Interlude-Warlock

The human crashed through the wall and spilled into the hall on the other side. Dust filled the air on both sides of the new hole in the wall. The silence was deafening as a Farnata looked at what she’d just done.

Caleb’s foot flipped out from under him, and he slipped back into the rubble beneath him. Red blood slid down his face and he stared at Nai.

There were some shouts in the hall as nearby Casti soldiers noticed what had happened.

In seconds, two Casti were leaning over Caleb trying to help him up. The human was waving them back, mumbling something about not moving him.

Shocked and confused glances found Nai as she stood frozen on the other side of the wall. Two Casti became four, became eight. Brief shouts and intense murmurs filled the space as someone realized just what had happened.

All the onlookers had the same reaction, for a split-second concern and confusion turned to a kind of twisted curiosity as they looked toward Nai again.

She’d attacked him.

They should have surged forward, if for no other reason than to separate her and Caleb: keep any violence from further escalating.

And they began to. A motion went through a handful of soldiers, a twitch in their spine and legs that made it clear to Nai where their minds were. But not one of them finished the motion. Something stopped them; some hesitation so powerful it arrested their impulse before they took a single step.

Nai’s gut wrenched.

It was fear.

On some level, everyone was scared of Adepts. These Casti were her allies, and they were hesitating because they knew what she’d just done to Caleb. And now they were unsure she wouldn’t do it to them.

Her heart pounded in her chest. Hot bursts of anger and shame competing inside her mind.

One young Casti actually mustered up the nerve to come closer to Nai. The badge on her shoulder marked her as just a Loth , a low infantry rank.

“Um… Asu Nai, you- you should come with- with me…”

Her voice was so shaky, it seemed like the young Casti might faint. Even if she had been the one to dare approach, she was just as scared as anyone else. More, even. She was just a kid too.

Nai nodded dimly, overwhelmed, furious with Caleb, everyone else, and herself.

“…you need to escort me to Ase Serralinitus,” Nai said.

The Adept’s voice was cold and hard; the young Casti shrank back but began walking, beckoning Nai to follow.

The girl didn’t say a word, or even look at Nai in the several minutes it took to wind their way through the building from the garage-gym to the command office near the reactor security station.

Even if it had likely been out of terror, Nai found some gratitude toward the Casti girl for sparing her those glances.

At the door to the command office Nai quietly asked, “what’s your name?”

The young soldier wilted further before choking out, “C-Corphica, Mi Corphica.”

Nai nodded, silently dismissing her and walked into the command office. She walked right past Dirdten who began to protest, but she moved right past him and entered Serralinitus’ office. She sat in one of the chairs off to the side, while the Ase himself held a base radio to the side of his head.

He looked at her, half still paying attention to what someone was saying over the radio.

Nai couldn’t bring herself to master her composure before speaking, sputtering “…I need to be put in the brig.”

·····

She sat alone in his office for almost an hour after he stormed out to learn of the events firsthand. Nai had not moved the entire time.

“You cocksure, petty, impulsive, koievaiwalta!”

Ase Serralinitus shouted as he burst back into his office and Nai jumped to her feet. She didn’t know the word, but context made it painfully clear what he meant.

“I know,” she protested.

“What were you thinking!”

“I wasn’t!” she started, but Serral swiped his hand out half slapping, half flicking her forehead, shutting her up.

“—I don’t want to hear a single diraksi word out of your mouth that isn’t ‘yes’ immediately followed by the rank of whomever the rasha it is speaking to you!” the Ase hissed.

Nai clenched her jaw and forced herself to say nothing.

After an angry moment of waiting to see if she’d speak out again, he quietly hissed at her, “Is that understood?”

“Yes Ase.”

Serralinitus gave a huff before sitting down at his desk. Nai almost mimicked him on habit, but she knew she hadn’t been ordered to. Instead she curbed the motion into just a reflexive twitch in one ankle.

“I know,” Serralinitus said, “that Nosoth Laranta considers you invaluable. And any void-soldier knows why, from a tactical perspective, you are an incredible asset. But it does not matter how much fire you can bandy about, how many Rak you can burn, or how impossible the tasks set before you are. The reason Laranta finds you so precious is not what you do on the battlefield, but what you contribute off of it-”

Nai nodded along, simply because she was paying attention, and Ase Serralinitus halted mid-sentence, waiting, daring her to open her mouth, even to agree with him. Only when he was sure she wouldn’t say anything did he continue.

“-you are so widely known, a significant portion of our recruitment material features you. People find you to be symbolic of what we’re trying to do. Any contribution you make in a battle pales in comparison to the recognition and weight of your title, to how people see you. Those are what makes you so irreplaceable to our Nosoth. ”

Serralinitus leaned back in his chair, somehow managing to look down on her while she stood, and he uttered almost silently,

“But I am not Laranta, and I do not consider you to be irreplaceable. I do not yet know what happened beforehand, but I don’t need to know. So hear this warning: if anything like this repeats itself, ever, I will not hesitate to execute you myself.”

