Shūtur eli sharrī—surpassing all other kings | Sha naqba īmuru—he who has seen the unknown
Chapter Summary;
To foe of His- I'm deadly foe-
None stir the second time-
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye
Or an emphatic Thumb.
-Emily Dickinson
Growing pains.
Chapter notes;
Line break text comes from Tablets I and II of the Sumerian/Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh.
AN: First of all. MAJOR SPOILERS FOR AC MIRAGE IN THIS AND FOLLOWING CHAPTERS.
Secondly, Apologies for the copious amounts of centered text. The fact that this site does not allow for right-aligned text is so incredibly annoying. Abuse of centered text is my way of attempting to maintain some shred of how the fic was formatted when I originally wrote it. This fic is also on other websites, if you'd like to read it in its original format.
[Also, as always, yes, I am aware that this fic is chaotic and borderline incoherent/scenes are not in chronological order/the formatting is weird/"girl why are you using so many parentheses and brackets and italics?", etc.]
[It's an intentional stylistic part of how i am writing this. Comprehend My Dread Vision, Boy.]
"He who has seen everything, I will make known to the lands.
I will teach about him who experienced all things, alike.
Anu granted him the totality of knowledge of all.
He saw the Secret, discovered the Hidden,
he brought information of (the time) before the Catastrophe.
He went on a distant journey, pushing himself to exhaustion,
but then was brought to peace."
"...How… long… has it been?"
Basim picked himself up from the nest-of-punishment's broken, battered floor, and steadied himself with one hand against the half-collapsed stone with a deep, shuddering breath. In his other hand, the Isu memory-data-disk was still clutched tightly in a shaking, white-knuckled grip.
He unclenched aching fingers and stared down at the adamant-alloy disk cupped in his trembling hands for a long moment. It was useless to him now, now that he knew its purpose, the memory it held having sparked the chain reaction within his mind that returned the rest to him once more.
The steadier second set of hands that joined his were hardly as surprising as they probably should have been; any wonder he might have felt at it mere moments before was now eaten up by a bone-deep exhaustion and weary, placid acceptance.
As he looked up, Nehal offered him a wry smile.
You won't be rid of me that easily, ya sadeeqi. She said, her voice humming in his throat, and he knew it for a truth.
Of course. Such was the nature of their reality. It should hardly change now just because they at last understood it.
He smiled back.
When they took their first shaky steps out of the cave that led to their Brotherhood's 'temple,' blinking and stumbling from shadow into light once more on legs that trembled from hours of exertion, days of travel without rest, months of nights without sleep, and years without certainty of safety and peace, the novices whooped and cheered, racing to be the first to greet him.
The leader of their clan [though he will never be a worthy heir to she-of-the-white-and-red] nodded in approval and recognition.
For a moment, it was almost enough.
For a moment, he-and-she forgot the fear that had followed them out of the dark.
For just a moment, they simply existed.
And then they caught sight of Roshan [their trade-mother, their wish-dam] slouched heavily against the far canyon wall, being tended to by a healer. Their eyes met, and in the hard steel of her gaze and the keen edge of the bloodied throwing knife clutched tight in her hand he understood the promise that safety and peace would never be his to keep - and the fear that had followed them out of the dark slowly began to take root anew.
Beside him, Nehal tensed and bared her teeth, one hand flying to hover over the gleaming adamant dagger tucked against his back in a self-protective gesture that went unseen by all but him.
A threatening hiss died unheard, strangled into silence behind his teeth.
[The distant ancestors of the people they once called 'theirs' had ruled the skies for eons here, and had easily dwarfed their smaller, fragile cousins in both scale and strength of will and wing, both long before and even long after their shapers-and-masters had traded the feathers and talons of those ancestors for cunning hands and sharpened teeth.]
Above them, Enkidu, caught fully in the roiling undertow of their shared mind, whistled and flared his wings to the subtle shift of his masters' shoulders, helplessly echoing the aborted instinctive threat display with wings much too small and voice much too shrill.
[Their time beneath the mountain had changed them, the pain and loss they suffered there knocking loose something strange and ancient and primal in their blood. Changed them then, and changed them now. From the shadows, into the light, more wild than before.]
Disoriented, the eagle shrieked his displeasure sharp into their ears, and stuttered into flight, path wobbling and dipping abruptly into a downwards pitch, before straightening and then reluctantly folding, fumbling for the first safe perch like a drunkard stumbling half-blind against a wall.
[Even the people of their sister's kin in their first life had known it. Feared it. Whispers had followed them, and their words had not been kind even long after they had proved the full measure of their usefulness, no matter the display of their newfound devotion.]
They watched him go, twinned faces each an impassive mask of dull, stony disinterest, too tired and fast caught in their own spiraling hurt from both that unintended interaction and all else that had come before it to extend even a moment of concern.
When he-and-she at last turned their gazes away, it was to find that Roshan had disappeared from view as well.
A familiar unease that bordered on the edge of paranoia joined the aching, yawning void of hunger in their belly, and they shuddered despite themselves.
[This time, they knew, sure as bitter, bleak truth, held little promise of proving any different.]
Find the copper tablet box,
open the clasp of its lock of bronze,
undo the fastening of its secret opening.
Take and read out from the lapis lazuli tablet
how Gilgamesh went through every hardship.
For all that they shared claim of kinship with the rebel humans' Hybrid leaders, that she-of-the-white-and-red had broken the chains that bound them and led them up out of the cold and the dark, that their own children had found safety and peace here, the now-nameless lightbearer whom Eve had freed from the nest-of-punishment nonetheless found that their own welcome at her people's campfires was far from warm.
Not as outright cruel and mean-spirited as that which he had increasingly found at the Havi's table, true, but still more than reminder enough to cause them to occasionally flinch in ready expectation of half-remembered violence that never came.
The people of Hawwāh delighted in tossing them their scraps once their cooking fires had cooled; charred bones and flame-hot marrow, flung far with mocking words.
Any sting they might have felt at their tattered pride for this before was now swiftly swept aside by the remembered black void of hunger borne from the brink of starvation.
Eve would not let them starve, he knew this, and they were of course free to hunt provided they were mindful. And yet…
And yet.
They had long ago learned to take what was offered or risk losing all. Survival first, pride later.
"The poor faithless hound has at last been shut out from his master's hall, and now must beg scraps from the wild wolves." the humans jeered.
Their words were brutal, yes, but neither could they deny the truth seated in them.
Too wolven for the wolves, exiled among the exiles.
[A shadow among shadows, hidden among the hidden.]
Even so, that knowledge was little comfort against the sickening taste of ash and char and cooked meat, nor the bile that rose in his throat when he felt a flash of disproportionate gratitude for even the smallest of scraps of fleeting kindness.
Who can compare with him in kingliness?
Who can say like Gilgamesh: "I am King!"?
Whose name, from the day of his birth, was called "Gilgamesh"?
Two-thirds of him is god, one-third is man.
"…So you have chosen those wretched dogs over your own people?"
"..."
"...Very well, Loki. Since you care for humanity so much, then I will make you like them."
"I will make you crawl, in the dust, like the animal that you are."
"Alone."
"Forever."
"When Anu had heard their lamentation
the gods cried to Aruru, the goddess of
creation,'You made him, O Aruru; now create his
equal; let it be as like him as his own reflection, his
second self; stormy heart for stormy heart. Let them
contend together and leave Uruk in quiet.'
"She has seen us!" Nehal hissed, her voice a low, skittish whine of paranoia in his throat."Basim!"
