Shale arranged for a shuttle to drop me off on the U'la'ke pride planet an hour before sunset, near an area where the orbital scans registered a spike in feline foot traffic. U'la'ke preferred hunting in the dark and Shale's strategists calculated it was the perfect time frame to expedite an encounter with the roving sentries.

From the decay of the city ruins and the partial regrowth of the native vegetation, the science crew calculated that the U'la'ke conquest occurred one to two cycles ago. All sentient and bestial life had been absorbed into the pride colony.

The rubble that remained reminded me of Aegis Point, an independent trading hub in the southern desert of my homeland. The city rose from the ruins of another long-forgotten advanced metropolis. However, this alien cityscape, unlike any on Menthla, was striated with several winding waterways streaming under tarnished pedestrian bridges.

On the surface, the planet appeared to be a dead wasteland, but my ears indicated a vast tunnel system below, swarming with life.

"They are near," Shale's rumbled in my ear through my modified Hass'ar skull-plate.

"I can smell them," I raised my nose and took a slow inhale.

Their scent differed from Shadow's Reach, more briny and tart. I pondered if each pride colony came in different flavors and what transcendent aroma the future Abura might radiate.

Dark shapes skittered throughout the city skyline.

The U'la'ke were just as powerful as the ancient ballads described. Eh'kt often spoke of the creature's malleability and ferocity, enabling them to thrive on any planet by siphoning DNA from native lifeforms, but witnessing their true might firsthand was breathtaking. This pride truly was worthy of Jahaa.

I stepped forward, ignoring the lingering itch left over from my missing pouch. It was empty as the microscopic embryo hadn't yet migrated.

Miscarriages and aborted pregnancies were common on Menthla, thus why we evolved a safe means to expedite the process. Terrain too volatile, resources too limited, no viable male to transfer to for the remainder of the gestation? Just peel and toss.

I encountered numerous species that would view our ways as heartless and barbaric. They never understood it was our body's way of minimizing suffering.

Conception takes three, which meant creating new was rarely a spur-of-the-moment event. Losing a youngling was an awful thing. I hated seeing the flap of skin half hanging off me and had there been a way to save it, I would have taken any and all opportunities.

But there wasn't so my body preserved what it could and concluded the tragedy quickly and safely.

A grouping of U'la'ke scouts gathered on the outskirts of the surrounding shadows. I could hear the dull rub of their sleek armored plating and their graceful stinger-tipped tails swishing in anticipation.

They were hesitant and aware that I was something different.

Sorry to disappoint, I'm only a messenger.

For weeks, I racked my brain over what opening song even approached a suitable greeting. Oru mandated that all aspects of this endeavor uphold the high standards of Jahaa and I'd been content to yield the majority of that dilemma over onto Shale. Besides, I had a bigger problem. What melody in existence was worthy of Menthla?

The U'la'ke were circling now, creeping in closer to better understand my scent.

Everything about them was perfection.

And here I was about to request their Liege to give up a precious daughter to some random razkur who couldn't even keep her own unborn child alive for more than a couple of weeks.

I paused, unconsciously grinding my teeth.

"Are they attacking?" Shale spoke up anxiously.

"No," I relaxed my jaw and shook out my ears. "It's nothing."

Fuck it. Now or never.

I wasn't here to mourn, my purpose was to shout.

The heart of Menthla wasn't a chant, or some carefully crafted historically accurate ballad. It was blood, and teeth, and love, and every fucked up horrible catastrophe that failed to kill us!

I filled my lungs to the brim and reaffirmed my decision to leave my guitar behind, so not to inadvertently threaten my audience.

Then I sang the first song I ever wrote to provoke Red Spider into fighting me out in the open.

I let go, howling to all the world that it was the best day of my life, that I was alive, and there was no stopping my beat. The song was written in Oto-Winde because that was the old bounty hunter's native language.

The U'la'ke watched me from nearby, confused but silently captivated.

My voice soared, flooding the night air with lyrics of how I was a time traveler delivered on a white-hot meteor aimed straight at his head and how our union would set the sky on fire.

Normally, I'd pair the vocals with sick ear-melting cords, but singing a Capella added a whole new level of rhapsody I'd never before delved.

A few refrains later, I incorporated the cats' delicate clicks to initiate a call and response and invited them to join in. And they did!

