Fazon: How The Noble Nuns Angered A City Whole
Utter disgrace, this hunt. Never has there been a more botched opening of the gate, or equipment release that followed it. Someone was to blame. Suspicion immediately cast on Iter, the youngest in the Legion whom everyone was mandated to hate by default; the Terevan’s attention being directed at the weak. The Terevan did not mess around, with itself—its own people—or the hunted. If there was any consolation, it had to be with the surrounding underground. Threats went to such an extent that Iter already had his palms put together as to mercybeg, despite knowing for certain that Byen was at fault. So nearly did the others, have their hands sacrificed to prayer.
Under usual exploration routine, the guilt bearer would be continuously hit with a shovel by a group of Legionnaires, and sent to the back to carry that group’s load. Today, the crowd was irate from the lack of a viable yield, and the usual punishment was not to the Legion’s satisfaction. An aggressive Legionnaire cohort took to Iter without an order and began hitting the eighteen year-old on the head, with palms instead of shovels. The seeming softness of the act did not persist, as the palms soon began grabbing onto Iter’s legs and wrists, and pulling the resulting star structure to one side or another. The boy knew it was Byen who had crippled the boom, but his pride and Terevan code stopped him from screaming “Byen did it! Byen did it!” out his lungs. Legionnaires were dragging the boy ever downward, toward an area of the hole least explored and deepest. They stuck him on the wall or ceiling by roping the legs and wrists with the surrounding stone structures. They sliced in a gash in his chest and left him hanging face down. The gash was to stretch, the blood was to run down, and the cavecrawler was to come to eat the boy out the wound. The cohort returned to an upper cave level where the Terevantsi Legion 10 was staying that day of Autumn, leaving Iter to face the ground beings.
Kavan is home to a library of caves and cave systems. Those who inhabit the caves possess a social hierarchy, culture, and tools not remotely adjacent to those of landwalkers. The Terevan, a society chained to the underground and its treasures, roams these caves. The peoples of the Terevan originate from the first metal miners of the land. The jewellery spun by Terevantsi women is rumoured by the landwalker to have special powers; the Terevan hardly speaks of it.
Landwalkers deem the Terevan a critical threat to daily life and a disgrace to mankind, equating it to hyena clans due to perceived or manufactured behaviour. There exist different kinds of landwalker, with varying degrees of hostility.
“In conclusion, collected were eight ounces of root spoil, five stone limestone, three loads of worm, a bucket of cavecrawler intestine, and the usual quota of meats, golds, and greases. No landwalkers encountered except for a small family of nonmalignant faces, berry gatherers they were,“ listed Guarmal, a field reporter standing in the brown stone room.
Ignoring the report, High Priest Patar burst through his oak door and stepped into the organization room, where a dozen of his decision-making subordinates sat, argued, and ate.
“Right. What is taking us so long to find the swarmer? Which Legion am I to blame? I assumed the operations were going swimmingly. Point me to the bearers and their families, and I will unleash a world of anguish!”
“With deep respect, sir, I am forced to point out that the daily missions consume all but a few essential resources in these troubling times. Legions could allocate and restructure, but I’m afraid the Terevan as a unit would suffer.” a bureaucrat tried to explain to the Priest.
“Hm. The following shall be, then. We will cause a coup of the landwalker District 82. They have it, and they guard it, I am certain of it, I’m sure of it! They must have found it! Have the Legions gather the heaviest guarded drills, which they shall use to drill themselves into the city. We shall fake out, then infiltrate. By what magic did I not think about this sooner? Did you? And to not tell me about it? And, if you didn’t—if none of us did—maybe some heads should roll.”
“Priest Patar, do we know for certain that they have it? It would seem a great risk…” a follower remarked, and saw his stomach begin hosting a dagger blade.
Criticism was prohibited, and although his was a question and not criticism, reason had succumbed. Today, a question was a criticism; there wasn’t going to be a distinction between the two going forward.
