“So, to summarize, while I can sell you some repellent today if you truly need it, it would be better if you would instead come back tomorrow once we have produced more for you,” Mawyeyz said. Another half hour had gone by since we had finished talking about his strange religion, and my grasp of it was no better for the effort I invested. “You also mentioned something about a mask?”

“Yes,” I replied. “If possible, I need some kind of spring to fix a sealing mechanism in a mask I have as well.”

“And you said you got this mask from a Rehvite assassin when you mentioned it earlier?” Mawyeyz asked. “Forgive me, it has been quite some time since I’ve been involved with the temple of Rehv, but last I checked there were no masked assassins. Could you be mistaken?”

“No, he was definitely a Rehvite,” I said. “He thought his target was Vaozey because we damaged his orders before arriving in Muhryehv, but his actual target was me. He was using weapons like this one.” I removed the grenade from my pocket and showed it to Mawyeyz. I still didn’t fully trust him, but he seemed to recognize it without needing to hold it himself.

“Ah, rawveymeyv eyngzoyjhaoeyl,” he remarked, putting a hand on his chin. I grappled with the words, but something about the way he pronounced them made them difficult to work out. Unstable… granulate? I translated tentatively. The words sounded like Uwrish, but weren’t quite right.

“My people call it a term that translates to ‘black powder’,” I replied.

“Your people also know of this?” Mawyeyz asked, looking surprised. “I was certain it was us who discovered it. A truly interesting substance, if a dangerous one. It has a very unfortunate tendency to explode and maim workers during processing.” So they must not have very sophisticated production methods yet, I thought.

“What did you call it?” I asked back. “I don’t understand the words you used, but they sound Uwrish.” Mawyeyz chuckled to himself, amused by the question.

“The language you call ‘Uwrish’ is just called ‘Far East Dahmpiyahn’ in my homeland, but people here view it as a different language,” he replied. “Essentially, the term is almost identical to ‘black powder’, but the word for ‘black’ also implies that it is volatile. Regardless, was there anything else this assassin said, or did, that told you he was a Rehvite?” I guess I should just tell him now in case it’s an issue, I thought, no need to risk him finding out between today and tomorrow and setting up a trap.

“Besides knowing I was the jhaoyeyl?” I asked, watching for a reaction. Mawyeyz froze for a moment, then covered his mouth, and the tent was filled with muffled laughter. Even Bahvjhey chuckled under her breath, smiling as though I had told some kind of joke.

“Sorry,” he huffed. “It’s just that, the way you say that word, it’s funny.”

“That’s about the last reaction I expected,” I admitted.

“Can I assume you don’t know what jhaoyeyl means?” Mawyeyz asked as Vaozey re-entered the tent. The laughter quickly stopped as we anticipated some degree of hostility, but Vaozey just sat back down, frowning and refusing to look at Mawyeyz.

“It’s just a fancy word for someone evil,” she grumbled. “I don’t see what’s so funny about it.”

“It’s like he just said he’s the monster hiding under a kid’s bed,” Bahvjhey snickered. “Of course it’s funny.”

“In case it wasn’t clear, I wasn’t making a joke,” I clarified. “According to the Rehvites, I am the ‘jhaoyeyl’, which marks me as their enemy.” Again, Mawyeyz and Bahvjhey made various suppressed noises of amusement.

“It isn’t that I doubt you,” Mawyeyz said. “That magic you displayed, the light, it’s certainly something that most people wouldn’t be able to produce. Though I understand the implications of what you’re saying, possibly more than you do considering how nonchalantly you’re saying it, I just can’t help but find the term as amusing as I did back when we decided upon it. Actually, I was of the opinion that we should call people such as you ‘eylmiyfernay’, but it was deemed to be too wordy.”

“‘Interloper’?” Vaozey asked, apparently proposing a tentative translation. So in Uwrish, the word is pronounced oylmayvernay, but in Dahmpiyahn some of the sounds are different, I thought.

“Better than a reference to a bedtime story,” Mawyeyz said.

“What is the story?” I asked. “Could it have any useful information for me?”

“Probably not,” Bahvjhey replied. “I guess you’ve never heard it, bein’ foreign and all. How about you, honey?”

