"In our Holy Place of beginnings, the Elden tell the stories of our origins for the arriving pilgrims. At least once in the life of a Child of the Stars, they need to see and touch the ancient artifacts. Guides are those who know the way to this land and lead the pilgrims along the path."
--Fable of the Guides.
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Dawn's first rays saw Rae laying under the heavy saberfang pelt with an arm covering her eyes. Throughout the night, a trio of drones traveled upriver to Edomere. She was waiting for the newest update on Fire-eyes. Her tablet chirped, indicating they had reached the pride's territory, and it was light enough in the red forest to start the search. Sitting up to check, she saw only the littlest of the younglings scampering under the red trees, certainly none with his colors, nor did she see the senior queen whose DNA proved her as being Fire-eyes' grandmother.
A drone finally spotted the ivory-furred older female with violet eyes on a low limb at the grove's edge, where it bordered on the flowered meadow around the bone pit. Older younglings prowled the field under her watchful gaze, looking under grass tufts and pouncing on what they found, and Fire-eyes was among them. It was the first time Rae'd seen him out there. His limbs were longer, and his head wasn't as big a proportion of his total size now. The drone got his exact measurements, and she added them to her chart.
Comparing his growth over the time it had taken, she guessed the felids would take twice as long as a terrestrial big-cat to achieve adult maturity, perhaps four to six years. He was probably less than one year old when she encountered him during the flood, and he was well into his second year now, rapidly approaching adolescence. Rae watched long enough to see a successful pounce from him. He proudly displayed his small prey to the fem elder and devoured it, licking himself clean. A faint smile crossed her face before she closed the program and recalled the drones.
She bathed in the early morning light, then dressed before heading for her pathology shed. The last few experiments seemed to confirm that the fungus spore germinated from the presence of blood or bloody tissues. The newest two tests were still underway. A dead digger exposed to the spores sprouted mushrooms, similar to where the ursoid was butchered. The giant beast's raw tissue examination showed a minor spore infection. Still, the meat from it that she jerked showed no trace, possibly indicating that heat could make infected meat edible, at least in early stages.
The other digger was alive when she exposed it to the spores and became infected while appearing normal as the spores began to colonize it. She introduced a sampler drone daily, destroying it after getting her sample. Later, when the spore count was similar to the ursoid's, the digger's behavior changed as a low-grade fever took hold. It acted as if intoxicated, erratically bouncing around its cage. It lost all fear of her, staring at her through the glass. She noticed it drank more water while eating and eliminating less. Muscle mass was declining as spore filaments started to spread throughout its body. In her lab journal, she speculated how long it would take to be as bad off as the wilderbeast.
Rae felt a little sorry for it, recognizing the gruesome fate awaiting the animal, but if she were to study the spores properly, she'd have to condemn even more animals to the same fate. She wanted to understand the sickness, what spurred it on, and what inhibited it. Creating an antifungal agent was top of her list, followed by an effective treatment to fight the infections. It was going to be a lot of work, and she was more of an engineer than a medical researcher, but for Fire-eye's sake, she was going to press on. Outside the shed, she flared her aura with a careful dose of heat that would cook any spores on her but not damage her clothes.
Rae topped off her energies back at the rock scrap pile at the front of the gryphon carving. A few days ago, her mentor told her to practice 'catch and release' of local animals in her totem form while integrating as much of her new skills into the exercise as possible. She figured she'd do the same today. 'Come up here, child,' Gryphon called to her. Reaching out with her mind, she found him overhead, idly beating his wings as he looked down at her. She levitated up to him.
'You spent far too long among humans when you were young,' he said and then folded his wings, standing in the air as if it were solid ground. He raised a talon and casually scratched under his beak. 'It's like when you were learning heat and cold manipulation. You're habituated to think there must be some connection between you and something you think of as real to stretch out your power. But that is what the aura does; bypass such channels by esoteric means. Even now, you're pushing against the ground. Stop that and stand here like me.'
"There's this thing called gravity, you know," Rae said while bobbling slightly. It was much harder to remain still in the air than fly through it.
'By gravity, you mean falling, and falling is optional. The mundane universe can and must be transcended. Stand upon the place of your choosing, where your aura intersects with all that you think of as reality. With it, you are connected to every place and everything. Gravity is a gradient that gets weaker the farther an object is from a massive body. You understand that, yes?' She nodded. He projected a flat plane of his blue aura at the same height he was standing. 'Feel the gradient from the planet's core stretching out until it becomes undetectable. Come over this aura construct and rest on this point with your aura. With your mortal physics, you could calculate the exact gradient from your lava pool under the plateau to beyond the atmosphere. Calculate the numbers for this spot here, and fix yourself to it.'
Oddly enough, when Gryphon couched the idea in those terms, it helped. Rae locked onto the aura plane and stood on it, finding it as stable a support as the ground. She grinned, glancing down at the blue translucent surface, then back up again. Gryphon cocked his head, 'Look again.' There was nothing under her, and immediately she fell, barely catching herself before hitting the ground. Gryphon gave an exasperated sigh. 'That was a mental error. You were doing it. The surface I projected wasn't kinetic; it was just a visual cue for a randomly chosen height. You chose to fall because the programming of your youth said that you should, and even that you must. But you aren't bound by those rules, so get up here and do it again.'
