Cultivating Plants

"You have to trust me!" The woman shouted to such degrees that the blood vessels in her neck threatened to pop out. "I have died!"

"We want to believe you, sister…" A man covered in shadows sighed. "But we see you alive and breathing in front of us."

"Because I have resurrected!"

"Yes…" He pinched the bridge of his nose. "You have said that before. And you also said that you had your skull crushed. I can personally believe that you had your heart come to a halt and resuscitated for reasons either medical or related to vital arts, but your face is unblemished. Shouldn't it be emaciated if it had been crushed? Even if it magically reformed?"

"You are not listening to me!" The woman continued shouting. "Bring me the Grandmaster at once!"

"As I have told you, as an Initiate you have no right to call the Grandmaster."

"And that's why I am telling it to you! You have to call Grandmaster Ger…"

"There is no need for that," a deep voice cut through the room. "What is this hysteria all about?"

The source of the voice was no other than Zayn Gerges, the Grandmaster Assassin of Asina, though most people knew him as the head of the Gerges Pharmaceutical Company. The man calmly descended from a set of rickety metal stairs down to the frigid underground where their hideout was located. He was an old man but had the vice of exaggerating his age for he was only sixty, and thanks to the developments of his own company, he managed to look slightly younger than his age would indicate.

"It's about the Initiate we had infiltrated in the palace, sir!" The male Shadow announced.

"What about her?"

"She says that she has… died?"

Gerges turned to face the woman on the ground, she still wore her maid outfit. "Aren't you a bit old to get confused by hallucinations?"

"It was no hallucination, Grandmaster!" The Initiate tried to stand up but her legs failed her. "I am speaking the truth!"

"Sure you are…" The Grandmaster spoke with sarcasm. "Anyhow, does anyone have information on our little fugitive murderer?"

"That is why I am here!" The woman interrupted.

"Maybe I have not made myself clear, woman. I am not interested in your hallucinations." Zayn Gerges spoke with a tired and heavy tone.

"It was the emerald that revived me!" With those words, the derision in the Grandmaster's visage disappeared and was substituted by interest.

"Speak," he ordered cuttingly.

"It was the guest of the Calipha who killed me," the Initiate assassin that had been acting as a maid spoke softly, no longer in shouts, as someone finally paid her attention. "I may have… unwittingly irritated her, so she grabbed me by the head and crushed my skull."

"That does ring bells…" The old assassin said weakly with his hand before his mouth, so no one heard his blabbering. "I might understand that you might have been killed by overstepping your boundaries, but from what I am seeing, you are still very much alive, Initiate."

"Because she revived me, Grandmaster," the maid spoke… with zealousness. "The moment my skull was crushed my consciousness ended in the world of ideas like our lore said, but when I felt like my being was slipping toward a deeper hell, I saw it. Vibrant emerald, life itself."

As the Initiate spoke those words, her eyes shone with a zealotry Gerges had never seen before. Not in clergymen, not in the most intoxicated of assassins. This was the gaze of someone who had witnessed a miracle, the gaze of a true believer.

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"I see…" He added at a loss of words. "And this emerald in the insipid world of ideas revived you?"

"Yes!" The female Initiate spoke with fervor. "It was a touch of warmth and healing. Even if my mortal vessel had been destroyed, I felt my consciousness pulled back to it. When I opened my eyes – and I was surprised to even have eyes – I saw her. Beautiful shining emerald eyes, a goddess on earth, Aloe Ayad."

"Ayad?" Gerges frowned. "Are you saying that a sultanzade killed and revived you?"

"No, no. She is no mere sultanzade, that much I can tell. But… I do not know exactly who she is. I was only told that she was a dear guest of the Calipha and that she was to have the best service possible. If I had not been told that… I would have not died, but… oh, I almost need to experience it again."

She's high, and not on drugs, unfortunately. The Grandmaster thought as he peered into those eyes. Maybe they weren't bloodshot, but they were certainly injected with a worse substance than drugs.

Faith.

But emerald eyes and emerald color at the world of ideas… If this Aloe Ayad was a special guest of the Calipha herself and bears that surname… it must be an old sultanzade, hmm… There are only two beings of immense age in this world. Whilst the Calipha is public knowledge, there also exists her right hand in Sadina, the old and forgotten Rani-al-Sadina. The Vizier and the oldest children are dead, and it makes no sense that Naila-al-Ydaz would hide it. It would certainly make her claims of legitimacy and her position as the Heavenly Descendant stronger if there were more members who could fight against time. So what is going on here?

"This Aloe Ayad, is she… youthful?" The maid nodded at Gerges' question. Noted, he thought before changing subjects. "You might not know much about her, but did she have to revive you for a reason?"

"I…" The assassin fidgeted a bit. "Uhm, she, uhm, Aloe told me that if there were to be changes, these should not happen through blood. That diplomacy should trump out violence. Ah yes, we did speak in the world of ideas first!"

"You… spoke in the world of ideas?" The Grandmaster assassin didn't hide his dismay.

"Yes! She appeared to me in emerald and told me that if I was to never lay hands on any young master – not just hers – again, she would spare my death. And once I affirmed that I would not, she resuscitated me. The conversation was not exactly long, but between my death and resurrection… I say three minutes went by, though they felt like days."

Spare her death? The curious choice of words confounded the old assassin. "So your crushed skull was magically back in a single piece?"

"Quite," the woman nodded. "She also told me to quit the job and to run some simple errands beforehand, but that was it."

"She only made you run errands…?" Gerges asked with his visage twisted in amazement and the Initiate nodded in confirmation. "Did she only revive you back from the dead to have you run errands?"

"I would not dare to say only, but after I carried my duties as a maid, she dismissed me, yes."

"This is quite… hard to grasp."

"I understand you!" The Initiate shouted unprompted. "What has She meant by that? It is quite hard to grasp Her message?"

There were nuances in the woman's speech, a degeneration in the inflection of her words that sent shivers down Zayn's spine. He had been willfully trying to not think about it, but it was getting harder by the minute.

"For the time being, Aloe Ayad's intentions do not matter," he explained slowly as he expected an outburst from the woman, but it failed to come. "I am more interested in her whereabouts and any information that you may have on her."

"Well, as I have told you, I disappointingly have not much information about Her, but… I did overhear something on my way out of the palace. The Calipha expediated a letter of recommendation for Her for the School of Pill Manufacturers. I do not know if She will be there, but… at some point, maybe…"

"Good enough," Gerges sighed. "Give this woman a warm meal and a blanket. And someone bring me my assistant. I need people on the case."

Not after long, his assassins did identify Aloe Ayad in the School of Pill Manufacturers of Asina, but there was nothing they could do. The woman remained too public and visible for his operatives to strike. And when she allegedly went home at the end of the day, she vanished. Several operatives, several days, several eyes, and they all said the same thing: "We lost track of her."

Her whereabouts were not known beyond those few hours at the school. It was as if she materialized there, but it was obvious to any assassin that she was not one of them. She might appear there out of thin air, but those movements didn't fit the characteristics of hashish. After a handful of weeks, the trail grew cold as she no longer made any appearances at the school. Even though Zayn Gerges knew that she was the murderer at the warehouse thanks to her recognizable 'emerald', a fact that a handful of operatives managed to confirm a handful of minute outbursts of emerald coming from her at the world of ideas from time to time, no one saw her for a long time.

They end up forgetting about her.

But she was bound to appear again, and Gerges would strike then.