I hadn’t planned on using the grenade, but considering the circumstances I gripped it in my left hand regardless. Even though the man, Mawyeyz, looked as though he was relaxing, it was probably a trap. Everything I had seen about creator humans indicated that they would, like warbreed, take the killing of a family member as at least an insult to their pride, possibly even a reason to drop everything and kill the perpetrator. I’m fairly sure that crossbow has a poisoned bolt, so I shouldn’t rush out just in case, I thought.

“You are the one who killed Yaavtey, right?” Mawyeyz asked, breaking the silence. I already admitted to it, I thought.

“Yes,” I confirmed.

“Could you… tell me why you killed him?” Mawyeyz asked. Considering that he was likely upset, he was hiding it well. His tone of voice was so calm that it was almost as though he was talking about the weather or some other mundane topic.

“Does it matter?” I asked back. “I’m not going to fall for this.” Vaozey gave me a strange look, and nobody said anything for a moment.

“I think you’re misunderstanding me,” Mawyeyz replied. “If you don’t oppose my goals, I don’t have any reason to kill you. It’s just that, since you’re the one who killed Yaavtey, I have a few questions about him that only you can answer.” I quickly glanced out to see Mawyeyz holding his crossbow aside in a resting position, then ducked behind the tree again. If I can coax the woman to get a bit closer to him, I can get them both with the grenade, I thought.

“I killed him because he tried, and failed, to kill me,” I replied. “I was hired by a mercenary company to assassinate him, and when that failed, he thought he had killed me. I survived, and to get my pay I went back and finished the job. That’s it.”

“So it wasn’t personal?” Mawyeyz asked.

“It was ju-,” I started to reply, but then I froze as I remembered the circumstances again. “No, it was personal,” I said. “At first it wasn’t, but by the end, I would have killed him even if there was no money involved.”

“I see,” Mawyeyz said quietly, letting the statement hang in the air. I heard footsteps moving from the tree to Mawyeyz and crouched down to peek out, making sure my head would be at an unexpected level just in case she was looking to shoot me. “Listen, we have a camp nearby,” Mawyeyz said. “If you have the time, there’s a lot I’d like to talk to you about. Since you were looking for tvehpaol I can only assume you need ant repellent. We have some there, and I’d be willing to sell it to you.”

“Maw…” the woman said, using an empathetic tone of voice.

“Why would you help us?” I asked.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Mawyeyz asked back. “She’s the madwoman of Owsahlk, isn’t she? And you, you’re not working for anyone in Zihzehshesk, so even if you are a Rehvite it doesn’t make you my enemy by default.”

“I killed your uncle,” I said, as if I needed to state the obvious.

“Someone had to,” Mawyeyz replied. “Yaavtey was a monster. From what I heard of your fight, you probably knew that by the end too. It’s a shame that it had to come at the cost of my aunt and their child, but I understand better than most that violence tends to run out of control. Did you set out to kill those two from the start?”

“No,” I replied.

“I didn’t think so,” Mawyeyz sighed. “I’m not sure what you’re thinking right now, but this isn’t some trap. Please, come back to our camp.”

“I’m armed with an explosive, and I’ll be keeping it on my person,” I warned him, peeking out again. “I’m more than capable of setting it off in a fraction of a second. If this is a trap, you will die.”

“Then we will live, because it isn’t a trap,” Mawyeyz shrugged.

The camp in question was about a kilometer west of where we had been gathering plants. I was expecting a tent or two, but it turned out that there were fifteen tents of various sizes and around twenty people present including Mawyeyz and the woman whose name I still hadn’t learned. The site itself was also surrounded by tvehpaol plants, most of which appeared to be tended to, forming a sort of natural ground barrier. They’ve been here a while, I thought, at least a year or two, judging by how much the ground has been worn down. It’s surprising that they’re still using tents if this is a permanent settlement of some kind.

After reassuring a few of the other people who reacted suspiciously to Vaozey and me, Mawyeyz led us into one of the larger tents and offered us a spot on the floor at a short table with cushions for sitting placed around it. The three non-flapped sides of the tent were lined with large wooden boards that had many pieces of paper attached to them. This is some kind of war room, I realized as I saw that some of the papers had what appeared to be battle plans written on them.

