Tell No One

Tell No One.

Chapter 12.

Master Shaper Mezhan Kwaad’s headdress knotted down tightly to her scalp; there it quivered with the intense emotion it picked up from its host in waves, small chemical changes that were the prelude to something much, much bigger. She was confused, it was the worst feeling for a master shaper to experience, their work was based in understanding how the universe, it’s beloved children – the Yuuzhan Vong – worked. Blessed with the knowledge and truths that allowed them to shape almost anything they desired, just as Yun-Ne’shel created, just as Yun-Yuuzhan was the creator, so too did they create.

But Mezhan Kwaad was of a generation that sought more than what was simply given to them, she was a heretic, accustomed to seeking out new and sometimes elusive truths.
So what made this situation any different? She wondered.

Vua Rapuung had been absent from the damutek for almost an hourly cycle, and she had been puzzling over this ever since. Slumped down wearily upon a large, fleshy polyp that served as a stool, Mezhan Kwaad stared sown at her hands as she placed them, palm down, upon the rust-red coral plinth she had found a rather interesting use for earlier that night.
All this skill she knew she held within, and yet she could not fathom what had made Rapuung so eager to leave. Perhaps the presence of his crèche brother, Hul Rapuung, had been enough to jar the wayward warrior’s conscience?

She wiggled her master’s hand, fingers and tools clacking against the polished surface ominously, she had sensed reluctance in her lover’s words, had she not? Yes, when she had requested that he stay here with her, there had been a subtle undertone to his voice that suggested he wished he could have, subtle indeed, but it had been there. Was this false hope she clung to now? She wondered, a strange pain filling her heart.

Yet left Vua had, and there was little explanation for his sudden change in heart. Hul Rapuung – it had to have been him! Did he know more than he had let on? Would he reveal their secret if he did? Mezhan Kwaad would not give him that chance.
She had managed to persuade Vua Rapuung more towards her views on his religious orthodoxy – yet she had not spoken the words that would either make them, or break them forever.

“There are no gods” She whispered to herself, imagining the words to form tendrils of vapour on the air, cold and virulent as the feeling in her gut.

All Vua Rapuung needed to do was believe these words too, accept them and know it only served to make them stronger.

Uncertainty glittered in the back of her mind, causing her heart to flutter momentarily,

“And if he does not accept?”

As much as she did not wish to contemplate that scenario, it was one she would need to be as meticulous as a prefect over. Intendants were the masters of contingency plans after all, though she could seek no advice on such matters without causing suspicion among those who sought to gain profit from her downfall.
Mezhan Kwaad ceased her finger-drumming, flexing the torturous looking implants upon each finger methodically. What could she do?

A dark, cold and blood-laden mist descended upon her mind, she would do what she always did…
She would shape.

*****
Blood running in gloriously painful tracks down his taut back, mixed with the sweat of exertion and stung with a salty virulence. His coufee now lay, cleaned and gleaming, beside a small plagnith full of venogel. All but the gentle rise and fall of the room occupant’s shoulders had fallen as still as the night cycle that surrounded him.
He had but one thing left to do, and he needed to be certain of it.

During his devotions, Vua Rapuung had sought the guidance of the gods in matters they could surely not ignore. They would be angered, enraged by the audacity to ask what he would, but he had to know.
Their answer had been a swift one, as sharp and decisive as a sacrificial coufee to bare flesh – he must end this.

Deep in the arms of strung out, white-hot agony, he had envisioned what atrocities awaited those who failed to heed the gods due warning. He had seen the bitter and twisted hand of shame befall his domain, spreading a plague of grotesque disgrace over all he cared about. Mezhan Kwaad’s had been the last face he’d seen before the vision’s end, maa’it implanted eyes, so once full of life and wonderment, now stared back at him coldly, lifeless and devoid of emotion. Black tears of blood had stained her cheeks and he had known that instant – his end would soon follow and it would be neither glorious nor a worthy one.

He pushed up from the blood-stained thorn chair, spikes tearing free of his back, legs and buttocks. Mezhan Kwaad would understand, he told himself one more time, he was doing this to save them both – she could go on serving the gods, just as he would do too.
It was time.

