₦airaland Forum

@dhehbhor thank you. Hope you enjoy it!

@spixytinxy I'm good haha. Sorry oh, I'm going with Saturdays, just to match up with when I started posting. So the tea is served now, you can come and drink

@Bluehaven thank you. This is not the Reckoning, it's a pre-prologue to it. So the story is following Nebud and he mentions that he is writing this while umanis (humans) are fighting, and he says one of them has green eyes (possibly one of the twins). And we know from the last book that the twins planned to come for him, so this writing is taking place some time after the events of the last book but before (...and maybe during...) the Reckoning.

@Aphroditee you're welcome

@GeoSilYe thank you! I'm happy to be back. Hope you enjoy this one

@Peaceyw HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Wow, are you sure your spirit isn't an augur, this one that it was able to sense my new update . I'm sorry about the confusion, this story, with the new creatures and the new world is really out there, so I'm trying my best to explain it in a way that will be easy to understand, but I'm worried that it might be hard to get a clear picture of what I'm describing. Yes, in the spectral existence there is no gender, so that is why the uspecs are 'it'. I take it as a challenge to make this story interesting and understandable, because I think I underestimated the complexity of introducing 'creatures' that are soo different. But, it will be worth it if I'm able to do it well, because (SPOILER ALERT) Nebud is coming into the Reckoning. I think the story will be so much more enjoyable if we get a good understanding of the spectral existence and Nebud's character before that.

@siralabai I don't know why, but it seems like siralabia is just sweeting me to type, because that's what I was typing. I had to remind myself that it was wrong lol.

@Fazemood Yes, you are right about the idea of the story. There will be a lot less dialogue, compared with the other ones. This book is intended to be an exploration of the spectral existence, through Nebud's experiences, and so there will be quite a bit of action, but I'm not going to spoil it by saying too much . That is definitely my intention with this (introducing the other existence). Depending on how this goes, I might do the same for the other existences, in between the other main books. Hahaha, yes, it is all about the POV. The uspecs think they look good and humans don't and, obviously, humans would think that uspecs are ugly. I'm back to school, so that means back to posting once a week. I'll post the next one Saturday morning.

@phoenixchap hehe, thank you! I really appreciate your confidence. I'm going to try my best to make sure I do it justice

@tunjilomo hahaha, thank you! I really intend for this to be an eye-opener. It will certainly help make some things in the next book clearer (or at least that's my intention). I definitely don't want anyone getting bored for too long.

@spixytinxy thank you. Honestly, I will try my best with the length of the updates, but it will all depend on how much writing I'm able to do during the week

@Niwdog yay! welcome back

@MiaB Welcome!!! I really hope you enjoy it!

Part 3
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Irira.

They had been right. It was there, in my reflection. I was what they’d accused me of being. I was an abomination, a crossbreed.

I looked at my neck again and I saw the rough cyan scales. They were little, just three lined up on my neck, forming a row across it. Three cyan scales, and I was mesmerized by them. I stared at the scales on my neck and watched the way they contrasted against my green skin. I thought about all the other uspecs in my slum, uspecs who had bare necks, because, unlike me, they were not abominations.

Still, I couldn’t stop staring at it. That was my first sacrilege. I should have turned my eye away in disgust and poured down insults on the heads of my progenitors, the uspecs who allowed me to happen. I should have mourned, I should have been grieving and I should have tried desperately to throw myself into the okun and drown in the liquid.

But I didn’t.

I didn’t feel any shame, all I felt was an absurd amount of curiosity. I moved closer to the okun to look at a better view of the reflection. Then I struggled with my restraints, so that I could kneel. I wanted to see both of my features together.

It was hard to see the tail, tiny as it was, but I’d seen the tail many times before. It was the scales I was drawn to.

As the tail was the distinctive feature of the kute spectrum, the neck scales were the distinctive feature of the hooni spectrum. The hooni spectrum had the uspecs with a natural inclination towards quicksand. When they gained the understanding, they could use that quicksand to teleport. Having both features meant that I was both of the kute spectrum as well as the hooni spectrum. I was a crossbreed, an abomination, irira.

That wasn’t all the okun had to show me. I had developed another mark of age and experience, I had grown a feather. I stared, shocked at the single cyan feather which had formed on my left aileron, and a slow smile crept onto my face. My feather was the most dazzling in the entire slum. It wasn’t broken in half like the uspec who I’d been given to at birth. It wasn’t wispy or thin like Bentuj’s. It was full, and it shone.

I looked at it all and I finally understood what had happened with the imp.

In the stories that the passing traders told about the hooni spectrum, they’d always said that the hooni scales had to be dug up. The hooni spectrum was made of passionate uspecs driven by anger. These uspecs had to rip out their first neck scale in a fit of anger, before more scales could grow. That was what I’d done with the imp. When my hand passed over my neck, I must have dug out my first scale and ripped it off.

