Zeus 25 - Praxis

28 - Consequences

As they cleared the top of the cliff, Zeus swung TizzleT in a slow arc putting her long tail within reach of one of the younglings who hauled them both back down. Then Zeus chanted the Word of Strength, erasing their weightlessness, while making the youngling holding TizzleT's tail doubly strong. "What's your name?" Zeus asked the youngling.

"Lakel," the lizardboy replied.

"The extra strength you feel will be gone in four hours. Be careful with your actions until it wears off."

When they were at last safe, the enhanced youngling turned on one of the other lizardboys. "When you removed TizzleT's optionchoices, you did evil." With that judgement, he used his enhanced strength to toss the youngling he'd confronted off the cliff. "LalaT says removing optionchoices is evil unless you would willingly switch places with your victim," he called down, as he demonstrated LalaT's punishment.

"No," the hapless youngling's translator wailed back up at them from where he'd dropped amid the razorJaws waiting below.

"RazorJaws cannot swim," TizzleT informed the Atlanteans. "If that youngling reaches the water he'll be safe."

Unfortunately, the youngling below was in pieces before he took a single step toward the sanctuary of the pool. Soon all the razorJaws were feeding or dragging their grizzly burdens across the bloody beach. When one came near a sandscrew plant, they would stop and sniff the air, changing direction to find the center of the leaves—a seemingly place to feed.

"Watch," TizzleT commanded, pointing to one razorJaw, the first to take refuge in a sandscrew's leafy center.

The plant seemed to be growing, but then the watchers realized it was just the huge outer leaves raising into the air. The leaves surrounded the oblivious razorJaw closing in tighter and tighter about it and its prey. Then the beach around the plant seemed to shudder and heave, and the sandscrew and its contents twisted down into the hard sand effortlessly until nothing remained on the surface but troubled grooves where giant leaf veins once rested, a pattern now being smoothed over by the breeze.

The Atlanteans seemed shocked speechless at the horror and strangeness of it all. Only Origen questioned what had happened, "What's the point of hatching if the sandscrews and razorJaws destroy each other?"

TizzleT barked in a way that made Zeus think of laughter. "They aren't destroyed, Origen. The razorJaws are being transformed into younglings beneath that beach. If we had not fed them our dead and lawless, the clan would be bringing them pirNa to consume. This is the way of life on ssKar. When the younglings emerge in three months, they will have one day to reach the water or die. All of us were once beneath this beach."

"Why did your own youngling attack you?" Eudora asked.

"Promotion often goes to survivors. The age-old pattern with quests is to reward those who return, and protecting off-worlders is very much like a quest. That ambitious youngling just thought to profit by my death." Then TizzelT turned to Zeus, "To you, I now owe a lifechoice."

"You owe me nothing."

"You will die for helping me," TizzleT continued. "SaTaan has decreed that the Words may not be used on ssKar by anyone—on penalty of death. Of course, I gave you a lifechoice. You may kill me now before I report this to HaziKan."

"Kill you? After I just saved you?"

"Of course, you would have to kill the rest of the younglings as well as they would be obligated to report all of this to HaziKan too, but I could kill them for you before you take my life."

"That's insane," Eudora said.

"No, it's the Way of LalaT, and it's been this way for thousands of years."