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—The time of the Z'skvy-de.
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Lex opened her moist eyes wide and trembled through clenched teeth as she seemed to understand that a familiar tragedy was happening to Scar.
The Chestburster under the breastplate struck intermittently, Scar's mandibles flared, he tasted blood from his own throat and felt his hearts squeezed together by the parasite... This can't be! He clearly avoided the second Facehugger!
The armor stubbornly blocks the Chestburster's breakthrough, and it slows down, trying to shift position, but it won't buy much time, and it will eventually come out of its abdomen.
Scar bends his body, a hot mist exhaling from his mouth. He resigned himself to his fate once more. He still had to finish THIS, whether the Facehugger had succeeded or not. Otherwise, how could he "end"?
The hunter lifted one knee and looked into Lex's eyes.
He believed she would understand what he meant.
The ceremonial dagger left Scar's calf, flipped in his palm, and was pinched in the blade section. The hilt of the dagger passed up towards Lex. She killed the Hard Meat, gave her companion a merciful death, and can also redeem him.
Scar's one hand broke off the chest armor; it split into two pieces, falling to the snow surface.
The ceremonial dagger was taken. Ooman's hand was small, cold, and shaking.
You should be proud, it's an honor. Scar stares at Lex, his big hand over her small one, correcting her grip on the dagger, the sharp edge pointing straight at Yautja's chest.
The Chestburster inside him is still moving, tearing through the flesh and swimming down. Scar lets out a low growl and a faint clicking sound and soon feels dizzy; there must be a sea of blood inside him.
The parasite was about to succeed.
"Yautja is thick," Scar says, shaking from the pain, "you have to do your best. No mercy."
When she first heard Yautja speak, Lex had no time to be shocked by the situation, and although she couldn't possibly understand the alien language either, she always understood Scar. she nodded.
Scar leads her to the movement of the Chestburster, waiting for it to leave the protection of the bones. Scar opens his fangs and spits out wails and hot breath, and no matter how much he wants to roll over and tear himself apart to rip out that Abomination, he doesn't let go of Lex's hand.
This is what she has earned—the right to be considered an equal by Yautja and the status he wants to give her.
Lex's expression, twisted with grief, gradually changed to focused rage as she stared down at Scar's breastbone.
They waited for the tip of the dagger to drop low and point at the soft belly.
"Yautja way." said Scar.
"We'll kill it together," said Lex.
Scar stopped the guideing and opened his arms as if to welcome a hug. Lex pointed Scar's dagger at the Chestburster, backed away slowly, paused for a moment, then threw herself at Scar with all her might, just as she had rushed at the Queen with her spear.
Scar caught her, wrapped his big hands around her heaving back and breathing, helping her gently press the blade into his body without hurting her. The pain had been intense, so he didn't feel any more pain, just the smell of Lex's hair puffing on his face.
She would have made a great hunter.
Scar, the hunter, collapsed. Lex cowered in the alien's arms and the warmth of his blood.
Scar's fangs, soaked in Ooman's hair, twitched weakly, tasting more scent. The last of the heat leaves his body, but he doesn't feel the cold.
The Chestburster screams under the dagger. Lex makes up her mind with a sob and twists the dagger with brute force. The Chestburster makes a cracking sound and dies completely.
The acidic blood spread through Scar's body, and the neutralizing effect of Yautja's blood only prolonged the agony. Without the bio-mask and the recording, the widening abdominal wound prevented Scar from making any soothing grunts for Lex, only a slow wiggle of his fangs.
Scar's tongue lingers around the silent words, his fingertips caressing the scars he marked for Lex.
Lex crawls out of the dying hunter's arms and carefully places Scar's head on her lap, her glowing, blood-stained hands slowly working their way down Scar's forehead, dreadlocks, and fine, smooth mandibles.
Scar inhaled the scent of Lex close at hand, exhaling a final breath of hot mist and sound: "Le...x..." He said it in English.
"Yes. I'm Lex—" The hot water beads in Lex's eyes. She smiled in sorrow and surprise, stroking the dying hunter's scaly skin. "—Alexa Woods," she said.
Alexa, "The Defender."
Her face pressed against Scar's. She sighed. "...Scar."
The darkness of Ooman's curly hair hung over Yautja.
Scar remembered that "Scar" was the nickname Lex and Sebastian had given him when they saw him marking himself with blood. "Scar" had never been his name.
But he couldn't remember his original name, like his brothers who had disappeared into the pyramids and the many weapons that had been left behind somewhere, forgotten.
Had the gods taken the name away?
