The Kingdom of Occultism was, as the name suggested, a strange place. When the country had been young and while it was still being built many had come to visit it, from simple [Wandering Merchants] to neighboring [Kings] with big and showy escorts.
The former would always find good people willing to trade and come out of the place a lot richer than when they’d come, while the latter… well, they were subjected to pranks.
Many a [Generals] had lost their dignity (and some their positions) when they’d met Tiana, thinking she was a child wearing a military costume and, therefore, treating her as such. Their faces every time she dropped the facade and beat the stuffing out of them were always priceless and, if voices were to be believed, somewhere in the city there was a gallery filled with [Mage Pictures] and recordings of those interactions – and subsequent fights.
In the same way so many [Kings] had encountered the actual King of Crows while he had been working with his people, helping in the slow building of his kingdom, resulting in them not recognizing him, which had most of the time led to some amusing ‘chases’ all over the kingdom-to-be in an attempt to hunt for the man. Inevitably, when someone just didn’t manage to contain their laughter and spilled the beans, the belaughed [King] would lose it and leave, taking with them their political plots that would’ve probably just brought trouble to the newborn kingdom.
Only once had the [King] in question not fallen for said trick, immediately recognizing Ravenspoken for who he was. The man’s name: Alban III. He had come from Eva in person to meet this up and coming man who alone had managed to wrangle these relatively useless lands from the hands of another kingdom and, with his and his people’s sheer effort, was slowly managing to turn them into something.
Anyways, all this to say: this kingdom was strange.
People would laugh and tell you the wildest tales about how they or their parents had been recruited to participate in the making of this new home, and if one dared to ask about the leaders, those behind the projects and the making of all this, well, safe to say the tales would become even more outlandish.
The most outlandish of them all? Here’s some: the [Architect] who had made the projects for the kingdom was a goblin of all things, the Prime Minister was an ex-Assassin, and, sometimes, there was even tell of an alraune living among them, which was utterly preposterous seeing how they were mindless plants who attracted prey with their beautiful human looking bodies only to drain them dry of blood afterwards. In a way, they were the plant world’s equivalent of a vampire. Some even said that they had been created by vampires, but there was no proof of that and, as everybody knew, vampires had died off centuries, no, millenia ago, well before the Silken Wars – although the general populace didn’t know anymore why they celebrated the Silken Week, nor had they heard of those wars.
This is what [General] Tiana had told Isse as she accompanied them down towards the landing area.
“So wait, you knew what the Silken Wars were and you knew what the Silken Week celebrated, yet you didn’t know what an arachne was?” asked Isse.
“I mean, I maybe-sort-of-probably-very-possibly fell asleep halfway through Ravenspoken’s explanation. So I just sorta remembered that the Silken Wars were fought against something very dangerous that was supposedly exterminated.”
Both the arachne and Shriya gave an unimpressed look to the woman who just shrugged: “Hey, I’m all for learning new things but I’m a [General] first and foremost and history lessons are only good when they explain the workings of battlefields.”
She pouted, crossing both her arms and legs, something that would’ve been funnier if she hadn’t been floating in the air.
“For the love of the gods,” finally snapped Shriya, “Could you stay inside the airship? You’re giving me anxiety, and I’m jungleborn so nothing should be capable of giving it to me.”
The [General] who looked like a tall child snickered and did a barrel roll, causing the birdkin to groan and look away.
“So,” continued Isse, ignoring completely that interaction, “you’re saying that this Ravenspoken, who, if I got that right, is the king around here, knows about us and our history?”
She made a so-so gesture: “Probably, yes. And if not him then the crows do.”
Right, King of Crows and everything, she thought.
“So he can really talk to crows?” asked Moon, who’d gone back to the airship’s wheel, releasing a few nearby ropes that opened small holes in the balloon, allowing air to leave a few internal compartments, which caused them to hasten their descent.
“Yep! They’re real gossipers too from what he says, but they only share stuff from outside the kingdom so I can’t find out who the new couples around here are without socializing. Ugh…” the look of absolute disgust on her face made Isse chuckle, which caused Tiana to chuckle, which, as you can probably guess, resulted in a chain reaction that had both women rolling on the ground – and in the air – soon.
