Chapter 25: All for Nothing or Something
K set Kagu on the tv console before heading inside to change out of his jumpsuit.
"Rerun every data log of when we in Nythera." He said had said to her before storming off.
Kagu groaned and pulled her plush gaming chair, summoning her holograms. Each holding entries from their little trip.
"He makes me follow him to a planet we thought was inhabited by anything other than wildlife because a woman kept telling him to retrieve her body. Now he’s pissed because he didn’t find any body and I warned him! I warned him!" She grumbled as she examined a thermal image.
...
K stood motionless beneath the cold shower. His jumpsuit discarded onto the floor soaking up the water that flowed from him.
He stared at his reflection.
"..."
An angry man stared back
His left eye shimmering gold as he held onto the cold tiled wall.
"Shira"
He called out but his only response was water hitting the bathroom floor.
"For fuck’s sake if you can hear me, I need you to tell me what the fuck is going on!"
His fist slammed into the wall. Blood coating his fingers and broken tiles peeking out between his flesh,
"I freed you...I died trying and I freed you, so why?"
Water rolled down his face, carrying away sweat and the last traces of blood.
If only there was a way to confirm if he had truly done it.
The System!
He had received a quest notification as soon as he landed on Nythera. About finding the Sacrilege of the Oracle, which is Shira.
He shut his eyes in concentration trying to summon the system but nothing.
"Wait..."
Speaking of which, when he found Shira’s true form. He should have gotten a notification saying the quest was complete. Had he missed it when he suffered a cardiac arrest?
Or during the moments he was unconscious in that tree house?
With a growl, he shut the shower off.
He tried again.
Still nothing.
Again.
And again.
Frustrated, he wrapped himself in a clean towel while using another to dry off his damp hair and headed to the living room where Kagu was.
"I’ve rerun all my data logs as you asked and my results are still the sa—oh shix pahk(six pack)!"
K shot her a glare before tossing the towel he was using to dry his hair. "So?"
She cleared her throat. "Yes, the results are still the same."
"That’s not possible."
"You know what I think is possible, K?" She dismissed the floating tabs. "I think it’s possible you were having vivid hallucinations most likely caused from head trauma. Look at your eye, K. You’re not mentally sound at the moment."
"I am! You saw that mimic! You saw it for yourself!"
"The mimic is being bars, being tested on and placed under heavy security and interrogation." Kagu ran her hands through her hair. "You were talking to yourself on several occasions"
"I was talking to Shira."
"Shira? K... Shira rather Oni’Ik Shira was a mythological goddess in Vashki mythology. The scriptures portrayed her as the goddess of love and fertility commonly worshipped by the Miwas of the Vashki species. Why would she be in contact with you when we have the doctor?" She folded her arms as she continued."Why isn’t she coming in contact with her own kind? With the one that spent half of his life span serving her?"
"I don’t know, Kagu."
"So it wasn’t her. Whatever you were seeing wasn’t real. Look at what happened at Nythera!"
K ran his hands through his hair, pulling it at its ends. "It’s real."
"It’s not , K."
"Then explain the planet we traveled to! You heard them talk about her! I fucking saw her! I know what I saw!"
"Did they tell you who the ’Fallen Star’ really was...did they?"
He blinked.
Kagu was right.
They did mention a ’Fallen Star’ but they never really told him what it really was. Only how they had come to protect it.
"...fuck."
"If you want answers to what lead us to that planet, it’s best if we ask my master himself."
"You think he’ll come out straight?"
"It’s worth trying..."
"I heard him..."
K leaned back into the chair. "I heard him when I was in that treehouse...in so much pain"
"What?"
"Something about coveting a beast and having a child."
"A beast?"
"Yea—"
The doorbell chimed.
The two exchanged glances.
"Expecting someone?"
"You co-own the house, not me."
"Check who it is."
"You go check!"
K grumbled and made his way to the door.
"Who is it?" He called out.
"A pretty lady whose ribs you busted a few days ago."
Lex.
The door opened with a sharp clank.
Lex stood, arms crossed and feet tapping the stone porch. Beside her was a now decently dressed Iniko in a jumpsuit that couldn’t go further than her chest area.