That was why the imp screamed. The stories had it that the scales were sharp, so sharp that just touching the edge would tear the skin. I must have used the scale to pluck out the imp’s eye. That was why there was so much blood. And the other uspecs hailed me because they saw my newly formed eye-socket. They saw the imp eye I had collected, and they saw the dazzling feather on my aileron, but they didn’t see the neck scales, because these new ones must have taken some time to grow.

Now they were out, and they showed what I was, a hooni – kute crossbreed. An abomination.

I spent the rest of the night just staring at myself in the okun.

I grew that night. Something very fundamental changed in me. And as I watched the red clouds in our sky give way for the orange dots which illuminated the day, I knew that I had to leave the slum. I knew that they would kill me, it would be a sacrilege not to. If the fates were reversed and another uspec was deemed irira, I would have joined to kill it. So, there were no ill feelings, not for Bentuj who as leader of our slum would lead the ceremony, and not even for Junte. Junte may have been jealous, but I knew it would not have done anything else with its jealousy if I hadn’t been irira.

I looked at the okun under the light of the orange dots and saw it turn from friend to foe. The kute spectrum were okun uspecs. The okun gave us our ability to drain for spectral magic. That was why all sacrifices made in a kute spectrum were made to the okun. If Bentuj and the other uspecs succeeded, I would be drowned in that okun.

As the day went on and the fog grew clammy, I became the slum’s biggest attraction. Every uspec in that slum came at least three times to look at the irira. The younger ones at least looked sad for me. I appreciated it, I really did, even though I didn’t show it. I was too busy trying to think of a plan to escape. I knew it had to involve overwhelming force, only that would make the uspecs release me. But every time I thought of the amount of force required, I despaired.


Then the moment came, and I saw them. Bentuj stormed towards me, Junte and some other uspecs following closely behind it. I watched them walk through the fog and with each step closer towards me, I became desolate.

Until they reached me.

“Irira.” Junte spat out.

His cry was picked up by other uspecs and soon every single uspec in the slum was out of their hovels watching. Most of them joined in, yelling ‘irira’ as loud as they could. They watched me from hovels. The really daring ones moved closer. Close enough that they could see my death first hand, but not so close that they got into Bentuj’s way.

The two uspecs who’d tried to hold me down the previous day came forward. They reached behind me and cut off the rope that bound me to the tree. As soon as my body was free, I tried to fight. They seemed to be expecting it, because they both took turns slamming their fists into my head until they were sure I got the message: they would not be caught unawares again.

I got the message.

They pulled me up. Lifting me off my feet, each holding onto my arm.

Bentuj cleared its throat and the chants of irira went away.

“Irira must die. All praise be to the founder, Chuspecip.” Bentuj intoned.

“Irira must die. All praise be to the founder, Chuspecip.” Junte repeated in a more gleeful tone.

The uspecs holding onto me took their turn saying it next. Then every uspec in the slum said it. That was the custom, it was how they washed their hands free of my abomination. Each uspec had to give praise to Chuspecip, had to call on the founder and declare their innocence in the crime of my birth.

Every uspec, myself included.

Once the last uspec was done chanting, all eyes turned to me and they waited in silence. I stubbornly kept my lips glued together. By my religion, by the beliefs that I had been raised on, I was an abomination, a sacrilege. By my religion, it was an insult, the most despicable insult to refuse to proclaim the words. But I refused. Even when Junte walked forward, its prized horn in its hand, I refused.

I was held still as Junte maliciously drove the pointed tip of that horn into my single outer eye socket. It was painful, but nowhere near the amount of pain I had felt when Junte had used that same horn to pull out the imp’s eye I’d gained.

I endured it.

“Say it, irira.” Bentuj ordered.

I shook my head.

“Do you want to be damned?” One of the uspecs holding me asked. It shook, shivering because of the damnation I brought on myself and the entire slum by my refusal to declare my own death sentence.

Junte pulled out the horn and drove it deeper into my outer eye-socket. “Say it, irira.” Junte’s voice was laced with disgust.

It is often said that the kute spectrum is tied to pain the way the hooni is tied to anger. The kute uspecs preferred to think of that as untrue. They considered it a fault, to bask in pain. As Junte continued its torture, I learnt the true value of the emotion that uspec spectrums hold. I absorbed the pain. I didn’t fight it, just as I hadn’t fought my anger, and as I absorbed it, I felt myself go groggy. I could tell that the change was upon me again. It felt just as it had with the imp. I closed my central eye and welcomed the mindlessness of the black void. As my mind drifted out of consciousness, a smile formed on my lips. I realized that I would live another day and my deliverance had come from Junte.

I woke to the same position I had found myself the previous night. Red clouds covered the sky giving the daytime dots a red hue. And I was alone, just me and the okun. It was night and the okun had become my friend again.

