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Post by KitClairvoyance on Feb 6, 2009 20:27:47 GMT -5
The bed didn't creak, but it did sink gently as Crystal crawled in. It was a tense night, and they all found comfort where they could. The reverend found his comfort in faith. Crystal in company. Kit in being alive. The fish. Well. In being alive too, Kit supposed.
When he lay and thought about it, not many things made sense. Humans were used to being at the top of the food chain - so much so that when they were turned to livestock, many died in their own hands. Those that were alive lived on hope. Much like them. It was a sick process - breeding, growing and consuming. He hadn't thought about it before they came along. Humans had hailed their ability to domesticate animals as what set them above all other creatures. Now it just seemed cruel.
Kit turned around and held Crystal, finding comfort in her as much as she did in him.
Their hideout used to be so full of life. He wondered if that was how the world was before humans came along. Full of life and happiness. And then came man with his spears. It was ironic that the Mythics too were using spears to subdue humankind. Perhaps if he looked hard enough, they'd be able to find traces of Mythic art depicting the hunting of humans. And what would happen to them should another race come to hunt the Mythics? What then?
They'd all be like the fish. Isolated. Afraid. Confused.
Kit pushed his thoughts far into the back of his mind and thought instead about the girl in his arms. He hadn't known her well. Perhaps saw her in passing. But survival was the strongest bond between people. Despite the cold of the air, they kept each other warm. Penguins did that too - Kit recalled reading once, back when he was young - they huddled for warmth. Penguins. Maybe the Mythics hadn't gotten to them yet. The Mythics hated the cold. Penguins could swim underwater.
His thoughts weren't coherent. A good thing. He slept.
When he woke, Crystal was still asleep. He wasn't sure of the time, there were no windows. No timepieces. Stepping out into the cool air, he slung his rifle over his shoulder and made his way out into the open. The reverend's door was still closed - asleep too perhaps. Sun was barely rising - the sky mostly still dark. The moon was half full. He washed his face in the icy cold water of the stream, stopping to drink his fill. It was a good stream - keeping clean and fresh despite the Mythics, he would miss it. When he looked up, he noticed a measly flock of birds rising into the air, their ranks haphazard with panic. Below them, the forest was red with blaze, the wind urging it on.
Hurrying back, he knocked on the Reverend's and his doors. How the Mythics loved fire, it chased their prey right into their hands, yet wouldn't touch their obsidian buildings. And it cooked. Burnt. Smoked. It caused pain. To their delight.
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Post by Crystal on Feb 6, 2009 20:28:15 GMT -5
She woke a good deal less refreshed than she would have liked and a good deal more than she had expected. And then she blushed. Kit was gone. She wasn't sure what he'd thought, finding her in his bed. Hopefully no more than she had intended.
Crystal closed her eyes, shuddered, banished her fears, and sent a little prayer to heaven to ask that perhaps they might be able to share blankets, the three of them, while traveling. And if Kit didn't mind, perhaps even after they'd reached, if they didn't get eaten.
She pushed back the thought of getting eaten. Oh, it would have been scandalous--! But she was so afraid, and she felt so safe when he was around, and who cared about scandal now that survival was the key? She'd explain it to him, of course… tell him how the walls changed every night and how her lone chair became a crouching alien, mutated and descended from their own kind. She'd explain it to the Reverend, too, and God would understand.
There was a knock on the door, and she hurried to open it. "Fire?" she gasped at Kit's explanation, and nearly tumbled to her own room, discarding her clothes and pulling on the cold, new ones she had set out so carefully last night. To her belt she strapped a long knife, and a little needle gun, fully loaded. Gloves from her jacket to be pulled on over shaking hands. And then she strapped her pack to her back, and it seemed somehow heavier than when she'd loaded it the previous day.
She snatched her Mythic spear and hurried to join the others outside. The old man was waiting already, his frail body tense under the new woolen jackets she had found for him, and they hurried together to the outside world.
