I wake to pain.

Muscle and bone separate from metal and rubber, reattaching only to do it again. I don’t even have the faculties to move, motorics in metamorphosis, limiting me to involuntary, spasmodic writhing.

My back is quivering. My head is pounding. Agony explodes in places that did not exist until just now, these are the only things I can focus on; any other sensory feedback is just garnish. Eventually, things solidify again and some degree of control returns. I’m not sure how much time it took.

There’s a scrap of embarrassment when I realize a repeating noise in the back of my mind is actually the sound of my new acquaintance trying to speak to me. I try to get it together so I can at least look at him, but just as I do, the kangaroo doll lunges into a skidding crouch, his nose almost touching mine as he reiterates himself.

“Focus, or you will die.”

That news, of course, doesn’t really do a lot to calm me down. “What’s happening to me?” I manage to seethe out.

“You have become something more. But, blood is being lost,” Suraokh states. “Part of you is wounded. It did not mend itself. Focus to make it stop. The base of your spine. Just think about healing it.”

“Believe me,” I growl through clenched teeth, “I would love it if I could.”

“You misunderstand; you can heal,” the gray kangaroo insists. Even the sound of his lexicon module rewinding itself for the next five sounds urgent. “Think about healing it now.”

I grunt through clenched teeth, and focus on the affected area. I can feel that the skin has been torn open, and my bones have split and gone off in several directions. I imagine it’s no surprise that I’d rather this not be happening right n—

And just like that, the pain begins to fade, though it’s replaced by the rather unpleasant sensation of fluids being sucked back into my wounds as they close up.

Even after it stops, I lay motionless, in disbelief about what just happened. Enough time passes that I jolt in surprise when Suraokh grabs my wrist and yanks me to my feet. As I stand, eight newly-acquired tails in addition to my original one drape around me, almost of their own accord.

I’ll have plenty of time to look myself over later, though. I’ve done what the kangaroo wanted.

“So now we leave?” I ask.

He nods. “I will lead the way.”

Holding my unfinished weapon, he turns quickly and begins marching toward a narrow crevice in the walls of the pale yellow stone pit. Before I follow, I take one last glance at the shifting, rippling prismatic well in the ceiling that bestowed me with… whatever this is. I hope it’s worth the pain. And I hope it’s worth the trouble it’s no doubt put me in.

I slip through the crevice, my clothes catching luminescent lichen from the walls as dust I scrape past. Keeping up with Suraokh proves challenging, especially with these new tails taking up more of what precious little space I have. Speaking of the new tails, to accommodate themselves they ripped the slot meant for a single one wider. As if I didn’t look ragged enough already.

It’s funny, the ordeal of earlier feels like such a distant memory. Suddenly I can go from fighting for my life to thinking about the specifics of clothing.

At the end of the narrow passage, the scent of damp earth is the first thing to reach me. Suraokh’s light casts long shadows off the stalagmites, so abundant there was no room for a clear path, requiring a light-footed meandering way through them.

The color of this stone is more familiar than the ancient chamber we just left, but the coiling shapes and soft edges worn by trickling water lend a mystical, otherworldly appearance of its own.

Maybe “otherworldly” isn’t so special to people living in the Ravel proper, with their habitable worlds aplenty, but I’m a Frayer, born and raised, and Paliputra is the only place I’ve ever known. You can’t take the mundane for granted here.

It’s difficult not to slip, but my new acquaintance and I follow a stream up quite a ways, to an irregular pool in the upper part of the cavern where a metal vessel sits; an almost-spherical thing that doesn’t look like it’s been used in a while.

Suraokh steps up to it. He dusts off a section of it, at least as much as the mineralized streaks traced by so many droplets will allow. He gives the surface a knock with the side of his fist, and is replied to by a descending pneumatic hiss from within. When it stops, a dividing door protrudes from the upper half of the squashed sphere. Shuddering, creaking, they glide apart. 

Without a word, he climbs in. Yet another unknown, but I follow him, since that’s been the pattern thus far. The interior is simple, but unorganized. The bare essentials, so as to even forego seats in favor of handles affixed to the inner perimeter of the structural frame. The floor isn’t even level, sloping and curving in keeping with the shape of its exterior. Still I pick my way through the mess carefully, settling down near one of those handles, not too close to the kangaroo. He drops my club inside by the door and approaches what I assume is the front of the space, but it’s hard to tell given that there are no portholes to orient by.

His form twitches a few times, and all the cables shift, gathering in ornate coils around him, like a sort of loose cage. I turn as I hear a rumbling from behind me, just in time to see the hatches slide shut, leaving the two of us with only the orb for light.

The vessel rocks slightly, cables drawing tight as Suraokh takes a braid of them in his arms as if embracing someone, operating the vessel by some intangible interface. and I grab onto a hanging cable for balance as we submerge. Naturally, I’m nervous about this, but any feeling of doubt or worry is, for once, secondary to the first real bit of hope I’ve felt since yesterday. I’m getting off the island. I count myself lucky that salvation came so quickly, but there does remain one important question.

“So, where are we going?” I ask.

“Nayre territory, to the east,” Suraokh responds. He doesn’t move at all, but at least he’s responsive. “I have an associate there. They will help us both.”

“Oh, nice...” I groan. On Paliputra, there are four states considered superpowers. All are driven by carefully cultivated fanaticism, and while the Nayre Dominion is no different in that regard, their version is certainly the loudest.

>>>>>>>>>

Gripped by clawed fingers yet again, I once more find myself in the palm of the larger jackal, who displays a crooked smile, but it doesn’t seem to be a particularly jovial one. Her eyes glare at a slightly downwards angle like spotlights under the shade of her bowler hat.

“Did it occur to you that you may be speaking to a Nayrean? In Nayre land?” she inquires.

I gulp nervously at that. I had forgotten my place. She’d seemed impartial enough earlier but such sentiments are less often welcome from the mouth of a foreigner.

“Fanatical devotion can be a respectable thing!” I rush. “I mean, look at us in the Maxim, we’ve got it in common!”

The larger jackal raises an eyebrow. “I’m tempted to swallow you again.”

“Please don’t,” I request.

“I won’t right now,” she says, “but you made me think about it. Just putting that out there.”

“Duly noted.”

She lifts me up, jaws gaping, and then drops me in once more. I impact with the spot where the back of her tongue pushes into her velum, and as quickly as I can, I upright myself and get centered on her tongue. Despite her assurances, I don’t trust like that.

“So… can I continue?” I ask, getting as comfortable as the situation will allow.

She mumbles an affirmation, squishing me up against her palate briefly.

Taking a few moments to wipe myself slightly drier, as futile an undertaking as it is, I recall my place in the tale. Provided I don’t mess up our precious acquaintanceship further, I’d like to imagine I’ll be earning my freedom soon.

>>>>>>>>>

“So why are you so worried about being investigated?” I continue. Now seems like as good a time as any for questions, because there’s not a lot else I can do.

“I am a diplomatic agent,” Suraokh begins. “Of diplomacy of a sort.” His head turns slowly in my direction, clicking to a stop before the fabric can twist too much. “A low profile is desirable. I come to the island. I wait for someone else. You are someone else. We go to Nayrean land. Then, the next part begins.”
And then his neck clicks back to normal position. “That is all you need.”

Question time is over, I guess. I disagree, but both courtesy and the fact that I’m rather uneased by the doll decide for me that it would be best if I avoid pressing for more information. Clearly there’s some side of a deal I’m now set to fulfill with my weird new body. Typically, when signing in blood, one gets to at least see the terms, as intentionally perplexing as they may be.

I shrug it off and move on, grabbing my unfinished weapon to resume work on it to pass the time, shaving off a little more until the grip on the long handle is more compliant. Once I’m satisfied, I set it aside, jolting a bit as it settles on a few of my tails. I’m still not used to having them, or the space they take up, but they’re actually really nice; the black stripe along the top that widens out to cover the tip is uniform on every single one of them. Somehow they feel a little more… dexterous, perhaps? I try to curl one around the handle of my cudgel which, to my surprise, I manage. Lifting it up proves unsuccessful though; that’ll take practice.

All in all, I’m far from displeased with this change. I do wonder how my hips will fare in the long run, though. They feel only slightly wider to account for the significantly more abundant spine but they’ll need some stretches to set them right.

After a time, Suraokh twitches erratically, and the cables shift more tightly around him. “We are being chased after,” he states. “I unfortunately cannot outrun them. Prepare to defend us, Merion.”

