Chilled: Elemental Warriors (A Sci-Fi Alien Warrior Paranormal Romance) Read online

  Drosteg fell like snowflakes if you knew how to fight them, knew how to aim for the parts of them that were more likely to freeze, and Cullen had been doing this for some time now. So he knew where to aim and how to strike them down.

  He wrapped his fingers around the hilt of the sword that had formed in his hands and looked up at it. Cullen had made this particular weapon so many times that he didn't have to concentrate as hard to form it anymore. He just let the power shape the ice to his will, and it worked.

  In his left hand was a wickedly sharp, wide bladed sword of ice. The blade was about a hand's breadth wide, and while one side of it was honed to a keen edge, the other side was serrated in thick, jagged icy teeth, ready to rip through anyone.

  The sword was an extension of his power, so it worked much the same as his power did. When he touched it to someone and willed it so, they would be frozen on impact and then easily shattered.

  Anyone who sought to pick a fight with one of the ice warriors was clearly lacking in common sense, but then, that was their business. It wasn't Cullen's job to keep them alive or help them make better decisions. Rather, it was his responsibility to defend the Walled City, and keep creatures like the Drosteg out.

  "You know your orders," he said to those who were close enough to hear him. "They don't get past us. They don't get close to the city."

  There was time for the rest to grunt their agreement and understanding, and then the battle was upon them. It hit fast and hard, the Drosteg clearly trying to compensate for their disadvantage by fighting harder than usual.

  They held crude stone axes and clubs and swung them indiscriminately, sending them crashing into thick icy shields instead of the softer bodies of the warriors who fought against them.

  Cullen watched his fellow warriors fight until the battle reached him, and then he dove into the fray.

  He'd done this enough times that it was like second nature to him. He whirled and dodged and parried, body moving sinuously out of the way of the blows of the Drosteg. He slashed at one of them, catching him right in the back and watching as he crumpled to the snowy ground.

  Frostbite was already spreading through the wound, so Cullen left him there to die and moved onto the next.

  He often chose not to fight with a shield, which was risky, but it allowed him to move faster. It meant that when one of the Drosteg hit him in the side with a club, though, that he felt every bit of the impact, even dampened as it was by his thick armor. Cullen growled his displeasure and lashed out with his free hand, freezing the Drosteg in place and then kicking out with his foot to send him crashing to the ground in pieces.

  He pressed his hand to his side, using the chill of the lingering power there to numb the pain slightly, though he'd definitely be paying a visit to the clinic when they got back.

  "Don't let it stand!" one of his fellows called to him, and Cullen inclined his head, letting the anger and slight lingering pain fuel him as he launched himself back into battle.

  It was hardly fit to be called a battle, in the end. Three hundred Drosteg lay dead or dying in the middle of the barren ground, and the ice warriors prepared to leave them there. Night was falling, and though the Drosteg were as much from the planet Fora as the Ithilir were, they were much less suited for it. Where the Ithilir had evolved to be almost one with the ice that coated the planet Fora, the Drosteg were not native. They'd been here longer than anyone currently alive could remember, but they weren't one with the planet. They weren't meant to spend a night on the frost plains, bleeding, dying, and freezing.

  Come morning, they would all be dead.

  Frist stood over the broken body of one of the creatures and shook his head.

  "What is it?" Cullen asked.

  "They never stood a chance. They never do. But they still keep coming."

  Cullen shrugged a shoulder. "They want into the city. Everyone wants into the city. And they'll do anything to get inside."

  "But why?" Frist wanted to know. "What could be in there that makes dying like this worth it? None of them ever make it back to their people. Surely they know what's happening out here. That they fight and die for no good reason."

  Shallara, one of the few females their number could boast, clapped Frist on the back. "Thinking about it will just make you crazy, Frist," she said. "They come and they fight and they die, and that's just the way it works. If they were smart, they would stay in their caves and leave us be, but no one's ever accused the Drosteg of intelligence, and I doubt they ever will."

  Frist just sighed but then nodded, and they all trudged back to the land ship, ready to take it back to the Walled City, so they could go home.

  The Walled City once had a name, but by now no one remembered what it was. It had been called the Walled City all of Cullen's life, and it was called that all of his parents' lives and the lives of their parents and their parents, too.

  The name certainly suited, considering the city was ringed on all sides by two thick walls of pure ice. Legend had it that it took the ice warriors countless days to get the ice in place, having to stop and fight enemies to keep them out before they could continue to build their walls.

  But it was a testament to their skill and strength that even to this day the walls still stood. Every now and then a section would need to be patched or repaired, and then the warriors would go out and lay hands on it, using their connection with the substance to make it stronger, willing it to keep defending their home.

  For all the city was walled off, it was still the biggest city on Fora. It was a center of trade, knowledge, and study, but only for the Ithilir people. Very few other races could even stand to live on Fora, coated with ice and snow as it was, cold all through every season, and the Ithilir only associated themselves with those of their own kind.

  It had always been that way, and they kept their secrets and jealously guarded their power and their ways against any who would seek to try and figure them out.

