May 1907
—
Fin loved Mirral. Some of the wind catchers throughout the city were outfitted with windchimes, pipes, or maja webs, and this time of year they always sang with the most beautiful melody he’d never heard anywhere else. As he moved through Trivaal’s capital city towards the market district with Hiro and Seah’ka, he listened to the music of the wind catchers and tried to keep track of the conversation ahead of him.
Seah’ka and Hiro were arguing in Vaali, the trade language of the east coast, as they led him through the crowds populating Mirral’s wide boulevards. He caught bits and pieces of the conversation, struggling over the noise on top of his own barely-there knowledge of the language. They were going on about something they’d noticed with the Starspawn breach and/or the Aetherian Emperor—maybe both, he couldn't tell. They’d decidedly left him out of the conversation, despite the fact that he had introduced the two of them to said Emperor over two months ago, and they were tall enough to be outdistancing him. Although if they really didn’t want him to know who they were talking about, they could’ve used Ialu’kan, the language of the temple district, and at least left him out properly.
They stopped at an intersection and watched as a hyperail train whooshed by overhead, sending leaves from the surrounding building decor flying across the street. Seah’ka frowned up at the rail line and Hiro took that moment to look back at Fin and ask what he thought.
He sighed and shook his head. “I have no idea what you two were saying.”
“I thought you spoke Vaali,” Seah’ka said absently, still frowning at the rail line and the surrounding plant life.
“I do,” Fin huffed, “just not when you two freakin’ giants keep speed-walking away from me talking at an eqore’s pace.”
Hiro and Seah’ka guffawed at him in the exact way, Hiro’s mouth twitching upward in a smirk and Seah’ka breaking into a full-on grin. Fin sighed. Here they go.
Fin endured short jokes for the rest of the walk to the market district. When they were younger he might have protested, but now that Seah’ka towered over him at almost seven and a half feet, with Hiro only four inches or so behind, Fin figured they had earned the right to tease him about it a little. Damn his Tritaran genes.
They finally reached the market district and the three of them made a beeline for the food carts—their real reason for traversing the capital’s midday crowd. They split up, Hiro heading for a cart loaded with grilled kebabs, Seah’ka and Fin making their way to different cultural cuisine carts. Fin picked a cart that was selling a particular kind of meat on a stick from the capital of Vante called Halle Merta and got in line. Hiro joined him a few minutes into waiting, handing him a pepper and meat kebab. After another ten minutes, Fin walked away with his order and he and Hiro set off to find Seah’ka. They found him waiting under a bridge between two tall, stuccoed buildings just outside the main market area, and he waved them up a narrow staircase. They came out on top of one of the buildings, the one whose roof was flat, and claimed the last empty table next to a planter full of blue Mirral ivy.
Seah’ka and Hiro picked up another argument, this time in Ialu’kan. Fin rolled his eyes and chose to ignore them in favor of looking out over the Trivaal capital’s stunning skyline.
The mosseaca was just beginning to turn green, the midpoint between morning blue and evening orange, casting the dusty orange and blue stone of Mirral’s cityscape in lime and emerald hues. This time of day, people who worked the morning shift in Mirral were getting off of work, taking the busy hyperail lines home or out of the capital district for the day. Others who worked the afternoon shift were coming in too, meaning practically every hyperail line in the sky was running. The hyperail tracks, merely more than spectral lines of light until a train passed over them, wove around the tallest buildings in the city during the busy hours like this, trying to avoid the hovercraft traffic and busy warp terminals like everyone else. Fin covered his food as a train blew past on the same track as before, now just on the other side of the building, and laughed as Seah’ka scrambled to protect his drakon chips.
“Serves you right,” he sneered, throwing a glance towards the basket of meat chips as Seah’ka levitated his chopsticks back to his hand.
Drakons—or dragons, wyverns, and their other categorizations—were protected creatures in Talki. In Trivaal, where Screechers and Lokai drakons overpopulated the countryside and Raptor dragons were on every city building, they were not. Fin knew this. He’d known this for years. Seah’ka knew he knew this. That did not stop Fin from poking fun and throwing moot accusations his way, and it didn’t stop Seah’ka from picking up a meat chip and throwing it at Fin with his chopsticks.