Even Shriya smiled slightly at that, although the reason for the gesture was completely different from what the two could’ve guessed: namely, she was happy that Isse, the young arachne, had found a distraction.
The laughter began to die down nearly a minute later, accompanied by wheezing on Tiana’s part and tears on Isse’s.
That was when they finally came level with the top of the walls. There were [Guards] and [Soldiers] on top, the difference between the two noticeable by the lack of heavy armor on the former – which tended to wear leather armor with chainmail underneath.
Both groups waved at them, noticing only a moment later the presence of their [General], which caused them to attempt to save face by turning the waving into a very awkward salute.
For her part Tiana waved them down.
“Those are my boys, each and every one of them. Trained them myself, I did!” she said, sounding for all the world like a proud mother showing off her child, “They’re great with both swords and bows! More or less. Let’s just say that anyone trying to breach these walls will be in for quite the nasty surprise.”
The rest of the descent was nearly silent and completely uneventful, leaving Isse enough time to calm down, her despondency creeping back, like a fox coming back to the scene of a hunt to see if the bigger predator had left something for her to eat. Finding nothing, it settled back comfortably in the back of her mind, darkening her thoughts with its presence.
Her thoughts turned back to the dream, to Anda and Makira and the others, her family she had lost and the only friends she’d left behind. Sure, she could’ve said that none of it had been her fault: she hadn’t decided to survive the fire that had engulfed her entire forest together with both arachne and enemies, nor had she gotten to choose Tobias’ destiny, and for that matter she would’ve never endangered Morra by going to find her
But would she have even wanted to come with me if I’d shown her the truth? Would she have wanted to help me if I’d told her what I’d done to her only other friend?
She shook her head, her hand instinctively moving to her belly, the other caressing her spider half. They’d been flying for a few days now and she was already starting to feel bloated: not long now, not long at all, and she wouldn’t be alone.
They reached the base of the walls and she didn’t notice, although she did hear Tiana shout: “On behalf of the entire Kingdom of Occultism, I welcome you, Moon and Shriya of the Jungles, and Issekina of Clan Silksoul!”
Upon hearing those words Isse’s head whipped up towards the tiny general, her mind broken out of its eternal circles of sorrow and hope by those simple words at the end. How –
“How do I know? Whoever told my king to let you in told him this as well, apparently.”
Albert.
He had cared. Always had, from the moment he’d found her up until the very end. He had found someone lost, someone broken, and seen in her what he’d seen in many others before. The real difference was that, this time, he hadn’t looked away. He’d helped rebuild her afterwards, repaired the damage, sutured and bound the weeping wounds. And, at the end, he had still tried to help her, going as far as telling the one who would help her, her story, or at least, her origins.
A small smile formed on her lips as she hugged the crow she was holding closer. The animal didn’t seem to be against it.
“Throwing moorings!” shouted Moon as she threw to the ground several ropes and, with the flick of a switch, released two heavy looking steel anchors.
Minutes passed, the only sounds around her those of the people working underneath, the words undistinguishable and all fusing together into droning broken only every now and then by laughter made distant by her ignoring it.
She didn’t feel the passage of time, her concentration on Moon, who kept on moving around the ship shouting instructions, and Shriya, who’d sat herself down next to Isse, looking down at her in… she flicked her eyes towards the birdkin and saw worry.
But there’s nothing to worry about.
And then there was the sensation of hair touching hers every now and then, Tiana’s if she had to guess. She could see her in her mind’s eye, just floating there lazily, probably rotating on herself because it was fun. She was curious about how she could do that: fly around all willy nilly, as if gravity had forgotten about her existence entirely. What kind of magic could do that? What enchantment? Or what combination of both? Or was it a Skill? She was sure that Grandmother would’ve found the situation interesting. Or maybe she would’ve unraveled it so fast it wouldn’t have taken her longer than a blink – although, now that she thought about it, Isse couldn’t remember ever seeing her blink.
“You can get down, little spider,” said Tiana’s voice at some point over her head.
The air felt like cotton as she got up, skittering towards the wooden stairs that had been placed to let anyone onboard get down comfortably.
A little part of her thought that both Moon and Shriya would’ve found that measure useless since they were jungleborn.
The rest of her though? The majority was locked onto those words: ‘You can get down little spider.’
“Let’s get down, little spider,” said Makira.
