Reborn From the Cosmos

Arc 8-30 (Khan)

“It started the night Villarey died.”

Leena, as Khan would come to know was the name of the younger sister, led him to an unused room not far from his own. He stopped by it to retrieve a candle, a mug of water, and a not-very comfortable chair. He offered the chair to her when he came back to find her curled into herself as she crouched on the thin, wooden frame meant to support a mattress, but she flinched when he came too close. He stepped around the room carefully, not wanting to frighten the girl unnecessarily as he placed his candle on a dusty table but pushed his chair up against the door before sitting down. The girl wasn’t leaving until he had his answers.

“What do you mean she died?” was his immediate response, fighting the instinctive urge to dismiss her strange claim or denounce her as mad as her sister.

“The creature with skin of ash and a beastly tail. It…” The young girl swallowed heavily. She still refused to look directly at him, but he had no trouble seeing the fear in her face, despite the meagre light offered by a small and solitary flame. “She choked my sister until the light went out of her eyes.”

“Ah.” Some of Khan’s grudge toward the violent woman eased. He had seen violence break people, break Victorians. There were several young men who only marched past the Peaks once, despite returning whole and healthy. Unlike the northern knights who denied their existence, Khan empathized with the souls that were never meant to face death. “Is she…trying to annoy them?”

Leena shook her head. “She…doesn’t talk much but sometimes…she says she saw something. When she died. She can’t remember much. Only…something grabbed her. It sung to her. And she knew.”

“…she knew what?”

“Everything. Nothing. She knew everything there was to know and how little she would ever know.” Leena shrugged. “She doesn’t make much sense these days. From what I gather, whatever she saw, it was like the old depictions of divinity. Something greater than mortals, greater than our saints, with utter dominion over existence.”

“That’s…”

He trailed off, not knowing what to say to such a revelation.

“Mad. It’s complete madness and it has infected her mind. Death held onto her for three breaths, maybe four. That short time was enough to break her. The wailing and screaming? She’s trying to imitate the song of the thing she saw and she does it incessantly. Thankfully, she pauses to see to her needs. I would go mad myself if I watched her screech at the walls until her throat bled.”

You’re not mad? He shook the thought from his head the moment it appeared. Clearly, Leena was quite sane. She was a perfectly reasonable young woman warped by unreasonable circumstances, but the civilized conversation seemed to revitalize her. Slowly, she was uncurling from her ball. Her eyes still hadn’t left the floor, but her speech wasn’t quite as reserved. It did a lot to reverse the impression of an unsocialized hermit he had of her. “Why is she violent?”

Leena shook her head. He noticed that she hadn’t washed her hair in a while, but tried not to judge her harshly for it. “Because you don’t know the truth. The thing she saw, she thinks everyone needs to know of it. That their ignorance is sinful.”

“And since she saw this thing in death—"

“She wants to kill you. Everyone else too, I suppose.” She sighed and shrugged her shoulders helplessly, as if they were discussing the inevitable rebellious nature of a child rather than a woman’s homicidal beliefs.

“But not you.”

“I convinced her that I saw it.” She vaguely motioned at her eyes. “I was there with her when…” She swallowed. “Convinced her I saw its reflection or some such in her eyes. Our parents too. Hopefully, that’s enough to keep her from butchering them if we ever see them again.”

Khan empathized with the bitterness in her tone, the lament of the helpless being pushed through the world by forces beyond her control. “…the lady of this house has a servant that is skilled with mind magics,” he said haltingly. He expected Leena to tense at the mention of their warden and she did. Aside from that, what he was suggesting would normally be madness. One didn’t invite interrogators and their ilk to muck around in someone’s head but drastic problems called for drastic solutions. “They could help.”

“Help?” Leena tittered but there was no joy in the stuttering laughter. “Those people don’t want to help us. The little one that delivers our meals knows about Rey. It mocks us. That woman wants us to suffer.”

“Maybe not,” Khan said. “Just because the creatures know of your struggles doesn’t mean their mistress does.”

Leena frowned. “Surely she’s keeping track of her collateral? She needs us to manipulate our parents after all.”

There was no nice way to say what he was thinking so Khan didn’t bother trying to soften the blow. “I don’t think it’s smart for me to share everything I know, but our captor has greater concerns than a single noble family. She also doesn’t strike me as a particularly meticulous person. I’d wager that she’s simply forgotten about you and your sister.”

