Page 23 of There's an Elf in My Cockpit

“Hold it!” I shouted just as the beasts started galloping past us and my brothers surged forward. I caught the teenager, Russam, by the back of his parka as he darted beneath my arm, too eager for the charge to listen. The other gladiators all hesitated, and I saw Darth yank himself out of a dive from the air and spiral back into an upward circle with a few flaps of his powerful wings.

The young, scarred, Asrai hissed and struggled in my grip so I growled at him and he snapped out of it to stare up at me with his glowing red eyes, his filed-down teeth bared at me in frustration. “Don’t harm them,” I said to the teenager, and then more firmly to the rest of my battle-eager friends, “Stand your ground, protect the shuttle with the girls, but do not engage unless provoked!”

Then I pointed at the charging beasts, “Look!” Their stampede had taken them across the trampled snow straight up to Elpherian’s ship, and they were ravaging their way through the guards at the bottom of the ramp. Some were leaping impossibly high to land on top of the sleek black ship and the sound of metal renting tore through the air as they opened that damn thing up like it was a can of sardines.

“What the fuck?” Da’vi growled in his dual-toned Kertinal bass and the others echoed his sentiment. The beasts were ignoring us completely and all of us started to back up a little more to the ship where Vi and Chloe were hiding. I didn’t think we had endeared ourselves all that much to our host, but maybe Elpherian had endeared himself even less and this was the result.

Blood painted the snow red beneath the clawed paws, they were snarling, growling, and howling as if the scent enraged them. The one thing I definitely didn’t see, was red eyes on these beasts. They were sleek, with thick pelts, and a big hump on their shoulders, their head like that of a lion and bear but while they were causing massive carnage, they didn’t look like they were out of their minds with it. These beasts were not the same as the one Vi and I fought.

When the fighting seemed to wind down, that strange shape seemed to slither out of the middle of the pile of beasts at the ramp. There were still scraping noises coming from the ship as beasts tried to break into it, but the others were sitting down around the ramp, acting like giant hunting dogs that had fulfilled their part of the job.

The shadow was just as big as they were, swirling and twisting. Sometimes it looked like it had horns, sometimes it seemed to walk on four paws, and then I thought it was two legs after all. It was not at all a surprise when a silver orb with a glowing red light detached itself from the shadow and floated out in front of us, hovering about three feet above the ground and gleaming in the light reflected off the snow.

The deep voice of the master of the ice castle said in the gruffest fashion, “You have ten minutes to leave my moon. After that, the window in my shields will close.” The orb disappeared back into the shadows and though it didn’t even look like he had turned around, the writhing, changing mass seemed to be moving backward now.

“Da’vi, how close to finished is the crashed shuttle?” I asked the male, my eyes drifting from the shadow to the partially snowed-in vessel that Vi and I had arrived in. It couldn’t possibly be done in less than ten minutes and the gruff mechanic confirmed this with a curse. We’d have to abandon the vessel and pack all of us in the intact shuttle, it would be a very tight fit and possibly very dangerous on the flight out of the moon’s atmosphere. Even with a window in the strange Master of the Moon’s shield or not.

Taking a deep breath, I followed the shadowy form, pushing away my sense of self-preservation and fear when I got closer. Two ice beasts blocked my path with a snarl, and their master’s shadowy form rose even taller behind their massive backs. “Wait, our shuttle is too damaged to fly yet, can you give us an hour? We won’t make it out of here otherwise.”

I ignored the snarling maws, and I ignored the heat of their breaths as it gusted across my face. Staring into what was likely the back of the bizarre, and powerful creature wrapped in shadow I willed it to turn back to me and agree to a little more time.

When the orb darted from the shadows with a buzzing noise, I wanted to sag in relief, it wasn’t an answer, but I wasn’t being struck down on the spot either. “Ten minutes,” the voice intoned again from the orb, a red light flashing over my body from its single light. Shit, that wasn’t good enough, we’d be too heavy to make it out of this extremely dangerous atmosphere.

I started to open my mouth to protest, to plead my case again when the orb zipped off at high speed and then abruptly stopped next to the half-buried shuttle. Wide-eyed, I watched as a blue light emitted from it, passing over the vessel. What was it doing? I dared a look over my shoulder at Da’vi and I saw that the mechanic had sheathed his big claymore and was holding a scanner in his prosthetic hands. Purple eyes glowed in wonder as he watched the readings on the screen.

“Thank you,” I said to the strange being in front of me. It was moving away, its pace slow and measured, like it had all the time in the world. The ice beasts that had blocked my path had already slipped away. I thought that maybe that was a sign of trust, it was leaving me an open path to him, without the protection of his creatures. Maybe, since he’d helped us defeat Elpherian and was now fixing our ship, he wasn’t nearly as bad as he sounded. He was just a grumpy hermit that wanted to be left alone. I smiled, I got that, I kinda liked it even.

