Even within the depths of drunken slumber, her snores droning in the oncoming dark of night, she could hear them, the hooting of owls. Each time their calls pierced her ears, her eyelids would flutter, revealing the off-whites of her sclera. One would think something affected her by the way her head bobbed while a slight dribble ran down the side of her mouth, the way her eyes rolled around in her head.
They would be right.
Owls. A congress never flew far from her when she would rest. Their hoots and coos were the symphony to her existence, an evocative yet tranquil sound that never ceased to soothe her into an almost inebriated state. Add the potent and excessive five liters of baiju alcohol in her system and she was nearly anesthetized.
Despite this, she remained attuned to her environment. High up against a tree trunk, resting on its thickest branch, she stayed aware of not just the owls but the distant sounds of activity resounding from the capital several miles away. Her intoxicated condition only aided this state of heightened awareness. Every rustle in the tree from the spring breeze made its way past the sentry of her eardrums before hushing into nothingness. Carts would pass in the shorter expanse between her tree and the road, their cargo clinking and juddering almost too loudly for her hearing along with the annoying chatter of city folk.
The soft spritzing sound of purposeful footsteps neared her from that very road. Normally, she would pay them no mind, but her senses—stretched about her for several measures like a bright aura—discerned the owner of the footsteps as kin.
"Aiyūl."
She grunted, remaining unmoved.
"I got a message from Haruko."
She came to life with yet another grunt, cracking open a bright yellow eye that rolled down at the man.
He narrowed his own eyes that slightly shone amber in the darkness. After a moment of staring each other down, he huffed, cutting his eyes away.
Disappointment oozed from his very posture.
Wiping the drool from her mouth, she sat up and ruffled her locks, running her hands through the long, dark strands. They cascaded over her shoulder and down past the branch, only to nearly whip over her head when she pushed off the tree to the ground. Not bothering to kempt them, she yawned widely, scratching her bare upper chest as she peeked through the locks at Savendao, her eldest son.
He continued looking away from her, and she followed his gaze to the dim but evident lights of the capital. Grunting with disinterest, she leaned back against the tree, closed her eyes with her head slumped, and waited.
After a moment of moderately tense silence, he deeply exhaled. "Haruko said it's urgent. We should go."
"What the fuck's that brat doing in Faifelethisa?"
He made a patient exhale. "She just said she needs to meet up with us."
Her eyes briefly narrowed. Her daughter never wanted to do that when she broke the family rule to stay away from the megalopolis. Regardless, Aiyūl groaned, running a hand over her neck. "We can't just use the fuckin' radio?"
He shrugged, turned, and walked towards the road, raising a black hood attached to his belted tunic. "Your own fault for getting drunk."
There was vehemence in his voice, more than she knew he meant to imply. Briefly shutting her eyes, she rolled her neck with a deep exhale, then followed him while raising the hood of her black coat.
With long legs, she shortly caught up and walked in step with him. He still had to walk several paces faster to keep up despite her walking lazily. "Fuck. His ira is feisty tonight," she said with a sigh. She kept her head down but sensed her son looking at her. "It's grown so much, I can barely recognize it."
"Is that good?"
Humming, she tilted her head side to side, glancing from under her hood at the people giving them a wide berth. "I don't know. He's not normal. No amount of guessing will help answer that question."
"Very helpful."
Though he moved slower than her, he led them. They traveled down the road for only a few yards and then deviated to the left off the main path. During their walk, she kept her eyes slanted so deeply she may as well have been blind; she stared at the ground, following his boots to lead her to their destination, and used her exterior perceptions as a guide. It didn't go unnoticed.
"Just how much did you drink?"
The scorn came back. She heaved a barely audible sigh, letting her eyes shut. "Not much. Just feeling lazy."
"That explains why your guard is down tonight."
She made a soft hum in agreement.
They made the rest of their trek in silence. She knew he could keep talking if he wanted to. Her idea of "not much" alcohol could kill or completely incapacitate a man his size and Savendao stood at and bore a tall, muscular frame.
Though, he'll always be a child in my eyes...
A crooked, self-deprecating smile spread on her face, her head slightly bobbing to her thoughts. She then hummed with interest, her senses telling her where they were.
Savendao abruptly stopped, but she expected this. She halted not a second behind him, cracking an eye open to look up at the scene in front of them.
