Nakiel Read online

  The intel that he received on Iza was substantial although some of it seemed out-dated. He just hoped that the machines didn't get any more fearsome in the last couple of years. Nakiel's hand cinches around one of the rocks along the cliff and he scales upwards, crawling through the collection of boulders before he arrives in the town, he hears someone talking, the voice sounded robotic in nature and something told him that he had made it just in time.

  "And now it is time to discuss the state of the facility here. Iza has deemed that this facility has become less and less essential. And with our newest discovery of someone here scheming to commit a coup, it seems that our plans for this facility to be demolished have been accelerated." Said the machine at the front of the crowd.

  In the crowd he saw many types of humans, all of them rather disgruntled and covered in dirt. He wondered if she was there for an instant and kept his eye out for a rather pretty blond girl. He watches them but fails to find her and for a moment he wonders if she was still at home or had overslept. It was possible but his gut told him that she was somewhere here.

  And that her family was here as well.

  He finally sees her, this speck of yellow in the entire crowd bobbing up and down. Her pale face peeks out of the hood that she wore and strings of her blond hair fall over the cheek as she watches the machine with a growing fear.

  Nakiel grabs his bow and notches an arrow, if she was going to perish then he would stop it, he swore that he would do whatever it took in order to have her.

  "And effective immediately, this facility is to be closed and its residents shall be imprisoned for interrogation effective immediately."

  And the crowd begins to panic.

  The humans push one another, rushing in various directions in an attempt to leave while he watches. He watches as she runs from the site with an old man and another young woman in tow. She was headed directly for one of the control droids around the crowd. They were shocking the humans and incapacitating them for transport.

  But Nakiel shakes his head, they would not capture her, he would have her and protect her before they could do a damn thing.

  He tightens his grasp around his bow and draws back an arrow that strikes one of the machines directly in the center of its hull. The humans look around for a shooter but he hides himself behind a boulder before one of the machines could sense him. But Iza saw all....so this was pointless. It was something that he realized just in time as he quickly ran from behind the boulder just as a drone appeared in front of him. Its lasers strike the rock near his feet, the heat from the beams only made the heat of the sun worse.

  And Nakiel rushes forward, his bow shaking before he notices another arrow and fires it at the droid that was following him. The machine falls after an arrow impales its hull. Nakiel himself leaps onto the roof of one of the nearby buildings before he rushes towards her home. He could tell from her scent that she had made it inside and was collecting whatever she could. Some humans were running directly into the desert but they wouldn't survive without the necessary supplies. Heather had the right idea. Unfortunately, she didn't escape quite fast enough to get past the surveillance of the droids. And so Nakiel went in pursuit.

  He follows her and stands on top of her roof, glaring down at the droid that was wandering over to her front door in order to detain and imprison her. He draws back one of his arrows and just as the droid begins to bust down the door, he leaps off the roof and fires a single arrow into its head. The metal man falls to the ground with a loud thud and Nakiel looks to Heather who merely stares at him with a great deal of shock within her expression.

  "Come!" Nakiel shouts and beckons to her and her family as he peers around the corner and leads them onwards.

  He encounters several droids that turn the corner and Nakiel draws his sword to jab into the droids directly in front of them. After spearing about two of them he drags his sword out and leads the party along. The old man was lagging behind, holding his chest in a show of distress as a result of all of the excitement.

  He had to protect him.

  "Dad come on, please hang on until we get somewhere safe." Heather whispered into his ear.

  "We should just go along with them..." muttered Sophie under her breath.

  "Too late now." Heather remarked. "This was what mom would want." She added.

  Nakiel holds his sword tightly in his hand, he gazes at his surroundings and scowls.

  Something was amiss.

  "Who are you?" Heather asks him and he doesn't answer.

  She would know eventually but not now. Nakiel was determined to get her and her family to safety first. He looked around at the valley and tried to find any caverns. From what he had read about Karakasis, apparently the caverns were filled with a great deal of danger and were left undisturbed by the droids which meant that they were great hiding spots for rebel factions or escape routes for humans. Of course, they could also contain man-eating monsters but at the moment Nakiel wasn't exactly in the position to choose. And he tightens his grasp around his bow as he beckons the family up a small dirt path. Around them were a massive crowd of humans attempting to escape, most of them were captured by the droids that were pursuing them or incapacitated by the drones flying overhead. The arrow enters the notch again and he yells for the family to get down as he fires another arrow that spears the drone out of the air and causes it to fall to the floor. He was ready to kill anyone in order to have her as his mate. She was already driving him mad with how she was moving, her hips swaying back and forth with every movement and he finds himself growing more and more enchanted with her. He could feel himself hardening and he cursed his senses for the moment, he didn't want to be distracted right now.

  His blade shines in the sunlight and he tosses it at one of the humanoid droids blocking his way before tackling the machine to the ground and pounding it into smithereens with his hands. The droid shivers under the weight of his blows and Nakiel looks forward, he was almost to the caverns, he could see them in the corner of his eye. Most of the humans were headed to the mouth of the valley which was quickly becoming a bloodbath with many humans being mowed down by laser fire.

