//?A Curious Sergal: Part 8.001
#8 of //?A Curious Sergal
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Part 7:
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//? A Curious Sergal Part 8
Jax approached the Nevrean trader. Having only seen the bird-like species once before (in a trading caravan that passed by his village when he was little over a year old), he had almost forgotten what they looked like.
As he came closer, the Nevrean appeared to tense up, and in the corner of Jax' eye, he could see the Nevrean's hand slowly sliding down to what looked like a weapon in his belt. He crooked his head inquisitively in hopes of presenting himself as a less scary figure just in time to get whacked in the head with the butt of a lance. Before he even hit the ground the muscular arms of the guards that had caught him pulled him up from under his arms.
***
The Commander, the Lieutenant, and Thyl inspected their jet black prisoner sleeping quite soundly in the tied up pile of limbs that he was. The Lieutenant almost thought she heard him purr.
"Who do you think he is?" The Commander asked Thyl.
"I haven't the slightest idea. He could have sent us the note as a warning, but then why did he knock out the guards and try to hide? He could have also sent the letter as a fear tactic" Thyl realized that two sets of eyes were on him, and if he didn't come up with any useful advice quickly, he would be shut up.
"I would advise that we have one of the refugees from the green-belt try to identify him" he resolved.
"Very well, I will have a guard fetch one of them" the Lieutenant said, then nodded to one of the soldiers standing near the doorway.
The Lieutenant took a step towards the prisoner, and then paused. He had started to stir. Trying not to startle him, she squatted down to his level and took a closer look at him. 'He is only a child!' she realized with a startle. Because of his strange features she hadn't realized before, but he wasn't the trained espionage specialist that she had saw walk in only minutes before. He cooed and began to stir. His large orb-like eyes popped open and focused on her. Her jaw dropped the second she realized they were his eyes... and they were completely white.
***
He cooed, and then snuggled up closer to Mother and Father in the soft warmth of their nest. It was so nice that they had returned. He shifted his position once more, to be closer to Mother when he felt a resistance on his wrist. He cracked his eyes open, and the blanket of blissful unconsciousness was blown away by a gust of cold, unloving reality. Mother and Father were no longer at his sides; instead he was propped up on something behind his back, his hands bound right above the base of his tail. And there was a face. When his eyes first cracked open, it had seemed nice, and almost curious. But the more he had stirred the more the disgusting, disfigured mug changed. Its eyes once curious now bulged and its once near-maternal maw (DO SERGALS USE THEIR MOUTH TO CARRY CHILDREN?) now widened itself so far it looked as if it could envelop him whole.
'Oh god! (OR WHATEVER A SERGAL EXCLEMATION IS) It's going to eat me!' He immediately thrashed around as much as he could manage to make himself a trickier meal.
***
The prisoner began thrashing upon waking. She scolded herself for not thinking about what was happening; her wide-eyed expression upon realization of his eye color must have startled him after being having been captured against his will. She first grasped him firm, but gently, on his shoulders as she had learned to do with some of her youngest recruits when they became homesick.
"Hello little one..." she said in her smoothest voice. She may have been raised in the army, but as a female she had enough maternal instincts to know how to treat him. "Calm yourself. You are safe"
The prisoner's violent throes died down, but she could still feel his muscles remaining tensed up under his skin, tightly coiled springs ready to exert as much power needed at a moment's notice should he feel that staying still was not in his best interest.
"We just want to ask you a few questions" Thyl explained to the prisoner. The black Sergal shifted to get a better view of the Talyxian advisor. It was apparent from his curiosity that he had never met a member of Thyl's subspecies of feline. The curious white orbs on the prisoner's head blinked before Thyl had a chance to speak.
"First off, who are you?" Thyl asked.
The prisoner did not respond.
"We do not wish to harm you, but if you will not tell us willingly, we will force you to" Thyl said in a more forceful tone this time. The prisoner shrunk back at his spontaneous outburst. The Lieutenant thought she heard a silent whimper emanate from within his throat.
