[SS]: We’re back from our intermission, and now I’m grinning cause I stole the sweater Korac was wearing. Smells frosty and feels so warm.
I like the way it looks on you.
[SS]: “Hee. So what are we covering now?”
We finish this chapter with one last Razor encounter. Are you all right for this?
[SS]: Snuggling in his sweater, I’m ready. “Absolutely.” I turn to poise over the typewriter once more. Korac dives right in.
{400 CE}
Although I despised the Pain Curator even then, I interacted with him one last time on behalf of my King.
During my tenure at the Obsidian Palace, I heard rumors that Razor offered an experience featuring myself—Celindria’s whipping at my hands. As I understood the technology, it required a donation of the inflicted person’s experience.
Celindria sold her pain to him.
This interested me greatly.
After my last match, Razor emptied the owner’s box to talk with me privately. He held nothing back. “I want you to sign for a further five fights. You alone are enough to fund my next invention for the Emporium. That puts you in a prominent position for negotiations.”
Think of it. The irony that he prospered heavily on my back for two of his vice industries. All the while, I never knew we were brothers.
[SS]: Korac takes a quiet moment. Lots of introspection in this Verse. It’s important, and I wait for him to get through it before we continue.
I treaded carefully with my answer. “While I appreciate my role in your ambitions, I will have to decline and offer another trade, instead.”
Razor never narrowed his gaze or showed any sign of losing the upper-hand. He only smiled congenially and nodded for me to continue. Meanwhile, he sat back in his chair and propped his boots on the table.
“I understand you already make profit—without my consent—on an experience I delivered. ‘The First Progeny’s Punishment,’ I believe you call it.”
At this, Razor clasped his hands over his stomach, and his smile contorted into more of a knowing smirk. “You want me to cease offering it to my clients?”
I stood across the desk from him, shirtless, armed with my whip, and covered in purple Lamia blood. The meat wasn’t as good raw. Deadly and hungry, I wondered at the Pain Curator’s cavalier persona. What, if anything, frightened this man from his casual air? Unwilling to ask, I instead elaborated on my intentions. “I want to know how you came to possess Celindria’s pain.”
“Ahh… I heard tales of your King. Stricken, yes? Vengeance is a hungry master.”
His observations were too insightful. I almost twitched with the urge to narrow my gaze at him, but the mask must stay in place. Give no one your reactions, sprite.
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In the end, I simply gave a single nod.
Razor took his feet off the desk and leaned forward with his hands steepled. “Celindria came to me a long time ago. Centuries after the Vacating. While you may find this odd, it is nevertheless the truth. She asked for nothing in exchange for the experience. Only that I charge minimally despite its premium quality. To my vault’s growing displeasure.”
With her peculiarities, this rang as truth. The woman was mad, after all, but this was hardly news to deliver to Nox. “Then if you see fit, I shall take my winnings and return to Cinder.”
At Razor’s polite nod, I headed for the door. I was halfway out of it when he called, “I can ease his troubles.”
I turned with a brow raised.
“King Nox. I have something that will ease him, and I am in the market of providing people with their needs.”
Suspicious but curious, I reentered the sphere of negotiations. “What is it, and how much does it cost?”
The Pain Curator chuckled at my pragmatism. He stood and gazed out of the glass opening to the onyx hexagon. With his back to me, he offered, “Light to banish his darkness. It will cost you the whip that lashed the First Progeny and another slight commodity.”
Trade Nox’s whip for a salve on his sanity? I frowned before asking. “And this second cost?”
“You collected nacres which are valuable to me. I want to see them returned to Yu. I believe you do, as well, but it may be better received by me than the Icarean General that fell them.”
The Yu Brothers. At rest on their homeworld.
It wasn’t a hard decision. “Done.”
Of course, I’d no idea at the time that he planned to smash them into plates and sell them to the highest bidder.
[SS]: We’re very fortunate that Iuo bought them during an auction and returned them to Legir. So the grief-stricken father could mourn his sons at their only marker.
You know what happened next. It was in Nox’s Verse. Razor, with all his strange mannerisms, delivered Cascading Light to Nox.
[SS]: Korac’s chuckling and now full on laughing.
I have to know why. “What is it, babe?”
I’m just ruminating that the way Nox reacted to Razor is very similar to how I imagine Rayne would. To treat the Pain Curator like a buzzing insect, too insignificant to pay more attention than it would take to swat him.
[SS]: I smile with him because I’ve thought the same thing about you, Rayne. It is oddly similar.
Aside from that, I want to lend my insights into Nox’s reaction. Understand that he spent the last several millennia mourning his family, his people, and his future. Now, here comes this vision of a girl in tears, utterly decimating the very regime he loathed. Have you seen it, Sagan?
[SS]: I shake my head. I don’t really want to. I try not to think about it. “But Kyle, Andrew, and Tumu have all told me about it.”
To an Icarus, under the weight of Li’s deadly promise—Rayne—you, in that image represented, our true salvation. I believe that’s why so many Icari easily accepted your leadership after the war. It was the natural order of things.
It was enough to rekindle the spark we needed for the second invasion. After my experience in the ring, I possessed enough credits to fund it.
“She is Celindria’s descendant,” I explained what Razor informed me. “The Probabilities tell us when, but not where, she manifests. Born near the end of the 20th century. We can contain her and the other Progeny line to one unassuming location. We can take her easily for the Martyr Complex—”
My King spoke his first words in the three weeks since Razor delivered Cascading Light. “The Traitor Prince will not idle with this one.”
I peered hard at the image. Eventually, I shook my head slowly. “No, he will not. I see too much vulnerability in her.”
“Do what you must to coordinate the next invasion. In sixteen hundred years, that girl belongs to me. Begin forging the Cruor Villam. Develop the nacre-affecting serums for the tranquilizers. She will not surrender. Look.” Nox pointed at the pure determination in the image of your eyes. “Expect one hell of a fight, General.”
“What is so special about her?” Colita sounded disgusted as she sassed with one hand on her hip. “That is an inexperienced, non-threat of a distraction.”
I couldn’t disagree more. “No. Our King is right, Colita. Those are not tears of sadness. That is pure loneliness from living a hard life of sacrifice and pain. I would know.”
The viper looked between Nox and I. The former had not yet taken his eyes off the flames. Colita distilled what I’d yet to acknowledge.
Our King wasn’t obsessed with the image of our salvation.
Nox was obsessed with the young warrior inside that fire.
That posed a complication I never predicted.