₦airaland Forum

decoderdgenius:
Albeit, a soon to be Kaiser should have some distinguishing qualities. It seems Nebud possesses none except from being the last brio. Even this is its ancestors doing.Right now, even Juke is besting it in combat.
I would prefer if Nebud shines in something. Having that quality that separates it apart from its lineage.

To be fair though, Juke had five years to train with double swords while Nebud has only had about a year on the inter-port trail to train with its sword while it learnt to read and write and speak all the spectral existence tongues. And Nebud does shine in brawling, it is what it did all those years in the pits, its the swordfighting that it its not great with but its still a lot better than the average uspec

I'm done writing so posts are going to be coming everyday now until I've posted all the parts! Happy reading!

We all walked together through the Kaiser’s suite. I realized that I had never really been into the suite. I’d only been as far in as I’d needed to kill Sophila. I had not known that Sophila had something of a display room, right in front of its personal eating room. This was Arexon’s suite now and so it took us through that display room. I saw several types of weapons hanging from walls that also had art and shelves with heavy tomes. It was an eclectic collection that managed to achieve a bizarre kind of beauty.

“I have never seen an mbira like this one.” Matina appeared bemused. I struggled to not roll my eyes at the artist.

Arexon approached it. The thing Matina was gushing over appeared rather fine. Even I had to admit that it was a spectacular work of art. It had several thin strips of crystalline hard fog attached in two layers to a thick wooden board.

“Can you play it?” Arexon asked.

“I have played metal ones, but never a boga mbira. Can I try?” Matina asked. Its eyes were wide and pleading.

Arexon smiled. “Of course, perhaps you can play something for us while we eat.”

Matina picked the instrument up with shaky hands.

“I did not know that there was a collection like this in this suite,” I remarked.

“How could you, when the only cause you ever had to enter this suite was to slaughter my sire?”

I was startled by the words. I turned around and found a very young, skinny, boga uspec standing a few paces behind me. It was an infant, about nine years old. I knew who it was as soon as I processed the words it had said.

“You owe the imperial Nebud an apology, Sophi.” Arexon scolded the young uspec.

Sophi. Sophian’s offspring. Arexon and I had made the uspec an orphan. I had beheaded its sire in this very suite and then Arexon had killed its progenitor one suite over. I deserved the hatred I saw coming out of the uspec. Its face was smooth. It had nothing but the center eye on its face. The young uspec glared at Arexon.

“Sophi,” Arexon warned, “the imperial Nebud is a guest of mine. You do not need to share its company if you do not want to, but I will not allow you to be rude to it in my presence.”

I clenched my jaw. I wanted to tell Arexon that I did not mind, I understood the uspec’s anger. And it had every right to hate me. I had killed an uspec of its line. But I could not oppose Arexon like that in its own port and so I held my tongue.

“Apologies,” the young uspec spat out.

I nodded, and then I turned away from it.

“You may go back to your suite.” Arexon stated.

“Can I not stay? I would like to dine with you general. I did not mean to be disrespectful. It won’t happen again.” The young uspec swore.

Arexon gave in. “I will hold you to that promise.”

“Gratitude sirga.” Sophi replied.

I walked into the eating room. It was a fine affair. There was a long table made out of fine hard fog and several backless high curule chairs with hard fog frames and hardened cloud padding. The dining table and chairs were close to the wall, while there was a large space and then a narrower fog table with a feast laid out on it. I was glad that the eating room was not set out in the noble’s style with lounging beds and uncomfortable supping. This was much better. There were several pails of warm scented okun for cleaning. There was chilled okun and other wines. I grabbed a platter and filled it with a good helping of food. Then I found myself seated on Arexon’s left side with Sophi on its right. I could tell the effort that the young uspec was making not to look at me.

I thought Arexon was insane for keeping Sophi here, with it. The last time we’d talked about the uspec Arexon had said that it was being groomed by Auxa. Had that changed when Auxa had betrayed them? Arexon and I had destroyed Sophi’s line and now Arexon had made itself Kaiser of Sophi’s port. Did Arexon really think that the young uspec would not seek revenge? I took my gaze from them. Arexon was well versed in politics. It did not need me giving it advice in that department.

I was halfway through my meal when I heard Arexon say, “I hear you are quite the skilled flying fighter Gamble.”

I groaned. Gamble beamed and Juke pouted. Gamble bowed to Arexon. “Yes, high one, I am.”

“It is mighty one.” One of Arexon’s ducal commanders corrected.

Arexon was still just Custodian to the rest of the world, even though its soldiers thought of it as Kaiser.

“Apologies, mighty one.” Gamble corrected.

Arexon chuckled and shook its head. “It is nothing.” It sipped its wine and then asked, “would you care to show us your skill?”

Gamble’s mouth hung open. “Against you sirga?” I heard equal measures of hope, excitement and fear in its voice.

Arexon laughed. “Not this time, noble one. Against the imperial Marcinus, perhaps?”

Marcinus stopped with a piece of meat close to its mouth. It put the food down and then stood. It saluted Arexon before walking to the empty space in the room.

Arexon sighed. “It was just a suggestion, imperial one, you are more than free to turn it down.”

Marcinus turned indifferent eyes on Arexon. It bowed. “If it pleases you, I will fight.”

Arexon turned to me and I was not sure I understood, or wanted to understand, the look on its face. I turned my focus to Gamble who gulped down okun, before rising and walking over to face Marcinus.

They both hovered in the air. The fight didn’t last long. Gamble was good, but Marcinus was a great deal better. It disarmed Gamble within a few minutes. Gamble was stunned speechless.

Juke stood up. It bowed to me. “Please sirga, allow me to repair the pride of your honoraria which Gamble has just destroyed.” Juke’s teasing met with a lot of snickers. I nodded. Gamble descended, gave Juke a mock jab and then stood aside. Juke flapped its wings and rose in the air. Juke and Marcinus circled each other. They stayed mostly vertical. Juke lasted longer than Gamble had, but that owed more to Juke’s bulk than its skill, it had the strength to withstand the force behind Marcinus’ blows. In the end, Marcinus was just too much better. Juke lost as well.

“Perhaps the both of you can go together against it,” a ducal commander offered. “That should increase your odds.”

I smiled.

They went together against Marcinus. They fought well, their attacks were coordinated, they made an exceptional team. But Marcinus was still better. Juke’s double swords did not faze Marcinus. It dodged, retreated, went horizontal, oriented its body, and made all its moves quickly. Its sword never stopped moving and it never lost balance. Marcinus was even better now than I remembered it being in Katsoaru, and it had already been great.

Juke and Gamble landed with their shoulders slumped.

“Cheer up!” Arexon called out. “You both lasted longer than most. Marcinus is one of the trainers of my flying squads. You did not really have a chance.”

Juke bowed to Marcinus. “Gratitude for the lesson,” it said, “one day, we will best you.”

Marcinus’ lips twitched. It was the most expression I had seen cross the uspec’s face throughout the evening. “I look forward to that day.” It stated evenly.

Marcinus descended. It bowed to Arexon and then went back to its seat to continue its meal.

“Marcinus has not been the same since it brought Moat’s corpse to me.” Arexon said to me.

Moat was dead too. I sighed. How many more would die before this war was over? I looked at the faces of the uspec’s in the room and I cringed. “How did it die?”

“A skirmish at the Katsoaru border.”

“Five years ago?” I asked.

Arexon nodded. “Marcinus snuck back in with what was left of the soldiers I’d left it and with Moat’s corpse in its arms, about the same time as you reached that paradise Fabiana has written to me about. Marcinus joined my army that day and it has never been the same. It stopped chasing its lust, but it also stopped chasing happiness. I haven’t seen it smile since. There’s just emptiness now.”

“It introduced my offspring to lust and cast it to a life of spasms. I don’t care what happens to Marcinus.” I said the words and forced myself to mean them.

Arexon stared at me with one of those direct gazes I hated. Before it could say anything, the sound of music filled the room.

I turned to find Matina plucking the black fog tines of the boga mbira it had found in the display room. The uspec was not without talent. It played the instrument and soon all conversation stopped, and everyone turned to watch it. I had heard music before, but I had never heard an instrument played like that. It was stirring in a way that few things had ever been to me.

Then I heard the uspec’s singing voice. I could not think of a word vivid enough to describe it. It was sublime, the uspec drifted between high and low notes with an ease that was baffling. Matina closed its eyes as it sang,

I hear it begging to crawl from the shadows
Asking the Lord for some light
Its life has been spent by the gallows
Now it wants them out of its sight

Its words echoed in my head as it hummed and continued to pluck at the tines. I found my gaze turning to Marcinus. It tore off a piece of sweet bun, dipped it in oleo, and shoved it into its mouth. Everyone else was watching Matina, but not Marcinus. Marcinus just stared blankly ahead.

Its begging for leave from the gallows
Praying to God for some hope
Its wanting a day without shadows
Where its life doesn’t go up in smoke

Matina finished the song with some more humming and I could not help but stare at the uspec, just as everyone else did. This was the second time I had heard it singing and it was the second time that its song seemed to apply so well to my thoughts. It was as if the uspec had heard the words Arexon had said to me and it had coined a song to describe how Arexon said Marcinus had been living for the last five years.

Sophi stood up and it burst into cheers. “That was exceptional, breathtaking. You must play another one.”

“Let it catch its breath Sophi.” Arexon chastised. “That was truly beautiful, Matina, gratitude for sharing it with us.”

Matina bowed and looked shyly at its food.

“Keep the mbira. It is yours.” Arexon said.

Matina gasped. “I could not, it must cost a fortune…”

“And it would go to waste here. I insist.”

Matina bowed. “Gratitude mighty one.”

The uspec’s eyes met mine. It was searching for something from me. Approval, perhaps, validation. I didn’t know. But I didn’t think I had anything to give. Nothing had changed. Yes, it was gifted, but it was still an artist in a warzone. It could not sing our enemies away. I turned my attention to Marcinus. The uspec seemed somewhere else entirely. It just continued to eat and stare blankly away. I turned my gaze bitterly back to my own food. I did not care what the uspec was going through. I did not care at all. But I could not help glancing back at it several more times over the course of the meal.

Part 5
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As soon as my eyes clamped on its form, I asked Matiu to take the cover down and then I climbed out of the canoe and made to move towards it. The made commanders stopped me. I could have pushed forward, but there was no need, it had already seen me.

Arexon grinned.

The uspec was walking between two ducal commanders and a swarm of lesser capons, a mix of golden and silver. I caught sight of a few officers, but the gurus were the lowest ranking ones I saw. A number of the dons and even some commanders were imps. I noticed that there were two dignified commanders, who were imps. These were the highest-ranking imps, around Arexon. Arexon had made imps golden capons, part of the highest echelons of its army.

Arexon held up its hand and the capons around it stopped talking and moving. It broke off from them and marched towards me.

The five years had done little to change Arexon’s appearance. If anything, the uspec appeared younger. Its chest spikes shone, as if they’d been polished, and the golden bands on its earrings caught and reflected the red lights from the clouds. It wore five golden armbands on its arms. The last time I’d seen it, it had only worn four, a custodian. The fact that it wore five now meant that it had made itself Kaiser. I grinned. It wore a belt that appeared modest and flamboyant. It was made of red and golden metal, with maroon leather built in as a sheath for its sword and daggers. If there were other pouches in the belt, I could not see them.

The uspec stopped in front of me and I found myself speechless. It did not appear much changed from the last time I’d seen it, but it seemed greater. I didn’t know if it was all the tales that Gamble and Juke had told about Arexon and its war and the way they’d spoken of it in awe. Or maybe it was just seeing it like this, surrounded by its capons. My gaze moved and I saw Marcinus amongst the soldiers. It was not wearing the black robe it had worn before. Now it wore nothing but a belt, earrings, and the golden bands of an imperial. Without the robe I could really see how much Marcinus had changed. The uspec had bulk now, it had become a brawler. A brawler with Marcinus’ skill in sword fighting would be something to see.

“I’m not sure if I should salute or bow.” I confessed.

Arexon burst out laughing. It clasped its hands around my upper arms and pulled me closer. It did not embrace me fully, as its spikes would have skewered me if it had tried. But it clamped onto my arms in a noble’s embrace. It was the first time that I had ever shared a greeting like this with Arexon. A greeting of equals. Or, well, close to it. I clamped my hands around its upper arms too.

“It is very good to see you my friend. Very good. After five years passed without word from you, I’d feared that we’d lost you for good.” Arexon sighed. “It is very good to see you.”

Arexon released me and I was suddenly surrounded by its capons. Hands reached for mine. They shook my hand, some bowed to me, others snapped out salutes. They greeted as me as one would a superior. It was a puzzling reception, especially coming from so many uspecs and imps that I did not know. The one uspec I did know stayed far away. Marcinus watched me with an expressionless face.

Arexon dismissed the bulk of the capons. It asked four to remain, one was a dignified commander imp, one was Marcinus, and two were two ducal commanders I’d never seen before. I looked closer at the imp and realized that I recognized it. It was the tall imp from the inter-port trail who’d dazed Cantonia. I nodded a greeting at the imp, it bowed to me.

“Imps in your army. I would never have expected it.” I said, when it was just the seven of us left.

Arexon chuckled. “It was Animaon’s idea. And the plenum had not expected it either.”

“Where is Animaon?” I inquired.

Arexon’s smile went away. “Animaon was killed in battle two years ago.”

I couldn’t believe it. I thought for sure Animaon would have survived. It’d had pansophy and been skilled with fighting. But then I had killed uspecs with pansophy who were skilled in fighting. So many lives lost to the chasm. “I am grieved to hear that.”

Arexon nodded. “It died well.” It said.

I thought of the pious one and I mourned for it. It had been a great uspec.

I found my gaze travelling to the black walls around Aurelion. “Is the mine still operational, or have you emancipated all your imps?”

Arexon chuckled. “I have not become that much of a revolutionary.” It said. “Aaliyah, Yakubo’s other imp, it runs the mines now. When the war started I offered all the imps there the chance to join my army in exchange for freedom and payment when the war ends. Those that chose to join are now soldiers, those that did not still work in Aurelion, but I gave them the land that used to be the serf camp. They live there now, thanks to Aaliyah.”

I smiled at the uspec. “It seems you’ve developed a soft spot for imps.” I said.

It laughed. “I blame your imp for that. I suppose Musa is in the Castle frothing that you did not allow it to come on this joyride with you and Matiu?”

My smile went away. “Musa did not come on this trip with us.”

Arexon frowned. “Was it sapped?”

I shook my head. “It chose not to come.”

Arexon peered at me and I saw in its eyes an understanding of feelings I could not name which churned in me from Musa’s absence. Neither of us said anything after that. Matiu and I rode in Arexon’s large canoe, while the imp capon volunteered to steer the fast canoe back to the Castle. One day I would learn to steer. It had been a thrill just riding. I imagined it would feel even better to be the one steering.

“So,” Arexon began, as we made our way back, “I cannot tell if your presence here means you did or did not succeed on your mission to return the founder.”

All of the uspecs stared at me. I turned my focus to Arexon. “I succeeded,” I said.

Arexon frowned. “Then is the plenum destroyed?”

I shook my head. “The founder was weakened. It needs time to recuperate.”

Arexon laughed dryly.

“How much time?” One of Arexon’s ducal commanders asked.

“I do not know. I would say a week, if I had to guess.”

“We don’t have a week.”

I knew that. I turned back towards Arexon. “Could we parley with the plenum Kaisers? Once they learn that Chuspecip is back, they will know they are doomed. Maybe they’ll surrender.”

Arexon shook its head. “No, they won’t.”

“But they’ll die. Chuspecip is back. It may not be ready to fight today, but it will be ready soon, and when it is…”

“They will join the wrath of sada.” Arexon announced.

I gaped at it. “You cannot be serious.”

“Unfortunately, I am. The wrath has been courting them. The only reason the plenum hasn’t joined already is because they’re holding onto hope that you’ve failed in your mission and that the founder is not returning. If they find out that you’ve succeeded, they will take their troops and add it to the wrath’s invasion. They cannot know that Chuspecip is back.”

I sputtered. It took me a long time to control my rage. “Those traitors!” I yelled. “They will bow to imps! They will allow another existence to invade ours!”

“Better that than death.” Arexon replied calmly.

“I would rather die than serve imps.” I spat out.

Arexon smirked at me. “Well, not everyone has your arrogance Nebud.”

I forced myself to think. “What if we promise them that Chuspecip will spare them?”

Arexon looked at me. “It’s not a promise we can make, or one that I think the founder will keep. Unless I have it wrong, it is the plenum Kaisers responsible for everything that the founder has been through. Would it really show them mercy?”

I did not know. I longed for the days of Chuspecip being in my head and speaking to me. “It’s possible.”

“The plenum Kaisers will not take the chance.” Arexon stated.

It was probably right. “Then it is war.” I said.

Arexon nodded. We’d reached the gates to the Castle. The space that this canoe docked in was much emptier than the one we’d taken the speed-canoe from. This docks only had a handful of canoes. Arexon told the other uspecs to await it in its suite, but it held me back.

It meant to speak with me alone.

Once the uspecs left, Arexon asked, “what are you doing here Nebud?”

It gave me one of those direct stares that I still found so hard to meet. “I told you sirga that if for some reason Chuspecip could not come to your aid, I would.”

Arexon smiled at me. “How many fighters did you bring?”

I had a feeling it already knew the answer, but I told it anyway. It laughed dryly. “You are a fool, my friend.” It said it in a way that made it sound more like praise than an insult. “You have come here to die.”

I shrugged. “Perhaps it is my time. I have performed the task that the founder demanded of me. My life is now my own to spend however I please, and this is how I choose.”

“And your offspring? What of little Nebula? Does it not deserve a progenitor?” Arexon asked. “And the uspecs you brought with you? Juke, Gamble, Matina? Children who’ve never really had a chance to live. Do their lives mean nothing to you?”

I clenched my jaw. “Is this your way of saying that you plan to send us back, sirga?”

Arexon’s direct gaze did not waver. “No.” It shook its head. “This is my way of berating you for making a foolish decision. You are a fighter, Nebud, and I am in desperate need of fighters. But a handful of uspecs will not make any difference to this war.” It placed its hand on my shoulder. “Those uspecs’ lives are in your hands now, Nebud. Think about that. And know that if you decide to leave, I will not think any less of you for doing so. I will send you with an escort to see you safely on your way.”

I shook my head and began to speak, but Arexon hushed me.

“Think on it. You have all night to decide.” It squeezed my shoulder and then it turned its back on me and began walking.

I followed stunned in its wake. I could not leave. But I could talk to the other uspecs, and Chike. The plenum was fighting with samus now. The samus may be attracted to imps with pansophy, but the plenum could have made an alteration to make the samus attack imps without pansophy. They had spent five years in this war. They’d had the time. I told myself that I would convince them to save themselves, but I knew that they would not. The uspecs I’d brought with me were loyal to a fault. Even silly Matina. The quivering fool could not fight, but it was in my honoraria and so it clung to me. They would not leave if I did not leave and I could not leave. Arexon had sacrificed too much for me. It had thrown itself into danger and it was in this war for me, because I convinced it that it was what the founder needed. And it had been, but at what cost? I had to be here. I had to fight with Arexon, I just had to.

By the time we walked into Arexon’s suite, a small group had formed there, waiting for us. There were the capons, Marcinus, included, who’d returned with us. The uspecs in my honoraria had joined them. I saw Zane with the golden capon imp that had driven the speed-canoe back. Chike spoke with Marcinus.

“Sirga, you should have told us you were going out in a speed-canoe,” Juke whined. “I’ve missed steering them.”

“I would have just liked to be in one,” Gamble added.

“You can both go steering after we eat.” Arexon stated.

It was as if they hadn’t noticed Areon’s presence before. They both turned to Arexon and they did…well I think what they were attempting to do was salute, what they actually did was something entirely different. The soldiers in the room laughed, but Arexon just saluted back to them as if what they had done could pass as a salute. Then it said, “in clover,” and the two young goofs took their hands down and began to prattle at the same time about their adulation of Arexon and its great military mind.

It nodded. It rose when I drew closer to it and then plucked a towel from an imp’s outstretched hand and handed the towel to me itself. I frowned at that. My frown got deeper when the uspec just stood there watching me towel off. After I was done, the uspec picked up my belt and gave it to me. I took the belt from Matiu, watching the uspec as I latched it onto my waist.

“What is it?” I asked, after I’d had enough of its silent stare.

It went on its knee in front of me and bowed deeply. “Gratitude sirga,” it intoned.

I frowned. “Get up, Matiu.”

It rose.

I eyed the uspec curiously. Matiu was the only other adult with me. Juke, Gamble and Matina still felt like children. They had grown in my absence, but I still saw them as they’d been five years ago. “What are you thanking me for?”

“You protected my sibling.” It said. “I am in your debt.”

I scoffed. “And am I in yours?” I asked.

Matiu appeared puzzled. “Of course not sirga.”

“You are no more in my debt than I am in yours. You have protected me, and you protected my offspring in my absence. We protect each other, that’s what we do.”

Matiu shook its head. “You are our imperial. It is our job to protect you. Not the other way around.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Matiu, I am not a fan of your sibling’s. But it is in my honoraria and I am as duty bound to it as it believes itself bound to me. I did no more than it would have done for me if it had the skill.”

Matiu gaped at me. “You risked your life saving it.”

I laughed. “That is an inaccurate postulation. It was a battle, all of our lives were at risk.”

The uspec stared at me for a long time and then a slow smile filled its face. “I am honored to serve you, imperial one.”

I chuckled. “As I am honored to have your service.”

We walked out of the cleaning room together. An imp, I assumed it was the Joel of whom Zane had spoken, offered to show us to our rooms. I shook my head. I felt like exploring, but I gave Matiu leave to rest. It chose to stay with me. The uspec was a silent one. I’d known that from the start. Matiu was not gregarious, it was stoic and reserved.

I stopped at a carving in the wall right beside the exit to the Visitors lodge. It was a carving of a hand that had scales and webs between the fingers. The hand was stretched out and held open, as if reaching for someone to grasp it.

“It’s the work of a fabricator from Arusoaru. I forget its name.”

I glanced at Matiu before returning my gaze to the carving. “I did not take you for one who enjoys art.” Then I remembered who its sibling was and I scoffed. “Matina.”

Matiu smiled. “It rambled on about the carvings while you swam.”

I nodded and then exited the area. I remembered the Castle enough to know that the Library was behind the visiting lodge we’d just come out of. I found myself going to the docks instead of deeper into the Castle. Matiu walked silently beside me.

“I am surprised you did not try harder to teach your younger how to fight.” I remarked.

“I tried, sirga, it just has no skill in fighting.”

“With discipline it could learn enough to at least be adequate.”

Matiu chuckled. “Feel free to try sirga, you are the great Irira, after all.” it said.

It took me a while to realize that the stone-face uspec was teasing me. I laughed. “Perhaps, I will.” I stated.

“And perhaps you might succeed. Odder things have happened.” It retorted, in the same calm tone that made it hard to hear the humor. But I was starting to find the uspec’s teasing easier to decipher. I chuckled.

There were two imp soldiers and two imps standing around a large canoe. As soon as they saw us, they frowned.

“Can I help you sirga?” an imp soldier called out.

It did not know who I was, I could tell from the suspicious way it looked at me. At least it was smart enough to know that I would not be in the Castle if I was an enemy. Imp soldiers, I shook my head, I had not expected it from Arexon. I made my way around the canoes and stopped by one that I found particularly fascinating. It was one of the fancy speed-canoes. It was completely covered and had a sleek curved body. I ran my hand over the hood.

“Have you ever ridden in one, sirga?” Matiu asked.

I shook my head. “I would like to, though.” I mused.

The imp soldiers appeared beside us. They both carried hoe-spears. “I recognize you.” One of them said. “You are the last brio, aren’t you?”

Interrogated by imps. I must have been in a particularly good mood, because I did not feel the desire to lop off the imp’s tongue. I turned to the imp soldier and, in surprising deference to its uniform, I nodded.

Its eyelids pulled up. It bowed. Then it shook its head and saluted. “I am sure the general would not mind if you took the canoe out. I mean, we were ordered to give you whatever you wanted.”

I nodded. The imps in Arexon’s army wore uniforms that the uspecs did not. They had earrings of course, in that, they matched the uspec soldiers.

“I cannot steer.” I said. It would have been nice to know what it felt like to move around in one.

“I can.” Matiu stated.

I gaped at the uspec. Stoic Matiu could steer a canoe. I smiled. The imp unlocked the canoe and I watched the form move away from the sleek cover, exposing the small interior. There were two small benches with room enough for one steerer and one passenger. Matiu and I climbed in. The imp was still saluting when Matiu pushed a button on the screen control and the form returned to the cover. The cover was colored in a way that we could see clearly from the inside out, when we hadn’t been able to see in from the outside. Matiu did some things and the canoe came to live. It was infused with motion. The uspec held the steering wheel, turned and before I knew it we were gliding between the canoes in the docks. There was a steering stick that emerged from the front of the canoe. Matiu pressed some buttons on it and a strange sound came from the canoe. That sound prompted the soldiers to open the hard fog gates. Once we reached the open road, Matiu boosted the motion and we were moving at a thrilling pace.

