by C. R Corbin
"It's warm, really warm." I said, feeling the water with my fingertips. This would be the perfect opportunity to bathe. He stared at me and nodded.
"So....you want to...." he started and I nodded.
"Yeah." I said and he turned away, sitting a few meters from the pool with his back turned. A pile of clothes laid near the rocks on the shore.
I dipped my feet into the pool and hopped in after confirming the temperature. I slipped the water over my face and sighed, it was so refreshing. For days I had been feeling pretty disgusting due to the sweat and all of the grime of travelling these caverns. I tossed more of the water onto me, sighing in relief as the streams trickled down my back. I looked back to see if he was stealing a glance, he wasn't.
"You don't want to look?" I teased him and he only growled. Cute.
I dipped my entire body in the water and shook around, I feel the water completely dig into my skin, washing me clean as I gasped and finished bathing. I turned to glance at him, his back was turned with the orange light falling onto his body. He looked so tired, so bothered, as was I. We were running low on food at this point and would have to start rationing a bit more severely. Not only that but there was no real plan of escape at the moment, there was no way out of this and I suspected that he feared the same outcome.
"Your turn." I said while drying myself off and slipping the last layers of clothes onto my body. He stared at me for a few moments before nodding. He seemed so enraptured, as if all of that muck and grime being washed away had caused him to see me in a different light. His eyes glazed over for but a moment and he grinned, a small blue blush forming on his cheek.
"You look wonderful." he said, admiring me for a moment before I hurried out of the pool.
"Oh stop with the flattery and hop in. It's really warm." I muttered.
I watch him undress for a moment. He stripped off his armor and that rippling body of muscle was revealed before he began to take off the upper part of his jumpsuit. It falls to the ground in front of him and he keeps his gaze on me, smiling as he did so. I watch him and can only shake as his torso is revealed, I see scars pervading every inch of his chest and his back. He flexed and those strange tattoos that were drawn across his chest and his back contorted. I smiled before he gazed at me expectantly, I wondered what he was-
"Oh." I said and turned away as he stripped off the last layer and stepped inside.
Once he was in the pool....well let's just say his use of force was a bit different than mine. The way he bathed...good god! I don't know if it was due to the strength that all of his race was born with or something else but the water came splashing out onto me with just the slightest shift. He noticed that he was making quite the fuss and apologized, the splashes became smaller and smaller until they were practically only drops falling onto the rocks.
"I'll just sit further away then." I muttered and stepped a few meters away from the edge, he resumed with the same amount of force soon after.
After he is finished we gathered in the middle of the room around a fire once more. He seemed to be deep in his own thoughts and I didn't want to pester him. He might have been thinking of a way out of this but....I needed to know one thing.
"You know my dream....it was really strange. I woke up in this beautiful forest and you were there by this river. I walked up to you and immediately we......made love. Mating as you call it....what did you dream of?" I asked him and he paused for a moment.
"Uhhh......I'm not entirely sure I should tell you." he started.
"Was it the same thing?" I asked him and he blushed.
"Yes." he admitted.
"So....there is something then uh? You've felt it too? Brewing inside of you and ready to emerge at a moment's notice." I muttered and he only nodded again.
"Yes, yes I have. Good god I don't know what it is but....ever since I've met you it's been dwelling inside. I didn't want to bring it up since you told me to back off but since you brought it up..." he muttered and I nodded.
"No I realize that. I'm feeling something similar and now....I don't find myself entirely opposed to the idea.
"So what should we do? I don't want to jeopardize this mission, but my feelings are telling me to mate. Every inch of my being is telling me to mate with you." he muttered and I shyly smiled, shaking my head.
"We could always talk about this later. After we're out of here we're going to have a word about this but for now.....we need to focus. I just wanted to let you know that something similar is being felt on my end and who knows? If we make it out of this those feelings might still be there and we can....well you know what we can do." I said and a ray of hope glimmered in his eyes. He nods and smiles, munching on the rest of his meal and sighing.
"I'm glad I was stuck with you. I have never been that close with a human before but...now I am. I have you. If we do make it out of this I would at least hope that we stay friends if not something more. I....value you. I see you in the same light as I see Koghu and Losil but even more than that." he proclaimed while white embers danced along his cheek. The glow of the orange flame shines onto his hands as he holds them close to the flickering shape of the fire.
"I've never really talked this openly with anyone before. About any of this." I said, I felt closer to him now than I ever did. It was if his presence and mine were mixing, our souls melding together in some sort of aura that consumed the two of us.
"Neither have I. I have very little experience with this sort of thing so you'll have to excuse me if I mess it up. I promise you if I am granted the chance then I will....then I will prove myself worthy of this strange bond that we have fostered. Until then we must rest, we must find a way out of this so I can see the sun again and I can tell you the true extent of what I feel, of what I want to build with you." he said with a great deal of longing in his voice and his eyes, as he glanced me over.
"And that is?" I asked.
