Bath and Lisa both felt the atmosphere in the room chill.
Lisa gave Bath a glance, then continued: “Though I’ve never been able to see a gate in person, I can’t fathom why taking from it and entering it are so different.”
Jessup’s eyes gleamed as they flickered from Lisa to Bath, then back. “Of course this is the first time you’ve seen a gate,” he chuckled, though his voice was without humor. “Your bodyguard is your inheritance, correct?”
Bath chose this moment to laugh. He wanted to suck these Ritus people dry for any information they had before making off with all their exotic lifeforms. To do so, he felt that keeping up a pretense of knowing what was going on was imperative.
“Jessup...” he began, his face devilish. “Do you really take me for a bodyguard?” He flashed his teeth, his gaze full of confidence.
Jessup snorted. “I don’t care what your title is.”
“Irregardless of how you view me, I can’t help but wonder why Ritus is so weak as to be unable to pass through a gate?”
Jessup sighed, his face once more becoming calm. The tension in the atmosphere largely dissipated, though undercurrents of aggression still billowed throughout.
“This gate in particular isn’t stable. This is especially true whenever it synchronizes with a two-way gate, the kind that allows us to use our instruments to collect new species. Even more troubling is the fact that these two-way gates usually lead to worlds inhospitable to the human body. That’s why we usually send—well, I’ll stop there for now.
“Unfortunately, this gate spends the majority of its time in relatively stable connection with another one-way gate. During these times, it can only bring people in one direction: away from Ildr.”
“Since this is the only gate on Earth, Ritus has a complete monopoly on all gate travel...and I can tell you that very few entities ever pass through here.”
Bath nodded his head solemnly. “I've only been with Lisa for the past two decades, so I'm still trying to understand this planet’s kursi politics.”
Jessup gave a wry smile. “Ah, well...Here on Earth, both us and Fungsoeng are fairly secretive. The shadows have always been places of relative safety and attract little attention.”
Lisa nodded. “Bath and I were searching for a way to make contact with other kursi for around two years now.”
Bath consciously stopped himself from cringing. He'd been trying to imply that they were no strangers to the kursi scene...alas.
Jessup seemed to realize the discrepancy between what Lisa was saying and what Bath had implied. Suddenly, he began to chuckle uproariously out loud.
“How old are you, Lisa?” The man said the words like they were a joke.
“18,” she replied without missing a beat. Bath had a feeling that a much higher number was the expected value, but didn’t offer his advice. They weren’t truly in any danger. Moreover, Bath wouldn’t be surprised if Lisa suspected that revealing her true age would make Jessup respect her. She might be correct in that regard: from what he could gather, kursi powers grew with age, and Lisa’s were potent enough to warrant Ritus’ official recruitment.
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Jessup’s expression changed very little, but Bath could feel a bit of excitement erupt from the man’s face.
“Jessup," he said sharply, his voice at least carrying with it a sense of authority. “While Lisa may be young, her talent is clearly enormous. Otherwise, you never would have assumed she was older.”
Bath had a feeling that “older” meant significantly older, by decades. He’d been studying the bodies of the elders for a few minutes, now, and noticed that they all appeared to be stalled around the biological age of twenty-five. Perhaps a queen kursi prevented the aging of its host.
“Fair,"” Jessup acknowledged, now looking at Bath differently than he had before, his eyes appraising. “How did you become her servant?”
“How do you think I became her servant?”
Jessup scoffed. “Someone gifted you to her. That’s the only way.” Though Jessup was clearly trying to indicate that this was undoubtedly true...Bath suspected that Jessup was misleading them. He realized that this encounter was going rather poorly.
Bath’s eyes flashed red. "I am with Lisa because we are friends."
Jessup’s eyes narrowed in confusion, though he hid it well behind a stony countenance.
“Where are you from?” Jessup finally asked.
Bath smiled grimly. His intuition told him that they weren’t going to get any further using diplomacy, so he spoke the truth.
“Earth.”
Jessup at once appeared stunned, this time his face completely open. Even his indomitable shell flickered with a nervous ribbon.
“Then why is your—” he suddenly began to pale, his hands shaking. "You aren’t from a planet closer to Ildr?”
“Jessup, you fool,” a voice rang out scathingly. “He’s a World Devourer!”
A person scrambled into the room stood to the right of Jessup. No, not a person—It was very human-like, but its hair was clearly not made of keratin and its eyes were an eerie, inhuman yellow with black corneas. It also appeared slightly more slender and willowy than the average human.
Before Jessup had a chance to react, Bath’s form expanded to fill the room. He assumed his favorite form. To the people below—Jessup, Angelina, Lisa, and the creature—he looked like everything they would expect of a majestic, feathered dragon. Bath let out a booming laugh.
“World Devourer?” he grinned, his mouth cracking to reveal lines of beady, needle-sharp teeth. “Fitting. Jessup: You are going to answer all of our questions, and then we will leave, and you will be alive. If you do not answer our questions, or try to retaliate...I will destroy this place.”
Jessup trembled. “You aren’t a World Devourer,” he stated adamantly. “Otherwise the Earth wouldn’t be able to support life. It'd be a dead husk.”
“Frankly, I don’t care,” Bath said, “but I know that I have enough power to wipe this place off the map in the time it takes to exhale one breath.” Bath had actually underestimated the pressure that his dragon form would place on Jessup and Angelina. Angelina was leaning against a wall, nearly unable to stand out of instinctual terror. Jessup resisted the urge to run away, but it clearly required conscious effort.
“Why are you here? We're just a small organization...” the human-like alien began slowly. “If you are a World Devourer, a Catastrophe, a Doom, a Black Hole...the titles given to your kind are as unending as they are accurate...we will gladly comply with any of your demands.
“Esteemed Devourer, I, personally, would be endlessly pleased to inform you about the workings of this gate and the mysteries of the kursi. My only request is that you take me with you when you leave.”
Bath snorted. Making demands? Bath nearly devoured the alien right then. However, having access to a entity that had come from a different gate seemed incredibly fortuitous. He had a feeling that this creature was more knowledgeable than Jessup, who hadn’t been able to identify what Bath was.
“I will take you with me, though only because I desire to do so.” The creature’s posture immediately began to relax, while Jessup’s became even more tense.
While all of this was happening, thick tendrils of Bath’s essence curled likes a mass of writhing worms and snakes over all the aliens in the holding areas. Bath devoured all of them from inside their cages, savoring their unique flavors.
Finally, Bath sent out a mass of tendrils to encircle the trembling Jessup. He lifted the man up into the air so that Jessup’s small form was in front of Bath’s snout.
“Jessup,” he asked softly, “How does one become a kursi?”