Aleem ended up spending most of the day with Sambi. The Ink-room was cylindrical in shape. Directly opposite the sliding doors was a glass window of equivalent height. Except for the fact that it stopped a couple feet above the ground, it might have passed for a door. The window housed two sashes, one of which had been left open. Warm breeze filtered into the room, ruffling the weighted stack of papers on the low table sitting in the room’s centre. The room smelled of wet paint—a smell he soon came to learn originated from the jars of ink arranged against the wall.

Aleem wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting when Sambi and Bojra had moaned about their reports. There was clearly some sort of miscommunication because it’d taken Sambi something like five hours of slow and careful writing before she was even close to being done. Aleem had never worked a nine-to-fiver, so his conception of reports was probably spotty, but five hours seemed like a ridiculous amount of time to spend writing one.

He and Sambi worked in silence. She with her reports and him with his, well, everything. Aleem meditated for several hours, not all at once though. An uncle of his often spoke of ‘beneficial procrastination’. Productive stalling. A sort of pre-work priming, like taking deep breaths before jumping into a cold shower, so you didn’t shrill like a little banshee. He loosely considered the things he had to do while not quite getting down to business. He sat, he practiced mindfulness, he guided his mana through his ducts and generally just tried to relax. His mana was colourless within him, and tingled his insides. It moved with the all the fluidity of unheated honey.

He also tried chasing down that cold sensation he had felt by the yard door, that coolness in his ducts. He retraced his thoughts in hopes of triggering something similar. That hadn’t borne any fruit, but he made a mental note to try to pay attention when next it happened.

He gave Haimol’s visualisation exercise some hearty attempts, imagining himself as a pool of water. He never made it any farther than he had the night before, but the exercise helped him centre himself, even if only a little. He kept [Trance] running all through but it hadn’t levelled up again. Guiding his mana while practicing the pool exercise turned out to be well beyond his current abilities, so he settled for cycling between the two.

The mirror Sambi had spoken of was latched to the sliding door. Its purpose was entirely lost to Aleem, and when he’d asked about it, Sambi had merely rolled her eyes and said, “It’s for seeing right through the door. What else are reflective surfaces for?”

He’d quickly grown bored with staring at his face. His eyes were slanted at an oblique angle and housed fiery red irises with traces of orange and green. There was not even the slightest hint of peach fuzz on his boyish face. He’d taken quite the beating too. Scrapes and bruises on his forehead, cheeks and jaw. Barring the pink skin colour, he might have passed as an ordinary human.

Reluctantly, he shoved his hands into his matted dreadlocks and felt around till his fingers brushed against a pair of spaced protuberances atop of his scalp. There was that too. Jrjis often had horns, or at least, they had the makings of horns; the ones on his head felt like jagged stubs, not even half an inch high. Powerful Vriorians also grew horns too, and in ‘Tales of Woe’ Akniyano had spotted a striking pair himself.

Thoughts of the incarnation had filled Aleem with dread. It was terrifying coming to terms with the fact that a godling somewhere had designs on this new body. Something truly unsettling occurred to him then. What had actually happened to Gwa.yao.rai? Had the boy died, only for his body to be claimed by Aleem’s consciousness? Hazy recollections of a fevered dream flittered through his mind, but he brushed them aside. That way lay madness of the crippling kind. With everything going on, he couldn’t afford to add an existential crisis to the mix.

He’d taken a short break and returned to the yard so he could split his lunch with Thebas. The meal constituted boiled eggs—each one about twice the size of a quail’s—and finger-thin slices of steamed tubers that tasted like cocoyam. There was also more of that meaty sauce Jolons had served him for breakfast. Aleem made a mental note to thank Jolons once he returned to the stockade. Thebas had gone right back to sleep immediately after eating. Maybe acid reflux wasn’t a thing in this world.

Sambi had taken breaks too. During one of them she’d pestered him about his recollection. “Really? Nothing at all?” she asked as her eyes bore into Aleem’s tome on the table. She tucked an errant lock of braided hair back into the black scarf on her head, frowning. “It’s already been a few days. You aren’t even experiencing a sense of familiarity?”

