Sequel

The questions you guys asked about the last chapter really helped get this one done. It added all the cool little bits and delved in a bit of Ashun's role. I corrected one statement that someone made. But not all of them. Lets see if they can pick it out.

Read, Review and Enjoy.




Ashun walked to the kitchen without waiting for Rel. Rel grudgingly shut off the laptop and joined the young woman as she pulled a plastic bowl out from under the cupboard. Ashun dug through Rel’s drawers until she found a set of measuring cups, a plastic mixing spoon and a teaspoon the likes of which Rel used to mix his tea.

“Do you know how to make cookies?” Ashun asked quietly before she opened the fridge and stuck her head inside.

“What kind of cookies?”

The young woman pulled out a carton of eggs and gave Rel a look, “I will show you how to make cookies. Now. To start off you pull out the ingredients, eggs,” Ashun handed them over to Rel, “butter. And such.”

“If he loves me so much, why does he want me to change?”

“Well. It’s just.” Ashun frowned at the sugar she pulled down from the cupboard, “hard to explain. But I suppose to explain it in people I’d have to say that he wants you to be the best you can be. If you become who we hope you can be, you two will lead a very long, happy life. It’s not guaranteed whether that life will be together so you don’t have to freak out all about how you’re being manipulated and such. But if you stay as Rel. Do you really see that you will be happy?”

Fuck no.

Ral gave his head a small shake. Ashun sighed and continued, “of course we’re forcing the change instead of allowing it to happen because apparently we’re running out of time.”

“Running out of… because of some sort of…”

Ashun climbed onto the counter to reach the top shelf of the cupboard and pull down baking soda and baking powder. She handed them down to Rel before hopping down.

“I am a game piece, a piece to the gods. They are severely pressuring us to make certain that you, Rel, change into Lel. Now this could be several reasons. One reason could be that you are a god. But. Highly doubt that as all the gods are accounted for. Or. You’re about to ascend to a piece, master, warrior, player or something called a higher spirit. Which is like a scribe for the gods. Then, considering the gods and such, there is the even better possibility that they need you to change into Lel because your existence as Lel can bring a soul out of the well of souls and thusly make a body for it here and the time for that to happening is coming up close and fast.”

“Why would it be coming up fast?”

“Because…” Ashun tilted her head to the side and watched Rel for a moment, “babies take a male and a female. If the female’s… tenth child shall be such and such a soul, then if she passes that tenth child and doesn’t… let’s say… have sex with a hobo then she won’t give birth to a king and the world will be worse for it. The gods give more free will to women. Male, they want him to breed, they get him drunk. Woman. They seduce her and then tease her and taunt her with what she will become and what her child will become and then they say, oh, by the way, it’s not us you have to sleep with.”

The young woman shook her head and rolled her eyes as if she had experienced that personally.

“So … the gods want me to change. Or. Muan?”

Ashun opened her mouth, closed it and cocked her head to the side before she giggled, “I almost said something completely stupid. Only the gods want you to change now. Muan,” she motioned over to the Sidhe, still looking out over the cityscape, “is perfectly willing to wait years for you. But sometimes, like when I work with Tuhn, it seems like the entire thing is impossible. Leh-ahn or Reh-ahn?”

“What?” that was a really shortened down…

“Matewise, would you want any children produced by Muan, let’s say it all happened this way, to be referred to as Leh-ahn or Reh-ahn?”

“Leh-ahn does sound better,” Rel muttered, “what do they mean?”

“Uhm. Loosely translated? Don’t fuck with me or please rape me. In that order.”

Rel chewed his bottom lip for a long moment and looked at the bowl, “alright. Name wise, Lel is better. I’ll give you that one.”

“Good. Because Rel means rape in Sidhe so none of us want to say it. Ever. Again.” Ashun gave Rel a glare, like he had named himself or something, “now, we start by measuring the butter like so.”

“Why would Muan dominate me if he just needs me sane though?”

“Muan can force you to become Lel enough to do what the gods want you to do. But down that road, not so good for either of you in the long run,” Ashun muttered, levelling off the cup of butter, “Rahl-ta is ordering him to dominate you if you don’t move fast enough.”

“How the hell does he expect someone to change that fast?” Rel snapped.

Ashun looked pointedly at the brown sugar, “measure a cup and a half of well packed brown sugar and put it in the bowl.”

As in, he wasn’t getting an answer unless he helped. Rel opened the brown sugar and began packing brown sugar into the measuring cup. Halfway through packing the cup with sugar, he looked at Ashun expectantly.

“He doesn’t expect you to change fast enough. Which is why he’s fighting with Muan to get him to dominate you.”

“As in rape me.”

“You are his to use as he pleases. Illuva has traded off your life, as is her right with any who have enough Aniege blood in them to be called an Aniege.”

“What could she have possibly traded me off for?”

“Likely?” Ashun asked, opening the carton of eggs, “it was for Paw or Mik or the program itself, even. It could have been for Koln or Taln or some side person or she could have sold you off to get you here, in the thing she sold you for, to get you in on the action because she needs you to trigger some reaction.”

“Hate Illuva.”

“At least she isn’t shallow.”

“But I don’t think I even followed that line of thought,” Rel mumbled to himself, tapping off the last of the cup. He held it out to Ashun and she motioned to the bowl so he tipped it upside down and dropped the, now lump, into the bowl. She began poking it immediately, breaking apart the packed brown sugar.

“I don’t think there’s any way to simplify this. At all.” Ashun sighed.

“You could simplify it by telling the truth.”

“Uhm,” Ashun held the spoon just above the brown sugar and butter, eyes narrowing as she pinned him with a look, “are you crazy? Even if Una wasn’t going to wake up, very soon, then I still wouldn’t be stupid enough to tell you, because my head would explode, maggots would eat my brain from the inside out and everything I love would be destroyed slowly and painfully.”

“Says who?”

“Says the banshee I made the deal with,” Ashun sighed as Rel dumped the half cup into the bowl, “now a cup of white sugar.”

Rel measured it out and dumped it into the bowl, “so you can’t tell me?”

“I know a great deal about very specific things, Rel. I know who and what Muan is. I know what his powers are, I could even tell you where his alpha is, who the people, for some reason, think is dead. I know there are several relatives of his who have escaped the farm before and where they are. I know Illuva’s plan and I know the fall out and how it’ll happen.”

“But.”

“But telling you would unravel the entire thing and I’d rather let the whole world unravel.”

“You mean. You wouldn’t.”

“I said what I meant.”


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