Note: 1. Royce and Isabelle have never left me. They've been hounding me every few weeks for me to finish their story. I keep telling them to just tell me what happens next and I'll be sure to write it down. Then after many, many, months they finally did. 2. Watch out for the epilogue.
Survival Skills: Divinity that Shapes our End
Moses gathered his flock and Royce gathered their supplies, ready to slip into the shadows in the wake of the jumbled exodus that would follow. Isabelle enlisted the aid of the grey skinned creature that helped her drag Royce out of the center of the world. They would need help if the two lone humans on this planet were going to be able to succeed in their plan, though they both were loath to admit it.
Royce watched from the edge of the woods as she approached the creature still holding the Lilith's trident. She held her hand up to him and after he cocked his head in confusion for a second stepped into it. After a few short seconds he watched as they separated. The creature nodded once at her, his long fingered hand gripping the trident and strode off to where Royce stood. She brought her hand up to her head and Royce could see the strain in her eyes, which only strengthened his eagerness to leave.
The trio easily broke away from the group and made their way slowly to the crack in the steps to climb down to the bottom massive pyramid-like structure. They decided to forgo the use of the cloaking devices they had for the moment. It was easier to keep up with each other if they could see each other, especially with the new addition trailing them. It was also better to keep that certain trick hidden well up their sleeve if indeed they were already being actively hunted. The plan was to double back to the crash site, track down that ship's, hopefully, still alive hunter and persuade the fallen pilot to help them hijack it's rival's ship still cloaked somewhere. Royce hated it. Too many things could go wrong, but he was at a loss at what else to do. They had one chance at getting off this planet.
They reached the bottom the steps and the two humans pressed their backs to the cool stone wall to catch their breath. Their new ally stared off into the woods seemingly unfazed by their long climb.
"Ya know, for a guy that was floating in coolant for years, he's pretty spry." Royce said as he passed over his canteen to Isabelle. She took a gulp of water before responding.
"The pods were programmed with a system to help prevent muscle atrophy. I think maybe his malfunctioned and he got too much." She said as she passed back the canteen. She waved vaguely between her head and the alien when she saw questioning looked. "I've gotten a lot of information from them."
"You okay?" He narrowed his eyes to study her. She smiled tiredly as she looked over at him. "I'm fine, just a little head ache."
He searched her face for a few seconds then satisfied with her response, nodded and looked back at the increasingly impatient creature. "I think we should call him Samson."
He turned back to her with a crooked smile that made her chest squeeze. "I do like motifs."
They paused in the tree line and surveyed the area of the downed craft Royce found earlier, Isabelle with her scope and Royce with his naked eye. Neither Isabelle nor Royce were sure of what they would find there, but it was a place to start. Isabelle was about to give the all clear when she felt a long fingered hand on her temple and the familiar itching sensation in her brain before images flowed in. She blinked as Samson removed his hand and she looked up to see what he saw. She wondered how she missed it.
"Up there. Pass those trees, on that big branch." She whispered to Royce and trained her scope to the location. "Do you see it?"
"Yeah."
The form of a hunter lay half hidden in the canopy, uncloaked and unmoving.
"I don't see any gear on him, no bracer or mask. He's just laying up there." She zoomed in. "He is breathing, so he's not dead.
"He wasn't there yesterday or he would have tried to off me." Royce thought for a moment. "Must've circled back or he had an escape pod land somewhere else. Doesn't matter, we need…" He cut off as the hunter suddenly snapped his head down. The humans tensed as they saw what had caught the hunter's attention. Samson walked slowly under the hunter, trident pointed down and arms spread. Isabelle glanced over at Royce who sat tight lipped watching the scene unfold.
Samson stabbed the trident upright in the ground and stepped cautiously closer. The hunter in the tree cocked its head at the unfamiliar creature walking up unarmed. The hunter scanned the area before easing its large frame down to the ground. Neon green blood oozed freely from a gnash on his side and Isabelle noticed he favored his left leg as he strode up menacingly up to Samson.
The hunter lashed out and grabbed Samson by the throat, lifting his slight frame off the ground. Isabelle had a shot lined up at the hunter's head before Royce placed a heavy hand on her sight and whispered for her to wait.
