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“The massage is wasted on me in this state.” Fabiana mused. “I’m too tightly wound. It would have been better if I saw mater first.”

I turned to face the uspec and shrugged. “Then we will return after your meeting with your progenitor.”

Fabiana burst out laughing. “You are quite sensible sirga.”

I smiled, rather agreeing with the uspec’s words. Fabiana organized imps into locking our belts in safes. When I questioned the security, Fabiana looked at me and said, “this is Lahooni,” as if those simple words should clear all my misgivings.

They did not, but I liked the confidence with which Fabiana uttered them.

We started in a heated pond filled with baths salts. Fabiana and I made a game out of racing to the end of it. As used to baths salts as I had gotten, this pool still stung. I beat Fabiana to the end, of course, I was half kute after all. Then we climbed out of the pond and flew over to the next one. It was a rinsing pond. Fabiana made a show of rising high in the air and then diving into the pond. I followed the uspec’s lead, laughing as I landed into the cool pool. We were not alone in the pond, but the few other uspecs there looked at us with little interest.

It was not until I dodged a scented bar Fabiana threw at my head, and then proceeded to throw one back at the uspec, that I realized I was doing what I had watched the younger uspecs in the public ponds do. I was playing. I had never played before. Never with Marcinus. My relationship with Marcinus had been polluted by the fact that I was sent to take its eye. I had come to that port to harm it and I’d known from the moment I met it. And Arexon, I thought then of my other uspec friend. Arexon had been somehow more than a peer. From the start, Arexon had been more. The setting of Chiboga had made it impossible to form a carefree bond with any uspec there, even Yakubo, who’d been more my equal.

But here, this was different. Fabiana had appeared out of nowhere. I had not gone searching for it. Finding Fabiana had been a surprise, a pleasant one. I had no expectations of this uspec. There was nothing I needed of it, and nothing it needed of me. The fact that we remained together was simply a testament to how much we enjoyed each other’s company. It was a thought that made me a smile. Still, I could not help the small pang of sorrow I felt as I remembered Marcinus. Marcinus and I could have been like this. It was the first uspec I called friend. If only I hadn’t been there to take its eye. If only Manus hadn’t been bent on taking its life.

We finished off in an almost hail-cold chilled pond. I let the cool liquid quench my thoughts. Whatever had happened with Marcinus was in the past now. I would never be free of my guilt, but that guilt was useless. I’d done what I had to do to save Marcinus’ life. I’d taken its eye and it had got to keep its life.

Fabiana threw a towel at my head, and the force of the wound cloth hitting my exposed skin, had the effect of knocking the sad thoughts right out of my mind. I smiled at the uspec, and then proceeded to unwind the towel. I scrubbed myself down hard, my gaze trailing over to the canal with the falling liquid. We had not had time to swim in that, but I knew Fabiana was eager to get the meeting with its progenitor out of the way. We would return later, and then we could spend the entire day in the ponds if we desired.

Musa was waiting by the exit, with our belts, when we arrived. Its sockets met my eyes and it moved to speak, but I shook my head, cutting it off.

We departed the ponds in silence. My mind was light. The whisper of Marcinus’ name still prodded my conscience, but I pushed it down. A glance at Fabiana showed that it too had much on its mind. Unlike the ghosts that poked at me, Fabiana’s demons were yet to be met. It still had to confront its progenitor.

I placed a hand on the uspec’s shoulders and squeezed. “It will be fine.” I said reassuringly. This was an uspec with pansophy, the familiar warning sounded in my head. But I knew Fabiana, the uspec was not the kind to use pansophy on another without permission. It was Lahooni after all. I scoffed at my own thoughts. A few more days with Fabiana and I would be spouting the same nonsense.

“Gratitude sirga.” It replied. “I suppose there is no point delaying the inevitable.”

I shook my head. It sighed. “Then we should go.” Fabiana reached within its belt and pulled out three black tokens with cyan markings engraved on them.

“These have thought of mater’s dwelling already imbued in them, so it makes no difference what you think of as you drop them. It will take us there regardless.” It laughed drily then, as if its words were meant as a joke.

Musa and I took the tokens from the uspec and dropped them onto the hardened quicksand ground. The ground pulled us in, sending us to our final location. We arrived in the receiving room of a richly furnished dwelling. An imp sat on a couch by a wall of hard fog. Its attention had been on a tome before we appeared. It startled when it saw us.

Its eyelids pulled over its eye sockets giving them a narrowed look. “Master Fabiana? Is that you?”

Fabiana smiled and then nodded. “I am here to see my mater.”

The imp recovered quickly. “Of course master.” It reached for a wooden sword hanging from the couch, and then it placed that sword into the hard fog. The fog softened, granting us entrance into the room.

The entertaining room revealed was a large one. There were at least twenty lounging beds arranged like the petals of a flower, around an open carpeted patch in the center. Stools and tables were fixed to different spots between the beds.

“If you wouldn’t mind waiting here sirga, I will find my mater and speak to it first. Then I will introduce you.”

I smirked at it. “Of course majestic.” I replied.

“Make yourself at home.” Fabiana stated as it walked in the directions of curtains to the left. There were several curtains and I was certain each one led to another part of the dwelling. I walked over to the nearest lounging bed and sat on it.

Musa remained standing. It stared at me, watching me in a way that made it clear that it was trying to hide the fact that I was the subject of its gaze.

Musa. I shook my head at it. We had not spoken since we left Damejo. Fabiana had always been around. Even the night before, we’d shared a room, shared a bed even. Fabiana had been too drunk to return to its room. And so I had not even had to worry about any silent awkwardness between Musa and I. Why had I agreed to bring Musa along today? The imp was adamant in its protection. Now that it knew my true heritage, it would not let me go anywhere without it. It was determined to protect me. Just as it had protected me in Damejo, when it got bitten by the samu. The thought rose warring feelings within me.

“You know,” I stated conversationally, “it is not Permafrost that I can’t forgive you for.”

“No?” Musa’s voice had the mild undertones of cautious hope. It drew closer and perched uncomfortably on the lounging bed beside me.

“I was angry about the lies, but that was not unforgiveable. Being here, in Lahooni, I can see what my line built. They were generous Musa, too generous to begrudge one such as you whatever you wished. I know that. And I understand why you lied to me. But I do not understand the invasion you’ve planned, and I cannot forgive it.”

Musa sighed. “It was not meant to be what the elders have made it. I only wanted equality master, only a world where all imps could be as happy as I was. I did not think that the imps I built permafrost for would turn around and seek to master uspecs.”

As happy as I was. The words stuck to me. The imp was no longer happy then. Life with me had not proven to be the joy it had been with the others of my line. And why that should affect me as it did, I could not say. But it affected me. I cleared my throat. “You cannot unleash a demon and then expect it to be tame.”

Musa shrugged. “Perhaps it was wishful thinking on my part.” It paused. “Why did you lie to me?”

“I never lied to you.”

Musa’s lips drew in a mocking smile. “Why did you keep it a secret then? Do you not trust me?”

“It was not about trust.” I leaned forward, my gaze turning to the painted ground underneath our feet. “I was not ready to be whatever it is you would want of me. I was not ready to be your precious heir. I am still not ready. I told you before that there is a voice in my head, a voice that guides me. Until the voice is gone, my life belongs to it. It sets my course, and I follow. I can do nothing else.”

Musa frowned. “A voice? I do not understand.”

It had truly not been listening to me when I’d told it in Chiboga of the voice in my head. Its mind had been too focused on finding its heir. Now that I was that heir the problem of my voice was suddenly of interest to it. My lips parted as I prepared to speak, but my words were halted as a two-band noble marched into the room, accompanied by two bannerets.

The noble’s gaze fixed on me. For a second, I forgot that I was playing the part of banneret. But when a frown began to form on the noble’s face, I remembered. I rose then, and bowed to the noble. “Salutations noble one.” I greeted.

Its eyes rolled over me. The noble and bannerets each had four outer eyes on their face. It seemed shocked by the extent of the eyes filling my face and then by the mangled flesh on my chest. When at long last it was able to find its tongue, it asked, “where is the majestic?”

“The majestic?” I asked in reply, alarm bells sounding in my head. No one was supposed to know about Fabiana’s presence here.

The noble looked away. “By the command of the high Salin, custodian of Lahooni, I command the presence of the majestic Fabiana” Its raised voice boomed throughout the open space.

Only moments later, Fabiana came out of a set of curtains. An unknown uspec followed it. I could tell from its aged appearance, and the four golden armbands on its arms, that it was the great Fabian, Fabiana’s progenitor.

As soon as Fabian stood in the room, all of us bowed. The bannerets and I curtsied, while the noble bowed at the waist.

“Well,” Fabian demanded, “what is the meaning of this?”

The noble rose. “I have been sent by the high Salin, to bring its junior cognate to its presence.”

Fabian frowned. “I am only just seeing my offspring. Surely Salin can wait a day?”

The noble shook its head. “The high one has ordered the majestic Fabiana’s presence immediately. It gave me this summons to deliver.”

The noble pulled out a scroll tube and handed it to Fabian. I watched Fabiana’s face as Fabian’s eyes rolled over the scroll. A variety of emotions crossed through Fabian’s face, the foremost of which was anger. I could feel that anger now.

“What is it mater?” Fabiana asked.

Fabian sighed. “My sibling is intrigued by your sudden reappearance. It demands our presence in the Palace to educate it as to your whereabouts.”

Fabiana frowned. “Is that all?”

Fabian shook its head. It looked defeated. “It mentions that the mighty Checha’s presence in the Palace makes this an opportune time for you to fully rejoin the family.”

Checha. My mind rung with the name.

“Fully rejoin the family?” Fabiana asked. “It means to put me to the inquisition in the presence of one of the five Kaisers that form the plenum.”

Fabian nodded.

Fabiana appeared resigned. “Then we must not keep my senior cognate waiting.”

“I will come with you.” I heard myself speaking before I even had time to process the words. Checha was there. My break, the time I had hoped to take for myself before pursuing the demands of the voice, was now over. It was time to see this Checha and begin to formulate a plan on how best to take its eye.

Part 3
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The Lahooni Acropolis.

If I had lived the life I was born to, this was the burg I would have been born in, the city I would have called home. I thought of the uspec Foild and felt a particularly nasty pang of irritation. I was not new to being spoken down to by uspecs who thought themselves my superior, but I found that there was something about Lahooni that changed things for me. From the moment I stepped onto the quicksand trail which led from the hangar to the rest of the port, I’d felt an uncanny kinship with this place. I’d felt the rightness of my blood in my bones. This was my port. The uspecs were mine, the nobles were mine, and I knew it. I knew it. I could not say how, or why this certainty took root in me now, but I felt it. Lahooni was in my blood.

As soon as I crossed the guarded gates into the Acropolis, I felt a strong urge to claim it. I wanted to flap my wings and fly to the palace so that I could proclaim myself as heir. I wanted to slit Salin’s throat, purge the plenum uspec’s of their lives, and cleanse Lahooni of the stain of them. I wanted to take what was mine. The feelings reminded me of the ring. I recalled how flashes of the ring had made me see visions of myself as Kaiser. I saw no visions, but I felt the certainty.

Checha’s eye. The voice in my head prompted, reminding me of my true purpose for returning to this port. It did not matter what I felt, my life still belonged to the voice.

I sighed, pulling myself back to the present just in time to hear Fabiana explain to Musa that the Lahooni Acropolis was the most spectacular place in the entire existence. I turned to stare at Musa as Fabiana lauded the generosity of my line. Apparently, the Kaisers had designated free settlers lots around the outskirts of the Acropolis. As long as there were vacant lots, any Lahooni commoner could claim one. Musa smiled at Fabiana and made a comment about generous uspecs. There were no signs on its face to show the knowledge it bore of the line of the Kaisers of this port. Why that would surprise me, though, I did not know. Musa was of course quite skilled at acting.

I took my gaze away and followed Fabiana into the dwelling which bordered the gates. Fabiana called it the registry. All uspecs who sought to enter into the Acropolis had to register themselves there. Fabiana explained that the entire Acropolis was built on quicksand, but that the magic of the hooni eyes could not be used here. Uspecs had to purchase tokens to teleport through the burg. It was a safety precaution, Fabiana explained. The tokens could be used to teleport to the common parts of the Acropolis, but not further in, to the reserved portions with direct access to the Palace. Although, it was quick to state that we were not to worry as it already had the special tokens which would teleport us to the dwellings reserved for the Palace noble officials.

Fabiana was talking a lot more than it usually did. I could tell from its chatter that it was nervous about the coming meeting with its mater. A conversation which it had looked forward to with longing was one that it now feared. It was disappointed with its family, but at the same time, it understood their fears, it knew why they’d forsaken Chuspecip. Still, Fabiana found the forsaking hard to bear. I had tried countless times to console the uspec, but my words never seemed right. I did not understand Fabiana’s religion, I did not understand the adamant way it clung to Chuspecip. As far as I was concerned, Chuspecip was a coward god.

The last brio. It was a thought that had the power to completely discomfit me. The last brio was part of my heritage. As Lahooni was mine to possess, so was the last brio. And the last brio was the only weapon which could destroy Chuspecip. If I had any thoughts of claiming my heritage, I had to claim the last brio. But what was I to do with it? From Fabiana’s tales, I knew that my progeny had been staunch followers of Chuspecip. If the last brio had been in their care, they had protected it. But I was different, whatever greatness they saw in Chuspecip, I did not see. If anything, Chuspecip was a burden. It was a burden to me, and a burden to uspecs like Fabiana who clung to faith in it.

I thought of the invasion then. Another thought which discomfited me.

I shook my head, turning to stare at the room instead. The dwelling we walked into was well ventilated. It had holes cut out of the walls, allowing for a circulation of fresh air through the room. The holes had been cut out of the tops of the walls, close to the ceiling, so that the air that drifted in had minimal fogs. I appreciated that little spark of ingenuity. The room had clearly marked lanes in the center, where commoners could form lines and see to purchasing tokens and registering their presence in the Acropolis. Fabiana led us to the portion of the room reserved for nobles. It was behind a large set of curtains to the left of the room.

We walked through those curtains and found several tables and stools surrounding them. Each table had a scroll in its center with a pen for writing and an uspec attendant sitting on a stool. There were also wine decanters with glass goblets adorning each table. The ground, I noted, was hard and cool, not like the foam ground of the common portion of the registry. I caught sight of smartly dressed imps standing at sporadic locations throughout the room.

Fabiana led the way towards an empty table. As soon as the uspec attendant saw us, it rose, and then bowed. Its eyes were rivetted on me, as I was the one dressed as noble. Fabiana still did not wear the golden armbands it ought to, as a majestic.

“Salutations noble one.” The uspec greeted.

I nodded at it, then sat when it gestured at the chairs. Fabiana sat to my left, Musa sat to my right.

The attendant rustled the sheets of paper in front of it, before returning its gaze to me. “Please be welcome to Lahooni, noble one. Have you been to the Acropolis before?”

I was about to say no, when Fabiana spoke up. “Yes,” it said, in a clear carrying voice, “my patron and I have been guests of the great Jukien, duke of the third metropolis of Lahooni.”

The attendant nodded, finding nothing strange in Fabiana’s interruption. “Then will you be seeking to purchase tokens for parts of the Acropolis abridged to the Palace? As you know, all nobles who seek to do this must pass through a pious screening to prove the authenticity of their noble lineage. Their imps must be screened by the pious too.”

Screened by pious? I could already feel Musa tensing beside me. The sapping of the samu was still too fresh on both of our minds. As to a noble screening? I was suddenly made to feel a warmth of pride at my lines cunning. No other port had insisted on this. What would a screening of the sort reveal for me? Would it show that I was the presumed dead heir to Lahooni?

“That will not be necessary, not today at least. All that we seek today is a trip to the massages and then the markets after. We have no desire to visit the favored lots abridged to the Palace.” Fabiana replied.

The attendant nodded. “In that case noble one, affix your name onto the parchment, your guest will sign under you, and you will be free to purchase tokens for the common lots.”

The attendant handed over a sheet of paper and a pen, and I scribbled my name onto it. As I handed the parchment over to Fabiana, I contemplated the lies that it had told about previous visits to the burg. I could not help but wonder how thorough the search would be. I found my hand inching towards my cutlass. The whole thing was over before I had any inkling to draw the weapon. The attendant asked how many tokens we’d like to purchase. I’d listened enough to Fabiana’s ramblings to know that each person had to have their own token. I decided to purchase ten. I was stunned to hear that each token cost nothing more than a tenth of a piece of value. I was starting to understand why my line had been so beloved by the commoners. At the hangar we had been granted entrance for free, and now, in the Acropolis, teleportation tokens were sold at a pittance. For some reason, as we rose and made our way out of the registry, I found myself recalling Musa’s words. The imp had talked about my line’s wealth, saying that they’d had too much of it to begrudge Musa taking some of it to help the imps in Permafrost.

We walked out the curtains separating the nobles’ tables from the commoners’ lanes. How had they accumulated so much wealth? Calam had worked. I knew as much from the conversations I’d heard about its innovations. It had created things, and it had sold those things. Calam’s innovations had made much wealth for this port. Now that wealth was missing, and there were many who would stop at nothing to find it.

The fogs drifted by us once we made our way out through the exit of the registry. Musa had taken the bag of tokens, so we each reached to it to pick a piece.

“Think only of the ponds.” Fabiana instructed, as we dropped the tokens onto the quicksand ground. As soon as the token touched the hardened sand, it softened and pulled us in.

Then it deposited us in front of a tall structure at least three stories high. Imp attendants stood in front of the curtains which led into it. By the structure there was a sign which declared the dwelling as a public cleaning room.

“Greetings dominas.” The imps bowed. They pulled the curtains aside and loud noises came out of the room. I took one look at this room and decided that I had no desire to clean here. I had never seen more crowded ponds. There were several of them that I could see. At least six different ponds, each one larger than any pond I’d ever seen, and each one packed with uspecs of all ages. There were so many young ones. Young uspecs played around, splashing pink liquid at themselves. There were older uspecs too, but these ones did not seem to mind the congestion.

Fabiana chuckled. “You need not look so terrified,” it whispered into my ear, “these are the free ponds. There are portals to the sides which will lead us to the more expensive ones. Come on, this is my treat, sirga.”

I was relieved by Fabiana’s words. “How do they clean packed so tightly together?”

“Some of the ponds have bath salts. A simple dunk in an okun with bath salts is all that is needed for cleaning. It only seems bad to you because you are kute, you enjoy swimming.”

Fabiana smiled as it led us to a set of curtains. I could tell from the relaxed set of its shoulders that it was no longer thinking of the coming confrontation with its progenitor. At the curtains, attendants charged Fabiana twenty pieces of value for each patron. Fabiana had a belt on now. It pulled out a pouch and handed it over to the imp.

The imp’s eyebrows rose. “This is sixty pieces.” It said. I was shocked that it could tell the amount simply by lifting it.

“Yes, I’m paying for our imp too. Is that a problem?” Fabiana replied.

“Not at all.” The imp was quick to reply.

It drew the curtains open and we walked into a portal room. This one already had the pools of quicksand formed within it. We walked into those pools and were teleported to the most splendid cleaning room that I had ever seen. I could not help the smile of contentment that came over my features. This was the kind of cleaning room I hoped to build when it finally came time for me to settle. It reminded me of the cleaning room in the Hakute Lastmain. It had a large canal with falling liquid pelting into it. There were several ponds in the middle, and several beds scattered around the room.

“I am not sure that I can do this.” Musa’s widened sockets and shaky voice pulled me back to the imp. I’d forgotten its abhorrence for nudity.

“Are there private ponds?” I asked Fabiana.

The uspec frowned at me. “Yes, but there are no massages, and they are expensive. Why bother?”

“How much?”

“Fifty pieces of value at least.”

I pulled out a piece of merit from my belt and handed it over to the imp. Then I walked away, shaking my head at myself. How could I have doubted my lines generosity with Musa when I could not stop myself from seeing to its every whim? Was it my job to care for the imp’s tender sensibilities? It had scarred skin just as I had scarred skin, but I did not let that stunt me. I fumed. How could the imp manipulate me so easily?

I made my way across ponds and sat on the first empty bed I found. It wasn’t till I was sitting on it, that I allowed myself to turn back to make sure Musa was okay. Musa was being led by another imp to a private pond, screened off by heavy curtains. I took off my belt and placed it on the foot of my bed, where I could see it when I lay down. Then I lay, and waited. It was not long till an imp appeared to see to me. The imp scrubbed at my feathers. It felt good. I allowed my mind to go blank as my body succumbed to the imp’s ministrations. My feathers were cleaned, and my body massaged. I could not say how much time passed with me on that bed, but when it was over, I felt a great deal more relaxed. It was the first time that I had ever been massaged. I could definitely see the draw.

@movmentish It's special because of its former leaders

@eROCK247 yeah, that is indeed unfortunate.

@cassbeat okay, okay, we'll see...

Muttering, Fabiana pulled itself out of the okun. Then it stood in front of the group. It spread its legs, placed its palms on its hips, and waited for the group of uspecs to get over their shock.

The first thing I noted about this new group of uspecs was the eyes. Three of them had completely formed outer eye sockets, but none of them had those eye sockets completely filled. The ones with their sockets formed had three of them filled, two imp eyes and an uspec one, I deduced. Their cyan neck scales proclaimed them all to be of the hooni spectrum. They were unclothed, so it was clear to see that none of them were irira. All though they had no golden armbands, I had a feeling that they were Fabiana’s family, its siblings. The two youngest only had a few of their outer eye sockets formed and filled.

It was Fabiana who broke the silence. “Well,” it prompted, “are you just going to stand there gawking at me?”

Heaving a sigh of regret, I pulled myself out of the pond, and prepared for formal introductions.

It was one of the elders that spoke first. It rushed over to Fabiana and threw its arms around the uspec. Fabiana laughed then. It laughed loud and clear, a sound filled with nothing but affection. There was no malice in it as it lifted the uspec in its arms up. When it put the uspec down, it broke the embrace with a kiss on the uspec’s scalp. I had never seen uspecs embrace as such. I had seen smiles, nods of greeting, bows of salutation, but never embraces. Not even in my slum, where life had been free of the knowledge, and thusly fear, of pansophy, had uspecs shared an embrace.

“Where have you been? What happened to you? We’ve been so worried, we feared you were dead. Mater…”

Fabiana broke it off, chuckling. “There will be enough time for questions later.” It walked over to the rest of the group and embraced them, one after the other. None of the embraces were as hearty as the first had been, but there was still obvious affection in each. Then Fabiana stopped in front of one of the two younger uspecs. “How you’ve grown my precious.”

That uspec ran into its arms then, and this one, Fabiana lifted in the air. It didn’t immediately put it down as it had the other, it kept it pinned between its carrying arm and its body. “You have outer eyes.” Fabiana remarked, tracing its fingers over the uspec’s eye sockets as it spoke.

“It’s a devout now.” Another uspec chimed in.

“Devout!” Fabiana’s eyes widened. It turned from the uspec who’d gave up the piece of information, to the uspec in its arms. “Are you really?”

The young uspec nodded.

Fabiana smiled in pure delight. It pulled the uspec closer and kissed it on the scalp. “I am proud.” It said, before putting the uspec down. Then, as if it had momentarily forgotten about my presence, it swiveled to face me, and its smile grew. “Sirga!” it called out loudly. By its words, Fabiana made me the focus, all gazes turned to me. “Let me introduce you to my family.”

Fabiana put the uspec it had been carrying down and walked towards me.

“Family, this is banneret Nebud, the uspec singlehandedly responsible for saving my life.” It declared. “If not for it, I would still be thinking of ways to get myself free of the prison I found myself in.”

“Prison?” One of the uspec’s gasped the question out, its face etched with lines of worry.

Fabiana shook its head. “The tale will come later, first, be properly introduced to my savior.”

I groaned. Before I could speak up to clarify just how much mutual saving had taken place, the uspecs were already drawing closer to me. Fabiana made the introductions.

“This is Fabin, my immediate younger.” Fabiana gestured to one of the older uspecs in the group, but not the one it had hugged first.

The uspec, Fabin, came towards me. It stretched its hands out, and before I could stop it, it clamped its hands around my shoulders. Normally, I would not hesitate over doing violence to one who would dare to touch me without my permission. But this uspec smiled. Its face appeared open, and trusting, and it was Fabiana’s sibling, and so I hesitated, frozen in indecision. I looked around the room, beginning to feel the pangs of uncertainty creep into me.

Fabiana appeared by my side. “Don’t worry sirga, this is Lahooni, we do not use pansophy on nobles, without first seeking permission. To others it is an acceptable practice, to us it is a rule we would not dare break. Be free, embrace my sibling.” After saying that, Fabiana grasped my hands, and I did my best to ignore the jarring calls of ‘pansophy’ that pinged through my mind when Fabiana’s hand brushed over my ring. It placed the palms of my hands on its siblings shoulders and tightened them slightly, before releasing its hold on me. It became clear then, what I was expected to do. Despite Fabiana’s words, I was relieved when the ring showed no pansophy in the uspec I touched. I squeezed its shoulder one last time, before releasing my hold on it. It released its hold on me too, smiling somewhat uncertainly at me.

“I’m afraid, it is not our custom to be so trusting where I come from. Embraces are not things often shared amongst family, and especially not amongst strangers.” I said, by way of explanation.

Fabin accepted this. “You are in Lahooni now.” It replied, as if that in itself was all the answer I needed. The words reminded me of Fabiana’s speech on the commune road, the way that it had talked the horde of uspecs down by reminding them that they were Lahooni. I had seen a lot of different places, but I had not seen that much differences in custom. It appeared that Lahooni was a much different place than the others. This thought made me both happy and worried.

Before I could think more on the words, the uspec who’d been the first to hug Fabiana, came running into my arms. It wrapped its arms around my neck. It was tall, not as tall as I, but close to being there. It was also lean, much too lean for one with any skill in combat. I made sure my ring brushed against the uspec’s flesh and was happy when it declared a lack of pansophy. Still, I wasn’t sure what to do about the tight embrace I was held in.

The uspec released me. “Gratitude for saving my sibling’s life.” It said, its hands gripping my shoulders. I returned this form of the embrace as Fabiana had showed me, extending my arms so that they gripped the uspec’s shoulders in turn.

“It was your sibling who saved my life. I would not be here without its help.” I said in reply.

Fabiana chuckled. “We saved each other sirga, but I was in more dire need of salvation. You would have found a way without me, I cannot say the same for myself.” It cleared its throat. “This is my sibling, Fabinna, Fabin’s younger.”

The uspec Fabinna smiled before releasing me. Fabiana gestured to the younger, the one that it had carried. “That, it said, is our youngest, Fib, now a devout.” This uspec, although proclaimed as the youngest, appeared to be the most serious out of them. It stayed where it was and bowed to me. It made no move to come towards me or touch me, and I appreciated that more than I could say. I nodded, bowing in turn at the young uspec. It was devout, a pious in training, and so I already knew it had pansophy.

Fabiana turned to the last two uspecs. “These are our cognates, Foild and Folida, offspring of mater’s late two time younger, that is, Salin’s younger.”

Late, their progenitor was dead then. I stared at the family and wondered what politics lay beneath it. There seemed to be much love between them, but they were a family tied closely to the current Custodian of the port. What did that mean? Where did the fault lines lie?

