Valerie stared blankly at her hands, caring little about the hustle and bustle that was going on around her. Not that what was happening wasn't important, or interesting, for that matter. They were aboard an alien spaceship, after all, and the snakes, despite being somewhat haughty, if Valerie were being honest about first impressions, were still doing their utmost to ensure the human group’s comfort during their hopefully short stay.

The snake people themselves were beyond interesting. They stood on their tails in a way that made Valerie's back hurt just thinking about, and they moved with a fluid grace that seemed to defy logic or reason. The four arms of each of the attendees moved in perfect unison with each other as they helped the astronauts out of their suits, distributed odd-looking refreshments, and strangely enough, began playing a few odd wind instruments in the corner, all in an effort to please their human guests.

But no, as welcoming and as interesting as these people were, Valerie found that she could hardly pay attention. Instead, her focus was solely on the small, circular, stinging burn that was on her right hand.

The burn wasn't that severe, though. The flame hadn't lasted longer than a second, had been about the size of a candle, but it had still existed. The slight, most likely first degree burn, was evidence enough of that.

What this meant wasn't something that Valerie could even begin to comprehend. The implications alone towards science, and the human understanding of the universe and how it worked, was staggering. It could change the whole world, or destroy it. She could see nations tearing each other and themselves apart chasing this power, people willingly enslaved at the thought of real life magic at their fingertips.

It was everything the human mind had hoped for, and feared.

Skies would burn, lives would be lost, human civilization itself could be completely wiped out, all in pursuit of the power that lurked just beneath her skin. Even now she could feel it, those ‘arms of imagination’ that Yavaar had helped her use. They felt exhausted now, like they could barely move, but it was as if she had suddenly gained control of a new muscle, one that her mind was just itching to move.

She was so entranced with her inner examination that she was taken completely by surprise when Colonel Conners plopped down on the floor next to her. “You holding up okay?”

Valerie looked up at the colonel, noticing the worry on his face. She smiled at his concern, but she rather doubted that anything he could say or do would lift the weight that had seemed to settle on her heart. “I'm well enough, I suppose…”

“You sure?” Colonel Conners asked, his eyebrows furrowed as he stared her down. The look only lasted a second, however, before the soldier leaned back and sighed. “Well, not to call you a liar or anything, but our hosts are apparently worried about you. They said, and I quote: ‘that one's spirit is most trouble. Is something wrong we do?’”

Valerie snorted a little at Conners’ rather accurate impression of the snakes’ terrible English. She knew it was rude, but for some reason she found it quite funny. “It's nothing… I was just thinking about how much everything is going to change.”

Conners looked around, his gaze lingered on a nearby snake that held out a serving tray to his men, before coming back to the young lady in front of him. “Yeah, I feel you. It's like none of this is real, but-”

“I wasn't talking about them,” Valerie said, cutting off the colonel. “This power… magic… it changes everything. How we see the world, how we’ll interact with it… our entire civilization…”

Colonel Conners’ mouth went wide as he understood what really bothered her. His eyes seemed to wander about for a little while, before he hung his head a little low, while scratching behind one of his ears. “Well, it’ll probably be a bit crazy, but not nearly as terrible as you seem to think it is. At least, I don’t think it’ll be nearly as important in the near future as the aliens will be. After all, it's not like magic exists on Earth, after all.”

Valerie looked up at Conners sharply at this, not quite sure that she had heard him correctly. “Excuse me?”

“I don't pretend to understand everything that Yavaar told us, but apparently magic has a few properties that are similar to electromagnetism. Certain objects have a ‘field’ which allows people to… well, do magic. Earth apparently doesn't have this field, otherwise we’d all have been using this power a long time ago.” Colonel Conners gave her a wry smile. “After all, I was there. Yavaar's instructions were so simple that even a child could do it! If magic existed on Earth, don’t you think we would have discovered it by this point?”

