Aj paused from its murderous labors

and returned to Sunset.

Reflecting,

reaching,

feeling the changes it had wrought.

It felt it in the shell of that verse

which Aj had first stripped

of its tireless dynamos:

the first crack

that might let nothing in

and everything out.

Aida's string-enhanced scream detonated the fern-like tree before her. And ten more around it plus most of the other plants nearby besides. Spores and leaf shreds swirled in a cloud. She walked out it of coughing and waving her hand in front of her face.

Well done, Ghillie signed. Better this time?

"Yeah, but I was trying to get just the one tree," Aida said, brushing green bits from her tunic and pants. "I won't be solving any hostage situations any time soon. Less sniper rifle, more cruise missile: aim for the dude, take out the whole building."

She looked back towards the turtle and sighed. Only so many plants could die to her training regimen before she had to get back to ruling her damn verse.

“I thought ruling would be different,” Aida mused as they walked back along the sodden paths. Before long they weaved between erratically-placed lean-tos and crude tents spreading in all directions from the looming turtle shell. "Feel like we haven't gotten anywhere."

Better, Ghillie signed, gesturing about them.

“Yeah, huge improvement. From 'shipwreck survivors' to 'refugee camp' to 'shanty town'.” She shook her head, kicking the air to dislodge a chunk of mud clinging to her patched, fraying pant leg. She idly wondered how many pairs of the flimsy pants Maxim had supplied her she had left. She'd seen a few locals wear attempted duplications of her style. Emphasis on 'attempted', especially the dirty pink baseball cap she wore when it was especially bright out. She'd have to take a trip to the Syphon-whatever-it-was they were building atop a dormant volcano to see if she could talk them out of a few extra pairs of pants.

“Where the hell has Eth gotten off to? I have a million questions I need to ask her.”

More come. More go.

“Yeah, what the hell?” Aida swung her arms to encompass the lush, tangled greenery they called the Tangle. It grew at an alarming rate, now snarling every scrap of spare ground from turtle to volcano, from horizon to horizon. “She taking all the Imminent who show up out into the jungle and sacrificing them to the prophecy gods or something?”

What questions?

“Mostly what the hell do I do that fixes all this!” Aida shouted, drawing looks from a wretched-looking gaggle of her people passing the other way. At sight of her, some grovelled in the mud, others cupped their hands on their chests or breasts which still weirded her out. A few gave her dark looks, and a vaguely-familiar, attractive man in the back with a bandaged hand and long black hair placed his good hand covering his face then flicked it at her.

“That guy just told me to get rottered, right?” Aida said out of the corner of her mouth as she waved, smiled, and uttered reassuring, hopeful nothings to the group.

Ghillie nodded, watching the man intently as they passed.

“Well, rate I'm going, I'll have all the offensive gestures down soon at least.”

A stench worse even than the inadequate, overflowing latrine systems lining the edges of 'town' arose. She turned abruptly towards the rope mesh dangling from hammered bronze anchors near the mouth of the turtle's shell rather than face the approaching rotter train. The things might be essential labor with so many sick, starving, injured, or all of the above, but she didn't need their omnipresent reminder of how many people died in the One-Eighth already right now.

“Seven-eighths deathtrap,” she grumbled as they climbed the mesh that served as ladder.

Her mood darkened further when they finished their climb and Stiller bounded over. The scruffy kid gestured wildly towards the Thorn sprouting from atop the massive turtle skull on the far side of the Neck. Aida groaned, but dutifully began the scramble along the ramshackle span of bone, rope, and plank that led from shell to skull. Skull and Thorn.

“More? Where are they all coming from? Maybe we'll get lucky and it's Jaxe with a Legion at his back finally come to put us out of our misery." She sighed. "Guess I better go talk with them whoever it is. Hey Stiller, don't suppose you've seen Eth around, have you?”

The boy nodded and pointed up to the turtle shell's curve. Its magnificent vermilion-and-emerald sheen had mostly disappeared beneath a relentless, colorful mat of tiny plants, creepers, and fast-growing mosses. Aida squinted into the cavernous neck opening to the shell, but she saw only another a cluster of ramshackle tents and another brave or desperate band of men and women armed with crude spears venturing in to hunt the dangerous critters inside. Good riddance to the critters. Hopefully they wouldn't stop to drink the parasite-packed soup from inside that so many insisted on drinking in spite of her regular entreaties and warnings against it.