Aleem shrugged. “I don’t think I’m any closer to regaining my memories than I was when I woke up in that tent.” Lying to himself had always come easier than lying to others, so he tried to keep his words as close to the truth as possible. It was clear to him that Sambi had been a close friend of Gwa.yao.rai’s. Possibly his closest even. The amnesiac card was the only way Aleem knew to cover for what would come across to her and a few others as drastic changes in his mannerisms and personality. It was icky.

“And Bojra told me it was just a mild concussion.” She made a soft ‘tch’ sound. “Annoying. I’ll see if I can get Yinsi to give you a quick examination tomorrow.”

Aleem made a non committal sound. He didn’t care much for that so he moved the conversation along. He touched the tome lightly. “I saw your name a lot in here. Were we—are we good friends?”

“Saw my name a lot, he says,” she scoffed, a wan smile tugging at her lips. “Two-two, those aren’t your notes. That book doesn’t belong to you.”

“Oh.” The amount of relief Aleem felt at hearing that surprised him. “I’ve been trying so hard to make sense of this book. Nearly half the words used don’t make any sense to me, and the notes are just as difficult to follow.”

“It’s Kohv’s,” Sambi said, a hint of bitter fondness in her voice. “She’s my—um, she’s a friend. Studying over at Wesse with her elder brother.”

Aleem recognised that name. One of Haimol’s grandchildren. The old [Turn-key] had mentioned them earlier, Kohv and Eckle. Now that he thought about it, he remembered Des saying something about her children studying. Still, Wesse was quite far away. An entire other subcontinent, in fact.

He couldn’t be quite sure but the mood in the room had changed after Kohv had come up. Sambi hadn’t seemed much eager to continue chatting, which was honestly fine by Aleem. He had dallied long enough.

Over the course of the afternoon, Aleem got down to business and pondered over the issue of allies, specifically of the mortal variety. He only knew of three people on this continent that could be of sufficient aid to him. The first one was the [Hag], foster mother to Bojra and her sisters, and longtime role model to one of the player characters, Sheilu Fir-lilla. Sambi had confirmed that the ancient [Hag] was presently off the continent, doing Dorothy alone knew what. In ‘Tales of Woe’ she’d been portrayed as having lost a lot of her children to the Creckowan disaster, which made sense if she’d been absent. Aleem had every intention of reaching out to her eventually, but she couldn’t help him right this moment.

The same thing applied to Sheilu Fir-lilla, who would be a young arcane swordstress of relatively low elevation at this time. Out of all the game’s player characters, she’d boasted perhaps the most meteoric rise of all. Right now, though, she’d have very little help to offer Aleem. Utility was what he presently needed, and that simply wasn’t Sheilu’s fort.

Wulry Cosk would be a far much better option. By the game’s accounting, the man would currently be an active member of Speckled Eye, a deviant group that ran an arcane black market of sorts, which was just the kind of thing that could help shore up Aleem’s defences. He was aching so bad to practice magic.

On Orig it was possible to cast cantrips and magical gimmicks without using a set of foci, but that was strictly the privilege of the very powerful or incredibly talented, none of which Aleem was. If he wanted to start twisting the fabric of reality, he would need to purchase the appropriate tools. Aleem believed that Wulry would be willing to trade wares for value, and of course there could be no greater value than knowledge. Or so some said.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

This left allies of the more divine slant. Godlings. Aleem sighed. There’d actually been a player character in ‘Tales of Woe’ who was a representative of Akeshi. Luctari. She was powerful but unstable, and he wasn’t sure he could trust her. Better to aim for an even more powerful godling who also happened to have a moral compass. Shallentlan, to be specific.

On the table were two ink-pots, one black and the other red, as well as a wooden container, crammed full with smoothly carved sticks, which he identified as reed pens. Sambi’s penmanship was much cleaner than even Haimol’s had been, but she wasn’t writing in Unolrian. The letters here looked like impeccable and pleasantly proportioned Burmese script. It was as elegant as it was utterly unreadable.

