8 – Skychasers

They were, in short, terrifyingly beautiful. Canid-like in form, they had black, iridescent fur that sparkled like stars in the night’s sky, which was not a hyperbole, they really did look like stars. Their large claws were curved, an adaptation that let them easily cling to surfaces to take advantage of the unique gravity of this environment. Their fangs, which were currently bared at us, were well suited to tearing through flesh and hide alike. Ears that rotated and twitched frequently, they constantly took in sounds from their surroundings. Purple eyes that assessed us, determined if we were prey or predator.

There were four – that we could see, which would have been far beyond our ability to handle, had it not been for their relatively diminutive size. They were no bigger than a dog, though that did little to ebb my fears, as I could see the rippling muscle beneath their fur and the hunger in their eyes.

Their silence was what truly unnerved me. They did not growl, or bark, or hiss, or make any number of vocalizations. Yet, they shifted, moved, and spread out as if communicating silently. Their elongated snouts sniffed, memorizing our sent for the imminent hunt.

With one hand I drew a hunting knife – I had found it abandoned while clearing out the Whizzing Arrow – and tapped the blade against my boot. It hummed a tune of severance.

I held my free hand before me, a thick leather glove – purchased on our way out of the colony, just in case we had to handle something we shouldn’t touch – that radiated a feeling of a chivalrous bulwark. There was a presence of a staunch defender guiding that arm, positioning it to intercept and deflect harm. It was the same feeling Kornos gave off when he had come to my aid against the crab.

The first wolf leapt over the edge, sailing through the air in an arc. The others followed soon after.

We dove out of the way, the wolf impacted the ground with a crash, kicking up bits of chipped rock.

A moment later, as I was scrambling to my feet, an impact knocked me down, and I found myself face to fang with a wolf, snarling and spraying me with spittle. My gloved hand moved – of its own accord or through shared instinct, I could not say – and grabbed the leg that had been about to eviscerate me, holding it back. We struggled back and forth for a moment that felt like an eternity before I raised my knife and stabbed it into the wolf’s neck. It easily slid into the hide, the hum of severance dimming as it fulfilled its role.

A small part of my awareness noted that the flecks of foul ichor that sprayed from its wound stung and burned my skin on contact; something to keep in mind.

It did not howl in pain; it did not whimper. Eyes of hate bore into me, though, and I could tell by the tensing of muscles that it did in fact feel pain. It was mute, a silent hunter through and through.

I dragged the knife across its throat, then ripped it out, the serrated edge mutilating the flesh and sinew further, but not before the wolf hook a curved claw into my thigh, ripping out a chuck of flesh and nearly stunning me with the pain.

But I did not relent.

With one more stab, this time in its ribcage, the beast went limp. I shoved it off of me, only to find another already poised to strike. I desperately rolled, barely avoiding a claw from ripping into my side.

A split-second glance showed Kornos having slain one wolf and was already engaged in a dance of fur and steel with the other. He moved as the tide, advancing with a devastating momentum then receding just as quickly before the enemy could initiate a counter attack.

On all fours, my position was not ideal. I faced the beast with a determined focus. In the next moment, it barreled forwards, and I brought my open palm up to bear. Jaws opened wide; I saw the inside of its maw. Two rows of gleaming white teeth served as the gate to a dark abyss. A tongue sprayed cloudy droplets of spittle into the air.

I had just enough time to get to my knees. The moment it entered my reach, I moved. My free hand slapped the side of the beast’s head, diverting it off course, while my knife sliced into its belly. I held my knife firm while the beast’s momentum did the rest of the work for me, slicing it open nearly end to end. It died before it hit the ground.

Dazed, I nearly forgot about Kornos. I turned, then shook my head with a wry smirk. He had already started cleaning off his blade, having slain his opponents seconds before me.

I breathed in the scent of copper and iron – or at least, that was close enough to whatever was in the blood of those beasts – and shuddered.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Is that all of them?” Kornos asked. I sensed the area, then nodded when I found nothing else. “Great.” Then he noticed my wound and immediately came over to start dressing it. I slapped his hand away and told him I’d take care of it myself. He chuckled, then went and organized the corpses and examined them for anything useful while I patched myself up.

The wolf had not torn through anything important, thank the Leviathans. While it did hurt and bled profusely, I was able to clean the wound out with some water and antiseptic. Taking out a needle and thread and a small container of gel, I started by rubbing the wound with the gel, which numbed the pain and stopped the bleeding. I then took the needle and thread and stitched it closed.

I stood and stretched, testing the stitches. They held, so I went and joined Kornos by the row of corpses.