This seemed to make sense to Valerie, though something still seemed to bother her. “While that is a relief, why was I the first one to accomplish this? From what I heard of the test, this wasn't the first time you tried…”

Conners leaned back, his expression a little annoyed. “You can blame Doctor Phillips for that. You're right that you weren't the first test subject, nor were you the first with… ‘aptitude,’ but you were the first that wasn't told beforehand what was going on.”

“But… shouldn't the blind test be the first thing he tried?”

“You'd think that, but Phillips is a stubborn SOB, and insisted that Yavaar’s whole talk on ‘faith’ was nothing more than superstitious nonsense,” Conners said, his disapproval clear in his voice. “Yavaar had to come to me directly to get the doctor to back off and try something different. Apparently, all of Doctor Phillips’ subjects were sabotaged simply after hearing the word ‘magic.’”

“Because they didn't believe it was possible…” Valerie said as she suddenly understood what Conners was getting at.

“Exactly. You see, we…” Conners started to say, but stopped as his eyes locked onto something behind Valerie. The forensic scientist turned to see what he was looking at, only to see one of those snake people quickly approaching them. In fact, she recognized him as the same one that had first greeted them when they had been brought aboard this ship.

“Am being sorry for interrupt, but urgent news from on high. Conners was name, correct?”

“That’s me, what can I do for you?” the colonel asked, his voice slow and even as he stood up to greet their host.

“Blessed High Priest, leader of Golden Armada, has sent me with orders. You and people to move to his ship, while you personal to go speak him. He wants talk before go speak with your leaders. Once he has talk, he return you all to home. Is in agreement?”

Valerie knew what Conners’ reply would be before he even opened his mouth. What did surprise her, however, was that the second he gave his reply, she felt that same, familiar disorientation that signaled that they were all about to be whisked from the room, regardless of whether they were ready or not.

When the room came back into focus, she found that she had not been brought to the same room as the others. In fact, this room was completely devoid of anything resembling earthly life.

That wasn’t to say that she was alone, however. She found herself sitting on a bench, in front of what looked like a small pyramid of beautiful, glowing crystals. There was some kind of mat off to her left, and directly in front of her, on the other side of those crystals, was what looked like an exceptionally old snake person. The lighting in this room was too dim to make anything else out, not that she had much attention to spare on anything but the snake person before her.

Where the others had brilliant green, and sometimes reddish hues to their scales, this one was a pale gray. Its skin looked dry and flaky, and it sat on its coiled-up tail in a rather hunched position, as if the weight of centuries were heaped upon its shoulders. It was clothed in a deep blue garb that seemed to shimmer ever so slightly whenever it moved, and its four, piercing eyes were locked on her own, almost as if it were daring Valerie to even think about making the wrong move.

Valerie shrank back slightly, unsure about why she was brought here separate from the others. She opened her mouth to ask where she was, and why she had been brought here, only to have that question die in her throat as the thing quickly got up and slithered towards her. She found that she could not move a muscle as the imposing figure quickly closed the distance, and with extraordinary care, laid a single thumb on her forehead.

Valerie than felt a presence touch her, as if a light feather was being dragged across her soul. Whatever it was lasted only a second, however, and the creature quickly retreated to its previous position, seemingly satisfied with what it found.

“Yavaar was right. You… great potential. Me… willing to teach. You people need gift like yours,” the snake said, his voice distinctly male, though Valerie still didn’t have a reference point for what a female was supposed to sound like to be one hundred percent sure in her assumption.

“I’m sorry, but what? Why did you bring me here? What was that all about?” Valerie asked as she rubbed where the snake had touched her.

“You people need power. Need expand on gifts. Will talk later, once speaking is better. Will send back to friends. Will prepare lesson, when time is right. Wanted to see for self, the power cousins hide. For now, go back. Tell what happened. Tell that we impressed, for power hidden in wasteland.”

There was another flash of light, and Valerie soon found herself surrounded by the other humans from the rescue team. They quickly surrounded her and bombarded her with questions about what had happened. Rather than help her clear her head, this only served to confuse her more.

