I Married Amreth (Prime Mating Agency)

Chapter 15

Ciara

A powerful sense of dread washed over me even as I spoke those words. My companions gasped, shock and confusion warring over their features as they looked at me in disbelief.

“What?!” Aku exclaimed. “Kill us all, how? What is that Kalmia?”

I licked my lips nervously as I ran my fingers through my hair, my mind racing as I observed the intruders. Raitheans were frequently referred to as Krakens on Earth. They possessed an upper body similar to humans, with a torso, two arms, and a head, but with thick tentacles instead of hair. And their lower body was made of eight tentacles like an octopus, but only half of them had suction cups.

“Raitheans—the male you see with the human—share similarities with certain creatures from Earth called squids and octopuses. They’re recognizable by the tentacles that form the lower half of their bodies instead of legs,” I explained. “Generally, they’re a peaceful species, but they also possess some extremely lethal abilities.”

“Like what?” Aku insisted.

“They can produce pearl-like growths that we call calcareous concretions,” I continued. “They’re usually shaped like small pebbles or stones. They can be smooth or rough, but usually with Raitheans, they look like red rocks.”

Aku stiffened, his face taking on a frightened expression that chilled me to the bone. He wasn’t the type to openly show fear.

“There should be no red rocks in the river,” he whispered with a look of dread.

“Exactly! I’m not sure why I know that, but—”

“My friend warned us it might happen,” Aku replied dismissively, interrupting me. “What exactly do these rocks do? How dangerous are they?”

That comment threw me. I wanted to ask what else his friend mentioned about it, but there would be time later for this.

“Mollusks like squids usually produce pearls or those concretions as a natural defense against irritants, parasites, or wounds. If a foreign object gets lodged inside their bodies, and they can’t expel it, they will coat it with some sort of nacre to prevent it from damaging them further. In Raitheans, it’s a little different in that they form a coat that is fibrous and not crystallized like nacre.”

“All right,” Aku said hesitantly, waiting to see where I was going with this.

“Pearls made out of nacre are extremely difficult to destroy whereas the fibrous ones crumble fairly easily under pressure or under extended exposure to something that could dilute them, like water,” I explained.

His eyes widened with understanding.

“Normally, the calcareous concretions are not a threat since they usually just contain a wood shard or other similar irritants that embedded themselves inside their bodies. But in a very nasty war involving the Raitheans, we discovered that they could use that ability in a lethal fashion to eliminate massive numbers of people. They possess a natural venom that can inflict a terrible disease comparable to what we call malaria on Earth.”

“A lethal disease?” Aku asked.

I hesitated. “It can be if it’s not diagnosed and treated quickly. The Raitheans produce very thin darts the size of a needle that they can shoot from the suction cups on their tentacles. They normally fire those from a distance the same way you do with your blowpipes, which is how they infect their targets.”

“Fine, but what does that have to do with the red rocks?” Aku asked, sounding a little annoyed and impatient.

I gestured for him to bear with me as I tried to summarize the entire concept even more succinctly.

“The problem is that, during that war, the Raitheans deliberately ate toxic plants which allowed them to secrete a virulent acid that they mixed with their venom before coating their darts with the combination. The same way they wrap a shard or irritant with a fibrous membrane in their bodies, they can wrap their lethal darts with it as well. And they become like time bombs,” I said.

“The Raithean is coming out of the water,” Amreth suddenly said, interrupting us.

He had swum a considerable distance from where he initially entered. That further worried me. Had he scattered a bunch of stones all over the riverbed?

“Your drone must scan the water for the presence of those rocks,” I said, my voice tense.

“I need the parameters for it,” Amreth replied. “I can configure this one for now, but I have a second drone incoming. This first one needs to stay with the ship in case they move.”

I nodded and swiftly started punching in some parameters, which I hoped would suffice. Otherwise, we would have to wait until they departed for the second drone to arrive and get close enough to the water for the camera to pick up their potential presence.

As he emerged from the water, the Raithean twisted six of his eight tentacles in sets of three, forming a makeshift pair of legs that allowed him to walk in a strange, wobbly bipedal fashion. It was a common practice for their people as they could taste with the suction cups of their tentacles and didn’t really care to lick the ground. Granted, they could block the taste receptor, but some crumbs always lingered when they glided on any surface.

To our surprise, as soon as he caught up to the human, both males got back onboard their vessel and took flight. Simultaneously, Amreth’s bracer beeped with the drone sending a confirmation that it indeed detected Puricis stones in the water.

“We must go at once and stop them,” Aku said even as he jumped to his feet and started marching towards the exit, Enre shadowing him.

“Wait,” Amreth said in a commanding tone. “We cannot go after them in the shuttle. If things get heated, their ship will obliterate us. And what of the stones? How long before they poison the water?”

“It will take some time for the fibrous shell to dissolve,” I said pensively. “It all depends on how thick he made them. If they knew that the temple would be empty today, but that people would come tomorrow, then he will have made it thick enough to last at least twenty-four hours.”

“Which gives us plenty of time to go after them,” Aku insisted.

“Yes, but only if my assumptions are correct,” I cautioned him. “You can go after them while Mehreen, Ernst, and I go after the stones at the temple. We just need a moment to gather some equipment and hazmat suits.”

“If you want to tag along, we need to use the shuttle to fly to the ship,” Amreth intervened when Aku opened his mouth to argue against that additional delay. “It wouldn’t make sense for us to monopolize both vessels while leaving these longer than necessary in your sacred shrine. The drone is currently tracking them. They will not escape. Let’s do this right.”

