Jepp was a good boy.

Or so Sambi had claimed amid a fit of, shockingly enough, giggles as Aleem ran for his life.

The foxlike canine had pursued him with a verve devoid of any discernible affection. Not that Aleem was even sure what that might actually look like in such a creature. He’d seen dogs in his past life cutely wag their tails just before annihilating vermin.

Somewhere in the middle of that near-death experience, Thebas—Morpheus be praised—had lifted the dog in a firm embrace. The creature had calmed down a little after that, being content with Thebas’s evidently effective bestowal of skritches.

“He’s just excited to see you,” Bojra insisted, giving Aleem a gentle pat on the shoulder as she settled down on the flokati beside him. Her hair was done in braided pigtails hanging from either side of her head. She'd come in at some point and gone about returning the mats to their place after giving Thebas a light scolding.

Aleem’s pulse was still pounding in his ears as he tried to catch his breath. If he had a piece of rent clothing for every time one of his friends had said something along the lines of ‘my dog doesn’t bite, they’re very well behaved’, it’d match pretty well with reality, honestly. He wasn’t bad with dogs, just … maybe a little afraid of them—which probably meant the same thing, if his past experiences were anything to go by.

Jepp, panting vigorously and wagging its bushy tail, continued to eye Aleem like raw meat from its place on the floor, but Thebas kept the beast appeased. The armoured knight in literal shining armour was kneeling beside the beast on the other side of the table. Aleem had often heard people insist on having seen sparks of intelligence in an animal’s eyes. He finally understood. Animalistic mannerisms aside, Jepp’s gaze bore a worrying amount of what Aleem could only describe as intelligence. It almost felt like he was being assessed by an elder.

“I did tell you not to run,” Sambi said, trying unsuccessfully to hide her smile with a pout. She was seated on the other side of him, a hand on his back as she helped him get his breathing under control. There was a prickly sensation at the point where her hand made contact with his clothes, a formication, like insects crawling over that sole patch of skin. He wasn’t sure how, but it was helping. Her icy demeanour had vanished entirely, and Aleem wondered what it said about her that she’d only warmed up to him after his life was almost snuffed out. “You run, dogs give chase.”

He’d heard that one too. Rather than protest, he focused on his breathing. He tried calling his basic visualisation to mind, but Sambi’s grip on his shoulder tightened.

“Don’t do that,” she said, shaking her head. “You want to get a handle on your breathing first. If you strain your ducts while I’m doing this, you’ll just end up overtasking your lungs considerably. You won’t be able to breathe.”

Aleem nodded reluctantly as she moved a hand lower down his back. After a few more rounds of breathing, he felt fine. It hadn’t escaped his notice just how much this resembled a full blown panic attack. He was under a lot of pressure, though, and it made sense that his mind had just snatched the first outlet it was handed. None of that made this any less embarrassing.

“Would you like a snack?” Bojra asked Aleem.

“Gods yes!” Thebas declared at the same time Aleem said, “No, thank you.”

Thebas shot him an open-mouthed look of soul-deep betrayal. Still holding on to Jepp, the man seemed to be silently asking ‘how could you do this to me after I just saved your life?’

“Sorry,” Aleem said, actually feeling a pang of guilt. “Jolons packed me lunch. But I can split it with you if you like.”

Thebas’s face brightened. He sniffed, nodding a manly appreciation.

“Well that’s fine by me,” Bojra said. “Because I have reports to write.” She shook her head. “So much work.”

To his left, Sambi groaned as if in agreement. “I don’t even want to think about it,” she said.

“Oh, you’d better,” Bojra chided with a mild moue. “Last thing I need is Yinsi crawling up my—” her eyes darted over to Aleem, “um throwing a fit. Don’t make my life any harder than it already is.”

“Things have been that rough, huh?” Thebas noted. “I thought the base was seeing less activity.”

“It is,” Bojra frowned. “But there’s that whole thing with the other… um—” she motioned with a tilt of her head in Aleem’s direction, and Thebas’s brows rose in realisation.

Aleem narrowed his eyes. “The other what? You just gestured at me.”

It was Sambi who answered. “The other jrjis. The dregs of Vriorian society.”

“Sam,” Bojra scolded weakly.

Sambi shrugged, unapologetic. “You know I didn’t mean anything by it. Prancing around uncomfortable topics is pointless. Two-two has to know what he is at some point.”

Aleem looked between the two sisters talking over him. His mind worked at the double. Jrjis were the lowest caste of Vriorians, virtual outcasts even. The former owner of this body had been one of such, and while it was terribly unusual for jrjis to be as highly functional as Gwa.yao.rai appeared to have been, no one Aleem had met seemed to have batted an eye so far. Or perhaps they’d had enough time to get used to it.

