Silver Splendor : Worlds Away (Warriors of Valose Book 14), page 1
SILVER SPLENDOR
Worlds Away
Warriors of Valose Saga 14
IONA STROM
Acknowledgments
Cover Designed by Natasha Snow Designs
www.natashasnowdesigns.com
Map of Valose
RobDonovanauthor.com or
snikt5
Copyright © 2024~Iona Strom
All rights reserved.
Please respect the work of this author. No part of this eBook/book publication may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Use your own judgment to determine if the content of this novel is appropriate for you.
This romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
NOTE*: If you did not buy this ebook via Amazon KDP or download through the Kindle Unlimited program, then you are in possession of a pirated copy of my work. I suggest you delete it and never return to where you obtained it. Copyright infringement is a crime.
Created with Vellum
Contents
Map of Valose
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Also by Iona Strom
About the Author
Map of Valose
Chapter One
SARAH
My consciousness flickered like a faulty lightbulb, struggling to hold onto the slippery edges of awareness. I was met with a darkness that felt both suffocating and expansive where I lay on a hard floor inside a tiny room that seemed to contract around me with each shallow breath. The air was stale, heavy with an odor I couldn’t place—something acrid and metallic, making my stomach churn.
My mind reeled, a carousel of fragmented images and muffled sounds spinning relentlessly. An echo of fear clung to those memories, elusive yet pervasive, like the hum of an electric current through my veins. My heart drummed a staccato rhythm against my ribs, an insistent warning that something was very wrong.
With effort, I tried to lift myself from the cold floor, my limbs heavy and uncooperative. It was then I felt it, the unforgiving bite of restraints encircling my wrists. Panic rose in me like a tide, swift and drowning. My breaths came quick and uneven as I tugged at the bindings, their relentless embrace igniting a primal urge to flee.
"Think, Sarah, think," I whispered to myself, my voice a ghostly sound in the oppressive silence. The room offered no clues, just shadows that danced across the walls, mocking my helplessness. There were no windows, no doors that I could discern—only the dim outline of what might have been cabinets or machinery etched into the periphery of my vision.
My eyes darted around, searching for any sign of life, any hint of an ally in this otherworldly prison. But there was only solitude, a companion as cold and indifferent as the space that held me captive.
Each moment stretched into eternity, marked only by the rhythm of my racing pulse and the tightening grip of despair. Fear clawed at my insides, a relentless predator threatening to consume me whole. Every nerve in my body tingled with raw terror as I grappled with the unknown fate that awaited me. The oppressive weight of uncertainty pressed down on my chest, suffocating me with its icy grip as I wondered what was planned for me. I wouldn’t have been left here without purpose.
Was someone watching?
My gaze took another flit around the room, this time searching for cameras while my mind raced with a thousand horrifying possibilities, each more sinister than the last.
Paralyzing dread coiled around my heart, squeezing it in a vice-like grip, as I trembled in the face of an invisible enemy. The oppressive silence engulfed me, sending my heart into a frenzied gallop. I sat vulnerable and isolated, enveloped by shadows, dreading the unseen presence scrutinizing my every action.
The door's creak announced a fresh horror. An avocado colored troll-like being shuffled into the dimly lit cell. His squat stature crowned by a wicked grin carving a crescent across his pocked, leathery face.
His guttural language clawed at the silence as he beckoned me with a gnarled hand and pointed to the hallway beyond with the glowing tip of a long pole.
"Nitek!” I had no clue what he shouted, but his intent was made clear in sharp gestures.
I shakily rose to my feet, vertigo setting my head adrift as I struggled with my restraints. Each step I took became a battle of determination, an exercise in will. My resolve not to crumble under the weight of my circumstances, a testament to a fortitude I hadn’t realized I possessed. Not that I was a coward, but waking up to this was something beyond terrifying.
As I shuffled closer on bare feet, the troll lightly prodded me with his glowing stick, sending jolts of agony racing up my arm. I instinctively jerked away. The sharp pain was like a bolt of lightning, welling tears in the corners of my eyes.
The quick touch served as a clear warning not to try anything stupid or suffer the full brunt of a prolonged jab.
Shoved out the door by my grotesque jailer, I was herded through a labyrinthine of corridors by the threat of his shock stick. With each twist and turn through a seemingly endless maze, the air grew thicker, hotter, until my lungs labored for breath. The oppressive heat cooking the marrow of my bones.
The troll's relentless march came to a sudden halt, and I found myself stumbling into a colossal cavern teeming with trolls surrounding a group of trembling bodies. The eerie glow of luminescent fungi above gave the scene an otherworldly feel. My heart raced as I took in the sea of faces, all bearing the same expression of dawning terror.
I was shoved in with the group of nine women huddled together. All of us wearing the same white, sack-like garments tied at the shoulders.
