I must have passed out for a moment, because Nala seems to have finished brewing some tea out of willow bark. There’s a cup, no saucer, or coaster, just a cup that’s still warm, sitting on the end-table. Kind of her to leave it for me, as quietly as she must have done. I try to gulp it down, knowing how bitter it’s going to be. Ack, yep, bitter, ugh. Flexing my jaw and rubbing my temples, I plead for the headache to just go away. I’ve got too many important things to do.
As I’m settling back in, to let the salicilin work its anti-inflammatory properties, I freeze, once again noticing the Gray-scaled figure. This time however, she’s not looking directly at me. She’s gazing out into the hallway, upwards towards the ceiling in the distance. It gives me the clearest view yet of her slender, smooth, supple neck, and the scars located thereon. Oh. She—. Her voice box, or vocal chords may have been severed. Gosh. How the hell does she not register on my silent sonar though? Wait, could she be a ghost? What if she’s dead, and is trying to seek help from anyone who can see her?
If she were a ghost, that could maybe explain some of the weird phenomena. I guess, like, sometimes beautiful women become banshees or something, and if she were a banshee without a voicebox, then she’d just have the allure that brings people in close enough for the scream, but no scream. You’re reaching Reggie. I know! It’s, it’s, it’s flustering, and inappropriate, and shallow, and I’m trying to rationalize it away!
Calm down. Besides, she’s right there, and this time, she’s not looking at you, so she’s definitely not trying to kill you. Hell, the way she’s turned, she’s exposing just enough of her backside to be showing vulnerability to you. Showing trust. If she knows you’re awake anyway, which she likely does, if it’s really the Spymaster, Errissa. Is that what this is about, a show of trust? Sh-should I do the same? I gulp and agonizingly slowly turn my back towards the figure, facing the wall as I lay down.
I begin sweating with fear, the vulnerability is terrifying. Exposing my unarmored back to someone that’s likely a master assassin is pure madness. I’ve almost completed turning away as the sweat begins stinging my eyes, but I want to keep my vision locked onto her as long as possible. She seems to disappear whenever my gaze leaves her. Hey Reggie, maybe stop obsessing and let your gaze leave her, then she’s gone, and there’s no assassin at your back to have to trust.
My chest heaves as I breathe deeply, slowly. I wet my dry, cracked lips, and intentionally blink in slow motion, trying to will my eyes to stay closed as she’s still just barely in the periphery of one corner of one of my eyes over my shoulder. When I open my eyes, the silhouette that marks her exquisite frame at the edge of my vision is still there, and this time, she’s moving, stretching almost lazily. There’s a sway, a saunter to her step as she works loose her various muscle groups. Her tail swishes back and forth, twitching like a cat’s as its tapered further half remains aloft.
I gulp as she approaches me, and yet again I’m completely captivated, frozen in awe and fear. Her scaled, dainty, clawed right hand enters the top of her tight-leathers to withdraw a small scrap of parchment. She lifts a larger lock of my hair, and sets the paper beneath it. I sense an almost humor-filled, delighted motion as she backs away, turning around beyond the edge of my sight. After a moment, the spell is broken once more, and she has vanished once again.
I gulp and hesitantly, tentatively reach for the small note. It simply says three words, three words that frighten me in ways, and uplift me in others. The note says, “Trust is earned,”.
Knowing that she’s the Spymaster, I feel for grooves in the fairly thick, small paper, and I find what I’m looking for. I have to make a quick etching of it. Two more words, “Not given.”
Trust is earned, not given? Is she warning me not to trust her? Is she saying I haven’t earned her trust yet? What the hell lady! Spooking the crap out of me, then leaving cryptic messages? I— want to blame you for the weird infatuation I feel, but that could be my own shallow stupid fault, maybe, probably. I’m really, really hoping it’s some sort of lingering effect of the psi-attack from the brainlash by Taurkul-whatsit, and that it wears off.
Tairkul, that was it. Her brainlash spell hit me pretty hard. Yeah, yeah that must be it, just some brainlash effect that um, uh, makes you think you’re in love with the next person you see that you’d be attracted to anyway that you haven’t already met or seen before? You’re really reaching Reggie. I know! If it were just the next person you see that you aren’t already infatuated, or in love, with, then it would have been Tairkul herself, or maybe Kinzul if it can’t endear someone to you that attacked you. Or it would have been Nala maybe, with, um, both of those rules, but lax on the seen before part? Ugh. I need to learn the dispellation spell as freakin’ soon as possible, but after the detect thoughts, as Kinzul ordered. One of the nice things about the dispellation spell is it can help pick out what sort of magics are laid on a thing. I suppose I could also try to find a mirror, and look at myself with the aura vision sense cranked up high.
