Page 24 of Alien Barbarian's Little Human

“That’s when a, a gray wind came from the sphere. Tala screamed, and it, it went inside of him. Through his nostrils, his ears, any way it could find a path. Tala’s eyes changed, turning shiny like metal.”

Dalra has another coughing fit, worse than the first one. The medicine men’s broth doesn't seem to help much the second time. They try another method, placing a crystal on his back to ease the weight of the world on his body.

He stops coughing, and sits up a little straighter.

“I spoke Tala’s name, asking if he was hurt. Then he looked at me with those terrible silver eyes and asked where he could find the Sky Woman.”

My heart skips a beat, and Micah looks very worried. I’m not supposed to speak out of turn, but I can't help it.

“Sky woman? Was he talking about Micah?”

Dalra looks over at me and nodded.

“That is what I took his meaning to be. I don’t know how to describe it, but I know that he was not Tala. Not anymore. He had become something else. Something evil.”

He shakes his head and shivers.

“I don’t know who gave the order to fire, but soon we plied our bows and arrows against it. We struck home a dozen times, most of them lethal blows. The head, the heart, the big vein in the leg. Yet he did not bleed. He just stood there and let us fill him up like a pincushion.”

Micah covers her mouth with her hand. I do not like the fear I see in her blue eyes, nor the recognition. She knows something about this. I am sure of it.

“The skin on Tala’s hand burned away, curling and blackened like he was being roasted on a spit. HIs bones were not white, but shiny metal, like his eyes. Then his hand, it changed into something like our bows, but much smaller. He pointed it at one of our party and something too fast to follow shot out the end. The hunter, he burst like a blister from the inside. I fired until I ran out of arrows, and then I ran. At the crest of a hill, I was struck by the strange weapon. I do not remember much of what followed, other than trying to drag my battered body back to the village, that I might warn you all.”

“Your bravery is inestimable,” Chief Ral says.

Dalra starts coughing again. They place another crystal on his back, but it does not help much. Chief Ral looks pained, but he kneels in front of Dalra.

“Dalra, please, one more thing. Where is Tala now?”

“Don’t…know…” Dalra sputters between coughs. The medicine men wheel him out of the chiefs hut, apparently intending to take him back to the Tree.

“What will we do, my Chief?” I ask. “This gray wind, this thing that has taken over Tala, it wants Micah.”

“It shall not have her,” Chief Ral says firmly. “I will speak with the warriors. We will keep watch. If Tala appears, we will not take any chances. He is to be not just killed, but obliterated on sight.”

“Arrows don’t seem to hurt him,” I point out.

“Then we will use ballista bolts. Or spears. Or perhaps crush him with a large rock. Nothing that walks this world is beyond the realm of death. Kro has made it so.”

Chief Ral takes in both Micah and I with his gaze.

“I do not wish either of you to leave the village until Tala is found. Just to be safe.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Micah mutters.

As we leave the chief’s hut, I turn toward Micah.

“Beloved, you seemed to know something about the strange thing that happened to Tala.”

“I don’t know that I do,” she says. “But the phenomenon he describes sounds a lot like the reports of Legion.”

“The reports of what?”

“A world distant from my own, Luvon, was threatened by a, a living machine.”

“A machine that lives?”

She grabs my arm and holds tight.

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