Raising herself to his level again, Rae sat down cross-legged in the air, and Gryphon lowered himself on his belly. She fumbled for the same feelings without the visual marker and eventually found it, staying steady next to him. "I suppose you're the roadrunner in this scenario, and I'm the coyote." Gryphon shot her a baffled look, and she couldn't blame him. The reference was somewhat dated. "Why didn't my parents tell me this stuff?"
The totem looked away, his mental voice softer, 'Because their training was poor. They weren't interested in learning the old skills, and those who could have taught them were equally uninterested in giving those lessons. They taught you what they remembered and found to be useful, and you retained what you could use, filtered through the lens of your mostly human upbringing. You must overcome this to face a foe who was a capable opponent in the days before the Devastation.'
"How tough could Shadow be, with only half my energy?" She said with a shrug.
'Did your parents tell you of the Questioner?' he asked, and she nodded. 'It was the destroyer of the Qard and the boogeyman of their nighttime stories as children. That is who your Shadow really is, and it was a match for me. It is using the half of your utmost potential it can reach, and you are not. You scarcely use a quarter of what's available to you. Whatever you don't utilize is added to what it's already claimed. You gift the remainder to your enemy when you don't fully use your portion.'
He gave Rae a sharp telekinetic shove. She wavered but found her balance again. He looked fiercely at her and summoned the twin temperature orbs, setting them to orbit her closely. She tried to fend off more teke blows and psi blasts while staying alert to the spheres and maintaining her position in the air. Suddenly, it was too much, and she fell to the ground, still dogged by the orbs. Gliding down to ground level, he crowded her as she rubbed her bruises. 'Do you see your problem now? All of these new skills I've been teaching you? The Shadow
can do them all at once. Get serious with your training, or the Questioner will be your end and cause untold suffering to your Family.'
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She stared back at him, hoping he was exaggerating, but fearing he wasn't. She nodded stiffly to him, and his blue aura swirled up around him as he translocated away. For the rest of the day, she worked out fiercely with a balance of mental skills and physical conditioning. When night fell, she shook with fatigue, hoping she wouldn't dwell on the fears that gripped her throughout the day. She climbed under her heavy fur and held Aggie in her arms.
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Drowsily, Rae woke during the night. Green filtered moonlight from the Great Forest poured in through the wide windows of her bedroom on Deltia. She heard slow breathing beside her and felt the small current of heat that trickled from him to her. She drew in a little of the warmth around her at all times, leaving her cool to the touch. Jeol always let out a small amount of his inner heat, as he did when he was human, and that constant yet unconscious flow formed part of their intimacy.
She stroked his arm, slowly sliding it upwards to caress his broad, bare shoulders. He stirred with a soft sound and turned towards her. Pressing his leg against her core, she felt his hands move on her body, and her long-suppressed desire flared up. Nibbling on her neck, he kissed his way down her chest. She moaned, squirming, soon wet with readiness. Catching her hands, he pulled them both over her head to hold them there.
Rising over her, he began to love her with a slow, languorous pace. Rae did her best to make it faster, but he didn't respond to her usual cues. She made a sound of frustration and pulled at his hold, but he just tightened his grip on them, preventing her from pulling her hands free. A frisson of uncertainty went through her, "Jeol?" she whispered. That got a reaction. He sped up and bent down to kiss her aggressively. At first, she kissed him back, but her doubts grew. She felt his beard against his cheek but not his mustache, and his taste… she jerked her head back and looked into his eyes. Instead of the warm jade she looked for, they gleamed red-orange malevolence in the faint verdant light, long loose pale hair framing his face.
"Hello, Lařaė," said Shadow. She writhed to get him off of her, but energies coiled over her to keep her pinned in place. He became brutal as he laughed mockingly. "I told you I would have your body. But I admit, I like you better under me!" She growled in anger and fought him bitterly but to no avail. He seemed so much stronger than her, something she'd only experienced once before, and even then, it had taken several attackers to restrain her. A rush of suppressed memories came over her, making her breath come quick in panic. Shadow chuckled, "How sweet of you to share your rape with me." The room swam around them, changing to an ancient stone temple, with thick frost obscuring the narrow windows.
A band of ruffians in fur and leather clothing crowded around where she was being taken against her will, cheering on the entertainment, holding her down, and jeering at her slender body. This was Thorne, the snowy planet she was stranded on with Jeol before they got together. The Light had turned her mortal and as carbon-based as her brother, while leaving with the same appearance and remaining ambisexual. But instead of the bandit chief on top of her, Shadow used her body for his enjoyment. Rae remembered his face from another dream; Ethan, blue-skinned, with a pale fringed beard without a mustache. Here, she had long thought she'd overcome the trauma of that day, but she found herself again overwhelmed with the shame that buried itself deep inside her. "No!"
