Page 24 of Taken to Nobu
I roar out my frustration, unwilling to waste anymore words on this female now. Not when I have allowed this creature into my home, to care for my Xiveri mate and such an act has put her in direct danger.
I prepare myself at speed before racing through my home, down black and then white corridors until I reach the east entrance. The doors glide open as they sense my approach and I am assaulted by the first icefall’s earliest breaths.
While we on Nobu are suited to this weather, she is not, and it will soon come down much more severely. At its deepest point, winter drives even the most bold of our villagers back into their home. For Kiki, mere instances could mean the difference between life and death.
I leap the steep steps of my home and sink into plush snow up to the shins. I charge through the white to where my dreya await, fastened to their ice glider, the first of my trackers already arrived and awaiting me in the transparent hull of his own glider.
Fierce beasts, my dreya stand on six legs and measure the height of a Voraxian male. Covered in shaggy fur and with short necks, but square blocks for teeth, they make for fierce battle companions and swift carriers in times of peace. Travel by transporter is forbidden in these temperatures, which often cause even our most advanced technologies to freeze.
By the time I am ready and strapped into the ice glider’s hull, my remaining warriors and trackers have gathered. I give only one swift signal before beginning to carve a path east. She has had little time and in these conditions would not have been able to move at speed. She would not have been able to reach the next village of Tannen.Unfortunately. There, she would have been found and I would have been alerted. She would have been given quarter, shown hospitality, and been kept warm in the time it took for me to come for her. Now she is exposed.
“Okkari, don!” Comes Cal’El’s hail from behind me. I rear up on the holo reins I carry and come to a sharp stop. Through the clear fiber shell of the hull that carries me, I see the dreya in front of me impatiently stamp their feet. They are loyal, hardened creatures. The storm would not usually put them on edge like this…
And then I hear it. An ancient beast’s wail followed by a female’s scream —my female —and she screams for me. “Okkari!”Chills rocket up my spine and an explosion goes off in my chest.
“It’s a hevarr!” My tracker, Cal’El roars over the sound of the storm.
I do not answer him, but snap my reigns, taking off further east than the course we had set. Kuaku, the sniveling welp, the treacherous hasheba. If what she has said is true at all and my Xiveri mate was looking to escape, she would have needed help. Someone to guide her. Someone to tell her where to find the transporters. Kuaku knows where they are, just north of my home, cut into the mountain. She would have had to give direction to my Kiki to come here with the express intent to kill her. She lied to her, just as she attempted to lie to me.And a sick, distant part of me feels relief that just perhaps my Xhea does not revile me so much that she wanted to run, but that she too was deceived.
Another scream lights the bright sky and the ghost of a pain ripples up my right leg as we ride. I ready the ice spear I carry as well as the ion blaster I keep strapped across my back. It has been many rotations since our hunters have faced off against a hevarr and it is likely not all in my war party will survive.
When we arrive at the source of the screech, I am sure of it.
The hevarr here is fully matured, easily visible even against the wind and mist engulfing it. My Xhea, on the other hand, is not. I bellow a battle cry as grief shatters through me and my warriors roar out their response. The collective noise, undampened by the snow, startles the hevarr, which hunt blind and rely solely on sound and vibrations to source their prey.
It turns towards us and as it shifts, my gaze flits rapidly over the white tundra, swept with ice and gales of wind carrying thickening snow. And against so much white, a small dark smear. She lies on her back, staring up at the creature with an expression of horror — one that recognizes that even if she were armed, which she isn’t, she alone would stand no chance against such a creature.
But all that matters to me, is that she lives.
“Kiki,” I roar, and I would never have used her slave name and disgraced her in such a way were it not so urgent. But it is effective. Across the gulley that separates us, she looks at me, and I can see her human gaze struggling to hone in on my features where my vision remains unaffected by the distance and can see her perfectly. I can see how her chest quakes. How she mutters her funny, human curse that she sometimes says in the heat of our rutting.Oh comets.And then,Thank the stars. Thank the stars. Okkari…
The Xanaxana in my chest beats harder for her as rage and fear and honor and duty and something greater than all of these disparate parts overcomes me. I roar out another battle anthem and charge the feral creature. It releases a screech of its own and then the white world around us shatters as the Okkari within me rises to defend his own.
10
Okkari
The sweeping tentacles came in violent blows, like the crushing arms of Xana herself, while the acid ink spewed like the deadliest sleet. Three of ours fell before I was able to kill the creature — a kill that would not have been possible without Re’Okkari’s sacrifice.
In the end, he engaged two of the creature’s limbs at once while the remaining warriors severed its third. His attack put him close to the creature’s mouth in a position where he was unable to avoid the hevarr’s acidic saliva. Still, he remained planted where he was, even as the saliva chewed him apart.
Using the distraction of all the creature’s limbs at once, I was able to come in at Re’Okkari’s side and stab the creature through with my black glass and Droherion spear — a new design by the Rakukanna. The end of the blade seared as it cut, cleaving a hole through to the hevarr’s small brain.
It fought, even as it died, splintering my spear and releasing one last gale of spray that I caught with my left forearm, flaying the skin from my flesh where it landed. Flopping desperately against the hole in the ice it created, it dislodged several shelves. Va’El’s body went down, but another of my warrior’s dove after it. I swept Re’Okkari aside and helped Cra’El and Ren’El secure the hevarr and afterwards, I issued terse orders to the rest to secure the fallen soldiers and dreya while I tend my Xiveri mate.
I remove my left sleeve and pack the raw skin with ice before jumping from floating ice-shelf to floating ice-shelf until I reach the other edge of the hole the hevarr created. There, I find my Xhea standing in wait — I might have said proudly, if not for the tremble in her chin.
“Are you hurt?” Bitter anger and deep grief make it difficult to speak.
She shakes her head and flinches when I reach for her. Snarling, I grab her nonetheless and run with her back to the other side of the broken ice, where my warriors and dreya prepare our return. I set her down in the hull of my glider where she is shielded by the wind.
As I climb in after her, I cannot control my wild and untamed pitch.“What were you thinking!”
She starts to shake — quite badly now — but she does not look at me. Nox, her gaze remains fixed to Re’Okkari’s body. It lies prone but a pace to her right, already prepared for transport. I curse this day, for it has claimed the life of one of my warriors and two dreya at least — I still do not know the status of Va’El or the injuries of my other warriors. And right now, I just need to knowwhat for. Even if I must debase myself and ask her question after question, I will have answers from her.
I slam my fist onto the slick floor, my hair shaking loose around my face in wet locks. “Answer me! Why did you run? Were you deceived? How did you end up here?”
“He’s dead?”
