"They should be punished for breaking Core mandates," Matriarch Natre's voice spoke clear and fearless amongst the crowd.
Rai waved her off. "Your law holds no sway with me. Besides, they are my chosen vessels for when this body no longer serves. As some of you may be, if I so choose."
She watched faces pale as her words sank in, eyes shifting between her and the Juggernaut guard. The realization that the Core was no longer in charge had finally hit home.
"My purpose today, however, is not to seek out a new host. When human ships first came to my world, I noticed you and fought back. Yet you survived and became what you are today. However, as you surveyed my planet, some of you found my Seed Marker. You knew what it meant, and you hid it, denying my authority."
"Have you found proof?" Chieftess Raza asked, fear present in her eyes. Did she fear for her brethren, or herself?
Rai sought the answer, found it and turned to Brague. "Present the evidence, Assessor."
Brague bared his mandibles. Rai knew this to be a display of joyful anticipation. He bowed before motioning waiting guards forward. They carried a cumbersome and sea-encrusted contraption forward and laid it next to Rai, then returned to their positions.
"Where was this was found, Assessor?" Rai prompted.
"Approximately five yards from your Seed Marker, Progenitor," Brague replied.
"And the purpose?"
"To block the transmissions and detection of the Seed Marker from space vessels in orbit. It was effective. We were unable to find your marker without the precise coordinates you provided."
"And the technology?"
"It is in keeping with scavenged parts from the colony ship, both in the manufacture, age, and molecular structure."
"My gratitude, Assessor."
"I am your humble servant, Progenitor." Brague inclined his head and stepped back. The scent of his joyful anticipation laced the air.
"Now, I will hear from you. Whom amongst you placed this device to hide my claim on this world so you could use it as your own? Admit your crime, and make the penance easier on your brethren." Rai stood stony-faced, meeting the gamut of expressions.
"I, for one, will not be judged by the traitor who should be dead, not walking among us!" Taessen shouted out, face flushed. Others grumbled and echoed his sentiments.
Rai's eyes narrowed, and she took a long, slow breath. Crumbling now would be easy. These were the ones who had hunted her down through the forest. Clawed at her, thrown her to the forest floor, and beaten her to within an inch of her life before Graeber had stepped in and drawn the blade across her neck himself in the act of mercy. Her eyes flickered to his, and she knew he shared her mind at that moment, and it bolstered her strength.
Rai lifted her left foot and slammed it upon the hard-packed dirt. A shudder rolled forward through the earth, toppling many within the cordoned area to the ground. After the tremor had passed, she spoke softly, but her words carried true.
"Heed my warning: I'll learn the truth, no matter the cost. You have seen the destruction I have brought to your colony so far. I am willing to do whatever necessary to find the one, or group, responsible for planting this device. You may even wish to hunt them out amongst yourselves. After all, if not for their lies, there would be no plague, no deaths, none of this. The fault rests on them. I'll give you a few moments to consider my generous offer."
Rai turned her back on them and walked towards the Assessor. The tenor of the conversations behind her had changed, however. She now scented fear and panic ripe on the breeze, and the keen desire for self-preservation had reared its ugly head over the previous camaraderie.
"What will you do if a confession doesn't occur?" Bauleel asked she stood stiff, a sign the anxiety of the crowd was eating at her.
Brague's mandible's chittered. "They will break. I feel the inevitable approach. None innocent of the crime wishes to feel the brunt of the Progenitor's wrath. If you watch, you can even see the moment where the tension wave will crest, and they will set upon each other like wild beasts during a hunt." His eyes scanned the group, the skilled marksman that he was. "There, see the one named Wraen? He's pushing for skin interrogations and will have his way, or there will be bloodshed. Mark my words," he chattered in excitement.
Rai drew her eyes to the scene he pointed out and had to agree. Widening her focus, she watched how the others reacted, and who refused to get into the fray. From her memories, she knew the Core members were an argumentative bunch. All wanted to get their perspective heard. She looked to Graeber and Bau.
