4.3 - Cicada Flower
Kurzumir didn’t wish death on anyone. That wasn’t his job. He merely visited it upon them. Why anyone would harbor such ill will towards another so as to wish them death he could never understand. Violence seemed like such an awkward solution to a problem. It was a shame he was so good at it. Requests found their way to him from every corner of the Barge of Souls, but only a few were accepted. He would never harm youth or the ill of mind or body. The odd request in one hundred for the elimination of an animal was immediately discarded or ignored. The contract he was under now, for a man hiding out in Gidaea’s Forest, met all criteria he needed for an acceptable one and paid exorbitantly. Far more than a single-head contract ever reasonably needed to pay. Twelve hundred gold for one man. When Kurzumir asked if an item or body part was desired as proof of a kill, the woman who submitted the mark responded with a shake of her head and two words. ‘I’ll know.’
Two weeks later, Kurzumir was closing in on the mark, somewhere near the heart of the woods. Gidaea’s Forest was infamous for housing renegades and misfits. When the Barge of Souls was fourteen distinct kingdoms, the forest resided in the Carshgan kingdom of Vesh’Nal, the sister kingdom to the Saorin central kingdom of Vesh’Tal. The king of Vesh’Nal had two sons, Bolarik and Gidaea. Bolarik left his family and transitioned to a Saorin, becoming the lord of a city in Vesh’Tal, leaving Gidaea caught between his Carshgan father and Saorin brother. The choice proved to be too much for him. He fled to the forest, forming what would become The Mist, a collection of former Carshgans and Saorins refusing to live either life. They lived in the shadows of the trees, and in the waning and waxing hours, becoming a people caught between worlds. From then on, Gidaea’s Forest became a place of refuge for criminals, those with no home, and the many lost ones striving for moments of thoughtless peace.
The forest was dense, with a canopy shadowing nearly every inch of the ground. The branches above Kurzumir swarmed with cicadas, many dipping low enough to land on his vapor-thin cloak. He didn’t mind. It made him feel like he belonged. Like he was a feature of the environment, and not just a courier sent by the gods of death to deliver their missive. As if even the gods of death still lived. As far as Kurzumir was concerned, all the gods had died long ago and left the scurrying ants of the world to fend for themselves, slowly fizzling out until only the land and sea survived. If he believed even one was still watching over them he wouldn’t take lives as freely as he did, but if the shopkeep is dead, what does it matter if you steal from the shelves?
Ahead of him, he saw a small hut jammed between two large trees. One of the walls was beginning to split in half under the pressure of a root pressing against it. The roof was covered in cicada shells and bird feces. There was no chimney, but a small area outside of the hut was cleared for a fire, surrounded by large stones. Outside the hut sat an old woman in a rocking chair, cradling a cage with some sort of small creature inside. The creature had a shield-shaped head similar to that of a snake, but its body was much closer to that of a centipede. It was short, round, and covered in multicolored scales. Along the underside were dozens of tiny talons that effortlessly navigated the cage. It slithered up the bars of the cage and along the top of it, even dipping in and out of the bars. The cage didn’t seem to serve much of a purpose outside of putting strangers at ease, as the creature quickly ducked back inside as Kurzumir approached. The woman was silver-haired and dressed in a loose-fitting cloth tunic and pants. Cicadas crawled through her hair and a pipe hung precariously from her lips. Kurzumir had assumed her to be old, but as he got closer she appeared to be much younger than he thought. Her eyes were bright and clear, her skin clean and unblemished, and she tapped her fingers quickly to a complex rhythm that Kurzumir couldn’t hear.
“An arrow should never be pulled from the wound,” the woman said. “You have to push it through to keep it intact. I wish you would have known. The shaft cracked and left splinters behind.”
“You must be mistaking me for someone else milady,” Kurzumir said, giving her a courteous bow. “I have never been wounded by an arrow.”
She looked up at him and smiled, crow’s feet forming at the corners of her eyes.
“Of course,” she said. “Silly mistake.”
“I hope to not be bothering you, but I was wondering if you might offer a traveler some directions.” Kurzumir pulled his hood down, letting his long dark red hair flow free.
“I don’t often leave my grounds, but I would be happy to assist if I can,” the woman said. “What shadows might you wish to haunt?”
“I’m looking for an old friend, we fought together in the Mullentia War,” Kurzumir said. “I have news concerning his family, but navigating these woods has proven more difficult than I was expecting. The last I heard from him he was living nearabouts the Mordostok Crypt, are you familiar?”
At the mention of Mordostok, the woman’s smile dissipated. The creature in her cage stood up and hissed at Kurzumir, its shield head fanning out wide. The woman caressed the side of the cage and gently hushed the creature until it curled up on the floor.