She remembered what her mother had first told her, even as her first flame hadn’t stopped flickering, “You will be capable. Powerful. You are Adept, and set with a higher standard.”

It did not matter that she had not used even a mote of her power. She was Adept.

“Am I understood?” he asked.

“Yes Ase,” she said, barely a whisper.

“Now diraksi explain yourself,” he demanded.

“I have no excuse, I—” she began.

“I know there is no excuse!” He roared, “I don’t care how badly you feel about this, I have to know just exactly how you failed to act appropriately and how you are going to be remembered by history, human history! Now give me an aksi report!”

“Ase… I was to report for the second duty shift this morning. I’ve been waking up early to exercise before my shift since…” since she agreed to be more aggressive teaching Caleb about Adeptry, “since my routine changed. I didn’t realize the human did the same in the mornings. We got into an argument…”

“I do not want to hear that you ‘lost your temper’,” Serralinitus spat, “Explain exactly what was said that made you think it was at all appropriate to knock him through a solid wall!”

“I didn’t, Ase,” she stammered, mind racing to elaborate before the Ase could misinterpret what she meant. “I didn’t think it was appropriate, at all. Ever. I…I didn’t think at all.”

For a single moment Serralinitus’ fury seemed to falter, like a single flash of lightning in a dark storm it was gone in a second, livid cold replacing it immediately.

“What. Was. Said.”

“The argument…it, itself, concluded without incident. As we separated, I…snidely…expressed doubts at his actions and intentions, specifically about returning to his homeworld. He remarked…’you get to know where your homeworld is’. I…became angr—”

Nai trailed off. It felt wrong to avoid the reality like that.

“I attacked him,” she spoke. The words tasted like shattered glass in her mouth.

She would not have… snapped like that if he had not phrased it so. It would have infuriated her, she knew. But if he had not phrased it like a privilege, that she ‘got to’…like it should be some comfort to her…

If only Caleb had been a few steps further away, if only Tasser had told him, if only she had been steadier. If only, if only, if only…

She didn’t dare say so out loud. It felt pathetic to think, much less voice.

“I am sure,” Serralinitus said, “that you are aware, the human has no aksi clue about Farnata?”

“I reali—”

“Shut up!” he shouted, “An adolescent says something in complete ignorance, and you decide it warrants violence?”

“No As—”

“I said shut up!”

The Ase was so visibly furious that his pale skin had taken on the faintest orange tint around his jaw and forehead. It was rare to see Casti blood flow so violently to change the shade of their skin.

“Your dead little rock does not warrant botching a First Contact! That alien is not a soldier! He is not even a civilian! ” Serralinitus shouted.

“That alien is effectively the only dignitary of his people still alive! A refugee of our enemies! I don’t care how many dead family members you have, or how many precious planets you lost; you have jeopardized our diplomatic position, potentially irrevocably, not to mention risked killing him! All because he ‘hurt your feelings’.”

The derision of her home and accusation of murder both struck like a cold metal spike plunged into her chest right alongside a scorching hot poker. A numb sensation made her blood feel boiling hot in comparison and the urge to scream and throw fists crept through her limbs. The urge only failed to move her when it was met with the pit of shame that still lingered.

The Ase took a moment to breathe, staring at her with a viciousness she never would have expected from a species that weren’t predators by nature.

He hissed at her, “Thank fortune at least some of your family died! They’ll be spared the shame of knowing you assaulted a First Contacted dignitary! Thank hope the rest of the Kiraeni died so the rest of your people have an excuse to hide behind if the human planet demands the Naxoi be punished on your behalf!”

He stared daggers at her, daring her to move, even a millimeter.

“Oh? Not going to attack me? Are you sure? Tell me, Torabin, are you going to snap at me? Throw me, an experienced soldier, veteran of combat through my office wall? ARE YOU?”

Her joints screamed at her, every muscle in her body ached with rage at the words, each syllable felt like it sank into her bones. But she remembered the look on Caleb’s face when he felt his own bloodied skull and the pit of horror that opened up in her belly at the sight.

“No Ase,” she choked out.

“So you DO have some pathetic scrap of self-control!” the Ase thundered.

“…Yes Ase.”

He had slowly risen as he shouted at her and finally fell backward into his chair again, finally breaking eye contact. The Casti suddenly looked weary, and he did not speak a word while his breath calmed.

When he spoke next, the words sounded proper and formal. It was perhaps the highest insult he could have delivered, words cuttingly dismissive.

“You are formally demoted to the rank of Raho. I don’t care if we’re out of contact with the Nosoth , if Laranta wants to countermand this, then I will resign my commission.”

