Trak could feel the pull of his sisters summoning him but he resisted; his desire was to be present during his uncle's rebirth. He stood alone in the large chamber, the cocoon suspended in midair by thick ropes made with Chimera silk that Trak produced himself.
Touching the pink translucent fluid that oozed out from the growing cracks in the cocoon, Trak extended his antennae to stretch out his senses and touch John's mind, finding it confused and frightened.
"Be calm my uncle... you are about to enter a new life," Trak sent out to ease John's fears.
"I will be hideous, ugly, and unnatural." John replied, the cocoon quivering.
"You will be beautiful." Trak promised. "All Chimera are born beautiful."
"All Chimera look like giant bugs."
"Well you will make a beautiful bug then uncle. Now come out or would you rather I tear you out." Trak said as he stretched out his mandibles threateningly.
With the sound of snapping fibers, Trak watched as a white armored claw fist cut its way through the thick silk. Next an armored foot, of the same pale color, ripped through, making contact with the ground. It was soon followed by the next, as the entire cocoon fell apart in shreds. Out from its ragged edges stepped an armored figure, as if out of humanity's past. A knight, decked out in white stood on the floor. Its face was covered by a grinning gold mask with brown, lidless eyes.
"You are beautiful." Trak clicked happily, letting his mandibles brush against the reflective surface of John's armored face. "So beautiful."
"What do I look like?" John asked, his voice still very human.
"Let me show you uncle," Trak said as he took John's clawed hand in his own, leading him to a mirror.
The moment John's reflection appeared, Trak felt his uncle stop cold. "What am I?" John asked as he ran one of his clawed hands down the front of his body.
"You are the future," Trak replied, as he pulled back the gold mask. Underneath was a face covered with soft grayish blue skin. The features, however, were human, just more angular and with high cheekbones, a sharp chin, thin dark eyebrows that grew at an angle around large bulbous brown eyes, and ears that were long and pointed. There were two short antennae that grew out of John's mat of black hair, and along John's back was the pulsating skin of two shriveled golden wings, which were growing as blood was gradually pumped into them.
It was John's mouth however on which Trak's eyes focused. Not covered by a fearsome pair of mandibles, they were soft, soft as human flesh was meant to be. Standing up on the claws of his feet, Trak spread out his mandibles so his own lips could touch his uncle's. When he removed them he saw tears running down John's face, his eyes frozen on the long claws that had grown from his armored fingers.
"What is wrong uncle?"
"My hands..." John stammered.
Trak, taking Johns hand in his, kissed it. "They are strong and powerful."
"And are incapable of one simple task... opening a book." John sighed as he sat himself down on the ground.
"But," Trak protested. He could not understand why John seemed upset.
"Your people have now taken everything from me... my sister, my world, my body, and now the one thing in which I always found pleasure... my books."
"But I gave you wings. Soon you will find the pleasure of flying. I gave you armor so no one could hurt you. I even let you keep your human face."
"But you gave me these... these things!" John shouted, shaking his claws at Trak.
"So you can protect yourself."
"So I can kill," John accused angrily.
"So you can feed. It is our people's way."
"You're people, not mine."
"Humans kill each other all the time, do they not?" Trak said defensively.
"We do not eat each other."
"But you do kill... for reasons that make less sense than our people's hunger."
"..." John did not know how to respond.
"Think uncle... you are now part of the greater Chimera race, connected to each one of them telepathically. If it is stories you want, my people have an endless supply of them reaching back tens of thousands of years to the original Chimera species. All you have to do is reach for them and they are yours."
Closing his eyes, John extended his thoughts into the greater Chimera consciousness. Gradually the stories began to flow into him, the histories of millions of Chimera and the races they had merged with over time, but they were told like dry text... no emotion let alone sense of a greater purpose. They lived, they ate, they fought, and they died. They were stories without love, hate, fear or passion and in the end they left John feeling empty inside.
"The Chimera are nothing more than hollow clay figures." John said as he opened his eyes.
"Now you see why we need humanity. Your people will give mine an entirely new world of experiences."
John nodded his head as he let the gold mask cover his face. He had not forgotten the millions of human Chimera hybrids when he had searched the Chimera over-mind. There had been some traces of human emotion inside them, mostly fear and confusion, but it was if they were being masked by the stronger static of the larger Chimera over-mind.
"The Chimera are not gaining human emotions... they are snuffing them out."
Trak's eyes went red with rage, the crimson light reflecting off John's gold mask. "What about me uncle? Is what I feel imaginary?"
Looking at Trak through the living mask he now wore, John let out a sigh. "No Trak... you are different from most Chimera, Clare made you that way."
"I don't understand," Trak replied, his antennae wilting.
John took a clawed hand and wrapped it around Trak's waist. "You are more human than any of your sisters and their children. I should be grateful that it was you who bit me... I would not have kept as much of my humanity if any other of the Chimera had."
"But you're not grateful. You're mad at me," Trak sulked with a low hiss.
"Yes Trak I am. Your people have taken away so much from me."
Walking over to the round portal to the chamber they were in, Drake trigger the iris like door to open. "I... I have a gift for you."
"What is it?" John asked, less out of curiosity then wishing for a distraction.
Into the chamber walked a humanoid figure, similar to John, his body covered by blood red armor instead of white with a bronze mask covering its face.
"Who is this?" John demanded.
"He is Ryan uncle... your Protector."
"Ryan?" John asked, letting his mask lift off his face.