"We're going to have to escape if you want to find out." he said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Anthriel
The very next morning I began to fit the pieces of the puzzle together.
I told her that I would keep watch that night and with good reason. I had to go over the details of our current predicament, I felt like I was on the edge of realizing something that would be the key to free us from this rocky prison. I glanced my hands over and looked out amongst the rocks that continued to shimmer their shade of orange. I stole the occasional glance at her, when I did my heart fluttered and I felt weak at the knees. I wanted to tell her about this burgeoning fire that was brimming inside of me, to tell her that I wanted to mate with her here and now like I had done in that hallucination.
But in order to do that we needed to get the hell out of here.
I will uncover the clues, the fact that the tree was man made, the fact that the organisms were mutating without any input from the environment, the changing compounds, the strange symbols on the wall.....there was someone down here and the likely hypothesis was that they were causing all of this.
So how should we track them?
"My communicator!" She yelped as I discussed this with her, I blinked for a moment and made a puzzled expression.
"What about it?" I asked.
"I can run a scan using it. The code shouldn't be that hard. If there really is someone then I should be able to detect their electronics and find them. That's it!" she said and grabbed her communicator, dragging it out and placing it on the rock in front of us.
Various lines of code flicker over the screen, much more than I could ever read in fact. I glance at it before a set of coordinates pops up and she types something else into the communicator. A light on the screen flashes again and suddenly....I see it.
"It's a map." I gasped.
"Yes and there's our man." she stated, pointing at a flashing light that was quite far from us, we were in the center of the screen and the reading was in the upper right corner of the screen.
&n
bsp; "So we need to go there?" I asked her.
"Most likely yes. Whoever is there might be able to help us. The things that they left here must have been clues." she states and I nod, gripping my axe and hoisting it behind my back.
I stand at attention and she packs up the rest of the gear, following me closely. I could see it in her eyes that she was relieved and so was I. Finally we had a sense of direction after wandering down here for about a week. We had a sense of where we are and a goal. The only reason that I had been keeping sane was because of her and now because of our discovery she was a great deal happier. I felt so good for her, anticipating our next move with great eagerness as I clutched the axe. The closer we got to this strange destination the more I heard it....
"More growling." she said in a fretful voice.
"What the hell are these things?" I asked myself. Part of me wondered if it was this man that was causing this, that was causing these strange creatures to surface.
"They're coming from behind too." she states, shaking with fear as I looked at her and frowned. I had one more weapon to give her.
"Here." I said and reached into my sack to hand her a laser pistol. I didn't really like firearms that much but perhaps she could use it to better effect than I could. "You do know how to use it right?" I asked her and she nodded, holding the pistol awkwardly in front of her. Oh well. We didn't have time to learn the proper shooting technique, it was do or die at this point.
"Alright, just keep steady...and keep close. I can't protect you if I stray too far away but if you keep close then we'll have a chance to make it through this." I informed her while shooting her a confident smile.
I felt a jolt in my arms as the first creature leapt from the shadows and I cracked it with my axe. A large light shoots out from my weapon as I pushed the blade in, blue rays of light spread apart from the center of the axe and I turned to watch her. A beast leapt for her and she got ready to fire out a shot but I knew that she would be missing. I told her to duck and tossed the axe at the beast which caught it in midair.
"Sorry!" she said.
"It's fine, just stay close and move when I tell you to move!" I yelled at her before leaping to grab my weapon but there wasn't enough time. They were coming in quick. I brandish my claws and snarled, telling her to lean against the wall behind us as I stood in the middle of the corridor, looking both ways and growling to invite more of them towards us.
One leaps at me and tries to claw at my face but I gripped its neck before it lands and tossed it into one of the nearby stalactites which cracked the rock and incapacitated the beast. Another runs towards me and snarls once more but I gripped its arm and tossed it away against another one of the creatures that was approaching. She did her best to fire her shots and to her credit she was doing a much better job than before.
"How many more of these goddamn things are there?" she asked me.
"Not many, I can tell. We're almost at the end." I said and kicked one of them in the face as it was approaching.
The final wave approached, four of them in fact. Two of them leapt forward first and I swiped at them with my claws, I managed to catch one on the throat and the other on the arm, killing and wounding them respectively. I stomp on the injured one and she takes out one more with a well-placed shot of the pistol before the last lunges at me. I grab it in midair and slam the creature into the ground. I can hear the bones snapping as the rock beneath my feet cracked and I snarled.
"Good, that was the last of them, I think. You going to be okay?" I asked her.
"I almost had a heart attack." she muttered. Yep she was going to be just fine.
I collect our things and venture deeper, with every step we took, we got closer and closer to this strange lair. Not only that but I also saw...we saw wonders. After a while of venturing through the corridors we happen upon a massive chamber. It truly was massive, larger than anything we had seen prior.
