In the Hours Before Sunrise 

All of the Anthimati’s so​-​called ‘ransom brood’ had children: Azalea Anthimati, Paparouna “Oosma” Anthimati, and last of all, Yarrou Anthimati. Of those children, Edu was the first hatched, get of Oosma. Edu had about a year in his mother’s care before he was seized by the Pantheca.

You see, the three had fought for Eothi as nymphs. Now, their loyalty to her is debatable — their childhood was spent in the care of Immolata’s Unbrood agents (never Immolata himself), and the memories weren’t unpleasant. When they became the ransom brood — when Immolata handed them over to Eothi in exchange for a ceasefire — they were cogent enough to object, and their objections went unheard. But they had no reason to hate the Pantheca — they’d certainly been treated fairer than Eothi had — and that, perhaps, is why Azalea tried to return to Immolata. She was rejected. Her loyalty to Eothi, then, can’t be taken for granted.

All three were present in the final battles of the first grand trial, but given the reputation of the cursed eyes, it would be hypocritical to take this as proof of their allegiance, not when plenty of Eothi’s supporters were cleared with the infamous ophisrhodon defense.

They returned to the Pantheca distrusted and disgraced, but free. They served in the wardens, and it was enough for them to believe they might have a place there. Then Oosma had a child.

Edu was taken in accordance with Immolata’s new policy for traitorous clans. Ironic, when the ransom brood were ‘traitors’ due to Immolata’s own schemes, but no argument swayed the law.

Oosma’s example taught the rest to keep their offspring cloaked in secrecy.

Of the three, two were ladies. What was soon discovered is that the ophisrhodon, like so many blood secrets, is matrilineal. They discovered this later, the hard way: Yarrou had been the last to sire.

Lacking the cursed eyes, Yarrou realized his children as all but useless to the effort of rebuilding the clan. It pained him, and disappointed any hope that he’d know Azalea’s joy in caring for her children. If his children would not further the cause of making clan Anthimati powerful and secure… he’d have to do it himself.

But this dismissal ate at his children, and nursing a kind of indignant despair in Chrysaor Anthimati, Yarrou’s second hatched. While the first child fled the clan that held no love for them, never to return, Chrysaor reacted differently. Desperate for some relevance in the resurging clan, he sought some guarantee of better position for his own children; so he married a daughter of Azalea.

Chrysaor hatched in a time of transition for the Anthimati. As he went from arch​-​fiend to overscourge, Immolata never wavered in his suspicion of the clan, nor ceased in his promulgation of that suspicion — but for a time, there seemed a real chance for them to be swept up in the wave of social progress inundating the Pantheca. Brismati were marrying laybrood; the court recognized the Asetari tribe as a clan, though they rejected their claim to ‘elder’ status. What a victory for the Pantheca’s principles it would be, if this progress could turn to light even the architects of the Alliance’s fall. After all, Eothi was, if nothing else, no dominionist; that legacy in their clan had been severed, no one left to propagate it.

Still, among the surviving Anthimati, there was no love for Eothi, not with how the first grand trial ended and the part they played in it. When Edu was taken, for Oosma, it birthed a hatred of the Pantheca. As Edu rose through the ranks, ignorant of his roots, it fomented outrage and envy among the rest of them.

It was this sentiment that catalyzed Yarrou’s growing influence. Most of clan Anthimati at that point was Azalea’s brood and grandbrood, but Yarrou and and his brood’s influence seeped into the cracks of their resolve. Azalea had a vision of Anthimati as noble, productive facet of the Pantheca’s edifice, respected and integral. Yarrou had a vision of the Pantheca, if it should remain at all, as but one piece of his — their — control. He dreamed of ruling something even greater — an empire.

He wasn’t a revivalist, not at first, but he became a skilled user of the ophisrhodon once he turned his focus from his children to personal power. He cultivated it to a higher stage of development than either of his sisters, or any of their children. A full five fangs and venom potent to crush a mind with but a few drops. Even at this height of power, he felt chained to ignorance; none of the clan had even known beforehand whether their children would inherit the eyes. If that eluded them… what other secrets had they lost? What else had Eothi denied them? Yarrou asked this, and Azalea had no answer; so the young looked to him for an answer.

