by Lucia Ashta
“I’m not feeling too great myself,” Dolpheus admitted.
Dolpheus and I trained—hard, and every day—to be prepared for whatever challenge life might throw at us. But how on O—or Sand—could we have prepared for this? Being pummeled by interstellar travel? Yeah, we hadn’t predicted that.
I knew everyone was feeling the effects of the extreme pressure we were placing on our bodies. If Dolpheus and I, who were in prime physical condition, felt like this, how were the others feeling? None were overweight or particularly out of shape, but none of them made it their job to perform in peak condition.
We needed to stop.
“You all can go ahead without me, really you can,” Lila said, suggesting again that she was more padlune bear than she-dragon. But I didn’t think she meant what she said. She couldn’t. Who’d want to get mauled by a pack of wild monsters all alone on an alien planet? I wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone, not even Aletox.
But it was Ilara who expressed my compassion, something I’d never witnessed the princess do. Again I wondered at the woman at my side. She was so similar to the princess I first loved as to be nearly identical. But there were differences. Sufficient that I could no longer deny that they were important ones. This Ilara was as strong and fierce as the princess, but she had a soft side she shared with others, not just me. She was a woman I could fully admire and love... but was she the princess of Origins?
Ilara put a hand on Lila’s heaving shoulder. “We’re not going to leave you,” she said, her words soft yet resolute. She flicked eyes that swirled even in the fading light first to me, then Dolpheus, then Kai. “Can you defend us against the hyenas?”
“Of course,” Dolpheus and I said at once while Kai said, “Yes,” and drew his sword.
“They’re likely to attack as a pack. I imagine they’ll surround us and try to pick us off, one by one.”
I turned at the sound of another sword drawing.
Aletox said, “You don’t think I’m just going to stand around without contributing to our defense, do you?” His tone was harsh, as if it was an insulting notion, but it’s what I’d assumed.
With his sword drawn, it was obvious he knew how to wield it. His body seemed to transform. Muscles he hid well unfurled and flexed. His eyes were remarkably alert and sharp.
It wasn’t the first time I’d realized how dangerous the man was. Still, I was shocked into silence, and I wasn’t sure why. It was as if I were watching a Vikas viper prepare to strike, startled that it should rear its head and pull its neck back for maximum effect when it did little to hide its true nature.
Aletox moved in the shadows. Why was I surprised by what I saw when he emerged from them?
“Well?” Aletox asked. “Are you just going to stand there? Or are you going to put some of those legendary skills to use? Because the pack sounds like it’s getting closer. Certainly they’re close enough to scent us.”
Dolpheus drew his sword and faced away from us, head scanning the monotony around us. “If they’re going to attack, I hope they do it before it gets any darker.”
Or we wouldn’t be able to spot them before they were nearly on top of us.
An ululating cackle erupted just then, as if they knew what I was thinking. None of my companions said anything else while we listened. They knew what I was thinking. Animals maximized the advantages afforded to them. And it was already dusk.
Finally, Lila spoke. “Is it too much to hope for that the moon will be bright enough for us to see them?”
“It’s never too much to hope,” Ilara replied. “I have no idea what point in the moon’s cycle we’re in, so I can’t predict how bright it will be. So hoping’s all we’ve got. Unless there’s some kind of faithum you two can do...”
Ilara was looking at Dolpheus and me again. He answered. “Even if we’re capable of true faithum, this is beyond what we can do.”
Maybe, I thought, before I could figure out where the idea came from. Had interstellar travel damaged my mind? I didn’t really think we could influence the moon on a different planet, did I? It was one thing to not believe in the impossible and it was another to give energy to crazy notions that must truly be impossible—and thinking we could affect a moon was impossible, wasn’t it? Still, something in me hesitated, and I pondered what it might mean until the hyenas called out again.
My hackles rose and I drew my sword too. They were closer, but it was difficult to estimate exactly how close. Their howls echoed across the empty space, giving us little to measure. I pulled one of my knives partly out of its sheath. That would make it half a second faster to draw. From the sound of the beasts that approached, half a second would make a difference.