"Is it just me," she asked, a corner of her lip curling up wickedly, "or is a conspicuous someone not jumping into the fray?"
Both eyed the crowd for a moment. Graeber caught it first. "Somnu. He isn't saying a word, and he's standing on the outskirts, holding his cape around him, protecting his skin from contact. He's the only one holding back."
"It could mean nothing," Bauleel replied, "but let's focus on him and see what surfaces."
Rai nodded. She walked back towards the Core, and they quieted, fearful of her approach. "I have decided you are to begin skin interrogations."
Chieftess Raza stepped forward, skin pale, yet brave enough to face her. "How would you like them conducted, Progenitor?"
Rai honored her with a slight smile. They were family, after all, and if she had her way, Raza would emerge unharmed. "I would like as many hands as possible on the subject. As you haven't come up with names on your own, I will pick them for you in the order I deem fit. You will begin with Somnu."
"No!" Somnu shouted, and he sprinted to escape, but the Juggernaut guard dragged him back into eager arms. There would be no escapes today. "I reject your judgment! Traitor! Traitor!" he screamed and pointed an accusatory finger at Rai before he was flung to the ground.
His Core compatriots didn't take his behavior as a positive sign either. Soon his cape, shirt, and pants were ripped from him, leaving small gouges and scratch marks weeping blood. They left him his undergarments, but he writhed in the dirt, attempting to escape the touch of so many seeking hands. Of course, who wanted their mind bared for all to see? It was one thing to be freely given, as Rai and Graeber had the night before. To have others rip into your consciousness was an act akin to rape. Rai forced herself to not cringe as memories of her own, so similar attack, by the same Core members played out before her now.
She could show no weakness, brook no mercy.
The Core gathered around him, and he tried to shove them off, but their strength was too much for him, and their perseverance too determined.
Rai walked up to the group, but they took little notice of her. "Chieftess Raza, will you open to me?" Rai asked, holding her hand out.
Raza had her hand on Somnu's foot and nearly jumped out of her skin at the request, focusing on getting into his head, and not in the world around her. Her expression was guarded. "Will it hurt?"
"No, I only wish to observe the group mind, and what is uncovered here. I will not delve into you, nor will you be allowed access to mine." Rai had seen Vida block before, thus knew how it was done. Vida had used it with Terem, so he hadn't known his fate beforehand.
Raza held Rai's gaze for a moment and then offered up her hand up. Her eyes sought and met Graeber's, Rai saw secondhand through her mind, and he nodded to his sister in reassurance. Raza looked back to Rai's face, and Rai felt her uncertainty and distrust, and the resignation underneath. Then Raza looked back to Somnu and refocused on him.
For Somnu's part, he'd ceased struggling, except in moans and grunts. He'd retreated inside his mind and was trying to keep them all out, hiding out as if it were a fortress of steel. His mental shields were impressive, to say the least, and it made Rai wonder how long he'd trained at secret keeping over the years.
For minutes the group pushed and prodded, trying to force down his internal barriers, but they held tight.
"Progenitor, we may not be able to breach his defenses. Some minds are too resistant and will sha
tter rather than open under pressure," Matriarch Natre spoke up, a sheen of sweat on her brow.
"I will have his mind open to us. The fact that he refuses damns him further." Rai stepped forward and laid her hand next to Raza's, gaining skin contact. Keeping her mind blocked from intrusions, she slid into the mass of thoughts around her and felt others begin to withdraw. "No, all of you will remain. I require you to witness. Graeber and Bauleel, join us as well." When she felt Bauleel and Graeber's touch join the fray, Rai continued.
Snaking through the gathered minds, Rai wound her way to the bottom of the literal heap where Somnu had hidden inside himself, walled away. He'd done an impressive job of shutting his mind off from the Core, but the walls wavered at Rai's indirect approach. Rai remembered the way Vida had molecularly disassociated so many beings and buildings. She tentatively, carefully, brought this skill to bear on Somnu's mental wall, unwinding just a few of the bricks holding his mental walls together.
