Kyo collapsed bonelessly into the plush guest chair, watching in fascination as the slightly rotund man babbled endlessly.

The man still hadn’t stopped speaking, darting from unintelligible questions to mumbled apology to whispered accusation and back to questions, spinning through the small hut, grabbing papers and tidying up and stuffing other papers away and moving odds and ends from here to there uselessly, going on endlessly, all without leaving space for a single response.

It was almost awesome, in its own way, and Kyo might have let it go on, just to see how much breath the man had, if his burns weren’t crunching and weeping so painfully.

Those last few beasts, some type of bipedal, scaled, pack-hunting reptile species, had had a nasty bit of fire mastery, and the whole area around where his oldest sword, Sever-Kiri, rested through his chest had cooked and cracked, the skin shearing off in flakes of dead debris that had begun to gather uncomfortably around the waist of his shirt.

“Castor!” he interrupted, trying to soften the rough edge of his own voice, “its Castor, right? Any chance your town’s got a healer who can work with inforced flesh?”

“No? No! Certainly not. Not to the degree that I am sure Honored Slayer is working with… Old Gretchen’s got a bit of the touch with the herbs, if’n you know as I mean. Swears to the World Tree she can make anything heal, eventually, but that’s probably a slower method than a sword through the shoulder would ask for… Although I’m sure that Honored Guest knows better than me… Always been a bit of an enjoyer of the forest’s bounty, if you know what I mean, that one. In fact,” he said, starting to chuckle quietly as he went on in a rapid-fire pace, “her daughter - married to the younger Hastor twin, - swears you can listen to her planning out fake disease diagnoses, quietly, to herself, once she gets to deep into her ‘herbs’ and cups, if Honored Cultivator knows what I mean…”

His voice petered out, his gaze catching on Kyo’s glare before sliding sulkily down to the screen in his lap, his voice going on again in a quieter ramble.

“Not that there's anything wrong with any of that type of stuff, perfectly fine way to release the stresses of life, especially for such as a job as Honored Slayer’s...”

“Please, call me Kyo,” Kyo interrupted hastily, trying to keep the other man on track, “Can you look up for me where the closest cultivator’s healer is? I’m unused to this district’s commercial offerings.”

“Oh!” Castor came back to life, his gaze popping up cheerful at the chance of new gossip, “reassigned from somewhere, offworld, or from another hab dome maybe?”

Kyo, stared at him a moment, then chucked his chin at the paper’s in the Liaison’s lap, waiting until the man turned back. Maybe bribing the man could make all this go faster.

The other man turned down, chastised, but lit up again when the story started flowing, figuring out quickly that the gossip only kept coming while he filled out the forms. It could only serve Kyo well to form a good relationship with this excitable man. If nothing else, he seemed like he knew where to source some fun substances if things got too boring around here.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“From elsewhere on planet. I had been assigned at first to another colony world, more coreward along the Katarian Rift, and had spent almost half a contract, but came here on the offer of higher pay for higher risks some twenty years ago. Part of my negotiations was to move around…”

“Carihine, where the Impyrial Embassy resides, is supposed to have a cultivator’s healer, though her information suggests that she specializes in holistic healing more than physical healing,” Castor interrupted, trying to be quiet.

Kyo nodded and went on, “...semi-regularly. I have been roadblocked for several years in my own personal advancement and am attempting to use this chance at service and mostly idle time to search within myself and the world around me for the structure and meaning to rebuild my path forward in progression.”

“Name?” Castor interrupted again.

Kyo grimaced. “Kyoumu Kage. Its a Taken Name, not a birth given name.” He paused for a moment and watched the other man from the corner of his vision, holding his breath for a moment as the man’s wiremind stored and logged the information, imagining how the information must be flowing out through the ether, pinging through a million data-transfers, searching for a translation in the depths of some far distant MetilMind or server bank.

He saw the confusion in the Liaison’s eyes the moment the translation must have come back.

Kyoumu Kage. It translated as something like the shadow of emptiness but apparently sounded ridiculous when said in the original language.

The name, taken for himself some distant years ago, still grated against his nerves. He wished he hadn’t been so dumb, so childish, with such an important decision. The dark companion imprisoned against his spirit writhed and squirmed in pleasure at his feelings of embarrassment and self-contempt.

To be honest, that was the only reason he hadn’t yet changed the name.

He was too worried that that could be construed as giving into the ridicule of his companion, and that could easily cause backslide or lost ground in the constant battle that raged between the two of them for control of his thoughts and actions.

Better to live with the embarrassment and childish self-recriminations, than to lose unnecessary ground in the constant internal war.

Trying to ignore the other man’s questioning side-glance, he went on with his story, hoping to speed up the papers.

“I lost a significant amount of my internal conviction and Intent some years ago, in an act that the Impyrium deemed as worthy of acknowledgement, and have decided that the path of service is my best bet for reconstituting my Being more in line with my current Mind. It has been a long, slow struggle to climb back from the edge of the pit of despair, but these green new lands and warm, equatorial climes have already begun to work wonders on my nerves.”

Castor made a soft sound at that, asking some question or other about the beasts he had had fought, then about the worlds that he had served as Slayer before coming here.

The last hour or two of night passed pleasantly in easy, if a bit intrusive, conversation, and it was almost morning by the time he was rising, wrapping his coat back around his shoulders, settling the blade of Sever-Kiri where it hung through the meat of his shoulder, and picked the weight of Verlassen, his other sword, from against the arm of his chair.

He had just turned to exit when Castor called one last question to him, “Oh! Do you need the timesheets for the trains to Carihine?”

“No,” the Slayer called back over his shoulder, pushing out into the darkness of the pre-dawn light. “I’ll walk. It will do these old bones good. Who knows, maybe a beast or something else blocking the roads will give me a chance to stretch on the way.”