Chapter Seven
Reina
Things had changed immeasurably in the last twelve hours. We were just outside the Vithohn city when I really noticed the difference in Oron.
Aggression used to be hidden just below his skin: trickling and bubbling and waiting to snap at a moment’s notice. Now he was calm: curious about me. He asked me endless questions and always had a pensive look on his face.
It made me feel… at ease. Not that I was thrilled about arriving at Bolmore, the city whose skyline could be seen from a mile away, but I was starting to feel that sense of adventure I first longed for when I climbed down the side of the mountain.
“Oron?” came the call of another Vithohn, traveling with yet another associate. The one speaking had his spire cut off: his face full of jagged plates ribbed in rows on his forehead.
Oron looked at me and then stepped in front of my body ever so slightly. “Vasaraask’u,” he greeted.
“What… are you doing here?” the man asked, sounding genuinely puzzled. He held a large bow slung over his shoulder, but I couldn’t see any arrows. The man looked at me then and ran his eyes up and down my body, stopping at my blood-stained shirt. “Sparing another human?”
My eyes flicked up to Oron, and he said, “What are you doing here?”
“You didn’t hear?” he said and pointed to the large gates guarding the city. They were metallic and shimmering with black sludge.
“A war broke out in Bolmore,” Vasaraask’u said.
Oron’s eyes roved over the gates, and he ran a thick finger against the dark gloss.
“There’s bloodshed everywhere,” Vasaraask’u continued: his eyes never leaving me. “The colonies are calling us the red city.”
“That’s festive,” Oron snorted. “Does that mean we won?”
“Yeah, but…” Vasaraask’u gave a pointed look in my direction, obviously not wanting to speak in front of me. He began speaking in the Vithohn’s native tongue then: his accent thick. I couldn’t understand a word of it, but I looked between their faces for some indication of emotion or motive.
Oron nodded to the man but spoke English in his responses, grabbing my hand as he did so. “They’re calling everyone back to base?” he said, possibly repeating the information being given to him.
Vasaraask’u drew out a long breath and ran a hand along the back of his head before saying something else I couldn’t understand.
“I’ve felt it for moons now,” Oron said.
“Who is this?” the third Vithohn, a black and silver spired alien asked, interrupting the others.
“Didn’t you hear?” Vasaraask’u scoffed. “Sylas want a human prize.”
“Can you blame him?” the third one said, looking at me with such desire that I wanted to take out my pistol and fire a burning pink shot into his skull. Or burrow underground. Either one would do just fine.
“I’ve had one,” Vasaraask’u said in a husky tone. “So no. I cannot.”
“You’re had one?” Oron said fiercely.
Vasaraask’u took a step forward, circling me. I tilted my head and watched him from side-eyes as he made his way around my body.
“Oh yeah,” he said, still looking me up and down.
Oron’s spire went thick with a yellow glow, fighting to burst from within its restraints as he lurched forward, grabbing the bow from Vasaraask’u’s arm and pulling the string back. As he did so, a laser-based arrow formed inside the bow and Oron aimed it perfectly, moving it between Vasaraask’u and the other Vithohn.
“Enough,” he seethed. “She is for Sylas. No one else.”
The unnamed Vithohn looked frightened, but Vasaraask’u merely snarled and grabbed his bow from Oron, ripping it out of his hands and walking back the way they came.
I lurched back into Oron’s arms and whispered out a thank you.
The city was immense and black, with buildings and gothic towers reaching up into the sky. They had gargoyles atop them, which made me wonder if this city was here before they invaded our planet or if this was something they had designed themselves.
Bolmore was lit up with electricity: a city perpetually awake.
I couldn't help but breathe in a breathy gasp as we walked by the pointed archways, flying buttresses, ribbed vaults, and immense paned windows of the city.
I looked up at the slits of sky that could be seen in between the city skyscrapers at the setting sun and the flat pink clouds that could be scarcely seen.
