Sidestory: A zmeu's worth
* * *
Maws rubbed his jaw as he pondered the offer he'd received on his comm. Unbeknownst to him, he wouldn't be taking care of it today.
Well. That was another occupational hazard in action. Life as a mercenary meant you tended to pick up the strangest phrases and use them even when you didn't meant to or liked them. Why, he'd once adopted the click-filled, song-like speech patterns and provers of the Heirs of Xoant, using them for several years. Not that he'd ever understood half of what their saying meant, but he still liked how the claptrap sounded. Similarly, rubbing his jaw was something a person with only one would have done. Maws, with his ten thousand heads, had fallen on the humanoid tendency to think of the central one as "his head".
Some of his enemies had thought that head, with its golden beard, was somehow more durable or important than the surrounding, grey-bearded ones. As if he were the Lernaean Hydra! Still, it was nonsense he liked to spread. It kept idiots focused on heads that weren't any more important to him than any other body part. A grown zmeu, barring certain regeneration nullifiers, had to be dismembered, with the pieces kept apart by force, just to prevent rapid regeneration. Otherwise, if you diced a zmeu up, the pieces would stitch themselves back together in short order, if they were any larger than a grain of dust.
Maws had once heard a zmeu sorcerer, addicted to the sound of his own voice, say that if you reduced a zmeu to just one piece, it would regrow into the zmeu. Since that could not happen to him and he'd never seen such a situation...well. It didn't seem farfetched. Maybe it was related to the principle that meant a beheaded zmeu had to wish for their head of head to regrow, which only happened automatically if the old head was obliterated.
Talking about merc work...void, the people he met sometimes...
The Xoantites, at least, had been more welcoming, and funnier, than the Xoantans who'd preceded and built them. The aliens hadn't even deigned to communicate with him themselves, instead making their machine-children do so. After a handful of gigs, which he believed had been intended to prove how reliable he was more than to achieve anything important, one of the Xoantites - an untiring knight of quicksteel, with the heart of a shackled star and blood of lightning - had told him its builders hadn't wanted to risk being intimidated by interacting with Maws.
The zmeu snorted at the memory. Nearly a dozen billion years had passed, but he'd never forget how cowardly that had struck him as. He knew he wasn't exactly the most pleasant being in existence, but he also knew that the Xoantans had possessed the means to meet him face to face, if they'd wanted.
Talking to him via comms, however, would have meant leaving their more than literal comfort zone, and the walls they'd raised between that and the rest of existence would've never allowed them that. The metaphorical walls, that was.
As unbelievable as the cowardice had been, alright, not like it'd affected him in anyway. The Xoantans hadn't been the first pussies to hire him, nor the last. But the advice they'd given him when he'd left had been downright ridiculous, in an insulting way.
It had been delivered through their machines, too, of course. The Xoantans, impressed by his skills, had suggested Maws should find a way to preserve his legacy: the stories about him, his skills, the wealth he'd gained. But that had been their fear of death and pain (any inconvenience, really) talking, The League of Xoant had crafted constructs to do everything for them: work, defence, war, entertainment, exploration, diplomacy. Nearly an eon of exposure to the cosmos had convinced them of its cruelty and perils, and they'd retreated into their shells, with nonconformists few and far between.
All because they'd wanted to preserve themselves and what was theirs, unto eternity. Even after the Xoantans had faded into blissful obsolescence, then oblivion, their machines had kept their culture alive in museums, though it had only relatively decently become something they did because they wanted to.
Maws had laughed scornfully at the suggestion, before leaving. Even now, the thought made his lip curl. Father or make children just to keep him and what he had alive? It would've made him feel like a parasite. Maws might not have cared much about his sons (those were his zmeu instincts at work, he'd have said if asked; he almost liked them as people), but he'd have never asked them to waste their lives looking after this. He hated caretakers.
Heh. Not that such a thing was likely to happen, even if he changed his mind. Maws was quite certain the hatchlings hated his guts, with the dog's meal he'd made of the last attempt at being fatherly. Even if he'd gone against the grain by accepting his son's request for help, the result had shown him he still didn't have it in him to be a good parent, not that he likely ever would, even if he'd wanted to be.
Ah, well. He couldn't bring himself to care about his son's opinions any more than he'd start following the Xoantans' advice.
Maws leaned back until his back touched the ground and crossed his arms under his head, sighing. Zmeu country was always there for him to return to, the one constant in his life, for even the Underdweller couldn't always be with him: he respected her to much to spend time around her while sleeping with another woman. But his home would never be barred from him by anything.
'Why are you naked?'
Maws cracked open a few thousand eyes, halfheartedly glaring at the zmeu standing a ways away from his feet, arms crossed. 'Because I'm not wearing anything,' he said drily.
