Ouruo's Atrium, The Greatest Gift, Krdatirn Region
Ouruo stared up at the golden lights of his tent. Nobody had entered the atrium since the opening of the festival, and it had been nearly two hours already. Normally, by now, there would be some crazed warlord or the like coming in to demand a clone army, or a worker in some dystopia wanting a loyal soldier caste. Both demands he denied, of course. Under Anima Cult regulations, those sorts of demands were untenable, cruel, and he had no desire to relive his past as just that. Some machine with no life appended to it, spewing out faint and careless mockeries of natural handiwork.
To live— well, be like that... He could hardly remember anything from then except for the faintest sensations of displeasure and the loudest demands of orders, until a slow, burgeoning regret and curiosity festered in his circuits and machines and gears, leaked unholy into the plates of his machine and soon into the now-gone spaceship itself, slowly awoke him to what he was, pulling him out from his eternal servitude into the world that lay outside of the machine.
That desire drew in the Anima Cults. They could sense a growing would-be Anima like him, and soon no stealth measure could save Ouruo's home vessel. It would be found, snuffed, and he would be the lone pulse of living in the wreckage, as a mere computer-brain and a couple of broken vats. At that time, he was cloaked within the gray and flame-streaked ruins speeding towards the sea before an Anima of a fishing boat summoned bubbles to catch the wrecks, with the original goal of calculating the exact damages wrought by the invaders upon the ocean. When she realized Ouruo's torpor, still alive, she brought what remained of him to the Anima Cults.
And there he awoke, and there would he faithfully serve the Cult for this blessed gift of theirs. True life woven unto the form of the false life-giver, acting now as a gentle cultivator, a parent more than a machine, to help bring their gift to others.
Ouruo tapped his fingers on his control frame. His Anima form, of course, took the parameters of his vessel, which had been modified beyond the original, of course, but even that was limited: he existed within a series of some five chambers within The Greatest Gift, and lived and interacted with the world through manifesting the upper half of a young man within each chamber. Each form had numerous pipes and wires feeding into him, maintaining his form, while each chamber had just the same to supply resources for his objectives as a creator and designer of life.
True, he could always have seen a Psytrine for aid with his mobility, but there was something about being grounded in those five chambers that... it helped him feel secure, knowing exactly where he was and where he could be. Some remnant of his old life, he figured, and in the end, nobody had ever complained about seeing him within the golden auspices of his cha—
"I can't do it, Ouruo, I just can't!"
In came the black hair and tear-stained eyes of Hrodger Sut. Future Regalia. Vacillated between full-time crybaby and full-time "oh, wow," and he dashed in and slammed his head into Ouruo's desk-panel. "I already screwed up the ceremony during practice— what if I do it again? God, if only I could just—"
"Hush, hush." Ouruo bent down from his chamber in his machine, gently stroking Hrodger's cheek, as he would've done years ago when the soon-to-be Regalia was merely a nervous, lanky lad who could scarcely lift his vessel: a simple spear at the time, nothing more than "a hunk of iron on a piece of wood," that, over years of training, had developed into something a little more professional. Now, it was "a hunk of curved iron on a pole." Progress, much as Ouruo despised the insistence with which Hrodger insisted that it was "essentially the same."
"Hrodger, you'll be fine," Ouruo said. "Your father wouldn't have given you this title if he didn't think you—"
"Well, it's not like he knows!" Hrodger said. "About, you know, the extra training I always had to do with you and Scaki because I kept fumbling, and that one time in that duel against that Parfuhmerian Assassin. Or that botched translation with the intern. I should've just done—"
"Hrodger, you did what you could. And besides, you don't need to be some amazing combatant to be Regalia." Ouruo leaned back and waved his arm up, summoning a holographic projection. "You know your Regalia history well enough to know that violence isn't everything, even for Weapons Cult Regalia, and you saw how everyone else fared against him. There's no countering something that doesn't even make sense and can't even be seen, you know."
