The Royal Bastards of Galagan (Chapter 2)
- June 29, 2025
The Royal Exiles
“Through tears, we gain freedom from the world, but most importantly… from ourselves.”
Lord Iwata Takeda
Potempa Lexus
My back still hurt from the fall, and so did my head, and my ankle, and my ass.
My wrist was okay though. Mother would have told me to thank my lucky stars, or maybe that I was better off with some broken bones. Something to actually learn from.
My eyes didn’t adjust to the light of a morning sky all that fast, but fast enough. Whatever Kybi hit us with clearly teleported us somewhere. There’s nowhere on Galagan that would gift me with the image of Cutta aghast at all these little aliens— natives— little shits—
Oh, who cares.
It was hilarious. Her mouth had dropped at the sight of all these little people coming out of the woodwork to surround us. Little did they know, we were the last people they should—
“Uh,” I croaked. I remember my pride being pried off my mind, my ill thoughts being attacked at their very core, and revealing something I hadn’t felt in a long time…
Fear.
I couldn’t understand what I was feeling, what these emotions were. All I knew was to do what I always did in the few times in my life when I felt afraid.
I leaped to my feet and ran to Calcutta. I remember gripping her arm, and the way she tore it from me. The way she looked at me, nothing but confusion in her eyes. I must have been shaking, I was standing in place and never felt still.
Cutta saw me and then turned her eyes to the little monsters. She roared and let her cakra envelop us in an aura, expanding far enough to grab hold of Lemon as he came to. She protected us in this shield, as she always did.
“Stay back!” she growled at them, but they didn’t seem the least bit afraid of us. It was ridiculous, we had the power to level cities, planets even, and these little things did nothing but stare. A couple even slowly approached the bubble.
At that point, I couldn’t tell the difference between these creatures. They appeared like clones coming to rub against the cakra shield as if it were glass. As they did, Cutta flinched, and it made my heartbeat rise. I couldn’t imagine what could get her on edge.
Then she raised her hand towards them, and I expected whatever it was to die.
Cutta charged her cakra but never fired. Instead, the light of charge cakra dimmed, and her shield fell.
“Cutta?!” I yelled as my sister began to sway, “Cutta, what’s wrong?!”
I had no idea what was happening, I was just panicking as I tried to keep her up but she keep stumbling and throwing fists. It was like she was fighting some invisible enemy.
“Lemon, help!” I called out to our brother. He had more or less come to his senses and rushed to help me hold her up.
As soon as he did, Cutta flung her arms back and charged her cakra with a roar. Lemon and I flew back and hovered a bit behind her as she flexed her arms and roared.
She struggled to grunt out word after word as her cakra flared and threatened to flatten the buildings around us. “Stay…!” The ground shook and the rumble began to fall off of buildings! “… Out…!” It felt like the whole world was about to crumble, and it would if Cutta sent out a blast with all the power she was charging! “… Of…!”
I looked around and assumed these people would be fleeing in terror, but none were. Most stood where they were, their hands held towards Cutta. They were doing this, they were the ones who were doing this to her!
“…My…”
When Cutta eeked out her last word, her power had dramatically tapered off, nearly dying out completely. She swayed again so I flew for her. I caught her as she went to hit the ground.
“Cutta!” I remember crying as I held her limp body in my arms, kneeling on the ground. I moved her to look up at me but her eyes were closed, completely unconscious. “Cutta!” I think I screamed again.
‘She’s only sleeping,’ I heard a voice tell me.
It didn’t take long to realize we were dealing with telepaths. Did they have technology that gave them the ability, a natural ability, or a honed skill with their cakra? I didn’t know yet then.
I knew that I was terrified as these tiny creatures began to approach us, and I screamed for them to get away.
Lemon jumped between us, but he quickly found himself falling to his knees. Whatever they did to Cutta, they used a bit of it on Lemon.
‘It’s fine,’ I heard someone say.
‘We won’t hurt you,” said another.
‘You’re safe.’
These words and the voices of strangers began to flood my head. I dropped Cutta, my hands flying to grip my skull, threatening to crush it in terror. I shut my eyes, and I was ready to just blast my brains out. I had never experienced such an invasion of my mind before. Never before nor since have I ever felt so afraid.
