Ecdysis

Chapter 100. The Knight’s Graph

A quick recap for the chapter - The campaign-ending battle and Bragge's machinations are over with few teleportations and roof-crashings along the way and now Erf returned to collect his just rewards, only to be intercepted by the no other than goddess herself.

Catriona Emanai Aethil - The head goddess of Emanai Manorat

Albin Shebet Chasya - 'the land name' of her son

Kamshad - House of Offence. One of the eight major Houses of Emanai. They have caused a handful of issues for Erf, even if not always by their own will.

Kishava - House of (military) Logistics. Another one of eight Pillar Houses. They are known for having arusak-at magic ('dolls', essentially necromancy by manipulating heavily runed remains). Kamshad, Kishava, and Kosenya form the military alliance called The Houses of War that defends Emanai and fights its wars.

Samat - Both the capital of Emanai and one of the eight Pillar Houses. The House governs the capital.

Unique terms:
Spark - a 'glow' that magically-able people can see inside other magically-able. The term is vague but can be somewhat reduced to a 'magical soul'

Chatrang - chess in their language

Farshat - luxurious carpet. Often used as decorations (hanged on walls, placed in low-traffic areas, etc).

Harald - bioengineered auxiliary implant inside Erf. Named after Harald Bluetooth as a nod to its primary function (data exchange and connectivity to other implants\augments) but can also serve as a data processor for tasks not well suited for human brain (even an augmented one)

Lash - Limbic Auxiliary System for Harald-augment. 'extension cords' for Harald system. Allow physical connection and interaction with other systems and objects (bioengineered or not).

“Over the days of Emanai Manorat,” the magical voice of the goddess thrummed across the room, “only a select number of notables were allowed to come into this hall. Invited to have a game with me. Some of them moved on to grow their Manors into proper Houses and some amongst those were honoured to have chatrang pieces shaped with their likeness. The one your fingers are clutching so roughly could trace her lineage to all three current Matriarchs of War.”

Unable to hold back the grunt, I rested the silver statue in its new spot. “I beg your forgiveness for my lack of Spark and magic — this is the only way I know how to move them.”

I knew I should’ve expected nothing ordinary from the game of divine chatrang and I wasn’t left wanting. Apart from the magical future-knowing opponent that she obviously was — my position on the board wouldn’t be so meagre otherwise — I now found myself lugging statues across the floor instead of moving pieces on a table. My ‘silver’ set was undoubtedly cast out of solid silver — as far as I could tell by the weight of my ‘pieces’ alone — while I had only one working arm and a burning desire not to topple any of them down in a most inappropriate display possible.

My occasionally cheeky nature aside, this was neither the time nor the place to test the boundaries of necessary etiquette. Catriona Emanai Aethil was revered as a just goddess by local wermages but that alone wasn’t enough to stymie my caution. The Emanai justice was built with a class system as its backbone and my wives and I didn’t travel across the country, brave the Forest, Creature, and nomad, only to have our trials and accomplishments erased by me accidentally offending the local divinity.

“Have you tried asking them?” The air rippled as one of the golden statues vanished from its place, only to reappear in the next position — goddess made her move.

I glanced up at the looming silver statue with an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach. “They are alive?”

Apart from the luxurious dresses put on them like they were mannequins, vivid paints to cover bare metal, and large cabochon jewels for eyes, they felt metal through and through. I really hoped those weren’t the ‘originals’ and that there was a possibility of me literally becoming one of her chatrang pieces by the end of this game.

Goddess shifted on her floating carpet, surrounded by cosy pillows and hovering plates of exotic food, and a wave of her sleeve basked my silver set in blue glow. “Remember where you are. In their nascence, Kishava nurtured their arusak-at knowledge in my halls.”

I offered an appropriately deep bow. “Forgive me, Divine Sovereign — until my arrival in the city of Samat, magic was quite a distant concept for me.” Apart from the magically enhanced strikes of a wer taskmaster and a rare sighting of the Chimgen family touring their lands, far away from the stink of murks, cattle, and manure, the life of a farming slave was quite ‘down-to-earth’. The Navigator knowledge only exacerbated that divide.

I assessed her latest move and the board at large, then turned back to my ‘arm’. “Erm, chariot to… lah-five?” The sudden appearance of virtana letters and Arabic numerals was unexpected but not surprising. The Orb of Truth had ones and zeroes as part of its divine runework and even if that was just a lucky coincidence or a long-forgotten echo of the original Tana settlers, the introduction of the number system was progressing across the Aikerim’s Manor and even some Enoch were picking up on the practice alongside their apprenticeships — there was no way the goddess did not know about them by now.

Jumping away from the suddenly alive statue stomping to her new spot, I cast a hopeful glance at a nearby flying carpet. The empty one, on my side of the ‘board’ and across the goddess. “May I?”

“That was your spot once you stepped into this chamber. Unless you desire to remain on the board amongst the other pieces — some guests had found that preferable.”

As the next golden piece jolted across the time and space, I eagerly climbed onto my designated seat, my thoughts abuzz. Despite being able to touch and feel the flying farshat — softer than a thick carpet on a hard floor but not soft enough for me to sink in and loose balance — and our somewhat whimsical conversation, I couldn’t put my thoughts to rest or kick Harald out of our entwined chess overdrive.