The membrane sealing the chamber parted, as he pushed through with one large hand. It was a matter of moments before Vua Rapuung had left the warrior grashals to do the gods’ bidding. Though as he went, the warrior could not help but feel uneasy, as though he would never return to these halls quite the same again.


*****
It was a thing of beauty, Mezhan Kwaad noted, eyeing the bulb containing a small amount of maroon coloured substance. In essence, it looked like a liquid to the naked, un modified eye. But to a shaper’s analytical gaze, it was something quite different. Skittering around the transparent bulb’s interior, were millions of micro-organisms, each one clamouring for release from their natural prison – a chance to breed and spread. Closely related to the bo’tous toxin, these little beauties carried out quite a different task, one that Mezhan Kwaad had specifically shaped them to do.

If just a fraction of these organisms entered a Yuuzhan Vong’s bloodstream, they would attack one’s immune system, making it incredibly hard for any new implants that the host may, or may not, have received recently, to take. Given time, they would breed, spreading to the parts of the individual’s body that were most vulnerable to infection, feeding off the necrotic flesh of festering scars and failing implants themselves until eventually, the implants failed completely. If enough of these organisms were directly introduced to one’s system, the effects would be very rapid indeed and effectively, the host would take on the appearance of one that was disfavoured by the gods.

This had been the favourite tool of manipulative heretics since before Mezhan Kwaad’s crecheling days, normally administered to a rival individual over a lengthy period of time so as not to arouse suspicion. It was an effective way of disposing and discrediting troublesome rivals that refused to go out quietly. Yet it was rarely spoken of, even among the heretical themselves, no one claimed to know it’s origin to the degree that many among the shaper caste believed it a myth created by the shamed themselves.

She placed the bulb down upon the coral slab, diligently watching to make certain she spilled none of it’s contents as she pulled open the plug. From one of her lean fingers, a needle-like hollow spine protruded spitefully into view. Mezhan Kwaad inserted said spine into the neck of the bulb, syringing up the contents completely – and she did so with care, even her own body would not be able to produce a remedy quick enough to halt this level of infection, should she unleash it by accident upon herself. Her hand however, would contain the biot’s for as long as she wished.

Disposing of the contaminated specimen bulb, she repressed a nervous quiver of anticipation – it would not come to the worst, Hul Rapuung’s threats would amount to nothing if he were shamed, and Vua Rapuung? She would make him understand. He loved her, he would know this was the only course of action left to take! They would be free to continue their acts in secret, Hul Rapuung’s words would fall upon deaf ears, no matter how much he shouted.

When the master shaper turned back toward the rest of the chamber, she noted that the nerve cluster at the side of the entrance membrane had turned a deep red in hue, indicating that someone was waiting outside.
Smoothing down the folds of her figure-hugging oozhith, then stilling her headdresses nervous sways, she approached the entrance, her face a mask of infinite calm.

The porthole dilated, revealing before her a tall, slightly build shaper initiate, his headdress knotted in deep supplication.

“Speak, initiate,” Mezhan Kwaad uttered as evenly as she could.

“Master, commander Vua Rapuung has arrived and is waiting in the central chamber, he informs that he was ordered to speak with you on matters of his domain’s grashal regeneration progress.”

Mezhan Kwaad’s heart seemed to freeze in the pit of her chest cavity, what was he doing?! For barely a moment, she contemplated weather or not the initiate had noticed her surprise, but she batted that thought aside like it was an errand crecheling.

“Truly? The hour is late, I trust this is urgent?” Her irksome manner may yet throw any suspicion the young initiate might harbour, firmly out of the window.

“My life in payment if it is not, master.”

He was a good initiate this one, the master shaper reflected, steadfast and dutiful – she’d remember him.

“That will not be necessary, show commander Vua Rapuung to the succession pools, I have matters of more importance to attend to therein.” She responded, tone unfaltering.

The initiates headdress rearranged it’s self in a genuflecting, but affirmative position. He did not speak, nor raise his gaze, merely turned to do as he was ordered.

So Vua Rapuung had returned after all? She should have been overwrought with joy, relief! So why was it then, that when her shapers hand ached with the heavy burden it carried within, she felt an incredible sense of foreboding?