Perhaps the gods did not take the name away to punish him, but he had already won a better one. Who knows?
It didn't matter anymore.
Death was so familiar that Scar accepted it. In a broken body, in the depth of hot blood, in the smell of soft hair, in the arms of Lex
But the reason death is so familiar is that it still abandons Scar.
Cetanu did not come, nor did Paya.
He did not wake up in the pyramid again.
Scar opened his lighter eyelids through the darkness and silence, only to find that the darkness was due to the bio-mask that monopolized his face. He was not lying on Lex's lap, just snow.
The Chestburster had disappeared, and the ceremonial dagger that had killed the Chestburster was tucked away by his calves. He is as complete as if he had just stepped out of the drop pod, wearing full Clan armor that is not acid-proof instead of the Hard Meat shell suit. Even the plasmacaster is there.
Scar sits up from the snow. The Antarctic appears calm in infrared; there is no difference between what is seen and what is not. The coastline was replaced by the same distant place, and the hunter's moon in the sky was as bright as the sun; Lex, the ruins, and the whale bones were all gone.
Scar stood up, activated the bio-mask, and sent a message to the Clan Mother Ship.
"Hunting ground destroyed, survivors..." He thought of Lex, "...two. I'm lost somewhere." The gauntlet showed that the message was successfully sent. Usually the Mother Ship was very quick to respond, but not this time.
Lowering his wrist, Scar switched to visual mode and looked around. This place does not look like the real world; there is no wind, no smell, and no sound. Even the heat net he was wearing had no temperature.
"Paya, is that you?" Scar asked. "Cetanu?"
Everything was still silent. Scar growled in frustration.
"The dance is over!"
Perhaps this was the verdict—an end forever trapped in the snow?
He had been abandoned.
A creature that wasn't there appeared suddenly as Scar turned. A Queen crouched right there. Scar thought it was the Antarctic Queen that had sunk to the bottom of the sea, but soon found out otherwise.
She is larger but not evil, with magnificent high spikes behind her, looking down like a god on the little Yautja, crouching quietly and nobly in the snow, like a great display on a trophy wall, the ultimate trophy that all Yautja dream of. None of the Yautja—NONE—will refuse it.
The Queen has no intention of attacking, and Scar doesn't think she's the real Hard Meat. Like the second pyramid, true, but not the truth.
"I don't want this." Scar said this and stepped back. Even though he didn't know what he was refusing, he just didn't want it.
Perhaps what awaited him was an eternity lost in the snow, but the will and dignity of Yautja's hunt could not be questioned.
Scar does what he wants: he turns away from the Queen and thinks only of Lex.
The Queen watches him leave and stays where she is until she is swallowed by the white light and distance.
Suddenly, the snow rippled as a giant Chestburster burrowed beneath the ground.
Scar struggled to steady himself, the strange sensation running from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Something was coming, he knew. Just as when she first came out of the ground, the snow was topped off—it was the Antarctic Queen.
She had come for Scar from the bottom of the Sea of Death.
The remains of the chain links still hung from the Queen, the ends of the shackles on the snow stretching endlessly into the distance until they disappeared. Her every step sounded metallic, slow, and furious as she closed in on Scar. An endless stream of spit washed the four rows of sharp teeth beneath the crown of the eyeless head.
Scar roared, pulling the combistick off his back and letting the blades pop out as the plasmacaster made an energizing sound.
If he had to fight her for eternity, he would.
The Queen gave the signal to fight, screaming and charging.
Scar's three shurikens flew out almost simultaneously, encircling the Queen and then slicing through her, while Scar smoothly dodged the long tail of the shot and, in an almost dance-like motion, caught each of the returning shurikens before tossing them out again.
Accompanied by the shurikens, Scar jumped up, his combistick plunging into the Queen's back, satisfied by her scream. And without turning his head, he rolled over, dodged the insidious tail spear again, and landed on her back with his weapon drawn.
Then Scar ran up Queen's wide, long, spiny back.
He leaped high and drove the combistick into the Queen's head with one hand. Her brain was surrounded by layers of overlapping crowns, but Scar wasn't going to rely on that deadly spot that he didn't know where it was.
He used the combistick to stabilize his body and used the muscles of his other arm to trigger the wristblades in the gauntlet, cutting a pair of wounds into the Queen. She struggled violently, the longest pair of hands flailing at her head.
Scar swung the blade again, slicing through some bone and fascia, and soon the Queen's crown was shaking...
Scar's plan was to open the prey's skull, then use the plasmacaster to shatter the exposed brain, and finally get a fully assembled trophy...
