Ohu’s Rage: Book Two of Ayun’s Trilogy

Copyright © 2018 by Mike Pearson.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2018913177

ISBN:                  Hardcover                       978-1-9845-0319-0

                             Softcover                         978-1-9845-0364-0

                             eBook                              978-1-9845-0318-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 11/15/2018

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CONTENTS

Glossary Of Characters

Prologue

PART 1

Hatred

Revenge

Supply And Demand

Interview

Application

Meeting

Secrets

Augmentation

Affliction

Long Haul

Landing

Recruitment

Communications

Brotherhood

Reshuffled

Blinded

Death

Evacuation

Decay

Bivouac

Sentinel

Torn

Poison

Snap

Wind

Spurn

Tension

Refuge

Assurance

Voyage

PART 2

Disgrace

Relief

Toll

Lost

Rally

Stifling

Gopeluras

Coalescence

Reconnection

Scourge

Naming

Dawn

Comrades

Breeding

Forgiveness

Conspiracy

Obloquy

Threnody

Aboleon

Agate

Strike

Fajun

Investigations

Curse

Unfinished

Epilogue

For David W. Bradley,

whose works still gift me

with endless inspiration and joy.

GLOSSARY OF CHARACTERS

The Party

Krystan — Lizardman spear fighting specialist, expert hunter and tracker

Sister Natania — Human missionary of the Preeminent Sisterhood

Rixuu – former warlord, founder of the Consortium, current shadow ruler of Gyaes

Yeukch – Radham assassin, expert on poisons, legerdemain and espionage

Zoang Divi – Kympar sword specialist, former captain of the Atokosu guard

Latricenam Effima – Amorean Archaeologist, amateur subatomic engineer

The Lizardmen

Father –patriarch of the remaining Lizardmen

Mother – matriarch of the remaining Lizardmen

Ondurs – machete specialist, firstborn

Dilon – club specialist, second born

Ranz – knife specialist, third born

Gorlo – axe specialist, fourth born

Gyaes

Alec Pollard – physiological augmentation specialist at Corpus Mechanica

Melanie Hamilton – Corpus Mechanica’s head of operations

The Duke of Giarda – Natania’s ex-husband

Viscount Lieshekim of Diperphy – Natania’s father, promoted to nobility by the Marquis

Viscountess Lieshekim of Diperphy – Natania’s mother, social climbing enthusiast

Aubyn – Natania’s uncle, a wealthy businessman

Hugo – second in command of the Consortium

Krieg – Human guard, has no time for Khaal’s shit

Khaal – Human guard, has no time for Krieg’s shit

Penelope – ruthless bounty hunter and mercenary

The Gunslinger – mysterious mercenary and possible gigolo

Sam Mellikh – former hostess at the Abadain Gentleman’s Club

Darielle – a Human friend of Rixuu’s

Ohu

Heinzei the Knife – ruler of Shiraa

Sukekiet – Shiraa’s chief telecommunications engineer

Miko – owner of the Reaper of Sorrow

Nakuya Ikei – Heinzei’s chief bodyguard

Prennetant Effima – Amorean anthropologist, and amateur subatomic engineer

Sekiketsen – Atokosuan bounty hunter

Yuro Divi – travelling Kympar warrior

Alistair Kesler – Human privateer, captain of the Sacrosanctity

Jasper Ainsley– Human privateer, boatswain of the Sacrosanctity

Shadowlord Guiss – leader of the Radham assassins

Overseer Zhursin – Aboleon’s leader of resource management

Bladechief Sunjhi – leader of the Radham ground military forces

Seamaster Zegnehd– leader of the Radham naval forces

Fajun – king of the Obsidian Fortress, ruler of the Radham

The Eternal Plane

The Chronicler – an observer who must live all lives in existence

Marcus – a cybernetic being who acquired godlike powers shortly before dying

Dominic – Marcus’ adopted brother, has a powerful sense of justice

Elise – Marcus’ adopted sister, has become separated from her brothers

The Star Devourer – consumer of the universe

Ayun – the universe’s creator and sustaining force

PROLOGUE

We may only learn what is right and wrong through our own suffering.

— Ayun’s Breath

T he scratch of the Chronicler’s nib faded into silence. With a slow, exhausted huff, he placed his pen on his desk, turned around in his chair, and rolled his shoulders. He tilted his head gradually until he faced the empty space above him. He blinked up at the familiar violet starscape. Which one of these is Krystan? One by one, the stars receded from his vision. His sense of himself as the Chronicler went with them.

