A thick trail flowed from a small wound on her forearm where she accidentally stabbed herself.
"You shouldn't even be here!" The boy told her angrily. "Lili, look what happens when you don't listen!" He was three years younger than her but he was much better at physical work.
"Well, You don't _have to_ tell anyone about this" She wrapped her arm with a strip of cloth torn from the bottom of her ragged dress. She wasn't doing herself any help with that, these clothes were caked in grime and dirt.
They sorted through pieces of bone, picking the smallest bit of meat and cartilage off them before crushing them to harvest marrow. These were desperate times. The hunting expeditions only grew in distance traveled with nothing to show for all that effort.
Their father was lucky enough to locate a new water spring in a deep cave. For his discovery, the tribe paid him with bones. Three bones to be exact, ones as large as her brother. The marrows in these could sustain their family for months.
She was not allowed to do dangerous tasks. Her father decided Esil was old enough to handle the bone crusher at nine years old. He didn't extend the same privilege to her when she was that age. The most he trusted her was with was kitchen utensils and even then, she had to be careful with sharp edges.
She hated being treated like the way she treated Mienna. She was just a year away from being coupled away to make her own family and here she was, put on a pedestal, simply because she could bear perfect children. As much as she hated her circumstances, she didn't want to upset her father. He never enjoyed punishing any of his children. She didn't want to force his hand by being disobedient.
She could never accept defeat in anything. She grabbed a small knife and a hammer from the tool shed and joined her brother while everyone else was asleep. This way, she could always claim she wanted to help him because she loved him so much.
The knife ended up in her forearm because she hammered it wrong.
This was bad for several reasons other than the pain.
A wound that made her bleed was of great concern. She was always taught to take care of her wounds by herself. She was advised to touch no one as long as she had a wound anywhere on her body. The curse her siblings suffered from was a blood disease. Her parents couldn't risk anything when it came to her.
As soon as she injured herself, Esil stopped his task and stepped away. He didn't want to risk the remotest chance of passing the curse to her.
"It's fine, I covered it" She insisted, picking up the tools again.
"If you try that again Lili, I'll run back home and wake everyone up" he threatened, covering his mouth with his hand. He was very superstitious about the curse and he thought even breathing the same air was cause for worry.
"Fine" She dropped the knife and hammer on the sand. "If you don't come to me right now, I'm telling them this was your fault" she threatened him back.
Two could play his game. She raised the little fool. She earned her right to flip the tables on him. Moreover, she knew the curse more than he ever did. She knew for a fact blood contact didn't pass it on because she covered up the one instance where it happened. Coincidentally, it was with the same idiot brother of hers. They both got wounded together when he was very little and couldn't speak. She ended up touching his wound and then her own by a careless mistake. She didn't tell anybody about it.
Nothing changed in the days that followed. She didn't get any skin deformations like her brother had. She didn't feel like she would be any less fertile in the future. She knew her family would never bother with the specifics. They just used blanket paranoia as a solution. The curse had to be avoided at all costs. It was a matter of lineage, something her people held in high regard.
"I mean it Esil, I'll tell them you did this" She reiterated her threat, watching him squirm.
"You wouldn't dare!" Esil gasped. "How is this my fault!"
"You come to me right now," She told him, tears in her eyes. "Or that's what you'll get"
He obeyed reluctantly. He left the bone crusher on the sand and came up to her, trying his very best not to even exhale in her direction. She grabbed him and rubbed her bloodied forearm all over his face.
"What are you doing!" He yelled, outraged. Her blood was all over his face and he was sure his lips brushed over the makeshift bandage at least once.
"I don't give a damn what happens to me. Do you know why? This isn't how the curse spreads"
"You don't know that!"
"Fine, don't believe me. I'll get cursed and I won't have children. That's fine by me. You know what's not fine?"
"Why are you-"
"...you trying to stay away from me like you're something dirty. I raised you. You don't get to act like we're completely different people just because you just turned nine"
"Alright alright. I'm sorry"
"No, you're not" She knew her father and she saw her father in Esil. This was her father. This was his exact fake compromise. He used it on his children often, and to varying degrees of success, on his wife.
"No you're not" she whispered through clenched teeth. She was upset at the world she was born into, more than she was upset at him.
"We are different, Lili" The words hurt her far worse than the knife did. He had the gall to not even look at her as he mumbled them. She didn't like how fast he was turning out to be his father.
"I wanted to spend some time with my brother. This is what I get" She wiped her tears with her sleeve and walked away.
She didn't know how to get her brother back.
She never figured it out.
