“It’s my fault. I allowed the small one, Runner, to get out of my sight.” It’s Darok, speaking telepathically through our Bond.
There’s no space in our heads for blame, though. I am in war-mode – a deep, meditative state in which I’m focused on everything and nothing, both at the same time. My fingers itch to rip the throats out of these men who arrogantly presume they can hold me. Despite my weakened state, if I had access to my blades, I know I’d make short work of the entire army – slaughtering these pathetic excuses for soldiers.
They have the arrogance to imprison me? Look at them! They’re all unblooded. Not a single one of them has ever faced a Scorp and lived – and their only weapons are the cowardly long-distance devices that nearly killed me in the city we’d escaped.
There’s a tinge of suspicion in Darok’s aura. He long-suspected that Tammy was some cruel trick - a Void-Being sent to lure us to our deaths.
“Tammy did not do this to us,” I telepath to him, and he nods almost imperceptibly. The small one, Runner, has a deep hatred for our kind. I know not why – but it doesn’t matter. Not anymore.
Plans change when battle starts. We came to this world knowing that our Orb-God had sent us for a purpose. I still believe that, deep in my bones. I will take this Tammy back to our planet, and I will make her bear my seed. She is strong – a fighter, with a quick mind. The merging of our beings will create something greater than ourselves.
One day, I’ll play with my sons. I’ll teach them to hunt, to fish, and to fight. I’ll be there through their whole journey – giving them guidance up to and beyond the day when they forge their first Orb-Weapons.
And I’ll witness, too, the day they earn their first ink; and sadly I’ll no doubt bury some of my sons who do not survive in battle, as they fight to earn their own mates. There is glory in my future…
…but first, I must earn it.
I force back a growl. I don’t want to alert the weak creatures that are guarding me to my strength and power. It rankles to be kept captive by such weak beings. The Scorp-blood within my veins pulses. I can barely hold myself back from leaping and kicking out; crushing the skulls of the men closest to me and throwing the rest aside like they were mewling children.
“Easy, Forn, easy.” It’s the voice of Hadone in my mind. I take a huge breath in. I will not waste my life so easily. It would bring no glory to die at the hands of these pathetic creatures – not now that I have everything to live for.
The human soldiers bring us up the pathway to a house so big that it could shelter my entire tribe in comfort, with plenty of room left over. The sheer opulence of the place is an affront to my senses. No man needs so much. To take so much for yourself, while others starve to death on this world, is a sign of great arrogance.
We let the puny humans manhandle us towards the back of the building. They are puny – but I know these men are not to be underestimated. They are soldiers, after all, and some of them could still put up a fight; especially with those projectile weapons they each carry.
As we pass through the building, I see servants working in the yards, spraying huge sums of water on the forests of bushes and trees, perfectly manicured and unnaturally twisted into shapes and designs. I’ve never seen anything like it before – the arrogance of man, to try the shape nature itself into his desire!
Sweat drips from my brow from the hot sun. The water being poured onto the greenery outside could be used instead to sate the thirst of a thousand humans. How many thirsted in Tammy’s village? The village burnt to nothing by those flying dragons?
I fought and killed countless Scorp in the huge, tribal city where Tammy lived. The people here are different to the ones in that place. Here, the servants spare quick glances at us, and the horror and fear is apparent in their eyes before they turn their gaze away.
Why do they loathe us so? I have done nothing to these people – and yet they hate me. Just like the small human child, Runner, who betrayed us the first moment he could.
“They will hate us until the day they die. They stare at us as though we’re as bad as the Scorp.” Darok telepaths his somber thoughts through our bond. I know he speaks the truth. If we’re to have any chance of escape, we won’t be able to rely on the humans of this planet – not even the servants and other underlings.
We’re lead forward to a small trapdoor. A soldier throws it open and points angrily, grunting in his alien language. I have to duck to get through the opening, all while the soldiers point their long, deadly sticks at me. I know that they can shoot projectiles as powerful as a thousand arrows right through me. My chest still burns from the shot that the old man had pierced my chest with, when we’d stumbled in on him protecting his home back in Tammy’s village.
That first man – the one who was friends with Tammy, and by now must be ashes and dust in that immolated city – was not even a warrior. He was old, fat, and untrained – and yet he still took me down with one blast of that cowardly weapon.
There are at least ten of the same weapons pointed at me right now – more advanced, gleaming variants of the old man’s stick – so I have no choice. I must continue through this opening
