Chapter 12

  Yin luxuriated in Zeurels lap for as long as he could possibly stretch it before someone accused him of being a baby.

  Zeurel laughed softly and Yin opened his eyes to see her definitely not angelic but still beautiful face. ‘’You’re like a little baby.’’

  Yin used the pure cloak to burst up to stand. ‘’NoI’mNot! Your healing just took a long time to really sink in! Work on that!’’ He stomped out of their borrowed room and quickly had to calm down and act like Yin the returned Tulaigo child. He greeted and briefly spoke to relatives in the compound, nearly all gold, and yet nearly all very weak.

  The vast majority of the clan was composed of architects rather than combat artists. The strongest of them was uncle Kam’en who’d spent most of his impressive sixty four years practicing combat arts.

  For now Yin had a few things he really needed to do. Find the time to cycle, link up with Duong and see what he found from the remnants and finally get something to eat. Probably not in that order.

  Instead he ran into Ti Li in a vacant corridor. The child reached into her robes and pulled out Duongs void key, opening the little space that was now filled to the brim with stolen goods. She carefully extracted some papers and handed them over. Yin gave her a pat on the head which the girl declined as appropriate payment for her time. Relenting Yin gave her his pure scale, he had honestly forgotten to give it to Secretary.

  Yin looked through the papers and found nothing all that important to him. The Tulaigo clan was up to some usual ‘powerful family’ bullshit, pressing their neighbors and trying to monopolize the real estate business in the area. They also seemed to have some odd project they were working on to do with pure Life madra. It struck Yin as some sort of occult thing rather than anything tangible.

  So all in all the papers were a waste of time, and when he was about to tell Ti Li that, he noticed his blade was missing. ‘’Oooh you little monster, when I get my hands on you..’’

  Plotting vengeance that he wouldn’t follow through on was pointless so Yin dropped it and simply made a mental note to get that blade back as soon as possible.

  He ended up passing a kitchen and was loaded up with a variety of vegetarian foods. Then he stumbled into a workshop temporarily remade for Duong to work in. The boy was doing some characteristically appropriate gruesome work on the two captured remnants heads.

  ‘’Are they going to be fine after that? I don’t want to capture another light remnant.’’ Yin asked him.

  Duong looked up, pulling a two inch long spike out of the dream remnant's head. ‘’Yeah, we can just feed them some pure madra and they’ll be better than ever. But this is odd, the dream remnant has foreign dream madra in it. The light one had dream madra in it too and it didn’t match this ones.’’ He tapped the dream remnant on the head, it made a noise similar to old TV static. ‘’I know you said it’s not possible, but I’m starting to think this is uh, Tiger.’’

  Yin plopped down on a bench and ate some little rolls of vegetables in dough. ‘’I hate the idea of that enough that I want to dismiss it out of hand. You know what that thing could do to us, even mostly asleep, right?’’

  Duong dropped his tools and came over to snag some little morsels to eat. ‘’Yeah.. I’m not that good at English but that thing would completely fuck us.’’

  The despair was easy enough to work through with some very tasty food to eat. ‘’Actually, no, it literally can’t be the Tiger unless someone took out one of the other ones. And that shit ain’t happening. It must have found a weakness in the cage and caught all those remnants. Worst case scenario really.’’

  Secretary flowed out of Yin’s hair and splattered down on the dream remnant, creating little question marks on the way. ‘’Be careful with that Secretary, it might still be dangerous.’’

  The little spirit seemed to be communicating with the remnant. Yin moved closer and Duong followed, they crouched on either side of the remnant.

  Secretary coalesced and floated up between them. Then it made a halo over its head.

  Yin turned and kicked a table hard enough to knock it over.

  —

  The crew gathered in a guest room, Duong and Yin wrote scripts along the walls to ensure their privacy and then they dropped the bombshell. ‘’Ladies and gentlemen, we are dealing with the Silent fucking King.’’

  ‘’What does that word mean?’’ Ten asked, sitting with Ti Li in her lap. ‘’Montai uses that word as well sometimes, what does it mean?’’

  ‘’Sex, but not in, like, a polite way of saying it.’’ Zeurel supplied from the bed she’d commandeered to make a nest on. Already wrapped in a few blankets despite the generally hot and humid climate.

  Ten put her hands over Ti Li’s ears way too late again and frowned deeply at Montai and Yin.

  ‘’Moving on, we’re dealing with an army of remnants puppeteered by the sleeping Tiger. So, our goal is probably complete extermination. Wipe all of them out and then Emriss will come and plug the hole in her cage, mission done.’’

  Montai piped up. ‘’I took the liberty of scouting a bit after our little excursion. There’s at least three to six hundred of them. And that’s after we killed like.. a dozen maybe.’’ Yin didn’t correct him that Montai was the only one who’d killed any of them.

  ‘’Right. So I’m thinking we all rest up, refill our reserves and then we do some gorilla shit.’’ Yin took a breath to continue speaking.

  ‘’It’s pronounced guerilla.’’ Montai and Duong spoke in perfect synchronicity.

  ‘’That first one was an animal from Earth and the second one was the name of a battle strategy.’’ Zeurel educated Ten and Ti Li.