The fire was catching hold, with no water in this parched land to stop it. It came from the direction of the farm, and Crystal could hear the charcoal forest crackling and snapping as it approached at an alarming rate. Orange lit the sky, blasting her even through the miles of forest still standing, with heat. She wheeled, left the caves behind, and began loping into the wood, nearly north, cutting across the wall of fire. According to the maps Kit had so painstakingly studied the previous day, due north were two other farms, which they would have to skirt, but before that came open, cold plains, the ones that came when one approached the edge of the tundra, where plants began to refuse to grow. Even the Mythics who lived so far north were either a scrubby lot or hideously powerful to be able to endure the cold they so despised.
They were prey on the open plains, flushed out of hiding, and they could expect at least one ambush, and Crystal cursed their horrible luck. But here and now, she knew, they were prey for the fire.
She ran faster. The fish's container gurgled across her back. The fire was catching up.
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Post by KitClairvoyance on Feb 6, 2009 20:28:37 GMT -5
The river would slow the fire down, Kit knew, but it wouldn't last forever. He carried both rifles, one slung across his shoulder, one in his hands, with a backpack containing the few changes of clothes he managed to grab before the smoke started to enter the hideout. He was glad it had rained not too long ago - it kept the ground damp at least, slowing the fire even more.
Charcoal forests lacked the undergrowth that would have made their flight hard, the ground was packed firm and the branches snapped easily, giving no resistance. Perhaps had the Mythics allowed the forest to have grown and flourished, it would have killed them with its clinging vines and network of roots. And when they first came, the forests did serve them in such a manner, trapping many fleeing humans. But fire after fire, and even the forests turned black - black like the cold hard obsidian that they prided themselves so much in. Yet for all they ran, the fire moved faster.
The old man was the slowest of the group, which meant that they all moved at his pace - but nobody complained or yelled, they were moving away from the fire, and soon they'd be on open plains without a single leaf to be burnt.
Despite the fire, cold northern air still managed to get through, turning their breaths into mist trails as they ran. And then , plains. The border between forest and plains was stark and sharp. The forest just ended in a neat line with no reason - it refused to grow any further beyond the point. The ground of the plains was hard - like concrete, never broken by plant or shovel. Yet they still ran. And as they ran, Kit felt a dozen eyes watching them - jeering as they ran like distressed animals from the fire.
They ran. Ran until the old man couldn't run anymore. Behind them, the forest blazed, sealing their path back with a wall of fire.
Kit dropped his load to the ground, tried to catch his breath. The Mythics wouldn't attack just yet, he knew - in Alaska, they would monitor lost patrols, watching and waiting. They could afford to, the plains were large and vast, and supplies only lasted for so long. And when they were weakened and couldn't lift a rifle, then they would descend.
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Post by Crystal on Feb 6, 2009 20:29:02 GMT -5
Crystal breathed the air of the plains in deep, even as the skin of her back prickled. They were out there. Oh yes, they were out there. Why didn't they attack? It would take them days to cross this plain, and even though it was coming on autumn, it wouldn't be cold enough to deter the aliens yet for weeks and weeks.
She swallowed hard and had an uneasy feeling that they might die out here.
The sky, what she could see of it that was not glazed over by smoke, was bright blue with the afternoon sun. Early afternoon. And she could still feel the blast of heat behind them; as she looked back, her stomach twisted to see that they had only just escaped in time. From another side, a flurry of lean, starved black birds burst out from the fire, flapped around wildly for a moment, and without even thinking Crystal pulled her needle gun and shot, twice, felling one of the animals. The little gun was a great deal quieter than a pistol, but not nearly as strong. It didn't have the heft and the recoil and the gunpowder behind it that a handgun did. Still, it was solid, and it would kill a Mythic at short range, and it would certainly take down a bird. Looking about warily, she headed over to her catch, removed her bullet, and slung the bird over her shoulder, curling bloody fingers in the brown grass.
She found the others looking warily about and planning out their destination, and without a word she set out after them, due north, toward the cold.
A few hours later, she was glad of her jacket and gloves. Wind blew over the plains at a seemingly constant rate, tingling her ears and near to freezing her nose. Tall thin brown grass crunched beneath her feet and left a horribly unmistakable trail. But at least there would be no Mythic hunting party out here that was not excruciatingly miserable. Crystal hunched her shoulders, and buried her hands deeper into her thick coat, and carried on, the walking keeping her warm as she struggled to breathe in the chill air. There really was nothing out here to see, she observed miserably, nothing but them and themselves and their pitiful camouflage coats.