While Matiu steered, I guided. It sped past familiar places and I told it all about my experience in those places. Matiu’s silence forced me to speak more than I normally did. When we raced around the civilian’s camp I told the uspec of the time that I’d spent there with Musa. I told it of how strange Chiboga had seemed to me. A military port with soldiers marching and flying around at all times. We went around the serf army barracks and I told Matiu of the time I’d spent as a serf soldier under commander Arexon. There were things I said that didn’t seem particularly funny, but Matiu laughed. It was hard to win an unrestrained laughter from the uspec. When we reached the serf camp, I told it about my strange encounter there. I told it of the uspec Sensu who’d given its freedom to protect my secret. Matiu spoke up for the first time then. It wasn’t till the uspec told me that Sensu had died, that I remembered that it was off Sensu’s line. That was why it had joined my honoraria in the first place. For the rest of the trip I tried to tell it as much about Sensu as I knew, and the heroic role it had played in my early life. Matiu listened intently and I hoped that it felt pride. I hadn’t known Sensu well, but Sensu was the first uspec I had seen go to pains to protect Cala. It did not even know that I was the one it had suffered for. Now, I wished that I had told it. But I hadn’t wanted to tell Musa then, and I couldn’t have told Sensu without Musa hearing.

Matiu made an abrupt stop by the one place in Chiboga I least liked.

The Mine of Aurelion.

There was a blockade in the road. Two made commanders, the lowest golden capon rank, held out their hands and ordered us to come out of the canoe. There were several more soldiers standing behind them, but I did not ask Matiu to remove the form from the cover until I saw it.

Part 4
---------

It took me longer than it should have to shake off the daze. But as soon as I did, I reached for the hilt of my cutlass. Our eyes locked. The uspec moved one of its lower eyes in the direction of my hand and the cutlass I clutched. Then it returned its gaze back to me. It said nothing. Its face was perfectly emotionless. I had seen various versions of this uspec, but this version was one I had never seen. I hated it. My teeth gritted together and every urge in my body screamed for me to pull my cutlass out of its scabbard and cut off the uspec’s head. But there was a voice, a small, potent voice, that urged against it. My jaw clenched. Even after all this time, after all that it had put me through, I still could not kill it.

“Imperial one!” Juke gasped. “Sirga,” it turned to me and jabbed me with its elbow, “that’s the imperial Marcinus!” It exclaimed.

I looked down at Juke’s wide-eyed stare. Did the uspec think I was blind? Of course I knew it was Marcinus. I had eyes, I could see. Marcinus was older than it had been the last time, and it looked composed, eerily composed. There was no trace of the lust-addict that had accompanied me on the inter-port trail.

I had seen Marcinus at so many points in its life. I had seen it when it was a young, kind, imperial with a swan for a pet and sword skill unlike any other. It had been happy in that phase of its life. It had smiled and joked often. I could still remember Marcinus under the influence of loony the drug that its sibling had dosed it with constantly. Then there was Marcinus in the grips of grief and rage. That was the Marcinus I had seen in Lahooni, the one that had loathed me, the one that had wanted to kill me and had then settled for Salin’s head instead. Then there was the last Marcinus I’d seen, the one on the inter-port trail. The one that had introduced my offspring to lust and then blackmailed me when my offspring’s life hung in the balance. Marcinus was the only uspec in my life that I’d felt true love and true hatred for. There was guilt too. In the end, even when it had harmed Nebula, I had felt guilty. Because my offspring lived. It stammered, but it lived. Marcinus’ offspring was not so lucky. Maricus, I still remembered the name. Marcinus had been happy and jocular until I entered its life and made it shun. After I left, it lost its progenitor and its sibling, and it sunk into a dark pit of despair.

It all comes full circle.

Those were the words Marcinus had said to me under the influence of lust, while it laughed at my offspring in its death bed. While it teased me and demanded more lust. I looked at the uspec now, at its empty center eye socket, its weathered green face, its unsmiling lips, the golden earrings dangling from its ears, and I was introduced to yet another version of Marcinus. The soldier. Each version of Marcinus had left me with scars, I could not say that I was looking forward to meeting this new one.

I released my hold on the hilt of my cutlass and forced my jaw to relax. I could not kill Marcinus even if I wanted to, which, even when it had been at its worst, I’d never been able to. Marcinus was my creation, I had destroyed its life.

I tried not to think too hard on how it had tried to return the favor.

Marcinus turned back around. It didn’t say a single word to me, it just barked out, “In clover,” and then gave orders for missives to be sent to Arexon ahead of our arrival. It began marching along the aisle between the soldiers standing at attention, and it was Zane who urged us to follow.

I was in a daze. Marcinus was free of lust. Arexon would not have given it such a high position in its army if it was not. It had not appeared happy to see me, but I was not particularly happy to see it either. We had both caused each other irreparable damage.

We were led out from the hangar, to the docks behind it. Then we climbed into one of the largest non-commercial canoes that I’d ever seen, and a soldier steered. It gave motion to the vehicle and we were off.

As soon as we hit the main roads, clammy fogs drifted around us. Those fogs really brought home the fact that I was back in Chiboga. Of all the places that Chuspecip had sent me on the quests to complete the brio inside of me, Chiboga was hands down the worst. Its funny how sometimes the best things come from the worst places. I thought of the time I’d spent in this port and I remembered Sophian giving the order for me to be whipped. My flesh was still mangled as a result. I remembered Arexon barging into my room in the civilian’s camp and delivering Sophila’s judgement that I was to be made a serf. I’d hated Arexon so much then. My hatred for it had only grown when it trained me with beatings and imprisonment in tight spaces. When we were in Aurelion, I didn’t think I could have hated the uspec more. Then Yakubo opened my eyes to all that Arexon had done for me. In the end, Arexon had saved my life and made it possible for me to leave this cursed port in one piece. Arexon had come to my aid several times after that. Arexon’s friendship was one that had taken me completely by surprise. It was also one that I cherished most dearly. And it had come from this port.

The journey passed in a daze for me. At some point Juke and Gamble’s excited conversations drew my focus to the sky, above what had been the Serf army barracks, when I’d last been in Chiboga. There were no more serfs in the port, thanks to Arexon, but I guessed it was probably still the army barracks. There were several soldiers flying in the air. Some dove while shooting arrows, others performed mindboggling acrobatics while they parried with swords. I was stunned. The canoe kept moving. Every once in a while, I would glance at Marcinus and wonder what it was I felt when I saw the uspec bent over staring into its own hands. Sometimes I was sure it was rage. Nebula would always have spasms because of Marcinus. Always. Everyday, for the rest of its life, my offspring would battle spasms. But then I remembered the imperial who had spent an entire night looking for me, when I’d been nothing more than a banneret. I sighed. My feelings when it came to Marcinus would never be straightforward. We had been through too much together and done too much to each other.

It came as a relief when we finally reached the hard fog gates of the Kaiser’s castle.

The canoe didn’t even stop. The order of “ajar!” was given before we reached the point where we would have had to halt, and so the gates were opened, and the canoe drove in. Once the steerer docked the vehicle, we climbed out and were led, by Zane to one of the Visiting lodges in the Castle.

Marcinus went its own way.

It was funny how it all came back so easily to my mind. I’d been stationed for a while in this castle, guarding the imperial brat Sophi. I knew most parts of it. There were places I’d never been allowed into, but I still knew what they were. These lodges had been designed for visiting dignitaries. That much was obvious in the décor. The ground was hard fog, as everywhere else in the Acropolis, but the walls were styled with fine engravings of colorless drawings. The lighting was an odd mix of silver and gold, and the walls had several hard fog shelves coming out of them. There were snacks and drinks on these shelves. My gaze locked on an imp dressed in a simple black tunic who stood by a shelf filled with fresh fruit. For some reason the imp reminded me of Musa.

We walked along a long walkway, until finally Zane made a turn through an entrance with the curtains already held back.

It was a cleaning room.

“The general is away, sirgas,” Zane explained, “but if you would like to clean up, you can do so here. Joel will take you to your rooms when you are done and you can rest there till the general returns. The general has asked that you wait to dine with it. There are appetizers available if you cannot wait. Joel is one of the stewards. It will provide you with anything you need.” After saying that, Zane withdrew from the room, leaving the six of us in a cleaning room with ten imps one of which I assumed was named Joel.

The cleaning room was perfect. It reminded me of the one from the Hakute Lastmain. It had several ponds and a channel with falling okun. It dawned on me then that this would be the first proper cleaning that I’d had in five years. There had been a small pond, in the standard existence, filled with a liquid the umanis called water, but I had not been able to clean properly in it, and I’d only used it once. There had been no time when we returned for me to clean in our paradise and so it felt good to be able to make use of ponds now. I took of my belt, placed it on a lounging bed, and then proceeded to jump into the pond with the bathing salts.

It burned.

My mind may not have known that I was gone for five years, but my skin sure did. I forced my mind to ignore the pain. The war started tomorrow, who knew if this was the last bath I would ever to take. I swam five full laps around the pond, fully immersed in the okun, before I climbed out and dipped into cooler liquids. The second pond had scented stones that washed off the bath salts. It felt good to take several more laps in this pond. This time I did not have to force my mind into the task of ignoring the pain, and so I could see Chike and the other uspecs in my honoraria lying on lounging beds where they were massaged by imps. They did not swim as long as I did, but they were hooni, they did not have the affinity for okun that I did. I took several more laps around the second pond before I finally climbed out and joined the others for a massage. This too reminded me of Musa.

“You are truly kute, sirga.” Gamble teased.

I laughed. “Yes, I am. It has been a long time since I’ve enjoyed a good bath.”

The others were still lying lazily about on their lounging beds when I began twitching again to jump into the channel with the falling okun. I wondered if the liquid would be chilled as the one in the Lastmain had been. I forced myself to stay still while an imp polished the feathers on my ailerons. Why couldn’t I stop thinking of Musa? The imp had made a choice. It had chosen not to accompany me on this journey. It had chosen to remain with its imp lover. I wondered if they would be there when I returned. I had given all the imps their freedom. Even the ones that had chosen to accompany me. I thought of those two imps then, the ones who’d been sapped during our last battle. I had not known them, I had not even known their names, but they had died fighting for me. There were so many now who’d died fighting for me.

I got up from the lounging bed, when the imp finished, and dove into the canal around the perimeter of the room. I swam underneath falling okun. The liquid was as cool as I’d hoped. It felt good to swim in it, very good. I don’t know how much time passed while I swam, but when I came out of the canal, there was only Matiu left in the room.

It was seated on a lounging bed, watching me.

“The others left?” I asked.

The general.

Juke gasped.

The general.

I remembered where I knew the imp from. I relaxed my grip on the cutlass. Yes, I had last seen it in Damejo, but it was not with the wrath, it had been with Yakubo. This was one of the imps who’d belonged to Yakubo. I remembered the other, the female one. That one’s name was Aaliyah. This one was its companion. It took me a while to remember the name.

“Zane.” I said, when at last, I remembered.

The imp bowed. “Yes sirga.”

“Sirga?” I asked, without emotion. “You are free now?”

It nodded. “I am a don in the general’s army.” My eyes flicked to its ears. How could I have missed those earrings? The imp wore silver earrings with three bars on them. I remembered enough about the hierarchy to know that dons were silver capons, high ranks in the army. Don was two ranks higher than I’d been when I’d been a serf soldier in Sophila’s army. It was one rank below commander, which had been Arexon’s rank. I could not help the sardonic smile that filled my face. Arexon had gone eccentric in the years that I’d been away. An imp as a capon in its army, I shook my head, it had really gone eccentric.

After hearing our conversation, most of the soldiers removed their headguards. Only one did not, that one was one of the three uspecs who’d flown in. It still had its bow around its shoulder, and a quiver of arrows hanging from its arm. Everyone else I saw had silver earrings. The highest ranked uspec amongst them was a captain, a full rank below Zane. I could not believe that Arexon would allow an imp to lead its soldiers. I could not believe it. There were other imps there, all of them wearing silver earrings. I counted five imps and fifteen uspecs, including the one still wearing its headguard. Two of the imps were officers, I could tell from the crosses on their earrings, the other two wore empty earrings as five of the uspecs. The empty chain earrings showed they were just soldiers, not yet leaders, but they did not carry the hoe-spears that soldiers had carried when I served. The rest of the uspecs had ranks varying from officers to silver capons.

“Don,” I heard Juke call. There was a great deal of respect in its tone, a respect that said it knew much more about Arexon’s army and its ranks than any uspec who’d not done considerable research should. But this was my Juke, I was sure it had done a great deal of research on it.

Zane turned to Juke. “Yes, sirga.”

“Is this, by any chance, one of the high Arexon’s flying squads?”

Zane grinned. It nodded. “Yes sirga.”

Juke and Gamble both looked at each other and then they started chattering, animatedly. I could not understand what they found so exciting about this. What was a flying squad?

“We should return.” The voice came from the uspec still with its headguard on. Its voice sounded familiar in some ways, strange in others.

“Yes sirga.” Zane snapped out a salute and I suddenly found the uspec in the headguard a great deal more interesting. “Where are you going sirga? Will you like an escort to see you there?” Zane asked me.

“I am going to Chiboga.”

Zane appeared baffled. “This is a surprise sirga. The general will be very pleased to see you. Come with us, we are headed back home.”

I nodded. When I turned around, Matina was standing. I took my dagger from it and placed it back into my belt, with my cutlass. Matiu stood beside its sibling, offering silent comfort. I just shook my head at the duo. I would never understand how Matiu could allow Matina to come here.

“How did you come to be here, sirga?” Zane asked, once we were free of the street of corpses. The black-robed soldiers formed around us. The one still in the headguard walked in front.

“I told you, I was headed to Chiboga.”

“Not here in the inter-port trail, but on that street.” The imp clarified.

“The great Auxa laid an ambush for us.” Gamble spat out. “I cannot wait to repay it. I will slit its head in two.”

Juke chuckled. “Not if I do it first.”

They both started arguing about who would have the honor of killing Auxa. I scoffed at them.

Zane was not smiling. “The general will blame itself for this. It did not think that you would ever return to Chiboga and so it did not see the need to warn you of Auxa’s switched allegiance.”

That was the one thing I had been unable to understand. Auxa had been loyal to Arexon for as long as I’d known it. It was Auxa who’d seen me safely from Chiboga, and it was Auxa who’d allowed Arexon to lead more troops into Chiboga. Auxa was Arexon’s uspec on the inside. I’d placed my safety in Auxa’s hands before and I had never been disappointed.

“What happened?” I asked.

“The chasm.” Zane replied, bitterly. “The plenum found out that Auxa was on our side and they turned it. We lost over a thousand soldiers because the general thought it could still trust its guardian.” Zane sighed. “Let us just be grateful that Auxa’s desire to appease the plenum is so great.”

I frowned at that.

“That was why it sent so few soldiers,” Zane clarified. “It no doubt wanted to clamp you in chains and present you as a gift to the plenum Kaisers. If it had told them about your presence here, there would have been at least a thousand soldiers waiting to fall on you.”

I swallowed and shook my head. It was baffling to see how loyalties could switch so easily. There was a time Auxa had called Arexon its ward. A ward was as an offspring, and Arexon had cared for Auxa as a progenitor. I shook my head again.

“We are in your debt, don, if you had come a moment later, I fear we would all be dead. Gratitude.” Juke bowed.

Zane smiled. “It is not me you owe gratitude, but the imperial commander. It was the one who asked us to change our scouting course this evening, and it was the one who ordered us to intercede when you were being attacked, before we knew who you were.”

The imperial commander? Again, I was forced to remember details on the Chiboga army hierarchy, details I had been forced to learn when Sophila had made me a serf. An imperial commander was a golden capon, one rank below the general. It was akin to an imperial in a civilian port, as the general was akin to Kaiser. Who was this uspec with the headguard on, and why did it stay away from us? It was that uspec who should have been speaking with us, not Zane.

I was just about to ask Zane for the imperial’s identity when I heard Juke say, “we were saved by a Chiboga flying squad. Now we truly have tales worthy of epics.”

“What is this flying squad?” I demanded.

“It is one of the things the high Arexon created, sirga, one of the reasons why it has survived this long in the battle, without losing any ground, and why its name and its epic will live on forever.” Gamble responded with a dreamlike quality to its voice.

I smiled. I’d always known that Arexon was the greatest uspec I had ever met.

“The high Arexon created the flying fight, sirga.” Juke explained. “Before the high Arexon uspecs did not fight in the air. Flying was just a thing an uspec did to get around, but not to fight. It was the high Arexon who saw the possibilities in flight. It trained its soldiers to take advantage of their ailerons during flight, and use those ailerons with as much ease as they used their legs and arms. The flying squads are the result. Troops of soldiers that combine flight battle with ground battle. It took the plenum completely by surprise the first time the high Arexon revealed its new tactics. The plenum lost thousands to the air assault. They are learning now, but they will never be as good as the Chiboga flying squads.”

“That is why you and Gamble learnt to fight in the air too.” I said.

Juke nodded. “We begged the high one to send us an instructional manual and it did. It sent us a manual that it uses for training its own flying squads.”

“War in this existence will never be the same again.” Gamble announced. “There are flying archers now. Whenever there is war uspecs will remember the Chiboga flying squads that caught the plenum unawares.”

“And they will remember Arexon as the mind that created them.” I stated, approvingly.

“There is no greater military mind, sirga, none.” Gamble sighed. “I still find it hard to believe that I lived a whole month in the high Arexon’s company. A whole month.”

“I poured its wine.” Juke boasted.

“Lucky bastard.” Gamble shoved Juke to the side and they both laughed.

This was the war that would live on in uspec tales. It was the first war that had ever been fought on the inter-port trail, the first war of this magnitude. The chasm. Chuspecip had made the sovereignty of Kaisers absolute in their ports and so there had been skirmishes before, within ports, and there had been a few annexed ports, all started by civil war within the port being annexed. The foreign Kaiser always entered victorious, when the port already belonged to it. But the chasm was different. There had never before been a group of uspecs trying to destroy the sovereignties that the founder had given on so large a scale.

“We have arrived.” Zane said, right as we turned into a street that had five uspecs in black standing in front of a wall to the side.

“Passphrase.” One of the uspec’s by the wall said. I doubted the uspec even knew the meaning of what it said. It spoke in the common umani tongue I understood.

The response was also given in the common umani tongue. It was Zane who replied. “Bonbons.” It said.

“In order.” The uspec responded, in the same tongue.

“Sun, moon, sky…”

It took me longer than it should have to realize that the passphrase was related to the Mine of Aurelion. ‘Bonbons’ had been what the imps there called the pansophic metal they mined, because it had tasted sweet. And sun, moon, sky, those were the names of the gangs that had ruled the mines. Leave it to Arexon to pick a passphrase that very few could guess. Once Zane was done with its recital, the uspec placed its hand on the wall. The cloud walls sucked us in and took us to the Chiboga hangar. I could not believe it. After all this time, I was back in Chiboga.

------------------------------------------
The First Metropolis of Chiboga
------------------------------------------

There were lines of soldiers standing at attention. These soldiers carried the hoe-spears I remembered.

When we walked into the room, the imperial commander that had kept its headguard on, finally removed the headguard. Its back was to me, so all I could see where the golden earrings with the four rectangular bars on them.

“Assiduity!” A soldier with two smaller rectangular golden bars on its earrings called out. It had two slight golden bands on its arms and was dressed in the full body armor of a capon. It was a noble commander.

As soon as the order was given, every soldier in the room, excluding the imperial, snapped out a salute. The coordination was perfect. There was not a finger moved out of tune. It was awing.

“What beauty thine eyes doth see, what splendors undeservingly shown to me,” a soft voice whispered with reverence. It was Matina, of course, the artist.

The imperial commander turned around and when I saw its face I froze.

Part 3
---------

My honoraria drew closer to me. I saw Juke appear by my right side with Gamble on my left. Matina, shaking, covered my back, and Matiu stood in front of me. It was a defensive positioning that my honoraria had taken one other time with me, the time that two of them had died to save my life. Now the choice was simple, I could either surrender, and save my uspecs or we could fight, and most likely die. We were good, but there were close to a hundred of them, and only eight of us, including an artist. I thought of Arexon and wondered how it would fare. There had not really been much that I could do anyway, I had come out of duty, bound by the fealty I owed it.

I shoved Matina away and walked out of the honoraria’s protective circle. The plenum had lost already. They just did not know it yet. And if I went willingly with them. There was a chance that they would let me live. They had nothing to gain by killing me now. So, why wasn’t I giving the order for my uspecs to stand down? Even now, I felt the thrill of battle. I’d feared that my longing to return to my offspring would remove this and dull the edge that made me such a great fighter. Now I knew that was not to be the case. I wanted to fight. I wanted to, but it was not worth the risk of losing the uspecs in my honoraria.

I turned to find Juke staring at me. I smiled sadly at it. Juke had to live, they all had to live. I’d made my decision, I would take my chances with the plenum. Better that than commit suicide on the outskirts of Chiboga. I reached for my cutlass, resigned to my decision and the fate it consigned us to. I was just about to pull the cutlass out of my sheath when I saw a dagger tumbling in the air towards my neck. I was so shocked by this, that it took me a moment to understand what was happening. It was a moment longer than I had. Matiu struck out with its sword and deflected the dagger. The weapon fell to the ground.

But by throwing that dagger, the plenum soldiers had forced my honoraria’s hands. They reached for their swords and began fighting before I could give the order to surrender.

I heaved a sigh and drew my cutlass and dagger out, this time with only the thought of battle on my mind. It was hard, but I forced myself to push all other thoughts away.

Juke and I faced off against the ten uspecs at our back, while the rest attacked the mass of new armored soldiers who’d come to join them. I deflected one’s sword with my dagger, lanced it in the throat, and then pulled my cutlass out in time to dodge another attack. Both uspecs fell. I looked up and saw Juke beheading an uspec with its double blades and then going in the same swing to lance two uspecs simultaneously, in their hearts, between their chest spikes. I was filled with pride. I deflected another blow and then jumped when I heard a loud shriek coming from beside me.

I gritted my teeth. This was exactly what I’d predicted. The artist had lost its sword and was now about to be felled by a plenum soldier. I actually contemplated letting it die. We were all going to die in this fight, why not let Matiu’s younger be the first. But it was an uspec in my honoraria. Foolish and inept as it was, it was still my duty to protect its life. I threw my dagger into the neck of the uspec who’d threatened Matina’s life. The uspec stumbled back and fell. I did not have time to retrieve the dagger, as three more uspecs rushed towards me. I parried with one while I knocked another one down with my fist, I stabbed my tail into its flesh before it could rise, paralyzing it. Another uspec lashed its sword out in the direction of my tail. I reached for its anger and exhausted it. Right at that moment, Juke was unburdened. The plenum soldier was stunned, its arm frozen mid-strike. Juke parted its head from its body. I killed the uspec I’d been parrying with and then stabbed my cutlass into the heart of the one I’d paralyzed.

“Gra…gratitude sirga,” a small voice sounded beside me.

I turned to find Matina there, blood stained, and holding up the dagger I’d been forced to throw to save its life. It was too shamed to meet my angry glare. I did not have the time to scold it and properly remind it of how stupid it was for coming. I just took the bloodied dagger from its outstretched hand and snapped, “stay behind me,” to it.

We had killed the uspecs behind us, so there was nothing now between our backs and the end of the street. The street was narrow enough that only five us could stand side to side. It allowed us to form a line and then advance as one. It was better this way, better than fighting in an open area where we could be surrounded. Auxa had not thought this through when it laid ambush for us here. The street worked in our favor; it gave us a chance. A slim one, but a chance nonetheless.

Matina cowered behind me as Juke and I joined the others in advancing on the new soldiers who’d joined the fight.

I took in the score before I started swinging my cutlass. Another thing Auxa and I had failed to properly account for was the skill of the fighters I had. Matiu had said they’d trained for war, but I had underestimated that statement. My honoraria weren’t just good, they were extremely well skilled. And the imps that fought with us. I grinned. Auxa certainly had not accounted for this.

I slashed and cut and swiped and moved and did my best to focus on the fight in front of me and not searching out the other uspecs. It was hard fighting beside Juke. I worried for its safety. I wanted to assure myself every second we fought that it was safe and well, but I could not, that level of distraction would get me killed. I dodged a sword, lanced my dagger into an uspec’s eye and then slashed my cutlass through another’s neck.

Gamble whistled. The sound distracted me enough to force my attention to the uspec. But its whistling had not been for my benefit. As soon as it whistled, Chike, who’d been fighting in front, pulled back to take Gamble’s place on the line.

A sword flashed beside me. It was pure reflex that had me lifting my arm. I had allowed myself to get distracted. The sword slashed at my arm. The uspec who’d held the sword was dead before I could extract my revenge. Matiu had killed it. The uspec continued fighting and I did the same, forcing my attention away from Gamble who was now attacking from the air. The uspecs and imps had trained to fight like this. I saw it in their formation, in the way that Chike had quickly responded when Gamble whistled. I could not believe it, but I was actually the weak link in this fight, as I had not trained to fight in this formation with them. I was getting distracted. By the sounds, by my worries for their safety, I was getting distracted and they were covering for me.

