Page 60 of Taken to Nobu
I say, “Or maybe Ishouldjust let you live out your days in the tundra, where only the hevarr beasts of Nobu will know you were once Bo’Raku. Meanwhile, the rest of Voraxia will call you only by your true name.Pe’ixal,” I shout the word like a curse and feel it linger like a stain.
He growls through his teeth, the air wheezing in and out of him, and when he looks at me, he is the beast that I know him as.But I’ve fought beasts before.He roars out a battle cry and attacks with a violence that catches me off guard. I narrowly avoid collision with one of the bodies forming the perimeter of the pit — I don’t know whose — before I manage to skip back into the clearing.
Raku is shouting for an intervention, but Kinan’s voice ride over his. “Nox! Let her finish this.”
I dodge and dodge again, bending backwards, ducking low, jumping when he goes for my legs. As he advances, I have no other choice but to defend with everything I have. He outmuscles me by tons and he’s not atotalmoron. He’s not trying to hit me with the hammer, he’s trying to use it to distract me. It’s working. Because I don’t realize how close his body has gotten to mine until he releases the chain end with one hand and lets his fist fly forward.
He hits me in the face and the pain is splintering. Blood fills my mouth, but I somehow manage to remain coherent enough to jump back. I don’t jump far enough. He kicks and his foot meets my stomach which punches up into my lungs as I fly. I hit the ground hard, left wrist searing in agony as I land. My body travels, skating over the cold. I feel feet jump out of my way and know I’ve broken through the first ring of attendees and when I finally manage to blink my eyes open, I’m sure of it.
Somehow, the first face I see when I open my eyes is Reema’s. It’s the only face I see too. Suspended against so much white like an inverted teardrop, her face is full of emotion, a riotous display. Even her eyes are wide and huge. She’s sniffling, body curled slightly into the one beside hers. I know this is her mother because her father is the Garon, and one day she wants to grow up to be just like him, but a female has never been weapons keeper before on Nobu and she’s afraid. I know this. I know this like a truth branded onto my soul.
I shove my legs beneath me and as I stand, I flash her a smile. I can feel blood seep between my teeth and when she shrinks back even further, I offer her all I can in that moment. A shrug and a wink.Fear is what hurts us. Blood is nothing.
She gasps and that’s all the warning I need. I canfeelhis energy behind me, burning into my spine. I spin to meet it with energy of my own. It’s a manic energy — just as hard, just as crazed, but somehow in that madness, controlled. I know that he can’t hurt me. Even if he cuts me down with his hammer, I might die, but he’llneverrecover from this.
He tries to grab me with one hand, but I move faster than he does and bring the blade of my grabar against his arm, severing muscle and the tendons beneath. He’s bleeding profusely now and roars. He advances, swinging his chain this way and that. He manages to wrap it around my grabar and with one pull, I know he can take it from me. So I let him.
“Pe’ixal,” I shout when he turns to face me, a smile on his lips.He thinks this is the end and that he’s won.
I wear a smile of my own and it must unsettle him because he hesitates when he could have killed me in one stroke. “Kiki…”
“Yes!” I roar, “That is my name and I own it. Kiki!” I scream to the wind, letting it ravage my voice. “But who are you? You arePe’ixal,” I laugh. “My mate exiled your father and now I’ll do the same to you. A disgraced family, dishonorable and shamed! Or would you rather die, Pe’ixal? I’ll cut you down and throw you into the water.” I laugh and I laugh deep and from the belly. “Not even the hevarr will know your name!”
He comes at me and when he raises his weapon, I do something that should scare the piss out of me — I duck under the curtain of his arms and come up against his chest and deliver two swift punches to the places where I know plates don’t cover him.Wrestling with Kinan in the cold was hard. This is effortless.He buckles, weapon drooping and I use that momentary lag to dive past him, rolling again and retrieving my grabar.
He’s close behind. Too close for me to rise. Too close for me to avoid the path of his hammer this time. It impales my left shoulder, the okami providing cover, but not enough to stop the hammer from meeting skin, tearing through that, and then flesh, tearing through that too, before finally landing at bone.
