Mina of the Stars

Chapter 6: Bite of Blue Fingers

Mina fades in and out of consciousness.  The floor spins beneath her, or does it move? It is hard to breathe.  She is thrown over someone's shoulder, her stomach crushed into her lungs in this position.  They are speaking but the words escape her.  Where am I? I was...Kakos...drank.  And drank...

Eyes forced open, she identifies a dark stone-walled corridor little wider than the Jadet who carries her.  Her hands are bound behind her back, along with her feet.  The Jadet lurches sideways as they go around a corner and she blacks out again.

A voice rumbles under Mina, bringing her awake. "...you get a look at her scars? She looks like a rabid animal, with knife wounds healed up along her stomach and legs."

"Mm. Rabid.  Like the silicon lions salivate over the sun? Or do you mean it in the old Earth ways, as in a virus carried by bats, skunks or coyotes?"

The hand over her back shifts her up higher, before the voice rumbles on, "Humans come from earth.  They've brought all sorts of disease here. Probably how this one's survived in the pits so long." 

The other seems amused as they answer, "So you think you're carrying a rabid human?"

The shoulders under her shrug, making the world spin.  Mina struggles to stay conscious. "Probably can't infect the god-bloods."

"You've really thought this out." 

"Oh. Yah. Well. Been doing my research--"

The other cuts Mina's carrier off, sharp, "Oh do tell me what's on her arm? Looks like some pretty noxious stuff. Maybe part of this human rabies?"

Mina is jostled as the Jadet beneath her comes to an abrupt stop. "Oh gross.  Is she drooling?"

Mina is unceremoniously dumped off at his feet.  She woozily breaks her fall so her head doesn't smack the floor. 

The Jadet behind Mina laughs long and hard.  Then his big hand grabs Mina by the back her neck forcing her dizzy gaze up, towards the younger Jadet who'd been carrying her. "Look you idiot, she's not sick, she's just been sucked dry by Kakos. Look at her neck. You young generation.  I don't know if there's a hope for you.  How do you take up a post without knowing the difference between a sick charge, and a dangerous one?"  The Jadet's hand releases her head and Mina catches herself on an elbow as he tosses her back down. 

Sounds like a sure way to underestimate their prisoners. But go ahead. Set me free.

"Well uh. Then what's that on her arm?" 

Definitely rabies. But Mina can't answer, her gaze spins so fast she has to shut her eyes to keep from vomiting.  If I vomit I will try to get his feet.

"Oh that. Well. Far as I can guess, it's a half-dead symbiont of a Poseidon warrior. Hades-knows what she's doing with it.  Probably why it's so nearly dead. I mean, bringing a thing like that to Typhon where there's not a spec of water to be had. Like I said. No hope for the young generation, human or otherwise. Get her onto the platform so we can shove her through."

Half-dead?  Mina feels a guilty turn of stomach. I don't deserve it.

Mina is lifted by one arm and leg, and through her blurry vision she sees stone steps that lead to a large platform.  A Gate. I'm going to go through a gate. 

Mina is dumped again on the stones.  Her arms and legs are unshackled and she curls into a ball, silent in the excrutiating pain of blood returning to her limbs. It is too bad because Mina desperately wants to appreciate that she is about to see a scroll, about to travel the one way she has been dreaming about for nearly her entire life. A gate. But ouch, the un-numbing pain! She bites her lip.

The Jadets heavy footsteps move about.  Mina tilts her head up.  The younger Jadet is now obvious in his smooth skin and more vibrant expression.  The young Jadet looks down at Mina with some trepidation, as though he isn't entirely sure that "Human Rabies" is a fiction.  The older Jadet stands back, his skin like rock stained by years of weathering.  He pulls a scroll out from the pocket of his pants, before tossing it and calling out, 

"Atlas, delivery for Earth."

The scrolls crackles, zaps, disappears mid-air to be replaced by an enormous tear that sparks with glowing edges like bars of lighting.  A single blue finger tugs at this interdimensional fabric, holding the door open.

The young Jadet crosses his arm, "Look at that, a single finger gate, she's going to have fun time."

The older Jadet crosses his arm, "She's a dead-human walking. I have no idea what Kakos thinks he's doing sending her after all the others."

Mina scrunches her face. Yet here I am, going after a god-killer. Living just took on a whole new level of impossible. 

She presses up on her palms, and manages to slowly come to a weary, wobbly stance. 

The Jadets freeze.  The younger one frowns, "She recovers faster than a human for that amount of blood--"

The older interrupts with a subtle smile, "That's because she's not entirely human, are you?"

He looks hard at Mina. Mina stares right back. "Give me my swords."

The Jadet laughs then tosses them to the ground at her feet. "She's got a bit of Poseidon in her, for all the good it will do her.  That's why she's got that half-dead symbiont on her. Ha. Oh Kakos. What did he do to find you, little water-halfling. And how you must have tasted, a water god on the lips of a fire-demon. Ha. Ha. oh well. That's a new one. Doesn't matter now though. get on through or we'll get you through."

Mina bends slow to get her swords.  She manages to keep from passing out as she picks up her swords.  She slips their bindings on to her back.  I could do this with my eyes closed.

Atlas gate is behind, snapping and crackling like the hand of Zeus himself.  Only it isn't Zeus's hand that holds it up, but Atlas, single-fingered blue and shackled. 

The younger Jadet steps close, Mina lifts a lip in a snarl. "Back up Rock-head or I'll get you with my "Human Rabies." wouldn't you like to find out if that's how I got all these scars?"

The older Jadet laughs even as the younger one hesitates. 

Mina takes the distraction in stride and comes right before the door. It is hard to look at, a moving purple black shimmer of vast swaths of stars and universe folding in and out of itself.  In the end her gaze comes to the top of the tear in dimension, to the thick knuckles of the blue finger holding it open.

"Thanks be to you Atlas." She whispers before crouching low and forcing herself to execute a dizzying leapt into the door.

The sensation is cool.  Even as she jumps, she feels the faint transition of being elsewhere, where there is no wind in her hair.  She glimpses briefly a black mound of hissing black snakes with a blue-skinned man sitting at its top, a statue in all other respects except for his black, star-filled eyes that blink as she moves past him, still in motion.

But Atlas is gone as the gate sucks her forward. Her landing approaches as the gate finds an end: she tumbles through in an awkward spinning fall. Which way is up? She scrapes her palms and knees holding herself to a stop.  

She clings to the ground but the single-finger gate has done her no favours. Around her spins and spins and spins. She shuts her eyes, 

Earth?

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