Her son chose to stop at just the right spot atop the hill overlooking the capital megalopolis, Faifeleth. Nestled in the center of the country giving it its namesake, the city went by many monikers. The massive capital, Yake Meresta, the Feast, existed as a beautiful location abundant with fertile green land and richer inhabitants, as evident by its multitude of lights scattered about the land visible for miles upon miles.
She made a disparaging scowl to herself, looking off into the greater but dark distance of the Feast. In fact, most of the districts surrounding the capital were so impoverished they had only heard of a lightswitch.
"Mokā."
Crossing her arms, she didn't bother turning in her daughter's direction. "You disobeyed me again, brat."
Her eldest daughter didn't respond, but Savendao gave her a patient look that she caught out of the corner of her eye. He then looked around her and approached his younger sister. "It has to be bad if you want to meet up," he said.
"Yes..."
The familiar meekness in the woman's tone made Aiyūl grit her teeth and turn to face her daughter. Haruko looked sad. She narrowed an eye. "Speak."
Haruko swallowed. "The Rak'ha of past and present...were poisoned."
Aiyūl blinked a few times, then frowned.
"Who the fuck?" Savendao spat. "And how?"
"I...don't know. But...that's not all that happened."
Aiyūl's hands tightly gripped her arms.
"Rhasti was...killed."
She blinked again. Savendao stood speechless, and Haruko stared at the grass, her shoulders low.
Looking away, the image of a keen young man with light red hair and kind grey eyes flashed in Aiyūl's mind. She saw him playing with her children before they could reach her thigh, and then the strange, unfortunate event that happened when they were older.
She closed her eyes with a soft exhale, rubbing a hand down her face. "I'm not drunk enough for this..."
"Aiyūl," she heard Savendao growl out.
"There's nothing we can do about it, boy; it happened. Are the Rak'ha badly incapacitated or are they dead, Haruko?"
"Incapacitated. They've slipped into deep comatose states; the ishdär believe they could die if they do not have a cure. The problem is the poison is—"
"Blood-based. Of course." Her voice took an almost mocking tone. "Because there are only a few people in existence at the moment who know how to do that."
A soft groan escaped her, and she ran a hand through her locks. What a wonderful start to the new year.
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All she could hope for her sister was that she acted smarter than the other Mahilasi.
She raised her better than that.
"Ah, also..."
"There's more?" Savendao hissed.
"Lanad was blamed."
Aiyūl's eyes snapped open. "Return home."
"But—"
Turning, she glared at her daughter, silencing her immediately. "Do not disobey me again, girl. You will get your asses back home—and get Hera, too. I know she's slinking about." She looked towards the city. "I don't like this."
Savendao didn't acknowledge her words, merely taking his sister's hand to run in the direction of the city. A few paces out, they disappeared from immediate view—or they did in the eyes of normal civilians. She saw them clearly, running faster than mortal speed down the hill.
Once they were gone, she softly sighed. She once more rubbed her forehead, then turned towards the palace in the great distance. Average eyes couldn't see it, but she could.
It was her destination.
Grass briefly fluttered, the only indicator she had traversed the land. The lights were dim against the stark black of her coat, keeping her relatively hidden in the plane's darkness. With her speed, no one would truly see her even if they tried, and as the capital came closer, she beelined towards the nearest building.
The tiles didn't so much as clink from her weight when she landed atop the sloped roof. She crouched there one moment, then disappeared the next, two buildings down in seconds. Staying low, she kept her gaze sharpened, focusing ahead on her destination.
The large white wall over the horizon stood out in the night even without the aid of the moderately dim lights. Her ears twitched as she listened to the chatter. Calls to buy wares. Whispering in alleys. The occasional spat of anger over money. Always money. People were still talking about the execution of the traitor, Lanad Kabuyun-Wasihl.
It did more than irritate her.
The initial distance between her and the white wall spanned the size of an entire quarter, yet she traversed it in a mere handful of minutes. Not in the mood to dally, she moved swiftly. The closer she came to the center of the capital, the pings of fervorous emotion from centuries of memories grew within her. She wanted to finish her business and leave as soon as possible.
Her coat softly fluttered as she crouched low atop the last roof nearest to the white wall. She assessed her location, reminding herself just what she was doing in this godforsaken city.
She needed, if not at least wanted, to speak to her sister.