For a moment, his chest ached at the memory of being Marcus. He had left Marcus’ life so many times, but he could not put it off forever. There was no way to avoid the agonising pain of his body disintegrating inside the Star Devourer, no way to spare himself from the crushing pressure of its guilt, shame, hate, and hopelessness.

A hood of darkness smothered his sight and the phantom pain of his previous life. Now there was one star, gloriously shimmering in the sky. He felt himself falling upwards into the star, deep into it, so deep that it enveloped him inside a new darkness. In this darkness, he hatched from an egg, six centuries before the end of the universe, in a hidden cave tucked inside a valley deep in the northern woods of Gyaes’ largest continent.

PART 1

HATRED

Krystan

A Lizardman’s emotions are buried deeply inside him. These feelings require great time and effort to access and express. What a tragedy that only one Human ever learned that these feelings even existed in the first place.

— The Chronicler

K rystan cradled his dead mother in his arms and silently cried for the first time in his life. His face remained unmoved, his hands were gentle, and the tears tickled his face like a breathy whisper. His father and brothers stood nearby, unable to accept the sight before them, unable to avert their eyes. Her face was frozen in pain and terror. Krystan wished he could comfort her, assure her that there was no longer anything to fear. But he did not know this for sure. So he let his tears drop on her body as he searched for a way to restore balance within himself.

Krystan carefully placed her on the ground in the brood’s cave, stood up, turned, and surveyed the Djodask corpses littering the cave around him. From a distance, they had always looked so tiny and harmless. These ones on the cave floor were barely taller than half Krystan’s height. Besides their elongated canines and muscular builds, the first thing Krystan noticed was that the villagers had died of wounds to their throats. His mother would have used her knives to defend herself in such an enclosed space. There were no defensive wounds on the Djodask hands or arms. These people had not been fought and killed; they had been executed, most likely from behind.

Although his mother regularly joined them on their hunting trips, her nesting instincts had prompted her to remain at the cave to prepare for the next brood’s arrival. She would have died holding out desperately for help that never arrived. She would have been just as confused as Krystan was right then. What motive could they have had to attack their mother? Food was plentiful. There had been no violence between their brood and the Djodask villagers. Both groups respected and avoided each other as much as possible—until now.

The cave where Krystan spent the last nineteen years hung under a heavy pall of stench. The bodies were at least two days old judging by the putrefaction of the bodies and their swollen stomachs. The metallic silver blood from the Djodask had dried and caked on the floor, the walls, and their bodies.

It only took a quick glance at their father for the brothers to know what was going to happen next. They promptly turned around and walked outside. The cave mouth, a gaping maw of rock angled sideways from the slope of the valley, belched its overwhelming stench at the six male family members as they moved away.

Dilon, the second brother and the most impatient of the brood, glared at the back of his father’s head. His father paced quickly up the narrow valley, not once turning to look behind him. He could feel Dilon’s hard stare boring into his skull, looking for answers. ‘We can no longer avoid conflict with the Djodask. We could move away, but that has no guarantees. We need a more permanent solution,’ said his father.

Ondurs, the firstborn, was unusually quick to question his father. ‘Won’t they expect us to attack?’ he asked quietly, not wanting to aggravate his brothers further.

Ranz, the shrewd third brother, interjected before their father could respond. ‘If we remove the threat here, we know we’ll be safe. We wouldn’t if we moved to another cave,’ he observed grimly. ‘Besides, I’m not leaving my home because some little shiny blooded cunts forgot their place.’

Gorlo, the fourth born and largest of the entire brood, snarled in frustration. Gorlo spoke even less than Krystan, but he rarely needed to. If he did not get his way, he would remind his brothers who was really in charge by pounding an impressively varied spectrum of faecal matter out of them.

Krystan, the fifth, remained silent. The other brothers dismissed this as him ruminating over their mother, but he was already miles ahead of them. He was the smallest in his brood, only coming up to Gorlo’s shoulders. He had never been able to beat his brothers in sparring, hunting, or racing with strength alone. The thinking which had brought him relatively unscathed to maturity was churning away at full speed. Why are we attacking when we don’t know how strong they really are? Won’t we draw more attention to ourselves from the outside world? Who were the people who killed all the Djodask?