I had to let it go. I could not fight and fear for Juke’s safety at the same time. I could not survive this war if I kept letting every sound distract me. I could see their skill, and I had parried with Juke, it had bested me with its blades. I had to trust it. I had to trust them all.

After that, the battle went smoother for me. I did not allow myself any distractions. I deflected swords and cut and threw my dagger. We were pushing forward and stepping on corpses as we made our advance towards the end of the street.

“Samu.” I heard an imp hiss.

Suddenly, our line was broken.

“Stop using your pansophy,” Chike snapped at the other imps.

It was too late, the imps were already being sapped.

The plenum soldiers took advantage of the break in our line before Gamble could return to fill it. They forced themselves through the gap between Juke and Chike and they surrounded us. This was what I’d been afraid of. We had done a significant amount of damage, but the moment they surrounded us, the battle tipped immeasurably in their favor. Juke flew up to prevent itself from being surrounded. It turned out that my uspecs weren’t the only ones trained in air-fight. Other plenum soldiers rose to. They battled Juke and Gamble in the air, while Matiu, Chike and I fought on the ground.

An uspec reached to end Matina’s life from behind it while I parried with another.

“Matina!” I screamed.

The uspec immediately ducked. I threw my dagger blindly and hoped that it was enough, because that second of distraction was all that I could afford with a battle of my own to fight.

The one disadvantage of fighting to kill was that there weren’t any wounded left which didn’t leave me with any pain to siphon. But there was anger and I exhausted it in as many uspecs as I could. It gave us an advantage, but it wasn’t enough.

We were losing.

We fought hard.

This was the kind of battle that epics thrived on. Terrible odds, but warriors so skilled that they defeated it. If our line hadn’t broken, we would have won. I believed that, I knew it to be true. But the imps with pansophy had been sapped by the samus and our line was broken.

It was over.

Or at least I thought so.

Right when I was certain we were all about to die, new players appeared on the scene. They were dressed fully in black. Black headguards and black robes, black enough to cover their entire bodies. Three of them flew in, all of the flying ones carried bows and fired arrows precisely between the chest spikes around the plenum soldiers’ hearts. The soldiers fell, and suddenly, our odds increased. More fighters garbed fully in black broke in on foot. They fell on the back of the plenum soldiers, surrounding them as they had surrounded us.

We fought with new vigor. Juke dropped back to the ground and slashed through as many uspecs as it could find. I fought as hard as I’d fought before, refusing to allow this new change in our situation to affect the tenacity of my fight. None of us stopped fighting until the last plenum soldier was dead. I didn’t allow myself to take stock until then. When I did, I found that we’d suffered two casualties. The imps. Chike was still with us, but only because the imp did not have pansophy. Samu was attracted to pansophy, it only bit imps using pansophy. I was surprised by how relieved I was to see Chike still standing.

Matiu nodded at me. It was drenched in blood. I nodded back at it, and imagined I looked much the same. My eyes caught on Juke and Gamble. Juke was bloodied, Gamble was not, an advantage of flying in the air, I supposed. Juke grinned at me. I scoffed and smiled back at it. I was forgetting someone. I knew I was. I jumped around when I realized who it was.

Matina knelt on the ground, its shoulders shook and it cradled my dagger in its hands. I knew the uspec was crying.

“It has never seen so many bodies.” Matiu explained to me.

I clenched my jaw and looked away. We stood on bodies. The street was so narrow that there were no empty spots for us to stand. There were only the corpses of plenum soldiers.

“Salutations sirga,” one of the black-robed uspecs who’d flown in with bows and arrows, approached me. It spoke in the boga tongue. No one flew, we were all grounded now. I counted twenty of these people. It became immediately clear that there were not just uspecs, but imps too. The tension returned. The last time I had faced uspecs and imps fighting together was when the Wrath of Sada broke into our dwelling on the inter-port trail. It appeared that we had only gone from fighting one enemy to fighting another.

“Who are you?” I demanded.

“I was about to ask you the same question.”

Juke’s hands clenched on the hilts of its cutlasses just as mine did the same.

“Relax, Centius, we are amongst friends.” I heard another voice say, in the boga tongue. Another black-robed individual approached, the one that had spoken. It was an imp, not an uspec. The uspec who’d spoken first backed down and then turned to stare at the imp.

It was clear that this imp was in charge. Imps in charge, another sign of the wrath. I clenched my fingers tighter around the hilt of my cutlass.

The imp that stopped in front of me was tall. As tall as Juke. It took of its headguard and smiled at me. It bowed. “Greetings sirga.” There was something very familiar about this imp. I could not put my finger on it, but it was there. I had seen this imp before. My mind told me that I’d seen it in Damejo and if I’d seen it in Damejo, it was part of the wrath. I was just about to raise my cutlass to cut off its head when it said, “the general will be pleased to hear of your safe return.”

Monday, Wednesday and Saturday it is!

decoderdgenius:
Clasping my hands in nervous tension.
Licking my lips with quiet anticipation.
The storm rages.
It is here, the end of ages
The world will know it was here
And so I stand with it, without fear.
Till its kingdom come!
Till its kingdom come!

Gratitude Obehid

I wish that NL had clapping emojis!!! Thank you

So, after a VERY VERY long "novella" I can FINALLY see the end in sight. I am about five-six chapters away from being done with writing this book and so I am now ready to start posting a bit more. I'm going to start with posting 3 times a week until I'm done writing. Once I'm done writing, I will start posting everyday until it's all posted.

My question for you guys is what do you want the new posting schedule to be. I was thinking I should keep the Wednesday and Saturday posts and add another day. Maybe Sunday? Or I can completely change the schedule and post three different days more evenly spaced out. Please let me know your preferences

@Madosky112 lol, it's really disappear

@cassbeat continuation coming soon, I agree the war begins

@tunjilomo we'll see what happens...lol, for what it counts I really hope none of them dies too

@Fazemood many many great questions. I'm actually not going to answer most of them now because they are either answered at the end of this book, or they are spoilers for other marked books. But, Nebud never said it was hunted by them. It said they were coming for it, but it did not say that it was being hunted. The cousins btw are not imps, they are still alive umanis. But that scene, is actually the prologue of white sight the Reckoning, so it's written (it will be written) properly there, from the viewpoint of the green eyed attackers. Nebud's part in it all and some of Nebud's actions in In Between will be explained by the end of this book, but this story really isn't meant to be a part of the marked series, it's Nebud's tale of its life. That's why it tells its offspring that the story it's going to tell is one it has never heard. The questions about what happens to the spectral existence and their immortality, that is not going to be in this book at all, except for maybe a little commentary on it from Nebud at the end. The Kuwor creating the marked is also not covered in this book, it's part of what Nebud tells its offspring it already knows. That story actually comes in the next marked book not in the standard existence (that one will be in the fourth existence). But it's not Nebud's story, so it's not in this book. Also just to clarify, 'undead' is a title given to progenitors. So every uspec that survives the battle in the hatch and gains an offspring, becomes undead. Nebud is already undead because it has an offspring.

“I fear for Gamble.” The voice that spoke was one I had not heard since the journey began and so it took me a while to place Matina’s voice. “Perhaps we should have taken one of its scales before it left.”

I frowned at that. “Why would we take one if its scales?”

“When a Lahooni noble dies outside its port, it is customary to have a piece of the noble’s feature left to return to its line, so that they can inter it in quicksand with others of the line who’ve passed as well.” Matiu responded in a low voice.

Juke’s eyes hardened. “Gamble is not going to die. It will return.”

“Of course, it will.” I stated. I had no doubts.

Juke nodded, relaxing a little. I decided to steer the conversation away from talks of death and my gaze fixed on Matina, the uspec that had brought Gamble’s death up in the first place.

“You did not spar with us this afternoon Matina.” I stated.

The uspec froze. Matiu looked calmly at me, and Matina seemed so scared I thought it would collapse right there on its lounging bed. To think I had only asked a simple question.

“I…I fear I am not skilled with swords sirga.” Matina confessed. “I cannot fight.”

I turned to Chike. “You did not teach it?”

The imp prepared to talk but Matina cut it off. “It is not Chike’s fault. It tried, but whatever it is that makes a great fighter, I desperately lack it. Forgive me sirga.”

I frowned at it. “You are skilled in pansophy then.” I said.

The uspec shook its head. This time I did frown. “I…I have no head for magic sirga, forgive me, I am not a fighter of any kind.” It confessed. This was no Cantonia. At least Cantonia had pansophy and it had a backbone. This uspec looked like it was going to faint because I was staring at it.

“So, what can you do?” I asked, irritated.

“Matina is an artist, sirga.” Juke said gently. I looked to its face to see if it was joking, but it was not. There was actually fondness in Juke’s voice when it spoke. It was happy with Matina.

“An artist?” I inquired. Perhaps artist meant something different than I thought.

“It is very skilled in playing many musical instruments sirga. It has blessed fingers. It can pluck a string as beautifully as any maestro I’ve ever had. And it paints and words poems sirga. It has even written several poems in dedication of your life. They will sing the songs Matina has written all over Lahooni, and they will know your glory as they sing it. Your tales will live on forever.” Juke said all of this with a peaceful smile on its face. It was content with Matina’s ‘skills’.

I was not.

I sat up and glared at Matiu. “Why did you allow your sibling to come with us?” I roared. “Have you lost your mind?”

Matina trembled in its bed, but Matiu just stared calmly at me. “We are both here to honor our line, sirga.”

I almost threw a dagger at Matiu’s neck. “I do not need artists. Do you not understand that we are going to war in Chiboga! Your sibling’s blood will not be on my hands!” I yelled.

“I swore an oath to you sirga!” Matina screamed. Its eyes were closed. The uspec was so scared it could not even look me in the eye as it responded. I would have sent it back to Hakute if I thought it could survive the trip by itself.

“Your oath is useless to me if you cannot fight. You are nothing but a burden if you cannot fight!” I yelled at it.

“It will be fine sirga, it is never too far from its sibling, and Matiu can fight enough for the both of them.” Juke teased.

“I should send you back.” I knew I could not, but I did not want to take it to Chiboga with us. I should have inquired as to its skill before I permitted it to come.

“Please, sirga, it would be a shame to our line if Matina joined your honoraria and did nothing to protect you.”

I stared at Matiu as if it was insane. Protect me? Was it going to sing my enemies away? Or perhaps it hoped to poke them in the eye with its writing pen. Protect me. I would be the one protecting it. I did not mind travelling with children when there had been many more fighters around, but there were only four of us, and we were going to war. How could Matiu not see that a warzone was not the place for an artist?

“It will be fine, sirga, we will care for it. We all have a duty to perform sirga, and this is Matina’s. You dishonor it by asking it not to perform the duty it has sworn to.” Juke spoke softly.

I looked between Matina’s trembling form, Matiu’s emotionless face, and Juke’s smiling confidence, and I cursed all three of them. And Fabiana too, for letting me bring an artist on this quest. An artist! I cursed them three times over. I glared at Matina as I said, “The only reason you are staying is because you would die if I sent you back on your own and I cannot afford to send any other with you.” Then I rose from my lounging bed, grabbed a pouch of heavily fermented wine and stormed out of the dwelling.

I paced the compound, drinking heavily from the wine as I did. Matina was not going to survive this war and that was going to be my fault. It would not return to Lahooni. It would die here. It would die. I wanted to hate Matiu for doing this, for creating another corpse that would haunt my conscience. It was Matina’s sibling. It should be protecting the uspec not sending it to fight with me.

I thought of my offspring, of Nebula. I would not let it fight if it could not. My mind filled with the moments we’d shared. With its smiles, its laughs, even its spasms. I’d only had few moments with it, not nearly enough. I wanted more, but I would not risk its life for anything in the world. Why was Matiu willing to risk Matina’s? My mind filled with thoughts of my offspring again and I took a gulp of the heavily fermented wine. I had not had enough time. Not nearly enough.


Little bubbles float on by
Filled with the moments we shared
Silent whispers make me sigh
At these happy thoughts in my head
Every little bit is twisted
Every smile, every tear
Every part of me addicted
To the one for whom I care
Life’s cruel teasing touch
Has given me only a taste
Now there’s only memories to watch
While I shrivel in waste


While I shrivel in waste. The thought echoed in my head, and I saw myself dying on a hard fog Chiboga road, making my offspring an orphan in the process. The words seemed so in tune with my thoughts of my offspring that it took me much longer than it should have to realize that the words had been spoken. Not spoken, but sung. They’d been sung by a singer without instrument.

I turned and found Matina standing several feet behind me. It was the one responsible for the song then. I frowned at it. How had it said words that resonated so closely with me? Was this an artist’s magic? I was not one for music or art in general, but even I could tell when I was surrounded by greatness. Matina was skilled, I could not doubt that, but it was not skilled in any way I needed.

It knelt before me. “I did not mean to displease you sirga, only to serve you.”

I scoffed. I was going to say something, but the words stayed in my throat because at that very moment, a green dot appeared in the sky and it descended on our compound.

Gamble had returned. I walked away from the kneeling uspec without giving it any further thought. Gamble had not seen me and so it walked into the dwelling. I followed in its wake.

When I entered into the entertaining room, Juke and Gamble had their arms around each other’s shoulders. Gamble laughed at whatever Juke said.

“You have returned.” I said, without prelude.

The uspec turned to me and bowed. “The great Auxa sends its greetings, and this.” It handed me a tube.

Once I held the tube in my hand, it dissolved. Auxa had sealed it with my identity. I spread out the scroll and quickly perused its contents. Then I smiled. “There is a way.” I said to the eager faces that looked on me. “The plenum lost a skirmish a week ago on a little street around the aft side of Chiboga. Auxa says that the plenum has ten soldiers guarding it. If we can overpower the guards, we can reach the Chiboga hangar.”

Gamble scoffed. “Ten guards. Why don’t you relax sirga and let Juke and I handle the guards for you. We’ll make a game out of it, see which of us can kill the most plenum soldiers.”

“A game you’ll lose.” Juke stated confidently.

“I guess we’ll see.” Gamble replied just as confident as Juke. I laughed and patted Gamble’s shoulder.

“You have done well Gamble.” I praised.

The uspec beamed. It bowed. “It is my honor to serve, sirga.”

I smiled and nodded. “We leave in five minutes.” I announced.

After that the preparations were made quickly. We did not have much to pack. We simply returned the things we’d removed from the satchel bags and then we were ready.

It was easy to follow the path that Auxa had laid out. It took us two hours on foot to get there, but we chatted the whole way. I’d even forgotten about the nuisance of Matina by the time we reached our destination. But I had not forgotten the song it had sang. The last two lines haunted me. Now there’s only memories to watch, while I shrivel in waste. They felt oddly like a premonition. And I had the thought again, of myself dying on hard fog Chiboga roads, only this time I could see my last moments were filled with memories of Nebula. Its smile, its spasms, its stammered words. The day it was born, the week it was sick, the look on its face as it had begged me not to leave. Now there’s only memories to watch, while I shrivel in waste

I forced my mind away from thoughts like that.

The street was as Auxa had said. It was empty and it had nothing but the ten soldiers loitering about in front of a wall of clouds. That wall looked like the gate we sought. The soldiers were so unprepared for a fight that they did not even have armor on. I was suddenly feeling very charitable. I would give them a chance to live.

By the time they saw us, it was already too late for them. They all had the chest spikes of bogas.

“Stand down and I will let you live.” I said, magnanimously, speaking in the boga tongue.

One of the uspecs laughed at me. It actually laughed. I shrugged and then reached for my sword. The others did the same. Then there was a whistle and I suddenly had a very bad feeling. I heard the sounds of heavy marching.

“Master.”

I turned around. There were at least seventy soldiers standing behind us. These ones were dressed in the same armor as the plenum soldiers we’d killed earlier. We were surrounded.

“It’s a trap.” Matius stated, gravely.

Yes, it was. Auxa had tricked me. Which meant this wall was no entry to Chiboga and we were trapped between a wall and over eighty plenum soldiers. More than ten uspecs for each fighter I had with me.

“How about we make you the same offer, last brio?” One of the original uspecs who’d been there taunted me in the boga tongue. “Stand down and we will let all of you live.”

“War has changed it. We did not fight well, your honoraria, the first time, because we had not trained for war. This time, we trained for war.” There were no inflections in Matiu’s voice, just a steady conviction.

I looked at Juke again. It had its arm over Gamble’s shoulder and Gamble’s arm was over its.

“I swear to the founder that when we reach Chiboga I will kill two uspecs for every one you kill Juke.” Gamble said.

Juke laughed. “You will need to make yourself into four people to keep that oath.”

I smiled. “They arrogant.” I stated.

Matiu smiled. It was a tight somber smile. Everything about the uspec seemed to be grave. “You are arrogant, sirga, and they are taking their lead from you. They want to impress you.”

I was shocked by the uspec’s words. I stared at it, and I saw its age on its face. It was older than Fabiana and I. About as old as Arexon, I guessed, which put it a good ten years older than I was. “I am arrogant. Perhaps it is for the best. A warrior must be arrogant to stare death in the face and survive. And they must survive, I do not intend to outlive anyone else in my honoraria.”

Matiu bowed to me. I took a deep breath and turned my attention back to the two uspecs in front. Juke was eighteen now, and if I remembered correctly, Gamble was twenty. When I was their age I had already killed many.

The closer we drew to Chiboga the more we drew to the fringes. When we were close enough that we could see tents pitched and large troops of soldiers milling about, we pulled away from the main path and walked into a resting place. This was the closest resting place to Chiboga that the plenum had not commandeered. It was empty. When Chike dropped the form card we’d purchased into the sludge, the dwelling that rose was the only one there.

“What is the plan sirga?” Juke asked.

“Go and clean the blood off your face first.” I ordered unwittingly harshly. Its smile went away. It bowed and walked into the dwelling. It would find a faucet. I tried to force my mind to reason as I normally did, but I could not reason properly where Juke was concerned. I knew that I should be proud, but I found it hard to be. I did not want Juke laughing with the blood of uspecs it had slain still on its body. I did not want it to be like me.

When it returned its face was straight, it no longer smiled. I looked away from its face to uspecs that did not mean to me what it did. It was unfair, but I could not help my reactions. I was not even sure I understood them, I just knew that I had not liked what I’d seen today. I had not liked it at all. Juke was meant to be a fighter, not a killer. For some reason I found myself remembering the conversation we’d had five years ago, in the entertaining room of the large dwelling Arexon and I had owned.

“Do you subscribe to the annihilates or the adjudicates theory of sparring?” Binna had asked. I could still recall Juke’s studious explanation of the differences. “Annihilates believe in fighting to kill while adjudicates believe in fighting to win.” It had been on the floor playing with my offspring when I’d asked it, “Which theory do you think is superior?” In the end it had decided that we should all fight as the Fabricates theory demanded, as if in the creation of an epic. That young uspec, the one who’d wanted to fight as legends do, now fought to kill and laughed at the bloodshed. Arexon had warned me once that those who followed me would emulate me in ways that I could not begin to comprehend. I had not imagined this, that my Juke would grow into this, into me. It was jarring.

“Apologies, sirga, I did not mean to displease you.” Juke’s voice was small. In that moment it reminded me more of the young uspec that I’d left behind, than it had since I returned. I put a hand on its shoulder and squeezed.

I shook my head. I wanted to say something, but I could not find the words. Could I send it back in time to be that sweet kid who was eager to please and dreamt of being a warrior. It was a warrior now.

It was a warrior now.

I shook my head again. There were no words. But I did not release my hand from its shoulder.

“We need to get a message to Auxa.” I stated.

“I will deliver it.” Juke rushed in.

I could not help but smile at that. “Auxa fights for the plenum. It will be deep in the plenum’s camp, close to the Chiboga border.”

Juke tipped its chin upwards and stared me square in the eye. “I will deliver it.” It stated firmly.

I laughed and drew the uspec close to me. I hugged it. It was not a warm embrace, it was a rather rough one, and very unlike myself. Juke brought out things in me that only my offspring had. “You grew up too fast,” I whispered into the uspec’s ear, before pulling it back.

The smile on its face was so wide that I caught another rare glimpse of the young uspec I’d left behind five years ago. The one with the single outer eye and the smile that touched that eye. It still had the eye, but the smile no longer seemed as funny as it had on the young face. The young Juke was still there underneath all the brawn. It was still eager to please me.

I released my hold of it. I could no more send Juke alone into enemy camps than I could send my own offspring. I just could not do it. It did not matter how strong it had grown and how well skilled it was. I could not risk its life like that.

“I will deliver it.” Gamble said.

Juke punched Gamble in the arm. “You will not steal my glory, my friend.”

Gamble disappeared.

I gaped.

Juke scowled and grumbled “show off.”

“I am well skilled in appearance, sirga, I can sneak into the camp. And, unlike Juke, you can be assured that I will return.” Gamble’s voice sounded but there was no appearance to show where it stood as it spoke. “What is the missive?” it asked. I swiveled to my right and found it standing between me and Juke.

Juke scoffed. I laughed. I was ashamed at how eager I was to send this uspec into danger in Juke’s place. It had appearance, it was a magic that no one else seemed to have mastered as well as Gamble. I pulled out the tube I’d had Fabiana make before we left and placed it in Gamble’s hand. Then I gave the uspec a pouch of merit. “For bribes and such, if you need it.”

Gamble bowed. “I will be on my way sirga.” It winked at Juke and then flew off before Juke could react. It took its appearance away before it flew out of sight.

“I am close to proficiency in appearance,” Juke said to me, “I will be ready next time.”

I shook my head at it. It was so eager to fight. Now that I had so much to lose I was not as eager for battle as I had been when I was younger. If the war in Chiboga could be settled without bloodshed that would soothe me just fine. All I wanted to do was get myself and my honoraria safely back to Lahooni. We had already lost too many Lahooni lives to the plenum.

I pulled my cutlass out of my sheath. “Why don’t you show me the skill you’re so eager to use.” I said to Juke.

The uspec stared dazed at me.

I pushed the rounded edge of my blade against its chest, deep enough to welt, but not to break the skin. That was all the prodding Juke needed. It reached for its cutlasses and drew them out of their sheaths.

I had never sparred with an uspec who fought with two blades. I was curious as to why Juke had chosen these weapons as its instruments.

I urged Juke on, and it leapt at me. There was nothing of the young one I’d left behind. This Juke fought with skill and cunning. It had strength behind each blow it threw. It brought both swords together and I deflected them both with my cutlass. It chuckled and then leapt back. It was light on its feet. It had a quickness baffling in one so bulky. It came at me again, this time it swung one cutlass low, one cutlass high, and it swiveled around as it advanced. It moved as if it was dancing and I was hard pressed to keep up. I slammed one cutlass away and then went into its space and knocked it back with my shoulder. I forced it back with strength, not skill. Juke advanced again and I deflected its blows. I focused on its sword and did my best to ignore its fancy footwork. In the end, even I had to admit that I was not skilled enough to best a skilled swordsman with two blades. I just did not have enough experience. I was just deflecting one sword when another one appeared lower, and I felt a sharp prick against my lower stomach. If this had been a real fight, I would be dead.

I conceded the fight to Juke with a loud guffaw. “And the student becomes the master.”

Juke bowed, turned on its feet and then leapt backwards. “Only because you have never faced an opponent with two swords before. It is not a common thing for uspecs to learn.”

“Because it is hard, domina, and it requires a great deal of effort.” Chike stated.

Juke bowed flamboyantly to the imp. “I am only as good as I am because I have been blessed with a great instructor.”

Chike smiled.

Juke sheathed its sword and then turned back to face me. “Shall we brawl, sirga, in that you can most definitely best me.”

I laughed and I knew it too. But I did not need to best Juke. I looked at Juke’s face and felt suddenly old. I was only in my early thirties, not quite as old as Arexon or Matiu or even Fabiana, for that matter. No, I shook my head. I was proud to have been bested by Juke and I told it so.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon sparring. Juke faced off against Matiu, I against Chike, and the last two imps sparred with each other. Chike could not resist the urge to instruct me. It found flaws in the way I moved my feet, in the swing of my cutlass, it even found a way to criticize the trajectory of my eyeline. I realized at the end that I still had a lot to learn about swordfight. I was a brawler, in that I was assured of my proficiency. There were few who could best me in a fight with only fists. But fights with fists were rare.

We wore ourselves out that afternoon and fought until the daylight dots went away and not even the faintest sign of orange light remained. We went indoors when night fell and the red illumination of the clouds was all the lighting we had.

The dwelling was nothing fabulous. It was a simple one. Big enough to have a compound with a fence around it, but not nearly as big as the one I’d shared with Arexon and our entourages. We took turns with the faucet and rinsed off the sweat on our bodies. We had not had the foresight to pack towels, but we did not mind. The pink liquid would dry quickly.

We all reclined onto the lounging beds in the entertaining room, imp and uspec alike.

“Why double swords?” I asked Juke.

“It is unexpected sirga. Only a handful of uspecs fight with it and so very few are trained to parry against it.” Its eyebrows pulled together, and it took on the studious look that I had seen so many times on its younger face. I could not help but smile at the familiarity. “Chike asked us, right before we started training, to take a week and think about the type of swords we wanted to fight with. So, I did my research and found the most uncommon type.”

