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The Offering - Chapter 11

A “One Thousand and One Nights”-inspired story in which you are chosen as one of the unlucky offerings sent to whet the appetites of the King of the World, Nerona Imu...only on the night you are bound to him, you prevent your untimely demise by telling him stories until the sun rises.

🦋 Nerona Imu/Reader | Inspired by "One Thousand & One Nights"

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Chapter 11: The First Glimpse

When you wake, dreams cling to the edges of your consciousness like night chasing the hem of sunrise. It’s difficult to dispel the slept-spun images at first. You had dreamt of the arbor where red eyes lurked in wisteria-cloistered shadow. Hands even redder with blood reached for you; eyes transformed from Edmund’s to Imu’s and back again in the flap of a butterfly’s wings. You think you see winged things pulsing in the canopy above your enormous bed, but then you blink, and the burning in the nearby hearth chases them away.

You are alone.

You have been alone for months.

Loneliness might be your greatest foe within the walls of Pangea Castle, though that has not always been the case. It’s ironic, really: The castle provided a cure for your lifelong loneliness in the form of the other Offerings, only for you to sicken once again when that cure was ripped away in a moment of unwanted choosing.

You want to see the other Offerings. You want to know how they have been faring without you by their side. The desperate desire claws at your heart every minute of every day, digging out a painful home below your ribs with sharp, serrated teeth. It’s almost a relief when Saturn appears at your door shortly after you rise in the middle of the afternoon…though only almost. You are still not sure what to make of Saturn. Another month has passed and you are still alive, but by the same token, you had only just run from King Imu without permission the night before. Was Saturn simply here for your promised meeting, or had he come to chastise you for fleeing from the King of the World without permission?

But Saturn voices no reprimands. He greets you calmly and sits in his customary seat by the fireplace with hands clasped around his cane. He is as wizened as usual. Nothing ever seems to change in the heart of Pangea Castle.

Nothing, perhaps, save you.

“Survived another month, I see.” Saturn appraises you coolly, an alchemist cataloging raw material. “What do you want this time?”

You relax somewhat. “I would ask for two favors of you today.”

“Two? Last time you said it would only be one.”

“My needs have evolved.” Your spine lengths, confidence derived through perfect posture. “My first request is this: I would like to see the other Offerings.”

Saturn says, “Ah.” He shakes his head. “No.”

“No?”

“No.”

Your fists clench in the hem of your clothes. “But why?”

“You are not permitted to return to the Waiting Room,” he says. “In fact, you are not permitted to leave the interior section of Pangea Castle. It is the Great One’s private residence, and the chosen Offering must remain within its boundaries.”

Recalling the presence of the guards in nearby hallways, you say, “You took me outside those boundaries when you showed me how the brand on my neck holds my tongue, did you not?”

“An excursion the Great One himself permitted in order to illustrate the covenant mark’s abilities. I would not take you any further than that without his express permission.”

You process this. A solution presents itself. You open your mouth.

“Before you endanger both our lives by suggesting I take you to the Waiting Room in secret,” Saturn remarks dryly, “you should know that I cannot, and even more importantly, that I will not. And you would do well to refrain from sneaking there, yourself.”

“But if he never found out — ”

“The Great One would find out.”

“I wouldn’t tell him.”

“You wouldn’t have to.” His mouth thins into a hard line. “You are bound to the Great One. The brand on your neck marks you as his. If you venture beyond the boundaries of his quarters without his permission, he will know.”

“How?” you ask, because how could you not?

Saturn stares at you for a time. He is measuring something. Likely pros and cons, and possibly your own temperament. Eventually his gaze settles both upon you and into surety, though what he has decided is beyond your ken.

“He can feel you.” A chill cascades down your spine at these words, syllables spoken in a rumbling murmur that resonates with the taste of hard truth. “Wherever you go, no matter how far you travel, the Great One will feel your presence. If you run, he will catch you. If you hide, he will find you. Secrecy is impossible so long as you bear his mark.” A single finger lifts from Saturn’s cane. It points squarely in your direction. “And he ensured that you would never be able to remove it when he placed it on your nape.”

Saturn’s admittance is two things: a revelation and a warning. The former was one matter, but the latter but was a portent Saturn needn’t have delivered. Running has never been an option for you — neither in practice nor in theory. Even if you found some clandestine way to leave Pangea Castle, you had long ago deduced that someone like Imu must have ample material resources at his disposal to find someone no matter how far they fled. But even beyond that practical obstacle, leaving the other Offerings behind was simply out of the question. You had never given the idea much thought as a result.

And besides, where would you go? Your own family had given you up. Even if they had had no choice but to do so, you held little desire to return to that place of isolation and loneliness. Your home country would be the first place Imu would look for you, which would endanger not only yourself, but your entire nation. You were not interested in shouldering a guilt so large.

But even though you had never truly considered running for these reasons, the realization that running was utterly impossible — for reasons well outside your control — was disheartening in ways unexpected. It was another choice taken from you when you had few to begin with.

As for Saturn’s other piece of information…that was more interesting. The brand possessed another magical property, one of which you had not been aware, and one that begged many additional questions. You think quickly, reexamining your situation in the light of new discovery.

“The brand prevents me from speaking of King Imu to anyone else. Through it, he can feel my presence,” you repeat aloud. “What else can it do?”

Saturn harrumphs, mustache twitching. “These are miraculous feats already. Need the brand do more?”

“In fairy tales, magic manifests in threes,” you say (as much in jest as in sincerity). “Preventing me from breaking secrets or traveling without his knowledge is impressive, to be sure, but I imagine they are but a small portion of the king’s abilities.” Flattery feels in order; you duck your chin, demure. “If he has power enough to command the World Government in secret, surely he is capable of even greater acts than monitoring a powerless Offering like me.”

Saturn isn’t fooled by your act. “For all your talk of magic, you have the mind of a scientist,” he says with grudging…not admiration, but something close. “Forming hypotheses. Looking for variables. Drawing abstract inferences from concrete information. An admirable quality, if you were not a mere insect from the Lower World.”

You force a smile. “Even insects may rise, should they grow wings.”

Saturn favors you for a time in silence introspective. You hold your head high, polite but unyielding beneath the weight of his scrutiny. You aren’t unreasonably afraid of him, though perhaps you ought to be. Only one being within these walls may harm an Offering, and that being isn’t Saint Saturn.

Eventually he clears his throat. His hands shift atop his cane, lifting and resettling into craggy-skinned topography.

“The last time we spoke,” says Saturn, “I told you I would ask a favor of you, too, should you live to meet me again. Now here you are, very much alive.”

“Should it be within my power to grant a favor,” you say, “then name it.”

Sharp eyes bore into yours. “Tell me honestly: How have you been sleeping?”

“That is the favor?” you ask, unable to keep incredulity off your face. “To know how I’ve been sleeping?”

“You misunderstand.” He tuts. “The favor is to provide me with unfiltered information.”

“For what purpose?”

“That is not for you to know.”

“Why should I comply with your wishes when you cannot grant my favor in return?”

He shrugs. “You said you had two favors to ask of me. Perhaps I can grant the other.”

“Right.” You think on the subject for a moment before admitting: “I have been sleeping well enough, under the circumstances. Although…”

“Although?”

