2. Chapter 2

It was supposed to be the best day of my life. I had passed the khadahr trials and now wore the scars to prove it. They were still fresh and hurt, but I was too excited to pay them any attention. I was a khadahr now, and the hunt was in my blood, calling me forward like all the other new leaders of their clans. We homed in on the gronk—a large buffalo-like animal—that would help feed the thousands of people who came to the Rodruk Mountains to partake in the trials, find a bride, or just be part of the quinquennial festivities. It was a great event that lasted a week, filled with laughter, family reunions, and new friends and alliances.

The other twelve newly made khadahrs and I had already successfully separated a large gronk from the rest of the herd. Confused, the animal pawed the ground with two of its six legs, shaking its massive head to map the approach of the thirteen hunters coming at it from all sides.

I kept a wary eye on the massive four horns on its head that could spear or slice a hunter to the core, eviscerating him. Right now, though, the beast hadn't picked which way it wanted to break through, and I closed in on it from the left. Keeping my spear in my left hand and my sword in my right, I took another few paces forward, readying myself to throw the spear at its flank, right through one of its two hearts.

My spear was up, and my arm moved backward, primed to strike, when the ground beneath me shook with such intensity that it robbed me of my balance and brought me to my knees.

I let go of the spear to steady myself with my hand, but the ground kept shaking and trembling.

The gronk let out a shriek as all six of its legs gave out, and it, too, crashed to the ground. The impact would have normally been felt where I kneeled, but the ground was already groaning so hard that the thousands of pounds dropping hard onto it didn't make a difference.

"Don't let it escape," Dzar-Ghan cried, crawling forward on all fours, straight for the gronk.

Not to be outdone by the other freshly made khadahr, I followed his example. The shaking gained even more intensity, making even crawling on all fours an act of sheer willpower.

"The gods are mad at us," Dzur-Khan, the new khadahr of Svengard, yelled but crawled forward just the same .

Before us, the gronk gave out pitiful groans as it tried in vain to gain footing. Its legs weren't strong enough to bring it back to standing. It lay on its side, ready for the slaughter.

There was no honor in that kill, and we all realized it, but this had been our task. Bring down a gronk to feed your newly chosen khadahrshi. Thoughts of Illug, the gallis I had picked as my mate, drove me on. Where was she? Was she alright?

Suddenly, the air around us seemed to be set on fire. My lungs hurt from breathing, my fresh scars burned from the heat, and then a groan filled the air that had to come from Vorag—our god—himself. Lightning split the air miles ahead of us, somewhere between the Rodruk and Grednok Mountains.

The ground shook even harder, rattling my teeth and making it impossible to speak. Another sound reached my ears, a loud boom, as if the Rodruk Mountains had just collapsed on themselves.

A stab of pain cut through my heart, just as everything around me stopped.

The ground stopped shaking, the noises ceased, even the air returned to its normal temperature.

The gronk was dead at our feet and as the thirteen of us returned to a standing position, we stared at each other in foreboding dread. We all felt it. Something bad had happened, something even worse than Vandruk shaking as if it wanted to free itself of all its residents.

"The caves." Dzur-Khan's voice was barely a whisper and yet his words ignited a different kind of terror in all of us.

We left the gronk where it fell and ran like we had never run before. Back up the mountain. Back to the cave .

Screams of agony and pain reached us before we made it to the side where the cave once stood. The holy cave that had been filled with our gallies preparing themselves for the choosing ceremony later on this afternoon.

Piles of rocks barred the entrance. Males of all ages were already working at it, picking up one rock at a time and throwing it away, their fingers bloody from their task of freeing the trapped gallies inside.

My heart constricted, and I froze midstride, taking in the chaos and destruction. The worst was seeing the males I had known and admired all my life, crying as they clawed at the rocks. Every time it seemed like they made a small dent, another shower of rocks would rush down, injuring a male who hadn't been able to jump to the side quick enough.

"I think I heard something," Bzun-Lhan, my brother, yelled. This made everybody stop and listen. But there was nothing. No sound escaped from the other side of the rocks.

My heart cramped; never had I felt such pain before. My mother, my sisters, Illug—the gallis I was supposed to mate today. They were all inside the cave. Trapped.

I kept my anguish and sorrow hidden, mortified by my father's open display of heartache and pain. My chest hurt as if my heart had been ripped apart, but I would have rather died than show weakness like my father and many of the other great khadahrs and warriors alike—males I had greatly admired and tried to emulate—were doing.

Great mourning followed as the truth of the Vandruk people's fate sank in—barring a miracle, our great race was doomed.

Of all the females who came with us, only thirty-five survived. Those thirty-five were older, past childbearing age. They had been out in the forest, gathering secret berries for that night's feast when the catastrophe hit. There had been more, but eight died during the event. One was struck by rocks, three were buried underneath a fallen tree, one was hit by a branch, two fell over a cliff, one tried to help another who lost her balance, and the final gallis's heart simply gave out.