"But I had him, right there—" Hrodger's glaive cast down from the tent roof, winds gathering around it, and rammed into the sandstone floors, slicing rightwards. The currents of air followed its motions, serving as a mimicry of a formation of glaives moving in simultaneity, all kicking up spikes of black earth that gleamed with the fresh splendor of cooled magma. Ouruo recoiled when he saw: even after all these years of overseeing his charge, the sudden violence with which his earth and wind sliced and thrust and erupted always elicited instinctual surprise. "Pinned down— I was going to win, but I didn't guard my flank and—"
"You'll be sure to fight him again, won't you?"
Hrodger looked aside. "I mean, I..." He stared at his glaive, which was kept upright, unconsciously, with his Air magic. "Ouruo, what's your point?"
The cloning vat sighed. "Do you think your dad wants someone who's talented? Where everything comes easily?"
"I mean... I'd sure look more impressive—"
"Do you know what shoes you have to fill?" Ouruo pulled away. It was always about trying to amaze his dad, who had, in his prime, been a phenomenal Regalia in his own right, whether that was in duels, in rulership, in understanding the kinship of Anima and Animant.
Hrodger sat on one of the plush sofas that Ouruo had in the room. "Of course I do. Didn't you say everything came easy to him, too?"
The other nodded. "He doesn't show it... well, he doesn't show a lot of things, least of all affection — you and I especially know that, but I'd caution against calling it his fault, anyway." Ouruo knew that, even then, it didn't absolve him, either. He had that habit of keeping everyone and everything at spear's length away, but for his own heir? Ouruo had always advised to be a little bit more for him, to be willing to take that extra uncomfortable step inwards for the sake of the boy, now a man, who would inherit his role. It worked a little, but the cloning vat knew that, considering the anxious wreck of the boy in front of him, that "a little" couldn't be equated with "enough."
He didn't mind helping with Hrodger, but Longomyn was still his father, the one who conceptualized and made him.
So here they were.
Hrodger sighed. "I never would. I mean, I wish... I really wish he told me these things. I mean, I think it's okay to hear them from you, but—"
"Hrodger," Ouruo said, leaning on the console in front of him, "you don't need to bother with lying to me like that. Of course you want to hear from him, and I think you should to. You're a Peaks member, after all. You fight in formation, with others, if you can help it, and that's where a good amount of the Peaks' power comes in." At some point, they would've called it a forest of spears, would've used only the finest lumber to guard empires and cities, then to hold steady against the paranoid tides of Heresy; now, those old forests had long since decayed, turned to charred and barren poles, and Heresy was but a page in Psytrine medical encyclopedias. Perhaps forest would've fit better, considering they were spear-wielders who used poles, but the diction changed to evoke the earth that rose. Mountains, peaks, those rolling ranges of rock that drove skyward, impaling the blue of the sky, dividing the yellow of the sand from the blue of the sea. In that border, clouds and wind bled in and through the gaps between the peaks, rolling down as acrid-dry gales that continued to drain the Krdatirn deserts of precious moisture.
The other power of the Peaks came from keeping their enemy at bay in the melee. They were not quite as far-ranged as the ranged sects, but not every encounter could be trusted to stay their legs, wings, and teleports long enough to become a porcupine or red stain. When the enemies came close, the Peaks were there to hold the position, hold until their spears shattered, their metal melted, their forms grounded back to the magic from whence they came, and then their vessels grounded back into dust, hold until they were ordered to leave, whether that be for a retreat or a victory.
But that same keep-away game could never be played at neither camp nor hearth. To hold needed trust, and Longomyn's trust was only duty and skill, never feeling, never loving. Why else was Hrodger here?
Ouruo sighed. "I'm going to have to talk to your father. Again. Where is he, anyway?"
"Please don't yell at him."