“I don't see her. Is she already inside-”

Stiller tugged her hand and she knelt beside him, wondering again if the mute boy no longer spoke due to mental trauma, physical trauma from the blow to the head he'd suffered as the Thorn Cupola collapsed in Jadeye, or both. Following his finger, she spotted Eth scrambling up the rope line that Parathas, her verser-cum-mountaineer, had rigged up to allow access to the impressive vantage at the shell's peak. “Is that Parathas up there waiting for her? Mr. Floppers wear out and she needs a still-attached replacement. Doesn't he seem a bit old for her?”

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

Ghillie shifted subtly into Aida's peripheral vision, facing towards the Thorn. Aida took a deep breath, patted Stiller on the head, and turned to face the still-nauseating spectacle. The Thorn spiraled out to encompass nearly the entire top of the skull, the air inside shimmering to a mirage of haze and distorted light.

“Ryk's not here armed and waiting, so pretty good sign it's not an invasion. Probably off leaping around that bizarre, solo battle arena he built himself and manhandling his spear. I could use a good manhandling myself.” Aida glanced about hoping to catch a glimpse of him. Her heart fell as she instead caught sight of Aliasara and what remained of her family marching in procession below towards the Crow's Camp at the tail-end of the turtle shell. A small, blanket-wrapped body rode on their shoulders.

“Poor woman's buried as many kin in the last month as I did in a the last fifty years,” Aida said, shaking her head at how far and long ago Earth felt now. A dream of a past life. “It been a month since we all got here? Five? A year? Hard to tell with the constant misery. Thought it might have been paradise when we first got here, but feels more like purgatory now.”

Ghillie tilted her hand back-and-forth.

Aida forced herself to look back at the Thorn as the mirage gradually solidified. “Maybe we're about to witness a miracle and these are craftsman bringing food, tools, animals, and building supplies instead of more sick, starving refugees.”

No such luck. The usual wave of vomiting from Vale-transition plus flu as the Thorn whipped back to its usual place. Same tiny bundles of belongings clutched over distended bellies, same exposed ribs and gaunt faces. Now-familiar looks of desperation, terror from the Vale journey, and stirring hope upon seeing Aida. This place would crush the hope in days if not hours while the desperation would thrive and grow. They'd found two more found dead from knife wounds last night, all for a small basket of jungle-harvested fruit.

A tall man in the Imminents' pale-blue marched from the heart of the immigrants as the common folk about him gradually recovered from the shift, thrusting a rope loop hosting several of the small crystals they called Valeer's 'nails into her hand.

“Thanks,” she said dryly. “I'll put it with the other dozens I've got stashed in my tents. Do it next week when I actually make it back there again. Eth is-”

“I know where she is,” the man said, wobbling slightly as he strode past Aida. He put up a brave face, but the unhealthy tint and the sunken stretch of skin on his face told her enough. To Aida's surprise, he stopped and cleared his throat beside her, staring out at the beautiful, dangerous strangle of the jungle.

“I am the last to come, only a few of us left now anywhere in the Book.” He spoke matter-of-factly, but Aida realized the tone served as a mask to keep the man's emotions in check. “Sacred future finally devours its children. We've known it would for millennia, but here we are, the lucky ones offered up as those final sacrifices. Keep her alive for Paradise' sake and make all this worth it. You are the First and the Last. I envy and pity you for your first and final meeting with Aj the Mother/Father Maker/Breaker when the parasite comes. Do your holy duty and preserve the past so many generations strove, worked, and died to make real.”

Aida stared at him blankly as he stumbled off up the neck. “My holy duty to what? Keep who alive? I meet the Aj monster? Maker/Breaker? What parasite?”

Ghillie nudged her, forcing her from her perplexed reverie.

"God, and I thought Eth was frustrating." Taking a deep breath, Aida turned and hummed into her strings the way she'd figured out a few arrivals back to project her voice like a loudspeaker.

“Welcome to your new home,” she said, raising her arms wide as she launched into the latest variation on her greeting shtick. “I am Aida. Welcome home to the One-Eighth. No, stand, please-”

Most of them fell to their knees and clutched their chests in a fawning reverence she didn't deserve in the slightest. She cringed inwardly and winced as many prostrated themselves in their own sick from a minute earlier. “Much of what you've heard is true, but even more is exaggeration and wishful thinking. Yes, I am the Mother of Menials, the Amma of Exiles. Yes, I fought Wake of Graves, crippled Jaxe of the Stacks, killed Dynast Reck of Chalk-”

That bit she'd added for the last batch of new arrivals. Close enough to the truth and useful propaganda. She waited for the excited tumult to die down before continuing in a graver tone. “But no, I cannot perform miracles. I've learned to destroy with a word, but sadly not to heal with one. You are free and equal here as you hoped, but know I cannot cure the Dynast's Plague.”