"It's beautiful," I said, and Oron squeezed my hand.
"We're going to meet Sylas now," he said and I felt torn.
On the one hand, I felt disgust at knowing I would be given to a creature for sex and for having been taken in the first place. Just like Kennedy said I would be; oh hell, just like everybody warned me about.
But, part of me wondered if I wasn't about to stumble upon a potential opportunity. If this 'Sylas' person really wanted a human female around and genuinely felt some sort of... otherworldly connection to me, was there are a chance I could sway him? Cause him to favor the humans and give our people peace?
I knew it sounded naive, but it was a chance I had to take.
Once inside the immense city, we found our way to a neighborhood in the north end, where a massive clearing was. It was a helipad, surrounded by buildings.
It was there that I first met Sylas.
He was handsome and fearsome all at the same time.
With his animal dotting and bright green and yellow patches, there was something fun about Oron’s appearance: playful and sexy.
But Sylas was just handsome.
He was tall, taller than the rest of the Vithohn, and had skin the same color as mine. He was the only Vithohn I’d seen so far with vertical plating under his skin. The plates were above his temples and didn’t jut out far, looking more like a pattern from afar than actual raised skin.
His pale skin color faded back in a gradient of grays and finally pure black, flowing up his horns and down into his spire.
I swallowed nervously at the sight of him, unsure what to do.
Curtsey? Shake his hand?
He was leaving the city. Going to get some of the Vithohn who were supposed to meet in Bolmore. So we were to meet him in front of his mech: a red-colored robot that looked immensely fast.
“Hello,” I said as Oron and I walked up to this great Vithohn leader.
His eyes were aglow as he looked at me, giving a broad, playboy smile as he caught sight of me.
“Sylas,” Oron said, kneeling down in front of him with his head bowed. “I present you Reina Lennox.”
“My, my, my,” he said, his words practically tasting me. He took my hand in his, and I thought for a moment he would kiss it or introduce himself, but instead, he kissed me.
It was simple and soft with just a flick of his tongue against mine. I opened my mouth unsurely and felt my heart speed up as our mouths kept moving together. I could feel him get hard and press against me.
I found myself looking down at Oron, feeling confused about how he might feel about this interaction now.
Sylas set both his hands on my cheeks and pulled me in closer to the kiss and then said, “It is my pleasure to finally have you.”
I wanted to spit back, I bet.
Instead, I said, “Thank you very much.”
“I have to go,” he said, running his hand down my side. “But I will be back soon, and we will get better acquainted then. I want to know everything about you, Reina Lennox. Until then, I hope you make a home for yourself here.”
Then, without another word to me, though looking immensely thrilled, the leader looked over at Oron and pulled him up off the ground. He gave him a curt nod and said, “It is well.”
Oron was then welcomed back into the city, no longer a fugitive, which I didn’t know anything about.
Sylas told him to keep watch over me while he was away and I was given a tower all my own.
How fitting, I thought, that the girl from the mountain would be made to live in such a tall, remote, lonely tower.
Not much happened while Sylas was away: not for the first few days, anyway. I spent my days with Oron, talking and never really leaving my tower much. Until the fifth day, when I began wandering the town on my own one night.
I’d made my way into a remote area of the district that was devoted to laboratories and had come across a strange room flashing with white lights and a long table.
Laid out on the table was a beautiful Native American woman with immense braids and shimmering blue eyeshadow. Her forehead dipped in severely at her eyes, giving her nose a graceful, elegant appearance.
I looked down at her lifeless form, and then realized she wasn’t dead at all. She was a robot: deactivated.
Her body was petite and heavily armored with plating and wires, and I set my hands over them, thinking how strange it was to see such a unique piece of tech that I had only ever heard about.
I ran my hand over the graceful woman’s arm, completely unattached to the rest of her body, and then picked it up.
“What are you doing?” came a shout that startled me so much I let out an embarrassing noise close to a ‘GYUUUAHHH’ and jumped back.
