"THEY ATTACKED ME! HOW DARE THEY... ATTACK... ME!" Kildra shouted in my ear. And there it was, the prideful moment.

  "NO! STOP!" I yelled out. The family had huddled together. The man was in front of the woman while cocking another arrow. Kildra stood where she was as I passed her and made my way to the man not 10 feet away, and desperately yelled "World Union! Golden Age!".

  A shadow of doubt passed his face as he looked at Kildra, who was now coming at us directly from behind me, and gave a small nod of assent. As he must have been thinking about the myths and legends that seemed to have just come true for him he put his bow down.

  His wife stayed her ground 5 feet behind the man holding her sons hand.

  The man stood there for a moment. He had dark brown hair with strands of white in them. His broad shoulders and tall height made him ideal soldier material. His dark eyes stared at me. Eyes that would haunt my dreams for years to come. He stood there and finally said in common tounge "Welcome. I am Eric Valssen, this is my wife Hogna Jondottir and our son Blaer Ericsen". I was so happy and relieved at changing a bad situation into a friendly invitation I let out a small laugh as I told them "Thank you, I'm Chen and this is Kildra; we seek to trade".

  And than Kildra floated to a stop directly in front of me and the man and whispered so that only I could hear "I'll show you the good of welcoming strangers..." in a dark and passionate way, full of hate and loathing that I had never heard her use before.

  The Heraldry will tell you about the grandeur that are Wisp. They will preach how much the potential for creation lie in the shadow of the Wisps; but they will never tell you their ability to inflict destruction.

  Kildra turned into a bird shape, but this time a silver falcon, with large razor sharp talons and a sharp beak appeared. I stood there staring at her new avatar, as the impact of what she had just said started to sink in. I turned to Eric and yelled "For the love of god's run! She's lost it!", as I tried to subdue the silver falcon.

  Eric stared at her in awe as she let out a sharp bird like cry and slashed backward catching me in my throat practically severing my head off in the process. I fell to the floor with the last seconds of life.

  I woke up an hour later as Kildra revived me at the edge of the field and the woods. The Kobe Dagger was on top of my pack, and my clothes were full of blood, my own I assume, which Kildra would later scan away a few days later.

  "What have you done Kildra!? There was no need for that -- they were friendly to us Kildra! Are any still alive?" I cried out to the now familiar robin that looked down at me from a branch.

  "No, the boy almost got away, but he was maimed badly and wouldn't have lasted here for long anyway" she looked around the forest as she said this "so I decided to give him a mercy and put him down before he died of infection" Kildra said nonchalantly as if speaking about an injured horse.

  I could see blood in front of the cooking fire from where I fell to Kildra's talon. Further back I could see Eric's body. A broken arrow lay in halves not far from his body -- good he tried to fight back but that arrow was no match for Kildra.

  A large chunk of the front wall was missing as if it had been eaten away. Further in the house I would find Hogna's body in a half dissolved state of bone and tissue -- as if a fire had consumed her without flame. Most assuredly the result of Kildra's nanite mist.

  Outside near the small shelter I found Blaer's body much like his mothers on one side of his body; he must have been next to his mother when Kildra's mist hit her, and after seeing his mother's fall ran out of the house in an attempt to get away from the fury that was Kildra.

  When the Truth Hurts

  This dream continues where it should have ended. I now find myself standing in front of Eric as he's just finished welcoming us to his home. Kildra is in her mist form coming over to us from behind. My memory tells me she will stop in the middle of us and transform into that evil falcon to massacre all of us once more but this time her mist continues and passes over my head and fills my mouth and nose instead taking up residence in my head once more. Visions of green and purple shoot through my eyes as darkness invade my senses. Unlike before though, now I can see clear the events of the past.

  I hear my voice straining to say "I'll show you the good of welcoming strangers..." as I feel myself pull my throwing daggers out of their sheath from my right thigh. Eric sees the movement and lifts his bows to my direction only reaching half way before the dart of a knife lands to the hilt into this top right of his chest, just slightly missing his heart and lets go of the arrow that he had started cocking and it hits the ground shattering in half at the spot.

  I can feel my hands have reloaded with the two remaining knives from my thigh holsters. The knives go flying wild toward Hogna and Blaer who have again started to scream and run into the house. The knives hit them both in their lower extremities. Hogna gets hit in her left buttock, which goes so deep that it must have hit bone. She falls to the ground at the threshold of the door where Blaer who seems to have gotton hit in his right calve stops to tries to help his mother get up.

  Whatever has taken me over doesn't seem to have the same skill that I have accumulated over the years. Eric recovers in the time that it took my arm to commit the bad throws and manages to grab at me with both hands his right hand, grabbing on to my shoulder is weaker than his left. I feel my head jerk violently and hear my nose break in a violent crush — I just head butted Eric back a pace or two. My arms pull at the right side of my hip where my hunter's dagger lay. Taking it out I see both of my hands are in the air holding the dagger out with serrated side down. The dagger moves through the air with a hiss of air into Erics broad chest and repeats in a cascade of punctures and rips through-his flesh. His innards have been ripped out; the devil that I am continues to attack. I hear mumbling from my mouth as it, I, attacks. "Attack me and think you will get away with it. You are nothing. Without me you your ilk wouldn't even be around anymore. I am your savior! Human ingrates - users; to think that you were my creators" and the demon ends his rant with a whisper, "you are nothing."

