EMMA

  When Peter squeezed my hands, my heart made several leaps. Regardless, I was still petrified. Aunty Petti was groaning, visibly weak from all the draining and the tight confines of the vines. She could not even speak. Everyone looked to be in the same state of distress except Major Santorez. He had thicker vines around his body, and even another tightly strung over his mouth like a gag. His body was bruised more than others and although he seemed unconscious, he still twitched.

  It was not long before I understood why he was subdued like that, different from everyone else. The next morning, we were all groaning from the pain except Major Santorez who was still unconscious. Immediately, one of the guards poured water over him and he was revived but still weak. They then proceeded to give us our daily ration which was a thick white porridge that weighed less than fifty grams. It was tasteless and foul smelling. I still had energy from leftover travel food, the snacks Peter and I had eaten on our way here, so I covertly passed my food to aunty Petti who thanked me profusely and gobbled it up. Everyone ate this horrible meal with gusto and my heart broke, knowing that someday, my senses would be blocked by how nasty the food was due to hunger. I, too, would eat the meal like my life depended on it because it would.

  I heard a loud, guttural yell. It was Major Santorez. He had spat out the food he was given on the face of the guard and was thrashing and yelling about.

  I tuned to Aunty Petti, who shrugged and told me, "It is a normal occurrence now. Major Santorez is the most uncooperative of all of us and he once succeeded in giving a guard a deep injury on his forehead with his fi gets. He spied on them till his mouth dried out, and that is why he has been gagged. He is erratic. You know how he is. A part of me thinks they are scared of him but the other part is convinced he will get us all in trouble. Perhaps they won't bother releasing us because they can see in his eyes that he would kill them all if they do so."

  I sighed. Major Santorez was always going to be Major Santorez.

  "He has not eaten a single thing from them since we came here." Aunty Petti added.

  When the meal is finished, I watch in disgust as one of the guards comes to take the now full jat of blood that had dripped from our bodies over night. I was repulsed at the fact that my blood was there. A part of me was mixed with that of everyone and it was going to be ingested by that foul elder.

  The guard who took the blood was a bald headed hiermocht with a head shaped like a brick. He had transparent pools of water in place of his eyes, and the ability to extract two extra arms from his sides. Before serving the blood to the elder, he was made to taste the blood. This was to ensure that he hadn't contaminated it along the way. I found it hilarious because there were a host of things that could contaminate the blood, right from us humans to the unsterilized cups, to the very air itself. A lot of things could turn into weapons against them.

  The elder drank up the blood and commanded the guard to bring Peter forth. The door was shut and no matter how much I strained, I could not hear what they said or did to him. I was frightened. I still had not gotten the chance to talk to Austin but I was glad he was alive at the very least. My heart was heavy for Peter. A lot of options of what could be happening ran through my mind. Were they going to kill him because he was a thing they could not understand? An intersection between a human and a hiermocht not by birth but simply by adaptation? Perhaps, they were ready to listen to his negotiation but even that seemed too much to hope for. I tried hard not to imagine that so as not to raise my hopes and have them fall like the aftermath of a high, drunken spree. It was better not to hope in the first place.

  Finally, Peter stumbled back into the cell we were all held in. The guard did not bother to tie him up because the vines had a mind of their own. With their strong thick branches, they reached for him, held him up to the wall and bound him. Peter made no resistance so the vines held him snugly, not too tightly at all, and they did not dig into his skin, past fascia and tissue to reach his arteries. They let him be.

  "The secret is to not resist the vines. They are made as predator plants and they work even harder when you put up a resistance against them." He looked at Major Santorez who did not bother to listen to him. He continued to struggle and the vines ate in deeper till he became unconscious. Aunty Petti said this was what he did, hour after hour, day after day.

  Even at the point of death, Major Santorez found it difficult to listen to the judgement of anyone except himself. Later, he would.

  I try it out and discover that indeed it works. I take deep breaths, try to relax, and I feel as the vines loosen their hold one me.

  "There is no point trying to cut it because they always grow back." Peter said to Mikael and Jason who had been trying to hack it off with their teeth. It only made matters worse.

  When we were all relaxed, Peter began. "I am familiar with this plant. It works via a symbiotic relationship. Let's just say it is a parasite that won't let you go until you both learn to live together." He paused. "I learnt something that could be very valuable to our escape, when I was called."

  "What is that?" Alyonna asked.

