GALAN

He came to a fallen temple, one the likes he had never seen. It was jagged as if torn apart by fire and claws but he knew of no such creature on Sonhadra that could’ve done what was before him. The smell that he had followed had grown stronger until he came upon the raised butt of forged metal. It stuck up with a half mile of skid marks leading up to it until the front had stopped it amongst the dirt and burned-up trees.

Orange beings, not unlike the raven-haired girl, milled about near what remained of the temple’s ruins. Many wore the same clothes the girl had but some were dressed differently. Those were less noticeable, and he decided that they must be the lesser brothers and sister valos of this new race.

Galan looked up. One that came from the sky... He itched to move closer but chose to remain hidden in the nearby trees. As the hours passed, he was privy to more than he ever thought he would be.

Females, not many. Males are the majority. All looking broken in some way. One of the men dragged down his pants beneath him and released his member, only to spray the stump of the tree with yellow liquid. Galan watched the man handle it, his member not unlike his own—although significantly smaller—before he put it away and returned to the others.

At least he knew these valos were built similarly to the others. His own shaft, having been painfully stiff since he left Dawn behind, jerked at the thought. It meant the girl Sundamar chased would be compatible with him and that what she had between her thighs would fit over what was between his. Galan shifted and pulled his wings tighter against his body, his quiver and bow hanging on either side of his stems but only a twitch and turn away.

His nostrils flared. He now had a name for the strange smells in the air. It smelled like newly forged precious metal weapons mixed with blood and something sharp and gaseous. It made his head spin. The constant drizzle of rain hadn’t lessened the stench. It only exasperated it and with it, the need to find out from where and from whom the new species had come.

They looked nothing like Lusheenn nor some of the other Creators he had seen. They were smaller than any valos on Sonhadra and appeared weaker. He cocked his head to the side and deepened his crouch on the branch, moving for a better view. Some held shaped metal rods on their hips, others carried them in their hands, while some had no rods at all. Only one female, he assumed by the curve of her bust, had one of these rods.

And yet, as they went about, all with a job in mind, many held electric lightning in their hands also shaped from thinner sheets of the same metal the rods and the ruined temple were made of. The flash emitted from the lightning electrified his eyes and he felt compelled to jump down and touch it like the tiny valos did.

He counted a total of twelve beings but couldn’t account for any that may have been out of the vicinity. Galan moved slightly on his branch and stiffened when excess rainwater spilled to the ground. He waited to see if any of the beings noticed but none had so he lowered his arm that had jerked up to his weapon in response.

His attention shifted to the several females in the group. None of them looked like his raven-haired girl; none of them stirred the shaft between his legs like she had, and to his frustration, he felt nothing for these other females. If he could muster any want for one of them, he could claim her as his own and conquer her, leaving the other beauty behind for his brothers to tame.

His jaw ticked at the thought and a well of disgust rose up in him. She’s as much mine as she is Sundamar’s. I saw her right as he had. He could even argue he saw her first as there was no way to prove...

It didn’t stop him from watching the new species or gathering intel for himself and his brothers. Galan found it strange that no other valos had come out to take in this new temple and these new people. He found it more disturbing that the Creator of these new valos was nowhere to be seen. They appeared to be left to their own devices. A new species had far too much to learn before their Creator left them alone.

“Stop! Stop, no!” A shrill feminine voice seeded through the humid air, drawing his attention away from the larger group, who in turn stopped to watch the sudden commotion.

“Please, you’re hurting me!” A disproportionate male, holding one of the rods against a female, dug its blunt metal head into her back. Galan slowly rose and turned as the female was dragged off and away from the larger group. The others who were left behind went back to work as if the female’s strange yelps had no effect on them.

He neither understood nor liked the sound of her crying plight and knew she must have done something wrong to deserve the punishment she was about to be given, however, it didn’t sit well with him.

Where is their Creator? Their leader? Punishment had guidelines and codes with choices allowed and decided upon by both parties. Judgment and sentencing had been a favored pastime of Lusheenn’s, and Galan knew his methods well.

Each kingdom had their own codes, their own way of handling things, but in one mutual respect, judgment and punishment were just. The way the male dragged the smaller, clearly weaker female intrigued and angered him at the same time. There was nothing but him and her and that didn’t sit well with Galan.