*****
The wet sounds of water bubbling away serenely, as mernips surfaced for air, before diving back under the surface of the succession pool, was a pleasantly calming one. Water vapour curled up from the surface in sinuous tendrils where it met the cool air within the caverns themselves. Light, so softly beautiful, danced off the moisture-slick surfaces of yorik coral ledges that lined the pools, illuminating them with a blue tone synominous with the bioluminescent fungi lining the walls.
It was, for all purposes, a stunning scene. How ironic then, Vua Rapuung thought, that this – the place of their union – should be the setting of the end for he and Mezhan Kwaad’s relationship.

All though one of the master shaper’s own initiates had led him here, Rapuung kept to the shadows that clung to the outer reaches of the cavernous area like a prowling fighting beast. Within their concealing folds, he felt some sense of reassurance, as though the gods themselves were preparing him for what tasks lay ahead of him. Though his heart weighed heavy in the pits of his chest, he’d not come this far to relent to his simpering wants.

Mezhan Kwaad arrived only seconds after the initiate had left the warrior alone. Tired and forlorn as she looked, Vua Rapuung felt a band constrict around his heart, stealing his breath away with it – she looked as stunningly beautiful as the scene he had walked into, her lean frame and all it’s implants, as full of life as the energy Yun- Ne’shel herself breathed into every living biot aboard this worldship. Her eyes, shimmering slightly, caught the glint of reflection from the water as she scanned the room for his presence.

The warrior faltered then, fearing that in taking these next steps, this would be his last glimpse of the shaper he loved, that when he next set eyes upon her, things would never be the same again. The ever constricting, invisible band around his heart tightened it’s hold, and he shifted his heavy weight uncertainly on his feet.
The gods were watching, their scrupulous and scathing gazes fixed down upon his every movement – he was a warrior of the Yuuzhan Vong, and they did not baulk at the thought of impending confrontation.

Mezhan Kwaad stood, back to the entrance to the caverns, her headdress swaying gently as it picked up on the delicately subtle changes in the air molecules – much the same way an oozhith fed off of them. When the hypnotic dance atop her head had shifted suddenly, she had known she was not alone.
Maa’it’s flickering to her right, she watched as the tall warrior materialized from the shadows, and she bid her hammering heart be still. Something in the way he moved, the emotional steadfast resolution she could see in his eyes, made her feel uneasy. Had she made her decision too late? Had Hul Rapuung dealt the damaging and fatal blow?

As Rapuung closed the space between them, Mezhan Kwaad decided that it would be she who was the first to break the unforgiving silence.

“I had not expected your return so soon, if at all.” Though her words had been softly spoken, as though it caused her great sadness and disappointment to utter them, she could clearly see the pain they caused him echoing briefly in his eyes.

Vua Rapuung nodded solemnly, his manner one of reluctant duty, a manner Mezhan Kwaad could only equate with how it had felt as a shaper initiate, placing her own, natural hand inside the serrated maw of the cutting creature’s mouth for the first time.

“I have returned, and reached a decision.”

The shaper canted her head slightly, her eyes meeting his, tendrils curling at the tips to betray her pensive state.

“As have I,” She informed him in return.

This seemed to surprise the warrior, his gaze narrowing for a second, as though he could see right though her. He remained that way for several moments, until whatever words he had been meaning to speak, unclogged his troubled mind.

“What it is you wish to speak of, may be rendered inconsequential when you have heard what it is that I have realized.”

He spoke in a low and decidedly ominous tone – so much so, the shaper wondered if he were trying to intimidate her as he would have a disobedient underling. The idea would have made her bristle, if it were not for his next words.

“This cannot continue, you and I. You were right, Mezhan, we cannot continue down this path.”

It was as though time it’s self had stopped still. Noises of the caverns’ illustrious, biological life, faded into a bleak nothing, punctuated only by the sound of her own shallow breathing. The shaper’s blood ran colder than she could imagine, and had it not been for the touch of the warrior’s calloused hand upon her upper arm, Mezhan Kwaad feared she may have forgotten to breathe at all.

Inhaling so sharply that it rattled her lungs to do so, she slowly brought her multifaceted gaze back into focus again. To see Vua Rapuung staring back at her, half concerned and half expectant, she found her own voice strangled by an all encompassing sense of anguish. It was with a great amount of effort on her part, the words were only torture to form on her lips, but she proceeded regardless.

“I was right?”

