Page 62 of Caveman Alien's Terror

Tarat’ex looks up at something I can’t see. “We’re tired of being outcasts, you see. We want to be tribesmen again. Of course our old tribes won’t take us back. But when we finally found the Ceremat tribe, we told them about you. They were very eager to see an actual part of the Darkness. They promised to make us members of their tribe if we would catch you and deliver you to them. That seemed a pretty good deal to us. They don’t know why we’ve been cast out, and we might not tell them the most accurate tales about that. And they won’t call us lackeys or beat us for imaginary offenses, the way you did.”

“I will murder you painfully,” I tell them. “I’ll burn off one of your fingers at a time until you have no limbs left. Then I will carve you up from the outside in. It’s going to take a long time.”

“We don’t think you will,” Tarat’ex says. “We think you’re too weak. Notice how you’re stuck in that pit? Oh, and there’s no gold here. No woman, either. Wherever she might be, she’s not with the Ceremat tribe. We told them about Astrid, though. They’re interested. Maybe soon we’ll get her, as well. You liked her, didn’t you?”

“Aaargh!”I lose control. Grabbing onto the logs, I push them up and toss some of them into the air like pieces of firewood. I punch them and kick them, heave them off me and stand them on end, making an opening that I can jump through.

The three lackeys pull away. A dozen shiny swords glint in the daylight, and some of them slash at me whenever I try to get out of the pit.

“Stay where you are, oh Darkness,” says a new voice. Many slayers gather around the hole, brown stripes across their upper bodies. “We can kill you now or let you live for a little while. Which do you choose?”

20

- Astrid-

I lost my hat somewhere along the way, but walking on the edge of the canyon, there aren’t any trees above me to drip their globs of sap on me. Even the sunlight comes down unfiltered, and the brightness should cheer me up.

It doesn’t. If anything, the sunlight makes me think of Praxigor and his eyes, yellow and fierce, before they went green.

He must be really sick. But I think he was always planning to leave me. It’s obviously a deep-seated trauma in him, from when the other dragons left him behind on Xren. And he must have decided to never be left again.

‘I’m leaving you.’ There was something mechanical about the way he said it, as if he had practiced it many times.

It casts everything that happened into a painful shadow. For a moment I thought that he actually felt something for me. His little touches, the way his voice would sometimes become tender, his stolen looks when he thought I wasn’t payingattention — was it all an act? Was he just setting up to hurt me by leaving? And I was simply a pleasant diversion along the way, an easy conquest?

“But he wasn’t much of an actor,” I seethe to myself. “He couldn’t act his way out of a wet paper bag. He was all direct and…real!” Of course he had the actor’s talent for catching the light in the most breathtaking way, but that was it. I’ve never met anyone who wore their heart on their sleeve like that damn dragon.

Unless hetotallytricked me. I can’t see how that much effort would be worth it, but he’s an alien. He might think very differently.

“I can’t be sure,” I mutter as I kick a pebble into the canyon. “I have to assume that he’s just a jerk. And he did tell me that dragons don’t have friends. I should probably have believed him.”

The cavemen are careful to not walk too fast, so that I can easily follow. I guess I should be excited about finding the Ceremat tribe and maybe Cora, but Praxigor leaving has turned my mind dark and tired. I miss his presence, his reassuring confidence, his deep voice with the metal clarity in it, his great beauty that had me smugly look around to check if someone was seeing me in his company and envying me. “It could never work,” I remind myself. “It was bound to?—”

“Watch out!”

I spin around and reach for the knife in my belt. The caveman behind me has his sword out and is running towards me.

A small green creature has come out of the jungle and is bounding straight for me on six strong legs, and the caveman is trying to cut it off before it gets to me.

“Stop!” I yell and raise my hands. “Don’t kill her!”

The caveman runs on. Just as he’s about to hack his sword into the attacker, he drops the weapon to the ground and throws himself at her, grabbing her with both hands.

A short fight ensues, full of hissing and swearing before the creature jumps off the tribesman. She trots over to me and takes up a defensive position between me and him, her tails looking angry.

I squat down and stroke carefully along her back. “I’m glad to see you, Luna!”

She looks at me with one eye, the two others still focused on the caveman.

“Good work, warrior!” I praise him. “Thank you for not harming her. Perfect catch!”

He gives me a lopsided smile as he touches a spot on his face. “That stevik has some sharp claws.”

I swing Bryar’s backpack off and rummage through it. “Let me look at it. I think I have a remedy against scratches.”

“Don’t waste that on me, Shaman,” he says and picks up his sword. “I have my own remedy.” He pats the satchel hanging from his belt.

I shoulder the backpack again. “If you’re sure, warrior.”

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