Then the voices stopped coming, and there was only the blackness of my mind.
Then a hand.
I felt this small hand on mine, followed by one lone voice, telling me, ‘You have nothing to fear, we mean you no harm.’
There was this… not a pressure, but this soft feather, tickling the edges of my consciousness, coaxing me out of my own head like it was a larva and my skull the shell. I should have been terrified to open my eyes and find one of these small little creatures with its hands-on mine.
I was surrounded, a dozen of them ready to force their minds on me again.
‘Only me,’ the one holding my hands said, ‘only me, we won’t overwhelm you again, but we were worried you would implode like your friend.’
I took my hands from it, breaking its connection to me, or so I thought.
“My sister!” I yelled at it, my cakra flaring blue, ready to flatten it now that it touched my mind on its own. “I’ll kill you!” I shouted at it as I tried to stand to my feet.
Turns out, the connection was made, and breaking hand-to-hand contact was not enough to sever it.
‘This hate,’ it told me, or she, but I would learn that later. She told me, ‘This isn’t really hate, this isn’t really you.’
I looked down at her, and I was ready to erase her from existence, but like before, I felt my emotion stripped of itself. It was like my mind and emotions were being peeled away, or the skin removed, as this anger and hate were stripped from me. Again, all I felt was…
Fear.
‘This is it, the true you, your true feelings,’ she told me. I was going to go mad, my emotions being puppeteered by this pipsqueak. She began telling me things like, ‘It’s okay to feel fear, it’s okay to be afraid. The fronts you put up do you no favors.’
Again, I felt her tiny little hands, but instead, she held my cheeks.
‘Tell me,’ she said, but her lips didn’t move, her words appeared in my mind. ‘Tell me why you feel afraid, show me your true emotions, no one here would take them from you, or judge, as long as they are honest.’
“I have no fear,” I told her, while at the same time feeling tears welling in my eyes.
‘You only hurt yourself,’ she said, ‘accepting fear is the only way to overcome it. What do you fear, what ails you?’
I felt the presence of her will on my mind, but it wasn’t pressuring me. It was turning a valve on the other side, trying to let me out. I found myself balling my eyes out, as all the anxiety that came from being on the run, the terror of facing down my stepmother— the Queen… and the great guilt of doing what needed to be done to my big brother.
“They were chasing us!” I wailed out as the tears flowed freely. “They wanted to kill us or lock us away, forever!”
‘Who dear, who?’ she asked me, as she embraced my crying face into her small form, and wrapped my mind in her sea of warm emotions.
“My people, we’re exiles,” I told her, everything inside me pouring out without any limit or control. The only thing stopping words from coming out was the sniffles and the pants for air from my crying. “I-I-I… I wanted to save them, we were saving them and they wanted to kill us for it, they hated us, they chased us, they wouldn’t stop! They wouldn’t leave us alone!
‘Oh, poor dear,’ she told me, and a part of me wanted to get up and run away. The words of my mother ridiculing me flooded through my brain, but a stronger part of me wouldn’t. I don’t know how and I don’t know why, but I believed this little thing.
“And her face, her face!”
‘Whose face?’ she asked.
“The Queen’s! My stepmother! We-we had to fight her, we had to beat her, kill her or she’d kill us! She had her hands around my neck and if Cutta hadn’t… I would have…”
“Shhh,” she shushed me, the first sound I heard her make with her actual mouth. ‘It’s over, it’s done.”
“We killed our brother, we stopped him from being khan… we had to but… but…”
Again, she quietly shushed me. She patted and rubbed my head, promising me, ‘No one is going to chase you here, no one is going to make you feel scared, let it go, let it all go, let the clouds out of you.’
I don’t know how or when, but I found myself resting my head in this creature’s lap, sobbing in the fetal position as she shushed and patted my head.
‘You are safe here,’ she told me, ‘you and your family.’
“Here?” I asked, my first logical thought since I landed here.
“Drota,” she said, ‘you are safe here on Drota, I promise you, you are safe.’
She told me that as she looked into my eyes, and by the gods… I believed her.