Vua Rapuung nodded once,

“We are blasphemy, I thought that the gods had granted us dispensation, just as you did, but they have tried to warn us. Do you not see?”

The warrior ran a hand through his loose crop of unruly hair, rearranging it into an even more bedraggled state that was testament to his urgency to arrive here and tell her what he had. Upon his body, the shaper could see many wounds along with the still-weeping scars and devotional marks of sacrifice.

This wasn’t happening, Mezhan Kwaad told herself sternly, this was not happening because she had found a solution so final, this did not need to happen! She had to make him understand.

“-Sending my crèche brother to discover the truth, it was just the beginning,” Rapuung was drawling on, becoming more and more animate by the second, his actions mimicked by the imposing shadows he cast upon the cavern’s walls. “- this is the only means of redeeming ourselves, if we were to falter now –“

The impending whirlwind of emotion contained within the shaper, crashed down upon the barriers of her now-fragile mind, shattering them like brittle phong coral into spiteful shards that formed words she could no more control, than she could stop the impending Yuuzhan Vong invasion. The tendrils of her shapers headdress, whipped about in a state of antagonized fury as she wrenched her arm free, and shoved the warrior away from her in the process.

“There are no gods!

Vua Rapuung stumbled back in stunned silence, thrown off balance by her words as much as her actions – if not more. Eyes wide and unblinking, he struggled to comprehend the true levity if his lover’s words, and indeed if he had heard right to begin with. She would damn them both, right here where they stood!

No less defeated for her blasphemous words, the master shaper dared to clarify them,

“There are no gods, Vua Rapuung, it is you who does not see, you and the majority of the caste into which you were born!”

Rapuung was still speechless, no doubt wrestling with faith and sensibility within the private confines of his own mind. His expression was so unreadable, Mezhan Kwaad had to wonder if she’d managed to kill him with words and air alone. So what would he do when he regained that strict sense of control? Would he sacrifice her right here and now? No – she was not done yet.

Pulse racing, the shaper dared to reproach the dazed and confused warrior, though she did so with extreme caution, one wrong move and she would end him – could she though? Could she do that? Her form shook visibly, wracked by the cruel hands of recently unleashed anger and a deeper angst.
Gingerly, she reached for his wrist, which she then encircled within the grasp of her shapers hand. She must not break, not here, not like this.

“They are nothing but a lie, an antiquated means of controlling both the castes and shamed alike! You must see,” Mezhan Kwaad began,

“We are free Vua domain Rapuung, we are free to do whatever we wish so long as we are strong!”

She cursed the bitter sounds of pleading that interlaced with her voice, chiding herself for her weakness, he would see it too, but what choice did she have? Deep inside herself, the shaper could feel a part of herself begin to wither beneath the tenuous pain she felt, with every passing second it grew in intensity – a pain she could not allow to overtake her, become her. She had not lost yet.

Mezhan Kwaad loathed herself for this thoroughly, she had broken shaping protocol after protocol, without fear or a sense reproach for her actions, and now she had foolishly placed the one, fragile thing that could destroy her, beneath the very heel of the one person she could not have.
How had she been so foolish?

Vua Rapuung surprised her, pulling her hand closer, allowing her to release her grip before pressing the palm against his chest, as though inviting her to sense his most intimate emotions, to confirm they were real. The information flooded into the analytical probe implants imbedded in her fingertips, filling her vaa tumour with plethora upon plethora of chemical reactions, but she needed no confirmation at all – all she needed to know was the words he was to speak next.

Looking down at the shaper, the warrior hoped to all the gods that she understood how much she meant to him. That even though the words she had spoken, outed her as a blatant and unabashed heretic, she deserved a chance at redemption too. In time she would understand what it was to follow the true way- as she must have, once.
She was more Yuuzhan Vong than many of the warriors he trained with on a daily basis, steadfast and strong in her convictions, unafraid in the face of death and as fiery in intensity as the rage of an enraged Vua’sa.
He loved her, and this would be his parting gift to her, heretic or not.

She had stilled now, headdress unfurling as thought to stretch up repeatedly for the small rays of light, still dancing about the cavern, as though she waited for his hungry embrace –it would not come.

Gently, yet firmly, he held her at arms length, pushing her way, mind near tearing in two as he saw what he thought was betrayal reflected in her shimmering, green eyes.

