Antierra Manifesto – Blog post #78

(Oh, where does the time go! – this blog post was supposed to be posted 5 days ago!  Sorry about that. Antierra is fully involved in a fight not only for her life – all fights in the arena are to the death – but one that, should she lose, will have terrible consequences for the women of Hyrete and the secret work of Dr. Balomo and his Cydroids. If she loses her entire effort at making changes for the betterment of the women of Malefactus will essentially be for nought. So she fights on…)
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Again we face each other, crouching, weighing our moves and their chances of succeeding.  The obvious for me would be to kick to the groin with my bionic ankle.  Problem is, he expects me to do that and will have a counter that will take me by surprise.  I cannot afford any surprises.  I forego the temptation and back away a single step.  He follows, comes forward and moves in closer.  I can smell that nauseating body odour of his in a change of breeze.  It smells even more of putrefaction.

End blog post #77
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Begin blog post #78

I must find a psychological advantage, not a physical one: I don’t have one.  I move back another step and stand up straight, lifting my arms over my head as if I were giving him my body.  He goes for the bait and I lower my hands just in front of his face and after smashing my elbows on top of his muscular shoulders I grab his neck.  Before he can twist out of my grip I roll him to the side while dodging a kick aimed between my legs. 

When his leg comes up I release his neck and grab it, pulling it the rest of the way until he’s down in the sand.  I kick sand in his face and let him have the bionic kick in the ribs.  I feel the cracking and hear his harsh intake of breath and gasp of pain.  He recovers and attacks by grabbing my arm and twisting with all his strength.  I have no choice but to roll with the twist and in turn I’m in the sand.  I see his kick and close my eyes and mouth as a volley of sand hits me in the face.  I turn my back to him to pull him down on top of me while I raise myself on all fours.  He collapses on my back and I “buck” him off, jumping out of reach as he delivers another masterful kick that would have felled a horse and certainly broken my leg had I used it to block.  I dodge with a back flip that takes me momentarily out of his considerably slowed reach.

I wipe sand from my face and wiping my hands on my breasts and front, prepare for another attack.  He’s in terrible pain now, an angry, desperate wild boar cornered by dogs.  This is truly the most dangerous part of the fight.  He backs away, drawing me to himself instead of attacking.  I move in, crouching low, my hands almost touching the ground.  I expect him to kick at my face and he does.  I move my head just a fraction to clear his arc and when his foot goes past I grab his ankle, going with the lift.  He was expecting that and as he goes back he puts all his available weight on my holding arm and brings his other leg up and connects with my side.  A jab of searing pain tells me one of my ribs is either broken, cracked or severely bruised. 

I clench my teeth and move in again, as if I no longer cared, swift and deadly of intent.  I seek to grab any part of him and break it.  I duck under a jab and put a full fist in his face, breaking his nose, lips and a couple of teeth.  The skin in my fingers splits and my hand is covered in blood.  I chop at his arm with my wrist instead of hand then use the other hand to grab his left upper arm.  I fully engage the bionics and crush through muscle and tissue to the bone.  He screams and swings at me wildly, connecting my head and I have to release my grip as I feel I’m going to faint.  I jump back, seeing black and feeling dizzy.  He put a hole in my temple and blood is coming out.  I press my hand to it, pull the skin over the hole and scream in turn.  Scream in anger.  Scream to release what’s left of the fighting animal in me.

I regain my sight in time to block another deadly kick.  Now the crowd is standing up and cheering, jeering, booing, clapping, going wild.  The aristocrats are showing they are no better than the rest when it comes to admiring bloodshed and mindless violence.

I must disable his legs.  His kicks are the most dangerous part of his attack and defence.  I attack again, being a little more careful but still acting out my instinctive wild beast persona.  I snarl at him as I charge straight in.  He readies to finish me only to discover it was a feint.  I pirouette to my left and as I fly past him, deliver my own kick with the bionic ankle, connecting just inside the thigh, making him drop to one knee.  I spin again, and deliver another kick to his back and he goes down, rolls to jump up and I’m there waiting.  I grab him by the arms from behind and squeeze until my fingers feel like they are going to explode from the pressure.  I use my chin to dig inside his shoulders and see his face as a mask of pain.  He tries to bring his head down to bite but I’ve damaged that part of his anatomy enough he can’t use it properly.

