The Book of the Twelve:Part Eight

     VIII-I. Bamon-Sal, the Healer

     Bamon-Sal was the high priest of the clan of Chias living on the Chia Spur north of Kal Panning. He became skilled in the magic of the healing arts at an early age, and by adulthood had succeeded in completely eradicating some diseases that had affected his clan for centuries. Hearing about his abilities, Xantan offered him a place in his Circle of Twelve.

     His interests gradually broadened to the act of altering the beasts of the land to be more resistant to illnesses, and he and his assistants began to research the process of altering a species magically at the Empire’s new research facility. They began with a race of small pygmy Petpets they called Meepits, native to the Chia Spur.

     The white Chia batted away one of the little Meepits front his work bench.

     “Pygmies,” he muttered under his breach. “They will be the death of me.”

     The pink creature scuttled out of the hut and back to the safety of the jungle beyond. Nothing more than pests, but a pest is still a pest to those who need concentration.

     Two more Chias knocked on the door. One was leaning heavily on the other, a green rash across his face.

     “Please, Bamon, it is my husband,” the other said. “The fever took him during the night, and then he woke with the rash.”

     “Another?” the white Chia frowned. “This is spreading quickly. Come, bring him in, this is Green Rot. The fifth case this morning. I am close to finding a curative salve, but patients are arriving quicker than I can treat.”

     The words Green Rot had struck fear into the woman, it was an illness that had plagued the Chia Spur for generations. But still, she helped her husband into the inner room. There, camp beds had been set up. Five other Chias were lying there, tended by their relatives.

     Bamon helped the newcomer get laid down.

     “I will return to my work,” he said. “Keep him comfortable. If his condition worsens call me. I will bring the salve as soon as it is ready.”

     He returned to his work table and continued to crush herbs and mix pastes. When he dared, he added in blasts of his own magic to temper the mixtures. For hours he worked, trying failed cure after failed cure, until at last he had a breakthrough.

     He rushed into the back room clinic and began to apply it to the green rashes. Within minutes, the skin had returned to normal, and his five patients were sitting up in their makeshift beds.

     “It is done!” he declared in triumph. “A cure for Green Rot!”

     The woman who had brought in her husband was in tears of joy.

     “Thank you! Thank you!” she cried. “I name you Sal, of the old tongue! The One Who Has Been Sent To Save! Bamon-Sal! Healer of the Chia Spur!”

     Green Rot would be the first illness Bamon-Sal managed to completely eradicate. It would not be the last.

     ***

     “This is a very ambitious project,” the old Buzz was saying as they walked through the halls of the Empire’a new Research Facility. “You are certain of the odds of success, Bamon-Sal?”

     “Oh, quite certain,” the Chia replied. “My research has had limited success outside of Chias because, fundamentally, each Neopet species is, well, just that. A species. And yet there is something underlying, be that magical or genetic, that unites us. If we understood that, why it would become relatively trivial to design medicines that work for all of us. The key, though, is finding something that isn’t a Neopet, but is sufficiently similar, to use as a control group. Petpets are the obvious answer, but they lack the required intelligence. I’ve been stuck on this problem for decades, until Mastermind happened to mention to me that there was once, long ago, a race of hyper-intelligent Geb Petpets in the Desert of Roo. Long since gone, of course, and the Gebs reduced back to common Petpets. But if one can go one way, it must be possible to go the other. We just need to magically uplift a species of Petpet, and we have our control group.”

     “And what if it goes wrong?” The Buzz asked. “What if all this ends up creating a race of evil geniuses?”

     “Really, Korabric, you worry too much,” Bamon-Sal laughed. “The chances of that are very slim. It would take something very powerful, the likes of a Kayannin relic, to rely give them the brain power for that. And in any case, we will be on hand monitoring the experiment at every turn. Should anything go wrong, we will be on hand to correct it. This is no more dangerous that Haestil’s botany.”

     “And the Petpets you intend to use, these Meepits?” Korabric asked.

     “Native to the Chia Spur,” Bamon-Sal confirmed. “We call them Pygmies. Vermin, really, they are. Anatomically I know them very well, so they are an ideal pick.”

     “I still think we should have gone with the lizards,” the researcher walking with them said.

     Bamon-Sal’s assistant, who would be running the project while Bamon-Sal was in Neopia City. A young Acara.

