Haiku
Jedi Master
Wrath’s World – Walkers
A plateau on some forgotten world, it was as big as a continent. Around it, a bank of clouds hanging low on some unseen ground below. From above it was a good mile drop, but that was just to the clouds, no one knew what was down below it, there could be nothing at all.
Wrath lived here, he was perched at the edge still looking down when a commotion happened behind him, he turned to see what was going on.
There was a pack of dogs, Malinois, they were newcomers here on this plane only being here for a couple hundred of years. Bhutto the spirit magician brought them here for his protection from the many entities on this plane. Bhutto trained them to be killers because of their mentality and fierceness, but he never expected the cerebrum’s takeover.
The cerebrum’s had been around as long as Wrath himself. They fly through the air until they find a host to use, then they attach themselves to them like a parasite over the head of the beasts. They become the eyes and intelligence of the new beast and will drive them until they die of a horrible death, usually in battle. They look like a brain out of their skull, they have independent eyes and two appendages that look similar to insect legs with one elbow and small pinchers on the end. They use these to extract energy from their prey.
Right now there was a pack of forty-two dogs with attached cerebrum’s running away from him at full speed, heading toward the quartz peaks in the south, they were on the hunt.
Like Wrath, the cerebrum’s required energy from other souls to survive, but they couldn’t take it from their hosts or they would die, they had to have another source. Their favorite food was young walkers, a bipedal creature that was mostly legs. The problem with them was their elders that were sixteen feet tall with feet that could crush a car flat. They only resided in secluded valleys in the quartz peaks, safely living in sunken valleys at higher altitudes.
Wrath needed a change, these dogs piqued his curiosity, so he got up and followed them. Now the dogs were fast and could run at speeds of up to 48km/hr but Wrath was ten time faster. He would sprint from point to point allowing the dogs to show him which way they were heading then he would sprint to catch up with them time and time again.
They passed by several spring pools, the cerebrum’s recharged with worms, the dogs ate the remains and drank from the water.
Eventually they made it to the base of the crystal peaks, it was quite a sight. They broke through the ground and were towers of crystal with some of them being dozens of meters across. They came in colors, some were colorless and clear, others were light pink, milky white, purple, yellow or brown. All had some level of transparency.
You couldn’t climb them, so you had to use the crystal shards that shattered from the big ones that laid all over the ground making paths up the mountains. They followed one such path up into the mountains.
There were many crag-beasts up here feeding on the shard of crystals themselves, they were rock biters. Some resembled mountain goats, others looked like a rhino’s, all were without prized horns that were commodity here on this world. All of them were larger then their relatives here on earth with the rhinos being five times bigger. They all had plates of stone covering their bodies, protection from falling crystals that shattered and fell upon them.
They arrived at one sunken valley, cliffs of hundreds of meters surrounded the valley with no visible way down. Below them were three villages of walkers. Each village was surrounded by a wall of smaller but long crystals of ten meters in length. In each one was twenty to thirty tall adult walkers that protected the smaller and younger ones, they numbered in the hundreds huddled in the center of the villages.
The adult walkers in each village had a hierarchy, most were foragers but there was a chief and one or two healers and at least one shaman. The shaman had all the power in the village, he could do things that almost seemed like magic. He maintained the portal, a black obsidian stone cut in the shape of a four-sided pyramid. It was the exit in case the village was attacked, which happened quite frequently. That was because of the energy that the walkers held, it was one of the commodities here in this realm.
The energy was what the cerebrum’s came for, but they had to get to them to extract it.
At the top of the cliff the dogs awaited their entry point. The cerebrum’s tested a cliff fall of one of the dogs, a sacrifice to see if it was even possible. One of the dogs leaped over the edge and either slid down the inner wall or tumbled to its death. That is what happened here and the cerebrum’s flew off the tumbling dog before it died and flew back to the cliff edge.
The cerebrum’s were delicate creatures and could easily be killed all by themselves, they needed to attach to some kind of creature to be a threat. A few hundred meters away were rhinos, a herd of twelve of them were munching on crystal shards, the floating cerebrum headed that way. The crag-beasts had little energy that the cerebrum’s needed but that didn’t stop them from using one of them.
The floating cerebrum landed on the largest rhino and sunk its spinal cord deep into the head of the rhino. It brought the rhino over to the cliff edge with the dogs. Then the rhino started pounding the cliff edge with it heavy front legs crushing the crystals and shattering the cliff all the way to the bottom. The dogs backed up as the cliff collapsed with the rhino falling all the way down creating a ramp of crystal shards and killing the rhino and the attached cerebrum in the process.