“I am troubled by nightmares.” A wry laugh climbs up your throat. “Though perhaps it would be stranger if I were not.”

“Quite.” He offers you no sympathy. “And your appetite?”

You shrug. “I eat when hungry.”

“And your health overall?”

“Everything seems in good working order.” You favor him with an assessing stare of your own. “The fact that you’re asking me these questions is telling, however.”

But he is a closed book, and his face reveals nothing when he asks, “What does it tell you?”

“That you expect something to be amiss. I would ask you to tell me what symptoms I should look for, but I suspect your scientific mind believes that would bias the results of your inquiry.”

“You are correct.” He pauses for a moment. Debates. Reaches some conclusion to which you are not privy. “The Great One forms covenants with some regularity. The particular one upon your neck has been forged with many Offerings over the course of his long life, but only one has born it for longer than a single night.”

Your skin, specifically that upon your neck, crawls. Perhaps unnecessarily, you whisper: “Me.”

“You,” Saint Saturn confirms. He looks less perturbed than you feel. “Perhaps there is more to the covenant upon your neck than I am aware. Perhaps there isn’t. I have little data from which to draw conclusions or make comparisons. Time will tell what else it is capable of.” He taps his cane, once, upon the floor. “Keep me apprised, won’t you?”

“I will.”

Perhaps he has softened to your compliance and good behavior, because he taps his cane upon the ground a second time.

“Returning to your first request,” he says. “I am not a fool who would needlessly risk the Great One’s wrath. If you wish to travel further than the boundaries of his quarters, you will need to ask your master for his permission. While he is unlikely to grant it, the request itself should not anger him.” His face lowers, gaze falling into shadow. “Not if you’re smart about making such a request, at least.”

“Thank you for your counsel.” You reach into your robe and pull forth an envelope. “Here.”

“A letter? Surely you know I cannot deliver it to your family.”

“It is for the other Offerings,” you say. “I expected you to refrain from granting my original favor, so I made appropriate contingencies.”

His chest hitches — a smothered laugh, you think — and he tucks the letter into his coat. “I will read it first, of course, and determine if it is suitable for delivery.”

“Of course.” You attempt a winning smile. “I made no mention of my most magnanimous host, indirect or otherwise, if that is of particular concern.”

“It is, and it isn’t. Your word hardly matters when that covenant provides all the assurances I need.” Saturn pitches forward in a precursor to standing. “Now, if that is all your second favor entails — ”

“That was not the second favor. It was merely an addendum to the first.”

His lips twist. “You enjoy a technicality. Noted,” Saturn mutters as he sinks back into his chair. “But if this is not the second favor, then what, pray tell, is?”

“Should King Imu kill me, ensure my body is delivered to the Waiting Room as the bodies of other slain Offerings have been delivered in the past.”

Fire crackles in the hearth. It places grim sparks in Saturn’s eyes even as it casts his wrinkled face into shadow. He says nothing for a time. Dark eyes crawl over you in a long, slow pass.

“Do you expect you will be killed, soon?” Saturn asks, tone lower than before.

“No. (You do not if you are lying.) “But I would like assurances just the same.” You swallow, mouth dry. “In the event my corpse is not fit for delivery, I would ask you to confer to the others the news of my demise. That is the favor I seek.”

He nods once, twice, three times. “That much, I can do.” He stands at last, uninterrupted. “I shall see you in another month, provided you survive.”

When the door shuts behind him, you crawl back into bed. Your second request to Saturn had been an insurance policy, of a sort, and it had exhausted you to voice it. But if you had truly angered the King of the World with your impertinence, it was a precaution you needed to take.

Although you had fled from Imu on pure instinct, rational thought had nipped your heels the moment you entered the halls outside the Flower Room. You had already penned the letter to the other Offerings in your head before you made it back to your quarters and committed your words to paper. Knowing you would need to entrust its delivery to Saint Saturn and that he would no doubt read it, you had kept your missive brief and impersonal…on the surface, at any rate. You remembered each word you wrote because you had agonized over each and every one:

“My friends,” you’d written. “I am alive and well, as is the hope I carry with me. It is my dearest wish that hope should remain alive and well in your hearts, too, for my story is not over. Neither, therefore, is yours. Though I am pinned in place as a butterfly under glass, my wings still beat. Listen for the sound of them in the long nights spent under the stars of Mary Geoise. Every daybreak I speak the words you taught me. In their recitation, we are as one.

Today, we are alive.

Today, we have survived.

Today, we saw the sun rise.

And for today, that is enough.”

You had penned your name beneath a promise to write them again, should you be afforded the opportunity to do so. To outsiders, this message would appear little more than a nicety meant to comfort. This is by your design. There is more to your words than meets the eye, but only the eyes of the Offerings would be able to discern your true intentions.

You only hope Saturn would keep his word and deliver the letter as instructed.

Speaking of Saturn: He had been rather talkative today. As you curl up in your bed, his words about the brand creep into your head and burrow there as snugly as you burrow into the blankets.

What did he mean, Imu could feel your presence though the covenant brand? How was that possible?

And if such a thing were possible, what else was it capable of?

Even if the details of the mark’s nature are sparse, you understand what this means from a holistic standpoint: You cannot run. No matter where you go, Imu can find you. It's a chilling thought, but you've long ago made peace with the idea that your life is not what hangs in the balance here. The other Offerings, however, might yet be saved. So long as they go free, you will be content with whatever fate befalls you.

They do not wear marks. There is hope for them yet.

But still the idea of the brand nags at you. You need to understand what it means and what it does, and if it actually does anything more than connect you to Imu in some insidious way you do not yet comprehend.

Still burrowed under the blankets, you muster your courage and investigate the mark with your fingertips. You have done this a number of times since receiving the mark in the painful ceremony that bound you to King Imu. At first the skin on your neck had been upraised, gnarled like an old scar, but over time it smoothed so completely you ceased to find it when you touched the skin upon your nape. It had healed unnaturally quickly. You had stopped trying to touch it in the days that followed, and its presence often went forgotten amid your other, more immediate stressors. Though its rapid healing had unsettled you at first, you had not questioned it at the time. It was simply a relief to forget the brand (and the way in which you had acquired it) at all.

Memories of that night still fill you with dread. You endeavor not to think of it whenever possible.

You have no idea what the mark looks like, of course. You had never quite dared try and see it; it had felt better not to know what had been done to your poor body. But the time for such comforting ignorance had long since passed, so you steel yourself, creep from your bed, and find a small hand mirror in the bathing chamber. Taking it in hand, you stand before the full-length mirror in your bedroom and meet your own eyes in the polished glass.

“You can do this,” you whisper to yourself. “Be brave.”

Knowing a delay might stay your hand entirely, you turn around, lift the hand mirror, and look.

Before that moment, you didn’t quite know what to expect. Some ugly, gnarled thing? A scar? Lines slashed into flesh, violent, a reminder of pain and anguish and uncertainty? All of this seems plausible, given the nature of how the brand had been applied.

What you behold instead through slatted eyes is nothing of the sort.

Upon your nape is a black star forged of steady, simple lines. It appears not unlike a tattoo. You stare at it in confusion before tracing the lines with your fingertip. Though your hand shakes, you feel nothing but smooth skin and little else.

How odd. How very, very odd.