"It's as long as a football field." she remarked, I had no idea what this football was but it sounded rather big from the way she described it. Whoever was down here had planted trees across the entire ground, there were these green trees that clung to the rock in front of us, a collection of soil underneath, a variety of these glowing blue crystals overhead and...
"Look at the pool, it's glowing down there too!" she spoke and gazed at the water in front of us.
The way the room was arranged was with the two entrances at the front where we came in and would exit respectively. In front of the entrances was a large pool of water that was moderately deep. In this pool there were long slithering creatures that glowed a shade in between blue and green. They slither around and swim away, giving me the indication that this pool was much bigger than the small surface that we were gazing at. In front of us were a variety of trees with green leaves that also glowed blue due to the rocks overhead. I looked at her and she seemed to be in complete awe, so was I, but for different reasons.
"It's incredible." She observed with her eyes rushing over the waters.
The way the blue light shone onto her face and her hair, the way it flickered the longer she stood there. My god she looked incredible. Her curves were accentuated by the blue light and her blue eyes blended in perfectly, I could feel a breeze running through this area, it dances over her cheeks and her hair. I watch as her eyes sparkle in the light and she stepped forward.
"Careful, it's slippery." I muttered, there was a small stone path leading across the water to the trees. She carefully steps on it and treks across, I follow her closely to keep her guarded and watched as she took samples of the tree bark. These were mutant organisms, designed to feast on the chemical energy of Medama itself.
"They're all mutated....Why would they do this. Why would whoever is down here do this to the place?" she asked aloud.
"Maybe they were hoping to grow food? Maybe this is a researcher that went mad." I stated and she smiled.
"I don't relish that thought, but I'll be damned if this isn't the first thing I've seen in forever down here that didn't send a shiver up my spine." she states and dances her fingers across the tree bark.
"Let's stay here a while then huh? I think we're getting pretty far into the day and we should take a break. By tomorrow we should be able to reach whoever is down here." I stated and she nodded.
"Yeah, let's." She spoke softly.
I watched her set her burdens down and take off her boots. She dipped her feet into the water after scanning it to confirm that it was non-threatening. Her toes dip into the pool and she smiles, sighing as I join her and dip my own feet inside. She glanced at me and blushed, her eyes surveying what I would presume to be my muscles. She leaned into me, smiling and laughing a bit before I finally asked her:
"What's so funny?" I asked.
"Just that this entire time the two of us have been asking for two things. I have been wanting actual scientific discovery and you have been wanting to kill something. I guess we both got what we wanted out of the deal then huh?' she giggled and I began to laugh as well, what started out as a chuckle became full and boisterous.
"Weird how things turn out right? I bet the rest of the crew wish they could've been stuck with us! Then we could have actually bonded instead of just wandering from cave to cave." I stated and she nodded, smiling as she did so.
"The rest of the crew....I know they made it out alive. And we will too right? After we get out of here what's the first thing you think you'll do?" she asked and I shrugged.
"Go back home and maybe inform the higher ups about this place. That's what I'd do." I said, she nodded.
"Same here. Maybe I'll write a book.....maybe we can go on another adventure together? How about that? We could make quite the team you know? A scientist and her warrior travelling the cosmos in search of new discoveries?" she asked and I laughed.
"Her warrior? You own me?" I asked her and she giggled.
"Oh stop it. You know i'm your scientist too right? We're a team, we'r
e friends...maybe more." she said with a great deal of sincerity in her voice, her eyes flickered and I watched the blue glow run across her cheeks. She leaned in and her nose barely grazed my chin before I gave in and kept my stare on her.
"What are you trying to tell me? Is this a confession of love? You want to be mates?" I teased her but her expression didn't change.
"I'm trying to tell you that...." she couldn't find the words to finish the sentence. Here we were, sat next to this pool without anything to say to one another, completely speechless. I felt like a boy again and not the veteran that has been on more missions than could be counted. In her presence I was small, I was her's and she was mine. I leaned in and gave in, pressing my lips against her's and moaning, gasping as my bleu skin rubbed her fair tones and she gasped.
"Oh." she spoke suddenly as I captured her.
"Shocked?" I asked her.
"Only disappointed that this didn't happen sooner." she stated and I smiled.
"Well now's my chance. I 'm going to claim you." I growled with that primal side taking over once again as I stand in front of her.
"I'm not going to resist." she said in a sultry voice.
I gripped her and stripped the rest of my jumpsuit off before tossing it over to the pile where my armor laid. I watch her with a great deal of interest as she stripped off her own suit and her undershirt. I gaze at her as she finally revealed herself to me in all of that light. The blue light flickered over her body, splashing over her chest and her back, shrouding her in oceanic tones of color as I kept my gaze on her.
"So beautiful." I remarked.
She was so curvy, so wondrous, every inch of her glimmered in the light. I watched her buttocks and her breasts curve, shaking a bit as she moved. Her lips spread and she gasped as the brown locks of hair run over her forehead before she stepped forward.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Cass