'And why is that?' she asked, flying closer until she was hovering above his eyes. Maws could've wrapped around Earth several times, even discounting the length of his tails, and she'd crossed that distance in a fraction of a second. She was faster than most zmei he knew, certainly than most her age. According to his arcane sense, she was in her early twenties.
Crossing two arms under his heads, Maws opened all is eyes, staring at the woman. Her orange-yellow scales gleamed dully in zmeu country's sun, and her black-slit red eyes were narrowed in amused mockery. Her surprisingly elegant eyebrows, a duller red, were quirked.
'What's the point of clothes?' he asked back. 'I don't have anything to hide, and I don't need protection from any environment. I can make my own, if I want to.'
'Yeah, about the first...' she put one hand on a cocked hip. 'What happened to your...equipment?'
Maws snorted. 'Why let any passing arsehole take a swing at it instead of keeping it retracted?'
The hatchling looked bemused at that. 'I've literally never heard of a male zmeu doing that,' she said flatly. 'Not out of combat, anyway. Are you serious?'
He gave her an incredulous look. She was starting to bore him, in an annoying way. 'What's that supposed to mean? Do you think I care enough about you to lie? I don't even know you, girl.'
She held up her hands in a pacifying gesture. 'No, no, it's just...I was this close to losing that bet with Lucian. I guess you just act dickless.'
Maws was to his feet in a blink, but his punch, more power than a hypernova in a far more concentrated package, was deflected her wards.
Tch...magic this powerful, at her age? Did zmeu country have another prodigy on its hands? He certainly hoped not, with what a pain in the arse the last one had been before becoming merely annoying.
'You know, I don't appreciate it when people trash talk my friends and try to kill me for calling them out,' the hatchling said in an even voice.
Maws' nostrils flared as his eyes danced with the joy of upcoming bloodshed. 'Watch it, you little bitch. Don't think I can't kill you if I put my mind to it.'
'I wouldn't do that in your place. I think you'd feel kind of stupid to see me being resurrected while you get a one-way trip to the worst dungeon in DEATH Keep.'
What the...ah. Ah! This must have been Silva's woman, the mate of the one they called Keeper. Apparently the latest in a line of unhinged bastards who ran the afterlife for the godless in the aether. He'd heard about him while shooting the shit with a few of his acquaintances. There had been a surprising number of mercenaries from Earth at this meeting, both because he'd never met some and because most of the vets weren't social animals.
Hmm...
'Oh,' Maws drawled, eyes hooded. 'You're the whore of DEATH's whore - or is he the Mover's? I'm surprised such a pair of two-timing bitches can stand each other. Are you trying to make up for putting the horns on him, or has that not happened yet?'
Mia scoffed. 'I've heard worse things from nicer men, fossil. Pretty impressive coming from a thug for hire. I bet you find all the time you need to come up with jibes for people who contribute something to existence in between paychecks. Do you practise them in the mirror? I'm,' she lowered her voice to perform a phlegmy rendition of his, 'surprised an old man with no balls can talk shit that mad, though.'
By now, Maws was growling, each power-laced sound that left his throat packing enough power to pulverise any planet. 'Why are you here? Did you get bored of your toy and come to annoy me?'
'Are you deaf or just stupid?' Mia snarled back. 'I just told you.'
Maws made a dismissive sound. 'And what friend of yours did I insult?' He thought for half a zeptosecond, running through memories of the hatchling (he'd never met her), then of people they both knew, who might have mentioned her...one of the mercs? 'Anyway,' he continued a sextillionth of a second later, 'even if I have, why aren't they here? Are you defending their honour while they hide behind you, just like how you threatened me with what your lover would do?'
Mia rolled her eyes. 'Gods, you really are a giant cunt, aren't you? I thought you just had son issues, but I see they weren't exaggerating.' Mia flew up so that she was between his central head's eyes. 'I'm going to have a talk with Aaron later, but let's be fair: no one has ever accused him of knowing how to read a room. Mostly the opposite, else he wouldn't have got stuck as an Admiral in a country with one opening to a sea.' She shook her head, as if to forget something, and stared back up at him. 'You don't give a damn about what you did, don't you? I bet you don't even see a mistake.'
Maws began walking away, hundreds of thousands of kilometres of soil that made steel look like air crumbling into dust in all directions with every step. 'Why don't you enlighten me? Seems to me you're very eager to put that mouth to anything but practical use - I'm not with anyone at the moment, by the way,' he added with a series of winks.
'You can stop leering, creep,' Mia replied with a slight grimace. 'I know it must be difficult for you, not thinking with what's between my legs, but I'd rather tough it out than sleep with whoever and complicate things for the rest of my life.'
'What's that supposed to mean?' the older zmeu asked, genuinely interested, if mildly.
'I don't sleep with friends, including friends who share my urges. Too much potential for awkwardness, and I'd rather not confuse people I only love as the siblings I never had. I don't sleep with friends' parents, either, for similar reasons.'
