Another Sky - 2 (Patreon)

Chapter 2

Know that I am a jealous Goddess, and shall not suffer attempts to worship false deities. Thine Lady’s fury is hell. -The Book, Promises, 1:3

Following Yabana back outside, the bright light of the sun briefly hurt my eyes.

“What do you mean ‘slave’?” I asked, shielding my eyes.

“Is your memory really that spotty, Andersson?” Yabana asked, staring at me for a moment. “The oracle said you were going to be important… I don’t want to be stuck with damaged goods just because she’s gotten old and lost her touch.”

“I—I know what a slave is,” I said, that being one of those strange ‘general knowledge’ aspects still floating in my mind. “It was an expression of shock and bewilderment… and horror that the practice exists here.”

“Well, it means no one will dare to eat you, so be glad for that,” Yabana said, turning to march off. She did add a bit more over her shoulder, however. “It also means you’ll have to do the work I ask of you… though I’ll get you some clothing. I don’t know how poorly slaves are treated in human lands, but here it reflects poorly on me to have you wandering around nude.”

Hurrying after her, it was only a short walk towards the collection of yurts, which I now realised was barely more than a half dozen temporary buildings. It was hard to process the change in my fortunes, but I could at least take comfort in the fact no one was going to eat me. There was still a hunger in the eyes of some of those around, but they lingered on the bracelet now affixed to my upper arm.

Yabana shouted something in her own language, a mixture of rough and guttural sounds and whistling. A rather interesting sounding language that pulled at memories of an interest in linguistics.

Which was odd… hadn’t I studied… physics? Yet it felt as if I had a fairly advanced understanding of linguistics. I supposed I must have had hobbies?

Shaking off the confusion about the blank emptiness that was my memories, I realised the others in the camp were starting to pack up their things.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“We’re leaving. The oracle called us out here because she said something was coming… and we’ve been stuck here for three weeks, stewing in place. Father said to believe the old bat and to stay, but patience was definitely starting to give out,” she muttered while leading me to a larger yurt than the one I’d woken up in.

Following her inside, I took a moment to process how much nicer this one was. The walls were covered in patterned rugs, the furniture was sparse but all of high quality. It all seemed well worn, but it spoke of wealth. At least wealth at some point. I didn’t know enough about artistic trends to guess how old any of it was, but there was clear wear on it all.

“Did you think the house of the Free Xahans had truly fallen so low we can’t have some nice decorations?” Yabana asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I—I don’t actually know what that is or what ‘Free Xahan’ means,” I replied.

For that, Yabana paused, staring at me for a few moments. “You really are from another world, aren’t you?”

“Um… apparently?” I replied.

“Huh,” she said, giving a small nod. “Well, we are the true Xahans of the Orcish Steppes. The last free people of the great continent, Urasin. There are other free orcs in the New Lands, but I know little of them. The empire of the Nbt-shm doesn’t exactly give us the opportunity to talk with them much.”

“The Nebet-sehem?” I said, trying my best to pronounce the term but feeling certain I’d fumbled the vowels.

That resulted in another perplexed stare from her. “Y—yes. I… you don’t have a Nbt-shm where you came from?” she asked, stepping deep into my personal space to stare at my face.

There was an utter bewilderment in her eyes that made me wonder if she might was a bit younger than I had first thought. Newer to adulthood than I’d realised. It was certainly a different expression from the hunger that mixed with smug superiority before.

“I… I don’t thin—I don’t know? I have no idea what that is, so—”

“Who,” Yabana replied. “She is… Her. The Undying One. The Eternal Empress. The Goddess that walks the earth. The nasty tyrant who kills anyone that questions her through utter command of the hkau, and is said to be able to listen in all places. Her authority stands above all. Not even the first princes, the wr-hkau themselves, can resist her mastery of it.”

“Sounds… sounds like a big deal,” I said, not really sure what else I could say.

Well, it sounded like madness to me. An immortal empress with magical powers? Yet—well, I was here on what was apparently another world. I was talking to a cannibalistic woman who surely wasn’t a Homo sapiens. Then there was… whatever it had been where I had woken up. That place of nightmares I didn’t want to think about.

“She’s ruled her empire for as long as history has been written,” Yabana explained. “Though her armies only defeated my people a few centuries ago. Our lands are too cold and dry for you humans to handle well… ah, but that’s enough history. You’ll get to learn all the history you want from old Minshei. He tutored me and my dad… right, we need to get you some clothing.”

With that she shouted something else in her language and an orc man perhaps a centimetre or two shorter than me stepped in. That made him one of the taller ones in the camp. He was carrying clothing in his arms, which he then shoved towards me. I took them and tried to say thank you, but he didn’t seem to understand me.

“They’re men’s clothing, but they should fit,” Yabana said. “We’ll get you something better when we get back home… humans are usually tall and you’re extra big.”

