I.O.U.
Khldom, god of justice, ran an idle finger along the edge of the paper he read. It was thin and weak, cheap paper that was so worn with age–despite only being, by his calculations, under two decades old–that it had to be held in a transparent sleeve to prevent damage. It was court evidence, all of it; all of the miscellaneous papers scattered across his desk were, for a dozen different cases. He rarely had to deal with the paperwork, although people did so insist on giving it to him. Being a god now, he could simply see the truth of the matter. Being a god, he was also not particularly bothered by the concept of due process. He was, quite literally, the embodiment of justice. Due process was the arduous steps mortals took to attempt to reach him. That was what he told people when they asked him about paperwork. It mostly worked.
Outside of his–one could call it an office, he supposed, but when gods inhabited things, even offices, they tended to become temples… Outside of the room he occupied was the girl–woman, now–who had run a quill against these thin pages, spilling her misguided hopes and dreams and vocabulary practice across them in cheap ink. She was attempting to muffle her choked sobs, but the desperate, gasping breaths of crying were unmistakable. It did not particularly bother him. He heard it extremely often. Innocent and guilty alike had a significant tendency to sob wildly when he was around, for one reason or another. He had not been at this god business for so terribly long, but one simple truth he had discovered quickly was that the innocent are, if anything, more concerned that they have definitely done something deserving of punishment.
That wasn’t why this girl was crying, of course. That would be all the latent trauma, he suspected. Humans were quite well known for their tendency towards dramatic displays of emotion. He suspected many of the things he had learned in the course of his mortal life would not hold true, particularly things about other races. He had, after all, learned them from other dark elves, and his people were not altogether known for being welcoming to outsiders. But as far as he could tell, they had gotten humans and high elves pretty much right. High elves were pompous, arrogant jackasses who were in competition with his own people for who could commit the most injustices per decade, so far as he could tell. Humans were emotional and short-lived, and ruled by both of those facts in roughly equal part. Hence, the sobbing woman outside his door, who, he suspected, was crying because the woman who had enslaved her for most of her life had been perfectly willing to sacrifice her loving slave to save her own skin.
Of course she was. Only a slave–a particularly stupid slave–would ever have thought otherwise. There existed no real affection between owner and object, no matter what lies the object told itself.
That fate had been adverted, of course, thanks to him. That lawyer had been heinously guilty, as had everyone involved in that particular ring of corruption. If the human woman’s desperate prayers hadn’t caught his attention, the stench of that much sin in one room surely would have. It had been a pleasure to deal with them all in one fell swoop.
At first, he had been a bit bemused to be summoned by the prayers of a human, of all things, but it made sense after his cursory glance through the court papers that had been shakingly thrust into his arms by a terrified, somewhat nauseated, and very relieved judge. She had spent her whole life studying dark elf law. She would obviously be very familiar with the god of justice, relatively new as he was to his post. Some of the older dark elves could still remember a time without him, but to the brief lifespan of a human, he suspected he appeared as eternal as he now technically was.
He was not the youngest god, however. No, that dubious honor belonged to another; another whom, unfortunately, he would be in need of shortly. In his deific infancy, Khldom had struggled with what to do with all the aftermath and baggage that came with dispensing justice. He was of the opinion it should not be his aftermath and baggage, as he had significantly more important things to be dealing with at any given moment, but he had learned that, much like the papers thrust into his hands by the trembling judge, it was going to be thrust upon him regardless. If he left these things up to the dark elf courts, they just created more mess. Slaves were property, to be transferred to next of kin. Next of kin were generally not exceedingly kind to slaves in the position of this girl, slaves who had been rescued while their mistresses had been judged and found wanting, left twitching and comatose on a courthouse floor, living out every minute of the false sentences she had imposed on others within the prison of her own mind.
And so, it fell to him. But dark elf slaves were often a useless bunch; many had been born into slavery, others captured, and all broken to some extent or another. What did he know of the slave’s mind? Teleporting them out into the light of day had not gone very well, particularly not for the humans, and dark elf slaves had less than nowhere to go, the surface completely inhospitable to them. The task of repairing any slave’s broken mind was so far outside his wheelhouse as to be comical. When something was outside one’s wheelhouse, the only appropriate action was to… outsource.