“You two, and one of you, you will come with me to make the damned plan. From here on out, every day before sundown—since you aren’t going exploring like the cowards that you are—we are to gather and plan. To begin with, you make a selection of your Legionnaires to handle the operations. There is no time. The landwalker keeps making bigger and bigger machines, and thus our methods, despite their impenetrable nature, will fall against the landfighter. Get the children to assist. Now, or never”
Byen was crawling in the crevices and reached a small deep alley. He began untangling arms and legs from the stones, cutting the rope in places where the tangling was immense. Iter was waking up from an exhaustion passout, but passed out again. The wound and the blood covering it hadn’t clotted and the blood was still dripping. Once the ropes were removed, Iter slid from the wall or ceiling and Byen immediately started dragging him upward. Byen was soon to drop from exhaustion too if he didn’t stop and drink water, giving some to Iter as well. Byen looked at the wound, washed it, and splashed on it the brown spirit Ipa he had stolen from the Dome. The spirits of Ipa stung so deep that Iter again awoke, acceleratingly releasing from lungs a shriek native to no man.
“What are you…” Iter gasped, and went out again.
The carrier continued the inclined steps, sweating rivers from the water, and finally starting to see signs of the Terevan’s ground level. Everyone who’s Terevantsi is required to learn at the very earliest—preferably and non-negotiably at age five—the ground composition at different depths. The rationale is to perceive the vertical exactly as well as the horizontal. Sometimes the rocks give it away, sometimes the plant roots and creatures, sometimes it is water or heat.
Remaining was still a parsak, or about a thousand feets, to reach the entrance to the Seventh Ibarricade from which both homecomers originated. Byen had never carried anything that heavy for so long and so high, and the body was beginning to chip away at the mind. Having neared the gates of the Seventh, a familiar family that was milling about ran toward the boys to tend to them. To the medical unit both were presented, after a preliminary checkup by that family.
The legend of the swarmer has been roaming Kavan for centuries. Landwalkers would be the ones telling tales about this object and not the Terevan, from whom one would expect it. The legend refers to a large piece of metal in cylindrical form that is said to be forged by gods of the underworld. Wisemen of the land would recite the swarmer’s powers: The earthly forces of man and weather will accumulate and pass through this object, but only when these forces are shielded by the metal copper.
Three groups, of Legions 10, 12, and 5, walked into a section on the Neta floor—the level of the Landwalker. Many Neta sections exist, and naming them was never a priority; they were rather referred to as relative to a given Ibarricade beneath.
No man was fully armed. Each still had a collection of individual accessories, for the most part visibly pinned to their camel-coloured outfits secured with belts of every shape. Reconnaissance, collection of Landwalker’s papers, as well as other detail-carrying, implicating items, was the objective. They had to find out whether the landwalker possessed the swarmer.
The Legions stepped out into sunlight, their belting changing its colors as it pleased. They were to take a carriage, large black robes and white paint for disguises, and begin their journey to the city. No one can suspect a carriage of nuns on their mission trip.
Two hours into the journey, the Legion was crossing the border of the metropolitan Kavan territory. In another half-hour, the gate of District 82 appeared and was opened to them with no questions asked. As the nuns passed the central market, they waved to the vendors and their customers, and everyone in between. They were nearing the 82’s fort and observation tower, where they were going to try and meet the people of influence, and make the mission trip count.
Field Reporter Guarmal was to join them there.
Iter was waking up in the hospital to his overlooking parents, as well as to Byen and his family, and several other familiars from the Ibarricade—two cousins and their friend, his godfather and aunt. Showing up for your beloved people was a given. If that was obstructed, you would do it in secret.
The field reporter had been running up, down, and across the section map of the outer underground Kavan. Guarmal was as much of an administrator as he was a reporter, except that he did not administrate but administer, fast remedies to fast-hatched problems.
The problem at hand was a remote yet real possibility of Ibarricade 63 collapsing, starting with one of its fragile, bone-rattled top-right corners. There were holes around it, dug by roots and rats and digger negligence in claywork.
63 was taking increasing amounts of time from Guarmal’s other duties, during a period concentrated around the coup project. Diggers, maintenancefolk, even two warriors stood stationed there without much groundwork to patch over. That was until the noises arrived.
The inhabitants and the crew flinched like they’d never, some jumping feets back toward the Corridors on the first rumble. Dead roots and a few human femur bones bubbled in their surrounding dirt, inward and downward, hitting the floor.