I seemed to have passed a hidden challenge without knowing how or why. There was still that appropriately divine aloofness, juxtaposed by the magical timbre of her voice demanding nothing but complete attention and obedience, but I was no longer merely stared at in silence. We both made quite a few moves by now, developing our positions, and Catriona had plenty of chances to tell me about this ‘hidden feature’ of her gaming board. She did not. Instead, she silently watched me as I manhandled the silver statues of Emanai heroes in my desperate attempt not to lose before the game actually began in earnest. Until now, that is. The question was-

“If I wished to hear well-rehearsed praises, I would have summoned dancers and performers.”

I blinked.

“Nor am I interested in watching you mull every decision like a freshly weaned child suckling on their thumb,” Catriona continued, glowing at me with her eyes through the veil, “Speak boldly — just like you move your pieces — today, neither your truth, silence, or lie will incur my wrath. They won’t bring you fortunes either but I will know of your character. A Gift in and of itself, as it will be questioned by others.”

“I wouldn’t dare to call my opening a bold one.” I rubbed my neck, quickly adjusting to the tone she had set. Now that that was settled, the next last thing I wanted to be known as was some exotic aggressor due to my unorthodox by Emanai standards playstyle.

“No, your opening wasn’t. You choosing your every move within a single heartbeat is. You might dally with moving them here and there, just as you are doing right now, yet your gaze hadn’t lied once.”

“Well,” I sent my pawn forward, “the early stage of chatrang can be likened to moving soldiers from their camp and onto the battlefield. Yes, one needs to keep the moves of their opponent in mind so that they can deploy them properly but the large part is still developing one’s pieces for the battle ahead.”

Goddess teleported her chariot piece, maintaining the pressure. “There is a divide between saying and doing that many wont cross. For it requires both certain wisdom of mind and boldness of heart. Tell me, traveller, did you come to my lands or came to be inside of them?”

I felt a rueful smile tugging on my lips. I feared that I would be grilled about the origin of my knowledge; interrogated on Navigator tricks and skills, akin to some of the inquiries made by a particular Censor. Instead, the chatrang mistress picked up the erratically moving piece off her board and simply asked ‘what are you?’. Her question wasn’t one I wished to dwell on either but this wasn’t the time nor place to keep avoiding it further. “I came to be, Divine Sovereign. Less than a year ago and not that far away from Samat, Erf was reborn, creating I. Two wants sought refuge in each other — a murk yearning for power and a traveller tired of dreaming. Like a child of two parents, I am both yet I am neither.”

“Was the ‘dreamer’ hiding away from Sight, waiting for an certain moment to wake?” goddess hummed with a faint lilt in her voice but her eyes glowed bright. Once she started talking, her questions were as immediate as her moves on the board yet I was the bold one for trying to keep up.

“Hiding implies at least some knowledge of future events or players above. The ‘Annals of Stag and Wolf’ might not be the most rigorous set of historical texts, but Albin Shebet Chasya considers them to be more faithful on the passage of time compared to other works of that era and I trust his judgement on this matter. Thus, if I am dating the events correctly, Emanai dragons descended on the southern shoreline around twenty-three centuries ago, absorbing the local wermage tribes, redistributing land among their followers, and eventually forming what is now known as Emanai Manorat. Even at that time, the seed that would give rise to me was already in the ground, its slumber caused not by some far-reaching plot but the necessity to let any sickness pass, lest it ravages the land. Near and far.”

Any other reason aside, an ‘unsanitised descent on a non-biohardened planet’ was not something any Navigator would ever condone, even in an unmarked region without direct oversight. Just like approaching planets with a ‘hot’ Kugelblitz drive or any other high-energy equipment — I would never do it and Lif would never let me. This wasn’t about accidentally introducing some space plague because I was an immune carrier — the ecosystem of a tree-ship was designed for that tree-ship and Tana could’ve easily found itself under a blanket of blackish-green three-meter-deep sludge within a decade or two because some stray fungus of mine found the local ecosystem ripe for the taking and too weak to resist. Obviously, Lif wasn’t the first tree-ship in space, still learning the ropes and had all necessary countermeasures in place to prevent a green goo extinction event during much worse accidents than an emergency planetfall. But my shuttle wasn’t Lif. Nevertheless, coming down separately remained a wise decision on our part when magic was not only real but able to wreak havoc with sensitive technology. In the face of an imminent and overwhelming uncertainty, keeping the original and the backup in same place was simply bad practice. As unfortunate as the subsequent outcome ended up being, we still had options.

I had to do a double take at her latest move. It wasn’t an eyebrow-raising fumble but neither Harald nor I could calculate why she thought it to be an acceptable one, given her previous playstyle, but I quickly schooled myself to finish my speech: “And just like a seed is beholden to the sun and rain, the untimely geological event — a landslide or an earthquake — turned what was supposed to be a tenday, a season, or a year or two at most, into centuries and millennia. The unfortunate series of events was not of mine making.”

“Unfortunate, yes,” Catriona readily agreed with me. “But you were quick to turn your fortunes around. Some might say too quick. Quicker than a wermurk’s rush to live their fleeting life, spurred further by your talent at cajoling wermages to do your bidding.”

I allowed myself a quick direct glance at the divine heurisk. Runed folds of her clothing hid her humanoid features, despite her towering proportions. Most of her face was hidden by a curtain veil around her conical hat, sufficiently magical to stop my augmented sight. I wasn’t sure if that was her traditional dress, the current celestial fashion, or a calculated move to limit how much I could read from her body language. It could’ve been for my sake as well — my brain itched when I paid too much attention to the few visible tentacles below her veil. There was something… aberrant… in their otherwise innocuous dance. Curiosities aside, her tail was placid and her pose relaxed.

