C157 - Ugly
Liiza had never seen a similar scene. The sky had never turned azure. She instinctively thought about the mana due to the similarities of their shades, but she knew that the event meant something entirely different.
At her side, Khan realized how strange it felt to see the sky change color. He had been among Nitis' darkness for so long that he had almost forgotten how beautiful the dawn could be. However, no happiness could accompany that moment. The unexpected event only hinted at the arrival of a crisis.
Khan wanted to question his girlfriend about the matter, but the surprise revealed by her expression stated that she didn't expect the daylight to arrive so soon. The event didn't even seem to affect the whole planet. The pale-azure shades darkened in the distance and brightened past the cliff. The marsh didn't even appear to be the center of that clear patch either.
A cold sensation filled Khan and Liiza's robes, and an azure glow seeped out of their fabric. The two picked their cubes and saw that their symbols were radiating an intense light due to the Niqols trying to contact them.
'How far are you from the academy?' Doku's voice resounded inside Khan's mind once he established the mental communication.
'Three hours,' Khan replied honestly.
'How far are you from this location?' Doku asked as a vague image appeared in his mind.
Khan had turned off the cube's tracker before flying to the marsh. The image sent by Doku depicted a map of the areas around the academy, but it didn't show Khan's current location. One of those regions had a striking glowing spot that marked the site meant by the Niqols.
Khan would have had to activate the tracker if he didn't manage to find himself on that map without the help of the cube. Yet, he had studied the area thoroughly in the last weeks, so calculating the distance from that bright spot wasn't an issue. It ended up being in his direction, at only one hour from the marsh.
'A bit more than an hour,' Khan gave another honest answer.
Khan and Liiza had decided how to handle a similar situation when he received his cube. Similar answers to questions concerning their location when they were together would inevitably create suspicions, so they had to come up with a simple tactic that they could apply all the time.
Liiza would always add one or two hours to her actual location, while Khan would be honest. Being available was more critical to Khan due to his political mission, so Liiza didn't mind risking being late even when it came to important events. Still, Khan didn't know how she would feel about the tactic in that situation.
'Go there right away,' Doku ordered before his tone gained a worried tone. 'We need all the help we can get.'
Doku cut off the communication at that point, and Khan checked the map once more to make sure that he had understood where he had to go. His gaze moved on Liiza as he put the cube back inside his robe, and she showed a worried expression as she stored her device too.
"Khan," Liiza whispered in a trembling voice, "No one expected this to happen."
"It's definitely strange," Khan announced while pulling her closer.
Khan didn't know how the daylight on Nitis would work, but it felt odd for only a small patch of the sky to brighten. He didn't know anything about astronomy and the connected subjects, but that event didn't sound like the apocalyptic event that everyone was waiting for.
"It's not happening only here," Liiza explained as she pointed her palms on Khan's chest to stop his hug and make their eyes meet. "The sky is getting clearer everywhere on the planet, but our calculations gave us at least two more months before the first light."
"What do you mean?" Khan asked as he started to understand the nature of Liiza's worry.
"We aren't ready!" Liiza shouted. "There is a village under this bright patch, and we aren't ready!"
Khan had felt worried about the light. He had immediately imagined the arrival of a long period spent hunting, but the situation had gained a completely different meaning now. The presence of a village under the bright patch hinted at Niqos with no control over their mana.
"I need to go," Khan stated. "How long did you say it will take you to go there?"
Liiza didn't immediately answer. She picked her cube again and made it touch the waterfall. Confused images appeared on the flowing water, but Khan managed to recognize the same map that Doku had sent to him.
"Where did they tell you to go?" Liiza asked.
The nature of the waterfall made the edges of the picture unclear. It wasn't the ideal surface for that function, but Liiza couldn't use the cube with Khan because the network would record their conversation.
"Around here," Khan said while pointing at the glowing spot highlighted by his map.
"That's the village," Liiza sighed as she raised her hand to grab the corners of Khan's robe. "They sent me to the surrounding areas to take care of the monsters there."
Khan would have taken longer to realize the entirety of the situation if he didn't have Liiza's conflicted expression in front of him. Yet, she struggled to speak, and she avoided looking at him in the eyes after learning about his target.
The Niqols knew how strong Khan was. He had even defeated Ilman, even if anger was controlling the alien back then. Still, Khan remained the perfect candidate for the hunts, but they had decided to send him inside the village and Liiza in the wilds. It seemed that they preferred to make a human experience the effects of the sunlight on the members of their species.
"I'll be fine," Khan reassured her. "I've probably seen worse."
"I really hope that," Liiza whispered while continuing to avoid Khan's gaze.
Liiza felt ashamed about that decision. Their superiors had sent a human to handle the mutated Niqols to save their students from that sight. She knew that she had nothing to do with that tactic, but that didn't matter when her boyfriend would be the one to suffer due to that choice.
The noise of Snow's wings soon echoed in the area and made Khan turned toward his flying companion. The Aduns landed in a stable spot near him, but it made sure not to let its feathers touch the mud nearby.
"Won't you say goodbye?" Khan asked while revealing a faint smile.
Liiza couldn't help but turn when she heard the exact words that she had spoken in the past. She could read in Khan's expression that he was doing his best not to make her worry, but his efforts became pointless when she thought about what he would see in the village.
"Don't hate us after today," Liiza pleaded before leaving a short kiss on his lips.
"Don't get hurt out there," Khan responded while caressing her cheek and wearing a frown until he saw her nodding.
Khan smiled at that point and decided to kiss her again, but the two separated afterward. He had been honest about his distance from the village, so he had to leave now.