Still Yarrou persisted his ophisrhodon development, yet no sixth fang came. He had reached a plateau, and there was no further breakthrough, only minute refinement. He branched out from his blood secrets to pursue other avenues. The Anthimati’s constitution did not lend themselves to ichorcraft, so Yarrou mastered the conventional ways of nervecasting, and delved into the binding arts of spellbrands. He received correspondence from the east, advising his progression and discussing political and philosophical matters.

Despite all this, the heights of power Eothi had once enjoyed still escaped him. What was he missing? Desperate, he ventured into the ash and melted stone of Castle Veilgloom, throne of the dead dominion the Anthimati had once ruled. Perhaps some scrap of document had survived the flames of damnation.

Past the ashes and crumbling walls — past the husks of past Anthimati still curled in charred and forgotten agony — he found a moondial surrounded by utterly still, black waters circling in protection an ancient stone structure of worship: the Erevos shrine. Yarrou could recognize the regalia of those cults banned in every corner of the Pantheca, not unlike the bat​-​devout who praised still their dead emperor, or the druids.

He found stone walls and tablets recording the clan’s mythology. He wasn’t the first to pick through the ashes, nor the first to gaze upon the stones — he was, however, the first (save perhaps Eothi) to gaze upon them with a five​-​fanged ophisrhodon.

When he returned, he spoke of finding a secret chamber beneath the ruins of the Erevos shrine. There he found tablets which spoke of insights and truths even Eothi was ignorant of. He told of revelations of the Anthimati’s true nature, spoke of the curse of treachery, and how there was a development beyond even the five​-​fang — a shining eye of enlightenment that would grant the user power to rival the angels.

Yarrou suggested they rebuild the old clan castle — Azalea refused, all too aware of the optics that would have. This struggle laid bare the faultlines in the recovering Anthimati clan. Who led them? Azalea, their mother and grandmother? Yarrou, the most powerful among them?

The answer came from neither. News of unrest in the east had reached, followed shortly by a declaration that sparked joy in the dissatisfied hearts of the Anthimati: Immolata had finally died, freeing them of his rule. And who did they have to thank for this? Synthia Shadowbane, who praised the angels the Anthimati descended from, to whom the endowed blood of a noble clan meant something — who, in those implication​-​shadows cast by her rhetoric, seemed nurse a promise to build something greater — the empire Yarrou dreamed of.

Some of the Anthimati flinched from the hatred that gripped the radicals of the east — the sermons of invective, the bodies of undesirable put on gruesome display. But most simply frowned in discomfort, hesitated in momentary silence when Yarrou suggested joining with the Shadow Court. There was one who marched with enthusiasm to Yarrou’s side — his son Chrysaor, inwardly praying his devotion would bear some fruit. For my child’s sake, he thought.

There was only one willing to speak out, to give voice to the better nature that floundered in each of them: Azalea. For her courage, she was the first example.

Yarrou executed his sister in front of all the clan.

And he said, “Witness the wages of cowardice.”

As if to lend credence to Yarrou’s actions, it was this act which granted him the ophisrhodon akmi, elevated him untouchably above the rest of the Anthimati. And so it was him they followed, leaving Azalea to rot, her ophisrhodon taken as ornament for his staff.

That was how the Anthimati once more found themselves on the wrong side of a grand trial. This time, Westhold had less mercy for them; Yarrou remained on the books as a most wanted defector. Masked and skittish, the rest of the Anthimati barely escape this fate.

Per the treaty that ended the second grand trial, Yarrou was of course safe and welcome in Shadowhold, along with the rest of the surviving Shadow Court. But Yarrou was uncontent to rule over a small parcel of land — subordinate to a defanged Synthia, no less.

Refusing to stay in Shadowcourt and fugitive in Westhold, one might think Yarrou had reached the end of his rope, disgraced and bereft of allies. But to the Anthimati that remained by his side, he was instead exultant, gripped by a singular mania. His ambitions only heightened in his ill​-​fortune. To his remaining followers, he was no longer Arch​-​fiend Yarrou or Patriarch Yarrou. “No,” he said. “Address me henceforth… as King Yarrou.”

