From: caz@owlnet.rice.edu (HWRNMNBSOL)
Subject: [KQ] Kron [TGMOAB 4.1] Retroscope
Organization: Rice University
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 00:52:30 GMT

*WHOOF*  <bang>

Pain.  Kron feels pain.

There's a haze in his head.  His eyes are closed.  He takes close stock of
the situation:

There's something cold under my back.  Ouch.  It's cold.  Oh -- it's a floor.

Why am I lying on a floor?

Open the eyes -- just a crack -- Yow!  Bright.  Hold off on that for a bit.

Pain in the back, neck, right arm.  Also a splitting head-ache.  Concussion?

Gotta lie still.  Don't know what I'm doing, or why I'm on my back, but if I
play dead a bit, maybe they'll let me recover.  Okay:

Lift right wrist a tad.  Small twinge; nothing major.  No bones broke.  No
nerves severed.  Good.

Back hurts just below left shoulderblade.  Poking, prodding pain.  Hmmm...oh,
wait.  I think I'm lying on top of my dagger.  Don't think the point got in --
nope, just feeling the handle.  Uncomfortable, but not a big problem.

Neck feels fragile.  Must have pulled something.  That will be a bitch.

Okay -- move left hand slowly up to head and feel around.  Uh-huh....yeah...
no blood.  Big sore spot, though, but no bump.  Must have just got it.  Ow.

Open eyes again.  Fuzzy -- can see light -- can hear too -- focus -- ah!
A ceiling!  How unexpected....

I'm okay.  I'm not badly wounded.  I don't think I have a concussion.  Time
to move.  

Pull legs up quick -- tuck into a ball -- roll backwards -- up!  Sword out --
HAH!!

What the......

Oh yeah.

*****************************************************************************

The battle's not over yet.  ...sage popped in at a timely moment, and now
Mother's attention focusses on this new threat.  'Raelf seems to lose a
hundred pounds as some of the assault on his defenses relents.  Additionally,
Thk appears to be armed with a new and perilous threat: a weapon invested
with some of the power of one or more Gods.  Mother has a lot on her minds.
Cheyenne's extrusion sinks down into the mass, making her better able to
control the situation.

Kron seems to have been lost in the shuffle.  He has no magic weapons or
tricks at his disposal.  He knows no spells and has no psychic defenses.
He can summon no potent aid.  Further, he has already agreed, of his own
volition, to join Cheyenne as one of Great Mother's components.  Hence, he
is briefly left to his own devices.  Kron crouches down to think.

Cheyenne presented him with the evidence of his own emotions.  She showed him
herself, and she showed him himself, and she forced him to evaluate all the
data he had been given.  In the end, she offered him one choice: join her or
die.  He chose to join her.  It was, Kron knows, a decision that was made
without interference.  He had been allowed to witness Cheyenne's tampering
with his mental functions, and he would have seen any underhandedness. 

Wait.

There was one element that Cheyenne entered into the equation that did not
compute.  She offered him a binary option: join or die.  Two choices.  Join
or die.  Only one path to take.  Join or die.

But what if there were a third choice?

Kron saw a lot when Cheyenne took him on a forced march through herself.
To be sure, he saw the intense love that she bore for him.  But he saw more.
And he knows what he must do.

Kron rises to his feet and marches over to the edge of the familiar, horrific
pool.  On the way he collects his dagger in his left hand, keeping his sword
drawn in the right.  He reaches the pool's edge and puts the point of the
dagger to his inner right forearm.  He jabs it, and the blood starts flowing.
He lets the red drops plunk into Great Mother's heaving mass, where he knows
it will get Cheyenne's attention.

"CHEYENNE!" Kron roars.  "GET YOUR BUTT OUT HERE!"

As the green-clad, girlish form rises again from the cyclopean bulk of her
hideous host, Kron unlimbers his razor-sharp short-sword and holds the
point to the pulsing veins of his own neck................

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