Galactic Calendar 259872/ 2000 [ Sol Year 4387/ Day 155 of 365. Sol standard year]
Days after of Crash landing/ 4
Uninhabited Island / Clearing of Escape Capsule # 405/ Unknown Structure/ Water Chamber
Galactic Standard Time / After 1440
Zevortro
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He looked from Jessie to the flapping chimera in the water and tried to understand what Jessie meant. No matter how he tried, Zevortro couldn’t understand why Jessie wanted to kill it before it hit the water. The fact that the beast had gotten out of the water……. Then he realized what Jessie meant.
“Oh nova. Can you do a mercy killing from here?” Zevortro asked, his voice full of terror and fear.
Behind him, he heard Bryke gasp. “Bro, what? I mean if it gets away won’t it know not to attack us?”
A final screech from the winged creature caused everyone to look towards the splashes. Within a moment, the winged creature was pulled under and out of sight. For a moment the water frothed and then it was still, a blood-red stain that slowly floated into the human light.
“Oh, that,” Bryke said faintly.
“Yeah,” Zevortro said bitterly as he scowled. He looked down at the water, noticing a small shadow just out of range of seeing what it was.
He had to hope that the monster had fed enough by now and that they would be left alone. If that thing was still hungry and thought that there was food on their island! There was no way that they could use Terra’s abilities now, if that thing was down there the icebergs would summon it. They had no other choice, but how to get Jessie to agree?
“We need to do something! You need to go!” Terra said to Jessie.
Zevortro turned and looked at Jessie who seemed to be looking out into the darkness around them. After a few moments, Jessie nodded. “Yeah, I’ll scout an island and then come back here. Once we’ve moved three islands away I can…..”
“No!” Zevortro said firmly as he looked at Jessie. As everyone looked at him, Zevortro took a deep breath and tried to gather his courage. He needed Jessie to understand just what was at stake here. “Don’t come back, keep going. Try to find a wall or something. Even a bigger island! We can stay here and hold the line! You need to find out way out of this!”
“What?!” Bryke asked shock and horror in his voice.
Jessie only looked at Zevortro for a moment before he nodded, looking at the water.
“You can’t be serious! He’s our only way out of here! He can’t leave us alone!” Bryke exclaimed.
“We can’t go running around with no goal man! We gotta find a way out of this place! And Jessie is our ride and the only one who can scout. He has to go and you know it!” Zevortro said bitterly.
“He’s right,” Jessie says before Bryke can open his mouth. “But based on how far apart this island is from the one we came from, I’ve got an idea. If I’m right, then I’ll go find one that’s far enough away that the lurker won’t find us! Once I’ve found it, I’ll come back and get you all.”
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Jessie
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Jessie looked around at the faces and then he delivered his bombshell. “And before I go, I’ll teach Terra how to ‘Air Dash’.”
“I can learn to do that!?” Terra asked with shock.
Jessie only nodded. “Yes, you feel that warmth within you?”
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As Terra nodded, it took all Jessie had not to release a breath. He had been worried that the warmth was something for him alone to feel the Power. “Well, focus on that. Then move it to your feet, and then think of reappearing somewhere else. That’s it. Simple, no?”
“VERY!” Terra said with shock in her voice.
Jessie only nodded and looked around, nodding as he took in the water around them. “Well, the beast is leaving. I think. Good luck.”
Without another word, Jessie was gone. He came out of his ‘Air Dash’ five feet up, and then he was gone before he felt gravity. As he came out again, he continued until he had hoped that he had gone far enough. Going up a ‘Dash’ he looked down and saw an Island twenty feet around beneath him. ’Dashing’ to the Island, he came out two feet above it. Landing, he turned around slowly and took in what he had found.
There were marks on the ground, strange symbols that looked like no language that he had ever seen. The single character was a strange mix of sharp lines and curves in the middle. From the way it was set up, he had to wonder if this was a pictogram. Looking at it, he saw three directions on it. One symbol was to the northeast, and the other was to the west. The last symbol pointed to the way he had come, and he stopped and looked around.
Trying to think, he looked up. The island was clear of anything, but there was something else he hadn’t told the others. The flyers were a threat, and they had to be around here. And if the lurker was something that ate anything that crashed into the water, then what made them crash? That was the one piece of the puzzle that he just didn’t have an answer for. With a slight scowl on his face, he slowly turned around. After a few turns, he nodded.
Without a word, he was off, ‘Air Dashing’ back to the others. He had to hope that the lurker hadn’t been able to get to them.
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Bryke
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As he watched Jessie leave, Bryke tried to keep calm. Looking out over the water, he swallowed heavily. The more he looked out at the waters, the more he grew worried. “So, how do you two see the next few hours going?”
“Jessie will be back soon, Bryke. Just keep calm and don’t get too scared,” Zevortro said softly next to Bryke.
