Moon 514- Blaze and the White Griffon

by Drew Briney

  Nothing was said.

  Blaze’s cultural guffaw was being overlooked. Further, the captain was very pleased with Evelia’s understanding of his culture and with the energy flow around all parties so he ignored the slightly awkward greeting and immediately jumped into the conversation twenty paces ahead of where Blaze and Evelia had expected him to begin.

  “Hmmm… you are hoping to start a new society for your species and would like assistance in determining how to properly begin the process,” he began. “… a pleasant surprise,” he continued as both Blaze and Evelia metaphorically tripped over their fallen jaws. “We would be honored to support you in this endeavor but I would first like to hear the message you have to share.”

  For Blaze, the captain’s words seemed excessively blunt and perfunctory and he felt uncomfortable – but it was his knowledge of things that no one had told him that really bothered the young warrior – Evelia’s assurance that no one would read their minds had been a crucial consideration when Blaze agreed to board this ship unarmed. Before he finished looking over at Evelia to determine what was happening, she was already silently answering his unprocessed question: He read Elayuh’s mind.

  But how …

  “Her comprehension is very limited but her mind records everything that happens around her nonetheless. Shockingly, the woman you refer to as the ‘magic woman’ deeply imprinted upon her mind a knowledge of all of our morals and values … this child's subconscious already understands the principles that have guided our people for untold generations. It is a very rare and sacred thing for a woman to do this to a child that she did not personally bear. And more unusual still, it was your planet that instructed her to do so." The alien paused only briefly but the pause seemed glacial because of his habitually swift speech. "Further, she imprinted upon this child the purpose for which your planet chose her to begin a new era for your species and she further explained your roles in this endeavor – as far as she understood it." Another brief, yet ambitious pause followed. "Very unusual for a woman in her situation." Then, he turned his eyes directly upon Evelia. "Please … share your message."

  Evelia was relieved that she had prepared what to say multiple times when travelling to the alien's ship. She knew that any pause or indecision would lead to a change in her energy flow and that change would be noticed – she needed to appear spontaneous and unrehearsed.

  It worked.

  Where are her parents? Evelia asked in his native tongue. Even with his superior intelligence, this question was too far off track to allow the alien man to quickly determine what prompted this question.

  Sensing his surprise, Evelia beat him to his intended mental destination. Surely her parents were aware you were going to pick her up? she asked with such sincerity that he immediately connected the dots.

  I see, he answered. You believe the message is private and do not wish to share it with anyone else? he ventured.

  Correct, Evelia responded in his native tongue, looking over at Blaze to see whether or not he was alert enough to understand that she was telepathically speaking to the alien captain silently. Unsurprisingly, she found recognition and understanding in his eyes. He may miss a lot of things, she thought, but if it has anything to do with safety or strategy, little escapes his attention.

  "Very well," the captain responded out loud and in English as he motioned the guide to do something Blaze and Evelia could not discern. "We have a device for this," he explained. "You can implant the message into the device in the same way that you would speak it telepathically to someone else. Don't worry," he assured Evelia before she finished processing her own concern, "this is something that you can do without any practice and the message cannot be intercepted by anyone other than the intended recipient." The captain's words betrayed a degree of understanding that Evelia could have scarcely comprehended before that very moment. Despite the simplicity of his guess into her heart, Evelia somehow intuitively understood that this man could nearly read her mind by observing the energy flow around her and that one could keep few secrets from a man like this. It was only her human nature - as distinguished from his own - that allowed her any degree of mental privacy from him at all. He would be slow to make negative conclusions until he understood her species better and that was the only reason her plan was working - she hadn’t anticipated this.

  "While she gets that," the captain continued, "perhaps I should answer your questions as to how you can ethically divest your ship of people that will stop your species from progressing the way it needs. Is that a good beginning?"

  While Evelia quickly responded in the affirmative, Blaze felt reluctant to pursue this conversation. Sure, he had spoken to the magic woman about these things and he had agreed that it sounded like a good idea but when it came down to it, he wasn't really sure that he was ready to ditch some of his fellow humans on some remote planet, never to visit them again. And he wasn't sure that he was ready to try to create some utopian order the same way Dr. Boyd did - especially given Dr. Boyd's monumental moral failures. And then there was the "Master," whomever that was - how was he to know how to find that person, let alone convince him to bail ship with a bunch of fellow crewmen who would be subject to his wicked ways. These and more thoughts were passing through his mind.

  "I see," the alien captain began again, his iridescent eyes flashing as he looked away from Evelia and towards Blaze. "You have a traitor on your ship. You are concerned how to find him? Am I right?" While Evelia nodded, Blaze's surprised expression and jumbled energy flow was sufficient answer for the alien captain - he answered before Blaze began to nod in agreement.

  "This is no problem Blaze," the captain said. "We can certainly help you with that." It wasn't until that very moment that Blaze realized that he had not spoken his name to the alien captain - and yet he knew it. "Hmmm," the alien emoted. "That's right. You have an affinity for griffons. Do you know where he waits for you? Of course not ... you are not aware that inside your globe … Blaze, your planet is hollow and houses survivors from your third holocaust."

