Moon 514- Blaze and the White Griffon

by Drew Briney

  After his arrival, he would focus on figuring out what he would do next – or at least, what he would do after he talked to Dr. Boyd’s team. That was, of course, the only reasonable next task ahead and there was no task that needed completing before that all important meeting. So, as he continued his hike, he began to resolve his will to be bold at that meeting; he resolved himself to speak eloquently; he rehearsed his words; he rehearsed the ideas that he would share.

  Soon, dusk was threatening to make her nightly visit. Blaze knew he was getting close to camp and soon, he could see the small hillside where Evelia and the magic woman would be waiting.

  Checking his surroundings, he carefully placed the sleeping baby on the ground. She cried much of the day and the last thing he wanted was to wake her up – the peace and quiet was nearly paradisiacal to his ears when she fell asleep. Tenderly removing his hands out from under her, he silently rejoiced that she hadn’t awakened. Now, he could wash in the stream he arrived at, dry himself off, put on new clothes, and hopefully find a meal waiting for him at camp.

  But that wasn’t all he found awaiting him at camp. As soon as he reached the highest portion of ground where camp had been set, he observed that both Evelia and the magic woman were gone and worse, he observed a troop of men slowly approaching the base of the hillside. They moved so cautiously and carefully through the swampy foliage that Blaze nearly missed seeing them at all. Dressed in camouflage, prepared with night vision glasses, and heavily armed, this troop of men was preparing for battle.

  And Blaze quickly surmised that he was the subject of their hunt.

  DENSE WISPS OF FOG SLOWLY ENCIRCLED the magic woman, sensually caressing her body as if petting a purring kitten. Crawling on all fours, she seemed to slither, whispering – nay, hissing – a long diatribe of cursings towards the approaching men. Her tail twitched back and forth, nearly swatting Evelia in the face a number of times. Her hands pounded the ground with piercing claws, her nails slowly extending in agitation, her eyes narrowing, her teeth baring, and her two voices airily whipping words Evelia couldn’t understand, the magic woman donned a countenance Evelia wouldn’t have even guessed was possible: she was angry – so angry in fact that Evelia began hearing the magic woman’s native language in her own mind. While she couldn’t understand the words, pictures, concepts, and ideas flooded into her mind.

  The earth. She endures everything … she survives everything. She uses a fallen, depraved tribe to produce the savior of the species – the most paradoxical species ever created! Some are nothing but vile –others are as wonderful as any species found in any planetary system. They need a new beginning … and it is coming. These and similar thoughts rambled through Evelia’s mind as the magic woman slithered across the field – like she was stalking prey. The alien woman was reassuring herself of something but Evelia couldn’t tell exactly what that might be.

  And while they moved in nearly synchronous harmony, Evelia felt strong sensations in her mind that were bogging down her body as well as her thinking process – physical feelings she could neither explain nor even describe. Intermittently, she felt as if her conscious state of mind was entirely unstable. In the midst of the most terrifying moment of her life, Evelia suddenly felt so groggy that she feared she would just pass out – right there - almost uncaring about what might happen if she did. And then, right when Evelia thought she might do just that, she would receive a burst of energy – and she would feel almost normal once more.

  After a few of these mental roller coasters, Evelia realized that she had become so entirely mesmerized by the magic woman’s thoughts and these strange sensations that she had forgotten to pay careful attention to what she was doing. Crawling through shallow waters and marshy grasses with her stomach pressed to the ground as low as possible, Evelia suddenly became aware that she was grunting under the physical exertion and that she was undoubtedly exposing her location to the very people who were hunting her. The magic woman mirrored Evelia. She too failed to stay silent. Perhaps it does not matter, Evelia considered, more consciously noticing the cacophony of buzzing insects and croaking frogs, they will cover us.

  But then, the lithe alien’s grating voices increased in volume and her movements became increasingly erratic and visible to anyone who may have been scouting the area. There is no hiding now, Evelia concluded.

  Ricochet! Aim at your comrades! The words rang clearly in Evelia’s mind as if someone had shouted them. She watched in shock as the magic woman stood up in the middle of the grassy field where they had been crawling, made menacing movements with her claws, and hissed at the soldiers.

  The unmistakable sound of high energy gunfire echoed throughout the marshy wetlands.

  AS HE SLOWLY AND METHODICALLY MOVED towards the scene, Blaze carefully scanned the area to determine how many soldiers were on the hunt. Behind the few soldiers he first observed, slivers of light intermittently penetrated the bank of trees like hungry tendrils slowly feeling after their prey. Nevertheless, Blaze only barely discerned the location of a few more camouflaged soldiers carefully wading throughout the dense foliage and foggy cover.

  But there were more.

  In contrast, he easily spotted the magic woman when she conspicuously stood up in the middle of a grassy clearing. The typically subtle glow of her skin was anything but faint now. Even without enhanced night vision, her precarious position was abundantly evident to anyone paying attention because her entire body seemed particularly luminescent under the swirling blanket of jungle fog. A moment later, Blaze discerned Evelia’s slightly more concealed position.

