When it came to psychics, the best way to detect them was through their aura. With the right knowledge and tools, aura could be examined quite thoroughly, even to the point of being able to see through their attempts to conceal their abilities.
That was one of Jercash's specialties, in fact. He'd been doing it for decades with great delight.
And it certainly hadn't earned him any affection from the nesting wrobels around the world.
Most of them seemed to be under the impression that he wanted to hunt them all down and exterminate them from existence.
Which was completely untrue. Understandable, sure, but untrue.
He would've much preferred to enslave them.
Unfortunately, even after all these years of hunting--and creating multiple specialized teams for hunting--he hadn't seen much luck on that front. Or any at all, for that matter. He and his men had never managed to successfully enslave even one of those stubborn birds.
So yeah, death had always ended up being the solution--hence why it was an understandable point of confusion. But he still fully intended to find a way to enslave them properly, one day. Not just through threats of violence but actual, true psychic enslavement. Just as their ancestors had once done to mankind.
It was only fair, wasn't it?
And he was hoping that, perhaps, these recent breakthroughs with the Yigorosks might prove helpful with that problem, too. More psychic specimens to study could only be a good thing, surely, even if they were a bit unruly.
Plus, he knew full well that some of those feathery deviants were working with the Vanguard, relying on them for "protection" in exchange for operational support.
The fools didn't seem to realize that such an arrangement was basically enslavement, already. If they would've just given him a shot, he was sure that he would've been a much better master than whoever was pulling their strings within the Vanguard.
But that was nothing new, of course. Everyone always thought that he was some merciless, evil oppressor.
They just didn't understand. As long as they complied completely, he was actually quite the benevolent master. He hadn't earned the love of all his men by treating them like trash, after all.
And yeah, sure, the killing and replacing of problematic subordinates with more pliable clones had helped, but that was more of a recent development, really. And it had its limitations, too. His men had loved him way before he started doing that.
Most of them.
A dark serial novel. Set in a modern fantasy world called Eleg. Mature language. Updates every day at noon PST by ~400 words.