Chapter 7

Maya stood in the middle of her small room, legs wide apart and slightly bent for balance, fists punching out straight repeatedly, left, right, left. She had recovered another memory when she woke up this morning. It was a memory of a far away monastery, and even now she was going through a standard martial arts routine she remembered from that place, and she had been doing the exercise for several hours without respite. Her bare face and arms glistened with perspiration, and there was a look of utter concentration on her face.

Suddenly a wave of nausea washed over her, pressing down on her like a physical weight, driving her to her knees. For a few seconds that seemed like hours she waited for the burn of a heart attack to bloom in her chest. But to her surprise and relief that pain never came, and instead she saw a montage of images flash through her mind. The images appeared and disappeared so quickly she could not garner any meaning from any of them, except from one.

Maya could see a small, rectangular device peaking out through a pile of snow, and with the image came a feeling she could not explain. For some reason she felt as though she needed to recover the device. The image vanished and the feeling along with it, and she was left sitting on her knees, eyes wide and panting. At the moment, she wondered more about source of this vision than about its contents.

Maya climbed back to her feet, but no sooner had she resumed her exercise when there came a tremendous crash from somewhere in the cave complex, and a massive tremor passed through the ground beneath her feet. For a few stunned seconds there was silence, and then the sounds of laser turrets firing could be heard, along with the throaty bellows of gihox, and what sounded to her like the barking of dogs. The battle cries of humans erupted from somewhere outside her room, and there came the sounds of many laser rifles firing.

Maya rushed to the door and entered the corridor beyond, where refugees were running back and forth. She ran in the direction where the sounds of fighting were coming from, along with several men and women carrying laser rifles. They rounded a bend, and there before them stood a gihox, its broad frame filling the corridor. The behemoth was carrying a club as long as Maya was tall, and it raised the dreadful weapon.

Then the gihox hesitated, all color fleeing from its craggy face as it looked upon her, though the reason for that escaped her at that time. The riflemen did not similarly pause, and they opened fire on the giant. The behemoth raised a huge hand in front of its face as it staggered back, the shots scorching its flesh. Then it raised its club in its other hand and rushed forward, the ground shaking beneath its charge. The riflemen concentrated their fire and soon enough the gihox slowed, then fell over, quite dead.

Maya and the riflemen with her entered another corridor, where they found a pair of riflemen, Cat one of them, firing on a charging gihox. The behemoth brought down its huge, wedge-shaped sword, splitting one of the riflemen down the middle, then it kicked out, knocking Cat to the floor. The orange-haired woman scrambled back as the sword went up, and spread her legs as it came chopping back down. The sword dug into the stone mere inches from her groin, then the gihox lifted its weapon again, grinning evilly.

Maya snatched up a broom propped up against the wall, then snapped its head off with a twitch of her leg. She hoisted the pole as though it were a javelin, lined up her target, and heaved with all her strength. The broom struck the gihox in the throat, and its sword clattered against the stone as it staggered back, gasping for breath.

Cat did not let the opportunity go to waste, and fired a searing bolt into the gihox, leaving a scorched ruin where its reproductive organs had been. The behemoth gave a choked cry and fell thrashing to the ground. Cat scrambled away from the dangerous thrashing limbs of the gihox. The other riflemen were quick to the spot, finishing the giant off, while Maya helped Cat back to her feet.

''Have you seen my father?''

''I'm afraid not,'' Maya replied, retrieving the broom.

''We've got to find him before he is killed,'' Cat said.

''Lead on.''

The two women moved swiftly down the corridor, ready but without fear in case a gihox leaped out in front of them. No enemies presented themselves, and they entered the largest chamber in the cave complex, and stopped dead in their tracks. The people there had gathered in a semicircle around the mouth of the tunnel that led into this chamber, where they fought desperately against the gihox that were pouring through. Fighting alongside the gihox were huge dogs of some species Maya did not recognize.

Each dog was about six feet at the shoulder, with a broad and thick body and stubby legs tipped with sharp claws. They had a huge head with a nose that appeared to have been squashed flat against their face, and their wide mouth was studded with huge fangs. Worst of all were their eyes, for they seemed to glow a bright green. They tore into the human ranks, rending people to shreds with their claws and fangs.

Cat spied her father where he was fighting a gihox, the large man sorely pressed as he parried wildly with a makeshift club. A low growl emanated from her chest and she went down on one knee, training her rifle on the gihox. The behemoth swung at her father, and she squeezed the trigger. The bolt struck the behemoth on its sword arm, and that arm was flung out wide, the sword swishing harmlessly above her father.

Roger did not let this turn of fate go to waste, and he swept his cudgel across down low, sweeping the legs out from under his enemy. Then he brought the weapon down hard on its chest, creasing its breastplate, but barely injuring the tough giant. His second swing was even harder, drawing a pained grunt from the behemoth. It reached for him, but he swung at the hand, smashing two of its fingers back over the knuckles. His last blow was delivered along with a furious snarl, and the cudgel caved in its chest.

Roger angrily kicked aside its limp leg, then rushed over to his daughter, wrapping her in a tight hug. Around them, the initial surprise of the attack was starting to wear off, and the humans were forming into groups of three. Each group found itself a gihox or one of the dogs, and worked with precision and fury to bring them down. Step by step, the invaders were driven back toward the entrance.

