Chapter Two
Kodyn
There is nothing more terrifying than the eyes of someone you love widening. The sound of their voice as their whisper hits the wide open space.
“Run.” Fiona’s breath hit the air around us the metal marches tramples the rock behind us: shaking the ground.
The humans came to find us.
We ran through the desert, sweating and hot but knowing that dusk was lurking around the corner, ready to cover us with its cold.
The metal robots marched and sped behind us, and I could hear the soldiers roping down to the ground. They were ready for a showdown.
This area was plush with what we called rock forests. Immense canyons with high walls to surround it. It offered enough shade and moisture for thick tree life to grow. Forests within desert caves. If we could make it to one, we could get protection from the monsters.
“Kodyn!” Fiona yelled to me, her blond hair whipping against the wind. She was already injured: limping behind.
I picked her up, ripping her from the ground, and sped across the hot sand.
“You, Vithohn!” one of the soldiers yelled: a dark-skinned man with heavy armor.
I had no idea there were so many humans.
“Don’t!” Fiona yelled, extending both hands to the soldiers.
But they fired anyway.
Bullets flew into her back, and a spray of blood shot into the air like rain droplets. I felt my body go cold as she sank from my grip.
I looked up at them and took a sharp inhale. Now they would pay for what they’d done.
I targeted the humans outside of their robots first. A man in a thick suited armor charged at me, and I ran into his path, grabbing him by the waist and flipping him over top of me. I used the long spires that connected to my horns to make sure his body hit the ground with force.
The next human fired his weapon at me, hot lasers, but I was able to put up a bubble shield around me: a Vithohn’s natural protection. The pink liquid surrounded my body in a bubble, and I watched as the laser cracked and sparked away from it.
I approached, and the human looked horrified. My shield retracted so I could get nice and close to him.
My eyes widened at him as his neck craned back in terror. I grabbed him by the face and pulsed my claws into him one time after the other until my hand was sprayed with blood. He was the next to get tossed.
The others continued firing their weapons at me, but I was unstoppable then. We were more powerful than humans: we could sense heat.
Or at least, the Voth could. Voth are known as the ultimate warriors of the Vithohn. We are larger and more powerful. We are often put in command of various packs.
“Try it,” I dared as four men came up on either side of me, one flanking me from the side with a bullet; it lodged into my side, and I threw my shield back up.
I could feel the sharp sting of cold imbedded in my side and fished it out with my fingers.
Blood swam from me then, even through my armor. I pressed my thumb and forefinger together and stared down at the blue liquid, only then acknowledging that I’d been shot.
I looked back at the one who sent the bullet flying toward me and looked down at my palm.
The human creature widened his eyes at me, brave but unnerved. I clenched my fist shut and felt my tentacles warming slowly.
Another perk of being a Voth: the ability to summon energy.
I retracted my shield and held my tentacles up in either direction, taking aim at two of their mechs.
The burst of energy rained into the sky with a purple light that melted the robots’ legs, causing them to tumble over with a crash, crushing the humans underneath the hunks of metal with screams that went silent as quickly as they began.
I watched as the remaining six mechs take off skyward, flying into the distance and retreating cowardly into the night.
The sudden silence that followed in the field of sand made my stomach sick.
“Fiona?” I called out into the field.
The summoned energy left my body feeling empty and weak. I lowered my shield once more and looked down at my side, still wounded.
I stared down at the field of bodies that surrounded me. They came for me, and they took her instead.
They took her from me.
The Vithohn, my kind, are mad. We seek humans out like a beacon, knowing they will free us from the aggression that binds our thinking capabilities. I was lucky enough to find a human that looked beyond my aggressive behavior, beyond my ruthless stares and the way I circled her like a wild animal.
Fiona.
We mated, and I felt her bond to me. Suddenly, the madness left my body like water through a sieve. Slow, and then without warning, completely gone.
I scrambled to see in the quickly darkening night and started screaming for her.
“Fiona!”
My voice was hoarse and throbbing as panic washed over me.
I heard a noise in the distance that I immediately recognized as her, and I ran toward it, my leg pulsing with hot pain as I anchored down on it: adrenaline keeping me moving.
A wide landscape surrounded us: a desert with immensely wide mountains that bury and block the light as they spire into the sky. I could feel the desert growing cold as I limped toward Fiona.
My leg gave out on my last step, and I plummeted toward the Earth: collapsing in a heap of uprising sand and dust flying around me as though I’d thrown it into the air.
Fiona was mass of limbs: pink arms and long golden hair. I crawled and pulled myself up next to her, watching as blood poured in a steady stream from her mouth.
“Fi,” I said in a breath.
She looked skyward: lost in consciousness. I wiped the blood away from her porcelain face, and she suddenly asked, “Do you remember the way home?”
I pressed my eyes shut and felt the moisture gathering at my lids. I didn’t answer her because I didn’t want this conversation to exist. I didn’t want it to live in my brain.
“Tell me,” she said, her weak voice still demanding.
“I remember,” I said, pushing through my tight throat to get the words out: struggling to make a sound. I grabbed her hand in both of mine and kissed it, swallowing down a sob. “But I won’t go back.”
The sun was just about set: a haze of purple and low pink shades still trembling through the air. She stared up at the sky in such a silence that I shook her to make sure she was still breathing: she blinked at my gesture and continued to stare for so long that I had to tilt my head up to see what she was looking at.
“Look,” she said. “The Pleiades.”
The stars lit up the sky. They were absolutely everywhere. Among them were the Seven Sisters: the open star cluster she had come to love the most.
“Hot B-type stars,” she said with reverence as she looked up at them and I smiled.
“I know,” I said. “I remember you told me.”
“They’re one of the closest star clusters to the Earth.”
“I love you,” I said and looked back down at her, mentally begging her for a smile: something to believe in. Instead, she squeezed my hand and gestured for my ear. I leaned down into what was left of her warmth.
“Don’t forget about me,” she said, and I almost died.
I saw it then: the last of her breath come out in a cold plume of smoke in the freezing desert night.
Her eyes were open, and I pulled myself further so that we lay side by side. She looked so full of life, I thought she might blink and smile at me. I burrowed next to her body for as long as it took me to take five long breaths.
Then my sadness dissipated into something so familiar I could almost touch it: fury. It was so real to me that I wanted to make it tangible enough to host it on a flag post and warn my enemies. Warn the humans.
I’m coming for you.