Thirteen

Ten days into their twenty-four day rest on the clan ship, Luar'ka was beginning to feel the strain. She was restless and irritable, finding even less to do on the clan ship than she had on the shuttle, which was hard to believe. She couldn't even study while she spent the majority of her time locked in the recuperation room in the medical bay. Than'ja would bring her food once every couple of days, the same schedule they'd lived under on the ship, but she hadn't seen Kar'kha, Ikthya'de, or even Thwei'ja in all this time. She'd begun climbing the walls again out of boredom and discovered that as long as she stuck to the grooves along the lateral curves of the walls, she could still scrabble along them despite their smooth texture. This came with drawbacks though, as one of Than'ja's comrades had come in to retrieve some supplies in storage and, having had no reason to have his guard up in case of ambush, had been so startled when Luar'ka dropped to the floor that he'd actually toppled backwards from the shock of it. Needless to say, Than'ja hadn't been too happy with her following that.

However, Luar'ka knew things wouldn't stay boring for long. With the Yautja, there was no way it could. Sure enough, on the morning of the tenth day on the clan ship, she was grooming her wings for the eighth—or was it the ninth?— time that morning when the door slid open suddenly, startling her. Her wings twitched violently and she scattered feathers, looking up in alarm as two shadowy forms appeared, moving toward her. She calmed when she recognized the Yautja approaching her. Than'ja and Me'vi-te, the arbitrator she'd seen the other day. She was a bit surprised; considering she'd seen the white one working together with him on Illmianyar, she had assumed they were partners or something, both working the same job. Apparently not. She stood up, eyes narrowed as Me'vi-te drew near to her and eyed her skeptically. He turned to Than'ja and clicked something rapidly. Luar'ka caught a few words and scowled angrily; He didn't see any reason she would be worth testing. At least that's what she was able to glean from his dialogue. She couldn't be sure. But his eyes seemed less than accepting of her as he stared her down. She stood up, ruffling her wings behind her. She'd started unfolding them a lot more frequently in the past few days. In the time since her half-imprisonment in the medical bay, Luar'ka had learned from Than'ja that she would have to prepare soon for her trial with Me'vi-te. She'd begun exercising her wings more often, hoping that S'iirai's theory had been right and that they would grow with proper stimulation.

She stood up tall, wings held loosely rather than tightly against her back. She had since been taught from Than'ja that eye contact was seen as a direct challenge. However, she now felt it necessary to break this rule as she met Me'vi-te's stare head on, surprising him slightly. The older Yautja regarded her stare, fists clenched at his sides. He turned to Than'ja, ((I will be taking her for a while. You may follow to observe, if you wish.))

((Has Kar'kha been alerted?))

((He has. He will be waiting in the kehrite for us.))

Than'ja bowed his head respectfully to his sire and cast a furtive glance at Luar'ka. He knew what was about to happen and he had an inkling that the young female at least had a guess. Her life would hang in the balance while Me'vi-te tested her. If she couldn't impress him, she would immediately be whisked off to one of their hunting planets. From there, if she survived becoming food for the voracious carnivores populating such planets, she would inevitably be cut down by hunting Yautja, who knew that anything that lived on those worlds was fair prey and wouldn't be there otherwise. The Avian would need to become strong, ruthless, and utterly formidable if she wished to remain alive.

Luar'ka followed Me'vi-te out of the medical bay, her heart fluttering nervously in her chest. She wasn't entirely sure what was happening, but she was able to garner from their serious stances that it was something big, whatever it was.

The dim lights of the corridors were just as dark as she remembered them. Her eyes were becoming more light sensitive and picked up the faint traces easily, but she was quickly becoming used to the darkness that surrounded her almost constantly. It wasn't as if the Yautja really needed that much light, after all.

