I didn't move. Didn't react.
Just another night. Just another planet.
Just another time they'd left me behind.
I closed my eyes and waited for dawn.
I woke to screaming.
Not mine. The sound was high-pitched, piercing—like metal tearing through metal. My eyes snapped open to darkness and movement, something diving toward the cave entrance with impossible speed.
Six eyes. Three on each side of its face, glowing faintly in the starlight.
Ateaer.
I rolled sideways as talons raked the stone where I'd been sleeping, throwing up sparks. The emergency blanket tore. The creature shrieked again, that awful metallic sound, and I saw its silhouette against the stars—wings spread wide, easily twelve feet across, body sleek and predatory.
It couldn't fit all the way into the cave. Too narrow. But it was trying, folding its wings, reaching with those talons, six eyes fixed on me with alien hunger.
I scrambled backward, rock hammer in hand. Useless. Completely useless against something that fast, that agile. The ateaer lunged again and I swung wildly, connected with nothing but air. Its talons caught my shoulder, tore through fabric and skin. Pain flared hot and immediate.
I was going to die here.
The thought was distant. Clinical. Just another data point.
Then something massive moved in the darkness outside.
The ateaer's head snapped up, all six eyes focusing on something behind it. It shrieked—different this time, alarm instead of hunger—and tried to pull back out of the cave entrance.
It didn't make it.
Something violet and impossibly tall grabbed the creature mid-retreat and threw it. Just—grabbed it with both hands and hurled it away from the cave like it weighed nothing. I heard the ateaer hit stone somewhere in the darkness, heard wings beating frantically, heard it flee.
Silence.
Then a figure filled the cave entrance. Backlit by starlight, I couldn't see details. Just size. Shape. The curve of something that might have been a tail.
Not human.
The figure moved into the cave with fluid grace, and I saw her clearly for the first time.
Nine feet tall. Deep violet skin that seemed to absorb the starlight rather than reflect it. A tail that moved with predatory awareness, coiling and uncoiling behind her. She wore leather armor, practical and worn, and in her right hand she held a blade—a thrae, I would learn later—that caught the faint light with a wicked edge.
She was the most alien thing I'd ever seen.
And she was looking at me with eyes that held nothing but cold assessment.
"Keth mera," she said. Her voice was low, controlled. The words meant nothing to me. "Vai keth-na sora aeth. Vai mera. Thren."
I didn't move. Couldn't. My shoulder was bleeding, my back pressed against stone, and this—whatever she was—had just saved my life and was now pointing a blade at my chest.
"I don't understand," I said. My voice came out steady. Flat. "I don't speak—"
"Thren," she repeated, sharper this time. The blade didn't waver. She took a step closer, and I registered the sheer physical presence of her—the way she moved, the coiled strength in every line of her body. She could kill me without effort. We both knew it.
She crouched, still keeping the blade trained on me, and with her free hand she grabbed my pack. Yanked it open. Started pulling things out with quick, efficient movements.
Rations. Water purification tablets. Atmospheric filter.
Then the geological scanner. UOE logo stamped clearly on the side.
Her entire body went rigid.
"Sorai-keth," she hissed. The words dripped with venom. "Vai... vai vesh..." She looked at me, and something in those eyes shifted from caution to pure hostility. "Thrae-sorai. Thal-vora keth. Keth."
She stood, blade now pointed directly at my throat. Her tail lashed once, sharp and angry.
I should have been afraid. Should have felt something. But I just looked at her, at the blade, at the clear intent in her posture.
Another person who wanted me dead. Another day on this planet.
"Go ahead," I said quietly.
She froze. Stared at me. Something flickered across her face—confusion, maybe. Suspicion.
"Vai... nira?" The blade lowered slightly. Just slightly. "Vai nira nai thora?"
I didn't answer. Didn't know how.
We stayed like that for a long moment. Her standing over me, weapon ready. Me sitting against the stone, bleeding, empty.
Then she made a sound—something between a growl and a sigh—and grabbed my arm. Hauled me to my feet with strength that made my earlier assessment laughably inadequate. I stumbled, and her other hand—the one not holding the blade—steadied me with a grip like iron.
"Vai mera naith-rai," she said. Not a question. A command. "Thren keth-mera. Vai mera naith-rai. Nai kira vai. Nai nira vai vesh thrae-sorai."
She shoved me toward the cave entrance, blade still ready, still watching me like I might attack at any moment.
I understood enough. Come with me. Don't run. I'm watching you. I know what you are.
My shoulder throbbed. My lungs ached from the thin air. And this violet giant was marching me out of the cave at blade-point, into the Thressa mountains, away from everything I knew.
I should have fought. Should have resisted.
Instead, I walked.
Just another night. Just another person who saw me as expendable.
The only difference was that this one had bothered to keep me alive.
For now.
The night air bit through my thermal layer. My breath came in visible clouds, thin and inadequate in the altitude. She walked behind me—close enough that I could hear her footfalls, far enough that I couldn't turn on her without warning. Not that I would have. Not that I had the energy.