  The land ship stopped at the first wall, right before the arch that was the only way past. The walls were too high to scale, too thick to tunnel through unless you had some manipulation of ice in you, and the ground was too hard to make going under them possible. The only way through and into the city was through the checkpoints.

  Two warriors manned each one, and the first was the arch. It was an arched cut out in the ice, kept safe by thick, ice made bars that formed a sort of cage to keep people out. They were easy to melt and reform, and so two warriors were on arch duty at all times.

  The returning warriors were hailed for their victory and then allowed entry.

  They traveled for less than a minute and then made it to the second wall. There was no cut out here, and only the strongest warriors could man this checkpoint as the ice had to be literally reshaped right then and there to allow entry and exit.

  There was a reason why the Ithilir mostly stayed inside the city, as leaving was a process. The warriors waited in their ship while the ice was reshaped to let them in, and then passed into the city without hassle.

  Going from outside the walls to inside them was like entering a whole new world.

  Outside it was quiet as the Void, just the sound of wind and the creaking of ice. Inside the city, people were everywhere, hustling this way and that as they went about their business.

  Smaller land vehicles zoomed up and down icy roads, their propulsion mechanisms keeping them several inches above the icy ground.

  People called to each other, vendors hawked their wares, the smells of rich, meaty stews and hot, spiced drinks were thick on the crisp air, and Cullen's stomach growled, reminding him that it had been quite some time since he'd last eaten.

  "The Prince will want to know we've returned," Frist said.

  "He will," Cullen replied, attention wandering to the idea of going and getting a bowl of stew and a hot drink before he headed home.

  "Come on, you," said Thallon, who was a full head taller than Cullen and older too. "Duty first. Food, second."
<
br />   Cullen made a face but let himself be lead in the direction of the castle.

  For all the modern conveniences Fora and the Walled City had made to make up for their lack of interest in trading with other planets and peoples, there were parts of it that were still firmly rooted in the old days. The castle where Prince Kalias and the other Foran nobles lived was a good example.

  It was straight out of the Frost Age, all glimmering spires of ice and sweeping staircases, towering over the rest of the city that was done in more modern lines.

  It was beautiful, everyone had to admit that, and it suited Prince Kalias well, icy and delicate as he was.

  It was much warmer in the city than it had been out on the frost plains, and Cullen wanted out of his thick, fur laden armor and into something more comfortable, but first things first. They would report to the Prince, he'd get his food, and then he'd go home.

  This was how life went for him on most days. Cullen took his turns manning the checkpoints on the walls, he fought when he was called to, and he answered to his Prince. When he had free time, he spent it with his friends or went to see his family. He trained, he flirted with the women who sold the delicate flowers that were always studded with ice crystals in the market. He knew the city and the people as well as he knew himself and his power, and his life was on the path to being like the lives of his father and grandfather before him. Like most of the people who called the Walled City home and had been called to keep it safe.

  There wasn't much variety, wasn't much change. Ice could either melt or grow, but it was best when it stayed as it was forever, and that was the same with the Ithilir people. Change frightened them, and they liked the lives they led, the way they kept to themselves and avoided people who weren't like them.

  It was a good life, a fulfilling life, and Cullen knew he was doing his part to keep people safe, something that was very important with all the threats out there these days. But still. There were times when he wondered what else was out there. Beyond the walls, beyond the frost plains, on other planets, even. He wondered where the other races who weren't native to Fora had come from and what their planets were like. He wondered if he'd ever see anything other than the ice and snow of Fora in his lifetime.

  "Cullen!" Thallon said sharply. "Stop staring and come on. We've got things to do."

  Cullen shook himself and nodded. Dreaming of other things was a waste of time.

  Chapter One: The More Things Change

  Fear.

  It had a particular smell that Sadie was getting very used to. Humans were definitely trained to be motivated by fear, though they were just as controlled by it. She was getting used to that, too.

  If asked before this, she would have said that it took more than three and a half months (give or take a couple of weeks) for people to change so much. She would have said that people were immovable rocks sometimes, boulders of stubbornness who did what they wanted when they wanted and neglected to care if they were perpetuating years and years of bad decisions. But apparently all it took to get people to move their collective butts towards something new and different was a healthy dose of fear.

  Or maybe it was just an invasion of creatures that no one could put name to, coming in and taking over their lives as they knew them. Probably that.

  Not that anyone could blame them, of course. Mass hysteria, public deaths, the governments of the world not being able to put aside their differences for long enough to come to some kind of consensus about what they were going to do.

  Of course, that last one wasn’t surprising at all. Apparently not even the threat of being annihilated by aliens could make things better between certain countries. And, of course, the countries who had yet to see any alien activity were thinking that the countries who were under attack were just getting what they deserved.

  The whole thing was a mess, and Sadie wished that things could just get better before they continued to get worse, but it didn’t seem like that was going to happen any time soon.