     “Really, Rollay, you and your lizards,” Bamon-Sal scoffed. “We have discussed this. There’s simply too much variance in the species. Pygmies — sorry — Meepits are all largely uniform. Makes it much easier to alter them as a species without any unintended side effects.”

     Rollay looked a little put out.

     “I am always in favour of less unintended side effects,” Korabric agreed. “What requirements will these Petpets have?”

     “Oh, nothing that won’t be fairly trivial to sort,” Bamon-Sal said. “They are hunter-gatherers by nature. I’m sure that wonderful cook you’ve procured, Pomanna, will be able to provide for them. As for housing them, well normally they live in the jungle. I was wondering if perhaps Haestil’s forest might be suitable?”

     “You mean the one she is only just planting?” Korabric asked.

     “Yes!” Bamon-Sal agreed. “Better to ask her before it all gets settled, I think. Would you talk to her for me? She is fond of you.”

     Korabric blushed at that, but agreed to talk to her.

          VIII-II. Bamon-Sal, the Profaner

     Kal Panning would have been subjugated and humiliated by the other Circle members. But it was Bamon-Sal that truly cursed the city. Under the orders of Jahbal, after routing the Kal Panning armies, Bamon-Sal worked his magic and altered the remaining residents of the city, turning them into undead liches. There they would remain for a thousand years until King Altador freed them from their agony.

     After Kal Panning, Bamon-Sal built on what he thought were successes. He abandoned the Research Facility, and returned to the Chia Spur. There, he began to mutate all forms of life, creating awful beasts that he hoped would form a new army he could use to dominate the other Circle members. He was thwarted in this by Lamora, the Bewitching, who turned his own creations against him and seized the army as her own.

          The forces of Kal Panning were in full retreat, forced back to the heart of the city, holed up in their council chambers.

     “Victory!” Gyn-Marg declared. “Victory! Let us press our advantage and finish them for good!”

     She found a gentle hand on her shoulder. Jahbal.

     “No,” he said. “If we destroy them so completely, this place will become a shrine to those who would oppose us. Instead, it should serve as a reminder of our power. Bamon-Sal!”

     The Chia floated over. These past few months, he had taken to it, declaring the ground under his feet impure. No, he levitated everywhere, an increasingly evacuated figure. He weighed himself down with iron chains that drooped below him.

     “How can I be of service?” he asked.

     “We need the survivors alive, but suitably punished,” Jahbal said. “Can your research do that?”

     “That which can be lifted up can be struck back down,” Bamon-Sal said. “You wish to make them nothing more than Petpets? Mindless little ghouls, cursed to forever wander this place, not knowing who or what they are?”

     Jahbal nodded.

     “Then it would be my pleasure,” the Chia said with a genial smile.

     He levitated himself up higher, so he could get a good view of the council chambers. He could feel the life down there, trapped and cramped. Calling out for help.

     Help he would provide. These people wanted an escape. Bamon-Sal would give them one. Free them from their higher order fears.

     He reached out with her magic. Plucking at the minds of the Neopets down in the building. Pulling on threads, tying some together, removing some completely. Rearranging their very thoughts and bodies into something new and quite terrible.

     He felt the awful rush of resistance from Faleinn as she tried to cast some counter magic. Too little, too late. She was taken along with the rest.

     When he had them all, he brought himself back down. The council chambers were opening, and the newly afflicted were shambling out, near blind to their surroundings. No different now to undead liches.

     “This place will stand for an eternity,” Bamon-Sal declared. “Testimony to our power, that it should not be challenged again.”

     ***

     Bamon-Sal was no fool. When they returned to Neopia City and found that Oberon had raided their vaults of Kayannin relics, he knew what had happened. The Staff of Ni-Tas was gone, and the Chia knew where it would be found.

     He fled southeast, to the Research Facility. He knew at once that something was wrong, the forest that Haestil had planted was growing out of control. Before long, it would be more of a jungle. It was clear the researchers that were meant to be tending to it were now otherwise occupied.

     He floated up high above the facility. Signs of damage were everywhere, several of the westerly towers were ruined. There were still noises of battle inside, though it was clear it would not last long. Bamon-Sal caught sight of Korabric and the last of the researchers making a stand on one of the parapets, attempting to fall back to the head researcher’s office. Bamon-Sal could not miss their aggressors.

