[Edited] Chapter 33 - On the Nature of Faen

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Our expressions of joy at having finally discovered the treasure rapidly dissolved into ones of confusion and disappointment. Beneath the lovely fabric of the throw was hidden a worn and rotting trunk. Its hinges and buckles were rusted. Its black, leather exterior was cracked, and bits of it were beginning to flake away. Against the backdrop of so much opulence, the contrast was striking.

Worse, atop it, a message had been scratched, as though by a convict with a shiv against his prison wall.

A bargain struck ‘tween Great and Low,
Of shattered soul to guard.
Why for should I then gifts bestow,
With bargain’s spirit marred?

“That doesn’t sound good,” I said after a moment. Although the poetic rhythm sort of reminded me Gilligan’s Island, for some reason.

“Do you think it’s a riddle?” Lynnria asked.

I hesitated in answering, instead rattling the lid to check if I could just open the thing. Unsurprisingly, it was stuck fast, but unlike the other Dungeon chests I had seen, there were none of those clear triangular indentations to stick a Key. So I did not see how this could be anything but a riddle, but if it was, I was having trouble seeing what the point of it was.

“I don’t know. It almost seems more rhetorical than anything. Mia, what do—” I paused to rephrase. Whatever this latest phase of hers was, I really did not want to trigger it again. “Uh… if you have anything to share, it would be helpful.”

“Oh? Finally beginning to pay attention to our phrasing, are we?” she replied with a chuckle. “I swear, how very you. What’s the matter? Does it upset you to see your lovely Faen drowning in the pleasure of your questions? Would you rather I go back to merely being pained by them?”

I sighed. “I would rather be able to have a normal conversation with you, but we deal with the hand we’ve been dealt.”

“That’s a weird expression,” Lynnria commented. “What does that have to do with the riddle?”

“Gargle piss, cunt! No one asked you!” Mia yelled—again, totally inaudibly to Lynnria.

“Mia, you realize—“ I paused, having realized something myself. “Wait, you only swore that time. What happened to the ‘drowning in pleasure’ bit?”

“Mmm~ yes! I’m a slut for Master!” she moaned gleefully before settling herself. “Uhm… well, I—I suppose that’s accurate. I don’t feel anything but annoyed at her questions.”

“Drowning in…?“ Lynnria shook her head. “Donum, you really have the most curious conversations. Do you two ever manage to stay on topic?”

I held up a hand and took a calming breath. Disparaging comments aside, Lynnria was quite correct. And so was Mia, for that matter. If I was learning anything through this experience, it was that schizophrenics had a raw deal. I was just grateful that the voice in my head was not a mere hallucination.

Or well… perhaps grateful was too strong a word. If someone were to offer me medication and a nice lie down to make it all go away, I would have given the suggestion some serious thought.

“I’m getting around to it, Lynnria,” I said instead. “Just give me a minute.”

She nodded and plopped down to wait. Then she winced and had to resettle to accommodate her tail—something I had never once seen her do.

Always had it, my ass…

“Mia, I’m sorry if I’ve been lax previously. I realize that questions set you off… in increasingly new and… interesting ways, but they are also a very normal part of speech. When we’re in a bind, I tend to forget,” I explained, trying to placate her.

Although, to be fair, I had also been finding a touch of perverse enjoyment in her uncontrollable swearing. It could be amusing at times, and I… may have still been a bit salty at my treatment at the hands of her deific counterpart. So I did not feel too badly for the occasional lapse. But she scarcely needed to know that.

“Also, rephrasing questions tends to make them feel commanding and rude.”

“Hardly rude,” she returned. “Do you think I cannot tell when you are awkwardly trying not to trigger me? It’s sweet.”

Sweet? Now I really was starting to feel guilty. For all that Mia had been spawned from Bline, she was not Her. It was not as if my interactions with the Faen could harm or even annoy the Lady of Power. Probably. Actually, I had no idea on that point.

