The Dead Dove Locker -- "I don't know what I expected."

[Mamorien]

The Greenfield Family.

I expect many of you will have been waiting for this chapter. As of the last one, the Greenfields have gotten their secrets out and pretty much accepted what they've all become.

Now, it's time to make it official. To properly seal their new lifestyle, to set the course for what kind of family they're going to be from now on.

And you can probably imagine what that is going to involve.

https://storiesonline.net/n/52852/the-gr...-family/45

“Batty,” He leans into her. “What are you saying to me?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how, I—I don’t know. But it can’t happen like this. I don’t want to be accountable. Not for this. If we are doomed, then let’s be doomed some other way. We have to find another way. We can’t let things turn like this for your people.” She’s on her feet now, silhouetted in front of the projector’s teal catastrophe. “We have to save them.”

Her tail lashes. He looks up into her fierce eyes. “Save them from what?”

“The Empire,” she says.

This time, her Impossible Hope of finding another way leads Sykora to dig deep.

”Save Earth from the Empire?” Grantyde wears a confused grin like it’s HAK plate. “We are the Empire. We’re saving Earth from itself. Aren’t we?”

“We’re dooming millions,” Sykora says. “You heard Hyax.”

“I did,” he says. “I was naive enough to imagine it’d be some other way, but the more I think about it, the more I understand how idiotic I was being. We were always going to break everything. All we can do is be there to clean it up afterwards. And I heard Vora, too. The number in the dark.”

He sighs. Sykora watches the lights turning off one by one behind her husband’s eyes, like a home being vacated.

“We can mitigate,” he says. “We can make it worth it. That’s what I’m holding onto.”

“No.” Sykora’s stomach is on the floor. “No, Grantyde, you—this isn’t what’s in your heart. I know it’s not.”

“What’s in my heart.” He laughs softly. “That’s so interesting, that Maekyonites and Taiikari both put stuff in there, when it’s just… stuff. Blood.” He crouches. “I’ll be okay, Batty. Not for a while, maybe. But we’ll—”

“We won’t,” Sykora insists. “Grantyde, I can’t do this. We can’t. Not without mangling ourselves beyond recognition.”

He chuckles ruefully. “So what, we cancel the invasion?” His eyes narrow at the defiant fold of Sykora’s arms, then widen. “We—Batty, are you serious?”

Sykora nods.

“We can’t,” he says.

“There’s precedent.”

“No, I mean—it—they’ll fucking kill us.” He seems to catch up with what she’s saying. “There’s precedent?”

“The Mandate,” Sykora says.

Her pause for effect is ineffectual...

Her pause for effect is ineffectual on her husband, who tilts his head in confusion. Of course he would—when would he have heard of the Mandate systems? This guilty chapter in the Taiikari history books is rarely flipped to.

“Before we’d developed the ZKZs, when Taiikari conquest wasn’t a simple game of waiting and warheads, the most dangerous annexations cost millions of warriors,” she explains. “There were territories we judged too dangerous to conquer. When the Empire concluded that a war for annexation would be unacceptably deadly for its citizens. These aliens were permitted stewardship over their own local systems, though any who meant to travel beyond their own star had to become Imperial citizens first.”

“So a truce, basically?”

“A treaty,” she says. “They remained sovereign over themselves and their system, and left the firmament to us, and joined when they were ready. But it was their call.”

“What happened to them when the ZKZs came along?”

“By then, the Mandate systems had been almost entirely absorbed,” Sykora says. “They’d been given a choice, and they ran the numbers and took it.”

“And now that’s all gone away.”

“Of course it has. Resistance to the Empire is no longer a question. There hasn’t been a single Mandate issued in kilos and kilos. How could there be, when no world can resist us? And even when it was an option, it was saved for planets which had a hope of damaging us. Doing it to Maekyon, to a world that’s barely discovered the sweep, would be far beyond any Mandate in Taiikari history.”

“So it’s unthinkable.”

“It is,” Sykora says. “But I’m thinking it.”

She hops onto the table and stands defiantly within the wireframe of Maekyon.

“If the Empress insists that the Maekyonites are already her subjects, then they are as under her protection as anyone,” she says. “We must judge their losses with the same scrutiny we’d use to judge the loss of Taiikari lives. And by this metric I judge the contest too destructive. And I must offer the Mandate to Maekyon.”

He gawks. He’s reacting to this heresy with such sense. Like a Taiikari would, she thinks, and tries to keep the despair from showing. “How?” he asks.

“I’m a Princess Margrave,” she insists. “We do it by me doing it, and damn the consequences.”

“We can’t just damn the consequences. They’ll—”

“They’ll circle me and snap at me,” she says. “They’ll rip me apart, if they can, I’m sure. The Mandates were the nearest the Empire ever came to surrender. Offering one to Maekyon? They’d think me mad. And God help me, I may be. I must be. But I don’t care. I survived for a decacycle of deprivation at the hands of your species and returned and claimed my throne again. I am the first Princess Margrave of the void sectors. The first wife to a free husband, the first mother to children of Maekyonite and Taiikari blood. I am Sykora of the Black Pike. I am not afraid of them.”

“The Peerage isn’t what scares me. The Empress.”

“The Empress?” She laughs, to hide the anxiety. “The Empress likes me.”

“She’s testing you. All the time, she’s testing. It’s the game, isn’t it? The one that determines the successor. If you don’t—if this doesn’t happen, if we do this, you’re out, surely. I think you’re out of the running.”

“So what?” she demands, and when he can furnish no response but an agog stare she presses on: “So what if I’m not Empress? So what if I lose this silly little competition?”

“Sykora.” Grantyde stands to get face-to-face with her. He’s wearing his anticomps, still. He hasn’t stopped wearing them, even after the reveal. She doesn’t understand why. She loves his eyes. “What happens once she dies? This Empire. It’s… if whoever is next isn’t like her, doesn’t think like she does, like you do, it’s a fucking nightmare. A nightmare within our lifetimes. That our children endure for centuries.”

“Grantyde, I haven’t told this to you because—” She steels herself to banish that juvenile teeter from her voice. She is a Princess Margrave. “Because I feared that when I did it would break your heart. You have such faith in me. Such ambition. But I am incapable of being Empress. I cannot do it.”

“You’re not incapable,” he says. “You’re the greatest Princess I know. You’d be incredible. There’s so many things we thought we couldn’t do, and we’ve done them.”

