2. Kal’va

Ido not know how long I rested in the embrace of death, consciousness hovering on the brink of Darkness Eternal, that final ending to which I'd consigned so many. In that dreamlike state, time passed without me registering it. My body lay still on its bier, dead but waiting. My mind dreamed in the walls of my tomb, stored by the cunning arts of the Makers.

I'd woken five times since the Makers placed me in this crypt, and each time I'd destroyed those who came to plunder the inner sanctums of their tomb. This was the sixth. A pulse of vital energy reached me, a living being touching me and calling me from my sleep-death. An unfamiliar being, an intruder. The creature was not from this world, nor from any species in the Makers' database, and the tomb required a guardian's services.

I should have woken earlier, when they entered the tomb. That they had reached my crypt without triggering the tomb's defenses was worrying.

Status reports edged into my consciousness, knowledge pouring into my mind. None of the news brought me joy. Large sections of the tomb complex reported damage, and most of the rest were dark, reporting nothing at all. The auto-repair systems failed, as did the comms and most of the storage.

I should receive updates from the entire tomb, but I only had full access to my crypt. A few alerts trickled through the system to me, far fewer than expected. They spoke of unexpected air movements, breaches of the outer walls, changes in the atmosphere. Old damage, not the fault of the current intruders. Whoever caused it, they were long gone or long dead.

A warm hand on my shoulder brought my focus back into the chamber. I didn't react to the intruder's touch. I couldn't. My body lay dead, drained of all vitality, and the resurrection protocol took time.

Some of my senses had returned. Sight would come last, but touch gave me valuable information about the creature. A warm-blooded species with an internal skeleton. No different to me, in that regard. Oxygen breathing. Inquisitive. Pleasant.

Wait. Pleasant? That wasn't a word which should appear in my analysis. Nor was it strong enough. Delightful? Wonderful? Amazing? None fit. Perhaps it has been too long since I felt touch, I thought. I might not know how long I'd lain here, but it was clearly far longer than I'd ever been dead before.

Vibrations in the air startled the intruder, and my hearing had returned enough to make out a voice. Radio waves mirrored the sound, and my systems had no difficulty decoding the primitive encryption. It wouldn't help me understand the unknown language they spoke, yet, but it was a start.

For one thing, it let me count the intruders. A dozen of them, most remaining outside in the grounds of the tomb complex. Two had entered the upper levels, one stood beside me, and one in the corridor above my crypt. Signals flickered between the upper three, and I learned what I could from them. Most of the transmissions were pure data shared between their primitive computers, which I left for the tomb to analyze. My attention was on the voice channels.

The upper two had deep voices, their signals bounced through the tomb to connect them with the softer, sweeter voice. A female voice, I guessed—her signal was easier to match to the radio transmissions, because her words reached my ears.

Which meant there was a hole from the corridor into my crypt. If I could have snarled at the self-repair mechanisms, I would have, but my lungs had not yet re-inflated.

A fourth voice interrupted, stopping my thoughts in their tracks. It came from the creature at my side, and commanded my attention far more than the others, leaving me transfixed. Warm, calm strength wrapped in smoky resonance, it hit me hard, far harder than it should have. I would listen to her until the stars burned out, given the chance.

That voice came from the intruder standing beside me in my crypt, and as soon as I heard her voice, I knew with a fiery certainty that she would be mine.