Mind-mapper Litana was so far ahead of her son that she almost faded beyond the glow of his torch.
“Must you be so insufferably slow all the time?” she said, her tongue surely sore and raw from the constant stream of barbs she had thrown the boy's way throughout the entirety of his decade and a half in the sun’s light.
“My legs aren’t as long as yours,” he huffed, “or as straight,” he added bitterly.
“Just this once, see that your will is stronger than that pathetic body of yours. I will not hesitate to leave you behind. I think few would notice or care.”
She showed her back to him once more, and continued to pound the dirt in the direction of a small, stubby hut on the edge of the settlement, even squatter and less impressive than its counterparts.
‘She would make a crap Guide; she can’t even lead on foot,’ Kaiba thought to himself.
Kaiba stared beyond the loose ring of the village dwellings and peered into the darkness. It was a hopeless attempt. Even with all the stars of tens of thousands of galaxies piercing holes in the black canvas of the night sky, the desert was an impenetrable veil of sable. He shuddered, and tried to force a scrap of extra energy into his warped ankles and hobbled knees. It was painfully uncomfortable, but he tried. Though he did not hurry for Mind-mapper Litana’s sake.
“When will they come, mother?” he asked.
Litana recoiled from the title like Kaiba had from her whip on many occasions, “You have been warned not to call me that.”
Kaiba knew this, and could not rightly explain why the word had escaped his lips on this occasion. It was unprecedented.
“Sorry, Mind-mapper. It’s just,” Kaiba rubbed his claw-like fingers together, “I can feel them.”
Litana snapped her head around so quickly that her cable of greying hair made a whooshing noise as it sliced the rapidly cooling air, “You can?”
“Yes,” Kaiba had a bad habit of looking with his eyes where his mapper’s senses were leading, which was everywhere, “They are many.”
Litana looked distinctly uncomfortable, although Kaiba could not say if this was because of the rival clan closing in on them, or because she lacked the skill to sense what he sensed. Perhaps, Kaiba wondered, that was why the tribe slept so soundly. Perhaps they really had no idea what awaited them. The Hive of Guides would know, certainly, but the others? Were they even aware that they were supposed to be looking?
“Come!” Litana gnashed, “You are slow enough without these constant delays.”
This was true enough. Kaiba conquered the short walk to the hut as if it were a marathon. By the time he arrived, his clothes were plastered to his body, and his joints ached profusely. Even his lungs were ill-formed and puny, failing to adequately power his tiny, twisted frame.
“Quickly, inside!” Litana said, poking her head out of the hovel like a tortoise peering from its shell.
The boy did as he was bid, shuffling into the cramped confines of the small hut. He set his torch in one of the sconces by the door and took mental stock.
The hut was bare, even by their Sakstian standards. There were no rugs, no cushions, not even a window. This was probably a place for contemplation, Kaiba assumed. Perhaps it would be where mind-mappers could come to test the limits of their focus in seclusion. Strange then that they were not alone.
Guide Nitak, his bald head and tanned skin blending seamlessly with the walls behind, stood in the center of the hut. To his left, a teenage boy, lithe muscles taut across his body, lay slumped against one wall. The boy was breathing shallowly, and little else.
“Welcome, Kaiba,” Nitak said with a smile that did not take hold, “You are not a moment too soon.”
Kaiba barely heard the Guide’s pleasantries, a peculiarity of Nitak’s for which the matriarch often berated him. Kaiba’s eyes were glued to the boy in the corner.
“Who is he?” Kaiba asked.
“He is no one,” Litana answered immediately.
“But he-”
“He is no one. Surely you can see that for yourself. Or are your abilities becoming as useless as your body?”
Insults aside, Kaiba could plainly sense the truth of her words. The boy had no soul. He was almost entirely empty. His shell was all but hollow, with only the faintest awareness within. Kaiba had seen the disembodied before, they bore a thread that tied them to their origin, like an anchor, weighing them to themselves. This one’s thread had severed though, or perhaps disintegrated. There was no indication of where his soul had gone, or whether he had even had one to begin with.
“I’m afraid Mind-mapper Litana is correct,” Nitak sighed, “There is naught left here but a body, where once there was a being. It is a tragedy, but a tragedy that happened long ago.”
“Why did the body not die?” Kaiba asked, staring at the abomination with mixed horror and intrigue.