The young woman’s jaw dropped. She still wouldn’t meet his eyes, but she’d turned toward him. He imagined that she was discretely checking his expression, looking for the truth. And when she found it, her features morphed into a scowl.

“My sister’s mind is unraveling because we’re not even worth the bother?!”

“Of course you aren’t.”

Khan muffled a yelp as he was suddenly thrown to the ground, his chair tipped forward as the door was pushed open. He scrambled to his feet but there was no fear behind the actions. He’d recognized the voice.

As expected, a petite figure stood in the doorway, pink eyes so bright they almost seemed to glow in the darkness. The succubus flashed him a fanged smile as she stepped further into the room, tail swaying behind her menacingly.

It wasn’t the first time that he’d met his ‘healer’, though the creature never stayed long. She seemed preoccupied with something more urgent and only visited for a few minutes to make sure his condition wasn’t deteriorating.

The second figure was unexpected and foreign. During the brief time he was awake, he wasn’t given the time to look around the estate or meet the many people that occupied it. There was only one thing Khan could do to better his situation: currying favor. To that end, Little Water had warned him never to insult Lou’s lovers, as even the estrazi could recognize that they were the most important thing to the noblewoman.

He had known about his sister and the elf. Little Water informed him there was a third. A ‘quiet shadow that sees all’. The estrazi described people by what they were, rather than how they appeared. He’d lamented not getting a proper description before their discussion was interrupted but had put it out of his mind after the first week had passed and no strangers came to visit him, deeming it irrelevant.

Yet, he found that Little Water’s words were more than sufficient in identifying Lou’s third lover. The woman that walked in the wake of succubus moved with a deliberate grace, each sedate step filled with consideration for appearance as she skirted the edge of the wall. The first thought it evoked was of a creeping shadow, the inevitable encroaching darkness that swallowed the day before one realized it. Her eyes were shut but that didn’t seem to bother her as she found a place to stand against the wall, arms loosely crossed over her stomach. It also didn’t impede the certainty that Khan had that she was watching him, a warning his awareness, honed through years of wandering the north alone, one bad encounter away from death, prodded him with incessantly.

Leena didn’t handle the sudden intrusion with his calm. The young woman had frozen the moment her eyes landed on the succubus, fear radiating from her so intensely that Khan almost swore he could hear the thundering of her heart. And the creature seemed to enjoy her terror, fixing its beautifully unnatural eyes on her. Khan wondered about the intense reaction until he remembered that Leena had watched the foreign woman kill her sister and bring her back to life. A display of incredible power and brutality. A being possessing both was certainly a thing to provoke fear.

“You should be grateful that my summoner has more important things on her mind,” the creature said as it stalked forward, like a cat sauntering before frozen prey. “If she were to think about you, I doubt it’d be in a favorable light. You do remember that your family has been nothing but annoyances, hm? Perhaps she’d decide that it isn’t enough to punish your parents?”

The succubus reached the noblewoman and raised a petite hand to stroke her cheek. Leena didn’t so much as twitch. She was so still Khan feared she’d stop breathing.

“There are far worse fates than being left to wrestle with your own thoughts in relative comfort,” the succubus whispered. “As for your sister, she is fine. There is a thin line between madness and inspiration. She teeters as she walks it, but we won’t let her fall. Lou has commanded that we ‘look after you’.”

She patted the noblewoman’s cheek before turning to Khan. “Khan. You look skinnier than the last time I saw you. Are you not eating properly?”

He huffed. As the weeks dragged on, it was hard to have enthusiasm for anything, even the best food he’d ever tasted.

His healer wagged a finger, as if chastising a child. “The brain needs to be fed as much as the rest of the body. Though it would be interesting to determine if your condition would be influenced by your health.”

“Surely, you don’t plan on starving me to find out?” he asked warily.

“Unfortunately, not. I have been ordered to make you better.” Her soft hand gripped his arm with the strength of a titan. He didn’t fight as she guided him to the fallen chair, righting it before sitting him down. Her other hand vaguely gestured over her shoulder. “You should see to your sister. If I’m right, she’ll be more energetic than usual tonight.”

Leena didn’t waste any time, practically bolting out of the room. The succubus’ eyes never left Khan and he fought the urge to squirm under the attention. “Now, let’s have a look at my interesting little puzzle.”