That night was spent in wary silence. They took turns keeping watch without daring to light a fire, and Crystal huddled up close to the other two for warmth before forcing herself to pace about to keep awake.
Two days later, two days of hunger and fear and ongoing, relentless plodding, with their food running out and their water nearly gone, and the fish's water supply reduced to a few inches, they finally sighted the end of the plains.
Then the Mythics attacked.
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Post by KitClairvoyance on Feb 6, 2009 20:29:15 GMT -5
In some ways, the attack brought a measure of relief. Two days had they been slowly walking in fear, hearts skipping at the slightest rustle and flutter. It haunted them when they slept, when they ate. They never dared to light too large a fire, or to leave too obvious a camp mess. Futile efforts in a vast open plain, but fear made people do anything to lessen its grip.
The hunting party was large, three groups of three broke in a mad run towards them from their flanks and front. Like them, they Mythics had a weary air about them from a long fruitless hunt. The old man fired the first shot, bringing up one of the rifles and spraying wildly the wave of Mythics with gunfire, bullets kicking up dust and glancing harmlessly off their armour. His old bones rattled with the harsh recoil from the rifle, his arms straining to keep the barrel of the rifle level towards the predators, but to no avail.
Kit proved more methodological than the man, having fought Mythics for too long. He picked his targets, small sharp bursts of fire picking away at armour joints, and as they got closer, falling two oncoming Mythics with clean shots to the head. The third Mythic that charged their front faltered and stumbled, its armour half dangling from a broken joint. Kit picked him off easily when he heard a cry of frustration, the old man picking up his spear and running straight into a flanking group.
"No!" Kit shouted, but the man just ran, fuelled by anger from the murder of his flock. The guttural war cries of the Mythics rang clear as they bore down upon him, easily smashing his skull in with a harsh blow to the head.
Grabbing Crystal's arm, he pulled her into a wild dash towards the end of the plains, hoping to lose the rest of the Mythics in the thick tundra pine forest ahead. Pain stung his heart as he heard the Mythics gloat over their fresh kill, the slimy tear of flesh from bone their prize sound. Feasting. They were feasting. It was a sick taunt, feasting on fallen Mythics and their friend as they tried to run. The Mythics were enjoying the hunt, allowing them to run.
Dashing through the forest, pine branches grazed and whipped at Kit as he tore past, never letting go of Crystal's hand. Only when the guttural cries of Mythics faded into the background did Kit stop, fighting back tears as he crumpled to the ground. Tired.
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Post by Crystal on Feb 6, 2009 20:29:28 GMT -5
Crystal had screamed as the old reverend had burst from them, her hand reaching out to hold him back. He was mad! Hadn't Kit already killed two and she'd already killed one? Didn't they have the advantage with their long-range weapons? But no, he was mad with fatigue, and in those swirling fractions of a second she'd seen once again that strange light in his eyes that had been there the last night in their old hideout – the one she had thought to be of renewed faith and hope. Of course it was. He'd been ready for heaven.
Crystal didn't stop crying for a long time after they burst into the pine woods. Her throaty sobs turned to hiccups, turned to dry gasps of cold air.
She turned her head unwillingly to see the trail they had left behind them, all through the wood, visible for anyone.
"Kit," she whispered, bending down to his heaving, tucked in figure, "Kit, we gotta go. We have to cover our tracks. They'll find us if we don't." At least they'd followed the direction they were supposed to go in. At least they were now theoretically past the first farm, whose occupants had, she was certain, set the fire and tracked them across the plains. Crystal grew to hate them in that moment, a hate dampened by knowledge that humankind hadn't really been much better. She took a deep breath.
The last farm was three days walk ahead. It was right in their path, and they'd certainly have to skirt around… or go through. She wondered with a sudden angry clenching of her stomach if they should go through. Perhaps free a few more people. Oh but they'd barely gotten out with their lives last round. But wouldn't it be worth it?
She began to hear again, around the wailings of wind in the pine thicket, the Mythics' voices. Their gruesome feast was done and they were sated, and there were still two humans left in these woods. Oh, fine fodder, oh good food. Crystal grabbed a pine branch, cautiously backtracked ten feet, and began brushing away the traces of their passing.