The hunter tilted the smaller creature's head painfully from side to side as if inspecting it, before he dropped him back to ground and walked dismissively to the trident. The massive alien bent down to grip the trident near the base as Samson, in a surprising amount of swiftness, struck out and brushed his fingertips across the side of the hunters face.
The two aliens froze and Royce, having seen the effects of that touch, stood free from the foliage and Isabelle's warning hand. He quickly made his way into the scene; weapon raised and kicked the trident away from the dazed hunter's hand. Isabelle kept her weapon trained on the hunter from the cover of the bushes. They waited for Samson to finish his "conversation".
The two creatures bent over the soggy ground began to quiver and Isabelle was sure that there was some sort of epic unseen battle going on between the two. As suddenly as the episode started, it stopped when Samson removed his hand. The hunter collapsed into the mud and Samson leaned heavily on a tree, both creatures breathing hard. Isabelle and Royce waited tensely to see what would happen next.
The hunter pushed away from the ground and stood, still slightly shaking. When it spied Royce standing before him with his weapon raised, it began a cacophony of clicks and hisses that was familiar and dreaded to the humans who heard it. The mini standoff was broken as Samson pushed away from the tree. The two killers glanced quickly over at his slim figure, then back to each other. Isabelle wished for a second that she was close enough to see what Royce saw, because he must have seen something in the hunter that made him nod his head, lower his weapon slightly and step back.
Samson sighed half in relief half exhaustion and walked around them towards where Isabelle still hid. Royce kept his eyes on the hunter who had placed a fortifying hand on the wound on its side.
"Is?"
"Yeah?" Came her reply and the hunter spun his head around to the sound.
"I think we just made a truce."
"That was easier than I thought it would be." She said and stood from the foliage with her rifle lowered, knowing her cover was blown.
"Me too. Can you go ahead and make sure?" He said and it took a second for her to understand what he meant.
"I'm on it." She nodded and looked over at Samson, who just stumbled over to the bag of supplies. She caught his attention and made the hand gesture that she wanted to 'talk'. His fingers touched her temple and a minute later, as she braced one hand on the tree beside her and tried to breathe the pounding in her head away, she knew more than she ever wanted to know.
Samson passed her the canteen as she tried to gather herself. He tilted his head as is examining her before he bent to the bag of supplies and pulled out some cloth and Royce's salve. Isabelle poured water onto the back of her neck in an effort to clear her head before following numbly behind Samson as he strode away. She heard the rumble of Royce's voice and saw Samson bend to examine the hunter's side, but it seemed distanced somehow. Her brain was having trouble processing all the information she was given. She felt Royce nudge her arm.
"He'll help us. He wants off this planet too." She belatedly answered his rumbled question. There were somethings humans shouldn't know. She heard him rumble again and she tried to focus on that instead of the second hand nightmare memories of a greater race.
"I am?" She questioned unmoving, even as she felt the blood Royce noted trickle from her nose.
"Is, look at me." She heard him demand and she tried to find his eyes, but instead all she saw were horrible flashes of the hunter's memory. Slick black creatures hissing from their gaping drooling maw, horrible clacking languages coming from squat clawed beings with thin membranous wings and chaotically angled buildings, all jostled for her attention.
Royce glanced over at the creatures, the smaller tending to the larger one's wound, and back to the woman beside him. Something was wrong with her, that much was obvious from the faraway look in her eyes and the increase in breath. For the first time in a while he was unsure what to do. Training told him not to turn away from a possible threat, while his guts told him to screw training for a second and help the woman who was becoming an integral part of his life. When he saw tears roll from her terror stricken eyes, guts won out. He cradled his weapon in his elbow and raised his right hand up to her face forcing her to turn to him. Her eyes were still focused somewhere far away
"IS." Nothing.
"Isabelle." He tried again.
She startled and blinked up at him. "Royce?"
"Jesus. What's happening?" He asked, concern lacing his voice even as he unthinkingly wiped the blood from her face with his palm. The motion caused her own hand to touch the drying blood with a blink. She shook her head and looked down.
"I can't…too much…" She started only to suddenly look up at him and death grip his raised forearm with both of her hands. "I don't know how much more I can take. Aliens, being prey, languages, something else's memories. I don't… take me home Royce." She pleaded.
