Chapter 8

Corin

I would never have dashed ahead as far as I had if I hadn't known that Min-Ji could keep up. Worry for Triff had made me race as fast as I dared through the tunnels, in what I hoped was the right direction. I hadn't scribbled the repair bot tunnels down on my map, but I had seen them when I made it.

Triff was exactly where I expected him to be when I ducked into the control room. Like the one I'd arrived in, this was a room directly connected to the air regulation systems, with a similar control unit at the center and grates leading in several directions, along with pipes controlling water, air, and power. I didn't expect the rest of the… things that filled the room.

The stench hit me first. It had leaked into the tunnel, and I recognized it for what it was in a heartbeat. Any hunter worth his salt would—that was decay. Something was rotting, and it didn't take a genius to figure out what. The long, sprawled-out body right beside the control unit was the first thing anyone saw when they entered. It was swarmed by the spindly, firesprite-like bodies of the repair bots, but whatever they were trying to do to fix this, it wasn't working.

The little bots were crawling everywhere; I'd never seen this many of them in one place, let alone this many activated ones. No wonder Zeidon and I hadn't been able to find any of these bots inside Ahoshaga, the damn Revenant had collected them all. Even while horror at what I was seeing still filled me, I also felt a pang of hope. If I could get control of all these repair bots, I could do so much.

On the control panel, wires lay in several long coils, and a head sat in the middle, hooked up to all those cables. Red eyes glowed from a metal face, partially covered by decomposing scales. I didn't understand everything I was seeing, but I could take a guess. The Revenant's body was made of metal parts and flesh parts, and those fleshy parts were failing after Zeidon had decapitated him. Good.

The cables that connected the control unit of the Revenant—the head—to the screens and computers controlling the systems below Ahoshaga weren't so good. What kind of evil things had he been able to do that way? And it wasn't just the controls of the hydro plants and the doors in this place; he had control of the airflow, the power, and the water up in Ahoshaga too. That was the real horror.

Triff was at the back of the small room. I could see the shining silver of his domed top as he burst from a small repair-bot tunnel. Several of the repair bots skittered out of the hole ahead of him, making chittering noises and clacking their spindly legs together. The entire horde of bots that covered the body shifted and clacked, raising up on their back legs as they directed all their attention at Triff. If they attacked, the cleaning bot wouldn't stand a chance!

"Hey!" I shouted, tapping my obsidian knife against the metal-reinforced chain sewn into the leather protection on my arm. It made a nice, satisfying clang, and as one, the horde of repair bots shifted to face me. My scales rattled along my spine in unease at how unnatural that was.

I knew they were bots, not living things; I knew how they were put together and how to take them apart, but it still felt like a living entity was threatening me with a hostile, menacing display. It was a bit like staring down an enraged horde of Vakarsa beasts alone. Dumb, but together, absolutely capable of killing a hunter.

My senses were on high alert, battle-ready. I knew where Triff was, and I knew exactly where Min-Ji was, too, in the doorway just behind me. Nobody was going to harm either of them; I'd make sure of it. I might have wanted to be a Shaman once upon a time, but I'd been trained as a hunter, and I was one of the best.

The bots rattled and shivered as they stared at me, still moving as one single being, but I knew who was responsible for that—what. The Revenant's head couldn't move, and its jaw seemed unhinged, but the core that Farah had left behind glowed beneath its metal dome. It was controlling them somehow; the Revenant was the true threat.

"Why are you doing this?" I demanded. "Ahoshaga is not the same as when you built it, you know that, right?" The eyes were lidless, as the decaying facade of flesh had slipped away, but it felt as if those red orbs blinked at me, a flicker of light. It heard me, and I could sense in my bones that it was calculating how to deal with me, with us.

At least it seemed the Revenant and the bots had forgotten about Triff, or maybe they had simply deemed him their lowest priority. I eyed the tiny cleaning bot and tried to urge it to come to my side. If I could pick him up, we could get out of here. I'd still have to deal with the Revenant, but I'd be able to take a moment to decide on the best course of action. Could I risk blowing up that control hub to end the Revenant?

Triff shouldn't be able to look scared, but that's what he looked like. Huddled against the wall, his cleaning disks trembling but not spinning beneath him. The lights at the front, what I was beginning to think of as his face, were blinking frantically. He didn't seem to see my gesture, too afraid to move now that the repair bots surrounded him. They had their backs turned to him, but that didn't seem to matter to the small bot.

"Ahoshaga is mine, regardless of change," the Revenant's head intoned in a grinding voice. "I built it, I control it, and it is by my grace that any of the Naga above are allowed to live in it!" He didn't quite say ‘I am God,' but it came close. "With my aid, we will rebuild Serant. We will make it great with our pure offspring. Our elite."

I bared my fangs at the bot, my scales shivering, my tail trembling with the tension that gripped me. What the Revenant said was tempting and despicable at the same time. Rebuild Ahoshaga to its technological glory? Bring all its systems back online? Yes, I wanted that for my people. But offspring and elites? That thing was out of his mind! He'd already tried to alter Farah's genetics to make her more Naga. I had to stop this Revenant before it tried on another human. Or worse, on one of their unborn children.

"Offspring?" I jeered. "You're a robot. A talking head and nothing else! Your real body has long turned to dust, Vrash. You are nothing but a broken machine." It did not like it when I pointed at the broken pile of metal vertebrae, coils, ribs, and pistons that lay beneath strips of rotting scales and flesh at the foot of the control unit. It didn't like that I'd called it by name either, but it couldn't do much at all. I knew that the system here had control of important things, but it did not control everything.

