The sun blazed brilliantly in the clear and cloudless midday sky. The small camp below was awash in its light, dappled only occasionally where copses of trees stood clustered between the shacks and tents. The only true shade fell along the western edge where two haphazardly built sentry towers stood on the brink of the forest proper. They, like everything else in the camp, had been crudely lashed together from a combination of strong young trees, vines, ropes, and occasional steel clamps, all with the intention of blending them into their surroundings. Not one building was like the others. Even the towers, though in twin positions on either side of the beaten trail leading into the shadows of the thick foliage, were only as alike as siblings born years apart. Where one was slightly shorter, much squatter, and featured a thick thatched roof, the other was tall, awkwardly angled, and topped with only a single unoccupied platform.

In the first of those two – designed as a pair of wooden platforms joined by a ragged rope bridge beneath the thatch – Ilander Hyanten slumped over the railing. With his muzzle scrunched up in concentration, he picked at a splinter that had caught under his claw earlier that morning and tried hard to control the urge to start panting. Even with his unusually pale aqua pelt, its color bordering on white in places, the sun shining through onto his scuffed black and dusty blue uniform was nearly unbearable, especially after four hours on morning guard duty.

He finally let out a snorting sigh and pushed himself to his feet, digging animatedly through the thick leather toolbelt hanging on one hip. “This is ridiculous.” He grumbled. “When I signed up for the Border Guard…”

“I know, I know,” interjected an exasperated voice from out of sight. “Join the Border Guard they said. See uncharted lands they said. Hey, I’ve been quaffing krellberry juice all day and I can’t see straight anymore, you said. Why the hell not?”

Ilander paused in his scrounging to cast a withering glare at the rope bridge. The only sight of his mocking compatriot was a sandy brown tail and toes tightly curled around the most stable of the fraying strands. One of Ilander’s lips curled in a snarl. “Do you want to kiss the ground, kid?”

“You couldn’t make me if you tried.” Before Ilander could move to carry out his threat, the younger tikedi twisted himself around, proving his famed flexibility before gripping the edge of the platform. A moment later and he’d yanked himself back up onto relatively solid ground and settled contentedly into a crouch.

Ilander cringed and turned away, his spine hurting at the mere thought of such maneuvers. Young Merck was certainly a strange one. The youngest in the entire troop stationed at the Shienta Camp, where the borders of Tieke Province and Harangin Province met the thick forests of tekk territory, and one of only three hundred tikedi who hailed from the distant Tarsin Desert. While the majority of tikedi were from the coastal cities and craved the ocean as much as plants craved sunlight, those few from Tarsin were perfectly content in the dust and the sun. They sported incredibly long-ears, pelts that ranged from brilliant gold to rich brown, and they were built tough like the stones they lived amongst, unlike their classically streamlined cousins.

Perhaps most useful, they instinctively understood the nature of the tekk better than any other race on the face of the planet, second only to the tekk themselves. There were places where the two races’ territories overlapped out there, where once the two had lived in a peace born of staying out of each others’ way. In recent years, though, even the Tarsin tikedi had suffered. Merck himself had more than enough reason to be with the Border Guard. His entire village had been lost to a night time attack only a few years before.

As the boy got back to his feet, Ilander turned to eye him bitterly through his thick mop of shining white hair. In pure contrast to Ilander’s sleek softness, Merck was all about gritty. His sandy brown fur was shorter, thicker, and wirier, his blond hair short and spiky. A series of pale gold rings marked the fur all along his elegant tail, but that was where his inherent grace ended. He was still apparently young, but everything about him meshed together to give him an appearance of age and toughness that only a Tarsin could achieve. It was small wonder that the ladies went for such an exotic specimen.

Ilander’s fingers finally found the blade he’d been looking for and he yanked it free, then turned it on the splinter with renewed vigor. “You’re a brat, Merck.” Merck opened his mouth in a grin, then suddenly blinked. For a moment his eyes lost focus, then sharpened again as a look of confusion crossed his face. He turned and abruptly lifted his muzzle into the air to sniff.

