Kuravaan strode through the hall, a second Primus trailing behind him. It hadn’t been obvious when he had greeted Omet and Horan, due to him keeping his distance from the two of them, but now that someone else was close to him, it became clear that Kuravaan towered over most other Primoi, with a full foot and a half between him and his companion.
Kuravaan held his arms behind his back as he walked. “And our guests know where they are allowed?”
His companion nodded, which Kuravaan presumably did not see. “We’ve clearly marked the rooms intended for their use and visitation, and made sure to inform them both of the indicators that we used.”
“Excellent, good work.” Kuravaan emerged from the hallway into one of the seemingly dozens of gardens that his home had, then turned around to look at Jatra. “Also, just to be sure, check up on Rachna again. I don’t want him causing a scene while we have guests.”
“Yes, of course. Right away.” Jatra scurried around a topiary elephant and out of sight.
Horan tapped the tiny TV-shaped sticker, and the postage stamp-sized moving image on the screen that displayed the conversation between the two Indians froze in place. He pulled his head away from the sticker, relieved that he would no longer need to strain his eyes and hearing just to make out what was happening. He didn’t really expect the audio-visual output of a bunch of stickers to be very high, but it was still a challenge to figure out what was going on.
He got up and stretched his legs. Two hours of sitting on the roof and waiting for anything good after sticking his network of surveillance sticker-glyphs was surprisingly lucky, but he had really been caught off-guard by how tedious that entire period was. Glad that phase of the plan was done.
Horan was pretty sure that he recognized the garden with the elephant-shaped bush from when he was placing his stickers all over the palace, which meant that he could still intercept Jatra. He quickly shifted into a bird and flew off to where he figured that particular garden was.
Horan silently thanked whoever had designed the Indians’ palace for forgetting that rain existed, as Jatra was easily located once Horan had a bird’s-eye view of the labyrinthine corridors.
However, Jatra eventually turned to open a nondescript door that revealed a dark, underground staircase. Horan was forced to swoop down and land on the doorframe while Jatra looked down the hallway to make sure he hadn’t been seen. When Jatra pulled the door shut, Horan squirmed onto the side and clung to the metal lining the door with his talons as Jatra brought the staircase back into darkness.
Jatra made his eyes flare with dirty orange light, illuminating the staircase while he descended into its depths. Horan awkwardly hopped down the steps a few feet behind him, constantly willing him not to turn around.
The unlit staircase ended abruptly in an unmarked wooden door, nondescript aside from the several deadbolts holding it in place. While Jatra withdrew a ring of keys from a hook on the wall and set to releasing the numerous locks on the door, Horan hunkered down as far away as he could manage while still having a good view of the door.
Jatra finally got the door open and swung it inward. “Me again. Just wanted to–” He stiffened and whipped around, the beam of light from his eyes clearly illuminating Horan’s avian form.
While Horan was frozen in fear and desperately tried to recall what it was that normal, non-suspicious birds usually did, Jatra relaxed slightly and clutched his chest. “Don’t do that!” He pointed inside the pitch-black room on the other side of the door. “Get back in there, the Aztecs have arrived and Kuravaan will have both of our heads if you make things go south for us!”
Horan slowly began to walk backwards up the stairs, still too petrified to take his eyes off Jatra. He had absolutely no idea what was going on, but he could potentially get out of the cramped space without Jatra realizing who he was.
He managed to go up a single step before Jatra held up a hand. “No, we’re not doing that. Shift back, come on.”
Horan performed the closest approximation of a wince that he could manage with a beak. The jig was up, then. He shifted back to his true form, feeling his hair suddenly brush up against the ceiling of the staircase. “Okay, I c–”
“You’re not Rachna.”
Horan froze. “Wh-what?”
Rachna didn’t respond, instead shoving Horan to the side as he sprinted back up the stairs. Horan was sent tumbling down half a dozen stairs before he got the idea to stabilize himself with a cushion of air. He mindlessly followed Jatra just to find out what was going on, then got the idea to check the room at the bottom of the stairs.
As the blue beam of light emanating from his eye swept across the dark stone walls, Horan saw that the cubical room was completely empty, with the walls covered in a zoo’s worth of different scratch marks. Horan quickly decided to shut the door and follow Jatra.
-
The red-eyed Indian pushed the two sides of the paper boat towards one another, widening the middle of the faux-origami construct. “And unless you skipped step 12, that should be good enough for the bucket.”
Omet mirrored the movement and looked over their boat. “Yeah, that looks about right. Aren’t these normally used in gutters when it’s raining and stuff? A bucket seems like a waste.”