The words in the memory and the [General]’s kept repeating themselves in a loop, a broken disk on a rusted gramophone who’s needle had forgotten to move to the next line. The words mixed together, they became one and the same, and as they did she no longer saw Tiana.
She saw Makira, the Smiling Woman. She saw her smiles, all of them, all the ones she’d shared with them since they’d been born, and there were oh so many.
And then she saw her last smile. The bloodthirsty smile of the monster she’d become in her desire to protect them from the [Soldiers] trying to murder them. The four armed monstrosity wielding swords of blood and fury, dancing around the battlefield with the grace of… actually, no: the moment she’d turned into that she had stopped being graceful, she had forgotten the meaning of beauty, and instead she had just turned into a merciless machine that clunked around and destroyed anything in her path, a thing of war that fed on blood and shat out corpses.
How she wished that hadn’t been the last memory she had of their mentor, their greatest [Carer], their… one of their mothers.
She was on the ground now and someone was telling her to get inside a wagon that, apparently, would get her to the castle. The voice didn’t seem scared, nor did it feel like it was trying to make her move faster, so she just calmly (on the outside) walked towards said carriage, not seeing its pleasantly decorated exterior, nor noticing the driver on top that was trying and succeeding to calm the horses that her presence was clearly scaring.
And all the while Moon, Shriya and Tiana watched her go.
Finally, the [General] spoke: “I have seen veterans of a hundred battlefields less broken than that girl.”
The two friends looked up in surprise at the woman’s sudden change in tone. She’d sounded so cheerful up until then, but now? Now she had the hard voice of a trained woman who’d seen people die and was ready to kill her fair share.
“I’m surprised she hasn’t been touched by Blood,” she continued.
Moon nodded: “Us too, for that matter.”
They stood there for a while more, silence falling over the ship. They heard the arrival of the Silver airship, the voices of the workers underneath rising towards them as orders were given and anchors were tied.
In the end it was Shriya who broke the silence: “Who are you, Tiana? You look so young and yet I can feel the weight of the years in your voice. You look cheerful yet the scent of Blood lingers around you. Who are you? How did you get here?”
The [General] turned towards her, twirling slightly in the air until she was belly down, chin in her hands, as if she were sitting comfortably on a mat.
“I’m a halfblood. Half Elf, half Dwarf. My name is Tiana, and that is my actual name. It comes from ancient elvish and it means ‘She who smiles in the face of adversity’, or something along those lines. Tiana’s just an abbreviation of a much longer name, Tianarife Olusmiel. I grew up in a happy and functional family, then one day I decided to join a contingent of elven [Archers] in a mercenary company going to war on Rodar.
“They told me it would be Airm, that me being ‘good’ wouldn’t be enough. I didn’t believe them, thought that no amount of misfortune could get in the way of skill and Skills. As they say, reality bitch slapped me. Let me tell you, being an [Archer] on Rodar is like being a fish in the middle of the Vinzant Desert. No matter how good you are, an errant gust of wind can and usually will make you miss the target, you will lose your foothold at the last second and fall face down in the mud, and so on and so forth.
“Long story short, I gained a lot of Levels. We also lost a lot of people.
“Then, one day, the enemy stopped fighting and started playing, and we didn’t know the rules. They got behind us, got to our [General] and his [Tacticians], killing every last one of them. We were surrounded, but my elder managed to get us out at the cost of her life. That night the Blood ran rampant among the survivors, but me? I smiled. I smiled and got the others to smile with me, and we smiled when they came to ambush us in the depth of night, but all they found was empty beds filled with grass and logs. We were in the trees to greet them, to play our own game. We were much better players than them.
“That night I led my survivors to victory, and in the nights that followed we brought the Blood that should’ve touched us to them, letting it flow into their dreams, changing them into nightmares that hounded them in daylight. We picked them off one by one, uncaring for the misfortune for we had been through too much of it and, for all the things that Rodar is, it is fair. I led them on, always with a smile on my face but never laughing. On that overgrown island I changed: from a simple [Archer] to a [Leader] to a [Tactician] to a [General] as, bit by bit, I won the war. Although we did forget what side we were supposed to be on, an unfortunate side effect of what we’d gone through. I think we decimated both sides, but the colors of the flags grow fuzzy every time I think about them.