I stared into the okun and smiled when I saw another eye-socket on my face. Two eye-sockets had formed in the span of days. While the first eye-socket had formed on my forehead, the other one formed by my nose, on my right cheek. I stared at the oval depression and the green within it.

Then I turned, maneuvering in my position to get a better look at my ailerons. At the rate I was developing, I expected to see two more dazzling cyan feathers.

I was disappointed.

I just had the single feather.

I kept turning, as if a feather would appear by sheer force of will and then I saw it. I saw the tail. My tail had grown. It had grown from the little stub barely protruding from my back, to a long, endowed, cyan appendage. It reached almost midway down my thighs, more than half the length of Bentuj’s.

I waited with smug defiance for the start of the next day. I watched as the red clouds moved slightly giving way for the orange dots. And as I watched the celestial bodies prepare, I wondered about another rumor I’d heard, one that was just as absurd as the idea of an uspec whose feet had never known sludge. I looked up at the red sky and wondered if hail could truly fall from it. I decided it was impossible. Hail in the spectral existence was just as absurd as common uspecs with sludge-free feet.

The day passed in a blur. The uspecs came to watch me and marveled at my new eye-socket. I tried to spread my legs as Bentuj did, to show off my tail, but it was pointless while I sat. So, I waited for Bentuj and its entourage.

I smiled when they finally came.

The uspecs released me and held me back as Bentuj went through the proceedings again. I bid my time, waiting for each uspec to declare me an abomination and then state my fate. Then when all the eyes turned to me, I spread my legs as Bentuj did and showed off my mighty tail.

Junte gasped in shock.

Bentuj’s eye widened and then narrowed with hatred. I could tell what was going through its mind. Bentuj hated that an irira, a hooni irira, would dare grow a tail that, even though was half the length of its, was double the girth and ten times more impressive.

I smiled.

I sentenced myself to death with that smile.

“We cannot wait another day Bentuj.” Junte said, its eye reluctantly fixed on my tail.

“I agree.” Bentuj replied.

An eye that had looked on me with kindness for the duration of my life, turned on me with spite. “Feed him to the okun.” Bentuj gave the order.

“All praise be to the founder, Chuspecip.” Junte chanted with a smile on its face, as the uspecs holding me wrestled me to my knees in the sludge. One of them put its hand behind my head, forcing my face into the okun.

“All praise be to the founder, Chuspecip.” the chant from the other uspecs was the last thing I heard before my head was forced into the water.

I struggled. I tried to fight them off, tried to push with my arms and feet, while I kept my nose shut against the liquid. I kept pushing, my feet digging into the sludge and my knees forcing the rest of my body forward. As I pushed with my legs, I wriggled with my arms and my body, I could even feel my ailerons flap from side to side. Every part of my body worked together for a single purpose.

To live.

I didn’t win, but I got a respite. I pushed myself into the okun. I waded through the pink liquid desperate to outswim them. Where I would go, I did not know, but I knew that every moment I lived was an extra moment to plan. I couldn’t leave the slum; the Kaiser had made sure of that.

There were boundaries that surrounded slums. Those boundaries were enforced with thick fogs, fogs so thick an uspec couldn’t see through to the other side. Once an uspec stepped into those fogs from the wrong side, they would die. Unless they had the special contrivances which the traders and imps used. No uspec born de trop was given one of those. Still I swam in the okun, I swam as fast as I could to the other side of the stream, hoping to outrun the uspecs chasing me and buy myself a little more time to live.

I had swum the length of the okun countless times throughout my life, and so I wasn’t surprised when I reached the other end.

Bentuj and Junte stood there with evil grins on their faces.

I turned, prepared to escape the other way, but the two uspecs were already behind me. They latched onto my arm, their fingers digging viciously into me, as they pushed me down into the water.

I pushed against them with my body, thrashing and fighting.

Bentuj and Junte walked into the okun. Junte grabbed onto my head as Bentuj wrapped its fingers around the back of my neck. They held me so securely there was no way I could break free.

I knew my life was over.

The sum total of my entire life was a short tail, a dazzling feather and two empty outer eye-sockets. It was the life I would have lived, they were all the features I had ever planned to have when I died. In fact, they had exceeded my expectations. But as death came knocking, I realized that the events of the preceding days had changed my expectations. Now I wanted more.

I wanted to see if an uspec could truly live without staining its feet in sludge. I wanted to see hail drop from the red sky and feel the cold against my skin. I wanted to go to metropolises and see powerful uspecs, uspecs whose tails swept the floor, whose ailerons were filled with feathers as dazzling as mine, and whose eye-sockets were filled with eyes. I wanted to fill my sockets with eyes and gain an understanding. I wanted to feel the power of the spectral magic I had heard so much about.

But most of all, I wanted to know if there were others like me, other irira, abominations who should never have been born.

Sadly, all the things I wanted would never come to pass. I would die, just one more unknown de trop in a nameless slum no one cared about. My entire existence would sum up to nothing. It was a bleak thought.

I exhaled and prepared for death.