I don’t scream. I don’t make a single noise. I take the pain as I lay there on the ground, face down, listening to Pe’ixal come up behind me, laughter on his tongue. “You thought you were clever.”Breathe.“You thought you mattered.”Wait.“You are nothing but Va’Raku’s whore.”Calm.“You’ll be mine again too before this is over.” I can feel his heat against my back. I can hear Miari screaming, Svera now too. More voices join the chorus. Kinan’s is not among them.
The thud of footsteps is loud now, right on me, but I wait for them to get even closer. So close that I can feel his heat, or at least, imagine it. Too close. Close enough that I should be afraid. But I’m not. Close enough that when I flip myself over, plant the butt end of my staff and lift the blade end and the big red bastard takes a step forward, he impales himself.
At first, only a little. But it’s still enough to startle him. He looks down at the dagger-end of my weapon, watches it disappear beneath his hide covering, watches blood radiate out from around it, soaking through hide and fur.
I grab the helos staff by the rough leather holds and push. A punctuated grunt comes out of me, the first sound I’ve made since this battle began that wasn’t an insult. Pain tickles my consciousness, but I ignore it. At least, for now. I shove harder, using my abdomen to lift my torso as I press my blade further into him.
He swipes at me and I can’t move. Now that he’s slumped forward, I’m carrying most of his weight and it’s alotof weight. Sharp, serrated claws find purchase in the okami covering my chest. They tear it open, scoring lines of heat across my sternum. But I don’t give in. I don’t give up. I want to finish this.
I lift a little more, pushing my grabar into his belly until I’m up to the first handhold. I glance around his body and can see bloodied helos pointing up towards the hidden suns. He moans horribly and paws at me with his claws, but his motions are slow, weak, defeated. He’s slumped almost all the way forward and when he opens his mouth to issue another cry, copper droplets spill from his mouth onto my cheeks, like rain that tastes like metal and redemption.
I push even harder, until I can feel his hot blood seeping into my gloves, until we’re eye-to-eye, face-to-face, cheek-to-cheek. He smells like sweat and metal, like sand and violence, history erased.
My lips move close enough to his skin to taste and I feel no fear as I whisper, “You are Pe’ixal, the worthless. And that is all you will ever be known as to me. And you can be sure that I will be the last soul alive who remembers you. I will never speak of you to anyone and when I die, you will be forgotten. It will be like you never even lived.”
His eyes blaze and his ridges shine, just once, and only fleetingly. They are a color I’ve never seen before, one that cannot be described in nature, but that is something like grey, only more profound. A color that speaks to unblemished agony.
And then the tension flees his body all at once and his torso releases. The pressure is surreal and I only barely manage to roll my spear to the left to avoid being crushed underneath his weight. He hits the ground with a thump, white flakes puffing up around him like dust, and for a moment, I just drink in the sight of his face. His eyes are wide open, lips slightly parted. He does not look at peace. He looks to have died how he lived — monstrously.
I place my hand against his face and use it to push myself onto my feet. Standing, I sway as I turn a full circle. The humans have gone berserk and most of the xleranx now are actively holding them back. My name is being shouted loud enough for the cosmos to hear. “Ki-ki! Ki-ki! Ki-ki!” Even the Voraxians, for all their honor and weirdness around names, have joined in.
But I don’t care what they call me. They can call me human for all I care. My gaze switches across so many faces in so many colors, losing focus. I see my mom covering her face with her hands in horror and wonder if she watched any of the fight at all. Miari holds her wrist and tries to tug it down while Svera, on her other side, is jumping up and down, earlier battle forgotten.
I stagger, using my grabar to keep me upright when a sharp voice draws my attention left. “Xhea.”
Kinan stands there and I notice something odd — four of his warriors, including Ka’Okkari have their hands on him. They hold his arms and legs and his body by the buckles of his okami. As if they are holding him back from something, restraining him from charging forward and making me wonder if that’s what his intention had been.
He wears all his colors in his face, though this time, color even rolls down his neck, like some sort of strange party is being hosted underneath his skin. It makes me smile, and when I do, I feel hot, sticky blood dribble down my chin. But he still doesn’t come to me. His body is flinching wildly, but he forcibly shrugs off those holding him and crosses his arms.
“You are not finished,” he barks. “I demanded his plates and you are empty handed.”