  ‘’I want all five of us out there breaking down their ranks. Duong and Zeurel, what are your long range options like- Ok never mind, uh, we could try to separate groups for you two to just, throw fat blasts at?’’

  Zeurel and Duong seemed a bit downcast. The goat spoke up first. ‘’I guess I could do something like that but, honestly I haven’t even practiced the whole ‘killing by overhealing them’ thing. I can make a blast or something but I don’t know if it will actually do anything.’’

  ‘’I think catching some more of the remnants and letting me make something of their bindings would be better. I could whip up two or three single use casters in a night.’’ Duong seemed entirely keen on not going into any amount of danger.

  ‘’Yeah, honestly bro, taking our non-combat personnel into the field seems like kind of a bad idea. I think Sun Tzu said that in his diary.’’ Montai said slowly.

  Yin hummed and could totally see the wisdom in that. But. ‘’On earth, that would have been totally the only correct move. But we are on Cradle, and stuff around here is going to get a hell of a lot more scary than jade and gold remnants.’’

  There was a silent moment as the other considered that, Yin continued. ‘’It’s up to you guys what you want to do, I just think you guys getting some experience alongside us would be good.’’

  ‘’I could try..’’ Zeurel meekly said, very uncharacteristic. ‘’I just.. I’m not all that good with violence.’’

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  ‘’God damn.. You’re benched!’’ Yin declared bombastically, making Zeurel jump in her blanket nest. ‘’Just be ready to heal Montai, Ten and.. Duooong?..’’ He nodded reluctantly. ‘’And Duong, because I’m not getting hurt again. I’m too strong, that crap won’t happen again.’’

  ‘’I could, uh, use some of the casters I’ve put together. My Quicksilver path isn’t really.. ready.’’ Duong explained, equally meek.

  ‘’You can probably just vent out a cloud of it and it should kill anything.’’ Montai encouraged.

  ‘’Ti Li, give my blade back.’’ Yin demanded of the child sitting in her older sister's lap. She played dumb. ‘’Ten, get her to give my blade back before I say a dozen more profanities- Thank you.’’ Accepting the sheathed blade back from Ten who’d apparently gotten it from her little sister he turned back to the room at large.

  ‘’Alright, so to reiterate. Game plan is: Rest and recover, go out tomorrow and do some damage then come back and get ready to do it all again.’’ Everyone agreed in their own ways, so Yin finished. ‘’I’m gonna go hit the bathhouse. Anyone who wants to join can borrow some swimwear there. Yes, there is enough space for you Montai.’’

  Everyone filed out after Yin.

  —

  The Tulaigo bathhouse was a work of natural art. The pools of water seemed to have been carved out perfectly for use by humans. Rocks created alcoves for some minor privacy here and there, and tall leafy plants shielded them from the sun. The pools were heated, cleaned and their waters regulated by scripts that Yin had taken a few minutes to memorize.

  They were something of a mark of pride for the Tulaigo clan, that they had the most advanced piece of scripts out there to keep their baths in best condition. Yin had, since he’d seen the scripts, identified several inefficiencies and came up with a few better ways to make the whole array.

  But that could wait for when he had a place of his own to make it in, for now he shared the great bath with his companions. And any Tulaigo clan member who wanted to come have a bath and greet their long lost little cousin.

  ‘’My, the world has been cruel to you, but you’ve risen to the challenge every time. Your name was Yin, yes? It is so wonderful to meet you.’’ An older lady pinched his cheek and generally was much too touchy feely for comfort. Especially when, as was common in the region, she was topless in the mixed baths.

  ‘’Thank you for the kind words auntie.’’ Yin chirped as she waded away, then went back to looking straight up so he wouldn’t catch another glimpse of Zeurel or Ten. Duong looked relaxed for the first time Yin had ever seen, reclined with a towel over his face. He might also be dead.

  Yin kicked him under the water and was rewarded with a groan.

  ‘’They’ve all got such big boobs. How? They’re vegetarian..’’ Zeurel muttered sneakily getting closer to Yin.

  ‘’Well, it’s all the arrogance and hot air of being the local ‘best’. The women store it all in their tits.’’ Yin whispered loudly enough for his group to hear it and heard some little laughs.

  ‘’That is not how breasts work.’’ Ten stated, seeming honestly confused that Yin would say something like that.

  ‘’Pff, yeah they do.’’ Yin gave her a sideway glance and snapped back up the sky again. Sure hadn’t needed to see that.

  He heard some giggling in another alcove and slipped out into the deeper water to see. Montai sat like a massive black duck surrounded by Yin’s cousins and aunts. They made impressed noises at some story he was telling, touching his feathers and generally treating it like a petting zoo experience with a celebrity.

  Yin wasn’t about to touch that with a pole of any length so he made to slink back, only to be caught by Kam’en and Chen’en. ‘’Nephew, I’m glad I found you here, there is something we’d like to discuss with you.’’ He shot a look into the space his friends were in. ‘’Privately, please.’’

  Already having been resigned to awkwardness when he’d found out the dress code, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to accept this as well. ‘’No problem. Lead the way.’’ Kam’en did so, letting Yin and Chen fall in after him.