That was where the youngest came into play.
Eager to get rid of the sobbing girl outside his door–the sobbing did not bother him, but the general presence of a person did–he pulled a vial of noble’s blood out from a desk drawer. It was exceedingly easy to get, with how many nobles he wound up dealing with on a regular basis. A branch–he always used the proper kind of branch, even if one didn’t technically have to–a few stones, and a prayer handled the rest.
Generally speaking, this would immediately cause an extremely annoying, extremely loud high elf to appear in his office. This time, there was a long silence. Well, no need to be concerned. This happened sometimes. He had to imagine that being summoned was inconvenient in general. He certainly knew that prayers came at incredibly annoying times, and he wasn’t particularly compelled to deal with them immediately, as his younger counterpart was. He waited. And waited. After what felt subjectively like half an hour but was, objectively, more like forty-five seconds, a lone petal appeared in the middle of his office, and floated to the ground.
Ugh. Great.
An IOU.
Kairi, who had spent the last twenty years, essentially her entire life, as Kairi, house and secretarial slave to Bezdeh Moonshadow, was sitting in a comfortably dark hallway on an uncomfortable stone floor, grappling with the very beginnings of how to cope with just being Kairi.
The last few months had been a blur. She’d known something suspicious was going on at the firm, she had. She’d just been trying not to notice it. She’d been trying so hard not to notice it, to rationalize every increasingly weird occurrence away. She’d been focusing so hard on not noticing, on keeping her head down and doing her job, so distracted with her own little concerns of managing her work load and avoiding the lawyers. Maybe if she’d been paying more attention, or paying less attention, none of this would have ever happened. Maybe if she’d been better at her job, they never would have been caught. Maybe if she’d been worse at her job, they never would have been caught. Did she want them to never have been caught?
A few hours ago, she would have said yes, definitely, one hundred percent, because a few hours ago, she had been on trial. Not at trial. On trial. For the falsification of evidence in multiple major trials, including one involving the fucking Obsidians. The fucking Obsidians. The family for which the slave breeder she’d come from had worked for, distantly at that. So far above the level of her reality as to be comical. She may as well have been accused of attempting to kill a god, for all it seemed within the realm of possibility for her. And yet. And yet.
And yet even that metaphor paled, now, because there was a god in the room at the end of the hall. There was a god in the room at the end of the hall and she was in the hall and there was one door between her and him, or her and it or her and majesty or her and incomprehensibility. The door did nothing to contain him, she could feel the pressure of his presence beating against the side of her mind. It felt like what she’d always imagined an aboleth would feel like, when she’d read of them in the massive and deeply horrifying encyclopedia of cave dwelling species she’d gotten into as a child. A psionic pressure, worse the closer she got to him, a sensation that made her want to fall to her knees and beg.
Or maybe that was just her reaction to anything particularly scary. She had lived a fairly charmed life up until now; sure, she had nothing on the treasured pets of the noble families which she sometimes saw in ostentatious leashes and collars at the upscale markets where her mistress sent her for supplies on occasion. But her mistress had been well-off, and she’d only ever had the one since she was seven. Like most human slaves, she was spared from hard labor by stint of being human; humans were notoriously hard to keep alive underground, especially wild caught ones. Because of that, it was even harder to produce her, a healthy second generation human slave, accustomed and adjusted to life in the caves.
She could have been a wealthy noble’s pet, her mistress had often told her, because of her social clout, and having had a taste of what social clout was, she had been immensely grateful, her entire life, to be a lawyer’s secretarial slave instead.
And now this. And now this.
She would have been put to death in probably such a horrific way as to be comical. The crimes of which she was accused were so beyond the pale for a slave, so beyond shocking, that by her own calculations, she could have been convicted of five different death sentences simultaneously. There had been a case where a serial killer, convicted of multiple death sentences, had been killed, resuscitated, and killed again for each count.