“Salutations banneret.” The older one, Foild, called out in greeting. “I am the dignified Foild. Gratitude for your service to our line.”

My lips quirked a little. This was the politician. I could tell just from looking at it. I felt anger seething in it. Its anger was like an affliction, one that was constantly present. It bristled at the casual way that Fabiana had introduced it to me. I bowed to the uspec, as its higher rank demanded. “Salutations dignified one.” I greeted in response.

“If you would be so kind as to leave us, we have family matters to discuss.” Foild stated, staring pointedly at me.

Fabin’s gaze turned to the ground. Fabinna frowned at Foild, then turned to stare at Fabin. When the uspec said nothing, Fabinna shook its head and looked away. It was Fabiana who spoke up. To be frank, I was quite happy to leave. I did not understand their family, and I was too tired to try to decipher the undercurrents of politics hidden in it. All I wanted was a nice meal and a good long rest. My mission was dangerous enough without getting involved in politics.

“And since when do you speak for my family?” Fabiana asked. I had never heard the uspec sound quite so imperious.

Foild’s jaw clenched. It shook its head. “You’ve been gone for a long time cognate. Your pater may have appeared as head of the family before you left, but things are different now. Now the Kaiser, our senior cognate Salin is head of the family, and with its single offspring gravelly ill, and me being its closest intimate in our line, I am as heir to it.”

I had an instant dislike for the uspec who declared itself heir to a position that was my birthright.

Fabiana’s expression lightened. “This is good news cognate! I left thinking that Lahooni was doomed to remain in the hands of our enemies, and here I return to see that an Uspecipyte will rule this port again.”

The silence that greeted Fabiana’s words was telling. Foild’s jaw clenched. “There are no Uspecipytes in this family, cognate.”

Fabiana’s gaze hardened. It glared at Foild, but it said nothing. Its words were targeted at Fabin, its younger. “Fabin?”

The uspec could not meet its sibling’s gaze. It said nothing, it simply shook its head.

“Coward.” Fabinna spat out.

“You declared for Kuworyte too!” Fabin shot back.

“No.” Fabiana took a step back. “No.” it shook its head.

“Only because you and mater begged me to do it!” Fabinna turned to Fabiana then. “Forgive me.”

Fabiana was silent. Then it rose its head and stared at Fabinna. “What happened?”

“There was an inquisition, precious one, our senior cognate Salin summoned the family to the palace about a year ago. In the presence of itself and the plenum, we were asked to declare our faith. ‘Tiyoseriwosin’, they asked. Our senior cognate Slinna, mater’s youngest, the one who’d been closest to Salin, it declared ‘Uspecipyte’, and our senior cognate Salin had it cut down. They beheaded it, right there, in front of us. Mater begged Salin to stop, but it was adamant. We all declared Kuworyte. We had to.” Fabinna reached out its hand for Fabiana’s, but Fabiana appeared too shaken to take it.

“Not all of us.” Fib said. “I am Uspecipyte, and I will never declare otherwise.” The uspec spoke with a somber dignity which seemed apt, coming from one about to be pious.

“Easy for you to say. You are devout, protected. Even the plenum wouldn’t dare to ask the pious to declare themselves. What protection did we have?” Fabin’s voice was desperate. It turned to Fabiana. “All nobles have passed though the inquisition. Now that you are back, precious, Salin will summon you too. It will force you to declare.”

“Not if Salin does not know that it’s back. And we’re not going to tell it.” Fabinna stated.

“Of course not.” Fabin agreed.

None of their words did anything to calm Fabiana. It stared at them, as if it could no longer place them, as if it didn’t know them. Then it began to walk away. I was following it before it had the foresight to ask me along. Whatever was going on, I had no intention of being left on my own with its siblings and cognates. And I’d thought that it would be a nice escape to stay here. I might have to find a new place to stay, one free of politics, and religion. Did such a place even exist anymore?

As soon as we walked out of the curtains, Fabiana turned to me. “I must confess, this was not the homecoming I expected. I plan on getting drunk.” It confessed.

I couldn’t help smiling at that. “Do you plan on getting fed? Because I am quite famished.”

Fabiana smiled, but the smile didn’t quite reach its eyes. It nodded. “We eat, then we drink, then hopefully, we sleep and dream of a better world than this.”

I could not agree more.

Part 2
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As soon as we crossed the boundary out of the commune road, Fabiana used the magic of the hooni eye to create a large pool of quicksand underneath us. The quicksand drew us in, and spat us out, on a quicksand trail at the foot of large, imposing, hard fog gates. The gates appeared to have been infused with lighting, as those from the clouds. They gave off streams of brilliant cyan light, light so bright it was almost blinding to stare at the source. I stared though, unable to keep my eyes from scanning each gradient of light in the hard fog gates. I had been in Chiboga and so the sight of hard fog displayed as ostentatiously as this, was not new. Yet, there was something different about this, something slightly more vibrant. Perhaps it was simply the fact that it was in Lahooni. Everything in this port appeared more alive to me.

Fabiana stared wistfully at the gates. Its lips seemed to be frozen in indecision, between a smile of relief and a frown of exertion. It took the uspec time to make up its mind, but once it did, the corners of its mouth tipped upwards, and a dazzling smile filled its face.

It turned to me, and for a moment, I was certain that I could see tears brimming in its eyes. “I am home.” It proclaimed, as if it had been hiding doubts all throughout our journey as to the certainty of its arrival. Then it bowed to me, a slight neck bow that seemed wrong after the easy friendship that had developed between us. “Gratitude sirga.” It said. “Gratitude.”

“Stop it majestic.” I forced lightness into my tone. “Unless you want me to start bowing and thanking you. We both know that I would not be here without your help. I am in your debt.”

“Nonsense.” Fabiana snapped back. Its mood had shifted, the seriousness of the previous moment was gone, a fact which brought me immense pleasure. I smiled, my carefree smile matching that on Fabiana’s face. Then it shrugged, chuckling as it said, “then we are in each other’s debt.”

That was a compromise I could live with. I nodded. Fabiana turned back around. It took a deep breath, as if steeling itself for a battle, then it placed the flat of its left palm against the smooth surface of the hard fog gates. As soon as Fabiana’s hand touched the solid wall, the cyan light went away. Suddenly, we were facing a wall so profoundly dark, it was as if I was discovering the color black for the first time. And then a sound filled the air, like the sound of a string instrument, plucked by one with great skill. The black gates were suddenly lit by a brilliant white light, and the fog softened and disappeared.

“Home.” Fabiana let the word out with its breath, intoning it as if in solemn prayer.

The sublimated fog revealed yet another quicksand trail. This one was much shorter than the commune road. I could already see where the brown trail terminated in a bush of shrubs and fruit trees.

Fabiana took a step along the trail and I followed behind the uspec. We’d only walked a few paces in, when three imps appeared from behind rustling leaves. These imps were eyeless. They had on simple green tunics which left only parts of their arms and legs exposed. On sighting us, one of the imps stopped short. Its mouth hung open, and then it let out a loud scream, and ran forward. The other two ran behind it.

“Master Fabiana!” The first imp to arrive exclaimed. “Master, is that truly you?”

Fabiana grinned at the imp. “I believe so. Do I look different Yemi?”

The imp shook its head. It had its palms over its mouth as it continued to stare bemused at Fabiana. The two who’d followed behind appeared younger. Of course, I could not say how long they’d spent in our existence, but I could tell that their umani lives ended before the one in the front.

“Yemi?” one of them asked, its gaze roving uncertainly over us.

“Oh! My manners!” the imp Yemi yelled, chiding itself. “See to the bear.” It turned to one of the imps. That one came towards me. I watched with narrowed eyes as the imp reached out tentatively. It waited for a few seconds like that, with its hand stretched out a few inches in front of the bear’s nose, but not touching. Then, it revealed another hand, and placed that hand by Marc’s mouth.

Marc trumpeted, its large trunk flying upward as it blasted the air with the shrill sound. The imp did not appear daunted, it remained as it was, offering my bear a blue fruit. It took some time, but the imp was able to cajole Marc into accepting the treat. Then, as Marc ate, it stroked the bear’s fur.

“Come, domina.” The imp Yemi, called, “leave your bear with Kate, it’s our pet whisperer.”

I stroked Marc’s fur, muttering reassurances to the bear. I knew that it would be fine, this was Fabiana’s home after all, but I could not fight the need to pet it.

“Come sirga,” Fabiana said, “the okun awaits us.”

I nodded then, running my hand through the bear’s fur one last time, before I released it.

By the time I was willing to part with the bear’s company, Fabiana and the imps of its household were already ahead of me. Musa had waited, I noted, although I didn’t remark on it. I followed silently behind Fabiana, only partially listening to the imp’s excited words about the changes that had been made in the years that it had been gone. I turned around a few times, to make sure that the imp was treating my bear well. Marc appeared okay.

We were led deeper into the bushes. The shrubs were well maintained, cut into even patterns that were quite pleasant to the eye. It was obvious that someone cared much for the vegetations, or perhaps it was simply care for the aesthetic appeal of the decorations.

“All of them?” Fabiana’s roared question pulled my mind back to the present.

For a second I feared that something terrible had happened. I could tell from the rigid set of the uspec’s shoulders that it had received news that it did not like. But when it turned to face me, it had a wary smile on its face.

“I’m afraid we must fly if we have any intention of having a proper bath before we are besieged by my family.” It said the words with a kind of affection that I envied. This uspec had a family it loved.

I nodded. If I was going to meet the family of the duke of the first metropolis of my port, I intended to do it clean. My port. I shook the thought away before I could dwell on just how right the words felt now that I was here.

“Yemi can show Musa to your rooms.”

I reached for the coffer tag and handed it over to Musa. It was the first time that we’d had any sort of interaction since we left Damejo. I noticed the lines of worry on Musa’s face, the unhappiness etched there. And, despite my wishes to the contrary, I felt pained by it. Even now, after everything that had happened, I still wanted it to be happy. I snatched my hand back, once Musa collected the tag. Its lips parted, as if it meant to speak. I turned away, denying it the chance to do so.

By the time my exchange with Musa was complete, Fabiana already hovered in the air above me. I let my wings flap, giving them the freedom they’d been craving ever since Nefastu.

“It feels good to fly.” Fabiana stated, giving voice to my thoughts.

“Very good.” I agreed.

And then we were off. We rose far enough in the sky that we could see the entire estate sprawled beneath us, but not so high that we got anywhere close to the clouds. It felt good. The last time I’d flown had been on the inter-port trail, on the way to Damejo. While that had been an experience, it was nothing compared to flying in open sky. Our wings flapped and we let them carry us away in companionable silence. Fabiana’s thoughts seemed focus on something else, its family perhaps, so I let my gaze fall to the marvelous dwelling below us. I had never seen anything quite like it. I wondered if perhaps this what the Lahooni palace looked like. There were arches, beams sharpened to fine edges, rails that wound all around the outer walls of the dwelling, and all of it, appeared to be built on a large pool of quicksand.

Fabiana began the descent and I followed. The closer we got to the roof, the more I was able to see of it. This part of the roof was different from the others. It appeared to be made of hard fog. Fabiana tilted itself, turning to a standing position as it made for its landing. As soon as its feet touched the fog, the fog drifted away. Then the uspec tilted back around and dove headfirst into the beckoning okun underneath us. I followed Fabiana’s lead and was greatly rewarded. There was nothing quite like diving into a nice warm okun.

I landed with a splash, and proceeded to swim two full laps, before I had the good sense to climb out of the pond and remove my dripping belt. As soon as I did though, I burst into laughter. Fabiana, seeing the mess I’d made of the belt laughed too.

“That impatient?” It teased.

“I could have done better.” I replied.

We both laughed some more then.

“I will dry that out, domina.” An imp, dressed in the same green tunic, appeared. It waited for me to take off the belt, before collecting it. It was a testament to my trust of Fabiana that I did not even think of the ramifications of being long without my weapons.

“So many new imps.” Fabiana mused.

“Not all master.” A deep voice called out from behind us.

“Kev!”

I turned around in time to see two naked imps standing in front of us. I could tell from their features that they were both males. One of them was bulky, it had the muscles of a fighter, the other was not. It was the skinny one that smiled at Fabiana.

“Where have you been master? Five years and you appear out of nowhere, dropping in from the sky?”

Fabiana chuckled. “Not now Kev, please not now.” The uspec was leaning against the high walls of the pond. “Be a dear and keep watch. No one comes in. I need at least a few minutes of silence before they descend on me.”

The imp frowned at Fabiana. “You have been gone a long-time master, long enough for us to demand answers.”

I found the imp’s tone curious. It appeared to truly believe that it could demand answers from the uspec.

Fabiana groaned. “I know Kev, I know. But please, keep watch. I just want a few minutes to get clean. No steams or massages, just a swim. Tell them I’ll be out shortly. Please.”

The imp sighed. “As you wish master. Now, I will have to delay my bath, and unlike you, I actually have work to do.”

Fabiana laughed. “We will catch up Kev, I promise.”

“Oh I know we will,” the imp stated as it made its way to the curtain-entrance.

I contemplated discarding my tail covering but thought better of it. Besides, it was already wet. The material was one that would dry soon. I followed Fabiana’s lead and jumped back into the nice pond. I could feel the bath salts, but they were not as overwhelming as other ponds. This was no luxury cleaning room, with several ponds for several stages of cleaning. It was a simple affair, made for the purpose of cleaning and nothing more. It was the first time since I’d stepped into Lahooni, that I’d had reason to remember that I was also part Kute. It was the kute in me that craved a better pond. I dreamt of falling liquid and baths with massages and bath salts.

“Don’t worry sirga, we have better okuns in this dwelling, but none comes close to that in the Acropolis.” Fabiana spoke as it slapped its hand against the liquid surface, swimming past me. We’d taken a few more laps in silence before Fabiana said, “you should come with me to the Acropolis tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? You plan on going to the Acropolis?”

“Yes, Yemi informed me that my mater has court business and so it will remain in the Acropolis for another day or so. I cannot wait that long to see it, so I mean to surprise it tomorrow. Perhaps you would like to come with me. There is no Acropolis like ours. And there is an entire structure dedicated to baths and massages. We can start there, and then go and visit my mater after. What do you say?”

“You had me at massages.”

Fabiana’s answering laughter was cut short by the arrival of five uspecs. They burst into the cleaning room all at once. It was obvious that the imp Kev had tried to get in their way, because the imp was now being carried in the arms of the uspec who ran into the room first.

“Oh, put me down!” Kev screamed, its voice filled with mirth.

Fabiana groaned.

There was a loud, collective, intake of air, as the uspecs, all five of them, froze, their lips parted, as they stared shocked by Fabiana’s presence. The wiggling imp in the first one’s arms managed to free itself from the one carrying it. When it stood on its own feet, it joined the others in watching Fabiana.

eROCK247:
obehiD thanks for the updates. They were captivating as always.

I had my traditional marriage last Saturday and the wedding will hold this Saturday. Bless me with lengthy and plenty updates so I can settle down and read on Monday please.

Thanks in anticipation.

WOWWW! Congratulations!!! Well wishing you all the best, and there will be some new updates for you when you're ready to read

@cassbeat thanks for reading

@doctorexcel thank you, thank you

@tunjilomo thank you for reading and happy valentines to you too

@Madosky112 hehehe, thanks for reading

I eyed the uspecs we shared the road with. Most of them were hooni. They wore the scales on their necks proudly, with their chins inched up in proud defiance. They were a proud people, the hoonis. I could tell. It could have been that I only saw what I wished to, but I saw it nonetheless. A kute tail caught my eye, but it did not hold my attention for long. Not when there was a scene forming.

It started as a whisper, a lone voice spitting out a caustic slur. It was not a word, nothing intelligible at least, the sound I heard could only be likened to a string of consonants strung together in no particular order. But after that one slur was cast, many answered. They began to pool closer towards me.

Instinctively my hand went to the hilt of my cutlass. I could not think of what I had done to cause these people, my people, harm, but whatever it was, I found myself hesitating, unwilling to harm them in response. Still they continued to pull towards me. Their hands rising in the air as they let out the caustic slur.

I felt their anger. I felt the spirit of it, and it was strong. It was stronger than anything that I had ever felt. These people brimmed with anger of a kind I could not describe. Indignation. I felt that in their anger, a lot of that. But there was also pain. There is anger that is a result of pain, and as one with the gift of both emotions, I am able to sense that anger keenly, and I felt it. I felt a twinge in that pain, the one that birthed the anger. It was the kind of pain I’d associate with grief over one wrongfully killed. The anger they felt was spurned from that. It was an anger they all felt.

Then, just before a lean hooni uspec came close enough that I’d feel the need to protect myself, another sound broke in. It was the sound of a horn, one of the sounds pre-programmed into landlocked canoes.

Fabiana let out the slur now.

“What is it?” I asked, my hand lifting from my cutlass now that I realized I was not the target of this collective rage.

Fabiana sighed, and I felt its anger leave, just as quickly as if it had been exhausted by one with the magic of emotions. “Disrespectful fools.”

“Hair of horns and a chest of iron,” it was a chant that started slowly, just as the shouts of the caustic slur had begun.

The answering, “Irira!” though, that was louder than anything I’d expected to here.

“Neck of scales and a skirt of tails, irira!
Not one but all, not weak but strong.
Say you, Tiyoseriwosin? Say I USPECIPYTE!”

Then suddenly, the canoe went up in flames, and the surrounding crowd erupted into a cheer of approval. The canoe had been one of the expensive ones, canoes with top coverings to shield its occupants from view. Now that covering came down as the uspecs tried to jump out of the burning vehicle. I was close enough to see that the canoe had only room for one within it, and one to steer it. The hooni uspecs surrounding it, reached within the flames to pull out the passenger.

It was tossed onto the floor a few paces in front of Marc’s front paws.

“Set the beast on it!” A voice shouted.

Immediately, hands reached for my bear, trying to control it, to get it to stump on the uspec. That uspec was trying desperately to crawl away, but the angry mob that had formed behind it prevented its escape. It stared with wide eyes at my bear. Wails sounded from the burning canoe. A quick glance at it showed that no one had bothered to pull the driver out.

Out of nowhere, hail appeared in the air to surround the burning canoe. It took some time, but whoever controlled the hail was able to use it to reverse the mejo magic that must have been used to start the inferno.

Marc trumpeted, pulling itself free from uspecs who’d reached for it. It rose onto its hind paws, and the uspec who’d been pulled out of the canoe was pushed forward, right where Marc could trample it when it set its foot back to the ground.

I leapt forward just as Marc began to descend. I was just barely able to pull the uspec away before it became the victim of Marc’s angst. Of course if Marc was to cause such harm to an uspec, the bear would be put down, and I could not let that happen.

The angry mob did not appreciate my interference.

Now their anger was solely focused on me.

“Stop!” I yelled at them. “I do not want to harm you!” I had never warned others, but these were hooni uspecs in Lahooni, something about spilling their blood on this road felt like profanity.

“Halt my friends!” Fabiana moved forward then. “In the name of our founder Chuspecip, and our lost Kaiser Calam, in whose memory you seek to cause harm, I implore you to stop.”

Fabiana’s words seemed to have caught them unawares because they stopped. Their anger was not abated, but they did not seem inclined to harm one of their own. I found that oddly ingratiating. Fabiana bent to a squat in front of the fallen uspec and extended its hand.

The uspec glared at Fabiana. “I despise Uspecipytes!” It spat out.

I groaned just as the mob’s anger rose to new heights. I would have to do something. I could exhaust their emotions, but I did not think that everyone would survive that single burst of anger. If I did not exhaust the emotions, then I would have to transfer it. To whom would I transfer such a wealth of emotions?

“Peace my friends.” Fabiana called out. “Peace. We are better than this, better than them. We who are recipients of the founder’s love, we who are inhabitants of its greatest gift to this port, we are better than this anger. We are Lahooni!” Fabiana yelled, and as it spoke, I felt the anger begin to ebb. “I say let the rest of the world fight. I say let the rest of the world squabble over petty jests. I say let the rest of the world kill themselves in uspecs name. We who are the founder’s best, we will not sink to their level. We who are the founder’s best, the inhabitants of its greatest gift to this port, we will rise above. We will not slaughter on sacred grounds, on the last place in Lahooni that the imperial Calami’s feet touched. We are Lahooni. We are better than the rest.”

There was silence. The uspec who’d been the target of the mobs rage rose slowly then, its eyes casting warily about it. Then, after zooming around without a target, the uspec turned its glare on Fabiana. “Who are you?” it asked.

Standing, it was easy to compare both uspecs. The uspec who’d been assaulted was hooni. It wore a light cyan robe with slits on the arms which showed it had four golden armbands on. It was either an imperial, or a duke. Still, with no armband on, Fabiana outshone the other. It was taller, bulkier and more composed. They both had all of their outer eyes filled, but neither seemed inclined to use magic just then.

“I am Lahooni.” Fabiana replied, its words filled with a fierce pride that led to an eruption of cheers from the mob. Gone was the anger I’d felt from them. Fabiana rose its hand and silence fell over them. “I am Lahooni,” it repeated, “and this is sacred grounds. No one rides a canoe on it. All who traverse it must do so on foot. That is the will of the line of Kaisers who built this road.”

“And why should the plenum be concerned with the will of dead Kaisers?” The uspec chose that moment to raise its hand. There, on one of its fingers, was the cyan ring of an uspec dedicated to the plenum.

The anger in the mob began to rise just as the whispers grew. Fabiana walked towards the uspec.

“Are you a fool?” it scolded. “While it may be known by the upper class uspecs that this port belongs to the plenum, I assure you, there are many commoners who believe in the lie you’ve sold. They are firmly Uspecipyte, and they will love nothing more than to kill you. Is it your will to die?”

The uspec seemed about to reply and then it shut its mouth. It snapped its fingers and the driver who’d been steering its canoe ran to its side. They both made to leave, but the mob stopped them.

“Let them go.” Fabiana’s voice was soft, but firm. “There will be no bloodshed here today.”

The mob seemed disinclined to obey, but after a few silent grumblings, they made a way for the plenum uspec and its driver. The Lahooni mob sang the Uspecipyte fight song as the uspec walked amongst them, and I found myself humming it under my breath. What an interesting display. And how well Fabiana had talked them down.

Fabiana did not seem as entertained by the events as I’d been. As soon as the mob cleared, it began walking faster than it had walked before. When before we’d been strolling, it’s pace now was more akin to sprinting. It was a brisk walk, I decided.

“Why the haste?” I asked.

“I would feel better if we were safely home before the great one has a chance to go to the Acropolis and force Salin to send troops to these parts. I would much rather be welcomed by mater’s embrace than by its sibling’s fist. My senior cognate Salin is not a huge fan of mine.”

Cognate was a term that uspecs used in general to refer to blood relatives who were descended of their sire, but not of their progenitor. Blood relatives further separated were referred to as agnates. It was strange to be reminded of Fabiana’s close family tie to Salin. The usurper Salin, was actually Fabiana’s progenitor’s sibling.

“Then we’d better find a dwelling to rent quickly.” I agreed.

“Rent?” Fabiana stared at me as if I’d spoken in a different tongue. “You’ll stay with me, in my progenitor’s estate. There are too many rooms and never enough people to fill them.”

I shook my head. “I couldn’t impose…”

“Nonsense.” It cut me off, sounding every bit the majestic, “you wouldn’t be imposing. I’m afraid I have to insist on it sirga. After everything that you’ve done for me, you have to allow me to make it up to you. Besides, my progenitor’s estate has large lands and great dens for housing animals. Marc will be in good company.”

I wanted to refuse, but the idea of Marc having a den to stay in with other smoke bears, proved too compelling. Besides, I was not yet willing to part with Fabiana’s company. I thought of all that awaited me in my own port. There was Checha and the eye I’d come here to steal. My chances of surviving that endeavor seemed so miniscule, that I was rather eager to put it off. Why couldn’t I just enjoy this new friendship with an uspec who felt in some ways, more my equal, than any other uspec I’d known?

“Okay.” I gave in, smiling.

I was home and in the company of a friend, what more could I ask for? My eyes, off their own will, made their way to the side, where Musa walked, its head bent, its shoulders slumped, and its hands crossed behind its back. I felt a pang of regret, and a sudden unwavering urge to reach out to the imp and comfort it. I pushed that feeling away and turned back to Fabiana.

