Page 15 of I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com (Cosmic Chaos #1)

I was getting real tired of life handing me lemons. As far as alien abductions go, I felt like I’d done at least a passable job at surviving. I was on day four, after all. I’m sure some would cry, “Dory, that’s not very long at all! Stop patting yourself on the back while you eat dinner with a madman.” But I choose to believe those people are stupid and would have died out on the first day.

They didn’t get bitten in the neck by a lion. Nor did they get mated to two weirdos or chased by what was possibly the chonkiest T. rex in existence with nothing but a bottle of puppy shampoo and a dream. I did. So if I wanted to accept my fate and enjoy my last meal, then maybe they could get off my fucking back.

My fork stabbed into the meat on my plate before I shoveled it into my mouth. It tasted a bit like jerk chicken, but the meat was more like venison. A drop of juice fell from it and splattered against the dress King Osid had provided for me. It was made of the same yix silk as most of their clothing, with a plunging neckline that disappeared into the sash wrapped around my waist. Red arrows sat boldly against the dark blue of its sleeves, while a green-and-red bird soared along the bottom of the dress.

King Osid was my only dining companion, despite the grand table we were at. He sat at the head of the table, casually sipping from an amethyst cup. The tribal patterns lining the cup’s rim repeated in the grand mural decorating the wall behind him. My focus drifted past him to take in the intricate work of art. The scene depicted a man holding a staff high above him. A bright orange orb floated in the center of his horns. Blue and purple flames blazed behind him, trapped inside a banded diamond shape.

Above the speared man, a one-eyed centipede creature peered down at him. Petals as vibrant as a peacock unfolded from the center of its head in a mesmerizing pattern, revealing an eye at its center that seemed to pierce through the fabric of reality. Skinny blue arms ending in six-fingered hands sprang out from its long, coiled body. Many of them reached toward the speared man with ravenous intent. The bottom of the mural was nothing but bones, piles of skulls trapped in eternal screams, and an array of smaller bones tied together in weblike circles that lined the bottom corners.

“Interesting artwork,” I offered. “Is there a story behind it?”

King Osid raised a brow, then looked behind him. “Ah, Yashvara and Laju the World Eater. You’re unfamiliar with the story?”

I swallowed my food, then pointed to myself. “Alien, remember?”

“Right.” He chuckled. “Funny, you probably had to pass by her on the way here.”

“Pass by a giant world-eating centipede? I sure hope not.”

He smiled and leaned back in his chair. “It’s said that Laju lives trapped in the Kavithran Whorl, a constellation seen from our old planet. Legend says that the Kavithran Whorl was created by the gods themselves to contain the World Eater, a monstrous being born from chaos and destruction with countless arms and a never-ending appetite. Yashvara, the greedy bastard, sought to take some of the gods’ power for himself and plucked a single star from Laju’s cage and used it to grant us our fire.” He lifted his palm, letting flames dance around its center before they floated to the ceiling in little wisps of smoke.

“Let me guess. His hubris caused the World Eater to break free and wreak havoc?”

“Ah, so you have a similar legend on your home planet?”

“Let’s just say the audacity of men is universal.”

“I won’t disagree with that. Many bookish types use Laju as an allegory for insatiable greed and ambition. But great change as well. After all, it’s Yashvara who granted us all the power of fire. Though I wonder if the change was worth the cost.”

“So, tell me how it all ends. Did Yashvara fix his mistake?”

“Not before Laju’s hunger drove her to devour entire civilizations. The only thing she understands is hunger, and Yashvara used that to his advantage. Using the last of his magic from the stolen star, he lured the beast with illusions of endless feasts and guided her back to her prison. Just before Laju’s last leg could enter, he sliced it from her body and used it to form a new lock on her cage. And that’s where she stayed. Locked safely away until she finds a new path to freedom and resumes her quest to devour the world.”

“Illusions of a feast, huh?” My eyes roamed over the banquet table, filled to the brim with various meats and fruit. Far too much for our mere party of two. “Do you plan on cutting my leg off and throwing me back in that cage?”

