“You see? That thing got scared and crawled out of your head.”

Laila’s eyes sought out the source of those cryptic words. She was in a cold, cavernous place, far removed from the warmth of the room in which she’d been about to bed down to sleep. A strange metallic scent clung to the air. She tasted salt on the tip of her tongue. Glowing blue and red moss crept along the ground. Pointy stalagmites poked their heads up around her.

She heard trickling water, nearby but it wasn’t close enough that she could see. In the distance was the rumble that she’d come to recognize as massive waves crashing against jagged cliffs.

“Are you listening?”

It came from above. That voice. That voice!? A sick feeling rolled into Laila’s gut. That voice was her own. Unmistakably. However inconceivably.

Her eyes zeroed in on the source. A dark body stood rooted to the slick stone ceiling, defying the gravity of planet Bentokal. For the first few moments, Laila could only stare dumbly at the figure. Her eyes traced the sharp contours of the indigo face, the tiny jewels embedded below the right eye, the scar below the cleft of her chin. Inky dots nestled in the silver sclera of red-rimmed eyes. Even her boots were still muddy from Laila’s foray to the boundaries of the habited zone.

Everything was the same. Everything!

Laila became unhinged, somehow staring up at her own body but the thing inside that body wasn’t her. The person frowning down at her, arms akimbo wasn’t her. That thing, whatever it was. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t her!

Panic set in.

“Nnnh?!”

The sound that came out of her wasn’t words. She couldn’t make her mouth move the way it should. The breath hissed out of her. Her heart was beating so fast it fluttered and made a humming, almost musical sound.

The thing that was but was not Laila spoke again. “Use your head, stupid. Your head!”

She tried to move but her arms and legs wouldn’t obey. It was as if they weren’t even there. Then, she saw reflected in those angry black irises, dorsal wings and the sleek body of a birdlike creature with a blunt, lizard-like head. This body was blue, sleek and wet. A creature that was not Laila. This creature was teruun, a prized denizen of the planet Bentokal. Coveted possessions across the universe. Here was Laila, trapped inside its body, not knowing how she’d gotten that way.

The body-thief nodded, tongue darting out, flicking at the lips then clicking against the teeth. It bared those pearly whites at Laila.

“I know why you’re here,” It drawled in a mockingly sing-song voice. The stolen countenance hardened. “Silver starchaser.”

Had it zeroed in on Laila’s reason for coming to Bentokal, that she was here now for Hegira’s sake, for Hegira’s future pilot’s sake?

The leviathan ship, Hegira was a wandering world of beauty and turmoil. It was the only home that Laila had ever known, and she was here, on a mission to save Hegira. Had her mission been blown? There was no way she could let that happen, was there? She couldn’t leave this planet and crawl back to Hegira empty handed, could she?

What would Brother do to her? What would Sumida say? Sumida would probably readily forgive her. That would probably hurt more than being tortured by Brother. What to do?

“Yes,” there was another knowing little smile. “What’s a pitiful creature to do? Laila. The sad one. The mad one. The one who will never be chosen.”

Laila knew! She knew that she would never be chosen to be Hegira’s pilot. Hegira, prized jewel of the galaxies and the legacy of Laila’s distant ancestors was once all Laila knew. The only home that she had ever known. Yet, she would never be chosen. She knew she would never be chosen.

Laila knew she wasn’t the golden progeny of the starchasers, Sumida was. Sumida was everything Laila wasn’t. Sumida was graceful, smart and devoid of scars. Both had been bred and raised for the same purpose but while Sumida had been treated kindly, Laila had not.

Sure, Laila had her Lloran fosters. They’d treated her kindly enough and Bex and Winny loved Laila with all their might but it hadn’t been enough to fill the void left by Brother’s cruelty. It could never have been nearly enough.

Sumida must’ve had fosters too. Fosters who loved her with all their might. But she didn’t have a Brother. She didn’t have Brother to torture, to chew her up, spit her out and leave her with nothing but a broken body and her battered pride.

Sumida knew this. Yet, Sumida loved Laila unconditionally, loved her scars and all. Though Laila was barely civilized, living almost purely on instinct. Though she was like a wild and wounded animal. Though she may as well be a beast clinging to the cracks in some forgotten cavern. But who was this thieving piece of alien vermin to decide?

