Chapter 178: A Letter from a Stranger
Letter from Eufemia to Rasmus:
Dad
Rasmus,
The two of us...we’re practically strangers. I can’t call you ‘Dad’ yet. I haven’t forgiven you for your failures, not yet. Maybe I got it from my mother But I am unforgiving, Rasmus. I won’t tolerate your mistakes a second time. I have lived more of my life without you than with you, and I can continue to do so.
Now that my obligatory threats are out of the way (a Nekroz tradition), I suppose I should begin with what we had agreed upon. My first story will be about John, the outworlder who became my partner in my escape from Nekroz.
As one for the dramatics, our ‘Story’ begins around 2 years ago...
*
What an unerringly shitty day it had been. It was always a shitty day in Nekroz, so this day wasn’t anything special. Just another shitty day in a line of unending shitty days.
Eufemia hated it here.
Her stupid noisy heels clicked against perpetually wet cobblestone, dark and slick like the grease that had welled up from the oiled, black arteries of Nekroz. A black fur shawl of charcoal ermine warded against the damp cold, but she was dressed up—which meant she was underdressed for the weather. Tights were a poor defense against Nekroz’s bitter, biting cold.
And since the weather was always piss poor, Eufemia was always underdressed.
Her heel slipped a bit on the slimy stone into a puddle, splashing freezing needles of dirty street water onto her legs. She stumbled a bit—one of the heels of her high heels had snapped off. Ugh, that’s what she got for buying cheap make (not that she could afford anything better). Fuck’s sake. It was too much to ask to have a half-decent walk home, wasn’t it? Of course not; the city would not allow it.
She ruthlessly snapped the other heel off. Better than trying to walk with one-on-one-off. She was this close to just tossing the shoes and braving freezing her toes off and running back to her dingy flat. Maybe if she was lucky, she’d keep almost all her toes. There were some gross bastards that liked disfigured feet: It was Nekroz, after all.
The Glowstone District in the morning was empty and quiet (the quiet, at least, she could enjoy, compared the despairing laughs of fools losing their life savings neck to the audible sneers of those the money inevitably flowed to). The grease and dirt couldn’t stain the beauty of dawn as it peeked over the vague shapes of grey buildings, an art made in impressions of dust through sunlight. The low-middle level casinos that she helped manage were part of the Glowstone District, a seedier part of town than where she lived, the slightly more upscale Carnelian Quarter. It was all bullshit—no part of Nekroz could ever be upscale, not to Eufemia. But, she was a woman, and she did have to care about her own safety, no matter how bitter she was about the circumstances of her life.
Eufemia had thought her day couldn’t get any worse, but there had been some sort of divine agenda that conspired against her to prove her wrong.
A figure (a mugger) stepped out of the alley.
“You.” He gestured with knife. “Your dimension bag. Hand it over.”
“What.”
Eufemia stared at him. He dared? She was going to rip him apart. She observed him carefully—he shook, not from nervousness, but from perpetual alcohol abuse—a repeat offender, in more ways than one. He was not outwardly strong, not muscular, and certainly not a vampire or a werewolf with enhanced physicality, which increased her chances of surviving this. His posture was not straight…his left leg, never healed right, perhaps?
“Are you daft, woman?” His knife waved about more insistently. “Your money.”
Eufemia was tired. She was not going to deal with this shit. She couldn’t run in her broken heels or in her stupid, restrictive dress. Without warning, she flung herself at him, tackling the mugger to the ground. With his poor posture and lame leg, he went down like a sack of potatoes. A loud rip of cloth indicated the tearing of her dress—whatever, she didn’t like it anyway—and a crack of bone indicated her fucking fist in his face.
Her legs straddled him tight, keeping him secured on the ground, squirming like a worm after rain.
“Bitch! Get off of me!” He screamed, struggling to try to rip her off through her physical blows.
“How about you hand me your money and forget your face, hm?”
“Fuck you, whore!”
The next punch was even more satisfying. Eufemia really enjoyed the sound of head cracking on pavement.
