Melvas 17th, Syvan, 8╥1071.
My Brother, I appeal to you!
Draw this maniacal fanaticism from me — please, I long for your judgment. What favor may you grant me? I, your sister, made of the purest delusions and grandeur.
My dearest Maker, I am shaken. Why have you crafted this harebrained euphoria, and expertly so!? That — I may — prove to be!
… The snare to my own hand.
To my people — your trust in me has betrayed you. I am too arrogant to yield and allow passage for another way. Intolerance, vindictive spite, ire, and jealousy were my counselors.
With these I engaged in many salacious orgies. The progeny of my prostitution is a fecund creation, hidden long amid the fermenting mire that produces the abhorrent, golden stench within my realm.
His godship taunts me. Night by night, he cleaves a blackened trench through the Human Spheres. The Nations that I’ve gingerly planted and keenly sought to enlarge, were they not thriving prior to his descent?
Do you know, Brother? The agony of hundreds of millions of scrupulous, scrutinizing, enraged voices as they pleaded against their demise proved unbearable.
What have I done? What am I doing? They deserved to know why I refused to answer them; to know the reason behind my inaction, even as I — yes, I! — WROUGHT their destruction — counter to my own aims, by letting him do what pleasured him most.
We do agree:
They had met their Fate.
I can no longer shoulder the weight of this pulverizing guilt. Yet, this, is the reason behind the fallacy of hope.
A fiery, loathsome tear raced down Laylen’s cheek. Her stalwart, unrelenting gaze allowed no outside rumination into what sentiments occupied her mind.
Or why, when the adolescent girl prostrated herself low until she was nearly flat to the floor, wailing, her face puffy from distress, the woman’s visage seemed cold and devoid of compassion.
“Yathédqa…!” The girl gasped, her voice a meager shell of itself. She’d wailed for hours, unable to separate herself from her lover.
How he’d been stripped and shackled, bound in chains. Tethered to the back of a pair of Féyrcaas, they dragged him, racing through the crude pavement and jagged rocks of the courtyard. Blood seeped from his back, stomach and sides, where his skin had finally scraped off.
“My Yathédqa, please! I beg your mercy! Let us leave in peace!” the girl cried.
“Stupid girl,” finally, Laylen broke her silence, with a chillingly nonchalant voice. “Did you thinket wise to hide your passion from Destiny? Did you thinket clever, as if you’d escape fromet unscathed? Or did the salted Swine Milk of this man seduce you into this ignorant fallacy?”
The girl trembled, hushed before the High Prophetess of Fate.
Or, what was there to say? Finally, she lifted her face. “I love him, and he feels so for me —”
“Sweetleng, you’ar twelve. What understandeng of these matters do you think you’av got? Yai, ain’a man liveng who wouldn’t beast to shove his rod down some naive, meaty pit. Ain’one. Butet ain’this ‘love’ that’s done you both in. Your blatant disregard for Mokallai is.
“Your body doesn’t belong to you to freely give.” A second tear descended from the same, gentle, hazel eye. The other, of an intense, blazing sky blue, kept focused. Between these, Laylen maintained the steely gaze of an eagle. Yet, the faint sob gave in to more than she was willing to admit.
For, what do adolescent girls know of love?
The first time it happened, it was a warm, misty night in the Spring month of Istafh. His name, over a thousand years later, proved as fresh on her mind as when they’d first kissed.
The silvery streaks in that deep burgundy and pink sky playfully tumbled in all that open space, much like what they’d been up to. Until, worked up but worn out, Meérykl scooted down and rolled over onto his stomach.
He folded his arms over her belly, rested his chin on them and gazed, endlessly, longingly, into her eyes. “You’ll be the damnation of every male to lay eye on you when you’re full, Layli.”
She blushed, and hid her smile behind her hand. “Yai, sucks for them, I say’d least!”
He bobbed his head, grinned.
“Meér? You know what I’m goeng to be later? As I get fuller? What will Mok make of me?”
He shifted, unfolded his arms, and ran his palms along her sides, alternating with circling her tummy. “A very special something, or so I’ve heard. We do not come by girls fit to be Prophets often. Maybe you’ll end up the Matriarch of that sort.”