“Then get the dira out of my sight. We don’t have a ‘brig’, so you are confined to your bunk, indefinitely, until I know more. And I do not mean your bunk’s room: I mean your bunk. If I find out you so much as set one foot on the floor I will throw you into the sea until your blood thickens to syrup.”

“Yes Ase.”

Nai left without another word.

·····

The barracks were empty at this time of the morning. Soon, just before noon, the night rotation would retire for most of the afternoon and evening. This entire floor of this section of the garrison was dedicated to sleeping, subdivided into pods that each housed between four and eight.

She was the only Farnata in the officer’s pod; Dyn forwent the ordinary accommodations and slept where he worked, in sick bay. Tasser and Nemuleki both slept elsewhere despite also technically being officers.

The three of them were the same rank now.

Serralinitus had the authority to strip her of her commission outright. She suspected he would have liked to reduce her to an infantry rank. But depending on who you asked, that wouldn’t be nearly as much of a punishment. It would also be complicated to revoke her officer’s clearance.

His word was more or less law for the Naxoi on the ground, but the Ase still answered to his own sense of pragmatism.

In some dark and painful way, she respected that unwavering adherence to efficacy. Any other day and she wouldn’t find it so dark or painful, but she was still softly shaking from anger.

He had not meant what he’d said, she intellectually knew.

But how could she not be furious all the same?

Nai thumbed at a bare spot on her wrist where she normally wore a bracelet engraved with the names of her father, and older brother and sister. She had left it with Nerin before the mission to Korbanok. Just in case.

No tears came to her, the Farnata physical reaction to pain was still crying, but with the voice. It was a reflexive and understated whimper that spilled out of her chest. Her time among alien peoples had taught her that neither Vorak nor Casti found the display undignified or even awkward.

She hated crying, but more and more she was not the master of her fate this morning, because she cried anyway in the empty barracks.

Whatever was beyond her control now was her own fault. Impulse had gone uncurbed and consequences made no exception for impulse.

Her arms had lunged forward and in the microsecond they crashed into Caleb, she had realized what happened. The look on his face, in the empty moment before she’d hit him, he had been mildly confused by Nai reaching out.

Caleb had not known the first thing about her planet.

Regret had bitten into her conscience before she’d even finished striking, but not quickly enough to abort the violence in the first place.

Nai wanted to scream and yell at everyone. Caleb had been a fool, only half thinking through his decisions. Serralinitus had been cruel, defiling a murdered people for a demonstration. Tasser had been negligent, failing to tell the human something important.

And most of all stupid, stupid Nai. She had done all those things herself, nearly killed someone, a child, not minutes after asserting she wouldn’t. No one approved hypocrisy, no matter where they found it. And today she and everyone else found it in her.

Caleb had been right. Her fists tightened at the thought, even now. But he’d been correct to be afraid. Wary. It had shocked her that Caleb actually thought so much about what he was doing. She saw so little of him outside his dangerously farcical Adept tutoring.

Nai felt stupid and angry all over again for not having thought more about what Tasser had been doing with him.

He had been in their presence less than six months, and yet he could speak now. Well, even.

It was too easy to remember the jabbering imbecile they’d rescued on Korbanok. It was harder to reconcile that creature with the rapidly adapting and flexible alien she knew too little of now. She had imagined Tasser’s work with Caleb had been something out of a children’s puppet show, with Tasser painstakingly and slowly demonstrating words and a vacuously attentive Caleb looking on.

But Tasser was not stupid.

And it angered her to learn, neither was Caleb.

It angered her even more to know and remember, neither was she.

Because as disastrous a mistake as she had made today, as pitifully unjustifiable as attacking anyone after an argument was, she could not help but think of the argument and the attack as truly separate things.

Because Caleb had been right, but she had not been wrong.

Even after vocally believing she might murder him, Caleb’s first reflex had not been to flinch away from Nai when she’d struck him.

It had been that confused reaction, like for a split second he found himself in a situation he hadn’t considered possible.

There was a gap between what he said and how he acted.

And perhaps, Nai let herself admit, that gap was not as large as her hostility had first insisted. But it was not absent.

This was a brilliant punishment. She wondered if Serralinitus had even intended such. Confining her to a space she could not stand nor pace in. It left only her mind free to move. And move it did, in circles. From shame, into hollow anger at peers, into that dark and slimy anger you could only muster at yourself and true regrets, back into shame and all over again.

Only the arrival of someone else let her pause the cycle.

Her best friend and brother-in-arms walked in. She almost wanted to burst out crying again. She’d seen so precious little of him lately.

He sat down with her on her bunk and wasted no time.

“Talk,” Tasser said.

Nai thought Serralinitus’ tone, either incensed or apathetic, had hurt.

Tasser’s was the opposite, carrying so much in just one word. Soft, caring, disappointed. The way he spoke just twisted the knife and she forced herself to welcome it. A reminder of just how monumental of a mistake she’d made.