“Hush and eat your merta’kine,” he snapped, not breaking his scowl at Hiro.
Fin picked the drakon meat out of his basket and tossed it to Hiro, who popped it in his mouth, meeting his brother’s stare with complete nonchalance. Fin looked between the two of them, resting his own chopsticks across his basket.
“What are you two arguing about anyway?” he asked, watching their eyes narrow at each other, bright green versus cerulean blue.
When Seah’ka broke off the staring contest with a shudder of surprise to look at him, Fin raised an eyebrow at him and casually lifted another slice of merta’kine into his mouth.
“Wait, you actually didn’t understand any of that?” Seah’ka asked.
“Veni,” Hiro said—brother. “He just told us before the market that we were walking too fast and he couldn't hear us over the noise.”
“And just now you were both going on in Ialu’kan,” Fin added.
Hiro and Seah’ka both turned to look at him with stunned expressions.
“We were?” Seah’ka asked, baffled. (He was not baffled. He threw another meat chip and Fin magicked it back into his face.)
“You haven’t picked anything up from that yet?” Hiro added, grinning sideways. “You speak more languages than either of us!”
Fin leveled an unimpressed look at the two of them. “Four of those are the Talkian dialects, which are all so similar they should only count as one.”
“What?” Seah’ka jabbed his sticks at him. “I’ve heard you speak Rekhan and Malekan, they sound nothing alike!”
“That’s because one is harsher and the other softens its R’s and -CK’s,” Fin said as Hiro mocked him in jest.
“That’s not the point,” he redirected. “What are you arguing about?”
“You and the Aetherian Emperor,” Hiro and Seah’ka said in unison.
Fin cringed and pointed between them. “That’s still creepy.”
Seah’ka was almost half a decade older than Hiro, but they acted like fraternal twins with how easily they continued each other’s thoughts, or shared them.
Hiro waved him off. “Specifically, we’re… shall we say, worried about the new Emperor.”
Fin paused his chewing.
“And how easily you’ve become friends with them,” Seah’ka added. “No one knows anything about Razienne, and considering we thought we knew nothing about Emperor Tainnos, that’s saying something!”
Great, so two of his oldest friends were going to be the ones who brought this up to him, after almost half a year. Fin knew the genera’ka, the Arv’hein’s Council of Generals, was thinking much of the same thing: he had gotten too casual with the new Emperor of Aetheria too quickly. It was something he was aware of too; he wasn’t an idiot, as much as his divided council wanted to believe. He knew being friendly with the leader of the largest imperial conquest in centuries was a risk, and that he was probably going to get himself into trouble. Befriending leaders of other dimensions was a lot different than befriending the other leaders of the North Coalition, like the Chirrells. He’d known the Chirrells since he was born, for one, and for another thing, Tartaruns—even the ones outside the Coalition—were all united under one banner: that of Tartarus-centra.
Sure, there were no more Tartarun empires or even a proper union between all the provinces, but there hadn’t been for millennia. They didn’t need that. Tartaruns might hate each other by and large and have blood feuds that go back centuries, but when it came down to it, they would all side with each other when things got bad.
The Aetherian Empire wouldn’t hesitate to leave Tartarus for dead if it meant saving its own skin. Alliance or no Alliance.
But on the other hand, as one of the leaders of the Coalition (whether he wanted to be or not, and whether or not they voted to demote him at the next annual session) he had a responsibility to maintain interdimensional alliances and keep tabs on threats that may present themselves to Tartarus. Not to mention that, if Fin was an idiot for thinking being friends with the Emperor of Aetheria was a good idea, then what did that make Ev?
“I think you’re assuming some things here that might be swaying your opinions,” he told the Chirrells when he realized he’d been quiet too long.
“Assuming what?” Seah’ka scoffed. “You couldn’t hear what we were saying!”
Fin pointed his chopsticks at him. “I couldn’t hear most of what you were saying.”
