2. Kaelor #2
“It’s also what I use to breathe with.”
I stop and turn to look at her. “Then next time, I will stop, think about which part of you to grab, and then grab you. You’ll be in the lava river by then. But at least I wouldn’t have grabbed your throat.”
She looked at me.
I look back.
She folds her arms under her breasts and looks away. “I’m just saying, there are other parts of me you can grab instead.”
I can help my eyes drifting over her body, snagging on those parts emitting the greatest scent in particular.
She seems to realize what she said and hastily unfolds her arms. “We, uh, should keep going.”
She walks on ahead, as if she’s taking charge of the situation in doing so. But she doesn’t know I’m keeping a close eye on the ground at her feet, for when the next fissure gives way… and which part of her anatomy I’ll grab next.
"That wall," I say, without stopping or pointing. "Don't walk under it."
She looks at it. The fracture runs diagonally across the full face of the structure — deep, structural, the kind of crack that's been working its way through since the last significant tremor and will complete itself on the next one.
"Got it," she says. "No wall. What about the ground ahead of it?"
I look at her.
"It's shimmering." She gestures. "The air above it. Like heat off summer asphalt, except we're not in summer and there's no asphalt." She pauses. "I'm a nurse. We notice things that are trying to kill people."
I file this and keep moving.
"It’s a gas pocket," I say. "It can blow at any time."
She keeps pace behind me, which requires more effort than she shows. Her legs are shorter than mine by a significant margin — I've been adjusting my stride without thinking about it.
"The other males," she says. "You know them?"
"Some."
"How?"
"This isn’t my first Mating Games."
A beat of silence.
“You’ve done this before?”
“Many times.”
"They brought you back?"
"Yes. "
"Why?"
I step over a section of hollow ground — it sounds wrong underfoot, a subtle reverb that means there's nothing solid beneath the surface crust — and put my hand back without looking to stop her from stepping on it. She takes my meaning immediately, routes around it.
"Because I am entertaining."
Another silence. Longer this time.
"You didn't win last time," she says. “Or you wouldn’t be here. Right?”
"No."
"So if you don’t win, they use you again?"
"If you’re entertaining enough."
"And if they weren't?"
I pause at a section of collapsed wall, check the stability of the path through it, move a piece of debris before I answer.
"Then you’re recycled."
"Recycled? What does that mean?"
"Your DNA gets used. Spliced into new creatures. New variations for future arenas." I move through the gap in the wall and wait on the other side for her to follow. "The Malquarans are thorough."
She comes through the gap, stops, and looks up at me. “Malquarans? What’s that?”
“They’re the creatures that built this place. The Mating Games.”
“All of this is just for entertainment?”
“Mostly.”
"Okay," she says. "Okay. So. Win, die, or become a craft project. Those are the options."
"Yes."
"Awesome." She looks up at the ash-grey sky. "Just checking — there's no fourth option I'm missing? Secret door? Emergency exit? Some kind of arena complaints process?"
I stifle a smile. "No."
"You sure? Because I feel like there should be a comments box somewhere. I have a lot of things I want to say.”
I say nothing. She falls back into step behind me.
"So the Malquarans," she says, after a moment. "Who are they?"
This is the question I've been waiting for. Not because I don't want to answer it, but because the answer requires choosing how much to give, and I'm still deciding.
"An ancient and powerful species," I say.
"They run the Games because they enjoy them.
No one will rise up against them because they will be wiped out and end up as fodder in the Games.
Nothing in the known galaxy has the combined will and power to stop them.
" I pause. "They take what interests them.
They watch what it does. When it stops being interesting, they find something else. "
"And we're what's interesting right now."
"You are," I say. "Specifically. Human females are a new addition to the Games. You're… novel."
" Novel, " she repeats, in the tone of someone tasting something they didn't order and finding it deeply objectionable. "Fantastic. Abducted for being novel. You know, most people just follow me on social media."
I don't know what that means. I don't ask.
She's quiet for a few steps, which means she's working up to something she's not sure she wants the answer to.
"Has anyone ever escaped?" she asks.
I don't answer immediately.
The silence stretches. We walk through it, past the remnants of what might have been a market district — stalls collapsed into each other, ash-covered surfaces that once held goods now holding only the shapes of absence.