She was led in the seemingly opposite direction from which they'd arrived initially. They passed a few Yautja here and there, all of whom cast interested glances toward her, but never outright stared as they passed. Luar'ka was quickly picking up on the fact that her presence on this ship was an oddity, to say the least. She was starting to copy the Yautja around her, mimicking their stances as they stood, walked, spoke to one another, etc. Their society, she noticed, wasn't too unlike that of her own people, with a seeming hierarchy and caste system that appeared to be determined by skill and rank. Luar'ka recalled her own father's strength as an aerialist and fighter amongst her people and she swallowed nervously, knowing that she was about to endure trials that served as a mere shadow to the ones he'd survived. She prayed to no one in particular that he was still looking out for her.

Me'vi-te opened a door at the end of the corridor and led them inside. Luar'ka followed, noting that the light in this large room was a bit brighter than most everywhere else. The space was enormous and reminded her of that hall they'd passed upon their first arrival. Like that other room, this one was also filled with Yautja, roughly two dozen individuals strewn about the room. Some were speaking in hushed, grumbling conversations, others were sparring on their own in pairs here and there. The room, like all the others Luar'ka had seen thus far, was oval in shape. She was beginning to grasp that the Yautja disliked corners.

Me'vi-te flared his mandibles and let out a deep bellow, halting all activity in the room. The other Yautja all paused and looked up at him curiously. They took note of the alien creature in the room with him and all eyes were on him as he strode to a wide rack of an array of weapons placed against the walls. He picked up a small, jagged dagger, the blade dull and the tip chipped away. It was a worn weapon on the tail end of its usefulness, soon to be melted down and reforged into a new weapon. It was virtually harmless against the thick hide of the Yautja, dull as it was. He handed this dagger off to her and watched as she took it uncertainly. She eyed it curiously, turning it in her small hands which now gripped the handle. It was almost too big for her small hand to fully close around. She looked up at him expectantly and he moved off to the side, stopping in the center of the room as he eyed her. He clacked his mandibles together a few times, clenching his fists tightly at his sides. The other Yautja in the room understood that a trial was taking place and moved off out of the way, congregating on all sides around the room to observe.

Luar'ka flicked her gaze from the arbitrator before her to Than'ja off to the side. She had understood that Kar'kha would be there as well, but she had yet to see him. She gripped the blade she held, her eyes narrowing at Me'vi-te. They had to have known she didn't stand a chance against him. There was no way they couldn't, especially if she herself knew she couldn't win. This had to be the basis for this; to see how well she could fare in a one-on-one fight. Young, inexperienced, raw, and barely coordinated; all concepts that summed up her existence perfectly in their eyes and she knew it. The only skills she possessed were her speed and agility. Her weapons consisted of her claws, which were relatively sharp. She was still in the process of shedding her baby milk teeth, which were dull and not very useful. She watched as Me'vi-te began circling her, his sharp eyes boring into her fiercely. She turned her body slowly, following him. Watching him. Studying him. He moved with his legs slightly spread apart, his back hunched and his head lowered. He was defensive for the moment. Clearly, he even took youngsters seriously. Luar'ka matched his slow movements, never showing him her back. Part of this was the natural instinct to defend her precious wings, useless as they currently were. But the other part was instinctively knowing that if he saw her back, he would strike and she would get hurt. Her heart hammered, her breath quickened and she could feel sweat beading on her brow from the exertion.

Me'vi-te hadn't even dealt a single blow yet.

So focused on him she'd become, she almost didn't notice his body tense suddenly as he lunged forward, his wrist blades unsheathing with that familiar metallic shriek. She hurled herself to the side, narrowly avoiding his strike across her shoulder as she tumbled once, landing on her coiled legs and bounding out of his reach. She staggered once, one leg raising to knee height to balance herself as she eyed him fiercely. Her hand still clutched the dagger and she cast a quick glance at it. The Yautja around her watched as she suddenly flung it across the floor where it skidded into the wall with a clang. She instead chose to bare her claws, scraping the ground with her talons and baring her teeth at her opponent, her eyes darkening. It occurred to her vaguely that Avians were expected to be choosy in their targets, lest their delicate bodies break from the exertion. But she reasoned, just don't get hit. Strike without being struck.