"Kit, come on," she said urgently when she was done. It would be slow going. Maybe if they could find a good tree, they could climb that and ambush the aliens. Maybe the old man had had the right idea, take the monsters head on. "We have to go."
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Post by KitClairvoyance on Feb 7, 2009 2:20:10 GMT -5
The aliens never came. Perhaps they had their fill of human meat, supplemented by the flesh of the three Mythics that they managed to kill. Perhaps they had found more quarry, routed another ramshackle hideout and feasted. Perhaps they were following, stalking. Watching the two of them for a moment of weakness. Oh, Kit didn't know. How could he? He couldn't understand their thoughts, their culture of cannibalism and torture. He couldn't understand what would drive a person to do such things.
Nevertheless, night brought some safety. Despite their love for the dark, night brought the biting cold that the Mythics so loathed, the same biting cold that stung them as they trudged through the forest. Neither of them felt like stopping, felt like staying vulnerable. At least they had brought warm clothes, and the moon shone full upon them. Kit kept Crystal close to his side, keeping her as warm as he could. Mythics weren't the only murderers out in the open. When man had ran to the only safe place he could find, he found new enemies in the same elements that protected him. Hypothermia. Frostbite. Murderers as stealthy and as cruel as the aliens themselves.
Clouds shifted overhead, wrapping the moon in their thick embrace. Blanketing them with their ominous shadow. Kit kept his head down, an arm around Crystal. The clouds lanced each other with bolts of lightning, agitating, growing angrier. And then they split, pouring a torrent of water down upon them, soaking right through their clothing. Cold, harsh icy water. At least the fish would be happy for fresh water.
Wiping the raindrops out of his eyes, he held Crystal tighter, trembling from the cold. At least in Alaska it was snow. Rain was relentless, pouring down their clothes, sucking their warmth. It got into their boots, freezing their feet. A bolt of lightning proved to be their saviour, the brief flash of light illuminating a cave.
Struggling, Kit helped Crystal into the cave, warmth slowly returning to his fingers and toes. The cave had a moist smell to it, but not stale. He looked around in vain for materials to start a fire with, everything was soaked through or wouldn't burn. They would have to do without.
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Post by Crystal on Feb 8, 2009 15:02:07 GMT -5
Crystal shivered, chill and beyond cold, and trying desperately to move her fingers and toes to keep the feeling in them. It was only her thick coat, chill but somewhat waterproof, that still lent any warmth at all. It was late summer in the taiga – and that was the only reason why it rained – and once they hit the northern tundras, she knew, there would be wind as well, whipping through the sparser and sparser forests, hitting them to the bone.
She wished they could burn dirt, but then the Mythics might come crowding into the cave with them. And then she cursed the rain for coming, for taking away a whole night when they might perhaps have skirted any hunters.
Squeezing out her cold hair, feeling it turn into icicles, she stumbled to the edge of the cave to fill their water bottles, just to be moving. Perhaps it was a good thing they'd stopped, and it'd rained. They might have died from thirst and exhaustion. She stood their packs to one side of the cave, removed two ration bars, and begun chewing on one slowly, trying to make it last. The first thing she'd do, she swore, given access to a good lab again, would be to make a portable cloning tank.
"Kit," she said softly, pulling out her one change of clothes from her pack and shivering, "we should change, or we'll be ill. Please turn your back." It was near to pitch black. Not like it mattered, but hopefully he had a change too.
They spent the night in the corner that looked the driest and the least disgusting, and it was thoroughly miserable indeed, for all that they'd spread her coat under them and Kit's over them and slept back to back for warmth. But when she did wake, the chill light of morning had begun filtering through the mouth of the cave.
She sneezed dolefully and felt illness coming on. At least, she thought with a sigh, she'd work the kinks out of her body today. Her legs hurt from running, and her neck hurt from sleeping on the ground. In fact, she hurt everywhere, and their clothes were still slightly damp. Come to think of it, she'd never found out if Kit had brought a change of clothing.
Crystal squirmed out from beneath the relative warmth of their two coats and hoped with her eyes closed that her partner wasn't naked.
