Chapter Two –Conclusion
Nooj thought perhaps his success in controlling the synthetic arm was due to the early training he had received on his home island. Concentration was the key to it all, that and identifying the mental connectors. When he had suddenly found the link between the receptors of the Al Bhed creation and his own highly disciplined mind, it had become simple to activate the artificial arm as easily as he used his real one. Now, if he could make the connections to the leg as quickly...
"Uh!" he grunted as the machina leg buckled under him, unceremoniously dumping him on the hard floor, his cane skittering away leaving him sprawled like an overturned beetle. As he struggled to right himself, Hypello came running, gathering around with their ineffectual little bluish hands tugging at whatever part of him they could reach.
"Get away; you can't help." He stretched for the cane, which was tantalizingly just beyond his scrabbling fingers. He could get his good leg bent beneath him and pull himself to his right knee but without the cane he could not push himself upright.
"This is absurd," he thought as he glared at the unbending and unresponsive limb. "I'm planning for battle and I can't get off the damned floor. What kind of Warrior can't even stand up without help?"
Then Droga was beside him, alerted by the noise of the fall, his powerful arms pulling Nooj to his feet with one huge tug.
"You all right, sir? Anything broken?" He inquired hastily.
"No more than usual, thank you, Droga. I was in a nasty fix just now." Nooj ground his teeth in frustration and turned to go.
"Mebbe I'll just walk 'long with you to your room. Keep you company, like." Droga casually held out the cane, which he had retrieved from the other side of the corridor.
"That will not be necessary. I do not need company. I can manage to get to my room." He bit the words into short strands with exaggerated care, furious with himself for his inattention. Dreaming about the days when his body was whole and he had a future – he mentally snorted at his carelessness. Well, he had paid for his inattention and the relaxing of his control. Burning with embarrassment, he imagined the sight he must have presented. The shame of being seen like that, helpless as a new-born, scrabbling around on the floor, unable to stand up much less defend himself. What sort of Warrior was that? Was he to be reduced to this? More aware than ever of the clumsiness of his gait, he limped toward his room and his bed and a night of disquieting thoughts, Droga discreetly trailing behind
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Nooj had joined his father, Biyonne shortly after his seventeenth year when he had finished his training to become a Warrior. He had been welcomed by his parent with courtesy but no enthusiasm or ceremony. After all, they were strangers with no contact since Nooj's natal day when his father had carried him from between his mother's legs to the arms of the waiting Elders. The boy had expected to be in awe of the man but what he had not expected was how immature, how callow and ineffectual he would feel. At home, he had been the best in every field and it was difficult for him to adjust to his position as the least able of his father's men, the one who needed things explained. Just watching his father on the battlefield was a humbling experience and Nooj was unused to humility. As a result, he withdrew ever more deeply into his accustomed silence, quietly observing and learning. He knew he was superior to his sire only in his agility and grace, so used those abilities to their fullest, running Biyonne's errands and, in general, acting as his batman in an attempt to earn his father's approval and praise.
Now, many campaigns later, he had gained a measure of acceptance from the Crusaders, who were both amused and impressed by his valiant attempts to equal their leader. And, more satisfying to the youth, he had sufficiently improved to be permitted the right of fighting back to back with the older man, almost as his equal. To Nooj, that was a privilege to be greatly valued since it implied an unspoken trust in his competence and courage. They had never had the long conversations he had hoped for, the ones that would have given him guidance on life, death and leadership, but he had earned the right to defend the back of Biyonne the Undying, to be a part of the most disciplined and daring corps in the Spiran army. On this day, that seemed quite enough.
It was hot and smoke obscured the battlefield while projectiles screamed unseen in the fog and blowing sand. The fiends were endless, boiling up from the ground as though brought forth by the very earth itself. Their tentacles reached for the warriors and the Mages who were trying to protect Spiran forces against the deadly basilisk gaze of the single eye at the summit of the writhing bodies. Already the sand was littered with the stony remnants of men and women who had fallen to that gaze, been petrified and shattered. Other, less dangerous Fiends fired bolts of pure energy that destroyed where they touched. Cries of the wounded added to the cacophony of battle, as did the howls and war-shouts of attacker and defender. The stench was nearly palpable from the bodies and the munitions of both sides. Blood had soaked deeply into the ground and dismembered corpses lay as they had fallen, there being neither opportunity nor time to remove the injured and dead.
