Oratus Read online

  Oratus

  A Short Story

  A.R. Knight

  Copyright © 2018 by Adam Knight

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN (ebook): 978-1-946554-23-9

  Published by Black Key Books

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and co-incidental.

  Black Key Books

  4209 Odana Rd

  Madison, WI 53711

  www.blackkeybooks.com

  Also by A.R. Knight

  The Mercenaries Trilogy

  The Metal Man

  Wild Nines

  Dark Ice

  One Shot

  The Riven Trilogy

  Riven

  The Cycle

  Spirit’s End

  The Rakers Saga

  Rakers

  The Skyward Saga

  The Spear

  Oratus

  Starshot

  Mind’s Eye

  Clarity’s Dawn

  Creator’s End

  Humanity Rising

  The Last Cycle

  Discover More Stories

  Want to find out when the next adventure comes out? I’ll only send out a newsletter when there’s a new release, so no spam, only sweet, sweet story goodness.

  Sign up for the my mailing list at http://bit.ly/bkbnewswn

  To Nicole

  Contents

  1. Formation

  2. Descent

  3. Past Acts

  4. Night watch

  5. A Hunt

  6. Raging Storm

  7. To The Mountain

  8. The Last Trial

  9. Inside the Rock

  10. Together

  11. Earning Her Name

  An Excerpt from Starshot - The Skyward Saga Book 1

  Also by A.R. Knight

  Discover More Stories

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1 Formation

  She begins in luminous blue. It’s wet, cool. There’s electric twitches as her muscles begin to activate, as the tips of her claws curl. The first breath comes filtered. Clean, ecstatic air. Life floods and flows through her.

  She opens first one eye, her left. White everything, a black line in the middle. Then her right. What they see is a membrane holding her massive form. The light, she realizes now, comes from the outside. Smell is only the barest tickle, and even that is purified. She moves one of her arms, of which, she realizes, she has four. It snaps and crackles, shifts as molecules and muscles stretch in ways they’ve been designed for, and yet have not experienced. She meets resistance; the water. The name for it comes to her almost without thinking, from some reservoir of knowledge with depths she can’t explore here.

  Because the feeling consuming her growing consciousness is that she is trapped and she must GET OUT.

  Fortunately, she is a weapon.

  Her head darts forward, her mouth full of tearing teeth. They grab hold and rip at the edge of the membrane even as her four arms and their claws shred the same. It’s not thick - the skin isn’t meant to hold her. At least, not once she’s awake.

  She spills out, falls from the sac onto hard-packed dirt. The sand sticks to her as she tries to stand. At first it’s a wobbly affair, her legs not used to bearing her weight, her talons not used to the concept of balance.

  But she’s being watched, so she gets herself under control. Digs those claws into the ground. Looks.

  The creatures watching her are not her own. They are smaller, scurrying around other sacs like the one she came out of. Brown, black, and gray fur covers their bodies in all manner of patterns. They chatter to each other in words she cannot understand. They ignore her. Don’t meet her eyes. They surround the sac she’s just left and begin tearing the rest of it apart and carrying it into the shadows.

  Small halos dot the floor, which, she notices, come from slight holes in the cavern’s rocky ceiling. The light’s enough to bring her attention to another sac, one twisting and shaking like her own must have. There’s a rip, a rush of fluid, and something comes out. Four arms ending in claws, a head atop a neck, deep red scales and a long tail... but its legs. Unlike hers, which stand strong and firm, this new one’s are twisted and shriveled, bent at wrong angles.

  The creature pulls itself from the sac, falls onto the floor, and struggles to right itself on its four arms. She takes a step towards it - a mix of curiosity and compassion pulls at her - then stops as five of the small creatures rush by her. They surround the struggling one, and she rises up on her legs just in time to see a bright blue flash and a sharp hiss that extends to a dying sigh.

  She moves fast then, following lights leading away from the sacs. She doesn’t want to give those furry things a chance to evaluate her, find her wanting. Apparently this place does not deal in mercy.

  A steel door slides shut behind her - she must have passed through it without noticing. As the door closes, a long, featureless hallway illuminates in soft yellow ahead. Standing in the middle of it is another thing that looks like her, bright blue-scaled and with its four arms crossed.

  She pauses. Her muscles tense. Is this thing going to try and kill her?

  “Oratus,” the creature says, its voice a deep hiss. “You have been made. What you are, what you know has been given to you. A debt you must now repay.”

  It doesn’t wait for a reply, but turns and strides down the hallway away from her. There’s nowhere else to go, and this thing seems like it’s not going to kill her, so she follows, her talons clicking soft on the dirt floor.

  2 Descent

  The blue one leads her to dazzling brightness. One not artificial, she notices. One that hangs high in the sky and casts an orange glow upon the deep green and pink covering. Giant arcs of glittering black rock stand over the lush gardens, sparkling and monstrous and scattered as far as she can see. Hanging from these arches are bulging rock bulbs. All suspended on large, thick cables hanging from those black arches. And then she realizes where she stands, too, is hanging. A massive boulder carved out and strung up.

