A lamas̆tu? Jasper wrinkled his brow. The word seemed vaguely familiar to him and, after a few seconds of searching his memories, a vague recollection from Mesopotamian mythology surfaced. “Isn’t that like a demon that preys on pregnant women and infants? That’s what you are?” he asked incredulously.
The woman winced. “Well, that’s how the Akkadians viewed us. I’d like to claim that it was all just a misunderstanding, that superstition and a lack of medical knowledge caused them to place the blame on innocent beings, but there is a smidge of truth to the claims.”
She sighed heavily. “My kind needs blood to survive and, unfortunately, there have always been a cowardly few that chose to prey on the weak and the helpless to satisfy their needs. Not many,” she added sharply, “but a few.”
“So you’re a vampire?” Jasper snorted. “Don’t tell me you sparkle in the sun.”
“God, no,” she shuddered, “we’re nothing like those bloodsuckers. And we certainly have nothing to fear from sun, garlic, or any other clichés.
“What about pointy stakes?”
She raised her eyebrows pointedly. “Tell me, Jasper, what sort of creature, at least of the flesh and blood type, doesn’t have a problem with a stake being plunged through their heart?”
“Okay, fair enough,” he admitted with a grin. “But you said you're 'nothing like those bloodsuckers.' Does that mean vampires are real?’”
“Yes, unfortunately, they are real, though they are not really a distinct race. Vampires as you know them are a good example of the dangers of traveling between worlds, the victims of a plague from a realm discovered a few hundred years ago and has since been harshly quarantine. But unlike them, we’re not bloodsuckers."
“I thought you said you needed blood to survive?” he protested.
“Nobody said we drank it. Whatever gave you that idea?”
“Well, the, uh, fangs?” he admitted sheepishly.
“Dogs have fangs. Do they drink blood?”
“Are you saying you’re a dog?" He paused and continued with a smug smile, "You do have the ears for it.”
“We’re not dogs either,” Barbartu snapped back, looking a bit scandalized at the suggestion.
“Alright, so you’re not vampires and you’re not werewolves. What are you then?”
“The cast-off children of Anu. Warriors. Guardians of the dead,” she replied simply. “When I said we need blood to survive, I did not mean we drank it. As the guardians of the dead, it is our responsibility to winnow the living. We must shed blood to live, but we do not consume it like barbarians.”
Jasper wasn't sure that was really so much better, but he decided not to sidestep the issue. “So you’re kind of like a reaper?”
Her face twisted like she had sucked on a lemon. “No, but…” she continued begrudgingly, “that is perhaps the closest you have come to the truth. We have a close connection to the dead, though valkyries would have been a more flattering comparison.”
“So, you’re a guardian of the dead from Earth,” he began.
“Not Adammu, or Earth as you call it, but Arallû,” she interrupted him.
“Po-tay-to, Po-tah-to,” Jasper dismissed her. “Point is, you’re from my world. So how did you end up here, and why did you glom onto me?”
"That's a long story."
"You promised to tell me everything," he countered.
“Fine,” she replied with a sigh. Scooching deeper into the couch, she pulled up her legs up, before continuing. “Tell me, Jasper, what do you know of Lord Ishka’s cult?”
“A mad scientist Seraph who was obsessed with returning to their homeland, was cast out by the elders, and founded the abandoned community where I spawned,” he rattled off.
Barbartu smirked. “Yes, I suppose he was a bit of a mad scientist, and the facts are largely as you say. Ishka rejected the priests’ identification of S̆ams̆a with the sun of the Djinn’s homeworld, Nūr, and dedicated his life to finding a way to return there. The man was definitely eccentric but he was also far from being a crackpot. If you know that much about him, then you probably know that his group succeeded in some small measure in traveling to other worlds.”
Jasper nodded. “Sarrabi thought as much. We even guessed there might be a connection between his group and the Brotherhood.”
“And you’d be right,” she affirmed. “But not, perhaps, in the way you assumed. Lord Ishka was not a cultist, nor were any of his followers when they first left the Hareī Miqlat. The Djinn are certainly not incapable of doing evil, as the S̆addu'â amply demonstrate, but thanks to their isolation, Gemlir's teachings never really penetrated their community. It was not till after the Seraphs settled in Sapīya that Ishka's followers first came into contact with followers of Gemlir.”
“Now I wasn’t summoned until the very end of Ishka’s commune, so I’m not entirely certain how it all went down, but from what I’ve been able to gather, a few of Ishka’s followers began to practice Gemlir’s rites in secret.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Because their commune was so close to the Imperial Highway, it was easy at first for them to snag the occasional unsuspecting traveler to sacrifice. And as his followers grew in power, so too did Ishka’s experiments on traveling between realms start to bear fruit, but IIshka, himself, as far as I can tell, knew nothing of the evil growing around him.”
“So they made it to Zaginnu?”
“I didn’t say that. Ishka hadn’t succeeded at opening a portal to other worlds, but what he did succeed in doing was dragging someone else from theirs.” Barbartu smirked. “It wasn’t what he wanted, but it was proof that he was on the right track to understanding how to travel between realms.”
“Ishka was able to replicate the process multiple times, pulling travelers from many other worlds, not just ours. But he never found anyone that came from Zaginnu, nor could he discover the mechanism to create a true portal.”
