The Hurd

The Foolish Warrior attacks enemy Soldiers. The Supreme Warrior battles the Mind.

"Caraazor 1:2 The Alchemy of War

      The full moon glowed through the sacred memory grove as Hoëlwyn watched her naiad brethren gather in the clearing. From all across the vast wilderness, they came; many had emerged from glades they had tended with delicate care for years beyond reckoning.

       They gathered in thousands"tens of thousands"in far greater numbers than Hoëlwyn had seen in her entire life. They came to tap the hûrd’s ancient memories. They came to gather their collective will.

They came to destroy Mankind.

Hoëlwyn briefly surveyed the smooth male and female faces, their ageless features blurred under the eerie moonlight. In silence, the tall, ethereal naiads arrayed themselves before the monumental elenium trees. They waited for Kafláen. For Kafláen was the trigger. The hûrd’s eldest member was the catalyst that would allow the vast gathering to become one.

Hoëlwyn reached out with a reverent hand and linked her mind with the ancient memories stored in the tree at her fingertips. The rest of the gathering linked with other trees in the grove. When Kafláen added her touch, the naiads truly were a “hûrd”: their individuality joined with the trees and the grass to form a single consciousness.

Past and present merged.

In an instant, Hoëlwyn’s mind expanded. Eons of experience flooded her awareness that had simply not been there before. As her mind explored the cornucopia of new information, she assembled scattered knowledge into a whole she had never dreamed possible.

She knew how to stop the men who chopped down the hûrd’s forest.

She knew how to save the ancient memories that had been stored in the trees.

She knew how to attack the minds of her enemies.

While the hûrd could not change thoughts or control actions, the hûrd now recognized it could deepen a tide-pool of sorrow into an ocean of misery or magnify mild pleasure into delusional ecstasy. The hûrd would assault the emotions of mankind’s leaders until they could no longer cling to sanity.

Hoëlwyn dropped her slender hand from the tree. The young naiad’s mind suddenly constricted after isolating her consciousness from the hûrd. Stunned, she glanced around the grove, searching the befuddled faces of the other naiads. No one spoke. No words between individuals could compare to the absolute symbiosis shared by the hûrd.

      Silently, the tall naiads melted into the woods. The hûrd needed to gather even more of their kind because this task would require a historic effort. The hûrd would have to entice key human leaders into the naiad forest in order to touch their minds. For long years, individual naiads would surrender their independent existence and remain locked together with the forest. However, the results would be worth the sacrifice. Mankind’s fragile peace would end.