[Veltzeh]: 39.The Heritage of Humankind.Tales from Kyerrion.28

Availon and Tegafel spent over two weeks traveling the river upstream; the boat was somewhat like a bus, it zigzagged across the river, taking people over and along it simultaneously. When they reached the great curve of the Great River where the river turned sharply southwest, they left the riverboat and started traveling by foot again. They reached the steppe in a few days. Tegafel had never seen large areas of land that would not have been a forest originally and was rather wide-eyed. Ey was also curious about all the animals ey saw; in the meadows, a lot of animals did not run away at the first sight of another creature like in forest areas. Availon was also curious since ey had not been this far north before, so the animals were different and there seemed to be more of them.

Availon and Tegafel were only a few days into the meadows when a strange incident happened. Tegafel was away hunting some animal for food—they usually ate plants, but meat was nice to get at least occasionally. Availon, in the meantime, was setting up the tent and preparing a fireplace to cook the meat. However, as ey was gathering dried branches from bushes and the rare trees, ey sensed the presence of two vile creatures. Ey looked up and saw two jinhaliares some distance away. They noticed Availon as well. Availon was terrified. If they were both far-walkers or if the other one was a strong far-walker, Availon would be done for if ey could not find Tegafel in time. And even Tegafel was no match for two jinhaliares.

Availon screamed, dropped the wood ey had gathered and ran into the direction where Tegafel had went. The jinhaliares ran after em, shouting to em that ey would be less severely harmed if ey gave up now. Though Availon was nimble, the jinhaliares reached em fairly quickly due to their size. One of them had ran beside em and stopped em while the other prevented em from turning back. Availon was panicking but managed to try to prevent them from seeing em by using eir far-walker abilities. One of them was relatively easy to distract, but the other one was a far-walker as well, and though ey was not a very powerful far-walker, ey could for now see through Availon's tricks. Availon was too distracted by eir fear and Tegafel's abilities to save em to stop the far-walker jinhaliare. Availon spent a few moments circling and dodging the jinhaliare, but eventually the big creature got a strike through, hit Availon in the stomach and knocked em to the ground. The jinhaliare grabbed Availon by the throat and was about to smash eir face in when the other jinhaliare's head dropped to the ground in front of em. Looking up, the jinhaliare holding Availon saw Tegafel starting to run toward em, but ey could not stop Tegafel before it was too late. Tegafel ran eir longsword through the jinhaliare's chest just as ey let go of Availon. Availon rolled on the ground, away from the two. The jinhaliare screamed at Tegafel who was quite demoralized by it. Ey let go of eir sword and the jinhaliare punched em in the face. Tegafel had fortunately managed to sidestep enough so that the hit did not shake eir brains too much, and since the jinhaliare was strangely confused, Tegafel took eir chance and tried to cut deep into eir arm with eir short sword. The jinhaliare screamed again and eir right arm was rendered practically useless—many of the muscles were cut. The jinhaliare continued thrashing about and though ey got some blows through to Tegafel, they were not very serious, while Tegafel's sword-slashes were that much more devastating. Eventually Tegafel had managed to mutilate both the jinhaliare's arms and had to cut some tendons in eir legs to make em stop moving. When that was done, the jinhaliare lay on the ground, bleeding and in serious pain, obviously trying eir best to control emself somehow.

Tegafel ran over to where Availon was. "Are you alright?"

Availon seemed to be fairly paralyzed. "Y-yes, I think so. I... I was just badly startled. Really badly. I thought... that I was going to die." When Tegafel lifted Availon's arm, it shook uncontrollably. "Please kill that one as well. I feel very uncomfortable with em there. I will be fine after some time."

"Shouldn't we interrogate em first? Besides, with those wounds ey'll die in an hour."

"Jinhaliares are very resilient. But... yes, I suppose you are right. But I can't do that now. Can you disable em more and tie em to some tree?"

"Disable more? I mutilated eir arms and cut the tendons of eir legs."

"Please. It is just a safety measure, but I trust eir healing abilities as much as eir ability to move when wounded. Also, ey's a far-walker, so we need to keep eir mind occupied."

Tegafel realized that Availon was very likely the expert on the issue and did as ey asked. At least torturing the jinhaliare did not feel repulsive to Tegafel—while it was horrid to be tortured, knowing how it was like did not seem to bother Tegafel too much. The jinhaliare did not scream in pain, though ey groaned suppressedly. When Tegafel was done, ey tied the jinhaliare to a tree some distance away from the tent. The jinhaliare was in pain and started to get a little messed up with it.

"Who are you? Are you one of those femehan rebel scums?! Why don't you kill me?!" ey shouted.

"Shut the groshje up! I don't want to hear anything from you!"

"Who are you?!"

"Who are YOU?"

Surprisingly enough, the jinhaliare replied: "Drength, a spy! And it won't be of any use to you, all the information has been extracted and removed from my mind! Kill me, you hiyrskoori!"

"Hork you! Maybe you should wish that some predator comes and eats you!" Tegafel finished tying em up and left as ey kept on shouting insults and killing requests.

Availon managed to eventually gather emself and move. Ey was still very startled, shook and could not eat much.

Tegafel was a bit concerned about the jinhaliare. "When can you interrogate em? I'm sure that with those wounds ey will not survive a day."

"I can't do it right now. I have to rest a little. But if ey's in that bad a condition, I can just rest a few hours and do it in the night."

