More than once during the "war council" assembled by Zserreth that morning, Chaa'ress shuddered down to the very tip of her tail, but that feeling of unease was nothing compared to the nauseating sense of dread that came over her as the leader of The Herd and his "warriors" returned, with one of their number missing, two wounded - and with two blood-streaked Gara-Morsa soldiers as their prisoners...
"Ba'atur is dead", Zserreth reported coldly as Chaa'ress, and several others who had not taken part in the attack, emerged from the shelter. "Several of the young ones broke from cover too early, and the invaders killed him. They nearly got Thevess, too, but losing the end of his tail will, hopefully, teach him to obey orders...!"
"We're not an army!", snorted another male Gara-Laserma, one of those who had objected to the plan. "We should have stayed away from them..."
"Until when?", snarled Zserreth, his fearsome array of pointed teeth in the objector's face. "Until their hunters ride through our city streets, slaughtering children? No - the Gara-Morsa must be made to fear the wilds. They hate everything they cannot control - if they cannot tame something, they tear it down. Would you rather have us behind energy-fences like farm animals, waiting to be turned into trophies for rich Gara-Morsa?"
"N-no...", mumbled the objector, backing away.
"Go get salve-moss for those willing and ready to fight", Zserreth ordered him, and the objector hurried away before he could hear the "Master of The Herd" mutter "Your song'll change quickly enough when it's your child, your brother or sister who doesn't come home..."
Chaa'ress barely registered anything that was said, her attention held by the Gara-Morsa captives, two men in standard one-piece military gear, covered with pockets and patterned to resemble the undergrowth. Both men were pinned to the ground, face down, by a hoof pressed into their backs, and from what the female Gara-Laserma could see - glimpses of blood-smeared, bruised faces; one man's attempts to shield one arm, held close to his body, from further injury; the sickening way the other man's leg seemed to have a bend too many - she felt the captives were lucky to still be alive...
She was also terrified. The presence of these men, and their condition, represented a shift in the fragile balance of peace between the two peoples of Gara-Laras drastic enough to overthrow it completely. "This is why the Gara-Morsa have an organised military force", she murmured to herself. "All the money they spent, all the soldiers they've trained - Zserreth, you just justified the whole thing..."
The Gara-Morsa hadn't helped things by allowing hunters out into the wilds for trophies - and maybe that was their intention all along. They had the army, and all they then needed was to provoke the Gara-Laserma into aggressive action... and again, Zserreth was deluding himself, if he believed he had any real free will. He was part of the plan, an unknowing piece in the machine - but if it hadn't been him, it would've been someone else. In the past, Chaa'ress might possibly have used such thoughts to talk Zserreth into considering a different plan of action, but that was a past as dead in the dust as the two prisoners would soon be, particularly if they chose not to tell Zserreth what they knew.
"Bring them to the cave", Zserreth ordered the two Cursed watching over the Gara-Morsa captives. "There's no need for anyone to see this..."
Chaa'ress stepped forward. "What's coming will affect all of us", she told him. "You've made that a certainty, with what you've done. We deserve to know what you intend to do with these people..."
Zserreth calmly strode up to Chaa'ress, covering the rest of the gap between them. "I had wanted to protect our people from the true horror of this", he said to her, "but since you insist... you may join us - you and anyone else who wants to see what the Gara-Morsa have made us do..."
The Gara-Morsa had underestimated Zserreth, not expecting for a moment that he, and any other of the Cursed, would dare to lead an attack against their well-equipped, lethally-armed warriors, and now Chaa'ress had been guilty of making the same mistake. She had viewed the herd leader as being driven solely by savage instinct, but now he was daring her to drag the others into this unholy, bloody mess, stripping them of their innocence.
Head bowed, dejected, Chaa'ress followed Zserreth and the two Cursed dragging the captured soldiers, and with every step, she felt more and more dirty - being Cursed was no longer the beautiful thing she'd waited for since childhood, racing through the wilderness, playing games with the more impressionable Gara-Morsa...
"This... this still feels like a bad idea", says Asor, as we pause on the crest of a ridge, looking down over the forested "shallows" of the great wildness, only a few miles beyond the outskirts of Taalsem City. "Zserreth's... herd aren't outcasts like him, but they still don't like to be bothered by 'city-folk'."
"That's not all, though", I respond. "You sense something, and you don't want to tell me about it..."
Asor sighs, and I don't just hear it; I feel it, a shudder that carries all through his body, and through his spine, into me. "I smell blood in the air - Gara-Laserma blood - smoke from damaged machines... and that strange acrid smell you get after energy-lances have been fired, like the air itself has been burned. I... It's got me worried."
"Hunters?", I ask him, remembering the smells from my own encounter with the Gara-Morsa - including what Asor is trying to describe; a harsh smell like powerful electrical equipment overloading.
"No - worse", he answers. "We should go back - we don't want to be part of this."
"What we want is not what is required of us", I surprise myself by saying. "If we don't do something, those smells will be in everyone's nostrils, right up to the moment The Dark Child hits..."
"You think this will lead to war?"
"Unless we prevent it", I answer.
"But does that mean you have to confront Zserreth in person?", asks Asor. "I mean, isn't there another way? Your powers - they've returned, haven't they...?"
They have, to the extent that I've tested them - and I know what Asor is hinting at... "You want me to telepathically declare peace?", I ask my friend. "You want me to tell the whole planet what to think?"
"You told me before that you're one of the most powerful telepaths on record", he reminds me. "Surely that's powerful enough..."
