“Y’know you could just leave us back there,” I said. “We’ll be gone in a few days.”

  “Quiet,” hissed the hunter following behind me.

  “No really, we won’t hurt a fly. It’ll be like we were never even here,” I said.

  “What part of quiet do you not understand?” The hunter demanded.

  “The third syllable,” I replied.

  I got shoved forward for my snark and had to stop myself from falling. It seemed like this was a tough crowd.

  We continued through the dark forest, heading to wherever these animal people wanted to take us.

  It was eerily quiet. For the most part I could only hear the sound of our footsteps and rustling leaves of the forest around us. That was interspersed with the occasional sound of what might have been other things moving about. I had no bushcraft skills whatsoever. So I had no idea what I was hearing and that just led to the tension steadily building as I anticipated whatever terrible thing was going to happen to us next.

  A bear maybe? That seemed par for the course given what had happened to me already. For all I knew I was about to get jumped by a dragon or something.

  The uneven floor, little rocks that stuck out and roots too meant I had to be extra careful. The shoes I was wearing weren’t built for this kind of environment and I was having to carefully place my feet to avoid stubbing my toe or landing on something awkwardly.

  Our captors didn’t make it easy on us, but they weren’t mean about it. If anything the hiss of annoyance from one of them as I almost fell over made them seem more anxious than anything else.

  Whatever was going on with these guys it couldn’t be good. “The ones we have been waiting for” didn’t sound like something I wanted to be involved in.

  And to avoid getting involved with whatever shenanigans were going on here I was going to have to get myself and Rel off this planet and that meant we’d have to get back to Starship rex.

  “Are you guys going to be able to take us back to our ship?” I asked. “I dunno if we’ll be able to find our way back on our own.”

  A hand on my shoulder stopped me.

  “In the name of all that is holy, can you not be quiet!” hissed one of the people behind me, again.

  To be fair I didn’t expect much of a response. But these guys probably knew their way around this forest so I could only hope they’d be able to bring us back here. It was going to be convincing them to do so that would be the trick…

  Hearing the commotion, the leader came back and approached us.

  “We can,” he said. “If everything goes well then I will be more than happy to bring you back to your sky ship. But please, we cannot risk being caught now. There are dangerous people no doubt heading this way right now and if they catch us with you then all our lives will be forfeit.”

  “What do these other people want with us?” Rel asked.

  “It would be better you put your questions to the elders,” he said. “What I do know is that if recent history proves anything then it will be nothing good. I promise you that. So please, we need to be as stealthy as we reasonably can while we get out of here. Just coming here and finding you both was a big risk on our parts and we have no idea if we could be being hunted right this second.”

  The way the dogman spoke sounded sincere. He was truly afraid for the lives of himself and everyone else here.

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  “Okay, we’ll be good,” I said for both myself and my companion who didn’t refute me. Whatever we had found ourselves in it screamed of danger.

  The rest of the journey was taken in silence, and I had to distract myself with something. So I decided to try thinking of how we were going to have to approach this delicate situation.

  We were effectively stranded on an alien planet with what I would tentatively describe as aliens and now we were going to be taken to someone in charge who could hopefully explain things.

  What were you supposed to do when engaging in first contact? I wasn’t going to try to Captain Picard my way through a diplomatic mess and trying the Captain Kirk approach only worked if you were dealing with princesses, and if you had game. Unfortunately based on my previous successes with the female persuasion, I knew I certainly had none of that.

  We had to have been walking for at least a few hours because the sun started to rise on the horizon, providing enough light to just about see by as we reached the edge of the forest. My legs were aching at this point. I was tired, exhausted really.

  This was basically the most exercise I’d gotten in ages and without having really eaten anything I was about ready to collapse.

  Hopefully it wouldn’t be much longer. There was a dirt path that led over some hills in front of it and I couldn't see beyond that.

  “Too late. People will already be moving about when we arrive,” the hunter’s leader observed.

  “We can’t let anyone see them,” another of the hunters piped.

  “Agreed,” the leader said gruffly. He gestured to two of his companions.

  “Give them your cloaks. We can’t advertise we’ve brought back more people than we left with,” he said.

  The two people he’d spoken to quickly took off their cloaks and handed them to myself and Rel, revealing that one of them was a full on furry person with a canine head. The other was a guy with goat horns curling up either side of his forehead.

  This was a lot of secrecy these guys were engaging with. Just who were these other people they were so scared of.

  “I’ll send someone with some food. Are you both going to be okay camping out for another day?”

  “Of course,” the goatman replied. His companion nodded in agreement.

  “Thank you,” the dogman replied sincerely. “Be safe.”

  “We will.”

  Myself and Rel put on our new cloaks and they more or less fit us. I had to be careful about where I put my feet though as mine was probably a bit too long for me.

  Good, let’s go,” the dogman said, seeing us with our heads covered.

  We continued walking for only a bit longer before the signs of civilization appeared.

  They were stone houses with thatched roofs, a lot of houses really and there were a load of people already out about their days and I had to stop my head from craning around as I took in the sights.

  Men, women and children of all sorts of animal races were going about their business. There were dog people, cat people, goat people, mouse people and even one little boy or girl that was full on lizard-person.

  Our escort led us through the settlement quickly.

  “Ho, Darren!” Shouted a woman with pointed canine ears. “Back so soon?” The man waved at her.

  “Afraid so!” We hightailed it back out once whatever that fell down landed. We figured the Tyrant would be sending someone to investigate and didn’t want to run the risk of encountering them.”

  “We saw it too and I’m glad to see you hightailed out of there pronto. I wouldn’t want to hear you’d had anything to do with the Dark Tyrant.”

  The now named Darren nodded his head in agreement.

  “I’m going to go and speak to the elders now. I’ll come and see you later,” he promised, receiving an appreciated nod from the woman and ending the conversation. Meanwhile the rest of us had just stood around awkwardly.

  A Dark Tyrant?

  What kind of second rate fantasy setting had I now found myself in?

  As we continued walking my vision was suddenly dampened as a shadow passed overhead. It was accompanied by a rush of noise from above us too.

  I looked up and wasn’t alone in doing so. I heard a few people gasp and there was murmuring as the people around us looked up.

  A giant bird was gliding over the village, heading right the way we’d just come from.

  That was far too big to be an ordinary bird, I thought to myself.

  “Come on, let's move,” Darren said.

  “It looks like the Tyrant’s soldiers are already here.”

  Suddenly feeling a lot more trepidation about the situation, I followed after the hunter towards whoever it was he wanted us to meet. But all the while I couldn’t help but feel a new worry.

  That bird had been heading straight for Starship Rex.