Page 9 of The Huntmaster

I turned. Toren stood at the edge of the bridge, his expression unreadable.

"The elders are meeting," he said quietly. "They want to know if you intend to keep her as a prisoner... or something else."

I looked back out at the violet mists. "Tell them she is a variable. And until I understand her purpose here, she stays untouched."

Toren grunted, a sound of disapproval, but he didn't argue. He knew my temper was as sharp as my claws tonight.

I stayed on the platform long after he left, watching the blue fires of the village flicker and fade. I had brought a spark of the sun into my house, and now I had to figure out how to keep it from burning the Oru-Ka to ash.

Chapter 6

Lyra

The wind up here didn’t just blow; it sang. It was a haunting, low-frequency whistle that vibrated through the platform's woven floor, buzzing against the soles of my boots.

I stayed exactly where he had dropped me for a long time. My body was locked in a state of high-alert paralysis, my eyes fixed on the empty space where the giant had just… stepped into the abyss. I half-expected to hear a thud, a splash, something to indicate he’d hit the ground. But there was only the distant, rhythmic hum of the village below and the rustle of leaves.

"Okay," I whispered, the sound of my own voice small and fragile in the vastness. "Okay, Lyra. Step one: don't move. Moving leads to falling. Falling leads to gravity-related structural failure of the skull. And I really like my skull."

I forced my fingers to relax their death-grip on the woven wood. My left shoulder was a scream of agony that had settled into a dull, nauseating throb. I needed to reset it—I’d done the training for it back at the Academy—but every time I even thought about moving my arm, my vision swam with grey spots.

I sat up slowly, dragging my back against the central trunk of the tree. There were no walls here, no roof to shield me from the alien sky. It was just a flat, circular disc of living wood grown out from the trunk, a terrifyingly exposed island in the clouds. I felt like a bug pinned to a board. Or a very confused appetiser.

From this vantage point, the sheer impossibility of my situation hit me like a physical weight. I was an exobiologist. Who'd spent ten years of my life studying fossilised microbes and analysing the chemical signatures of distant atmospheres, praying for a sign—just a single, definitive scrap of proof that we weren't alone. I had written papers on theoretical morphology. Debated the likelihood of bilateral symmetry in extraterrestrial vertebrates until my jaw ached.

And now? One of those "theoretical morphologies" had just sniffed me like a piece of meat and told me to be still in perfect, guttural English.

"Aliens," I breathed, a hysterical laugh bubbling up in my throat before I choked it back. "Actual, living, breathing, seven-foot-tall, red skinned, three-fingered... sentient life...with mother fucking tails."

I thought back to the way he moved. The fluidity of his muscles, the way those glowing markings on his skin seemed to pulse in time with a double-beat rhythm I could feel even now. He wasn't just a biological marvel; he was a person. “Well, technically an alien, Lyra.” I scoff to myself. An alien who currently held my life in his massive, clawed hands. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves with the inter-species personhood manifestos just because he has nice shoulders.

The realisation sent a fresh wave of vertigo through me that had nothing to do with the height and everything to do with the fact that my First Contact experience involved being manhandled by a giant who clearly didn't believe in personal space—or shirts.

"Focus," I hissed, rubbing my face with my good hand.

The shock was starting to recede, leaving something much more dangerous in its wake: the cold. As the adrenaline drained out of my system, I realised I was shaking. Not just from fear, but from a deep, bone-settling chill. The air at this altitude was thin and biting, and my flight suit was a total loss.

I looked down at the tears in the fabric. The opening across my chest was gaping, and the cooling night air felt like ice against my sweat-slicked skin. My skin felt... wrong. It was sensitive, as if the very air was rubbing against me like sandpaper. I touched my forehead and winced. I was burning up, yet my teeth were beginning to chatter so hard it was audible.

"No, no, no. Not now," I muttered, my breath hitching. "Not an infection. Not some alien flu. I refused to be the first human to die of space-malaria."

The peppery, humid scent of the forest floor was gone, replaced by a sharp, chemical smell from the blue fires below that made my lungs ache. I tried to shift my weight, wanting to find a more secured spot, but the world tilted violently to the left. The stars above—too many of them, too bright—began to swirl like a drain.

I slumped back against the trunk, my breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps. The bioluminescence of the forest was starting to blur, the teal and violet bleeding together into a kaleidoscopic mess. I watched a small, glowing insect drift past my face, its wings leaving trails of light in my vision. Was it real, or was my brain already misfiring?

"Shit," I whispered. My voice sounded further away now, like I was listening to myself through a long tube. "Shit, shit, shit."

The fascination—the scientist’s wonder at the markings and the anatomy—was being swallowed by a much more primal reality. I was a biological intruder on a world my immune system didn't recognise. Every breath I took was a gamble. Every scratch on my skin was a gateway for something I couldn't name. My body was reacting to the foreign microbes, the pollen, the very atmosphere. I was an anomaly, and my system was starting to shut down in protest.

My eyes returned to the spot where the male had once stood. I found myself wishing he’d come back. Not because I trusted him—he was a predator who had looked at me with clinical indifference—but because he was the only thing that felt solid in this shifting, glowing nightmare.

"Come back, you big freak," I croaked, closing my eyes as a wave of heat washed over me, followed immediately by a violent shiver. My shoulder pulsed with a heat that matched the fire in my brain. "I'm not... I'm not finished... observing you..."

The platform seemed to sway. I felt the Pulse of the tree beneath me—thump-thump, thump-thump—and for a moment, I couldn't tell if it was the planet's heart or my own. I sank further into the shadows of the trunk, my hair matting against my damp forehead. The air felt heavy now, like I was breathing through a wet cloth.

I wasn't a scientist anymore. I wasn't an explorer. I was just a body, breaking down in the dark, waiting for the hunter to return and decide if I was worth saving or if I was just another piece of wreckage to be cleared from his home.

As my eyes flickered shut, I saw a shadow detach itself from the darkness of a nearby branch. For a second, I thought I saw those amber eyes again, glowing with a terrible, silent intensity.