The twin suns of Sate loomed overhead, blazing the sky with a myriad of whites and brightness. It gave off the feeling of warm heat, but to Terra it felt more like the lashing of a burning whip. It did not help that they were walking through a desert badland surrounded by rocks and sand with no shade, water or life in any direction.

The only good thing about the situation was that Selok, the elemental spider allowed her to ride him, which gave her just enough height to feel the breeze of the wind. It was strong too, which helped her stay cool even with the other hazards beating down on her.

She smiled slightly at the thought as she laid across the spider’s abdomen, thinking of the suns and the journey.

Not that Terra was complaining about her position, far from it.

She was grateful for feeling anything, ever since she had been freed from her... service to the Skiritix.

Though despite that, she still carried their lingering corruption, a perpetual reminder that she was a slave to a horrid race of monsters.

Her body, more insect-like than human or Shandori, felt as alien to her as waking up knowing you have grown twelve years in a day.

Oh and your also part of a hive mind that can steal your individuality at any moment.

She had a carapace instead of skin, her hands only had two fingers and a thumb while her legs and arms were mottled together in what looked very similar to spider limbs.

Her feet were two nubs with protruding hooks, elongated to support weight and fast movement with a small arch spanning behind her knee.

It reminded her of a hound’s hind leg, only vertical and meant for bipedal movement.

She did not need to see her face, she could feel the changes there as well since her mouth was widened to allow her jaw to click with miniature mandibles. It felt so strange, but she could not imagine being able to speak without them.

She was glad that they were inside her mouth rather than protruding outwards.

And her hair… she could not even call it hair anymore. It was molded together like spines rather than hair follicles, and she could move each one individually if she wished.

Even with all these changes, her biggest one still made her scared.

On her back just over her shoulder blades, were two long antennae that jutted outward like small wings, each holding their own webbing and what appeared to be veins.

She remembered staring at the mirror for a long time at the revelation. Her two tendrils that lay on her back seemed trivial compared to the alien appendages. They represented her deepest fear of all, losing herself once more to the Skiritix and their Hive mind.

It was the first time she had come to appreciate what she was, as so much was happening around her when she had been released, she barely had time to register her own emotions.

She was glad for Feor, her Cheruvian friend who lived within her. She had made sense of what she was, and more so what had transpired since she was taken. She even began to start feeling in control again with the help of Sara and Kalra, her Shandorian friend and savior. With both her and Garin, Terra felt safe and stress free.

At least for a while, for shortly after resting on Selok’s back as they trudged east, Terra picked up a twinge on one of her antennae.

She knew it to be a flier as the antenna picked up on a shift of wind and a particular scent. She opened her eyes to reveal a flier closing in on her location straight ahead of her. She felt her instincts claw up, the primordial need to protect and preserve herself take hold as she prepared to combat the unknown flier.

What settled her shortly after was that both Garin and Sara seemed happy by the flier coming towards them, even waving to the creature.

Collecting herself, Terra took her hands and put them up to her face to shield out the sunlight. She recognized wings and feathers just before the creature landed a few yards away from Selok, who also seemed to be as surprised as her.

The creature began hugging Garin, who returned it and laughed as he whispered something to the flyer.

Sara poked at the creature, laughing when she did it, because the creature thought Garin was poking it. Fed up with being in the dark, Terra moved over to the creature, who despite Terra’s changes was still much taller than her.

Granted she was the shortest of them all, standing at four feet nine inches, but this flier towered over her. Seven feet with a purple-bluish hue over her brow, with a flock of feathers for hair, each having a tip of white.

Her mouth was a beak, small and flexible and her eyes, Terra could have sworn they glowed purple when she stared through them.

Noticing her, the flier turned to her after she had acknowledged Garin and Sara. She held the strange medallion that Garin kept on his chest, something he called the All-speak that was given to him by a friend he told her he met when he first woke. The Flier hugged her, startling her at first until she heard the thing speak.

“Metal girl!” it was ecstatic with her, squeezing her tighter and picking her up with ease. “It’s so nice to meet another, Garin told me there was more, but I thought he meant only Sara. Nice to meet you!” She dropped her, which after spinning a few times made Terra feel dizzy and almost lost her footing.

Unable to keep her balance, she fell to the ground on her butt. She felt no pain from the fall, but the dizziness still set in, making her unable to focus.

“Sorry metal girl, too excited. Haven’t seen Garin or Sara since we landed in the giant rock, and knowing they found a friend to keep them company made me happy!”

