The sound of the swarm on the move nearly deafened him to the shrieks of the nixir beneath him. The dagger’s tip shifted closer to the creature’s eye, scorching the fur around it.
Then something punctured the back of his armor, stealing his breath as it slammed through his scales and pierced the flesh beneath. Sharp shards of lacquered bone impaled muscle, causing agonizing pain as he jerked upwards to face the other attacker—the one who should already be dead from the chanu zayul’s toxic ichor if not from its opened belly where guts had begun to slip free.
He couldn’t believe it had managed to find his blowgun and break it, then have enough strength to force the weapon through his armor. He had no idea what still animated the creature, but its endurance was unthinkable before this moment. No other nixir could have survived even this long after such a wounding, much less find the strength to impale him with his own weapon.
That act seemed to use the last of whatever reserve it had left. It barely managed to stand, swaying on its feet as it clutched its stomach to keep most of its entrails inside. Glowing chanu zayul ichor stained its teeth and the fur around its mouth, which dripped with bloody foam.
Jotaha roared, his glow blazing even more as adrenaline and chemicals from the chanu zayul filled him, allowing him to ignore the agony of the blowgun still piercing his back. The nixir beneath him took advantage of that brief distraction of his impalement to shove him off of it with a mighty heave of its powerful legs. It flipped to its stomach and skittered away as he was pushed backwards, towards the other nixir.
The mortally wounded creature chuckled like a maddened thing, sounding very much like the other nixirs that he’d fought in the past, though it didn’t look at all like them. It staggered towards him again, clearly intent on shoving the blowgun deeper, just as he had slammed the dagger home in its gut.
The nixir spat glowing ichor darkened with its own blood and foam as the toxin shredded its mouth and throat. Jotaha jumped to his feet and turned to face it. With a final shriek of defiance, it threw itself at him, claws raised as if to slash him. Its arms sagged from its weakness and entrails poured from its gaping stomach wound.
He brought the inferno dagger up to stab it through the throat as the force of its body struck him. The reek of burnt meat filled the air as it finally collapsed in his arms. He rapidly stabbed the corpse several more times in kill zones before finally whipping the blade free one last time. He pushed it away from him, watching it fall to a heap on the stone. He wondered if he should dismember it before turning his back on it again. Given what he’d already seen, he couldn’t be certain it wouldn’t pop back up again.
Once he was sure it remained unmoving, he turned back to the other nixir, only to find that it had used his momentary distraction to escape.
13
When Jotaha had told Sarah to stay, or fan-ack, or whatever he’d been saying, she figured he didn’t mean she had to remain sitting right in front of the stone ring where he’d left her, and she hadn’t meant that she would with her promise.
She finished her sweet and savory bun, wondering at what the filling could be made of, since it was like a slightly gritty paste that she had initially assumed to be made of some kind of bean. Yet it was thicker than the beans she was familiar with, and much stickier. It was baked into the thin, pastry shell that looked like unleavened bread, and flaked when she bit into it. Despite that biscuit-like flakiness, the shell tasted more of a sweet base like corn, rather than of flour.
She polished off her breakfast and the rest of her tea, then had nothing to do but sit there and worry about whether Jotaha would return for her at all—and what her future held if he did.
Or didn’t.
He’d left his pack, the glowing stones, and the majority of his possessions in the cave, so it didn’t look like he was abandoning it, or her, altogether. Clearly, he’d simply left for some purpose of his own. Perhaps he had an appointment to keep.
The kind that involved poisoned darts and daggers.
She tried to push that aside, worried about any kind of threat that someone like Jotaha needed so many weapons to face. Instead, she focused on the cave, trying to distract herself by examining her surroundings really well for the first time, now that she wasn’t wholly focused on the alien in the room.
She also had to distract herself from a body relaying its needs. For the moment, those needs could be denied. She wasn’t about to head out either exit from the cave in search of the poop beetle cave, even if she could bring herself to sit on that rock ledge over the hole again, knowing that there were creepy beetles down there, waiting for her to drop a load. She shuddered at the thought.
Her first turn around the cave proved that it was larger than she’d initially thought, about the size of her living room and kitchen combined. The stone ring was closer to one side of the cave, near the tunnel opening where Jotaha had disappeared. He’d stowed his pack on the other side. She made her way towards his pack, discovering rolled up furs that propped it up, revealing that the pack itself wasn’t as big as she’d thought. It wasn’t much different than a human pack, though it was made of leather with a gathered top tied off by coarse, narrow rope. It was as neatly sewn as a sewing machine might make it, and had one soft leather strap that probably wrapped across the chest.
After glancing back at the tunnel Jotaha had gone through to make sure he didn’t suddenly appear in the doorway to catch her riffling through his things like a thief, she crouched down and pulled open the pack.
The inside smelled of a combination of herbs, other foods, and some acrid scents she couldn’t identify. She took out a bundle wrapped in cloth and sniffed it. It smelled like the bun she’d just eaten for breakfast. Setting it aside on the ground next to her, she selected another item. This was a metal hammered square tin the size of her palm. The flip lid had a catch on the side and she opened it to discover a pale green powder that smelled like herbs of some sort—or maybe just weeds. She’d never been good at identifying the differences in plant odors.
Another tin had a soft pink colored powder, and some of the other bundles revealed more food. More of the gross blood bars mostly, though she did find some dried roots in a bundle. She also found several leather pouches. Opening the first released the earthy mushroom scent of the relaxing tea drug that Jotaha had given her. She quickly pulled the string on that pouch to close it again, then shoved it back into the pack where she’d found it. It was way too tempting. Given the fact that there didn’t seem to be much left in the pouch, she wondered if Jotaha also indulged in that particular drug. Why else would he have it in his pack?
The other pouches held different teas, she suspected, though she only recognized the one she’d drunk that morning.
The final bundle had a small glass bottle tied to the top of it. The bundle was wrapped with a thick square of suede. When she untied it after setting the bottle next to her she saw why. Sharp pointed darts were neatly lined up inside the suede. A thin, suede strap kept them in place. Each was as long as her middle finger, with small feathers on their ends in colors that might have come off the most exotic of parrots, but could also have been dyed.
The darts looked to be carved of bone, given the slightly yellowish cream color of their shafts, but the tips were most definitely metal, with unpleasant barbed edges. She had no idea how Jotaha had taken the dart out of her without leaving a wound that was no bigger than her other cuts and scrapes. Those tips looked nasty.