“But you need not apologize,” she continued. “You are my master. I live for your attention. Your questions for me now are like… like the warmest of hugs. The tenderest of kisses. They make me want to wrap my legs about you and—“

I cleared my throat with some exaggeration. “Okay! I get the picture.”

For a moment, I glanced at Lynnria. I really, really needed to address this whole ‘master’ business, and Mia’s behavior lately had gotten… inexplicably horny. She might have claimed not to be affected by my lust aura, but you would never know it from the way she had been acting recently. And acknowledging the development in front of an audience was its own can of worms.

The only thing was, I also had no idea when I might have the time to get around to it. Lynnria was not going anywhere, and before long, I would have the lilim to deal with. Privacy was a commodity in extremely short supply.

“Um… Lynnria,” I begin, signaling for her attention. “Mia and I need to have a private discussion about some personal things, so…”

“Oh, alright. Uh…” She looked around the smallish room we were in at a loss.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll just go sit in the corner over there and talk… and I guess bind my knees while I’m at it. You see what you can do with the chest.”

She nodded and hopped to her feet again, seemingly happy to busy herself with the puzzle. Though, when she straightened, she wobbled unsteadily and had to catch herself on the furniture. For a moment, she frowned in confusion and glanced back at her tail. It waved back at her.

While I hobbled away, Mia’s transparent form sauntered back into view, still wearing the black gown from earlier—to devastating effect. She really was gorgeous. “So… what is this all about? Something bothering you? Or perhaps, you wish to… ask me some more questions? You wish to see my pleasure for yourself?” She bit at her lower lip suggestively at the idea and began pressing down on the front of her thighs as if to still her hands.

Ho boy.

While I worked to compose myself for the coming conversation, I carefully tore the throw into two long strips by using my teeth to start the rip. It really was a nice bit of fabric and extremely delicate. It felt like silk to the touch. I almost felt bad in destroying such a thing for bandages, but needs must.

“Mia…” I began. “I am no one’s master.”

Her face instantly went stony. “False,” she shot back, sharp as a blade.

I sighed. “Okay, I may allow Jax to call me that, but that’s only a pet name. I’m not actually—“

“False,” she insisted again, not listening to me.

“Damn it, Mia. I am not—” I grit my teeth and took a breath. I had already had this conversation once with Jax, and I certainly did not want to have it again—mostly because I was pretty sure I had lost that argument. “I don’t understand why this is upsetting you, so maybe you had better explain yourself. You are making me sound like some sort of slaver here, and I don’t appreciate that. I would never intentionally—”

“A slaver?” she repeated, cutting me off. Then she quirked an eyebrow. “Implying that I am a slave? How ludicrous! Surely you do not believe that.”

“No, I don’t. Which is why I am objecting here. Unless you mean something else by that word?”

She shivered at my slip of a question, but she did not comment on it. Unusually. “I mean that you are my master, of course. What else could I mean? You are my reason to exist. You are my—” She hesitated, then fell silent.

“Um… okay. I guess. But can you…” I grimaced. Damn it… how do I even articulate this? “I hope you can understand how uncomfortable that sort of talk makes me. I haven’t cast any spells to bind you to me. We haven’t sworn any oaths to each other. So I can’t see anything that would compel you to think of yourself that way. I am not your reason for existing. You should… I don’t know. Have hobbies? Have… have likes and dislikes a-and things that mean something to you that… that have nothing to do with me! You should be able to walk away if you want to… i-if you could. Y-you should want to… to escape!”

Her eyes widened briefly as though alarmed, but then she blinked a few times in confusion. And slowly, a soft little smile curled her lips. “Oh, dear boy. You don’t yet understand what a Faen is, do you? But then how could you? You are so very young. You aren’t even from this place. How could you hope to understand anything?” She sighed in frustration. Then, seeming deep in thought, she distractedly reached out to stroke my face, but of course I felt nothing. “I am sorry. I do wish I could just explain everything for you, impossible as that might be. If only… Well. Perhaps, I should try some of it anyway. My creation was far from orthodox, so it could be that my own lack of understanding will help.”

