Chapter 6

  Dalex couldn’t see what had grabbed him, but he could tell it was big. It pulled him along the ground like a tangled yo-yo. He thrashed around, trying to get his footing, and then was slurped partway into something hard and moist. A scale-covered mouth clamped down on him while a sticky tongue pulled him deeper into the maw of a massive reptilian creature.

  Before the thing could suck him down its throat, Dalex grabbed it by the lips and wrenched himself free of the tongue. He flew out of the lizard’s mouth, tumbling across the ground to stop a few meters from its front feet. Panic gripped him as he scrambled back on his hands and feet. He quickly checked to see what was behind him, and when he turned back to face the lizard, it was gone.

  Dalex froze. He glanced left. Nothing. He glanced right. Still nothing. Where had such a huge creature gone? How fast could it move?

  “{Blunderbuss},” he said, and the weapon appeared in his hands. Then, while he scanned his surroundings, he said, “{Status}.”

  When Dalex noticed the status screen listed the correct name, his mental health value jumped from seventy-six to seventy-eight. And then he realized the few seconds he had spent in the lizard’s mouth hadn’t done any damage to his person or his armor. The reading lifted to eighty-three.

  “Are you seeing this?” he asked Seventh.

  “I am aware of the situation,” she responded. “Your motion detectors are not sensing any activity.”

  “What is it?”

  “Unknown. The [scout probes] have not witnessed this lifeform yet. However, I repeat, the motion detectors sense no activity.”

  Motion detectors. Not seeing activity. Did that mean the lizard hadn’t actually run off?

  Dalex squinted. A shimmer in the air caught his attention. He hefted the blunderbuss, considered what it would mean to shoot this creature, and then shot it anyway. He started with buckshot. The blunderbuss bucked and a poof of dust blossomed in the air where the lizard hid with its camouflage. The creature let out a tiny squawk and the forest rippled with a great flinch.

  As the lizard squirmed, circling Dalex through the surrounding trees, patches of its green scaley skin appeared and disappeared. Its camouflage didn’t completely conceal its body.

  And buckshot didn’t seem to have done it much harm. Dalex’s target recognized the shot only as a nuisance and resumed hunting him. Dalex upped the blunderbuss’s load to something the system called [plasma pulse]. He backed away from the lizard, pointing the barrel of his weapon at a patch of revealed skin. The animal had tried to make him part of its food chain, so it probably wasn’t overly intelligent. Either that, or it was smart enough to recognize him as a fellow sentient being and still wanted to eat him. Dalex didn’t like that idea.

  Before Dalex could pull the trigger again, the creature’s mouth appeared, opening wide to fling its tongue at him. He jumped out of the way to the right, crashing into a tree and snapping its trunk with his impact. It creaked and groaned, falling to the forest floor. Dalex hit the blunderbuss’s trigger on reflex. A blast of blue and purple energy leaped from the barrel. It scorched the ground in a cone in front of him and blew the back half of the lizard into a cloud of bloody smoke.

  The animal let out a stricken scream. Its camouflage dropped away, bringing the entire creature into view. It had big eyes with a short narrow mouth and a tall crest on the back of its head. Its high smooth back ran in an arch to a long, curly tail, which now lay on the forest floor, severed from the rest of the body. Dalex had thought it might be some kind of small dragon or wyrm, but now it looked just like a really big chameleon.

  Dalex let the blunderbuss hang in one hand at his side and rested back on his heels. Watching the chameleon die didn’t feel good. It scraped the ground with its intact front feet and let out little mewling whimpers. As far as Dalex could tell, his {adamantine heavy plate} made him invulnerable. What danger could the animal actually have posed? Perhaps Dalex should have just tried running away.

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  Dalex shook his head, walked forward, and pressed the end of the blunderbuss against the chameleon’s head. When he pulled the trigger, the poor creature stopped moving.

  “I should have tried the [stunner],” he mumbled to himself.

  Seventh spoke up, “Considering the animal’s proximity to the human settlement, I doubt it is endangered.”

  “That doesn’t matter. {Status}.”

  Dalex wondered how the system calculated that figure, but he didn’t care enough to ask Seventh. Besides, it accurately reflected his mood.

  He let the blunderbuss vanish in a cloud of mortar smoke. His hands free, he interlocked his fingers and placed them against his belly.

  Deep breath in. Hold it. Let it out.

  “Lesson learned,” he said. “No use fretting about it now.”

  Just before the status screen blinked off, his mental health read 89/100, but he was done thinking about numbers. Dalex strode up to the chameleon’s corpse and rested his hand on his hips, inspecting the kill.

  “Do you think this thing is valuable?” he asked. “I don’t have a cent to my name.”

  On Earth, the carcasses of animals, exotic or otherwise, were always useful to someone. The right person might be willing to pay a pretty penny for a dead giant chameleon. Seventh remained quiet, refusing to speculate.

  “I’d have to drag it to the village, and that’d be messy,” Dalex went on. “And there’s always the chance they’d accuse me of poaching and try to lock me up.”

  Seventh finally gave in and said, “You haven’t met a single member of this planet’s dominant civilization. Making assumptions about their culture and value system is foolish.”

  “True,” Dalex said. “Unless this big guy was a citizen of that town in the valley. In that case, I’m off to a bad start.”

  “Unlikely.”