'Ah!' Maws exclaimed. 'The youngest one! You know him? So what's the matter?'
Mia huffed. 'The matter is that you came in at one of the worst moments in his life, when he was powerless to find the woman he loved, and basically told them their relationship doesn't matter, because they can't always be together. That their love is a joke because their instincts push them to sleep around, as if that makes it less genuine.' She gave him an unimpressed look. 'I've heard this opinion before, but you'd think a zmeu would know better.'
Maws laughed. 'My wife's the only reason our relationship works, and I've never pretended otherwise. But if even one half can't keep what matters pure, then why continue the sham? Better not start it in the first place.'
'That's certainly a point of view,' Mia said tartly.
'It's a fact. And it's not my fault he couldn't find his woman. What was preventing him from using that mace of his to destroy the distance between them, or whatever was stopping him from reaching her?'
'What wasn't?' Mia asked. 'Listen: creation might have changed, that might not have happened, but we still remember the timeline where it did. No one involved is any different.'
'I fail to see how that's relevant-'
'It's not the only thing you fail at. You made a deal for power and forgot about anything else...oh, my bad!' Mia facepalmed in mock-realisation, a sarcastic grin on her face. 'That and fucking you way across creation! Blazes, but you're something. Three chances to learn to pull out, and you still haven't gotten the knack.' Her expression darkened. 'Don't talk as if you ever understood the forces at play. No one could've done whatever they wanted in those moments, or you'd best believe your son would've done everything you suggested, and more. He loves Bianca.'
'Spare me,' Maws rumbled.
'No, you listen to me.' Mia was suddenly above him, knocking him down with a spinning kick that split his central head open and pulped the neck. 'I'm not saying you're completely useless, but even if you'd never become a father? There would have been others to fight in your sons' places, to guide me. Fixer would've arranged it - ask you wife.'
Who the hell was Fixer...? 'You-'
The younger zmeu throttled him with one hand, claws sinking into his regenerating throat before throwing his body, heavier than any planet, away. Maws flew, crossing three hundred thousand kilometres in a second, before crashing into and through the ground. A mass equal to a dozen Jupiters
slammed through the landscape with more force than ten supernovas, and Maws grunted. He felt as if he'd punched himself.
He got up in an instant, his innate durability more than enough to endure such power with nothing more than cracked scales - no need for the power he'd gotten from the pact. Now, he had the girl's measure. He'd thought letting her throw him had been enough for her to vent, but she still looked as irate as before.
'Don't mock him again,' Mia held up a warning finger. 'As far as their natures allow? They're practically married, in every way that matters. He has vowed to always be there for her, so you don't get to disparage what they have just because you're screwing an Escher painting that has to be prompted to hug and confuses affection with curiosity.'
Maws roared. 'Don't you dare bring her into thi-'
'Raise your voice at me again and you die,' Mia promised flatly. 'I've got weapons and monsters that have never existed, because they were torn from history. You don't want to join them.'
At that, Maws broadened his arcane sense, but he couldn't spot anything on or around her, only a general sense of menace. But maybe that had to do with the nature of what she'd mentioned? He'd learned it was better not to underestimate or assume.
'See how it feels?' she continued. 'The difference is that I actually know what I'm talking about. Don't confuse the fact the Underdweller likes playing house with the idea she loves you or wants a family. She's not wired that way.'
'She is enough for me,' Maws retorted, not missing a beat.
Mia arched an eyebrow, sardonic amusement dripping from her voice. 'But what your son and his girlfriend have isn't enough? At least Bianca can feel love. Gotta beat having the personality of an exoplanetary rover.' She laughed. 'Listen, I'm not here to kill you, provided you don't do anything stupid - a harsh demand, I know.'
Maws let out a bored chuckle. 'Get to the point. So I didn't tell him what he wanted to hear, didn't indulge his nonsense.' He spread his arms. 'So what? Other zmei wouldn't have gone to talk at all. Some would kill their hatchlings and spare them no more thought than they would an ant.'
'Do you want some head pats for being dad of the year? I'm not sure I have that much time,' Mia said. 'I'm here because I can't just let a colossal bastard and a bigger hypocrite than you just walk away from that. Lucian might be more forgiving than me; good for him. He's always managed to detach himself from what doesn't hurt him. Guess I'm too hotheaded,' she said with a self-deprecating smile, shrugging. 'And I couldn't see you relaxing and having such a good time, after you took a dump on your son's life and hauled arse without so much as a by your leave.'
'Who are you, his mother?' Maws asked contemptuously, bored to tears but aware he'd never get anywhere with this annoying brat on his heels. She was hellbent on ruining his day.