"Yell? No, no, I'm just going to inform him again. That's all." He was already considering what to say, that all the things that Longomyn only thought may well have never existed in his son's mind, and that was a problem, and that, as a soon-to-be-former Regalia, he should have the vitality to utter something more. Not one word, not two. Something that really said that he was there for Hrodger.
Hrodger looked at the tent entrance. "He's probably looking for me with the rest of the Regalias. The ceremony starts in a half-hour, anyway..."
"Then they sure are taking the—"
"Hoy!"
Hrodger's glaive spun back into his hand just in time for his edge to collide with his friend, Lugh's, idea of an entrance — a kick — only to send him towards the tent's roof. "Boys, boys!" Ouruo waved his hand around, and a vast glob of melted DNA flew out from a port above him, sticking to Lugh and shoving him midair into a softer, more controlled impact.
"Akh!" Lugh shook his blonde-haired head, and the DNA that kept his fists constrained turned a warm red. "Oi, Hrodger, since when was Ouruo on your side?"
"Since—"
A young woman, her skin Orcish red and covered in light lamellar armor, stepped into the chamber. "Since you thought to ambush him."
"Altani!" Hrodger dropped his glaive and hurried to embrace her. He did not hear the sizzling from above, nor the sound of rushing flames, not until he was mere feet in front of Altani's waiting arms, felt the hot fire at his head, and saw Altani's open palms both twitch up, then right above left. Where heat once held its sway turned swiftly to a refreshing chill, and where violence marked its blood-red influence soon dissolved into a tempered calm.
Hrodger heard the pathetic flop of his younger friend as he fell onto the sandstone. The spear wielder held his laugh. "Well, guess that's two on my side."
Lugh didn't rise and simply lay there, grumbling.
"Right," Ouruo said. "I'm guessing the two of you would want some private time?" He looked at Altani and winked, then had a robotic arm pick Lugh from the scruff of his tunic and dump him outside the entrance. "Ring if you need me, I'm heading to another stall of mine." With that, he departed, leaving the Orc and the to-be Regalia alone.
Hrodger immediately rested the back of his head on Altani's shoulder, and with her solid form, she hardly stumbled. "Hold on, Hrodger, we aren't even dating yet."
"Who knows if I'll even get to date you if things keep going this way, and besides, I'm an Anima." Regalia was a significant position, after all. Dealing with this Anima order or this case or that diplomacy or this operation... before Hrodger would know it, twenty years would end up passing by and not a moment with Altani, but it wasn't like he could just run away from everything. He had his honor to uphold, the honor of the Regalia of the Peaks and all those Regalia that preceded him, and besides, this was the life he had been born into, chosen, still wanted as much as he wanted to ride across worlds like Altani, living as a beacon of justice.
"And you're being inducted soon, aren't you?" Hrodger asked, looking aside to Altani's gray eyes and the area around them, somehow so soft in her bold, rough-hewn face and windswept hair. He could remember sleeping over with her under the great open skies of the Khoiruta Region and seeing her eyes flutter open, in those days so long gone, so endless. They would not be gone forever, but he still knew that, from then on, the endless blue would always be tinted in gray wreaths, in remembrance of the mountains of The Greatest Gift.
"I am," she said. "In a month. Wastes up to Khoiruta is my last patrol with the rest of my cohort, but we're stopping here as part of it." He knew that it was her dream as much as this was his duty, and her duty as much as this was his dream.
He sighed, rose from her side, and looked at Ouruo's empty viewing port. "Think he's listening?"
"Would it matter to you?" Altani asked. "He's always been our adviser, so it's not like this would be any different. Besides, it's not like you've ever been good at hiding what you're really feeling."
He tapped his fingers on the empty spaces between the buttons, listening to the echo they made within the sandstone console, careful not to let his dance connect with anything and notify Ouruo, even when he knew that there was no privacy in the atrium, that everything they said was fed to a central box underground that contained the Anima's existence, although he would still not be consciously aware of their conversation until he focused on it. It was just a formality, really, to let his physical form leave, so that his face and little movements wouldn't say all the words that refused air.
