Alien Barbarian’s Little Human

13. Varona

CHAPTER 13

VARONA

M y wings spread out like twin shadows of death. Below me, the city is burning, chaotic rioting and full on battles between the Coalition and the Alliance are everywhere.

The first group below me is one such battle. Some have military grade weapons, which they use without discretion. Rage boils inside of me as a Vakutan uses a high powered plasma caster and misses his target, but takes out the entire first floor of an art gallery.

Some of those works date back to the earliest Ishani history. Our past and present are in flames. If I want to douse the future, I must act now.

I don’t bother flaring my wings as I descend. I hit the Vakutan full speed right on top of his head with both feet. We collapse in an ungainly pile, his deadly weapon flying out of his grasp and skittering across the ground.

Legendary Vakutan toughness means he’s still alive, even with a fractured spine. He tears into me with tooth and claw, as he has no other weapon. I respond in kind, raking long strips of his scaled flesh off. Blood flows from both of us, mingling together in a pool on the ground.

I will not let them destroy my home! No matter what it takes.

I get my hands around his throat. The spike protruding from my palm digs into his flesh. He gives up all thought of intelligent defense and grabs my wrist with both hands, struggling to breathe.

Something moves inside of my wrist. It almost feels like a splinter moving around beneath my skin. I flex muscles in my forearm and the feeling subsides, coinciding with a wet gurgling from the Vakutan.

My hand grows wet. I pull away from him, and gape at the protrusion in the middle of my palm. It looks as if a jagged piece of bone has thrust its way out of my skin. What’s happening to me?

“He killed Raomchez!”

I turn to see another Vakutan, this one with yellow scales, staring at me with mounting rage. His fellows are still fighting the Coalition, but his focus is not squarely on me.

“I thought you Ishani were all about peace,” he says, ejecting a spent magazine from his rifle and slamming in a new one.

“You dare speak to me of peace, while waging war on my homeworld?”

“The Flame Kissers started this,” he snaps. “We came in peace. But now, it’s you who are going in pieces!”

He pulls the trigger. I try to take flight, but the battle with the dead Vakutan has left my wings damaged. I take the full brunt of the automatic weapons fire in my torso. A scream rips out of my mouth. The agony! Half of my insides have been blasted away.

I look down at the hole in my center. An Ishani song bleats from my throat, a song of healing. It’s an instinct all Ishani have, to try and recover from grievous injury.

But the song is twisted. Black. It sounds ugly and guttural. I feel the pain lessen, so I know the healing song is working. But not as it should.

“Impossible,” the Vakutan gasps, still squeezing the trigger of his spent rifle.

My torso has healed, but now dozens, if not hundreds, of sharpened bone spurs jut out of my skin. I reach down and touch one of them, and my finger comes back bloody.

The Vakutan slaps another magazine into his rifle.

“Nice trick, can you do it twice?”

He squeezes the trigger. The projectiles flare from his gun, but they cannot penetrate my new layer of bone armor. I dart forward, moving faster than I ever have in my life. I grab the gun and rip it away from him. Along with the limb holding it.

The Vakutan falls to his knees, mouth open wide as his life’s blood pours from his gory stump. My claws rake across his throat, putting him down like the animal he is.

A terrible sound fills the air. Laughter born of the sheer joy of slaughter. It takes me several moments to realize it’s coming from my mouth.

The other Alliance soldiers have taken note of me. They turn their weapons my way, but that leaves them exposed to the Coalition forces. Gunfire rains down on their position. Many stray shots strike my hide, piercing the flesh but reflecting off the bone spurs.

I do not even have to sing as my body knits itself back together. I’m changing, and not just physically. Urges I have never known before beat at my mind and soul. I want to destroy, to slay, to dominate.

“Cease fire,” cries a Grolgath, apparently some kind of officer. He holds up his hand and looks at me with the most puzzled expression.

“What is that, Captain?” asks a three-eyed Shorcu.

“I don’t know. I think it’s an Ishani, but it’s…hurt.” The Captain tilts his head to the side as he continues to stare at me. “Whatever it is, it’s not the enemy. Let’s move out and find some more Alliance scum to kill.”