Krystan trudged behind everyone, turning these thoughts over at every conceivable angle, every one of which screamed out at him to run—run away from the Djodask and try to draw the real killers into some kind of trap. But the screaming was not loud enough for Krystan to speak, to interrupt his brood. It had never been his place to question them. They continued to storm towards the Djodask village like they had a desperate thirst that could only be sated by silver blood. He mutely followed, having imaginary conversations with himself where he impressed everyone with his plan to get their mother’s killers. Krystan would regret this silence for the rest of his life.

REVENGE

Krystan

A week ago, my son thought the Lizardmen were only stories to scare him into behaving. Now they are coming for him, for me, for everyone. It’s almost as if they heard us, daring them to come and prove us right. Now they are.

— Zaelterichvit’s last journal entry

T he brood spread out so that they could attack the settlement on multiple sides and split the defence. This would be the first time any of them had ever attacked this many targets who would not run away from them, and it made Krystan nervous. Cornered prey were the most dangerous.

They moved swiftly with the moonbeams, their sounds soaked up by the damp earth and masked by the chirping of the crickets. Krystan flexed his wrist to stop it from cramping. His fingers gripped his bone spear much more tightly than usual. It tightened even more when he heard a loud crashing sound off to the north; something must have gone wrong.

Ranz knew better than to make that much noise. Krystan stopped dead in his tracks to listen for his brother. He sensed no movement. He abandoned his path without hesitation and bounded in the direction of the crashing sound, his own shadow obfuscating the path in front of him in the dim evening light.

In the rush and the darkness, the first clue that Krystan had of his brother’s fate was the pungent odour of Ranz’s blood. Krystan edged towards the smell, pulled forwards by the force of his own heart slamming up against his chest. It did not take him long to find the open pit at the south-western edge of the small clearing and move to its lip. His breath caught as he looked down to see his elder brother at the bottom, wooden stakes bristling from his body. They were black and sticky from his blood, and they didn’t glisten. Even from a distance, they poked tiny black holes into Krystan’s vision, slowly bleeding all colour and feeling out of him and into the pit below.

Ranz was pinned, grotesquely twisted as if he were frozen mid-spasm in his sleep. His body was slightly side-on from twisting in the air as he fell, his neck folded back from a spike entering under his chin and jutting out through the base of his skull.

Krystan staggered backwards, legs buckling underneath them. This is my fault. I did this because I said nothing. Ranz wouldn’t be here had I told them my plan. Krystan’s head shot up at this last thought. I’ve got to stop them. I can’t lose anyone else today.

Legs shaking, Krystan hoisted himself back up to his feet and stumbled under his own weight. He took in a deep breath to calm himself, turned, and ran towards the Djodask village’s northern wall. How will I tell the others about Ranz?

He had a clearer view through the forest and moved quickly, arriving at the village just in time to see Dilon smash the northern wall into twigs. The splinters bounced harmlessly off his hard, scaly skin. His momentum carried him several more steps inside the town and straight into a barricade of sharpened wooden spikes. The spikes had jagged points sharp enough to pierce through Dilon’s torso completely. Dilon instinctively pulled back on the spikes, lifting the entire barricade with him as Djodask flocked to his sides with their spears. Krystan froze in horror as the throng of villagers surrounded his brother but quickly remembered himself and made a dash to Dilon’s aid.

As if the realisation of him being surrounded with spears somehow erased all traces of panic, Dilon stopped pulling away from the spikes. He gripped one of the two that were inside the right side of his chest with one hand and smashed downwards with the other, demolishing it in one swipe.

By now, the Djodask had moved in and demonstrated their lack of experience by how they attacked him. A spear thrust required a great deal of force to pierce Dilon’s hide. The Djodask at the forefront were either too gentle with the aim of being more precise and trying to push the spears in or so forceful that the spears only made glancing blows to Dilon’s back, thighs, and tail.

Dilon smashed the other spike, freed himself, picked up his club, and struck the nearest Djodask’s head, reducing its contents to pulp as Krystan arrived to fight back to back with him. The brothers’ aggression quickly overwhelmed the Djodask, and with a few short twists, thrusts, and swings, twenty villagers lay dead around the barricade. Dilon had fought sloppily; his lack of technique allowed the Djodask’s silver blood to splash onto his face and torso.

Krystan shot a look at Dilon to see if he was okay. He noticed Dilon was not breathing; the spikes had pierced his lungs. They had filled up with thick black blood, and he was fighting with the last scraps of energy in his body. He was determined to take out as many Djodask as he could before he ran out of time. Not stopping to look at Krystan, he half-stumbled, half-loped farther into the village to search for new prey.