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Wrenching her eyes open, Rae awoke in the living area of the dig. Shadow was here, too, the dark teal projection looming over her. 'Having you helpless and despairing is a good look for you.' She combat ported out of bed and across the chamber, snarling. 'Still, have some fight in you? Good. That old totem was right, you know. I am many times stronger than you.' It advanced on her as she marshaled her defenses, settling into a fighting stance. It swung on her, and she flinched, making him chuckle again. Usually, she was more composed than this when fighting, but the threat of sexual trauma made her jittery and unsure.
It blinked out of sight, and as she tried to locate it again, she felt it behind her, reaching around her to palm her breast, then grip the fabric of her nightshirt there and ripped a large patch of it away, exposing her. She swung her elbow back hard, but it was gone before she could connect. Its presence flickered around her, too quickly for her to get a fix. Suddenly it was in front of her with one of its energy blades in hand. She summoned electricity around her hands and batted the blade away as it swept at her. She'd prevented it from cutting her, but a sudden draft on her thighs told her that she wasn't the intended target. Glancing down, she saw the long nightshirt's hem was sliced open. Shadow kept flickering around her, and the next time it came up against her, it gripped either side of the cut hem and ripped it upward to her navel, revealing that she slept commando.
Toying with Rae, Shadow came at her in unpredictable surges, threatening her with the psi blades. She blocked most of them with electricity but sensed Shadow was hardly making an effort. 'You want to play with energy? We can do that.' She felt an intense cold swirling around her, then touched her arm like a brand. She cried out hoarsely and tried to draw away from the freezing point, but it too flickered, making her unable to track it. She wanted to put her back to a wall, but Shadow shoved her to the center of the room when she tried. Wreathing her arms with lightning seemed to provide some warding from the blades. Playing total defense, she kept the blades from cutting her deep, at the expense of her hands and forearms, soon covered in nicks and shallow slices until her hands were dripping silver. The lightning proved useless against the burning cold, and nothing she did hurt Shadow.
Rae sensed a new kind of energy as Shadow dragged something sharp and hot from her neck down her back to her waist. With this attack came the sound of sizzling and the smell of her flesh charring. She gasped silently, in too much agony to even cry out. She didn't even know something could be hot enough to burn her. She staggered, and Shadow slammed her injured back against the wall. She screamed, and the projection threw her out of the dig to roll over and over on the paving stones. She ended up on her belly, gasping. She heard measured footsteps come from behind her, and she willed herself to get up to her hands and knees and try to stand. When she got halfway up, a boot settled on her neck and pressed her upper body flat to the ground while her lower body was propped up on her knees, lewdly displayed.
She squirmed, clawing at the stones. 'Stop that,' she felt Shadow poke her middle back, making her groan with pain and stop moving. It reached down to pull the back of her hem to pool on her lower back. 'It's like you're offering yourself to me, and I don't mind if I do. But first, let's bring back some old friends….' Rae heard the bandits yelling again as their dark projections clustered around and took over holding her down. Shadow stood back, and she looked up to see what was coming next. It deliberately undid the belt at its waist and began to unbutton the trousers' fly when she did. Her breath came in short pants as it walked around her, trailing gloved fingers along her sides. 'You belong to me, and it's time you realized that.' The other projections dragged her ankles apart as she felt Shadow behind her, then reached down to rip the fabric away from her other breast. Her mind thankfully went blank as it savagely took her.
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As Rae's conscious mind shied away from what her body was undergoing, she found herself back in the temple after her old assault. Her bare body was covered with a blanket, and she saw signs of a fight around her. The brigands were defeated and removed from the chamber. She thought about what has led to this experience long ago. She stayed behind in a women's shelter as the local warriors and Jeol went in hunt of the predators on two legs. The refugees didn't trust men, understandably, but she assured them they'd be safe with her. If there were fewer of them, say, only half a dozen or so, she would have been a match for them, even in her carbon-based body. But there were more than a dozen, some with crossbows.
She told the women to hide. They begged her to join them as they went, but she couldn't. There were evident signs that people lived here, and if the bandits found no one to play with, they'd tear the place apart and find the hidden chamber, and they would all be their prey, Rae was stronger and combat trained. It should be her that met them, she insisted. Concealing the secret passage, she made it look like it was just her that lived here. When they pounded down the door, she greeted them with derision, focusing their anger on her. She fought as they went for her, knocking several of them out. One of the crossbowmen got a target on her, making her freeze, and the rest of them grappled her down.
She couldn't stop what they did to her, but she'd found solace that she had chosen this for the good of others. It wasn't pleasant, but it was bearable, and she kept her promise while retaining most of her agency. What was happening to her now in the conscious world was completely different. It had all the shame of before while leaving her completely helpless to resist. Rae felt like a victim for the first time, and she couldn't do a thing about it except getting stronger. The chamber gradually became brighter as golden light poured in the narrow windows…
Rae blinked open her eyes to the predawn, feeling her pain diminish with myriad gentle touches along her back. She was sprawled over the paving stones with Krueger next to her, healing her. The lesser light was again in the form of a half-grown, glowing felid. 'Rest easy, Rae, and I'll take you inside,' he said. She let her eyes close as she trembled in reaction. Krueger's presence meant that the torment was over, at least for now.