“Stop calling me that,” Vaozey grumbled.

“Can’t help it, you remind me too much of my son,” Bahvjhey smiled. “Anyhow, the story’s actually called ‘The Chaayiyl of Mowriyehsk’. To sum it up for you, the baron of Mowriyesk saves a god’s daughter from a pack of thugs, and the god decides to give ‘em a reward for it, so he said the baron can have anythin’ within his power to grant him. The baron tries a bunch of wishes, but the god is only a minor deity, so he can’t grant ‘em. Eventually, the baron just gets in a huff and says he’ll take whatever, and the god offers him a servant.”

“As the servant appears, he is dressed in shabby clothes and looks unkempt, causing the baron to turn up his nose in disgust,” Mawyeyz continued. “The god introduces the servant as his chaayiyl, which is both a name and a title. The baron reluctantly agrees to take the servant as payment and rudely leaves without thanking the god. However, he does not know that the chaayiyl is not a human being, nor that the god has taken great offense at to his behavior. In truth, the chaayiyl is an evil spirit in human flesh, and the god has sent him to bring the barony to ruin.”

“So the servant basically goes around screwin’ up every order he possibly can in creative ways, while actin’ out every order to the letter no matter how crazy,” Bahvjhey said, picking up the story again. “Kind of stuff like ‘oh well you didn’t tell me not to poison your food when I made it for you’, or ‘you told me to buy this list of food but not how much so I blew all the money on salt and bought one bite of meat’. At first it’s petty, but as the baron wises up and gets more specific with his orders, it grows in scale and danger. Eventually, the servant kills the baron and his whole family after bein’ begged to bring prosperity back to his land, since in the servant and the god’s eyes, the baron was the reason everythin’ went to shit.”

“Then Mowriyesk falls to its enemies and the chaayiyl returns to the god, who finds the whole affair very funny in retrospect,” Mawyeyz finished.

“Sounds like a Dahmpiyahn bedtime story all right,” Vaozey muttered.

“I don’t see how the reference applies,” I said.

“That’s why I said it likely wouldn’t be useful to you,” Mawyeyz replied. “It was chosen because the servant, the chaayiyl, was a corrupting influence from a petty and evil god. The thing it was meant to describe, to us at least, was potential servants of foreign gods sent to disrupt us. Yet you say that there are no gods in your homeland, so perhaps they are misusing it somewhat.”

“Whatever,” Vaozey huffed. “If we’re waiting until tomorrow, let’s get out of here.”

“I agree,” I replied with a nod. “We will be back tomorrow, assuming we can find our way here.”

“We’ll look for you,” Bahvjhey smirked.

Back in town things were quiet. Vaozey and I didn’t have any sort of plans besides waiting, so at her request I joined Vaozey in her cabin to help her with her magic practice. She couldn’t quite explain how she managed to finally light a fire away from her body, but with some effort, she was able to do it consistently. Once I was confident that I wouldn’t be wasting my time, I came up with a method to begin teaching her to reach past an opaque barrier and heat something on the other side: using a board of wood to obstruct her vision and my hand as a heat sensor.

“Did it work?” Vaozey asked.

“No,” I replied for the fifth time in the last few minutes. “You scorched the surface again though, I can smell it.”

“Seytoydh…” Vaozey swore under her breath, slapping the table in frustration. “How do you know this will even work?”

“Put your hand behind the board,” I commanded, and Vaozey did so. Using just enough power to cause pain but no significant damage, I created a field of heat over the area where I knew her hand was, and she pulled it back.

“Fine, it’ll work,” she grumbled.

“You should be aware that, as far as I know, this is a very non-standard technique,” I reminded her. “Human magic seems to relate very heavily to one’s visual perception as a matter of instinct. Most people have trouble using magic on things outside their field of vision.”

“But not you,” Vaozey sighed.

“I do as well,” I replied. “But, in this case, what you’re trying to do with magic doesn’t really depend on the structure or composition of something you can’t see. If I was trying to, say, move something with force magic from behind this board I would have issues because I wouldn’t be able to see where to apply the magic. With heat, specifically for this purpose, all you need to do is heat something a given distance from you, regardless of what it is or what’s there.”