I laughed. “Still the studious one, I see.”

Juke grinned at me. “Always sirga. I must remain studious if I am to one day be one of the advisors you count on most.”

I stared fondly at the uspec’s face, remembering the conversation we’d had in my canopy room the night that Darlin had showed itself to be a traitor. I had told Juke that night that it would grow to be one of the advisors I counted on most then I had promised to make it a duke. It was a promise I had every intention of keeping. I wouldn’t even need to make a new dukedom for it. Its progenitor had already proved itself a traitor. As Juke was the only one in that line I could trust, Juke would inherit once I reclaimed my port and separated its progenitor’s head from its body. “Yes, you must.” I said finally.

Part 2
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------------------------------
On the Inter-port Trail
------------------------------

We emerged from the hangar into the parts of the inter-port trail that surrounded Hakute. The soft ground was empty, but I could not help but remember the last time I’d seen it, when it hadn’t been so empty. I thought of that war, of the uspecs that had died right on the grounds we stood on. It was as if I could see them again. I doubted I would ever forget it, the look of over hundreds of headless corpses. Some of them dismembered, some no doubt done by my own blade. I thought of the blood that had stained their bodies and the look of despair that had filled their eyes. And as I thought of this, I could not help but wonder what their final thoughts were. What did one think in the moments before death? I knew what I would think of. Just the thought of death made me see it in my head. It’s little green face, not so little anymore, I reminded myself. Nebula. My entire world had changed when my offspring was born from the hatch. I had not known before that love like what I felt could be cushioned in a heart like mine. But now I knew, and now my entire existence seemed dependent on my offspring. Its happiness brought me joy. I thought of it and knew that there was nothing I wouldn’t do to ensure its safety.

I had escaped death more times than any other uspec I’d known. I thought of the slum I’d been raised in and how I’d escaped death there when it was found out that I was irira. Then the pits. And my life after. My entire life seemed like an endless cycle of facing death and somehow surviving. But then I’d had Chuspecip. The founder had been in me, it had needed me, and it had used me and used others around me to ensure my safety. Now the founder was returned and it no longer had use of me. This was the first time that I would be facing death completely on my own. And I was afraid. It was not the fear of pain that filled me, or really even the fear of death in itself. It was the fear of leaving my offspring alone. It would have Fabiana, but Fabiana was not its mater. I had grown up without a line and I did not want that for my offspring. I wanted to ensure its safety, I wanted to raise it, to spar with it, to play with it. I wanted an entire life with my offspring, and if I died, I would never have that. Nebula would grow up alone.

“The bodies haunt me too, sirga.” Matiu intoned the words with the solemnity of a prayer.

I turned to the uspec and I nodded. Matiu, Fabiana and I were the only three uspecs left who’d witnessed the battle. Juke, Gamble and Matina had been too young to fight with us. Now they were older, and we were headed to another war against the plenum, only this time, our odds were far worse than they’d been in the battle to get to Hakute.

“Are you ready?” I asked the uspecs. “Once we embark on this journey, we must fly hard to reach Chiboga before nightfall.”

Juke nodded gravelly, but Gamble grinned and said, “I was born ready, sirga.”

I took a step back, stunned by the words the uspec had said. The memory of that previous fight came back to me with an alacrity that left me shaken. I saw Binna in Fabiana’s arms and in my head, I heard the sounds of Fabiana’s lamentation. It had wailed loudly over its sibling’s corpse.

“What is it sirga?” Gamble asked.

I was too filled with my own memories to respond. It was Matiu who spoke up in my place. “Those were the majestic Fabinna’s last words.”

Grief and understanding filled Gamble’s eyes. The uspec looked down. We all did. The younger ones would not see what Matiu, Chike, and I saw. They would not see the pool of corpses that had died here. I had to shake my head vigorously to pull the gruesome thoughts out.

“Let us go,” I said.

We had packed lightly. There were three imps with us. The younger uspecs would carry them during flight. Matiu and I would carry the satchel bags we’d packed. We hadn’t brought much. I had two pouches of worth, merit and value, enough food to last us a night, pouches of okun and wine, and sharpeners for our blades. There were a few extra belts and an extra neckcloth for me.

We had to walk till we got to the road for flyers and canoes. The inter-port trail was not how I remembered it. There were too few people about, and each one we came across eyed us warily.

“It is the war, sirga,” Juke explained to me, “this side of the inter-port trail is ravaged by it.”

I nodded grimly. The chasm. The plenum should know that they had already lost. Whatever happened in Chiboga, they had lost. They might beat Arexon, but the founder was back, when it recuperated, it would destroy them all. How long would it take for it to recuperate though? I had felt its weakness, and carried that weakness inside of me. I did not know the way of Chus. Chuspecip was the founder, our god, but it was still just an uspec. It was an immortal uspec, a powerful one, perhaps in many ways much more than the normal uspec, but still just an uspec. It needed time, time that Arexon did not have.

We emerged from the slow lane to the faster one and then we were off. We let our ailerons flap, bearing us high in the air, higher than the scattering of canoes steering below us. There were not many people sharing this road with us. I thought as we flew. I did not want to, because all thoughts inadvertently lead back to worries about my offspring and its safety if anything happened to me. I trusted Fabiana implicitly. Yet, I worried for my offspring. I was paranoid, and I could not help but think of all the ways that things could go wrong for my little Nebula. When I was not worrying about Nebula I was plagued with thoughts of this new emptiness I felt. I had not thought much of what it meant to be brio and carry Chuspecip with me. There had been a peace to it, knowing that the founder was with me, that I had a link to it I could draw on. Now with that link gone, I felt different, lighter. In some ways that lightness felt like freedom, but most of the time it just felt like emptiness, like I was hollow. I still did not understand how I felt about Chuspecip. I was much changed by my journey to it, and much changed by being in its presence. But it had not spoken to me. Not a word. It was my ancestor, it had used me, but I did not think it liked me much.

I tried to take my mind off Chuspecip but I could not. I could not forget the sight of it in the moment that it had stood before me as Chacip. It had been tall but not much taller than I. I had seen giants that were taller. I knew Chacip was just one form that the founder had taken and that it could take on others. I could not help but wonder if it knew what I was about. Would it come to my aid? Did I want it to? I was its subject. I belonged to it. I had dropped to my knees on sighting it, there could be no more doubt in my mind that it was my god. I sighed. I did not like thinking on Chuspecip, and I was a good enough warrior to know that I should not go into battle expecting to be saved by the founder. That was not the right mindset to have.

We flew hard. A fast canoe speeding by on an empty road could make the journey in a little over an hour, if the steerer was willing to exhaust a great deal of motion. We were not speeding canoes, but we flew as fast as we could, and we reached our destination in three hours. When we descended, we were all sweating. We stopped well away from Chiboga, not so far that we needed to fly to approach the port, but far enough that we wouldn’t be seen.

Still, the moment we emerged into the slow, walking lane, we saw a troop of plenum soldiers. Five of them. They were marching in the direction of Chiboga. These soldiers wore armor, which the ones that had stood guard outside Hakute had not. They seemed like the normal issue, slight bulk, medium height, no fine specimens amongst them. Two of them were of the kute spectrum and the last three were mejo.

“Halt!” A kute called out in the kute tongue.

“Do you think they’re talking to us?” I asked in the hooni tongue.

Juke grinned. “I hope so.”

I looked at the uspec and approved of the way it clutched the hilts of its swords. It was travelling with a matching pair of shorter cutlasses. I knew without being told that it had chosen cutlasses to match my weapon of choice. My Juke. I smiled back at it and nodded. But I gave orders for it not to lose its cool. We kept moving, ignoring the call from the soldiers.

“Halt in the name of the plenum!” The cry in kute was much louder this time.

I gave orders of my own and we stopped. “Is there a problem?” I asked, speaking kute back to the soldiers. They wore metal headguards over their heads and necks, all the way to their shoulders. Their belts were an odd mesh metallic contraption that fell slightly past their waists. The plenum had not spared any expense in covering their soldiers. The headguards for the mejos had holes cut out for their horns.

One of the mejo soldiers frowned when it was close enough to peer into my face. “You look familiar.” It said.

My eyes narrowed. “I cannot imagine why.” I stated seriously.

“Where are you headed?” A kute soldier asked.

“North.” I replied.

“Where north?”

I’d instructed my honoraria to remove their golden bands. I appeared as the only noble in the group. “Damejo,” I replied.

The soldiers eyed us all. “You are heavily armed for uspecs going to Damejo.” One of them said.

“We are mercenaries. We are always heavily armed.” Gamble chimed in. “You know how it is.”

The soldiers glanced at Gamble before turning back to face me. “What business do you have in Damejo?”

I was just about to respond when the mejo uspec said, “I remember how I know you!”

As soon as it said that, there was chaos. Juke killed it before I could even begin to process an adequate response. The rest of the plenum soldiers immediately pulled out their swords and the spar that followed was quick and ended in their deaths.

“They should have had the foresight to cover their chests as well as their heads.” Juke stated calmly, pushing its bloodied cutlass back into its sheath.

I stared at Juke, dazed.

“I did not even get to wet my blade.” Gamble complained. “You should have left the last one for me Juke. Why did you have to be greedy and kill two?”

Juke scoffed. “The first one didn’t put up a fight.”

It took me a while to get my bearing. I stared at the brawler standing beside me, grinning with its face stained with blood splatter, and I struggled to reconcile it with little Juke. “You have killed before.” I said, when I could finally form speech.

Juke nodded. “We fought in Lahooni, or at least we tried. We only left a few of us at a time and we attacked the troops on the inter-port trail around our port. It wasn’t enough to make a difference, though.”

I nodded. I sheathed my sword and then nodded for us to leave before we were seen. Gamble and Juke teased each other the entire way there. Gamble kept complaining about the lack of action and Juke groaned about the fight not being exerting enough.

“They are young.” Matiu said.

I turned to find the uspec walking beside me. Its sibling walked on its other side. It had not drawn its sword. I could not begin to imagine why it had asked to come along if it did not want to fight.

“They are bloodthirsty.” I replied.

Matiu shook its head. “We have all lost many to the plenum. Gamble lost two of its siblings in the war, and Matina and I lost our progenitor. Juke did not lose any in its immediate family, but several of its cognates and agnates were slain by the plenum.”

“I cannot believe that that is Juke.” I shook my head. The Juke I remembered would not joke about a corpse. It troubled me. Juke’s behavior, its bravery and callousness in the face of death, it was something I would have admired in any other, but not in Juke.

@tunjilomo Musa and Nebud's friendship is well, maybe gone, maybe not, we'll see. What 'uspec' could be either Gamble or Matina?

@cassbeat Lol @Musa pursuing its destiny

@eROCK247 Yeahp, five years passed and it shook Nebud. I won't say much about their relationship just yet

@Fazemood I;m doing fine, thank you so much for the concern

@Madosky112 Gratitude for reading

@Tuhndhay what twist...you mean Musa and Nebud's relationship? Well, we'll have to see how that one turns out

I clenched my jaw. There was a crestfallen look on those eyeless faces when I turned my gaze back on them. Halima was lying beside Musa next to my imp. There was foam all over the floor so the whole thing was like one large bed, like the room I’d shared with my offspring before leaving. I thought of the way I’d watched my offspring sleeping, worrying about its convulsions and took my gaze back to it, wondering if it still suffered from those convulsions. These imps made Nebula happy. I swallowed down my true feelings and shook my head at Fabiana. I could tolerate them for one more day.

Palm fronds had been cut off in some parts of the tree and tables had been placed on the sludge ground. I walked over to one of those tables and filled my platter with food and my cup with wine. I sat beside my offspring’s lying form.

“My-my mater is back, Hali-lima. My-my mater is ba-back!”

Everyone cheered at that, imp and uspec alike. Halima bowed to me and I surprised myself by managing to nod at it.

The conversations returned. Gamble and Juke teased each other about their last bout. Every once in a while, my offspring would chime in, and make some boasts of its own. Some of those boasts were so outlandish that I found myself laughing. My little Nebula made a bet with Juke and Gamble, that when it was their age, it would be able to take the both of them on in a fight and win. I laughed so hard my stomach hurt.

“My-my mater d-d-doubts me. I-I wi-will pr-pr-prove myself.”

“Let us make a gamble,” I heard the deep richness of Matiu’s voice, and I was stunned. I had never heard the uspec speak that loudly.

“You want to make a me?” Gamble asked.

Everyone laughed.

“You should sue your progenitor for naming you thus. Your name has no bearing on the one that bore you.” Juke said. Gamble’s progenitor was named Hanaion. I could think of several preferable names than the one it had named its offspring.

Gamble threw a piece of fruit at Juke’s head and Juke caught it with its mouth. “My upbringing is not as auspicious as yours, majestic one,” it teased, “my banneret, pater, named me in honor of a noble friend it hoped would endow a patronage on me. It did not want me to grow up impoverished.”

“How did that work for your progenitor?” Juke laughed in a way that made it clear it already knew the answer. Gamble launched another food projectile at Juke.

“Surely, you must be wealthier than a halcyon.” Chike teased. “Badly named but so wealthy you can throw pieces of worth at those who would laugh at you.”

Everyone laughed and I knew this was a ritual of some sort. Gamble threw a piece of candy at Chike, who caught it, laughing.

“If you must know,” Gamble began, furrowing its brows, “I am both badly named and poorer than a pauper. Why else would I be here with you unfortunate cast of misfits?”

I roared with laughter.

The teasing continued in that fashion. They never went back to my offspring’s boasts, the conversation just went on. I realized that this was unlike anything I had ever seen before. Imps and uspecs all together, laughing and teasing each other. There were no differences made. It reminded me of how it had felt in the early days traveling with Musa. I found myself unusually happy. My offspring was teased, but it gave back as good as it got. It went smoothly from one uspec tongue to the next and then added several umani tongues that even some of the imps did not understand. I could tell from the way it interacted with Halima, that it was the imp who’d taught it so much of the umani tongues. I ate fully and freely and with a smile on my face. My gaze darted from Juke who ate shamelessly with its mouth open, to my offspring who managed to look both young and dignified, and then to the others. To Fabiana’s somber form and Matiu’s laughing face. Gamble’s name was teased at least three more times and each time the uspec found new ways to make us all laugh. I looked at my offspring again and wondered what my life would have been if I had grown up surrounded by love and friendship like this. If anything I had done in my life had guaranteed this life for my offspring, then I was proud, and I would do more yet. It would never know the hardships that I had. If it wanted imps, then I would endure their presence, anything to make Nebula happy. A million meals like this. I had to admit, I was enjoying it too. This was what happiness felt like.

“Sirga.” Fabiana prompted.

I shook my head and turned to the uspec. “Apologies majestic, I was carried away.”

“We were asking about the founder, sirga.” Juke said.

I nodded. “It is back.” I stated.

There were loud rounds of jubilation. Even my offspring celebrated. Its love for Chuspecip could only come from one person. I turned to Fabiana and nodded at it. It bowed back to me.

“Then the high Arexon is not lost!” Gamble exclaimed.

It was as if someone had just poured a pail of okun over me. I had walked into my paradise and immediately been blanketed by the joy that surrounded me. I had forgotten about the world that I had left behind. I had forgotten that a five-year absence, meant five years of the plenum’s war. Five years.

“What is the status of the war?” I asked.

It was Juke who replied. “There have been heavy casualties on all sides, sirga. The plenum completed their bridge into Lahooni and they have taken control of all parts of our port, except the palace in the Acropolis. What is left of our army and the nobles that lead them stay fortressed in the Palace. One of the plenum Kaisers commands the troops left in Lahooni. They’ve laid siege to the Palace for the last two years. With the bridges destroyed, the plenum has no way of reaching the palace. They are not of your line and they do not have the special tokens and so they cannot teleport in, which is the only other mode of entry with the bridges gone. Which means the plenum is forced to wait for the supplies in the palace to run out.”

“How many Lahooni uspecs have died?” I asked.

“Too many to count.” Matiu stated sadly. “Including the great Fabian.”

I jumped, startled. My gaze turned to Fabiana. “I am so sorry. Why did you not tell me?” Fabiana had now lost not just one but two uspecs of its line to this war. Its progenitor was dead.

“It died three years ago sirga.” Fabiana stated.

“Still, you should have told me.” I replied. It said nothing. I could feel its pain and I wanted to do something more than offer condolences, but what could I do? “How many plenum troops in Lahooni?” I asked.

“About five thousand.” Gamble stated.

“And ours?”

“A few hundred left in the palace.”

“What about Chiboga?” I asked.

“The battle has been one for the ages. Somehow, the high Arexon has held its ground. The plenum has taken far more casualties from Chiboga than anyone thought was possible. But we got word a week ago that the high Arexon only has enough troops left for one big showdown. One final stand against the plenum. They still have about twenty thousand soldiers surrounding Chiboga, and the high Arexon only has about two thousand of its soldiers left. It sent us a missive sirga, letting us know that it will fight the plenum head-on, with what is left of its troops.”

I swallowed. “When?”

“Tomorrow.”

I sighed.

“But the founder is returned now sirga, so we are all saved. Right?” It was Gamble who asked.

I stared at the uspec. “It is weak. The founder will take time to recuperate.”

“How much time does a god need?” It was Matina who asked this.

I frowned. “More time than Arexon has.”

“Then what do we do sirga?” Juke asked.

I looked at them. “I will go to Chiboga. I gave my word to Arexon that I would be there to fight with it if Chuspecip could not. It is an oath I must keep.”

Fabiana gasped. “You cannot be serious. Arexon will lose. It has fought well, and generations to come will learn of the great Chiboga war, but it will lose. You cannot go down, sirga. Think of your own port.”

I looked to my offspring and forced myself to smile when I saw the look of worry that crossed its face. “How long can the troops in the palace hold out?”

“Weeks sirga.”

“Chuspecip will be restored long before then. Lahooni will survive. Chiboga does not have weeks.”

“You are our Kaiser, you cannot leave us leaderless.” Fabiana stated.

I turned to my offspring. “I do not. I have an heir. An able heir. And my heir has you, great one.” I looked at Fabiana. With its progenitor dead, it was now duke, duke of the first metropolis of my port. It could guide my offspring if anything happened to me.

“N-n-no ma-mater, n-n-no. You j-just returned. N-n-no.”

“Shh,” I hushed the young uspec. “Have no fear,” I forced myself to sound confident, “I will return.”

“Do-do not le-leave me ag-gain. Please.” It begged and its bottom lip shook. It was still so young and, in my eyes, very old. It was older than it was in my brain. Old enough to speak, to understand what my leaving this time meant. It was old enough to know that if I died it would be without a progenitor. It would be Kaiser. Kaiser at five years old. It was not what I wanted for my offspring. But I had no choice. Arexon had risked its life for me. It could have joined with the plenum against me, but it had not. It had stayed my friend. It was Kuworyte, but it had chosen to stand with Chuspecip for me. What kind of person would I be if I abandoned it to its fate now that it needed me the most? I was only one uspec, not nearly enough to really tip the scale in Arexon’s favor, but I would die trying. That much I owed to the uspec who had given so much for me.

“I will accompany you.” Juke stated.

I chuckled and shook my head. “You will stay here. You will stay safe.”

Juke stood up. It was still strange to look on the uspec and see so much brawn on it. Juke had become a warrior. “I am your honoraria. It is not my job to be safe, it is my job to ensure your safety, sirga. I have trained tirelessly for five years so that I could be worthy of the trust you placed in me when you allowed me to join your noble honoraria.” It went on one knee and bowed its head. “Let me fight for you now, imperial one.”

“And I,” Gamble said. It went to its knee too. “Let me be your sword and shield, your scale and spike.”

Matiu rose and went on its knee. “I will guard you, imperial one.”

“As will I.” Its younger sibling Matina joined in.

I tried to gainsay them, but they would not be swayed. In the end, I had no choice but to give in. Fabiana would remain with Nebula. It would keep my offspring safe, and if the worse happened and I died, then it would ensure that Nebula took its place as Kaiser of Lahooni. The rest of my honoraria would go with me.

We had no time to waste. I tried desperately to reach for the bond I shared with Chuspecip, but it was not there. I felt nothing but emptiness inside me. The founder would not be coming to our aid, it was just us, and we had no time to waste. Though I did take some time to talk with Musa. It was not the talk I had expected and it did not go at all as I had imagined. Chike had insisted on accompanying us. It recommended two other imps, both who had pansophy, both who could fight. I agreed to bring them along. When I spoke with Musa, I of course expected it to insist on coming along.

When it did not, I was taken aback.

It stood in my canopy room watching my preparations to leave again and it made no offers to accompany me. This imp who’d sworn that it would protect me until I reclaimed my port, made no attempt to keep its word when I was going into battle. That was when I really knew that my ties with Musa were forever broken. I left the imp with fifty pieces of worth and writs of emancipation for all the imps left behind. They would have their freedom and the wealth required to make lives for themselves, away from me. That was the promise I’d made to myself before I left. I said that if they were loyal, I would free them. And good riddance. The other uspecs might miss them, but I would not.

I said goodbye to my offspring. It begged me to stay, but I could not. I tried to explain to the best of my ability, but in the end, I did not think it truly understood why I would rush into sure death for an uspec that it could not even remember. Arexon did not mean much to my offspring, but it meant so much to me.

I did not truly believe that Musa would not ask to come along until the eight of us said our final goodbyes and Musa stood by its imp Halima and stared evenly at me.

I left. Musa remained.

“Let me look at you,” I said, after we hugged.

The uspec took a step back and beamed up at me.

It had grown. It was an uspec fully grown now. Eighteen and already in its prime. I was beyond proud.

“Do I please you imperial one?” it asked.

I laughed again, and this time, several others joined in my mirth. “Yes, Juke,” I sighed, “yes.”

“Did you see our sparring?” Juke asked.

I laughed and then turned my gaze on the other uspec it had been sparring with. This one dropped to its knee in front of me.

“Rise Gamble.” Truth be told, I was not sure that was the uspec’s name. There had been three young uspecs when I’d left, Juke, Gamble and Matina. This uspec could be either Gamble or Matina.

The uspec rose. It smiled at me. “I am honored that you recognized me sirga.” It bowed. “Salutations, and welcome back. You have been greatly missed.”

I walked over to the uspec and grasped it on its shoulders. It was the first time I had touched the uspec. We had not been close before I left. But now I had only five uspecs left in my honoraria, five that had proved loyal. I intended to get close to them all. Then I heard, the call of ‘pansophy’ and became suspicious. All of these uspecs had not had pansophy when I left. Gamble grasped my shoulders in turn.

I greeted Matiu and its younger, Matina, the same way. Both of them had pansophy. Matina had grown well. It was not yet in its prime as Gamble and Juke were, it still had two outer eye sockets yet to form. It was older than Juke, but I did not fault it for its delay. Juke was a rare case. This uspec was painfully scrawny. Not a fighter, much to my chagrin. But I thought of Cantonia and decided not to be too judgmental. Matiu was as it had been before I’d left; filled with somber gravity. It bowed formally to me and exchanged the casual embrace with our hands grasping each other’s shoulders. Then it said the words of salutations and welcome and said no more. Standing closer to it I could see that it was bulkier than it had once been. I felt its strength in its arms.

When at last I returned to Fabiana, I found myself asking, “how do they all have pansophy?”

Everyone laughed.

Fabiana smiled at me. “It is a gift of this paradise sirga.”

It took me a while to understand. There are two things needed for one to gain the understanding of pansophy. The first was one already well versed in the magic. The second was a golden-cyan liquid called bio. The bio was the reason why the pious owned pansophy, they were the ones the founder had entrusted the liquid to.

“Bio is here?” I asked.

Fabiana nodded. “There is a never emptying bowl of it in a tiny canopy room Juke found in its excursions.”

I gaped at Fabiana.

I could gain pansophy.

After all this time, after wishing and hoping and being at a loss for not having it, I could finally have the magic. It took me a while to realize that the Fabiana, in its softness of heart, had probably given it to the imps too. It was unfair of me, to become instantly distrustful of all of these imps, in a way I had not been of the uspecs. But I could not help it. I stared at the imps as if with new eyes. That was of course the moment that I noticed the imp Halima standing by my offspring and wiping its body with a wet towel.

“Be still, young master,” I heard it chide softly, “I am almost done.”

I clenched my jaw. Five years had passed and I still disliked the imp as I had the last time I’d seen it. It became immediately obvious that my offspring did not. It laughed and squealed and spoke in a foreign umani tongue with the imp who laughed back. My offspring did not stammer when it spoke to the imp. I frowned.

“I gave no pansophy to the imps, sirga,” Fabiana whispered to me. “I know they are your slaves and thought you would not approve.”

I felt relieved. I could not forget what imps with pansophy had done to me in Permafrost. I did not want to be surrounded by imps with pansophy again. I glanced at Halima and knew that I did not want to be surrounded by imps at all. They had all come out now. All twenty-four of the imps. They outnumbered my honoraria. And they had taken good care of my offspring, I remined myself. They had taken care of it and taught it a tongue that Musa had never seen fit to teach me. I thought of how best to reward them and was instantly calmed. I would finally be rid of the lot of them. I would not mind Chike remaining, especially not when I knew that Musa would leave. I did not know much, but I knew that whatever duty it had owed to me was gone, somehow severed by Chuspecip’s return. Perhaps that was the difference I saw in it. I remembered the year we’d spent on the inter-port trail, when it had taught me how to fight. Things had been so much different then.

