Out of the Ashes (Maji 1)

I jumped backwards as his face smacked off the ground with a sickening crack. His body twitched once, twice, then his movements ceased. I thought he was still breathing but quickly realised the hyperventilating rasps weren’t coming from him; they were coming from me. I lifted a shaking hand to my mouth and covered it as I stared down at the now dead watchman.

I swayed from side to side as my pain and shock became too much for me. I focused my blurring vision dead ahead and made out six dark figures walking toward me. Six huge figures. When they stopped a few metres from me, they stared at me, and me at them. They were fully clothed in a black armour of some kind, and it only made them look that much more intimidating.

The man in the front said something in a language that didn’t sound of this planet, and without thinking, I stammered, “Wh-what?”

The man grunted and turned to his right and spoke to the person behind him in that same strange language.

“No,” the man behind replied in strained English. “We’ve practiced for weeks; you have not. You need to learn how to speak the human languages to make this mission easier, just until we fit them with translators of their own. Do what I told you to do. Repeat what your translator says through your comm, and the female will understand you like you can understand me right now. I’m not responding to you anymore unless you use this particular human language.”

With a defeated sigh, the large man turned back in my direction.

“I sa-said,” he rumbled in a bizarre accent as he switched to an extremely choppy version of English, pausing every couple of words as if he was trying to form them as he spoke. “What ‘re … you ‘oing … out … ‘ere?”

After he had spoken, he removed the mask that covered his face. The now well-lit area shone brightly on his face and revealed all I needed to know about him to be terrified. He had vibrant grey skin, dazzling violet eyes, and menacing sharp teeth with gold caps on them. That was the moment I dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes and began tumbling into darkness.

“Why do fe-females … ‘eep ‘oing … dat ‘round me?” the Maji asked with a tired sigh.

Without missing a beat, the other voice said, “I told you that you were ugly. How many human females must faint before you until you realise that?”

If I was safe, I usually woke to silence. If there was a sound, no matter how minimal, it usually had a bad outcome for me. Today, I awoke to humming, soft singing, and beeping. Loud, constant, annoying beeping. I opened my eyes, and when a damaged concrete ceiling didn’t come into view, I began to panic. I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t. I looked down at my body and saw I was in a white gown of some sort with thick black straps covering my arms, chest, and lower legs, pinning me to the spot.

Oh, my Almighty.

My heart slammed into my chest, and I began to hyperventilate as I struggled against the ties that bound me to the unexpectedly comfortable … bed. I paused in my struggle and looked down once more. I blinked, surprised at what I found. I was on a real mattress and not one that was years old, flat, insect infested, and matted with dirt. A clean white linen sheet covered this one, and it had a lot of cushion in it. It felt incredible as if I was lying on a soft cloud.

The comfort astonishingly calmed me down and gave me my bearings to scan my surroundings. My jaw fell open when the room I was confined to registered. It was clean—really clean—and undamaged. It had all its walls, the floor was intact, and so was the ceiling. It disturbed me greatly because I had never seen any place so pure and beautiful; it was somewhere that didn’t look it was dying. I had never seen anything like it.

The shock from taking in the beauty of the room was quickly replaced with worry. Many questions ran through my mind.

What’s going on? How did I get here? Where is here? Why am I strapped down to a bed? Is that somewhat fresh smell coming from me?

I stared down at arms and legs, and I couldn’t believe when I spotted clear patches of skin. Usually, my skin was so matted with dirt it was hard to tell the colour of my skin, but not anymore. Someone had gone to great measures to cleanse me. While they had done a good job, I could still see patches of dirt and catch the faint stomach-churning twang of stale sweat. I knew my hair hadn’t been washed, considering how itchy my scalp still was. I wondered who cleaned me, but my thoughts on the matter suddenly fled and my body tensed when I sensed I wasn’t alone. I had heard humming and soft singing when I awoke, but those sounds were now mute, and for a moment, I wondered if I had imagined them. That was until I looked to my right and saw it.

A Maji.

The Maji staring at me from across the clean room was clearly a woman. I could see her skin was a vibrant grey, the irises of her eyes were the most eccentric colour of pink I had ever seen, and her hair was as white as the sheet was I lying on. She was huge in stature and leaner than anyone I had ever seen. Apart from those differences, she looked completely human. That was the part that freaked me out the most. She was very similar to a human woman, and I didn’t like it.

I need a weapon.

“Oh, my Almighty,” I whimpered when the woman slowly approached me.

I had to crane my neck back to look up at her when she neared me. She must be at least six feet tall, give or take a few inches.

“Be still, female,” she said, her voice surprisingly gentle. “I

mean you no har—”

I screamed before she could finish her sentence.

“Female,” she repeated, her features contorting in dismay. “I implore you to be calm. I mean you no—”

The centre of the wall across from me opened like a hidden door and in stepped another Maji. He was even taller and broader than the woman trying her best to quieten me. He had a different coloured skin; it had more of a blue hue to it than grey. His hair was tight to his head, black as darkness, and his eyes were blood red with streaks of silver flicking through them in a pattern like lightning strikes. I lost my calm all over again. I began to scream even louder than before, and it caused the female Maji to plug her ears with her fingers. The man did the same, and he had a look of pain on his face.

“Silence!” he bellowed after a few seconds.

I clamped my lips shut and ceased breathing altogether.

“Mikoh,” the alien woman snarled. “You’re scaring her!”

She actually snarled at him, and the sound reminded me of a vicious animal I’d normally encounter in the woods.

Mikoh lowered his hands from his ears. “She was scared before I entered, or was she screaming for another reason?”

“Leave.” The woman growled, her posture rigid. “She is my charge, and you being here is making my introduction to her more difficult than it needs to be!”

Mikoh lazily grinned, and it caused me to scream again because he had gold caps on his … fangs. Not mythical vampire kind of fangs, but fangs that would do a hell of a lot of damage to someone’s throat all the same. It was weird, but the fang observation made it concrete in my mind that I definitely couldn’t refer to them as man and woman anymore because they most certainly weren’t a regular man or woman. They were male and female.

They were aliens.

Mikoh quickly stuck his fingers back in his ears, and so did the alien female, but she was glaring at Mikoh, not me.