I’m not waking up in the middle of a war.
I’m not sure what I’ve emerged in the midst of, but these aren’t warriors at all. The non-warriors run and scream when I appear, like small children with much larger vocal cords. At first, I simply stare, the heat from my rage escaping from my eyes, my ears, and my nostrils in tendrils of smoke.
But then my prey-drive kicks in, and I give chase.
The non-warriors scream louder and scrabble across the rocky ground even faster than seasoned warriors would. It may not be a war, but it’s very nearly as fun as one. My rage at being left asleep for so very long while humans completely disregarded the power and sanctity of death pours out of me faster and hotter, and the not-warriors around me actually begin to burn. I can’t quite help the joy that fills me with the passing of each and every human life.
They fear death so much, but it frees them, too.
Free from the demands of this world that don’t matter. Free from their fears and their petty desires. Free from the chains that tie them down to following paths leading to nowhere.
I watch them carefully as I run, and as the humans burn, their tiny, sparkly little souls float upward and then zing toward me until they pass through me and finally disappear. I know they haven’t really disappeared—they’ve gone wherever human souls go—but it’s easier to say that than it is trying to describe the release of that light inside each of them. Even in my glee at my new power surge, I can’t help scanning the humans who are close for my general.
Whenever I waken, I always choose one human, a dark human, a strong human, one who can help me reacquaint myself with a new time and place. I need a human who’s able to understand me—hence dark—and the humans of this world, so he can teach me how to best accomplish my task. The fastest way to restore balance for humanity is always to start a war. When I can target their brightest and happiest cities with it, all the better.
Human suffering’s enough for my brothers, but I need them to die.
And they do, in respectable numbers as I gallop toward them, all except one. While everyone else in my path is bursting into flames, screaming and running away, or hiding quickly, one idiotic human runs toward me, pointing a gun at my head. She actually fires all the bullets in her gun trying to kill me.
Her aim’s impressive, and it’s clear that the technology has improved since the civil war I sparked that last kept me awake and powered-up. I’m sure that helped her to hit me right in the center of my head repeatedly, but it gives me pause. She’s female, but she’s also angry, unafraid, and very talented.
I slow as I scream at her, and I look at her soul. What I see surprises me. She’s not just a do-gooder heroine who’s trying to take out the big-bad-death-horse. No, her soul’s quite dark.
She’s not a heroine at all.
After her gun fails to slow me down, she throws her arm back, and she hauls off and chucks the handgun at me, the entire thing. It spins round and round before slamming into my chest in a rather solid fashion. I’m too dumbstruck to absorb it.
This girl’s the first warrior I’ve encountered, and she rivals all the males I’ve met in the past.
“Well, shoot. That’s just going to piss you off, isn’t it?” she asks.
I can’t quite contain my glee.
While every other human around us was a coward, after I emerged amid an entire army of not-warriors, could I have actually managed to find a good prospect for a champion this quickly? Is this girl my general? She’s staring right at me, trying to take me down. After such a long and disorienting slumber, it would be a huge relief to have an immediate guide. The feeling when I initiate a bond has never been wrong before, so I reach for her, but she somehow deflects my invitation.
She rejects me.
That’s never happened, and it makes me even more curious.
I consider plowing her into the ground. With her small frame, it would be easy. I’ve never had a human reject me, and I’m not even sure how she did it. I didn’t think humans could deflect the initiation of a bond with an immortal creature. It irritates me, but the thought of destroying such an interesting warrior saddens me further, so I decide to simply pass her by instead.
I’ve nearly run right by her in my rush, the earth opening up beside me as I move, as if to welcome me right back down, when she pivots, slams her arms against my side, and jumps onto my back. In all my many millennia of life, I’ve never had a human voluntarily, nay, aggressively, leap onto my physical body.
“If you’re going this way anyway, be a doll and give me a ride.” She beams down at me like I couldn’t end her with a thought.
I scream back at her, still running forward, my feet striking the ground like lightning, the crack shrieking its way beside me as the earth shouts at and rejoices in my return. I consider chucking her into the widening hole, but again, I’m reticent to destroy something I don’t fully understand, and she’s not harming me. In fact, she’s moving quite comfortably on my back, as though riding a massive, magical stallion bareback is a normal thing for her.
Is it?
And why am I curious about a mere human?
I focus again on the world around me, incinerating dwellings, snuffing out lives right and left, beginning the monumental task ahead of me of restoring some semblance of balance to a world overrun and unhealthily overgrown. I naturally orient on where I feel the largest imbalance of life, the closest settlement to where we are. As if she has decided that we’re headed the wrong direction, the human female on my back stops floating in balance above me and starts trying to move me. She squeezes with her legs, and then she actually grabs my mane and tries to redirect my movement.
I ignore her, of course.
At least, I think I do. But slowly, I start to realize that I’ve somehow drifted away from the large mass of humans I felt up ahead. As my hooves pound furiously against the rocky ground, I realize the settlement’s now ahead and to the far left. That irritating and confusing human creature has shifted my course away from the people I intended to kill. The rage builds up inside of me again, threatening to level the entire mountain. I look back at her so I can burn her to ash, since she caused these feelings inside of me.
But when smoke from my fury blows into her face, she says, “Dude, someone needs to teach you some manners. That’s just rude, and also you need some massive breath mints, or maybe, like a toilet bowl cake. Those are minty.”