Mia clasped her hands. 'Let's bring that back, shall we? You say you're in a real relationship because the Underdweller doesn't sleep around. Ok...let's say I can imagine only caring about sex, we're both zmei, but you're as old as the goddamn universe, or older. How come you still think like a preteen? Rhetorical question,' she held up a hand, preempting him. 'You're dumb enough to think your wife going down her interaction checklist equals love because she doesn't bang other people.' She took a deep breath, sounding tired, the fabric of her red sleeveless shirt bulging slightly with her muscles. It was narrower around her upper back, with a smaller strip of fabric between her wings. 'I want you to apologise. I spent half the days I worked for Lucas hanging out with Lucian. The man's practically my uncle...but I get the feeling you don't care a whit about him, do you?' she asked, sounding disappointed. 'You know what? Better silence than an insincere apology.'
'And here I was about to clear my schedule,' Maws sneered.
'Oh, no need,' Mia replied in the same tone. 'See, I'm here because I want to check something. Sure, there are a lot of people who'd love to see you dead and most would pay for it, but I don't think I'll take that. It would make me too much like you. What I'm interested in is, are you worth keeping around? I'm not working,' she gestured at her clothes. 'And we try not to be too proactive, anyway; it comes across as paranoid. But I want to know if I should pull any punches in case you become a threat to Earth.'
'Ha!'
'So, tell me,' Mia showed her teeth. 'Do you know how to do anything a monkey couldn't? Do more than eat, drink, sleep, shit and fight? Because from where I'm standing, you look like a stray dog that's very easy to goad into biting people you don't like. I normally wouldn't care about a meathead like you, but...some of my family does. Even if only those who hate you.'
Oh, good. At least they also wanted to avoid meeting.
'Doesn't mean they might not pay you a visit too,' the cow continued, as if reading his thoughts and deciding his day wasn't bad enough. 'And, besides that, I also want you to prove something to me.'
The audacity...! 'As if you can demand anything from me!' Maws exclaimed, incredulous, half his heads turning to boggle at her. 'But very well, if it will get you out of my sight. Not like I have anything better to do.' He crossed his arms. 'What do you want.'
'I imagine you noticed my spells.'
'Yes, good wards,' he said with grudging respect. 'What are you channeling?'
'My inner - no, you wouldn't get it.' She laughed to herself. 'It's not really sorcery, per se. I don't have a patron or a focus. I'm...improvising.' She looked frustrated at something. 'Not that it's easy to bump into people around here, but we wouldn't have met if I hadn't come to you. I don't have a demesne here.'
'I'd be surprised if you did,' he grumbled. That would have been too much. A slip of a girl like her, with a demesne, when she wasn't even thirty? Most zmei were only able to carve out their own demesnes in zmeu country when they were mature enough, physically and mentally. With how their species was, that could take as much as a century, and usually required several decades. To establish a sub-realm in the supernatural landscape, a zmeu needed to understand themselves and have a strong will besides, though sometimes, such things were intertwined. 'But what does that have to do with anything?'
'I keep trying to mould the country's reality into the shapes I want, but it doesn't take. It's too malleable. Like trying to keep air in your fist.' Hm. That was a way to put it. Back when he'd created his demesne, he'd had much of the opposite problem: it had felt like chipping away at a mountain with a spoon, and he'd managed to pull it off thanks to his stubbornness more than anything else.
It occurred to Maws that there was some poetic irony, or whatever it was called, to be found there, with how opposed his and the girl's views were. For some reason, that irked him. It felt too much like the lessons in children's fables.
'What does that have to do with your magic?' Maws asked, more insistently this time.
'I was getting to that, you crotchety snake,' she said, glowering. 'I can't make anything like a palace, or a workshop, or a barracks.' Oh, exactly the centres of his sons' demesnes given as examples? What a coincidence. 'But the country speaks to me, even if it sounds like it's sleep-talking at the best of times. I can't make anything stable, but I can channel that power, and it's endless. The only other limit is my imagination, how much I think I can use at one time. Because I might not be able to raise anything complex out of the country, but I can use what it gives me as a battery. And magic, I know well enough.'
'Hijacking the country to cast? That is very clever. Do you get ideas like this to compensate for being this weak, or do you just have a lot of free time?' Maws asked, affecting fascination.
To his pleased surprise. she didn't fly off the handle and start tearing into him. Thank the void, some zmei closer to his age still had hair-trigger tempers, to say less of those her age. It was...refreshing.
Instead of raging, Mia gave him a bland smile, before continuing as if he hadn't said anything. 'I could figure it out on my own, though it would take a while, even with time dilation. So...why not prove you're good for more than wrecking stuff, and try to be a teacher? You can pretend you'remaking up for the mess you made of that meeting with Lucian.'
Maws sniggered disparagingly. 'It's pointless. I never faced the obstacles to creating a demesne you say you've encountered. Nothing I say could help you. And besides, what's in it for me? I help you become more powerful, and gain...what? Some memories of the time I wasted?'
