“Axis, damn you!” he roared. Then I closed in with a sweeping swim of a leap in the air and slammed my fist into his jaw, feeling the glory of payback for the blows he had landed on my Destin.
I looked down below me, fifteen feet away, to see my soldiers and Ceritha looking up at me, waiting for my command, as they watched our duel, and then I saw the way the dolgons and firefins were squaring off with each other, darting in and biting at each other, and Ceritha turned to them, hands flailing, trying to communicate, trying to soothe her friends, and I knew I had to save these animals before they hurt each other. Not only for their sake, but for Ceritha’s, too.
Gorgin flashed around in the air and tackled me, sent us flying back to smash into the roof of the gazebo and I found my feet, picking him up easily, holding him up in the air, then body slammed him to the roof, wincing as I heard the rafters underneath splinter with his bodyweight as I smashed shingles to smithereens underneath his back. He fought against my hands at his throat as I knelt into his chest and he slipped one leg around my other leg and kicked. I slipped to the side and he managed to crawl out from underneath me and sail back into the open air, kicking me hard in the gas mask with his boot as he let loose.
I cursed and licked the blood from a hard bit lip. Damnit…
I looked down at Cartari. “Get a unit on that ship!” I shouted telepathically to him. Cartari nodded and quickly assigned a set of twelve soldiers, who ran toward a skiff, far off from danger of the firefins. They sped away to tackle overtaking Gorgin’s ship.
Then I ran off the gazebo and telekinetically flew myself through the air again, but toward where Gorgin was waiting over the heads of some of the aggressively frothing and flailing dolgons. There were puffs of a dangerous seeming purple cloud in the air above a couple of them, just a whiff of poison gas in the air. The firefins were still guarding Ceritha on the gazebo dock, but the dolgons were getting closer and closer, biting out at them, and they were a larger, huskier animal. The firefins had their tails up, threatening to let loose their poison barbs, and the dolgons were going to let loose their poison breath.
“Can you calm them, Ceritha?” I asked, gliding through the air to confront Gorgin again, fists up.
“I’m trying. I need us all.”
“Ok…” I opened myself to my soldiers again. “Soldiers. Everyone. Focus on the animals like I was saying. We need to calm them, now. Before they unleash their breath that might hurt the town… One… Two… Three…”
I felt the collective deep breath my men and women took as they let mindfulness Will overwhelm their minds, the way to access telepathic control, letting a bit of their emotion into their intention… and then they were reaching into their souls and trying to communicate with the animals.
“Love… Hope… Healing… Trust… Love… Hope… Healing… Trust…”
I could feel the message. It was heartwarming. My men and women were trying so hard. I was proud of them…
But will it work?
Eighteen
Ceritha
The gathered collective Will from the surrounding soldiers was a jumble of words and images, but it all left a clear impression to the firefins and dolgons: “Love… Hope… Healing… Trust… Love… Hope… Healing… Trust…”
I reached out as earnestly as I could to the firefins and dolgons where they stirred and roiled, a tempest of spinning scales, barbed tails, and feathered faces below me in the teeming daybreak waters. I opened myself telepathically and tried to bolster the message coming from the soldiers to the animals.
“Please listen to them… Trust us, my friends… We are here to help you…” I showed them images of me on Serpul, helping my firefins and dolgons.
It was working…! The animals were growing less restless. They were calming in their anxious stir. They weren't darting at each other. They weren't huffing out bursts of purple smoke. They weren't raising their barbed tails. They weren't dodging in toward each other and snaking bites at each other's necks or whipping fins at each other's faces.
The rippling waters calmed, and they tread water lightly, just below the surface, listening to our calm call.
The soldiers looked at each other in wonder and their telepathic holds intensified, their messages gaining even more strength. They realized they were doing it, they were connecting with the animals!
I wasn’t sure they could feel any connection back, yet. It didn’t seem like any of the animals were speaking back to them, but obviously the animals were hearing us.
“Don’t trust them!” Gorgin suddenly roared above us. I looked up just in time to see him throw a knife down into the depths. Cartari whipped a blocking telepathic dodge at the blade with one of his own knives, but not before it struck a glancing blow off a firefin's back ridge. The firefin screamed in pain. The animals erupted into an angry shrieking chitter again.
“Soldiers! Bond with me and help calm them again!” I yelled, holding up my hands. We intensified our telepathic melding again, Willing calming goodwill, welcome, thoughts of healing, and hope.
“Cartari,” I said, signaling to the Commander beside me, “I have to go to that firefin and heal him. If it hit one of the dorsal nerves, he may tweak it and paralyze himself. I need to act quickly.”
“How will you get out there?”
“I will float.”
“I don’t know. Those animals aren’t in the calmest state right now. What if they
