“And you’re sure you couldn’t understand him?”

I wasn’t the type to roll my eyes, but after being asked a different version of the same question five times in a row, I was tempted to start.

“No I couldn’t. And no, it just sounded like he was speaking some foreign language. It wasn’t some incomprehensible mumbling like I was listening to some sort of eldritch god,” I said, trying to anticipate the follow-up question that Marten was sure to ask.

I thought I saw both Marten and Stoney flinch a little at what I said, but with how fast their faces returned to neutral so quickly, I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined it or not.

“With your magic, you should’ve been able to interpret him, no matter what language he uses,” Marten said.

“Well, I couldn’t,” I said, holding back a frustrated groan. “Maybe there’s just a language in your world that I’m not able to understand.”

Marten shook his head. “Your magic’s supposed to be infallible. If it’s a spoken language, then you should be able to interpret it.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, knowing that he would just ask me the same questions again if he wasn’t satisfied with my answer. “What language does your boss usually speak anyways?”

“The same one I’m speaking now,” Marten said. “Ashanic.”

“That’s not necessarily true,” Stoney said, raising his hand as if he was a student in a classroom. “When I contacted the Founder, he spoke in Petani. My native language.” He glanced sideways at me, ignoring the deepening frown on Marten’s face. “Did you understand what I said?”

I glanced between him and Marten. “Were you talking in Petani?” I asked, testing my hunch. “I couldn’t tell if you were. It just sounded like English to me.”

“I was talking in Petani, yes. I presume that English is a language you have on Earth?” Stoney asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “You didn’t know?”

Surprisingly, Stoney shook his head. “Most of the time, Otherworlders don’t bother to question why they can understand us and vice versa. It’s convenient for us, and there is no real reason to ask what your native languages are. We know of a few, but don’t place any value in knowing them.”

“You’re getting off topic,” Marten said with a frustrated huff. He had discovered that he’d used up the last of his tobacco a few minutes ago, and was just fidgeting around with an empty pipe now. “We don’t fucking care what your language is.”

Stoney sighed and rubbed his temple for a moment before looking up at Marten.

“Take a break, Marten,” Stoney said. “You’re clearly not thinking straight if you’re swearing at an Otherworlder.”

Marten glared back at Stoney, but said nothing before turning around and stomping up the stairs and out of the basement.

I watched him go, a little sad at the reason why he had been dismissed. When I looked back at Stoney, he gave me an apologetic smile that seemed to understand exactly what I was feeling.

“I wasn’t gonna do anything to him, just because of a little swearing,” I said, just in case he didn’t. “You don’t have to treat me like a monster.”

Stoney shook his head slowly. “We’re not treating you like a monster, Jamie,” he said. “But I won’t lie to you and say that we’re treating you like a regular Materian either, because, quite frankly, you’re not. You’re dangerous enough that we have to treat you with the utmost respect, purely because it’s our safest option. I knew enough boys like you to know that sometimes you won’t admit if something is bothering you, so it's in my best interest to make sure Marten is polite to you, even if you claim that you don’t mind the rough language.”

Stoney gave me another apologetic smile, and I was struck by the sincerity behind it to the point where I couldn’t find anything to say. I didn’t want to agree with him, but I didn’t want to speak up against any of his points either.

In the end I just decided to sigh and hang my head.

Stoney sighed along with me.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know it’s difficult for you.”

“Don’t be,” I said, shaking my head. “It must be hard for you to deal with me.”

“Yeah,” he admitted without any hesitation. “It is.”

“You admitted that much more easily than I expected,” I said. I’d tried to put a little humour in my voice, but it came out a little flatter than I hoped, so I just gave him a small smile so he wouldn’t think I was angry. “What happened to being polite?”

Stoney smiled back at me. “I’m being honest, Jamie. That’s more important than being polite, though I admit I could’ve been a bit more tactful with how I said it.”

“Nah, it’s fine,” I said.

Stoney opened his mouth to say something, but his ears perked up and he turned his attention to the basement door. I hadn’t noticed the footsteps approaching, but when I turned to match his gaze, I saw Tenna and Sera marching down the stairs.

“Welcome back,” Stoney said. “Did Marten catch you up?”

