"Get up," said an insistent yet hollow soundi­ng voice.

I kept my eyes and ears screwed shut. still curled up in the foetal position.

"Get up!" the voice was a bit more insistent this time.

I shook my head to make the voice go away.

"Get up... " the voice seemed to fade out and I relaxed a bit.

"Get up! Get up! Get up! GET UP! GET UP!"

I moaned in pain and frustration as the voice, sounding as loud as the earlier explos­ions filled my head to bursting. I jumped up and looked around wildly. my blood boiling. I was ready to smash the source of the voice.

The ghost of Kishni, or figment of my imagination, stood placidly in a field of black, burned soil. My mouth fell open as I witnessed the sheer devastation that the Pridish monstrosity had wrought. The air was full of wisps of ash and smoke. The trees and the pond had sim­ply vanished, replaced by stumps and a crater.

"Good job boy. You've let the enemy know that you're alive with that idiotic yelping," said ghost Kishni with a straight face.

I felt lost amidst the destruction.

"What do I do now?" I asked no one in particular.

"Hmmm..." came the familiar hum­ming. "You fight back of course. It's your turn now."

I stared at the little ghost.

"Are you out of your mind?" I asked her without a trace of irony.

She simply lifted a single ghostly eyebrow at that.

"With what do I fight back?” I asked, spreading my hands helplessly.

She pointed her not-really-there stick at the ground near me.

"That boulder should work."

I looked where she was pointing. It was the large boulder I had sheltered next to during the bombardment.

"No seriously... are you mad?" I said.

"Pick it up,” came the stern reply.

I looked at her and she looked back at me with a placid expression.

"Pick it up," she repeated.

"No," I replied stubbornly.

"Pick it up," she said again. I shook my head.

"Pick it up."

" ..."

"Pick it up!"

"I... I'm scared… I don't want to fight I'll just run."

"Pick it up! Pick it up! Pick it up! Pick it up!"

With another roar of frustration and anger I wrapped my arms around the top of the boulder and with my knees bent almost all the way to the ground, I lifted.

The boulder was harder to uproot th­an I had expected. A large part of the bottom half had actually been underground and I had to shimmy it loose. It was an ungainly object and because of its oblong shape I had to balance in both arms. Holding it around waist-high the top of it almost cut across my line of sight.

"Now what? "I asked the air in front of me.

“Hmmm..."

I waited.

"Now you find your enemy and rain wrath down upon them."

Kishni, the real Kishni didn't speak like that.

"I’m really scared. I don't want the pain again," I said in a small voice as I acknowledged that my fear was a fear of pain.

"Hmmm. Everyone's scared. Life is tough for everyone. Were you normal you wou­ld have a died a long time ago. But you're not normal, you have power that you don't deserve. Are you going to ignore that power just because you haven't earned it? Does a rich man's son sleep on the streets in rags bec­ause he hasn't earned money? You use the gifts you have. And you have power. Use it. if not to take what you want then at least to show your enemies the cost of hurting you."

Her rant sounded like the real Kishni and yet not. The real Kishni had never patronised me so much. I couldn't fault her words though. And yet my fear did not disappear. Could I do this? Could I really?

“If I do this, it won't stop them. I'm an oddity to be studied or worse someone who hurt their ego. They'll keep coming for me," I said in mild protest, still hoping she would let me off the hook.

"Boy, kings who crave power have murdered their own new-born siblings and cousins since the beginning of history. You think this empire will suffer you to live, no matter how much you run?"

What she was saying made sense to me. But I was envisioning the war that would follow. It would be a long fight to prove my dominance.

"Boy the war will come to you or you will go to war. It is coming none­theless."

"Did you just read my mind?" I asked.

"Hmmm!”

The boulder wasn't as heavy as it was large and ungainly. The terrain, although clear of vegetation was now pockmarked with craters that I couldn't spot because of the obelisk in my arms. I stumbled numerous times as I walked downhill on the charred remains of the hills.

I had butterflies in my stomach. I tried to take deep breaths to calm my beating heart but it only made me more anxious. I could feel my skin prickling as I imagined that I was headed towards my fiery death. To make it worse there was an annoying grinding din reverberating across the wall of mountains that got louder with every step of mine.

The source of the din became apparent when I was suddenly greeted by the same old whistling noise and an explosion in the air above my head.

“Shit!" I exclaimed as I back-tracked in a hurry, dropping the boulder in the process.

In my rush, I failed to find footing in the destroyed surface and I fell heavily on my side, groaning in pain. Desperately I tried to crawl back uphill.

"Pipe down you idiot,” came the stern voice. "Stop and look first."

Ghost Kishni’s irritated voice made me pause long enough to realise that the barrage had not come as expect­ed and that the fiery explosion had been far above my head and I hadn’t even felt the heat from the explosion.

Heart thundering and imagining myself a daring warrior I swiveled around, still in a prone position and tried to peer downhill.

The Pridish velocicar was a ways downhill from me but nose inclined upwards as it struggled to climb. Struggle was the right word to describe its ongoing efforts. The Prids had devastated the side of the hill in a show of firepower. But in the process they had made the soil dry and sandy. The multiple wheels of the velocicar struggled to find purchase and for some reason that was causing the machine to produce the grating noise.

More to the point, the front cannons of the machine were point­ing skywards and for whatever reason were not able to aim properly.

"You can lie there and look at it all day boy," came Kishni's voice. “Or you can take your chance and destroy it.”

"Okay, okay just give me a minute."

"Take your chance, take your chance, take your chance..."

"Just a minute let me think..."

"Take your chance, take your chance, take your chance."

"Okay, okay."

"Take your chance! Now!"

"OKAY!" I heaved and rose up, loaded the dropped boulder into my arms. Adrenalin was pumping as I imagined the Prids training their cannons on me. I manoeuvred the boulder in front of my face and then slowly over my head until my arms were vertically extended and the boulder was balanced above my head. Then I chucked it.

Except chucking a giant boulder from that body position is impossible and it was more of a gentle shove as the boulder's weight dropped it forwards.

Boulders don't bounce, but they do roll. Everything seemed to move in slow motion as the boulder rolled very untidily down the hill, its oblong shape taking it this way and that. I had the sinking feeling that it would miss the velocicar entirely. But miraculously it kept rolling faster and faster in the general direction of the Pridish machine.

I thought the game was up for sure when the boulder hit an obstacle and was launched into air. But some­how it did strike the machine, jut not where I wanted. The boulder hit the top corner of the machine. The velocicar's walls, which were clearly made to withstand catapults, didn't crumble under the sud­den impact as I had hoped. But what happened next was even more fantastic.

The force of the boulder tipped the machine onto its side at an angle and the giant blocky machine began to roll end-over-end downhill still being pushed further by the sheer momentum transferred by the boulder’s impact.

I watched, mouth agape as the machine came to a stop at the bott­om of the hill, upside down, wheels facing the sky and rolling in vain.

"Hmmm... what a bad throw."

I laughed.

I kept laughing as I saw the machine open up and deposit its shaken and woun­ded inhabitants onto the ground. I laughed as I felt my bloodlust rise and strode downhill without hesitation. I laughed as the Cotton-mouth Governor and his aide saw me coming and made to run away. I laughed as the remaining guards tried to stand up to me and I broke them. I laughed as I threw the body parts of their compatriots at the Governor and his aide. I laughed as I caught up with the cowards and kicked a hole through the aide. And I laughed as I tore the Governor's head and limbs from his torso.