Chapter 170
The space in the den was smaller than the first one they’d gone into but it was stocked pretty much the same. There was a space where the water came in through the rocks. There were tools and other materials for use.
Tempest did realize that though it held the same things there wasn’t as much of the items in this den as there were in the other one. She wondered if that meant they were closer to the settlement than she’d thought they were.
After she rested for a while she got up and walked over to where Aliq was, Gerax had already pulled out his bedroll and was snoring away.
Aliq on the other hand, was busy working on something. Tempest didn’t know what it was, but it seemed like a cord-like material.
"Hey, busy?" Tempest asked when she got near him.
"Not really, just trying to keep my mind busy."
She didn’t realize that he was concerned about anything, but now that she was near him, she could see that he was a little more tense than he was when they’d started the trip.
"Is everything okay?"
"Yes." he answered too quickly.
Tempest took a seat next to him, not close enough that she was invading his space but near enough that she could talk to him without having to raise her voice. She didn’t want to disturb Gerax as if that were a possibility.
"You know, if there’s something on your mind, you can talk to me about it. You may not know me that well, but I’ve been told I’m a good listener." Tempest smiled at the man as he looked up from whatever it was that he was working on.
"It’s nothing of consequence. I’m just always running possibilities in my mind. It’s something of a curse for me."
Tempest huffed at that, "I know someone else people think is cursed. In my opinion, curses are nothing but hogwash." She flipped her hand through the air as if to wipe the entire notion away.
"Hogwash?" Aliq questioned. "That doesn’t translate how I think you meant it. Do you mean actually washing of a hog?"
Tempest blinked a few times. She had just realized that the people around her could understand her. She’d gotten so used to just talking and people understanding her on Thraqe that she had nearly forgotten that in the beginning the people on Thraqe all had to update their devices so that they could understand her.
"How is it that you can understand me? If you’ve always been on Skoq, where did you learn English?" Suddenly every hair on the back of Tempest’s neck stood up. Something was off. There was something Aliq wasn’t telling her.
He looked up from what he was doing, and she watched his face fall. He wasn’t expecting her to ask him that. It was clear to Tempest that he didn’t want to answer her either.
She looked around briefly in the small den, but she already knew Rynax wasn’t there. As soon as they fully got into the den and he realized how small the space was, he made an excuse about going out to hunt for some dinner.
He didn’t need to, they had enough prepackaged food with them. It was all dried. Jerky and dehydrated fruits. It would be nice to get a warm meal. That was the only reason Tempest didn’t object when he offered to leave them there.
Now she was wishing she had.
If Aliq was lying to them about something and it turned out bad, she might need some protection. Protection a sleeping Gerax wouldn’t be able to give her.
Instead, she focused back on Aliq.
"It’s a long story." Aliq went back to focusing on what was in his hand.
There was no way she was letting him get by with that pitiful answer. For a second she thought she should. Maybe she should just wait for Rynax to come back and then deal with it, but by then Aliq might think up a lie or a story.
No, it was better that she found out the truth now that he was caught off guard.
"In case you haven’t realized, we have plenty of time." Tempest tried to smile to show that she wasn’t intentionally trying to poke the bear when she really was. It was manipulative, but she didn’t care.
"As you wish..." Aliq turned, placing the item in his hand on the ground next to him. "Well I told you as much as I know about the settlement we are going to. I was being truthful about people in our stronghold not going there." Aliq raised his eyebrow as if waiting for Tempest to agree with him.
She nodded and gestured for him to go on.
"We don’t go there, but there was one woman. I don’t know if she’s human. She had the same physical makeup as you do, but she looked different. She was a different color."
Tempest struggled to understand for a moment, "You mean her skin? Her skin was a different color?
"Yes, more of a brown. Golden?" He seemed to be having trouble finding the right words.
"Okay, that’s normal. There are people with all different shades of skin on my planet. Some are very pale, some are very dark, with plenty of colors in between." Tempest explained.