Then I chirped my purpose for coming and watched them hop about in a tizzy. A few of the scouts broke off while others stayed to continue watching and listening.

I kept the remainder entertained with a second performance. This time I selected a dark rock anthem I composed for a hostile Graven I stalked in Thorngate's underground.

Three overtures later, one scout returned, followed by hundreds more congregating.

They stared at me, their glowing orange eyes waiting patiently.

"Are you in danger?" Shale checked in over the intercom.

I let out a long valiant wail, then motioned for the U'la'ke's response.

The cats frolicked over one another, chirping in unison with their heads pointed toward the sky.

"Welcome.. this way," was the best I could translate to my fellow clan members observing in orbit on Shale's ship and those watching the holo-broadcast being transmitted to Sahei.

I followed the U'la'ke deeper into the city.

The fragmented buildings were littered with still blinking holo billboards depicting half-naked females dancing, similar to the ones I came across on the lunar colony where I performed my Dread Rite.

The former occupants of the planet weren't human. Shale called them Fentari. Similar to humans except with pink and green skin. A moderately industrious society but plagued by systemic greed and political treachery.

A synthetic ethereal glittered hand swooped by my face, then crackled and glitched into nothing as the billboard hummed in disrepair.

It reminded me of Eh'kt and our long, painful conversation the night before.

The secure comm link Shale provided allowed for an unlimited holo chat with the option to activate hard light communication. Ordinarily, I would have ignored the superfluous upgrade but with Eh'kt stuck on Sahei attending to the preparations for our journey to Menthla, I availed myself of the luxury.

The link lacked his sounds and smells, but I could feel the pressure of him holding my hand and stroking my hair as we layed quietly next to one another all night long.

We knew we were leaping into the entire venture of starting a family rather quickly, and maybe it was naïve of us to think the process would be easy.

More than anything, I wanted a life with Eh'kt and I wanted to know that he was happy.

Logic, Eh'kt, and Dr. Kazz'mon all attest circumstances were beyond anyone's control and that I had nothing to apologize for but I couldn't stop picturing Eh'kt receiving pregnancy termination notifications from his previous partners and his subsequent anxiety over females writing off all of his offspring as unworthy burdens. I couldn't help feeling like Iwas branding my mate with another failure.

I'll be home soon. Everything will be better once I'm in his arms and we're on our way to Menthla.

The U'la'ke raced through the wreckage, guiding me toward a cluster of buildings. I dragged a hand along a rusted length of handrailing still tacky with cat's territorial marker jelly.

They stick together and look at all they have accomplished!

After all the death and misery I've witnessed and cultivated... All the worlds I've traveled to... All the joy and violence tasted... Today I got the chance to fulfill every razkur's silent dream.

Today I bring the Abura home. Nothing can stop me!

Several of the cats began hissing frantically, calling out warnings for me to run and seek shelter. Then they all scattered.

"What happened?" Shale called out over the intercom. I set the proximity recording sensors in my wristcomm up to maximum, to provide the Forged and everyone on his ship with a three-dimensional display of everything occurring around me.

A buzzing noise approached from above, rising from behind a row of twisted skyscrapers drooping around me.

A long metal-scaled fish came swimming through the air with sharp spines protruding from its belly and sides. Each spine tip was sparking purple and lit up dormant plasma channels that were built into the city infrastructure as it passed over.

I took refuge under a lopsided concrete awning to wait for the mechanized fish to pass over. But purple lines hummed to life below my feet, triggering the automated security system sensors to activate sirens.

"Run!" Shale shouted.

I took off through the streets, narrowly dodging a hail of concrete-piercing bullets as glowing purple lines snaked throughout the ruins and stimulated dormant turrets into action.

"I'm sending the shuttle," Shale boomed in my ear.

"No! Not yet!" I huffed, tumbling and parkouring through a mishmash of urban wreckage. "Negotiations are over if I turn tail now."

The familiar grumble of Shale's displeasure vibrated in my ear, but he revised his order to the shuttle crew, ordering them to remain out of sight and on standby.

The U'la'ke were nowhere in sight.

Good! The last thing I need is for one of them to get hurt because I lured them out here.

I sprinted into the remnants of a wide-open corporate campus courtyard featuring a fountain sculpture, the kind with little jets installed in the ground that shoot up spouts of water. But this one was slanted and covered in slick algae.

Crap! Only one way to go.