To do that, she would have to go into and past the Janchitei itself, the forbidden Court of Feasts where nobility lived. Exhaling sharply through her nose, she eyeballed the wall. There technically lacked a way inside except by the front door itself. She could see the entrance from where she crouched, but the six K'etishao guards, draped in ankle-length, immaculate white tunics, white turbans over a coned hat, and their faces hidden by a dirty-gold mask, were blocking it.
The K'etishao number is higher than normal, she observed. Typically, there were only four noble guards.
She disappeared from the roof and appeared on a suspiciously empty street.
Narrowing an eye, she kept her hood raised and moved slowly through it. She stood out among the browns, pale tans, greys, and whites of the street and storefronts, a moving target for anyone to spot. Her senses spread out around her, acting as a radar for movement and presences.
There was nothing.
Strange...
Not a moment after this thought, something rapidly approached further ahead. She soundlessly slipped into a shadowed area, her gaze pointed forward.
The moment the "something" came close enough for her to decipher, her expression worsened and her eyes took on a strong yellow glow.
A white figure, barely a blur, passed the street from the intersection ahead. If she hadn't been watching, even she could have missed it. She waited a moment, then sped after it, disappearing from where she had stood in the shadows.
Running and jumping over the walls, she could see the white form as it ran further from the central city. Her eyes stopped glowing for her own sake, and she continued to watch after it for a few minutes.
She could follow. Or she could resume.
She hated to, but she turned away and continued towards the large white wall. She had a method of entering, but something told her to explore the exterior. If she knew anything about the person in white, they were just coming back from the Janchitei.
And she didn't like the implications of that.
Eventually, she snuck her way into the thick verdant that surrounded the noble city. She kept her eyes keen while looking over the wall, looking for anything suspicious or out of place. This brought her to the base of the wall where she placed a hand on it and walked around.
If that Snake was here, he was up to something.
After several long minutes, she noticed a slight rippling effect below her hand. Moving back, she examined it.
The wall rippled, much like the effect of water when something came close or dipped into it. Not much existed that she didn't know about, but this was one of them.
And she hated that.
This was left here intentionally, she thought with a scowl. Yet why would that Snake want someone to go into the Saralat after him?
She placed a hand over the ripple, only for her hand to press into and past the concrete. She felt something lukewarm and wet. Water? Not about to let the opportunity pass, she slipped into the wall.
As she thought, she found herself underwater and at the bottom of a concrete trench. She looked up and saw the dark sky, then crouched and gathered energy to her feet.
In seconds, she hit the surface when she propelled herself out of the water. She placed her hands out as she looked around, using the power of hydromancy to keep the sound of the water to a minimum. Instead of seeming as if something large came out of the water, it sounded little more than the sound of a raindrop entering it.
Settling gracefully on the edge of the wall, she stayed low. Before her, she examined the expanse of a small city where the nobility lived. The Janchitei, the Court of Feasts. Several miles beyond it, the Sūn Palace where the two royal dynasties of Wasihl and Rākhirah resided stood imposingly.
First, she had to do something about her sopping wetness; she couldn't leave a water trail around. She focused on the moisture on her body and in her clothes, gathering it and pushing it out simultaneously. She watched all of it drain from her feet and back into the water trench.
Once dry, she turned against the wall and slid down, a black dot on pure whiteness. As she inched down, she kept her radar up. Unsurprisingly, the number of Noble Guard members walking around was numerous, and she sensed the high kēpu energy of several noble members as they walked around with worry.
With ease, she jumped to the ground and slunk through the city. Fortunately, she was still intoxicated, which allowed her to stifle her own energy without worrying about feeling sick.
The brief thought distracted her, bringing her thoughts to her children. With a slight scowl, she shook her head and continued forward.
After some time of running, dodging and hiding, she made it to the edge of the city right before the large street between the Janchitei and the palace. Much as she hated to think about it, she would have to be more careful from here on out.
She spotted some tall, muscular soldiers walking around. They were not the Imperial Guard but the Sansthā Khalilf, Royal Protectors of the Empress. There were only a few members walking around but two stood in sentinel stances at the palace entrance. Looking left, and then right, she didn't sense or see anyone else.
Swiftly, she disappeared from where she had been standing at the city edge and reappeared atop the palace doors. Not a second later, she stood in the shadow of the Wasihl Compound.
Closing her eyes, she stretched her exterior senses to discern what was happening within the compound.
