₦airaland Forum

@dragonstar14 thank you. Will it end like this? That's a good question

@tunjilomo I hope so too, that could be very dangerous for Nebud haha

@spixytinxy I know, this was indeed a short episode, but Wednesday's will be longer

@ayshow6102 thank you for reading. Yes, oh, Stay with us Nebud

@Smooth278 ...well...let me just keep quiet

Part 10
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I was lost.

Perhaps it was for the best. I tried to convince myself that there was some benefit to being away from the Yakubo, the lying traitor. I could not imagine spending another moment with it. Did it really expect me to believe that it had not betrayed my confidences to its commander? Of course it had. How else would Arexon have known of my close bond with my imp? It was, after all, not such a common thing for an uspec to care about its slave. Yakubo told Arexon, and Arexon found a way to use it against me. I could not stand either of them.

I took another blind left turn down another tunnel. I’d come across several blocks in the tunnels where I’d seen naked imps lying on the floor. I stepped over them and kept walking. The soles of my feet hurt the more I walked, as each step scraped them against the rough bumps on the ground. I sighed, stopping to rest against a wall when I reached yet another joining in the way. I could either turn left or right. Which way would lead me back? I’d left in search of an okun, just a little pond to stick my bloody feet into. My search so far was proving to be wholly uneventful.

The right tunnel seemed to have some sort of color mixing further along. I caught a light stream of red-yellow light. I assumed that walking that way would lead to another dig led by another gang. I was suddenly grateful that I had paid attention to Jojo’s speech. The different colors represented different gang territories, and I had to stay in the daylight digs.

I turned left instead and continued down my torturous trek.

Why was I in Aurelion? I barely bent my head in time to dodge a stalactite. So, I missed the stalactite, but grazed the skin on my forehead against a particularly coarse bump in the wall. It scratched my skin. A finger against the abraded skin showed that it was bleeding.

My frustrations mounted as I continued walking. My plan now was just to get back to the eating room. If I found my way back there, then I could get directions to the dig where Yakubo and Arexon where. As much as I hated their company, I found that I was now desperate to return. How was I to kill Arexon if I was separated from it? Knowing Arexon, the only way that I would get back with it, was if I found my way back myself.

As I continued on my walk, a troubling thought flashed through my mind. I walked past an archway which led into a small dig with naked imps packed together, lying on the floor. I heard moans as I walked by, and a number of whimpers. There were imps in there crying. I heard the sound of one retching, another who’d consumed the metal, I assumed. An image played in my mind of the imp scooping up its vomit and trying to eat it, all to put something in its empty belly.

When Musa had said that Aurelion was an imp’s worst nightmare, I realized that this was what it meant. I had thought that sapping would be worse, but nothing could be worse than this. At least sapping you lost your consciousness. There was no such mercy for the suffering imps in Aurelion.

And as I walked by this dig, the imps packed so close that where one ended the other begun, the troubling thought occurred. The thought was simple. In fact, it was a testament to my own abhorrence of Arexon that I had not thought of it sooner. I thought about spending the rest of my finite life here. I thought about what would happen if I was somehow trapped in this hellhole. What good would my hate do me then?

I had to leave this place. I could not be left here. This was the thought that troubled me, because it made me dependent on Arexon. I did not know a way out. And even if I could somehow find my way back to the pious ones, how would I demand that I be released. Arexon had the exit mapped out. I was sure of this. The commander and this mission were valuable to the Kaiser. If I killed Arexon in here, I would be trapped here, with the imps, as an imp.

I could not think of a worse fate.

I still wanted Arexon dead. I could not think of anything I wanted more than to take away the life of one that had brought so much anguish to me. But, I realized with a sinking heart, that I could not do it here. It was easier to make this decision as far away from Arexon as I currently was. I did not have to see it and have my hatred rekindled. My mind was clearer as I walked, lost in the maze of tunnels. And in this clarity, one thing became glaringly obvious. Arexon was my only way out of here.

I would have to find another place to kill the uspec then. Surely, killing Arexon would be easier than taking the life of the Kaiser Sophila, and its offspring Sophian. I just had to bide my time. I remembered another whose death I wished for. One who had forced me to procreate and then used my own offspring against me. I had found that my desire to leave the pits outweighed my desire to see the uspec dead. It was similar with Arexon.

All of this was dependent on me finding my way back to them. What if they moved? The imp, Aliyah, had only offered shelter for a night. If I did not make my way back before the night was over, they could have moved on to completing the mission of finding the last brio. In that case, the odds of finding them again would be greatly diminished.

I refused to panic. I would find them before the night was over. Arexon would be displeased. I wondered what my punishment would be once we returned to the land of uspecs? More scourging? The green room? Both would be preferable to the rest of my life in Aurelion.

I saw imps wearing clothes. They were walking through tunnels to the left of where I stood. They were my first glimpse of hope. I turned to the left, going after them. I found myself running when I thought that I might not be able to catch up with them. I ran to the end of the tunnel, just in time to see them, moving towards my right. I went after them, hoping that they would lead me back to the dig with curtains.

I walked silently behind the group. As we walked, I began to realize how easy it would be to lose time in here. How long had it been since I left Yakubo? I could not say. It could have been minutes or hours. If it was hours, then was it still night? Had Arexon and Yakubo already moved on? I refused to let myself think about it.

We walked past an archway. I stopped, frozen in shock as I stared at the dig. It was dark. I realized, as I stared into the darkness, that I was in the midnight digs. That did not mean that I was still lost though. From the tour which Jojo had given us, I remembered that the midnight digs were just by the daylight ones.

I made to move, continuing behind the group of clothed imps, when I felt a hand latch onto my wrist. The hand pulled me into the dark dig before I could stop it. Again, I was made aware of my lack of bulk. The imp grabbing me was obviously strong.

“You look lost stray. How about you give me that ring on your finger, and I’ll help you find your way back?”

I did not like the voice.

The dig I was standing in was completely dark. It was not like the previous midnight dig which Jojo had led us through. There it had been lit just brightly enough that I could make out shapes. Nothing could be made out in this dig. I could not imagine how the imp could see me.

“Let go off me.” I ordered, swinging wildly with my left hand. I felt the contact that my hand made against the imp’s face. But the grip did not loosen. I had packed all of my strength into that blow, but the strength of my uspec bulk was lost in this feeble imp’s body.

After a moment though, I was released. That shocked me. I took a step back and was stopped by a body.

“You really should just give us the ring before this gets unpleasant.” They wanted Calami’s ring. I’d forgotten that I was wearing it. The ring told me if an uspec had pansophy, but more importantly, it belonged to Calami. It was the only thing I had of my line.

“It looks expensive.”

I heard voices now, so many of them. Some spoke boga tongues, but the majority spoke an umani tongue which I had no knowledge of. I could not see them. But I could feel them.

I reached into my emotions.

There was pain. A slight pain, which was gone before I could reach for it. I assumed that was the pain from the weak blow which I had landed. That was the only pain in the room. There were no hunger pangs that I could feel, no wounds. There was also no anger.

I decided to change that.

I mustered all the strength that I could find in this weakened imp form, and put it into my elbow. Then I drew my arm forward, bent it, and drove my elbow into the side of the imp standing behind me.

I felt its anger and a slight pain. The anger was more potent. I took it and transferred it to where I believed the first imp was. I had never done this in the dark. I knew enough about emotions to know that they would not go unless I gave them another living host to transfer to. But, as I could not see, I could not say with certainty where to send the anger. There was also the little problem of the instability of polluted anger. The imp I gave it to would be driven mad with rage. But that rage would be unfocussed. In the dark, I was just as likely to be the target of its anger, as anyone else in the room. I decided it was a risk I had to take. Luckily, the imp hadn’t moved much.

I knew it worked, when I felt a burst of pain. I went into my pain emotion and reached out for the imp’s pain. I could still feel the imp standing behind me, so I transferred the pain I felt to that imp. It wailed with polluted pain.

The imp rocked forward, pushing me in the process. I found myself knocked against an imp.

Then I felt a fist slam into the side of my face. The blow was so strong that I fell to the floor.

I landed on a sharp point.

The pain I felt was indescribable. It took my focus from the rest of the room. I knew that I had been stabbed. I felt the sharp object inside me. My instincts told me that it was a pickaxe. I had seen nothing else in this place capable of inflicting the kind of damage which I felt.

I howled in pain when a leg stepped on my ankle, breaking the joint.

“The stray!” A voice yelled. “Hold her, she’s insane.”

There was commotion. I reached for the anger. It was hard to hold onto the emotion. There was so much of it now. But, the bleeding in my side was weakening me. It was dangerous to go into my lifeforce, but I had to. I allowed my mind to go blank, escaping the room, as I focused on my pain. The pain told me that the wound was a mortal one. I was losing too much blood. No wonder I felt so faint.

I tried one last time to grab for the anger, but I could not reach it. “Where is the stray? Turn on a light!” I realized then, that they could not see in the dark either.

I crawled with the pickaxe in me. My ankle was broken so I could not twist the joint. I had to move on my elbows. I tried to go as silently as I could. I did not know where I was going, but luckily, I did not slam into any imps. I kept moving, until I saw a flash of white light. I went towards the light.

“He’s leaving. By the door!”

I had just reached the tunnel when I heard that. I latched onto the biggest bump in the wall, which I could find, and pulled myself up with it. It was faster to crawl on my hands and knees. But I would not last long.

“There!”

I turned into another dark dig. This one was like the one which Jojo had led us through. There was light enough to see that it was empty. I could make out the shapes of the bumps in the walls. I was grateful for these bumps for the first time since I came to Aurelion. I used the bumps as a rail, a support through which I could pull myself forward. I noticed a crevice in the wall. It was not big, but it was big enough that my imp body could fit in, if I sat as I had in Arexon’s punishing green room.

I knew that if I could make it into that crevice, then I could hide there till the imps passed. It was dark enough that they would not be able to see anything more than my shape in the wall, which could easily be overlooked.

It was a struggle to stand.

Each time I tried to use my unbroken leg as a support, I fell back against the wall.

“Where did he go?” I heard the voices. They were outside the dig now. It would not take them long to realize that I could have come in here.

I put both feet against the floor, and I stood. The pain in my broken angle was almost unbearable. I did not need to go into my pain lifeforce to know that I was aggravating the damage already done there. But I had to stand to get into the crevice in the wall, and that crevice was the only thing that could hide me. So, I bit down hard on the insides of my mouth, silencing the cry of pain that would have been torn out of me otherwise.

Standing, I was just high enough to sit in the crevice. I sat, taking the weight off my broken angle. There was something strange in my mouth, a soft piece floating about. It tasted like blood.

I spat it out, once I realized what it was. My mouth was still filled with the taste of blood.

I had to lift my injured leg into the crevice with my hands. Then I pulled my knees close to my chest and I waited. I felt my energy draining as I stayed in the crevice. I left the pickaxe in my side. I could just barely remember reading in a tome, that it was better to leave objects such as these inserted, in the case of a stabbing wound like mine. Perhaps, the pickaxe could slow the blood loss.

“Let’s check this dig.”

I watched as several imp forms walked into the dig. I remained silent, trying not to think of anything. Not the smarting pain in my ankle, not the lightheadedness, not the blood in my mouth. I must have bitten off a good chunk of my flesh, because it felt as if my mouth was filled with blood. Liquid spilled out of it. I could not spit. Not with the imps in the dig. I opened my mouth instead, and let the blood, run down my face.

An imp stopped in front of me. I could not tell from its shape if it was facing towards me, or away. The lightheadedness was becoming even more severe.

“It’s not here.” A voice said.

“Then it’s in another dig.” Another replied.

“I want an imp covering every inch of the midnight digs and tunnels. I will not let a stray make a fool of the moon gang.”

The imps filed out, but they did not go far. I could still see hear their voices, speaking the umani tongue.

I knew that I was losing consciousness with each moment that passed. I felt drowsy. How much blood would I lose before I died? I tried to stay awake, to force my mind to stay active. But the weariness was too strong. My eyes shut, and my head fell back against the wall behind me.

Tuhndhay:
Sometimes Nebud is smart, sometimes Nebud is slow, I think Nebud has a hard time processing thoughts and situations........ Well, I think the background affects his thinking and approach to life situations also.

Am keenly observing sha, I think Nebud might have to put a stop to it's plan of overthrowing the emperor and gaining half of the army for now.

Yeah, I agree, its background definitely affects the way it acts. Well, next installment is here

@Ultimategeneral Sometimes, I agree that Nebud is stubborn, and very very angry. But it's like OluwabuqqyYOLO said, Nebud has been through a lot. I'm actually thinking back now to the first time that it met a noble and how obedient it had been. It had been so eager to call Fajahromo 'sirga' and follow it to the pits, simply because it told it to. So, life has hardened Nebud, and made it very difficult, and stubborn. And, I agree that acting the way it's acting while it's in the imp form, is very reckless, but, I think it's not really easy to have your identity changed. Like, on the outside it's an imp, but it still sees itself as an uspec. Anyway, I just hope that it doesn't get itself into too much trouble

@cassbeat thank you for reading, glad you liked it

@ayshow6102 thank you for reading!

@Fazemood haha too unsmart. As in, the smartness is regressing, that's too funny! I agree, but it's like I was saying to Ultimategeneral, Nebud is very very angry. And, I think, rightfully so. It has been put through so much, and now it has to endure another thing. But yes, Nebud needs to grow up...hopefully it learns that before...more coming soon

“Please forgive him domina.” Arexon said, staring at the tall imp.

I frowned at Arexon. Him? Arexon clearly knew what it was doing. And domina? It called an imp domina? I did not know how those words could come so easily from Arexon. Did it have no pride? No wonder it slaved away for the uspecs who murdered its progenitor and stole its port.

“She called me domina.” The tall imp said. “I like her.” The imps standing behind it laughed. “Tell your boyfriend to keep his hands off my girl. I won’t accept apologies next time.”

Arexon nodded. “Thank you do…”

“It’s Zane.” The imp cut Arexon off.

Arexon bent so close to me, that its lips were by my ear. “If you ever do something that stupid again, I’ll kill you myself.” Arexon whispered. Then it pulled back.

The imp with the basket of rolls smiled at me. “It’s okay babe.” It pulled out two more rolls and put them by my bowl. Then it did the same for Arexon. “You’re very beautiful by the way.” It said to it.

Then the imp moved around and went to sit beside Arexon. “We should get her clothes babe, or none of your miners will be able to get any work done.”

Zane smiled. It sat beside the imp and pulled it into its arms. Then they kissed. It was a strange thing, one that I had only seen in the tome which I had read. I did not understand this locking of lips and the twining of tongues. But these two imps did it, and they did it for a long time. Long enough for Arexon and I to finish our meals. Yakubo ate its rolls, but it did not touch the soup.

Finally, the imps stopped their kissing. “I should go babe.” Zane said.

The other one nodded. “Can I shelter them for the night?” it asked. “They’re so cute, aren’t they?”

Zane glared at me.

“Come on babe, it’s their first night.”

“No one sheltered us on our first night.”

“Kindness towards strangers Zane, that is what makes us better than the rest.”

Zane sighed. “As if I could say no to you.” It placed a kiss on the other imp’s head before walking away.

“I am Aliyah.” It said to Arexon. I found the way it smiled at me puzzling. There was something about this imp that reminded me of my own. I thought of Musa then, and I realized how much I missed the imp’s company. If I survived this ordeal, it would make a great story, I thought with a smile.

“I knew you had it in you.” Aliyah said.

It wasn’t till the imp spoke that I realized that I was smiling. I wiped the smile off my face. “Don’t worry,” it leaned towards Arexon, “we’ll work on him.”

Arexon giggled, leaving me even more befuddled by it. How did it play its part so well?

“I really do need to get you clothes.” Aliyah said.

“I thought only gang members wore clothes.”

Aliyah sighed. “Miners and their stupid rules. I’m a cook, so it’s very different for us. Still, I’m sure I can talk to Zane. He said he liked you, he’ll want you in his gang.” Aliyah looked up. “All of you.” It smiled at Yakubo and me. Yakubo smiled back at the imp, I did not. Aliyah turned its attention back to Arexon. “You really are too beautiful to walk around here naked. I remember what that was like, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. They may not have lust, but they remember what it felt like to have it.” It sighed. “Even without lust, we are still attracted to ourselves.” It laughed. “I suppose that is the human way.”

“Thank you.” Arexon said.

Aliyah smiled. Its gaze turned to Yakubo’s bowl. “Are you done eating?” it asked.

“Yes.” Yakubo replied, smiling back at the imp. “Thank you.”

“It really is not so bad. You will get used to it soon. Wait for me, I will be back.” It rose and took its basket of rolls with it.

“That is a kind imp.” Yakubo said.

“It is. Not that we deserve it.” Arexon said the last part glaring at me.

I ignored it.

“Let’s go!” Aliyah announced once it returned, its hands empty. “I’ll show you to my shelter. I share it with Zane, but we’ll all share it tonight.”

“What do we do with the bowls?” Yakubo asked. It was starting to mimic the deference in Arexon’s mannerism.

Aliyah smiled at it. “Leave it. The cooks take care of all that. While the miners mine, we cook and clean this room and the kitchen.”

“Where is the kitchen?” Yakubo asked.

