Deathstalker 07 - Deathstalker Return

looked like she could walk forever.
    Saturday, on the other hand, looked increasingly unsettled. He couldn't connect to this silent, lifeless world, where there was nothing for him to eat or kill or have sex with. The great trees made him feel small, and weak, and he wasn't used to that.
    Almost an hour and a half after they'd left the Hereward, the forest finally took mercy upon them and fell away to reveal a great clearing with Base Thirteen at its center. It was a hulking steel structure surrounded by plenty of space, as though none of the trees wanted to get too close to it. The base had been built for function, not aesthetics, but even so, the years had not been kind to it. The steel exterior was weathered and distressed, and punctured here and there with ragged holes. Many appeared to have been punched out from within, either by energy weapons or brute force. The front doors stood open, but Lewis couldn't honestly say they looked inviting.
    He brought his group to a halt at the edge of the clearing and studied first the clearing and then Base Thirteen carefully. There was no sign of anyone waiting to meet them. He activated his comm implant.
    "Sir Carrion, this is Lewis Deathstalker. We have reached Base Thirteen. Are you here?"
    He waited, looking about him, but there was no response. And then he felt as much as heard something approaching, and he looked up. The others looked up too, following his startled gaze. And there, all across the sky, the Ashrai came falling out of the clouds and into the diffused light. They flew unhurriedly through the still air—hundreds of them, their vast membranous wings barely flapping. They were huge, monstrous, grotesque creatures bulging, with muscles under rainbow skins, their broad faces composed of harsh bony planes and angles, fiery golden eyes, and a wide mouth full of long needle teeth. Their movements were eerily graceful as they swept across the sky.
    Jesamine stared up at them, enchanted. "Oh, Lewis, it is Owen's dragons! Look at them! They're not what I thought they'd be—they're not beautiful—but oh, God, they're magnificent!"
    "They're scary buggers, is what they are," said Brett, from behind Rose. "Look at the size of them!
    Damn, one of those things could make a real mess of a man, if it put its mind to it. I'd back one of them against a Grendel. A dozen Grendels. And give odds."
    "I killed a Grendel in the Arena," said Rose, one hand resting on the sword at her hip.
    "I know," said Brett. "It's all you ever talk about, and I do wish you wouldn't. Please don't start anything.
    Or if you must, give me plenty of advance warning so I can get a good running start."
    "I wonder what they'd taste like," said Saturday, and Brett glared at him.
    "Don't encourage her. You're almost as bad as she is. Am I the only one here who's noticed they outnumber us by a hundred to one? And they are big! Seriously big! They've probably crapped more dangerous things than us! I can feel one of my heads coming on." He watched the Ashrai circling slowly overhead. "How does anything that big and that heavy stay in the air anyway? I don't care what kind of wingspan they've got, nothing that massive belongs in midair, particularly when I'm standing underneath it."
    "Calm down, Brett," said Lewis. "You're babbling. The Ashrai fly because their esp holds them up.
    Maybe they can fly unprotected through space after all… These are dearly powerful creatures."
    "The song's back," said Jesamine, her neck arched almost painfully back as she gazed adoringly into the sky. "It's so much stronger here. It's not just the trees. It's them. The Ashrai and the forest, singing together, bound together. Can't you hear it?"
    None of them said anything, because it seemed to all of them that they could hear something. Jesamine opened her mouth and sang a delicate lilting song, older than the Golden Age, older than the age of heroes, from the days of the First Empire, when Humanity originally went out into the stars. The words were lost, but the melody remained, an ancient haunting evocation of days long gone, when to be human was to be part of a great adventure. The words were lost, but not the meaning. In their bones, and in their souls, Humanity remembered.
    Jesamine sang, and the Ashrai sang with her. Their great voices filled the air; alien harmonies that joined with Jesamine's song, augmenting it without drowning it. The song filled the clearing—a celebration of life, and the glory of existence, and