Beyond Good and Evil novel 3

The descent was smooth and mechanical, as though the abduction was being carried out by a drone rather than a living creature. The tentacle's hold was equally robotic, as strong and as cold as iron. Jade shuddered as she tried to find feeling in her numb legs.

Down she went.

The walls throbbed with DomZ presence, tendrils of ribbed bone clutching every surface. Jade choked on stale air, striving to breath as the tentacle squeezed her burning lungs.

The DomZ limb finally stopped moving just as it reached the bottom of the crater. Its base was surrounded by a ring of upturned claws that caged both the appendage and its captive. Jade jerked her shoulders urgently, to no avail.

A whisper echoed round the chamber.

Jade looked up. In spite of the green glow, the pit was still doused in shadows. She thought she could see something moving ahead of her, but the features were obscured by the darkness.

Then an orb of illumination winked into life at head height with Jade, still held two metres off the ground. She observed it, a plethora of suggestions as to what it was running through her head- the sun, a floodlight, the way to the afterlife; all absurd. She just wanted to believe that it was anything except what it must be.

The light increased in intensity, sweeping back the shadows and unveiling itself.

Jade's mouth fell open of its own accord.

It was a DomZ. But not like the sarcophagus domzii. This was a superior breed- a Soul Eater DomZ.

Its body was a thicker, longer version of the thing that held Jade tight in its grasp. The ball of green light was set in the tip of the length, surrounded by a formless circle of DomZ flesh. From the sides of this 'head', pale and featureless arms waved aimlessly, probing Jade's face as the spidery shape moved towards her.

Jade stared blindly, mouth agape, so frozen that she didn't even flinch at the skeletal touch against her cheek. She'd heard about this sort of monster in news reports but had never even dreamt she might see one. There were few who had and had lived to tell the tale. It was all she could do to return the DomZ's shining gaze.

'Khauhl oempakanh,' the creature's deep, guttural moans bounced off every surface of the crater. Jade winced at the noise.

'Khauhl oempakanh,'

Jade squirmed as the sound bit into her head; an awful chorus of growls that made her stomach turn. She'd never heard anything like it. The noise resonated at just the right frequency to hurt her ears, and each note took a full ten seconds to dissipate as it rebounded from wall to wall.

"Shauni."

The word clicked with Jade. She sensed something from that particular sound.

"Shauni," it moved closer, as though with insistency.

With a sudden shock, Jade realised that this thing- this DomZ thing, was speaking to her!

It was calling her Shauni!

There was no equivalent of a facial expression to be seen, and the words were incomprehensible, assuming that they were words at all. Nevertheless, somehow Jade had the strangest feeling that some sort of connection was forming between her and the monster. Already she was certain that the thing wasn't just staring at her; it was examining her, like a scientist would marvel at an insect under a microscope. It was as though the creature's thoughts were reaching into her mind.

"Shauni Ourhbaïths mètheud."

Jade became a little dizzy and blinked slowly. The moment she did something flashed behind her eyelids- an image.

A vision.

A huge cave, covered in DomZ matter, half filled with a mirror of dark water. In the middle of this solid ocean was an island with a single occupant.

The entity was huge, as tall as Jade's lighthouse. It was a human made of armour-grey stone, but it wasn't a statue. It showed no sign of being alive, yet its appearance implied without any perceivable reason that it was a living being.

It felt alive.

Jade opened her eyes, and the vision faded. The sight that awaited her was the blazing core of the Soul Eater DomZ. Jade squinted, unable to tear her gaze away.

"Shauni."

The vision appeared again, before the girl's waking eyes.

The statue that wasn't a statue was concealed beneath a stone cowl. What little could be seen of its face was soulless and empty. It contrasted heavily against the DomZ influence that flooded the cave with its creeping presence, pulsing bones clutching the walls in greedy malice while the human sculpture remained still and expressionless. Four arms reached from the torso of the living monument, two held out to the side, two cupped before it. In the cupped hands was a ball of light. Jade found her attention drawn to the sight, more than an intangible image should've gauged her interest. It wasn't the yellow light of the sun which she feared she'd never see again, but neither was it the green light of the DomZ. This light was pure white.

The light began consuming Jade's thoughts, blinding memories and feelings. She let out a gasp and tried to look away, but she could no longer feel her body. She tried to tell herself that it was a hallucination with no meaning, but her conscious dissolved in the glare, and soon enough what little thought that was left to her could think of only one thing.

'What is it?'