  A significantly long pause lingered in the air as Blaze and Evelia found themselves once more lost among a plethora of shattering paradigms. Myths were becoming reality. Fiction was becoming future. The strange was becoming the expected. The guide had been correct: the captain moved a dozen paces in front of them at the conversation’s every turn.

  "If you would allow me, Evelia, I can give you all of this information directly and then you will need our help no further and you can be free to return to your ship. I'll make sure to provide you with the coordinates to a nearby planet where you can leave crew members who are interested and willing to explore the planet for the possibility of starting a colony in the future. Am I missing anything?" Without waiting for an answer, he responded himself. "Yes, of course. You need to leave the message first."

  Within a very brief few moments of time, moments that were completely silent as Blaze and Evelia tried to process what the alien captain had just said, the guide returned with a significantly large object that was artistically engraven to resemble an alien woman's head, with skull removed to expose the brain. The guide gently placed the device into Evelia's hands, allowing Evelia the time and opportunity to shift the baby so that she could properly place her hands under the jaws of the sculptured head. As she quickly delivered the message, it occurred to Evelia that this psionically gifted captain might be able to discern both the message and the intent behind the message that she was sharing. It occurred to her that he might be able to discern that she was delivering a message that could shake the very foundations of the society that he was leading. As she finished implanting the message into the device, she looked over at the alien captain only briefly.

  But it was enough. She was sure of it: he knew.

  “ARIA,” TOKA AIRILY BREATHED in a sarcastic tone that clearly betrayed disappointment. She was in for another beating. She practically felt it coming before she entered the room. Part of her wanted to run. She lived
with new people now; this was her golden opportunity to escape her personalized prison, to start anew. But her only true refuge was the man aboard an alien ship, a place he may never return from. Somewhere deep in her heart, she expected him to come back. She even yearned for him to come back. But in dark moments of desperation like this one, it is difficult to make room for hope. This was a time of dejection, a time of despair.

  “Yes, Toka?” Aria replied in the most innocent, yet sultry tone she could muster. Silently, she began releasing small but repeated pulses of pheromones into the air towards her master. Too small to easily detect but close enough together to hopefully dissuade Toka from unleashing the full measure of his fury, the scent pulses moved towards Toka to work their magic.

  But it didn’t work.

  Toka’s wrath was too intense to deny. Today, he would test the very limits of Aria’s remarkable ability to heal. Today, he would instill enough fear in her to prevent any future complications or any potential disloyalties.

  “You administered the wrong virus,” he snapped, crossing his arms in front of him as if making the letter “x” and then thrusting them apart and perpendicular to his body until he resembled a lazy letter “t”. Aria knew what to expect. One of Toka’s many genetic modifications included quills that he could release from his forearms. Laced with a poison that nearly instantaneously attacked the central nervous system of the victim, the quills quickly paralyzed whomever they touched. If a few stuck in the victim, a quick death would be all but certain. Toka had thrown several at her all at once and while a few grazed her skin, leaving traces of the poison to be absorbed by her body, another couple found their target more solidly, leaving Aria feeling extensively groggy for the next several moments.

  “Tell me pet,” Toka fumed, “what enhancements did you give to Blaze? or did you give him nothing significant at all?” Morphing in front of her eyes, the Master was pointing towards the cup Aria held in her hands. As Toka removed his shirt and kicked aside his shoes, his beastly enhancements began to appear. He menacingly bowed towards Aria and spread his curved arms as if preparing to pound his fists together. Protective spikes slowly exited his body and pierced through his skin, protruding all over the backsides of his arms and the front side of his legs like bladed lobster claws. More spikes appeared on his backside and others exited out the backsides of his fingers. Sharp canines appeared as he growled towards Aria and the color and texture of his skin began to change much like a chameleon hiding from a predator.

  All the while, Aria was struggling to maintain her balance and remain standing. Part of her felt very scared. Part of her felt almost nothing at all. Her body automatically responded in the way she wished it would not: she became numb, spiritually numb, mentally numb. Conscious unawareness enveloped her. What happened to her was of no consequence. Her life was nothing more than fiction anyway. She was a puppet and nothing more. She had no intrinsic value; she carried no value to anyone. No one liked her for who she was – they only liked her for who she pretended to be. And the only person who had cared for her when she was weak, helpless, and crippled was Toka. He was her only true love in the world. He was her Master.

  She knew all these things were true. She knew she would suffer for her earlier disobedience – for her foolhardiness. She would confess and accept his wrath – this, she had done for years.

  But before she could summon the energy to answer his question, she felt the bladed backside of Toka’s arms slicing across her face and her chest. That familiar feeling of blood pouring out of her body and soaking into her clothes crossed her conscious mind before she observed the final stage of Toka’s transformation. She felt his teeth digging into her neck and felt the daggers of his fingers embedding themselves into her torso. She felt his bladed shinbones pressing into her own delicate legs. She felt her consciousness ebbing and flowing. Intuitively, she knew that this beating would take her to a new level of suffering. Within moments, she was aware that she was enduring more than she had experienced before, she was bleeding more than she had bled before. Many times, he had beaten her as a man; few were the times she received a mauling by the beast – but those few times were unforgivably memorable.