Reggie, are you willing to maybe accidentally screw over any of your self-buff spells, on the off-chance, that you think maybe an enemy made you infatuated with an ally that you’d probably have had a crush on anyway? I—. Remember, she is drop-dead gorgeous, and could likely drop you dead. Flippin’ heck. I’m a shallow dickweasel. I really need to talk to Lu. Te would be laughing too hard, and pushing me to try to add Errissa to our affection-circle. Lil would just shrug and tell me to follow my heart or something, the goon, when he knows I call him My Heart. I can’t exactly “talk” to Lucky. I in absolutely no way whatsoever want to bring this to the attention of Lady Kinzul. She tolerates my accidental infatuation with her own grandiose appearance to a very minor degree. I don’t want to give her cause to think I’m going to mess up the organization for personal desires.
Argh, but I also want to be transparent, and completely honest with Kinzul, so we don’t have any stupid sitcom hijinks, or actual fatal situations that could have been avoided by just talking about things. Huff. Crap. I’m probably going to talk to Ki—. Errissa touched her lips in the shushing motion. She wants me to earn her trust, and wants me to keep my mouth shut about her? I already spilled the beans to Nala, but Nala’s in denial about it, so she doesn’t believe me. Maybe Nala doesn’t count then. Or maybe her and Nala are good friends, and they’re playing a huge prank on me, and Nala hid some sort of infatuation charm in my clothes.
Please let it be that simple. I begin disrobing entirely to carefully search every inch of my clothing, and hair. I’m absolutely bare, bent over, hastily searching through pockets and pouches and folds of my clothing, when I hear a light scritching behind me as of clawed boots scraping stone floor. Nope. Nope. Not going to turn around, not even going to wonder who I’m mooning. The heat that flashes through my face could weld metal. I lean forward, facefirst in the bed, pull my knees up to my chin, and throw the covers over myself, attempting to sleep in a ridiculous position.
Thankfully, between the headache, and the embarrassment, sleep takes me.
Yawning, and incredibly uncomfortable, I awaken with a stretch as I flex my jaw and wet my lips several times. I have no clothes on. No one shall speak of this. I struggle my way into all the layers of clothing, and even equip my Valkyrie armor for good measure, to cover any of the holes that have been melted into, stabbed through, or burned out of my clothing. Enchanted clothes are remarkably resilient, but I’ve been hit with a lot of stuff since coming to Rayileklia. I struggle to fight the stupidly embarrassing thought of having been seen bent over, bare, pretending to be able to think about the damage my clothes have taken.
Don’t ask Nala if she saw your butt. You don’t even have a butt. Don’t ask Nala if she saw your butt. You don’t even have a butt. Don’t ask Nala if she saw your butt. She won’t mention it. It can go forgotten by the wayside. You could be subtle, you could ask what kind of footwear she wears. No, don’t mention anything, confirmation would just make it worse. This is Fakeworld sitcom levels of stupid! This whole thing since that crazy--! Glp— crazy-gorgeous assassin, spy, something or other, showed up. Ugh. What the hell Reggie? I couldn’t even go through with thinkingly calling her crazy. There definitely is something messed up going on here.
Teuila is going to mock me mercilessly when I admit all this to her. Lu might join in. Lil will if Luni does. Ugh, my headache’s coming back just thinking about it. I mean, sure, it’s probably kind of funny from an outside perspective, but I’m the inside perspective. Some Spymaster playing headgames with the new recruit, maybe throwing down some bewitching powder or some charm potion in the sweat on her scales, her lovely, smooth, glistening-neath-the-glowlichen scales, err, or something.
If I thunk my forehead into this wall of the door to the library enough times to— dislodge the enchantment that I’m trying to believe I’m under, and accidentally cave my skull in, do you think Nala would be upset? Grim Reggie, completely uncalled for, unrealistic, and just gruesome. Ugh, why’d she have to meet my gaze for so long? On several occasions. Repeatedly. With those insanely exquisite silver eyes.