The sky deepened into evening above. His eyes caught the two moons rising as the female’s shrieks grew distant and more frenetic. As they continued without stopping, aggravating his nerves, he stepped off the branch slowly, allowing his wings to flow through the air just enough for him to hover. When it was clear none of the new valos paid him any mind, he moved through the thick, mossy canopies until he reached the source of the noise.

And stopped.

The female’s lower body was bared. The male struggled with her clothes, knocking the rod against her skin as she was shoved roughly against the trunk of a tree. Even from his position he could smell the speckles of blood where her skin met the bark. It didn’t smell like Sundamar’s blood. It smelled like the rest of the new valos’ temple and products: different.

His nose twitched as a deluge of other scents washed over him next. Grimy, dirty, unwashed, and metallic, body odors that sickened his stomach.

“You’re hurting me! Please,” the female’s screams grew shriller. The man remained focused on his intent to punish. “No!”

Galan didn’t understand any of their words.

The female suddenly knocked the male away, sending him sprawling on the ground, but as she dove to the side her eyes locked with his, stopping her in her tracks, forgetting about her accuser. Her mouth parted but whatever she was going to say to him never came out. The man had taken her ankle and sent her crashing to the ground.

This isn’t right. He shouldn’t get involved. I know nothing of these valos. It could be a sacred ritual.

His fingers wrapped around the grip of his bow. The small female valos’s gaze found his eyes again and she made sounds that could only be taken as garbled pleas. The scene playing out sickened him. The man pressed her into the moss. The fight within her waned.

Galan lifted his bow and notched his arrow. The male released his erect member and thrust open her legs. Are they mating? His confusion and unease strengthened. His own member surged forth at the prospect and his eyes narrowed.

She has tears streaming down her cheeks...

Galan placed the shaft on his arrow rest and aimed. The female who still stared at him with wide-eyed horror, eyed his weapon with sad confusion and dug her fingers into the dirt. She jerked into herself when he released.

The man dropped on top of her without a sound louder than a whoosh. The female wailed and dragged herself out from underneath the male and crawled to Galan’s side. He held his bow out and helped her to stand up, his eyes never leaving the male valos. He twitched and convulsed on the ground, shuddering as if lightning had struck him from above.

Galan, still uncertain about what he’d done, stepped forward for a closer look. The female stood sniffling behind him. When he turned the male over, glassy eyes met his.

“Don’t—don’t kill me,” the male sputtered, saliva spraying Galan’s face.

“What did the female do to you?” he asked in his own language.

The male shook his head.

“What did she do to warrant such a disrespectful punishment?” Galan asked again, knowing the male should know the language of light. All valos did. In all his research, in everything he had seen, never had he heard of a punishment of forced mating. The thought of such an intimate act brought low by law and pain churned his stomach. He would do anything to find relief, anything, but not force someone into it for his own selfish reasons.

“Please...”

The female at his side picked up the downed male’s rod and lifted it, pointing it point blank at the male’s face. An ear-splitting blast erupted in his ears, sending him back in shock. Then another one followed, this one accompanied by a burst of excruciating pain. The woman was now pointing the rod at him.

Galan blacked out, knowing he should’ve never gotten himself involved.

***

HE WOKE UP TIED TO the burned-out metal temple with his wings bound painfully at his back. A chain of linked metal secured his wrists and ankles and rivets of the electric lightning he had seen the strange valos use before. But this time the lightning wasn’t made of flashing pictures but was red and hot, and when he tested out his chains, it seared his skin.

The light it gave off, subtle at most, was barely enough to feed on but it was enough to replenish the barest minimum of his strength. It was the beginning of dawn.

Galan released a shaky breath and tried to relax. Wait. Wait a little longer. His shoulder hurt and he looked down to see what had gotten him—what the female had done—but it was bandaged up. When he flexed his muscle, dull pain coursed from the hidden area. His bow and quiver were no longer strapped to his body and with a quick glance around the space he was in, they were also nowhere to be seen.