"Mera," she said when I slowed. Move. "Mera, thrae-sorai."
The blade never wavered. I could feel it there, a presence at my back, ready to open me up if I made the wrong choice.
I kept walking.
The terrain was brutal. Loose scree that shifted under every step. Narrow paths that skirted cliff edges I couldn't see in the darkness. Twice I stumbled, and twice her hand shot out—not gentle, not kind, but keeping me upright because a corpse was apparently less useful than a prisoner. She spoke occasionally. Sharp commands in Sorath that I was starting to parse through context alone. "Keth thal-mera"—don't go that way. "Vai kira kethara"—watch the rocks. "Thren keth-thora"—don't speak.
That last one was unnecessary. I hadn't said a word since leaving the cave.
What was there to say?
6
The Home of The Mountains
The mountains rose around us like the bones of some ancient titan. In the darkness, they were shapes and shadows, vast presences that dwarfed even her considerable height. The path—if it could be called that—wound between them, sometimes climbing, sometimes descending into narrow defiles where the walls pressed close enough to touch on both sides.
My legs burned. My shoulder had gone from sharp pain to a dull, throbbing ache that pulsed in time with my heartbeat. The thin air made every breath feel insufficient, like drowning in slow motion.
She didn't seem affected. Her breathing remained steady, controlled. Her footsteps never faltered.
Of course they didn't. This was her world. Her mountains. I was the invader here, the foreign body that didn't belong.
Hours passed. Or maybe minutes. Time had lost meaning somewhere between the second abandonment and the ateaer attack and this forced march through alien stone. The sky above remained dark, but the quality of the darkness was changing—thinning at the edges, preparing for dawn.
"Keth-mera," she said suddenly. Stop.
I stopped. Swayed slightly, caught myself.
She moved around me, blade still ready, putting herself between me and whatever lay ahead. For the first time since leaving the cave, I got a clear look at her in profile.
Nine feet of coiled strength. The deep violet of her skin seemed to absorb what little light existed, making her almost a shadow herself. Her tail moved constantly—not nervous, but alert, reading the environment in ways I couldn't begin to understand. The blade in her hand caught a glint of pre-dawn light, and I saw it clearly for the first time: not metal, but something organic, curved and wicked and beautiful.
She was looking at something ahead. Listening.
Then she turned back to me, and her eyes—dark as the space between stars—fixed on mine with an intensity that should have frightened me.
It didn't. I was too empty for fear.
"Vai thora-keth," she said. Her voice was quieter now, but no less dangerous. "Vai nira? Nai thora Sorath. Vai thora-keth. Vai keth-nira nai-thora."
You don't speak. You understand? I speak Sorath. You don't speak. You don't understand what I say.
I understood enough. She was taking me somewhere where others would be. Others who spoke Sorath. And she was making it clear that I was to keep my mouth shut.
I nodded once.
She studied me for a long moment, searching for something—deception, maybe, or resistance. Whatever she was looking for, she didn't find it. Or maybe she did, and it was just the emptiness she saw. The nothing that had kept me walking through the night without protest or plan.
"Mera," she said finally, and gestured with the blade.
We moved forward.
The path opened into a wider space—still enclosed by the mountains, but less claustrophobic. And there, tucked against the base of a cliff face, barely visible in the growing light, was a structure.
Not a building. Not exactly. More like the mountain itself had been carved away to create shelter. Stone walls that flowed seamlessly into natural rock. Openings that might have been windows or might have been natural formations. The whole thing was camouflaged so perfectly that I wouldn't have seen it if she hadn't led me directly to it.
Smoke rose from somewhere within. Thin, carefully managed, dispersing quickly in the mountain wind.
People lived here. Sorathi, hidden in the Thressa mountains, invisible to UOE scans and surveys.
She grabbed my arm again—that iron grip that left no room for resistance—and pulled me toward the entrance. Her blade pressed against my spine, a cold promise.
"Vai keth-mera," she said one more time. "Vai keth-thora. Vai vesh thrae-sorai. Nai kira vai."
Don't run. Don't speak. You are an invader. I'm watching you.
The sky was lightening now, dawn breaking over the peaks in shades of amber and rose. Beautiful, probably. The kind of vista that would have made the promotional materials back home.
I didn't care.
I let her push me forward, into the hidden camp, into whatever came next.
Just another morning. Just another place where I didn't belong.
At least this time, someone had bothered to bring me along.
The entrance was narrow—deliberately so, I realized. Defensible. One person at a time, and anyone coming through would be silhouetted against the outside light, an easy target.
She shoved me through first.
The interior opened up immediately, a cavern that had been worked and shaped over what must have been years. Decades, maybe. The walls weren't rough stone but smooth, carved with patterns that caught the firelight. Geometric designs that flowed into organic shapes—mountains becoming waves becoming flames. In one alcove, a small shrine: a carved figure with four eyes and blade-like protrusions from its head. The Vearonsa. Offerings laid before it—flowers, already wilting in the dry air. A bowl of water that reflected the firelight.