Chapter 15
Zeidon
Flicking out my tongue, I tried to catch the elusive scent of my mate again.
I knew I was not crazy, and that I had not imagined it.
My mate’s scent was here, which meant she was nearby, but how that could be?
I did not know for certain, but I had the faintest idea, a theory.
My den was on the other side of Ahoshaga, a narrow tunnel that led into the mountain from a lower elevation.
Ahoshaga’s famously haunted caves had a grander entrance here, higher up the flank of the peak.
That is where the outcasts had decided to create their Haven, but the caves were already there, and they must be connected.
The revenant stole my female and took her deeper inside the mountain.
They must have crossed to this side, so now all I needed to do was find the right passageway to track her.
Her scent was my only clue and it was slowly getting stronger.
I was close to her, so close that my scales tingled with excitement.
If only I could find the right tunnel, I could be with her soon.
Next to me, Srazz muttered grumpily. He had just settled for a nap when I had made my escape, and he didn’t appreciate the interruption.
Once we found Farah, he’d sing a different tune; I was certain of that much.
Inside Ahoshaga, a long walkway spiraled down into a pit, and crystal lights lit the way.
The walkway was flanked on one side with a drop towards a gathering place.
It surrounded a tinkling fountain, while the other side had intermittent doorways.
The scents that clung to each doorway told me which ones were inhabited rooms and which were empty, but I was only looking for one scent in particular, one doorway.
There, Farah’s scent grew thicker and then thinned when I continued down.
I backtracked to the nearest door and inhaled deeply, tongue flicking as I worked to decipher as much information as I possibly could.
Was it her blood? Or just her floral scent, the musk that belonged to her skin and hers alone?
This door did not want to budge for me, unlike most of the other doors inside this place.
It was locked. That did not stop me, I was very experienced in opening doors that did not want to open.
It took only a little fussing with the door’s access panel, my claws, and a knife.
It slid open and the air that rushed toward me was filled with my mate’s scent.
A scent that was turning sour from fear.
Though pain still plagued my body, weakening it from the severe loss of blood, I threw myself into that passage and started following it down as fast as I could.
That fear scent meant she lived, she lived.
That fear scent meant she was in danger, and I urged myself to go faster, to gain more speed.
She had been with that monster for hours, nearly an entire day. I had to reach her, now!
Almost too late, I recognized the shape racing toward me and pulled back, just barely refraining from stabbing it with the sharp tips of my trident.
Buzz landed on my shoulder with a screech, he flapped his wings and raised his spines anxiously.
The sight of the small Sleara filled my heart with hope; if the little male lived, my mate’s survival chances would go up too.
Light reached me from somewhere up ahead, but I did not slow my rapid pace. I did not slow down until I burst through the door and into a huge, cavernous room filled with all kinds of strange, ancient technology and machines. There she was, my mate. I found her.
Farah was lying still as death on top of a metal table that gleamed silver in the bright light of hundreds of crystals embedded in the ceiling.
She was breathing, but her face was pale, very pale.
A robotic arm was hovering over her chest, the exact same kind of machine that had worked on my injuries not that long ago.
Behind the table rose the revenant. A silver and white wraith, a ghost from the past, with one gleaming golden eye, and one a red light that locked onto me.
“Get away from her!” I growled, crossing into the room to approach the table.
She was breathing, her chest rising and falling with a steady rhythm.
After last time’s attack, I was more cautious in my approach, I could not let him get me like that a second time.
“Request denied,” the revenant intoned stiffly.
“The female is gravely injured and needs immediate medical attention.” His words made my heart ache, and I desperately scanned her prone form to search for any sign of injury.
She seemed whole, just so still and unmoving beside the rise and fall of her chest. Injured how?
“What did you do to her?” I demanded, the robot seemed less hostile but maybe that was simply because it was focused on controlling the healing machine, not kidnapping my mate.
Srazz was right next to me, keeping pace with his hackles raised, his spines bristling, and a snarl rumbling deep in his chest. Buzz was posturing in the same way from the safety of my shoulder, his tiny maw open, and a hint of smoke curling from his nostrils.
“The female requires immediate medical attention,” the revenant responded in the same strange, monotone voice.
It made my scales crawl with unease; they fluttered along my back with a soft susurrating noise.
This was wrong; this being was wrong, and there was something extremely off about the way it spoke.
Then its red eye dulled a little, and the one remaining, normal-looking eye rolled my way.
The golden orb seemed so real, and the fact that half of its face could pass for a true Naga was even more unsettling to watch.
I had to move carefully, I could not trigger another attack until I was certain I could take it out.
I needed to be certain that it could not harm my beautiful Farah when we fought.
“Don’t you see? Her beautiful tail needs fixing!
We need good, strong females if we want to breed new, strong warriors to conquer the world!
” The words the revenant spoke hissed from his throat in a furious, intense tone.
It was not quite a snarl, not quite a shout, but rather something I imagined a madman might spew.
Her tail? She had no tail, she never had one, so it didn’t need to be fixed.
With horror, my eyes landed on where the machine was now hovering.
Her thighs. A burning scent filled the air, the thinnest of tendrils of smoke wafting from her leg coverings.
I had not caught the smell yet, mistaking it for the fire the Sleara wanted to belch into the air to protect my mate.