The Indian held back a snort and pulled up a large metal bucket filled with tap water. “Well, these people are too boring to just get rid of the ceiling magic and just let the whole house flood, so the bucket will have to do. Now try not to–” He failed to hold back the second snort. “Try not to cut yourself on that. Cellulose has no taste, is odorless, and is hydrophilic with a contact angle of twenty to thirty degrees.”
“...Neat.” Omet looked around at the library the two of them were seated in the corner of. Surprisingly normal in most respects, save for the lack of ladders, a good dozen Indians were huddled around the room’s periphery, seemingly paying more attention to the other Indian than to Omet. Kuravaan sat in an armchair in the far corner, holding a dark orange-eyed Primus by the arm and whispering furiously in his ear.
Omet shrugged and placed their tiny boat in the steel bucket. “Where did you even get this…?”
“Doesn’t matter, look at it go!” The Indian cackled as Omet’s boat floated serenely in the still water of the bucket, before throwing his own boat in with enough force to make the bucket rattle on the floor. Both boats quickly became soaked through and sank to the bottom. The Indian looked back up at Omet. “Wait, it’s common knowledge that paper does that, right?”
“Y… Yes?”
The Indian doubled over and fell out of his chair, wheezing with laughter. Omet retracted their limbs as the Indian rolled around and made sounds that brought an asthma attack to mind.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Suddenly, the Indian, face down and staring at the persian rug beneath his feet, redoubled his bout of laughter and pointed limply at the library’s entrance. Omet looked up to see Horan standing in the entrance, staring at the Indian on the ground in shock and fear.
Horan noticed the other Indians crowded up in the other side of the room and singled out Kuravaan. “Were you just keeping Rachna locked in the basement?!”
Kuravaan shot to his feet and closed the distance between Horan and the Indians in what felt like an instant, seemingly trying to block Horan’s view of his Domain. “That doesn’t matter right now, but we are so sorry for the scene, he’s normally much more willing to stay in his room. There’s, um, no need for us to make a big deal out of this, we can just guide Rachna back into his room and continue with things as we were?”
Rachna devolved into hysterics, getting onto his knees and looking Horan dead in the eye with manic amusement. He briefly flashed with dull light, then transformed into a perfect copy of Horan, save for the same nonsensical laughter dominating his expression.
Horan took a step back. “R–Rachna? Call it off, dude, this isn’t funny…”
Rachna began rapidly switching his appearance between everyone in the room. He shifted into Omet, then Kuravaan, then his entire body was momentarily engulfed with pale blue fire, then he switched to Jatra, then he started flipping through all the unintroduced Indians bunched up in the corner. All the while, his deranged cackling never abated.
Horan tore his eyes away from Rachna and stared at Kuravaan. “What…? Wha-what did Deus do to him?”
Kuravaan clenched his jaw. “We’d all like to know the same thing… Just… Don’t bring this up to anyone outside our home, understood?”
Heaving with now silent laughter and fully settled into the appearance of one of the Indians watching from the side, Rachna crawled over to where Omet was still sitting, intermittently muttering under his breath in between bouts of giggling as he approached. “Born alone of cold and fear… Source of gold and glyph and claw and mist… Vault of shame and secrets… Dread of blue and white…”
Omet pulled up their legs, out of Rachna’s reach. “I– I don’t, I.. He seemed fine, he just kinda sta– just walked up to me and started talking! Wha–” They looked up at Horan. “What happened to him?!”
Kuravaan winced. “Let’s not, we don’t need to make a scene about–”
“No.” Horan stepped forward. “You’re gonna explain right n…”
Kuravaan glared at Horan.
“You’re g… You’ll…” Horan shrank back, eliciting a satisfied huff from Kuravaan.
One Indian stepped forward and tried to speak, but only made it as far as opening their mouth before Kuravaan glared at them in turn and they slunk back into the crowd.
Horan stood next to Omet. “I… I remember when Deus first started throwing his weight around, it would’ve been around when the Carthaginian Domain went mortal. He started threatening to intervene whenever someone messed with humanity, tried to pen everyone in and separate us from his pets.”
Rachna giggled and looked up at Omet. “Ooh, here’s my favorite part!”
Horan glanced at Rachna and swallowed. “But a lot of peop– of Primoi didn’t like that, a bunch of them camped out of their Domain’s homes to try and prove a point. Rachna went the extra mile, crossed the Atlantic before we even knew there was something on the other side.”