There were still quite a few females left in our towns, most, most married and pregnant, others either unwell or too young to celebrate Vandruk's feast, but the remaining numbers wouldn't be enough to sustain our population. Many males would remain single and would die alone without ever knowing the pleasure of a family.

Rage warred with anguish when my father finally decided, two weeks later, that we needed to return home. He had given up all hope of getting into the cave, and even if a miracle would happen, by now, the gallies inside were surely dead. I preferred the rage. Rage I could handle. Rage I could channel by snapping at others or going off hunting. I could even relieve it by attacking a narran tree with my sword. The anguish, however, was like a festering wound—never healing, constantly throbbing, and I was clueless about how to deal with it.

On our way home, I remembered the lightning strike I had witnessed and directed us in that direction. This was when I first encountered the red swirling fog in the middle of the steppe. The ground underneath was torched as if burned, and the fog rose up high into the sky, as tall as two males, one standing on the shoulders of the other.

"Vorag,." my brother Bzun-Lhan invoked the name of our main god, telling our father to send for the High Priest.

While we waited, we camped by the side of the strange fog for three days before my father decided he needed to go home, ordering five guards, Bzun-Lhan and me, to stay.

Two days after my father's group left, a strange, rounded shape emerged from the fog; antennas stood out, and lights blinked in many colors. It made whirring sounds as it slowly flew like a bird, even though it looked nothing like any bird I had ever seen; nor did it fly like one. It kept low to the ground, and as our eyes followed it, its very parts dissolved into thin air. What was left fell to the ground, and by the time we made it to the crash site, there was nothing left to indicate it had ever been there.

"Vorag slew the demon," the High Priest, who had arrived the day before, praised. More priests and curious onlookers arrived every day. Thankfully, with them, more guards arrived, too. By the end of the eighth day, we were a hundred Vandruk strong.

Only a day after the first curious object appeared, something else flew out of the fog. It was smaller and, like the first, took off like a bird but flew higher into the sky than the first one, only to disintegrate into nothing after a few long moments.

More things arrived, all falling apart, and the High Priest concluded that Vorag was slaying them because they brought indescribable evil. He declared whatever came out of the fog had to be destroyed.

Then, one day, the fog retreated. I narrowed my eyes to see what was on the other side and made out people and blinking lights. I was still in shock and mourning when the first of the three males took a step forward, striding through what now looked more like a doorway into another room. Only, the room on the other side didn't look like anything I had ever seen before, and the door hovered freely in the middle of the steppe.

Two more males followed; one was talking in a language none of us understood. They looked excited, pointing at us, and after a moment's hesitation, we warriors did as instructed by the High Priest. It didn't matter that the males looked like us—only shorter and smaller. I didn't hesitate; these were the beings responsible for the deaths of my mother, sisters, and Illug. They were demons from dagghar—the eternal abyss, hell—and needed to be destroyed.

My spear flew straight and true, hitting one of them, just like my brothers' spears hit their targets, taking all three of them out.

Cries emerged from the other side, and the red fog returned. Cautiously, we approached the fallen males. Up close, I noticed even more similarities—they had hair like us, five fingers, two legs, two arms. Their facial structures were like ours. All three of them were beardless, though, their skin as soft looking as a baby's. Their skin tones were different than ours; one was a pale pinkish color, another's a deep brown, and the third's a lighter brown. Two had black hair like us, and the third's was light and golden.

"Out of my way, step aside." The High Priest pushed his way through to stare at the dead intruders.

"Burn them," he instructed. "There can be nothing left of them to allow them a foothold in our world, and cleanse yourselves thoroughly afterward."

That night, we sat even more subdued than before around the fire, talking to one another quietly while Bzun-Lhan sat with the High Priest and his acolytes.

"Do you think there will be more?" Szun-Var asked.

"Does a raindrop fall alone?" Dzur-Khan replied dryly. "There will always be more. We need to guard this place at all times."

He was right; the next day, more aliens arrived, thirty of them.

They brandished terrible weapons that made loud noises, and something spat from them that felled several of our warriors before we regained our senses and attacked with an ear-shattering war cry, slaying them where they stood. Their terrible weapons fell apart not long after their dead bodies hit the ground. Three made it back through the doorway before the red fog returned. The others were burned just like their brethren before. Curiously, these males' hair was close-cropped, coming in many brown, black, yellow, and red tones. They looked stronger than the ones who had come the previous day but were still much smaller than us .

From then on, we surrounded the red fog from a good distance away, far enough so their weapons couldn't reach us, and it didn't take long before they disintegrated. Killing the enemy after they lost their weapons was easy, even when they outnumbered us. But like the demons from Dagghar they were, they kept coming over the next few years.

Until it suddenly stopped.

Many more years passed; some of the females who had been children on the day of the tragedy grew into adulthood. They were sought after like the rarest of gems, which they were. My father died, and I fully became the khadahr of my clan. Many fathers offered their daughters to me, but I remained stubbornly unmated. Every time I met one of the daughters, there was a voice inside me, whispering, Wait !