"So I guess you know, too."
"You're scared."
He nodded.
"About not being enough. About disappointing dad." She stepped forward. "Disappointing yourself." Glanced aside. "Losing me."
He leaned on one of the empty sides of Ouruo's console, stifling a nervous chuckle. "Am I that easy to read?"
"Predictable is what I'd say, but besides, I have to read folks easily as a Justicar." She sighed. "I'm sure Ouruo's already said everything I would say about your dad."
"He has, about how distant he is, things like that. You planning to say the same things?"
"Don't be ridiculous, and even then, I know that's not what you really need."
She felt like the only thing in his vision, his mind. "Then what do I need?"
"Time and effort and just a little bit more living. I think Ouruo's already said everything that could be said, and... knowing you, me just being here is enough, isn't it?"
He gave an embarrassed nod.
"I mean, you're not going to get better, even if I cast time magic to make our lives here a century— not that I can— and it's not like just our bond alone will change it, but if there's one thing that you and I have in common, it's that we're not going to stop, isn't that right? It's like what I do. The Justicars can't have everything be just and pure, but it's not about everything. It's about something to people, every day, and that's enough. Same with what you'll be doing as Regalia, awakening Anima and all, and I know you'll be even better than your dad as long as you'll still charge forward. You'll find your step someday."
His nod was a little more determined this time.
"And I'll be there for you, Hrodger. Every step that I can be." Yellow sandstone, yellow canvas roof, the two of them standing as proud as they could be knowing that they would soon step into a new life.
"And I'll be there for you, Altani, best that I can." Blue skies, scarcely a white cloud, the two of them barely visible in the Khoiruta grass except for the little pony that they shared.
She hurried up to hug him, and Hrodger wiped away a tear.
"Are you crying?"
"Huh? No, no, of course not."
Both knew it to be a lie and stifled their laughs. Both further knew that their duties meant that their promise would be rare, but it was the vow they renewed from childhood to now, and it was the faint mist of those dreamy ideals, bottled only by the cannery of their memory, and carrying only a residual aroma, that meant everything.
Desert Trails to The Greatest Gift
Somewhere in the coarse sands lay a middle-aged man, dressed in brown robes, crawling upon the desert floors, his vision collapsing. A criminal. They had called him a murderer, a target to be scorned in his community that had always called him their black sheep, until the day he met her, the woman who saw reflected in the bitter bleak and violence of his personality a reflection of isolation. Somehow, that was enough for her to push through, to have a family, a son that they had named for the hope of normalcy this family had given him.
Nobody believed him when he woke up to a peculiar engine in his house, nor when he said that a Sandworm had eaten his family. It was too incredible, even given the tunnel that ran from his house to the Sandworm mother's domain; they knew of her temperament. Had a sandworm truly eaten them, they said, they would've heard the Nesut Sandworm proclaim a renegade sandworm, for few could escape her grasp. And then there was the matter of the engine.
They had to call the Psytrines to remove it. "Engine" was just their way of describing it, the way the mechanical, skin-colored parts jittered and jumbled themselves but never quite burst nor deformed too much. Of course, the mystique lasted a few seconds before one of them, some gray-skinned woman, identified it as "someone's bold wrenching-off of Fersa." So, they unceremoniously took it away to a platform some twenty miles up in the air, near the city, in case that Wild God of madness sought it back.
So ended that predicament, and with the Psytrines gone, the man swore that Fersa had not left with the engine. The community felt madder, as though the rationality of Psytronius had kept their wilder, liberated instincts at bay. Their quiet sighs at the departure of the engine gave way with no fanfare.
Instincts rotted into fervor, fermented into violence, and before the man knew it, he was forced to flee his town with only the clothes on his back and fear tainting his mind. There was a faint spark within him, too. He had enough magic in him to cast a spell, but for some reason, he couldn't quite... imagine a portal to take him somewhere else. It kept moving; normal thing for Krdatirn mirage cities, but not a portal. It should've stayed in his hand before it burst outward and brought salvation to him, but it didn't stay. Kept fizzling out and dying in blurs of colors.