“While I’m still being nice. Your money, shit stain, before I paint you into a real one.”
Eufemia’s reverse mugging was interrupted by an extremely unpleasant crack to her own skull. She gasped, vision swimming and thoughts spinning. The man beneath her used the opportunity to crawl away, although his struggles suggested he was suffering from equal cranial impairments, and his bum leg prevented him from getting up again, which Eufemia could dimly register as good.
That asshole had a partner, because of course he did. By the laws of the universe, Eufemia’s shitty day couldn’t get better; it could only get worse.
After another dawn light hissing catfight-like struggle, Eufemia had somehow managed to wrestle away the metal pipe from scum-eater # 2 and sent both limping (or crawling) away, tail between their legs: She wasn’t much better off.
Her head was pounding, and she was really starting to hate the blinding light of the sunrise: Leave it to Nekroz to ruin another beautiful thing. The knife must’ve nicked her somewhere, she wasn’t sure: she couldn’t tell over the red silk of her dress. That be a bitch to clean, but at least it wasn’t white. Small mercies.
Eufemia was having a terrible day, but since every day was a terrible day, that had never stopped Eufemia. She would have to drag herself to her mediocre flat, rub on some healing unguent that she’d stashed somewhere (she still had some left, right?), and wrap it all up with some clean bandages. The hardest part was just step one—getting home.
Ugh, maybe she should keep some unguent in her pouch the next time. It was a rather shitty dimension pouch that she’d managed to win off a sucker in a bet, and she had prioritized keeping a sizable amount of her wealth on hand if she ever needed a quick getaway. Not out of Nekroz, but somewhere else, at least. It was easy to disappear here.
And she’d lost whatever was left of her shoes in the scuffle. Of course. On the bright side, she had managed to counter-mug the bastard after all and had in her possession his rather anorexic pouch: Nothing personal, he’d started it.
Before she’d had even realized it, she was leaning against the wall. That...that wasn’t good. She felt a little lightheaded, and the cut (a cut?) to her waist burned. Her legs were just pins and needles of ice, and her feet had already lost all feeling.
If she had to roll herself down the street, she’d make it back. While her legs mechanically, desperately moved onwards, her mind churched with alternative plans—
Healers were rare in Nekroz, with goodly healing being so inimical to undead. Finding a healer would be a small miracle. Alchemists were more the alcohol to Nerkoz’s cocktail. They ranged from the heretical “looking for a miracle combination to produce immortality-in-a-jar”, from normal neighborhood herbalists that served the common folk: Needless to say, she was looking for the latter.
Glowstone District...she mentally called up the maps and her current location, although she struggled to keep coherent thoughts. She should be close. There was a bookstore up ahead—one with translation and transcribing services; With all the drifters in Nekroz, the gods knew it was needed. And yes, she could see the dingy little book sign. Then, two blocks inward down the alleyway, and she should find the herbalist. There was even a little garden there, where the herbalist planted her own herbs to grow. Community effort had managed a greenhouse for the potion brewer: it served them all that she could keep them alive. With all the blood those vam-pricks wanted, and in these tits-cold temperatures, blood restoratives were all the rage.
Eufemia wanted to rage. She didn’t have the energy.
She managed to stagger past the bookstore, briefly thumping her shoulder and resting against the door. Ow. That had been harder than she intended.
She was just catching her breath. She would continue onwards in a bit—
The door shoved open—
“Did someone knock? Oh, this door always gets,” a grunt, “stuck—”
—And Eufemia thumped ungainly onto the ground. She must’ve made some noise (she did not cry), because the man called out apologies.
“Oh my lord! Bloody hell, are you alright? Wait—are you bleeding? That wasn’t supposed to be literal. Did I cause that? Oh lord. Oh shit. Can you stand?”
Eufemia groaned out a response. She really, really tried to say something more dignified.
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
“Alright. I understand. Let’s just pop on over to Ol’Timothy and get you sorted out. Everything is going to be all right.”
