When Hazahnahkah awoke, someone was already carrying him—away from the rubble—away from his last wielder. This was the first time he could clearly remember a wielder that he had. Her name—Ysan. The sword shouted for her and towards the cave in, but there was nothing he could do. The battle had somehow exhausted him, and it seemed Hazahnahkah was either too far or too out of sight to ensure that Ysan and Ul were okay. He could only hope that Vikushak and The Fawn Cities took care of them.
The experiences hadn’t broken Hazahnahkah, but they had pushed him further than before. If only he had been faster, maybe things may have turned out differently. He decided the best way to grow from this was to evolve himself against his lowest and weakest stat—Agility. He had never imagined he might need more of it, but he never wanted to lose a wielder like that again:
-The Fawn City expedition has been completed… just in the worst of ways.
-Ysan and Hazahnahkah have parted ways… for now.
-Bankanzaku, Vikushak, and the Orphanspawn have ceased fighting.
Health (source of vitality and abilities): 900,000,000,000
Energy (source of stamina and abilities): 900,000,000,000
Agility (speed of actions): 50,000 → 50,500
Regeneration (rate of recovery per hour for Health and Energy): 100,000,000,000
Tenacity (resistance to unwanted effects): 100,000,000,000,000
Strength (physical or mental reality manipulation potency): 1,000,000,000
Ysan: Devoted 99/100 → Lamented 100/100 → [Ysan-Developed River Ramble]
[Ysan-Developed River Ramble] → [Lucidity]
Lucidity: Hazahnahkah’s consciousness no longer requires a wielder to sustain itself. His desire to keep Ysan safe anchors his continued awareness. If an attack would kill Hazahnahkah, Hazahnahkah survives with 1 Health instead.
Wherever Hazahnahkah was now was a completely different place. There was no water. Only wide sweeping hillsides beneath a new and vast and cloudy sky.
No, that’s not a sky.
It was a river, complete with whales, subaquatic continents, and luminous coral reef. It was Serpent’s Ramble! They were beneath it.
The currents swept up islands, mountains, cavernscape. All sorts of creatures were caught up in it. Low, sonorous wails rolled through the air like a tide turned to sound. They shook everything, too deep for speech and too wide for the sky. Not quite roars, not quite cries, but something older and lonelier than either. Each one at least the size of a city and their chorus touched Hazahnahkah’s blade heart.
As well as December 11th’s. The man carried Hazahnahkah now.
“The Leviathan Sky.” The man rubbed the blood from his eye with his wrist.
It was amazing December 11th was even alive, and judging by his heartbeat, he was scared to even hold Hazahnahkah, afraid to even look. He would not let go. The rest of Bankanzaku’s children tended to him and The Tower—shoveling debris, fetching curatives, running back and forth from their now crashed home.
The vestige of the mysterious building was now laying on its side. Its bricks and pipework spilling across grass like a grey pudding left out for too long. The collapse of the cavern had clearly hurt both sides quite badly. The Orphanspawn woman from earlier came out with a warm wet cloth and dabbed at December 11th’s cheek.
“Damn that Bankanzaku,” she whispered, several other curses.
December 11th grabbed her wrist and pushed it away. “I didn’t expect him to run. It is my fault.”
“Nothing is your fault.”
“Sounds like something he would say.”
The woman frowned. Her lips were scarred. Her hands were worse: calloused, hardened, cracked and hardened like a golem’s. She had a fiery mane of ginger and gold hair. “The tower can no longer warp us around, and we don’t know where Bankanzaku is. Serpent bite me, we don’t even know where this is.”
“We’re in a period of rest,” December 11th replied coolly. “We’ll repair March 23rd’s tower. In the meantime, I want you to scout the area with February 15th and November 7th. It’s going to be the usual.”
“You’re not coming?”
“I have a date with The Sword.”
The woman got up to go fetch the rest of her siblings, but December 11th gave her one last call—as if suddenly remembering something so minute he had forgotten to mention it earlier. “January 6th.”
“Hm?”
“Leave some alive this time. And don’t take everything. We’ll need hostages.”
Hazahnakah did not like the implication that in addition to being ruthless cutthroats, Bankanzaku’s children were violent thieves. He couldn’t wait for December 11th to let him go, then, he would summon the wind and the tide and the earth to take him far away.
But December 11th did not let him go.
Instead, the man went inside The Tower, cleaned up a messy room, and set forth a posh scarlet covering across a wooden roundtable. He lit several candelabra, scattered sage about the room, and muttered several prayers that Hazahnahkah really couldn’t make any sense of. All the while, Hazahnahkah watched The Leviathan Sky flow beyond them. A series of silver coins flickered up and under its waters. They must have been as large as chariots given how easily they could be seen from this distance, but Hazahnahkah already knew what they were. Those strange wingless creatures above The Fawn Cities lived even here in this place. How fascinating that they could swim and fly so seamlessly in their airborne dance.
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How pretty they were to watch when one was alone.
The man stared at Hazahnahkah in silence for several hours, eventually giving up on whatever he was trying to do. “Hm…” He rubbed his chin, took off his mask, revealing a worn but young face with black eyes and brown hair. The man looked a lot like his father. “Sword, you don’t like me. Do you?”
No, Hazahnahkah did not. He did find December 11th more interesting now that he was trying to communicate with him. No other person had ever tried to do this—even when Ysan spoke to him it was more often to herself rather than to the blade.
Hazahnahkah figured he would try too.
“No, I think you’re evil. Your hatred towards Ul’s child. You blamed the created’s innocence for the creator’s sins.”
December 11th did not react to this. His eyes only narrowed to the ring hanging from Hazahnahkah’s tsuka. The sword figured as much. The man sat back, crossed his arms, and then deflated with a sigh.