Behind the fiends ranged the Llyob. Humanoid but unknown, they were the instigators, the controllers of these brutes that menaced the armies of Spira. The strange, cloaked invaders formed a sort of flexible integument shaping the feral hordes into a single weapon aimed at the middle of the opposing line where a compact core of Crusaders held firm.
In the midst of this chaos, Nooj stood, legs spread for stability, his back pressed against that of his father. They had fought together as Spiran warriors for what seemed an eternity in this time of bitter conflict. Time while he had watched his father leap heedless of danger into the very central maelstrom of battle after battle, seen blows that would have destroyed other men turned away by that great sword and steely wrist. Three years while his keen eyes had looked and memorized and learned – always learned. He had observed and adapted for himself the techniques he saw his father use and had begun to understand why the squadron called the big fearless man "The Undying." But, this battle seemed different somehow; the fiends were more numerous and their defense seemed stronger – it took many more blows to kill them; spells were less effective and the human responses were slower. Gradually, it occurred to him that somewhere, someone was casting magic upon the human army, sapping it of its abilities, negating its defenses.
"They must be suppressing our minds, too," he murmured to himself. "I should have realized this earlier."
He looked across the plain, straining to pierce the dust of the battle and then, suddenly, as the wind lifted the fog for a moment, his hawk-keen eyes saw It - the small group of Llyob Mages on a low hill far to his left. With an inchoate cry of rage, he sprang toward them, his sword raised as he ran, dodging tentacles and weapons automatically with the athletic grace of a youth at his physical peak. Behind him, he heard Biyonne bellow, "Damn you, coward, run from the enemy, will you! Come back - no Warrior..."
He could not even glance back or he would lose sight of his quarry and it would all be for nothing. With a desperate bound, he reached the hillock and with one swing of his sword, cut down the Mages like so many stalks of grass. From his rear, he heard the sudden triumphant cheer of the army as they were freed from the weight of the Black spells and waded into to the fiends surrounding them.
He stood for a moment, shouting exultantly, joyfully swinging his blade against the few remaining enemy within his reach, his Warrior's heart singing within him. Now he must hurry and explain his behavior to that stern, unyielding man - his father. Surely, he would understand that the battle had turned due to his son's actions and be proud. The young man loped proudly back to where he and his father had stood defending each the other's back. No one stood there anymore; instead he saw a shape lying crumpled among the rocks and sand. Biyonne was fallen.
"Father!" Nooj flung himself down on his knees beside the sprawled shattered body of the man he had not known well enough to love. What he saw before him was too terrible for his incredulous mind to process – the massive destruction of the center of the body, the crimson smears where the chest and pelvis should have been. Connected to what remained of the torso by strings of sinew, the limbs were little more than bands of torn muscle and fragmented bone. Only the head was still recognizable as human. The boy gagged, staring into the fixed dark stare of his father's eyes. Inside his head he was still deafened by the persistent scream of 'Damn you –coward'. He was kneeling there, maddened by grief, howling demented denials, when two Crusaders came to him and, lifting him to his feet, compassionately dragged him away from the scene.
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Nooj started awake from the nightmare, sweat beading on his skin. His eyes were stinging as though from the wind-blown sand of that fatal ground and, for a moment, he was confused as to his location and the time. It was too much like the event earlier in the evening. He was again trapped in a hopeless situation from which there was no escape. Why had he not gone back home and sought counsel from the Elder? An unwillingness to accept either solace or help had been a trait of his from the beginning – that and arrant pride. The Crusaders had offered him his father's position and, in time, his cognomen. In his efforts to be worthy of both, he had left much that should have been done unfinished. ...And years ago, he had admitted to himself that much of what he did was to surpass his sire in the eyes of those who had known them both. .
In the paranoiac depths of the night, he wondered if his fate was his punishment for abandoning his early beliefs or – the thought shocked him like the touch of lightning – abandoning his father on that field. It seemed somehow an appropriate penance that the strong, swift, raptor- sighted boy should be reduced to this hobbling, useless man who needed help to see across the room, this experiment, this tool of the Maesters. Grudgingly he confessed inwardly that he had spent the years since the death of Biyonne attempting to expiate his sin in his father's eyes. The motivating force of his existence had become the need to blot out any stain that remained from his father's dying accusation. It made no difference that the sire was no longer there to witness the son's atonement – Nooj was locked into that traumatic moment. It was a slow poison corroding his spirit and driving him to headstrong acts that augured ill for his eventual survival. But he dared not die with the brand of coward still on his soul and burned into his mind.