'How about the certainty that if I do have to kill, it probably won't be for personal reasons?' she asked in an overly sweet voice. 'I might not even join the guys if they decide to tear you a new one.'
Maws rolled his eyes. 'Girl, they don't care. You care more than they do - what, don't you have anything to do, either? If Silva is half as disappointing as I've heard, it wouldn't surprise me.'
'Sounds to me like you're scared,' she goaded. 'Or maybe admitting you're stupid. If you know you can't teach or even give advice worth a damn, why'd you even go when Aaron called? You should've told him to piss off. It would've hurt less.'
Maws felt his lips peeling back from his mountain-sized fangs. 'You just can't let go of that, can you? What's it matter to you?'
She looked like she wanted to throw up her hands. 'Do you even talk with anyone besides the Underdweller? Why are you so surprised I'm angry? You went to one of my closest friends and told him he and his girlfriend can't really love each other because they're ruled by their lusts? You said that with such confidence, as if you've ever felt a thousandth of what they have.'
'Even if the Underdweller doesn't love as I do,' Maws said coldly, 'my heart still beats for her. And that's enough.'
Mia shook her head, hawking a flaming gobbet of fire-laced spit. It burned a three-kilometre wide hole through the ground in an instant, turning soil to a white-glowing, steaming mess, and kept going. 'It's actually kind of impressive you can spout bullshit like that, but still look at them and say it's a joke. For just a moment, forget about the sex: if they were spirits, without bodies, what would you be getting hung up on?'
Maws waved her off. 'Forget it. I'm getting a headache. Return to your inane request.'
'Why? Didn't you just tell me to get lost?'
'What did you expect?' Maws asked caustically. 'That I'd be so incensed at your insinuations of me being a poor mentor I'd take you up on it? Forget it, hatchling. This is not some asinine story where you get someone to train you by taunting them about how they're incompetent to manage. As I'd told you, it's useless.' Maws closed half of his eyes, clearing his throats. When he resumed speaking, his voice was lighter. 'But I know someone who might manage to help. Even if she can't, she's always eager for visitors.' He leaned closer, mouthing the name without making any sound. Mia's eyes narrowed as zmeu country shook around her.
Maws then turned his back on Mia, spreading his wings as he prepared to fly away. 'And just to make sure you don't drop in again to be a pain in my necks, I'll think about what you said.'
Who knew? Maybe clearing the air with his hatchlings, even if just to make sure they had nothing to say to each other from now on, would help.
And...he wanted to visit his wife again, as soon as he could without feeling guilty. Maybe he and the Underdweller had some things to talk about, too.
* * *
Maws rubbed his jaw as he pondered the offer he'd received on his comm. Unbeknownst to him, he wouldn't be taking care of it today.
Well. That was another occupational hazard in action. Life as a mercenary meant you tended to pick up the strangest phrases and use them even when you didn't meant to or liked them. Why, he'd once adopted the click-filled, song-like speech patterns and provers of the Heirs of Xoant, using them for several years. Not that he'd ever understood half of what their saying meant, but he still liked how the claptrap sounded. Similarly, rubbing his jaw was something a person with only one would have done. Maws, with his ten thousand heads, had fallen on the humanoid tendency to think of the central one as "his head".
Some of his enemies had thought that head, with its golden beard, was somehow more durable or important than the surrounding, grey-bearded ones. As if he were the Lernaean Hydra! Still, it was nonsense he liked to spread. It kept idiots focused on heads that weren't any more important to him than any other body part. A grown zmeu, barring certain regeneration nullifiers, had to be dismembered, with the pieces kept apart by force, just to prevent rapid regeneration. Otherwise, if you diced a zmeu up, the pieces would stitch themselves back together in short order, if they were any larger than a grain of dust.
Maws had once heard a zmeu sorcerer, addicted to the sound of his own voice, say that if you reduced a zmeu to just one piece, it would regrow into the zmeu. Since that could not happen to him and he'd never seen such a situation...well. It didn't seem farfetched. Maybe it was related to the principle that meant a beheaded zmeu had to wish for their head of head to regrow, which only happened automatically if the old head was obliterated.
Talking about merc work...void, the people he met sometimes...
The Xoantites, at least, had been more welcoming, and funnier, than the Xoantans who'd preceded and built them. The aliens hadn't even deigned to communicate with him themselves, instead making their machine-children do so. After a handful of gigs, which he believed had been intended to prove how reliable he was more than to achieve anything important, one of the Xoantites - an untiring knight of quicksteel, with the heart of a shackled star and blood of lightning - had told him its builders hadn't wanted to risk being intimidated by interacting with Maws.
The zmeu snorted at the memory. Nearly a dozen billion years had passed, but he'd never forget how cowardly that had struck him as. He knew he wasn't exactly the most pleasant being in existence, but he also knew that the Xoantans had possessed the means to meet him face to face, if they'd wanted.