  "The elder, the one who drinks all the blood? He has fallen sick."

  "Of course he has! Why won't he? I have never seen a grosser species in all of my existence." Aunty Petti said. She began to giggle and Peter told her to stop before the vines ensnared her mouth. They could be that petty considering that she didn't know how to handle them yet.

  Jason scoffed. "So, about this plant thing, you mentioned that they are symbiotic and what not. Are you? Are you really... you're saying they are going to be part of us just like those little disgusting things are on your body?"

  "Jason!" I hissed at him.

  "What? Isn't that the truth? Why should your little animal plant hiermocht hybrid boyfriend or whatever the fuck he us be offended by the truth? I bet Austin has some things to say about him as well."

  Austin's head was bowed. He said nothing.

  Peter maintained a neutral expression. I knew he must be hurt by their cruel words, by the condescending way the people he was trying to help treated him. We did not at all deserve Peter yet Herr is always helping and advocating.

  "How dare you be rude to Peter?" Aunty Petti said, as though she had suddenly realised that she was in charge of us. I liked her when she was like this. She gave Jason a stern warning and pleaded with Peter to share what he had discovered.

  "I believe you all need to have, even if nothing, at least a measure of reverence for Peter. He has saved our lives countless times and..."

  "Aunty Petti, I am no god." Peter cut in.

  "Whatever. You deserve to be respected. I owe my life to you and I know others do too." Her fiancé was tied beside her and she squeezed his hands. "Peter Wargner, I will not sit back and let them make fun of you. You deserve much more than that."

  Peter nodded. "Okay."

  The rest of the team was quiet as he revealed to us what he knew, what he had discovered, and what he speculated could be happening.

  "He was sick, the elder. His eyes were glazed over and he was so weak, he could not drink the blood." His voice turned grave. "The guard whose duty it is to bring the blood to the elder every morning was executed right in front of me. He was beheaded, so primally. They thought he had poisoned it."

  My heart jumped. "So why did they call you? Did they think you had anything to do with it?"

  "No. Remember I told them I had an offer which they refused to listen to? Well, with the looming death of their elder, they are ready to renegotiate our release but on a more tricky term. They want me to find a cure for their elder. If I do, we will all be allowed to go. If I don't, well... I want this to be a team effort. We need to think, to figure out how to stop him from dying."

  "I can't believe this." I said, exasperated. "So we are going to try and save the same hiermocht who tried to kill us? Like, we are really going to rack our brains and think of his to save this killer's lives even when we are near death ourselves from hunger and weakness?"

  "We do not really have a choice, Emma. It is what I agreed to. There was no other option. If he dies, we go down with him. So, there..." Peter replied.

  "Why doesn't he stop drinking the damn blood, then? It is apparently what is making him sick." I almost threw up, thinking about all those blood clots being gobbled up, the reddish stain on his teeth, and his disgusting snare. He was going to explode from all that purulence.

  "Well, he cannot stop drinking that." Peter said.

  "Why?!" We all asked at once.

  It seemed like such a ridiculous idea, to allow ourselves to be drained of blood when we were invaluable in the quest to save the life of the very thing which tried to take ours.

  "Why can he not stop drinking our blood, Peter? Please tell us? I truly need to understand this. I need to make sense of this madness we are all witnessing."

  Peter sighed. "He can't because it is the reproduction season for their species. Unlike other Hiermochts, their species need a lot of iron to procreate. If they have an insufficient amount, the foetus dies. When they captured humans, perhaps through a twist of fate they discovered that the human blood has a good amount of iron and they were elated. So elated that they decided they would keep us and keep milking out the iron that they need."

  "Wait, wait. Hold on. That hiermocht there is the one who needs the iron?" Alyonna asked.

  "Yes," Peter replied. "Over here, the males are responsible for reproduction."

  Jason burst out laughing and everyone turned to stare daggers at him. He kept shut instantly.

  "Reproduction season is near. They need as many supplements as they can get, and we are the suitable prey to provide that, yet something is wrong."

  "The damn blood isn't healthy for him."

  We turned to Aunty Petti who was shaking and whimpering so badly that we could hear the sound of her teeth chattering. Her fiancé tried to hold her but the vine wound itself around him thicker and stronger.

  "Aunty Petti?" Peter called her.

  "He has to stop taking the blood from us." She said between sobs.

  "Yes, yes. We'll find a way." Peter said.

