“In order to understand the context of this, you need to know that my… people, in our homeland, are something between mercenaries and soldiers,” I began. “For my whole life, my homeland was in a state of civil war, in a sense. That meant that there was always work for us because our purpose was killing. For as long as I can remember, I got orders from a superior, an operator, and I followed them. That was my job, and it was very simple. I didn’t have to think much about it, I just did it.”

“So I fought for a long time. I fought in just about every kind of terrain you can imagine, except maybe snow or desert. I used knives, spears, sticks, explosives, and plenty of weapons your people don’t have names for and have never seen. It went on and on just like it always had, until one day it didn’t. Our enemy was running out of people to throw at us, we had quite literally killed them down to their last few hundred men.”

“So I got sent out on a mission, I did it like usual, then I came back to my… hometown, and they told me that they didn’t need me anymore,” I sighed, looking down. “I accepted it, it didn’t bother me at all. They ordered me to go home, so I went home. I just… laid down to sleep in my bed like I had thousands of times before, and it didn’t really hit me until I was just about to fall asleep that I didn’t have anything to do. My purpose in life was just gone, like that.”

“That night, I had a dream,” I said, looking back up at Vaozey and Koyl. “But, it wasn’t a dream, not really. It’s hard to explain the difference to you, I know it in my own language, but you don’t have the concepts or words to understand it as it is. You could think of it more like a vision, but even that isn’t quite right. This wasn’t borne of an altered state of mind, there was no irrationality to it at all, it was real. At least, it was indistinguishable from reality and designed to communicate information and be remembered.”

“In this dream, a voice called out to me. It told me that it had a mission for me, and it showed me the noypeyyoyjh,” I said, my tone completely level and serious. “It told me that the noypeyyoyjh was in its territory, that it was broken, and that my mission was to fix it. I asked a few questions, but it dodged all of them and just told me that I would be able to do it and that it was confident in my ability to succeed. I… eventually accepted the proposition because I had nothing else to do, and because… I don’t know how to explain this in any other way, but if I didn’t accept I knew I would be… dead.”

“Your people were planning to kill you?” Koyl asked, and only then did I realize that I was giving out more information than I had initially intended to. I can’t really get out of this now, I sighed, Might as well just answer him.

“When we are of no use anymore, there is no reason to keep us alive,” I replied. “After I accepted the mission from the voice, I woke up naked on the shore of Awsriyah island. I have no idea how I got there, I knew nothing of the land I was in, I didn’t even know if there were people in it. From there, Koyl, I’m pretty sure you know the rest.” By the time I finished the story, the expressions of Koyl and Vaozey were just as severe as my own. To my relief, there wasn’t any doubt in their faces, just indications of troubled thought. At least I didn’t accidentally mention the new body too, I thought.

“And you’re sure you don’t know where your homeland is on a map?” Koyl asked.

“I would not be able to point to it on a map, no,” I replied, deliberately lying through clever phrasing to avoid doing so directly.

“These weapons we don’t have names for,” Vaozey said. “Those are the ones from your story that one time, right? The guhnz.”

“Not just those, but yes,” I confirmed.

“What other kinds of weapons besides those have you used, then?” Koyl asked. “Are there any we could make here?”

“Not in a short time,” I said.

“But what-” Koyl began. Fine, you really want to know? I thought, inexplicably feeling a spurt of anger.

“Weapons that can destroy the part of your body that tells it what its form is so that it slowly falls apart,” I rattled off. “Weapons that create clouds of gas that kill in seconds if they so much as make contact with skin. Weapons that can strike from so far away that it is physically impossible to see the target when they are fired due to the curvature of the world. Weapons that create invisible rays of energy that can instantly destroy a target’s brain inside their skull. Weapons that shoot arrows that can seek their targets so that they never miss. Weapons that take the form of sicknesses that can wipe out cities on their own. Need I go on?”

“No,” Koyl muttered. “No, I think that’s enough. Yuwniht, I hate to ask this, but do you think you could… wait out back for a little while?”

“Why?” I asked.

“I think Vaozey and I need to talk for a few minutes,” Koyl said.

“Um, alright,” Vaozey said, sounding surprised. “I think there are a few things I’d like to discuss with the rich boy as well, so…” The way she let the sentence hang made it clear that Vaozey was confused by Koyl’s request, but willing to go along with it.

“So yes, if you could give us some privacy, just for a few minutes…” Koyl said, also not really finishing his sentence, but instead making a placating gesture with his hand. What do they need to talk about that I’m not supposed to hear? I asked myself, notions of paranoia and suspicion flooding my mind.