She felt bile rising in her throat, the familiar, all-consuming terror that had been her whole world for long enough to seem like eternity. That had been her fate, inevitable, and all her legal knowledge had been unable to assist her, because she was not a secretarial slave anymore. She was a criminal. There had been nothing to do but face the dragon… that was, until, a much, much, MUCH bigger dragon had showed up.
She’d heard of Khldom, god of justice, of course. She was a fucking secretarial slave. Yes, sure, the oldest of dark elves could remember a time before his presence in their legal system, but that just served to cement his legend, because occasionally one might hear from someone who remembered when it happened. And in the here and now, there were statues of him in courthouses. His name was never invoked in proceedings, because everyone was a bit too worried they’d catch his attention, but things were done with him in mind. At least, in theory.
In reality, most lawyers were probably like her, in that the idea of a god, even a god of the thing she did, was a very distant concept. It wasn’t as if he’d show up at her work desk and demand to see if her papers were in order. It wasn’t as if he’d appear in court.
Except for the times he did.
Except for today.
Generally speaking, Khldom was only ever brought into disputes on purpose, and often as a bluff or intimidation tactic. The idea of escalating her case hadn’t even been mentioned, although in retrospect it clearly should have been. Her defense lawyer had been one of the ones spared, so she’d clearly been trying, but it hadn’t occurred to her at all to consider pulling a god into the situation. Then again, it hadn’t occurred to Kairi either. Cases in which he appeared didn’t make it into law books. She hadn’t read about them. There was nothing to be learned from them, other than a warning. He was unactionable. The most literal sense of an Act of God.
But occasionally, it did happen. An act of corruption so grandeur that it summoned him, name unspoken, into the courtroom.
It had been like someone had sucked all of the air out of the room, she remembered, although she had barely been able to breathe to begin with. He had introduced himself, but there had been no question as to his identity. His presence had been absolute. She’d barely felt able to process words, and yet she could recall each and every word he’d spoken, the emphasis of syllables, as if they were branded into her mind with a hot iron. The corruption of the lawyers. The egregious abuse of justice. The cowardly sacrifice of a loyal slave. His words. Not hers. He’d laid out a case of corruption bigger than she could comprehend. Not all of them had been in the courtroom, and even fewer had been the ones on trial, but the ones that were present were enough that still, hours later, her mind was a cocophany of their pleas for mercy and agonized screams.
She’d lived a fairly charmed life up until now. She’d never been present for a death sentence; at worst she’d heard the desperate wails of the convicted. She had never, not once, heard screams like that. Now it was all she could hear.
Gods were very real, and could, on occassion, be very present. Those who witnessed them had a changed air about them, spoke about it in reverant or haunted tones, often both. She supposed she was in that category now. Or would be, if she ever regained the ability to speak.
Except it wasn’t past tense for her, just yet. Because he hadn’t simply stopped with dispensing justice. Twice, his acid-green eyes had seared into her, obliterating all thoughts from her mind. The first, it had been to declare her innocence. The second, it had been amongst the echoing choir of screams. It seemed like he spoke softly, but his voice had been so clear over the hellish din, so he couldn’t have, and nothing about him could be described as soft anyway.
“As for you,” he’d said, and she’d remembered being so stunned by being addressed directly, a comically stupid thought to be having in such an unreal moment. “I will provide justice for you Myself.”
And now she was here, on the floor of his temple, uncomprehending. He had told her to wait here. There had been no force of presence behind it, no stunning blow to her mind like she’d seen befall countless others around her in the courtroom. Nonetheless, she would have sat there, unmoving, if the room had caught on fire, content to burn to death while waiting here. She didn’t know why she was waiting here, but she didn’t question orders from her highers, and it quite actually did not get any higher.
And after what could have been hours but probably wasn’t days, the door at the end of the hallway cracked open.
