Runaway

Runaway: Prison

Outside of the chamber, the Judicator adjusted his cowl. The cloth covered the bony plates of his head, and overshadowed his face. It obscuring his individual identity to the eye just as his mental control could discard his individual personality before the mind.

What he had done did not strike him as cruel or unusual, as he reviewed the session in his mind. He had spent much of his childhood and youth undergoing similar training. Few ever suffered such austerities or felt such deprivation as the members of his particular tribe.

It was they who led. They kept unimaginable secrets and commanded the full military power of a warrior race. Their had merely to order it and any of their people would willingly go to their death.

This much power was dangerous. This much power could corrupt. It could not, under any circunstances, be wielded for merely personal reasons but only for the good of the whole.

To be worthy to wield such power, they had to divest themselves of themselves.

Few knew, or could even imagine what this entailed.

Except those like Isharra, who suffered as well.

What he himself had suffered, few could endure.

Except Isharra.

With a jolt of horror he realized the affection he had sent out to Isharra wasn't coming from his carefully built persona after all. It was not the will of the collective or a tool to further the common good. It was coming from him. Himself.

It was his own emotion.

He felt ill. He... he must not fail. The consequences were staggering. He would correct this mistake. He would have to rid himself of the feeling and erase any effects of it from Isharra's mind as well.

He shuddered and hurried away. It was probably the girl's fault anyway. She must be so powerfully rooted in her individuality that contact with her was warping his perspective.

No one said that the office of Judicator wasn't dangerous.

He would cure her of it. He had to.