Despite your discomfort, you cast your thoughts back to the night you were bound to Imu. Veiled in shadows and gauzy fabrics and your heavy, embroidered robe, you had screamed in pain when the brand seared to life. You had hardly able to hear him utter words you still did not entirely understand over the sound of your own terror, his carmine eyes like imploding stars in the empty firmament —

You let the mirror drop. You shudder. You can't think of it anymore. It's too terrifying.

Equally terrifying is the idea of asking Imu for anything at all, let alone answers to your questions about the brand. He's given you gifts he deemed you needed: the food, the table, honey, tea, these quarters and your clothes (not to mention your very life). You have never dared ask for anything more. Should you summon your courage tonight and ask him for the answers you seek?

Your branded neck prickles, gooseflesh rising fast, as you think of Imu’s hands reaching for you beneath the shadows of wisteria.

Saturn said to be smart should you ask Imu for any allowances. Considering your actions the night before, the timing of your request is inauspicious. You ran from Imu only that daybreak, and you did not yet know if he had taken offense. You likely would not know until that evening when you joined him once again in the Room of Flowers and beheld his comportment firsthand.

But that was not all. Beneath the blooming wisteria, he had spoken words you still did not quite known how to parse. Gifts, ambition, gratitude…you could not help but think he had been giving you a warning, somehow.

He spoke of insects knowing their place.

Perhaps that was a signal for you to do the same.

Butterflies have no ambition. They take what they are given. They do not ask for gifts.

As you place the hand mirror in a drawer, you decide tonight is not the night for asking favors. It is too soon for such risks. You resolve instead to shelve your questions for the time being and to return to the Room of Flowers in the spirit of a butterfly: obedient and colorful, filling the world with amusement but little else besides.

Tonight, you will simply do your best to survive to see another sunrise.

Should you succeed, there will be other nights for asking favors of your strange and unsettling host.

You enter the Room of Flowers intending to repair the unspoken rules you had broken the night before. Routines, heretofore, have kept you safe. Breaking them could upset that fragile equilibrium and your fragile human body along with it. Perhaps tonight you will pay the price for your impudence…or, perhaps, with the correct amount of penance, you will live to see the dawn.

To your not inconsiderable surprise, everything is as usual when you enter the Room of Flowers. Imu waits for you at the appointed place at the appointed time, and though you walk to him with heart in your throat, he follows the script of the play in which you both star sans any improvisation whatsoever. As always, he escorts you to the table laden with the same good foods you have enjoyed for some months now. The arbor drips with flowers like usual, the butterflies frolic as is their wont, and your heart beats heavy under your ribs as is its frantic custom.

But Imu, seemingly unbothered by your surprise at unsurprising things, merely gestures at the table and recites the lines prescribed to him: “Sit, and begin thine tale anew.”

You play your part with equal adherence to rules unspoken. You tell Imu stories as before. He does not circle you when you draw the current narrative to a close. He plays with his butterflies and listens until the sun rises. No shadows blot out the sun to spell your doom, and no strange hissing mars the pre-dawn quiet.

“Hast thine tale reached its end?” he says when the sky turns rosy through the windows.

“No, King Imu,” you reply. “There is the unresolved matter of the twin princes, parted at birth, who share a larger destiny.”

“Very well.” He turns from you in a flutter of black cloak. “Tomorrow night.”

This time, you wait to be dismissed before returning to your quarters to sleep the day away. But sleep does not come quickly. You lie awake and clutch a pillow to your chest, mind racing faster than a serpent through still waters.

It feels almost impossible to believe, but Imu has let you live without consequence. He has allowed your behavior to slide without comment. He spoke nothing of brief touches under dark wisteria, and he said not a word about butterflies and their role in the grand world order.

It was as if the night before had simply never happened.

You fall asleep baffled.

You wake that afternoon baffled.

You return to the Room of Flowers still baffled.

Confusion dogs your footsteps the next night, and the next, and the next, but Imu provides you no answers that week, or the following, or the one after that.

Six months later, routine unbroken, you are no closer to answers — but Imu has let you live long enough for summer to become winter outside the castle walls, and perhaps that is answer enough.

There is security in routine. There is safety in repetition. You take refuge in both. From predictability you draw reliable comfort and assurances you will not meet an untimely fate just yet.

But while your particular nocturnal routine protects you well enough in body, with it comes not insignificant threat to the mind.

For six months, you woke each afternoon and prepared yourself for the night ahead. You consulted your journals and wrote down new stories, planting seeds whose fruit you would harvest in the nights yet to come. You studied your embroidered robe. You ate the food Imu sent you and drank the tea he bid you imbibe, for every sip and delicious bite was a reminder you still lived. You reported to the Room of Flowers at the appointed time. Then, at dawn, you waited for Imu’s express dismissal before returning to your room.

There, you slept.

When you woke the next afternoon, you did it all again.

Your nights were spent telling tales. Your days were full of sleeping and writing things down. You spent hours racking your memory, filling in gaps, creating new narratives, and weaving them together to support each new story you told. But sometimes the words trickled to you slowly, and to find the stream of them again, you sat and stared into the fireplace or at your own reflection in the silver teapot Imu sent you every morning.

Minds need space to create. They need emptiness, on occasion, where words can find purchase in unoccupied creative soil.

Somewhere along the line, boredom bloomed in these hollow places, too.

At first, the adrenaline of survival carried you through the doldrums of your routine. Though you were enmeshed in habit, every day presented new fears and new opportunities for missteps. But eventually that fear eased (as all things ease with time) and you stowed that blade away. Curiosity took its place. You ignored it as best as you could, at first. You ate what you were given and were grateful for each new dawn you witnessed, and you pretended the urge to experience something, anything else did not exist within you.

But even the most delicious foods lose their appeal when those who eat them are given nothing with which to compare their flavor.

Humans are not meant to live monotonously. They are not meant to be confined to one room, to one garden, and to the single stretch of hallway connecting the two. They are not meant to live in a windowless bedroom with nothing but a fireplace to gaze at between writing in pages of a journal. They are meant to move. They are meant to see. They are meant to experience and to discover.

Unable to do any of that, you had begun to pace. You counted the tiles of the floor and the rafters in the ceiling. You left dishes uneaten and morsels unsavored. You talked to the walls and stared into the fire until your eyes hurt. You wrote nonsense poems on the backs of napkins and burned them in the hearth. You crafted dolls from scraps of cloth and conversed with them before bed. At some point you finished transcribing all of the thoughts in your head and the stories in your heart. At some point you started transcribing them all over again, repeating them them the same way you repeated this routine day in and day out for six entire months.

Routine had protected you until now.

But where your body was safe, your mind was in peril.

It is no wonder, then, that eventually your harried mind sought more.

Six months after being bound to the king of the world, it occurs to you that Imu has ceased to circle you when your nights together draw to a close.

You had noticed previous instances of this phenomenon, of course, but the realization that he had stopped entirely — that rare occasion had turned, somewhere unnoticed along the way, into a routine all its own — was significant. Looking back, you realize he had not stood over you with looming shadows and hissing threat in many months. He stays in view when dawn rends the horizon, and he dismisses you with little more than a murmured word. It is rare to the point of absence, now, to feel that pressure at your back.

