Tales of Midbar: Heretical Gods

“It will be better with practice,” said the Briad priest, pushing me back against a table.

“I shouldn’t be forced to practice with you,” I said, giving him one last chance.

His friends, who were gathered round watching, just laughed, except the one who was holding a knife to Breeze’s thoat. He had an odd expression on his face. Outside, the blizzard gave an ominous chorus of white noise, making the restaurant feel very remote.

“If you’re not nice, it will be very bad for your red haired friend.”

“Practice it is then!”

This wasn’t going to be pleasant but I needed the practice.

I'd been practicing for years; on animals and using my special abilities to help with healing. I'd dealt with a couple of pimps and the henchmen of one of them. We knew the time would come when I'd have to put my powers to serious use and I needed to be sure I could control them.

Somebody once told my fortune and said she saw me kissing a man in a temple after which there were monsters and death. Shortly afterwards a man did kiss me, but not in a temple, and then some people died. Around the same time, a mage used Old Magic and produced some pictures of my future. One showed me dressed in a very sexy way and another showed Breeze, my best friend, and myself with a male Temple Prostitute of Strumeg and a couple of other teenages outside the Cascade Hotel in Minris. This made some people think I was or would become a prostitute but I don't know what it means. I am sure some very bad things are going to happen and I will be in the middle of them. That was five years ago but sometimes it seems like yesterday and other times like a lifetime ago. Time is strange when you're fourteen, pretending to be thirteen, look sixteen and have the memories of a woman who lived for centuries, millenia ago. Temple Prostitutes are supposed to stay in their temples and the temple of Strumeg isn't in Minris, a town with no Temple Prostitutes. I started to suspect ... well first let's clarify some things as Indratar thinks this may be read by people who don't know basic stuff.

My name's Eleprin, no family name because that would be familyist. I live in the small mountain village of Minris, in the nation of Pax, on the planet Midbar. Midbar's a small, rocky planet which is ... Oh come on Indratar! There's a glossary, people can look at that if they don't understand things!

A gang of Briad worshippers had taken to going round small villages in the mountains that line the edge of Pax and terrorizing people. Briad is the goddess of discipline and disgust, she's supposed to be Streculic's wife. While Streculic tends to use temptation and trickery to hurt people, Briad is just nasty. People who worship her, which hardly anybody does, think they should organize themselves into groups who inflict pain on each other and anybody else they can. Recently they'd taken over the Crater's Edge restaurant, which sat on the highest point of the pass that led from Minris to outside the Great Basin. They'd set a up an idol of Briad, a naked woman who was simultaneously vomiting, defecating and urinating.

While the Tarm Valley, which includes Minris, is mostly protected from the winds that bring rains, Crater's Edge is not. It's so high it even snows there sometimes. Me and Breeze decided to pay it a visit as I thought I still needed practice with my special power, using telepathy as a weapon. The Briad worshippers lost no time in deciding that we needed raping.

The scumbag started reaching for my neckline, probably intending to get my shirt open.

"Let's start with a blazing migraine," I said.

I felt the scumbag's mine in my head. He gloried in everything most people reviled and craved power. He worshipped a "goddess" who was supposed to be married to Streculic and was normally depicted as a naked woman simultaneously urinating, defecating and vomiting! This was the most unpleasant part of my telepathy weapon, feeling the minds of the scum I used it on.

He screamed, "Zexa's flaming abortion!" with a look of horror, put his hands on his head and dropped out of my sight.

The followers starred, wide eyed and open mouthed, except the one with the knife to Breeze's thought.

"I need practice because I never want to accidentally kill anybody with my power again! I never want to kill children again!"

The crowd were quiet, realizing that something was wrong.

"Ow!" shouted Breeze.

Yes, I'd caught a bit of her mind in my head. It's hard using a telepathy based weapon to hurt hipsickim while there are psychics, particularly anavim, nearby but that's why I needed practice.

"Sorry," I said, standing up straight and finding the scum curled up on the floor. "What about this?"

I got another truly disgusting personality in my head, this time mingled with puzzlement and a bit of fear. The man standing next to Breeze screamed and fell over.

"We're just having a bit of fun!" screamed one man.

I had a flash of bald, clean shaven Purist Pirates floating around me and smiling crualy although the Briad worshippers all had long hair and beards.

"Blond beard," I said, "die!"

Another disgusting personality, getting more agitated. A man who looked part bennis fell over.

"Guy next to him, loss of bladder control!"

Another disgusting mind, not so strong that time as what I was doing was more subtle. The man next to the blond beard scumbag got a horrified look on his face.

Then they finally showed some sign of intelligence, turned and started running or backing away so I had to hit them all with lower body paralysis, getting a really nasty blast of their minds in the process.

"I guess we can experiment on them now," said Breeze, dropping the knife man who'd probably been dead for about a minute.

"Sorry guys," I said, "but I need to practice selectively killing humans. You feces don't really count but you'll have to do."