Virel Sanguis's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

The sun was rising over Vilemass, and Virel Sanguis had nowhere to hide their children. The eggs hung on the branching alien tree behind them, soft lights pulsing under thin shells. Each one held a piece of the brood Virel had carried across the dark between stars. Dawn light would boil them inside their shells. Virel had one goal now: shelter the young before the sky burned. Virel dragged the tree by its root-base, hunting for a door, a cellar, anything sealed against the light. The old cathedral loomed ahead, its bell tower empty against the pink sky. At its entrance stood a pale girl in a torn white dress. She pointed up at the tower and whispered names Virel did not know. Dara Coldwell did not run from the tall stranger with the glowing tree. She only stared with hollow black eyes. "You can't put them up there," Dara said. She kept pointing at the tower. "The light gets in. It always gets in." Virel gripped a warm egg. Their skin already stung where the first rays touched it. "Then where?" Virel asked. "They cook in minutes. I need stone. I need dark." The girl lowered her arm. For the first time she looked at Virel instead of the tower. "Under," she said. She turned and walked between the cathedral's broken graves, sure-footed on bare feet. Virel followed, hauling the tree across cracked earth. Behind a fallen slab, half swallowed by weeds, sat a buried bunker of gray stone and rusted metal. Its heavy door hung shut. Dara pressed a green button beside the frame. Seals hissed. The door split open on a black throat that swallowed the light whole. Cold air breathed out. Virel dragged the tree down a ramp into the dark. The chamber was deep and windowless, walls of thick stone. Along one side stood a rack lined with glass containers of dark red liquid, and near it a smaller rack of neat vials, blood catching the faint egg-glow. A weathered coffin-shaped pod lay against the far wall, its panels corroded, warning marks faded. Someone had sheltered here before. Someone had left food. Virel set the tree in the center of the room. The eggs stopped pulsing red and settled to a calm blue. The stinging on Virel's skin faded. The brood was safe. The first goal was won. Dara stood at the door, one hand on the frame. "They'll be hungry when they hatch," she said. "There isn't enough here for all of them." Virel looked at the rack of blood. Twelve vials. A dozen jugs. Enough for days, not for a colony. Enough for one, not for the whole brood that would soon crack open in this dark room. The shelter was found. Now Virel had to fill it with feeding, and the vials would empty fast.