“Why do I need to leave?” I asked.

“I don’t want to risk offending you by accident,” Koyl answered.

“You know that isn’t a possibility,” I countered.

“In this case, it is,” Koyl insisted. “Listen, I believe your story, and I will help you, but I’d prefer it if you would let me discuss what I need to discuss with Vaozey in private, alright?”

“I don’t want to have to threaten you, but I don’t take kindly to betrayal,” I reminded him.

“I know,” Koyl said. I glanced over at Vaozey and we made eye contact for a moment, then I looked back at Koyl.

“Fine then,” I said. “I’ll be outside.”

The backyard behind the building was small, but fenced in, so there wasn’t any chance that the guards would see me. The night was young, and the ocean air made it pleasantly cool, so I decided to just sit on an empty barrel nearby while I waited. The city was remarkably quiet, probably owing to the fact that the guards were harassing anyone acting out, and so I could hear the muffled voices of Koyl and Vaozey through the closed window shutters. Paranoia got the better of me and, using magic, I climbed my way into a position where I could listen in on their conversation.

“…to hear about your mother,” Vaozey said. “Genuinely, you may be an asshole from a family of assholes, but nobody deserves to lose a parent like that.”

“What happened to you?” Koyl asked. “You’re like a totally different person.”

“What, because I feel a bit of sympathy for you?” Vaozey scoffed. “You know what, I take it back then. Grow some leymz and dry your eyes, niyzao. I lost my whole family and I didn’t act this torn up about it.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t appreciate the sentiment, I was just surprised is all,” Koyl sighed. There was quiet for a while, and I could picture the two looking away from each other, even though I couldn’t see them.

“So what is this about?” Vaozey asked. “You should be happy he didn’t just tell you to seyt off.”

“Do you think he’s lying?” Koyl asked back, cutting straight to the chase.

“No,” Vaozey replied immediately.

“Yeah,” Koyl grunted. “The details, everything about it, it’s too accurate to be a lie, at least one he came up with on the spot.”

“So you’re suspecting the same thing I am,” Vaozey said in a low tone. “That’s why you wanted him out of the room, because you’re not sure if he knows you know, or if you’re even supposed to know at all. You’re worried he has orders to kill anyone who finds out and that’s why he’s so secretive.”

“I’m trying to figure out where he might have heard some of that stuff he said,” Koyl sighed. “I want it to be fake, bad as it sounds.”

“You know it’s not,” Vaozey said. “Just look at what he’s done in a few months. Is there anyone, any thing, that could do that besides a genuine ihlzheyv? Gods and spirits, he seytoydh taught me how to use magic. Do you know how many tutors I had? Do you know how much my family spent? Do you know how hard I tried?”

“I can imagine,” Koyl muttered.

“It was nothing to him,” Vaozey continued. “It was just a curiosity, he didn’t ask for payment even after we split off from you. Somehow I managed to use force magic a few days ago too. Do you know how it happened? We were punching each other in the face, and it just worked. I still don’t know how I did it, but it’s not like I haven’t been hit before. The only difference was him.”

“Internal?” Koyl asked.

“My feet were stuck to the ground for half an hour,” Vaozey replied, loudly enough that I could have heard it even if I wasn’t right outside the window.

“Wow,” Koyl grunted, sounding impressed.

“I traveled with him the whole way here,” Vaozey continued. “The things he’s talked about, the stuff he can do, even if I ignored the combat magic it would be unheard of. I’ve seen him draw pictures and letters in the air with light, like something out of a seytoydh bard’s tale from Dahmpiyah. We played games with it. The whole time he was talking to those ants he was drawing out the shit they were writing with magic and then changing it into proper words.”

“How did he even know he could talk to them?” Koyl asked.

“I don’t know,” Vaozey replied. “He was convinced they were just bugs, but then he saw them draw a few shapes and somehow just knew how smart they were right away. I thought maybe they were evil, or some kind of animal servants of Rehv, but he knew they had a mind like we do as soon as he saw the drawings. Or, not really like us, actually. In fact, come to think of it, he even knew the ways they were different from us, but I’m sure he had never spoken to them before then. He just knew.” The pair went quiet, and someone began pacing around the room.

“That gas weapon he just told us about,” Koyl said from a different position than before. “That must have been what he was trying to make in Vehrehr when he gathered all the blue leaf. Did he tell you he killed a bear after we got to the mainland?”