This is getting far too weird… she thought to herself as she tried to catch her breath. That being said… this is probably only going to get weirder…

When Colonel Conners’ vision came back, he found himself in a small, clean, softly lit room, most likely a study of some kind. For some strange reason the colonel was alone, which allowed him plenty of time to examine his new surroundings.

To the colonel’s right there was what looked like a large, well illuminated terrarium built into the side of the wall. Inside was a single, bulbous-looking toad-thing that sat in the sand that covered the bottom of the tank. It was a dull brown color that closely mirrored the color of the sand it sat on, and Conners was a little surprised to see what looked like a third eye on the back of the toad’s head. There were a few other bits and bobs, like a small branch, and a dish of water, but otherwise the toad-thing was the tank's only occupant. It did not move, or even make a sound, so Conners ignored it for the time being and chose to instead examine the rest of the room.

There was a bookshelf on the colonel’s left, which displayed a large number of heavy-looking tomes in a variety of languages, most of which he didn't recognize with one, notable exception. He would have passed off the bookcase as just a random, alien fixture in the room, had it not been for the single copy of the King James version of the Holy Bible sitting on the top shelf. An odd choice, but it told Colonel Conners that the collection was most likely a random assortment of alien texts from a multitude of cultures, implying several things about the snakes that Conners really didn't have time to think about at the moment.

Behind the colonel was a door, next to which was a single side table with a small statue on it. It depicted a large snake coiling around a planet, with its mouth open up towards the ceiling. It was exquisitely made, and was crafted from a dark, silverish metal, most likely tungsten or something similar.

Directly in front of the colonel was a desk with a computer monitor on its surface, though no input device, oddly enough. There was a very nice, posh-looking chair upholstered in some kind of dark brown leather behind the desk, with an only slightly simpler-looking one in front. The chair was turned slightly to the left, as if to invite the colonel to sit, but he decided against it in favor of continuing his examination. Compared to the rest of the room, the desk was rather spartan, the only decoration Conners could see being the single picture frame off to one side of the desk.

The frame was currently facing away from the colonel, so, out of curiosity, he reached out to turn it his way. On the other side was a picture of a snake-alien, its four arms full of much smaller snake aliens, all of which looked towards the camera, smiles on their faces. They were all wearing fairly simple clothes, mainly dark green overcoats that complimented their eyes, along with white undershirts that looked like they had been pressed. Other than that, there wasn’t much else in the picture. In fact, the background was nothing more than a white backdrop, a convention that was eerily similar to that of certain human family portraits. Off to one corner of the photo was some kind of message scrawled by an alien hand. The characters looked flowy and smooth, almost like English cursive, though where cursive required there be at least one point of contact between the characters, this language seemed to require three. Colonel Conners wasn't a linguist, or indeed a specialist in other cultures, but even he could guess the general meaning of the words, as well as who was depicted in the photo.

“They are the High Priest’s wife and children,” a familiar voice suddenly said, breaking the colonel from his examination of the picture, causing him to look around in alarm as he returned it to the desk.

“Yavaar? Is that you? I take it they got you out, then?”

“It is. I am glad to see you well, Colonel Conners. However, I regret to say that I am not yet free from my station. I have merely been connected to this ship's systems to serve as the High Priest’s translator for this exchange,” the A.I. explained, his voice utterly calm. “Rest assured, the Holy Armada is working as we speak to excavate me, so it is only a matter of time before I am brought back into the full service of my people.”

Colonel Conners was confused at that, and briefly wondered why they didn't just download him to the ship’s computer, but put that thought away in favor of getting down to business. “Well, where is this High Priest, then?”