“We have. And it’s been so wonderful. I’ve had so many dreams for myself that I’ve put aside into this unlit place of the unthinkable, and you’ve found them and brought into the light. But this has never been one of them. Never ever.” Her compressing insides allow her a tight laugh. “My lovely man. Have you ever once heard me desire it? I don’t want to be the Empress. I’ve never wanted to be Empress.”

“If it’s a question of Taiikari loyalty—”

“It is,” she says. “But not in the way you mean, I don’t think. The Empress must be loyal to the Empire above all things. The Empress must place the Empire in front of everything. Everything. And I can’t do it.”

She extends her hand. Obediently he steps forward, and she nests her touch along his jaw.

“You or the Pike? If I had to choose. Do you remember?”

He nods.

“That was the hardest question of my life,” she says. “And I thank every God in the grand vault of the firmament that I didn’t have to answer it. But this? You or the Imperial seat? This isn’t hard at all, dove.”

She smiles, though her stomach is turning itself upside down over finally saying the words that she’s kept inside so long.

“I need my people. I need my Pike. I need to rule my sector and run my voidship and pop out a Staff Clash team’s worth of Maekyonite-blooded babies. That wasteland we saw in the Empress’s daemon, that misery, that lack of love. I can’t live that. Yours and Vora’s and Waian’s and Hyax’s and the children—my God, the children, I can feel it from them already. They can’t even say my name and there’s so much love. I wouldn’t trade it for a hundred Empires. I’ve become such a creature of love. I swim in it. If I’m taken out, I’ll die. I will never be Empress. If it was offered, I would turn it down, and if it was forced upon me I would seek escape with the same desperation I fled from my last prison.”

Her hand shivers. Her palm is damp with sweat.

“I will not allow you to change into whatever was required to conquer Maekyon,” she says. “I will not allow Grant Hyde to disappear in that way. I will not lose you. I will take the Mandate as my starting line, and I will find another path. I will burn all my capital with the Empress. I will convince her again, just as I have before, of the exceptionalism Maekyon presents. And if the Empress will not allow it—”

Then what, Sykora of the Black Pike? What will you do? What can you do? Can you even imagine?

Grantyde abrogates whatever dark conclusion she might have reached by sweeping her off her feet and into his arms.

“I’m sorry.” He lays kiss after scratchy kiss on her face. “I’m sorry, Batty. I never—I won’t disappear. I didn’t know. I’m so goddamn sorry.”

“Grant, no.” But her throat is leaping, giddy at the crumpling-up and throwing-away of the careful Taiikari norm. “Grant, you can’t say that—”

“Whatever,” he grunts, and boosts her higher, kissing her neck, her chest. “In English, then. I’m sorry. I love you.”

He takes hold of the sheer leggings she’s wearing under her uniform, nails digging into the thin fabric at the tail hole; she yelps with the crackling sound as he shreds them open. The chilly air stings the exposed skin of her rear momentarily before his giant, warm hands clamp tightly on her and squeeze. His palms were as covered in nervous sweat as hers; but the shaking’s stopped.

He slides her gasping onto the table and it’s all she can do to unclasp her uniform before her brute of a husband rips that from her, too. He kisses her exposed stomach, the tightening peaks of her breasts, her trembling lips. She fumbles with the catch of his belt. She tugs insistently on his anticomps and he gets the message, helps her tear them from his face. His big beautiful brown eyes shine with tears.

“Thank you,” he whispers into her ear, which quirks straight at the shivery sensation his dusty voice sends down her spine. “You pulled me back. I’m back. Thank you so fucking much.”

“Grant,” she pants. “Grant, wait—wait, we can’t do it here—”

His hands were journeying south from her ass, ready to flip her thighs up into their favorite place. They freeze.

“Oh, no,” she says. “Not really.”

He laughs and raises her hips until the small of her back is in the air and her tail is dangling.

From there, it goes the same sort of place as TGF, albeit behind spoiler tags in the RR edition.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/120617...sible-hope
https://www.scribblehub.com/read/1419041...r/2526304/

[Mamorien]

Headless Over Heels.

“Here’s what I don’t get about pirates.” Annalise prodded at her scar. “You’re a man of justice, Sunshine. No tears shed on the scaffold.”

“Sure.”

“But everyone goes away with the fairies when it’s pirates,” she said. “Even you.”

“To a point,” Tiago said. “I still would’ve killed him. Just let him do a monologue or two first.”

“We did,” Seth said.

“Piracy is a fanciful crime,” Ofelia mused. “Sky piracy doubly so. You say murder or assault, and your listener rightly frowns. But say piracy and you put stars in eyes. Who among us can’t relate to the urge to light out with a crew of vagabonds, quomodocunquizing across the United Territories in a baldrick and a ruffled shirt?”

“That’s not a word,” Tiago said.

“Shirt?”

“The quo- thing.”

“That’s absolutely a word,” Ofelia said. “When one hears of a pirate, one imagines living the life of the perpetrator, and not the victim. But the latter outnumber the former, always. And you die just the same at the hands of a rakish avatar of freedom as you do in the maw of a seraph. It’s the sense of belonging, I suppose. To an iconoclastic community.”

Belonging.

“Belonging.” Seth picked a blade of grass into pieces as he thought. “What if it’s belonging?”

Tiago lifted a brow. “What if what’s belonging?”

“When I used my Darkness up there,” Seth said. “One of them saw me and I… I told him he didn’t, I guess? Or that I was just minding my own business. And what you told me. About how a Darkness works. It’s what you long for. And I thought: what if my Darkness ends up being, I dunno. Summoning an image of Annalise’s butt.”

Tiago scoffed. Annalise tried to turn her laugh into some kind of irritated exhalation, but he’d gotten her with that one.

“And then after today, I thought, what if it’s tweaking the noses of the powerful? Or being a perfect liar? But that’s not what that was, I don’t think. It didn’t feel like I was lying, it felt like… like I was making it true.” He let the torn-up grass sprinkle to the ground. “I guess—if I really thought about it—I’ve always wanted to feel like I belong. To exist someplace, without being told to clear out or explain myself or whatever. To be accepted, I guess. Does that make any sense at all? Would it be ridiculous if my Darkness is belonging somewhere super-hard? Hard enough to fool people?”

Annalise stared at him in astonished silence.

Tiago cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah. That’d make some sense, I guess.”

“I hope you don’t take this as emasculating,” Ofelia said. “But that’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever heard.”

