Song: The Sharpest Lives by My Chemical Romance
The Files of Kazdan Kalinkas
Book One: Not By Choice
Chapter Fourteen: Duress
UnderWorld Ruler #14: The Coliseum is for fighting your allies, everyone else—everywhere else—is fair game.
"If it looks like I'm laughing, I'm really just asking to leave this alone. You're in time for the show. You're the one that I need, I'm the one that you loathe. You can watch me corrode like a beast in repose, 'cause I love all the poison, away with the boys in the band." I scowled at H'earring as he pressed his hands down over his long ears, "If you don't like it, then don't listen!"
"It's not the song I don't like, it's the singer." H'earring muttered.
"Hey! I resent that! Come here you scrawny little Creature!" I jumped at him and he laughed and ran around the fire, me racing after him, shouting all the while, "You big-eared creeper! I'll show you! Come 'ere!"
"Kaz is tone deaf!" H'earring chanted as he skipped out of my reach, "Kaz is tone deaf! Kaz is tone deaf!"
"At least I'm not short!" I shouted back.
"Hey, no short jokes in this house, buster!"
"Oooohhhh, I'm sooooo scared! Have mercy on me, Puny Master!"
"Mercy!? On you!? Not a chance!" He jumped on me and we scuffled, rolling around on the floor, calling each other names and poking and punching and kicking and slapping.
Then Cherri came in and kicked both apart with a frown and a shake of her head. She'd become something of a surrogate-mother in the two weeks she'd been living with me and H'earring. We both put up with her presence and I'd established firm boundaries with her about what she could and could not do: she slept upstairs by the fire, she did not come into my room or the hot spring, and she wasn't allowed to hang off of me.
During the two weeks we'd been adjusting to her existence, I'd gone on six other missions and slaughtered five more Creatures. During those missions, I'd gotten myself killed two more times; once by a Danian shooting me through the heart and once by an OverWorlder hacking off my legs and leaving me for dead. That was the one that got away. Chaor hadn't been pleased with that at all.
On the other hand, Ulmar's stupid shock treatment had actually sped up my regeneration at least a little bit. I didn't have to haul myself out of the puddle anymore, it just started forming back into me. It didn't make me like him anymore.
I rolled onto my back on the stone floor with a sigh, staring up at the criss-crossing wooden beams overhead. The heat from the fire licked one side of my body, warming the right side of my face. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Then I looked around at H'earring. He was sitting in front of the fire, watching me with his great blue eyes. He knew something was up.
"I've got another mission tonight." My voice sounded strained, even to me. H'earring's ears perked up slightly. He was good at listening, "To the Mipedian desert again. I hate going in there and Chaor knows it. He's punishing me for losing that OverWor—what?"
"Nothing." H'earring quickly looked away but there'd been something about the way he'd been acting that caught my attention, mainly the way he'd been squeezing his ears in his fingers the way he did when he got nervous about something.
"Not nothing." I muttered, rolling onto my side and looking at him over the flickering flames, "What, H'earring?"
"I've got somewhere to be too, Kaz." There was a way he was talking that made it sound as though he wanted me to think it was a mission. I'd been living with him for a month; I wasn't easily tricked by that.
"What're you planning?" I interrogated, getting up on my hands and knees and crawling around the fire towards him, "Come on, H'earring! I can tell you're up to something! Tell me what it is!"
"Shouldn't you be going if you're going to make it to the desert by nightfall?" He stopped me short and I scowled at him.
"Clever." I mumbled, "Fine, but when I come back you're spilling!" I got up off the floor and trudged out into the kitchen where I stashed my Battle Gear in my former-usual corner. Cherri looked at me as I slung The Ripper around my waist and put on the Destiny Claw. I ignored her and stuck my head back in the living room, "See you H'e—H'earring?" But the little Creature was gone. I shrugged, a little hurt he hadn't even stuck around to say good-bye, and went out the back door into the cramped and stinking alley behind H'earring's house.
Fastening my cloak around my neck with a sigh, I set off into the city, heading for the OverWorld. I'd have to traverse its borders in order to get into the Mipedian's vast desert. Not a prospect I found very heartening. Not that anything was heartening these days. But OverWorlders had taken a particularly nasty dislike to me; they knew it was an UnderWorlder knocking them off and if they caught a stranger on their lands they'd be more than happy to rip me apart.
No thanks.
I'd rather have taken my chances against Toxis but orders were orders and I wasn't about to disobey Chaor. Putting my friends in danger was the last thing I wanted. If I lost them, I'd lose everything.
I wasn't giving up quite yet.
I may have been broken but I sure wasn't beaten.
I know I've been whining about how hot it is in the UnderWorld but it's nothing compared to how high the temperature can get in the Mipedian desert areas.
But when night falls, the deserts get icy cold. I shivered in the dark, used to the heat of the UnderWorld, and pulled my cloak tighter around me, keeping an eye out for sands shifting of their own accord. If you knew how to look for them, invisible Mipedians were easy to spot and the lizard-like Creatures didn't function that well in the cold. But that didn't stop their Stalkers from patrolling the edges of their desert home.
