this was adjacent to the lava fields?” I asked Raxthezana as we all pulled ourselves from the cave pool and chose a path between stalagmites.
“I had marked it on one of my maps,” he said. “But I also sensed a temperature change in the water.”
“Oh, it is warmer, isn’t it?” I said and scrolled display options in my visor. I found one that showed the temperature and humidity and confirmed it.
“These formations are incredible!” Joan said.
“One of the most beautiful caves I’ve ever seen,” Pattee murmured, reverence anointing her tone. We could see scattered smashed formations here and there, but overall, the damage wasn’t as horrible as I expected.
“When do the monsters come out and ruin it for us?” Amity asked, and I laughed.
“So, I’m not the only one on edge?” I said.
“Definitely not,” Esra chimed in. “Any minute now ….”
The humans laughed, but the hunters didn’t join in.
“Girls’ channel,” Amity announced.
“I bet they’re grimacing,” I said.
“They’re 100 percent grimacing,” Esra replied.
“I think I’m in love,” I blurted.
Stunned silence, and then the women laughed again.
A chorus of delighted statements punctuated my helmet. “When did this happen?”
“I knew it!”
“Finally.”
“Wonderful!”
“He’s—I don’t know how to describe it. Except that he’s here for me. He’s never trying to change who I am. He helps me when I need it but otherwise lets me fuddle my way through things. He sees me for who I am, and God. I don’t even know who I am anymore!”
“Yeah, what is it about these aliens? Is it the matriarchal society? Is it cultural or religious?” Esra said.
“Or maybe it’s their occupation or life experience,” Pattee suggested.
“Whatever it is, I can get used to this,” I said. “I’m also a bit surprised, but happily so, about the chemistry. We haven’t even done anything yet, but I just want to eat him up.”
Amity sighed loudly in my headset. “The blush of new love is so romantic.”
We laughed until our guides stopped us with raised hands. We’d drifted into the center of the single file as we talked, and now we were flanked by the hunters.
“I scent ikadaxl,” Natheka said.
“We’re quite far from the nursery,” Raxthezana said. “They nest on the north side of the Black Mist Chamber.”
“How big is their territory?” Amity asked.
By now, all of us crouched along the narrow trail, keeping still and peering into the dark spaces between stalagmites. Naraxthel had suggested we use night-vision for this leg of our journey, the risk of drawing curious creatures with helmet lights too high.
“The ikadaxl roam far under the mountains,” Natheka said. “At times, they are known to emerge into the skies, as well.”
“Into the skies?” Amity said. “I imagined some kind of big worm digging tunnels in the rock.”
“That would be the rock worm,” Hivelt said. “It is large enough to devour you lot, but it does not prey upon meat.”
“That’s a mercy,” Esra muttered. “I think.”
“Did Hivelt just call us meat?” Joan whispered.
“I think so,” I whispered back.
“The skies?” Pattee’s calm voice brought us back to the present danger.
“If it helps,” VELMA said. “I’ve imported a screen capture from Theraxl archives of the ikadaxl.”
The image popped into my visor and presumably those of my friends, as well.
“Holy freaking schist,” Esra said.
Amity’s breathy voice was ecstatic when she spoke next. “Dragons are real?”
“For the record,” Hivelt said. “I am not carrying an unhatched egg back to the surface.”
Natheka’s quiet laugh. “She wouldn’t ask you, my friend,” he said. Then, “The scent faded. I’ll run ahead several veltiks and scan the area.”
“You wouldn’t steal an egg, would you?” I asked Amity.
“Meh,” she said. “Diablo is all the pet I need.”
Amused and admittedly, relieved, a frisson of joy trilled in my heart. Lightyears from my old life, I was crouched in a breathtaking formation cave surrounded by massive hunters and courageous, intelligent women, waiting to find out if we were about to battle a huge, cave-dwelling reptile that resembled an honest-to-God dragon on an alien planet.
It wasn’t precisely what I’d signed up for when I began working for IGMC, but damn if it wasn’t the most incredible circumstance to be in.
Looking behind me, I saw Raxthezana dip his helmet at me, and that little frisson bloomed into a full-on shiver. Chemistry.
“A lone ikadaxl heads toward you,” Natheka reported with calm intonation. “She eluded my notice until now.”
“Enter the monster,” Esra muttered.
As one, the rest of us faded behind the nearest formations and waited, drawing our weapons.
“Do ikadaxl breathe fire?” Joan asked, the slightest tremor detectable in her voice.
“I do not understand the question,” Naraxthel said.
“That’s good enough for me,” Amity replied.
“What do we need to watch out for?” Pattee clarified.
“The ikadaxl are possessed of talons as long as my hand,” Raxkarax said. “A spiked tail similar to that of the spiny warted rock climber, and powerful wings with which it soars over the lava fields and also uses to embrace its prey.”
“It devours its prey with its mouth; ringed by double rows of teeth, it also has a double-spiked tongue,” Raxthezana said from behind me.
“As large as a Theraxl hunter at its smallest,” Naraxthel continued, “it is yet able to lift one of us. And has.”
“Does it have a throat sac?” Esra asked.
“Ik, though its sac is of a tougher hide, that it might withstand the temperatures of the lava fields,” Naraxthel finished.
“Well damn,” Amity said. “There goes my strategy.”
“Right?” Esra said.
I tightened my fist on the hilt of the sword I’d pulled from its sheath. I could feel a stirring in me, and I wondered if the shel somehow sensed the changes in my body when my brain signaled the fight-or-flight response. Of course, they would, I thought. They injected their own amino acid and hormone cocktail into my bloodstream.
The stirring, the adrenalin spike tempered with a preternatural calm, the readiness: the shel, in concert with my body, were preparing me for battle.
Exhilarated, I couldn’t wait. And that feeling had to be the shel, because both the old and new CeCe was shaking in her boots.