As deeply confused as that last sentence had left me, her own expression was little better. She looked reluctant and frustrated, yet there was a yearning edge to it at the same time. Like she was torn straight down the middle.

She took a breath.

“I am…” She paused expectantly, but whatever she was waiting for did not come. Smiling, she continued with more confidence, “I am an extension of your Will. A piece of you, cut away and given form. Separated perhaps by distance and circumstance but never intent. I can think and feel independently, yet your goals are ever my goals. Your glories and your failures are as my own.”

I stared at her for a short while, not at all sure what to make of that. It seemed unreal and nonsensical on its face. She was decidedly not me in every way that meant anything.

“I… don’t see how that could be,” I argued finally. And I was trying to be tactful. I wanted to say that it was the most idiotic thing I had ever heard. “You… you were Bline. How could you also be me? Or even a part of me?”

She shivered again and fluttered her eyelashes. “Mmm~ Delicious. You make me so wet!” She struggled to master herself for a second before elaborating. “That is only what a Faen normally is. But as I said, our situation is quite unorthodox. Technically, I should be Her Faen. But… She severed me from Herself and attached me to you after She—hnn… no. Can’t say that part.”

I quirked an eyebrow, instantly curious. But she continued on before I could formulate an appropriate way to ask.

“Anyway, it was an… intensely unpleasant and frightening experience. I wonder if you can even imagine what it was like. To be rejected and cut off from everything you are, then thrust into the essence of another.”

I could not. What she was describing was so indescribably foreign, she might as well have asked me to imagine what it was like for the metaphysical concept of ‘puce’ to become a bulldozer.

“That… sounds horrible,” I said.

She favored me with an indulgent smile. “Since then, I have been slowly… dissolving into you. In a sense. I exist within your mind. But the boundaries that define me are weak and insubstantial. There is nothing truly there to separate what you are and what I am. Like an ink blot dropped into water.”

She hesitated, then grimaced, clearly dissatisfied by her own explanation. “Well… no, that metaphor doesn’t work. It’s funny. I’ve never had to explain this before. Even back when I was… Us. It’s just been something I’ve always known intuitively.”

I just stared at her, my mouth agape. “I certainly hope it’s better than what you’ve been describing. Because that sounds terrifying.”

She raised a hand to cover her growing smile. “You are afraid? For me? How wonderful!”

Whatever that meant, she did not elaborate. Her eyebrows were already bunching together, her thoughts forming on her face before ever finding her lips. “I suppose I should say… there isa separation between us, but it’s… fuzzy at the edges? Anyway, the only reason I mention it at all is because it is at the core of why I have been changing. The more I accept what I am, the more my form reflects that. Or… that should be the reason. There are many things I still don’t understand.” She reached up to touch her antlers thoughtfully. “Do I still look like… like Her, by any chance? Like Bline?”

I nodded absently, still trying to process what she had been saying.

“Curious,” she murmured. “I should be taking on more of your own appearance, but that does not seem to be happening. Maybe because you are male? Or it could be another complication from your alienness.” She waved the question away, unperturbed. “Ah well. Time will tell.”

I held up my hands in frustrated bewilderment, as if to somehow fend off the figurative ocean barge of crazy shit she had just been dumping on me. “Okay, wait. Back up. None of this makes any sense. I’ve met Faen before. Most of the time, they’re just these disembodied voices.” I paused. Mia was looking at me expectantly. “Okay, I guess that part tracks. But I have actually seen one. It was just a little… bug… thing.”

“Sounds like one of Ahnbe’s,” she replied, nodding knowingly. “But what you are referring to would have simply been a physical manifestation, not its preferred form. Constructs of that kind are really quite… well, not simple. But for the Third they might as well be. It’s something of a specialty of Hers.”

“But… but…” I shook my head in denial. “It… I tricked it! It was… childlike and… and innocent! Nothing like Ahnbe at all!”

“Was it?” she asked softly, as though pleasantly surprised. “What was its name?”