“You think about it all wrong,” The body thief’s tongue darted out and back in. “You see? Teruun are partners, not thieves.”

GET OUT OF MY HEAD!

“No shouting!” Her silent retort was met with a violent shudder, “you sad little girl.”

What did that even matter? Laila was still struggling to grab hold of calmness, to make sense of her predicament. This was all wrong, so very, very wrong.

“Right!” The thing in Laila’s body chortled. “Wrong is right. It’s all upside down, yeah?”

While Laila regarded it, nonplussed, the body thief seemed to be waiting expectantly for something. A few more moments passed. Laila knew the body thief was waiting for something, but what? She had no clue.

WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!

The body thief merely opened its mouth. The ear-splitting sound that came out made the walls of the cavern quake. In the next instant, Laila was back in the warmth of the domicile and back inside her own body. Her knees buckled and she crumpled to the ground.

On the space where the wall met the ground, a dark-bodied millipede was coiled up into a circle. The attendant who’d introduced it to Laila’s body when she first came to this world had called it a cirq. Forefinger and thumb pinched together, she picked it up and set it gently into to palm of her other hand. She brought it up to her right ear, wondering how to go about coaxing the trembling thing back inside.

“Go on. Get back inside,” she urged in a low voice. “Do it!”

The millipede’s head probed at the opening of her ear canal, and then it pushed its head inside. It writhed and wriggled until it was completely burrowed inside.

Wracked by the pain of having her body invaded again, Laila was still shuddering and sweating for a while after it was done. She sat, back against the wall of hewn stone, head bowed between her knees as she fought off wave after wave of nausea. It would be a while before that water-logged, unsteady feeling would dissipate.

She sat there, contemplating her strange encounter with the body thief. Had it really happened because the cirq had crawled out of her head? If that was the case, why had it done that? That was the question wasn’t it?

Bentokal and the surrounding planetary system made up territory deemed Protected by the laws of an interspecies cooperative, led by a race of beings called the Var. It was said that prior to the designation, Var researchers had been studying among the natives of this planet for over five centuries.

The teruun were a non-technological race of beings who communicated on levels that even the Var had only begun to grasp in recent centuries. Teruun were highly sapient beings, known as the best navigators across galaxies. Many teruun would partner with spacefaring beings. To prevent poaching and encroachment upon protected regions, the Teruun/Var principality established the facility on Mount Brul to educate prospective partners and aid with the mental bonding process.

Entering areas outside the designated hospitable zone was forbidden, yet this was exactly what Laila needed to do. She’d arrived on Mount Brul three days prior to her encounter with the body thief, under the guise of seeking a teruun partner, but her true purpose lay elsewhere. Laila was on Bentokal to commit a theft, so preposterous that even the principality hadn’t seen fit to safeguard against it. She would enter the forbidden wilds and steal the rarest of snails, a pale snail.

She could do that much for Sumida’s sake. She could do that much for Hegira’s sake.

The domicile was a massive habitat built into the right incline of the cleft between two massive hills. Rooms had been carved into the stone. Knotted rope ladders led to the plateau above. The Bentokal Principality’s headquarters sprawled out from the center of the plateau just shy of the edges overhanging the domicile.

Laila dragged her boots on and donned a clean jacket over her tunic. She peeled open the vines that served as a door and ducked out of her room, just in time to catch sight of the occupant from six rooms below hastening up the rope-ladder next to the one she was about to climb.

The vrath was a vicious looking thing with big, buggy orbs for eyes, and leathery skin that sagged at the jawline and flapped about as the creature moved. From the mouth grew curly tentacles coated with slime. The vrath had two pairs of arms and legs twice as long as Laila’s, which made it twice as fast. In a flash, it was right beside her.

It was enough to make any self-respecting traveler quake in her boots.  This primeval fear was unwarranted, the vrath were insect-eaters, after all. Though Laila knew this, she yelped and clambered up her rope-ladder with the vrath hot on her heels.

They finished the arduous climb at breakneck speed. Laila felt like her lungs were about to burst but she didn’t stop. She was too stubborn for that. They reached the top at almost the same time. The vrath was over the edge a fraction of a second before Laila. This was their twelfth impromptu half chase-half race and Laila’s eleventh loss.