“Behind those fog walls.” It jerked its head to the wall of fog behind us. “Now, come on, Mr. Inquisitive.”

We stood and followed Aliyah out of the eating room. I took one last deep breath before we left the room. As we walked forward, into the crowd of imps standing outside the eating room, a space was created for us. They did not reach out to grab Arexon as they had before. I could tell from the way that Aliyah smiled and greeted some of the imps, that it was familiar with them.

We made our way through a maze of tunnels and digs.

“It is a hard life.” Aliyah said, after we walked out of a room filled with strays. “I was one of them once.” It said. “Zane and I.”

“Were you really?” Yakubo asked. “What happened?”

“A fluke occurrence. I found a big enough bonbon and snuck into the cleaning room at an odd time. I started speaking with one of the cooks, and she decided that I had the makings of a good cook. She knew one of the runners, the imps like Jojo, who assist the pious, and asked the imp to put in a good word for me. A month later I was a cook. Zane joined the sun, and the rest is history. I think he didn’t want me in a gang, and he couldn’t join one without me.”

“You and Zane are close?” Arexon asked.

The imp nodded. “Our church was burned down right as we were about to say our wedding vows. We died together, came to this existence together, lived our first few decades together, and were sent to Aurelion together. We’ve never spent a day apart since we turned ten in our human lives. We’ve always had each other.”

“That must be nice.” Arexon said.

“What about you and…” it broke off. “I never even asked for your names. I was too carried away with Jacob’s smile.”

Arexon laughed. Neither Yakubo nor I joined in. Again, I did not see the humor in the imp’s words.

“I am Alexa, and this is Ned.”

“Nice to meet you. And what is your story?”

“Too long to tell while walking.” Arexon and Aliyah laughed. Again, I did not see the humor.

Finally, we reached a small dig. This dig had curtains covering the archway leading into it. Aliyah pulled the curtains aside. “Come in.” it said. “This is our humble abode.”

“Are there any okuns nearby?” Arexon asked.

Aliyah nodded. “Come with me.”

“You two stay here and wait for us.” Arexon said, before leaving.

They turned around a few bends and were lost. I was suddenly left feeling as if I should have gone with them. I did not like Arexon, but I could not imagine anything better than sinking my sore feet into okun.

“I have been to mines before Nebud, but none as wretched as this.” Yakubo stated.

I glared at it.

“What is wrong Nebud?” it asked. “Why have you been ignoring me? I had thought that after all the time we spent together in your suite, we had formed something of a friendship.”

I snapped. I don’t know why I chose that moment, but it was as if I suddenly realized that I was stuck with Yakubo and Arexon in the most depressing place I’d ever seen. Both uspecs I hated.

“A friendship with a traitor?”

Yakubo pulled back. “Traitor?” it frowned. “What makes me a traitor?”

“I brought you into my suite and allowed you to see my interactions with my imp, and in exchange, you told Arexon about our close bond. That was how Arexon knew that it could use Musa as a way to keep me in line.”

“I did not. I would never…”

“Keep your lies.”

I stormed off, deciding that the thought of okuns was too tempting to resist. Especially not when the alternative was spending time with the lying traitor Yakubo.

“Where are you going Nebud?” Yakubo yelled. “We were told to stay put. You’ll get lost in these digs!”

“Sadly, stray, today is not your lucky day. Give it to me.”

The imp shook its head. “Beg you, beg you. One piece, one month. Beg you.”

Jojo put its hand on the back of the imp’s head and pushed it forward. The imp’s head smashed against the rough wall. The imp fell, with blood on its face. Jojo bent to take the pickaxe from the imp’s hand. The imp, though fallen, struggled to keep a hold on its instrument. Jojo was obviously stronger. It grabbed onto the pickaxe and pulled it from the struggling hand. Then it rose the instrument up and struck the fallen imp in its face. The imp’s limbs twitched. Blood came out from the wound in the side of its head, where Jojo had struck it.

Jojo rose the pickaxe again, much higher this time, and brought it down hard against the bump on the wall. A large piece broke off. Jojo picked the piece up and brought it over to us.

“This is what our bonbons look like.” It said, handing the piece over to Arexon.

“Can I hold it?” Arexon’s voice was filled with awe, as if it had never seen the metal before. It was a truly inspiring performance.

“Please.”

Arexon took it. Drawn by my curiosity, I walked closer to the metal. Most of it was brown, covered in sludge, but the part that had been sheared, was a glittering cyan crystal. It was large enough to fit fully in Arexon’s palm.

“It’s beautiful.” Arexon said.

Jojo nodded. “Hold onto it for now. I’m going to have to take it from you at the eating room though.”

“Thank you.”

Jojo continued walking. As we walked, I stared at Arexon. If I did not know better, I would truly believe that Arexon was the imp it pretended to be. I had never seen a better performance. It was subservient, it was subservient in a way that I could never be. And Arexon was by birth an imperial. Yet, here it was, playing the part of an imp, and playing it convincingly. A voice in my mind pondered at what other roles Arexon played. I silenced the voice. I did not care about Arexon and all the parts that it could play. All I cared about was its death. And from what I’d seen so far, fatal wounds here were not an uncommon thing. I would not have a better chance to kill Arexon, than here in the mines, especially since it was doing its best to appear as an imp.

I was pulled to the present when we walked into a crowded space. I could tell from the size of the space that it was a dig, but it was so filled that my body scraped against imps as we made our way to the front.

“Beg you!” I heard a naked imp cry.

I heard other cries, but in tongues that I could not understand. I did understand the word ‘beg’, but in an umani tongue. It was said in the most common umani tongue, the only one that I had a shallow understanding of.

A naked imp reached for the piece of metal in Arexon’s hands. As if expecting it, Jojo turned around and struck the imp’s hand with its pickaxe. The imp pulled the hand back with tears streaming down its face.

“I’ll take it now.” Jojo smiled at Arexon, before taking the piece from it.

“Pickaxes are not allowed in the eating room. The fog won’t let you take it in.”

I heard a loud whistle. Now we were pushing past clothed imps. Several imp hands struck out, grabbing at Arexon. I noticed that several of them where grabbing onto its breasts.

Jojo turned around. It did not strike these imps with its pickaxe. “Be gentle.” It pleaded. “She’s new, it’s only her first day.” When its pleading was not heeded, it looked around, and then smiled. “Zane!” It yelled.

A space was cleared in front of us. Through this space I could see a fog door, and beside the door, a short stand. The stand had a basin at the top which reminded me of the ‘address’ in Katsoaru, from the day of the kaiser’s bout. This was a different type of address though. I had wondered how the eating room worked. Now I understood. The piece of metal was most likely put into the basin, and, depending on the size of the piece, the fog softened to allow an appropriate number of imps in.

“Jojo!” A tall imp, dressed in worn trousers and a shirt, called out. It stood to the side of the stand.

“Please tell these boys to be gentlemen.”

The tall imp’s gaze darted to Arexon. It stared at it for a while, before turning back to Jojo. “Why should I care?”

Jojo tossed the piece of metal to the tall imp. The tall imp whistled and all the hands reaching for Arexon fell away.

“Come on.” Jojo said. It led us to the fog wall. The imp turned around, and then pointed at the stand. “Once you have a piece of bonbon, put it in there. If it is big enough, the fog will take it, and allow you access to the room. If it is not, it won’t take it. Depending on the piece of the metal, you may be able to have more than one person get into the eating room with the same bonbon.”

It rose its hand in the air, and flung the pickaxe towards the back of the room. The naked imps rushed at it.

“Why’d you do that?” The tall imp drawled.

“I have to give back to the strays.” Jojo replied with a smile.

It touched the fog wall and it softened. “You three, go in. This is a first day only treat, so I would advice that you take advantage of it.”

“What about me Jojo, do I get a treat?” the tall imp asked.

Jojo sighed. “Only you and five of your imps.”

“Thank you.”

Arexon walked in first, then Yakubo, and then I. Six clothed imps walked in after us, before Jojo came into the room and the fog hardened behind us.

I took a deep breath.

It was a reflex. It took some time for my brain to catch up to my nostrils and realize that I liked the smell of this room. Maybe it was the hard fog at the entrance, but the foul odor everywhere else in Aurelion had been purged from this room. It smelled clean. There was no scent like there’d been in the pious one’s office, but I preferred the plain cleanness of this room to that one anyway.

The room had a simple set up. It was by far the largest space I’d seen so far in Aurelion. The smoothness of the ground was a welcome relief from the calluses everywhere else. It was in standing on this smooth ground, that I finally noticed that I was bleeding from the soles of my feet. I looked down and saw that Yakubo was also leaving bloody footprints. Arexon, however, was not.

“Your feet will get used to Aurelion.” Jojo stated, looking at the blood.

It led us down a space between two rows of rectangular tables and long benches, which imps were packed together on. “There is always a cook in this place, so, whenever you have earned a meal, you can come in here and eat. If you’re smart, that can work to your advantage.”

We stopped on a line in front of a short table. There were several imps wearing tunics, standing by the walls behind the short tables. The wall they stood by was made of hard fog. We reached the front of the line and Jojo said, “first timers Alex.”

The imp wearing a short tunic behind the table nodded. Jojo got out of the line. “Find a bench and eat.” It stepped towards Arexon then. “I’ll talk to Zane and see if he’ll allow you into his gang.”

“Thank you Jojo.”

The imp winked at Arexon before walking away.

We were each giving a bowl, filled with a light brown soup, and a roll. With our meals in our hands, we walked towards the first empty spot we found, and sat together on the table. Yakubo sat close to one end, and I sat on the opposite bench. I found it irritating that Arexon chose to sit beside me.

There was a bit of space beside Yakubo and Arexon. The space was large enough for four more uspecs, two on each side.

Arexon broke off a piece of bread, dipped it into the soup, and ate it. It said nothing as it ate. Yakubo looked around. I was not hungry. We’d had a full meal before leaving the pious base, but prudence told me to eat while I had the chance. I could not help but notice that the three of us were the only naked imps in the entire eating room. My mind filled with the vision of an imp so hungry that it ate its own vomit. I took a chunk off my roll and placed it in the bowl. The soup had several small chunks in them. A bite into a chunk showed that it was meat, but what kind, I could not tell. I lifted the bowl to my mouth, as I had done so many times in the pits of Hakute, and drank some of the soup.

It was not good. It was not worse than the food I’d had in the pits though. I much preferred the roll.

Yakubo dipped its roll into the soup and took a bite of it. It coughed loudly, as if gagging on the food. “This is terrible.” Yakubo said.

Arexon’s mouth parted, but before it could speak, another voice broke in.

“It’s not that bad handsome.” It said.

There was an imp standing by our table. The imp was dressed in a short tunic, like the server. It had a basket filled with rolls. It took two of those rolls out of its basket and placed it on the table by Yakubo’s bowl. “The rolls are better.” It said with a smile. “What’s your name handsome?”

Yakubo’s mouth hung open. Its gaze darted to Arexon and I could tell that it was nervous. Then it cleared its throat. “Ya…Jacob.” It said.

“Jacob. That’s a beautiful name. I’m Aliyah.” The imp stated.

I wanted more rolls too, so, I grabbed onto the imp’s wrist. “I want more rolls.” I said.

The imp’s gaze shifted to me. Its shocked gaze moved from my hand on its wrist, to my face, and then back to my hand, as if it could not imagine that I had touched it. I was beginning to get irritated.

“Take your hand off her.” An angry voice spat out.

I turned to find the tall imp, Zane, glaring at me. There were five imps standing behind it.

Arexon leaned into me. Its fingers wrapped around my upper arm. “Take your hand off now Nebud.” It snapped in a whisper to me.

I tightened my hold, before releasing the imp.

Part 9
-------

The stench only grew fouler as we emerged into a dimly lit tunnel. A low hanging stalactite scraped against the imp hair on my scalp. Pushed past reason, I reached above me determined to knock the structure down with my hands. I found that I was not nearly strong enough to do any damage to the stalactite. My hand hurt instead.

I hated this fragile imp body.

The tunnel we walked through now was so narrow that we had to walk in a single line, one person after the other. Bumps on the side walls scraped against my arms as I tried to force my way through. I could see that Yakubo, due to its larger bulk, was having an even more difficult time making its way through. I caught sight of another stalactite just in time to dodge it before it banged against my forehead. The dangling obstacles and the bumps on the walls combined with the calluses on the ground to make for a truly unpleasant passage.

We walked in silence for minutes, though with the discomfort, those minutes felt like hours. As our voyage continued, we drew closer to an archway made prominent by the lack of lighting behind it. The imp, Jojo, stopped just in front of that archway and turned to face us.

“Everything in Aurelion is either a dig or a tunnel. The tunnels are the passageways. That’s most likely where you’ll be sleeping for your first few years here. If you sleep in a tunnel, make sure your awake before the mining starts. Never clog the tunnels during mining times. The digs are where the mining occurs. We are lucky here in Aurelion, we get to mine bonbons.”

“Bonbons?” Arexon asked. I noticed now that when Arexon spoke, the pitch of its voice was higher than when it had spoken as an imp in the pious base. How did Arexon manage this? Why did Arexon do this?

The imp smiled at Arexon. It winked, closing its right eyelid over its empty socket for a second before opening it. Its gaze lingered over Arexon in a way that I found intriguing. “That’s what we call the metal we mine here.” It replied cheerfully.

“Why?” Yakubo asked.

The imp did not look at Yakubo as it had Arexon. “Because it tastes good.” It replied curtly. “As I was saying, we mine bonbons in the digs. Some digs have been fully mined, and overtime have come to be used for a different purpose. The eating room, for example, is a stale dig. Every once in a while, a bonbon appears in those, but it’s rare. There are other stale digs which the gangs use as their headquarters. That’s where they sleep. Never wander into a stale dig, it’s the best way to get yourself snuffed.”

“Snuffed?” Arexon asked.

The imp smiled. “Yes beautiful.”

“But we are immortal.”

“Indeed.” The imp’s smile widened. “But our body still functions mostly the same. We cannot be killed, but we feel pain. And so in Aurelion, we choose to refer to attacks that would have killed us as humans, as snuffings. For example, if you are starving. You won’t die, but your body would feel like you were. The hunger pangs would be unbearable, you’ll be weak, you’ll be in pain, you’ll be snuffed. If you’re stabbed in the heart, your body will heal, but before it does, you may or may not bleed your blood volume out. Snuffed. But don’t be scared, it won’t happen to you. Them,” it gestured at Yakubo and me, “definitely, at least a million times. But you, no. Not if you join a gang, and all the gangs will want you.”

“Gangs?” Arexon again.

The imp nodded. “They run this place. Occasionally, the novices walk around, but mainly, it’s the gangs. The easiest way to survive is to join one. And you will have your pick.” It stepped closer to Arexon and stroked the side of its face with the back of its hand. “I can introduce you to one if you want.” The timbre of its voice dropped.

“I would like that. Thank you.”

“Anytime. It is Alexa, is it not?”

Arexon nodded.

The imp took a step back and stretched out its hand. “Jojo.” It said. “Nice to make your acquaintance.”

I watched the imp’s face as they shook hands. It was turned towards us, so I could note its smile as it continued to study Arexon, its gaze moving over every inch of its body. Finally, it let go of Arexon’s hand. It took a step back, cleared its throat, and glanced dismissively at Yakubo and me, before returning its smiling gaze to Arexon.

“Until you learn this area thoroughly, and you will, in a year or two, don’t go wandering about. If you move too far away from the eating room, you may starve before you find your way back. It is bad if the gangs catch you laying weakly in the tunnels, but it’s even worse if the novices do. So, just don’t do it, because I can guarantee that you will get lost. We’re walking into our first dig now. Stay close to me.”

It turned around then, and walked into the dark alcove.

I did not know how it was possible, but it got even fouler the further in we went. It took some time for my eyes to readjust to the darkness. It was just lit enough to make out the shapes of things, but not enough to see their colors. There was one advantage to this space though, it was bigger. The top walls were higher up, giving enough room for me to walk without worrying about stalactites. The side walls were much further away, so that we could walk side-by-side if we chose to. We did not. The ground, however, was more callused than in the previous place. There were so many sharp bits on the floor that I started to feel as if I was walking on shards of glass. Then I stepped into a small pool with a sticky substance. I could not see what the substance was, but I could tell from the feel of it, that it was not okun.

“We call these the midnight digs. You can’t tell day from night in the digs, but these are the worst lit ones. Believe it or not, the gang that runs these digs, removed the lights themselves. It’s smart too, they have the least fights. Who wants digs like this right? That’s the moon gang, by the way. Get it, moon, midnight.” The imp laughed. “Human humor. Don’t worry, you’ll learn all the gangs by name and clothes, and after some time, faces too. Unless you want to join their gang, or get snuffed, don’t stay out after dark.” It laughed again. “Get it, midnight, after dark.” It laughed some more, and then it sighed, leaving me thoroughly confused. I did not see any humor in anything that it had said.

I frowned at the sight of a form hanging from a stalactite. I could tell from the silhouette that it was an imp with its legs wound tight around a stalactite. One of its hands held onto the stalactite, the other held an object which it struck against the stalactite.