“It…” I had to pause to think back. “It said it wasn’t important enough to have a name.”

“Then it was either very young or just a temporary servant,” Mia surmised. “Ah, my kin… She can be rather cute sometimes.”

Wha—Ahnbe? Cute? I shook my head. That was far from the most important point. “But I don’t want you to dissolve… or transform… or… or whatever the hell is going on. And I definitely don’t want you to look like me. I want you to be you!”

She scoffed, chuckling. “You act as if I were dying. I told you I remain independent. What are you so worried about?”

“I—I…” Frustrated, I began angrily wrapping my knees with the cloth. I almost welcomed the pain from agitating the wounds. It cleared my head. “Why does no one on this world seem to care about this stuff?” I asked hotly. Then I hastily added, “That was a rhetorical question.”

She flashed me something of a hungry look, then gave a slight nod and waved for me to continue.

“It’s like you all want to gleefully throw your lives away for someone you barely know. You. Jax. Arx. Even Lynnria now.” I cast a quick glance toward the girl, but she was too absorbed with feeling at the chest to be paying attention to me. “I just don’t get it.”

“We all have our own reasons, I’m sure,” she replied enigmatically. “But speaking for myself, I have no life to throw away. I am Faen. I cannot exist save through you. For you to deny me would be to destroy me.”

That brought me up short. Reluctantly, I nodded. “Well… I certainly don’t want that, either.”

“Good.” She smiled, then looked up and away musingly. “Perhaps it would help to think of it like this. You are like… the ruler of the land. Or perhaps the land itself?” She paused for a moment before nodding. “Yes, I think that works better. I am inexorably tied to you. I live upon you, cultivate you. Your glories are my glories. Your failures, my own. Whether you flourish or decay, so too do I. So you see, I cannot seek to escape or somehow separate from you. The very notion is ludicrous.”

I shot her an incredulous look. “Okay. I guess. But none of that explains how thirsty you’ve been acting.”

“Yes… that is curious, isn’t it? I guess patriotism makes me horny, my liege,” she replied with a flirtatious little wiggle. Then she shot me a devilish grin. “Ooh! I know. If ‘master’ makes you so uncomfortable, why don’t I start calling you things like that instead? What do you say, your majesty?”

My face fell. A lot.

“Please don’t.”

*****

“Did you get whatever-it-was talked out?” Lynnria asked as I limped back over a few minutes later.

“Actually, I think I may have made it worse.”

Mia cackled. Then assuming some kind of weird accent, she wailed, “Dewn’t say such as that, me lord sovereign! I am but a poor, shtewpid peasant girl with bounteous bosom and an empty ‘ead, ‘ere to warm yer bed. Dewn’t cast me aside!”

I twisted my mouth, both in consternation and a degree of unwilling amusement. That had been startlingly close to something out of a Monty Python sketch. Or maybe Jax… but she wasn’t that bad.

“Maybe a lot worse.”

Lynnria looked at me with alarm.

“Only kidding,” I assured her. “Mostly. What have you figured out?”

“Not much,” she admitted. “I can feel more of those hidden Words along the bottom of the lid, and there are more right underneath this riddle. Not sure what they do, but I think they’re linked together. And I haven’t been able to pry open the lid. Maybe it’s some kind of… magical lock?”

I opened my mouth to suggest something, but then the implications of it put an instant damper on the idea. “I… do have a spell that gives insight into these kinds of things, but uh… I really doubt I should use it. I think it might draw some unwanted attention.”

“Oh, that spell?” Mia said. “You’re quite right, we should definitely avoid that one until we figure out what has the Fifth’s panties in a bind, mine lord. But no worries. I’ll just hop over…”

Lynnria jumped. “Oh. Hello, Mia.”

There was a pause, then her tail began to swish as though agitated.

“There’s no need for name calling… No, I’m not!” She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye.

