The chamber felt large to the boy, though it easily could have been a small cavern or inside a tent. It smelled strongly of tanned Mal’ie hide. The floor was cool to the touch and covered by a dried horse hide. The boy was an Earther, a Human as they called themselves.
Most Earthers were an unenlightened bunch of bipeds, and this male was no different. He was born into the zealot faith of the Church of One. From his earliest days he had been told there was One God with the Human as his chosen creation whom he made in his image. He had been told all aliens were not human, therefore were obviously creations in the image of the Devil. He had been told many, many things that had no proof of evidence. He had been told to believe, more than anything, and had been told that these beliefs would guarantee him a place in eternal paradise.
His name was Dominic Levi Strauss III, and his father was what they called “well-placed” back home. Dominic hadn’t had to struggle for food, or worry about the dangers of the wild. He had never had to experience the fear of being hunted by racist killers across miles of terrain.
But he did know fear.
He had known the fear of his father’s rage, and his fear of the Nun’s ruler, and a fear of the Priest’s flogger. He had known the fear of hiding under his covers with a crucifix in one hand and a sharp dagger in the other, and having to kill a Nightmare before it ate him.
And his Nightmares always looked like the worst sort of monster, The Goblin.
Dominic knew the Goblin was big and hairy, and scared him to his core. After five weeks straight of killing the same Goblin Nightmare in his room, and being reprimanded for being covered head to toe in bite marks and scratches from their claws at morning, Dominic finally left home. He swore he was going to kill The Goblin (because in his childish mind there was always only one, and it was the route of all evil). He applied to become a squire to the Goblin Slayer Paladins and was denied for seeming too eager, but was accepted by a traveling Knight-messenger named Solona. At least once per month, Dominic was tormented at night by The Goblin. If Sir Solona had noticed black ichors staining Dominic’s hands, he never mentioned it. But Sir Solona had never woken up to actually kill The Goblin. It has always been Dominic’s job to sink the blade in the dry and cracked flesh of The Goblin to kill it.
The creature that sat cross legged on the far side of this dark place was not The Goblin from his dreams. Dominic looked at the native of Refuge, noticing it looking at him with intelligent emotive eyes. The Goblin only had dead eyes, like a fish left out to rot in the sun. This creature breathed like he did and had saved him from its own kind.
At first on the battlefield near the terrorist Tladol’s hideout, Dominic was surprised to Sir Solona killed by the primitive spears of the green-furred natives. Dominic watched as the other squires were slaughtered but he was chosen for some reason.
It had been this native who made the choice, who had convinced his kind to spare the boy.
Dominic knew the creature could speak his language, and he had personally seen the natives dance their strange dances and bring a storm down on Bartsport. They seemed sad and confused at the people killed, which surprised Dominic, as he had only heard of their kind as reveling in death and destruction.
Then he had seen one of their conclaves. There had been Green Furs dressed in pelts, and green furs dressed in bone armor, and Green Furs dressed in robes and Grey Furs dressed in alien battlemail.
And this one had been there, among the leaders.
Dominic didn’t know anything about his captor, or even if he was a prisoner…or food.
Yet the strong, proud gaze of the native did not look upon him as food, only with deep concern.
And Dominic thought back to a magnetic-lift malfunction that happened in Bartsport, when he had been among the natives sneaking into the frozen town. They were not ignorant savages like the priests said, Dominic had noticed. They ignored most of the homes and went straight for the Inquisitors manor. He rode on the back of a Brezan Stalker, burrowing under the ground for a moment before punching through a basement wall into a terrible, terrible place.
It was a lab, but was not god’s science. It looked like the Inquisitor was trying to grow MORE natives. And if an Inquisitor was growing more natives and they acted nothing like The Goblin in his nightmares, then maybe…just maybe…no.
Dominic remembered the mag-lift hurling their lift chamber into the air. It felt like what a Red Bishop’s railgun round felt when being hurled from the barrel. Into the air Dominic and his native savoir were hurled and would have been killed, splattered into the ground, if not for the evil sorcery the native did to stop their fall.
Dominic now knew the easy temptation the Priests always spoke about. How easy would it be to want to learn the evil sorcery? thought Dominic as he forced the thought aside. That would be grounds for crucifiction by the Church of One, he worried. Then again would the Inquisitors even allow him to come back alive now that he had been defiled by living with the natives and eating their food.
He looked up at the native and said, “My name…my real name is Dominic. I want to know what you plan on doing with me?”
–[ This thread is open to KolGol, and The Bladed Sun, but not others unless invited by KolGol]–