It was easy to see as Me'vi-te moved toward her that the Yautja were almost the diametric opposite of the Avians, their bodies riddled with powerfully honed muscle, built for bearing sturdy and rigid weight to be used in devastating tandem with their incomparable durability. Already, Luar'ka could tell that distance would be her friend. She just had to avoid getting hit.

Me'vi-te flared his mandibles and jinked to the right, throwing her off guard. He swiped viciously at her with one arm as she twisted out of his range, stumbling backward and raking her claws up his arm as she moved to his other side. Her balance was off and she fell hard on her side, flailing to her feet and skipping out of his range. She started a steady series of movements in a circle around him, never giving him a steady target to focus on as she eyed him. He watched her, observing her new tactics and formulating plans of his own.

The Yautja around them started bellowing and jeering, creating a cacophonous racket that reverberated off the walls around her. Luar'ka grumbled deeply and continued to move, never staying still for long as Me'vi-te continued to study her.

Suddenly, he barreled forward, moving far more quickly than she had been expecting. He lashed out with his wrist blades and gouged them into the floor near where her feet had been seconds before. She was so focused on avoiding the blades and evading his grasp that she didn't notice his other hand lash out and grab her shoulder in a crushing grip, his talons gouging through her skin. She felt her own warm blood trickle down her front as he lifted her up, bringing his blades around to draw near her face. Her eyes snapped open and she hissed shrilly, twisting her body upward to slash his neck with her talons, mirroring his own actions and digging her talons into the soft flesh of his neck. He snarled in fury at her actions and she took this opportunity to wrench herself free of his grasp using the torque given her by her grip on his neck. The action ripped her skin around her shoulder, leaving small flecks of it attached to his claws as she lunged forward, propelling herself back to the floor by pushing off of him with her powerful legs. She landed catlike, bounding away on all fours before straightening up across the room, eying him darkly as he turned to stare at her. The slash marks running down his neck bled bright green blood which dripped to the floor below him, mingling with the red blood Luar'ka had shed while at the mercy of his claws.