“He might have mentioned it,” Vaozey muttered.

“That was the fourth bear he encountered in around two months,” Koyl said. “He didn’t even know what force magic was when I met him, and before that, he had already encountered one alone and survived. I was still half-convinced he was lying about the bears until he killed the one near Pehrihnk.”

“Wait, you’re telling me he didn’t know force magic when you met him?” Vaozey asked.

“No, he didn’t,” Koyl replied. “I showed him a coin trick my brother taught me and he just figured the rest out in a few hours from seeing it. Two weeks later he was using it to fight Yaavtey.”

“What about the light magic?” Vaozey asked.

“I have no idea where he learned that,” Koyl sighed. “He knew it when he rescued me, but he didn’t know it before that. I think he might have discovered it on his own.”

“It would fit,” Vaozey grunted. “I can’t think of any better proof if him being an ihlzheyv than that, actually.”

“There hasn’t been a real ihlzheyv in centuries though,” Koyl said. “Never even once has there been an ihlzheyv on this continent either, so what could it mean if he is one?”

“You’re asking that like I have an answer,” Vaozey grunted. “We don’t even know who sent him, there’s no way to know what they intended.”

“I was hoping the story would give us clues, or that he would tell us what god talked to him,” Koyl sighed.

“He doesn’t know,” Vaozey replied.

“What makes you think that?” Koyl asked.

“He said once that his homeland had no gods in it,” Vaozey said. “He’s totally ignorant of religion and gods for the most part, and not just ours. He says his language has a word for the kind of ‘dream’ he had, but he doesn’t know that he was describing a divine revelation. If he knew anything about gods, he wouldn’t have acted like he wouldn’t know what he was talking about.”

“No gods?” Koyl scoffed. “I knew he wasn’t religious, but no gods at all? That doesn’t even make any sense.”

“His whole homeland makes no sense, the lack of gods is the least of the worries there,” Vaozey huffed. “I’ve been trying to figure out where the seyt he’s actually from since before we got to Kahvahrniydah and I’ve got nothing. I initially thought it might be somewhere out west, like Iynahfehn, but none of them have the tools or weapons he talks about. It’s like something out of a myth.”

“I remember at least one ihlzheyv had a similar story of a mysterious homeland,” Koyl mumbled. “I think it was the third one in K’krowd, do you know-”

“I’ve heard of her,” Vaozey said. “Didn’t they eventually figure out she was from S’tahng or something after she died because of her journal?”

“Still, nobody knows how she ended up in K’krowd,” Koyl said. “There was no contact between the two countries back then, we hadn’t even discovered the other continents. Maybe his situation is similar, and a god transported him here from an undiscovered place.”

“A lost continent?” Vaozey asked. “That’s not very likely as far as I know.”

“Do you have a better explanation?” Koyl asked back. “If his people knew about us, they’d be ruling us or they’d have wiped us out entirely. Sicknesses that can kill entire cities? Weapons that can strike over the horizon? They wouldn’t even have to set foot on shore, they could just launch some corpses from their ships as they passed by.”

“Maybe they don’t have ships that can cross the ocean,” Vaozey shrugged. “The gods taught us how to make sturdy ships. If they don’t have gods, maybe they never figured it out.” Neither of them said anything for a little while.

“He didn’t know how to use a sword either,” Koyl recalled. “He said he wasn’t trained to use them, but he was trained to use all kinds of other weapons. Maybe there’s something to that, maybe his people don’t have any godly knowledge. Maybe they only have things they discovered on their own.”

“But then why would a god take a godless man and turn him into an ihlzheyv?” Vaozey asked, somewhat rhetorically. “What makes him worthy, over everyone else?”

“Loyalty, maybe,” Koyl proposed.

“Loyalty,” Vaozey scoffed derisively. “He was a slave and a child soldier. He’s not loyal for any reason, he’s loyal because he doesn’t even realize that disloyalty is an option. I’ve seen it before, people who get beaten enough just stay down after a while.”

“A child soldier?” Koyl asked, stopping his pacing.

“When he said he was fighting for his whole life, he meant it,” Vaozey explained. “His people aren’t just soldiers or mercs, they’re raised to be soldiers and mercs and thrown into fights as soon as they’re old enough to kill each other. He wasn’t paid or rewarded, he just had to do it or they’d kill him. That’s why it didn’t surprise me when he said they were going to kill him once the war was over.”