I need to find someone else to talk to, someone that knows the Spymaster’s thingy, the, um, hell my brain’s going fuzzy. Alias is tied to a— Latent, that’s it. Hellspit and Fel fires Reggie. This is really throwing you off your game. I know! Ow, gorram headache is back. I do need to avail myself more of the library though, and I said I’d help Nala. Maybe just quietly sorting books will help out some.
I draw a deep breath, loose a sigh, and breathe deeply one more time before I stride into the library to offer my sorting aid to Nala. She makes no mention of possibly having been mooned, and I quickly begin picking through relevancy-scored texts to shelve them in their approximate orders, leaving enough room that texts with more common alphabetical beginnings and more popular topics have more room. As Nala continues to finish marking relevancy scores at a blisteringly quick pace, I struggle to keep up with the shelving. For someone that never sleeps, I guess it makes sense that she’d somehow have already read every friggin’ book in the library that she maintains. Or maybe it’s her Latent that’s guiding her towards what relevancy scores to give various books. Or possibly both.
It is rather pleasant, working in silence with her, but I should probably be having her lecture me more about current affairs, how things got this way, and so on. I bring it up to Nala, and she agrees. She’d gotten so used to simply working in silence, that it didn’t even occur to her to speak with a partner that is managing to help out and not get underfoot.
Nala continues instructing me about the state of Rayileklia. I’m rapt while listening to Nala for the most part, and I try to pay extra special attention to things like how several orders of dragons banded together, with Kinzul in the lead no less, to push back the Felgre horde originally. Slaying enough of them, and setting up or caving in or locking down some kind of portal is a bit unclear, since they didn’t want the knowledge of how to free the Felgre horde to get out. The knowledge was held by only a select few acid dragons. Huff. Yep. Go figure, Astridus betrays all of Rayileklia at Terrorzin or Olashax’s behest. That’s confirmation enough for me to believe so anyway. I doubt Kinzul would have somehow convinced those pair of Terrorzin loyalists to go open the gates to the Felgre horde, even if she’d wanted to, and I doubt she’d want to unleash such a thing.
Kinzul knows now that the Felgre horde was unleashed, or she’s known for a while, due to having a Spymaster, and a Pawn, a messenger. Wait—. Latents and Aliases are supposed to be related. Teuila got the Alias of Tenith, which happens to be the first name of a friendly, funny, quirky goddess of sky and storm. But Teuila’s Latent is something like “complete control over the forces of attraction.” Oh that butt. That absolute butt. Teuila, you utter butt. I bet in a private thinkspace channel, Te had let Kinzul know, or something, so that her Alias wouldn’t just be like, Gravitar or something, making it more abstract, to be able to possibly apply to several meanings of her Latent.
I call out, “Pardon me Nala, I have to go see a woman about a curse.”
Nala waves me off, and I rush my way down towards the lowest levels, periodically sensing outwardly telepathically for Teuila. Finally we connect, and I breathe a sigh of relief, while trying to hide a hint of frustration.
Teuila’s telepathic avatar leaps at mine, calling out, “Air! You’ve been gone for hours, and I’m getting wrecked, mega sleepy, mega mega mega sleepy like Lil would say. I missed you though.”
I try to keep a straight face as I ask, “Teuila, did anyone explain to you what Latents and Aliases are?”
Teuila’s telepathic avatar squints at me, but neither confirms nor denies for a long while. My avatar returns the squint in suspicion as I ask, “Te, did you try to use your Latent on me?”
Teuila, innocently enough, asks, “What’s a Latent? Or, what’s mine?”
Teuila’s fishing. I’m trying to hide the details mentally, but she’s got me, and I’m going to have to explain. I groan as Teuila’s avatar grins derpily. I explain with a sigh, “Huff, Latents are those special talents that the Sisters told us about. Our Aliases? They’re literally empowering our Latents with Kinzul’s own dragonforce. She’s invested her own life essence in us to expand those powers Te. Yours could have been something like Graviton or Magnetar or something. Why’d she choose Tenith?”
Teuila shrugs and hazards a guess, “I dunno, because Tenny was a super-cute awesome hotty goddie?”
I furrow my brow and press, “And how would she have known that about Tenith Grayl, the Sky Unending?”
Teuila shrugs again, and tosses a frown my way as she guesses, “I dunno, Lu could have told her about all of our Can’Z’aas stuff.”
