Epilogue

Mia sat in a beam of sunlight filtering in through one of the windows of the learning center. She shifted the chair a little and then adjusted her heavy form. Her back ached with carrying this child, her stomach protruding well into her lap leaving very little space for the tiny girl perched there. Small black striped ears twitched toward her and big blue eyes gazed up from the cherubic face framed by black curls. Kiri was going to be a heart breaker. Already Adaini and Jasper battled over who could do more for her, who would find a pillow for her to sit, or bring her a drink whenever she pouted her pretty lips. Corban, her older brother thought it all a bunch of ridiculousness.

“Tell the one about uncle Gorth again mama,” he begged. “Did he really beat seven Y’kil all by himself?”

“And burn out the brooding nest?” Adaini, never far from Kiri, or his best friend wanted to know.

She withheld a groan. It had been a fine idea when she had decided to turn Gorth’s adventure into a fairy tale of its own. In the days after he had returned his bravery and selflessness had become a symbol that both the Livarians and the women had rallied around. As if it had somehow tempered the fear of the Y’kil invasion. For weeks it was all anyone could talk about. Now, almost ten years later, it was still the most requested tale the kids wanted to hear.

“Please mama,” Kiri placed her little hand on Mia’s arm and batted those eyes.

“Alright,” she gave in. A little cheer went up from those close and when Corban called out that ‘mama was telling the story again’ several more children rushed in.

Mia couldn’t help but smile down at them. Their hope, their future. Beautiful babies that were far too fast growing into young men and women.

A large shadow darkened the door and the man himself stepped inside, his large dark figure not one bit intimidating to the children who all jumped up and danced around him excitedly.

“Uncle Gorth! Miss Mia is going to tell your fairy tale again,” one of the little denizens cried. His coloring an exact replica of Huntak’s, though he had Pheobe’s wild red hair.

“I heard,” he grumbled, picking up his daughter and setting her up on his shoulder. She was really much too big for such actions, and as serious and reserved as her mother, but Gorth was bigger and he still did it every chance he got. “I thought we agreed to retire that one for a while?” he looked at her.

Mia shrugged. “You try telling them no, they’ll eat me alive. Hows Becks?”

“Resting. The baby was up all night, we finally got her to sleep,” Gorth sounded put out but the wide grin on his face was anything but. Oh the joys of a newborn. She rubbed her belly lovingly.

Gorth settled himself on the floor, his daughter, Freya tucked in his lap.

To her surprise it wasn’t long after Pheobe and Ashley walked through the door, followed by the most familiar figure of all.

“We thought you were keeping them a little late today,” Draven smiled at the sight of her. “Enforcing some extra learning?”

Yeah right, like she could enforce much of anything on this bunch.

“Dad!” Kiri leapt from Mia’s lap and nearly toppled over. She was no longer quick enough to catch the girl, the baby had dropped a week ago and turned her into a bloated land whale. Fortunately, Gorth was well within reach and steadied her before she ran into her father’s arms.

“They requested Gorth’s tale,” she told him when he approached her chair and leaned down to give her a kiss.

“Again?”

“It never gets old it seems.”

“Alright, alright,” Ashley commanded. For some reason the kids responded to her much more thoroughly than Mia. “One story and they we are going to let Mia go home and rest.”

“She’s should probably go to supper first, mom,” Adaini told her factually.

“Alright, we should let her get to supper then,” Ashley responded, but Mia didn’t miss the affectionate ‘smartass’ the woman whispered under her breath.

“Is everyone ready?” She asked, and the room fell silent before her. Even the grown-ups seemed transported to another time. So Mia began.

“Once, not so very long ago, when the old age had fallen and the new one begun, there was a warrior. This warrior was big, and strong, but most of all he was wise. A terrible evil had beset his people, a creature that could transform at will into any living thing it had tasted. The warrior’s people were vulnerable, for they did not yet know of the evil’s existence, nor its powers.

One night the warrior was on watch, carefully ensuring his people would face no danger, when he noticed something he found odd. One of the very people he was to protect slipping away from the compound and into the city alone.