  She might as well put a target on her chest – she is suicidal, Blaze concluded with no other viable explanation to consider. Gripped by the growing danger this represented to Evelia, the young warrior’s mind flooded with improbable thoughts of how he might yet save her. Instinctively, he placed Elayuh on his bed as carefully as possible – to avoid waking her and bringing attention to himself – and pushed away the protective screen to gain access to the control panel of his staff.

  And then the flash of gunshots became visible.

  Instead of making a trail of light towards the magic woman’s location and culminating in an even stronger glow across her body, the gunfire roughly flashed in a large scalloped semicircle. Even from Blaze’s somewhat distant location, he could discern that telltale glow that came from direct hits on several of the soldiers as they fell to the ground. Within a very few moments, the jungle grew silent and all of the lights were gone – excepting the now subtle shimmering of the alien woman’s skin.

  The soldiers were all dead, save one: Dr. Boyd. Unseen by either Blaze or Evelia, Dr. Boyd had fallen into fear induced psychotic seizures before the other soldiers opened fire one upon another. Without any explanation to Evelia, the lithe little alien slowly and sleekly strolled towards the fallen scientist not unlike a glamour model strutting down a runway – only the magic woman’s motions were not intended to be seductive – they were half intended to calm herself and half intended to keep herself in a defensive mental state.

  Evelia was still recovering from the terror of being in the midst of gunfire with zero protection. Lying with her face buried in one arm and plastered against a section of moist ground, she nearly panicked when she heard the magic woman start to walk away. When she resolvedly gathered enough courage to peer through the surrounding heavy foliage, all she could see were disappearing, swaggering hips and then a disappearing, twitching tail and then nothing besides the minor tremors of tall, moving grass.

  In the midst of these now silent but dangerous wetlands, Evelia didn’t dare stay by herself. At the same time, she was only barely able to summon the courage necessary to follow the small alien’s trail – albeit Evelia only remained willing to follow on all fours until she understood what was going on. In reality, the path followed by the magic woman was less than a hundred yards; in Evelia’s psyche, the trip seemed to have been at least a half mile – if not more. Her heart pounding, her b
reath labored, her thoughts racing, and her senses in overload as she crawled across the bottom of this foggy clearing, Evelia anxiously hoped for only one thing: the sound of Blaze’s voice. Nothing else would calm her overflowing fears.

  BLAZE STOOD OVER DR. BOYD, consciously restraining himself from harming this man who had betrayed him – the man whom Blaze silently blamed for the death of his parents. If only they had been warned, Blaze had reasoned. If only they had been given opportunity to defend themselves against the natives. They could have scouted the area. They could have installed security recorders on the perimeter of the Orders. They could have done many things to prepare for an attack. Instead, nothing had been done. And Dr. Boyd was the only man who knew enough to prevent the slaughter that had taken place only a few days ago.

  The pain was fresh. Memories remained vivid. Confusion lingered. But the magic woman had insisted that Dr. Boyd remain unharmed. They needed to talk to him and they needed to ask him questions. So Blaze restrained his instincts. He didn’t even kick the aging man – except in his mind. He couldn’t help entertaining those thoughts – he couldn’t prevent those raw feelings from surfacing. But at least he had been able to conquer his feelings enough to not follow through with them physically.

  Why? Why did you do this?

  The magic woman slept soundly. In contrast, Evelia’s sleep was nothing more than shallow and intermittent. The slightest movement of the baby awakened her and fear of what might happen next suffocated her ability to fall back asleep. The only comfort she felt was knowing that Blaze was keeping watch.

  Blaze, on the other hand, slept not at all.

  In the morning, he would scout the area to see who these men were. Blaze hoped he didn’t know any of them. Part of him feared that some of the fallen might find ranks among his old friends. Part of him didn’t even want to see them. But something primeval told him he had to do it. He had to make sure there were no survivors hunting him down. He had to make sure Evelia was safe – and Elayuh. After what he saw the night before, he had few concerns for the alien – somehow, he instinctively understood that she was behind the massacre. He just didn’t know how.

  Another hour until sunrise, he thought. It was one of those intuitive thoughts that didn’t really have any words associated with it – one of those realizations that only found words after you tried to express something primeval, instinctual - something very organic. His thoughts about Dr. Boyd were like that too. Blaze’s thought patterns were not characterized by words – they were not verbal. They were somewhat pictorial and somewhat intrinsic – perhaps even kinesthetic.

  If Dr. Boyd wasn’t awake by sunrise, Blaze determined that he would give in to his temptation to kick the man – and not very gently. It was this promise to himself that kept his hatred against the man under control … for now. It was this promise that kept him from acting like the rabid beast he had been yesterday, plowing through enemy fields like they were no obstacle at all. He didn’t understand why the magic woman kept the scientist alive. He was, after all, planning to kill Blaze wasn’t he?

  Blaze distinctly remembered a lesson from Dr. Boyd when he was a small child, a lesson about self defense, a lesson about taking the life of other people. Trained as a warrior from a very tender age, Blaze had considered the proper circumstances to spare life and the proper circumstances to take it. Yesterday’s decision to take a life had been as difficult as anything he had ever done before – and internally, he still wasn’t sure if he had done the right thing. Internal turmoil ravaged his soul; internal conflicts flooded every few moments of his life until he wondered if these feelings would ever leave him or if they would constantly be his master – and he their slave.

