by Paul Cude
“I...I...I... betrayed him. I didn’t mean to, it just sort of happened.”
Unlucky got the feeling there was slightly more to it than that.
“And?”
“My father, he... took my mother hostage to make Man cooperate, threatened her life, told him what he would do if things went badly. It’s all my fault, not in my wildest dreams could I have imagined any of this would happen.”
So that was it, thought Unlucky. That scum sucking piece of filth of a leader was blackmailing one of his kids through threats of torture and murder to their mother. Suddenly it put his regular beatings into perspective, that’s for sure. What to do though, what to do?
Consumed by what he’d done, the younger of the two siblings dropped to his knees, just out of range of Unlucky, who at the moment had no thought whatsoever about harming the youngster. That hadn’t always been the case.
Looking on, the dragon prisoner followed what was left of his conscience and tried to do the right thing.
“I’m sure your brother knows that you would never deliberately do anything to harm either him or your mother.”
“I’m not sure he does. The reason he’s not here at the moment is because he’s off spending time with that creature, off learning how to control his magic, preferring to spend time with him rather than me.”
“Perhaps he’s choosing to learn about magic while he has the chance. Perhaps he figures that in the long run, he can better help you and your mother out by doing this now, while the opportunity exists. The only way you’ll find out for sure is to go and ask him. Why not do that?”
Shaking from the cold and the fright of maybe never seeing, speaking or simply being with his brother again, Josh looked up, frozen tears building up in each of his eyes, desperate for some reassurance that things would be okay.
“Do you think it could be that simple?”
“Honestly... I don’t know. It would depend really on exactly how he views your betrayal. Speaking to him would be a start, and you might just be able to get things back on an even keel. Don’t expect to repair things straight away though. Forgiveness is different for different beings and in my humble experience, can only fully be offered up over the course of time. My kind often say that time is a great healer, something I can attest to one hundred percent.”
A weight taken off his shoulders, Josh staggered to his feet, all the time thinking about the dragon prisoner’s wise words.
Unusually for him, he felt compelled to say thank you, and did just that.
“I wish you the best of luck,” was Unlucky’s reply.
With nothing left to be said, and his chore complete, Josh headed off in the direction of his lessons for the day, contemplating speaking with his brother in an effort to find some sort of common ground and a resolution to their predicament.
Communicating out loud for all to see, well the leader’s watchers anyway, and across their telepathic link as well, Marg had started to teach Man the art of firing projectiles and hadn’t gotten off to a particularly good start. So much so, that the leader’s son had to transform into his prehistoric visage before anything less than complete and utter failure could be contemplated.
Looking majestic in all his ancient, scaled glory, Man found it much easier to direct the ethereal power within him. Commanding the projectiles was fiddly he found, and something about his dragon form made it much more effective and instantaneous.
As Marg produced a dizzying array of floating coloured lights, Man attempted to shoot them down with a range of magical projectiles, including poison, electricity, fire and ice. As you might expect with him being a dragon, the fire was having the most success, destroying all the targets in the quickest time possible. Electricity proved harder to control, and he zapped himself more than once or twice, whilst the poison seemed ungainly and inaccurate, occasionally dissipating before reaching its objective. As for the ice, the less said about that, the better. Difficult and time consuming to produce in the first place, he had yet to hit even one of the targets with a bolt of it so far. The moment the cold left his fingertips, it thudded unceremoniously to the ground, instantly indistinguishable from its surroundings. Pleased with the triumph of the flame, he more than berated himself for his failure with the others. Inside his mind, Marg had much kinder words.
“You’re being too hard on yourself. These are difficult skills to master. To attempt to do so in such a short period of time is almost asking for a miracle. What you’ve achieved so far, is nothing short of fantastic. If we had three decades to accomplish all of this, we still wouldn’t get it done. You have to face the fact that your education will be incomplete to start with and that there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“I just want to be able to do more,” uttered Man in frustration through their invisible link.
“I know youngster, I know. But you’re doing brilliantly. You must keep practising. Forget about the ice shards and concentrate on the electricity and poison to see if you can temper those abilities more to your will. You already have control over the fiery flame, but you must add some different arrows to your quill. If you come across something that can barely be hurt by the fire, what will you do?”
“I’m... not sure.”
“That’s why you need a limited degree of mastery over the poison and the electricity. It won’t be perfect, but it will help.”
Nodding, Man went on to explain the same misgivings out loud, so that those that were watching could see what was taking place and hopefully stay oblivious to the ongoing deception. Speaking of which, during the course of the training so far today, the elder of the two siblings had started to get the feeling that something, or somethings, were deliberately being withheld and kept out of reach of him. Like an itch you just can’t scratch, or something right at the edge of your peripheral vision, apparitions of dark, secretive deadly magic tickled his mind, teased his psyche. Too afraid to ask, wondering if these were all spells he’d be getting to later, he threw all his effort into controlling the wicked bolts of electricity and putrid, luminous green darts of poison. It proved to be the most difficult thing he’d experienced so far.