As a fugitive, he returned to the castle Veilgloom in a forgotten woods, examined once more the stone tables of the Erevos shrine. When he spoke to his followers again, he claimed his akmi had witnessed insight etched in stone that eluded even the five​-​fang. Guided by these new doctrines, Yarrou creates the Kult of Kaos.

His last surviving child, now known as Chrysaor of the golden sword, had proven his worth in the second trial, rising to the rank of his second in command. Then, in the late 1680s, Chrysaor at last sires a child.

Every king needs a successor. Lacking the ophisrhodon, Chrysaor was simply unfit, whatever other virtues he may possess. But the mother of his child, one Callirhoe Anthimati, was a loyal daughter of Azalea. She would bear nymphs with the blood secret.

Thus, Prince Agrios hatches.

Preparation defined Agrios’s childhood. Training to become a fighter without equal, grooming to become a unwavering believer in Yarrou’s doctrine. After the failure of the second grand trial (in correspondence, Synthia insisted it success, their machinations proceeding as planned), not all of the Anthimati followed Yarrou into Veilgloom. The least invested, the apprehensive and half​-​principled, backed out. So unfurled a diasphora of sorts, a core of the clan huddling in fugitive shadows around Yarrou while distant branches broke off and fell away.

This threat of desertion is why grandfather’s authority coiled so strictly around young Agrios and his parents. It would not do to have Yarrou’s most promising heir whisked away and spoiled by one of Azalea’s babes. Still, whenever the watchful eye of his grandfather averted, Callirhoe and Chrysaor loved their son. His mother told soft stories of the world outside of castle Veilgloom, and while his father remained stoic, no wound however minor went uncared for — and there were many, as Agrios was trained by his father in the art of the sword. Still, for all his quiet care, it was his mother who let him feel true warmth and protection.

It was this secret affection, the sense of safety, that led Agrios to feel comfortable confiding in her — he despised his grandfather’s strictures. He was going to leave the castle soon, find some place far away from him. It was a child’s impulse (by then Agrios was only three seasons pass seven years old), and Callirhoe shook her head. She wouldn’t accompany him, begged him not to invoke his grandfather’s wrath, but he didn’t listen. He needed to go.

Despite his age, Agrios did have some cleverness. He’d made maps of the castle, as strange and spatially wrong as it lay, and he’d reasoned out what the other clan members and their beholden would do. He’d figured ways around locks and traps. He made a plan, revised it over and over, and executed it flawlessly.

Just outside the castle, Yarrou and Callirhoe were waiting for him, his mother crying.

She’d revealed his plans to grandfather.

“I’m sorry. I had to. I couldn’t—”

Agrios stood paralyzed by this betray, swaying, eyes pale. He stared at his mother as if he’d never known her, as if he’d never truly seen who she was. He stared and stared and — the world turned red. He saw her. He could see right through her. He sensed the emotions roiling within her, heard her despairing and self​-​loathing thoughts whispered in his ear. Agrios cried out, lifting a hand to his head, where blood poured in thick rivulets and felt for the wound — had he been attacked? — but no, there was something new there.

He had awoken his ophisrhodon.

Minutely, Yarrou’s palps curled upward.

“And now you see. You desire to escape, then?” he asked. “If your will is true, nothing should withstand it. No obstacle should deny you. So tell me — no, show me, prince, the truth of your will.”

Agrios only stared, anger warring with despair and fear on his face.

“Is it not clear what impedes you, boy? Will you suffer this betrayal, this dispute of your will?” Yarrou gestured at Callirhoe.

“Mother.” He looked up, finally meeting her eye. “Please.”

“No. Strike her down, Agrios… lest you deny your own will.”

“No.” Agrios shook his head. “I can’t. I won’t.”

“Then you are weak. And tell me, grandson,” — his voice had taken on a dangerous quiet, words coiling as if the punctuation would be a serpent’s strike — “Have I any use for a heir who is weak?”

