Published via Ecency

Fell Dragon
Greetings all! I hope you have all had a fantastic week. I am making great progress in my new book and I am enjoying the interactions I am having with the client. As a ghostwriter, it can be very difficult to write a book when the client isn't involved, or overly involved. Luckily, neither is the case with this client.
But enough about my week. Here is the next update! Some adult undertones here so young ones be warned now.

“It doesn’t help that you know a million techniques if you cannot control a single one.” Muttered Doran as he tried to explain to Saita why once more, she was not developing as fast as she wanted. “I mean, it’s fantastic that you can learn so many, but if you can’t even master one you are not going to manage to protect your family once I leave.”

“What if I don’t want you to leave.” Muttered the girl.

Here we go again, thought Doran.

He pointed to the target that had smoking craters all around it, but it remained untouched. “That is not nearly enough to protect anything. What if I needed your help in a fight, and this was all you could do?”

Saita looked at the target and snarled, it was something new she had picked up, and Doran did not like it. He had no idea if it was her hormones playing a role in her behaviour or the frequency of nightmares, she was now suffering that had a direct impact on her sleep.

“I’m trying.” She hissed under her breath.

Doran took a deep breath then slowly let it out. “I know, I know. I shouldn’t expect that much from you.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” she snapped at him.

“Store your hormones, Princess. I am not in the mood for this today.” He said with a straight face.

“I’m doing the best I can.” She yelled at him, balling her fists at her sides in frustration. “I don’t know how to do what you want me to do. I have to form a thought in my head, aim and fire. I don’t know how! You keep talking about your life force as being an extension of yourself, but I don’t understand!”

“Sit down.” He ordered as he pointed to the ground.

Begrudgingly Saita sat down with crossed legs, her hand shoved between the small space between her legs and pelvis, squeezing her chest. She was grimacing in pain. Her late development that had seemed to have stalled for the last year was now rushing to catch up, and everything was in pain, and her moods were everywhere.

Doran squatted in front of her, his elbows on his knees and his fingers forming a tent under his nose. This was part of the training he had not expected to deal with. With Astec it had been easy, sending him off for a cold shower now and again, but Saita had proved somewhat more difficult. He had raised sons, and tutoring a female was alien to him. He had asked Jarah for assistance, but the Butcher had laughed in his face.

“What do you want me to do? Experiment with medicine to control her hormones?” he laughed. “I can barely make a concoction that works on a mild headache for her. Deal with it yourself.”

He would have to change his approach if he wanted to get through to her.
“What are you feeling, Saita?” He asked gently.

“Frustration. Anger.” She hissed.

“Why?”

“Because this is difficult, and everything is pissing me off.” She refused to look at him.

“I know the war is difficult, and you miss Karesh…”

“It isn’t that.” She snapped, and she squeezed her eyes closed.

“Then explain it to me.”

“I feel sick all the time, I am not sleeping, and everything hurts.” She wrapped her arms around her body. “Being 15 sucks.”

Doran chuckled and said. “Yeah, yeah it does, more for me than you as I cannot get you to listen.”

“And I cannot get you to understand.” Whined Saita. “I am listening but your words mean nothing to me. I may have the language now, but I still don’t understand everything.”

“Now there is a start I can work with.” He stood up. “Okay, on your feet.”

Grudgingly the girl got to her feet. Doran showed her his hand and then folded his fingers to make the typical gun shape. “Do you know what this is?”

“You pointing your finger at me.”

Doran pointed at the target and blew a clear hole through its chest, leaving a small smoking crater. Saita’s eyes actually grew wide with shock.

“You have power Saita, far more than what I had as a child, but you cannot direct it. You throw your various attacks wherever with no thought. Make your life force an extension of your body, like a tool, like the shape of a gun.” he showed her his hand again.

Saita looked at her hands and thought a little before she simply pointed to the target. She thought about the target and the various parts she could hit then simply curled her finger back. Doran thought for a moment that he would need to re-evaluate his words when Saita suddenly opened her hand and pointed her palm outwards. The target was shredded by the force she projected.

“That’s one I haven’t seen yet.” He said, trying to hide his shock.

“Kiai used it to kill the flames.” Saita scratched at her scar. “Except she was far gentler. I added more power. It is still force, just more...extreme?”

“Well then. There is your start.” He grinned. “If this is the kind of control you can use on your force ability, I would be very interested in learning how you would make use of this with your fire ability.”

Saita flexed her fingers and looked at the pieces of the dummy lying around. “I’m going to have to kill one day, aren’t I?”

Stunned Doran could only look at her with a frown. He had been training her to think of defending her family, but the thought of having to kill was not one he wanted to have in her head. Yet, he could not lie about it.

“Yes.” He simply said.

“You didn’t even try to lie about it.” She said sadly. “What if...what if I don’t want to kill?”

“Could you stand living with the fact that if you had not killed to defend someone else, there would be a grave in their place?”

“What if I can’t kill?”

“Every human can kill,” said Doran. “What generally stops them is the willpower to go through with the killing or not. When you are defending someone’s life is usually a lot easier.”

“Then why wars?”

Doran was starting to get a little uncomfortable with her questions. “Defending of lives, property, sanity, safety; there are many reasons wars are fought. This one, this one is more honour and bloodlust.”

“Bloodlust?”

“The urge to kill.”

“Who has the bloodlust?”

“I think both sides have forgotten why they are fighting,” said Doran. “Anyway, let’s get you a new training dummy to work on. We have a winner here.”

