From: "BKWillis" Subject: Desert of Fear (new installment) Date: 14 April 2002 04:20 "What the--? Where am I? How did I--?" Xel stared around her in numb shock, trying to piece together how she could've been charging into the Vale on a gurvuk one moment and in this place the next. The place had the feel of a cave, though it didn't really look like one. The walls were of rough-cut blocks of desert stone, grim and featureless, that arched up into a vaulted ceiling not too far overhead, while the floor was of ancient and footworn marble. Nonetheless, there was a sense of depth about the place, a sense of being surrounded by solidity, as though the room were a bubble inside a mountain. There was no door. A soft light pervaded the room, coming from nowhere in particular and casting no shadows. And right in the center, where the light shone a bit brighter, was a large stone cauldron, easily eight feet across and waist-deep, filled with greenish-looking water. As Xel watched, a small ripple formed and sloshed lightly against the cauldron's side as though trying to escape its stone prison. The sight made her shiver. Xel felt a sense of presence behind her and spun about, her fists raised protectively. The Exalted Greatmother Kazaan stood behind her, leaning on her staff of gurvuk-bone and looking at her with an expression Xel had never seen on a Servii before. The old crone's three eyes were heavy-lidded and the lines on her face seemed graven more deeply than before. Her shoulders sagged as if worn out from some burden too great to bear for long. But the strange look on her face was something different from that. It looked rather like pity. "G-Greatmother!" Xel stammered. "What are we doing here? Where are we? How did I--" The old woman held up a hand for silence, cutting the slave girl's questions short. "We are nowhere, child." She waved a hand at their grim surroundings. "This place be but a metaphor, a shaping of things thy mind cannot grasp into things thou canst. I pulled thy ghost hither from thy body, lest the Snouted Devil take thee." "My ghost?!" Xel cried, staring about herself in new alarm. "Am I dead?" The Servii shook her head. "Nay. 'Tis but for the moment that I keep thee here, to try and save thee, if I may. Look, and hark at my words, child!" An image formed in the air between the two, showing the battlefield Xel had just left. On one side, she could see a robed man mounted on a spindly-legged harvuk, riding hard for the gates of the distant fortress. It didn't require a close look to recognize the white-clad, blood-spattered form thrown across the saddle as her own body. Behind him pounded War Chief Ghorlok, his massive-bodied gurvuk running at a dead gallop, crashing through and over the shaky ranks of Golden Apes who sought to block the path. "Thou seest, youngling?" the crone's voice sighed as the image vanished. "Thy mind be in the grip of the Snouted Devil, and soon thy body and ghost, lest thou awaken and fight, for old Ghorlok shall not reach thee in time, try though he will." "I _was_ fighting!" Xel protested. "But, something pushed it all away from me..." "Aye." There was no mistaking the sadness in Kazaan's voice now. "The fault there be mine. I had thought the Sacred Land would take thee ere now and did not count 'pon thy resistance to it. Thou hast but barely touched the power of the Land and its people, alas not enough to fend off that Devil's witcheries." She grabbed Xel by the shoulder, her claws clenching almost painfully as she stared hard into her eyes. "Thou must accept the power to thyself in full, child! An thou dost not, thou shalt die and the Cause of the Sacred Land with thee!" "I _did_ accept it! I felt it!" "Thou didst not," the crone replied. "An thou didst, thou wouldst not _feel_ it, thou wouldst _be_ it! Now come, ere time run out for us all!" So saying, she hobbled over to the cauldron, pulling Xel with her. "I'm sorry, Greatmother," Xel blurted. "I really did try..." "As I said, the fault be mine, not thine," Kazaan replied tiredly. "But 'tis naught for it but to correct things whilst we yet may. Now, look ye into the cauldron. What seest thou?" Xel, more than a little frightened, did as she was told. The water, she saw, was not the green of a scummed pool, but a richer hue, more akin to... the color of Servii flesh. The water rippled, as though stirred by something unseen in its depths. A tiny wave lapped against the stone closest to Xel. "What seest thou, child?" the crone hissed insistently. "I see the water, Greatmother. I see green water. Wait... There are shapes in the water." Xel's eyes widened a little as her voice sank to a whisper. "There are hands... Lots of hands, and now faces behind them. So many..." "Aye," sighed Kazaan. "'Tis the ghosts of all born to the Sacred Land, its every son and daughter, down into the forgotten times. 