To your desperate mind, this absence of threat implies the presence of toleration. This scant assurance is enough to convince you that the bodily risk presented by breaking unspoken routine is preferable to the risk isolation poses on your mind, and so you will take that risk. But you are not stupid, and you will take precautions in your daring. You will not break the portions of the routine you share with Imu. Perhaps if you are discovered breaking other parts, he will afford you some leniency.

You must believe this to be the case, because you cannot stand being trapped in that room for even a moment longer.

You start off slowly. You leave your room during daylight hours and creep along the halls until you find a new stretch of corridor you have never seen before. It is a boring stretch of hallway, but it is new, and with it comes a measure of relief to your harried brain. You bring paper with you, and pens, and a flask of water, too. Hunkering in a corner, you sketch out these new halls and make notes. You draw maps with a compass rose in the corner like Iris taught you, and slowly a record of the architecture comes into view.

(She would have been proud of me, you think, but you bury the thought away before it can bring you to tears.)

Chandeliers here remain dim, half-lit, providing just enough light to guide your way into the maze of corridors beyond your quarters. And Pangea Castle is a maze. Just as you think you detect an emerging pattern amid its many passageways, the pattern breaks, leaving you to remake your maps and reorient yourself amid the winding halls.

But this is something new to do, and you do it with a keen heart.

Strangely, you have come to look forward to one other part of your routine, and that is Saturn’s monthly appearance. He is the mark by which you gauge time in this dark place, a measurement of passing weeks that otherwise threaten to blend together into a single, undifferentiated morass. Whenever he appears, you apprise him of your wellbeing, and you write another letter for those in the Waiting Room. Saturn claims to have delivered your messages, and with no recourse but to trust his word, you continue to write. He does not deliver any messages back, but you had never expected him to. Saturn implies the Offerings are not allowed to communicate with anyone outside the Waiting Room. The details he provides you about what happens within are thin, though he claims your friends are well enough (in body; he cannot comment on the state of their morale).

It’s strange, realizing you have come to regard your meetings with Saturn with some fondness. He is the only other person with whom you hold conversations apart from Imu, after all. In a way, Saturn himself represents a break from monotony, or at least a form of monotony so infrequent it ceases to feel monotonous at all.

Though his visits are not without their own perils. The first time Saint Saturn visits you after you begin your forays into Pangea Castle, you wonder if he will chastise you for your audaciousness. Surely he, or someone else, has taken notice of your explorations, and surely they will protest if said exploration continues.

But he does not bid you stop. His visits are as perfunctory as always; he merely asks after your health and leaves again, promising to return if you survive another month.

Perhaps no one has noticed your midday roaming. Perhaps it is simply not his place to chastise you. Perhaps he hopes Imu will be the one to do the punishing.

But when neither he nor Imu makes mentions of your excursions from your quarters, you take that as tacit permission to continue. Your maps bloom large across the pages of your journal, and desperate boredom yields discovery.

Saturn has never told you where, exactly, the boundaries of Imu’s territory within Pangea Castle lie, but you guage potential edges of your confinement by the dust on the floorboards and the cobwebs in the chandeliers. Most doors within these areas remain locked under your questing touch, though some contain empty quarters no one has touched in many years. You believe any well-lit place must be off limits. Any time you find a door, you test it. If it is locked, you mark it down and leave it alone. If a door is unlocked, you peer through the keyhole or through the crack at the threshold. If no one is there, you open the door. You observe. If it seems like a habited area, you do not press onward…but you mark down everything you can see from your side of the frame just in case that knowledge should prove useful in ways you cannot foresee.

More than once through the crack of a door or a gaping keyhole, you observe guards on patrol. You camp in place and annotate their comings and goings. They are on a schedule of some kind, and their faces become known to you. You write down their names and their schedules in your journal. If pressed, you could avoid these patrols if needed.

Not to run, of course. That option is barred to you. But perhaps you will need to sneak past them on some clandestine errand someday, and avoiding them will prove prudent.

You eventually learn that servants frequent the darker areas of the castle, too.

The first time you hear voices that do not belong to Imu or to Saturn echoing down the dark corridors, you are so severely shocked you stand rooted to the spot until candlelight appears at the bend of the corridor. You duck into an abandoned bedroom and peer down the dim hall as people pass. They are a group of about ten clad in stiff uniforms, collars with glowing jewels clasped tight around their necks.

Slaves, you realize with a jolt. Mary Geoise is a country of slavery. A dreadful thing, abhorrent to you, unthinkable.

Nevertheless, their presence comes as a surprise, one for which you feel enormously silly. You had been forced to clean your own quarters when you first arrived, but after about a month in captivity, the corners of your room had stopped accumulating dust and the fireplace remained clear of ash. You had been too terrified of your plight to notice at the time, but looking back, you realize you have returned each night from the Room of Flowers to a room devoid of mess or grime. Someone has been cleaning your rooms, and now you finally know to whom you owe your thanks.

But while you are starved for conversation that is not with Imu or Saturn, you do not approach the servants when next you find them. The next time they appear, you hear them before you see them, and you duck down a hallway and hide in an empty room so that you may grant them a a wide berth.

You feel they should not see you. You are not sure why. But something tells you that you should keep your distance for their sake, if not for yours.

It’s easy enough to avoid them, luckily. They appear on a strict schedule, one you learn even more quickly than you learned the schedule of the guards. The schedule keeps them away from your area of the castle while you are awake; you have to travel quite some distance through the halls before seeing any evidence of them whatsoever. Thus, you deduce their movements must be set to some prescribed pattern that keeps them from view.

It likely prevents Imu from encountering them — and, more importantly still, it prevents them from encountering Imu.

Routine protects you. It also protects these innocent souls. You are not sure what would happen on their part if this particular routine were to be broken, but your suspicions are as dark as Imu’s cloak.

Your suspicions will be confirmed, eventually. But that time has not yet come to pass.

Eight months and thirteen days after you were bound to the King of the World, you venture once again into the halls of Pangea Castle.

You have begun to think of your forays into the castle as a form of exploration. You are a sailor charting unknown waters, and you prepare yourself as such. You fashion a small bag from a spare coat and fill it with food. You bring paper, pen, and ink in your deepest pocket. You know where to find windows by now; the march of the sun across the sky helps you return to your quarters on time to dress and make your way to the Room of Flowers at the hour appointed. Breaking rules as you are, you do not dare be late for your nightly rendezvous with Imu.

Today’s excursion into the unknown begins like all the others. You walk confidently down one hall and the next; you do not hesitate, and your footsteps whisper steadily over polished floors. Your past explorations assure you that you will not encounter servants this way at this time of day and on this day of the week. Routine protects you even as you break it, and for that you whisper a prayer of gratitude to whatever gods may hear you. But even with your swift strides, it will take some time to reach the edges of your map. Exploration, cautious as you are, is slow going. The halls of the castle are nigh endless. It has taken you months to map only part of a single floor. You wonder if you will be able to map it all. You are not sure what you will run out of first: hallways to explore, or time in which to map them.

Though routine has gifted you some comforts, you remain aware even now of the razor’s edge you always walk.

