Red Wishes Black Ink

Uicha de Orak, Wildcard of the 6th Renown, representing the Forgotten One, an observer to a meeting of old enemies

Kayenna Vezz, sorcerer of the old Kingdom of Orvesis, on memory's road

The Firstson, Monster of the 1st Renown, representing the Forgotten One, right where he belongs

Lavicta, Elementalist of the 10th Renown, Gen'bi Nomads, suffering a headache

20 Blossum, 61 AW

The Gen'bi desert

40 days until the next Granting

At night, the temperature in the desert dropped. Uicha had learned to savor those first few hours of cold, letting goosebumps rise across his forearms, oddly enjoying how the dried salt on his skin crinkled and pinched. Eventually, though, it was back to misery, huddled beneath his cloak that felt too heavy during the day but far too light at night. He sat under the canvas lean-to Lavicta had provided, the Gen'bi woman snoring in her own tent on the opposite side of their small fire. She had recovered from her episode, albeit with a splitting headache.

"He's quiet now," she had told Uicha, tears in the corners of her eyes. "He don't ever shut up for long, but he's quiet for now."

There was relief in the Gen'bi woman's words. Uicha felt a similar satisfaction radiating from below the sands.

Lavicta had studied the crimson markings on the Firstson's chest for only a few minutes before shrugging to herself and then striding out across the dunes to chase down one of their errant mounts. Apparently, she had lived long enough with the strangeness of chanic and the desert that nothing surprised her. She calmed and fed their horsasis while Uicha finished gathering his things. They set up camp and Lavicta cooked. She paid little mind to the stoic gargoyle that stood at the edge of their fire's light. Complaining about her throbbing head, Lavicta quickly fell asleep.

Uicha could not brush off their new companion so easily. The gargoyle loomed with his wings folded around himself, head tilted back to stare up at the stars. The Firstson showed no sign of needing to eat or sleep. Uicha wondered if the creature had entered some kind of fugue state or if he was awake and thinking. What did something like that creature even think about?

As if in answer, the Firstson turned his head toward Uicha. "Sky," the gargoyle said, pointing upward. "Big sky."

Uicha looked away, staring at the burnt ribcage of the sand-mole they had roasted for dinner. The Firstson returned to regarding the heavens.

"What am I supposed to do with him?" Uicha asked. "As if I don't attract enough attention."

"Now you wish for my advice?" Kayenna Vezz replied.

The witch sat next to Uicha, outside the shielding of the lean-to, her pale skin tinted bluish by the moonlight. She sat with her legs out straight, her bare toes wiggling. The return of her monster had put her in a good mood.

"Our monster, now," Kayenna corrected him. "The Forgotten One has bonded him to you. He will know your feelings. Your wants. Your commands."

Uicha glanced at the Firstson and felt a pang of guilt. "He can sense what I'm feeling?"

"Yes," Kayenna replied. "But his kind are used to revulsion."

Frowning, Uicha fell silent for a moment, listening to the steady rhythm of Lavicta's snoring. "How could he be made a champion?" Uicha whispered. "He's not human. I know the oca'em have champions. And the trolls, I think? But they're people, aren't they? Close enough to people. They aren't stone and magic."

"The Forgotten One taunts the gods," Kayenna said. "It looks for ways to undermine their game."

Uicha put a hand on his sternum. The tips of his fingers were cold, but he could feel the heat from his Ink through the cloak. "So, that's what we are," Uicha said. "An insult to the gods."

"Yes," Kayenna said.

"How do you think they'll take it?"

"I think you are but the first provocation of many," Kayenna replied. "The vanguard."

"Perfect," Uicha said.

"Yes," Kayenna said. "Bad odds for the first into the breach."

Uicha put his palms flat in the sand, then flinched and lifted them up. He examined the ground thoroughly before relaxing again, worried that a coil of chanic might bubble up and grab him.

"My grandfather told me about a place in the east where champions go to take their Ink off," Uicha said. "I should've gone there instead of here. This desert has nothing for me. Lavicta is a nut and I doubt the rest of her people are any better."

"You would wash off the Ink and what? Become a fisherman?" Kayenna snorted. "Better to die a man's death on the island."

"What would you know about it?" Uicha turned to regard the ghost. "I wish I'd left you locked in a cupboard gathering dust. I wish you were out of me."

"And soon, you will go to a place where you can wish for that, or anything else," Kayenna said. She leaned back placidly, her open palms pressed to her knees, as if it felt good to stretch after such a long time trapped in Uicha's mind. "If you wish me elsewhere, our most ardent pursuers will lose interest in you. Then, you can wash off your Ink and return to the smaller life that better suits you. Maybe the gods will even be able to sort you now."

