Selection (Book 2 of P.O.E. chronicles)

Chapter 18 Human

Even though the Legres were becoming smaller and smaller as we ran away but for some reason I knew the Ursidae was looking right at me. The other Legres began to look around themselves, appeared to be confused with as the leader of the Ursidae who just narrowed its eyes and looked around. The Legres suddenly stopped looking around and began fighting each other and the remaining Ursidae let out an earth-shattering roar before tearing its glance away from me grudgingly to help his pack.

My heart began to beat faster and faster in my chest as I accessed the situation, all the while too afraid to stop running. The look on the Ursidae’s face was etched in my mind; that moment seemed so human that it was scarying me. He seemed to blame me for what was happening but why? Did I actually do it?

My mind floated back to those thoughts that I was projecting just before the packs turned on each other. Surely? I mean, I have heard of manipulating of other human mind, but never ever that of any Legre’s. Suddenly a distant flash back of Fred’s out-of-control behaviour in POE Academy that seemed an age ago came up; didn’t I do something similar there? Could it be that Mr. Andrewson was right, that I really had all the powers of a Mentalist?

“They are fighting.” Emily came to a halt and said, causing everyone else to stop and turned around too. I looked at the fighting Legres and tried to pick out the Ursidae leader, who seemed to be trying to keep his pack from being injured. Fight harder I thought, trying to see if it was really me who caused the outbreak. The moment I thought it I could feel the Ursidae’s eyes on me again and I shivered, maybe I should restrict this to the Felixia pack? The Ursidae seemed too high class to fall for this.

Just as I was contemplating what to do I felt an unfamiliar mind that was very angry, but I couldn’t get any words from it. With a jolt I realised it was coming from the Ursidae; how was this possible? Is it trying to communicate with me?

Startled but curious, I tried to extend a cease-fire indication to the Ursidae, who seemed to get angrier but then quietened down, as if it was considering it. I truly could not believe this, but then it occurred to me that if this was happening right now, then surely at some point in the Legre-POE history someone would have done it too. Maybe not quite the same way as I was, but there are higher class Legres out there, ones that are as intelligent as human. Could it be that they could openly communicate with POEs through mind, or even directly? The possibility overwhelmed me and I felt like everything I ever knew was being turned upside down. We were always taught that we are far superior to these creatures, but if they develop the same level of intelligence as we do, surely that means that we are equal?

Finally, the Ursidae seemed to have decided and sent a friendly signal and I told the other Legres to stop and to my relieve they did. Some were looking around as if wondering what had happened, but both side backing down away from each other with a ten meter gap.

“What is happening?” I heard Tom asked beside me but I was concentrating too hard to answer him. Trying to translate we-mean-no-harm-please-let-us-go to the Ursidae, the latter suddenly stood up on its hind legs and very, very humanly wave its forearm at us, as if asking us to just leave.

This time I wasn’t the only one who saw it; a collective of gasping sounded next to me and I nodded my head appreciatively at the Ursidae before tugging Tom’s sleeves and telling everyone to just go.

“Did the Ursidae just waves at us to go?” Jeremy asked incredulously. We were all running at a much more leisurely speed with no danger facing us and everyone had a dazed expression on their face as if they couldn’t quite believe what just happened. Neither could I to be honest.

Tom’s suspicious glance at me let me know that he was onto something; he was always observant of my power, even when we were kind of unfriendly back in POE Academy.