Page 11 of Ruby
At first, it doesn’t look like much more than a silver speck on the horizon. It is slow moving but it does not resemble anything I have ever seen. It moves through the clouds in one of the strangest ways I’ve ever witnessed, almost looking like it forcefully pushed them away from itself but as it inches closer, my sharp eyes begin to make out the details of what I can now recognise to be an inorganic metal craft.
I can immediately tell two things; it is traveling at impossible speeds and it is not native.
I turn to warn Nnaiv when I hear a loud, wet squelch. It sounds final and it strikes fear in my heart. From above me, someone screams out something guttural and points with a long limb; we all see Tch’tek at the same time. I spot his bright red wings trailing after the rest of his body as he falls out of the sky in an almost beautiful display.
It registers immediately that this is an enemy with the intention to harm my brothers and me. Small beams of red light torrent out of the wingless silver monster blanketing the area where my flock was located, some landing on my left wing but I swerve before they can properly connect.
Several of the flockmates around me are not as lucky and I hear their death songs as their wings stop moving and they plummet.
Nnaiv belts out a battle cry and retracts his wings only a few meters so that it can thicken and form something of a shield around him while extending his murderously sharp talons. I sing along and do the same, maneuvering toward the vessel as fast as my wings will allow.
The melody is echoed around us by flockmates and Shi’ell alike as we fly toward the vessel in solidarity. My chest swells with rage, feathers standing at attention, red like Tch’tek as I smoothly avoid another one of the beams of light.
The memory of someone so prideful falling out of the sky so weightlessly angers me even more and I swear within myself to make them pay, whoever these strange new trespassers are. Cowardly creatures disrupting the peace of others for no reason deserve nothing but to be wasted in ways worse than what they have done.
The vessel is much closer now and is launching even bigger missiles from its side. Nnaiv arrives first, avoiding one of the larger projectiles and screeches, his sharp talons reaching out from beside him so that he can scratch the side of the wingless silver demon.
I follow closely under him, intending to latch myself onto it until I can find a way to pry the thing open and pull the trespassers out. They won’t feel so powerful after I have ripped out their throats so they are unable to scream while I tear the rest of their bodies apart.
The craft is gradually being surrounded at this point, covered in the blood and feathers of fallen flockmates and Shi’ell, as well as deep gouges crisscrossing its previously mirror-like surface.
A large group of Shi’ell wielding long bladed weapons in each hand finally join the battle hacking repeatedly at it before a pulse of energy emanates from deep within the obviously damaged silver craft filling the air with burning flesh and feathers and the screams of anyone who was in contact with it.
Bodies drop like flies.
Luckily, I had backed off at the sight of the warriors but I’m immediately filled with trepidation. I’m certain Nnaiv was at the forefront and was most certainly close enough to be affected by the strange attack wave. The craft starts to freefall, whatever that pulse was, it clearly took its toll on the attackers as well.
Rushing toward the rapidly falling vessel, I hear Nnaiv call out to me, immediately followed by his death song. It feels like a part of my wings have been ripped off and I give up on my plan of attack and start to chase the body of my friend as it falls.
My hands are stretched out in front of me and I can see his life as it leaves his eyes.
“No death!” I beg my friend just as I make contact with him but I am just as quickly stopped by something I cannot see.
It wraps around me quickly, forming a flexible cage around the entirety of my body and shrinking in a way that forces me to retract my wings and arms into myself.
I struggle against the strange material, fighting to not let it shrink anymore, realizing the battling to stretch myself against it until it breaks and I feel hope that it is working until a horrifying smell I cannot recognize fills my nostrils. It burns my eyes and my tongue when I try to scream, drawing the air out of my lungs until I am gasping for air, no breath left to sing out my dismay.
I am still flying, but without my wings, when the world goes dark, my mind racing with my pleas for Nnaiv to forgive me.
4
Ani
The pain radiating from my ribs jolts me awake. I don’t understand my surroundings and I definitely do not understand what the hell I am looking at in front of me, but I know it’s not normal. I shut my eyes tight and scream as loud as my throat will let me, before taking a ragged breath and darting my eyes around again.
I’m in what looks like a slender glass pod with a soft red lining, held firmly in place. I try to claw at straps, but there aren’t any. What the fuck? I start to panic and flail my arms around before I notice the grayish, blob-like creatures peering at me from another room.
This is not real, I say in my head over and over again, even though the sharp throbbing in my side is an indication that it is every bit as real as the pain.
My scream is cut short by something painful in my throat. The pain is gone as soon as it starts and I realize that I canunderstand the language of the weird, disgusting gray blobs on the other side of my glass prison.
The figure in the middle moans. “Delicious.”
My stomach heaves and I barely keep myself from screaming again, suddenly even more frantic to try to figure out where I am.
I discover I can move my neck so I take in my surroundings properly this time. The room is brightly lit and not very big, and there are other similar looking pods in the room too, with what look to me like other women suspended much in the same way I am.
As much as I want to believe I went on a drug trip and somehow signed up for a sci-fi horror film, this is definitely not a set. No green screen or weird prop in place for the alien. This is fucking real.
