Chapter 4: The Betrayal

The transport rose slowly. Too slowly. To slowly to stop me from seeing the carnage below. The Monarchials were destroying anything that moved, and my father was at the forefront.

These people would pay any price for political power.

I was reminded of a quote in our Holy Book of Truth - equivalent to the Miranu Litany of Mir or the Earth Bible. We of the Daragiz, like most other races, have about half a dozen Laws that form the cornerstone for our judicial system - or, rather, they did. Each faction had a different judicial system now. Of our Seven Laws, at the forefront is "You shall not kill, or arrange for someone to be killed." Then came "You shall honor your family above all else." Third, and the one that applied most here, was "You shall not sacrifice morality in the pursuit of power."

The Monarchials were breaking all of the First Three.

For the entire seven-hour flight, I could think of nothing but the image of my father leading the death squads. He had lied to me, his own son. He loved me, but also lied to me, and in doing so broke Law Four: "You shall not intentionally deceive."

Clearly, the Monarchials were evil. And yet, that couldn't be, because my father was a Monarchial. Thus, the Monarchials could not be evil - at least, not all. they were just doing their jobs when they killed those people.

Not killed, said the voice in the back of my mind. Slaughtered. Massacred. Mass murdered. Unprovoked, premeditated, murder.

Murder. My father was a murderer.

No.

My mind was divided. My own four-lobed brain was battling against itself, half convinced that my father was evil, the other half defending him.

He was my father.

And I was betraying him.

No, I told myself. No. you are betraying what he has BECOME, not what he WAS. What he has become is evil, and betrayal of that evil is an act of goodness.

And yet...

All my life I had seen the struggle of good and evil as very black-and-white. There was good, and there was evil. There was not, and could not, be anything in between. There was, though.

I suddenly saw, as Kythundre already could see, the eternal shades of gray.

Kythundre looked at me, and though we Daragiz are not telepathic, in that moment we shared something special. We shared an understanding. In a way, we had both lost something. I had lost my father to war, and he had lost his innocence. He was only ten, but I would not be surprised to know that he had performed this maneuver dozens of times before - occupy a province, wait for a counterattack, and show the youths what war really was.

In that moment, I both hated and loved Kythundre. I loved him for taking me away from my now-evil father, and hated him from taking away my childish innocence.

Ketzecoatal, a friend of mine since birth, walked over to the solitary bench in back of the transport where Kythundre and I were sitting. His eyes had a haunted look, and I knew that he was replaying what he had seen hours ago over and over again in his mind.

He sighed, a deep, long, mournful sigh, expelling in one breath all the horrors of war. He looked at me, his face looking even more sorrowful, and spoke.

"That was your father, wasn't it?"

I nodded.

We would have to fight in the war. There was no question about that. But we would fight together.

(This is the last chapter of In the Beginning of EVO to be posted here. If you want to read more, I will be posting it occasionally on the message board of Blazer's UEVORPG, which is located at (url="http://"http://micahl.virtualave.net/cgi-bin/uevo/index.cgi")http://micahl.virtua.../uevo/index.cgi(/url) .)