"Sort me?"

"You were empty when you found me, Uicha. A blankness of spirit that hid you from the gods. Perhaps, now, they would mark you as Flamingo Islands. You would be like the rest of Emza, fitted neatly into your place."

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Empty. Uicha glanced again at the Firstson. Had he been no different than that monster when Ambergran was destroyed? A hollow thing. A blank canvas. He chewed his lip.

"So, first I get rid of you," Uicha said. "Then the Ink."

"If your goal is a return to mediocrity," Kayenna said. "Yes."

Uicha bit back a reply, instead focusing on the rising heat on his chest. What would it mean to welch on his agreement with the Forgotten One? The symbols felt suddenly irritated, like he'd rolled through poison ivy. There was a wrongness to them. Perhaps he felt that more acutely here, in this blasted desert, where the entity he owed his life to tortured the nomads with its screams.

And yet, part of Uicha couldn't quite imagine giving up these abilities. Part of him yearned for more.

"Those few who taste it learn that power is addicting," Kayenna said. "When things are difficult, you pine for a simpler life. These are a child's thoughts. Yet, if you were to return to that kind of existence, you would think only of what you gave up, of what might have been. You would spend the rest of your life searching for a way back to power."

"Is that what you want?" Uicha asked her. "Is that why you want me to wish you somewhere else? Somewhere that you could be in control?"

Kayenna stood up, brushing off her backside even though no sand had stuck. She had not left an indentation in the desert floor. The fire flickered, but Kayenna cast no shadow.

"I have no say in what you do with me," Kayenna said. "I am nothing but memories now. I no longer want anything."

"You're lying," Uicha said. "I felt your reaction when Battar Crodd told you he had, uh…"

"Crying Otter," Kayenna said.

Uicha was glad she'd said it; the phrase felt dumb in his mouth.

"Yeah," Uicha replied. "What is that?"

"It was a man," Kayenna said. "Now, it would be nothing but his mask."

That answer didn't clarify much for Uicha. He shook his head. "You want that, anyway," he said. "You have an agenda, just like everyone else."

Kayenna looked down at him, pushing her dark hair out of her face. "Perhaps you are right." Uicha jerked his head back when she held out her hand to him. "Come with me."

"Where?"

"Not far," she replied. "I have been to this desert before."

Uicha glanced across the fire to where Lavicta snored with her hat tilted over her face, then to the side where the Firstson stood still as a statue, gazing up at the stars. He surprised himself by taking Kayenna's hand, her skin cold against his own. She helped him to his feet with surprising strength for such a small woman. The edges of the desert blurred in his vision and the sand shifted beneath his feet as if he were gliding across it. Uicha recognized the sensation. They had gone into one of her memories.

Kayenna stood atop a dune and Uicha found himself a step behind her, peering over her shoulder. It strained his mind to look anywhere other than where the Kayenna of memory had placed her eyes, and so he stared out across the sand as she had, going with the flow of the memory. It was still night and they were still in the Gen'bi, but the desert had changed. Down below, a grove of shaggy trees like hairy caterpillars swayed, shielding a small pond. Antelope pranced cautiously up to the water's edge, heads twitching, mindful of the people nearby.

There were others atop the dunes that night. Uicha could make out only shadows, small groups standing huddled on the adjacent rises. On one, a glowing doorway appeared from thin air, a silhouette stepped inside, and then both disappeared. Uicha got the sense that some sort of gathering had recently ended. He felt Kayenna's uncertainty bubbling in his own stomach.

"Can they really do it?" Kayenna asked the man at her side.

Uicha got a look at him, then, as Kayenna turned her head to regard him. He was skinny in a way that bordered on sickly, brown-haired, with sunken almond-shaped eyes, his gaunt face shaded by a patchy beard. He wore loose clothes that seemed to only accentuate his scrawny frame, like a boy dressed up in his father's wardrobe. But Uicha knew—because Kayenna knew—just how many knives he kept hidden in those billowing sleeves.

"It sounds like madness to me," the man said. "To capture a god. Not even the Magelab in their highest hubris thought to attempt such a thing. They will die and we will die with them, if we participate in this stupidity."

Kayenna smiled. Always so blunt with his opinions, so cynical, so quick to judgement. Except, when it came to killing her. Then, this man had hesitated. Uicha could feel the warmth lingering inside Kayenna. He hadn't thought her capable of such feeling.