“You are very wrong,” I growl. “I am your enemy. In fact, I am the last enemy you will ever know.”

The captain sneers, shaking his head in disgust.

“You need to find a medic and stop courting death, you foolish Ishani.”

“Are you sure that’s an Ishani?” asks the Shorcu. “I mean, look at his eyes, and those bones thrusting out of his skin like a thousand barren trees.”

I take a step toward them. A half dozen guns train my way.

“If he moves another inch closer, shoot him,” the Grolgath captain commands.

I grin, and take a step closer. All six of them inundate me with gunfire. My left leg is nearly severed in half, my wings in tatters, but I do not fall.

I feel a familiar painful heat spreading through my leg. I’m not surprised to see bone spurs forming where the injuries were the worst. My ruined wings drag the ground behind me, leaving streaks of blood as I charge their ranks.

Before anyone can reload, I’m on top of the captain. I grab the end of his rifle and tear it out of his grasp by the still warm barrel. He only has time to scream before I slam the butt of the rifle atop his scaled head. A wet crunch fills the air, and his eyes roll back into his head.

“He killed the captain!” shouts one of the Coalition. “Waste him!”

I turn and throw the rifle at him with ferocity that no Ishani has ever displayed. It spins through the air and then the barrel thrusts directly through his eye socket. The Grolgath sways unsteadily on his feet, then collapses to the ground.

“Shoot him!” cries the Shorcu. He tries to carry out his own order, but I grab another soldier and use him as a living shield. The Grolgath in my hands shakes and sputters as he takes the full brunt of a clip-emptying barrage. A couple of shots make it through his body, but they do little to my rapidly devolving body.

I throw what’s left of the Grolgath at the shooter, knocking him flat. The other coalition soldiers try to flee. I chase them down one by one and end their miserable lives. Joy spreads through my being as I slay them.

Some tiny part of my mind that remains pure Ishani is horrified at what I have become. But it is only a small piece of me, now. My city still burns. I must find all of the aliens destroying our homeworld and put an end to them.

And I will enjoy every second of it.

I can no longer fly, but I can still run. Only, I move so slowly with my dead wings dragging behind me. Reaching up behind my shoulders, I grab the wings by the roots and tear them out. The pain is horrific, but I hear myself laughing at the sheer brutality of it all.

My wings now lie on the ground behind me. I stumble forward and fall, in even worse pain than when I was shot. The wounds begin to heal, growing long, curving bone spikes where the wings once were. Good. I have more weapons with which to eviscerate my enemies.

I roam the city streets for hours, slaying everything that I encounter. I do not know where my folk are. Perhaps they are hiding, or in the midst of evacuation. All I know is, I must punish those who have destroyed our beautiful home.

And I thoroughly enjoy doing it.

At last, I find myself in the rubble that used to be the council chambers. It resembles half of an open air stadium now, the roof blown away and the walls largely collapsed. The reflecting pool in the center is now stained red with blood.

I catch a glimpse of a hideous monster in the pool. Recoiling in horror, I see that the monster acts just as surprised and abhorred as I…

Until i realize it is my reflection. I am the monster. I drop to my knees, staring into the water at the horror I have become. My features are sharp, feral. The bone spurs jut out of my body, most of them dripping with the blood of my slain enemies.

I am no longer Ishani. I have become death itself.

“Varona?”

The sound of Chloe’s voice makes me start. I slowly rise to my feet, but I do not turn around.

“Do not come any closer, Chloe.” My voice is a vicious rasp of barely contained homicidal rage. “I am not feeling…myself.”

“Varona, what happened? You left me all alone. Where are your wings?”

I turn to see her, and she gasps, hand flying in front of her face. Yet, I can see the recognition in her blue eyes. She knows it is me. Chloe is my jalshagar. She knows my soul even if my body is changed.

But I wonder, is my soul intact? Or is it just as monstrous and twisted as my physical form?

“Chloe, I love you.”

Saying the words helps me feel more grounded. Staring into her azure eyes fills my heart with joy rather than the violence of slaughter. All of the sudden, my problems don’t seem so insurmountable.