My pawn rushed into the gap she left behind. I cared not whether this was a deliberate handout or an accidental stumble, I wasn’t in the position to refuse it anyway. “I was the extra product that a merchant added to the balanced scales, making him look generous and the deal — visibly in favour of his important customer. A denigrating status, I admit, but what spurred me to action wasn’t the shame of my present but my quickly solidifying future. If I waited even for a handful of tendays, I would’ve been given away to one of her returning husbands or sons as an inconsequential, bed-warming gift. Moreover, convincing the successful merchant Domina that a cheap bauble was actually a precious gemstone was a lot easier if said gemstone was still in her hands.”

“You would’ve fared just as well.” The tone of her voice told me that those weren’t words of praise, merely the statement of a fact. “You would still earn the ear of Aikerim Adal. There would be Esca and there would be Third Bragge. Your sadaq would have been different but that is of little consequence.”

Now that was-

“Do you grieve for the untold thousands of sadaq-at that never came to be, because you chose your current path and not the others?”

I gave a small nod of understanding. Heurisk, future sight, and all that. Now that it happened, my sadaq was obviously important to me and, as a Navigator and a husband, I would defend them with my lives. But back then, when everything was still in the future? To the past me who knew and cared not about the sadaq-at, the possibility, size, and variable roster of my future harem were indeed quite inconsequential. Well, as long as one of Aikerim’s husbands didn’t come up with a bright idea of adding me to their son’s dowry. Probably not — I was fairly certain that Aikerim would have kept me ‘in the house’ one way or another. I was also fairly certain that I wouldn’t have left Yeva to her fate either, regardless if she were to become my wife or not.

“Well, it was my will to act and thus my ‘choice’ wasn’t truly random. As long as everything remained as it was, including myself, I would make the same decision time and time again.”

“If you were a wermurk? Perhaps.” Her tower warped across the board and snuffed my attack. The exchange still ended up marginally in my favour but that only lessened the gap between our positions. “A werspark or a wermage? Without a doubt. But your soul is dark enough to make cancers stumble and its twinned nature foretells no sole path. Yet, despite the sinister nature of your power, it served you well in battle. Fortunately so.”

I considered my options. A twinned soul was one fancy way to call my Ego-Harald dance as there were indeed two separate I’s within my body with subtly altered thought-streams. Not too different that I looked like two minds fighting for one body but different enough to ‘darken’ my already ‘murky’ soul to the Creature and, apparently, Divine sight. But ‘sinister’ was a dangerous label. Arguing against it would lead me nowhere — for a Heurisk at the top of the magic pyramid of power, what I was doing wasn’t simply wrong but diametrically opposite of what she perceived as the ‘right’ path. Better to leave it alone. “Fortunately?”

Arksite scales rustled when Catriona waved her shark-dragon tail sideways. “Do you truly think that all your previous successes were of your own making? Pillar Manors accepting you as a daimon after just a handful of tricks, despite your lack of spark, uncertain origins, and potential gains they would surrender to Aikerim Adal from such attestation? Your twinned soul, stoked early and carefully cultivated so that it was ready just when it was needed most?”

Past events rushed through my mind. Me being a daimon? Yes, Aikerim, Anaise, and even Virnan Shah all had personal reasons why they eagerly bought into that idea. The Kiymetl and Enoch mostly wanted a reasonable explanation for Aikerim’s sudden rise in fortunes and ‘daimon’ was easier to their sensibilities than ‘magic-rivalling murk technology’. But the Houses of War? The House of Samat, that held a personal grudge against Aikerim? Neither of them had any incentive to accept my questionable status, without at least some concessions from my Domina. No, it was politically wasteful for them to do so. Yet they did. Because the Speaker of Shebet, the most desired hunk of meat in the capital and beyond, was seen by my side. Because the Censor of Emanai, the Voice of the Goddess, was personally interested in me. Interested enough to push the date of the Divine Ritual forward just for the faint possibility to claim me. Unsuccessful possibility, yet that event pushed me out of the capital to reclaim my family, where I acquired Harald along the way. The ‘origin’ of my ability to ‘twin my soul’, as Catriona called it.

It was easy to dismiss her words as a blatant attempt to claim credit, but could I? The archaic terminology that would’ve outed a normal person as a fraud made sense for a heurisk — she didn’t need to know in detail what something was when she already knew what it would do in the future. “You… caused all of that?”

Goddess gestured at the board and, once I made my move, immediately teleported her piece with a scoff. “Caused? Do I look like a Domina to run around causing things? I allowed it to happen. Fate is a River of duality — a hushed breath can send a giant boulder tumbling, yet, once it is moving, no force would change its now-fated destination. Within the River, time is but a length of a lever — the bigger the gap between an act and its result — the less effort is needed and the greater result is obtained.”

The wide-brimmed cone and its veil vanished, allowing me to gaze at her directly for the first time. “And you, traveller, are a thousands-years-long lever, wrenched deep into my plans.”

A moment all it took for my mind to start screaming at me in the howls of phantom pain. Expecting, no, demanding that I move and twirl appendages I did not have, as if envious to the dance of her tentacles. I had to force my nanodendrites to stand down as they started to prepare the flesh around my chin and ears for the imminent growth spurt. That absolutely wouldn’t do. Aikerim’s manor would burn if someone saw me trying to mimic heurisk features. But, rather than looking away like any sane person would, I reached into my sash.