Grass, drenched by ochre blood, sizzled and withered. From my kit, I took out a glass vial and scooped up some of the liquid. I had no idea if it would retain its potency over time, but it was worth collecting. Powerful acids were always useful, thaumatic or not.

The claws and fangs were savage ivory; sharp and tough. Those were harvested as well. The eyes weren’t anything special, but inside of the ear canals we found a plate of hardened flesh riddle with holes. Touching it, I felt how it communicates beyond sound, it listened and spoke in such a high-pitch that only this species of creature could hear it.

My face broke out into a wide grin. When Kornos asked, I told him how much communication-related thaums sold for. He whooped, and I joined in, bumping fists with him. This was our first big score, our first real success. Yes, it had cost us supplies and left us injured, but it was proof positive that our course had a fair chance at leading us to our destination.

“We should name them,” I said. “We have the right to do so, as the first to discover their species.”

It was a point of pride for a lot of Highdiver crews. Any information they could provide to the government would be rewarded, and the information itself would be distributed to other colonies and their Highdiver crews so they would know what they faced if they ever encountered the same beast.

Kornos thought it over for a few minutes, then said, “They live in the sky, a vast field of broken islands that eternally hang in the air, leap vast distances using the incredibly powerful muscles in their bodies, and their coats are like the night sky; midnight black and sparkling like stars.

“Skychasers.”

I nodded. It was a good name.

***

“Ok, hear me out,” Kornos began. We had been workshopping ideas for how to traverse to the next island for the past half hour. The greatest difficulty we faced was the fact that once we entered the next gravity field, we would be faced with a however-many foot drop, and we didn’t have the tools to survive a fall like that.

“Ko…” I trailed off, his tone provoked an instinctive response within me. He was going to suggest something stupid; I felt it in my soul. Fifty-fifty odds whether it was potentially suicidal or just plain dumb.

“What if we tied a rope to a rock, and threw it at the next island, then tied the other end to a tree, then we just climbed?”

I thought about it.

I opened my mouth, then closed it.

***

“This is fucking stupid,” I said. It absolutely was pure idiocy. Objectively so.

“This shouldn’t work,” I protested as I shimmed up/down the rope, the unnatural feeling of both halves of my body pulling in opposite directions causing me to feel dizzy as I passed through into a different gravity zone.

But it did work.

That fact did not please me, no matter how much it benefited us.

“Stop pouting, Vin.”

I refused to stop pouting. A rope and a rock wasn’t the elegant solution I had envisioned. It was like bashing turtle shells with clubs instead of trying to pry the shells off, and yet the idiots waving their big sticks managed to get done before you did.

Leviathans dammit.

We touched down on a similar terrain, trees and grasses and the like. Except for the river.

Cutting right through the island was a stream of pure, crystal-clear water. It weaved between trees and rocks, circled around hills and dips, and eventually led to the edge of the island.

Where it continued through the sky in a roughly tube-shaped stream, headless of altered gravities. It connected some islands while it snaked around others, ignoring them entirely. It looped and weaved over and around itself at times, though it never intersected. Where it stopped and where it began, I could not tell – whether by the illogical nature of Anomalies or simply because I lacked the perspective to see the terminus points.

I reached down and tentatively stuck my hand in the water. No thaums, which somewhat surprised me. I raised it to my mouth and took a sip.

I choaked and fell to the ground.

“VINCENT!” Kornos screamed. He rushed over and grabbed my shoulders, flipping me on to my back.

My eyes were rolled back in my head, my limbs limp. My mouth moved indistinctly, and my throat convulsed.

“Fuck! Fuck! What do I do?!” Kornos panicked. He shook me, then slapped my face.

“Ko…” I croaked out a whisper.

“Vin! Don’t worry, It’s going to be all right!” he sounded desperate, though it felt nice that he cared enough to reassure me.

“Ko…” I repeated.

“Don’t talk! Save your strength! You-”

I cut him off. “You… are such a moron.”

“What?”

My eyes returned to normal, I ‘regained’ control of my limbs. A shit-eating grin found its way to my face.

I hadn’t known where the urge came from, but for some strange reason, I saw the opportunity to pull one over on Kornos, and I just had to take it. Not once had I ever pulled a prank on someone. Not because I hated them myself, but because I just hadn’t found them to be funny.

“Oh, you bastard,” he swore and punched me. Despite the pain, because it very much hurt, I ended up doubled over laughing.

But now, the look on Kornos’s face was pure comedy in my eyes. I saw the last vestiges of panic and grief overridden by irritation and mischief. I would treasure it, and whether I realized it or not at the time, it now was yet another piece of what made me, me; a sophic experience.

When I recovered, I saw him with a predatory grin of his own. A shiver ran down my spine. I felt like a stunned mullet. But my grin remained.

Worth it.