As Paige leaned against the wall she looked at the door to the charnel house from against the wall. She didn’t believe that she had survived Callahin and his beast. But now they had to go back into that horror show they found? All she could do was hope that the others kill that monster instead of having to go into that morgue again!
“Hey. Be calm girl,” Sk’p said softly. “It was terrible, I know that. But hold it together and we’ll honor them all later. It’s the most we can do for them, so keep calm.”
Paige looked up and saw the way he was looking at her. She looked away, a bit ashamed that he had noticed what was wrong with her.
“Is it that obvious?” Paige asked with a soft voice. She hated her weakness, they were just dead bodies. But the way that they were just all around, how they were chained up. It just bothered her that they had been left there to die. She couldn’t imagine just how any being could have let that happen. Or that they could have done that to others on purpose.
“Yeah, but I’ve seen the look before. And I hated every time I did,” Sk’p said, shaking his head in disgust. At the look Jess sent him, he just sighed and shook his head. “I have to say, that was tame considering some of the things that pirates have done. And I once had to compile a report on active pirate fleets. The horrors that have been recorded by survivors or first responders. Some of the worst things I’ve ever read were in that file, even worse than fiction!”
Paige looked at him, feeling the revulsion that he was feeling almost made her throw up then and there. But she kept it down and tried to keep calm. It was only when they all heard the sounds of people talking that she even started to feel better. But it was the feeling of relief and victory that calmed her down.
By the corner to the hallway outside of the hanger, Jinn led the group as the small bugs were on either side of him. Behind him was Jess guarding Sara as Karakpace followed behind them all. But it was the way that Karakpace was looking over his shoulder that made Paige a bit worried. He was feeling not victory, but shock and horror. What could he have seen back there that affected him but didn’t affect the others? It had to have been bad, and something of this world.
But against that, it was nothing compared to the look on Jinn’s face, and his feelings. He wasn’t feeling vigorous, no he was feeling revulsion. He was looking at Paige, with a look that she couldn’t even understand. But the way that his eyes were looking at the door told her all that she needed to know.
With a hard swallow, she pushed off the wall and walked towards the access pad.
The others made it to her and Sk’p, Sk’p grinning as he laughed a little.
“So you beat that thing? Great! Nothing is standing in us claiming this place now!” Sk’p declared with glee.
But the way she felt terror when Jinn shook his head as Jess looked away almost broke Paige then and there. She swallowed and was able to rasp out a single sentence. “No! Don’t tell me it’s alive!”
“It’s dead, but we didn’t kill it. Something else ate it in one gulp when it broke one of the hanger walls. The monster fell into the ocean, then it just….. I can’t even describe what ate it,” Jess said softly.
“Why can’t you describe it? Wait, don’t tell me,” Sk’p said bitterly.
“It was too big. Maybe bigger than this whole ship,” Jinn said softly.
Paige almost went white and threw up as she felt the truth in what Jinn was feeling. That there were creates that big around the island was something that they would need to know.
“That big!? Are you serious!?” Sk’p demanded and he fell back against the wall. He just muttered softly in his tongue, words of horror and protection. Given how people treated faith nowadays, she didn't have the heart to tell him she understood him.
“We’ll deal with that all later, for now, we need to find the others. This place is too much. And I want to see what’s in there,” Jinn said with a hard tone.
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Paige looked at him and then looked away. “It’s terrible, but something that I’d expect from what history says Zeelitrix did.”
“Zeelitrix?! This is one of his ships!?” Jess demanded as Sara gagged in horror.
This a ship of the Pirate Lord Zeelitrix the Butcher!? The monster that killed whole planets!? The person that created the model of the Pirate monster in the films?! The one that led a campaign that killed over twenty plants!? The man that killed over a hundred billion people?! That Zeelitrix?!” Sara demanded horror in her voice and mind. She felt that she was on the edge of passing out, but she kept it together.
It was all Paige could do to nod, and feelings of horror came from them both. Jinn didn’t feel anything, it was like the void. He looked at her with a blank look on his face before a spark of rage came from him. It was hotter than anything that she had ever felt before, and from Jinn she could only read a little, it was scary. And the way they had started to burn with what Sara had said about that pirate. Paige didn't why understand he had reacted that way at all. Didn’t he know about Zeelitrix from history class?
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“Yes, it is. And behind that door is a horror! I don’t know what you expect…..” Sk’p began only for Jinn to hold up a hand.
Jinn looked at the door, his mind elsewhere. The name Zeelitrix was someone that the people who raised them said was a hero. Someone who fought the perverse monsters that dared to take over the Federation. One of the heroes of the last age. So here Jinn was, about to see the truth of another of the lies that he had been taught while he was young and stupid.
