Chapter 10:
Tredorphen
Making love had become a regular routine in my day, it seemed. In accordance with the King’s wishes, I continued to show Marina around the land, and the shifters helped her people get biological samples.
We approached the familiar ship with haste: myself, Aurlauc, Khrelan, and two other shifters my father deemed worthy to watch over us.
The Vulcana. It's purple letters scrawled across the side of the enormous vessel. I stared at it, unenthused by our mission, and I pulled carelessly at the door. They'd left it open, of course.
"Humans," Khrelan breathed with a wicked smile. "They are entirely too trusting."
"Right," I said with a roll of my eyes. "Let's just get this over with."
The lot of us walked in, but I turned to see Aurlauc waiting outside, staring off into the red abyss of Drogs and tentacles that had greeted us the last time we were on Ceylara.
"Coming?" I asked hesitantly, holding the door open for him.
I could already hear the startle of surprise from one of the human men as they caught sight of the other shifters. The soldier laughed nervously as the recognition washed over him. We’d all met before. Protected these people many cycles ago.
Then the screams came.
I pressed my eyes shut and then looked back to Aurlauc, raising my brows, still expecting an answer from him.
"No," he said, turning to regard the expansive planet. The wasteland that had failed to provide us food.
"Khrelan says there's food inside," I bribed; my tone still wavered between friendly and orderly.
"I'm not coming," Aurlauc spat. "You can tell the King what you like. Have him kill me if that's your wish, D’nebu’a."
He spat the last words out with such venom I was sure he'd been waiting to say them for cycles now.
"You're mad?" I asked with a laugh.
The dark shifter crossed his arms, the scales going down his bicep and down his bare chest shimmering against the red backdrop of the planet, a deep maroon sheen reflecting off his black scales.
He brushed his thick braids behind him and remained silent.
“So you’re not talking to me now?” I yelled to him. “You think I want to be here?”
“I think you’re the one who brought them back in the first place and you’ll be the one to kill them. Not me,” he spat, still unturned.
I nodded in frustration and slammed my hand against the side of the ship. “So be it,” I seethed, turning back into the ship and making my way through the perplexing white corridors.
How like Aurlauc, my mind bristled, to see my fault in things that were beyond my control. This was my punishment for trying to find my people food. To make for them an existence. To trust my father around pretty things.
I breathed harshly through my nose so I could feel the fire roaring through me. I shifted my wings so they spread and then brought them in tight to my back.
A deep-skinned human male caught sight of me and his eyes went wide with surprise.
"You're back," the man said happily. "Where are the girls?"
"The coordinates for your Earth," I said angrily. "Give them to me."
“I can’t do that,” he said with a deep, concerned frown. He raised his hands to me and begged, “Please, don’t hurt us.”
“I have no intentions,” I said. “But I can’t say the same for the dragons crawling through your ship right now.”
It was the truth. If I had it my way, none of these humans would shed a drop of blood, but I wasn’t so sure about my comrades. There was no point to it. The humans could do nothing to penetrate our bones; nothing to hurt us.
I picked him up by the neck and held him against the wall. The man choked and gripped his hands against my dragon's claw. The whites of my eyes flecked yellow, and the man tried to scream out in terror. I was done with these humans.
“Tell me,” I seethed a hot breath toward the man and tilted my head back.
The man stared at me and his eyes slowly glossed over to Khrelan as he entered the room behind me.
"Why? What's... what's happening?" the man asked. “Are the girl’s okay?”
“They’re ours now,” Khrelan said in a chagrined manner. “They have chosen to stay with us and abandon your cause. They will remain unharmed, with us, so long as you give us exactly what we want.”
“Tell us,” I warned. “Unless your secrets mean more than your life.”
The man looked at me, and I already knew his answer, just as he knew I was doling out an empty threat.
I heard a dull drumming of boots against the floor and a blond man emerged, his weapon aimed at Khrelan. “They would never do that,” the man spat. He narrowed his gaze at the navy shifter, and I bit my lip.
This was a thing he should not have done.
I watched the blond carefully and moved slowly until I picked the dark-skinned man up by his neck and slammed him into the wall. He grasped at his neck, striving for breath until I eased my grip. I looked to the blond with a confident tilt of my head to the side. My countenance read: ‘Just try it.’
Defiant, the blond fired his rifle and my ears shrunk back as I heard the beam sizzle against Khrelan’s skin, causing a roar that echoed like an eruption from the navy shifter.