She sank down on all fours, struggling to catch her breath. The vrath stood off to the side, waiting for her to recover. She waved him off breathlessly.

“No. You,” She coughed, tasted bile. Yuck. “You go on ahead.”

The vrath’s head tilted. “You no eat?”

She smiled appreciatively at his use of human-speak for her benefit. “I’ve got to do something first.”

Smiling at a vrath was a risky thing. It was said that they interpreted the baring of teeth as aggression. Laila and done it without thinking but it was just as well. It was always better to know exactly where she stood. Curiously enough though, he reciprocated, snotty tentacles curling back to give a view of two thick and sharp-looking front teeth.

Laila grinned. “I like you!”

“You,” the vrath returned. “I like you.”

He made a rumbling sound in his belly that Laila chose to interpret as a laugh, then he was off in a flash, scampering away in the general direction of the gathering hall.

Laila headed for the medical section, hoping they would answer her questions without asking too many about her. Her first obstacle was the robotic attendant at the entrance of the dome-shaped building. Laila noted apprehensively how it morphed into the general shape of a troll-like being in front of her.

Now that Laila approached, it took on a generally human shape and asked.

“Genus?”

“Er,” Taken aback, Laila offered. “Human.”

She wasn’t technically lying. Some starchasers had been human once. Hell, they’d probably all started out that way.

The attendant didn’t seem to care one whit about her prevarication.

“Place your claw here,” it instructed.

“Hand,” Laila corrected.

The attendant blinked, nonplussed.

“It’s a hand,” Laila explained further. “I just thought you might like to know. For future…”

The attendant’s droll silence suggested that it couldn’t care less.

“All right then,” Laila swallowed gamely and placed her palm on the scanner.

She nervously chewed on her lower lip. What if they found any irregularities? Sesili, Hegira’s current pilot, had been desperately adamant about this one thing. The Principality was not to learn that a starchaser was on Bentokal. Brother had also sworn Laila to secrecy before she left Hegira. For his plan to work, Laila would need to keep the treasure for herself in order to usurp Sumida. No one could know who she was or why she was here.

The attendant looked at the readings and pointed to the left. “You’re assigned to Medical Unit Six,” then promptly began to shape-shift for the benefit of the next patient.

Laila considered herself dismissed.

Medical Unit Six was a sterile facility, seemingly designed for humanoid body types. The attendant who approached Laila had pink skin and inky blue hair that flowed from the center of her head and down her back. At least, Laila thought it was female. It was otherwise impossible to tell; not to mention, she didn’t recognize the species.

She sat down as instructed and waited with some trepidation while the attendant read the scan that had been taken earlier. It didn’t seem there was any need to be nervous, though.

“There doesn’t seem to be anything to worry about,” the attendant said after a while.

“Right,” Laila nodded. “I’m here about my implant.”

“Implant?”

“The cirq,” she hastily specified, referring to the millipede that had crawled out of her head. “Are they known to behave strangely?”

“Define strangely.” The attendant leaned forward, more interested now.

Laila felt a bit stupid asking now but she plunged ahead. “Like speaking to me in dreams or leaving my body while I’m asleep?”

She left it at that. She had to be careful with her questions. She didn’t want to go as far as suggesting that something other than the cirq—namely, teruun had bonded with her before the initiation ceremony. Something told her that was probably another kind of taboo.

The attendant seemed truly confounded. “That is strange. Cirq don’t communicate, they are simply parasites that facilitate communication between you and teruun. As for leaving your body without a reason, this just doesn’t happen.”

“I know what happened to me,” Laila returned anxiously. “This cirq is weird.”

The attendant came over and coaxed the millipede out. She gently laid it on a transparent platform and ran a scan. When she was done, she brought it back to Laila.

“I could find nothing wrong.” Pale pink eyes, brimming with frosty censure bored into Laila’s. “Perhaps the one who is weird, is you.”

Going to Medical Unit Six had been a mistake, after all. Realizing her blunder, Laila clammed up and promptly made herself scarce, hoping that she hadn’t stirred up enough suspicion to warrant the attention of the Principality.

The starchaser went back to the domicile. She clambered down the rope to her room, grabbed her gear and climbed back up into the courtyard. The yard was deserted, everyone else likely gathered inside the domed eating area for the morning meal. This was her chance to slip away unnoticed. She needed to do it now. There was no time to hesitate. There was no time to be scared.