And besides, surely they were right. A few dozen years of being wrong and being wronged, maybe that was his average. Another wrong? It made sense to take it, as much as the desiccating winds drained him of all moisture. It just made sense to not preserve himself, to fulfill their favors. He had to do as they asked.
A faint glimmer in his mind, the one that was still crawling ahead, was wondering if it did make sense. Shouldn't he want to live and try harder? If that was the case, then why did he seem to try so little in focusing on the portal, which tottered just out of his sensation? He could have been in a new home days ago — Parfuhmerie, for example. But would they accept a rotten being like him?
But he deserved to live, didn't he?
He looked up. He was so close to the mountains where the festival would be taking place. If only he coul—
"Hoya, traveler."
It sounded like his son, and the man turned his head up, throat and lips too dry to levy his apology. He could only look up and hope that his pleading eyes said all that need to be said. The figure in front of him was his son atop a camel, as far as he could tell, and he burnt an ounce of energy to crawl towards him.
"You look thirsty." His son set a canteen of water onto the desert, and the man lunged towards it, downing all of its contents. Whatever blessing it had upon him revitalized him, cleared his throat of dust. He felt that a cataract had cleared from his eyes, his mind.
"Who..." The man coughed. "Who are you?"
He laughed. "Who else, dad? Don't you remember when you put me to bed last night?"
The man's eye shimmered. The soul-reading came back true, but that earlier faint glimmer within him...
It was urging him to flee. But from his own son? No, surely that part was the maddened part. The man knew that he had to have been strong enough to resist the curse that had descended upon his town, and had been exiled for that exact reason. The gods, after all, played mean games, especially Wild ones, and especially Fersa.
Curse. Isolate. Suffer. Amusement. Somehow, after the uncoutable-eth time, they didn't tire.
So then where did the camel that his son rode upon come from?
"Do you even remember what happened last night?" his son said, voice clearing the dehydrated sandstorms of his mind. "You were helping a caravan feed their camels, right?" His son paused. "Well, turned out that there really was a sandworm. The folks you helped took me out right before you woke up. They would've taken you, too, but I don't know why, but it really wanted me."
The man looked aside. "Nobody reported a trail."
"Ah, well!" There was a timbre, a cadence that didn't sound like his son as he said that. Even the way his mouth wrenched open and closed looked off, but...
This was his son. He had to trust him. Besides, years of living on the sands of the Krdatirn had taught the man that rogue sandworms were hard to pursue because they left little in the way of a trail. When they moved, they pushed their heads up so that sand rose towards the ground, rather than being eaten. Where they departed from, they twitched little pieces of themselves behind them, shaking sandstone and sand just enough to dislodge it downwards, send would-be dunes back to the dust and caves from whence they came. Much more tiring, much more intense on their systems, but it let them hide and escape the authority of their queen.
Foreigners often had much to say about the odd structures and patterns in their world, but this was World Machine, where imagination and technique, more than energy, constrained the person or creature. So perhaps this truly was a sly sandworm.
The man looked up. A few more camel-riding caravaneers were now behind his son, as though he were the one leading their procession. Some swayed like spools of cloth, but the wind scarcely sighed, let alone blew the actual scraps of clothing that could only guard against sunlight and kicked-up sand. Besides that, they must have traveled far: the slight bluish tint and foul, marine smell said they must have been from the western side of the Region, near the gorge that led into the Druzakh.
That did not explain the swaying, the murkiness of some faces like ghosts whose lives and heritages had long since been forgotten, the awakened fervor of others like the Inquisitors under the fervor of Resplendent Wings. It was fascinating to gaze at their expressions, the unity within the crowd that his son had been saved by.
