Chimera's Gift (Into the Dead Fall Book 4), page 1
Chimera’s Gift
Book 4: Into the Dead Fall
By Susan Trombley
Copyright © 2019 by Susan Trombley
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author.
Disclaimer:
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Character Illustration by Sammi Griffin
Book cover design by Kasmit Covers
Character Art of Kisk by Sammi Griffin
CHAPTER 1
The chimera was the best scout they had, but not much in the way of companionship. Even when Tak could get the other male to talk, he never had much to say. The only one who inspired more than a few, abrupt answers from him was Asterius.
Tak and Asterius also got along quite well, considering their rocky beginnings. Though he much preferred being back in New Omni with Alice and his son, Friak, there were far worse people to travel with than his current crew as they patrolled the ruins, searching for the latest victims of the Nexus.
Someone had come through. Gray knew that much, but they didn’t know anything else. That was why the chimera and Asterius were with them. They were the best scouts and hunters in the Dead Fall. Asterius could navigate the maze-like ruins blindfolded, and the chimera—well, Tak was still recovering from his initial shock when a part of the chimera had peeled away from his mane and shifted into a falcon that took to the air to scan from above.
With the bird in the air, the feathery mane the chimera usually wore had shifted to coarse hair, much like Iyaren had around his leonine head. In fact, the chimera had a leonine face similar to Iyaren’s, though the chimera had two twisted, spiral horns that curled from the top of his head between his round ears.
His arms—only two of them—were covered in scales like Tak had over his entire body, and they ended in sharp-clawed hands. With feathers and fur and scales and horns, the chimera was one of the strangest of the creatures in the Dead Fall—and there were many strange creatures to be seen.
“He’s not the friendliest sort, is he?” Tak asked Asterius as he jerked his chin towards the chimera, who stood atop a pile of junk, scanning the horizon with his odd, shifting eyes.
Asterius chuckled, snorting steam through his nostrils that showed just how chilly the air had grown after the last opening of the Nexus. “Prove your strength to him, and you’ll have his loyalty for life, but if you can’t defeat him, he won’t bother with you.”
Tak eyed the chimera, then lifted his gaze to the sky where the falcon circled. “I take it he’s not easy to defeat.”
Asterius grinned, baring sharp, gleaming teeth. “He nearly killed me before I managed to claim my victory in the gladiator pit, but at least you’re immune to fire.”
That much was true. Tak had an internal flame burning inside him that was part of his very soul, and he could burst into flames if threatened, without being burned himself. His entire body, inside and out, was fireproof.
Still, he was a peaceful sort. He preferred friendship to fighting. He’d been a simple farmer before he’d been forced to serve in the army of his god, Ss’bek, back in his own realm. He’d enjoyed his bucolic life and had not sought the adventure that had befallen him. But he wouldn’t change anything now that he had his spark—his mate, Alice.
He had no plans to pick a fight with the chimera just to prove himself. There was enough fighting to do even on routine patrols, much less patrols like this one. Scavengers were always out in force after the Nexus opened, looking for new treasures—or new victims.
It was Tak’s mission to reach those potential victims first, and if they were peaceful, guide them to New Omni, where they’d find a home in the ruins that were even now being renovated within the safety of the sentient forest that provided a thus-far impenetrable shield from the dangers of the Dead Fall and its inhabitants.
Since the sacrifice of life-energy by Asterius and his mate had expanded the forest, they’d been able to add six new buildings, including a sprawling marketplace that spilled out of its designated building and into the alleyways between the two buildings. They’d needed every last building to house the growing settlement, because as word spread of its existence and its protection from the portal in the sky, scavengers and survivors trickled in, seeking a sanctuary where they could live out the rest of their lives in peace, and maybe even find a family.
There was no returning back home through the sky portal that had brought them to this world. Though it did work in both directions, or so Gray—the leader of New Omni—said, the artificial intelligence that controlled it would not help them find their way back to their own worlds. In fact, they were currently at war with NEX—the AI that sought to eradicate them—though they’d been at a stalemate lately.
Not that Tak would ever leave the Dead Fall. This place had become his home and he had his family. His mate, his son, and his kin, Iyaren—who had become like a brother to him, even as they shared the same mate.
After a long perusal of their surroundings, the chimera motioned to Tak and Asterius and the other members of their squad that he’d spotted no sign of survivors. That didn’t mean there weren’t any out there. It just meant they had a long search ahead of them, until they found the creatures that had fallen through the Nexus—or far too often, the corpses.
As the chimera made his way down the pile he’d been standing on, some unseen thing thrust up from beneath the junk and twisted pallid tentacles around his ankles. Before he had a chance to react, the tentacles suddenly yanked the chimera right down into the debris, leaving behind torn flesh and blood on the jagged edges of some of the broken items that surrounded the newly-formed hole in the pile.
The falcon overhead shrieked in rage and pain, its flight faltering as it began to descend towards where the chimera had stood just seconds before.