“It never occurred to me just how much you sound like a Dahmpiyahn when you’re talking about magic until just now,” Vaozey muttered, putting her hand back in position. “I still can’t understand how Bahvjhey could marry someone like that.”

“I don’t understand marriage at all beyond the definition, so to me it’s irrelevant,” I replied. Vaozey appeared to be concentrating, but then she blinked a few times and met my eyes again.

“Your people don’t even marry?” she asked.

“No,” I replied. “Focus on the magic, this isn’t relevant to your training. If I’m right, you should be able to perform this technique before the end of the day. Your inability to visualize also lessens your dependence on visual input for magic, so this leap shouldn’t be as difficult for you as it is for the average person.” Vaozey began glaring at the board again, and I saw some smoke rise from her side of it again. For a few minutes, she continued, trying about twenty times before sitting back in her chair and relaxing again.

“This isn’t working,” she sighed.

“Try novel approaches,” I advised.

“As if I wasn’t already doing that,” she grumbled back, returning to the practice. There was less smoke on her next attempt, but I didn’t feel anything from my side. No, wait, was that a small amount of heat? I wondered, trying to interpret what might have been a phantom sensation on my fingers. “Seyt, I knew there was something off about that guy,” Vaozey swore.

“What?” I asked.

“Mawyeyz,” Vaozey replied. “He knew who I was, at least by the time we got to his camp. So he should have known my description too. He didn’t ask about my face.” I hadn’t thought of it at the time, but Vaozey had a point.

“Maybe he didn’t know,” I replied. “He didn’t know who I was, maybe he thought the description was inaccurate.”

“Or maybe he knows more than he’s letting on,” Vaozey countered.

“And if he does?” I asked. “He admitted that he was, or rather is, a Rehvite. It would make sense that he might know about magic boosters and have in-depth knowledge of magic. He could have just not thought to mention it because it wasn’t surprising to him.” Even as I said the words, I found a flaw in them: If Mawyeyz knew about disabling healing magic and using boosters to regenerate facial skin without scarring, it was possible that the marks of ire on everyone in the camp were just for show.

“I don’t trust him at all,” Vaozey muttered, looking away at a spot on the floor. “There’s just something off about him.”

“As usual, we’ll be cautious tomorrow,” I said. “If he holds up his end of the deal, we’ll be leaving anyway.”

“Did he ask about the light magic?” Vaozey asked, looking back at me, and once again I felt as though I had overlooked something extremely important.

“No,” I replied, realization showing in the tone of my voice. “He didn’t say anything about it at all.”

“I’m telling you, something is off about him,” Vaozey insisted. “I don’t buy his ‘friendly Rehvite’ routine one bit. I know these people, if it was possible for them to have decency I would have met a decent one by now. I feel like there’s something else I’m missing too.”

“What about Bahvjhey?” I asked. “Did you meet anyone else?”

“I don’t know,” Vazoey sighed. “They seemed genuine, but I don’t know.” Again, she turned back to the magic training, and I felt a slight heat on my fingers.

“Keep doing that,” I said.

“Is it working?” Vaozey asked. There was a sudden rush of heat into my hand, and I jerked it away instinctively, feeling healing magic fixing the tissue damage that had been done before my reflexes kicked in.

“What did you do differently?” I asked back.

“Not sure,” Vaozey mumbled, scratching the side of her head with one finger. “You’re not messing with me, right?”

“We’re going to use a candle now,” I said. “Sadly, there aren’t any human skulls available for practice.”

“You two missed lunch yesterday!” Lehpey called out as Vaozey and I left our cabins the next morning. The magic practice had gone quite well after the initial breakthrough, though Vaozey still couldn’t articulate exactly how she managed to perform the task of heating something behind a visual barrier without using any visualization. Her best description was that she just had to “reach through” the object in question, but even that wasn’t something she was sure of. By the time we had finished for the night, it took her only ten seconds on average to light a candle she couldn’t see.

“We’re going to miss it again today,” Vaozey replied. Even though she still sounded gruff, it was clear she was in a good mood by the fact that she replied at all.

“Ah, well, if you’re done your business early, I hear the priest is arriving today!” Lehpey beamed. “We’re having a feast for him, so try not to miss out, you hear?” Though her words were jovial, they put a damper on the atmosphere immediately, not that she noticed.