“So, firstly, welcome to our camp,” Mawyeyz said, sitting cross-legged on one of the cushions. “As you can see, it’s a bit small, but we eat well and everyone’s friendly. Bahvjhey, could you get us a bit of bread and water?”

“Of course Maw,” the woman who was apparently named Bahvjhey said, exiting the tent. Vaozey and I were still standing, but after a bit more non-verbal prompting we sat down at the table as well.

“This is a small militia,” Vaozey said.

“Among other things,” Mawyeyz replied. “We’ve been out here for three years now, biding our time and planning.”

“We’re not interested in joining,” I said. “We have a different objective that we need to tend to, we just need the repellent to get to Awrehrehzha.”

“I wasn’t planning on asking,” Mawyeyz replied graciously. “With all due respect, it takes me a very long time to trust a person enough to fight with them. Though I don’t expect you mean us any harm so long as we don’t mean you any, I would never fight at your side while knowing so little about you.” Well that’s new, I thought.

“Then we can buy the repellent and be on our way,” I said.

“I’d like for you to talk with me a bit first,” Mawyeyz said. “It’s part of the price for the repellent, if you want to think of it that way.” Vaozey sighed, and my lips tightened. “I swear, this will just be a chat,” Mawyeyz assured us.

“What do you want to know?” I asked.

“What were Yaavtey’s last words?” Mawyeyz asked. “Let’s start with that.”

“He apologized to his family,” I replied. “They were already dead, of course, but I’m not sure he was in a right enough state of mind to know that.”

“He was still a little bit human inside then,” Mawyeyz sighed. “I had thought he was too far gone decades ago, but maybe a small bit of the man he used to be survived until his death. Tell me, did you know him at all, besides as a target?”

“Not really,” I replied. “I met him in the headquarters of his company, where he ordered me to beat a man to death with my bare hands for an opportunity to work for him. The man in question was already set on killing me, so I did as he asked. Yaavtey seemed impressed by that and offered me some jobs, but my companion at the time rejected them, and we ended up taking on a job from another mercenary company to kill him.”

“The Steelheart Company,” Mawyeyz nodded. “Yes, I heard.”

“How did you hear?” I asked.

“About… twenty days ago I received a letter from one of my acquaintances in town,” Mawyeyz explained. “It was from a friend of mine who lives in Vehrehr, who told me about a man he met, and about how that man killed my uncle, among other things. It was so unbelievable that I almost thought it was a joke, but my friend wasn’t one for joking.”

“This friend told you about my light magic?” I asked, trying to figure out who could possibly have seen it. I suppose everyone on the street would have seen the flash attack, I thought, but he probably wouldn’t relate that to the orb, so how?

“Oh yes, that was actually half of the letter almost,” Mawyeyz laughed. “You left quite an impression on him, knocking someone senseless outside his shop then seeing right through the little show he puts on for customers.”

“The albino,” I realized, and Mawyeyz smiled.

“He even remembered that word,” he continued. “I’ve never heard it before, but I suppose the world is wider than most can see in a lifetime. My friend also saw your fight because he lived on the same street as the Hatchet Crew’s headquarters. From what he tells me, it was quite brutal.”

“Your friend is a Rehvite,” I said, and Vaozey twitched.

“Of course he is,” Mawyeyz smiled. “I am also a follower of Rehv.” Contrary to my expectations, Vaozey didn’t immediately jump to her feet with a weapon drawn, but she did begin burning the edge of the table she was holding onto, and some of her facial muscles began twitching.

“You had better explain yourself very carefully before I get upset,” she growled.

“I wasn’t aware that you could use magic,” Mawyeyz said, looking at the smoke coming from beneath Vaozey’s hand. “If you could stop burning my table, I’d be happy to-”

“Stop seytoydh spewing shit and explain,” Vaozey snapped. “Is that teylm you were with one too? Is everyone here?”

