Lydia
I’ve somehow got myself turned around…again.
These passages in the various quadrants belonging to all the warlords all look exactly the same. Except Dante’s which is a bit more scorched than the rest.
Darax’s is also seemingly more of a maze than any of the others. Despite all the time I’ve spent in it, I still get lost.
Usually I have someone else with me, or at least somewhere I need to be, but with all my friends loved up with their Sarkarnii mates, I’m on my own.
I mean, I’m not really on my own. Kerra has invited me to live with her and Darax permanently, given everyone else is with their warlords in their quadrants. As I find Darax the least scary of all the warlords, I’ve agreed.
The thing is, Kerra is often busy. I love helping her out with her baby when I can, even though I never thought of myself as particularly maternal. She’s often with Darax, who clearly wants to have her to himself, and I can’t exactly hang around, being a spare part to their loved up coupledom.
Which means I seem to spend a lot of my time roaming around, trying to avoid the scary Sarkarnii warriors who are particularly loud and bombastic. Alternatively I can sit in my quarters.
I don’t like being on my own. The silence…
I can’t.
Either way, it’s all about the lesser of two evils, and today I chose to risk the noise and scales and tails of the Sarkarnii in order to not think about anything else.
Then I got lost.
I’m sure I’ve not been in this part of Darax’s quadrant before. It’s less used than the rest of the places I’ve been, and I haven’t seen or heard a Sarkarnii voice for a while.
The passage in front of me opens into a large atrium. This one is bare of the usual lush vegetation the Sarkarnii like to adorn their open spaces with. Being sort of reptiles, they seem to like the warm, the moist, and then the dry, as if they can’t quite make up their minds.
This place is eerily quiet too. As if all the air and all the sound have been sucked out of it, to be replaced by absolute silence.
A silence broken by a long, low, painful growl. One which rises then falls away to nothing.
Every hair on my body stands on end. I’ve heard Sarkarnii growl and this can’t possibly be a Sarkarnii.
If anything, it reminds me of the time…the time before…the time before I was found by Kerra and Darax, before my friends, between my home on Earth and…
“Female…”
The voice whispers into my ear, and I spin on the spot, expecting to find something terrifying behind me. Sweat soaks into my clothing when I see there is nothing.
Only the echo of a word I’m absolutely sure I heard. Even if I’ve heard it a thousand times before from the Sarkarnii. This one was, somehow, directed at me.
One hundred percent directed at me.
A shiver runs up my spine. Not the sort which you get when you’re watching a movie, this is the bowel loosening sort. I want to run, I really do, but I’m frozen as if being held by an invisible force.
I should run, I should have always run. Not running was my mistake. It was the reason I ended up here in the first place.
My feet don’t agree. They stay stubbornly rooted to the ground, no matter how much my brain screams at them.
It’s as if the nightmare which wakes me oh so often is real. The voice which calls to me, the one which threatens to take my life, to put me through all the pain again, is here.
One of my feet becomes unglued from where I stand. The other follows. I can run…I can finally run. I don’t care where I’m going, I just know I have to leave.
The scent of smoke clings to me as I sprint down the nearest passage, desperate to get away. I hear the growl once more, and this time it forms words, words which follow me with a terrifying warning.
“If you run, female…I will chase you…I will catch you…I will devour you.”
Book 6: Craved by the Dragon Warlord - Deus and Lydia’s story.