“We’ll need to verify that,” Tiago said. “We’ll work out some testing. And maybe build up your endurance. First time always knocks you on your ass, but you’ll get used to it.”

“Aye, well.” Annalise started as though shook awake, and clambered off the circle cloth. “That’s for later. Need you and your sister to head down the hill to ol’ Sheepfuck. Someone has to go tell the Corregidor—the Karla, whatever—we found our man and more besides.”

“What about the stormship?” Tiago asked, helping his mother to fold the magic circle lengthwise.

“Ship’ll keep.” Annalise ruffled her son’s hair. “Don’t you worry, Sunshine. I won’t sink it without ya.”

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/173313...7-darkness
https://www.scribblehub.com/read/2385004...r/2531287/

[Mamorien]

More Headless Over Heels.

The scaffold creaked under the heavy stride of the Verdugo as her shadow fell across the kneeling woman. “Do you love your people, Jesska il Maksdotir?”

The waxen-faced sacrifice blinked away her sweat. “I do.”

“Do you repent your crimes against them?”

“I do.”

“Do you give praise to Hundred Saints, and to the Sorcerer General, and the deathspell beneath which he shelters us?”

“I do.”

Annalise whistled toward Jesska’s blind spot. “Ho, there, Tiago. Pass me the sword.”

Jesska turned her head in confusion to Tiago where he stood gauntly to one side—didn’t the woman behind her already have her black blade ready?—and Annalise struck.

The village of Tondarre reacted with a healthy ohh! Only a couple of screams, no whooping or clapping. Seth, observing from the carriage’s threshold at the rear of the crowd, was developing a theory that you could tell how the year had been in a village by the sound their assembly made when the head went flying.

“Why does she do that?” he asked the placid girl at his side as she flipped the hasped broach of her traveler’s cloak open and shut. “The fake-out?”

“It positions them right,” Ofelia said. “If they stay put, they hunch sometimes, or dart, or the muscle is tense with the anticipation of the blade. The al Ydrises don’t swing twice.”

“What does she whisper to them? The reluctant ones?”

“I’m not sure,” Ofelia said. “Mother’s actually never executed me, if you can believe it.”

“It does beggar belief.”

“Thank you, Jesska.” Annalise passed a palm over the corpse’s gray eyes and shut them forever. She pulled a rag from her belt pouch and wiped the wide span of her steel. “With that, folks, we’re done. On behalf of the Legion and the Sorcerer General, I thank you all for your loyalty, and wish you as warm and safe a winter as Ms. Maksdotir’s sacrifice has earned you. We’ll see you next year.”

Esteemed colleagues and also Ofelia, I decree the 841 quota season complete!

The sword hissed back into its scabbard. The prisoners who had earned a punishment gentler than its mercy were corralled from the scaffold. Annalise waved aside a hermandati gauntlet on offer to ease her passage to the ground, and hopped down instead, her boots splashing into the mud.

Corregidor Tannon valiantly attempted warmth from as far as one could reasonably excuse. “Madam Verdugo. It’s such a privilege to finally make your acquaintance.” The guy had a pair of long gloves on and a scarf cinched up past his chin, which he took every second breath from. The proper Corregidor maneuver was to invite the new Verdugo to stay in the manor. Tannon’s training did pitched battle with his terror of catching the soul-sickness from this huge unlit woman. “I would love to. Er. Well, that is to say, it would be such an honor to invite you and your retinue to stay, in, in whichever, uh—we, we understand Ms. il Maksdotir lived alone, and perhaps—”

“It’s been grand to meet you, Corregidor.” With a merciful smile and a wave, Annalise released Tannon from the metaphorical meathook he dangled from. “Truly it has. But if it’s all the same to you, we’ve got to be on the hoof again. It’s a chock-a-block schedule. So unless there’s any pressing business—”

“Of course, Madam Verdugo!” Tannon was so loud and abrupt it brought a startled flush to his own face. “Of course. Wouldn’t dream of keeping you. Yes. Uh, be well.”

Annalise mirrored his relief as she departed Tondarre’s emptying plaza, Tiago in tow. Seth moved aside; she caught his hand and tugged him with her into the carriage. “Come on, come on, come on,” she whispered urgently. Ofelia scurried in after them. The spring steel of the carriage’s black-lacquer driver box squeaked beneath Tiago’s hasty clamber to the reins.

Ofelia banged her palm on the front-facing window’s diamond lattice. “Go, go!”

Tiago cracked the reins; Draco and Draka huffed into motion. Demetrius, tethered into their train, knickered with annoyed confusion at the haste.

“Not yet. Not yet, dammit. They might hear us.” Annalise indicated a scaffwood tree split along its midpoint like a tuning fork. “Once we’re past that.”

The carriage trundled past the tree. Tiago stood on his seat and proclaimed it in his praise the Verdugo voice: “Esteemed colleagues and also Ofelia, I decree the 841 quota season complete!”

Annalise seized Seth and showered the side of his face with kisses; Tiago banged his fist on the roof; even Ofelia couldn’t help but bounce in her seat and punch the air.

“Thank you, Jesska, for number fifty,” Annalise cried, “Thank you, Plainlands, and smell you later! Thank you, Draco and Draka and Demetrius and whatever Seth is naming his! And thank you, Sunshine and Feeli and Seth il fucking Gutierre because we did it!”

They cheered, and broke out the red wine and the nice cups that were wrapped in newsprint and stuck inside a munition breastplate for safe-keeping, and Seth was exactly where he belonged.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/173313...lers-haven
https://www.scribblehub.com/read/2385004...r/2532866/

[Mamorien]

And now on Headless Over Heels, a musical interlude.

Out in the brightly lit center of the taphouse they’d cleared the crockery from a banquet table, and a pair of musicians—a mitegrinder and a fiddler—were taking requests. “Don’t be shy, now!” The mitegrinder snapped shut the trap on his boxy instrument’s toggle and its low drone began. “For a solitar we’ll play what you please. For a brace we’ll play it sober.”

“Hey!” Seth whistled and waved a score coin. “Do The Verdugo and the Maiden!”

“Where’d you get that—” Annalise patted her pocket. “Oh, you blighter.”

“C’mon,” Seth said. “This is your profession’s anthem. Don’t tell me you don’t love it.”

Annalise snatched her purse back from him with a dry laugh. “I dunno if I’ve heard it, pet.”