Old Timothy. That was good. She recognized the name of the herbalist, maybe, or it was her concussed brain making her think she did. Either he had understood what dribbled out of her mouth (a plea for medical assistance was intended), or the blood was self-evident enough.
He hefted her onto his back, and slowly made their way down through the alley.
“Are you still awake? Stay with me.”
A few steps.
“Hang in there.”
One more block to go.
“It’s just a little further.”
Eufemia usually didn’t like empty platitudes, but today she found his words reassuring. No matter how she hated Nekroz, she couldn’t hate the people who lived there.
*****
He shifted her weight on his back, freeing up one hand. He pounded on the door: Ol’Timothy should be awake—from midnight to dawn was the time of workers. The undead lived for the night, and the life of the living revolved around their schedule. Once the undead have rested, the workers would return for their ‘night’, just as the sun began to rise.
“Timothy! There’s an emergency! I need help!”
The door shunted open—like all the other poorly made doors in the Glowstone District, it got stuck. Ol’Timothy wasn’t that old, mid-sixties; Certainly not that old compared to the real elderly of Nekroz, the immortal vampires that stalked the streets and the centuries. But his wrinkles and salted brown hair were reassuring, a mark of the living. He poked his head out the door, a few heads below John, and nodded for him to come inside.
*****
Voices wafted in and out.
“How is she?”
“Eh. Hm. Not too bad. She’ll live.”
“What do you…payment?”
“…not yours to pay…”
“…can hardly do so…”
“There was that potion recipe from, um, uh...”
“Yumeha…translate it for you.”
“Fine, John. It’ll do.”
***
It was half a day later Eufemia finally reawakened to the land of the unliving, no longer chilled to the bone and fighting the nausea of a head injury.
She was in a small private room, barely large enough for the bed she was on; built for privacy and nothing else. Dusk light illuminated up the grimy stains on the window, yellowing and scratched. The bed was lumpy, and the mattress creaked out a haunted choir. Her shifting was enough to alert someone that she had woken: there was a knock on the door.
Eufemia despairingly thought that she’d have to miss work today. Not that she’d miss another day of licking the boots of whatever mediocre vampire wanted to talk up the proprietress of poor man’s casino row and drape herself over their arm as their little living accessory. Their little blood-bitch.
“Is it alright to come in?” A voice came from beyond the door. She couldn’t tell if it was Old Timothy, or her unknown helper.
“If you can. There’s not much space for that.”
The man pulled open the door and shuffled around the door that invariably got stuck on something. He slid a rickety old wood stool to the end of her bed.
“I’m John.”
“Eufemia.” She looked him up and down—he was a pleasant sort, modestly dressed in clothing that were clearly second-hand but well taken care of. Obviously, part of the common rabble, which was mostly reassuring, aside from her mugging yesterday. Although, he smelled clean—not of alcohol or any other sort of addictive substance—which set her more at ease. There was neat stubble on his jaw, and a little nick—cleanly shaven, oddly enough. He wanted to make an impression... on who? On her? He looked human—pale skin, pale blond hair, pale green eyes: the usual sort for this area (pale, pale, pale).
She’d think him a native, if not for his ‘accent’—the quirk of a translation ability: She’d heard it before, in the casinos. It wasn’t uncommon in Nekroz, the country with the greatest diversity of criminal elements. Joy.
He seemed to nice for that though—at least, Old Timothy probably wouldn’t associate with a criminal like the muggers. (Criminals in general were fine, like smugglers, just not ones that brought the injured to his doorstep, although Eufemia’s knowledge of Old Timothy’s reputation was not as thorough as she’d like, in this situation.) His eyes had genuine warmth, despite their paleness (or he practiced well in a mirror). Wrinkles crinkled at the corners—a sign of age (which was good in Nekroz, criminals wanted to be Undead), and a sign of happiness. This man smiled often. He was smiling now, just passively. Incredible. What was there to smile about passively in Nekroz?
Eufemia imagined what it’d be like to smile not because others wanted to see her smile because she was beautiful, but because she was content and hadn’t noticed she was doing it. What a pointless little dream.