"Thyl, please..." The Lieutenant spoke to her non-combat counter-part. Then, to the child in her hands, "...we simply want to make sure that you are on our side".
She released him from her grasp and asked him "Why did you give us the note?"
The prisoner seemed much calmer now, but did not respond. After a few moments, he tweaked his head sideways. She was confused, but did the same. While she could not see what his pupil-less eyes were staring at, she could tell it was not him.
"Please, this matter is very important in concerns to our safety...", she glanced back at the Commander and Thyl before turning back and adding in her most feminine voice, "...to my safety" (If the fact that she was his captor made him not speak, let the fact that she was a woman make him speak, she thought to herself). The black prisoner's face took an expression of sorrow, as if he wanted to tell her, but he couldn't... As if he wanted to tell her, but he couldn't because he was not on her side. Almost perfectly on cue, as if the prisoner could hear her thoughts turn against him, he started struggling to wiggle free of his bonds once more.
***
"-we will force you to!"
Jax shrank to his smallest size and whimpered softly (one of the only sounds he could still make with his damaged vocal cords) at the frightening tone of Angry-one.
"Thyl, please..." Armored-one said to Angry-one. He didn't understand what it meant, but upon seeing Angry-one visibly settle down he was quite overjoyed that his life was just that much less in danger, and decided that he did not dislike Armored-one as much as he had before. "...we simply want to make sure that you are on our side."
That part, he did slightly understand. 'BUT I AM ON YOUR SIDE!!!' he wanted to scream out with all the force of his broken vocal cords. This was infuriating. This was why he never stayed in contact with other Sergals. One had murdered his parents, one had decapitated his best friend, and one had tried to kill him quite recently. Now, when he tried to warn them of an imminent attack, they take HIM prisoner!
Armored-one slowly released her grasp on his shoulders. "Why did you give us the note?" He wanted to tell them somehow that he was not the enemy, that he was on their side, but how? He scanned over the room he was in, and something caught his eye. On a table with a large parchment (presumably a map) stretched over it, he could spy(pun not intended) a quill dipped in an ink well. 'Perfect!' he thought to himself, 'communication'.
"Please, this matter is very important in concerns to our safety... to my safety." Jax wished that he could trade his arm, or his leg just to tell her that he wanted to help her. Her soft, helpless voice, though a completely fabricated ploy, for a split second melted the ice that had formed around his heart after years of the frozen wastelands of his life that was the Facility. After that second the moment was over, and he remembered how important it was that this city knew he was on his side. Their lives depended on it. His revenge depended on it. There was too much at stake for him to sit back like he had so many times before. If that quill and ink would determine the outcome of so much importance, so be it. He started to try to wriggle free of his bonds once again to get it. As he tried to shift out of his ropes, his pen slowly slipped out of its pocket on his belt. Though his arms were bound, he had enough slack to reach to his side and pick it up.
***
The Lieutenant leaped back, startled as the black prisoner had somehow materialized a small pointy weapon from out of view in his hands. She held up her claws in defense. The prisoner cowered back into a ball at this spontaneous reaction.
"Lieutenant?!" The Commander raised his voice.
"He has a weapon, sir!"
At this, the black prisoner seemed puzzled, but slowly realization dawned on his face. He pointed the tip of the pen to the tiles on the ground, and dragged it. Wherever it made contact a small black stain appeared.
"An inkless quill?" Thyl voiced his amazement, before chuckling at the Lieutenant's misinterpretations of the prisoner's actions.
"Well... get him parchment" The Commander ordered.
***
Everything was going so well. Jax saw Armored-one grab a blank parchment from a nearby table. They finally understood. That was when the refugee entered. The refugee who had gone mad from witnessing the death of everyone she knew at the hands of the Shigu, and whose mind had been imprinted with the Eye of Death emblem after such bloodshed.
