The Arotia Drones started to mumble amongst themselves. Sapha could hear the fear, the worry, and maybe even the slightest hint of hope. There were other survivors. The male who was next to Marl started to chatter. He was wondering if they had stores of energy hidden away somewhere. Were they saviors?
Sapha bit into her lip. She had a bad feelings about this. If these others had lots of energy stores, why would they have journeyed to Arotia? They were here for a reason, and judging by their massive group and hard features, it wasn’t to form a community and celebrate life. A glance along the fence showed that there were no priests or guards along the perimeter, no one to defend the city. Where was Kan and his men?
“This is bad,” Sapha muttered.
A commotion had her spinning to the left. Finally Kan had emerged from his home, and surrounded by guards was making his way to the watchtower over the main gate. Despite her previous thoughts of his absence, his presence didn’t exactly fill Sapha with reassurance. So far the high priest was proving to be more than useless.
“We should go, Marl,” she said. That nudging sensation to flee was not one she ignored; it had saved her life on more than one occasion.
Without hesitation, she scaled back down the fence, and Marl, who trusted her implicitly, followed. “I want to know what’s going to happen.” He continued craning his head as they started to backtrack away from the front gate and through the town.
They didn’t speak again until they’d arrived at the piece of metal which hid the hole in the fence they used to leave the city. Luckily, it seemed as if the incoming foreign Drones were only at the front entrance, so they did not have to sneak to their cave.
It took a little bit of time to cross the darkened planes. Sapha had marked the route many years ago; she could have walked it with her eyes closed. Both of their faces reflected relief as the thorny bush that hid the cave came into view. It was always a good outing when they made it home without detection. Scooting around the outer area, they made it inside the large rock cavern. It was a huge single room, with an arterial that exited out the other side. It was perfect because they had two ways to run if it ever came to that.
The moment Sapha was safe inside, she dropped the shadows that cloaked her, revealing her tall, thin frame. She was not as shapeless as the average drone, but still did not have much extra weight on her bones. Her long, dark purple hair was secured to the nape of her neck with many twines of string. Unlike the Drones, she had two eyes, but they were still red around the pupil, darkening out to a gold on the iris. Her skin was chameleon-like, changing color with her surroundings. But generally it was somewhere in a rich brown tone.
Marl was striding around the sparse room. There was not much in the dark interior besides a few padded surfaces for his meditation, some bones they used for games, and tomes of information that Sapha had hoarded away. The moss creatures which clung high to the wall cast shadowy light. Luckily the town didn’t know about these light givers; otherwise they would have drained their energy long ago. Sapha had never seen them in the city, they seemed to only exist far away from civilization. In fact, she was starting to wonder now how many other organisms might be out there, surviving, learning how to function in the dying world.
The army out the front suggested there was quite a lot.
Marl finally expressed his unease. “Where did they come from? What do you think they want?”
“I have no idea,” Sapha had to admit. “But something tells me that Arotia is not going to like the reason they either want our city or our crystals, and either way it will be the end of the people here.”
Marl was already deathly pale, his skin white, translucent – like all of the Drones – muscle and bone visible beneath, but he seemed to shrink even further into himself. “What will happen to me?” He knew Sapha needed nothing to survive.
“I will keep you alive,” she whispered to her only friend, the little boy she thought of as a brother and would die to protect. “Do not ever fear death from lack of energy, I have enough to keep you alive.”
Marl hugged her, his cold thin body melding into her own for a brief second. The Drones did not hug or touch much, it was not in their nature – too easy to want to suck the life energy from another. But Sapha craved touch, so these brief moments meant everything to her. “I would give you energy now, but I know that if anyone sensed it on you, they would want to know where you got it from and they would kill you.”
They would think Marl was stealing energy and they would not hesitate to end his life. They were brutal with their laws now. Martial law ruled Arotia.
“You give me more than enough.” Marl patted her arm once before withdrawing back to himself.
He really didn’t understand the power Sapha wielded.