Goose Got Your Tongue

“Eat that, devil,” Sels crows from the rooftop, dangling the locket from a claw. “Go back to your fissure while ya still can!”

“I am not a fissure devil.”

“Yeah? You’re pretty suspicious for a normal guy.”

“You’d be able to sense if I was a fissure devil.”

“Yeah well, ya smell kinda weird to me. So that counts.”

“Wouldn’t I be trying to kill you right now if I was?”

“Ya just did before.”

I sigh. “I was hoping to slow you down enough to talk. It seems you didn’t listen, in any case.”

“What, that you’re some kinda guy magically from some future? Magic don’t do that.”

“Actually, it can. A special kind.” I look up to see disbelief silhouetted against the sky. “But if you want proof, I know that when you were six, an eel ‘as big as a skiff’ tried to drag you under and eat you near Longfin Peninsula. I know your favourite food is spiced cress soup with fresh-squid dumplings, that you have a scar behind your right ear where Geno’s trapping-hook caught you once, and your friends dared you to carve a hairy rear on the magistrate’s house that no one ever found.”

“Hey, wait, I did that yesterday!” She bushes up, feathery ears on the side of her slender head standing up stiffly. “How d’you know all this stuff? You been stalking me?”

“No, they’re all things you told me.” I finally lever myself out of the water, fish scattering in all directions. “Because, unfortunately, in four years’ time you’ll be part of an accident where Geno drowns, and your ‘friends’ let you take the blame, leading to the magistrate consigning you to servitude. We then meet, after an unfortunate chase that winds up with me in another river, and I take you on as a servant at the Imperial Palace. You prove a terrible servant, but a good friend.”

I can feel her watching me as I wring out my cloak.

“Or maybe you’re just some creepy devil-guy who’s been stalking me. Cos my friends wouldn’t do that.”

“They will, and they do, unless you knowing about things throws them off-course. It’s happened before.” I give up and imbue the rest of my clothes, slaking the water out. “With other events.”

“You’re a real weirdo huh.”

I half-smile. “‘Growing old is not the danger, for he who ages becomes but stranger’.”

“Okay, yeah, I don’t believe you, you’ve got a net with a lotta holes in it.” A glance up and I see her tapping her head. “And that blood magic stuff? Pretty sure that’s devil’s magic.”

“And what if I told you I’m Imperial Prince-heir Lonni Dynas?”

She squints. “Didn’t he die? Y’know, going to try and kill Big Evil? They said only Healer Greshol made it back, then she died, too.”

Greshol? I don’t remember that. Greshol... she was Meil’s companion, wasn’t she? I remember that she died—I was upset over it at the time—but not that she made it back.... “We were presumed dead. Mistakenly.”

Wouldn’t she have been able to let them know some of us had survived? So why...? I sigh, tapping the mask covering the side of my face. “This is an injury I received, fighting Noruaas. It touched me. That’s why I can ‘do freaky blood magic’.”

“What, so, you’re infected?” She eyes me. “Cool, lemme see.”

“It’s not an infection. And no, you can’t see it.”

“Maybe I’ll believe ya if I do.”

“The last time I showed you, you accused me of being a fissure devil and tried to escape out a window, so no, I don’t believe it will help,” I return, opting to sit down at the edge of the bank to massage aches and ego. I’m as wrung out as my cloak. “Maybe I should wait four years.”

“So what, you wanna kidnap me or something? That’s real suspect, brass boots.”

Of course she’d hear the mutter. “No, I was going to ask.”

“Huh, you wanted to talk to me so you could get your mind-controlly magic stuff in my head and make me come with you to your fissure.”

I massage what’s left of my face. “No.”

“Why d’you wanna steal me, anyway? Some kinda weird ritual thing?”

“Because Fishmouth was close by. And I need as many allies as I can get.”

The river’s settled again, the murkiness washed away and tiny fish glinting in the sunlight as they flit about.

“...For what? Takin’ over the Empire?”

“No. For saving it.”

“Uh-huh. ‘Saving’ it, yeah.”

“In my time, everything’s gone, Sels.” I stand, and look up at her, lounging there on the edge of the roof, an old locket glinting in one crossed goose-foot. “There’s no sun, there’s no greenery, freshwater can only come from wells, and the people live only because they can’t bear to die.”

‘And you were one of the only lights left in it’, is what I can’t say. Mostly because she’d label it “creepy”, as disbelieving of the entire thing as she is.

“Wow, sounds depressing.”

“It is.” I start for a rickety wooden bridge further along. This was a fool’s errand from the start. I should have left things to progress naturally, rather than try to interfere. Sentimentalism will be the death of me. “You can keep the locket. It’s only a memento.”

I feel her eyes on me until the rooftop disappears from view.

Ξ-Ξϟ†ϟΞ-Ξ

“Sire, did we really need to come here at all if you don’t intend to even visit the magistrate?”

Captain Eruto has a one-track mind, doesn’t he. At least he’s willing to question. “A journey can occasionally be a waste of time, Captain. I don’t intend to waste more of it.”

Our horses’ hooves thud steadily along the dirt-paved road, the fjords sparkling behind us, the stream meandering on our left as it climbs steadily towards the forested hills, a sturdy stone wall on our right. It’s peaceful, though the clouds crouching on the peaks watch us.

And something else, too, watches us....

“My lord, are you well?” One of the other guardsmen, Makolo, asks quietly on my left, his face peering past my fingers.

“It’s alright.” I lower my hand to soothe the sturdy old mare I was given as her head jerks up to the woods past the river. “You feel it too, old girl.”

“Feel what?” The others take tighter hold of their steeds as the wave of jitteriness spreads. “Easy, easy. What is it?”

A shadow flits behind an old hollowed log. “An unwelcome visitor.”

We stop, the rasp of Eruto’s sword drawing cutting through the hush of grasshoppers abruptly falling silent. “Is it that gryphon child again?”

“No.” I keep watch, two more blades drawing in the corner of my eye. “This would be a stray fissure beast. Hold my horse.”

“I don’t like this,” the third guard, Tokon, mutters as I toss the reins to him. “We’ve got frissions out here? Where’s its fissure?”

In one movement, I slip off and slash my drawn dagger across my forearm. The horses don’t startle too much at the scent of blood, but they do when it snaps in a writhing rope around my arm and arrows across the river.

An unearthly shriek meets it splintering straight through the log.

I snap it back with a wrench of my hand, and an ugly little parasite with too many legs and too many mouths squelches into the sharp tip of my clean dagger. A drop of black ichor oozes out—a clean hit to the heart, something I could manage deaf and blind.

“Well, unfortunately—” I let it fall, the thick black droplet disappearing with the flick of a red thread burrowing into the stab wound “—it seems we do have a fissure nearby. This is a scout.”