“And then Ravenspoken found me and what was left of my people. One thing led to another, we tried to kill him, he survived, and now we serve him.”
The two jungleborn looked at the, apparently, half elf and half dwarf with gaping mouths.
“And if you think my story’s crazy you’ll have to hear the others’! They’re so much better!”
It was Moon who broke the silence on their side in the end, not unusual per se, but still slightly jarring for her friend – yes, only a friend, most certainly just that: “Are you sure you don’t have a Bloody Skill?”
She nodded: “As sure as the sky is blue. My [King] has ways to check. I’m just… well, damaged. We all are, me and my people. At least we managed to fill in the cracks, and we’re all that much stronger for that.”
She smiled then, and there was kindness in the small gesture as her eyes grew distant for a moment.
“Granted, not all of us managed to do it. The night when everything changed some of us gave in to the temptations of the crimson sweetness. We put them out of their misery: better not to have someone preaching that temptation and, in the end, just signing their own death warrant. Fast and painless, that’s all we could do for them.”
She turned her head towards the carriage, which had reached the main gates of the city.
“I hope Ravenspoken manages to help her, because if that girl ever breaks, well, it won’t be pretty, that’s for sure.”
She chuckled bitterly: “Not that it ever is.”
Moon and Shriya had to agree with her.
----------------------------------------
Six goblins stood in front of death, a crackling, warm, inviting campfire behind them, calling them, telling them to sit there and relax, to let their worries go.
Five of those goblins were wearing heavy armor. The last one wore normal clothes, his only distinguishing feature from any mere civilian being the presence of the toolbelt winding around his waist and the many pencils tucked behind his ears.
Death stood in front of them, a gentle presence, a reminder that their time had come.
“Why won’t you let go?” asked Death, her voice warm and kind, filled with honey that seemed to soothe the distant memories of pain on the goblins’ bodies.
“You’ve been fighting for so long. Why won’t you let go?” she asked.
One of the five armored goblins, a [Warrior], smirked as, slowly, he sat down, crossing his legs and placing a hand on one. The armor didn’t make any noise, because he wasn’t really wearing it: it was just an image, a memory projected by his mind, a way for him to feel comforted, comfortable. In the decade of war his armor had become akin to a second skin, leaving him feeling naked whenever he went without it.
“Why? War ain’t won, thatta why.”
His brothers nodded, agreeing completely.
“We hafta keep fightin’. ‘Wise, we’ll be losing ground, and more’ll die,” continued a second goblin.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Lastly, it was the goblin in civilian clothing to speak: “An [Architect]’s work ain’t ever done, my lady. Got fortresses to design, trenches to help dig, homes to put up for the folks who hope to finally have one.”
Death looked at the six brothers. Not of blood, or, at least, not their own blood. They had spent so much time on the battlefields now that they’d baptized each other in the blood of their enemies. Which ones? Heh, it would’ve been easier to list out who wasn’t their enemy. Which amounted to just the dwarves. Everyone else? Yeah, you get the gist of it.
Finally, she spoke: “I will offer you a chance. One of you will be allowed to go back if they win a game against me. Choose the one, and then he will choose the game.”
It was an old deal she offered sometimes. A test, in some ways, to see how bound these people were: would they act as the brothers they claimed to be, or would their bonds be forgotten in a moment as they tried to take the chance from their own kin?
The six goblins looked each other in the eyes, then, in an action that surprised even Death, the five [Warriors] raised their feet and kicked the sixth, the [Architect], towards her.
“We ain’t got no need for a’ [Architect] in Airm,” said the sitting one – whose kick had been the weakest considering his position.
“He be right. You’re useless to us, brotha. Go on, take tha gamble, play her game,” added a second goblin.
A third just snorted: “Don’t listen to them idiots. They fink you dumb enough te fall for the trick,” he sighed, imitating his first brother and sitting on the featureless ground. Then, thinking better of it, he rose, walked the few steps that separated him from the campfire, and sat down on one of the logs around it. Immediately the armor melted off of his skin, leaving behind only simple woolen clothes that made him look a lot like… a farmer. He had always wondered what it would’ve been like.
“O’ the six o’ us, yar the one more d’serving to live, brotha. We kill people, and there’s plenty o’ others like us raring to keep doing our job. But ye? Ye protect them. Ye save lives!”