Ilander glanced up . “Merck?”

“Smell something.” He pulled himself up onto the railing and leaned far out into the sunlight, eyes tracking across the shadows of the forest. “Hear something, too.”

Both held their breath for several long moments.

The fur on the back of Ilander’s neck was standing straight up and he suddenly wasn’t noticing the heat. Cold fear rushed through him. They were short six tikedi already, having sent a patrol into the forests to scout for tekk raiding parties in the pre-dawn hours. If the patrol had missed something, if the tekk came…

“It’s them.” Merck barked suddenly, throwing himself free of the railing and bounding across the platform towards the ladder.

Ilander jumped, startled, and nicked himself with the blade. “Eayagh! Them? Them who? Merck!” He shook the blood off the tip of his finger even as he leaned over the railing to see for himself. The young tikedi was already on the ground below and scrambling for all he was worth through the thick grass towards the tree line. Annoyed, Ilander dropped the blade on the platform floor and snapped his fingers up to the base of his ear, tapping a thin metal switch on the coiled metal enhancement that he wore. At once, every chirp, squeak, and rustle in the forest ahead rang magnified into his ears. He chewed his lip, listening hard.

Then he heard it. Tikedi voices. Relief washed over him. The patrol was back a good three hours early, that was all.

“Wish that damn boy would remember that we don’t all have Tarsin ears…” he grumbled, scrambling for the ladder himself.

As he charged across the grass towards the trees, haphazardly switching his cybernetic enhancement back off to avoid giving himself a headache, a feeling of unease settled over him. The soldiers were still half lost in the branches and bushes at the edge of the forest, but Ilander swore that there were too few. His head bobbed to one side as he ran, craning to see. One, two, three. No four. The closer he got, the less hope he had that he was mistaken. Only half of the troop stood there, and worse, they just barely stood. One, Verrd – an unusually tall Tieke tikedi known as much for the volume and energy with which he tended to speak as he was his speed and athletic skill – stood unharmed. His companions, the twin brothers Andalf and Zandrof, were holding each other up. Blood was smeared through the fur of Andalf’s face and across the bare skin of his muzzle, splashed from where one dusty blue ear had been completely torn off and hastily bandaged with a scrap of uniform. His left arm, the sleeve ripped free, was laced with deep gouges and scratches. One of Zandrof’s arms was resting across his brother’s shoulder, but the other was clutched to a deep bloody wound across his stomach. He was panting hard, eyes half closed while his twin looked on in silent panic.

Merck had pulled Verrd to one side, trying hard to get a coherent story out of him, when Ilander ducked through the bushes to get a closer look at the wounded twins. He’d grown up in the same residential corridor as the two of them, back in Tieke City.

“Shandrek fins,” he quietly cursed, turning his attention immediately to Zandrof. “What in Teyka’s name happened?”

Andalf was shaking as he tried to explain, “It was tekk. Lots of them. Dozens? Could be hundreds. I don’t even know. We lost Shaunya, Orvin, and Ferrin so fast.” He stooped, cringing with every movement, and tried to comfortably lower his brother into Ilander’s waiting arms. Zandrof’s eyes were glazed and unfocussed, his arm drenched in his own blood. “Goddess Teyka, oh he needs help, Ilander. He needs help now. Please.”

“I can see that. So do you.” He waved an arm at Merck, trying to get the boy’s attention. “Merck! Do me a favor and…”

Ilander’s voice died almost as soon as he’d spoken. Merck was fidgeting, the fur on his tail standing up as he thumped it nervously in the grass. “Ilander,” he said hastily. “I don’t think we have time.”

Ilander swallowed, feeling his heart sink. “They’re coming this way, aren’t they?”

“Sounds like it. We have to evacuate.”