Thebas kept silent, seeming even to avert his eyes. His discomfort struck Aleem as strangely similar to Haimol’s and Des’s last night.

“Fine,” Bojra said with a defeated sigh.

“Jrjis are people like you, Two-two,” Sambi continued.

“People like us,” Bojra cut in, choosing to use softer words. “Vriorian.”

Sambi weighed her head. “Vriorian… but less. I can get into the details later, but the gist of it is you lack the major racial benefits of our kind. Some idiots oh so long ago interpreted that as a very bad omen and, well, here we are.”

“We only ever use ‘jrjis’ as an identifier,” Bojra said. “It’s not a direct reflection on you. Vriorians born without the full array of our racial benefits usually have some telltale defects. That’s where a lot of the stigma comes from. In fact, the caste system is essentially an outdated practice, but...” she gave him a helpless shrug.

Aleem knew a thing or two about ‘outdated practices’. Prejudices were not so easily dispelled. In ‘Tales of Woe’, it’d been something of an open secret that the Matriarch of the entire Vriorian homeland and diaspora was herself a jrjis. She’d been the one to abolish the caste-system even. By the game’s reckoning, that should have been a number of centuries ago. But in a world with magical longevity, it made sense that customs took much longer to die out.

This had all been a tangent though. There was a thick knot of consternation in Aleem’s gut as he asked, “Did something happen to the other jrjis?”

“Yes,” Bojra said, nodding. “So, I did a little digging sometime after we left your tent. I was able to track down a few people who’d witnessed the fight between you and those boys—”

“And while we’re on this topic,” Sambi cut in, “you did throw the first blow—”

“They goaded him,” Thebas said, finally joining the conversation. He appeared to be ashamed of something. “I confirmed from witnesses too.”

Sambi shook her head, “Doesn’t change anything. He promised to avoid trouble.” Her mild glare bore into the side of Aleem’s face. “De-escalate and disengage.”

That was the kind of nifty little motto quoted to children when encouraging them to seek help from adults against bullies. Aleem had been homeschooled up to college in his former life, and had barely encountered any bullies in the traditional sense. But even he knew that a person could only ‘de-escalate and disengage’ so many times before needing to do something drastic.

“Moments into the fight,” Bojra continued, she didn’t seem to mind being interrupted so often, “you began to convulse. Some thought it was just blind range. A frenzy. Then you fell on the floor and began to thrash, screaming, gurgling. The other boys had piled on you and things got really messy quickly, but a few soldiers jumped in to intervene. Dwillo was close by too, so he tied you all up with some cantrip.”

Well, at least that explained the abrasions all over Aleem’s torso and arms. There was more to this story though, and a part of him really didn't want to hear the rest of it.

“Yinsi had headed out to Kanks encampment immediately after attending to you. Apparently, another jrjis there had suffered a manic episode quite similar to yours. Gwa.shao.sheh, or number two hundred and sixty-six as he’s called. He’d been bound up at the time. Guy nearly managed to break out of his confinement. By the time Yinsi arrived he was unconscious and frothing at the mouth.”

Aleem clenched his jaws very firmly, barely stopping his teeth from clattering.

Deep breaths. Steady. Steady.

Bojra was oblivious to his inner turmoil. “The timing seemed to line up quite well too. And we might have written it off as a coincidence, but then on the same day, Evna and Sambi were called down to central zone. Same time.”

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

This was fine. He could handle this. His [Trance] Skill triggered. He hadn’t meant for it to happen, but it did. His emotions grew cool, hollow.

Sambi nodded, folding her arms. “There’s an elderly jrjis woman lodged at one of the rooms in the Premonitorium. Gwa.shao.gu that’s um two hundred and sixty-two. I found her passed out. Foaming at the mouth as well.”

“Wait,” Thebas said, “but they’re fine now right? The other…um— the man and the woman? If Two-two woke up then—”

Bojra shook her head, “Still passed out.”

Aleem held his breath. [Trance] was helping. It really was. Everything was going to be fine. He firmly seized his writhing panic and tucked it deep within himself. He could only repeat this so many times, he knew, but it seemed the only reasonable option at hand. He needed to keep it together.

“It’s why I came over yesterday,” Sambi said, folding her hands over her chest. “Bojra and Yinsi had confirmed that you’d been awake after your episode, which just raised far too many questions. At first, I thought it might have had something to do with the fact that Yinsi got to you on time, but apparently she arrived almost an entire half hour afterwards, which was quite a bit longer than it’d taken me to get to the Premonitorium. Shao.gu and Shao.sheh are still comatose. They haven’t so much as stirred in the past two days.”