  And so Nakiel turns his attention to Heather and directs her towards the mouth of the cavern.

  "No...it's been closed for ages ever since..." her father tries to protest but Heather keeps him silent.

  "We don't have a choice dad. Come on." Heather groans with a great deal of struggle evident in her voice as she and Sophia lead their father to safety.

  This was far too hectic, even for her.

  Firstly, the entire purge and capture of their population wasn't something that she expected at all. She was expecting another day at work but once she had been woken up and been corralled into the gathering area it was clear to her that this was going to be a struggle of a day. It wasn't clear how bad it was going to be until they had started firing into the crowd. And then she meets this man, this alien stranger who she had never seen before had arrived at her doorstep and saved her and her family. She didn't know what to make of it.

  As for the man himself she felt a great deal of....emotions swell up within her. How could she feel this way? She had just met the man, surely this was not natural in the slightest. She couldn't feel the overwhelming swell of affection and worry that was within her heart. There was just no possible way that she is going to feel like this yet here she was.

  And she didn't know what to make of it at all. She didn't know what to make of it even as this droid that was larger than any other that she had seen appears behind the man that had saved her and raises its arm to swing.

  "Look out!" she cries before the man turns and barely blocks a strike from this goliath of a droid in time.

  It was built like some sort of human bodybuilder although its frame was entirely metal. Its head was that of a snake. It appeared to be some sort of special model for it was the only one that she saw on the battlefield at the moment. She screams for him as he barely dodge
s a stomp from the droid before drawing his sword and swinging it at the legs of the machine which buckle with the immediate strike of his blade.

  And it turns to strike at him again but he rolls out of the way and tosses his sword into one of the creases of the droid. It shivers in reaction and quickly begins to attempt to grapple the stranger while he darts over its body and reclaims his sword before swinging it one last time at the face of the droid which seemingly takes out its optical sensors. But then it grabs him and flings him into a nearby boulder. He falls to the ground and struggles to stand but she screams even louder. "Hey!" she shouts at the droid and tosses a rock at it as it attempts to approach the downed warrior. "No!" shouts Nakiel as he leaps and tackles the droid onto the ground before pounding it with everything that he had. He attempts to smash the very metal hull of the droid with his fists before he realizes that she and her family had made it to the entrance and he just had to catch up.

  And so he takes his sword and sprints towards her, he runs as fast as he can, his pace quickening with the droid quickly getting back to its feet to chase them. Its arm begins to shift into something akin to a firearm and Nakiel barely dodges its bullets before he runs into the cavern and grabs his bow to fire off one last shot at the pursuing droid. Unfortunately, the gunfire caused him to have to move in order to dodge it and he was only able to fire off an arrow that merely pierced the leg of the droid. The droid shook at the sudden impact of the projectile and fires off one of its shots near the rocks at the top of the cavern, causing much of it to suddenly collapse.

  On top of Nakiel.

  "No!" shouts Heather as she looks back and attempts to sprint forward in an attempt to save him but she was unable to reach him in time before the rocks piled onto his prone body.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  He wasn't quite sure where he was exactly, he was struggling to breathe and before long he realized that it was because there was a rock squeezing against his chest. He didn't feel any injuries but that could just be wishful thinking until he got out and properly examined himself. And then Nakiel hears them speak, the people that he had saved. "We should leave him and try to link up with another settlement." Sophia remarks. Heather scoffs, "He saved us." "And he's probably dead now. I don't care how strong you are, you're not surviving that much damage." Sophia remarks. "She's right, he seemed strong but I know from experience that rocks collapsing usually result in almost anyone who is caught under them dying or being horribly maimed.

  "It doesn't matter dad, if we go down here without any sort of protection we're toast, you know that."

  Heather snaps.

  The old man merely grunts.

  "Why are you so keen on saving him? You know it's more likely that he's just dead under there." Sophia remarks.

  Nakiel listens intently, wondering if he should hold out a bit longer to get his mate's full opinion on him or if he should just cut it right here and burst out from the rocks. He ultimately decides to wait it out, watching the humans from this small hole that was in the pile of boulders.

  The old man seemed to be in good enough shape to walk or even run but it was clear that he was weakening. From the way that he caressed his knees and his chest Nakiel could tell that there was something wrong. The girls were decidedly different in their own physicality. Heather was slightly larger than her sister, that is, she had more flesh. Nakiel saw no issue with this and only found her more attractive because of it, the way her stained blond hair flicks against her face while she speaks made him want to run up to her and kiss her right then and there, but he knew better than to act rashly. The older sister had brown hair and had brown eyes in contrast with the blonde and blue of his mate. She was decidedly colder in nature than her sister, something Nakiel took note of. There seemed to be some tragedy there, something that was causing the girl to be so antagonistic towards her family. "Because he saved us! We owe him something! He might know something about this whole mess." Said Heather. Sophie growls, "What the fuck is there to know? They were going to ship us somewhere else until you started running! If we complied dad would have medical attention right now and we would both still have our fucking jobs." The two girls looked as if they were about to take each other's heads off so Nakiel acted fast and pushed the rock out of the way. It falls to the wayside and he glances at them, the mass of boulders topples even more behind him and he steps forward in order to avoid some of the falling rock. He glances over the party, they all eye him with some degree of distrust except for Heather. "Hello." Heather remarks with a shocked expression, her entire body was frozen in place. "Hello." He responds.