“What? No!” Verrd suddenly barked. “That’s not what I said. We don’t know that.”

“You said they were heading east.” Merck insisted. “That’s towards us. We can’t take chances.”

“No, no. That’s not what I meant.” He frowned for a second, then pushed past Merck, striding towards Ilander. “I need to see Myrnak. Right now. I…” He stopped, scrounging something out of his pack. “I killed two. One had this.” He held up a sheaf of thick bark paper sheets, each inscribed with scratches of tekk language. Verrd’s thin face was locked in solid determination. “We can’t take chances, that’s true. But there were far too many of them for a strike on one tiny camp. We’re definitely talking hundreds.”

It suddenly dawned on Ilander. “Teyka’s tears. You don’t mean…”

“I don’t know. I can’t know.” He strode forward and pressed the documents into Ilander’s palm. “But if you really want to save lives, you’ll go find out.”

Ilander stared down at the documents. “Shandrek fins.” He bit off every syllable, gritting his teeth together. “How far off are they?”

“Far enough. They’re a few hours’ trek to the northwest yet, or should be. We have time if you hurry.”

“All right. Verrd, you sit tight and watch Zandrof and Andalf. Merck, get Warrel and the other healers.”

Verrd obediently took Zandrof’s limp form into his own arms while Ilander clambered to his feet. As one, he and Merck tore off across the grasses once again. They turned in opposite directions once they’d reached the central square of the camp, but their hearts continued pounding in horrified unison as they prayed for things to be so much less terrible than they were shaping up to be.

O

It was absolutely beautiful that day.

The water was pure and smooth, sparkling in the early morning sunlight, and so wonderfully deep that Derec couldn’t hope to see the bottom. He smiled to himself, crouched at the edge of the pool, tail luxuriating in the cool wet glory.

Situated at the far eastern edge of the island that housed the Hybrid Project, the naturally occurring pool had been thoughtfully left as one of the rare recreational sites. Along one side, the island’s rocky exterior rose into the sky, marked only by the unassuming cavern that served as a doorway back into the facility. The rest of the pool was enclosed with a ring of rocky seawall, marked here and there with crevasses to let the ocean water rush in and out with the tide.

Derec tugged off the standard laboratory gear: heavy cream white protective cloak first, then the blue shirt, the knee length blue pants, and the white wrappings that protected his shins, and folded them neatly at the water’s edge. Underneath it all was a simple, translucent, close-fitting garment that covered him from collarbone to knees, leaving his hands, lower legs, and tail bare. In the ocean breeze, it rippled gently. He flexed his fingers and his toes, freeing the webbed membrane between each, and, pausing only to suck in a lungful of air, smoothly dove into the waters.

As he vanished beneath the waves, the garment tightened just noticeably, fitting like a second skin. The fabric was the product of a mix of chemical and biological engineering, devised specifically for the Tieke tikedi and worn by any who craved the sea. It insulated and protected far better than a tikedi’s naturally waterproofed fur ever could, as well as providing a degree of modesty. Once, that modesty hadn’t been an issue. It was only with the increased alliance of the aquatic, desert, and mountain tikedi races within the last few centuries that the aquatic tikedi had found themselves having to adapt somewhat to their cousins’ sensibilities. Where the land was a harsher companion, tikedi had placed more importance on the concept of being covered in all elements.

Derec had never minded one way or another. He whipped his long flat tail through the water, swirling bubbles to the surface while propelling himself further into the blue black depths. The argument was an old one, long dead, and as long as he could swim, he was content.

After a few minutes, the familiar pressure in his chest broke him of his underwater reverie. With a kick of his powerful legs, he careened abruptly skyward, breaking the surface with a splash and a gasp before shaking his head vigorously to rid his glistening white mane of excess water.

“Having fun today, Derec?”