“High Priest Yovakior is late,” Yavaar stated bluntly, catching the colonel off guard. “He wanted me to convey his apology to you, as his subordinates worked a little faster than he was prepared for. He is only a few minutes late, however, and if my projections are correct, he should be arriving right-”

There was a low hum, followed by a brilliant flash of white light that briefly blinded the colonel, causing him to raise his hand and squint. When it dissipated, the colonel found himself face to face with another one of those snake-people. This one seemed dressed to impress, his tight-fitting suit a brilliant white color, trimmed in gold, but no medals or decorations that Conners could see. The absence of any decoration of valor seemed odd for someone who led an entire alien armada, and Conners had to actively remind himself that he wasn't exactly an expert in these people, their customs, or their mannerisms. They might not have the same ideas about commendations, or he may only wear those for specific events. Not that he needs them anyway to announce who he is... Conners thought to himself. That stare alone could burn holes through concrete.

It wasn't like the snake-person was even staring at him with malice, or even anger. There was just a quiet, penetrating strength behind that gaze that seemed to stare right through the colonel, and see everything he had ever said or done. Even when the thing wasn't looking at him, the the aura of command that seemed to rest around the snake was as palpable as the very air Conners breathed, and when he had the need to move, he moved with the confidence and poise of someone who had been fighting for a very, very long time. When he wasn’t moving, the snake was almost unnaturally still, as if he were waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

Conners found himself almost gulping uncomfortably at the gaze that was being directed at him, but luckily his training came to the forefront. Instead of showing weakness, the colonel straightened up and came to a parade rest in front of the snake’s desk, his gaze not on the snake’s eyes exactly, but rather a few feet above him.

“-Now. Colonel Conners, it is my great honor to introduce High Priest Yovakior, Leader of the Holy Armada,” Yavaar stated, his voice taking on an almost ritualistic quality. “Yovakior has summoned you here because he has a great many questions for you, mainly in preparation for his upcoming meeting with your world’s leaders. However, because of the circumstances, and as a show of good faith on his part, he has decided that you may satisfy whatever questions you may be harboring first. You are free to speak.”

Colonel Conners was a little bit shocked when he heard that. The whole little speech sounded as pompous as hell, but the concession to allow him to start with the questions threw him completely off guard. He was fully expecting this to be an interrogation, albeit a nice one.

After a little bit of thought, he finally settled on the first, simple question he wanted to ask. “Why are you here?”

There was a short conversation between Yavaar and Yovakior, before the A.I. addressed Colonel Conners again. “The High Priest has said that: ‘We received some disturbing information that made us believe that the Krin were going to make a move on your homeworld. Yavaar’s destroyed base is evidence enough of that.’”

“But they didn’t know about your base, Yavaar. You yourself told me that you couldn’t send any messages, and that your next check in wasn’t for another couple of months,” Conners pointed out. “Your base being destroyed is evidence, yes, but it doesn’t explain why your armada is here.”

Yavaar supposedly relayed what Conners had said, but the being on the other side of the desk did not say anything at first. Instead, he let out a low hissing sound before he reached underneath his desk and pulled out what looked like a computer tablet. The snake pressed a few things on it, before he said a single sentence and held out the tablet for the colonel to take.

“We found one of your people, Colonel,” Yavaar translated as Conners took the hand-held computer.

Conners recoiled a little upon seeing the image on the screen. Whatever the thing was, it only bore a passing resemblance to the human race. It had the same general shape and symmetry as a human, in the fact that it had two arms, two legs, and a head. There were a few other similarities, such as the ears and the more private parts, but that was where the similarities ended.

It was thin and gangly, to the point of being severely malnourished. Its ribs and hip bones stuck out in a way that made Conners hurt just thinking about it, and its too-long arms and legs looked like they’d break if they held up anything larger than a pencil. Despite this, however, it had long, sharp, blade-like claws that burst from each of its fingers, which seemed to gleam in the flashlight of whatever being was taking the picture. Its toes had similar claws, but they were much shorter, most likely only there to provide traction, or to increase the generally terrifying air the thing exuded. Its skin was a pale gray color, and with the way the shot was taken, Conners could barely make out what looked like blade-like spikes bursting from the creature’s back along its spine.