In this tiny, cramped room, she began the conversation, threading in some guilt. “You dumped me on the street, but you also picked me up and helped me, so, thanks for that.”
He winced. “Right. Sorry about that. I hadn’t expected—well. I didn’t think you’d be there so soon.”
That was an odd thing to say. Had he seen her staggering from his window? It was kind of him to go outside to help her out, even if he had also invited the street to her face for his trouble.
“So, how do I settle?”
“Settle?”
“Do you want money? Timothy too.”
“I settled up with him.”
Eufemia narrowed her eyes. “I don’t like owing people.” Not around here. Not in Nekroz.
“There’s no ulterior motives here Eufemia...but...” He paused to consider something. “If you’d like to settle up with me for paying Timothy, it might make what I'll have to say next more genuine.”
“What do you mean?”
“How about we even it out first? Or it’d defeat the purpose?”
She nodded. Her pouches (her and the one she counter-stole) were just on the tableside. She checked her contents—all accounted for. The mugger’s pouch looked like it had a reasonable fare to pay a physician for his care (which was its entirety). She tossed it to him, cringing as she twinged her waist and pulled her stitches: a healing unguent couldn’t heal it all in one day.
How shitty—it all evened out, if she discounted the pain and the scar. Nothing gained: just another terrible day in Nekroz.
“Now, what do you want?” she said, trying to keep from sounding too confrontational. She wasn’t upset at him; it was just her natural state of being.
“It’s mutually beneficial, really. No need to sound so cautious.”
“Pardon me if I’m on edge after a mugging.”
“Right so... I’m John.”
“I know that.”
He sagged a big and released a breath as if he were exhaling a secret: “I’m an outworlder.”
Eufemia eyebrows shot up; she’d forgotten to control her facial expressions. “Really?”
“I can prove it—but erm, that’s not the point. The point is, I have a proposition for you. Have you ever wanted an essence?”
Of course she did. She kept her cool this time. “Who doesn’t?”
“Do you want to leave Nekroz?”
Her breath caught. “Again, who doesn’t?” She sounded a bit too invested, even to herself. She hadn’t managed nonchalance. (It wasn’t entirely true that everyone wanted to leave Nekroz, but it was true enough. It passed through many minds: if only I hadn’t been born here. She felt the most sympathy for those, those who really had no choice but to take their first breaths in land seeped in the stench of blood.)
“There’s a... contract you can enter, with me. It’s an outworlder thing.”
She nodded. She didn’t entirely understand, but she’s heard the legends. A conversation over a shitty beer, a defunct academic with stories: outworlders have their own powers.
“You’d become my partner, and in return, you’d get essences as you help me complete these...uh, commissions. It’s nothing terrible—I need to get to Sanshi, and I need to find a person.”
“Why?”
“Supposedly, this person has a way back to my world.” He twisted a ring on his finger—something dear to him, sentimental. From a lover? (And her necklace in her second hidden pouch, still there.)
“Supposedly?”
His smile was abashed and charmingly humorous, “I’m afraid I don’t know this outworlder thing any better than you do. It’s not like I was born like this. So, how about it?”
She was missing information. She drummed her fingers on the ratty quilt. “Why me?”
“You’re sharp, aren’t you?
“So? The real reason?”
He chuckled, “It seems true enough. But if you want to know, I have no good reason—my outworlder ‘ability’ told me you were the one.” He looked at her appraisingly. “And you seem like a good enough sort.”
She wanted to throw her hands up. “If I had the ability to leave, I would be gone by now!”
“That might be it—I have something you need; you have something I need. This is a great undertaking—an escape from the land of the dead—”
“Undead,” she corrected. The distinction was important.
He hummed. “Fair, that. We can’t all go at it alone. What say you be my partner-in-crime?”
This was stupid. Undoubtedly so. What did some know-nothing outworlder have that’d help her escape from Nerkoz other than a friendly grin and a trusting face?
…Well. He had essences, apparently. It seemed she was her mother’s daughter, after all; that desire ran in her blood, a genetic connection to pursue the pull of power. The ambition of always wanting to be more. Never patient.
