The lesson blinked out, leaving me with so many more questions than answers. I mouthed words that didn’t make it to gaining sounds trying to piece together what I’d just seen, but in the end, it really didn’t matter. Nia was gone, and we were just watching a mystery from her past. One that had obviously already been solved, since I’d seen Inopsy with my own two eyes.

“Okay, now I’m just confused.” Jun said flatly, cracking her back as she stood from the couch. “So Inopsy was missing at that point, the cavern was alive, and the two were somehow connected. And because of that we got a rushed lesson from Nia that she could’ve re-recorded a hundred times over. But she didn’t.”

“But she didn’t.” I echoed with a shake of my head. “There has to be a reason for that. Maybe Okeria or Keratily know more, or maybe I’ll find something else in all the other files Nia’s inheritance has for me to go through.”

“Maybe Okeria does.”

I blinked in the darkness at the sound of Okeria’s voice, then sighed and swiped away my interface. There he was, standing right in front of me, with a dark expression unlike any I’d seen on him.

“How much did you see?” I asked warily. This could be the point that either proved I could trust Okeria, or that I absolutely couldn’t.

“Nothing at all. I’ve been giving ya two your privacy ever since I found out about that little thing ya wanted ta keep a secret, and then I come back ta hear ya talkin about one of the worst things that ever happened ta me.” Okeria said sharply, waving his hand between Jun and I as if asking us to make space. Instead, the couch shuddered and expanded by one cushion length to make that space for him.

He sat down heavily, frowned at how soft it was, but didn’t do anything to change it. “Inopsy went missing for exactly two years, two months, twenty-two days, twenty-two hours, twenty-two minutes and twenty-two seconds. We didn’t know it was that long until we managed ta find someone who’d been with him the very moment he went missing, which wasn’t until we’d already found him.”

“That’s interesting and all, but how’s that one of the worst days of your life?” Jun asked. “Wouldn’t it be the worst for Nia or Inopsy, not you?”

Okeria grimaced, then shook his head. “It would be, if I wasn’t the reason Inopsy went missing. People didn’t like that I went against the old grand warden of Rainbow Basin. Inopsy was helping me deal with all the constant threats and blackmail, and luckily Persephonia was out doing her own thing while everything went down. That’s actually how I met her, truth be told; she came ta me after she found Inopsy gone since I was working with him, and we became fast acquaintances.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. “Fast acquaintances?”

“Well, we certainly weren’t friends.” Okeria laughed sadly. “I keep the real me outta the public eye, since nobody wants a klepto ex-zealot as their representative, but Persephonia ground it outta me. Grated on my last nerve asking about Inopsy and some armor thing she was convinced she’d found in one of the hazards, and then I snapped at her. Showed her the real me. But Persephonia was a soldier through and through, and she more than knew how ta deal with someone like me.”

Okeria thumbed at the wall that still separated us from Keratily. “She sicked that woman on me. The same one that saved my life had saved hers, and then we just sorta clicked from then on. A partnership of mutual necessity with only the most minimal amount of chumminess.”

“So it was the worst day of your life because you met Nia?” Jun asked confusedly. “You did say it was mutual necessity, and not one sided, so how is that–”

“I’m getting ta that point.” Okeria said gently but firmly. “Inopsy went missing eight months after I won the title of Grand Warden from Tigel Scalovera. Persephonia didn’t come ta me for help until fourteen months after Inopsy went missing. I spent those six months completely unaware that one of my closest friends had vanished off the face of the planet, buried in paperwork and politics that Scalovera left me as a parting gift. When Persephonia came ta me for help, it caused a stir from the abyss that pricked the little minds of all the bastards who hated me for taking their positions when I ousted Scalovera. I barely survived that storm as Grand Warden, and Persephonia’s reputation only fell from being lumped in with me. How she still managed ta become a Matria…” Okeria chuckled to himself. “Well, I’d call it a miracle if I didn’t know the woman personally.”

Jun let out a hum while she was deep in thought, pressing her hands together at the palms while she did. “So it was the worst day of your life because you almost lost the political position you’d fought for?”

“Nah. It was the worst day of my life because of all the violence that spread since Tigrel Scalovera painted me as a traitor and a weakling for working with Persephonia. We’ll visit one of the monuments ta the slaughters when we get ta Rainbow Basin, then you’ll see what kinda living nightmare that drowned bastard put on what had been his city for so many years. Like a child who’d break his own toy instead of sharing it.”

Okeria held up a hand to stop Jun before she asked another question. “I know, I know, I’m getting ta it. It was the worst day of my life because I lost everything else that I’d been working for. Rainbow Basin was supposed ta be a stepping stone ta trying ta fix our home on this world as a whole, but I’ve been working ta make sure the Scaloveras and Keratilys don’t swoop in and destroy everything I’ve worked so hard for. Inopsy’s plans and connections disappeared along with him, and when we eventually got the man back, he wasn’t quite all there any more. And everyone who would’ve helped us because of him suddenly wanted less than nothing ta do with us.”