Well that’s a lot to spring on someone in so many words. “How?”

“They will catch us, surely. You must fight up close. I must concentrate for now. I will intervene when ready.”

“Alright,” I agree. Not because I think my chances are good, mind you, but what else am I going to do? The cudgel wasn’t just out of convenience, it’s actually something I trust myself with to an extent. I can probably buy us a few more seconds so Suraokh had better be ready by then. “So I just whack them and throw spells?”

“That should suffice, I think,” the kangaroo says. “40 seconds until our capture.”

Now, 40 seconds seems like a lot of time to stand around doing nothing, but when it’s a countdown to something that could easily kill us, I tend to feel awfully nostalgic for every second gone by.

With perfect timing, something rattles the pod forcibly, causing me to fall. Suraokh braces himself against surrounding cables and remains standing firm, even as the floor flips overhead as we are lifted upside-down. I hit the hatch with my back, and I can feel it warp as something tries to pry into it from outside. Then comes the sound of gas being pumped. I quickly get to my feet and leap into the mess of cables right before the hatch blows, popping out with force sufficient to damage itself and slamming to the sides.

A pair of gloved hands reaches between the polymer-lined shutters and a shudder of dread wracks my body.

“Don’t waste your chance!” Suraokh shouts, bringing me out of my panicked freeze. 

The meager light that pours in is blinding compared to the dimness in here. You really, really shouldn’t gapwalk somewhere you can’t see, but I do it. Tightening my grip on my weapon, I fling myself forward, stepping through the background of the space between myself and our attackers, emerging into the light with my cudgel coming out in a wide arc. I hit nothing, a failure the enemy does not reciprocate. There is a gentle sting in the left side of my abdomen, flaring up into an excruciating burn. I’ve been sliced almost halfway through. So much for getting that first hit in. I land unceremoniously on the deck of a somewhat-patchwork ship, and a heavy boot follows that trend by landing heavily on me. I struggle to bring myself around with what remains of my core strength, unable to keep my breathing from going ragged. Throwing the foot off, I release a scattering of sparks at my opponent’s eyes, only to find them covered by her armor.

Green raiments and scratched plates bearing the marks of many battles, crowned by a one-horned flexible sallet that renders her blind. She sheaths her thin curved blade and kicks me over again, reasserting my new role as a podium on which to pose and look majestic.

Grym marines, the eyeless face of the Prelature’s push northward. This one’s even an opossum like the majority of their nobility, probably brought up all her life for this.

She utters something in Radiant at her soldiers, and they begin to advance on the pod, clutched in the arm of a crane mounted on the deck. I grunt as I try to get up again but she digs her cleats into me, keeping me in submission.

“You are a trespasser here,” she says to me in Siggska. “Misbehavior like that will not benefit you. We’ve yet to decide what to do with you, after all.”

She begins to reach for my weapon to confiscate it, but stops as the pod powers down. Everybody on deck turns their attention to it, and the men who went to inspect stop short of it. Suddenly, Suraokh drops out, landing almost so limply that he falls over, but manages to save his posture and upright himself. The soldiers ready their empty hands for defensive casting; they easily could have apprehended the doll in his moment of proneness but they must have been taken as off-guard by him at first sight as I was.

His dull eyes scan across them slowly, before finding me at the mercy of a rather bewildered captain.

“No need to worry, Merion,” he assures. “You bought the time needed. I will do the rest.”

As he rewinds, his entire body convulses, and then a pulse of what I can only describe as colorlessness erupts from every seam of it, hurling everyone as if taken by a powerful wind, myself included. It throws the captain off of me, thankfully, but nothing in this moment nurtures relief. Everybody who isn’t packing in their own viscera hurries to get to their feet, just in time to watch the kangaroo’s mouth unsew itself, bringing needles with it, like lethal tips on long, thin whiskers. The mouth creaks open, revealing actual teeth connected to actual skeletal jaws. Complete remains, scrimshawed upon, encased in a soft, cuddly exterior. And then, in the middle of fully grasping that, all sound simply stops.

It is the most silent silence I have ever experienced. The movement of the sea, the howl of the wind, footsteps as the kangaroo strides past me, the absence of their echo becomes stimulus in and of itself.