Talking to him via comms, however, would have meant leaving their more than literal comfort zone, and the walls they'd raised between that and the rest of existence would've never allowed them that. The metaphorical walls, that was.
As unbelievable as the cowardice had been, alright, not like it'd affected him in anyway. The Xoantans hadn't been the first pussies to hire him, nor the last. But the advice they'd given him when he'd left had been downright ridiculous, in an insulting way.
It had been delivered through their machines, too, of course. The Xoantans, impressed by his skills, had suggested Maws should find a way to preserve his legacy: the stories about him, his skills, the wealth he'd gained. But that had been their fear of death and pain (any inconvenience, really) talking, The League of Xoant had crafted constructs to do everything for them: work, defence, war, entertainment, exploration, diplomacy. Nearly an eon of exposure to the cosmos had convinced them of its cruelty and perils, and they'd retreated into their shells, with nonconformists few and far between.
All because they'd wanted to preserve themselves and what was theirs, unto eternity. Even after the Xoantans had faded into blissful obsolescence, then oblivion, their machines had kept their culture alive in museums, though it had only relatively decently become something they did because they wanted to.
Maws had laughed scornfully at the suggestion, before leaving. Even now, the thought made his lip curl. Father or make children just to keep him and what he had alive? It would've made him feel like a parasite. Maws might not have cared much about his sons (those were his zmeu instincts at work, he'd have said if asked; he almost liked them as people), but he'd have never asked them to waste their lives looking after this. He hated caretakers.
Heh. Not that such a thing was likely to happen, even if he changed his mind. Maws was quite certain the hatchlings hated his guts, with the dog's meal he'd made of the last attempt at being fatherly. Even if he'd gone against the grain by accepting his son's request for help, the result had shown him he still didn't have it in him to be a good parent, not that he likely ever would, even if he'd wanted to be.
Ah, well. He couldn't bring himself to care about his son's opinions any more than he'd start following the Xoantans' advice.
Maws leaned back until his back touched the ground and crossed his arms under his head, sighing. Zmeu country was always there for him to return to, the one constant in his life, for even the Underdweller couldn't always be with him: he respected her to much to spend time around her while sleeping with another woman. But his home would never be barred from him by anything.
'Why are you naked?'
Maws cracked open a few thousand eyes, halfheartedly glaring at the zmeu standing a ways away from his feet, arms crossed. 'Because I'm not wearing anything,' he said drily.
'And why is that?' she asked, flying closer until she was hovering above his eyes. Maws could've wrapped around Earth several times, even discounting the length of his tails, and she'd crossed that distance in a fraction of a second. She was faster than most zmei he knew, certainly than most her age. According to his arcane sense, she was in her early twenties.
Crossing two arms under his heads, Maws opened all is eyes, staring at the woman. Her orange-yellow scales gleamed dully in zmeu country's sun, and her black-slit red eyes were narrowed in amused mockery. Her surprisingly elegant eyebrows, a duller red, were quirked.
'What's the point of clothes?' he asked back. 'I don't have anything to hide, and I don't need protection from any environment. I can make my own, if I want to.'
'Yeah, about the first...' she put one hand on a cocked hip. 'What happened to your...equipment?'
Maws snorted. 'Why let any passing arsehole take a swing at it instead of keeping it retracted?'
The hatchling looked bemused at that. 'I've literally never heard of a male zmeu doing that,' she said flatly. 'Not out of combat, anyway. Are you serious?'
He gave her an incredulous look. She was starting to bore him, in an annoying way. 'What's that supposed to mean? Do you think I care enough about you to lie? I don't even know you, girl.'
She held up her hands in a pacifying gesture. 'No, no, it's just...I was this close to losing that bet with Lucian. I guess you just act dickless.'
Maws was to his feet in a blink, but his punch, more power than a hypernova in a far more concentrated package, was deflected her wards.
Tch...magic this powerful, at her age? Did zmeu country have another prodigy on its hands? He certainly hoped not, with what a pain in the arse the last one had been before becoming merely annoying.
'You know, I don't appreciate it when people trash talk my friends and try to kill me for calling them out,' the hatchling said in an even voice.
Maws' nostrils flared as his eyes danced with the joy of upcoming bloodshed. 'Watch it, you little bitch. Don't think I can't kill you if I put my mind to it.'
'I wouldn't do that in your place. I think you'd feel kind of stupid to see me being resurrected while you get a one-way trip to the worst dungeon in DEATH Keep.'
What the...ah. Ah! This must have been Silva's woman, the mate of the one they called Keeper. Apparently the latest in a line of unhinged bastards who ran the afterlife for the godless in the aether. He'd heard about him while shooting the shit with a few of his acquaintances. There had been a surprising number of mercenaries from Earth at this meeting, both because he'd never met some and because most of the vets weren't social animals.