Agrios only stared, as fear won against anger on his face.

“Take out your sword,” — Agrios had stolen his father’s shining sword for his escape — “and do not make me repeat my order.”

Years of obedience had him following the orders before he could even hesitate. He held his sword in a practiced grip, memories of training with his father. He stepped toward his mother. He lifted his sword.

“Do it.”

Callirhoe looked at him with paralyzed fear, pentagons of an ophisrhodon’s geas present in her eyes, preventing her escape or even flinching. Her fear had reached an apex just as the sword did, and she screamed as he took aim and swung.

The blade fell — and he did not strike at his mother. But the blade didn’t get anywhere near hitting Yarrou. Without even an expression marring his neutral mask, grandfather lifted a hand and crackling force sends Agrios backward. Seallessly, in less than a second, Yarrou had struck out with cursed lighting, a binding arts technique searing into his grandson’s flesh. As if terrible lightning were a hundred worms burrowing into his flesh, birthing a thousand burning children as they feasted. He convulsed.

“That was stupid, boy,” Yarrou said. “But you aren’t stupid, are you? You knew who really stood in the way of your desire, and you had the will to do something about it.

Agrios had no words but some stuttering. Hemolymph was pouring out of the crater in his torso. His throats had opened up, and his breaths sputtering out of tracheal tubes before reaching his head. The world was getting dark, and in one compound eye nothing at all was seen.

“But if you won’t do it, I will.” Yarrow turned toward his mother, lifting his staff.

“No,” Agrios rubbed faintly. He couldn’t manage sentences, but he was a vesperbane, and the ichor in him was clotting, crawling over the wound. “Do not…”

“Oh? Shall I kill you instead, and tell her not to fail with her next child?”

“Let her… go,” he says. “You want heir — I will… be…”

Yarrou lowered his gnarled staff to the ground, using it as a cane as he slowly stepped towards the puddle of blood and mantis that backtalked him. “How noble. But you’ve mistaken me. When I want something, I get it. I want a heir, and I will have one. You are in no position to offer what is mine to me.”

Standing over his grandson, Yarrou lifted his staff, and stabbed into his open wound, thorns along its length biting into him. Two baleful glowing ophisrhodon watched him — the one rising from Yarrou’s head, and the one at the head of his staff — Azalea’s. Poison flowed into Agrios from the staff’s thorns, and the nightmare agony of the akmi’s dreamworld engulfed him.

When he awoke once more in the prison​-​like confinement of the castle, Callirhoe was nowhere to be found.

Something else had happened after the second grand trial, while Yarrou hid away in secrecy. The Great Triumvirate separated — Anna learning haruspicy from the Thimithi alongside Cinderel, Immolata’s heir, and Uvema had united the Asetari and other wingless tribes under the aegis of Duskhold. This left Edu alone, without a family. Training an apprentice wasn’t enough, and he sought out the second overscourge’s records to uncover his true origins. Like that, he found his way to the Anthimati. Not to Yarrou, but to Paparouna — or Oosma, as she liked to be called. Oosma wasn’t like Azalea, nor quite like Yarrou. Ruthless and sadistic, she fit in well on the wrong side of the second grand trial, but held no allegiance to Yarrou’s ideology. She desperately wished to see Edu again, care for her son, and so when he sought her out, she had few compunctions distancing herself from the worst of the Anthimati. Edu was a scholar, friends with a wingless rights radical and a self​-​styled prophet; he was above bigotry.

Like that, Yarrou’s faction dwindled further, even as the Kult of Kaos expanded its influence. Still, Yarrou’s most valuable disciple remained firmly in his grasp. Uncertain of his mother’s fate, Agrios had thrown himself into loyalty to Yarrou, hoping somehow it could make a difference.