VOLUME EIGHT
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~~~
hooni
(A Spectral existence word which represents one of the five spectrums in the spectral existence. This word refers to the people of this spectrum, that is the uspecs of the Hooni spectrum who have neck scales as their distinctive feature. The uspecs in the Hooni spectrum are sometimes called quicksand people as they are so tightly bound to the quicksand in the spectral existence. As such, hooni eyes give an uspec the magic of quicksand, which allows them to use quicksand to teleport. The uspecs in the Hooni spectrum are bound to the anger emotion.)
~~~

Part 1
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The First Metropolis of Lahooni (the spectral port which coincides with Lagos State, Nigeria)
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Light fogs drifted towards me, embracing me with their warmth. I felt that warmth seeping into me. I breathed it in and let it fill me. It was an experience, the acceptance of fog. Never had I felt life about me as much as I did in that moment. The fogs suddenly seemed like old friends, desperate to whisper to me, to share suppressed memories. And I knew, without a shred of doubt, that if I was of the boga spectrum, with the ability to understand the fogs and the fear they spoke through, I would hear it, just as clearly as I heard the pain in lit okun. The sensations were odd, but I welcomed them. I especially welcomed the heat. It felt unbelievably good to be free of the constant chill of Damejo’s hail. Now I walked bare, without the hindrance of cloaks and footwear.

The ground underneath my feet was solid. It was not the soft embrace of clouds with form, or even the sticky wonder of sludge, it was just as it was, a hard ground that was somehow solid enough to walk on but not so sturdy that it gave any sort of discomfort. Its color was a telling shade of light brown, a brown so light that it could come from only one place.

Quicksand.

And as that realization filled me, as it dawned on me that I was walking on hardened quicksand, I felt a burst of anger, and froze in my tracks.

I waited. Exactly what I waited for I could not say, surely not the anger, but I could not get myself to move. There was life in the quicksand. Of course all the souls of the spectrums had life, but this was life that was eager to share with me. It was not the okun which held itself away from me until I gifted it with my pain. It was a soul willing to give first.

A small smile crept onto my lips as a sudden thought filled and echoed within my mind.

I was home.

The fogs did not immediately burst into song to highlight this fact, neither did the quicksand send forth another generous wave of anger. Nothing shared life with me, nothing spoke to me, but I felt it nonetheless. I felt this port in my bones. I felt it in my soul, wherever my true essence lay. This was my home. At that moment I remembered the tale that Fabiana had told, of the uspecs who’d been worried that an irirakun’s loyalties would be divided between two ports. How wrong they’d been. I’d spent my entire life in Hakute, but I had never felt in Hakute what I felt here, in Lahooni.

The Lahooni hangar had led us to the trail we now walked on. It was obvious that this road had not been designed to be remarkable, yet there was a quiet beauty to it. The ground was nothing more than hardened quicksand, but the quicksand had been hardened to the perfect blend between comfort and sturdiness. And while the fogs were the same fogs as everywhere else in the existence, they were light and floated freely. They did not cling clammily to one, and they were not so thick that they could not be seen through. It was late in the day, around the time when the daylight dots began to mix with the red clouds, yet this mixture of celestial lights was somehow done in a way that rendered the time of day far more beautiful than the pure orange that came before and the red that was soon to follow. This, I decided, was well done. I wondered if the rest of the port would hold the same level of fascination.

“What do you think of my port, sirga?” Fabiana asked.

Sometime during our journey on the inter-port trail, the uspec’s adamant use of ‘sirga’ had turned from an honorific, to something of a nickname. We had spent long days on the trail, much longer than was necessary as the both of us could fly, but it was time well spent. I had thoroughly enjoyed Fabiana’s company. I did not know what it was that I found so endearing about the uspec, but I liked it, I liked it a lot.

“It is beautiful majestic.” I said in reply. ‘Majestic’ was my reply to Fabiana’s ‘sirga’. To the both of us, it was a special type of fun. Of course many who overheard could not understand why I called an uspec without a single golden armband majestic, but then they did not know Fabiana.

“And what do you think Musa?” Fabiana turned its beaming face to the imp standing beside it.

Sometime over the trip, Fabiana had made itself our mediator. Musa would not leave and there was nothing I could do to change the imp’s mind. My treacherous mind chose that moment to remind me how glad I’d been when the imp revealed itself on the inter-port trail. How I’d lagged behind, spending days on a trip that should have taken hours, simply because I could not feel the imp’s presence. How could I want it to leave so desperately, but feel relieved when it chose to stay? I still was not sure that I could trust the imp.

“It is very beautiful Fabiana.” Musa replied.

They had a different relationship, my friend and my imp. Fabiana insisted that Musa call it by its name. The uspec said that it would feel strange for the firstborn, whose picture it had spent so much time gazing at, to call it domina. I did not understand how an uspec could spend years forced to serve imps and still feel charitably towards the imp who had created the place that had held it captive.

As if suddenly desperate to announce its presence, Marc trumpeted. Drawn by cords of shared humor, the three of us turned to each other and laughed. My eyes met Musa’s empty socket while both of our faces were still contorted in laughter, and we froze. It was the first time since the samu bite that either of us had smiled at each other. I looked away, the laughter quickly fading from my lips.

Our previous bout of gaiety instantly fell into awkward silence.

I turned my mind to other things.

According to Fabiana, the road we walked on was called the commune. It was specifically designed with hardened quicksand to forbid the use of hooni magic for teleportation. The Kaisers of this port, my own line, I added as an afterthought, had designed this road to be walked. Fabiana, the devout believer that it was, was certain they did this so that all who walked into the port could fill the founder’s presence. It was the first thing Fabiana had asked when we stepped on it. “Do you feel the presence?” I burst out laughing of course, and Fabiana chuckled, now used to my pagan ways. But it did not miss the chance to scold me for my lack of faith, and to my surprise, I let it, and enjoyed it a little, although I would never admit that to Fabiana.

As I looked down on the empty road, the long street filled with nothing but vast lands of perfectly hardened quicksand and drifting fog, I was certain this was done for protection. The hangar to Lahooni was not as secure as I would have expected it to be. There were no thought bubbles as those in Katsoaru, and no soldiers like Chiboga. Few questions were asked, and all were let in. I wondered if this was done to give a sense of security, to show that the Kaisers of Lahooni were so secure in their power that they would invite their enemies in. If that was the case, then I was certain this ‘commune’ road had been designed to hide soldiers. Though the fog was light down the middle of the road, it got the thicker closer to the boundaries. Thick enough to hide battalions of soldiers.

And hardened quicksand. If I was in charge of the security, I would make sure that there was a layer of smog sand, the hooni equivalent to lit okun, underneath the hardened quicksand, so that I could drop my enemies into it. That would be a great defense. As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I became inexplicably certain that there was indeed a vast pool of smog sand beneath my feet.

“I expected more soldiers.” I stated offhandedly.

“What’s the point? The plenum knows they have us, and they don’t really care to protect us. If Lahooni is invaded they’d happily see us fall. I think they’ve just about given up on finding Calam’s wealth.” Fabiana said the last part with a burst of pride. In the face of its pride, I could not help but feel pride at my sire’s cunning too.

“Calam was smart, was it not?” I longed then for the chance to have known my sire.

“It was a genius sirga, a true genius.” Fabiana replied wistfully.

I was wistful to. I turned my head then, just slightly, to the side. Why did I do it? Perhaps I’d known that Musa would be looking at me, studying me, with that pitying expression on its face. I suddenly felt unbelievably vulnerable. Glaring at the imp, for the feelings it raised in me, I turned my focus back to Fabiana.

“Surely we’ve communed enough with the road.”

Fabiana laughed. “The end is just a little bit further.”

Knowing Fabiana, a little bit further was more likely to mean a few more hours than a few more minutes. But there was nothing else to do, but walk. There were others with us, uspecs making the long walk both ways. Lahooni was special in this regard, it was the only port that did not have a portal that led to the hangar. All that wished to go had to pass through this same road. There were no stops along the way to make the journey more bearable. No kiosks selling sweetmeats or chilled drinks. No resting places with lounging beds for entertaining.

@Madosky112 yeah, I'm glad you got that name twist

@eROCK247 Actually Calam gave birth to Calami, so Cala can add more letters to the name for its offspring

@ayshow6102 it's really a viper for sapping imps

Sorry for the late update everyone. It's here finally!

That was news to me. So, there was a key associated with the quicksand that allowed teleportation out of Permafrost?

“Years passed and I prayed incessantly to Chuspecip. I prayed for salvation, for forgiveness, for a chance to redeem myself, but there was no hope. Then you came, and I just knew that you were my way out. I knew that I had to help you, I just knew it.”

I was bemused. What was I to say to a tale like that?

Then Fabiana laughed. “Now look, we are out and where are you headed, if not the very same place I sought to return to. Chuspecip is a powerful god, and if I fail in my mission, I will gladly die than live in a world where the plenum or Sada rules. You see why I cannot inherit?”

I nodded. I did see, I did understand. But I did not like what I saw, I did not like what I understood. Still, I could not help it, I liked this uspec, in the same uncomplicated way that I had liked Yakubo the first time we met.

Then we were there.

The Mausoleum loomed in front of us. I could clearly make out the main hall where I’d first seen Fajahromo, and then the stacks. The tall stacks rising proudly behind it. My room vault was in the tallest of those, the mansion. How much time had passed since I’d been in that room-vault? How I’d run out of it desperate to save Musa’s life. The thought annoyed me. I found myself marching towards the first portal I could find.

“Surely sirga,” Fabiana sounded both amused and alarmed, “you don’t mean to take the bear with you into the mausoleum?”

I frowned at it, and then I burst out laughing. “Would that be frowned on?” My gaze landed on the imps standing in front of the curtains that led to the portals. Those imps stared at Marc with wide sockets which told me that it would indeed be frowned on if I tried to take the animal within. My poor Marc. I did not want to leave it.

“Leave it with me sirga.” Fabiana said. “I will wait here for your return.”

Could I trust it? Of course, I knew I could. I didn’t know how, or why I was so convinced. I mean, the uspec could have made up its whole life’s tale, but why would it go through the effort for an uspec, a banneret it did not know? The only mark I had against this uspec was the fact that it was a majestic and it chose to call me sirga. I was obviously younger and lower ranked, so why would it affix me with the honorific? Unless it could sense that I was the heir. I stared at it, but nothing showed in those open eyes.

I nodded. “Beware, Marc’s tusks have had a taste for uspec blood.” I bent to lay my forehead against the bear, and then I whispered into its big ears that it was to kill Fabiana if the uspec tried to run away with it. I knew Fabiana wouldn’t and I knew Marc couldn’t understand me. I said it anyway and felt much better. “Gratitude.”

Fabiana smiled in return. I turned and made my way towards the portals. As I walked, I felt Musa’s silent, invisible, presence behind me every step of the way. I did not like it. I walked through curtains an imp held open for me, and stepped into a pool of quicksand. It sensed the key in me, sucked me in, and teleported me to the top floor of the mansion.

I walked to my room vault, placed my hand on the hard fog, and almost cried in relief when the room opened to me. I couldn’t say what it was, but there was something about being back here. It was as if the room solidified the notion that I had won, that I had come to Damejo, gotten my eye, and was leaving with my life intact. Yakubo had not been so fortunate though. All for Musa, whose presence I could still feel.

“Show yourself!” I snapped, once the fog hardened.

There was a pause, a moment or two when nothing happened. Then the imp revealed itself. It was standing by the door, in its fine black and white robe which declared it as the firstborn.

An awful rage took over me. I felt the hilt of my cutlass in my hand before I even knew that I meant to draw the sword. Then I was standing in front of Musa, the sharp end of my blade pressed against its neck. The imp did not flinch. Its head was bowed, as if in acceptance. Of course, it had nothing to worry about. It was immortal, I could cut off its head a million times and it would feel nothing but the pain of the loss, and the blindness. The rage left me, and I was left with a sense of sorrow so profound it hurt just to stare at the imp.

I returned my cutlass to its sheath and went about my business. There really wasn’t much to do. I hadn’t disturbed the coffer too much. The key was still in my belt. Just the thought of that key reminded me of how Musa had worn it. It had always worn the key to the coffer around its neck. And I had never had any reason to doubt it, I had never suspected that it was capable of lying to me.

“WHY!” I yelled. I didn’t think I was actually asking Musa a question, but when it didn’t reply I whirled around. “Why!” I asked in a more civilized tone.

Musa walked forward. It stopped a few paces in front of me and rose its head up to stare at me. “I could ask you the same thing.” It stated sadly.

I almost slapped it. Almost. “What is that supposed to mean?” I asked in a low voice.

“You are the heir to Lahooni. You are Calami’s offspring, you are the one that I have been searching for, and you knew it. You knew it! All the time I spent with you, all the time I spent talking to you about the heir I so desperately wanted to find. Why did you not tell me that it was you?” I heard the anger in Musa’s voice, the hurt, and I almost laughed.

“I bet you would have loved to know. How hard it must have been not knowing where your next funds for the upkeep of Permafrost would come from.” I stared down at it. “How did you find out? You finally used pansophy on me during our walk over, didn’t you? I’m only surprised you didn’t do it sooner.”

“I have never used pansophy to siphon your thoughts or memories, and I never will. I told you that. I found out from Fajahromo. I heard what it said. I followed you to Takabat’s room vault. I waited for some time after you left, and then I followed you. I heard Fajahromo’s tale. I should have known. It was always there, staring me in the face. You are an irirakun, just like the heir. You are of the same spectrums as the heir, and your feathers. No one but those of the line of the Kaisers of Lahooni have feathers like that. That was why I stopped in shock the first time I saw it. But I could not make the connection, I could not see how you could be the heir. Why didn’t you just tell me? Why?”

For a moment I felt shamed and saddened from the pain I heard so clearly in Musa’s voice. Then my resolve hardened. “I suppose for the same reason you felt the need to lie to me about the wrath, and about your true relationship to my line.”

“You hate imps and you hated Xavier. If I’d told you the truth, you would have sent me away. I did not know why then, but I knew that I did not want to leave you. Of course, it makes sense now, the bond I feel to you. All of a sudden, it all makes sense.”

“Why did you lie about my line?”

“I have never lied about your line. Why would I?”

“You are all lies Musa. Why didn’t you tell me that the only reason you stayed with my line was to steal from them? Your Permafrost elders told me everything, how you used the wealth of my line to build permafrost. Or do you deny it?”

Musa’s jaw clenched. It shook its head. “I do not.”

Three words had never been harder to hear.

“Yes, your line had wealth to spare and I used it to build a place for imps who had nowhere else to go. But I never stole! The first time I interacted with the imps in Nefastu, it was under the orders of a Kaiser in your line, the first Kaiser. It saw the imps, saw them shivering and freezing in the cold, starving, and their torment never ended because they could not die. Then it sent me to them, to find out why they were there. The tales of what their uspec masters had done to them! The tales of sufferings. Of whippings for no reason, of cutting off parts of their bodies simply because they knew they could not die. One stood in front of me, without a head, without arms, without feet. The cruelty! I went back and I told my master. It told me to bring them with me, to bring them with me to serve its line. I went back to the imps but they refused. They would not serve another uspec no matter how much I vouched for it. They did not know if they could trust me. I told my master that and it understood. It gave me pouches of worth and told me to help them. It gave me the money, so that I could make their lives better. And I did. My link to Permafrost was never a secret from the uspecs of your line. The first Kaiser had it written into tenets that it passed on, tenets that said that part of its wealth was to go to building and keeping Permafrost running well. Every Kaiser after knew of this and they did not begrudge me the wealth. They knew they would not miss it and that the imps needed it more than they did. Why do you think I never left, why I was content to remain a slave? I have never met kinder or more noble people. They asked for nothing in return, they just gave. If I could have told the imps, I saved, the truth, I would have. But their distrust for uspecs was so great that the first time I mentioned the food and provisions I brought came from uspecs, they refused to touch it. I laughed it off then, as a joke, and told them I’d stolen it. That was the only way they’d take the help.”

What an intriguing tale. “Am I supposed to believe that?”

Musa’s lips shook. “You are not what your ancestors were.”

I took a step back, shocked by the effect those few softly spoken words had on me. I turned around immediately. I did not want the imp to see that it had hurt me with those words. Of course, by now I knew that I was no Calam. I did not have its wisdom. And neither was I Calami. All who spoke of Calami did it with reverence, as if it had been an honor just to know it. I wondered how people spoke of me. I thought of Marcinus, of the broken uspec I’d left behind. I thought of Yakubo, the uspec who’d died for me. What did I ever do to earn loyalty of the kind they’d shown me?

I walked over to the coffer and bent to pick up the tag, the one the coffer was bound by memory too. I looked around the room. I had nothing else here, all my belongings where in that coffer or on me. I could not forestall it anymore, I turned to face Musa.

“If there is anything you would like to take with you, take it now.” I pulled the key out of my belt and tossed it onto the top of the hard fog covering the coffer. “This is where our journey ends.”

“I am sorry, I should not have said what I did. I was hurt that you would think that I would lie about something like that, and I lashed out. You are not what they were, but it is not your fault. Each Kaiser before you was raised knowing their place in society. They were taught, educated, but most of all, they were loved. Loved by their progenitor and sire, loved by the nobles who bowed to them, and loved by the imps who served them. If they were kind to imps, it is because that was the only life they knew. None of them had to live the life you had. I am sorry.”

“I do not care. I cannot have you with me anymore Musa. I don’t trust you.”

“Then I will earn back your trust. I swear master, I never stole from your line. I would never. I am no thief. Every happiness I’ve had in this lifetime, I’ve had from the uspecs of your line. They were family to me. I would never steal from them. They all knew of my link to Permafrost, and they gave willingly. I swear it.”

Something about Musa’s words raised a memory from Aurelion. It was the memory of Aaliyah’s tale. Chike and Calami had been taking Monica to Permafrost. And Monica had confirmed this. Calami had to have known of Permafrost then, and it must have found nothing wrong in taking an imp to it. Calami was linked to Permafrost. If Musa had been stealing to fund Permafrost, it would never have allowed Calami to learn about Permafrost. At least, I didn’t think so. Or was I just trying to make excuses for Musa. Did I want the imp with me that badly?

“And the invasion?” I asked. “Did Calam give its blessing for that? Because I doubt Calam would have, not when it created the samu for the purpose of defending uspecs from being overrun by imps.”

“Master Calam created the samu?” Musa was shocked.

“Yes.” I nodded. “Animaon told me that. You remember Animaon, the one you lied to me about knowing.”

Musa sighed. “Samu, Musa, it all makes sense now. It must have made me the cure. It named it after me. So like Master Calam. It would never make a poison without an antidote. No wonder the samu didn’t finish me. As soon as they gave me growth, I just pushed it out, like a fever. I could do the same for all imps bitten. Master Calam knew that it could trust me, that I would never try to harm uspecs.”

“But the invasion does just that, doesn’t it?” I almost cursed my sire then. Why did it make an imp have the cure? Now Musa would know how to cure others, and if the invasion happened, then any imp bitten could be cured. But how many imps could Musa cure? But what if the cure could be taught to others? I would make a better Samu. I swore it to myself. I would create a Samu that no imp could cure. Only I would have the cure.

“The invasion was only meant to create a world where imps and uspecs could live together. It was never my intention for imps to seek to control uspecs. I wanted equality, it is all I want. I did not tell master Calam, and you can fault me for that. I would have told it in time, I was never good at keeping secrets from it. But I didn’t know how to explain. And I’d only made the decision to allow the invasion a few months before master Calam was killed. I don’t want uspecs to bow to imps, but I don’t want imps bowing to uspecs either. Is that so wrong?”

“This existence belongs to us.” I snapped.

“But we didn’t ask to be brought here.” Musa replied. “We didn’t ask for this, it’s not our fault. We don’t deserve to be treated the way some of your kind treat us.”

I was tired of arguing, tired of trading words. “It is time for you to leave.”

“I cannot.”

“Go, Musa!”

“I will only remove my appearance and follow you. I swore to serve your line, it is an oath I mean to keep. You have so many enemies master. At least let me guide you till you return to power. When you reclaim your inheritance, if you wish to dismiss me, I will go. I swear it. But not till then. Please.”

Part 23
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Can a presence be felt? Surely, I thought, it must be possible, because I felt Musa’s presence like a foul odor clinging stubbornly to me. I felt its presence trailing behind me as I made the slow march towards the Mausoleum. How badly I wished for a portal. I was starving. I’d refused to eat the food the imps served me, and now my stomach ached as a result. Not that I would change a thing if I had to redo it. For all I knew, there’d been poison in that seemingly innocuous meal. I couldn’t help dreaming of a bath. A nice bath in a large cleaning room with okun ponds containing bath salts. If only the closest portal wasn’t behind the gates of Cormeum. I wasn’t foolish enough to risk returning. There were bound to be more portals in the Terminal vacuous chamber, but the walk to the entrance of that chamber was just as far as that to the border of the Mausoleum.

Of course, I could ride Marc. That was what I would have done if it was just me and Musa. Perhaps I would get lucky and ride too fast for Musa to keep up. From what I knew, it didn’t have siphoned spectra, but seeing as it was a liar, I could not count on anything I thought I knew about the imp. It was a moot point anyway, I had an uspec guest, and it would be rude to ride while it walked beside me. We could ride together, but I was not keen on having one with pansophy at my back. Though I had no proof of the uspec’s ability to use that magic, I did not doubt it. All the uspec guards entrusted with guarding the permafrost elders had pansophy.

It was as if the uspec could sense that it had become the subject of my thoughts, because it turned to face me then. Its lips quirked in a smile and it bowed slightly to me. “Where do we go, sirga?” it asked.

“I am Nebud.” I replied. “And we go to Lahooni.” I shook my head. “I go to Lahooni, you are free to go wherever you please.” It was odd to say those words and feel bound by them as I had not in Nefastu. But I was bound by them. I could feel the return of that weight in my head, I could feel it there reminding me that I belonged to it, that I had to go to Lahooni. It had been absent in Nefastu, and I wished I knew why.

The uspec gaped at me. Then it threw up its hands and exploded with a cry of jubilation. The display drew the attention of uspecs riding in a hail canoe past us. Fabiana did not seem to mind though.

“I knew the moment you started talking that you were godsent, the answer to my prayers, a blessing from Chuspecip. But now, now I know for certain. How else would you come to be going to the very same place I seek? Lahooni is the land of my birth sirga. It is the land I have ached so desperately for.”

“What a coincidence.” I smiled back at the uspec’s joy-filled face.

“No coincidence, sirga, Chuspecip’s blessing.”

I gritted my teeth. I was being accompanied by an Uspecipyte, a staunch one by the sound of it. Did this uspec not know that it was in the middle of a Kuworyte port? Did it not know that there were those who would slaughter it for the faith it showed?

“Tiyoseriwosin, sirga?” Fabiana asked.

I glared at it. In all the time that I had heard the question asked, I had never heard it asked as Fabiana did. The question was not asked as a test, or an accusation. It was not asked with glee or fear, only a calm acceptance. I was with a religious uspec, one who actually wanted to know what god I served so that it may better understand me. I could tell, simply from the way it asked the question. Whatever answer I gave would please it, except, perhaps, for the answer I was going to give. I felt no need to lie.

“I serve no god, unless and until it is expedient to do so. Then I am Uspecipyte or Kuworyte, whichever keeps me alive.” I replied. The words came out harsh and callous.

But Fabiana smiled as if thrilled by my answer. “An unbeliever. Have no fear, Chuspecip cares for us all.”

So many rants came to my mind. Rants about Chuspecip’s weakness. The founder. The great founder that I had been taught to revere in the slums, to fear even. That founder, the supposed greatest uspec to ever live, the only immortal uspec, was being chased by the plenum. It was nothing, it had no power. I thought of my own desperate prayer to Chuspecip. I had prayed in the moment that Musa had been bitten by the samu, prayed that Chuspecip would let it live. I had sworn everything to Chuspecip if it granted my prayer. I laughed at myself now. Musa lived but I would care just as little if it was dead. At least, if it was gone, sapped, it would not now be trailing me.

“How did you come to serve the imps in Permafrost?” The words were cold and unfriendly, and cast in an accusing tone. This uspec had saved me. It had been the only one willing to defy the elders and announce to the room that Musa lived. Not even Monica, who’d seemed so desperate to help me, had been willing to do that much. I blamed my callousness on my own feelings. My feelings on Chuspecip, our weak founder, allowing the plenum to overpower it, allowing the imps to pollute Nefastu and make it grounds that another existence could invade through. And then there was Musa, and the betrayal that I felt whenever I thought of it. I did not want it with me, I did not want it anywhere near me, but I could not force it to leave.

For a few seconds I contemplated making a detour to the Terminal Vacuous Chamber and buying a whip. If I was mean to it, if I hurt it, it would leave. It had to. I could drive it away with pain. It had no fear of me. I thought of the imps that I had hurt in the past. The pain I had caused, I had done with my own hands. Not Musa though, I wouldn’t touch one with pansophy. It would have to be a whip. Or maybe my cutlass. Maybe I could just cut its head off. That would send it back to its people. So why didn’t I? I could trick it into thinking I had forgiven it, so that it would reveal itself, then I could behead it.

Even with my hurt, I could not. I could not do that to Musa. Maybe that was what I hated most, that the imp had gained such a hold on me that I could not lash out at it, as I could at any other. I hated it, I hated it for the feelings it inspired in me, for the trust we’d shared which was now gone, for the truths I knew. I hated it more than I’d hated anything else. More even than I hated Fajahromo. But I could kill Fajahromo. Musa I could not bring myself to hurt. And that made me hate it even more.

“Sirga?” Fabiana stood on the other side of Marc. It was leaning close now and staring at me with worry in its eyes and features.

I had to blink to bring the world back into focus. “Why will you not call me Nebud?”

The uspec smiled at me. “It does not feel like I ought to.”

“Because I wear these banneret cloths?” I asked. In that, I probably gave myself away. I should have said, because I am a banneret, but I was drawn, mentally exhausted, and tired of lies.

It shook its head. “I don’t know why sirga, I just see something in you. An aura around you. I do not know how, but I can tell that you are the greatest uspec that I have ever met.”

Its words made me frown. The greatest uspec it had ever met? I almost laughed at that. It must not have met a great many uspecs. I’d not met that many uspecs, but I had already met several who were greater than I was. Marcinus, for one. Maraci, its progenitor. And then there was Arexon. I think that if I had to pick, I would say that Arexon was the greatest uspec I had ever met. There was no one like Arexon, no fighter greater, no magician more skilled. That was the definition of greatness. Not me. Arexon at least was smart to feel nothing for imps. What kindness it did to them, it did for the sake of the uspecs they were bound to. Not me, what I did for Musa, I did solely for the imp’s sake. More fool I.

And then it hit me. Fabiana said that it was from Lahooni. As soon as I remembered this, I coughed loudly. Could it sense who I was? Could it see the blood of my line in my veins? Would all uspecs in Lahooni be able to see it as soon as I entered? I had thought of Lahooni as nothing but an assignment from the moment that the voice in my head named it. Now I remembered what else it was. I remembered that by right, it belonged to the heir to Lahooni, to Calam’s heir, Calami’s offspring. Cala. Nebud. Would I ever be able to reconcile both? The uspec I was and the uspec I was born to be?

I turned to Fabiana. “You never did tell me how you came to be in Permafrost.”

Fabiana chuckled. “I began telling you, sirga, but your mind drifted. I will start again.”

And it did.