Basim growled wordlessly in irritation as their feet stalled and then slowed to a stop.
No, Nehal. He snapped, refusing to allow the senseless urge to turn and flee the way they'd come any more purchase than that. She has seen you. And she does not know your face, only your name. Which will not even matter, if you do not give it to her.
Though this was …hopefully true, Roshan had spotted the Hidden One stalking her, and had evidently decided to confront them for it.
Nehal made to retreat up the ladder again and Basim blocked her once more, sighing in frustration. Nehal…
"This was foolish. Is foolish." Nehal looked ready to bolt. "Why are we even doing this again? Do you enjoy tempting fate, Nine-fingers?" she muttered accusatively, fingers dancing across the handle of their dagger in a worrying motion.
Me? Basim snarled. Nehal, this whole excursion was YOUR idea. You wanted to test our old holo-field projection designs, and you were the one who also insisted we find out what she was doing here. We could have simply left the district, hours ago, but you-
WE SHARE THE SAME MIND, IDIOT-
An irritated growl behind them, and then, just as quick, a knife held to their throat.
Caught. In that same maneuver Roshan had pulled on them in their novice days all those years ago.
How mortifying.
"Did you really think I wouldn't notice you following me?" Roshan's voice rasped in their ear.
Nehal, the knife, the knife, the knife, the knife-
I CAN SEE IT.
"Roshan, wa-" Nehal began.
"Foolish boy." Roshan muttered. "You are not nearly as subtle as you think you are."
How could she possibly know-
To their continued bafflement, the knife was removed and the hand restraining them tugged at their shoulder, turning them around and bringing them face to face with Basim's former mentor.
…She looks tired. Basim noted with a tinge of melancholy to his thoughts.
And …annoyed. Nehal added, sounding perturbed.
"Did your Den Master put you up to this? Does he truly have nothing better to do with his masters' time?"
What.
Basim. "Den Master?" Is she… talking about… you?
"...What is your name, girl?"
…girl…? Basim hastily smothered a flutter of giddy excitement. Oh! The hard-light holo-projection fields! They work!
Shut up, Nehal—no, don't start laughing! No. Don't even grin. That will look so strange. Just act. Normal.
Right. I Am A Real Live Person Who Definitely Exists.
With My Own Flesh-Prison And Neural Pathways And Bones And Everything. I Interact With Other People All The Time—
Nehal! Just answer her question!
" —Nehal!"
Roshan's eyes widened in alarm for a fraction of a second, before a look of …vaguely amused suspicion overtook the surprise on her face.
Ya Allah! WHY—
I PANICKED!
"Nehal…?" she queried with a look of dry amusement.
AHBIL!
SEYLOS!
Don't say bint Ishaq, Don't say bint Ishaq—
"...bint… bint-La'Ahad?"
There!
Daughter of no-one—
HOW. HOW ARE YOU THIS STUPID—
—YOU SAID NOT TO SAY BINT ISHAQ! WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO SAY?
LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE OTHER! THAN! USING! HER! NASAB!
Roshan physically recoiled at Nehal's answer, visibly startled. The expression that crossed her face was complex, a fascinating mix of utter bafflement, annoyance, and unexpectedly raw vulnerability. She opened her mouth as though to say something, shut it, gave Nehal another long look of incredulous disbelief, and then abruptly whirled around, putting her back to them and crossing her arms in that way she did whenever she had decided that she was going to graciously ignore whatever idiotic mistake her apprentice had made this time.
…What now?
Well, now we leave. Obviously.
…If we hurry, we could maybe even make it to the alleyway before dropping dead of embarrassment. Or a throwing knife.
After a few moments, Roshan began to pace the width of the rooftop like a lioness in a cage, but still didn't say anything.
…I think you might have broken her, Nehal.
Seriously.
We can still just leave.
No, wait. Not yet.
I want to see where this is going.
…I am invested now.
The only place this is going, Basim, is straight to an early grave—for us.
You just think it's funny because you aren't having to deal with the consequences, don't you?
Perhaps.
UGH.
It is VERY funny, Nehal.
To me.
I WILL turn off the projection fields and MAKE it your problem, Nine-Fingers—
And then we WILL die—
"...I suppose I cannot fault him for his wariness." Roshan muttered at last, mostly to herself. Taking a deep breath, she noticeably steeled herself and turned to face them again, fixing them with that look of 'Am I really going to have to deal with this right now, Basim?' that usually followed whatever foolishness they found themselves in.
"Still, your brother should have known better than to put you up to this." she said, evidently electing to ignore Nehal's blunder entirely. "Basim should be focusing on his duties as Den Master, not wasting the time of the Masters assigned to his district in chasing after shadows. What I am doing is none of his concern—or yours."
…BROTHER?
BROTHER?
…I…?
…she thinks we are SIBLINGS?
I mean. Well.
She's not exactly wrong.
Besides. It could be worse.
…She could have gotten the same impression as whatever Tabid was thinkin—
EUGH. Do NOT remind me of that… incident.
I am also trying not to think about it.
…we should use our projection fields on him next.
For a prank. As revenge for implying that we were—
I SAID I am also trying NOT to think about it—
…We are NOT separate.
Yes. But the others do not know that, Nehal.
And even if we WERE—
Trying not to think about it!
Whatever.
"You should return to your brother's Bureau, Nehal." Roshan said at last, waving one hand in a clear dismissive motion as she turned her back to them, evidently grown bored with quietly observing them and impatient to return to her prior task. Whatever that was.
"And if I don't?" Nehal challenged, tilting her head.
Roshan looked back at them with a look of irritated amusement that she was hiding very poorly behind a shoddy attempt at a stern, disapproving frown.
"...Then you are just as much a foolish child as your brother, if not moreso." Roshan said with a long-suffering sigh, shaking her head in exasperation.
Child? Basim scoffed.
Oh, please, we are far older than even you are, nàgṃ.
Half of us is, anyways.
…I am not so sure about Basim.
Rude!
"That said," Roshan called back over her shoulder as she stepped up to the edge of the roof and then dropped to the adjoining building below. "If you wish to further disappoint the Council then I will not stop you."
But we already disappoint the Council every day just by breathing. Basim muttered bleakly.
Still… she is right. We should at least attempt to do our job.
They lingered for a moment, and then prowled across the rooftop after her.
…The Bureau is the other way, Basim. Nehal snorted.
You're the one in charge here at the moment, not me.
You go back to the Bureau.
No you.
That doesn't even make sense.
You don't make sense.
We frequently don't, no.
…Well, we're hungry.
Maybe we can catch something when she isn't looking.
She leaned forward to eye the docks speculatively. Fish sounds alright, I guess.
Eugh. With the scales? And all the little bones?
Well unless you think ship-rat sounds good—
Nehal. We are NOT that hungry.
And we are NOT eating it in front of Roshan!
Nàgṃr hate it when we do that, remember—
I'm just saying—
Fish is fine. If we have to.
…Besides, that sounded like as good an invitation to follow as any. Nehal huffed.
But why? Basim pressed after a moment. I thought you hated her.
Hate is a strong word. She was kind to us, once.
But she also lied to us, used us, tried to kill us, tried to deny us what was ours.
I do not hate her as we do the Havi—but neither do I trust her.
She is nothing like the Havi—
I know. I am merely… curious. Nehal admitted.
And knowing you, we will get no rest tonight until we find out what she is doing here.
Me? You were the one who wanted to—
Same. Mind.
Basim. …What is Roshan doing here?
