What Dwells (Wickedly Winged Book 1) Read online

  I really, really didn’t want to meet my maker today. A performance review, and so soon, I begged of the powers that be. I’m barely into my thirties! “Not wearing the right outfit for this,” I blurted, then burst out laughing like I’d just said the funniest thing ever. I’d always envisioned myself finally breaking out of my mold, in some slinky dress, then suddenly dying of shock at my scandalous self in the arms of some disgustingly handsome, wild playboy millionaire. Eh, so maybe it was a stretch, a far one, but it got me going in the morning daydreaming about it.

  The little blue flashing warning sign informing me my oxygen was running low, something, something, I dunno, my head hurts, wasn’t working, a leak of some other gas, probably inside my cabin. There were too many flashing circles on the desktop panel like demented elevator buttons as my head grew floaty and my vision swam telling me all the things, all the shit was wrong. Did anything work right now?

  Engine one died, I noted with a wobbly bob of my head and a snort, until suddenly it didn’t. Tip to the left, tip farther. Slowly, we dove sideways. The second it kicked back on, coming to life with a vengeance, I was flying left. Then it died again, taking the opposite engine with it. Now I was straight up nosediving, plummeting straight down to whatever lay below.

  “Wow,” I whispered, as smoke and misty clouds whipped past. It was whipping by so fast, in fact, I could almost see the sky around me and grey rocky smudges of things below.

  Glancing around, I leaned forward and hit the master shut off. It occurred to me, as everything died and I really began to fall to my death with some gusto, that should I reach an end to this fog anytime soon, should there be one, there was the remote possibility I could pop the hatch and ‘chute my way away from here. That is to say, should the dome’s emergency hatch pop and I could get out safely before the fog murk could touch me. “Only one way to find out,” I whispered.

  The alarms no longer blared, those flickering lights blissfully dead. Everything was dead but the crackling, fizzing pops, the wind whipping by, and the lurching of Krull’s metallic hull as it slowly gave.

  Speed. Picking up lots of damn speed. Definitely feeling it. My fingers dug into the seat. One hand lifted to reach for the hatch latch, should we find an out, before we, my tentaplant and I, were going too fast for me to find it and grip it.

  On second thought, just in case, both hands grabbed for the lever.

  My legs lifted, until they were dangling, slapping at the top of my seat where my hands had just been. Knuckles white, my hands on the lever were the only thing keeping me from dropping and smashing into the console and the dome. I guess I should be thankful the gravity modulator was still in place. For now.

  Right when I was about to drop and curl up, assuming the fetal position, ready to accept my fate and try to go out with as much muffled screaming as possible—I mean, as much dignity as possible—the fog started to thin out, until it resembled the fine, immovable, immobile, plentiful mist I’d stupidly assumed it was for all those years, my thick arse hovering right above it without a freaking clue and not enough common sense to take an active interest in the shit soup I circled on the regular to actually try and understand and, on this vein, as such, actively avoid it with the healthy respect I’d earned for it. Like sharks. I knew gwog damned well enough about sharks and logates and how much I wouldn’t like to be eaten by one, enough so to go into the water of the beaches but not past the leagues. Past the leagues were deep waters, shark and logate territory, and they could keep it all to themselves. Gwog, I’m rambling...

  Krull jerked forward, until it began rolling, tumbling in a dizzying circle into the open air. One moment I was dangling, then falling, then stuck floating in the middle. Fucking grav had suddenly started acting up. Of course it did! Slamming into something to be lifted up weightlessly moments later, I wanted to snarl. Then I was falling. A shout tore from my throat as my torso smacked my seat, and then I was floating up once more. Grrr.

  My fingers grasped for purchase. I ignored the way my stomach churned, the world flipped and flopped. My hands found, fingers curling around. I pulled. The latch released, the hatch popped open, the hull chose that moment to blow, sucking me out with it, and out I flew. But for the fact I was now freefalling as my schooner dropped below me in several fiery pieces to disappear into the great dark depths of some dark cloudy nowhere, some great beyond past this, a mountain of rocks and empty landscape surrounding me, the tippy top of said mountain of rocks just off to my left, it was all rather lacking in any great sense of relief as far as great escapes went. I’m still alive, I thought with mild relief. And I shall remain so, I insisted, gripping the pull for my parachute. I wasn’t very ladylike when I yipped, bellowing a curse, jerking when it opened, throwing me backwards with the force of it. I considered it my only accomplishment, the great, “Fuck!” heard all around down below.