“Once you start really mining, which won’t be for a long time, because you need to get pickaxes to do real mining, and almost all the pickaxes have been taken by the gangs. But once you start mining, you’ll find yourself in odd places. Our bonbons are tricky metals. They can sprout from any walls. Roof, stalactite, doesn’t matter to them. They’re like uspecs in that way, they don’t care about the pain they cause us.”

A stream of white light came into view. We emerged from the dark space into another narrow tunnel. We were squeezed between the walls. I had to dodge some more stalactites. We came to a cross-section where the tunnel could either go straight, left or right. The imp turned left and continued walking. Soon, we were close to another archway. This one had bright yellow light streaming out of it.

“Welcome to the bright side.” The imp turned around to smile at Arexon before walking in.

The dig we walked into was filled with imps. There were not so many that it was crowded, but there were enough to be shocking. All of the imps were naked. They scratched at the walls with their fingers. I found this extremely odd. It took me a while to realize that this dig was not as foul as the areas we’d just walked out of.

The imp leading our tour stopped. “These are the daylight digs, they belong to the sun gang. That is the biggest and most powerful gang in Aurelion. Their leader is a man called Zane with a girlfriend, Aliyah, as beautiful as you Alexa. They’re one of the few here with lust. They shouldn’t be here, but they lied to the pious, and now, this place won’t run without them. Aliyah serves in the kitchen, she’s one of the cooks. Nice girl. Anyway, they are kind enough to allow the strays to mine their nearly stale digs.”

“What are strays Jojo?” Arexon asked.

“I like the way you say my name.” The imp replied. I frowned. “Strays are naked imps. All clothed imps belong to gangs. Of course, there’s really not enough bonbons here for a stray to earn a meal with, but it’s something.”

Jojo’s gaze wandered to a side of the space where an imp was putting its fingers into its mouth. Jojo’s mouth twisted with disgust. “Never eat the bonbons.” Jojo warned. “They may taste good, but they will make you sick. Enough of them and you’ll snuff yourself.” Right after it’d said that, the imp who’d put its hands into its mouth, bent and a strange cyan retch came out of its mouth. It vomited. Then it let out a loud shriek. It scooped up the vomit with its hand and put it back into its mouth.

It was a truly disturbing sight. I looked away.

Jojo shook its head, but then it sighed. “Strays.” It spat out, before turning around and continuing to walk.

“Why would they eat the metal if they knew it would make them sick?” Yakubo asked.

“It’s probably better than nothing.” Arexon replied. “At least with the metal, they can feel as if they’re eating something.”

Jojo turned around to flash a smile at Arexon. “Beautiful and smart, I think I might be in love.”

In love. I frowned at that. Was this love Musa had described an imp trait then? Could they so easily love a stranger?

“You’re right Alexa, that’s part of it. The truth is, the system is rigged against strays. If they find a piece of bonbon big enough to earn their meal, a gang member would take it from them before they made it to the eating room. But, if a stray does manage to get into the eating room, it can eat in peace. No one would take its meal. The eating rooms are run by the worst gang, the cooks. They live separate from miners, and they are solely in charge of the food. If they decide not to cook, the miners will not eat. It is a terrible system, but it works for strays, once they get into the eating room, that is.”

We walked into another dig. This one was mostly empty, save for a single naked imp, striking a pickaxe against a slight bump sprouting from the corner of the room. It stopped as soon as it realized that it was no longer alone. I could tell from the stricken look on its face, that it had gone to much pains to ensure its solitude.

Jojo walked towards the kneeling imp. “That’s a beautiful piece.” It said.

“I thank.” The imp replied. This imp’s boga tongue was not as good as Jojo’s.

Jojo whistled. “You must have spent weeks mining that one, without anyone seeing. And it looks just about ready to fall too. A stronger imp would have it in one strike.”

The kneeling imp did not speak.

@RealLordZeus thank you!!! that's so nice to hear

@Fazemood I've actually never heard of that app, but I'll look it up. Thanks for the suggestion

@cassbeat happy birthday in arrears! Hope you had a great day! This update is not as long as the last one, but it's longer than average. Hope you enjoy

@spixytinxy Thank you for reading!!!

@Madosky112 As in real adventure for Nebud. Two future emperors? Hmmm...what are you seeing that I'm not?

The motion slowly returned to the mobile. We eased past the open gates, emerging into one of the major burg roads. I caught a glimpse of the hard fog gates which led to the barracks. It was only one of four such gates. The serf turned left, boosting the motion of the canoe as it proceeded. It made a sharp right turn, and I was suddenly at a part of the Acropolis which I’d never seen before. The area to the left of the road was covered with an ominous black wall. The serf made another turn, left this time, and we were suddenly in view of another set of hard fog gates.

I couldn’t say exactly how I knew. Perhaps it was the armed novices standing guard at the gates, the marks on their neckcloths making it clear that they belonged to the order of Fabrication. Or maybe it was the aura of the place. My nostrils were suddenly filled with a particularly foul stench.

The canoe stopped.

A novice walked up to the side of the canoe. It glanced over us, before fixing its gaze on the serf. “More deliveries for us?” it asked in a way that made it clear that it was familiar with the serf.

“Yes sirga.” The serf replied.

“They’re a scrawny lot. Hope our elders didn’t waste too much money on them?”

The serf chuckled. “Makers are smart sirga, I would assume not.”

The novice laughed. “Were you told what purpose they would serve? We surely don’t need any more cooks or cleaners.”

“They are miners sirga.”

“Miners.” It scuffed. “Well, I guess we can’t be too picky. The better imps find masters.” It poked its head out and stared at us again. “Although, one of them looks quite capable of the work. Not all bad then.” It moved back. “Ajar!” It called out.

The gate opened and the serf steered us in.

We went from the bright natural light of the daylight dots to almost complete darkness. It was impossible to see. Perhaps if I had aqua-sight I would be able to see through the barely lit area, but I didn’t.

I could smell though, and it was foul. I had never smelled anything as foul in my entire life. It smelled worse than death. I would never forget the smell of death, it was linked with one of the few early life memories which clung to me. I’d thought that I would never smell anything fouler, but I’d been wrong. It was so putrid that I tried not to breathe in too much of it.

It was obvious that the serf had a lot of experience in this place, because it did not seem the least bit perturbed by the lack of illumination. It just kept steering the canoe, until we emerged into an area which was much better lit. It smelled just as foul, but at least we could see the walls.

The tunnel we steered in was narrow, much too narrow to take more than one canoe at a time. It was so narrow that our backs scraped against the walls as we moved. After a few bumps with uncomfortable calluses in the wall, I bent, leaning away from it. I tried to think of a good way to describe these walls. Hard sludge I decided, very hard sludge. But they were not smooth sludge walls like those of the dwellings which we’d stayed in on the inter-port trail. No, these walls were filled with bumps. Some hanging like growths from the top walls, others emerging from the bottom. The bumps on the bottom were made obvious by the rocky motion of the canoe.

Finally, the canoe came to a stop.

It docked in front of a break in the callused wall, covered by closed curtains.

The serf came out of the stern and walked through the curtains. “Salutations pious one.” I heard it say through the curtains.

There was a long pause before I heard a croaky response. “Yes?”

“I have a delivery of miners pious one.”

“Are they newly dead?”

“No pious one, they have served in the spectral existence for years.”

“Is there any length of service time prescribed?”

“No pious one, their length of stay here has been left to your discretion.”

A gruff sound, like that of a throat being cleared, was followed by, “bring them in Jojo.”

“Yes domina.”

An imp dressed solely in brown knickers walked out through the curtains. It drew the curtains open and said, “well, come down.”

It had been a long time since an imp spoke to me with so much disrespect.

Arexon stood. Yakubo and I rose more slowly. We climbed down from the platform and walked in through the curtains.

There was a pious one seated in a chair, behind a crowded desk. I could tell from its fraise that it was a maker, a pious of the order of fabrication.

The serf waited for us to file into the tiny office space, before walking out. The curtains were drawn behind it.

I could tell from the walls and the floor in the space, that the uspec had made an effort to make it comfortable. It was obvious that the bumps on the walls had been filed and that some sort of scent had been added here, to reduce the putrid stink of the air outside the space. The scent did not make this air comparable to that outside the mine, but it was an improvement. I took a deep breath.

The maker kept us waiting for a while.

The imp returned to its task of arranging documents onto shelves around the space. There were several such shelves. There were shelves behind me which were filled with tomes. Several of those tomes appeared quite intriguing.

“I suppose we can handle them ourselves, since its only three.” The maker said.

“Yes domina.” The imp replied.

“Very well,” the maker sighed, “fetch the logbook.”

The imp walked over to a single shelf at the right of the room. That shelf had several worn looking tomes. It picked up the tome at the top and took it to the maker’s desk. It flipped the tome open and pulled out a pen.

“Names and genders.” The maker ordered.

“Alexa, female, domina.” Arexon was the first to reply.

The pause between Arexon’s response and Yakubo’s was just long enough to be noted, but not too long to be offensive. The maker’s attention lifted. “Jacob, male, domina.”

I was the last. I was already prepared, seeing as this had been the first line on the sheet which Arexon had given to us. “Ned, male.” I swallowed. “Domina.” The word sounded forced; I knew it.

“Do any of you have the ability to produce lust?” the maker asked curtly.

The imp’s head rose, and it stared intensely at Arexon.

“No domina.” Arexon replied.

“No domina.” Yakubo stated.

“No… domina.” I added. This had also been covered in the sheet which Arexon had given us.

The maker rose its head then, making us the sole focus of its attention for the first time since we’d walked into the space. It placed its hands on the table, twining its fingers together. It had four outer eyes on its face, and a bare chest. This was not a boga. It did not have horns or neck scales. It was either a kute or a soaru then. But as it was seated, and the bottom of the desk touched the ground, I could not tell.

“You are in Aurelion now. Your job is to mine. You will learn how to perform your job and you will do it to the best of your ability or you will be whipped. You earn your meals by mining. If you do not mine enough on any given day, you will not eat. You will mine until you earn the right to have a term of service fixed. When that day comes, should it ever come, you will learn how many more decades of mining you have in store for you. Less than ten percent of the imps who come here do a good enough job to leave. I will let you decide if you will like to be amongst them. Do you have any questions?”

At this point, the maker had already dismissed us and was staring intently at the open document on its desk. Its dismissal made it clear what the expected response was.

“No domina.” We all replied. Although, I only said the ‘no’ and let Arexon and Yakubo say the ‘domina’.

“Show them around Jojo.”

“Yes domina.” The imp bowed to the maker. “Come.” It stated, walking by us.

Arexon led the way, Yakubo followed, and I brought up the rear. I took one last deep inhale of the scented air, before resigning myself to the foulness I was about to be submerged in.

We were just out of the space, the stink forcing its way up my nostrils, when the imp turned around to regard us. It smiled at Arexon in a way that I found troubling. Arexon did not seem to mind. It had its head bent slightly, as if it was shy. I did not understand how Arexon could take to a plot of subservience so easily. It was a commander. It had been an imperial one. How could it bow to a pious and call it domina? How did it serve the line of Kaisers that stole its home and call them sirga? It was weak, I decided. Not that I cared. Arexon’s days were numbered.

“Welcome to Aurelion,” the imp said, with a smirk.

Part 8
--------

I munched on a piece of bread as Yakubo asked, “why imps sirga? Could we not have conducted the search as uspecs?”

Arexon looked up from its meal.

According to the commander, this was the last good meal we could expect to get for a long time. The food at Aurelion was barely edible. I rose my cup and gulped down half of the cup’s content. I realized as the liquid made its way down my throat that I was just as eager for Arexon’s response. Why did we have to appear to be imps? Would it not be easier to go into the mine and search for the artifact as uspecs?

“We do not have the exact location. According to the map it can be in one of three digs. There are other uspecs in the mine, not to mention the imps. If anyone else found out that we were searching, they could reach the exact location before us. We cannot let that happen. We have to go in as imps and search the locations discreetly.”

Arexon pushed its empty bowl away from it. It rose its hand in the air and a guru approached. The guru handed Arexon two sheets of paper. Arexon read those sheets silently.

I filled my cup with more wine.

My sight was just as widened as it had been in my uspec form. I did not have eyes at the back of my head, as I’d had when Manus turned me into a swan. It was as if my eyes had remained exactly where they’d been. After our transformation we’d been led to a room with several reflective surfaces. I’d seen the reflection of my new self, and realized that, just like Arexon and Yakubo, all evidence of my extra eyes were gone. I was left with only the appearance of two empty eye sockets. There was no blemish on my skin, nothing to show that I was anything other than the imp I pretended to be. That was the purposes of the styluses in the chamber, I assumed, to change our appearance. It was well done.

Arexon lifted a sheet of paper and handed it over to Yakubo. “Your name is Jacob.” Arexon said. “This is your epic. Memorize it.” Yakubo took the sheet.

“But this is less than ten lines.” Yakubo exclaimed. “Surely, this is too short for a plausible life story.”

“That is as much information as anyone will care to ask.” Arexon replied. It handed me the other sheet. “Your name is Ned.”

I took the sheet of paper and read the sparse lines written in the common tongue.

“Imps speak an umani tongue.” I stated. I did not know what I thought of my voice. My height had been greatly shrunk in the crowds. I was now even shorter than Musa, and much scrawnier. Yakubo had the best bulk. It was about the same height that it had been as an uspec, and had muscled arms. I could not help but wonder why I had not been given such a body. I despised physical weakness.

But then, Arexon was much scrawnier than I, and it did not seem frazzled by this.

Arexon stared at me. “Umanis, like uspecs, speak different tongues. In the mine they will speak the boga tongue predominantly. That is how the uspecs who officiate the mining prefer it.”

Its sockets seemed to be frozen on me, because even after answering my question, its gaze did not shift. It studied me in a way that I did not like. Though, considering my hatred for the uspec, I would be annoyed whichever way it looked at me.

“We will be imps.” Arexon announced after long moments of silence. Its gaze was still on mine. “That means that we will have no pride. Is that understood?”

“Yes sirga.” Yakubo responded immediately.

Arexon made no move to acknowledge its words, it chose to stare at me instead. I ignored it, gulping down my wine.

Arexon sighed. “Do I need to remind you what you stand to lose if this goes wrong Nebud?”

Musa. I thought. My eyes. No, the uspec, now imp, did not need to remind me. “No.” I spoke through clenched teeth. Arexon quirked an eyebrow and waited for me. It simply sat there and waited, staring patiently at me, as if it knew that I would cave. “Sirga.” I spat the honorific out.

Arexon did not even smile. I think that was what I hated the most about the uspec. It did not gloat. It stole little victories from me, bent me to its will in despicable ways that reminded me too much of Fajahromo. But unlike its counterpart, it did not outwardly glory at my humiliation. No, it kept its joy on the inside. I loathed it.

“You can understand the most common umani tongue can you not?”

I frowned. How could Arexon have known that? My first thought was Yakubo, but Yakubo did not know that. Yakubo could not have known that. Musa was not comfortable speaking the umani tongue with me. It had only done it one time, once, while I was reading the tome on umanis and asked the imp to pronounce some words in it. “Not fluently.” I replied. Arexon waited. I swallowed. “Sirga.”

“That will do. As I was saying, we will be imps. We will call all uspecs we see domina. Is that clear?”

“Yes sirga.” Yakubo replied.

I did not respond. Arexon continued anyway. “It is imperative that the imps see us as one of them. If they even suspect that we are uspecs, they will kill us. There is no great love for uspecs amongst imps, especially not the ones in the mines. Do not, under any circumstance, use spectra. Imps cannot be killed. The worse that our magic would do, is render them comatose for a period of time. We shouldn’t be in Aurelion for too long, but if we get stuck there, it will be best if there are no imps who know of our true identity. While we may appear as imps, we are not, which means that we are not immortal as they are. They can kill us, and we can die. There are over tens of thousands of them down there. No amount of spectra will allow three uspecs defeat so many imps.”

Yakubo took a deep breath. “This is starting to sound less and less appealing sirga.”

Arexon smiled at it. It was a closed lip smile, but it was the first time I’d seen Arexon smile in a while. “You were stationed at a mine in your home port for some time, you know your way around mine digs. You also know how to read a map.”

“Yes sirga.”

“That is why you were chosen, and why you cannot be replaced.”

“Of course sirga. It will be my honor to serve with you on this mission.”

The puzzling part was knowing that Yakubo truly meant it. I did not understand the uspec. I did not understand how it could so easily accept its servitude and admire the commander that ensured that it defended the uspecs who enslaved it. I would never be as foolish as Yakubo. It actually felt good to know that Arexon would not be using spectra in the pits. It meant that I would get my chance to kill the uspec. When I got that chance, I would not hesitate.

“Sirga!” A guru called.

Arexon turned and nodded at the guru standing by the curtains which led into the small eating room. “Your mobile is here sirga.”

Arexon stood. “It is time.” It announced.

Yakubo and I both stood. We followed the commander. We were led down a narrow corridor to the base docks. There was a serf seated at the stern of one of the canoes. The canoe was unlike any landlocked canoe I’d ever seen. It had only a tight space at the stern, space enough that only the serf steering the canoe could sit there. A flat base extended from the back of that tight space. The base had two long benches on either side of it. Arexon stepped onto the base and sat on one bench. Yakubo and I sat on the other.

