"There's a reason why the Almder called me a god," he said, while taking a step closer. My scales could feel the heat rolling from his jewels. "My loh were honed to survive from very little radiation and the excess radiation stored in my loh makes it possible to become a ghost of the moon's grace... or vengeance."
He disappeared again in a blur of heat that even when I closed my second lid over, my eyes burned and blinded me from knowing exactly where he was before refocusing.
When I could see the solid heat signature of my prey once more, I pretended to sniff the air like that was how I noticed he was there before and not by sight of his heat. I needed him to get close for my tincture oil to work efficiently in such volcanic temperatures. My eyes were straining, and my second lids wouldn't last long under the extreme heat he was producing. My scales adequately dispersed the extra steam in the air with ease, but my second lids were meant for tracking prey that weren't as hot as the suns.
My tail was still behind me, not wanting to cause undue attention. I moved to the left, the opposite direction of where his heat was focused, showing him my back. I waited for the scales on my tail to dry and swung my tail low, while my head scales misted, and my arms lunged in a rotation. My claw met the resistance of the blade on his forearm, and I clamped down on the sharp weapon, bending it with the heat he was producing until it was melting into his own skin. The heated glow of his loh flickered the longer we fought against each other's hold for dominance.
I took a moment to make sure my treasure had listened to me and lowered her hood over her face so as to not breathe in the mist.
The echo of his laughter haunted my eardrums.
"I'd heard rumors of your kind. Able to resist the radiation heat with your scales, but this is remarkable." His teeth gleamed, though not in a threatening manner I would expect from dead meat. My poison should have been working its way into his system with how close I was.
I showed him my own teeth, rows of razors prepared to shred him. His grip on my own arm seared against my scales, damaging some of my gland production, but his grip was loosening.
His eyes grew wide as he realized what was happening to him. Even without poison... the numbing properties of my oils were penetrating. But he wasn't the only one surprised as we pushed and turned in the hallway. My scales were unable to dissipate all of his heat. Glands were bursting beneath my scales, muscle was heating, yet even I barely felt it as my own grip faltered due to the numbness of my tincture oil seeping below the protective armored layer.
The heat, combined with the tincture oil, was bringing my tissue beneath my scales to boiling temperatures that I knew weren’t sustainable for either of us. Steam rose around our movements as I hissed, locking my jaw from a deeper ache in my arms that my oils haven't reached yet.
"Why don't you use those sharp teeth of yours, lizard?" He gritted out, words swollen from the oils that evaporated in the air, making his tongue numb.
I refused to bite him unless it was a last resort. How our poison worked was a secret that kept our species safe from those who wished to challenge us.
"He doesn't have to," a beautiful voice taunted from his side as she placed her hands on the daggers blooming from his back and she gripped them with all her might as she glowed. Her head bowed back as she screamed a war cry that had my heart skipping with a vicious kind of excitement.
The more she glowed, the more the outlaw weakened, and his mouth gaped open before his knees crumbled to the ground. He released me, and I fumbled backward to the wall, balancing with my tail.
She was magnificent as she shone like a thousand suns, burning up the robe that was supposed to be protecting her from the poison in the air...
Goddess, help me.
Would she forgive me?
On unsteady steps, I forced myself to push through the heat and remove one of her hands from the melted mess that was crumbled on the ground at our feet. There was no time for explanation, not that she was fully coherent to accept any words from me. I tried to avoid puncturing any of her precious jewels as I found a space on the inside of her elbow and bit down. I concentrated on bringing my antidote up from my throat as I tasted her blood. Using the barbs on my tongue to scrape her skin to allow more area to accept the counter agent specific only to my poison. Retracting my barbs and spitting into her wound should be enough with the short exposure time. I held her wound with my tongue to give it more time to enter her blood stream before I unlatched. My tail wrapped around her shoulders to keep her up before she fell against me. I made my way out of the Den of Bounty one difficult step at a time to create distance between us and whoever finds that we'd killed the largest outlaw of this sector... Lord Zorn, himself.
Chapter nine
Hazel
Fromthemoon'sgrace,a god was crafted from the molten core of our largest moon, Lupa. Skin the color of white and blue crystal. Loh was capable of glowing so hot that no eye could gaze upon the moon god without bestowing his light on those worthy of his blessing.
From his seed, warriors were given his power to disappear amongst the stars. Our loh were not bound to their jeweled form, but burst forth like the wings of a loretig, a great creature that disappeared along with the clan's mythical sky warriors.
But there stood one, a warrior that appeared just like the crystal statue of the moon goddess's gift of a god in flesh to protect our clan. Only the Almder herself was known to have loh that could replicate rapidly with the moon's rays and sprout as the loretig once did. He appeared out of thin air, and I stared in shock as he disappeared like a wave, blurring until there was nothing.
I stared as the scales on Yueril's head flared, and I quickly brought my hood over my face as he instructed. I couldn't see anything through the thick fabric, but I heard the sounds as their boots scuffed on the ground, loh and claw scrapped, and that twisted laugh of a male that marred the beauty of a clan I never got to be part of.
My lip trembled with self-pity as I cowed in the disillusioned safety of nothing more than a thick blanket of fabric. I wanted so badly to be accepted and rejoin my clan, even after my mother's passing, but I missed every chance given. Time and time again, I could have returned to the palace, explained why I was alone, living in a cave beyond the clan borders.
I chose to be a coward then, too.
Yueril hissed, and it wasn't the kind of noise he made as I wrapped my mating gland around his tail and squeezed. It was... pain. I couldn't stand by, crouched on the floor, as he protected both our skins from Lord Zorn. Shame made me hesitate that such an outlaw came from my planet, born from the decisions of a leader I never got to officially meet, and my mother abandoned to keep me by her side.
A lifetime of indecision and I finally lifted my hood up to see it was wrong of me to allow someone else to handle my battles for me. Yueril wouldn't have been in this position if it weren't for getting involved with a runaway slave. Glowing a bright green, my loh burned in preparation. I didn't have the power to transmorph my loh into a weapon like Lord Zorn, but I held firm that he was no god of Estreldez and his energy stores were as finite as the rest of us.
Quietly, I moved behind Lord Zorn, and as he threatened Yueril once more, I leaned in and growled out, "He doesn't have to." I will, I thought wickedly. I will be the one to kill you myself.
With renewed vigor and resolve, I gripped his back loh and began absorbing as much of his radiation as I could. As fast as I could, I pulled his radiation into myself, channeling it into the tarnpul strapped to my hip. Fire coursed through my veins, and my jaw clenched down to stop the scream bubbling up from my throat. I swallowed the pain down as I continued to syphon from Lord Zorn, praying he was too occupied with Yueril to fight back and reverse the flow of radiation back into himself. I felt the jerk of his shoulders as he tried to get away, break the connection, but I held tightly. Blood flowed from my palms, along my forearms, and dripped from my elbows, glowing from vengeance instead of grace, just like Lord Zorn wanted.