Putting all his remaining strength in it, he pulls himself forward and sends me flying as I release his arms and somersault away from him, turn and stand.  I don’t feel right, as if one side of my body was dead.  I feel I’m going to stagger and fall.  But somewhere deep within I find a new force, a power to overcome the weakening flesh.  I take hold of the body that doesn’t want to work and move it as if it were on strings, a puppet.  I urge it to stand properly, to move its appendages and consider the next move.

Warmo is in at least as bad a shape as I am by now.  Still on one knee, his face a tangle of hair, mass of bruises, cuts, blood and sand, dragging a foot, he manages to stand.  This is going to decide the issue.  Will he find his own demonic power to pit against my new-found power?  I can sense him searching, trying to tap into my power now.  Focusing hate to me, and that deep and old  fear of men with authority and power that has managed to find me again so long after my lives on Old Earth. 

This is his power over me, he knows.  He pictures himself to me thus:  I see the spy who took over the leadership of the people I had come to love so long ago in Galilee and Judea, the serpent who destroyed the work begun by the man I’d hoped would change things forever.  I see the Christian judge in C-16 who had me tortured and hanged as a witch in England.  I see the father who rejected the blind daughter and condemned her to a short life in the wilds of Scotland in C-19.  I see the husband who beat me regularly in the barn on that farm in eastern France.  I see the SS Obersturmführer in Paris who personally directed the torture of female prisoners connected to the French underground and at whose hands I died.  I see Warmo himself, master of the T’Sing Tarleyn official Inquisition and my recent escape from his clutches.  He shows me that not only is he going to finish the job, but he’s going to get every woman still alive who was released from his torture that day. 

End blog post #78

The Sacrifice

          a poem – by Sha’Tara

“It’s mine to think on, mine to decide, mine to know —
mine to act upon” – so she thinks alone in the dark
as the day wears upon the snows, rivers, forests and mountains;
upon bloodied cities of men and upon their children’s ghosts
as she conceives it all — the torrential flow of despoliation
filling every valley, leveling every mountain, drying every river.

“It is mine to do as I please in this respect!” Invisible
she stumbles through her thoughts, alone in the crowd,
jumbling the words that will not form the proper conclusion
she is looking for in her mind — “mine, not theirs”
she repeats endlessly as the fouled winds suck her breath dry.

“However unacceptable, however deformed, however strange,
my life belongs to me and me alone. It is mine.
Thus am I empowered to keep it, or to give it away:
who shall gainsay me in this? The gods?
Those who had me killed for my healing hands?
Those who said the Devil empowered me?”

“Perhaps the Devil rules this planet of the damned —
his works are plain enough for all with eyes to see —
but if that’s so, the God who craves humanity’s love
most certainly is drunkenly asleep on His crystal throne
with not one daring enough to wake him from his stupor.”

“So, earth, I ask you: if those in whom you trusted
have abandoned you to the ravages of entropy;
forced you to serve them as an aged, denuded whore,
will you accept my help this time around?
Will you speak to me if I bring you the wisdom you lost?
Will you turn your heart to me for the compassion I carry?”

“Will you this time accept the alien cast upon your shores
and agree ’tis time you should humble yourself
before the one who would pardon your waywardness
and teach you the one sure way to save your innocents?
Will you reject your false lovers, your handsome Powers,
your predators whose hearts carry the stench of death;
your oppressors whose mouths are filled with carrion?”

“Will you settle in my cupped hands as a wounded bird,
seeking refuge from your emptiness and loneliness?
Will you draw close to my open arms under the moon
when I offer you my life to heal your boils and open sores?

There is coming upon you and I the day prophesied
when the sun shall not rise as expected and the stars will fall;
when a poison of darkness will seep into your very marrow
and death will proclaim his victory over you and yours.”