  “Not back into the mists! Not back into the mists!” I found myself shrieking as the wind drew me upwards. Losing my ever loving mind, I started frantically paddling forward, like that would somehow fucking help. Jerking on my ‘chute’s pulls, I prayed to any and all greater beings to descend. No lift off. I don’t want to go up! “Put me down you blasted-” My legs kicked uselessly and I snarled. The harder I jerked on the pulls for my ‘chute, the more thoughts of one ripping clean off had my heart racing.

  As luck would have it, right as I was starting to reach the top of the mist, the wind changed. It was a sharp spike whipping my parachute, and I was chucked round in circles and then tossed towards the mountain, but I’d take the rocky landscape over the alternative. Hells, I was just thankful there was anything beneath the mists at all.

  Toted around, I was dangling above a whole other world, the bottom of the only world I’ve ever known secretly hiding this great beyond of another away. A very vast, great other, I thought with no small amount of awe. Bellinor. It was like the stories Humanids, descendants of the Apenemens, such as myself, were told as children. The Great Beasts of Bellinor, the endless tales told in ancient texts, had been favorites of mine. It was why I’d gone on to study ancient languages, a perfectly useless degree, I realized later. No one really cared about history anymore, not realizing if you hid it, it would repeat itself. I had no desire to repeat some of history’s greatest travesties. Though, if I could do it all over again, I supposed I’d have gone to school for a more lucrative career.

  ‘Round and ‘round I went as the wind took me where it would, leading me in an endless circle around the mountain coming closer and closer, growing and growing until massive cliff faces, caves, so many cave openings, large enough to fit a hairy mad-tusk through, were right before me.

  Was this related to the Great Apenem, the primates who developed into what the Apenem are now? And with the help of evolution, what us Humanids, their descendants, were now? Would I find remnants of a lost, primitive Apenem city? A society? Was I now about to stumble across the greatest discovery of our time and I’d never be able to share it? Oh, the ancient languages major in me was as giddy with excitement at the idea as the very real living and don’t wanna die other half of me was wild with fear.

  Great Apenems, here, now. History preserved and thriving, in the flesh. My jaw about dropped at the thought.

  Another gust of wind, stronger than the last, pulled me towards the right, then the left, sending me into an awkward tailspin. Tugging on the cords in my hands in my terror filled dive, nothing happened. Tugging harder, I started to fall a little. Glancing up into the dark blue canopy of material keeping me afloat, a small, shocked whimper left me. No! The cords were caught up there up above me somewhere, the lines twisted, pinched.

  How had the ties... “Frye,” I snarled. This wasn’t a standard issue ‘chute! I would have recognized the stupid logate skull in the left hand corner anywhere. Oh, if I had a chance to see him again I was going to murder him. What kind of sick joke was that intended to be? A moment too late a small shot of glitter hit me, vomiting from the ejector fan. The sma
ll ejector fan that was supposed to help guide me down sputtered out and remained immovable. Had the glitter clogged it? Had my mad escape damaged it somehow? Was it already messed up to begin with? What wasn’t defective, myself included, or tampered with on my damned vessel?! Ugh!

  One peek down towards my dangling feet and all that lay before me below had me gulping. At least I wasn’t spinning like a top anymore. Just me and the wind now, sailing along, I guessed. Take me somewhere good, wind.

  I supposed I should be losing my shit right now, by now, howling my bloody head off, in a continuous state of crazed terror. Oh, I was panicking on the inside, where it counted, alright, but this was- I just couldn’t. An ancient civilization, right below us... and I was so damn close, and I’d survived the mists! When you’re expecting to die in a horrible shuttle crash but instead find yourself staring slack jawed at a hidden world, yeah, I was allowed to act funny.

  “Wish I had my camera,” I muttered, shaking my head.