Knowing that Dilon ran off alone for a reason, Krystan ran around the spikes and moved towards the centre of the village to look for the rest of his brood. The fact that nobody moved towards him again smacked of the Djodask’s lack of experience; there had been no communication of Dilon’s attack to the rest of the village. Or had his brood already finished?

His question was answered by Gorlo smashing through the western wall, leaping over the spike barricade, and slicing two Djodask faces open with his bone axes before he even hit the ground. Like a lightning bolt striking a small pond, all the Djodask guarding the barricade seemed to die within the instant of his arrival.

Relief washed over Krystan as Gorlo bounded onwards into the village untouched, undeterred by anything that stood in his way from avenging his mother. There were no Djodask moving around the village, so Gorlo kicked open the door to the nearest shack and stepped inside. A sickening choonk sound shot out of the doorway.

Krystan dashed to look inside the shack. He saw Gorlo standing just inside the doorway with his head slumped forwards. From his back sprouted the sharpened and bloody point of a support beam which had swung down from the ceiling upon his entry. The weight of the beam had driven it clean through, killing him in seconds.

Krystan tore back outside to cry out to his brood to not go inside the buildings, for all of them could have similar traps inside. But before he could say anything, he spotted Dilon dropping to his knees, drowning in his own blood. Krystan found himself on his knees in front of him, trying to lay him down, muttering some gibberish about trying to relax.

At the sound of his brother’s voice, Dilon swatted Krystan’s hands away, eyes locked in a stare towards a far-off place. Dilon snarled at him in frustration, sending thick, viscous tendrils of black and silver blood onto Krystan’s face. His mouth and lungs were too full to form words, but nevertheless, they were clear as day. Stop fucking around and get back to work.

What am I doing? The living are the ones who need help. I have to help the brood before I lose them all. Krystan nodded at an unseeing Dilon and spun around to see Ondurs charge into the large stone building in the centre of the town with his heaviest machete, seemingly unaware of Krystan. His entrance was quickly welcomed by an explosion.

The noise made Krystan feel like his head split in two as the blast flung him into the side of a nearby wooden shack, somehow without collapsing the whole structure. How could we have underestimated the Djodask so badly? They were prepared so well. What could we have done to make them go through all this just to get rid of us? Krystan felt like one of the heavier stones, rather than the invisible hand of the explosion, had struck him full in the chest. He tentatively sucked a breath in and savoured the smoky grey air that filled him.

He picked himself up and immediately saw his father lying supine nearby. By the looks of him, he had been much closer to the explosion. Krystan dashed over to his father and froze when he noticed several jagged projectiles jutting out of his neck.

Djodask warriors abhorred the use of ranged weapons. Most would rather kill themselves. When a Djodask warrior killed someone, they believed their souls joined together. If they were not connected as one life ended, both the souls of the killer and the killed would dissipate into the void. Is that how much they hate us? Enough to erase their own souls? The idea was almost as unfathomable as losing his brood.

Krystan was brought back to real life by the sound of his father chuckling and his own wincing when the laugh was cut off by a wet, snapping sound. ‘Why are you laughing, mm?’ asked Krystan.

‘All our lives, your mothe— … your mother and I wished that you would show a little more affection towards us. All I had to do was get some throwing knives in my neck.’ Krystan’s father tilted his head towards his son and grinned ever so faintly. ‘You’ll want to wa-watch out, lad. These won’t be the only knives that fly our way tonight.’

Krystan’s eyes shot up and around him, but they were dragged back down to his dying father. ‘I just stood and watched, Father. I watched everyone die, hmm. Now the Djodask have—’

‘This wasn’t the Djodask, Krystan.’

Krystan’s jaw clenched, partially to stop himself from blurting out ‘I knew it!’, and partially from his refusal to allow his face to shrivel in front of his father in his last breaths.

‘These are … Radham assassins sent by Fajun. They have hunted us since your m-mother, m-my brothers, and I escaped the Brukk. I saw one in the sh-shadows before it g-got me. I thought … that we’d be s-safe if we stayed quiet and out of the way. But they found us. Fajun found us. You must … s-s-seek help … to destroy him. Or else, you will n-never be safe. There is one who can help. Rixuu, if he is still alive, he will h-help you.’

‘I’ll find him, Father,’ Krystan promised as he knelt. ‘Then he and the Radham will pay for this.’

