-----------<span style="font-style: italic">One Moon earlier… </span>---------------<br/><br/>To an outside viewer, the two figures collecting dew in the long grass must have looked like a witch doctor and their possessed patient locked in some kind of black magic ritual.  Both were nude. She was on the floor and he hunkered down next to her, skin painted in tribal bars with white clay and terracotta, palm planted flat beneath her collar bone, murmuring foreign tongues under his breath.<br/><br/>She had torn her clothes off hours ago, screaming about fire. Ripped them off in strips. Not through natural strength, but the kind of power that sheer desperation lends muscles, like those stories you heard of grandmothers lifting fallen trees to save trapped children. The full moon wasn’t due for another day yet, but her voice was breaking up like a horn in the wind, volume meandering, peaking at high, keening whimpers about burning skin and dropping to breathy guttural groans.<br/>Possessed…<br/>Fucking good word for it!<br/>She was half crazed, tearing her fingers through her hair, kicking the balls of her feet into the earth, arching her back then rolling back over into a foetal ball, clutching her knees desperately into her chest like the corpse of a lover. Tears glistened on her cheeks and her feverish mutterings rattled up her throat as wind through broken drain pipes, barking loud noises, dulling into strange high pitched hisses.<br/><br/>“Gods… she’s gon’ die…” Someone murmured. The crowd that had gathered watched with eyes like bull lamps, some covered their faces, but peeked through the small crevices between digits. For a brief second, childlike glee skittered across the surface of ‘the witch doctors’ mind; it was a perfect minicognism!<br/>Attitudes towards the Lemurinian were bleak at the best of times… ON THE SURFACE.<br/>To the public face folk openly discriminated, even scowled at their mention alone. Tiny bones were found in wells, not from bird, but babies who had Realized early, so that their mothers could spare them the harsh life ahead and lighten their own load by one less mouth or so that their husbands could find work again rather than being shunned in a faux exile by a jury of their local towns peers… and yet, here they were!<br/>Those same people!<br/>Sneaking out of their homes when no one was looking to watch a man who was openly Lemurinian ‘heal’ a complete stranger! An exotic cast out girl who’d made her debut begging on the streets little more than three moons ago. No, not a stranger, everyone knew her in the same sense they knew to drive their carts around the pothole in the high street. Everyone and their friends after she started speaking in tongues and pulling her hair out at the bloody roots.<br/><br/>Was it simple cart crash curiosity or something more?<br/><br/>Since the Solarian threat, there had been a sensation both eddying, uneasy, like the first mile of a river in spring, that the whole land was watching through the gaps in their fingers…<br/>Wishful thinking, but dreams were still free—<br/><br/>-Another strained scream and “Please…pleaseohgodohgodno!” pausing only to struggle for breath, “Aaahfuck! Noithurrrts!” cut that line of thought off sharply.<br/><br/>Akami hushed the girl quietly for the umpteenth time that evening… or morning…<br/><br/>Switching to English, he raised his own to be heard above her, “Don’t fight it,” but even if the earth went still and she shut the hell up he wasn’t certain she’d hear him... “Let it run through you like liquid or the energy’ll burn you out, girl,”<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic"> “Is it her bad demon?”</span>someone asked cautiously from the back, “Are you gonna get it out?” The voice sounded young and it landed on his ears with an almost physical jolt of guilt. Without glancing back Akami nodded.<br/><br/>Because everyone knew the stories; The Sun Gods of the Solarians planted fire spirits in their people like seeds, what other explanation was there for their unearthly warriors and anger? What else did Sun Gods do!?<br/><br/>Pain and passion of empty fields and burned homes were more likely, you ask him (because the Solarians were barbarians that destroyed their own), but you couldn’t make an enemy of something that could empathize with. Minus the humanity men became little more than the ghouls and devils of stories. Ghouls and Devils were way easier to war with.<br/>… Or at least that’s what it looked like on logic’s papers…<br/><br/>His own energy turned restlessly beneath his skin, shaken awake by the prospect of activity. A riot stirring that was by no means predictable (back in second puberty after his own Realisation he’d float, literally apart, whilst drifting away in thought, fall through walls and endure panic attacks, trapped in his own stoney flesh whilst human statue-ing), but they’d conversed, in their own way, often enough that he knew battling the damn urge was akin to mashing your face against a wall to cure a hangover.