“Hoctan,” she told him when he’d finally asked. “The language is a peculiarity of our Vriorian heritage. Of course, that’s not a privilege that extends to you, being jrjis and all.”

She was mincing words, Aleem knew. Hoctan was an unlearned language. In ‘Tales of Woe’ Vriorians were presented as having an instinctual understanding of it from birth. One of the benefits of their bullshit ancestral magic. There were certain skills that just weren’t ever taught in Vriorian communities because it was expected that all among their kind could access innate abilities from something they called the Grand Coral.

After some coaxing, he’d gotten Sambi to lend him a reed pen. Aleem set about making himself a to-do list. In his old life, this had been one of his most reliable processes for thinking through problems. He’d pace about with a small jotter in hand and make himself a nigh sprawling checklist, each item accommodating exhaustive steps. And while he’d started to feel himself warming up to the idea of boiling his problems down to three distinct items, there were quite a few glaring issues with the model. A stepped-list was so much better in comparison.

That said, Sambi had warned him not to use up her ink, which was something he was pretty sure might have happened if he’d gone with a stepped-list, or if—god forbid—he’d written in Unolrian. He decided then to try combining both systems. Three things he absolutely needed to do along with just a few concise clarifications. Even this compromise had earned him a petulant look from Sambi. Surprisingly enough though, she hadn’t asked him what he was doing, despite having glanced over at his parchment several times.

He wrote in the English language.

ORDER OF OPERATIONS

1. Invocation

* Recite Shallentlan’s ulterior names.

* Appeal to the use of the old customs. Insist that I am merely an Envoy and not a mere Supplicant.

* Be very respectful.

2. Oblations

* Tender knowledge of Panshaan’s meddling in Aminkaal. Make sure to point out that she and her retinue were operating under the benefice of another godling.

* Present details of where the Soul-render Annex can be found. Make sure to underscore the danger of attempting to retrieve it.

* Offer access to my soul schema Offer to let her study my Geas Reveal everything I know about Orotaz’s Emanation ritual, including the fact that it has failed.

3. Requests

* Inquire about the Seeded Directives. What is it and who placed it there? Does it have anything to do with Daranirajido? Get rid of this stupid sub-Diminution debuff while we’re at it.

* Inquire about the nature of Emanation rituals. What happens if it fails? How quickly can it be recalibrated? What steps can be taken to counteract such a ritual?

* Ask for a set of spell-foci Inquire about finding Wulry Cosk. Where in Ontnmor is he? How can I locate him?

Aleem read through his list, frowning. His penmanship had always been quite the scrawl, and this wasn’t improved by the unwieldy reed pen. As a matter of fact, he deemed it cause for celebration that he’d managed to not get the ink running all over the page. He didn’t like this system very much. It turned out a lot more messy than he’d hoped. Well whatever.

Entreating godlings in the game was reasonably straightforward. One just had to find a shrine dedicated to the venerated entity and then present an offering there. The godling of course would be under no obligation to answer right away. Or ever.

A quicker—and far more brazen—way to draw their attention would be to invoke their ulterior names, which was the equivalent of having their private cellphone number. Anyone could miss a work email over the weekend, but phone calls were harder to ignore. Ulterior names were rather personal as they were tied to the origins of one’s existence or the ‘Sithen’, as the game called it. Ulterior names were handed to only the most loyal of worshippers. The tricky part for Aleem would be explaining how he’d acquired them. He intended to present himself as a messenger and had the perfect cover in mind.

In ‘Tales of Woe’ there were arcane customs in place that allowed certain individuals to reach out to higher-order entities through the use of envoys. This was largely frowned upon as it forced both parties to abide by a strict set of rules. When dealing with supplicants, gods or godlings could be incredibly erratic. Naturally, this fact made the oneway mode of communication in basic entreating much safer and far more preferable to drawing direct divine attention.

