Chapter 22
Ani
Obey?
The question breaks me out of my panic and on the heels of his question comes… rage.
If this mudaz was after me, I realize, then he may have chopped off Szhe’ka’s wings. If I am going to die, then he needs to die along with me.
The surge of cleansing fire I couldn’t access before comes surging through me.
When my lips start to curve into a smile, I don’t stop them. I can feel the deep grooves in my face as my mouth opens in a feral grin.
I let out the words I have been dying to tell the Witch for decades. “Poshol na khuy,” I spit out between my widened lips.
“The plan was to fuck you, but you ruined it,” he hisses back, revealing he understands Russian insults.
It makes my rage deepen, but also increases my glee. No matter how this ends, I took something from him with this transformation. He hates that I look like Szhe’ka, and suddenly it feels like another precious moment where I have wrested control back.
I’ve never been more pleased to see someone so upset before. Something is clearly wrong with my body, and he despises the change. It’s unexpected and perhaps frightening for him. His precious cargo he spent time and resources hunting has been ruined. Nothing could be more poetic.
Slime oozes from his body as he vibrates with more than just rage, but fear too, I realize, his bundles of fat jiggling in response.
In response to his jiggling, I laugh, making sure to scorn him in ways he can understand.
“You dare…?!”
One of his stubby legs swiftly kicks me in the side, knocking the wind out of me and punting me a few short feet. Pain radiates from my side to my whole body, keeping me a few breaths short. It’s a struggle to even gather strength but I have to get up.
I don’t want him knowing that he is actually causing me any real pain. If there’s one thing I can tell, it’s that these things enjoy inflicting pain. They revel in it, and the more you react to them, the worse you will have it.
Instead, I cackle like I’ve lost my mind.
I probably have.
There is no right answer because they will hurt you regardless, the bright rage tells me. Make them fucking pay.
I struggle to my feet, trying to put on a brave face, taking the moment to make my strike, lashing out with my new dark-blue talons and dragging them across his sickly wet body, the surge of blood following making my heart pound for a whole new reason.
I move to swipe again, but I am immediately blindsided by another blow.
This time, a large stick is shattered against the left side of my body.
Once more, I find myself falling to my knees in an explosion of pain.
He’s really pissed. I taste copper in my mouth, spitting blood on the ground.
However, the color of the blood I see is less red and more an amber color .
Even my blood is changing. The odd sight distracts me, but I still manage to strike out with another slash, this time catching one of his three stubby legs.
He grabs a handful of hair and bellows at me, “You are dead!”
He pulls me up to look closer at him—about an inch from his face, close enough that I can see right in his slimy black eyes—and when I shut my own, writhing to try to get my claws back into action, a low growl and a knock against my cheek are what I feel next.
He proceeds to knock me around some more using anything his stubby arms can get on.
There is his pink goo and gray blood and my yellowish blood splattered around the entire clearing each time I get a bleary glance between blows.
He is getting the better of me and it’s only a matter of time.
Despite this, a strangled laugh is all that escapes my throat.
“How does it feel to lose?” I bark out.
I can barely get the words out without my throat feeling like it’s about to tear apart. The alien pants, taking a break.
My vision is swimming and my body hurts to a ridiculous degree; everything aches. I know I have at least a broken arm and a few shattered ribs. They hurt the more I try to breathe.
If I could rate this facility, I would give it one star for reception and would recommend nobody in the universe to interact with these creatures.
The stupid thought helps center my mind as the pain throbs through me. I try to pull up another, but the alien hits me again, only earning a small scratch in return because I am slow to react, then takes a moment to suck in enraged breaths.
From the corner of my eyes, I see another hunter parting the crowd to hurry to the front, weapons dangling from its back.
It whispers something to the hunter hitting me like a sack of meat that makes him stop in his tracks.
Something is definitely wrong, more than just my transformation.
This could be the distraction I need to escape.
This collar won’t let me get far but I can sure as well try.
The second hunter sees my expression and he puts one of his feet on my torso, making sure to apply enough pressure that it presses on my broken ribs. I scream out in pain, releasing the few breaths I had managed to steal.
“If you try anything stupid, you will not get another chance.”
In response, I spit blood at him, swearing breathlessly.
He glares at me with those creepy black eyes before he retracts his feet and sloughs off with the hunter that came running in.
With him gone, I’m surrounded by spectators, none of which move me.
It allows me a moment to catch my breath, however painful.
It feels like I’ve been run over by ten tractors, each taking its time.
The hunter’s argument has gone past quiet chattering and now they are whispering harshly to each other, clearly engrossed in their little conversation. There is nothing I can do but lay here on the ground and wait for my eventual fate of very obvious death, so I decide to listen in.
“The camp is being moved, seems to be less of us and more of the desiccated green testicles,” the second hunter, much wider than my captor, says.
My head begins to throb and I only hear a mention of spotting a Manticorid… or a spotted Manticorid. Then confusing talk about a venom spitter. Or a tail? And a tail? Whatever it is, it sounds scary if they are talking about it in panicked tones and I don’t want to be here when it gets here.
