Chapter 2: aš-ši'rā

"...My kin?" the Sage queried, eyes sharp.

"Yes, my Lord." The Order member answered, her voice soft and irritatingly maternal in a way that came off as vaguely patronizing. Judging by the slight twitch in the Sage's facial expression and the way a flash of red roiled across his aura as she spoke, he had caught it too. "Our forefathers took great care in tracking the lineages that bore your fellow Ancients' blood. Several lines were terminated before we could reach them—" here the masked figure turned to glare darkly at Roshan. "—but not all. And now that we have at last caught the troublesome cuckoo bird responsible, we can assure the remainder's safety."

"My fellow…" Al-Najm trailed off, a wide grin curving his wounded mouth in a way that screamed predator! and danger! "The living. How many?"

"Four others, my lord." answered. "Besides your own."

"Four…" he muttered to himself, still grinning, a calculating look in his eyes. "That is… a start. Names?" he said, expectantly.

"Al-Saqr…"

"The falcon?" He muttered, sounding baffled.

"Al-Maeiz."

"The… oh! The goat." A snort of what might have been laughter escaped him. "The goat, indeed."

"…Al-Qadi."

The mirth dropped from his face abruptly. "...The judge. Bah!"

"...And the last one?" he said, eyes sharp and hungry. "...Al-Ghurab?"

"No, my lord. Al-Dhiyb."

The Sage reeled backwards slightly, ducking his head like he had been struck.

The others he had deliberated over, expressing confusion, indifference or outright disdain in turn. But not this one. Roshan noted. This one he knew. Recognition had flashed in his eyes, followed by a wild and desperate longing that he hadn't been quite quick enough to hide.

"...And the dead?" he choked out, voice stuttering slightly before he regained his composure.

"Al-Fuqma. Al-Buma."

Images flashed before her mind's eye; a blue-eyed Rusiyyah warrior with a star-shaped mark on his neck and a human skull at his belt, ranting and raving in broken bits of the Ancient's tongue even as her blade bit deep into his neck and finally silenced him; a tall, sinister woman with two-colored eyes, one gold and one blue, both cold and unfeeling as dead stone.

"The… seal? …The seal… oh. heimdallr." He spat out a strange mash of syllables that it took her a moment to recognize as likely being a name. The chains at his wrists rattled as he waved one hand in an aborted dismissive gesture, the movement suddenly cut off with a soft clink as he reached the end of its slack, and he frowned, giving the offending restraints a momentary baleful look of annoyance.

Expression smoothing out, he turned and glanced at her appraisingly with renewed interest. She kept very still until his golden-eyed gaze eventually slid off of her and returned to wandering the room restlessly. "But the owl? Who would… Hm. No matter."

"...These …lineages. You said you had been tracking them? …Do you know their current locations?"

"Al-Rabisu." The order member who had spoken until now—who could not be more obviously the leader if she tried—gestured sharply to the group behind her, waving one hand imperiously.

One of the others, part of the cluster that had hung back, busied himself forward in response, hurried movements and flailing bow screaming a ludicrous self-importance.

"Yes, my lord." This order member's voice creaked with age, and Roshan frowned. She had heard this voice somewhere before. "We have kept very close records of their current locations, as best as we are able to. I can tell you where they are."

The Sage's earlier reaction had apparently not gone unnoticed by her captors either, because the decrepit Al-Rabisu blundered eagerly along; "The line of Al-Dhiyb, for example, currently resides in Bilād Fā—"

…The pompous old windbag seriously could not be this stupid.

Roshan fought to keep her incredulity from showing on her face, trying to remain as small and unnoticeable as possible, all-too-aware of the golden opportunity about to be handed to her.

A sudden and frightening look of rage passed over the Sage's face, and he surged upwards, staggering to his feet, teeth bared and violence in his eyes, lunging forward towards the masked fool in a way that made it clear the chains the Order had bound him with had only ever been a minor inconvenience.

"srṛæsnos!" he roared, and Al-Rabisu quailed back, falling silent.

A jolt of fear ran through her at the idea of one of these …things running wild in her homeland. It had never occurred to her before.