Destabilized, his wall fell into shreds, and Rai withdrew to the edges of his consciousness, not wishing to cause further damage. But she'd wrought well, and his mental walls fell, leaving his mind naked to the will of the Core.
They wasted no time. Although this wasn't a standard procedure, it was a skill not forgotten over the passing of decades. Rai took no part in the deconstruction of his thoughts. It was important that any information gleaned from the Core members today be of their own making. They needed to see the truth of their deception, of the fate they'd brought upon themselves, for themselves. This was essential above all else.
So Rai watched and waited. The Core was ruthless in their hunt, and the hunt was, as Somnu's behavior had predicted, fruitful.
However, his betrayal swept further than even Rai had predicted.
The memories of him discovering the Seed Marker were as fresh as yesterday. A great find, to be sure, and one he and his then partner Treus knew meant voided their colony charter. Somnu had argued with Treus, and on the way back to Sebaiya, Treus had met with an unfortunate end, and Somnu had reported him missing at sea. When Somnu had gone back to 'search' for Treus, he planted the device to block the Seed Marker's signal, thus allowing the Colony Charter perfunctory validity.
"Why the risk?" Rai breathed out.
Somnu's eyes flickered open, meeting hers. "I thought them a myth. You're a myth. Why endanger our colony for a stupid myth? We didn't have the resources to make it to another, better location. We were stuck here or somewhere much worse. It was worth the risk."
Rai arched a brow, and his eyes closed again. No eyes turned towards her. All were still focused on Somnu. This was not his only secret. It was felt. Known. The Core dug deeper.
Somnu's memories revealed how he directed the construction at Jeweled Cove, insisting upon the high walls and great tower overlooking the sea. A tower which would be used to watch for any visible activity from the Seed Marker far below. When a hundred years had passed, Somnu himself wrote the orders to abandon the tower watches, declaring the seas safe and of no potential threat to human life.
He'd been wrong, of course, but the revelation damned him further.
Again the Core dug deeper, sensing yet more.
And menial details bubbled by, Rai ignored them, so did the others. They cared not who he'd slept with over the years, who he'd pilfered from, and what minor lies he'd told to cover his identity within the Core.
But when they lifted the image of him placing the thallium-laced devices into the Luna Berry swamps, a collective gasp arose from the crowd, and his eyes shot open, wild with panic.
"I didn't intend anyone to get hurt! The stockpile of berries and storehouse checks should have caught the tainted batches in time!"
The atmosphere around him had turned into a dark miasma, as the Core members delved for every tidbit of detail regarding this new transgression. They were nothing if not thorough, and their anger stoked with every passing moment.
"Yet you sought to frame Graeber and myself with your crime?" Bauleel accused. Her thoughts moved within the stream of the others, welcomed now, while before she'd been held separate and apart. "You came here to accuse us of the very acts you committed."
Somnu turned vicious, perhaps realizing he had nothing left to lose, his gambit lost. "You and he deserved to die for defending the traitor. You were never part of us! And now, it's clear you never followed our mandates! Kilawren's experiments defiled us, robbed us of our humanity and treated our children like animals. She slaughtered them for nothing!"
Matriarch Natre stood tall, a grimace upon her face, brushing her hands on her robes. Could she brush away the offensive mind she'd crawled into? "No, instead you killed and maimed innocents to draw guilt onto another? I had to witness and tend to the injured personally. I speak for everyone here: you disgust us, Somnu."
The images of the injured and dead filtered from Natre to the others, courtesy of a light hand upon her calf from another. The tension within the group mind ratcheted up another few notches. Rai, or rather Kilawren, remembered the sensation all too well. The Core was about to issue a mandate.
And it was time to remind them of their place.
"I have heard enough," Rai announced, her voice echoing through the air and minds of those gathered. All eyes turned to her. Yet she waited.
"What is your will, Progenitor?" Graeber asked, setting the tone.
Rai had remained where she was, at Somnu's foot, connected to the group mind. Yet no emotions played over her face, and she refused to mirror the rage displayed by so many others. Rai was Progenitor and alien, Core no longer. Somnu's betrayal of them did not impact her emotionally, but she felt the searing heat of Bauleel and Graeber's anger.