The musicians were looking askance at the clutch of unlit. “Begging your pardon, master.” The fiddler’s swallow bobbed his instrument where it lay at his neck. “Perhaps it’s not a song for a mixed crowd.”

“She loves it. Don’t worry about it.” Seth added a second score to his palm. “C’mon now. You gonna catch these?”

Annalise scoffed. “How the feck d’you keep robbing me.”

“You need to pay me more regularly.”

“He’s got the Forked Tongue on his back,” Ofelia called to the dithering players. “He’ll join in.”

“C’mon then, goodman,” the fiddler cried. “And bring your braces.”

Seth balked. “Oh, hold on now. It’s, uh—it’s not active.”

“Yes it is.” Ofelia gave him a kick forward from their booth. “Get up on that table, Mr. il Gutierre. That’s an order.”

“You don’t give me orders.”

“I do,” Annalise said. “And I’m apparently paying good money for this. Get up there, Seth.”

Seth scrambled onto the table as the music rose, and with his new colleagues, he sang.

The Verdugo with his thirsty sword came riding on his bay...

The Verdugo with his thirsty sword came riding on his bay

Sing who’s the one whose pretty head I’ll have for me today

He startled himself with the sound of his own voice. The Forked Tongue hadn’t applied much to his conversation; maybe a bit more bass to his brogue, but nothing more. He’d been vaguely disappointed. Now, though, singing, he felt it. Felt all the imperfections stripped away as if by an acidic bright dip bath. Annalise beamed.

And up the scaffwood he did climb, and whistling all the way

The Legion calls and one must fall whose head I’ll take today

A head, a head, a pretty head! A head for me today!

Seth had never been particularly afraid to sing, especially once you got some corn whiskey in him. But he wasn’t a singer. Not a one you’d beg to hear, or toss braces at his feet. And yet here they were. Clattering by the toes of his boots. He laughed aloud at the joy of it. He was soaring like a songbird over the hairy-headed revelry. He was good.

Forward came a maiden fair with dainty doily dread

O Verdugo all in black, O mercy lord, she said

My father stole a stallion, yet I’d weep to see him dead

So spare the man your thirsty sword and take my maiden head

O take, and take, and take again! And take my maiden head!

There were four more verses, each more obvious than the last. By the finale Seth had been outfitted with not one but two straw hats.

And okay: when the reels and dances began, the first girl who offered her arm blanched with sudden remembrance and snatched it back before it could graze unlit skin. But Seth already knew who he wanted to dance with, and she never hesitated to touch him.

“Was it worth your scores, Madam Verdugo?” he asked, as she twirled him off the table.

“It was a bleeding slag,” she said. “But I love how you sang it.”

Her utter fearlessness of the world’s attention, when she kissed him, screamed in the face of his thief training. A life spent in the shadows, now dragged into the light and kissed by a gorgeous, indulgent giant. It would take practice to get used to this.

Wet, wonderful practice, he reflected, as Annalise led him back toward the table from whence they’d come.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/173313...the-maiden
https://www.scribblehub.com/read/2385004...r/2536840/

[Mamorien]

The Greenfield Family.

With the Greenfields having officially accepted their new lifestyle, now we see them branching out to their nearest and dearest outside the immediate family. Over the course of a week, it's time to see how they incorporate everyone who's been a part of their transition become a part of what they have become.

It looks like all is working out for the best...

...or are there still some threats lurking in the corners?

https://storiesonline.net/n/52852/the-gr...-family/46

Princess of the Void.

Master Sergeant Ajax is in his cabin, sitting in front of his and Meena’s portable terminal. The flotilla drama they were watching last night is still on screen, paused where he fell asleep—Meena paused it on a frozen image of a weeping woman, her horns half-cocked, a pistol in her hand.

He blinks. He doesn’t remember how he got here.

His anticomps are raised to his forehead. In his lap is one of his wife’s stuffed animals, an adorably bug-eyed throok with orange felt skin, with a big patch that’s turned pale and threadbare on its middle left leg. Ronax really loves chewing that bit, and to Ajax’s pleased surprise, Meena just giggles when he does and doesn’t flash the boy to stop.

In his hand is a datawafer. WATCH ME is written on it in thick-lined memorandum ink.

All right, Meen.

Is this some kind of romantic gesture from his wife? “All right, Meen,” he murmurs, and slides the wafer into the terminal’s bank, anticipating something adorably pornographic.

The Prince of the Pike’s face fills the screen. Ajax nearly jumps out of his skin.

The screen tilts and the massive Maekyonite backs away, seemingly satisfied with the camera he’s just set up. Behind him is a view of his cabin. Her Majesty and their children are missing. There’s nobody inside but Grantyde.

And—as the cabin door slides open—Ajax. He watches himself on the recorded video step into the room and salute. “Majesty.”

He has no memory of this.

Grantyde indicates an ornate gulwood seat. “Have a seat, Master Sergeant.”

Video Ajax sits stiffly in the chair. It’s worth as much as the HAK armor he’s wearing.

Grantyde sits across from him and points at the camera. “I’d like your permission to record you, Ajax.”

“You’re always recording me,” Ajax says.

“Yeah, but this recording is special. This one, nobody but you will see. So if you’re watching this in the future I need to order you to do it alone. Just in case.” Grantyde waves at the camera. “Pardon the trouble, Meen, but please leave the room.”

Ajax looks over his shoulder. He’s alone in the cabin except for Karinax, who’s in his crib sleeping. He presumes Grantyde would make an exception. He turns back to the screen, where his digital doppelganger is sitting in attentive, impersonal silence, Grantyde’s reflection in his visor.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” Grantyde says. “About a lot of things. Recently, I mean. I’ve been thinking about the ways I’ve changed, and how I’ll have to keep changing, and sometimes about the ways I don’t think I’d like to change at all, actually. I’ve been rushing. That’s understandable, you might say, in my position.”

Ajax doesn’t say that—he says nothing at all, in fact.

“But if I think about it,” Grantyde says. “If I look back at my first days on the Pike, more than any promise that was made to me or exception established in my name, it was you who changed me first. You made me realize I could live here, Ajax.”

He pauses, then, in invitation for Ajax to speak. Ajax doesn’t. Modern Ajax congratulates himself for how formally he’s following procedure on the recording.

