Good God, they are nauseatingly cute. I'm about to chuck some nectar berries at them to get the pair of them to knock it off before the pregnant lady barfs all over our little picnic but I'm interrupted.
By a scream.
Bea scrambles backward straight over a platter of meat after the noise had torn from her throat, piercing through the pleasant, sunny day. Everyone looks to see what had caused her reaction and at first, I don't see anything out of the ordinary at all.
The Trixikka around us do though.
Suddenly, I'm grabbed by Mavyx and hauled into his strong arms and we launch into the air before I even have the chance to wrap my hands around his neck. "Mav!What is it?! What's the matter?"
We don't go too far off the ground - only about twenty or thirty feet, and looking around I notice Rynn is in the air with Serena and somehow Zyntaar had come from out of nowhere and held both Bea and Tessa in his huge arms too.
"Get the females!" Mavyx bellows at his men. "Get them in the air! Keep them safe! Whothe fuckwas on lookout duty?!" Then he mutters to himself, "I will gut the male who let this happen."
"Whoa, hold on now," I say. "No one's gutting anyone, and what the hell happened anyway? I don't see-"
But then Idosee.
"What thehellis that?!" I breathe, scrambling for better purchase around Mavyx's neck as if I could get higher that way. His arms tighten around me as I do.
"I have you, my star. You are safe" he murmurs.
"Don't'my star'me, what the fuckisthat thing?!"
Down below, a dark figure limps into the clearing. It's covered in hair and stands upright on hind legs, though it's taller and bulkier than any human man. It's no beautiful Trixikka male either. Its arms are too long for the rest of its body and even though there is clearly what looks to be a dagger lodged in one of its too-big eyeballs, it limps along with a scarily huge grin on its face. Thick, black blood oozes down from its injured eye socket into the rows of pointy yellowed teeth housed in its mouth.
"It's a demon-chimp!" Serena calls from where Rynn holds her as he glides over to us on his wide, dark wings.
I look at both Trixikka males, their skin-stars going haywire at the temples of their furious-looking faces. "I swear to the Goddesses, Mavyx," Rynn snarls, "if your patrol males have let a mimyckah just wander up to our gathering-"
"The majority of my Protectors are off on the Eastern Search," Mavyx snaps. "The males I am left with are-"
"The males you are left with are the males that should be trained to protect our females.Thatis your duty, Second Spear."
A menacing growl builds in Mavyx's chest. I can feel the rumble of it where he holds onto me tightly, his huge wings giving big, sweeping flaps to keep us relatively still in the air. "You think I would knowingly put my Ah-Lanah in danger? You think I would endanger the youngling growing inside-"
"Guys!Guys!" Serena barks, interrupting the spat between Mavyx and his friend. "What are we going to do about the demon-chimp?"
We're all staring down below at the creature who, though it looks like a walking-nightmare, is stumbling in a circle like it's confused and lost. As it turns its back, I see there's a dagger lodged into its shoulder-blade too, it's already dark fur matted and wet where it's bleeding out. This thing isn't going to last much longer. But who do the daggers belong to?
"Let's get the females back to the village," Rynn says before nodding at Mavyx, "I trust your remaining males have enough training to be able to dispatch a single, injured mimyckah?"
Mavyx grunts and holds me tighter, but before we start to fly away, there's a voice - a human woman's voice.
"Why is it staring like that, Ezryk?"the voice says, and it takes me a moment to realize the words are coming from the mimyckah."Why is it staring like that, Ezryk? Oh, God, it's so creepy!"
For a second or two, I don't think I can breathe. "W-" I start, stuttering over my words as I stare down at the limping creature. "Why does it sound like one of us? W-why is it saying those words?"
"It is repeating something it has heard," Mavyx tells me, his voice low and sounding calm, but when I tear my eyes from the monster below to look at him, his jaw is so tightly clenched, it looks like he might crack a tooth. "It has heard these words in the jungle and it is mimicking a female's voice."
"Why is it staring like that, Ezryk?"the mimyckah repeats, the tone, cadence, and inflections in the voice exactly the same as before like we're listening to a recording on repeat.
"Why is it staring like that, Ezryk?"
"Why is it staring like that, Ezryk?"
"Oh, God it's so creepy!"
The creature then drops to a terrified-sounding feminine whisper."Ezzy, I'm scared."I don't know how the mimyckah has managed to do it, but it has perfectly replicated the way a human woman might sound when on the verge of tears. And yet, its face remains with that too-wide smile containing a graveyard of too-long yellowing teeth. It stumbles on its feet and then repeats, exactly as it had before,"Ezzy, I'm scared."