I walked over to my offspring and placed a hand on its head.

“Ma-ma-ter.” It stammered, but it grinned at me in a way that took all my misgivings away. I rubbed my palm over its scalp and felt new depths of happiness. My offspring was alive, and strong. It had not spasmed once since I’d returned. My gaze turned to the imp I so thoroughly disliked. It had knelt to wipe my offspring’s body, now it was kneeling and looking up at me.

“Welcome back master,” it said.

I took my annoyed gaze from the imp back to my offspring. “I am famished.” I said.

“Ea-ea-ting t-time!” Nebula screamed.

It was so strange to see Nebula so grown and speaking in full sentences. I nodded and then gave instructions for all but Fabiana to go. I took Fabiana aside. If there was one thing I had learned in my life it was the importance of seizing opportunities the moment they presented themselves. I found that now that I had the possibility of pansophy so close to me, I was eager to gain it. Fabiana took me to the bio.

“My offspring no longer spasms.” I stated.

Fabiana smiled at me. “It still spasms just not where you can see. Ula learned motion and appearance quickly. It is that way with the young. Spectra can make learning pansophy harder, but when an uspec is introduced to pansophy before any other form of magic, they can take to it quicker. It transfers its spasms inside, sirga. When it feels it coming, it moves it inside of itself. It is not yet an expert at it, especially not in the middle of a fight, but…”

I stopped walking. “It fights?” I could not believe it.

Fabiana nodded. “Chike teaches it. It is quite good sirga. If not for its spasms, it would be better. But it’ll take time for the uspec to learn to use pansophy while keeping its attention on the fight. Only time and experience will bring that knowledge. I would give it two or three more years of training with Chike. When it is done,” Fabiana whistled, “you will have a young warrior that will make the entire existence quiver.”

I laughed. I could not remember a time in my life when laughter came so easily. I thought of my offspring as it had been on its sickbed in the inter-port trail and I laughed. I was overjoyed. My offspring would be a great young warrior. I knew that it would be like Juke, reaching its prime when it was still young. It would form its outer eyes much younger than I’d formed mine. And when it was grown, with all of the magic that it would possess, when it was grown, it would make the entire existence do much more than quiver. My offspring would be great. I knew it. After all that it had already been through, it deserved that.

Fabiana stopped in front of a set of drooping fronds. It picked up a frond and held it aside for me to precede it.

Under the canopy tree was indeed tiny. There was nothing in the small space but a bowl that extended from the stem of the tree. The bowl was an extension of the tree, and the liquid in it appeared to be gushing from the very innards of the tree. A stone cup bobbed on the surface of the liquid. Fabiana reached for that cup and filled it with the golden-cyan liquid.

I don’t know what I expected. A prayer maybe, or an explosion of light, but there was nothing. Fabiana touched the stone cup and then it handed it over to me.

“Drink, sirga,” it said.

I took the cup from Fabiana’s hands and stared at its contents. I thought of all the times that I had been subjected to pansophy and how desperately I’d wanted a chance to even the field. Now it was here, the moment I had waited forever for. I placed the cup against my lips and I drank. I gulped the liquid down, then I handed the empty cup back to Fabiana.

“Well?” I asked, when, I felt no different.

Fabiana shrugged. “Now you have the understanding of pansophy. It is in you, ready to be wielded once you are able to start training. It will be painful the first few times you try. Not so painful for you, since you already have the magic of emotions, but painful enough that you should not rush into it until you have time to learn.”

“And if I wait years to train?”

“Once given, it can never be removed. You have the understanding sirga, it is up to you to decide when you want to train.”

I smiled. “Gratitude majestic, just having it is enough. Gratitude.”

We left the canopy tree. Fabiana informed me as we walked that they had made a special canopy room into a dining place for them. It said they all ate together, and I approved of that. I liked the idea of the uspecs in my honoraria eating and living as closely as Fabiana described. If I had to leave my offspring for five years, I was grateful that I had left it with one such as Fabiana. And I said it.

“Nebula does not stammer when it speaks the foreign umani tongue.”

Fabian shrugged. “It is a tongue it shares mostly with the imps, Halima especially. The two have grown very close sirga. Perhaps it does not stammer because it does not think too much on the words when it speaks with the imps. Its relationship with them is different…I cannot explain it sirga, it is just different.”

I frowned at that. First Calam and Calami and now my offspring. What was this infatuation that they all had with imps? Then I remembered a fact I had not dwelled too much on so far. Chuspecip was my ancestor, the first of my line, and it loved imps. Perhaps that was why the others did too. But I did not. I was not sure yet if I would cure my offspring of that affliction. The imps had proven loyal. I sighed. I would not think on it now.

“How is my offspring otherwise?”

Fabiana smiled at me. “Ula is smart sirga, smarter than any uspec its age I’ve ever seen. You should see the way it’s taken to its lessons. Pansophy and fighting, reading and writing. It excels at them all. It is serious when it needs to be and playful when there is cause. It is kind, but it also has a strength of spirit which is beyond baffling in one so young. You should be proud, sirga, very proud. You have an heir that uspecs would vie for the chance to serve. Ula even got Matiu to sing. Can you believe that? Quiet Matiu becomes another person around your offspring.”

There was awe and love in Fabiana’s voice. And I was proud, but I was also sad. My offspring was five years old. I had missed the first five years of its life. I had missed when it had learnt to form full sentences. I had missed when it had gotten pansophy and learned the magic. It had wielded a sword already and it had not been me who placed the weapon in its hand. It had grown up to an uspec others respected and I had been absent for it all. No more. I swore to myself. I would watch it blossom from this point on. I had fulfilled my role with Chuspecip, I had played my part. Now I could spend the rest of my life as Nebula’s proud mater, and watch it grow into the uspec Fabiana gushed over.

We walked into the dining canopy and I stopped dead in my tracks. When Fabiana had said they all ate together, it had meant all of them, uspecs and imps. They had been in the middle of a riotous round of conversation when I’d walked in. They stopped speaking.

“Shall I send the imps away?” Fabiana asked.

Part 1
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--------------------
The Isle of Brio
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Neither Musa nor I said a word as we made our way back to the paradise where the others awaited us. There was something different about Musa. The imp had not looked at me once since we’d returned with Chuspecip. When we’d made our journey over, it had been sulking, but it had still looked at me several times. Now, it just rode beside me with its bead bowed and its gaze fixed on the warm fur of the smoke bear it rode. I took my troubled expression from the imp to the welcoming beast beneath me. I could always count on Marc for comfort.

I found the corners of my lips inching to the sides as soon as I sighted the canopy trees that marked the entrance to our paradise. I could not wait to see my offspring. Night and day had all merged into one during our journey. I frowned, contemplating this. It was obvious now that the orange dots beamed down on us, that it was day. But for some strange reason, I could not clearly recall seeing orange or red illumination during the journey I had just embarked on. There had been blue and yellow, the odd colors of the umani world, but in this realm, before we’d left through the portal…I frowned, how many days had passed? I could not recall, but it could not have been more than a week. A few days longer than I’d told Juke we would be gone. However long it had been, I longed to peer into my offspring’s eye.

“Salve,” I said the words and let my breath carry them to the invisible fogs I knew lay between the hail trees. As soon as my words reached the seemingly empty space, cyan fog appeared. It drifted apart and granted us entrance.

Paradise was a sight for sore eyes. Marc let out a loud trumpet as soon as it stepped in. I felt the coolness of the falling hail combined with the warmness of drifting red fogs. Clouds hung low and I could see the turtles rolling around in them. Winged cobras flew within the drifting fogs and a draco or two popped out of the quicksand underneath us. A sense of peace filled me. We had returned, but the ones we’d left behind had not marked our presence. I saw no faces, imp or uspec. Then I heard the clashing of swords and knew that they were sparring. My smile widened. It was good to know that even in my absence they had kept up with the routines I’d instilled in them on the inter-port trail. Granted, it had only been a few days, but I was proud of their industry all the same.

I pulled my thighs together and urged Marc in the direction of the sounds of clanging metal.

“Master!” I heard Musa call out in shock. Its gaze on me was wide and rounded, but Marc was in full speed, the animal would not be stopped. Whatever Musa intended to say would have to wait.

The sight that greeted me when I reached the sparring contest was one that filled me with several different emotions all at the same time. There was of course the casual approval of an uspec watching a good match. Two uspecs fought. They were both young, barely in their prime. I would guess they were about nineteen or twenty. One of them was lean with a musculature that reminded me of Marcinus. The other was bulky, a brawler. But the way they moved, I gaped, I had never seen uspecs move like this. They combined flying with fight, and the grace in their movements made them look as if they were dancing and not really fighting. But they had the agility of uspecs. It was a beautiful thing to watch. The smaller one flew in the air and then descended on the brawler who turned quickly in time to parry an attack. The brawler fought with two short swords while the lean one fought with one long sword. I was so amazed by their skill that it took me much longer than it should have to realize one very important fact.

They were strangers.

I had never seen either of these uspecs before. They were not part of my honoraria, so who were they, and how had they come to be in my paradise? With my offspring. Alarm bells sounded in my head. No. This was what I had feared most about leaving. I wondered who in my honoraria had betrayed me, and let this uspecs in. I could tell from the golden bands on their arms that they were nobles. One had a single band the other three, a majestic. I had been betrayed. Someone had let these uspecs in.

“Master!” A voice screamed. “The master has returned!”

The chaos that followed that statement had my head swiveling. First, I noticed that it was the imp Chike who’d yelled out to me and announced my presence. It stood on the opposite side of the sparrers, watching them calmly. Did it not have the sense to attack, to drive these foreigners out? Or had Chike betrayed me too?

The uspecs stopped their fighting. They both had sweat dripping from their bodies.

“Sirga!” The strange brawler called out to me. Its swords dropped to its side and it smiled a wide smile. The uspec had formed and filled all of its outer eyes. The lean uspec was the same. It was rather impressive to meet a noble uspec so young who had already had enough stimulus in its life to form all of its outer eye sockets. Its neck was filled with cyan scales and I had seen before that its ailerons were fully filled. I was baffled to see young uspecs so well endowed. Who were they? And why did the brawler have tears in its eyes as it gazed at me? There was something about its smile. It was strangely familiar, which made absolutely no sense to me as I had never seen the uspec before. Yet it gazed at me almost as an offspring would its progenitor. I was dazed.

I cleared my throat and turned to the one person I did know. “What is going on here?” I demanded of Chike.

The imp frowned at me. It appeared puzzled. “I do not understand master?”

What did it not understand? Why were there strange uspecs in my paradise? I was just about to voice this last thought when I heard another uspec voice call out, “sirga!” I was relieved when I heard this voice. It was Fabiana’s. Praise the founder, Fabiana was present. I felt my fears subside. Perhaps these uspecs were new recruits to the honoraria. If Fabiana trusted them, I would too.

I jumped off Marc’s back and laughed when it wrapped its trunk around me. I had to force that heavy trunk away from my body as I turned to face Fabiana.

I gaped. “Fabiana?” I asked. It was not really a question. I knew it was Fabiana, but it was… “you are old.”

“As are you sirga,” Fabiana replied.

I gaped at it. I immediately turned to face Musa and then remembered that imps do not age. The smoke bears did not appear any older, but smoke bears did not change much after they’d reached their prime. I turned back to face Fabiana. There were two uspecs standing behind it. I recognized Matiu. It was the other old uspec I’d left behind, the quiet one. Another uspec stood beside Matiu, but it was unfamiliar.

“My god!” I exclaimed. “Fabiana, you look at least four years older.”

“Five years,” it clarified.

“Five years.” I repeated the words in a daze. Five years. I turned back to face Musa. There was something about the imp’s gaze when it met mine. Something so different. I could not name it exactly, but it was there.

“I tried to tell you,” it said simply.

It had not looked at me the whole way back. But when it had looked at me it had called out to me. I recalled the look of shock on its face. I frowned. “But I was only gone for a few days.” I said to Fabiana.

“More like a few years, sirga.” Fabiana replied.

Five years. But how was it possible? How could five years go by without my knowing it? And exactly when had the years passed? On the journey there? In the portal? In the standard existence? On the journey back? Surely that had not all been five years. It could not have been. But the evidence was there, staring me in the face. Fabiana and Matiu had aged.

“Ma-mater!” I heard the call before I saw the uspec.

“Master Nebula,” I heard giggling sounds coming in the uspec’s wake. “Master Nebula you still have bath salts on you!”

I only had a few seconds to wait before my offspring came bursting out of a canopy tree. Only, the uspec that came vaulting towards me was not the little Nebula that I had left behind.

It leapt into my arms and I felt the bath salts burning against my skin. It must have been years if my skin had become so sensitive to the salts. But years. How could I doubt it when my offspring was living proof? The young uspec wrapped its arms around my neck and pressed its sweet-smelling cheek against my ear. It was big, much bigger than I’d left it.

It was five years old now. Five years.

I could not believe it. I wrapped my hands around its body and was jarred when I heard the cry of ‘pansophy’ fill my head. If it was not my offspring I was holding, I would have dropped it. When had it gotten pansophy?

“Ju-juke, I to-to-told you that my-my mater wo-would re-tu-turn. I to-told you.”

I heard Nebula’s stammered words and turned around to find the brawler grinning at my offspring.

“Yes, you did, Ula. And I never doubted you.” The brawler replied.

I was stunned. “Juke?” I could not believe it. The scrawny uspec I had left behind had turned into this brawler. I studied its muscles with pride. Then I recalled the way it had fought and I was doubly awed. Binna had predicted this. On the inter-port trail it had predicted that Juke would turn into a great warrior. My gaze turned to Chike and I nodded at it, I could see its work in the uspecs who’d been fighting. It bowed to me with a smile on its face.

I hugged Nebula close to me and then released it. It stood tall by my side. How had it grown so tall? The top of its scalp now reached my waist. Thankfully, it had not yet grown old enough to form outer eye-sockets or any of its features. It was irirakun so it would have a lot of features to form.

I walked towards Juke. The uspec stood tall. It was not my height, but its head reached my shoulder, which was tall enough. I grinned at it. Then I found myself laughing. I could not even say why I was laughing. I knew it had to be Juke when the brawler threw its arms around me, clasping me in a hug that no uspec, other than my offspring, had ever dared to do before. It was not an uspec’s greeting embrace, but a hug, a filial hug. I hugged the uspec back and was again jarred when I heard the call of ‘pansophy’ when my ring touched its flesh.

Part 15
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In the First Metropolis of Lahooni
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In most respects, the task of saving Chuspecip was not at all what I had expected. It was at the same time surprisingly quick and painstakingly long. It was cheerfully easy while being exasperatingly tedious. I have come to think that perhaps all work involving the Chus happen that way. Long ago, I made an oath to the founder that I would never disclose the secrets I learnt on that journey. There was so much that was invalid and incomplete about our knowledge of the Chu. All the things I had thought I’d known for sure turned out to not quite be what I had expected. But I will not set the record straight because I swore never to do so. I will not say how it was that Chuspecip was trapped because doing so could see our founder imprisoned again. I will not say what it was that caused the weakness I felt when I carried it with me on the inter-port trail, and I will most certainly not disclose how close it was to death’s door and what it would take for a Chu to be killed.

In all honesty, my thoughts of that journey have been so thoroughly scrambled that I doubt I could decipher and explain as much as would make sense. To me, thinking on it, it all makes perfect sense. I see that trip with Musa as if I was back in the day, living it. But whenever I try to articulate it, whenever I wish to word it, only in the comfort of my mind, I find the pieces scrambling. Perhaps that is the way of the Chus. Perhaps their secrets are not meant to be held by the things they created. Often times I wish it was possible to speak to Musa about that journey…or really to speak to the imp about anything.

When I think about Musa these days, I find myself remembering that journey more than anything else. I did not know this at the time, but that was the last journey that Musa and I would ever make together. There was so much I wanted to say to the imp, and so much distance to say it, but then it felt as though there was not enough time. Or maybe it was the opposite, maybe I thought there was too much time and that was what made postponing our conversation so much easier. I should have talked to the imp. I’d wanted to speak to it about the reason that it had transitioned to the harsher tongue when the imps from the wrath tried to attack me on the inter-port trail. I trusted Musa too much. In some ways, perhaps that was one of my biggest failings at the time.

If there was one thing that the betrayal of my honoraria taught me, it was the repercussions of trust. I’m much older now, too old not to trust. I trust often and I trust many. I am now in a position where I can do so, and I have been blessed with many people, uspecs and imps alike, who’ve taught me the benefits of trust. I am still betrayed, but those betrayals do not hurt as much as my honoraria’s. And if they do not hurt as much as my honoraria’s then they certainly do not hurt as much as Musa’s. But Musa had chosen to stay with me. Or so I had told myself on the inter-port trail, and even later when we journeyed to save Chuspecip. Musa had been ‘renounced’ by its people. It had chosen to stay with me. Now that I am older and have learnt a great deal more about people and their intrigues, I know how easy it would have been for Musa to ask those imps to ‘renounce’ it in the tongue I could hear, while they said other things in the tongue I couldn’t.

I should have spoken to Musa during that journey. It sulked. I did not understand much of imps and their loves, and so I could not understand its infatuation with its lover. I know now that imps seek to love as they had in their umani lives. Uspecs are different. I have loved many. If I had been asked on the day I left my paradise in the Isle of Brio I would have said that the only uspec I loved was my offspring, Nebula. But I would have been wrong. Very wrong. Now I know that I had loved Fabiana as well. I loved Fabiana deeply in a way that surprises me now to think back on it. I loved Arexon too, but in a different way. And Juke. That crazy young uspec, I loved it sublimely, because it loved me so much more. It was not the only young Lahooni noble to idolize me, but it was the first, and its love was pure. Then there was Marcinus. Even after all that Marcinus did to me, after all the pain it caused, I loved it still, a twisted, broken, love. There were imps too. I have heard many now say that I hate imps, but I do not understand how they could say such. I am descended of Calam, I was born with a gene for loving imps. I just did not give them my trust or respect as blindly and freely as others did. And I certainly was not quick to forgive when they showed me disrespect. I know now why I am so affronted by the insults of imps. I know now how much I had truly despised being locked in a slum for seventeen years, unable to leave, while I watched imps come and go without much thought for the de trop uspecs they left behind. But I know, without a shred of doubt, that I do not hate imps. I know I do not, because I loved Musa. Perhaps more than any unrelated uspec I’ve ever loved. Maybe less. I do not know. Even now, I cannot properly articulate how I felt for that imp, but I had loved it deeply and dearly and I wished that I had spoken to it during that journey to save Chuspecip. Perhaps if we had spoken, so many hurts could have been avoided.

There were two surprising things that occurred during that journey. Two things that always spring to mind when I recall that moment. The first was not so impactful. But the second was life-altering. I will start with the first then.

Chuspecip had been trapped in the standard existence. At the time, there had only been the one portal left to the standard existence and it had been so well hidden that Chuspecip itself had had to lead me to it. And in guiding me, it had revealed several secrets of the Chus that I know it shouldn’t have. Musa and I had journeyed through that portal to the standard existence. That was my first visit, but it certainly wasn’t my last.

Umanis. In that time, they were ordinary and weak. Now, they are not so much so. Not since the creation of the marked. The marked. Many had cursed their creation. But the imp of a marked umani has eyes that do not expire. Other imp eyes taken by usepcs have to be replaced. But not the eyes of an imp formerly marked. In that regard, we uspecs celebrate the marked. But recent encounters have given me cause to despise the marked.

I get ahead of myself.

We found Chuspecip living in a hut in the standard existence. It was in the body of a little umani girl. I’d had several conflicting feelings about Chuspecip before the first time I laid eyes on it. But the moment I saw it, I dropped to my knees, placed my head against the ground, and hailed it as ‘my god’. That was the first surprising thing that happened. It jarred me. I had not expected to supplicate to Chuspecip in that way. I had not expected to bow. But I had knelt, and bowed, and prostrated in a way I have never done to any other. Chuspecip was weak. A weak Chu in the body of an umani. But even in its weakness, I felt its strength. The strength seeped out like an aura from it. And in the presence of that strength I had no other choice but to kneel. I had not thought I was one for gods. I love Chuspecip though, despite myself, I love my founder, my god. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, I think it loves me a little too.

It had taken both of us, Musa and myself, to transport Chuspecip back to its existence. I will not say how, only that it had been done.

The second shock did not come until after we returned to the spectral existence and one of Chuspecip’s uspec forms was revealed.

There are certain things that you see clearly in hindsight. One of which was Musa. So many things were wrong with Musa. It was a smart, well-educated imp, who’d chosen to serve and teach me, an irira just emerged from the pits of Hakute. That was wrong. It was the wrath’s firstborn, an imp leader to a group that sought to invade mine, yet it had clung stubbornly to me, even when it had appeared to lose the respect of its own kind. Time after time it chose me. And its choice was wrong. It was wrong because it made no sense. Musa’s love for its imp Halima far outweighed any love that it bore to the uspecs of my line. Musa was a liar, and it was wrong. Its actions and inclinations, its loyalty, the fact that it followed me into danger repeatedly, it was all wrong.

By far the most wrong thing about the imp was that it was able to travel through a portal back into the standard existence. Imps cannot do that. Once they are dead, they cannot return. They must live in the existence their souls departed to. For imps, that meant that they were bound to spend eternity in the spectral existence. But Musa was different. Musa could leave.

If there is anything the ancestry has taught us, it is what happens to umanis when they carry a Chu’s lifeform. Again, I get ahead of myself.

Musa was wrong. And as soon as Chuspecip returned to the spectral existence and revealed its uspec form, Musa’s wrongness suddenly made sense.

“Master Chacip!” Musa had yelled upon sighting Chuspecip’s form.

Chuspecip was too weak to acknowledge Musa’s greeting. As soon as it returned it left us. It went into its uspec form and it left us. It disappeared and took itself from me in the process. Chuspecip is a god. The Kuworytes will only call it founder and that is their won’t. But it is a god, and god’s are mercurial. It is kind as far as god’s go, and merciful in ways that I could not be in its shoes. But it is still a god, and I know now that I wounded it. I wounded it by attacking it, by fighting against its presence in my being, by refusing to come when I was afraid to leave my offspring in paradise with uspecs I wasn’t sure I could trust. I wounded it in even more profound ways after our return. But again, I get ahead of myself. I had wounded the founder.

And I found out then, that it was my ancestor.

‘Master Chacip’

Chacip was the first uspec of my line. The first Kaiser of Lahooni. As soon as Musa called out the name, I remembered my first vision when I’d put the imp eyes in. I realized in that moment that it had been a vision of Chacip. Chuspecip and Chacip were one and the same. Chuspecip had watched Musa’s umani death and had been stirred to pity. It had born Musa into the spectral existence in its own arms, giving Musa one of its lifeforms in the process. That was why Musa had been so drawn to me, and I to it. That was why the imp had fought so desperately to save my life and train me. Not for me, but for this, to bring Chuspecip back. Once Chuspecip returned I quickly learnt the truths of my bond with Musa.

Chuspecip was first of my line.

As the founder it had created uspecs and so all uspecs were made by its hand. It had drawn them into existence. Or wished them into existence. Or routed them into existence. I do not know. It had done whatever it is that Chus do to create more of their own. But for me and the uspecs of my line it was different. We were not merely gifted with Chuspecip’s lifeforms, we were its brios, created from it. Maybe I should have put it all together, but I could not have. The moment I learnt that Chuspecip was Chacip, the first Kaiser of my line, I recalled Juke’s tale from the night that my offspring’s ailment on the inter-port trail had taken a turn.

A disseminator told me the tale of Chacip’s procreation, how its intense desire to create one out of its own form, led it to forsake the usual bout and instead make itself the offer in the hatch.

Chuspecip made itself the offer. It created my line from its very self. We were direct descendants of the founder.

It brings me shame now to think back on the ways that I had fought so adamantly against Chuspecip’s voice in my head. I had carried the founder in me, and instead of seeing it as the blessing it was, I chose to look on it as a burden. I was young then, and foolish. But I am ashamed. It had been trapped because of its love for my line. My sire had been used as a bait to lure Chuspecip in…

I know now that Chuspecip takes many forms and I know for certain that it visited every single uspec in my line. It lived with them, trained them in some ways, loved them always. My line is special. We are the only ones who can visit Chuspecip’s home at will. It gave us so much, and asked so little of me in turn. What it asked was really my duty as Kaiser of Lahooni and as an uspec. And I had chafed at it the whole way.

Thankfully, Chuspecip is not the kind to not forgive. I had wounded it, but in the end, I am an uspec of its line. It is not a distinction I brag about, but it is one that is known, by some.

When Chuspecip left us, Musa and I returned to our paradise and the people we’d left behind. Both of us were changed. I no longer had Chuspecip’s voice in me. I am a brio, I will always be, but Chuspecip decides how much or how little of itself to share. I wish more than anything that I could go back and react differently to having the honor of its presence in me. I wish that I could have known that I was being guided by my god. Wishes are pointless. Yet, I find myself swimming in them.