He threw back his head and let out a great peal of laughter. “That would send a message, I’ll admit. But there’s no need. I’ve got just about everything I need from you. And it’s a little too macabre for how I like to run things. The end of the world doesn’t have to turn us into animals.” He plucked a berry from his plate and tossed it into his mouth. “Besides, if the conspiracy theorists are to be believed, Laju already escaped her prison and took the form of a spaceship that swallowed the world in poison. Now all that’s left is to bring order to the era of change she left in her wake.”

“And I suppose you’re the man for the job?”

“Should I have left it to your runaway coward? While he was off rolling in yix shit, I built a fortress for our people to escape the rabid beasts that infest this land. Try the wispfruit; it’s a delicacy in these parts.” King Osid pointed to a bright green fruit about the size of a pineapple, its swirled leaves wrapped around the base like a dragon fruit.

I reached a tentative hand toward it and looked back at him. “It’s not poison, is it?”

He didn’t bother to look up as he sliced off another chunk of meat. “Would I tell you if it was?”

“You sound like someone I know.” I plucked the fruit from the table, then dropped it with a scream as the swirls along the leaves shot out like spikes. The fruit fell to the ground in a sharp tink as it bounced on its spikes and rolled out of view. “What the fuck?” I snarled, clutching my wrist.

I heard the scrape of his chair before the king grabbed my wrist and lifted it above me. He wrapped a white cloth around my injured hand and pressed it in the center of my palm. Blood soaked the cloth. He watched the white fabric bleed into red before a chilling smile lit up his face. He released my wrist, holding up the bloodied cloth like it was made of solid gold.

“What the hell was that?” I asked.

“The last thing I needed from you,” he said, snapping his fingers. A soldier came from the next room and collected the bloody cloth without a word, before retreating. King Osid slid back into his chair. “That wooden saucer next to you contains a healing cream. Rub it on your palm to stop the bleeding.”

I stared at him wide-eyed. “Why would I believe you after that?”

He merely shrugged. “Use it or don’t. If it were me, I’d rather not bleed all over my plate. But to each their own.”

I gritted my teeth, unsure of what to make of him. But the pain in my hand was murder. Frustrated, I snatched an unused spoon and poured a generous portion of the white paste on my palm. A coolness eased out the pain and I breathed a sigh of relief. “At least you weren’t lying about that.”

“I haven’t lied at all. Wispfruit is a delicacy; you just don’t know how to open it.” To prove his point, he grabbed another wispfruit by the top of its leaves, separated them with his fingers, and peeled back the skin like a banana. The flesh inside was a deep blue with flecks of red. King Osid sliced the flesh free from its stem with a knife, placed it on a small plate, and slid it over to me. “Try it.”

“No!” I slammed my fists on the table and stood, the chair screeching against the wooden floor before toppling over. “I don’t want to eat your damn fruit. I want my friends back and I want you to let us the hell out of here. Now!”

He rested his chin on his hand; a glint of amusement flickered in his eyes. “Now, why would I go and do a thing like that right before I get everything I want?”

“I…You can’t just keep us trapped here!”

“Oh, I think I can. Get comfortable, Doll. You barely touched your food. I won’t have Lok screeching about how I starved his woman. It’s bad for morale. You understand.”

“I don’t give a damn about your—”

“Sit down.”

“I—”

All amusement faded from his gaze. “Sit. Down.”

I picked my chair up off the floor and sat.

“Better,” he said, refilling his glass. “Tell you what, I’m a reasonable man. When the general comes in, fire raging to save his stolen love, I’ll let you say goodbye before I kill him. In the meantime I’ll gift you a home with your alien friends and your other mate. What was his name again? Saw?”

The nonchalant murder plot sank beneath my skin like ice. “Why are you doing this?” I asked breathlessly. “Lok abandoned his post; you won. There’s no need to keep going after him, let alone keep the rest of us here. Just enjoy your victory and let us go.”