A blonde woman with haunted eyes offered me a rueful smile that spoke volumes of our shared plight. My gaze roved over the group, each with their own tale of upheaval and chaos. Like me, these strangers had been plucked from their peaceful existences and thrust into a world of unknowns.
One by one, we were brought forth and forced to our knees, a line of despair stretching across the cold stone floor. I fought the urge to resist, feeling the metal clasp of the troll's restraint biting into my flesh as a stark reminder of my captivity. Questions churned in my mind, but fear kept me silent.
The trolls moved systematically among us, wielding devices resembling crude pistols. The sharp prick at the base of my ear made me gasp. The trolls' guttural language suddenly unfolded in my mind, a grotesque complexity of sound that now held meaning for me. Instead of bullets, these guns implanted a translator device that nestled against my skin like a parasitic whisper.
"At least we can understand what they’re saying now," murmured a girl to my left, her Canadian accent placing her worlds away from my own origins in southeast Kentucky.
I wished I could agree, but I couldn't. Sometimes ignorance was bliss and knowledge did not always equate to power. If anything, it etched our predicament in stark relief, the strange conversations between the trolls we now understood only highlighting the depth of shit we were truly in.
"Where are we?" I dared to utter the question aloud, my words a tentative bridge between me and the strangers who now shared my fate.
"Far from home," another replied, her tone laced with the weight of galaxies that lay between us and everything we'd ever known.
I closed my eyes, allowing myself a momentary respite from the visual assault. But even behind the veil of darkness, images danced memories of Earth, of freedom, a time before the trolls, before this room that teemed with lost souls. I clung to those fragments of the past like lifelines, anchoring me to the person I still was beneath the fear.
I had to stay strong, search for a way out of this.
And with that singular thought, I opened my eyes, facing the alien landscape of my confinement with an unshakable resolve.
"Move, humans. The Gorken await."
We were herded out and into the corridor, shuffled forward by the guttural commands of the trolls with their leering grins and coarse laughter that scraped against my eardrums like sandpaper. Words my translator implant forced me to understand but wished I did not.
That name, Gorken, was foreign yet filled with an ominous weight, a specter that now had a form as they appeared at the end of the passage. Monstrous figures loomed like a fusion of lizards and insects, their scaly bodies gleaming under the dim artificial light. Their shark eyes were deep pools of emptiness, absorbing all hope within their gaze. Sinuous appendages extended from beneath their armored exoskeletons, moving with an unsettling blend of grace and purpose. Instead of conventional mouths, jagged slits punctuated the hard carapace of their faces, opening and closing in silent anticipation of the upcoming exchange.
My breath hitched, chest tightening in a vice of dread. We were commodities, flesh, and bone bartered across stars unknown. My mind recoiled at the sight of them, the Gorken—a harsh reminder of the vast gulf between this reality and the life I once knew.
The trolls pushed us through the threshold, into the blinding embrace of a blood-orange sun that did not warm but seared. For a moment, my eyes caught the vista of the red planet sprawling beneath the violet sky, a canvas of alien beauty that should have stirred wonder, not terror.
"Board the ship!" A troll prodded sharply, snapping me back to the grim procession toward the gaping maw of the Gorken vessel.
As we approached, the ground beneath my feet resonated with the hum of engines, a vibration that reached deep into my bones. It sang of distances unfathomable, of cold spaces between stars where Earth was but a whisper on cosmic winds.
"Into the belly of the beast, then," a girl beside me muttered, her voice a blend of irony and fear. Her eyes met mine, and in them, I recognized my reflection, a mirror of haunted resolve.
We crossed the threshold together, stepping into the dimly lit interior of the spacecraft. With each step, the door to everything familiar narrowed, a contracting portal to a past life that slipped further out of reach. But still, within the confines of this new prison, the ember of defiance within me glowed brighter.
We were marched into a large holding cell, the air heavy with the metallic tang of fear and uncertainty. The room was dimly lit by overhead lights that cast eerie shadows on the smooth, metal walls. The floor was cold and hard beneath my bare feet, sending shivers up my spine as we huddled together for comfort.
As the Gorken activated the row of glowing, razor-thin bars that blocked our escape, I was struck with a sense of foreboding that settled over me like a weighted blanket. The bars seemed to writhe and undulate in the dim light, taunting us with their unyielding presence. I tentatively reached out, my fingers stinging from the icy heat, and recoiled from the electric shock that coursed up my arm.
“Electrified,” I muttered.
I exchanged uneasy glances with the other women, knowing that our fates were now intertwined within this forbidding cell where every breath felt like a struggle against the unknown forces that held us captive. Yet, survival was the silent rebellion which no shackles could claim, and no darkness could extinguish.
Inside the heart of the Gorken craft, surrounded by strangers, I pledged to hold onto my ember of defiance, to nurture it into a flame that could illuminate the path back home.