He closed his eyes and knocked his head back but the vibration that sounded through had him opening them again. He was near the strange temple. Not inside it though... I can still see the sky. Strange forms, corroded and bent and damaged by fire lay about him. Sparks flew from cords off to one side, sizzling the air until they vanished into the ground. Small booted footprints were everywhere, especially around his body.

They took me. And to some small amusement, he knew they had studied him as he had them. Which meant one thing: he knew as much about them as they did about him. He had an advantage when day broke.

I’ll have to avoid the rods they carry. All he had to do was wait. The smell of soot and char filled his nose, making him cough, making his feathers shake and molt beyond its banding, making his shoulder ring out in pain.

“You’re awake.”

His eyes flicked up to see a female, the same one as before, stepping out from the gloom. He peered at her through the darkness but couldn’t see her features clearly. His gaze fell on the rod she carried.

“So you see my gun.” She lifted it off her belt and pressed several triggers. It was enough for him to replicate later if he needed too. “Good, that makes things easier.”

She took a step closer to him, swapping the weapon from hand to hand until she pulled a smaller, square device from her shirt.

“Are there others like you?”

He didn’t understand; he kept his mouth shut. He didn’t look at the first glint of the sun rising through the thick trees.

“Are you here to hurt us?”

Galan ignored her and waited.

“Will more of you come?”

Shivers of stray light coursed through him. His wings stiffened almost to the point of breaking his chains. Not yet. The female clicked the new device in her hand and something stung his head behind his right ear.

“You can understand me now.”

You can understand me now... The words came to him slowly, like lava over cool ground, and he repeated them in his head. His mouth parted, uncertain about this new angle, unsure because he knew she wasn’t speaking his language, but also because he understood her. The spot behind his ear ached even more as he concentrated on it.

“What you’re feeling is a hybrid translation device. Popped one in you while you were out.”

Her words seemed to flicker behind his eyes and speak directly into his head, it wasn’t unlike how he and his brothers communicated telepathically.

“Unless you’re dumb and your species can’t grip language.” She laughed and squatted in front of him. Her dark eyes shadowed within the silhouette of the rising sun.

“I—” he coughed out the translated word, “understand.” It was all jarring but the less he fought it, the easier it became.

“Good. That’s good.”

“What have you done to me?” He didn’t like how sour his mouth was or the pain streaking straight to his head from his shoulder. “What have you done?”

“Shot you in the shoulder. Knocked you out soon after. Then I dragged you back to the ship and damn fucking god, it was hard... Might’ve kicked you a few times in frustration. After that I got some... help... tying you up. Once that was done, I sourced out Brailen’s translator, and daaamn was digging through his brain gruesome, cleaned that shit up as best I could and stuck it in you. Well,” she waved her rod at him, all of him, “then waited for you to wake up. That’s if, if you would.”

Galan squinted his eyes against the headache breaking open his skull. “You stuck what in me?”

“A not-so-tiny microchip that attaches to your ear canal and brain tissue right here.” She pressed the tender spot on his head and he groaned. “That little piece allows you to speak my language so I wouldn’t go pulling it out if I were you,” she said as he tried to rub his shoulder into the spot. “Understanding is a privilege and right now, human-alien-moth whatever-the-fuck-you-are, you’re the only alien who understands me at this moment. That makes you important, cause, well, you see, when there’s one bug, there’s another. And when there are two bugs, you might be in for an infestation and I don’t like infestations. You get me?”

He didn’t. Not quite. But he got the gist. Galan nodded.

“Good.” She rose and looked about her with a sigh before facing him. “Sorry about shooting you.”

He narrowed his eyes in response.

“Brailen’s had his prick in me a few times now but damn was I getting sick of it, ya know? So thank you for that as well. And,” she showed him her rod, “thank you for this! I haven’t had one of these bad boys in over four years. Came in handy when I got you back to the ship—er—ship parts.”

Words and pairings for those words flew through his head as she spoke. Between listening to the female, trying to understand her, and having to deal with the translations behind his eyes, he was falling from the sky. One word kept coming back to him. One he didn’t understand but wanted to.

“Infestation?”

A thickly shadowed smile appeared across her darkened features. “What about it?”

“I don’t understand.”

She could lie to me... but that was a chance he had to take.