I gave a small nod and then stood there quietly for a few moments. It did not occur to me immediately that Yabana was not about to give me privacy to change. Which I probably should have expected. Wasn’t I her property now? In her eyes, at least…

Knowing that was what she thought of me didn’t make it any less uncomfortable to have her walk around me as I changed, apparently examining my physique. Maybe she was wondering at the signs of good nutrition I’d had growing up, in a more civilized place than whatever this land was. Famines were rare back on earth, outside of war torn regions like America.

Wherever that was.

“Your sunburns are healing,” she said.

“I—” pausing, I looked at my arms and noticed that they were indeed looking rather less red. “Mhm. I guess that’s the… the… there’s something. I know there’s something that is causing it, but I can’t remember what.”

Yabana raised an eyebrow. “So, it’s not just here that you don’t know about, but… wherever it is you come from?”

“Sorry,” I said, with a small and shy shrug. “My brain is slightly scrambled right now. I—I don’t even know how I’m speaking the same language as you.”

“Well, we’re speaking the language of the Nbt-shm right now. If that helps,” Yabana said, taking a seat on a small stool.

The information did not help.

Feeling self conscious, I pulled the clothes I’d been given on. They were somewhat rough, but still better than being nude.

The language we were speaking was still taking up a fair bit of my thoughts, however. It felt like I was speaking the language I’d grown up in. The Swenglish that dominated old Stockholm. Yet, wherever this world was surely wasn’t any part of the Nordic Federation.

Then there were those occasionally peppered in terms that felt unfamiliar. Were they simply terms without translations, that the… ‘hka’ wasn’t translating? It still seemed too early to say, but I swore there was something about those words that I should know. That lingering feeling that I had a familiarity with linguistics was itching at the back of my head.

“Well, your brain might be all scrambled, but you seem coordinated enough, so you can help pack,” Yabana said, hopping to her feet. “I want to be ready to move tomorrow morning. We’ll load everything but the bed rolls up.”

-

There wasn’t much for it but to do what Yabana told me to. I was in the middle of a camp full of her loyal followers and officially her slave. If I tried to resist or refuse what she said, who knew what would happen. Maybe they’d decide they wanted to eat me after all. So I gathered up rugs and small bits of furniture and loaded them onto horses and camels.

At least the animals here were familiar. Well, the ones in the camp. I was helping to disassemble one of the smaller yurts when a herd of strange creatures wandered close to the village. They looked like gazelles or antelopes, but they had noses… well, not quite like anything I’d ever seen. A tapir was my first thought, only for me to get distracted by trying to remember what a tapir actually was.

One of the orcs yelled at me for getting distracted, and so I did my best to focus again. Still, the strange creatures were vaguely on my mind.

Yabana strolled up at one point, saw the creatures grazing and then hurried off to release the cheetahs the camp had kept leashed up. The skinny felines set off in a burst of activity towards the herd. In the chaos as the creatures scattered a number of members of the camp rushed out with curved and elegant looking bows to bring down a number of those fleeing.

Shouts and whistles showed a celebratory mood in the camp as they hurried off to gather the carcases and drag them towards fires in the middle of the camp. They let the cheetahs gnaw on those that they’d brought down, however.

“Well, look at that, slave, you’ll actually get some meat tonight,” Yabana said with a sharp toothed grin. “Probably.”

The smugness of her expression and the way she’d apparently not bothered to remember my name dug at my very being. Thinking about years of this ahead of me flashed in my head and I was left with a desire to lash out. I wasn’t sure how, because before the desire could materialise into an actual thought I felt a burst of pain on my upper arm. Letting out a yelp, I realised that the slave-marking bracelet had… stabbed me? Burnt me? I wasn’t sure. It hadn’t felt natural, whatever it was.

“Or maybe you won’t get meat, slave, if you’re going to think about hurting me when I offer you kindness,” Yabana said.

I stared at her in confusion, then glanced down at the arm-band, now yet more confused. Looking back at her, there was a realisation in her eyes.

“Right. You’re not—you don’t know how those work, do you?” she said.

I slowly shook my head.

“They’re filled with hka. They maintain control over slaves. If you try to run away from me or plan to harm me it will inflict pain. The worse you try to do the worse it will hurt you,” she explained.

A wave of dread washed over me as I stared down at the band that I had mistaken for simply a ceremonial bit of jewelry. I could feel my stomach sinking as I realised I had no hopes of escape.

“It was you humans who invented them, we just take them off slaves we free and reuse them on prisoners,” Yabana said.

I was certain there was a look of horror on my face, but I did my best to swallow it and look at her with what dignity I could muster. “I—I was merely upset about you calling me ‘slave’ instead of my name. Give me that small dignity and I promise I will be far more cooperative.”

Yabana replied with a small nod. “Very well. The oracle says you’ll be a hero at some point, so I can do that… uh, what was it, again?”