'Tis their power thou hast touched 'pon, that filled thee with the battle-joy. 'Tis their power thou must take into thyself and make one with thee." The slave girl swallowed hard, unable to tear her eyes from the shifting mass of Servii faces staring back at her in the cauldron. Her voice was distant. "What must I do?" "Ordinarily, nothing," Kazaan replied. "'Twould happen of its own, wert thou raised a proper Servii. The will of thy heart and the will of the Sacred Land would combine to bring it to thee when thou didst first partake of the Libation. Alas, thy upbringing now means we must force it, a thing I should have seen. All thou must do is reach for the power, Xelerina. Reach into the water, and take it unto thee." Trembling mightily, Xel slowly eased a hand toward the emerald pool. The nearer her flesh drew to it, the more agitated the rippling became and the more the faces seemed to crowd just beneath the surface tension. She was a hairsbreadth from fleeing as her fingertips drew ever closer, the faces giving way to a multitude of grasping, clawed hands that reached out for her even as she reached to them. A sense of _presence_ began to loom in her mind, the pressure of a titanic _something_ pushing hard at the edges of her conciousness. An endless, pulsing babble of voices sounded just below the edge of her hearing, speaking, groaning, crying, cursing, shouting their rage. "Yes, child!" the crone cackled. "Do it! Grasp the power!" Xel's fingers had stopped just short of the now-turbulent water, but the whiplash of Kazaan's voice drove her on. Eyes clenched tightly shut, she thrust her hand into the water. The almost-voices reached a crescendo as the water frothed madly in its stone prison and then-- --nothing. Xel opened her eyes after a moment, then stared at her hand in shock. Where her hand was thrust into the pool was a large depression in the water, as though an invisible bowl were keeping it from her hand. At no point did the water touch her flesh. Mystified, she moved her hand to and fro, watching as the water parted before her as though repelled by her. Nor did the faces stare up at her any longer. She was suddenly jerked backwards as the Exalted Greatmother spun her roughly by the shoulder, her ancient face flushed with anger. "Dost wish defeat 'pon us all, child?! I tell thee, thou must take the power unto thee and make it thine!" "I tried," Xel stammered indignantly. "Thou didst not! Thou must want the power! Thou must _want_ victory! It must be thy heart and ghost that reach for it! Only the force of thy desire can make it thine! It cometh not to thee, for thy heart burneth not for it!" "Of course I don't want it!" Xel snapped back. "I'm a slave! I'm only doing this because you made me!" "The gods marked thee," Kazaan answered with deep solemnity. "Thou art the salvation of the Sacred Land, whether thou knowest or no, and art fated to war on behalf of thy people." Xel's tone was sullen. "The Servii are _not_ my people. I'm a human." "Human, Servii...?!" The old woman's face twisted in disdain. She grabbed Xel's hand in her own and held them both up before the slave girl's face. "Bah! What matters flesh and bone? Thou wert born in Serviion, as I. The first light 'pon thy eyes was the sun over the South Dunes, as mine. Thy sweat and blood stain the same ground as mine, and we wing our dreams to the same starry sky." She stared hard into Xel's face, searching for something and not finding it. Her three eyes narrowed to flinty points as she pushed the girl away. With a weary sigh, the old woman settled back, leaning heavily on her staff. "So, then. Thou hast it not in thy heart to fight for the land that gave thee birth, nor for its people, nor even for thy own life. The gods marked thee for a reason, so an thou dost reject the way prepared for thee, it can only be thy cowardice that be to blame. Glad am I to not be thy mother." Xel snapped her eyes up in a hard glare that the wise-woman paid no heed to. "Aye," the old Servii went on. "To have whelped such a child as thee, cowardly and ungrateful. Wherever thy mother be, she must curse the day she bore thee. Aye, and spit 'pon thy memory!" "My mother is dead, you old witch!" Xel spat. Kazaan's middle eyebrow arched in sardonic amusement. "'Tis better for all that she is, that she bear no more curs such as thee. Didst die of shame of