Falias, Finias Chapter Seventeen
Suggested Theme:
Main Theme- Candidate by David Bowie
Isolor digs his booted heels into the dirt, but Kazdan isn't having it. He tugs the toddler away from Chaor's Castle without any questions from the guards on duty. Once they hit cobblestone, he decides to carry the temperamental tot like a very unhappy bride.
"I don't want to go!" The tot shouts and wriggles in his arms like a pale snake, earning a couple of looks by passing UnderWorlders.
It's strange how he went from monosyllables to full-blown sentences in a couple of days. Maybe he's a prodigy or he's a mimic.
"Why?"
"He made me take tests all day!"
That would explain why he passed out as soon as we got home Saturday. I really should've prodded him about it, but Nivenna came over and I had to go. Then, I spent my Sunday listening to music with Accato, which was nice, and the barkeep wasn't too surly. And Reggie's apparently working for Bodal now, or at least that's what Krystella told me.
"He was assessing you to see what you know and what you didn't know."
"I didn't know my Creature letters, so I failed the reading and writing questions. But I did well on the oral parts." Isolor admits with uncomfortable shame choking his voice.
Of course, he wouldn't know it; I never taught him the Creature pictographs because I don't know it. I've only taught him the human language!
"I wasn't so good at writing either and had to get some tutoring at the start of elementary. My point is you can't be good at everything and you can get help to improve in those areas, which is what Agitos will do for you."
"You read fine in your tongue."
"Well, not at first. You see my dad taught me his people's tongue first and that tongue had very little in common with English, which is what the human tongue I read and speak is called."
"What was his tongue?"
"Irish Gaelic. It's hardly spoken by his people anymore, and even I don't remember most of it, except for a few songs."
"He's like my mother." Isolor figures out eerily quickly.
"Yes." He tries not to think of the tiny white stones and swallows his sadness down.
"If I learn to read and write in my people's tongue, will you sing me one of your people's song?"
"Sure, but take your time because I need all the practice time I can get."
Agitos's home is located a few miles north of Tartarus Theatre in a ring of homes that Dairus modestly dubbed mini-castles. Agitos's mini-castle was egotistically designed to look like his head with the roof reflecting his spikes. Sensibly, the mini-castle is a dull gray while the spikes are maroon; he likes to believe that Agitos ran out of money for the paint job. He puts Isolor down on what he presumes is a welcome mat but in the Creature pictograph. Isolor looks down at his boots with a sad expression.
"Will you come back?" Isolor asks so quietly that Kazdan almost misses hearing it.
"I'll try, but if I don't then…..Nivenna will come and get you."
"What if she doesn't?"
"Then, Dairus will come."
"And what if she doesn't?"
"Uh, H'earring?"
"…What if no one comes?"
"Then, Agitos will take you back because no way does he have the courage–"
And Agitos opens the door, glaring at him heatedly. He looks down at Isolor who's wearing a naughty grin on his pale face.
"It's like he knew Agitos would hear that!"
After the awkward drop-off, Kazdan prepares himself for whatever nightmare that Kammy has in store for him. When he first arrived to the castle, Dairus solemnly informed him that he belonged to Kammy for the day while Isolor had his lessons. At first, panic welled up inside him, but then Dairus gave him a pat on his shoulder with her bloodied hand.
"She's a loon, but even she's not crazy enough to kill you. Unless Lord Chaor told her to. But I wouldn't know since all he told me was to send you to Kamangareth's."
Her words nearly erupted the panic, but Isolor staved it off with his grumpiness. However, he's alone in Fear Valley once again.
What if Chaor ordered her to secretly kill me and make it look like an accident? No, no, he wouldn't do that! For one, that's petty. And for two, he gets nothing substantial out of my death. Sure, one less person to pay and one less human in Perim, but there would be no one to nanny his son. Nivenna can't do it full-time, Dairus clearly prefers cooking and sleeping with H'earring over children, H'earring spies for Chaor, and Lachima is possibly too old to be caring for a very active toddler. And even if she said yes, she would demand an expensive salary that Chaor wouldn't pay for.
He breathes in and out just before heading inside the cave. This time he didn't have to use the light on his Scanner to see; there are several torch-like scones holding pink glowing crystals that weren't here the last time. The depression in the center cave still has its clay-colored slab and the pink quilt lay atop of it.
Where's Rustle? He immediately wonders and keeps his guard up in case Kammy decides to prank him again.