“No,” Mawyeyz said, holding up a hand. “My wife follows the old gods, as does most everyone else in this camp.”

“Then why-” Vaozey started to yell.

“I got the drinks and food!” Bahvjhey announced, pushing her way into the tent with a number of wooden mugs and two loaves of bread. “Oh… is this a bad time?”

“You married this Rehvite filth?” Vaozey snarled, baring her teeth at the new arrival.

“Oh, it’s about that,” Bahvjhey sighed, walking over to the table. She set down two of the mugs and one of the loaves of bread, then gestured for Vaozey to follow her. “I think it would be better if us girls talked outside a bit,” she suggested. “I know that look when I see it. Come on, let Maw and your friend chat a bit.”

“How about I-” Vaozey yelled, jumping to her feet and winding back to smack the food and drinks from Bahvjhey’s hands.

“Go with her,” I ordered, raising my voice just enough to get through Vaozey’s anger. “I’ll figure this out, then explain it to you. Don’t kill anyone unless I start killing first.”

“Scary,” Bahvjhey chuckled. “Come on honey, let’s go talk somewhere else.” Vaozey glared at me for a moment, then did something that I could visually recognize as shoving her emotions down the same way I often had to, and wordlessly followed Bahvjhey out of the tent. Mawyeyz watched the exit for a moment, looking slightly nervous, but then just chuckled to himself and took a sip of water.

“I was actually expecting to have to restrain her,” he said.

“If you knew, why would you do that?” I asked.

“There’s no better way to do it,” he replied. “She would have found out eventually. Now, let’s get back to business. In order for this to make sense, we have to go back thirty-five years to the most recent Dahmpiyahn civil war between Treysihs and Muhraantey…”

For nearly an hour, Mawyeyz explained a number of historical and geopolitical events to me. I had little interest in the majority of them, but the story that they helped to explain was more interesting. The kingdom of Dahmpiyah was not a united country like Uwriy, that much I had heard insinuated before, but the extent of its internal divisions was surprising nonetheless. With an average of ten times as many people per province as Uwriy and not nearly as much in the way of usable farmland, famines were common, and inter-provincial strife was a regular occurrence.

Yaavtey was only five years older than Mawyeyz, the youngest son of his parents while Mawyeyz was the oldest born to his own. Due to this, the two grew up in a relationship more like brothers than an uncle and nephew. When Mawyeyz was ten, Yaavtey joined the army of Treysihs, their home province. At the time, there was a famine going on in the border region, and one of the neighboring provinces, Muhraantey, had been raiding the relatively more fertile lands of Treysihs for food. Some distant relation of the two was killed, and Yaavtey took it upon himself to avenge his kin.

After three years of fighting, Yaavtey came home. The war had turned into a full-blown civil conflict, driven by drought and the politicking of nobles, and the fighting had intensified. Despite this, Yaavtey didn’t appear weary or withdrawn, instead, he was like a man possessed by joy. He regaled Mawyeyz with stories of glory on the battlefield, of how they drove away their enemies, of how the villagers thought of him like a hero, and so on. Mawyeyz, swayed by these stories, joined the army two years later when he turned fifteen. By that time, Yaavtey had reached a high enough rank that he was placed in command of some soldiers, and Mawyeyz became his subordinate.

The war was not glorious, according to Mawyeyz. Instead, it was a brutal conflict with regular mass slaughters of noncombatants and days or weeks of starvation between battles. Most soldiers broke within their first hundred days, but Mawyeyz stuck it out, driven by sheer determination and by a desire to not disappoint his uncle. Not only because he wished for his uncle to respect him, but because his uncle was more terrifying than any enemy he faced.

Yaavtey was known by another name in the army: Jhoyruway. In Uwrish the word meant “glutton”, but in Dahmpiyahn it meant “endless hunger”. Evidently, Yaavtey’s cannibalistic tendencies hadn’t started as a method to gain power, but instead to ward off starvation on the battlefield. Mawyeyz also partook of human meat when he couldn’t stand to starve any longer, but Yaavtey seemed to develop a taste for it, preferring it over other food. Even once the conflict ended five years into Mawyeyz’s service, Yaavtey still sometimes looked at people he disliked with hunger in his eyes, and his reputation was known widely.