“You’re my friend,” Grantyde says. “Maybe my best friend, if wives don’t count. And it took me decacycles to get there, to have someone I could count as much a friend as a subject in the way I counted you, and I need it back. Whenever I picture my kids’ childhood it’s them being best friends with yours. And I think at one point, you pictured the same.”

Another pause. This time, Recording-Ajax fills the silence with a brief “Majesty.”

“I thought I was being responsible trying to keep my distance.” Grantyde threads his fingers behind his head and sits back. “But, well—like I said. I’ve been thinking. And I think I’m done trying. So it’s either me order you to be my friend again—that’s a joke—or this.”

The watching Ajax feels his shoulders load with tension. The recording Ajax stiffens, too. “What is this, Majesty?”

“This is me explaining myself,” Grantyde says. “This is the truth you deserve about what happened the day I was compelled, even though it’s—”

The screen flickers. The timestamp in the corner jumps ahead by five minutes. Ajax watches the skip in time knock him into a forward lean, hands clasped tightly. His helmet is off, now, by his feet on the floor, a look of muted shock on his own face.

“—et it now?” Grantyde asks. “Why I had to do what I did, and play along with it and keep this from you?”

Video Ajax stares down at his hands. “Hellfire,” he mutters.

Grantyde laughs drily. “Imagine how I felt.”

Whatever this video skipped so thoroughly dumbfounded Ajax that all he can respond with is another “Hellfire. Fuckin’ hellfire.” He snaps partially out of it. “How long has—”

The video jumps.

“Now I’m giving you the choice,” Grantyde is sitting back down and handing Ajax a glass of water. “I will let you hold this thing, with the knowledge that it’s a monstrous breach of secrecy and—”

A digital click accompanies another jump.

“But I’m guessing that’s causing you some distress.”

“Yes. Yeah.” Onscreen Ajax takes a sip of water. His legs are hooked beneath his seat, tail wrapped round its base, like the grav’s been shut off and he’s holding himself to the floor. “I mean—I can handle it.”

“I know you can,” Grantyde says. “That’s why I’m telling you.”

“But wait.” Ajax looks up. “ If you—”

The tape skips forward again, another minute.

“—top talking about it in concrete terms at this point, please,” Grantyde says. “I’m gonna need to edit this myself, and I barely know how.”

“Couldn’t the Chief Engineer? Unless… nobody knows you’re doing this, do they?”

Grantyde shakes his big shaggy head. “Just you, Jax. Though I might tell Kora if you decide to keep this in your brain.”

“As opposed to…” The light goes on for video Ajax at the same time as it does for the guy watching it back. “You’re gonna compel me.”

“That’s your other option,” Grantyde says. “Meena’s waiting outside. I can get her in here right now and ask her to remove your memory of what we talked about here. Then I’ll give you this recording, with the sensitive shit cut out of it. And you can watch it, and know that I trusted you enough to tell you. That I trust you with my life, and the life of my family, and the Pike. And that I’m sorry for what happened and the cycles of distance it’s made, and I need my friend back. So if you can be satisfied by this shadow of the truth, we can flash the rest away. But if you need an explanation, you have it now. And I’ll let it stay in your head.”

Video Ajax is statue-still.

“Jax?” Grantyde prompts.

“I’m thinking.”

“Take your time. Do you have any more quest—”

Another jump. They’re both on their feet now, shaking hands.

“—ver again,” Grantyde says. That’s a promise.”

Ajax watches himself shift his grip on the handshake and pull the Prince of the Black Pike into a hug. What the fuck are you thinking, he wants to ask himself, but Grantyde smiles and thumps him on the back.

“Thank you, Majesty,” video Ajax says. “Thank you, I—it’s been such a fucking hole in my head. It shouldn’t have been. I’m not… I didn’t deserve—”

“Yes, you did,” Grant says. “I love you, man.”

“I love you too,” Ajax says—shouts? The audio just boomed so hard that it clipped at the edge. “Edit that shit out.”

Grantyde laughs. “No way. I’m turning it way up. And putting it two more ti—”

“I love you too. I love you too.”

“—mes right here.”

Ajax points toward himself in the future. “This is where you’re recording from?”

“Yep.”

The camera shifts as the Ajax of the past picks it up. “Master Sergeant,” he says, sternly. “I’m electing to remove the memory of the explanation His Majesty gave us. But I am stating directly to you, in the future, that it satisfied me. And if you’re watching this and you insist on maintaining your distance, stop being a dumb asshole.”

“And let me know when you’ve watched this,” Grantyde’s voice from over Ajax’s armored shoulder. “Please.”

“Sure.” The camera jolts around. “Catch.”

“Wait Jax wait that’s expens—”

The video feed ends.

Without meaning to, Ajax has been crushing the hell out of his wife’s stuffy. He tosses it back onto their comfy little nest with the rest as he stands.

He puts his anticomps back on and exits the cabin.

Where are you going? he inquires of his feet. They’re pointing him toward the sleek pillars of the lifts, where they rise like a needle from the center of the hab ring. Towards the command deck, and the Prince he thought he knew, and then thought he didn’t.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/120617...7-watch-me
WHILE I WASN'T LOOKING: https://www.scribblehub.com/read/1419041...r/2552101/

[Mamorien]

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I get to update you on two several Headless Over Heels chapters!

After the bit I excerpted from Thursday's chapter, the al Ydrises got the United Territories version of a telegram, which prompted precision F-strikes from Annalise, Tiago, Ofelia and Seth in order:

Skywire Bulletin — Highest Priority — All Legion Agents Exark & Superior

Seraph breach reported upon Central Plainland Corridor route. Traced inbound to Shaheill, to reach on 6th Drozt at 2100.

The seraph Enna-Belum has breached the deathspell. Blackfeather, est 20 tons, moderately wounded on front right appendage. Containment efforts have failed. Immediate interdiction requested.

May the 100 Saints preserve you.

Since it's a seraph-hunt, Annalise switched to her seraph-hunting head, Anna, who is now getting a tour of the local perimeter from (and inflicting her bottomless reservoirs of patience and tact on) Simon il Teremi, acting interim undersecretary to Shaheill's "indisposed" corregidor, while Seth and the twins liaise with the professed Chief Hermandat, Simon's probably-niece-or-something Riccana.

Seth detached from the shadows and joined the twins. Riccana cast a look across the three unlit. “So you’re the Verdugo’s retinue?”

“And her children, yes,” Ofelia said. “And Seth’s her Seth.”

