Sssr'dssnssts: 1364 DR
There was a day on which the Golden One came to conquer the pod of Sssr'dssnssts, the day on which the Golden One conquered each of the eighteen pods the Red Master had held. Sssr'dssnssts remembers the day most brightly.
In the caves of home Sssr'dssnssts wrestled with its podsib Rsssjss'nssts. There was a pleasant darkness and salt-scent of the lapping sea, and the strong smell in their breath of jellyfish-prey the pair had caught and consumed before their game. Of the same nourisher and same birthing and identical in natural appearance, this first of Sssr'dss' sibs was as great a match as any; and Sssr'dss was nearing victory through none but its determined will. Today it was not practicing combat with mind-skimming, where the crucial trick was to breach through to only the opponent's combat-reflexes rather than become overwhelmed by a vastness of mental debris. Today Sssr'dss wished to practice pure fighting only. Sssr'dss falsely aimed to Rsssjss' side to provoke a shielding from its sib; Rsssjss grasped at the shifting. Sssr'dss had considered its following move in its head, dreamed clearly of the motion of right-hand bones extending and the vital cut made at the very point of Rsssjss' distraction. Sssr'dss could taste the pleasant victory even now.
But then on that day different to so many other play-wrestlings, the rumblings of a loud call echoed through the caverns, the summons of a Greater, the very earth shifting under a power that was perhaps even that of the Red Master.
"Hasten, Rsssjss!" Sssr'dss reluctantly lowered its hand to cease the fight. Something attacked the pods.
"It may be monstrous," Rsssjss the more fearful responded.
"Then it will be a shape almost suitable for us!" Sssr'dss said. It had not its gift-stripes yet from either Greater One in its pod, but it was only a season from reaching maturity. Would that the Red Master was less cautious in Its ways. It ran to the pod's meeting-place. The Greater One Wsssstssstsss'nssts had been birthed by the same nourishing parent as the podsibs, and Sssr'dss hoped that Wsssstssstsss would recall that the high blood might well appear in it also, especially in a time of crisis.
Sssr'dss hastened along the narrow passageways. Challenges to the Greater Ones were called in the pod-centre; but today, there was merely chaos. Sssr'dss called to the veteran Lsssrsss, a decrepit old one who told tales of impersonating and consuming thousands of primates in its lifetime, and who was always willing to gossip, though generally Sssr'dss preferred to hear the tales of conquest.
"Lsssrsss!" it called. "Where is--"
Asking the feeble old thing, Sssr'dss realized, had been a waste of time.
MY SERVANTS THOSE TRULY SERVING ME TO HALL TO HALL TO HALL
The Red Master. And Sssr'dss had all but missed this event! It grasped at its podsib's arm, dragging Rsssjss onward.
"I do not feel the compulsion-requirement," Rsssjss protested. "Should we not remain, and later--"
Sssr'dss' pod were all running about like stupid primate-animals flopping about with their heads removed, as Lsssrsss' stories often had it. The Red Master's hold upon them was suddenly weak. Sssr'dss felt as if its footing had been lost on an egg-hunt, that while climbing the cliff the rock had turned to none but air, and Sssr'dss was falling.
Sssr'dss would see this event; perhaps it would be the one to rescue the Red Master and prove it could become a Greater One; perhaps any change could occur. A fall was an avian-flight by the proverbs. Sssr'dss felt faint dark stirrings inside itself; it had never known the Red Master's leash so weak before. It had never guessed that it could feel such...uneasiness. But Sssr'dss told itself that it would try.
"Sssr'dss, please--" Its podsib was too weak. Sssr'dss ran to the hall of the Red Master, the protesting Rsssjss drawn with it.
The Red Master lived in luxury within the centre of the nobles' large warren of caves. The centre of it was a large cavern, floored in pale tiles, where blood in fights was often spilled whilst a magical dome confined the combatants. Sometimes the Master forced two Greater Ones to battle each other for Its amusement, sometimes a Greater One to face a beast It had procured, or sometimes even one of the Master's own race, in ritual challenge against each other. The Red Master Itself was undefeated; it had been Sssr'dss' privilege, only once, to watch It destroy a Greater One of another pod who had displeased It.
It was not one of the Red Master's race who battled under the mage-field today. It was a large primate who wore heavy dark armour; the armour of the elven primates was supposed to be fine, so its classification would probably be a human, Sssr'dss thought. Around its chest were strapped a series of small vials, each containing purple liquid; it paused in the swing of its large sword, and raised one of the vials to the darkness of its helmet. The empty glass fell to the tiles, shattered by a step of the primate's metalled boots. From the glittering shards lying about them upon the tiles, the potion was not the first that had been consumed.
"My mind is empty, Sssr'dss..." Rsssjss wailed. The blows of the sword forced the Red Master back; but these did not prevent It from attacking the strange warrior in return. A blinding headache took Sssr'dss, and the voice was restored.
TO ME MY SERVANTS AID ME NOW
The Red Master's tentacles struck the primate warrior a blow that would have felled any Greater One. The warrior did not falter; its sword struck powerfully, and one of the red-patterned tentacle was almost severed. It hung from the Master by a single thread of flesh. The Red Master's scream was terrible to hear for Its servants.