thee? So it must have been, for she could have loved thee not. Aye, good riddance to such baggage, then!" Hot tears, the first in a long, long time, welled up in Xel's eyes. "Shut up!" she cried. "Don't talk about my mother like that! Don't _ever_!" "And I am to tremble at the words of a skulking beggar?" Kazaan laughed. "I say what I wish! Wilt stop me, motherless brat? Let all curse thee and the filth that bore thee, useless wretches fit only to grovel and die! Whatever agonies thy mother bore in death, they can only be less than she deserved!" "Shut UP!" And Xel, at that moment, did something she'd never, ever done before, nor even dreamed of doing. She formed a fist and swung at the Servii as hard as she could. There was a solid meaty thwack as Xel's small fist drove into the palm of the old woman's hand. She'd moved her hand up and caught the girl's fist without Xel even seeing her move. Without ever changing her hatefully smiling expression, she easily flung Xel backwards, sending her asprawl on the cool marble. But Xel was on her feet again in an instant, lunging at the Greatmother again, only to be flung aside like a ragdoll. She never noticed the mad swirling and foaming in the cauldron. "Wouldst strike me, child?" Kazaan demanded. "_I_ shaped this place, and here my will doth reign. Thou canst not overcome me by thyself, little fool! Thou hast not the power! Curl up and die alone, like thy feeble dam!" By this point, Xel had been pushed into a state of anger she'd never even approached before. A lifetime of furtiveness and submission was struck aside by the rising waves of bitter rage at the old woman's words. A heat rose in her red-misted brain, throbbing to the rapid pounding of her heart. The sense of presence surrounded her again, although she was too focussed on her rage at the Greatmother to notice. Just at the edge of her hearing, that endless drone of voices began to build again, seemingly crying their own wild fury along with her. A look of mad triumph abruptly spread across her face and she leapt over to the cauldron. "Power?!" Xel cried brazenly. "I'll give you power, you dried-up old bitch!" She turned to the churning water, noting only in passing the shouting faces and flailing fists that lurked within. With a wordless wild yell, she thrust both arms into the cauldron. This time, the water rose to meet her. ---- The Exalted Greatmother's eyes cracked slowly open as she let out a long breath and slumped down deeper into the folds of her rough-stitched robe. Instantly, one of her attendant Priestesses was at her side, pressing a bowl of steaming moontea to her lips. The old woman drank it down mechanically, then feebly waved her helper back. "Thou wert in thy trance near two minutes, Exalted Greatmother," the Lesser Mother said, worry heavy in her tone. "Never hast thou been so long." "Aye, Khaaia," Kazaan sighed. "But the child was most stubborn." Khaaia gazed out over the battlefield, in the direction Xel's abductor had fled, a trail of broken Ape corpses littering his path where Ghorlok had followed in pursuit. "But will she do, Exalted Greatmother?" the younger Servii asked. "Aye," Kazaan repeated, voice breaking a little. "There be a depth of strength in that girl, when it be roused. She shall do very well, methinks." Khaaia nodded solemnly and turned to watch as the Servii cavalry rode down and destroyed the few surviving knots of Golden Ape warriors, lances driving through yellow-furred chests and broadswords sending matted heads spinning from their shoulders. Here and there a handful of robed riders tried to bring the frantic brutes to order, but most of the degenerate humans were carefully shot down from a distance by Servii musketeers detailed just for that task. The Greatmother's eyes stayed fixed on the black fortifications that brooded in the distance. She bared her broken fangs at them, but her mind was on the girl-child Xelerina. "Fight hard, child," she murmured. "Thou'rt strong and true, and thy mother's ghost looketh 'pon thee proud and with love." She paused for a moment, then added, "As do I." ---- Xel fell through an eternity of memories, passing through them and feeling them pass through her, living fragments of the lives of hundreds of generations. She lived, she died, she loved, she hated, over and over again, down through the ages. The first memories were her own... Xel clung to her mother's breast, hiding from the predatory scavenger bands of the Serviion slave caste and praying to whoever would listen that they might live to see another sunrise. But then... Xel stood on the temple steps and watched