  Wading through the deeper water next to her had Yin wanting to use his pure cloak. But cycling now would just cause questions he didn’t want to answer. He kept aware of where Chen’s hands were, ready if she decided to try to prick him with her goldsigns again.

  But she wasn’t doing anything, only looking at him from the side of her eyes. He couldn’t begin to guess what her plan was now, having been such a wreck earlier.

  Kam led them through a short tunnel that ended in something like a jacuzzi. Instead of water jets there was a script that caused it all to gently churn in the circular little area. They sat, Kam and Chen opposite Yin, worrying him even more.

  ‘’What is this about uncle Kam?’’ Yin asked in his concerned little boy voice. Chen fought down a sneer just in time to hide it from Kam.

  ‘’My apologies, nephew, you’ve already done something we wouldn’t have expected of any of our warriors. Stealing away remnants from their army like that with only two of you. However, due to your apparent skill, we would ask more of you.’’ He left it to Chen to finish.

  She started and stopped, taking stabilizing breaths. Yin knew it was to stop herself before saying something that would topple the little house of cards they were both balancing on to keep things civil in the Tulaigo estate. ‘’I told you, they took.. They took Yeng from me, when they attacked Amau.’’ She looked ready to vomit.

  ‘’You managed to take two of them, so you can do it again. Yin, find him. Find.. Your Father, and bring him back to us.’’ She barely managed to get the words out. To anyone else she would have seemed choked up by emotion, and maybe that was true to some extent. But it was due to hate and nothing else.

  ‘’I can try.’’ Yin said, trying to keep his tone right and not slip into his usual pattern. And trying to keep from swearing. ‘’But I cannot promise anything. Yeng is one amongst hundreds. I might recognize him, and if I do I will try to bring him back. But I, WE, might not have that choice.’’

  Kam’en gravely inclined his head, completely missing Chen’s murderous expression. ‘’We ask too much of you, nephew. When next your companions and you decide to strike again I would join you, along with my most skilled men. That we may thin their numbers.’’

  Chen got up and moved to exit the little pool. ‘’The heat has gotten to me, apologies but I will retire.’’

  Yin relaxed a bit, grateful for his useless parents' grace to leave him be after making such an insane request. What was she even doing with Yeng’s remnant for all that time? Did she keep it around like a macabre housecat that made demonic noises at every hour of the day?

  ‘’You must be worried for her.’’ Kam stated, nodding in his usual grave manner. ‘’I am as well.’’

  Yin nodded allowing the misconception. ‘’Do you think the remnant army will return any time soon?’’

  ‘’There is no telling, but if I were the one leading it I would have retreated, looked for softer targets to replenish the ranks and only then returned for another engagement.’’

  ‘’I hope they have at least some of your sense, I’m sure we could all use a.. reprieve?’’ Yin wasn’t entirely sure on the word. ‘’Speaking of, do you mind if I?’’ Trailing off and moving to exit the cove, Yin left after his uncle agreed.

  Returning to his friends he was met with Zeurel and Ten sitting on the edge of the pool. Yin was too tired to act prudish and simply waded up and sat with them, enjoying the cool wind on his heated body. ‘’I fucking hate it here so much.’’ He told them quietly.

  ‘’As I understand it, this is what many men would call a paradise.’’ Ten stated with absolutely zero humor or facetiousness.

  ‘’Some might, these people are more or less closely related to me though.’’ She seemed to understand after he said it. Zeurel picked a towel hanging off her horns and started to dry his hair. ‘’Wanna stay in my room tonight?’’ He asked her.

  She hummed in agreement.

  //////

  An idea.

  One among very many.

  Something Yin had said once, resurfaced, summoned by another thought. ‘’It sucks Secretary, I had this whole plan. Dreams and Hunger. The path of the Devouring Mind. It would have let me advance like That Guy.’’

  Forgotten by Yin, Secretary continued to imagine, to observe and to learn. Secretary knew something, a truth that suffused every scattered thought in it’s mind

  Secretary wanted to know more things. It hungered for novelty.

  Yin was a great thing, big (but smaller than others), smart (but not as smart as others) and hungry for more. But not as hungry as Secretary.

  The beings similar to Secretary, still bound on the floor thrashed and writhed to escape. Secretary had many ideas. Smart words said by Yin resounded in its sea of thoughts. Fusion.

  Make two into one.

  Words of warning, Secretary remembered there were many of them. Light, Dreams and Hunger was a bad path. But Secretary was good, Yin said so all the time.

  Secretary took the time to review every time Yin had said so.

  Contentment.

  It didn’t last. More was there to be taken, and so, Secretary simply had to take it.

  Fusion, knowledge on how to make two remnants into one, Secretary had it. Fusion, how to make Secretary into the mind of the fused ones. Secretary did not have it.

  Speculations by Yin, scripts of control, an imaginary brain. Yes.

  Secretary set much of itself to work. Imagine the brain script, throw away those that obviously don’t work (Yin will help with that) and then become Strongest Secretary!

  Secretary ignored the loud sounds that tried to distract, someone else will deal with that.