It was impossible to return to sleep so he struggled from the bed and, wrapping a robe around his bare body, grasped his cane and haltingly made his way to the belvedere at the end of the corridor. A numbingly cold despair gripped him and he felt like a climber on a blizzard -struck mountain, trudging one exhausted step at a time. He stood at the window looking out at the stars and the few lights still glimmering in the city but seeing none of it. The horror of memory was overwhelming as he relived once more the last hours of his father's life.
"What else could I have done that day? We should have talked more but with both of us so reticent... I wish I had known him better... I should have asked questions instead of just watching him... I never knew his age or what he thought of anything. He never praised me and I will never know if he really thought I was a coward...If we had talked more, he might have trusted me then, known what I was doing... Damn, I don't even know who my mother was; I never asked. I never asked anything... "
The dimly lit room was empty save for the distraught man. Suspended as it was above the buildings of the city with a sheer drop to the courtyard below, the lounge gave the illusion of being out of time and space – a soaring capsule on the far side of reality. So much of what Nooj had experienced in the days since the events in the white room was like that – not entirely real, both more and less than a dream. This was the night and the place for facing truth without the protective screens of half lies he had used for so long to shield the unhealed emotional wounds of that day that had seen his actual transition to adulthood. He had built a temple of adulation around Biyonne to house the god memory had created from the man. Now, this night, he must look into his own sanctuary and come to terms with what had changed him that day; death had rendered further self-serving deceits untenable. With a sense of inevitability, he acknowledged to himself what he had for so long hidden in shame. ...He had hated and resented his father. There, he had admitted it but the expected relief did not come. With increasing anguish, he twisted his half-machina body in search of surcease. From the day he had met the cold, hard man who had fathered him, he had envied and hated him. There had been no bonding, only a cruel and demeaning relationship that was more that of master-servant than father- son. He had known from the first that there would be no appeasing of the soul of Biyonne, that the only choice would be to join him, willing or not. It was for that reason Nooj had lost his faith in the comforting legend of the Far Plane. Only with maturity had come the understanding that his father had felt much the same animus toward him – that neither the envy nor the resentment had been his alone.
"We were too much alike. It was inevitable that we would be competitors and enemies when we met. I was driven to supplant him and he could not bear to have his own son challenge him. He had invested his entire existence in being what he was: the flawless leader, the Undying captain. He never wanted to leave off being a Warrior because he never wanted to take on civilian responsibilities; the field of battle was too comfortable for him. Am I the same there as well? Am I condemned to stay what I am until I find a way to die as he did?"
He saw his life and behavior since that pivotal day, recognizing that Spiran strictures and his own rigid upbringing had blinded him to what had actually happened within him then. His essence had been deformed in a radical way, one unacceptable not only to his own people but also the vast majority of the inhabitants of his world. Stripping away all pretenses, he forced his hesitating mind to acknowledge the truth he had heard hinted, whispered when others talked about him. He was a Deathseeker – one of that doomed fraternity of Warriors who sought their ultimate victory in their ending – one of those not spoken of in public because of the disdain they held for the principal ethos of the planet - life and its protection. He whispered the word – Deathseeker – and took it for his own with a feeling of sardonic relief. It defined him.
He leaned his forehead against the cold glass and closed his eyes. So that was it, the key he had been missing. That was the admission he had been required to make. Now that it was done and finished with this had to stop; he was not all that weak. No more brooding like some fluttering priest. No more self-pity. His life had become a series of leave takings, of disentanglements. There seemed to be an endless number of decisions to make and realities to face. This would not be the last, of that he was sure, but it was one more illusion dispelled. He now knew what he was and what he would do. That was enough. He would master the damned leg, get out of this place, and go hunt his doom on the nearest battleground but it must be a death that would clean the stain from his honor; he could not die for a caprice. And, oh, yes, he had promised long ago to make sure his genetic material did not die so he must father a son quickly – if he was still capable. A troubling question crossed his mind. Would a son of his – if such were possible - be as warped as he had become? Probably not, since he could have no direct contact with the boy. He sighed as he contemplated the tasks before him. It would have been so much easier had he been left as he was on Mount Gagazet– that death had been appropriate and splendidly uncomplicated as opposed to this pointless struggle to accommodate the needs of the people who now infringed on his existence. An ironic smile twisted his lips as he visualized the reactions of those other people if he just stepped out the window so temptingly near. Tonight. Now. Of course, he was a Warrior and could not do that – yet.
