Enduring (Valos of Sonhadra Book 8) Read online

Chapter 3

  I walked for what felt like forever, always with my back to the black smoke. The looming column didn’t seem to get any smaller. Sometimes, it would disappear from view completely, hidden by the crowns of tall trees, but then I would reach a clearing, and the smoke would be visible again, as forbidding as ever.

  I didn’t encounter any other signs of the crash, no dead bodies or large pieces of debris. I wondered if my capsule fell out of the disintegrating ship before its impact with the ground. That might have improved my chances of survival, because the capsule avoided being crushed by large pieces of ship debris as well as any fire or explosions.

  Picking my way between the smooth tree trunks, I kept scanning my surroundings for any signs of water, a possible food source, or potential danger.

  Through the dense purple undergrowth, I caught a glimpse of bright orange, the shade of the jumpsuits worn by prisoners on the Concord.

  At the beginning of my time on the spaceship, I was issued one too. Then surgical gowns replaced it. Eventually, they stopped bothering to dress me at all.

  Was it another prisoner?

  I got on my hands and knees and crawled under the low-hanging branches to get to the figure.

  Her face was turned to me, and I recognized her immediately by the fine web of scars on one side. Even though her eyes were closed, I knew that they weren’t identical—one was blue, another one green.

  Early on in Dr. Zukov’s experiments on me, they let me recover in a cell instead of the test room just off the lab. I remembered the first time my mind broke through the darkness and into the pain.

  “Shhh.” I felt a hand on my forehead. “It’s okay.”

  I opened my eyes to meet the two mismatched ones of the blonde woman above me. It was so rare to experience any comfort aboard the Concord.

  “What’s your name?” I managed to ask around the dry tongue that felt way too large for my parched mouth. Talking was painful, but I needed to know the name of possibly the last kind person I saw in this life.

  “Quinn. My name is Quinn.”

  Quinn was dead now. Dark blood from an ugly abdominal wound soaked her torn jumpsuit, and when I brushed the tangled blonde hair from her face, my fingers felt the sticky mess on the side of her head where it had been smashed in from an impact.

  My heart ached in sorrow for her. Quinn was someone I could sincerely mourn from the Concord.

  I smoothed her hair the best I could, wishing I could do more.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. With no tools and with hardly any strength left, I couldn’t even bury her properly and had to leave her where she lay.

  I HAD LITTLE TO NO skills for surviving in the wild. Any knowledge came from a few old adventure novels I had read. Right now, though, I didn’t need any survival skills to tell me that my priority was finding water.

  With the drugs wearing off, my headache had intensified, but the extreme thirst was even worse. The air felt comfortably warm even to my naked body, and under the trees it was nice and cool, but my thirst burned through me from the inside. Painful spasms overtook my dehydrated muscles.

  None of it was new to me. The same symptoms came after every surgery. Water was what I wanted, but I knew that only more drugs would really stop the agony.

  As I lumbered through the forest, determined to get away from the crash site as fast as possible, my biggest fear came no longer from the suspicious animal noises all around me and not even from the very real possibility of dying from thirst. It was the fear that I’d break under the torturous pain and crawl back to the ship in search of Dr. Zukov and his drugs.

  The thought of it spurred me to walk faster. The further I got from the ship and its temptation, the longer the way to crawl back would be for me if I broke, and the greater the chance I’d die in the forest, wild and free, not a prisoner on an operating table.

  By some unexpected miracle I’d been granted not only my life again but also my freedom. Now I had to make sure I kept them both.

  SHORTLY AFTER, I STUMBLED upon a bush covered with red berries. This wasn’t water, but their juice would still feel like heaven.

  Exhausted, I collapsed into the leaves under the bush. Everything in me screamed to stuff my face with the berries immediately, to eat them straight off the branches. Only the concern that the berries could be poisonous made me hold back a feeding frenzy.

  I plucked one berry and squished it on the inside of my wrist, just the way Aunt Judie made me test any new food before I grew out of my childhood allergies. If the berries were toxic, I’d get a skin reaction, still unpleasant but infinitely better than potential death from eating them.

