The Wild Ba’Neesh Chapter Thirty-Nine ©2019 Fay Thompson All Rights Reserved

The worries grown out of their foolish use of Vrill led to an uneasy and extra careful exploration when daylight faded to darkness. While everyone wanted to test out the new Vrill ideas, where or how to do so safely remained a solid problem. So, being Soek and Ba’Neesh, they argued in whispers while others stared into the bushes and woods jumping at every tiny sound.

Eventually, they all agreed that they could be no closer than one league to their base to use Vrill, except in a dire emergency, then to flash red to warn everyone. It made sense. Sorting out how far a league was, became tricky. Elias said they should allow forty-five minutes at a fast walk, less at a run. Without a watch they decided to count evenly to fifteen-hundred for a near distance.

Mick demonstrated by counting out loud, not really wanting to expose whether the Ba’Neesh had math or not. He counted in English and as he did, he noticed a distinct echo as every Ba’Neesh in the group called out the same word. At the end of this count, while walking, all of them felt comfortable they were far enough away for Vrill. But, by then, none of them wanted to test anything. It all felt serious. So, they hunted instead. Actually, twenty of the Ba’Neesh hunted, all pairing up and moving away from Mick, Elias and eight remaining Ba’Neesh standing in a circle around the Soek facing outward. Mick didn’t arrange this set up, it was all Ba’Neesh. He appreciated its simple structure and noted it was a fast way to scout an area.

“I’ve been thinking, Elias.” Mick squatted down and scratched at the leaves with a stick.

“Yeah?” Elias was wary. He’d been thinking too. “If Mael hadn’t been wearing a kick-ass defensive sigil, you would have hammered his brain.”

“You too?” Mick nodded. “He said it hurt and he punched upward with his own Vrill, breaking the surface tension of the water hard enough to transfer force. His was some kind of cast, right? Mine and Aenor and the chain, that was a directed thought. It was only an attack because I have crappy control over my Vrill. So, the Ba’Neesh boosted my sense of insecurity so what was I throwing at that helmet, besides anxiety and a fear of failure?”

“You are saying you threw an emotional attack at Mael, not just wanting to ‘see’ him like the Ba’Neesh use water for viewing? You wanted to see that helmet, that defensive shield? The shield sensed this as dangerous and reacted. Mael simply reacted. His Vrill is intense and unstable, so they say. He didn’t cast, he juiced the direction of attack.”

Mick brushed his hands in the leaves, as if brushing away this aspect of the conversation. “It’s about Aenor, she did an undefined broadcast, at me locally but hit everyone around me too.” He said, “I don’t remember what happened on that floater right before I was wiped. Something about attaching Speech to light or something in order to deliver confusion. Was that right?”

“Yes.” Elias said. “Speech requires a local listener to become compelling so the words had to use the light as a vehicle to reach the subjects before the speech activated in their presence. If Speech passes through a mechanical device, it seems to alter the Vrill such that it stops compelling.”

“Vrill activated thought doesn’t need the light, Elias.” Mick said. “It must use itself as the delivery vehicle, like wireless does with electricity.”

“A weapon.” Both of them said together.

“Yes, with sufficient power.” Elias modified. “We had the MagC on the floater. Aenor and the others chained up to wallop Mael.”

“He recognized me.” Mick said. “He said my name. Vrill must carry a signature from the initiator because I don’t think he physically saw me exactly. Or, maybe he did. It was more like he knew I was there.”

“He knew you were attacking from above.” Elias said, “Right? You visualized the helmet from above, although I don’t think you ever saw it from above, did you?”

Mick nodded. “I thought turtle shell looking down because you know, turtles are on the ground in the Reserves when you see them. It was instinctive to think of Mael as the identity, coupled to turtle shell, powered by Vrill.”

“That means this weapon can be aimed at a target.” Elias said. “Rumor says there are two-thousand-five-hundred immature Ba’Neesh in that facility, Mick. And, with Tule Soc still hunting us and our Ba’Neesh, it seems pretty clear they are still confined. I don’t know why Mael hasn’t got them out of there yet. It has to be politics.”

“We could reach them with this weapon, we know the Ba’Neesh know some of them super well.” Mick said. “But then what? Tell them help is coming? Aren’t they all drugged out and shit? The longer I know about what is going on there the worse I feel about it.

Mick pushed the thought aside to focus more on the weapon. “Iiyiko used Speech on me.” He said, Sometimes I felt like She was right against my eardrum, but She was outside my head, not in thoughts inside, I don’t think. It was hard to sort out. I was really afraid She could read my mind like a telepath but now I feel like she got patchy impressions when I was stressed. She made my ear itch.”