Rachna wheezed upon hearing the last part. “I’m sure a certain workplace acquaintance has told you about how fun a good rafting trip can be…”
Horan continued, visibly uncomfortable by now. “Deus tried every trick in the book, getting all these people back and, uh… putting them in their place.”
Omet shuddered, but decided not to inquire.
Horan acknowledged the gesture with a nod. “But no matter what sort of combination of powers or whatever he got from all that power Rome was constantly giving him, he couldn’t get Rachna for some reason.”
“Hide And Seek all-time world champion,” mumbled Rachna.
“And after a few years of Rachna succeeding in making Deus look like a clown, the big guy got sick of it and made his own personal-use summoner, the Seraphium.”
Omet sighed. “Can’t I just learn things under normal circumstances?”
Horan nodded dejectedly. “I wish, dude. I don’t know how the Seraphium works, and Deus doesn’t like people asking. But however he managed to make it, it was able to pull Rachna from whatever hole he’d made his home.”
“And it brought him back as that,” finished Kuravaan. “We still don’t know whether it was the Seraphium that did it or wherever he hid, because Rachna’s been as tight-lipped about the whole thing as Deus.”
Rachna stifled more laughter. “I’m afraid it won’t work twice, it’s their favorite stash now!”
Horan sighed. “Deus hasn’t used the Seraphium since. Tucked it away where he said nobody would find it. According to him, because it even worked on him. Didn’t feel like saying why that was an issue, but I’m sure we can all imagine. Still not sure how he solved the rock-so-heavy-even-he-can’t-lift-it debate, but at least we can hold it over his head now.”
Kuravaan stepped between Horan and Rachna, who was still on the ground. “Omnipotence paradox aside, that’s all that the Aztec needs to know about the affair. Rachna now needs to be returned to his chambers until further notice, as that is the only place we can somewhat reliably keep him without incidents like this one. Evidently, that requires a little more work.”
Omet helped Rachna to his feet. “But this whole time, he…?” They decided not to continue that train of thought.
Kuravaan snapped, summoning three Indians forward from the group to drag Rachna back down to the basement. The Primus made no effort to resist, absent-mindedly chuckling to himself.
Kuravaan waited until Rachna had been taken away before turning back to Horan, who now had Omet standing next to him. “Alright, um… This information regarding Rachna and his condition is not to leave this building, is that understood? This is our business, and your Domains have no need to interfere in it.”
Horan grinned and shrugged. “Oh, sure, we’ll keep it all hush-hush… If you swear that regardless of whatever might happen for the rest of me and Omet’s stay here, you will assist their Domain with its current issues anyway?”
Kuravaan visibly held back the urge to grit his teeth. “...Yes, of course. We’d be more than willing.”
“Say the words, Kuravaan.”
“...We swear that we and our Domain shall see our currently-affirmed duties to the end, regardless of how your presence within our home makes us feel about pursuing such an endeavor, provided you do not mention anything related to Rachna to anyone not currently present to witness this.”
“There we go, nice and straightforward.”
Kuravaan left in a huff, muttering something under his breath. Slowly but surely, the other Indians cleared out of the library, leaving Omet and Horan alone.
Horan turned to Omet, a wide grin plastered across his face. “...And that is how you make the best out of a bad situation. Take notes, dude.”
Omet rubbed their arm. “I– I feel gross. For a lot of reasons. Do you think we should do something about Rachna? Where were they keeping him?”
Horan’s grin swiftly faded. “Yeah, um, that’s definitely worrying, and I feel a lot worse about coming to these guys, but... But you know what? Aside from the extremely worrying reveal of why I haven’t seen Rachna in two millennia, I’d call that a good turnout for my surveillance efforts, overall. Remind me to thank Quet for caring about my five thousandth, six hundred and thirty-n… yeah, thirty-ninth birthday. I sure didn’t.”
After a pause, he went for the room’s exit, still trying to straighten out his slightly ruffled hair. “But yeah, that whole deal did kill the mood. I’ll, uh, I’ll go help the Indians figure out a dress code, you can go back to...” He squinted at Omet’s open notebook on the other side of the room. “Whatever your ‘project’ is meant to be. Ha– have fun.” He hurried out of sight.
Now alone, Omet sat back down, pushed Rachna’s chair away and ran a hand through their hair. “How does he handle it all…?”
“Poorly.”
Omet turned to see Rachna’s face inches from theirs, his dark blue eyes bathing them in the same color.
Omet fell out of their chair in surprise, recoiling away from Rachna, who was splayed against the nearby bookshelf like a spider. Omet stared at him in shock for a moment, before slowly lifting a finger to point at him. “...Were your eyes always that color?”