His father cast a look up at him darker than any of the shadows hiding from the flames around them. ‘Krystan, the Radham are only loyal servants of Fajun. They are doing their b-best to serve someone they c-care for. P-promise me you will not g-give yourself to anger, especially with them.’

Krystan’s father had never made him promise anything before. Perhaps he never wanted to see him break one. ‘I promise. Don’t worry, mm-mm.’

‘I’m not worried, Krystan. All will be well.’

The eyes that had been looking up at him affectionately became glassy. It was a strange sight. They had been still before. They were still now. But they had stopped seeing their sole surviving son.

Projectiles from five different directions sliced through the air. As Krystan had been hunched over his father, their aim was concentrated over a small area. He grabbed the handle of his father’s bone sword and easily deflected the throwing knives.

The attackers were smart. Their scent had been masked by flame smoke, gunpowder, and blood flowing freely across the ground. Their forms were still hidden in the shadows. The fire’s roar drowned out all sound of movement. No wonder they were able to get the drop on the rest of the brood.

But it would take more than simple cunning to get the better of him. And there were only so many places they could hide. Although Krystan could not see the attacker, his left hand shot out and released his bone spear on the path of where one set of projectiles had come from. A loud gurgling noise burbled shortly after, followed by the sweet, melodious tones of a body slumping limply to the ground. Several sounds of almost weightless feet shifted rapidly away in escape.

Wasting no time, Krystan made his way over to where his spear had landed, retrieved it with a swift tug, and knelt to inspect the body. As his father had said, the body was not a Djodask. In fact, it was very similar in appearance to his mother, except its head had filed-down black horns protruding from maroon skin.

Krystan pulled out his knife and forced himself to consider his next steps. He would bring the head of the Radham with him; it would save time if he ever had to describe them to someone. He quickly set to work not because he did not want to fall too far behind the assassins but because he knew that, if he paused for even one second, his grief would dry every drop of blood in his body.

SUPPLY AND DEMAND

Krystan

A Lizardman learned to speak, and the Humans all forgot.

— A patron, summarising Krystan’s

visit to the Laughing Bull Inn

T he dew on the leaves glittered in the bright morning sunlight. Krystan would have observed how they refracted the light like diamonds had he ever seen one. Like many other things he saw, heard, and smelled on his journey, it instead reminded him of early morning hunts and sparring sessions with his brood. He choked the bitter memories down, burying them deep within himself.

As Krystan moved farther and farther south-east, he recognised fewer familiar landmarks and found himself casting his thoughts back to old stories that his father had told him and his brothers in the darkness as a reward for a hard day of hunting or training. In one particularly wide and open clearing, he took note of the many high and thin rocks which resembled a giant ribcage near a small rocky hill. He fondly recalled his father’s bizarre tale of a gem-encrusted beast that had burst forth from the ground to consume the world. The mighty Brukk had slain the beast, whose crystalline flesh exploded and spread out all across the world. It was said that all gems were once a part of the giant monster’s destroyed body. Ondurs had nodded slowly along with the story, the movements of his head branding it into his memory despite the fact that his father’s version changed slightly with each telling. Gorlo would sit enraptured, occasionally forgetting himself and shouting his support for the Brukk and occasionally going as far as to correct his father on specific details.

His brothers, with the possible exception of the cynical Ranz, had loved those stories, but Krystan saw them for what they were—clever ways to trick them into remembering important details that would prove useful later on. The giant ‘ribs’ meant he was on track to Shaiturias, the business and information hub of the world, a bizarre mega-village with large shacks built several times his height and made of stone—not stone like his cave, of course, but small hand-chiselled ones all placed together, which did not sound very stable or practical in the least.

He had been tracking the assassins for two weeks, almost without sleep. He wondered how long they would be able to maintain this sort of pace. Their scent was never far off. They ran in single file, creating one set of footprints in an effort to hide their number. It seemed strange that they would not split up while being pursued. Krystan was always wary that they had, in fact, separated and that he simply missed the signs.

Four days later, Krystan broke free of the treeline at the edge of the forest and stood atop a long gently sloping field of lush grass. After a brief hesitation, he moved down the slope and onto a well-trodden path with many Humans and their pack animals, all coming or going from the city of Shaiturias.

For the first time since he began tracking his family’s assassins, he faltered in his movements as he got closer to the city, keenly aware of the attention he was receiving. Nobody made eye contact or moved away from him; all were too afraid to draw any attention to themselves.

But he would need to speak to someone eventually, and it would be the first contact Krystan had ever made with someone outside his own brood. He offered his parents a silent thanks for