"But you came," Kayenna said. "You listened."

"I've spent ten years trying to end this war," the man replied. "I grow desperate. Although, not as desperate as our hosts."

"They will die here," Kayenna said. "I see no logic in the trying."

"Good for a laugh, at least," the man said. "A bit of levity to break up our endless battles."

And yet, Uicha thought, they both sounded so grim.

Kayenna's head turned. A shadowed figure had drifted down from a nearby dune and now sauntered up theirs. Recognizing him, Kayenna dug the sharpened nail of her little finger into her palm, drawing the blood that would be necessary to work her magic.

"The war staggers forward on two legs," Kayenna said. "The first is Mudt. The second approaches now."

"He tests his luck," Kayenna's companion replied, then reached around to his belt where a wooden mask hung. He slid this over his face—a furry, whiskered visage that drooped in comical sadness. Finally, Uicha understood the meaning of the Crying Otter.

"Kayenna Vezz, I thought that was you," called the man approaching from below.

The new arrival's face seemed strangely familiar to Uicha, though he couldn't immediately place him. He was handsome in an effortless way, his hair tied up in a loose ponytail, a cape draped dramatically across his shoulders. It wasn't until he tilted his head and Uicha saw the man in profile that he recognized the face as the same one stamped on the angles in Uicha's pocket.

"Cizco Firstson," said Kayenna. "How novel to see you without your walls."

"And who is this?" Cizco asked, nodding at the masked man. "Have the Orvesians made alliance with Besaden, after all? I have always said that your people are no better than jackals, so it makes a kind of sense."

Crying Otter made no reply. Cizco pursed his lips with disappointment.

"We are not here to mingle," Kayenna said. "What do you want?"

"Well, I had thought we might put our hosts to the test. They claim neutrality and say that none can be harmed beneath their watchful eye," Cizco said. "I thought that I might try to kill you, regardless. But then, I recalled your banishment to Ruchet, and realized there would be no point. I needn't dirty my hands to know what I've heard tonight is nonsense."

"Not all nonsense," Kayenna said.

She knew this because she had already worked the spell that would freeze Cizco's heart—had bypassed the predictable ward-weave on his clothes, had spun the spell while he ranted—and yet felt her efforts rebuffed by some external force.

"You will lend your power to their cause, then?" Cizco asked, and chuckled. "A stupid bitch to the end."

"No," Kayenna said. She glanced at Crying Otter, repeating a phrase he had often spoken. "This world has enough tyrants already."

"Ah." Cizco scratched his cheek. "Well, for once, we find ourselves in agreement. Why attack the natural order of things, hm? The gods have always favored Infinzel."

"So I have heard."

A glowing doorway appeared in the space behind Cizco. Through the portal, Uicha could see an opulently decorated room of gray stone. He felt Kayenna's urge to rush headlong through that portal, straight into the heart of Infinzel, knowing what damage she could do once inside. But, she stayed put. Her war was over.

Along with the door, another woman appeared—in her forties, plain, a disapproving scowl on her face. Uicha would not have found her memorable, except for the tattoo on her throat. A straight line crested by a half-circle, a sunrise or a sunset, he couldn't decide which. None of these others bore a symbol on their neck, not yet, but this woman already did.

"It is time to go," the woman said.

The wind changed. The night turned colder. Down below, the grass and water of the past were long since scorched away. Uicha stood where Crying Otter once had, Kayenna next to him. He turned his head to study her neck—the brutal gash running straight through the blackbird symbol of Orvesis.

"That's it?" Uicha asked, unsure what more he even wanted.

"I am incomplete," Kayenna said. "Crying Otter's mask would have the rest. They hold the memories of their wearers, each one, back to their making."

Uicha recognized a worm on a hook. He wasn't sure that he needed more of the blanks filled in. Without thinking, he put a thumb against his own throat, tracing the crimson rectangle there.

"Those people you were mocking—they succeeded," Uicha said. "They trapped a god here. The Forgotten One."

"Yes."

"What does he want?"

"What do all trapped things want?" Kayenna asked. "To be free."

"And then what?"

Kayenna turned to look at him. "What did you do when you broke free from the grips of the archmage?"

Uicha's hand dropped to his hip, although he had left his scimitar with his horsasis. Still, he could imagine the feel of the hilt in his hand, the limp resistance of Ahmed Roh's neck beneath his blade.

"Yes," Kayenna replied. "I wonder how a boy's revenge would compare to a god's."