IRON GOD | 2: Empyrean

[23] Kolo: And It All Stopped Cold

Over the next week or so, Styzia was very loud.

Qila finding out about Xigon's brief torpor went over about as well as expected – that was to say, not at all. When Azvalath let it slip while they were training with Qila, the old woman's face had gone so purple with rage Kolo thought her head would explode. Or that she'd bite Aza's head off.

Only the interruption of Ami and Magpie having a screaming match saved their skins. Except it hadn't even been that. Evidently, Magpie alone was making all that noise. Which led to the question of when the argument she was echoing had originally happened. When asked, neither she nor Ami had answered in any way that made sense.

Kolo still couldn't hear as well. It was somewhat improved, but she still got told time and time again to quit yelling everything she said. Which only made her want to yell more.

Now, in the middle of the night, Kolo was in a spot she ended up more often as of late — sitting on Aza's bed while he sat at his desk, both of them searching through texts borrowed from the masters' shelves. Neither of them really knew what they were looking for. Perhaps anything that would clarify the increasingly turbid stretch they now navigated.

"Did you know there are these crocodile-looking dolphins in some blueholes that don't have any eyes?" Kolo turned her book to show an illustration. "They're creepy looking."

"Yeah, lots of old folks below have stories about how their uncle's neighbor's father-in-law lost some body part or another to a water monster." Aza didn't even look up from whatever he was reading. "I don't think a bestiary's going to have what you're looking for."

"It's not just a bestiary. It's all about 'unnatural beings.'" Kolo thudded the book back down. "And how do you know what I'm looking for?"

"I don't." Aza shrugged. "I just had a hunch it wasn't the habits of wildlife."

She scoffed and went back to reading.

While the eyeless zo-su still hold to many natural laws of beasts, not all do. Highly peculiar individuals may rear their heads now and again, becoming the stuff of campfire tales and superstition through generations. Often these beings live exceptionally long lives by the bloodline and power of the Iron God.

She glossed over several paragraphs of the author's rambling before something caught her focus again.

The notion of misfortune being repelled by lightningfishers' teeth has basis in the habit of a very real entity who is far from inconsequential to those living in what should be an undisturbed community, given its isolation from the rest of the remaining world.

"Oh fuck that." Kolo shoved the text aside. It fell down between Aza's bed and the wall.

Aza glared at her. "Could you not?"

She folded her arms and seethed. "Why can't I run away from that thing?"

His glare became a confused squint. "Are we still talking about eyeless crocodile-dolphins?"

"No!" If he was trying to be funny, it wasn't working. Kolo wriggled a ghost arm down to where the book had lodged itself and yanked it back up into her lap. Then she flipped through to find the page she'd been on. "Damn it, where's the page? It was talking about the Grinner."

Azvalath grimaced. He'd pull faces and get restless whenever Kolo brought her family's demon up. The horrid entity she'd used to free herself and then forget it all. Maybe he didn't want to see her in that way. Too bad, Kolo thought. It was what it was.

Kolo found the spot she was looking for. "Yeah, I didn't know anyone outside my family knew about him. When Vali and I were little our grandmother would try and scare us and tell us Linn would eat us up if we were too impatient, or if we did this or that thing that wasn't allowed." She shrugged. "She made Vali really upset when she suggested that was why her mom died."