She was unable to not turn and look. Dim light spilled from the opened door, cast back into blackness by the shadow of, well, god, who was very tall and had a lot of shadow to cast. She found his presence was slightly less ominous than before, or possibly she was adjusting, or possibly, she had dissociated the rest of the way and was so far out of her body that her brain could no longer process fear. It was all possible. Anything was possible, since this had happened. Was happening.
“Human child,” he said, by way of a greeting. “Your route to safety will be secured shortly. Not shortly enough, however, and I am aware humans require regular food, water, sleep, and access to light.”
She stared blankly at his knees, which were comfortably at eye level and also, beneficially, were not his eyes. She had stared directly at them twice in the courtroom, as if every ounce of her manners had been obliterated out of her by the force of her awe. She felt fuzzy and unreal, but at the very least she could pretend to be properly domesticated.
“I have formed a room in this temple that should suit. Follow me.”
A command was something even her scrubbed-raw brain recognized. She scrambled to her feet, eyes remaining no higher than waist level, which was made easier by the fact that he was a good head and shoulders taller than her. Kairi was used to this to an extent; humans were shorter than dark elves on average, and she had been almost a full head shorter than her mistress, but this felt a little absurd. Gods, she supposed. Larger than life and all that.
What a stupid thing to think about. She thought she could maybe feel her brain dribbling out of her ears.
Khldom, actual god, led her through the doorway into the dimly lit room, which looked an office, a little, if it were also a temple. There was a desk in the back, and that made something an office, probably. It was dimly lit in the way of dark elf dwellings, with a number of faintly glowing blue orbs. The desk, she noticed, was very messy, and the fact she noticed that made her think that maybe she really was losing her mind, to be thinking of the necessity of keeping a clean workspace at a time like this. Really, though, if you were a cleric of the god of justice, it just seemed like you really ought to. Whoever owned that desk should be at least a little ashamed of themselves.
Through another door, down another hallway, and another door. This one, Kairi winced as it opened. The dim blue light had not been enough to adjust her from the near-complete darkness of the hallway to the brightly-lit room in front of her. Some of the light was obviously coming from a fire, crackling cheerfully in a large hearth, but it seemed too bright for even that.
She had hesitated too long in the doorway, squinting and blinking at the sudden and unexpected light. Khldom had entered the room, and turned around, as if to see why she was not still behind him. She scrambled forward immediately, stumbling through the door. She was immediately made aware of the source of the light. One wall of the room was completely dominated by what was easily the largest bed she’d ever seen in her life. Staring at it, she thought it might be so large as to be completely square, and she suspected it was long enough that the god of justice himself could have laid down on it comfortably. Perhaps even stretched a bit. Growing over and around it, almost like a protective canopy, were mushrooms. Giant mushrooms. Giant mushrooms with brightly glowing spores mixed around in their gills, some even dangling down gently, as if they might fall like ash.
She’d heard of this, she thought. They called them light forests, and the dark elves had long since farmed such areas in order to grow produce, such as wheat, underground. She had known, objectively that such things must be quite bright, but she’d never seen them in her life, and whatever she’d imagined in the past fell significantly short of the reality. There were more of them, too, growing along the wall near a small table on the other side of the room, spiraling around near a set of drawers, and even, she realized as her neck craned backwards, smaller ones growing from the ceiling, dotting the ceiling like a cavern embedded with sparkling gems.
Her breath was still gone from her lungs, but for a moment, it had nothing to do with her fate or the presence of a god. It was beautiful, but damn was it bright. She still had to squint, and looking down helped, but only so much.
“Will it suit?” asked the literal, actual god, who had saved her life and then led her into a freaking fairy tale room. “You shouldn’t have to stay here long.”
“Huh?” she asked blankly, and then realized immediately she would have to, for the rest of her life, deal with the fact that stupid word was the first word she’d ever said to a god.
Khldom regarded her–she could tell, even while staring, mortified, at his shoes–for a long moment, and she considered at length that it might also be the last and only word she’d ever say to a god. She could feel the pressure of him pulsing at the front of her mind. The echoing of courtroom screams had chased her down the hallway.
“You will stay here,” he said finally, explaining as if to a child. “Until someone can come and get you. They will take you to where there are other humans.”