"Kammy, you here?" There's no reply, and he decides to take out his Scanner just in case he needs to port.
SKITTER-SCRATCH!
He looks up and sees Kammy with Rustle in her arms; he pales but does not scream.
"It's good that you looked around, but you need to look up like in the nursey rhyme."
"T-The what?" He squeaks out.
"Look up
Look around
Never forget
To look down!" Kammy sing-songs, and Kazdan bites down on his tongue from mentioning that it was a flavor text.
"That's one of the first things you learn in school. Oh, that's right you're human!" She exclaims like she just had realized that.
"Any reason you're on the ceiling?"
"Mostly boredom, but then I heard you come in and decided to test your sense of danger, of which you have little. But it's better than the nothing most've of you humans and freshly hatched Mandiblors have."
"I'll remember to look up next time."
"There might not be a next time!" She grins upside down like the Cheshire cat.
"Why am I here?" If I have to answer three riddles, I'll scream.
"To try out my hot peach sunshine!"
"…Is that an Attack?"
"No! I wouldn't harm Lord Chaor's Caretaker of….the child."
"His name is Isolor."
"Of course, it would be." Kammy quietly hisses, but then quickly puts her grin back on.
"Is there a special meaning to the name?"
"No, it's just….." Kammy's nostrils flare. "A made-up name at home in one of Melinoë's plays."
"So how about that hot peach sunshine?" He suggests for the sake of his sanity. Her face twists back into manic glee and she skitters across the ceiling and deeper into the cave; he does not follow her. A minute later she comes back with a pitcher and a red clay cup.
"It's a drink!"
"Yes, and you should sit down because I don't know how this will affect you."
So I'm her taste-tester? What if this kills me? No, no, she wouldn't give me something poisonous. At least not intentionally. But if I feel horrible, then I'll just port back to Earth and be fine.
He goes to the slab and sits right on the quilt. She skitters over and hands him the cup; she pours a pinkish liquid into the cup. He takes a small sip.
"It's like a flat peach soda." With a hint of sharpness like mom's white wine. Is this like a wine cooler? I know they have wine, but I've never heard of a Creature ordering a wine cooler at the Inferno Inn.
"I don't know what a soda is, but you look fine."
"I feel fine. Is this alcoholic?" He takes another sip.
"It is, but it usually takes affect right away. Maybe you humans are immune to it."
"Huh, I guess so. Pretty refreshing if spicy."
"It's spicy because of the hot peaches hence the hot."
"It's really good." He keeps drinking until the cup is empty, and then she refills it.
"I made plenty; maybe I can sell this to your kind."
"The problem is 99.9999% of us don't have your currency to pay you with." He drains about half of it.
"Oh, there's other ways." She makes his glass full.
Isolor spends most of his days in rooms. His favorite room is Chaor's room, even if he keeps those sad white stones around. His least favorite room is Agitos's dining room, even the small hall leading to the room mildly irritates him. A glass cabinet stretches from the doorway to the dining room; it's filled with trophies, framed scrolls of scholarly achievement, and miniature busts of Agitos. He would hate the hall if not for the fleeting amusement it provides him, such as imagining how the glass would shatter under a mighty stab of his talons.
The dining room contains a round blue table with three-legged stools; his stool is the one with all of the red seat cushions stacked on top of each other, always reminding of his short stature. On the table, there's a note pad with an inkwell and a partially-chewed nib pen.
I should've chewed it in half. Isolor thinks as he's lifted up by Agitos and placed upon his throne of small pillows.
"You did exceptionally well on the oral exam, but you have trouble grasping reading and writing."
"I don't know my Creature letters; I can read the human's English just fine." Isolor says flatly, making Agitos flinch.
Do I really sound like Chaor?
He doesn't know how to feel about the idea.
"If the humans decide to leave any of their writings, I'm certain your fluency will come in handy." What if more of them come and decide to establish their own Tribe? What if they're working for the other Tribe leaders? What if–
"It won't quite matter if I can't understand our own tongue. I need wisdom of only which you can provide."
Flattery is a way to get what you want. That's what that silly little fairy proved to Caretaker.
"We'll start with the first ten letters…."
Kammy forgot to tell the human that hot peaches always makes the consumer feel hot, but it's especially potent when distilled into alcohols, such as sunshine. She also forgot to mention that sunshines are known as creepers since it takes a while before the drinker feels the effects from it. She figured that the drink may not affect Kazdan like it did with regular Creatures, but, after four and a half cups, he decided to strip down to his undershorts that she realized he was drunk.
