CHAPTER SIX
Lezura and Joey had their meal of fruits and cossik meat. Once the mynamather had rested up, Lezura fashioned a saddle of matted leaves and sticks and tied it around the animal with vines.
Lezura wore a blouse of red and green leaves with the right shoulder matted with the leaves of the gopto tree. Her shorts were also from thick leaves and vines.
So she allowed Joey to discard his merino and put on her blouse. Lezura put on her utility belt along with her spear. Joey wrapped the bag with the bows on the rear side of the mynamather and climbed up to his seat behind Lezura.
Once they had the mynamather in a stroll, Joey bombarded Lezura with questions.
“So are all nycarmans faeries?” he said.
“No,” said Lezura, “only a very few. One obtains the Faery Path depending on the gene they inherited.”
“Gene?” Joey said.
“The innate ability to absorb energy from the surrounding environment,” said Lezura. “It is what you would call nature energy, or mana.”
“So what’s different from a nycarman and a faery?” said Joey, popping in a sweet and sour, yellow hespi berry in his mouth.
Lezura said, “A faery can alter the shape of their body’s appearance, where as a normal nycarman cannot unless using special devices. I can use my honoi to copy the skin color and texture of another sentient species, which is how I transformed into a human. A faery can also manipulate the size of his or her body to shrink. But this can only be done with organic matter.”
“You mean fleshy stuff?” said Joey.
“Yes,” said Lezura, pleased to know Joey wasn’t as stupid as he appeared to be, “which was why I had to shed those clothes. Even my braces are organic.”
“And the healing with the honoi?” said Joey.
“I would not say it is only limited to faeries,” Lezura said, “but faeries can do it easier.”
“What else?” Joey said hastily like he was hurrying to go somewhere.
“We have a lifespan stemming hundreds of years,” said Lezura.
Joey’s expression changed to astonishment. “You’re hundreds of years old?”
“No,” said Lezura, “I am twenty-three, actually…”
“What other powers do you have?”
Lezura turn to Joey and exhaled glittery dust in his face.
Joey unwillingly inhaled the daisy smelling stuff, and found his eyelids were getting heavy and his muscles getting weak. He lifted a hand to touch Lezura, but all of a sudden it felt like weights were tied to it.
“Lezura…” Joey droned, and the last thing he remembered was falling on Lezura’s shoulder before blanking out.
When Joey woke up he was still behind Lezura on the mynamather. His memory was still fresh, and he reckoned he probably just dozed off. But the sudden loss of consciousness was too startling nonetheless.
“What the hell did you just do, Lezura?” Joey said sharply, making Lezura’s ears cringe.
“You do not have to shout, Joey,” Lezura said, her tone lightened when she said; “I can produce a sleep inducing chemical from a gland beneath my tongue.”
It crossed Joey’s mind to make a joke about Lezura’s breath, but let it drop in case Lezura knocked him out again—with her fist. “So how long was I out for?” Joey said.
“About three minutes,” said Lezura.
“Wait,” Joey said, “It just crossed my mind, why didn’t you just use that on our monster-horse in the first place?”
Lezura said, “The ratio of my body determines the amount of sleep glitter and honoi I am able to produce,” she said. “So I collected some of the chemical and wrapped it up in the leaves. Do not confuse it with the one I used to stun the mynamather with the one I use knock out those police officers, though, that—”
Joey giggled.
“What is it,” said Lezura.
“It’s just that,” he said, “first you’re a purple elf, and now you’re a faery. What else do they have on this place, werewolves?”
Lezura kept quiet, thinking maybe it wouldn’t be wise to tell Joey all about the orderrans as yet. She said, “Your species never believed such things existed. Now, you are the first human to ever see one, but I would not be too arrogant about that either?”
“Why?” said Joey.
“The possibility exists that aliens had been using the rift for a long time now,” said Lezura. “It is plausible that during the thousands of years ago in your people’s history, aliens from other worlds might have come to the planet whether accidently or intentionally through the rift.”
“You could be right,” Joey said. He hugged Lezura. “This is so awesome! I’m talking to an alien faery!”
“Please Joey, do not squeeze me so hard,” she said, “Your fingers gave me bruises.”
“Sorry; my little faery,” Joey said.