Without the slightest battle shriek—silent—three cavecrawlers burst through whatever was left of the corner and jumped toward the diggers, incapacitating one and clawing down the unarmed others. The track to the Corridors was blocked by the people flocking to them, leaving a defined circle for the rat-mouthed, rabbit-eared, boar-sized beasts to target.
The warriors threw their spikes at the monsters, as well as bottles of acid. The meek artillery only reached their tails, ears, and paws, but did slow them down somewhat. Possibly, still not enough. By then, the beast shrieks, as a result of the acid, were unbearable.
The field reporter and the one still-alive warrior Barqan climbed the construction ladders, and poured the remaining acid onto the hungry animals’ downstairs-chasing faces.
The formalities, including the reporting, resource collection, body counting, and recycling, followed.
Rested, Guarmal found himself on the surface, sat on a horse pointed toward metropolitan Kavan, with robes of a cattle trader in his bag.
The nun-Legion, crouching as gracefully as it could, knocked on Commander Ramdatan’s palace-tower gate. A pigeon-faced man guarding the gate opened the peephole, stood staring for a second, and snapped the massive iron door inward to let them in.
“Wyelcome,” said the guard, “You follow red powder line, see stair, climb, see guest tower, wait host.”
The nuns nodded and started duck walking, following the powder ornament likely to be rust.
“What if they know it’s a trick? Aren’t you at all worried? They have eyes all over, just like we—” , began whispering a Legion 12 warman.
A fellow Legionnaire stabbed him in the thigh with a spike. The receiver released a quiet whimper but nothing more, and the whispering was gone immediately after.
Upon arriving at the designated stone porch ever more rust-covered, the clan sat down fittingly in a prayer circle. Another figure arrived in a fortminute and joined them, a stinky-robed meddler that was Guarmal.
During reconstruction, the inhabitants of Ibarricade 68 were gathered in a place of ceremonies that was the Bunk. The women surrounded a hill of pots and cups—a lab of its own sorts—in which they were brewing Tikcha. The bottom of these cups landed a semiherbal substance in both powder and tiny rolled leaf form; as a whole, the twisted form of chai was another phenomenon whose glossy crimson color and texture was foreign to the landwalker, who was also ignorant of the effects. The Terevan did not exactly sanction any such gatherings to lift spirits; it was discouraged despite their own widespread attendance and understanding.
There was not dancing at the sprees of ceremony, or at least as a defining activity. The people instead were packing themselves in disorganized groups to listen to stories from those who have seen it all—the deepest and the highest-up, the furthest and the closest and heaviest in movement. Tikcha was aiding the recall of the most intricate details and the creation of lessons from each, as it had for centuries. The children would later reenact the stories, reinterpreting each of them with every iteration also with the help of Tikcha.
Two servants who were also in the force opened the marbled, iron-oxided door and stepped onto the Commander’s porch, staring down the pack of nuns and the cattle trader. One gestured to the nuns to follow him, and when the trader stood up too, another gesture of disallowance was raised. The heavily robed group moved toward and into the tower. Following the guards up the stairs, the soldiers in disguise were making the best old lady voices to account for the expected discomfort with each step. After many repetitions of this, they reached another porch that was also the top floor of the commander. The medal-decorated door opened, and this time, a hawk-like face appeared.
“Greetings, and welcome, traveling holynesses. Iuger Ramdatan at your service! Please, come in,” said the hawk, and continued as he closed the door in front of him, “As you know, we have been trying to welcome more and more of you in our humble town, and when a request comes directly from the Monastery, it is truly an honor. Please, let me get you something; how about some chai?”
“Lord, be our witness, our thanks to you… go jolly and wide, Mr. Ramdatan. Oh, how good… it’d be to nurture… souls with the blessings of chai!” carefully generated a Legionnaire who they agreed was with the highest pitched voice suitable for imitation.
“Of course! I am so glad we can enjoy it together before we begin our discussion regarding the ever-pressing public affairs,” said the Commander. A real nun of the Kavan-surrounding lands would never accept even a simple indulgence such as chai; thus the nun-soldiers thought they’d obtained an upper hand.
“Splendid!” said the commander, as he began turning toward his hand-crafted, engraved kitchenette.
In an instant or two, he felt an unearthly sensation on the side of his neck, which soon took over his every thought and movement. It could only have been a needle of some kind, although the object was not in his field of vision. A small red explosion followed as he pulled out the item out his neck.
