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That’s not salt falling from the leaves.
Those aren’t the whispering voices of my family.
That’s not salt falling from the leaves.
Those aren’t the whispering voices of my family.
Chio repeated the two phrases silently inside her head as the weird salt substitute continued to spill from the branches to the left, and the voice of her mother told her in hushed tones to, ‘come to the right, there’s a vending machine with all the snacks you liked as a kid.’
Obviously, it wasn’t real.
This was an alien forest, on an alien planet with a name that sounded like a drunk clearing their throat, which meant the salt-like stuff was probably the xeno equivalent of tree dust, and the voice of her mother…hmm…probably a native predator, like a hyena, attempting to lure her into the shadowy foliage so it could more conveniently devour her meat.
She knew all this.
Yet the voice in particular sounded so convincing, so accurate in some of the temptations it described, that, after tripping on a turquoise plant root which looked like a giant’s leg vein, she crawled close to the edge of the path and called out, ‘where are you, mum? How did you get here? When?’
There was silence for a moment or two, relative silence punctuated by the sounds of salt-substitute shaking free of the canopy on the other side. Then the voice answered back.
‘I’m so close to you, Chio. Just crawl a little further.’
Jun.
It knew her name.
But…it couldn’t be. Her mum was dead. Wasn’t she?
‘Where exactly are you?’
‘So very close.’
‘Where?’
‘Just a little bit further.’
Chio pulled herself up onto her knees, scanning the gaps between the tightly packed trees. Or she assumed they were tightly packed as it was too dark and shadowy to see too far in. But it was a fair assumption. It’s not like a forest changed its topography that dramatically after twenty metres or so. If topography was the right word. She didn’t know, couldn’t remember. But there was one other thing she was sure of, a word the thing kept using that her actual mother would have scolded it for.
‘I should crawl further in?’ she asked the dark, shivering a little when she saw two white orbs appear to the right, about ten, fifteen metres in.
‘Yes, further in. Come. I can take you to the vending machine, all your favourite snacks.’
‘Further?’
‘Yes, further in, a little bit-…’ The voice cut off suddenly, replaced by the salt spilling in the background. That sound continued for around ten seconds before the voice tagged back in. ‘I am very close, Chio. Please, come to me. Just a little farther in.’
Keeping eyes fixed on the hovering orbs, Chio pulled herself up onto her feet and back into the middle of the path, where she assumed it was safe.
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‘Why don’t you come here to me?’ she asked, pointing at the reddish soil next to her feet. ‘Or is that against the rules?’
‘I am tired. You come over here, help your mother to walk.’
Chio breathed out, kicking a small hill of red soil with her shoe, then flinching when some of it spilled through the hole at the front.
Broken for half a year and now she’d never be able to get it fixed. Jun. This whole thing was a joke. This forest, the fake thing that may have been telepathic trying to pass itself off as her dead mother. If this were an alley back home, in Dah Heen, she’d be pulling a knife out of her jacket pocket and bracing herself for a fight, but…for some reason…here, right now, she wasn’t prepping to defend herself at all. Cos she didn’t feel scared in the slightest. Well, maybe at first, when the voice had started, but now she was just irritated.
‘You do know my mum is dead…right?’ she said, basically yelling it right at the two floating orbs, which were dimming a little now.
‘That is not true, Chio. I came here, through the portal.’
‘And have been living in a forest, off vending machine snacks, for the last eleven years?’
The sound of Chio’s words spread out into more silence as the two dimming orbs blinked out completely, followed by a rumbling noise that sounded kind of like Sataan’s stomach after eating too much Old Sichuan food.
‘Too tough for you, mum?’
Chio stretched out her shoe, shaking off some of the excess red soil that had layered itself on top, refusing to disappear down the torn fabric hole.
‘Good. Jun off. And don’t ever try to play act as my mum again, or I will come closer and then you’ll be-…’
The line died on its ass as a blackened charred mess launched itself out of the shadows towards her position, with long appendages that may have been limbs reaching out to grab hold of her head.
Chio had zero time to react and, as a result, did exactly that. Nothing. For about half a second. Then her left arm shot up, spraying out green, micro-flash grenades at the attacking force.
Or that’s what it looked like from her perspective.
But then, after almost tripping backwards over the same blue root she’d tripped on a minute earlier, rationalism returned in the form of a shrieking megaphone inside her brain, stressing that it wasn’t occult magic in her fingers, it was a kind of forcefield protecting her from the carnivorous natives deeper in the forest.
That was a sound theory, and it became even sounder as she hurried forward along the path, pursued by the burnt-octopus type creature throwing twigs at the invisible barrier, calling her names that sounded way too weird to be accurate translations – Clovic shaft, lizard ruin, witch-eyed cyprilune etc. – insisting that she didn’t know what she was doing, that soon she will have wished that she’d gone off the path and into its bosom cos the Krezzak would take its sweet time devouring her, and Chio tried her best to block it all out, but the creature was persistent, Krezzak, Krezzak, Krezzak, whatever the jun that was, and there was still an antecedent part of her that wanted to dive right and rip the annoying little jun kut sei to shreds for daring to impersonate her mother.
Luckily, there was another, saner part at the helm, reminding her that the barbequed xeno-thing to the right was actually quite large, and most likely had years of killing experience, whereas she’d only-
Keep Going.
The new voice that had just cut in from somewhere, nowhere, fluidic space, Hell itself was both enthusiastic and tinny, and hit her at the same time as the jet of green gas from the tree trunk she’d been rushing past.
She stopped, raising her arms up in defence.
Stay on the right path.
Chio looked right, through the green gas residue, squinting at the space where the barbequed creature had been loitering a few seconds earlier.
It was gone.
Permanently?
There was no answer, mainly cos it wasn’t a spoken question, though whatever that electronic voice thing was decided to add something anyway.
You can do it.
It was weird. There was no sign of any equipment or wired device in the surrounding trees, yet the voice sounded like it was coming from very close by. Perhaps a mosquito orbiting her head, carrying a microphone?
She checked again, covering all the air particles in the immediate vicinity [or trying to, at least].
Okay, if it had been an alien mosquito, it was well-cloaked. And it didn’t really matter anyway. The voice had scared away the creepy predator, which was clearly a good thing. And, for whatever reason, it appeared to be set on encouraging her. Just like Trig before her fights. Though that was tempered by the fact that he’d talked her into them in the first place. And refused to pay for the medical treatment after the last one. Jun. She’d even had to fork out credits for the bandage. What a-
Don’t look back, only forward.
This time the voice came out sharper, with a reverb on the end word that was so shrill it knocked her off balance. As in physically off her feet and rolling down a slope that she hadn’t seen coming at all.
Stay on the path, stay on the path, stay on the path, stay on the-
The words spun along with her body, stopping when the slope ended and her body flew forward into unmapped space.
Please nothing pointy, please nothing pointy, please nothing pointy, please nothing poi-