“Of course,” I replied with a smile. “We’ll be back in time if we can.”

Back out in the woods, it didn’t take us long to find where we had encountered Mawyeyz the previous day since we had left a small trail of markings to help us find our way back to Kuhtehsh. From there, following the path to the camp was only a bit harder. Vaozey probably had no idea if we were going in the right direction, but since I was experienced at tracking people through wooded areas I could see the telltale signs of our passage the previous day. When we finally came to the circle of tvehpaol flowers around the camp, Vaozey gestured to a spot nearby in some bushes, and we ducked inside before anyone noticed us.

“You had the same idea as I did then?” she whispered.

“No sense going in blind,” I replied, gesturing for us both to keep quiet. Though we were about twenty meters from the edge of the camp, the people inside were loud enough that we could overhear some of their conversations. For around ten minutes we sat and listened, trying to pick out anything that might indicate that we were walking into a trap, but all conversation appeared innocuous. The only thing we could tell was that they were preparing to do something once night fell.

Once nobody was facing the bush, we stepped out again, and I took the lead by walking into the camp. Vaozey stayed about two steps behind me, and I could tell from her footsteps that she was standing more rigidly than usual. A few of the other people in the camp whose names I didn’t know glanced at us, some with surprise, then someone whistled loudly. The sound made me flinch and reach for my sword, but then Mawyeyz stepped out of the same tent he had been in yesterday, not covered in mud this time. Looking at my reaction, he chuckled to himself, then gestured for us to follow him.

Without the mud, his family resemblance to Yaavtey was more apparent. His hair was the same color as his eyes, and though he lacked the extensive scarring of Yaavtey their skulls had a similar shape to them. We walked over to a round tent, with Mawyeyz ducking inside before us, then closing the flap behind us. It was apparent that we had entered a storage area by the number of boxes and other objects strewn about on the ground.

“You are a nervous man, my friend,” Mawyeyz remarked.

“Whistles often signal ambushes,” I replied.

“That they do,” Mawyeyz agreed. “I suppose I should have considered that.” He walked to a box and then opened it, revealing a simple leather backpack that he removed and handed to me. I checked the inside and found that it was filled to the brim with waterskins, all of which smelled of repellent. “This should be more than enough to get you to Awrehrehzha,” he said.

“How much do you want for it?” I asked.

“Well, that is where this conversation grows more interesting,” Mawyeyz said, leaning up against the center pole of the tent. “Instead of money, I would like information from you. Firstly, can you confirm your name for me? We never actually exchanged names properly yesterday.”

“Yuwniht Lihyveyz,” I said, furrowing my brow and handing the backpack to Vaozey, who began quickly shuffling the contents out of our near-destroyed one into it.

“Your real name,” Mawyeyz said. “Lihyveyz is a placeholder for orphans with no family or foreigners with no family names. I suspect you are neither.”

“Why would you suspect that?” I asked.

“You did not deny it,” Mawyeyz smiled. “Come now, I believe I have been more than forthcoming with you. I assure you, nothing you tell me will leave this tent. You have seen enough here that you could easily ruin me if you so chose to.”

“You’re planning to kidnap the priest, right?” I asked.

“As if you need my confirmation,” Mawyeyz responded. “Now, your name.” There was a quiet tension in the room, and Vaozey stopped what she was doing to look over at me. For a few seconds, I considered lying, but then I sighed. It isn’t as though he’ll gain anything from knowing it, I thought.

“INFUNIT-24503e,” I said. “Technically, my true name is far longer, but this identifier is unique enough that it can serve as a name that only I have.”

“Ihnfyuwniht Tuwfaorfayv Zihrowthriy’iy,” Mawyeyz recited, in a terrible accent. “I can see why you go by Yuwniht.”

“You knew my short name already from your friend’s letters, right?” I prompted.

“Among other things,” Mawyeyz confirmed. “Tell me, did you steal the taazmoydh ahlshaalz that was used to heal your companion’s facial scarring?”

“So you knew about that too,” Vaozey growled. “Then you know how it’s made, don’t you?”

“Are you aware of how to create it?” Mawyeyz asked back, sounding surprised as he looked between us, apparently answering his own question by analyzing our responses. “That is… shocking, to say the least. How did you come by this knowledge?”