***
The Lieutenant walked to the table and picked up a blank piece of hide for the prisoner to write on. 'Perhaps he can explain why he cannot talk by writing' she mused to herself, her soldier's mind not being accustomed to the intricacies of irony. In the corner of her eye she saw her one of her guards walk in, escorting a beaten and bruised Southern Sergal with tangled hair and watering eyes. She had been the refugee they had found not only yesterday; one of the scouting parties had found her hiding under a log, mumbling to herself about some 'eye' or something. To say that her physical state was slightly diminished after what she had gone through was an understatement. To say that her mental state was stable was an overstatement.
"THE EYE!" she screamed.
"What is it!?"
"THE EYE. the blood. the rivers of blood. AND THE EYE. THE YELLOW EYE. THE EYE THAT RAN WET WITH TEARS OF RED", Her screech/mumbling combo had started to put some of the Lieutenant's guards on edge.
"The scar? Under his eye?" Thyl tried to get a hold of the refugee to keep her from hurting herself in her throes. "Help me with this!"
The Lieutenant rushed over and tried to help Thyl get a better hold of the self-destructive, enraged creature.
In the process, the refugee managed to push the tangled mass of bodies that was composed of her and the two bodies that were trying to subdue her towards Jax. She lashed out at him viciously with her foot (the only part of her body not tangled up with someone else), and managed to cut his leg. As the sticky red blood crept down his leg, Jax realized (from his vantage point in the ball of limbs he had formed for protection) that the ropes that bound his feet felt much less restricting. He popped his head out of his protective ball, and realized the rope around his feet had suffered the same gruesome fate of the skin on his feet, and were lying in shreds on the floor. With the excitement all around him, Jax decided that it was now time to do what he had done so many times before. Run.
***
An hour later... From bad to worse. How had it all gone so wrong so fast? The Commander stopped running. The alley had a dead end. His back was to the wall. "There is nowhere to run, coward!", he heard behind him.
"Why do you invade a peaceful farming town?"
His Northern pursuer grinned. "You and all of your disgusting Southern kin shall serve or die, so is the will of the Brutal General"
The Commander knew this was it. He unsheathed his sword and charged at his opponent, who was wielding a spear. He parried his assailant's first charge, and when he was close enough swung his sword in a mighty arc, leaving a scratch on the Northern youth's armor.
The Northerner reacted quicker than the old Commander could see, and in the time it took him to recoil his sword for another attack, the Northerner was in a crouching, recoiled stance, waiting to exert all the force of his body into the tip of his dagger. There was nothing the Commander could do as he watched the young Northerner spring forward with all his might, and the spearhead tore through the Commander's once proudly-worn armor to the soft sensitive organs underneath. As he lay bleeding out, the Commander had one last glimpse of his city as the fires of such a pitched battle consumed it before the Northerner took out his dagger. He was lucky he did not need to witness what his decapitated head was about to be mounted on.
***
An hour earlier... (back to the paragraph before)
"Restrain her!" the Commander bellowed to the guards stationed nearby. The crazed refugee's violent throes were causing quite a commotion. Out of nowhere, a black shadow shot through the room and darted out the door under the noses of two other guards, leaving a trail of red that had leaked from its injured foot. "Capture him!" He yelled to the two, still confused at what had gone past them. How had everything turned so sour so fast? The two guards both tried to get out the door at the same time, trapping each other and pushing down a scout who had been trying to gain entrance on accident. The Commander wanted to facepalm. Could this get any worse? The scout had managed to crawl through the tangle of guard bodies (as opposed to body guards) and saluted. He looked quite comical, saluting so professionally while surrounded by two guards tripping on each other on one side, and a mad refugee being tackled by the Lieutenant and Thyl. He opened his mouth, and with it the Commander's spirit plummeted.
"Sir, an army is approaching. They carry banners with eyes... that bleed"
Part 9: