Book 4 Chapter 9: New Experiences

++The role of homosexuality in Garamon has often been a downplayed one. While never illegalised, it is generally seen as something of an embarrassment, though being the one to ‘give’ rather than ‘receive’ mitigates this somewhat, regarding roles within the bedroom. This culture can be traced back well over two thousand years to the Ikiniyet culture from which Garamon’s ancestors first emerged. Whether the Gods have any particular feelings on the matter, none can truly know. The Demigods, however, are known to be very enthusiastic about it. Of course for beings of their eminence, such social faux pas are the utmost triviality.++

- A Discourse On Gender Roles And Their Sexual Manifestations, The Garamon Watcher, published 1878 A.E.

My life was going smoothly, and so of course the wrench had to be thrown into my workings to grind it all to a halt.

Of course I could not complain about this too much. The wrench in question was a message from the Harbinger of Zameka, manifesting as a pulse of magic so impossibly fine that I knew none but myself and Sethira could possibly have felt it. It was a set of directions and instructions for a meeting, one I was bound by my own moral code to attend thanks to the debt that I still owed to Zameka.

This, too, was not something I could complain about. It was my own shortcoming that had led to this debt of gratitude after all. Had I just possessed the basic moral fiber to be unstoppably powerful, I would never have been imprisoned, never required her aid to escape from my Great Setback and would owe a debt to nobody.

I was endeavouring to never make that mistake again, now. But in the meantime my debt still existed, and my morality still demanded that it be repaid.

I set out shortly to reach the designated location, expecting to find the Harbinger waiting for me there. I was surprised to find nothing but another message.

Sethira was there of course, already reading the note as I approached.

“Hm, different instructions for both of us,” she sniffed as she scrunched the parchment up. “Like they think they’re better than us. Like they think they can order us around.”

“They can,” I pointed out. “At least for the time being. We are in the debt of Zameka, and they understand the best way to help her.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m going to follow any orders, if they tell me to do something stupid I’ll ignore them,” she sniffed.

“True,” I conceded. “Give me the note.”

She dropped it at my feet. “Oops.”

I ignored her slight and levitated it into my hand with a gust of conjured wind, unfurling it and reading through it. I was surprised, and amused, to find it was written in an ancient, cruciform language that was older than Garamon itself by quite a few millennia. I could read it, fortunately, though this version seemed to have changed quite some bit from the variant I first learned, featuring all sorts of new-fangled grammar and childish buzzwords that almost confounded me.

“There is a device of particular quality that can potentially free our Goddess from her prison. It is located in Garamon. Old and precious, though unassuming. Its magic is as intense as any artefact in the world, though hidden with a genius that Garamon has never possessed.”

Quite simple, as far as directions went, but it told me all I needed to know.

“The museums then,” I guessed. “If it is old and precious, but not evidently magical, the idiots of Garamon will most certainly have stashed it in one of their museums.”

Sethira shrugged. “You’d know best, you actually grew up there, didn’t you?”

“In one life,” I said evenly.

“In one, and the other, I suppose, began with you being totally removed from puny humanity.” She was mocking me, and she was making a show of it.

“Regardless of what you think about my differing views on physical sensation, we clearly have a new priority,” I noted.

It would be more amusing to keep my precise thoughts on physical sensation hidden, I decided. Sethira clearly had her doubts about my recent changes, and I saw a great source of potential amusement in stringing her along with those doubts. I owed her some payback for recent annoyances too.

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“Will we be searching for these together?” she asked me abruptly.

I pretended to think about that, though in truth my mind was already made up. “It would not be very convenient, would it?” I asked. “There is every chance that this item is beyond your ability to sense. In fact it may even be invisible to my magical vision, in which case this whole affair is pointless to begin with. Better not to leave both of us distracted and overseas on a fool’s errand if it comes to that.”

Sethira made a show of pouting in that way she knew always bothered me. “But I might get lonely without you,” she snickered. “What am I supposed to do here then? Run your refinery I suppose?”