The volcano rumbles, low and constant, shaking the ground at a frequency that's stopped registering as an event and started registering as a condition.
She doesn't push. She waits, and the waiting tells me she's already reading the silence correctly.
"No," I say.
"No one."
"The Games end one of two ways. You win your freedom — collect all three relics and bond with the female — or you stay in the rotation. Reset after reset until the Malquarans decide you're no longer entertaining."
"And then the craft project option kicks in. You get… recycled."
"Yes."
She absorbs this without breaking stride. The information is not small. Most people, when they understand the full shape of what they're trapped in, stop moving. She doesn't.
“But it’s possible… someone escaped but the Malquarans didn’t want anyone to know about it, so they kept it hushed up.”
“It’s possible,” I admit.
She’s quiet a long moment. I can virtually hear the cogs turning.
"So the three relics," she says.
"Yes."
"One male collects them all."
"Yes."
"And mates with the female."
I look straight ahead. "Yes. "
She doesn't ask me to elaborate, so I don't.
"You know this place, don’t you?" she says, after a while.
I miss a step. I'm standing in the middle of a dead street with ash falling around me and the smell of burning stone in my lungs. She's behind me, and I'm aware that she is watching the back of my head with that focused, cataloguing attention she gives to everything.
I had not intended to tell her anything. Nothing I can tell her about my past helps her — or us — in this place. I thought I was showing nothing. Apparently I was wrong.
"You're not as hard to read as you think," she says quietly. "No offense."
I turn and look at her.
She meets my gaze without flinching. Few can do that.
"My world burned like this," I say.
She holds the silence. Doesn't fill it with questions, doesn't offer sympathy, doesn't make it about her response to the information. She simply receives it and lets it be what it is.
I start walking again.
"I'm sorry," she says simply. “That must have been… difficult.”
More than you know.
The silence grows awkward, so she changes topic:
"And the males in the ruins," she says. "What can they do?"
Better ground. I'm more comfortable here.
"Varketh controls lava flow. Redirects it, shapes it, moves through it without injury.
In this terrain, he's the most physically dangerous.
" I pause at an intersection of collapsed streets, read the options, take the left fork.
"Syrox manipulates gas vents and ash density.
He's strategic. He'll wait for the most opportune moment and then exploit it.
Don't assume stillness means inactivity with him. "
"Noted. The third one?"
"He’s a Meteor Shifter. I don't know him personally. They redirect falling debris mid-air, control trajectory and impact point. Long-range advantage, much weaker in close combat." I glance back at her.
"So he's range-limited."
"Range-limited and angry," I say.
"Also noted." She steps over a piece of fallen masonry without breaking stride. “And what about the one you… incapacitated?”
“What about him?”
“Did you have to rip his… his… bits off?”
I shrug. “They were the easiest things within reach.”
“Yeah, I know. But…”
She lets it hang there.
"What about you?" she asks.
"What about me?"
"What can you do? You're fire-adapted, right? That’s why you have all those fire veins. How adapted are you?"
I consider how to answer this.
"Significant heat tolerance," I say. "Not unlimited. I can move through heat that would kill most species. I cannot move through magma the way Varketh can." A pause. "I'm fast. I'm a trained combatant. I've been in the Games before and I know how they progress."
"And your weakness?"
I look at her.
She looks back. "Everyone has one."
I just look at her.
"Keep walking," I say .
"I'm walking. I'm walking. I’m allergic to peanuts. That’s my weakness."
“What are peanuts?”
“Little snacks you get at the supermarket.”
“What’s a supermarket?”
“A big building with lots of food stored away.”
“A depot?”
“Sort of. But with buy-one-get-one-free deals.”
I stop and turn to her. “I don’t know what peanuts are. Or why they’re your weakness. But I can assure you, you have far more weaknesses than that. You’ve almost died a dozen times in the last one hundred yards.”
She deflates. “And I thought I was doing well.”
“You are. For a human.”
She almost smiles. I keep trying not look at her but it’s tough.
“Well then. I’m lucky I have you here to watch over me, aren’t I?”
The dead district begins to thin ahead of us — the density of collapsed structures giving way to more open ground, the ash-covered streets broadening into what was, once, perhaps a central square of some kind.
We move toward the edge of it, where a natural rise in the platform's surface gives us elevation and cover simultaneously. I slow as we approach the lip.