  As I sat there, mustering my patience and waiting for a possible skin rash, something small and furry appeared from behind the tree opposite.

  The round body of the animal was slightly bigger than my fist and completely covered in fuzzy, lavender-colored fur. The numerous round black buttons on the front must have been the creature’s eyes. And it moved on several furry legs that resembled a bunch of curly, fluffy tails wiggling under its body in apparent randomness. All together, though, the tails propelled the creature in one direction, towards me.

  It seemed cute and harmless enough.

  “Hi, little one,” I croaked, pushing the air out through my dry throat.

  ‘Food!’ It launched itself at my leg. A tiny pink mouth opened beneath all the eyes and attempted to take a bite out of my ankle.

  “Hey!” I was more surprised than scared as I kicked my foot out. “Pick on someone your own size.”

  Thrown into the air, the critter squeaked ‘Hurt!’ Before landing in the berry bush. A moment later, I caught glimpses of lavender on the other side of the shrub. He mumbled something angrily as he stuffed his mouth with the red berries.

  It was a good sign that the animal found the berries edible, wasn’t it? Still, there were some plants on Earth that were harmful to humans despite the fact that animals ate them. Deer, for example, ate poison ivy without any problems.

  I picked up a leaf from the ground, rubbed the berry juice off my wrist and inspected my skin carefully. Beside the red stain from the juice, my skin appeared normal. Well, even if I died from eating the berries now, at least I’d know I attempted due diligence.

  Ravenously, I attacked the berry bush. Their taste was somewhat sweet and a little tart and so, so delicious! I plucked them by the handful, not caring that they squished in my grip, juice dripping down my arms, staining my skin, and shoved them in my mouth as fast as I could.

  I stopped only when there were no more berries left on the bush and my stomach started cramping.

  I groaned and rolled to the ground, folding both arms across my abdomen.

  Stupid, stupid, Zoya!

  I should have known better. Even under the best of circumstances, I would need some time to get used to any alien food. And since IV fluids had replaced most of my meals, my stomach was not used to any solid food at all.

  My insides heaved, and I managed to turn to the side just in time to vomit the berries I had just eaten out onto the fallen leaves under me.

  Deflated, I lay on the ground for a while.

  Who am I kidding?

  I was never meant to survive here. Naked, alone, with no clue of what I was doing. With my mental capacity rapidly diminishing, how was I supposed to make it in the alien forest of an unknown planet? No matter what, it seemed my destiny was to die today.

  The sky was so cheerfully bright above me. The sunlight filtered through the canopy in pink-tinted rays. Brilliant violet and magenta spots of light shimmered in the air, bouncing off the leaves that swayed and rustled in the breeze.

  It looked so pretty, foreign but beautiful. Too beautiful to just give up and die.

  Not now, I decided. Not here, lying next to my own vomit. Just a little bit longer.

  Shaking, I struggled up on all fours then staggered to my feet.

  Despite the pain crushing my body and exploding in my head, despite th
e thirst, I forced myself to take one step, and then another, and another. As long as I could walk, I had hope.

  Chapter 4

  I no longer cared about the direction I was going. I hardly paid any attention to my surroundings. All that mattered was my next step. I focused on simply placing one foot in front of the other, each an accomplishment on its own.

  Somewhere at the back of my mind it registered that the trees around me had become shorter and thinner. Eventually, they were replaced by patches of pale violet shrubs. The soft grass under my feet had thinned out too, until it all but disappeared, exposing the sandy ground underneath.

  Without the shade of the canopy, the sun felt brutal against my exposed skin. Sharp twigs from the shrubs poked my feet through the rubber of my improvised foot coverings.

  Maybe I should turn around and go back to the forest?

  I stopped for a moment and took a good look around to gather my bearings.

  In front of me, I could make out the dark-grey ridge of mountains, stretching as far as I could see along the horizon.

