Chapter 3 Xolotl
Xolotl
Waking up is hard.
It’s even harder when you’ve been sleeping a very long time, which it feels like I was this time around. I hate feeling disoriented. It fills me with rage, but at least there’s great power in rage. As I stretch, I realize with delight that I’m full almost to brimming with power.
The beauty of slumbering for a long run, I suppose.
The mountain trembles and creaks around me as I shift, and then I force it apart so I can emerge from the depths of the earth and reenter the world. I wonder how long it’s been since I last walked topside. Fifty years? A hundred? More?
As I rise, I hear a strange sound, a bang like. . .could I be so lucky? Could it be gunfire? Am I waking amidst a war of some kind? I can’t contain my smile, which is not the impression I want to make. Before I officially emerge, I shift into my more mobile shape, that of a massive black horse.
Real horses are useless most of the time. Everything terrifies them.
But this form moves efficiently, and it’s something that human brains can process.
Interestingly, though the horse is a prey animal, many humans nevertheless see them as a terrifying threat.
That makes it a predator-like prey animal, and I love contradictions.
Plus, once I’ve selected my general, it’ll be easier to travel with him in my equine shape.
As I near the surface, I hear other sounds as well.
All the screaming’s even more welcome than the sound of gunshots.
Well, perhaps not more welcome, but it’s nice to hear after spending so much time in silence.
I follow the sounds of gunshots so that I exit this pile of rock where the best kind of action’s taking place.
But when I do, the people who stare at me with gaping mouths and goggling eyes don’t look like warriors.
In fact, most of them are downright out of shape.
They have saggy midsections, greying hair, and they’re wearing ridiculous, brightly-colored attire.
I’m not waking up in the middle of a war.
I’m not sure what I’ve emerged in the midst of, but these aren’t warriors at all. The non-warriors run and scream when I appear, like small children with much larger vocal cords. At first, I simply stare, the heat from my rage escaping from my eyes, my ears, and my nostrils in tendrils of smoke.
But then my prey-drive kicks in, and I give chase.
The non-warriors scream louder and scrabble across the rocky ground even faster than seasoned warriors would.
It may not be a war, but it’s very nearly as fun as one.
My rage at being left asleep for so very long while humans completely disregarded the power and sanctity of death pours out of me faster and hotter, and the not-warriors around me actually begin to burn.
I can’t quite help the joy that fills me with the passing of each and every human life.
They fear death so much, but it frees them, too.
Free from the demands of this world that don’t matter. Free from their fears and their petty desires. Free from the chains that tie them down to following paths leading to nowhere.
I watch them carefully as I run, and as the humans burn, their tiny, sparkly little souls float upward and then zing toward me until they pass through me and finally disappear.
I know they haven’t really disappeared—they’ve gone wherever human souls go—but it’s easier to say that than it is trying to describe the release of that light inside each of them.
Even in my glee at my new power surge, I can’t help scanning the humans who are close for my general.
Whenever I waken, I always choose one human, a dark human, a strong human, one who can help me reacquaint myself with a new time and place.
I need a human who’s able to understand me—hence dark—and the humans of this world, so he can teach me how to best accomplish my task.
The fastest way to restore balance for humanity is always to start a war.
When I can target their brightest and happiest cities with it, all the better.
Human suffering’s enough for my brothers, but I need them to die.
And they do, in respectable numbers as I gallop toward them, all except one.
While everyone else in my path is bursting into flames, screaming and running away, or hiding quickly, one idiotic human runs toward me, pointing a gun at my head.
She actually fires all the bullets in her gun trying to kill me.
Her aim’s impressive, and it’s clear that the technology has improved since the civil war I sparked that last kept me awake and powered-up.
I’m sure that helped her to hit me right in the center of my head repeatedly, but it gives me pause.
She’s female, but she’s also angry, unafraid, and very talented.
I slow as I scream at her, and I look at her soul. What I see surprises me. She’s not just a do-gooder heroine who’s trying to take out the big-bad-death-horse. No, her soul’s quite dark.
She’s not a heroine at all.
After her gun fails to slow me down, she throws her arm back, and she hauls off and chucks the handgun at me, the entire thing. It spins round and round before slamming into my chest in a rather solid fashion. I’m too dumbstruck to absorb it.
This girl’s the first warrior I’ve encountered, and she rivals all the males I’ve met in the past.
“Well, shoot. That’s just going to piss you off, isn’t it?” she asks.
I can’t quite contain my glee.
While every other human around us was a coward, after I emerged amid an entire army of not-warriors, could I have actually managed to find a good prospect for a champion this quickly?
Is this girl my general? She’s staring right at me, trying to take me down.
After such a long and disorienting slumber, it would be a huge relief to have an immediate guide.
The feeling when I initiate a bond has never been wrong before, so I reach for her, but she somehow deflects my invitation.
She rejects me.
That’s never happened, and it makes me even more curious.
I consider plowing her into the ground. With her small frame, it would be easy.
I’ve never had a human reject me, and I’m not even sure how she did it.
I didn’t think humans could deflect the initiation of a bond with an immortal creature.
It irritates me, but the thought of destroying such an interesting warrior saddens me further, so I decide to simply pass her by instead.
I’ve nearly run right by her in my rush, the earth opening up beside me as I move, as if to welcome me right back down, when she pivots, slams her arms against my side, and jumps onto my back.
In all my many millennia of life, I’ve never had a human voluntarily, nay, aggressively, leap onto my physical body.
“If you’re going this way anyway, be a doll and give me a ride.” She beams down at me like I couldn’t end her with a thought.
I scream back at her, still running forward, my feet striking the ground like lightning, the crack shrieking its way beside me as the earth shouts at and rejoices in my return.