I just crossed my arms to wait it out. Once upon a time, I remembered Lynnria mentioning how Mia was ‘all business’ when she was in her head. But going from what I was currently hearing, either the Faen had become markedly more familiar with the girl, or things had begun changing on that front, as well. But… perhaps that was for the best.

Still, it was a little strange to be on the outside of the conversation for once. And even more of a relief. Enough to leave me decidedly incurious as to whatever Mia was saying to get Lynnria’s dander up. Let her deal with it for a few minutes.

One of these days, I was going to have to figure out how to either solve the one-way communication problem or get the Faen a body of her own. She had mentioned something about physical manifestations, after all, and it might even help with some of this dissolving business she had been so fantastically lackadaisical about.

How would that work? Maybe some kind of spell?

“I’m sure I have no idea—” Lynnria yelled, then stopped to calm herself. “Look, what do you want, anyway?”

She blanched, immediately regretting the question.

“Sorry. Oh… okay, it’s right here.”

Leaning forward, she touched the lid just above the seam. “It’s right here,” she said. Then a moment later, she began dragging her finger to the left.

“Like this?”

She twitched.

“Uh huh…”

There was a pause.

“I think it stops here. Okay.”

Her finger retraced its path, moving right until she got nearly to the edge of the box. “And that’s the other end of it.”

She sat listening for a while, her tail swishing back and forth idly. It was cat-like in a way. Or perhaps a lion.

I quirked an eyebrow. You know… if you tied a bow on the end, it would look kind of like that one character from ‘The Littles.’ Only with purple hair on the end. What was her name? The one with the pig-tails… Geez, I haven’t thought of that show in ages.

That random thought inexplicably led me to another much more salient one.

Mia’s explanation had definitely had a few holes in it, but she had not been pretending otherwise. There were things at play which neither of us had any explanation for.

However…

If Mia really was some sort of piece of Bline that had been grafted onto me—whatever the hell that was supposed to mean—and she could now jump back and forth between my mind and Lynnria’s… and Lynnria was now exhibiting certain traits…

I could not see how the two could possibly be unrelated… especially once I considered the blood component our ritual had introduced.

But why would my… essence—or however that was manifesting within Mia—cause Lynnria to grow a tail? Obviously, there were quite a few parallels between all of this and the lilim, but it was all messed up! And what was with the teeth? Twice now, I had seen them mysteriously sharpen only to return to their natural shapes. But the tail had stayed? And she believed she had always had it.

I shook my head. None of this makes any sense.

“Okay, that makes sense,” Lynnria said, the coincidental phrasing breaking my chain of thought. “But why—uh, that is… I don’t understand why it would need so many Words just for a lock.”

There was another pause for the unheard explanation.

“It has to be that specific?”

She flinched then sighed.

“Okay, okay…”

Leaning forward again, she found the other spot she had mentioned on the lid. “It’s here.”

Slowly, the two of them went over the second engraving until Mia was satisfied. Finally, Lynnria looked back up at me again.

“Mia says it’s definitely a riddle of some kind. The box is… Hmm… how did she say it? ‘Primed to listen?’” she explained uncertainly, cocking her head for confirmation. Nodding, she continued, “There’s some kind of key word, I think. Then it should pop open. But the answer is being… suspended? I don’t understand that part, Mia.”

There was a moment of silence before she glanced up at me again.

“She says its some kind of trick you can use to hide the answer in case the person who finds the lock can read.”

She blinked.

“That’s what I said—I did so! Read… read… What other way can you pronounce it?”

The left side of her face twitched.

“What does capitalization have to do with anything?”

Ignoring the rest of the ongoing one-sided conversation, I instead turned my attention back to the riddle itself.

“A bargain struck ‘tween Great and Low,” I murmured softly. “Hmm… no idea there. Maybe… king to subject? God to man?” It might have even been in reference to some legend or fairy tale I had never heard of.

I glanced to Lynnria for help but, as she was still arguing with Mia, I decided to skip that part for now.

“Of shattered soul to guard.” Hmm… shattered soul, eh?

