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Chapter 2: Beneath Twin Suns — KURII Mountain — E

Editor’s Note: This Chapter has two versions. Mine vs Todd’s. His is short, mine luscious with detail. Todd had already published his short version before I saw it. I kept his basic Plot & Scenery, but added mood and details. Hoping to not confuse readers, we offer both versions. Chapter 2 — T; Chapter 2 — E.

If you have an opinion of how we handled this situation, leave a comment. We can take honest criticism and would LOVE the Boost your comments, highlights, and claps will bring!

Slight name Change. Kurii, World of Trog has become: **KURII Mountain. **But the Story shall continue

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A Collaborative effort by Medium.com/@toddhammerrick and Medium.com/@evelyngaede

Chapter 2

The cove had seemed a sanctuary.

Sheltered by jagged rock formations and framed by still, dark water, it felt untouched, hidden from the rest of the world. Even the wind was quieter here reduced to a whisper among the stones, but under the subtle glow of twin suns — today, both seemed swollen, pulsating a crimson glow in the late sky, and on this day, no longer felt like a safe sanctuary.

It felt like a trap.

Mara stood at the water’s edge holding a damp towel clinging to her skin. Her breath came shallow, uneven, as she scanned the ridgeline above them. Every shadow looked deeper. Every silence, heavier.

“They’re still out there,” Lara said, voice trembling. “They never left,” Kayla replied, her tone sharp but thin with strain.

Neither one could stop scanning the rocks though neither girl knew what they were looking for. “They’re just waiting.”

Sera sat on the sand, arms wrapped around herself, rocking slightly. “We shouldn’t have come here,” she whispered. “I told you something felt wrong.”

Mara didn’t answer because Sera was right. The stillness wasn’t natural.

Even the lake, a familiar friend, alive with faint ripples and distant calls — comfortable always, comforting when any one of them needed it — had fallen to an oppressive, smothering silence.

As though something vast had pressed down on the world and forced it to listen. Then came the sound.

A low, grinding rumble. Not quite a growl. Not quite the rustle of movement. Something in between.

Mara froze. Was that a shadow of something moving? Something other than the bough of a tree pushed by a breeze she hardly felt? Peering deep into the shadows, she saw them.

From the darkest edges of the cove shapes began to emerge. At first, they looked like part of the cliffs and tall rocks — hulking, uneven, almost blending with the shadows.

A breath of wind and the scene shifted. Shadows became identifiable forms… of what? Was it… animal? Human? The truth didn’t pause. The dark forms kept advancing. Too fast for shadows dropped by a roving moon.

Human in shape the hulks of shadow were tall, too bulky to pass for trees swayed by a wind hardly noticeable. Massively bulky, the shadows… if it was men of Trog… had broad husky shoulders.

Too soon, shadows became identifiable. Not Trogan men. Creatures. GIANTS. Bad breath that reeked of raw meat and fish. Heavy puffs that hit sensitive nostrils with putrid heat, the volume of those breaths as if carrying their own weight made the climb to the cove strenuous exertion.

The Kurii!

Their movements were deliberate, stealthy, controlled. Mara watched the shadows advance; her own life’s breath caught in her chest.

Each step carried weight, pressing into the sand with quiet authority. They had been there all along. NOT RIGHT THERE BUT CLOSE ENOUGH TO SEE, TO WATCH, TO WAIT.

Lara let out a small, broken sound. “No…”

Mara instinctively stepped in front as if to protect the others knowing the attempt was doomed even before she attempted it. Too many of them! No gaps. No openings. Just ONE tightening CIRCLE.

“We’re surrounded.” A voice so weak it hardly sounded like Sera. “Maybe if we just…” A half-uttered suggestion drowned by an angry Kayla. “They’re not here to talk!”

Kayla was like Mara, braver than courage could carry. Lara and Sera often showed fear, most times faked. This one time, that fear was relevant and honest.

Today, what all four girls shared alike was a warranted fear, and very visible on each one of their faces, through their expressions. Kayla was half a syringe from hysterics, but she’d begun this moment brave and meant to keep that demeanor.

Two of the four bolted — right into the arms of shadowed hulks— near as the girls could tell they were surrounded by a circle of Sasquatch Apes, and still, their circle continued to tighten as they crept closer.

One of the Kurii was noticeably larger than the others with commanding manner, figure, and stance. The creature’s cold stare swept across… visually memorizing each body as it moved to the next girl, the third, the fourth. Slow and measured, the beast assessed each attribute, noted each flaw — and there were not many.