“I didn’t sleep again,” she said, “got myself in a bad mood. We argued…” she couldn’t bring herself to say it in one pass. If she had tipped over the edge at the height of the argument, it seemed like the shame wouldn’t be as harsh. But his words had come as an afterthought, a trailing remark, separated from any of the important exchange that had come before.

The moment had come unexpectedly, her guard was down because the worst of the interaction had passed.

She’d attacked him anyway.

“We came so close to just walking away, with nothing having gone wrong. But in the moment before he left, he effectively said I enjoyed the privilege of knowing where Farnata was…”

“Oh Nai…” Tasser reached an arm around her and gave her a hug. Another involuntary cry slipped free. It was the first scrap of support anyone had lent her.

“I pushed him hard enough to go through a wall, I was just angry and—”

“Is he okay?” Tasser asked.

“I don’t know, one of the grunts went with me to Serralinitus’ office. He tore into me. I got demoted, and that’s just what’s happened so far.”

“You’ve made a colossal mistake, Nai,” Tasser said quietly.

“I know!” she wailed, “Serralinitus already made that painfully—” she clapped her mouth shut. Tasser had not swayed even an inch at her outburst. Not even a flinch. He knew the Ase had already said so. He’d decided to repeat it anyway. Repetitive did not necessarily mean redundant.

“You need to hear it,” he said plainly.

“…over and over,” she conceded. She was quiet and reticent, but she believed the same as Tasser did.

“Until you don’t make the same mistake again,” he finished.

He gave her a moment to sit and collect herself a tad before continuing.

“You know he couldn’t have known,” Tasser said, still barely above a whisper.

“In the heartbeat as I moved,” Nai confirmed.

“It’s…it’s your responsibility,” the Casti told her, “but I can’t help but feel it’s my fault. I never told him about your home.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like there was a reason. But saying it aloud now…I’m worried I might have tried to refuse covering that subject with him. So he couldn’t learn anything about you from me. If you were the only one to talk to him about you and your people, he would have to satisfy his curiosity through you, and in so doing get to know you a little better.”

“You wanted your friends to get along,” Nai said. “Or at least be able to.”

“Still do,” he said.

“…why did you become friends with him so quickly?” she asked. “How?”

“He saved my life when he did not have to,” Tasser said, “but I suspect that is only part of it, and maybe not even the beginning. It was…patience, I think. When you were still unconscious, and he was in that pathetic quarantine…we had to slave for hours just to find the one word in common. Neither of us abandoned the effort, and it did not feel like either of us begrudged the other’s difficulties.”

The words stung to say, but she did anyway.

“Patience is a good foundation for a friendship,”

“What about you?” Tasser asked, ever calm, but still carrying hints of the same disappointment. “Why do you find him so…” He struggled for the right word. “…objectionable?”

“Well, he tried to shoot me. But like you said, even if that was the beginning, I don’t think that’s but a small part of it.”

Drained of her energy, and most of her ire, for now, Nai thought deeply about the human before she opened her mouth. She did not want to speak hastily,

“He was risky from the start, but even just days after meeting him, he grew more and more dangerous but no more knowable. Even after he learned to communicate, when I believe what he says, I grow angry at his… ease . When I doubt, I grow afraid of which lies I can’t spot.”

“I am not sure I have the words to describe the feeling. It’s like I am not truly experiencing any sensation, but rather that it is always a moment away from arriving, but I never fully grasp it. It’s just out of reach. He did something to me. I’m sure. But I have no proof, no way of knowing, no reason to think I am being anything but paranoid…but I cannot shake the idea that he is why I cannot sleep. That he is not telling us everything. How else can I react to that but suspicion?”

“Suspicion,” Tasser quoted, “is but curiosity joined with hostility.”

“That’s from ‘Diplomatic Enmity’,” Nai recalled, “I didn’t know you read Yuk.”

“You recommended it, and it’s fittingly appropriate for your situation. Your choices seem to have been made for you, Nai,” Tasser said. “Because you can’t afford to be hostile anymore. At the very least, you’ll have to trust that role to someone else.”

“Because I’m the only Adept for the job.” Nai realized, “I’m still going to have to teach him.”

Her Casti friend nodded. “Ase Serralinitus might not realize that yet, but yes.”

“I don’t know that I can just stop being suspicious of him,” Nai confessed.

“Hostility with curiosity,” Tasser repeated, “You can only afford to keep the latter.”

She did not respond to that. She did not quite know how.

“Get some rest, Nai,” he ordered, “I’m going to check on Caleb now. I’ll be back again in an hour.”

Nai nodded, sad to see her friend go again. But ceasing the comfort of his presence felt like it at least began to satisfy the pit of shame still gnawing away at her belly.

He slipped out of the bunk room leaving Nai once again alone with her guilt.