Chapter 13
Iave
An arrow appeared in the eye socket of one of the malformed creatures I was fighting.
I shoved it off me with a roar, making sure to hit both others with it.
It didn’t have quite the effect I was hoping for, but the result was far better.
Both remaining misshapen creatures fell on their fallen brethren like they were starved; tearing into the sickly pale body to feed.
Raising my ax, I severed the tail from the body of the nearest one.
Shocked when it hissed in pain and then simply continued eating like nothing had happened.
It didn’t even seem to bleed from the point of amputation.
Kalani yelled something at me from the doorway and I dashed in her direction, catching her hand and tugging her back into the hallway so we could make our escape.
“The fuck were those things? Zombies?” she said, not missing a beat or a single step as we started hauling ass.
I had no clue what zombies were but I knew those Naga were wrong, twisted beyond recognition, twisted so far they were more animal than Naga.
Just mindless, clawed monsters with an unending appetite.
“I don’t know. Evil,” I said to her. Behind me, I could still hear the sounds of their feeding frenzy and I could taste something similar to rotting flesh in the air.
If there were more of them, I had no doubt they’d be drawn to that location now.
We did not want to be trapped down here with a whole horde of the creatures.
“Did you at least get what you wanted?” she asked next.
She still sounded calm, barely winded from our fast run.
I grunted in reply. I had gotten many things from the three Ancestors.
Shiny metal objects I did not recognize, some jewelry, and a larger, tube-shaped object I had never seen before.
It was a good haul, especially if Corin could make sense of them.
Had taking the time to search for them been worth the risk to Kalani?
I wasn’t sure. She’d held her own, she hadn’t even screamed when we were rushed.
Her one shot with the bow had been precise and fatal, showing that she hadn’t panicked but had taken the time she needed to line it up.
Kalani would make an exceptional hunter, she was perfect; my beautiful Goddess.
With far more patience than I could ever boast about, I’d never claimed to be a patient male.
When I could see the glimmer of the fading light at the central hub of this place, I also heard the faint sliding of flesh over stone behind us.
We were being followed. Kalani was keeping up a decent pace which meant that right now we were outpacing whatever it was behind us.
The clattering sound of water falling into the basin beneath the statue of an Ancestor was like a lure.
It seemed like reaching that place meant safety, but I couldn’t explain why I might feel that way.
We were almost there when two shapes threw themselves out of one of the rooms that lined this hallway and blocked our path.
Kalani didn’t flinch, she just set her feet and raised her bow with steady hands.
The two figures were roughly Naga shaped, with long sinuous tails and a torso with arms and a head.
That they had no scales seemed utterly repulsive to me, and the tears in their flesh seemed evidence that it was a hindrance to their survival, yet here they were anyway.
They seemed completely anathema to life.
As Kalani fired her first shot, I darted after the arrow, ax raised to engage both in combat.
They stunk of rot and disease, their flesh a sick gray color visible through the tears in their skin.
They looked like they’d fought each other, one was even missing a section of its tail but that didn’t seem to hinder its mobility.
I cleaved my ax into the chest of the nearest one, the other rocking back from the arrow striking it in the center of its torso.
A killing strike on most but this one just kept going, throwing itself at me as I tussled with its companion.
I warded off blows and struck a few scoring strikes with my ax but they kept on coming, just like during the last scuffle.
They didn’t seem to feel any pain, they didn’t notice their injuries; they were fighting machines.
“Iave!” Kalani yelled and I ducked and rolled out of the way, curious to see what she intended to do.
Light speared the hallway and I slid my nictitating membranes over my eyes in a rush to avoid being completely blinded.
She was standing in the center of the hallway, holding several of the light sources and aiming each bright beam directly at the abominations.
Unlike my weapons or her arrow, the light definitely did something to them.
They hissed and screeched, coiling and slithering out of the way of the bright beams. Tendrils of smoke rose from their skin where the light had touched them; red welts rose along their sickly-colored flesh.
They dashed out of the path of the light and back into the rooms they had come from and Kalani and I took our opening.
We started racing back toward the central hub while aiming all the light we had behind us to ward them off.
No wonder it seemed like this central area was safe, the fading crystals were providing just enough light to keep these creatures out.
As soon as we reached the edge of the water basin, I dropped my ax to the ground and reached for my mate.
I ran my hands over every inch of her beautiful dark skin to assure myself that she had remained unharmed.
I pulled back her dark green coat to expose her midriff and arms, hissing when I spotted some scrapes along her left wrist. “Arrow scrape,” she explained, “I was in more of a hurry the second time.” I knew what she meant, the fletching of the arrow had scraped along the inside of the wrist holding the bow as she fired it.
Her skin was fragile and thin compared to my scales, it was no wonder that had happened.
“If you have a piece of leather, I’ll tie that around my wrist for protection,” she said pragmatically.
Her eyes lingered on the bulky backpack still hanging from my shoulders.
The tough leather had held against long slashing claws during my last fight, protecting my back.
I shrugged it off my shoulders so I could fish out what she needed right away.
My ears twitched when I heard the sound of slithering in the dark, the scuttling of rocks rolling over stone.
The creatures knew we were here now and they had approached as close as they dared.
How were we going to escape this place? If they had us surrounded, would we have to find a way to fight through them?
Would we have to try to open that set of thick doors again and risk the sentinels in the Bitter Storm tunnels?
The idea of these creatures escaping to the surface was a terrible one too, they had somehow been contained down here, or we would have known about them. What if Kalani and I messing with those doors had broken their prison? What if the only way out was back through those doors?
Yanking a strip of tough leather from the backpack, I wound it around my mate’s proffered wrist and tied it off with string, crisscrossed around her slender limb to keep it all in place.
“No other injuries?” I demanded to know as I bit off a piece of excessive length of string to make sure it wouldn’t get in her way.
“None, what about you? If these zombies are anything like those from the stories from my world… You really shouldn’t let them bite you. Also, probably the best way to kill them is to hit their heads. You saw how little my arrow to the heart did to stop that thing, didn’t you?”
I squinted at the serious face of my mate.
How was it possible that she knew about these creatures and what they were?
Did they exist on her world too? Had her people created something this evil just like mine had?
What a horrible thing to contemplate. That such deviant curiosity existed everywhere, ready to be the downfall of many.
“I saw,” I responded, and then I spread my arms. “Why don’t you check for yourself that I’m whole?
” I grinned in invitation and was gratified to see her lose the serious expression on her face to make place for a sly smile.
My warrior Goddess didn’t back down from any challenge, which was what I was counting on.
She ran her eyes over my arms and chest, then circled my body to check out my tail and back.
Too bad she was only using her eyes, not her hands.
Though, if I thought about it, that might be a good thing.
With evil Naga zombies hovering at the edges of our circle of light, this wasn’t the time or place to engage in more heated play.
“You’re fine,” she said when she came back to stand in front of me, “Very fine.” I met her smile with my own, my chest growing warm and tight at the feeling of shared amusement.
It felt like we were connecting in so many ways, equals, partners, lovers.
It was impossible to imagine a life without her now, and for the first time, I understood what my parents had felt.
And why they’d chosen to fight to the death together, leaving me behind all alone.
I swallowed the tight knot of emotions and focused on my mate’s dark brown eyes and the smile on her face.
She was here and she was alive and our situation might not be great, but it was not nearly as dire as that one dreadful attack that had cost me my family.
Besides, I was no longer a tiny scrawny youngling without any defenses, and Kalani was a warrior in her own right.