No holding back! Luar'ka let out a shrill screech and broke into a bolt, running the length of the room across the center of the training hall as she built up speed, swerving erratically around him while he watched, following her movements. She knew so little about fighting and deceit, precision and timing, that she knew she was probably going to go down permanently following this fight. But she had so little to care about anymore that her own life didn't hold very much value to her, now. Baring her teeth, growling low in her throat, she skidded suddenly, her claws scraping backwards against the floor, her legs coiling as she launched herself at Me'vi-te who turned suddenly to meet her. Her vision darkened suddenly, almost as if she'd closed her eyes. But oddly enough, she found she was still fully aware of what was happening as she crashed into his upper body, burying her teeth in the junction of his neck and shoulder and raking her talons and claws across every part of him that she could reach. Her vision swam behind the strange darkness, her throat burned as she swallowed the drops of hot blood she ripped from beneath his tough skin and she could feel his own claws slashing at her as he tried to dislodge her writhing, slashing, infuriated form. When she felt his claws rip across her back, tearing feathers out and opening the fabric of her tunic, flight impulse kicked in and she propelled herself backwards off his chest, missing her footing as she landed and falling hard on her back. She struggled to her feet and skipped backwards out of his reach as the darkness suddenly lifted from her vision and she once again had complete clarity of her surroundings. Her brain felt foggy, her heart pounded almost painfully and her breath came in short, painful gasps. She was aware that half of her back was now exposed with her tunic laying in shreds across her upper body. She saw Me'vi-te standing slightly hunched, his dark eyes glaring viciously at her as his mandibles worked feverishly, the lower set extending outward as his growl intensified. Part of his face, the majority of his neck and parts of his upper torso glistened with green blood that still flowed from the many open wounds. Luar'ka was aware of her own wounds bleeding profusely and felt it cascade down her back and arms. The warmth incited her, the scent intoxicated her senses and she felt like she was losing control of her own head as she began the system again, speeding past him and jinking at erratic intervals to catch him off guard, and then leaping toward him the second she caught sight of his back and repeating the process. Again, as before, the second she closed in for the attack, her vision darkened with a blanket of black as her teeth and claws attacked his hide again and again while he roared his fury. The blanket of darkness lifted for a second, almost as if she'd just opened her eyes before it lowered down again in time for her to catch one his long, black tendrils in her mouth, clamping her teeth down around it as her claws and talons ripped at his flesh. He'd been simply angered before at his hide being ripped open, but when she sank her teeth into his tendril, he let out a trilling wail of both anger and pain and she saw stars blinking in her vision as he reached back and grabbed one of her wings, yanking her up over his head and slamming her down to the ground with a force so great she felt one of her ribs fracture immediately upon impact. The blow stunned her, her vision swirled sickeningly and she couldn't move her limbs. She heard his heavy footfalls drawing near and her instincts screamed at her to stand. Groaning, she flipped to her side, hissing from the pain of her broken rib as she staggered out of his reach. Instinct started to take over her rational mind as her vision darkened a third time, and yet she still remained fully aware of him. His blood flowing freely, his scent betraying his anger and fury directed at her, the warmth of his super-heated body as he drew dangerously close to her. She continued to stagger back, hissing and growling at him until the breath left her lungs the second she felt the wall at her back. Her senses were going haywire, now; the scent of blood hung heavy in the air, both hers and his. She could smell and taste his blood across her mouth. Her vision cleared again as the darkness raised up and her eyes met his as he stood before her, glaring down at her. Gasping for breath, hands clutching her chest above the broken rib, dimly aware that her tunic hung in rags across her shoulders and back and seeing the murderous stare in his gaze, she sat before him. Waiting. She glared defiantly up at him, waiting for him to deal the death blow. Her heart felt like it was going to give out from pumping so hard, and her body ached like mad, but she didn't look away.

Her vision started to swim and darkness now lined her sight, different from the blanket that had covered it before. As his form started to warp and twist in front of her, she struggled to hold onto reality as her head grew increasingly foggy. She dug her claws into the palms of her hands as she ground her teeth, fighting off the impending black out. She would not faint, she would not sink down into the darkness!

Finally, Me'vi-te turned and stalked away from her. Even through her warped and twisted vision, she saw him approach Than'ja and noted with relief that Kar'kha had arrived as well. Me'vi-te cast one final staggering scowl in her direction before he strode off through the crowd of onlooking Yautja. She was dimly aware of Than'ja approaching her, his dark hide now a swirling green blob before her eyes. The same went for Kar'kha as he drew near. She felt herself being lifted to her feet and guided out of the training hall. The light faded along with her vision as she now walked blindly, stiffly beside Than'ja. She expected herself to collapse any moment now as her mind grew foggier and foggier. But somehow, her feet kept moving, dragging slightly on the floor, but moving nonetheless.

One more step...one more step...just one more, now...one more...

It wasn't until she felt herself being lifted up and set down on some sort of metal platform not unlike her bed in the medical ward that her body finally sank down into the welcoming depths of darkness, enveloping her like a black cloud of ink in the cold recesses of the deepest, blackest ocean imaginable.

/ooo/

Luar'ka awoke in slow intervals. Her first coherent thought was...why ? Why was she waking? She felt certain that she'd died. But then a more rational thought process kicked in and she remembered that she hadn't sustained incredibly serious injury from Me'vi-te. Actually, she'd probably done just as much damage to him while in her panicked, anger-driven frenzy. Her body ached like mad, unnervingly similar to her experience fighting that Bad Blood on Illmianyar. Her right wing throbbed painfully and every breath she took hurt tremendously. She released a soft hiss through her teeth as her eyes opened. The room was bathed in a soft, low red light. It was also eerily quiet. She didn't recognize where she was. This wasn't the medical bay. Or if it was, it wasn't a part of it she'd been to.

