Tales of Midbar: Secret Priest
Judging Clindar - part 3

I got up and approached her chair, well aware this wasn’t standard practice.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“I believe I have a genuine case and so does my father who’s a lawyer. I was unjustly expelled from the school for getting evidence for this case.”

“You do know that you’re an anav?”

“Yes.”

Just then I noticed a man enter and go to the public area. He was a quippa hipsick and had a strange smile on his face.

“Can’t you replace anav friends?”

I wondered if she knew anavim could teleport.

“There aren’t any at school and it’s only since I filed this case that one has moved to my town. It’s only after I filed this case that I’ve met other anavim. Well that’s not strictly true, I did know my sister, who’s an anavah, when I was younger but she was taken to be a Temple Prostitute and I’ve ...”

“Do you think I had it easy?”

I could feel the anavot behind me moving to the far corner on the side with the door.

“I don’t know much about you but there are a lot more nibeyim than anavim and people are generally thought to be more hostile to anavim.”

“Aren’t these girls merely following their natural homokorbarsexual instincts?”

“There’s more to it than that. If all hipsickim marry other hipsickim and psychics aren’t allowed to marry each other, then psychics can’t marry anybody. Are you saying it’s acceptable to bully anavim?”

I was really wondering where she was going as I felt she was arguing with me about things I should have been arguing through my lawyer. Also I couldn’t help feeling that something worrying was happening behind me.

“What do you mean by, ‘more to it’?”

“For a start the girls gave themselves points for having sex with boys and having sex with me would earn them negative infinity points, so some girls were clearly discouraging others which is, by definition, a conspiracy. Also the school ...”

“Why did the girls give points for having sex with boys? Is sex a game?”

“It wasn’t my idea!”

She stared at me and at the anavot in the public area. “You realize this is a difficult case?”

“Yes but I believe ...”

“Go back to your place!”

The lawyers continued to argue their cases.

Egrindreth left the court.

Then they started showing my film of students having sex in the school and asked me to explain what was happening.

“That’s Ruttan, he’s rather an idiot and, as you can see, not very good looking. That’s Adria, he’s fondling. Most people would think she was a fairly nice, regular girl.”

“This doesn’t look regular,” said the judge.

“It is at this school,” I said.

Adria opened the front of her dress and undid her bra at the front.

“Is this really relevant?” asked the judge.

“It is really a big part of the problem,” said Galdreth.

Adria bent down and started sucking on Ruttan’s penis.

“Stop!” shouted the judge. “How long did it take you to film this?”

“About four hours,” I said before Galdreth could stop me. “That’s ...”

I was now standing near the screen at the front of the court and could see the corner where Dwendra, Ice and Vrenloa were sitting, looking worried. The smiling man was sitting in the middle, with my parents and Attan. Suddenly he jumped up, took a leap off the wall and shouted, “Ahmaza ...”

The anavot dematerialized. I was strongly tempted to teleport but the man in the doors had told me not to. To be honest, I think it was simply indecision rather than obedience that stopped me from doing so. Dad held up his hands and I’m sure he was putting up a magic barrier.

“... rules!”

Then the quippa exploded. It was a very bright explosion, almost certainly a suicide bomb spell that breaks down all the complex chemicals in the body, releasing a huge amount of energy, with very little residue. I think I must have put up a magic barrier but I still felt the blast of hot, damp air. Remember the human body is mostly water, which had been vaporized, and most the rest burns to produce more water and carbon dioxide. The screen beside me disintegrated into fragments. There were blasts of powdered rock from the floor. The tiles that composed the ceiling shattered into fragments and dust. The air became cloudy with water droplets condensing. Galdreth’s head flew past me as her body collapsed with blood spurting from her neck. The judge’s wooden desk disintegrated into splinters. The window shattered into geodeserine diamonds. The electric lights exploded and the room became a lot darker. Most people who were still alive were coughing from the dust and carbon dioxide. My magic protected me from this somewhat but I felt faint and realized I had to breath heavily as the oxygen level in the room had fallen considerably.

I just stood there in the devastation. I’d kind of being expecting this but it was still a shock. Then the corner where Dwendra, Ice and Vrenloa had dematerialized, collapsed and rubble from the vaulting above the suspended ceiling collapsed and a man and a couple of wooden seats fell through. I realized my mother was screaming and my father was talking to her. Attan seemed at least as shocked as me. An alarm was ringing. Most other people were dead or injured. I saw the judge was laying behind her shattered desk, coughing heavily with blood spurting from her stomach. I started walking towards her but she screamed as I did. Just then, I felt a materialization outside the door and Breeze rushed in (anavim can’t teleport into dense clouds of dust and the like).

“Nasty,” Breeze said. “Shot out destructive associates!”

I felt another materialization behind Breeze and heard the grating sound of conflicting magic.

“Help!” screamed Dwendra. “Breeze, get it off me!”

I started running towards the door. The judge screamed very loudly and a number of things broke or exploded around me.

“Clindar don’t move!” screamed Breeze as she spun round looking at Dwendra and myself.

I stopped as fast as I could.

Breeze was blocking my view of Dwendra but her dress seemed to have been removed and she was clearly distraught. Breeze was frantically waving her hands at Dwendra and I was sure she was manipulating associates and bindings. The grating sound stopped. Then she turned back to me.

“Dwendra’s all right, I removed the binding that was supposed to draw one of these associates to her. You’ve got one that repels them!” She pointed to the judge. “She’s got one inside her!”

“A magis!” gasped Dad, who was pushing Mum out the window. “She’s only a kid!”

Breeze walked towards me frantically waving her arms around. “You can move now! You don’t have healing powers?”

“No!”

“Then you,” she shouted, clearly directing her voice at everybody, “anybody who can move and doesn’t have healing powers get out! I’m nearly indestructible!”

Dwendra ran past us, her dress was in shreds, fortunately she was wearing underwear, and she was trying to get her dress back on, best she could, as she ran. She was bleeding a bit from her stomach, “Anden, you didst tryeth to killeth me!”

I headed for the now geodeserine-less window. Dad, Mum, Attan and a man I didn’t recognize did likewise. Breeze went to help the judge.

“Can you get me that artifact?” gasped the judge.

“Go to the car park at the back!” shouted a guard from the doorway. “We’ll want to check for who’s missing and the police will probably want to question you!” By now Attan and my parents had climbed out the window. I pushed Dwendra out and followed her.