“The Frayer eradicated an entire colony of Vikar settlers onDagr Dottir,” he says. “They used an energy weapon. There was no chance to fight back. There is also a reason only the Frayer still occupy Verold, Earth.”
“It’s because the Vikar are restless, nomadic raiders who cannot stop and build and must travel the stars,” I say, parroting what I learned in school.
Drako looks at me as if I am soft in the head. “Is that what they tell you?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“The Vikar are not on Earth anymore because the ones who did not flee to the stars were murdered.”
I frown slightly. “When was this?”
“Before you were born,” he says. “Don’t worry, little one. Your ancestors performed the bloodbath. You were free to enjoy the fruits of their bloody labors, before you decided to fling yourself into the stars.”
I look around at Thor, to see what he thinks about this story. Sounds like propaganda to me, though I did always think it was a bit strange that there weren’t even a few thousand Vikar living somewhere on our world.
He looks at me and gives a little shrug.
“Is that true?” I ask him outright. Shrugs are useless to me. I need information.
“It’s true there were wars,” he says.
Drako snorts. “Wars are between two sides of opposing strength. My people were hounded from the cradle that birthed them by the twin they were created alongside. We seek to settle the stars, so that never again can our world be taken from us. And that is why when a Frayer cruiser with a crew of many hundreds slides by in the night, we shoot it down.”
“Didn’t really work out for you, though, did it. Because it made those scavenger creatures wake up and eat everyone except you somehow because you were sitting on a chair.”
I think that reason is dubious as hell, but I have done a lot of pushing and questioning, and the terrain is starting to shift touneven rock, so I have to pay attention to where my feet go or else risk another lecture from Thor.
I follow Drako quite closely, looking at him often, examining his tattoos as much as I dare, wondering if what he said was true. It does make a certain amount of sense. Frayer culture is all about expansion and improvement. It’s why my father’s house had to be sacrificed in the end. Weltheim is a city of many wonders, but there’s no wilderness left in it. Nature has been entirely dominated by our kind. That’s why I ran to the hills to herd goats until I was called back to the birth of Freya’s child.
Drako notices me looking, I am sure, but he does not growl at me, or tell me to stop.
“These rocks are strange,” Thor muses from behind. “I wonder what geological process caused them to form. They almost look as though they are armored, the way the plates seem to…”
“Stop,” Drako says firmly, but not loudly. There is an urgency in his voice that Thor and I both instantly respond to.
He looks down at his feet, and across at the plain of undulating rock.
“We have to go back,” he say. “But not by the same route.”
“Why?”
I follow Drako’s eyeline, which is cast back the way we came, and I see that the ground seems to be undulating a little, sort of shifting and settling again. What a strange geological feature. I wonder if there are springs under this ground or similar.
“These are not rocks,” Drako says. “We are walking on the same horde that consumed your crew and mine.”
His words send a bolt of adrenaline right through me. Every part of my body is immediately tingling with fear as my primitive brain screams at me to flee.
“What the fuck?” I gasp, looking down at my feet and then around myself. It would be so easy not to notice that at all. They are packed together so tightly one seems to blend into the other, and there is no sign of limbs or eyes or anything else that makes a creature a creature. They must be coiled up on themselves like roly-poly bugs, their eyes retracted as they sleep off their recent meal en masse.
They are spread out as far as the eye can see, though we have traveled only a short way over them. I am realizing now that the motion I saw was them stirring a little from being woken up just a bit before settling back into sleep. My mind concocts a horror scene of what would happen if just one of these creatures were to wake completely, pop a single stalked eye up at us, and call down the army of his family upon us. There would be nothing left. Not even bone.
Thor, Drako, and I make our way off the plain of sleeping horde as quietly and quickly as we can. We tiptoe cautiously, holding our breath, not daring to make a sound. No more words are spoken. Nobody is complaining about the crimes of the past now. Every moment matters until we are back on what my mind is going to refer to as solid ground.
Once we are no longer wandering over the backs of our greatest predators, we run. It’s an instinctive thing, our bodies are demanding safety and we have no choice but to give it to them. We sprint as fast as we collectively can all the way up an incline that turns into a steep hill where the trees thin and the field of scavengers can be seen laid out beneath us in what mercifully can be described as the distance.
We are all panting as we come to a halt, adrenaline starting to fade from the use of it doing what it was supposed to do—get us to safety.
Thor lets out an unexpected peal of laughter.