“It means when there’s a lot of something, like,” she looked around and shook her head, “like those screeching monsters in the forest. An infestation is when there are so many of them in one place, they overwhelm that place. It usually takes a fair amount of effort to... get rid of that infestation. Are you part of an infestation, moth?”

Galan studied the wiry female as she shifted from foot to foot, the stench of blood and body odor came off of her in waves. “And if I am?” he shot back.

Her eyes briefly widened before the shadows fell back into place. “Then you and I have a problem.”

“Let’s say I’m not,” he coughed out, his voice gruff. “Would you let me go?”

“No.”

“And if I am?”

“I’d come to an agreement with you for safety.”

He laughed, oddly charmed. “If the roles were reversed? Would you help me out?”

“Only if I could gain something from it, from you.”

“Hmm...”

“Hmmm indeed. So what’ll it be, Mothman? Are me and my fellow lackeys in danger from you or could we work something out?”

The morning light speared directly at them through the canopies of the trees. His headache vanished when one delectable bolt washed him in gold.

He had cause to harm these valos but the longer he stayed in their presence and the more he was able to interpret their electric language, he began to have doubts. Doubts that valos, even within their many races, may not be alone in the world. Nothing around him was familiar.

“I won’t harm you,” he hissed out, shifting against the stiff bonds that contained him.

The female released a long, stale puff of air. “Great. So what happened to the crew that went foraging two nights back?”

Crew? Team. Group. Party. He and his brothers comprised a crew.

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly.

“You don’t do you?” The rod was raised to point at his arm below his shoulder wound. “You sure about that?”

He eyed the weapon with frustration, scissoring his feathers to cut his bonds, but they were stronger than mere rope and he still didn’t have enough light to power him.

“Yes. I saw your temple first. The smell, its smell drew me. And the girl...”

She pressed her rod into his arm and dug it in. He waited for a burst of pain but none came. “What temple? And what girl? We’re missing more than one.”

Galan bared his teeth, hating the patience he didn’t have. “This temple. Your Creator’s house. It smells like rot,” he spat, muscles bulging, feathers hardening. “The scent carried to my city and I followed it here to find your people, and you off in the woods being punished. Let me go.”

“I don’t think so, Mothman.”

“I’m not a Mothman.” An image of a fuzzy, shivering creature came to mind. One that was clearly of her world and not his. “I’m a valos.”

The female snickered but it came out with fear. She’s afraid. She should be.

“Will others like you smell us? And what did the girl look like?”

He flexed his fingers behind his back, ignoring the pain that sliced up his arm. “If they notice it.”

She pressed the rod harder against him. “That doesn’t help.”

“Then do something about it!”

The female shot to her feet and he finally caught her features as the light bled across her contours. They were small, dirty, strained, and immensely tired like the raven-haired girl’s, but not alluring. Galan almost felt bad for her again. Almost. The pain in his shoulder was warning enough. His feathers made headway.

“You look nothing like her...”

She turned back to him. “The girl you saw? She have curly hair and freckles or a plain-jane brown?”

“Black,” he said. “Black and long. And eyes that... held shadows within them. Pale skin.”

His ears filled with shrill laughter, long and self-deprecating, mixed with glee and disbelief. Galan knew that laughter well. Lusheenn laughed like that. Even Sundamar laughed like that on the rare occasion.

“Psycho bitch! You saw psycho bitch? Of course she’d live, she’s so fucking good at staying under the radar, even the damned guards...” the female trailed off.

Psycho. Crazy. Insane. Unstable. An unstable mind. Galan repeated the words in his head, unsure how he felt about their translation. He asked, “What’s a bitch?”

That same horrible, odd laughter filled his ears. He gritted his teeth, deciding any like for this girl was quickly fading. When she caught her breath, heaving into herself, she faced him and snickered. “A female dog. Yahiro. One and the same.”

Dog. Canine. Domestic four-legged animal. Animal. His feathers snapped one of the bands. He should’ve never left her trail. Somehow he knew that the female was insulting his female but at least he learned one thing: her name. Yahiro. It was unlike any he had ever heard before.

“Is she safe? Is she here?” he asked, hopeful. He hadn’t seen her from up in the tree but maybe she had been away or inside the ship temple? Although, judging from the rising sun, he hadn’t been out for longer than a full evening and night. She could’ve returned to this very spot. But that meant...