He better not puke on me! She thought as she tied the human against her back since she's pretty certain that he'll fall and crack his head open during the trip.
Now, he's drooling on me! And Rustle just polished this breastplate. I should've gagged him, but I doubt he's smart enough to breathe through his bony nose; did his parents not teach him to accept drinks from strangers? Or maybe he's an orphan like me.
"Where's my Scanner?" The drunk human mumbles into her back, and she shivers as more of his salvia pelts her back.
"I got it with me."
"…..Between your boobs?" She laughs until tears threaten to stream down her face.
Boobs!? He sounds so dopey! I am so never going to let him live this down. Well, if he survives the hangover.
"No, ya silly drunk fool, it's in my belt pocket." She taps on the back pocket of her utility belt with a long, red fingernail.
"Oh…." She thought the human was going to say something else, but then she hears snoring.
I really he hope he doesn't puke on me in his sleep.
A few hours later, with a few emergency stops to let the human relieve himself and guzzle down his canteen of water, they make their way to the very edge of the UnderWorld border that the Danians liked to believe is unclaimed land. It's also one of the few pieces of greenery in the UnderWorld, but most of the greenery is hag moss. Hag moss is green as any pretty strand of grass in Everrain, but slimier than sewage sludge, making it difficult to move across the strip without falling face first. Normally, she would use the rocky outcrops to leap around until she hit arid Danian dirt, but with the half-awake drunken human on her back she's not keen on doing that.
I can hear his stomach gurgling; he'll puke if I jump around, but skidding through the moss wouldn't make it any better. What to do? I could just stash behind some rocks and come back for him later! She smiles at her own cunning and quickly moves over to an outcrop that reminds her of Dardemus's crooked teeth and even as sulfur yellow as them too.
"WAMMA!" She hears a screech and quickly moves behind Dardemus's Teeth and curls up her lower body, so not one leg is poking out. She peeks her head up just in time to see a Mandiblor, bursting out of his exoskeleton, pulling up a yellow-haired human girl from the moss that has claimed one of her sandals.
"Sarah, I told you not to walk on the green; it's very slippery." The Mandiblor shakes his head, but the twitching in his antennae lets Kammy know that he's holding back a laugh.
"You could've said something." Sarah glares at him.
"I warned you, and you chose not to listen." He points out, but then makes a gulping sound when the human girl's glare intensifies.
"Whatever, is there anything else to this Location than slime?" She demands as she tries to brush the moss off her black pants, but Kammy knows that nothing short of a chemical solution will get those green stains out.
"There's rocks. Like that one." He points his staff right at Dardemus's Teeth. The girl picks up a nearby stone and then hurls it at the outcrop, taking out her frustrations on them. Kammy is smart enough to duck her head, but Kazdan's slow reflexes are not.
"What the fuck!" The human on her back groans back to consciousness, and Kammy makes the tactical decision to slice the ropes binding them and let him fall to the ground. Luckily for him, her lower body keeps him from the ground, but her exoskeleton is far harder than the ground.
"What the fuck?" He hisses at her.
"There's a human and a Mandiblor out there; I need you to be a distraction." And before Kazdan could process, let alone protest, she coils around him and then spins him out of their hiding spot.
"Nice, Star Trek undies!" Sarah laughs at him, and Kazdan gets up from the dirt and straightens his formerly wobbly stance.
"They're Star Quest limited-edition mercenary briefs." He corrects her without a stammer and then brushes off some of the brown dirt off the insignia of a golden, porous crescent.
"Let me guess, you're another poor newbie that Klay conned into porting to Perim in the hopes that you'll never find a way back home." Her malachite eyes are a mix of mirth and pity, and Kammy sees Kazdan's cheeks flaring to an angry red that reminds her of Chaor.
"I was sleeping off a hangover!" He counters with balled up fists.
"Where'd you get the booze? Because the Port Court doesn't sell anything alcoholic."
The Port Court? Cothica, what a stupid name for their city.
"I got it for services rendered." He lies like a passable theater actor.
"What services? As a stripper?" She snickers, while Wamma looks on with curiosity.
"As a Troubadour!" He boldly declares, and Kammy shakes her head at such a rookie mistake.
Don't make a lie that you can't back up!
"You're not French!"
