Helen Ch 1
#1 of Cadi, Volume 7: Helen
Helen never understood why her mother had disappeared, or where she had gone to. Though her father and brothers searched all over the jungle for her, they never found her. Of course, Helen never tried to lie to herself that there was any sense of altruism to it, or concern for Cadi's wellbeing, it was purely because of the part that her father, Zaros, had laid out for Cadi in his grand plans.
He had always believed that the humans were soft and unworthy of the world that they had stolen from the wilds. He was a seventh son, and he had sought for years to find a seventh daughter. He had studied the ancient ruins of the jungle, and he understood the power of sevens. He came to the conclusion that the seventh son of a seventh son and a seventh daughter would be a truly powerful being. Exactly the kind of child that he could raise to reclaim the world from the humans who had corrupted it.
Child after child, Cadi had born for Zaros. Son after son. First was Aman, who was strong and arrogant just as his father was. But Aman was not the child he cared most about. Next came Beta, followed by Jacob. There had been some worry when Cadi next bore twins, but Martin and Lucas were still sons... and neither of them were the seventh, and so there would be no question as to who the chosen one would be. After the twins came Dean, and not long after that, Cadi was pregnant once more.
The family held its breath with anticipation. This next child was the seventh... Zaros' long-awaited seventh son. But when Helen was born, the family greeted her arrival with deathly silence. Thankfully for the girl, Zaros did not attack her... though none of his sons would have been surprised if he had killed the child out of hand. That was the kind of tiger that Zaros was.
But he didn't. Even as a girl, Helen was his daughter. He would just need to try again with Cadi in order to get his seventh son.
But then... Cadi was gone. No trace. Nothing that they could follow to find her in order for Zaros to continue with his plans. She had vanished the day that she had gone hunting, once Helen had been able to look after herself. They were able to track Cadi to a clearing, but every trace of her beyond that clearing was nonexistent.
Defeated, his sons returned home to share the dire news with their father. Not one of them escaped his rage, each one of them coming away from the encounter with fresh scars that they would bear through their lives as reminders of their failures. But after that, Zaros descended into brooding over how to progress his plans in the wake of this catastrophe.
That left Helen... largely ignored by the rest of the family, which wasn't entirely a bad thing. It meant that they didn't harass her, or take out their displeasure on her. All of Zaros' sons had become disciples of a sort... true believers in their father's vision for the world. At least the twins were still kind to Helen, helping her out as she needed from time to time, even teaching her how to hunt. They may have done so in secret, but she still appreciated it and remembered their kindness to her.
Years upon years went by, and Helen grew to adulthood by a tiger's standards. She was never deemed important enough by anyone within her orbit to warrant a mate, though. Still, given what her mother had gone through, she had precious little interest in having a mate. Her father had left a sour taste in her mouth when it came to that.
No, her general... unimportance was, in many ways, her saving grace. Within her father's orbit, it was better to be so far under the radar that no one even bothered to bully you. It left her... with little to do, except for hunt, and few people to spend a lot of good time with... but... there were few that she actually wanted to spend time with. Martin and Lucas were good company when they were away from the others, at least. She at least had those two as real brothers of a sort.
They really helped to make things bearable.
Helen was a curious girl, though, and she frequently went exploring off away from her brothers, searching through the ancient ruins that the others largely eschewed. It helped that she had a smaller build that allowed her to squeeze through the smaller openings.
She even found the ruins where her father had formulated his grand plans for the world, and as she delved deep within them, she found an entire complex of chambers that her father had never found. He was entirely too proud to squeeze through the narrow openings that they were hidden behind.
She spent days upon days exploring these ruins, marveling at the inscriptions and carvings on the walls. There was so much more lore that her father had never discovered... and she had no desire to enlighten the tyrant of her findings.
But the inscriptions were not her greatest find in the depths. One day, during her thirteenth year, she came upon a grand chamber. From the entrance, there was a bridge that crossed a pool that was fed by still-functioning fountains around its edges, and which must have somehow been drained in turn. Otherwise, the entire room would have long since been flooded.
On the other side of the bridge, there was a circular island, its floor carved with runes that she did not recognize or understand. This was a different language from every other part of the complex.
At its heart, was a low pedestal with a crystal lying atop it. He padded up to it and furrowed her brow. This was something wholly new, and she could not resist the urge to reach out and prod at it with her paw, ready to pull it back if anything bad happened.