Quist would be here as well. And his brother was not in his head. They weren’t here. Yahiro wasn’t here.

“I’ll tell you if you tell me everything about you and your kind. If you have ships, electricity, fuck, even soap. Do that, and I’ll get Yahiro for you.”

His lip twitched but he nodded regardless of the lie. “Fine. But I have one question first.”

“Hmm?”

“Where did you come from?”

“Earth. The sky. How many of you are there?”

He ignored her and looked up at the purple and grey sky; the few short minutes each day where the night and the day blended together, and the strange colors those unisons made. What he didn’t see was more of this female’s kind, this Earth place that she mentioned.

Terra. Planet. World. Gaia. Earth. Sonhadra. His eyes trailed from the colors above and back down to his world. What he saw were trees, moss, the faded outlines of the two moons off in the distance, and the terrain he had grown to know.

A sinking feeling boiled in the pit of his stomach and he looked at his captor in all her unusual orange garb, and the things she held in her hands; the others hanging off her hips. He smelled the constructed foreign smells that she emitted and listened to the unusual words that made his head feel light.

We’re not alone. It shook him to the core. He felt more at that moment then he had when his life came back to him.

“Well?” she prompted. He clenched his hands.

“It won’t be easy for you here.” He leveled at her, finally understanding the situation, and doing his best to keep his nerve. His eyes calmly went back to the rod she held. She pressed it back into him. This time right into the apex of pain under his bandage.

“If it’s not easy for me, it sure as hell won’t be easy for you!” She laughed again, humorless, wiping her eyes. “I didn’t think aliens could be so much fun. But,” she pressed closer to him, suddenly serious, “nothing about this is fun or easy. What do you say, valos? Can we strike a deal?” Her weapon clicked.

Another thick cord fell away. He talked over the sound it made. “That time has passed.”

“What do you mean? I’m the one with all the cards.”

The sun streamed through the space and the rest of the bands fell. “And I’m the one that’s free.”

Galan sliced through everything in his path, breaking free and apprehending the girl. Numerous shots were fired out but this time he was ready for them. Even when they embedded themselves into his skin.

Gun. Firearm. Weapon. Machine. He was amongst machines.

***

SUNDAMAR

His eyes fell on the female before they found Quist.

So much smaller than I thought. She had features that were more delicate than any valos he had ever come across and hair so black, so long, that it fell like his, loose across her shoulders and down her back. His heart raced like never before. He wanted to twine their hair together and caress the clash of colors it would make.

Sundamar took an involuntary step forward, wanting to be nearer to the girl, needing to be closer to her. Even from his position a dozen yards away, he could smell her exquisite scent, so different and more erotic than anything he had smelled before. Every fiber of his body stiffened and went on alert as a horrible, crushing desire to possess her in any and every way that he could overcame him.

A soft snore escaped her lips and he zeroed in.

Such soft lips, so feminine, so unlike Lusheenn. They pouted wet and red even in sleep, pliant and well used. His gaze caught Quist’s possessive one and noticed his brother’s whip sliding between them like a golden snake slithering through the brush.

The determined rage he had felt before came back. Sundamar would fight his brother for the female coiled in his arms. His painfully erect member demanded it.

“I’m the king,” he leveled at Quist, making his younger brother’s eyes narrow further. Sundamar was the strongest but even he couldn’t brandish his sword before his brother strangled him in the whip.

“Of what?”

The taunt did little to hurt him.

“You,” he said and nodded his head at the female. “Her.”

“I swore an oath to her, Sundamar. She’s mine.”

“You swore an oath to me as well and to destroy Lusheenn, I thought those mattered too.”

“I’ll never leave her side,” Quist hissed in response. “She’s delicate and new and has no way of protecting herself.”

Sundamar stepped closer despite the deadly aura Quist was giving off and inspected the female closely. She looked exactly as she had in his vision, pale and distraught, except this time, she looked relaxed, safe. He desperately wanted to pull her into his own arms and keep her that way himself but he also didn’t want to wake her.