I might not know magic or the esoteric reasons why her tentacles were making such an effect on me, but I knew my mind. I pulled out my lash and plugged it into my body. Not into the wrist as an extension of my arm or into my spine as an individual locomotor-manipulator, but into the back of my skull. Just as she did not need to know of Harald to know our future, Spark wasn’t necessary to give my mind a proper reprieve from the magical malady.

My eyes rose back to her face as I took in her features in full. Expectant, curious, amused. Strict. Like a librarian that came to shush me, yet eager to know what book had caused me to make such noise. Long white hair, loosely bound into four tails, floating in the air like lengths of silk cloth in a clear river. Fair arksite skin with the glowing blush that all but confirmed my theory of their luminous blood giving their skin colour and eyes — their shine. Full eyebrows and impressive eyelashes, revealing the centuries of diligent grooming. Slanted eye sockets and pointed ears created a fairy and elvish look, popular during the first scattering; although it looked less like a purely aesthetic feature and more of a practical outcome from the three massive horns docked on her temples and forehead. Now that I saw them up close, calling them horns didn’t feel right. Yes, they were majestic, hard, and pointy and had everything else necessary for the divine awe-inspiring look like golden engravings, hanging gemstones, and wisps of magic dense enough to be visible, but there was flesh underneath that bone. Not just any flesh — the ‘horns’ were protrusions of her skull and they weren’t empty. Nor were the two fleshiest tentacles that emerged from behind her ears and settled on her chest, the same ones that every wermage tried to emulate with their twin braids. Potential vulnerabilities weren’t an issue — she could chew diamonds for breakfast — but with her height and these additional outgrowths, there was almost an order of magnitude more brain by weight behind the glowing eyes than that of an average wermage.

That didn’t necessarily mean she was ten times smarter but, if some of that extra brain tissue was used for magic processing and her future-perceiving abilities, I could see why their kind was seen as divine by the less brain-endowed land-dwellers.

Her latest words, however… “A lever? Are you saying that my entire existence is someone’s plot?” The implication was… concerning. Yes, the combination of my unplanned descent and the subsequent burial of the shuttle was both highly improbable and impeccably precise to cause as much inconvenience as possible. Anything else, apart from the total and instant obliteration of Lif and I, and I would’ve either revived earlier or regrown by Lif without merging with Erf. But highly improbable didn’t mean impossible. Moreover, it was one thing if I was simply waylaid by the invisible but turbulent magical aura permeating this stellar system and another — that local heurisks could leisurely rearrange the inner asteroid field to their will. That would’ve been far beyond Anaise accidentally throwing my cup into a suborbital flight and I really hoped that it wasn’t a common power among the divines. Fate magic or not, swatting a lone tree-ship from space was a lot harder than glassing the surface of Tana. Let alone doing it precisely enough to entomb her Navigator for few millennia through a series of unfortunate events. “Not that I am denying your words but for that to happen without an enormous effort the time ‘leverage’ would’ve been immense!”

“Another would’ve looked away,” Catriona observed as if she just told me yesterday’s weather, “yet you kept on looking. Emboldened by curiosity.”

Her hand reached out and lifted my lash from my chest. “Perhaps it was, but if there is one thing that is plentiful in this world it is time.”

I shook my head. “Not when it comes to the people of Tana. There is a set point of origin and when we are talking centuries and millennia before the foundation of Emanai, that point isn’t that far off.”

“Perhaps.” Catriona twirled my lash around her finger. “And perhaps you were summoned by the same force that brought true life to Tana.”

What?

“What?”

Goddess took her eyes off my lash for a moment and glanced at me. “Did I stutter?”

“Forgive me, Divine Sovereign.” I rubbed my neck, trying to phrase the next words as politely as possible. “When I said ‘people of Tana’, I meant more than… the wer-kind on the ground.”

“We are in agreement, then.”

I licked my suddenly dry lips, feeling the buzz behind my ears. Goddess casually implying that there were divine-like beings to the divines themselves was definitely not on my list of today’s revelations. Was there more to the origin of human mages than some cross-contamination from local alien life?

“You are beginning to understand. Good.” Her fingers wrapped around my lash in an impossible grip. “Know this — I am not vexed about the past. You had your piece to play and you played it well. More than well — or you wouldn’t be in this room. But the string of successes stoked your ambition into a blaze. No, you always had that ambition within you. Were I to force on you the title of a general, you will obviously take it with sufficient gratitude but you will scoff inside your mind.”

“I would be the wors-”

“Everyone is, in the beginning. I care not for the excuses.”

I sighed. “I do not have a warrior’s heart, no.”

“The first wermurk to have three beating hearts in my domain and not a single one of them yearns for battle,” Catriona complained to herself. It appeared that I wasn’t the only one who was looking past the skin-deep features. “How wasteful. No, you’ve set your eyes for a much bigger prize. Titles, wives, or glory mean little to you, when you are eyeing my country as a whole.”

I quickly shook my head. “I have no intention to take your lands from you, Noble Heurisk. Neither now nor in the future!”

“You intend to change it as you see fit, like a Domina moulds her Manor. Good intentions or not, tell me — do you believe you will bring prosperity to the lands of Emanai without causing uncountable strife? Bring fortune, without soaking my fields with blood? Feed the hungry, without igniting a war among sisters?”