"Heard you escorted the expedition team...and rescued a peculiar human."
She pushed past him and made herself comfortable on the sofa.
"K, they made me wear this! It’s so constricting! I can barely move and there’s no where to keep my Ulu. The clothes on your planet are so strange!"
It’s the clothes on yours that are strange!
K swallowed his retort resorting to patting her head instead, "you’ll get used to it."
"So close already?"
Lex crossed her legs as she waved at Kagu.
"We’re not close."
"Oh yeah, you should have seen her looking for you the moment she was out of Thira’s sights. You’d think she heard news of you dying in a ditch flat on your balls."
K felt his eyebrow twitch. "It’s good to have you back..."
She hummed in agreement. "Is that all?"
"I’m sorry. I went overboard, you were just doing your duties."
"No biggie, all is forgiven. So, what’s the gathering all about? I didn’t know you’re all buddy with big girl Kagu here."
"See K, learn! See how she appreciates my presence and respects me?"
Kagu puffed her chest smugly. "Hmph!"
"Say, why don’t you introduce your new friend to me? She was too fidgety and won’t say a word if I didn’t bring her to you"
"Lex, this is Iniko," he pointed at his colleague. "Iniko this is Lex, H squad’s commander." He pointed at Iniko.
Her fiery eyes lit up as she rushed to Lex’s side.
"A woman-warrior! But where is your efun?"
"My what now?"
"That’s right! Iniko, why don’t you tell us about your planet and your people." Kagu switched to English, opening a new hologram panel to document.
"Ah~where do I start from?"
"Let’s start with your weapon. Your Ulu."
"The Ulu is forged from a spring deep in our village. We called the material we get it from Sylarite, it’s continuously melted down at very high temperatures before it is poured into the spring." She pulled out her Ulu, which somehow was not a flat round circle. "The spring brings it to life and granted to its owner, who will wield it til the day they return to the dust."
"Well that was grim." Lex tucked her hair behind her ears. "So you just throw that disk around and it kills people?"
Iniko shook her head.
"The spring brings the Ulu to life."
The disk in her hand shook and split into unequal halves before thickening and forming two staffs. One long, the other short.
"Holy shit!"
The redhead exclaimed. Her face frozen in shock.
"Impressive." Kagu wrote something down. "Now, you mentioned something called ’efun’. What is that? And why did you ask why Lex didn’t have one?"
"In Nythera—"
"Nythera?"
Shit.
K sucked his teeth at the slip up. He should have told her beforehand not to mention the actual name of her home planet.
"I meant Phythena..." she corrected.
"Oh, sounds similar to the expedition-marked planet Nythera."
"Is that so?"
"Please carry on, Iniko."
"Yes. Efun, is the marking on my body. It’s the ashes of our ancestors burnt down and refined then mixed with our spring water to form ink which is then drawn on our skin."
"Is your Efun alive?"
She smiled and reached for the zipper of her jumpsuit. "It’s best I show you."
Iniko pulled the zipper of her jumpsuit down just enough to expose her shoulder and back.
K had seen the markings before.
He hadn’t looked at them.
Gold traced across her obsidian skin in delicate, branching lines that reminded him of veins carrying molten sunlight like blood. Some curled into intricate spirals, others spread like the roots of an ancient tree beneath the earth. Tiny geometric sigils bloomed where the lines met, each one impossibly symmetrical, as though they had been carved by nature rather than painted by hand.
Above her skin surface, the gold pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
Like a faint heartbeat.
The light flowed through the markings in gentle waves, gathering around her sternum before branching outward again across her shoulders, down her arms and disappearing beneath the fabric of her clothing.
It wasn’t merely ink.
It was alive just as she had said.
Kagu nodded and continued typing away.
"And the reason I asked is because every woman on my planet has one, especially warrior-women."
Iniko pulled her clothes back on answering a few more of Kagu’s questions.
Lex got called back to base, leaving Iniko to them.
"I like your new friend." She had said before heading out.
Once it was just them in the room. K faced Iniko,
"This spring you speak of, where was it?"