“My name is Alexa.” Arexon stated. “From this moment on, we will answer our imp names. Remember, you are to be courteous to everyone.” Now Arexon stared me in the sockets. “If you do anything to disrespect anyone, and they take it upon themselves to discipline you, I will not intercede. If they decide to slit your throat, thinking that as an imp you will heal, I will not intercede. If they choose to kill you in anyway, I will not intercede. If you die in there due to your own foolishness, I will make sure your imp is sent to Aurelion before your corpse turns cold. Perhaps your precious Musa will be the one to clean up your remains.” Arexon watched me. Its gaze shifted to my clenched fists and my tight jaw, before moving to Yakubo. “No pride. We have a job to do. If we keep our head down and do it properly, we will be out of the mines in under a week.”

I had to stifle the urge to let Arexon know that it would be dying in those mines.

“Move!” Arexon ordered, pounding into the wooden back of the stern divider.

“Yes sirga.” The serf responded.

Moments later, the motion in the canoe was activated. I felt the canoe moving at a slow pace. It continued at this pace until it made its way out of the docks. The canoe turned left as we steered by another base, belonging to another pious order. I noticed that the serf made no move to increase its slow speed even as it continued steering straight down an empty road. Several minutes passed before I could make out the gates which led into the pious camp.

The serf stopped at the order of several bosses standing guard by the gates.

One of the bosses marched over to the right side of the canoe. It examined the stern, before moving along. Its eyes scanned over each of us carefully. I did not know what the soldier was looking for, but it took its time, walking around the mobile. It spent so much time that I was starting to get irritated. I expected Arexon to snap an order at the boss, revealing its true identity. Arexon disappointed me. It stayed silent, its head bent as if it was looking into its hands. I noticed that it appeared nervous.

Finally, the boss’s search was over. “Ajar!” It yelled, before waving the serf on.

"Gratitude most pious one.” Arexon replied.

Most pious one? This irira was a magistrate, I realized. A magistrate of an order in a port. It was the highest position that any pious of that order could hold. And it was filled by an irira. If I did not hate Chiboga, I might actually like it for the fact that it did not have iriras slaughtered.

Arexon turned its head and nodded at something.

One of the gurus which had been standing by the curtains approached. It held a tray.

“Take off your earrings.” Arexon ordered.

I was more than happy to comply. With gleeful hands, I took the offending things off my ears, and placed them on the proffered tray. Arexon and Yakubo did the same.

“Open the chambers.” The magistrate ordered.

The pious ones on the stools pushed a button on their boards and the strange chambers opened, revealing their interiors.

“What is that?” I heard myself asking.

It was against protocol to speak as I had, so I was not surprised when I was not given an answer.

“Yakubo take the chamber to the left, Nebud the one to the right.” Arexon ordered.

Yakubo began marching to its assigned chamber, while I just stood there. I did not like this. I did not like it all. What were these chambers and why was I going into it? Was it a pious tool to retrieve my memories and store them somewhere? I did not know, and I did not want to find out.

“Now soldier!” Arexon snapped.

I remained frozen to the spot, staring at the interior of the chamber. I don’t know what got to me. It certainly was not the snap in Arexon’s voice. I decided that it was the fact that Arexon was going into one of those chambers itself. Surely it could not be too bad if Arexon was going in as well. Not that I had a choice. I told myself that I was moving because Arexon was willing to subject itself to the same treatment, and not because I wanted to keep my eyes and my imp.

The chamber was empty. I found that there was enough space that no part of my body had to scrape against the walls.

“Load the crystals.” I heard the magistrate order.

What crystals I wondered?

“Close the chambers.” The magistrate ordered.

The chambers were closed before I could get an answer to my question.

As soon as the chambers closed, the compartment was filled with complete darkness.

“Activate the displays.” I recognized the magistrate’s voice. “Run through the display tests. Count of.”

“Screen one activated, subject in full view, display test successful.”

“Screen two activated, subject in full view, display test successful.”

“Screen three activated, subject in full view, display test successful.”

“Create the stylus map.”

I could not imagine what that order meant.

“Activate styluses.”

I did not have to wait long to see, or rather feel, the meaning of this order. A hundred tiny needles pushed into my skin. They covered my ailerons, my tail, the scales on my neck. Everything. The pricking was not intolerable. After the scourging that I’d received at Sophian’s behest, and then during my trainings, a needle prick was nothing. But it worried me. I started to think that my initial thoughts may have been right. Pansophy was a contact magic and it was the pious working on us. It was most likely that they were using pansophy. I went through my memories, determined to relive them so that I would know the moment that anything was taken. I realized that that may not be the best solution. If they were searching for my memories and I relived them, then the memories would be out there, easy pickings.

I reversed my decision then, choosing not to remember. But then how would I know that they had stolen my memories. I wouldn’t. There was no way to tell. I could not think of one good thing about this port. Not one. I dreamt about killing all the uspecs that needed to die and then walking out of this port, never to return. As soon as the thoughts crossed my mind, I wondered if perhaps it was a little foolish of me to just think them so openly when they were most likely in my head, reading my thoughts. Pansophy. Why did the magic even exist? Just to torture me with my lack of ability to use it. Why else?

“Review displays. Count of.”

“Screen one, operation complete, review positive.”

“Screen two, operation complete, review positive.”

“Screen three, operation complete, review positive.”

“Deactivate styluses.”

The needles went away. I reached into my head and scanned through my memories. Did I feel any different? I remembered who I was. I remembered that I needed to check my memory, which in itself had to prove that I still had my memory right? If they had taken my memory, or done some invasive search, surely they would also have taken away my memory of any need to worry about such a search. I hoped so at least.

“Deactivate displays.”

“Open the chambers.”

The chamber opened and the strange red-stained-white-light streamed in. I stepped out of the chamber.

I saw Yakubo first.

I frowned.

Yakubo’s skin had been changed. It was no longer green, it was a light shade of brown. It also seemed to be short an eye. One of its imp eyes had vanished. The cyan spikes on its chest were now the same shade of brown as the rest of its body.

I looked down on myself and found that I appeared the same. My skin had been changed to a darker shade of brown. It actually reminded me of Musa’s skin. What was the meaning of this? Had I lost my eyes too. There were no reflective surfaces that I could look at, and so I could not tell. But my field of view appeared the same. I did not think they’d taken my eyes then.

I turned to stare at Arexon and found that it was also missing its eyes. It now had only two eyes on its face, the rest of them had been taken. Why would they take the commander’s eyes and leave mine?

“Is the cloud ready?” the magistrate asked.

“Yes sirga.” A voice replied. I could not see the uspec.

“You may proceed commander.” The magistrate said.

With a jerk of its head, Arexon made it clear that Yakubo and I were to follow it.

As soon as I stepped into the clouds, I realized that I should have been more wary of it. Our identities were being changed. I found it intriguing how mild this pain suddenly felt. Had my recent brush ins with the scourge increased my pain tolerance? I did not think so, I thought it was more likely, that the pain in this cloud was actually milder than that in soaru.

I did not panic as my identity changed. It actually all made sense now. Wherever we were going, it was a place that required us to appear different. I wondered what sort of animal we would be turned into for our mission. A smoke bear, I decided. They were the most common beasts in the boga ports. I would not mind being a smoke bear. From the pictures I’d seen, and the stories I’d read, they were actually quite ferocious.

The pain ended and I was out of the clouds. I could not tell if the clouds moved backwards or if I moved forward.

I stared at Arexon. One look at the breasts on its chest showed what we had been turned into. I looked down at myself and saw a penis sticking out of my pelvis region.

Not fog bears then, but imps with streaked skin.

“Why are we imps?” I asked.

Again, Arexon ignored me.

“With your permission sirga?” Yakubo spoke. It had been turned into a male, like me, and given a slightly bigger body than I had.

Arexon, now a female imp, nodded at Yakubo.

“Why have we been turned into imps sirga?” Yakubo asked, like the dutiful traitor it was.

“Because our assignment requires it.” Arexon replied. “We are going to retrieve the last brio from the Mine of Aurelion.”

I found Arexon’s words ominous. As soon as it spoke, I heard Musa’s voice saying, “The Mine of Aurelion master. It is an imp’s worst nightmare.”

In celebration of Independence weekend, I've decided to make this update LOOONG. I hope you all enjoy it

Part 7
-------

Why me?

The question played on a loop in my head as soon as Arexon gave the order, the day before, and remained throughout the night. In my mind, I was back in the barracks, marching into Arexon’s office after Sophian left. That was when Arexon gave its order, and when I began to ponder on why it would choose me.

Now, I was standing at attention besides Arexon. Arexon’s stance was slightly more relaxed. It had its hands crossed behind it and its feet spread. Yakubo was standing on the other side of Arexon, also at attention. Two gurus stood by the curtains which led into this room.

I did not know what this room was, or why we were standing here. I did know that it was in the pious camp, in the base that belonged to the Order of Fabrication. The canoe ride which brought us here, had been swift. We’d boarded the canoe at the docks by the commander’s office, and then steered through the pious gate exit from the barracks, to the pious camp. As soon as we docked in this base, we’d been led to this room.

Again, I wondered why I had been chosen.

Arexon, Yakubo and I were without our weapons. We all stood unclad. Arexon had explained that we would be unable to wield weapons on the special mission that we were going on.

Of course, after standing outside the office while Arexon had its conversation with Sophian, I could guess what this special mission was. The retrieval of the last brio.

Again, that item. The last brio.

The same last brio that, if Sophian could be believed, was the real reason that Manus had sent Reynard to Lahooni. To Manus, the last brio was the key to the fabled wealth of Lahooni. To the plenum, the last brio was somehow connected to Chuspecip. How could the same object be a key to such diverging interests? I had to believe that Sophila did not actually agree with Manus about the last brio being a key to great wealth. If it did, then I doubted that the uspec would so willingly hand it over to the plenum. So what was the last brio then, and why was it worth so much to the plenum? Enough to stop a war. I reminded myself.

The plenum against Sophila. If I was anywhere except for Chiboga, that would have been a war I wished for. With any luck, both sides would eliminate eachother. Or they would do enough damage for some other forward thinker to drop in with its troops and finish off whoever remained.

I suddenly wished I had the troops to do that. I could have been amassing an army large enough to destroy whoever won. Instead I was here, about to go in search of the last brio, a thing that could turn the plenum away from Chiboga.

Perhaps I could steal the last brio and abscond with it. I knew the plan was foolish before I even finished thinking about it. It wouldn’t happen, not with Arexon there.

Again, I was left to wonder why the uspec had chosen me.

Arexon’s warnings from the day before still rung in my head. It said that this was an opportunity for me to prove my usefulness to the line of Kaisers. That statement alone was enough to make me stop listening. Perhaps I would have if Arexon had not taken it upon itself to reiterate what the young Sophi had shared with me. Apparently, Sophi had been right. I could not be allowed to stand out. After my training period was over, it will be decided if I should be promoted to a rank which befits the eyes on my face, or if the eyes should be removed.

Arexon made it clear that it held no grudges against me. If I served well on this mission, it would bargain on my behalf. If I did not, it would not. It was that simple.

Loathe for the uspec filled me, pumping through my veins with purpose. I thought of how I would kill it to calm myself. I thought, this mission which Arexon was stupid enough to take me on, might actually be the perfect opportunity to do away with the commander. Perhaps I might even find a way to escape from this forced servitude in the process. Of course, I knew it was wishful thinking, but I could not help indulging in it. And as much as I hated Arexon, I could not deny the validity of its words. If I could not find a way to free myself, was it worth it to antagonize the one uspec who could help me keep my eyes.

YES!

I could not forget my hatred for Arexon.

“Please take this seriously master, and please hold on to your temper.”

Musa’s words filled my head. They were words that it had said to me when Marcinus had sent for us in Katsoaru. That was before either of us knew what Marcinus would become to me. But those words seemed just as apt for this situation. Hold on to your temper, Nebud. I cautioned myself. Remembering Musa’s words, reminded me that I was not the only one who would pay for my folly. My outer eyes, Musa, the green room, I was beginning to hate just how many ways Arexon had found to leash me. I despised this. I despised it.

“Assiduity!”

Immediately, we saluted. My right hand went to the top left corner of my chest, and I was left applauding my speed. Each rule of theirs I obeyed, meant a higher chance that I could keep my eyes. I did not think that I had ever felt hate like this before.

Then I remembered Fajahromo.

Sophian halted before us. Its eyes scanned over Yakubo, glanced past Arexon, before stopping on me. It frowned. “In clover.” The uspec’s voice was, as always, deadpan.

Our arms came down to rest by our sides, but we remained at attention.

“What is the meaning of this?” Sophian asked, in its lifeless voice. Its gaze was directed at me, in a way that made it clear that I was the subject of its inquest.

“I decided that I will need a small team to retrieve the artifact. I have chosen guru Yakubo and soldier Nebud as my team.”

“I agree that a small team is the best method. But the soldier is untrained. Why would you choose it over the other serfs?”

It took a lot of effort, but I managed not to flinch at the imperial’s casual reference to me as a serf.

“Nebud has owned an imp for some time sirga. It is the only soldier in our barracks that has such a rich experience with imps. Its knowledge will be valuable for our ruse.”

Sophian’s frown lifted. “As always, I am impressed by the level of consideration you give to every aspect of your missions. You are right of course. But I worry that you cannot trust the uspec. This is an important mission, is its knowledge of imps worth the risk?”

“Perhaps not alone. But, when you combine its knowledge with its superior pugilistic skills, I cannot think of anyone in the army who would be better suited.”

“Again, you are right. But can you trust it?”

“I suppose that I will find out on the mission, sirga.” Arexon replied.

“And the guru?” Sophian prompted.

“Has unmatched knowledge of the terrain.”

Sophian nodded. “Very well then. I have looked over the plan that you submitted, and I agree that it is our best course of action. You have the mighty one’s permission to go through with it.”

“Gratitude.”

Sophian took a step back. It placed its hands behind its back as its eyes darted from me, past Arexon, to Yakubo and back. Then it said, “the mission you are going on is of utmost importance to your Kaiser. If you succeed, you will be rewarded. The founder’s grace be with you.” Then it saluted.

The three of us saluted in response.

Sophian brought its hand down and then marched out of the room. We took our hands down after the uspec left.

“Commander Arexon.” A strange voice called out. Arexon turned around, so that it stood facing the door behind us.

“Yes novice?”

“The elders are ready for you and your team.”

“Thank you, novice.” It replied. “Come.” It said, before marching off. Yakubo followed behind it, and I followed behind the traitor. The gurus standing by the curtains saluted.

We were led through a maze of sparsely lit hard fog tunnels, to a bright room. This room was unlike any that I had ever seen before. It became clear as soon as I stepped in that I was indeed in the base of the Order of Fabrication.

The room was lit with white light sources hanging from the corners where the ceiling met the walls. The white light from those sources was polluted by the red light emerging from a patch of clouds at one side of the room. There were several cylindrical chambers in different locations in the room. From the outside, the chambers looked large enough for an uspec to stand in comfortably. A stool with wheels at the bottom, was positioned in front of each of these chambers. These stools were in front of boards which reminded me of the front of the landlocked canoes which populated this burg. The boards had buttons on them, reminiscent of the control board on the panel, and a screen rising above the board. At the moment, the screens were black.

I noticed that only three of the chambers in the room had uspecs seated on the stools by them. These uspecs were makers, pious of the order of fabrication. Two novices stood behind each maker, and the novices held three crystals in each hand. These crystals appeared to be different shades of brown.

“We are ready commander.” A pious with all of its outer eyes said. This one was not seated on a stool like the others. It was with shock that I noted that the uspec was an irira like me. It had both the spikes of a boga, and the horns of a mejo, fully displayed.

OluwabuqqyYOLO:
Hello, Obehi.

Truth be told, if you are going for publishing, please consider Amazon's Kindle. It's far better than all these other platforms. Thanks.

I use amazon, but the truth is that the platform you choose really depends on the market. For an e-book targeted at a Nigerian market, to me, it makes more sense to use Okadabooks, which is why Crimson Night is up on there

OkadaBooks:
Hello ObehiD,

Do you have your works published on OkadaBooks?
If no, please consider it. We would love to house your stories.

Thank you! Yes, I do have some of my works published on OkadaBooks.

@tunjilomo as in eh, they don't even know what damage Nebud can cause

@Fazemood great! If I end up finishing it, I'll let you know Will Nebud be promoted...only time will tell

@spixytinxy hahaha, I like this your faith oh! Unwavering...well, we shall see

@Omittesb only more and more intrigue from here

@ayshow6102 thanks for reading! lol, you want to bath in blood? Please oh, don't let Nebud drag you into such bloody pursuits, hahaha

“Because I can kill them all.” I replied, trying to scare the uspec away.

It laughed instead and sat beside me.

“Do you doubt it?”

“Not at all.” It replied. “You have the bulk of a great fighter.” It was silent for a while. “Oh.” It said, “you are the banneret, the uspec who maliciously attacked…”

“I did not maliciously attack anyone.” I spat out. Then, “go away” I added, “I desire solitude.”

“You are a serf. You cannot tell me what to do.” The uspec stated.

I turned to the young uspec and glared at it. I was moments away from striking it when it said, “did you really fight off two gurus? I heard that commander Arexon had to stop you itself.” There was awe in the young’s gaze as it spoke.

