THE FOUR SECTORS WARS - Sample Chapters

EIGHT

Laurel bit into the fruit and let its juices trickle down his bare chest. He had a way of savoring food-any food-that never failed to bring a smile to Raikin's face. No doubt an extension of his more animal nature combined with the sense of presence, immediacy, and absorption in the natural world unique to Muritania culture. His ears pricked with the slightest sound in the forest, which he seemed able to translate with accompanying images that also brought smiles to his face as he decoded their meaning, as he was doing now in response to the cracking twigs at the edge of the forest just before the side of the river. Animals trying to sneak up on him never managed to do so, and elicited more pleasure than consternation, though he had none of Linara's ability to make them docile. He just redirected them on their way toward live food they were more likely to be successful with, as he was doing now with that huge constrictor snake slithering down towards from from the top of the boulder.  

Raikin laughed. "Ah, the simple pleasures that occupy you." 

"I can't deny it," Laurel said, relaxing against the boulder, making sure to stay upwind so his pheromones would continue to exert their effect on any creature attempting to come up behind Raikin. It would scare them away, as Raikin too had none of Linara's animal magic to protect him.  

Laurel pretended to look at the sky only to give Raikin chance to peruse his body, covered with no more than a loin cloth, with his eyes without feeling self-conscious. All part of his elaborate seduction rituals. Raikin had to admit his relentless dedication to the task of flirting with him was offset only by his inexhaustible supply of tricks up his sleeve. Laurel must have been able to smell just how much Raikin's own pheromones had dropped off since his crown chakra had become dominant. And it was his way of anchoring him to the physical world. He had gone from trying to distract him and keeping him off Linara to notifying her to dial up her pheromones as well to the same end of grounding him. Now it was all Raikin could do to keep from being sucked into a lover's triangle.  

He wasn't sure he needed the grounding exercise, and for now found it mostly annoying. Then again, maybe they were on to something. Perhaps his own sense of detachment to what was going on in the natural world would only increase without some way of luring him in. After all, how many spiritual adepts resigned themselves to a life of non-participation in worldly affairs, saying, "The world is just as it needs to be?" The implication being that even if mortal minds couldn't divine the larger patterns, and the rightness of things, it didn't mean the Godhead had surrendered its nurturing role and its own dedication to uplifting all lifeforms and reuniting them with its unlimited beatitude. Raikin didn't want to be that kind of spiritual adept, and maybe he would be until he learned to balance his chakras more as Warnak had, until he learned more chakra magic, either from visiting Chakly himself, or indirectly from Warnak.  

When he saw Raikin wasn't taking the bait, and was getting lost in his head again, he came over to Raikin's boulder and flopped down behind him, allowing Raikin to lean against his chest. "Wouldn't want you to get backache. You have such little muscle of your own to rely on. Go ahead, use my chest for support." 

Raikin leaned back into him, trying to get with the spirit of the game. It suddenly dawned on him that, as with so many things on Hitara, there could be multiple meanings behind Laurel's actions. Maybe contact with his body, or just increased proximity to his energy field, helped bring the latest awareness to the surface. "You and Linara are really terrified if you don't make me immune to your wiles that Warnak will get his hooks into me, aren't you? Either by way of his thought projections, or his shape shifting, or some other seductive means." 

"Little bugger stole my magic right out from under me, without me even knowing. So, yeah, I'm a little concerned about him getting to you when your guard is down. No one can maintain hyper-vigilance all the time. Take it from a predator who can sustain the mindset longer than most, way longer, if only to avoid becoming prey himself in a world full of threats, and creatures that come to life just as you're going to sleep."