  Tiny furry animals, white and round against an unforgiving grey landscape, nothing but rocks from here to there as far as the eye could see, looked like splotchy polka dots from my vantage point. Goats? Sheep, perhaps? A newly discovered creature like the mad-tusks, a variation on a wooly mammoth and elephant, discovered hidden deep in the Ice Isles of Jhadran less than two of its solar spans ago.

  Even the notoriously tightlipped Apenem had seemed surprised by the wooly discovery. Crocodins, the lizard like, humanoid reptilian people the Apenems have been at war with for centuries and probably always would be, had been as pleased yet shocked to find mad-tusks as we were. Living dinosaurs. Not descendants of, not evolved beings that came from, no, but real, living, just like the fossils we’ve found, down to their DNA, mad-tusks.

  The Apenems and Crocodins were secretive because they feared, given enough knowledge, the right kind of wrong knowledge, there was no telling what Humanids might do with it. Couldn’t say I blamed them, considering our personal history. The days of Humanids experimenting on unsuspecting beings had long ago ended, all beings banned from such scientific exploration, the days of half mad hybrids terrorizing the cities, greedy warlords using these macabre beasts as their own personal bargaining chips, were a very unfortunate part of Humanid past. All research was regulated heavily, and monitored by all parties. Being caught even attempting such things meant automatic banishment, shipped off to one of the distant, primitive mining planets several moons over. It was worse than a death sentence. It was enough to cure anyone of any ill thoughts.

  Speaking of tusks, I thought with wonder, noting the thick, curling protrusions coming out of the fluffy, flat nosed sheep-like creatures making eerily similar guttural noises to someone about to lose their lunch, bleated, thick tusks protruding from their mouths like wild hogs on display.

  Did sheep and boars come from this being? Had two entirely different creatures evolved from this species?

  Down, down, down I slowly glided, close enough to the tusked sheep things to spot four navy blue eyes watching me from a bulbous, lumpy, rectangular head.

  I was so busy watching the four-eyed, tusked sheep making weird bleating noises I didn’t spot the creature just in front of me.

  “Ack!” I smacked right into the rather large being, my legs flailing a moment too late, taking him unaware. My knee mashed the side of a bald, round head that almost came to a point at the back, my boot connecting with a swath of loose, wrinkly skin covering his back, almost like a cape in appearance, wrapped around his broad shouldered frame.

  Stunned, startled, the creature roared, spun around, and made a grab for me. Clawed hands dug into my leg, tearing through my flight suit like it wasn’t the thick, water tight, weatherproof material it was. My other leg kicked automatically, missing its intended target, grazing the wrinkle massed back as I gaped in stupefied horror.

  The beast batted my leg away like it was nothing, the pain that slammed through my ankle suddenly by his actions enough to make me cry out and gasp in pain. Wrenching me towards him to spin and toss me away, the force of it caught me on the wind, and my body subsequently on my ‘chute, sending me tumbling down the mountain cliffs. My screams echoed as I flew towards the great abyss below.

  The creature made the strangest noise, almost discernible over my terror filled screeches as my ‘chute swallowed me up, my screams replacing those shocked noises to mute everything and anything else out after that. Air rushed past me, my ‘chute’s canopy enveloping me, swaddling me to the point I was blinded to all else but that blasted material. The sensation of blindly falling, I couldn’t explain it, the wind whipping past me, the sound of the ‘chute flapping whistling in my ears, my death song on my fast paced plummet.

  Snapping out of my shocked scream fest, my arms pinwheeled in some last ditch effort to free myself, but every bit of material I managed to push out of the way, it was like another bit took up its position.

  So THIS was how I was to die, I realized, on the cusp of the world’s greatest discovery, done in by an awkward run-in gone wrong with some strange, alien creature with waxy skin, wrinkles galore along his backside, a roar to rival a lion on a stubby snub-snouted, pig nosed beast.

  Giving up the fight, I curled in on myself, figuratively, physically, in all the ways one did when accepting the inevitable. “Blessed oh Gwog,” I began as I quietly started to chant the prayer of the Apenems lord and savior, Gwog the Magnificent, The Great Gwigging Gwog of Grog, and about fifty other titles the deity held—seeing as I couldn’t say I’d honestly followed any actual faith and theirs was the least in your face, do as I say or drop to the fiery pits of the inner hells—when something slammed into me.

