Chapter Two
Bannack took his place near the edge of the lake and mimicked the position of the other warriors, reaching over his shoulder for one of the arrows tucked in the quiver on his back. His opposite hand held a bow painstakingly handcrafted from one of the trees in the forest that they had only the day before discovered was covering the mysterious and dangerous underground lair that the Klimnu had been using to infiltrate the compound with the help of a human flight attendant who sympathized with the Klimnu's hatred for the Denynso. This was a treasured weapon, but one almost never used for actual combat. Instead, it was an item that every Denynso warrior made for himself in his early life and kept as a reminder of their heritage and the ancestors. Occasionally the bows made an appearance during a battle or were used to hunt some of the species that would come to the land near the compound once a year. Most often, though, they were kept displayed within the warriors' homes and taken down only when it was time to pay homage to the dead.
The women carried the cloth to the edge of the purple water, its color darker and more saturated than the smaller pond near the cliffs on the other edge of the compound, and lowered themselves to their knees. They moved in concert, never turning their eyes away from the intense focus directly in front of them, but moving at the same moments and in the exact same way as all of the others. The first two women lowered their corners of the cloth into the water and the women behind them handed their sections forward, passing the edges of the black shroud through all of their hands so that the first two could guide it down into the lake.
As the water took hold of the cloth and it started to drift forward, the warriors drew their arrows and lifted their bows. When the cloth made it nearly to the center of the lake, Creia walked down the row of warriors, lighting the ends of the arrows with the torch he held. The warriors lifted their flaming arrows at the same moment, pointing them sharply toward the expanse of dark blue above them, and let them fly.
The arrows hit the cloth just as it reached the center of the lake and a massive whirlpool began to churn beneath it. This majestic phenomenon was why the earliest members of the Denynso tribe had chosen this lake as the place where they would put their cherished warrior to final rest. The whirlpool began when something touched the center of the lake and would churn as it did now, pushing upward into a funnel of water that lifted the flame-engulfed cloth, tunic, and dagger toward the sky. After several seconds, the column of water lowered and the flames, along with the memorial to Jem, disappeared into the depths. They didn't know what happened to the honored men that ended up in the water, but they believed that by giving them into the water that surged under the ground and gave life to the plants that thrived on Uoria, they were giving their beloved warriors continued life.
Bannack could only hope that it was true now. Jem's death was a confounding and infuriating mystery that none of the warriors, and not even Creia or his wife, the queen of the Denynso Theia, could explain. What lurked beneath the compound was a place that seemed to directly reflect the land above it, as if a mirror had been placed just at the ground line so that what looked like branches of massive trees were actually the roots above, what looked like roots were actually branches, and what looked like water covering the floor of the massive cavern was actually a reflection of the sky. This is where Jem fell. He jumped down into this reflection of the sky, giving himself over to it without knowing what would happen, and none knew where he ended up.
Bannack hoped that even though they could not properly inter his body in the lake, that Jem's spirit would continue on through all of them and give them the strength and courage that he possessed, because even though they had eliminated the last of the Klimnu, Bannack did not believe that it would be the end of the threats to the Denynso. There would be more. There would be more battles to fight and more wars to win, and each warrior was going to need every bit of intensity and power that he could have if he was going to be able to help his kind continue to thrive and dominate their part of Uoria.
Everyone stayed in their places by the lake for several minutes after the funnel of water had completely disappeared back into the lake and the surface had become calm again. The women remained kneeling in the sand, the warriors maintained their wall of defiance, and the king and queen stood stoic and calm on the opposite side of the women. Behind them, a few yards back from this ritual that they had not seen and would not understand, stood the human women who had made their home on Uoria. These women, the mates of some of the warriors, as well as the healer and the baker, were astonishing to him.
He, like many of the other Denynso, had thought of human women as weak, flimsy little creatures prone to extreme emotions and unlikely to make much of a contribution to anything. When Creia announced that he wanted to foster greater understanding, connection, and cooperation with the humans of Earth, and that humans would be coming to the planet in order to not only research them, but to help them understand humankind, many of the warriors had been skeptical, even angry. Many of the earliest visitors, primarily scientists, had only been after a sample of their blood. It was well known that the blood of the Denynso warriors was incredibly special, and that it held the key to not only their powers and abilities, but to many amazing uses. Their desire to take samples of their blood had only increased the distrust among many of the warriors.
Eden had changed that. She was the first of the human women to show up on the planet and to earn their trust. The mate of Pyra, the most powerful and revered warrior among them, Eden was not standing with the other human women. Instead, she was kneeling in the sand at the edge of the lake with the Denynso women. This was because she had faced a brutal death at the claws of a Klimnu who had made his way into the compound by guising himself as Pyra. Through his efforts to heal her, Ciyrs, the healer of the clan, had somehow changed her from a human into a Denynso woman. Though she was still small and delicate looking compared to the other women of their kind, she was truly one of them.
The other women had come in turn after her, each with her own reason for visiting the planet, and when they came they found themselves the chosen mates of Denynso men. Their courage to stay on the planet and be with the Denynso was already impressive. It was the incredible intelligence, strength, fortitude, and resourcefulness that they had shown that proved to Bannack that he and the others had been wrong. Of course, they were still far smaller than the Denynso, even Zuri and Samira, the two largest of the group, and were far more emotional as a whole than his kind, but they were also the central reason that the warriors had been able to dominate over the Klimnu in this final battle. It was these human women that found the mirror world, helped develop healing ointments that saved the wounded, and even fought alongside the warriors to enable their victory.
Bannack looked at the human women, and at Eden, her belly swollen with Pyra's child, the first of the new generation of Denynso, with respect and gratitude, but even these comforting feelings were not enough to dampen the fury and aggression that had been tormenting him since they dropped down from the moss-hidden holes in the forest into the mirror world beneath the compound. This was anger and intensity like he had never experienced, and he struggled with understanding what could be creating these feelings inside him when the other warriors didn't seem anywhere near as affected by the battle, or even by Jem's death, as he was. Though they had all expressed their own dark and painful emotions, they all seemed composed and controlled.
Soon Bannack couldn't take it anymore.