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Post by KitClairvoyance on Feb 10, 2009 10:33:55 GMT -5
The one good thing that had come out of the old man's death was that Kit now had his change of clothing, having carried his backpack for him. There was a certain morbidity about it, Kit mused as he pulled out the dead man's change of clothes. He was a fair bit more well built than the old man, but the clothes fit, not as snugly as they could have, but Kit was sure after a while they would stretch to accommodate him.
He didn't think much as he lay down to sleep, their coats warming up to them as they huddled in. His dreams were full of black, not the empty dreamless black, but thick, suffocating black which he tried to wade through in vain. The dense ooze that filled him, leaving him nowhere to run, yet transparent enough for a dozen and a dozen eyes to watch him.
When he finally woke, he woke with a strange craving for pizza and chocolate. He placed the craving away with a ration bar of old dried fruit and grains. The meal of fish they had was by far a luxury in comparison to the stale, sour taste of the bar.
When they left the cave, they left light, leaving their damp clothes behind, along with any of the old man's belongings. The sun was gentle upon them, the forest surprisingly peaceful. Perhaps their pursuers had forgotten about them, having retreated back to their cold stone farms to escape the rain. The ground was damp, giving off a strong earthy smell, mud clinging to their boots. Kit led Crystal hand in hand, the sun giving his direction. It was mid afternoon when the first signs of the second Mythic farm came visible. The forest had been cleared, the ground ploughed again and again, seeded with the bones from their many meals. Whatever they used to build their structures poisoned the land, nothing grew, and everything died.
A chorus of guttural cries rose out to the sky. Just beyond the clearing, the farm was in full operation. Human cries begged for mercy, Mythic cries roared in celebration. They had a large haul. Kit feared that they had reached the next outpost, that where they were heading to now lay in ruins and blood.
The perimeter of the farm was staked with slender obsidian posts, various body parts nailed to them for no obvious reason apart to suck hope from those that approached. Arms, heads, thighs all were hung in what the Mythics might consider a decorative display of valour and strength.
Kit hesitated, the farm was much larger than the one he and Crystal first fled from, and neither of them knew the layout within. To stick to the forest would be safer.
It was then when Kit noticed the figures prowling the farm compounds. They were malnourished and bent over. Humans. Sickly and stripped from any shred of humanity, some had a limb or two torn from them, bloody festering stumps in their places. Their bodies were terribly mutilated, ripped and slashed all over. One of them saw him and let out a throaty cry, imitating that of the Mythics, and charged at them, the rest of the figures following. They smashed and clawed at the obsidian stakes that surrounded the farm, an angry mess.
And then the Mythics came, pouring out from every orifice of the farm to see the commotion. They hacked and beat the pile of humans until they were unconscious or dead, more still catching sight of Kit and Crystal and sent chase after them.
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Post by Crystal on Feb 15, 2009 11:58:39 GMT -5
Her fear choked down the bile her stomach was throwing up as she sprinted back the way they had come, clutching at Kit's hand. God, there were swarms of them! There was no way they could get free!
In her terror, she lost sight of Kit and dimly heard roars coming from the front—
The front?
They'd been tracked after all. They'd been so careful, so careful. Now it was all lost. Crystal flung herself to the side, pulled her needle gun, and fired, time after time. But they kept coming at her, those aliens, those monsters, and she kept firing, jammed another clip in, firing and firing, realized that they'd backed her up against a tree. She screeched and pulled her knife, and it shattered against the black obsidian breast plate of the Mythic that stood in front of her.
Crystal woke perhaps five minutes later, in a blood red daze. She'd been beaten, efficiently and quite badly. There was blood in her mouth, and blood on her face, and bruises and scrapes everywhere – but oddly, nothing broken. No big injuries. She was quite nicely preserved. They had even left her the shambles of her clothing, and thank heaven for small favours, but she could still feel her smallest, three-inch knife pressed against her skin.
She glanced numbly down at her own body, being hauled to its' feet by a rope and trussed and tossed into a small cage. There was a long line, red and seeping and shallow, down her chest where her shirt and undershirt and jacket had been ripped away to check her gender, and she cursed herself, softly and in a moaning voice, for being so young, so healthy and female and perfectly good for breeding. Ripples of goosebumps formed on her belly from the chill air. And Kit – oh, Kit, he must be dead now, dead and eaten, the Mythics never took males alive. Surely it was too much to hope that he still lived. Crystal cried, little gasping ugly tears, as they carted her into the farm and tossed her into one of those cages she still saw in her nightmares. It was a newer breeding room than the one he had loosed her from. There was only her in this one, her and two other girls, and a pen across the room to hold the breeding male. All the other cages were quite empty, and the room was silent as a tomb.