As the day meandered on, rests were interspersed with learning, magic zipped and zagged throughout the distant enclave, melting ice, burning holes through rock, incinerating stalactites and stalagmites as well as charging the particles of air throughout the vicinity with all sorts of dangerous supernatural power. On top of learning about projectiles in general, Marg spoke across their undiscovered link about using projectiles as a deception, about sending off a series of projectiles and in what formation, as well as combining different kinds of magic in one overall, almighty attack. It proved to be all-consuming to Man, as well as hugely informative. As the end of the day arrived, and the time for the elder of the two brothers to leave once again, he was disappointed that no mention had been made of the deadly and forbidden magic that he’d just caught a glimpse of in the background earlier. Deciding not to make a scene about it, for obvious reasons, he hoped that with more control over his magic tomorrow, that he might get a chance to acquire such valuable knowledge. Bidding goodbye to the being he now thought of as his friend, he marched off in the direction of some well earned sleep.
Arms bound behind her back, she could barely see through the tiny crystalline structures of the frozen tears that held her eyelids in check. As the cold tortured her body, stabbing here, piercing there, whispered dark words echoed out of the adjacent room. What she heard terrified her to her core. If she could have run, she would. Unfortunately for her, that wasn’t an option.
“Report!”
“We’ve rounded them up as you’ve asked. They’re being kept out of the way in one of the far reaching storage facilities, with guards on hand. Nobody will make their way through, of that we’re sure.”
“Will anyone notice them missing?”
“Unlikely. The only youngsters that visit the women’s chambers are your sons, and both know better than to do so at the mome
nt.”
Although stating only the facts, to some lesser degree or other, the words cut him like a knife. Now though was not the time to be soft, quite the opposite in fact. Now was the time to be bold, adventurous and brave. If things went their way in the coming days, they could all be free, with their powers returned in no time at all. The fact that the remaining women would all have to die was a small price to pay in the scale of things, of that he was sure. What the women thought of that was anybody’s guess.
“Are you sure women are the best bet for the process to work?” asked one conspiratorial voice. “What if things go awry? We might need them in the future to procreate once again.”
“I think,” stated the leader firmly, “that their procreation days are well and truly behind them. For the plan to have the best chance of working, the life force of the females will greatly enhance what we need to do. Their remaining supernatural power should bolster the magic in two or three of us for just long enough if we time things right. After that, it will be a case of using our magic, and those we’ve taken captive, to do our bidding. If we can capture their leader, the very real threat to him should provide ample incentive for them to not only keep us warm, but help us escape from this freezing hellhole.”
In the darkened room directly behind the wall in front of which the despicable men spoke, Man and Josh’s mother struggled with all her might upon hearing details of the proposed dirty deed. She wriggled and jiggled, writhed and stretched, using new-found strength at the thought of what they had planned for the women amongst them, her friends and co-workers, beings she regarded and loved. Her struggle, however, was in vain as her sons’ father had seen personally to the bonds that held her in place. And although she knew him to be teetering on the edge of insanity, something she’d shielded her boys from, he was nothing if not cautious and thorough. After numerous minutes, and falling down onto her side, she conceded defeat, allowing the cold, monstrous shadows to take her, for once sleep not at all her friend.
Halfway to his pathetic excuse for a private space, a figure garbed in dirty, rotten rags stepped out into the path in front of him from somewhere between a shattered series of crumpled boulders. Just as he’d been taught over the past few days, he raised mental barriers around his mind, and brought forth the spark of supernatural magic from within him that burned bright, so much so that the tips of his fingers glowed in the gloom. As the mysterious figure strolled into what little light existed in and around them, the magic died away, relieved to see, if not quite a friend, certainly not an enemy combatant.
“What do you want?” Man asked harshly, wanting nothing more than to get back and lose himself in some well deserved sleep.
It didn’t look as though it was going to be that easy.
“We... we... we... need to talk,” stuttered his brother, all the time keeping his voice friendly and low.
“There’s nothing else to talk about. You’ve chosen which side you’re on by betraying your mother and brother. How you could do such a thing is totally and utterly beyond me.”
Standing facing each other by now, Man sidestepped right in an effort to get past. Quicker than he would have thought possible, his sibling blocked his path, determined to have this out. Hands on hips, Man just stood and glared, something nobody wanted to be on the end of, least of all Josh.
“You... you... you seemed so convinced not to help. I didn’t want to get you in trouble with Father, I just... I... just thought that if he knew how you felt, then he could have a chat, make you see the bigger picture. I had no idea he would do that to Mother, you have to believe me Man, you just have to.”
He had to do nothing of the sort, that much was for sure. But standing there, watching his traitor of a brother try and justify his actions, forced his temper to rise, really got his goat, and so without hesitation, he responded.