You eventually reach the edge of your map and the place you last left your adventures. Here the hall splits in three directions. You have not forayed down any of them yet, but today, you will try the middle hall. The dust is thickest along this hall, caked with grime save for a single set of footprints down the center, and even these hold a slight smattering of dust in the middle. The quantity of the dust tells you much: That the footprints were left relatively recently, but long enough ago to fill with evidence of passing time. You place your own feet in these footprints to hide your passage, but their owner’s gait was longer than yours by a not insignificant amount. You hop from print to print, mindful of the noise you make in the empty corridor.

After so long spent in your sunless quarters, you have become quite proficient at estimating time without daylight’s guidance. This is a fortunate skill you’ve developed, because there are no windows here. Intermittent sconces with flickering lamplight provide only reluctant illumination. You have a candle to light your way should you need it, but you don’t, because soon enough the hallway opens up and you find yourself standing before a large door — the largest you’ve yet seen in the twisting tunnels of this endless, labyrinthine castle, in fact, and painted imposing black.

Your self-made rules are clear, and you proceed with them in mind. You press your palm to the door. Unlocked, it swings open on silent hinges. You listen, but you hear no voices, and so you peer inside. The room beyond the door opens up into something larger, ceiling higher than in the hallway. A vestibule, you think, because at the edge of this liminal space the room opens up yet again. You take a tentative step forward, head craning. There are stairs beyond the vestibule. One flight, huge, and then another, one stacking atop the other. They ascend into a cavernous room with a roof so unfathomably high you can’t even see the ceiling. Shrouded in darkness, you peer into the rafters, eyes screwed up against rippling shadow as you try in vain to grasp the mindboggling scale of your new discovery. There are raised platforms above you, you think. It’s hard to tell from your low, sideways vantage point — but then, at the top of the steps, something glimmers. A point of gold juts up like a spear, impossibly tall, looming high enough to see even above the mountain-steep staircases that dominate your field of view. You move to the edge of the steps, the corner of them, to get a better look.

For a moment, you just stare.

Then, all at once, the truth sinks home like a dagger to the heart, and in your ear a dark voice murmurs:

“One such as Mythweaver should not be here.”

The low, throbbing whisper traces over your nape, and it is Imu standing just behind you. His silhouette blots out the dim hallway at his back. You shrink, heart in your mouth, eyes wide as his shadow eclipses you in pure chill. He has found you at last. Even with door unlocked, perhaps this counted as straying beyond his boundaries. Perhaps you have trespassed beyond the limits of his tolerance. Perhaps he is here to punish you —

He takes a step forward.

You drop your eyes. You brace for death.

But he strides past, leaving you untouched.

While you scrape together the fragments of your scattered wits, Imu places a foot upon the stairs, a motion you see in your periphery because you do not dare look at him directly or else your shaking knees might give way and send you tumbling to the floor. Imu, either unseeing or uncaring, moves forward. Up and up and up the steps he climbs, each clack of boot upon them like a sword striking stone. His steps echo in the huge room, clattering into the air and reverberating off rafters unseen — louder in your ears, perhaps, than in reality.

“Mythweaver.”

The call of your name is a summons undeniable. You turn toward him. You raise your eyes. He stands at the top of the stairs, high above you, close to the golden spear. You follow like a scrap of iron dragged toward a lodestone. Your steps whisper where his struck, subtle sussurations slipping over stone. You move up one flight, above a landing covered in weapons driven into the floor, and then up the next flight, until you stand before Imu.

He watches you for a time.

Then, slowly, he sits upon the Empty Throne.

You can see the throne clearly now. You recognize it for what it must be even though you have only ever read of it in books. It is made entirely of what you suspect is solid gold, upholstered in red velvet, with roaring lions for armrests and a back that juts upward into a point so high and so sharp it is a wonder the air does not bleed at its intrusion. The backrest forms a circle at the base, huge and broad, bearing the distinctive cross-and-circle symbol of the World Government. The throne is so monstrously large it appears massive even within the cavernous room it occupies. But while the throne is impressive, the stage upon which it sits is pockmarked, raw earth and mossy stone peeking between panels of broken masonry. Rusted weapons from bygones past jut from this broken floor in a jagged field. You know that if you counted them, there would be 19 in total, one for each of the Founding Families who came together to form the World Government many centuries prior. Sahra had explained that much to you; it was a piece of history your tutors had failed to mention, or one they simply did not know to impart.

You wonder how much the world knows about this place. You wonder what some would pay to stand in your shoes, even rooted to the spot in fear as they are.

Imu sits upon the throne and among the broken weapons as easily as you perch upon the cushions in the Room of Flowers every night. Though he appears at rest, body languid beneath the fall of his robes, you are left on edge. He should not be here. He should not sit upon that seat. This was a sacrilege, a violation, a profane corruption of the agreed-upon rules that governed the lives of every citizen of the world. In Imu’s shadow you are but a supplicant led astray, a wayward worshiper standing at the feet of some usurper god, some changeling being in a stolen crown he wore without an ounce of guilt or shame.

Carmine eyes train unerringly upon you. He stares your way in challenge, bold glare aimed squarely in your direction…not that you are stupid enough to meet that glare with a gaze of your own. You sense Imu is daring you to protest. He is daring you to place a name to the blasphemy playing out before your eyes, but you are not stupid, and you do no such thing. You remain silent. You listen to your heart thunder in your ears and hope it does not echo in the sepulcher-quiet of the pharaonic throne room.

But it seems you fail to hide your fear, because Imu soon asks you a question with a curious tilt of his crowned head: “Art thou disturbed by the sight of Mu upon the throne, Mythweaver?”

The question sounds like bite. You don’t bit. You answer honestly, but tactfully: “I am…surprised.”

His head tilts just so.“Am I not the King of the World?”

“You are.”

“This throne, therefore, belongs to Mu.”

“It is as you say, King Imu.”

How could he expect you to do anything but agree, under the circumstances? He studies you again. You shift from foot to foot. The sound churrs all around you, movement punctuated by moth-winged whispers.

Imu asks: “What know ye of this throne?”

Heretofore, you thought you knew much. You were educated. You knew the heft of global politics and the systems of power that ruled the other nations of the world. Others better educated than yourself, like Sahra, had revealed more within the bounds of the Waiting Room. But standing beneath burning carmine, you wonder if, perhaps, neither you nor they were as knowledgeable as you had once assumed.

It’s an epiphany you never asked for, but it comes to you with guillotine finality just the same.

“The Empty Throne sits at the center of the world.” You speak only facts, what few you know, because you have no choice but to give an answer, and this seems the safest one. “It remains unoccupied. Its emptiness symbolizes peace among the nations of the world, as no one nation bows to another.” Your eyes crawl over the hem of his tumbling cloak. “And yet…”

From beneath the darkness of his cowl, Imu echoes, “And yet.”

And yet, here he sits. The secret puppeteer of the entire world. You want to know more about how he came to occupy this famously empty seat. You have so many questions. They bubble on your tongue in a vomitous riot you are desperate to spew at his feet, but you do not dare voice a single one, and so you stare with your head bowed low. You stand in a silent plea for mercy from this dark deity who holds the reins of the world in his iron grip.

But by your silence Imu is not deceived.

“Loosen thine tongue, Mythweaver,” the King of the World commands. “Speak.”

The command leaved you paradoxically tongue-tied. You gather yourself, sharpening the blades of curiosity and fear against one another to temper each in turn.

“Who else knows you exist,” you ask with reluctant care, “and that you sit upon the Empty Throne?”