  A crushing weight rammed into my side. Air rushed from my lungs and my eyes bugged. Had I hit a rock along the cliffs? A boulder or something of some sort? It was atop me, and I was still falling, faster now than before, but then the boulder moved, thick arms banding around me in my swaddled prison, and it breathed.

  A thick, wide chest expanded, a strange whoosh, a shot of a slap, and then my downward journey jerked and we, I, was gliding. A strange flapping sound had me tensing.

  Snub nosed, wrinkly backed... He wasn’t covered in some kind of crinkled mass of wrinkled skin, those were- “Wings,” I whispered, scarcely able to believe it.

  Rumbling noises emitted from the being who’d nabbed me, the odd sensation of being carried as we flew causing me to curl up tighter until I was in a huddled ball. My body shook so badly I could barely hold still. Mind muddled, I wondered briefly if he might find me too heavy and drop me any moment, allowing me to finish my plummet. But, no, why collect me, then? My teeth chattered to the point I acknowledged I was probably in shock.

  Wind whipped around us. I’d never been hang gliding but assumed this must be, minus the ‘chute swaddling, a similar sort of feeling. Gliding on air, swooping and circling, I imagined, should this have been under better circumstances the adventurer in me would be rejoicing.

  Thick legs bunched beneath me, curling under my ass. It was like he was preparing, but for what? I needn’t have asked. Mere moments later, we tilted forward and dropped, the dips and dives to our flight pattern to follow putting me on alert. What now? Were we to land? Had he decided to unburden himself after all? Was this where he was to drop me?

  The sound of scraping pricked my ears. It grew louder and louder, the slower and gentler our gliding ride grew. His feet? Toe claws, assuming he had any—something was scraping those rocks hard enough there was a screeching beneath my feet, the raw scraping of something strong and sturdy to stone dragging along. Those thickly muscled thighs digging into my soft arse tensed, one and then the other, in quick succession. It was a pattern. Scraping sounds beneath me and just to my left, that leg tensed, then the right would have a go. The sound grew so loud I winced. Then, slow as this fun rock dragging business was getting, we jerked to a halt.

  Just when I thought we’d come to a sudden, immediate stop, his legs tensed and, the sound of slapping flaps
causing my eyes to snap in the sound’s direction, despite my inability to see shit, we popped up. Small, poorly muffled, strangled noises burst from my throat. My hands scrambled, grasping for purchase, finding what I assumed were thick, bunched biceps to hold onto tight.

  Moments later we dropped, a short fall that while brief had me shrieking, my stomach tumbling to my feet. The thump of feet landing, the action reverberating through both of us as impact hit me moments later, had the horrible sounds I was making cutting off, until only a discernible grunt was all that came out of me. My spine, from my tailbone to the top of my thick mopped head, felt rattled. Grimacing, my hand automatically went to my neck to rub my nape. Oh, I was gonna be sore in the mornin’. A soft groan left me as I did a few gentle neck stretches. I wouldn’t be surprised to find the thing wasn’t quite screwed on right anymore. Hah. A small laugh left me. “That would just be Gwog’s will,” I grumbled quietly under my breath, “wouldn’t it?”

  “Strange creature,” I thought I heard someone grumble.

  Humanids? There were Humanids here? Hope soared within my chest. Could it be? They were speaking Hutaung, the language favored among Humanids. It was said to be the Humanid language, but it wasn’t, not originally. At some point, our ancestors had lost the ability to even attempt our own mother tongue, the Apenem’s Simiafor. Where Apenems and Crocoids speech was more complex and harder for us to attempt, they’d mastered Hutaung. Hutaung was the easiest language, and had over the years become universal speak, a means for everyone to communicate without misunderstandings, but it was easy enough to tell if the species was Apenem, Humanid, or Crocoid from the way they spoke it. Tone and inflection alone were a dead giveaway. Yes, the speaker was using a variant of the older dialects, more formal, stilted, but still.