I was just about to close my eye when I saw the reflection in the okun. And suddenly, the okun was my friend again.

The okun showed me my salvation.

Part 2
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In a slum in Hakute (the spectral port which coincides with Rivers State, Nigeria)
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I woke up groggy. The sight from my center eye was blurry. My mind seemed to be acting a little slower than usual. There were long strings of a brown material draped overhead. A part of me understood that it was the roof of the hovel I reclined in, but my mind didn’t seem to be able to process that information. It filled me with an awful sense of fear.

That was before the voices and the double faces I saw floating over me.

I drifted off again.

When I woke up the next time, everything seemed to make a lot more sense. There was a myriad of faces before me. The younger uspecs who I’d grown up with, knelt on the muddy floor by the bed I laid on.

The bed was not as strong as I remembered. I could not recognize the soft wool underneath me and the longer length of the bed. Looking around, I saw over a dozen uspecs scattered around, some on their knees, some standing as they watched me with wary eyes. My hovel was not big enough to contain this many uspecs.

My eyes darted over the worried green faces of the younger uspecs, to the disapproving frowns on the faces of some of the older uspecs, and then to the blank look on Bentuj’s face. Junte smirked at me.

I frowned back at it.

There was something missing. In the span of hours, perhaps a day, I had gone from being an accepted member of their society, to being something else. It had to do with the imp. I knew that much, I knew that there was something I was missing. But what it was, I could not say. Whatever it was had changed me in Junte’s mind. I had gone from being just one of the many who followed it, to one that it no longer wanted to lead.

That thought saddened me. I was willing to make amends.

I pulled at my legs, preparing to stand, when I felt the restriction. My panic set in then. I pulled more forcefully at my legs, desperate to free myself from the bindings, but no matter how hard I pulled, the knot held. I imagined Bentuj tied it, no other uspec could tie a knot that well. I yanked at my arms and found them bound to my body.

I looked up, my shocked gaze rising to Bentuj’s face. For some reason, I paused, stopping myself from speaking to really look at Bentuj. Bentuj’s face was just like all the other uspec faces I’d seen. It had the same one open eye in the center of its face, right above the nose. Unlike the others, Bentuj had three unfilled eye-sockets decorating the perimeter of its face. It was the most eye-sockets of all the uspecs in my slum. The rest of Bentuj’s front features were just the same as mine.

I could see pieces of the ailerons, they looked so much bigger than mine. None of the uspecs in our slum could fly. An uspec needed to have its ailerons at least halfway covered with feathers before the ailerons became wings which could give flight. Without spectral magic, an uspec didn’t stand a chance of having its ailerons filled enough for flight.

There was also the tail. When Bentuj was out of hearing distance, Junte would tease it, saying that Bentuj always stood with its legs apart to show off its mighty tail. Maybe the words were true, maybe they weren’t. But at that moment, Bentuj stood with legs spread and I could see its mighty tail. I could see the long cyan tail covered with patches of tougher skin. I compared that tail to my little stub, and I was frightened.

“What have I done?” I asked, my eye pleading as I looked at Bentuj.

“Irira.” Junte spat the word out before Bentuj could speak.

The younger uspecs kneeling on the sludge crawled back.

“Irira.” An older uspec with two eye-sockets on its face joined in.

“Irira.” Another uspec said.

The younger uspecs left. One by one, they stood up, their knees rising from the sludge, and left. I looked at those knees and wondered if the rumors I’d heard were true. I wondered if there really were places in burgs were the ground wasn’t all sludge. A passing trader told us a story once, about a commoner, an uspec just a tier above de trop, whose feet had never known sludge. I couldn’t believe it. An uspec who’d never walked on sludge? Most of my early life was spent sleeping in it. They were good times. The mud formed around my face, as if to cradle me in its arms as loving progenitors were rumored to do, and I slept calmly. But there were uspecs who’d never known it. It seemed impossible.

It was a stupid thought, I knew it. But it was the only thing I could get myself to think of as I watched the uspecs leave. They’d been my friends, they’d been closest to me in age and they were forsaking me.

“Irira.”

Abomination. That was the first time I’d ever heard the word used. We’d been told stories of them. The birth of an uspec was a sacred thing covered in myth as our founder, Chuspecip, wanted it. No one knew how it happened. We only had stories, and in those stories the villains were always irira, the abominations, crossbreeds belonging to different spectrums. Crossbreeding was not allowed to happen. It was forbidding by Chuspecip. It was an uspec’s duty to kill abominations.

Bentuj walked towards me then.

It bent, its fearful head dropping towards me, and my eyes widened. I watched with bated breath as Bentuj’s right hand went up and came down over my neck. For a moment I feared it meant to choke me, and I had no doubt that it could. Bentuj could do anything. But all it did was run its fingers over my neck.