I started to turn away too, ready to return to my pretty woman and celebrate our success with her. When my feet crunched in the snow I scanned my surroundings out of habit, my eyes lingering on the spot where I’d fought Vi’s bastard of an ex. He wasn’t there, and neither was the telltale stain of blood that meant he’d been devoured by one of the beasts.

A feeling of disquiet washed over me but it was already too late. Just as I lifted my head to search for him in case he’d somehow managed to escape, my friends started shouting. Instinctively I spun around but that wasn’t enough. I caught the edge of the blade in the side of my chest and I felt it lodge in my ribs.

“What…” I started to say, confused at what I was even seeing. A snowman? Where had it come from? I raised my arms but I had no weapons and when the second blow came toward me, I did the only thing I could, I threw myself backward into the snow.

A humming filled my head, no wait, that was the sound of the shuttle. My mind felt sluggish like I was swimming through some kind of haze. Why were they leaving me? Vi wouldn’t do that, she wouldn’t run. Then darkness swallowed me up, and I just floated along on the tide of black, too sluggish to do anything else.

*

Vi

When Elpherian, covered in snow, rose from the ground like a wrathful phantom I did exactly what Chloe had suggested to me. I gripped my hands around the yoke of the shuttle and pressed forward, swerving around the gladiators standing in front of the ship and barreling into my ex. I didn’t know Chloe, but I knew what Oliver had told me about her legendary navigating skills. I simply trusted the dotted line she’d laid out for me on the screen and steered the shuttle along it.

I was not a pilot, but I knew just enough to be dangerous and I landed the shuttle with a shudder, the whole thing wobbling as I put it back down in the snow. I knew that Oliver had been struck and that he’d collapsed. Not caring even the slightest if I’d landed it correctly, I dashed from the cockpit and dove out into the still partially opened hatch. I felt the air whistle by my legs when Belal tried to grab me and stop me, then I was rolling through the snow, coming up on my feet and charging across the distance separating me from Oliver.

I landed on my knees at his side, staring in horror at the pool of blood that was saturating the snow around him and instantly freezing. There was a slash across his ribs that seeped red, but more worrisome, a deep wound had been opened up in his gut. I was no medic, but I was pretty sure gut wounds were extremely bad.

“Pack it with snow, quick,” someone said, a flurry of activity exploding around me as many hands started doing just that. Packing snow against the wounds and pressing down, “Where’s the medkit? Hurry!” I didn’t like those panicked voices but I shoved that fear aside and just worked as instructed, and when that was no longer needed, I cradled his head in my lap and ordered him to hang on. Tears froze on my lashes as I watched how pale his face was, and how frantic the gladiators seemed as they tried to fix him up.

A shiver rolled up my spine, fear curdling in my belly. He wasn’t going to make it, he’d already lost far too much blood. The snow was awash with red, and my white snow clothing was equally stained. Already I could feel his skin turn cold beneath my fingers and I wanted to shout, I wanted to howl out my pain. This wasn’t right, I’d already nearly lost him once, and I couldn’t go through this a second time.

“So fragile,” a voice said from right behind me. I heard the sound of several knives and other weapons as they were pulled from the males surrounding Oliver, but I didn’t feel any kind of fear. I barely even lifted my head to look at the swirling shape of the Master of the Moon behind me.

He towered over me, but he also seemed to be on two legs this time, appearing almost humanoid in shape. I couldn’t see a face, I couldn’t make out any details at all in the shifting shadows that cloaked him but I was very sure now that he had at least two pairs of horns curling over his head and a pair of red eyes glowed from just beneath those.

“Please,” I said, “If you can help. Please… I can’t lose him.” I wasn’t above begging, I didn’t care what anyone thought of me now. I didn’t care about anything except Oliver. If he didn’t make it off this ice moon, I didn’t think I would either, not in one piece at least.

The shifting shadows seemed to part and a limb stretched out from them, the arm too long to be right, black and clawed, its shape monstrous. A light seemed to glow from inside as it passed over Oliver, the arm somehow dipping low over my shoulder to reach without the strange figure appearing to stoop or bend. It was extremely eerie, but nobody stopped him, we all just watched with bated breath to see if it worked.

When the hand withdrew, Oliver shuddered, his breath gushing out of him in a cloud of white. Then he blinked open his eyes, his beautiful gray eyes, and they were bright and focused when they met mine. “Hey there, Vi. Why do you look so sad?” he asked casually as if he was completely unaware that he’d just nearly bled out in the snow.

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