The command forced Sssr'dss and Rsssjss to the crowd massed about the arena, the Greater Ones at the forefront, the mass of the Master's servants attempting some means of breaking through. The sealing was triggered by battle and prevented escape from the duels of the Red Master; it did not need to prevent the escape of this warrior. Sssr'dss caught the beginnings of a chant of a ritual of dispelling from some of the Greater Ones. It recognized Wsssstssstsss'nssts amongst them, a worried look resting on the Greater One's face. The pain of the Red Master continued to throb in Sssr'dss' head.
"We cannot obey the order! Please, can we not run?" Rsssjss pleaded. They could not do that; the compulsion-requirement was too strong. The Red Master ruled them and they could not abandon It.
The primate gulped another potion; discarded another sparkling vial to be crushed. Sssr'dss saw it as though Sssr'dss itself stood in that arena, the primate's height and strong bulk, the enchanted armour, the sword shining some dark colour--Sssr'dss would never have used that phrase before this moment--the horned helmet, and the glowing yellow eyes Sssr'dss saw, as the Red Master flew to hit the side of the arena's shield and the primate turned to face them. It raised a gauntleted hand that held two tentacles; and dropped them upon the ground like so much waste.
Golden eyes. Sssr'dss could no longer call it only, the primate.
TO ME TO ME TO ME...
The blinding headache took Sssr'dss' vision. It heard Rsssjss crying out, and steeled its own jaw. It could be strong in the defence of the Red Master, it told itself. It could be strong if only...
Sssr'dss found itself able to look up in time to see the arena's shield dissipate. But the golden-eyed one was too fast, too powerful, despite the weight of its armour. It had taken up the Red Master; grasped its neck in one hand; and had slain it. Sssr'dss could see the body hanging, the sword withdrawn from it.
Five Greater Ones were the first to attack the primate. Then the battle-dome appeared again in existence; Sssr'dss, who had been running to do likewise, was cut off from it. It would never tell Rsssjss, but it wished to void its bowels at the possibility of battle with that warrior.
Then the one with the golden eyes spoke for the first time, its voice full and deep, speaking the Common tongue.
"I am your new master. You shall serve me, or die now."
Wsssstssstsss, who was quite old for a Greater One, was amongst the five, and became the first to be sliced in two by that sword. Two Greater Ones used magic to speed themselves, mirror images for protection; yet the quickness and strength of the golden-eyed one overcame them. Another cast a spell to wound, which seemed to fizzle and die at the warrior's flesh and only burned its caster; and the fifth of the Greater Ones was simply wounded deeply, flung aside like so much offal. Blood washed over the tiles like a flood.
The exercise had held scarcely ten breaths of time. The warrior marched to the arena's shielding, which still appeared because the last Greater One was dying rather than dead, and the power of his sword was sufficient to break it.
None other dared challenge it. The remaining Greater Ones, and Sssr'dss and Rsssjss and the other lesser, gave obeisance before it. A new master. Sssr'dss knew the absence of the Red Master, and held the thought of the new.
"Our eighteen pods--all our eighteen pods we pledge to you!" the Greater One of the north-west caves cried out.
"All of you will leave with me and join a caravan," the golden-eyed one said. "You will serve the Iron Throne; and my mortal father."
"It shall be as you say, Golden One," a second Greater One spoke; an older being by the sound of its voice. Golden One would be the name of tthe pods' new master, then. "You are more than mortal..."
It was more than mortal. Sssr'dss, on impulse--a simple thought-skimming found but a fraction of what lay on the surface, to the other it did not even feel as an attack--let its mind reach out, briefly, to the human-appearing golden thing. Sssr'dss' probe was narrowed to a needle's thinness, searching for the merest trickle of what lay within the Golden One's eyes. This smallest of glimpses all but destroyed Sssr'dss.
Power. Naught but that golden power lay behind its eyes, exploding brighter than any astronomical light. Perhaps a single word: murder? A fire ignited in Sssr'dss' head that burnt its thoughts to a fragment of ash; and an instant later it was behind its own skull again, with a howling and dark fear that the Golden One had detected it. With trembling terror Sssr'dss watched ready to beg for mercy. The golden eyes gradually turned to a more somber amber, but it was not possible to doubt the fury that could have been summoned back with the briefest of thoughts. Sssr'dss could not stop itself from shivering.
Orders were given. The pods of Sssr'dss' people would follow the caravans, join the Golden One's people, gain power through serving them. Their own people had not even time to clear their dwellings before the departure; there was no need for material possessions by a noble people, but even so Sssr'dss had once valued fishing-nets it had twisted, cunning traps it had laid in the waters. Sssr'dss followed the Golden One with great willingness, knowing its strength and power. The replacement to the Red Master was a better fate.
Clan-legends told of the pods under a band of the Tentacles conquering a tower to the south crafted by the short-bearded inferiors, and that was greatness and memorial amongst their superior people. This, Sssr'dss hoped for down to its shifting still-shivering soft bones, would be identical.
The Golden One was a god, a god in the form of an inferior primate, a deception that marked it akin to the Noble People. They must also pretend not to serve the Golden One, Sssr'dss and its pod and the other pods learned in some order; instead they must feign that the lowly primate masquerading as the parent of the Golden One was their true master, until the Golden One destroyed it.
(The words that Sssr'dss read in the caravans, plucked out of minds far easier than the Golden One's blinding power, were: Father, Son, Merchant. How Sssr'dss longed to steal these inferior forms and to consume the inferior flesh that smelt sweeter than any other it had devoured. It was a deception that marked the Golden One as their true leader.)
The Golden One was the new god of Sssr'dss; and Sssr'dss' only wish became to achieve Greatness and adventure in Its sight.