Neither of them answered back immediately, which Stoney raised his eyebrow at.

“Well?” he asked, directing his gaze at Sera.

Sera seemed to notice the gaze and flinched, as if she was surprised to be called on. “He did, sir,” she said. “He mentioned that you would know best what to do with me. Or us, rather.”

Stoney stared at Sera for a moment before shaking his head.

“Okay, I’m going to stop whatever this is right now,” he said. “Sera. Get your head out of your own ass. You’re a Mediator. Act like one.”

Sera’s eyes widened before she regained control of her expression, snapping it back to one of controlled neutrality.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“I wasn’t sure if I was still a Mediator, sir,” she said.

Stoney let out a frustrated sigh. “I guarantee your little stunt with the civilian girl will get you into some trouble, but you haven’t been fired yet,” he said. “You can still do good, Sera. Don’t forget why you became a Mediator in the first place.”

Sera frowned.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ll try to focus. Have you considered the possibility that there are concepts that might be untranslatable? While his magic might be infallible, Jamie is anything but. No offense.”

“None taken,” I said, all too willing to accept my imperfections after the past couple of weeks.

Stoney didn’t seem too happy by Sera’s eagerness to change the subject, but he accepted it regardless. “Unfortunately, Marten already suggested that,” he said. “Names and locations foreign to him are untranslatable, but that should’ve been expected, and words that don’t exist in his language are still translated. The feeling you get when you sense that someone is watching you, but you’re also suspicious that you’re simply delusional from the lack of sleep, for example, is a word that doesn’t exist in Jamie’s language, but his magic translates it by giving him a broader definition… What?”

Sera didn’t respond to the question. For some reason, her eyes were narrowed, glancing between Stoney, me, and Tenna, before finally landing back on me.

“Schroighfaren,” she said, still staring at me.

I waited a bit for her to continue or at least give me some context on what she wanted, but when she didn’t, I shook my head at the foreign word. “I don’t know names or places,” I said. I wasn’t sure if it was one of the ones that Marten and Stoney already tested me on, but the language sounded similar enough.

“It was neither of those,” she said. “I just repeated the exact same word that Stoney did, but I didn’t take ten seconds to say one word.”

I didn’t quite understand what Sera was talking about, but Stoney seemed to clue in on what she was suggesting almost immediately. His face hardened and his mouth curved down into a deep frown.

“The feeling you get when you sense that someone is watching you, but you’re also suspicious that you’re simply delusional from the lack of sleep,” he said, speaking a bit faster than he did the first time around.

Sera’s frown only deepened as she shook her head.

“You’re still stretching out the word. You really don’t notice it,” she said, in more of a statement than a question.

“No,” he said. “And you’re immune because you’re a Follower.”

“That’s my assumption,” she replied.

Though I was no stranger to not understanding what people were talking about at times, the fact that they were talking so gravely made it impossible for me to keep quiet.

“You’re immune from what?” I asked, not liking the quiver that had somehow entered my voice.

“The fact that your magic can subtly manipulate people’s minds into not noticing the fact that they’re speaking slowly to accommodate for the time it takes for your magic to translate words with long definitions,” Sera said. “To me, it sounds like Stoney was saying, ‘Schhhhroooifaaaarrreeenn.’”

“Oh,” I said, a little taken aback by how nonchalant Sera was being. “I’m manipulating people’s minds? That’s kind of terrifying. Right?”

“Extremely,” Stoney said, his tone just as casual as Sera had been at the idea that he was being mind controlled. “But not anything outside our realm of expectations. What we are surprised about, however, is the fact that this interaction with an Otherworlder’s magic was never mentioned in our records.”

“Oh,” I said. Honestly, I was still a little shocked by the idea that they were so casual about the idea that I could mind control them, but with how little they seemed to care about it, I didn’t really want to address it. “Is it possible that it just never came up? I mean, I assume there aren’t that many words that are untranslatable that just pop up in normal conversation.”

“It’s possible, but the Mediators have been interacting with Otherworlders for nearly two thousand years,” Stoney said, shaking his head. “The chances of this being the first time a Mediator has used an untranslatable word in front of an Otherworlder and a Follower at the same time is quite low.”

“Oh,” I said. “And it’s a big deal that these words are untranslatable?”