  When she was on the very verge of death and fainted from exhaustion, Toka very briefly paused from his labors and sneered at the broken woman who lay at his feet. He volleyed verbal balls of hatred towards her. He expelled violent and vile words at her that she had never heard before. He expressed feelings of disgust and displeasure for her until her body healed itself well enough for her to stand up on her own, all the while goading her and denigrating her for her inability to hold her own body erect. Then, when her consciousness was stable and her posture was strong, he repeated the process all over from the beginning, only this time tearing and stabbing her body in different places. And when she passed out, he continued to beat her with his fists so that her body would know the feeling of blunt wounds as well, occasionally breaking a rib or an appendage. As he continued, her body healed itself increasingly slowly until he believed that she had little ability to continue.

  Physically drained, Toka calmed down slightly, having vented his deepest anger upon his disappointing pet. He tore some hair out to see how quickly it might regrow and considered severing appendages and holding them together to see if her body would spontaneously reassemble. She was his master creation. He would glory in what he had done.

  Rarely had his anger exploded so vehemently; rarely were his feelings so thoroughly vile but he was losing control. His army had been single handedly dissembled. The man responsible for their fall was now the recipient of charity at the hands of his most trusted pet. The treachery was too intense, the devious disobedience was too personal to ignore. Retribution would be met. Vengeance would be served. But then, he could not slaughter his prize trophy. Sure, she would take a terrible beating but he still needed her. He needed her loyalty. He needed her many talents. As these and many other thoughts rambled through his cranium, Toka breathed heavily and in a belabored fashion. He felt tired and worn – both physically and emotionally.

  He lapped up some of her blood and smiled menacingly, his rough tongue awakening her. Naïve and innocent eyes snapped open with great fervency and terror. Toka, still breathing heavily over her crumpled figure, glared down at her and spat upon her blood stained clothes – clothes that tatteringly clung to her like strands of algae ridden vegetation at the edges of pond when held up by a stick.

  “I’ll ask you one more time Aria,” he taunted, raising his arm as if preparing to decapitate her, “what enhancements did you give to Blaze? My patience is wearing thin.”

  “EVELIA,” THE CAPTAIN BEGAN with a grave tone of voice that she could not clearly discern. Was it disbelief? Anger? Frustration? Hurt feelings? “What message is this that you bring? You hold very strong, yet conflicting feelings about it. You do not understand the message, yet you feel that you must pass it on.” One of his characteristically brief but deliberate pauses followed. “And you worry that this message could change the entire course of our species … do you not?”

  The question was not only unexpected, it was so pointed that Evelia had no clue how to respond – and the energy flow all around her betrayed her surprise and anxiety as clearly as a strong red blush on pale skin might expose the embarrassment of a red haired belle.

  “I do not understand all of the message,” she began truthfully, grateful that she had prepared a brief speech ahead of time, just in case it might come in handy – and she confidently expected that the energy flow around her body would bear out the truth of every word she would share. “And I have only a limited amount of understanding about your global history,” she continued, “so, I cannot know what affect it may have on your people. In our world, the message – if I understand it clearly – could generate significant change. However,” she began to improvise, “I have reason to believe that any change it may make will be for the betterment of your society if the knowledge contained in my message is used wel
l.” While Evelia felt a great degree of anxiety over what might happen next, she harbored no small degree of pride for her nearly prodigious off-the-cuff addition. It was all true and it would serve to inspire more confidence in the alien captain. She looked carefully into his eyes, searching for any clue as to how he might be responding inside – his expression was as blank as a cloudless sky – and it stayed that way for quite some time. She could feel the alien captain’s energy probing Elayuh’s mind more carefully but gathered that he drew no satisfaction from doing so.

  While Evelia and the captain quietly shared a strong degree of mutual understanding that he would be observing the movement of energy around her body, how it flowed, the colors that it showed, and a myriad of other details invisible to Blaze’s eyes, the young warrior sat in isolated silence, wondering what he should – or even could – do to improve this situation. By the especially long silence that was looming in the air, Blaze was gathering that even the great intelligence of the alien captain was unable to sufficiently weigh the many potential variables that might allow him to come to some statistically influenced inductive conclusion.

  Soon, the alien captain broke the silence. “Your friend that you call the magic woman … she did not share this message with the infant. Neither did she make any statement to the child about her personal dealings on her home moon that led to her exile …” He deliberately paused for a moment so that Evelia and Blaze would react – to see whether or not they would unintentionally engender some energy flow that would expose their knowledge. He was disappointed. Blaze had already concluded that the alien had been reading their minds from the very beginning so he had mentally come to the conclusion that Evelia’s gamble had already gone awry. Committed to that paradigm, he reacted very minimally to the captain’s statement and therefore, his energy flow remained relatively unfazed - a subtle change that suggested nothing more than a surprised feeling the alien might have expected. On the other hand, Evelia was already anticipating that the alien captain might use this detail in an attempt to extract further information from her and had somewhat prepared for this contingency before she ever left her own ship.