The dogs leaped at this and made their way down into the valley, the tall walkers sounded off an alarm and closed up each village.
Wrath in the meantime was up on the cliff’s edge watching this whole event going on. He followed the dogs down to the bottom of the valley and stopped to inspect the valley floor. He felt it, it was a soft limestone and could be easily be dug into. He looked up to see the dogs had arrived at the first village.
The dogs started digging up the foundations of the wall looking to remove several of the crystal wall pillars.
In the village the shaman went to the pyramid and started it spinning. He had prepared for this event as each face of the pyramid had been turned into portal to another place, each going to a different place. He knew not where they were going but as long as it wasn’t here, it would do. This pyramid was only a meter tall, it would not allow the tall walkers to pass through, but the young could. The chief ordered the young through as they clamored into the pyramid faces and they were all gone.
This left the tall walkers all by themselves awaiting the attack that was about to ensue.
The dogs had cleared three pillars' foundations and one of them leaped at one of them making it fall inwards, a opening was now available. The other two pillars fell backwards at the dogs and crushed three of the dogs, their cerebrum’s detached and flew at the pyramid and passed through. The shaman saw this and landed a foot on the pyramid crushing it into bits, no more would pass through now.
The rest of the dogs attacked making the walkers defend their home. They stomped and swung their legs, but it was to no avail as they started falling over from the dogs running around them.
Wrath watched as the tall walkers screamed in their deaths as the thirty-eight dogs tore them to pieces letting the cerebrum’s suck their energies dry.
Now some may think that Wrath was just like the cerebrum’s, but he was not, he felt sorry for them. He decided to help the other two villages. He slid past the first village and planted himself in front of the second village.
The dogs eventually exited the first village and headed straight toward Wrath. But Wrath was ready, he planted his feet firmly in the soil and prepared his attack. He had several attack methods from fire to slashing and one he called the lightning strike, that is what he decided to use. A cloud appeared above him and grew blacker by the second.
The dogs came at him in a wide grouping, any normal creature would be shaking in their shoes see this, Wrath wasn’t. He waited for the dogs to get close, and he drew lightning bolts out of the cloud striking him and charging him up. He let it loose on the dogs dropping them in their tracks, killing not only the dogs but the cerebrum’s in the process. He looked around and all he saw was smoking carcasses all over the place, he smiled as the cloud above him dissipated.
Wrath used almost half of his energy to make the lightning strike, he could use some energy to replenish his. He looked over his shoulder at the walker village, even one of them could totally replenish him, but he decided not to. He walked away, there was a spring pool at the bottom of the mountains that had many worms that he could use.
The walkers saw him leaving, there were a few hoots and hollers as he was leaving in appreciation of the effort he did for them. Wrath felt good as he walked away.
A little while later he was at the pool sucking energy out of the worms crawling around there, it took no time at all to fully replenish himself.
Wrath felt another entity and he sent out a scan. He spun around to see one of the dogs there, it survived the lightning strike, and it didn’t have the cerebrum attached, it was all alone. It walked up to him with his head down, the dog knew it could kill it in an instant. It stopped in front of him standing twice as tall as Wrath and sat down.
Wrath came up to him and the dog leaned down and licked his face. Wrath replied and he scratched behind his ears, there was a friendship going on there. Wrath walked away as the dog went over to the remains of worms and filled himself with their leftovers. He drank a good amount of water and then sped up and caught up with Wrath, it looked like Wrath had a friend, at least a pet to have with him, it was nice, he was no longer alone.
Now as for the small walkers that made it through the pyramid, they went to four different worlds, one of them was earth. And the ones that made it to earth had a tail, one of the cerebrum’s made it there too. The young walkers scattered, some formed groups and stayed together, others just took off by themselves.
Some of these young walkers have been seen here. They have problems walking here as the gravity is so much different, but they suffice to say the least. The shaman gave them instructions to keep on walking as they have cerebrum’s on their trails. As for the young walkers they are not old enough to talk but they can make noises of animals, barking like a dog or screeching like an owl, we’ve seen this and caught them on videos.
The cerebrum’s are still following them waiting for their chance to take their energy. We see them also, they look like a pulsating glowing string of light in the night air, it is the brain stem doing this. You might even find an earth animal that is dead near the walkers as the cerebrum’s took their lives to sustain until they find their prey, the walkers. Also note, the cerebrum’s can talk at some frequencies, they will warn you not to get in their way! If you see a cerebrum, don’t go near them, they kill with a single touch.
So, be nice to the young walkers, they are on the run … always. Haiku …