Chapter 13 #2
Krashe scoffed and pointed the tip of his tail at the sight of the approaching lights, they were already much closer.
I was shocked by how much closer they’d gotten when I’d only looked away for all of three seconds.
What was that thing? It seemed to be getting bigger too, the lights splitting off into several rows of them on further inspection.
“You think you can escape that unless I end it? You know as well as I do, that a revenant won’t give up the chase until either it is dead, or you are.
So what’s it going to be, Joxra?” Krashe turned his back on the male he was talking to as if he wasn’t in the least worried that he might end up with his knife in his back.
He ducked to wipe his sword along the dense, low brushes that covered the ground here.
Not far away lay his giant backpack, filled up with the leather skins for the tent and furs to sleep in.
Emptier than before because I’d taken to wearing most of our furs just to keep warm in this freezing climate.
He was acting casual but I could see how he was moving his body, coiling his tail gently, moving it through some morning stretches I’d watched him do each day.
He was preparing himself, just how bad was that thing heading for us?
I ran my hands over the blades strapped to my middle, counting the four that were left and wondering how much help I was going to be.
“No, Nomy, you sit this one out. You must not draw the attention of the revenant to you. Besides, its skin is as tough as stone unless you know where to strike it.” Krashe’s warning was uttered in a dark, ominous tone and I instantly pictured a light-giving monster covered in plate-like armor like a rhinoceros but as big as a house.
Ignoring the shocked and confused looks the Bitter Storm warriors gave us, I kept my eyes on the approaching danger when I responded.
“No way, I know I can’t walk, but I’m not just gonna sit there and do nothing!
” Of course, those words came back to bite me in the ass a moment later when I could finally make out enough detail on the revenant to realize just what I was dealing with.
It wasn’t an animal and it wasn’t some kind of dinosaur or rhino like I’d imagined.
I’d seen lights and hadn’t once thought it was from anything other than a natural source; that seemed monumentally stupid now.
It was some kind of robot, a giant, shimmering silver thing on a thousand legs like a centipede, red light lines streaking along its sides and two blue headlights beaming like eyes from the front.
“Oh, shit…” I said, and Krashe huffed out a laugh of all things.
“Yeah, shit. The revenant is a formidable foe, you can have another shot at one when you’ve had more practice.
” Uh no thanks, but I appreciated his confidence in my future skills.
I wasn’t even sure we’d survive this encounter, that thing really was as big as a house.
While we’d stood there yapping, it had raced toward us at speeds approaching those of most hover vehicles I was used to seeing race through the skies back on Earth.
“You can talk to it?” the lead warrior demanded, not looking at the fast-approaching centipede robot but at me. His orange-red eyes were wide, a mixture of surprise and horror. Like it had not even crossed his mind that I might be able to communicate in some way.
Full of defiance, Krashe’s eyes seemed to dare the male to say anything more.
Then I spotted the tip of his tail slide up the rock toward me and I reached out to meet my mate halfway, clenching the tip in my fist. Instantly the markings that Krashe called sigils, lit up along his upper chest and shoulders, glowing from beneath his leather pauldrons and the hard cuirass he wore.
There were shocked hisses, some growling, and even an outright groan at the sight, but the one in the lead said nothing.
“She is my true mate, a gift from the stars themselves. A gift our Clan has lost but I remember, we remember. Bitter Storm memory is long.” Krashe’s voice carried, a deep, dramatic rumble he’d pitched to make sure every single one of the warriors present would hear it.
They had no chance to respond, it was the robot menace that answered.
A screech echoed over the tundra that made every single one of us reach for our ears to shield them.
Some weren’t fast enough and I saw blood dripping from the ears of at least three of the unconscious males.
A sonic weapon tailored especially to sensitive Naga ears, I seemed far less stunned by the noise than they were.
The mechanic creature reared back, lifting half of its long body into the air while balancing on the remaining dozen legs.
Sharp hooks engaging on those feet that drove deep into the frozen ground to anchor it.
