Naph’s eyes began widening.

  Myriad of images of the grand hall went past him, every voice that made itself known back then. He couldn’t distinguish when someone spoke in the same language he knew and when the hall translated it for him.

  Except none in three continents that had begun learning the name Anaphol knows he speaks more than one language.

  Inri Plora said, “Didn’t you wonder why you got exhausted so fast in the hall? Why did you faint?” Her tilting towards Bulwark’s headless preserved body, Irni however turned to face him.

  Naph grabbed on the bottom seams of his neon jacket. The zip open. She did not wait for an answer.

  She turned to face Bulwark. “Why is she headless?” Inri had multiple questions she wanted to ask.

  In the castle, people knew to trust the Plora name. Inri was trusted except she asked plenty, whether it was a simple nuisance or a philosophical catastrophe. She queried.

  Anaphol said, “I, uh..I think I fainted because of,” even he was finding it hard to believe given what had happened in his life even before he came to Sevenren, “my worry about the Territory of Sevenren.” He peeked a side-eye at Inri, “Not everyone there deserves to die,” a breath away he added, “for a battle they never had the choice to…”

  Anaphol quieted down to a lull.

  Inri nudged Bulwark’s thigh. “Hmm, rigor mortis still hasn’t even been considered by the body.”

  “Bulwark’s headless because I sliced it off and gave it away.” Naph could tell apart the bubbles in his saliva.

  Inri took note with a nod.

  There they stood in silence. No language needed to utter the simple understanding that spread from one single breath.

  Minutes later they were comfortably settled in sofas by the window. Stars shone brilliantly like beads that could never perish.

  Inri sitting across Anaphol while Anaphol’s right had a peripheral view of Bulwark’s feet.

  Naph felt sounds of tongue clicks against the roof of his mouth. His palms rubbed against itself.

  The wide double doors opened.

  Two maids and a manservant stepped through. All three conversing in a language Naph couldn’t fathom. To him, it seemed to be quite different in structure than what Inri had spoken.

  Inri spoke to those three in the same language, “Ah, dinner’s ready I hope? What’s on the menu?”

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  Anaphol hearing a small sequence of sounds considered dismantling it. “Hmm.” Within he thought, ‘is that ever been done even?’

  If he had asked this question, Inri would have told him that Tarna has quite the history with decoding languages. He would have then asked what does the word decoding means. And that’s how that conversation would have ended, except he did not ask. Never touching the genocidal history of Tarna.

  Why? All because the events that had happened in his life were quite literally reintroducing themselves in his mind.

  Inri turned to him and said in the lone language of Tarna he knows, “Are you using some cata?”

  Naph confused, “Hmm? I-I don’t think I am?”

  She nodded, “I felt so because, hmm, let me think…my cata immersion felt a foreign cata moving against it.”

  The three servants brought the cart they were pushing near Anaphol and Inri.

  The maid with open violet-black hair said in a particular language native to the smaller inland ocean’s archipelago. “Duchess Inri, which desert will you like to have first today?” The other maid with fairer complexion than her and the manservant gave her an estranged look.

  Since except Inri no one else there could understand her.

  What was ever more impossible part of that language was the fact that it has phoneme undetectable by normal human ears. This language utterly requires ears that could hear more than the physicality they are developed for. The natives do not rely on that since they learn the required lesio purely by existing on those islands.

  With a sweetly soothing laugh, Inri said in English. “Oh, please, Matrona.” The smile never leaving her lips as her head tilted to left. “I am a duchess only in name. I have not earned it like my ancestor Plora.”

  She caught the trace of defeat and confusion in Naph and weird mix of apprehension in the new manservant from Fiarno. The other maid had nostalgia running in her blood.

  “Why don’t we let the newcomer decide the dessert? And not desert, Matrona.”

  Naph only knew English out of all the languages spoken in the last one day and yet he did not know that it was called that only on the Island of Monite. The rest of Tarna had a different name for it.

  Inri’s palm with her fingers stretched pointed at Naph and she asked him. “What will you like to eat as sweet Anaphol? I don’t think I ever heard your surname.” She scratched lightly in a split around her left eyebrow. “What is it?”

  Anaphol held his silence, his gaze landing among the stars of Jhorime. He recognized a few.

  Yet, there were many he didn’t.

  Inri followed his gaze. Looking out she quoted, “Once the night is known, even the sun cannot dissuade a soul back to loving it.”

  Matrona ignoring the conversation between Anaphol and Inri began setting a table. First, she drew the table up from the ground. Immediately Naph’s eyes went from mesmerized by the stars to frightened disbelief that someone could pull out a table that literally is a giant stone block.

  Inri said to no one in particular. “I wonder what does the moon in Tarna looks?” With a playing smile, she further wondered, “I have only seen illusions of the moons of Irka continent. But then what of Regda? It is so close to Tarna.”

  Anaphol filing Inri’s rant to ask about later, blurted out. “Uh, is everyone here stronger than…uh, us? No, people like me?” The word human literally slipped out of his memory back into the depth it was summoned from. Somehow it wasn’t odd to him, Inri infact even gave a small cough of laughter.

  Remembering something she hadn’t addressed she told him bluntly, “Ah, I forgot. The reason you fainted is simply because of your Dream cata mind.” Naph’s gaze went up back to Inri as she continued, “So, the grand hall, the Emperor Stelart Keyriftrian, and many others I don’t know were involved in keeping you alive helped you passively in getting translated conversations there.”

  “Dream cata mind?”

  Inri nodded, “Yes, it is the most basic amount of cata any human has. You ended up expunging it, so you collapsed.” She shrugged and said, “Could have died, yet,” her lips quivered a split moment, “that won’t have been the worst.”