He was going to try and make a tail out of her legs!
And she wasn’t just pale, there were shimmering spots, white glossy scales, that covered her cheeks and her hands.
I raised my trident before I could think better of the action, certain that I had to stop that machine, right now.
The weapon flew from my fingers, hurling through the air with a whirring noise as it spun.
It struck the machine above my mate and sparks rained down around her.
I was already moving, throwing myself at the table and yanking her from the metal plane and into my arms. “Farah! Farah? Wake up my sweet, precious female…” She did not respond, but the revenant roared, the sound matched by a high screeching noise that burned my ears.
Disoriented when sound cut out, I lost my balance and stumbled.
The whole world sea-sawed around me, I could not figure out how to stay upright without dropping my female.
Lowering myself to the ground, I coiled across the floor as fast as I could while holding her cradled against me.
A Naga could move through the grass unseen that way, a useful hunting tactic any good hunter applied on a regular basis.
There was nothing stealthy or graceful about this ground slither, I bumped into pipes and vats in my haste.
My world spinning, and still, I could not hear anything but a rushing in my ears, much like the world sounded when deep underwater.
“Zeidon?” Farah’s voice was the first thing that pierced that strange fog.
It was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard, her soft voice, so melodic and pure.
I clutched her tighter to me and curled my back against a vat of some strange-smelling liquid for cover.
Darting my head left and right, I searched for the damn revenant but could not locate him.
“Farah,” I husked at my female, “I was so scared for you. I am never letting you go! Never.” It was not a thing a male should say to his mate, it was the kind of thing that could get a male sent on trading missions for a year.
A Water Weaver Naga was fiercely independent, she would balk at being claimed in such a way.
It was a desire each mated male battled every day of his life, but Vera said humans were not the same. That I needed to forget all I knew.
Her arms raised and curled around my neck, a shudder wracking her body.
“I was so scared he killed you! Zeidon, you had better make good on that promise. I don’t ever want to let you go either.
” Her words were music, they were everything I had ever dreamed of.
Vera was right, humans wanted very different things from their male.
Now was not the time for this digging I was supposed to do, I had a revenant to kill first, but soon.
“I am tough to kill,” I assured my mate, but right now the world was still spinning.
Shadows danced long and vivid, the colorful vats of liquid, the pipes, it all combined into a nightmarish landscape.
My eyes were only willing to focus on the pale roundness of my mate, taking in with perfect clarity the opalescent scales that dotted her cheekbones like a fine mist. It was beautiful, I could not deny that, but it shouldn’t be.
That revenant had done that to her, it had tried to change her. None of it made any sense.
“Fine,” a dark voice hissed from somewhere to my left.
“I need two specimens anyway. You will do too. A male and a female. A mated pair even!” The revenant cackled with delight, and Buzz and Srazz growled in anger.
It sounded closer with each word it spoke, gaining on our position and I needed to move.
“Ah, fudge,” Farah said, “It’s not an improvement to know what he’s saying.
He sounds utterly mad…” He did, it did. A madman with a mission, and he was after both of us now.
I twisted my head and peered through the bright lights and dancing shadows at the tunnel passage I’d arrived through.
The door was closed now, and the revenant was nowhere to be seen.
I estimated the best path, how much time it would take me to get us through that door, and which distractions I could pull when it came after us.
Then I raised myself on my tail, and with Farah tucked close to my chest, made my dash.
The screech that shivered through the air struck me just as hard as the first time, harder even.
I felt blood drip from my ears, my senses spun as I lost my balance, dizziness striking.
We collided with the medical table and the still-smoking medical machine.
With an arm, I clung to the end of my trident where it stuck out of the broken trunk, as I fought the rising nausea.
I had to push forward, I had to keep us moving.
Farah’s lips moved as she spoke, but I could not hear her speak. I knew she urged me on.
I struck the door with my shoulder and pain reverberated through my body, each cut and wound making its presence loud and clear.
Farah helped by reaching over my shoulder and yanking on cables inside a broken access panel, it was a good plan but it wasn’t going fast enough.
I put her down and turned to hover protectively in front of her, searching the room for my opponent.
I could not hear him or see him, and the vats with their strange chemical smells overwhelmed my spinning senses.
Then I spotted him, his white arm and shoulder sliding out from behind a vat.
He touched something on a nearby table and the lights dimmed.
Srazz charged and retreated, posturing and growling though I could not hear him.
Buzz fluttered around my head and belched smoke and little bursts of fire that the revenant ignored.
My gut twisted and I knew something was off.
If only my hearing would come back, my equilibrium, but the world still tilted drunkenly on its axis all around me.
The revenant was doing something to the machines that were housed inside the table he hovered over.
If I had my trident, I would toss it again, to stop him from whatever he was doing.
Farah’s voice was the first sound that sifted through my damaged hearing, again.
“Got it!” she yelled triumphantly, and I felt the rush of cool air as the door whooshed open.
I went to pick her up, my injuries screaming, my balance still off, but good enough.
The revenant’s tail came out of nowhere, twisting from behind the vat, the tip disjointed, broken.
The dart that struck me quivered as it hit my chest, I did not feel pain, just a deep sense of failure as darkness claimed me.