The Beast Inside

by M E Wolf

  The Dochani appear human-like as to say that they are bipedal in nature and walk upright with very efficient pointed ears and piercing hawk-like eyes. Some have been known to develop wings and the ability to breath or process water and other substances as though they were air. Also, they were like birds in that their offspring had memories from their ancestors passed from generation to generation.

  Traveling to different worlds was hard on her body especially when she was about to release an egg. By traveling to different worlds while close to delivering or releasing an egg she put her child at risk, but she felt that the importance of her message in some ways trumped the well being of herself as it would hurt her more than her child. The council of Dochani Zeta knew the many risks placed on mother and child due to the temporal displacement caused by time shifting from world to world.

  It was their duty to warn her of what it would do to her child and she knew what they would tell her, but she had a greater duty towards other civilizations that were not as advanced as hers was and may not be able to cope with the murderous onslaught that would follow in their wake. She left before they could tell her, what she already knew, that she and her child could die or after the egg hatched the Dochani child would be in some way defective or deformed.

  Besides the council was always opposed to her traveling and those who were like her because less than two percent of all Dochani could travel the way that she could. There was a time when there were more people like her, but very few could do so after thousands and thousands of years of wars with the Fenshians. The people of Sevle needed to be warned of their impending doom.

  Their world was one of the many worlds on the list that were to be exploited and destroyed by the mortal enemies of her home world, Dochani Zeta. These enemies were from the world called Primus Mortus and their peoples were called Fenshians. When you are around for a long time enemies are made every waking moment of your life. Some races were known to become extinct for the minerals on their worlds and Dochani Zeta did carry a mineral called petaleum, which was a gaseous substance found in the petals of most flowers on Dochani Zeta that were used to fuel the Fenshians’ ships.

  Most worlds contained this natural fuel although no one developed a way to extract this powerful fuel except for the Fenshians and a little known race of cyborgs even larger in society and older than the Fenshians, if only partially humanoid, called the Mechanaar. The planet Sevle had more of the petaleum than even Dochani Zeta, especially since the Fenshians used up most of the supplies of petaleum on Dochani Zeta.

  Thus the ever conquering race of Fenshians coveted their supply of petaleum. The danger lay in when an attack would be made on the Sevle world and not whether there would be an attack on them or not.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  No one knew where the Fenshians’ world was, the only information that her people had of them was in the great library now occupied by the Fenshian peoples inhabiting the cities where she grew up, which was now in ruins. It was rumoured that there were other cities with Dochani great libraries, but Kenjin did not know where they were or would be.

  Efforts were made long ago to retrieve the books from the library, but many of them were destroyed before being recovered by her people and unfortunately most of those who had written the books were dead for more than one hundred thousand years or so it has been said since all the records contained of them said that they just up and left what they were doing and no one knows where they had gone to.

  Many technologies were lost due to this war. With only a mere fraction of books regarding the Fenshians recovered or any other race encountered in the last one hundred thousand years. Only the last two thousand years were known of the Fenshians, thus the home world of the Fenshians was not known. Her people and the Fenshians were said to be at war for over twenty-five thousand years and only recently went into exile to prevent total annihilation, even then the once vibrant communities were long gone.

  More than one hundred thousand Dochani were forced to build underground caverns beneath the lush forests and colourful flora and fauna, which there was not much of since the wars began. Gone were the days of basking in the warm rays of the comforting sun overlooking the rainbow of spring and summer colours that were dazzling to the eye. Now, there were no trees or any other plants, except that which could produce petaleum.

  Ancestors came and went over that period of destruction and desolation, hers and a few others were the only noble families to remain at least in some part over the centuries and centuries of war. Most of those that were left ranged from newly hatched to slightly more than seventeen thousand years old. Some records suggested that at one time there were some Dochani that were still living at the age of fifty thousand. This amount of longevity was hard to fathom considering those records were not older than the oldest Dochani living after the wars.

  Of course there were most likely so many Dochani living on other worlds that there could be someone of that age, even if they were only partially of Dochani blood. Her father had died protecting her and her mother and her betrothed, a man she believed was three thousand years older than her at the time. Death was hard for a Dochani to fathom when it rarely was visited upon them until the Fenshians invaded their world. Thousands of years could literally pass before a death was recorded and most often that occurred only in accidents.

  Out of all of the family that she had asked, none had ever saw old age in a Dochani. It was, however, seen in many other worlds’ populations but old age was never seen in a Dochani. Even after so much death was seen during the wars, death was a very misunderstood poison of life. Always, death was considered the robber of youth because for a Dochani life was always filled with youthful exuberance and vitality that was never diminished no matter how much time passed. In this the Dochani was forever young and able to enjoy the finer things of life.

