THE REFORGED TRILOGY: BOOK 2 — SWORD OF DREAMS
Epilogue: Sword of Dreams
“Time lost may never again be found. Or so it is said.”
– Titania Cavainna, Arcadian monarch (234 PA)
Commander Dhozo stood at the edge of a withered field of dead grass. Something had changed. Everything had changed. What had been frozen stone and icy rain a moment before was now a heavy sky seething with dirty gray-brown clouds that obscured a pair of tiny, pathetic orange suns. Dhozo raised one huge fist. The hissing, buzzing swarm of his nanites clung close.
“Halt!” he called.
His squadron — just eighteen left of a twenty-one soldier squad hand-picked for this assignment — formed up around Dhozo. They weren’t alone on the plain of crumbling grass.
A crowd of creatures, many with feathered wings and nearly all dressed in black clothes, stared in shocked wonder. They huddled behind a single woman. She was tiny, but with a regal bearing that defied her size.
“I know this place,” the winged woman said. “This planet is Zeos, Gavriel’s homeworld.”
Dhozo’s nanites translated the woman’s words, sending signals back and forth to each other and their central computer, implanted at the base of his skull. A readout lit up at the edge of Dhozo’s vision and he bared his sharp predator’s teeth in sudden surprise. He thought he recognized the wings, the short, pointed ears… An aerad, a slave from the ancient feeding grounds.
Dhozo’s soldiers moved toward her, but he ordered them back again. There was something important to be learned here. Something… unforeseen had happened. Hunger gnawed at his stomach, but the commander was more disciplined than hungry.
The little aerad woman stood as tall as she could, but was still half Dhozo’s height.
“You will hear me, Devourer,” she said in a clear, strong voice.
“Devourer?” Dhozo answered. His computer made an educated guess at the translation and repeated him in the aerad’s language. “My species has been called by many names. Yours is not new or even very interesting. Why should I listen to you, slave?”
The last word made the woman’s violet eyes blaze, but she only smiled. “My name is Xartasia. I can give you what you have lost. What is your name, Devourer?”
“I am Commander Dhozo, of the VSS Forge. What do you think you have to give us, Xartasia, besides the marrow in your bones? My people are hungry, and you are only a slave. We left your race to die long, long ago.”
“You were as surprised by the Waygate’s call as we. I have lore you also thought long gone,” Xartasia said. “There is ancient knowledge that you have lost. I have sacrificed much to find it. But from you, I need only one secret. Let us trade our secrets, Commander Dhozo, to both our benefit.”
“Talk holds little interest to me and my soldiers,” Dhozo told her. “They are very hungry, little aerad.”
Xartasia smiled again and gestured toward the huddle of aliens behind her.
“Let it not be said that I am a poor hostess. You may eat,” she said, then held up a white-gloved finger. “But, even knowing your taste for them, you must not touch those with wings. The humans, Dailons, Ixthians and Lyrans are yours. They are happy to die.”
All around him, Commander Dhozo’s soldiers surged forward, nanites reflexively reaching in sharp, inky tendrils for the cowering creatures.
“Hold!” Dhozo ordered. “Not yet! There’s too much we don’t know. Take scans before you eat. Every one of them! And none of the aerads… for now.”
With that, they lunged past Xartasia, who stood unflinching as the Devourers tore into their next meal. The creatures in tattered clothes couldn’t run far on the open ground before Dhozo’s people tore them apart, devouring skin and muscle, organs and bones. Dhozo’s stomach rumbled fiercely, but he wasn’t done with Xartasia yet. He stepped close to make himself heard over the screams of the dying.
“What do you want, little slave?” Dhozo asked.
“Show me your face, commander,” Xartasia said. “Let me see to whom I speak.”
Dhozo thought the command to his nanite swarm. It had been burned thin by the human in the fighter, but was still enough to tear Xartasia to bloody rags of skin within seconds, if he wanted to. And they would rebuild themselves, as soon as he could harvest the materials.
At Dhozo’s command, the nanites coalesced against his skin. The layer of glistening black was thinner than his skin and was the only clothes he wore, concealing nothing and revealing all.
Dhozo knew how he looked to Xartasia, how his kind appeared to all aliens — huge monsters, beasts out of nightmare. Like her, Dhozo had two arms and legs, but no wings. His ears, too, came to points, but were much longer than Xartasia’s. Where it was not covered by the nanites, his skin was smooth, hairless and dark gray over thick, corded muscles. His fingers ended in wickedly curved claws that matched the long, sharp fangs filling his wide mouth. His eyes were solid black over a broad, flat nose. Xartasia looked up at him, that secretive smile still on her lips.
“Fascinating,” she said softly. A stale wind stirred the dead grass around them. “You look much like the creatures I met not so long ago in my search for you. The Arborans, as they are known.”
The name meant nothing to Dhozo. He loomed over Xartasia, fanged mouth watering, but she did not bow or flinch. Strange. She didn’t have the bearing of a slave at all.
But nothing was supposed to be alive at all in the old feeding grounds. They had been picked clean eons ago. But now there was so much to learn here… and to eat.
“Tell me about this deal you want to make,” Dhozo growled.