“In your pride you said: “This shall never be.”
for the people said you were a goddess of power:
Gaia, they called you, and you accepted this false honour
though it never was yours to accept – and you knew it.
I just wanted you to know that I know – for it was said
that all things would be laid bare, even the deepest secrets
and they would belong to those who sought for truth.”

“Here’s my olive branch, wrought from my heart, my very life,
offered to you without strings attached: will you take it?”
And without waiting for an answer she continues her walk
whether to hall of fame or scaffold, she no longer cares
for now she sees it all and all makes perfect sense.

“Yes,” she sighs, no longer in weakness but in renewed strength:
“I will do what I determined, what I set out,
what I came, to do for ’tis I who since before time
carried the humble title of Gaia the compassionate.

I never lusted after power, I was, I am, I will always be
the giver of Life, the final rest for the innocent:
I AM
                                Woman.”

Does Money Make You Mean?

A rather long but very educational article on wealth and selfishness. In my opinion, well worth the time to read through to the end, especially to the end!

Embrace Serendipity

I’ve been thinking a lot about why it’s dangerous to elect rich politicians.  It’s easy to have an opinion on the subject but facts to support such an opinion seem hard to come by.

In an age where we have more information than knowledge there are a lot of questions that  I find myself hard pressed to answer in a way that other people are happy to hear.  I know I’ve always been a leftie in a right-handed world; I know I’ve always been just little bit socially obtuse; but I look at the world differently than my friends (I won’t even say “than most of my friends” because I know that’s not true).  One of those questions is about why rich people behave as abominably as they do.  Yes — I’m making a value judgment about other people, and I make no apologies because I have seen and occasionally…

View original post 3,524 more words

Antierra Manifesto – blog post #77

(…and the one-on-one to the death battle continues unabated)

However, like Samson recovering his strength as his hair regrows, my Avatari awareness has been returning to me. And the reason is, this battle is for the very soul of T’Sing Tarleyn, hence of Túat Har. On the etheric we are not human combatants but cosmic divinities fighting for the mind of an entire world. One of us wants to own them to devour them one by one; one of us came to redeem and to set free.

One of us is the Demon; the other the Avenging Angel.

End blog post #76
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Begin blog post #77

What I don’t understand is how the Warmo was able to get the rules changed for this fight. What legal technicality was he able to invoke and what did it cost him to buy the judges? Whatever, it’s done and I have to deal with these last minute “improvements” that the crowd I’m sure is really going to get off on. Especially if we come close enough to hold each other in the so-called ‘death grip’ which I’ve heard talk about but never seen done. If it comes to that I’ll know when the time comes to perform this thing. I’ll know what to do.

I know if he succeeds in overcoming me he will bite into my neck and draw my blood while he rapes me, not physically but with his poisoned mind and his scent that will work on me as a neuro-inductor would. He’s shown me by mind-touch the ritual he’s indulged in so many times with women in his torture dungeons. Some of the stories must have gotten out somehow and that explains why there is such a universal hate and fear of him. I can see in his mind that he now wishes he had raped me and drank my blood while he had me in his custody, but then he figured he had all the time in the world and wanted to destroy my will before he destroyed my mind and body. Now he is convinced he can finish the job. He is staring at me and smiling. Involuntarily I shudder at what I sense.

Still waiting for the trumpet call I trance out of Warmo into my own body. I trace its muscles and the bionic and positronic replacements. They seem to be in perfect order. I see nothing that could be taken advantage of except perhaps that massive black-blue bruise with the bleeding skin on my shoulder. But the arm movement is not unduly affected by it and I can easily control the pain. I’m sure the Warmo is nursing worse from my foot stab. Too bad about losing those amazing sandals. Oh well… I have done deadly things with my bare feet in the past.

We’ve moved as close to each other as possible without being able to touch. And we wait. More restlessness. Suddenly several trumpets blare. We’re free to attack each other. I feel strange in this position. I’m used to handling weapons to attack, not do it with my bare hands. I feel terribly naked for a moment and have to play-back many past lives to get some idea how to proceed. I extend my arms, hands and fingers in a straight line towards the Warmo. There is no plan in this except to confuse him and gain a sense of my own reach without my “extenders” or weapons. He would know my move is not a workable tactic and he must also know I would have at least some rudimentary skills to fight hand to hand. He also knows I have a very powerful body boosted by my additional height and length of arms and legs.

