Dancing for Blue

Tasmir’s torso arced with rhythmic exuberance. Emotions sang out of his fingers as they brushed the night air. His feet were dynamos, jolting and tugging his legs every which way.

With each step Tasmir’s eyes followed the face of the humanoid colossus with four arms, the one to whom he offered the dance. Humans had various names for the gargantuan being, but in this region they called him Blue after his sapphire eyes. People cowered and prayed to this tyrant as their god, for not doing so resulted in their painful deaths and the destruction of entire cities. Tasmir would put an end to that, he hoped, but in order for his plan to succeed, he needed Blue to take the bait.

On the divine platform high above, Blue reposed on a barge-sized divan under a resplendent marquee of gold-brocaded satin damask more capacious than the temples of the now forgotten deities of ancient lore. He watched Tasmir perform with a wry smile. In his hands, the cauldron out of which he quaffed the life essence of his minions was the size of a mere goblet. With two other hands he clapped to the music, sending out deafening thuds that shook the vale. His riotous curly hair and blue garments shimmered as ghost-chilling candelabra sailed above the arena. The unnatural light enhanced the gloom and despair painted on the slouched backs of the downtrodden humans sitting in the tiered stands. Attendance was obligatory.

For centuries Blue would appear unannounced and scour the world to kill time and people and suckle on the essence of their lives. As Intercessionary, Tasmir’s role was to represent humanity and profess absolute subservience and devotion to the tyrannical giant. He also danced to entertain and distract Blue during his appearances. Death and destruction inevitably rained, but people hoped the dances would save a few lives, for Blue took a liking to the various traditions of human dance.

Life expectancy was short for Intercessionaries. Word was, proximity to Blue’s thoughts left a person “touched” and traumatized, if Blue hadn’t killed them first. Dancing guilds constantly searched for gifted children and trained them as future replacements.

Gifted with tremendous psychic powers, Blue had the ability to invade the minds of people and take full control of their bodies. He took pleasure in forcing people to jump in fire or off of cliffs. Intercessionaries were prime targets, of course. He would control their bodies and make them dance for days without rest until they dropped dead. Tonight, however, Tasmir wanted to come closer to Blue than any Intercessionary had before him. He needed Blue to enter his head, so he danced and danced, as he never had done before.

He soon felt a nudging sensation in his mind. Blue had taken the bait. As Tasmir’s consciousness got pushed aside, he felt a chilling sensation enter his mouth and inundate his being. His limbs flailed independent of his volition. Blue had turned him into a puppet, invading his mind and taking full control of it for sheer sadistic amusement. Pangs of pain pierced Tasmir’s awareness as his body contorted into humanly impossible positions. But he had trained constantly for the past decade, and was able to focus his thoughts away from the pain. He packed his soul into a tight ball and charged it with all the mental strength he could muster and held it back like the string of a bow.

When the tension reached its critical point, Tasmir released his soul. It erupted out of its corporeal confines and glid against the thrashing billows of Blue’s psyche. Tenacious as salmon charging up their natal river in search of spawning grounds, his consciousness propelled upstream against the cascade of Blue’s rage, disgust, and contempt towards life. Too engrossed in knotting Tasmir’s body in unnatural ways to the rhythm of the music, Blue didn’t immediately sense the psychic ejecta surging towards him and gleefully continued his sadistic exercise in puppetry.

Slipping in through Blue’s cavernous maw, Tasmir’s consciousness shot out tendrils in all directions, lunging deeply into the ogre’s mind and planting hooks of empathy as anchors. Blue’s body jerked and abruptly disconnected his mind from Tasmir’s body. His inner eye glowered within, searching for the intruder. You dare violate this celestial mind!? The thoughts dripped with wrath and evil.

Psychically tethered to the giant, Tasmir now experienced Blue’s thoughts directly, as his inner voice. Tasmir had always inwardly trembled at the raw violence embodied in that thundering voice, but now he sensed the negative emotions feeding it and convulsed as it flooded around him. This was no mere brush with an evil mind; he now became the first Intercessionary to directly perceive the giant’s unadulterated evil nature.

Tasmir looked out through Blue’s eyes. On the dusty clearing of the coliseum lay a flesh-sack of bone, muscle and gristle. No yearning for his erstwhile abode overcame him, though. He had much to do.

Deftly skating in and out of the folds of Blue’s labyrinthine mind, Tasmir plunged through strata of memories, layer upon layer of unspeakable horrors, peoples and worlds destroyed by his wrath and hatred. But these were not the memories he sought. He submerged further.

Soon he spotted a bamboo grove on Blue’s home world. In a thicket near a clearing hid Blue, much younger. This youthful Blue stared through the morass of grass and bamboo, paralyzed in horror. Tasmir moved in closer behind and watched as angular-bodied Insectoids chopped down bamboo as thick as Sequoia. They were harvesting young infants. Blue’s species reared their progeny within the internodes of massive bamboos stalks, where they lived symbiotically with the plant until they reached second childhood. Stunned, weak, and frightened, Blue could do nothing but hide and watch.

Blue was an oddity in his community. His culture extolled gregariousness, confidence, and tough competition, but he was timid, quiet and shy. He had no sense of how to communicate with others and gain their loyalty and trust. He spent his time secluded in the bamboo grove, tending to the nursery. He soon viewed his self-imposed isolation as a weakness and grew envious of others. He despised the leader of his world in particular. Blue blamed him for all the wrongs, for the leader was the personification of the society that rejected Blue. His hatred stewed until he finally hired an Insectoid squad to assassinate the leader. But his plan backfired. The Insectoids seized the opportunity to destroy his entire planet, even attacking the nurseries. And there he sat in hiding, watching the fruits of his decisions.

The scene changed. It was later in the day. Blue sat alone, weeping in the clearing and surrounded by felled bamboo stalks. His grief soon turned into anger, then into rage. He swore to kill his weak self and exact revenge on the Insectoids. His indignation at his stupidity and envy redirected outwards and coursed out of him. Drawing in the strength of his world, he grew in strength and stature tenfold. After singlehandedly attacking and liquidating the Insectoids remaining on his planet, he phased into pure energy and traveled to the Insectoid home world, razing it in its entirety.

Tasmir rose through myriad memories spanning millennia, and witnessed the initial seed of anger and pain brought about by Blue’s own decision morph into contempt for all life in the universe. Coupled with this, Tasmir watched how Blue developed a megalomaniacal belief in himself as a divinity destined to punish all life.

You measly wretch! You dare touch the divine?

Tasmir shuddered as a wall of seething hatred closed in on him. He could no longer move.

You pathetic human!

The all-powerful mind of Blue ripped out Tasmir’s consciousness and spat him out. As Tasmir flew out of Blue’s mouth and dissipated, he entreated the old gods for his plan’s success. The tiny anchors of empathy he planted still remained deep in Blue’s psyche. Locked in by barbs, they remained latched on when Blue cast Tasmir out of his mind.

One day, Tasmir hoped, those seeds of empathy would take root. They would sprout and spread, turning into a force to balance the deep hatred and contempt in Blue. A long shot, for sure, but worth it.