  Summoning her voice takes effort. She calls upon an instinct within her, natural and not, to make her throat move in such a way as to create a rasping hiss that pours forth words she’s only just beginning to understand and yet has always known.

  “Who am I?” She rasps.

  The blue one says nothing at first, only orients back to her. Its is a look of pride, coupled with expectation; she has come so far and has so much further to go.

  “Oratus, that is what you must discover.”

  The blue one points down, and she approaches the edge and looks.

  “You will leap from here and find your way to that Mountain’s peak. Survive, and you will take the first step to learning your name, and who you are meant to be.”

  The blue one says nothing more, and only stares at her. She looks first to the Mountain, off away from the glow and rising like a spearhead on the horizon. The drop is far, and deep beneath the vegetation is a darkness she cannot see. Sounds barrel up from it, a cacophony of roars and whistles, rattles and shakes.

  She hesitates but senses that every second she remains upon this platform is one she is judged for. That no questions will be answered here.

  She makes the leap.

  The fall is swift, and as she plummets, she sticks her four claws and two talons out in front of her, looking to grab the first thing she encounters. Which happens to be a large pink flower shooting up from a thick green trunk. She strikes a soft frond
that does nothing to slow her fall, but provides the barest hint of a grip. With her left foreclaw, she digs into the core of the flower and swings herself, nearly breaking her arm in the process, into the cluster of blossoms and petals, some of them as large as her. She bounces and rolls, desperately trying to keep her grasp, and she’s moving, falling off the end of the petal and towards the ground. Only this time, the trunk runs along her back and she’s able to turn with her claws, reach out and slice through the bark. It splinters and shatters as wet green wood flies out.

  But she slows.

  Eventually, she reaches the forest floor.

  It’s a soft landing on all sixes. Because, she realizes, it’s not dirt or rock she’s on, but a cushion of leaves and fallen petals. They litter the forest floor, covering everywhere in their fading greens and pinks except for the shoots of other plants - greens and blues, mostly - trying to make their way up to the far-off sky. The air hits her next, as the vents lining her chest open up and take in a thicker scent than what blew across the hanging rock; she finds it invigorating, sharp and bright. Even opens her mouth to see if she can taste it, lick up the flavor, and only gets a piece of falling flower for her efforts.

  Beyond the undergrowth, however, the forest is crowded and dark. Orange light beams down at random, and the shafts move with the breeze above, so that she feels as though she’s fallen into some mystic riddle. A place not too unlike the membrane that gave her life, except here, if she’s careless, the forest might take hers.

  So she’s ready when there’s a rustle, then a sudden thrash behind her. Swinging her tail, she uses the momentum to twist on her talons, bringing up her foreclaws towards the approaching noise. A gray-scaled creature, similar to the blue one above and, she believes, to herself, tears through a sprawling fern and rolls by her. Her eyes follow it, catching the glistening red of fresh wounds sprinkled across its back. The creature settles on the ground, unmoving.

  But the thrashing isn’t done. A moment later, following its prey, a bronze-scaled Oratus, larger than her, Blue and Gray strides into the small copse where she fell. Like Gray, Bronze shows signs of fighting, though by the size of the cuts, it’s obvious who’s winning this struggle. Bronze stops as he catches sight of her - she can tell his sex from the way Bronze smells, a pheromone hovering on the edge of her senses.

  “Another one?” Bronze says. Then he seems to remember a plan, clasps his strong four arms in front of himself, and nods towards Gray. “Welcome to our momentary world. I march towards the Mountain.”

  “And him?” She points to Gray.

  “One whose journey is over.” Bronze spares Gray a glance, it’s not a merciful one. “He protested my leadership. He failed.”

  She watches as Bronze moves to stand over Gray. Bronze raises a claw, looks back towards her, and opens his mouth as if to say something, when Gray bursts from the ground. With two, then four claws, Gray scales Bronze as the latter hisses, flails, and misses as Gray leaps from Bronze’s shoulders. As Gray flies, his tail snakes around Bronze’s neck, circling tight and, with Gray’s momentum pulling it forward, drags Bronze over and slams the creature onto his back. Loosening his tail, Gray wheels around, raises a talon and hovers it above Bronze’s head.

  She cannot deny the thrill rising in her, the power pulsing in her veins at the fight, the primal urge to join in and tear with her teeth, her claws. It doesn’t even matter who, just that she is a part of the carnage. And she cannot resist. This, this is her calling. What she lives for.

  Her jump carries her into Gray, knocking him away from Bronze. Gray, though, uses her own momentum against her and, rolling with his talons pushing against her own, kicks her off so that she flies on into the forest. Bounces off one of the trunks and lands on the plant floor. The shock jars her mind, clears the rage, though it lingers and she feels she can reach out, grab and wrap herself in its fiery cloak...