We returned to the paradise, both the same, but both much changed in ways that were not immediately apparent.

cassbeat:
Ghostly reading.... Meanwhile I think u made a lil mistake its Marc instead of "Mara and another smoke bear"...
Now we await Chuspecip's return....

Thank you for the correction! I'll look into it

NoChill:
Please where can I find The marked: white sight

I'm working on finishing up the editing now so it should be out in a few months. Thanks for the interest!

EVERYONE

The next part is pretty short so for this week I'm posting a little extra extra before Saturday

There was a tiny voice in my head still telling me not to trust it. The voice told me I was a fool to leave Nebula with Juke and other nobles I could not fully trust. It was harder to trust, to shut that voice down, but I did. I placed Nebula on the foam ground under Juke’s tree and told the uspec to play. It ran over to Juke and the look of happiness on both of their faces was so young and innocent I wondered how I could ever have doubted Juke.

I nodded, turned and left. Fabiana’s tree was my next stop. Fabiana’s tree was like mine, with the okuns. It was kneeling over a coffer when I walked in.

“Sirga!” It jumped.

“Were you praying?” I asked. Once I would have scoffed, but I understood now when it nodded. “I did not mean to interrupt.”

“Chuspecip lives in you sirga, and so I see talking to you as almost equivalent to praying to it.”

I laughed. Then I sat on the foam ground beside it and stretched out my legs. “I will leave soon.” I stated.

Fabiana nodded.

“I do not know if I can trust the nobles that remain. Not Juke, I clarified. The others.”

“They’ve all subjected themselves to an inquest. Juke begged me to use pansophy to siphon through its thoughts and memories. It wanted to prove its innocence to me. When the other uspecs heard of the treachery, they did the same. Neither Musa nor I found any treachery in their thoughts. They had no knowledge of the plot and no desire to join it after they’d learnt of it.”

I was relieved. I had made the choice to trust Juke before hearing Fabiana’s words, but this last betrayal stung so much that I did not even trust myself to make the right decisions when it came to trusting others. I was happy that their innocence had been proven without a shred of doubt. The other uspecs did not have pansophy, they could not have hidden their thoughts or memories from Fabiana if they’d wanted to. In fact, none of the fourteen that had kidnapped me had pansophy so those ones could not have taken the memories away from the others. But others could have. Jukien could have placed a trigger in Juke’s brain to only reveal a specific memory at a particular time, as Gerangi had done to me.

“Am I making a mistake Fabiana, leaving my offspring here alone with these uspecs?”

Fabiana looked affronted. “I am here Nebud. Or do I no longer have your trust?”

I frowned at it. That was not what I meant. “Of course, you do.”

“Then have no fear. I will watch over your offspring as if it were my own. No harm will come to it. And though you do not like the imps, most of them like you, all of them worship the memory of your line. They will watch over Nebula too. Leave with a clear mind, my friend.”

Why did people keep saying that I did not like the imps? I did not like Halima, but that imp had insulted my offspring and then tried to convince Musa to join Permafrost. Was I supposed to like it? “I do not trust Halima.” I said.

Fabiana chuckled. “I know. It told me.”

I glared at the uspec. Its affection for imps was disgusting and I told it that. It just laughed and I found myself laughing to. Who was I to judge? I had risked my life for Musa and would no doubt do it again. And even now, that wretched imp Chike, was crawling into my affections. Caring for imps was an affliction we both shared. But if they took care of my offspring, then I would reward them. I would give them all their freedoms. That way I wouldn’t need to have them staring after me all the time hoping to see Calami or Calam in me. It was exhausting having ancestors with such a reputation. I smiled to myself. I was proud of them. In some respects, I wished to take after them.

“What is Matiu’s story? Why is it here?” Matiu and Fabiana were the only uspecs in my honoraria who remained and had the skill to fight. Matiu was not as bulky as Darlin, but it could hold its own in a sparring match. It had fought and survived the battle with the plenum so that raised it in my estimation. But it was quiet. It had never dined with us in the entertaining room in my dwelling and it had never sought to spar with me.

“It comes from good stock. Sensu’s line. I believe Sensu is familiar to you, a companion of Calami’s?”

I nodded. Sensu was the uspec who Calam had entrusted with my safety. Sensu, its imp, and Chike. Now Sensu was probably dead, or still buried deep in Chiboga. “That reminds me.” I said. “Please, send a missive to Arexon. Sensu is hiding underground in what used to be the serf’s camp in Chiboga. Please have Arexon bring it out and care for it. It has grown old and infirmed.” Fabiana nodded. “Is Matiu Sensu’s offspring?” That didn’t make sense though. Matina was Matiu’s younger, and it was too young to be Sensu’s.

“No, they are offspring of Sensu’s cognate. Their presence here, I believe, is a duty to their line. They are trying to reinforce the bond that their line once held with yours.”

I nodded. “You trust them?” I asked.

Fabiana nodded. “I scanned their minds and found no treachery. Plus, they are from good old loyal stock. Loyal to your line as well as to the founder. Staunch Uspecipytes, though they were forced to declare otherwise during Salin’s inquisition. I see no reason not to.”

“Then I will leave and leave everything, and everyone, in your care.”

Fabiana bowed.

I stood up. After that, making the preparations to leave was easy. I was as confident of the uspecs I left behind as I was ever going to be. I’d expected to have to fight to tear Musa from its imp Halima, but it had already been expecting to accompany me. They had a relationship, Musa and Chuspecip. I did not know what it was, but I knew that it existed.

We packed enough grains, dried meats, and caked for a month, much more food than we needed. We also had leather bags of okun. My travails in Nefastu had taught me to travel with liquid.

It was done quickly and Musa and I were standing in front of the exit to our paradise not too late into the night, with Mara and another smoke bear beside us. The road to the portal could not be flown. Chuspecip did not share that until we were about to leave. It would take a whole day to ride there.

We bid farewell. I asked for Nebula to be kept away. I’d said my farewell to my offspring in private, without it knowing that it was farewell, for a little while at least. I did not want it asking to follow me. Chike was with Nebula. Everyone else stood in front of us. They bid us farewell.

“We await the founder’s return.” Fabiana stated solemnly.

“The founder’s grace be with you, sirga.” I think it was the first time I had ever heard Matiu speak.

I nodded to the uspec.

I was about to leave when I felt little hands wrap around my belly. I smiled. “Please be safe,” Juke begged.

I patted the uspec’s head. There was nothing to fear, I would be back.

Juke released me and Musa and I left.

“You should not let a few poison your feelings on the rest, sirga. There are still uspecs that you can trust. Like my line. I will swear for every uspec of my line. And Juke. Jukien maybe guilty, but Juke is not. Please do not push that young uspec away.”

I swallowed. There was not much I could say to that. I was exhausted and so I placated it again. “I will think on it.”

Fabiana nodded. Then it left. The imps did not follow. I could see that they both intended to keep guard over me while I slept. I was too tired to overthink it. I lay next to my offspring and drifted into sleep.

Come Nebud. You are mine.

I could not tell if it was Chuspecip’s voice or Nebula’s fingers that woke me.

“Ma-mat-ter.” It said.

I smiled at it. “Salutations precious one.” I greeted it.

Its head spasmed for a bit as it tried to respond. “Sa-sa-sa. Sa-sa-sa.” Then it grew silent and its limbs thrashed against my body. I did not mind it at all.

“Salutations is too big of a word, master.” Chike teased. It was polishing my blades. Musa set a platter of food on the hard-fog top of my coffer.

I cleared my throat. “You don’t need to watch over me.”

Chike laughed but Musa didn’t so much as smile. Its gaze just moved to me and then moved away. It bowed and left. Chike did the same. I sighed. So much grieved me. I thought of the betrayal which still stung and I was grieved. I thought of Binna’s corpse and I was pained. I thought of the bodies, those three hundred bodies. All dead. I knew enough now to know that they had mostly been my enemies, even the nobles in my honoraria who’d fallen. But the bodies burdened me. Not as much as before but still. So many dead uspecs. Then I thought of Musa and my chest tightened. I was not yet courageous enough to face the truth that Musa had already left me. It was still with me, but it had already left me.

I shook the thoughts off and rose to my feet, carrying my child with me. It was easy to be content when I had Nebula like this. Healthy, happy, and making gurgling sounds. We ate together. I drank some of the nama’s milk it liked and made a face. It liked that. It laughed and clapped and spasmed. It always spasmed.

It was in a playful mood. It crawled all over the coffer and then the ground around me. Then it managed to collapse, face first, into the shallow okun around the edge of the tree. I had to go and retrieve it before it drowned on the liquid. It pulled out of my arms and ran around the empty space. I watched it with a smile on my face. While it ran its spasming wasn’t so obvious. Until the one time that the spasm was in its leg and it fell down. It just got back up. It picked up one if its toys and threw it at me. Right at me. Its arm amazed me. I caught the toy and threw it back, laughing.

We played and ate and just enjoyed each other’s company. My offspring and I. There was so much that I looked forward to with Nebula. I could not wait to teach it to spar. I did not know what that would look like with its spasms, but I was going to try. I was going to fight hard to give my offspring all the tools it would need to strive in the world long after I was gone.

“Ju-ju-ke!”

My gaze snapped to the left. Juke had lifted a frond and was standing outside the tree. Its nervous gaze snapped to my face. “Sirga?” It asked.

I shook my head. “Go away Juke.”

It frowned. “What have I done to displease you?”

“Go away!” I snapped.

“Tell me. I must know. Whatever it is, I must know.”

I glared at it. “Why don’t you go and ask your progenitor?” I heard myself yelling at it. “Why are you here Juke? You know the plan has failed. You have to know that I killed Darlin, so what are you still doing here?”

Juke stared at me as if bemused. “I do not understand, sirga.”

“Get out!” I roared at it.

It retreated.

“Ju-ju-ke?” Nebula called out as Juke went away.

“Come here, precious one.” I softened my voice and Nebula ran into my arms.

Come Nebud. Come! What are you waiting for?

Chuspecip’s prodding ate at me. But I couldn’t leave. Not yet. I held Nebula in my arms for a long time. My little offspring was the light in my world. It was innocence, strength and joy all mixed into one small package. I looked at it and I wanted to be able to achieve the impossible for it. I held it and I wanted to shield it, to never release it. But I knew that I had to. If my life had taught me anything it was that an uspec had to be strong enough to fight for itself. There were hard lessons in little Nebula’s future, but I couldn’t let the lessons begin right at this moment, with it so young and so vulnerable.

I was ashamed to admit that I would pick my offspring over Chuspecip. Over the founder. Over a god I had somehow come to believe in. Chuspecip must have felt this in me because it stopped prodding. It became silent and it pulled away from me. Just a little. Not everything, but enough.

I sighed and held my offspring close to my chest.

It liked being here. Sitting on my lap and leaning in on me. It spasmed every so often but it did not try to pull away. It just kept its ailerons pressed against my body and stared at its toys. It stammered ‘mater’ a few times and I beamed at it.

Then I heard rustling and Nebula jumped on my lap. I thought it was convulsing. Then I saw it was only excited. “Ju-ju-ke!” It threw its wooden bear toy at Juke and the young uspec caught it.

Its head was bent low as it shuffled into the tree. Then it stopped in front of me and dropped to its knees.

“The imperial Fabiana told me what happened.” It said in a low voice. “I understand why you don’t trust me. I will leave. Your mission is too grave to let my presence here hinder it. I will leave. I just wanted to express my gratitude for…” It took a deep breath and its voice shook, “for taking a chance on me. For training me. You will always have a loyal subject in me, sirga. Always.” It stood up and my gaze followed it. “Farewell Ula.” It placed a hand on Nebula’s knee and squeezed. Then it turned around and walked away.

I watched it go. I let it go. A piece of my heart broke.

“Ju-ju-ke! Ju-ju-ke!” My offspring called after it.

I clenched my jaw. Where was it going to go? Juke couldn’t return to Lahooni on its own. The young thing could barely swing a sword. The plenum would arrest it. In the best-case scenario, they held it and tortured it for information about my whereabouts or about Lahooni secrets. If they weren’t feeling that charitable, they would just kill it.

I took a deep breath and then went after the uspec. I walked through sludge and quicksand underneath falling hail and drifting fogs, all the while ignoring the glances that were cast my way. It was evening again. I had slept and played with my offspring throughout the day. Now the orange streams of the daylight dots were gone. I found Juke in its room putting its things together.

“Stop.” I ordered.

It turned to face me. “You spoke with the imperial Fabiana.” It stated.

I frowned at that. “Why would I have spoken with Fabiana? I am stopping you because you will die before you reach Lahooni. You cannot travel into a warzone on your own.”

It looked like the uspec was about to smile, then it saw the seriousness on my face and the smile went away.

“You did not know about your progenitor?” I asked.

It shook its head. “I did not. I am its youngest offspring; it does not take me often into its confidence. But I am its favorite. So, I do understand why you cannot trust me.”

I had not known this, that Juke was Jukien’s favorite. It was obvious the uspec expected me to know. “Do you support your progenitor’s plot?”

Juke’s gaze snapped to my eyes. “I do not! Of course, I do not. You are the rightful heir to Lahooni.”

“Ju-ju-ke!” My offspring had been turned around. Now it had shifted to face Juke and it was excited. I hushed it.

Then I took my focus back to Juke. “Your progenitor seeks to usurp my port. You understand that I cannot let it live. It is either I die and it succeeds or it dies and I rule.”

Juke’s bottom lip quivered. It looked away. “You could succeed and spare its life.” It said in a small voice. “It loves me…I love it, it is my pater. It is misguided and arrogant, but it will serve you when you are Kaiser. I will make sure of it. Please.”

“I do not want to lie to you Juke, or make any promises I have no intention of keeping.”

The young uspec persevered. “Will you think on it? Don’t make up your mind yet. What if I can get my progenitor to surrender to you? I can do that. I will write it a letter and tell it of all your deeds and your kindness to me. It will apologize. It will beg for your forgiveness. I swear it.”

Juke was naïve. It did not understand what a person who craved power would do to gain and keep it. Its progenitor may love it, but I had a feeling it loved power almost as much. It would not surrender to me. After I returned with Chuspecip, after we defeated the plenum, it would contrive to kill me. I had to kill it before it could succeed. I had my offspring to think about. The look of hope and pleading on Juke’s face was so intense that I did what I hadn’t wanted to. I lied to it. “I will think on it.” I said. “If your progenitor surrenders, I will relent.”

Juke smiled as if I had solved all of its problems. I did not know what it meant to be so young and so sure of ones relationship with ones progenitor. I thought of Nebula, grown up and asking me for favors. I did not think that there was much I would be able to deny my offspring. Perhaps Juke was right. Maybe the progenitor’s bond would be enough to force Jukien’s submission.

“Gratitude sirga. You are the kindest, most noble, most laudable of Kaisers. And I will make sure the entire existence knows it. Gratitude.” It bowed deeply, a waist bow. It had spoken with so much exuberance that it had called me a Kaiser, a term that every one of my nobles, with the exemption of Fabiana, had been clear not to use.

“Will you let Nebula sleep with you while I’m gone?” I asked. “It will only be a few days, a week at most.” Now that Chuspecip could sense my coming it gave me more details. It would not be the search I had thought. The portal, the last remaining portal, was one linked to the founder. It would take me exactly where the founder was. I would not be surprised if I was back by the start of the next day. Even if it was just one night, I wanted Nebula to be with an uspec it loved and one who loved it. And Juke already knew of my offspring’s convulsions. It would watch for them.

“Of course, sirga. It would be my honor!”

Part 14
----------

“Master!” Musa exclaimed. It was standing in front of the entrance to my paradise. I could tell that it had been worried about me from the relief that filled its face once it saw me there.

“Sirga!” Fabiana rushed to me. What was left of my honoraria walked in the uspec’s wake. It was a ragtag group. Three of the uspecs left where young ones without much skill in fighting. The only older one that remained was a quiet one-band noble named Matiu. One of the young uspecs was its younger Matina. And the last young uspec was a one-band noble Gamble who was descended of a banneret who’d claimed to be sworn to my line. That banneret was too old and feeble to accompany me and so it had sent its offspring, Gamble, in its place. Now I looked at all five of these uspecs and knew that there was only one I could implicitly trust.

“Sirga,” Juke ran forward. It gasped. It’s eyes opened wide and ran over me, taking in my injured state. Then, it reached up to take my offspring from me, but I did not let it. I could not look at Juke’s face without remembering Jukien’s plot and the uspecs who’d taken me out of my paradise that night.

The faint streams of orange light told me that night had long passed. We were in the early hours of the morning.

“What is wrong, sirga? What happened?” Juke questioned me. It frowned.

There were several imps milling about. They had been worried about me. These people. They had woken to find me gone and they’d been worried about me. My gaze locked on Halima, Musa’s imp, and I frowned. The imp withdrew behind a canopy tree. Other imps were there. Now the imps outnumbered the uspecs four to one. They could not die, so none of them had been lost in the battle that killed so many of my honoraria. But even that thought made my insides churn. Perhaps I should see that battle as a blessing now. It had left me with only fourteen traitors to contend with, as opposed to the original eighty Darlin claimed had followed me. The worst of it was that my faith in my honoraria was completely broken. That broken faith seemed to extend to Lahooni as a whole. I thought of how it had felt to be there, to step into the port and know that it was mine, written into me as surely as my identity. And then to have so many question it and then plot to steal it from me.

“Sirga?” Juke prodded.

I glared at the young uspec, held my offspring tighter to my body and then made the walk back to my canopy tree. They all followed silently in my wake while I contemplated the very essence of trust.

Come to me.

I heard Chuspecip’s weak prodding in my head. It was time for me to leave, time to go in search of it. But how could I leave knowing that my offspring was surrounded by people I could not fully trust? Last night I had been more than happy to leave Nebula here with Darlin, not knowing the full extent of Darlin’s treachery. I could not do the same again. I could not abandon my offspring now without first ensuring its safety.

You are mine.

Chuspecip needed me. I pushed the fronds of the canopy tree aside and walked in. Then I placed my sleeping offspring on the foam ground. I was badly bruised, but I felt exhausted and I knew I needed a jolt to my system to give me the strength I needed. So I took a dunk in the okun pond that surrounded the stem of the canopy tree. It was a quick one. And I found that I needed Fabiana’s support to help pull me out.

Juke stood on the foam ground. Musa had entered too. And Chike. The rest stood outside, watching me through slightly lifted fronds.

“Leave me!” I bellowed.

The ones peeping from the outside startled and left.

“Your wounds need to be seen to.” Fabiana stated.

“You stay. Leave Juke.”

The young uspec looked startled. It took a step forward. “Why, sirga? I can look after Ula while the imperial Fabiana sees to your wounds. Shall I take it to my room for a bit?”

I shook my head. “I said leave.” I snapped.

The uspec appeared hurt. “But…”

“Just go Juke,” Fabiana stated softly.

Juke’s mouth hung open. I saw the pain in its eyes and read it in its emotions, but I did not reach out to it. How could I, after the events of the last night? For all I knew, it wanted to get my offspring alone now that it could see that Darlin’s part of the plot had failed. Perhaps there was another aspect to the plot against me that Juke was integral in. I wanted to trust it. I wanted to trust it more than I could remember ever wanting to trust another person. My little Juke. It had somehow managed to mean more to me than almost everyone else in my honoraria. If I was honest with myself, I would rank it as number two in my affections, second only to Fabiana. But I could not allow myself to trust so easily again. Not when my innocent offspring’s life hung in the balance.

I watched Juke go and waited a long time after before I lay down on the foam ground and allowed Musa and Fabiana to use their pansophy to put growth into the parts of my skin that were cut. I had no infections and so an excess of growth was all that would be necessary to heal me. While they worked, I told them of what had happened. I told them everything. From Darlin’s kidnapping, to the torture, and then the revelation that it was my own nobles, headed by the ‘mighty’ Jukien, who had orchestrated the entire thing. I ended by telling them about Cantonia, the discourse we’d had and the mission I’d given it.

“It had been so long since I’d seen the uspec that I did not remember it. When master Calami died, Toni was still just an infant, barely five.” Chike spoke after I was done.

I turned to face the imp. “Then you know Cantonia.”

“Master Calami called it Toni. I was there the day it was born and I accompanied master Calami to visit its dwelling a number of times.”

I scoffed. “Then there was indeed a Cantonia, but I am not convinced that this uspec who claims to be Cantonia is the same one that my progenitor saved. And even if it is, I am not convinced that it now wants to serve me, after its hostility towards me on the inter-port trail.”

“It seemed to have an excuse for that, sirga.” Fabiana sounded drawn. I’d forgotten that this was just the day after Binna’s death. Fabiana still grieved and I was filling its mind with suspicions and plots. I did not tell it that I suspected its progenitor was one of the nobles plotting against me.

Cantonia had many excuses and many tales and many suspicious timings. But it had saved Nebula. It’d had a chance to attack me with its pansophy when I had no non-pansophic blade to fight it with. If it wanted me dead, I was honest enough to admit that I would be. The fact that I was still alive gave some credence to Cantonia’s tales. It’d had me at its mercy, and it had made no aggression towards me. But until it proved itself further, I would not trust it completely.

“Forgive me majestic,” I said to Fabiana, “I did not mean to drag you out of your bed.”

Fabiana laughed drily. “I would have been inconsolable if I had lost two siblings in the span of a single day.”

Two siblings? At first, Fabiana’s words made no sense to me. It took me a while to realize that the uspec was referring to me as its sibling. I felt humbled and unworthy. Fabiana’s trust and allegiance to me from the very start…it always humbled me to think on it. It was so dedicated to me that it had lost its own sibling in my quest and even while it mourned, it put its grief aside to come to my aid.

“I am so sorry Fabiana. Binna…” I couldn’t quite find the words to say. ‘Sorry’ it was an imp twist on the uspec ‘apologies’, but it seemed more profound somehow, more personal. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Binna was…”

Fabiana cut me off. “There is no need Nebud. I know.” It placed a hand on my thigh and squeezed. I bet it had not expected this when it had met me in Damejo and immediately decided to become my companion. Even in the midst of the betrayals, I knew that I was beyond lucky in the few true friends I’d made. Why did my gaze drift to Musa in that moment?

“So, what will you do about this plot?” Fabiana asked.

I cleared my throat and broke my gaze with Musa. Its empty eye sockets had met and held my eyes. There was no hatred in its face, but there was also no love. No sorrow, but also no joy. I did not know what exactly it was I saw etched there, but whatever it was seemed to resemble resignation. We were bound to each other even when we did not want to be. And finally, as Chuspecip prodded and urged me to come for it, I understood why. Well, soon enough it would be at an end.

“I will leave it to Cantonia, until I am ready to return.” I stated simply.

Fabiana frowned. “I am not sure that I trust Cantonia in a matter like this. Cantonia is very…” Fabiana paused, “wily.” It finished and I chuckled at that. That was the same word that Cantonia had used to describe Fabiana’s progenitor. “Cantonia slithers and…it’s just not very trustworthy.”

I shrugged. “I do not have too much invested in Cantonia’s success. If it fails me, I will find some other way to uncover the traitors after I take my port.”

“How about my progenitor? Or my younger, Fabin. Both are in a position to do the job you assigned to Cantonia and both are a good deal more trustworthy.”

I could have said no, but I did not have the heart to tell Fabiana that I suspected its progenitor of treason. So, I let it. “If you want to reach out to them, do. But do not tell them anything about Cantonia. Just say that Darlin was caught and I revealed its plot.”

Fabiana seemed troubled but it did not deny my request. It nodded. “You should eat something.”

I shook my head. “I just want to sleep.”

“Then I will leave you.” Fabiana said the words but it hovered around me.

I sighed. “What is it, majestic?”

@lukfame thank you and my pen thanks you for the extra ink

@tunjilomo Cantonia is smart, Nebud already doesn't trust it so if it had tried to exhaust its anger, Nebud would have felt it because Nebud is also an anger kun. I just have to say that it's amazing that you know the link between Lahooni and anger off the top of your head.

@Dathypebruv It's just getting interesting now...I'm doing something wrong, lol, jk. I will check back with you when it's time for the next round. Thank you

@eROCK247 So, I went back to talk to Darlin's ghost and what it meant wasn't that they literally don't know, they know that Nebud is Calami's offspring, but they don't know, like Calami was a true talented fighter, and so what they were saying was that they didn't know that Nebus is just like Calami, it's offspring, made of the same stuff. About Cantonia's link to Calami and why they didn't know...maybe this update will answer this

@IntellectLord welcome from the ghost side! Glade to have you

@Fazemood Oooh, that honestly sounds like the kind of mistake I could definitely have made. Hmm, I'll have to go through that when I'm editing. I'll go back over it. Yeah, I never disliked Cantonia too

@DaLaw22 thanks, definitely making a note of that

@kelsmic thank you! I appreciate it

@doctorexcel thank you! About the first round I had an issue with trying to send emails to multiple people through Nairaland and so I just asked everyone to email me directly instead if they were still interested, and that's why you didn't hear back from me. I have your email now so I can reach out to you when it's time for that next round. Thank you, I really appreciate it!

