Reborn From the Cosmos

Arc 8-28 (Umphrieltalia)

What does it mean to be a flower of an elven clan?

That question defined Talia’s existence. It had no easy answer. When she imagined giving herself to Lou, she thought it would be in a more traditional role. A mistress perhaps, or a concubine if the noblewoman wanted to give her a more official status. She wouldn’t generalize every extramarital relationship as a frank exchange of carnal indulgence for resources, but that was what she imagined when she made the offer. That, and the loyalty every person expected from those under their wing.

The flower was far more than that, such a complex existence. There was no one way to be, no list of rules and behaviors that had to be learned. They had no uniform that distinguished them from a crowd or a set of tools necessary for their work. All they shared was a common goal; to bring comfort to their clans, but how they achieved it was solely at their discretion.

When Kierra explained it to her, that she would have to find her own way to be a part of them, Talia was irked. She feared failing, having never had much success connecting with others. She’d learned to pretend under the guidance of her teacher, but her performances were always off. In private, her peers among the interrogators called her Remmings’ Knife. It said much about her ability to relate to others when the people she spent the most time with compared her to a cold, sharp instrument of death.

Incredibly, spitting in the face of her experience and her expectations, she didn’t struggle in the Tome clan. Her lovers found her deficiencies charming. Lou delighted in her brusque mannerisms. She found Talia’s inability to express normal emotion cute. Even when she lapsed into a contemplative silence, Lou was content with watching her.

It was flattering, far more than the pitiful attempts at flirting she’d endured from suitors over the years. Talia had always been popular for a myriad of reasons; how she looked, who she was connected to, what she could do.

Her clan was the first to appreciate her for herself.

It was freeing. Her role was still an act, but it was a comfortable one. One that, maybe one day, she wouldn’t bother to shrug off. It was a field of interest that she would spend her life studying, alongside the mysteries of the mind and magic. And she would give them her full devotion because they didn’t have to be pleasant. For her goals, she would do thing that would make civilized eyes turn away in shame. They could have used her desire to break her. Instead, they nurtured her.

She would so the same. Talia would not be a simple flower. She would become the epitome, the exemplar to which all others would be compared…and found lacking.

But she didn’t understand how. So, she watched. She wanted to understand her clan. Not just what they were willing to show or wanted to hide. Talia sought the things they didn’t even know of themselves.

In her doubt, she’d fallen back on her training. It was foolish for an interrogator to go straight for the information they wanted to gleam from a target. The mind was a powerful thing. The mental affinity was well-known, as well as the ways to combat it. Someone without a drop of mana could still force an interrogator to drain their core if they purposely obscured their thoughts.

It was much better to peer around the walls people put up. Ignore their distractions entirely and seek out their true selves. From there, it was a simple thing to turn their mind against them. A broken wall offered no protection. True masters could even do so with words, leaving their targets so vulnerable a child could rifle through their thoughts.

Talia had never cared for the practice, thinking it a mundane and crass use of her time and magic, but had studied it diligently as it was undeniably useful. She knew that rather than a fruitful search for what was hidden, a discerning mind could find insight in what was so instinctual, the person doing it never thought to hide it.

Her prime targets of observation were the succubi. Flowers were comforters only because they were protectors of the heart. Hearts were influenced by thoughts and the succubi were a danger to the thoughts of her lovers. The one threat she didn’t believe the clan was prepared for.

Talia both feared and admired the creatures. She’d studied them extensively, going as far as having Lou to tell her all she knew, which was quite a lot. Aside from them being the power behind the Tome family’s hated rivals, Lou had read several records related to them for her own contract.

The succubi are creatures of intention. Every word they spoke, every twitch, every blink of their eyes, was under their control. The trap was believing they were bound to their forms. Geneva had a heart; Talia had felt its beat. But did that mean she always had one? What if she produced the organ only when someone thought to check?

If she had a heart, like a person, and she breathed, like a person, then it was easy to assume she felt like a person, if only different emotions. It was easy to assume her mind worked like a person’s, if perhaps faster and with more clarity.

That was the succubi’s greatest power, so effective because of its subtly. Summoners prepared themselves for the schemes, for the grotesque power of using the body as a weapon, for the invasion of mental magic. They had no defense against their own assumptions.

Lou was no exception. She had read the mistakes of summoners past and scoffed at their delusion that they could predict or control the beings from Burning Earth. However, she had leaned into the opposite extreme; she believed she had no control over the creatures.