She wasn't prepared for what did happen.
The moment she touched it, the large gem seemed to jump to life. At first, she thought that she had knocked it from the pedestal, but no... that wasn't what had happened. It bounced and wobbled around for a moment before it settled into place above the pedestal. It pulsed with waves of energy, which radiated out to fill the dome of the room as it spun there.
Helen wasn't sure what she had just done... and was fairly confident that it hadn't been a good thing. Still, she couldn't help but watch as more of the mysterious runes were carved in raw energy on the dome of the ceiling. She watched for a short while before she backed away worriedly and then made her way out of not only the room but the ruins as well.
Loping through the jungles back to her family's home felt... awkward now, but she just pushed through it, needing to get back as quickly as possible, lest she be blamed for anything. Still, she was no prepared for what she encountered when she arrived.
Before she even made it up to the archway into the ruins that her father had claimed as their home, she could hear sounds of excitement and jubilation coming from inside. She quietly padded up to the entrance and was shocked to see the others... standing on two legs.
She paused, looking down at her front paws, and she quickly understood why her normal loping movement had felt wrong to her. Her paws were no longer the broad pads they had once been, and her forelegs had changed shape. They had become... like a human's hands and arms.
She looked down at the rest of her body, twisting herself to investigate before she realized that, like her brothers in the courtyard, she too had taken on a humanoid shape. She frowned and started to straighten out, rising up onto her hind legs. No... her legs. The others were arms now.
She took a deep breath as she stood there at the entrance to their home, only to recoil and try to tuck herself behind one of the pillars supporting the archway when she saw her father come into the space.
It wasn't that he looked angry. No... he looked excited... elated... and in very many ways, that was an even more terrifying sight. He had, if anything, grown bigger... so powerfully muscled, his face even fiercer than it had seemed before. He looked as though he considered this transformation a triumph of sorts. She dreaded to think what he would do now.
She slowly crept around the entrance into the courtyard, doing her best to look as excited as the others, though she still looked nervous and wary around all of them. But... that was hardly unusual for her. It was her normal state around her family.
"At last! The fates are with us!" Zaros bellowed from the middle of the courtyard. "The world wants us to succeed... the world wants us to reclaim our birthrights!"
Her siblings cheered, and she knew well enough to play along right now.
"We will start with the nearby villages... bring them to heel under our rule. It is a humble beginning, but they will be the first stepping stones to our rise to greatness," he snarled.
Helen flinched at that, grimacing as she worried about what he would do to the human settlements. She couldn't do anything to stop him... or even try to dissuade him from his plan. She could only go with her family as they set off toward the nearest village. It was several days away since they had settled just that deep within the untamed jungle. Still, they moved with purpose.
Eight tigers set to descend on the poor humans who had no idea what was about to befall them.
When they reached the edge of the village, Zaros sent Jacob, Martin, and Lucas to scout around the perimeter of it, wanting to know the lay of the land before he struck. When they returned a short while later, their expressions were one of shock and amazement.
"Father," Jacob said, his eyes wild with excitement, "The humans... they're like us..."
Zaros blinked and stared at his son. "Explain."
"They have fur... they have been changed, but where we gained more human-like forms, they have taken on more animalistic forms."
Zaros grinned broadly at that, standing tall over his children. "If there had ever been any doubt... the world is paying the way for our dominion," he said, his teeth gleaming in the sunlight that filtered down through the canopy.
He didn't wait for his sons to rally behind him or finish processing the news, he simply began striding directly toward the village. His sons were left to quickly follow his lead, falling into formation behind their father, with Aman at his right hand, looking just as proud and terrible as his father.
As they entered the village, the place was a scene of chaos, the newly changed furs frantically trying to make sense of what had happened... how their entire village had been transformed in an instant. When they saw Zaros striding into the village, many of them panicked and rushed to their homes, cowering away from him while about a dozen of the men, who had become creatures like bulls and wolves came to stand ready to meet Zaros, brandishing weapons at him. "Halt! Do not come any closer," the bull at the head of the defending force called out to Zaros, brandishing his spear at him.