Under Yarrou’s tutelage, Agrios quickly became adept in his use of the ophisrhodon. He benefited immensely from a trick the patriarch had once idly theorized, but was of no use to the wizened old mantis: a way of using the ophisrhodon to watch not only a bug’s brain, but their entire nervous system. Agrios took it farther than Yarrou had ever considered, and attained a talent unique among the clan: in years, his ophisrhodon’s perception grew quick and studied enough to be of useful in combat, granting him insight into an opponent’s tactics, and the mechanics of how they moved. At ten years old, he was outmanevering adult vesperbanes; after one spar with a master of martial arts, he could replicate their movements after just weeks of practice and adaptation, no teaching needed.

All the same, Agrios began to approach the limit of what he could learn while confined to the castle. He never spoke of word of wanting to escape again, an observation Yarrou himself had voiced. For Agrios, any thought of trying to escape only brought back memories of that day, and what his desires had cost him. Callirhoe’s fate was still uncertain, and the cursed lighting that had struck Agrios left branding wounds the vespers would never let heal completely. The pain dimmed but never left him.

The disfigurement unsettled Yarrou’s servants; the dark, branching scarsbulged from Agrios’s chitin. He remained blind in one compound, the eyeflesh burnt and nauseating to behold, so he wore a eyecap strapped to his head. There was a message in his injuries, about how even Yarrou’s closest family could not escape his wrath. Chrysaor of the golden sword remained highly ranked, but no one could miss that Yarrou’s regard for him had cooled considerably.

When Yarrou finally allowed Agrios to leave the castle and carry out missions for the Kult of Kaos, he was never taken with his father, always other servants.

Agrios and Edu’s path cross some years later. In the incident that led to Uvema’s death, the Triumvirate had each attacked one cathedral the Kult conducted operations within. Anna cut down all of them but Agrios — he was a nymph of but eleven years then, and she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She leaves him there, telling him to find another path. He wished he could.

When Agrios encounters Edu, though, the familial connection is enough for Agrios to slip Yarrou’s leash for just a while — it was not freedom (Oosma may be removed from Yarrou, but she was not free of him), but it was distance, and Agrios cherished it. The result of Agrios meeting Edu is, for a few months, they become teacher and student.

And then Agrios returns, and it feels little has changed. Whenever the strain of obedience to Yarrou wears on him, he thinks of his mother, hope flares in his chest, and he pushes deeper. It’s not long before Agrios has killed many on Yarrou’s orders.

Still, it’s through that relation with Edu that salvation comes. Edu’s standing with the middling radical factions of the clan, and his cleverness sees him piece together the clues and gossip, enough to conclude that Callirhoe is alive, far from Castle Veilgloom, and watched by Yarrou’s servants. It’s a threat hanging over Agrios and he’d never even vocalized — was he waiting for a slip up to leverage it?

But no. Thinking a moment more, Agrios anticipates exactly how Yarrou would have used it. If Agrios stepped out of line once, grandfather would inform him that Callirhoe was dead. No warning, no mercy, ‘only the consequence of defiance,’ he would say.

So Agrios begs Edu for help. Find my mother, he says, and let her go somewhere Yarrou will never find her. Don’t tell her why, don’t even tell her it was me. Please.

With a quiet nod, Edu accepts.

Agrios redoubles his service to Yarrou — in his greatest hopes, this is to mislead him into thinking he had nothing to do with Callirhoe slipping to leash; in his sober hopes, this is to perhaps assuage his rage when he learns the truth.

Months pass, and Agrios wonders if there’s something simmering in grandfather’s mind, but no retribution quite comes. Slowly, Agrios realizes there was a deeper implication to his play. Without quite registering it, Agrios had found an ally with power to match that of grandfather’s. Edu was one third of the Great Westhold Triumvirate, a hero of the second grand trial, while Yarrou had never been in a grant trial he didn’t lose. Agrios didn’t know whether Edu could be defeated in a fight with grandfather. But, he thought with a species of hope, neither did Yarrou.

Agrios knew something big was coming. The Kult of Kaos ramped up its operations, increasing raids and demonstrations. But from where Agrios was positioned — ranked high, just shy of the inner circle — he knew there was more depth to the picture. All of the attacks were, if anything, sound and noise to distract. Yarrou was looking for something, and his most trusted operatives were sent to more obscure locales — pre​-​Third Dominion ruins, the libraries of wasps and therids, and empyreans temples. Yarrou was searching for information, for lore lost and obscure.