“The Elders. The Knights of God.” He pauses before saying: “Mythweaver.”

“And no more?”

“Correct.”

You stare over the throne room while you process this admission. It remains as huge and as empty as before — emptier than the throne, certainly. You wonder how often Imu has spoken these truths in his long life. It occurs to you that you are likely one of only a few who have heard the full and unvarnished truth from his mouth. No other Offerings have been granted such insight, and the list he spoke of is short indeed.

You cannot leave, now. Not that leaving had been an option before, but with this knowledge making home in your head, the jaws of the trap have cinched impossibly tight into your flesh. You cannot leave this place knowing what you know now: a truth that would shake the earth to its foundations and send the delicate architecture of world order crumbling into the sea.

It is a truth worth more than any gold or treasure in the world, but it cannot buy your freedom. Only your continued captivity.

No wonder the brand seals your lips. No wonder the other Offerings are kept so completely in the dark. No wonder only an Elder has deigned to visit you. Should word of the one true king slip free, chaos and war and bloodshed unfathomable would surely follow.

But you are alone in these thoughts, judging by what Imu says next.

“Thou art most fortunate, Mythweaver, to glimpse this place.” The pressure of his gaze fades when he stares out into the empty room. “Few are afforded such a privilege. Certainly none outside the scion of the First Twenty. Mu permits such a thing only upon occasion most rare.”

The tightness in your chest eases enough to make your response sound genuine: “Then I must thank you, King Imu, for this gift.”

“Thine gratitude is appropriate.” Cutting carmine finds you once more. “But take heed, Mythweaver, to only enter this room again when given express invitation or instruction.”

Though you do not sense any particular venom in his words, you recognize a reprimand when you hear one. “I apologize, King Imu, for intruding,” you say while bowing low to him. “Please accept my deepest regrets.”

But Imu shakes his head. “Thou dost mistake my meaning. The Empty Throne belongs to Mu. As such, Mu may freely travel to and from this hallowed hall. But so, too, may the Elders venture here. They bring with them all manner of guards and dignitaries.”

It dawns on you at once. “You wish for me to keep out of sight of them.”

“Yes.”

(It occurs to you, vaguely, that the number of people who know about you is only slightly higher than the number who know about Imu himself, and even that small number does not know your full story. You stand beside the center of the world invisible, the tiniest of insects on a vast stage — but Imu’s eyes are on you still, gleaming like a scalpel lifted from an act of careful bloodletting, and you do not let your trepidation show.)

“I wish to assure you that I have remained out of sight these past six months,” you say. “I have spoken to no one, even when such opportunities presented themselves.”

“Mu is aware.” He drums his fingers on a lion-headed armrest. “Mythweaver has proven…discreet.”

“Thank you for allowing me to wander.” Another bow; another allowance bought with flattery, if he is susceptible to such a thing. “I know it is by your magnanimity alone that I am afforded such a privilege.”

“It is by Mu’s magnanimity alone that all denizens of the Lower World are afforded their privileges, large and small alike.” His head somehow inclines further. “Such is the power of the one who sits upon the Empty Throne.”

Even seated, he manages to look down at you. This feels like another challenge, though you are not certain what he is testing. Your resolve, perhaps? Your acceptance of his rule? You must play your next words carefully.

“It is as you say.” This, and demurely lowered eyes, feel like the safest answer. “My very life endures at your discretion.”

Imu tells you: “Yes.”

(It might be the first time you’ve heard him acknowledge this. It’s the first time you’ve stated the true tenor of your relationship in plain language, you think. The threat has always been there, but to name it outright — it’s a relief, almost. You’re surprised to feel yourself relax the smallest modicum. But tension returns when you recall you are not the only one whose life depends on Nerona Imu.)

“And not just my life, but the lives of all the Offerings. Past. Present.” You swallow. “Future.”

“Future…”

It’s not a question. He just repeats the word like an empty cave whispering back a shout. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, his head tilts. Light finds its way beneath his cloak, and then you see his face — the angle of his cheekbone, the dull gleam of his bronze skin. He isn’t looking at you, but rather past you, into some middle distance into which you cannot travel. The faintest line curls his brow. A faint whisper of white curls across his cheek. A lock of hair, you think. And the curl of it is so strangely human, so fleetingly delicate, your heart leaps to make an appeal — an appeal to the human in him, if such a being exists at all.

“Seated on such a throne, you could have anything in the world,” you say. “So why call for Offerings, King Imu? What have we to offer that you could not gain by other methods?”

You know you have made a mistake when carmine flashes with the heat of pale lightning. You press your fingers to your mouth, but it’s too late. His eyes have sharpened and found you again, spearing you in place like one of the swords jutting from the earth between you and the world’s unknowable king.

“I apologize,” you hear yourself say as though from a great distance. Your mouth is moving but you can hardly feel it, body some distant thing that no longer belongs to you. “I spoke out of turn. It is not my place — ”

“No,” says Imu. “It is not.” A single, domineering finger points at the stairs. “Go.”

You stand stock still, stupid and slow.

“Go, Mythweaver.” Shadows rise and hiss in your periphery in a way they have not moved in months. “Go, and do not return to this place unless thou hast received express invitation.”

“Yes, King Imu,” your mouth says for you. “Good day.”

You flee from him.

At least this time you had his permission.

You spend the rest of the afternoon wondering if you will pay for your sins, or if the god you serve will forgive this sinner their trespasses…but his rule is not marked by mercy, and you prepare to meet him with the pall of dread hanging dark above you. Your questions were too many, too pointed. Months ago, Saturn told you to be smart if you asked favors of your master. Today you had not acted with logic, but with the passion of a momentary opportunity.

That passion had led you straight into the jaws of a beast with a taste for blood like yours.

You pace the rest of the afternoon. Normally you’d nap to regain your energy, or you would read your stories in preparation for the night head. After the incident with King Imu, you are too electrified to sit still. You pace and pace and pace some more until you show the floorboards mercy and abscond to the bathing room, instead. There you style your hair three times, scrub your body raw, and dress and redress yourself until you have exhausted every option in your wardrobe, which after six months holds a not inconsiderable array of options in its belly.

And then you do it all again just to keep from going mad.

Eventually what might be your final day on earth strays into evening. Resigned, you settle on attire and make your way to the Room of Flowers. Every step is a trudging battle, a slog through mental mud, but still you arrive at the appointed time.

Imu is waiting for you, as usual. He stands unmoving in the light of the setting sun. The moment you enter, your eyes find him. His black cloak swallows sundown like oncoming night devours day, pulsing in your vision like a tooth plucked from sore gums.

“Follow,” he says.

This is routine. You take comfort in that knowledge. Perhaps no offense had been taken from your impertinent questions that day, after all…but your heart does not listen to your head and beats hard against your breastbone, seeking escape so it can run to safer climes as the rest of you trails after Imu into the garden’s heart. You tell it to calm itself. You tell it this night is as usual. It is a night like any other. You and your wayward heart are safe.

But it is not a night like any other, because when you reach the flower-laden trellis, something has changed.

Imu has added to the garden a throne.

You don't know what else to call it. Though it does not bear the imposing heft of the Empty Throne, the chair is made of gold with a plush crimson seat that looks almost black in the fading light. It is not marked with any signs or sigils. Royal in mere presence, regal in sheer simplicity, it towers over the cushions and low table, which is laden with food just like always. The throne is an invader of routine, a mockery made of intrusive juxtaposition.