     The Meepits flooded over the stones, armed with weapons and armour. Speaking as if they were Neopets. The Buzz researcher’s worst fears had been realised. The Meepit race had been uplifted beyond their control, and without the Circle to oversee it, the situation had snowballed.

     The cause of the uplifting was soon apparent, as Bamon-Sal had guessed. At the rear lines of the Meepits, there was one, far larger than the others. He was wielding magic, and commanded it via a staff. The Staff of Ni-Tas. Xantan’s Kayannin weapon. A powerful enough thing to create this change.

     Oberon had been here, he had sowed this chaos.

     Giant lizards were emerging from the ranks of Meepits and fighting alongside them. Through the smoke of battle and fire, Bamon-Sal could make out the Acara commanding them. Rollay, but now scales were growing around his neck. Somehow, he had joined this insurrection, and lifted up the lizards he had always wanted as his army.

     Bamon-Sal noted a strange medallion around the Acara’a neck. Mastermind had told him of it — the Kelladrian Medallion, a Kayannin relic from the Temple of Roo. Mastermind, too, had been here then. Both he and Oberon intent on destroying the work they had done.

     Dismantling the Great Empire.

     War, it was, then. Bamon-Sal knew how to do war.

     It was clear the facility was lost. He abandoned the researchers to their fates and flew south, back to his home on the Chia Spur.

     There, in his hut, he began his work. If he was to take on the others, he would need an army. An army like the one he had made in Kal Panning. He began to abduct the locals for testing. They came willingly at first, little knowing what fates awaited them. By the time the rest figured out what was happening it was too late, and then Bamon-Sal began to cast his net further.

     Before long, he had huts upon huts of cages, filled with his new monsters. Giant Chias that commanded elements. Grarrls of massive sizes and primordial Chombies. Kougra made of the mists, rabid Lupes and Aishas. Neopets stripped of their thoughts and burning with hatred.

     He was missing one element, control. These beasts would not serve him. If he let them out of their cages they were just as likely to attack him as his enemies. He struggled with the problem for what seemed like an eternity.

     Then, Lamora came.

     The pretty Kau, always unnaturally young, wandered into his hut one afternoon as if she was walking through a meadow and came across an old friend.

     “Bamon-Sal!” she called. “It's good to see you! It has been entirely too long!”

     Bamon-Sal thought of flattening her there and then with a blast of magic. But there was something about her presence that had always been infectious. A way she put other people at ease just by being there.

     “What are you doing here, Lamora?” he asked instead.

     “Looking for you, of course!” she said with a little giggle. “I've come to tell you to come back home to Neopia City! The fighting is over. I heard about the monsters you are making here and I wanted to tell you there is no need! Jahbal is still imprisoned, Mastermind and Oberon have disappeared. Haestil is gone, buried in rubble by her own people. Gyn-Marg has become an outcast, while Polmith and Tradym have turned pirate. Zhadoom and Ifuli have returned to Sunny City. There is no one to fight, Bamon-Sal. We can rebuild the Empire, together!”

     If anyone else had said those words Bamon-Sal would have been sceptical, but Lamora’s smile was so genuine and her words seemed to ring true in his ears.

     “Then this calls for a toast!” he declared, fetching two cups.

     “Yes, yes!” Lamora agreed, pouring them drinks. “To the Empire, renewed!”

     “The Empire, renewed!” Bamon-Sal agreed, drinking deep.

     “Not that you’ll see it, of course,” Lamora added casually.

     “What do you mean?”

     “I heard about your monsters and the problems you’ve been having with them,” she said. “My magic should help bind them to my will. I’ve always been very good at making people agree with me. You’ve done all the hard work already. Made an army for me.”

     “But you said they weren't needed,” Bamon-Sal said, suddenly feeling very hot.

     “I’m afraid I lied,” Lamora said sadly. “I’ve been very good at that for a long time, as well. I poisoned your drink, by the way. Nothing personal, Bamon-Sal. But if there’s going to be a throne in Neopia City, I’m going to be the one sat on it. And I’ll sit there alone.”

     Bamon-Sal fell to the ground, clawing at his throat. In front of him, the figure of Lamora shifted and changed. The beautiful Kau disappeared, replaced instead with an ugly and mutated creature that repulsed him.

     Lamora’s true form.

     “Goodbye, Bamon-Sal.”

To be continued…