The vision drowned her psyche, and Jade collapsed in a faint. She no longer sensed the Soul Eater that continued to examine her, nor the grim surroundings. Nothing entered her mind except the hypnotic vision generated by her proximity with the DomZ, and the echoes of the name 'Shauni'.

Deadly silence descended. Nothing disturbed the stillness except the gently writhing of DomZ flesh. It could have stayed that way indefinitely, were it not for a muffled cry from somewhere on the edge of the scene.

"Jade!"

Jade- her true name.

Jade groggily raised her head. As she did, there was a shout of "Hang on Jade; I'm comin'!"

The girl looked up to the source of the voice. She had the chance to acknowledge the limited view from the crater opening, before her attention was grabbed by a figure leaping from one of the lower lighthouse windows with an excitable cry that drowned out the smashing of glass.

Jade's Uncle Pey'j, an extremely short and portly evolved pig, came plummeting into the crater with all the brash inelegance that defined him. His loud and abrupt entrance banished the subtle tendrils of atmosphere created by the DomZ as he landed in the middle of the Soul Eater's extended spine. The creature howled and reared up, tossing the hog aside. The tentacle that held Jade segmented and retracted back into the ground, and the girl landed in the centre of the ring of claws with a burst of acute awareness for the real world.

"Free yerself, Jade!" Pey'j hollered as he regained his footing. He took something from where it was attached to the harness of his S.A.C and hurled it through the air.

"I'll create a diversion!"

Jade spotted the object spinning end over end toward her. She jumped up and reached out, catching it perfectly. As she expected, it was her Daï'jo.

Jade admired the device as it extended in the middle, becoming as long as she was tall. The pole itself was coloured with a pleasant bluish hue and as light as a feather, while the ends were weighted ovals with flecked gold leaf coatings, each one clasping a small, clear gemstone. The Daï'jo was a meditation tool that Jade was an adept at using both for mental exercise, and for combat.

While Pey'j charged at the Soul Eater with a small hammer, Jade turned her thoughts upon her prison of claws. Holding her prayer stick in her right hand, she pulled it back over the left shoulder to prepare to strike, and contacted her meditative centre.

The crystals on the staff lit up as single cell organisms breeding inside detected Jade's focused mind and replied. Psychically responsive bio-energy bled from the gems, crackling down the staff like pink tinged electricity till it coalesced at the point where Jade held the Daï'jo. The energy known by many names such as qi, life-force, soul essence or psycho-karma continued to grow stronger, the only limit to its strength being Jade's ability to channel it from her own mind.

After a few seconds the girl unleashed this build-up of power.

Organic lightning erupted from both her and the staff, knocking down the claws like they were toothpicks. The blast carried Jade a few feet into the air as electrical arcs jumped from her and into the floor at a safe distance. She set down again, her heart beating so hard it ached. Jade's body burned with effort, but she forced herself to move.

The DomZ had taken some sort of damage to its spine. It had now employed a ring of spikes to hold its head up off the floor and out of reach of Pey'j. The pig dashed his hammer along the bars until one of the arms on the DomZ's head came down, swiped the tool away into the darkness and hurled Pey'j to the floor. Jade darted towards her uncle, but he saw her coming and held up a trotter/hand.

"In the eye, Jade! That's his Achilles Heel!"

Jade froze in a moment of indecision- help her uncle, or stop their attacker?

The monstrous DomZ let rip with an energy beam from its eye, not unlike Jade's own psycho-karma attack. Pey'j jumped up and went sprinting through the cavern as the yellow ray powered after him, burning the earth to ash.

Jade ran at the Soul Eater, charging her Daï'jo as she moved. She skidded to a halt in front of the DomZ and fired another pulse of mental energy.

The creature screeched in outrage as the claws bracing it fell away and it collapsed to the rubble strewn earth, writhing as it tried to get up again. Jade attacked immediately but the ball at the centre of the DomZ mass was tougher and heavier than the purple crystals of the sarcophagus domzii. While the thing squealed with each impact, it did not die, and soon the circle of claws had risen again to hold the Soul Eater up out of reach of even Jade's athletic jumps as she tried to go after the eye.

Jade stepped back to prepare for another attack, but one of the DomZ's spindly arms flicked out and knocked her down. Her staff clattered to the ground as she landed on her back.

The Soul Eater tilted its head and fired is deadly energy ray. Jade rolled aside and came to her feet, dancing away as the beam chased after her. The beam took a moment to burn itself out, and when it had the girl made a dash for her staff.