He didn't know what she was talking about but he heard the panic in her voice, saw it swelling in her eyes and knew he needed to something before she went completely around the bend. He looked back over at the duo still seemingly unconcerned about the little drama playing out in front of them and bent closer to her.
"Okay." He said quietly into her ear pressing his check to hers, while keeping an eye on their new allies.
"You remember I told you about my place by Canyon Lake?" He felt her nod on his cheek a second later. "Well, there's a great claw foot tub in the bathroom. Perfect for a hot bath. We'll get in until our fingers are purney." He felt her hands ease from their death grip, one even wondering up to his neck. He wasn't sure why he was telling her this, but it seemed to be calming her. "There's a 60 inch TV down stairs and we'll watch football and talk about the news and what we did that day."
Isabelle began to translate the rumble of his voice into real time as she focused on it. No sudden moves, she thought to herself. She pushed back away from his face slowly and saw the worry in his eyes.
"Better?" He asked. She responded with a broken smile. Royce relaxed for a second only to tighten again and jerk his attention to the shadow suddenly looming over them. The hunter clacked its strange language and put a hand out palm up.
"What?" Royce said angrily.
Isabelle unhooked her mask from her side and placed it in the outstretched hand. Royce wrinkled his brow.
"What are you doing?" He asked her as she bent down and began untying the bracer strapped to her leg.
"He knows how to use this thing better than I do and he needs the mask. They can't breathe the air here for too long."
It took Royce barely a second to better understand her partial break down from a few seconds ago. "Shit." He mumbled, then "What else did he show you?"
Her fingers faltered a second. "More than I wanted to know."
She stood and handed the bracer over to the waiting hunter. She looked over at Royce and saw the worry again in his eyes.
"You gonna be okay?"
She shrugged actively trying not to think and turned to watch the hunter put on the devices. "I don't know."
She felt Royce slide up to her and heard his grumbling voice next to her ear. "I can't promise we'll get home, but..." She looked up at him. "I promise like hell to try."
Her lips curled up and she thought about leaning up to kiss him.
A loud claxon from the bracer the hunter now controlled was the only warning they got before plasma shots fizzled by and burst the trees around them. They dove for cover uncertain just what direction the shot were coming from. Isabelle had her rifle raised to the trees, knowing that's how they preferred to hunt, with her back to another tree. Royce slammed beside her and scrambled to turn on the cloak.
"They like to hide in the trees." She said to him before he shimmered out of view and she felt the weight of him leave her side. A plasma shot exploded the bark of the tree behind her just where her head was a second before. Wood splinters scratched her face as she flinched and rolled away. Plasma shots blared from over her head towards the general direction where the first came from. She took the covering fire Royce was offering and slid feet first into a nearby ditch.
The sound of the shots began to gain some distance from her before they stopped. Isabelle took a breath and carefully raised her head from her make shift cover to scan the area. A blur of movement caught her eye as two hulking fighters fizzled in and out of her vision in some kind of epic hand to hand battle. She blinked away the foreign memories of honor and trophy killing as she lined up her scope on the two and waited for a clean shot. Their new ally may not like her taking his kill, but this wasn't about honor for her. It was about survival. The shot provided itself as the two suddenly parted from each other. She was squeezing the trigger just as she felt the rifle ripped from her hands and suddenly she was hurtling through the air. She hit a nearby tree and felt something snap and landed gasping in pain in the mud below.
Pulling her face from the mud she looked up and saw a hunter materialize in front of her. The mask it wore had horns sprouting from the sides making it look like a buffalo and for some reason that terrified her. She frantically scanned area looking for her missing weapon. She tasted blood in her mouth as the hunter leveled its shoulder mounted cannon down at her. She clawed at the ground trying to get away, wondering why her legs didn't want to work. Isabelle glanced back and saw why the buffalo masked beast before her paused its killing blow.
The forest around them shivered as the gray skinned creatures encircled the area. She painfully pushed her way to sit with her back to the tree as she watched the hunter spin in a circle and hiss menacingly at the newfound threat around him. She felt rage replace terror and knew it was not her own rage but that of the physic creatures around her. The hunter bellowed loudly as he too felt the anger of the others. The shoulder mounted cannon began to hum as he began to, one by one, vaporize the quickly advancing creatures. Isabelle scanned the area again for her lost weapon hoping to help in some way.
