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Athena Storm

Reaper's Prey

Reaper's Prey

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He's the stuff of nightmares. And the only one I can ever love.

Demon. Monster. Reaper.

These are words the galaxy uses to describe the Ishana.
Descriptions that come to mind when I crash onto their brutal world and am taken by a hunting party and held prisoner in their animal city.
Where I’m threatened to give up my body to their basest desires.
But then…I see Ishtar. He may look like a demon and a monster but he doesn’t bring out the terror in my heart. He brings out something else that tells me everything will end up for the best.

Is his soul as sick as mine? Is that why we have such a pull?

What is this he makes me feel? It’s something I’ve never felt before, but I think I'd call it…

Love.

Author's Note: This full length scifi romance is a darker journey into the Athenaverse. It's standalone, and you should always approach the Reapers with caution.

Chapter 1 Look Inside

Chapter 1
Ishtar

My feet ache as I reach the peak of the great mountain, Spire. It is the tallest peak visible from my village. As I stop to catch my breath, I look out into the magnificent expanse of the valley and admire the sunset.

"Beautiful," I murmu, huffing a laugh under my breath. "The only truth to what they call this planet."

On this planet, on Kurse, there is nowhere to go, nowhere high enough to climb to forget that I live in a haven for Reapers–or it's supposed to be. The most brutal race in the galaxy went through several abrupt evolutionary changes, searching for a home as soon as they realized they could finally breed.

The angels of our race, the most powerful Reapers, hybrids, and the last living Ishana used a wormhole to escape into space to find a new world. Several thousand were stuck behind.

I know that when one Reaper was chosen as King by a great power, we searched for a planet to settle. Once there were children to care for, our race decided to build and evolve, never to pillage the stars again.

A small reminder stayed in the sky of those that had become most brutal. They will remain monsters, I suppose.

But what are we?

The sunset seems to be assaulting me with its beauty. Violent pink rays streak through clouds of deep red and bright orange. Behind it the sky is pale, electric blue. The half circle of the sun itself is blinding as it sinks past the horizon.

Somewhere behind me, the moon will be rising. Almost full if I have calculated correctly.

A cool wind stirs around me, ruffling my hair and setting a chill against my skin. Reapers have changed in the last three hundred years, but some things remain the same. My fast metabolism demands that I eat and get warm, immediately.

I gather up some sticks and create enough friction to spawn a flame. I feed the fire slowly until it blooms, the light it throws on the pale rocks like a reflection of the sun in the sky.

I don’t have much food, a few handfuls of nuts, some strips of dried meat and a bag of fruit candy. I’ll be hungry, but I’ll survive. That is, after all, what I came here to do. I want to test myself, the limits of my body. I want to learn what I can do when I am free of expectation.

Three Reaper clans live on Kurse. We are all very much alike and we are fighting for unknown reasons—something that happened in our past. I had all the ancient knowledge forced on me in school, but I just couldn’t absorb it. Too boring.

The Reaper King—who was said to wield extraordinary power—and a few other couples settled on a dangerous planet to raise their children. I don’t even know if this is the same planet.

What I do know is that at some point there was a disagreement and it has become so ingrained in our culture that the three tribes cannot make peace.

I stretch out against the rocks, folding my hands behind my head and warming my feet by the fire. Like most Reapers, even after several generations, we still don’t wear shoes. Our tough soles and clawed toes have persisted through those evolutionary changes.

"Who needs shoes?" I ask the wind. 

I stare at the flames, hoping to find some meaning there. When I cast my mind back to my home, I can think of no reason to go back there. My choices in life were simple—scholar or warrior.

Being a scholar was far too boring. What did I care if this particular piece of ancient wisdom was from Slade’s diary or Llyron’s journal? In the heart of the city, we can access the original Reaper ship logs that were built by a few of the human pets. The trouble is people added to it over time. We don’t actually know who wrote what.

Apparently, there are original, hand written books from many of the captains. This is a source of fierce debate amongst our kind. The higher priests and priestesses are so fervent in their beliefs it is almost fanatical.

"Yeah," I groan as I lean up. "I don’t give a fuck." 

I really don’t. What does understanding their words do for me, right now?

My other option was to become a warrior. A weapon is shoved in our hand the second we can walk. We rarely raid the other two clans, but we do need to defend when they raid ours. We have the best tech and the highest level of civilization on the planet.

The other two tribes are always trying to rip off our stuff. They have very little in the ways of modern comforts and if anything, their evolution seems to be moving backwards.

I fought in the advance guard for one week. I was good at it—too good at it. I cut down lines of Reapers with nothing but a long blade. I was congratulated by my family and peers.

But I couldn’t go back. I did something I don’t think any Reaper has ever done before.

I ran away.

I want the clear sky above me and nothing on my mind except my next meal, my next step. I want to see the farthest reaches of Kurse and feel the great isolation of being one with the wilderness.

I don’t know why we have to fight each other. I couldn’t bear to kill my brothers. I wanted to invite them in for a drink, food, and song. I couldn’t focus much on the old material, but I know that when we came together, it was a time of great joy.

I won’t be a fighter. I can’t be a scholar. In my society, that leaves me absolutely nothing to do. I could have ended up exiled, maybe that’s why I just said fuck it and exiled myself.

"And that's why I'm at the top of a mountain talking to myself." I shake my head, rubbing the back of my neck. "What the hell am I doing?"

I don’t want to walk away from my family, my clan. I want more for us. Why are we again descending into mindless violence? We built beauty here, we could be evolving into something truly amazing, instead of constantly fighting each other.

What are we missing? What was the key element that brought us together?

Goosebumps fly across my skin and a whisper touches me, deeper than hearing. My bones resonate and my skin sings.

Connection…

The Ishana and then the Reapers themselves were masters of connection. Not just to each other, but to the force of life itself. Being able to feel, to understand the energy flow that exists beyond all matter, allowing us to change it with our song.

No one has had that ability for a very long time.

Connection…

It was lost and then rediscovered by the Reapers, but how?

If I were to stumble upon it and bring it back to our race, would it bring us together, or just give us more creative ways of killing each other?

With a soft groan, I shake my head. Most likely the latter. The other two tribes are so primitive and savage I doubt they could connect to themselves, let alone nature. If they did, they’d probably just try to blow it up.

There are dark forces in our past, horrible demons. But there are also angels. The very worst acts of pain and violence were done by one of the worst of us: The demon Queen, Mahresh. At the same time, Holy Light was wielded by several others who had inherited pure genes.

I have no interest in ancient texts. I don’t think it can help us now. It seems that in three hundred years we have not really evolved—rather, we have returned to square one.

We appear determined to destroy each other, and ourselves. We are wedded to war with a never-ending bloodlust.

 

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