“You should not be one to call people ‘little’,” Lezura said, grinning silently at what was next to come.
And as Joey snapped into a hysterical chorus about why he was short and others tall, Lezura’s ears picked up on some unusual sound patterns. She hushed up the human.
“What?” said Joey, “You don’t like the fact that—?”
When Joey saw Lezura give him a smoldering stare hot enough to form diamond from coal, he knew something was serious. He reached on the back of the mynamather for the weapons, handed Lezura the bow and arrow and took out his baseball bat.
The footsteps still continued around her. Lezura got off the mynamather, dropped her goggles over her eyes and readied her bow. Joey got off and followed her. The mynamather became restless, pacing around and grunting.
“What’s near us?” said Joey.
That question was gladly answered by parts of the green bushes breaking off and running at them, exposing themselves to large quadrupeds with longs snouts and green and yellow stripes on their bodies. Salivating mouths with large fangs and crazed, yellow eyes of bloodlust were the things about the gufders that stuck out the most about them.
“Gufders!” shouted Lezura, snapping off a shot at one of them right in the chest. The blow flipped the gufder in mid-air and it fell with a heavy thud.
Joey let of go of the mynamather’s reigns and yanked the bat off his back, swinging it into the nearest snarling animal. The blow stopped it only momentarily and it came snapping back at him.
Lezura avoided a swipe of a gufder’s four-clawed paw, pivoted on her heel and whacked the animal in the head with her bow. It staggered at the blow, but spun around and leaped at her again, slashing her across the upper-arm.
The mynamather tried to make a run for it but only got a few feet before the gufders surrounded it. The mynamather kept them at bay with its swinging tusks and striking hooves. The predators paced around their large prey. Dark blue quills on their backs and shoulders bristling with excitement like a bunch of college jocks circling a helpless freshman girl.
Lezura contested two gufders, knowing they were taking their time to tire her out with repeated blows until she was exhausted enough for them to finished her off.
She lunged at the nearest one, it side stepped her but Lezura anticipated it and fired a Blueburst into its trunk. As the gufder toppled over with a tight squeal the other one pounced on Lezura. She raised her forearm and the gufder sank its teeth into it. Lezura screamed, tears brimming her eyes. The other gufders saw that one of the preys was wounded sufficiently and switched targets.
Joey smacked away the gufder before him with a blow to the head. The animal’s skull cracked and it went limp.
Joey ran in the way of the three gufders heading for Lezura. He threw himself into one of the animals and wrestled it to the ground—which was a very stupid thing. Not only were the gufders now on Joey, but some of the quills from the gufder had stuck into his flesh.
The gufders took point, one snapping onto Joey’s trouser foot while the other bit into his ankle. Joey repeatedly slapped the one he had in a chokehold with his bat awkwardly, screaming in rage at his victim and the pain the others inflicted on him.
The other two gufders left the mynamather and went for the easier prey on the ground. Lezura plucked an arrow from the holster on her back and with a fluid, quick motion she slipped it into the gufder’s left eye and felt it thud in the back of its skull.
But its fangs were stuck in her flesh, and its dead weight dropped Lezura as well.
Lezura fired a Blueburst at one of the gufder’s heading for Joey. It missed. But something else found its mark.
A short arrow skewered the gufder from out of nowhere. It fell into a harsh roll, twisting into a heap of mangled limbs.
The foliage around them erupted with huge beasts, carrying people on their backs in loose green and brown garments. Even in the chaos and near death Lezura noticed that some of them were largaphs and rapturans.
She saw one of them lift a crossbow in green hands at a startled gufder. A barrel in the center of the bow rotated and three arrows slapped out into the gufder’s chest, puncturing its heart. It was a circus of thrashing gufder bodies all around Joey as his attackers were made pincushions of.
Lezura took the opportunity to pry the gufder’s jaws from off her arm, gritting her teeth as she did. As she got to her feet and hurried over to Joey, they both saw the people on their four-legged beasts encircle them, effectively blocking off the sunlight.
“Besi ni’jipap ade uuch!” said a voice.
Joey yelped as he yanked three quills out of his shoulder. “What?” he said.
“Someone wants them to give us some space,” said Lezura.