He proceeded to explain that, yes, he had heard them mention the names “Razienne” and “Ev” and dive into speculation into how those two names were related—if they were at all. Then, he continued and informed them that Vaali was a very expressive language, and the way you said certain words carried different connotations. That was how he knew both Hiro and Seah’ka seemed to doubt Ev’s genuinity, and thought their “unqualified, inexperienced” act was just that: an act.
“But think about it,” Seah’ka cut in. “you watched the last half of the tournament too. They knew what they were doing in those fights, Fin. They knew what they were doing when they put a plasma arrow through Tainnos’s skull, and when they knelt and accepted the Aetherian Crowns.”
The Aetherian Crowns, which no one knew anything about despite the New Aetherian Empire’s own Era 9 edict that all dimensional Crowns and their associated ability boosts, powers, and blessings and curses be made public. The Aetherian Crowns, which were said to number over ten and bear down on one’s psyche like the weight of the worlds on the old gods.
“But,” Hiro countered, “Ev seemed like a completely different person between then and when Fin met them, and when we met them on HOLO back in March.”
“And they confirmed they were a ziojic locked in a battle trance for the first few weeks of their reign,” Fin added. “Maybe they weren’t the same person when they fought in the tournament.”
“What?” Seah’ka scoffed. “Are you implying that the gods controlled them from when they resurrected on the beach in Karian’s vision until they opened that portal to zio’cerual?”
Fin hesitated. He didn’t necessarily think about it like that, but… “Maybe. Someone could have been controlling them those first few weeks, for sure. Whether or not it was the gods, though…”
“What if it was someone else, and the gods intervened when that person made them open the portal? To set them free?” Hiro suggested.
That would make far more sense, in Fin’s opinion. Most of the gods were silent these days, except for Ialu, He’tara, and a few others. It would be out of character for any of them to control a newly-resurrected ziojic, then allow that control to be broken.
Unless there was an exceptionally important reason to do so, and the break in control had been accidental, like if someone else in the mortal plane disrupted the connection.
“The point is,” Seah’ka said, snapping Fin out of his thoughts, “that we don’t know the answer to that question. Nor do we know where this ‘Ev’ or ‘Razienne’ is from. We just know they’re not Aetherian. They could be from a pirate gang in Darekaeii for all we know.
“We knew where Tainnos was from,” Hiro continued, elaborating on Seah’ka’s train of thought that he must have mentioned earlier. “Xe made it very clear xe was from the island of Saturna—an Aetherian, through and through.”
And upper-class Aetherian, at that. Saturna was a posh island reserved for the noble families of Aetheria centra. Emperor Tainnos had worn the island’s crest on xer pauldrons for the entirety of xer reign. It was even rumored that xe was from one of the Council families and had gone for the position of Emperor instead of waiting for a seat on the Imperial Council.
“And we knew where xe learned to fight,” Seah’ka added, his eyes going dark. “We don’t know where the new Emperor learned to fight like that.”
They all went silent as they recalled the Tournée de Coronae, and how fiercely the then-nameless champion had fought. Fin could agree with the Chirrells here; he hardly recognized any of the fighting styles they had used during the Tournament. Each fight had revealed something new about their abilities—their magic, their training, their enhanced spatial awareness. It was impressive, he could admit, but it also further clouded their exact origins; they clearly had influence in a lot of major combat arts. He had considered all of that when he first encountered them in the Talkian outback at the start of the year. Ev could have taken him out right then and there, had they wanted to.
But again, he didn’t think Ev was quite the same person as the one who fought in that tournament. Maybe those methods of fighting were part of the battle trance and they couldn’t remember any of them now that they were out of it.
Comparatively (and this is what he knew Hiro knew), Tainnos was informally trained at the Imperial barracks like every other IAF recruit, and could have been bested by any Talkian who made it past their own provincial basic training. Most people who worked in the official ranks of the Coalition knew that—not that they’d ever said that to Tainnos’s holographic face. And Fin could agree that, for the time being, they didn’t know anything of the sort about Ev. That made them unpredictable and, as Seah’ka no doubt thought, dangerous.
Reluctantly, he acknowledged that the Chirrells had a point.
