The Light Within Ch 01

I want to thank everyone who was kind enough to encourage me to keep writing. I have a very difficult time sharing my stories with the public and I admire anyone with the courage to do so. The Light Within is the final installment of Jayn and Perikos' story and if you've stuck around this long, then I'm truly flattered. I've had a difficult year and so the writing has come very slowly but I personally feel satisfied with the conclusion and I hope anyone out there still interested is satisfied too.

We were lucky to have found a cave to hide in while the Kragosi ships were overhead. Yesterday, Perikos, Shadow and I had discovered that just because they were forbidden by the reigning King to use UV search lights to find us didn't mean they wouldn't use infrared sensors to determine a human heat signature. Perikos had gathered Shadow and I up and moved with a kind of lightening rapidity even I hadn't thought him capable of and now here we waited. Sixty kilometers or so by Shadow's estimations from the compounds we escaped from, where our nascent rebellion against the corrupt, cannibalistic government of this planet met a sticky end, we hunkered down and waited for the wail of Kragosi engines to die down.

"

The stitches are poorly done and have likely caused infection. To make matters worse, they seem to have torn,"

I heard Perikos' melody, soft and rich if slightly uneasy.

There was nothing to do but wait till to mercenary ships gave up searching. Perikos had me lean back against something rather soft that I thought might be some kind of massive fungus. He had set a splint against my broken right wrist and bound it with a small bit of vine he had managed to scrounge. It was only when I complained about my ear feeling hot and wet again that Perikos had eased me down onto my back, and I felt rather than saw several long, thin tendrils drift tentatively towards my injured ear.

"

How did you say you sustained this injury?

" Perikos asked.

"One of the assholes in charge of my interrogations thought it would be more interesting to nail my ear to the wall than bother wasting the rope," I said, knowing it would piss Perikos off. Then again, it was the truth and it made me feel relatively badass, especially considering I wasn't actually conscious at the time, and since I was feeling pretty low on badassery as of late, I let Perikos shake in furious indignation on my behalf for a moment.

He touched it gently and all pretensions of my toughness evaporated instantly as I moaned. Definitely it was infected. Whimpering was more in keeping with how I'd actually been feeling lately, what with the terrible soreness from Perikos and Shadow milking me for all I was worth energy-wise to bolster our escape. Not to mention the stiffness, the beatings from my interrogators, my broken wrist and sprained ankle, plus the extra gravity that slowed me down already, to say nothing of my torn, infected ear or the multiple head injuries I'd sustained this week alone. I was lucky I remembered who I was and why I was here.

Perikos held my jaw gently with his tendrils and turned my head to get better access to my ear. "

First the remains of the stitches must come out, I think. Then it must be drained. Then we must stitch it anew.

"

None of that sounded pleasant and I was particularly unenthused about the draining part. Perikos lifted up my head a moment and I felt something soften as he pressed me down against it again. He had turned some part of his body into a pillow and now held my head firmly down against it.

"

Exhale and count to five.

" I heard his song, soothing and measured.

I exhaled deeply and tried to concentrate on the number one but all at once was consumed by a sharp, fast ripping feeling and then my ear, neck and shoulder felt wet again.

"What happened to counting to five?" I grunted, trying to stay perfectly still in spite of the bleeding infection attached to my head.

"

I was diverting your attention and it worked,

" said Perikos softly, and I felt several thin, light touches on the shell of my ear. "

It is certainly infected. Hold very still please, Little Shade.

"

Not that I could have moved, the way he was holding me down. I took a deep breath and something very sharp, so fine I wouldn't have felt it at all had the skin not been infected, made a small incision near the top of my ear. Then, before I could anticipate it, there was a sensation that began as pressure and culminated in lancing, gut wrenching pain. I moaned through clenched teeth but I couldn't help thinking of Shadow, who must have been watching the proceedings from outside what little radius I could see. He had sustained some pretty dire injuries and was far from fine but he wasn't making a big production out of every minor hurt or scrape. Then again, I never signed up to be a professional soldier. I was a self-professed wimp.