through three hooded eyes as a Servii girl named Kazaan, little more than a child, was initiated into the Mysteries of the Mother Priestesses. Xel led his green-skinned warriors against a rival War Chief in the High Desert and died with his fangs locked in the throat of the swordsman who ran him through. Xel stood over the torn corpses of her four sons, heart aching with the loss and yet bursting with pride at the mounds of slain foemen who surrounded them. Xel crawled from under the body of his dead gurvuk, dragging two crushed legs, and put a pistol ball through the chest of the nearest Skyborn raider even as the man's comrades tore him apart with blaster fire. Xel leaned on his pike and watched the twin moons set over the South Dunes, wondering at the play of shadows on the desert floor. Xel reeled as his playmate's wooden sword struck his head, then he climbed to his tiny feet, laughing the pain away as he struck back. Xel stood over the shattered, burning remnants of his camp and the bodies of his warband, hurling ineffectual curses at the giant birds that winged their way back to their City in the sky. And on, and on, down through the ages of the Servii, until... Xel stood on a high hill overlooking a green and vibrant land. Her mate's clawed hand was clenched tightly in her own, while her children clutched at her skirts. In the distance, a green star traced its arc through the twilit sky, into the far-off Vale. There was a tension in the air, a sense of wrongness, as though the world was about to change in a way that was never meant to be, about to follow a path not of its own making. As though the destiny of an entire world was being stolen. The power of countless lives surged within the mind of Xelerina. It flowed within her, around her, absorbed and was absorbed by her. She was a child of the Sacred Land and its life was hers. Its song pulsed in her blood as it had in so many others and she could not, would not, turn away from it. She cried out to it and the souls of two hundred generations of its children added their voices to hers in a wordless answering song of love for the land that bore them and unquenchable hatred for those who stole from them all the birthright that should have been theirs. When Xel felt herself starting to return to the captivity of her body and her own mind, she was ready for blood. ---- The priest lashed his panting harvuk onwards, casting a glance back at the huge Servii pursuing him. The harvuk -- a much smaller and more tractable cousin of the ubiquitous gurvuk -- was stable- raised and unused to such exertion and with the extra burden of a captive was tiring fast. Still, with the long lead he had on his pursuer and the narrowing distance to the gates of the fortress, the man judged that he should easily reach safety before the green- skinned savage could catch him. He smiled mirthlessly, showing yellow teeth filed to points, digging his spurs into the harvuk's flanks to keep it at its killing gallop. He thought he felt his prisoner shift a bit under his hand as a sudden sliver of unease slashed across his mind. ---- Xel found herself locked within her body, conscious without being able to awaken, paralyzed and unfeeling. There was a numbing grayness wound tightly around her mind, cutting her off from her own senses. And yet, she could _see_. Instinctively, she knew that it was the sight of her third eye, the one old Kazaan had inked upon her forehead. Through it she could see the ground passing rapidly beneath her, and where the landscape had earlier pulsed with light and life to the sight of that eye, it now bore a different cast, its glow that of something rotting slowly in the dark. A pallid, diseased radiance lay in irregular pools like sores on a dying man, the sight filling Xel with a soul-deep loathing. Xel pushed her mind against the bonds that held it, feeling them give under the pressure. Give, but not break. She paused, reaching to gather in the force that throbbed inside her, then pushed out again. The grayness about her mind gave further... gave... then shattered into nothing as sight, sound, and feeling came crashing in all at once. ---- The priest grunted in pain as the power he was channeling to hold the girl ensnared was suddenly overborne by another. The backlash of energies surged into his brain, causing him to reel in the saddle and clutch at the pommel for support. Aware that the girl was now free of the binding, he clawed for the dagger on his hip, intending to kill her if he couldn't take her. His fingers were on the hilt when he realized that the girl had turned and was looking