I worried at first, wondering what Bentuj saw, why it ran its fingers over me. Then it reached a hard part and pulled back as if stung. Its head shook and its previously forgiving eyes turned cold and heartless. That was when I knew true fear.

“Irira.” Bentuj said.

My eyes darted to Junte, the only younger uspec in the room. Junte had not left with the others. It smiled when Bentuj proclaimed me as an abomination.

“It must die, all praise be to the founder, Chuspecip.” Junte said, its eye never leaving mine.

Bentuj sighed. “It must die, all praise be to the founder, Chuspecip.”

Apart from Bentuj, there were two other uspecs in the slum with somewhat long tails. Those uspecs moved forward and came towards me.

“Please.” I begged. “I am not irira.”

One uspec held me down, its gaze determinedly averted from my pleading face, while the other released my feet. As soon as my feet were free, I began to kick. I thrashed around, my feet swinging wildly from left to right as I tried to get free. The uspec just grabbed onto both feet and held me down.

I fought. I had never fought more desperately in my life. In fact, I hadn’t thought myself capable of fighting. That was the moment I learnt how desperate I was to live.

“I am not irira. Bentuj!” I screamed. “Bentuj! I am not irira! I swear on my progenitors, I swear to the founder!” I was mindless. I was so desperate to be free that I did not pay heed to the severe frown which had begun to form on Bentuj’s face. “Mercy Bentuj!” I pleaded. “I swear to the founder, I swear to Chuspe…”

I was not allowed to finish that.

Bentuj punched me in the face. It was a punch so hard that I was dazed into silence.

“How dare you lie on the founder’s name!” Spittle fell on my face from Bentuj’s mouth. That is how irate it was. “I see the proof irira, we all see it.”

I had thought myself timid. Too timid to speak up in the face of such anger, but I learnt that I had an iron will, one much stronger than any other uspec I’d met. In the face of Bentuj’s indignation, mine rose.

“Then show me your proof Bentuj!” I snapped back at it.

The tone of my response was so shocking that the uspec holding my feet momentarily slackened its hold.

I took full advantage.

I kicked its head backwards with my right feet and hit the other uspec in the mouth with my head. Then I jumped to my feet, my arms still bound to my body, and prepared to flee. I noticed the shocked look on the elders’ faces, but I did not let it faze me, not when they were determined to kill me.

I ran.

And ran right into the base of Junte’s horn.

The pain was overwhelming. It was more than just the pain of a hard object colliding with my flesh. It was as if the horn had hit my most vulnerable pain receptors, receptors I hadn’t known I had.

I fell to the floor and Junte knelt over me. Its lips curved into a malicious smile as it turned the horn around and sent the sharp pointed edge back into whatever it was that had caused so much pain. Junte stabbed the horn into a spot on my face and pulled.

The pain was more than I could bear. My eye closed and I drifted off.

When I woke up, I was tied to a tree by the okun. I could tell from the red clouds that it was night. There were no uspecs around, no one outside a hovel but me.

I turned and looked into the okun.

That was when I saw it.

I saw the eye-socket first.

Then I understood the pain. I understood why Junte had been so malicious, why it had been so gleeful at the end.

You could always tell an empty eye-socket, one that had never been filled, from an eye-socket which had been filled and lost its eye. The empty eye-socket was green, the same shade of green as the skin. I’d heard that once an eye-socket was filled, the eye closed, given the body time to adjust to the new eye. That must have been why I hadn’t noticed it when I woke up, why I could only see with the one eye. There were white streaks in my eye-socket, the new one I had formed without knowing. Those streaks were the sign that my newly formed eye-socket had been filled.

I put it all together then.

I realized that I must have taken out the imp’s eye when I’d been blinded by rage. I still didn’t know how. I would have needed something sharp, something like Junte’s horn. But I must have taken out the eye. I’d heard rage was one of the stimuli which catalyzed the formation of eye-sockets. That must have been what happened. In my rage, I must have formed an empty eye-socket and then filled it with the imp’s eye.

Junte, having bragged that it would be the first one in our slum to take and use and imp’s eye must have been outraged that I’d done it first. So, Junte must have formed the lie that I was irira, so that it could take the eye away. Which it had done, before I passed out.

Having everything settled, I felt at peace again. Bentuj was a reasonable uspec. I would speak sense to it. I would convince it that Junte was wrong. I knew Bentuj would listen. But there was nothing I could do till morning.

So, I took my focus back to my surroundings and enjoyed the view of the slum at night.

Hovels were scattered around the area. The ones further off were partially hidden by the red fog. The surroundings were really nothing inspiring. We had three tall trees, including the one I was currently tied to, which provided us with our entire collection of fruits. We had the okun whose pink hue covered about a tenth of the slum and provided us with jejas, our only source of nourishment, until the traders came and Bentuj bought spices, grains and meals off them. We didn’t have any other creatures. Although, on a rare occasion, I believe it was during the celebration of Junte’s tail growth, Bentuj had bought smaller creatures called etkus. We made a special jeja stew with the etkus, some grain and some of our fruits, and it was the most succulent meal I’d ever had.