I looked around for the source of the scold and found myself looking down.
In the doorway stood a short alien, though I wasn’t sure what origin. He wasn’t Vithohn; I knew that much. He came up to my middle and had a higher-pitched voice than I was used to hearing from a man.
He had long, wispy arms and thick stubby legs and walked slowly—deathly slow—over to where I was standing.
“I’m sorry,” I said, taken aback.
“Yes, yes,” he said, as though he had already expected my apology and wasn’t all that bothered by my snooping.
The creature waddled over to the desk and stepped on a pedal at the bottom of a stool, causing it to lower at a crawl. He climbed up on the stool and then pat the side of it, causing it to grow again, like magic.
He scooted up to the table and gingerly picked up the arm I had been holding, inspecting it.
“My name is Reina,” I said gingerly, setting my teeth together.
“Yes, I know that. I feel something… something…” The creature cleared his throat and then looked up at me with a frustrated, odd stare before concluding, “Tingly, around you.”
“Yeah, most people have that reaction to me,” I teased with a genuine grin. The blue creature stared up at me, puzzled, and I confirmed, “Allergic.”
He cocked his head to the side, slowly. “I see. Perhaps if you bathed more often. I have met humans, but they are much cleaner than you.”
I laughed out loud at his sentiment and then covered my mouth.
“You’ve met other humans?” I said with a sharp inhale, his sentence just occurring to me.
“Oh yes.” The creature said. “Many.”
He had a round skull with a blue fin set in the middle of it: large, round, red eyes protruding from the sides of his face.
“Alright then,” I said, and an awkward silence resumed between us. “And who is this?”
“This is Lele,” he said, absent-mindedly as he fit the arm back into the robot’s socket. “She is not a human… but she is my friend.”
“Humans can’t be your friend?” I teased.
He waved a long finger at me, matter-of-factly, and said, “Humans can’t be Lele.”
“Oh, um,” I looked down at her and then back up at the alien unsurely. “And yourself?”
“Oh, right, yes,” he quipped with a not. “I am Jareth. Yaclion.”
I wasn’t sure if the latter was a surname or his race, so I just offered a silly smile and said, “Hello, Jareth.”
The man looked like a creature that belonged in water, with his finned head and slotted nostrils.
“So, are you trying to rebuild her?” I asked, raising my brows and looking down at the beautifully crafted robot once more.
“Yes but...” He paused, tapping his long fingers down on the robot’s forehead somewhat disrespectfully before wheeling himself across the room and inviting me along.
There was a vast collection of weapons set on bright white counters along the perimeter of the room. He escorted me through his collection and explained that, despite how much he wanted to bring ‘Lele’ back to life, he was missing an important part. A fusion chip commonly found in mech and other heavy-duty machinery.
In the meantime, he’d gotten distracted with building an arsenal of weapons for the Vithohn.
I licked my lips and marveled at his creations, and then inwardly shuddered at the thought that the weapons he was making for them were likely the same ones the Vithohn were using on the humans. My people.
“These are amazing, Jareth,” I breathed. “You built all these?”
“Hm? What? Yes!”
I nodded, setting my fingers over the cold metals. “I used to build weapons with my dad out of the scraps of metal we would find on the…” I stopped cold, almost saying ‘mountainside’ to the little creature. I thought better of it and finally concluded, “Ocean.”
Jareth seemed to perk up at this, his red eyes going even wider, and as if he had the sudden need to impress me, he began handing me different guns, one after another as he spoke.
He wouldn’t explain to me what they did or how he built them. Just, set them in my hand to see if I would be overwhelmed with his genius.
“I feel, an unease like never before,” he said thoughtfully while scrambling around the room, setting a purple gun down in my palm.
“It’s the Kilari,” he continued. “Do you know?”
He didn’t finish the sentence. Didn’t say: Do you know them? Or: Do you know of them? Just. Do you know?