"My lord," came a deep almost gurgling voice as the Chimera went down on one knee.
John walked gradually toward Ryan, lifting his hood like mask off his downward cast face. "Look up at me Ryan."
As if fighting off ropes holding him down, Ryan lifted up his head, his face flat and emotionless. "It is good to see that you are well my lord."
"Is that all you wish to say?" John asked, confused by his lover's expression.
"My sole purpose is to serve you." Ryan said as he went down on his knees.
"Ryan stop it!" John shouted.
"Stop what my lord?" Ryan asked in a flat tone.
"What have you done to my husband!" John demanded of Trak.
"Red Eyes gave him the gifts of the Chimera." Trak replied innocently. "Is he not perfect now?"
John reached with his mind to touch Ryan's soul. It was as if half of it was gone, drained away somehow. The part of Ryan that loved him was still there but muffled. "You have taken my husband from me." John accused.
"No I haven't... he's right here before you." Trak clicked thinking John was joking.
"Ryan, how can I help you? How can we save our people?"
"There is nothing you can do to save humanity... not now. One way or another, humanity's days are numbered," Ryan replied.
"What do you mean Ryan?" John asked.
"Ask your nephew." Ryan replied, bowing to both men. "I must go now. Our people have come to depend on me these recent weeks. I should not be away from them long."
After Ryan left, John turned his brown eyes on Trak who was huddled in a corner of the chamber. "Why is humanity doomed?"
"It's not my fault John... you must believe me."
"What has happened Trak?"
Wrapping his translucent wings around his body, Trak nodded. "It happened long ago... so long ago that we Chimera had almost forgotten about them... the enemy, the ones who destroyed our home world."
"Who could have destroyed your home world?"
"A species calling themselves the Fungi. They are a race of sentient molds and fungus that have spread across space like an illness. Each world they infest is soon consumed, all native life destroyed. You can not reason with them. They do not make peace. They only believe in the continual spread of their own species."
"Sound a lot like the Chimera." John said with disgust.
"No uncle you don't understand. We Chimera do not destroy life; we add it to our own. Once the Fungi have planted their spores on a world however it belongs to them. When we Chimera first came into contact with them, the Fungi had exterminated the lives of hundreds of sentient species. Since our contact with them, they have surly destroyed hundreds more. After they claimed our home world, my people fled deep into space until we came across a species of semi intelligent arachnids from which the old ones were created. "
"What does all this have to do with my people?"
"It is now the human worlds that the Fungi are targeting for colonization."
"But we can fight!" John insisted.
"You will lose... like the countless others that have come before you. Humanity only has three choices... to flee, die, or..." Trak left hanging.
"Or join the Chimera." John guessed.
"Yes uncle..." Trak nodded as he stood up, heading for the portal. "Come with me... there are some things I must show you."
Not seeing that he had any other choice, John followed Trak down the long tunnels and ramps that ran through the command ship till they were near the bottom of the gigantic craft.
After watching Trak punch in a complex sequence of buttons on a wall panel, a thick rust coated door opened with a sharp metallic screech. Turning around in the middle of the doorway, Trak faced John. "You must not tell anyone what you are about to see. It needs to be our secret."
"I understand." John nodded.
Entering, John found himself entering a spherical, half domed chamber, as most rooms built by the Chimera seemed to be. John's eyes however froze on the center of the chamber where on a raised platform was the headless shape of an old one female, its body still pulsating with life as its body produced sticky clumps of eggs, a dozen at a time. Standing to one side of the Mother was Red Eyes.
"Trak, what is going on here?"
"Uncle... I would like you to meet my mate."
"But her head... it's gone."
"Yes..." Trak replied with a guilty hiss.
"Did you do that?"
"No... Red Eyes did."
Letting his gold mask cover his face, John let out a sigh. "Will you tell me why you did this?"
"To produce these my uncle?" Trak replied as he went to where dozens of four legged spiders two feet in length and a foot and a half wide crawled about the room.
"And what are these creatures?"
"My children... my gift to mankind so that they might keep their freedom and survive the war with the Fungi."
"And how will these creatures allow for that?" John asked as a pair of them crawled up his body, their pointed legs clicking against his armor.
"In our people's last war with the Fungi we found one species... a species of insects that seemed impervious to the toxic spores released by the Fungi. They were unintelligent, primitive creatures but they offered our people our only chance for survival."
"So you merged with them?"
"To what you might think was our own folly. To gain the insect's resistance to the Fungi poisons the Chimera had to give up a large part of themselves... some of their best parts."
"Their souls?" John asked.
"Yes. See why humanity is so important to us? It is a chance for us to get back all that we lost.
"And these things?" John asked.
"A way for both our races to get what we need to survive." Trak replied.
Stripped of everything, something terrible happened to John. He let his soul flee into the greater, single over-soul of the Chimera for a brief moment before its nature revolted him. It was cold, calculating, unfeeling. Fleeing back into his own body, he did not come back the same. He brought a part of the Chimera corruption with him, twisting his heart and personality.
His face hidden behind his mask, John glared at Red Eyes, the Chimera who had destroyed the soul of his lover. He did not care how long it took but one day he would have his revenge.
The epic fantasy series The Centurion and the Academy have gone on sale and are now almost four dollars off the original price so those of you who have not ventured into the world of Ares now is a good time to find out what you've been missing. Also, soon the third book in the series Angels Ascending will be coming out which I hope will prove to be just an excellent read. So enjoy the books and thanks for all of your support.
JMH