“Yeah. I returned to the base with Shao.sheh yesterday,” Bojra said. “He’s been unresponsive since the incident. We’re lodging him at the ens stockade here in second zone, since its closer than the Premonitorium.”

Aleem glanced at where his hands rested limply on the table. His fingers, all six of them seemed to be mocking him.

In ‘Tales of Woe’, sometime before the fall of Ontacreese, a powerful godling, through the extensive preparations of his agents, had thralled four Vriorian jrjis. This godling had then incarnated themselves in one of their Vriorian thralls. A young man in his mid twenties. Or at least, he’d been in his twenties at the beginning of the game’s timeline.

Six-fingered. Six-toed. He’d gone by the name Akniyano and had featured quite heavily in ‘A Grand Farce’, especially in Sheilu’s storyline. Akniyano, being the very bodily vessel of a higher-order entity, had in his possession several tools and boons. Yet one thing that stood out in his skillset was his creative and nigh-unparalleled use of shadows. Which naturally implied a strong shadow affinity.

Aleem’s teeth clattered. He fucking knew it. From the very beginning he’d known—no.

No.

He couldn’t make baseless assumptions. A distant part of his mind laughed at his use of the word ‘baseless’. Still, Bojra and Sambi had only accounted for three jrjis, himself included. If his knowledge of future-past held true, then there was a fourth, another male. It could very well be that one of the other two males fit Akniyano’s descriptions as well.

Even as he told himself this lie, Aleem fought to come to terms with something else. His reflection.

There was a reason he’d avoided mirrors all this time. Even Thebas’s armour had proven too reflective for Aleem back on the cart.

Presently, Aleem tried not to berate himself too much, and that very thing was an exercise in self-restraint. What difference would it have made if he’d found out sooner?

Even if this wasn’t Akniyano’s body, Aleem was very certain that a godling had just tried—and failed—to add him to their thralldom. The game hadn’t been detailed about the event. There was supposedly great destruction following soon after, though that was terribly ambiguous as far as accounts went. ‘Soon’ could mean anything from minutes to years.

So, what then? Had his being transmigrated into this body, interrupted the emanation ritual somehow? And if so, to what extent? Had he merely denied the godling one body out of four, or had the entire affair been turned on its head?

ALERT

The Skill [Trance] has levelled up!

[Trance] Level 3

“—still waiting to hear from mother,” Bojra was saying. “She’ll know what to do.”

Aleem blinked.

Sambi had clasped her hands over his balled up fist. When had that happened? “I’m just glad you’re okay, Two-two.”

Everything was just fine. Perfectly fine. He could deal with this. “Me too,” he said gravely. The steadiness of his own voice surprised him. The table, the people, the moods, everything felt so far away. He was an outsider, looking in from a window and watching things play out. “I don’t…” he wasn’t even sure what he was trying to say.

“It’s okay,” Sambi insisted. She squeezed his hand gently. “What matters is that you are safe now.” Her earnest expression gained a glint of mischief. “Just leave the rest to your big sisters, we’ll get to the bottom of this. Don’t worry.”

Thebas gave her an amused look while Bojra just chuckled. Some of the tension seemed to bleed from their postures, but Aleem still felt as hollow as he’d ever been. Still, he forced a weak smile unto his face.

Bojra gave Aleem a fond pat on the head and rose to her feet. Jepp perked up, his ears pricked. Thebas released the creature and it rose to its full height, almost prancing in place with all the eagerness of a coiled spring. Aleem barely felt himself tense up at the beast’s sudden movements. The creature panted, brimming with unexpended energy. It seemed to like Bojra quite a bit.

“I need to get going,” she said. “So much to do. Two-two, you’ll stay for dinner, won’t you?”

Thebas was shamelessly brandishing puppy-dog eyes at Aleem. Unnecessary. Aleem saw little sense in braving the long walk to the stockade under the midday heat, it was far more preferable to wait till evening. Besides, he needed a place to think and plan and ground himself. Pacing around in the open would have been nice, but he mostly just wanted to do some seated meditation. It had always helped calm him back in his old life. “Sure,” Aleem said, earning himself a jovial thumbs up and grin from Thebas.

Bojra turned in time to see this and she snared at the man, exaggeratedly lifting a hand as though to strike him.

Thebas just jerked away from her, smiling.

“Come on, boy,” she said to Jepp. The creature fell in step beside her.

“I’ll be waiting here,” Thebas called after her. “So I can give you a hand later.”