She came upon the grand divide, where a deep valley separated the habited zone from the forbidden Wilds. A flimsy suspension bridge hung between the two plateaus. The rickety bridge swayed under Laila’s feet as she ran. Way down below, frothy rapids threaded through the lush valley between the two mountains. The heavy air of Bentokal sliced into her lungs like razors. The shrill cries of one alarm after another nipped at her heels. She kept running full tilt across the divide. She ran until she saw nothing but red.

She didn’t even realize that the alarms had stopped. She plunged into mist, blood roaring in her head. She reached the other side, setting foot into the savage Wild. At first, there was only a deathly silence. Then, like some dark greeting, out of the thick of the brush rose a creature, the likes of which she’d never seen.

The beast was six-legged, covered in bristly black fur with a triad of eyes the color of molten sulfur. The predator’s stare burned with intelligence and hostility across the distance between them. Laila’s trembling hand went for her weapon before she even knew it. The beast snarled, double edged tongue and fangs glistening in the poor light. The muscles of its back bunched. The creature launched itself at her.

Her weapon was out of its holster and she as firing blindly before any conscious thought to fight or flee even registered. The wounded animal stopped in its tracks, a hair’s breadth out of reach. It tumbled to the ground. At least one of Laila’s shots had popped the vicious bugger dead center of the third eye and split the skull wide open, steamy brain matter leaking out.

Gone weak in the knees, Laila crumbled. She sat there on the ground trembling and sobbed. Once she managed to get herself under control, she wiped away her snot and tears and activated the device embedded in her palm.

“Show me Sesili’s map,” she ordered hoarsely.

The holographic image produced was a rough map of the Wilds, with an indicator pointing at the target deep within the thick of the Wild, as her sick luck would have it. To make matters worse, the map wasn’t even necessarily accurate. Sesili, who was barely hanging on to this mortal plane, had warned her about that. The map was centuries old, a relic from the time of a man named Karl Methos, who was the first human known to bond with teruun.

According to Sesili, Methos had started an entire philosophical movement, based on two questions:

“What makes teruun soar high up into the heavens and seek out the stars? What makes them dive deep down into the sea?”

Sesili said it was important that Laila remember those words, but Laila didn’t understand how it was relevant to her mission.

What did it matter? Teruun wasn’t her reason for being here.

Sufficiently calmed, the shaking had finally stopped, Laila was on the move again. Hyper vigilant, this time, she kept her gun at the ready, just in case the corpse behind her had some living company.

The gathering hall was in an uproar. Just as the bonding ceremony was about to begin, Brood Master Kush, the Var half of the Var/Teruun Principality had raised the first alarm.

“A child is missing!” Kush had roared. “Sound the alarms! Ground all star-bound vessels! Search every inch of this mountain!”

The brood master wore long robes that touched the ground. His torso was encased within the shell of a giant gastropod. With an ostentatious spire and intricate whorls that gathered at the at the back of the neck, pointing upward and out.

Despite Kush’s rising panic, the group of young teruun gathered to choose partners, not to mention the teruun half of the Principality, calmly floated about mid-air watching the scene before them unfold with bright, curious eyes. Amidst the flurry of activity that followed, the alarms at the boundary between the Wilds and the habitable zone had sounded.

In his flat, sharp-edged voice, Kush ordered the remaining guards to see to the breach of security at the perimeter.

The vrath who all this time, had sat in a corner eating quietly, noted that the only candidate missing from the large hall was his fleet-footed friend of the morning races. He put two and two together, and promptly opted to add to the chaos by lobbing what was left of his meal at a particularly violent looking, blue fellow two tables over.

A full-scale brawl erupted. With half of the candidates fighting and the other half fleeing to avoid the carnage, the crowd bottle-necked at the main exit. The remaining guards who had been dispatched to secure the boundary were now either occupied trying to quell the fight or simply stuck inside, unable to push their way through the throng.

The small riot was eventually brought under control.

The bonding ceremony was put on hold, while the search for the missing teruun child carried on into the evening. This was a highly unusual situation and Brood Master Kush was beside himself with worry. Younglings never usually strayed far from their broods and the possibility that one had either gone astray or come to some harm while under his care was unbearable.