“I think I heard her externally too.” Elias said. “But, it’s tricky, She doesn’t have vocal chords to vibrate the air. Yet, she vibrates the air. I should have paid more attention in physics. When they were setting up that light attack and discussing the wave fronts and blending them with a sigil, I felt out of my league.” Elias admitted. “She is pure Vrill, her imagination manifesting physical form. We weren’t paying attention. She imitates vocal representation, likely it is all Vrill manipulation since She is all Vrill manipulation.”

“So, wait. You are saying that we didn’t need the light She simply needed to move her manipulation into the hearing range of those She was acting upon.” Mick wrinkled his upper lip, “No wonder She thinks we are all stupid.” He started to laugh.

Aenor trotted up and dumped two strings of small animals in front of them. “Why laughter?” She asked.

“They are discussing Vrill manipulation and activated Speech.” One of the guarding Ba’Neesh turned to say. She picked over each word with difficulty but both Mick and Elias had a sense she understood the gist even if the words remained a struggle.

“The thought weapon?” Aenor asked.

“That too.” The same Ba’Neesh answered.

Mick realized he only knew a few of their names, intentionally so. He had resisted crossing the threshold of knowing them. There was a sense of risk attached to such knowing.

“You are?” He asked directly.

“Beate.” She answered, her look toward him cool, bordering on unfriendly.

“Beate.” He repeated. “I apologize for failing to ask before. I felt an attachment fear of some kind. I don’t know how to behave properly, not with Ba’Neesh and not much with human either. I’ve always sucked at social stuff. In my head I feel like I don’t grasp essential components to shared attachments and that creates some fears in me. I don’t want to let those fears continue to inform me.”

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“Beate.” Elias repeated aloud, discovering he was equally guilty of avoiding knowing all of these Ba’Neesh. “I have failed as well.” He admitted.

Beate glared at the two of them. “Weak fuck Mick and fuck Elias.” She spun around and stomped off.

“So much for apologies.” Mick said.

“Yeah.” Elias agreed, “but, the apology wasn’t for her exactly you know, it was for me. I need to get my head straight around what I’m doing too and self-honesty is essential for that.”

“True.” Mick nodded saying. “I feel better, regardless of Beate snooping in on our semi-private conversation.” He threw the words at her back and was rewarded with a snort.

Aenor stomped her foot. “Now you must repeat your ideas to me or I rip them out of your skulls.” They both knew it wasn’t an idle threat so they did their best to go over the same ground, adding in thoughts and details while more Ba’Neesh teams came in with their kills, a few bloody. By the time they finished the entire group was back together and Aenor made a snorting sound. “No Vrill experiments.” She ordered. “I felt Vrill hunting out there. We go to other area next time and talk about cowardice in such usage.” Several guilty Ba’Neesh chirped disagreement and Mick and Elias gathered the dead kills, knowing it was their job to haul in the food killed by the females. They were heavy, nearly double what had been gathered the last time. Good eating, Mick thought, not really realizing the shift in his tenor of thinking about eating off the land. He did have one thought though, “How about some teams range around on the way back and look for tubers, berries and nuts. All meat will block our digestion.”

The Ba’Neesh fussed over the idea for a moment with several exchanges in Neesh and then the majority decided it was likely fun. Imagine, a Soek suggesting fun. Aenor organized the search for other foods as a challenge instructing double pairs, one set to guard as the other set foraged. Mick was impressed. Aenor would likely make a decent gamer if she continued to develop. He stored her idea away in his growing inner vault of Ba’Neesh strategies.

To say they ate well that next meal was understating the experience. All of them took greater care on how to prepare the meat and the addition of other edibles proved entertaining and fun. None of them could identify exactly what had been found but the Ba’Neesh said they could smell fouled food. Mick wished he had that talent.

It continued to puzzle him why the Ba’Neesh were all so radically mutated when the Soek were restrained to be visually nearly identical to human males. Evolution suggested the mutations were responses to environmental pressures. He wondered what those were and then after a few minutes he started getting that pain avoidance signal in his head and he backed away from the thought. He looked up to find Aenor and two others watching him closely. He shook his head. Telepathy, at least as he understood it in this moment, wasn’t letting them peek into his skull. Their intuition might give them hints but did they really know him well enough to extrapolate from hints?

As they settled in for the arrival of daylight, most of the Ba’Neesh were cleaning themselves and using the grooming tools and mirrors to work on their hair. Mick watched with more than a little attraction. They were looking better to him. Their fur and muscles seemed to change every day and he would swear their horns and antlers were longer.

“Stop staring at them.” Elias sat down next to him and whispered. “They are Ba’Neesh.”

“What’s that mean?” Mick asked.

“It means they have physiological triggers too. They are noticing your noticing of them grooming. Do you see their amusement? We don’t want them thinking of playing with us physically, okay?”

“Oh.” Mick carefully looked away from them. “Are you having thoughts?” He asked.