The group stepped back. Lezura helped up Joey. He kicked a nearby gufder. With his bat firmly clenched he observed the animals breathing around him.
They had some resemblance to mynamathers, only their bodies were more bulky, they were short and their legs narrowed from thick shoulders and thighs to stand on two toes with a the third being some kind of blunt claw. The tail was flat and broad with a pointed end. The animal’s neck was short and its snout long, with a blue-beaked tip that went in segments on the edges of the lower jaw. The two eyes on each side were close, dark and beady. There were small tusks on the jaw that pointed outward and membranous feathers on the shoulders and neck with blue and green patterns that glowed in the sunlight. While the animal’s body was greyish-blue with green and brown waves and ridges, its underbelly was a cream color.
The people approached the nycarman and the human off their animals. They were of various height, and body builds and species. And in their garbs and their weapons firmly held they exuded and aura of no-nonsense purpose to Joey.
He recognized a few of the largaphs, thanks to the painting Lezura showed him, though some had skin color with more brown or some yellow added with it.
But he also saw blue-skinned people with circular orange eyes, and those with reptilian features; scaly green skin, slit-like pupils in their yellow eyes and snout that was short enough to be a face with a few teeth sticking out the sides. They also had short, bristly red hair.
“Who are they?” Joey whispered, eyes darting at each face, and found them looking at him with equal curiosity.
“I am not sure,” said Lezura, “but they must live in the area. Please, Joey, do not do anything stupid.”
But Joey wasn’t going to anyway, as a few of them had crossbows trained at he and his companion.
Joey saw a tall largaph man with a slender face unsheathed a thin, curved sword from his hip. He neared a gufder that stilled squirmed the last of its miserable life on the ground. He flipped the sword in his fingers to an upward position, and brought it down, slicing off the gufder’s head.
The man wiped the sword on the animal’s hide as he stared at Joey with steady eyes; even as he sheathed the sword he didn’t move them.
Joey got a challenging vibe from the man, and eyed him back with an acknowledging lift of his head.
From the crowd a person approached them. Like a few of them she wore a dark brown, crusty trousers and long-sleeved tunic with the ends tightened with strings. Over it she wore a dusty looking cloak with leafy patterns and tattered ends. And on her feet were simple sandals of leather and plant matter.
Even though she was a bronze-skinned largaph, and lacking the hair like Lezura and pointy ears, Joey still found her good looking; lofty with bright brown eyes on her narrow face. Her clothes fitted over her nicely to show those nice curves in her waist.
She stopped and threw the hood back off her head, showing pink patterns on her head plates.
“Ma’yi dua yuh namidi?” she said.
Joey figure she just asked who they were. Lezura even confirmed it when she whispered it to him, and she quickly replied, “Jipap dua woandroi…”
The woman’s expressionless face nodded. She turned her eyes to Joey, and when he flinched she smiled just a little bit. “Ma’yi dua-a di dre-dis ishin yuh?” said the woman.
Lezura gestured to Joey and said, “Dis dua-a Joey Sadowski. Dre dua-a human.”
The man with the slender face said, “Dre awike ekeho wan orderran…” And he spat near Joey’s feet.
When Joey was about to respond to the obvious insult the woman before him turned to the man and said, “Yuh…Muto!”
The man frowned, and said, “Bia—”
“Muto…” she woman said more sternly.
“That’s right, you little b—awww!” Joey was stopped with a stomp on his toe from Lezura.
Lezura and the woman found themselves looking at each other, and realizing what just happened they both smiled and laugh.
The largaph woman said, “Dwont dre michat Jipap igris?”
Lezura shook her head and said, “Ne,” she turned Joey and said in English, “he does not speak our language, yet.”
Lezura looked at the woman and the people around her. She looked back at the woman and said, “Temelo mi besi dre-ta sinting?” and she patted a pocket on her belt.
The woman looked at the men, saw that they were ready to shoot at any sign of trouble, and turned to Lezura and said, “Yuh temelo.”
Lezura took out a translator from her pocket. It was black, oval shaped and with a soft tip and a white cap with a blue half-ring.
“Do you guys mind filling me on what you’re all chatting about?” said Joey, touching a quill on his upper arm and considering yanking it out right now.
