Keeping With Destiny

by Stephan Knox

  By the end of the day’s travel, Tannin’s back had become painfully worse, and he felt the fever setting in over his skin where his Symbiotai rested. It was enough that it interfered with his focus and he decided to stop early for the night when they came across a cinderblock structure now taken over by large leafy vines and moss.

  Tannin paused, holding his hand out behind him to halt Aari from approaching any farther while he sniffed at the air. He kept still, drawing in another deep breath through his nostrils. He waved her down into a crouched position and keep an eye out, while he proceeded in to clear the area. He glanced back watching her as she pulled the pulse pistol she’d held onto since they’d left the camp of his brethren. Her eyes darting over their surroundings, but not just the building or the brush, she watched the tree tops too. She was sharp. She knew about snipers.

  For the first time, since he had reclaimed her stolen prize, Tannin pulled the long heavy sword from its scabbard strapped on his back and held it out at an upward angle ready to cleave.

  He stepped slowly one-foot crossing over the other as he listened more than looked. The muscles in his arms flexed with tension on the ready. He sent his nose to the breeze and inhaled deeply then with ears pricked for the most miniscule of sounds, he approached the structure.

  So far, the scent of humans was old, at least a few weeks back, but that didn’t mean they weren’t returning. Hunting and foraging often meant long days out. The steps up to the entrance were covered in dirt and moss, bearing only the imprints of a five-toed varmint and a two-toed hoof, which could only be deer. Food was close by at least. Tannin glanced up as he stepped under the overhang created by the second floor of the structure. The perfect trap would be to have a hole in the second-floor balcony. Scavengers rarely looked up— neither did food. He glanced back over his shoulder to Aari, gave an upward motion of his chin. She responded with her hand on her forehead, palm out. Coast was clear.

  He hovered just at the door a moment, glancing in— listening while his eyes adjusted to see in the dim lighting. His internal infrared sensors caught the movement of a rat or squirrel skittering on the far side of the first room, registered and transferred the image in his vision and mind. The flap of wings and the coo of birds in the room above was all that he detected inside, so he finally ventured past the threshold.

  The first room gave little detail of who had once been her yet, despite its abandoned age, it was surprisingly dry. The second room was easier to see as light poured in through the two window sections. Birds, that were perched on a counter, gave a start at his entry and flew out. Movement in the brush outside caught his attention, but saw it was only Aari making her way towards the back of the structure.

  Tannin cleared two more rooms before approaching the stairs that led to the second story. There wasn’t much left of the steps, which meant trading out his heavy sword for a weapon that could be managed with a single grip. A vulnerable position, but the section needed to be swept before he could declare it safe to make camp. He sheathed his spadone, pulling out for the pulse pistol from his leg holster.

  “I’m coming up! If you’re up there, you better make yourself known now, because if you don’t, and I get up there and find you, I will shoot you!” he called out, stilling listen for the telltales of a hide-a-way, but heard none.

  He took a long stride up the steps, keeping tight against the walls, hoping that the rest of the stairwell didn’t collapse out from under him as he transferred his weight from one foot to the next. He reached out, catching the floor above him and pulled up just enough to see over the floor, gun taking aim, and readied for the first thing that moved. He twisted, scanning across the room; an old bedroll lay in a corner with its stuffing yanked out by every critter with teeth, wanting to borrow from it for its nesting. Leaves that had blown in through the double doors to the balcony were now piled against the back wall and in the corners. Sparrows flew in, circled overhead, and back out, while a few of the cooing birds huddled to one wall, bobbing their heads nervously.

  Footsteps crunching on the floor down below had Tannin dropping back to the floor to find Aari coming from the back.

  “Owner is outback face down in the dirt.” She shrugged.

  “Cause?”

  Another shrug and her lip quirked to one side, “Not much left of him to tell. Far from fresh. He doesn’t even stink much anymore.” Without further regards, she stepped over to the sink basin in the room and tested the hand pump. It took some effort but within ten or more tries, she managed to get it primed and had a trickle of water coming out.

  With the place cleared, they set up to rest for the night. Tannin set a few alarm traps out in case of intruders, while Aari went out to take a crack at bringing back a meal. Returning not long after with a cloth filled with berries and a snake she would have preferred not to have encounter, but it would suffice for food for them.

  Tannin tried to rest while they waited for the snake meat to roast in the fire. He flexed, twisting about trying to work out some of the pain, which had only worsened as the night approached, but to no avail.

  “Is there something wrong with him, you think?” Tannin gritted his teeth, looking to Aari for answers, but he feared she didn’t know enough about their kind to have the answer he needed. “It feels like my back is on fire.”

  Aari circled around him, dropping down to her knees and lifted his shirt to look. She paused as her gaze lingered on the ripple of corded muscles down his back, not even the slight swelling around his spine marred the allure of his body and she felt her own sym stir within her, making her feel things she had always struggled with. Even more so now, since Tannin had snatched her. She mentally admonished herself for the randy thoughts and pushed her mind towards a proper purpose, as she touched his skin. It was definitely hot to the touch, and as she slid her fingers up his spine, she saw his sym move under the skin and she instantly drew her hand away.