“Some.” Elias admitted. “It isn’t like with human women. I never feel out of control with them. They are enjoyable but I can’t seem to deep connect like they want me to.”

“I’ve never been.” Mick said. “Honestly, I’ve never wanted to either. I can see the attraction of women but I’m emotionally flat. That’s what the psychiatrist said. They did this one test where they showed me faces and figures of a wide variety of males and females and I didn’t spike. That’s what they called it. They said I was immature and that was odd for my age.”

“And, now?” Elias asked, they were both turned away from the Ba’Neesh.

“I notice them in a way I can’t explain. They are becoming vivid to me. I feel like I’m waking up somehow.” Mick answered.

“Me too.” Elias said. “I grew up thinking they were monsters, you know. Back then the Order kept the truth of the Ba’Neesh from the students. They were the monsters who lived topside and we were bound to protect them. When we went on Quarters the Order made sure we had lots of human females around. They said it was to normalize us. I think they gave us stimulants and hormones too. Lots of retired or non-Citadel older Soek have human families and low latent Soek and Ba’Neesh children. We were told that was the correct path. I thought those girls were okay but I didn’t try anything for years, and then, it was enjoyable and not really important.”

“Why did the Order lie to you?” Mick asked. He noted that the Ba’Neesh had quieted, as they did when they were snooping.

“Well, honestly?” Elias hesitated and glanced around at the way the Ba’Neesh could and did look through him. They had his memories. They had all of this in there. It was better to frame it with his adult understanding of it than to let them encounter those memories raw.

“Back then, the Directorate was moving in a direction much like Tule Soc. They wanted the Vrill without the trouble of the Ba’Neesh. They had covenants, agreements with the Ba’Neesh from the World Wars when the Ba’Neesh helped them win, and they started to break them, refusing to give the Beloved back to the Ba’Neesh. That became a series of battles where the Directorate tightened and tightened the conditions they forced the Ba’Neesh to live with. The Ba’Neesh retaliated by refusing to become pregnant. The Directorate tried everything but forced reproductive attempts died within hours. They had a plan to harvest all existing Ba’Neesh and magnify the Vrill with machinery like the MagC and CoEx.”

“Xasper was the major voice in challenging this plan. He told them without the Ba’Neesh all design and casting would collapse, the Grove would end. They sell casting for gain and influence. It was a huge political mess. A bunch of stuff happened that ended when Mael took Xasper’s Beginning Casting Class. He was flunking out and he crossed the sigil without being killed. No one knew the Ba’Neesh at Barrens had created Mael to be Mael Strom, to break the Directorate. He did that just over two years later when the Beloved popped him through five levels of granite for Anya to find him in her garden.”

“Mael did what Mael does, he brought the great storm. That was the first deadly battle with Tule Soc where every adult at Citadel nearly died. Mael and other youngers saved them. That freed the Directorate Ba’Neesh from the punitive control of the Directorate and put Order back in charge. Not everyone agreed, there are still factions inside the Allied initiative that want the Ba’Neesh out. They want the weapons and power without the source.” He shook his head.

“That’s when the lies ended.” Elias said. “Every student in Citadel mounted in defense against Tule Soc. They fought alongside the Ba’Neesh youngers. The Channels were freed as the Ba’Neesh took control of Level Five and they have retained that control since. They returned to the Agnosin Ritual and the Lamentation of the Beloved. And, everything changed.”

“The Lamentation!” Aenor cried out, to be echoed by the other Ba’Neesh. “How could we have forgotten?”

“Why did Mael Strom not free all of us, then?” Aenor demanded, her tone furious.

Elias looked around, at the sea of dead Ba’Neesh, those destined for Tule Soc termination. “He was eleven, a younger. I am not sure but the Directorate was fractured then, there was a turncoat inside the Citadel and we were in chaos. The Akaitapi and Serla said they must not, I think, they said it wasn’t the time.”

“We died for what time?” Aenor pressed, still angry.

“The time to come.” Mick answered and then buried his head in his hands and howled out in pain. It was just a passing memory blow but it hit him so hard he became unconscious. When he wakened minutes later it was to find Healer Helewidis pressing her horn to his head with all of the Ba’Neesh humming something, stealing the agony away.

Aenor pushed Helewidis to one side and straddled Mick physically, her nose inches from his. “Fuck Mick. Ancient memory I feel, hear. I no ask again. Understand. None of us ask again. This trust you earn. But, we know you carry it. That Neeshatari knew, it is perhaps why she take you personal. Not hers now. We defend your brain. Understand? We accept Akaitapi remember something we forgot even if hard to accept.”

Mick blinked, she smelled really good.

(I admit I really liked writing this one, for my writer friends, this is where magic grows, in inspired accidents by clueless persons. J Anyway, off to more tomorrow. You know I think about this all day. Story grows in the fertile mind.)