"You have awoken. This is good."

Luar'ka shrieked and leaped up, only to gasp and snarl at a horrible clenching pain in her chest, forcing her back down to a sitting position atop the platform. She raised her gaze suspiciously, spying someone standing by the door. Of course, she only knew one Yautja who could speak her language that easily and she relaxed marginally as Elder Sechinde wandered closer to her. His graying tendrils swished lightly behind him as he moved, the dozens of beads and trinkets making a pleasant clinking sound as they jumbled together. He nodded once to her, raising his upper mandibles in a friendly gesture as he indicated her to relax fully. Luar'ka willed her body to ease up as she eyed him skeptically as he paused directly before her.

"How long have you been there?" she asked quietly.

"Not long. I was informed that your match with Me'vi-te had ended, Avian. I came to speak with you."

His tone was dry and it was impossible to read his voice or face for any indication of how good or badly she'd fared. Her wings sagged as she looked toward him, avoiding eye contact, "What...what's going to happen to me?" she whispered.

Elder Sechinde made a low rumble deep within his chest, his mandibles clicking faintly as his tusks scraped against one another. He fixed his dark eyes on her seriously, "Me'vi-te was not impressed." he said, his voice low. Luar'ka winced slightly, having expected little else but was still unprepared for the news.

"I...I see..." she mumbled.

"You are clumsy in your execution, your tactics are transparent, and your strength is minimal. Your body is far too weak."

Luar'ka grit her teeth, resisting the urge to bite out some retort and make the situation worse for herself. Elder Sechinde allowed her to process his words before he continued, "Me'vi-te came away from the match with minor injuries. He had little praise."

Luar'ka nodded, keeping her eyes down. She sighed, "So what's going to happen to me?" she asked again.

"You will be sent to another part of the ship. You will spend one season with the Unbloods. Once this time has passed, you will be evaluated further for any improvements."

Luar'ka's eyes widened and her head raised, staring at him in disbelief, "What? But I thought I'd be killed if I didn't impress him." she said.

"Me'vi-te had little praise; this is true. However, he also had little to say against you, Avian. He did not deem you worthy prey. Therefore, you will remain on the ship and train for a season with the Unbloods. We shall then see where you fall from there. I would suggest you make the most of your time allotted to you. You will be moved by rotation's end."

With that, he turned and swept out of the room, moving through the doors with utmost silence. Luar'ka stared after him, too shock with disbelief to really understand what he'd told her until many minutes after he'd departed.

Another chance. She was being given another chance!

Even as this thought crossed her mind, Luar'ka couldn't help but feel somehow even further away from her old life than she'd felt before. She looked down at her clawed hands and then twisted painfully to glance at her ruffled and battered wings. She moved them easily in and out, watching their flexing and retracting with wide eyes as if she were seeing this movement for the first time. Her gaze raised to the ceiling and she thought back to her time on Earth, how she had never once believed she'd get the chance to experience her life, to truly feel alive. Fighting Me'vi-te, struggling to land a hit on him, and then seeing her death standing close enough to touch...it was a bit morbid but in that instant, she'd felt more alive than she ever had in the past. It felt like she'd been reborn, baptized in the fires of damnation and then pulled to the safety of a chaotic new regime. And her saviors were humanoids with terrifying faces and a penchant for fighting.

This was it; the final step. From this point forward, looking back was no longer an option. It would only slow her down. Grinding her teeth, she buried the memories of Earth as deep as she could, purging them from her consciousness. She knew it would take a while before they vanished completely. Physical pain, she could handle. But the mental pain was something she could do without and had no choice but to expunge. She took a deep breath...and then slid off the table, moving toward the door.

Time to embrace her new life.

A/N: Bit of a shorter chapter this time, but I wanted to get the point across. This is the end of Arc I. Arc II begins in chapter 14. Just warning you now, there is a time skip. It's been a while since I've done one. I'm too tired to write much. So...enjoy.