Now, we all know that Livarians never go into the city alone, but that wasn’t the only thing that bothered the warrior. He knew that some of his people had gone missing, and the most recent ones had all been together on one special mission.”

“The one that brought you here, right mom?”

Mia smiled at Corban. “No interruptions,” she told him. He frowned. It was almost comical how much his frown made him look like Draven.

“The warrior decided to follow the Livarian, and because alerting anyone else would definitely alert the one he was following, he, too, ventured out alone. They traveled a great distance through the dangerous city streets until they came to a collapsed building, one with deep roots beneath the ground. The Livarian unknowingly led the warrior beneath this building, through a maze of unfamiliar tunnels until they reached a large, dark chamber.

There was just enough light in the chamber that the warrior could watch as the Livarian he had once called friend transformed, his skin stretching and breaking in the most horrible way, until he was not a Liviarian at all. Worse, there was more of the nightmarish creatures, and they had started breeding. Filling the chamber with the eggs containing their young. You see they had been feeding on the creatures of Callaphria, but their favorite of all foods were the Livarians themselves.

The warrior knew then that he couldn’t leave the chamber without trying to destroy the creatures and their eggs. For if the young hatched the monsters would spread over Callaphria, and all would be lost. He crept back into the city, finding the supplies he would need. But when he returned he was discovered.

Vastly outnumbered the warrior fought, killing four Y’kil before they overtook him, and losing two of his fingers to one of their hungry jaws. When he was subverted, his armor peeled from his body, the warrior thought it was the end. He waited for death thinking only of the people he served, and the woman he loved.

But the Y’kil did not kill him immediately. He was beaten and bound and then set in the egg chamber, next to the largest clutch of eggs. They were as big as his head and every once in a while they moved, so close were they to hatching, and the warrior was to be their food.

For days he lay there, slowly starving. The Y’kil only coming to give him enough water to stay alive and ensuring his bonds were kept tight. When the chamber emptied of all but one warrior, during the attack on the compound, the warrior knew this would be his only chance. He rolled his way over to the eggs, and with nothing but his head cracked at one until it broke open and a fat ugly larva fell onto the ground. The Larva thrashed, enraged by being spilled into the world. Its head was nothing more than a mouth with rows of teeth with which to devour its prey. The warrior twisted, allowing the creature to latch on to him, ensuring the first thing it reached was the bonds themselves.

The larva sliced through the warrior’s flesh, sending agonizing waves of pain through him. The warrior held out, allowing the creature to feed, until, at last, the bonds broke and he was free.

He made quick work of the larva, for it had no eyes only a sense of smell and veracious appetite. The guardian of the eggs was no where in sight, but his supplies, hastily discarded once he had been captured, lay untouched in the corner of the chamber. The Y’kill unfamiliar with the items, had deemed them useless.

The warrior was weak, and he knew this would likely be his last action on Callaphria, so he took very particular care to coat every egg with the fluid he had obtained and then, with one last silent goodbye to those he loved, he lit the chamber on fire.

“But he didn’t die?” Kiri wanted to know. Tears shone in her big blue eyes. She was nearly four, but sometimes she forgot the story’s end, or that it related to someone she knew was alive and well.

Corban rolled his eyes.

“Of course he didn’t he’s right there, Kiri.”

“He didn’t die darling,” Mia assured her. “The smoke from the fire alerted the guardian of the eggs. The creature burst into the chamber, screaming its rage, but it was too late for the nest. The warrior took to the tunnels, hiding as well as he could, but the lack of food and water had left him weak and delirious.

It was the smoke from the fire that saved him in the end, for that was when the Livarians were guiding the last remaining Kirich from the world. The team that saw them through their gate noticed the fire and spent the next few days going through the ruins, ensuring none of the eggs survived. They set up a trap for the remaining adults luring them in and destroying them before they could do any more harm, and they found the warrior, a man they had thought dead.

And that was how Gorth the warrior became the compound’s hero.”

“You forgot the last part,” Freya called from Gorth’s lap.

Mia smiled and looked at her little charges.

“I could never forget the last part,” she told them. “And he lived happily ever after.”