After a moment, the Sage seemed to remember himself, insensate wrath and aura of killing intent fading away once more into the calm, impassive demeanor he'd otherwise borne throughout the interaction.

"...In writing, fool." The Sage sighed, tilting his head slightly to glance pointedly at her. She glared back at him.

No! Roshan seethed quietly. Where in Pārs?

"Ah. I… of course, Al-Najm." Al-Rabisu loitered uncertainly, clearly unsure whether to take this as a dismissal or not. "We have a book containing the most recent genealogies, and several more extensive records in—" the mask turned slightly, as though the fool had remembered her presence once more."—in. Ah. … in a secure location."

"The book. Do you have it here with you now?"

"Y-yes, Lord. The others, however, are, as I said—" another nervous glance in her direction.

"Fetch. It." The Sage snapped with a dismissive wave of his hand, again cut short by the length of the chain, evidently growing tired of the doddering old fool's nervous fawning.

Damn it. Roshan thought.

Al-Najm watched with raptor-like intensity as Al-Rabisu beckoned to one of the other, obviously lower ranked cultists, who hurried from the room, returning a few minutes later with a large, leatherbound book.

Al-Rabisu snatched the book from his lackey, and turned with a flourish to proudly present it to the Sage, but Al-Najm had already turned his attention elsewhere.

"You." He said, eyes fixed in an unblinking stare on the Order member who wore that strange dagger at their belt. He raised his hands, letting the chain rattle pointedly. "Unbind me."

"Well? What are you waiting for? Do as our lord commands, Al-Azdaha."

With a hesitant glance at their leader, Al-Azdaha stepped closer to the Sage with a submissive "Yes, Ra's Al-Af'a."

The Sage tilted his head, smiling at the man in a way that was decidedly unkind, snorting in amusement when the man flinched as he shifted, the chains falling to the floor with a heavy clunk. His eyes flicked briefly to stare at the leader of the Order over the man's shoulder in an almost challenging, contemptuous manner as he abruptly stepped forward into the Dragon's personal space.

One hand raised up to catch the man by the jaw as the Sage leaned forward, whispering something faint and unintelligible into the man's ear.

There was an imperceptible shift in the air.

One of the other cultists, a tall, imposing figure whose mask reminded her of the carven depictions of the ancient kings of Sumer, visibly started forward, a hand flying to his sword as he strode towards the pair.

The Sage released the cultist, straightening his posture and smiling gently in a way that did not reach his eyes. The man hunched over slightly, bringing one hand up to clutch at his abdomen and made a wet, gurgling, choking sound before abruptly toppling backwards. The Sage watched him fall impassively before flipping the stolen dagger into a backwards grip.

The room quickly descended into a blur of bloody chaos after that.

In the space of a half-a-dozen heartbeats, half the upper ranks of the Order lay dead before they could so much as blink - killed by this... scrawny and underfed seventeen year old street thief while beaten and wounded from having been tortured.

Well, almost.

One of them, her masked headdress having been knocked loose during the short, brutal fight by the same backhanded, close-fisted jab to the throat that had sent her sprawling to the floor, flailed slightly where she lay on the carpeted floor with a desperate croaking noise, sputtering uselessly for air.

"Oh?" The Sage turned at the sickening wheezing noise. His eyes roved searchingly across the grim scene around him, and then fell upon the struggling woman.

"Ahhhhh." he said, sounding almost sympathetic. "A crushed trachea? Hm." He grimaced, and then shook his head.

"...Sloppy." he muttered with a self-critical frown.

He bent over and wrenched his stolen dagger from the supine corpse of the Order member at his feet, pausing only briefly to tug the mask away and tilt the man's head to glance searchingly at his neck, and then straightened and prowled across the room, tucking the dagger into his own belt as he did so, eventually coming to a stop to stand over the downed, struggling cultist.

"Shhhhhh. Shhhh." he murmured absently. "Now, now. Hush."

He lowered himself into a crouch beside her, and gently tilted her head to the side, inspecting her neck intently as he had done with the others.

…He was looking for marks. Roshan realized. Marks of the Ancients. Like his.