Had residing with Vida for so long changed her fundamentally, despite Vida's current disposition?
"Somnu allowed human settlement upon my world in violation of the treaty, and in return, I wrought damage upon all of you for centuries. He further violated Core and colony laws, causing the deaths and maiming of others," Rai proclaimed
Rai rose and stepped backward in slow, measured steps. All eyes watched her in anticipatory silence. "I will unmake him with a single thought."
"That is too merciful a death for his crimes," Matriarch Natre replied.
"I well know the lack of mercy the Core shows traitors," Rai replied, leveling a stare at each of them in turn. "My decision will not be swayed by your rancor."
"When will you carry out our sentence?" Matriarch Natre asked. Her anger was a palpable force.
"Now," Rai declared.
Rai had the option of terminating a living being as Vida had relatively painlessly extinguished Terem. However, Terem had been the unfortunate result of Vida's plague--Somnu had been the cause. Somnu's actions had brought immeasurable pain to the colonists of Az'Unda.
Rai knelt and placed her hand squarely on Somnu's chest.
"If I deserve to die for failing the human race, so do you!" Somnu exclaimed, and then spat at her. "You'll get your due, Kilawren. No one can outrun the consequences of what they've done, or who they've become."
Rai had listened to his speech, grinding her molars. When he paused, likely awaiting some biting retort, Rai set the skin of his chest on fire through mere contact and the intention of her will. She stood and took a couple steps back as the immolation spread to engulf his entire body.
Somnu's screams rang through the valley, and Rai was impressed that only Rilte flinched and turned away, while Bauleel and Graeber watched, expressions of mild disinterest schooled upon their faces. The frustrated bloodlust on the faces of the Core members was not lost on her; Rai's actions had thwarted a greater punishment at their hands. The Juggernaut took an even more unashamed interest, grunting, and keening along with the Somnu's screams, but they did not break rank.
If she didn't grind him into nothingness, some part of his consciousness might remain, and over time, reform. Despite the seeming brutality, it was merciful in the end because there was a finality to it. Perhaps Vida wasn'
t as vicious as Rai'd assumed earlier. Perhaps disintegration was the only way to extinguish the shapeshifters she'd created.
Rai stomped her foot, and the earth trembled and rippled. The ripple rolled forward, and Core members leaped out of the way. When the ripple reached the remains of Somnu, what was left of him was unmade and sank into the ground, erasing the evidence of his death and preventing any possibility of return.
"I am impressed with your handling of the situation, Progenitor," Brague said. Rai gifted him with a slight smile and returned her attention to the Core.
Chapter 32
“What is to be done with the Core now?" Natre asked. She thrust her chin forward and continued, forcing a fearless manner that her scent betrayed. "We have been cleared of initiating our Colony against the treaty. Therefore the other humans and we are free of wrongdoing, are we not?"
"I agree, Somnu acted alone," Rai replied. "Yet I am left with a species not in the scope of my designs. It presents difficulties I am under no obligation to deal with."
Natre paled, and she wasn't the only Core member to react so. However, they all remained quiet. Expectant.
The Assessor stepped forward and bowed low. "It would be my pleasure to eradicate the vermin from your territory if that is your wish, Progenitor. It would be a simple service for all your kind have done for my people." His formal offer made the knees of more than one Core member quake.
"Your offer is most generous, Assessor. However, I cannot accept. You see, as I study these creatures, I realize they are no longer fully human."
He straightened, surprise stiffening his joints to his full height. "How so?"
Rai had stayed up all night working out a solution to minimize the human deaths and also pacify the Juggernaut thirst for vengeance. Could she now deliver it? Further, would both sides accept her resolution?
"My attacks on them, via the plague, as they called it, have modified their DNA and RNA patterns. Thus, I have begun to change them into my image just as I've changed the rest of this world, just at a different pace. If they cease fighting me, then I stop attempting to destroy them via the plague, but rather integrate them into my bio-system. Then they may stay."
Dreams Manifest Page 24
