The wall behind it appeared the same as it had been for the past two decades. That meant there was only one place that large rock could have come from.
Could it be?
I felt dizzy and euphoric all at once. Something had made it fall. Someone…? As I made my way down the corridor with drunken steps, an odd buzzing sound reached my sensitive ears. Weak at first, it grew in strength as if a huge fly was approaching. My steps faltered, wondering what could be making that sound. It was organic, not that of a hovering device. Brees moved ahead, soon followed by the other adult Creckels.
The female froze, and she immediately took on a menacing stance that had my stomach drop to my feet.
“No fucking way!” whispered a male voice filled with awe and disbelief.
A violent shiver ran through me at the sound of another human voice, of words spoken in a language I hadn’t heard in twenty years since the passing of my mother. I rushed forward, almost stumbling on my own feet in my eagerness to see who it belonged to. But then my blood turned to ice. Time appeared to slow as the Creckels all bared their teeth at the stranger who was lowering into view. Black, glistening, blade-like darts protruded from beneath the scales on the tails of the Creckels.
My mind was suddenly bombarded by images of the half-moon shaped Kryptid horn, followed by an image of me inside the great hall, hiding. No! He couldn’t be a Kryptid. They didn’t speak Universal so fluently and without a thick, clicking accent. They didn’t fly. They didn’t have human legs like the ones I could somewhat see descending from the shaft. Kryptids had three-segment legs.
“I come in peace!” the male exclaimed before throwing his arm in front of him. “We’re here to rescue you!”
For a split second, I thought he was brandishing a weapon to shoot us, but then, in a blinding glow of energy, a rectangular shield appeared in front of him. At the same time, the Creckels whipped their tails forward, launching a barrage of poisoned darts at the intruder.
“NOOOOOOO!” I shouted, my voice cracked from disused and dehydration.
However, it was too late. The male dodged in an attempt to avoid the darts, but there were too many in the narrow space. His shield sparked from the numerous impacts before collapsing, the rest of the darts finding their mark. The cracking sound of chitin armor—a sound I recognized well from the Creckels’ uprising against the Kryptid Soldiers—resonated in the hallway before the male plummeted to the ground. His body landed at a bad angle partially on the boulder and partially on the ground.
“No. No. No. No. No,” I whispered as I rushed to his side.
There was no question that he possessed the Deynian horn of the Kryptids. His cheeks and forehead had a few chitin scales, and through his damaged armor, I could see what looked like the broken chitin plates that had protected his vital organs before the Creckels’ assault. But his face was undeniably human. So were his arms and legs, and the soft black hair that fell to his shoulders.
“Wake up,” I said to the male, shaking him even though he was clearly beyond help. “Don’t leave me. Please. Please!”
My throat hurt forming the words, while my eyes pricked with the need to shed more ghost tears. Brees projected an image of the half-moon shaped horn that adorned the male’s forehead, her confusion and guilt at the sight of my distress oozing out of her through our mental connection. I wanted to yell and shout at her and the others. For the first time in my life, I wanted to hurt them.
“You’ve killed us all!” I said.
I then projected side by side images of this male’s legs compared to that of a Kryptid, then the insectoid face of a Soldier before rubbing my fingers over the dead male’s features. I picked up his hand and held it next to mine. He had human hands with five fingers made of soft flesh, like me. Kryptid Soldiers had three fingers covered in chitin plates.
“He was coming to aid us!” I added.
I bombarded my companions with images of the empty larvae tanks, of the rotten vegetables, of the starving membrane stalking us, and of the dying alveoli on the ceiling that provided us with a small sliver of oxygen.
And now, we were once more trapped here.
The Creckels all approached me, projecting images of apology, their guilt and remorse oozing through our psychic connection. They had simply wanted to protect me from what they thought was an enemy. I loved them for it, but right now, I was too heartbroken and too angry.
I picked up the male’s hand again and pressed it to my cheek. It was still warm, calloused from having been well used. My throat tightened again at this reminder of human touch—or whatever species that male had been.
The grumbling sound of hunger startled me. My head snapped to the right. My vision was too blurry to clearly see Grol’s expression, but I knew the male Creckel well enough to recognize his eager anticipation before a meal. I stared at him in horror before looking around at the other Creckels. They, too, were hungrily sniffing the male as if he was a large slab of meat. Rationed, he would be enough to last them a couple of weeks.
When I gave Brees a disbelieving look, she lifted her head defiantly. She then projected an image of the young hibernating followed by that of the membrane. Between the two, the choice was obvious. And yet, for the first time in my life, I became afraid of my lifelong companions. My head understood their logic, but my heart couldn’t agree to this. Worse still, in a few days, when my time came, I realized they would probably eat me, too.
Guessing the thoughts running through my mind, Brees shook her head to say no then leaned forward to bump my arm affectionately. I pulled away from her, from them, and from the beautiful stranger that could have been our salvation.
As I made to head back to the great hall, refusing to see what the Creckels would do to his remains, a powerful tingling at the back of my head startled me. At first, I thought it was the precursor to me fainting from hunger, but then I realized it was the effect of a powerful psychic mind connecting to mine. It was very alien and unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.
“Do not be afraid, Janelle,” the stranger mind-spoke to me. “All is well. We are not angry for Reaper’s death.”
The voice terrified me. With a burst of energy I had no idea I still possessed, I ran towards the great hall. I felt the stranger’s mind disconnecting from mine a few meters down the corridor. A single thought played in a loop in my head: the male who had come in was named Reaper, and they knew we had killed him.
4
Reaper
The warmth of my new Shell closed all around me. For the next couple of minutes, my limbs would feel heavy and my body uncomfortable while my soul adjusted to this new corporeal vessel. My consciousness had found its own way back to this Shell. Unlike Xian Warriors, us Dragons didn’t need a Soulcatcher to be reborn if the distance between our corpse and the new body we would resurrect into was short enough.
The memory of the pain of the modified Creckels’ darts impaling me still lingered. But it was the image of the wisp of a woman, clearly at death’s door, that occupied my every thought. I swallowed, half-stunned by the ease with which I did. As I’d begun my descent down the shaft, my mating glands had finally awakened, swelling to an almost painful level. But the intense joy that had filled my heart had evaporated in the few seconds that my eyes had caught her frail silhouette in the dark corridor. Even now, panic and a fierce need to protect my soulmate spurred me into sitting up from the rebirth table and dash back out to her.