Archive for kethrios
Part 22: War Camp
“There,” she said, pointing, and the two headed off around the animal pen. As the children walked past the animal pen they passed a number of people from the new tribe. Amada openly stared at the strangers. Their skin was the same brown as hers, but their dress was very, very different. Their men wore no leather, but instead sported armor made from tubes strung on cords. Rather than hanging free as Father’s did, their male parts were looped with a cord and tied to their belts. Amada was shocked to see the men displayed so. The women were also dressed very oddly. Their faces were completely uncovered, as were their entire torsos. Whereas her own naked body was veiled by the long ropes hanging from the wide brim of the bas on her head, these women only wore strips of woven grass attached to a thin cord that circled the waist and passed between the labia. It looked very uncomfortable. Their children were completely naked, except for the older girls who wore a string between their legs like the women, and the older boys who were tied up like the men. Amada shook her head, amazed at their brazen immodesty.
Part 21: Council of War
The pace at the Department of Animal Reconnaissance had picked up dramatically in the last twelve hours. Molli had been working there as an adjunct to a regional dragon squad for seven months and had never seen so many people in the building at one time. Then had come the news of the crash of the Constant Vision, and the whole place sprang to life.
Part 20: The Hunters
Life in the scrublands can be hard, and so many of the things that live there are hard. Spiny, too. Filia realized this quickly. She and Staun »»
Part 19: Coming Down
Filia expected the crash to be a sudden thing, but it wasn’t. She and Staun had time to prepare themselves, securing various bits of equipment and tying themselves to the basket before the first of the tree branches struck. After that there was an interminable time where the basket alternated between shaking violently and free-falling.
Part 18: Precious Victory
“Marileyna is asking to speak to the captain,” Tritti said. “She says she has something that has to go on the rocket before we launch it.”
Domas looked up, startled. “Rocket? I wasn’t notified of a rocket launch.”
Part 17: Balloon Alone
She looked forward, to where they were headed, and gasped.
“Staun!”
“What?”
“We’re not going to make it! There’re cliffs ahead!”
Part 16: Into the Darkness
It was almost nighttime when Filia and Staun emerged from the tunnel. The pair had reached a place where the walls of the old passageway had been breached. From the look of it, a flash flood had carved a ravine in a hillside, long ago, excavating the tunnel. Filia stood in the impromptu entrance, blinking in the fading light.
Part 15: A Higher View
“How long have we been up here?” Stolia asked, moving gingerly across the trembling metal framework that held them suspended so high above the barren dirt below. The young brown-haired woman adjusted her harness for what had to be the fiftieth time, revealing white indentations across the bottoms of her breasts where the straps had been. Her pale skin was marked here and there by purple bruises and reddened abrasions, and her movements were halting and stiff.
Part 11: Over Land
Filia was sitting crosslegged on the floor of the starboard engine room when Loillola entered with an armful of hardware. Filia looked up expectantly as Loillola approached »»
Part 10: More Ahead
“The whispers?” Staun asked, his voice suddenly soft and unsure. Filia had a terrible flashback to his first collapse on the airship. The whispers. The strange whispers. She had never been able to get those words out of her head. Those were the last words she wanted to hear in this dark place.