Terra was almost certain she was speaking to a child, but the creature was clearly older than she was based off of her figure. It made Terra uncomfortable to stare, as the creature carried no clothes on her person.

Realizing the creature was waiting for a response, Terra finally managed to get a word out.

“Who… are you?”

“Oh? I’m Ella.” She stated eagerly.

“Umm, well my name is Terra. Nice to meet you Ella.”

“Yup Yup, I can tell already I’m going to like you.”

Terra was not ready for such a positive response, it threw her off so much that she questioned why she had felt so threatened before when she saw her in the sky.

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She smiled as the creature picked her up with her wing arm and put her back on Selok’s back.

“Terra stay on Selok, he nice Telika, keep you safe.”

Ella walked over to Garin and began to talk to him, her mood improving even more. Terra could not remember feeling so good in such a long time.

She doubted anyone would approach her with her looks, well, besides Garin and Sara, and maybe Selok.

Yet here was the exception flying down from the heavens.

She thought to wish for a warm meal and a flying machine just to see if it might happen. She laughed to herself as the group made their way along a canyon wall, giving them a bit of shade at last. Sara came back to walk alongside Selok as both Garin and Ella moved forward to talk.

“Watcha laughing at?” Sara said as she looked up at her.

“Seems things just get better with you two along. I thought about asking for some things to see if it would happen.”

Sara smiled at that, “there were some things I would ask for too. But I’ll settle for getting out of this desert first.”

“Yeah, the heat’s gone for now, but I doubt this canyon is going to block the suns forever.” Terra enjoyed the shade as much as she could, the wind worked well to make her comfortable.

As her thoughts became relaxed, she remembered something Ella said about Selok. Using her tendril to lock onto Selok she began to speak to the massive spider rock.

“Selok, what is a Telika?”

Selok visible rumbled from the connection, his voice coming through like soft pebbles on a river.

“Selok is Telika. Name given for brethren.”

“So there is more of you?”

“Yes, Selok told others of kind, had forgotten tainted metal one was not told. Selok is Telika, of the earth.”

Hearing herself referred to as the ‘tainted one’ made Terra feel uncomfortable, but it was Selok’s only way of identifying her so she knew it was not for want of hurting her feelings.

“So Telika are rocks?”

“Selok is rock, Telika is many kinds. We differ, we are part of the land. Anything could be Telika.”

Terra began to understand. Selok was a Telika, but it did not mean that there was another like Selok. Of the land… Terra thought of the elements that would make up the land. Earth was certainly one of them, but so was air and water. Terra did not know what Sate could have though so only those seemed to make sense to her. Satisfied she released the link from Selok and turned back to Sara.

“Selok says he is a Telika, I guess it is some kind of elemental but I’m not sure what other kinds exist.”

Sara tilted her head, not looking at her but acknowledging she heard her.

“If they are like Selok, I think we will be okay.”

“What do you think they look like?” Terra turned to lay on her belly as she stared at Sara. Sara put her finger to her mouth and looked to be pondering.

Terra already thought of dragons and watery creatures, but Sara’s response made her confused.

“I think they are more like guardian spirits, so I could see some stone statues being Telika. Standing vigil over the land.”

“That’s boring Sara, where’s your imagination? Hell for all we know they could be human looking.”

Sara got visibly red on her face from Terra’s view, looking like a cherry tomato. “Human, here? I doubt that Terra. Humans came here on ships well after Selok was already moving around.”

“But what if they could change their bodies? They literally could be anything we encounter at all! I wonder if any of Selok’s brothers or sisters can hear us.”

Selok nudged Sara, which was his way of showing that he wanted to speak to her. She used her tendril to create a link, tilting her head in Selok’s direction in quiet contemplation. Nodding a few times, she disabled the link and continued walking.

“Well?”

Sara looked up at her, “well what?”

“What did he say? You can’t just keep things to yourself like that.”

Sara smiled evilly at her and ran ahead to Garin, putting Terra in a fouler mood as she laid on Selok’s back alone.

Now she wondered what Selok had said to her, but she knew better than to pry.

She knew better than to move in on a private conversation.

Still, she wondered what information the rock spider had to offer.

As simple as he sounded when they spoke to one another, Selok carried a sort of ancient wisdom with him.

She felt it every time she talked to the rock being, as though she wasn’t just talking to him, but all of him even back to when he was first brought into being.