Derec swirled around to face the cavern entrance, then burst into an open mouthed grin. Jamet crouched on the bank by the cavern, his shaggy deep blue fur almost blending in with the shadows of the rock. “Hello there!” he called back. “Care to join me?”

Jamet waved off the offer with a chuckle. “I never did take well to the water. The rocks are home for me, thank you.”

“Suit yourself.” Derec dove back under the waves, vanishing entirely for a few moments before bursting back into the air an arm’s length from the shore. He gently knocked water out of his left ear. “What brings you here if not the water, Jamet? Craving the sunlight?”

Jamet shrugged his narrow shoulders. “No, not so much. Looking for you more than anything.”

“Should have guessed.” Derec rolled onto his back, gliding slowly and easily backwards. “Ezra’s doing well, if that’s what you’re wondering about. He’s picked up the tikedi language at a brilliant pace, although he still has that bizarre accent. All the same, another few weeks and he’ll be fluent.” Derec tilted his head, catching Jamet’s eyes. “Impressive considering how far behind he’d been.”

Again Jamet shrugged. “Sometimes it takes the right teacher to bring out the student.” He smirked. “Congratulations. Katrix will be pleased.”

“Oh, he is. I met with him two days ago and he talked with Ezra himself. It took a bit of translation sometimes, but they conversed. Actually conversed.”

“Ezra’s not afraid of him anymore?”

“A little, but…” Derec righted himself, gliding back to the shore and settling on his forearms. “I’ll tell you, he’s surprising me every day. He has a brilliantly resilient spirit, and he genuinely seems to want to succeed. I mean, he’s still cautious, still wary, but when he makes up his mind to do something, nothing can stop him.” His brown eyes latched onto a point on the rocks as he spoke. “He’s so much better than I could have hoped.”

“You’re starting to sound as hooked on him as Ardreal.”

Derec blinked and met his co-worker’s gaze. “Well, a little. You have to admit that both she and Katrix were right. It’s hard not to be.”

“Just be careful.”

“You worry too much.” Derec shook his head. “When the time comes, I’ll let him go. I know my place.”

“Good to hear.” The dark furred tikedi stood and stretched, then clambered further up the seawall and into a sunbeam. Derec paddled slowly along beneath him. Jamet sighed and stretched out across the rocks. “So, tell me, have you given any thought to what you’re going to do about teaching him tekk?”

“I’ve been pondering it, yes.”

“And?”

“Well, it’s not as if we’re completely without resources. There’s Jahrd Ardeana himself and those like him: those who’ve taken it upon themselves to try translating tekk writing, at any rate. I only know the basic forms myself, but the information is out there.” He tilted his head back, squinting into the sun. “Beyond writing is tougher. There are a lot of physical gestures, a lot of guttural sounds, clicks, hisses. I can’t simply speak it and teach Ezra, of course, but if I had access to audio clips, video clips, I’d have something. Ezra knows tikedi. I could use one to instruct the other if I had those resources to work from.” He scowled. “That’s the problem, though. I don’t know where to find anything like that.”

Jamet followed Derec’s gaze thoughtfully, head bobbing slowly in affirmation. “There I may be able to help you, honestly.”

Derec looked up. “Really?”

“I believe so. You’re right, tekk is unspeakable, but there are those who can at least understand the spoken language, rare though they may be.” He smiled. “I happen to know one who would be more than honoured to help, particularly with this cause. All it would take is a few pulled strings in the right places, a little luck, and a dedicated troop to gather the materials.”

Derec surged forward, grinning. “This is wonderful news! How did you ever find someone like that?”

“To put it simply, the Border Guard takes all kinds. I never understood his fascination with our scaly adversaries, but a resource is a resource. If you want, I can attempt to get a communication channel open with him. See if he really is interested.”

“Oh, certainly, yes!” Derec was swimming in happy circles down below. “Brilliant!” he cried, “Absolutely brilliant. Jamet, you’re the graciousness of the goddess herself.” With a graceful twist, he spun back around to face his cohort. “Out of sheer curiosity… who is this man?”

