Chapter Seven.
* Riddick's POV *
My hands clench into fists of pure rage and hate as I watch her throughout the struggle like a predatory animal inspecting a wounded brethren. Knowing I should have helped her twisted my insides but I didn't, why didn't I? Maybe some sick; evil part of my wanted to see what she was truly made of and I wasn't disappointed by her deceitfulness, wilfulness and strength. I almost grinned at her effort and the willingness she had to take a knee and a fist to the face, all to trick and lead the dark coloured man into believing he was truly winning, only to be ended by a small cut to the back.
The man lays face down on the uneven floor with red blood pooling around his middle as a result of her swiping the Sweet Spot. Brilliant move and beautifully choreographed. She now leans up against the jagged wall, fatigued and breathless. I watch her in bewilderment as she breaths so steadily and relaxes almost without a problem from the pain of her wounds. The cut situated above her right eyebrow is relatively deep and releases a substantial amount of blood, her side will no doubt bruise as will the surface area of skin around her nose. My eyes glass over as I watch her studying her small movement like her gliding her short fingers through the top section of her hair drawing back the stray clumps that have fallen free during the struggle and hide her face. As she pulls back the hair revealing the relaxed muscles of her face to show her to be rather pretty: her face is slightly rounded but elfin like with large eyes; thick black eyelashes and a sweet mouth, like a pink flower.
Elisha's ears twitch like a small animal to the tiny noises erupting from my body: the gentle rattle of my controlled breaths and the annoying habit I have adopted of griping my back-teeth when I feel trapped and uncomfortable.
"Don't stand in the dark like a creepy pervert," She snaps, "Just come on out."
My stomach knots in the most unnatural way as I walk out trying to seem confident and arrogant, the person I have portrayed myself to be to anybody I have met. She doesn't stand up straight and presentable however she does remove herself from the wall and stands at the head of the body whilst I stood at the feet. The body voluntarily separates or represents the distance we feel most comfortable being near each other.
I study her as she studies me. Her muscles recoil and retract as the waves of pain curse through her body. 'The eyes are the doors to the soul' – very true, if she had normal coloured eyes I could easily tell how she feels but here she has had years of telling lies and hiding away what she truly feels because weakness means you're an easy target, it is true in here just like any other slam built. Inmates, convicts whatever you wish to call them, they feed off the weak ones fears.
I flick my eyes from her to the inch cut above the right eyebrow before pointing a finger, "You probably going to need stitches," I say like she doesn't know or figured that out for herself.
She tuts sarcastically and purses her lips, "I hate stitches." she remarks.
I smile slightly, "We all do." I reply before flicking my attention down to the man between us before reconnecting with her hurt gaze, "Where did you learn to do something like that?" I ask with real curiosity as I never taught her which I was disappointed about but nobody in this prison looks capable of knowing a neat trick like this.
"It was a birthday present." She replies with a smug smile.
I raise my one brow, "Looks like we got the same thing," I reply halfwittedly.
She releases a small chuckle from her lungs, singular not plural. She uncrosses her arms and walks confidently around the body, dodging the blood and passed me without giving me so much as a side-ways glance. I followed her seeing as I do not know my way around the prison. She walks like a cat, her hips in perfect way of the rest of her body, moving along with her steps, her hair that is plaited – not every neat due to the attack – down her back also sways in perfect motion with her body's movement.
"Why have you come back?" She asks abruptly not turning back to look at me but instead she continues on walking down the inner section of the walkway.
"I needed to find you." I reply knowing it wasn't a satisfactory answer but I was not going to tell her about everything until I could find somewhere private.
"But why now?" She spits, "What is so important that you need to come back now?" She hisses as we pace down a pair of rusting stairs to the second floor, my hands clench into fists as anger from her hard word whip me harshly. She stops at a waterfall, well, a broken pipe no one has bothered to fix yet. She splashes the dry blood from her face to return a sense of normality to her facial features before swelling could start.
I grip her upper arm and pull her round to face me. She twists on her heels to crumble into my chest, our faces are so close, my lips almost graze her forehead and her static breathes tickle my neck, "Remember who you're talking too," I growl peering down at her.
"I thought I was talking to a friend." she snaps in reply.
"You are." I insist, "There are some-things bigger than you. Bigger than me." I sneer.
"I am not interested in anything you have to say at the moment." She says and is about to continue when a loud siren cracks through the atmosphere from speakers clipped onto the bars spattered around. Her angry expression changes drastically to pure fear, the little colour in her cheeks drained leaving her a ghostly shade of white.
"ITS FEEDING TIME." A grizzly voice of the guard boss splatters through the speakers followed by the loud and blood chilling roars of what sound like multiple creatures. Elisha struggles against my grip frantically and pulls herself free.
She begins to shuffle backwards, "Come on," she beckons, I pause unable to get a grip of what is happening around me as people – mainly men – scream, the banging of cell doors and clanking of chains replace the slams calm atmosphere.