  Of course, Dalex didn’t think that was the situation either. He decided to leave the corpse and get a closer look at the town first. If someone told him the carcass was worth something, he could come back later. If it rotted, the local ecosystem could take its pound of flesh.

  ***

  No longer under threat from the ballistic tongue of an arboreal reptile, Dalex set off toward the river town. He stopped when he reached the edge of the forest, observing the closest gate from a distance. The inhabitants had cut the forest back a few hundred meters from the palisade walls, giving him an unobstructed view. He checked behind him for more apex predators and then cast {farsight}.

  A window-like visor appeared in the air just in front of his eyes, magnifying his view. The level of zoom and its fidelity changed with his eye movements and focused where his interest settled. He let out a hearty chuckle.

  “Those sure look like humans,” he said. A short line of two-legged, two-armed, one-headed people lingered outside the gate. They wore clothes, carried backpacks over their shoulders, and hefted objects meant to be held by a pair of hands. What looked like two guards stood to either side of the gate, speaking with the first person in the queue. If there were small differences in body structure, he couldn’t discern them from this distance.

  Dalex chuckled again. “Small universe.”

  “They are likely not exactly human,” Seven said, “but–” she paused as if uncertain she should say the next part. “You may share a common ancestor.”

  “Galactic exchange, right?” Dalex said. “It doesn’t matter. I’m going in.”

  It took effort not to sprint across the treeless expanse between him and the entry queue. He didn’t want to give a first impression of a madman. But he also couldn’t wait to see what these people looked like, how they sounded, and how they behaved.

  No one paid any attention to him as he walked up and joined the line. A few meters away he stopped, noticing the first quirk of these people that set them apart from him. Long pointy ears. He almost had a heart attack.

  The man at the end of the line finally noticed his presence. He looked over his shoulder at Dalex and his eyes widened. Very formally, he turned and bowed, his body almost reaching a right angle. Suppressing a gleeful grin, Dalex returned the bow, trying to match the man’s depth. This appeared to startle his new friend. The man’s eyes widened even farther, and he quickly turned around, facing forward down the queue, his body ramrod straight.

  “I guess I wasn’t supposed to do that,” Dalex muttered to himself.

  He figured he would do the natural thing and wait for the line to move. His eyes wandered over the strangers in front of him. The line ran seven people deep, not including him. All of their ears were long and sharp. Their hair colors varied. Two were blonde, but the others ranged from inky black to earthy brown. None of them grew their hair particularly long.

  All of them wore shabby clothes. The man in front of him wore a dirty tunic and patched trousers. If Dalex felt inclined to rude observations, the man smelled a little bad as well, but that wasn’t any of Dalex’s business.

  After a few minutes of waiting and only one person being allowed into the town, Dalex couldn’t take it anymore. He tapped the man’s shoulder. A shiver went through the stranger’s back. It took a long second before he turned back around to face Dalex.

  “I’m very sorry,” Dalex said. He held out a hand, hopefully for a shake. “My name is Dalex. I hope I’m not bothering you, but I really wanted to ask you some questions. If you don’t mind.”

  The man’s mouth hung open a fraction. He cocked his head to the side and said, “Taim invo dateh sesivyak, ishihmrra?”

  “Should have seen that coming,” Dalex said. He pulled his hand back in. That gesture probably didn’t mean anything to his new friend.

  Seventh prompted him, saying, “Convince him to continue speaking.”

  Dalex swallowed and said, “Apologies, friend. I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m new in town, just trying to learn the ropes. I hope I’m not a bother.” He paused and then added. “What is your name?”

  Dalex shook his head. Stupid. This person couldn’t possibly know what any of that meant. But a slight light glimmered in the man’s eyes.

  “Enol lanihopa, ishihmrra, tatum ne ramarmy atim tatiokrat. Ramarmy friend.”

  Dalex perked up. “Friend! Yes, I understood friend just now. Do you want to be friends?”

  The man took a step back. “Friend, Lord Human? I am niakun, but surely you do not want friendship with me.”

  “So, you do know English!” Dalex said, momentarily ignoring the “Lord Human” part of his response. “Of course I want to be friends. What’s your name?”

  “He doesn’t know English, fool,” Seventh chastised him. “Your armor’s systems are translating for both of you.”

  That made a lot more sense.

  “I am Kari, Lord Human,” Kari said. “I do not know this ‘English.’”

  Dalex waved it away with a hand. “Forget about that. It’s wonderful to meet you, Kari. My name is Dalex. You don’t have to call me Lord Human. I–”

  “Hey, what’s going on back there?” a gruff voice called out.

  Kari stiffened and quickly pivoted to face forward. One of the guards at the gate had taken notice of their conversation. Dalex, happy to meet new people, stepped out of line to wave at the guard.

  “Just getting to know my friend Kari here,” he said. “Is something the–?”

  The question died on Dalex’s lips as he noticed the soft triangular wolf ears jutting out of the top of the guard’s head. It took every fiber of his self-restraint not to rush the man to feel his ears and fluff the poofy tale at his back. It helped that the guard’s glare made it clear he shouldn’t make any sudden moves.

  “Silenceria means–” the guard started but then took his turn to notice something important. “My sincerest apologies, Lord Human. I did not notice you. Please, enter at your leisure. You need not stand in line.”

  Dalex made a silent “O” with his mouth. Inviting as that sounded, he didn’t like the way it made him feel.

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