The floor under Jade's feet ruptured as the DomZ's tentacle burst upwards and threw Jade to the earth again. When she landed she felt the tentacle clamp around her leg, and in the next moment the thing was dragging her towards the hole it came from. She reached down to try and pull her foot free, resisting the urge to cry out as DomZ apparently sought to bury her alive.

"Come on, Jade! Fight yer way out!" Pey'j shouted as he appeared at the hole where the tentacle was coming from and took hold of the alien limb in a huge bear hug.

Although the tentacle could no longer pull her, Jade found that she been dragged back into the vicinity of the Soul Eater's sinister aura.

Her thoughts were once again being invaded by those of the DomZ.

Jade's reality blurred as the silhouette of a four armed figured blocked the view of her DomZ adversary. She tried to push the multi limbed phantasm aside and ignore the mental violation, but the immense wall of thought thrown up by the DomZ coursed through her mind as an invasive sludge and weighted her thoughts down.

Jade convulsed as though to be sick. Whispered voices taunted her on the edge of her hearing.

"Shauni. Shauni."

Memories that didn't belong to her cropped up - memories of shadows and green lights and screaming, pleading faces encased in crystals. Hostile intentions battered at Jade's mentality, and she sank deep into the DomZ's mind, drowning in its oppressive presence.

She couldn't stand it anymore.

With all the willpower she could muster, Jade lashed out in her thoughts at the DomZ- not just the Soul Eater but at the whole DomZ race and the hurt and pain she seen them inflict, thoughts of her orphan charges lending weight to her rebellious impulse.

The psychic bond between Jade and the Soul Eater broke.

Maybe it was because the DomZ hadn't been expecting such potent defiance from a human being, but the shattering mental link left the DomZ in throws of agony. The high pitched voice of the Soul Eater peeled throughout the cavern in an awful tidal wave of noise that left Jade's ears ringing even as she struggled with her own trauma from the experience. The girl's mind returned to her body, ablaze with the shock of what she'd achieved.

The Soul Eater collapsed to the floor. Knowing that she might not have long, Jade turned her attention upon the Daï'jo. She reached out a hand to the abandoned weapon and began to meditate again, chanting a mantra under her breath.

The bond between a Daï'jo and its user was unique, given power by the channelling of psycho-karma. Jade was no fully-fledged psychic, but she was an accomplished practitioner of higher conscious meditation and knew that the art held sway over more than just how people think. The staff was several metres away and on the edge of the shadows, but as Jade turned her attention to the Daï'jo it ignited with psycho-karma, even at a distance. Jade fought to pour even more focus into the device. The staff burned brighter, shuddered with suppressed power, and then unexpectedly skittered across the ground and into Jade's outstretched hand.

Jade panted with the effort of the feat, proud of herself but aware that there was no time to lose.

The girl in green sat up and slammed her staff forward. The blunt head penetrated the mass of hard flesh chomping down on her foot. One flash of psycho-karma later, and the DomZ finally let go with a moan of pain. Jade flipped back onto her feet, and before another diversion could take place she charged the monster with her Daï'jo held high and humming with power. With a two handed swing she struck the DomZ as hard as she could across its huge, bulbous eye, spilling the psychic energy of her staff into the bright orb. The affect was instantaneous.

The DomZ's body was racked with spasms that defied the damage Pey'j had dealt to its back earlier. The creature lifted itself high into the air in an attempt to escape the throws of death that travelled from nerve ending to nerve ending within its harden flesh. The DomZ quaked, the colour of its body flowing into different shades of green and red in less time than it took for a heart to beat. The process of death went on until, at last, the root of the DomZ exploded, leading to a domino effect all the way up the elongated spine until only the head remained, still upturned in shock. The mass of other worldly flesh remained suspended in the air for a moment, propelled by the power of the residual DomZ light that ebbed away.

The Soul Eater's head fell and landed in the small depression that marked where it had been planted. The creature wailed, thrashing about, its legs wiggling pathetically.

Despite the air of evil and the utmost dread that came with the very name 'DomZ', Jade couldn't help feel splash of regret as she observed the suffering she'd inflicted on the alien.

Though only for a moment.

The Soul Eater stopped struggling and curled its legs up, the very picture of a wounded insect. Then the harshly shaped body burst with explosive force, leaving not a trace behind except for the green central orb, which began to pale as the taint of the DomZ bled from it. The last few fingers of dense flesh shrank away to nothing, and all that remained was a gleaming sky blue pearl the size of a football.