Is it not obvious? Basim hummed, a hint of defensive pride in his thoughts. She is hunting.
…hunting? Like… ship-rats? For food?
ṇ shuàgwàsi. No, Nehal. The Order.
I know you're hungry but please TRY to focus—
We are both hungry, moron. Besides, it's not my fault. You skipped 'iiftar. And lunch.
Stop doing that.
…Why would she be hunting the Order anyway?
A sense of duty? Obligation to her clan?
Former clan. She left the Brotherhood, in case you have forgotten.
Something the others STILL have not stopped blaming us for, by the way.
So? We continue to hunt the Havi's Chosen despite our obligations.
We have not left Hawwāh's clan, though.
Merely made pact again with their …lesser descendants.
Nehal.
What? It is true. You have said it yourself. "Rayhan is no worthy successor to the-breaker-of-the-chains!"
Pfft. As if you are any better.
"Wait. You aren't Eve. And you don't even LOOK interesting."
"But Hawwāh said it was fine." Nehal mocked back in a deliberately poor imitation of her other self's timbre.
"That it was okay. I—I'm ALLOWED to do this."
…Besides, the goals we follow come from the same clan.
Even if they have forgotten them.
Hmm.
…You really think that Roshan is hunting an Order member?
Here? Now?
We've had no word from any of our informants regarding movements near the docks.
Although… if she IS hunting a member of the Order of the Ancients, then that makes this practically our job.
Which we are therefore doing. So, you know.
Take that, Roshan!
Now do you see my point?
Ugh.
Ask her, if you do not believe me.
"Why did you leave?" she asks instead.
Nehal!
Roshan stilled. "Your brother and I had a…falling out."
"I know. He told me."
"Then you know why." Roshan said sharply in a way that made it clear the conversation was over.
"That", Nehal said, stubbornly crossing her arms. "is why you have not spoken to him since you left. It does not explain why you left."
Nehal, what are you doing?
Roshan's breath hissed out from between her teeth in annoyance.
"Why did you leave?" Nehal pressed.
"Rayhan overruled me, not only allowing your brother to walk the Order's path but openly encouraging it. The others of the council supported the Mentor's decision. Basim had made it quite clear that he would no longer listen to reason. He opened the door, entered the temple, and did not return."
"And so you left?"
"I—"
"You were so committed to your Brotherhood, to your creed, that you were willing to kill over it—but then you just—you just gave up? Just like that? You couldn't even wait to see if the baseless assumptions that made you attack u—him were even right in the first place?"
"Yes! I left. Because I could not bear to. I did not want to be right—"
"But you weren't! You weren't! You weren't even right at all, about any of it—!"
WE NEEDED YOU.
"It does not matter now!"
THEN MORE THAN EVER.
"Yes, it does!" Something ugly and desperate and close of kin to hope slithered in their chest. They wanted—they wanted—they wanted—"And if you would just put your faith in
us, you would know that! It doesn't—it doesn't have to be like this, Roshan. Come with us back to the Bureau, talk to Basim—"
"No! This is how it must be."
"WHY?"
"What is done is done. It is in the past, now."
They reeled with hurt. So they were now relegated to nothing more than yet another part of the broad stretch of her past that she had abandoned? Nothing more than a footnote she would refuse to discuss and then flee from at the first opportunity?
WE ARE STILL HERE! Basim howled.
"So you will ruin your future out of fear of the past? AGAIN?"
"Ruin? No, girl. The only future that has been ruined is your brother's own. Rayhan and the council saw to that. He was full of promise and poised for greatness, and now look at him—"
("And now look at him.")
("—And I am telling you, there is something wrong with him, Rebekah. Ever since he returned from the Temple he's been… strange. Well. Stranger, anyways.")
("And now look at him.")
("...Will you compete with Tabid's dog for the bones of tonight's dinner as well, Basim?")
("And now look at him.")
("First Nur, then Roshan, now Enkidu. …I'm just saying, there is a pattern here, and it isn't the Order that's the common link.")
("And now look at him.")
The desperate thing inside them withered and died, and then rotted and rose again in a red mist of rage and hurt, sharp teeth and sharper words.
"'You were but a young man, broken and alone. Desperate for guidance. Wanting to do good.'" Nehal snarled, throwing Roshan's words back in her face. Roshan flinched.
"'The order's presence in Baghdad, and beyond, rests on shifting sands so long as you remain at the tip of our spear.' Was that all we were to you and your creed? A weapon? A tool, only valuable so long as it is USEFUL? To be cast aside and forgotten—"
"'The Brotherhood is unified!'" Nehal spat out, tone bitter and mocking. "'There is no place for those who would set themselves above it.' —except when they make a decision you do not agree with! Is that it, Roshan?"
"Hypocrite!" she snarled. "Which of us stayed? Which of us broke the tenets that day, Roshan? It wasn't us. We stayed. We have been nothing but faithful to our clan. We have upheld every promise. All our oaths remain unbroken. You broke with the Creed. You left. You abandoned the brotherhood, abandoned us when we needed you the most—"
"I warned your brother what would happen if he pursued that path. He made his choice. So did Rayhan, and the rest of your Brotherhood." Her lips curled in disgust as she scoffed. "Betraying all their ideals for a glimpse of something that should have stayed dead—"
…dead?
….something that should have stayed dead?
SOMETHING THAT SHOULD HAVE STAYED DEAD?
YOU THINK WE SHOULD HAVE STAYED DEAD?
"...dead?" Nehal said, voice small.
DEAD? They roared.
She had tried to kill them once before, but they'd always thought—they'd always believed—
Maybe—
Maybe they had just needed to explain it better.
Maybe they had done something, said something that had scared her.
Maybe if they'd just been able to tell her the truth, to show her what had happened, all that had been done to them—
Maybe—maybe then she would have understood?
Surely.
[Maybe it had been their fault.]
[Maybe they had done something wrong.]
[Maybe they had done something to deserve this.]
[Maybe—]
[Maybe—]
[Surely—]
[They'd always thought that they could fix this.]
"Some things are better left buried where they fell." Roshan snapped. "Your brother made his choice. Rayhan and the council made theirs. This is mine."
The wretched, hateful thing that festered inside them demanded balance; cut for cut, wound for wound; an eye for an eye, kin for kin.
They showed restraint, grace, civility, reaching for the sharpest, most cutting thing they could think to say instead of for the dagger burning into their back.
"Is that what you told Azadeh, too?" Nehal snarled.
Surprise, followed by a flash of deep hurt and then swallowed by rage, flashed across Roshan's face.
[Their rebirth had tempered none of their impulsive cruelty—their silver serpent's tongue could still wound as well as charm, and cut deeper than any blade.]
Nehal, Nehal, wait—
Brushing aside Basim's frustrated attempts to stall her words, Nehal continued on, "She still searches for you. Still sends letters asking after you in Alamut, in Baghdad, even here in Constantinople—did you know that, Roshan? Do you even care—"
"You should be more mindful of your tongue when speaking of things you know nothing about, girl—"
"Hypocrite."
"Hypocrite? You and that brother of yours are the ones poking your noses where they do not belong; the contents of those letters do not concern you!"
Nehal scoffed. "A much harder argument to make when your lover's letters keep ending up on our Bureau desk instead of in your hands—"
"You make dangerous and foolish assumptions, girl. You know nothing of my past—"
"—And you know nothing of ours!"
Roshan looked stricken and confused. The heat fled from her voice as she questioned softly; "—O-Ours?"