She’d hardly heard a word he’d said, pushing down on him as overly infatuated girls might do.
Infatuation. That’s what cried out from this young girl’s lips when Laylen gestured with a flick of her wrist, and the Féyrcaas came to a rearing halt like obedient stallions.
The Fervent who rode upon their spiny backs hopped down, and, tittering, took the chains that bound the man and led him up onto a platform stationed before a golden basin. In it, eel-like streaks of a deep crimson swam, each one encased in a pristine white aura.
When the Fervent shoved the man in, he didn’t struggle. Seeming to have accepted this new destiny, he sank like a stone, as if descending to some grand calling. Without a moment’s pause, those light-encapsuled, serpentine things bore into his every orifice.
Immediately, his writhing body began to stretch and contort.
The girl blathered on, shrieking at the top of her lungs. Yet, as the man’s transformation neared its completion, Laylen gestured her away.
“Remove her femman organs, and lop off her clit.”
At once, the Fervent thudded their fists between their breasts, bowing deep at the waist.
Finally, that girl kept her mouth shut.
At the ensuing quiet, the woman loosed a faltering sigh of relief. A moment from the intensity of her duties that proved short lived. Because, no sooner had the stress rolled from her voluptuous form, than did the voice of their god resound within the core of her being.
▼ My Yathédqa! You never fail to deliver. Mokallai’s voice was one she didn’t perceive with her ears. Instead, he spoke directly into her hearts. Such endless elation washes over me at your devout service. I am very well pleased with you, and that I spared you the jealousy of your predecessor.
“Yai, Lord!” she cried out, prostrating herself with her arms outstretched, palms up, as if prepared to receive his soles. “What would you require of me?”
▼ There exists a power in this world that is unlike any other. A power that I must have. It is rumored to be in union with these things called Ra’ol Stones, but I haven’t found a single inroad as regards their mysteries.
“You wish me to fetch a rock…?”
▼ Rest assured, this is not beneath you. I do not know this Alyi’s inane designs, but the ability to alter the fabric of realities past, and present, and to infallibly guarantee the future is not something to be overlooked.
No, it sure didn’t sound like it. Yet, to think that such capabilities were simply laying around for anyone to stumble across was deeply concerning.
For that matter, she didn’t know this Alyi, the one called Dyiij, either. It didn’t change how reckless and stupidly irresponsible it made the Alyi sound.
What was the worst that could come of it?
“For your pleasure!” Laylen declared. By the time she rose from the floor, the Fervent were no where around. Though the creature, once the girl’s lover, seemed ignorant of realities surrounding it.
The beast lurched into the basin with a dull thud, and Laylen went her way.
Now, Mokallai had many men and women in the ranks of his worldly organization. There were many Uruqmihane, those being his High Priestesses. Yet, he had only one Yathédqa.
The Supreme Prophetess was his special possession. A deceptive woman who wrought obedience and terror in nearly every soul she crossed, the Yathédqa was gifted with the uncanny, divine capabilities that the god himself possessed.
And, she could not wield her authority lightly.
Those pseudo-winter, autumn-like months of Withering were cold like a frigid partner incapable of rendering loving compassion. In part, this was characteristic of the season, hence Laylen didn’t give it much thought. She pulled the folds of her coat taut over her shoulders.
There were three nations that inhabited the wastelands. For now, she couldn’t concern herself with two of them, but the one, Jocthath, promised some relation to this prized rock.
In fact — had she known of one before? Her mother kept a choker given to her by her late husband. The polished stone was nearly as big as her fist. A thing of dark colors and pearlescent, off-white markings rumored to signify the lasting dignity of the Autocracy of the Swamplands.
That one always appeared so… unassuming.
Gradually, her mind returned to the task she’d been given. She dismounted the Féyrcaa, and set her soles to the glittering, deep crimson flagstones leading to the Vyz Raqam.
It was an onion domed palace. Every facet of its structure was etched in an art deco style that touted a teal and violet color scheme. A magnificent structure, with no other like it.
