Xilanada - Unforsakable Birthright/Part 13

The 14th Day of Resplendent Wood, 766 in the Year of Our Empress.

With a single inhalation, Fex Tay watched the bowl of his pipe suddenly grow hugely tremendous. A gladiatorial ring loomed before him, with little tiny fighters sparring desperately for their lives among fiery pillars of the burning poppy flower in the pipe.

It would be hard to say how long he watched the men fight for their lives for his entertainment. Time was rather meaningless when you were riding the trail of opium into the sky. Fex Tay leaned back in his chair, knew no discomfort from it, and sighed contentedly as he watched his own personal arena entertainment.

The air blowing across him was cool and soothing and the night sky held the promise of many fantastic sights this evening. Opium was cheap and it promised sights unknown to any mortal. Some said it also revealed the presence of the Gods to mortal eyes. Some wise practitioners said they could see the difference between a hallucination and a God, but Fex Tay enjoyed not being able to tell. It made every experience that much more real.

For some strange reason, he thought again of that blonde whore he'd seen a few weeks ago. If only he'd had a snuff of opium then! Or better yet, Bright Morning though that was far out of price reach. If he'd had it, maybe he would have been able to see if she really was a God, or something else.

It was still a strange encounter, so many weeks later. He'd kept his ear to the ground and it was almost surprising when he heard something. A Guild Factor was looking for a blonde prostitute, a personal whore, one of his favorites. She fit the description he heard...but if it really was her, what was she doing in his part of the city?

Any woman savvy enough to have kept the favor of a Guild Factor should be savvy enough to walk away with a great deal of money and promptly flee the city by a carriage, or not run at all. Most of this men, thugs all of them, wouldn't have thought about it at all, just gone for it. But that's what made him different from them. He thought things through.

"Opium," said a woman's voice. It took some effort to look up and turn his attention from his thoughts to the voice. At first, he thought he was hallucinating when he saw her, but then he remembered that he had actually heard her voice. And even Bright Morning affected your eyes but not usually your ears.

But how else could he explain the strange vision before him?

A woman paler than snow stood before him, as white as whitewash, impossibly white. How could she be that white? And her eyes.

She had reptilian eyes. Snake-like. That they were green made it even more viscerally stunning. Her eyes, despite the slits in her pupils, still looked human enough. But the effect was stunning.

He had to be hallucinating. A bone-white woman with snake-eyes?

And yet despite her strangeness...she was fantastically beautiful. More beautiful than that blonde woman, by far. More beautiful than any woman he had ever laid eyes on. He managed to get hard in seconds, even though his opium didn't always cooperate with that mood.

"Yes, opium," she said again, sniffing the air. Her voice was sweetly melodious, but he thought he heard an edge to it. It helped him, actually. It made it a lot easier to focus on her. It also meant she was probably real, and not a hallucination.

"You want a toke?" he asked politely. Not that politeness was something he did much, but when faced with strange women you didn't understand, being careful was the way to go. He learned that lesson, after the last strange woman.

"No," she said, and though her voice was sweet, he had no doubt how she felt about drugs. The wrong offer for him to make, obviously.

"You need something else?"

"Yes, I do. I'm looking for my hus...for a woman." Her glower deepened, if that was possible.

"A woman? Try a brothel." Fex Tay had a sudden sinking feeling in his stomach, that his recent thoughts were prophetic somehow. That happened, sometimes, when you smoked opium. That's what they said, wasn't it?

"No, I'm looking for a specific one. One you've seen. I know you've seen her. I can...smell her on you, even as light as your contact was." She took a step forward and there was nothing pleasant or friendly whatsoever in her demeanor.

Fex Tay wasn't going to make the same mistake that he did last time.

"Help! Help! Get her! Get her now!" He bellowed at the top of his lungs. One of the advantages of being a lieutenant in the local crime syndicate. He had his own men.

Even as he drew the knife at his belt, the doors in this house they had taken over for a party flew open. Ruffians and thugs, loyal to him every one, charged in. Some had knives, some had bottles, some just came with their fists. But they all showed at a moment's notice, and he felt pride that those he led were so much better than most of the street scum in Nexus.

They surrounded the white woman and, even though they looked a little uncertain about what kind of danger she could pose, they kept her ringed.

"I don't know if you're a God or what you are, but I want you out of here. I don't know where that woman went, I don't know who she is, and I don't want to know. If you do, move on somewhere else and leave us alone."