“She trusts you,” he murmured. His brother nodded. “She’ll learn to trust me too. We’ll protect her together.”

“And Galan?” Quist relaxed his whip and spread his wings so Sundamar could move within their circle. Sundamar, at that moment, didn’t even mind that he didn’t have his own; he was happy enough that Quist had them to shield her away from the dangers of Sonhadra.

“Galan too. We both saw her a full sun cycle ago, through your eyes. She made our members swell with seed and made us both find release after these many quiet eons.” He reached out to take a cluster of her hair and once again craved to see it amongst his golden own; whether it was weaved together or spread out on his bedding, he wanted them to mix. Sundamar spread out the strands he held over his palm and brought his cheek down to nuzzle it. He huffed softly and moaned with pleasure. Exquisite. “Where did you find such a treasure? She’s not a valos of Light. Lusheenn would never create a female... a body that was so unlike his own. Is she perhaps from the shadows?”

Sundamar hoped she wasn’t but would keep her all the same.

“I found her miles from here, on the outskirts of the swamps, injured. I was tracking our Creator when he miraculously returned and brought me to my knees, but my senses didn’t lead me to him, they led me to her... and this.” He untucked a thin strand of rope from her chest, hidden behind her arms and Quist’s bicep, and pulled forth the source of light that had illuminated them in the dark.

Sundamar released the female’s hair and trailed his finger over the heartstone, shocked that he was touching it, that it even existed.

The Creator’s power flowed through him, igniting every nerve in his body until his eyes glowed with copper fire, strengthening his form. He had never felt more powerful. He tore his eyes away from the stone with a grunt and sat back, clenching and unclenching his fists.

“Lusheenn.” It was the only word he could utter.

“I felt it too.” Quist’s tone was harsh with hatred. So unlike his own feelings toward their Creator. “I still feel him.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” his brother gritted out, drawing the female further into his arms. “But he’s here in Yahiro and that damned stone. I can feel his eyes on the back of my neck and his power in the pit of my stomach. She’s all I found when I followed his presence.”

“Is she?”

“No. Yahiro is clean, the stone is not.”

Sundamar unstrapped his sword and placed it on the ground by his side. It shifted slightly in the grass but pointed away from them, away from Yahiro and Quist and off into the distance. He shared a look with his brother but neither one of them made a move to get up. A pondering silence fell between them in the darkness. It had been a long time since he last saw Quist and although he never missed his third—he never felt anything at all—it was nice to be back within the shell of Quist’s wings.

His gaze fell on him and the female and he knew he could never take her away from him. The possession in which Quist held her was argument enough. His queen would have three kings to obey. His throbbing member didn’t go unnoticed.

“Her name is Yahiro?” he asked, at last, turning briefly toward the horizon to wait out the rising sun.

“Yes.”

“It’s a strange name. Do you know what race she is?”

Quist shook his head, the long locks of straight hair slipped like silk over his shoulders. “No. She says she is human. I’ve never heard of them and in all my travels I haven’t seen a valos that looks like her. She says she fell from the sky.”

“Then she lies,” Sundamar gritted out, spearing the innocent sleep-ridden face with a glance.

“She didn’t speak our language. Sonhadra taught her over the course of our first night.”

Quist’s words brought him back to attention. He didn’t like that Quist had a first night with her, one in which he wasn’t privy. “That’s not possible.”

Quist laughed softly. “Oh. It is. I watched her learn our words... It was strange. No valos was ever born without language and even after she spoke my words, the way she said them was quick. Harsh. But not ugly. The way her mouth shaped them was intriguing. Too much so. I wanted to breathe in her breaths.”

Sundamar liked none of it. The implications that she was so new, so barely of his world, that her Creator never finished forming her broke him. He gazed down at the sleeping, unusual female, his arms straining to take her from Quist and possess her as he had.

It fired a new anger through him. The need to protect her quickly became his main focus, even to the point of hiding her behind gilded diamond walls in the center of the City of Noon wouldn’t be enough.

What kind of Creator would throw such a creation away? What kind of divinity does that? I’ll find out. I’ll find him. I’ll join Quist in his search. Sundamar barely stopped himself before making oaths he wasn’t sure he could keep.

“Maybe she’s a miscreation.”