It doesn’t matter what my body looks like. All that matters is our love, and the soul we share.

“Varona?” She takes a cautious step back as I approach.

“Don’t flee, my love. I would never hurt you. Never.”

My voice sounds more like its old self. Something shifts in my skin, and it seems like the bone spurs are receding, growing smaller. My clawed hands grasp for her.

Chloe stops her retreat. I can’t hold back any longer. I surge forward and wrap her in my embrace. It feels so good to hold her in my arms again.

“Chloe, my love, let us be gone from this place while I still have some measure of sanity.”

Her response is a rasping, choking sound. I pull out to arm’s length and stare into her wide eyed expression. A line of blood leaks out of the corner of her mouth.

“Chloe, are you injured, my love?”

My gaze drops downard, and my heart shatters. Her uniform has soaked through with dark blood, its fabric perforated dozens of times. When I embraced her, I impaled her with my spikes. How could I have been so careless?

Gasping, she suddenly collapses. I catch her, lowering her gently to the ground. I try to apply pressure to stop the bleeding, but once I staunch the flow in one area, it begins anew somewhere else.

Desperate, I try to sing the song of healing. Only, my voice comes out as a guttural, harsh snarl. The power is gone. I cannot sing her back to health.

“No, Chloe…do not die! Please!”

“Varona,” she gasps, blood foaming at her lips. “I…forgive…”

Her head lolls to the side, eyes wide open and staring. I have lost a piece of my soul. The unbearable pain rips a primal scream from my throat. I only stop the screaming long enough to drag more air into my lungs before I begin keening again.

“I win again, Gog.”

That voice. I’ve never heard it before in my entire life, but I know it. I know it from forgotten nightmares of twisted flame. Slowly, I lift my head and see an Ataxian standing there. Half of his head is missing. I can see the exposed brain matter, yet somehow he still stands, still lives and speaks.

His eyes are mirrored, like metal. Cybernetics? Is that how he stands there while in such a physically ravaged state? It doesn’t matter. I only hope he kills me and ends my suffering. I do not wish to live without Chloe.

“I took a less direct approach this lifetime,” he says, even though I have not responded. “Instead of doing the deed myself, I have manipulated events to perfection. Not only will your progeny never be born, but your cursed kind are exterminated.”

“Your words make no sense. Kill me, or leave me to my grief.”

I turn and embrace Chloe’s body. It is still warm. If not for the blood on her face, she might almost be sleeping.

“No need to kill you. You are no threat, until you are reborn, Gog.”

“Again you call me by a name that is not my…own.”

Gog. Yes, I was Gog! It’s all coming back to me. Micah. My love was named Micah. And she had the same sky blue eyes as Chloe.

I rise to my feet, staring at the strangely half dead thing in shock.

“I see that you now comprehend who I am, and who you used to be. That is good. I enjoy the idea of your suffering right before the end.”

Screaming, I charge the monstrosity and tear it limb from limb, my violence fueled by rage and despair that knows no equal. Somehow, it’s still alive, even when the severed head rolls across the ground. The head looks up at me and smiles.

“I win again, Gog,” it says in a thin, reedy voice. “You may kill this body, but I will return in the next life. And I will slay your jalshagar again, and again, and again, throughout the eons, until the Galaxy itself grows cold and fades into darkness.”

I stomp on the head, squishing it to jelly. Then I return to my Chloe and hold her close.

“I’m sorry, my love. I’m sorry. I did not remember. I did not remember the first time we met, in another life. I’m so sorry.”

Tears roll down my cheeks as the ground rumbles. A massive fissure splits the ground a dozen paces away. Molten rock spews forth in a geyser, stretching up toward the heavens.

The Ishani homeworld is dying. No, it’s already dead. These are its death throes. I watch as the curtain of magma curls over like a breaking wave, descending toward me and Chloe. I make no move to escape.

“I will find you, my love,” I rasp as the magma descends. “I will find you in the next life, and this time I will not fail--”

The wave hits, searing away my skin. It only hurts for a moment, and then I surrender to the sweetness of oblivion.