That was how Agrios found himself blasting down the great stone doors of a quiet monastery in the western mountains. Far from any stronghold, there would be no vesperbane presence, just a few monks any Kultist could cut down with ease should they stood in the way of accessing their library. For that reason, Agrios was the only vesperbane of his high rank. (He’d be fiend or arch​-​fiend were he not a renegade, he thinks). Instead, the accompaniment is half a dozen low level members of the Kult, probably there to keep track of him than any necessity. He’d long reached the point where Yarrou saw no need to send minders with him — if for no other reason than because Agrios would rival any of them in power, even his father.

With mute surprise, it dawned on him that he was in charge now, at least for the sake of this mission. He’d gone from a child to be ordered around to one who gave orders. He should feel powerful. He feels as helpless as ever. Forget the minders; what mattered was the king, and his growth had not gotten him even close to matching his grandfather. He never would; the king’s authority was absolute.

Agrios stood, brooding while the Kultists he was ostensibly in charge of rushed into the monastery. (It was made of stone — carrying all those bricks up the mountain must have been years of grueling effort). Idly considering the stonework, Agrios decided he would wait here. He’d let them handle the laymants that populated this monastery; six banes, wretch level though they were, would be more than enough. Agrios tried another line of thought, but they all tended to end in the same place, as if by gravity. It seemed he couldn’t escape thought of grandfather and his authority, no more than he could escape the bug himself. Reaching this conclusion once more, he sighed.

Agrios strolled in slowly after the rest, not sparing a glance to the corpses of innocents that littered the interior of the monastery, marking his subordinates’ path. His horror and outrage had long ago iced over into powerless apathy. He noted how they killed even the monks that looked to have surrendered; Agrios didn’t think that was necessary, but what difference would stop them make, ultimately? If he protested, Yarrou would hear of it, and disapprove.

As Agrios went deeper into the monastery, he frowned. He’d taken his time following the rest; they should have cleared out the whole place by now. If they were amusing themselves with the laymants, he’d have to put a stop to that waste of time — but there were no screams that suggested torture. Indeed, there were no screams at all, and hadn’t been for more than a minute. All the noise of carnage had stopped, and yet the Kultists hadn’t returned.

Then he heard it — shouts of alarm, groans of shocked pain. Not the sound of civilians being slaughtered — no, it sounded like his allies. Agrios got moving, a jog. No need to run to their rescue (did they deserve one?), but still, something unexpected was happening. That was concerning, or at least interesting. Perhaps it would prove a momentary distraction.

Agrios came upon a corridor where three banes in Kult robes were down. A brief glance at their wounds — raptorial marks on this one’s throat, a head caved in as if by a fist on that one, and this one looks to have miscast bane blast to a remarkable extent, writhing as they succumbed to organ failure via systemic enervate dissolution. Agrios continued on.

In a more open chamber, a mantis in robes just like the slaughtered monks stood, three banes circling around them. They moved with a fluidity beyond grace, weaving around blows that should be faster than a layman could react. She threw punches that had the banes actually stagger, if only minutely. One bane made the signs for bane blast, dark aura along their arm belying the enervate rushing down it. The monk thrusts an open palm forward, hitting the enervate​-​channeling arm, and the aura ruptures outward, black nerve surging forth. That bane’s arm both melted and exploded. Their screams were raw.

Now the monk faced two banes. One is slashing forward with a sword — the monk catches it in a raptorial, and pulls. Agrios hears the spines snapping, their sword’s grille tearing chitin as it’s wrenched from its owner’s grip. The monk only holds it long enough to twist it around and throw her own weight behind it, sinking its tip into that bane’s head.

The last Kultist hesitates, staring down this laymant. (Was this even a laymant?). But the monk meets eye with them. Agrios catches their eyes flushing in the manner characteristic of a projectique’s attack. The bane freezes where they stand. A moment passes, and then they collapse.