Hmm...
'Oh,' Maws drawled, eyes hooded. 'You're the whore of DEATH's whore - or is he the Mover's? I'm surprised such a pair of two-timing bitches can stand each other. Are you trying to make up for putting the horns on him, or has that not happened yet?'
Mia scoffed. 'I've heard worse things from nicer men, fossil. Pretty impressive coming from a thug for hire. I bet you find all the time you need to come up with jibes for people who contribute something to existence in between paychecks. Do you practise them in the mirror? I'm,' she lowered her voice to perform a phlegmy rendition of his, 'surprised an old man with no balls can talk shit that mad, though.'
By now, Maws was growling, each power-laced sound that left his throat packing enough power to pulverise any planet. 'Why are you here? Did you get bored of your toy and come to annoy me?'
'Are you deaf or just stupid?' Mia snarled back. 'I just told you.'
Maws made a dismissive sound. 'And what friend of yours did I insult?' He thought for half a zeptosecond, running through memories of the hatchling (he'd never met her), then of people they both knew, who might have mentioned her...one of the mercs? 'Anyway,' he continued a sextillionth of a second later, 'even if I have, why aren't they here? Are you defending their honour while they hide behind you, just like how you threatened me with what your lover would do?'
Mia rolled her eyes. 'Gods, you really are a giant cunt, aren't you? I thought you just had son issues, but I see they weren't exaggerating.' Mia flew up so that she was between his central head's eyes. 'I'm going to have a talk with Aaron later, but let's be fair: no one has ever accused him of knowing how to read a room. Mostly the opposite, else he wouldn't have got stuck as an Admiral in a country with one opening to a sea.' She shook her head, as if to forget something, and stared back up at him. 'You don't give a damn about what you did, don't you? I bet you don't even see a mistake.'
Maws began walking away, hundreds of thousands of kilometres of soil that made steel look like air crumbling into dust in all directions with every step. 'Why don't you enlighten me? Seems to me you're very eager to put that mouth to anything but practical use - I'm not with anyone at the moment, by the way,' he added with a series of winks.
'You can stop leering, creep,' Mia replied with a slight grimace. 'I know it must be difficult for you, not thinking with what's between my legs, but I'd rather tough it out than sleep with whoever and complicate things for the rest of my life.'
'What's that supposed to mean?' the older zmeu asked, genuinely interested, if mildly.
'I don't sleep with friends, including friends who share my urges. Too much potential for awkwardness, and I'd rather not confuse people I only love as the siblings I never had. I don't sleep with friends' parents, either, for similar reasons.'
'Ah!' Maws exclaimed. 'The youngest one! You know him? So what's the matter?'
Mia huffed. 'The matter is that you came in at one of the worst moments in his life, when he was powerless to find the woman he loved, and basically told them their relationship doesn't matter, because they can't always be together. That their love is a joke because their instincts push them to sleep around, as if that makes it less genuine.' She gave him an unimpressed look. 'I've heard this opinion before, but you'd think a zmeu would know better.'
Maws laughed. 'My wife's the only reason our relationship works, and I've never pretended otherwise. But if even one half can't keep what matters pure, then why continue the sham? Better not start it in the first place.'
'That's certainly a point of view,' Mia said tartly.
'It's a fact. And it's not my fault he couldn't find his woman. What was preventing him from using that mace of his to destroy the distance between them, or whatever was stopping him from reaching her?'
'What wasn't?' Mia asked. 'Listen: creation might have changed, that might not have happened, but we still remember the timeline where it did. No one involved is any different.'
'I fail to see how that's relevant-'
'It's not the only thing you fail at. You made a deal for power and forgot about anything else...oh, my bad!' Mia facepalmed in mock-realisation, a sarcastic grin on her face. 'That and fucking you way across creation! Blazes, but you're something. Three chances to learn to pull out, and you still haven't gotten the knack.' Her expression darkened. 'Don't talk as if you ever understood the forces at play. No one could've done whatever they wanted in those moments, or you'd best believe your son would've done everything you suggested, and more. He loves Bianca.'
'Spare me,' Maws rumbled.
'No, you listen to me.' Mia was suddenly above him, knocking him down with a spinning kick that split his central head open and pulped the neck. 'I'm not saying you're completely useless, but even if you'd never become a father? There would have been others to fight in your sons' places, to guide me. Fixer would've arranged it - ask you wife.'
Who the hell was Fixer...? 'You-'
The younger zmeu throttled him with one hand, claws sinking into his regenerating throat before throwing his body, heavier than any planet, away. Maws flew, crossing three hundred thousand kilometres in a second, before crashing into and through the ground. A mass equal to a dozen Jupiters
slammed through the landscape with more force than ten supernovas, and Maws grunted. He felt as if he'd punched himself.
