“You can’t go alone,” Wrath said in a tone that brooked no argument.
Seconds later, everyone blinked as the mental feed from Varnog ended. My mate turned to look at me with something akin to anger mixed with a hefty dose of worry. However, he didn’t say a word and just summoned his wings. As I began to summon mine, half of the Dragons and all of the Scelks standing with us summoned their own. It was a bit of overkill, but our boys were always extremely protective with us.
“Fly me over,” Wrath told Dread, Bane’s closest brother.
Both Dragons had been the sons of Wrath’s very first human Soulcatcher Elisa. Ever since, he’d all but adopted the young men as his sons.
“Wrath!” Chaos said in a disapproving tone.
“I’m not letting my girl go to the front while I sit here all nice and cozy,” he said in an unyielding tone.
Without waiting for Chaos’s response, Wrath gestured with his head for Dread to go ahead. With Bane now clearly out of my range, I couldn’t waste time on this and took flight surrounded by my Dragon and Scelk brothers. As I took off, I vaguely heard Doom suggesting hopping on Fireflies and crossing over.
The Dragons flew ahead of us. As we reached the corridor, my eyes flicked this way and that, looking for any signs of traps in the walls like those crazy beams that had wrecked us in the maze. My mate was doing the same, but nothing jumped out at us. I couldn’t tell if it was that Khutu had become overconfident that no enemy would reach this far, or that he had merely run out of time to beef up his defenses.
As we reached the nursery, the hair at the back of my neck stood on end as the Scelks fanned out over the room, expending psychic energy to control the Zombie Workers before putting them out of their misery. While they moved on to exterminate the eggs and larvae, I flew to the entrance of the smaller passage and hovered in front of it. My mind brushed against Bane’s, who I could see in the distance, halfway through what seemed like an endless tunnel.
“Do not enter, Linette. This place is rigged,” Bane said in our group chat, waving at the walls.
I had no idea what kind of weapons they were, but I could see tiny holes scattered around the walls. My money was on lasers. Dread dropped Wrath at the edge of the tunnel, then came back to hover next to me. Wrath started running towards Bane who was on the move again.
“HE’S HERE!” Bane suddenly shouted as he reached the end of the tunnel. “VARNOG! I NEED YOU!”
My heart leapt in my chest. Fighting the urge to rush in, I locked eyes with my mate, a silent message passing between us before he flew in like a bat out of hell. Dread followed close behind him.
Just as most of the Dragons and Scelks were flying up to the tunnel, the shit hit the fan in an epic way. Entire sections of walls from the nursery seemed to explode inwards, pouring a shower of debris. Blaster fire rained on us from a tsunami of Enhanced Workers. Just like the ones we had previously encountered on the Moon of Melibos, these females were fearless, devoid of any emotion, and single-minded in whatever command the General had given them.
I instinctively raised my shield and made to rush inside the tunnel, but a wall of crisscrossing lasers popped in front of me. They then started spreading at dizzying speed the length of the tunnel towards Dread, my man, and Wrath.
“VARNOG!” I shouted, terrified, my blood turning to ice in my veins.
He and Dread looked over their shoulder, then flew hard toward salvation on the other side. Dread never made it. The lasers caught him, tearing him to shreds in an explosion of blood and gore. I felt his passing like a physical blow. My heart stopped as the lasers raced towards Varnog who swept up Wrath a couple of meters from the edge before shooting out on the other side half a second before the lasers would have reached him.
My shuddering breath of relief died in my throat as a familiar light beam blasted through the other room. I didn’t see my mate fall, but I felt his consciousness fading. Dread’s was already gone, I wanted to believe it had been captured by his mate Myriam or one of our Portals.
The sharp burn of a blaster shot grazing my shoulder forced me to spin around and shield myself from our attackers. Feeling numb, I raised my weapons and started to fight as the first Fireflies carrying our Warriors began pouring in.
Chapter 18
Varnog
I regained consciousness to the sound of the most dreadful voice in the universe. Although I knew it to be the General’s, it had significantly worsened since I’d last heard him on the Moon of Melibos. It was like scraping glass with my claws, mixed with a high-pitched squeal. It set my teeth on edge and made my spine hurt. Then again, my entire body hurt. You’d think someone had taken a sledgehammer to each of my limbs. They had propped me up on some kind of stretcher in an almost vertical position. Wet straps held me in place. From the slightly moldy scent, I guessed them to be organic membranes.
Keeping my eyes closed until I got a better sense of my situation, I strained my ear to listen past Khutu’s horrid voice. In the distance, far to the right, the weak murmur of what could only be an epic battle spelled even more trouble. I tried to reach out to my mate, but an excruciating pain at the back of my head kept me in check.
“You certainly took your sweet time getting here,” Khutu said. “Had you delayed much longer, I would have sent you a personal invitation. But as usual, I can always count on you to exceed my expectations not only by delivering yourself to me but also bringing one of the leaders of the Vanguard and a perfect little Scelk.”
“What I’m delivering to you is your death,” Bane hissed, his hatred for his sire almost palpable. “Your reign of terror ends now. And I will enjoy watching my allies tear you limb from limb. Everything you’ve ever tried has been a failure. Your own people have turned on you after all the harm you’ve done to them. Today, you will fail for the last time.”
“My silly boy, you will not get to see anything, because you will be long gone before the rest of this plays out,” Khutu said in an almost apologetic tone. “As for the Kryptids, like the rest of my experiments, they have served their purpose. I have no more use of them. All my planning has been a series of successes; you just could not see them. You, my beautiful Bane, are one of my greatest achievements, and you’re about to fulfill your destiny, at long last.”
He abruptly stopped talking, and an odd thumping sound that I couldn’t identify moved towards me.
“Welcome back among us, pretty Scelk,” Khutu said, his voice far too close for comfort. “You can open your eyes. There is no fooling me.”
Clenching my teeth, I complied. The bright lighting in the room stung my eyes. But as soon as my vision cleared, I wished I could close them again and forget what could never be unseen. It was no wonder the General had not shown himself publicly in months. It also explained why the only Kryptids allowed to approach him were the Enhanced Workers—braindead zombies that blindly followed his commands.
Khutu no longer walked on two legs. His original three-segment ones had completely straightened, giving him an unnatural height, like someone walking on stilts or like the insanely long legs owls hid under their feathers. A blob of organic tissue—reminiscent of the membranes of a liveship—hung around his waist like a giant tumor covered in a sprinkle of black scales. At the back of that growth, an extra pair of legs had extruded. It could have almost been compared to the lower half of a nightmare giraffe with much shorter rear legs. The armored chitin plaques of his upper torso—the smattering that remained—had taken a dull, ashen color. Where the scales had fallen off, a pallid flesh crisscrossed with dark veins peeked through.