Mordecai sat back on his haunches, stunned as his mind tried to wrap itself around a concept that he had always thought was impossible: the presence of a race of psionic vampires! Was this the reason he was pulled forward in time? To discover this? Regardless of the answers were, Mordecai wouldn't get the opportunity to consider them.
"Stand, knight-protector, so that I may separate your head from the rest of you!" snarled a powerful voice and, with a frown, Mordecai's head jerked up.
He found himself staring hard at the rapidly advancing form of yet another Reaver, equally big and as impressive as the one he had just killed, already sheathed in the red Quaydrim armor of his people. It was time to resume his dark task. 'Vampires or not,' he thought darkly as he swiftly rose to his feet to ignite his sword and bring it to the ready. 'The Reavers are going to die this day!'
The man in black, filled with both Caiphus' god fire and his own native determination, was as good as his word. Wielding his Quaydrim weapons with instinctive skill and fiery desire, he cut his way through the ranks of the Reavers that were sent out, one by one, to face him. Until, as the great sun slipped beneath the horizon to leave only the lesser white dwarf sun to cast its pale light across the twilight-lit glade with its tournament grounds in its belly, he found himself alone on the battlefield.
Stepping away from his latest victory, breathing hard from the effort it had taken to smash his mace into his opponent's head with enough force to kill him through his Quaydrim armor, Mordecai stared down at the Reaver jerking out his last moments on the ground in front of him. Ground that was already well littered with bodies, the Reavers making no efforts to clear their dead. Only the UV fire from the great sun had kept them from stinking throughout the afternoon's heat.
Clutched in Mordecai's right gauntlet was his mace, a seething ball of bright blue energy generated by the blue Quaydrim crystal that jutted from the mace's haft. He had been forced to turn to it, this, the second time, after his opponent had managed to knock his fire sword from his grasp.
The mace's haft spun lightly in Mordecai's quick fingers before, with a thought, the uneasily shifting ball of blue light that sat at its head was extinguished, leaving only a softly glowing crystal in its stead. Then it joined the only weapon that Mordecai had yet to use on the belt, the curious bivalve device, whose purpose the man in black could only guess at.
Mordecai chuckled softly at that thought. There was no doubt in his mind that he'd get the opportunity to find out what it was. There were still plenty of Reavers that needed killing! Although a glance up at their camp at the tournament ground's far end yielded their numbers were severely depleted by the afternoon's activities.
But, before any of those could advance towards him, the trumpet sounded to announce the end of that day's fighting. And, almost in the sound's shadow as Mordecai frowned in disappointment, he felt a gentle touch on the armored sleeve of his right arm.
"Time to retire to our camp and renew your soul, Sir Caiphus," Brin's soft and familiar voice husked in Mordecai's ear. "I believe you've bathed in enough Reaver blood today!"
And so it was a half hour later that found the man in black bathed, wearing a new shirt and slowly chewing his way through an unimaginative but filling meal of black bread, beans of some sort and a chunk of boiled meat, its origins equally unsolved. The meal sat on a plain wooden plate on an equally plain table in front of him. And the unassuming Father Brin sat across from him, a small smile of satisfaction playing on his worn face, as he looked the lean knight-protector over.
"You did well today, Sir Caiphus. Very well! I must say that I'm pleased with how quickly you learned how to use the Quaydrim."
"The god fire itself showed me how," Mordecai replied with a brief glance up at the worn looking priest before returning his undivided attention to the meal in front of him. Quaydrim armor or no, he could feel the drain on Caiphus' untested psionic cortex that the day's battle had brought. He needed to refuel.
"It was as if my hands, legs and arms were guided in the motions they needed to go through in order to use the weapons you gave me." He paused to shovel in another mouthful of beans with the edge of his bread before leaning back to chew thoughtfully, speaking when his mouth was clear enough to do so without spraying the good father with half-chewed beans.
"Yet my training mentioned nothing of the Quaydrim." An eyebrow slowly rose. "In fact, my training was barely enough to teach me how to raise a blade! I'm surprised that, with my rudimentary knowledge, that I actually lived long enough after encountering Vestrun to make it back to the order's camp."
Again he paused to push more beans onto the bread before lifting it to his mouth to methodically take them in.
"Why was I not told about the crystals and what they could do before now, Father?" he softly asked around the mouthful of bread and beans. "I think the hope of them might have saved not only my pain and suffering, but the lives of my fellow knight-protectors!"
"Perhaps," Brin conceded, his smile fading slightly. "But, unlike days of yore when the order's resources were virtually unlimited, we neither had the ability nor the time to teach you and your comrades about the mystical crystals. Nor could we fully educate you in the ways of the knight-protectors! Our last phalanx of trained knights were taken in ambush not but three weeks ago, slaughtering any with experience enough to face the Reavers in this farcical tournament. Instead of giving you and your fellows proper training, we were forced to pluck you from the fields surrounding the order's borderlands headquarters, thrust a sword into each of your hands and send you to Jorik's tournament, ill prepared. Only that way could we hope to face the Reavers without complete and utter shame."
The smile returned briefly.
"And, outside our shame, we were forced by our very vows to protect the borderlands against the Reaver threat. So the order did come, hoping against hope that one or more of you would show the god fire, our only hope of victory. Which, thank the Maker, you have."
"You pitted the entire order and our lives against a hope as tenuous as that?" Mordecai abruptly hissed, his meal temporarily forgotten as he stared hard at the worn-looking priest. "The Council took an awful risk! If I had failed to realize the god fire, I would've died and you all would've been summarily slaughtered by the Reavers with Jorik looking on in glee!"