A fourth nodded in agreement, going to sit beside the fire: “Ye’ve got more reasons to stick around. Take the game.”
His armor, too, dissolved into a fine mist as he suddenly wore glasses too big for his face, clearly more decorative than functional. A [Researcher] maybe? Or a [Librarian]? Or maybe something simpler, like a [Scrybe]? He had always been the intellectual of the bunch, had spent so, so, so many nights learning to read Evarion so that he could peruse the few books abandoned by their enemies.
Finally, the fifth reached them and, silently, nodded. His armor didn’t disappear, instead changing into a lighter form, a [Guardsman]’s armor.
The [Architect] wanted to cry, but he knew better: tears were just a waste of water. So instead he smiled and nodded towards his brothers in thanks.
Then he turned towards Death. He couldn’t see beneath the cowl of her dark cloak, but he could feel the warmth of her smile. She was happy, for some reason. Not that she’d felt sad up until then but now? Now she felt nearly ecstatic. Or so he thought.
“Choose the game then, young goblin.”
Young? He had to contain a chuckle. He was five years old: by goblin standards, he was the equivalent of an elder.
Still, he decided not to laugh in Death’s face, just in case that would cause her to change her mind.
He thought for a while, trying to choose a game that he was certain he could win. The problem with being at war since the day you were born was that you didn’t get to play games of any kind. It wasn’t important: all that mattered was surviving, living to fight the next day while hoping it was going to be the last. Or wasn’t, depending on the point of view.
In the end, after going through all the games he could think of, he answered: “A coin toss. That will be the game. A single coin toss. If I guess right, I win.”
Death nodded: “If that is your choice.”
Her hands left the long, deep, sleeves of her cloak, the skeletal fingers thin and long in a way that felt unnatural. Between two of those she now held a single gold coin. It looked old, worn by the passage of time and the rubbing of skin, the passage from one hand to another visible in how smooth the surfaces were, the occasional chip or scuff mark a reminder of the time it had spent in a pouch with many others of its kind.
She showed him the two faces, showed how on one was visible a long forgotten king’s head, while on the other was the imprint of a country which name had been buried by the sands of time.
“Take your pick.”
“Heads.”
She tossed the coin up, her thumb the only part of her hand to move as she did, making it clear that she couldn’t have cheated.
One would be forgiven for thinking that, for the goblins, it felt like an eternity had passed. It didn’t. They didn’t care that much. The coin flew up and came down in the span of a single second, and that was that: goblins didn’t have the time to feel the passage of eternity in an instant. They seldom had the time to dream.
Death took the coin, her left hand slamming it on the back of the right, before she lifted it, examining the result.
Two words left her mouth: “You won.”
And that… was that.
----------------------------------------
His brothers had called him Archie in honor of his Class. It wasn’t uncommon for goblins to get names based on their Class, or on something special they had done in their youth. One of his brothers’ name had been Peaslip in honor of that one time when, while training, he’d slipped on some peas someone had accidentally dumped on the training grounds. Even though he grumbled about it, he’d always liked the name: he found it fitting, seeing how he’d always wanted to be a farmer when the war ended.
Archie walked slowly through the corridors of the palace he’d planned and built… like the rest of the city for that matter. It was a strange, wondrous, place, filled with small secrets that both him and the people had squirreled away in the most improbable places, little gifts left behind for those that would come after them. A treasure hunt of memories that took the form of a small carving on a brick of the defensive walls, a little chest enchanted with [Runes of Preservation] to protect drawings made by a child who’d been born when the city was still being built, a badly made wooden toy made by a loving father for said child, and so much more. For every object, a story, and for every story a place.
He’d done the same so many times during the war. Both him and his comrades, be they his brothers or just another goblin [Soldier] or [Warrior]. They’d left so much behind every time they’d been forced to run, to escape. Little things to remind their enemies that they, too, were a people, one that wanted peace and quiet. It had worked, sometimes. Not many, but enough to help a few hundred goblins more live.
[Our Memories Moved their Hearts]
His Level 30 Skill. Some had thought it useless. Him? He’d cried in joy the night he’d gotten it.
Finally, he reached the doors to the throne room. They were a grand thing, tall enough to probably let a half-giant pass through them without needing to bow – not that there were any half-giants left in the world. They’d all died long ago.