“Kasja Andersson,” I replied in a slightly flat tone.

“Mhm. Alright, Andersson,” Yabana said with a nod. “It still sounds rather… never mind. Go prepare our bedding in my yurt. I’ll—yeah, I’ll try to save you some saiga meat.”

She then pointed out who I should talk to about the bedding before leaving towards the burning fires where the meat was starting to cook. There was more shouting and whistling from the crowd as she joined them, someone pulling out a stringed instrument to play on.

I turned away, not wanting to watch the celebrations of people who practiced slavery and cannibalism. Especially with the smell of cooking reminding me just how hungry I was, while having no idea when I’d get to eat. Instead, I focused on the task I was given, heading over to the woman I’d been pointed to. She was dressed simply, though didn’t have a circlet like I did, so I suspected she was a servant rather than a slave. I tried to ask her for bed rolls, only to discover the woman apparently did not speak the language I could understand, and I was forced to try to communicate with gestures and charades.

In the end, though, the woman seemed to understand and handed me three bedrolls. I wasn’t sure I needed that many, but I was too tired to argue and so headed back to Yabana’s yurt. Just to be on the safe side, I unrolled all three of them and pulled out the blankets needed. The yurt seemed rather empty, now that all the furniture had been packed away, and I wondered how cold it might get.

I then tried to make my way towards the meal, but found the other orcs elbowing me back, some of them shouting unclear orders at me. Unable to communicate, I returned to Yabana’s yurt and waited. I would say I waited patiently, but there was nothing patient about my hunger. It was more a waiting driven by a lack of control. Waiting fueled by defeat and powerlessness.

With nothing better to do, my brain revolved around the little information I had. The idea that I had been summoned by some ancient and mysterious to topple an empire run by a goddess didn’t make much sense to me. What little I remembered said I was just an academic. A scientist. Why would I be the one brought to change it?

Or, if there was a reason why I was a good choice, why couldn’t I remember it? How long would it be for me to regain my memories? Would I regain them? Or had this hka thing (stuff?) messed up when it brought me over… had it messed me up and grabbed the wrong person? With how things had gone since I’d woken up I felt that would probably fit my luck.

In the end I had no idea what to make of any of it and was glad that hunger and exhaustion caused me to fall asleep where I was sitting.

What followed, I couldn’t remember. I knew it was nightmares, however. Confused flashes on sensations that I couldn’t process. The most basal sort of nightmare, fear of fear itself.

When I woke up, gasping from some vague fright, I found a blanket draped over me, Yabana sleeping in a bed roll a short distance away. And—

And cheetahs. A good half dozen of them, sleeping in a pile across the two free bed rolls, apart from one that was curled next to Yabana. One of them was awake and noticed I was looking at it. Fear shot through me, not sure how to handle a large cat. The cheetah, however, chirped at me before walking over in a surprisingly friendly way and flopping against me, its head resting in my lap.

I was still nervous, but the way it was purring and rubbing against my leg made me think it wanted me to pet it. So I gave it a try, a small scratch behind one ear, and the cheetah’s purring grew louder. It was calming and gentle. Enough to slowly lull me back to sleep.

-

Staring at the smartboard in front of me, I wondered what was missing from my equations. Macro-scale quantum tunnelling was just out of humanity’s grasp, I knew it. I had to prove it.

It was all so close to working.

Then again, it had seemed so close back in Nairobi. Back when Joshua and I had been working together. Before the university had said we either needed to change our focus or find work elsewhere.

I had stuck to my guns and found myself back in Scandinavia for my troubles. Teaching at a third rate university that was thrilled enough to have someone educated in the prestigious universities of East Africa that they let me have my eccentricities.

Yet, I had barely moved any closer to an answer. Each issue I solved seemed to come with two new issues born of the solution.

Sitting down at the table, I let out a small sigh. “I’ll beat you in the end, Einstein. I know I will.”

“Maybe you need to take a break, Dr. Andersson,” a female voice said.

Turning, I saw one of the other professors walking over, a mug of coffee in each of her hands. Dr. Svensson, if my memory was serving me correctly.

“I don’t mean give up,” she said with a soft smile. “Just to work on something else for a while. Let it sit in the back of your mind.”

“There’s nothing in physics that grabs my attention even half as much,” I said, taking the coffee she offered with a quick thank you.

“Try a hobby, then? I find gardening rather relaxing. And I’ve managed to make a rather nice little sanctuary to retreat to, if I do say so myself,” Andersson said, smiling down at me.

She was a tall woman, having a good few centimetres on me even as I was a bit above the average height. It vaguely made me wonder if she was trans, height changes being one procedure that wasn’t very available in Europe. There’d be no way to know unless she told me, though. And it didn’t really matter.

What I did know was that she was confident, beautiful, and… probably flirting with me. A hobby might not provide the distraction I needed to let my brain rest, but a romance would.