Nooj thought perhaps his success in controlling the synthetic arm was due to the early training he had received on his home island. Concentration was the key to it all, that and identifying the mental connectors. When he had suddenly found the link between the receptors of the Al Bhed creation and his own highly disciplined mind, it had become simple to activate the artificial arm as easily as he used his real one. Now, if he could make the connections to the leg as quickly...
"Uh!" he grunted as the machina leg buckled under him, unceremoniously dumping him on the hard floor, his cane skittering away leaving him sprawled like an overturned beetle. As he struggled to right himself, Hypello came running, gathering around with their ineffectual little bluish hands tugging at whatever part of him they could reach.
"Get away; you can't help." He stretched for the cane, which was tantalizingly just beyond his scrabbling fingers. He could get his good leg bent beneath him and pull himself to his right knee but without the cane he could not push himself upright.
"This is absurd," he thought as he glared at the unbending and unresponsive limb. "I'm planning for battle and I can't get off the damned floor. What kind of Warrior can't even stand up without help?"
Then Droga was beside him, alerted by the noise of the fall, his powerful arms pulling Nooj to his feet with one huge tug.
"You all right, sir? Anything broken?" He inquired hastily.
"No more than usual, thank you, Droga. I was in a nasty fix just now." Nooj ground his teeth in frustration and turned to go.
"Mebbe I'll just walk 'long with you to your room. Keep you company, like." Droga casually held out the cane, which he had retrieved from the other side of the corridor.
"That will not be necessary. I do not need company. I can manage to get to my room." He bit the words into short strands with exaggerated care, furious with himself for his inattention. Dreaming about the days when his body was whole and he had a future – he mentally snorted at his carelessness. Well, he had paid for his inattention and the relaxing of his control. Burning with embarrassment, he imagined the sight he must have presented. The shame of being seen like that, helpless as a new-born, scrabbling around on the floor, unable to stand up much less defend himself. What sort of Warrior was that? Was he to be reduced to this? More aware than ever of the clumsiness of his gait, he limped toward his room and his bed and a night of disquieting thoughts, Droga discreetly trailing behind
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Nooj had joined his father, Biyonne shortly after his seventeenth year when he had finished his training to become a Warrior. He had been welcomed by his parent with courtesy but no enthusiasm or ceremony. After all, they were strangers with no contact since Nooj's natal day when his father had carried him from between his mother's legs to the arms of the waiting Elders. The boy had expected to be in awe of the man but what he had not expected was how immature, how callow and ineffectual he would feel. At home, he had been the best in every field and it was difficult for him to adjust to his position as the least able of his father's men, the one who needed things explained. Just watching his father on the battlefield was a humbling experience and Nooj was unused to humility. As a result, he withdrew ever more deeply into his accustomed silence, quietly observing and learning. He knew he was superior to his sire only in his agility and grace, so used those abilities to their fullest, running Biyonne's errands and, in general, acting as his batman in an attempt to earn his father's approval and praise.
Now, many campaigns later, he had gained a measure of acceptance from the Crusaders, who were both amused and impressed by his valiant attempts to equal their leader. And, more satisfying to the youth, he had sufficiently improved to be permitted the right of fighting back to back with the older man, almost as his equal. To Nooj, that was a privilege to be greatly valued since it implied an unspoken trust in his competence and courage. They had never had the long conversations he had hoped for, the ones that would have given him guidance on life, death and leadership, but he had earned the right to defend the back of Biyonne the Undying, to be a part of the most disciplined and daring corps in the Spiran army. On this day, that seemed quite enough.
It was hot and smoke obscured the battlefield while projectiles screamed unseen in the fog and blowing sand. The fiends were endless, boiling up from the ground as though brought forth by the very earth itself. Their tentacles reached for the warriors and the Mages who were trying to protect Spiran forces against the deadly basilisk gaze of the single eye at the summit of the writhing bodies. Already the sand was littered with the stony remnants of men and women who had fallen to that gaze, been petrified and shattered. Other, less dangerous Fiends fired bolts of pure energy that destroyed where they touched. Cries of the wounded added to the cacophony of battle, as did the howls and war-shouts of attacker and defender. The stench was nearly palpable from the bodies and the munitions of both sides. Blood had soaked deeply into the ground and dismembered corpses lay as they had fallen, there being neither opportunity nor time to remove the injured and dead.
