Pango

Glad you could join us for the next armored episode of Elliot’s Adventures. If you’re new here, you can catch up by returning to the beginning, and reading really fast…

Sirehta’s brothers had spread the word among The Arids’ disaffected residents of a meeting that might save their futures. Now the meeting place was crammed with silent creatures. Cahret rose from his coil to face those who had answered the call.

“You are here because you hate tyranny, yet you do not know how to stop a tyrant. Alone, you hide in your own defense, but you believe you are too weak and helpless to protect anyone else.”

Shifting beneath a hard skin of shining scalloped scales, a pointy-faced insectivore lumbered to her feet. “Each of us grows to become our own protector. We can’t be responsible for anyone else.”

“What is your name, friend?” Sirehta asked.

She glanced from side to side before answering. “Pango.”

“Pango, what you say is only partly true,” Sirehta responded. “Do you not try to protect your young? Have you never lost offspring to the General’s soldiers?”

Eyes downcast, she answered, “Of course I have. His army is voracious, but if we resist, the General’s wrath is worse.”

“You are not alone,” the serpent said, “and it is not right that any mother should be forced to sacrifice her young.”

Cahret’s eyes blazed and his voice sizzled. “You can see we are many, and there are even more outside The Arids who would help us rid this land of General Hai and his minions so we may all live free.”

“Where was this ‘help’ when his forces attacked me in the sky?” asked a bedraggled Flyer holding out his broken wing.

The crowd began to murmur.

Someone yelled, “No one has ever wanted to help us!”

Sirehta rose to address them. “They do now. I have witnessed their help myself. Let us tell you about the Alliance.”

To be continued. . .

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