Dark Planet Pt. 04

"Hmm?" I felt the danger, the armies, the stars in the sky around me fade away. I felt my body cradled in Perikos' mass, felt the coolness of his touch on my face and in my hair. Strange, I thought, how Perikos' body felt so cool and yet his touch warmed my entire body, starting just below my bellybutton and pulsing outwards through me in little bursts of pleasure. What did he just say? "Why fear?" My words sounded slurred, even to me.

Perikos brushed my hair from my forehead and pulled me closer to his center. "I must never become complacent or you will cease to be satisfied and then I cannot feed. You need fear as much as I do, Jayn. Now sleep, and dream of me."

I was back in a cell in Kragosa, that much I knew but I was all but shrouded in darkness. The only pinpricks of light came from two camera lenses pointed down at me from the ceiling and I could feel the tension in the air. Something was going to happen.

Something enormous and extremely fast descended on me from behind, hurling me bodily into the cell bars -- the only place in the cell the camera lights couldn't reach. It wound itself around my body and the bars, immobilizing me while it gripped onto my pussy lips, holding them wide open so it could bury itself in me. I tried to catch my breath but it increased its pressure on me, smashing me against the bars.

I saw a glint of reflecting light suddenly on the other side of the bars. Brogn, the Warden. He reached out a thick, greasy sausage of a finger and flicked my erect nipple with it. A sick little thrill ran through me as I pressed back against the darkness. Between a rock and a hard place.

"Someone help me," I gasped, pinned as the thing plunging into my pussy pressed me forward still, holding me tight against the bars.

"This is your sentence," Brogn panted in slurred, choppy Common. "To stay here, always in darkness, always watched, fodder for the Perikos. How long will you last?"

I turned my head then, partly out of panic, to try to glimpse at the thing fucking me, holding me captive with Brogn. The two camera lights went out then and we were in total darkness. The thing inside me released its grip on my arms and legs but a thick appendage stayed inside me and so I stood very still for a moment, afraid to move.

Suddenly it moved again, like a wave crashing down but this time instead of crashing into me it engulfed me, seemed to swallow me whole until I felt it covering every square inch of me. More panic rose in me and I curled up into a ball inside it, pulling my knees close and unwittingly granting it better access to my folds. The appendage inside of me held me still on its girth. I began to shake, completely enclosed and controlled and then I heard a steady, rhythmic tune surround me.

"Be brave. I am with you. I will be your everything here."

I woke up with a start, for a moment not knowing why. Perikos still held me. It was dark andas always when I woke up, the dark was nearly impenetrable. Then I heard it -- an odd, shrieking whine, grisly and horrific. Something was wrong.

"Perikos?" I sounded more frightened than I meant to.

"We've been ambushed," he whispered back. Next his song was commanding, almost deafening. "Ambush! Retreat! Regroup!" There were other images, ideas. Too complex for my brain as I craned my neck forward and back to try to see what was causing that sound. It was getting closer. It was terrible, it scratched at the inside of my brain and I felt nauseated. Several flickering thoughts flew into my head.

Being back on the hill, at the rally and totally surrounded. Realizing someone was trying to take too much? What as too much? How would I know? But I did, I felt everything closing in on me, felt prickling pain like incisors chewing me from the inside out. I felt everything that was me, every thought, blood cell, heartbeat and memory being pulled away, sucked into something else. Someone else. To fight, to murder, to cannibalize every aspect of another. I felt utterly sick.

I was jolted back to my own thoughts as I felt Perikos streak like lightening through the darkness. I folded myself against him and forced myself to keep my eyes open even though I couldn't see anything, couldn't tell where we were or what, if anything, was around us. Fear was good, right? Didn't Perikos always encourage my fear? I must have been doing him quite a service as I shrunk against him.

I heard more shrieks like the ones before and more songs besides back where we had come from. The rest of Perikos' army wasn't far behind and some of them sounded as though they were fighting strong.

Something collided with us then, something fast and I felt my head swim from the impact. Something hit him hard again, and then a third time and I couldn't stifle my screams. I couldn't see it, couldn't even sense where it was coming from. Suddenly I felt a hunger closing in, voracious and cruel like before.