The smell of the invaders bodies was repulsive. Four hands went to cover nose and mouth. Conversely, the smell of human female hormones to the beasts was quite intoxicating… Infinite heaven in a bottle… a bottle plucked free of body hair… naked skin.

Gruff set a large black metal box on a flat rock, waist‑high to Mara. It was a language translator — crude compared to the model soon to be implanted in their throats where it would wrap around their vocal cords converting human speech to Kurii. The cords would act as a highway; vibrations that would become the vehicles to carry meaning.

Those signals would translate human words to something the Kurii could understand, and the Kurii’s guttural grunts, groans, and snorts to language humans could comprehend.

“You are far from your kind.” Mara’s voice accused.

After years of running marathons, her stance was formidable, standing with feet apart she presented a narrow wall between her friends and the invaders.

She wasn’t as tall as the other girls but with a bustline heavier than all of them, legs stronger, at this moment she thanked the stubborn dedication that got her out of bed each morning before dawn’s first light to run.

She’d begun slowly, first from home to the end of the block. Then to end of the next block. Advancing slowly over days, weeks, months, running corner to corner until she’d run a full half mile. Then a whole mile. Now she could run a full 10k no problem, but runners of her personal experience didn’t have her long legs.

The beasts would catch her on their first step, second step for sure. Catch and squish her like a bug. And if they caught her, they’d catch the others too. The beasts knew it. And now, they knew that she had fully grasped the fact that she was powerless, that the Kurii held control of the situation.

Running would be a fruitless behavior.

“We should have listened to Kayla. Waited for daylight to swim.” “Daylight would not have saved you. We’ve known for days what we were going to do. The delay was on our side. Nothing to do with day or time.”

“Our kind?” The gorilla seemed to speak only to her. Questioning the statement made when he set his black box on the rock. “This is home. You think one little mountain top will keep us in place, unable to pester your feathery homes? Your cities? Does a city limits sign contain you?”

Mara grasped his point. Humans roamed all of earth’s terrain. Trog had no boundaries. What couldn’t be reached on foot could easily be reached on the back of a xaren. Even Trehjo Valley and Whispering Sand Dunes could be risked using Donkeys, horses, or camels. The xaren wouldn’t go near it.

The brute’s words came deep, rough. Resonant! ‘Like stone grinding against stone. Makes my teeth hurt. Same way running my nails down the surface of

To Mara’s ears it sounded like a growl. To her brain, she heard him say, ‘You are far from your kind.’ Its voice was deep, rough, resonant — like stone grinding against stone.

Mara’s stomach twisted. “We can leave. Can’t run. You’ll bar every attempt.” Words that pulsed out of her throat. came quick like spewing lava. Grunts, snorts, growls that her brain could not process. Instead, it hung onto what her fear wanted to explore. “Allow us to leave. We won’t come back. The beach, the lake… it’s… yours. We intruded but will cooperate and leave. Immediately.”

She hoped what she was beginning to understand was an illusion. She was asleep. This was a nightmare. It would force her awake. Very soon. Any moment now.

It wasn’t, and terrified even more.

The Kurii didn’t respond immediately. Instead, it took one more step forward. “No,” it said at last.

Behind it, another bent to lift something off the ground. In the shadowed light it looked like a tan-colored snake. Mara and Sera recoiled, jumped back to avoid it.

As it grew closer, with light from the two suns slowly erasing the early dawn, something Mara hadn’t noticed before slowly rose from the ground, gripped in the tight fists of the beasts that had bent to pick it up.

A length of rope threaded through iron restraints clutched tight in two black gorilla fists the size of human feet hung between two Kurii men like two men at each end of a jump rope. Except, this rope wasn’t twirling up then down with invitation to jump.

It was a frightening menace, rope threaded through links of heavy chain, heavy metal manacles dangling off the chain-rope at three-foot intervals.

The meaning slammed, jolted the panicked brain and body of each girl. “Run!” Mara hissed.

They turned and sprinted toward the narrow break in the rocks — the only exit from the cove. Sand slipped beneath their feet. Sharp stones cut at the soles of their bare feet.

For one wild second, Mara thought they had a chance. Then the ground shook. It felt like each step of these monsters shook the earth, an old cartoon image of a alarm clock ringing, causing the small clock to vibrate off the table.

The Kurii moved with terrifying speed.

A force — how she would forever describe it — struck Mara from behind driving her forward into the sand. The breath exploded from her lungs as a crushing weight pinned her down.

She tried to twist free by clawing the ground, a useless waste of energy.

