The Gift of Volkeye (37 page)

Khyeryn was the first one out, and he went to lean upon the stone wall, wheezing and suddenly nauseous. Maugrimm went to help steady him. Zynathian, eyes burning with anger, looked to Sing and Bahzee.

“This is what we cannot allow…from now on we’re going to take the fight directly to Phyllamon!” he said, now looking down at Lyn Sha. “You all know what to do.”

At this, Lyn Sha (though still in tears) bravely climbed from the floor and began suiting up with her sisters. Upon finishing, she ran to get her book, as to read it on the way down and take her mind off of what she’d just been exposed to. Dressed in a fluffy winter combat suit (another design of Asha and Zynathian’s) with the body armour underneath, Lyn met Sing and Bahzee with her heavy book slung under her arm. They were garbed the same way as she, though armed with an assortment of weapons. They, too, carried expressions of utter distress, not speaking, as they stood in the middle of the floor, preparing to be lowered below to the ship.

A long metal rail emerged from the floor, on which they clipped themselves before the hatch opened beneath them. This would allow them to walk to the ship without the wind carrying them off the edge to their deaths. When the airlocks released, the frigid wind howled, and the girls watched the rest of the family vanish from sight as they were lowered beneath the castle to the ship.

The shield closed promptly as they boarded. Finally, as the ship detached from the bottom of the complex, setting off, the others indoors were forced to look away from the screen yet again.

Felix was now having his turn.

3

…Oooooohhhh!”
he groaned, convulsing, as he sodomized a girl of no more than sixteen years.

She wailed to no avail, meeting Phyllamon’s eyes, begging for mercy. Still naked, he relaxed off to the side, already having expelled his pent up sexual energy. He ignored her pleas.

As Felix withdrew from the girl, her head dropped to the wooden table with a heavy thud. He slapped her bottom and told her to get up. She didn’t stir. He now shook her more roughly, and still she just laid there, rear end up in the air, arms and torso splayed flat about the table.

Puzzled, Felix looked to his father, who chuckled with amusement. Neither of them had ever witnessed someone die so easily. The girl, black and blue from rough handling and sticky from several expulsions of the rapist’s bodily fluids, had died from a combination of shock and internal injuries.

“Oh well,” said Phyllamon.

“Oh well,” Felix replied.

“We’ll dispose of the body later,” Phyllamon said, robing himself. “I must see to Murlach…I can’t believe the fool is working despite all of the pain he’s in!”

Phyllamon exited the dungeon.

After his father had gone, Felix decided to have
seconds.
Though dead, he knew that her insides would still be warm, and as he inserted himself, semi-erect but suitable to do the job, he heard movement from behind. Startled, he withdrew and looked about, hoping not to find his mother.

There was no one.

As Felix commenced with his devious activity, his audience member shut off the camera, knowing that he’d captured more than enough of this moment. Though he thought it necessary for Zynathian to see this, he was certain that he’d be infuriated.

Fighting the urge to split the back of Felix’s head open with his talons, he decided to catch up to Phyllamon, knowing that he would be able to get some new footage of Murlach. The last Jix saw, Murlach was nursing a mutilated hand that was undoubtedly the work of his friend, Khyetarah Vyx Mune—he could tell by the bite marks.

Flattening his wings, wrapping them around his middle, Jix disappeared into a tiny crack in the wall.

4

Murlach grimaced as he flexed his new fingers. Though dirty, clotted with blood, and ugly as all hell, they worked. Having already flipped through the select volumes he’d stolen and not finding the secrets to which Zynathian created each mechanical component, Murlach was forced to improvise. He’d collected every piece of scrap metal he could find about the castle. Once he had all he needed, he melted them down, molded each piece into a crude version of Zynathian’s mechanical components, and, with the help of the journals, Murlach adjoined the completed index and thumb to his hand. He’d now been living with his new experimental fingers for less than three hours.