But Imu sits on his throne without acknowledging your uncertainty. His hands settle on the arm rests. His fingers splay wide. When he says nothing, you sit on the low cushions beside the table…like always. Like routine might protect you, even if it’s been misshapen under pressure.

“Begin thine tale anew, Mythweaver,” Imu says once you are settled.

And so you do. You roll a grape between your fingers as you begin your story of a hero and his quest on behalf of a wise king. You talk for a time, pausing only when Imu shifts upon his ostentatious chair and interjects.

“The hero is foolish not to accept the king’s most generous offer,” he says.

“Perhaps,” you say, “but what adventure does not start with a fortuitous misstep?”

Imu makes a sound caught somewhere between a chuckle and a sigh. You know that sound well, and from it you draw encouragement. It is not unusual for him to interrupt. Over the past six months, he has interrupted many times to comment upon your work. Conversations ensue more often than not, ones containing long debates about some facet of the story that has caught Imu’s particular interest. Sometimes you listen to Imu’s theories regarding what might happen next, or observations regarding motif, theme, and symbolism. Imu is an astute listener. More than once you have scarcely told your story for half an hour before he finds something to say. These days, the sun regularly rises not upon the sound of your stories, but upon a conversation shared between the pair of you.

These interruptions used to bother you. They diverted your focus and made resuming the story difficult. Now, however, you are grateful for Imu’s interjections. While you are not running out of stories to tell just yet, any delay in divulging material is welcome. In the very act of wasting time, Imu’s delays extend your life. No moment can be considered wasted under such conditions.

That night, the pair of you discuss the story at hand and all the ways the protagonist might resolve his troubles. You eat lightly when Imu speaks; you respond earnestly when he pauses, encouraging him to explore and develop his conclusions further. He is exceedingly clever, keenly tracking your foreshadowing in ways that never fail to surprise you.

During your time together, you have found that Imu is somewhat naive — not in the way of an innocent child, no, but naive in the manner of a man who has not had to grapple with the needs and wants of the common folk in untold centuries. Once, when your evening’s protagonist was buried alive, Imu suggested he simply wait until someone found him to escape his untimely burial…neglecting, of course, to remember mere mortals might starve to death before such a moment might arrive. The needs and limits of mortality never failed to surprise him, as did the emotional foibles that compelled many a protagonist’s actions within the confines of a narrative. Considering Imu had at one point forgotten that you would need to eat or drink, this did not particularly surprise you, and you used his lapsed memory of mortal existence to your advantage whenever you could.

“Dramatic irony is the way of stories,” you find yourself saying after a long conversation regarding Imu’s insistence he would have made a better choice under the story’s circumstances than your protagonist. “The listener knows things the characters do not. You would make a better choice, undoubtedly, but you have the benefit of beholding the bigger picture that remains invisible to our hero himself.”

“Perhaps,” says Imu slyly, “this story would benefit from a more observant hero.”

You chuckle into your cup of cool, clear water. “But there wouldn’t be any story if he solved the problem right away.”

“No. But Mu would be less frustrated by his ineptitude.”

You laugh. “In that case, I would challenge you to weigh the following: Your desire to end frustration, temporary as it is to endure, and your desire to hear more stories. Should the latter outweigh the former, perhaps the former is worth enduring for the sake of the latter.”

“But Mu desires both.”

You laugh at his petulant tone. “You cannot have both. Perhaps instead — ”

You stop. Your hand tightens around your water. You gaze at the platter that once held grapes. Now it holds only a stem like a spine picked clean by carrion.

“Apologies,” you murmur. “I will try to deliver you what you desire, King Imu.”

You felt Imu’s gaze intensify the second you denied his wish. It was the first time you had ever denied him anything, you think, and that denial had slipped from your lips without a second thought. You had been lulled into complacency by your repartee — a repartee one could have mistaken for friendly banter if not for the circumstances under which it had transpired. Such conversations with Imu were often pleasant. He was witty, and intelligent, and well-read. If the circumstances were anything but this, you might have considered such conversation enjoyable — enjoyable! A traitorous thought, one you refused to consider at any extended length.

This man had killed hundreds. Thousands. He had slain your friends. There was blood on his hands, and you would do well to remember that.

While you hold yourself in fearful limbo, Imu studies you. Perhaps your mollifying correction had come to late. In your periphery you watch his head tilt, carmine eyes assessing.

“Didst thou think better of thy words, Mythweaver?” he murmurs eventually.

Your heart leaps, fear an unsheathed blade in your ribs. It is all you can do to nod.

“Wherefore?” asks Imu.

It takes you a moment to remember what that archaic word means, and your reply is a stumbling thing as a result: “Because…because my words were impertinent,” you tell him, hoping that is all the explanation he requires.

But he denies you just as you denied him, and he says in a voice of hard command, “Mu would hear these impertinent words.”

“King Imu.” Your heart and your breath both quicken. “I am sure they are not worth repeating.”

“Mu would hear them,” he insists. “Speak.”

Certain he has damned you, your voice shakes with every syllable of coerced confession: “I was going to say that perhaps what makes a story compelling is frustration. Struggle. Strife. Conflict. Without conflict, a story cannot exist. It cannot move forward. To tell you a story without any frustration…” Your chest hitches. “I fear that story would be unbearably boring.”

Imu says nothing. A butterfly flits into your field of view. It lands upon the stripped grape stem, proboscis unfurling to taste that barren bark.

“I will think on it, though,” you say when the silence proves unbearable. “I will find a way to make a story to your liking while — ”

“No.”

The garden is quiet. The butterfly on the stem crawls forward, wings listing until it creeps sideways along the stem.

“Mu…” He pauses, briefly. “Mu favors thy tales unaltered.”

You stare at the butterfly. Its wings are dusky blue, shiny and reflective, edged in deep black. Imu’s fingers drum against his throne. You realize it’s been some time since you stopped reciting your stories that evening. A glance at the windows tells you you’ve been chatting with Imu for more than an hour. How very odd, to think someone like Imu capable of such pleasant conversation. Then again, the hand on the throne appears human enough…but it’s easy to imagine it covered in blood.

It could be your blood at any moment.

“Then I won’t alter them,” you hear yourself say. “As you command, King Imu.” You swallow, coming back to yourself. “Now, where did I leave off?”

He informs you at once, reciting the most recent line of your story perfectly. You nod.

“Very well. Then it shall come as no surprise that our hero…” You stutter, throat thickening. “Our hero…”

The yawn breaks over you like a wave over sand. The first time you yawned in front of Imu, you thought it might anger him, but he had not reacted. You’d yawned with relative ease in the months since. You do not think much of this yawn as a result, and you push through it as usual.

But when he once more breaks routine and sits up sharply, you flinch. Sleep scatters to the winds under his stare.

“Dost thou tire, Mythweaver?” Imu asks.

“Perhaps a little.”

“Approach.”

You do not move. You do not think you heard him correctly, and if you did, you can’t quite grasp what he’s asked you to do. You might have hallucinated, actually; that seems more probable than the alternative. But when Imu repeats the word, you realize you have not, in fact, hallucinated, and you are left with no choice but to obey. You rise and stumble toward him, watching in disbelief as he gestures at his feet — no, not at his feet. At the space before them upon the grass.