“Open it. Please,” Jinn said as he looked at Paige and tried to project all the emotions that he was feeling. He had to know, he had to see this for himself. It was beyond anything that he could ever speak, he had to see the truth.
Paige swallowed and after a moment, she nodded as she walked over. “I won’t look in or go in. I’m not budging.”
Jinn only nodded and with a swallow, Paige touched the Interface Pad. In a moment, the door opened and they all smelled the stink of death.
As he walked in and saw the corpses, Jinn felt bile rise in his mouth. He swallowed and looked around, trying to take stock of this. He had been raised to see that man as a hero, but here was the truth.
“How could anyone do this!?” Jess demanded from behind.
Sara stayed silent and walked by him, taking out an instrument from her pack. “Okay, I can’t give you the time they all died, but I can at least tell you it wasn’t slow, at least for most of them. I’m seeing broken necks all over. And the ones that don’t have other broken limbs. and other marks of death….. I don’t want to talk about those.”
Jinn looked at the bodies near the ones she turned away from and understood. His eyes could see the marks on the bodies around them, the holes that weren’t from wasting away, but from teeth. There were few things that people wouldn’t do to stay alive, and here were many people had seen here. The chances of some of them losing control over their hunger or their desire to stay alive just one more day….. The chances that some would have made that choice weren’t as large as he would have wanted it to be.
He wanted to scream, but then the people who had raised him taught him that survival was all that mattered. But from all the lies that those beings had told him, he was starting to see what they were so long. But one of the beings that he had based his life’s choices on was not one that he had expected to be one of those lies.
Turning around, Jinn walked out the door and nodded at Paige. “Thank you. We’ll get a burial detail set once the others are here. Maybe burning them all? We’ll decide later. Come on.”
As one the others followed after him, but he barely heard their feet. He wanted to scream, but he didn’t. The fact that another part of his childhood was a lie, didn’t matter. All that did was to keep moving forward. They had to get to the others now, and then they needed to talk with Karakpace.
“If that’s it, then I think I’ll be off,” Karakpace rumbled as he fell into step beside Jinn.
Jinn blinked and looked up, seeing the large Insect looking down at him. After a few moments, he nodded reluctantly. “You sure? I’m sure the chief will want to talk to you. Sure we can’t get you to stay here for a few hours?”
“No, I’m sorry,” Karakpace said and looked back towards the hanger. “That thing that ate Callahin’s monster? It’s said to be a species that loves the taste of insects. The crew of my ‘ship’, used a few of the bugs we control to fish. Sometimes we would go out with them. I need to warn them.”
Jinn looked at him and tried to find fault with that but he couldn’t. The fact that Karakpace needed to wad his people, was something noble. And he couldn’t argue, getting something to help their own was why the group was here after all.
“Yeah, you do. But what is that thing anyway?” Jess demeaned from behind.
Karakpace only released a low reverberating growl in the silence of the hallway.
“A horror, one of the stories. Tell that other one that grew up here to tell the Tale of the Ship Breaker. It’ll tell you all you need to know once you hear it. But I must go now,” Krarakpace said as he walked faster ahead of them.
Jinn looked at the big guy before him and nodded. “It was a pleasure to fight by your side. May your departed sleep easier tonight.”
Karakpace released a slow breath and nodded one last time, a note of respect in his stance. “I think my own might come back to talk but stay alive.”
Jinn only nodded as Karakpace took off, running off with his bugs at his heels. In moments had reached the door at the far end of the corridor, his bugs at his side. As the smaller bugs went through the door, Karakpace turned and raised a fist.
Jinn raised his blade above his head before bowing, the old Dualist’s salute. In the distance, Karakpace went through the door and was away.
“So our friend is gone then? Jess's voice asked as Jinn heard displaced air next to him.
Without looking, Jinn nodded. “Yeah, his own need him. I think we’ll need to rethink our plans to fish here. Maybe some robots to make traps below?” Jinn said as he shrugged his shoulders.
“Guess we’ll just see if we can get this place back up and running. Think that big robot was built here? Think we can get anything from the robot remains?” Jess asked.
Jinn only nodded and sighed. “I hope the big thing was built here. That means we can use everything here. That might be the one thing that can save us all.”
“Yeah. So I was talking to Paige. There’s an open door to a cave in the mountains. Might be where that horror of Callahin was hiding. Think we should go and check it out?” Jess asked bluntly.
Jinn looked at her, his eyes wide. He just thought of everything that might be hiding in there. And then there was an even worse possibility that his mind conjured up. The single thing that told him they needed to get into those caves soon. “Yeah, we really do. I just hope that we can last until we can secure it.”