Behind the fiends ranged the Llyob. Humanoid but unknown, they were the instigators, the controllers of these brutes that menaced the armies of Spira. The strange, cloaked invaders formed a sort of flexible integument shaping the feral hordes into a single weapon aimed at the middle of the opposing line where a compact core of Crusaders held firm.
In the midst of this chaos, Nooj stood, legs spread for stability, his back pressed against that of his father. They had fought together as Spiran warriors for what seemed an eternity in this time of bitter conflict. Time while he had watched his father leap heedless of danger into the very central maelstrom of battle after battle, seen blows that would have destroyed other men turned away by that great sword and steely wrist. Three years while his keen eyes had looked and memorized and learned – always learned. He had observed and adapted for himself the techniques he saw his father use and had begun to understand why the squadron called the big fearless man "The Undying." But, this battle seemed different somehow; the fiends were more numerous and their defense seemed stronger – it took many more blows to kill them; spells were less effective and the human responses were slower. Gradually, it occurred to him that somewhere, someone was casting magic upon the human army, sapping it of its abilities, negating its defenses.
"They must be suppressing our minds, too," he murmured to himself. "I should have realized this earlier."
He looked across the plain, straining to pierce the dust of the battle and then, suddenly, as the wind lifted the fog for a moment, his hawk-keen eyes saw It - the small group of Llyob Mages on a low hill far to his left. With an inchoate cry of rage, he sprang toward them, his sword raised as he ran, dodging tentacles and weapons automatically with the athletic grace of a youth at his physical peak. Behind him, he heard Biyonne bellow, "Damn you, coward, run from the enemy, will you! Come back - no Warrior..."
He could not even glance back or he would lose sight of his quarry and it would all be for nothing. With a desperate bound, he reached the hillock and with one swing of his sword, cut down the Mages like so many stalks of grass. From his rear, he heard the sudden triumphant cheer of the army as they were freed from the weight of the Black spells and waded into to the fiends surrounding them.
He stood for a moment, shouting exultantly, joyfully swinging his blade against the few remaining enemy within his reach, his Warrior's heart singing within him. Now he must hurry and explain his behavior to that stern, unyielding man - his father. Surely, he would understand that the battle had turned due to his son's actions and be proud. The young man loped proudly back to where he and his father had stood defending each the other's back. No one stood there anymore; instead he saw a shape lying crumpled among the rocks and sand. Biyonne was fallen.
"Father!" Nooj flung himself down on his knees beside the sprawled shattered body of the man he had not known well enough to love. What he saw before him was too terrible for his incredulous mind to process – the massive destruction of the center of the body, the crimson smears where the chest and pelvis should have been. Connected to what remained of the torso by strings of sinew, the limbs were little more than bands of torn muscle and fragmented bone. Only the head was still recognizable as human. The boy gagged, staring into the fixed dark stare of his father's eyes. Inside his head he was still deafened by the persistent scream of 'Damn you –coward'. He was kneeling there, maddened by grief, howling demented denials, when two Crusaders came to him and, lifting him to his feet, compassionately dragged him away from the scene.
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Nooj started awake from the nightmare, sweat beading on his skin. His eyes were stinging as though from the wind-blown sand of that fatal ground and, for a moment, he was confused as to his location and the time. It was too much like the event earlier in the evening. He was again trapped in a hopeless situation from which there was no escape. Why had he not gone back home and sought counsel from the Elder? An unwillingness to accept either solace or help had been a trait of his from the beginning – that and arrant pride. The Crusaders had offered him his father's position and, in time, his cognomen. In his efforts to be worthy of both, he had left much that should have been done unfinished. ...And years ago, he had admitted to himself that much of what he did was to surpass his sire in the eyes of those who had known them both. .
In the paranoiac depths of the night, he wondered if his fate was his punishment for abandoning his early beliefs or – the thought shocked him like the touch of lightning – abandoning his father on that field. It seemed somehow an appropriate penance that the strong, swift, raptor- sighted boy should be reduced to this hobbling, useless man who needed help to see across the room, this experiment, this tool of the Maesters. Grudgingly he confessed inwardly that he had spent the years since the death of Biyonne attempting to expiate his sin in his father's eyes. The motivating force of his existence had become the need to blot out any stain that remained from his father's dying accusation. It made no difference that the sire was no longer there to witness the son's atonement – Nooj was locked into that traumatic moment. It was a slow poison corroding his spirit and driving him to headstrong acts that augured ill for his eventual survival. But he dared not die with the brand of coward still on his soul and burned into his mind.