  Kenjin, short for Kenjindia Maria Flora Serdoma-Gorsentias and what was left of her family lived in the furthest depths of the earth on Dochani Zeta. With more than ten thousand years of war there was lot's of time to build a network of tunnels and pathways throughout the globe of Dochani Zeta. Great structures rose beneath the earth in the many years of war that would make any other structure pale in comparison. Cathedrals dug out of the solid marble that was the bedrock of the planet always amazed her.

  Sounds were made to bounce along the ceiling and walls and floors of each cathedral, especially the grand hall that Dochani meetings were held in. Hundreds of thousands of Dochani would sit on the stone benches listening to the council’s discourse. Dochani from every age would be present to hear what had to be said with many guards, militia and the main army making sure that the meetings were civil and also so that no enemy would be using some sort of mechanism to infiltrate the meeting. The meetings could go on for hours without any real issue being addressed. It did seem sometimes the older the council members were the longer it did take to start and finish the meeting.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Fenshians were not humanoid as she saw it, but also were not the typical green men with pointy ears that most of the natives of Sevle reasoned them out to be, if you can call that reason. Fenshians had more of a draconic appearance, the Fenshians in the stories told to children in Sevle to frighten them into behaving, than being green men with pointy ears. Most had a long lupine snout with long razor sharp teeth that could be as long as a man’s arm from their armpit to their fingers, stood forty to fifty feet tall and were more than one hundred feet long.

  Scaly four inch leather hide covered their bodies from snout to tail that was harder than the hardest metal. Each scale was roughly two feet in diameter and overlapped each other the way shields overlapped in an immovable line of footmen with interlocking round shields and short gladius type swords. Spikes were fastened on their tails, one two or three horns on their head and a brain the size of a gnat. Most of them were like this, but just over twenty percent were intelligent, could speak, fly and had bones laced with silver.

 
; The silver is what made them dangerous to a Dochani. Some Dochani went mad when silver entered their bloodstream, some died, some it had no effect on and some it affected in a way that was unknown to all Dochani. It could not be told how one Dochani would be affected until they were infected with silver. Shinra was one of the many places on Sevle that she had to visit and convince of the impending doom due to visit their planet. King Ramazan, Shinra’s ruler, was one of the most stubborn of kings that she had to try and convince of the impending Fenshian invasion.

  His ancestors had fought many wars and ended many rebellions. As a result, the Shinra peoples were proud and long since forgot how wars were waged, and the army was all but dismantled. Kenjin also noticed that the people’s stores of weapons had a few layers of rust caked so thick it would be easier to reforge them than to remove the rust and their armour was not much more than costumes used in parades. Ramazan himself greeted her in his throne room.

  Spoils of previous kings’ wars were scattered haphazardly about the room. Cobwebs and layers of dust covered their details and dulled metal armour did not even shine or sparkle from sun coming in through the opening in the ceiling of the atrium. She could tell that he had not used the armour he had on for a while considering his rolls of fat were squeezed out through the joints and seams in his armour. His armour hung awkwardly on his overly fat frame since it could not be fastened snugly due to the armour being made for him well before he became a balding man with a nose too large for his round pig-like face.

  His sword did not look like it had been used in over twenty years and hung too low for it to be drawn with any chance of clearing the scabbard before being shield bashed or killed with a single thrust of a dagger. He seemed to think that, since his ancestors paved the way for him, he did not have to work as hard as they did to sit on the throne. If the King of Shinra was any indication of the kingdom, a child could storm the castle of this fool and sit on the throne after the king died of a heart attack.

  The only reason for the fact that he was still sitting on the throne was that the people of Sevle were all relaxed and content with the land that they currently held. None of them believed that there was a greater force out there than any of their ancestors had ever faced even though five moderately trained squires could take the keep from them.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  After warning many of the kingdoms in Sevle, she was tired and felt weak from constantly shifting space so she could travel to and from the islands. Some accepted her warning with a shrug of their shoulders, but most did not even acknowledge that she had spoken to them at all. Now she was too tired and ill to move, so Kenjin stayed in a small village within the kingdom of Shinra. She was treated well in this village. The Dochani woman would lay an egg that could last for thousands of years buried beneath the soil.

  A typical egg’s shell was harder than the hardest of metals, thus no predator could ever eat the egg and nothing could destroy it at least that was the theory that the Dochani told themselves to make themselves feel better. The egg would remain dormant until someone or something dug it up, while the child inside grew to maturity. They were children to the Dochani, but to other races they would appear to be an adult and due to their birdlike nature would have knowledge from their ancestors and be able to cope on their own.

  Being well over fourteen thousand years old, Kenjin had experienced much things. She had laid thousands of fertilized eggs capable of hatching on many different worlds and never saw one grow up to adulthood. Kenjin was always doing work for the council and visiting many worlds and never had any free time for herself. The last of her energies would go with her last and final birthing as well as the normal knowledge of ancestors that a Dochani child was born with.

