The Joy Thief

Two - Fifth

The way the lips of the human with pale, luminescent skin trembled as I gazed at her and removed the cudgel from her shaking fingers burned in the back of my mind as vividly as some glowing ember from the crater of Ardormor. Still, I carried on with my landing duties by pushing all thought of them out of my mind. The scent of fear the dark-skinned human gave off was comparable to that of the others. Humans always smelt of fear. And the scent shared an uncanny likeness to the way Nexspheni smelled when they stepped to close to Ardormor's edge and toppled into the mouth of hell: a vile combination of bone turned to ash, skin emulsified to fluid, and blood unifying with magma.

But not her; not the girl.

She wasn't like the others. Her delicate green eyes bore into me as though she wanted to destroy me. She probably did want to. Not that she'd ever stand a chance.

"Fifth."

The Commander stood behind the pilot controlling the skyship. She turned in my direction and signed for me by waving three bulbous fingers on her left hand at me. Like always, I obeyed my directives and made my way to her past the humans we'd taken captive, all peacefully asleep inside cocoons which allowed for their easy transport.

Once at the Commander's side she signed to the pilot to land. Lights from the landing beacons flickered on and shone through the shuttles' front window, glinting off the metallic lattice shield shrouding her face. As we descended, the crimson glow of our planet reflected off the skyship's nose. It tinted the Commander's black eyes with the same red hue for a moment, and then the dome over the human colony slid into view.

Human crafted billows of white, reminiscent of the feathery frozen crystals suspended in the atmosphere over their homeorb of Earth, which they called clouds, rose out of the pebble pelted red dust. They looked to pierce the star-filled indigo sky over a crag and canyon filled horizon. The dome protecting the human colony from the atmosphere of our domain wasn't merely one continuous vaulted edifice, but rather a connected cluster of tent-like structures that spread across the land like it belonged on Nexpernon. But it didn't. It was never meant to be here, in the middle of the adjacent creators that my kind called home eons before, Earth became a star shimmering in the great expanse of the universe a whole cosmos away.

The directives my commander gave the day they arrived and proceeded to build on our soils still rang aloud in my mind. Even now, ages later, it was her go-to command.

Take all essence the earthlings have inside them—then leave them where they fall.

The steel of my armor rattled as the skyship shifted, settling into place on the colony's docking station. A couple of my comrades appeared at my side even before the Commander turned to request that they join her.

"Ninth."

"Yes, Commander?" The Nexspheni with ranks lower than mine that'd been standing in the nearby alcove stepped forward. The way the corner of Commander's mouth twitched upward told me her not having to specify who she wanted pleased her.

"Both of you." She pointed to the captured humans. "Wake them, and then move them into the Colony."

"Yes, Commander," one replied. My eyes followed them as they walked the path back through the designated slumber chamber in the middle of the ship before returning to the one I'd been sworn to protect.

"Fifth, is this shuttle clear for debarkation?" she questioned.

"Yes," I replied with a nod.

"Good." Without taking her eyes off my face she reached for the barbed rod in my hands and took it from me. "Thank you for my dowel. You're free until I'm in need of an escort to the palace. I shall wish to greet my sister, personally."