"Perikos! Move!" I yelled, standing and clutching onto his slick form for balance.

He spun in place so quickly I lost my balance and would have fallen but a massive tentacle caught me at the waist and held me high in the air and out of the way of the blows. Perikos glided forward again, faster than I could think to hold on and I swayed and rocked high in the air. If I strained my eyes I could make out a field of rustling darkness below me that wasn't chaotic enough to match the tunes, the screams and chaos I knew was taking place. I felt Perikos take another blow down below. Why bring me into battle if he wasn't going to fight? Why lead the charge? I was holding him back, getting him hurt.

I blinked as something black and massive glided up to meet me where Perikos held me aloft. Its great mass swung towards me but Perikos pulled me out of range and then I heard the shrieking sound in my head again and felt panic flood me.

"Perikos!" I felt one of them closing in. They would distract him trying to protect me and then go in for the kill. "PERIKOS!"

Something tore me out of his grasp, catching me around the ankles and flinging me through the air.

"Jayn!" I heard Perikos' song, clear as spoken words. "I'm coming!"

Something grasped at my waist, something vaguely familiar, but before it managed to gain any purchase, something else tore me away, flung me again by my ankles and I felt the sickening sensation of free falling without any way of knowing when my body would hit the ground.

Something cool that I was certain was not Perikos broke my fall and almost broke my head. It didn't so much snatch me out of the air as it softened the blow of me landing flat on the earth, but not by much. My head swam again, throbbed from the impact and I stumbled forward onto my feet and tried to crawl away from it. I felt my way forward in the dark until my hands ran up against the same mass in front of me as below me. I flung myself the other direction but I was too slow and only succeeded in smashing my shoulder against my newfound enclosure. I ran my hands frantically up and down the interior walls -- I was being held here, surrounded on every side. I looked up and couldn't see the stars and felt a jolt of claustrophobia. Captured.

"Perikos! Perikos, I'm here! Over here!" I shrieked, my head pulsing. The sound all but disappeared into the black mass that surrounded me.

I strained my ears and I could hear the frantic, erratic tune as Perikos called my name over and over again. Why didn't he know where I was? Why couldn't he feel me?

I beat against the sides of the creature holding me, screamed as loud as I could until my throat seared and burned from the strain and I felt myself dissolving into furious, hopeless tears.

"Perikos! I'm here, I can hear you! Let me go! Perikos!" My throat felt as though it would bleed from the strain and suddenly the creature holding me jerked his body to the left, knocking me off balance. A thick tendril wound around my neck and choked the breath out of me before I could scream for Perikos again. I thought it would let up but little starbursts of light danced in front of my eyes as its grip tightened, gradually. If it was trying to kill me, it wanted me to feel myself dying, I thought, as I tried to pull it from my throat, tried to hold my breath even as I felt my lungs burn as they tried in vain to pull air into them. I was going to pass out, probably die and all I could think about was that I hoped Perikos would make it out of this fight in one piece.

When I opened my eyes again I was in darkness. I had gotten used to darkness over the last month because it meant Perikos. Now it seemed too tight, horribly intimate and I felt miserably helpless. My head and neck ached, as did my left ankle and something about the outside of my right ear hurt badly, almost like I'd been stabbed there.

I was leaning back against a rock face of some kind, no stars overhead either but as my eyes began to adjust, I saw small patches of red light scattered nearby, with small, conical fungal shapes bursting up from the ground. I tried to reach up to assess my ear but found something binding my wrists. I felt around in the darkness and noticed something itchy and thick like a rope wrapped around my waist and wrists. I had a few centimeters range of movement but not enough to reach my head.

I turned my head gingerly and felt a fresh stab of pain at my ear but then I got distracted as I felt the rope at my waist connected to another bit of rope tied around my neck. I tried stretching to see how far I could move and found I only had a few centimeters give -- I couldn't sit up straight without choking myself.

I heard the echoing din of stone scraping against stone and started badly. I tried to rise into a standing position but the rope around my neck must have been nailed into the rock somehow and the effort caused an odd sort of tearing sensation at my ear, followed by a worrying wetness. I sucked air through my teeth as I saw at least one shadow in this cave or hole or wherever I was. I knew it wasn't Perikos.

