LO!

You have invoked a Representative of AKESHI [The Pristine Reptile]

Another godling had forcibly ceased control of Aleem’s invocation. He knew exactly who this was. He had to protect himself. “Do me no harm, Luctari! I come as a—

a/a/a/a/a/A/A/A/A

All fall in the presence of—

At the appearance of—

A HAND

A HAND REACHES OUT FROM WITHIN THE UNALTERABLE CONFLUENCE OF KTHES, WHO IS MOTHER OF US ALL. She shapes, she keeps and retains of the past a THRESHOLD that will not bend even if coaxed by the deepest of agonies.

AKESHI IS HER HAND. SHE IS THE ELBOW AND THE FOREARM THAT SUSTAIN THE fist enwrapping…

Enwrapping…

Enwrapping a—

a/a/a/a/a/A/A/A/A

“—an envoy! I come as an envoy!”

He felt something begin to pulse out of him only for it to face painful resistance at the borders of his … shell. He did not scream alone. People were screeching in horror. In Awe? Distant voices. Great and loud and numerous. Aleem fought through the pain.

“Do me no, harm!” he croaked. “I come in the stature of another! I co—

o/o/o/O/O/O/O/O/O

THE HAND IS THE HAND FOR IT YET SPEAKS. REPORTS faithfully. And its report is TRUE. The hand…

The altar has transformed into a yellow tree-sized arm that stops at the elbow. There are eyes on The Hand. THERE ARE EYES UPON IT! All have seen what cannot be seen. None cannot see what has not been hidden. Fo—

o/o/o/O/O/O/O/O/O

His consciousness stuttered. He was screaming again. An indecipherable voice in a sea of wails. [Trance] was ALIVE! It told him that there was something he was meant to do. It was stirring him from sleep, insistent that an important guest had been knocking on his door.

Envoy. The Old Customs. Wait. No harm. No h—

h/h/h/H/H/H/H/H/H

A FOOLISH, namelesss CHILD is bowed in reverent dulia before the glorious…

Glorious…dLcAjXkSjMnhfgn

He yields his histories to the Narrator whose report is true. He hands over…

Gwa.yao.rai willingly offers…

His schema—

He…

H—

h/h/h/h/H/H/H/H

A new presence began to coalesce. It spoke of reprieve. But it was taking too long. The incense was denser than ever; he couldn’t see an inch in any direction.

“Do me no harm!” Aleem screamed, the side of his face still pressed into the plush carpeting. Mana emptied out through his ducts in a cascade of tremulous incandescence. “Finger of Akeshi! Impersoned [Whilom]! I demand,” he wheezed, “ASYLUM!”

He could feel the metaphysical channels within him straining greatly as he poured his entire being into the working. He was giving something and SOMETHING else was greedily guzzling his offering. It felt right.

Appropriate.

“I said, I come as an envo—

o/o/o/o/o/O/O/O/O

SLEEP COMES FOR ALL. Memory fails. The boy FORGETS…

THe pristine finger wipes off…

Erases…dsLdnlNcgwXh

Retention dims...

Forgetfulness…ddHbckbaCahkBh

o/o/o/o/o/O/O/O/O

A new weight presses down on all. A weight of the soul. Greater even than fragmentary divinity. It does not harm the harmless, nor does it o—

o/o/o/o/o/O/O/O/O

DREAMS AND VAIN IMAGINATIONS OF THE CHILDREN ARE unfortunately reified. Their recollection of the supernal is [Denied]! The hand is not present. Nor was it ever here to begin with, for—

o/o/o/o/o/O/O/O/O

The Consuetude, a new weight said in Aleem’s mind by way of introduction.

Albatross of orderliness, preponderance of the ancient ways; the entire framework of Old Customs had come. It had revealed itself, its name. And it weighed so heavily in Aleem’s mind that his consciousness laboured to maintain itself. ‘Old’, the Consuetude clarified, did not mean defunct. Its customs were enduring, immutable. It hummed a tune of penalties. Of enforced hospitality. Of infractions and reckoning.

Even the significance of the godling paled in comparison. Or at least it soon would.

“I know it’s you. Luctari,” Aleem rasped. His breathing was still erratic, but he felt greatly emboldened by the new presence. “I have grazed your Sithen. Do not deny me audience. I come as an Envoy.”