I lowered one hand to the small of my back and the dangling flasks there. He'd left me no choice; I was going to blow him up. I couldn't risk backing away and discovering that the repair bots had taken the head and the Revenant's core and escaped through the repair bot tunnels. Vrash's replica seemed beyond words, but the horde of repair bots shifted as one toward me.

My hand went up. I was about to hurl the potent mixture of liquid I'd concocted, but a sound behind me distracted me. Reflexes made me slide to the side as I turned toward the door and Min-Ji. She was moving fast, but I had enough time to catch the fearful expression on her face. She threw herself into a dive into the room, aiming herself carefully past the repair bots and toward Triff. On her heels was another of the Slithrazer Revenants.

If that thing let out a screech like the other one, I'd go down, and with my hearing not fully healed… I didn't know how long I'd stay down. Instincts made me react: saving Min-Ji was the only thing that mattered. My arm whipped forward, throwing my deadly missile, and my tail snatched her around her waist, yanking her to safety in my arms.

A billow of fire blazed where glass shattered and liquid made contact with the Slithrazer Revenant. Things popped, rattled, and groaned as they suffered inside the blazing heat. I flung myself away from that unnatural fire, Min-Ji protectively cradled against my chest, where my damning sigils blazed with silver light.

The fire caused utter chaos, and for a few agonizing moments, I lost track of where Triff was. When I saw the little bot, he'd scooted around the room toward me, squeaking and beeping all the way. I caught him in a coil and that silenced him, but his entire tiny metal body trembled and shook against my scales.

"What the hell was that?" Min-Ji asked, her hands around my neck as she raised herself to peer over my shoulder. I shifted her against me, one arm beneath the luscious curves of her rear so I could grab another fire flask and get Vrash too. Only, the damn Revenant was gone. The head was no longer on top of the control unit, and the mass of repair bots was swarming every which way on the floor around us. I couldn't tell which bots had it or where they were going when they moved in such dizzying, crazy patterns.

"Slithrazer," I muttered, "and a fireflask. My own invention," I added when that answer did not seem to satisfy her. "Did you see where the head went? Where is Vrash? We can't let him escape!" Destroying the Revenant had been my secondary quest, and I couldn't let this opportunity slip away. If those repair bots would stop moving, then I could put Min-Ji down and hope she hadn't seen my mating marks. I had to locate which repair tunnel or pipe system the Revenant had disappeared down.

She shook her head, then turned to look around and help me search. I didn't let her go, even though the repair bots did not seem to want to attack me. They were ignoring my tail, and when I moved, they scooted out of the way.

The fire that had ignited the Slithrazer Revenant died down as suddenly as it had exploded into existence. Its heat and light winked out, leaving behind a smoldering pile of metal parts in the doorway. That was as far as the beast had gotten. It seemed to be a signal to the repair bots. They spun away as one and dashed into a dozen different tunnels and pipes.

We were alone in the span of blinking my eyes; the danger was gone. I had to put her down now, I had to. But without any threat to focus on, I was suddenly hyper-aware of everywhere we touched. Her tempting scent filled my lungs, and her soft breasts were squished against my chest. Her legs dangled from beneath my arm; they only reached a short way down my tail—my tiny mate.

"Good job, Triff! You found the bad guy," Min-Ji said as she slipped one hand from my neck to wave at the bot trembling in my protective coil. At the gesture and the words, he beeped a happy noise, stopped shaking, then spun and shimmied against my scales. "Yeah, dance, little guy. But seriously, don't run off like that again… I was worried!"

Ah, the sound of her voice, the soft smile she aimed at the cleaning bot—I could not resist any of it. When she wriggled against me, I was done for. A groan escaped my control, my heart pounded in my chest, and my free hand returned to her back. Let her go, now! That was my job, my only option. She raised her face at the sound I made, her brown eyes startled in her pale face. My eyes latched onto her pink, soft mouth. Naga didn't kiss, but humans did, and I'd seen my mated brothers do that. I wanted it so badly.

My head lowered, and her eyes widened, but she did not back away. "Yes!" she hissed, all bold and brave. Her hands clutched my neck, pulling me closer, and our lips collided. It should have felt awkward and clumsy, it should have felt wrong, but it was like one of my fireflasks had gone off inside my brain.

This close to her, all I could do was taste, smell, and devour. I pinned her against me in my arms, unwilling to let her go, and my tail wound around her legs, holding her tighter. My cock ached in its pouch, ready to extrude and claim her right then and there. Our tongues tangled, and I felt my fangs press against the soft pillow of her bottom lip. This was absolutely lurid, a mimicking of sex with our tongues, and I loved every second of it.

If I'd believed before that she might not have noticed my glowing sigils, I knew that was a lost cause now. They were the brightest they had ever been, glowing like daylight on my scales. This wasn't like that night when I'd carried her to safety from Thunder Rock village, through the Ancestral caves, and toward Ahoshaga. That had been a weak, barely-there shimmer, contained to my chest while she'd been unconscious. This? This was a blazing sun.

When she was safe at Haven, surrounded by her friends, it was easier to stay away. Down here, we were in danger. She was not safe, and it became harder to see the lines I'd drawn, the things I had to do to protect her. It felt too right to hold her, to taste her, to claim her. I spun us until her back collided with the nearest wall, and she moaned so sweetly when I pressed my cock against her core. I couldn't hold this back, not now that the gate had been cracked open.

There was no one here to stop me from taking what was always meant to be mine.