Khrelan bared his fangs at the man, and the blond didn’t stop firing.
The shifter pulled his wings tight to his body and rushed toward him. He’d knocked the weapon from his hands with one careful flick of the tail. Khrelan grabbed the man's head in his beast-like hand, and with a tight-fisted motion, we heard the crack of bones within his grasp.
The blond went limp after that, and my body careened back in disgust. A scowl crossed my face as Khrelan met my eyes, his skin smoking and bleeding through from where the laser had pierced his flesh.
Perhaps we were not as indestructible as I once thought.
"Tell me," I warned the man in my grasp, his face twisted in shock and repulsion at what we had just witnessed. "Marina needs the coordinates," I instructed carefully, kneeling down to his level. "It is an emergency.”
"I knew this was going to happen," the soldier cried. "We all knew!"
"Get it together," I scoffed, pinching the bridge of my nose. "Tell me or do not. It is your life that hangs in the balance."
The human looked up at me in a panic, and slowly his body seemed to settle into a new knowledge. He breathed in sharply and shook his head. "Marina has the coordinates," he said with some confusion as his eyes flicked back and forth from mine.
I slammed my hand on the wall behind him and threw him to the ground. He was useless to me then. I cursed as I made my leave from him. Marina had tiptoed around the subject all this time, but it never occurred to me she was purposely keeping the information.
“She said…” the man gargled out a bodily shock overtaking him as he trembled on the ground.
“Marina?” I asked. “What did she say?”
“She said…” again the man on the floor went to finish his sentence but seemed to think better of it. “Just kill me,” he said weakly, resigned to his fate.
“What did she say?” I demanded, stomping my foot brashly against the ground so that the plates of the ship shook beneath us.
“Just kill me,” the man said, placing both of his arms over his head.
I snarled at the creature and bellowed a loud roar toward him. I heard screams from the room over: a bloody gurgle followed by rifle fire. I instinctively bent my knees, and my wings extended protectively, my senses heightened. The man on the floor looked up in terror.
Another shifter, Egeshoth, entered the room. Khrelan stared at the red shifter, and Egeshoth shook his head. No information.
I looked back down at the deep skinned soldier and raised my brow.
"Tell us your coordinates," Khrelan dared.
The man looked up at us and reached for his laser weapon. Egeshoth dove toward him but the man turned the weapon on himself, firing into his head before careening to the floor, a mess of gore surrounding his body.
I looked up at Khrelan in fury and balled my fists. This wasn’t what I wanted.
It soon became clear that the humans were not willing to share their resources: their greenery. We tried bargaining, tried threats; their lives; told them we'd kill their women. But the humans were surprisingly relentless. Khrelan had taken to bending their limbs, forcing their hand, but not one of them would give up what we most craved.
My eyes flicked up to Khrelan as he extended his claws and let out an angry cry, a furious roar that sent fire blazing from his throat down into the corridors. The crackle of the flames sizzled and bounced against the cold walls of the ship, and we heard the hallway flood with screams.
I met the navy shifters glare: a dare of sorts.
"That was extensive," I snapped."
“In case you've forgotten, we are on a mission here. It is our mission to get information.”
"Which none of them are giving!" I screamed. "Let us take our leave from here!”
"Look at me!” he demanded, pointing to the blood that leaked from him. "They are beasts! Come to take our women!"
I set my jaw. “We have taken their women.”
“You took their women, Tredorphen. I have yet to take mine. But I will.”
I raised my chin to the navy shifter, and we had a standoff. I followed limply behind as the three shifters continued to clear out the ship: clean it of any life. Empty it of life.
They torched their halls and scraped their metal, stole their foods.
My thoughts twisted and tore against my instincts. To fight. I knew the deep urge to hunt. The core of my body that screamed for me to be the great warrior. But we fought beasts: creatures after our lives. Not weak humans, begging to be spared.
I walked out to the thick and cold air that greeted me outside the spaceship and listened as they set the craft ablaze.
Aurlauc sat near a great rock formation that spun and crept around into a freestanding circle, a family of Drogs unusually silent as they lay together at the base of the structure.
I walked up next to him and sat down, both of our eyes searching the great beyond that splayed out before us.
The night was so silent; I could hear his breaths nearly masked by the flames that raged behind us.
This wasn’t an interrogation. It was a massacre.