“No, I’m sorry,” I said.
“You do know,” he said distractedly. “But, ah, I fear you are lying to me. No matter.”
“How would you know what?” I laughed.
“I can see it in you. Look,” he said, shining a ray weapon on me and watching as the splatters of Kilari blood still showed on my arms. “See that?” He swiped a warm finger on my shoulder. “That is Kilari remnant. It’s a nearly untraceable slime.”
“What?” I yelped. “Get it off of me! What does it do?”
“Not much. It’s just a trace. It’s like a lure for other Kilari. You, Reina, are bait.”
I made a disgusted face, thinking of how many times I’d bathed and yet still had the disgusting goo left on me.
“Lovely,” I said, and Jareth quickly interjected: ‘No.’
“And there’s nothing I can do about it?” I asked desperately.
“You can kill the Kilari,” he said, like a wise old sage. “Like you have done,” he surmised. “I think I like you better than I did before.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You build?” he asked me, now changing the subject.
“Yes,” I shrugged, still feeling disgusted. “A little.”
He blinked quickly and wandered back over to the table where Lele’s body was carefully splayed out. “And you've... run into mech before?”
“Sometimes. Yes. Scraps of it.”
Jareth looked suddenly joyous: his eyes beaming. “I've never had someone else here to build with.” He stopped then, looking up at the sliding glass doors as they opened at the front of the lab. “Ah. Oron. Hello. I see you are back from your banishment.”
“Jareth,” Oron said with the hint of a laugh on the tip of his tongue.
The attractive Vithohn saddled up next to me, coming in just a little too close, and suddenly I felt a sexual energy between us. It had been slowly building in the days that he had been my personal ‘guard.’
“So tell me, Reina. How is it you are not in captivity? Or, is this your captivity?” Jareth asked while scribbling something down.
I offered an awkward laugh and said, “Something like that.”
“She is here for the Voth’s pleasure: Sylas,” Oron said, filling in the blanks. Jareth began speaking when Oron reached down to my hand and leaned in close to my ear and whispered, “I hated seeing him kiss you.”
“I see,” Jareth said. “Yes. And then you will become a partner to a Vithohn.”
Then he handed me a piece for Lele, pressing it firmly into my hand and causing Oron to snap back, away from my face.
“There is an abandoned mech to the south of the city. This magnetic chip,” he pointed to the piece he set in my hand, “is what I require. It's imperative that you take it out correctly, or else. Well. Yes. It won't work.”
“So you’re really trying to bring her back, huh?” Oron asked, seeming to already have some sort of backstory on the Yaclion and his robot.
“Yes,” Jareth said. “I feel Lele understands me.”
“You don't see too many of those around, anymore,” Oron said thoughtfully, scratching his chin. “I thought those were done away with in the war.”
Jareth shook his head vehemently. “No, no. Humans have reconstructed them. Made from scraps. Like Reina.”
“No!” I said with a laugh.
“Reina is made from scraps?” Oron asked: his brow dipping dangerously low in confusion.
“No,” I laughed again, shaking my head to Oron.
“What? Yes? No?” Jareth piped in. “You said you and your father would build: take scraps from the mech.”
“Yes, but for like, guns and armor. Stuff like that,” I shrugged bashfully.
Jareth narrowed his eyes and began to tap down on the chip in my palm over and over. “I see,” he said. “But, I believe you are lying.”
I blushed and batted his hand away playfully, pulling the chip to my chest. “Just give me the chip, okay?” I laughed.
“Take her,” Jareth insisted, pointing to Lele and then gesturing to Oron to pick her up. “Take Lele with you. That is what I want. Take her with you, and yes, I will follow.”
Oron widened his eyes playfully and laughed in my direction before narrowing his eyes suspiciously at the little creature. “Oh, I see how it is. You’re just using us for the manpower.”
Jareth tapped his nose but said nothing more.