Kallore
Elin spoke as they entered her office, a room he’d yet to see. “The real reason you were awoken is to fight.”
Sneaking back onto the base hadn’t turned out to be an issue. Elin had simply driven up to the front gate, lambasted the guard about lack of security when he expressed surprise that she wasn’t still within the perimeter, and taken them both inside. Perks of being the base commander he supposed.
He sighed, the information nothing new. It was all he’d been told since coming out of his sleep! “If all I’m going to be fighting are drunks back there, then you seriously underestimate yourselves.”
Although Kallore shrugged off the incident externally, there were two things he couldn’t forget about it. One was the way his blood had boiled and the room had turned red with a fury the likes of which he’d never felt before. Every fiber of his being had urged him to use his powers to shred the challenger to pieces, demonstrating to his mate with a brutal finality just how well suited he was to be her protector and champion. None would dare impose on her again if he had just let himself loose.
That wasn’t what Elin needed, however, and his sole existence was to ensure she had everything she wanted. Including a mate who knew how to exercise restraint. Which is why he’d contented himself with simply tossing the bum through the door. The second thing he would always remember was the look on the drunk’s face as he sailed through the air like a bird. Horror mixed with a surprise so complete he didn’t know how to react.
Some memories were priceless.
“I’m aware. But those aren’t what you’ll be fighting.” She motioned for him to step around her desk.
He did so, trying very hard not to notice just how into her personal space he had to get to watch the screen on her computer. Kallore was practically hovering over her shoulder. All he would need to do is lean forward and his face would be just next to hers. It was tempting, and for a moment Kallore almost did. Then the video started playing.
“This is your enemy.”
The gravity of her words stole his attention, the monitor showing a video. He focused on the screen. It was dark. The sound was muted, but it didn’t seem necessary. The owner of it stopped and light began to fill the room. They were underground, that much he could tell. The soldiers—and there was no doubt that’s what they were—swiftly set about rigging up some lighting, while others put together what looked like barricades.
“What are they doing?” he asked.
“Dying,” Elin whispered.
A spotlight flickered to life and was aimed out across the darkness of the cavern.
“What the fuck?”
The light had focused on a section of the darkness that crackled and shimmered with an energy that was easy to see with the light playing across it. About five or so feet across, maybe eight feet high with a slight arch to the top, it hung there maybe six inches off the floor.
“Our thoughts exactly,” Elin said, hitting pause. “Miners discovered it, apparently. The stories are jumbled, because not all of them made it out alive. Only the ones who fled right away survived. This time we rigged up transmitters so we could get a live feed of the video as they were down there. We figured it was a cave-in.” She resumed the video. “We were wrong.”
Kallore watched in growing horror as the soldier with the camera approached the void. A flashlight was played across it, revealing not the cavern floor, but a dull, reddish landscape instead. “That’s not the same place.”
Elin didn’t respond. Suddenly something on the other side moved. The soldier turned and ran, but it was too late; whatever it was caught it. The camera jerked around wildly, moving too fast for him to see what it was. Then the video disappeared.
“What was that?”
His mate just shook her head and tapped a few keys. “This is a feed from a soldier farther back.”
He watched again, this time from a different angle as the original soldier approached. They turned to flee, but now Kallore could see the monstrosity that emerged from the gateway. It wasn’t huge, so much as it was more akin to its namesake. A monster.
Glossy black skin covered the humanoid being, though it stretched and flowed in a stomach-churning pattern as the…thing…lunged forward. An appendage stabbed outward, seeming to melt from a club-like weapon into a two-pronged blade. The soldier was impaled and shaken violently.
Kallore had seen death before in its myriad ways. He’d knelt over fallen comrades and watched the last life leave their eyes. Men crying for their mothers and the screams of the mortally wounded as they tried to hold closed their wounds. War was a terrible, terrible foe, and one he’d never truly enjoyed. He enjoyed a good bout with one of his fellows, but those fights had rules, limits, and rarely did anyone die.