“We have given this body sufficient awareness so as to sustain life, and nothing more,” he frowned in the direction of the empty young teenager, its mouth hanging open with a rope of dribble connecting lip to chest, “I believe this one was imbued with the essence of a cricket, robbed by the Guide’s of any desire but to eat and sleep.”
“That’s flipping hectic,” Kaiba concluded.
“Must you speak like a common labourer?” Litana rebuked.
Nitak cleared his throat, “Anyway, that is neither here nor there. We have far more pressing concerns.”
“You mean the army surrounding the village?” Kaiba asked nonchalantly.
Nitak was surprised, but pleasantly so, “Just so. You truly are gifted,” he clasped his hands behind his back, “The Reltiath have decided to act upon their long-standing animosity for us. They come to destroy us and wipe all memory of our existence from this place. They have long been hostile, but with new leadership comes new points to prove.”
Kaiba digested this a moment, “Well, that sucks.”
“Indeed. Fortunately, we have other ideas. A plan was set in motion long ago, one that will see our kind endure.”
“You have a way to beat them?”
Nitak snorted, “No. Our hunters and farmers will fight, just as soon as we rouse them, but they will lose. Fortunately, the Sakstian way of life does not exist in flesh and blood, it exists in our shared community,” he pressed a finger to his temple, “it exists in our Gift.”
Kaiba hummed, “I still think I’d rather not die.”
“Fool. No creature is dead whose soul and essence persists,” Litana reminded him.
“Yeah, but, even so.”
“Mind-mapper Litana alludes to your salvation, young Kaiba. You will survive this, in mind and body; it just won’t be your body.”
Kaiba had never felt ice on his skin before, and definitely wouldn’t know what ice piercing through the length of his spine would feel like, yet, somehow, that was still the most appropriate analogy. He looked at the other boy. That young, fit, healthy, vacant husk of a human being, staring openly at nothing at all. He looked at the body he was expected to call his own. It was a peculiar feeling. Kaiba was himself. He had always been himself, save for when he had briefly been a scorpion, and now he would abandon that for good. He would abandon his twisted, cruelly disfigured body, and take on a new one. A new, healthy body to call his own. Had he not dreamed of that countless times?
“You are to take this body to the Guides,” Nitak said, evaporating the dream before it had even taken root, “The Hive will share this vessel with you and the other senior Mind-mappers, until such time as this body sires children. Then, one by one, they will transfer themselves to our new young, and thus, our clan, our people, and our Gift, shall live on.”
“Multiple souls in one body?” Kaiba was aghast.
Nitak simply shrugged, “And why not? We Guides are as one anyway, and we commune near constantly. It will be no different in that regard. Besides,” he smiled sadly, “We have too few allies among the Reltiath to risk any more than that. We were able to negotiate the safe passage of one of our own, but one only,” he forcibly shoveled optimism into his voice, “It is a great boon, no matter how small it may seem.”
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“The Reltiath are just going to,” Kaiba threw out his hands as far as they would go, “Let me, or us, wander through their lines and leave?”
“Many years ago we had one of our own join their ranks, in preparation for this day. You will go to the Eastern side of the village and hail the one called Tsepo, by thrice imitating the song of the Feinbos Bird. He is not a mind-mapper, but he was born among us, and will heed the call of the Guides. Tsepo has arranged to take the Guides past the Reltiath soldiers, and escort them to safety.”
“To where?”
“It is best that I do not know.”
“You are not coming,” it was an observation, not a question.
Nitak smoothed his sackcloth garment, “Many of my peers have no love for those among us without the Gift. But for myself,” he tugged at the loose skin of his throat, “I would not see them make their sacrifice alone.”
“Guide Nitak, you are far more valuable than any spear wielding simpleton. I beseech you, please reconsider,” Litana begged, her head low in deference.
“It was not a decision I made lightly, Mind-mapper Litana, but it is one I am proud to see through to the end. There will be no further discussion on the matter.”
Litana was taken aback by the force of the mild-mannered Guide’s words. She shrank back like a beaten dog.
“You know now what is required of you, Kaiba. Are you ready?” the Guide prompted.
“Why me?”
“You were able to stich your soul to a scorpion. We have faith that your talent is sufficient enough to prevent this body, which has not known a soul for the longest time, from rejecting you. I ask again, Kaiba; are you ready?”
Kaiba touched his face involuntarily. His fingers glided along his cheeks as if seeking to imprint the memory of his features on their tips. Pointless, really; they too would not follow him. Whatever he felt next, it would not be with this skin.
“Just a moment.”
“There is precious little time.”