“Do whatever you want, Thebas,” she said without looking back. Aleem thought he heard a smile in her voice.

The armoured man just grinned goofily at her back, seemingly pleased with the exchange.

Sambi tapped Aleem’s shoulder. “Want to come with me? I could use some company while I fill out my reports.”

He nodded. The ceiling of the apotheca was a perfectly reflective surface. He needed to know for sure.

As soon as they stood up, Thebas set about pulling out the flokatis from beneath the table. Aleem grabbed his tome and followed Sambi back into the apotheca. He closed the yard door behind them, taking the steps one at a time. Even with his [Trance] Skill active, Aleem could feel his pulse racing. The new level up seemed to enhance bodily and emotional detachment. Things he’d already been good at in his old life.

Carefully, very carefully, Aleem looked up at the ceiling’s reflective surface.

He’d played ‘Tales of Woe’ far too many times. Every pivotal non-player character in the game was known to him. He’d always had that affinity for remembering the way people looked and being able to account for age and significant changes. Maybe it was just the artist in him, often mentally reconstructing shapes and forms into new patterns.

All this to say, he knew when he looked up. He knew with all his heart that this was in fact the teenage face of Daranirajido’s incarnation.

Akniyano.

If Aleem’s bruised face were aged up a decade or so, his body swollen in mass and height, cleaned up a fair deal and layered with a dozen auspices, he would look exactly like the Incarnation had in ‘Tales of Woe’.

ALERT

The Skill [Trance] has levelled up!

[Trance] Level 4

Something cold ran through his ducts. He didn’t know if it was his mana. He didn’t care. He just stood there, looking up at his reflection. It wasn’t his fault, Aleem told himself. He’d had reason to believe that the emanation ritual wouldn’t take place so soon. He’d dawdled as a result, thinking he had time enough to come to terms with his reality.

He’d been so wrong. And maybe a little foolish.

A new fear gripped his heart, though he scarcely felt it. What were the consequences of all this? Somehow, he’d impeded a godling’s plans. In ‘Tales of Woe’ defying ‘fate’ was a sure way to earn yourself the attention of very powerful entities. That was its own flavour of trouble. And for all intents and purposes, Aleem’s very existence in this world was a slap in the face of destined eventuality. A slap in the face of those who orchestrated happenstance itself. And he couldn’t even begin to wrap his head around that. It was the whole question of how he’d ended up in Orig to begin with.

“Two-two?” Sambi was looking back at him with a raised eyebrow.

“Sorry,” Aleem heard himself say. He felt an empty smile stretch across his face. “I haven’t looked into any mirrors since I woke up.”

She laughed, “There’s a large mirror in the Ink-room. Come on.”

He moved without noticing in himself a will to do so. Aleem had thought to postpone his meeting with the Representative of Akeshi so he could learn more about the current going ons as well as secure his footing. But that didn’t seem like such a reasonable decision anymore. Besides the fact that the daily sub-Diminution debuff would greatly impede him as more time passed, he was now in a desperate position. Sort of.

In ‘Tales of Woe’, Orotaz was a [Warlock] and Faajian warlord who venerated the godling Daranirajido. In the game, he’d been known to have played a great role in the fall of Ontacreese. Beyond commanding the Faajian hordes, he’d greatly helped facilitate the ritual that enabled Daranirajido to incarnate himself.

However, the reality now was that Orotaz’s ritual had failed. Once more, Aleem wondered if this perhaps had anything to do with his transmigration. Whatever the case, there remained the possibility that Orotaz could simply just try again. Aleem did not want to find out what the effects of that would be. Two whole days had already gone by. But from what he knew of Orig, rituals of this kind could—and would—take lengthy periods of planning. A recalibration, however, was another matter entirely. If they’d taken measures to account for failure, it’d cost them much, much less time to give the emanation another hearty go.

Sambi led Aleem through a side entrance that opened into a stairwell. As they climbed, Aleem decided that he would head over to a shrine and seek divine assistance as soon as he left here. He wanted so badly to do that right now, but there were two very specific windows for directly contacting divine beings.

Twilight. And he had several hours till then. More than enough time to plan and acclimatize himself to the present state of things. At dusk he would invoke Shallentlan’s ulterior names and secure her assistance. This would invite consequences, especially if she hadn’t been the one to intercept those Seeded Directives from last night. But Aleem was fairly confident in his knowledge of the divine song and dance. He let out a sigh under his breath.

He would need to prepare a few oblations—offerings to appease her for his brazenness. And there was only one thing he was uniquely positioned to offer.

Knowledge.