1. Olivia #6
Spikes along his spine and shoulders elevates and spreads in a threat display that's deeply, viscerally alien. Then they shiver side to side like a rattlesnake’s tail and a sound comes out of him that I feel in my molars.
Then he charges.
He is large. Getting larger with every stride, the ground shaking under the impact of his approach. He is built for exactly this — for forward momentum and mass and the kind of collision that ends things.
Between his legs his massive cock sways and bobs with each thundering step. My brain files that under information I did not need and cannot now unlearn. He’s getting so close, so impossibly close, and Goldie is just?—
Standing there.
Still.
Peaceful, almost.
I take a step back. I take another. Every survival instinct I have is screaming at me to do something, to run, to yell a warning, to find a rock and contribute in some meaningful way to the continued existence of the only male on this platform who has so far declined to be horrible to me?—
Goldie sidesteps.
One step. Clean, unhurried, timed to the last possible fraction of a second.
Jawline's momentum carries him past and Goldie moves with him, not against him, and what happens next is fast enough that I miss the details and only get the result: a single decisive movement, an appalling wet sound, and a scream that cuts off almost before it starts.
Jawline hits the ground and slides to a stop .
A pool of blood gushes from it like someone left a tap running. There is a quantity of the dark fluid that I will not be describing in further detail for the sake of my own continued mental health.
And there, clutched in Goldie’s fist is the object of the creature’s death. His enormous cock, torn out by root and stem.
Jawline , understandably, does not get up.
He vanishes. Removed, instantly, cleanly, the way they all vanish.
I stare at the ground where he was.
My mouth hangs open. I close it. I open it again.
"That," I say, to nobody in particular, in a voice that is admirably level given the circumstances, "is disgusting."
And the winner of the Understatement Awards goes to: Olivia Carter!
Goldie drops the floppy appendage and the moment it turns still, it too disappears.
He looks at me. Then at the ground. Then back at me with an expression that, if I'm reading it correctly across the considerable gap of our respective biologies, translates roughly to: problem solved.
Then he picks me up.
He does it in one smooth motion, one arm hooking around my legs, and I am over his shoulder with my face pointed at the ground.
"Wait! Put me down," I say. "Hey. Hey! I'm talking to you! Put. Me. Down!"
He doesn't put me down.
He doesn't even slow down. He doesn't adjust his grip. He doesn't give any indication whatsoever that he has registered my objections as a category of input that requires a response .
I drive an elbow into the back of his shoulder and instantly regret it. It’s solid, hard, like slamming into a brick wall.
"Unbelievable," I tell the ground, which is the only audience I currently have. "Absolutely unbelievable. I survived a boulder. I survived a reset. Now I’m being carried like luggage by a?—"
The volcano sends a shudder through the platform that I feel rising up through Goldie's chest and into my stomach. The ground ahead of us shifts with the bass resonance of it.
Behind us — and I have a perfect rearward view from this undignified vantage point — the remaining males are regrouping. Orientating. Beginning to move in our direction with the coordinated purpose of things that have decided, collectively, on a destination.
My palms are bleeding again. My knee aches. Again. I don’t even remember hurting them this round. My dignity is in a condition that I prefer not to assess.
But Goldie has not tried to pin me to the ground.
He has not tried to tear my scrubs open.
He dispatched a rival with a single movement and then picked me up and moved, and his grip — firm around my legs, one hand braced against my back — is careful in a way that is categorically different from every other hand that's been on me since I landed on this hellish platform.
Ahead of us, rising from the platform's surface, is a structure.
I see it upside-down first and have to process it in pieces: two massive pillars of dark volcanic rock, rough-hewn and ancient, standing maybe fifteen feet high and ten feet apart, connected across the top by a crossbeam of the same material.
A lantern hangs from the crossbeam's center on a heavy chain — black iron, the glass panels glowing with a contained light that burns amber-gold rather than the orange of the lava.
It doesn't flicker. It just burns, steady and self-contained, like it has been burning for a very long time and intends to continue.
There is a single marking on it and for a moment, I’m shocked I understand it. It’s the Roman numeral “I”. As in, number one.
My stomach sinks. “I” implies there will be a “II” or even a “III”. Or many, many more.
The ground on this side is the familiar fractured black rock, ash-dusted and hot. The ground on the other side is darker, more settled, like stone that has had longer to cool and longer to decide what it is.
Goldie stops at the threshold the way you stop at a cliff edge — not hesitation, not fear, but acknowledgment.
He sets me down, finally, and I find my feet and immediately take two steps sideways because I am not a piece of luggage. I turn to run and get half a dozen steps before I look back at him.
He isn’t reaching for me, isn’t chasing me. He's just staring at me with those deep, golden gorgeous eyes. A thoughtful look on his face.
Something in his posture has shifted in a way I can't fully read — the stillness is still there but it has a different quality now, weighted rather than watchful.
Deliberate.
He takes a breath. Slow, deep, the breath of something that has made a decision.
And he reaches out a hand toward me.
Offering. Not taking.
I look back over my shoulder. The other males are coming.
They are not close yet but they are not far, and they’re moving with the focused, ground-eating pace of things that know where they're going and why, and between us and them there is a narrowing quantity of open platform and a diminishing quantity of time.
I had a choice to make. Go with him through that archway, wait for the other alien males to arrive and fight for me, or take off on my own.
I look at the Roman numeral and everything it signifies. A level. A challenge. And many more to come. So who would I rather face them with? Because, no doubt, I can’t handle it alone.
Do I choose a mindless animal that’s as likely to kill me as help me? Or a conscious being offering to help me?
I look at Goldie, hand still outstretched, watching me with those golden eyes.
I died once today already. He is, so far, the least terrible option on this entire volcanic hellscape…
And I cannot believe my life has come to this.
“All right,” I tell him. “We’ll work together. For now.” I wave a finger at him. “But if you try anything, mister. If you try to do anything untoward…”
What? What will I do? What can I do?
“I’ll rip your balls off too.”
He doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t smile. I’m not even sure he understands what I’m saying.
I sigh, take his hand, and together, we step through the archway and into this new world.