Empyrean Iris

Chapter 36

 Chalan couldn't believe what she was seeing, didn't want to believe what she was seeing.

Before her, the Drev paced over the floor looking down upon the hunched Tesraki slaves driven to work as the machines ground back to life. This. this was all wrong. No self-respecting Drev would ever be involved in something like this, not ever.

But the evidence was right here in front of her own eyes, and there was no way to deny what she was seeing.

Despite not having held a grudge against the humans for how they had taken over her planet, she had always assumed they had the moral high ground in the war. She had always assumed that her people were held superior by the spirits because of their honorable practices in war.

All of those assumptions came tumbling down around her as she watched the Drev pace across the open floor snarling at the quivering Tesraki if they didn't work fast enough.

A hand touched her arm, and she turned her head to find the human looking at her. She sort of expected him to appear smug, but instead his single eye was soft and the line of his mouth was pulled into a tight frown. He jerked his head to the side, and began to move slowly through the shadows.

She followed after him, forcing her eyes away from the scene down on the factory floor.

How could they!

Then her mind was immediately stopped. And she reprimanded herself.

How could she be mad at them? Wasn't she just as bad? She had done more reprehensible and dishonorable things in the last month than most Drev in their entire lifetimes, if anyone here was a pathetic excuse for a Drev, it was her.

No matter how hard she had tried to forget, she couldn't deny the reason that she had been sent here.

She glanced forward at the human ahead of her, and inside her stomach flipped summersaults.

For the longest time she had both admired and pitied the humans. Admired them for their sheer will to live, and pitied them for their poor moral character, but now she was seeing the truth.

It had been her all along.

Not him.

He had forgiven her and let her aboard the ship against his culture and better judgement, and now they were working side by side as allies.

The human's feet were near silent on the steel stairs as they skirted down from the catwalk and into the shadow of the whirring machinery. Beside her, a machine was churning out barrels for newly made human weaponry.

The clatter of metal was deafening.

The human crouched low behind one of these machines eyeing the floor before him.

She knelt next to him trying to force thoughts from her mind.

"What now?" She whispered, barely audible over the roaring of the machine, despite being only a few inches away from his ear.

He turned his head to look over the floor frowning as he did.

"Do you see that hallway over there?" He asked, pointing to beyond the factory floor – to where the Drev had originally emerged.

She nodded.

"We have to make it further into the building."

She shook her head immediately, "That's not going to happen, not unless you want to fight your way in."