O

Myrnak Katrall sat in silent meditation on the floor of his shack in Shienta Camp, eyes closed, breathing regular. The floor around him was clear, but that was where the tidiness ended.

As far as furniture went, there was admittedly very little. A hand woven hammock hung in one corner. In the other was a classic example of tikedi weaponry: a six foot long spear, blades pointing forwards as well as back to give the best chance of hooking the enemy and sticking in place. This one, as with most of the recently produced weapons, was equipped with a switch and a battery. Flicked just before launch or thrust, and the tip was lethally electrified. A successful hit would bring down a tekk every time.

Beyond those few objects, however, the simplicity of the room was ruined by the occupant’s choice of carpet. Rather than expensive grish, the floor here was completely covered with papers. Some were the same type of thick bark sheets that Ilander currently carried, others were thin, pale green and fibrous kelp based papers from Tieke. Mixed among them all were occasional thin black plastic datapads. Not a bit of the floor showed through.

Even the walls were covered. Where there weren’t pinned documents of utmost importance or uniqueness, there were maps and diagrams. One, twice as long as Ilander was tall, depicted in full anatomical correctness and insanely detailed horror, was a perfect scale drawing of a male tekk in the crouch that passed for sitting with their kind. No matter how many times Ilander saw that image, it never failed to make his fur prickle. From tusked serpentine head, complete with disturbingly intelligent scarlet eyes and fang filled maw, to the fins and the two-pair wings – one pair to beat the air, the other pair spread beneath the first to give the creature extra lift – to the wickedly sharp claws on each of the four limbs, it was the stuff that little ‘kedi nightmares were made out of. It was a running joke among his fellow Border Guards that only Commander Myrnak Katrall could find peace in such chaos.

Of course, that didn’t mean that peace would always stay.

Something crashed into the wall outside, hard enough that Myrnak felt the vibration through the floor. His eyes shot open and he blinked.

“Myrnak!” It was Ilander’s voice. Myrnak let out a sigh of relief. “Myr, I need you right now! You’d better damn well be awake and decent!”

The commander stretched and slowly pushed himself to his feet. “I’m here,” he called. “Come on in, Ill, please.”

Without wasting another moment, Ilander thrust open the door, breathing hard. Light suddenly flooded the room.

Myrnak met his friend’s eyes, mismatched eyes of green and violet gazing calmly at the flustered soldier. Like Merck, Myrnak was a Tarsin tikedi, although his fur was a beautiful shining gold where the other’s was dusty brown, and his hair was deep orange compared to Merck’s blond. It fell in an elegant wave towards the right side of his face, framing the one sign that his lineage was not as pure as the majority of his desert fellows. A deep ocean blue splotch of fur over his left eye was the one and only sign that somewhere in his ancestry, there was Tieke blood. Overall, he had an oddly regal appearance that perfectly matched the unwavering coolness of his personality.

He raised an eyebrow, silently encouraging his friend to speak.

“Myrnak.” Ilander panted, finally catching his breath. “Thank the goddess. We have trouble.”

He spilled the tale in all haste, with Myrnak listening in his typical blank-faced calm. Even at the mention of three lost soldiers and a tekk force of hundreds – far larger than they’d ever seen before – Myrnak’s only response was to rise to his feet and gently take the documents from Ilander’s shaking hand. He glanced them over while Ilander continued to speak, then settled down amidst his papers with a datapad and quickly scrawled in a series of commands.

Ilander panted slightly as he finished. “So, Myr?”

“One second, Ill. I’m reading.” He furrowed his brow, muttering under his breath as he read. “... names, something about… stone. Fire. No. Water.” He hesitated and blinked. “Water.”

“Water?” Ilander peered over Myrnak’s shoulder. More than once Myrnak had tried to explain what the scar-like language really meant, but despite all efforts, Ilander had only ever been able to discern a handful of words. Never could he ever piece together the grammatical structure.