The words pulled more of that cold something out of him and the pressure upon his body began to abate slowly.

“Honour the Old Customs.” Aleem was wrung out, short-winded, scared shitless, weak of body, weak of mind and of… something more internal, and he was very angry. Only one of those emotions offered him anything remotely resembling strength, and he latched on to it like a drowning man. It took all of his residual yet paltry willpower to not call Luctari a fucking lizard. She’d tried to run away the moment her ambush had failed. If the Consuetude hadn’t stepped in just now, Luctari would have knocked him unconscious and fled the scene. “You cannot run a—”

Aleem was flattened once more, but with far less force than the first few times.

“SILENCE!” Luctari’s voice echoed from all around. The glory-speak threatened to render him unconscious. His vision swam. The surrounding air retreated, shied away, skittered from the sound of her voice.

Posturing. That was all this was, and his patience had been worn thin. He could feel the wetness around his crotch. Pissed himself, it seemed. But that was fine. He was on home ground now. Since coming to Orig, Aleem had stumbled from one event to the other but this he could handle. ‘Tales of Woe’ was a game that featured formidable player characters, each one secure in their power. Being so weak, he’d struggled to apply much of that knowledge, but now, in the presence of a player character whose secrets he knew, Aleem felt a surprising amount of keenness.

Still, he wanted so much to scream some choice obscenities at her, but caution won out easily. Aleem needed her to think he knew what he was doing, without infuriating her enough to pull out all the stops to subdue him. He grit his clattering teeth and spoke through them, trying—and failing—to keep his voice steady. “You have defiled convention. The Consuetude bears me witness. The balance now tilts against you. I am not without recourse, Luctari.”

“YOU ARE A WORM!”

“No, Luctari,” Aleem said, only half managing to keep out the chimeric mix of bile and terror from his words, “I am an Envoy. And I bring you uneager salutations from my Master, the Venerable Sibyl, on whose behalf I sought audience with the Palm of Akeshi.”

Sibyl was the username he’d used on several ToW forums back on Earth. Aleem often doled out ‘non-cannon’ information to the fanbase with this username. He’d after all had access to his parent’s outlines—large pages of unadapted content; it’d earned him quite the reputation.

He took in a deep, calming breath It failed to calm him. “Since you took such pains to so gratuitously intrude on my Master’s affairs,” he said, “you’ll just have to stand in place for Shallentlan. Grant me audience.”

“I dO NoT bArGaIn WItH MOrTALs!” The glory-speak had lost a lot of its oomph. A sign of diffidence if he knew anything about her.

“Oh, it’s a little too late for that now," Aleem said. “You can consider this the price of your meddling.”

There was silence, real silence. Even the distant screams vanished. The thick smoke writhed and shimmered and twisted in on itself, returning to an acceptable sparseness in mere moments. Paired with the arrases, it looked like a thin, filmy veil had been laid over everything.

The weight upon his body vanished. Somehow, Aleem knew with unshakable certainty that he was now within the protection of something ancient and stalwart. The Consuetude was a foreign and eerie presence circling the border of his awareness. ‘Tales of Woe’ had only ever referred to it as the Old Customs, and some of the most powerful player characters had placed great reliance on it. It seemed to be the real deal, but Aleem endeavoured to stay circumspect.

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Slowly and with unsteady movements, he pulled himself off the floor and into a lotus position. It was uncomfortable, but his other choices were lying down or kneeling. He couldn’t afford to show weakness to his would-be divine assailant. He scooted towards the altar opposite Akeshi’s and placed his back against it as he watched the final stages of Luctari’s manifestation.

The space above Akeshi’s altar seemed to collapse on itself and expand and grow and dwindle and swell and coalesce and Q/q/QuAke and SHifT anD S/s/s/s/s/SuRGE AND—

The Consuetude pulsed, pushing back against the altar. The strange spacial anomaly bloomed into the giant face of an enchanting woman. It hovered over the altar, a vivid hologram comparable in size to Aleem’s full height and four times his width. Her face was the colour of burnished gold and three majestic horns of glistening quartz sat upon her head. Her dense hair was smooth and sallow, denying gravity its due, floating behind her as though suspended in water.