“I asked her if I could give you this translator,” said Lezura, pressing a button on the device and listening to a soft beep. She put it in Joey’s left ear and said, “There. Now, tell me, what does the word ‘vri’ mean?”
Joey could hear the word in clear English in his ear. “Yes,” he said. “It means ‘yes’!”
“Good,” said Lezura happily.
The woman said to Joey, “Can you understand me, alien?”
“Vri!” said Joey.
“Good,” said the woman. “Now I would kindly like to know what you two are doing out here?”
Joey looked at Lezura, signaling for her to do all the smart-talking. Lezura said calmly, “My friend and I were trying to outrun some orderrans—”
The people around them looked at each other and murmured, but Lezura could here all of what they were saying.
“They were running from orderrans?” said one.
“That means they must’ve pissed off the orderrans!” said another.
“Who the hell are these people?”
“And what’s up with the short thing next to the pretty lady?”
Lezura heard Joey growl next to her.
The woman lifted a hand and silence followed.
“We should just kill them,” said the tall man.
The woman scowled and said, “I said be quiet, Podge…”
Podge looked away with a defeated face. “Don’t give them my name…”
The woman said to Lezura, “Your story doesn’t really make any sense. You say that alien is a human; how did he get here?”
Obviously through the void! Lezura wanted to say, but she used her manners and said, “My dear lady, please understand that our situation right now is very fragile. We have to maintain some level of secrecy at the moment for our own good. But believe me when I tell you that we are not your enemies.”
“That isn’t the right answer,” said the woman. And with a snap of her fingers more crossbows were lifted and the people took three steps closer.
“Holy f—” Joey waved his arms before him to block the potential arrows. When none didn’t some he said, “Lezura?”
Lezura sighed heavily, staring at the emotionless and steady eyes of the woman. She knew this woman wasn’t about jokes and sneaking around. Lezura said, “Fine, you want the truth, then we shall give it to you…”
Lezura grabbed Joey, lifted the compass from under his shirt and showed it to the people.
Gasps rippled among them, and Joey could have sworn he saw one of the animals put a hoof to its open beak.
“That is the key!” said a bewildered reptilian man with lime green skin. He approached Tylin’s side to get a closer look at the key. Joey became wary of the man’s huge size, a little over six foot and in a suit like Tylin’s, but dark green with brown on the chest and a blue green cloak. “If he possesses it—”
“Then he must be the Rakai,” said Podge, but he didn’t seem as awed as the rest—more irritated actually.
The woman said with a steady voice, “You people need to tell us what exactly is going on. But not here, you’re coming with us back to our camp.”
“What?” Podge said. “Are you crazy? The orderrans are after them. If we bring them back to our camp we will lead the orderrans back to the others!”
“If we do not,” said the rapturan, “then we might have left the Rakai and his Chevalier to die here and we did nothing about it…”
“Okay,” said the woman. “We’ll decide this back at the camp.” She turned to Podge. “That’s final.”
Podge looked at her cynically. He turned his eyes on Joey, hissed through his teeth and stepped back.
“Thank you,” said Lezura.
“I didn’t do you any favors,” said the woman. “I’m just trying to get a grip on a situation before it spirals out of control and affects us. I’m not even sure if that’s the real key, and I need someone to confirm it.”
The woman turned around and gestured to someone at the back. He came walking up with their mynamather by the reigns.
“Aw man,” said Joey, “I thought Redbolt got away.”
Lezura turned to Joey. She said, “Redbolt?”
“Yeah,” said Joey. “That’s what were goanna call him.”
“Please come with us,” said the woman as she mounted her beast. “Then again, it’s either that or you die here.”
“Lead the way, missy,” said Joey.
The woman twisted her face. “What…?”
Lezura and Joey travelled in the center of the convoy through a grassy path in the forest were a river had dried up years passed. The beasts that surrounded them were what Joey learned they called greshkues.
“What’re those people called?” Joey said with a gesture of his chin to one of the aliens with light blue skin on his face, and darker blue from the cheeks down.
“Lazhinians,” said Lezura. “They have incredible regenerative abilities, which lead to their blood being harness for many medical purposes. And its pink color is the symbol for good health.”