The old customs, however, dated back to a time when the gods were far less vaunted and thus more active in the world of Orig. Such customs forced both parties to courteously accommodate each other for the duration of their meeting, ensuring a faux-hospitality at the very least. It also afforded a measure of anonymity. While this favoured him, it made sense to Aleem that gods and their representatives would bristle at the prospect of being restricted in some way. He knew from the game just how much the godlings of Orig hated having the old customs invoked upon them. It was a grievous insult, but there was very little that top quality oblations could not mitigate.

Since Shallentlan represented a goddess of knowledge, she would be very pleased by his offerings of information. He’d specifically chosen things that directly related to what little he knew of her long-term goals and ambitions. In the game, the Soul-render annex had been the holy grail among quite a number of godlings. And he was pretty sure that giving up its location would secure a good working relationship between the two of them.

The Seeded Directives were quite concerning, and he needed knowledge about the emanation ritual. Only the most powerful godlings could incarnate themselves through emanation rituals. In ‘Tales of Woe’ quite a few of them had done so, and such things were never a pretty experience for their ‘hosts’. Aleem needed to defend himself against whatever the hell the godling, Daranirajido and his followers had attempted. Revealing the details of the failed ritual was sure to earn Aleem far more attention than he cared for, but that was a price he would gladly pay if it led to Daranirajido being foiled in some way. The game had always pegged the godling’s incarnation as an unexpected occurrence. Aleem needed to spread word of the failed ritual.

He also needed to find Wulry Cosk. Contacting the man would allow Aleem to acquire resources and tools. Being able to practice magic, for one, would give him a sense of control. A direct and discernible path to getting stronger. It would better equip him to handle the clusterfuck that had now become his life.

Under the guise of stretching his legs, Aleem returned to the yard, Kohv’s tome in hand. He ripped off the page he’d written on, crumpled it and shoved it into his mouth. He gagged but suppressed his reflexive revulsion at the terribly unpleasant taste of the paper and ink, masticating the mass sufficiently. He swallowed and hurriedly took long pulls from his water-skin. Maybe that had been stupid. He could have just shredded the page into tiny pieces, but he was going to be messing around with divine entities soon; best not to risk anything.

He noticed his hands trembling and put the water-skin down on the low table. Everything was going to be fine. He had a plan in place. “I have a plan,” he whispered to himself for effect. Sambi had told him that sunset was only two hours away, and the sky seemed to confirm as much.

“It’s going to be alright,” he said to himself. There was something he had tried to put out of his mind. A matter of souls.

In ‘Tales of Woe’, invocations were usually performed within an elaborate script circle formation that anchored the working to a number of designated supplicants. This way, the godling’s manifestation would task the supplicants’ souls alone, instead of weighing heavily on the souls of just about anyone within a wide radius. There had been the rare instance of a godling just popping up willy-nilly and that very often resulted in a good number of unconscious people littering the streets for hundreds of yards in every direction.

If he invoked Shallentlan without making any of the standard preparations, it would mean that he and many other unwilling persons would split the load of the godling’s manifestation. He would be consigning them to the role of battery sources for the godling’s visit.

It was an incredibly shitty thing to do.

He felt sick to his stomach. Aleem closed his eyes and took in deep breaths. He imagined himself as a pool of water. Something reached down and—

His breath caught in his throat. The visualisation unravelled. His panting matched Thebas’s soft snoring.

He couldn’t do this. “I can do this.” He really couldn’t. “I can,” Aleem said. “It’s going to be fine.” He wasn’t above doing questionable things. Deep down he knew he believed he was.

He could very nearly say for a fact that the working wouldn’t kill anyone, but a few injuries to the soul was nothing to laugh at. Shallentlan was strict but noble. Arguably righteous even. Very arguably. Still, he could hope that she would hold back a little.

He clenched his trembling fists. “It’s going to be—” No. He’d engaged in enough denial for one day. He let out a shaky breath, straightened his back and closed his eyes. “I’ll just have to live with this.”

He called Haimol’s visualisation exercise to mind once more and imagined himself as a pool of water.