She'd given up on trying to get people to call it 'the flu' or to understand even the most basic virology weeks ago. Instead, she'd shifted to calling it by the name Semon had come up with to hopefully shift the blame and retributions for it somewhere other than on the poor Wretches.

“Know that we have little shelter, limited water. We've planted a few crops from what few seeds were brought. Food exists in abundance in the Tangle, but we still don't know which out of all the plants are safe to eat and which kill or sicken. Ask before you eat.”

She gave that a moment to sink in as they looked out over the blossom-thick growth of the Tangle and then across what passed for a town.

“We have rotters available to help you with any simple labors... too many rotters,” she added under her breath. “What tools we have you can share. What you can take from the Tangle is yours, though the creatures within grow quickly and many are venomous so go with our guides in armed groups. Stay near the marked trails. Watch out especially for the little versions of this big guy we're standing on; they'll bite a chunk out of your calf, curl up inside their shell, and whip their poisonous tail around until you go away."

She glanced down at the divot in her leg where she'd learned that the hard way. Mostly grown back by now, but many out there limped around with permanent muscle loss, missing toes, or mangled feet from the nippy bastards. At least they made good soup if you hacked the tail off and put them over a fire.

"You may make your dwelling wherever you desire out of whatever you can find but know here and now that people are inviolate whether man, woman, child. That includes Wretches.” Her jaw tightened at the last as a few of the new arrivals called out in anger and others muttered. “Also what property anyone has is theirs. The punishment for violating the person or property of another is exile in the the Tangle. Believe me, exile from us Exiles is not pretty. No one who's disobeyed these few of our rules have been seen again once banished.”

“A few other rules: the water in the sinkholes inside the skull is for drinking only. Anyone who urinates or defecates in it shall be exiled.” With their general ignorance of sanitation, she'd been forced to increase the punishment repeatedly at risk of losing their one reliable rain catch. “The water in the shell hosts many dangerous creatures and the water will make you sicker than any chant can heal. Don't believe the rumors that drinking it mixed with lice herb or bitterberry will cure the Dynasts' Plague or any of the other garbage about it. It'll make you sick or sicker. Period.”

“For those of you carrying dead loved ones on your back or those among you who will inevitably be struck down by the Plague or killed as you fled wherever you're from, know I grieve for your loss. That said, with so many invalid, sick, injured, or weak, we need every able body whether its soul remains attached or not. The Crow's Camp sits around the far side of the shell. Mourn quickly; the humidity here works fast so they are useful longer the sooner you get them to the Crowmen.”

“I strive to be fair and just. I aim to make this place a bastion of freedom welcome to all, but I will not lie and tell you it is anywhere near that state now. The One-Eighth is hot, damp, dangerous and full of toxic plants crawling with poisonous animals, insects, and things somewhere between the two. The only thing we have in vast abundance is a scarcity of everything. I have been and will continue to work tirelessly for my people, but Dynast-or-not, I am one woman and can only do so much."

She'd given this part of the speech enough times that she forced her mind to not wander as she spoke. "Work together. Ask for help and give it. Share when you can. Refuse when you must. Keep the peace. Know everyone struggles here together to survive and make a better verse. Hopefully, someday, a better Kiloverse.”

“Lastly, know that I've been condemned as traitor, exile, and outlaw by a Tribunal the Black Court or three. By coming here you're now truly exiles, your lives forfeit for associating with me should you go to any other verse. Forfeit here, too, when the Legions come as they eventually must. I have acquired an array of Valeer's 'nails leading to a few dozen different verses should you wish to leave. I will not force anyone to stay against their will.”

Even worse than watching the light go out in so many eyes as she spoke was the few eyes still brimming with hope as they listened to her. She turned away, a bitter taste in her mouth as she brushed off the hands of those who crawled forward to touch her.

She re-crossed the rope-and-bone of the Neck with dangerous speed. Trying to outrun reality was futile, but she tried anyway. When she slowed, her breath coming fast, she turned hazarded a glance back. Just in time to see the Thorn begin to swell again.

“Of course.” She slumped against the nearest vertebrae fin. Ghillie followed her gaze from where she stood several vertebrae back, then shrugged and made an eloquent “after you” gesture back towards the Thorn.

As Aida clambered back towards the skull, Aida glanced up to where Eth greeted the newest-arrived Imminent atop the turtle's peak. “You better still be there when I get done, girl, or I'm going to track you down and choke the future out of you.”

Standing again before the Thorn, she prepared her spiel again, but as the Thorn whipped back to solidity, words failed her.

These were not refugees.