“Ninety-two out of a hundred,” I offered to her without a blink. “Magic might be an arcane subject for me but power is power. Emanai Manorat is still an agrarian society with an oligarchy on the top, albeit a magical one. Sparks divide the strong from the weak, but wealth still comes from the land itself and the land isn’t infinite. Meanwhile, I have what none of your Pillar Matriarchs nor their advisers have — the knowledge of past societies. The ones similar to the Emanai Manorat, Barsashahr tribes, or lamurian city-states. And the vastly different ones too. I know of their successes and failures. Their falls into obscurity and rises into brilliance. I do not know the path that your people will ultimately take but I can aid them in their travel. I can free them from the ‘tyranny of land’ in wealth generation. I might not have the political power of a Matriarch, let alone a Pillar one, but no one does. In the beginning, that is. My high odds of success are based on my projected growth as well as the array of tools and tricks already at my disposal. With all of that in mind, wouldn’t I be selfish to idle? To deprive my family, my sadaq, and my community from the fruits of my labour just because I am afraid or uncertain? Yes, there are beings more powerful than me and my struggles might be for naught, but to live is to try.”

“Power is power, but Fate is Fate. The fault of your dream lies in the belief that other families would play by your rules, when my domain is on the game’s table.” Catriona gestured at the board below us. “Can your plots and tricks prevail against the might of Divine families when you struggle with a single game of chatrang? Do you think the ninety-two against a hundred is enough, when your opponents manipulate fortune and chance as they see fit? Or do you believe that I will follow behind and shield your every step? Show me why I should — what made you useful in the past hinders your use in the future, for you are not a seedling slowly growing into a tree but an egg that is a worm one day and a moth — day after. Or a scarab. Or any other crawler, yet untouched by the light of day.”

“Because I do not, in fact, undergo ecdysis,” I murmured as my skinsuit slowly overtook my body, leisurely enough for Catriona to witness the envelopment in all of its glory. My voice shifted along with it. “Neither intentionally nor by accident. Of all the people under this sun, I might be the one and only expert in this matter. Yes, it might look like I metaphorically moult from one instar into another as circumstances dictate but what I am shedding is but the latest mask, donned on me by others’ expectations. For I am no expendable spear. I am no agile chariot nor I am a hard-hitting tower. Neither am I a domineering vizier or the essential general on the chatrang board of Tana. I am a gambling die, rolled onto it by accident… Or by the will of some greater force.”

“Do you know what happens to the stray dice that roll onto the board?”

My frontal eyes opened in full, watching the corners of her mouth twitch upward as she resumed her hum — goddess indeed had brains throughout all five of her ‘horns’. And the flexible two showed the highest level of neural activity. My body hummed with power as my skinsuit and lash focused on the sensory input, while Harald and I tackled processing and decision-making. To me, this was a fight comparable to my struggle with the Creature and I wasn’t willing to give up. Yet.

Yes, with other divine families in play and Catriona willingly admitting that they were comparable to her in power, her current stance was unquestionably sound — the Divine heurisk had all the time in the world to slowly nurture her lands but was one chance away from someone snuffing it all out. ‘Slow and steady wins the race’, and I was the proverbial hare in this conversation. But I already pushed quite a few boulders down the hill to stop now. The Manors would weather my waves with but a slight discomfort and Aikerim would still enjoy the rise of her prosperity, but the Samat poor would suffer. My spinning machines alone put a ticking timer on the profession of a spinster — the tedious, labour intensive, but easy work that offered some reprieve to the sick, elderly, and crippled. Mothers, too. The distaff and spindle — unmistakable tools of this profession — were light to carry and easy to use between other tasks, even for the burdened with heavy bellies or loud babes. Yes, I had plans in place to offset the damage caused and Aikerim was perceptive to my pleas but she wasn’t eager about it. Nor would she suddenly try harder if I was sanctioned by the goddess.

At the same time, Catriona never had the need to go this far just to tell me ‘no’. The invitation wasn’t strictly consensual but she more than respected the spirit of the game. She was willing to let me think for myself, offered relevant information, and waited for me to arrive at my own conclusions, something that many wermages still struggled to do. A just goddess, studying my character, indeed. But if I believed that to be all there was, I wouldn’t be in front of a ‘give me enough time and an appropriate fulcrum and I will move the Fate of the world’ Archimedes over here. Catriona confirmed it herself with just two words.

‘Show me’.

Those two words were the final impetus for me to cast my latest mask aside and tackle the problem as a Navigator proper.

Her request wasn’t an outright mockery — while Divine magic was seen as the ultimate peak of magical ability, it wasn’t perceived as all-powerful either. Emanai folklore was rife with heroines impressing Divines by besting them in contests of strength, will, and wit, or them being saved by their Divine patron at the last moment, right after foiling some plan of another god. In fact, I had a sinking suspicion that something similar had happened during this battle without me being all the wiser. The presence of two flying ‘castles’, Divine chess, and Catriona mentioning that ‘I’ve done more than was expected of me’ were dead giveaways.

So, Divines weren’t unbeatable. In the short-term, at least. Check.

I felt the warmth spread across my body from Harald’s power drain. How was I supposed to ‘show her’ here and now? Beat her at the game? My position wasn’t stellar in the slightest and Catriona was no Albin. I could occasionally ‘fork’ him in our matches with my ‘twinned soul’ by offering two equally unpalatable future paths, but she crushed any attempts with extreme precision well in their infancy.

So how was I-

‘Within your mind. Until you speak.’