Ten days later, she hugged him for the last time. Esil was sent off to become a hunter-killer under the same mentor that her father learned his adventuring from. Times were dire and the tribe needed men, not boys.
She had to do everything in her power to guilt him into cuddling with his sisters for one last time.
He left them in the early morning. She wouldn't see him again until he made a man of himself or died trying to.
That day was more painful than any wound she suffered since. She felt it stab her heart as he disappeared with other boys his age over the red dunes.
"Don't go! Esil!" she wanted to scream.
Maybe she did scream, maybe he could've even heard it.
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That part wasn't clear.
"Nooooo!!! don't leave me!" Calan screamed as he sat upright. His head was about to burst and he was trembling. He gulped dryly as he looked around. It dawned on him then.
He was a girl!
"H-hello! Lira! Sainu!" he screamed both the names that he faintly remembered. They felt like characters from a dream within a dream.
"Yes Calan, what's the matter?" the lady's voice came from the ball. Yes, the ball, it was at the foot of his bed. He hadn't noticed it in his sheer panic.
"I-I had a dream! I-" He forgot all the faces and names of the people that were in the dream.
"I wanna pee" he announced, still recovering from the effects of that dream.
"This is-" Sineul's voice came from the room itself. "I'm afraid I cannot allow you to defile-"
"You don't even get started on that" Liera interrupted him sternly. "Calan, you can use the washroom, you don't have to ask anyone"
What happened next was pure catastrophe. Calan went into the washroom and he screamed in horror upon discovering he lacked a major body part that he had before.
"WHAT DO I DO!?" he screamed the walls down, unable to hold it. It ended in him making a mess of himself and he had to bathe from head to toe yet again. He came out half an hour later, wrapped in a towel.
"I should've thought about this," Liera told him. "I'm sorry you had to go through that" The thought hadn't even occurred to her. She had the most flawed idea of what a small child is.
"The relic has been defiled!" Sineul was outraged. "This is wrong! This is wrong!"
"Well, for all your talk about it being sacred, you didn't see this coming either" Liera banished him and his theatrics from the comms system.
"I need clothes" Calan whined. The closet in the room was empty when he opened it. Of course, the room hadn't even been prepared. It wasn't furnished for long-term use. If Calan knew any better, this was only slightly better than a prison cell. There was one bed, one chair, one table, and a small washroom. This was the first time this room was even used. Liera had never been able to stay in her body long enough to try to live normally with it.
"You'll have to get them back in the stasis room. I'm sorry we didn't plan for this"
Calan suddenly laid back on the bed. He had something else to talk about. It was that dream that launched him straight into this embarrassing predicament. It was that bad dream he wanted to wake up from but he couldn't. It was the reason he woke up at the edge of this new body's limit to hold the bladder.
"I had a bad dream!" he told Liera. "It was weird. I was sad about a boy leaving me"
"Interesting. Do you remember who?"
"I don't know who it was. I was in this place with sand and bones and... what was that? I don't remember now"
"Oh-" Liera stopped her response. "It sounds like some-" she paused again. "Could be an artifact from reintegration. I'll make sure it won't happen again"
"That dream was very sad," Calan told her, standing up. "I felt like It was Linan"
Unexpectedly, he started crying. He did leave Linan behind and unlike the dream, he didn't get to say goodbye. He also never saw his mother. It took about two hours of uncontrollable sobbing for him to recover from this crying fit. Liera was there to help him through it but she allowed him to cry it all out to his heart's content.
"I wanna see.. the city again," he told her at the end of it, his voice broken from sobs and his face wet with tears. She hadn't seen her own body undergoing this violent emotion in such a long time.
"It's still the same loop as it was before" Liera reassured him. "Why don't we get to the stasis room? You need clothes and I need to make some changes to make your life easier"
"F.. fine..." Calan wiped his face, tightened the towel he wrapped around himself, and walked out of the room.
“We have visitors!” Sineul announced as soon as the comms ban on him was lifted. “They sent someone from GALSTAN outpost and they’re requesting your audience, Priestess”
“Calan, hide,” Liera told him urgently. “You shouldn’t be seen” The ball dropped on the bed as her voice echoed. “Sineul, stay with him”
Three AUM galactic interceptors escorted a small cylindrical ship. Liera manifested there as a holographic image in its command bridge.
“Sovereign priestess, my deepest apologies for violating your reserved space” spoke the only passenger on the ship. It was a man wearing a dark blue and gold uniform. He was bald, middle-aged and he had luminous green borders on his irises.
“What prompted this visit of yours?” No one was supposed to breach 25km radius around her ship. This was established when she arrived here. Whether she was in the territory of Illuviets or not, some orbital rules and privileges came with being a Red Priestess. It was also a safety measure for civilians. There was no telling what the red sect intended to do on a planet and that often involved danger.