It moved closer to me and I saw another one move in to flank me. Was I just supposed to be someone's dinner? Would they interrogate me? And torture me? Considering how often they ate each other, I figured it was pretty much certain they would.

"Alien!" The sound came from the one to my right. "It is awake. Its bodily response patterns have changed," it told the other, who hovered in the shadows just outside my view. It was just too dark to make it out, even though I knew it was there.

"This was the treasured strategy? What is the point of it?" asked the other.

"Do not be obtuse! Can you not feel that? The terror? It is better than I have felt in my lifetime."

"Better than on the battlefield? Are you a fool?" the one to left taunted, it's tune disgusted.

There was a moment of tense silence. Then: "perhaps I have a distaste for killing, even justly. Far better to harvest these for food."

I could only assume it was gesturing at me and I couldn't stop a fresh wave of terror from pulsing through me. I felt my body shivering but I was suddenly suffocating from the stuffiness of this enclosed space. I felt a cold sweat break out over my brow and upper lip.

"It is frightened," remarked the one on my left.

"Now who is the fool? I told you why we had orders to take it. We have intelligence on it. It can understand us and apparently can make itself understood."

The one on my right closed some of the distance between us and I fought back a whimper.

"Alien! What is your planet of origin?" Its melody boomed out at me in the low ceiling cave. I kept my mouth shut.

"Are you certain it understands you?" The other asked.

"Alien! On this planet a captured creature has two choices: it can ask for a swift death and hope it will be granted or it can beg for mercy from its new master, whoever caught it. I have caught you and no swift death will be granted. You have few options."

"Why do you speak to it as though it is one of us? Cattle is eaten, not bargained with." The other sneered.

I clenched my teeth shut, closed my eyes and thought about Perikos. About what he would do if he were captured and thought he was about to be killed. I didn't stand a hope in hell of fighting.

"Do not attempt to advise me further. It was your cruel nature that instructed our comrade to nail its skin to the wall. It might have died from the bleeding." The one on my right turned to the other. Shit, my ear. They had tried to nail me to the wall by my ear? It felt as though the wound had been dressed, however strangely.

"How was I to know it had blood? I was trying to immobilize it. At any rate, that created fear and is that not in our favor?"

"It would be more in our favor were we to encourage it to speak." The creature seemed to turn back to me. "Your Keeper -- the Leader, the Criminal -- has been captured. He will die, of that you can be certain. You have a certain affection for him, don't you? He has treated you well?"

The creature was lying. He had to be, there was just no way Perikos would let himself get caught.

"You may call my bluff, alien, but if you speak you might buy him time. We might even allow you to see him before he is executed. Now tell me, what is your planet of origin?"

I sagged in my bonds. If they were telling the truth I had little choice. I couldn't risk them killing Perikos without my intervention. I was unlikely to tell them anything useful because I didn't know anything useful. Still, no need for the exact truth.

"Kragosa," I answered, my voice barely a ragged whisper.

Something clubbed me in the side of the head and my vision swam again. Luckily or perhaps intentionally it wasn't the side where my ear had been hurt.

"Do not lie! It is plain you are not Kragosi. Where were you born?"

"The -- the Rhydia Station."

Something smashed into my jaw again and I tasted blood.

"Try again, alien. If you lie again I will snap one of your bones. Where were you born?"

"Althea!" I blurted, not knowing why. My mother was born there.

Before I had a chance to wonder whether the creatures had spotted the lie, I felt something thin like a whip close around my right wrist and twist it. The shockwave ran through my entire arm up to the nape of my neck and a tearing, gut-clenching pain shot up the whole of my arm. I screamed like a little girl and burst into tears.

Turns out I'm a coward, I thought, quivering against the wall I was tied to. The creature would break bone after bone, I was sure of that. I wanted to save the rest for the questions that would really get me into trouble, like the questions about what Perikos was planning and why I was important.

"Ferox 4," I coughed, whimpering wetly into my hair.

"The Ferox System?" The one at my right queried, his tune arrogant, carrying. "A Union System, primarily occupied by humans. Are you a human?"