  “What’s wrong?” Tannin glanced over his shoulder at her.

  Aari’s hand was curled up against her chest still from the quick withdrawal, but she shook her head at him. “Nothing. I just didn’t want to disturb your sym if he’s in pain.”

  Tannin’s brows wrinkled up and he tried to force a smile on. “Funny, because for a moment there, I think he was wanting you to touch him.” He tried to laugh, but the discomfort he felt was enough to mar his features. “You should probably not be too close. If Sif is sick, I don’t want you being affected as well.”

  At his request, Aari kept a small distance from him. He feared his sym was sick, only, she suspected the illness was something else. But until she was certain, she kept silent and obeyed Tannin.

  They traveled for two more days, but by the aftnoon of the third, the pain was so great, Tannin was nearly crippled by it. However, by then, Aari was fairly certain what was happening. There was no way they could go any further. Not until it either passed or it killed him.

  Tannin’s Symbiotai was growing inside him, extending its tentacles down along the spine, and working its way towards its host’s reproductive organs. The process was insufferably painful, even under normal conditions of puberty establishment. Tannin was far from that age.

  She watched in innate horror and concern as it grew worse as the night came.

  Unlike most Symbiotai, who had only two lengthened tentacles, hers had four that reached all the way down into her womb. The process began when she entered puberty herself. Consequently, suffering similar pain. She didn’t know how she knew, but she was certain Tannin was going through the same thing now, and perhaps it was worse because he was older than she was when hers happened or because she received help when hers began.

  She had still been boarding at the Skaddary Academy, where all lost and stray feral kids were sent, when it happened.

  The infirmary there didn’t know what to do with her and against the prerequisite orders documented in her file, the staff ordered a transfer to a higher medic facility— to
have her scanned.

  Except, those orders were intercepted, and They came. Like some secret military control unit, They took her off the base in the middle of the night.

  She was taken up into the mountains, into a secret labyrinth where she was submerged into a pool of thick warm liquid. Thicker than water, and more opaque in color than the pool of awakening. An almost fluid, gelatinous substance that reminded her of the pool at the temple when she was little. There, in the secret mountain cave, she stayed for four more days, in a barely lucid state while her Symbiotai’s growth spurt completed the journey— almost pain free. She was vaguely aware of the tenders that watched over her, but they never spoke to her, nor did anyone else for that matter. On the fifth day, she was taken back to the academy along with a litany of warnings to never ever allow anyone to transgress sexual behaviors with her. What they didn’t warn her about was that was also when her sex drive became an inner battle for her that would never really let up.

  Tannin needed to be in the pool. She knew this, but she didn’t know where it was, or how she would get him there. She could only sit and watch and grow fearful of the results when it was over. Tannin had already made it clear he intended her to be his union. Now, his Symbiotai was preparing for the mating as well.

  “Why the long face? I’m the one in pain,” Tannin muttered from across the camp. His face half buried in the bedroll, from where he had been biting into the blanket-hide during the lacerating spikes throughout the evening.

  Aari shook her head with minute jerks, her hand coming up to flick the tears from her eyes, before they could fall. “It’s like I don’t have any say so in this.”

  “What do you mean?” Through his pain she could clearly hear a concern for her.

  “You say you intend me to enter union with you. They apparently knew this as well, and now your Symbiotai is stretching out into your man tools in anticipation of the union.”

  Tannin’s jaw clenched a moment, still coming down off the last spasm. “Is that what’s happening to me?”

  “I think so,” she answered with a mute nod.

  “I’m not going to force you, Aari. I want you to know that. But I do need your gift in order to kill the warlords.”

  Tannin tried to travel more on the fourth day, but his worsening condition overruled his perseverance to catch up with the supply caravan he’d intended to sabotage. Decidedly, he gave into the crippling effects he and his sym were going through when they came across a large structure, now completely taken over with vegetation that both offered shelter and a fresh water source. They could not have found a better spot to camp for now. Even the few small carnivores that grazed inside offered some hope of hunting food.

  Tannin pulled his gun, his senses mapping out the insides to be sure it was safe for them and not a stage-hold for marauders. Aari kept in step, right behind him with her own gun drawn, her eyes sweeping across the over growth.

  The building was huge. A long dome like tunnel, now dense with thick masses of vines, diffused the sunlight that shown through its broken panes of transparent sheeting overhead. A shallow trench cut -out in the center with two rows of steel beams, amongst tall grasses, led the way down its stretch. And ahead, a box car sat silent, rusting away, while ground roots strived to swallow it up.

  Birds flew overhead, setting off a high alert of their approach. Aari’s gaze went to the walls, covered in more foliage, and trailed up to the possible nesting farther up the wall. With any luck, she could climb up and find some eggs for them to eat.

  The tunnel fell apart, only to be replaced by a second section of building, equally taken over by the wild vegetation, but in better condition than the tunnel. It stood some four stories high with concrete walkways that so far remained sound on two of the upper levels, while some of its balcony rails in other areas had long since rusted and collapsed away. When they came out o wait appeared as the structures epicenter they saw it was even bigger than the tunnel for the rail car they’d just come from.