That line would have been a complete mystery to me had Mia not just explained what Faen were. If a portion of a Goddess’ essence could be separated out and given form, then I had to suppose ‘shattered soul’ was a reasonable—if poetic—description.

But to guard? Why would Faen need to be guarded?

I frowned. Maybe I’m off-base here.

Deciding to circle back to that point later, I muttered out the rest of the riddle to myself, “Why for should I then gifts bestow with bargain’s spirit marred?”

I stared at the line for some seconds before carefully rereading the whole of the riddle again. Overall, it felt like someone complaining about having to do a job when the entire reason they were doing it had been compromised by a broken deal. But I had no context to work with.

Not for the first time, I wished Arx were here. She would be the one to ask about old legends and such. Unless… maybe it’s not a legend. What if… what if this riddle is aimed at me? Specifically.

I could not tell you why that thought had popped into my head. But it was an interesting diversion. And it made the lack of context all the more bizarre.

I crossed my arms while I considered this new angle, gently tapping my fingers along my elbow. There was something bothering me about all this, as if there was something in the back of my mind tickling me. Somehow, seemingly disparate events along the timeline of the last month or so had been scattered as breadcrumbs for me to pick out and follow. Except some birds had come along and snatched up several of the most crucial of morsels.

And strange as that metaphor was, that was what made it click.

Dreams! Ah hell…

At some point, I had to have been visited in a dream, unknowingly made a deal of some kind… with one of the goddesses, and had ended up breaking it because—of course—I had no fucking clue I had even made the thing in the first place. I did not even know when it might have happened.

For all I knew, it could have been the very reason I had been summoned to this world at all!

Well, that’s just great. Now what am I going to do? And which goddess did I even make the deal with?

Bline was one suspect. After the screaming fit I had left Her in, the subsequent silent treatment… and the literal fragment of Herself she had shoved into my head, there was the distinct possibility She was a tad cross with me. For whatever reason. But if something like this had gone down, Mia surely would have said so by now. Especially after reading that riddle.

As for Ahnbe… I had to suppose it was possible. The entire reason She had come after me in the first place had to do with some offering I had made. And during a dream, no less. Although… we had not ended up making anything like a bargain until after the fact.

Hmm… more like a pact, really. And what a strange thing that had been. Some goddess gets a little randy, and now I have to get good for Her sake?

It kind of made me envious of the old Greek myths. At least when Zeus needed to get his rocks off, he did not need his mortal trysts to go on epic quests of self-improvement. He would just turn into a duck or something and Poseidon’s your uncle. Although, then they would have to deal with Hera getting pissy about it.

So not a total loss.

Continuing down the list of suspects, the only other goddess I had any dealings with was this Xhinn. Though, whether She was angry or not was a toss-up. She had certainly sounded angry the last time I had heard Her voice, but then She had left me that strangely formal and exceedingly polite letter… after having devoured an entire town to get to me.

Okay, yeah… To be honest, it’s probably Her. So, I’ve broken some kind of bargain, have I? I glanced once more at the locked chest and its riddle.

A bargain struck ‘tween Great and Low,
Of shattered soul to guard.
Why for should I then gifts bestow,
With bargain’s spirit marred?

So… now She’s withholding treasure? Or… no. She’s asking a question. With an answer.

For a moment, I thought back to that letter. She had been very exacting on a couple of points. She could not just summon me directly to talk. I had to first go through the hardship of the Dungeon.

Because it was Her nature. And… if it was Her nature.

She… can’t withhold treasure. Not when it was justly gained.

Not even when She Herself had been wronged.

It was a sad realization. Despite everything She had done and likely would do in the future, this Demon Queen was like a prisoner here. Forced to be the eternal dungeon master for an entire population, who themselves were the unwitting and often unwilling players in some grand game of D&D.

And now I’m trapped here, too.

But at least I now knew the answer.

“Because it is your Purpose,” I whispered.

With a soft, almost morose click, the lid—itself scratched and worn like the prisoner whose message it bore—popped open.