Tak was already moving, racing towards the hole in the junk pile. He reached it just as flames burst forth, doing nothing to harm him, but sending Asterius—who’d reached the hole at the same time—staggering backwards as his fur hide caught on fire.
“Roll, Asterius,” Tak shouted, not looking back at the burning minotaur, knowing the other male would figure it out.
Instead, he focused on tearing away the scorched trash around the hole in an effort to dig the chimera out as more flames burst from the opening.
A cry of agony from the falcon drew his attention as he glanced up, only to see the bird plummet from the sky.
“Yaneas!” he called to the naturally-armored insectoid that was closest to where the bird was falling. “Catch it!”
Yaneas hastened to get under the falcon before it crashed onto the jagged debris. It would still be wounded by its fall, but they had a better chance of saving it if it wasn’t impaled in a hundred places.
Tak continued to tear at the opening, fearing he was almost out of time to save the chimera. The falcon had not fallen because something wounded it. It had fallen because something was killing the rest of its body. Tak still didn’t understand how the chimera worked, but he could guess that the bird’s condition was a good indicator of the rest of the male.
A leonine roar echoed from within the hole, growing fainter, as if the chimera were being dragged down a tunnel.
Tak finally had the hole large enough to climb through.
“I have the bird,” Yaneas said, and a quick glance showed that he cradled the feathered creature in his large, three-fingered hands, where it lay lifelessly.
Asterius joined him at the hole, stinking of burnt hide and smoked meat. Tendrils of smoke still curled away from his burnt skin, but he would heal quickly.
“He still alive?” he asked, his tone revealing his concern more than his words did as he glanced at the fallen bird.
Another roar, more distant than the last, was his answer.
“I’m going in,” Tak said, knowing Asterius would have to dig the hole even larger in order to follow and they didn’t have time for that.
Asterius clapped him on the shoulder. “Kill whatever did this to him and I’ll buy you drinks for a month.”
Tak nodded, then turned and climbed into the hole, tasting the blood of the chimera in the air along with the pheromones of some unknown creature as his tongue flicked out.
He followed the tunnel that the creature had formed, smelling it all around him—a foul, musky, slightly rotten odor, tainted with blood, both old and new. This wasn’t the first time this tunnel had been used to drag a body through.
He had to proceed on hands and knees, keeping his upper hands free, one with a blade in it and the other unarmed so he could clear the way where dirt and trash had fallen in the wake of the chimera’s struggling passage.
A faint roaring sound let him know the chimera still lived—and still fought—but there was pain behind the sound and Tak knew that time was running out. Fire traced along his scales as adrenaline pumped through him, stoking his internal flame.
He struggled to calm himself, deciding to proceed with stealth instead of fire as he concentrated on shifting his scales to camouflage his presence until he’d decided the best way to deal with the unknown threat.
It was pitch dark
Climbing down the wall in darkness, he made his way towards the sounds of struggle, pausing as he heard a slithering sound, then a drawn-out hiss just below him.
Keeping his sword drawn in one hand while the other three carried him down the wall, he followed that nearby sound, discovering solid ground not far below him, where a serpent coiled, hissing in distress.
As soon as he approached it, it hissed a bit louder, then slithered away from him, stopping a short distance away, then hissing again.
Tak realized it wanted him to follow it, and he wondered if it was yet another part of the chimera. It sounded like it was suffering, much as the bird had suffered.
He moved quickly, but the serpent was faster, speeding ahead despite its lack of arms or legs. It led him down a new tunnel, and drafts coming from all directions told him that it wasn’t the only choice he would have had. If it hadn’t been for the serpent, he could have been searching tunnels all day trying to figure out which one to take, since the scent of the creature and of death was overwhelming in all directions.
The absolute darkness of the tunnel was relieved by a faint, glowing bioluminescence from lichen on the walls as he followed in the path of the serpent. The soft, blue-green glow intensified when Tak rounded a corner, where the serpent suddenly froze and then writhed in pain, its body twisting and turning among glowing mushrooms, the whip-like movement tearing them out of their stone moorings as it flung itself this way and that.
Then it fell still, and Tak feared that meant the chimera was already dead, but when he approached the serpent, it lifted its head and its tongue darted out, showing him life still ran through it. He collected it gently and coiled its unresponsive body into the pouch slung around his waist that shifted with his armor and his scales, allowing him to remain invisible to a casual observer.
Without his guide, Tak hoped there would be no more multiple tunnels as he sped up his steps, straining to hear any sound of the chimera’s roar.
When he finally did hear something, he nearly sagged in relief as he rushed towards that weak roaring, coming out into a large cavern where a massive rodent-like creature with tentacles hanging from each side of its pointed nose rather than whiskers hunched over something, jaws moving busily.