Despite all that he can’t help but move in to attempt a grab at my forearms to break them by pulling me down over his leg. My own plan is simple, if dumb. I need to learn what he knows of martial arts. It must be considerable for him to choose to fight me without weapons. I have to assume he knows moves I’ve never heard of. How far back does he extend his knowledge of this discipline? How much of an adept is he?

I bend to his pull and fall across his thigh, then double over and land upright behind him, giving him a powerful kick near the base of the spine. He tumbles forward, gasps and regains his footing two meters from me, whirls to face me and return to the attack. I sidestep his rush and parry his finger thrust at my jugular as he whips by, smashing my fist into his fingers. Crude but effective move taking advantage of his speed. I know I break at least one of his fingers by the expression on his face and the feeling I get in the pit of my stomach.

Again we face each other, crouching, weighing our moves and their chances of succeeding. The obvious for me would be to kick to the groin with my bionic ankle. Problem is, he expects me to do that and will have a counter that will take me by surprise. I cannot afford any surprises. I forego the temptation and back away a single step. He follows, comes forward and moves in closer. I can smell that nauseating body odour of his in a change of breeze. It smells even more of putrefaction.

End blog post #77

Antierra Manifesto – blog post #76

While I draw him after me again I marvel at the design and temper of those short blades in the sandals. It penetrated cheelth as if it was paper and I’d be willing to bet there is hardly any dulling of the cutting edges. Way to go Master Smith, I love you!

End blog post #75
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Begin blog post #76

Chapter 33 – The Fight of the Beasts – Part Two

Three hours into the fight, according to the great wall chrono and finally the trumpet calls the time out for cooling down, drink, weapons switch entailing armour replacements and patch up work on the cuts if needed. My handlers bring a first aid kit, help me remove all my armour since the next fight has to be with the rapier and dagger requiring we do it naked. Using sterilized and anaesthetized fibresteel staples they patch my cut and apply morphing tape on it. I bite on the handle of my rapier to absorb the pain. I nod I am OK to proceed and adjust my sandals.

Since I ‘invented’ the sandals we have been permitted to wear them in combat even when the rules demanded we be naked. Foot wear is not considered part of one’s apparel. Like so many other rules pertaining to the treatment of fighters, rape, and procedural matters of fighting, it would be a complete waste of time to wade through them looking for either common sense or consistency of enforcement. This world is choking on legalistic legalism. They make laws to interpret laws, laws to enforce laws, laws to render existing laws unenforceable. And yet bottom line is, all law breaking is considered a crime, all crimes are a capital offence. What was it that I learned during my days with the Supremacy forces? That when a thing becomes all, it becomes nothing? Absolutism destroys the very thing it would become… or claims to be.

As I prepare my mind for round two, I recall my Teaching to the women in the compound a few days ago. I wonder if they are doing the prayer I taught them. I sense they are. And I look into the sky above for the circling vultures. Hmmm, yes the are still there. Well, I did not say it would happen today, did I. What I said was, it would be a long time before these scavengers are frightened away by the sky boat of the goddess Desert Beast in her green scale suit. A long time. A time to determine whether they chose to become self-empowered, or chose to forget and remain in their slavery. That choice I cannot make for them, only for myself. But perhaps I can help them make it. By example.

In actual fact, the only thing that will send the scavengers away is when they no longer find food outside the great Keep of Hyrete – when they are no longer being fed the bodies of fighters and other female victims of the Power that rules Malefactus.

I drink greedily and surreptitiously slip the stim cube out of a tight lock of hair above my left ear and slip it into my mouth, cutting into it and letting it take effect slowly. Amazing stuff but I can’t understand how anyone could become addicted to it. That sex-slave trainee must have been introduced to it in some bastardized form, with something else in it, added to it or injected in it. Chakr mix? Possible. Or some kind of subtle poison which would explain her insane outburst.