Guards had scoured the perimeter of the habitable zone, but it was apparent that whoever had breached the boundary had already crossed over into the Wild.

The surly brood master had called off the search and declared, “Whoever crossed that bridge will die. It will serve them right!”

He had far more important things to be concerned about and was callously content with that verdict until one of the attendants from the medical complex was ushered into his quarters. The medic who had seen to Laila that morning handed over a data tablet with a recording of their strange interview.

“I believe the disappearance of the teruun child might be connected to this candidate,” the medic said. “I’ve checked the logs. This candidate was missing from the gathering hall.”

Kush wasn’t listening. He was too busy staring at the image on the tablet. Those unusual eyes and the pattern of the jewels under her eye were a tell-tale sign. It could be hard to tell sometimes. Their appearances varied, depending on ship of origin, but there was no doubt in his mind as to the identity of the being in the recording. Frowning down at the recording, he dismissed the medic with an impatient wave.

He waved the data tablet at his teruun partner, who was idly floating about the room. “You knew about this didn’t you?”

The adult teruun glided over to where he stood.

Kush. His partner’s thoughts streamed into his mind. You worry too much.

“Why are you not concerned?!” He screeched. “It’s a starchaser! There is a starchaser on this planet right now.”

Then, something even more troubling struck him. The starchaser had breached the boundary. She was surely going to die. Kush stared at the portrait of the legendary Karl Methos on the wall and groaned. Under his care, a being of legend was going to die.

Laila finally reached the place pinpointed on the map. Her arms and legs, even the back of her neck and face were all scratchy and bloody from fighting her way through the thick underbrush. It seemed even the plants here wanted to take a bite out of her. They weren’t the only ones. Some creature had been stalking her for a while now, flitting about in the brush just beyond her field of vision. Now that she’d reached her destination, it seemed to be keeping its distance for some reason.

A large clearing stretched out before her. The earth here was dry and cracked. At the center of this barren space was a massive tree with lush canopy, thick limbs, and fat, serpentine roots boring down into the ground. It flourished beautifully, sucking the life out of everything around it. Laila stepped onto the desiccated earth and it trembled under her feet. Every inch of her body tingled. She immediately became light-headed. Yet undaunted, she drew closer to the tree’s enormous roots.

The starchaser pressed her palm against the bark. It was warm to the touch, like flesh. It shuddered as if something alive was moving under its skin. Something moved Laila. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was something darker.

She suddenly knew then. She knew exactly what she needed to do.

The next thing she knew, she was on her knees, desperately clawing at the ground at the base of the tree. She dug until her fingers started to bleed. She dug until the dry, ungiving soil gave way to soft, wet earth. A clear, viscous liquid bubbled up, then steadily began to flow.

Laila’s bones ached. There was a buzzing sound in her head. She couldn’t think clearly anymore, couldn’t move away. The thick liquid pooled around her. The opening in the ground widened, became a gushing maw. Out with the fluid came a handful of what looked like eggs. They were gray, speckled with red. Laila plucked one out of the fluid. The shell was soft. The life within pulsating with warmth.

She moved mechanically, couldn’t seem to stop herself. She brought the strange egg to her mouth. She swallowed it whole, then she chose and swallowed another. They slid slowly down, lit a fire in her belly. Laila whimpered, doubling over in agony. She coughed. Blood and spittle spewed from her mouth. She fell sideways, in a pain-stricken stupor, the gushing liquid fanning out around her and sinking back down into the greedy earth.

How long she’d lain there in a stupor, Laila had no idea. By the time the pain finally subsided, the strange water had seeped back down into the earth. The rest of the eggs that had washed up were scattered about already dying, wrinkly and glistening in the declining sunlight.

Night was about to fall. Laila groaned, struggling to move. She didn’t want to be wandering about the Wilds in the dark. First, she needed to get away from this dead zone. If she didn’t, she was going to die. That was the reason the beasts in the wild avoided this area. They knew it too. They were afraid of it too.

She’d come this far. She’d even gotten what she came to find. There was no way in the stars she could just lie here and let this monstrous tree and what lived in its roots suck the life right out of her. It took monumental effort yet crawling on all fours was all she could manage. It felt like it was taking forever but she finally collapsed just beyond the clearing.

