Prologue
Bound and blindfolded, Korlu awaited what was to come.
The voice, when it came, was all encompassing, made of a thousand whispered echoes. Such was the voice of the Blind ones…
"/Korlu of Vega, because of your crimes, you have been sentenced to banishment, a sentence you will live out on the planet Earth. Do you accept this sentence?/"
No, no! "/ Yes,/" Korlu replied in a voice full of false confidence. The fate he had just consigned himself to, whatever it may include, was surely better than the death he was sure to face should he have refused. But he hadn't…!
As unseen guards led him away, he placed all his hopes on that one small belief. Tears fell silently as he left the only home he had ever known, never to return. He told himself they meant nothing.
He was never very talented at deception.
CH I
The journey to Earth was long and wearisome. Instead of in a lush and comfortable cryo-chamber, he was forced to spend the journey bound and blindfolded in the cargo bay. The hard floor was unkind to his thin body. The cold room chilled his bared flesh, his lush robes having been exchanged for a mere sleeveless tunic and a small loincloth to protect his modesty.
Hunger gnawed at his body, an unfamiliar feeling to Korlu, stemming from his not having been allowed to eat for the past two days, and food was a luxury not to be expected by a prisoner. Every twelve hours, he was allowed to relieve him self and have a few swallows of water, but words were never exchanged, and his bonds and blindfold never removed.
If the starvation did not kill him, the monotony surely would, as the minutes turned to hours and the hours turned to days, each second longer than the last. The temperature of the bay was too chill to easily find sleep, so he was forced to suffer without even the reprieve of slumber. The temperature was constant, as was the sound of the air whooshing from the air system. His bonds prohibited much movement. His blindfold was never removed, and so his world was nothing but the blackness of blindness.
He could not see, nor hear, nor move, nor smell, and barely feel, his entrapment turned into a sensory deprivation chamber.
He had nothing to think of but his past, his present.
His future.
Korlu sighed, letting his head fall back to rest on the wall behind him. He still had much ahead of him.
They changed him.
Injected a serum to cloak his DNA, changed him human.
His beautiful ears lowered and shrank, his tail disappeared, and his eyes narrowed, white filling in around the cerulean-dark irises. His skin paled and pinkened.
All occurred in a burning, excruciating, pain-ridden eternity, as his muscles and bones physically reshaped themselves in a mere two minutes and twelve seconds. His body trembled, his muscles twitching in their new places with little stabs of fresh pain. Tear tracks streaked his face, his throat raw from when he had screamed with the agony of the change, even his voice affected. Fresh tears flowed as the impact of what they took from him hit him fully. His ears, his eyes, his tail, his home.
His life.
All taken from him so brutally.
He could feel the two Avians that had changed him standing over his twitching form, waiting.
The tears still flowed from his burning eyes, his body still trembled and ached, but Korlu was gone. They had taken him away when they had taken his ears and eyes.
They released his hands and feet from their bonds, but he didn't notice. They lifted him to his feet and led him to the new planet, but he didn't care. It didn't matter anymore, because he had died inside.
Hot air blasted a numb face, hot sand burned numb feet, and hot sun burned numb skin. When they removed his blindfold, unseeing eyes gazed upon a desolate landscape. They released his arms, and he fell to the scorching desert sand. The blast of air as the ship took to the sky went unnoticed to the limp form on the ground. As the soft whooshing of the craft grew distant, then nonexistent, the desert wind rushing to mask the sound, Korlu's heart echoed the vast emptiness of the sands around him, hollow and dry.
He slowly returned to thought. Tears silently fell from Korlu's changed, burning eyes. The harsh sun scorched his back while the sands beneath seared his front, and that hollow wind echoed in his scoured mind.
That constant wind did nothing to ease the burning of his flesh, and tore at his hair, whipping it across his face in small stinging lines.
Everything about this place seemed only to be there to harm Korlu, to cause him pain. The sun's harsh rays, the sand so sharp and cutting, even the very air as with every breath it stole away the very moisture from his body. It cracked his lips and made his throat ache for a water. The wretched heat was relentless.
Korlu then realized he was going to die. Water in a desert could only be found near civilization, and his people was a cautious one, so civilization was miles away. He was already so weak, the hunger and thirst and change having ripped and torn away his strength.
But… he didn't want to die like this. Not like this, banished from his only home, his own face stolen. His will broken.
No, not broken. Bent maybe, cracked a little.
Grunting, the sand rasping as he dragged his hand over its fiery surface. A hand the wrong color. His sensitive skin burned as he pushed him self up. Getting up was harder than it should have been, his balance ruined without his tail and his body protesting at every movement. The rough ground was like broken glass to his tender feet.
If he was going to die, it would not be lying broken on the ground. At least he'll have done something before he rejoined the Prism.
He gazed around him with now seeing eyes. Sand. Brush. Rocks. Not much else for miles and miles and miles. Except.. A thin ribbon of blackness wound it's way across the horizon at the limits of his line of vision, indistinct and hazy through the curtain of heat, but… there. It was a point of incongruity among the vast monotony, and something he could orient himself to. With one fleeting glance to the bleached sky and blinding sun above him, Korlu took the first scorching step among thousands…
Lost in thought, he stumbled--
A spiked plant imbedded its barbs into the flesh of his leg--
The sun seemed to sear away all life, all thought, all…
Maybe if he had…
It getting closer? No, or…
Colors blurred, the light, the light, was the Prism…
Feet, oh …
Weak, so weak, can't…
Burns, but…
Have to move, he could rest…
Why had he thought, rest…
Burns, but rest eyes…
Hands?… arms…
Ah… darkness…
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And so begins this Sci-Fi love story