Agrios lifts an antennae. Knocking someone out with nouprojection was an easy trick, but now there came no rise and fall of the abdomen. Had she stopped their heart with a mental attack alone? Agrios had heard of ophisrhodon users managing that.

After years of training.

His eyes returned to the monk with renewed interest, and a growing heavy feeling — was this respect? Admiration?

He could see they hadn’t left their fighting stance, but made no move to attack the newcomer.

“Remarkable violence,” Agrios started, “for a monk.”

“They deserved worse. To bring death and depravity to a place this sacred…” The monk bares their mandibles. “You arrive in their company, yet without their robes. You dress regally, as a battle​-​queen of eld… you are their superior?” Agrios was still a nymph, and a tiercel at that; but he dressed the part of a battle​-​queen instead, wearing prideful ropes tight against his chitin, antennae protectors rising like a horned crown, and golden regalia adorned him. The monk finished, “Leave at once, and no more blood need be spilled.”

“ ‘They deserved worse’,” he echoed her. “And yet you’ll let me go?”

“You do not wear their robes, and you do not attack me. You watched me kill them, and made no move to save them.”

Agrios waved it off. “Sow merciless brutality, reap merciless brutality. They were monsters.”

“And you’re not?”

Agrios paused. “I suppose I am. Still, this business could have been done without any killing. It was unnecessary.”

“Your business,” she says, the question implicit.

“My superiors’, in truth. King Yarrou has designs on your library. Some of the scrolls you keep may have what he seeks, and I am to retrieve them if so.”

“You’re not here by choice, then.”

A shrug. “I could choose death.” Then he smiled. “We’re alike, in that way. See, if you stand aside, you can live. I will let you run, or perhaps remain here, if you like, so long as you don’t bother me. I don’t know if your sacredness is salvageable, but I’ll leave after I’ve taken whatever’s needed from your archives. Otherwise… if you remain in my way, you die.” Most of Yarrou’s bosses like to growl their threats, inject some menace, and advised him to do the same. Agrios simply spoke plainly.

Dangerously, the monk took the focus of her gaze off Agrios, looking down to the bodies. “You would make this threat, after what I did to the rest? Three of them failed, and there is one of you.”

“What you did was very impressive, especially for a laymant — you are a laymant?”

The monk tilted her head, and spoke slow as if to a child. “This is a monastery. We are of the first estate.”

“Don’t care what that is. I’m asking… do you have vespers?”

“The gifts stolen from the bats in ages past? I have not partaken.”

“Remarkable. Few civilians could withstand a real vesperbane, let alone win, let alone three at once. But do not overestimate your victory. I am nothing like them. You fought three at once, and won? I could fight all six while sitting down.”

The monk looked him up and down. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen years, ten instars.” It was a lie; he was sixteen, but was getting close. “It doesn’t matter.”

Another glance to the bodies. Every Kultist with him, he knew, had been years past teneral. “Boastful nymph.”

Agrios frowned. “This conversation was pleasant,” he started, “but I am no longer pleased. I’ve told you my terms. Step aside.”

No reply. Not even a wind up. The monk lunged forward. Agrios dodged backwards. She strikes out with raptorials, with kicks, attempts a grab. Agrios could see how she had been more than a match for the weaker Kultists he’d brought with him. But he’d been trained by Chrysaor and Yarrou; none of this phased him.

He tests her with experimental jabs and swings. She weaves around them, even parrying one.

This goes on for a minute. It becomes clear that Agrios can match her blow for blow and he shows no sign of tiring or faltering. The monk leaps up, midlegs rising to kick off of his torso. It’s a wild move, and brazen enough Agrios lets it happen, although he breaks a self​-​imposed limit and uses enervate to anchor himself to the ground; as a result, he doesn’t even budge.

The kick sends to monk across the room to land softly on her feet, panting. She looks down to meet Agrios’s eyes, and —

Agrios feels the probe of nouprojection. For a moment, the monk’s antennae flare as if seeing something unexpected, but feeling his mind being invaded reflexively sends his ophisrhodon glowing to life. The cursed eye casts a distortion​-​shield over his mind, blocking access, and then the eye orb is tilted to lock onto the other mind in the room.