She saw it as touching his soul, for it seemed to be the only thing she could use to describe it, but she learned even then that if Selok did not want you to know something, you were just better off trying to find water in a desert before you’d get an answer from him.

She had plenty of experience when she tried to ask him about why he was with Sara and Garin to begin with.

She tried still, meeting with only silence from the creature as he moved to meet up with Garin and the others.

Terra laid back and stretched, letting the heat and wind bring her to a solemn slumber awaiting her friend she knew was inside her mind. It was one of the things she loved about her new self, the Shandori self not the Skiritix part.

Shandori were born, at least according to Garin, from a union between the Cheruvian race and the Humans. They were metallic beings that used symbols to communicate with each other through runes. When they spoke to each other, runes would dance over their bodies and glow with the conversation.

Terra had a good grasp of the language, mostly because her Cheruv was a scholar in her passed life.

She closed her eyes, feeling the connection to her Cheruv. The feeling brought with it a transference, and soon Terra was in a room with a distinctly metal being with floating runes on its face.

Her name was Feor.

Feor sat in a room filled with a glowing green light, books and scroll laid strewn across the large area with Feor’s shining light in its center.

Terra used her tendrils, hopping over the mass of literature to meet her friend.

Terra knew better than to interrupt Feor when she was reading.

It was simply rude to do so.

She knew Feor knew that she was there, but Feor liked to finish what she was reading before she was ready to speak to people. Terra got the feeling that Feor was not a fan of speaking to anyone in her past life, that same tugging of soul she felt with Selok resonated with Feor as well, if only a little.

Rolling her scroll and laying it to the side, Feor seemed to project happiness with her glowing runes. Terra had to imagine a smile on her face as Feor rose to meet her.

“Sister, I just read the most wonderful thing.”

“What was it Feor?”

Feor got nervous for a moment before she spoke, “Well, it... Umm, it was about, well.” She settled herself down, her runes becoming slower as opposed to the jerky movement they had made earlier.

“Your family. It was about what you remembered from them.” Feor smiled at the thoughts as she picked up the tome. She threw it into the air as it shattered into fragments. Terra could see pictures forming around the walls, showcasing her memories of her family.

She remembered them well, Her sisters Anya and Leslie, her mother and father.

They were always the best images she could think of when it came to her loved ones.

They were always tinged with sadness though; Terra knew her family was destroyed when the Cheruv came for them.

She did not hate the Cheruv for what they had done to her, for who they stole from her.

Feor had told her of the great deception made by her leaders.

“Sate punished us for the mistakes of our foolish Overlords, the Cheruvikan. I was their advisor as well at the time, and I had told them they would be condemned for defying her wishes.”

Feor cried in front of Terra when she told her that, metallic water tinted with green streaming down her runic face.

“They laughed at me, told me it was not my place and threw me into a maw of my starving brethren.”

It was as far as she would go when Terra asked what happened after, but it was like it was with Selok.

She knew Feor would tell her when she was ready, but until that moment she would wait for the answer.

But she wasn’t interested in the past, she was interested in Feor.

“Feor what did you think of my family?” She smiled as she asked.

Feor lost her sad look for a moment as she spoke of them, “I enjoyed the part when your mother made you soup for you and your sisters on your birthday. You all seemed so happy, especially when your father came with the gift. What do you call these things?”

She stopped the memory reel on a familiar creation.

“It’s a bike, my father said I should get out more, so he made me a bike for my birthday.”

She smiled as she remembered, the reel starting up once more.

Her family loved that bike too, so much that her sisters went out of the way to make side buggies so they all could ride together.

Terra missed that.

“Feor?”

“Yes Terra?” Feor’s face seemed to be shifting slower, making her seem sincere.

“Did you have family too?”

Feor shook her head, “I never knew of such things. Cheruv were made by the goddess, in her image I was told. Yet,” She paused as her runes slowed in contemplation, “I have many who I would lay down my life for, even though I am not a warrior. I care for them, like you do to your family. Tehran and Kalra, I knew them before, and they are like family… to me.”

Feor smiled at the thought, as she turned to face the memory reel with Terra.

It wasn’t Terra’s memory though, so much as it was Feor’s.

Feor paused the reel before it went any further, but not before Terra could make out two beings in a group of shining creatures. One red and blue, one purple and black. Terra thought of the colors, knowing she had seen them before.

But she didn’t pry Feor for the information, she knew they would speak of it together in time.

Bidding farewell to her Cheruv, Terra drifted to sleep, floating in a sea of images and thoughts as her body rested.