The Mythics cut her rope and slammed the door, speaking together all the while in their mellow and curiously fluid tongue.
Crystal slumped to the floor and passed out.
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Post by KitClairvoyance on Feb 23, 2009 21:11:33 GMT -5
Harsh white light glared down on Kit, tears of irritation watering his eyes, rolling down the sides of his face. His hands were strapped down firmly, unable to wipe the tears, the bare skin of his back pressed hard against a cold stone surface. The air stank of bleach and saccharide, the sound of water bubbling the only thing he could hear.
Turning his head away from the glare of Mythic light, he saw tanks lining the walls, each spherical and filled with a pink liquid but otherwise empty, identical to the tanks in which he had seen the Mythic-human hybrids grown in. Closer to him was another worktable, his rifle dismantled, along with the clothes he was wearing, ripped to shreds. Turning his head the other way, he saw a long intravenous tube connected to a large bag of clear liquid on one end, and a crudely formed needle on the other.
He was alive.
His mind ran through the last events he remembered. The swarm of Mythics overwhelming them with sheer numbers, the rush of fear and adrenaline. It happened so quickly, yet felt so slow in memory. He had shouted out to Crystal, calling her name, screaming at her to run away. He tried to pry them away from her, a blunt spear connecting with his side, falling him. They left him conscious as they knocked Crystal out, poised to devour her. An elderly Mythic had stopped them, tearing Crystal's jacket and undershirt down the middle before lifting her limp body by her hair and dragging away. Kit had yelled again, knowing the fate Crystal was being taken to. A Mythic foot connected with his skull, and he too lost consciousness.
The clicks of Mythic footsteps approached, the male Mythic that entered the room was easily seven feet tall, tall even by Mythic standards. A smaller female Mythic accompanied him, carrying a tray of implements. Kit struggled against the bonds that held him down, the male Mythic not regarding his fruitless protest as he examined Kit's body with surprising care; the way a person would regard a purebred horse, not wishing to damage. It took the Mythic hours to glean what data he needed from Kit's body. Once done, he swiftly jabbed a needle into Kit's arm, clear fluid flowing through the IV tube into him. The effect was immediate, Kit's limbs going limp. He was released and dragged by the arms, taken through the long obsidian corridors where screams and cries echoed continually.
It was a breeding room they finally threw him into, locked him behind the cold wires of a cage. The room was empty, but a sparsely filled cage. His heart skipped when he saw Crystal crumpled on the floor of the cage, breathing and modest, but sorely treated. The two other girls in her cage too kept some modesty, clinging to the shreds of clothes they were allowed. They were new. Older prisoners gave up on modesty, hope. Humanity.
Kit curled up for warmth, keeping his thoughts together. He knew his role in the farm now.
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Post by Crystal on Feb 27, 2009 16:32:32 GMT -5
Crystal woke to vague visions of domesticated humans, quiet ones, obedient in their cells and slavering love over their Mythic owners, like prize puppies or cattle or rats.
There were guards in the little room now, opening the pen for the breeding male, throwing a limp body inside. She jerked, stared, couldn't believe her eyes. It was Kit. It was Kit, she'd know him anywhere, she swore it. He was naked and his body was oddly clean in some areas, sterilized almost, like he'd been examined by a skilled surgeon. Crystal dragged her eyes back to his face with some effort. "Kit?" she called tentatively from between the bars of the cage. "Kit! Kit, answer me, Kit! Kit, please wake up, it's me, it's your Crystal, wake up!"
One of the pair of guards glanced over at her and contemptuously walked over, his body tall and lean and silvery in its obsidian plates. He rattled the cage bars and shouted something at her in silvery Mythic speech, then turned in disgust to leave. "Kit!" she screamed, and the Mythic once again spat a curse at her.
Infuriated for a moment beyond reason, she imitated him, screaming his own words back at him.