However, as terrible as all of that was, it was the creature’s face that would truly ensure that Conners would never have a peaceful sleep again for the rest of his life. It was gaunt and skull-like, and was clearly missing several muscular structures that otherwise rounded out a human face, as well as any sort of hair that would otherwise soften the features of the thing. It was missing its lips and cheeks entirely, exposing its long, interlocking teeth for the world to see. It also didn’t seem to have a nose, though judging on the cartilage he could barely see, it was evident that whatever this thing was used to have one. And finally, as if to crown the terrifying image as the king of all nightmares, the thing’s eyes were nothing but ebony pools of pure black, lacking any sort of iris, pupil, or even eyelid that would otherwise humanize the terrifying gaze that was being directed towards whoever had been holding the camera.

The shot looked like it had been taken inside a cave somewhere, though anything else about the environment was obscured by the monstrosity that took center stage.

“Are… Are you telling me that they want to turn us into this… thing?” Conners asked, completely horrified.

There was another brief conversation between Yavaar and the high priest, during which Conners had a very difficult time trying to tear his eyes away from the demon on the screen. He even jumped a little when Yavaar began speaking again in English. “From what we’ve been able to ascertain, no. This was merely a byproduct of their real intention.”

Conners looked up to see Yovakior wave his hand in an odd way. There was a flicker of movement in the corner of Conners’ eye, drawing his attention back to the tablet, allowing him to see that the image had changed. In its place was two pictures, side by side. One was quite familiar, it being a side-view of an MRI of a human skull, revealing the human brain in all its glory. The other looked like a similar kind of picture, except for the fact that the features on the front of the skull was far more reptilian in nature. Conners only had a few seconds to examine the two photos, before they seemed to squish themselves to make room for a third photo on the bottom.

This one revealed what looked like a human neck, as well as part of the head. Right at the top of the spine, where the neck and head met, was a single, round, metal hole. The frightening thing about this was the fact that it did not look like it did not belong. In fact, Conners had a hard time figuring out exactly where the flesh ended, and the metal began.

“If you remember, I once told your people that our brains are very nearly identical. I postulated that they were here to try and figure out how we think, through you,” Yavaar said, causing the horror and revulsion in the colonel to increase even further. “It is now apparent that speculation was far too small in scope. They want a way to control us. And it is apparent that they do not care who they destroy before they get what they want.”

Conners didn’t know what to say. In fact, he found it extremely hard to make any sound at all. He brought up a single hand, and gently traced it around the hole on the picture in front of him, thoroughly disgusted, yet unable to look away.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Conners looked up, determination in his eyes. “Where is he? I would like to speak with him.”

There was a brief conversation, during which Conners caught what sounded like English words, but poorly spoken. “I’m sorry, but the victim is not here. Our armada wasn’t the ones who found him, nor were we dispatched to collect him. He is still on the world that he was discovered, though from what information we’ve been able to gather, he is in good hands.”

Conners took a deep, cleansing breath, before handing the tablet back to the snake in front of him. “I understand. Do you have a name for this guy?”

“Yes, in fact. The High Priest had trouble pronouncing his name, but he still did so in a way that allowed me to pick up on his errors and correct them. The victim’s name is Alexander Cunningham, and while he was the only survivor, he was by no means the only one taken and turned into this.”

“He’s not the last, either,” Conners said darkly, remembering the bodies of the bug people that Valerie had filled with holes.

“Indeed. That being said, while we cannot conceivably follow the abductors at this time, we can still secure your world from further incursion. However, we will need the cooperation of your people in order to see this objective fulfilled.”

Conners brought his gaze up, until he looked the High Priest in the eye. It was rather difficult, since the four eyes made it rather hard for the human to pick out exactly where he should be staring, but he found that the slight discomfort at not knowing where to look was a tiny, insignificant speck compared to the white hot rage that was boiling through his veins.

Ever so slowly, Colonel Samuel Conners moved from parade rest to a more attentive, respectful stance, though he did not salute. “What do you need from me?” he asked, his voice cold and calm as a winter morning.