“She doesn’t have to worry about me.” Riccana tucked her helmet under her arm and unbound the messy bun beneath it. “I’m older than I look.”

“We know the feeling,” Ofelia said.

“I suppose you do.” Riccana inclined her head; her ginger hair cascaded in unruly ringlets. “Pardon me, sirs. Here I am talking like you might not all be twice my age.”

“We’re not,” Tiago said, at the same time as Ofelia said “We’re forty.”

“We’re not,” Tiago repeated.

Riccana had a pretty smile, even if (and this was new information to him) she was much younger than Seth’s preference.

“Pardon our Verdugo’s snippiness,” he said. “It was a long ride and she’s not in her right head.”

Ofelia released a humored hm. Riccana shook her hair out and pinned it up again, tighter this time. “I can imagine.”

“Do you have any idea why the blackfeather is coming for Shaheill?” Tiago asked. “If we know what it’s here for, we might be able to outthink it. They’re not exactly brilliant tacticians.”

“I don’t suppose you need to be, when you’re twenty tons,” Riccana said. “As far as what makes Shaheill special, it’s only a few streets over, sir, if it please you to see.”

Tiago tilted his head. “Lead on, Chief Hermandat.”

Here we are. The treasure of Shaheill.

“To be honest, everything is a few streets over when you’re in a place like Shaheill,” Riccana said, as they walked its wide, tidy streets. “We’re not exactly a destination.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Tiago said. “If you’re worth attacking, you’re worth defending.”

“I didn’t mean to put the place down. Lived here all my life, after all.” A stray strand of ginger hair slipped Riccana’s bun and into her heart-shaped face. She tsked and pinned it back up, and Seth was even more convinced that all my life could hardly be more than a pair of decades, if that. How’d a stripling end up the Chief Hermandat? “And we have this to our name.” She came to a wooden fence painted the same cheerful orange as her hair, pushed it open, and saluted. “Here we are. The treasure of Shaheill.”

Seth cast a curious look around the field into which they walked. The furrows in the ground were dotted not with crops or hedgerows but with domes of terracotta clay, each as tall as a man. “You’re growing clay?”

“Press your ear to it.” Riccana tilted her head against the closest clay structure. “Like this.”

Tiago mirrored her motion. His brows knitted. “What in the Saints’ name is that?”

Seth laid his cheek on the coarse clay. Within the dome something was clicking and popping. It almost sounded like a Prossimo popmite silo.

Riccana grinned. “That, milord, is rhubarb. The forced rhubarb of Shaheill. The Teremis have been growing it for decades. It comes up in the pitched dark, pushing out all pale from the ground an inch a day. Fast enough you can hear it.”

“You’re shitting me,” Tiago said.

“No, no, I’ve actually heard of this.” Seth listened harder. Another echoing pop. “Didn’t put the name to the thing until she mentioned it, but I knew a chef who swore by it. Sweet and tender. I always wondered how it’d be to cook with it.”

“Best rhubarb in the Plainlands,” Riccana said, with evident pride. “We grow all through the frost and harvest it by candlelight. It never sees the sun 'til it's on your fancy city plates.”

“You have time to work on the farm while you’re Chief Hermandatting?” Ofelia asked.

Riccana’s smile wilted. “Well—it’s a quiet town, usually. As I said.”

“Ignore my sister,” Tiago said. “She noses in. Gets it from Mother. You go on ahead and get your people to the muster hall. We’ll catch up.”

Ricanna saluted. “Sir.” She turned on her heel with perhaps a touch too much military formalism and set off through Shaheill’s mitelit streets, following the whispering, jostling flow of its citizenry.

“She’s rather cute, isn’t she?” Ofelia’s elbow prodded her brother. “And she called you sir, Tiago.”

“I am making it a gleaming-sharp point not to get attached to any of these people,” Tiago said. “A blackfeather. Here to murder everyone for what, rhubarb. Fuck my life.”

“It’s very special rhubarb,” Ofelia said. “Unlit, you might say.”

“You might.” Tiago frowned at the palisade that surrounded the town. Atop its wooden walkways, torches were lighting a circle of flickering fulmination around Shaheill. Like a ritual circle. “I’d hoped we might understand something about what’s coming. Some way to be cheeky. As though there was any reason for a blackfeather to come to a village other than to raze it to the ground.”

“So why?” Seth asked. “Why Shaheill?”

“We can wonder once we’re on the other side of this,” Tiago said. “If we survive it.”

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/173313...f-shaheill
https://www.scribblehub.com/read/2385004...r/2544540/

Today, before they get to the matter of How We Kill It, there's a question of seniority to discuss.

“She’s rather short, for a CH,” Ofelia said.

“This thing’s the size of a townhouse,” Tiago said. “We’re all short.” He crossed past his sister, back to the muster yard’s concrete ring as its nervous irregulars filled it with supplies.

Seth and Ofelia followed him past precarious racks of two-story anchorpikes, a patchwork pile of surplus platemail, a hodgepodge of edged weaponry, and a heavy barrel with a splash of angry orange paint on its lid. This last item Tiago opened, and frowned into. “Is this all the powder we’ve got?

A blond hermandat, his armor close-fitted and meticulously polished, saluted beside the stock. “Yes, sir.”

“Do you have a powder cannon?” Ofelia asked.

The man’s shine dimmed. “We have rifles.”

“That’ll tickle it, anyway,” Ofelia said.

Tiago lifted a pane of polished onyx from the supply pile, its octagonal edge bordered in riveted steel. “And just this one animaxis?”

“Yes, sir,” the hermandat said. “Sorry, sir.”

Tiago returned it to its crooked place on the stack. “No, no, just… try not to go unlit, I suppose. We can only catch one soul.”

Sir, may I speak of something indelicate?

The shiny hermandat ahem’d. “Sir, may I speak of something indelicate?”

“It’s an indelicate night.”

“That woman is not the Chief Hermandat, sir. Our Chief vacated the village along with the Corregidor when the skywire came in. Riccana wasn’t next in line, either. She’s—”

“She’s what?” Tiago’s eyes narrowed. “What are you telling me this for? Who was next in line?”

“I was, sir. I’m the—”

“Why did you not speak up sooner?”

“I—well, I—she was insubordinate, and I was waiting for an officer to—”

“What order was she insubordinate to, little man?” Tiago’s glare was as black as a seraph cavern. “What did you tell these people to do, that she could overrule you in their heads? We’re all a day away from saving the entire territory or dying the worst possible way anyone can fucking die, and you think I’m about to lock up the only woman with the balls to do something about it?”