The guard jumped as if he'd been shot, and whirled, his alien features unreadable to her. Crystal flinched, sure she'd pay for what had surely been something horribly rude.
Then, to her utter surprise, the guard laughed. It took her a moment to recognize it as laughter, but how it laughed, and she could nearly see in that moment the evolutionary bloodlines flowing down into this horrible twisted mutated creature, who slaughtered its own for food. It said another word then. "I don't understand," she said hopelessly.
It repeated the word. She repeated it, her shoulders slumped. And the guard laughed again. She said the first word, and then the second, as offensively as she could manage. The pair left then, and Crystal was left staring at Kit's cage, wondering if the first wolves who had been tamed into dogs had felt like this.
It was the next day when the guards returned, and brought with them more of their ilk to jeer as she repeated the words they threw at her listlessly, like the first parrot who had ever learnt human speech. Finally a tall one stepped up from them, a tall Mythic, near perhaps to seven feet tall, and it examined her closely with its eyes. Crystal shrank back in debilitating fear, burying her face in her hands and pulling her torn clothing closer, sobbing and doubting her actions as it questioned her sharply in silvery speech. It repeated the words, and she looked up, and rattled the cage bars, and begged him for Kit. Pointing her hand to his pen, she repeated haltingly over and over again the silvery words she did not understand, until the cage bars were opened, and she was dragged out and thrown into Kit's cage, surrounded on all sides by watching Mythic eyes.
Crystal crawled to her friend, and wrapped her arms about him, and cried salty tears into his bare skin.
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Post by KitClairvoyance on May 16, 2009 10:53:30 GMT -5
It was a spectacle to them, the Mythics. They rattled their obsidian plates, all crowding around the small cage, all witness to the new discovery. Oh, it would be a circus. The talking human, reunited with her mate. What were they expecting? Maybe they weren't sure what to expect, chattering amongst themselves in their horrid speech. Speculating. When Kit's only response to Crystal was to hold her close, to give her some sense of security, some got impatient and struck their spears against the cage. Others tried to coax them with food. Kit's stomach revolted at the sight, the drippings of flesh and blood, one Mythic throwing a still intact finger in to them. They wished a show, a spectacle. They all had gathered for one, why else would they have obliged to Crystal's request? Surely not out of some feeling of compassion. He was reminded of the way children jeered at pet animals when they caught them in the act of mating, cheering them on in twisted amusement.
Kit lashed out at the nearest Mythic, grabbing onto the shaft of the spear that came too close to the cage. They fell silent, confusion riding the air before their jeers turned to shouts of anger, children angry at an animal who not only didn't perform, but turned on them. The cage was unbolted, leathery hands tearing Kit from Crystal. They formed a circle around him, shoving him from Mythic to Mythic, each taking turn to inflict pain. Scratching, kicking, punching, and when he could no longer stand, the tall Mythic stopped them and threw him back into the cage. It was clear they still wished him broken but alive, he still had a duty for them.
The congregation of Mythics dispersed, their need for entertainment sated, leaving only the guards once again. The two girls in the opposite cage were visibly traumatised, shrinking into the corner furthest away from Kit's cage. How well trained they were, to even shun those that wouldn't cooperate with the Mythics. Kit huddled back to Crystal, sorely bruised and bleeding. He fought to hold back tears of humiliation and pain, trembling by Crystal's side.
Food came to the room, but not to their cage, the guards not looking even at them as they shoved bowls of leftovers to the two girls who ate hungrily. It had been days since their last meal, and even then it wasn't large. Hunger made the body weak, but it also made it sharper.
Time was fluid, having neither day or night. They were given the barest they needed to live, fresh water dripped from tubes that dangled into the cages, and food came in the form of leftovers. Kit never touched the food they gave, he couldn't.
Weak, he was dragged from the cage by one of the guards an hour after feeding, the other guard pulling one of the girls to follow. They were led, dragged, to a smaller room. The temperature was warmer than the rest of the farm, and the air carried the distinct musky scent of sex. One of the Mythics jabbed a syringe into Kit's arm and the girl's, more drugs to make them compliant, and then they were left alone.