Liiza followed Snow's white figure as it shot through the sky and flew toward the brighter areas. Her expression darkened whenever she thought about what the village could hold. Even imagining those scenes seemed too much for her.
Khan couldn't meditate during that short hour. He had to adjust Snow's direction according to the map in the cube, so resting was also out of the question.
The region highlighted by the map eventually unfolded in his vision. It featured a vast lake filled with dark water, a forest expanding from one side, and a plain with some hills on the others. Yet, Khan couldn't see any trace of a village from his position.
It felt strange to inspect Nitis' environment with that faint light illuminating the scene. It wasn't exactly morning, but there wasn't the usual almost complete darkness either.
Khan made Snow hover above the area until he noticed a group of Niqols coming out of the edges of the forest. He didn't hesitate to dive toward them, and an ugly feeling soon spread inside him when he became able to inspect those aliens properly.
Snow set off again as soon as it dropped Khan on the ground. The latter hurried toward the six adult Niqols standing and sitting next to the trees. Their bloodied white robes became impossible to ignore at that point, but the aliens didn't seem to have injuries on them.
All the Niqols were wearing ugly or lost expressions. Some were even smoking an alien version of the human cigarettes. None of them seemed willing to talk with Khan, but a short woman among them eventually decided to approach him.
"Go there," The woman ordered in a flawed human accent while pointing at a seemingly empty spot near the lake's shores. "Kill everything that lives."
"There?" Khan asked as his brows furrowed.
"A barrier hides the area," The woman explained. "The academy built it for the humans. It didn't protect from the light."
Khan didn't need to ask anything else. He bowed and proceeded toward the spot pointed by the woman. He only had to walk for two hundred meters before finding the barrier.
The scenery in Khan's eyes changed when he crossed the barrier. Many houses built from dark wood mixed with the iconic azure symbols of the Niqols expanded for almost a quarter of the shores. Some structures even occupied the shallow waters. The whole village could probably contain a bit more than five hundred aliens.
A few troops who wore blank expressions sat in a circle at the edges of the village. Blood covered their robes too, but they didn't have a single injury on their bodies. Some still clung on their weapons, while others drank from metal flasks that released a strong scent that reminded Khan of the pink booze.
The Niqols almost didn't notice Khan's arrival. They turned only when his steps became impossible to ignore, and their expression became even uglier when they realized how young he was. Some even covered their eyes in shame as a few tears ran down their faces.
"Are you alone?" One of the older Niqols among the group asked, and Khan limited himself to nod.
The male alien sighed before glancing at the flask in his hands and shaking his head. The Niqols went through some of the backpacks amassed among the circle and took out an identical bottle before handing it toward Khan.
Khan tried to refuse the offer, but the Niqols only needed to say a few words to make him accept it. "You will need it."
The mission was clear, even if no one had the strength to go over its details. Khan had to clear the village from the mutated creatures inside it, which would probably be Niqols. The effort had brought the aliens to their mental limits, so someone else had to take care of the matter, and letting a human handle it sounded proper.
Khan gulped as he approached the village. He partially knew what to expect, but he decided not to think about it.
The short houses at the edges of the village's main street were open, and Khan couldn't sense anything with his sensitivity to mana. He tried to inspect some of them, but they were empty. None of them featured creatures that could remain hidden in front of his senses.
Awful scenes unfolded in his vision as he went deeper into the village. Patches of blood and corpses belonging to Niqols of different ages filled the streets that divided the various houses. Most of those aliens appeared young, younger than any student in the academy, but pieces of their bodies carried strange features.
Some corpses had scales, and others had spikes that created a gruesome spectacle. A few had even started to grow additional limbs or organs in strange places. The scene was horrific, and Khan couldn't help but feel lucky that those aliens were already dead.
The scenes didn't improve as Khan went deeper into the village. They actually became sadder. A few older Niqols had hung themselves, others had died next to bottles that radiated an awful smell, and a few had directly killed themselves with blades or other weapons.
Khan couldn't even imagine the chaos that had spread when the sunlight arrived. None of those Niqols expected the event, and everything had fallen into madness. It even appeared crazier than the Second Impact.
Something faint eventually appeared in Khan's senses. He turned toward the source of the presence and noticed a house with a dead couple hanging from a rope. That scene didn't hint at anything good, but Khan decided to cross its entrance anyway.
Khan walked slowly as he approached the presence in his range. He was ready to fight, but the appearance of a wooden crib when he entered a room made him freeze. He felt unable to move forward, but a strange wail soon reached his ears.
The wail wasn't human. It didn't seem to belong to a Niqols either. It had something monstrous inside him, which made Khan hope in the power of the mutations. He didn't desire much. He only wanted the appearance of the creature inside the crib to be as far from Niqols as possible.
Khan took hesitant steps forward, and the insides of the crib soon unfolded in his eyes. The scene was quite gruesome. The mutation had made a mess of that thing, but it was still alive. Its structure simply prevented it from moving. To make it worse, the creature still had some features that reminded him about the Niqols. Its glowing white eyes focused on him and showed how azure shades had appeared inside them.
The wails slowly transformed into hungry growls, and Khan instinctively looked at the flask inside his robe before heaving a deep sigh. Booze wouldn't help him now. His legs wouldn't move no matter how drunk he was.
A familiar cold sensation spread inside his mind as the mental barrier fended his emotions away. The technique had improved after all his training. Khan felt empty and devoid of feelings. His mind could only think about the mission, and his legs finally moved.
To be continued