Birthright (The Technomage Archive, Book 1) - Complete Novel

Chapter Seventeen

When Harlo opened her eyes, all she could see were wings. She thought it was a dream and rolled back over, just a remnant of a nightmare burned into her eyes after a short night of restless sleep. She blinked her eyes, but the vision was still there.

And then the vision shrieked at her, and Harlo knew it was no dream.

Harlo was a small woman, so her petite frame was in stark contrast to the toned and muscled giant in front of her. She recalled vaguely from the day before that whatever had kidnapped Ceril and the others had been barely dressed.

The angel before her, however, was quite the opposite. It wore long, flowing robes made of something that could have easily been silk. Just saying they were "purple" would be wrong—the threads seemed to rotate between multiple hues. Chevrons decorated both arms, and two parallel stripes ran downward across the front from the shoulders. Symbols embroidered in green decorated the stripes, though they appeared to float slightly away from the robe itself. The creature wore gloves that left every other finger bare and sandals that did the same to its toes.

In all, it conjured a much more majestic image than the torn rags had yesterday.

Harlo immediately came out of her stupor. Swinton was now awake, too. He made his alertness known by firing his sidearm over Harlo's head into the towering winged creature. His sidearm was not a slug-thrower, and Harlo thought more's the pity when she saw the energy bolts pool like water against its clothing before being absorbed into its body. Or, more accurately, into its clothing. Harlo thought she saw the green symbols on the front glow when Swinton's blasts hit it, but she had just woken up and the world was nowhere near right.

Swinton fired maybe a dozen shots into the thing, and it never twitched.

It did, however, shriek.

"Harlo, are you okay? What did that thing do to you?"

"I'm fine. And nothing," she shouted back, not taking her eyes off it. She wished that she had gotten a better look at the ones who had taken the others. She had no way of telling if this was one of the same angels coming back to kidnap her and Swinton, too, or if it was an all-new member of a happy little local community.

Another shriek.

This time, the noise was accompanied by the thing's head cocking slightly to the left. Was it trying to communicate? Harlo couldn't be sure, but she wanted to try something.

"Swinton, stop shooting. It's not doing any good. I have an idea, anyway," she said.

Swinton listened. He put his sidearm away and reached into his pack to pull out an impressively long knife. The edge was serrated from the blade's halfway point all the way to the hilt, and the tip was curved slightly down, making it far more dangerous when slashing than stabbing. He held it close to his body as he edged closer to her and, unfortunately, their giant visitor.

"What kind of idea?" he said, sliding close to her left side.

"I think it's trying to communi—"

More shrieking.

"—cate," she said.

"You're kidding, right?"

"No. I have no reason to think that's the case, but I do. Don't you think that if it were here to hurt us that your shooting would have made it fight back? At least a little?"

"Maybe," he admitted.

"So I'm thinking that we need to find a way to communicate back. It keeps making those screeching sounds. It may be trying to talk," Harlo said.