His [King] hadn’t liked the idea one bit: he’d never been a grand man – except for when he was putting on a performance, but that was another matter – and so creating such a grand palace had felt like too much for him. Originally he’d just wanted to live in a tower of all things, something about a [Wizard] always needing a big and very unstable tower. As someone who’d fought in a war, he’d told him straight away that just putting a tower in the middle of the city would’ve been a death sentence for whoever stayed in it. So, instead, he’d just told his [King] to fuck off and had this castle built with, yes, a big ass tower in the middle, because he was certain that otherwise the man would’ve come moping.
Anyways, the wooden doors were carved to show a grand crow with its wings open near the top as feathers descended towards the ground, accumulating towards the bottom and turning into a black mass that seemed to be watching the person standing there. ‘Menacing’, you say? Why of course! It was made to be a reminder to anyone coming in: attack us and learn why crows were so often considered birds of the dead.
There was someone else standing by that door: a young looking man had an air of nonchalance about him, as if he was supposed to be standing where he was, always, even if for some reason one was to find him somewhere he wasn’t meant to be standing. He wore simple clothes: a white button up shirt tucked in cleanly in a pair of black trousers, their legs covered in pockets. Archie was quite sure that there was a knife in each and every one of them, with some more blades hidden cleanly inside some seamless stitch somewhere. He was holding a pocket watch, checking the time, but he closed it with a little clack when he heard him approaching.
“Fred, good morning,” said the goblin with a small nod.
“And good morning to you, o’ champion of spinach.”
The goblin ignored that last part. The boy was like that.
A chuckle tried to escape his lips at that thought, but he managed to keep it down. By far he was the youngest of the people here, being only twenty five years old. But ten of those he’d spent fighting a war that seemed impossible to win, so, at least with Fred, he liked to think of himself as older.
“Our guest has arrived, apparently,” he said instead.
“So it would seem. I’m curious to see what an arachne looks like. Raven always seemed fond of them in the stories he told us.”
----------------------------------------
Fred sat calmly in the padded chair. Much could be said about the Guildmistress of the Assassins, the Queen of Deathbringers (but never Queen of Death, no, never), the Sovereign of Spilled Blood and a few dozen other titles that people had made up to amuse her, but she didn’t use the bad tactics of some of the worst politicians.
Like the so-called Chair of Torment, which consisted of making people you disliked sit down on chairs made specifically to be as uncomfortable as possible.
No, she liked her small luxuries and she wasn’t against sharing them.
He looked at the red velvet used to cover the stuffing, appreciating its feel underneath his fingers. For all that this chair had been around longer than him, it still looked good as new. Was it a Skill? Or was this what good craftsmanship really looked like?
He passed his hand over the velvet again, feeling every crevice left on it by the passage of arms and elbows, trying to read the people who’d sat there before him, trying to understand the reason for their presence in the same place he was sitting on now. One could understand so much about someone just by the way they sat on a chair, so it stood to reason that one could understand just as much by feeling the imprint their form had left behind.
Sadly that was impossible here: too many people had come before him, too many elbows, too many arms, legs, knees and even heads.
But why was he thinking so much about a chair and the possible secrets it could hide? It was quite simple, really: he was nervous. More so than he’d ever been before in life.
Because he was about to meet her for the second time in his life. Hopefully also the last.
The Guildmistress walked into the room, her footsteps soft but in an artificial way, a clear reminder that she could’ve just as well walked around without making a single sound, without even her heart and breathing being capable of betraying her presence.
It took her a few seconds to get to the desk, a few seconds more to look at him and sit down heavily on her soft chair. She opened a drawer, taking out a dark bottle containing an even darker liquid, together with two small glasses.
“Elven liquor. Want some? I find it helps with anxiety. And stress. And a myriad other things, but those two are the things that most plague us right now.”
Fred nodded his head, watching as the elven woman poured a glass first for him, then for herself.
She raised her own in a small toast, a gesture he reciprocated, as she said: “To us, the people who work in the shadows so that light may have more places to shine in.”
Then she knocked back her glass, the dark brown, nearly black, liquid disappearing in a moment. The other assassin tried to imitate her, but he changed his mind the moment his tongue touched the drink: the bitterness alone nearly made him wretch, while the smell went to his head and made his eyes shine with unshed tears.