Its tale was not one I had expected. It was born noble in Lahooni, not just any noble, but a majestic, like Fajahromo. Fabiana was the first offspring of the great Fabian, duke of the first metropolis of Lahooni. It outranked me, in the role I claimed to be. So why did it keep calling me sirga? Salin, was Fabian’s younger sibling. While Fabian and its other siblings had clung to Chuspecip and the Uspecipyte ways, Salin had broken off, and joined the plenum. Salin was Custodian now, and Fabiana’s progenitor, Fabian, was forced to serve it. Things had been strange in Lahooni when Fabiana left. There was no march of soldiers on the streets, but any uspec heard insulting the plenum, or Salin, was sure to be found dead the next day. To the rest of the world, Lahooni was still an Uspecipyte port, but to those within, it walked a tight line. All knew that the inquisition would come. When the plenum had conquered every other Uspecipyte port, and had no more use for the charade of Lahooni as Uspecipyte, then it would purge the port of all Uspecipytes. It was not so far off, Fabiana thought. But there would be a great many dead, because the blood lines of Lahooni were deeply rooted to Chuspecip. They could no more claim to be Kuworyte than they could claim to be imps. It was just not them. They had served Calam’s line for too long.

I learnt from Fabiana that Calam had been adored. It had learned from its progenitor that the nobles would have gladly given their lives to save Calam’s. But none of them had known the treachery being planned within their port. They had grown confident in their security, and so they had not seen the plenum corrupting uspecs like Salin. The nobles had let their guards down, allowing the plenum to create a band of Lahooni nobles loyal to them. By the time the nobles realized the extent of their mistake, it was too late, Calam and its heir were dead, and Salin was the Custodian of Lahooni. The plenum took a strong hold of the port and killed any protesters. There had been no inquisition as of yet, the plenum still allowed the nobles to remain Uspecipyte because it gave a modicum of truth to the lie that Lahooni was still an Uspecipyte port. Fabiana was sure that there was more, ways that the plenum used this against other Uspecipyte ports, but it could not say how.

“You say they mourned Calam’s heir, but from what I’ve heard, Calam’s heir was an irira who the nobles refused to have lead them.” I asked.

Fabiana sighed. “The nobles, my own mater included, are set in their ways. They did not much object to the irira itself, as our Lord and Master, Chuspecip, is itself irira, it is the allegiances. Our irira was a kun, an irirakun, with emotions, another thing to take solace in. But the fact that it was kun, also meant that it could not be clear who had the right to claim it as offspring. Calami’s offspring was also the offspring of a Hakute imperial. It was connected to both lines. If Calami had lived, then the offspring would have belonged solely to Calami. It did not, and so the offspring’s heritage was mixed, of two royal lines. Who could say that the Kaiser of Hakute would not seek to claim our heir? Who could say that our heir would not favor its kute lines? And Hakute is Kuworyte, as it has always been. An uspec torn between two spectrums, between two religions, that is what the heir was. That is why the nobles were not so keen to take it. Calam could have had another offspring, a pure hooni uspec, that is what the nobles wanted. Calam refused and the nobles were offended. But they would have come around, even Calam must have known that. No Lahooni noble could have resisted Calam for long. Calam would have raised its heir with loyalty to Lahooni alone, with love for Chuspecip, with worship of the Uspecipyte ways. Calam would have raised an heir every Lahooni uspec would be proud to bow to. My mater told me that. But the nobles had to protest, they just had to. Do you understand?”

I shook my head. I did not understand at all. “If Calami won, the uspec would still have been kute, still have been undesirable. So, it did not matter that it was irira, did it?”

Fabiana shrugged. “Politics. An irirakun, raised by Calam, trained by Calam, the nobles would have served. At least it would have had neck scales. A pure kute? I suppose, but it would have been harder for the nobles to stomach.”

I took my mind off that. It did not matter what would have happened if Calami hadn’t died in the hatch. “You are the first offspring of a duke, does that make you heir?”

It nodded. “Heir to the first metropolis of Lahooni.”

“I should call you sirga.” I teased, and didn’t realize I was jesting with it, until the words came out.

Fabiana laughed. “Please don’t. I cannot do it. I have three siblings, and for our sakes, mater bows and scrapes to its younger sibling Salin. It jumps at the plenum’s orders and does what they command. I am more Uspecipyte than mater, more than anyone else in my line. If I inherit, I will be the destruction of my line, because I will never claim a religion I don’t believe in. I will never bow to the plenum over Chuspecip. Never.”

“Even if Chuspecip is gone?”

Fabiana rose pained eyes to mine. “Never. I am already prepared to die for my faith, sirga. It is a death that my time in Permafrost forced me to escape.”

“If you are so loyal to Chuspecip, how could you serve Sada?”

“I have never served any god save Chuspecip, and I have never claimed to.” Fabiana’s jaw had clenched. It loosened it then. “I was only a few months past my second birthday when Calam died. In the years before its death, it ordered all those of noble lines to send their offspring to the pious, to be tested for the ability to hold pansophy. It wanted all that were able to own the magic. I was one of the few who passed. Pansophy may run strong in the line of Kaisers, but it does not in the noble lines. Commoners are much more likely to have it. This is an equalizer, I think, Chuspecip’s way of given power to those not born to it. For some reason, the ability for pansophy ran strong in me. They even likened me to Animaton, Calam’s own apprentice. My line was honored, and I was sent for training by the pious. It was Calam’s rule that all nobles who were to be trained by the pious be trained by the order of Adjudication, our warrior priests. That way our training encompassed more than just pansophy, we were taught to fight too.

Calami itself would come to our order and fight with the pious and the nobles being trained. It was only my honor to fight with Calami once, on my second birthday. It was a gift from mater. Calami beat me soundly, of course it did, I barely knew how to hold a sword, but it said that I had potential and that it would train with me again, when I was older and stronger. It died before it could keep that promise.

Then five years ago, the magistrate of my order sent me to serve a two-year charity tour in Damejo. The charity tour is a requirement, a repayment of Chuspecip’s kindness to those less fortunate. I was sent to protect a Procreation base in a poor burg, and see that the rule of law was obeyed. I was not a pious, or even a novice, as my training had been that of a noble, not that of a pious, but it was close enough that I could still help. That is where the wrath of Sada found me. They had an arrangement with begetters there, using them to gift pansophy to those the wrath willed to own the magic. I tried to fight them off and found myself struck from behind. I woke in Permafrost.

My choices were, serve them, or die. I was weak then. They did not ask me to serve Sada, only to serve the imps. To train others in pansophy and fighting. It was not as much as they asked of others, and I was not yet willing to die for my pride. I justified it by saying that I was not serving any god but my own, and that in my own way, I was doing my charity tour, helping to protect imps who’d run away from cruel masters. It took years before they asked to siphon my spectra, before they taught me to withstand Nefastu’s curse. Then I was made a guard of one of their great elders. I learnt of the invasion then. They told me Chuspecip was dead, and that the plenum had won. Would I rather serve the plenum, the people that killed my god, or would I serve them? I was weak, and I wanted to live. I accepted their lies about Chuspecip, and in so doing, I betrayed my god. I never served Sada, never prayed to it. But I also stopped praying to Chuspecip. I withdrew into myself, and there was no light. Till one day I overheard a piece of gossip, that Chuspecip was not dead, that the plenum needed to destroy the last brio to destroy Chuspecip. And as of yet, the plenum has been unable to find it. I almost killed myself that day. The truth of my circumstances came to me, I had allowed myself to desert my god. But then I thought of how I would make it better. I thought of how I would find a way out, how I would dedicate my life to searching for the last brio. How I would protect it. That gave me life, a reason to live. No matter how hard I tried to gain their trust, they never gave me the key, they never allowed me to use my quicksand to leave.”

@olite93 thank you, although the last update was one of the longer ones I've posted

@eROCK247 thanks, I agree, Nebud should hear Musa out..maybe it will

@Fazemood I told you I was naming a character after you

@Tuhndhay You are right about the secret keeping on both sides...Nebud should think about it

@ayshow6102 lol ayshow is a strange name for a bear though, hahaha

All of a sudden, Musa’s message through Monica made sense. And out of the crevices of my mind, a plan began to form. It was crazy, it had very little chance of working, but it was better than nothing.

I turned back to face the elders then. “I demand my imp.” I stated in a clear voice which carried across the hall. The musings which had begone at Monica’s words, and grown in my silence, fell away, returning the hall to silence.

If there was any doubt on the elders’ faces, it did not show. “Musa is gone, sapped fully. We could not find it. You know this.” The one to the side lied. Did all imps lie so easily?

“Is it truly?” I asked.

“I grow tired of this.” The elder in the middle stated. It opened its mouth to speak further, but I cut it off.

“Let me sweeten the deal.” I reached into my belt and pulled out a doll I’d thrown in there, never thinking I would have cause to use it again.

Tantan’s appearance. I heard Xavier’s gasp before I continued.

“Give me my imp, and I will give you Tantan’s appearance.”

I knew Tantan was in this hall with me. That was Musa’s message. Tantan, the uspec from the inter-port trail. The one whose appearance Xavier had taken. Musa had found the doll and given it to me. I’d left it in my belt ever since, never thinking that I would actually have use for it. Now though, it was the key, the key to forcing the elders’ hands.

I thought of Musa. I thought of its betrayal. I thought of its theft, of its lies. Then I thought of Yakubo. I dwelt on Yakubo, on the uspec’s death. It had died before its time. Died a painful death all for Musa. I felt pain, like a welcoming balm.

“We could just take it from you.” The elder stated drily.

I had expected that, and I had hoped that I would have an answer. I did not. The pain I felt was not enough. Not enough to overwhelm the curse of Nefastu. I needed more.

“Of course, you would say that.” I spat out. “You show just how little regard you have for uspecs.” My words caused a spell of commotion. Certainly not enough to make all the uspecs in the room cry out for war, but enough to make several of them turn uncomfortably where they stood. “Why should you care about the appearance of an uspec who risked so much for you?” I goaded. “Why should you care for Tantan?” Again, the uspecs shifted, expecting more.

Then, “I spit on uspecs!” an imp yelled. That imp’s cries was greeted by a small scattering of applause. Not from the elders though.

I was running out of time and I needed more. I needed more than just Musa, I needed more than Yakubo. I needed pain, true pain, pain of loss so unbearable that it would break through Nefastu’s curse. I had only done this once before, and it was the pain of Musa’s loss that had driven me. Now, I searched frantically for a loss as the elders struggled to calm the room.

My eyes met with Xavier.

“Where is my pater Xavi?”

The voice came unbidden. It was a memory I’d thought I’d closed my heart against, an ache I’d thought I’d buried. Apparently, the pain of losing an offspring could never be buried. The knowledge that the offspring had called another pater, that it had trusted an imp, over its own progenitor. I saw my offspring’s final minutes in my head again. I saw it rushing for me, armed, ready to kill me. The pain of betrayal. The death. Gerangi’s hand, my offspring’s body. My mind juxtaposed images of my offspring’s body with Yakubo, and I knew pain. I knew true pain. The losses that I had taken. The uspecs I cared for that I had seen dead!

I heard a thud, and then a loud shriek.

“How is this possible?” a startled voice asked.

The memories threatened to overpower me. I felt the okun. I felt energy pulling into me and I knew that I had taken a life with it, I just did not know if it was uspec or imp. This was the time to pull back, this was the time to return to consciousness. But it was so hard. My offspring’s face continued to flash in my mind. It had been so young, much too young to die. Now that I had allowed myself to remember, to bring that day back to life, I could not stop it. I could not stop the pain, the sorrow. I could feel it, sorrow taking root, starting to form into clouds.

No. That was not what I wanted. I could not lose control. I knew it, yet I could not stop the sorrow from forming in me.

“Musa lives.”

I heard the voice, and suddenly, I was crashing back to the present, the here and now. Pain spoke to me. Volumes of it, echoes of overwhelming loss that could only come from a lit okun.

Cognizance returned, and with it, awareness of my surroundings. The pool of lit okun had grown much larger than I’d intended. An imp lay in it. This was one of the imps that had been standing guard.

I waited for the voice to repeat itself, but nothing came. Whoever had said that Musa lived, was not speaking up now. It did not matter.

I smiled.

“Reveal Musa, or I will drop Tantan’s appearance into the lit okun. Maybe all that will happen is that the appearance will leave the doll, sentencing Tantan to spending the rest of its life invisible, or with someone else’s appearance. Or, maybe there’s a link between an uspec’s appearance and itself. Maybe, if I drop the appearance into the lit okun, the uspec will die, just as if it had been dropped into the lit okun itself. Shall we find out?”

I lowered the hand that held the doll threateningly.

“No!” I heard a voice scream. I could not find the source of the voice. “Please mother.” It begged.

The elder in the middle was glaring at me now, all of its old hatred coming to the front.

“Observe uspecs!” I yelled. “Observe the imps you’ve chosen as masters. See how little they care for your life, how little regard they have for you. They do not even blink at the thought of one of you dying. If it was an imp’s appearance I threatened they would not be so nonchalant. They lie to you!” I yelled, my voice booming. “Just as they lied to me. They told me that if I found Xavier and returned it, they would give me my imp. I brought Xavier back. An uspec died so that Xavier could be freed. And what do I get for my troubles? Lies and attempts on my life. They have so little regard for uspecs that they did not even contemplate honoring the deal they struck with me. Instead they ordered me killed, slaughtered. They have no respect for us, no care. Observe uspecs! Observe the imps you’ve chosen as masters.”

And then I let the silence do the speaking for me. The imps needed our magic. They needed uspecs to siphon that magic from, live uspecs willing to allow them to siphon spectra. Without spectra, well they had pansophy, but there are so many disadvantages to a purely contact magic. Spectra could attack against spectra. Pansophy could not.

Mumblings.

The hooni uspec standing by the center stared at me. Its lips twitched. It bowed, a slight neck bow. A show of gratitude? I could not tell, but then it looked away.

Finally, the elder in the middle spoke. “Musa is gone.” It bellowed.

I was just about to drop Tantan’s appearance into the lit okun, when another voice stopped me.

“Musa lives.” It was the voice that had pulled me from my pain rush. It was the hooni uspec, the one that had bowed to me. I stared at it, stunned by the unexpected show of camaraderie. “I have seen it with my own eyes. It is healthy.”

“How dare you?” the elder in the middle snapped.

“Does Tantan mean so little to you, that you will disregard its desires for the sake of an imp who may not even wish to remain here?” The hooni uspec countered. “I say a new bargain should be struck, right here, in the presence of all. Let Musa decide whether it will stay. If Musa chooses to remain, then the banneret will return Tantan’s appearance and leave in peace.” The uspec turned to stare at me. I nodded. In fact, all I wanted to do was leave, I did not want to take Musa with me. But I could not go back now. This uspec had just given me a boon. Regardless of what Musa chose, if the elders agreed, I would be set free. It continued. “If it is Musa’s choice to leave, then surely it must be allowed to leave.”

I heard many more mumbled words, and grumblings from imps. They did not like an uspec speaking up as the hooni did. I stared at the hooni, wondering why it would risk so much for me.

“You are both aligning yourselves with the enemies of the wrath.” The elder in the middle stated, lumping the hooni uspec with me. “If you continue in this regard, you will be counted as such when the invasion is complete.”

“Then it must be so.” The hooni uspec stated, seemingly oblivious to the ominous words. “Musa lives, and you struck a bargain with an uspec. It has done its part, doubly so now, it is time for you to do yours. Fairness is what you swore to each uspec here, fairness is what we all agreed to. Prove it to us now, or never say it again.”

Silence. Whoever this hooni uspec was, it was an uspec that was respected. That much was clear. The imps may not like its boldness, but they did not doubt its words. They knew it would not lie.

Then the elder seated in the middle gave a curt nod to the last imp remaining standing around it. Quicksand appeared underneath that imp. It disappeared and a great silence followed in its wake. In that silence I could do nothing but stare at the hooni uspec who grinned at me. I smiled back at it, and nodded. It nodded at me. I could tell from the way the elder stared at the hooni uspec who’d come to my defense, that it would not be alive for much longer. This imp was vicious. It put on a façade, but its true self had no kindness.

I knew once I heard the gasps of shock. Then the chants. It started slowly at first, whispered words, and then the room shook with it. Cries of ‘Firstborn’ echoed throughout it. I realized then that most of them probably did not know Musa by name, but they knew its face. I was not ready to look at it, and so I kept my gaze averted.

The elders stood. They all turned to the side where I could imagine Musa stood, and then they bowed.

“This uspec.” The elder in the middle began, gesturing dismissively towards me. “Wants to take you away, wants to own you. Is it your desire to leave with it?”

The words were asked plainly, and the answer given just as plainly. “Yes.” Musa replied.

What was that burst of relief I felt? I pushed it down. Musa had betrayed me. It only wanted to come with me now to continue its search for its precious heir. It wanted to continue stealing from my line. That was all.

“But…”

“No.” Musa’s voice snapped like a whip, and I had to bury the burst of pride I felt. The imp was so different here, so very different. “You dishonored me, Clarice. You dishonored me by keeping me locked in a room, and you dishonored me by trying to harm one that you knew I wanted protected and well cared for. We do not hold people against their will. That is not what Permafrost is for.”

“I’m sorry Musa, I just thought…” I heard an ache in the elder’s voice. “I am sorry.”

“We are leaving now.” Musa announced.

“As you wish.” The elder was eager to comply.

“Let any uspec who wishes to follow come with us.” I heard myself say it without thinking. Surely, I could not be the only one that the imps had dealt unfairly with.

“You have no right…” the elder began.

Musa cut it off. “No one is to be held against their will. Are there any uspecs who wish to leave with us?”

Silence greeted Musa’s words, and for a moment I thought that no one would come.

“I want to leave.” It was the hooni uspec who spoke. “I want to leave with you Firstborn.”

“Then we will go.” Musa said.

Was there no one else? Out of so many uspecs only one wished to leave with us, only one was unwilling to continue bowing to imps? I was disappointed.

“The appearance.” I heard Xavier say.

I looked down to find that the pool of lit okun was gone. When had it left me? I could not even say. It was okay though; it had played its part. I tossed the doll to Xavier, not caring if it fell and crashed into a million pieces.

Quicksand appeared underneath me.

“Marc!” I yelled before it could engulf me. “I want my bear!” That smoke bear was the only good thing to come out of my trip to this port.

My cries seemed to fall on deaf ears because I was sucked in without a response. I did not have long to worry. I found myself teleported to the boundary of Nefastu with Marc standing beside me. I stroked the bear’s fur, smiling with pure joy when it trumpeted. It wrapped its trunk around me, and in that warm embrace, I knew a relationship which would be free of betrayal. I walked forward, my hand in the bear’s fur, as I made what I hoped would be my last trip out of Nefastu.

Damejo greeted me like a breath of fresh air.

“Thank you sirga.” I heard a voice say.

I turned to the uspec who’d stood up for me and decided to escape Permafrost by my side. “What is your name?” I asked the hooni uspec.

“Fabiana.” It replied.

“I am Nebud.”

It nodded, and then it smiled, and then it laughed. It was foolish, but I heard myself laughing too. I don’t know why, but I did.

And then Musa’s voice broke my joyful return to the world of normalcy. “Master?” it said it softly.

I was yet to look at it. “Go back to your people, Musa, go back to them. I do not want you with me. I cannot bear the sight of you.”

I heard a sharp inhale. “Please master…”

“Just go.” I snapped. “Leave me.” How great I had thought being a master would be. I’d thought I’d own a whip, that I’d strike out at my slave, forcing it to bend to my will. Even in this, in this awful feeling of betrayal, in this loss of a relationship that I had come to rely on, I could not lash out at Musa. I just could not. Maybe the imp was right, maybe it really did have a special bond with the uspecs of my line. It would take a special bond to keep my line blind to its treachery, blind to its theft.

“I cannot leave you master. Please…”

“No.” I cut it off. “Go back to your kind. I do not want you with me. I cannot look at you Musa. I cannot.”

“Then I will take away my appearance so that you don’t have to, but I will not leave you.”

I moved on, fuming at the imp’s gall. Even in this it sought to thwart me.

Part 22
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Our walk in the hail chill was filled with Monica’s incessant chatter. It did not matter how much I glared at it, the imp would not stop speaking. I did not remember this from the last time I’d been with it. Surely, if the imp had such an avid penchant for chitchat I would have known. Well, this trip was different in so many ways from our previous one.

Through it all, the imp talked. I listened with half my mind as it pointed at a sculpture, a large dwelling with a cylindrical base and a hail-mountain peak. According to the imp, that building was the living lodges where the elders stayed. It was quick to point out that uspecs stayed there too, of course, powerful uspecs sworn to the wrath. If this was said to draw a reaction from me, the imp was sure to be disappointed. Not that it seemed to mind. It immediately turned to its left, to the dwelling we’d just emerged from, and highlighted that as the living bunks, where most of the lower people stayed. Its room was in that hail-mountain dwelling. I said nothing.

As the imp continued to drone on, I turned my attention to the busy streets. It was a new day, not that the foul hail pellets made it easy to see through to the skies. Still, soft streams of orange light made its way to the ground. Perhaps if I’d been in a better mood I would have acknowledged the beauty of the day, the way that the orange rays fell off the hail pellets. I did not.

A passing imp spat at my feet. It said a few words in the harsh dialect I could not understand, and I clenched my fists, fighting to keep myself from lashing out at it. I hated to be so weak, so outnumbered. And this was the future the imps saw for my existence, a future where all uspecs would have to hold their tempers in check against the insufferable insults of imps. That world would come over my dead body.

The imp continued to speak and I continued to pay no heed to it.

I felt my ailerons twitch. It had been a long time since I’d flown. Of course, I knew that I could not. The lesson I’d learnt the last time I tried to fly in Permafrost still lived in my memory. The pounding of the hail, somehow even more unpleasant higher up in the sky, the twirling of the fogs, spinning me as though I was in a tumbler. No, flying in falling hail was not as simple as flying in clear skies. Still, I could not help but see this lack of flight as another affront of the imps. This was just another way they’d devised to keep uspecs imprisoned.

I shook my head, coming back to the present just in time to see that we’d reached our destination.

The prayer coves.

I stood, gaping at it. I had never seen anything quite like the structure before me. Like all the other dwellings here, it appeared to be made out of hail, or at least covered with enough layers of falling hail to give off that impression. But it was not the frost white that made me stare. It was the design of it. The sharp slopes from the top, converging at a slotted entrance at the bottom. It was beautiful. And as I stared at the beauty, I wondered just how much Lahooni wealth Musa had stolen to build a place like this for its kind.

It was with these stormy thoughts in my head, that I marched into the prayer coves, following in the imp’s wake. This dwelling had no guards. There were no giant imps standing in front of it, no warrior uspecs.

The darkness hit me as soon as we walked in. It was like being in Aurelion, not a pleasant thought. I was so distracted that it took me a while to realize that Monica’s incessant chatting had ended. The imp looked relieved. I realized then that it must have been worried that we would be stopped on our way to the prayer cove. If that was the case, why hadn’t it just teleported us here? I proceeded to ask just that.

“These are sacred grounds.” The imp replied. “It is blocked from quicksand. All who enter must do so under Sada’s watchful gaze.”

The imp’s words made no sense to me and I did not try to decipher them. I turned instead to the first source of light in the darkness. To be exact, it was not completely dark, not so dark that I could not see my way through, but it was dark enough to make navigation clumsy. It came as a relief to see an abundance of white light emanating from a spot in the wall only a few steps ahead of us.

Several imps knelt in front of that wall, their hands raised to reverently stroke it. Their reactions to a wall piqued my interest, lengthening my stride. When I got there though, and saw what it was that the imps worshipped, I regretted my eagerness.

There, painted on the wall before me, was the image of Musa. This imp was much different from the one that I knew, the one that I’d spent so much time with. It had a smile on its face, and its hands open and spread out as if inviting another to embrace it. It was dressed in a dark robe, with fringes of white along the seams. And underneath the painting, the words, ‘THE FIRSTBORN’, were written in bolded letters of the uspec common tongue.

I swiveled, turning away from the image, just as an imp crawled to kiss the feet of Musa’s painting. I looked away sharply, my disgust clear on my face. Monica was watching me. It must have seen my expression, but it said nothing. It simply continued moving. We walked in silence then, and I was grateful for it.

As we walked, I saw several coves, broken from the path Monica led me on. In each cove there were imps. Some stood, some sat, some knelt, but each was silent. I could understand why Monica had called this sacred grounds. It was interesting to see this worship. We had no such thing of course. There were places where uspecs gathered to hear the sowers, the pious of the order of dissemination, spread knowledge of the founder, Chuspecip, and the Kuwor. But there were no statues, no paintings that we kissed.

There were those who prayed. I knew that Yakubo had been one of them, an uspec who prayed to Chuspecip. I did not see the purpose of prayers; my life was mine to ensure.

“This is the tabernacle.” Monica whispered to me. “Our most sacred cove.”

We must have entered a new cove. There were no doors in this place, nothing to mark the passage from one room to another. Still, I could tell that there was something different here. Everywhere else, the ground had been the common soft clouds which formed around the feet. It was different here. The ground in this room was filled with a material that I could not place. There was enough light for me to see that it had the color of sludge, but it had none of the stickiness. It was like walking on hardened fog, but it was not quite as hard as that. Something in between sludge and perfect hardness.

The center of this cove was cordoned off by ropes. Imps knelt around these ropes, their hands steepled together as if in prayer. But what did they pray to? All I saw was darkness, a vast nothingness. Was this their god? I shook my head, turning away from the bizarre sight. We went further, and something I saw in the void, made me stop. It had been nothingness, but in the nothingness, there was a figure, hidden within darkness and shadows.

My heart leaped in my chest.

It appeared lifelike, even though it made no movements. I could not see colors, but I saw contours. I saw the form of a body, the outline of ailerons sprouting from behind it. An uspec then. I took a step closer, until I was close enough to see the tail between its legs and the spikes on its neck. It was an irira, a kute-boga irira, like Fajahromo.

Suddenly, I was desperate to be nearer, desperate to see it in detail. I put my hand on the rope, ready to rip it down as it stood in my way. Monica’s hand on mine stalled me. “It is blasphemy to step behind the ropes. Blood cannot be spilled in the prayer coves, but for blasphemy to that extent, an exception may be made.”

I shook its hand off mine and pulled away from the rope. I couldn’t keep my eyes from straying back to the form hidden in the shadows. Still, it did not move. We continued ahead then. Monica led us to an empty cove, and then it walked in.

“I will give you the privacy to contemplate.” It stated, before turning to leave.

For a second I forgot what it meant. Then I remembered, and a terrible weight settled in my chest. “Tell me what your elders will do to you if they find out what you did to the giants.”

Monica’s sockets did not meet my querying gaze. “They will find out, I was seen.” It shrugged. “They will have me banished for some time, send me into isolation in Nefastu so that I can contemplate my disobedience.”

“And you did this because Musa asked you to.”

“Not just that.” Monica replied. “I told you, your progenitor was very kind to me once. It is a debt I never got the chance to pay.”

I scoffed, as if I was about to believe the imp’s lies. What it did, it did for Musa, for the firstborn whose image imps worshipped. “How will it be done?” I asked.

“How will what be done?”

“My inquest with the elders. How will it be done? How will I force them to reveal Musa’s wellness?”

“It must be done in public. A general audience in the Judgement Scene. Have you decided that is what you want?”

What choice did I have? I wanted to snap at the imp. I did not though, I kept my emotions in check. To the imp I simply nodded.

Monica smiled. “Musa will be pleased. I will go and sound the gong for a scene, then I will come back and get you.”

It departed then, and I was left to contemplate my course of action. Thoughts of Musa’s betrayal filled my mind, but I paid no heed to them. I could see how much power the imp held here, power that it had bought with wealth stolen from my line. I had no quicksand to teleport myself out, and it was impossible to fly in the fogs of Nefastu. The imps had to release me, and there was only one person who could force them to do it. I loathed that power they had over me. Power from pansophy which we’d given to them. From spectra which we allowed them to siphon. Our magic, wielded by imps against us. How charming I had found it when I thought Musa was good and loyal. Now I wished to gather every imp with our magic and burn it out of them. Unfortunately, I knew that pansophy, once given, could not be withdrawn. I would never give an imp pansophy. If I desired for an imp to have magic, I would allow it to siphon from me, that way I could control its use of it, I could cut it off if I deemed it necessary. Never again would I let an imp fool me. Never.