  "No, I mean... It's just that. It is..." She stuttered. "I think I might be pregnant." She blurted out the last bit quickly and we stared in stunned silence. Her fiancé began to sob. He was happy, crying and smiling but the fear hovered over all of us, restraint us from expressing joy about the new baby. It was such a wrong time.

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  "Congratulations, Aunty Petti. But, I must say something. I know these people. It takes a long time to reproduce for them. It is one of the things they struggle with. It takes about fifty to sixty earth years. That being said, no one should mention that Aunt Petti is with a child. That could be disastrous for us all. There is every chance that they could make us into their herd animals, specifically for reproduction. They seem primal to you now, hut trust me, they gave the tools, the technology to make that happen for themselves. Nine months is a short time compared to the half a century they spend waiting for an offspring that could end up being laid hollow or born dead derived from nutrients. That is why this is important to them and we must use it to our advantage."

  We all agreed to the pact. No one would speak. We would all pretend that we had not heard the news of her pregnant, but we knew we had to keep her safe. She too needed nutrients for her baby. It was not sustainable for her to give up what she had to the Hiermochts at the risk of killing off her own. It filled me with goosebumps when I remembered that she gobbled up the extra plate of food I had given her that morning. She was not the only one eating.

  "So what is our plan?" Alyonna asked. Something suddenly occurred to me.

  "I think he is sick because of all that blood he is taking in. Of course, they need iron. But too much iron leads to hypercalcemia in humans. Now I have no idea how it oxidizes in a hiermocht system but it is my guess that too much iron doesn't do them good at all. Perhaps we need to find a way to extract all that iron from his system, and at the same time, stop him from drinking more blood. That would preserve us and give us time to find our way out."

  "Great idea, Emma. We only need to find a way to extract those irons. I think that is what works. As for the blood, well, there's nothing left to do but to try and convince the Hiermocht that there is something about our blood that doesn't settle right. This is their first time of being with humans, of having anything to do with us at all. It has always been the other species of Hiermocht so our blood is foreign to them. We can use that. We can convince them that our blood is toxic and they need Something different, a different source of iron. In fact, I could add that our blood has extremely lethal properties that could ruin their reproduction process till a millennia."

  Just as we were speaking, Major Santorez began trashing again. He had woken up from his unconscious state, and as usual, began the process of fighting with himself again like a person being exorcised of demons. It was as though he was trying to fight himself because literally, the Hiermochts were a part of him. Just as would not let them be, they had themselves sworn to not let him be.

  He bit into the vines like a rabid dog. The vines immediately made new strong buds that twisted around his mouth and held him. He kicked and struggled, swore through his muffled mouth, fought against the plant with a strength that was unnatural for someone who had almost been comatose a few moments ago and who had not eaten anything for days now. Major Santorez was determined to free himself, stubbornly, even after being shown that it was not the right way to go about it.

  "This man is going to get us killed." Aunty Petti said, rolling her eyes.

  Peter on the other hand was trying everything possible to calm Major Santorez down. It was all to no avail. It wasn't until Peter shrieked that the elder was sick that major Santorez calmed down.

  He looked at all of us, his eyes crazed and bloody, his head bleeding from the side due to the impact he had made from thrashing about, hitting his head in the process.

  "What did you say?" He slurred.

  "The elder is sick and we are currently trying to find a say to use it to our advantage. Emma thinks it is from too much iron , from all the blood he had to drink. But, they need iron for their reproduction so we are tasked with finding a way to cure the elder that doesn't involve using our blood. Also, Aunty Petti..."

  Peter paused, unsure if he would tell Major Santorez about Aunty Petti's news. He decided not to.

  "As I was saying, Major..." Peter paused. "Major Santorez?"

  Major Santorez had fallen into unconsciousness again. Alyonna was close to him so she relaxed till the vines gave her arms enough space. She reached across and held Major Santorez wrists to check his pulse.

  "He is still alive. Pulse is weak, breathing is slow, but he'll make it." She said.

  "Why should that be any of our business? He is the one trying so hard, so desperately to kill himself by struggling against the vines. Perhaps he would be mad about still being alive when he wakes up. So he'll trash about and try to die instead."

  Alyonna shrugged. "We can't let him."

  "She is right." Peter said to Aunty Petti. "Major Santorez has to report back to earth, alive. He may be an asshole but the space mission needs him. The UNCF does."

  Aunty Petti scoffed.