She forsook understanding them, truly, in favor of leashing what she saw as unfathomable ability to her own interests. Geneva was given the leeway to scheme so long as she kept it from Lou’s sight. That was the carrot, made more enticing by the ever-looming stick of the contract to restrict her into oblivion should she reject the mercy. Lou counted on the logical creatures to reap what they could from the arrangement while having the infallible control to never endanger it. The kingdom may need to be sacrificed to Geneva’s ambition, but, so long as humanity wasn’t made into chattel, Lou would turn a blind eye, seeing no difference in the mindless masses were ruled by a dispassionate noble or an elemental.

Talia didn’t believe her new teachers to be perfectly inscrutable nor all-knowing. They were too cautious. Not in what they did or said, their visages were always perfect. It was they didn’t do, what they didn’t say. There was something hidden there and the only thing she could imagine a succubus hiding was a weakness.

So, she watched.

While the clan discussed their plans for the hunters, she watched Geneva, taking note of what the succubus didn’t say. She didn’t offer an opinion when they debated their strategy for the distraction. She kept her silence when they turned the discussion to which beast to use. Even when they asked for her input regarding anything they might have missed, Geneva merely commented that she didn’t see any problems that would greatly impact their chances for success.

Surely, the creature could have offered more than that. Geneva had been scheming against intelligent beings for centuries. There had to be some kernel of wisdom she could offer to improve the collaboration of a handful of amateurs concocted in less than an hour. There were many benefits to retrieving the Authority. It didn’t make sense for the creature to hold back.

Unless there was a greater benefit in keeping silent.

When Lou announced they were done for the night, Alana and the elves left quickly, eager for a warm bed. Talia remained where she was. Geneva also lingered. She announced that she would check on Khan. A good enough excuse for Lou to ignore her for the rest of the night.

Talia wondered how many nights she’d been left without a task. A succubus had a heartbeat, like a person, breathed like a person, so it was easy to assume she tired after a long day, like a person. That she couldn’t accomplish much in a few hours. How many little assumptions had doomed summoners across the ages?

Geneva’s tail swayed gently with amusement. Or at least, that’s what Lou had decided the gesture meant, having applied it to a certain mood and certain mannerisms. It was another deception. If the succubi could control every movement perfectly, she could appear amused even when she was seething with rage. Or when she felt nothing at all.

The saints give her patience, it could be overwhelming. She understood why Lou didn’t bother. It was hard enough to understand people. How did one unravel a deception that never ended? How could anyone understand a being with the ability to utterly remake itself from one moment to the next?

“You wanted to ask me something,” Geneva asked after the silence had stretched for several minutes.

“No.” She did, of course. She had a hundred questions and each day with the creatures only generated more. However, she feared Geneva’s insight. The creature wasn’t allowed to read their minds with impunity, only to scan for their desires. Her curiosity about the succubi was no secret but her thoughts about them, her methodology, remained Geneva’s grasp. She feared the wrong question would give away her game.

“Then shall we stand in the dark together? It sounds rather romantic. Do you think my summoner will be jealous?” She moved to turn—

“Don’t look at me!” Talia snapped and the creature froze. She didn’t know if it was rampant fear or clever instinct, but something told her that the creature was about to look at her and she would know. “Do not look at me directly unless it would impede you from carrying out any previous orders.”

That was important. The clan had power to command the succubi, but Lou’s orders took precedence. If their commands infringed or hampered her duty to carry out said orders, Geneva was free to ignore them. Lou was also the only one that could free her from previous commands, intentionally or otherwise. Who knew what orders the creature was truly following? Did Lou know the exact chains she’d bound the succubus in anymore?

Geneva laughed, a sudden guffaw that ended in giggles. “So, you wish to play the game. Not a bad start but you have a long way to go to get there.” Her tone implied that Talia would never get there, wherever that was. Except, that could be another deception. One meant to dissuade her because Geneva feared anyone that didn’t view her as unknowable.

It didn’t matter. Living in a dark world had taught Talia one thing; trust in herself. If she’d believed what others said about her limits, she’d be dead in a ditch a long time ago.

“I have time.”

“There are better ways to live a life than trying to unravel my thoughts.”

“I disagree.”

“Well, I am yours to do with as you please, so long as that pleases Lou. But unless you really enjoy standing in darkness, shall we move on? I do intend to check on my patient tonight, at least to make sure his condition hasn’t deteriorated.”

“…do what you will. I will watch.”

“And learn, no doubt.”