Page 64 of Protected by the Alien Warrior Triad

Focus, Tammy! Focus!

I turn to Diana and respond to her comment from earlier.

“He’s not aboy,” I answer back – and it was true. Forn towers over the both of us. One in a million humans might be seven feet tall, but they aren’t built like these three Aurelians are. These alien warriors arewide.Huge, broad shoulders swollen with massive muscles that make me feel so small and vulnerable in their shadow – and yet so protected and desired at the same time.

“Oh Gods, how much longer?” Diana sighs, and when I turn my head she blushes. I can tell she meant to keep the complaint in her head.

I feel bad. It was cruel to think of her as ‘just’ a spoiled royal. She’s been through hell. Snatched up from her family, imprisoned, and barely making it out alive? I didn’t have anything left to fight for back on my home planet – everything I’d worked for and everyone I’d ever known or cared about had been killed or burnt to a crisp in the firebombing.

Diana, on the other hand, had been forced to abandon a life of luxury she’d been born into, and now she was alone on a jungle planet where her last name carried no weight or meaning.

While I have fears that the Aurelians will stop caring about me when they find out the truth of how they came to find me, Diana doesn’t even have a single alien warrior looking after her.

As we get closer to the edge of the jungle, I realize I have no idea of what’s awaiting me there.

Do the Aurelians have a tribe? Are there more of them?

I wish I’d asked Lord Tenderfoot more questions, or asked to take one of his books with me! But back in that dark basement everything had felt like such a chaotic rush.

Now it’s too late.

The answer to my first question becomes apparent as we approach the edge of the jungle, however, when a loud horn sounds ahead of us.

Birds fly up from the trees, adorned in features of a hundred brilliant colors. As they flutter into the air they look like gemstones flung from a giant’s palm. Diana gasps, and I realize that my mouth is hanging open too as I watch these feathered jewels fluttering up.

They’re birds of such different gorgeous hues, reflected by the hot, heavy sun in so many ways, that I realize I’ve never seen such beauty before.

The only animals in my home town of Barl were the mangy street dogs that I would throw scraps to – plus the ever-present plague of rats and pigeons trying to eke a meager living just like me.

I hate that I have more in common with a pigeon, while Diana has more in common with these birds of paradise.

The three Aurelians stop short. Out of the jungle come men – strange men!

As I’d thought, this answers my first question – Darok, Hadone and Forn do have a tribe.

The strangers are towering Aurelian men, who should appear as strong and healthy as the triad of warriors standing beside Diana and I.

Only they’re not – these new arrivals are not straight of back or strongly postured like my three saviors.

While the Aurelians coming from the jungle may be the same age as Forn, Hadon and Darok, they’re bent over. They walk out slowly, dragging their feet and coughing. My eyes go wide as I see that they’re clearly in ill health.

The nurse that still lives inside me immediately starts documenting the symptoms these Aurelians are exhibiting – the worst and perhaps most telling of which is that constant, hacking cough which slows the formerly strong men in their tracks.

“They’re all… They’re allsick,” says Diana slowly.

I’d noticed that Forn had been coughing when I’d first met him, but this is far worse. There’s something horribly wrong with the Aurelians of this tribe.

“Don’t go any closer,” I say, my voice tight and filled with warning. Diana stops in her tracks. The three Aurelians talk in urgent voices.

Minutes later, an Aurelian walks out of the jungle carrying an amulet that glimmers with a small Orb shard. It takes me a moment to realize it’s a child coming towards me – as he’s roughly my height.

This ‘boy has no tattoos on his body, and I wonder if it’s some coming-of-age ritual for the Aurelians to be adorned with that green-black ink.

The child doubles over with a racking cough. On the outside, he appears healthy enough. On the inside, though, something horrific is clearly happening to him. Red flakes of blood mar his perfectly white hand as he pulls it away from his lips, and my heart aches for this towering lad.

Bright, red blood. So, he doesn’t have the same green blood of these three Aurelians. What does that mean?

The child regains something of his strength, and forces himself to stand tall. I know he’s putting on a brave face, though. The child sets the amulet down on the ground before us, and Forn walks towards it.

---