Chapter 1
Listening Post
In the holy Ei’veth Forest of Mokisia, beneath a bright, setting gas giant known as Sceytera, the dawn hour found young Zyvolz “Zy” K’olt still asleep in his swaying hammock. His family’s modest stonework home hummed as automated timers brightened the lights in hallways and the kitchen, where appliances sorted their stored ingredients and prepared fresh meals for Zy and his parents.
Today’s Nihavian holiday meant stuffed yuttah would be served all day. Zy’s father harvested some of the ingredients from his own water garden: herbal ferns and eggs from mud fish. These would be rolled together and thickened into a shell with the grains of speckled grasses that grew across Mokisia.
The main ingredient for inside the shell - filleted tad toads marinated in palm oils - had to be ordered through traders in the nearby Mokisiaan capital city. Tad toads came from the equatorial belts, far south of the forest lands, but remained a delicacy to modern Angorgals, whose evolutionary roots stretched to the tropics.
A mutation - the development of a stomach sack - had brought proto-Angorgals north. Like a hamster’s cheek pouches, an Angorgal’s stomach sack stored food for later digestion, when a cold-blooded body needed extra energy, pumped through blood vessels by twin hearts.
Outside, a few bright rays from the rising, blue sun showered light onto flocks of chirping bats heading to their nearby caves. Like passing clouds from the nearby geyser grounds, the swarms cast brief shadows upon Zy’s home and across the clear ceiling dome above his bedroom.
Until Zy awoke, the whispered voices in his dreams spoke to him again, and images of the heavens reappeared. Countless stars shared space with Sceytera, her six moons, and another light. A blue light. A hissing blue light with a flaming, whipping tail.
He exhaled and his body shook. The hammock croaked as Zy rolled onto his side and stretched his dark green arms.
“Please be vigilant out there. A friend or two as companions would be best, Zy, and would settle my worrisome hearts.”
“Mother, please, I’ll be fine. Besides, my friends can’t keep up with me. No one can keep up with me. I move really fast.”
“But what of the wild animals?”
“If you leave them alone, they leave you alone. Besides, I move really fast.”
“Yes, I’ve heard something like that before. Nihav has truly blessed you with tremendous physical gifts. And such pretty blue eyes too. They are like the sun! You should try to give thanks to Him more often.”
“If you say it, it must be so, and so shall it be done, Mother. Bye.”
“Be careful, Zy. The forest must be respected…”
With his mother’s words trailing off behind him, Zy left his home in the dense woods within an hour after sunrise. As the teenaged son of an agronomist, rising early was routine. But this morning was different for the Mokisiaan Angorgal. With no chores or school on the agenda, he headed out to the rugged highlands above his home for the simple benefit of refreshing exercise. Staying in shape for the pretty females at school was his priority and these occasional day hikes maintained his strong bipedal reptilian physique.
The forest’s idyllic beauty had surrounded Zy his whole life. Seeing it now under the warm sun was invigorating, and brought life to his muscles.
Chirps, squeaks, and howls of the forest - a lively composition from a multitude of animals that fluttered and dashed - sang to him. Despite rising exertion and strain, he smiled, revealing neat rows of sharp, white teeth.
The sun’s blue rays peeked between tall pine trees, twinkling beacons of encouragement that drove Zy to the highest elevations above his home without stopping.
In full daylight now, he reached a clearing at the pinnacle of Alp D’or and rested. Zy squinted to the south. He couldn’t see Mokisia’s capital city. Too distant for the naked eye, but he knew it was there. Not that he had any desire to go there, he just liked to look toward it and recall its sprawling granite contours and endless serpentine transpo-tubes. Sometimes, he borrowed a friend’s binoculars for these hikes, but not on this day.