"Alright. I'll stay up and keep watch... I'm a bit too agitated to sleep."

"I hope I can sleep a little."

They finished eating and Availon went into the tent. Tegafel sat outside wrapped in the blanket and kept watch. However, once eir system had recovered enough, ey grew very tired and after one eyelid-resting session ey did not open them any time soon again.



Tegafel woke up to a vague feeling of pleasure and some sounds. Ey was fairly confounded first, but then saw the empty tent, realized that ey had been sleeping and got another adrenaline burst. Ey ran toward the place where the jinhaliare Drength was.

Ey could see from a distance that Availon was standing or sitting over the jinhaliare's lap in a way that definitely looked like they were having sexual intercourse. Tegafel could not really believe eir eyes, but could not question it either. Availon moved and wriggled about while Drength tried to do eir best to move eir goninjin around.

"Availon! Stop! What are you doing?! Availon, what the gzoozz are you doing?!" Both of them seemed to ignore Tegafel and started getting orgasmic just when Tegafel made it to the spot. Ey stabbed the jinhaliare in the chest while shoving Availon off of em. The two shouted. Tegafel pulled eir sword out and went over to Availon. By now, Tegafel could tell that Availon had had eir first orgasm, but the second one was on its way. Tegafel felt the galanfetzcan's pleasure much more clearly now. "Availon, don't! You have to stop it! Don't!" Tegafel grabbed and groped Availon a bit in an attempt to stop eir second orgasm and Availon groaned a bit, but Tegafel failed. Availon's body discharged and ey pulled Tegafel along as well.

After a few moments of recovery, Tegafel said: "What on Earth was that? You people hate each other! Why...?"

"I— I don't know. It's... it was like a dream... I just didn't see anything wrong with it... I-I don't understand." Tegafel could sense the disgust that was building up in Availon's mind. Availon let out a frustrated shout, rolled about and then started pawing eir crotch, trying to clean it.

"Do you think —"

Availon sensed the question immediately. "NO! Half-breeds are not possible! Especially ones between us and them! And ey would need another jinhaliare in order to use me as some carrier!" Availon immediately looked around emself, very concerned that a jinhaliare would spring up and rape em now.

Tegafel got up and went to check on the jinhaliare. Ey was dead now, and after detaching the rope, Availon and Tegafel went back to the tent.

"You told me once that garandals and nacrans make a lot of half-breeds... Why wouldn't it —"

"That is because they are so similar. There is nothing in common with galanfetzcans and jinhaliares. Our reproductive systems are incompatible, we can't produce offspring." In reality, Availon had no clue about it; ey knew well enough that a long time ago galanfetzcans and jinhaliares had been of the same race but ey could not even guess what was different now and what was not. There was a good chance that their gametes could combine. However, Availon did not want to even think about it. While ey did not even try to make emself believe that it was impossible, ey was so disgusted that ey prohibited emself from thinking about it.

Tegafel did not even have a clue that the galanfetzcans and jinhaliares might have been of the same race a long time ago. "Are you sure?"

"Shut up!"

Tegafel was a bit surprised and taken aback, but figured that it must have been a very disturbing and revolting experience for Availon. Besides, ey had not gotten pregnant from being raped, by other femehans no less, so ey could not really argue against Availon.



The next morning, Availon suggested that they go ahead with the mind-modification. Tegafel agreed, and after a day's travel, they settled in the meadows for a few days and started creating Tegafel's new memories. They did not need to be modified that much, even; Availon merely enhanced the memories of suspicion before the trip on the seaship and then inserted a scene of arguing and disagreement before adding the obvious modification of making Tegafel eir friend. Ey removed the memories of them having sex, but left much of the rest intact. Ey hid the impressions of Tegafel's real memories behind hidden blocks in eir subconscious—those would be hard to find since Tegafel was not a far-walker. Availon modified eir own mind accordingly; ey hid all eir sensitive and important information, eir and Tegafel's real memories and the contacts to most of eir friends behind a series of blocks that would be nearly impossible to breach. Ey created a bunch of new memories and hid the memory of creating those in another hard-to-reach spot. Ey hid a bunch of other, less sensitive information behind breachable blocks.

Availon had been trained at something like this and was not very freaked out by it, but it was still very strange—and justifying some of the things ey had done according to eir false memories was a strain, but doable.

The two continued traveling. They moved out of the steppe and reached the jungle. Availon hated the jungle and they barely moved in there, even though the temperatures dropped every day. They came to the next Great River, the Great River of Jungle Mountains. The Jungle Mountains resided north of Watery Mountains and they were connected by a relatively small range of mountains and canyons that were called the Flowing Passages.

Tegafel and Availon crossed the great river by a femehan boat and arrived at Gaoranola. Many femehans there thought that their nation was the biggest femehan nation of all, and those who did not think that way believed that it did not make a difference either way, because the bigger nations were so far in the north that there would not be any sense in knowing of some bigger nation anyway. Some people were of the opinion that Fetormana was way bigger, and Tegafel even spoke to one person who firmly claimed that Kervanela was the center and head of everything. Availon wanted out of the jungle, so they headed straight forward and ran across the northwestern parts of the jungle mountains. If anything, that encouraged Availon and they spent a week climbing the mountains up and down before they made it to another side where the terrain was plain leaf-tree forest again. They traveled a bit further southeast and reached meadow-lands again. Then Availon started figuring what ey could do here to break the alliance.