“That explains a lot,” Koyl sighed. “He once told me that his people get over the mental shock of battle in two weeks or less. I’m guessing anyone who can’t is probably killed.”

“Two weeks sounds normal to me,” Vaozey said, and I could tell she shrugged from the way her voice lilted.

“You’re not normal, that’s why,” Koyl countered, and she chuckled to herself.

“Still, that’s exactly what I’d expect from him,” Vaozey said. “He’s like someone’s idea of a warrior made into flesh, not a real person who became a warrior. There are just… pieces that are missing, pieces a person should have, but a warrior has no need for. Maybe that’s why he was chosen, maybe he embodies a divine archetype.”

“So then you think it was Roydlow who sent him,” Koyl guessed.

“It seems the most likely, but he’s so dishonorable,” Vaozey replied. “You would think Roydlow, of all gods, would select someone with good morals and an honorable heart. It’s hard to even talk Yuwniht out of looting the dead, he might as well be an animal at times.”

“So then who else are you thinking of?” Koyl asked. “It’s not any of the peaceful gods, that’s for sure. It could be Gaypao’eyv, but-”

“Are you insane?” Vaozey hissed. “We shouldn’t even be talking about this here, but to mention her name like that outside of a temple-”

“That’s what I was about to add,” Koyl responded. “If it was her, we’d all be dead, probably from one of those sickness weapons he was talking about.”

“Does it even matter what god sent him?” Vaozey asked. “Think about it: No matter who it was, whatever he’s about to do at the noypeyyoyjh is going to seyt the Rehvites harder than a shehplao werm. The gods aren’t always considerate of human affairs, but they’re not evil. If a god sent him here, they sent him to repel Rehv from this land, that’s a certainty.”

“But what if it was Rehv?” Koyl proposed. “That’s the second half of the reason I wanted to get some privacy. What if, and don’t discount it right away, the god who sent him was Rehv?” Again, a moment of silence.

“To kill his own people?” Vaozey finally asked, sounding doubtful.

“You know more about their book than I do, but even I know that Rehv is a scheming sort of god,” Koyl explained. “Yuwniht is magically gifted, more than anyone I’ve ever heard of and that includes bards’ tales. Rehv is supposed to be a god who loves magic and doesn’t have much in the way of honor if the way his ngaazmayjh followers act is any indication.”

“But the Rehvites want to stop him,” Vaozey countered. “They’re his enemies. He’s a seytoydh jhaoyeyl according to them.”

“I don’t want to think he’s deceiving us on purpose, but as you said: He’s ignorant of gods,” Koyl said, and I heard someone sit down in a chair. “Maybe Rehv selected him because of his ignorance and his lack of morals, then gifted him with magic when he sent him here. Maybe that’s why they want to capture him, not kill him. Maybe this whole thing is part of some insane plan, and we’re all being deceived.”

“You didn’t just think of this now,” Vaozey said.

“No, I didn’t,” Koyl admitted. “After he got his arm back, that’s when I suspected it. Everything just slid into place. He might be a Rehvite and not even know it. Did you know that light magic is in the book of Rehv? They call it the light of Vowzeysay.”

“I refuse to seytoydh believe that a Rehvite would-” Vaozey began to shout.

“What about that Mawyeyz guy you just told me about?” Koyl interrupted. “He was a Rehvite, wasn’t he? Maybe Rehv sent him to correct his followers because what Mawyeyz said was true, and they’re all heretics.” Someone slammed something, probably Vaozey slamming the table with her hand.

“I don’t give a shit who sent him,” she growled. “He’s the best bet to shove a stake through the heart of those nopytz and if he backstabs us, I’ll kill him myself.”

“Do you really think you can, if it comes to that?” Koyl asked calmly. Vaozey slapped the table two more times, then I heard someone stomp out of the room and begin descending the stairs. Hurriedly, I descended the wall, jumping to the ground as soon as I was close enough to not break my ankles. A few seconds later, Vaozey shoved the door to the backyard open and stormed out, looked around, then strode right up to me.

“Are you a seytoydh Rehvite?” she demanded.

“No,” I replied. “Why would you even ask that?” Vaozey’s eyes, filled with anger but also a hint of another emotion I didn’t recognize, darted back and forth between mine for a second or two before she finally exhaled and stepped back.

“I didn’t think so, but good,” she growled, turning around and stomping back into the building.

“Can I come back in now?” I called out, and I heard Koyl murmur something before the window shutters above me opened.

“Yeah,” Koyl sighed. “It’s getting late anyway, let me show you where the beds are.”