Page 7 of Fog of War (Over the Moon)

Gabbie

Leopha pulled me by the hand as she bumped and shoved her way through her family members like she was a bowling ball.

Their plates collided and mandibles clacked like echoing skeletons in the still air.

Faces with painted eye sockets and mouth parts, totems that looked like ancient humans, talons dipped in neon colors…

Had I been transported to a demonic rave in the Underworld? Hades would have been proud.

“Outta the way!” Leopha bellowed, yanking me towards the front of our watch tower. Eventually we hit the edge of the packed group and I braced myself against the railing with wide eyes.

The valley stretched out around us like a bowl filled with dry ice and a chill descended, biting into my cheeks and ears.

Fog poured from the ground along streams beneath the grass and waterlogged ditches, collecting in the damp air as dusk shifted to night.

Pink prisms strummed the horizon, embedded in the sky like the powder in the grooves of my fingers.

A drone glided by, buzzing as loud as a cicada.

It turned towards me and examined my face.

I glanced at the holoscreens hovering above the myriad watch towers littered throughout the battlefield, and saw myself reflected back like a kiss cam at a baseball game.

I gave the drone a little wave, fighting off the instinct to scrunch up my shoulders and disappear.

“Good luck, everyone!” I yelled at it, making a heart symbol with my hands. Whistles, clacks, growls, and hollers rose around the valley. The drone wandered away, looking for the next novel face.

“So uh, what I said about orgies,” Leopha yelled in my ear.

I laughed as she handed me a shot of blue alcohol. “Please tell me we don’t have to watch your brother at least?”

I’d expected her to scrunch up in disgust like any human sibling, but instead she clinked her glass against mine.

“He better fuckin’ converge!” She threw back her drink and tossed it down a tube in the watchtower wall.

I followed suit, absolutely needing the liquid courage.

“But if it sucks, tell me, okay? Battle consummation isn’t exactly everyone’s forte. The hjarna hate it.”

I nodded, snatching up another shot from a leviplatter hovering nearby.

As I swallowed the drink in one gulp, an eerie horn warbled through the valley and the merriment fell silent.

Leopha grabbed my hand, and for the first time, I realized how nervous she felt.

I leaned into her side and squeezed her palm with both of my hands in solidarity.

“He’s going to be magnificent,” I murmured into her shoulder as the vid drones all turned towards the center of the battlefield. She squeezed my hand with a timid flutter of her mouth parts.

On the holoscreens, an ancient venandi with cracked grey plates ascended a crystal dais carved straight from the ground.

He was adorned with a mantle built from thin, shivering blades that warbled and sang when he moved as if he were wearing a cowl of pheasant feathers.

The flat tapes of gold decorated his calves and waist, too, catching the light thrown off by his white body paint.

Totems hung from his spires like a veil to either side of his face, tinkling and chiming as they jostled about his chest.

His entire body was painted in white except for his groin plates, which had been painted red and matched the half-mask that obscured his mouth and nose with uncanny human features.

Wrist cuffs connected two extra digits to the outside of his hands with a ring and fine gold chains that moved with his talons.

When he stretched his arms to the prismatic lights in the sky, the drones caught deep carvings in his plates that harkened to anatomical illustrations of muscle tissue in Grey’s Anatomy.

The effect was astonishing. Ancient, unforgiving, exhilarating…

“That’s Tyrus Murua Primus. The high priest of the Muruic Temple,” Leopha whispered.

He spoke in a ghostly, vibrating rasp that didn’t sound weak but otherworldly.

Like Chiron on the River Styx asking for your coin or a grim reaper that had known every human age, a timeless being that had stretched his mortality beyond the limits of science.

Goosebumps rose across my skin as he chanted Muruic prayers and tossed powder into the four quadrants of the battlefield, honoring each clan.

As the prisms of light in the sky faded–the sun having dipped too far below the horizon to ignite the mountainous veins of crystal–he inhaled deep and curled over himself. Then the war horn rose again and my mouth fell open.

The Murua Primus was the war horn.

His body blurred from the vibration and the metal cape about his shoulders shivered like a thousand rattlesnakes.

The sound reached through every cluster of onlookers as loud as a cruise ship set to sea.

Like when the Tetradi champion had purred for me, the vibration slithered under my skin and ignited every nerve ending with pleasure just on the precipice of lust.

It lasted for as long as the priest had breath and long after he’d stopped, the echo sloshing back and forth across the landscape in deep, sweeping gongs. And then he sat upon his crystal pedestal, murmuring to himself as he swayed to the beat of drums being projected beneath every watchtower.

“Wow,” I breathed, panting from the way my lungs had constricted and my lower abdomen tingled. Leopha mirrored me, blinking in shock.

“Holy shit,” she awed.

“What was that?”

She looked at me with glazed eyes. “That was a hrum. It’s the vibration that pushes genetic particles into the air for convergence. Muruic priests are famous for strengthening it for the gods, but I had no idea it could be that strong. The radius is usually only a few meters.”

My eyebrows shot up in shock. “So he was converging with everyone? How does that work?” I gaped.

She shook her head to clear it. “No, he’s not close enough to do that. It was just a blessing.”

The holofeed flipped to the four quadrants, to each trio standing on their pedestals. Most of them held a small hatchet in each hand, and were covered head to toe in powder.