A cyan glitter from the pink okun caught my eye. I turned to face the okun, and again saw my face reflected in it. This time though, I didn’t just see my face, I saw my neck.

My lips parted in shock.

‘Irira’ the word echoed in my head like a taunt as I stared at the reflection of my neck in the stream.

Now I could see it. I could see what Bentuj had run its fingers over. I could see what made my old friends run away from me.

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VOLUME ONE
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Part 1
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In the First Metropolis of Lahooni (the spectral port which coincides with Lagos State, Nigeria)
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I was born de trop and sent to a desolate slum buried deep in Hakute. I did not learn who my progenitors were until long after it could do me any good. Sometimes, I shut my outer eyes and think back on the time. Back when there was new life, back in the days when an uspec could die, back when an uspec could be born. In those few treasured moments, I think of you, my offspring, and see your little eye. I remember your little green face, smooth and startling because it was free of the eyeless holes we formed as we aged. I remember your ailerons, the appendages that give us flight, but in the young were free of the feathers only time and experience could grow. But most of all, what I spend my few carefree moments dwelling on, is the tranquility.

It was a time so different from now. A time when there was peace amongst the existences, when the supreme existence held no claim on the standard. When the dead umanis, the detested imps, were slaves who knew their place. It heartens me to know that in the fourth existence, they still are. It was before the war, before the Kuwor retaliated by creating the marked. We gained our immortality in the process and lost our ability to procreate. It was before Churaya gave life to ensure new young in the supreme existence and by so doing, left the standard under supreme control.

But that is not what I write about now, those are all stories you’ve heard before. No, what I write now is the one you’ve never heard, the one I was always too afraid to tell you. This is the story of how I came to be, how I moved up, from de trop in Hakute, to the Kaiser of Lahooni.

My ears grow wary, the understandings gained from my outer eyes have sensitized them. So much so, that they can pick up the sounds of swords clashing, and umanis speaking the umani tongue. I hear imps scream and uspecs cry out loud. I know who attacks them, but I do not know how an umani could make an uspec cry.
I do know two things.

One. I know that one of the umanis has green eyes.

Two. I know that the umanis are coming for me.

So, I take this time to write this to you, my offspring, explaining how I came to be. Perhaps it will illuminate my many quirks, or perhaps, if Chuspecip permits, it will make you think a little kinder of me. Whatever the effect, I leave you this.

I am your progenitor, the mighty undead, Nebud, the Kaiser of Lahooni, and this is my story.

But where does my story start?

Does it start when I was born? I would hate to bore you with the trivialities that encompassed my early life. It was a time of days filled with nothing but harassing osins. I remember the time well. The slum I grew up in was out of the way of everything. We had no markets, no extravagant dwellings, no mighty uspecs. The ground was sludge, and the air was filled with fog. We had an okun, a small stream with yellow jejas swimming in a murky pink liquid.

If there was one thing that slum could boast, it was the treatment and preparation of jeja stews. If I never see another slimy little yellow creature, it will be too soon. One of the first things I did after becoming Kaiser, was have all the life drained out of the jejas in Lahooni for spectral magic. Blasted bitter things. But we did know how to cook them.

I diverge. Back to the story, back to harassing osins.

In that slum, we woke up to green. Green skin was all around us. Everyone we saw was green. The older uspecs all had the same green features. They had the same green face with the empty outer eye-sockets. They had the same crinkled aileron with one or two wispy cyan feathers. And that was the norm.

You wouldn’t understand this. You were surrounded by the greatest uspecs from the moment you were born and as such, you became a great uspec at an early age. You gained your understandings and filled your eye-sockets long before most your age, certainly earlier than I did. You racked up on the experiences and wonders of life and your ailerons filled and flourished. But it was not so for me. Not so at all.

Perhaps you can imagine how dreary a life I must have lived, when the greatest occurrence, the most abnormal event, was the visit of an osin.

I remember the osin well. It was what the umanis would call a woman – umanis and their genders – and a beauty to them, I think. To us, in our slum in the middle of nowhere, it was nothing but a dead umani. It was ugly, as all imps are. This one though was allowed by its master to stay in the form it had died in. So, the imp’s eyes weren’t taken, it wasn’t drained for spectral magic. It meant it could keep its umani form, it also meant that it couldn’t siphon the spectral magic off its master.

Maybe that is an important story after all. In some ways, my life changed that day, or at least it began the start of events that saw me taken from the only place I’d called home, from a life I had grown content with living. I will tell it then, I only hope I do the memory justice.

I was very ordinary. In those early days, I was not one to stand out. Perhaps there was a part of me that knew what I was, a part of me which knew that I was an abomination. Whatever the reason, I did not stand out. I did not make waves, I simply belonged. I was one out of many young uspecs settling into life in the slum.

