The sound of clanking filled the truck as I struggled against my bonds. My warriors and I had been strong-armed into the back of a large green vehicle with a bench on either side after being chained together by thick irons. Three of the warriors sat opposite me with their ankles bound in adjoining manacles and their wrists restrained behind their backs. Lokos and I occupied the other bench, held captive in the same manner. Each time I shifted my leg or jerked my shoulder, Lokos was forced to move his as well. We were completely unable to flee or fight.

I had to hand it to the humans: they had us.

“What do we do now?” Lokos murmured, speaking A’li-uud.

Three pairs of white eyes fixed on me as my other warriors waited for my reply. “We wait,” I answered in a voice as low as Lokos’. “There is little we can do now. These shackles allow us no leverage, and we are unarmed.”

“You still have your sword, Fierce One,” the warrior directly across from me, Silah, pointed out.

It was true. The humans had taken my warriors’ weapons from them before chaining us together, but they had been unable to take my sword. Every time someone reached for it, the hilt jerked violently, and the inscriptions etched upon it seared with angry white light. It was a perk of the Elderhood I had not known. Apparently, the powerful, fuchsia blade was bound with magic to prevent anyone but its owner from taking it or using it. I imagined the only reason I’d been able to hold it when Duke had turned it over to me was because he’d relinquished it willingly and we’d held it together while he performed the ritual that released him of the Elderhood, crowning me in his place. The glowing scimitar rested on my hip, crushed between my body and Lokos’.

“Yes, but, as long as I am bound, I am unable to use it,” I said, rustling the chains on my wrists to demonstrate my helplessness.

There was a series of bangs on the metal mesh that separated us from the humans in the front of the truck. “Quit your clacking!” the passenger barked.

I ignored him. Speaking A’li-uud was the only semblance of privacy I had with my men in our confinement, and I certainly wasn’t about to switch to English and allow the soldiers to listen in on our discussion.

“Can you not travel on the winds and free yourself?” Lokos asked.

“I must be outside to use wind travel,” I explained. “As primitive as it is, this vehicle constitutes an indoor environment. I am grounded.”

There were more bangs on the mesh, and, this time, the soldier turned around in his seat to glare back at us.

“I said shut up!” he bellowed. His face was round and doughy, and it was becoming a rosy shade of pink in his anger. “Otherwise I’ll cut one of your throats and drown the rest of you in the blood!”

“Do what you must,” I replied calmly in English.

Lokos, who was glaring at the soldier, stiffened upon hearing my response but said nothing. The other warriors continued staring at the human with loathing scrawled across their faces as well. For a moment, the man goggled at us with a mixed expression of fury and surprise, and then he turned back around in his seat.

“Arrogant prick,” he muttered to the driver.

Lokos’ chest was heaving in and out at great intervals, though his breathing was silent. I knew he was seething, and I didn’t blame him a mite. To be captured by humans was infuriating enough, but he was also in the throes of grief that he was, as of yet, unable to express. Ki’lok had been his brother. He had witnessed his own flesh and blood being murdered at the hands of those who had now taken us hostage. It was a wonder he was able to remain as calm as he did.

“Where are you taking us?” I asked the soldiers, still keeping my voice calm and steady.

I saw the corner of the passenger’s lips curl down into a snarl. “None of your business,” he snapped. “But, if I had my way about it, I’d be taking you somewhere a lot nastier than where you’re going.”

This surprised me, mainly because it intimated that we might not be headed to our deaths after all. Of course, had they intended to kill us, the leader of the squad would have never stopped them from shooting the rest of my men and me, and they likely wouldn’t have bothered gathering us up in the truck. After all, they’d left Ki’lok’s body lying in the muddy grass without any mention of what would happen to him—an act that disgusted me beyond measure. A’li-uud had great respect for the Grand Circle of Life, and to discard the dead without reverence for the magic of existence was the ultimate dishonor. It was just one of the many reasons my distaste for humanity had become nothing short of sheer hatred.

When I had come to Earth several months ago, I had been on a mission to destroy humans and analyze whether their planet was worth colonizing. Those of the A’li-uud who were not fond of conflict convinced themselves it was a mission of defense since humans had learned of our presence in the universe and their history showed that they would make attempts to invade Albaterra and take it over. It was a fallacy, however, to believe the mission was anything other than an offensive move on our part. Once the humans found out about us and returned to Earth with the knowledge, the confrontation between the two races was imminent. We were simply striking first.

Of course, not all humans were loathsome, at least not by the standards of every A’li-uud. The first group to find out about us had crashed on Albaterra after we’d shot missiles at their ship for encroaching on our territory, and an Elder I knew reasonably well, Rex had fallen in love with one of the survivors. She’d never returned to Earth when we’d permitted them to leave Albaterra; as far as I knew, she was living healthily and happily with Rex in his kingdom of Campestria. As if that wasn’t absurd enough, my own brother, who’d joined us on the mission to exterminate humans, fell in love with his human hostage too. It was his desire to be with her that drove him to relinquish his Elderhood to me.

On the other hand, it was because Rex and Duke fell in love with humans that I was sitting in the back of a military truck right now with my hands chained behind my back and my leg joined to Lokos.

“I will kill them.”

Lokos’ voice jarred me from my thoughts, and I twisted my gaze from the truck wall over my warriors’ heads to him. His face was gnarled in an ugly frown of resolute bloodlust. His eyes, usually as white as the snow capping the craggy mountains of Montemba, seemed darkened to a shadowy gray and as hard as the aspex mineral that was abundant in my kingdom. Even the way he spoke reminded me of stone; impermeable and unyielding. His statement was not one of anger or idle plans for escape; at that moment, he was taking a vow of vengeance.

“We will all kill them,” Silah agreed.

I heard the soldier in the passenger seat grumbling to his cohort, but he didn’t turn around to shout at us this time. Leaning my head back against the wall behind me, I tightened my lips into a thin line and exhaled in one sharp breath. My hair, long and specter-white, draped over my shoulders in tousled disarray. I’d been captured by humans three months ago, along with the others who accompanied me now, but I’d only been one of them at the time. Now, as an Elder, I felt the heavy weight of responsibility to my loyal fighters, and I was riddled with frustration that I was unable to free them from this captivity. We could do nothing more than sit as we were taken to our bidden destination.

“Yes,” I murmured. “But we will not only kill them. They will pay for their wrongs, and there will be retribution for Ki’lok. The A’li-uud will reign supreme.”

The warriors across from me let out loud, warbling war whoops, and the human in the front returned to banging on the mesh. He roared something at us, likely an order to be quiet, but his voice was inaudible over the raucous yells of my men. We could not be silenced. We were the people of the universe, perpetuating the Grand Circle and allowing nature to dictate our course.

We would see that the corrupted human race never won.