into his eyes. Something in her gaze held him for a second, then she spoke a single word. "Die." ---- Xel turned her head to look up at the priest who held her. He was a gaunt, blotchy-faced man with eyes of a moldy brown-green color, clad in a torn red robe that flapped in the wind of their passage. But through her third eye, she could see a grimy grayish aura about him, as though filth had been rendered as light. The dirty glow extended from him in two directions, one tendril reaching out towards herself, where it pressed vainly against the outer shell of her awareness, the other -- larger -- stretching off into the distance, toward fortress and Vale. She noted all this, noting too the look of mounting fear on the man's face, as she willed the force of the Sacred Land to her. It shone rainbow-hued and scintillant at the edges of her vision. "Die," she said. The coruscating light drove outwards from her body, tearing into the gray foulness and consuming it. Up the questing tendril it shot, then into the aura around her captor. The man shrieked once as the energy enveloped him. She wrapped his mind in bonds of force, as he'd done to her, but where his will had _held_, hers began to _crush_, driving his consciousness ever inward upon itself. The harvuk, suddenly confused and undirected, slowed to a walk as its rider began screaming in mortal agony. Xel's will, backed by the vast energies of the Sacred Land, pushed into the priest's brain, burning as it went. As synapses began to fuse and misfire, his body went into spasms. He fouled himself as he tumbled, jerking and writhing, out of the saddle and onto the stony ground. Xel slid from the harvuk's back as well, standing over the thrashing body and watching with pitiless eyes as his brain boiled within his skull. Then, with one last croak of raw animal pain, the priest's right hand flailed at the ground and went still. As the verminous priest expired, Xel siezed on the aura-tendril that had connected him with the fortress and sent her energies along it. There were other minds connected to it. She could sense them within the fortress-cliffs, their foulness standing out like cancers, the Lord's priests and acolytes. She reached for those minds within range and began to burn them out as she had her captor's, one by one. ---- War Chief Ghorlok hunched low in the saddle as his gurvuk pounded over the parched landscape in pursuit of his people's Battle-Charm. For the fifth time in thrice as many seconds, he cursed himself for having fired his musket already. If the slave- child were taken by the Apes or the Devil-Priests, it would mean the end of War Chief Ghorlok. No warrior would follow such a disgraceful leader and there would be hundreds of blades justly eager for his blood. But that was trivial compared to the irreparable harm such a reverse would mean to the Cause of the Sacred Land. The Cause was the core of all Ghorlok's beliefs and the goal of all Servii for more generations than any could recall. Reclaiming the destiny of their land from those who had usurped it was the only thing that mattered to the War Chief and if the human girl-child's life was key to that, then he would pursue her to the foot of the Devil's throne, if he had to. Even as this grim thought struck him, his fortune suddenly turned as the red-robed priest lurched from the back of his mount, Xel following a moment later, just a few hundred yards from the iron gates. He urged his mount onward, feeling his heart leap at the sight of the girl standing over the stricken man. As he drew nearer, he saw her turn toward the fortress gates and it was as if a shadow had been lifted from his spirit. A feeling of wild joy filled him and he gave forth a roaring battle-cry, his gurvuk bellowing its own newfound elan as its pace quickened. ---- Exalted Greatmother Kazaan felt the change in the air and permitted herself a tiny smile. The girl had come through! Already, the power of the Lord of the Vale's adepts over the nearby area was dwindling as Xel used the energies of the Sacred Land to devour their corruption. It was evident not only in the land's aura, but in the hearts of the struggling Servii warriors as they gave forth a violent yell of triumph and redoubled their strokes as they beat down the last ragged remnants of the broken Golden Ape army. ---- At the Lord's feet, the priest was about to bring the sacrificial knife down through its deadly arc when he suddenly grunted heavily and dropped the weapon, clawing at the sides of his head. All at once, the mental bonds holding the Doctor and Prak vanished as the Time Lord faintly sensed