After five more years of uneasy peace, Mawyeyz was discharged from the army upon his request, and he settled in Awrehrehzha, opting to leave his country for reasons he couldn’t quite explain. Yaavtey remained a while longer, and the two lost contact for many years. During that time, Mawyeyz met Bahvjhey and the two married, having two children of their own who were apparently grown up and living in Pehrihnk. As Mawyeyz began to talk about his daughter, Vaozey and Bahvjhey walked back into the tent, sitting down at the table. The latter had washed off the mud on her body to reveal her normal, light skin tone.

“…used to try to get me to pay her for sweeping up,” Mawyeyz remarked with a smile.

“Very cute,” Vaozey grunted. “So not only a Rehvite, but Dahmpiyahn scum and a cannibal as well. I suppose it explains why you worship a god that hates humans, I’d hate myself too if I were you.” Mawyeyz looked at Vaozey, then his face softened into a melancholic smile.

“I suppose I should expect nothing less from someone who has been wronged as much as you have,” he replied.

“You people always act like you’re so above it all,” Vaozey seethed back. “Even the way you say things, you try to make it sound like things are just happening, not that people are doing them. I wasn’t ‘wronged’ you npoyt, Rehvites killed my whole family and fried me like a piece of meat. Stop dancing around it.”

“Things do just happen,” Mawyeyz responded. “It’s just that, when evil is happening, it’s usually a person that it’s happening through.”

“And here we go…” Vaozey growled.

“What is your name?” Mawyeyz asked.

“Vaozey,” Vaozey replied. “Svaaloyweyl.”

“Miss Svaaloyweyl, do you know what the first thing Rehv says about humans in the book of Rehv is?” Mawyeyz asked.

“Why would I care?” Vaozey asked back.

“It’s fairly important to understanding Rehv as a whole,” Mawyeyz explained. “It’s actually in the second chapter of the book of Rehv. ‘Though your kind are not of me, and did not come to exist through my will, you are alive. As I love life, and you are alive, I will treat you the same and grant you my blessings of magic.’”

“Lot of seytoydh love to go around then,” Vaozey spat. “Looks like you’ve got some on your face, actually.”

“Oh, this?” Mawyeyz asked, gesturing to the mark of ire on his cheek. With a wipe of his hand, he showed that the mark was indeed a scar and not a fake of some kind. “This entire thing is blasphemous in itself, there’s nothing about this in the book at all actually.”

“Blasphemous?” I thought aloud.

“Are you aware of what this means?” Mawyeyz asked me.

“Someone with low magic skill,” I replied.

“Interesting that you would phrase it that way, though perhaps you have a reason,” Mawyeyz replied, glancing back at Vaozey for a moment. “Also, no, what I meant to ask was if you knew what the symbols meant.”

“The triangle is a common Revhite symbol,” I said.

“The triangular figure is a symbol for Rehv,” Mawyeyz said, pointing to the section on his own cheek. “The circular figure is a symbol for humans. The five-segmented line in the center is a barrier figure taken from ancient Dahmnpiyahn art, and was typically used to segregate symbols for royalty from the peasantry. Literally, this figure means ‘a human who is not worthy to be in the presence of the god Rehv’.”

“Fascinating,” Vaozey grumbled.

“That entire concept is, in itself, heretical,” Mawyeyz said. “Not once in the pure word of Rehv does he make reference to a human being unworthy of him due to birth or ability alone. He explains our many flaws in great detail, but only those who commit evil are condemned. Even in the commentaries, there is little justification for the persecution of those with less magical ability.”

“You should tell that to one of the high priests,” Vaozey retorted.

“Why do you think I have this mark?” Mawyeyz responded, suddenly turning serious for a moment. “Do you believe that I lack magical ability, after serving ten years under my zaeternaaf uncle who was himself nearly a match for any kehpveht?”

“So it was a punishment?” I asked, and Mawyeyz sighed.