<br/>Tempting, but no dice.<br/>Already a familiar heat crept along the path of his spine, his skin felt cold, insubstantial and itched with the brush smoke, like if you scratched it your fingers would dip through seven layers of skin and meet wispy sinew and liquid bone. It crept up along the back of his cheekbones, cupped his hairline and pulled at the back of his calves and elbows stiffening and hampering his movements.<br/>Not much but enough to irritate him, enough that his mind whispered<span style="font-style: italic">‘if you turn you can move freely again… how’s that sound champ? Sounds good? Would you like that?’</span><br/><br/><br/>An animated murmur of underhand and under breath conversation hailed his change of state, the colours in his skin coiled out into the night air and they’d never seen anything like it!<br/><br/>All the meanwhile the colours had drained from his vision (irises visibly milking over) and his insides churned horribly. Ribs groaned and the tiny bones in his hands and feet creaked like someone was slowly turning a woodwork clamp on them. They weren’t MEANT to be there was the message…. He had the feeling that somewhere internal organs had already started to shift themselves and tangle like a lost child’s coat caught in a flooded storm drain and he’d already swallowed back a few dry heaves and mouthful of vomit, but he paid it no heed. These were blackmail tactics. Nothing harmful. This body was shared accommodation and while HE was the type to cut off his nose to spite his face, his inner Lemurinian ran too much on instinct and, thankfully, never shat where it ate.<br/><br/>Akami locked gazes with the young woman, jaw jut with tension, “Be ready girl, this isn’t gonna be pleasant,”<br/><br/>She twisted, jerking upwards in a heartbeat.<span style="font-style: italic">Phftt!</span>Warm spittle clipped his cheek and she collapsed back, sweat sucking her hair to her face, teeth gritted in what could have been an equal mixture of hate and pain. Beyond speech, this was as close to communication as she seemed to manage.<br/><br/>Wiping it off with the back of his arm, the damp collected in the pale hair like dew. There was a smirk that never reached his eyes, “That’s what I like to hear,”<br/><br/>For all purposes and intent his arms seemed to explode into thick, coal coloured smoke, like a cheap magicians trick. There was barely time for her to squirm as the crowd watched him plunge them deep into her middle. A cracking screech tore through the air and her back arched. People gasped behind him. Akami jerked his arms free of her, mist knitting itself together in something at first off colour and swimming, but eventually resembling hands. Black tar coated them, gumming up the tiny spaces between his nails, dripping from his knuckles. Cradled in his palms was something small, fleshy, sodden with the dark gunk.<br/><br/>The once beggar girl hit the ground with a dull thud, chest heaving, eyes wide whilst he scowled down at the little bean shaped<span style="font-style: italic">thing</span>…<br/><br/>“See this!?” he finally turned his attention back to the crowd, clutching it like a mother cat does a kitten, thrusting it into view of the crowd, “THIS is a Sun Devil! See how it resembles the unborn--”<br/><br/>One of the faces went green and ducked away behind the rest to vomit.<br/><br/>“—left to develop, this poor refugee would become like the monsters of The Eternal!” He flung it across the clearing distastefully, “How are you feeling, refugee?” all dramatics.<br/><br/>There was a small groan from besides him, “Where am I…?” she groaned, eyes rolling back into her skull, but those scarcely human shrieks were gone. Gone like they’d never existed.<br/><br/>The relief was palpable. A few of the crowd cheered, still in the spirit of the bizarre exorcism. Trauma’s tremors slowly departed in waves, but left their watermark on the psyche of all those present.<br/><br/>One hell of a performance, Akami reckoned. No one was going to forget this show in a long, looong time.<br/><br/>--------------------<br/><br/>Two hours passed and two figures still sat in the long grass, now dressed, with a bottle balanced nearby. A thin fog was started recede back to the swamp for the day, Amaki had sat back by this point, twiddling with his earrings and watching out for will-o-whisps between the moss covered ruins that jutted out from the sticky, sodding span of land just beyond their territory; Like animal bones.<br/><br/>He scowled, regarded his partner in crime (the ‘refugee’, a petite, dark haired thing with eyes that belonged on the wrong side of a fish tank) with a pointed look and snapped, “Alright, I give. What!?”<br/><br/>She scowled and crossed her legs at her ankles. “Geev me you coat. Is freezink.” Even through that strange accent the disdain was gods damned crystalline!