An eyebrow quirked up. Emotions were high, enough so that people were flaring their kēpu energy about. Sensing an intimately familiar forōs bunched with a specific group that also flashed its worry troubled her despite knowing why it was flailing about.
She opened her eyes, a low growl growing in her throat, expressing her worry despite herself. What's going on in there, Meimetō[1]?
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After some time, that very energy slammed the doors to the compound open, startling the Imperial Guards standing outside to guard it. Out stalked the captain of the 22nd Bracket, Yuayai.
The younger woman rubbed her neck while the guards quietly shut the doors behind her. The moment they were closed, she spat, "Motherfuck. What the fuck am I going to tell Aiyūl?"
"Everything," Aiyūl scoffed while crossing her arms, standing in the shadows under the long, sloped roof of a part of the compound. "I know everything."
Yua glanced around to make sure no one was near, then approached while rubbing her forehead. "How much of everything?"
"Enough that I have to relay tragic news to Hera and Rashar."
"Fuck. I'm..." Yua stood in front of her, head lowered in shame. "How the fuck did this happen..."
A deep scoff. "I imagine it may have something to do with our resident freak, if not more than him."
Her head snapped up, eyes furious. "What?!" she all but shouted between her large shark teeth. "That motherfucker?!"
Aiyūl shoved her with an elbow. "Hush, you," she said with a weary sigh, unable to muster much more than that. Her eyes slightly lit up before closing. "I saw him coming from the Janchitei."
"Coming from here?!"
"Yua, you aren't doing yourself any favors by yelling—"
Grabbing her by her coat, Yua growled, "Bitch, the Tenk'ha chewed my ass out and ripped me a new one for incompetence! Do you know where he went?!"
Her large eyes opened, impassive. "No."
These words drained all the righteous anger from Yua's body, and she slumped against her sister. "Fuck...Fuck!" Her grasp lessened on Aiyūl's coat. "How did he get here...?"
"He can...move through walls, it seems."
"The fuck?!" She began to tense up, but she lost her energy not a second later, too weary and overwhelmed to sustain it.
Aiyūl's hand went behind her head, massaging her fingers into her scalp. "I don't know, Yua," she said in a soft voice. "I really don't."
With an exhale, Yua shook her head, but no more words came out. Aiyūl briefly thought about those three children who would play together, their smiles contagious and mutual love tangible.
After five hundred years...
She closed her eyes. She didn't want to tell the remaining two children one of their soulmates had died.
If the Snake had anything to do with Rhasti's death...
She sensed her sister's simmering anger. Their thoughts were likely at the same place. "Don't get ahead of yourself, Yua. I'll investigate first."
"Why?"
Her eyes opened, no longer alight. They focused on her sister. "Something's odd." She shook her head and ordered, "Do not engage with that thing. If I find out you're the first person to learn he is indeed capable of eating bashmut[2], I'll bring you back from the afterlife itself. And it won't be to say, 'I miss you'." She narrowed her eyes at the not-so-veiled and very real threat, flashing them a single time in a warning.
Yua nodded, looking away with a despondent sigh. "What are you going to do?"
Exhaling deeply, Aiyūl growled out, "I've...considered...helping."
Green eyes focused on her, wide with shock. "Why?"
"Nobā..." She trailed off, grimacing at the thought of their grandmother. "That woman's the only reason I would even have nightmares of returning to this fucking place again."
Her sister went quiet.
"But first...I'll maybe take a visit to Ciceol." She met her sister's gaze. "Lanad is not dead."
Her sister went as rigid as a pole. "H-how...?" she managed, her voice choked.
"There was a discrepancy in his kepū."
Yua clearly didn't understand, much to her slight irritation. "I...don't...?"
"Believe me. I'll get to the bottom of it. He may be wandering around Ciceol. And if he isn't...someone will know where he is."
"I'd...I'd appreciate that." The head of brown hair lowered. "I..."
"Don't mention it. It's fucked up what happened, no matter which way you look at it." She turned around and glanced back. "Remember what I said," she warned.
Yua looked up. Her eyes were slightly teary but she cracked a small smile. "Don't have to tell me twice, Jiene[3]."
Easing, Aiyūl mirrored her sister's expression. She then turned forward and slunk into the shadows.
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[1] Little/younger sister.
[2] Mortals, like faifethi, indrahti, and humans.
[3] Big/older sister.