“Survival is never impossible. Someone is alive. Someone defies the sentence of death.”
Iris felt the king’s eyes on her even though there was no way he could see her. She was crouched behind a big tree stump with plenty of foliage which she knew from experience made her impossible to see. If Iris knew how to do anything, it was to hide.
But he was seeing, or at least, sensing her. He knew she was there. She felt the knowing, and saw the glint of those impossibly blue eyes. For a terrible second, they locked gazes.
Turning on her heels, Iris ran. These were her woods. She had explored every inch of them, knew every gully and root intimately. The knowledge would do little if the king took his fiery metal mount and began to burn the world around her, but she did what all prey has done from the beginning of time. She sensed that her chance of escape was narrowing to nothingness, and she chose to run rather than wait for the predator to come upon her.
Chapter 5
There was a skittering throughout the forest, the horror of nature beholding what sentient creatures were capable of doing one another. The smell of smoke had frightened the inhabitants. He knew every four legged creature would be fleeing the area, but he had a feeling that there was a two legged one somewhere in the mix. He had felt eyes on him, intelligent, angry eyes. Those never belonged to an animal. They could only belong to a sentient being. Perhaps one allied with the humans who had just been swept up into the belly of his ship while their village was turned into soot and cinders.
“Sire?” Sergeant Nanite came up behind Archon. He was a bold, bearded, beast of a clawed male with more fur than scale. Only on a far-flung planet could a mutant with actual fur be considered for the position of sergeant. “We have safely stowed all the villagers in your ship, transported them up with the flash drives. They are all sedated and awaiting transport.”
“There was someone here,” Archon said. “I want each and every one of these villagers. I want people to wonder for centuries what happened to the village of flames.”
“Village of flames?”
“That's what they’re going to call it, I’ve decided. The village of flames. Every single one of them gone in an instant. Probably should have refrained from burning it, now you mention it.”
Nanite had not mentioned it, but he didn’t like to say. Contradicting a king who had just destroyed a village was not the way to career advancement, or general continued existence.
“I doubt anybody escaped your net, your highness, but if they have it is of little importance. The rebel village is destroyed. All will know that you are not one to be defied.”
“I would have thought they already knew I was not one to be defied,” Archon drawled, his eyes scanning the dark trees for hints of human life.
Archon’s senses were far keener than his general’s rationale. He had felt the eyes of the prey on him. He had felt the way they searched him. Saw him, not as the generals did, or as the charred and fallen villagers did. There was something in that gaze he wanted to feel again.
“I want everyone. Every. Last. Person. If I do not, there will be consequences. Fatal consequences for those who have let me down. Have you seen war, Nanite? Have you felt the blade of your enemy slashing your flesh?”
“Yes, your highness. I have served for ten years in Naxus’ army.”
“My army, Nanite. My army.”
“Of course, sire. Your army. My apologies.” Nanite was starting to sound less and less confident in his ability to remain breathing. Archon was evoking thoughts of war, and with those thoughts of war, the possibility of death for an underperforming sergeant.
Everybody was bold and brave until they heard the screams of the dying and realized that those screams would one day invariably come from their own throats. Then they started to look for reasons to be merciful, in the false hope that mercy might one day be shown to those they loved.
“If someone did escape, they will spread the word of your terror and they will ensure that others know never to antagonize their great king. Was that not the purpose of this exercise?”
“Perhaps, but it was supposed to be a mystery. An attack can quell rebellions for a few years, but a mystery can last for generations.”
Archon had at first thought that making an example of the village which had started the rebellion would be a good idea. Then he had decided that it would be better to simply remove the village and let everybody wonder what had happened to it.
If he could not secure every single one of the humans, then the illusion would be broken, and if the illusion was broken, then real war was inevitable. The humans might possibly believe that they had some chance of succeeding in their rebellions.