“I know, it’s just… I just want to,” Kaiba was almost too embarrassed to say it, “I want to know who he was?”
“Who, child?” Nitak asked softly.
“The one that,” he choked, “him,” Kaiba pointed instead.
Nitak looked at the slumped body. It had lain vacant for many moons now, save for the gentle spark of a cricket, robbed of its sentience, “It is just a body, Kaiba. It has no name or personality.”
“I know that. But he was someone, once. I want to know who,” Kaiba mumbled.
“You shame me with your stupid questions yet again,” Litana said, holding her face as if she were weeping.
Annoyance flashed across Guide Nitak’s face, and Kaiba had no doubt that what he shared next was more to berate Litana than it was for Kaiba’s own benefit, “The boy was called Vishanta. He was once a nephew of mine. It is perhaps my fault that his burgeoning ability with the Gift was not recognized sooner, and properly nurtured.”
Nitak’s face was unique in that it bore his feelings in a way that was not true of the other Guides. It was this defect which constantly saw Nitak at odds with the others, and it was for this reason that Kaiba liked him.
“Vishanta,” Kaiba said, committing the name to memory.
“If that is all, Kaiba,” the Guide steeled himself, “Are you ready?”
“I think I am.”
“Good. There is no time to waste.”
Nitak beckoned Kaiba before him, holding the young boy firmly by his shoulders. He positioned the youth so that he was facing his new body, and reached out to encompass the pair with his mind.
“It has been a long time since I have done this,” the old Guide laughed, “Litana, if you would assist.”
“Of course, Guide Nitak.”
“Now, boy, open your mind to us. Sever your roots. Free yourself of the confines and the boundaries of this body.”
Kaiba did as he was bid, raising himself gently from his shell, out and up, towards the ceiling. He let his essence hover in the abstract space above his body, waiting for the Mind-mapper and the Guide to open the door for him, and lead him to his new home.
When next he opened his eyes, he saw himself. That is, he saw his old self.
Kaiba saw that bony, ungainly body of his that had so offended his mother and all others in the village. It was a pitiful thing, barely useful even when his strong mind had inhabited it. Now, it was just a loose parcel of bones and organs, being lowered reverently to the dusty floor of the hut.
‘Ugly’, he thought.
Litana seemed to hear the boy’s unuttered curse.
“Would that you had been born this way to begin with, and had not so cursed my womb,” his mother said, her eyes welling at the sight of her son as the young man she had always ached for.
Kaiba tried to say, “Would that you would piss off,” but it was perhaps a blessing that his new and unfamiliar tongue was too thick and dry to form the words.
“Can you stand?” Nitak asked.
Kaiba tested this.
The limbs of his new body had to be willfully commanded. No action was thoughtless, not even the flexing of fingers came naturally. However, the body did respond. It listened when he bade it, however sluggishly. Before long, it would move fluidly and effortlessly, as if it had always been his own.
“Yes.”
“Then you must go now, and quickly. I may be the only one among the Guides who still has an appreciation for time, so it is best I use that influence while I still can,” Nitak smirked.
Kaiba didn’t dare nod. He’d only just worked out how to keep his head straight on his new neck, and he didn’t want to tempt fate with any sudden movements. Instead, he bundled his limbs beneath him, and attempted to push the ground away.
“For the sake of the Gift,” Litana tutted, and yanked her son to his feet.
“I was getting there,” Kaiba protested.
“You were humiliating yourself!”
Litana pulled Kaiba from the hut with a low bow back towards Nitak. Both Mind-mapper and son missed the disappointment on the old Guide’s face as Kaiba was dragged once again into the open expanse if the village. The air was now cold, where shortly beforehand it had been cool.
“Everything feels,” Kaiba breathed deep, “sharper.”
“It is as it should be. If your own body were not such a sham then you would have known the pleasures of the senses much earlier,” she was too late to catch her heresy, but for good measure added, “not that the body holds any import.”
“Are you not proud of me even now?”
Litana’s hate built on the darkness of the night, wrapping the pair like a fog, “You have Nitak to thank for your existence. You may stand in a strong, proud body now, but I know you to be the same foul wretch of a creature who could scarcely untuck his own prick to piss. You are broken, Kaiba, inside and out. The rot runs deep in you, from body to soul and back. I see it, even if the Guides do not. You ask me to be proud of you? I will not,” her eyes reflected the myriad of burning suns and stars hovering in the mesh of the aether, “I laugh and I weep that so much now depends on you. All that we have rests on you being able to walk from one end of the village to the other, and, I must say, I cannot find it within me to trust that you will not find a way to screw it up.”