Years, though, have a means of chipping away at a male. Thoughts of being the last of my family entered my mind; the responsibility of keeping my line going sat like a heavy rock on my shoulders and gnawed at my stomach. By then, all eligible females had been married off; unmarried ones were mere babies, most already promised to others.

As the khadahr, I could have taken any female who caught my eye, but I wasn't about to take a mate from her partner.

Two years ago, I found myself back at the source of the red fog that still swirled the same as it had that terrible day and every day thereafter. Nothing had changed, except nothing came through it any longer .

Priests and guards still surrounded it but notably fewer than in the years before.

I don't know why I came. It had been like an urge inside me to come back to the place that had been haunting me for years.

Nobody was more surprised than me when, on the third day after my arrival, something came through the fog.

One lone form—a male, just as strange and just as similar to us as the others had been before him.

One of the guards readied his spear, uncaring that the male coming through was unarmed, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

It felt like Vorag was guiding me when I halted the guard's spear and approached the stranger, took him back to Farruk. Over the course of the next two years, I learned everything that could be learned from the male who called himself Matt.

Learning that the humans hadn't known the great tragedy they had caused to our world didn't make the loss hurt any less, but a plan began to form when he told me that the humans had many unmated gallies, a plan that wouldn't bring back the dead, but a plan that would benefit both our species.

I would go through the red fog and make my demands to their leader.

And here I was, staring hypnotized at a human gallis, uttering, "You are a gallis."

"Um, yes," she responded.

Matt had described them to me and explained that they came in many variations of skin tones. Still, seeing this pale gallis in front of me with her palm raised in imitation of mine shook me to the core.

Her hair was long and black, her eyes a piercing light color of bluish-gray. She wasn't very tall. She might have reached to my chest, but I had expected that, as Matt was a head shorter than most of our males and insisted that he was one of the taller people of his species.

Her hand hung frozen in the air as she stared at me. Trepidation was edged into her features, but there was also curiosity and yearning. Yearning for what? I wondered briefly before I asked, "Who are you?"

"I'm Gwyn," she said in a melodious voice. "I… wait, you speak English?"

Matt had spent many hours teaching me their tongue.

"Sa. I mean, yes. Where is your leader?" I demanded, still staring her up and down and realizing I had first answered in Vandruk.

"I, um… they're all sleeping and… um." She finally lowered her hand.

"Go get them," I ordered.

"It's not that simple," she refused. Refused me, a khadahr. Nobody refused me, least of all this weak race of murderers who couldn't even fight. My anger at her took me by surprise. My initial hostility with Matt had worn off over the years and turned into some kind of… friendship. I hesitated to call it that, but in the end, that's what we were now. So, it surprised me that it returned full force at seeing another human .

"They're gonna be here… soon," she stalled, looking understandably insecure. "There is a meeting scheduled for this morning… And, oh my God, are you from Hope One?"

According to Matt, that was what the humans called Vandruk.

"I'm from Vandruk," I corrected, forcing the hostility from my voice and demeanor.

"Vandrag?" she repeated, mutilating the letters.

"Vandruk," I corrected again; it had also taken Matt a few attempts to pronounce it correctly. Both he and she gave the V a sharp edge, instead of smoothing it, same with the a .

"Wanndruck." On her second try, she almost got it, and I let it go.

"What's your name?" she asked, taking me in with her intense, unsettling gray eyes.

"I am Khadahr Tzar-Than of the clan of the Farruk, descendent of Vorag," I introduced myself.

"Khad… what?"

"Khadahr Tzar-Than," I repeated slowly.

"Khadahr." She nodded, and I didn't correct her. There were more important things to talk about than my name and title.

"Your leaders?" I reminded her.

"Oh, yes, yes." She turned her wrist, looking at a thick bracelet. "They should be here in like… three hours. "

"I will wait." I nodded, pulling a curious-looking chair out and settling down on it, only to find it rolling me away from her. I jumped up. "What demonic magic is this?"

She giggled. "It's just a chair. Here, look." She sat down on another, planting her feet on the ground to keep it from rolling.

Skeptically, I copied her. Moving my hips, I found the chair moved quite pleasantly.

"I might take one of those," I mumbled.

"I'm afraid that would be impossible," she replied.

"Why?" I stared at her, narrowing my eyes. Was she contradicting me again? I was a khadahr; I could take anything I damn well pleased.

"Because parts of it are made from metal, and for some reason, all our metal disintegrates on your planet… on Vandruk."

She remembered the name of my planet, and I acknowledged it with a short nod. She was also honest; her words echoed Matt's.

"This is metal?" I asked, pointing at the chair.

"This and this is," she said, pointing at something else, leaning forward enough to give me a quick glimpse of swollen tits. Was this female nursing? And why did that thought bother me? It shouldn't matter to me if she had a mate or not, if she had children.

I concentrated on what she was showing me, shiny parts of the chair, silvery. So, that was metal?

"What else is metal?" I wanted to know.