The nuns remained quiet, surprisingly stunned by their own spike action. In a usual case, one would grab the victim, then throw it to the ground, or at least against a wall. There was no such action.
To the nuns’ dismay, the commander fell toward and into the tower’s main hole-window. To the dismay of everyone in and around the town square, he began screaming like no man had ever screamed.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, Aaaaaaaah, Aaah, Ah… Terevaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahn,” and perished, coming to a stop as a windmill would.
The Legionnaires stood paralyzed as they began hearing roars coming from the street and from the stairwell. The battle shrieks of guards neared the observatory door. The nuns ordered themselves in position to fight, and, as the hinges and the doorframe tore off the wall, they observed the outnumbering and braced for impact. The Terevantsi warmen fought well, and managed to slice several heads off. Not soon after, small hits and injuries began to compound, slowing them down and leaving the nuns without heads of their own.
Guarmal had heard the screams just like everyone else. He also saw the guards come up, and the militias scramble for mobilization. In spite of the complete and total people-soup that was swirling round the tower, he hesitated to engage and investigate.
He saw the guards starting to run back down the stairs, and assumed the worst, which conveniently was the truth. On the bright side, he was able to stay in the city for observations of the militant activity that was to follow, then escape and report.
Back under ground, Legions were beginning visitations to Ibarricades and dragging certain youngsters out of their homes, into native halls, and into camps. Byen and Iter were on the list, and they saw themselves walking into the camps as well. They were headed to different Legions, and they were to be assigned very different roles. Iter was going to be a guerrilla warfare jumper, and Byen was going to be part of the assassination gangs. With no time for training, they would be using what they’d learned in the expeditions.
District 82 had sent people carrying every detail of the scene to the other 88 districts. Some of those districts, in turn, were sending their own people into the deeper Middle East to call for help. For at least a century, there has not been a demonstration of such boundary-breaking by the Terevan or any of its familiar, smaller underground peoples.
Being the first participant district, closest to the presumed cave locations, 82 already had invoked curfews of sorts, and armed groups of protector were ruling the central streets already. Several alchemists and wisemen were pulled from their daily ponderings to attend to the swarmer and design methods of producing the force at large. The women were sewing more war quilts of the protector.
In a day and some more, the first groups were leaving the city, carrying with them many light spherical objects resembling stones.
“And that is all there is to report, Priest Patar,” said the returned Guarmal. “I can only thank the land that guided my escape…” he remarked, “I expect it is necessary for me to return there and conduct reconnaissance.”
“You think you’re heading out for one more of your routine observations, Guarmal? You have just told me of an ungodly failure of an operation, the produce of which is now threatening every single one of us! Why weren’t you there, why didn’t you do anything, why? Why, oh, why?!” Patar responded. “You are going to the camps, like the rest. And then you’ll rise to the surface and against the walkers, like the rest, and you will make up for your failure one way or another.”
Iter’s new Legion was gathered inside the First Ibarricade that was part of a cave closest to the 82nd. They were tinkering with some artillery that was new to almost everybody. In recent years, Patar had been running a program concerned with the taming and control of cavecrawlers.
Simply by the act of throwing pieces of meat, they were able to force the cavecrawler to run off and tackle in any direction a Legion desired.
Such artillery was going to prove very useful when they reach the 82’s underground, and are able to throw the meat upward and into the city.
Byen was on the surface, on a hill, using a looking glass to stare down some of the buildings of 82 his new Legion had selected. Their assassinations were to be mass assassinations.
When the first guerrilla fighters burst up and into the city, they were to tie the ends of ropes to the found structures of those buildings. Byen’s Legion would then pull on these ropes using a capstan, in an effort to cause the structures to crumble into themselves.
During a Tikcha ceremony at the Fourth Ibarricade, the drinkers began hearing extreme rumbling sounds, and the corners of the hall began crumbling. The people presumed cavecrawlers again, and ran toward the corridors. As some of them continued looking through a gap in the door, the corners and the ceiling continued collapsing, with no sign of animal life.
Daylight sprawled into the Ibarricade’s hall, and with it, a set of metal tools was dropped. With them, a rope.
Such was the beginning of the great Kavan War.