NEHAL, DON'T—
"—Our brotherhood's "temple", the 'vision' within the disk, did you even know what they were? Did you even try to find out? Quabiha's words— 'something more—'" Nehal swayed and thumped a four-fingered hand twice against their chest in emphasis, voice hitching into something bordering on hysteria in their frantic desperation. "'—than man?' Did you even stop to think, even try to understand?"
"Understand? Understand? I certainly understand more of it than you or your brother—"
"NO. NO, YOU DON'T. NOT ANYMORE. YOU DON'T. YOU NEVER EVEN TRIED."
NEHAL, SHE WILL KILL US—
"These Precursor artifacts, these temples—they are dangerous, Nehal—too dangerous for mere men, let alone in the hands of a—" a look of terror flashed across Roshan's face and she cut herself off.
Rage bubbled up in their throat, along with an ugly, familiar resentment.
Oh, of course. Nehal hissed icily.
We can't have the dirty mongrel mix-blood getting their hands on an artifact. They're dangerous. Less than us.
Wolf, Wolf, Wolf, Wolf, Wolf!
Basim snarled. Not even here and now can we escape it. WHY is it always like this?
"A WOLF?" Nehal barked out, ignoring Roshan's baffled look of confusion.
"Wha—What?" Basim's former mentor said, staring at them.
"It's ALWAYS like this—"
"I was only trying to keep your brother safe—"
"SAFE? SAFE?" Nehal laughed, wild and incredulous. They hunched over slightly, wrapping one hand around their middle, feeling sick to their stomach. "HOW WOULD WE EVER BE SAFE WHEN THE ORDER WAS HUNTING WOLVES FROM THE VERY START—"
A look of confusion, and then sickened horror and guilt stole into Roshan's eyes and Nehal reeled back as if they had been struck.
That day, in Dervis' place. She tried to dissuade us from going to the Palace. She was already after the data-disk. That was no mere mission given by the Council to secure one of Eden's artifacts. Two of her acolytes died, Basim—not only to steal it from the Order—but to keep it from us.
SHE
KNEW?
"You—" The rage clawing in their throat strangles their words into silence and for a moment it is all Nehal can do to keep both their voices from leaping out in a tangled garbled mess of noise that will strain their fragile too-human vocal cords into oblivion.
HOW?
They had known that she had gained some inkling of their true nature, at some point, but had always assumed it had been Quabiha's speech, or some element of their dreams, or from studying the disk that had tipped her off.
But that she had known their nature—
THE MARK.
IT MUST HAVE BEEN THE MARK—
"YOU KNEW?" They spit out at last, animal-instinct preservation-of-the-self winning out over their rage as they carefully let their words filter out only in Nehal's voice, their much more noticeable tinge of Atlantean drawl creeping further into their words as they speak. "FROM THE VERY FIRST. YOU KNEW. OF—OF COURSE YOU DID."
"I—"
"DID YOU KNOW WHAT IT CONTAINED? DID YOU KNOW WHAT THE ORDER WOULD HAVE DONE? WHAT HAPPENED IN THAT TEMPLE— WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED AGAIN—"
"I—no, no, I did not—"
"'ALAMUT?' 'MOUNTAIN OF THE EAGLE'S TEACHING?' HAH! NO, NO, ROSHAN. THAT IS NOT WHAT THAT WORD MEANS. 'ALAMUT.' 'NEST-OF-PUNISHMENT.'"
"IT WAS A PRISON! A PRISON, ROSHAN! A PRISON THAT YOU HAD APPOINTED YOURSELF WARDEN OF—"
"A—a what?" Roshan looked stricken.
"YOU may keep running from YOUR past in the foolish hope it will never catch you, Roshan—but we will not. We cannot. We are not like you. We could never be like you. But you couldn't see that. Didn't want to. We were made for looking back—"
NEHAL, STOP—
"...We?"
"You may have abandoned your past and all the people in it—but we will never abandon ours."
"...Ours?" Roshan repeated again, voice still hushed but now sharp with a calculating edge and heavy with the creeping weight of horror. Even if they had wished to, Basim made sure that Nehal could not fail to notice how Roshan's hand crept towards the pommel of her sword, hissing at their second self with a terrified, distraught;
—DO YOU SEE?
DO YOU?
"Basim and I share everything." Nehal snarled, too furious to care.
"...Everything?" Roshan repeated, her gaze slowly sharpening. Her hand fell at last to rest upon the pommel of her sword, and then trailed slowly downwards towards the grip.
"Everything." Nehal snapped. Instead of retreating, as would have been wise, she stepped closer, moving further into Roshan's personal space with every biting sentence.
"All that we are, all that we were. All that we will be." Roshan's fingers closed around the grip of her sword.
"Every dream, every nightmare. Every oath we swore, every promise we made." Their opponent's sword scraped from its scabbard.
"We do not keep secrets from each other. We do not lie to one another. We do not leave each other to struggle alone—!" Their dagger had found its way into their trembling hand.
No, no. One of their selves half-laughed, half-wailed in anguished agreement with the other. We are honest in our cruelty like that to one another.
There was a throwing knife in their opponent's hand, readied to fly in its flashing, wheeling arc like a falcon from the fist—.
"NO." they snarl. "NOT THIS TIME."
YOU WILL NOT HURT US AGAIN.
They shrieked with rage and darted forward, adamant dagger flashing in their hand—
And then, they were there—
—there before their mind could even catch up to what they were doing, blinking impossibly, improbably between one where and the next in the space of less than a single breath, launching themselves forward in a lunge, eyes fixed on their prey—
[—for this transgression and all that came before it, they will have the throat, the eyes, the heart—]
—leather armor and metal studs mean nothing to the keen edge of their sharpened fang, their gleaming talon—
[—no one will ever cage them or trick them or hurt them ever again—]
—as they collide, one of their prey's feet goes out from under it with a small noise of complaint and it stumbles backwards, and—
—its limbs and claws flail out in a desperate attempt at escape, its blunt claws catching against them as they tumbled forward, limbs tangled uselessly together before their blade-their talon-their fang-their beak can find purchase, and—
—then they are falling into empty air, and for a moment their ancient instincts assert, comically, that they are flying, falling forward into a steep dive—
—their prey yelps and makes noises and tries to get free—
—annoyed, they adjust their hold, trying to correct the steep angle of their dive, straining with wings they cannot feel—
[—why can't they feel their—]
—the white-white-white of preservation-of-the-self-useful-safe-safe-nest-here-hide-here looms large below them suddenly—
[—what has happened to their—]
They hit the haypile on the roof below in a tangle of limbs and hissing.
Roshan bats blindly with her hand in the dark of the hay around them, and the younger woman (Sage?) yelps as her hand connects sharply with the side of Nehal's head. Roshan barely has time to take advantage of the momentary lull—her sword, where is her sword?— before the other is back on her again.
In her second sight, the Sage blooms a strange, roiling mix of blue [kin-loved-family-clan-heir-ally-blood-tie] that she ignores and the bloody red [fear-resentment-rage-hopelessness-defiance-fear-for-life-fear-for-kin-fear-of-death] that she recognizes as belonging to that of an enemy, someone intent on doing harm.
Her sword shines a watery, mocking gold [important-tool-looked-for] on the flat rooftop to her left, just out of reach beyond the haypile.
If she can just—the Sage's dagger slips past her defenses and gouges deep into the leather of her gorget, catching on and then skipping harmlessly over the metal studs before ripping a gash through her scarf.
Roshan grabs for the other's hand, fighting to turn her blade aside.