Albin’s words during our first meeting doused me with a cold chill of revelation. The Orb of Truth was a Divine Gift! It used Divine magic to discern truth from lies, yet it was unable to penetrate murk minds. Catriona also mentioned that my shuttle was hiding from Divine sight for centuries well enough for her to assume intent where there was none. Because the shuttle was the ‘murkiest’ entity in the entire Tana, clean from that arcane field confusing my lithoscanner. So how was she so good at chatrang to effortlessly wipe the floor with me and Harald working together? Mass and volume alone couldn’t compare with Harald’s efficiency and deliberate design, just as centuries or even millennia of experience playing against humans and heurisks wouldn't match the sheer scale of chess game automation.

Because that was not where she was looking all this time.

Each piece on a chatrang board had enough runes and magic to turn a Manorless wermage into an influential Matriarch three times over. Catriona had no need to peer into my murky fate when she could see the fate of the board itself. Just like an opposing Divine family would care not for my attempts to hide when they could see the future of my moves through the ‘pieces’ of Emanai.

It seemed that the lecture had started a long time ago and I just started to listen in earnest.

What were my options?

Request a new board? The purpose of our game was likely never about winning the game itself and by discarding the entire board I would simply admit defeat here and now. No, for me to prove that I can be trusted with moving Emanai ‘pieces’, I had to show it with the current set. Besides, I wouldn’t be able to tell if the new pieces were ‘clean’ in the first place. But what could a stray die do before it was swiped off the elegant and refined chatrang board and tossed back to the uncouth soldiers, drunkenly gambling their spoils away?

It would shed its skin again.

If my continuous ecdysis was all that they saw, then I would indulge their wants further.

Noticing that her fingers weren’t holding me as hard as they did before, I gave a final pat to the flying carpet I barely had time to enjoy and hopped down onto the board.

“Fortunately for this die, it knows the chatrang rules.”

I tried to match the gravitas of the statues around me as I walked across the board. My skinsuit regrew a sleeve around my missing arm, an empty shell but it could act and look as a full appendage, while my lash trailed after me like an exotic head-tail of some far-away House. My legs took me to the piece I loathed to move as her stature and impressive horns skewed the centre of mass too far up for the old one-armed me. Hadia Enoch Kiannika. Hadia, the Raging Cow. The first general of my arm and my left chariot piece. I couldn’t afford to trade her away, not at the Catriona’s exchange rates, but I had her exert pressure with proper positioning on the board, ready to make a move at moment’s notice. And that moment was now.

“Leave the board.”

The statue blinked at me with silver eyelids as I made a shooing motion but its magic was flexible enough to understand unorthodox commands. A moment later, my feet stepped onto the square once occupied by the silver hooves.

“This die can don new masks by itself. Proper, chatrang masks. And it can play them well.”

“Hoh?” the Goddess mused from above. “So the moth is a bee, finally ready to show the stinger? But will the sting be sufficient to matter or simply an annoyance once more?”

I tilted my head. Now that one puzzle piece was finally in place, Harald and I were quick to pounce on the others, unravelling Catriona’s weave thread by thread. “Permit me to ask you a question, Divine Sovereign?” Following her nod, I continued. “This… isn’t a single game, is it? How many games are in your ‘here’, yet outside my sight? How many questions have been asked that this timeline me would never hear?”

“Timeline… it is a good word. I shall use it. The answer is all of them, but you already knew that yourself.”

I was expecting it. Yes, magic was bullshit as usual and Divine magic even more so with the time and multiverse shenanigans, but this was one of the rare cases where the magic fell short and the spellcaster had to rely on non-magical methods to circumvent those limitations. Catriona wasn’t mocking me with slight concessions or making amateurish mistakes, unfit for a future seer, she was anchoring my answers to the movements of her pieces. Across time and space. Thus, not only was she able to foresee this game itself, she could foresee our dialogues across an uncountable number of games that might or would happen in my future. Or even more uncountable number of games that were ‘happening’ right this very moment. How many questions were there? How many answers did all of ‘me’s gave? How many moves did she prepare with sufficient amount of counter-moves to match those answers?

How literal was her Heurisk title?

My hand reached into the khalat and pulled the bundle that Albin had graciously returned to me just a day prior. My runic keyboard. With me giving away my Gestr to the nomads, this was the only magical thing in my possession. Their secrecy was irrelevant here — the fact that Catriona could sense a near hundred of fully charged artefacts with active internal Flow was without question as even Albin could sense basic and inert runes nearby, but could she feel their future just as clearly as she could read her statues?

I couldn’t afford to assume she couldn’t. But I wasn’t content with the obvious solution of putting them aside just as I’d done with my chariot piece. Not yet. I wanted to sting, not to annoy. My fingers quickly undid the ties and unfurled the bundle, retying it back to my chest with the keys facing outward, then immediately slammed on the first chords.

Her tail swished with emotion as the tentacles missed their usual beat and the glowing eyes were peering into me once again. “You!”

“The mind orders — the body obeys,” I murmured as my hands continued to develop the melody. I could see with satisfaction that her tentacles tried to resume their previous dance, only to pick up the rhythm set by my fingers again and again. “The body yearns — the mind follows.”

Both Albin and Sophia were a lot more perceptive to my piano music than Anaise and Irje. While it took my sadaq a few listening sessions to even begin deciding what songs and styles they did or didn’t like, it was obvious what the Chasya siblings favoured in a matter of notes. Now I was certain that the time magic was the cause of that discrepancy. Their minds already knew where the artefact melody would lead them and they were eager to follow it along like an old companion. They welcomed lows and anticipated highs as if they were well-listened experts.

And so did the mind of Catriona Emanai Aethil, the true time mage, the Heurisk, the Divine.