<br/><br/>“You’re a bad liar, Mookie! ” he took a swig of something strong enough it kicked all the way down, “A good actress, but a piss poor liar!” he grinned half assed and returned to swamp gazing, “Normally,” little tip of the hand so the drink swilled inside the bottle, “you’d just take the damn thing! No asking involved!”<br/><br/>“Mek me ask ‘gen.” Mookie glared him down, “I dare you.”<br/><br/>Akami’s grin widened, “Double dare, cherry on top, THEN we’re talking,”<br/><br/>“Give dreenk!”<br/><br/>He held it at arms length,“Tell me what’s eating you, Chicken!”<br/><br/>For a moment he thought she was going to dive him, literally clamber over him to take it, but instead her expression broke, like someone bursting into tears only minus the waterworks. Character Mookie could muster up torrential downpours, but real Mookie was dry as a bone.  He’d seen her ‘cry’ twice in their long partnership and each time it had been an experience verging on demonic possession grade unnerving. All noise no tears.<br/>“Bastad! You took eet too fah! Dat oful ‘unborn’ stuff! Dat vasn’t in screept! Nat one word ov it! You SEE dat girl face!?”<br/><br/>Flinching back, he could scarcely believe it… that she was trying to reason with him without her fists, this worried him terribly. Both hands and one eyebrow went up in the body languages equivalent of raising the white flag, “It has to be realistic! Reality is<span style="font-style: italic">awful</span>,”<br/><br/>“And ve create FANTASY!” she spat, arms folded across the slim line of her chest, “NAT needed! All ov dat! Nat needed! Never hire showman, they<span style="font-style: italic">skreepdift</span>! Uncaring!”<br/><br/>For a moment he was stunned, upturning every nook and cranny of his head for the right words. Not normal Mookie behaviour… not by a yard… would it be right to try and tempt old Mookie out? Was this her equivalent of bottling things up? This was not her healthy and normal self... with that in mind he lifted a telling-off finger and settled with this, “Stick to one language or I’ll start making up words for you!”<br/><br/>“Naht point!” Mookie snapped, he could almost see the battle behind her eyes. She didn’t have an angel and a demon on her shoulder, Mookie had a bureaucrat and a barbarian that usually tied the bureaucrat to a spit, “I KNOW your treecks, I WROTE dem! Don’t you try distract me! You took eet too fah! I vahn know vhy! Are you jest cruel? Is that eet!?”<br/><br/>“Oh, you’ve got to leave them talking, don’t you! Everyone’s going to hear about the lemurinian who cures TERRIBLE afflictions! I’m like a messiah! Besides,” a crooked, catlike smirk crept into his expression, eyes glistening like black beads on a monks rosary, “it’s<span style="font-style: italic">our</span>bit for the war effort! This is our morally-obliged-to-society lovechild, Moolie-chicken! ”<br/><br/>Her jaw dropped, her eyes blazed and you could physically see her starting to tremble, only this was nothing to do with the cold or the lack of coat,“<span style="font-style: italic">Eesvhal! Tetiir khajack mahkr!</span>”<br/><br/>“Have my coat? You look awful cold,Chicken-kisses!”<br/><br/>Mookie launched. Tiny and dainty as she may have been, a herd of horses couldn’t trample your arm better then Mookie pounding on it. The bottle was knocked clean out of his hand and went spiralling over the grass, spraying booze like a cheap firework. Akami met the grass, mud splashing the both of them and the brains of the long con sat astride him, teeth bared like an animal, pummelling his arms and ribcage and meaning it enough that the slick bastard felt it alright. She pinned him, forearm barred across the lemurinian’s throat, “Cal me cheekin-keesis ‘gen! I show you meening of pen!”<br/><br/>There was a gurgle of pain, a noise that sounded like someone coughing up a length of drain pipe and a face half way between a grin and a grimace, “You pronounce it ‘pain’. Geddit? Paaaaiiiii-” his bear baiting was rewarded with a howl of frustration and a couple of quite violent pinches that outranked the punches by far. He flinched, cackled, squirmed and spat out every curse under the sun in an odd kind of role reversal, then howled, “Ahhh! Shiii—THIS ISN’T HOW YOU CELEBRATE A JOB WELL DONE, MOOLIE CHICKE-”<br/><br/>She jammed a knee into the dip right below his ribcage to shut him up, “Turrn! Do smoke! Go on! I dare ya! I light match, bet good money you go up like WHOOSH!” Accompanied with exploding gestures, naturally, “Asshole!”<br/><br/>He cracked up as much as the compromising position would allow, the world was still swimming pleasantly for drink, “I probably would!” he coughed, grinning, eyes streaming now. It was like fighting with your sister!<br/><br/>“Dis time I get sixty, you fourrty, ya?” She growled, grinding in the sharp bit of her joint further, “I do hard vork, you jes show off!”