Chapter Two
GUNNOX
Even after all I’d seen in the past few suns-rises, it still struck me as unfathomable to be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with my rival clans inside the city of Huren. This wasn't a secret mission inside Huren territory to hunt for meat for my starving clan, but a collaboration of all three clans to defend Valose against outside invaders from beyond the clouds.
I’d been told that even a small group of Nuttaki, the insectoids who were once our mortal enemies, had joined forces with all three clans in the final battle to reclaim our world from the Gretolics. I imagined it was a sight to behold.
“The techs intercepted a message from the Gretolic’s spacecraft after they left here with the Valosian males and human females who had been held captive under the palace,” Sia Jakkar told us. Once ruler of Clan Huren, he now ruled over all three clans. “Thanks to Lennox and Aggar, they were able to record the majority of it, giving us the location of where our people were taken.”
Inside the Huren hangar, I stood between my clansman, Drekkor, and Murrox who was the Sia of Clan Jurigon, preparing to listen to a message intercepted by our clans’ techs.
“This is a recording of the Gretolics negotiating a trade with another alien species called a trollis,” Aggar, of Clan Huren, explained. “We believe they were headed to a trading port on Tirius after leaving here. Many munthis have passed and though a few have been returned, most have not. We don’t have a long-range spacecraft to go after them.”
“Until now,” Tyrk, the massive, horned Nomadican said with a cocky jut of his chin. He was one of five who had escaped the dinner plate of a giant alien along with me.
“Aye, until now,” Zaku, a large and very purple scaled Moktain, affirmed with a sly grin. “With full cloaking capabilities against all scanners, even Moktain tech, you will have the ability to travel undetected."
Zaku had crash-landed inside Trisess territory with his human mate, Ivy. After demonstrating his loyalty during a skirmish with the Nuttaki, Sia Jakkar had deemed him a member of Clan Huren and a warrior of Valose. Besides a strong sword arm, he had brought with him the expertise to aid our techs in building a long-range weapon, and the planetary shield that kept our world safe from any more celestial enemies.
Since my abduction, the passage of time had become a haunting specter, a relentless force I struggled to grasp fully. The world around me whispered tales of moments missed and experiences left unshared, painting a vivid picture of the life that had continued its relentless march in my absence.
Aggar tapped the sleek screen on the console before him, and a guttural voice suddenly filled the hangar.
"...no less than five-thousandths rillium for the Valosians," the Gretolic was saying. "The Mannocks are worth double that."
"Three for the Valosians and seven for the Mannocks."
"Unacceptable!" the Gretolic exploded. "You will be wealthy beyond your dreams, trollis, with what I have aboard my ship, and well you know it."
"Eleven for the lot," the trollis countered.
The transmission garbled before clearing. "...more than that. To sweeten the deal, I have a compatible pair ready to mate."
"I have no use for bonded spirit mates, Gretolic!"
"They have yet to bond. You can sell them to a pleasure cruiser. The wealthiest beings in the Luartick Sector will pay handsomely to witness the forming of shawras when they bond. Maybe even enough rillium to trade for the tellic needed for the creation of kript you're so desperate for."
"Twelve!" the trollis shouted. "That is my final—"
The transmission abruptly cut off. Across the way, a Huren warrior named Alexxon pulled his brightly maned spirit mate, Breena, closer. I had been told they were the couple who had been sold as the compatible pair.
I had caught fragments of their tale, snippets of how they had escaped the pleasure cruiser with Ruze's help, and found themselves on a prison moon, only to be delivered to Valose by one of three reavers, Lizordian brothers scouring the cosmos for humans and Valosians.
Zaku had been the one who had made contact with the reavers and placed bounties on the heads of the missing people in hopes some would be found and returned to Valose.
“Tirius is where I last saw my mate, Zorin,” Nara spoke out. Flesh of a brilliant blue with a mane of a shocking red, she was a species called Mayran, and another member of my small group who had escaped the clutches of the giant alien. “Now that Zaku has removed all tracking devices from our vessel, not even the Moktian can track it while it’s cloaked. We need to fly to Tirius. Someone there has to know where my mate and your people were taken.”
“I agree,” Ruze stated. “Tirius is a good place to start and I can search for my missing people along the way.”
"Then it's decided." The words spilled from my lips, each syllable a declaration of war against the Gretolics who had stolen those who did not belong to them. "We journey to Tirius. Find and reclaim all those who have been unjustly taken."
“You can’t mean to go with them, Gunnox,” Drekkor rounded on me. “We have just found our way back home. Your feet have barely touched Valosian soil and we have yet to return to our home in the Trisess Forest.”
“I cannot keep from thinking about those who are still out there, somewhere lost.” It didn’t matter if they were Valosian or humans, or even Nara’s people. “This very sec, they could be fighting for their lives or praying to the Spirits to be saved. I can’t remain on Valose knowing there are so many trying to find their way home.”