“Flesh and mind, Spark and soul. All of them are mere concepts, invented by us as a means of understanding ourselves and others. They help but they are incomplete.” It wasn’t important if she loved the melody itself or not, since what mattered here was how I was playing it. And when. I couldn’t experience different timelines or see the future but, just as Catriona could assign specific moves to my answers, I could make sure my melody would follow a certain chatrang progression. The one where Harald and I saw us winning. Any misstep, any mistake, any successful counterattack by my opponent and the melody would break, hiccup, and peter off. Only to be replaced by a new melody, towards a new victory. For me, it was about mindlessly following a set of rules I just invented on the spot. For Catriona, it was about an exponentially growing tree of music timelines where every branch that her mind might subconsciously follow would lead to her demise. But to see the future of this ‘chariot’, she had to listen to its music. To win, she had to immerse herself into the cacophony of unfinished melodies, most of which lead nowhere.

“For they are parts of a larger whole,” Catriona finished my speech. “They are the sides of a single cut, and to bend one is to bend all others. And so, when you can’t reach one, you strike at the other with the full knowledge that both will be hit. Devious. Commendable.”

She jumped off her flying carpet with an astonishing, possibly magical, grace and landed not that far from me with the force of a down feather. Something between a huff and a sigh escaped her lips, but a tinge of amusement still lingered in the corners. “Very well. I will carve your character into the Fate of Emanai.”

I made an appropriate bow of gratitude, letting Harald power down with a sense of relief and accomplishment. I didn’t stop playing, however — no reason to pull an Orpheus at the last minute and the music helped me stay in focus anyway.

Goddess banished the chatrang pieces with a swish of her tail and begun a leisurely stroll around me. “But I won’t let you claim my golden set either. I won’t give you my Pillars nor I will make you one. For you are no golden general and never will be. Never want to be. A silver one? Perhaps. Perhaps not. That would be up to you as I have no want in overseeing your rise myself.”

“An independent venture,” I summarised immediately. Just because Harald was no longer gorging on my finite amounts of nuclear juice did not mean the gears stopped spinning. “Separate enough that its failures won’t pull Emanai with it but close enough that the successes can be shared.”

“Keep talking in such a manner and I might reconsider keeping you in my retinue within the palace.” Not a sound emerged from her steps or clothing and I could swear it wasn’t a magical silence. Catriona seemed to… cut through the air as she walked. Heurisks. “You will ask for land from the Houses of War. They will make you pick a burden.”

Why was I not surprised?

“Because you know how the game is played. Choose wisely — your decision will be the square you will claim as my silver piece. You have shown yourself above nomad, cancer, and sheydayan alike. You withstood the sight, will, and act of a Divine. You want freedom to exert your will? Within that square — you will. In turn, I will extend my blessing over your domain — enough to make it known to other families that you and yours are mine — but I will not coddle. Want to be seen as a Manor? A Pillar? Earn it. Want to influence Emanai? Make Matriarchs respect your real power and not your fake title. Fail, and you will have only your ambition to blame.”

Catriona paused and turned toward me. She stood a few of her steps away from me but I still had to look up to meet her imperious eyes. “You have fifty years to satisfy me. What say you?”

I suppressed the immediate desire to shrug. Yes, her choice for my future path did favour Emanai safety and certainty at the cost of mine and significantly hindered my starting growth, but fifty years was a lot of time. Maybe not to heurisks and wermages but definitely to me. I already stirred quite a pot in less than a year and I was a slave of Aikerim Adal most of that time. Still was. Technically. “Your blessing alone is all-”

“What did I say about honeyed words?”

Now I did shrug. “They are true, however, but for a different reason. There is little else I truly need that I can’t already get by other, simpler means. There are Manors eager to purchase my wares with their plentiful silver and there are the downtrodden, eager to swear their fealty and offer their labour for said silver and protection a Manor can provide. Especially a Manor with a Kiymetl Matriarch’s granddaughter as one of its Dominas. Magic? Artefacts? I am certain that some of the Gifts you can bestow wield power beyond my comprehension but I unfortunately lack the skill, ability, and expertise to wield them proper. A sword that can slay seven enemies with one swing would turn another into a figure of the ages but won’t stay long inside my inexperienced grip. And just like you are favouring the certainty of Emanai over the ramblings of a potential madman, I too prefer to rely on tools that I know I can trust. The rest?” I made an obvious glance at my artefact keyboard. “Those are wants, not needs, and thus can wait their turn.”

Her hand pulled on her tentacle. “You are quick to act and speak with the simplicity of a naive fool or the brevity of a heurisk. With your obvious lack of Spark and Sight, there is little wonder why you were able to fool the Archomilea…

“The tools that you can trust… You have done this before?”

I glanced at the sky in recollection. “There is a popular game amongst a particular group of youths. The ones with too much time on their hands, too much itch in their asses, and plenty of centuries to waste. They call it ‘Civilisation’. The premise is simple — a handful of players are dropped onto a barren, barely survivable rock. No tools. No help. Just your hands, your mind, and a very sturdy body. And time, obviously. The goal is a bit trickier — settle, survive, build tools, then use those tools to build better tools. Iterate again and again. From stones tied to sticks to a real ship, sophisticated and powerful enough to leave that rock behind. From what I can remember, the shortest times were well within a single century when participants started gorging on grains before the game to skip the ‘agriculture level’ entirely with their seed-rich shit…”

“And your time?” Catriona barely blinked at my vague and lackadaisical description. As expected from a heurisk that she was.

