The Moon's Fangs | 1

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit his backup plan sounded risky. Did I tell him that? Not in so many words. More so in the language of shifty eye contact and awkward smiles as we waited for his wounds to heal and for Luk to work on hacking into a waypoint within the outskirts of the oasis.

“So… hacking. You do that often?” I asked, dumping the sand from my boots and tugging them back on, keeping an eye on the pink crystals scattered around the area. None had made any movement yet, which meant Blaire wasn’t close. Yet.

“When the job requires it.” He said, reworking a series of multilayered codes on his projection. I couldn’t tell who did the heavy lifting in the portal piracy – him or Luk.

“Sure, sure. Just out of curiosity, what’s your success rate for these kinds of situations? Do you get caught like, what... once out of every ten times?”

After looking like a jumbled mess for the past several minutes, the circular codework locked together, and the projection dissipated as Reks turned to face me. He folded his arms, looking at me disapprovingly. But I found it slightly difficult to focus on the disapproving look when his sleeves were rolled up his biceps, allowing his muscles silently seduced me.

“Are you finding it difficult to trust me, Outlander?”

“No! No, of course not.” I waved both of my hands between us as my voice changed pitches like a game of hot and cold. “You are obviously very skilled at… many things, and totally know what you’re doing. But I was just thinking, it would super suck if we ended up getting arrested and thrown in stasis jail, or… however that works. If that happened, we’d be screwed. Who would even save us?”

~Fun fact: Cryo is rarely practiced among orleizens, and is even looked down upon. It is quite unusual for the dais which contained Reks Arlen to have been set up on Orlaith since the species that specializes in the time-freezing technology chose to flee their planet to avoid being conquered by the orleizen empire. Before The Fall, mind you.~ Nox provided, then continued. ~If we did get caught and our captors followed protocol, we would be taken to the holding cell connected to the colosseum to await questioning.~

Huh.

Earlier, Reks had mentioned hacking into an oasis surface waypoints would cause a security breach, resulting in alarms to instantly alert the orleizen council, guards on duty, and possibly a unit trained for the circumstance. I played out the scenario in my head several times, trying to figure out how the two of us were supposed to outrun units specialized in hunting down runaways and fugitives.

Reks’ cocky vitiate attitude is confident in his ability to escape unscathed, but that doesn’t eliminate every high-strung nerve in my body at the mere thought of running from the authorities — alien or not.

I could already visualize my dad’s hair going grey in my future telling of traumatizing adventures. Maybe I’d leave this part out, for his sake. Or… several parts, now that I think about it.

“If you don’t loosen up, you’ll struggle to keep up with me.” Reks warned, albeit teasingly.

I shot him a glare. “I see your arrogance is still intact. A shame.”

One of his brows arched as he slid his gate ring from his finger. “It’s almost as prominent as your desire to push your limits with me.”

“I— I do not. And that’s beside the point. I’m just trying to look out for us, consider the danger you might be downplaying.”

“You don’t have to go. I’ll drop you off at the lab, so long as you promise to be a good girl and not fall asleep until I come back.”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t try to get rid of me. You can’t go on about beautiful views, then rob me of seeing them. Now come on, quit stalling and open the gate. We’re losing precious darkness here.” I stretched my arms, as if that’d help me.

“Such a bossy little Stargazer.”

My stomach flipped as he tossed his ring in the air, opening the gateway. Anticipation curled inside me as I stepped through the whorls of stars with him to face whatever would come next, leaving all but one pink crystal behind.

We left the rocky sierras to instead face a primitive forest lush with shades of orange, pink, and yellow, scaling up the curved mountain. It bloomed with life and fertility whereas just a few feet behind us, an endless and decrepit desert stretched outward. The difference was nothing short of striking. The astral barrier represented a hard line between life and death. Safety and danger.

“Wow… did forests like this once cover all of Orlaith?” I gazed up, eyes trailing ahead to where natural paths lit by the abundance of moonlight twined through the trees, insinuating they led up the mountain in the distance.

“Unbelievable sights, yes.” he gave the stretch of night-soaked wastelands a bitter look before reverting his attention back to the situation at hand. “You’ll have to pause your gawking until we lose the incoming company. The Circle and special units have been alerted.” He turned his back to me, bending his knees a couple degrees for me to hop on.

I snapped my mouth shut, annoyed he called me out for gawking. But since we were on a bit of a time crunch, I’d let it slide.

I squeezed his shoulders, then swooped a leg across his back. I locked my ankles together around his lower waist, wrapping my arms around his neck in a secure hold. A blaze of heat licked through me as his hands slid up my bare thighs, repositioning my weight.

Behind us, the grounded waypoint lit up a bright amber-gold, materializing a new opening.

His voice sounded husky as one of his hands lifted to pull his gate ring off with his teeth while his other hand squeezed the apex of my thigh. “Try not to scream.”

My legs impulsively hugged him from the pleasure that one hand dealt. “Wh—what? Why would I scream?”

Before I could get an answer, the waypoint behind us started to twist in a gyre of stars. Any second now, reinforcements would step through.

Reks bolted. I held tight as my body pulled back against his sudden burst. He chunked his ring in the air a few feet in front of us and jumped through before I could see who or how many would come out of the waypoint.

The scenery shifted, setting us several yards ahead of where we started. But it didn’t stop there. He kept up the pace, throwing his ring, warping us deeper into the forest, catching his ring, then starting the process all over again. It was like playing a solo game of never-ending catch.

Bits and pieces of soldiers calling out orders turned more and more detached the colder the trail became.

“Holy crap!” I laughed between jumps. “This is insane. It’s like we’re glitching our way up the mountain!”

He laughed. “That’s a funny way to put it.”