“What are you getting at, then?” he asked. “The new Emperor is mysterious, unpredictable, and possibly dangerous. So what?”
That description fit half of the seasoned agents in the commanding ranks of the Talkian military, including the Manor Guards. Hell, it fit anyone who had learned kajan, the old Tritaran fighting art.
Seah’ka’s brows flattened and he fixed Fin with one of his conspicuous older brother looks. “What we’re getting at is that you’re awfully friendly with them—and they are dangerous, Fin! Anyone connected to the Imperial Aetherian government is exceedingly dangerous. They’re the top of the Imperial government!”
Fin hissed under his breath and leaned back in his chair. His tail was flicking irritably behind him with a mind of its own. “I know that.”
“Then why do you have an open chat log with them? Why do you act like they’re some other boarding school friend you’ve just made?”
He stabbed a piece of merta’kine, narrowing his eyes at Seah’ka. “What’s your point?” he spat.
“Dia vitsas,” Hiro muttered, sinking down into his chair and looking away from them both as he started on his last kebab.
“My point,” Seah’ka said slowly, “is that you’re the Arv’hein of the last remnant of the Talkian Empire, and you’re young, and if this new Emperor isn’t what they seem and the turn out to be worse than Tainnos…”
“I’m not setting myself up here, Seah’ka,” Fin said cooly. “I know how to recognize a trap; I don’t think this is one.”
“Did you think that cute little coup your generals tried to run was a trap before Teldorae ratted them out and set them all straight?”
He winced.
Hiro sent his brother a sharp look. “Ven’ai…”
In the immediate weeks after his appointment to the throne, the members of the genera’ka who had split to side with the Malekahn loyalists had attempted to have Fin removed from power due to his age and lack of preparation. Teldorae had been the one to catch them red-handed before their plans could be set in motion, but those four generals had since continued to split off into their own mini-faction. They couldn’t be reprimanded without approval from four of the remaining six generals on the council, and only two—the Crown loyalists, Herenai and velKetter—had given theirs. The other four generals, the Lakeshian idealists, saw the merit in their Malekan counterparts’ argument and opted to join up with the Idealist Party in the Lakeshian district, which argued for the dissolution of the monarchy and the arv’ahl.
The whole thing had been a terrible mess that nearly tore the province apart.
Fin actually had more or less gone on a bender in the woods, like Hiro teased him about, to escape the aftermath while the political leaders of the province sorted it out in his stead. It wasn’t something he was proud of; he wanted to fill the role of Arv’hein, and to be better than his mother had been in recent years. But he was too young, and he was unprepared! He wasn’t supposed to receive the Crowns and the arv’ahl for another three and a half years, when he turned twenty-five! He had been working through his mandatory military service years and had just started to shadow his mom when she abdicated and disappeared a few months after he turned twenty-one. The genera’ka was right, he had no idea what he was doing.
But that didn’t give Seah’ka the right to throw it back in his face.
“Don’t go there,” he hissed, pushing onto his feet. “Don’t say what everyone else is saying right now, Seah’ka. I hear it enough from my own people, from the news, and from Teldorae. I do not need to hear it again from you.”
Seah’ka’s frown lessened, but his expression remained stern and his eyes stayed cold. “Even if they’re right when it comes to your limited experience outside of Talki?”
“I can discern good people from bad, Seah’ka—”
“You can discern good Tartaruns from bad Tartaruns, Fin. We may all be different, have different cultures and creeds we follow, but we all still follow the same moral codes. We all are loyal to one another. Not everyone outside of our dimensions is like that, and hardly any of them extend that kind of grace to us. The Aetherians are not loyal to anyone but themselves; they’re imperialists, they take what they want, when they want, no matter what anyone says or does to stop them.”
Fin worked his jaw. “You said it yourself that we don’t know anything about the New Emperor, but what we do know is that they’re not from Aetheria. They might not have the same superiority complex—”
“Do you really want to get in too deep and find out too late that they do?”