I had never thought of it before, but it did make sense for such things to be possible. An irirakun was formed when two died in the hatch. If the two were of the same spectrum, then the irirakun would have to be of that same spectrum. A kun of one spectrum. An irira that did not need to hide because no one would suspect what it was. No wonder I disliked it so much.

“And how did you get here?”

“I woke from the daze, you so kindly ordered me put in, and instead of running in the opposite direction, I found myself chasing you and the nobles’ plot.”

“A plot you could have told me about but didn’t.” I spat the words out through clenched teeth.

Cantonia rolled its eyes. “Would you have believed me? I tried to tell you that the duffel bag of scrolls was not mine, but you did not listen. If I had accused your beloved Darlin, would you truly have listened to me over an uspec who was skilled in both sword and fists?”

I sighed. Cantonia was right. I would not have believed it. I was tired and the blood loss was starting to get to me. I turned my back on Cantonia and began walking back in the direction of my paradise and the few uspecs who remained. Fourteen. I’d only had nineteen left in my honoraria.

“The duffel bag?” I asked, when I heard Cantonia following in my wake.

“Darlin was afraid that Fabiana would uncover its plot and send word to you. It kept the scrolls from you to prevent that from happening.”

I eyed Cantonia suspiciously. How did it know so much? Then I laughed drily when the answer came to me. “You were part of the plot.”

“Of course. How else could I discover the details? Somehow Darlin learnt of the bond I’d shared with Calami and it confronted me. It suspected me and so it planted the duffel bag on me, and predictably, you cast me out.”

I ignored the last part. “And Fabiana?”

“It did not find out about the plot from the conspirators that you sent with it. If it had found out, it would have told you. You do not doubt that do you?”

I shook my head. If there was one Lahooni noble I trusted, it was Fabiana. The second name was harder to call out. I had to force it out through what felt like a stone in my throat. “Is Juke a part of it?”

Cantonia shook its head.

I released my breath.

“Remember when I came into your office and insulted you? That was done for Juke’s benefit. The young uspec came to me later that day and begged me not to push you any further. It wants you to be Kaiser. I think it worships you as I did Calami. Although I do not know how such a thing is even possible, especially when Juke is so smart.”

The ghost of a smile flashed on my face. Cantonia’s dry wit was not unamusing. “So, I’m just supposed to believe that it’s a coincidence that Jukien’s offspring joined my honoraria when Jukien has already named itself Kaiser?”

“You are stubborn Nebud, you will believe what you want to. But I know Jukien. It would never risk the life of its own offspring on an endeavor such as this. It sent disposable uspecs. It does not consider an uspec of its line disposable. Juke snuck out of its progenitor’s dwelling to follow you. Juke is a mystery to me Nebud, I do not understand what it finds worthy of devotion in you. You should not push it away. It will work in your favor to have an uspec of that line in your camp when you return to take your port. Just as it works to have Fabiana with you.”

I clenched my jaw. “Is Fabian part of it? Was Binna?”

“Binna, no. Binna followed you because of Fabiana. Do not doubt it. Fabian…I don’t know. It is very wily that one. If you succeed it will pucker up to you and serve you till its dying breath. But will it fight for you, risk its life to see you as Kaiser? In all honesty, I do not think so.”

I was suddenly exhausted and grateful that we’d reached the entrance to paradise. There was a nice ‘canopy room’ as Juke had coined it, waiting for me on the other side of the empty space between the hail trees. I thought of Juke and sadness mixed with joy. I doubted it. I could not help myself. Its progenitor was calling itself Kaiser of my port. It had sent noble uspecs to follow me just so I could lead them to the wealth of Lahooni in the Isle of Brio.

I turned to Cantonia. “How did you get here?” There were not that many people that knew the way to the Isle of Brio.

“Calami told me all about this place. It told me that there was a place I could hide if the world went to hell.” Cantonia smiled sadly. “It really wanted you. I was jealous of you before you were even born. As much as I saw Calami as my progenitor, it wasn’t, and it never let me call it pater. But you are its offspring and I bet you would give anything to enjoy the moments that I had with it.”

I clenched my jaw. I really did not like this uspec. It had done me a great service. It had saved my offspring. It had followed me here to save me from a plot after I’d had it dazed and kicked it out. I was suddenly very grateful that I had not killed it.

“You are skilled in espionage.” I said. “Who saw this first in you?”

“Calami. It sponsored my education in pansophy.” It chuckled. “Truth be told, it sponsored my life and left me with a very healthy revenue stream in its will.”

I nodded. “You will go back to Lahooni.” I said.

Cantonia frowned at me. “I heard the uspecs talking about paradise. Can I not see it?”

I shook my head. “You will go back to Lahooni. Use the wealth my progenitor left you and uncover all the nobles that are a part of Jukien’s plot. I will repay you three times over what you spend in this quest when I return.”

Cantonia studied me with narrowed eyes. “You do not trust me.”

It was not completely true. I did not mistrust it. If Cantonia proved useful and had a list of my enemies waiting for me on my return, then it would be beneficial. But I would not hold my breath, and I would not leave it in a place with my offspring while I was gone. I was not yet sure if I could trust Juke. But from this moment on, my trust would no longer be given freely. My offspring’s life had been endangered this night. It slept peacefully in my arm now, but it had been terrified. This would not happen again.

“You are a hard one. Harder than any of your ancestors. Perhaps you’ve had reason to be. Raised in a slum and boarded in the pits of Hakute…perhaps you’ve had reason to be.” Cantonia sheathed its sword and dropped to one knee in front of me. “I pledge my loyalty to you imperial one. I will return to Lahooni and fish out your enemies.” Then it rose, its green knee stained with sludge, bowed, and then turned around and flew away.

I dropped Darlin’s sword. I hadn’t dared to drop it while Cantonia was still armed and beside me.

Then I breathed ‘salve’ into the empty space and walked back into my paradise.

“Where is the wealth?” It repeated the question and I remained silent.

What followed was an endless barrage of blows. My face, my scarred stomach, my bound arms, my neck. Darlin punched everywhere it could. I was in pain, but the pain did not compare to the pain of betrayal that I felt within me. My honoraria had made me feel noble. Before them I had been unable to reconcile Cala with Nebud, unable to see myself as the heir to Lahooni. But these uspecs, the ones who now turned out to be traitors, they had forced me to accept myself as an imperial. And I’d become what they’d made me out to be. I’d become an imperial. I’d made the transition from a common de trop, to Cala, Calami’s offspring, Calam’s heir. No blow these uspecs dealt me could hurt more than the sinking feeling of betrayal inside.

I bled. My nose had been broken, my lip cut, and there were gashes by my eyes. The blood seeped into my eyes and I saw red everywhere. Red from my wounds. Red from the clouds’ lighting. Red in everything. How could they have done this to me? I did not understand this. I just did not. I was battered and bruised as much on the inside as I was on the out.

The blows stopped.

“Bring the offspring.” I heard Darlin say.

I’d fallen to pieces. The pain of their betrayal had shattered me. It had taken the one thing I’d wanted most in this world, a thing I had not even known I’d craved, and it had dashed all hopes of it away. Without the hope of reclaiming my port, I did not know what else I had. Then I heard Darlin ask for my offspring and I forced the pieces back together. I was all Nebula had. I was its only protection from a hard and faithless world. I could not allow myself to be so broken that my offspring was left on its own. I could not give my offspring the life that I’d had. It could not be the last brio. It could not be the last uspec of my line. It just could not.

“Wait.” I groaned. It hurt to speak. There was so much bruising on my face that it hurt to push my lips open. But I managed. “I will tell you what you want to know.” Once I said the words, I knew what I had to do. If I had not been busy feeling sorry for myself, I would have come to the conclusion sooner, when I had less bruises and more strength. But for my offspring, I would fight. Even at death’s door I would fight. I would scourge the entire existence for my child.

Like fools they cut my ropes off and pulled me to my feet.

I had to wipe the blood away from my eyes. It was abrasive, dragging my weathered skin against fresh cuts, but it cleaned my gaze. I saw clearly through and saw my offspring, twitching in an uspec’s arm. The dagger was still too close for me to try anything foolish. But my offspring was in tears. It had tears running down its nose from its single center eye. It was afraid and it was in tears.

I smiled at it. “Have no fear.” I said to it in the umani tongue I knew none of the uspecs could hear. “They will pay with their lives for this. That much I swear.” My offspring must have sensed something in my tone because it sniffed and stopped crying. I nodded at it. It was still twitching, but it was just its limbs flailing, not its entire body.

I took a step forward and almost fell. I had to stop and then give myself time to stabilize. There was pain everywhere, from the blows they’d dealt me. But not as much pain as I’d felt in the hatch from Checha. This was nothing compared to the beating Checha had given me. I’d found the strength to fight then and I would do the same again.

I walked. Ten of them followed me, the rest remained with my offspring, by the hail tree. I’m sure they believed that ten uspecs would be enough to subdue me if I tried anything. They were wrong. I walked past the green room, where the wealth actually was, and led them to another hidden place only my identity could open. The green room would have killed them if they’d tried to enter, but only a few of them would have died. The others would have seen the first few to enter die, and then they would have withdrawn to attack my offspring. I could not let that happen. So, we walked past the green room and I breathed, ‘salve’ into an empty space between two hail trees. Red fog appeared and I walked through.

They followed me in.

“What is this?” Darlin asked.

This was no paradise. It was barren land with nothing but sludge. It looked like a slum.

“Your funeral.” Was the response I gave Darlin. Then I reached into myself and pulled out lit okun. The lit okun filled the floor. It killed nine. Darlin I left for myself.

Darlin’s eyes narrowed. It pulled its sword out of its sheath and said, “you’re dead.”

I laughed at that. My laugh was hysterical. Like Marcinus’ after a lust binge. Like my offspring’s had been when I took it out of that lust den. I didn’t even reach for a weapon from one of the dead uspecs. I’d harvested spectral energy from them. That energy pulsed in my vein. I could kill Darlin easily with magic. But I wanted its death to be slow.

It swung its sword at me and I dodged. It swung it again and I dodged it again. It lanced and jabbed and fought like the proper noble that it was. I dodged a swipe and then I dodged a swipe and then slammed my fist into its nose. It took the pain without stopping its attacks. The uspec kept swinging. Its blade cut me once on my upper arm, and once on my thigh. I was too crazed to care. I just kept getting into its space and punching it, often, and merrily. One blow I struck dazed the uspec so much that it momentarily lowered its sword. I rained down blows on its face. One punch after the other till I heard its jaw break. It was in so much pain that it dropped its sword. I smirked at it. It could not take pain. It was a brawler, but it did not know what it meant to be at death’s door and still fight because you had to survive. It did not know what it meant to fight when every muscle in your body was drawn and tired and every patch of skin ached. I knew. I had learnt that lesson time and again in the pits of Hakute, with every uspec I’d challenged, everyone I’d killed. I’d learnt it again in the hatch when I’d died from the wounds Checha had inflicted. They did not teach nobles this. They did not teach them how to survive.

Darlin fell.

I knelt over it and wrapped my hands around its neck.

“They do not know,” it struggled to speak as I choked the life out of it, “that you are truly Calami’s offspring.” Those were the last words Darlin said before I broke every bone in its neck and ended its life.

Darlin was dead, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted more. I wanted to go back out and kill every one of the uspecs standing by my offspring. Then I wanted to return to Lahooni and shove my hand down Jukien’s throat, far enough to pull out its heart. I wanted to turn that entire port red with the blood of the traitors who’d dared to do this to me! Everything I had that did not already belong to my offspring I had planned to give to Lahooni. The wealth of my line. My strength, my skills, everything!

I bent, picked up Darlin’s sword and its dagger, then I spat on the ground by its body. Those nobles, the ones who’d planned this, they would live to rue this day.

I felt fresh wounds on my body. There must have been more cuts inflicted, more than just the swipe to my arm and my thigh. I felt a lot more cuts. And I was wet, as if I’d been in an okun. But I knew it was blood.

It did not matter how much I bled, I was still ready to lop off the heads of the four uspecs that remained.

Much to my chagrin, the uspecs were already dead when I got back.

There was only one uspec left standing, and this uspec had my offspring in one arm and a bloodied sword in the other.

For some reason, the image of Cantonia holding a bloody sword seemed wrong.

“Ma-mat-ter!” My offspring screamed once it saw me. It pushed to be let down and Cantonia lowered it to the floor. Then the little one ran into my arms. I picked it up and held it tightly to my side. There were many cuts that hurt worse with my offspring in my arms, but I did not care. How could I, when it was safe?

“Imperial one,” Cantonia bowed.

I frowned at it. “Explain yourself.” I was not in the mood for more nobles. Especially ones I disliked as much as Cantonia. How was the uspec here in the first place? We’d left it dazed on the inter-port trail.

Cantonia cleared its throat. “I don’t know why I expected some sort of gratitude for saving your offspring’s life,” it whined.

“I’m not in the mood for this Cantonia. Speak quickly or you might find yourself a head shorter.” I warned.

The uspec glared at me. “How did you come from Calami?”

I rose my sword up and Cantonia rose its. I almost laughed at that. Did the uspec think that it could challenge me?

“Normally no, but as we are both holding swords that are made of pansophic metal…” it led the words hang.

I withdrew my sword with disgust. Suddenly, the dead corpses made sense. Of course, Cantonia had used pansophy to kill them. And it had shamelessly used its pansophy to siphon my thoughts when our blades touched.

“I save your offspring and you scorn me because you do not approve of how I did it? You are a funny one, Nebud.” Cantonia tsk-ed.

“You did not save my offspring. I was more than capable of killing these uspecs.”

Cantonia shrugged. “Perhaps. Or perhaps they would have seen you coming by yourself and either killed your offspring or used poor Nebula as a shackle to chain you again. In fact, when I think about it that way, I think I didn’t just save your offspring, but yourself as well.”

I sighed. How did uspecs as aggravating as Cantonia exist? And why did I have to run into it at a time like this? “You did this because…” I prompted.

It frowned. “To save your life of course.”

“Why? You are no friend of mine.” I stated.

“No, but I was as an offspring to Calami, so I could not just let the nobles get away with what they had planned, no matter how much I dislike your arrogance and condescension. For every uspec that attacks you and seeks to claim what is by right yours, there will be others who serve you in Calam’s or Calami’s name. If you are smart, you will learn to make yourself appear worthy of your ancestry. There is only so much that a person will give to you out of loyalty before they start to despise you for the same reason.”

Something about Cantonia’s words brought Musa to mind. It was as if our entire tempestuous relationship was running through my mind. From the day that it had told me the story of my line and its service to them with shameless tears running down its face, to the day that it had sworn to serve me even knowing that I was angry at it for lying to me about Permafrost, and then to the day only a little more than a week ago, where the imp had stared at me with hatred.

For every uspec that attacks you and seeks to claim what is by right yours, there will be others who serve you in Calam’s or Calami’s name. If you are smart, you will learn to make yourself appear worthy of your ancestry. There is only so much that a person will give to you out of loyalty before they start to despise you for the same reason.

There was a part of me that hated Cantonia because the words it had said resonated too deeply in me. I thought of those words and I saw Musa. I saw its love and I saw its hatred and I saw mine too, for the imp. And Sensu. I found my mind returning to an uspec I had not thought of in a long time. That uspec had snuck me out of Lahooni. It had consigned itself to a pit in Chiboga so that no one else could learn of my whereabouts. It had done all of this out of love for my progenitor and sire. I could not imagine the kind of uspecs that inspired this much loyalty.

“As an offspring to Calami?” I asked, once the lump in my throat passed.

Cantonia nodded. “Your progenitor was the first I saw when I opened my eyes in the hatch.”

I frowned. That did not make sense.

“The story is long and founded on blood feuds. Suffice it to say that my progenitor, the one that lived, meant to kill me as soon as I was formed, because of a feud with the offer, the one that died in the hatch. Your progenitor threw its dagger and killed it before it could kill me. I rose in the hatch and cast my eyes on your progenitor’s back. It did not look on me so that it would not form the bond. Calami was too noble to form a bond with an offspring that was not its. But I bonded with it anyway. When it came to visit me as often as it could. When it sparred with me. When it saw me settled and protected. Then it died before I was old enough to give it a proper sparring.”

“You are a kun?” I could not believe it. “A kun of one?”

It nodded. “Such things are possible.”

Part 13
---------

Darlin led me out of the paradise and back into the sludge ground of the Isle.

I followed.

I had no weapons. All I had were my fists, but I could kill with my fists. I’d done it before, and I looked forward to doing it again. If an uspec wasn’t holding my offspring with a dagger to its neck, I would have created lit okun to drown them all in. But the slightest movement of that dagger could kill my offspring, so creating lit okun wasn’t a risk I was willing to take. I just needed an opportunity, one chance.

As soon as we stepped out of the paradise with the canopy trees and the hatch-like ambiance I stopped dead in my tracks.

I could not believe it.

At first, I’d thought it was just the two of them, just Darlin and the other uspec from my honoraria. Only two betraying me. But there were not only two. I felt as if someone was lancing my heart with a spear. My dazed gaze met the faces of not two, but fourteen uspecs in my honoraria.

FOURTEEN.

No, I shook my head. This could not be happening. After all that we’d been through together. After the month we’d spent on the inter-port trail sparring and laughing. I had placed absolute trust in Darlin. So much so that I’d given it command of one of my teams. Now I found myself rethinking it all. Was Darlin working for the plenum? Had it fought against me in the battle where I’d lost so many uspecs in my honoraria? Had it killed those uspecs so that the guard around me would be reduced? I wanted to kill them all. I wanted to wrap my hands around their necks and squeeze the life out of their traitorous necks. They had been as family to me. They were my honoraria. No betrayal could have cut me deeper. If only they did not have my offspring so close to that dagger. But they did, and I could not risk any harm coming to Nebula.

“Move, Nebud.” I heard Darlin’s voice behind me. It pushed me forward with the hilt of its sword and I obeyed. They had my offspring. I followed where they led me.

“Did you find the ropes?” Darlin barked the question and an uspec I could not see replied in the affirmative.

It did not make any sense. Why would Darlin do this? If it worked for the plenum then it could have killed me a long time ago. We were together on the inter-port trail and I had trusted it enough to sleep in my dwelling. It could have ended my life in my sleep. Or it could have disclosed our location to the plenum. No, it didn’t make any sense for Darlin to work for the plenum. We’d just killed over two hundred of their troops. If Darlin was their creature it would have informed them of our plans. So, what was the meaning of this?

They led me to one of the hail trees we’d walked by on our way to the paradise. When we got there, they forced me to my knees and then tied me securely to the unusually warm stem of the white hail tree. The knot they tied held, no matter how much I tried to yank at my arms. They’d tied my legs together behind the tree and my arms to each other. There were also ropes binding my torso to my bound arms and the stem of the tree. Through it all I said nothing. I just kept my gaze on my offspring.

The uspec holding it had a forearm pressed tightly against Nebula’s belly, which forced the infant against the body behind it. The other hand held a dagger which was placed precariously close to my offspring’s neck. My eyes rose to its mouth. They’d wrapped a cloth over its mouth to gag it. I feared that it would start convulsing and that its convulsions would force its neck into the dagger being held so close to its neck. I felt more fear in that moment than I had ever felt before. I knew that I would do anything to keep my offspring safe. Anything.

“Why?” I asked Darlin. It was the first thing I’d said since it woke me into this nightmare. My own honoraria. Was there any place I could go where I would not find betrayal skulking behind me? Ahh, I had trusted these uspecs. I had let my guard down around them. More fool I.

“Why?” Darlin repeated my question. There was none of the ‘sirga’, none of the bowing it had done in the weeks passed. There was no subservience in its stance, or in any of the uspecs who stood with it. These uspecs who’d called me ‘imperial one’ and made me feel an honor beyond recounting by their service. Maybe it had all been too good to be true from the very start. But I had been so eager to believe it, so ready to accept their allegiance.

“You are nothing more than a de trop, raised in the slums of Hakute, yet you expected us, noble Lahooni uspecs, to serve you? To bow to you? To call you Kaiser?” Darlin laughed and the other uspecs joined in. Each guffaw scraped at my heart. I felt broken.

“Then why did you follow me?” I asked in a small voice.

“For the wealth.”

I frowned. “What wealth?”

Darlin bent close to my face and then snarled, “You know what wealth” at me. Drops of spittle fell on my face from the uspec’s mouth.

I shook my head. “I do not.”

“The fabled wealth of Lahooni. The wealth that belongs to our port. We know that it is here, in the Isle of Brio and we have every intention of taking it and returning it to the uspec who is equipped to rule Lahooni in your stead. The mighty Jukien.”

Jukien. The betrayals would not stop coming. I thought of the duke Jukien, the one I’d left in command of my troops. I had trusted the uspec to guard my port. And its offspring. I saw Juke’s face in my mind and questioned every moment that I had spent with the young one. Had it betrayed me too? It was not amongst the uspecs in the group that night, but that did not mean that it was innocent. Had it poisoned my food, put something in it to make me sleep so deeply that I didn’t hear Darlin coming?

“You will be a duke, and you will be my advisor. That much I can guarantee you.”

The words I’d said to the little uspec came back to my mind. How it must have been laughing at me in its head. It must have laughed to know what it had planned with Darlin. Laughed to know that its progenitor was plotting against me. I was offering it duke when it already had every intention of being an imperial one.

“Does the founder’s plight mean nothing to you?” I asked. These uspecs did not deny my claim to Lahooni. In fact, the fact that they’d followed me in the hopes of stealing my line’s wealth proved otherwise. They must believe that I am truly Calami’s offspring, if not they would not think that I had access to the wealth they sought. I wondered how they’d known that it was in the Isle of Brio. That was a secret that no one else who’d been searching for my line’s wealth had guessed at. I thought of my ancestors, of the bond they were said to have with the nobles of their port, and I imagined that it was from my own ancestors lips that Jukien and its line had heard of the location of our wealth.

“We spent years under the plenum’s yoke waiting and praying for the founder’s mercy, for the founder’s salvation.” Darlin spat on the sludge ground. “The founder abandoned us, it left us to fend for ourselves, and that is what we intend to do. Let the founder fend for itself while we do the same. With the wealth of our port, we will have the means to buy the plenum’s favor. And when we turn you over to them…well, that will just strengthen the bond between the Lahooni nobles and the plenum Kaisers.”

The Lahooni nobles. Not just Jukien then. There were others in league with it. Other nobles in my port who were part of this plot. I thought of the nobles I’d met. Of Fabian who had acclaimed me and then renounced me when it was expedient to do so.

“How many nobles?” I asked. I didn’t really expect an answer. Why would Darlin tell me?

“There were eighty of us who joined your honoraria for the explicit purpose of getting the wealth. We have lost several uspecs of our lines to this war with the plenum. We do not intend to lose anymore. The mighty Jukien will bring Lahooni back to its former glory.”

Eighty. Darlin had misunderstood my question, but I was shaken by the revelation it had made. Eighty out of the hundred who’d joined me had done so only to come to this end, to reach the Isle of Brio and then take my line’s wealth. Eighty. I thought of the uspecs I’d sparred with, lived with, shared meals with, and all the while they’d been plotting to take my port from me. I had grieved for the uspecs I’d lost against the plenum, now I wasn’t even sure which of those uspecs had been trustworthy. Not even Binna. I would trust Fabiana with my life, but its sibling…what if Fabian was one of these nobles who wanted my port? It was the first duke, it made sense that it would connive with Jukien, the second. Had Fabinna only come along at its progenitor’s urging. Would I ever be able to trust another Lahooni noble? I was pained.

“No more questions.” Darlin said. “It’s time for answers.”

I was kneeling so I had to look up into its face. It was not a nightmare. This thing that was happening to me was real, not a figment of my imagination. It was either very late night or very early morning. I could not tell from the shade of the red cloud lighting. The red light cast Darlin’s face in an evil shade. I wondered why I hadn’t seen it sooner. I should have known that the face the nobles presented to me was fake. Eighty of them had planned this, to steal my wealth and then take me back to the plenum. I looked away from Darlin.

“Where is the wealth?” It demanded.

I was silent.

I was not looking and so I did not see the fist until it slammed against the side of my face. I was dazed. Darlin was a brawler. It had always been that. Its bulk was one of the things I had most liked about it. Now it was an instrument it used against me.

Sooo many interesting questions and we're about to get the answers

Thanks so much for the support Fazemood and Dathypebruv I've been lucky enough to get a good number of people to read the first round of the editing but please let me know if you're interested in reading the second round and I'll put you on the email list when that's ready. Thanks again

Under the canopy tree was magnificent.

There was a small, shallow pool of pink liquid around the perimeter. I stepped into it and rinsed the sludge and quicksand off my feet, then I walked into what looked like the most dazzling room I’d ever had. The foam ground in the middle just looked like a ridiculously large bed. There were several tiny holes in the fronds which allowed for natural lighting under the tree. The base of the stem had a larger pond around it. Large enough that I could dunk into it for a good cleaning if I wanted to. I walked around the stem and found an offshoot. It looked like branches had grown and intertwined. The branches were so closely packed together that the offshoot could easily be used as a desk, or a bench. I found my coffer on one side of the room and a large platter on it. My mouth watered at the food.

“Join us,” I called out when I saw Juke retreating.