  People went missing left and right, never to be seen again. At the end of every news broadcast, there was a list of people who were missing, their names and faces plastered over the television screen with pleas to call someone if anyone had seen them. But the list just got longer until eventually it was just a scrolling bar at the bottom of the screen to save on time.

  There was, of course, no shortage of other things to report about, and they couldn't take up the whole broadcast looking for people's missing mothers, fathers, brothers, sons, daughters, wives, sisters, etc., etc.

  Honestly, it was depressing.

  On the couch in her home, Sadie sat and watched the news. It was never anything pleasant, never anything new or good, just rehashes of how terrible everything still was, but she felt like she needed to know.

  People were dying and being taken, and maybe it was someone she cared about, someone she had known once, someone she could have helped.

  She still remembered the day, not too far into this nightmare, when Jasmine had discovered that her parents were missing. Well. Her mother was missing, her father was just dead. Jasmine had found out from the news, and she'd just stared in silence for long moments after their names and faces had flashed across the screen.

  Sadie had recognized them too, of course. She'd known Jasmine's family well when they were in school together, and she understood the look of complete stricken horror and sadness on her best friend's face.

  It had been several weeks since then, but Jasmine wasn't the same. She hadn’t gone back to her home to deal with any of it, opting to stay with Sadie instead.

  “You’re safe to me,” she’d said when Sadie had asked her why. “I feel like nothing can get me if I stay with you.”

  It was baffling, honestly. Sadie was just as afraid as everyone else seemed to be. She had no idea what was going to happen in the long term. Hell, she had no idea what was going to happen from day to day, even. She got up every morning hoping that it wouldn’t be her last and that she’d be going to sleep in her own bed at the end of the day and not wherever people were being taken.

  With the exception of their very notable entrance, there weren’t any more of those...things in the area. The neighborhood was mostly quiet these days, people having fled the moment things had started to get bad.

  Sadie just didn’t have anywhere else to go, so she stayed put.

  It was maddening, though.

  Of course The Forge was closed down. No one was going to come in to learn how to weld or blow glass when something like this was going on. And no one was concerned about working there, either. She hadn’t seen any of her coworkers since this madness had begun. She hadn’t picked up a blow torch since then, either, and it made her hands itch to hold one and to build something.

  There wasn’t anything she could build to fix this, though, so she put it out of her mind, focusing on doing what she could.

  Sadie and some of the braver people in the area would go out on food runs once a week, bartering with shop owners, looting where they had to, and using whatever money they had to get supplies and food for themselves and for the people who were too afraid to leave their homes after watching the news at night.

  They moved together in quick, efficient groups, getting in and out and back to safety (in as far as anywhere was ‘safe’ these days) as quickly as possible. There were people who did deliveries, people who organized drop offs, and people who donated their money to make sure that people didn’t starve.

  With so few other options, doing the best they could with what they had was good enough for them.

  “Bread still looks good,” called Keisha, a scrappy girl not much taller than Sadie herself with long braids and a sharp eye. “Ten loaves just about.”

  “Snag it,” Sadie called back. “And anything else that looks good.”

  They were raiding a convenience store that Keisha had scouted and determined was basically abandoned.

  “What about these Twinkies?” asked Marshall, holding up
three boxes of the things.

  Sadie snorted. “May as well. Those things will outlive us more than likely.”

  “Can’t go wrong with that.”

  “Candy for the kids?” asked someone else on the raid who Sadie hadn’t worked with before. “To lift their spirits?”

  “I say go for it,” Keisha replied. “At least they’ll have something to smile about.”

  “You know what this reminds me of?” Marshall mused. “My grandfather lived through a war when he was a teenager. He always talked about how his mom would bring him chocolates when she had money to spare, just two little ones maybe once every couple of months. Just anything to get him to smile and stop looking so afraid all the time because it was breaking her heart. But then he’d share one of them with her to make her smile, and it was just… Yeah.”

  Keisha shook her head. “Marshall, that’s depressing as all get out. We’re not at war.”

  “Well…” said the new comer. “We kind of are, though. Not that we’re doing very well.”

  “Can we not, please?” Sadie broke in. “It’s bad enough that we have to hear about it on the news every night. Let’s just get the food and get out of here.”

  The others agreed with her, and they kept gathering what they could find, stuffing it into reusable bags, and cataloguing what they had found.

  “Hey, papaya!” Marshall exclaimed from a display that was way in the back, and everyone made a face at him.

  “From a convenience store in the middle of the Midwest?” Keisha said, voice dry. “Come on, man. We’re better than that. Even now.”

  “Okay, okay,” he replied, hands raised in a ‘don’t hurt me’ gesture. “Was just a thought.”

  “A bad thought,” she muttered in response.

  “I thought there was no such thing as a bad thought.”

  “That’s questions,” Keisha said. “And even that’s wrong. There are definitely bad questions. Now come on.”

  Honestly, even with the tension that still lingered, this was probably Sadie's favorite thing to do. Three months ago, she hadn't known any of these people, and they hadn't known her. If it weren't for the fact that they were raiding an abandoned store for food, it could have been just her hanging out with friends somewhere else.