"

The worst is over,

" Perikos reported after another moment of me trying not to embarrass myself. "

I just need to close the wound.

"

I took another deep breath. Stitches weren't that common on Ferox 4 unless something real bad happened to you. Our closest neighbor got mauled by a feral mygvere when I was eleven and had to get stitches but mostly if you got hurt you just took some painkillers and glued the skin together and that was that. Sometimes it would get infected but there were always antibiotics. Except here were there was just Dr. Perikos.

I felt something very thin and quite warm press into the skin of my ear and then felt an odd sensation of pressure and pulling and then felt the light prickling again. I felt ten more after that and held completely still. I was not interested in having to go through this again.

"

Your wound is closed,

" Perikos said finally after another moment or so of inspection.

"

Do you really think it's wise, using your body in that way?

" At first I thought Shadow was talking to me, judging by his cold tone. I turned to snipe back some caustic reply even though I didn't know what he was referring to but then Perikos replied to him as he helped me sit up.

"I do not see why not. How I can assure it was sterile?"

his music was light, buoyant and I felt nearly the whole of his attention on me.

"Yet you diminish yourself,"

Shadow sounded deeply unimpressed.

"Hardly,"

Perikos replied.

"How are you feeling, Jayn? Are you in pain? Are you dizzy? Nauseated? You do not have a fever – "

"What?" I frowned, trying to find Shadow's form in the dark as if by locating him I could discern his objection. It didn't sound like he was just being regular old stick-in-the-mud Shadow but then what did I know?

"Besides that, what of the long-term affects?"

Shadow continued, ignoring me entirely

"Will it die? Will it bond to her? What if her body cannot accept it?"

"Jayn's body accepts everything I do to it,"

replied Perikos, sounding more like a smug teenager than the former leader of a major rebellion. Not that he was wrong but I had a sinking feeling I was missing something important.

"What are you both talking about?" I used Perikos' tendrils to steady myself as I rose to my feet.

Perikos started to say "

nothing

" just as Shadow began to speak over him.

"You take a great deal for granted, Human. How do you suppose he closed the wound?"

"Stitches," I replied, feeling stupid for missing whatever was so obvious.

"Using what, exactly?"

Shadow replied, his tune both triumphant and reproachful.

I reached up to feel my ear, which had been torn almost all the way through. It was now held tightly closed by something that felt for all the world like very fine silk thread. "What

did

you use?" I turned to Perikos, frowning.

Before Perikos could reply or maybe blow off the question, Shadow replied, "

a piece of himself.

"

"What? How is that supposed to work?" I looked back and forth between Shadow and Perikos, unsure if I just wasn't in on the joke.

"

I used a very small piece of myself to bind it.

" Perikos didn't sound ashamed in admitting it so maybe Shadow was just being a twerp.

"

What he means to say is he tore a small piece of himself away, effectively killing it and used to seal an open wound on your body without a thought given to the complications or how it might affect or diminish him."

"

It could not continue to bleed or Jayn would have been weakened and so would we all. I can assure its strength and sterility and no satisfactory alternative presented itself."

Perikos sang back at Shadow, though I could feel his attention on me. "

You endured the pain well,"

he told me, which I supposed was his way of telling me he was grateful I never started screaming and flailing, which was only partially true because I had been a bit of a crybaby since we escaped, between my wrist and the rest of it. Or maybe I just felt like a crybaby next to Shadow, who had been doing the whole stoic injured General thing well enough to put me in my place.

I slumped against the wall next to me. Now that I was standing I felt dizzy and felt my heart pounding but maybe it was just all the pent-up adrenaline I had built trying to stay perfectly still while Perikos poked holes in my infected skin. I closed my eyes, counted slowly to ten and wobbled over to where I heard Shadow's music come from. It was too dark to see him but I could feel him as I approached. His presence felt smaller, colder and I could tell he was irritable and probably lonely. After all, Perikos and I had been acting pretty couple-y and while I wasn't going to complain about Perikos prioritizing my health and comfort, we didn't need to work Shadow back into the funk he was in about me before I got captured by those Loyalists.