The gong sounded then.

It was a loud sound, one that seemed to reverberate through the walls. I could hear it in the cove just as clearly as I would if the gong had been rung in the same room as me. The gong rang, and I was no closer to formulating a plan of action than I’d been when Monica left. What would I say to the elders? What magical words to make them honor their own deal? It was already obvious how little regard they had for uspecs. The uspecs here may be blind to it, but I was not. I was not, and I would never forget it. I would never forget how I’d been treated here. Spat at, stoned, mocked, even almost killed. No, I shook my head, I would never forget.

I was still taking an inventory of my mistreatments when the imp Monica returned.

“They are ready.” It said. “We should go.”

I nodded and followed silently in its wake. Our journey out of the prayer coves was not as awing as the journey in. I thought as I walked, contemplating over this meeting that I had called. A general audience, how many imps was that?

I found out when we reached there, somehow finding our way in through a throng of imps. So many of them stood outside, their cries of disappointment audible, when news spread that there was no more space within. It was the same ‘S’ room that Monica had brought me to the first time, the same room where the elders had confessed the full extent of Musa’s treachery to me.

Monica’s rank amongst its own kind became obvious in the way that the imps reluctantly made way for us. When we got to the entrance, Monica had to show proof that it had been the one to call the meeting before the imps standing by the entrance allowed us in. I noted that they were not the giants. They were still tall, but these ones were about the same height as me. They did not look the least bit perturbed by my presence with Monica.

We entered into the hall, and it was more packed than I could have imagined. There was just barely an aisle down the center, leaving enough room for Monica and me to make our way to the raised stage at the front. I could not imagine how so many imps lived here. I’d thought that there would be many, but I had not imagined quite so many. Hundreds, I thought, hundreds of them. And there were uspecs too, uspecs fighting for standing space amongst the imps. The crush of people reduced as we got closer to the front of the room, closer to the raised dais. Now, that dais was filled with robed imps. I could tell from their clothing that they were elders too. I could not help but note the absence of uspecs on this dais. Only imps sat in this hall, only imps held power.

Monica did not need to explain that it had been the one to call the meeting, I could tell from the looks on the elders’ faces, that they already knew.

I was just about to climb up the stage, when a glance brought my gaze to Xavier. The imp showed no sign of recognition. I snorted, thinking again, of just how much I had lost to bring this imp back. All for what, for Musa?

I climbed the dais.

All the other times that I’d been in this room the center of the raised dais had been cordoned off by hard fog. Not this time. There were still just three highbacked chairs in the center, and still the same imps seated on them, but there was nothing barring their view.

Four people stood around the center. Two of them were uspecs, two new ones, uspecs I’d never seen before. A short bulky boga with a chest of spikes, and a tall lean hooni with a neck of shiny cyan scales. The hooni uspec looked at me with interest, but the boga did not deign to catch my eye.
Monica fell to its knees in front of the elder seated in the middle of the three highchairs. It was this same elder that had ordered my execution this morning. Now it stared kindly at me, with a smile, as if it had no recollection of the events of that morning. I glared at it.

“Rise my daughter.”

As soon as the elder spoke, the hall quieted. It was impressive, how a hall packed with so many people could have so little noise.

“Thank you, mother.” Monica said, rising.

“You called this audience?” another elder inquired.

“On behalf of the banneret, Nebud.” Monica replied. After saying that, it bowed to the elders and withdrew from the stage.

Now there were gasps of shock. I could just imagine the questions they asked, the thoughts pondered in their head.

“What is your desire my child?” the elder in the middle asked.

I almost snapped at that. ‘My child’, I had to clench my fists. What useless things emotions became when they were stunted, when there was no power to draw for them.

“Child?” the elder prompted.

My anger spun out of control, it grew like a beast, hungry, ready to be unleashed. It did not matter though, even if I could, polluting anger in a room this crowded, would not benefit me. Pain maybe, not anger. But my gaze had turned in that moment, and again my eyes had locked with Xavier. Xavier, the first imp with pansophy that I’d met. It had helped me escape the pits, but my offspring had died in the process, an offspring who had been close to Xavier. I should have known then that Xavier was a liar. But no, I had to wait to be blindsided by the imp’s presence on the inter-port trail to learn that lesson. Xavier’s head turned to the side, and its head bent as if it was listening, but there was nothing beside it, nothing but an empty space. I frowned at that, finding that odd. The hall was so packed that a space like that should have been taken by another. Why wasn’t it?

“Musa said to tell you that, it sends greetings from Tantan.”

@maynation really deceitful imp. lol, gratitude for reading

@Fazemood That will be revealed soon

@OluwabuddyYOLO lol, no, I'm not playing to the gallery oh, just writing it like it is

@cassbeat lol, that's my goal to twist and twist your brain hahaha

@ayshow6102 Yes, Monica told Nebud that Musa was already healing before it went to save Xavier. The elders in permafrost lied to Nebud when they said they were going to find Nebud

@eROCK247 Nope, never ending twists. Saturday is here, come and read!

“That is the problem.” I stated calmly, all the anger seeping out of me. My decision had been made, and now I was ready to accept the consequences. It had not been said yet, but I had an inkling. “Those things are not yours to grant. You coat your desires with pretty words of equality, but equality is not yours to take or give. This existence, and its way of life, is not the property of imps. If you want equality, ask the other existences you connive with to send you back to the existence you came from. Go and plague your living umanis with your constant presence and leave us alone.”

The imp’s face twitched lightly, but it was enough.

I seized on that and laughed. “They would not want you, would they? The living dead amongst them, of course not. They would not suffer your presence as we have. They, your own kind, would find ways to eradicate you.” I smirked at it, as its face contorted into a mask of barely concealed animosity. Now that was the real imp. Perhaps not Musa, but this imp, this one would seek to own uspecs, just like it owned the uspecs standing in this room with it. I was no such fool. “You have my answer, imp.” I snapped at it, goading it with the command in my voice.

It glared at me. “Very well,” it seethed, “now you have mine. Kill it.” It ordered, before a pool of quicksand appeared underneath it, and sucked it in.

The uspecs approached me first. I saw belts appear underneath their light outer garments. Those belts held swords. I drew my cutlass out and faced them. I was outmatched, and I knew it. They had spectra they could use in Nefastu, while I did not. So, I tried to take that advantage away. “Do you fight like uspecs?” I asked. “Or have you spent so much time with your imp masters that you no longer know how to use your swords.”

Those swords pulled free from their scabbards then, the ring of the drawn metal filling me with a certain giddy excitement. Perhaps I was not the biggest fool in this existence.

The uspecs approached me together, Shadra and the kute, one aiming at my left side, the other at my right. Shadra was the first to thrust its sword out. I easily evaded that, turning as I did to deflect the blow that the kute aimed. They were good fighters. I knew that, I had seen the way that they moved, but they danced like imps did. That might be in the imp nature, but it was not in ours. Brute strength won out in the end. I’d already learnt from training with Musa how to beat dancing fighters. They must never have learnt how to beat a fighter with the strength and skill I had. I beheaded the kute uspec first, and then, on the same swing of my cutlass, before Shadra could pull out its spectra, I swiped my cutlass through its neck, severing its head. If I’d had the time to dwell on my victory, I would have savored it. One of them had stabbed me in the side. It was a small wound really, one that invigorated more than hurt. That wound showed that the fight had been good, enough of a contest for them to draw blood.

But there was no time to dwell on my sweet victory. The giant imps lurked ahead of me, their impassive gazes roaming over the dead bodies of the uspecs. I wanted to pull the uspecs back to life, just to show them the lack of feeling on the imps’ faces. Those imps did not care that they were dead, yet the uspecs had betrayed their own kind for such as these. I truly wished I could bring them back to life, if only to kill them more slowly.

The imps had no weapons. They needed none, I knew this, yet the fact irked me.

“Well?” I teased.

Quicksand appeared underneath me. The sudden appearance of the quicksand shocked me. Immediately, I turned, looking around the room to see if anyone had come to my rescue.

But no, the quicksand did not teleport me out of Permafrost, it merely pulled me in slightly, as if to teleport me, but then it kept me there, held fast. I had never seen quicksand used like this. Of course, it made sense, that it could be used to freeze a person in the act of teleporting, but it would take great control to accomplish this. And these imps, with their siphoned spectra, had that control.

Then a weapon appeared in one of the giant’s hands. It was an unusual axe. The base of the weapon was long, like the shaft of a spear, but the head was unmistakably that of an axe. The giant wielding the weapon stayed were it was, far enough that my cutlass could not reach it, no matter how hard I tried. I hurled the cutlass then, desperate. The imp, though tall, had the grace of the other fighters. It seemed to have expected it, and so it simply swerved, evading the blow.

It grasped onto both ends of the shaft and lifted the butt of the floor. Then it rose the axe in the air and swung it at my neck.

There was no aid coming, no Arexon to teleport into the room and save my life. I was in Permafrost, surrounded by imps who hated uspecs. None of them would help me.

Or so I thought.

A hand appeared, sticking out of a pool of quicksand in the ground. That hand touched the leg of the giant swinging at me, and the giant lost its motion, with the sharp end of the axe only a blink away from severing my head. A larger pool of quicksand appeared underneath the uspec and it was sucked in.

The other giant was flustered. It was just enough time for me to pull my dagger out of my belt and aim at the uspec’s neck.

“NO!” Monica burst into the room. It ran over to the dazed giant as its daze was beginning to clear. The imp was frowning at Monica. It’s attention was so fixated on Monica that it did not see the quicksand which had appeared underneath it, and was now pulling it away.

I gaped at my unlikely savior.

It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that I was alive. I had a wound in my side, but that was nothing. I lived. How many times had I so narrowly escaped death? I had more luck in this than any single fighter had the right to.

The daze cleared right about the time that the imp Monica took it upon itself to touch my wounded skin. I did not flinch back from the touch though.

“Why did you help me?” I asked, as I felt my skin heal faster than was normal. The imp had given me growth then, maneuvering the lifeforce to the part of me that needed it most.

It waited till it was done, before taking a step back, and meeting my gaze with a pained expression on its face. “Is it truly so hard for you to imagine a world where uspecs and imps are equal?”

There was pain in its voice, a sadness which I could not understand.

“It was not so hard for your progenitor.” It stated.

My progenitor? It took me a moment to remember that the imp was aware of my true bloodline.

“I want to leave this place.” I said, ignoring the imp’s words, and its pain-filled look.

It nodded. “You asked me why I helped you?”

I said nothing.

“I did it because Musa asked me to. Musa lives. Our hunters found it under the canopy tree the day that the bandits took you. They brought it here then. It is well, the effects of the samu bite were reversed. No one knows how the bite was reversed, but it was. Once we gave Musa enough growth, it healed itself. Now it lives, it knows of your presence here, and it does not want you to come to any harm.”

My mind reeled. Too many emotions coursed through me. I wasn’t sure what to say, how to feel. There was relief, joy even. That instantaneous reaction to the news that one that I had cared about was well. That Yakubo’s death had not been in vain. Then Musa’s betrayal came back to me, and I was not entirely certain that I wanted the imp back.

“It has been here the whole time?” I asked. “When I petitioned the elders, it was already here?”

Monica nodded. “I did not know. It was already here, already healing.”

The rage that I felt at that moment was without equal. “I want to leave this place.”

Monica seemed shocked. “Without Musa?” it asked.

Musa could spend the rest of its immortal life here in permafrost, with its lying deceitful, kind, for all I cared. I was done with the imp. “Yes.”

Monica gasped. “You can’t mean that.” It said. “Don’t you at least want to see it, to speak to it?”

Speak to it? No. I wanted to kill it. I wanted to wrap my hands around its lying neck and break it.

“The elders will need a push to make them acknowledge Musa’s wellness to you. It may be revered, but none of the elders agree with its desire to return to you. They have waited a long time to have Musa here, in permafrost, they will much rather slaughter you, than give you the chance to take it away. Of course, if you can get them to acknowledge Musa’s wellness, then they have no choice but to bring Musa out. And once Musa is out, they cannot force it to stay. Musa is the firstborn after all.” Monica waited, but I remained silent. “Musa said to tell you that it sends greetings from Tantan.”

It was an odd message. My mind sought to grasp it, to examine it closer. But my heart refused. I wanted out of this place. “If Musa is so powerful then why could it not come itself?”

“It is heavily guarded. They say the guards are for its protection, but we know that the elders just want to keep it away. It can fight them, but the elders have ordered the guards to release the samu if Musa tries to leave. Musa will survive the samu bite as, with growth, it can heal itself, the guards will not. That is why Musa stays, for their safety, not its own.”

Monica appeared desperate now. “I will give you time to think on it. For your own safety though, will you come with me? I can take you to a place where you will be safe while you deliberate.”

“Take me out of here instead. I see you have siphoned spectra.”

“I cannot. The elders…” it broke off. “I cannot. Musa is your best chance out. Force the elders to summon it. Will you come with me to the prayer coves? Not even the elders would dare to attack you in there.”

I nodded. It was not as if I had a choice.

Part 21
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I couldn’t sleep. I’d given up on trying after hours spent twisting and turning on the hard and narrow bed. I glared at the offending furniture, then reclaimed my previous praise. That thing could not be called a bed. Although, I reminded myself, it was better than what I’d had in the slum I’d grown up in, and much better than what I’d had in the pits of Hakute.

A long weary sigh came out of my mouth as I thought of the pits of Hakute. It had been a rough life, but at least, for the years that I fought, it had been simple. My life had consisted of nothing more than rising in the morning, eating, cleaning on days when I felt like it, and then fighting on days when I was called on to do so. Nothing else. No port-politics to keep me guessing and constantly dancing on tiptoes around threats to my life. No voice in my head which I was forced to obey, to heed, even when I did not want to. Now the voice in my head was gone, and for the first time since I left the pits of Hakute, my immediate future was mine to plan.

Why did that not give me the comfort, or joy, that I had expected news of that type to bring? Surely, I had not now grown so use to having my life dictated by a person I did not know. If the voice even belonged to a person. Again, I sighed. All of a sudden, the possibility of a future dictated by myself seemed overwhelming. What would I do next? I could truly live the life of the wandering banneret, a role which I’d only been acting at. I had the wealth for it.

Could I do it?

I knew too much now of the politics in my own existence, of the hands trying to manipulate events. I thought first of the plenum, and the chasm that they had created. Being in a port like Damejo, where the Kaiser had already sworn full allegiance to the plenum, it was easy to see how peaceful things could be if the plenum succeeded. It would be one end to the chasm, no more Uspecipytes, just an existence controlled by uspecs. Was that such a bad thing? Was Chuspecip itself not an uspec? Why should I care who ended up with the power to lead the spectral existence? Why should such things be mine to ponder on? I did not want the responsibility of such, and in the case of the plenum vs Chuspecip, I wanted to keep myself fully away. Whichever was stronger would win, and what we needed was a strong leader.

So why did I feel this aversion towards the plenum? I knew my loathing of them had a great deal to do with the role that Musa had said they’d played in the death of my line. Now that Musa’s loyalty was in doubt, surely I couldn’t take anything it said as truth. And if I was willing to accept that the plenum may not have killed my line, then what did I care if they won. Then I thought of my friends, because now, I really did have friends, only two left, now that Yakubo was dead.

Two imperial ones. If someone had told me on that day when I left the slum on a noble one’s canoe, that I would find myself befriended to not one, but two imperials, I would have laughed in their face. Of course, I was an imperial myself, but that was not a role that I was ready to think on just yet. And so I thought of Marcinus and Arexon instead. What would become of Marcinus if the plenum succeeded? As long as Manus was willing to defend it…I shook my head, shrugging off my own retreat back into ignorant optimism. If the plenum got full control of this existence, Marcinus would die. Marcinus felt too strongly about being Uspecipyte, it could not bow to the plenum. And Arexon? Who could say what Arexon would do? Could it plead innocence of Animaton’s true identity and Animaon’s disappearance? Could it slaughter its iriras as the plenum demanded? If it refused, there would be war, the war that Arexon had managed to delay. Arexon against the full might of the plenum’s forces. I did not like its odds.

And so, I could not remain unaffected, I could not side with the plenum when my friends, two uspecs who’d risked their lives for me, would die in the bargain. If my choices were my own, then I had to help them. I had to find a way to reach Marcinus, to protect it. I thought about sneaking it out of Katsoaru and taking it to Chiboga where we could both fight with Arexon. Of course, that was nothing more than the fantasies of an uspec who had spent so long without the unpressured camaraderie of true friends.

Fajahromo. I clenched my jaw at the thought of it. Even now, knowing that Musa was what it was, a liar and a thief, I could not help but feel rage at the uspec who’d ended its life, causing it to be reduced to a bit that even trained hunting jackals could not find. I thought of all the enemies that I had gained since I left the slum. Maxad, that had been my first true enemy, and I’d slain it with my own hands. Fajahromo was the next of course, the one that truly mattered. It was the one that had used and manipulated me in the pits. The one that had taken me there in the first place. Fajahromo had duped me into making an offspring, and then it had taken my offspring for itself, creating a powerful tool against me in the process. That offspring was dead now, a death I laid the blame for at Fajahromo’s feet.

As if its offences against me hadn’t been enough. Now Fajahromo sought to own me as it had in my last days in the pits. It sought to use its knowledge of my true identity to make me a pawn in its hands. It wanted to own this existence itself. I laughed its claim off, of course. When more powerful hands pulled at the strings of power, Fajahromo had no chance of winning. Still, it irked me that it dared to steal my ring, my birthright left to me by my sire. Fajahromo had to die. That would be the first thing I did. I would go in search of Fajahromo and slaughter the uspec. Then I would go to Katsoaru and find Marcinus, I would save it from the danger of the plenum. We would fight in Chiboga together after that, Arexon, Marcinus and myself, three great fighters. They would both teach me how to wield my spectra, to control it in a way that had eluded me thus far.

It was a future I longed for, one that had me smiling despite the abysmal state of my surroundings. After I killed Fajahromo and retrieved my ring, would I try to use it get Lahooni back? I was heir, but I was not sure that I wanted that power, that responsibility. I did not know if I could handle it.

But before I could lounge in the certitude of the decisions I’d just made, I remembered the invasion, the wrath of Sada. Now that, was a future that I could not live with. To see my own existence controlled by another, to have imps as the leaders of my existence, an existence that belonged to uspecs by right. No, I shook my head, violently cursing Chumani and all the Chus in general. Why hadn’t Chumani kept the cursed imps in its own existence? Why had it sent them here, to litter our existence and dare to plot such havoc? Now the imps sought to own this existence, to usurp us, the uspecs it belonged to. The plenum I loathed, but I could live under, although I probably wouldn’t survive Arexon’s war to do so. But the plenum at least were uspecs, they had the right to control this existence if they had the power to win it. But imps? What right did they have?

And there in lay the crux of my biggest problem with my new knowledge of Musa’s treason. It was bad enough learning that its loyalty to my line was nothing more than a façade which it used to steal from them. But to learn that Musa had planned this, that it had given approval to the invasion. That was a betrayal that I could not forgive. Musa, my imp, who’d spent so much time teaching me, fighting by me, protecting me even, all for what, to eventually recruit me for the wrath? Did it think that when the invasion came I would be like Shadra or the kute uspec, bowing and kneeling to imps, to it? The thought so disgusted me, I tasted the bile of my contempt on my tongue.

If Musa was not already dead, I would have killed it myself. There would be satisfaction in that, the swipe of a cutlass against an imp’s neck, severing its head from the rest of its body. But that would not have killed it. The samu then. All of a sudden, I saw the benefits of the creatures my sire had created. I was grateful for it then. The imps would not find us powerless to their invasion. They would die, the irreversible bite of the samu would kill them all! And the other existence, they had said the fourth was responsible for this, hadn’t they? Although Monica had also mentioned the supreme existence. Two out of the four existences conspiring against us. Both, no doubt, with their Chus to guide them. Where was our Chu? Chuspecip. What chance did we have against other Chus of other existences without the power of our Chu? But if the plenum won and they became the new Chu of our existence, well then, they could be of help. So then, maybe I had to re-evaluate my decision to fight against them. Perhaps I could speak with them, share with them all I knew of the invasion and the wrath’s plans. I hated to do it, but if my choices were between the plenum and another existence? I would choose my kind, always.

I would choose my kind, always.

My own words echoed in my head. And with each repetition, I saw a picture of Musa crawling into my mind. In all that it did, creating permafrost, allowing the invasion to take root, it had been choosing its own kind. It had been fighting to protect them. Could I really be so enraged because it did what I just swore to myself that I would do? It had stolen from my line to accomplish its feats, and it had lied to me. It had lied when I asked how it knew Xavier, and it had lied everyday by omission. Perhaps I had kept the secret of my line from it, but that was no secret that could do it harm. The invasion was a secret that could do me harm, and it had kept it. No, I could not forgive its lies and its treachery. Yes, I would choose my own kind, but I had the right to. This was our existence, it belonged to us, we did not go to other existences trying to take them over. We did not bring the imps here, their stupid Chu did that. No, I shook my head, I could not forgive Musa for what it had done. I just could not.

The sounds of curtains being drawn invaded my thoughts, bringing me back to full awareness of the room I inhabited. It was a source of irritation to me that I was no more sure of what to do next, when the robed imp walked in. This was the most powerful one, the one that always sat in the center. It was accompanied by two uspecs I knew, and two imps I’d seen.

The uspecs were Shadra and the kute, the imps were the giants who usually stood guard outside the S-shaped room where the robed imps sat and conferred.

They all crowded into the tiny room that I had been given.

The robed imp’s eyelids moved up and down over its empty eye sockets in a slow perusal of me. When it was finished, it turned to me and asked, “have you made your decision?”

I glared contemptuously at it. “My decision was made yesterday, and you know it. I will never bow to imps.”

“No one is asking you to bow to imps, we are asking you to live with us, as equals, not as slaves.” Its voice was gentle as if it hoped that by saying the words calmly it could cajole me into betraying my own kind.

“Is that so? After the invasion the balance of power would be in imp, not uspec hands, that, I cannot, and will not, live with.”

The imp shrugged. “Perhaps, but imps are not as power hungry as uspecs are. We do not seek to own you as you do us.”

“Really? And can you swear that for every imp in this existence?” I badgered.

“No.” it replied honestly, which surprised me. “But if you stand with us, you will be protected, rewarded. We will win Nebud, it is inevitable. Do you not want to count yourself amongst the winners? Think of whatever it is you desire. A port of your own? Wealth? Power? After the invasion we will give it to you.”

gratitude @HotB I'm glad somethings are getting explained

@ayshow6102 Maybe, maybe...I guess we'll see soon

@olite93 Very interesting predictions, we shall see

@cassbeat lol, well, at least it would learn it haha

@doctorexcel HAHA, you know honestly, I thought more people would relate to the imps of Sada, and to whatever part Musa may have played. lol, poor Musa

@Madosky112 LOL, it's really a creature greater than the samu

@olite93 Yes oh, I told you my intention is to keep the twists, although I don't know how many more there are. We are somewhat close to the end, at least we're closer than we were at the start

“You serve imps.”

“You are banneret, you must have served an uspec. There is no difference.”

I almost, almost, cut off its head for that comparison. Instead, I spoke calmly, “uspecs are not imps.”

“What is the difference? Our ailerons, our multiple eyes, our features? Imps are immortal, they live forever, that in and of itself makes them higher creatures.”

“Shut up.” I snapped.

The uspec gaped at me. “Banneret…”

“I said shut up. It is taking every inch of control to keep myself from cutting off your head. Keep your words to yourself, I have no desire to hear them.”

It opened its mouth to speak and my hand went purposefully towards my cutlass. The uspec took one look at my face, and then my cutlass, and then it shook its head, and closed its mouth. The infuriating smile never left its face. Thankfully, the rest of our journey proceeded in silence. We made our way to a part of Permafrost that I had been to before. This was where Monica had brought me to petition the elders. Again, two giant imps stood in front of the curtains which led into the room. They did nothing to stop us as the kute uspec pulled a set of curtains aside and bid me precede it into the room.

I walked in, it walked in after me. I could better appreciate the curvature of the room as we made our way through it. As we walked past the last bend in the wall, making our way to an alcove surrounded by drifting fog, I realized that the interior of the room seemed to have an ‘S’ shape. I found that intriguing.

We had to climb up because the alcove was on a raised platform. Three uspecs stood on the outside of the drifting fog. One of them was Shadra, none of them looked welcoming. The kute uspec followed behind me, stepping into the alcove, before the drifting fog hardened.

I remembered this room. Like the last time I’d been here, there were three high-backed chairs and three robed imps seated on them. One of them I recognized as the one who’d delivered the news of Musa’s absence to me. The other two looked vaguely familiar from my last visit to Permafrost. Unlike the last time, there was a backless chair positioned opposite the backed ones.

The uspec dropped to its knee in front of the imp seated at the center chair, and an immediate wave of revulsion rushed through me. I’d never thought I’d see the day when an uspec knelt to an imp. The imp in the center chair rose its hand for the uspec to kiss, and the uspec kissed the ring on its finger.

“Rise my child.” It said.

The uspec rose. “Thank you, mother.” It bowed at the imp.

“Please sit Nebud.” The imp in the middle chair said.

I ignored it. “Why was my bear taken from me?” I demanded.

The uspec gasped and turned to face me, its eyes widened, as if I had committed an unspeakable atrocity. I ignored it, focusing my withering glare on the seated imp in the center.

“To shelter and care for.” The imp replied.

“I want it back. I am ready to leave.”

Silence greeted my words.

“Sit,” another, less gentle voice called out.

I glared at that imp. “Do not think that you can order me about.” I snapped at it. “I am not an uspec of the likes of this.” I gestured with my nose towards the kute uspec who’d fallen to its knees in front of imps.

That imp’s features hardened, but it was the one in the center that spoke. “Your imp, Musa, the one that you risked so much for, it believed in this place, fought for this place. Don’t you want to know why?”

Something in the imp’s tone sparked the embers of curiosity in my mind. I shrugged, noncommittally.

“Then sit,” it said, taking my shrug as an affirmative gesture, “and we will tell you.”

“My ears work just as well standing as they do sitting. If you have words to say, say them.” I realized now that my refusal to the stool was solely for the purpose of being contrary. Knowing that the imps wanted me to sit, I would not sit on that stool if all the strength was removed from my legs.

“As you wish.”

“We know that Monica has told you about the invasion.” It was the last imp that spoke, the one who’d delivered the message of Musa’s loss. It paused and I was not sure if it expected affirmation, but I remained silent. “Musa dreamt of a fair world, one where uspecs and imps could co-exist, and interact as equals. It was this dream that led it to free so many suffering imps and bring them here, to Permafrost. It was this dream that led it to teach so many the intricacies of pansophy, so that we could defend this place we called home. And when the fourth existence reached out to us with their offer of an invasion, it was Musa’s dream that led it to accept their proposal.”

No, I shook my head. Lies. Now, they expected me to believe that Musa was responsible for the invasion? Musa whose thoughts had been filled with searching for the heir to Lahooni. If it had cared at all for their invasion, it would not have been so consumed by the affairs of uspecs.