"Not as great a risk as you may think, Sir Caiphus," Brin pointed out, his smile growing slightly. "You see, each of you were tested by a healer adept at finding the potential of the god fire in the mind. We sent those that scored the highest in that potential. And, of all your brothers and sisters, you, Sir Caiphus, scored the highest to actually realize the god fire. Which, once again praise be to the Maker, you did. The god fire and the Quaydrim themselves finished the rest of your knight's training, instinctively giving you the skills and abilities you needed to defend yourself on the field of battle."
Mordecai nodded at that as he resumed chewing. Indeed the god fire and the crystals seemed to imbue his very muscles and nerves with what they needed to know to fight, and effectively against the Reavers. He swallowed carefully.
"I concede that the rest of my training took place out on the field of battle, Father. But how? How did the crystals and the god fire know to give me the skills that I needed? Do they possess an intelligence of their own?"
Brin laughed softly.
"So full of questions, Sir Caiphus! Very understandable, however, considering what you've gone through today. I will try to give you what answers I know."
Nodding with satisfaction, Mordecai sat back and worked on completing his meal as quickly and methodically as possible as the priest went on, speaking in what could only be described as a lecturing tone. By the sounds of it, Brin had done a little teaching of his own, perhaps even within the order. Which could be interpreted as the old priest being an expert of sorts on some sort of topic. Perhaps on the Quaydrim. If only he could give Mordecai what he wanted to know, it would be perfect!
"In a time lost in the mists of the past, our ancestors discovered the Quaydrim in their raw form. Even then they were beautiful and filled with power unknown to our people. Yet their discovery couldn't have come at a better time: the Reavers were already well involved in their battle against our people, their intentions clear. They would only be satisfied with our complete and utter destruction!"
Brin paused to frown at that point, leaning forward to put his elbows on the rough-hewn table as his thoughts worked visibly behind his eyes.
"It was a time of great horror and bloodshed, my young brother. Many of our people lost their lives before our order was formed with the specific purpose of slowing the Reaver onslaught. The first knight-protectors had to teach themselves how to fight and use weapons that we had to invent, because we didn't have the knowledge or the science of violence and warfare. Most of what we have, we learned by our experiences with the Reavers."
A tired smile touched the worn looking priest's face at that point as he continued to stare into the shifting mists of the past.
"And we learned some brutal lessons, young Caiphus. Very brutal, indeed! The knight-protectors were slaughtered without mercy. The fields of battle literally ran red with their blood, rivers of sacrifice that did nothing to stem the tide of destruction that swept the land, ravaging all that lay before them. Until that day when we discovered the god fire. Through the god fire's ability to bring the Quaydrim to life, we found a weapon that effectively countered the Reavers' awesome strength and skill. Abruptly the battlefields became painted in Reaver blood, not knight-protector."
The tired eyes rose to look into Mordecai's face as he finished the last mouthful of his simple, but filling meal.
"Only knight-protectors with the god fire could make the Quaydrim into the weapons that you now wear around your waist. And only those with great experience in battle could properly use them. Since the god fire comes out of the midst of one's mind to flow into the Quaydrim, bringing them to life, the crystals themselves learned all the skill, knowledge and experience of the greatest of these knight-protectors as they were handed down from generation to generation. It is that learned knowledge that the god fire in your mind is tapping into, stored in the crystals from the earliest days of the knight-protectors, only the greatest skills, abilities and knowledge from the greatest of your brothers!"
"Maker preserve us!" Mordecai breathed, swallowing his last mouthful to speak. "It all makes sense!"
Indeed it did: the mystical ability to summon the Quaydrim weapons, the uncanny speed at which his body learned to move, to strike with absolute precision and unnatural grace. It was the ghosts of knight-protectors gone by that were teaching him how to fight, summoning the Quaydrim when needed and filling him with the ultimate rage that had seen him through every battle he had so far fought. He just hoped that the god fire and the learned abilities of his long-dead predecessors would be enough to finish the greatest Reaver of them all, when he faced Vestrun in battle tomorrow.
Tired beyond words, Mordecai turned in early that night with a final word of blessing from Father Brin. But, lying on his ragged cot all by himself in the darkness of the knight-protectors' tent, he found that sleep was no where to be found as he stared up at the ceiling, going over not only Brin's words about the Quaydrim, but his own discoveries of the day.
He just couldn't figure it out: how did the vampires manage to overcome their weakness to psionic energies long enough to mate with the psionics to form the Reavers? Even a tightly shielded psionic leaked energies during sex. There was no way that anybody, even him, could remain completely shielded in an act that demanded complete and total absorption of his or her attentions. In fact, it was the wonderful thing about making love with a psionic: that blending of consciousness, making love with not only the body but also the mind itself. A very potent lovemaking tool.
Abruptly Mordecai's eyes narrowed as another thought slid into his mind. It would be possible if forced sex was involved. Of course a female psionic would be able to defend herself easily against the unwanted attentions of a male vampire. But a female vampire didn't have the same defenses. A male psionic could easily overcome her then have his way with her. Considering the difficulty vampires actually had in reproducing, she would be strongly inclined to keep the baby, regardless of the father, simply due to their society's demand that every child be preserved.
If she survived having a psionic child with its innate abilities to generate psionic energies in the womb and gave birth, then there was a pretty good chance that the child would be a curious blending of the two mutations. If this was then done on a massive scale ... say, in a Brotherhood forced breeding facility, then there'd be an entire wave of psionic-vampire blends that ran a good chance of being able to breed with each other, thus becoming a breeding population. A population that stood an equally good chance of perpetuating the blended mutation. If they survived their own energies.