“Sword, give me a sign. What do you need from me? I need power to kill Bankanzaku. Now that Uncle Vikushak knows about us we may be able to get his help, but I cannot go back with The Tower in rubble. Nor should I. The ramblebeasts are powerful and we do not have the means to get past them again. That is why we commit the crimes that we do. No shortage of effort or resources can be spared to breach the realm we have left Ysan and Vikushak in.”
Hazahnahkah was not sure what ramblebeasts were. He was also eager to slay Bankanzaku for his wanton irresponsibility, but December 11th was also about to attack innocents for it. The sword figured this was to rob them from supplies. December 11th was predictable in the sense that in the short amount of time Hazahnahkah had spent with him, it was very clear he only wanted one thing above all others and at any cost—to find his father—and kill him.
Maybe Hazahnahkah could help anyone who wasn’t involved in this. He could stop December 11th and January 6th from robbing people by taking away their reason to.
In an instant, The Tower was repaired and flipped right side up. This was very easy to do with his Third Terror.
All the children were racing in and out, utterly amazed as they fixed furniture and moved the injured to proper rooms, but December 11th was not impressed. “This won’t do, sword. The tower isn’t made out of any kind of material. There are leylines interconnecting each brick, and all trace back to the source of its power—the reason for its name sake—the Foundry.” He stared back into Hazahnahkah, grimacing at his own reflection. “Do you understand, sword? Your power is not enough to restore it.”
This was another first time for Hazahnahkah. Were his powers not magnificent enough? What was he lacking? How could he become even more powerful? It was the first time Hazahnahkah felt impotent.
“I see now,” the man grinned. “We’re going to rob and kill and kill and rob—unless you do everything I say.”
If it wasn’t for the fact that December 11th very much seemed to be the man keeping the rest of Bankanzaku’s children together, Hazahnahkah would have killed him with his Third Terror right then and there.
But he couldn’t.
Inside The Tower lived the elderly, the injured, and even the newborn. Some may not have even been Bankanzaku’s. They hadn’t just taken in orphans related to them—they’d taken in any orphan at all. Hazahnahkah felt deeply conflicted now. December 11th may not have fully intended to kill Ul’s child at all. He may have been intending to take the woman here where it was safe. Maybe Ysan should have taken that deal. Maybe this was the result of a terrible misunderstanding. Hazahnahkah cursed himself. He had so many magnificent possibilities to manipulate reality with—but communicating was not one of them.
“And don’t even bother trying to kill me,” December 11th added. “It won’t work.”
The sword was confused by this, although he had expected some kind of reason for the man’s confidence. It quickly became clear. December 11th took out a dagger, sliced himself, and the wound almost immediately sealed shut. Several people outside the room cried out moments later.
“Injuries against me are shared evenly and distributed appropriately between those within The Tower. I am The Man with Many Lives, perhaps you may have heard of me…”
Hazahnahkah had not heard of him. And he also did not care. However, such a power was insidious and surprising to him. Was December 11th’s power why so many people were injured and dead when The Tower had crashed? It wasn’t the debris, it was Hazahnahkah’s attacks against December 11th? He was willing to even hurt even his own brothers and sisters? December 11th wasn’t just hateful, he was pure evil.
Hazahnahkah analyzed December 11th for a weakness. The first thing that struck him was that his ideas of himself echoed around him, and that they did not match the name he went by. He was lying about who he was and what his powers were, but he did not have the prowess to veil it.
Health (source of vitality and abilities): 23,000
Energy (source of stamina and abilities): 11,230
Agility (speed of actions): 14,000
Regeneration (rate of recovery per hour for Health and Energy): 4,745
Tenacity (resistance to unwanted effects): 400
Strength (physical or mental reality manipulation potency): 700
[Wilchick’s Abilities]
Camouflage: Cloaks the physical presence of targets within 30 meters.
[Wilchick’s Equipment]
Onyx Knife: Unknown. While pretty, there is something amiss about it. Occasionally and currently cloaked with [Camouflage].
Uncategorizable Revolver: A projectile weapon more powerful than its gunpowder-powered brothers and sisters. It is powered by an unseen force. Damage is equal to its wielder’s Strength x10. The weapon’s projectile Agility is fixed at 80,000 regardless of wielder stats and has no distinguishable source of ammunition. It is a wonder how it fires anything at all.
Yurrethflesh: There is such a small trace of this within its sealed bag that it is unclear what this does. It looks and smells like trash.
Tynypsil Snake Venom: Ingesting this grants +5000 to all attributes for an hour. Over the course of an hour the consumer loses 50% of their Health.
[Wilchick’s Conditions]
Interlinked: Someone or something occasionally grants Wilchick a massive boost to all his attributes—roughly +400,000. The boost could sometimes be higher, lower, or even absent, with no explicable cause or source.
This analysis confounded Hazahnahkah. Even with his mysterious items and incredible condition, the man had no demonstrable ability that could explain his survival against Bankanzaku and Hazahnahkah’s First Terror. While this was technically good news, it was also concerning. It was possible he did have many lives given the Attributes granted to him by [Interlinked].
Hazahnakah could not recall ever meeting such a malicious human being. And it was so strange to see such a malicious human being live out their life so normally. Over the course of several weeks, Hazahnahkah watched who anyone would have believed a different man. December 11th was not just a deeply loving older brother to those who lived within The Tower, but to others far away. The man sent mail by spearbird all the time—short, narrow, straight creatures clearly evolved to pierce the sky—to wherever the rest of Bankanzaku’s children were. The birds were quick to accept quartz from those who raised it, and quicker to eat the food that came after. December 11th always gave a little more food, trying to purchase favor with the winged in an attempt to expedite the process. The man actually kept nothing he robbed people of to himself. He sent everything—every nugget, mote, and speck of gold to whoever was beyond the sunset.