But only for me; the others cover their ears and drop to their knees again. They look like they’re screaming but I can’t hear it. I watch, paralyzed with fear as Suraokh approaches the cowering soldiers, and one by one, his thread whiskers lash forward, digging their needles into their chests and seeming to suck something out from each of them. Wide coils in the vibrating thread travel toward him, emulating an insectile proboscis bulging as it takes in blood. He turns slowly, and begins to move in my direction. At first, I seize up, thinking that he’s coming for me, but he brushes harmlessly by me and goes for the captain. He tilts her face up to his with a single hand, his once-listless eyes now sharp and terrifying, with their pupils shrunk to tiny points of light.

Much in the way he didn’t need to open his mouth to speak before, his jaws remain agape and still as he speaks to her. It’s an odd language, one I’ve never heard or heard of before, but it’s the only thing I can hear, and it surrounds me.

“Uukh Shaa’aarhha, Uim Silgarga Roekhthiin.”

And then he backs off from her. His mouth stitches itself back up, the needles tucking up in the fabric behind his nose. There’s an audible rush of air as sound returns; the captain has stopped screaming. Just the waves and our collective heavy breathing.

>>>>>>>>>

I am pulled out from my place again; it’s getting more irritating than it is startling, at this point.

“That just sounded like gibberish to me,” the larger jackal says. “How do you remember that?”

“Who knows? I don’t think they’re words like we think of words, it’s like… the utterance almost forces recognition of the intent. ...When he’s the one saying them, anyway.”

“So you know what they meant?”

“I can’t forget it,” I state. “It’s stuck in my head now; I think he told her he would spare her. And then, despite everything that happened afterwards, he kept his promise. I should have worried that he’d kill her, but I guess I already understood that he wouldn’t.”

She smirks a little. “Well, he’s just a big old softie, isn’t he? A big old murderous softie though; taking down a Prelature captain is no small feat.”

“It is for him.”

“Yeah, she had you on the ropes, though. So where is he now?”

I suck in air through my teeth. “He’s… around-ish? I don’t exactly know. He said to come look for you.”

“Did he say you could talk about him to me? Because you’re spilling an awful lot, for him wanting secrecy.”

“He seems to think you’re reliable, despite never having met you. I wouldn’t breathe a word about him if he didn’t say so. Believe me, I’m more scared of him than I am of you.”

Very, very poor choice of words on my part. My captor tilts her head, imitating me by sucking air through her teeth as well. “I could change that, right here and now.”

“Can we not do th—Whoa, hey!” She almost lets me fall as she tilts her hand, but catches me out of the air with the flat of her palm again, clapping me against her stomach. It’s soft enough to absorb most of the impact but my neck still appreciates it even less than the rest of me.

“See, we’re not running a ferry here. We’re privateers. Mayhem and havoc on the high seas all at the behest of the throne. In my line of work, fear is kind of important,” she begins. She’s not even keeping an eye on me; the clouds have her attention right now. “I have to be good at it. Besides, so long abroad makes a little ball of nutrients and iron like you so difficult to pass up…”

Her stomach growls, as if on cue, further driving her point in. The passive power of that hungry flesh within and below, capable of annihilating me in an afternoon. She dangles me by a single arm, lifting me so I’m level with her face again. I don’t say anything. I’ve got nothing to say. Nothing I can say. All I do is scowl.

And suddenly, she smiles as warmly as someone who hadn’t just threatened me. “Oh, relax, I’m not really that petty,” she says. “To be honest I don’t care if you’re scared of me or not. I had hoped for a better reaction, though...”

In times like this, I would usually sigh, I think, but I’m so unamused by her game that my expression doesn’t change a bit. “Can I finish my story?”

“Please,” she invites. “Do get in my mouth first, though, if you don’t mind.”

“Like I have a say in it,” I groan as she lifts me up a bit.

She clamps me gently from the waist down with her teeth, and then quickly jerks her whole head forward, engulfing me in the blink of an eye. In that same motion she stresses the second instance in which she totally could have swallowed me then and there, if she wanted to.

I make myself relatively comfortable again, leaning my head back and staring out at the clouds going by in the pale gray sky beyond her teeth. Settled in, I finally allow myself that overdue sigh, and sink into her tongue. I’m nearing the limits of my patience. The fear remains, of course, but it is secondary to the frustration at being toyed with like this.

Just a little more of this, and then I can get on with it all.