As he finished reading the last entry in volume forty eight, Murlach resolved with the fact that he’d have to suffer the inexplicable pain, as there wasn’t a hint of this man’s pain killing method in the journals. Zynathian’s words merely stated that it was a natural substance that he extracted from a plant, but Murlach was at a loss for this method, for he hadn’t the slightest clue what a
Khyetarah Vyx Mune
was or where to get it!

Though it pained him beyond measure to flex his fingers, Murlach’s fascination with Zynathian’s methods compelled him to continue. Face contorted with grief, Murlach’s eyes teared up as he made the tips of his two new fingers touch. Just then, Phyllamon came bursting into the chamber.

“Well, how are things?”

“Excellent, Master,” he replied, dismissing the pain for a moment. “This man…well, ‘man’ could be an inaccurate description, because no one with a mind this powerful can be called such. Nor should he be called ‘genius,’ for it, too, is the most ludicrous of understatements! In fact, there is no word to describe this Zynathian Volkeye, Master. I could study for ten lifetimes and never match him!”

Phyllamon lowered his head with irritation.

“He’s found a way to merge living tissue with foreign components—a metal of some sort. Actually, it might not even be classified as a metal, but it’s obviously another manifestation of his talents. The procedure for making it isn’t written down in any of these journals. With my luck, the answer is probably in one of the earlier volumes that I didn’t have the strength to carry. As a result, I have to improvise.”

Murlach began pacing.

“So, I can’t reproduce this metal-like substance. Nor is there a hint of any medicines that he uses to nurse his patients relayed here, except for a breed of plant, called
Khyetarah Vyx Mune
, which I’m certain to never find. Even if I did, his methods for extracting this medicine are not in this selection of journals either. This will make healing difficult for any subject I choose to experiment upon.”

Phyllamon rolled his eyes, as Murlach seemed to be giving him nothing but bad news.

“Don’t give up on me so quickly, Master, let me finish,” he said, calming him. “As I was saying, even though I could never match his level of talent what I
can
do, however, is imitate him!” he said excitedly, holding up his crudely made fingers.

Phyllamon listened, rubbing his brow with curiosity.

“Now, make no mistake, my version of these methods is vastly inferior to anything that Zynathian could do, but it still works. Now all I have to do is wait to see if the pain subsides, indicating that the wounds are healing. If this happens, that means I can use these same techniques to create the army that you so desire, Master. The beasts that my mind is conjuring will be far superior to the soldiers we’re presently using,” Murlach explained, holding up the fortieth volume of Zynathian’s journals with pages fifty and fifty-one on display.

Phyllamon came closer to examine the drawings, and he too noted that Zynathian was a decent hand with a pencil. The image depicted a woman with a large, detailed, cannon-like weapon, fused with her right arm. Beneath this drawing were several images of the gun itself, un-built, with its separate components numbered and followed by arrows, showing where the different pieces went. This was, in fact, the early version of Khyeryn’s weapon.

“You understand what I’m getting at, Sire? If I were to select the most vicious of my breeds from the bowels of the castle and apply Zynathian’s knowledge to them, they could be a terribly threatening force.”

“How long will it take, my friend?”

“I’m not certain, Master, I’ll need to do some tests.”

“Do whatever is necessary. I’ve just been informed by Vlajdimir that we should expect no help in military matters from the citizens of Rhylix, and I’m sure that those of Mheep, Dohrm, and Mashyuvah share their sentiments. They will all pay dearly for their betrayal,” Phyllamon said, clasping his hands together. “I shall be anxious to see your beasts on the battlefield, Murlach. When they’re ready, we will storm the neighbouring towns, bringing them to their knees!”

5

It was now two in the morning, and the girls found themselves far north, many miles from Rhylix, their destination. Still angry over the young girl’s rape, they’d recently developed ulterior motives (and Zynathian suggesting that they take the fight to Phyllamon didn’t help matters either, for they’d slightly misinterpreted his words). Wanting to hurt Phyllamon as bad as possible, they thought of robbing the new mining locations Sing learned of during her last two years in servitude.