"And her hair was different; it swirled around like a spiral."
Tempest nodded again. This all sounded normal to her, but she assumed to someone from this planet it might be strange.
"Anyway, she was what I’d call a scout. She didn’t describe herself as that, but she did say that she was simply exploring." Aliq shrugged.
"Okay, and this woman, she is the one who taught you english?"
"You have to understand, before her we’d only heard stories about people being brought from other planets. There was talk of aliens and otherworldly beings, but at that time no one thought of it as anything more than myth and stories. She was the first one to show us that the stories were all true. I wasn’t on duty when she showed up to my town. I was on leave. Instantly, every scientist was both obsessed and frightened by the woman who just showed up at the gate alone. They didn’t know if it was an invasion or a trick."
A rock began to form in Tempest’s gut. For some reason, she didn’t feel like this story was going to have a happy ending.
"Finally, the scientist figured out a way to update their translators, and that’s when she told them her story. How she was from another planet. How she was searching for ways to get home. How there were others like her. The scientist studied her. The trackers and scouts accompanied her to other settlements to see if she had any knowledge of them. We learned so much from her. Soon the word got out and translators were being updated with the new language all across Skoq."
Tempest leaned in a little closer, "I have a feeling that’s not the end of it. What happened to her? If she was such a great wealth of information why is it you all don’t have a working relationship with the human settlement? Why is it still so much mystery?"
"Because of what we did to her..." Aliq’s voice dropped and Tempest could hear the despair there.
"What did you do?"
"Me personally? Nothing. But I did nothing to stop what was happening. I couldn’t. I’m not a scientist. I’m a nobody."
"Tell me." Tempest urged him.
"They wanted to know how she was different from us. They could see outwardly that she was similar but they wanted to know if the same was true for the parts they couldn’t see. They beat her just to test her pain tolerance. Kept her chained up. The alphas used her as a pleasure worker when they realized that she could be used in that way. In the end, she was a shell of the woman she had once been. One of her own eventually came in search of her in secret, and when they got a look at her, they ended her life just to put her out of her misery. The people in that settlement don’t trust us because they have good reason not to."
Tempest gasped and leaned back. She couldn’t believe it but based on how Aliq was looking she knew he was telling the truth.
"Why didn’t they attack me then? I was in the middle of a entire stronghold full of Alphas. No one attacked me."
"You have Rynax. If you would’ve attempted to come to Skoq without him, things would’ve been very different for you."
Tempest shook her head, "But there were times I was on my own, the bathhouse."
"I was there. Ever since the unfortunate end to that woman in my town, I vowed I’d never let something like that happen again. It was wrong in the most incredible way. I wasn’t going to let anyone get to you. I’d have died before anyone stepped foot in there." Aliq kept her gaze.
Tempest knew that was the truth.
She witnessed firsthand the fight with Rynax just how far Aliq was willing to go to protect her.
The story was horrible, and it added a new layer of difficulty to what they were trying to do. Tempest wanted to see the settlement for herself, but what would the humans do to Rynax and the others with her? If they thought the men were a threat, there was a chance that people in the settlement would try to attack before they were attacked. A scared human is a dangerous human.
She didn’t want to sneak in, and she didn’t want to try to go in by herself.
She was just going to have to find a way to play peacekeeper.
"Do you think the alphas back in the stronghold would try and hurt the humans?" Tempest questioned.
"No, Crilium has a pretty good hold on all of them."
There was another question rattling around in Tempest’s head. The policies about not going near the human settlement seemed to be widespread. According to Crilium, everyone knew not to go there. It was as if it had been known for quite some time.
"When did this happen? How long ago?"
"Hundreds of double moon cycles. At least seven of your human years."
Tempest was in shock.
Seven years?
There had been humans living on this planet in secret for seven years?
Tempest had a hard time believing that.
How had they survived for so long, and what condition would she find them in?
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⏸ PAUSE■ STOP