“You may not know this, but the first prophet of Rehv was an ex-Dahmnpiyahn soldier in Awrehrehzha,” he explained. “He, much as I did, fought in civil wars until he could no longer stand to slaughter his countrymen in the name of lords and old gods. His revelation happened at the noypeyyoyjh, and from there he went to preach. All of this is true, so why do you think that the largest Rehvite temple is in Zihzehshesk, not Awrehrehzha?”

“Because you got your asses kicked,” Vaozey snorted.

“Because the first Rehvites were peaceful,” Mawyeyz said. “I would know, I converted twenty-five years ago. At that time, there were no brandings, but there was persecution. Specifically, persecution of us because most of us were foreign, and because people could not stand to hear the truth of our words. We were often beaten, many times people would not sell food to us, and as time went on the violence escalated. Twenty-two years ago, the people of Awrehrehzha had enough, and they ran us out, killing more than half of our number.”

“So it’s our fault then,” Vaozey scoffed, clicking her tongue in disgust at the notion.

“It’s the fault of human nature,” Mawyeyz said. “After that, our magic research became militarized, and the notions of ‘detested’ started to become popular. The same things I saw happen in Dahmpiyah, the politics, the power struggles, the evils of humans, all emerged once more.”

“Nobody told you to go around burning people,” Vaozey retorted. “Nobody told you to go around killing families, making orphans, treating us like animals-”

“Nobody needed to,” Mawyeyz interrupted. “Those things are flaws inherent to humans, not commands from Rehv. Rehv doesn’t hate humans, Rehv wants humans to be better than we are. The purpose of his explanations of our nature, and our flaws, is not to demean or torment us. It is to help us become better, to help us shed the evil in our nature and become what we could be if only we lacked it. Zihzehshesk has forgotten that, and worse, they’ve corrupted the message of a true god to their liking in order to justify the evils they should be fighting against.”

“How can you say that when-” Vaozey sputtered, jumping to her feet. “You- I should- I-”

“Doesn’t your ideology state that Rehv controls every event in this world?” I asked, seeing an opportunity to learn about creator human religion as well as stop Vaozey from exploding. “If your god existed, would he not be able to simply remove ‘evil’ from humans? How could ‘evil’ even exist in that case?”

“There is an explanation for that, but it is extremely long,” Mawyeyz said, looking apologetic.

“I’m not listening to this ngiyvdoym any longer,” Vaozey snapped, storming out of the tent.

“She took that pretty well,” Bahvjhey remarked.

“Better than I hoped when I realized who she was,” Mawyeyz sighed.

“I’d like to hear the explanation,” I said. “My people don’t have gods, so this sort of thing is interesting to me.”

“No gods?” Mawyeyz asked, laughing a little bit. “You must be from very far away indeed. Well, the short version is this: Rehv’s will is acted out through the living things in the world, he rarely ever intervenes directly.”

“Then is Zihzehshesk’s ‘corruption’ of his message not part of his will?” I asked.

“Yes, but then, so is my defiance of it,” Mawyeyz replied. “To act according to one’s nature, that is the will of Rehv.”

“That’s an unfalsifiable statement,” I said. “Any action, even mine, could be the will of Rehv in that case. Choices in opposition to each other, with completely reversed objectives, would both qualify. It’s nonsensical.”

“From our perspective, yes,” Mawyeyz agreed. “But we are not gods, we are not privy to the perspective of Rehv. What appears as chaos to us may not be so when viewed from above.”

“Then how do you know that any choice you make is the right one?” I asked. “Presumably, you want to serve your god, but your god’s objectives are incomprehensible. At any given moment, you could be acting against them.”

“To do that, I use the greatest power a human can wield,” Mawyeyz smiled. “More mighty than the largest army, more miraculous than the most sublime magic. The power that allows humans to rival gods and shape the world as they see fit: Faith.”

Though what he had said was utterly insane, Mawyeyz didn’t appear to know it, and I found myself momentarily dumbstruck. The man’s entire conception of the world was so different from mine that, as I stared into his orange eyes and saw the drying dirt on his face crack and begin to fall into his lap, I felt as though I understood him less now than when he started talking.