Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 44088 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 220(@200wpm)___ 176(@250wpm)___ 147(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44088 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 220(@200wpm)___ 176(@250wpm)___ 147(@300wpm)
She is human, a species he has sworn to destroy.
But he does not slay her.
Instead, he saves her.
Fate made them enemies.
Love will save them.
Survivor is a tale of desire, danger, revenge, forgiveness and love against the odds.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
1
Kail
She has a death wish.
So kill her.
That would be too merciful.
So let her live.
That would be wrong.
I argue with myself silently inside my head as a rustle in the forest behind me puts me on high alert. A stick cracks. There is silence. It is not the silence of nothing. It is the silence of something.
My senses are sharpened by solitude and hunger. I grip my spear and prepare to impale whatever has made the mistake of creeping up behind me. I am hungry, and I am angry, and I am yearning to kill.
Pivoting swiftly, I spot eyes that do not reflect in the night. They lurk low in the undergrowth, just barely discernible in the twin moons’ glow. Wide eyes with round pupils rimmed with brown and blue, set in a flat face aside from gentle undulations of features which include a small snub nose.
I grip my spear tighter.
It is an animal.
I have killed hundreds of these things.
There is no reason not to kill this one too.
I smell blood. It is wounded. It is sickly and pathetic, and not worth the attention of my spear. Killing it might draw attention. Animals do not always die quietly, and I am trying to move stealthily.
Snarling, I shake my spear and make deep, guttural, threatening sounds. The eyes widen for a moment, then retreat into the undergrowth. I hear the uneven skittering of a wounded retreat.
I suspect it will be back. That animal has been following me for days, mistaking me for a savior. The irony of its mistake is intense. If only it knew what I do to its kind, it would not dare to be within a hundred miles of me.
Several days ago I made the mistake of dropping some dried meat on the ground and not stopping to pick it up. I have been moving as swiftly as possible, avoiding trackers. I suspect I am being hunted, though I have not seen any.
The animal picked up that food and has been on my trail ever since, hopeful of more easy nourishment. This is the way some beasts are domesticated, but there is no taming these animals.
Night is falling. I decide to make camp while the terrain is still relatively flat and the local fauna abundant. The wind is soft on this evening, and the land is bright under the glow of the two moons. On a night like this, I can pretend that recent horrors never happened, that I am on a hunt for a food beast for my family, and that they are waiting for me to return to them with smiling faces and hungry bellies.
If I had a better imagination, I might be able to sink into that fantasy, but the truth is my loved ones are waiting for me in the cold ground. The afterlife is the only place I will see them again. I am not ready to be reunited with them. I will not do that until every one of the invaders who came to our world and exterminated us like so many pests are brought to bloody justice.
I light a fire and ignore the crackling in the forest. The animal is back. It is persistent and perhaps stupid. There is something wrong with it besides merely being wounded. No matter how I try to frighten it, it keeps returning. I may have to put it out of its misery.
If I concentrate, I can hear it now, breathing heavily several feet behind me, making louder noises than it should if it wants to be stealthy. I loathe these animals. They are not native to my world. They are invasive, they are dangerous, and they are cruel.
The one following me appears to be some kind of outcast. It has not tried to make direct contact with me, and if I approach it in any way, it draws back in fear. It is fortunate that my initial bloodlust has been sated. But my patience is not infinite.
Sitting before the fire, I eat my rations. I know that in the morning, any crumbs I leave will be hungrily consumed. The animal does not know how to hunt for itself. It is sick, wounded, and helpless. The wild will take it soon enough.
AIEE!
No sooner do I have that thought than a shriek pierces the night. It is a plaintive, awful, pitiful sound. I thought I had no feeling left in me, certainly not enough to feel pity for such an animal, but something about it reaches into my gut and twists an unseen knife.
I hear the rasping of a mantid from the bushes not far away. I know what has happened without needing to see it. The animal has been caught and is being consumed.
Mantids are hundred-pound exoskeletal beasts with wings, compound eyes, antennae, and an array of mouthparts designed for consuming almost any living thing. The animal will have no chance of survival.