“I—forgive me. I thought you should be made aware.”

“It’s time for you to fuck off,” Tiago said.

“Sir—”

“Fuck off,” Tiago repeated. “Back to your post, or you can desert with your chickenshit CH.”

The tin soldier clanked fretfully back into line. Seth took up his former position at Tiago’s ear. “What are we thinking?”

“We’re thinking that skywire better catch wide and drag more bodies in.” Tiago scratched the wispy pubescent hairs on his upper lip. “Because if this is all we have to stop a blackfeather, we are fucked with a capital fuck.”

“I’m thinking that half-pint impostor scouring the town has caught my brother’s eye,” Ofelia said. “Sadly shadowed as it is. That was very gallant, Tiago.”

“Shut up, Feeli.”

“He’s got your inclination in reverse, Seth,” Ofelia said. “He enjoys looming over ladies.”

“The Legion should be here in force to stop this blackfeather, and they’re not, and she’s just a rhubarb farmer, and she and hers are standing in front of it anyway,” Tiago said. “If you want to hear I admire her bravery, then whatever. I do.”

“Admiring her bravery. Uh huh.” Ofelia leaned Seth’s way. “Do all Plainlanders keep their bravery in their round, perky butts, or is that just Shaheill?”

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/173313...we-kill-it
https://www.scribblehub.com/read/2385004...r/2546330/

[Mamorien]

Today on or in Headless Over Heels, Seth prepares to stand against Enna-Belum, even though the acting officials can only offer him a Red Cloth and a pointed stick.

Ofelia stared at the cloth, as Simon handed it off to Seth and Seth tied it to his wrist. “You’re really doing this.”

Seth’s forearm, thin as it was, required a double-bind to secure the fabric. “You don’t need to sound so surprised.”

“I don’t sound like anything,” Ofelia said. “I work very prudently to be as monotone as possible, for the sake of my aesthetic.”

“Well, yes. I am really doing this.”

“It’s a bitter waste of your value if you die, Mr. il Gutierre,” Ofelia said. “Rather like placing a splendid mouser in a swimming competition with an eel.”

“That is the craziest fucking metaphor I’ve ever heard, Ms. al Ydris, and it won’t stop me.”

“Oh, you needn’t stop.” Ofelia’s willowy fingers brushed the knot he’d tied to himself. “Just don’t die, yes?”

“Sure.”

“Good.” Ofelia smiled vaguely. “I would miss you very much.”

“Feeli!” Tiago was descending the palisade. He waved his arms at her. “They found the sorcerer!”

“Ah, Saints.” Ofelia broke into a jog back toward the clustered village streets. “Come on, Seth.”

By the time they’d arrived at the sorcerer’s house—a bungalow that ought to be quite pretty, with dried vines tangling its window and peeling paint on the door—a crowd had gathered. At its fore stood Anna al Ydris, her goliath arms crossed. Little redheaded Riccana and two fellow hermandati were tugging a stubbly, threadbare man out of its darkened interior. “Goodman, come on. Please just see her.”

The sorcerer staggered out the rest of the way, swatting the hands that bore him like they were insects landing on his shoulders. “Off me. Off me, damn you all. I’m going.”

“You’re the Shaheill sorcerer,” Anna said. “Robert il Magnard.”

Yes. I am a sorcerer, yes. Worst fucking thing that ever happened to me.

“Yes. I am a sorcerer, yes.” The man’s bloodshot eyes clambered up Anna then dropped back down to her boots. “Worst fucking thing that ever happened to me.”

Anna’s stone face showed little pity. “Your Legion is calling you again to serve, Robert.”

“I’m not fit,” he mumbled.

“Stand up. Stop muttering.”

Robert made a credible effort at both. “Said I’m not fit, Madam Verdugo. I’ve got a hangover.”

“You won’t, by the time you’re needed.”

“By the time I’m needed I intend to be drunk, Madam Verdugo.” Robert laughed, high and cracked; he sounded like a gamefowl getting run over. “I can’t do it. I can’t. I can’t look at it, I can’t fight it, I can’t do a thing. Cut my fucking head off and be done.”

Anna looked about ready to do just that. Tiago intervened from past the great black scabbard on her back. “Have you forgotten the spell?”

“Have I forgotten. Got your fucking fancy ink crawling around all over your fancy arm and you think you know how magic works. I haven’t fucking forgotten the spell, boy. I dream the spell. I’ll forget my father’s name before I forget the spell. It’s everywhere. Over everything. Like looking at the sun too long. They brand it to the inside of your skull.”

“Don’t be pathetic, il Magnard.” Anna’s murani fangs were showing now. “You’ve got a pension and a house so that the Legion can depend on you for these situations.”

“Aye, a pension. A pension and a jumpy neighbor who pretends he’s not being paid threebrace a week to blow my brains out if I hold my hands out wrong. A pension and a head full of—” Robert’s poeticism tripped over his enlarged liver. “Of shit. Shit and blood.”

“If you won’t serve for the Legion,” Tiago said, “then you—”

“You made a match out of me!” Robert spat a discolored lob into the dirt at Tiago’s feet. “And now you want me normal? To eat three squares and tiddly-um down to the shops and go hmmm I wonder what’s at market today? You expect me to hold a lover with these hands? A child? A fucking job? A fucking life? When all they have to do is—”

His hands shot up and forward. A ringing out of screams and shouts. Tiago ducked, lunged, slide tackled the man to the ground, and wrenched those gnarled weapon-hands behind Robert’s back.

“See?” Robert’s cracked cry was suspended halfway between laughter and weeping. “See? Let me up. Let me saintsfucking up, boy.” He struggled to his feet, though Tiago stayed at his back, still pinning his arms. “You ruined me. You colorless bastards. You made a match out of me and you sent me home to a paper world, and I’m still burning.”

Tears cut through the grime on his face.

“I’m still burning,” he sobbed. “What the fuck do I do?”

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/173313...-red-cloth
https://www.scribblehub.com/read/2385004...r/2550895/

[Mamorien]

The Greenfield Family.

With the Greenfields having accepted their new way of life, now it's time to face the future and what comes next for them.

Especially when some pretty big upheavals are coming in their lives. A few unfriendly faces with unsettled grudges are not about to let things lie and are determined to make trouble for this family.