How old was I then? We uspecs keep age by tracking the growth of our features. But I’ve come to think of how inexact an act that is. For example, I can say that it was before any of my outer eye-sockets formed, before any feathers grew onto my ailerons. My cyan tail was still just a stump then, as were many of the tails of the other uspecs in my slum. But then tails grow at different paces, and sockets form from different stimuli. You were at least half the age I was then, when your first eye sockets began to form.

I will go with the umani ages then. If there is nothing else that can be said for the umanis, their one good thing is that they have perfected the science of age-keeping. It cannot be exact, but I would say it was at most 17 years after my birth. I was still very young, very young indeed.

There was an uspec, Bentuj we called it. Bentuj was the chief. In our small slum, it was the uspec with the longest and most impressive tail. I remember many days spent crawling into its hovel and looking at the tail with wide eyes, just wondering if mine would ever grow to half of Bentuj’s. Bentuj’s tail reached midway down its legs. A most unimpressive feat, but it was the longest tail and so it was the most respected.

As was the practice amongst most Kaisers, when an uspec is born and unclaimed by its progenitors, the uspec is termed ‘de trop’ and sent to live in a slum. It was the only influx of new life the slums would ever see as the uspecs in the slums could never be progenitors. When I was sent to this slum, I was taken in by an uspec with a half feather on its aileron and a single empty outer eye-socket on its face. The uspec died 2 years later, and another uspec was brought to replace it. Bentuj took that uspec and named it Junte.

Junte was child of the chief. In our slum, Bentuj was the Kaiser and Junte its heir.

Although, it raises the level of our slum to liken Bentuj to a Kaiser. No, Bentuj was more of a chief. For Bentuj to be a Kaiser, it must have, at the very least, had spectral magic, which it didn’t. No uspec in our slum had spectral magic. As you know, an understanding must be gained before an uspec could have and use spectral magic. For an understanding to be gained, an uspec had to acquire two imp eyes. One from an imp who, in its umani life, was born in the same plane as the uspec, and one whose umani life ended in the same plane.

No uspec in our slum could boast that.

Although, as we found out later, Junte was conspiring to do it. A single uspec with a single understanding would make the difference between a slum and a burg. A single understanding would turn an uspec from de trop to a commoner, from inconsequential and powerless, the lowest of the low, to an uspec who was counted, an uspec who mattered, an uspec with the right to own an imp and request to procreate.

Junte was the one with dreams. I just wanted a simple life, like the uspec I’d been given to. I didn’t even aspire to leadership, not even to Bentuj’s status. It’s funny how fate sets the course, pulling on our strings, and we like puppets swing.

But I get ahead of myself. Back to that fateful day.

The imp walked in as it usually did, crossing the boundary from the neighboring burg, which none of the uspecs in our slum had ever had the privilege of stepping into. The imp walked in, carrying a small bucket, and wearing what umanis call ‘clothes’. Why they need such, I will never know, but I have learnt how adamantly the imps cling to it.

The imp’s journey was usually the same. It would walk in, unmolested by the elder uspecs who only looked at it with their single eye, the one in the center of their face which they were born with, and looked away. It would walk past their hovels to ours, and we would taunt it.

Imps with masters learnt the tongues of the spectrum their master belonged to, so we knew it understood us. We would tell it how disgusting it was, then we would form sludge missiles from the mud on the ground and aim it at the imp. The imp would walk past us, head held high, on its way to our okun, the real reason why it came into our desolate slum.

Amid our taunts, despite the mud missiles flung at it, the imp would kneel by the okun and wade its hand into the stream to catch yellow jejas. It would fill its bucket with as much of them as it could get and then it would leave.

This day was different.

On this day, when the group of us young uspecs, gathered by the pink stream, we graduated from verbal insults and mud projectiles, to physical assaults. One of us slapped the imp across the back of its head. The imp fell and half of its face sunk into the mud. I kicked the filthy creature in its back and it screamed. I still remember the way it sounded. It was such a ghoulish noise.

Junte laughed and so I did it again. Looking back at the day, and knowing how small of an individual Junte really was, I wonder what drove me to be so desperate to impress it. I really wonder.

Junte had a prized possession, a sharpened horn which Bentuj had bought for it from a trader who came in from a neighboring burg. It was the distinctive feature of the mejo spectrum, the ones born with a natural inclination towards clouds. When they gained the understanding, they could use the clouds to alter another creature’s body temperature. We’d all heard stories of them. But we’d never seen another feature. We were of the kute spectrum. Our distinctive feature is our tail, and we were born with a natural inclination towards okuns. If we gained the understanding, we could use the okuns to drain any living creature for its spectral magic.

Junte ordered us to hold the imp down and then it said, “I’ve heard imps can’t die. Let’s test the theory.”