And Agrios freezes. What he saw in her mind was not too shocking — he’d seen enough shrouded minds to recognize a distortique, even if the degree of distortion gave him pause (that was percipient levels of noudistortion).

No, what startled him was what else he saw. Rather hat he didn’t see: her nervous system. Even distortiques were vulnerable to Agrios’s famous trick — predicting and copying an opponent’s moves by tracking their nervous system with his ophisrhodon. But this monk… his trick was rendered useless; he discerned nothing.

It was as if her body had a distortion shield.

“What are you?” Agrios asked. He lowered his raptorials, hoping the signals of disengagement was clear.

The monk didn’t leave her stance, but she did lower her raptorials as well. “We of the first estate are students of the mind and body.”

“Explain,”

“Words are poor vessels for such disciplines of mentality and action. And you are a poor recipient.”

“What would it take for you to show me?”

“Wherefore? So that you may kill me more effectively?”

“My ability to kill you is not in question. Or did you think I was not holding back in our spar?” He shook his head. “But if I kill you, your mysteries die with you.”

“You don’t expect to uncover our practices in our archives? You are here on business — and I don’t suppose your ‘king’ will allow you the delay it would take for me to teach anything of our ways — were I even willing.”

Agrios glanced down to the Kultists. “Your library was damaged in our attack,” he said. “Details of your practice were… coincidentally… tragically lost. As a distortique, I know you would not break under torture.” Agrios taps his ophisrhodon. He looks away, and speaks as if speaking to someone else. “The only way for me to learn of this unprecedented blindspot to my ophisrhodon, oh my king, was for me to promise them mercy, and beg them to tell me. I won’t return until I’ve learned, and this may take months. Forgive me, my king.”

“You don’t serve by choice. You expect me to shelter a princess, be an… excuse for eluding this ‘king’ for some time.”

Agrios peered at the monk. At length, he nodded.

The monk breathed out, and then slowly looked around the room they are in. At the cooling bodies, at the fixtures and decorations that had been destroyed in the fighting. Finally, the monk said, “Our auspices have been sanctuary to many lost souls, over the years. Welcome to the Lost Winds Cloister. May serenity and strength arise within you, sister…?”

He’d thought she was being funny when she said princess, but again with ‘sister’. Agrios hadn’t yet finished developing — being a vesperbane, he was bigger than most tiercels his age, and his not being as big as a formel could be attributed to his being young.

And he was dressed like a battle​-​queen, by design. So what did it matter? He decided not to correct her on his gender.

“Agrios. Agrios Anthimati.”

“And I am Fumela of Tifon. Now… we shall… first dispose of the bodies, then wash away all of the blood, replace the candles, light the incense, and perhaps prepare a meal. Now, rid yourself of those ropes if you please — I will find you some robes. It will take many days of work and many rituals before this place is clean and purified of the stain your lot brought.”

Agrios frowned. “And if I don’t? If I refuse to be your slave?”

An antennae twitched, but Fumela’s visage softened. “Stay and rest, if you must. You will find, in time, there is little else to do around here. Should you decide to assist me, you will find your efforts rewarded — by my gratitude, and the answers you seek for your king, and for yourself.”

Defensively, Agrios said, “I do everything for my king.”

Fumela only hummed.

He picked another route of attack. “You would express gratitude? After what I’ve done?”

“What have you done? The desecration was committed by these bugs, not you. You did nothing, for good or for ill. You offered to spare me. Even when attacked, you didn’t truly try to harm me, did you? Above all else… you are not here by choice. If not you, would your king not have sent someone else — someone worse? Perhaps they would have killed me, and if that is so… have you not saved my life?”

Agrios arched an antennae. Remarkably cogent reasoning in the face of what should be a devastating loss, an infuriating threat to life and home — but then again, she was a distortique, of apparent skill beyond any other he’d seen. Unparalleled control of emotions should be more than expected, he realizes.

“Perhaps I saved your life,” he says. Bending down to begin helping her carrying bodies out of the monastery. “But when the time comes and I must end it… you must save your own.”

To be continued…