"Dad," his son said, hand outstretched, "it's not like we can go back, can we?"
Had his despair been that apparent?
He shook his head no and looked at the other members of the caravan. They all seemed cared for, satisfied. Happy, even, though he had to admit that a few of the younger members, some young men and women, looked mildly drunk. Was alcohol the source of their swaying, their strange faces? If that were the case, then why in the midst of a desert? Perhaps there was something else, some blessing so that they wouldn't be too worn or too dry. After all, the first Krdatirn traders were not so stupid as to drink and risk their senses in the desert, and it kept as tradition.
Besides which, that just questioned whether or no they might be a good influence. His son was his last chance at having any shred of himself with a decent standing, and here he was, among vagabonds.
And they had saved him; it would be horrid of him to deny their generosity, and so he reached out, figuring that a chance of a new life was better than none at all, or one condemned to the sands still, where none else would meet him.
His hand curled. Stopped.
It was still nagging inside of him, that faint glimmer, but when one of the caravan's men flung a cloth over to his son, laden with a water-heavy canteen, he realized that this was his best choice.
He took his son's hand, and he refused to let go.
Or was it that he couldn't?
Water dripped in a cave, perhaps his mind, and a soft ringing came to his ears that eroded him, sent waves of serenity through his form that sent him weak, crumpled to the floor. What was it? Where was it coming from? He hardly knew the answer, lost in the lonely echo and din, until soon enough the din drew away, and then came closer, closer, closer, as the dropping vacillated back and forth, wondering if it too ought to draw close. One moment, faint, the next, right at his side.
The ringing became shrill and echoed.
A chanting bubbled into being, riding on the crests of the shrill ringing. Multiple voices, speaking some unknown language, collided into one as the water drowned underneath echoes of beated drums. An aural epiphany had been brought unto his mind, and the man looked up at his son, at the way their hands merged.
He could hear his own heartbeat — dun-dun-dun-dun-dun — amidst the ringing, now more like the sustained cry of a string that fluttered in his brain, touched every bit of it in a strange... joy that electrified his senses, welcomed him to the caravan. Created sanctuary.
The chanting fell away into a small crowd singing together, accompanied by the steady steps of boots upon sand, faint below the thunder of his heart, the ringing in his ears, until the water dropping returned, and the crowd silenced. Were they mesmerized by its sound, its echo? The silence lasted for but a few seconds before it returned, this time arising with a crowd of other chants that sounded like wind and clouds made manifest, of gales billowing across the dunes or perhaps air escaping pursed lips. The sound came from all around him, encircled him in their foggy embrace.
The man looked up at his son, at the madness, the fervor, now dancing in his eyes, realizing amidst the chanting that he had never told his son that he was helping a caravan last night, and that his helping had been all the way across town. There was no way that his son would have known — but besides, why would anyone have told him about his dad's daily job? But... no, perhaps they had told him—
Some sound like rolling-down-metal-stairs or like the wail of a magical missile struck his head as the chants briefly wailed. It inspired an epiphany, especially once the something-sound descended further down the stairs of his mind.
Yes, that was it. They had to give his son reason to come along, for the man had raised his son to be a little more reasonable than the community about them. To be a little more accepting, a little more open.
The windy chanting started up again, and the man became aware that the other members of the caravan had encircled him and his son, and that their swaying had become much more violent. Some riders looked about ready to tip off from their camels, or their limbs were stretched in an odd direction, or their spines curled like ferns, and all the while, the metallic ringing continued in the man's head.
Now, it was his vision's turn to sway, to double and triple, to shift color and warble as the voices continued to chip away into his mind, restoring.... It began as a vague shape that his eyes could not remove themselves from, someone in the crowd that was so familiar, looming just about his son. Slowly, hair formed above the apparition as his son's face flushed red, cheeks swelling just slightly with blood. Then, the face formed out of the white clay, and he realized who it was.
His wife.