My mind reeled with wonder of how this was possible. My focus entirely shifted from fear of getting caught to the sheer thrill of the moment, of this unbelievably freeing sensation it breathed into me.

It was a feeling that begged to be given voice, to scream out in joy. The only reason I held it in was because Reks warned against screaming. Had he known I’d feel this, or did he think I’d cry out in fear? The faint glances he stole at me between warp-jumps hinted at the former. The same exhilarance shone in his eyes; wild and utterly addictive.

After a few more jumps, he finally slowed at the inner edge of the mountainside, a small expanse of smooth rock where trees hadn’t grown. Not a soldier in sight.

“Now, on this generous tour free of charge…” he turned to give me an amused smile as I slipped off his back. “I thought I’d give you an aerial view of the empire before we move on to the best part.”

With a wide sweep of his hand, he gestured down toward an empire with an appearance like a pristine, downsized Greek God utopia with a botanical, space-age twist. River canals wound and flowed through intricately designed alcoves. The artworks were outlined in thin gold trims, trailing up the soft white frameworks of the architectures. On some buildings with pointed roofs, the designs curled up to sculpt snakes in pure amberite. Their heads tilted up to face the vast sky as if searching for the Fates amongst the stars.

A sister mountain curled around the opposite end only connected to the one we stood in a low dip to our right, where a peach-tinted waterfall supplied the oasis with water. It traveled through the astral barrier like it wasn’t there.

~The astral barrier is more than just a simple construct of energy.~ Nox offered the answer before I could conjure the question. ~The barrier registers the water to be a valuable resource to sustain life, allowing it to flow inside. This is the same for weather, save for severe conditions.~

I hummed at the information, studying the edge of the small empire, where a striking structure was built against the sister mountain. Two smaller waterfalls cascaded down either side of the palace-like structure, complete with sharp and elegant features. Instead of an amberite snake, this one adorned an iridescent cobra at the center, directly above the grand entrance, with doors large enough to invite a titan through. Above the cobra, a circle nearly the same size as its head glowed red, like a halo dipped in blood. The eerie red matched the cobra’s eyes.

Even with our distance from it, there was an intimidating weight to its dormant stare. And I recognized it as one of the images Sio implanted into my head.

A strangely intense tug drew my attention toward that structure in particular. There weren’t any sounds other than the night breeze brushing through the trees… but deep down, I swore it called to me. It whispered my name. It pulled me forward.

“Whoa… hey.” Reks broke through that focal point when his hands found my shoulders. “Try not to walk off the damn edge. We’re not that desperate to get rid of the tail.”

I blinked, breaking away from the inanimate snake to look at him instead. When I did, the invisible pull loosened, and the whispers dwindled away like it was nothing more than the wind. My imagination.

Amber-gold hues of the barrier and lights from the empire below gleamed across the black prisms of his eyes.

Something powerful blossomed across my chest as those colors danced across them as if drawn to his very soul. Like flames to the moth. How could eyes so dark reflect so much life? The longer I stared, the deeper I fell into them, and the stronger the pull had an effect on me. I began to crave it.

His brows pinched together, and I realized he waited for a response. From me.

“Hh-what?” I asked, embarrassment flushing my cheeks. Had he asked me a question? I couldn’t remember. What were we talking about again?

Uncertainty and amusement settled across his features. “It’s nothing like how it used to be. In my time, the barrier encompassed the entire planet. The empire had so much to offer. Imagine this, but on a much larger scale. Now in its place…” he gazed past the barrier, towards the stretch of dunes. “Now the Adamant Horde stalk this alleged oasis just outside of safety, where those who live outside live in constant danger. And The Full Spectrum’s monsters steal peeks at life inside this oasis and prey on our weaknesses. Biding her fate-damned time.”

I followed his gaze where in the distance several blue crystalline monsters stalked the outer edge of the barrier, and not far from that, dark smoke furled up from a small settlement partly hidden by the sands, where their kind must have attacked recently.

“The citizens must know this is nothing more than a gilded cage. The orleizen forces don’t even attempt fighting the Horde if they can avoid it.” Reks said bitterly. “They evacuate at the first sign of trouble and abandon those who aren’t allied with Orlaith… which is few and far between from what I’ve learned. After some digging, I found out The Circle has a closed-door policy to mostly everyone outside of their precious barrier. Hiding like this has only made us weaker. Isolated us. When the time comes, no one will help.”

“What if you talk to them? I mean… you’re a vitiate. If anyone would have sway over the council, it has to be you.”

“It’s not that simple.”

I shrugged. “It is to me. You make the most impossible tasks look easy. I think you could convince anyone of… anything if you really wanted to.”

“Says the Stargazer from a naïve world.” He smirked, shaking his head. “It’s nice you think that. But my track record with council members is sticky. It’s a power level problem between The Circle and vitiates - like oil and water.”

“Well, that was so long ago. Surely now they…” I trailed off when movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention.

A little way down the mountainside, a line of heads moved through the brush, moving in the wrong direction of where we were stationed. However, a couple others veered in the right direction, taking the uphill path that would eventually lead them to where Reks and I were now. From this vantage point, I could make out one of the two had a head of blonde, ivy league hair. Only one name came to mind matching that single description.

A twinge of anger prickled its way up my spine. I still wanted to confront Nolan about what he pulled at Altered. But now wasn’t the right time. Not when soldiers that likely followed his orders to some degree swarmed the forest at present. Plus, the last thing we needed was for Nolan to learn the two of us were responsible for the waypoint breach. The General’s son, of all people.

“We’ve got trouble.” I whispered, pointing at Nolan and the other one accompanying him.

Reks silently motioned for us to turn back towards the hued forest. “Where we’re going, no one will be able to follow.”