  ...

  "Ok, enough of this, who are you? Why did you save us?" Sophie interjects.

  Nakiel could even tell that Heather was beginning to smile as soon as she saw him. Perhaps she only saw him as a useful guard at the moment but he would become so much more, he knew it.

  He holds his breath and glances around to see if there was anyone else with them.

  There was no droid in sight nor in earshot so he lowers his guard for a moment. His stance eases up and he glances at each of the humans in front of him, they all eyed him with some degree of wonderment, Heather especially. He clutches his sword and bows to them, letting his short white hair dangle over his blue cheeks while he does so. "I am Nakiel, a warrior of the Verotan, a pleasure to make your acquaintance humans." He states. Heather seems like she was going to speak but she is cut off by her sister, "Ok that answers who you are. Now why are you here?" she asks and he glances her over. "I am here because of one reason and one reason only. Her." Nakiel states and points to Heather who immediately blushes.

  "Wha-"

  "You are to be my mate, the one that I shall spend my life with, that is your purpose."

  She shivers in shock and glances him over, her entire body quivers and she shakes her head in disbelief. What the hell did that even mean? To be a mate?

  "And you are to help restore my race."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  "So just what the hell are we going to do?" Sophia asks her family.

  Heather was rubbing her fingers together, trying to avoid the stern glance of her sister. It wasn't working, whatever she was trying to do, because Sophia's glare only became worse the more she tried to ignore it. Her father was watching the girls intently, his hands clenching the rocks and feeling them, his thumb dashing along the sandy surface.

  "I....I don't know what we should do. I don't know." Heather remarks.

  "We should....Maybe we should follow him and do as he says. I just don't like the fact that he's after you in particular, maybe he just wants you for some nefarious purpose."

  Heather huffs and gets to her feet, Sophia attempts to stop her but she keeps on marching forward, walking over to the man that was sitting in a corner of the cavern, he counted how many arrows he had left and sharpened the ones that had been used. She looks to him and he raises his head, his red eyes clashing against her while they stand still, frozen here in this dusty old cavern. "Can we talk?" she asks the man and he listens, nodding intently and raising his bow before they get to their feet.

  She signals for her family to stay behind and despite Sophia's attempts to protest, they do not follow and the two end up in a private area of the cavern. Nakiel sets a device that blocks out the noise and the two begin their conversation in the shadows, only a simple beam of light from the device illuminating them as they conversed. "What...what is it that you want from me? Don't just say what you did last time because I don't understand it." Heather remarks.

  Nakiel wonders how he should put this. After all, as a human she had little connection to the spirits or his culture so almost everything that he would say would surely go over her head but he tried his best to teach her with what he was doing. He was going to do the best that he could in order to keep her in the light about all of this. "I am a warrior of an extinct race known as the Verotan. We are an ancient fighting force that was only recently taken down by....by the sa
me beings that ruled you." She shivers, her eyes shutting before she mutters a simple phrase that puts him at ease: "I'm sorry." He nods and continues. "A mate is the person that should bear the offspring of a warrior. It is a woman of traditionally Verotan descent but recently.....recently we have discovered that humans are able to bear our children as well. As a result I have been sent to find you, the spirits have chosen you as my mate and they have chosen correctly." Her eyes widen and she begins to stammer but he continues. "And I want you to leave this planet and come with me. I can find a ship and get you and your family out of here, I can free you." Heather was tempted to just take him up on his offer immediately but for a moment she hesitates. There was this sense within her heart that she should try to fulfill her mother's legacy, she should try and stop these bastards from ruling them as they had for so long. To leave this place with her death in mind....it just seemed wrong.

  And she didn't want that, she didn't want to leave everyone else here to suffer while she got a free pass out simply due to her status as his mate. It didn't seem right in the slightest.

  "I...I have to think about it, until we escape the caverns."

  This did not please him.

  Nakiel reaches out to grab her shoulders gently, but firmly and holds onto her as he pleads with her to simply listen. His eyes were filled with desperation, with worry, he just wanted her to be his, he just wanted her to be his mate but it was becoming apparent that there was still some amount of doubt within her. He didn't know why, the conditions that she lived in were abhorrent and he was desperate to free her from this bondage that she was stuck under.

  "You must accept, for the survival of my people. You must leave this world and come with me, I can offer you a far better life than this one."