“A grim place for one to call home,” she said quietly. “The only ones out there are too sick or hateful for the rest of us. But I know the way if you truly wish to go.”
“He is a...difficult man, that much is true,” Kurzumir said. “But we have a connection that, for better or worse, transcends that. I feel I must see this through, if only for my own peace of mind.”
Lying was integral to the work Kurzumir did, and he was just as efficient at it as he was the bloody part. The Barge of Souls was massive, and finding a single person was nigh impossible without a little help. The woman before him, despite her amiable presentation, was clearly not naive. It was impossible to say if she was buying anything he was saying.
“Blood is thick,” she said and paused. “I understand. Head that way until you find a small clearing with a pool of water. From there, turn left towards the moss-covered rocks and keep that heading for about two hours. You’ll hit Mordostok.”
Kurzumir thanked her and bowed again. He was eager to be on his way. The woman made him deeply uncomfortable. Each word seemed to cut through his clothes directly to the skin. After an hour he reached the clearing and, after taking a few minutes to rest and drink from the pool, he found a path leading into a mess of moss-covered stones.
Before continuing further on, he rifled through his satchel. One who kills for a living must acquaint themselves with all forms of death, obvious and otherwise. Kurzumir hated the bloody ones and hated the showy ones even more. Some clients would request public executions or murders that made a very vivid statement. If he accepted, he charged them double. Even so, it still felt like it cost his sanity more than he made back in gold. Those were the ones he saw each night. The ones he pictured in the gray lightless mornings. Luckily this client made no such request, only that whatever method he chose would kill quickly.
Kurzumir found the tool he was looking for. An Emblacross. It fit in his hand while its wings were tucked against its wooden, cog-filled body. It hummed and rumbled as he picked a small glass bottle of poison from his satchel as well and uncorked the bottle with his teeth. With his thumb, he flicked open a small compartment on the stomach of the Emblacross, which released its sharp iron stinger. He drenched the stinger in poison and delicately folded it back beneath the hatch. He held his hand up and the bug construct flipped upward and unfurled its wings, hovering above him.
Niki Rae
“My little angel of rest,” Kurzumir said. “I’m sorry for what you must do, but the weight you take from me is unknowable. If Ysopra still lived, I’m sure she would be relentlessly delighted by you, the creation of her creations. Alas, we killed her, along with the rest of the gods. Us miserable fools.”
The Emblacross buzzed in the air.
“I’m boring you, I know,” Kurzumir said. “Very well, let’s get this over with.”
He took an even smaller wooden object with razor-sharp hooked claws along its edges. Inside of another glass bottle (one he was sure to keep in a separate pocket than the poisons) was a numbing agent that he dipped the claws in, then gently pushed the object into the skin of his palm. The Emblacross wavered in the air, shaking back and forth for a moment, and then steadied once more. Blood began to drip from the surrogate now implanted in Kurzumir’s hand before the cogs inside kicked into gear, and the construct sucked up the blood and pumped it back into his hand. It was always painful but in an oddly fascinating way. A brief intense pain, followed by a cold and then a hot sensation, then the numbing agent activated. He could move his hand freely, but it tingled and lost most feeling. The control surrogate made the Emblacross too impractical for most assignments, particularly in crowded cities or close quarters. Were it to devolve into a fight, he would be at a severe disadvantage. The Emblacross felt like it was made for this job. The cover of cicadas, the open wilderness, the target not known to have any associates. Finally Kurzumir could keep his hands relatively clean. He flexed his fingers and tested the surrogate, raising his pointer finger multiple times. The Emblacross fluttered upward, more with each finger flick. Kurzumir moved his hand left, the construct moved left. He moved his hand right, the construct moved right. With his middle finger, he flicked downward and the construct fluttered down, then ejected its stinger. Happy that everything was working, he flicked his pointer finger upward again and the construct closed its stinger hatch and flew up into the bug cover overhead.
Mordostok wasn’t quite as grim as he expected it to be, at least on the surface. He had no intention of descending the massive stone stairs that led below ground into the tombs, but above ground it was nothing more than a sparsely populated area. Intermingled with trees and bushes were tents, poorly crafted sheds, and a few very small cabins. All of them, similar to the cabin earlier, seemed to have become a part of the forest. Kurzumir spotted a few humans here and there, but from what he knew of Mordostok, most things took place below ground, in the tombs. The surface was for resting. Luckily, his target was known to avoid the tombs. After thirty minutes of carefully stalking the grounds, Kurzumir laid eyes on his prey at last.