“No, Mezhan Kwaad, my decision stands.”

At first she shook her head, tendrils falling into a strangely structured display of weaves, perhaps in denial? Perhaps something equally as incomprehensible, he’d thought better of her.

“Your decision?” the shaper exclaimed uneasily, “This is what you wish? You would refuse me?!”

With each new word, her voice grew stronger, drawing on the fury within her , her actions less and less listless. It was as though she was gathering all of her remaining strength for something, as yet, unseen. Something, Vua Rapuung thought inwardly, that would be abhorrently ineffectual by this stage.

“Dwi, I wish it.” His warriors resolve had slipped perfectly back into place again, as though a switch had been thrown, a curtain of death brought down upon the spectacle that had been their short lived affair.

And as he began to turn away from her, taking all his torment and strung out pain with him, Mezhan Kwaad felt her intense outrage rise just that bit higher.
How dare he! How dare he cast her aside as though she were nothing but the chelipeds off of a tasty morsel of a yanskac!? And with him he would take her life, her dreams, her only chance at ever having truly felt. All her work, her research, would be lost forever along with it – her body left to fester in the depths of the maw luur, with the rest of the worldship’s waste and heretics.
She could not let that happen, how could she let him do this?! He wouldn’t get away with making such an idiotic fool out of her, that her rivals – particularly the decrepit Yal-Phaath – would pounce on the chance to debase her. Mezhan Kwaad vowed that none of her latter thoughts would become a reality.

Waiting until Vua Rapuung got as far as the exit valve, the shaper felt her shapers hand ache for release, the organisms contained within her whipsting, as volatile as her burning temper.
He would rue the day that he ever chose the false gods over her, and he would come snivelling, crawling back to her on his pitiful belly, when he realized his grievous mistake!

Rage boiling over the brink of sanity, the shaper moved almost without thought, raising her cruel hand and viciously unleashing the virus-laden whipsting at her former lover’s scar-ridden back. It only took one casual flick of the wrist and the whipsting was hissing through the air, boring a deep hole in Vua Rapuung’s shoulder, where it deposited the horrific virus, before then withdrawing and preparing for another strike.

The warrior hissed through gritted teeth, spinning around to fix Mezhan Kwaad with a disbelieving look of anguished surprise. The shaper stood there, ready, seething with a pain that gave her a source to feed from, no doubt. When he did not retaliate, she seemed no less enraged than she had before, though this time it was she who let a mask of caste resolve fall upon her words and impulsive reactions.

“This is my damutek, warrior, and you have no reason nor use for being here – leave!” She forced back the tears that threatened to overwhelm her, what feeling was this? She wondered over and over the thought as the words hammered through her mind. What feeling was this? Had it been that long since she had thought as a shaper should? And if so…had it been too long?

Yes, too long, there were no feelings, she remembered, only chemical processes, and the reactions that made them up or triggered them. At the end of the day-cycle, every living thing was just a mass of cells, tissue and complex synapses.

Vua Rapuung stood unsteadily, attempting to examine the wound she had inflicted with one of his large hands, without taking his eyes off of the shaper for too long. The wound throbbed with an agonistic intensity most unfamiliar with puncture wounds and impalement. Certainly, the pain he would have felt in the latter, would have been more than most could take, depending on the circumstances, though he would have embraced it gladly. However, this was quite something else, and his nerves continuously screamed out for relent. His glazed over gaze, flitted back to Mezhan Kwaad once again, her words had drawn him from his torment, calling out to him in the darkness like the angered sounds of a wounded predator in warning.
He paid her words heed, but replied in question.

“What have you done to me?”

Mezhan Kwaad, did not respond – her icy gaze remaining fixed upon the warrior in a mark of defiance. This was exactly where she remained until finally, Vua Rapuung –convinced he would get no more in the way of information from her- left her alone with her thoughts.

Barely a moment passed after the membranous entrance had snapped shut, than the master shaper, Mezhan Kwaad, sagged into herself, falling to her knees, heavily, at the edge of the succession pool.