Zaros laughed and stood just out of reach of the spear, smiling down at the bull. "Brother. You have nothing to fear from me. I bring glad tidings," he said, just so full of confidence and arrogance. The defenders looked taken aback... confused by his words. "I am not here to attack you," though that had been his intention on the way here, his plan had changed in an instant, and it was like the old plan no longer even existed in his memory. "I am here to lead you to our glorious purpose. You have been blessed by the wilds, which have been corrupted and tainted by humanity for countless centuries. I am the avatar of the wilds, and I am here to lead you in reclaiming the world from the taint of humanity."
The bull wavered but still scowled at Zaros. "We were human until now. You would have come to destroy our way of life? We lived at peace with the wilds, and you would have attacked us."
Zaros grinned down at the leader, "The peace you shared with the wilds is why you have been blessed... freed from your corrupt humanity. The humanity of your way of life was necessary to shed, just as the humanity of your bodies. But I will lead you in a new way of life. Together, we shall sweep across these lands and reclaim them for the wilds. Those who are worthy will become as we are, and the unworthy will be brought to heel."
The defenders were feeling very confused at the moment... but Zaros' confidence and certainty... they were hard to deny. The tiger looked to the huts and homes where the weaker furs had retreated. "Brothers, sisters, come out... you have nothing to fear. We are one with the wilds, all of us. You will all have a place within our great kingdom. You will all be free of the shackles of humanity," he said, and those who had retreated into their huts... slowly started to emerge.
Zaros walked past the defenders, who were no longer certain of their purpose, and Zaros walked among the villagers, holding his hands out to them. Some came up to touch his paws, feeling their strength, and he did not lash out at them. He did not attack them. He was... kind to them. When a small child, a little wolf pup, came up to him, he smiled and picked the child up, lifting him to sit on his mighty shoulder, which made the child giggle.
That seemed to relax the villagers, more of whom came out of their huts, crowding around Zaros. He had replaced their fear and confusion with his confidence and certainty. He had become like a saint to them.
Helen's heart sank as she saw this happening. Had all of this been her fault for touching that crystal in the ruins? She was fairly certain that it was. She understood then that she could never let anyone know about that crystal. It was dangerous, and if her father learned of it, there was no knowing what he would do with it.
At this point, her biggest worry was just how far the crystal's reach had already extended... how many humans had been changed.
She had to figure out how to fix the mess she'd made.
As it turned out, the gem's reach had been substantial, extending dozens of miles in every direction. Zaros had quickly mobilized to travel far and wide, going to the impacted villages to draw them into his fold. With each village, he drew the strong men of the village into an ever-growing army, while he made arrangements for those not suited to battle to go back to the heart of their territory.
He loathed to delegate any of his sons to manage the... lesser members of his growing force, but when Helen offered to oversee them, it gave him pause. On the one hand, his opinion of her was... very low, indeed. But... then again, she was a tiger of his blood. Even if she was a female. And in his opinion, a female's place was in the home. He didn't answer right away, but as the village was finishing their preparations to mobilize, he looked to her and jerked his head toward their home. "Take those who are not warriors back to our home. There is much work to be done preparing it to be the seat of a new empire. I trust that you are able to see to the preparation of the land, at least, until I return and can direct the construction of our new capital."
She bowed graciously to him, showing him the deference that he demanded from her. "Yes, Father. I will prepare our home for your arrival," she said, hiding the relief she felt from him. She would have time to figure things out with that stone... possibly even cause a collapse at the ruins there.
She dutifully led the 'civilians' away. Any man fit for fighting, regardless of his level of training, was taken by Zaros, leaving Helen with the women, children, and those not fit to battle. She could already see the shape that her father's empire would take, and she hated it. She understood that he would give little time and attention to the people like the ones she was leading to their new home... and that it would be her responsibility to care for them.
It took a little while longer to bring them back to the ruins complex since not all of them had been able to move as swiftly as her family, but once they were there, she quickly set to work organizing them to work. She started by having them clear much of the brush, so that there would be room to build, but she also quickly delegated some of them to hunt for food.
She was thankful that she'd managed to have them bring seeds and tools with them. As much as her father hated human ways, if they were going to have a city, they needed crops to feed themselves with, and they couldn't just... claw the ground with their bare hands to do that. On top of that, building would require tools and equipment. Her father was an idiot, with no sense of how to actually accomplish anything. But that was born of his arrogance and rage.