Kaiba studied the embittered old woman who had birthed him well after her prime. For the first time in his life, he was of a height with her, standing close enough to see the passionate loathing that burnt within her dark irises, and cracked the skin around those soldering coals into deep chasms that could have cut into the depths of the earth.
Kaiba knew then that he didn’t hate Litana, as he once thought he had, he simply didn’t care about her. She had pored so much of herself into her rivalry with her son, and he, in return, felt nothing for her. He felt sure that it was that, more than anything else, that drove the old woman so mad.
If that wasn’t reason enough to smile, what was?
“Why do you grin like a moron?” she said, raising a hand to strike him and then remembering that the body was on loan.
“Because fuck you, that’s why.”
The mind-mapper shook her head, “I look forward to tearing that foul language from your being. I will dismantle you from the inside out.”
“Wait, you’re coming with?”
“Do you really think that the Guides would leave you as our only surviving mind-mapper? After they have joined in union with this body, you are to return to the village center, where I will have assembled the mind-mappers. Our longevity lies in our existence.”
“Oh,” Kaiba bit his lip, enjoying the sensation of the vivid pain, “Thanks for telling me.”
“I tell you only so that you know to hurry up! Go! Go now, and stop jeopardizing our success with your selfishness.”
“Right.”
Kaiba ordered his feet to march away from the hut, out towards the hall where he would find the Guides, probably still locked in meditation.
Once he was sure that Litana was nowhere in the vicinity, he stopped and inhaled the scents of the scrubby desert once again. The coolness leant a crispness to the aroma of the flowers that bloomed in this craggy environment, and the baked mud of the houses added a peaty quality that was both savoury and smokey. It was a hard thing to admit, but this body was just better at enjoying the world.
“Thanks for telling me, mother,” Kaiba said to himself, “because that makes this decision a hell of a lot easier.”
Kaiba wagged a finger along the horizon, found the stars that hung over the Eastern ridge, and set off. As he trundled along, his over-large feet occasionally scuffing in the dirt or catching a low tuft of thick, wiry grass, Kaiba tried to familiarize himself with how these new lips whistled. It was a breathy sound, and, dry though his throat was, he summoned more spit than music. Regardless, it was fun. It was liberating.
Far beyond the edge of the clearing, still some distance from the amassing marauding army, Kaiba felt the presence of a solitary being. The lone man’s attention was piqued, and his anxiousness bled out into the savanna.
Kaiba called three times, in the voice of the Feinbos bird.
Tsepo called back.
The Sakstian-turned-Reltiath approached, spear and shield in hand, and bowed deeply. He had the muscles of a warrior, and skin much darker than the typical Sakstian, but his allegiance was written in his soul, and laid bare for Kaiba to see. Without a word, Tsepo bade the fledgling mind-mapper follow.
Kaiba and Tsepo walked straight through the Reltiath camp without anyone batting an eye. The Reltiath here kept their word, and pretended not to see the escaping pair, destined to carry the legacy of their tribe to safety as their kin were put to sword and flame with the light of the dawn. Kaiba kept his head low as he walked in that dreamlike state through swathes of soldiers, tending to their blades and oiling their bodies for battle. They paid him no heed, but their spirits reached out to him, coloured with their bloodlust, their animosity, and their pity.
Kaiba smiled. He had known hate his whole life. It was refreshing to feel it so overtly.
Once beyond the loose lines of Reltiath warriors, Tsepo guided them down a tight gauge, which at a time had been a river, back when these lands were still blessed with water. At a tight bend, a pair of ponies had been hitched to a tree, ready to take the Guides and the Mind-mappers far away, to a place where they might rebuild, and replenish their tribe. Ready to take Kaiba far from this miserable pit that had been his only home, and far from the destruction of all he once called family.
Tsepo helped Kaiba onto his horse and then mounted the other.
“Great Hive of Guides, I am sorry to tax you so, but we must ride through the night if we are to stay clear of the Reltiath warlords and put the village behind us before the fighting begins.”
“Suits me, uh, us just fine, my good man,” Kaiba grinned.
“Thank you, Great Hive of Guides.”
“That’s a bit of a mouthful, don’t you think? Plus, you know, something of a giveaway if we pass anyone on the roads.”
“You are of course correct, wise Guides. What would you have me call you?”
Kaiba thought for a moment, “Call us,” he clicked his tongue, “Call me Vish.”