I laced my fingers together and stared down at the floor. I wanted to chastise Okeria for making Inopsy’s disappearance about him, but I knew what it felt like to be in his position. Not to the same degree, of course; I’d only been in charge of a couple dozen people, and even then I was only part of a ruling council. But one loud discordant voice had been enough to turn so many of them against me to the point that I either had to step down from my role or step down into my grave. Even when almost everyone else on the council supported me, the angry voices drowned them out and I was blamed for almost everything we were suffering from.

That turned the fuck around when the group suddenly didn’t have enough people to explore hazards and bring back things like food and building materials. But after that, there was always a whisper of dissent no matter what I did. People remembered that I was ousted, and it didn’t matter for shit what I was ousted for. Looking back, it was probably the reason my friend group dwindled down so much. That and all the other bad shit that happened.

“I couldn’t tell ya what happened ta Inopsy before Persephonia found him, but he was so far gone that I couldn’t recognize him as the man who was my friend.” Okeria continued. “He smiled too much, never talked at a consistent pace, and couldn’t stop moving his hands for the life of him. But no matter what I tried ta pry outta him, he insisted that nothing bad had happened ta him. That he was the same person as before, and that he’d stopped trying ta hide it. Then he introduced us ta this girl he’d met, Sefflaria, and it only muddled everything. Ya met her while she was fighting Nia, Sebastian, so ya probably remember that the two of ‘em had problems with each other.”

Sefflaria… sefflaria… I could remember hearing that name before, but couldn’t put a face to it. Thinking back to all of Addia’s chosen that I’d met personally, the only one that I could one-hundred percent remember was a woman was the one who’d sat next to Inopsy. The one I’d called ‘the other matria’ for a while.

“Was she the one Nia de-limbed before Endra came though?”

Okeria nodded. “She’s the one. We didn’t find out she was one of Addia’s until way after, and that gave Persephonia and I a few ideas on where Inopsy had gone for those missing years. Whether he’d gone willingly or not is something I don’t know, and unless you’ve got the answer in that inheritance of yours, one that we’ll never find out. ‘Cause the mind currently in Inopsy’s head ain’t the same one that went missing, even if nothing physically changed.”

“Either Addia making him her chosen made him change, or whatever changed him made Addia notice him enough to make him her chosen.” Jun surmised. “Interesting. It doesn’t help us at all right now, but interesting.”

“True, true.” Okeria said. “It’ll probably come inta play when we actually get inta the fray with Endra and all her chosen, but for right now, it don’t mean much of anything. Oh, and Seb, how right was I with my little theory? I heard everything ya said after, since of course I did, but I want ta hear it from ya in person. Are ya actually one of The End’s chosen? Or the one and only, if I’m completely right.”

Once again, I considered lying to Okeria. His sad stories really didn’t add up to the kleptomaniac that was sitting right next to me, but other than the fact that he’d stolen, or tried to steal everything we’d come across, he didn’t seem that bad. Which was a really strange thing to say.

Eh. I decided to tell him the truth and let The End be the underlying threat. “I am what you think I am. The End saved me and made me its chosen, but it didn’t give me any orders or anything like that. Hell, I’m starting to think it doesn’t really know how to deal with having a chosen of its own.”

{Envoy! Not chosen!

-Mortician}

//…WHAT THEY SAID.

I paused for a second just in case there were more messages to come, but that seemed to be it. “I’ve been reminded that I’m now an ‘envoy’, and not a chosen, whatever the hell that means. Oh, and one of the things that just told me that is a manifestation of the people that died on your planet before the Staura existed. Don’t take any of the slyk pieces from the pods. Because that’s them.”

Okeria looked at me like I had two heads, then a massive grin split his face as he came to an unsaid conclusion without me. He looked to Jun as if to ask if I was being serious, then started physically shaking with excitement as his smile grew somehow broader.

“Oh, Thraiv is going ta love this. No; every single drowned Staura is going ta love this.” He cackled, jumping to his feet and pulling both Jun and I up with him. “Don’t tell Keratily. She’s old enough that she might have stock in this that don’t align with us, and Jun can pepper her with little questions until we’re sure the fossil won’t sell us out. And before ya say it, I know it’s rich coming from me, but ya gotta understand that our people know pretty much nothing about who came before us.”

Okeria tapped the side of his head with a sly grin. “Unless you’ve got a physical relationship with one of the few gods that both lived through, and didn’t accelerate, the first end of my world. If Thraiv wasn’t flat-out lying ta me this whole time, of course.”