It was perhaps familiarity with an older, infused pantheon, that she told herself the pain she felt ignite her nerves, as she clasped her hands crossed over her ribs, was some minor discomfort of unknown origin. Not out of an attempt to assuage the unfamiliar sobs that wracked her body. Nor that the droplets of water, that fell into the cool, gently rippling water of the succession pool, were in fact not her tears, rather that they were moisture collecting upon the high arching ceiling above, falling prey to the gravity of the worldship’s pull.

What have you done?

The words seemed to be a whisper on the non existent breeze. And for them, she had only one answer.

“What I had to.”

*****

The day cycle was just breaking in the communal areas of the worldship by the time Vua Rapuung made it back to the warrior grashals.
As promised, he did not find his crèche brother, nor indeed a slaying squad, waiting for him when he arrived.
Good – let this mark a new beginning, the warrior thought to himself.

The wound in his shoulder still pained him immensely, alive with a virulent pain that seemed to spread with every measured breath he took. The hit had jarred one of his new coral implants, and it now hung at an odd, sideways angle when compared to where it had been. It was no matter, he would seal it with a neathlat to prevent infection, and arrive at his post as usual.

Duty, and the pain – both physical and emotional- would serve well as a means to atone. When he had embraced it fully, then the gods would know he had always been a true devotee to the Yuuzhan Vong way. The only way.
Yet in his heart, though he would never dare speak it again, Vua Rapuung would always love the shaper who had captivated his thoughts so often lately. His recent wound stung as a permanent reminder, she had given him his favourite scars – he just had no idea how much he would live to regret and despise that statement.


Epilogue:

Vua Rapuung awoke once more to the festering, acrid smell of decay. It had been almost half a klekket now, and the shapers prognosis had not been a good one. Indeed, even when he had taken the initiative to increase his devotions and sacrifices to the gods, the infections causing his implants to fail did not let up in the slightest. If anything, by the day, they increased in their persistent mission to destroy his implants, cause his scars and even the most fresh of wounds to become inflamed and disgustingly infected.

This is not the will of the gods…it is not! – Rapuung thought constantly, he’d done everything they had demanded of him, and yet this apparently impending shame afflicted him? Impossible!

The priests condemnation was swift and final, he had received it a day prior to his being ostracized to the grashals, reserved for workers and shamed ones – cast aside like some imperfect yammosk youth, or an marred coufee.

“You! Shamed one, guuvuk!”

A voice, as gravely as his own once had sounded, snapped him out of his anguish with enough contempt to make him start. The owner – a rather lanky looking warrior, who could not have been long out of the crèche, and was certainly not higher in the echelons than Vua Rapuung!
No – not higher than he would have been, should have been.

The familiar crack of an amphistaff rang shrill in the mal-formed cavity that had once been his ear, as a white-hot pain blossomed upon his side from the impact of a strike. It was only by sheer force, that the ex warrior fought the urge to whip the weapon away from it’s wielder and show the young ingot how it could truly be used effectively. He would never get used to this, his fate, he would never accept it – and that, perhaps, was why these warriors tended to pick on the newcomers especially. Breaking them down, piece by piece, until all that was left was the empty shells of beings that had once been great Yuuzhan Vong.

But Vua Rapuung was not like the others, he would not stand for labouring days upon end in the gardens of the worldship, he would not be some slave to those who should so rightly be beneath him. This was not his fault, the gods did not disfavour him! This was the surreptitious work of another…..and he would bet his life on the fact that he knew who.

“Guuvuk!” The warrior ordered again – Move! And Vua Rapuung did so, to join the group of pitiful and festering, just like himself, next to the entrance of the worker grashal.

“You are fortunate, snivelers!” The young one now addressed the entire grashal full of sleep-shaken shamed ones,

“The gods have granted us passage to a rich new world, one our shapers will cleanse given time. You, pitiful and unfavoured by the gods as you are, will depart for this world also; you will aid them by performing the menial tasks beneath the worthy.”

Vua Rapuung issued a low growl of disapproval and the shamed that stood closest to him cast him wary glances. Had this warrior been under his command –

He paused that thought right where it was, not caring to go back over it one last time. One day he would be redeemed, because Vua Rapuung knew that none of what afflicted him was because of the gods, the words he spoke in defiance when questioned about his downfall? They were no madness he had ever heard of – but he knew one other that would.
And she would pay for what she had brought upon him.

Mezhan Kwaad. May the gods rain down their fury and outrage upon you and your domain, before I do.