As the days went by, more groups of civilians were sent to the ruins, where Helen needed to add them to the different task groups. She was just glad that she'd told the twins that any civilians they sent her needed to come with tools and resources. She dreaded how this would go if she hadn't.
Still, on the first day, she wasted no time in finding the chamber with the jewel in it, where it was continuing to pulse and glow. She scowled at it, reaching out to try to pull it from where it floated. At first, it sparked at her, but when she growled at it and grabbed at it once more, ignoring the jolt, it shattered and crumbled in her grasp. She felt a strange rush of energy flow through her as it did, but she didn't have long to contemplate that as the earth began to rumble and groan.
She did not hesitate and began to run for it, booking it out of the ruin complex before the was crushed under the earth and stone. She saw the opening and dove through it a moment before the stones settled in, sealing off the hidden complex. As she sat there on the paving stones, she let out a breath of relief, grinning as she stared at it. "Well... that solves that..." she said, no longer having to worry about keeping the underground complex a secret from her father. And, for that matter, the gem was no more.
She returned to the worksite, where progress was coming along... very nicely. As she approached, she was greeted by an elderly panther, who smiled and held up a bundle of brightly colored fabric to her. "A gift for you, my Lady," she said. Helen was surprised, gently taking the fabric from the old woman before it clicked in her head. This was a dress. This entire time, she'd been strutting around naked. It had been what she'd been used to as a feral tigress, but... she wasn't one anymore, and with no clothes on... she stood out from all of the others in ways that... weren't the best.
As she handled them, it was clear that she had no idea how to put them on, and the panther smiled softly at her, wordlessly helping her to dress herself. The garment fit her... very nicely, actually, the top covering her breasts and shoulders, while leaving her belly exposed, with a flowing skirt around her waist. She thanked the old woman for the clothes graciously, bowing to her with respect.
The old woman smiled and patted the back of Helen's hand. "It looks very good on you, my Lady. Far better than it ever looked on me in my youth," she said with a small laugh, which Helen returned with warmth.
Within the week, much of the ruin complex was cleared of overgrowth, and many of the trees within its bounds had been felled and processed into lumber. The rubble and debris of the once opulent ruins had been cleaned up and organized. It helped that there were some more powerfully built women who had been overlooked for military service, because of their gender. Her father really was a dyed-in-the-wool chauvinist like that.
With no idea how long it would take for her father to finish scouting the area that had transformed villages within it, she set to work, organizing them into teams based on their skills and abilities. The fields were easy enough to get them set to work on, while others were set to work building housing for the civilians.
As much as Helen didn't want to, she understood that Zaros would be upset with her if she looked after the civilians without making preparations for his army. So, she made sure that she got some of her workers to build barracks for them, making sure that the nicer materials were allocated to that project. She even talked with members from the various villages that had been assimilated into Zaros' empire, seeing if there were any worthwhile stockpiles of supplies left there, organizing follow-up runs to those villages to retrieve more of the materials, authorizing them to make use of the carts and so forth.
At the end of it all, Zaros truly was lucky that he had Helen to handle all of the organizational elements to support his grand plan. On a very deep level, she hated herself for doing all of this to help him, but on a deeper level, she wasn't doing this for him. She was doing this to ensure the safety and well-being of the people who he conquered. Because even though these villages had joined his cause bloodlessly, she understood that they were still fundamentally conquered by Zaros, and would be subject to his displeasure if they did not meet his whims and desires.
Zaros wound up being gone for a few months as he traveled from village to village, sending wave after wave of "new citizens" for Helen to deal with, but in many ways... it would have been more accurate to call them refugees. There were some who had invoked Zaros' displeasure, and she made sure that they were quickly taken to the healers. Thankfully, none of them had any life-threatening injuries... at least none of the ones that made it to her (not that she wanted to dwell on those thoughts more than necessary).
By the end of the third month, no more furs were being sent to Helen, which worried her a bit, but she really couldn't afford to let herself get caught up on that. There was too much to do. Thankfully, with the return trips to the villages, their stockpiles were full with more on the way, and they had even managed to outfit the barracks to a level that she hoped her father would be satisfied with. Looking out over everything that she had built, she actually felt kind of proud of what she'd made, even if it had come from her father's megalomania.