“These are only part of the orders given.”

Ilander ground his back teeth together. “So what do they say?”

Myrnak was silent a moment longer.

“Myr, time is…”

“Contact Aurorin Duskeir immediately.”

Ilander spun around as his friend got to his feet and rushed past. “What?”

Myrnak thrust his head out the doorway, gazing with all seriousness at the sky to the west. “Contact Aurorin.” He glanced back over his shoulder, deathly serious. “Forget about the camp, Ilander. We’re fine. The tekk are attacking Tieke City.”

O

Screaming from the cliffs high above, echoing down through the corridors of the Hybrid Project facility, and rippling out over the waters of the recreational pool, the high pitched whine of an alarm was like an audible nail being driven through Derec’s left eye. For a moment he was lost in cringing, and then it registered.

The alarm.

Tekk attack.

On sheer impulse, he ducked beneath the waves, gazing warily back up at the sky. Along the rocks, he could see Jamet react like a startled predator. No longer a simple scientist, the dark furred tikedi dropped into a defensive crouch, every muscle taut and ready.

Derec made his way closer to the shore, eyes never leaving the sky. Even underwater he could hear the shrill warning. His pulse pounded hard in his ears, beating behind his eyes, half choking him. In all his years, he’d never seen a tekk up close. Now that the moment was upon him, he was certain that he hadn’t wanted to.

A moment later and there they were. Unwittingly, he released his air in a gasp of surprise. Where once there was a clear sky, the brilliant blue was suddenly marred by a roiling cloud of flashing wings and rippling serpentine bodies. Derec threw himself towards the surface in a blind panic, needing air and craving shelter.

He was only vaguely aware of Jamet shouting at him as he heaved his body at the shore. A sound somewhere between a scream and a roar erupted abruptly behind him. He turned to look, and froze in fear. A lone tekk had broken free from the group and was dropping straight for him. All he could see were rows and rows of needle teeth and a flailing of ridged and bladed wings coming at him. All he could see was his death.

Jamet threw himself across the stones. “Derec! Dive!”

In one swift motion, the tekk pulled up, its tail slicing into the waters and just barely missing Derec’s head. The tikedi threw himself towards the shore, seizing the rocks with one hand and Jamet’s arm with the other. Above them, the great lizard threw itself onto the rocks, its claws scoring deep gashes in the stone wall. It stuck there, wings twitching, crimson eyes locked and glaring. Above it, the swarm continued, circling and surging through the blue.

Not understanding why it was they had been spared but not willing to take a chance that it would last, Derec chose to act. He gave a strong tug to Jamet’s arm. “Tekk can’t swim!” He shouted. “Come back in with me. Hurry!”

“No… I’ve seen this before…” Jamet dug his heels in, eyes locked on the tekk.

Before he could finish, the tekk’s jaws opened and that terrible scream rent the air once again. It launched itself back into the air, wheeling skyward, but not before it had whirled to pull something long and shining from a crude holster on its back. Jamet’s eyes widened.

Electrified spear. Probably stolen.

“Get out!” he screamed, pulling back on Derec with all of his might, bodily hauling the other tikedi out of the water.

Too late. There was a crackle and the tekk let fly.

Just as Derec was pulled free of the water, the blade sliced into it, filling the depths with invisible death. A single bolt arced through the air and caught Derec’s tail tip, dancing fire across every nerve in his small form. He managed one horribly distorted scream, echoed by Jamet, and then fell, crumpling into a heap, tangled across the stones with his would-be savior.

Pain faded. Consciousness faded. The stench of burned fur hung over their crumpled forms long after they’d stilled.

Far above, a single tekk hissed in malicious triumph before spiralling back into the sky to join his fellows. The cliff side city of Tieke was a shadow on the horizon.

Between the tekk and their target, the skies were clear.