  I stood in a valley covered with patches of prickly grass and shrubs. Huge rocks were scattered over the ground. Smaller at the edge of the forest, they grew bigger towards the mountains. Some appeared to be large boulders. Others towered over the valley like cliffs, casting sharp shadows onto the sand.

  The sun was low in the sky. The edge of it touched the top of the mountains. Night was coming. If it were anything like Earth—so far it had been—there could be predatory nocturnal animals that would happily make a meal out of me.

  I took a few shaky steps towards the mountains and then stopped again. Would I be safer back in the forest? Or should I spend the night here, in the open?

  I remembered reading something about climbing high into a tree being safer at night. For me, it meant going back into the forest where the trees were tall enough. Could I even climb anything in my current state?

  Besides, I knew nothing about the wildlife on this planet. How could I figure out a safe place if I had no idea what kind of predators existed here? What if they all lived in nests in the very same trees I intended to climb?

  Every tortured muscle in my body screamed for me to lay down in the shade of one of the boulders and rest. Through the pounding headache, deep inside my brain, I realized that if I lay down now I might never get up again.

  While I stood in the valley, struggling to make a decision, a ray of light suddenly reflected off a shiny surface, attracting my attention. It came from behind a nearby bush, and I stepped around it to take a better look.

  Water!

  It was a small, perfectly round pond. The water in it looked cloudy, slightly milky-white, but I didn’t care at this point. Even if it was pure acid, I was going to drink it. The thirst stripped me of any last vestiges of logic or caution.

  I scrambled around the bush as fast as I could muster on my shaky legs, barely noticing that something bounced out of the shrubs. It hit my leg, making me shriek in surprise. I lurched aside, lost my balance and fell to the ground.

  Something that reminded me of a bicycle wheel without spokes rolled towards the pond, its trajectory changed from the impact with my leg. The wheel bounced up the raised edge of the pond and landed neatly near the centre of the water. I expected a splash, but none happened. Instead, the wheel remained on the surface as if glued to it.

  ‘Danger!’ The wheel hissed sharply, proving that it was an animal. It quickly bent into an arch, trying to bounce off the surface in vain. The pond no longer looked like water to me. The surface rippled and bent, agitated by the struggles of the animal, but remained solid, like a thick membrane.

  I wasn’t sure what was happening, but things didn’t look good for the wheel creature. Impulsively, I crawled on all fours towards the pond, without having any clear plan, but wanting to do something to help the poor thing.

  I didn’t make it far, when a single bubble, larger than my head, slowly rose from the bottom. It burst open as soon as it reached the surface, and a ripple floated all the way to the edge of the pool. The ripple then moved back to the centre, growing higher as it approached the trapped creature that thrashed and hissed frantically. The ripple rose even higher from the surface, enclosing the animal by forming a perfectly round bubble over it. Against all laws of physics, the bubble then submerged back under the surface, taking its prey with it.

  Eyes wide, I watched the poor thing struggle inside the bubble as it kept going deeper and deeper to the bottom until I could no longer see through the cloudy substance of the pond.

  The unbearable torture of my thirst—intensified by the bitter disappointment and intense pity for the creature—overcame me.

  Heavy sobs shuddered through my body and I sank to the ground, propping my back against the nearest rock. My body had not a drop of moisture left, and I cried tearlessly, with loud sobs and painful spasms of my chest. I wrapped my arms around my legs and hugged them to my chest, dropping my head onto my knees.

  ‘Useless,’ the memory of Aunt Judie’s voice sounded loud and clear through the fog of pain in my head. ‘Absolutely useless. You couldn’t even last a day on your own!’

  The empathy for the animal now turned into pity for myself. Overflowing with feelings of defeat and hopelessness, I couldn’t stop crying.

  I had no idea how long I remained like that. Any sense of time had long since left me.

  A crashing sound and the heavy vibration of something like hooves hitting the ground finally caught my attention and made me glance up just in time to see a huge beast emerge from the tree line.