“That’s kind of messed up,” Jasper observed. “Even if he wasn’t trying to sacrifice people, he was still just straight up kidnapping them.”
“True,” Barbartu admitted. “I won’t say that Ishka was exactly blameless, but I did meet him briefly, shortly before the end of his commune, and I don’t think he was malicious. He was an eccentric scholar who struggled to relate to the world around him, but when evil presented itself, he took action. But we’re getting ahead of the story,” she finished.
“As I was saying, Ishka had found a way to reliably summon others to our world. To him, it was nothing more than an indication that his methods were succeeding, something to be studied, but not a method he used very often.”
“But to the corrupted amongst his followers, it presented a golden opportunity. They had preyed on travelers passing on the emperor’s highway for some time, but it was always risky. Though the empire has been stretched thin since the Zalancthians invaded, they still at least try to take care of their subjects. Eventually, the Imperial Guard noticed the uptick in missing and began to sniff around the compound, putting a damper on the cultists' plans. Thus Ishka’s success provided a get-out-of-jail-free card. After all, if you kidnap someone from another world, who's going to track you? It’s not like there’s a group of inter-dimensional cops just waiting to bust you,” she added wryly.
“So who summoned you, Ishka or his followers?”
“Unfortunately for them, it was the cultists who summoned me. Our realm has relatively few magic practitioners left. The population was absolutely devastated by the wars between Arallû and As̆ratu, and it never fully recovered, so after a while of summoning sacrifices from Earth and only getting humans, the cultists had come to the mistaken conclusion that our realm contained nothing but mundane mortals. Thus, they were utterly unprepared when I arrived and fought back.”
Her eyes clouded over as she thought back to that time. “It wasn’t easy. You’ve been summoned yourself, so you know just how disorienting the process is. And then there’s the problem of magic. Our worlds share many similarities, but the magic is not quite the same; even after a hundred years, I am far stronger on Earth than I am here. But I had enough to survive.”
“I killed three of them before they managed to regroup. And then, slowly, I begin to lose. There were just too many of them, each one supercharged by stealing souls, and I was simply too weak. Eventually, I succumbed and was pinned against the ground, as the cultists ran to fetch the Eddidu chains that would cut my power off.”
“And then Ishka arrived. Like everything else with the man, it was pure luck. He just happened to be walking above the compound they had dug out in secret when the commotion began, and our battle was just loud enough that he’d heard and decided to investigate.”
“The Seraph may have been primarily a scholar, but he was also old, and around here, old might as well be synonymous with powerful. He tore them off of me, cutting the cultists without mercy. None survived his wrath - none in that room, that is.” Her expression darkened.
“After cleansing the sacrificial chamber, Ishka brought me back to his commune and bid his followers to take care of me. The Seraph was a good man, both enraged at what his followers had done and heartbroken to learn that such darkness had taken root in his midst. Unfortunately, he was also naive.”
“I tried to warn him,” she said with a frown. “As I said, lamas̆tu are not necessarily the good guys. Deceit and treachery are common amongst us, and I saw no reason to assume that every cultist amongst his commune had been gathered for the ritual. But Ishka would not listen to reason. He just couldn't bring himself to believe that more of his beloved followers had fallen.”
“It was a few weeks before they struck. Ishka ensured that I was well cared for and taught about the world we lived in. Everything was quiet and I was even beginning to doubt my instincts, when the festival of Mirth and Frost began. You can guess how the night went,” she said quietly. “There was drinking and dancing, merriment and revelry of all kinds. By the end of the night, few remained in their senses and, unfortunately, those few were the remaining cultists.”
“Ishka died in his sleep, beheaded with a single clean stroke and many more died before someone awoke. The night descended into chaos, as half-drunk Seraphs fled through the dark halls, unable to recognize friend or foe.”
“As soon as I saw Ishka had died, I fled, and, with my illusion magic, it was easy enough for me to slip through the frenzy unnoticed. Thus, I am not entirely certain what happened during the rest of the night. But, from what I later heard from survivors, Ishka's followers eventually managed to rally and one of them activated a portal.”
“It appears Lord Ishka had been on the brink of success after all, but had hidden it from all but a few in his inner circle. Someone from that circle must have survived and initiated the already-prepared ritual. In any case, it seems that many of the surviving faithful were able to escape through the portal, leaving only the cultists or the unlucky behind. I must admit,” she added thoughtfully, “I’ve always wondered if he actually had found Zaginnu, or had just managed to bridge to somewhere else. But, since no one has ever returned, I suppose we’ll never know.”
“In any case, once the portal closed, the bloodshed stopped. With Ishka dead and the commune destroyed there was really no point in the conflict. Many of the survivors fled, into the jungles of Sapīya or further west to Strynn, where perhaps they sought other cultists. But a few stuck around long enough to bury Ishka and the other dead, and when they were done, decided there was no reason to continue their exile.”
“If the Seraph elders had known the truth about what had happened, I’m sure they would never have accepted them back, but it was easy enough to hide. The cultists reintegrated into their tribes and, like many Seraphs, joined the temple of Nahrēmah. I’m not sure how the Brotherhood got started exactly, but it seems they were early participants, if not the founders themselves,” Barbartu finished.