“I am a Navigator. My kind does not participate.” My lash pooled under my feet and gently lifted the rest of my body into the air. High enough for me to match Catriona’s height. My lash against her tail and numerous tentacles. Her two glowing eyes against my reflective three and dozens more from my skinsuit. Her flowing robes with gold, gems, and magic against my sleek scales of technology and life. “Our skills alone are too unfair, and even less can be said about our bodies.”

The tip of her tongue wetted her lips. Heurisks were glowing blue on the inside.

Catriona Emanai Aethil

She stood in front of a window, deep in thought. Erf was gone but she didn’t rush to let time flow once more. The meeting was… illuminating to say the least. Albin’s fascination was obvious — her son loved to act like a fool on occasion and saw a kindred soul in Erf. Even if the child of Mreea wasn’t intentionally acting as one, he saw the world too differently from the rest not to look like he was fey-touched. Albin was right — Erf had his own Sight, different from theirs. He wouldn’t play this well otherwise just as he couldn’t use the tricks he used without being perfectly, intimately aware of how the game was progressing at every single turn. He had a Spark of sorts too. Catriona felt that bundle of heat and power between his shoulder blades. A bundle of death, as her Sight Saw it. She sensed its pulse before his breakthroughs as if he was a Heurisk tapping into his power to See further into the River of Fate.

Before, not after.

Mreea, not Arkshi.

A small part of her wished to go back, to take back the promise Cait gave to her son, but she knew she made the correct choice. Erf was an occasional annoyance on land and a constant one on the chatrang board. He was like a spry piglet covered in oil — quick to slip away and annoyingly messy to catch. It took her more moves to wrestle him into a corner than she needed to win most of her games otherwise.

No, as her trance had told her back then, his place was on her land.

Slave. Alchemist. Mathematician. Tutor. Husband… Daimon. Aikerim Adal was quite blessed by Mreea to witness the butterfly spreading his colourful wings in her courtyard.

Spear. Healer. The Bloodied Carapace. The balloon. Procurer. Scourge of nomads… Bragge’s trap. Her children were quick to groom him into a wasp, rousing the other Pillars with his buzz and bloodying rakshas with his sting.

The masks and shells came and went, and now it was time for the bee to build a hive.

Her hand rose up and rubbed her temple. She would need to do something about her headache as well.

“Stupid Navigators.”

XXX

“Erf, cease your foolishness!” Anaise hissed quietly into my ear, propping me up with her magic. Irje’s invisible hands were fast behind her.

I shook my head, dispelling the vertigo of sudden teleportation, and stood up straight. I was, at last, inside the tent of Lita’af Hikmat, even if it took me quite a few hours to enter. Anaise and Irje were by my side, along with the Kausar twins, observing my valiant battle with the entrance flap. As expected, most of the tent’s empty space was filled with the Kamshad. Their eyes and pointed wolfish ears were on me.

Indifferent and curious, irritated and entertained, threatened and arrogant. The usual. Knowing Lita’af, this might’ve been less about me and more about them, however. The diligent Silver Wolf made it quite obvious that she wanted no further beef between us and her House and went above and beyond in trying to keep the casual racism in check before it made yet another mess for her to clean. Especially when her own brother got his ass handed to him on a silver platter by Irje. The ‘wasn’t she a wer slave?’ Irje wielding a trimmer grown by a ‘but he is still just a murk’ Erf.

“I see that the price you paid for your Shattered Carapace is still causing you some difficulties.” Lita’af wasted no time in turning my stumbling entrance into a reminder that I was not only wounded in battle but a Creature-killer. An honourable and shrewd gesture — apart from presenting herself as a gracious host and beginning the unlikely to be pleasant discussion of our grievances on a high note, the daughter of the Kamshad Matriarch was preemptively silencing possible objectors and strengthening her political foundation well into the future. After all, being fair or even generous in placating a Creature-slaying, nomad-routing daimon wasn’t a sign of weakness but wisdom.

Politics and intrigue. Layers upon layers. In sky and on land, they were ever-present. But that was the price of power. And no matter how insignificant it felt dealing with the Kamshad after Catriona’s revelations, I knew I couldn’t slack off. Even if, as the goddess foretold, the generosity of Lita’af Hikmat would be inevitably spoiled by the machinations of Kamshad. Because as my battle deeds would legalise my all-but-official freedom within Emanai Manorat, the chatrang ‘victory’ brought me yet another, equally important freedom. The freedom to act with Catriona’s blessing. The freedom to ‘choose wisely’ and not just ‘choose carefully’. For my family. My sadaq.

Our Manor.

I straightened my khalat, gave my wives a reassuring smile and an appreciative nod, and then stepped forward. It was time to collect my dividends.

The tips of my fingers touched my chest and lips in a greeting gesture. “I am certain that we can step into the ring once more not that long from now, and the spar won’t leave you wanting. But not every fight is fought with strength alone and not every battle is won through brawn.” My eyes scanned the tent and quickly spied the ubiquitous item of most officer quarters. The chatrang set, well-crafted but mundane. “While my body heals, why don’t we use a board instead of a ring to ‘talk’ as warriors, when we discuss our matters?”

I observed the room again as I gestured at the board. Lita’af looked surprisingly wary — her nose was apparently that good at smelling trouble — but few other tails and ears stirred as well. It wouldn’t be too hard to goad their owners into similar ‘spars’. It shouldn’t be hard to defeat them either. They were warriors and local leaders, not professional chatrang players… and I just had a warm up game with the goddess herself.

“Multiple boards, perhaps… If others here wish to test my mettle…

“Play a game with me.”