Then those front legs shifted and I was staring at the barrels of at least a dozen laser canons that started to glow white hot as they powered up.
I wasn’t in its direct line of fire but I wasn’t taking any chances, rolling off my boulder to get behind those stones for cover.
I landed hard, wrenching my shoulder and shooting radiating pain up my arm but I ignored all of that and crawled as fast as I could between a gap in the rocks.
Just in time, an explosion boomed and dirt and rocks flew every which way, pelting any of my exposed flesh.
Krashe, where was he? He’d been right in the path of that canon fire.
Was he hurt? Dead? I risked life and limb by sticking my head out of the gap as soon as the dirt and rock stopped falling but I didn’t care.
Squinting against the cloud of dust I searched for any familiar shape and spotted a dark red arm not too far away.
I didn’t know if it was Krashe or someone else, but they weren’t moving.
I grabbed that arm and started pulling with all my might, trying to drag that impossibly heavy weight to safety.
I’d managed to budge them just enough that I could see the curled tip of a tail, pale red, so definitely not Krashe whose tail tip was nearly black.
I grabbed it anyway, pulling on that tail to get the whole body behind cover.
It was pure adrenaline that fueled me, fear making the back of my neck crawl the entire time I was exposed. Where was my Warlord?
When the dust settled again, my hearing also seemed to come back, a high-pitched ringing first and that was followed by the screech and crash of a furious battle.
When I crawled over the fallen warrior out of my hidey hole, I dragged his spear with me to wield as a club.
My eyes were huge as I spotted the robotic beast, shimmering purple and silver in the sun.
It was moving, rapidly shifting on its many legs, and from its back hung at least three Naga.
I recognized Krashe in an instant, hanging from a handhold high up on the creature’s back, hacking at a segment on its neck with his sword.
His tail he’d wedged between ridges to help him hang on and he wasn’t alone in using that tactic.
The other two were doing the exact same thing, but lower on the towering machine.
I was pretty sure that one of them was the leader of the group that had attacked us, I recognized those nearly orange scales.
A crater was still smoking right next to the pile of boulders, several broken or burning bodies lying haphazardly around the edges.
The stench of burning flesh filled the air, a hint of copper, and something that smelled distinctly like motor oil.
The remaining, still mobile, Naga had scattered, hiding in the low shrubbery or the boulders scattered around my own pile.
It didn’t look to me like any of them were eager to pitch into the battle Krashe and those other two were waging on the back of the machine.
To be fair, I didn’t know how to help either.
I fully understood why Krashe had told me to stay out of this, because what the hell could I do against a giant, independent war machine?
I was tiny next to that thing, and though its shiny surfaces were scratched up, dented, and even rusted in places, it was fully functional.
Whoever had created this weapon had been extremely advanced, and extremely interested in total destruction.
At least it looked to me like Krashe was relatively safe on the back of the robotic centipede. The guns couldn’t shoot him where he was perched, the robot seemed to be ignoring him in favor of laying salvo after salvo of laser fire down along the alien shrubs whenever it sensed movement.
I thought that maybe my fierce Warlord was getting to it, sparks were flying with each strike of his sword.
He was severing wires near the head of the machine that I hoped were extremely vital to its ability to function.
I’d only just started to feel like we might be winning this battle when the machine shivered and plating along its long body started to shift and move.
Krashe was starting to lose his precarious perch, worse, it looked to me like the barrels of more laser artillery had been exposed.
Krashe or one of the others had triggered defense mechanisms, they must have reached something vital.
If that monstrosity wasn’t distracted, it was going to blow Krashe to shreds.
He’d done the impossible and curled his long body up on top of the head of the machine, still sawing away at the cables inside, wrenching his blade to cause massive damage.
It was working, the headlights—that seemed to peer at us like they were eyes—were flickering, and some of its legs were twitching in strange ways.
When guns raised along a rail on the spine of the robot and aimed directly for Krashe’s form at the top, I knew what I had to do.