The woman made a choking, bubbling noise of what was probably protest, one hand coming up to grasp pleadingly at the Sage's arm.

Evidently failing to find what he had been looking for, Al-Najm looked up with a scoff of disappointment.

He glanced at the offending hand with a look of momentary disgust and open annoyance that quickly softened into an expression that might have been mistaken for pity if it weren't for the bright gold, slightly too-wide-eyed stare that accompanied it, gaze fixed not on her face but on her throat, body and aura both radiating predatory killing intent.

"Ahhhh, Yes. A word of advice, my dear." He said, tone hushed and syrup-sweet, movements gentle and slow as he removed her hand.

A slow, deliberate blink, and then he leaned slightly forward, giving her a tattered, encouraging smile that was more a smug, meaningful flash of too-sharp teeth than it actually was a gesture of empathy or concern. "If you or your kind ever seek to awaken a sleeping 'god' again—It would behoove you to do some basic research first."

"Perhaps," He said, drawing the dagger from his belt. "For example, you should consider taking more care in choosing one who would be grateful for what you have done. One who would gladly play the puppet to your every whim."

"Perhaps one who is blind." he snorted, lips quirking upwards just the tiniest bit more with amusement and eyes going slightly distant, as though he had just recalled some private joke.

"That would be my advice, is all." he shrugged.

The sweet, dead-eyed smile vanished from one heartbeat to the next, his face going cold with the emotionless expression of one well-versed in the arts of death as he struck like lightning, the dagger thumping unceremoniously home into the heart of Ra's Al-Af'a.

"Not that you will need it." he muttered, and then, to Roshan's surprise, he reached out and gently swept a hand across the woman's face, shutting her eyes with some murmured blessing.

Just like that? She marveled distantly. Just like that, the head of the Snake that had lurked patiently in the grass at her siblings-in-shadows' feet had been cut, its coiling stranglehold on the Caliphate going still and slack.

Oh, there would still be death-throes yet to come, she knew, and more snakes would come writhing from their den eventually. Roshan was no fool. This war of theirs was far from over.

But still...

And then the young Sage all but bounced over to stand before her, flashing her a sweet, boyish smile—one that reached his eyes this time, genuine and true—as though he were not wounded, covered in gore and actively wiping a splatter of red arterial blood from his stolen robe.

"Well." He said, elongating the word in that same drawling purr as he toyed absently with the dagger he had stolen from the Order member, circling her in a slow, leisurely manner. "Do you have a name, o Daughter of No One? Or shall I call you Al-Waquwāqi?"

She remained silent, glaring at the dagger in his hands.

"Hmm." the Sage hummed, staring at her with a considering frown. He circled her again, briefly coming to a stop to her right just out of her line of sight. The flat of the blade tapped twice against her right shoulder. "Neck." he said, expectantly as he stepped forward just into view, pointedly looking away and brushing an offending speck of gore from his robes in a way that made it clear she was not being considered a threat even in the slightest.

After stubbornly hesitating just long enough to make her point, she reluctantly tilted her head to the left, shaking her head slightly so that her hair fell away to expose her neck.

"Hm." The Sage said again, sounding oddly disappointed this time. After a moment, he resumed his infuriating, shark-like circling.

"...No?" he said, turning and smiling at her like she'd made a hilarious joke, "I know that you can speak, o' cuckoo—you spoke to both Dervis and ourselves easily enough this morning."

Uncertain, she called upon her gift.

…He still shone that baffling blue. Even so, she stubbornly refused to answer as she craned her head, struggling to keep him in her line of sight as he passed behind her again.

"…Or." Something in his voice changed again. Grew lighter, softer. Almost as though… No. She was imagining things. He stopped. "…perhaps is it that you have cast off even your own name as well as that of your sire-and-dam?"

Though she could see neither the Sage nor the dagger they held, something in her other sense kept her keenly aware of the dagger's exact position in space as it hovered near her neck for a moment before drifting downwards.

The bastard Ancient was playing with her. Like a cat batting a mouse around.

"Ah, no matter. Suit yourself, my dear." The dagger darted downwards, her sixth sense screamed, and she dove forward, twisting sideways so that her shoulder took the brunt of the impact as she hit the floor.