Nearby, Lara screamed, a shriek that abruptly cut off. Sera gasped, the breath caught in her chest as something caused her to trip and fall. Flailing arms grasped wildly for something to grab. Kayla fought — kicked, twisted — but faltered against something so large it blocked one of the rising suns.

Exhaustion melted all resistance. Mara’s treatment was especially rough because she’d been the one in front, the defiant one, the barrier that dared them to advance.

The motion to pull her arms behind her wrenched her shoulder, sent a razor-sharp pain shooting through Mara’s arm and shoulder, dulling what otherwise would have been a cold shock when the heavy metal manacles closed around her wrists. It was the sharp snap and click that finalized the end of freedom — the doom of captivity.

Reality hit next. Settled into each one of them all, one by one. “No… please…” Lara whispered, words that were barely there.

For Sera, the pressure set on her arms, shoulders, and back lifted her just enough to be dragged upright. Her legs trembled beneath her, barely holding her weight.

All four were forced to their knees, bound with the manacles, rope & chain. Breathing came ragged. Not one could brave the attempt to look at any of the others.

The leader approached.

Up close, with daylight conquering the lavender dawn, this giant creature was even more imposing — a presence that filled the space around it, pressing into her thoughts.

“You resist.” The voice box sent words that each girl understood. “That will pass.” Mara swallowed, forced her hardest defiant stare to meet him head-on. “What are you going to do with us?” she asked.

The Kurii tilted its head, reminded her of gorillas in the zoo. “You will learn,” Syllables clearly heard through the voice box. The creature turned away, punctuating the matter “settled”.

The rope woven through chain links bound four pairs of wrists, locking them to a “chain-gang”. A tug on the line pulled Mara forward.

“Stand!” Came the first command through the black box. Time was given to pull up from knees to their feet. “You will have to keep up, watch where you step. With hands locked behind you back it will be all but impossible to find your equilibrium if you should trip or slow your pace.”

The rope pulled and in the first seconds Mara experienced the unpleasant consequence of a missed step. “Why not put hands in front of us? We couldn’t… can’t… impossible! To! Walk! This! Way!”

“You have proven you can’t be trusted. Now, you must earn the privilege of having hands in front.” Each girl marched forward with a Kurii ape-figure to either side of her. The chain-rope kept them upright — held by something far stronger than human muscle or human will.

“Move.” Choice was gone. The order would be obeyed. The procession began. Out of the cove. Away from the water. And what was most terrifying — away from the last place that had felt even remotely safe.

The path wound upward through uneven rock, the twin suns had completed the slow day’s journey around the planet Trog. Long shadows began to slink along beside them, slowly shifted to follow them, finally shrunk to nothing.

And still, the March kept advancing. Never slowed. The monsters marching beside them became distorted hulking shapes, distorted shadows. Even the girl walking in front them, at least the three who followed Mara, even THEIR SHADOWS didn’t appear human anymore.

No one spoke. Not even Kayla. The only sounds were the unsteady steps of the captives and the steady, rhythmic clomps of the Kurii surrounding them.

THEN CAME THE MOUNTAIN.

As they climbed, Mara glanced back. ONCE. Then AGAIN.

First glance returned a blanket of black. A dark so deep it refused to penetrate, boomeranged right back to her. The second glance took courage but returned the sense of something she knew. Something that had always brought comfort.

Tonight, it brought terror. A sickening, suffocating, paralyzing terror.

The lake, the rocks — everything that defined the world they knew — had slipped away, swallowed by shadow. Ahead, land rose into jagged formations, broken and unfamiliar.

‘A different world.’ Mara thought. At this moment, she couldn’t bear to look in front of her. She wasn’t that brave. Instead, she looked down. Locked her gaze on the rocks and ledges they used as steps to climb the face of this mountain ridge. One that on the clearest day when back on ground near the cove, one could see the very top of Kurii mountain. Now, she’d climbed it.

Lara’s voice broke, barely audible. “Mara… what do we do?” Mara hesitated, unable to answer. She didn’t have one. But she refused to admit that. To admit it would make it truth, a win she refused to allow these beasts.

“We stay together,” she said quietly. “Whatever happens… we don’t lose that.”

It wasn’t a plan. It was strategy. A strategy of delay. ‘Time. That is all we need. Just… time. Maybe luck.’

The rope tightened.

Beneath the dying light of Trog’s twin suns, four young women were led deeper into a future they could not in their wildest dreams, begin to fathom.

[embed]List: Kurii Mountain | Curated by Evelyn Gaede | Medium Kurii Mountain · Sasquatch creatures on the planet Trog enslave humans · 1 stories on Mediummedium.com