<br/><br/>Akami winced and tried prying her leg free before she impaled him with the blunt instrument of doom,“Do you even<span style="font-style: italic">know</span>what we’ve made this time? I take the bets, I collect their money” then added with a reminiscing look “–or their balls, a man not of his word is no man at all-- how would you even know what sixty percent is?”<br/><br/>“Tomorrow, you VILL collect, I VILL get my share and den ve part vays!” She growled, that same tearless mourning rearing its ugly head again, “Last time! Last town ve trick! I’ve had nough! You vill NEVER do dis gig ‘gen! Hear me? Promise!”<br/><br/>“Oh, come now girl, you say this every time—“<br/><br/>“PROMISE!”<br/><br/>“On my honour as a Roe,” he said locking gazes with her, hand on his heart.<br/><br/>“You no Roe, you<span style="font-style: italic"> khajack mahkr!</span>” she socked him one for good measure, “Promise!”<br/>“Fine, I--” He was suddenly interrupted as she clamped a hand over his mouth, eyes suddenly scanning the horizon, pupils narrowed to pin points, “Shh! Someone’s coming…” The mood suddenly darkened, both went still and deadly silent. Mookie shifted her weight, careful to rustle as little clothing or plantlife as she could. She hunkered on the floor like a waiting predator, fingertips, brushing the bow on her back. Mind turning at full pelt.<br/>Would she need to kill tonight?<br/><br/>Akami sat up with considerably less grace. Nothing revealed itself as much as he squinted into the dull half-light of the swampland. No shadows dancing from between the trees, no flicker of torch light, not even any abnormal snaps of twigs like you’d hear from in the ghost stories, “If there IS anyone there, it’s probably just drunks or teenagers. Probably both at the same time, come on,” he scratched the back of his head stiffly, muscles telling him all about the bruises he’d grow come the morning… afternoon.<br/><br/>Mookie touched his arm, still searching, heart beating beneath her tiny ribs like the wings of a caged bird, “No… someone…” she frowned, ears straining against the night noises, “someone vith trained walk…” he eyes widened and the two exchanged glances. Authority?!<br/><br/>No…<br/>Maybe he HAD taken it to far…<br/><br/>“Come!” she grabbed his arm, panic plain on her face. Fraud was treated with various fines or jail sentences, only rarely execution, but both of them had hardly come from favourable backgrounds, you’d be kidding yourself if you believed the council would be lenient on you, “Ve go!” she pulled at his sleeve desperately and groaned when he didn’t move, “‘Kami, please!”<br/><br/>His expression had cooled, suddenly free of emotion, “You can run, I’ll talk my way out of it,” then softened apologetically for a moment, just in case, “I’m not as quick as you, chicken. Go on! Shoo!”<br/><br/>She searched his expression, nodded and scurried off into the trees, keeping her back low and her pace silent. Clever little thing!<br/><br/>Akami sighed and hunted for his bottle, hooking it up with one finger in the rim like a caught fish and inspecting it mournfully, seemingly unaware of the small group crossing the field between and the village. A little bit of him was frozen up with fear, what if they’d come to beat him to death, what if they’d caught on and decided they weren’t going to have it or pay up. It wasn’t like anyone would LOOK for him or miss him… who cared if a travelling con artist vanished one cool morning!<br/>Had he slipped up? He’d been careful, VERY careful to lay bets between people with absolutely no affiliation, I mean, you didn’t want them talking afterwards now, did you!<br/><br/>The group of men approached just as he was attempting pat the last few drops of booze from the bottle. Mookie was right, they WERE trained, you could see it in the way they held their backs and shoulders, the weapons at their hips… somewhere in the long grass Mookie would have an arrow aimed at their  heads—or at least he hoped.<br/><br/>“Are you the Realized going by the name ‘Varik Descoe’?” One of them asked, stood over the pale haired man. In his head he was already being arrested.<br/><br/>“Morning gentlemen,” he purred, cheerfully enough, greeting them with a wave of the bottle, “I am simply a drunk looking for a sunrise! What do you wish of Varik Descoe?”<br/><br/>“You are him,” one of them answered slightly sternly, “And three years ago you served on a council seat by the name of Akami-Roe. You’ve been masquerading as an exorcist with an associate since. You pretend your powers lie in healing, but you change form and at every bar you order a bottle mulled wine and a quart of whiskey to mix!” his fingers brushed the hilt of his sword in impatience, “Yes, we know who you are!”<br/><br/>Akami’s blood went cold, “How thorough…Then I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage!” his voice was thick with professional charm, but questions burned behind his eyes. Provincial soldiers and officers didn’t threaten, nor did they argue, they didn’t gather information on you like this, they didn’t have you tailed, they recited your rights and hauled you away, no fuss no questions. Who were these? “You know of me, but I am at a loss for you lovely fellows!”