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  My head tilts up from the carnage and I see the hurt woman who has been dragged further into the home by her injured son. Blood is spilling profusely from the boy where the knife must have hit an artery. My view is interrupted as they move further in to the house.

  A small bit of mist came out of my mouth and starts to form into a ball into my left hand. The silver globe is a polyhedron sphere and looks like a small silver football. Each side of the ball is slightly lifted so that it looks like it's made of scales. I lift the light ball and toss it at the front of the barn. As it coast through the air, its sides begin to open emitting a giant field outward from it. The field and ball hit the front wall of the house and simply disintegrate the wall leaving a perfect round shape in its wake. The field continues ro move through the wall into a weak and crawling Hogna, while her son still tries to drag her to safety. The field starts to dissipate as it hits the back of the house leaving a disturbing scorch mark on the back wall but not dissolving it.

  My legs had begun to walk toward the house as the ball moved forward. By the time I see the result inside, Hogna's half body lay where she died and her son lays there in a half crouch crying. Half of his right arm is badly dissolved as well as a quarter of his right leg which still has my throwing knife stuck in his thigh. His round angelic face is smudged with blood, dirt and tears and isn’t harmed in any way. Walking pass the corpse of his mother I walked toward him and he looks up at me, then starts to crawl on his one good leg out toward the shack on the side of main house. He doesn’t get far before I am upon him. His back is to me as I grab him from his shoulders, turn him around to grab at his neck, choking the life out of him. He struggles to get my hands off his neck. He moves his legs franticly and I hear him grunt -- he must have hit the knife that's in his thigh. As I spectate through my own eyes, I am horrified and feel pity for his vulnerable state. It would have been better to die in the house with his mother.

  I listen and hear that I'm whispering to him "Shh, it'll be over soon. Relax, don't fight this". I sense that the me-that-isn’t-me felt a sharp pain in my left side as the boy seems to have pulled my knife out of his thigh and plunged it into my spleen. The spirit inside me becomes enraged and snaps the boys neck in one motion putting him to rest at the spot that he lay.

  Mist exits my mouth and tends to the wound in my side. The mist also fixes the deep scratches and minor wounds that I've taken in the altercation. My nose cracks back into place. I walk over to the back side of the interior of house. The walls are a mess, scorched from the field that I had sent inside earlier. The chest that lay in front of the wall also bears the scorch marks. I open the chest and after moving some things around, including an old small doll made of glass and cloth is dressed in the uniform of the ancient World Union army and stares back at me. I assume this was a family relic handed down through the ages. At the bottom of the draw a black dagger with a safety button on it's hilt laid wrapped in an old blanket that seemed to be in surprisingly good condition given its age. I take the dagger out and walk back to where my backpack had been dropped. I walk back to the lip of the clearing where Mist exits my mouth and nose and I fall to the ground.

  I woke up without a memory of the event. I looked up at the small robin shell perched on a branch above me that was Kildra and asked "What have you done Kildra!?".

  I spent the rest of the day digging graves for that family. I placed them in the field that they had worked so hard together to clear. I filled my canteen and took some of the dried meat from their alcove inside the house and left the homestead. Although I felt like a killer already due to Kildra's actions, now I felt like a thief as well but the food would do them no good now, and unlike them I needed it to live I told myself. If I died of starvation, Kildra would just revive me again anyway, but I had learned from experience that starvation was a terrible death. Kildra lead the way a mile or so in front of me as we walked out of the clearing into the woods a sweaty and bloody mess. With tears in my eyes, I walked eastward.

  Return of the Space Elves

  The man that tried to attack us lays in front of us at a newly made camp fire that Joya had built when the goofy oaf finally got over his small concussion. It's been three days since he slipped on one of those slippery vines at the forest floor.

  He swore that it moved in front of him on it's own accord but I didn't believe him thinking him too prideful to just say he tripped and hit his head. I was definitely proved wrong on this one; which he will be sure to goad over me for a long time yet.

  Our mysterious man lay on his stomach, the warmth of the fire should allow the healing venom to react faster. I placed the extracted vine venom on his open cuts along his spine which should keep infections at bay while the Lash sets in to compensate for his brain’s bond based deformities. After that it's just a matter of time before the new machines start to fix his bruising and the external cuts that I had to make to install the Lash.

  By the Great Father, he was really lucky to have me literally in front of him while he debonded with that filthy machine. Pure history come to life! Of course he was about to smash us with his plasma polearm before that vine lifted him in the air and electrocuted it out of him. That may be a first; exorcism by vine. Moxley and the other “Greens” need to be told of this when I get back. By gods where did he get that polearm, and was it him or the machine trying to kill us?

  Joya tied the mans feet together as well as his hands loosely behind his back because he say's he's still dangerous even in his current state. But I couldn't help but notice how happy Joya was to take his gear and re-appropriate it on his own thick waist. I can't blame him really. The quality of those supplies are unsurpassed. With the regeneration technology in those nanobots you could create almost anything with enough processing power.

  A shiver runs down my spine as I think about how those things accumulate their processing power. To run tendrils of nanobots through their host brain's synaptic connections and use it as an organic super computer; for larger builds they can even network multiple host together. Shiver.

  I wonder how long this husk of a man was under this things control for. Does he even know his real name? His original tribe? How does he know to speak Ba`tya without the Wisp translating for him? So many questions for him once he wakes. Yes, I think it's time for some answers.

  Coming up in Chapter 5:

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