“You’ve got a bloody cheek seeking me out, trying to apologise for your treachery,” he spat, jabbing his index finger deep into the middle of his sibling’s chest.
So taken aback by this was Josh, that he stumbled back on his heels, nearly slipping on the ice and falling flat on his arse. Blind luck stopped this from happening.
“I... I... I... I never meant for that to happen. I was just worried... for you, and for Mother and for...”
“Worried for yourself more like,” growled Man, his temper hanging by a thread. “You didn’t give a damn about either of us. You just thought you’d use it as a way to get in with Father.”
“No... no... no,” babbled Josh. “That’s not it, that’s not it at all.”
“I don’t believe you, and neither does Mother, particularly not in her current predicament. Why don’t you run on back to whatever little hole you’ve crawled out of, and wait for some faint semblance of praise from your father. After all, that’s what you’ve been hoping for isn’t it?”
Pointing and shaking demonstrably, Josh stood in front of one of the only two beings he loved on the entire planet, eyes wide, mouth snarled, anger at not being listened to and instantly forgiven, rising with every moment that passed.
“I tried,” he shouted, not caring now who heard. “All I wanted to do was leave this place. Is that so bad? But you... you decide in your great wisdom that your precious morals are more important, more important than everyone here leaving this icy prison. Well... bully for you, I hope your morality brings you great comfort when you’re still trapped her fifty years from now.”
Man reached out, and in a blur, grabbed his brother by the rags around his neck, pulling him forward, now close enough to feel his freezing breath wash across his face.
“What’s the point of living if we can’t lead a decent life? Treachery, betrayal, deception... and that’s just amongst his own kind. Exactly what kind of leader is our father? Someone you look up to, someone you admire and want to follow in his footsteps? Pathetic! I’d rather be trapped in here knowing that I’m a decent, honest and kind being, just as my mother raised me, than have anything to do with that slimy piece of filth. He’s only my father in name... that’s all. I want nothing to do with him, his policies or his plans. You forget what he’s already done, what our mother’s already endured, up until now. And then you do this... betray the both of us, all for what? You’re a joke and one that I want nothing to do with. You had your chance to choose, and I’ll tell you now, you’ve made an almighty mistake. So get lost,” Man cried, throwing his brother back a full five metres, “and don’t come near me again. If you do, you won’t walk away in one piece.”
Barely containing the rage threatening to erupt out of him, the elder of the two stormed off in the direction of his tiny little space, determined to ignore and not touch the flickering and sparking magic that threatened to consume him. Ignoring its touch and desire to be used, a few minutes later he laid down his head and as a cacophony of emotions assaulted his very being, drifted off to sleep.
During what would be regarded as the early hours of the morning, and with most of the community asleep, the leader, his second in command and a couple of the other thugs that they could trust, silently made their way from one side of the compound to the other, arriving half an hour or so later, at a heavily guarded entrance that few knew about.
“Are they all in there?” asked the leader to the head guard.
“They are.”
“Do they know what’s going on?”
“No. They’re only aware of what’s happened to them, not what’s in store.”
“Good. It’ll all be over in an hour or so. Make sure no one comes anywhere near here.”
Clasping his comrade tightly on the shoulder, recognising the look of uncertainty in his eyes, the leader spoke firmly and surely, for all those around to hear.
“We’re so close, it’s almost possible to touch it... escape I mean. But we can’t give in now. We have to be strong and stick to the plan. Of course it’s risky and not ideal, as well as being repugnant, but if it pays off, and I truly believe in my heart of hearts that it will,
then it’ll have been worth it. Their sacrifices won’t have been in vain, and will lead to not only a better life for all of us, but a foundation on which to build the renewal of the planet. The much bigger picture here, is that we can shape the face of the earth, but first of all we have to make sacrifices, much as we don’t want to. What happens here today shall be remembered forever. Nobody will be forgotten, on that you all have my word.”
In total and utter silence, each one of the men there bowed their heads in subjugation, knowing that their leader was right, ashamed that they’d doubted him at all, and infused with righteous belief in what they were doing. Dark, desperate deeds, in their minds at least, had become totally and utterly justified. It was time.
Accompanied by his second in command, and two of his men chosen not only for their loyalty, but because of the strength of the power they contained in their natural personas, the leader strolled into the storage facility, all too focused on the job at hand. It had to be done for the greater good, that was what continued to drive him on.
Cowered against the furthest icy wall, clad in filthy strips of material, the remaining seventeen women of the penal colony, with the exception of Man and Josh’s mother, looked a state. Having long since foregone their sleek, sensual, prehistoric figures due to the harsh temperatures, the females did little justice to their true forms, or at least that’s what the leader’s first thought was. Most beings in this situation would at least have felt some pity or remorse for what they were about to do. Not him though.