Eufemia had been patient, to the limits of her sanity. She was tired of being frustrated. Whatever books she kept—clean, dirty, morally grey—her progress was too slow. She was running out of time. She should’ve been a vampire by now: They hadn’t realized she was already 25. According to the deal her mother had struck, way back when she was first turned, she should’ve been made a vampire at her 25th. Some bonehead quill scribbling official with little more to do than wank to filing cabinets would check the records he has to clean off and figure out they needed to call a clan head to have her turned. Her mother had promised not to interfere, but there was little she could do if someone else noticed. And who didn’t want to turn a pretty celestine. Ugh, vampires and their odd obsession with beauty.
There was little choice: her first instinct about this man had been good, and she was rarely wrong. Better to agree now, and back out later if things went to shit. If she could maneuver it right, maybe she’d get one essence before they had a falling out. “I’m in. I’ll be your partner.”
“I haven’t even started explaining how the contract works—”
“Screw the explanation of your goddam magical handicap. I’m in. Here—” she fished the necklace she had in her hidden pouch, the last memory of her father. It clashed with her dress, so she couldn’t wear it outside. “This’ll be collateral.”
“Hey, hey. Slow down. I didn’t say anything about needing collateral—”
“You’re giving me an essence. You need collateral. Take it. Besides...” She looked him up and down. “I don’t see a dimension bag on you. Do you have an inventory? Of course you do. It’s safer with you.”
“How--? ...Are you sure?”
“I’ve been afraid all this time that someone would try to steal it one day. It isn’t worth all that much, but it means a lot to me.” Eufemia confessed. Just yesterday, she had been concerned it’d catch the eyes of the muggers. If she’d lost the fight, if they’d been thorough about searing her for another pouch…
“Okay. Alright. Well then...”
As she suspected, once he had held the necklace gently in his palm, it disappeared. There was a pang in her heart from parting with it, but a more pervasive relief she wouldn’t ever have to see it in the hands of some petty thief that had just slit her throat for it, who’d eventually sell it for lessers to bronzes as nobody could use it but her.
“Here’s to a mutually beneficial partnership!”
-------
-[Eufemia Teresina] has agreed to become your [Partner-in-Crime].
-For the duration of 1 year, Eufemia Teresina will share all applicable racial abilities. This partnership can be renewed at the end of 1 year. If the partnership is terminated early, you cannot enter another partnership before the year has expired. Only you can terminate the partnership.
-During this time, you will be able to sense if [Eufemia Teresina] has any hostile intent towards you.
-You will be able to sense each other’s general location and direction, when applicable.
-------
“You don’t have anything to toast with, John. Not in this dingy place.”
“Don’t let Ol’Timothy hear that. The neighbors have worked hard on this place for him: he’ll get mad on their behalf. So, can’t we pretend? For the spirit of it?”
“When we get out of here, we’ll do more than that. Now. Where’s that essence, John?”
“Right here—”
“Don’t give it to me so easily!”
*
…It was Mirror, of course, my first essence. Essences are very restricted in Nekroz, but we managed to find the materials needed for my essence absorption ritual (He didn’t need one, damn outworlders). The bookstore owner, Yune, had some ritual books she let us reference, to refresh my memory.
It was when I awoke that first ability that I had the growing confidence that I could do something with it. That my essences would be a game changer: taking on the form of anyone I remember was both a recipe for disaster and riches. Many toes were stepped on... just perhaps not in my form.
Chaos, connections, resources: All three were the ingredients to our eventual emigration. Nekroz is not a nation with the resources to tighten security in chaos. When chaos reigns, the clans watch their backs for a knife in the dark—or from a friendly face. My chaos was but a small chaos: it wasn’t nearly so extensive, but enough to throw the delicate artifact of their port control.
Someday I’ll get back at Nekroz and ‘burn it all to Hell’, as John would say.
(No Rasmus, that doesn’t mean I approve of going to war.)
Sincerely,
Eufemia