The man looked barely alive. He was sitting on a mossy rock that extended over the forest floor, roughly fifteen feet up. His clothes were shredded and muddy, his feet shoeless and blackened from travel. The parts of his skin that were visible had a dark gray discoloration to them that made Kurzumir’s stomach turn. This man was on death’s door. Kurzumir only needed to unlock it for him. From his hiding place thirty feet from the outcropping, he commanded the Emblacross upward further, making sure it was well within the cicada swarms. He guided it forward slowly. This mark wouldn’t be on the move anytime soon, so he had the freedom to take it nice and easy. As soon as the Emblacross was above the man, he carefully began the process of lowering it, as slow as his fingers would allow. The man sat motionless, hands gripping the edge of the mossy stone, staring outward over the forest. Kurzumir held his breath for a moment as the Emblacross lowered behind the man’s back. With one quick flick of his finger, Kurzumir saw the man flinch. The control surrogate buzzed twice, confirming the venom had been injected. With a few quick flicks, the Emblacross was back in the cicada swarms and completely obscured from view. Not that it mattered.
The man didn’t move. Kurzumir began to wonder if he was already dead, and he had injected poison into a corpse. The poison he used wasn’t a particularly painful one, but it was, after all, a deadly poison. Surely he was feeling something. Suddenly, still with no expression on his face, the man lurched forward off of the outcropping. His arms and legs went out wide and he plummeted to the ground. Kurzumir expected to hear bones crunching, but instead, what he heard sounded like old air escaping a crypt. The man’s body was obscured by foliage on the forest floor. Kurzumir crept closer, attempting to at least verify the kill. Before he could reach the body, however, a plume of dark blue smoke billowed upward from where the man had landed. It flashed and flickered with unnatural movement, not simply escaping upward. Almost as if it were searching for something. Kurzumir was frozen in place at the sight of it. Then, a large piece of the smoke split off from the main body and careened toward him.
Toma finished writing and folded the parchment closed. She sat the cage down and held a hand out for Daykuh. The centipede creature crawled out of the cage and curled up on her hand. She brought her hand up and its shield-shaped head perked up in excitement.
“I’m afraid the time has come,” Toma said. “I can feel it breaking loose.”
She took the parchment and held it in front of Daykuh. The creature opened its maw and swallowed the parchment with one swift movement. The patterns on its head shifted in quick, abrupt motions and it stamped its talons rapidly on Toma’s hand. A faint pale light surrounded it, and then it vanished. A minute passed before Daykuh reappeared in Toma’s hand, looking tired but healthy. It scurried down to its cage and happily curled up inside to fall asleep. The air in front of the cabin became cold, and then strikingly hot. A thunderclap rang out, followed by what sounded like the same thunderclap only in reverse. The air itself split, and Toma looked on as a being three times the size of her cabin climbed through the portal. Its body was a smooth and shimmering pale red, from its long axeblade tail all the way up to the three long-necked heads sprouting from its torso. Each footfall was heavy, shaking the ground and yet the trees and cicadas did not seem bothered in the slightest. The portal behind it closed, and the beast stood placid as if it was exactly where it belonged.
One of the heads turned towards Toma and nodded.
“Daykuh has missed you,” she said. “As have I.”
Time is a cruel mistress for us all. The words appeared before Toma, in delicate script through the air before being cast away by a breeze. I am here now, whatever that may count for. Iriyosh and Sunhesh are here as well, although Iriyosh may still be slumbering. Both of them seem to have a bond that brought them. Tumo Karesk has pulled himself through, always resistant to a bond. I will return to you, once I’ve taken care of the outbreak. I’m eager to hear about the last few hundred years.
Toma smiled and nodded, words escaping her. Palidesh, the empyreal protector of the former kingdom of Vesh’Nal, had that effect on people. Of course, Toma knew that. She just hadn’t felt it in over two hundred and fifty years.
Palidesh entered the clearing where Kurzumir had unknowingly killed an egg carrier. The body of the carrier, no longer being sustained by the parasite within it, was nothing but dust and bone. The man formerly known as Kurzumir was standing still, head tilted back, mouth wide open. The parasite, or at least the fraction of the parasite that had moved into Kurzumir’s body, had evolved beyond the incubation period into the infection stage. Dozens of cicadas flooded into and out of Kurzumir’s mouth, being drawn in by the soft blue light radiating from his throat. As they escaped, a trail of blue powdery smoke fluttered from their wings and out of their mouth. One egg carrier would be capable of creating dozens of these infection farms. Gidaea’s Forest would soon be swarming with the infected unless Palidesh could get to the farms first.
They said a prayer to Ysopra asking for forgiveness on behalf of Kurzumir, then with all three heads, they devoured the poor assassin and suffocated the infection deep in the star-filled void of their body.