As he strolled the summit, Zy rehydrated and dropped a stuffed, fist-sized yuttah into his mouth. He soon turned his thoughts away from the scenery and to several of his female classmates who had occupied most of his spare time and his teenaged fantasies. With stunning natural beauty surrounding him, Zy’s joyful, hormone-induced daydreams grew more vibrant than ever. He took it as a sign that he was nearing the age of service, a point at which a young Angorgal blossomed into physical primacy and when, by tradition, he would negotiate his first path as an adult.
Zy frowned when he realized that, as always, he didn’t have a clue where his first path would lead him. “I am fast,” he reminded himself. “Like a comet, I am fast.”
Then, a sudden swirling breeze carrying the scent of incense and the sound of holy chants swept through the trees and wrapped around Zy. His daydreams melted, and he felt radiant warmth grow inside him and shoot through every inch of his body. It emerged as a brilliant flash, white-hot and then a cool blue.
“Kal’iveth, when the heavens fall, you will carry the sword and shield in my name, and lead the fight against evil in the stars.”
The resolute voice boomed through Zy’s head. Between the light in his eyes and the words in his ears, Zy lost his footing. The next thing he felt was the ground in his face.
“OW!”
Uninjured but confused, Zy turned, seeking an explanation for the mysterious interruption. He saw no one. But, a dark thicket of trees near the southern edge of the precipice put a strange twist in his gut. After a hesitant climb from the ground, Zy dusted himself off and let his muscular legs plod him toward the strangeness that tugged at him.
A Sekkalan Angorgal, an infiltrator, had no time for the unexpected, approaching enemy. He stood at a critical - and final - juncture in his long-term passive electronic eavesdropping mission in the woods of Alp D’or. According to his orders, his job to spy on the nearby Mokisiaan capital culminated in one minute, just long enough to transmit the last bits of data about the enemy’s activities. Once that minute terminated, he intended to disconnect his gear, initiate its self-destruct program, and then address the unfortunate intruder.
The more Zy advanced toward the thicket, the more its appearance played tricks on his eyes. It was not just a dense growth of trees. Camouflage nets like those used by hunters hung across tree branches, concealing…something.
Knowing that both religious and civil laws forbade hunting in the sacred Ei’veth Forest, Zy continued his tepid steps forward. Under the nets, a circular metal structure, two meters across and waist high, appeared dug into the ground.
Then, Zy heard something.
Occasional bursts of electronic static hissed at him from within the metallic maw.
The pilot of an SA-27 Sobek stealth rotorcraft redlined the turbine engines ever since he and the crew of special operators lifted off ten minutes ago. They had departed from a covert military base in Mokisia’s capital and flew north to the Ei’veth Forest. Their mission: investigate unusual electromagnetic data pulses originating from the crest of Alp D’or.
“Sixty seconds,” the pilot said over the intercom.
The team of six special operators readied their weapons and prepared for a fast drop into the target area.
With the edge of a cliff nearby, Zy crouched along the side of the small, half-buried metal structure. A single hatch and multiple dish and whip antennae adorned its flat roof.
The electronic static ceased.
Zy waited a few seconds and then said, “Uh…Hello?”
The screech of grinding metal drew Zy’s eyes toward the hatch. Its handle turned.
“Hello?” Zy said, standing and taking a step back.
A faint and repeating whoop-thump noise swiveled Zy’s attention away from the hatch. He squinted. A black aircraft approached. The fierce, penetrating sounds of its rotor blades and engines intensified.
“What
the…?”
Whoop-thump…
Zy turned back to the camouflaged structure. Its hatch stood open.
Whoop-THUMP…
In a blur, a red-chested Angorgal - just like the history books had described - lunged and grabbed ahold of him. The monster’s sharp clutch and putrid breath injected fear into Zy’s body and soul. Its grasp shivered through him as if an icy torrent had been unleashed from the darkest of hell storms.
WHOOP-THUMP…
Blue bolts of energy flashed around Zy in a dusty haze. Zy fell and saw nothing but darkness, even before he closed his eyes.
In the monster’s clutches, Zy disappeared through the hatch and into the depths below.