Stoney shook his head, his brow still furrowed in thought. “It’s not the specifics of the scenario that we’re fixated on. It’s the fact that, despite our overwhelming history of dealing with Otherworlders, this is the first time that we’ve known it’s possible to be immune to an Otherworlder’s magic.”

“There’s also the possibility that Jamie’s not a real Otherworlder.”

Stoney turned towards the stairs again, watching as Marten trudged down the stairs, a heavy cloud of smoke following in his wake as he sucked on his pipe, having apparently restocked his supply while he was gone.

“And what evidence do you have to support this theory, Marten?” Stoney asked.

Marten shrugged. “He feels different.”

“That’s not evidence,” Stoney replied.

“Don’t tell me you don’t feel it,” Marten said. “You’ve been on the job longer than I have.”

“Feelings aren’t evidence.”

“And that isn’t an answer.”

Stoney answered with silence and Marten responded in kind by taking a long draw of his pipe and breathing out a cloud of smoke before turning to me.

“So, what’s different about you?” he asked.

“I’m not sure?” I said, more than a little confused.

“That was a rhetorical question,” he said, before turning back to Stoney. “You seriously won’t admit that you feel it too? Trust in your gut, or at least mine. It’s never led me astray.”

“Coming from a man with a gambling debt as large as yours, I’m not sure how true that is,” Stoney said, though the furrow in his brow refused to go away as his gaze fluttered between me and the floor.

“Fair point, but it’s the only one you’ve made so far,” Marten said, rolling his eyes before turning to Sera. “What about you? You’ve been traveling with Jamie this whole time, and you were and still are his Follower. Got any insight, or were you too busy trying to get into blondie’s pants?”

A part of my brain started to whir at the implications of what Marten said, but the larger part of me was more focused on the fact that Sera didn’t even seem to hear him.

Marten looked down at her, and opened his mouth, as if he was about to say something, but eventually closed it again and crossed his arms as he looked down at her. I could almost imagine him tapping his foot impatiently as he waited, but he stayed still, only moving to take puffs from his pipe, until Sera looked up at him.

“Well, look who finally decided to-”

“Shut up,” Sera said, her lips pulled into a thin line. “You say that Jamie feels different from the other Otherworlders you’ve met. Do I feel different from the other Followers you’ve met?”

“Other than the fact that you’re a horny teenager with no self control?”

Sera gritted her teeth and shook her head, looking at Stoney.

“Stoney,” she said. Her voice was low, but it trembled, like she was barely holding back a shout. “Compare me to the other Followers you’ve met.”

Stoney frowned. “That’s a very vague request,” he said. “I’m not sure what you’re searching for.”

Sera gritted her teeth, and she opened her mouth, but no words came out. She grimaced, and shook her head, though I wasn’t sure why.

“Can you compare me to any of the other Follower’s you’ve met?” Sera asked, still managing to keep her voice from rising in volume, but not in pitch. “Because I can’t. I’ve been on five different teams to pacify five Otherworlders, and I can’t remember a single Follower’s name.”

“Are you serious?” Marten asked. “You going crazy now?”

“Not as far as I can tell,” Sera said, though she hesitated slightly as if she was considering the possibility. “Just humour me. Give me the name of a single Follower other than me, and I’ll drop this.”

Marten’s lips curled into a mocking snarl and he opened his mouth, before he went completely silent.

If it were just that, I might not have been so unnerved as I was, but there was an instantaneous shift in Marten’s expression, from one of annoyance and confusion to one of nothing. Blank and expressionless, Marten stared forward, not seeming to register the world around him at all.

The shift in the room was so sudden that I felt myself flinch, but Sera was still moving. With a grimace on her face, she spared Marten a simple glance before she looked around the room. Following her gaze, I noticed that Stoney and Tenna had also fallen into a dull trance-like state, before they immediately snapped back into reality, just as quickly as they’d exited it.

“There, you got your names. Happy, now?” Marten asked, with his arms crossed over his chest, the same snarl on his face, like he hadn’t just fallen into silence for a few seconds.

Sera let out a hiss. The emotions hiding behind it were too complicated for me to interpret fully, but the thick undercurrent of dread was obvious.

“No,” she said, glancing at me. “No, I’m not.”