Tales of Midbar: Religious Intolerance
After the Trial - Part 1

I didn’t sleep well that night. I could hear Mum and Dad arguing on and off but they were trying to keep their voices down. Therefore, I could only hear bits of it but I got the impression that Dad wanted to kill Lishrashic because it was the only way to protect me from him and it was necessary to send a message that people couldn’t just do what they liked to Winemakers and get away with it. Mum thought that if he did that, we’d be found by the Ermish Love Priest and I’d be a Temple Prostitute and they’d be thrown in prison or worse.

I asked Yoho about this. Then I realized that there was only one solution.

The room above our apartment was vacant so I managed to get into it and retrieve Tianamet, well the idol, you know what I mean. She, it, was the only artifact I could get easily. I put her, it in my school bag. I only had a vague plan as I didn’t know where Lishrashic was and knew that he’d be protected by police, probably including psychics and magi. I was sure that I’d need Breeze’s help.

As normal, I walked to school with Breeze, Irvis and Cloud. It was blue day again, matching my mood. I noticed that people were giving us more strange looks than normal, like they didn’t know what to do about us.

“Why do you have an artifact in your bag?” asked Breeze.

She couldn’t see it. She must have detected it with her magis power.

“You’re not allowed to bring artifacts to school,” said Irvis.

“I thought it might be useful if I ran into Lishrashic but it’s the only artifact I could get. It makes people like it.”

Breeze stared intently at my bag for a while.

“If it was easy to make people like you with magic, we’d be really popular,” said Cloud.

“It has two associates,” said Breeze. “One seems to make it hard to physically damage. The other’s very unusual. I think it must reflect psychic signals similar to the observer, giving them the impression that the artifact belongs to their korbar. There’s probably more to it than that.”

“Dad’s going to kill Lishrashic and get arrested and put in prison,” I said.

“I think a lot of other people want to kill him,” said Cloud, “so they might get to him first.”

“I’m going to kill him,” I said. “I’m only eight so I can’t be charged.”

“How?” asked Cloud.

“I don’t know. I think I’ll need your help.”

“I’ll use a simple binding so it’s easy to reverse,” said Breeze.

“What?” I asked.

“You’ve never done this on humans before!” said Cloud.

“Don’t distract me,” said Breeze. “It looks as if it was designed for this!” She waved her arms around and seemed to be looking and grabbing at invisible things. Then I heard a faint cracking sound from my bag. I felt as if there was an explosion in my head and everything swirled around me.

“Notice anything?” Breeze sneered.

“She’s turned into a nice but rather week anavah,” said Irvis, sarcastically.

“It’s rather subtle,” said Cloud crewly, “and I’m not sure we’d notice if we weren’t looking for it.”

“I don’t really feel good,” I said, “and why have you turned so nasty?”

Breeze made some menacing hand movements and returned to her normal nice but creepy self and I felt less disorientated. In fact I felt as if I was the greatest person in the world.

“That better?” she asked.

“Sure, I’m totally awesome! Don’t you just want to bow down before my greatness arthropodoids?”

“Perhaps you should just ...” said Cloud, humbly.

Breeze waved her hands about to show her inferiority to me.

Suddenly I had a mental picture of a naked man who I didn’t recognize. I wasn’t even sure what race he was. He wasn’t much larger than me. He came flying at me with a big smile on his face and pushed me against some hard surface, I think a wall, grabbed at my chest and kissed me very hard. I wrapped my arms and legs around him and nearly fell over but Cloud and Irvis caught me. I was just being held there in the street with my arms and legs in front of me, my head to one side with my mouth open and breathing very heavily. This felt very strange indeed!

I suddenly felt as if a dark cloud had come over me.

“What was that?” asked Cloud.

“Now?” asked Breeze.

“Don’t ask,” I said to Cloud. “What happened? I feel as if the world is horrible and there’s going to be a disaster and nobody likes me.”

“I’m starting to understand why this sort of associate isn’t used on people,” said Breeze. “Odd as I was sure it was meant to be, perhaps it’s just my inexperience. Let’s try ...”

“Just remove it?” said Cloud.

“What are you doing?” asked Tenenet, who must have sneaked up on us.

We’d reached the school gates and found a group of people, mostly girls but they included Poslit and several other adults.

“Oh nothing,” said Breeze.

I felt as if, well I don’t know. A whole load of strange images swirled round in my head; I was fighting, kissing, holding a baby that was biting my nipple, floating in space in an astronaut suit, ducking from an explosion, mixing up chemicals in a laboratory; and I felt a bit dizzy. I suppose it was a bit like being drunk but I’ve never been drunk so I didn’t know that.

“Lishrashic has to die!” said Tenenet.

The words echoed round my mind and I knew that she believed this.

“And his vagina of a wife,” said another girl.

“Are you with us?” asked Tenenet.

“You think we can use magic or psychic powers against him?” said Breeze.

“Can’t you?” asked Tenenet. “What happened to Pardnis’s arm? What happened when the master used that magic detector on you?”

Part of me wanted to agree with her but I was too busy fighting the strange thoughts swirling round in my head. I was running for my life through a swamp, fighting with the controls of a spaceship and staring into a man’s eyes.

“You hate us most the time then you come to us for help when you’re in trouble,” said Cloud.

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