I ignored it. Its speech had returned sanity to me. I did not know who this uspec belonged to, and so I pulled myself back and reclined against the tree. The young opened its tome. It bent its head as if it was about to read and then it turned to stare at me. “Do you like to read?” the uspec asked.

I ignored it.

“I am reading the tale of the great boga maker. It was a pious of the Order of Fabrication who the founder, Chuspecip, trained itself. Have you heard the tale?”

Silence. I hoped eventually the young would get tired and go away.

“Chuspecip was so impressed by the maker’s adept use of pansophy that it gave the maker a rare gift which it had only shared with a few others. Do you want to know what Chuspecip gave it?”

I stared at the training. An uspec left itself undefended and another took advantage of that lapse in judgement. A great deal of bleeding followed.

“Chuspecip gave the great maker siphoned route. It was the maker who created the equipoises in Chiboga and many other…”

“Siphoned route?” I asked, now that the uspec had gotten my attention.

It smiled at me. “Yes soldier.” It said. “Route like every other magic can be siphoned. But, since Chuspecip is the only one that has it, it can only be siphoned from the founder.”

“You speak with much respect for the founder, for a Kuworyte.”

“The mighty Sophila subscribes to the old Kuworyte religion.” It chimed. “The Kuwor is our god, but we respect Chuspecip as the founder that it is.”

I found this intriguing. To the young I said, “you should not walk while you read.”

It giggled. “I saw your leg, didn’t I?”

I shook my head, dismissing the uspec again. Stretching my arms out, I reclined further against the tree, ignoring the bite of the hard bark against the fresh scourge marks on my skin.

“You will not remain a soldier for long.” The young said.

“Why do you say that?”

“You have too many eyes for a soldier. It is either your eyes are removed, or you will be promoted to a rank that fits with the eyes that you have. Although, giving your relationship with the imperial one, it might just decide to take your eyes away instead of promote you.”

I was stunned. “It cannot take my eyes.” I said.

The uspec turned towards me. “It is a very common thing. The commander prefers to promote soldiers who can fight at the rank they are promoted to, like you. But the ones that can’t have their eyes taken away, and they have to earn them back by rising through the ranks.” The uspec must have seen the incredulous expression on my face, because it said, “don’t worry, commander Arexon is fair. If you serve it well during your training period, it will fight on your behalf. The imperial one listens to the commander, if commander Arexon fights for your eyes, you will keep them.”

‘Pansophy.’

The word in my head were so unexpected that I jumped.

“What is wrong?” the uspec asked, moving its head closer towards me.

I noticed then that I had stretched my hand out so far that my ring was touching the uspec’s leg. ‘Pansophy’. This uspec had pansophy. What uspec this young would have pansophy? I was starting to think I knew the answer to that. “Who are you?” I asked, pulling my hand, and all of my body, further away from the uspec.

I decided to stand.

The young stood as well. It was frowning at me. The uspec was short, so short that I had to bend slightly to peer down at it.

“I am Sophi.” It said. “Offspring of the sole imperial Sophian. It was my pater that you maliciously attacked. But I do not hold it against you. Commander Arexon teaches that once a soldier pays for the crime it commits, the offense must be wiped away. You are praying for your crime and so I have forgiven you.”

How generous, I thought with a glare. I took my gaze away from the uspec. Instead of focusing on its parentage, I decided to focus on its words. It spoke with much respect for Arexon. I found that interesting. The time had come for me to depart from this young uspec with pansophy. I did not want it stealing any of my thoughts.

“Sophi?”

I heard the familiar voice, and found my hand darting across my chest. I was saluting Arexon. It was true that after the green room, I decided that it would be best to play along. Best to salute, best to train, best to plot while I pretended that I was bending to their ways. Still, I had never saluted the uspec so quickly. As much as I hated to admit it, I knew it was the thought of losing my eyes. I did not much care for the imp eyes, but the soaru eye belonged to Marcinus, it was the only bond I had to the uspec. I would not part with it.

But even I could not deny that Arexon was a great fighter. It had bested me. It would not be easy to kill Arexon, and until I could do that, my eyes were not safe.

“Salutations commander.” The young greeted.

“Salutations sirga.” Arexon replied. It saluted the young uspec then, all while ignoring my presence.

“In clover.” The young said. Then it turned to stare up at Arexon. “Did I say that correctly?”

Arexon bent to a knee in front of Sophi. It tickled the young underneath its chin and said, “perfectly. You’re starting to sound like the general you will be one day.”

The young stood taller.

“Sirga!” Two uspecs ran to a stop behind Arexon. They saluted. I recognized one of them as the traitor Yakubo. Since coming to the barracks, I’d learned that Yakubo was part of Arexon’s personal guard. It had only been filling in at the hangar the week I arrived, because the regular uspec who had that position had fallen ill, and Yakubo was the lowest rank soldier who could passably communicate in all the tongues.

Arexon stood. “In clover.” It ordered. “What is it?”

“The imperial one is demanding your presence in your office sirga.”

Arexon nodded.

Sophi gasped. “I should be with my teacher!” It cried. “Pater will be angry if it knows I came here without permission.”

Arexon smiled at the young. “You.” It beckoned to the uspec that was not Yakubo. “Fly it back to the castle.”

The uspec saluted. “Yes sirga.” Then it walked over to the young and picked it up. It carried it in its arms before its ailerons began to flap. The uspec lifted into the sky and then it flew on flapping wings away.

“Come with me.” Arexon ordered Yakubo. It was about to march off, when it turned to stare at me. It was frowning. “You too.” It said, jerking its head.

Could I ignore it? Not if I wanted to keep Marcinus’ eye.

Arexon marched off, and I followed behind it. I heard sounds and chose to ignore the prattling of traitor Yakubo. The training ground was close to the Ante gate which in turn was close to the commander’s office, and so we reached the room within a few minutes of our departure. Arexon marched so quickly that it was hard to believe the uspec wasn’t running. Of course, I had no trouble keeping up with it.

There were two gurus standing in front of its office. “Wait here.” Arexon ordered. It went into the room with Yakubo.

I hesitated when I saw the gurus. I had to remind myself that they had imp eyes, which meant spectra and the power of the fog. When that didn’t work, I reminded myself of the green room, and Arexon’s promise that next time it would be a week, instead of three days. It was the thought of losing Marcinus’ eyes that spurred me into action.

I saluted.

The gurus saluted and dropped their hands, a clear sign that I could do the same. I dropped my hand, but remained at attention, with both arms at my side.

I hated the army.

“Where were you?” It annoyed me that I could still recognize Sophian’s voice. Over six weeks had passed since I last heard it speak, but I could not forget the voice.

“Walking the grounds.” Arexon replied.

Sound traveled freely through the light curtains.

“What is wrong?”

“News of Isthum’s death reached the plenum, and their reply reached the mighty one.” It replied. Sophian spoke in a way that was precise, matter of fact. There was no emotion in its voice, so I could not tell if the plenum’s reply was good or bad.

“Should we be worried?”

“Certainly not. We still own more than fifty percent of the mines in this existence, and we are Kuworyte. The plenum cannot go against us.”

“But the plenum own more than eighty percent of the existence. So…”

“So, we cannot go against them. They sent word that the mighty one should prepare Chiboga and all its annexed ports for inspection in two weeks.”

“Inspection from the plenum means invasion. They will come with soldiers.”

“Yes. It will mean war if we refuse them access.”

“Does the mighty one want me to start preparing the troops for war then?”

War? With the plenum? And I was a soldier in the army which would mean that I would have to fight. One the plus side, I would be killing troops of the plenum, the people who had Calam and Calami killed. On the other hand, I would be fighting to protect Sophila’s line. I could not think of a less appealing prospect.

“I will appoint dons to do that.” Dons were a rank below commander. “You have a different assignment.”

“Which is?”

“Retrieve the last brio. It is of no value to us. Since the plenum wants it, we can use it as leverage. I will leave it up to you to plan the who and the how. But we will need the item by the end of the week. That will leave us with enough time to communicate our possession of it to the plenum.”

“Yes sirga.”

A guru came marching out of the office. “Assiduity!” It yelled.

Immediately, all the soldiers, myself included, turned to face the exit of the entrance and saluted.

Sophian marched out and two chiefs followed behind it.

“In clover.” The guru ordered, once the imperial was out of sight.

“Is Nebud still out there?” Arexon asked.

I frowned at the question.

“Yes sirga.” An uspec replied.

“Send it in.”

Part 6
--------

Arexon. I could not forget the commander. Of course, I’d started and ended my list with Arexon. But I saw no reason not to have Arexon’s name on the list three times, just to emphasize how much I looked forward to ripping its head off its body and watching the blood flow out into a beautiful crimson pool underneath my feet. I decided that Sophila’s death would be the most humane. I did not know Sophila personally after all, I only detested the uspec for signing its name to the document which had turned me into a serf. Sophian I would whip. One lash for each one that the uspec had ordered given to me. Then, I would decapitate it. I imagined myself tearing the uspec’s limbs from its body and then laughing as its blood coated me.

Arexon. I smiled, just imagining its death. Arexon would be last. I remembered pieces of advice from passing traders, folklores which advised that the best things ought to be saved for last, for maximum enjoyment. And so it would be for Arexon, I declared.

I leaned back, and immediately flinched when parts of my whipped back made contact with the stem of the tree.

I was sitting under a fruit tree. I did not know the fruits of this tree by name, but I could see the purple star-shaped pods. I wondered if this was the source of the common purple fruit wine. Probably not, there were so many other purple fruits.

I was mindful of my back as I rested against the tree.

Two weeks in the serf army barracks and each day was as foul as the one that came before it. Now, I was starting to get used to the whipping. I contemplated adding the drill guru to my list of people to kill, but I decided against it. Even I could see that it brought the uspec no particular joy to use its lash, it was only doing its job.

I found the drills highly vexing. Days filled with nothing more than fighting drills yelled out by an uspec who I could kill with my own bare hands. I would have done it the first time the uspec used that whip on me, but Arexon had interrupted. The uspec had gotten in my way. Just one more reason why its death would bring me the most pleasure.

Arexon had taken pleasure in telling me exactly what would happen to Musa if I ever again attempted to harm a superior officer. It advised me, advised me, to do my twenty years in peace. It even had the gall to tell me that I might learn something from my time serving in the army. It had taken a supernatural willpower to keep myself from ripping the uspec’s head off right there and then.

I sighed, my eyes drifting to the training grounds only a few feet away from where I was seated.

There was nothing redeemable about this place. I had been taken from my expensive, and slightly extravagant suite, and dumped in a dilapidated hovel which I shared with about thirty other uspecs. Each one of us had nothing more than a bed even less comfortable than the ones I’d slept in in my hovel back in the slum.

Some idiot blared a horn early at the start of the day, and we got out of our terrible beds, went into a terrible eating room with deplorable food, and had breakfast. In my mind, the gruel in the pits was better than the filth that they served here. The okun, I sighed just thinking about the dirty tiny pond that over a thousand soldiers shared. I decided, for my own sanity, to forsake thinking about that. I thought instead of the training. It was an unending stream of drills. Of course, they were all drills that I could do in my sleep. I was so much better than all the other soldiers, that I was never set against an uspec for combat training.

Not after the last three uspecs I’d maimed.

I felt bad about that, the uspecs were innocent after all. But my mood, my mood was growing darker by the day. I often contemplated reaching into the magic of the clouds, which I gained through Marcinus eye, and using it to change the identity of every uspec I came in contact with. Perhaps I would too, if I knew how to reach the magic in the clouds. I still could not produce okun. I could manipulate it, but not produce it. I found the restrictions of my spectra very annoying. Just one more source of irritation in an already irritating life.

Twenty years.

I was starting to think that I could not do twenty years in this place. I hated everything about it, how would I manage for twenty years. Twenty years.

I stared at the training grounds again, watching the inept soldiers spar with swords. This and the pugilist bouts were the spars that I’d been exempt from. I had to run the pillars just like everybody else. I did not mind those as much. Honestly, I did not mind many of the drills, under other circumstances I might have enjoyed them. But it was the knowledge that I was a serf which vexed me too much to see the benefits to anything.

There was more green here than any other port I’d been to. That, I thought, was another point of fascination. Where did all these equipoises come from? I thought of another equipoise, one I hated almost as much as the scourge in the Castle. I ignored the thought pushing it away. Manus had said that the equipoise could only be created using magic which only Chuspecip had. Why then did a Kuworyte port have so much of it? I wondered. Had Chuspecip made these equipoises as well?

Two bosses marched towards me.

I’d learnt the ranks in this army a day after I’d been forced to join. That was the first thing they drilled into you. Ranks, orders, salutes, marches. After the other soldiers were done with their sparring, I’d have to go back for more drills. I wondered what it would be this time.

The bosses had one cross on each of the silver links which dangled from their ears, unlike the empty links I had. They also carried swords. They were the lowest rank of officers, which put them one rank above the serf soldiers. I was supposed to stand and salute once they got close to me.

These bosses were both scrawny things. They did not have the height to take me, and as all bosses, they only had one imp eye, not enough for spectra. I learned that spectra eyes were also things given with rank. The bosses did not pose much of a threat.

I remembered the green room. It was yet another equipoise, but one built within a sadistic chamber. The outer chamber had polluted emotions infused in the fog, so that when an uspec walked in, it was filled with those emotions.

I’d refused to salute bosses just like this, and in lieu of having me whipped, Arexon had ordered that I be shut in the green room for three days. Three days without food, in a room so small that you cannot stand, or sit with your feet stretched out. It was a cubicle really, one so narrow that your ailerons are pushed together. You are forced to seat with your knees pushed close, so close they are almost touching your chest. It was a pose that I had seen Musa take so many times. Perhaps it would not have been so bad if it was just the discomfort, but it wasn’t.

‘Sorrow and fear’, Arexon had ordered before I was taken away. I did not know what those words meant until I was pushed into the outer fog, and immediately had my head filled with polluted sorrow and fear. Then I was in the tiny equipoise room before I even knew what was happening. In that room, I had no power in my anger and pain, no way to use the emotions to lessen the effects of the polluted ones.

It had been hell, a misery that I would never forget. I remembered my time with Gerangi after the pits. I’d been filled with those same emotions, but they had been inundating. They had been so consuming that I had no possession of the mental faculty to understand it while it was happening. It was not so in the green room. I’d had just enough of the polluted emotions to feel the overwhelming sorrow and fear, but not enough to be rendered thoughtless.

I would have killed myself if I wasn’t filled with the horrific knowledge of what would happen to Musa if I died.

My mind darted to the imp. I hoped it was well. What would it be doing now? I wondered. Two weeks without seeing the imp. This was the longest we’d spent apart since I’d found it. I realized that I was worried about it. It was a useless thought. If there was anything I’d learnt about Arexon, it was that the uspec kept its word.

I hated it even more for that. There was no soldier here who did not like the commander. None but me. I found it troubling. Arexon was not uniquely strict with me, it was just as severe with every other soldier, yet they idolized it. They admired Arexon in a way that I found solely incomprehensible. Perhaps they’d been brainwashed, maybe a pious had filled their brains with the worship of Arexon. That made no sense though. If they were going to brainwash soldiers, wouldn’t they fill their heads with worship of the Kaiser’s line? At least, the soldiers were like me in their hatred of Sophila and Sophian. But they feared the Kaiser’s line, and they admired Arexon, who was loyal servant to the Kaiser, and so they stayed in line.

I wanted to kill Arexon.

I heard footsteps and turned to see the approach of a young uspec. I frowned watching it. The uspec was reading a tome. It walked distractedly, its mind captivated by the tome in its hands.

It stopped a few paces from my outstretched legs.

The tome was closed, with a finger between pages to mark the uspec’s place. The young uspec turned to stare at me. It was very young. About three years old, I guessed. It had nothing on its body, no spectrum features, no outer eyes, nothing but the center eye it was born with.

“Salutations soldier.” The uspec greeted.

I stared at it a while. What was a young uspec doing in the barracks? At first, I thought it was the offspring of one of the soldiers, but then I looked at its empty ears. The lack of earrings showed that it was not a serf. The offspring of a free person then. Who would wander into the barracks?

“Who are you? What are you doing in the barracks?”

The young uspec walked closer to me. “I like to watch the soldiers as they are drilled. It is interesting to see them improve over the course of their training. You carry no weapon which means that you have no assignment yet. Why are you not training with the rest?” It bent its head to the side as if to get a closer look at me. “You have three outer eyes.” It said. “Interesting.”

I ignored its last comments. I decided that I was in no mood to be plagued by a young uspec that I did not know, and so I looked away.

The uspec came closer to me. “Why are you not training with the rest?” it asked again.

Fazemood:
I believe Musa will build an empire of wealth with what has been handed to it, Nebud will not recognize what it owns by that time.

As for Yakubo, I don't have any comment yet, just I know Nebud will build an army that will be loyal to it.

Better story as always.

Pls Obehid, I have been unable to log into my okadabooks account, I need to read your earlier posted short story. I don't want to open a new account yet. How do we go about this?

I haven't finished the story yet. When it's done I can send it to you if you still want to read it.

ayshow6102:
Obehid I think that it's not every body that is following nehud journey keenly because they know that last last he is going to be the kaiser of lahooni

Well, as long as there are still some people following the story keenly I'm okay

@Dathypebruv you're welcome, and thanks for reading MORE coming soon...