“Do you think it’d be all right if I drink the rest of my water?” Lila asked. She couldn’t have more than half a sip left. Even measuring our intake, the day had been sweltering. “I mean, if I might die, I might as well drink all I have left, right?” She chuckled, but the sound didn’t fool any of us.
Kai moved to buttress Lila’s other side. “You’re not going to die.”
I held my breath and willed him not to say the cursed words, “I promise.” I didn’t particularly care to make promises none of us could guarantee we’d keep.
He put his hand on Lila’s other shoulder for a quick, comforting second. “Remember who we’re with. Tanus and Dolpheus are legends. They’ve killed mowabs with their bare hands. Mowabs, just think of that. These hyenas can’t possibly be worse than mowabs.” He laughed, but the sound had no mirth. If anything, his quick laugh was nearly as unsettling as the prolonged, taunting ones of the animals that hunted us. He was frightened, and I couldn’t blame him. He didn’t have the experience in battle that Dolpheus and I, and even Aletox, had. His heart hadn’t stopped feeling fear in order to survive.
But there was no opportunity to see whether Kai’s reassuring words had any effect on their intended target.
The hyenas’ call changed. They weren’t laughing at us anymore, they were talking to each other, and the soldier in me could only imagine they were coordinating their attack.
Ilara’s gaze matched Dolpheus,’ and she took a step away from Lila to search the rapidly vanishing horizon. She crossed her arms and yanked upward, pulling a knife from the bands on her arms with each hand.
This was it.
Without the need to speak, Dolpheus and I arranged ourselves around Ilara, Kai, and Lila, facing out. We’d done this hundreds of times, but never to protect something quite so important. Princess or not, I’d lose whatever sanity I had to my name if I lost the woman I loved to some crazy animals.
“Here.” Ilara pulled another knife and passed it to Lila.
“I’m a scientist. I don’t know how to use this.”
“You’ll know how to use it well enough if you need to, trust me,” Ilara said.
I sidled next to Ilara. The woman had trained in combat far more than a princess should need to, but I wasn’t letting her out of my sight. I took a quick look at her, but I didn’t find the fear I expected to, and she didn’t look at me.
“I can feel them,” she said. “They’re here.”
I could feel them too. The air around us had shifted. It was charged in some creepy, unidentifiable way. Whatever exactly was approaching, I could sense it. A tangible feeling of danger.
The sky turned pink with the last of the sunset.
As if the sun on this strange planet were on our side instead of the hyenas, the flare of pink silhouetted several dark shapes creeping up on us.
Aletox completed the haphazard circle we’d formed, closing the gaps, with Lila a few steps further inside the circle than any of the rest of us.
I counted at least seven beasts emerging from the blurred horizon before the pink faded in a final, dying gasp. If these were the sunsets of Sand, then I’d find the chance to be disappointed later.
The hyenas began laughing again, circling the sound around. It was the sound of nightmares, the taunting one could never fully
escape until one woke.
There was no waking from this.
Then they moved faster toward us. Another handful of them materialized from the dusk.
“Fuck me,” Ilara whispered.
I prayed with all I had that the two of us would be alive after this so I could answer her request in a most literal fashion.
15
As was often the case when I was under attack, the scene around me distilled into contradictions. Everything moved so quickly that I was forced to rely only on instinct, without the opportunity to weigh the outcome of any action. I moved before my mind could register, operating on something ancient and beyond reason, much as the animals were.
At the same time, the movements around me fragmented into still scenes that would later pose the threat of appearing within my memories without warning. A rabid mouth with long, sharp teeth, mouth stretched impossibly wide. Dark eyes that seemed lifeless, belying their single-minded focus on killing. Leaping bodies of mottled fur flashing by too fast.
We were too busy to produce any sounds that would’ve distinguished us from our attackers as being human. We were reduced to grunts amid the snarls.