“You lie.” I stated, resolutely. “I can accept that Musa helped to foster imps here, and that it helped to train some in pansophy, but I will not accept that it had a role in your invasion.”

“Our invasion is only a possibility because of Musa. How could we even dare undertake such a mission without the firstborn’s blessing?”

I took a step back, my mind spinning as I tried to digest this new revelation. “The firstborn?” my words came out as a mere gasp.

The imp in the center took over. “You have been fed a lot of half-truths and lies. In Musa’s memory, I will tell you the truth, the whole truth. When Musa happened upon this frozen land, it was escorting its master, the first Kaiser of Lahooni, to the isle of shuns. It came across a handful of runaway imps struggling to survive in the harsh mejo climes. At that time, Nefastu was not cursed, as you have come to think of it, but it was still as rural as it is now. The chill here was the most biting, the hail pellets the most uncouth. Musa could not bear to leave us as we were. So, it stole from its master and used that wealth to set up Permafrost, or at least what it became. Before Musa, we’d been imps living under the fickle protection of canopy trees. Musa used its connection as the osin of the Kaiser of Lahooni to get us aid. Provisions to feed off. Wealth to build dwellings. Musa taught us the faith in Sada which it had learnt from its study as a pious slave. And so it is firstborn, as it initiated us into the worship of Sada. I was amongst the first imps who Musa found. Over the centuries, Musa continued to use its position in the Kaiser of Lahooni’s household to steal wealth and divert it to Permafrost. It used this position to give the imps it found worthy pansophy. It snuck away when it could, and it trained its chosen ones in pansophy. All that we have, we owe to Musa. You see now why we searched every inch of Nefastu for it?”

Thief. Liar. Fraud. Musa. I did not know what to say, what to do. Musa’s loyalty to the line of Lahooni had been a lie. Now I understood why it was so desperate to find its precious heir. It was not out of loyalty to my line, but loyalty to its own kind. It wanted to find the heir so that it could return to its position as osin and continue to steal from my line for runaway imp slaves. That was why Musa grieved so much for my line. Not out of loyalty, but lack of wealth to pilfer. I thought of the meaningless tears that the imp had cried when we first met. How well it had played the role of doting slave. Now, I knew better. To think that I had been grieving the imp. I hardened my heart against it. It was best that the imp was gone. I would kill it with my own bare hands if it were standing in front of me at the moment. I had never been more betrayed.

I forced my emotions under control, wrestling to keep the betrayal from showing on my face. “What do you want from me?” I asked simply.

“We want you to join us.” The imp in the middle said simply. “Join us, aid in the work that the imp you cherished so dearly fought for. Musa’s dream was to see us all live as one, all free, uspec and imp alike. Help us make your imp’s dream a reality.”

I seethed with anger and loathing. I was sure that with all the anger brimming in me, if I had the hooni eye, I would have been able to break through the curse of Nefastu and manufacture enough quicksand to send myself out.

The imp must have taken my silence as indecision, because it forged ahead. “We can teach you how to use spectra here. All uspecs who join are taught. Soon, it will be as easy to wield the magic here as it is wielding it anywhere else in this existence.” I was still too angry to speak. “Pansophy.” The imp added. “We have connections to pious ones who act at our behest. We can give you pansophy. Join us Nebud. The invasion is coming, there is no way to stop it. When it comes, you will want to count yourself amongst the faithful, amongst those loyal to Sada. If you do this, you will not only survive, you will excel.”

“And if I refuse?” I asked once I had my emotions under control enough to force the words out of my mouth.

“Why would you? We know your story Nebud, we know that you owe loyalty to no one. You are rumored to be a great fighter, imagine what you could do with spectra and pansophy added to your arsenal.”

I opened my mouth to speak and then thought better of it.

“Sleep on it.” The imp in the center ordered.

Before I could respond with a denial, the imp nodded in dismissal at the kute uspec.

Quicksand appeared underneath me, as if in confirmation of the imps’ boasts of the magic that uspecs could wield under their influence. That quicksand pulled me in and teleported me to a room with spare furnishings. There was a set of light curtains at the door, a narrow bed, obviously made for an imp, and nothing more.

The kute uspec stared at me for a long time. I thought it would say something, and then it closed its mouth, and quicksand appeared underneath it. The uspec disappeared, leaving me alone, in a strange room.

It took some time for me to note the food. The food had been placed on a tray on the single other furnishing beside the bed. A stool. That stool was so short that I had missed it during my first survey of the room. I marched determinedly towards the stool and kicked one of the legs in. The stool broke, and the tray crashed onto the floor, sending the rolls and meal scattering all over the floor. I’d done that to help alleviate my temper, but I found that it had not helped. I was still just as angry as I’d been before I broke the stool’s leg.

I marched out of the room then, determined to find my way out of this place.

As soon as I pushed the curtains back, two green faces with filled outer eye sockets turned to stare at me. One was Shadra, the other was the kute uspec who’d escorted me to this room.

I could tell from their stance that I would not be leaving without a fight. Normally, in a mood like I was in at the moment, I would welcome a good fight. In this instance though, the odds were decidedly not in my favor. They both had spectra, and knew how to use it despite the limitations of Nefastu, and they both had pansophy. Still, I was so angry that I contemplated fighting, thinking about raising my cutlass and feeling it sinking into their skin.

I turned back on my heels and stormed into the room.

As soon as I walked back in, the curtains were given form, trapping me into the room. There was no other exit.

I paced the room like a trapped jackal. As I paced, I tried to think. The first thing my mind wanted to think on was Musa. Musa was gone, the thought filled my head, but before it could cause pain, I blocked my heart to that cheating imp. My only concern now was for myself, and how to extricate myself from Permafrost. This too, I could blame on Musa. If not for Musa I wouldn’t be in this condition. So much I’d risked for that lying, thieving, imp. No more of me would be devoted to it. No more. I swore.

My mind thought of other things. It thought of the imp’s offer, of staying here, learning spectra, gaining pansophy. The pansophy was tempting. But could I even stay here? Would the voice in my head let me?

I thought of staying and waited for the prompting of the voice, reminding me that I had to go to Lahooni to take Checha’s eye.

Nothing came.

I thought of crazier things then. I thought of staying the rest of my life in Damejo.

No voice.

I thought of never ever going to Lahooni.

No voice.

No matter how contrary my thoughts were to the last prompting of the voice, the voice did not return as it usually did. I found this strange, and I continued to contemplate it, as I waited for the dawn of the next day, and my coming confrontation with the robed imps.

Part 20
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Musa is gone.

I think that sometimes the mind chooses the most vulnerable moments to fail you. And at that moment, as I reeled from the shock of the robed imp’s words, my mind failed me. It brought up images of Musa as it had been the last time I’d seen it whole. Images of the imp in my room-vault pacing impatiently as it waited for Fajahromo’s arrival on our floor. Musa as it appeared by the door to the room-vault where Fajahromo had pious ones waiting to use pansophy to force me under its control. Musa as it fought.

I shook my head, trying to clear it. Surely, I needed my wits more now than I had before. My head turned and my eyes darted, unseeingly, across the peaks of white. There was a splendor to this Permafrost which I had not noted the last time that I was here. There were few dwellings, but each one was marvelously made. The falling hail ensured a consistent coating of white.

The uspec Shadra was leading me somewhere. I could not say where. Then I felt a pull on my bear. I turned and found an imp tugging at Marc’s tusk.

“Leave it!” I snapped, with more vigor than I’d previously thought in me. My wits returned with an alacrity that would have been dizzying if my mind had not chosen to lock onto a target.

The imp spat some harsh words out in a tongue that I did not understand and then it proceeded to spit at me. I was so shocked by the daring display of tempers that it took my mind a long time to come to terms with the fact that an imp had dared to hurl spittle at my face.

My reaction was instant. I latched onto the hilt of my cutlass and pulled it from its sheath. Before I could swing the cutlass at the foolish imp, Shadra stopped me, blocking my blow with its own body.

“You are outnumbered and outmatched.” It said, its gaze resting coldly on me. I felt hatred from this uspec, but what did it hate, me? “If you strike an imp in Permafrost your life will be forfeit. Think long and hard on that before you proceed on your course of action.” After saying that, Shadra withdrew, leaving my cutlass in full aim of the imp who’d dared to spit at me. The imp stared at me, its face a startling depiction of loathing.

For a split second I considered it. What purpose was there to my life? I was nothing but a pawn, I thought grimly, nothing but a pawn to the voice in my head. So, what if I died? Musa was gone. It was not as if there was anyone else who would suffer greatly from my loss.

A picture of Arexon’s face, proud and imperious, loomed in my mind.

The picture faded and with it, all thoughts of being careless with my own life. I returned my cutlass to my scabbard, taking care to note the imp’s face. I would remember it, I swore to myself, I would remember it and the insult that it had dealt to me.

Shadra reached for my hand then, the one that held onto the bear’s fur, and freed it from the beast. I pulled my hand back and made to swing at the uspec’s face. It dodged with a dancer’s ease. It’s technique reminded me of Musa’s way of fighting. The graceful mannerism of each movement it made. It had been awing to see it in an imp, but it somehow seemed so much more lethal on an uspec. I glared at this uspec, one that had made itself slave to imps, and returned its loathing.

“What do you want with my bear?” I asked, struggling to keep the anger from my voice.

“It will be cared for.” Was the uspec’s simple reply.

“And if I refuse?” I asked, watching its face through the veil of my headguard.

“They will use pansophy to rob it of its consciousness, then they will put a dagger into its heart.”

I clenched my jaw. “Am I a prisoner now?” how hard it was to say those words to one such as the uspec, Shadra.

It looked coolly at me. “You are the elders’ guest.” It said in a tone of voice that seemed to include an unspoken, ‘for now’.

I said nothing, and was filled with an impotent rage as I watched my bear being led away by the same imp that dared to spit on me. I became all too aware of the crush of people, the large number of imps around us. Shadra was right of course, I could not fight my way out of this place, not with so many imps, some of which I knew had pansophy, and uspecs with spectra loyal to them. I felt my anger like a blocked tide. At one moment, I would feel it, strong and unstoppable, a wave that could flow through me carrying my emotions and the emotions of others with it. Then it would stop, as if a blockage had been put in its path, one wide enough to let only the calmest wave pass.

I knew it was Nefastu responsible for this. No, I shook my head trying to remember more clearly what Monica had said to me on the days when it searched with me for signs of my imp. It was not Nefastu, but the imps here in permafrost. They had made a bargain with other existences, a bargain which would allow the other existences to assail ours. It had already begun to happen here, which was why I could not feel my emotions as clearly as I should. Why it was so hard for me to pull on my spectra in this cursed place. And without spectra, I had absolutely no chance of breaking my way out. So what was I to do? Wait, I thought, it was all I could do.

And so I followed behind Shadra, seething with emotions too affected to be of any use to me. And to think of all that I had gone through to obtain the magic of spectra, all that I had sacrificed. Now to have it and be unable to use it. In moments like this, my life felt like a cruel joke.

We stopped at the base of a bridge, and I felt my anger rising again, as I watched Shadra bow slightly to two imps walking down from the bridge. The imps nodded to it and stared curiously at me. I ignored their stares, wondering what I would do if I was forced to serve imps. That, I could not countenance. I would kill myself first.

Shadra stepped onto the bridge, gesturing impatiently for me to follow. Again, useless, stunted, anger filled me. I followed behind the uspec, and allowed it to lead me through heavy curtains, into a cleaning room. Although, this cleaning room was like none that I had ever seen. The air in the room was filled with thick, heated, fogs. The fogs were so hot that I felt suddenly uncomfortable within the sweltering confines of my garments.

“I will take your belt and your garments if you would like to be free of them.” Shadra offered.

I scoffed at it.

It shrugged. “Please yourself then. It is customary to lay on a bed and allow the steams to work their way into you.” After saying that, the uspec stormed out of the room.

I stood there, alone, and unsure, for much longer than I would have liked. It was long enough to make a spectacle of myself. It was hard to see far through the fogs, but the room was inhabited by enough imps that I could see several empty eye sockets staring at me, watching.

So many imps. I had only ever shared a bath with an imp once, and that had been my own imp, Musa. Just that simple thought of Musa filled me with an unexpected pang of pain. It was as if my heart was on fire, as if someone had forced hail into me and was using the magic of the mejo eyes to set my innards ablaze. It was discomfiting, but there was also something beautiful about it. And then it was gone, robbed from me, by this cursed place.

I took a step forward and found myself standing in a shallow pool of heated okun. It was hot, but not so hot that I immediately felt the need to withdraw my feet. Instead, I took my cloak and headguard off, and draped them over my arm. I kept my belt on, were I could reach for it if the need arose, and followed Shadra’s suggestion. I found myself an empty bed, at a point in the heated okun where the liquid was just a few inches above my ankle, and just slightly hotter than that at the start. I could tell that there was a temperature gradient which meant that the okun got hotter the deeper it went.

I sat on the bed and turned my gaze to search the room.

Imps. Everywhere. I groaned. Those within eyesight stared at me. I read fascination on some faces, curiosity on others, and pure, unadulterated hatred on the rest. I ignored most of them, choosing to focus on the group I saw swimming close to the deeper ends of the pool. They laughed, whistling tunes to themselves and then splashing the liquid onto their bodies. I could tell from their exchange that this was some sort of play which was acceptable to them. I shook my head at the odd display.

Musa was gone.

The thought crept into my head at odd intervals. Whenever I stared at an imp with the same color of skin as Musa’s, or when I heard one humming the tune which I knew now was their secret to getting into Permafrost. Was there a chance that Musa lived? Perhaps the imps had not searched hard enough for mine. I wanted to believe this, to cling to this last vestige of hope, but at some point between the robed imp’s delivering of the news of Musa’s fate, and my sojourn to this cleaning room, my mind had been cleared. It was clear enough now to think of Xavier’s words, of the robed imp’s words. One thing was clear, Musa meant a lot to these imps. It was a truth which filled me with an awful sense of betrayal, and a heart wrenching bout of sorrow. Musa had lied to me about its relationship with the wrath. I knew now just how involved it was with them. It had delivered many to the wrath, taught many pansophy, Xavier included. If Musa lived, these imps, the ones that it had done so much for, would have found it.

And if they hadn’t found it, then it was gone. Musa, my Musa, was gone.

I sighed. How foolish I had been to think that my hallucination of Yakubo had been an after-life message from the uspec. Umanis may be granted life after death, but such was not the fate for uspecs. Our death was final. Yakubo could not have appeared to me. Its presence in my mind was nothing more than my own wishful hopes for absolution from it.

Now Yakubo was gone. Musa was gone. Everyone that I had ever cared about seemed to be falling dead before me. How long would it take before Marcinus joined the pile of bodies? And Arexon? The pain came again, unbidden, and this time I tried to hold onto it, but it slipped out of my grasp before I could do anything with it. What would I have done? Maybe polluted this heated okun with lit okun and snuffed some of these imps. They would awake, of course, I did not have the pansophy to sap them, but at least I would have the pleasure of causing them harm.

My attention was fixated on my own silent musings, so much so that I did not notice the rock until it was less than a horn’s length away from my face. I rose my hand up instinctively, catching the full brunt of the rock’s bite. It pelted into my skin, leaving an indentation of its coarse features onto my skin, before it fell with a splash into the heated okun.

I turned in the direction that the rock had been launched at and found no immediately guilty expression. Some of the imps had tired of watching me, but there were still others gaping at me. I saw hatred in many faces, but none of the hateful imps appeared to be responsible for the projectile.

For an instant, my mind filled with beautiful, graphic, images of marching onto Nefastu with a squadron of mejo-eyed soldiers and gathering enough hail around Permafrost to burn it to the ground. Of course, it did not take long for my mind to remind me how hard it was to find enough life in our emotions to use spectra in Nefastu. But I knew it was possible. I had seen an uspec create quicksand here without showing signs of arduous labor. How, was the question.

A throat cleared behind me.

I turned to find another, new, uspec, staring down at me. This uspec had its outer eye sockets completely filled. The long tail I spied behind it, declared that it was a kute. I felt animosity and kinship in equal degrees. The uspec smiled at me. It bowed slightly, saying, “Salutations banneret.” In the kute tongue.

This uspec was younger than I was. Its features had grown to completion and its sockets had been filled, but I could still sense youth about it. I nodded in response to the uspec’s greeting.

“Would you please come with me, banneret?” it asked, its tone deferential.

I was not sure what to make of the uspec’s presence, but I decided that I’d had my fill of this strange cleaning room. I did not much enjoy sharing a room with so many defiant imps. I rose from my bed and followed silently behind the kute uspec. Each step I took was fraught with worry. My unprotected back was turned to a room filled with imps who’d made their hatred of me plain. It came as a relief to be out of the heated fogs, and into the cool presence of falling hail. Of course it did not take long for the pelting of the hail to become uncomfortable, and for the chill to begin making its way into my skin. My feet remained covered with the footwear that I’d purchased in Cormeum.

We walked about the compound, around the curve of a hail dome, before the chill became harsh enough to warrant the return of my heated cloak. I tucked parts of my headguard into my belt and put the cloak on. I noted then that the kute uspec was wearing a light garment. How had it become so used to the cold?

At long last it spoke. “I am sorry for your loss.” It said, “I do not know much about your imp, but I know that it was well respected.”

I said nothing.

Musa was gone. The thought in my mind. Did it keep repeating because I was yet to properly dwell on it?

“How did you come to care so much for an imp?” the uspec asked.

I turned to stare at it then. It was not walking in front of me, as Shadra had when it led me to the cleaning room. This one walked beside me, determined to chat with me as if we were friends.

“How did you come to serve imps?” I replied scornfully.

It gasped. For a moment the smile on its face gave way to shock, and then slowly, the shock morphed back into a smile. “I suppose it can be seen that way. Although, we all serve each other really. Well not the elders. The elders serve Sada, and we serve them.”

Whatever Xavier thought of my words it kept to itself, and the rest of our journey was embarked on in blissful silence. If only I had insisted on silence the moment that Xavier opened its mouth. Ignorance was better. I would have preferred not to know of the extent of Musa’s betrayal, of the reality of Yakubo’s sacrifice. I thought about myself, drudging through the blistering chill of Nefastu in search of the imp. I thought about the injuries that I’d taken, the leg that I’d almost lost. All for Musa, all for an imp who was in league with the wrath, in league with a group of renegade imps trying to take my existence away from my kind.

I thought of what little I’d seen of Permafrost, of the uspecs who bowed to imps. Was that what Musa wanted? Was that the world it secretly worked to bring to pass? It would not happen! I swore it, to myself, to the cursed road, to the punishing coarse hail, to the drifting chilled fogs, to whoever and whatever chose to hear me.

It would not happen.

“Brace yourself.” I heard Xavier say, just before it begun to whistle a tune so achingly familiar, I felt my broken heart break even further. It was the tune that I had heard Musa sing the morning after my first night with it. It was the same tune that I had heard the imp Aaliyah singing, when I’d awoken in Arexon’s suite in Cormeum. I’d heard that tune and immediately thought that it was Musa, without realizing why it had sounded so familiar. Now I knew.

I knew before the ground underneath me softened, pulling me in. I knew before the darkness enveloped me and the quicksand portal teleported me into Permafrost. I knew that the tune the imps shared was a signal for the wrath, a key to gain entrance to Permafrost.

The darkness receded, and I found myself in a cave with hard sludge walls, and soft sludge grounds.

Xavier dismounted, “we call this our hideout.” It stated, conversationally. “There are a number of them throughout the camp. It’s the only way in. Are you coming?”

The imp waited for my response. I saw no need to hasten, and so I simply sat there, staring at the cave. It reminded me of the dwellings built from form cards on the inter-port trail. The walls of this cave were unnaturally smooth, and the ceiling was so far up that I could stand on Marc’s back and still not touch it.

I took my time studying every inch of the walls, before slowly, dismounting, and joining Xavier on the sludge ground. The imp looked amused, but it stayed silent.

“Shall we?” It asked.

I nodded stiffly.

Xavier began walking. I followed behind the imp, watching the walls as if I expected something spectacular to either manifest on them, or to emerge from them. Nothing so intriguing happened. We made our way across the empty sludge cave, until we reached a curtained area. Xavier pushed the curtain aside and walked through, leaving it to fall in my face. I swallowed down my irritation and held the curtain. I waited for Marc to precede me, before I followed behind and let the curtain fall back into place. The room we entered was a portal.

“The hideouts are under ground.” Xavier said by means of explanation.

I shrugged, beyond the point of caring, and stepped onto the hardened quicksand. It waited several seconds after we were all standing on it, before it softened and sucked us in. It deposited us outside, under the falling hail.

Had there been this many imps the last time I’d been here? I could not remember seeing quite so many of them. There was a scattering of uspecs, but the uspecs were far outnumbered by the imps. I could say that I had never seen quite so many imps in a single place before.

Marc trumpeted and the imps turned around to face us. Their eye sockets caught on Marc and their eyelids pulled upwards, widening their view.

“Xavier!” A voice shouted.

The imps’ focus shifted from my bear to the imp.

“Xavier!” Another yelled. Soon the imps were pushing towards us, indifferent to my presence. They gathered around Xavier, eager to lay hands on the imp. I felt so many imps crushed against me, and all of my hackles rose.

I reached for my cutlass and drew it out of my sheath.

The imps drew back immediately. Xavier turned to face me. “There is no need for that.” It counseled.

“Tell them not to touch me.” I seethed in reply.

Xavier’s face looked sad, but it nodded, and then it turned to face the imps and spoke to them in a tongue which I could not understand. A mix of hateful glares and fearful looks were fixed on me then. Some of the imps gave me a wide berth, others called out words in the tongue I could not understand. I could tell from the rebellious looks on their faces that the words they said were taunts. I gripped the hilt of the cutlass tighter.

“I fight am!” A young imp yelled, in broken mejo.

Others seemed to like this, because they cheered the imp on. I was outnumbered, and I could do no mortal damage, but I did not care. I would welcome the chance to share some of my anger with these imps.

Sadly, it was not to be.

A hush descended on the group of imps.

Quickly, a path was made, as imps drew back, mouths hanging open, their eyes fixed in reverent awe at a sight I was not yet at an advantage to see.

It was the uspec I saw first. An uspec with outer eyes completely filled. I knew that I had seen it before, the last time that I’d been here, but I could not quite recall its name, only that it served imps. It wore no weapons. Behind the uspec, I saw an imp. The imp was dressed in a simple robe, with a familiar looking ring on its finger. I had vague memories of Monica kneeling and kissing that ring.

As if driven by my own memories, Xavier walked forward, stopping in front of the robed imp, and then it dropped to its knees on the hail ground. The robed imp extended its hand imperiously to Xavier. Xavier grasped the hand and placed a kiss on that ring, before releasing the hand.

“Rise my son.” The robed imp said.

“Thank you, mother.” Xavier replied, rising to its feet.

The imp smiled at Xavier. “You are back.”

“Yes mother.” I heard the smile in Xavier’s voice.

“Sada is merciful.” The robed imp said.

“Sada is merciful.” Xavier chimed in response.

“Your Sada had nothing to do with Xavier’s return.” I spat out. How dare they accord some other existence god with the rescue that Yakubo had died for?

Several gasps rose from the group of imps which still remained around us. I heard harsh cries and some spitting sounds. I ignored their disdain.

“Is that Nebud?” the robed imp asked. “Will you not take off your headguard so that I may gaze at you?”

“Where is my imp?” I asked in response. I did not want to be in this place for a moment longer than I had to.

“Please,” the robed imp implored, “take off the headguard so that I can look you in your eyes.”

I ignored it. “Musa!” I yelled, bellowing so loud I knew it would hear me wherever it was. “Musa!” When no response came, I turned to the robed imp. “You asked for payment, and I brought it, at a dear cost to myself. Now, it is your turn to satisfy your end of the bargain.”

The robed imp sighed. Its face contorted into a mask of grief and I knew what it was going to say before it said it. Still, I could not get myself to believe it until the words were said.

“I am sorry Nebud, but Musa is gone. We could not find it. We searched over every inch of Nefastu, every single inch was scoured with our jackals, but we found nothing.”

I searched for the lie in the imp’s face, but I found none. No. I shook my head, it was not possible. Yakubo had told me that Musa lived. It had told me! And I trusted Yakubo a lot more than I trusted this imp.

“You lie!” I spat out. “You lie!”

The robed imp shook its head sadly. “I wish that it was a lie. I wish that we had found it. We owe much to Musa. There are a number of imps here who would never have found their way to us without Musa’s aid. A number of imps who would be lost without the knowledge that Musa passed on. Whether you returned with Xavier or not, we would have done everything in our power to find and restore Musa. We mourn its loss.”

No. It was not possible. No after everything, everything, that I’d been through. I could not believe it. I could not believe that Musa was gone, sapped.

I thought then of the inter-port trail, of the day that Musa had told me about pansophy. I remembered the look of fear that had filled its face when it had mentioned yielders and the sapping they performed on imps. I had sworn to it then that it would never be sapped, that I would never allow it to happen. My own sire had made a liar out of me.

I swayed on my feet, thankful for Marc’s presence beside me. If not for the bear’s solid form, I would most likely have fallen.

Musa was gone.

“Shadra.” I heard the robed imp call out the name and then mutter words, but I was too pained to listen.

And to think that only moments ago I had been enraged by the imp’s betrayal. I did not care about the wrath and what it may have done for them. I did not care about any of that! I wanted my imp back, I wanted Musa. How much grief could I take? First Yakubo dies and then Musa? Maybe they were wrong, maybe there are places that they had not thought to look. I had to hold on to hope, I had to keep the fire burning inside me. I could not lose Musa.

“You’ve had a long journey,” I heard the uspec say. Where had it come from? It was standing beside me now, gently leading me and Marc away. “Come and eat, maybe swim in the okun, you will feel better soon.”

It thought that food could make me feel better? I searched around, desperate for…what, I could not say? I found a familiar face in the crowd. Monica. It had only been there for a few moments and then it retreated. It had been the first one to tell me that Musa’s condition was unfixable. Why hadn’t I listened? Yakubo would still be alive if I had.

The uspec led me away, and I let it.

Part 19
--------

This time, the journey through Nefastu was thankfully uneventful. There was the familiar feeling of inexplicable loss which I felt upon crossing the boundary from the neighboring port into the cursed road, but that I had expected. And that was the only loss, I was to be subjected to. The coarse hail continued to fall, and I could feel its slight presence in prods against the top of my headguard. I remained indifferent though, unbothered by the sudden unnamed loss, or the frigid chill, or the pelting of the coarse hail. My mood could not be soured, not when I was so close to being reunited with my imp. I thought of the days that I had spent in doubt and wondered exactly when my doubts had been lifted.

Yakubo.

It was after the vision, when Yakubo had told me that Musa lived. That was the moment I’d known, but I had only been willing to accept it when I saw Marc, alive and healthy despite my lack of care. Just the thought of my recent failings in my treatment of the bear had me stroking its fur gently. It let out a low trumpet as it continued on, trotting down the hail path.

Yakubo.

The loss was still there. It was muted now, somehow twisted by Nefastu, but still present. I could not help but see the uspec’s corpse in my mind every time I thought of it. I was grateful for the other memory though, the one that I had been gifted by the green fog created from the cobra, the boga frosted beast. I did not understand the fog, or the hallucination that it had spurred, but I believed in the truth of it. What a strange feeling.

“You care a great deal for Musa.” Xavier’s words were spoken so softly that it was a challenge to hear them, especially with my thoughts in such disarray. I managed however, pulled to the imp’s words by its mention of the one I was so desperate to reunite with. What would I say to Musa when I saw it?