@popeshemoo lol chai, if only Nebud knows that it has a noble like you in this existence willing to take up its case...may be it would not have given up so easily.

@tunjilomo you know I write for surprising turn of events. You are right about Sophila...dangerous uspec that one

@spixytinxy hey, this your faith in Arexon ehn...what do you see in Arexon that we don't?

@phoenixchap yes oh, Nebud has really been through a lot in its life, well, we'll just have to see what happens with these serf camps

@ayshow6102 sorry for the sour mouth, maybe the next update will leave your mouth salty

@Botaflica serious turn around. About the voice in its head...I'll just say that I like the way you're thinking, and we'll see if you're right

@Tuhndhay lol, that's true, patience is really a virtue. Maybe we are thinking the same...what are you thinking?

@Fazemood lol! thanks, let me know what you think

@popeshemoo thank you soo flattering

Follow the link to read the rest of the story (free with an okadabooks account):

https://okadabooks.com/book/about/servia_an_unpublished_short_story/29310

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“I ask for an heir and you bring me oxblood?” King Mattias screamed. His loud voice travelled around the throne room, echoing off the walls and filling the listeners’ ears with the rage the king felt. He was so enraged, in fact, that his anger was not only made known through the harsh grating sounds which accompanied the words he yelled, but also by the visible tremors travelling through his body, and the fisted hands by his side.

Faustina had never seen a royal so angry. But the cause of his ire proved to be the greatest shock to her. An oxblood princess? Who would not want that? She pulled the baby closer towards her chest. This baby that she had carried for nine months, nine blissful months with Caster by her side. Now, Caster, the father of her child, and heir to the throne of Ikeja, stood on the other side of the room, beside his enraged father.

Caster’s silver eyes shone with the rage he felt. It was those silver eyes that had pulled her to him. He was fine and she was ox, both bloods were meant to mate, it was the way of the blood law, it was the natural order. At least it was in Uromi, the land of her birth. If Faustina had given birth to an oxblood in Uromi, there would be a celebration. There would be joy, not the boiling rage of an unyielding king. You would think that he was fineblood, with the way his anger commanded the room. But he was foul, a black-eyed being born of a mixture of the purer bloods.

“What did you do brother, mate with a servant?” Silas’s voice dripped with scorn.

Faustina fell to her knees on the stone-cold floor. She bowed her head, her sky-blue eyes fixing on the answering blue in the eyes of the daughter she had born. Silent tears spilled from her eyes. There was no thought of defiance in her head, no desire to yell back insults at the young prince who had called her a servant. She was oxblood after all.

The king marched over to her. He pinched her chin between his fingers, forcing her head up. “Well, what are you?” he demanded.

“I am Faustina, majesty, of the Eme-Ora line.”

The king gasped. “You fool!” his voice thundered through the room. “You bedded an oxblood noble from Uromi.”

“I married her first.” Caster’s quiet voice filled the room. “Our daughter is heir to the throne of Ikeja.” Caster was not shaken by his father’s anger. He did not cower as Faustina did, as cowering was not in his nature. He was fineblood, born to lead, just as surely as the oxblood were born to serve.

Silence greeted Caster’s words. It was a silence which was felt by each person in the room. The guards stilled, Faustina’s sobs froze in her throat, and the king went so rigid he could be likened to a statue. Then it happened.

The king reached for the mahogany hilt of his famous cutlass, drew the sharp blade out, and then sent it on a smooth arch through the air. Before the onlookers’ unblinking stare, the king of Ikeja cut off the head of an Uromi noble. The head fell onto the floor with a loud thud. In death, Faustina released the baby from her hand, sending her on a tumbling fall which was stopped when the baby’s head hit the floor.

Caster launched at his father. He was pulling his cutlass out of its sheath even before he reached his father’s side. Rage shone pure and dazzling in the fineblood’s silver eyes. He placed the rounded edge of the blade against the white kaftan of the king’s agbada.

King Mattias simply rose an eyebrow. “Do you have the stomach for patricide Caster?” he asked. “You were disloyal enough to dare to wed a woman I would never approve of, but are you disloyal enough to kill your king?”

Caster blinked. He stood in a pool of blood. His wife’s head rested somewhere behind him, parted by a man he respected, a king whose service he had sworn to. And his daughter? Caster’s eyes closed in anguish. Tears fell from his eyes. The cutlass slipped out of his loose grasp. The sound of the metal clanging against the hard grounds was the last sound to so fill the hall since the one that preceded it, the sound of Faustina’s head falling.

Caster dropped to his knees and wept, the picture of a broken man.

“Take him away.” The king ordered.

The guards could not move. They stared at a sight which no history book had ever recorded, an occurrence which defied the laws of nature. Fineblood was unbreakable. Yet Caster, a prince some called the finest of them all, had been broken. They could not understand the love that Caster had lost. The prince that would awaken from the horror of this day is one that the entire kingdom will reel from. His anger would become an all-consuming thing, a beast which no beauty could ever tame. It would be felt in the air that filled the castle, by the servants who tended it, by the king who had caused it, and most of all, by the prince who was it.

“NOW!” The king yelled.

Their reverie broken, the guards stirred into action. They approached Caster warily, as one would approach a wild lion. It took long seconds for them to realize that Caster was too distraught to attack, too heartbroken to care. When at long last they reached the prince, they locked hands on his arm, and carried him away.

Following in Caster’s wake, the king turned to leave.

Then they heard it.

First it started off as a cry, a lone sound in a room that had grown silent with terror. Then the little wail grew into a string of cries and then an unending barrage of a baby’s screams. The king turned back around, his mouth hanging open as he heard it. His disbelief was mirrored by Silas, Caster’s younger brother. How did a baby survive such a fall? They wondered. Especially an oxblood. Oxbloods were born weak, yet this one had survived a fatal blow. Some would call it a miracle.

A frown formed on the king’s face. “Kill it!” he snapped.

“Yes father.” Silas was quick to respond, bowing as he watched his father storm out of the room. Most of the guards followed, only two remained. These two were Silas’s guards, soldiers that had guarded the prince since he came of age.

Silas walked over to the wailing baby and picked her up. He rocked her in his left arm, while his right hand reached for the dagger that he hid in the deep pockets of the trouser underneath his tight fitted agbada. When he brought the dagger up, raising it high enough that the baby could see it, she stopped wailing, and stared into his eyes.

Silas faltered.

A slow smile began to form on his face as he stared into those blue eyes. His black eyes traced the glow of her brown skin. She did not have her father’s light-brown complexion, no, she was dark like her mother, a true Uromi girl. He looked at the curve of her face, at the slope of her chin, and finally the stark contrast of the blue eyes against skin almost dark enough to be black. His smile turned into a wolfish grin as he thought of the beauty that she would become. A dark skin oxblood with the appearance of a noble. There were many in Uromi who would pay a fortune to spend a night with the woman she would become. Silas was young, only a few years past his prime, but he was smart enough to see the value that his father threw away.

He put the dagger back into his pocket.

“Take her to the blood institute. Tell them that she is a noble’s bastard. They will raise her to serve, they will train her to be the oxblood she was born to be.”

The guard bowed as he reached for the baby. She stared at her uncle as she was taken from his arms. In the blue of her eyes, Silas saw a glimmer of silver, a sliver of strength. It was a sight that left him so shaken, he almost rescinded his order. But Silas was nineteen now. He was the foulblood brother of a beloved fineblood prince. Even though their father, king Mattias, was foulblood just like him, it was Caster that was preferred. But Silas saw a chance in the oxblood princess, the promise of a beauty that could buy him a nation. He turned away from the baby, looking away before she did.

Nineteen years would pass before the blue eyes of Caster’s oxblood daughter locked again with the black eyes of his foulblood brother.

“Do what?” Arexon’s hands were crossed behind its back, its feet slightly parted. It had four silver bands on its arms and four silver rectangles on its earrings. It was a silver capon, a commander, which, according to Yakubo, was the highest rank in the serf army.

“Serve the uspec who killed your progenitor. Have you no pride? It is for the best that Arigad never lived to see what you have become.” That, I decided, was for the blow that Arexon had struck at me while I was chained to the post. And for the loony that it had forced into my mouth.

Arexon flinched. The gesture was so quick that I almost missed it, but I didn’t. I smirked. It felt good to know that I had hurt the uspec. Yakubo was glaring at me. I did not care.

“You think that because you read Arigad’s last tome a few times you know the uspec?” Arexon’s previous emotionless mask was now firmly fixed to its face. “You are wrong.” It spoke without inflection.

I prepared myself for a response that would do just as much damage as the last words I’d uttered.

Arexon beat me to it. “You have been found guilty of malicious intent against the sole imperial of Chiboga.” It announced.

I frowned at the uspec. “There was no malicious intent. It was a mistake, one that I think I’ve already paid for.” I gestured towards my chest.

Arexon only glanced at it for a second before returning its gaze to me. It did not seem the least bit perturbed by my disfiguration. If I had to guess, I’d say it had seen worse.

“You have been found guilty.” It pronounced.

“Found guilty by whom? The Order of Adjudication? They are the only ones with the right to settle disputes between nobles of different ports.”

“The Kaiser is the final say in this port, and by entering Chiboga, you submitted yourself to its judgement. Perhaps if you have a patron, a landed noble from another port who would take up the matter on your behalf?”

I glared at Arexon, silently fuming.

“I did not think so.” It brought its hands forward, revealing a wooden scroll tube. It opened the tube, pulled out a rolled parchment, and extended its hand with the tube in it, to Yakubo. Yakubo took the tube.

“Would you like me to read your sentencing, or would you prefer to read it yourself?” Arexon asked. The uspec spoke calmly, as if it was referring to an inconsequential matter.

I clenched my jaw and stayed silent.

Arexon unrolled the parchment and then read from it. “The malefactor, Nebud, has been found guilty of malicious intent against the sole imperial of Chiboga, the imperial undead Sophian. In reparation for its crime, the malefactor will be stripped of its rank as banneret and serve for a period of twenty years as a serf of Chiboga. If the malefactor completes its service satisfactorily, it will be reinstated as banneret upon completion of its serfdom and paid a piece of merit for each year of loyal service. This is the ruling of the mighty undead Sophila, Kaiser of Chiboga.”

I laughed.

It was incredulous. This was why they had seen to my treatment then? Sophian was not satisfied with having me scourged, it wanted to humiliate me as well. The mirth I’d seen in the situation quickly faded.

“I will never serve as a serf.” I spat the words out, disgusted by the fact that I’d used ‘I’ and ‘serf’ so close together in the same sentence. “You may have lost your pride, but I have not.”

Arexon grinned at me.

It took a step towards me and I wished for the fight that would come. They had the magic of the fogs, so they could kill me with the boga eyes. While I did not relish the thought of death, I found it much preferable to being a serf.

“I can break you.” Arexon stated simply. “You think that you are strong, but you are not. You wouldn’t know strength if it was standing right in front of you. I can break you. I can make you beg me to serve as a serf.”

There was something so dreadfully dark and portentous in Arexon’s words. Perhaps it was the level of certainty that it uttered the words with. It had me remembering the scourging. There had been a point when the pain had reached its peak, right before I lost consciousness, when I’d been so unbelievably close to breaking. Had Arexon seen? I shook myself, pushing that thought of weakness away.

“I could do it, but I won’t.” Arexon said. It gestured for the tube and Yakubo handed it over. Arexon gave the parchment to the other soldier, and took the tube from Yakubo. It pulled out yet another rolled parchment, before handing the tube back.

Arexon did not bother unrolling that parchment. “This is the alternative.” Arexon stated. “If you will not pay for your crime against this port yourself, then your imp will pay for you.”

I advanced on Arexon and opaque fog surrounded me, imprisoning me.

“This is a writ from the Order of Fabrication, giving me the authority to reclaim your imp, as all imps are subject to the pious. Your imp will serve two hundred years in the Mine of Aurelion, and then it will be given to the Order of Annihilation. You, Nebud, will be free to leave Chiboga. We will escort you to the hangar, and you will never be allowed back in.”

My arm went out towards Arexon, but the fogs stopped me. I felt the life drain from me as soon as my arm went into the fog. I pulled it back, but I was suddenly inspired by it. If my choices were serfdom or death, I would gladly die. Giving Musa to the pious was not even an option. I stared at the fogs, hoping the death would be quick.

“Killing yourself would be a pointless waste. Your imp will still serve the sentence.”

I frowned at Arexon. How had it known? I had not even walked towards the fog. Right at that moment, the fog went away. I took a step towards Arexon.

Arexon shook its head. “Don’t do it.” It said. “If you advance on me, I will kill you, and then I will take your imp to Aurelion myself.” It stared levelly at me. “Make your choice.”

“I can do it master.” Musa said, walking forward. “Don’t worry master, I am not afraid of Aurelion. You should go master. I am an imp after all, I am immortal. Two hundred years is nothing to me.”

Musa was trying to be brave, but I could hear the tremor in its words. I remembered the fear it had felt when it realized that we were in the same burg as Aurelion. Its words that day came back to me.

“The Mine of Aurelion master. It is an imp’s worst nightmare.”

I promised to protect this imp. After all it had done for me, how could I fail it now? I shook my head. “I will do it.” I said to Arexon.

“No master…”

I turned to face the imp and shook my head at it. It stopped speaking, but I could see the grief etched into its face.

“You must affix your signature to the sentencing.”

I nodded without looking at the uspec. How had it known? It was not common for uspecs to be so fond of imps, so how did it know of my relationship to Musa. Arexon had never met Musa, it did not know I had an imp. In fact, there were only two uspecs in this port that knew about Musa. Manus and Yakubo. But even Manus did not know how close I was to Musa. It was Yakubo then. The betrayal stung. It reminded me of another betrayal. Mine. I’d stolen an eye from the only uspec who had ever treated me as a friend. Perhaps I deserved this.

Arexon inclined its head towards a surface and I followed.

It placed the parchment on the table with a pen beside it. I read the document. The wording was just as Arexon had said. I would be a serf for twenty years if I signed this document. Twenty years.

“Sophila’s eye.”

The voice in my head urged. I found the voice cajoling this time. It did not vex me as it had before. No, on the contrary, it pleased me. I signed the parchment, consigning myself to a serfdom of twenty years. But I swore to myself, that before the term was over, I would have taken Sophila’s eye, killed it, Sophian and Arexon. They would all die.

“Hold it.” Arexon ordered.

There was no point in fighting. So, I let Yakubo, the traitor, and the other uspec maneuver me. They pushed me to my knees and held me down while Arexon forced two earrings into my ear. The earrings dangled. They were empty silver chains. I was to be a soldier then, a serf soldier in the Kaiser’s serf army.

Arexon pulled out a necklace with a strange pendant on it. It dropped the pendant on the table and turned to face Musa. “That pendant declares that you have been granted free travel by the Kaiser. You can leave this suite as you please, and walk around the civilians’ camp as you please. But you are never to leave the civilians’ camp. Do you understand me imp?”

“Yes domina.”

“This suite will remain yours as long as you pay for it.”

The soldiers released me.

I rose slowly, unsteadily, to my feet. The corners of the earrings scratched against my skin.

“Take off the banneret adornments.” Arexon ordered.

I had not even thought of this.

I stared at the uspec.

Arexon sighed. “You are a serf soldier now Nebud. I do not like your chances of survival if you cannot obey simple instructions.”

The only banneret adornment I was wearing was the neckcloth, the one that covered my scales.

I hesitated, my hands by the cloth, and then I took it off.

Arexon looked at the scales for a second before looking back at me. It did not appear surprised. Would the death come now? “When you kill me, what happens to Musa?”

“Why would I kill you?”

I jerked my head, showing the scales.

“The mighty Sophila subscribes to the old Kuworyte religion. It has no problem with iriras. There are many just like you in its army.”

I said nothing.

“Come Nebud.”

Arexon marched off, but the other soldiers waited. I turned to stare at Musa, before nodding to the imp. When would I see it again? After my twenty years were up?

“Farewell Musa.” I said to the imp. I was suddenly glad that it knew that it could spend my wealth in whatever way it chose. I did not want it to suffer any hardship.

“Farewell…”

“I said come!” Arexon snapped.

Anger surged in me, and I came close to attacking the uspec. I calmed myself down by thinking of how sweet it would feel to kill it. One day. I promised my raging temper. I nodded at the imp, turned around and followed Arexon out of the suite and towards my new life as serf soldier in Chiboga.

Part 5
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How many times could I walk the same area before losing my mind? I didn’t know how Musa did it, but the imp appeared to be completely unaffected by our confinement. I suppose I should be grateful that I was back on my feet. How many days had I spent slipping into and out of consciousness? According to Musa, Yakubo had brought a cobra, the boga frosted beast, to me three days after the scourging. The timeline matched up because that was around the time when the weakness faded. It was also when the numbing went away, and I felt every wound on my flesh.

I would have liked to see the cobra.