<br/><br/>Another one with a slightly calmer tone answered, “We are representatives from the Lemurinian order,”<br/><br/>Akami nodded slowly, “Ah,”<span style="font-style: italic">that</span>cult…<br/>“We’re here to offer you a chance to wipe the slate. This… this is a great opportunity for you!”<br/><br/>He visibly sunk in relief, “Gentlemen, let’s walk,” then hauled himself awkwardly to his feet. Somewhere in the grass, a little black shape that he’d told the crowd was a demon spirit, melted into mist and crept back, like a dog to its master, re-joining his skin sneakily. Maybe Mookie was right, this would be the last gig they had together. Shit, she’d slaughter him…<br/><br/><br/><br/>--------------    PRESENT DAY    ----------------<br/><br/><br/>“Careful, careful!”  he cooed the horse as it took on the quagmire, you could hear a wet sucking noise with every step as the earth tried to swallow it’s shoes<br/>Arguably he was more concerned for the animal than the natives they passed. Cornaillim childhood concerned itself solely around climbing trees and navigating the marshes, trust him, you knew exactly how much pressure to test each step with, which pools went deep, which were shallow, what mud would splash and what would trap. More importantly you understood that as long as you could put one foot in front of another there was hope.<br/>These people were hurt, lost, but, as long as they made bases for themselves before winter brought starvation, fine.<br/>They just weren’t aware of it yet.<br/>Besides, more of his fellow countrymen had tried to kill him than horses.<br/><br/>Akami raised an eyebrow as their destination dawned unto them, a genuinely pained groan escaping his throat. Many an old building was being left to grow crooked and darken, like a blackened tooth in an otherwise healthy mouth, the streets stank, rubbish gathered in corners like crows, windows were broken and the charred corpses of wagons unlucky enough to have been targeted by rioters or raiders rotted still at the scene of the crime. Oh, but who thought of the poor architects who made this place!<br/>It was the broken window effect, once things were allowed to slip, once patrols were dropped inside the walls of the city, all respect was lost for it. One piece of rubbish quickly became a pile, one broken window quickly equalled addicts and squatters, the more desperation moved in the more desperate moves were made. This was a breeding ground for criminals. “You’ve gone to the dogs old girl,” he sighed as they entered.<br/><br/>He turned his attention curiously to the group as they hitched up.<br/><br/>Being amongst the ranks of Lemurai was an entirely new game with a whole new rulebook to abide by. Or at least to get to mindfully get to grips with before you learned it enough to start picking for loopholes, playing origami with the pages and twisting the language in your own odds.<br/>Rule one; no one gets their own way, even when it made logical sense. Xui (a shapeshifter or so he’d been told and a clever little duck egg to boot) had wanted to fly there and scout ahead, which would have saved time, resources and left more men to, well, man things. Instead they (cursed creatures of many a rhyme) were riding in (on expensive horses and through lands that they looked like a stranger to) bearing their signature get up (expensive clothes and expensive weapons. Not monarchy expensive, but enough that they could feed a man for a week) and hoping to boost moral by doing so.<br/>Whoever had laid the order had never been desolate and desperate.<br/>They looked, for all the world, like an excuse to kick off.<br/><br/>Rule two; You WILL be subject to the buddy system and your buddy will, by law, be very disapproving of you. Hotaru her name was. Cute little thing, with a flick nose and red hair that would probably eat your hand whole if you attempted to pet its deceitfully soft looking surface. He’d attempted being sweet on her just the once before she gave him a look so damn venomous it almost had a physical impact, he was half surprised his face hadn’t melted clean off and she made him so nervous that his hair, fingertips and other extremities started to curl with smoke.<br/>Defence mechanism.  Unavoidable one, used to happen every time he spoke to crushes as a teenager, pain in the ass.<br/><br/>Akami had no problem ignoring her question point blank and cutting in, call it payback.<br/><br/>“You want MY advice,” he chirped, tethering up his animal and watching them over one shoulder, “you keep your goods close and in your own eye-line, weapons on display. Don’t want to look like an easy target now, huh kids! Nice weather for thieving,” he nodded cheerfully, knowingly.