  A pair of hissing roars snap her eyes up to see Bronze and Gray circling each other, eyes locked and claws sharp. They are so like Blue. Like her.

  She leaps in between the two monsters, hissing as she does so. Both Bronze and Gray dart back, avoiding what both must think is an attack aimed at themselves. She winds up alone, with plenty of space to circle and stare at the other two, as they stare at her.

  “Do you go to the Mountain?” She asks, turning her head from one to the other as she states the question.

  “I do,” Bronze says, and she sees confusion in his eyes. “I told you that a moment ago.”

  “I do, but not with that one,” Gray hisses. “If I wish to die, I’ll do so on my own terms.”

  The two burst into another fight, though this one, at least, is waged with words. Insults and accusations fly too fast for her to catch, with names of places and strange things tickling her mind but being interrupted before clarity can struggle through. What’s clear, though, is that both of them have been down here longer than she has. A deficit of knowledge she must correct if she’s going to survive long enough to make the Mountain.

  So she roars again. This time louder, more confident. A guise, and one that works. Again, Gray and Bronze stop and stare at her.

  “I come from above,” she admits. “And I do not know where I am.”

  A risk, but she hopes they forget their feud to focus on her. Even if they tear each other to shreds in another moment, she wants to learn what she’s able to first. Get what she can from these two so much like her before they vanish, either into the forest or the cold whisper of death.

  “You came from the last arch?” Gray asks, looking up towards the canopy.

  Bronze says nothing, and by his questioning eyes, he’s as interested in the answer as Gray.

  “A blue one of us told me to leap,” she replies. “I landed here.”

  “Then you are the missing piece,” Bronze says. “The third one to our trio.”

  “Our trio?” Gray replies. “I’m not going with you.”

  “No choice,” Bronze says the words as if describing stone. “Three arches, one of us from each. That is the design.”

  She doesn’t understand what Bronze is talking about, but Gray’s anger seems to dissipate at the words. He looks at the shredded scales on his skin, at the crimson blood seeping from them towards the floor, and closes his eyes. She looks over to Bronze, who, sporting his own scratches, stares hard back at her.

  “What design?” She asks.

  “I’m from the first arch,” Bronze replies, as if that says everything. She cocks her head so he knows that’s not the case. Bronze takes a breath, his chest swelling with the intake. “This one is from the second, and you are from the third. The three of us are meant to join together, as it takes three to complete the Mountain.”

  “Why should I listen to you?” She asks. Distrust trickles through her senses. Her instincts warning her that the wrong allies can be just as fatal as enemies.

  “You shouldn’t,” Gray hisses from behind her. “He wants your help for his own ends.”

  Bronze hisses, glares at Gray. “This one would go alone. Would abandon you in a moment if he thought it would help him. You need companions, pink. You must have help, or you will die out here.”

  Bronze casts his claws wide, calling her attention to the noise coming from the jungle around. All those unknowns lurking in the shadows behind the trees and thick blue and purple leaves, floral smells mingling with an undercurrent of rot and fresher kills. Bronze likely isn’t wrong - this is a place full of predators, and a loner makes for easier prey. Survival isn’t something she needs to learn.

  “I’ll go with you,” she says and Bronze nods, as if he had expected no less.

  “A mistake,” Gray hisses. “But he’s right about one thing; you’ll die alone in this place. You have your trio, Bronze.”

  Now Bronze bursts into a toothy grin. “Then we have nothing more to wait for. Assuming you’re not hurt too badly, let’s go.”

  “As if he could hurt me,” Gray rasps softly behind her.

>   She thinks about pointing out the wounds, the bloody scratches, but stays quiet. Even now, only a short time after hatching, she already knows what buttons to press and what to leave alone.

  3 Past Acts

  Bronze chatters endlessly as they climb between trees and branches, over small ponds and wading through a rushing river - she is thankful for her talons and the way they cut footholds in the rocky floor. They brush aside ferns and endless amounts of small, pestering insects intent on clogging up her breathing vents. Yet always, always Bronze talks, and because the only alternatives are the jungle noises, which quickly blend into an indistinguishable miasma, she listens.

  Bronze lays out a parade of theories. Guesses and questions about what might happen on the top of the Mountain. What lies beyond the sky above, because they, Bronze asserts, did not all come from here. He wonders if this is all a game, if there are people deriving entertainment from their struggle. Or if this is some sort of strange military exercise.

  When Bronze asserts that the whole thing might be an illusion, a mental trick, she can take it no longer.

  “Bronze, what are you talking about? I hatched, and a blue one shoved me off a cliff and into the forest. He told me nothing,” she says as she steps over a wide, triangular purple leaf.

  Bronze holds up his left midclaw, points to a green ring around his forearm that she has, up at this point, assumed was a piece of jungle plant or maybe a scar.

  “This tells me. It whispers in my mind, answers every question. I’ve barely begun to dig through what it holds,” Bronze seems to lose track of reality even as he says this. “It’s like an ocean, one I can keep swimming forever.”