"Richard!" she growls from the end of the walkway. I allow my instincts to take over and I follow her willingly. We race down the walk way to a particular cell with blankets draped over the front, she enters the cell allowing me to slip into a small room before closing the door, removing a concealed chain from beneath the bed to the right, wrapping it around the first bar of the door and the first bar of the cell before moving as far away from the door as possibly pulling the chain tightly.
"What are they?" I ask Elisha who still holds the chain tightly from behind her, I watched these large cat like creatures prowl around the slam in search of slow inmates who do not find shelter quickly enough.
"Hell Hounds," she replies out of breath yet breezily, "The guards control equipment, whenever they need to seize control, the Hell Hounds are released to place us all away." She explains briefly.
The light shines on the closed blankets projecting silhouettes of people and the hounds. A large silhouette of a hound is cast across the blankets, a low pitched gasp was released from the cell by a small child tucked cosily in the arms of an elderly women I recognised. A threatening snarl erupted from outside the cell followed by the ripping away of one of the blankets revealing the creature, half the height of me with scales that coil red when it spots a prey and for us it was no different, however as the creature nears the door, it catches sight of Elisha, it doesn't snap at us, snarl nor bare its teeth. Its bright orange scales recoil back to match the rest of its body, a sutler, ash coloured grey. Elisha lets the chain fall limper as she edges closer to the hound, moving her head in perfect unison with creature. As she stares at the creature, it is almost like she is sending a mental message to it before the hound moves away giving us no problem.
Elisha tightens the chain again in case another far more unfriendly Hell Hound appears.
"How did you do that?" I ask in amazement.
A loud buzzer sounds signifying the end of feeding time. Elisha allows her tense body to relax nicely and lets the chain hang loose to un-loop it from around the rusting bars.
"It is an old trick." She says blandly shoving the chain back under the bed.
She takes the child from the elderly woman's arms without being asked and sits on the edge of the bed with him tucked in her arms. Her entire body oozes with love and devotion for this child who was known to me. The elderly women remained happily positioned on the stool near the back wall of the cell. Her snow white hair was streaked with dark grey that complimented her pale skin nicely; her ice blue eyes burn their way through my face as she studies me like a dangerous bug that needs to be squashed quickly.
Elisha hushes the quietly crying child back to a light sleep before tucking him back into the cot covering him up with multiple blankets, completely oblivious or deliberately ignoring the hundred-and-fifty degree temperature surrounding us. As her hand brushes against mine, my body feels immediately weak limbed and psychotic as the corners of my vision turn black.
My vision goes black blocking out the cell from my sight but the pitch black is ripped open by a orange light to reveal an outside world, dead willowy trees dance in the background, their grey colour stood out boldly against the light orange sky and their roots trail along across the sandy red floor like an Etch-A Sketch. A burst of light fractured the silent planet revealing a confident women standing before me and Elisha, she smiled not with her mouth but with her light green eyes but her sight seemed mainly focused on Elisha, their similar facial features strikes me. Elisha also harvested the mysterious woman's height and build, it then dawns upon me that Elisha never knew her mother, she died the night Elisha was born. The woman's dark brown hair was braided with silver streaks and she stood in front of hundred and hundreds of grey headstones that marked individual graves.
"Some of us still remember the true crime that happened here on Furya. And when you both wake, truly wake, you both will remember too." She says strongly pressing her hand on her chest – the space above her heart – and stretched out an arm towards Elisha first, the woman's hand shifts to transparent transferring a ghostly hand print onto her chest. Elisha twitches awkwardly as a glowing print soaked into her skin. The women then done the same to me, the hand print burns like a hot press beneath my skin.
As the print fades, the corners of my vision glitches but instead with darkness, it glitches with a blinding white light making the planet disappear from around us and reformed the darkly lit cell. Elisha's grip on my arm loosens worryingly. The sensitive hairs covering the surface area of my arm felt the air shift around Elisha's body, I turn quickly to catch her limp body in my sturdy arms way before she was endanger of hitting the floor.
"Elisha?" I ask, my voice no more than a whisper as I laid her down on the bed beside the young child. The elderly women removed herself from the stool to waddle over to Elisha's unconscious body, she pulls down the neckline of her shirt – not exposing anything – to study the moving outline of the hand print pressing from the inside of her. I looked down to see my chest doing the same thing, it was almost like the women was inside of us, trying to break free with no regard for the damage she may cause.
The elderly women mutters something under her breath, too quiet for me to hear but when she finishes, Elisha's body explodes back to life, she sits bolt upright in on top of the bed, sweat gathering in her chest area and face. The women removed herself from the bedside and reseated herself on the stool.
"What happened?" she asks glancing up at me but when neither of us don't answer, she slips off the bed to stand next to me and turns to face the women, "Sybil?"
The elderly women – Sybil – stares at us like a pair of dead relatives some back to life. Her entire body begins to twitch violently before shifting from solid to ghostly transparent.
She is an Elemental.
I raised an eyebrow in mock surprise when in fact I am pleased to discover what she is. "You're an Elemental." I state from behind Elisha who turns around with wide eyes filled with confusion, her mouth hangs open slightly revealing the uneven line of her bottom teeth.