I—. She’s got me there. Crap, she’s grinning like a loon again. She knows she’s got me, and I have to explain why I’m asking all this. Te, you’re a butt, a complete and utter butt.
Teuila’s mental avatar actually bursts into a cackle. Not many people can pull off a cackle. On a good day, Teuila is one of them. Today is not a good day, heh. Teuila pouts at my train of thought, so I flash her a retributive smirk.
I grumpily explain the situation, “So, I was doing what Kinzul wanted me to do, sort of, I kind of have to work with a grumpy librarian and jump through some hurdles and learn some stuff before I get access to the resources I’ll need. That’s Nala, one of the people we saw standing over us the other morning, with Kinzul. No one new. No, the first new person I saw, was an unbelievably gor—, koff, I mean, the Spymaster. Somehow, either one of my Latents, or my Alias, or my position, or my honoris causa, or one of my senses let me see the unobservable Spymaster. We locked eyes Te. We locked eyes! I gazed into the swirling mercury vortex of her ethereally beautiful eyes for minutes before either of us did anything!”
Teuila begins giggling like a madbeast, not quite admitting it yet. I fight the smile on my face that spreads from her infectious laughter. I grump, “It’s not funny Te, she got spooked when I stood up, because she could tell I could see her, something that no one’s supposed to be able to do. She’d been observing me, maybe not sure if I really saw her til then, since I’d been frozen with a lump in my throat, until I stood. But then I *couldn’t stop thinking about her.* You absolute butt.”
Teuila’s giggle becomes stronger, a deeper belly laugh, I bite my lips to keep from laughing with her. I try to lean over into anger, to try to get my point across, as I mutter, “She showed up again, when I was trying to rest off a headache. She was perched over me, standing on a table while I’d been sleeping, and it looked like she was going to friggin’ assassinate me for having seen her, or having been thinking about her, or the way my gaze kept drinking her in, like I was some pervy lech or something!”
Teuila’s laughter stops instantly. Panic, fear, and anger, and sorrow well up in her eyes. I regret my outburst, I leaned into anger, to try to hide how enamored I am of the Spymaster. I gulp as I continue, “Sorry, I—, it’s okay. She didn’t try to hurt me. She left me with a note, said three words easily Trust is earned, and in secret, said two more words, not given. I have no friggin’ idea what to make of it. The thing I didn’t really tell you is every time she showed up, my brain went friggin’ loopy while she was there, and for a good long while afterwards. I was *Crazy!* for her with a capital C.”
Teuila recovers while wiping tears from her telepathic avatar’s eyes, and she manages a snicker at that. I sigh and ask again, “So, Te, did you use your absolute control over the forces of attraction on me, after you’d been titled by Kinzul?”
Teuila gasps and begins giggling again as she responds, “I, hahaha, I totally made you lighter, for Lu, so she could hold you while I took the Turkey to Aunty Zool. Did, hahaha, I mean, I tried to make it more powerful, to show off, and make it last, hahaha. Did I do that?”
My mental avatar facepalms. I wonder if Kinzul knows what she has unleashed, and if this is why she picked Tenith instead of a gravity based Alias, to broaden the scope of Teuila’s powers. I grumble, “Teuila, I’m serious, it’s been hours, and I don’t know when the effect is going to end. She was the first new person I’d seen since you used your power on me, and I’m head over heels gaga for her. My brain keeps trying to rationalize it, and it’s getting pretty good at it! Thinking about her sleek form in her tight-fitted leathers, her amazing silver eyes, her perfect slate-gray scales, her— Ack! What if this is permanent!?”
Teuila’s giggle fit continues for far too long and I can’t help laughing with her, due to the infections nature of her melodious laugh. Dangit all. Even as I laugh, I’m imagining the saunter of the Spymaster, the swish and flick of her tail, that penetrating stare, her silver-eyed gaze.
Teuila manages to grump, “Okay, if you keep that up, I might get a bit jealous.”
I fail to prevent myself from rolling my eyes as I blame her, “Te, this one’s totally on you. Every time I see her, or think of her, I’m probably going to go crazy for a few hours until this side of this thing wears off. Unless it already has worn off, and now I just feel this way because it was on me long enough to make me notice how slender and supple her physique was, how her perfectly rounded-to-a-point face was marred by only a single vertical scar that continued from her left brow down to her left cheekbone, how her graceful, serpentine neck was smooth, soft, and scarred along her vocal chord region. Gack. Friggin’ hell. What if I now just feel this way because of that, because of paying attention to those things that way Te?”