Somewhere behind me I registered a quick bark of pain. Then a growl as ferocious as any of the attacking hyenas. Aletox. It had to be. I’d heard Dolpheus wounded in battle enough times to know the sounds weren’t his, and Kai was immediately to my left.
But the old man was too tough to be killed off that easily.
A hyena squealed to my right for an instant as Ilara sliced its throat wide open. It dropped from the air in a heavy heap. I looked at Ilara’s face, suddenly needing to see what she was like during a kill.
Her face was set in sad lines of regret as she crouched over the slain body that was all too still for something that had been in mid-lunge a few seconds before. She brought a hand to the creature’s chest while she swiveled her head back and forth, searching for the next threat. I was certain she must’ve been aware I was looking at her, but she didn’t look back.
Until her eyes widened in alarm, and I knew that those moments I couldn’t afford had cost me.
I felt the hot, terrible gash at my shoulder before I managed to face my attacker. I swiped blindly at the beast with a knife and made contact. But it was a swipe not a stab, and that wouldn’t turn the animal from its attack and sliding right past me. Straight at Lila.
Her eyes were wide as suns, her hands limp and useless at her sides. All these centuries, I’d never allowed myself to become distracted during combat. Distraction killed. I’d said this over and over. I knew it. Yet I’d allowed myself to be stupid.
And now Lila would pay the price of my error.
I lurched at the blur of fur and managed to stab its hindquarter. In a moment of dastardly irony, another beast snapped at my calf while my back was turned.
I’d paid for my distraction twice already, though I’d learned the lesson even before I felt the physical repercussions of it. As soon as I realized my eyes were on Ilara instead of where they should’ve been, I’d known.
I bent at the waist in one swift motion, pulled upward on my sword, and prepared to stab the shit out of the animal that gnawed on muscle and neared bone.
Kai beat me to it. His sword pierced the animal’s chest, where a heart would be in a cat on Origins, and I had to fumble to divert my own sword before it endangered him.
My eyes swung left, to his unprotected back, then quickly right, to Ilara. Hyenas were ready to pounce on both of them.
The one after Kai was closer, and the right thing would’ve been to defend him, he was only at a disadvantage because he’d leapt to defend me and my stupid, distracted ass. But right and wrong could be hazy on the best of days when love was involved.
On a shredded leg, I jumped to Ilara’s defense. I jabbed at the creature and drew blood. Ilara did the same and I spun toward Kai, sword at the ready.
I was in time to watch Dolpheus withdraw his sword from a beast and Kai finish him off.
They kept coming. I silenced the dangerous recriminations of my mind and flowed. I’d prepared for this all my life. The beasts might be different than any on Planet Origins, but the energy of attack and defense was the same.
I swung and sliced and ducked and lunged. And then I did it again. Until finally a deafening silence descended, occupying the space of growls and snarls and whimpers of pain.
I couldn’t see into the twilight well enough to confirm that none of the pack had survived. But I knew it just the same. Through and through. The air felt different, heavy with loss, but free of the urgency of life or death.
Death had already come and gone, a cruel and unforgiving mistress.
Ilara was the first to slump to the ground, but the rest of us would follow her lead.
But she was the only one that cried.
16
I’d never seen Ilara cry, and although it wasn’t a stream of tears, I stood, frozen, watching the cosmos in her eyes waver and shimmer behind them.
I was staring, but I realized it only when she tilted a vulnerable but unashamed look at me. When she brought a surprisingly steady hand to tuck strands of hair behind her ears and smeared blood across her cheeks, I dropped to my knees next to her. The sand muted my fall, and the thump of a man who knows he’s done for was swallowed into oblivion.
There was nothing of me that I wouldn’t give to her. For a man who’d resisted true love for centuries, I’d allowed myself to be swept up with shocking ease. What would be left of me if I ever lost her? She’d survived this attack, but there would be others. Whether or not she was the princess, she led a dangerous life, one that allowed for risks and the full expression of life—the same kind that too often danced with death.