“I have done my best to tell my brethren as much as I possibly could about your culture, your leaders, and the political landscape. However, my knowledge is incomplete, as my viewpoint is of that of an outsider,” Yavaar stated, his tone completely matter-of-fact. “High Priest Yovakior is to meet with your United Nations on the following day. Before he does that, he would like an insider’s perspective on the leaders of your world.”

Conners let out a weary sigh. “You sure about that? I owe my allegiance to one of those nations. My ‘perspective’ is going to be somewhat biased.”

“Your bias is known beforehand, and will be taken into account. We are not here to lift one nation above the others, or even to start a war between you. In fact, the High Priest’s primary purpose during this meeting will be to prevent such a war between the different factions.”

“I would assume so. It’d be rather hard to protect a planet while the people of that world are busy trying to kill each other, after all,” Conners said as a self-mocking smile graced his face, before his eyes dropped back to the tablet in Yovakior’s hands. “If you want a good place to start, however, I’d suggest that you show some of those pictures during your speech. You’ll be surprised in how much support you’ll get if you insinuate that the same fate might fall upon all of them if they don’t band together.”

There was another short conversation, after which Yavaar asked a simple, single word question: “Why?”

“Because while we might be at each other’s throat constantly, there is a way to make us forget all of that, and band together: a clearly evil, superior force.” Conners stated, before his lips turned up into a wicked smile. “After all, I only saw Alex there for a few seconds, and I’m ready to rip off some bug legs right now. Really shouldn’t be too hard to convince the others to fall into line. At the very least, you’ll get America, Canada and the United Kingdom behind you with that picture alone. Shouldn’t be too hard to convince most of the others after that. Though, to be fair, there may still be some that may not trust you, or may even actively fight you, claiming that all aliens are demons.”

There was another short conversation, before Conners was addressed again. “Please, any information you can provide about the different factions would be greatly appreciated, if only to decrease the number that would see us as demons.”

“I’m a soldier, and don’t know much, but I’ll tell you what I can...”

Author's Notes:

Hey, guys! Sorry for the long wait, work's been killer, and I've had my arms full with my new bundle of joy! That being said, those two things don't occupy my every waking moment, and in the moments between exhaustion, I've finally managed to crank out another chapter for you all.

FYI, one of you guys, (I'm looking at you, Gogofan), decided to commission a picture of what Alex looked like before he was partially changed back into a human. Just so you know, the only input I had on this thing was me describing what Alex looked like. Not to the artist, but to Gogofan:

xXmarkingXx made this, and I must say, for having received the description second hand, he made a 100% accurate rendition of Alexander Cunningham. Like, seriously, this is exactly what I saw in my head, with the sole exception of the obvious censorship. Thanks a ton, Gogofan! I am really quite shocked and overwhelmed that you would spend your money on something like this, and I am beyond grateful!

Also, in case you were in the dark about this, the artwork for my book has been finished, and you can buy physical versions of it RIGHT NOW!

What I've Become!

Yes, I know that Alex in this picture isn't nearly as accurate as the first one I showed you, but you'll have to give me some slack on this one. Finding the right artist is hard, especially when your first, second, and twelfth choices turned you down, or didn't even respond to your messages. That being said, I'm still quite glad with how this came out.

If you buy my book, you may notice a few odd spacing errors as well as a few other things odd with the actual text. I lay the blame of this squarely on Amazon's book creator, and how some of its requirements before it lets you publish are pure lunacy. "It can't have two or more page brakes back to back." "No multiple empty pages." "No summoning Cthulhu on page sixty-four." You know, stupid stuff like that.

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter, and I hope you all take the time to buy and read my new book! If you're short on cash, though, and would like a sample first, you can go on over to reddit, and follow me there. I'm slowly releasing the book chapter by chapter, and I would love it if you head on over and take a gander. It would help me a whole lot, and certainly would make my story more visible, if you went and liked the chapters I've put out so far. Just a suggestion, you really don't have to if you don't want to, but I would be quite grateful if you did.

Anyway, see you guys next time!