He smirks with such a smarmy arrogance that reminds her of Chaor after a raid.
"I'll make you a deal, like any other candidate,
We'll pretend we're walking home 'cause your future's at stake.
My set is amazing, it even smells like a street,
There's a bar at the end where I can meet you and your friend.
Someone scrawled on the wall 'I smell the blood of Les Tricoteuses'
Who wrote up scandals in other bars."
She expected him to have a singing voice so faint that even H'earring would fail to pick it up, but what comes out is something low and playful like a mischievous spirit. His lips drip with taunts, while his brown eyes burn with contempt.
"I'm having so much fun with the poisonous people,
Spreading rumors and lies and stories they made up!
Some make you sing and some make you scream,
One makes you wish that you'd never been seen
But there's a shop on the corner that's selling papier maché
Making bullet-proof faces; Charlie Manson, Cassius Clay
'If you want it, Boys, get it here, thing!'"
Manic energy charges his voice and courses through his blue veins. His body jitters from it like he's about to explode. The girl rolls her eyes and walks away, maintaining a noxious dignity. The Mandiblor loiters for one more verse.
"So you scream out of line:
'I want you! I need you! Anyone out there? Any time?'
Tres butch little number whines, 'Hey dirty, I want you
When it's good, it's really good, and when it's bad I go to pieces.'
If you want it, Boys, get it here, thing!"
He erupts into a coughing fit at the end, making Wamma scurry after the girl, not wanting to catch human cooties. Within a few minutes, the pair vanishes from Kammy's sight, and she decides to come out of hiding.
"You gonna hurl?" She asks, and he finally collects himself.
"My throat is killing me." He rasps and rubs his throat like it would soothe it.
"Spontaneously singing would do that to you."
"That wasn't even the whole song; there's three parts to it. I couldn't even make it to the final verse." He coughs again.
"You clearly aren't a real Troubadour; they can perform for hours."
"I really want to sleep." He moans, and she points to the outcropping.
"Sleep there, and I'll come back to get ya."
He smiles wearily and drags his fleshy feet through the dirt, and Kammy can't help but grin.
The lampposts came on hours ago. Isolor slumbers on his makeshift bed of pillows in a corner of the dining room like a domesticated pet. Agitos wonders if the lanky human died on the mission with Kamangareth the Unstable; he wonders grimly if she had him stuffed and mounted to keep her Danian company.
His grandmother's clock tolls twelve times in the kitchen, but the thirteenth toll is replaced with a loud bang to the main door. His chair scrapes against the stone as he hurries to the door; he knows that impatient knock anywhere.
Lord Chaor comes in without a word or a glare and heads straight for the dining room. Agitos waits and sees Chaor emerge with the child in his arms; the child's bleary, blue eyes stare up at him. Not of fear, but of disbelief.
The duo leave without a glance or a word to Agitos. Once, they were out of his sight, he breathes a weary sigh and heads upstairs for some much needed sleep.
Author's Comments: Here is the link-
Here is the link to the song that Kazdan drunkenly sings which is "Candidate." I was going to go with "Bring Me the Disco King" because I love the title of that song but it was too melancholic. I feel like "Candidate" can be sung with drunken spite: a href=" watch?v=IvJnF5JRDAs"Link/a
Look at that Sarah's first speaking appearance in the story. It's also a nod to the second episode of the series in which she made her debut, but Kazdan ain't no Tom. I was also tempted to have him sing "I Would Be Your Slave," but it just wouldn't work for her; though, Krystella might be the ideal candidate. I feel like out of the group Sarah and Kaz got along the least because whenever the two are alone together, she's either criticizing his "cowardice" or using him for her own ends like in season one's episode thirty-four's "Trading Cards" when he traded his rare scan for some card that in the end Sarah didn't need for her trade; granted, she screwed over Peyton and Tom too in that episode. She isn't outright mean like Krystella is in the show, but I feel like she can be more manipulative than her because of that.
Also, here's hoping they expand and revise The Ultimate Guide to All Things Chaotic because maybe then they'll use stronger glue to hold the book together; I've had my book for a couple of years and bought it practically new. I don't throw it at walls or drop it from my bed, but by simply turning the pages, it's caused the gluey binding to wear out and I've only flipped through that like a dozen times. My Star Wars: The Essential Atlas has been flipped hundreds of times and that hasn't fallen apart.
I plan for the next chapter to be shorter, but we'll see if the chapter agrees with that.