Month after bloody month the war dragged on with no clear winner. Neither side was willing to back off, and the war had now dragged on for a year. The doctor watched all of this, keeping tags on his experiment. Each time it had excelled at its lessons he glowed with pride. He had created it and it was perfect, but it was starting to get too old now. It would be 16 soon, according to his notes and the creature that had been behind all these experiments had been too slow to bring him what he needed. His research had slowed to a crawl, and he was irritated.

He sat before his computer looking at the latest of the readouts he had gotten from its training. He was glad that the earlier grafts to its long bones had prevented the human doctors from finding his trackers and sensors. He was never too far away from getting what he needed. He was pleased that its mimicry ability had copied just about every power it had encountered but was vastly disappointed that its hormone blocker had failed so miserably.

“Could have done without it having its menstrual cycle. Waste of energy, and for what? It’s not like we are planning on breeding it.”

Then, an idea started to form in his head. “Maybe.”

He brought up some more data and frowned. It had been the only child to survive past the age of five, the rest dying early in their toddler years, he had never considered the possibility that perhaps it too was doomed to fail. But it was viable, it produced eggs. If it got too old for the experiments, then perhaps its offspring could be used. He scratched at his head and flicked through more data screens. More dead experiments needed to be cremated. He frowned. There had been clones of it in that batch. They failed upon birth, and he didn’t know why.

“You share the exact same DNA. How is it you died, and it lived?” He muttered in frustration.

“What are you muttering about?” came the dark voice behind him.

He had long since learned not to jump at this voice, but he frowned. “How do you keep getting past all my defences?”

“Immaterial. I brought you what you need.”

The doctor locked his computer screen, and the data screens floating around him disappeared. He didn’t want his dark beneficiary to know about this plan just yet. He spun in his chair and viewed the tall creature with the long cloak. He had a handheld out with what seemed to be some sort of data storage device. He was frowning heavily.

“You found the data?”

“I did, it was extremely difficult so I will be very disappointed if you cannot use it. I know time is of the essence now.”

“Perhaps, but then again, perhaps not. You haven’t been around for a while. Look here.” the doctor snatched the data device and unlocked his computer screen to bring the data screens back up. “It is actually viable.”

The creature had never liked the doctor and continuously wore a sour look on his face, but not the look changed to one of pure fury. “You assured me that she wouldn’t be!”

“I told you that I did everything possible to prevent it, but you know the old Earth saying ‘Life finds a way.’” the doctor pulled on a glove before gripping a data screen. “Look here. Hormone production is perfect, and it is fertile. It will likely be able to have healthy offspring well into its old age.”

“I didn’t want this.”

“Look,” the doctor shoved the data screen under his visitor’s face. “You dragged your feet in getting me the data I needed. I have less than two years to get a working system that I am supposed to put into it. I am running out of time. If it is viable, its genetics can be carried onto a child that can be moulded with the system. You mentioned the survival rate of grafting of the system was low, so this is another option.”

“No children.” He muttered as he pushed the data screen away.

“Then you better hope that it survives this stupid war and what you want me to do to it.”

“Just look at the data disc and tell me if you can do it or not.”

Grumbling, the doctor slipped the data disc into a slot on his desk. A new data screen popped up, and with his gloved hand, he started scrolling down the information with a smile growing as he read the data.

“I see why we needed to manipulate the bones so early as well as the organs. What did you say about the success rate?”

“One in five.”

“Before the age of?”

“Eighteen was the oldest that this was attempted at.”

The doctor pulled a pen from the mess of paper on his desk and started writing a few notes before scrolling through the data again. He would make notes and mutter to himself now and again before he started chewing on the pen loudly. The creature came to look over his shoulder but could barely make out what the man had written.

“We are cutting it close.” The doctor expanded on a picture on the data screen. “We may have to skip this implant in the brain stem. That seems a little too modified for one of your kind. It may not work on a human, but I guess we will see. Remind me...why are we doing this on a human?”

“Because you seemed to have no problems with your previous experiments on human children before I approached you.”

“Touché sir, touché.”

Rolling the pen in his mouth the doctor thought a few more minutes before saying. “I will need to make and test this on at least one subject in the next year to see what modifications need to be done before it can be applied. I have one clone that is nearing its fifth birthday, it is developing along the same path as the older one, it is likely our best bet.”

“Why do you do this, doctor?”

“Science, what other reason is there?”

“Have you no feelings for the lives that you destroy so easily?”

“You came to me.” The doctor reminded him. “Almost 17 years ago. The numbers I went through were for your experiment, not mine, and anyway, more than 90% of the things downstairs are grown in a tube. Half-lives, nothing more, cattle for science.”

The creature grimaced as the doctor pulled up a picture of Saita grinning at something. He did not want to think of the girl as anything other than a saviour. She might not know it yet, but she had been made for the sake of the universe. This would be the start. If she could survive the insertion of the system, then maybe this timeline…

His thoughts were interrupted when he noticed the picture also contained a young man who appeared to be mock fighting the girl.

“Who is this?” He pointed to the boy.

“If my sources are right, this is the son of the Berserker Viribus, the younger brother to the current human King Pura. Rumour has it the boy is betrothed to the girl.”

“I have heard of this Viribus. He is very powerful, what of his son?”

“He keeps it on its toes that’s for sure.”

The creature scratched at a pointed ear and grumbled to himself. “Fine.”

“Fine, what?”

He pointed to the boy, and the doctor understood.

“Oh, good choice.” he grinned.

And there you have it. Some really dark plans in Saita's future. Will she be able to escape her fate? Or is she supposed to follow a script from a time travel? I guess you'll all see int he coming weeks! I hope you enjoyed the update, see you all on Tuesday!

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