“Let you go?” He chuckled. “Don’t sell yourself short, Doll. You and my darling new wife might just be the most valuable people on this planet. The first two women most of us have seen in a decade, and what’s more, the promise of even more women once we find out where the rest of your kin were dropped off. To be honest, I can’t fathom why you’d want to leave my care in the first place. In here you’ll be safe and protected. With a snap of your fingers, you could have just about any man here on bended knee swearing fealty just to be a part of your harem. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

“A gaggle of horny men following me around at all times? No. No, I can’t say that it does.” I barely had enough stamina to keep up with Lok and Sol as it was. “Maybe Blair or one of the other women will be more open to the idea of wrangling her own personal football team, but I’m good. So, if you could just let us go, I’d be more than happy to go find Lok and tell him to never darken your doorstep again and we can all go our separate ways. Sound good?”

The king shook his head. “And therein lies the crux of the problem.” He got up from his seat and motioned for me to follow him. “Walk with me. If you’re not going to eat, you can at least see what this is all about.”

I stood and quickly followed him out of the room. He led us out of the feasting hall and into the fortress itself. I shielded my eyes from the bright midday sun and followed him closely. Towering wooden walls encircled the fortress, adorned with weathered banners that fluttered in the brisk wind. A group of men were patching a destroyed section of the fence. Beside them lay a dead triceratops. Scorch marks coated the beast’s hide. An elder Sankado carved meat from the carcass with practiced ease. Beyond the wall was a cacophony of noisy animals. The only ones I could see for sure were some type of sauropod. Their long necks reached far past what a mere fence could block out. One good tail swing from one of those giants and this whole fortress would be busted right open.

The men repairing the wall stopped to peer at me curiously as we passed by. I noticed a sharp intake of breath and turned to see two of them eyeing the bird along my dress. They whispered to each other in hushed voices. One took a step toward us but was yanked back by his white-haired friend. So distracted by the bird on my dress, the men failed to notice the ankylosaurus poking its head through the gap in the fence. The armored dinosaur grunted and began trying to shove the rest of its body through the gap. When that didn’t work, its head disappeared from the hole, followed by a splintering crack as its clubbed tail slammed into the fence. The blow shattered the wooden plank, nearly taking the white-haired man’s head off in the same swing.

In a flash, the group jumped into action, pelting the ankylosaurus with fireballs. King Osid rolled his eyes at the display and kept walking.

“How often does that happen?” I asked.

“It’s been never-ending for the past few days,” he said tersely. “The same bloodthirsty beasts attacked us last year while we were building. It took weeks to fight them off last time, and we lost some of our best people. We need every able-bodied man ready to fight these monsters off in order to secure our home. Yet some of my men would rather chase dreams of the past and divide us. That’s why I can’t let you go. You see, as much as I loathe to admit it, General Ghoszi Lokbaatar is one of the finest leaders to ever live. His men worship him with an almost cultlike reverence.” A muscle in his brow ticked. “Even the fact that he abandoned them in a new world wasn’t enough to sway his most stalwart supporters.”

“You sound like you envy him.”

“I do.” He chuckled. “Who wouldn’t want blind devotion from their men? In the wake of his absence, the Singing Arrows fell almost as fast as clan Stormforge did. Though that’s not saying much. King Towei was a miserable cretin. If I hadn’t taken his head, I’m sure one of his men would have done the honor. With those two out of the way, I was finally able to unite the three great clans under the Dulba Empire. Or what’s left of it. A feat no king before me managed.”

“Your journey of conquest is inspiring,” I drawled. “What does that have to do with Lok?”

“Everything.”

We came upon a crowd of men jeering at something near the lake. As we approached, the rhythmic splashes reached my ears, and a feeling of dread settled over me like a heavy shroud.

A man with long arching horns and black hair cropped short stood on a wooden platform with his hands on a lever. The muscles in his arms strained as he pulled the lever back. A long wooden pole rose from the water. I gasped as I saw the man trapped in a cage at the end of it. He coughed up water, heaving desperate gulps of air before wheezing into a coughing fit. He paid no mind to the crowd jeering at him, but through the haze of his wheezing, he locked eyes with King Osid. Rage, white and hot, flashed in his eyes. The man stood on wobbly legs and let off what I could only assume was a stream of Sankado cusswords.