My first memory of a fully lucid day, post-scourging, was a little over a week after. I remember seeing uspecs wearing fraises with the marks of the Order of remediation, healers. I don’t know how many of them had come, or if it had only been one healer playing on a loop in my mumbled brain. Had they used pansophy on me? I did not know. I honestly couldn’t understand why they bothered. I would have been less worried if they had not sent a healer to me. That at least would mean that they did not care what happened to me. What possible reason could they have for caring? That was what frightened me. And through it all, through my slips between cognizance, I had that awful voice reverberating in my head, demanding Sophila’s eye.

I wanted to kill that voice. I wanted to reach into my own head and rip the stupid voice out. What did I have to show for my efforts? Scourged flesh.

I soaked in the tiny pond and tried to ignore my rage.

The cleaning room in the suite I’d rented had an entire wall filled with a reflective surface. I found that wall irritating. It was especially annoying now that the wall showed me for what I was, damaged. My skin showed the effects of the lashing, a thousand scars which mangled my flesh in a way that I had never seen before. No uspec had scars like mine. One glance at me, and onlookers would know that I had been scourged. I, Nebud, tied to a whipping post, utterly helpless, as my skin was shredded before my eyes.

I turned away from the reflective surface, choosing instead to stare at the black walls of hard fog. The floor around the pond was made of the same shade of fog as the walls. My trailing eyes wandered to the okun next. It was the single most pitiful pond I’d ever seen, and I was kute, so I’d seen a lot of ponds. The pond was so small that two uspecs my size could not clean together. I certainly could not swim in it. To immerse myself fully, I had to bend at the knee, a position which forced my ailerons against the sides of the pond.

But I had two functioning knees, I reminded myself.

Thanks to the speed at which the healers had come and worked on me, I had two functioning knees. I didn’t even feel the pain in the bad knee anymore. That much time had gone by. There were no holes which allowed for the natural light of the orange dots to stream in, no way to tell the passing of time. All we had was Yakubo’s arrival. The uspec came once a day, bringing food and some extra treats for Musa. It found the imp amusing. Musa liked it too. They huddled together for the hour that Yakubo spent in our suite, talking about what it felt like to be umani. Yakubo still had so many questions.

Thirty-two days had gone bye. I knew because I kept a meticulous count on Yakubo’s visits. Thirty-two days since the scourging, thirty-two days confined to this suite.

I placed my hands against the hard fog ground and pulled myself up. The healers had done such a good job that I only felt a slight spark of pain from the parts of my body which had been flayed. Again, I thought that I should be grateful that I’d had that. The few moments I’d spent conscious in those early days had been spent in a daze. But I could vividly remember the look of worry on Musa’s face. The imp hated having a solution which it could not use. If it had used its pansophy to heal me, the healers would have known and they would have taken the one good thing I still had away from me. Thinking about the healers reminded me that they would not have spent so much effort patching me up, unless someone thought I was worth it.

This was day thirty-three. I refused to count it though, not until Yakubo came in with our meals. Whatever we wanted, Yakubo found a way to get it. I do not know why the uspec has taken such a keen interest in us, but I am grateful that it has, even though I haven’t shown it. I was just too annoyed by my confinement to be in any decent mood. Musa makes up for it.

Even though I just cleaned, I felt dirty. I’d grown so used to proper cleaning with cleaning salts, that now, cleaning without them felt odd. There were several good public cleaning rooms in the base, but seeing as I was confined to the suite, I could not make use of any of them.

I placed my hand against the entrance, which was marked by a slightly lighter shade of black, and then watched impatiently as the form left it. I walked through the fog, into our room. Musa was seated on its bed, reading a tome which Yakubo bought it.

As soon as I walked in, Musa’s head lifted. It regarded me warily. With only the both of us in the room, I had taken most of my foul mood out on the imp. It was slightly better now that I was well enough to fight. We sparred. My cutlass and dagger had not been returned to me, but Yakubo got us wooden swords. I hated those things. But it was enough to get a good exercise. I found myself missing the more basal feeling of pounding flesh against flesh. Musa could not fight with me, not in pugilism. Besides, I was too angry to let the imp, even if it volunteered. No. I punched the air, practicing what I would do the next time I had a chance to fight against Arexon.

It would not defeat me again, I swore to myself.

“Did you have a pleasant cleaning master?” Musa asked.

I stared at the imp for a while, trying to read its face. Was that question a joke? It had cleaned in the pond, it knew how deplorable it was. I shook my head, ignoring the imp. I walked to my bed and sat heavily on it.

Musa was silent.

The walls and grounds were made of hard fog. It was one of the reasons why the room was so expensive. I preferred clouds. I longed for Katsoaru. I should have stayed. That was another thing my mind had taken to doing. It would come up with a million different ways in which I could have saved Marcinus’ life without taking its eye. Perhaps I hadn’t considered them because I needed the eye. Now, I wished that I had. I wished that I had left Marcinus’ eye in its socket, and found a way to convince my friend that we should kill Manus before the uspec could kill it. Why hadn’t I done that? If I had, Marcinus would be heir now, and I would be ‘joyful’.

I shook that thought away, refusing to dwell on past decisions which I could not change.

“Shall I make something for you to eat master?” Musa asked. “Domina Yakubo has not come yet, but we still have a lot of grains and dried meats. Perhaps you would like a soup master?”

The imp’s words drifted in one ear and left through the other. I paid no heed to them. My mind was churning on something else.

The last brio.

I’d had much time to think over the weeks that I’d spent in my suite. I had pondered the term until, at long last, my mind had seen fit to give me an answer. I finally remembered why the term had sounded so familiar. At first, I could only remember the ‘Isle of brio’, the place that Gerangi had taken me with the green sludge. It was the place that the uspec had died. I wondered if that place had anything in common with the last brio? Anyway, besides Gerangi’s isle, I had heard of the word somewhere else. It had been a long time ago, in the pits of Hakute.

I could not remember exactly what had been said about it, but I recalled that I’d heard of the last brio from the plenum. I could not say whose voice it was, but I remembered that they were searching for this thing, the last brio, and that it was somehow connected to Chuspecip. Other than that, I could not say what other significance this object had.

But Sophila said it had it. The plenum wanted it, and if the conversation I’d overheard between Sophian, Sophila, and Arexon was right, then, the last brio was the key to the fabled wealth of Lahooni, rumored to be millions of worth.

Millions of worth. It was more than a fortune. I could not even imagine wealth like that. It had taken me several weeks to link myself with this fortune. I found it strange to think of myself as linked in any way to Lahooni. I was after all, a Hakute de trop. I was born in Hakute, my earliest memories were of Hakute. But according to Gerangi, I was the heir to Lahooni, the same one that Musa searched for.

I liked Musa’s tales of its previous masters, I liked to think of myself as descended of Calam and Calami. I liked thinking that my sire wanted me. But it was still too much of a leap to connect myself to Lahooni. For a moment, I dabbled with the idea of going in search of the fabled wealth myself. Did anyone have a better claim to it than I did? But who was I really? After all was said and done, I was still just a de trop from Hakute, who dreamt of a progenitor like Calami and a sire like Calam.

“Domina Yakubo is here!” Musa’s excited scream pulled me from my reverie.

I did not know how I had not realized this sooner, but spending so much time alone with the imp, in such a confined space, helped me see many things I previously had not. The first thing I realized was that Musa was always using pansophy. It strengthened its sight and its hearing, in a way that was abnormal. And so Musa knew exactly when the fog door to our suite was opened. The fact that the owners of the establishment our suite was in had given keys to the soldiers, was just one more annoyance in a long, growing list.

Musa stopped short of the entrance to the room. It froze and then it swiveled, turning quickly to face me. “It is not just Domina Yakubo.” Musa said. How did Musa know this? Pansophy, of course. Extra sight, extra sound, extra feel? Who knew?

“Come out here Nebud.” A familiar voice ordered.

It was Arexon. Had the time of my rematch finally arrived?

I was slow in rising. If I could not see Musa’s agitation, I would have been even slower and more reticent. As it was, Musa’s discomfort made it hard for me to keep the uspec waiting too long.

I walked out of the room and emerged in our front room. It was quite spacious. The front room was like an amalgamation of the entertaining and cooking room which we’d had in the suite in Katsoaru. The okun faucet was right in the middle of the lounging beds in the entertaining room. There were several counters, and a hail-box, scattered around the perimeter of the room. It was an odd style.

The space in front of the entrance to the suite was filled by Arexon, standing between two gurus. One of them was Yakubo, the other was unknown. They both stood at attention, one of their hands fisted and laying by their sides, the other grabbing the hilt of their sword. Their feet were placed together, their heads held up, as they stared off into space. Well, Yakubo did, the other soldier caught a glimpse of my mangled flesh and became so engrossed in it that it could not look away.

I’d learnt a bit more from Yakubo about the army in which it served. I knew now that there were several ranks in the army and that those ranks were denoted by the crosses/rectangles on earrings and the bands on arms.

By far, the most interesting thing that I’d learned from Yakubo, was that it was part of a serf army. When it had introduced itself to me in the hangar as a serf officer, I’d simply thought that the ‘serf’ term was part of its title. Now, I knew better. It was a serf. An actual serf. All the serfs wore earrings, and all the free did not.

Which meant that Arexon was also a serf.

I found this very discomfiting. It was troubling that Sophila would take it upon itself to own uspecs. It was one thing to own imps, another entirely to make an uspec a serf. But, according to Yakubo, Sophila had lost so much in its wars against the ports it annexed, that it would not allow any uspec from annexed ports to be free. The uspecs had to earn their freedom. They had to work as serfs for Sophila for a predetermined amount of time, before they would have the right to own themselves.

It was barbaric.

Apparently, Sophila’d had more than ten offspring. It had lost all but Sophian to its war efforts. And so, all uspecs from annexed ports were made serfs. Those that could fight were sent to the serf army. Over time, the serf army became the only army. The highest ranks, the ‘golden capon’ positions, were filled by free uspecs. They wore golden bands on their arms. There were no born nobles in this port. All nobles earned their gold in the army. The nobles were the only ones who could join the army at the golden capon rank. Any other uspec who wanted to join the army had to join the serf army.

If I was in Sophila’s serf army, I would have led a rebel a long time ago. From what Yakubo said, the serf army far outnumbered the golden capon nobles.

“You look well Nebud.” Arexon stated.

Unlike the guru, Arexon did not stare at my mangled flesh. It did not even glance at it. Its eyes remained on my face. My eyes wandered to the silver earrings on Arexon’s ears. I knew now that those earrings meant that Arexon was a serf, only better than an imp slave because it would ‘eventually’ earn its freedom. Arigad’s offspring, a serf to the Kaiser who stole its port.

“How do you do it?” I asked.

spixytinxy:
Came for early morning tea before, guess update is still cooking. Good morning obehid

Good morning. It's a little late today, but it's ready now! Hope you enjoy

@dragonstar14 chai, I agree oh, it must get its pound of flesh...see suffer oh!

@cherriex thank you!

@Omittesb I am glad Nebud is alive too. As to Arexon's agenda...well, who knows...I guess we will see

@spixytinxy Chey, I'm sorry oh, I don't want to kill you with suspense, oh I don't know how long Saturday's update will be yet, but I think it might be longer than this. I like the way you're thinking about Arexon, I sha hope that nothing happens to make you change your mind...

@phoenixchap thank you, thank you, ah, but Sophila didn't do anything, it was its offspring that ordered nebud's whipping. But I agree sha, Sophian is just...anyway, let me not come and spoil it now. Please, feel free to write their ends, maybe we can consolidate our ideas and about the lurking friend you see...well you may very well be farsighted oh!

@Ultimategeneral So the ring only senses pansophy. If it touches someone that has the magic, it tells the person wearing it. The ring uses pansophy to do this, but as Calam is farrrr smarter than I am, I am still trying to grasp all the complicated pansophy engineering that went into making that ring. But no, it cannot shield from pansophy, it can only detect it.

@Tuhndhay I like that question, but I think you have Sophian mixed up with Sophila. That's a good question though, why indeed? Maybe your answer will come tomorrow...or maybe not... A clue? Hmmm...well, we'll see

@ayshow6102 Thanks for reading! As in, chai, if only Nebud could have used spectra, but you're right, Sophian has all the eyes, so Sophian would have attacked, but it would have been so cool if Nebud could fight back with the magic. You're making me want to rewatch doctor strange now. You know, doctor strange is actually my favorite (well top three) marvel hero. I just love that magic!

@Fazemood Nebud suffered sha. It was a struggle, and when you think that its only crime was stabbing Sophian's hand small...anyway we shall see what will happen. But I agree with you, I'm happy Nebud was able to stay strong. Thank you for reading!

@KngGezy more coming tomorrow!

The uspec with the whip stopped to the right of me. It stood just outside the area covered by the green dome. The dome was small enough that the whip would have no problem reaching me. The uspec waited for Sophian’s nod, before it began.

The pain of the first lash was indescribable. It fell on my skin and the thorns pushed into me, breaking through the surface. I wanted to scream. I felt so helpless. I jerked at the bindings, but they would not give. The second lash fell, and I swallowed down the cry of pain. The third came and several of the thorns went into already formed wounds, deepening them. After the tenth lash, I stopped counting. I stared instead at the uspec who’d ordered this.

Hate burned in me, hot and deep. I wanted to make this uspec pay. I was going to make it pay I swore, as the lashes fell. I stared fixated at the imperial, my eyes filled with hate. The pain did not end. Lash after lash, it continued, leaving behind blood and shredded skin in its wake. I thought back to the pits, of the time that I had spent trying to reach the lifeforce in my pain. Under the equipoise, that lifeforce was unreachable now.

Arexon showed no emotions. Why did I stare at it? Each time I looked at the uspec I remembered Arigad, its progenitor. Arigad’s port had been taken by Sophila, and here Arexon was, serving the line that destroyed its own, like a loyal pet. It was disgusting. If it was me, I would have killed them all a long time ago. I would slaughter them! The scourging continued and I refused to give them the pleasure of my pain. I kept my sounds to myself. Not even a whimper, I would not give them that.

Sophian’s eyes never left mine. It stared at me, watching my face, not the scourged flesh. I did not know what it hoped to see there, but I was determined not to give it. I wondered if this uspec ever showed emotions. It did not smile at my punishment. It did not frown. It just remained aloof, unaffected by my anguish.

The only sounds in the air, were those of the whip falling, the lash forcing the thorns into my flesh, and the deep grunts of the whipper.

I could no longer tell if there was flesh on my stomach. The parts of the whip that touched my body were now stained red. All I felt from my chest and stomach was a burning. Unimaginable heat. Perhaps this was what it felt like to be consumed by an inferno.

My vision was getting blurry. It was becoming hard to lock eyes with the imperial. I had never felt pain like this before, not even in the pits. Death was preferable to this.

I think if I had the strength to, I would have yelled. If it was pain the imperial wanted to see, I would have indulged it. But I was too weak. I was grateful for the physical weakness which covered up my mental one. Thanks to the weakness, the uspec would not know how close it had come to breaking me.

Still the lashes did not stop.

My eyes closed and my head dropped.

I blinked.

Where was I? There was a hard ground underneath me. Not the wetness of the okun. Had I passed out in the pits again? But the ground in the pits was sludge. I shook my head. My body was burning. I felt an avalanche of pain in my stomach. It was as if Junte had scraped at the flesh on my stomach with its prized horn. Junte? I shook my head.

My mind was foggy. Foggy. This area was foggy. Too much fog for the slum. Too much fog for the pits.

“Nebud.” The voice was strange. I did not know this voice.

Fingers pinched my chin and forced my head up. I was staring into a face I did not know. It had four outer eyes.

“Nebud!” The voice snapped. Then it let go and my head fell.

I pulled at my arms and the burning in my chest doubled. I groaned. I was too weak to do anything else. The fog drifted around me. I did not like the feel of it against my stomach. I was too raw. I looked down on myself and I was left confused. What happened to me? There was only red where my chest and stomach used to be. My legs and foot were still green.

I forced my head up.

There was something familiar about this uspec. It had earrings on its ears and silver bands on its arms. I watched as it placed a black pellet into a wooden cup. That pellet was familiar. It was the same pellet that I had placed into a goblet filled with chilled wine.

The daze lifted just as Arexon brought the cup with loony towards me. I jerked my head to the side. That sudden movement pulled at the lacerated flesh on my stomach. I swallowed down the cry of pain.

“Drink.” Arexon ordered.

I glared at the uspec. I could not move my head, not again. “No.” my voice was low.

Arexon frowned at me. It clenched its left hand into a fist and punched me in the face. The blow forced my head to the side, pulling again at my skin. I was coming to loathe this uspec.

Arexon forced the wooden cup into my mouth and pushed it up, pouring its contents into my mouth. Some of the liquid made its way into my body, but most of it poured on my skin.

I yelled, the pain of the liquid flowing over my torn skin unbearable.

Just then, the loony took infect. I felt myself growing weak. I was too weak to yell again, even though the burning on my flesh did not lessen.

“Take it back to its rented suite in the civilians’ camp and have two gurus stationed outside its door. If any living creature tries to leave that suite, they are to kill it.” Arexon ordered.

“Yes sirga.”

“On the off chance that it is foolish enough to try to leave, and it makes it past the gurus, send writs to all soldiers stationed in the civilians camp, on the roads, and in the hangar. If they see any uspec matching Nebud’s description, they are to kill it immediately.”

“Yes sirga.”

After giving the orders, Arexon marched off.