They turned off the ship’s lights as they came upon the first of two mountainous hills in the earth, the other of which was about a mile away but still visible from moonlight. Lyn ran to the back of the ship to see if the previous supply of Arhyz was done bagging. She found all the bins empty and a heap of bulky, white sacks resting on the floor.

“Lynnie, how does this thing work?” Sing yelled back at her. Lyn Sha came running to the front of the ship.

“There should be a button with the abbreviation ‘ARZ.’ See, it’s there,” Lyn said and reached forward, pressing it. “After it stops flashing, hit that switch on the right.”

They hovered over the black landmass of earth, and when the green light stopped flashing, Sing hit the adjacent switch. The Arhyz began being sucked from the earth. The sound was deafening, and as they plugged their ears with their index fingers, Bahzee ran back to see the bins fill. She began the bagging process.

As the noise died, Sing looked at Lyn with smug gratification.

Take that, Phyllamon!
their expressions read.

Bahzee was in an immensely good mood as well. “If we didn’t have other orders, we could stay down here and figure out ways to screw over Phyllamon all night!” she said.

With that, the girls abandoned the barren hole in the ground and went to explore the other. They came to the next mine and approached it as stealthily as the last. At such a slow speed, the ship hardly made any noise. If it weren’t for the fact that pulling Arhyz from the ground was such a noisy procedure, they would’ve completed their deed unscathed with no blood on their hands. However, this wasn’t to be so.

A sleeping guard on duty at the first mine had been woken by the racket. It was he who alerted the guards at this location and had subsequently sent a message to Phyllamon. As Sing moved the ship directly above the mine and began pulling the rocks from the earth, they were startled by heavy fire to the windshield.

Though the craft Zynathian designed was too well protected for their weapons to do any damage, this still didn’t stop the girls from ducking. From the floor, they looked up to find lasers bouncing off the shield. They got up and saw six guards below, trying to find a weakness on the ship’s outer shell. There were none. All that came of each blast were black scuffmarks, burned on by the heat of the lasers.

“Sing, get us out of here!” Bahzee yelled.

“No, wait,” Sing replied. “We have to kill them...they’ll alert Phyllamon!”

“Sing, I’d bet any amount of money that they already have,” Bahzee said. “Are there any weapons on this thing?” she asked, watching Lyn hit the switch for the top hatch to open.

“No, Daddy built it for our protection and comfort—not combat,” Lyn answered, readying herself.

Though Sing was impressed by Lyn Sha’s eagerness to fight, there was no way in hell that she’d allow her to go atop with Bahzee and have all the fun! “Lyn, you stay here!”

“NO!”

“Bahzee and I can handle it…if one of us gets hurt, then you back us up!” Sing said in a manner of finality, climbing from the pilot’s seat to follow Bahzee.

Lyn growled in disagreement but still respected Sing as her new ‘big’ sister. “You two be careful, I’ll be ready when you come back down,” she said, seeing them run to the rear of the craft.

Rather than going straight to the roof of the ship, Bahzee had a better idea. She dumped the food and candy out of the cooling unit and pushed it onto the elevation platform, along with a few seats and a table that she ripped away from the floor of the ship.

Sing understood that this was to be their distraction. As the platform rose to the top of the ship, she got on her knees and crawled to the edge, peeking over. What she saw would pose a serious problem if they didn’t act quickly.

“Bahzee, hurry up, they’ve got hoverpods!” Sing cried out, as she watched them mount their pods outside of the mine’s entrance. No sooner than yelling her warning did she see furniture go flying towards Phyllamon’s minions.

One chair knocked two of them off their pods, rendering them unconscious as they fell into the hard, frozen earth. The steel base of another chair caught a guard between the neck and shoulder, crushing his chest and collarbone. He was dead as could be. The table caught the tail end of another pod just as it was about to speed off, causing an explosion that sent its rider thirty feet into the distance. He broke his back and lay wailing in excruciating pain. The refrigerator, heavy as it was, didn’t bounce or roll like the others. It landed and crushed its enemy flat, whilst the beast’s arms and legs protruded in awkward angles from underneath.