It was impossible to return to sleep so he struggled from the bed and, wrapping a robe around his bare body, grasped his cane and haltingly made his way to the belvedere at the end of the corridor. A numbingly cold despair gripped him and he felt like a climber on a blizzard -struck mountain, trudging one exhausted step at a time. He stood at the window looking out at the stars and the few lights still glimmering in the city but seeing none of it. The horror of memory was overwhelming as he relived once more the last hours of his father's life.
"What else could I have done that day? We should have talked more but with both of us so reticent... I wish I had known him better... I should have asked questions instead of just watching him... I never knew his age or what he thought of anything. He never praised me and I will never know if he really thought I was a coward...If we had talked more, he might have trusted me then, known what I was doing... Damn, I don't even know who my mother was; I never asked. I never asked anything... "
The dimly lit room was empty save for the distraught man. Suspended as it was above the buildings of the city with a sheer drop to the courtyard below, the lounge gave the illusion of being out of time and space – a soaring capsule on the far side of reality. So much of what Nooj had experienced in the days since the events in the white room was like that – not entirely real, both more and less than a dream. This was the night and the place for facing truth without the protective screens of half lies he had used for so long to shield the unhealed emotional wounds of that day that had seen his actual transition to adulthood. He had built a temple of adulation around Biyonne to house the god memory had created from the man. Now, this night, he must look into his own sanctuary and come to terms with what had changed him that day; death had rendered further self-serving deceits untenable. With a sense of inevitability, he acknowledged to himself what he had for so long hidden in shame. ...He had hated and resented his father. There, he had admitted it but the expected relief did not come. With increasing anguish, he twisted his half-machina body in search of surcease. From the day he had met the cold, hard man who had fathered him, he had envied and hated him. There had been no bonding, only a cruel and demeaning relationship that was more that of master-servant than father- son. He had known from the first that there would be no appeasing of the soul of Biyonne, that the only choice would be to join him, willing or not. It was for that reason Nooj had lost his faith in the comforting legend of the Far Plane. Only with maturity had come the understanding that his father had felt much the same animus toward him – that neither the envy nor the resentment had been his alone.
"We were too much alike. It was inevitable that we would be competitors and enemies when we met. I was driven to supplant him and he could not bear to have his own son challenge him. He had invested his entire existence in being what he was: the flawless leader, the Undying captain. He never wanted to leave off being a Warrior because he never wanted to take on civilian responsibilities; the field of battle was too comfortable for him. Am I the same there as well? Am I condemned to stay what I am until I find a way to die as he did?"
He saw his life and behavior since that pivotal day, recognizing that Spiran strictures and his own rigid upbringing had blinded him to what had actually happened within him then. His essence had been deformed in a radical way, one unacceptable not only to his own people but also the vast majority of the inhabitants of his world. Stripping away all pretenses, he forced his hesitating mind to acknowledge the truth he had heard hinted, whispered when others talked about him. He was a Deathseeker – one of that doomed fraternity of Warriors who sought their ultimate victory in their ending – one of those not spoken of in public because of the disdain they held for the principal ethos of the planet - life and its protection. He whispered the word – Deathseeker – and took it for his own with a feeling of sardonic relief. It defined him.
He leaned his forehead against the cold glass and closed his eyes. So that was it, the key he had been missing. That was the admission he had been required to make. Now that it was done and finished with this had to stop; he was not all that weak. No more brooding like some fluttering priest. No more self-pity. His life had become a series of leave takings, of disentanglements. There seemed to be an endless number of decisions to make and realities to face. This would not be the last, of that he was sure, but it was one more illusion dispelled. He now knew what he was and what he would do. That was enough. He would master the damned leg, get out of this place, and go hunt his doom on the nearest battleground but it must be a death that would clean the stain from his honor; he could not die for a caprice. And, oh, yes, he had promised long ago to make sure his genetic material did not die so he must father a son quickly – if he was still capable. A troubling question crossed his mind. Would a son of his – if such were possible - be as warped as he had become? Probably not, since he could have no direct contact with the boy. He sighed as he contemplated the tasks before him. It would have been so much easier had he been left as he was on Mount Gagazet– that death had been appropriate and splendidly uncomplicated as opposed to this pointless struggle to accommodate the needs of the people who now infringed on his existence. An ironic smile twisted his lips as he visualized the reactions of those other people if he just stepped out the window so temptingly near. Tonight. Now. Of course, he was a Warrior and could not do that – yet.