But never before in all his life had he watched a being simply rip the life from another. That was what he saw on the screen. A vibrant blue hue was forcefully ripped from the soldier, absorbed into the ugly black being, where it humped its way under the skin. The outline changed, stretching somewhat as the being seemed to grow with the absorption.
Although it was probably half his size, even after it had grown, the thing was clearly much more powerful than any of the humans. He watched as they unleashed their mightiest weapons against it. The shadow-being staggered backward under the onslaught, bits and pieces of its skin shredding. Whatever it was, it was tough. But the soldiers were winning.
“By the gods,” he whispered as a second monster came through the gateway.
And then a third. That was when it grew bad. He saw more and more soldiers have the life stolen from their bodies, the mysterious attackers rippling and bulging all over, their three-clawed feet carrying them forward with ease as they grew slightly with each life absorbed.
A soldier ran forward as he watched, aiming for one of the flanking beings. Kallore gasped as he vanished in an explosion of fire that reached out and wiped out the camera holder as well. The video ended there.
“What the hell was that?” he whispered into the stunned silence that followed.
“I ask myself that every time I watch the video.”
Kallore made his way around the desk, slumping into the chair. “They simply stole the life of those poor men.”
Elin bowed her head. “Yes. They did. That’s what we suspected it was too, though obviously it seemed rather farfetched at first. But in time we’ve been forced to admit it.”
“In time?” He looked up sharply, stabbing a finger at the screen. “How long ago was that taken?”
“Eight months, give or take. Once we sent a heavier armed team, one more well suited to combat into the depths, the Outsiders were nowhere to be found.”
“Outsiders?”
“That’s the name we’ve given to them. They aren’t from our world. That much we know.”
“So what happened next?”
“More of them started to come through. They beat us back at first, but we brought in heavy weaponry, advanced systems, and the like. They were beaten back, though it cost us nearly three hundred lives to do so. We went to their side.” Elin shuddered.
“You were there?” he asked.
“No. But I’ve seen the footage. Heard about it, though I don’t have it here. That stuff was locked away quite tightly. But Kallore…what we saw? Babies. They had huge constructs; four-legged walkers and beings twice your size abounded. We fought, but they were coming forward in overwhelming numbers. Thankfully only the smallest could come through the portal.”
“It didn’t end there, did it?” he asked.
“No. With it clear we were losing, the order was given to deploy a nuclear weapon through the portal, in an attempt to close it.”
He bowed his head. Part of his research and the training Elin had given him had covered the development of bombs, especially the nuclear and H-bomb variants. “Did it work?” He didn’t want to ask the question, but it was necessary. Kallore had to know.
“Sort of. Little of the explosion escaped to our side.”
“That’s good,” he said, perking up.
Elin shook her head. “But the portal absorbed much of the energy, Kallore. It grew, just like the Outsiders did! Do you have any idea how much energy one of those emits?”
He shook his head.
“When they recover, and once the radiation on their side fades, they’ll be able to send through their big units. Walkers the size of your dragons.” Elin sagged, looking the weakest, most defeated he’d ever seen her.
Without thinking about it, Kallore rose and moved back around the desk for a second time. Now though, he put his arms around her, holding her tight without a word spoken between the two of them.
“How long?” he asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer.
“It’s a matter of years. The radiation on their side is fading faster than normal. Not even a decade at most. Then they’ll be back. We can’t fight them, Kallore. Not with any hope of winning.” Her spine flexed in his grip, tightening. “I’ll lay my life down before they get to the civilians, but I fear it will be in vain.”
Her proclamation flared his protective instincts. Nobody was going to harm his mate! Kallore would turn the world to ash before he allowed a single one of those murderous killers near his mate. She was strong, with a strength in her worthy of a dragon, but in the end, her body was still human. They couldn’t stand up to these beings.
They needed him for that. Humanity needed Kallore to save them.
But he couldn’t let them rely on him. Because he would fail them. Like he always did.