Still, at the end of six months, her father and brothers returned with... what was finally starting to look like an actual army behind them. The furs following in their wake were singing together, and it seemed as though they had... well, been indoctrinated into his view of the world. She was starting to understand why they had been out for so much longer than they had needed to, just to bring the surrounding villages under his control. He had done it in order to build loyalty among the soldiers.
She really didn't want to hear the stories of what they'd gotten up to. Though, she knew that she wouldn't be able to escape that.
Thankfully, from the sound of things, they hadn't been raiding or rampaging. More just hunting and going through drills. That was a relief, at least. This part had been relatively harmless, at least. She would have to hope that things stayed that harmless.
She was... not wrong in her assessments of how her father would run things. Namely, she had been very certain that he would run things very badly. He was a man of grand declarations, and sweeping concepts, not a man with any time or patience for the minutiae of... you know, how to actually govern. None of her brothers were really any help in that regard, either. They seemed far more interested in enjoying the spoils of their father's conquest so far, including hitting on many of the women of the new city.
Helen had to step in more than a few times to get them to knock their shit off, but on the whole, the peace held... even if the women whose husbands had joined the army found their new status quo to be... less than ideal. On the one hand, the men now lived in the barracks and spent their days training, but beyond that, Zaros had really gotten into their heads with his visions of superiority, which now seemed to include superiority to anyone who wasn't of a military caste.
That made life difficult for Helen in keeping the peace within the city... but it seemed that when she had to really confront someone who was overstepping their bounds, they... seemed to lose the wind from their sails faster then she would have expected. It confused Helen why that was the case, but for right now, she used that to the best of her abilities.
It also so happened that when the farmers were having a problem with a particular crop, if Helen came to check on it and tend to the pest or infection, it gave way... without difficulty. The civilian population of the city really started to see Helen as their angel in a way... though Helen at least had the decency to be bothered by that, and refused to take advantage of it. Still, she could see that where she needed to step in... things... really did get better.
The next year was... difficult. Zaros continued expanding his area of influence, at times driving humans out of their villages further and further afield. Soon, the humans of the area began moving away from the area, leaving abandoned, empty villages, rather than face this army of monstrous creatures from the deep jungles.
But soon... they discovered something unusual starting to happen. They weren't just expanding outward, ravaging new territory... they were encountering newly transformed furs fleeing from the human areas into Zaros' lands, having heard the tales of half-human, half-animal marauders in these jungles. They soon came to understand that something... new was going on in the world. There were humans who were simply changing into furs.
Zaros seized on this, declaring this as further proof of the righteousness of his cause, and made it known that any furs that came to them seeking asylum would be taken in and welcomed. What's more, he sent spies out into the rest of India, keeping an ear out for any furs being held by the government. This resulted in several bloody raids, where Zaros made one thing perfectly clear to the governments of the region: Any furs that were held in bondage within Zaros' reach would result in his swift retribution, and that all furs in the region should be brought to his lands to live under his rule.
The cost in bodies that the governments of the area had to pay in their attempts to defy this decree served to cause them to break with the global effort to partition the furs in districts, causing the Indian subcontinent to be the one region with no officially reported districts, despite the size of their population. It did cause some squabbles with the other world powers, but none of them really cared enough to do anything about it. What mattered was that they didn't have furs escaping from the area in order to try to find places to live in their lands.
While Zaros and his army celebrated the new flow of furs into the kingdom, Helen wracked her brain about what had happened to cause this. The crystal was gone... and in the time between their initial conquest and these new furs appearing around the world, there had been no other furs appearing in the world. The destruction of the crystal had seemed to work, but something had changed, and she was determined to find out just what it was.
But she had nothing to go on for further information, leaving her at as much of a loss as to the cause of it all as the governments of the world. It pained her to see news of the TranshumanDistricts, and she almost wished that they had been able to liberate the furs from those places... but then she looked around the land that her father ruled as its absolute tyrant... and she couldn't say that they would have been any better under his leadership.
And so, for the time being, Helen worked to keep the peace and manage the new arrivals... most of whom were not fit for the army and needed to be worked into the civilian population. She could see how much of lost souls these new furs were, and she did her best to care for them and shield them from her father's cruelty.
As the years went on, it really became clear that he didn't care about "freeing the world from the dominion of man"... so much as he cared about power, and having an ample supply of people to exercise it over. There was no grander vision than that.
And so, the next steps depended on her, and she struggled to figure out how to make this kingdom a place where their people could live in safety.