Endosymbiosis

33. Hands

Third circle of the Empire
Venerna

When we got back to Venerna, the revolution's leaders already knew what I had done, because of Kadi's spy eye. We walked through the corridor of beasts that greeted us from the underground city gates to its center, making very clear that they didn't like what I'd done.

"Are you sure you want to face them?" Kadi whispered in my ear and I nodded, firm in every step I took.

"It's the price for the answers I'm looking for."

The creatures ordered me to kneel in the center of the circle and I obeyed before they snapped the fragility in my neck. I curled up on the stone floor and slenderly looked up through the strands of my hair, as if just staring at the living towers that surrounded me could kill me. I looked for some crumb of pity in those beings, but if it existed in that Empire of beasts, I wouldn't be so far from home.

Those beasts hated me because I was as wild as they were, when they thought they were the only ones who could be monsters. But soon they would be able to celebrate the ruin the stars had long ago decided for me, because, in a universe like this, they couldn't plan anything different.

"DONECEA GAXY!" A primordial roar echoed off the rock walls and shuddered through my bones. Korrok... Apparently I was no longer sapiens. I was stupid. "How did you let this happen, Phaga?!"

Kadi shrugged, eerily confident.

"The test was hers, not mine."

I thought Korrok was going to explode when all the red in his body went to his head.

The vorrampe turned to me and snarled, his words hitting my face like the winds of an explosion:

"Why did you think throwing the upgrades inside a sun was a good idea?!"

"You never said you wanted them..." I muttered. "Just the key."

"And where is it, by any chance?!"

"It has no more value if it doesn't keep anything."

Korrok could have ripped me apart with just the look he sent me. And then, to the beasts in the circle around me, he roared:

"GET RID OF HER!"

Two beings covered in stone shells that looked like living rocks detached from the walls rushed towards me at full speed, one on either side of me. They shook the ground with each step and all I could see was my body being crushed by them. It didn't matter that the metriona needed me, because those beings would enfold me in the rocky embrace of their claws, and if they had the benevolence not to squeeze me until I suffocated, they would drive me out of Venerna, never to return to rebellion.

My face lifted to the expressions around me, filled not with hate or bloodlust, to my surprise but... Expectation. I could see Kadi clench his fists in an attempt to contain the claws that wanted to poke through the barriers of skin, and from afar, his eyes screamed a plea for me: that I fight; that I won; that I somehow proved that I deserved to be there...

Because that was still part of the test.

I closed my eyes, not wanting to see death approaching if I failed, and stretched my hands to my sides with my palms pointed at the rock beings. I felt a burning sting through my arms migrating under the skin, an uncontrollable force I couldn't stop from bursting from my palms in a rush I didn't want to see. The sound of drops falling to the ground caught my ears and the earthquake of mountains crashing down around me shook the universe beneath my feet, as if the entire cavern of Venerna was snarling at me.