We all laughed. Truly we were fools. Not for what we did to the imp, but for the lack of thought we put into it. This was an imp permitted to stay in its umani form. An imp which we knew belonged to a powerful uspec, one at least powerful enough to have its osin walk around burgs and slums, unprotected. We were fools.

Junte ordered us to hold the imp down and we did. I held on tightly to the imp’s arms, kneeling on it to keep them from moving. I distinctly remember the feeling of having the base of my ailerons scratching against my legs and thinking it was uncomfortable. But I held still, so did the others.

Junte took out its fancy horn and dug it into the imp’s stomach. The imp cried. It cried as if it had never known a moment of pain. It cried as if it had never been disciplined, as if its master truly treated it as the ‘pet’ it was known for.

That thought annoyed me.

I was an uspec. Perhaps a poor and dirty one, but an uspec nonetheless and I had known pain. I would not cry the way this imp cried. I was furious at it. I was furious that it would dare cry out, furious that it would shout. And when the imp began to scream for its master and call us names, when it began to insult us, uspecs, I only saw red.

Junte stabbed it, over and over again with the tip of the horn, and the other uspecs laughed. It insulted us, Junte retaliated by carving marks into its face, and the other uspecs laughed some more. But I was too angry to laugh, I heard the imp’s insults and I needed to punish it, I needed to teach it a lesson.

In a blind rage, I ran my right hand over my smooth green face all the way down my neck, and chest. By the time my hand came down to the imp’s face, the imp was screaming. It was screaming even louder than it had when Junte stabbed it. Screaming as if it was dying. It stopped insulting us and began to beg.

You see, I was too upset to know what was happening, to see what I was doing. One moment I was furious, and the next there was blood. Red blood everywhere.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I heard Junte’s voice in my ear, but I stayed where I was, my hands moving of their own accord as I knelt over the imp.

Finally, the other uspecs got me off it. They moved me away, carrying me back to Junte’s hovel. They laughed and cheered me on, singing, screaming and jubilating over something. I did not know what, in fact, I could not really hear the words they were saying. I felt very strange, very strange indeed.

I remember that one of them walked up to me, pointed at my face and then jumped back laughing and clapping. I remember seeing that Junte wasn’t happy about something. The uspecs kept pointing at Junte’s arm and then at me, or more precisely at my face. But Junte was shaking its head and yelling. All of a sudden, it was as if I couldn’t hear them.

It was as if I was not a part of their spectrum anymore.

That was a disconcerting thought. My eye closed and I drifted off.

I think I will tell this story, or attempt to tell it, as it happened from this part on. Then, I suppose, this is where the real story begins.

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PREFACE
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This story is intended to be a standalone novella, so even though it is “technically” part of a series, you don’t have to have read the prequels to understand (and hopefully enjoy ) this.

Welcome to the world of the marked!

If you’ve visited us before, then you probably already know everything I’m going to cover here, and so you can skip the preface. If you haven’t, here’s all you need to know.

In the world of the marked there are four existences. The first existence is where humans reside. This existence is called the standard existence. Some of the humans in the standard existence have ‘marks’ which give them supernatural abilities. These humans are the marked. When humans die, they go to one of the other three existences. They could go to the supreme existence, where, depending on their ancestry, they would either become a part of Nature, or join the elements (the servants of Nature). They could also go to the fourth existence. But the fourth existence is covered with so much mystery that we don’t fully understand, yet, what happens to humans when they go there. The last option is the spectral existence. When humans die and go to the spectral existence, they become imps.

This story is based wholly on the spectral existence.

The spectral existence is inhabited by creatures called uspecs. The uspecs are to their world what we humans are to ours. Though, the uspecs choose to refer to us as umanis…we don’t know why they do this yet, but that is what they call humans.

What else do you need to know…

Oh…osins.

When imps enter into the spectral existence, they are not welcomed and treated like equals to the uspecs, they are taken as slaves. Some of these slaves have a special relationship with their masters. These special slaves are treated as pets and are called osins.

That is all the background needed for this story.

You may now enter the spectral existence…

I'm back to my school schedule, so I will be posting once a week.

This first post is going to be uncharacteristically long, because I want to go deep enough into the story to give everyone an idea of what it will look like, but after that, the subsequent posts will probably be a lot shorter.

As promised, I am tagging everyone who commented on the last story.

Dranoid, jupitre, nady94, phoenixchap, GeoSilYe, monalicious, izicky, damon147, ashatoda, tunjilomo, richykemzy, fazemood, ultimategeneral, niwdog, spixytinxy, bluehaven, peaceyw, dztzl, sampz, siralabai, ayodipths, rynne, popeshemoo, godwinfury, mhistahrah, oluwabuqqyyolo, correctguy101, mhistahrah, lukfame, amauwana, lightqueen, aphroditee, botaflica, dhehbhor, elyna, tenniebae

This is a stand-alone story set in a fictitious realm: the spectral existence in the world of the marked.

Though it is a part of the marked series, you don't have to have read the previous books in the series to understand/follow it.