Miraculously, the marks I’d left were clearly visible on everyone, as if they’d kept others from touching them.

Hearts on chests, kiss marks, a crisp handprint.

The Ferulis champion that I’d smacked stood proud in the top left corner of the screen.

His name slid by on a ticker tape–PALADUS FERULIS–and I heard his smoky chuckle in my mind.

Who would he be converging with? I squeezed my thighs together, but didn’t want to think about it as a pit formed in my stomach. Maybe battle consummation would be too much for me…

“Look!” Leopha pointed to the bottom right of the screen as Leonide was featured.

We both hooted and hollered for him, even if he couldn’t hear us.

I threw myself into it, getting pumped. Today was about Leopha and Leonide for me.

I didn’t have to watch anything else that was going on except root for him.

The cadence of the drums changed.

Leonide took a deep breath.

Then the champions descended into the fog.

My heart jumped to the beat of the war drums and I clutched the railing, craning my neck to see into the eerie battlefield rather than up at the holoscreen.

Figures glowed here and there, weaving in and out of towers, hiding beneath the fog.

I recognized the red of the Ignarian clan immediately as one of them bobbed through the mist nearby, making a beeline for our end of the field.

They tilted the side of their head towards the ground, feeling for vibrations, and instantly I knew it was Faeste.

They’d seemed so bashful and sweet when I’d given them the kiss on their cheekbone, but now their eyes were glowing gold slits and their mouthparts set with the practiced caution of a hunter.

Confidence corded every movement as Faeste crept beneath us, using our watch tower as cover.

I held my breath and tugged on Leopha, pointing down at them.

She looked and her mandibles clacked, letting me know she’d seen.

It was eerily quiet now, everyone focused on not giving away the fight.

Then she tugged me right back and pointed to a dark shadow surfacing from the fog.

Someone’s shoulders as they army crawled in Faeste’s direction from behind.

I bit my lip and laced my fingers together in front of my mouth to keep from making noise. I was on the edge of my proverbial seat as the breath lodged in my chest and I waited to see who was stalking them.

Please, please be–

Once Faeste’s back was turned entirely, Gavenidus rose from the fog like Death, the clouds clinging to his shoulders like a cape. He hunched and his glowing marks painted the fog. I had to stifle a shout of excitement, smacking Leopha’s arm repeatedly so we could freak out together.

Gavenidus raised his hatchet by the end of the pommel, lined up his sights…

Dread lined my veins in ice. Was he going to hurt Faeste or–

Faeste rolled into the fog and launched an axe right back, getting Gavenidus in the chest. The hatchet sank into his pectoral plate with a heavy thunk, and Leopha’s cousin lost his footing. I screamed in shock and horror, instant tears springing to my eyes. Was Gavenidus–

Our watchtower erupted into a deafening roar.

“Get up!” Leopha bellowed.

Faeste took their chance to get in close as Gavenidus heaved the blade out of his plates and threw them both to the ground in a tackle.

Every holoscreen turned onto the action beneath us, the wrestling match accentuated by the buzz and the drums and the roars.

I heard a high pitched cheer and realized it was me, jumping up and down with my fist in the air as those tears of terror raced down my cheeks, forgotten.

“Woohoo!” I yelled. I wasn’t exactly a sports person, but my breathless smile suggested otherwise as Gavenidus flipped Faeste over his shoulder, dispersing fog like a stone dropped in a pond.

And then I heard that sound again. The hrum.

The cheering got louder as the two venandi fought for dominion.

Both of their forms blurred as their limbs intertwined and their muscles bulged beneath their glowing plates.

The rhythm changed, breaking into layers that built upon each other, shaking my thighs and making me warm between the legs.

Gavenidus slid over Faeste’s back and pinned them to the ground. He bent the Ignarian’s head back with a hand cradling the front of their throat so he could lock their spires together.

“Yeah, cousin, get it!” Leopha roared.

Gavenidus’s hand disappeared into the fog between their bodies, and then he rocked his hips forward slowly. Pulled back. Pushed forward again, a little further…

I forgot how to breathe, captivated, my face burning.

I squeezed my thighs together as the blurred, vibrating champions merged, Gavenidus rocking into Faeste now with a rhythm.

Their matching kiss marks were on the same side and glowed up at us as Gavenidus took his victory with abandon, gnashing his teeth and snarling into Faestes’ shoulders.

The powder on their skin was dislodging in a haze of color that stained the fog, enveloping them in a symbolic celebration of convergence, even as Faeste reached back, attempting to hook Gavenidus with their claws and gain the upper hand.

It was so… hot.

Reckless, feral, mind-bending. There I was, standing with my best friend in a crowd of her family, and I’d never been more turned on in my life. None of us could look away, caught up in the frenzy and the bloodlust mixed with real lust and oh my god, if I heard that sound again I might… I might–

Something caught on my sleeve and tugged. I batted at it, assuming one of Leopha’s cousins had gotten their belt or a chain stuck on my knit sweater in all the excitement. Then it tugged again, hard points biting into my arm and squeezing tight.

I looked at my sleeve with a gasp that no one could hear over the cacophony and found a pair of green eyes glowing up at me. The female Tetradi champion was poised just below the side rail of our tower, talons and feet wrapped around a rope tied to a grappling hook. She grinned at me, then yanked.

I flew over the railing on a silent scream.