“No, I think I get to ask some questions now,” Vaozey retorted, standing up. “If you know how that stuff works, and what it is, why do you have that mark on your face? Is it just for show, or what?”

“Do I appear as though I am the type of man who would go around butchering ‘detested’ to turn their bodies into medicine?” Mawyeyz snapped back, finally sounding offended and standing up straight. “I have done nothing but show you decency so please, do not insult me.” Vaozey seemed to have a realization, and froze in place for a moment, mouth partially ajar. “To answer you, I keep it as a reminder, and the rest of those in camp with one have kept theirs for their own reasons, not the least of which being the ethics surrounding the very thing that could heal them.”

“How do you plan to keep the priest from committing suicide?” I asked, changing the subject. Mawyeyz collected himself, then relaxed and leaned against the center pole once more.

“He will be heavily sedated,” he replied. “Even if he dies, it is not a major issue. The point of the operation will be to show the people of Kuhtehsh that Zihzehshesk is not as powerful as they seem and that-” his sentence was interrupted by Vaozey, who slapped her cheek, then withdrew her hand to reveal a crushed insect.

“I thought there were no ants here,” she said, showing us the remains that were stuck to her palm.

“It might have come in from the forest, before you crossed the ring of tvehpaol,” Mawyeyz suggested, but he looked nervous. As Vaozey was about to reply, someone outside the tent yelled, and then several more yells followed. Vaozey grabbed the backpack and threw it on, then we ran out of the tent to check on the situation.

Another round storage tent on the other end of the camp was completely covered in an undulating mass of ants. Several other members of the camp were approaching with torches, presumably to try to scare the insects away, and Mawyeyz ran over to join them. Vaozey and I looked at each other, both thinking the same thing, then someone else yelled out in pain to our left and we saw a woman with a bow fall to the ground, scratching and tearing at her arms and legs.

“We need to get out of here,” I said.

“What the seyt happened to the plants?” Vaozey thought aloud at the same time.

“You two, get out of here!” Mawyeyz yelled, running over to the woman who had fallen. Putting both his hands together and directing his palms outwards, he used some kind of magic that rippled the air in front of them, sending out a continuous wave that peeled the ants away from their victim, but also appeared to cause her great pain.

“How did they penetrate the barrier!?” I yelled back.

“I don’t know!” Mawyeyz shouted. “I wasn’t part of the aaleyyeyv oylmeyvahtm section! Don’t go back to Kuhtehsh! Go around it, at least one entire teyvawyeymay, and stay off the roads until you’re out of the forest!” What is a teyvawyeymay? I wanted to ask, but Vaozey was already pulling me southward.

“Maw, we’re got more comin’ in from the north!” Bahvjhey called out.

“I’ll be right there,” Mawyeyz replied frantically, and I broke into a run behind Vaozey, heading southwest.

We ran for around half an hour before Vaozey was finally out of breath and had to stop. As she was resting, I spotted more ants on some nearby trees, so I ended up throwing her over my shoulder and continuing to run, using magic to keep myself at a high speed. Another thirty minutes later I was almost out of energy and had to stop, but we had come to a small clearing and there were no ants in sight. As I sat on a rock, gasping for breath and bathed in sweat, Vaozey watched our surroundings, looking paranoid and afraid.

“What the seyt was that?” she hissed.

“I don’t know,” I huffed. “If there any food in the backpack?”

“What the seyt is the point of the repellent if those bugs can just seytoydh ignore it?” Vaozey demanded, not so much directing her question at me as just voicing a frustration.

“I don’t know,” I repeated. “Is there at least some water?” Vaozey seemed to snap out of her paranoia for a moment and pulled off the backpack, checking a few of the waterskins before tossing a bundle of dried fruit over to me.

“No water,” she said. “It’s going to rain though, I can feel it.”

“Fuck,” I swore, stuffing food into my mouth. “We need to keep moving. What’s a teyvawyeymay?”

“I don’t know,” Vaozey replied, and for a moment, it was all that I could do to finish chewing and swallowing.

“Then we just head east until we hit a road,” I decided. “Hopefully we cross a creek before that, and don’t bump into any more ants.”