Teuila alternates between tittering, and frowning. After a few moments, she offers up, “Then just ask her for some smoochin’, if she says no, maybe that’ll break the spell. If she says yes, well, sounds like a hell of a crush.”
My mental avatar facepalms again. I knew this would happen. I knew exactly that she’d recommend this, and yet I asked anyway. I can’t help laughing about the insanity of it all. I grump, “I’m going to have to admit my sudden newfound mental weakness to Kinzul, and *we* are going to have to admit your powers might be a little out of control if you didn’t even mean to do that—.”
Teuila frowns as she admits, “Okay, okay, I was kinda playing around with that side of it. I thought, I dunno, you’d wake up and the first thing you’d see would be me, but you didn’t wake up right away. Then I thought maybe you’d see Lu, and you missed her so much, so maybe I ramped it up some, okay, maybe a lot. I didn’t think it’d keep building up, and wait to kick in until you saw someone you hadn’t met before. I’m sorry Air, my Airhead. I—, I wasn’t thinking.”
Now I have to gnaw on my lip and figure out how to approach this. Worse, Teuila’s going to know my thoughts going through it, and I don’t want to hurt her, but some of the thoughts are probably going to be hurtful. Like, that’s not okay, this wasn’t okay. If it had just given me a zing of the crazies for Te, and she was just doing that for us as a one time thing, and it wore off right away, it’d have been fine, funny, we’d have had a laugh. But this was like using a love potion on someone, almost mind-control, maybe. I probably coulda, woulda maybe been attracted to Errissa anyway, so I don’t know how much effect it actually had. Ugh, it’s definitely something that we need to have consent for in advance from now on though, whatever the case. It also bears some experimentation, which is going to be absolute hell.
Teuila is sad, and repentant, and I’d like to absolve her, but my migraine has returned, and for all I know, it could be because I’m still thinking about Errissa in the back of my mind, her dainty, dexterous hands, her—. Fudge! I can sense that Teuila wanted to giggle at that, but she’s sorrowful, and worries that she might have hurt me, or our relationship. Sighing, I rub my eyes and sniffle, before my mental avatar wraps Teuila’s avatar in a tight embrace.
I mumble, “I love you Te, My Wings. Always and forever, above all else. I’m sorry that I’m upset about this. It is honestly sort of funny, but it’s also really bad.”
Teuila nods, sniffling, “You’re right, I know. I—. I’m sorry. I’m, I’m trying to find the right emotions, the right words. I don’t want to be manipulative, or petty. I’m just so sorry, and part of me wants to beg you to not hate me—. I, I know how that sounds. Overdramatic, manipulatively sorrowful. But, glp, but I really feel it. I’m sorry, I really, really messed up. That got way out of hand, and, and, glp, it shouldn’t have been in-hand in the first place, without warning, and, and consent. Glp. I don’t know when would be right to ask for your forgiveness. I—. Yeah.”
Gulping my own sadness down, I try to be myself, and be there for Teuila. I find myself wondering if the fact that I held Nala’s hand through a panic attack was because of my own reaction, or because of the Latent effect. Nala was very distressed about me having done that. How much was Te’s Latent boosting all of my empathetic and infatuatory responses?
Sighing, I try to quiet my mind so that I can absolve Teuila, “I know Te, I know you wouldn’t intentionally hurt me, or do something that would really mess me up. It— it’ll just, I mean, I do forgive you. Like I said, it’s funny in a sense, but it also may have set me up with a vulnerability, so it could have some really bad consequences. I, I’m sorry to put that on you, and make you feel so bad about it, especially when I don’t know how much was the actual effect, and how much was me.”
Teuila half frowns as she nods, “Sorry Air. I’m not sure either. You do get pretty smitten pretty easily, but I don’t remember you going on and on about Alanea’s pillows for too long, or her dominating your thoughts. Same with Tiki, sexy-dorable gremlin munchkin lady that she is. Goblin, something, I don’t know. Fun is what she is. Mm, real fun. Soft in all the right places, just a bit of squish, all in a tight little packa—. Sorry, where was I?”
I snort and burst into laughter, shaking my head incredulously. I honestly can’t tell if Te was running a bit on me at the end there, because I’m pretty sure we both feel that way about Tiktik.