Two soldiers walked into the equipoise. One of them reached for the chains binding my hands, the other worked on the belt around my legs. They both released me at the same time, and unsupported, I fell on my stomach.

It was then, lying with my cut flesh against the hard ground, that I realized that the loony had also numbed me. If it hadn’t, the pain from the fall would have been unimaginable. Instead, I felt nothing.

The soldiers reached for me. They dragged me away the same way that I’d been brought here. I stared at the floor as my body was tussled during my travel.

I blinked. When I opened my eyes, I noticed that the flooring had changed. I was lying in light sludge. Several hands reached for me. They picked me up and lifted me onto a canoe. This canoe was much larger than any I’d seen before. They laid me down with my stomach on a wooden bench. Again, I had cause to be grateful for the loony. I could not even imagine the amount of pain I would have been in, if I could actually feel my body.

I was too weak to turn around, despite how much I wished to.

My current position meant that I could see nothing but the wooden interior of the canoe.

It lurched forward.

A green hand caught me before I could fall.

The canoe continued moving, but its travel was smoother this time. I heard sounds. Some where the vocalization of sounds stored in all canoes. I tried to move my arm and found it impossible. How had Marcinus fought under the influence of this thing? My mind chose that moment to bring up the memory of me putting loony pellets into Marcinus’ wine before taking its eye.

I did it to save its life! I screamed in my head.

The canoe stopped.

I felt hands reach for me and then lift me up and out of the canoe. Had we arrived already? How much time had passed? My mind was too vacuous to provide me with an answer.

They dragged me away.

I heard knocking sounds.

We’d stopped in front of a suite.

The light knocking turned into pounding. “Open for the Kaiser’s army!” A loud voice declared.

Brown legs appeared in front of me.

“Out of the way imp!”

The brown legs disappeared.

I was dragged into the room and dropped on my belly.

I heard feet shuffling.

“Help me imp.” A familiar voice said.

Two more hands grabbed onto me and turned me over.

Musa gasped. “What happened to you master?” it cried, dropping to its knees beside me.

A green face bent over me. Silver earrings with crosses on them, dangled above my head. “You will live great fighter.”

I closed my eyes.

Part 4
-------

Several things happened at the same time.

My eyes all acted in parallel, each one trying to take in as much information as it could. The first thing I saw was the drop of blood. Apparently, I’d lanced the imperial one’s wrist deeply enough to wring blood from it. The drop landed silently on the hard fog ground.

At the same time, I noted a furrowing on the imperial one’s face. It did not seem enraged or even hurt by the wound I’d inflicted on it. Its face indicated more confusion than anything else. I followed the trajectory of its eyes and saw that it had been staring at something behind me. It was with a rising feeling of doom that I inclined my head just far enough to see the subject of the imperial’s gaze.

I saw a fraise in the hand of one of the soldiers who’d been standing behind me. I understood then that the pious one had been reaching for that fraise, and not for me, as I’d thought before I lashed out at it. I had faint recollections of the lessons of the pious which I’d learnt in the slum all those years ago. I’d learnt from those lessons, that lying on a fraise was a grave sin. The imperial had probably meant to make me swear on the fraise. It had not been trying to use pansophy on me.

As soon as I came to this conclusion, I withdrew the dagger. In the process of pulling my dagger back towards me, my ring accidently brushed against the imperial one’s arm. ‘No pansophy’, the call filled my head, showing that the imperial did not even have the magic of pansophy in it. I’d harmed the imperial for nothing.

I bowed my head. “Forgive me imperial one.” I said. “I’d thought you meant to touch me.”

Only silence followed my words. The silence lasted for so long that I found myself raising my head simply to observe the imperial one. Its face showed no emotions. I reached through my anger for the uspec’s, determined to yank its rage, but I felt no anger.

My pounding heart stilled then, calmed by the imperial’s lack of anger.

“That was an unfortunate mistake.” Sophian stated calmly. It turned its gaze to the soldiers standing behind me and ordered, “kill it.”

I was so shocked by the uspec’s words that my reaction time was delayed. It wasn’t till I heard the swords being pulled from their sheaths, that I understood the imperial’s order.

I swiveled immediately.

I only had my dagger, but that was enough to cut through a soldier’s arm. I’d hoped to steal its sword when it dropped it, but I was surprised to see the soldier ignore the deep wound. I reached for its pain and found nothing.

There were two swords aimed at me now. I dodged, swerving underneath one, while I swept out with my foot, knocking the other soldier down. Still bent, I stabbed the foot of the soldier left standing. The soldier pulled its foot back before I could retrieve my dagger. This one also showed no signs of pain. It struck its sword at my neck. An attack I was only able to deflect, by grabbing onto the sharp end of the blade, and pulling it out of the soldier’s arm.

The soldier was not expecting that and so it offered little resistance.

Ignoring my bleeding hand, I switched the positioning of the blade so that my hand was wrapped around its hilt. Then I punched the soldier in its face. The soldier fell. I was just about to deal it a killing blow, when I saw the other soldier advancing on me. I only had to clash my sword against it a few times to see that it lacked strength.

I channeled all of my effort into one swing, and knocked the soldier’s sword out of its hand. I swiped my sword through the air, aiming for the soldier’s neck.

Before my blade could reach its target, a cutlass was thrust in the air, deflecting it.

I was shocked to see that it was Arexon.

I smiled. The uspec showed no emotion.

I struck out with my sword at the uspec. A bolt of pain shot through me. I clenched my jaw, swallowing my answering howl. I fell to the one knee still capable of providing support. With dazed eyes, I stared at the broken joint of my other knee, realizing that Arexon had dislocated the bones there, right as I was striking out with my sword.

I tried to stand but found my broken knee incapable of supporting weight. Instead, I placed the tip of my sword against the ground and tried to use that to push myself up.

Arexon brought the hilt of its cutlass down against the side of my head. There was so much strength behind that blow that it knocked me to the ground.

I was dazed.

The sword was knocked out of my hand. While I lay on the floor, two strong hands grabbed onto my wrists and forced them together behind me. I felt cold metal against my skin. It reminded me of the time that Fajahromo had chained me in the pits of Hakute. I did not like the memory. I tried to move, to force my hands free of the shackles, but they’d already been bound.

A hand grabbed onto the back of my neck and pulled me up by it. It forced me to a kneeling position.

I pushed back at the hand, throwing my weight around to free myself from its hold. I found my efforts futile, the uspec was too strong. The only one with more bulk than I in the room was Arexon. It had to be that uspec holding me down now.

The sharp edge of a cutlass was pressed against my neck. It pressed it into my skin. Hard enough to cut. I felt my skin part underneath the blade. And then the cutlass was held there. The cutlass was so deep in my flesh that if I jerked, I would kill myself on that blade.

I did not move.

What was Arexon waiting for?

The imperial stood in front of me. Its gaze was fixed on something above me. It stared at that thing for a while before saying, “take it to the scourge.”

The bite of the cutlass eased, leaving a line of blood in its wake.

I tried to stand, but found it impossible to do with only one working leg and both of my arms shackled behind me.

Hands grabbed onto my arms. Those hands pulled at me. My knees had only just left the floor before they began to move, dragging me out of the room. I was in a particularly vulnerable position. I reached out with my emotions hoping to find something that I could manipulate, but I found nothing. The lack of emotions infuriated me. I’d stabbed one, where was its pain?

They pulled me through open curtains, the top of my feet dragging against the ground. I shoved myself to the right, hoping to knock one of the soldiers down. Instead, I put too much weight on my broken knee and reignited the pain coming from that knee. It had been a bearable ache before that.

Now the pain was almost overwhelming.

I went into the lifeforce of my pain as a distraction. The pain was so severe that I was starting to fear that I would never walk again. A more detailed study assured me that it wasn’t that dire.

By the time I pulled myself out of my pain, I was outside.

I shook my head, frowning. No, if the flooring was any indication, I was still inside the Castle, I was just in some part of the dwelling which was without a roof. This area was filled with thick fogs.

The fogs were so thick that if I did not have the extra doses of aqua sight, I would not have been able to see the green cylinder they were taking me to. It wasn’t until I was inside the dome that I recognized it for what it was. It had been so narrow from the outside that I had not considered that it could be a dome. Now though, I could clearly see that it was an equipoise.

Two more soldiers walked into the dome.

Both of them grabbed on firmly to my good leg, holding it fast, as the other two pulled me upwards. I knew before my arms were lifted what they were going to do. So, I wasn’t surprised when my arms were chained to a bolt, and my legs were bound to the bottom of the post with a belt.

I was left alone then, tied, with the center of my back against a cold, unyielding, post. I put all of my weight on the one leg that could take it, and did my best to ignore the pain in my knee. A strange thought crossed my mind then. I wondered if there was some sort of pansophy that could make one not feel anything in a specific region of the body. The pain bore in, pulling my thoughts back to the knee.

I looked around the area, trying to distract myself from the pain. Was this a prison? I thought, as my eyes spotted two more domes just like the one I was in. With my extra sight, I could see through the fog a little, but I could not see too far into it. My initial idea of it being a prison quickly changed when I saw several implements a distance off. No, it had to be a gym. Even that did not seem right. A mix between a gym and a training ground, I decided.

Two soldiers came close enough that I could see them through the fog. They both had black belts on and wore earrings with crosses on them. One of them seemed vaguely familiar the other was not.

“What did it do?” the unfamiliar one asked.

They were both standing in front of me, staring at me in a way that made it clear that I was the subject of their discussion.

“Stabbed the imperial.” The other replied.

The uspec’s eyes widened. It stared disbelievingly at the other. “Is it crazy?”

“It is foreign.”

“Ah.” The uspec stared pityingly at me. “It does not know Sophian then.” It stated.

They both shook their heads at me before turning to walk away. Right at that moment, before they could move far enough to be hidden by the fogs, another soldier dressed as they were walked in.

“Assiduity!” it yelled.

The soldiers turned immediately, so that they were facing the one that had just come in, and then they saluted.

The imperial and Arexon emerged from the fogs. An uspec with studs in its ears walked behind them. The imperial jerked its head in my direction and the uspec came forward.

It had a whip in its hand.

On closer inspection, I saw that the whip had thorn-like structures sticking out of it. “The scourge.” The imperial’s words from earlier filled my mind. This is what the uspec had meant. I clenched my jaw.

[quote author=Tuhndhay post=8[img]2531394]I have this creeping suspicion about the conversation and turn of events..... Something does not yet add up...... This is not even about Manus, the power at play here is bigger than the current existence. It feels like a game of chess and they don't even know they all are the pawns.[/quote]I agree that this is definitely more than just Manus, but you're thinking so big! I like it!!!

@tunjilomo lol...I guess we'll find out if that's true, soon enough

@Smooth278 I'm sorry, next update won't be ready till tomorrow.

@cherriex coming soon, coming soon...by soon I mean tomorrow

@ayshow6102 lol, I like that you caught that! Don't forget it oh, it might prove to be an important detail later on As to where Musa is, this is a dangerous port, Musa is staying in doors like it was advised to

@Fazemood Lol, well, we shall see...I won't say any more than that, although I agree that respect ought to be earned. As of Manus, I agree, that uspec is greedy and power hungry, smh, all of this talk of Manus is just making me think of Marcinus. Chai, hope that one is okay oh!

@Madosky112 Lol, I like this prediction! I guess only time will tell if it is accurate or not

@Omittesb Thank you. So you are advocating stabbing people? Chai...what a world, lol. Well, I understand why Nebud did it, but...anyway, we shall see...

Its comment must have been a joke, because the uspecs laughed.

“We kill Isthum.” The Kaiser stated. “That yielder has far outlived its usefulness.”

“But only Isthum has the…”

“Then find it!” The Kaiser snapped, cutting Arexon off.

“Sirga, the plenum wants Isthum alive. If we kill the yielder, they will not be pleased.” Sophian cautioned.

“This is my port!” The Kaiser yelled. “I am Kaiser of Chiboga and all its annexed ports. I own more than half of the mines in the entire existence. I do not care what the plenum thinks. I answer to no one but the Kuwor.”

“Please, pater, reconsider.” ‘Pater’? This was Sophian, which meant that Sophian had to be the Kaiser’s offspring, an imperial one.

I heard a loud sigh. “The plenum!” it spat. “I curse them!” Silence greeted the Kaiser’s words, giving me time to ponder on this new revelation. The Kaiser of Chiboga, although Kuworyte, was not in league with the plenum? I knew that this had to have some significance, but I could not think of exactly what that significance was, not when there was a little voice in the back of my mind, telling me that there was something very familiar about this ‘last brio’ that they spoke of. I’d heard it before, but I just could not recall exactly where I’d heard it, and why it had been mentioned.

“Very well, I will pander to the plenum yet again. Kill Isthum, lead Manus to the body and make sure that the uspec leaves my port. Then we will cater to the plenum. We do have the one thing that they want more than anything else. We have the last brio.”

“Yes, mighty one.”

“Yes, sirga.”

“Do it quickly!”

Suddenly, the young uspec came running out of the curtains, pulling it open and rushing to open the other.

The soldier with the crosses on its earring marched in, yelled “Assiduity!” and then saluted.

The Kaiser and its soldiers were marching out of the room before I could decide whether or not to make my presence known.

I was still pondering this when the room was empty again and the soldier yelled, “In clover!” before marching out.

“Is the banneret here yet?” I heard Sophian ask.

“Yes sirga.” An unfamiliar voice replied.

“Bring it in.” Sophian ordered.

The curtains were drawn and an uspec with a single silver band on its arm and a silver rectangle on its earrings, walked out. The uspec’s belt was silver, just as Arexon’s had been. Again, I wondered what the silver bands meant. This uspec had three of its outer eyes filled.

“Come in Banneret.” The soldier said, staring at me.

Again, I contemplated my odds at a successful escape. I did not like my chances, not when all the uspecs in this room had the magic of the boga eyes which could kill instantly.

I stood. On impulse, my hand reached for the hilt of my cutlass, only to find the sheath empty. I had to make a conscientious effort to keep that hand from wandering towards my hidden dagger.

The soldier held the curtains open, and I walked in.

Counting the imperial and Arexon, there were four uspecs in the room. From my quick survey of the room, I noted that it was some sort of office.

I heard footsteps behind me and turned.

Two soldiers had followed me from the other room. I found this slightly alarming, but I could not say why with any certainty.

There was a black desk towards one wall of the room. Arexon stood to one side of the desk, and the imperial, which I identified by the golden bands on its arm, stood in front of the desk. I noted that this uspec did not wear any earrings. It wore a golden belt instead and had a sword sheathed on that belt. I only needed to look at the uspec once to know that I could take it in a fair fight.

It had bulk, more bulk than Manus, but not as much as Marcinus. It was also fairly short, much shorter than the uspec it was standing next to. But, it had all of its outer eyes filled, which meant that it had the full range of spectra.

I was surprised to see that the last uspec in the room was not boga. It had the neck scales of an hooni. But it was also a soldier, one with a silver band around its arm, and a rectangle on its earrings.

I stopped in front of the imperial one and curtsied.

“Rise.” It said.

“Salutations imperial one.” I greeted.

There was a level of severity in the uspec’s expressions which I had not seen on any other. I was familiar with nobles who smiled, and those who frowned. But this noble was something else. I could tell from looking at its face, that it was not prone to smiling.

It was standing with its hands crossed behind its back, its bearing much similar to that of the other soldiers I’d seen. “I am the imperial undead, Sophian, sole imperial in the line of the Kaisers of Chiboga.” It turned to pick up a sheet of paper off its desk, turned back to me, and said, “and according to this log, you are Banneret Nebud, who hales from Mugakute. Is that right?”

I recognized the sheet of paper from the hangar. “Yes, imperial one.”

“Mugakute?” It asked, repeating the port’s name.

“Yes, imperial one.”

The uspec placed the sheet of paper back on the table and stared at me. It placed its hands behind its back, widened its stance, and then said, “you are lying.”

“I am not, imperial one.”

“According to Manus, you hale from the forgotten kingdom of Murekute, an Uspecipyte port.”

“The imperial Manus must have been mistaken.”

The uspec’s eyes all narrowed on my center eye. “Tiyoseriwosin?”

“Kuworyte.” I replied, without blinking.

“Yet you have just come from Katsoaru?” It stated.

“I was questioned on this in the hangar, imperial one, and I explained the purpose of my visit to that port.”

“So, you stick by your story?”

“Yes, imperial one.”

The look on its face did not change. It continued to stare into my center eye, and then it relaxed the gaze of its outer eyes, only staring at my center eye with its own.

“You are lying.” It stated, its voice filled with conviction.

I knew that it knew the truth. I didn’t know how it found out, but I knew that it knew. It knew that I’d claimed to be Uspecipyte in Katsoaru. Had Manus told them? That was the only way that the uspec could know with this level of certainty. But why would Manus tell them after I’d promised to help it?

The imperial one took a step towards me.

It stretched out its arm, moving its hand towards my arm. It was going to touch me. The uspec did not seem like the type for casual pats. If it knew that I was lying, then the only reason it would touch me would be to use pansophy on me.

I could not let that happen; I could not let the uspec see into my head.

I reacted.

I reached for the dagger in my belt and pulled it out. Then I struck out with the dagger, placing the sharp tip of the weapon against the imperial one’s wrist.