“Do you really want to do nothing if they really don’t know what they’re doing? An incompetent Aetherian Emperor can be just as much of a threat to us as one from their heartland.” He looked to Hiro. “You told me after that HOLOcall in the lab that they didn’t seem much older than us, and they seemed… How’d you put it?”
Hiro glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “Rural,” he said quietly.
Seah’ka’s head whipped around to look at his brother as if to express his horror over Hiro calling the Emperor of Aetheria “rural,” even if it wasn’t to their face.
Fin jabbed his chopsticks at Seah’ka. “We know they’re not Aetherian. We know they were resurrected and dropped into Aetheria with combat programming capable of defeating Tainnos. We know they’re at least a little out of their depth—”
“Really out of their depth,” Hiro muttered.
“—so ‘so what’ if I treat them like another recruit at Vadetta Heights?”
Seah’ka shook his head. “You can’t treat them like an equal. That’s the point, Fin. They’re in control of the most powerful military force this side of Era 8, and you’re the key to the remnant of the Tritaran Empire—”
“There is no Tritaran Empire,” he spat. “My mother ended it for good, and for good reason.”
Exasperated, Seah’ka sighed again and worked his hands. “And everyone in the multiverse knows that you’re her son. You’re the legacy of the Last Imperial Arv’hein, and the first person other than her to successfully wield the title in millennia. You’re special, and you have connections. The Tritaran Empire lasted millennia longer than it’s been dissolved, Fin. The Aetherians might want it to be brought back, and to use you to do it.”
“They’re not all manipulators.”
“They’re all telepaths,” Seah’ka countered.
“And you’re all Ialuan dreamwalkers,” he retorted. “You’re classified as dream demons by blood percentage. What’s that make you?”
Hiro tossed a piece of char at him and it pinged off his armor. “Be nice, both of you.”
“He’s not being nice!” Fin protested in unison with Seah’ka. They glared at each other, the force of it burning Fin’s retinas with a hint of voire-taratan, Demon’s Eyes.
“You both have good points,” Hiro said, standing up and rapping his brother’s horns. “But you, ven’ai, are being obstinate and pouring salt on fresh wounds.”
Seah’ka rolled his eyes moodily and plucked a meat chip up with his chopsticks and shoved it in his mouth.
“And you,” Hiro said, pointing at Fin, “are classified as a half-blood of both Adreoni and Tartarus; you might as well be Hellspawn yourself, just as much as we are. Don’t start on the whole ‘dream demon’ thing.”
He walked away to throw out his napkin and skewers, leaving Fin and Seah’ka alone to glare at each other. Reluctantly, Fin sat back down and continued eating, not flinching as the next hyperail train sped by. He glanced at Seah’ka again, barely catching him doing the same, and stewed.
He’d known the Chirrells since he was born. They were his friends and he loved them all, from the twins to little Arinya Chirrell. But he hated how well they knew him. He also hated, sometimes, how easily they’d adopted him into their family dynamic. He’d witnessed spats like he and Seah’ka had just had dozens if not hundreds of times over the years, often between a younger and older sibling. And given that most of what Seah’ka was saying was right and came from a place of care, Fin supposed that made him the rebellious younger sibling today.
That didn’t mean he had to take anything Seah’ka said with a grain of salt, though.
They sat in silence until Hiro returned and started telling them about the nest of lunara drakons on the side of the tower. Fin and Seah’ka avoided each other’s gaze and tried to sidestep around each other in conversation until it was time to leave. Then, as they prepared to part ways at the bottom of the tower stairwell—Fin to the warp terminal and the Chirrells back to the palace—Seah’ka stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Argue with me all you want,” he said, smiling. “That’s part of Trivaalian culture. But take what I said into consideration. The Aetherian Empire is dangerous; even more so than the empires either of our families destroyed. Whether Razienne is good or not has yet to be determined, but we know for sure that the people around them aren’t to be trusted. Just… be careful, alright?”
With a reluctant sigh, Fin nodded and leaned into Seah’ka’s hand. “I will, Seah. Thanks.”
The middle Chirrell nodded and followed after Hiro, who had stopped by the corner and was waiting for him. Fin watched him go, then left for the warp terminal.
Comments