I consider chucking her into the widening hole, but again, I’m reticent to destroy something I don’t fully understand, and she’s not harming me.
In fact, she’s moving quite comfortably on my back, as though riding a massive, magical stallion bareback is a normal thing for her.
Is it?
And why am I curious about a mere human?
I focus again on the world around me, incinerating dwellings, snuffing out lives right and left, beginning the monumental task ahead of me of restoring some semblance of balance to a world overrun and unhealthily overgrown.
I naturally orient on where I feel the largest imbalance of life, the closest settlement to where we are.
As if she has decided that we’re headed the wrong direction, the human female on my back stops floating in balance above me and starts trying to move me.
She squeezes with her legs, and then she actually grabs my mane and tries to redirect my movement.
I ignore her, of course.
At least, I think I do. But slowly, I start to realize that I’ve somehow drifted away from the large mass of humans I felt up ahead.
As my hooves pound furiously against the rocky ground, I realize the settlement’s now ahead and to the far left.
That irritating and confusing human creature has shifted my course away from the people I intended to kill.
The rage builds up inside of me again, threatening to level the entire mountain.
I look back at her so I can burn her to ash, since she caused these feelings inside of me.
But when smoke from my fury blows into her face, she says, “Dude, someone needs to teach you some manners. That’s just rude, and also you need some massive breath mints, or maybe, like a toilet bowl cake. Those are minty.”
A toilet what? My rage turns into irritation, and instead of incinerating her, I shake her from my back.
“Yep, you’re a grade A jerk. I was trying to help with the peppermint suggestion. Plus, I hear horses like those.”
That’s it. I’m going to kill her. My curiosity’s gone, and all that’s left is annoyance.
I decide to shift into my humanoid form, so that when she dies, she’ll know I wasn’t a horse at all.
As I shift, I decide to tell her off, first. What kind of person just climbs up on a horse she doesn’t know?
One she just tried to kill, for that matter?
“You—” But the soot and ash and rock dust in my lungs makes me half-choke, and that’s all I say before I have to suppress a cough.
“Hey.” She smiles then, and she snorts. “You learned a word. Nice work.”
Is she mocking me?
I think about how she shot at me, even though I must be the scariest thing she’s ever encountered.
She’s clearly well-adjusted in this time, and she’s violent.
Plus, her energy’s dark. Instead of destroying her, I surprise myself by reaching out again and pushing hard.
It works, and I bond her this time. A feeling of accomplishment pulses through me—a rare feeling for me.
I think she’ll make an excellent guide, but if she doesn’t, I can always force her.
Now that the bond worked.
Once the bond settles into place, my fiery throat and my burning eyes stop immediately. I forgot about that, how being bonded to a human who can support and direct my actions helps me to exist here more comfortably. I inhale slowly and exhale, my throat and face calming.
But she’s acting the same, almost as though she didn’t even feel me claim her. I take a step closer, and she backs up, averting her face from mine.
“You are mine,” I explain.
“Yours?” She shakes her head, finally meeting my eyes and then glancing away immediately. “Nope, I’m mine. You are yours. But that was three words. Pretty good job for a newborn baby who throws fiery tantrums.”
It seems like I’ll have to invoke my control through the bond right away. She isn’t showing much respect at all, and while humor isn’t necessarily disallowed, she can’t mock me when anyone else is around. “You’re mine, human. You will help me restore the balance.”
When she continues to stare at me blankly, I decide to show her.
I turn to walk, my boots crunching against the drifts of snow. “Come.”
She struggles a bit, but eventually she stumbles along behind me, starting to understand that we’re connected, thankfully.
We’re moving toward the settlement again, albeit quite slowly in this form.
I’m about ready to shift back, now that she must clearly feel the bond between us and understand her part in this a little better, when she decides to bolt away from me.
Toward the edge of a cliff.
My newly minted general nearly offs herself because she’s an idiot. “Ah, ah.” I catch her, her arms pinwheeling wildly, just before she can crash over the edge and die.
The rocks her boots knocked over the edge skip and bounce their way down to the bottom of the ravine, and she inhales through her nose. I inhale and then exhale gustily, relieved that she didn’t fall and die. I’ll have to be more vigilant and keep a much tighter leash on this one.
On that thought, I decided to plunge into her thoughts, but when I try, I slam headfirst into a block.
Her thoughts, which should be easily readable at this level of physical proximity, are clouded and unclear.
I strain, and still, all I get is something about the color blue. Cobalt? It’s nonsensical.
“Now listen to me, woman.” I growl. “You will not run from me again. You’ll do as I order, and—” I can’t read her thoughts, but as I try, her soul rises up inside her body, shining and shimmering like a twisting, twining ball of light.
Light.
I can’t bond a light and bright soul. My darkness can’t form a connection to someone who’s light.
And yet, I’ve done it, and I blame this infuriating woman.
She’s half light and half dark, and now I’m in real trouble, because my one vulnerability when I wake up this powerful and this rested is standing right in front of me.
If someone should manage to kill this woman, or if she should manage to kill herself, I’d be incapacitated for an unknown amount of time, and unlike every other general I’ve ever bound, she isn’t all dark.
Which means she might want to die, if she discovers the truth.
“How do you feel about starting wars and killing humans?” I glare at her. “Will you help me?”
She spits in my face.
I’ve never wanted to fry, crush, or break a human more than I want to destroy this girl at this very moment. The only thing keeping me from doing it is the knowledge that killing her would send me back to sleep for a very long time.
Still, I consider it anyway.
It might be worth it.
The biggest thing holding me back is the fire in her eyes. If I can convince her to help me, I have a strange feeling that I may have found the greatest general I’ve ever had.