I am able to penetrate the Warmo’s mind block while he is pondering his next moves. In my mind I actually see the attendant inject the poison on the end of the dagger blade, wait a couple of seconds for it to gel and blister the steel, then slip the blade back into its closed scabbard. Subtle enough for the average person, but I’m using Avatari functions today. I’ve noticed that lately they have been returning to me incrementally. I never thought I could use them to actually fight with intent to kill someone. Much to learn, I have!

Strengthened by food, water, stim and the short rest, I slip on the belt that holds the dagger in its scabbard. I take the rapier in both hands, lift it high over my head pointing directly at the sun and perform a high flipping throw, letting the thin blade gleam and vibrate in the sunlight. I wait for the thin sword to return to me and grab its handle as it comes down, blade straight up. Again I lift it high, only this time as a salute. Then I flip it down, tip into the sand and bowing my head, I wait for the centering trumpet.

It seems an unusually long time in coming. The crowd is growing restless without its usual quota of cut flesh, spilled blood and screams from the dying. I wonder too – what’s the hold-up?

A judge in a bright red robe and hood thrown back comes striding into the ring, kicking sand with his bare feet and puffing. He’s carrying a gold circle in his hand meaning he has a priority message. He stops by a group of trainers and handlers who have assembled. He slips the ring up his arm, indicating he is speaking for the Courts and the Law. He points at me and explains something with arm and hand gestures. A handler shakes his head negatively and angrily. The judge points at him and does the hand across the throat sign. ‘Shut up or die!’

A trainer comes over to me. “You slave, take off sandals, now! Fight naked now, no shoe.” I unstrap my sandals and hand them to him. He rips them from my hands and throws them at the judge’s feet.

He yells at me, “Now krosspeeg, you listen. This fight special, different, understand. When challenger drops belt and weapon, you do same or you flogged by challenger, killed. When he ready, you fight – no weapons, understand? If he no weapons, you no weapons. You keep weapon, guards cut arm off with laser.” He says these words clearly so they carry into the crowd.

Then he comes closer to me and under guise of checking my weapons or belt he whispers: “Sorry to you, we must obey Law judge. Big change, big problem with the Warmo. Much evil done. Cannot help you. Must fight bare hands. Sorry you not trained. Much we need you win. You OK now?” I nod and would just love to hug him and assure him it’s all right.

The Warmo has taken off his boots and suddenly drops his belt and weapons. He stares at me and I cast a sidelong glance at his totally naked body and the way his toes curl in the sand. Powerful legs and forearms. Have to concentrate on those. Yes indeed, this is a switch. There has never been a weaponless fight has long as I’ve fought in this place. Only in the killing orgies have I seen people tear into each other with bare hands, or kick each other in the genitals or face. But those were free-for-alls and no one would dare intrude to bring order.

The trainer raises his voice again. “Understand now, krosspeeg? You animal, fight like animal. Beast fight with beast, no weapons.” To avoid punishment or worse, forfeit of the fight, I drop my rapier and dagger belt and the trainer grabs them and throws them at the judge’s feet also.

So what the Warmo let me see in his mind was a complete fabrication, a deception. I understand now what the Warmo is doing. First, by disarming me he’s preventing me from fulfilling my promise, should I win, to cut him down piece by piece and torture him to death. Second, if he gets close enough he will bite me, Vampire fashion and drink my blood to weaken me and strengthen himself. That taste of warm female blood is how he gets his power. I know that even my bionic wrists, which he must suspect I have somehow acquired, seeing as how he destroyed my original wrists on his infernal cross, and the small cube of stale stim I have ingested cannot prevail against what he plans for me.

However, like Samson recovering his strength as his hair regrows, my Avatari awareness has been returning to me. And the reason is, this battle is for the very soul of T’Sing Tarleyn, hence of Túat Har. On the etheric we are not human combatants but cosmic divinities fighting for the mind of an entire world. One of us wants to own them to devour them one by one; one of us came to redeem and to set free.

One of us is the Demon; the other the Avenging Angel.

End blog post #76