Instead of punching the dagger downwards, to stab through her armor as she should have been trained, the Sage fruitlessly continued the motion, slashing the edge of the oddly familiar curved dagger—she had seen this blade before, but where?—down the length of her cuirass, hissing in fury when the blade simply scores into the leather instead of biting deep into flesh, the noise sharp and shrill, something more akin to those she had heard from the half-wild birds in Fuladh's mews than any befitting a human tongue.
Roshan saw her chance and took it, cuffing the other sharply about the head with her free hand and then shoving the Sage hard, rolling them both out of the haypile onto the roof. They were still some distance from her sword—but maybe she could—?
Roshan smiled in grim satisfaction as she successfully wrestled the dagger from Nehal's hands.
The Sage yelped in terror, lunging for the weapon—true fear shining in her wide, unnaturally brilliant eagle-gold eyes—an expression she had seen mirrored before in Basim's face, that day beneath the Palace of the Green Dome—
—and on the day when they had first, truly met—
[Basim, fighting his way awake out of the first of many nightmares she would bear silent, helpless witness to, pressing himself back against the wall of his small, sad hovel in a vain attempt to escape whatever horrors haunted his dreams, whimpering and pleading mumbled fragments in a tongue whose meaning she could only guess at, throwing his hands up as though to protect first his neck, and then his head from some phantom onslaught.]
[Wide, wide, unnaturally bright eagle-gold eyes full of terror, eyes that became distant and glazed over in a way that made her heart twist with unexpected pity when the boy caught sight of the artifact in her hand—]
[Another memory arose, one that caused her mind to stutter in its tracks—]
(—"You know, all he wants is sons." Taláyi had told Roshan that night so long ago, as they settled among the other wives. "When he found out I was with child, he left me alone for eight long, glorious months.")
{"And then he never left you alone after that," Halima piped up, mocking the oldest of the Harbor Master's wives with all the impudence and vanity of youth. "As soon as he knew you could carry to term, you were his prize.")
("And where is he now, hmm?" Halima taunted. "Where is your son?")
Roshan flinched and tore her eyes away from the other woman's gaze, refusing to further acknowledge that line of thought as she quickly gathered herself, swiftly settling into a low crouch and planting one knee on the other's arm before the Sage could bolt.
Rather than lunge for the weapon again with her free hand, the younger woman shrunk back, going still and quiet as Roshan brought the curved tip of the unusual dagger to rest at the Sage's throat.
"Now—" Roshan began, shifting her weight slightly and moving the dagger away from the other's throat and to the side.
The fear in the girl's eyes bloomed into something a little wilder, a little more raw, a little more desperate. Roshan's breath caught in her throat.
("It is not silence!" Basim leapt from his meager bed of straw and thin, tattered blankets, desperate to move as though he could escape his nightmares if he paced any further, voice hitching a note into hysteria. "I cannot explain what I saw!")
("That—that object. It did…something to me." That same blank-eyed horror flashed across his face, his voice hushing with terrible certainty. "I was… somewhere else.")
("Cold.")
("...and frightened.")
[Something had stirred in her then, in those first moments—not yet that want that she would never put a name to, the one she had sworn away sitting with the other wives on (that man's) swaying ship, the one she had openly scoffed at the idea of ever feeling—("I will not give that man a son.")—but perhaps the beginnings of it.]
[For now, it manifested as a simple desire to protect that lit the trembling young man before her in soft honey-and-amber golden light, flecked with specks of blue [kin-our-kin-blood-tie-clan-family] [well-loved-important-necessary-promised-protected] in her second sight.]
[As she had watched him struggle night after night with the phantoms in his mind on their journey to Alamut, the desire only grew, until one night she caught herself absently testing the trigger mechanism on her Hidden Blade over and over again, lying awake and listening and watching silently as the young man grappled with his demons.]
[She laid there, listening to the young man pleading in a language no longer spoken by any living tongue but his dreaming one, begging for mercy that would never come, and found herself irrationally wishing that she could drag whatever invisible opponent tormented his sleeping mind off him, and bury the blade deep in its throat until the life faded from its eyes and the boy's dreams turned at last to peace.]
[If she could kill his past for him as she had her own, Roshan swore then, she would gladly do so in a heartbeat.]
The Sage bucked suddenly, jerking the arm trapped underneath Roshan's knee in a frantic attempt to get away, arching back away from the dagger—raw, animalistic panic etched into every fiber of her being. When that got her nothing, she lashed out, nearly slashing her throat open on her own blade's keen edge, lunging for the hand holding the blade with animalistic intent and a panicked cry of pure terror.
It is only thanks to Roshan jerking the dagger back in startled alarm that she does not, and instead her teeth latch into the outer edge of the older woman's forearm with surprising force behind the equally surprisingly sharp teeth.
Roshan let out a yelp of surprise and pain—of all the things, she never would have expected the other woman to bite her.
The Sage reared back, red-red-red [faintly shimmering, barely more than a glimmer in the dying, fading sunlight] blood smeared across her lips from where she'd broken the skin. For a heartbeat she stayed where she was, staring up at Roshan with a dazed, slightly unfocused expression on her face.
The bloody bite mark burned, and Roshan hissed, letting the dagger clatter numbly to the rooftop beside her feet as the Sage bucked again and finally broke free, scrabbling for the far side of the roof to press her back against the wall of the adjacent building.
Roshan fumbled to both retrieve the dagger and keep her gaze fixed on the other woman where she huddled against the wall with a stunned expression on her face, and then just as suddenly, stopped, going still like a mouse that has seen a hawk on the wing above as she became aware of—
A flash of something, like the sound of wind through wing feathers overhead, hovering on the edge of her awareness, something shifting in her other sense—
Her mind felt strange in a way she had never been aware of before, as though she was simply a much smaller fish in a much, much bigger ocean, abruptly and without warning made frighteningly aware of the vast empty nothingness around her.
A nothingness, her instincts screamed at her, that felt… wrong.
Inexplicably, horrifically wrong. An empty quietness where there should have been… something, a yawning, gaping chasm of wrong-wrong-too-quiet-too-few that she hadn't been aware even existed.
For a moment she simply stayed frozen where she was, stunned deaf and dumb by how frighteningly alone she had been made—until suddenly she wasn't.
She shuddered at the phantom touch, the disturbing sensation of something brushing softly, carefully, hesitantly against the borders of her mind, ghosting at the edges of her memory but not daring to intrude.
There was something… out there, in the nothingness.
Something vast and alien and ancient hung suspended just beyond her reach, waiting with a patient wordless humming—like a hand being held out in an offering older than time itself, an offering that etched itself in beautiful shapeless golden and blue hues, dancing in a mesmerizing pattern before her starstricken mind—
She started to reach out and—
Fondness.
[Her breath hitched in her throat, and she choked back a startled sob almost without thought.]
The thing reaching back out to her was looking at her with fondness.
With this singular realization it was like a barrier she hadn't even known was there had been torn down—
Fondness. Blue. Wonder. Gold. Affection. Blue. Pride. Gold.
Kin, the thing waiting there in the nothingness crooned, meaning-intent-motive-message drenched in loving blue. We [an image filled her mind—the impression of the cold light of a distant, winking star, accompanied by a profound sense of grief.] give greetings.
[The little Sage across from her was still staring at her with wide, wide eagle's eyes, but now there were tears tracking down her face too.]