How are they going to handle this? What are they going to do now?

https://storiesonline.net/n/52852/the-gr...-family/47

Princess of the Void.

”The woman plotting our downfall followed the protocol and procedure set before her to the letter.” Sykora hops from her throne. “She trusted in precedent, and when precedent failed she trusted in her sense of fealty and duty to protect her sanity from the unspeakable task that was set before it. But she trusted in vain.”

She paces the table, her tail switching back and forth with each step. Grant watches her and realizes this must be how it felt to kneel in fealty to Joan of Arc or Hatshepsut. He is not sure his wife has ever looked quite so beautiful.

“She murdered millions and broke her own mind into pieces.” Sykora reaches past Waian and plucks the bag of nuts off the table. “Now she sees the servants of the Empress as the same genocidal automata she proved to be. I will show her that the strength of the Taiikari Empire rests not merely in our fealty to Zithra XIX, but in Zithra’s faith in her servants, and the power she has vested into our hands.” She roots around in the bag and produces a handful. “I will demonstrate to her that she did not fail on Malkest because of the Empire, but because of her own weakness.”

“But she followed the Empress’s order.” Vora’s puzzlement is fermenting into unease. None of them have realized quite what Sykora is saying.

“She did,” Grant says, as his wife chews and swallows. “But the Empress ordered her wrong.”

A stunned silence around the command table. Vora breaks it again, her voice high and tight with uncertainty. “That’s… that’s a dangerous thing to say, Majesty.”

“Do you presume Her High Majesty would disagree?” Sykora returns the bag to its place by her paralyzed chief engineer. “Do you think she considers Malkest a victory?”

“No, of course not, but…”

“She has been working for kilocycles now to bring the great bulwark of the Empire into a new era,” Sykora says. “She has done so through deeply unorthodox means. It is time for us to square our shoulders to the great glacier and help her push. I would sooner risk her displeasure at the venture’s onset than bring her despair at its conclusion.”

Waian’s lips are tightly pulled, into the anticipatory beginning of a grin or a grimace. “Kora,” she says. “Grantyde. Kids. What are you saying?”

The Mandate of Maekyon.

“Grantyde and I are moving to cancel the annexation of Maekyon,” Sykora says. “The Black Pike sector will recognize it as a Mandate system and we will stand as its protector until its people integrate fully into the Imperial firmament of their own volition.”

“Gods of the fucking firmament.” Behind the cherry-red frames of her glasses, Vora’s eyes dilate. “You—this—we can’t.”

Sykora takes her heiress’s hand. “We can, Vora. We must be brave. But we can.”

“This is tantamount to treason, Majesty.” Lomanza’s emotionless countenance remains on, but something in her body language makes it clear how threadbare the mask is becoming. “By many metrics it is indivisible from treason. Our duty is to annex Maekyon.”

“Our duty is to turn Maekyon imperial, and we will,” Grant says. “Eventually. But we aren’t here to take what they won’t give.”

“Majesty.” Lomanza rotates to him with machinist precision. “With all the considerable respect you are due, this closeness you have to the situation—of your homeworld, after all—”

“It was my idea, Majordomo,” Sykora says. “My husband had to be convinced. Convinced to save his world. This is my point. This is why I am sure. Who is the only true rival to a dutiful servant in devotion?”

“A hunk?” Waian ventures.

“A lover,” Sykora says. “We will win Maekyon the way I won my Maekyonite. We will show them the glory of our people and the wonders that we offer; we will place our faith in their hands and our oath of stewardship at their feet; we will open our arms wide.”

“We’ll steal them a really expensive guitar.” Waian’s the only member of the command group with a smile on.

“And we will hope.” Sykora approaches Grant and stands beside him. “With the desperate courage of a love’s confession. And when they choose us, our bond will be stronger than any coerced shackle could ever be. We will make them fall in love with us.”

She radiates confidence. But her tail is wrapped so tightly around Grant’s wrist that it’s leaving a mark.

“Now take that to the Empress, if you wish, Majordomo,” she says. “I know she’s awaiting your next report on me. I don’t care.”

“Majesty, I’m—”

“I don’t care,” Sykora repeats. “I bear you no ill will. I fully intend to present my plan within the tenday, regardless. We must have it in-hand before we arrive in Maekyon’s orbit for our grand reveal. You are sworn to obey her, so obey her. Spy on me. Warn her. But you are sworn to obey me, too. And I command you to aid me in the venture I decree. Find me the legal backing for a Mandate.”

“This will be a significant challenge.” Rare emotion is on Lomanza’s face. Grant’s never seen her this distressed. “All the files are older than the dataframes on which they’d sit. I’d have to search museums.”

“Then search them.” Sykora’s ironclad stare reminds Grant of the Empress, whenever she removes her glasses and shows her true face. “I’ll not be deterred. Hyax, Waian, Vora. You will reorganize your working groups into a tricameral committee and deliver me a blueprint for a modern Mandate stewardship. I refuse to bring the Empress some archaic scheme from the pre-membranal days. We don’t need razor fidelity, but I want this path to take us forward, not back. Presume, at the drafting stage, ready cooperation from Maekyon’s governments in the facilitation of citizenship for any Maekyonite who seeks a place in the Empire.”

Hyax snorts. “Not fucking likely.”

“I know it’s not,” Sykora says. “But we have a tenday until we’re in Maekyon’s orbit, and I need to put this up in front of Her High Majesty with enough time to revise all my bloody speeches and get my hair done up. We need something that can stand on its feet and sing for its supper. We’ll bolster it later, once the waters are rising. That crotchety Egon individual can help, perhaps.”

“The UN is kinda…” Grant wiggles his hand. “I mean… it’s better to have them than not have them, of course, but—”

“What do you mean?” Waian asks.

“We should focus on the superpowers for this,” Grant says. “Egon there onscreen is sure to be useful, but he’s not, like, the leader of the free world. I don’t think.” He rubs his chin. “I mean—I could be entirely wrong about the way my planet’s governments work. That was a common enough anxiety we all had. Have. A lot of conspiracy theories about the UN. We—”

“Boss.” Waian interrupts. “Boss, what I’m asking is what does UN stand for?”

“United Nations.”

“Ohhh.” She gives her forehead a light tap. “Cause it’s in Maekyonite. Had me confused for a second.”

“I’ve gotten used to ZKZ. You’ll catch on.”

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/120617...of-maekyon
https://www.scribblehub.com/read/1419041...r/2552105/