the waves of some form of psychic backlash cutting through those present. The Doctor took advantage of the moment to hurl himself up off the altar, kicking the priest in the stomach in the same motion. All around him, the robed men were reeling and groaning under the force of the backlash, while the Lord of the Vale howled in pain and impotent rage, the Ape warriors blinking in dull and fearful confusion at the sudden change. Prak was only a heartbeat slower than the Doctor. He hurled himself bodily upon the nearest Ape, yanking the creature's own dagger from its belt and ramming it upwards through its shaggy jaw as they both fell. The Ape's fellow hefted his spear to kill the young man, but the Doctor was on him before he could bring the point to bear. A leg-sweep took the brute's feet from under him and sent him crashing to the floor, stunned. Prak wrenched his weapon out of the dying Ape's head and stood glaring like a blood-maddened animal for a moment. His eyes caught the form of the sacrificial priest, still gagging from the Doctor's kick and half-insensible from the psychic trauma, and he leaped on the man with a wild snarl. Prak surged into him, driving the dagger to the hilt in the priest's stomach. The robed man straightened, screaming as though his throat would break, rising to his toes as if trying to lift himself off the blade. Prak screamed too, a curse of hate that needed no words, and hauled upwards on the dagger, ripping the man open to the ribs as reeking blood drenched them both. He then jerked the weapon out and, as the priest sagged away, jammed it through the dying man's neck. The Lord was still howling in his pain and hate as Prak staggered toward Soolisa's body, his eyes streaming hot tears. His jaws worked, but only a lost mewing would come out. "Prak! Prak!" the Doctor yelled in his ear, clutching at him. But Prak shook him off, sinking to his knees at the side of the girl he'd loved so dearly. His hand brushed over her cooling cheek and a spamodic shudder wracked through him. All the things he'd done, all that they'd both gone through, for it to end this way... He leaned across and placed a tiny soft kiss on her lips. "Prak! We have to get out of here _now_, while we can! I can't find Jo without you! Prak!" The Doctor spun about as an Ape lunged at him with an upraised bludgeon. He caught the creature with a straight kick to the midsection, then gave it a throat-punch to put it down. "Prak! We have to fight clear _right now_!" Fight. Somehow, that word penetrated the fog of sorrow that had replaced the Lord's bonds in imprisoning Prak's mind. Fighting. There was fighting left to do. It was all that was left to him. Nothing left but to shed the blood of his beloved's killers. The Doctor looked around worriedly. He could sense the shock of the psychic backlash beginning to fade from those around him. Here and there, some of the robed men seemed to be regaining their senses and it was just a matter of time before someone started giving orders and taking control of the situation. Already, the palpable aura of the Lord's malignity was pressing at the edges of his thoughts again, the despicable creature seeming to regain its power as its howls subsided. "Prak!" Even through the grieving madness that had settled into Prak's brain, he was well aware that he had no chance of harming the Lord of the Vale by himself. Prak was a canny, crafty young man, famed as an adventurer who could rustle birds from under the Skyborn's very noses or steal from the Servii's most guarded strongrooms. He was running on his instincts now, and they told him that the way to defeat the Lord was via the Overworlders. The Overworlder Cain had some plan for the Lord's overthrow, he knew. Then it was to Cain he would go for his vengeance. And the Lord had need of the Overworlder who called himself the Doctor. So it followed that he must get the Doctor away from the Lord, to Cain if possible, so that the Lord of the Vale could be destroyed. All this passed through the back of his mind in half a heartbeat. Prak arose, taking a short, wavy-bladed sword from the body of the priest he'd killed. He grabbed at the Doctor's sleeve, pointing at the nearest stairway, and the two set off for it at a run. "Stop them!" screamed the Lord, still too weakened to bind them by will alone. A scrawny acolyte leaped into their path, obedient to his master's command. Prak lashed out in a full-armed blow, easily dodging the man's knife and bringing his own blade down to cleave the acolyte's skull to the eyes. And then they were on the stairs, descending into the darkness.