"Hey, how are you feeling?" I kept my voice softer and spoke gently. Too gently. I forgot who I was talking to.

"

I do not appreciate your condescension. I am as unwell now as I was several hours ago when you last bothered to inquire."

Shadow hissed like a cymbal.

I turned and looked at Perikos as though hoping to read his body language or discern some clue as to what I should do. Unhelpfully, Perikos looked just as like a tentacled mass of inky blackness like he always did. I looked back at Shadow, who I was close enough now to see. He was small enough to hold in my arms, and while I never thought he looked robust, per se, any hint of luster or strength seemed to be sapped. He could have been an artistically rendered lump of charcoal.

"Look, we need to do something about this before we move on. You need enough energy to be able to heal yourself."

"

I do not see how that is possible and at any rate I am well enough not to burden you very greatly. Do not trouble yourselves,"

Shadow's tune was more of a bitter grumble.

What we were all carefully not saying was that we all knew how easy it was for him to feed well enough that he could heal himself. And we were about as eager to actually say it as we were to engage in it. Perikos and Shadow fed of fear and pleasure and apparently I was pretty easy to please. Humans apparently achieved emotional heights completely unknown to creatures on this planet. To feed at all they had to consume living beings capable of at least some emotion. After their population expanded so that they killed all or nearly all the lower lifeforms, they turned on each other. Death by having your friends and neighbors feast on your still living corpse became de rigueur until Shadow taught Perikos that such things were really awful and barbaric, and those lessons resonated with enough people to form a rebellion against the current Leader or King or whatever. The King committed more atrocities and Perikos actually killed him, so legally he should have taken over and reformed the planet. Well, the best laid plans of aliens and men oft go awry, so instead of a weird take on socialism, Perikos was captured, subdued and sent to Kragosa, an awful, maximum security prison planet outside Union law. That's where I met him and he helped each other away, and since humans weren't supposed to be there and anyone who

was

there was never supposed to escape, that made us both outlaws. I didn't really have anything to go home to, so I joined Perikos. The theory was (at least until pretty much the entire rebel army got squashed yesterday) that Perikos' new regime meant everyone ate off everyone, just a little, kind of on the honor system.

Assuming these creatures were at all like humans meant this certainly wouldn't work, but it beat the hell out of starving horribly or cannibalizing every guy that looked at you funny. And hey, Perikos' rebels had wasted away rather than do harm to their fellows, so maybe it really could work. To feed emotions off one of their fellow creatures was apparently to tap into a finite supply of emotion and energy. By contrast, little ol' human me couldn't stop producing emotion surplus if I tried. The long and short of it was that it seemed I was Perikos' trump card, his lifetime supply that no one else had access to. On the negative side, the Loyalists who fought against the rebellion had no scruples when it came to devouring any and all of their fellows to do battle against us. There was something to be said for engaging them and then retreating and repeating it all until they depleted their numbers badly, but that was probably my alien point of view talking. Yesterday we escaped their prison, and Shadow, Perikos and the dying rebel army took out a fair few. They seemed to have a better sense of what they were dealing with because probably they had sent out kill squads and they had definitely put the Kragosi guards on retainer to recapture us. The downside of that was that while Shadow and Perikos could likely protect me against Loyalist kill squads so long as I kept pumping out "emotion", Kragosi guards had been authorized to use intra-red and UV light to recapture us and while that didn't bother me too much, Shadow and Perikos were a bit allergic. Like, shrivel up and die allergic. Which is why we were hiding till their ships got tired of searching.

None of this was much help to Shadow. Like I said, there were two ways for them to feed: fear or sex. Fear was bad because I wasn't particularly interested in soliciting an alien creature who didn't much like me to provoke enough terror that it could heal the worst of its injuries. As for sex, Shadow and I had done it once but the circumstances were a little different. I had been captured and bound so I couldn't stop it; Perikos was not around and was in dire straits and we did it to strengthen Shadow so he could help me save Perikos. I had really disliked it and would almost classify it as rape. Did I mention I was tied up at the time? Not to mention Perikos was here now and he was the jealous type. Possibly weirder was the knowledge we all shared when we embarked on the idea of overthrowing the King at the capital that if Shadow and Perikos were going to stay strong enough to make this worth their attempt, I was going to be putting out. We all knew it but none of us knew how to proceed.

