Reborn From the Cosmos

Arc 8-29 (Khan)

Once again, Khan struggled to sleep.

Someone was wailing.

It had only been a few short weeks since Khan had been woken at the insistence of Little Water and he was starting to resent the gesture. Just a little. He appreciated his conversation with her and was comforted that she hadn’t forgotten him.

He didn’t know what they were to each other before but whenever he laid eyes on the exotic woman, intense emotion welled in his chest, squeezing his heart. It was a sweet agony, a calling he couldn’t ignore. It was…he hesitated to call it love. How could he proclaim with any certainty that he loved a stranger? He did know that wherever she walked, he would follow. So, it was good that she had at least some regard for him.

But he didn’t appreciate Lou’s hospitality. Or rather, the lack of it. Everyone knew that he was no threat to anyone, or no more of a threat than any person with working hands and legs, capable of picking up an instrument of harm and swinging it with whatever might they could muster. He could be left to his own devices and could do nothing against the woman. He couldn’t even escape; he might have had some confidence if they were in the frozen north, where he grew up navigating the harsh storms that stole even the sharpest senses, but in a city, he was as proficient as a fish navigating land for the first time.

His magic was better not mentioned. He knew a handful of spells but he’d practiced them for utility. Combat had never sit well with him so he abandoned it in favor of learning ways to avoid it.

Despite his martial ineptitude, he was being treated like a dangerous criminal. At least in the sense that his freedom was greatly restricted. Admittedly, he didn’t imagine many criminals ate the same quality of food or had cages quite so expansive, but he was still being detained with no access to the outside world.

Occasionally, his sisters came to visit, Yulianna about once a week, Alana infrequently, but that was the extent of his life beyond the unfeeling walls of the estate. There was nothing aside from Khan, no books to read or art to admire. It was only him and his thoughts trying to avoid one another in the oppressive silence.

The sisters didn’t count.

Technically, Khan shared his prison with two sisters. He rarely caught glimpses of the younger sister, or at least he assumed as much from appearances. She had the mannerisms of a pest, scuttling about in the dark and scuttling faster whenever anything caught sight of her. Her ability to sense attention was admirable. Khan half suspected that she had eyes in the back of her head.

The only time she stayed still was when she was tending to her older sister. And the older sister…was mad.

There was no other word to describe it. She roamed the halls like the wraiths in the stories he heard as a child, muttering nonsense rather than leading children into storms.

Khan had attempted to speak to her, once. The moment their eyes met, the woman had screeched and launched herself at him, fingers curled in a mimicry of claws. He wasn’t a big man and she easily knocked him to the ground. Then she tore at him as if there was a priceless treasure in his skull. He tried to push her off, but his meager efforts meant nothing in the face of her manic strength. The pain made it impossible to build a spell. All he could do was cover his face and plead for mercy as she battered him, unkempt nails drawing blood with every swipe.

He was saved when the younger sister tackled the madwoman off him. The older one still valued the bond between them, as she didn’t attack the other woman, merely hissing at him as she clawed the air, straining to return to her rampage. Khan didn’t stick around long enough to see more, scrambling to his feet and sprinting to his room as fast as his legs could carry him.

He’d only encountered the older sister once more, when he’d let his guard down while going to retrieve a meal. Twice a day, a cart laden with food was placed just within the entrance to the wing of the house they shared. It was a large space, previously used to house servants judging by the number of modest rooms. Without any effort on his part, he rarely ran into the sisters. He didn’t think he needed to be cautious and had haphazardly walked toward his breakfast.

The older sister was hunched by the cart, head bowed between her knees. Her head had snapped to the side at the sound of his footsteps. Crazed green eyes met his own. His heart pounded heavily, so hard he thought it had tried to leap out of his chest in shock. Then the woman was running toward him.

With the finely honed instincts of a coward, as his brother had mocked him, Khan fled with even greater speed, sprinting away from the howling woman. He ran all the way to his room, locking the door and barricading it. She’d beat on it for an eternity before her sister realized something was wrong and led the tortured soul away with soft mutterings.

From then on, Khan didn’t see the two women as fellow prisoners. They were dangers to be avoided. The older one’s wailing was like the cries of a titan in the distance, not a thing to invoke empathy but to warn him against a certain direction. He was fine being alone.

He just wished they would let him sleep.

During the day, he appreciated when the animal masquerading as human gave him forewarning of its passing, but he didn’t appreciate it nearly as much when he was trying to rest. Something the howler apparently didn’t need as it was a rare thing for her go a full night without waking him. Tonight was especially unfortunate as she’d started early.

It was maddening. Khan wasn’t a violent man, that was the source of all his woes, but if he could manage it, he wouldn’t hesitate to strangle the source of his misery. The constant stress and exhaustion had rubbed his nerves raw. Every minute of his sentence seemed to drag on forever, as his tired mind weighed down his thoughts.

Worse, he didn’t have his usual escape of wilderness. It wasn’t unusual for him to be overwhelmed by even normal interactions, but he managed by losing himself in the mountains when the fort became too much. Just being stuck inside four walls would be enough to make him irritable. Combined with poor rest and dread for his present and future?

If it carried on for much longer, Khan feared he’d be the one howling.

So, he decided to ignore good sense and rose from his bed to confront the danger. He didn’t have so much as an idea of what to do when he found the women and no guarantee that he wouldn’t make things worse. Or come away maimed. Knowing that his warden would see to his wounds in short order was a small comfort; perhaps having to wipe up his blood a second time would convince them to take action before it was necessary a third time. He couldn’t fail.

That was enough to keep him moving through the dark halls. A few deep breaths and a quick smack to his cheek got him to crane his neck to look through the ajar door where the terrible voice was emanating from.

It was a simple room, not unlike his, drab and only barely furnished. The feral woman knelt in the middle of the bare floor, eyes closed, mouth open wide, and head tilted back. He watched with morbid curiosity as her lips moved silently, twitching as if she was testing their function. Then he winced as she let out another piercing wail. This close, he could hear that she was modulating her voice, a twisted singing.

A tap on his shoulder interrupted his observations. He jumped, and then stumbled forward, continuing until he was on the opposite side of the door. His heart pounded as he wondered if the dangerous woman had noticed his presence but her wailing continued uninterrupted. He waited three breaths before looking for what had touched him, though he already knew.

As expected, the younger sister stood on the other side of the door. She looked incredibly uncomfortable. Wouldn’t even meet his gaze, her eyes staring down and away from him, keeping him in her peripheral. She seemed to want to avoid him as much as he wanted to avoid her sister. It had to be important if she’d abandoned her usual caution.

Her hand contained no small amount of urgency as she beckoned him to follow as she backed away from the door. And while Khan had come for a solution, he recognized that it would be better to talk with the more rational woman.

He followed her unspoken guidance, letting her guide him away from the room and its wailing occupant. But when they reached the end of the hall, he surged forward, grabbing the younger woman by the wrist before she could take off. They both tensed; he didn’t know what was going through her mind, but he feared that the violence of the older sister was hereditary. Thankfully, his captive merely curled in on herself.

“We need to talk,” he softly demanded.