There was an amused snort above her, and belatedly she realized that the chafing pressure and uncomfortable tension in her shoulders had released as the bindings linking her wrists behind her back fell away.

"Al-Waquwāqi it is, then."

She rolled onto her back, eying the Sage with open suspicion as she propped herself up onto one elbow and pulled a throwing knife from her boot, squinting as the flickering torchlight behind him cast his face in deep shadow.

…There was something wrong with the Sage's silhouette.

Al-Najm rolled his eyes and muttered to himself in the Ancient's tongue, too fast for her to even guess at what was said, but tone obviously disparaging. There it was again. That strange shift in the Sage's voice.

"Are you going to writhe around on the floor pointlessly until the palace guards inevitably come, Al-Waquwāqi? Or are you planning on getting up at some point?" The Sage asked dryly.

The hand that was held out to her in an offer of assistance was… slimmer, smaller than she had expected. She refused the offer of help on principle, and lurched to her feet.

"...Why?" she demanded, once she had regained her footing. She tried to circle to the side to get a better look at the young man. Infuriatingly, the Sage turned and began to make for the nearest window.

"Why what?" The Sage queried back, tossing the question over their shoulder. Lighter. Softer. She had not been imagining it.

"Why tell you to get up off the ground before the guards find what we have done?"

'We?' She hadn't done anything.

Ah. Was the boy trying to bond by implicating her in his crime?

She stared at them flatly as she belted her sword and its scabbard back on once more. There was something… if she could just figure out what…

They paused and lingered by the window, apparently waiting for her to finish retrieving her weapons.

Very casual and unhurried for someone who had just been urging her to move before the guards came to investigate. Either arrogant and overconfident to the extreme, or a damned fool.

Al-Najm remained silent and just stood there, watching her from where they leaned against the wall.

Ugh. They were going to force her to actually ask. "...Why free me?" she ground out as she made quick work of reattaching her Hidden Blade to her bracer, keeping one eye on the Ancient incarnate all the while. She tested the blade briefly, humming in satisfaction when the blade sprung free without issue.

"Ah." The Sage said, tilting his head slightly to the side, too-bright golden eyes shining with interest as he observed the blade. Frowning at the Ancient, she disengaged the mechanism, allowing the blade to slide back into its housing with nary more than the faint whisper of cold steel.

"...We hunt the same prey, my dear." The Sage proclaimed, sounding bizarrely thrilled by the nonsensical pronouncement. "Which makes us allies, no? I suppose I must thank you for the rescue. I might have… mhmm… underestimated the situation, initially."

'The same prey'? What was that supposed to mean?

The Sage declined to elaborate any further, instead falling silent again. After one last wary glance at the carnage the other had left in his wake, Roshan reluctantly strode over to join Al-Najm at the window, and the Sage unceremoniously flung the window open, allowing unobstructed moonlight to stream into the room. As Al-Najm passed close to her, they turned to look her directly in the eyes and smirked, momentarily brushing back the dark hood.

She flinched, startling backwards.

More than just his voice alone, the reborn Ancient's face, no, entire form, had… changed. A rounded jawline, clean of the slight scruff she knew had been there only moments before as though it had never existed. A slighter figure, somewhat obscured by the ill-fitting dark robes. Long, loose hair that was quickly twisted up into a makeshift bun. The only things that made her sure the person she was looking at was still the same being was the presence of the same wounds that marred her face and the unchanged aquiline golden eyes.

The girl winked.

Al-Najm snorted in amusement as she hopped up onto the window frame and then out onto the ledge below, trotting forward a few paces and then lingering.

Waiting for her?

"You should see your face, o cuckoo." she called back.

"Div." Roshan hissed, reluctantly following.

"A jinni? Oh, my dear Al-Waquwāqi, no, no. We are no djinn. We are merely…" Voice shifting once more to its original pitch and range, the Sage paused thoughtfully, and then turned, once more wearing the face she had first met them under, flashing her a smile full of too-sharp teeth that glinted in the moonlight.

"...Something more than man."
They laughed.