Kairi’s head whipped up, almost to his eyes, but to do that she would have had to crane her neck and she fortunately caught herself somewhere around his neck and darted them back down. His chest did not feel like a safe place, so she lowered them further to his waist. There, that felt polite enough. She was desperate to ask questions, but terrified to do so.
“You will be safe there.” There was something odd in his voice, a tone she could not recognize at all. It made her nervous; she was normally good at reading tone, expression, body language.
“Safe… from what?” she managed, her voice coming out like a dormouse’s squeak upon being trodden on.
“The reach of the Dark Elf Empire,” he replied, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. Her head raised again, her expression baffled, and she made it almost to his chin this time before adjusting her gaze to somewhere over his right shoulder. His face was in her periphery, flirting with poor manners, but she couldn’t understand his tone and his body language was more stiff than a soldier’s. She was praying his expression would give her some clues. Praying? Ha! To whom? Him? He was the one she normally invoked, and here he was in front of her.
“My colleague can explain more.” His expression looked a little exasperated, which made her flinch into herself. Great. She was annoying a god. Leave it to her to manage that. “They will take you back to the surface, somewhere safe.”
Back… to the surface? Back?
Suddenly, the brightly lit room made sense. Memories clicked in her mind. Humans were hard to keep because they were from the surface, and more sensitive than most creatures, certainly more than any elves or beastkin. They needed light, and anyone who wanted to keep one needed to regularly expose them to it, lest they grow ill. Even then, it was tricky to keep them alive long enough to breed, and harder still to raise one through its delicate childhood. But Kairi was a second generation slave. Her need for light had been dulled with magic while she was still in her mother’s womb, and both of the mistresses she’d had in her life had taken excellent care of her diet. She had grown up in the caves, and while her vision was absolutely pathetic compared to any dark elf, or even the lesser elven slaves, she was used to light no brighter than a candle or a kitchen flame. If Khldom thought her from the surface–a fairly safe assumption, in his defense–then he must have lit this room just as bright.
She ought to clear up the misconception, but she had no idea how, when she could barely squeak out a single word in his presence. She simply stared, like the dumb animal she was.
“Until then, you can remain in my temple,” Khldom continued explaining, as if she might need small words–another fair assumption, given her eloquence at the moment. “Food and drink will be provided. Rest, and regain yourself.” He gestured broadly towards the bed, and something else clicked, as if for the first time.
“Me? Here?”
God help her, no wonder he clearly thought her an idiot. Even she thought she sounded like one.
“Does it not suit?”
As if a drain had been unclogged, unnecessary words poured out all at once. “No, no, it’s great, um, it’s huge, it’s like, the biggest room I’ve ever seen, it’s, wow, I mean, super bright, but, um, thanks, that is to say, thank you my… l-lord?” Her voice squeaked higher at the end. Her training had not included how to speak to divinity. It hadn’t needed to.
Khldom considered her, for too long. She really, really, really wished he would stop doing that. His face was, unmercifully, unreadable in her peripheral, and, cheeks turning red, she resumed her vigil of his shoes. Which meant, she noticed that he was reaching for her when the shadow of his arm fell over her, and not second sooner. She flinched. The reaction her body had wanted to have was ricocheting backwards, out the door and into the hallway, but a lifetime of training had her instincts on a tight enough leash that she managed just a flinch. Even that was rude, although dark elves rarely minded a show of fear, in her experience.
Before she could even properly anticipate a blow, however, his hand settled briefly on her head. She had just enough time to steel herself for a cruel twisting of her pale copper hair which never came, before she felt a chime in head. It wasn’t like his normal presence, it was like a reverberation, the echo of sound when it’s so loud you can hear it, but without the accompanying pain of the ears. By the time she had processed it, his hand had been removed.
“If you need it to be dimmer, to sleep, or brighter, for energy, the mushrooms will respond to you.”
The mushrooms will do what now.
“I will leave you here. Later, food will be brought. Rest.”
And with that, he swooped past her and out of the room, the door closing with an echoing click.