  Aari contemplated its uses, perhaps it had been a place for gatherings, but in this world, it only welcomed the approach of nature. Its strange and eerie beauty touching her in some way she could not explain.

  Running across the floor, coming through a large washed out section of wall, now etching its way into the ground, was a creek run-off from the river they had been following. The water source gathering in a large pond that may have, at one time, been meant for nothing more than to look at, now gathered water for thirsty wildlife.

  Tannin right away identified about a dozen or so species that frequented the place by their foot prints in the mud surrounding the pool. He named off which ones would be easiest to catch for a meal, and a skin for trade in the next barter town they came to.

  “There are a bunch of bird nests back in the tunnel. Maybe I can find some eggs?” Aari suggested with some valiance.

  “Wrong season for them,” he burst her optimism. “Eggs are found in the spring.”

  “Oh,” she muttered as she tried to figure out how she was going to manage hunting down any of the other things he mentioned, not being very adept at hunting.

  The ceiling overhead was little more than barren steel girders. Trees that had laid claim to the space inside, reached all the way up towards the ceiling, breaking through its top.

  Under the overhang of balconies, walls divided sections of the area into smaller rooms. Tannin picked one out and they began setting up camp where he would endure the remainder of his transformation safely.

  Like before, nighttime was the worst for Tannin. Straining to withstand his Symbiotai’s puberty growth, he lay face down on his bedroll, biting into the hide to ride out the throes. Pain that was brought on by the stretching of the sym’s tentacles that slowly made its way cut through flesh and nerve endings, following along spinal cord then arc in the direction of Tannin’s scrotum, where it would eventually establish its own seed for a Symbiotai breeder recipient.

  Aari tended to all that she could, grateful that Tannin didn’t have much of an appetite that would challenge her lack of hunting skills. She had just finished stoking the fire and banked it for the night when she settled down and watched over him from the other side of the camp. But she couldn’t dispel what she had gone through and what she knew was coming with Tannin’s growth spurt.

  When hers had been completed, the sexual drive was fierce at first, never ebbing completely away, but the first few weeks drove her crazy. Only difference now was Tannin had no reason to not act on them.

  He could see the growing fear in her again. The same she always carried with her in concern for him. “I told you, Aari. I will not force you.”

  Aari looked away. He may not want to force her, but would he be able to restrain himself after his Symbiotai was in position to take her? “You can barely control the raging hormones from your sym as it is. What makes you think you’ll be able to once he is in place and ready to mate?”

  Tannin didn’t get the chance to answer, his body contorted with the next surge of agony that ripped through his body like a shockwave that started with tearing flesh at the base of his spine. Tannin’s teeth clamped down in the hide and he growled. His fists curling into the skin, threatening to rip it just as the Symbiotai did to him.

  The spike came and went, leaving him panting with a heavy breath, and his body already soaked in sweat. “Is there nothing you can do to ease the pain?”

  “No,” she answered in a withdrawn tone. “There’s nothing.”

  Tannin gritted his teeth, smelling the lie and he no longer had the tolerance to swallow it down. “Do not lie to me anymore! I smell them every time. The stench of words comes from your mouth. What is it you’re not telling me?!” he bellowed out. Aside from the change in her body’s scent when she did, he hated that she found it so easy to do so. He wanted her pure in every way except for the moment when he would take her. She was a breeder; she should not carry the lies of men on her tongue.

&nb
sp; “It would not matter if I told you the truth. We can’t get there!” Aari snapped back at him.

  Tannin felt the second part of the agonizing spike coming, the stretching of the second tendril, but he held to his wits. He wanted to know the answer. “What is it? And why can’t we get to it?” he growled out the question; his fingers fisting once more as he tensed up to accept the pain.

  “Because, I don’t know where it is,” she sobbed out. “I have looked so many times. I can’t find it.”

  Try as he did, Tannin couldn’t hang on, his head kicked back, and he let out a cry that echoed off the old-world walls— sending birds and other creatures of flight into the night air.

  Aari jumped and ran to his side. It was getting worse, much worse. There was no pool to submerge him in. Even if there was, how would she get him there? She recalled how the Elder escorted her to the cavern, how he rubbed her back while they sat in the back of the transport vehicle. His touching easing the suffering as much as possible until they reached the pool.

  Hesitantly, Aari laid her hands-on Tannin’s back. He flinched so hard his elbow kicked back, nearly knocking her away, but she reached for him again, and slowly and gently began to caress the inflamed skin on his back.

  Almost instantly, Tannin’s tension soothed, if only enough that he didn’t have the need to cry out. His head collapsed to the bedroll and he let out a moan, mostly pain, but some relief was there as well.

  She kept her fingers light at first, like feathers floating over his skin. She didn’t dare push into the bruised muscle tissue. She wasn’t even sure if Tannin was aware of how stimulation to his back affected his sym. Though it would seem likely his Symbiotai would have found a way to urge him to do so. Hers always did.