I make my rattled brain pay more attention; maybe they’re speaking of Szhe’ka or something that could help me or some predatory hunter that would kill my captors and massacre me too. Either way, it’ll be better to be informed; my mother did always say knowledge is power.
“Sounds like an excellent trophy,” my captor says and starts to turn around.
His counterpart holds onto him and they both turn to look at me. I see my captor tighten his hold on his gun and my heart tumbles to my stomach.
The gray blob motions toward me with a clawed flipper. “What about her?”
“She is ruined. I will finish her off,” my captor says and his colleague honks, slapping his back twice and asks him to save some for him.
They laugh together some more before parting ways but all I can think about is how absolutely fucked I am. There really isn’t much I could do to protect myself in this state and as he proved earlier, even if I were in peak physical shape, I would still lose this fight.
My body does not seem to get the memo that I am about to be raped and killed by a disgusting blob monster that probably has a gelatinous dick too, as moisture continues to collect between my legs just like it has since I’ve been here and a laugh tries to bubble back up my throat.
I am frozen, laying prone and watching as my soon-to-be murderer approaches me, unable to do anything.
I’m fucking aroused? I have well and truly lost my mind.
“Did you hear that? You are ruined.”
A blow to my jaw with what feels like his gun follows with a kick to my back and I yelp out in pain.
This is not going to be a quick death.
I spit out the tooth that has come loose along with some blood and scramble to find something to use to defend myself, finding a fist-sized stone, which I weakly try to throw at my tormentor.
It whizzes past his head and he honks before continuing to hit me. All I can do is continue to scream.
“Your metamorphosis was supposed to be mine.”
A kick to my left breast follows and I sob, holding my hands in front of my face. It doesn’t make much of a difference, as he has three thick and stubby legs that are working overtime to inflict harm on me.
“You were supposed to be mine, but you decided to be a whore.”
I’m sure I hear a crack in my ribs but there is pain radiating from every part of me so I can’t be too sure. I don’t even know why I’m still alive to feel all of this. God should be merciful enough to take me quickly, so I don’t have to feel all of this pain.
The sound of a gun cracks through the air and the hits stop. There is a thud behind me and I struggle to let out a painful exhale. This is it then; this is how I die; beaten up and shot by a raging mad hunter for supposedly ruining myself. Something I didn’t even know was a thing.
I had never been beaten like this before. I’ve been hit, sure, what actress hasn’t? Still. It wasn’t something I had ever imagined could happen on this level. I didn’t even live a full life and now I’m going to be dead at thirty-nine.
It’s quiet all of a sudden. The hits I’ve been bracing myself for never comes and I peek past my swollen eyes to see why there’s calm. There’s a silhouette in front of me of some sort of humanoid creature. The creature is speaking to me and I feel my brain try to understand what they’re saying.
“Are you alive?” The person asks and I open my eyes and am instantly met face to face with the lifeless eyes of my captor beside me.
I scramble from the ground too fast and the entire world begins to spin, but a hand with brown and off-white coloring stretches out in front of me, three slender fingers and slightly shorter thumb wide apart from each other.
I make the connection between that and the deep voice.
I allow him to pull me up and take a few steps away from the gray blob, just to assure myself that he really is dead.
“Thank you for saving me back there,” he says, but I can’t find the words to respond.
“What?”
“You fouled their shot. Thank you,” he responds.
Even after a repeat, I don’t quite catch on. I can’t stop staring at the hunter.
My captor. Dead at last.
His body is oozing slime out of the places his mouth and ears are supposed to be and his eyes are wide open.
They are as haunting dead as they were alive and I’m incredibly uncomfortable.
I take two shaky steps farther away and hug my hands around myself, needing my brain to properly process what is going on.
“Are you worried he’s still alive?” the furred alien asks and I realize how monotonous his voice is.
It is flat, almost dead, and I take a closer look at him.
By the time my head is raised, his back is toward me.
He is obviously sapient and dressed in a dark-brown shirt with no sleeves and matching pants.
The material looks like leather and the color, though darker than his skin, matches it perfectly.
It makes me remember I am naked and I absently order the jumpsuit to cover me as I keep looking him over. He makes a startled sound, but doesn’t comment.
He is taller than me but not as tall as Szhe’ka; I would say seven or eight feet tall and the milky white part of his short fur crosses all over the exposed parts of him, which I can see in so many interesting patterns. Stripes, dots, zigzags—they’re all there.
I don’t bother making my brain focus beyond that. I’m just grateful to still be breathing.
I look at the deflated body of the alien, who was so sure he was going to be the last face I saw and I want to feel something. Joy, anger, victory, anything, but I cannot.
It has nothing to do with the fact that I didn’t do the killing with my claws and more to do with the fact that I’m just numb, maybe a little nauseous.
“T-thank you.” I let out, my voice shaky and low. Luckily, he hears and his fur shivers in some sort of response.
“I wanted to do it anyway. These things don’t deserve to be alive,” he says back and we are enveloped by silence.
I raise shaking hands to the collar around my neck, searching for the clasp. After a long moment of me fumbling, he darts out a hand and in another breath he has it off and launches it almost faster than I can see high into the canopy.
His lips are pulled back in a snarl as he does it and the breath I let out is somehow more cleansing than the one before.
He hates them as much as I do.