Page 76 of Taken to Voraxia
“There must be someone else,” I heave.
“Nondah has killed them all.”
“Comets…no…” I’m hyperventilating, fighting with the table in front of me with all my strength but it doesn’t budge. Not even a little. Reaching past it, I grab one of the pipes criss-crossing in front of me and push. It topples forward and the far side of the room comes into view.
There are bodies everywhere. Three or four lie trapped beneath a mesh of grate that ripped up from the floor and pierced legs and arms and necks and backs, holding them pinned. Another half dozen Niahhorru on the left wall were pierced by beams like the one above me. But the rest…
Five Niahhorru lie face down on the floor, pieces of their plates removed — one of them the male who tried to stop Nondah before. His gut is ripped open for all to see and my stomach rushes up into my throat at the sight of it. The only thing that keeps me from being sick all over myself is the panic at seeing the only living, uncagedferalNiahhorru left in the room.
He’s advancing on Svera, menacing over her by two heads. The only thing separating them is a fallen table and her only weapon is the little Droherion knife experiment in her hand. He lunges and she screams, thrusting the knife up in an unwieldy gesture. Still, she manages to catch his cheek.
He dabs at the fresh blood on his face and shrieks his rebellion. Plunging towards her, one of his arms finds purchase in her hair. He yanks, and tears away her hair covering. Two golden brown braids fall over her shoulders and she cries out. She battles with his hands, using her blade to draw blood from him a dozen more times, but she can’t hold him forever.
He grabs the front of her tunic and rips upwards so hard her whole body is yanked forward at the same time that her tunic splits right down the middle.
Impotent, angry tears blur my vision. I can’t watch. I can’t look away. Svera’s little body is yanked over the barrier of the table and left splayed on the bloody floor.
“Get away from her!” I call out, but Nondah doesn’t care.
He kicks her legs apart and lowers himself to his knees between them. Svera screams and swipes for his face, managing to plunge her knife cleanly into his neck. He rears back with an enraged shout and plucks the dagger from his throat,from one of the plates she must have hit.
Tossing it aside, he doesn’t even bother to staunch his own black bleeding. Instead, he grabs her shoulders and uses two of his arms to pin her wrists to either side, away from her body so that her breasts are bared to him. He uses his other two arms to tear the shreds of her robes away completely. She bucks and fights hard and his rage only builds, bubbling up to the breaking point. Then reaching it.
He grabs her shoulders and shakes her and when her head connects with the metal grated floor, she releases a strangled cry and her body goes still.
“Svera!”
A muted roar follows the sound of my voice and I hear metal bending, then a bang. The doorway explodes inwards and hot tears pour freely down my cheeks.
Tears of relief.
Krisxox. Covered in copper blood. One arm cocked at an unnatural angle and held against his chest with a rope. His other hand carrying one of my Droherion swords. But he looks ready. He looks lethal.
“Krisxox! Help Svera!”
His eyes widen as he takes me in, trapped where I am, but then I see his lips form a word he doesn’t voice.Svera.And then his head swivels, gaze surveying the scene, and he is utterly lost.
Black sweeps his ridges and rolls down his arms, then spreads to cover his chest and stomach in splotches while fully consuming his face. With his black eyes with no irises, he looks like a shadow and he moves faster than one as he dives for the Niahhorru on the floor.
Krisxox bellows out a roar that shakes the entire room. The foundations of the ship. He leaps forward and with one sweep of his radiating blade, he removes all of Nondah’s spikes at once.
Nondah screams in pain and rears back, but his eyes are unfocused. His hands still reach for Svera’s limp, bruised and battered body on the floor. He stands no chance. No one would. Not against Krisxox on a normal day andcertainlynot against Krisxox now. This is another version of him I did not know existed.
It’s over too soon. Because when Krisxox takes his next step and cuts his sword through the air, he takes Nondah’s head with it. The cut is clean, just above where Svera stabbed him. Nondah’s head flies. Towardsme.
I bark out a strangled shout when the bloody stump of a head smacks into the outer shell of the table caging me and more sulfuric blood sprays into my face. My chest squeezes when it makes contact, but I ignore the pain and return my gaze to Krisxox as he tosses his sword aside and removes the band that holds his left arm against his chest.
He genuflects, knees buckling as he drops down beside Svera. My panic hitches when he removes his loincloth, but only for a moment, because in the next he very carefully wraps the black cloth around her body. He takes the tattered remains of her robe and ties them hastily around her hair, then he lifts the whole bundle of her against his chest and for the longest moment, just holds her.
His eyes are closed but the colors…his ridges…the black has parted and they shine now with other colors too…many other colors. Reds, blues, greens…purple… He shines for her like Xoran shines for me when he feels the Xanaxana’s heat strongest. I gasp.
Krisxox’s gaze rips up to me and the colors die instantly. Or they try to. It’s clear he doesn’t have the skill Xoran does at controlling them because every few seconds a faint murmur of color crops up — a dusting of gold, a splash of white, a smear of lavender.
And then, at the onset of the sound that thunders towards us, back to black. Krisxox rises to his feet and grabs his sword from the ground without releasing Svera.
A dozen Niahhorru pirates thunder into the room. And they’re armed now. Krisxox can’t win. And I can’t help him. And even if I could free myself, I couldn’t help him then. We need help. We need Raku.But I need Xoran.
“Xoran!” I scream, remembering too late that I should never share his sacred name, least of all with the enemy. I choke and bang my fist on the platform hard enough that pain spiderwebs through my entire arm. “I need you.”
