Callisto

Awakening

Father-Mother's eyes were the searing suns of the Deadlands made flesh.

Besides the rain, those eyes were the first things that fell upon her as she emerged from her mother's womb before the Great Spirit took her from this world.

Since the day she was born from a corpse that the heavens wept for, she had thought of Father-Mother as more than just the leader of her Tribe. Her mind and that of Father-Mother's were one. To disobey her command was to imagine that her own limbs would refuse to offer her motion.

And yet something deep within Rain-Born's consciousness told her that the creature that lay bound in chains before her was not her enemy. His beady eyes betrayed no threat to her.

"Rain-Born," Father-Mother said. "Have your ears been filled with the dust of the desert wastes? Take up your dagger and plunge it into the heart of this thing of evil."

Around her, Rain-Born heard the words of the Elder echo from ethereal mouths that screamed in the crimson-streaked night sky: "Thing of evil. Thing of evil..."

She felt the arms of her brothers and sisters reach out to her from their unmarked barrows in the red sands of the hill. Their twitching fingers touched her cheeks and caressed her arms and legs with the tender touches of a long-lost family. Her hair they stroked like they did on her name day when each prospective mate offered her a flower drenched in the blood of a Guthra infidel. And even her mother, interred in the liquid-starved earth, whispered in her ear in a voice that she had never once heard but knew. It was a voice she had felt in the black abyss that was life before her eyes could open. And the voice told her she could bring her family back if she wished. She needs only to take the weapon and do what she has done since she was birthed into a world of war, famine, and chaos. The Great Spirit smiled upon her, and she knew she could do it.

Yet still, something stayed her hand.

"The creature has committed no crime, Father-Mother."

Rage answered her. Blind and directed from all sides of this world that held her in its death grip.

"Obey your command, child!" Father-Mother yelled above the din of the roaring wind that assailed the hill and buffeted the bodies that lay below. "Obey and live, or defy and die!"

And all around her, the screams of her brothers and sisters reached her scarred ears:

"Obey! Obey! Obey! Obey!"

Her hand rose to deliver the blow that was demanded of her.

She looked into his eyes, gripped the dagger tightly, and prayed that his death would be swift. He was not made for this world. Not like the Hanakh. And not like her.

It was a mercy to deliver his fate to him. And once he was gone, Father-Mother would embrace her, and she could stay with the Tribe. She could hold them all again. They would accept the sacrifice. They –

"Chief."

A gruff voice echoed from a place outside of reality. It came from a place beyond her mind and yet reverberated like a drum quivering in the wake of its own beat. And then it came again.

"Chief!"

There it was: that name that he called her. Whoever he was in her mind's eye that she caught cursory glimpses of through the dissolving darkness that shrouded Father-Mother, still seething with rage.

The corpses of her once-companions surrounded her at this point, bearing down upon her like the very tide of blood that churned below. Their broken limbs jabbed at her wildly, and she felt the impact of their fists on her arm as they tried to grab at her and force the knife down into the elongated head of the captured prey.