He took only a sip.
The taste was marvelous, all things considered, but it had clearly been made to be savored.
“So,” started the woman as she settled down in her chair, making herself comfortable, “what brings the Clockwork Assassin to my desk?”
Clockwork Assassin. A fitting title, one he had worked hard to obtain. He was known all over the world now, the kind of infamy that would get many killed in his line of work. Him though? No. Because he didn’t have a method, nor a preferred victim: the only consistent thing about him was what was left afterwards on every victim. A clock’s piece. A gear here, the spring there, a number in the eye, things like that. So many pieces, so many victims. By now he had placed enough of those for someone to be able to build an entire clock.
That was why he was here: “I kept my word, Gardener.”
He showed her his pockets – the ones without weapons. Not that it mattered, the woman in front of him could’ve killed him faster than it took him to blink – all of them empty. Missing something that had accompanied him all his life.
“Enough contracts to build a watch. Over a hundred and eighty kills. I am free now.”
She nodded at that: “Indeed, enough to make an entire clock. Nearly.”
He froze in place, his hand tightening around his glass.
“You lost a piece somewhere and could never find it.”
He wanted to deny it, to call her a liar, but he knew better. She was telling the truth.
“You owe me one last contract, Fred.”
His hands were trembling slightly, something he tried, and failed, to hide by gripping the glass harder. It nearly slipped from his grip instead.
Then… she smiled kindly: “But it doesn’t matter.”
She rose, pacing around her desk, stopping in front of him. The thing that struck him most was how tall she was. How thin. Not the typical thinness of the elves, no, this was the thinness of someone who hadn’t eaten for a very long time and, afterwards, had lost their taste for food.
“You owe me a contract but… I’ll call it an ‘IOU’. One day I shall call it in, but until then? You’re free.”
She patted his shoulder, her other hand moving towards the bottle of elven spirit. She took his glass, placing the bottle in his hands instead.
“Take it. A gift for a job well done. Oh, and don’t close the door, there’s someone else out there I need to give anxiety to.”
----------------------------------------
The goblin and the human waited for the arrival of their final companion.
It didn’t take her long.
“Hey guys, sorry for making you wait!” said a voice from a nearby window.
The two turned around, seeing a face looking at them with a sheepish smile: “The kids were particularly rowdy today,” she said as an excuse.
“No worries,” said Archie, smiling back at her, “We weren’t waiting long. And I don’t even want to imagine how bad the situation was with them ‘rowdier’. Stars, why can’t all kids be like goblins’? When I was born I learned to walk in no more than a week and was already helping build defenses by the end of the second.”
The woman’s face – which was just the face, the rest of her body wasn’t there – glared at him: “Just because you had a tough childhood doesn’t mean everyone has to be like you.”
The goblin laughed out loud: “Tough childhood? More like ‘tough everything’.”
“But an enjoyable retirement,” countered Fred.
Archie grumbled but nodded his head: “Yes. Quite enjoyable.”
“So, our dear alraune, ready to greet our guest?”
She smiled again, nodding her head energetically, the leaves forming it shaking around while the wood of the branches supporting it groaned slightly.
----------------------------------------
Eat, grow, produce sap, attract prey, eat, grow, produce sap, attract prey eat grow produce sap attract prey eat grow produce sap attract prey eat grow produce sap –
That was how creatures like her thought.
No, not thought, that didn’t even count as thinking. It was just instinct, her entire nature. She was a plant, and just like any plant she needed, wanted, had to eat and grow. The other steps were just an extra. After she’d grown, her body used the excess nutrients to produce a sweet smelling and sweet tasting sap which attracted prey, be that insects, animals or, occasionally, one of the more intelligent species. Sometimes the bigger prey – because that was how she saw them, just ‘bigger prey’ – attempted to attack her, to hurt her, but she, like many other things in this jungle, had evolved in time, growing an expendable, extra, part. A body, not unlike that of one of the most ferocious and cunning predators of them all, the talking, thinking ones. They always attacked that part of her, ignoring her actual body, the one with the important organs.
It was a simple existence, one in which she had nothing to worry about. She fed, she grew, she found ways to attract more food, and then the cycle began anew.