To Xavier I simply nodded in reply. My aversion to this imp had not waned. I did not trust it, and I did not trust the wrath. My mission was simply to get my imp and go as far away from Damejo as I could.

Lahooni.

My home. Or, my supposed home, the home that I should have grown up in. Cala’s home. I had not really had time to think of this fact, that the next place the voice required me to visit was the port which had belonged to my sire. And Checha? How was I to steal the eye of a Kaiser in the plenum? Sophila had been a challenge, and even now, I could see how lucky I had been to escape from that port with my life. If Arexon had not been in that room, cloaked by its lack of appearance, I would be dead. I felt an uncomfortable dryness in my throat as the memory brought to mind all that I owed Arexon.

“There is no cure for a samu’s bite Nebud, you know this don’t you? There is no cure.”

My hands clenched as a sudden wave of fury rocked me. I did not realize that I’d been holding onto Marc’s fur, until the bear moaned. I eased my grip immediately, bending to stroke the bear’s skin and offer platitudes I did not fully know I was saying before I said them. It was strange this, the bond that I shared with Marc. It was not quite that which I would share with a person, but it was still special. I continued to coo gibberish at the animal until its tension eased and it let out a low trumpet of pleasure. I pushed myself up to a sitting position then.

“Don’t touch me!” I snapped at the imp when I felt its fingers inch up as if in a casual graze of my skin. I felt its hand jerk backwards.

“I’m sorry.” Xavier said, “it is instinct. Not that I would have to tell you this, seeing how close you are to Musa.”

I froze. Slowly, I tilted my head backwards so that I could get a better view of the imp’s face. Its eye sockets were trained impassively on me. There was nothing on its face to show guile.

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, slowly, enunciating each word. How is it that I could spend so little time with the imp and already want nothing more than to part companies?

Its face took on a look of shocked wonder. “Pansophy. Musa has it. Are you not aware of this?”

What game was it playing? “Of course I am.” I snapped.

Xavier leaned backwards slightly, as if relaxing. “I thought as much. I was referring to the gentle graze. As imps, as slaves, it is in our best interest to get as much of uspecs’ thoughts as we can. We do this to protect ourselves. It was Musa who taught me…” It trailed off, its eyelids pulling upwards as if disturbed by the expression of rage which it could no doubt read on my face. “What is wrong?”

“What do you mean by it was Musa who taught you?”

Xavier frowned. “Musa taught me pansophy. Musa gave me pansophy. Did you not know this? Surely, after we met on the inter port trail, Musa must have told you of our relationship.”

I turned back around, returning my gaze to rest in front of us. My head throbbed and my heart pounded with fury. I clenched my jaw, my teeth gritting together as I struggled to keep my anger from pouring over to the creature beneath me. How dare Musa lie to me? How dare it! I could feel myself shaking.

A hand clamped onto my shivering upper arm.

Immediately, I reached for the dagger which Arexon had gifted to me, and slashed at Xavier’s wrist with it. Xavier pulled its hand back immediately, its sockets turned to stare at the blood dripping from its arm. I knew how easy it would be for the imp to heal itself, how easily it could use its growth to stop the flow of blood and repair the torn skin. Growth which I could not use, because I did not have pansophy. Pansophy which Musa had said was not in its power to give. And I believed it!

I forced my mind to slow, as I reconsidered all that I knew of the magic. Pansophy was a gift given by the pious. I knew that. All of the tomes I’d read had agreed on that fact. But, there was no mention of pious slaves, of imps with pansophy, in those tomes.

“I did not mean to shock you.” Xavier stated placatingly. “I thought that Musa would have told you of how we knew each other.”

“It told me that you were in the wrath and that you had tried to recruit it.” I spoke through gritted teeth.

Of all the responses that I had expected, it was not this.

The imp laughed. It burst out laughing, releasing loud guffaws. I could feel it shaking behind me, and with each shudder of mirth, I felt my anger grow. All the lies, the half-truths, I was so tired of them. I had thought that Musa was the one person I could count on never to lie to me. Whenever I had asked it questions it had been unwilling to answer, the imp had simply said so. It had never led me to believe that it would answer something that it did not deem acceptable to share. So why would it lie to me? When had I ever pushed it for an answer it was truly unwilling to give?

It took a while, but Xavier’s laughter abated. It sighed, a long grating sound, after its bout of hilarity ended, and then it chuckled, before finally, becoming quiet.

Then, just when I’d begun to hope that it was done taunting me with words I had no desire to hear, it said, “I did not recruit Musa for the wrath, it recruited me.”

It recruited me.

I groaned.

As if sensing my mood, Marc halted beneath me.

We remained that way, motionless in the middle of Nefastu, surrounded by the picturesque scene of canopy trees and colored herbs. Xavier’s words continued to echo in my head, and for some reason I could not fathom or explain, I knew that the imp was telling the truth. I just knew it. I could not say exactly why, but something in Xavier’s words stirred a memory which I was not completely sure was my own, and a piece of a puzzle fell into place. Xavier was telling the truth, and Musa had lied to me.

All of this, everything that I had done, the risks that I had taken for an imp who’d lied so thoroughly. What else had it lied about? If it was recruiting for the wrath then was it a member of this resistance group? How well I’d thought of it when it had professed loyalty to my line over loyalty to its own kind. Now I knew the truth. If only I’d known it before I let Yakubo die, all in Musa’s aid.

“Why have we stopped?”

Fast drifting fogs passed by us then. They swept pass, taking drops of coarse hail with them. It felt as if the fogs were throwing stones at my body, and I found the sensation to quite match the raw feeling of my insides. I did not like this, this feeling of betrayal. I did not like it at all.

“Are you giving up on your quest?” Xavier asked. “Musa is gone, Nebud. You have brought me back and I am grateful for that, and so I tell you this in return. Leave me here and go back to the Labyrinths, Permafrost holds nothing for you.”

I contemplated it. My anger and sense of betrayal had grown so acute that I actually contemplated Xavier’s words. Of course, I thought about beheading the imp before I left. It would not end its life, but it would give me satisfaction. That would be the only satisfaction I was likely to get from this whole cursed journey. Abandon Musa. In that moment, I did not care if it lived or died. In fact, I wished that the samu had sapped it to its last sustainable bit, and that it would never be able to regrow.

But I knew that was only my anger speaking. As angry as I was with Musa, I had to make sure that it was fine. I missed it. Even with its betrayal. And there was the matter of Yakubo. I could not let Yakubo, one of the only uspecs I’d ever called friend, have died for nothing.

“Go.” I said in a soft whisper to the warm frosted beast underneath me.
I knew it could not hear me, but something in my gesturing must have urged it forward, because it begun to move then.

“Neb…”

“Silence!” I cut the imp off sharply. “Another word from you and I’ll cut off your head. I was asked to bring you back, not to bring you back whole.”

@cassbeat thank you

@ayshow6102 lol! It's really the umani language that Nebud doesn't understand...are you sure you understand it? haha

@Madosky112 Thanks for reading

@eROCK247 Touche, I did say that in the start, lol. Wouldn't be an interesting twist if Nebud was only dreaming and it turns out that it is not what it actually said it was in the beginning?

@movmentish LOL, maybe, maybe not. I don't think Nebud is getting enough credit for that fight, but okay. As to the voice in Nebud's head...I guess we'll see. Thanks for reading and enjoying, I appreciate it

It was not a cry I had ever heard before, but I could tell from the soldiers’ responses that it was a common one. Arexon bent, so that its arm was close to Yakubo’s face, and then it rubbed the back of the cobra’s skin against Yakubo. The cobra unwound from Arexon’s arm and then flew, its neck ribs spreading and flapping until the creature hovered in the air. It circled over Yakubo’s body, before descending on it.

Arexon saluted.

No one moved as the cobra bit into Yakubo’s flesh. It worked at Yakubo’s flesh until there was a gaping hole in the side of its face, then the cobra sidled into that hole, and entered Yakubo’s body.

Before my dazzled eyes, Yakubo’s body gave birth to flow fog. The flow fog engulfed and then consumed it, eroding at the flesh until all that was left of Yakubo was a solid form of translucent green fog. I could just make out the form of the white cobra slithering within the flow fog. Then the globs of liquid began to go away and the green flow fog turned into green regular fog. It became light and drifting, moving upwards and then flowing into the room.

“Breathe freely,” Arexon ordered, “and know that you carry a piece of great life within you.”

I took a deep breath once the green fog reached me, and my mind spun. I lost touch with my surroundings. Suddenly, I found myself back in the Kaiser’s castle in Chiboga. I was in Sophila’s pleasure room, the one that I had slaughtered it in. The room was empty, but I remembered what it had been like to see Yakubo there, grasping Aaliyah close to itself, as if to shield the imp from the world.

“I knew you would be the death of me.”

I whirled.

“Yakubo.” Tears filled me eyes. The uspec stood there, in front of the curtains, looking alive and well. It was dressed as it had been the day that I’d cut off Sophila’s head. “Forgive me my friend. I…” I choked.

Yakubo smiled at me. It came closer, close enough that it could grasp me around my forearms. “There is nothing to forgive it said. I died in service to a friend. What more could I ask for?”

“But what if it was for nothing? The samu’s bite is irreversible. Musa is gone.”

Yakubo shook its head. “Your imp lives Nebud, your imp lives in full health.” I could hear Yakubo’s voice fading as sanity returned to me. I was not ready to return, to part from such a sweet memory of Yakubo. “The founder’s grace be with you my friend.” And then it was gone, and I was back in the room.

The green fog had faded, and the cobra was nowhere to be seen. I did not know what I had seen, but I could not help but find a little peace in it. It was most likely the ramblings of my own mind, still, it made a difference to feel as if Yakubo did not die hating me.

Arexon marched out of the room, the dons following behind it. The cries of “In clover!” just faintly reached me in my daze. I don’t know how much time passed as I stood there, my arm frozen in salute, staring at the empty table where Yakubo’s corpse had lain. A thousand thoughts fleeted through my mind, memories of Yakubo and its ways.

“Domina Nebud.” The voice calling out to me was cautious, almost wary.
I turned to find the imp Zane staring up at me. It was tall enough that it did not need to crane its head too far back to meet my gaze. I realized then that a cramp had started to form in my arm. I brought my arm down and focused on the imp.

“The master would like to speak with you.” It said.

I nodded. It led the way, and I followed. It was mindless really. In some part of me I noticed that Xavier no longer followed me. In fact, the imp was nowhere I could see.

Hard fog covered the entrance to the room Arexon had chosen to use as its office. The imp placed its hand against it, and the fog softened and then drifted away. It stood back, waiting for me to precede it. This I did without much thought.

Arexon was seated behind its desk. Its head came up once I walked into the room, and its eyes focused on me. It gestured with a tilt of its head to the stool on the other side of its desk. I sat on that stool without much thought. My eyes scanned the food on the table. Normally they would have been meals which left me salivating for a taste, but I could not quite bring myself to contemplate food at that moment.

Arexon spoke first. “Would you care for something to eat?” it asked.

I shook my head.

Arexon sighed. “I don’t have much of an appetite either.”

There was silence then. It took a few moments, but I managed to shake away the daze that had descended on me in the wake of the green fog and my vision of Yakubo. As soon as the haze faded, I heard myself saying, “I should take my leave.”

Arexon nodded as if it had expected these words from me. Then it turned towards Zane. “Fetch its things and the imp.” It ordered.

“Yes master.” The imp withdrew.

“What will you do with them?” I asked. Why did it suddenly feel so hard to speak? I swallowed, trying to force down the lump in my throat.

“Yakubo’s imps?” Arexon replied with a question of its own. I did not trust my voice and so I simply nodded. “I will care for them as it would have wanted.”

“Is there…” I cleared my throat. “Is there anything I can do? I have wealth, not much with me here, but more in my vault in the Mausoleum. I could give you some of it, to help with their care.”

Arexon’s lips formed into a wry smile. “Gratitude, but I think I can manage.”

“You must let me do something.” I snapped at it.

“Make sure Yakubo’s death is not in vain.”

I nodded. “Why did you go back for Xavier? Was it so that Yakubo’s death would not be for nothing?” I did not know that I had been holding the question in, but once I gave it voice, I felt lighter.

Arexon’s gaze settled on me. It was a look that I found singularly disconcerting, and unable to hold for long. I looked away. “I did it for you.” It said simply.

The lump in my throat doubled. “Gratitude.” My voice felt squeaky. I did not like it. I cleared my throat again.

“Where will you go now?” Arexon asked.

I forced my eyes to rise and meet the uspec’s. “Permafrost.” I replied.

Arexon smiled. “I mean after that. What does the voice in your head command?”

Arexon’s mocking tone eased something in me. The lump in my throat cleared, making it easier for me to speak. I smiled, but even I could tell that the smile was not a happy one. “That I go to Lahooni for Checha’s eye.”

Arexon’s look of shock was so comical that I found myself laughing. It finally managed to govern its surprise. “Is there anything I can say or do to make you change your mind?”

I shook my head.

“That’s what I thought.”

I laughed again, this time at its surly tone. “This is one mission I do not relish sirga.” I confessed. “But I cannot refuse the voice.” A quick study of Arexon’s features showed that it did not understand, but it respected my choice.

“Just try not to get yourself killed.”

I smiled. “I will do my best.” I paused, before asking, “and you? What plans does the Custodian of Chiboga have?”

“To play the fool and deliver Animaton to the plenum.”

“And after that?”

“And after that, we will see.”

It was not willing to make any commitments as to the safety of iriras, and for the first time since I heard of the news, I was not willing to press it. I knew then, that I would always care for this uspec, regardless of the decisions it made. Even if it slaughtered every irira in its port. It was a strange feeling, that which I felt for Arexon. It was more than just gratitude for saving my life and finding Xavier. It was much more, but exactly what it was I could not say. Nevertheless, I knew that if it came to it, I would sacrifice my own life to protect its. Arexon had given me more than any single person had ever given me before. All except for Musa.

How far we’d come from the commander and the serf in Chiboga.

“Master.” Zane’s voice broke into my thoughts. I turned to find Xavier standing behind Zane, in front of the solid fog door.

Arexon nodded and Zane approached me. It placed the new cloak I’d purchased on an empty stool beside me. My headguard was set on the table and my footwear on the floor by my stool. I put the cloak on, noting that the gash from the dagger had been sewn. Zane handed me my belt right as I’d been thinking about it. I strapped that belt onto my waist, beneath the cloak. As soon as the belt was on, I felt the weight of my missing dagger. I’d not been able to retrieve the dagger that I had thrown at the pious one’s neck.

I bent to secure my footwear onto my feet. When I stood, Arexon was standing in front of me.

“I could not retrieve yours,” it stretched its hand out, and I was stunned to see a dagger proffered. “This is one of mine. It is made from metal which conducts no pansophy so you need not worry about that.”

I took the dagger from Arexon. “Gratitude.”

Arexon clasped me tightly on my shoulder. “Just be safe.” It said, before releasing me. It took a step back. “Just be safe.” Then it turned to Xavier. “Put the headguard on.” It ordered. “The Cormeum guards will recognize your face.”

Xavier nodded. I had not noticed the headguard in its hands until it made to put it on. Arexon reached for mine on the table and handed it to me. I took the headguard with shaky hands.

I was not ready to part. I opened my mouth to say…what exactly I did not know, but before the words could form, quicksand appeared underneath me and sucked me away. When the quicksand forced me out, I was standing in an animal den, in a stall facing a big red smoke bear.

Marc! I had gotten so carried away by the craziness that I’d forgotten about Marc. My Marc who’d carried me back, sick and delirious, across Nefastu, and into Cormeum. But Arexon had not forgotten. It had seen to the care of my pet.

A loud trumpet sound filled the stall, and a warm trunk wrapped around me. Mirth filled me. I could not name the cause, or why the animal’s warm greeting would make me feel as I did, but I enjoyed it. I walked over to its side and stroked its fur in apology for my neglect. I made a silent promise then that I would never forget it again. Marc trumpeted, as if it had heard my promise and agreed.

“It’s time to go back.” I said to the bear.

As if it could hear me, it bent low to make it easier for us to climb on. Xavier whistled in shock behind me, but I ignored it. I climbed onto the back of my magnificent beast, and then I put on my headguard, and leaned forward, grabbing onto Marc’s tusks as it began to rise.

We were headed back to Permafrost with Xavier in tow, and I felt a rush of optimism. I knew then, that everything would be alright. Musa would be fine and healed, waiting for me to retrieve it.

Part 18
---------

I woke to the pleasant comfort of a soft bed. The air around me was warm and sweet smelling. The environment I found myself in was so pleasant that I allowed my mind to dawdle. I was trapped in a fugue state, not quite unaware of the horrors that plagued me, but not aware enough to know them in any detail. It was a nice moment of peace, for as long as it lasted.

Unfortunately, it did not last long.

Sanity returned, and with it, the cold shock of memories. I remembered the yielders’ room. The fact that we were outmatched had become immediately evident. And that was before I’d seen the full extent of the pious in the room. The fighting came back to me in detail. The pious. The spectra, the pansophy, the sword-skill, and the greater number. Any one of which would have been hard to deal with, but all four together? It had been too much. I groaned aloud as I thought of the battle. There had been okun to drain my strength. I’d had to split my focus between the okun and the soldiers prodding at me with swords and skill in its use. Then there was the dagger. Just the thought of the stab made that part of my body throb. I was too consumed by the memories to pay too much attention to the fact that the wound caused me no pain.

Yakubo’s corpse. What a thing to remember. Yakubo, my friend. It had been my first true friend in Chiboga. I could not help but recall the month that it had spent visiting with me and Musa, and ensuring that we had all that we needed. I had felt caged, so much so that I had never been in a mood good enough to thank the uspec for its continual presence. The battle flashed again in my mind and I saw Yakubo as it had been before its death. I saw the sword thrust into its neck from behind and the look in its eyes the moment it had realized that its life was over.

Other memories of Yakubo filled my mind. Yakubo from the hangar, the first Chiboga uspec that I had spoken to. Yakubo in Aurelion, Yakubo in Chiboga, in the Kaiser’s castle. It had saved my life, and how did I repay it? By costing it its own. The pain. Yakubo was loyal to the end, loyal to me. Died for my cause. And for what? For nothing. Xavier remained under the control of the pious. Arexon had forced our retreat.

A wave of anger coursed through me as I thought of Arexon. In a sane part of my head, I knew that I owed much to Arexon. I had not forgotten the pious that had taken away my motion, and the one that had sought to take advantage of my paralysis and behead me. No, I had not forgotten how Arexon appeared just in time to save my life. But then it had taken me away, it had given up. And when I tried to go back to finish the fight myself, it had taken away my consciousness. Perhaps the time will come when my anger at it abated, but that time was not now.

I seethed.

A sound drew my attention.

I forced my eyes open then, jerking myself up into an upright seated position. My eyes focused on the room I was in, and the parts of my mind which were not stunned speechless, realized that this was the same room that I had woken in when I fainted unknowingly, at Arexon’s feet. And like the last time I had woken in this room, there was an imp awaiting me. Unlike the last time, the imp was seated on the bed, staring at me with a grin on its face.

I gaped in turn at the imp. Surely my mind was playing tricks on me. There was no way that this imp could be here. It was impossible. Yet, I blinked several times, re-orienting myself, and regardless of the number of blinks, when my eyes became fully opened, it was the same sight greeting me.

I could not help myself, I smiled back. “How…” I began.

It cut me off. “Arexon found me.”

I was stunned. It was real. This was no dream, no manifestation of my deepest desires brought to life in front of me. The imp was truly here, sharing my bed.

“Xavier.” The name came out in a breath.

The imp’s grin did not fade. “It is good to see you too Nebud.”

I scoffed. The imp had not changed, although why I would think it would, I could not say. “How did you escape?”

Xavier smiled. It leaned back, its empty eye sockets turning to fully peer at me. “So you want the full story? I will oblige you then. I know now that it was Arexon who purged our chamber of the gas the pious used to rob us of our consciousness. Once that gas was gone, it did not take me long to recover. I was weak, much too weak to go too far, but I had enough strength to flee that cursed room. I collapsed in a corner, my teeth chattering as I had nothing to shield me from the frost of the falling hail. But then Arexon found me and it brought me here. That was two days ago. It says that I have you to thank for my escape?”

I nodded, unable to trust the strength of my own words. Why would Arexon go back for Xavier? Why would it risk its life, without me, for an imp, after it made it clear how little regard it had for their kind?

“I am humbled. I did not know you cared so deeply for me.”

I frowned at the imp. Was it teasing? I could find no trace of humor on the features that stared back at me, or in the words that had been said. Still, I could not help but doubt the sincerity of the imp’s words. “I did not do it for you.” I stated drily.

Xavier’s lips quirked into a smile. “I did not think so.” It seemed about to speak and then it cut itself off, turning instead to look around the room as if in search of something. When its search was at an end, it asked, “Where is Musa?”

“I don’t know.” I tried to shrug the words off, to make myself sound indifferent, but I could not quite manage it. Not now, probably not ever. My thoughts chose that moment to remind me that this could all still have been for nothing. What if Musa was already gone, already sapped to its last sustainable bit?

“Why did you save me Nebud? From what I have seen here, it cost you dearly to do so.”

I knew it spoke of Yakubo. I closed my eyes, and tried my best to force composure on my emotions. Sorrow and pain, it was not a combination I relished. I took a deep breath, and when I was sure I could speak without my voice faltering, I replied. “Musa was bitten by a samu. I took it to the wrath, and you are the fee they demanded for giving Musa aid.”

“I see.”

After that there was silence, neither of us spoke. What was the imp thinking? I decided it was not worth my time to try to decipher its thoughts. I found my mind darting back to Arexon instead. It risked its life for my imp. Twice, and the second time after it had refused my pleading. Why?

“Domina.”

My eyes rose to the curtains. I had not noticed before that the curtains had been drawn and that a soldier had been set to watching it. I thought in passing of why the soldier had been assigned to watch the curtain, but my mind quickly focused on the imp standing by the curtain. It was dressed completely in black.

“Aaliyah.” I had meant to say more. To say that I was sorry for its loss, to say that it was my fault that its master was gone, if Yakubo was even that. Their relationship had been one that I could never understand, but it had been one with real feelings, with mutual compassion and concern. I could tell from the grief on the imp’s face that Yakubo’s death pained it. This was not the same imp that had greeted me with song when I’d woken. This imp lacked all the animation it used to have.

“The master sent me to summon you for Ya…” it sniffed, and a tear fell from its socket. It wiped the tear away hastily, but it was a long time before it could bring itself to finish its missive. “For Yakubo’s obit.” It said finally.

I rose from the bed. Someone had seen to my wounds. The pious one’s dagger was no longer embedded in my body, and the gash I’d taken on my arm was healed. The job was so well done that I could not even feel the effects of the wound. All I felt at that moment was guilt. Yakubo was dead, and it was because of me. I had been stripped of my clothing, and so when I rose, I was unclad.

I closed the distance separating me from the imp and then I followed as it turned immediately to lead the way. It walked in silence, guiding me from the suite of personal rooms to the large entertaining room. As we walked, I contemplated several ways to reach out to the imp. But what would I say? I could hear footsteps behind us. Two distinct sets. The soldiers I could make out easily, but Xavier’s lighter steps were much harder to discern.

As soon as we walked into the entertaining room, a gap was made for us. We made our way to the center, and I came face to face with Yakubo’s corpse. I inhaled sharply, shocked by the reality of it in front of me. Aaliyah fell to her knees, her hands grabbing onto Yakubo’s lifeless one.

It took some time, but I was finally able to bring myself to look at it. I could tell that its body had been preserved somehow, as it did not have the foul stench that accompanied corpses after days of exposure. Was it preserved in a bed of hail perhaps? I could not say. Aaliyah sobbed. Each sob tore at me, yet, I did not begrudge the imp its tears. I had never thought much of the imp before that moment, but in its grief I saw a token of what Yakubo must have seen in it.

The pain!

I wish I could go back in time and refuse to take Yakubo on this mission with us. I wish that I’d gotten to it faster, that I had sensed its pain. Arexon should have saved Yakubo’s life instead of mine. It would have been fitting for me to die. It was my mission after all. It was my imp I’d been trying to save.

“Assiduity!”

The loud cry sounded, and the soldiers immediately saluted. It came to me as an impulse. I found my right-hand darting across my chest and coming to rest on the top left corner of it, before I could really contemplate my actions. But as I stood there in salute, I thought of how apt it was. Yakubo was a soldier. It had gloried in its position. If this was all I could do, then I would. I would pay it respect. My eyes travelled over the earrings in its ears and the golden bands on its arms. It was only then that I remembered the lack of earrings on my own ears. Arexon must have had them removed while I was unconscious.

The uspec strode past me then.

Two soldiers both of the rank of dons, walked behind Arexon, and the imp, Aaliyah’s partner Zane, brought up the rear. They stopped by the table where Yakubo’s corpse had been laid.

“Assiduity!” Arexon called out. Immediately, the three soldiers, Arexon included, turned to face Yakubo’s corpse and saluted.

We all stood like that for a time. How long was it? I could not say, but I did not mind. It seemed a fitting honor for Yakubo. Then Arexon’s hand came down. It walked over to Zane and reached for the box in the imp’s hand. Arexon put its hand into the box, and when it brought its hand out, it had a cobra wrapped around it. The boga frosted beast.

“A great life is ended.” Arexon intoned.

“In fog new ones begin!” The soldiers bellowed in response.

@Ultimategeneral I don't think it would be normal if Nebud was able to master spectra just like that. I mean, it wasn't so long ago that Nebud found the way to break through to actually use the spectra in the room-vault, and since that happened Nebud has been running around, it hasn't had time to practice the magic. The magic that it knows (emotions) it had years in the pits to learn and practice it. The fighting skills it has took the same amount of time, so it only makes sense that it would not be able to master spectra so quickly.

@HotB lol, I guess we'll soon see what happened. Thank you

@cassbeat Thank you for reading, yes oh, Nebud was overwhelmed in that fight

@doctorexcel Lol, abeg I disagree with you on this, I think Nebud tried in this one. Learning spectra isn't magic. If you think about it, Nebud hasn't really had time to practice and train and get good at it, when it's rushing so that it can save Musa. Plus, can you imagine the odds of that battle. Nebud wasn't just focussing on spectra, it had to focus on parrying, and also fighting while trying to prevent the pious ones' pansophic blades from touching it.

@ayshow6102 LOL. If Nebud had released lit okun on everyone in that room, Arexon would have died too. Although, at that point, I don't even think Nebud was thinking about that. Maybe it would have released the lit okun if Arexon had not pulled it out of the fight then, or maybe it would have been so distracted with trying to summon pain that it allowed one of the pious to touch it with their pansophic blades...

@eROCK247 Thank you, I'm very happy that you found us and that you're enjoying the story Technically, the narrator can die, all that means is that the story would end lol

Then the ground in front of me turned to quicksand, and Arexon burst out of it, rising from the ground like a flapping jeja burst forth from its okun bed. Arexon came with its sword outstretched. It had a dagger held in one hand and its sword in the other. In a single move, Arexon threw the dagger, from one hand, behind me, at the uspec who’d stabbed me, I guessed. As it rose, while and after it threw the dagger, it cut through the uspec whose long sword had only been a breath away from my neck. Arexon’s sword went into the juncture between the uspec’s thighs and rose high, all the way up to the uspec’s neck. And then Arexon pulled the sword out, and the pious one fell to the floor, parted along its middle.

Arexon touched me and motion returned.

The ringing in my ear stopped.

I could hear clearly.

I heard clearly through to the loud scream of pain.

I ran.

With the pious one’s blade in my body, I lurched forth, and cut at the first uspec in my sight. Globs of hail appeared around and me, and a bang sounded. This time I knew who’d destroyed the mejo hails, I knew it had to be Arexon. But I could not turn back, not when the pious had surrounded Yakubo, not when its cries of pain filled my head.

Two swords reached for me. I dodged one and threw my dagger at the neck of the other. I did not stop to see if my dagger hit its target, I could not stop.

They’d formed a circle around Yakubo.

I swung my cutlass at the back of the first uspec in that circle. It turned around to attack and I dodged, intending to sneak beneath its raised hand.

In that exact moment, Yakubo’s cries ended.

A sword pierced into Yakubo’s neck from behind it. Somehow, I could not comprehend this. I was at a loss to explain what was happening. Yakubo’s headguard had been pulled away, revealing its identity. I watched as the sharp point of a pious one’s sword emerged through Yakubo’s throat. The uspec gagged on its own blood.