Kin-of-kin-affection-joy-surprise, colored blue, shifting into shades of we-welcome-you and unlooked-for-yet-loved and joy-of-joys blue all-hurts-forgiven reddish-blue, empty-ache-now-diminished red-gray-white that faded into loneliness-is-over-exile-is-ended blue-gold relief-dulling-of-pain-dulling-of-grief blue-red-gray—
A fleeting moment settled among her memories that in no way belonged to her—an unfamiliar, alien night sky in a place that she instinctively recognized (knew) as Alamut, long before the stone with which her clan had built their mountain fortress had even begun to form, a skyscape, seen from the mountain's peak; unrecognizable, foreign stars and cold, dark vastness above slowly, inexorably giving way to brilliant, glorious golden-white light. The sheer feeling of relief and sense of …an-end-to-suffering.
A moment of peace amid a roiling agony she knows-understands-comprehends in that moment that she is being gently shielded from, her mind being effortlessly redirected from the dull buzz of red-red-red pain and horror; like she is a child again, her mother's hand against her back, pressing her against her side with a gentle-yet-firm "Hush, little light. Don't look."; like she is four winters old and hiding her face in her mother's skirt as they pass the butcher's stall.
There is great pain here in this …memory, but that is not the point being made. Not the gift being offered.
And it was a gift. The profundity and emotional weight attached to the … gifted memory was such that it made her want to lay down and weep.
The thing that waited in the nothingness crooned again. [Another image was pressed into her mind, one that shifted and fluctuated—a flickering torch, a glowing lantern, hands, cupped, filled with glowing, molten gold.]
Splendid-light. It said, with a soundless voice that was neither man nor woman but as familiar as every aching scar on her body. [The alien night sky, the sunrise. Relief, an end to suffering.]
Name-that-is-truth. It murmured, tone colored bright with approval-certainty-wonder white-gold, flecked with the dappled blue of that baffling fondness. Child-of-our-clan. [Again, the white-hot star and the dull aching weight of grief impressed upon her mind.]
The words-concepts-thoughts called on memories unbidden—
("Daughter of no one doesn't sit right. How about… Roshan?" Fuladh had said, sitting before her there in that prison cell in the cold and the dark.)
(She knew exactly how long it had been since someone had last called her by that name. Fear gripped her heart like a vice. "Put me back in the pit," she whispered.)
("It means light." Fuladh continued. "You weren't the daughter of no one.")
(Not fear for herself. "Put me back in the pit.")
("You were someone's splendid light.")
(Fear for her sisters, her parents. Her family. Her kin."Put me back in the pit!")
Pain-that-is-known. The thing offered. [Shimmering starlight and a clinging, cloying grief that left sorrow on all it touched.]
Pain-that-is-shared.
She froze.
The pit. Her thoughts spiraled in on themselves, all her old fears rising to the surface once again. The pit.
Fuladh had said that no one would know. Her crime expunged from the records. That she was safe, that they were safe—
Wordless tones of concern that again tugged at memories unbidden—of her mother cradling her in her arms, of her father, kneeling to examine a scraped knee with all the concern and seriousness due a much more dire wound—echoed across the tenuous, gossamer spider's thread that bridged the gulf of nothing between her mind, her self, and the thing in the nothingness, wrapping her in blues and dark, dim reds.
How did it know?
[The sunrise, peace amid sorrow.] Splendid-light.
She—She could not recall volunteering her name to the thing in the nothingness, nor had it made any effort in kind.
[Trust was not something she believed in, any longer.]
The thing in the nothingness hummed soundlessly, the soft tones rich with the blue-red hues of amused-disagreement-patience.
[The brilliant, blinding star and crushing grief.] [A torch, a lantern held aloft.]
She didn't understand what it wanted. She didn't understand what it was doing here. She didn't understand what it was—
Kin. It offered. [A strange and impossible torch, lit without flame, light cool and white and steady like captured moonlight, held up like a weapon against the dark.]
Her kin were safe. Her sisters, their children— Fuladh had promised—
How did it know?
[Trust was a luxury afforded to other people. Normal people. Not ones like her.]
Concern-sympathy-sorrow filtered across the nothingness, an attempt at a soothing gesture like a hand being carded gently through her hair.
Splendid-light. [Shadow and sunlight, joy and pain.]
Pain-that-is-known.
How?
Pain-that-is-shared. The thing insisted, words bleeding into bright, bloody pain-soaked red like the morning sky that heralded a terrible storm. [A massive white star teetering on the precipice of all-consuming implosion, grief raw and biting like the agony of an open wound.]
Another gifted moment of long ago settled unkindly among her memories like a carrion-bird above a soon-to-be-corpse; a darkened room of cold, cold stone, all harsh, impossible angles and gleaming, twisted metal. Words forced forth from a throat already raw from screaming—
("srṛæsnos!")
[—words that she KNEW—]
[—words she had heard before—]
("dű hṃ làygw ṛ zàrhàsi!")
[— once, twice, dozens, hundreds of times—]
[—hundreds of sleepless nights, hundreds of worried glances and lying, hurried, exhausted 'it was nothing. Im fine's and missed or ignored chances to say something, do something, anything—]
("seylos!")
They were thrown roughly to the floor and struck again. Barely struggled upright, still reeling from the blow, before they were kicked backwards onto their back—
("I was… somewhere else.")
("Cold.")
("...and frightened.")
—A figure, face in shadows, features blurred, indistinct and meaningless, crouched over them. In the other's hands, a dagger that was not—shining silver and cold, icy blue, the wicked fang-like curve of its blade, the tip held to their throat with cruel and obvious intent.
("Lately, all I have are questions.")
("What do you mean?")
[The dagger she clutches in her shaking hand looms large as though her vision has been strangely doubled, as though her memory had suddenly folded back on itself.]
("I have… I have struggled with… nightmares.")
("In these dreams, a jinni torments me until I wake up, panicked, and soaked with sweat.")
The dagger moved, tracing a thin line of living light up their jaw and to the side of their head, carving a bright, jagged line of agony despite their struggling hands that fought against the ones restraining them—
("And I am left asking why. Why here? Why now? Why me? Piling questions and no answers.")
[The dagger.]
Pain, again. An agony beyond words that she knew she was shielded from—the kind, she knew, that would snap men's minds in half like twigs—dulled and muted like she was wrapped in a thick layer of wool. A grief and despair and aching, breath-stealing loss from which she was not, black as a pit and deep as an ocean.
Their little ones their kin their love their nephews their sister their family their clan their kin their kin their kin their kin—
Their own heart, their own heir—
[The dagger.]
("I meant to tell you, but…")
("You were afraid I would think you weak of mind.")
The barest beginnings of a madness taking root as the mind that had hosted this memory began to fracture; unaltered, unhidden, presented with a frank, frightening, grim honesty. The nature of reality. Immutable. Unchangeable—
("We are only as weak as we allow ourselves to be.")
[The dagger.]
("To shed a weakness, you must do what is necessary to mend that which causes you pain.")
Splendid-light. said the thing that skulked in the nothingness. [A sunrise painted bloody by a red mist of perpetual agony, a bright, clear joy just this side of mania, heady with the thrumming desire for revenge.]
Pain that is shared. It promised slyly. Pain that is known.
No. She responded for the first time, pushing the thought back across the thread that bound them, hued in an unflinching, uncompromising blue-tinged red love-of-kin-willingness-to-harm. Not. Yet.
She kept her thoughts focused upon that wretched dagger, envisioning a cutting edge as keen and sharp as the very real blade clutched in her shaking, white-knuckled grip—
[She had sworn once before that if she could kill the thing that had haunted her son's Basim's dreams, she would.]