Several riflemen concentrated their fire on a section of ceiling above the entrance, and before long there came a deafening crash, as large and heavy stones fell down. Several gihox and a couple of dogs were crushed to death, and the invaders already inside turned to regard the way they had come in. The exit was completely blocked by rubble, and the gihox and dogs trapped inside were quickly overwhelmed and slaughtered. But the barricade would not last, for already the pile of rubble was starting to shift as the gihox tried to break their way through.

''We cannot hope to survive a second assault!'' Roger shouted, eyeing the scores of human corpses that had already piled up inside the chamber. ''We must head deeper into the caverns, and evacuate through the back exit!''

''But the gihox will just break through and catch up to us,'' said one man.

''Then I'll stay behind to slow them down,'' said another man. ''They've already killed my wife, son and two daughters. I've got nothing left to live for, except preventing the bastards from having the satisfaction of claiming more lives.'' A few dozen other men and women stepped forward to volunteer to fight by his side. Maya knew from their haggard faces and grieving eyes that they too had lost everything.

''Your sacrifice will not be in vain,'' Roger said. ''Fight well, and die well!''

The pile of rubble shifted again, and a large stone rolled down from atop the pile. The throaty voices of gihox and the barks of dogs could be heard on the other side. Roger and the humans who would be making for the back exit rushed off. As they entered the tunnel complex beyond the large chamber they heard a tremendous crash, and the defiant cries of the humans who had stayed erupted, followed by the booming voices of gihox and the barking of the enormous dogs.

The troupe moved through the tunnel complex, sweeping up what provisions they could carry as they did. Maya spotted something from the corner of her eye then, and she turned to look down a side passage. There lay the corpse of a gihox, and beside it were the much smaller corpses of two men. Maya discarded her broom and grabbed up the quarterstaff one of the human corpses had been clutching. It was well crafted, and made mostly of wood, but was reinforced with metal banding, platinum by the look of it. She hefted the weapon, then caught up to the rest of the troupe, and continued her flight along the tunnels.

Behind them, the sounds of battle had dwindled to nothing, to be replaced by the sounds of pursuit, the thunder of stomping gihox feet. Worse yet was the baying of the dogs, and judging by the sound they were getting closer by the minute. The humans quickly became increasingly unsure of which path to take at which fork in the tunnel, for only a few had ever been to the tunnels this deep in the complex. Still, they did not slow, knowing that to do so meant getting caught and slaughtered, and so they just guessed at each fork.

Before long they felt a slight breeze coming down a tunnel that was different from all the others, for it was more unstable, and braced by wooden beams. They moved along at a brisk pace, until they came upon a makeshift door. The portal was small, too small to admit a gihox, though large enough to accommodate one of the dogs. A man threw open the door and ushered the others past him and into the daylight outside. Charging along the tunnel came the dogs, all sinewy, packed muscle and brown and black fur.

Cat and the other riflemen stood in the doorway and trained their guns on the beams supporting the ceiling, and opened fire. The dogs charged on, fangs bared and running with drool, glowing green eyes intent on the escaping humans. but then parts of the ceiling gave way and came crashing down. The noise made by the cave-in was deafening, drowning out the whimpers of the dogs, and a huge cloud of dust exploded out the door, covering the riflemen and many others in a layer of light gray.

Then there was silence, apart from the wind weaving in and out of the scraggly trees and boulders dotting the valley where they now stood.

''Where do we go now?'' Cat broke the silence a few moments later.

''Castle McCann is only a few days away,'' Roger said, frowning thoughtfully. ''We might be able to find help there.'' The name of the castle struck Maya as strangely familiar, though she could not put her finger on just where she had heard it before. People were nodding and murmuring amongst themselves, and shortly thereafter it was decided they would go to the castle. But Maya was not thinking about the castle, but about the vision she had had earlier, and the image of the device sticking from the drift of snow. She had felt as though she needed to find that device, or all would be lost.

''I'll not be coming with you,'' Maya declared at length.

''What?'' Cat balked.

''I've got to go back to where you found me,'' the blue haired woman explained. ''There is something there I must retrieve.''

''You've recovered another piece of your memory then,'' Cat stated more than asked.

''Going there is madness!'' Roger accused.

''Be that as it may, I have to go,'' Maya said resolutely, for she could not ignore the sense of urgency in her vision.

''Then I'll go with you,'' Cat stated.

''Cat, what foolishness is this?'' Roger balked.

''You should go with your father,'' Maya said.

''I'm coming with you,'' the fire-haired woman said firmly.

''You know what's out there!'' Roger practically screamed.

''I'm not going to argue with you, father.''

Roger stared at his daughter, at the stubborn set of her jaw, and the simmering fires in her green eyes, and at that moment she looked just like her mother had when she had set her mind on something. He realized he could not dissuade his daughter from going on this foolish journey, and so he decided to try a different tactic. Instead of digging in his heels and try holding back a landslide, he decided to try to guide it instead. ''Then I'm going with you,'' he stated.

To be continued...

Here is another song for a character

Catherine = Derniére Danse, by Indila.