"Power is not everything, contrary to popular and thoroughly misguided opinion", I inform him, sighing inwardly - but I'm sure Asor can feel my sigh as I did his, conducted into the centre of his being by his spine, astride which I am seated, "and an exercise of power is not the way to ensure peace. Rely on power, and you will have to maintain power..."
Asor just doesn't seem to understand, but it's no surprise. It's so hard to make any non-telepath understand, but I have to try, to get Asor to see just why this approach is the only way. "Interfere with, control, one mind, and the effects can be profound, and lasting", I explain. "No ongoing effort is required, but the more minds you influence, the more thinly spread the effect becomes, and the more maintenance it requires. To ensure peace across the whole planet, I would have to give it my entire psychic effort, day in, day out, until the last of the current generation dies. And then there's the ethical dimension, depriving the people of their personal freedom..."
"I... I see...", murmurs Asor, but that's not all I have to say...
"...but most important of all", I emphasise, "I absolutely will not do it. The character who was my inspiration would possibly consider it, if the benefits favoured her, but I am not her. I am my own person now, not some flesh-and-blood 'cosplayer'..."
That's how far I have come, since Kiranni Rafiloh saw some comic books from Earth, and became fascinated by one of the characters, the "evil" Winnowill, from Elfquest. It had never been my intention to directly copy her, and from the moment I Soul-Selfed, I allowed my own personality to subtly shape the image - I retained five fingers, when my inspiration had four, and of course, my own preferences in clothing went into the mix... and the result was Mane-of-Night.
That, I soon found, wasn't the end of it. I assumed a cold, arrogant demeanour, and that, in hindsight, was the worst thing I could have done. I started to drift into the company of Ealvonhai's darker personalities, and more than once, I nearly ended up a criminal myself - and so, I chose to take a different direction, leading to the birth of Mane-of-Night, the wrestling "manager". However, that eventually proved to be as much of a dead-end as criminality - it had to end when I opened my wardrobe, and saw a dozen exactly identical outfits, the "uniform" for my "character", a merchandisable image for the Confederacy Unlimited Wrestling Association. I realised at that moment that I was in real danger of losing control of myself to a corporate machine...
I vaguely remember some ancient Earth emperor who came to the edge of his kingdom and despaired, "for there were no worlds left to conquer", and that was the tone I tried to echo when I "retired", telling the wrestling world that there was no challenge left for me, as my "stable" had won every title there was to win. Not long after that, The Transformation took place, and when I emerged from it, Mane-of-Night was no longer a "character"; she and Kiranni Rafiloh were one and the same. Like her inspiration, the "original" Mane-of-Night might have given serious thought to the idea of controlling a whole world, just like a comic book villain, but I stopped being that person a long time ago.
And I'm not going back.
I've managed to do a lot of good since those "bad old days", helping to steer Dominion into a position of real influence in civilised space, and managing to keep myself entertained in the process, having my own "adventures" - which have, every now and then, included fighting several significant battles, against major opposition; The Darkening, the Faenri... Bekalth. I've learned from all that that the best way to deal with it is head-on, and using gifts other than my powers. Being chased through the jungle by a walking statue certainly makes you think differently...
The conflict between the two people of Gara-Laras gives me an unexpected advantage - apart from The Dark Child, neither race has been particularly inspired to look into the heavens, or venture into space. The tension between them keeps them grounded, and I'm hoping the arrival of a being from another world will shake them out of that mind-set, make them realise that there is more to reality than their one world, and their two species. It's a strangely violent form of negotiation, the rape of their beliefs, but if they're left to continue this way, they'll take "violent" to a whole level beyond anything I can do.
Asor was first to voice doubts, and he's the one to kill them stone dead. "I trust you", he says. "Please - save my people. Save my world."
"Take me to Zserreth", I tell him. "Fire exists because of three factors - oxygen, fuel and heat. Deprive fire of any of those, and it cannot exist. Zserreth's rage is the heat, and we can do without that."
"From what I've heard, Zserreth's 'herd' move around, from camp to camp, never staying in one place for long", says Asor, "and if what I've been told is true, there should be a camp not far away - hopefully the right one."
My first impulse is to perform a psychic scan for Zserreth's unique mental signature, but my eyes serve me just as well as I scan the landscape, and spot signs of machinery on the move - metal glinting in the midday sun, exhaust fumes rising, the shadow of some kind of airborne vehicle, skimming over the tree-tops... "We need to get to where they're going", I tell my friend, telepathically sharing what I've seen with him, "and we need to get there first."
"Get ready for the wildest ride you've ever had", he warns me, and I can feel his rear legs tensing, ready to race down the slope into the valley. I take as firm a hold on Asor's mane as I feel I can, and try to apply as strong a grip as possible with my legs as he leaps forward, down onto the valley-side, bounding with incredible agility between the trees. I would be enjoying this, but there's every chance that I'll be facing a fight at the end of it...
...to be continued...
Posted at 23:00 on 02.05.2009
~ o O o ~
Previously...
Mane-of-Night And The Watcher From Beyond - Chapter 1 - 21.06.2009
Mane-of-Night And The Dark Child's Descent - Chapter 14 - 17.05.2009
Mane-of-Night And The Dark Child's Descent - Chapter 13 - 15.05.2009
Mane-of-Night And The Dark Child's Descent - Chapter 12 - 13.05.2009
Mane-of-Night And The Dark Child's Descent - Chapter 11 - 11.05.2009
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