She reached out, took hold of that thread-that-bound, and pulled—
[She still meant it, even now.]
Roshan staggered to her feet.
She had, frustratingly, been unable to deal the "jinni" a mortal blow. Unsurprising, given that the Order's hallowed Ancients never seemed content to just simply die an easy death in the first place.
It had fled into the black sea of nothingness it had come from, howling in red-red-red hues of shock-pain-betrayal-hurt-confusion.
She would not be so easily rid of the weight of the guilt she carried, it seemed.
…Nor the awareness of the crushing, deafening too-empty-too-quiet nothingness that had heralded its arrival.
The thread that had bound them still remained, too, but had gone slack and still, and no amount of careful prodding and focus would remove it, so she bitterly resigned herself to its continued presence.
Still…If her actions meant that the young Sages might sleep a little quieter tonight, then it was well worth the cost.
Speaking of Sages…
Roshan turned her attention to Nehal.
She was curled up on her side against the wall, hands covering her head as though to fend off further attack.
Roshan's heart twinged in pity. Roshan still wasn't entirely sure what the girl had meant by her earlier words, how much of her nature was shared with that of her brother, but—
("Basim and I share everything.")
("All that we were. All that we are. All that we will be.")
("Every dream, every nightmare.")
[Roshan was not a fool. The girl had bit her and then the Ancient had followed. She was not blind to what this implied.]
…It was likely her sleep was far from peaceful, too.
She took a step closer, and the younger woman flinched back against the wall.
"Roshan!" the girl yelped, uncurling and sitting up, flattening her back against the wall, looking back up at her again with those wide, wide eagle's eyes, before glancing nervously at the dagge she still held in her hand. "Wait. Wait, please, please, please. Wait, you didn't understand—you have it wrong, please, please just listen—we didn't mean it, whatever we did, please just don't—!"
("Think about it." Taláyi mumbled. "It could be worth the peace.")
("And what if it's a girl?" Roshan asked, voicing her greatest fear.)
(If possible, Taláyi's look was even worse.)
"Go home, Nehal bint-Ishaq." she snapped, tone harsher than she wished, flinging the wretched …Precursor weapon down at its owner's feet. "Return to your brother's bureau. Do not follow me again."
She… She…
[Of all the ridiculous notions—it was the usage of their proper nasab that had stung the most.]
WHAT DID WE DO?
Hàgwṛm!
HYPOCRITE!
"Aruru washed her hands,
she pinched off some clay,
and threw it into the wilderness."
"I am-"
"-Part of my reality too, yes, I know." he hisses. He does not understand why this is happening now. A flash of phantom silver and cold blue light dances in the water. Fire burns across his back in arcing, shattered lines of pain.
"-And so is this."
-he sees
her
raise the
blade-
Water waist deep around him. Cold and soaking him to the bone. His reflection does not dance upon the quietly lapping waves before him in this moonless night, but rages and seethes and surges before him, trying and failing to cross the distance the dark has brought between them.
Nehal is just as soaked through as he is, just as uncaring of it as he is. She can be nothing else. They can be nothing else. There is nothing else.
The blade is there between them. It is always between them. It has always been between them, since the-
Since the-
Since-
the-
[Since the moment it was stabbed between them, separating them into they, there underneath that mountain in the cold and the dark, since it was cruelly carved between their mind and their soul and their body and their heart and their lungs and their flesh and their blood and their name and their self and their own heart, their own heir-]
His hands on the handle. Her hands. Their hands. Still struggling for balance, for answers, for the handle of the adamant-alloyed dagger to pull it with frenzy-clumsy hands from their sense-of-self where it has pierced their mind-and-soul for all the decades and eons and centuries since their first life.
Nehal's face twists into a anguished mirror-opposite of his own, and she wrests the dagger from him even as he holds it defiantly close, a ghostly not-there phantom of the very real blade that burns a firebrand into his back from where it is strapped. "Why must we always end up back here?" she howls, and he wails with her even as he misplaces a foot on the rocks and feels himself slip. "Why must it always be the face of someone we love that stands above us with a blade to our neck?"
"In the wildness she created valiant Enkidu,
born of Silence, endowed with strength by Ninurta."
The following dawn found them pacing along the rooftops again. Nehal had quickly tired of the novelty of interaction afforded her by their newly reacquired projection fields, and once she had figured out where Basim's thoughts were leading their feet, she had balked and refused to re-engage with them, ignoring any and all nudges from Basim regarding the matter.
This is NOT focusing on your duties as Den Master, Basim.
Mmm.
Basim stalked along the rooftop with a measured gait better suited for hunting, eyes fixed on their distant quarry.
She will not like that we have continued to follow her.
Again. After she explicitly told us NOT to do that.
…
…
…
…Helloooooo?
…
Baaaa-sssiiimmm?
…Huh?
Basim.
Mmm. I am listening.
Basim!
What, Nehal!?
Finally!
Wait. Yech. What is that?
What is what?
That expression. And… whatever is happening with your emotional state. Like that pet bird of yours just dropped a live rabbit kit into your lap and you aren't sure whether you want to eat it, coo at it or flee in disgust. Why are you looking at her like that?
Who? Roshan?
No, the dhimmi woman on the corner selling camel saddles. Yes, Roshan!
I am… not sure. There is something…
…What is bothering you, ya sadeeqi?
I am TRYING. To figure. It out.
Well hurry up. Whatever this feeling is—I hate it. It feels… strange. And uncomfortable. Besides, we need to check in on Hytham and Azar. It is almost meal-time.
…We should… at least try to be a better rhṇhér to our children-by-trade, even if they are not capable of inheriting anything from a nanite graft.
Yes. Yes. You are right. We should not spend any more time away from our children than necessary…
Of course I am—
our…
what?
…our children—!
…WHAT IS THAT.
…Look at her, Nehal.
I am looking.
I have been looking.
What am I supposed to be seeing?
Her.
Her face.
That… That is Jor's nose.
NO.
…Her hair has faded now, but it was once shining and brilliant—the same color as our dam, Laufey. The shape of her jaw—she gets that from our sire's line—
WHAT.
That fierce, leonine bearing… now that—that is all Aletheia. …Hel used to make that exact same face at us when she was confused, do you remember—
You are INSANE!?
…Kin knows kin, Nehal.
That thing we felt yesterday—
No. I told you then, and I'll tell you again now: We were…. We were … experiencing a bout of psychosis or something. An adrenaline high.
She responded, Nehal.
So? I respond to you all the time, and I'm not real either.
…We've talked about this, Nehal. You ARE real, after a fashion—
Just not separate. I am part of you, as you are part of me, yes, yes—
Exactly. This is the nature of our reality. Such self-doubt does us little good.
…And we aren't going to need to talk about it again, are we?
…No.
Anyways, they say that arguing with yourself is one of the signs of insanity—
Can you please at least TRY to be serious—
I am!
Nehal.
Basim.
Fine. Roshan might be a descendant.
Born from …someone's bloodline.
But I still think you are reading too much into it, ya sadeeqi.
What we felt—
Misplaced affections.
You are chasing false echoes, Basim. Ripples in a pond. Shadows on the temple wall.
Are the echoes really false if there was something there to make them, Nehal? A pond does not ripple on its own power, even if only in the wind. Shadows have sources. Our plan, remember? Fenrir would be brought to the Chamber of the Seventh and…
She has the Sight, Nehal.
So did Nur. I did not see you fawning over him like a nestling.
Nur was an elder brother, if anything.