The hunter reared backwards as his mount suddenly blew up on his shoulder. The hunter screamed in pain and spun around towards the direction the shot came from. The creatures surrounding him took the opportunity and swarmed him. Some came with stone, some with rocks, most just used their bare hands to meet out the punishment of an entire race on him.
Isabelle caught the familiar silhouette of Royce outlined in the sun as he lowered his weapon and stumbled towards her. To her horror she saw blood staining his new robe and a gory mess on his side that he tried to cover with his hand.
"Royce?" She said, the final death throes of the buffalo masked hunter echoed off in the distance somewhere, she didn't care.
"You okay?" He asked. She wasn't, but she nodded at him anyway even as she felt her insides fill with blood. "Good." He swayed once and fell to the ground in front of her.
"Royce!" Panic filled her insides along with the blood. No, no, no. They both couldn't die, not here. I wasn't fair. She grunted past the pain and dragged her broken pain wracked body over to him.
He lay unmoving staring up at the trees, but turned his head at her when she crawled up and put her hand over the hole in his side.
"You're not okay, are you?" He said even as a little bit of blood trickled from his mouth.
"No. I'm not." Her hands were shaking, it was getting hard to breath and her damn legs still didn't want to work. She fumbled in her cargo pockets for the quick-clot, only to realize that must have fallen out at some point. Tears of pain, anger and fear rolled from her eyes.
"Stop that." He said weakly as he tried to raise his hand to her face only to have it fall again. She ducked down so he wouldn't see the tears and laid her head on his shoulder. Her hand lay numbly on top of his, neither doing much to staunch the flow of blood.
She felt him turn his head. "Guess we didn't lose them."
She shifted her head and tried to focus on the grey creatures as they began to drift away from the mangled body of the hunter and fall into each other's arms.
"Guess not." Came her quite reply. "What about the other hunter?"
He shrugged in answer. This almost seemed right to her somehow, her head lying in the familiar hollow of his shoulder, talking. Except. Except, her vision was fuzzy and his heart beat was slowing beneath her ear.
"Talk to me."
"Why?" Came his soft reply. She shifted her head again to look at him. He stared up unseeing into the trees. She slid her hand away from his side and numbly, awkwardly pushed his face to meet hers.
"Because I need to know you're still with me." Her fingers slid limply down to his neck. She left smear of blood on his chin and she couldn't take her eyes away from it.
"Don't worry were not gonna die here. I already choose. 824 Canyon Lake Drive. You're gonna like it, I'll meet you there."
"What?" She looked up at his odd reply and saw him close his eyes. "Royce? Royce!" Fear gave her the strength to shake him and when that didn't work, it gave her the strength to crawl up and whisper through the tears into his ear. "I love you."
The cool wind blew the leaves around them and the smell of blood wafted away for a moment leaving a faint smell of lilacs. An alien sun drenched the two humans, wrapped into each other bleeding and close to death, with its light.
She never quite imagined she would die like this and she certainly never thought she would welcome it. Well, almost welcome it. A small part of her still rallied to keep her eyes open and watch her fingers slowly move up and down from the pulse in his neck for as long as she could. Which was why when a shadow crossed over them, she was able to crack her eyes open a little more and see Samson look down at them and then glance up at something behind her. The terrible familiar sound of a hunter's rattle was the last thing she heard, before pain wracked her body, then nothing.
No. Not nothing. There were flashes of white and black, sterile and dirty smells, pain and numbness. And a voice, smiling and feminine.
Not yet, Isabelle not yet.
She was floating, pain free, with the air rushing through her hair and in her ears.
Wait a minute. She wasn't floating, she was falling! Green canopies of trees rushed up to her greet her eyes as they flew open. Panic burst through her like a tidal wave, a yell escaped her mouth and her hand went up to where she feverently hopped straps to a parachute lay. Her fingers found a metal disc on her chest instead. A memory so distant that it almost seemed like a life time ago hit her. She suddenly felt like the bowl of petunias from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as she thought: Not again. Isabelle's burst of laughter continued as the chute on her back sprang open.