“The circumstances we’re facing are uniquely challenging. You’re the only vessel that we have no authority to enforce. We also observed partly, your activity on the surface. We must talk about what took place”
“Your name and rank”
“Commander Brenvalo, 1891th fleet, AUM galactic”
“Do you need to be here physically?”
“Yes, I have confidential matters to discuss and I bring classified data”
“You have the permission to dock. Order your interceptors to retreat”
“Of course” He gestured at his screen. The three interceptors broke the formation and positioned themselves beyond the 25km radius.
Sineul handled the docking and absorbed the small personal ship that Brenvalo came in. It had no offensive capabilities. He thought it was a polite gesture and a great show of his intentions. A quick analysis of Brenvalo’s personal history revealed that he was raised an Illuviet. He knew the expected level of respect when interacting with the Red Sect.
Liera used the battle-frame for this interaction. It was more imposing than a hovering ball and the high commander needed something he could respect or fear.
“Greetings, High Commander Brenvalo” She sat across him on the floor. Sitting on the chair would’ve flattened it.
“First, AUM high council and I, offer our deepest sympathies for the loss of your sacred flesh in this regrettable event”
“Your regrettable event is going to cost me 300 years” Liera told him sternly. She didn’t place the blame anywhere yet, but the Commander looked keen to take it.
“We’re ready to compensate you in any way we can”
“If you must know, that’s not how it works” She dismissed him. No amount of money could manufacture a body any faster. The Red Sect owed her as many bodies as she wanted. There was no transaction to be made in this regard. It just took time.
“I need more information” She demanded.
“I’ll hand you the data cluster we prepared for you” Brenvalo physically produced a small black box. “This is isolated from all networks” Liera picked up the cube with the giant clamp-like fingers. She processed the data cluster in 17 seconds.
“I see” She could use a thought stream to conclude this meeting in the next two seconds. But she knew Brenvalo wouldn’t agree. He was paranoid about his secrets. This is why he wanted to talk in person.
“You discovered the vervid in an underwater dig 74 hours ago. Rediscovery expedition funded by Darud foundation, for AUM” Liera paused. “Surely you know how little this explains”
“I can only present you the facts. As for speculations, there are theories right now about its origin. It has all the characteristics of a swarm weapon, although it is far beyond the scope of others we have in recorded history”
“I have my own theories. For one, in the logs I received from my body, there was an encounter with a soldier. Sigmund L. He briefly mentioned that the reactor was 'going to warp everything'. I had no reason to believe him because no mere power plant had ever generated enough power to warp space-time”
She observed the discomfort on Brenvalo's face.
"In this data cluster that you gave me, AUM admits the high council decided to sabotage the reactor to cause a meltdown. This was necessary to stop the spread at any cost"
“AUM regrets but stands by that decision”
Brenvalo's eyes twitched, betraying his composure.
“Based on the way AUM responded, I assume someone knows what the vervid is. Otherwise, you doomed 37 million men, women, and children on a whim”
“I can see how you came to that conclusion” Brenvalo shifted uncomfortably on his chair. Liera continued.
“To be clear, I don’t attribute this to evil. AUM is beyond such folly. I assume there is a reason behind the decision. It could even be the right one"
“You make some excellent deductions, priestess”
“Indeed, and with that, we circle back to the reactor sabotage. I think we both know the dome reactor by itself couldn’t just create a perfect time loop. How exactly did AUM do it? What tech did they use, where did they get it from?"
“I see the data I presented to you is lacking these key details. I can-“
Liera stood slowly.
"You won't answer that. If you intended to answer that, it should've been on the data cluster. I know exactly why you won't answer it"
She placed her heavy mechanical arm on his table, denting it with the weight of the battle-frame.
"Because that's not the kind of technology anyone's supposed to have"
The table creaked loudly as she placed more weight on it. Commander Brenvalo sat petrified, his legs still under the same table.
“High Commander, are you aware of the Red Sect mandate? You grew up an illuviet. I assume you've at least heard about it”
“I-I am familiar, but the specific commandment, I might not-”
“It’s the third commandment. The light of will. It has a sentence about war. It goes like this - A red sect sovereign may declare a war of their choosing for they and they alone carry the absolute will of God”
“Please-“
“I will unilaterally declare war on AUM”
“Y-you can’t be-!”
“You need to show me something I already don’t know or point me to someone who knows more than you”
She took her hand off the table.
"If it turns out you can't, You'll be the first recorded death in this war"