She lay there outside the tree’s sphere of influence, fighting to catch her breath. She felt sick to her stomach, right down into her marrow. She managed a chuckle. She sobered an instant later. She still needed to make it out of the Wilds alive.

A twig snapped somewhere behind her. Laila was up like a shot and fumbling for her weapon, adrenaline shooting straight to her head. She fought off the wave of dizziness, spun unsteadily, scanning her surroundings.

“Fraggin’ stars,” she muttered. “Will this day get any worse?”

They were out there, those beastly, wolven things. She couldn’t see or hear them, but she knew they were there. Laila was out of her element again, and scared. Her grip tightened on her gun.

She was not so different from the beasts in the wild. The predators were only doing what predators do. For not being strong enough or fast enough to survive this encounter, Laila would only have herself to blame.

Or, so Brother would say. How many times had he beaten her mercilessly, while driving that very point home?

“I am not prey,” she declared under-breath. “I am not prey!”

Locked in their awkward dance, hunter and hunted snuck about the darkening woods.

Out of the corner of her eye, Laila saw a flash of molten sulfur and the white of sharp, sharp teeth. She took off at a dead run, propelled by the thunder of clawed hooves behind her and the chilling howls of her pursuers. The next thing she knew; she’d already been outflanked. She stumbled, rolled sideways as she fell, barely avoiding the beast’s nasty claws. She yelped in pain and dismay as her hand collided with the tendril of a vicious stinging plant. Her gun flew out of her hand, far out of reach. She had a backup, but it was in her backpack and she was out of time. Three of the snarling beasts advanced.

Laila wanted to run but her legs wouldn’t obey. She’d seen this sort of thing happen before. Brother’s minions hunted down dissidents in this fashion. She knew what was coming next. Her eyes squeezed shut. Dread pooled into her already churning gut. A helpless sound squeaked out of her.

A bright light cut a swath into the darkening woods. The air hummed with crackles of electricity. A luminous body came to rest in the air above Laila. It hovered there, emitting waves of electric light and a high-pitched wail that send the creatures of the wild crashing about and howling in pain as they fled.

RUN!

The sharp command speared into Laila’s mind.

When she still didn’t move, the little teruun’s thoughts boomed in Laila’s head again.

Starchaser! 

Spurred into action again, Laila sprang to her feet and she ran. She didn’t think about where she was going. She simply followed where the little beastie flew. She didn’t think twice about it until she found herself skating to a sudden stop. The little twit had led her right to the edge of an outcropping rock. Below it was a dead drop into the dark heart of the valley.

“What kind of lame joke is this?!” She yelled hoarsely.

She spun about, intending to go back the way she’d come, dangers of the Wilds be damned, but little teruun darted around to block her. Its body swayed from side to side. It regarded her with bright, curious eyes. Laila instinctively reached for her weapon, but it wasn’t there.

She frowned at the young teruun. “What are you playing at?”

Bargain.

Came the steely answer.

“What?” Laila blinked.

You give life. Your life.

“Are you out of your mind?” Laila’s tone became deadly. “Why should I agree to die because you–“

Live. Not die. Came the hasty qualifier. You see? You live, I live. You die, I die.

“You mean the bonding ceremony?” Laila’s hackles went down. “But you know, don’t you? I didn’t come here to bond with teruun.”

Bargain.

It demanded again, with a stubborn edge this time.

A ghost of a smile crept across Laila’s face. “If you want to bargain, you have to offer something in return. What can you possibly give me that I don’t already have?”

You. The teruun chimed. I give you courage.

The little monster launched itself at Laila, sent her tumbling right over the edge. Laila screamed as she fell. Her scream was cut short as her body slammed into something cool and supple. She was on some sort of firm surface. Disoriented, she managed to sit up. Whatever had cushioned her fall was moving. She could feel the cold wind on her face. A slight tremor went through the surface of her dubious carriage and that’s when she realized that it was alive. It was a massive, adult teruun! The small teruun came to rest on the big one’s back beside Laila.

You see? Came the smug declaration. Courage.

As they glided silently through the dark, all the tension suddenly went out of Laila. The starchaser crumpled and she fell for the first time in years, into a deep slumber, while being carried out of the forbidden Wilds.