  The fallen were strangers – another race of men who were uncivilized and untrained in morality. They were ravenous beasts that interrupted a hunt. They were necessary casualties because they attacked first. These were justified killings, he convinced himself. But the convincing never lasted long. Later, he would rehash these feelings all over again and he would dread the moment when they resurfaced.

  What made Dr. Boyd any different than the savages? The only rational detail Blaze could mentally conjure was that Dr. Boyd did not personally attack anyone and that he was incapacitated from doing so now. But that didn’t change his heart any and that was what made sparing his life now so challenging for the young warrior. If he had not intended to kill Blaze or either of his companions, he might have felt differently. Somehow, the personal nature of this attack left Blaze feeling much more conflicted than he had the day before. Somehow, this was much worse. Only now, he couldn’t fight his foe. Instead, he just got to watch over him for several hours to make sure he didn’t wake and kill everyone in Blaze’s camp.

  Then, his secret fear of disappointment materialized: Dr. Boyd opened his eyes.

  The instant his eyelashes touched his bushy eyebrows, the magic woman hissed and awoke from her slumber and Blaze had to resolve himself not to kick the scientist one more time. His feet involuntarily taking a step back, his thumb resting next to the screen covering the control panel on his staff, his upper teeth biting his lower lip, and his temper flaring, Blaze summoned the courage to tame his anger as he looked into Dr. Boyd’s gentle and surprised eyes.

  “BLAZE?” THE DOCTOR’S EYES SEEMED heavily laden with fatigue and worry. His face scrunched as he tried to focus on the young warrior’s face and his body appeared sore when he tried to sit up. “It’s great to see you. We sent a team to find you and Evelia. We could not leave some of our greatest teammates behind.” By the time this sentence ended, he could see that Blaze didn’t look very happy and swiftly determined to change the course of conversation.

  “Are you alright Blaze? You look really stressed …” Then, looking around the sparse campsite, he spotted Evelia and the magic woman. “Wonderful! Evelia – how are you?” And then, looking around further, he asked with genuine puzzlement: “Where is everyone else? How did we get separated? How did you find me? What happened?”

  A slew of questions lingering in the air, Blaze looked upon Dr. Boyd with great confusion. How could he possibly have forgotten what happened the night before? Why would he be addressing Blaze and Evelia with such apparent enthusiasm? Were the soldiers really just sent to find Blaze and Evelia to make sure they were okay? Was last night a huge mistake?

  I gave him temporary amnesia, a soft voice instructed Blaze. I want to see if he will voluntarily offer information, she continued. Please let me speak before you respond.

  Unsure how to answer Dr. Boyd’s inquiries anyway, Blaze readily consented, glancing over at the alien woman and nodding his head. Then, seeking more support, he looked over at Evelia to see what she might suggest.

  But she was a blank slate as well.

  “Dr. Boyd,” the magic woman purred with her hypnotic, harmonious voices. “You are safe. Do not concern yourself with these worries for a few moments. We have some questions that you can probably help us with. We watched the explosion the other day. How many natives are there and are they likely to attack again?”

  “I do not know how many there are,” he began, “we estimate ten thousand on this island but it is difficult to tell. The cube has a hard time discerning humans from similarly large creatures so we can only really make a rough estimate based upon clusters of people. As to whether or not they may attack again …” He seemed to be tripping over his words now, leaving the magic woman dripping with anxiety. The only visible indication of her feelings was the twitching of the tip of her tail – which was not clearly in the venerable doctor’s field of vision.

  “Why are you unsure?” she asked. After some pause, he continued.

  “We were not expecting their attack until sometime later – perhaps a month or two – so they caught us by surprise. I have a secret team of men trained in warfare history however – some are looking for you; others are guarding the ship – but they tell me that we probably should not expect another attack for a while.” A lengthy pause fo
llowed. “That said, we don’t know for sure so we’ve been taking precautions.”

  “No contractions,” Blaze blurted spontaneously, without the slightest conscious effort to interrupt. Some habits die hard and this detail was grating on him.

  The magic woman looked at the young warrior with an expression crossed between amusement and annoyance. Realizing his mistake, Blaze quickly grumbled an apology and looked towards the ground, noticeably biting his lower lip with some degree of frustration. Dr. Boyd’s sloppy speech had offended him from time to time when he lived in the Order. Now, under the current circumstances, Blaze was heavily offended and having a hard time keeping his temper under check.

  “I have reason to believe that a few thousand natives are preparing to attack the ship tomorrow morning,” the magic woman nearly growled with her two voices slightly out of sync and with manifest dissonance. “They have the assistance of the scientists you despise so deeply,” she added with a transparent intent to obtain the doctor’s cooperation. “Every survivor from your community is in grave danger. If I can get information quickly enough, I might be able to help you avoid this conflict,” she seemed to finish. But no one dared to respond because one of her voices maintained a scratchy, airy echo sound somewhat like a human blowing air through a “k” without moving the tongue – only the air pressure pulsed rhythmically as if this meant something to the alien in her native language.