The Queen's endless chains suddenly rose from the ground, hanging in the air and shaking as if something was pulling at them. The amplitude is small but very hard and familiar.
Lex！
She wouldn't be here... She cannot be here!
The decision to abandon the Queen was suddenly easy. Scar jumped off his prey, dodged the Queen's claws, passed her belly, dodged the flung tail spear, and ran with great strides towards the chain extension.
The sound of a piercing cry rang out behind him.
The Queen came after him, and Scar could almost feel the tail spear miss her by a hair's breadth. The monster's wet spit and two sharp claws ghostly on his back.
A few times, he almost wanted to turn around and fight.
But what could she do? Kill him again?
Scar continued to run along the chains as if there was no end in sight, and the Queen, who should never have lost Scar, moved farther and farther away from him, uttering a resigned sound and lagging far behind him until she disappeared.
The air suddenly seemed to come to life, no longer stagnant, Scar's run finally flowing with wind, his mouth tasting the scent of Lex's hair, the heat net warming his body.
"Sai-i, Sant'ja." The sound of clicking in Yautja came from behind him.
Who’s there!
Scar turned and was knocked away.
It was only a flick of an arm. The power of the stranger Yautja is so fierce, stronger than that of the Antarctic Queen. Scar could do nothing, only see for a moment the magnificent Yautja with the lightning-shaped combistick and the countless Yautja figures behind him.
Scar hit the ground with his head on his back and took a while to recover.
This time, the Yautja and the chains were gone.
Still snow.
Scar felt for a while to find the location of the wrist gauntlet and to check the playback of the recording in the bio-mask. But there was nothing, as if the recording had never been turned on. The diagnostic function began to run, and Scar found himself in good health with no Serpent in his chest.
He touched it; the acid blood burn marker was still on the bio-mask.
Scar rolled over, trying to get out of the snow, and then stopped on his side.
There was a line of footprints extending outward along the spot where he had fallen. The hunter's palm dangled over the tracks, comparing them carefully. Very small, very shallow, are the Soft Meat's shoe prints. And it doesn't look like a fake.
Scar's bio-mask's enhanced visual mode showed him the footprints, and the hunter rose to his feet, following the tracks deeper into space until his diverging tongue tasted the familiar scent of Ooman's hair.
A figure, seemingly unfocused and blurred, suddenly became clear in front of him.
Lex trudged slowly through the snow with her back to Scar, half a spear slung across her back with straps behind her chest. It is a broken combistick that belonged to Scar. Lax's one hand is buried in the shield made from Hard Meat's head shell, and her other hand holds Scar's familiar weapon: the Clan Ancient's combistick.
Scar's bio-masks hang from her hips, and a ring from his dreadlocks hangs from a bottle cap necklace. Lex presses her stomach with one hand and walks aimlessly forward.
Scar can't help but make a percussive, guttural sound.
Lex turns her head sharply, revealing two paint marks on her left cheek, and looks around, oblivious to Scar, who is not far away. She calls out in confusion, "Scar?"
Scar then realizes the cloak has been activated.
He turns off the invisibility system and removes the bio-mask.
He clicks at her again.
The wind blew Lex again in the snow, and she finally smiled, her eyes filled with hot drops of water.
"That thing killed you. And you died in my arms," she said quietly.
Scar moved closer to Ooman, touched his fingertips to the scars he had given her, and said with the tip of his tongue, "The enemy of my enemy..." Lex immediately threw herself into Yautja's arms, hugging Scar's unharmed body.
"...is my friend," she said.
More than friend. Never tired of hearing.
Scar's hand hung in the air for a moment, then carefully relaxed and dropped down to cover Lex's back in a self-taught embrace.
This is the end. The end of his final hunt.
The mother ship of Yautja's clan appeared silently nearby, so huge and high that the top couldn't be seen, a cluster of starry windows disappearing deep into the blurred sky, the belly of the plane lying on the snow with its brightly lit hatch open, no backlit figure in the light, and no engine sound.
The Yautja and the human were still working well as a team.
Scar released the hug and gently took Lex's small palm, slowly leading her up the ramp and into the light door of the mother ship. The outlines of the two are submerged together.
Whatever lies beyond, they will...
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THE END
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Continue In "Soulwalker: Benzoin"
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Ls Chapter All Nx Chapter
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Novel's English correction accept, welcome to point out mistakes or provide constructive suggestions. But I will revise it after a while to avoid several different suggestions.185Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs0kBN67WmT
