Chapter 2 - Aloryk

I had tried to fight the comforting nothing that threatened to softly take me away this time. If I am to survive for my female, I need to stay awake. Unfortunately, the Goddesses had other plans when the stinking mimyckah got their hands on me again to continue on with their journey. The rough jostling was too much for my body and my mind fell into that dark, welcoming place again.

When I awoke this time, the sounds and scents from the jungle are changed.

My nostrils are filled with the smell of damp, decay and the tang of blood. There is very little light wherever we are, and so I expect to hear the chorus of night-time jungle sounds. But there is none. There are echoes bouncing off walls as though we are in the Mother Caves, and a strange, constant whirring that swells and then ebbs away like this place itself has a slow and steady pulse.

Once my sight adjusts, I see that this time, I have been dumped on a pile of bones. In some ways, this might be fitting, since I feel like a pile of bones right now myself.

The band of mimyckah are not near, but I still hear echoes of their gruesome, guttural noises, and catch the scent of their stench over the rancid odor of decay.

Sensing that I am alone in this small area, I try to sit up, smothering down the groan of pain as my whole body protests the movement. Bare bones crumble and clatter as I shift. I pause, holding my aching frame still in case I've drawn attention to myself.

Nothing but those background noises; the distant hissing and grunting from the mimyckah, the strange flowing, whirring sound, and my own, labored breathing, loud in my ears.

Fuck , everything hurts. I think both wings are broken. I cannot lift them to tuck into my back. My shoulder is dislocated, and I have bruising, clawed slashes and bite marks all over. My lip feels like it is swollen and split.

I cast a furtive look about my surroundings. Nothing but the dark and damp greet me. On one side of this cave-like area is a wall that is oddly shaped. I only notice it because there is a slither of light casting down a tunnel and it catches on edges too straight and exact to be of these lands.

Where have these wretched creatures brought me?

The pain slicing through my shoulder is amplified when I shift my position. This is the simplest of my issues to fix, so I reach up and over the back of my head and jerk my elbow with my hand. With a grunt, the joint slips back to its proper place, giving me the smallest of reliefs.

After I have done all I can for my shoulder, I try to stand. It is not the swift, elegant movement of a Trixikka Protector, and I am in need of pausing more than once to catch my breath from the pain shooting up and down my body. My skin-stars are going crazy with all the different uncomfortable sensations, but once I am standing, and my head clears the initial dizziness, my tail twitches behind me, and I know I need to find a way out of here.

I take one staggering step when I see them; skin-stars.

Except, they are not skin-stars. My mind only thought they were because I have not seen anything of the like. They are star-like lights, almost like moon-flies, but very strange ones. They sit there, unmoving on the wall of the cave. I stagger closer, wincing with every slow, clumsy step. The lights are multi-colored, and some flicker, some stay bright constantly. But they are of a very straight, unnatural shape and-

As I near, I see it.

It looks as though she is falling out of the cave wall. Except, she is not all intact.

I nearly wretch as I force myself closer.

A female. A human female. One of the females we have been searching for. As I near, I see she isn't falling from inside the wall at all. She is half inside one of the ‘pods' that my High Spearess told us of. The front is broken, and it looks as though something tried to drag her out but could not complete the task. The mimyckah creatures seemed to have devoured what parts of her they could extract, and have left the rest to rot in that pod that is meant to sustain her in a long sleep.

Bile rises up my throat as I take in what is left of the poor female. We failed her.

"I am sorry we could not reach you in time," I whisper, my voice hoarse and dry as I bow my head. "May the Goddesses be blessing you now with safety and happiness."

I take the time to pray that this female did not wake from her slumber to be faced with her fate. I hope that she knew nothing of it - that she merely drifted off to The Promised Lands in her dreams.

My mind buzzes as if filled with a thousand jungle bugs. My eyes slide over to the wall next to the poor, unfortunate female. Now that I know to see the shape of the ‘pods', that is all my eyes will allow me to fix upon. In fact, it is not a wall at all. It is only pods. It is all the remaining pods. The mimyckah took them from the female's ‘ship' and brought them here. They are caked in filth, grime and dried blood, but those star-like lights flicker beside them and I see each cluster belongs to a different pod.

My heart thuds painfully in my chest and I inhale a wheezy breath. The short, stumbling steps I take unthinkingly bring me directly in front of one of the pods. It sits upright, and, now that I am close, I can see that the mimyckah have tried to smash this one open, too. There are two cracks curling around it, one, near the top, that has liquid slowly trickling out of it.

Tentatively, my hand moves forward only to pull back when a light from within begins to glow as soon as the pads of my fingertips brush the grimy surface. There must be life-stones or something similar at play. The surface is still caked in filth, but the hazy shape of a floating female is revealed now that there is light inside the pod.

Instantly, I know it is her .

The feathers on my broken wings prickle at the sight of her luscious shape, topped by mishi flower-colored hair loosely floating around her head. I can feel myself break out in another sweat all over as I rest my palm on the pod and wipe away some of the filth to reveal her face.

She has such a beautiful, rounded face, this female from my dreams - a face so perfect it makes my heart stop.

The sight of her sleeping there behind the clear surface has an ache blooming in my chest that has nothing to do with my damaged rib cage. My breathing comes in short and wheezy as I frantically try to wipe more dirt away, revealing more of my mate to me as she floats there, suspended in fluid from the pod.

She looks so serene. She looks like she is dreaming.

Is she dreaming of me in the way that I dreamt of her?

I do not know how long I stand there, staring. All I know is that the pain that consumed me before seems little more than an annoyance now that she is here - now that I can see her. "She will be protected," I whisper my pledge, my hand coming to lay over my frantically beating heart. " You will be protected," I add, leaning forward to rest my forehead against the cool surface of the pod. "I will get you out of here, I swear it, I-"

"Sweeeeeee-t…" I spin to see the entrance to the small area blocked by a filthy mimyckah - a filthy mimyckah sporting only one of those nightmare bulging eyes. I go to a defensive stance, remembering the dagger I have tucked away and deciding to let the creature get closer before I reach for it, lest I give away my hand. "Sweeeeee-t… meeeeea-t" it says, saliva dripping from its smiling lips as it raises one of its too-long arms.

The disgusting creature gestures past me - to my sleeping female.

"Sweeee-t… meeeea-t," it repeats.

Sweet meat .

I'm confused at first. Mimyckah cannot speak words unless they echo what they have heard. At least, that is what I have been taught. But this one can. This one is trying to communicate with me. Sweet meat . That is what it had said. That is what it had called my mate.

Anger boils inside my gut when the whole reason for me being here becomes clear. They've tried to get at the females before and that resulted in a poor female only being half pulled out and their ‘sweet meat' rotting away behind the face of the pod.

They brought me here because they think I can open them.

They think I can open them, so they can feast on the sweet meat inside.