Quist ran his fingers along her orange arm. “I don’t think so. I thought, possibly, she was at first but she knows too much to be so... yet so little as well. She mentioned that there are others.”

“Others?” He wondered if they all looked like the slight creature before him. If they did, he was doomed.

“Yes. They fell with her from the sky. I haven’t seen any though.”

Sundamar’s heart raced. “We’ll find them.” Before the other valos do. He didn’t say it aloud.

“No.”

His nostrils flared. “You dare defy me?”

“Yahiro’s hurt, tired, disoriented, and far too weak to stay on the ground much longer. Once the light returns, I plan to take her back to the city.”

Sundamar felt the burn of defiance course through him. No one went against a direct order, not Galan, not Annahs, and not Quist. He bore his willpower through his brother’s puttering heart, furious that he would even chance the words aloud.

Quist had been a heretic since the beginning of days, since before Lusheenn had left, and Sundamar abided by his brother’s ill will because their Creator had. But to utter words against his was treason. He fisted his hands at his side and his broadsword drew near him. The light that shielded them flared. The stone reacts to my will. His eyes once again fell upon it where it rested on the female’s chest.

She holds more sway than I do now. He ground his teeth together. And she hasn’t even uttered a word. The prospect that she was hurt, that she was anything didn’t bother him because now that he was present, everything would be better, for him, for Quist, and especially for her.

The need to have her in his arms grew with his rage.

He heard the feathers surrounding him straighten and saw them lengthen in his periphery.

“Calm. Calm down, Sundamar.”

Sundamar’s hand shot out and gripped Quist’s neck just as his broadsword shot back into his hand, but not before the whip coiled around his neck.

“What the!?” The female startled awake and tried to move out from Quist’s hold but his brother wouldn’t let her. Her foreign words fell dead on his ears. Neither one of them would hurt the female.

“Smart to keep her between us,” he sneered.

She stiffened and stopped fighting, her heart thundering for all to hear. He could smell her lifeforce and blood thrumming through her body. The power that screamed she was his roared in his ears. He wanted her more than anything in that moment, regardless of the noose around his neck.

“Sundamar, don’t.”

He heard his brother but reached for her anyway. The cord tightened around his neck, cutting off his airway.

All shadowed dirt broke loose.

The sword came down between them to slice the whip but it didn’t cut. The female screamed. She was thrust away out of his reach and beyond his sight behind Quist’s wing.

His mind cleared long enough, but too late, to realize what he had done.

“Stop!”

Quist leaped on him, slamming him back and tightening his hold on his whip. Sundamar gasped for breath and pivoted on his side, straight into a feathered wall. The whip slithered around him, around his hand, and over his sword. He fought its hold with all the remaining light he had left.

He lifted his sword to slash at the golden thread but not before darkness overtook him. The deep black shock of it was more startling than hearing Yahiro for the first time. He swung out without thought, desperate to go after the light and the girl who held it, fighting against the roars in his ears caused by Quist’s voice, and struck true.

The whip released and slithered to the ground. Sundamar sucked in a painful breath and moved to rise but was pushed back and thrown to the mossy ground. The connection fading further and further away as his brother’s body landed on top of his. No.

Sundamar dropped his weapon and caught the jerking tremors of Quist’s body. NO! His chest was quickly drenched in hot blood that wasn’t his own. I can’t see! He maneuvered the body flat onto the ground and checked for wounds, finding where his sword had cleaved Quist’s side.

He couldn’t see!

“Don’t return to the clay!” he ordered, pressing his palms into the gash that continued to flood his hands. Quist sputtered a wet reply Sundamar couldn’t make out. “NO!” he screamed feeling so many emotions that his mind went blank until it was eclipsed with dread.

“You can’t go. Don’t go.” Not after losing Annahs so recently, not after rediscovering... Sundamar leaned his head into his brother’s chest and begged... Not after rediscovering sorrow. Sorrow and hope.

The taut skin went cold beneath his palms. He prayed harder.

Lusheenn, please. Please! The shuddering movements came to a horrible stop.

“Lusheenn!” he screamed, and all the night animals fled.

Sundamar fell to his side and pulled Quist’s lifeless body against his own and fell into silence.