She was present for many of our nightmares, and helped tend to our wounds after missions on occasion—it is not impossible that we might have exposed her to both our own latent telepathy and the requisite nanites to awaken her own dormant inheritance—
Ridiculous!
Don't pretend—You saw it. I know you did.
The orange tint in her blood.
Refraction from the sun.
Refraction from the sun that glows in the dark of night on our sleeve?
Refraction from the moon.
…Which is technically still just refraction from the sun.
That almost shimmers a faint orange? With the windows shut?
Besides, the blood had dried hours before the moon rose, Nehal. You are being ridiculou—
Psychic interference. Leakage from our sixth sense.
Psychic. Interference.
…Wishful thinking. Really, really powerful wishful thinking.
…Really, Nehal?
We—! We still do not know if it even worked, Basim! If we even succeeded!
Every moment beyond the Seventh Method is lost to us.
Those memories are gone, beyond our recall—we do not even know if we ever made it there.
We do not even remember how WE DIED.
Let alone if Fenrir—if he even has a line for descendants to come from!
WE exist, don't we?
That alone is proof that the Seventh works-
But Fenrir was—was wounded; dying—
I… Even if it did work. Even if, somehow, Fenrir's genetic code lies dormant in some human bloodline…
The idea that you think you would be able to recognize them is- is… ridiculous!
Why does the idea frighten you so much, Nehal?
We are certainly no strangers to unusual and complicated family dynamics.
The Isu practice of adopting trade-children saw to that. One individual might occupy several roles in the same clan. Did we not take Hawwāh's children in as our own?
It is not that.
…We—
We are sick with grief. We are not whole. We are not well.
I… I do not know that we can trust what you are seeing, ya sadeeqi.
Our people relied far more on sense-of-self and touch-of-minds to identify their kin than they ever did physical appearance.
Denied the sixth sense, mankind were as blurs to us. And that was when we were whole and unbroken—!
We are—are mind-sick, Basim. You… this is grief, or something—
We are not—We are not well.
…I am not so foolish as to believe that she is one of them, Nehal.
Nor that she would welcome or even understand such a revelation.
She is—she is not Fenrir. The Calculations, the node… You remember as well as I what we saw.
…Yes. A young man. With our Heir's face.
Our Heir's eyes. …Even his scar. Our blood. The Staff in hand…
Perhaps we are still half-mad with grief, Nehal. And I will not deny that we are… unwell.
You guard us zealously because of this, I understand. And I thank you for it.
My second self, fractured-from-the-whole.
…Basim…
You fear and defend the wound you came from, I know.
But I also know that she is kin. Our kin.
…
The plans we made. The mathematical equations we memorized. The timing is not right.
No.
A thousand year sleep awaits us still, Nehal, and our Heir is long in coming.
No, she is not our clan's Heir… but still I say that I can see something of him shining in her.
And that… that is a hopeful thought.
Even if it is false…
False hope is still hope, Nehal.
"His whole body was shaggy with hair,
he had a full head of hair like a woman,
his locks billowed in profusion like Ashnan."
NOTES
—The beautiful and poetic visual metaphors and gut wrenching line reprisals aside—Its kinda stupid that the ending of mirage is just like. "Oh now that basim has achieved total understanding of his situation and found inner peace, his mental illness is now ~ magically ~ cured and will never affect him again" like girl WHAT.
ubisoft. Ubisoft listen to me. I am speaking directly into your ear now. i love you. i hate you. you drive me insane with your mediocre storytelling and amazing missed potential. I know you have mental health professionals on staff. Look me in the eyes. mental illnesses do not work like this.
Basically for this AU, the mental illness is not magically cured by self-love and acceptance at the end of the game. Basim still has his emotional support psychic peanut gallery during the events of golden city through valhalla, he's just gotten very good at masking and also it wasn't relevant to eivor because she's a terminally oblivious turbo-dumbass [affectionate] [derogatory.]
—congratulations roshan. Its a he/she/they/them
—its my fic i get to decide what the inclusion of canonical hardlight hologram technology that you can physically touch and interact with [the holograms covering the stupid isu tombs in that one valhalla post launch update] mean for Shapeshifting [Not?] Real
—basim: nehal why the fuck are we following her around im hungry we could be doing anything else right now like our job for instance-
nehal, pounding nails into a baseball bat: yeah basim i hear you hold on i just wanna ask her one small question real quick-
—many thoughts, head full with regards to how the daughter of no one novel made Roshan;
a. a certified Weird Girl [THE ANT INCIDENT? HELLO?]
and b. THE. EXACT. FUCKING. SAME. TYPE. OF. PERSON. AS. BASIM. [the abandonment issues. The "don't betray me and then act surprised when i get revenge on you. thats the number one consequence of betraying me. everyone knows it. even babies." attitude. The paranoia and inability to trust. The prison related trauma. The bookworm nerd. The familial trauma. The hangups regarding parenthood. The murder.]
—i love dissecting all the implications of how basim getting all that Isu era trauma dumped into his head would affect his outlook on things, or how his sudden altair2 esque increase in standing with the council/mentor and radical changes in behavior roshan leaving would generate resentment among the other assassins and ostracize him from them. but also how it would be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy bc he would be LOOKING for and expecting those behaviors and—ahem.
i mean. i think about this a normal amount,
—orphan to orphan (mis)communication. prisoner with no light to prisoner with no light [incoherent] conversation.
—one of the mirage devs indicated that roshan is canonically related to Altair in some way. Do with this what you will. In this case, she's a however-many-greats great-aunt.
—in fenrir sage theory land, this means she comes from the same sage bloodline as alty and desmond, thus, technically making her an extremely distant lokifam descendant. Congrats roshan and basimnehal, you've created the new familial roles mother-granddaughter and ancestor-sondaughter. I don't know what they ARE, but boy are they awkward!
—roshan thinks shes having her own personal bloodborne final boss battle moment. Basimnehal think they're experiencing a "grandbaby's first telepathic words" moment.
—roshan: i got bit by a Sage [derogatory] and momentarily contracted Space Rabies️ which temporarily gave me a direct link in my brain to some kind of eldritch cosmic horror that then tried to give me a little bandaid with hearts and a cookie. I hit it with hammers until it cried and ran away. Why does my horrible failure of an adoptive shitty space wizard demigod son never call me.
roshan, later: what do you MEAN 'yeah so that was your sondaughter|reincarnated ancestor trying to say hi?'
—tfw no species-wide global telepathic hivemind anymore because every single other one of your species are fucking dead except you and nine other fuckers you HATE and also your mom-granddaughter who you still aren't on "successfully interacting without trying to kill each other over a misunderstanding" terms with.
—"""Wolf [derogatory]"""
—if a thing is unexplained. Well. this chapter got split up three separate times. We'll get there.
TRANSLATION
Ahbil — stupid
ISU
ṇ shuàgwàsi. — [you] do not speak. — shut up, basically. Probably. Was a little lazy with the conjugation and grammer
srṛæsnos! dű hṃ làygw ṛ zàrhàsi! — Enough! Let me out!
seylos — silence
hàgwṛm — coward
Rhṇhér — canonically means father, however in this fic i am subscribing to a theory that the Isu did not have the same concept of a gender binary as humans do [meaning their language is not inherently gendered] and thus, both words for parental roles can technically apply to either parent.
In the context of the fic, father is a in-universe inaccurate human English translation - for the Isu, it more accurately means "one who assigns tasks" - a mentor, the parental figure who takes on the task of educating Isu children, a meaning somewhat based on the Proto-Indo-European root word it likely comes from.