The lazhinian had large, round orange eyes, vertical slits for nostrils and two scale-like organs on the sides of the forehead; called sensory quills. Joey noted the alien had two arrow-tipped fleshy protrusions on each check, which were a second set of sensory quills for chemical detection.
“And those guys…?” Joey said, gesturing to the large reptilian man on the greshku in front of him.
“That is a rapturan,” said Lezura. “He is one of three races of rapturans, a dracoid.”
Joey noticed some little spines running down the man’s neck. He turned around to give a brief check-up on them. Joey gave him a nod. The man nodded and turned around. He was riding on the woman’s left, while Podge was on her right.
At least he isn’t a dick like that guy, thought Joey.
After blowing away a pesky bug in his face Joey spotted what looked like a moss infested, giant stone hand with large claws reaching out of the ground.
Joey’s attention wasn’t held by it for long, for he noticed more obelisks scattered around where they were walked.
Most were craggy, carved and battered with weathering, then covered up with a dressing of plants, but Joey could make out one with the painted sculptures of animals and people in some sort of dance. There was another with the sculpture of the torn face of a nycarman in a hood lying on its side. Half of it was covered up with dirt, but the rest had grass and moss growing out of its stone flesh.
They came onto a path through a glade, where the sun washed the ground with splendid light, and large red flowers like roses with pointed petals stuck out the sides of the road like mortars, firing out yellow filaments that hungry bugs eagerly swarmed.
The giant root of a sinni tree touched from off the top of a slope and over their heads to the other side, creating a huge arch where flowery vines hung.
“Our camp is just beyond that hill,” the woman said, pointing in the distance to conical shape beyond an approaching ville tree.
Joey noticed some little stone totems here and there. He saw a few a while back, but the sigh of more of them aroused his curiosity.
They were no more than three feet, abused by the elements with blue moss and vines clinging to it like leeches. Some looked like animals; Joey recognized the shape of the head of a mynamather, and the squat figure of a karoti and the wings of a tratali on another. He even saw those that look like people, all nycarman.
“What’re those things for?” Joey said, pointing to the totems.
With a quick glance at them Lezura said, “They are called ven-hachachs, or ‘guardian rocks’. The people from the countries of Ixia and Balion who once lived in this region would place these statues here to gain the favor of the spirits during their journeys from home.”
“I guess that was their place we passed that was torn down?” Joey said.
“Yes,” Lezura said. “It was done mostly by natural disasters. The finishing blow was by centuries of war and finally the orderran invasion.”
A quarter mile later as they neared the hill Joey saw some totems with the shape of rapturans and lazhinians. He could tell by their smooth appearance and the little plant matter gathered on them that they were fresh additions.
On the other side of the hill they came upon a thick network of trees where the path ended for good in a sea of wild grass reaching nearly two feet. The wind blew with a fragrance of flowers and wet soil, swaying the grass into fluid waves.
The convoy split up to navigate the tight network of trees, and they all came upon a path a smooth path that led into a loosely knit group of trees. And there Lezura and Joey saw the camp.
Joey had to admit to himself that so far the planet was looking like some adventure fantasy story with all the people riding animals, the large tents these people now were living in, and the lack of anything fancy technology or machines, apart from the robots he had encountered yesterday. But when he remembered Lezura’s words; that the Prestige System had deprived other countries of any resources to develop machinery and attacked their major power plants, Joey realized that these people weren’t living like elves or dwarves, but were actually living in poverty.
The tents were large enough to house a bed or two, and when they could the people painted them in a variety of colors. People stopped cooking, sweeping around their tents and tending to their animals and weapons to have a look at the new comers.
Lezura figured that they weren’t just surprised to see Joey, but to see a nycarman—the people who had abandoned them to hide in their fancy little Prestige Kingdom.
Lezura felt some guilt about it, but not enough for her to lose her cool.
“Don’t worry,” said the woman to the people in a raised tone. “I have already confirmed that they’re not a threat to us. Neither is the strange alien.”
“My name’s Joey, lady,” said the human.
“Whatever, alien,” the woman said.
“Just keep quiet before you get us killed,” said Lezura.