I slid down and crawled through a snarl of berried vines into a section of the courtyard that had long ago crumbled into a soggy valley.

"You're cornered," Shale kept me updated from the bridge of his ship. "But there's a tunnel behind you. Can you access it?"

I turned to the steep wall blocking my path.

"Uhh.." I looked down in dread. "Yes."

The buzz of the fish drone grew louder and then multiplied when three more fish flew in from the north.

"Hurry!" Shale snapped.

I stood at the edge of a deep oily pool of water, then hopped in and dove under.

It should be noted that razkurs were not buoyant. Our bones were inherently dense and our body fat ratio was near to nothing. Even with our lungs full, we all eventually sank straight to the bottom.

If the 3D holo stream was still functioning, I must have looked completely ridiculous to the Zhaguai.

Sure, it's easy for you big fuckers. You float like gators and barely have to paddle to generate momentum.

I tried my best to kick like Eh'kt but gave up and just started hopping along the bottom.

Heavy slippery things bumped my arms in the darkness, and memories of the white lake clouded my vision.

No no no! I'm not giving in!

My air was running out but I was determined to locate the exit. For Menthla. For the Abura. For Eh'kt!

"-ere ar- uu?" A low garbled voice vibrated in the water.

Shale... ?

I tapped on the auxiliary backup in my comm to boost the signal of my locator.

His communication switched over to red text hovering above my wristcomm. EXIT AHEAD.

I fumbled in the blackness, the protective membranes in my ears were sealed and my infrared went wonky underwater.

There was a flimsy wall of plastic blocking my route. I groped along the panel until my fingers grazed a gap at the top.

There!

I slammed my body against the wall, but it wouldn't budge. A cluster of bubbles slipped from my mouth.

Not today, water!

I squatted down tight, then vaulted up and over, spun upside down to kick both legs at the ceiling. The wall wobbled and I did it again.

"Ahh!" I cried out in pain as water sloshed up my nose.

My air was nearly gone. I kicked again and this time I felt the plastic crack.

Once more, for Jahaa!

The plastic split open and I hurried through the opening, finding myself sprawled out on the tiled floor of a dark empty room, coughing and gasping.

"Made it," I updated Shale.

I was in the lobby of a broken office building. There weren't any purple lights, only the soft flicker of a cracked computer monitor illuminating the empty foyer.

A breeze whirled through a tunnel nearby.

The smiling, wiry faces of the U'la'ke sprang up along the rafters. I sang a little to confirm that I was unharmed. Then more big cats gathered and swarmed against my legs, chirping for me to follow.

The tide of black armored beast eventually pulled me to a broken escalator leading down into a giant sinkhole coated in shiny chitin. The citric smell wafting up from the hole reminded me of the Abura History Museum in Karwarak.

My bare feet slid over the translucent biopolymer and, to my surprise, my white claws sank in as though they were perfectly evolved to meld into the glassy material.

"I'm going down."

...

I entered the main chamber and couldn't help but stare. The U'la'ke Liege was magnificent. Exactly as the hymns of old and the most prized Zhaguai trophies implied. Unlike the others, it had a dense wiry mane and a dozen additional thick, long stinger-less tails. It also possessed both sex organs, making it the only feline in the pride capable of procreating.

It was also huge and easily on scale with the behemoths Eh'kt and I viewed during the Convergence.

The Liege's progeny pulled me closer, as its wide spiky ears tilted toward me, beckoning me to share this alluring sound all of its children have been chirping about.

I lowered my face in a deep formal bow and then complied, this time selecting a bewitching earworm my father wrote to commemorate his lost triad. It was a simple ballad about divergent paths slowly but inevitably merging together.

The Liege observed my performance while drones bustled around it, tending to its thick voluptuous black tails sprawled across the den as it continued birthing litters of purring nymphs from each tail-tip. Then, when my song ended, the Liege raised its head and began making a repetitive rasping sound.

"What's it doing?" Shale whispered in my ear.

The drones went into action, half of them nuzzling at her extra tails while the others licked the appendages clean and carried the last few nymphs out of the chamber.

"Oh, wow!" I backpedaled.

The Liege shook and raised its entire plume of tails and stepped forward, looming over me. Its glowing orange mouth drifted by my face, then opened to inhale in my scent.

I kept my ears high and vigilant, ready to satisfy its next request.