A ripping sound tore the air, and me from myself, from the dangers that I raged against within me, nearly as devastating as the ones in the Sahara Desert, which gave life to monsters within and without.
I sought out the source of the sound of ripping fabric, still stuck in slow motion, in the denial of a reality that could deliver finality all too swiftly.
Dolpheus was tying a strip of fabric from his shirt around Aletox’s upper thigh. As if in a drugged stupor after too large a pot of hakusha, I stared at the crimson that soaked into the parched sand beneath my possible-father’s leg. That sand drew the blood beneath its surface in less than a second and seemed to suck the wound for more, greedy for moisture.
“The wound’s bad, but you’ll make it,” Dolpheus was saying, but his words bubbled around me as if underwater. “Where’s the med kit?”
When I didn’t move, Dolpheus said, “Are you all right, Tan?” All eyes looked toward me, even Ilara’s lovely ones.
“Aye, aye, I’m all right.” Dolpheus forced me out of whatever had a hold over me. Whatever it was, I’d never allowed it a chance at me before.
I wiped my blades across the nearest hyena pelt and sheathed them. Then I noticed Ilara’s gaze heavy upon me. She wasn’t angry. She was only sad.
I rose to my feet and swayed for a second before I took a step.
“By the oasis, Tanus, you aren’t all right,” Kai said.
I watched Ilara transform. She went from morose to heightened alertness faster than I could register.
She jumped up with astonishing agility for someone who’d endured space travel in two directions in just days. Her blades dropped to the ground. “Oh my god,” she said, a hand tearing at the sleeve of my shirt.
The haze that possessed me retreated gradually, forced away by her prodding. Even though it was gentle, it hurt like a motherfucker, and just like that I was fully back from wherever I’d gone, led by the love I’d resisted for so long—by the balls.
“And your leg too!” She ripped at my pants, her hands on my bare skin awakening desires that had no place in a contest for survival. “Where’s the kit?”
“I think Kai was carrying it,” I said, my voice sounding like someone else’s to my ears.
Ilara moved fast. �
�Holy shit, Kai! You too?”
“No, I’m all right.”
“Then what’s all this blood dripping down your sleeve?”
“I think I tore your stitches open, that’s all.”
“From when the ninja kidnappers slashed open your bicep,” she said.
“Right.”
“What the hell, guys? Is life always this dangerous for you?”
It was more dangerous for me when she was around. Only she could cause me to forget myself and all my hard training.
“They’re the stuff of legends,” Lila said, sounding tired but with more spark in her than before the hyena attack. “They’re always facing danger, at least Dolpheus and Tanus. But then, you know that already.” The tone of her voice changed before the end of her sentence, but she didn’t point out, once again, that this Ilara didn’t remember what the princess should. I was grateful for it. My heart hurt more than my shoulder or my leg, and I wasn’t even sure why. Was it simply facing the possibility of Ilara’s immediate death?
Ilara rummaged in Kai’s bag noisily then held up her prize. “Is this it?”
I squinted but could barely make out the outlines of a rigid black container. She was already snapping it open when she returned to my side. “How’s it work?” She held up a small, portable healing wand, turning it this way and that trying to see it better in the dark.
“You put its base in the palm of your hand,” Lila said, “and transfer your energy into the device. It amplifies it and emits it through the top.”
“So it’s just your own personal energy that does the healing?” Ilara was incredulous.
“Aye.”
“And what amplifies it? What’s inside this thing that manages that?”
“Crystals.”
“Crystals,” Ilara repeated, lathering the doubt on heavily.
“Aye,” Lila said, nonplussed. Then she laughed, and it was a much more pleasant sound than the unhinged laugh from before the attack. “You have no problem following your intuition to a foreign planet but you doubt that crystals can amplify our natural energy?” She laughed again. “What exactly do you think powers your body if not your energy?”