Teeth clenched, Aku gave us a stiff nod. “While you prepare, I will have Sora send a message to Vala and the other Kalds to warn them to steer clear of any water that shares a stream with the temple.”

“That’s an excellent idea,” I said with a grateful smile.

We hurried to the deployable lab and grabbed everything we needed. As we hopped into the shuttle, a million different thoughts fired off in my mind. As soon as we settled down in the passenger seat and Amreth got us airborne, I shared the theories taking root in my head.

“I think I finally got it,” I said pensively. “Puricis—the red stone bomb the Raitheans produce—would effectively serve to repeat Kalmia. Anyone who enters in contact with it doesn’t just get sick. The acid will also liquify them from within. By the time it has run its course, the person is completely unrecognizable and has turned into a puddle of gore.”

“So all the pilgrims would be wiped out?” Aku asked angrily.

“It would be worse than that,” I said apologetically. “Puricis is highly contagious, once the symptoms appear. Death is atrocious but comes quickly. The bacteria transfer through mere contact, but especially through the patient’s sweat. It lasts for about twenty-four hours. But as soon as the fever breaks, the patient dies within the hour.”

“What is this Kalmia you keep mentioning?” Aku asked, looking distraught.

“It was a massacre that took place between two rival cartels,” Amreth explained. “One of the cartels poisoned the water source of their enemies’ compound. It wiped out everyone. What troubles me is that if the assassins are targeting your temples now, they know that this is the season during which a majority of your people will go into that water. Who would have that kind of information about your customs?”

“No one should,” Aku said with helpless frustration. “Even our friends know very little about us. They do not pry the same way we do not pry about them. So clearly, off-worlders are spying on us. Which brings me to your own friends. Who warned you about the assassins?”

“The same friend who told me to come here and rescue my mate,” Amreth replied in a factual manner.

“You trust them?” Aku insisted.

“Yes. Without this message, tomorrow or in a couple of days from now, we would be waking up to an irreversible tragedy,” Amreth said. “The question is why? Who hates you so much they would attempt to wipe you out when you seemingly just want to go about your lives?”

“The answer is obviously the powerful people our friends told us would come after us with vicious wrath if we went public,” Aku replied.

“Tharmok’s blood!” Amreth suddenly exclaimed, his eyes widening. “Didn’t you say that Elias claimed that the creature at the origin of SS12 decomposed too quickly for them to have anything to show for? That it all but liquified?”

My jaw dropped. “Yes. That’s the explanation he gave when people asked about it. This cannot be a coincidence. He used Puricis as a reference to justify everything. But why would he go to such extremes over that initial incident? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Whatever the reason, they clearly want to wipe out the Kreelars and erase all traces of their existence,” Amreth said in a harsh tone, his silver-white eyes gleaming with unyielding determination. “Let’s go catch those fiends. They will talk.”

The five-minute flight to Amreth’s ship felt like an eternity. As soon as we landed, Aku rushed out of the shuttle. I understood his impatience. His people had already suffered so much, this new threat would be the final blow.

“You be careful and come back to me in one piece, you hear?” I told Amreth as we stood by the shuttle’s ramp.

“I promise, my mate. You also be careful out there. I didn’t just find you to already lose you,” he replied.

“Not a chance. You’re stuck with me,” I said with a smile despite the apprehension twisting my insides.

We exchanged a kiss, far too brief, but we couldn’t linger any longer. Aku would probably lose his shit anyway, with good reason.

As soon as Amreth exited, I went back to my seat while Mehreen piloted the shuttle out of the hangar to the temple. Barely a minute after our departure, Amreth’s ship took off. I clamped down on the dreadful images wanting to worm their way into my mind about all the ways things could go wrong. Reminding myself that Amreth was an elite Warrior and a Warden on Molvi helped alleviate some of my fears.

I really cared about him. The prospect of a life without him was unbearable.

But as we closed in on the temple, I refocused on the task at hand. We quickly donned our hazmat suits. To Enre’s dismay, they weren’t suitable for him or the other two Kreelars who came with us, in no small part due to their tails.

Further scans of the area thankfully didn’t reveal the presence of any other person, cameras, or drones that the would-be assassins might have left behind. It either testified to an excess of confidence or a high degree of carelessness. Whatever the reason, it served us just fine.

As we waded into the water, a wave of anger surged within me. This was such a cowardly and underhanded way of eliminating people who had done absolutely nothing but tried to live their lives in peace. Had we not seen the Raithean get inside the water, the chances of anyone discovering what had happened would have been slim to none.

Due to their relatively small size, detecting the Puricis stones would be nearly impossible if you didn’t know of their presence beforehand. And even then, we had to use our scanners as we kept walking right past some of them, which too conveniently blended with the riverbed. We picked up twenty-two pebbles and stored them inside a biohazard container.

“How bad is it?” Enre asked, his voice tense as I sealed the container.

“For the water?” I asked.

He nodded, his back stiff.

I gave him a reassuring smile. “Ernst is taking some water samples for further analysis back at the lab, but all our initial scans show that it is safe. The stones themselves have a pretty thick coating. I’m confident that nothing leaked. We caught everything early enough, and there’s no strong current that could have dragged them away. The water is also relatively cold. It slows down the breakdown of the fibrous shell. Had the water been warm, it would have been more problematic. All should be well.”

“Thank you,” Enre said, his voice thick with emotion. “Our people cannot handle another large-scale tragedy.”

His companions nodded, their expressions grim.

“And we’re going to do everything in our power to make sure it doesn’t happen,” I said reassuringly. “Let’s go back to the village, test this stuff, and destroy it.”