The creature was too large to have fit through the narrow tunnels, so Tak wondered how it had gotten up to the surface. As he approached on silent steps, he remained unnoticed by the massive beast, but it did lift its head, tearing away a strip of flesh and fur in its long, jagged teeth from the barely breathing beast lying on his side, blood and gore covering the tan fur that looked so much like Iyaren’s that Tak had a brief moment of terror that Iyaren had somehow been captured too, before reason reasserted itself. The chimera did share some similarity to the lion-man, though the chimera had taken the form of a four-legged, powerful feline instead of a two-legged warrior.
Blood coated the chimera’s massive paws and long, sharp teeth, and viscera clogged the spirals of his horns, but he had not put up enough of a fight. The rodent-creature had won, and was now feasting on the chimera while he still struggled to breathe.
Tak drew his other three swords, slow enough that they didn’t ring when they broke free of their sheaths as his eyes scanned the creature in the low, bioluminescent light cast by the mushrooms and lichen. It’s head and flanks looked the most vulnerable, so he moved forward on stealthy steps to stab the flank closest to him.
He buried his sword in that flank, causing the creature to rise up on its hind-legs with a shriek of agony. The sudden motion jerked Tak off his feet and into the air as he kept his hold on the sword. He braced himself against the furred side of the creature and stabbed with his other three swords.
The underside of the creature writhed like a bed of worms as tentacles spilled out to encircle Tak, squeezing hard enough that even his armor buckled.
Tak unleashed his internal flame, allowing it to spread from his chest to engulf his entire body, burning away flesh and fur as the rodent squealed in agony and struggled to break free of him. The tentacles that had been squeezing him turned crisp, then disintegrated to ash, but the creature’s screaming didn’t stop as it raced around the cavern, scraping Tak against the stone walls with skull-bruising force.
Tak kept his swords buried it its flank to keep him attached to it while he burned it to death.
When it finally gave up the fight and collapsed in a flaming heap, barely twitching, Tak withdrew his swords, one by one, and doused his own flames, though he left the creature on fire.
He made his way to the chimera, limping slightly from where his leg had slammed against the stone in the creature’s maddened attempt to shake him. In fact, his entire body ached, but the armor—gifted to him a few years ago by Gray—had undoubtedly saved his life.
The chimera’s golden eyes opened as he approached and his mane twitched as one furred ear lifted. He made an effort to move, then groaned in pain and froze in place, only his heavy, labored breaths giving away that he still lived.
Tak crouched beside him, noting the damage to his stomach, where entrails spilled out from the torn opening of his flesh. “I will get you home, my friend.”
The chimera didn’t respond as Tak studied the wounds, knowing he couldn’t carry him out of the tunnel. There was only one other option, but Gray had told them to only use it in the direst emergency, because there was a possibility of it glitching. He had to teleport himself and the chimera back to New Omni. Only Gray had the technology to heal the chimera’s grievous injuries.
He pulled the small device Gray had given him out of his pouch, where the serpent still lay coiled and silent around his survival gear. Staring at the small, silver disk, Tak took a deep, bracing breath, praying to a god who didn’t hear him anymore that he and the chimera made it back to New Omni with all their parts intact and in the right place. With the way Gray’s technology had been glitching lately, that was no guarantee.
“Alice, I’m coming home to you, my spark.”
He reached out to lay a hand on the chimera’s blood-soaked flank, then pressed the disk, activating the teleportation device to send him to Gray’s main teleportation platform.
CHAPTER 2
“That was quite the ass-chewing you gave there, Sergeant,” Alice said with a grin as Lauren returned to their table in the social-gathering room after dismissing her team.
Lauren snorted as she settled into her seat and pulled the plate Alice had fixed for her closer. “That?” She waved a hand towards the team of females who’d moved to another table to take their lunch after a hard day of survival and combat training. “That was nothing more than a pep-talk.”
She eyed the steaming contents of her plate with appreciation. Then glanced up with slightly narrowed eyes. “Uh, you didn’t make this, did you?”
Alice crossed her arms over her chest. “Hey! I’m getting better at cooking. It’s not my fault we don’t have decent stoves and ovens around here.”
Lauren looked contrite, even if she was hesitant to pick up her fork and dig into the plate of meat and strangely-colored vegetables.
“Sorry,” she said, “it’s just that the last time I ate your cooking, I was in the latrine for hours.”
Alice held up her hands. “I swear, this time, all the meat is fully cooked! I’m also really, really sorry about giving you food poisoning.”
Lauren grinned as she lifted the fork to her lips. “Well, you know I like to live dangerously. So, here goes nothing.” She shoved the forkful of mashed vegetables into her mouth with the expression of someone facing a firing squad.
Her eyes widened a bit as she chewed, and Alice waited eagerly for a verdict. She’d been working with Iyaren to improve her cooking and better learn to use the more primitive appliances they had available, but so far, she’d had some disastrous results, and she’d gained a bit of a reputation for it. She hoped her latest attempt would help erase that reputation, but Lauren was the only woman she knew who was brave enough to keep trying her food.