  "Oh my God." Peter exclaimed. His eyes were aglow with a new discovery.

  "What?" I asked.

  "I just remembered, from having spent time with these plants in the past. I just discovered that they do react to salt. Like a worm, when in contact with salt, they slither away. We can actually free ourselves from these vines!"

  We all murmured among ourselves.

  "But we can't do it like that just yet. We have to be methodical about it." I spoke up. "We need to carry major Santorez and there may be traps and hurdles outside. Peter and I were almost shot with a warning arrow before we even got to the training camp surrounding this settlement. We just can't go like that."

  ***

  The next day, Peter asks the guard to take me, himself and Austin to meet the elder. They have a certain respect for him now, so they do not question him when he asks this of them.

  They ng in the same food. I take one spoon and give the rest to Aunty Petti who thanks me and scraps off everything on the plate in a jiffy. Like a clockwork, Major Santorez gets up again and throws the food at the guard.

  The only thing different this morning is that the guard quietly takes the blood way, but he doesn't replace it with a fresh container.

  Me, Peter, and Austin are released from the jail. As we walk down the corridor, I Hurry to Austin and take his hands in mine.

  "Hi." I say to him.

  "Hi." He replies.

  I try to start a conversation but he is too weak to continue speaking with me. I notice that he is trying to reserve his energy so I leave him be, but not without giving him a small tug and whispering how happy I was to see him, into his ears. We were still bound with the vines so we waddled around awkwardly.

  "I was glad to know you are alive too, Emma. I thought they would burn the base camp and the space ship along with the people in it when they took us away. It feels good to know my wild imagination doesn't come to pass."

  I laughed. "I'm glad too. Apparently, they only wanted humans. I don't know how they found out about us."

  "They have a radar." Austin said.

  There was so much I wanted to say to him, and there was no time.

  Finally, we were granted audience with the elder. He was laying on a large wooden bed, draped with silk with bowls filled with strange liquids around him. I wondered what it was and the guard mentioned that some are chemicals to purify the air.

  "Before I speak, I would like to request for the retrieval of all the things I came with. Backpacks, everything. I would need them intact." Peter signed to the guard.

  The guard considered Peter's request for some time and obliged. He signaled to another guard to bring out the properties. He tossed my backpack to me and took his.

  I whispered to Austin to distract the guards while Peter spoke to the elder. All I had to do was to reach into our backpack and bring out our supply of salt which we journeyed with.

  Peter my throat and began to sigh to the elder. He was quick, making sounds and gesticulating wildly. I could only make out a few of the words he was saying. From what I gathered, he was trying to tell the elder that he had studied the vines in the land of the other species of Hiermochts. He said he knew the behavior of the vines more than anyone else in the kingdom, and it would be fitting for him to give advice based on that. He then said that the vines had healing properties that could extract what the elder needed from his own blood. All he had to do was keep calm, and let it work.

  I saw the doubt hover over the face of the elder. He seemed to recoil at first but he was so sick, there was nothing he could do but acquiesce to try it out.

  Meanwhile, as they conversed, Austin was playing with our gadgets and this attracted the guards. They placed their gaze on him while I silently snuck out the salt and his it in my clothes.

  I signaled Peter to let him know I had it and he in turn, told the guards that he would like for us to go back to the jail as he wanted to speak to the elder without the interference of humans. This pleased the guards who wasted no time in taking us back. Once in the jail, I began to free everyone from the vines. On first contact with salt, the vines withered and shrunk back into nothing but black strands. It seemed the salt absorbed all their water and nutrients, and it also affected the core of their life. I had no idea if they had a heart or a brain. Perhaps it was distributed all over the cross section of their body and it died along with their skin as it withered.

  I freed Alyonna, Aunty Petti. While Austin worked from the other end. Mikael and Jason did not look at me as the vines fell away from their bodies. Aunty Petti gave me a tight hug. The last person I freed was Major Santorez who immediately fell to the ground weakly. His next memory would be of suddenly appearing outside the grounds of the Hiermochts and he would attribute it to his resilience in fighting the strange vines off his body.

  As we freed ourselves, Peter was changing the course of the conversation with the elder. He told the elder that the blood he had been drinking from humans had the propensity to become toxic after a few days. He said the elder was ill as a result of this. For good measure, he added that the human blood could also melt away plants and the skins of Hiermochts, just as they were doing currently.