"No, I don't want to," she growled. She actually growled. "This is the second dead-end I've run into. And by Luna, if I'm not going to find her from you, than I'll get some satisfaction, one way or another."

She stepped forward. They closed the circle, barring her. And then they started dying.

Long viciously savage talons suddenly thrust out from her fingertips. The nearest just grabbed his throat and tried to keep the blood from spilling out from the backhanded swing of her hand. He failed.

She snarled, exposing sharp incisors, and disemboweled two more of his men. A bottle smashed over the side of her head, spraying her with glass. She didn't even flinch. A knife thrust into her stomach and she just gripped the throat of her attacker and threw him through a wall, leaving the poor man a crumbled ruin of broken bone and flesh.

Chance was his God and Goddess. And either this was Her, and he'd offended Her or even She didn't like the odds. He knew that he didn't. It was a cowardly thing to do, but he ran. He ran. He ran like his life depended on it. And it probably did.

Fex Tay made a mile before she caught him.

A hand seized him from behind and sent him tumbling to the cobblestone street. Before he could gather his wits, that hand and another reached around him and lifted him to his feet, dragging him along into a nearby house. He tried to get his feet under him but couldn't seem to manage it before being thrown on top of a table.

The white woman loomed over him, and the paleness of her face was thrown into shocking relief by the liberal staining of crimson across it. Most of it was congregated around her mouth, which made not screaming an effort.

"Last chance. No idea where she is?" The woman's fingers dug painfully into his shoulders and he almost screamed again, remembering the deadly claws that had so recently shredded his men.

"No, no, I swear by my hope of rebirth, I have no idea who she is! No idea where she is! I just ran into her on the street, that's all honest!"

"And you left her on the street?" her silky voice demanded.

"Yes, yes! She was crazy, so I left her alone! Look, I can help you find her, if you'll let me. I have connections. I know people in Nexus. I know a Guild Factor is looking for her, see? I can help you!"

"Oh, you'll help me sure enough," snarled the woman. "But my name is Solitary Coil for a good reason and I don't need company. On the other hand, there is a Sidereal who has troubled me in the past...I think I'm going to use you to send him a small present..."

Sometime later that night, when the screaming had stopped and her Celestial Circle Sorcery had done its work, Solitary Coil looked on in satisfaction as her powers ripped the skeleton from the corpse before her and assembled it into a Bone Lion. A Sorcerer's construct of vengeance, it would never stop and never be deterred in its hunt for the one it was designated for.

Let the Fateful Ambiguity think in the future of crossing her and her husband. Deadly beyond all measure as the Bone Lion was, she was strong enough to destroy one herself and so she had confidence he would too. But that wasn't the point. He would know how dangerous an adversary he was making if he pressed her again. And it would neatly tie up his attention while she found her husband.

The Daimyo of Faces had been singularly unhelpful. And though Solitary Coil was great among her kind, she knew her limits and knew better than to press a Spirit of such great stature as the Daimyo. In the end, only an almost-vanished trail remained. It had led her to this thug but it was clear he knew nothing more.

She could chain his soul to what was left of his shattered body, but there was little point. He didn't know where she was, and that's all she cared about.

Solitary Coil looked out across Nexus, the Great City of the East. It was a vast place, as large as some of the Dune Seas of the South, of her youth. Finding Final Starry Night in this mess of humanity promised to be difficult.

But what else could she do?

"Night," she breathed, out into the evening. "Night, where are you? Why did you do this? Why...did you leave me?"

Coil hated this, hated feeling this need for him. For her. Gah, by Luna, for HER. She, who had never wanted a woman's touch, even now longed for her Solar mate and she had the feeling that when she saw who...she was now...even so, the desire would be there.

"Who are you, my love? Where did you go? No matter why you did this...I'm coming to find you, my love. My heart...my heart is big enough for you, no matter what choices you make. Please...don't hide from me any longer."

That was all the sentimental wallowing she could tolerate. Solitary Coil was a Lunar, one of the champions of the Moon. The mates of the Solar, among the greatest warriors in Creation, equal to the Sidereal, surpassed only by the Solar. Even the Dragon-Blooded were but kindling against one of her kind, and she was great among even those ranks.

She would find her husband. Or her...wife. One way or another, she would reclaim her mate, bring her mate back to reason. And back to their destiny together.

After all, a whole world lay out there before them. Grayfalls was only the beginning.