The girl knew her job and lay obediently on the floor. The drugs were disorienting, feeding images into Kit's mind. The room turned to a lush palace setting, draped with purple and lined with gold. The girl. The girl turned to Crystal, lying there waiting for him. Kit stepped towards her, hesitating. His untouched consciousness fought, aided by the hunger that kept him alert. He swayed and fell to his knees, clutching his head. The girl rose, confused. Afraid of what would happen to them when the Mythics found that the job had not been done.
Kit lay there writhing on the floor when the Mythics came to retrieve them. If they knew that Kit had not done his part, they did not show it, dragging them back and tossing them into the cages once again. Kit curled up, trembling, knowing that he couldn't fight the drugs another time.
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Post by Crystal on Jun 7, 2009 1:12:19 GMT -5
It was while Kit was gone that the tall Mythic came for her. Crystal had been curled up, unable to touch the food they were offered, her stomach roiling with hunger, concentrating on not thinking about what her friend was surely being forced to do at that moment. It took her firmly by an upper arm, propelled her out of the room, and she let it, weak with hunger and deep despair.
Then she smelt it.
Fresh air. Fresh air and freedom. She restrained her urge to bolt toward it, slowly turned her head down the corridor. Why, escape had never been far away at all. The newer pens. Why hadn't she thought before this? Why'd she been so caught up in her world of despair and fear?
Crystal looked at her captor, suddenly, with the new eyes of a scientist, and recognized a colleague. A twisted one, to be sure, but a colleague. Deep sunk black eyes in pale white stretched skin. It's alien features looked older to her suddenly. Even the spikes jutting out cruelly from its body seemed to have a scholarly bent to it. And she had bred her own rats, once upon a time.
She stilled herself to be docile, hunger and desperation giving her new strength. Ah, Mythic, she thought, I'll be your quiet and good lab rat. I'll prod your knowledge. I'll arouse your scientific curiosity. And when you're not looking, we'll be gone.
Her own inspection did not take as long as Kit had been gone, and she gritted her teeth against the knowledge of her clothes ripped and torn in a pile beside them, the samples of her flesh the tall Mythic took, closed her mind to all those techniques she herself had performed. Ah, and she'd spoken again, a few Mythic words, and knew in that instant that they must go soon, for soon she would be placed under observation. The first talking parrot. She snatched her long jacket back and wrapped it about her as the guards arrived, and submitted docilely to being dragged back to Kit's pen. Another set brought Kit back in only minutes later.
Crystal rose to go to him, clad in nothing but coat and shoes, her mouth open in excitement to tell him what she had found.
Then she saw his eyes and she froze, her newfound strength falling away. Kit was looking at her, and his eyes were glazed with drugs and something she did not quite understand. He wasn't looking at her, no, he was looking at something else.. and her.
Flinching back, she shrank against the bars of the cage.
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Post by KitClairvoyance on Sept 15, 2009 10:06:16 GMT -5
The images flickered on and off in his mind like a bad light, again he found himself in the soft purple palace, Crystal before him. She was pressed up against the wall, wearing a long silken gown that teased her figure. He opened his mouth to speak, to whisper and confess his love to her, but the words got caught in his throat, building and swelling before bursting out in a screech. He fell down onto cold obsidian, the bars of the cage spinning around him rapidly. Scrambling on all fours, he grabbed onto the bars of the cage, gripping it, grasping for a centre of stability.
Gentle wisps of pink perfume calmed his mind, the desire rekindling again within him. Kit turned to approach Crystal again, a hand reaching out to push aside her silken gown, easing it aside. He reached further, his fingers warm, blood rushing through them and back, veins throbbing, convulsing. Again he fell to the cold obsidian floor, his limbs jerking erratically. The cage's bars falling around him. His muscles spasmed, his leg kicking out hard against the bar, dislocating his knee at an odd angle, but the pain was swept away in electrical storm of neurons firing at random.
The Mythic guards summoned the tall Mythic. Fearing for his prize specimens, he had Kit bound and fastened to his lab table, Crystal being led alongside to watch the operation, perhaps learn more words and mannerisms. The tall Mythic worked quickly, preparing yet another cocktail of drugs. Kit's convulsions worsened, his skin chafing against his bonds, blood trickling down his limbs.
A quick jab with the needle, and the tall Mythic sent a stream of sedative flowing through Kit's system, deadening the storm, leaving Kit limp.
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