We had finally gotten to the crux of the issue, the topic I most sincerely needed to discuss with her. Several months was a long time to let it rest, but then again we were both liches. Months were never really any time at all as far as we were concerned.

“That is the problem. I would like to leave you in charge, because you are easily the most competent creature I know besides myself. But I do not now know if I trust you.”

Sethira’s smile didn’t waver, though I could sense her tensing up. She knew that now, with my new body, I had widened the already significant gap in power between Isabel Vornholt and Sethira. She knew that the gap between Dread and Sakhent was wider still. She knew that if I chose to attack her, I would win.

“You haven’t been concerned with trust before,” she said mechanically, taking a step back.

“I have not been given reason for concern before” I replied, stepping forwards to keep her from increasing the distance. “But that was before the stunt you pulled during our fight with Aravon Voret. Now I know you may move against me if you think there is something to gain from it, either by inaction or action, and it begs the question in my mind of what else I know about you. I know you wish to restore the culture of your own people and reign as you once did. But how do I fit into that? How do I know I am not an obstacle to that goal? How do I know you will not begin your plans to dispose of me now?”

I was quite surprised when Sethira got angry then.

“Don’t put this on me,” she snapped. “This is you. This is all you. Always contemptuous and above it all, everything you say is a smear against everything I believe, you’re so desperate to be above humanity, and then you turn around and start folding anyway. It’d be one thing if you were consistent about it, but you seem intent to flip-flop in the worst way possible and ensure I have no idea what you’ll do next. How can I trust you when you’re this inconsistent!?”

She had stopped backing up somewhere along the way, and started storming forwards, bringing her nose almost tip to tip with mine.

“I don’t care what you do for your own sake, but now you’ve become unpredictable.”

She was, I thought, sincerely angry. Something about what I had said had touched a nerve. I met her rage with cool indifference. “You betrayed me before my behaviour changed,” I pointed out.

“That was just a test,” Sethira snapped. “Don’t pretend like you haven’t given me plenty.”

She was deflecting now. I was not stupid enough to overlook a warning sign like that, and by how she was scrambling I could tell she knew it. “If you want a spoken agreement, an exchange of oaths, not to do that sort of thing again, fine. But I need a guarantee too. How do I know I can rely on someone who can’t even rely on themselves?”

Her words stung, less because they were true as because they touched upon something I had been concerned with myself. I was not ignorant to my changes. Attempting to kiss Alira, my handling of Qaigor, and a thousand other things. I had been working to my own detriment with alarming regularity. Sethira’s accusations hurt because I agreed with each one.

I had spent enough time on half-measures, flirting with the different aspects of my new body and allowing contradicting instincts to pull me in different directions. I needed to get a handle on myself.

I needed to either tighten my hold or let go, because this compromise of semi-resisted emotion was simply too inconsistent to abide.

“Fine,” I said at last. “You have…a point.”

Sethira seemed surprised. Enough so that the fury went out of her, for a moment at least, and she stepped back blinking in perplexity.

“You…agree?” she asked.

“Within reason,” I said hurriedly. “I…clearly am affected by this new body. And it will clearly be some time before I am able to permanently linger in the one I find more comfortable. For the time being, if only to keep my own judgement under control, I will do things…your way.”

Sethira stared for a moment.

Then she grinned. “Does this mean you’re going to be open to new experiences?” I could tell by her smirk that she was trying to irritate me again, though perhaps there was more to it too. A genuine interest, and a desire to understand where my new lines might be.

“Yes,” I said. “It does.”

For the upteenth time in the same conversation, I was able to appreciate the surprise of Sakhent the Doom Lord staring in utter confusion.

“I…See.” She recovered quickly enough with another smile, “then—”

I cut in. “But we will be doing it my way, not yours,” I told her. “Understand that? My way. As far as I am concerned this is all for the sake of letting me explore a new experience, and you are nothing more than a tool I will use to do that exploration.”

Sethira seemed to take all of two seconds to consider that. “Sounds fine,” she said with a wider smile than I’d seen her show so far. “You…uh, are you up for a bit of exploration before you leave for Garamon?”

As it happened, I was.