Bryke looked at his friend who was slowly moving his rifle, always keeping it locked on something. Bryke swallowed as he realized his friend was keeping a watch on the lurker.
“That’s where it is?” Bryke asked softly.
“That’s where something is. I don’t know what, but I have a bad feeling about it,” Zevortro said softly.
Bryke blinked, and looked at his friend in total shock, wondering what his friend meant. He stared for a moment before a terrible feeling started to grow from within him. “What do you mean?”
Zevortro didn’t say anything, but he just kept his weapon trained on something in the water. “Terra, how deep was the water when you hit it?”
“I don’t have the foggiest idea. I almost didn’t believe that I was able to get Bryke back to the surface before he drowned. Who knows how far down the water goes, or how big the creatures are down there?” Terra said with worry.
Bryke looked at Terra and then he looked down at the water, his mind going dark places. To put his mind off it, he turned and moved towards the creature that Jessie had brought down.
With a few steps, he was there and started to look over the body. He saw the wounds that had killed it, and then he saw the blood that was slowly leaving its body. The more he looked at it, the more that he didn’t understand what this was. The blood and the body were the same color, and that was shocking. He knew that he didn’t know much about biology, but there was something about that blood that was bothering him. As it seeped along the island, he looked at it.
“So, once we have a place to rest, what do you plan to do? We still have our food supplies, right? I mean I know that was my part of the supplies,” Zevortro said from behind Bryke.
“Yeah, any of you two have something to let us know if we can eat this thing?” Bryke asked absently.
Terra just sighed and shook her head. “No, I don’t think we brought that with us. We didn’t expect anything like this!”
“And here I thought planning for the unexpected is what people are supposed to do. You know, plan for the worse,” Bryke mused softly. Suddenly he went still as he looked at the blood. He felt his eyes widen as he slowly realized what had bothered him. His eyes followed the path his mind made and the more he watched, the greater his terror grew. “NOVA!”
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Terra
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As soon as Bryke screamed in fear, Terra turned as Zevortro took a step back. She turned all around, and after not seeing anything she turned to glare at Bryke. Biw just dropped down, his fingers tracing something in the ground.
“Bryke, what is it!?” Zevortro demanded as he kept looking out at the water. “Did you hear something?”
“No, I figured something out! The reason these islands are so clear, there are channels that carry the blood to the water!” Bryke exclaimed.
Terra shared a look with Zevortro who looked back at her with the same look of confusion that she felt. No matter how she went over what Bryke said, nothing made sense. Just what did that mean? “Bryke, what in the name of the stars are you talking about!? How do channels in the island lead to it being clean?”
“Simple,” Bryke said with terror in his voice. “Who said that the thing down there only feels vibrations?”
Terra looked at him and then she felt her heart freeze. The more she thought of that, the more it made sense. Creatures that hunted in the depths of oceans needed to have some ways to track prey. And with a deep swallow, he down at the blood as it moved ever closer to the water.
Without a word, she dropped down and put her finger in the channel. As the blood hit it, it slowly spread to the sides and another channel.
“Tell me that Bryke is just looking at something that’s not there. Tell me that the blood won’t call that thing!” Zevortro demanded from the water’s edge.
Terra let her gaze move to the water and then she swallowed. “Sorry, but I can’t. How can we stop it?”
“Freeze it!” Bryke said suddenly.
Terra looked at him, not understanding what he meant. How could they freeze blood fast enough out here? Then she felt herself blush as she pulled out her weapon as she understood. “ Right, me. Stand back! Blast Enhance; Ice!”
As soon as her weapon gained the blue glow, she thought of what she wanted her blast to do and fired. Within a moment of the shot hitting the ground, the ice went along the island, the channels freezing.
Terra watched and paled in horror as she saw that the ice had gone to the edge of the island. The ice stopped a good half foot from the water, and she sat down.
“Oh Stars and Nova! We almost died!” Bryke said as he fell to his knees.
Terra only looked at the ice she had created, and then she had a terrible thought. She slowly got up and started to walk around the carcass, trying to find all the ice. The thought she had was something that she wanted to disprove beyond all doubt, it had to be just her fear! If it wasn’t, then they were in so much trouble that she couldn’t believe it.
But then she found what she didn’t want to behind the carcass. There it was, a line of ice that went into the water the color of the blood. She stared at it for a moment, then slowly she looked up and swallowed as her light found what she didn’t want to see. “Too late!”
“NO!” Bryke bellowed as they were forced to watch as the shadow in the water moved closer to them. Without even stopping to think, Terra aimed and fired. As soon as the bolt hit the water, a spire of ice formed. For a second she hoped that the spike had killed the lurker. But then they heard a screech of pain, unlike anything they had ever heard before.