King Osid raised his voice to carry over the crowd. “Yengro, are you ready to speak, my friend?”

Yengro curled his lip, then spat at the king. “USINDULA!”

The king glanced at the man working the lever, who nodded and dunked the cage back underwater.

A gasp caught in my throat. My hands trembled, and I instinctively pressed them against my mouth to stifle the horrified sound threatening to escape.

What should I do? What can I do? There was no way I’d be able to fight my way through a crowd of alien warriors to save the poor guy. Hell, if I stepped in, King Osid might just put me in the cage with him. Sickening helplessness twisted in my gut. The cage rose again, before stuttering coughs gave way to another splash.

“Please stop this.” I reached out to the king, but when I caught sight of the impassive look on his face, I nearly retched. King Osid merely glanced at me with a cold indifference that sent a shiver down my spine.

The king smirked down at me, then tilted his head toward the dunking. “First time?”

My eyes widened. “You’re joking about this?”

He laughed as the cage rose. “If you can’t have fun at work, you’ve got one hoof in the grave already.”

“You are insane!” The crowd around us continued to revel in the torment. He didn’t give a shit. None of them did. I drew closer but was stopped when King Osid pulled me to him, draping an arm around my shoulders.

“You know, he’s in there because of you.”

Splash.

“What? I’ve never seen him in my life. I swear, Lok and Sol were the only two I—”

“Doesn’t matter.” He slid a hand to my back and guided us forward. The crowd around us parted like a school of fish in the path of a shark. “Didn’t I tell you, Doll? You rack up just enough bad luck to be stuck with Lokbaatar, unquestioned leader of the merry band of intransigent dogmatic idiots who insist on making every little thing so difficult.” He spat the words out contemptuously.

The cage rose, its sole occupant wheezing for life-giving air. Yet Osid had no reaction. With a creak, the cage jerked down a notch when the torturer prepared to dunk him again. The man in the cage fell to his hands and knees. His arms strained in an attempt to push himself back up, only to collapse beneath him.

King Osid held up a fist, halting the man on the platform. “That man has just enough bad luck to be loyal to that stupid bastard. Which I’ve come to understand means”—he paused, nostrils flaring in an ill-suited attempt at hiding his anger—“it doesn’t matter that your king has shed his armor and fled. Nor does it matter that I so graciously allowed you to live instead of slaughtering the lot of you insufferable bastards. You still scream for a revolt every time you think that man takes a shit. You want to see him again that bad? Fine.”

He pulled me onto the platform with him, placed his hands on my shoulders, and raised his voice to address the crowd. “Listen up! I want every remaining Singing Arrow still loyal to your old king to hear this. Here’s King Ghoszi’s Zhali match. I’ve confirmed it with your druid Sarek himself. As we speak, my scouts carry this message to him. ‘General Ghoszi Lokbaatar, I regret to inform you that your wife has been poisoned with wispfruit.’?”

The man in the cage slammed his fist against the bars.

“No, no,” I repeated, shaking my head. “Why is the crowd murmuring? I don’t like that. That’s not the life I’m trying to live right now.”

“Then this next part will be good or bad news for you. ‘The barbs of a wispfruit release a toxin potent enough to fell a titanstalk in six days. You’ll be a lucky son of a bitch if she gets three. If you want the antidote, return to the grove where you so easily cast off your honor and don it again. At sundown tomorrow I will meet you there. Let us finish this feud once and for all.’?” Cheers erupted from the crowd while Yengro slammed against the bars with a roar.

“Are you kidding me?” I screamed. “That shit was actually poison?”

He smirked down at me. “Did you think I cut you because your blood was pretty?”

I smacked him hard across the face. “Don’t fuck with me, Osid. I’m not dying because you and your men can’t get your shit together. Give me the damn antidote!”