Chaor was having some particular trouble with one Mipedian Stalker who was always lingering on the border between the OverWorld and the desert, a border that was close to the UnderWorld-OverWorld border as well. The Mipedian was sneaking through the OverWorld and into the UnderWorld and had already made several attempts to raid Chaor's arsenal. The Battalion guards had always managed to chase him off but Chaor was getting sick and tired of him and wanted him gone.
That's what I was for.
His assassin tool.
The sand on top of a dune not four feet away from me slid down the side with a slight hissing sound. I looked around at it. Sure enough, there was a slight depression on the dune's crest. A Mipedian; they knew how to walk in the desert without disturbing the natural balance of sand all that badly but they were no match for a Spectral Viewer.
Okay, so I really didn't have a Spectral Viewer but there was a similar type of thing built into my visor. Ulmar really didn't know how to use that kind of technology yet because the image through the glass was a bit broken and blurred but it was enough to see by. He was there alright, standing on top of the dune, looking around, keeping watch.
I slowly moved out of the pathetic excuse for shrubbery that dotted the borderlands between the two tribe's lands and eased out onto the sand. I hated walking on sand; it got everywhere, in the cracks of my armor, in my hair, and I'd find it trickling out of my boots weeks after coming back from the desert. Add that to the fact that I couldn't take my armor off…well, it was just plain annoying.
The Mipedian's head swiveled around. He'd heard something. I froze, flattened against the sand, my cloak helping me blend in with the dark shadows cast by the half-moon overhead.
A fork tongue flicked out, tasting the air, and then the Mipedian looked in the other direction. A desert bird flapped noisily into the air from the shrubs and vanished into the dark. The Mipedian's eyes followed it. I inched closer, centimeters away now, and stuck the Destiny Claw out from under the cloak. It gleamed silver in the moonlight. A fingertip inched forward, paused, moved slightly to the right, and then cut through the Achilles' tendon on the back of the Mipedian's right ankle.
He was in too much shock to make much noise as he collapsed and rolled down the side of the dune, leaving a crimson trail behind him. As he rolled past me, I swept out the Destiny Claw again and scored a bloody gash across his neck. Then I turned and fled back into the shelter of the half-dead trees making up the borderland.
I'd vanished before he'd come to stop at the bottom of the dune.
I hated going back to the UnderWorld after a mission. The list of things I hated grew with every passing moment, though, so it wasn't much of surprise. But Chaor demanded I report to him upon the completion of the mission and if he found out I didn't I'd get into trouble.
So I trudged through the hallways, careful to leave a trail of sand everywhere I went just to spite him and his lackeys. He was, of course, waiting in his throne room with Takinom and Agitos.
"Well…" He growled, inviting me to speak.
"Success." I said tiredly, giving him a sarcastic thumbs-up sign, "Enemy neutralized, sir. Preparing Subway sandwiches for retrieval." I found that the best way to deal with my hatred of Chaor was to be sarcastic. More often than not, it would piss him off but that was usually because he didn't understand the jokes I was making.
"Don't take that tone of voice with me, Kaz." Someone, it seemed, had already pushed his buttons today, "Is it dead?"
"Yes."
"You're sure."
"Indubitably."
He narrowed his eyes at me and I sighed,
"Yes, he's dead."
"Where's H'earring?"
"On vacation in the Bahamas."
"Kaaazzzzzz…" There was warning in his voice.
"Lost him have you?" I toed the line, ignoring the leer Agitos was giving me, "Sorry, I don't know where he we—." My own screaming cut me off as I collapsed to the floor, writhing against the stone. When the torture let up, I got breathlessly to my feet, glaring daggers at Chaor and breathing heavily.
"I'm…I'm telling the truth!" I panted, doubled over with my hands resting on my knees, "I don't know where he is! I didn't even know he was going anywhere!" Not truth but Chaor didn't need to know that.
The UnderWorld lord looked me over for a few moments and then dismissed me with a snort of disgust. I turned on my heel and walked out. Screw him, then.
The walk back to H'earring's seemed to take longer than usual. I was tired and sweaty and covered in sand and now I was grumpy. Talking with Chaor usually put me in a bad mood. I went through the front door this time and was greeted by an enthusiastic Cherri. She gave me a big hug and then scowled at the sticky sand I'd gotten all over her.
"That's your fault, you hugged me." I pointed out, tossing my cloak to the floor and hiding The Ripper and the Destiny Claw underneath it, "I'm going to take a bath and go to sleep. Walking all the way across Perim without porting is exhausting. No, Cherri, not now. I'll eat when I get up." And I vanished into my underground room.
The hot spring was mercifully wonderful and the water got the majority of the sand out. So, hair still slightly damp, I stretched out on my bed, closed my eyes, and fell asleep.
Alright, I know that was a short chapter and everything but, uh, I really don't have an excuse for it. I'm on vacation right now (no, not in the Bahamas). A camp ground north of where we live, alone in this trailer, on my mom's laptop, with only two sleepy dogs for company. (sighs) I miss the PS3…
Ah well, I'm enjoying myself. It's nice to get away once in a while. Maybe we'll have smores tonight.
Where'd H'earring go, anyway? He just sort of ran off, didn't he? Hmmm…
Well, thanks so much for reading and for waiting for reviews! Please keep it up! See you around! Byes!