Luctari.

In ‘A Grand Farce’ this godling had been a real piece of work … but the endearing kind. She’d earned a fair deal of sympathy from him in the game; so much so that Aleem had always found her storyline particularly compelling. But now that those very eccentricities he’d once deemed charming could screw him over, she came across as blood-curdling terror.

Nevertheless, this could possibly turnout to be a much better outcome than he’d envisioned. A part of him was immensely aggrieved at her show of force. It was impotent rage, and he gelded it even further. An outburst would do him no favours now. He was in need of divine help. ‘Help’ that she, a godling of knowledge, was perfectly suited to provide.

Luctari inspected Aleem with a pair of pure white, completely pupilless eyes, an imperious expression on her face. “I SUPPOSE,” she finally said, “MY DAYS OF INTERACTING WITH PAWNS ARE NOT YET OVER.”

“Finally ready to have a civil discussion like an adult, are you?” Aleem asked, frowning up at her. His heart was thumping erratically in his chest, but his voice only barely shook.

Luctari seemed to bristle at his words, all three horns atop her head shifted to a brownish-red glow, her smile slipped. “If anything,” she said, “I am rather agog to learn more about this supposed master of yours. It’s not often that a mortal so readily spurns my goodwill.”

Aleem contained the indignation that surged within him. [Trance] was working over time. His voice was very hollow. “You just tried to ransack my mind. And you consider that ‘goodwill’?”

“Oh?” Her face broke into a predacious smile, baring inhumanly shaped teeth at him. “You haven’t figured it out yet? How disappointing.” The glow of her horns softened into a lively pink hue. “Were my presents not to your liking, little pawn?”

Realisation dawned on Aleem. He nearly palmed his forehead. Of course. It was Luctari’s attention he’d drawn all along. She’d been the one to forestall the Seeded Directives and impose the sub-Diminution debuff. The Consuetude pulsed heavily, and Aleem got the distinct impression that Luctari was still withstanding it somehow. That was concerning.

“I can tell no lies.” Luctari’s opaque horns began to sparkle a yellow-tinged pink with splotches of saxe. “You have piqued my curiosity. When last I checked, there was nary a sign of some conceited Seer stirring your path.” Her malicious smile widened; a horrifying sight on such an immaculate face. “See, I’ve already skimmed your entire pitiful existence, and I must say, it is rather unimpressive. Yet I have completely been unable to so much as glimpse your Sithen.”

He’d hoped as much. The powerful on Orig were skilled at hiding their origins and their envoys were also shielded from scrutiny. The Sithen was not merely one’s history, but that tied quite heavily into it. The fact that he’d transmigrated from another world should make his Sithen all but undecipherable, better helping him sell the envoy act. “I come in the stature of another,” Aleem said. “It’s only natural that my Sithen would be obscured by the one I represent.”

“True.” Her disembodied head leaned forward, eyes gleaming like a pair of snowy-white fluorescent lamps. She seemed excited. “The practice of deploying weak and disposable envoys is not utterly unheard of. But to encounter something so outrageous in this far-flung sand heap? Spectacularly unusual.” It appeared that the game’s read on her was mostly accurate. Luctari clearly loved the sound of her own voice, which was probably a flaw all godlings shared. “A faceless, unassuming boy with little to his name but a tragic destiny; average by any worthwhile standard with a Sithen so perfectly concealed. Honestly, I might have considered it all a fascinating oddity, if I hadn’t already detected that fiat in your soul.”

Was she talking about the Seeded Directives?

“And then after I was kind enough to summon you for further inspection, you tried to bypass me and take our business elsewhere.”

“Luctari, you and I had no business until you tried to rip knowledge right out of my head.” He took another calming breath. “You even shamelessly tried to flee after your assault misfired. I’ll be sure to exact hefty reparations. As is proper.”

He’d meant it as an empty threat, token posturing. But at the mention of reparations, the Consuetude seemed to tighten its hold on the surrounding vicinity, concurring. Well, that was a pleasant surprise.

Luctari’s horns turned a red so blinding that Aleem had to avert his gaze. “I AM A SEDIMENT OF KTHES! I CANNOT be coerced by some gutless mortal who hides behind inutile ordinan—Ow!”