"Yes," I sobbed, wishing there was something I could do to lessen the pain.

"Very well. We will return tomorrow, human, to let ask more questions." I felt their attention turn from me as they began to drift towards where they had entered.

I wanted to say how desperately thirsty I was, how hungry I was, how badly hurt I was, to threaten that if they left me here like this all might be lost but that would involve revealing why I was valuable and forfeiting any chance I had of making it until tomorrow and maybe seeing Perikos again. Instead I sniffled and hiccoughed and tried to concentrate on anything besides my twice broken, throbbing wrist.

I heard something like a stone shift again and then all I could hear was the sound of own mewling sobs. What were the chances that they were lying? Surely Perikos would have done anything to prevent his own capture. And what besides ultra-violet light could hold Perikos? I couldn't see how they could have acquired any but then again they would have had the entire period Perikos was trapped in Kragosa to acquire some for just such an occasion. But in a cave? Though what if the rest of Perikos' unit had fallen? He wouldn't have run away and left them. More likely they were bullshitting me to get me to talk and it was working. I wasn't prepared to gamble a chance to free Perikos on the supposition that everything was fine. Everything was not fine. We were ambushed, there was a traitor and I was being interrogated. Provided I didn't die from dehydration or starvation before they were done with me, they were going to run out bones to break before much longer.

Something felt odd suddenly. Maybe there was a change in the air. I couldn't hear anything but I stifled my own sobs a moment and concentrated. I could sense something nearby. Something unpleasant, something that turned my stomach and I felt a little ball of fury surge up inside my chest before I knew the reason why. I saw the faintest trace of movement in the dark and then it clicked.

"Shadow. Come to gloat? Or is this punishment enough?" I wanted to voice to sound threatening and furious but I came off more pathetic, defeated. Fresh tears stung my eyes and rolled down my cheeks as I pressed myself back against the wall.

"Human." The tune was still oily but no longer assured or pompous. It sounded hollow, weaker than before and maybe a little surprised. "You sensed me."

"What the fuck do you want?"

He said nothing for a moment. The rage continued to boil up inside me until I wanted to scream myself hoarse again from the heat of it.

"What the FUCK do you want, you bastard? You asshole! You're slime, you're nothing! You know what? Don't tell me what you want! Go back to your King and get your reward! You did fucking fantastic! He trusted you! He didn't even care that you insulted him behind his fucking back, that you're so obviously weak and pathetic and jealous of anyone better than you! He cared about you and you stabbed him in the back! I hope you fucking rot, you evil, cowardly, worthless son of a bitch!"

I groaned, catching my breath from my tirade. He didn't move, didn't hit me. I wanted to get up, to crush the life out of him with my bare hands. I felt my chest rise and fall with shallow breaths as I fought to keep from moving too much so I didn't strain my injuries. He wasn't worth that.

"If you lower your voice it will be possible for us to discuss this new…situation," said Shadow, his music hushed, calculated.

"And why would I want to do that?" I growled savagely, feeling my headache throb painfully from the movement.

"Because I never betrayed Leader -- "

"Bullshit!"

" -- and I am certain who did."

"Why the hell should I believe you, you lying piece of shit?"

The darkness was in front of me suddenly and I squirmed back against the wall, trying to stay out of reach. "The Loyalists do not know I am here. No one knows I am here."

"So?"

"They have Leader."

I chewed on my lip a moment. "It's perfect. They knock me around and then send you in and you do a real about-face and suddenly you want to be pals so we can work together for Perikos' sake and then when you get my trust you twist the knife, just like you did to him. Good cop, bad cop. It's perfect. Wish I'd have thought of it sooner."

"Human! I despise you as you do me and that is unlikely to change. But I love Leader, in spite of his inexperience, his idealism, his hopelessness. His foolishness, his predictability or perhaps I love him because of it. I have spent much of my life by his side, guiding him. I taught him of the rebellion, of the Other Path. I followed him until he was captured the first time and I awaited his return, training his followers and carrying out his orders. I have done everything he has ever asked of me and now he is a prisoner again! He will be killed!"