"A what?" She asks.
I advert my gaze from her to Sybil, who stares coldly at me. I give her a look as if to say; you know better than I do. Sybil gives me a irritated glare – the sort of look you would give a young child who had drawn on the walls with permanent marker – her pursed her lips and squinted her eyes narrowly at me. I step forward to stand level with Elisha.
"Elementals are a race that decide their actions on the result of complex calculations rather than personal opinions or feelings or emotions," Sybil says sourly, "But since I have been in here, I've been forced to do quite the opposite."
Elisha's face tenses in unison of her body as her words slowly sink into her skull, "What are you in here for?" She asks, her voice oozed with curiosity amongst other emotions that I couldn't pinpoint but as the question leaves Elisha's lips, Sybil's eyes dart uncomfortably in my direction. Elisha follows Sybil's gaze, adopting the same angry stare.
"What did you do?" She asks me venomously.
My eyes widen in shock as my shoulders push back, "Nothing, I swear to you."
Our eyes turn back to Sybil who stares back at us, "I am here because of a fate I delivered to a powerful Necromonger commander named Zhylaw, just shy of thirty years now. He lead an attack on Furya in an attempt to void his fate that he would be killed by a young Furyan, preferably male."
"True crime that happened here on Furya..." The woman's voice rattled through my skull, "When you truly wake, you both will remember too."
"Furya?" Elisha asks, "Never heard of it."
"It has been destroyed for a more thirty years. I am surprised anyone but you and Mr Riddick have hear about it," Sybil replies.
"But what does that have to do with us?" Elisha asks defensively, "That planet – Furya – has been dead long before I was even born."
Sybil chuckles, "You mother, Shirah, escaped with Riddick's heavily pregnant mother long before the commander had planned to strike. They hid away before the Necromonger's found them on Ubrion." She pauses, "Riddick's mother was killed for resisting to convert but your mother, Elisha, was pregnant and brought here with young Riddick."
Elisha steps forward, "What does this Necromonger crap have to actually do with us?"
Sybil stands wobbly and lowers the he, of Elisha's shirt down in a respectful manor like she while Elisha was unconscious, a fate outline of a hand print still lingers on her skin. Sybil releases the hem of Elisha's shirt allowing it to cover her back up before gently pulling the hem of my vest down to reveal the same faint marking.
The elderly women gasps, "This happens once in a lifetime, when a male and female are both marked by an elder, they are bound to each other." Sybil says quietly ignoring Elisha's eyes grew wider with confusion, "You both carry a very important mark, this comes with a very important role."
"What's that?" I ask.
"You, Riddick, are an Alpha male Furyan." Sybil says to me before turning to Elisha who looks as if she has frozen stiff, "You, Elisha, are an Alpha female Furyan." she raises her hands to involve both of us, "A powerful pair."
A powerful Alpha pair. The words climbed over my brain, racketing at my skull trying to find a way in but they are rejected. I turn to touch Elisha's arm but she recoils from my touch.
"What are Necromonger's?" she asks, the question was open to anyone but I remain silent.
"They are the race that believes in a faith where you must be purified and they will kill anyone who refuses to take on their faith but will convert and spare, all those who will. They will change every last human life." Sybil replies angrily.
"And these Furyan's...Richard and I...we are the only people who can stop these aliens." She asks, her voice shakes with sickness.
I nod.
"Is that why your here?" she asks, turning to face me, the ridges of her eyes were lined with tears as I nod again.
"I was captured on a planet called Helion Prime by Necromonger's, they searched my thoughts and found memories of you. I managed to escape but was brought here by Merc's, who no doubt couldn't cover their tracks, their not going to stop until we are dead or converted." I tell her.
Her confused expression filters away and becomes angry as her entire body begins to shake with nerves or adrenaline.
"So you came back to tell me that I was going to die?" She asks, "All for some bullshit faith I don't want to believe in?"
I shake my head defensively, "No, I never said that. I left because I was – am – no good for you, as long as I was away from you, Elisha you were safe," I tell her.
"Were?" she shakes her head, "What are you trying to pitch Riddick?" she hisses, "That you had my ass protected from across the Universe, leaving without a word before goodbye was too hard only to show up again, seven years later to tell me some bat-shit crazy ghost army wants me dead for a heritage I wasn't aware of until five minutes ago!?" she yells.
"Elisha." I say soothingly reaching out to touch her arm but she bats it away viciously.
Her lips are separate with anger, her body ridged; every muscle in her body was tense with her small, child-like hands curled into fists.
"Fuck you." she snarls at me before turning to Sybil, her anger is masked by hurt, "Why did you not tell me about all of this?"
Sybil remained silent, Elisha turns sharply on the heels of her flat boots and charges passed me. I attempt to grab her but she is far too quick, I left the cell calling her name trying to dart after her but as I go to grab the back of the shirt she wore, Elisha leapt over the second floor balcony before I even had the slightest chance.