The Consuetude pulsed, suppressing Luctari physically. She winced as the glow of her horns dimmed and her skin lost its sheen. Even her magnificent and imposing visage upon the altar appeared to shrink a fair deal.

The Consuetude seemed capable of keeping her in check, but he feared to swear by it. Even now she pushed against the framework as it sought to contain her, and while Aleem doubted she could actually repel it, ‘doubt’ was not something he’d prefer to base his actions upon. He didn’t even so much as entertain the thought of actually threatening her, despite having the means to the do so. Luctari was a spiteful little godling. ‘Vindictive’ didn’t begin to cut it. He was not going to initiate a prolonged bitter quarrel with someone who’d had centuries to hone malice. Well, not yet, anyway.

He simply thought it best to trade on even footing, but Luctari enjoyed her games, and would continue ruthlessly seeking leverage even if it cost her less to just embrace fairness. If there was any merit to the Consuetude, it might favour him to keep the balance tilted against her. Leave himself enough give for sufficient protection if things somehow came down to that. In the meanwhile, he would focus on incentivising her cooperation through positive means.

He lifted his chin, channelling an arrogance that simply couldn’t match hers, but this wasn’t a competition. “I’m not nearly as average as you think,” Aleem said. He was more than half sure she hadn’t noticed his Geas yet. And this one had to be of a high enough grade to come across as the working of a skilled master. Now to bluff a little. “A Geas was placed upon me. I can’t say by whom—for obvious reasons—but I’ll have you know that it’s in your best interest to hear me out.”

Luctari graced him with a scornful smile. “I already know about—” she froze. Her horns shimmered a resplendent yellow tinged with ash-grey.

Something washed over him. It felt like water but without its wetness and tendency to cling. It left his skin cool. Was she scanning him? Luctari’s white eyes widened in frenzied recognition. Of what, Aleem couldn’t say.

“Oh, what a dud spiff-lock you are,” she drawled in a frighteningly quiet voice. The Consuetude pulsed, which seemed to suggest that she had just tried something borderline hostile. “One bothersome mystery after another with layers and layers of facile complexity. How curious. Someone has invested a fair bit in you. A divine-grade Geas. Hmm. Well, that certainly explains the Seeded Directives.”

Aleem put on his A-game poker-face. Holy shit! Divine-grade? Only Tutelars—the actual gods of Orig—could place such things. It made no sense whatsoever to Aleem that he had such a powerful Geas, if all it ever seemed to do was prevent him from revealing details about Tanton. Then again, he hadn’t actually investigated the extent of his Geas, which considering the circumstances was fairly reasonable. He would need to rectify that.

More importantly, however, Luctari had just confirmed that the Seeded Directives were directly tied to whatever Tutelar had placed the Geas on him. Daranarijido was not a god, so that ruled him out.

He felt that odd sensation of dry water wash over him once more. She was definitely scanning him.

“I am intrigued to the point that I could just TEAR THROUGH this invidious observance you and your … master have taken refuge in, if only to cut you open and sift through all your secrets.” She let the words hang for a moment, and Aleem found that he was holding his breath.

She was bluffing. He hoped she was.

Luctari chuckled darkly. “But that would be much too hasty of me, wouldn’t it? I’ve already incurred more amercements than I care for.”

“Wise,” Aleem said, his voice very nearly pitching into a whimper. He cleared his throat, keeping his confident facade in place. “My Master knows things you don’t and you know things she doesn’t. Let us trade without fear of favour, Luctari. As I’ve already demonstrated, my role here is to disembarrass you of your ignorance.”

Luctari glared at him. “YOU ARE SHOWING,” her horns flashed yellow and pink with specks off grey, “a dangerous amount of impudence, Supplicant.”

“Once again,” Aleem told her, “I am not a supplicant. I come as an—”

“Yes, yes,” she cut in, a sullen look on her face. “You come as an envoy.”

If she had any discernible irises, he suspected she’d have rolled her eyes. All three horns had dimmed to a mostly colourless hue. One moment she showed hollow rage, the next, droll frustration. What a pendulum she was.

In the silence, she seemed to struggle with herself for a moment, horns alternating between purple, red and yellow. “I will … comply with this VILE observance … until I grow bored of it.”