  She knew that she would die and was not afraid. It was good to have a last birthing before you died. If you did not have a birthing at the time of your death, then your powers would dissipate out into space and be lost for a time until a daughter had her last birthing. This caused a disturbance in the space-time continuum and threatened to disrupt the balance that was needed for harmony amongst all systems in space. Having a birthing at death meant that your powers and knowledge would be added to the child’s already immense powers and knowledge.

  Thus continuing the line and possibly receiving powers, and knowledge from previous generations not inclined to have a last birthing. These powers that would be given to the child would come into effect when that child came into puberty or some time later. With the powers came all of Kenjin’s knowledge and with the knowledge would come understanding. The egg inside her would soon be laid and with its coming, Kenjin’s death would come.

  “Kenjin, you must push. If you don’t push, the egg will not come out,” Said her hostess, Mrs. Laura Shievshen whom was still puzzled with this alien’s presence in her life. Kenjin was weak and found it very hard to push. After a long time her egg was laid with a last and final breath.

  Mrs. Laura Shievshen knew what she must now do. Kenjin gave her specific instructions to follow upon her death. She was to bury the egg. A letter was to be written up for a descendant of hers two hundred and forty years from now. It was to have instructions on it for them to dig up the egg and take care of the child as their own. Average life expectancy of these people was about thirty to fifty years and the amount of time needed for an egg would entail many generations to pass in the time needed for the egg to hatch.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Boltchovik Shiev was the last of a long line of great carpenters. As a master carpenter he made a fair living and thus was elected to take care of the Dochani child. The letter written under the instruction of the fourteen thousand year old Dochani woman was now two thousand years old and written in a dialect long since abandoned. If it had not been wrapped in an oil soaked cloth, it would not have been legible and would have decayed a long time ago.

  He had to get a scholar that specialized in the study of ancient languages. For the life of him, he could not understand why they had buried the egg in the dirt floor of his cellar. He wondered why they had waited so long to unearth the egg, since it was to be dug up about eighteen hundred years ago. Boltchovik thought that it might have been because the Shiev’s did not have possession of the land and it took almost two millennium to reclaim it. After many wars between different tribal groups his family had acquired the plot of land that was necessary for the egg to be dug up.

  Instructions were given to build the house he lived in now, and his father gave it to him. Twenty years later when he was cleaning up the attic he found the letter and dug up the egg, which was larger than four good sized men. He needed more than a dozen strong villager men to help him lift it out of the crater sized hole and place it in a safe place where he could wait for it to hatch. It took nearly fifty years for the egg to hatch. Since Boltchovik was already thirty when he had dug up the egg he was eighty years old when it finally hatched. When the egg did hatch, the woman inside appeared to be between seventeen and twenty five, but looking into her eyes he saw that she had to be far older.

  He and his wife, Katherin, were surprised when she was found to speak an ancient dialect of their language. The same dialect that was on the parchment in the attic is what she spoke, which meant that they needed the same scholar that had translated the letter in the first place and the likelihood that he spoke the ancient tongue was very little. Unfortunately, that scholar had been over eighty at the time they needed him and thus they had to settle for his apprentice who happened to be around sixty five now to translate the spoken language.

  This new scholar also had to help instruct her in the local dialect of Sevlin, which is what passed for the common tongue on the planet Sevle. In three short months the Dochani hatchling learned to speak, read and write the Sevlin dialect spoken in the small village of Bannian. Soon after Boltchovik and Katherin learned that the Dochani woman’s name was Alexandra. Alexandra knew from the start that her mother had died during the release of the egg that she had recently hatched from and
her father was somewhere in the universe.

  Sometimes she was found staring towards a certain spot in the sky, when asked she said that her father was out there. She could pin point exactly what planet he was on just by looking into the sky. What kind of creature has that kind of power, those Sevlin's were known to think and gossip about her? These were not her parents, but still deserved her respect since they made the necessary arrangements for her to hatch from the egg even though she was waiting for a long time to be released from the darkness within the egg.

  Spending lots of time with the scholar helped her learn the culture and history of Sevle. She learned of what her mother did up to her death on Sevle and of what she tried to do for the people even if they were stubborn at times and most times refused to listen to her mother. A lot of time was spent in reflection upon her existence and the existence of others like her. She was found at the beach prostrate in deep meditation early in the morning and late at night contemplating the metaphysical.

  It was not known when the time was that the Fenshians would arrive and begin their slaughter, but the alien knew that it would not be long to her even if it felt long for the Sevle being short lived peoples. Alexandra knew that many innocents would die in the battle that could not be avoided.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  To the Sevlin though it was unsettling for someone to spend time in the village of Bannian and have no signs of aging over a span of three hundred years, but here Alexandra was doing just that. That was the nature of the Dochani race though as they did not age like the Sevlin did. Sevlin aged badly if anyone could be said to age badly. At the age of thirty a Sevlin male would have heavily callused hands, dark weathered skin on their face and upper body and their usually lustrous dark hair showed signs of age by greying over the ears and temples and their beards would be nearly all grey.