  In the golden rays of the setting sun, its fur was a messy russet with bright orange highlights. The creature was shaped like a boar but appeared much larger, even with the distance between us. Several long, thick, spiky tusks covered its head. All of them pointed straight ahead, right at me.

  I stilled. My sobs stopped. Maybe, if I sat perfectly motionless, the beast wouldn’t notice me and would just move on.

  It paused, but only for a moment. Then its beady eyes fixed on me.

  ‘Kill!’ The word came out as a roar. Then the beast charged.

  Everything inside me disappeared in that instant. Every single feeling I had—pain, thirst, even fear—all were immediately consumed by the paralyzing awareness that this was how I would die today.

  Time slowed. I watched as the raging beast came closer and closer. I could see the many heavy-set, round eyes on its face and the light of the sunset reflecting off its shiny tusks. I could hear its menacing, snorting roars. I could feel the ground shake beneath its pounding hooves . . .

  The thought formed and rose to the surface of my brain. I’m going to die, without accomplishing a thing in my life . . .

  Except that I did accomplish something today, didn’t I? I didn’t die on a surgery table under the scalpel of a mad scientist. I was not dying as a pathetic prisoner either.

  I, Zoya Ray, was dying a free woman. And that was my life’s biggest accomplishment.

  Using everything I had left, I stumbled to my feet, and took a step forward to meet my destiny head on.

  I BRACED EVERY SINGLE muscle in my body, ready for the impact, ready to be speared by the spikes on the head of the beast.

  It’ll be quick . . .

  With my eyes glued to the approaching menace, I sensed it before I saw it. It was like the cliff nearby suddenly collapsed. A pile of rocks fell from the top of it and landed in front of me, in the path of the giant boar.

  I swayed back, unsteadily. Even adrenaline could no longer keep me upright, and I slid down to the ground.

  I must have begun to hallucinate, for it appeared as though the pile of rocks in front of me rose and took a somewhat humanoid shape. Large and bulky, it was almost twice as tall as me and several times as wide.

  It reminded me of a stone golem from a fantasy movie. Its hands and feet were disproportionately large compared to its humongous figure, each like a massive, shapeless boulder. The rock creature wa
s positioned with its back to me, and I could barely see its rounded head behind the enormous hulking shoulders.

  The boar emitted a pitiful squeal and struggled to come to a stop. It dug its hooves into the ground, raising clouds of dust and kicking sand into the air. But it kept sliding towards the wall of rock between us.

  The stone figure took a step forward, moving smoothly and with unexpected swiftness. It raised its arm in the air and slammed its boulder-fist into the head of the beast. A short, unintelligible snort came out of the boar-creature’s mouth before it crashed to the ground and remained completely motionless, leaving no doubt it was absolutely, positively dead.

  The rock man turned. I thought of him as a man at this point, because as shapeless as the pile of rocks appeared at first, upon a second glance the proportions of the figure seemed more male than female, with wider shoulders and relatively narrower hips.

  Unable to process what had just happened, I sat there, with my back to the rock, and kept staring at him. I wasn’t sure if he was real or if he was simply the product of my feverish imagination.

  As if to confirm the latter, the sharp edges of the rock man began to shimmer and waver. The hard lines of his silhouette seemed to be melting into the air as he moved towards me.

  Did my brain conjure some weird stone angel to come and save me, and he was melting into the air now that his job was done?

  The rock man didn’t disappear completely, though. Instead, a slightly smaller, proportionally closer to human form emerged from the wavering shimmer.

  I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my vision. The melting transformation of the golem only added to the dizziness engulfing me.

  His feet came in my line of sight first—big, rough, with skin the same taupe color as the rocks around us. He came way too close. I had to pull my knees up to my chest to make sure he didn’t step on my legs.

  My gaze traveled up his shins, covered by some kind of armored plating from the ankles to the knees. The armor appeared to be made from leather or thick suede in a shape that reminded me of the greaves of medieval knights. Next, came the pair of massive, muscular thighs, covered by nothing at all, and then . . .