  The elder was alarmed. He immediately sent the guards to check the jails to see if what Peter said was true in any way. The guards were too scared to do it. They too feared that their skins would melt away if what Peter said about the humans were true.

  They were forced to and they approached the jail with fear. When they opened the gates, they saw that we were ball free and the vines had formed a shriveled black ball at our foot. They had withered and died. The guards screamed and ran out, and I led them to the place where Peter was, still speaking with the elder.

  I whispered to Austin to get his remaining salt and free Peter. I had used up mine.

  "What salt?" Austin asked. We both stared at each other in horror, realising that we had run out of salt and forgotten the most important person we had to free.

  I look at Peter, feeling guilty of making the mission fail. Instead of the scalding glare I expected, Peter smiled at me.

  He then turned to the elder and told him, in a dramatic twist, that the humans could also melt away Hiermochts. I felt a slight sadness that Peter had to do this to make us free. However, I knew his advantage of not looking completely human was what helped us survive.

  "Out!" The elder screamed. "Out. Take them all out. Expunge them from my kingdom. I do not want to see any one of these humans."

  "I would like to request for one of the Daemon horses to convey one human. He is bleeding terribly, unconscious, because almost all the toxic blood he lives on has been taken out of him." Peter pointed to Major Santorez who was held by Mikael and Jason. He was still bleeding from the head and looked quite roughed up.

  "Get one horse. Immediately!" The elder yelled. It seemed the news had invigorated him. From looking forlorn and desolate, he looked scared and full of rage at the same time. I was amazed that all it took to free ourselves was simply a manipulation of the elder's psychology. We did not have to plan sophisticated escapes or put our lives at risk. Peter had done it all for us with his timely thinking.

  We are pushed out roughly by guards holding a rod. They were particular about keeping us at arms length so as not to evaporate or be shriveled up like they had seen us do to the vines.

  "Move it!" the guard ordered. His voice was a deep baritone and he sounded intimidating. But behind the timber of that commanding voice, I could detect the shrill whimper of a scared little child. They were afraid of us. I imagined what would happen if I suddenly played smart with them or did a clever trick. They would have shat their pants for sure.

  Finally, we came to the training ground where Peter and I had been taken from. It was still full of the targets I had seen earlier, but a fee had fresh kill marks on them. Were they training to kill us?

  Austin and I, the rest of the team, all ran some more till we came to an open field. That was when I looked and realised that Peter was not with us.

  "Where is Peter?" I asked Austin who looked at me pitifully. He did not reply the first time. "Where is Peter, Austin?"

  My voice had begun to increase in decibels. Everything was swirling around me, like the dust of the daemon horses as they rode around a prey. Austin came up to me and hugged me.

  "Calm down, Emma. It's okay."

  I pushed him away. "How can you tell me it's okay? Where is Peter? We have to go back for him."

  I took a few steps then Austin went after me and held me again. "Emma, Peter voluntarily stayed behind."

  There were so many questions I had to ask but instead, I just stared at Austin with my mouth ajar.

  "Last night, he told me his plan. He made a deal with the elder to stay behind and find a cure. Remember that was the first plan before they let him off? Yes, so apparently, he has to stick by it. He told me and Major Santorez last night. I am so sorry, Emma."

  "He told you, and you let him go? You did not convince him that it was a stupid idea? How could you?"

  I jabbed Austin on his chest. "How could you?!"

  He held me and tried to calm me down but I could not be consoled. The others came and said the same thing, the same glib consolation to let Peter go, and I looked at them as though they had grown horns. How were they comfortable with Peter's absence? What did they feel towards him all along if they could not even mourn his departure?

  Finally, I agreed to leave before the Hiermocht army changed their minds. Because we had made a deal with Mundas, we did not go back to the settlement. Instead, we went to the place where our space ship was abandoned. Major Santorez was treated and one night of three moons, we woke up to find a new spaceship, waiting. There was a tag on it, and on the instruction manual, Mundas had signed off his name along with the elders. It read, from the depths of the most primal caves, comes this gift of high technological advancement. Farewell on your journey.

  I was elated, but still torn apart with longing. I had been waiting for Peter to return all this while. As an alternative, I placed my books, snacks, and Xavier into the abandoned spaceship. Austin stood beside me as I made these final preparations.

  I turned Xavier on, told her everything I needed to tell Peter, and placed her in the ship.

  I looked at Austin. "Are you sure he would find them?"

  "Peter? He finds everything."