Something clicked into place, the ambience in the chaplet seemed to gain a new texture. Where before, it spoke of equality, now it seemed to profess fairness. Equity. Not merely equal footing, but precise commensurateness. His mind interpreted the concept as a seesaw-like structure whose fulcrum and engine was the Consuetude. There was a noticeable imbalance. The structure was slanted at a steep forty-five degree angle. His end of the platform was high up in the air, and Luctari’s was well below the fulcrum.

The strange diagrams and images on the faint arrases flanking them reshaped themselves. Luctari’s head shrunk to nearly half the size of Aleem’s full height.

The oblations he’d prepared were mostly useless now. And while the Soul-render Annex would work marvellously as an actual bargaining chip, he was not comfortable delivering something that valuable into the hands of Luctari. He’d rather have a far more ‘righteousness-aligned’ entity come into possession of it. Shallentlan, for one, would have appreciated the show of good faith far better than Luctari ever could. He was not short on bargaining chips for Luctari, however. He knew most of her quests by heart, which translated to knowing quite a bit about her.

But something else had been bothering him since they’d started talking. Why had she intercepted the Seeded Directives? It was clear she didn’t know what they entailed and Luctari was selfish. She wouldn’t have done it out of a sense of duty; such things were inconsequential to her. Curiosity maybe, but even then only as a secondary incentive. ‘Tales of Woe’ had been very specific about how the Creckowan disaster had caught the Ontacreesians with their pants down. No one had anticipated it. And it was also heavily implied that the gods themselves had mostly been blindsided by Daranirajido’s incarnation.

Had Luctari picked up on the failed emanation ritual? There was no way to know without asking. This felt like the right direction to go. But first, reparations. Something that would be easy for her while still being beneficial to him. Luctari would be easier to manage if she felt like he wasn’t being soft. “There is a man I have been tasked with finding,” Aleem said. “Wulry Cosk. Tell me where he is.”

Her horns settled into their crystalline hue but with mottles of yellow and grey. “He is here on this site. Chained and interned beneath the stone.”

Before he could inquire further, an enormous construct of light and force appeared before Aleem’s face. He jerked away in shock, then realised what it was.

An intricate array of nested heptagons, finely detailed with contour lines and discernible bas-reliefs.

A topographic map of the Outpost. It was far more comprehensive than anything he’d expected to see here. Strangely enough, it looked remarkably similar to something right out of ‘Tales of Woe’. This was no time to marvel at that little fact, however. His gaze scoured the apparition, aiming to memorise sections of it with each blink of his eyes. Wulry was here in the second zone of the outpost, north-east quadrant. There weren’t—

Something poked at Aleem’s awareness and he noticed how the Consuetude did not impede the probe. Aleem squinted at the map before him. It wanted to… to do what? His awareness was poked again. He noticed now that there was some passive resistance from outside himself—the thought of ‘shells’ occurred to his mind once more, and he found that he could retract that resistance.

Tentatively, Aleem did so. The map shimmered and stretched in his direction, genie-effect style. He flinched backwards, but it was faster, funnelling into his glabella. The space between his eyes burned and his mind was immediately filled with an uncannily specific understanding of the layout of the entire Wotbourne Outpost. His newly acquired ‘understanding’, however, did seem to favour a handful of direct paths to Wulry’s precise location.

There was a tingling sensation behind his eyes, his mana stirred within him then stilled. The Consuetude marked their exchange and Aleem could feel the balance between himself and Luctari approaching equilibrium. Can’t have that. He let out a heavy breath and delved right to the heart of the matter. “An Emanation ritual was enacted about three days ago. The Irulowan Star, Daranirajido tried to incarnate himself. He failed.”

Luctari’s floating golden hair froze in place. It was hardly the only sign that she was affected by his pronouncement. Her horns drained to a glistening silver with speckles of yellow. Her white eyes glassed over, and how Aleem knew this when she had no apparent irises was honestly beyond him. Magic fuckery no doubt.

What he could see was that her eyes lost their lustre as something pushed against him. It didn’t feel like it’d been aimed at him though. It moved past him, spread out into… wherever.

Luctari blinked. Her horns darkened to a dull grey as she fixed surprised eyes on him. “You,” she said breathily. “It was you!”