And then, one day, something else came to her little clearing, one of the few places in the jungles the trees didn’t dare to encroach upon.
The thing was a plant, one that could move, and yet it also had a body like the expendable appendage she had grown on top. Just like hers, the being body ended before reaching its legs, with the main difference being that the thing had what looked like a snake’s body instead of her most beautiful and fragrant flower.
The thing stopped when it noticed her, clearly enamored by her figure, but she ignored it, for it had nothing to feed on, it was just a corpse infested by plants.
Then the Corpse – yes, that title was more fitting than thing – spoke: “You are beautiful.”
She kept ignoring it, for the corpse would not provide her with food.
But what did an alraune consider food? Why naturally, blood. Filled with fizzy oxygen and tasty nutrients, all inside a medium that was extremely easy to digest. Flesh… flesh was less appealing. It had, comparatively, a lot more nutrients than a body, but it took a lot longer to digest, therefore she just kept a good amount of it underneath her, cradled by her roots. Blood fed her, flesh helped her grow. But since this bloodless flesh was still moving around she deemed it unnecessary to interact with it. Especially because it didn’t seem to be hostile.
“How I wish something like you had existed in my home. But the plants there were ugly.”
Babbling, all of it. Sooner or later it would leave.
…
Or maybe it would attract more prey! Yes, that was a possibility!
She turned towards the being and made her expendable appendage smile, an approximation of a gesture that was creepier than intended, but she could be excused since most other species she encountered did not tend to smile.
“Oh, ok, that’s disquieting.”
She opened her arms invitingly, making sure to show off all the assets she had added to the expendable appendage. For some reason the talking ones tended to become a lot more docile when she did that.
“And that’s just downright lewd. Girl, did nobody ever teach you about bras?”
She kept at it, knowing for sure that the Corpse would react in some useful way that didn’t involve speaking things she did not understand.
“Oh, I see. You’re not sentient, not really. You’re just… copying. Cool, cool, we can work with that.”
The Corpse came closer and now, in one hand, it was holding a knife.
She got ready to fight, like she so often was forced to, but then, unexpectedly, the Corpse raised the knife and cut the palm of its free hand. Initially, nothing came out of the wound, but then, as she got closer, close enough to reach the expendable appendage, the hand rose, letting a few beads of something… orang-ish flow out. Like blood, but mixed with sap.
She didn’t understand what was happening, but she still welcomed the nutrition, however strange it was.
The drops fell, hitting the flower underneath her expendable appendage.
She drank it in.
And, for the first time, she tasted her food.
Her appendage’s eyes opened wide as her smile grew wider, beatific even, the pupils of the eyes she’d recycled expanding as the roots embedded inside spasmed in… whatever the sensation she was feeling was.
And then she had her first ever thought.
I like this.
The Corpse smiled, and she understood she was more than just a corpse walking around, so much more.
“We’ll teach you how to talk, in time. For now, we’ll teach you what it means to have a body.”
The Corpse stopped, before adding: “Well, might as well tell you our names. I am Nav,” the Corpse, Nav, pointed at herself, “And she is Sera,” she pointed at her serpentine tail.
“We change places sometimes.”
In that moment, as she heard those words, those… names, she understood the idea of them, of what they represented, of their importance. She decided she wanted a name, just like Nav and Sera.
And since those were the first ones she’d ever heard, she wanted to use them, because they were special!
But what to call herself? She couldn’t be Nav, nor Sera, because that wasn’t how names worked. She couldn’t just take them. But then…
An idea struck her like lightning – she knew how that felt, the expendable appendage had been struck by lightning many times – as she realized the solution to her conundrum: she’d just fuse them. So from now on she was going to be Navera!!!
But… that didn’t sound good. Maybe if she shuffled the letters around a bit? Serav? No. Nevara? No. Navare? Nope, even worse. Nivera? No, wait, she’d gotten a letter wro –
The word repeated itself in her newly formed mind.
Nivera.
It felt… it felt right. Fitting.
Yes.
Yes!
YES!!!
NIVERA! It fit perfectly!!!
She smiled, the expression stretching her verdant face and nearly dividing it in two. She had a name now!!!!
“Ok, we’re going to have to work a lot on expressions. But at least you’re happy. I hope.”
----------------------------------------
They were ready.