The king merely smiled down at me and rubbed at his cheek where I’d just slapped him. “My, my, the Singing Queen has some fight in her after all. That’s good.”

“OSID!”

He patted my shoulder. “You’ll get your antidote as soon as I take Lok’s head.”

My heart thudded in my chest as all thoughts drove to the cut on my hand. I ripped off the wrap and inspected the cut, hoping any signs of discoloration would clue me in to what kind of toxin the plant held. Yet the cut merely looked a little aggravated. No discoloration or numbness had set in. I’d researched countless plants, both poisonous and otherwise, in my studies. Which meant FUCK ALL on a goddamn alien planet. “Shit, shit shit!”

His eyes flicked to the man in the cage, before he lowered to whisper in my ear. “He’s shouting about how he’ll save you. Beat me to death and return his king’s queen to him, yada yada.”

“You think a battle to the death is going to get his men to listen to you after this?” I said, voice quivering with unease.

“Of course. Singing Arrow warriors take an oath to serve their leader with unquestioned loyalty. After I remove Lok’s head, his title will fall to me.”

“And they’ll just go along with it? After you’ve murdered their leader and tortured them? That’s insane!”

“Like I said, dogmatic idiots.”

“It won’t matter. I’ve seen Lok fight. He’ll make mincemeat out of you.”

The king nodded as if considering. “Yeah, in a fair fight, I suppose he would.” He brushed a curl behind my ear and whispered, “Good thing I coated his armor in Aetherrot toxin.”

“What?”

“Did you think I’d leave the fate of my empire up to chance? Oh, you adorable little fool. Lok will suffocate on his own spit before I even have to lift my sword.”

I shoved away from him. “You have the gall to call him a coward, then you go and poison his armor? That’s not an honorable match at all.”

“True. But who’s going to tell them? By the time the match is over, there will be nothing anyone can do about it.”

His words hung heavy in the air, until their meaning rocked me back on my feet. The king was the only one with the translator symbiont. With Sol and the others locked up, there’d be no way for us to transfer it to anyone else. Desperate, I turned toward the crowd anyway. “Listen to me, King Osid poisoned Lok’s armor! This challenge isn’t valid!”

The cheering continued, undisturbed. A few men in front called to the torturer behind us, making pulling motions toward the lever. “Dammit, stop with the medieval torture bullshit and listen to me!”

King Osid chuckled as he patted my shoulder. “Save your breath. You know they can’t understand you.” His laughter disappeared behind a scowl as he glared at the man in the cage. “Oh gods, he’s started a poem. Dunk him. Dunk him now!”

The torturer pulled the lever.

“STOP!” Driven by a surge of desperation, I couldn’t stand by any longer. The cage descended once more, and without further thought, I rushed forward, shouldered the torturer away from the lever, and threw my weight against it. The cage breached the water once more and I fell back, panting.

The torturer reached for the lever, then drew back his hand when I slapped it away. “No! No more dunking.” I pushed myself to my feet and glared down at the laughing king. “You’ve made your point. Going any further is just barbarism. Let him out.”

The king crossed his arms over his chest and turned to the man next to him. “It’s incredible how many demands she makes without any leverage.” Several members of the crowd snickered, but there was a notable edge in the air that wasn’t there before. I scanned the faces in the crowd. The people enjoying the spectacle threw up their fists, cheering for another pull of the lever. Past them, on the outskirts of the revelry, I spotted the two men I’d seen whispering to each other earlier.

One wore a scowl as he leaned down and spoke softly to his companion. The second nodded and turned his attention to the men beside him. Their eyes were fixed on me, but I could feel them studying the scene around me. The tall one tapped the other on the shoulder. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but his body language read urgency.

King Osid smiled, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “You’re right. Perhaps I have made my point.” The air shifted, and a familiar scent hit me. The scent of fire and smoke.

He held out a hand to the cage, embers igniting in the center of his palm. Before I could react, the king fired a shot at the cage, only for the fireball to explode before it reached its target. The world went white, and I felt my body skitter across the water before going under.