“NO!” I heard myself yell. I heard myself screaming like a deranged lunatic. There was pain, lots of pain, my pain. I felt it keenly, the pain from my wound, the pain of seeing Yakubo. The pain was blinding. I swung my blade. I could not tell what I swung the blade at, or even if it hit a target. I was deranged.

The sword came free of Yakubo’s neck, and Yakubo fell to the ground. It was dead. I knew it, but I could not bring myself to accept it. I had seen uspecs die. Many of them by my own hand, but I had never seen the death of one I cared for, one that I called friend. I did not have many friends. Pain. It filled me. I tried to reach into that place in me, the place that I had gone to create the lit okun. I wanted to get there, to fill the floor of this filthy base with lit okun and kill every single uspec in it.

“Nebud!”

The call came just in time. I must have been more in tune to the commander’s orders than I’d thought, because as soon as it snapped my name, my mind shifted back into focus, and I saw a ring of pious ones approaching me. As the pious approached, their pansophic swords outstretched, a pool of okun formed underneath me. This okun was not mine, it tried to seep strength from me.

The first pious reached me, just as I managed to deflect the okun. I dodged its blade, as another fell in behind me. They were skilled. Very skilled. I lashed out with my left hand, intending to parry a blow with my dagger, and only belatedly realized that my dagger was not in my hand. I had thrown it at the neck of an uspec. I pulled my hand back, but not in time to avoid a deep gash.

Blood trickled from my arm.

I was cornered, surrounded as Yakubo had been.

I tried not to think of Yakubo. I could not. I could not allow my mind to think of its body, lying dead on the floor just a few paces in front of me. It took all of my focus to deflect the blows I was receiving. I had never been in a fight like this. A fight with pansophy and spectra, combined with much sword-skill. I could not think, could not strategize. All I could do was swing my blade, and move my body as I’d spent so much time training to. They had pansophy so I could not subvert to pugilism. A single touch and I would risk being paralyzed as I’d been before.

Another uspec joined the three goading me.

They were goading me. Not fighting in earnest. They did not need to. Just the teasing flicks of their swords alternated between them with the skill of fighters who’d trained together was proving to be more than I could handle. I was outmatched. Outmatched in magic and in fighting skill. It had never happened to me before. But I could not despair and so I continued swinging my blade. I swung even when all thought fled my head, my body moved by rote. I could not tell how much time had passed. My bleeding arm felt weak from all the blood that it had lost, and my swinging arm felt exhausted from the blows that it parried. My head hurt, my legs felt weak, my entire body felt fatigued. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than for it to end.

And then I was falling.

The ground sucked me in, and darkness descended on me. It was a testament to my complete exhaustion that it did not occur to me where I was, or what had happened. It was not until light poured in through my closed eyelids that I had the chance to stop and think.

I heard the sound of falling okun before I opened my eyes. When I did open my eyes, the first thing I saw, was Yakubo’s body, lying on the floor beside me. I jumped to my feet. My head spun and my vision was blurry. I’d lost too much blood, and I was still bleeding from the wound in my head. I looked around the room. It was familiar, but I would not have recognized it as quickly as I had, if I did not see Arexon standing before me, its face stripped of the headguard it had worn.

“I’m sorry,” it said, “we could not win.”

I knew. I dropped to my knees, in the private cleaning room in Arexon’s quarters, and stared at Yakubo’s corpse. It was all for nothing. Yakubo’s death was for nothing.

“I have to go back!” I yelled. “Send me back!”

Arexon shook its head. “You will die if you go back.”

“Send me back!”

“No!” Arexon snapped. “No.” It turned its back to me, and I saw for the first time the extent of the wounds it had taken in the fight. Its cloak was tattered and bloody. I saw slashes and cuts all over the garment. But none of those wounds seemed great enough to slow the uspec down. “I took the form out of the hard fog covering, releasing the gas and the imps trapped within it. That is the best that I could do. But we cannot go back. It is up to the imp to save itself.”

“Arexon, please.”

Arexon stopped moving. I could tell that it understood what the word had cost me, what it took for me to beg. But I could not let Yakubo’s death be for nothing. I could not abandon Musa, not when I’d come so close to getting Xavier. The imp had been in the gas chamber. I had seen it.

Arexon took a deep breath and then released it. It turned back to face me, its face an unreadable mask. Then it approached me. For a long time Arexon did nothing more than study me. Its eye rolled over me, studying my face, trailing over my skin to the dagger still in my side and the bleeding gash in my arm. Then its gaze fell on Yakubo and its features filled with pain. Then it turned its gaze back to me and its features hardened.

It shook its head.

Fine. If it would not help me, then I would do it myself. I began rising.

“Stop.” It snapped. “You are not strong enough to even attempt it.”

“I am no concern of yours.” I pushed the words out through tight teeth. How could Arexon deny me this? How could it allow Yakubo to die for nothing?

“You cannot fight by yourself. They will kill you.”

A thought crossed through my mind and I said it without thinking. “You have soldiers here, enough soldiers to ensure a victory.”

Arexon glared at me. “I will not risk their lives for your imp.”

I glared back at it. I was on my feet now. We stared at each other. Then I looked away and began to move past Arexon. I did not see it coming. One moment Arexon stood with its hands by its side, the next moment its hand was on my shoulder.

Darkness descended on me and I fell into oblivion.

Part 17
---------

A calm descended on the room as soon as our presence there became known. It was a heavy calm, one strained by the keen eyes that darted towards us, and the hands that instinctively went to grasp at weapons. In that calm I was able to survey the room.

It was not at all as I had expected, although, come to think of it, I did not know what I expected. I had never been to a base belonging to the order of Annihilation before, and so I could not possibly have had a reference for the layout of a room like this, a room obviously built for the sapping of imps.

The imps were there.

They lay in the middle of the room, on a covered island whose ground was made of a cyan metal, I could easily identify as the pansophy conduit mined in Aurelion. The rest of the island emerged like a blob around the imps. This blob was transparent hard fog, rising from the pansophy conduit at the base, and then taking on amorphous forms as it made its way to the top. That island completely sealed the imps within from the uspecs on the outside.

Through the clear outer walls of the island, I could plainly see gas. The gas was an odd mixture of blue and grey. Within the colored gas, the imps lay unconscious on top of the base of cyan metal.

An open palm pounded against the inner walls of the clear had fog. I could tell by the waning intensity of the pounding that this single remaining conscious imp, was losing its consciousness.

It was Xavier of course. The imp’s eye sockets met mine, as it pounded for the last time, its open palm slapping lightly against the hard fog walls, before its eyelids pulled back, and it collapsed, coming to rest with the other imps on the metal floor.

A sword was pulled out of its scabbard.

I turned my gaze then to quickly take in the uspecs. I realized belatedly, that I should have spent the majority of the time our surprise entrance had afforded us, studying the room and counting the number of uspecs within it. Now, the initial stun was beginning to fade, and more and more uspecs were freeing their swords from the sheaths attached to their belts.

There were twenty. Twenty uspecs in the livery of the guards of the base. It registered on me that there were more guards in this room, than I had seen anywhere else in Cormeum, including the parts of the maze which surrounded the sovereign’s dwellings. And behind the guards, there were more pious than I had thought. Five would have been expected, seven excessive, but thirteen, thirteen pious ones? I shook my head, suddenly at a loss to understand why so many pious ones would be present for a single sapping. Surely this was not such a rarity for their order.

I did not have time to contemplate further on my thoughts. Four guards approached us. Like the guards who’d been outside the room, these ones wasted no time on questioning us. There was nothing spoken, no accusations, no polite orders of dismissal, just the steady approach of battle.

I ducked underneath the swinging blade of a guard to my left, while twisting my dagger into the belly of the one to my right. I rose swiping my cutlass in the air. I was cutting down an uspec to my left as I tore through the neck of one that approached me from behind. More came then. And they died just as quickly as the ones that came before them. They did not have the skill to parry with us.

It was not long before we were standing within a throng of bodies. Blood stained the ground underneath us, pooling at the soles of the footwear we wore as we made our way deeper into the room. Once the last guard was discarded off, the rest of the room became exposed.

I froze.

Swivel stools were revealed. In my initial count of the pious in the room, I had missed a count of those seated. There were four seated, seventeen pious in total.

Curtains were pulled aside. The sound of the material being pulled on the rail filled me with a sense of foreboding which I had never before felt during battle. I turned and the bumps on my flesh rose. Eight novices walked in. The novices had the markings of the order of adjudication. None of the novices had fully filled outer eyes, but what the novices lacked in spectra, the pious ones made up for.

We were outmatched.

There was pansophy in the room, that fact was made obvious by the presence of the pious ones, but I took solace in the fact that pansophy was a contact magic. Although, with so many of them, what chance did we stand?

The novices approached us from the back, while a handful of pious ones closed in on us from the front. They must have realized that ordering a surrender would have been futile, because they made no move to do so. They simply reached for discarded cyan swords and approached us with the weapons in their grasp.

I felt a trickle of fear. The feeling was closely followed by the emergence of fog, rising from the ground, and climbing upwards as if to engulf me. I did not think. There was no strategy in my head as I watched the rising fog begin to circle me, no plan as to what to do and how to do it. There was simply a crashing wave of fear, roiling though me. The fear was real, and it was wholly mine. It was fear of the pious and the magic that they possessed. It was fear of the impossible odds that we faced in this battle against them, and it was fear of death. For the first time in my life, I was faced with a battle I had no chance of winning.

The fear I felt reached out to the fog and a loud bang sounded in the room.

My ears rung.

Moments passed in which I heard nothing but white noise. I watched Arexon throw a dagger and then swing its blade at novices that had surrounded it. I watched Yakubo’s frantic fight as it tried to ward off its attackers, and I saw the uspecs approaching me. I knew that fighting surrounded me. I should have heard the sounds of swords clashing, but I heard nothing other than the ringing in my ears, a consequence of the bang which had sounded when I used the magic gained from my boga eyes, to counteract the magic of another’s boga eyes which had created fog around me.

A blade came towards me.

The blade was long and cyan. Its wielder was a pious, an uspec in the prime of its life. It bore the sword down on me, its double-handed grip fixed on the long hilt of the large blade.

I swung my cutlass up to meet the attack. It came as instinct, my desire to protect myself despite the dismal odds. And it worked, I was able to deflect the blow. I did not hear the sound of my cutlass clashing against the uspec’s long-sword, but I felt the shock of the blow in my body.

I felt weakened, as if I was being robbed of my strength. It came as no surprise to me to find okun underneath my feet. Another uspec’s magic. I knew it. I tried to reach into my pain to communicate with the okun, but as the okun continued to syphon my strength, two more pious ones joined in the attack on me. One of them was unarmed, it reached for me with its hand, no doubt trying to touch me so that it could use its pansophy on me. I swung away, tilting myself away from the uspec’s hand. I brought my sword down at the same time.

My actions were successful in that I was able to cut off the hands of the pious one who’d been reaching for me, but my actions at evading its touch, had sent me into the waiting blade of another pious behind me.

The okun continued to seep my strength.

I felt an abundance of pain from the wound to my back. I could feel the pious one’s blade in me. The okun continued to eat at my strength. I knew that I had to reach through my pain to it, to communicate with the soul as I’d just barely begun to understand. But the uspec with the long sword still stood in front of me, and its blade approached me. There was no time for me to think. I could not tear myself from this battle to focus on the okun and the strength it stole.

I rose my arm to block the long sword again, but nothing happened.

My mind reeled.

Again, I attempted to raise my arm, but it did not move. I tried to move my legs then, but they, like my arm, did not do as I wished. It was then I realized that my motion had been taken. The blade in my side, I guessed, it was probably made of pansophy conduit. How ironic that I had pushed myself towards the blade to avoid the hand which I had been sure approached me with pansophy.

The long sword fell determinedly towards my exposed neck.

Time seemed to slow as the long sword fell. As the sharp blade approached my defenseless paralyzed body, I thought of the life that I had led. The slum flashed in my mind. It had been a simple world filled with sludge. I had yearned for more, yearned to know great uspecs. I’d never thought that I was a great uspec. And by birth, I was. I was great. Cala, my sire had named me, a name derived from its own. I was not de trop as I’d been led to believe, but an imperial, the imperial heir to one of the greatest ports in the entire existence. And this would be my end. Slaughtered in an annihilation base which I had come to in search of Musa’s salvation.

The long sword was only inches from my neck now, and I wished that I had enough motion in me to close my eyes. In the end death comes swiftly. My final thought, the blade was so close now that I could feel the air part from the sharpened end.

“You are not allowed to be here, high one.” One of the guards stated. “Are you lost?”

“Exploring.” Arexon replied.

“You must turn around.”

“On what authority do you, a commoner, seek to order me about?” Arexon’s tone was deceptively mild.

The guard drew up, standing straighter. It frowned as if it had been deeply insulted. “On the authority of the sovereign of this burg!” it snapped.

“And what authority does the sovereign have to order a custodian?” Again, Arexon’s tone was calm.

“A custodian of another port. The sovereign acts on the orders of the Kaiser of this port, and a Kaiser outranks a custodian.” The guard stated haughtily.

“I see.”

It happened so quickly I was left gaping after it concluded. Where had the blades come from? In a flash, Arexon had two daggers, one in each hand. It slit the throats of the two uspecs closest to it, in a single move, and then it threw its dagger at the one furthest away. The last one made to run, but Yakubo was already behind it, its sword poised over the uspec’s neck. I realized then that I had never actually seen Arexon fight. The battle with Sophian had been too much of a mockery to count as a fight. It wiped the blood off on its dark coat, before turning to the last guard left.

“Please.” The guard begged, its voice shaking, “I do not want to die. You may go wherever you please high one.”

Arexon took a step back. It looked at me, and then jerked its head at the guard. I did not need words to discern its meaning. I walked towards the guard.

“We are looking for an imp.” I said. “A captive named Xavier.” I did my best to describe it, and then concluded by asking if it had seen it.

The uspec shook its head. Its one center eye, and two outer eyes, all darted to the sharp end of the sword Yakubo held underneath its chin. “No.” it replied nervously, “I have not.”

“Pity.” Arexon stated nonchalantly. “That means you are of no help to us.” It nodded at Yakubo and the blade went towards the guard’s neck.

“No! Wait!” It screamed. “I do not know of this imp in particular, but I know of others, of a group of them.”

“Speak.” Yakubo prompted.

It swallowed. “I heard of a group of imps being held in the brig.”

“Where is that?” I asked.

“The outer ring surrounding the core of Cormeum.” It replied.

“Can you lead us there?” Yakubo’s voice was soft.

The guard nodded profusely. “Yes, please, I can, I swear.”

Arexon smiled. “Good. Lead the way.”

The guard only looked at the corpses of its mates once, before it nodded and turned around. This time, Yakubo walked in front, its hand on the guard’s arm. It had its other hand on the sword it kept close to the guard.

We proceeded this way, walking under the falling hail, through the maze that was Cormeum. Until, at last, the guard stopped, right by a T-junction.

“What is it?” Arexon asked.

“The brig is to the left.” The guard replied, its voice shaking.

“Check Yakubo.” Yakubo pushed the guard back, towards me. I caught the uspec in a tight grip, and shook it, when it tried to push me away.

Yakubo went close to the hail wall. It kept its back against the wall as it sidled close to the edge. It turned sharply then. It looked out for a moment or two, and then pulled back. “Curtains sirga.” It replied in a whisper. “Unguarded.”

“Why would the brig be unguarded?” Arexon asked suspiciously.

“It wouldn’t be.” I replied, pulling out my dagger.

“No!” The uspec begged when its eyes caught on my dagger. “It’s the brig. I swear!”

My gaze drifted to Arexon. While the uspec had been staring apprehensively at my dagger, Arexon’s fingers had slightly brushed against it. Arexon pulled its hand back and nodded at me. The uspec was telling the truth.

I released it.

Before it could run away, Arexon created quicksand underneath it. The quicksand sucked the uspec in.

“Where did you send it?” I asked.

“Back to my suite.” It replied. It jerked its head towards the junction and Yakubo moved. I followed behind Yakubo. It did not take us long to reach the set of curtains. For a brig, it was quite open. Yakubo drew the curtains aside, and walked in.

We stopped. It was empty. The room, if it could be called that, was nothing more than a bare space with bowls placed on different parts of it. There were chains on the walls, chains which led to empty manacles in the middle of the room. Those chains were the only signs that the room really was a brig.

“Someone is coming.” Arexon warned, right before it drew back, leaving the room. Yakubo and I waited for the arrival. It was an uspec. It whistled a discordant tune as it drew closer to us. It had no weapons, and its cloak was worn and brown. It was not the cloak that the guards wore. It seemed taken aback when it saw us, but it did not stop its walk.

“Excuse me.” I heard Arexon’s voice.

The uspec frowned at us. It was a small thing. If I had to guess I would say barely ten years old. It had no horns on its head and no outer eyes on its face. Its eye widened when it stopped before us.

It curtsied.

“Rise.” Arexon ordered. The uspec obeyed. “I am Aunti, one of the duke’s in the Custiodian’s entourage. You have heard of the Custodian of Chiboga, have you not?”

The uspec nodded, its eye still wide, but it said nothing.

“Good.” Arexon replied. What game was Arexon playing? It continued. “I am here for my imp. I was told that it was being held for me in the brig. Where is it?”

“Today is cleaning day, great one.” The uspec’s voice was light, filled with the carelessness of youth.

“Cleaning day?”

“When the pious sap the imps they’ve held prisoners. They empty the brig on cleaning day, great one. You only just missed them.”

No. I took a step back. It could not be.

“My imp was to be held for me.” I heard the feigned annoyance in Arexon’s voice.

The young uspec frowned. “If there’s been a mistake the pious will reimburse you great one.”

“Were does the sapping happen? I will stop it if I can.”

The uspec shrugged. “In the pious labs, great one.”

“Where is that?”

The young uspec pointed to the curtains behind us. “To the left, all the way down, and then the first right. It’s in the core of Cormeum, great one, you cannot miss it.”

Arexon offered a piece of merit to the young uspec. From the wide-eyed stare, I knew that this was a lot of money for the uspec. It was a lot of money for most. It bowed. “Thank you, great one.”

I turned then and had to swallow my gasp. Arexon was wearing a headguard. No wonder it felt comfortable exposing itself to the young uspec. The uspec would be unable to identify it. We walked back out to the chill of the maze.

It was easy to find our way to the core, following the young uspec’s instructions. Arexon still wore the headguard.

“Put on your headguards.” It ordered, “we are about to have a lot of company.”

Yakubo and I obeyed. It felt good to be under the headguard and free from the hail. “Why did we not do this from the start?” I wondered aloud to myself.

“We did not know where we were going. We had to question the first set of guards we met. If we’re going to kill them anyway, what’s the point?” Arexon’s words were flat.

I nodded, understanding the logic. It did not take us long to reach a solid contingent of guards. There were ten of them, stationed outside a circular wall of hard fog. We had reached the core of Cormeum. That much was clear. I found it quite revealing that there were more guards protecting the pious labs than there had been around the parts of Cormeum closer to the sovereign’s dwelling.

These guards did not even to try to ask us questions. The moment they saw us, they were on the attack. They ran towards us, with swords drawn.

We made quick work of them.

Really, it would have taken at least five times their number to beat us. I did not think that I could be more stunned by Arexon’s skill if it grew another pair of hands and fought with them. Its grace with the sword reminded me a little too much of Marcinus.

Yakubo pounded against the hard fog.

The fog softened. Before the guards could realize their mistake, Yakubo stabbed one in the stomach, I beheaded the other.

We walked into the pious labs.

I don’t know what I expected a sapping lab to look like, but it wasn’t this. There were stocks of materials piled on different shelves. A familiar cyan metal had my mind darting back to Aurelion and the bonbons the imps mined there. To think that I was back with the same uspecs I’d gone into Aurelion with.

A wall of thick curtains cordoned off the other parts of the room.

We walked towards it.

Arexon stopped us with a raised hand. “Pious.” It mouthed, without giving voice to the words. “Many.”

With my blood-stained cutlass in one hand, and my dagger in the other, I took a deep breath and then released it.

I nodded.

Arexon drew the curtains back.

Part 16
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“You can’t be serious.” I exclaimed, as my eyes glared at the offending objects proffered.

Arexon looked amused. “It is your best cover.” It replied.

Again, my gaze trailed the room, moving from Yakubo’s shaking shoulders, to Arexon’s smirking face, to the blank stare of the soldier standing in front of me, and then finally resting on the objects in its hands. I had sworn to myself that I would never wear another earring. Now, Arexon expected me to wear this willingly?

“There has to be a better way.”

“If you are to accompany me, then you must pass as a soldier in my army. The soldiers in my army wear earrings and silver bands.” Its statement was made in such a matter-of-fact tone that I knew I could not argue. Besides, Arexon was coming to my aid. With Yakubo. They’d both decided to accompany me to the heart of Cormeum where Xavier was rumored to be. I should be grateful. And I was, but I did not see why I had to show my gratitude by wearing those things.

Arexon sighed. “You are wasting time that you do not have. Or have you decided that your rescue of the imprisoned imp is no longer critical?”

I shook my head. “I cannot believe I am doing this.” I muttered, as I picked up the earring from the soldier’s hand. I lanced the sharp point of the earring into my ear, and let the weight of the silver rectangles settle. There were three rectangles on the chain, two rectangles more than I’d had the last time I’d worn earrings. I picked the second set up, and placed them onto my ear with the same lack of enthusiasm as I’d had for donning the first. The silver bands went on next. Three on each arm. It was in my mind, I knew this, yet I could not help but feel a particularly unpleasant itching on my skin, underneath the bands of silver.

“Well?” I asked.

“It will do.” Arexon replied dismissively. It turned to stare at the soldier whose adornments I was currently wearing. “Fetch Animaton and take it, with the rest of my personal guard, back to our suites. Yakubo and I will meet you there once our mission is complete.”

The soldier frowned. “Will you not take more guards sirga? At least let me and Juhha accompany you. It is not safe for you to go wandering about on your own.”

I realized then that I had never heard a soldier question Arexon like this before. I could not help but wonder how Arexon would handle it.

“I can protect myself Kiux. Do as I say.” While Arexon’s words did not particularly come out as harsh, they did not leave room for argument.

The soldier saluted, turned, and marched out of the room.

Arexon’s gaze turned to me. “Is there anything you want to take with you?” it asked. I did not need to look around to know my answer. I shook my head. “Very well, let’s go.”

Arexon led the way, I followed behind it, and Yakubo followed behind me.

As soon as we walked out of Animaon’s quarters, I felt the blast of the chilled air. The fine hail fell, immediately coating me with a layer of white powder. I reached for my heard guard and then thought better of it. If the purpose of wearing the earrings was to pass as a soldier, the headguard would hide that. Besides, I did not think it was plausible that a soldier in Arexon’s guard would wear a headguard while Arexon itself wore none. I resigned myself to the chill of the fine fog.

We walked in silence.

I’d been filled in on the relative locations of everything. I knew that Animaton’s quarters was on the same ring as Animaon’s and that they both partially shared a ring with the sovereign. The outer ring of the maze belonged solely to the sovereign. But our destination was inward. If only we knew exactly where Xavier was being held, Arexon could have teleported us there. We didn’t, and so we walked stealthily, resigned to the fact that we would have to kill all the Labyrinth guards who saw us. They could not be left to tell tales of Arexon’s escapades within the mazes of Cormeum.

We walked into a dead end. Arexon led us on a turn in the maze which abruptly ended in a wall of hail. We turned around then. Arexon was going off pieces that it had picked up from the thoughts of guards it had brushed against. Apparently, those pieces were not enough to form a clear picture of the maze. While we did not know Xavier’s exact location, we knew that it was in the heart of Cormeum, which meant that we had to keep going deeper into the maze until we came across a guard who could lead us to the imp.

I tried to focus on the task at hand, but I could not keep my mind from drifting to other things. Checha, most pressingly. Why would the voice in my head think that I could steal the eye of a Kaiser in the plenum? Of all the challenges that the voice had set forth, this was by far the hardest to reconcile. A Kaiser in the plenum? Again, I was made to ponder on the motives of this voice. I did not like to think on this, because it led nowhere. There was no connection that I could see between the uspecs whose eyes I’d been tasked with taking. And the voice in my head? No, I did not know what it was, or why I was unable to ignore it. Was Arexon right? Would this voice lead me to my own death? Was that the purpose of the voice? Surely not. So far I had come out on top.

Arexon sighed. We’d reached another dead end. We made our way back to the bend in the road which had led to this spot.

Arexon. The voice in my head was responsible for this friendship. Without the voice in my head, I would never have gone to Chiboga. I would never have met Arexon or Yakubo. Now here they were, both of them willingly risking their lives to help in my quest to reunite with my imp. Surely this was proof enough that I could trust the voice. Marcinus. I thought of the uspec and cringed inwardly. A friend that I had lost. I wondered if I would ever see it again. While there was a part of me that wished for this, there was another, much smaller part, that wished against it. What would I say to it? Could it ever forgive me for what I’d done?

Musa.

The name rose in my head like a cry, and an answering pang of pain accompanied it. Pink liquid came out of me. I stopped, shocked by its sudden emergence. I pulled it back in, but not before Arexon and Yakubo saw it. They said nothing. I forced my mind back to the present. We walked in loops of soft white hail. There was no guard in sight. I could not tell if we were going further into Cormeum, or out of it.

The imp’s form flashed in my mind. I remembered it as it had been the last time I had seen it. Could what remained truly be called a form? There was a torso, that much I’d seen. But no limbs. No head, no feet, no arms. Only a torso with smudges of goo on the sides where Musa’s limbs had once been. Even then it had been sapping. And now? If the wrath had not found it, it would be gone already. I knew that for a fact. With the rate at which it had been sapped, it would be gone. But if the wrath had found it, then it could be healing now.

“I am sorry Cala, there is no cure. If Calam had one in mind, it carried it to its grave.”

Animaon’s words chose that moment to return to me. No, I shook my head. It could not be. Not after all of this. There had to be a cure. Animaon had to be wrong. I held onto hope, because without it…without it I had nothing. The emptiness I felt whenever I thought of the possibility of Musa being gone, was too deep to countenance. Could I live with that emptiness?

Checha’s eye.

The voice in my head. It was not adamant, not urging as it had been before the worst of the head pain faded, but it was there, present. It did not bid me leave Damejo, but it would not let me remain. It was contradicting, the voice, but as long as it did not stop me, I ignored it, while I still could.

And if Animaon was right?

The question snuck up on me.

“Be warned.” Arexon whispered, thankfully pulling me out of my thoughts before I had to contemplate that question. “Guards are coming.”

“What should we do?” Yakubo whispered back.

“Nothing. We continue on as we are. They know of my presence here, so they will not attack, not without provocation.”

I walked beside Yakubo now, both of us keeping pace only a few steps behind Arexon. Yakubo’s hand, like mine, had gone to the hilt of its cutlass. Arexon’s hands remained casually at its sides. It did not seem bothered by the nearness of the guards.

It was another ten seconds before we saw them. We noticed them before they became aware of us. As soon as our presence registered on them, they rose their hands in the air, seeking to halt us. There were four of them, each dressed in the unflattering black coats of the Labyrinth’s guards. Two of them placed their hands on their cutlasses, the other two did not seem too troubled by our presence. It became obvious as we drew closer to them, that they were aware of Arexon’s identity.

The guards bowed to it. The bow was careless, the sharp jerk of a head, not the deep curtsy expected. In fact, I pondered, as we drew to a stop in front of the guards, they should have genuflected. Arexon was the custodian of a much greater port than Damejo, after all. Alas, the disrespectful bow was all the guards deemed fit.