You stand in place. You sway in time with the beat of your heart. Then, slowly, you you settle where he indicated upon the grass. You are forced to turn your back toward him; you wrap your arms around your knees, hunching forward in a protective cocoon.

You are cognizant, in a detached way, of the fact only a few inches separate your back from Imu’s black-cloaked leg. You are grateful for those inches. They are the buffer than prevents disaster, and the sole barrier between you and the King of the World you are never to touch.

All at once, you recall hands reaching for you through a curtain of wisteria.

Something brushes your hair.

You think you are imagining it, but then the feeling returns. It is feather-light. It strokes down your hair and up again, brushing over the crown of your skull before pressing lightly against your scalp. It coaxes you backward until you lean against the throne, your spine pressed to wood, and you flinch as soon as you make contact. If you lean but a fraction more to the side, you would lean against him — against the King of the World who had slain so many of your friends with his own two bloody hands.

But those hands don’t move to hurt you. The move across your hair, instead, in a slow, deliberate caress no rougher than the slip of a butterfly’s wing.

“Recline,” he tells you, “and continue.”

You swallow.

“Thou needn't be afraid,” he murmurs. “Mu can be gentle when inspired to such feats.”

Against the throne, you still.

The hand pets over your hair. It is firmer than before. It is a repetitive motion you fear will become routine before you can prevent it from settling into the fabric of this strange new life you live.

“Speak,” says Nerona Imu.

Once more you swallow — but this time, you obey.

You tell stories dawn arrives. You wait for him to dismiss you before leaving the Room of Flowers…but you break one rule as the sun breaks over the horizon.

You do not leave alone. You take with you something small and stolen. Something Imu will not miss. Something you alone can fathom and take with you to study in the dark of your quarters.

That something is inspiration.

After inspiration strikes, you spend time confirming what you already know: that Imu has stopped circling you when your nights together end. You sit at his feet more often than not, now, and at each evening’s conclusion, he asks you the same thing:

“Hast thine story reached its end?”

“No, King Imu,” you always say. “There is the matter of the…”

No matter how banal the story you promise to tell may be, he lets you live to tell it the following night. None of the strange pressure and rising darkness that characterized your first months with him appear. You leave the Room of Flowers whole, and you return the next night intact.

He has grown accustomed to you, you suspect. Perhaps ‘obliging’ is more accurate. You don’t dare assume he has grown fond your stories, though of course that was the hope when you concocted the scheme to tell them in the first place. In the end, the exact nature of his emotions is immaterial. Whether he enjoys or merely tolerates you, his lack of aggression presents new opportunities. It is in this opportunity that your inspiration blossoms into more than just a stalling tactic.

It blossoms into action.

It was Imu himself who granted you the gift of inspiration, little though he knew it. It was his own words that sparked the fire of creation inside your heart.

Mu can be gentle when inspired to such feats, he’d told you.

He had not intended these words to be a seed. Nevertheless, they root in your heart and flower, soon to bear fruit you will pluck and devour until you spit the seeds of intention from between your teeth.

You cannot simply stall him forever. You have known from the start that you must change something, and so you follow the unfurling leaves of inspiration until a new tactic unfolds beneath your fingertips.

But you do not enact your plan right away. You take routine-assured time to craft your strategy. You plan. You plot (both figuratively and literally). You are slow. You are careful. You are methodical. You are patient.

And when the time is right, you begin to plant seeds of your own.

“And of course, there is the matter of the emperor,” you tell him when your next tale transitions from one chapter to another. “You are a listener most keen. You might have noticed his subjects adored him and deferred to his judgment in all things.”

Arrogance embroiders his response:“Mu took notice of his subjects’ adoration, yes, as it is an emperor’s proper due.”

“You may be interested to know his rule was not always so lauded,” you say, voice dropping into the hush of intrigue. “In fact, his ascent to the throne was fraught with peril, but it was peril that granted him great wisdom. His story begins…”

Imu listens to the new story as he has the countless stories prior: with rapt attention, keen commentary, and sharp-eyed queries. He does not question why you have chosen to tell this story in particular, and when it comes to an end, he does not question the tale that follows. He does not seem to notice that your stories are not simply tales of grand adventure and intrigue anymore. Now they are more than that. Your stories have shifted, from one to the next, into tales of a different make.

They are not merely stories crafted to entertain.

Now they are tales of goodness toinspire.

Imu had claimed himself capable of gentleness, and of being inspired to adopt it. If he is truly subject to the vicissitudes of inspiration, then you will use your works to inspire more of it in him. You will fill your stories with good rulers and kind kings, and in doing so, inspire Imu himself to change. Your protagonists will free the enslaved. Your kings will mete out mercy. Your heroes will instill hope in those who long to taste it. Your characters will lead by example both in their narratives and in their listeners — or such is your dearest, deluded wish.

It remains to be seen if a man such as Imu can be led anywhere he does not intend to tread. Nevertheless, you will try, though the task set before you is daunting. It may not prove successful in the end. But though the odds of changing the ways of an immortal man are nigh impossible, you are still determined to make the attempt. It is, after all, the only option you have at your limited disposal. Whether or not these seeds will take root in Imu’s heat is anyone’s guess.

You will plant them, anyway.

Over the course of the next months, you do it slowly. You turn the tenor of the tales toward temperance as a sailor tilts the rudder of a vast ship toward the tides. It does not happen all at once, but rather gradually. A slip of mercy here. A hint of goodness there. But nevertheless your explorer’s heart charts a course toward charity, and Imu is your passenger unwitting.

You worry your stories cannot please a man like him.

But by the time a year goes by and he has not killed you yet, you think it is possible Imu does not mind them, after all.

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NOTES: In the original “One Thousand and One Nights” story, Scheherazade told the king stories of goodness and light into order to inspire him to change his (murderous) ways. I wanted to preserve that part of the story somehow, so here we are. Can’t say I think it’ll WORK, of course, especially with someone as set in his ways as Imu, but preserving the heart of the 1001 Nights story is an important part of this story as a whole. We’ll see results of this new tactic as the story continues to unfold...

So an entire year has passed for our dear Mythweaver. We’ll get more about that year in chapter 13. I wanted to include some pretty big time skips in this story and this chapter was basically the vehicle through which I did it. For an immortal being like Imu, I truly believe it would take AGES for him to develop any kind of feelings for anyone. As he said in chapter 9, patience is key. What feels like moving at a glacial pace for us probably feels like a snap of the fingers to Imu. A timeskip solves a lot of character problems in fun and interesting ways that will become more obvious very soon...

And THE BRAND/COVENANT. A black star?! I will confess that this is the part where I start making shit up due to a lack of canonical material. The star covenant is not anything we've seen in canon yet, and anything regarding it is my own invention. Hope you like it; more to come!

Also there was no way I couldn't include some kind of nod to Mythie going ABSOLUTELY STIR-CRAZY while trapped in the castle. There was no way this wouldn't have happened at some point. Humans are zoo animals and they need enrichment!

aaaand yeah, more to come soon, see you again soon and tysm for reading. please leave a comment and let me know what you think; mwah mwah mwah, love youuuuu byeeeeeee!

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