A soft infrasound rattled from the Liege's orange glowing ribcage. The nearest I could translate was SHOW US.

It permitted me to use lethal force against her children and demanded that I prove my ability to keep its progeny safe.

I bowed once more, then leaped up onto the ceiling.

All at once, the pride swirled into a frenzy, biting and jabbing at me with their claws and stinger-tipped tails. The sound of their bodies rubbing together made the hair on the back of my neck flex and tingle.

"I have the emergency evac ready and waiting!" Shale called out.

"It's all good," I flipped backward through the mayhem and sprang gracefully between the columns. "No need to step in."

The churn of cats tight around my body felt like the first time I made love with Eh'kt. He was soo eager and clumsy while grinding that glorious cock against my clit down the hallway, and then that soft hissing thrum rolled up from his chest!

I was ready to rip off my own skin just to feel him sooner.

Abura below, I wanted to fuck him three times over just for not making me wait another second!

I never thought twice about missing out on experiencing a razkur. Heck, before that day, I resigned myself to dying a virgin. Not for lack of trying.

There was once a fella in Thorngate I was sweet on and I knew he felt the same way, but despite our endless age, he was a fully grown male and I was trapped in the body of a thirteen-year-old child.

Oh, but the wait was worth it!

Well, no... being the only horny razkur for a million light years sucked. Still, finding Eh'kt, fighting alongside him, and feeling him stretch me out places I never had a clue were aching to be ravaged, made all those centuries wandering in isolation feel like nothing.

And now here I am singing with the Abura!

Well, their sorta mama and eunuch aunties and uncles.

As much as I wanted this dance to go on all night, Jahaa had a timetable. I scanned the chaos and spotted the Liege's colossal mane poking out amongst a wall of whipping tails.

I braced my toes against the wall and listened for my target.

There!

I launched forward and nailed a hulking sentinel with a devastating uppercut, then flung its body beneath the Liege's muscular legs.

The Liege slipped and tumbled over, then I flung another one of its children into the fragile section of a load-bearing column.

CRACK!

The roof puckered and broke open.

One, and two, and three, and four... I kept my beat as I timed my charge, then plunged head-first below the Liege's chin.

Tink.

I stopped my teeth and locked my jaw firmly inside a critical armor gap between the Liege's head and throat. The sting of its acidic venom would have been unpleasant, but I had no fear of being paralyzed or mortally injured. Razkur blood neutralizes their stinger venom.

The U'la'ke Liege laid on its side, out of breath and fully submissive to my hold, until I let go.

If there was any debate over whether I could defeat the cat Liege within the heart of its territory, it was obliterated when all its children withdrew and the sovereign stood up and bowed to me.

When I returned home to Sahei, I would need to give my thanks to E'pire. A fair portion of this victory was possible due to her ruthless drills enforcing restraint and sensible acumen.

A lanky sentinel slipped down from the hole in the ceiling carrying a small mewling nymph swaddled in black and hanging from its mouth. The drone crouched and presented the precious offspring.

Then the Liege slammed its hand down, hissed, and flashed its long fangs.

"It has one more demand," I spoke to Shale over the intercom.

The Forged growled at the ready.

"The flying fish drones and the turrets," I continued. "They self-repair. It wants them gone."

"We can disable the security system permanently," Shale confirmed.

I dipped my ears respectfully to the Liege. "It can be done, but you will have to give my clan temporary access."

The Liege hissed once more, then stepped aside and twitched its plume of black tails toward the sentinel, signaling that the loyal drone was meant to deliver the nymph personally.

The drone crept forward and knelt in front of me, fully aware that the unborn Liege would kill it to secure the new pride's supremacy.

I lowered my head to the Liege and the drone sentinel in reverence. "You have our gratitude."

.

.

.

TRANSLATION:

U'la'ke/Abura = alien cat species that are mortal enemies of the Zhaguai. Have stinger tails with paralytic venom. Known as "The Felija" to humans. They live in large Prides. The Lieges are the biggest, are both sexes, have large manes, and thirteen tails. AlSO: a sacred predatory species that shares a symbiotic relationship with the Razkurs.

hass'ar skull-plate = an ancient military-grade skull-plate head armor made for pre-surface dwelling eyeless razkurs.

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Next stop, Menthla! and more🔥🔥🔥~😁

-A. E. Shelly (a.k.a. Oloo)