As she stepped in, the attendants of the garden took care to keep out of her way. That is, until the entryman hurriedly cut her off.
“Our Chief Exec is not expecting guests at this hour,” he said, briefly bowing his head. “Please leave.”
“My business takes priority over his petty times of operation.” Laylen snapped her fingers. At once, a Fervent scurried up to her with a satchel slung over her shoulders. She presented it, Laylen reached in, withdrew fistfulls of one of the rarest currencies in the world, and dropped it at the entryman’s feet.
The entryman half-raised his hand, staring, then, “A moment, please.” He scrambled into the Vyz Raqam. Minutes later, he returned, gesturing with a waist deep bow and a sweep of his arm. “He will see you.”
She followed him.
Each of the halls of the Vyz Raqam distinguished itself from one another by the designs hewn from the stone, and the metal inlays. Jocthai craftsmen were among the most dedicated, skilled workers in the world, and the magnitude of pride manifested in their work, for Laylen, was as awing as it was unsettling.
It delved into a sparsely familiar aspect of her being. The inlays had a galvanizing, near magnetic flow to their rolling twists and turns. She ran her fingers along the metal, and in its own, silent voice, it began to tell the story of predecessors, and their families.
Until the entryman stopped, and snapped her from her meandering when he cleared his throat.
“Here, please.” He opened the door, and she stepped in.
The private room was quaint. A couple loungers, a corner couch, and a low table. The choice lighting was smooth, not too dim, bright enough to read.
In there, on the other side of the table sat an aged man. Old, but not appearing a moment past the freshness of having turned thirty. What gave him up was his staunch demeanor, squared shoulders, and that he seemed neither too excited to assess her offer, nor too eager to turn her away.
A businessman, true to the nature of equivalencies and exchange.
“My attendant has informed me that you have something of keen interest to me,” he said, as she’d taken it upon herself to sit without his direction.
“See’t yourself, yai?” She pushed a small coin purse towards him.
He dumped the contents on the table, spreading each one from the other, looking on in disbelief. “They’re mint,” he said, chuckling nervously.
The high dollars of Konstanean Tefh were different from regime to regime. Each Dictator had the highest dollar made into the signature coin of his reign, and she had brought the legacies of several dead men with her.
Among them was one with a heptagonal hole in the center. It featured a domed, polished onyx, in which was the mark of that Arch Ganton’s regime. The metal had a dark, almost forest-green shimmer in the light. But the palladium band that formed the edge was signed:
A. M. DuShaffte.
Cehesedifh slid that one away from him. “I remember the day it was announced that this one had died. His wife, dear woman was wise to flee Konstaneah — those pale-faced Sludge-skins had rejected her immediately and outright.
“What made no sense was the part of the report that the Neisam of the desert-mountain kingdom did it. Yonathael loved Arlen, mentored him on everything there was to know about running a country — even without military force.”
“Must’av done him in by the end ofet.”
He remained quiet for some time, as if respecting the deceased, and impatience flared within her gut.
“A business deal, yai?”
“First, where did you get these? Kneitun’s treasury is empty, and no one knows where to search even if we did breech the thick of that ice storm.”
“Do you well not to ask that of me.”
Lellayla, her mother, never set foot back in the swamp since the death of her father. Though, her brother did decades later, before it froze.
Cehesedifh raised no more questions about her sources, peering into her eyes as if wanting to discern the true nature of her visit. “Your asking price?”
“The Ra’ol stone.”
He calmly put each coin back in the purse, and pushed it towards her. “This is a breaking deal that I cannot take.”
She canted her head at him. “Yai?”
“I’ll have the attendant show you out —” He started to get up, but she shot upright and cut him off.
“Another agreement may be sweet on you, yai? I wish to base here while I search foret. As payment, I’ll afford you other collectibles, such that I’av brought, and such that I may breng from on far, if you wishet so.”
The weakness was evident in his eyes. He’d tasted only a small facet of her wealth, and the promise of rarities from far lands hinted at things that were considered lost from the felled nations.
Not just Konstaneah, but also Alekzandrya, which had gone down violently only some days after the Swamp’s demise.
She arched her brows, and he acceded.