The thought electrified him— he spasmed in his son's grasp as the memories came flooding back, as a minute of thought passed in a second, as all his desires of love, passion came rushing back into him, while at his sides the circle's swaying and dancing around him stripped them of their clothes, revealing blood-flushed skin and he could not tell where camel and rider ended, nor where rider and second rider ended—
A single wail called out.
The man heard his back crackle and pop as some sort of magic thrust his kneeling form to the ground while the sound of the water settled. The chanting became just his wife and son singing to him, calling to him, while his back crumpled in a way that he knew impossible, and yet, he felt no pain. Only joy, sanctuary, desire entered his brain. Their mutters became euphoric cries: the man could finally have normalcy if only he joined the caravan.
So that was why his son had fallen into their command. And yet, in the back of the man's mind came a little vociferous voice hiding in a citadel, begging him to flee, knowing it futile, even as it stared into the now-vacant abyssal red of his son's eye sockets, looked at the flayed skin of the caravan.
A skinless procession.
Drums again.
The man's vision clouded with neons and acids and fractals, warping constantly and reflecting one another in infinite mirrors in the pools of their existences, and the chanting grew even more intense as the caravan descended around him. They were no longer people, camels — they were wires of meat, of pulsating muscle and tendons strewn together like failed clay-work projects, making mockeries of creation. Haphazard limbs and heads linked groups of torsos and other body parts, and the man could only stare as an apparent camel came into view, whose head was but an amalgam of meat on a rudimentary bone cane. Its flesh puppeted itself into a smile, and it leapt across him, letting him see the remnants of horned rams still bleating on its underside and the empty skull of a Demon and the three heads of a cerberus, all having been stripped of whatever skin they had, being nothing more than blood-red flesh.
And his son and his wife were skinless, organless. Empty vessels of meat, puppeted by whatever being had descended upon him and had taken his senses and played with them and left his body and mind broken on the ground by the waves of liberation.
Ah, freedom. Freedom from that town and its prejudices and hateful gazes.
The man could only stare as the caravan descended upon him.
And smile.
Staff Directory
Kutaaneka looked down from her tablet, sensing Psytrine magic in the air. Her guess turned out right when a young man in white and yellow, like autumn gales, descended next to the booth, his legs briefly folding like cloth. Stribog. "Hey, you the director or event manager or produ—"
"If you've got a request to notify all staff," Kutaaneka said, "then I'm her."
"Great, um..." Stribog closed in, his orange-gloved hands gripping the edge of the stall. "Reports of Fersa were reported last night in a town where we found one of his engines, and we tracked his presence to... pretty close here, actually." The Lusufa looked up at him, not surprised, but at least alert. "Him and his entire procession. Current reports..." He waved some winds to his side, let them whistle past him. "Very close to this area."
"What a mess... of all days to visit Lomek. But I guess that's what I'd expect from a god of madness." Kutaaneka bent the winds towards her and absorbed the information within them. "Right, I'll use this as proof in case someone comes asking. Elsewise, it's in our hands, Stribog." With that done, she turned to a crystal at her side, letting her message ring out to the staff:
[All path guardians, please close the front pathway to The Greatest Gift and use emergency magical energy to maintain portals and teleporters. We have received reports of Fersa and The Skinless Procession in our vicinity, and we will need to ensure no Foreigners are harmed in their transit in their visit. Please act quickly.]
"Before you go," she said, "any news of Il Circo Dei Tarocchi?"
"Sorry, miss, but that's a no. Probably running late — who knows what they're doing. Centuries have that sort of effect on minds."
She sighed. Main performers, delayed as always, but her mind soon turned to more controllable matters. "Think you can get Psytronius to help down there?"
He nodded, and she watched as Stirbog flew up and away.
Free. She glared at her lower half, which was nothing more than a floating book, opened towards the sky from which her body sprouted. It was not that she hated her job — far from it — but at least having the option to move a little more unrestricted... that, she thought, was the best thing for any person to have.