I glanced back at Perikos again and reached out to touch him. One tentacle coiled around my unbroken wrist to wind its way between my splayed fingers.

"Now what?' I asked him silently, hoping he could read thoughts. "How do I help him and still keep some parts of myself off limits? What are the new rules? Help me."

Perikos continued to hold my hand a moment, and stroked my tangled hair, pulling it away from my face and holding it there, in a ponytail. I felt something thin and feather light press itself against my uninjured ear and it tickled me but then I heard Perikos' soft, whispered melody. "

Do not worry, Little Shade. I will help. Do not concern yourself with the politics of this – you are first and foremost mine. I will set boundaries for you and I will make sure my Second has what he needs. As with any other manner of feeding, relax and trust my judgment."

That wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear. Once again, what I wanted didn't matter. Why should it be up to me, it's only my body, right?

I felt pressure on my shoulders as Perikos pushed me downwards. I tried to turn my head, but he held my hair behind me and I had very little range of motion, like being on a very short leash. I took the hint and knelt. I probably would have sat down entirely but Perikos kept me on my knees as he held me by my shoulders and waist. He then held my arms just above my elbows, squeezing them together until I had to thrust my chest forward. His grip on my hair tightened and he forced my chin up before a thick, cool tendril slid over my eyes and it got even darker than it had already been. I knelt, restrained and blinded in total stillness for a moment before I felt Perikos' tendril snake between my legs from behind. Hooray, I thought, since I had never been one for teasing or anticipation. Perikos' tendril circled my swollen nether lips and then patted them gently.

"

So perfect. All need do is hold you in some position of supplication and your body responds."

The tendril pinched my labia together over my already wet hole and I ground down against him, moaning for something more substantial. "

Shadow, come here please."

I stopped grinding and felt my insides ice over. What Perikos made my body do and how Shadow made me feel were totally different things. Not to mention Shadow didn't know what to do with a human female body. I wriggled a little in attempt to communicate my reservations and Perikos pinched me together more firmly.

"

I have no desire of it and it has no desire of me,"

replied a cold, hollow tune. I had been demoted back to "it".

"

Jayn eagerly anticipates your participation. Feel it for yourself. Her arousal fills this tiny space."

I assume Perikos meant the cave and as for anticipating Shadow's participation, maybe I was just a freak like that. To want something I knew I didn't.

"

Then I will content myself with proximity. It is yours, it does not want me."

Shadow's voice rang again in the blackness.

I felt one of Perikos' strong, thick tendrils trace a long, tender line along my jaw and down my neck to between my naked breasts. "

Even if that were true, I am responsible for decisions about Jayn's body in matters of feeding. What she says she wants is not important because her body swells and pants for intrusion. She prefers to have no control."

A little moan escaped my lips before I could stop it. Perikos was right of course, we'd hashed that out long ago. And yes, I wanted the fear of what Shadow would do because even if it didn't feel good, Perikos would control every moment of it. And I wasn't getting out of it, either.

When Shadow replied, his song sounded weaker, thicker. "

I do not need – "

"With all due respect to you, My Second, I order you to satisfy yourself now, before we must leave. You will take what you need this time and in any future instance I request and never deny yourself at the cost of our success. You are my Second and Jayn is my Partner but she knows I require obedience from her in this matter, as I require it from you. Do as I ask or we will forfeit this endeavor we have set ourselves on for we cannot win if you do not heed me as she does."

Calling Shadow's pride into question was something only Perikos could do and get away with, but even blinded as I was, I sensed something physical shift in the room. Had Shadow moved?

"

Thank you

," Perikos said quietly and I doubted he was talking to since I hadn't moved or spoken. "

The first thing you must know of is her mouth."

I felt my body stiffen.

"

Please open, Little Shade."

I had to, of course, but I steeled myself to do it.