Joey mimed zipping his mouth. He looked around at all the alien faces, and noticed most of them if not all looked like they were battle-ready. He even noticed a few of the women in their long frocks and skirts with metal spoons, knives and pots drawn. One, a lazhinian woman, even had a battle-axe drawn; so did the little girl lazhinian girl beside her.
“Damn…” Joey said, “And here I thought I was tough…”
The woman stopped, the others followings, when they saw some men approach them. They came off their greshkues and allowed the men to take the animals to their stables. On the woman’s approval Joey and Lezura got off Redbolt, and a lazhinian took him by the reigns and brought him in line with the towed greshkues to a stable in the distance.
“Follow me,” said the woman, leading the way to a tent.
“Where are you taking us?” said Lezura. If things weren’t going to go in their favor, she was prepared to unleash everything she had to protect herself and Joey. And Joey she knew would be eager and ready to fight.
“I’m taking you to our scientist,” she said.
Something exploded inside Lezura and she hurried up to the woman’s side, startling her. “Really?” said Lezura. “What kind of scientist?”
“Um…” the woman didn’t know how to react to this kind of sudden interest “…he’s an alchemist?”
“Wow!” Lezura said, “Amazing! I never got the chance to meet an alchemist in person!”
“What the hell’s an alchemist?” said Joey with a puzzled frown.
Lezura slipped back to Joey’s side. “You will see soon enough,” she said, and further added, “An alchemist is a person who specializes in manipulated the structure of matter to their will using their honoi energy.”
“Okay…” said Joey, still preferring blowing something up. But alchemy it sounded was also interesting.
The dracoid accompanying them said towards the tent, “Clastaan, we have visitors!”
“Oh!” a chirpy voice said, “please, do bring them in.”
Podge pushed away the curtains of the tent. Sunlight shone on numerous wooden and metallic jars on the ground, some scrolls on boxes and made to stand in the corners, a bed with tan colored spread in one side, and a huge figure in a sand brown cloak seated at the top of the room.
The woman entered first, with Lezura and Joey following and then Podge and the dracoid.
Neither Joey nor Lezura could get a clear look at the man, as he was hunched over, too engrossed in whatever he was doing on the table. He was humming a lively tune, and reached out a brown, scaly hand with sharp claws for a powder grinder at the end of the table.
“So,” he said, “who are these travelers you’ve found, Tylin?”
The woman, now known as Tylin, said, “One’s a nycarman, and the other is some strange alien.”
The man spun around on his seat and faced them all; revealing a brown-skinned dracoid. He had shiny yellow eyes, messy short hair and wore a green tunic and grey shorts under his large coat. He didn’t wear anything on his dirty feet that he had plastered in the grass, and in his hands he had a bowl and the powder grinder. Across his forehead were electronic glasses with two lens hoisted above each.
His eyes were immediately fixed on Joey, studying him intensely.
“What’s up?” said Joey, then adding a wave incase Clastaan didn’t understand.
Clastaan waved back, said, “Helloooo…”
Podge stepped in front of them and said, “All right, enough with the pleasantries. Clastaan, these two say that the short alien here is the Rakai.”
“I’m the damn Rakai!” said Joey, with Joey Lezura translating. “And stop calling me short!”
Clastaan straightened in his seat. He said, “Is this so?”
“Yes,” said Lezura. She nodded to Joey, who took the compass from around his neck and gave it Lezura, who gave it to Clastaan.
“Please confirm the truth for us, Clastaan,” said the other dracoid.
“I will certainly, Nartha,” said Clastaan, putting down the items in his hands and cradling the compass in one hand.
Clastaan searched the compass with a claw, found the lock and pricked it open. He took out the key with the chain at the end. He put the casing down, held up the key to a yellow lava lamp in the corner. He pulled down his glasses over his eyes. After a few seconds of looking he pulled down the second set of lens, increasing the magnification from times-twenty to times-forty. In the surface of the key he saw green energy, but looking in the red strip it also had some kind of pinkish-purple energy.
“Hmmmm…” Clastaan replied, nodding to himself.
“What does ‘hmmmm’ mean?” said Podge impatiently.
Clastaan lifted his glasses, put the key back in the compass and handed it to Joey. “That is definitely the key,” he said.
Tylin, Podge and Nartha stiffened, all turned to look a