It walked in, cleaned the sludge off its feet in the pond, and then came to sit beside the coffer. We ate together, the three of us. Juke talked for so long I was shocked that it still had more to say after half of the contents of the platter was cleared. Nebula liked it though. It clapped excitedly and tried to copy some of the words Juke said. Sometimes its clapping turned into spasms, and its words were almost always stammered. But it was healthy.

“Where is Fabiana?” I asked, interrupting a tale Juke termed Chacip’s glory. It was a lore of the escapades of the first Kaiser of my line.

“It has the canopy room two trees away from yours, on the right. But it is asleep. It wept for a long time before the dignified Darlin was able to get it to sleep. We all really miss Binna.” There was a catch in its voice and then it looked down. I thought it meant to cry, but when it looked back up, there was sorrow in its face, but no tears.

“You didn’t cry.” I won’t have said it to anyone else, but Juke was special to me. As Binna had been.

“I don’t cry sirga. My progenitor beat it out of me. It is not acceptable for a noble to shed tears. But I am sad, and I mourn for Binna.” Juke picked up its cup and drank from it.

“I have not heard much to recommend the great Jukien.” I said.

Juke frowned at me. “You did not cry either sirga, and I know you loved Binna as I did. Is my progenitor wrong to say noble’s should not cry?”

It was an astute observation. I shook my head. “I don’t know. Fabiana is a noble. There are few I consider more noble. But it wept today. It lost its sibling and it wept. It is no less of a noble for crying. Perhaps the tears pay homage to the dead.”

Juke tore off a chunk of sweet bread and chewed thoughtfully on it. Then it shook its head. “I do not think so. I think tears are a solace for the living not for the dead.” It looked up at me and the cunning I saw in its young gaze both startled and impressed me. “Don’t get me wrong sirga, I do not think any less of the imperial Fabiana for its tears, far from it. Maybe I would weep if I knew how. But I do not, and I think that my way of honoring Binna is better.”

“What way is that?” I asked.

“Binna talked long and often about a charity fund it wished to convince its progenitor to create. The fund was one that would educate and empower fifty of the poorest Lahooni commoners a year. They could be pious. Or scholars who could become adherents. Fighters who could become bannerets. Merchants who could become halcyons. It wanted to make the average Lahooni uspec richer. It believed that by doing this it could make Lahooni richer both in wealth and moral character. In its memory, I will create that fund. I think that would please Binna. Since I know what I intend to do, I do not mourn. By my works I will honor it.”

I put my hand on the uspec’s chin and tilted its head up. “You are a wise one, young majestic.”

It chuckled. “I am the last offspring of a duke. I must have something to distinguish myself.”

“One day, you will be one of the advisors I count on most.”

It laughed. “You jest, sirga, I will be nothing more than a majestic crawling through your library and sparring with you whenever you give me the chance.”

I shook my head. “No. You will be a duke, and you will be my advisor. That much I can guarantee you.”

The young uspec gaped at me. It appeared at a loss for words. “I have older siblings sirga, it is their place to inherit.”

I grinned at it. “I will create a dukedom, just for you.”

It looked uncomfortable. “That is not why I spoke…I mean…”

I cuffed it playfully. It did not know it, but the uspec had given me a way to honor the nobles in my honoraria who’d sacrificed their lives for this mission. I would find what they cared about most and I would see it brought to life. I would do that in their memory.

Juke cleared its throat. It shifted from sitting to kneeling. Then it bowed to me. “Gratitude sirga.”

I laughed. “Sit down, Juke.” It did. “Tell me another story.”

Once Juke started talking, there was no shutting it up. Nebula copied its speech and mannerism and I watched the both of them. My burden lightened. I would be okay leaving Nebula here, with Juke. Juke would take care of it. And there were others. Fabiana, wise and strong. And Darlin, fierce warrior that it was. My offspring would be protected.

The rest of the meal passed quickly after that. Juke left and Nebula and I settled into the hardened clouds to sleep. I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until I settled into the foam. Sleep came as soon as I closed my eyes.

There was a blunt object pressing into my face.

I woke with a start.

At first, I thought it was Nebula.

Then I opened my eyes and found Nebula in an uspec’s arms. I couldn’t believe it. It was an uspec in my honoraria. The uspec had a hand over Nebula’s mouth and another hand holding the sharp edge of a dagger against my offspring’s neck. Was this some sort of joke?

“Don’t say a word. If you try anything, we will kill your offspring. Do you understand?”

I was too startled to believe my ears. I knew that voice. It was an uspec I trusted. An uspec I’d trusted with my life!

“Do you understand?” It demanded.

The uspec holding Nebula pushed the dagger closer towards it.

“Answer,” it snapped at me.

“Do you understand?” The voice behind me prompted. I was beyond betrayed. I knew this uspec. I’d trusted it.

I nodded in answer to their question. I did not want my offspring getting hurt.

“Good. Come with us.”

I couldn’t believe it. What would prompt Darlin to do a thing like this? I didn’t know, but, for threatening my offspring, I was going to kill it the first chance I got.

---------------------------
The Isle of Brio
----------------------------

The quicksand took us to the Isle of Brio. It was not immediately clear where we were, but I knew, from Chuspecip’s presence in my mind, I knew where it had led us. I looked around to ensure that we had all been teleported safely. Then I felt my legs moving towards Fabiana. Chuspecip still had control and I did not fight it.

“Let me give your sibling a hooni noble’s burial. I owe it at least that much,” I heard myself say.

Fabiana did not even argue. It just placed Binna’s corpse on the sludge ground and then knelt beside it. It dug a scale out of Binna’s neck before takings its hand away from its sibling’s body. Quicksand came out of me. Chuspecip interred Binna in quicksand.

Fabiana dug its hands into the bloody sludge that remained after Binna’s corpse was gone. Its shoulders shook but I heard no sounds. No one spoke.

I await you.

Chuspecip withdrew. It returned control of my body back to me at a time when I wasn’t sure I had the strength to carry it. But I had to. I had no choice. Now more than ever my uspecs needed me to guide them. This part of the Isle of Brio was exposed. It could be entered by anyone in Hakute who had hooni spectra, knew the location of the Isle, and was in a burg that neighbored it. There was another part that only me and the uspecs of my line could reach. We had to go there. We would not be safe until we were there. And once we got there, then I could go to Chuspecip. I could finally find it and return it to its existence.

I pulled Fabiana up and supported the uspec’s weight when it became obvious that it was too grieved to walk on its own. I lead them all. No one spoke. Not even my little Nebula. We all sensed that there was no victory in this. There was no glory in the battle that we’d fought. Only hard truths, only blood and bodies. I felt so filthy that I had not even made to touch my offspring once. It was with Juke. Nebula loved Juke. It was Juke’s name that my offspring has said first. I knew I could trust Juke with it. I did not want to be around my pure, innocent, offspring, when I was so stained, inside and out, with the battle I’d fought.

So, I stayed away.

It had still been day when we arrived on the Isle of Brio. The battle we’d fought had been mentally and physically exhausting, but it had only lasted a few hours. Only a few hours for me to lose over seventy-five percent of my honoraria. Only a few hours for Fabiana’s world to come crumbling down. I wondered if I would ever be able to get the image of Binna’s corpse out of my mind. Binna had been my responsibility. It had been mine.

As the last brio, I was the only one who could use spectra to teleport within the Isle. But I did not have the spectral energy to make enough quicksand and so we walked. We walked for hours in sludge and under the illumination of the daylight dots. The fog should have been a greeting. It was light and it drifted around us, but none of us were in the mood for celebration. It had been over a month since we’d been in a port, under the pure illumination of daylight dots, without the interference of the clouds. We should have enjoyed it. But we didn’t. We walked exhaustedly for two hours. There were sights in the Isle that should have awed us. Like the hail tree. I saw several pure white hail trees which had no business growing and thriving in a place without hail. A few sky fowls, usually contained in the clouds, flew low enough to graze by us. But none of us commented on any of it. We just kept going.

Until finally we reached a sight that I remembered twice over now. The first time I’d seen it had been when my sire brought me here, and the second time had been with Gerangi. But I still remembered. The room Gerangi had tried to enter was the room that my sire had shown me, the room that held the fabled wealth of Lahooni. Only those of my line could enter. Anyone else that tried would die. Now, with Chuspecip in me, I knew this. My line was the only one gifted with the last brio, we were the only key to that room. For more than one reason.

I knew now that there were several other hidden places in this Isle. The green fog around the green room was visible to all, but the place I would keep the rest of my honoraria was not.

I turned away from the green room and headed for two hail trees.

“Salve.” I said. Once I spoke the words, my breath, carrying proof of my life, my willingness, and my identity, floated towards the seemingly empty space between the two white tree stems. As soon as my breath met the empty space. The appearance was returned to it and cyan fogs filled the once empty space.

Someone gasped.

Fabiana stood straight. It took its arms off my shoulders and stood, unsupported, on its own two feet. I walked through the cyan fogs first.

My eyes widened when I stepped in.

It was as if I had walked into the hatch, except without any of the bloodlust.

“My God!” I heard Fabiana exclaim behind me. It dropped to its knees, put its head into its hands, and wept.

Red and orange light mixed together in a wondrous hue. Hail fell but the hail was fine and made bearable by the warm drifting fogs. There were clouds in the sky, but some were low enough that I could touch them. I stretched my hands into a cloud and was pleasantly surprised when two white frogs, the soaru frosted beast, leapt onto my arm.

I heard my offspring giggling and I saw that it was rolling around in a pool of quicksand with several white dracos crawling all over its body. There were more animals here than I had ever seen before. Frosted beasts living in the souls of their spectrums, and regular animals running around. Marc trumpeted when a group of smoke bears appeared and walked towards it.

I cradled a frog lightly in my hand as I walked further. I walked through sludge and quicksand and found my way to a large okun with several swans swimming across the surface. They sunk back in once they saw us, but the jejas remained.

“I see a soft rooster!” I heard an uspec say. “I have never seen a soft rooster before!”

“This is paradise, sirga, paradise.” Juke stood beside me. I placed a hand on its shoulder and squeezed. Something about this place washed the gore of our battle from my mind. I did not feel as polluted as I had before. “Is this where Chuspecip lives, sirga? Are we in the founder’s burg?”

The young uspec beamed up at me. I patted it on the head. “Yes and no, Juke, yes and no.” I said. Then I took my belt off, ripped my neckcloth off, and took of my tail sleeve. Then I stepped into the okun and I swam.

Juke picked up the things I’d discarded and it just stood at the bank, watching me. It was hooni, it did not enjoy the okun as my kute heritage had taught me to. I swam for hours. Just laps and laps and laps over and over in that pond. Sometimes I sunk deep into the water, so deep that I saw a few swans, and was lucky enough to feel their screen scrape against mine. They reminded me of Mara and Mara of Marcinus, how it had been when I’d first met it, and how it was now. But even those memories didn’t seem as bad as I swam in this pond.

The peace I felt when I stepped out of the pond could only have come from Chuspecip. I laughed at myself. I had gone and become a believer.

There were splashing sounds coming from other ponds when I stepped out of mine. I walked around. There were canopy trees. I hadn’t seen them through the fog, but the closer I got the more I saw. The canopy trees were full length, grown to maturity with their fronds scraping the ground. I kept going and found several fronds of one of those trees pulled up.

My offspring was in it.

Under the canopy tree was as refined as the outside was natural. This one had a pond with bathing salts in it, and yellow light sources hanging from the stem of the tree. Juke had been right, this place was a paradise.

Then I saw Musa’s imp, Halima, in a pond with my offspring and I lurched forward.

“Master,” Musa’s voice stopped me before I could wring the imp’s neck. I took a deep breath and saw that the imp appeared to be cleaning quicksand off my squirming infant. Juke was there too. Juke stood close to the edge of the pond, but it was watching my offspring. That was good.

I turned to Musa and simply waited for it to speak.

“She…” it cleared its throat and shook its head. It looked down. “Halima is not a bad person. It did not mean for you to hear what it said that night. It did not mean to insult your offspring, really, it did not. It is just hard for it, after the way master Calami treated it. Masters Calam and Calami had spoilt it because of me. Halima misses them. It came to serve you expecting them and that was wrong, but it is not bad.”

I heard Musa’s words but they did nothing to make me think better of its imp. Nothing at all. It had called my offspring feeble. It had said that it would die. Was I supposed to trust that it would not do something to bring about that fate?

“Nebula.” I called the name harsher than I had meant to.

The imp’s gaze snapped to me.

Nebula looked to me too. “Ma-ma-mater, mat-t-ter.” It said and I smiled. It rose from the pond and came running into my open arms. I picked it up and forced myself to ignore the way that its hand slapped repeatedly against my shoulder. Juke was beside me as we walked away. I left Musa with its beloved imp.

“Where are my things, Juke?”

The young one looked up at me. “I gave them to Chike. It said it would prepare a room for you, sirga.”

I frowned. “A room?”

Juke’s eyes widened. “Have you not been under the canopy trees yet? They are wondrous sirga? Some are like rooms fine enough to rival the best resort. The ground underneath those are soft hardened clouds with a firmness underneath. Soft enough even for your ailerons to sink comfortably in. We will all sleep well tonight. There are more than enough for everyone.”

In its excitement I doubted Juke thought much on its words. But I did. I thought of the rooms and how they were enough for the number of uspecs who’d survived. The bodies flashed in my mind, but they did not weigh me down as they had before my swim with the swans in the pond. The three of us were wet from the pink liquid, but somehow the combination of falling hail and drifting warm fogs dried our wetness away.

“May I ask something of you young majestic?”

Juke nodded emphatically. “Of course, sirga.”

I thought about my leaving. It would not be tonight, but tomorrow. I had to leave as soon as possible on my mission to get Chuspecip. And where I was going, I could not take my offspring with me. I was glad for Fabiana, Darlin and Juke. At least, I could leave my offspring in their care. “Never leave my offspring alone with the imp Halima.”

Juke frowned at me. “Has it done something to offend you sirga? It seems to adore Nebula.”

Appearances could be deceiving. “Will you do this for me?”

Juke nodded. It still appeared puzzled, but it did not question me further. “Of course, sirga.”

“And when the imp is around my offspring, you must watch it closely.”

Juke nodded. “Yes sirga.”

I put a hand on the little one’s scalp and squeezed lightly. “Gratitude, young majestic.”

It bowed. “Shall I take you to your canopy room?”

I smiled at its excitement. “Yes, you may.”

We walked past several canopy trees with some of their palm fronds lifted. I saw some that appeared like cooking rooms. Three imps had an inferno raging beneath a succulent looking rooster.

Juke stopped in front of the largest canopy tree that I’d seen. The fronds of this tree were shades of light blue and green. Juke held the palm fronds aside, and bowed low with its hand extended for me to go in. I chuckled at the gesturing.

Part 12
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Five teams assembled in front of the Hakute border. We arrived through different courses, and united a ten-minute march away from the plenum’s troops. Two hundred and fifty. I’d had a full day to come to terms with the number but I still could not believe that the plenum had left Hakute so defenseless. I knew that the ruse of my presence in Lahooni had a large role to play in the lack of plenum forces guarding Hakute, still I could not come to terms with how undefended it was.

My offspring was not in my arms. It, Juke, and a few other young uspecs in my honoraria, along with Marc and the other smoke bears, would remain with a group of five imps and five older fighters, while the rest of us fought. It decreased the odds in our favor, but I didn’t mind. I found that after spending close to two months on the inter-port trail, I was ready for a good fight.

“Shall we advance sirga?” I heard the quiver of excitement in Binna’s voice and I chuckled. Fabiana did not approve of Binna’s thirst for battle. Fabiana was different from us. Uspecs like Binna, Darlin, and I, we enjoyed the fight. Fabiana fought for survival, but it took no pleasure in it. Still, Fabiana’s lack of pleasure in fighting was something I could easily forgive the uspec for.

“Are you ready?” I turned my focus squarely on Binna.

It wrapped its hand around the hilt of its sword and nodded. “Yes, I was born ready, sirga.”

I roared with laughter. When I met Fabiana, I had not known how much of a blessing its friendship would be. Now I had not one but two uspecs in its line that I called friend and was truly fond of.

“If you are ready Binna, then we must proceed!” I gave the order and we advanced.

Ten minutes had never gone by so quickly. I led the charge of course. Fabiana stood to my left and Darlin to my right. When the battle started, we would be forced to break up. I knew this and I was not looking forward to the eventuality, but I trusted in the skill of my honoraria.

It may have been my mind, but I felt the ground shake underneath us as we made the march. We walked along the common road of the inter-port trail, on a path that was veered away from the main traveling roads. There was no one else on the path, just me and the uspecs in my honoraria. We were bathed in a red-dominated tincture of cloud and daylight dots lighting. Our feet were enveloped by the foam of the hardened clouds as we made our march forward.

It didn’t take us long to sight the contingent of plenum soldiers.

As soon as we sighted them, they sighted us.

They had nowhere to run.

Right as the five teams I approached with marched in from one end, the remaining five teams marched on them from the other. The plenum soldiers made this realization when they tried to withdraw.

As we drew closer, I had enough time to realize that they were not what I’d expected. The soldiers were of a mixture of spectrums. But I could clearly see several horn-filled chests on the front lines. They stood at attention. We had not found them sitting idly about whiling away the day. These were not lazy fighters then.

Good.

My heart pumped and an excited thrill washed over me. The soldiers reached for their swords and pulled them out right as we descended on them. I pulled out my cutlass and started fighting.

They were good soldiers. I could imagine why the plenum would only send two hundred and fifty of fighters such as this to guide an important port. They were good.

I fought with my dagger in one hand and my cutlass in the other.

Fighting like this was different. We fought in an enclosed space with swords swinging from all directions. I had trained my honoraria to spar, but I had not trained them for war. I had taught them to fight against each other, to look at a face and know who the opponent was. It was different when uspecs fought in a tight space. There were so many bodies that I only had enough time to look at features to discern if an uspec was against me or not. I’d almost been caught unawares by a hooni plenum uspec for that reason. But the uspec got lanced with a sword in its back before it could attack me. The uspec fell and I saw Musa standing behind it, bloodied and grim. It turned and continued fighting and I did the same.

The battle passed in a flash of blades and blood. I heard the clashing of swords so close to my ears that the sound echoed in my brain for long moments later. It was as if I was fighting deaf. Metal clanging and cries of pain were the only sounds loud enough to make it through.

This fight was different than any other I’d been in before. Hundreds of people fighting and dying and blood painting my face. I had to stop several times to wipe blood away from my eyes so that I could see through the crimson haze. I got blood on my lips so many times that by the end of it, I had become much too familiar with the taste of uspec blood.

I don’t know how many uspecs I killed. Thirty, at least. My honoraria was at a deficit, they were not ready for a battle like this, where the space was so tight and the enemy had to be ascertained in seconds. I saw one of my nobles stab another because it had gone into a frenzy when blood splatter covered its eyes. And I’d been so far away that the only thing I could do was look away and continue fighting.

But in the end, even with our deficit, we triumphed. They had experience, but we had skill on our side. And for my part, I fought as if I was possessed. I didn’t know what got into me. I felt neither fatigue nor pain. I charged on and dropped as many uspecs as I could. I didn’t stop fighting until the last soldier in the plenum had fallen. Perhaps I’d fought as I had because of Chuspecip in me, urging me to go on, giving me strength. Or perhaps it was the thought of my offspring, of little Nebula whose survival was tied inexorably to mine. Whatever drove me, I fought more brutally than I ever had before. I cut uspecs down without really seeing their faces. I knew when it was done, that I would never remember a single distinguishing feature on any of the uspecs I’d slaughtered.

What I would always remember was the look of the battle ground when it was done.

So many bodies.

I had never seen so many dead bodies in one place. Over three hundred corpses. Some of them headless, some without limbs, all stained with blood.

I looked around, taking count of the uspecs that survived, and I grieved for the number that I saw. We were all covered in blood. Some so much so that I could not even make out their features. But I saw the golden bands on their arms and it was enough.

I counted only nine of us left standing. There were nine others that remained with Nebula and Juke. But nine, only nine. A hundred nobles had left Lahooni with me, and now we were down to nineteen. Over seventy lost in a single fight. My eyes scoured over the corpses again and I saw several familiar faces amongst them. I saw the face of the uspec who’d delivered the news of the plenum’s troop deployments only two days ago. It had been alive then. Now it was dead.

They were all dead.

So many bodies.

Someone let out a loud cry.

“No!” I heard the scream and felt joy leap in my heart when I recognized the voice as Fabiana’s. Fabiana lived. Then I heard its cries in more detail and I knew, I just knew, who we’d lost.

I found myself beside it.

As soon as I saw the younger uspec cradled in its sibling’s arms, I dropped to my knees.

Binna.

No. I echoed Fabiana’s cries. No. Binna was my responsibility, I had only just started teaching it how to brawl. No. I stared into the uspec’s lifeless face and I felt a deep loss.

Fabiana wept openly. It drew its younger sibling into its arms, and it wept and screamed for it to return. I had never seen another person cry as loudly or for as long as Fabiana did. I did not think that I had ever seen someone lose an uspec that they cherished so much. I had lost a friend once, I remembered Yakubo and its death in Damejo. But now I knew what love was. I knew the bond of family. I thought of the depth of feelings that I had for my offspring and I knew that it was similar to what Fabiana had felt for its younger sibling, Binna. I could not imagine losing my Nebula.

Fabiana wept.

The survivors of our battle gathered around it. I saw Darlin and several of my best fighters. Only the very best had survived.

My gaze flashed on Binna and I felt guilty, so guilty. I should have taught it to fight better. I should have turned it into one of my best fighters. I grieved for it, and my guilt rose in equal parts to Fabiana’s agonized cries. I could not move.

“We should go master,” I heard a hushed voice whisper into my ear. I was so distraught I couldn’t tell if it was Musa or Chike. Imps. None of them were gone, but I’d lost seventy-nine nobles in my honoraria. Seventy-nine uspecs who’d sworn their lives to my mission.

“Sirga, I’ve been to the Hakute hangar. The room is empty. I don’t like it. They must have gotten word of the battle and sent news to the Acropolis. We should enter before the Kaiser sends troops of its own to bar our entry. We must leave now sirga.” Darlin said.

I rose. I didn’t know how it happened, because in my head I was still on my knees, still grieving with Fabiana over the loss of its younger sibling. I was in tears too, I was broken and weak. But I was also standing. Then I was giving orders for the rest of my honoraria to assemble. I heard the words come out of my mouth but I could not imagine how I possessed enough wits to say them or appear confident enough to ensure that the orders were obeyed. I saw myself placing a hand on Fabiana’s shoulder and speaking to it. I said words stirring enough to make the uspec contain its grief, but it brought its sibling with it. It carried Binna in its arms the whole way.

I gave orders for the younger uspecs who’d been left behind to be brought forward. We left the inter-port trail before any of those young minds, my offspring included, could be forever polluted by the sight of the bodies. I found myself walking through an empty hangar and directing Musa to use pansophy to steal tags for the uspecs I had left who were not of the kute spectrum. They would need those tags to survive in the foreign port.

It was easy to slip into Hakute with the hangar deserted. If we hadn’t had pansophy, it would not have been so easy, but we did, and it was. Through it all, my mind was focused on the bodies, the three hundred bodies that we’d left on the inter-port trail. And the one body, Binna’s corpse. How could the uspec be dead?

I was born ready, sirga.

Binna’s words floated through my mind. It had been alive only a few hours ago, smiling at me, asking me to advance, eager to stain its blade with the blood of our enemies. And now it was dead. It felt in some ways as if I had lost my own younger sibling.

But we forged ahead. Even when it was the last thing I wanted to do. I had not thought that this would be the end of the day’s battle. I think in some ways that Arexon’s adamant restating of our odds had been done to prepare me for a conclusion like this, but I had not been prepared. I had been so sure that we would survive with minimal casualties. I had believed that much in the skill of the nobles in my honoraria. Nobles that I had sparred for a month with. Now most of them were gone.

No one spoke as we made our way from the hangar, into the port.

It had been over a year since I’d last been in Hakute. This was the port of my early years. Something about being back in the port reminded me of the slum I’d grown up in. I thought of the simple life I’d lived then and how much I had longed to be a great uspec. Then I thought of the pits of Hakute and a heavy weight settled in my belly.

Strength.

I felt Chuspecip’s presence in me once more. It was not as strong as it had been when I left Lahooni, but I felt it better than I had on the inter-port trail. I felt it take control of me and I was more than happy to give over the control of my body. I was bloodstained and war cursed. No matter how hard I tried, I could not wash away the image of the bodies on the inter-port trail. Fabiana still held Binna’s corpse in its arms.

Quicksand spread underneath me. It was magic coming from me, that much I knew, and it was magic that required almost all of the spectral energy that I had left in my body. But Chuspecip was the expert. Even in its weakened condition, it maneuvered the quicksand easily.

We were all sucked in.

Fazemood:
It's been a hard time this pass few weeks, and staying offline due to bad phone and no service Centre open to fix nor purchase another.

I am glad that I have finally over come this. I I see that I have missed too much, much going back now to start from where I stopped.

Obehid, I hope you have been well and safe?

Glad to have you back! I'm sorry about all the phone issues you had but I'm glad it's over! I am well and safe thanks for asking