He got up in an instant, his innate durability more than enough to endure such power with nothing more than cracked scales - no need for the power he'd gotten from the pact. Now, he had the girl's measure. He'd thought letting her throw him had been enough for her to vent, but she still looked as irate as before.
'Don't mock him again,' Mia held up a warning finger. 'As far as their natures allow? They're practically married, in every way that matters. He has vowed to always be there for her, so you don't get to disparage what they have just because you're screwing an Escher painting that has to be prompted to hug and confuses affection with curiosity.'
Maws roared. 'Don't you dare bring her into thi-'
'Raise your voice at me again and you die,' Mia promised flatly. 'I've got weapons and monsters that have never existed, because they were torn from history. You don't want to join them.'
At that, Maws broadened his arcane sense, but he couldn't spot anything on or around her, only a general sense of menace. But maybe that had to do with the nature of what she'd mentioned? He'd learned it was better not to underestimate or assume.
'See how it feels?' she continued. 'The difference is that I actually know what I'm talking about. Don't confuse the fact the Underdweller likes playing house with the idea she loves you or wants a family. She's not wired that way.'
'She is enough for me,' Maws retorted, not missing a beat.
Mia arched an eyebrow, sardonic amusement dripping from her voice. 'But what your son and his girlfriend have isn't enough? At least Bianca can feel love. Gotta beat having the personality of an exoplanetary rover.' She laughed. 'Listen, I'm not here to kill you, provided you don't do anything stupid - a harsh demand, I know.'
Maws let out a bored chuckle. 'Get to the point. So I didn't tell him what he wanted to hear, didn't indulge his nonsense.' He spread his arms. 'So what? Other zmei wouldn't have gone to talk at all. Some would kill their hatchlings and spare them no more thought than they would an ant.'
'Do you want some head pats for being dad of the year? I'm not sure I have that much time,' Mia said. 'I'm here because I can't just let a colossal bastard and a bigger hypocrite than you just walk away from that. Lucian might be more forgiving than me; good for him. He's always managed to detach himself from what doesn't hurt him. Guess I'm too hotheaded,' she said with a self-deprecating smile, shrugging. 'And I couldn't see you relaxing and having such a good time, after you took a dump on your son's life and hauled arse without so much as a by your leave.'
'Who are you, his mother?' Maws asked contemptuously, bored to tears but aware he'd never get anywhere with this annoying brat on his heels. She was hellbent on ruining his day.
Mia clasped her hands. 'Let's bring that back, shall we? You say you're in a real relationship because the Underdweller doesn't sleep around. Ok...let's say I can imagine only caring about sex, we're both zmei, but you're as old as the goddamn universe, or older. How come you still think like a preteen? Rhetorical question,' she held up a hand, preempting him. 'You're dumb enough to think your wife going down her interaction checklist equals love because she doesn't bang other people.' She took a deep breath, sounding tired, the fabric of her red sleeveless shirt bulging slightly with her muscles. It was narrower around her upper back, with a smaller strip of fabric between her wings. 'I want you to apologise. I spent half the days I worked for Lucas hanging out with Lucian. The man's practically my uncle...but I get the feeling you don't care a whit about him, do you?' she asked, sounding disappointed. 'You know what? Better silence than an insincere apology.'
'And here I was about to clear my schedule,' Maws sneered.
'Oh, no need,' Mia replied in the same tone. 'See, I'm here because I want to check something. Sure, there are a lot of people who'd love to see you dead and most would pay for it, but I don't think I'll take that. It would make me too much like you. What I'm interested in is, are you worth keeping around? I'm not working,' she gestured at her clothes. 'And we try not to be too proactive, anyway; it comes across as paranoid. But I want to know if I should pull any punches in case you become a threat to Earth.'
'Ha!'
'So, tell me,' Mia showed her teeth. 'Do you know how to do anything a monkey couldn't? Do more than eat, drink, sleep, shit and fight? Because from where I'm standing, you look like a stray dog that's very easy to goad into biting people you don't like. I normally wouldn't care about a meathead like you, but...some of my family does. Even if only those who hate you.'
Oh, good. At least they also wanted to avoid meeting.
'Doesn't mean they might not pay you a visit too,' the cow continued, as if reading his thoughts and deciding his day wasn't bad enough. 'And, besides that, I also want you to prove something to me.'
The audacity...! 'As if you can demand anything from me!' Maws exclaimed, incredulous, half his heads turning to boggle at her. 'But very well, if it will get you out of my sight. Not like I have anything better to do.' He crossed his arms. 'What do you want.'
'I imagine you noticed my spells.'
'Yes, good wards,' he said with grudging respect. 'What are you channeling?'
'My inner - no, you wouldn't get it.' She laughed to herself. 'It's not really sorcery, per se. I don't have a patron or a focus. I'm...improvising.' She looked frustrated at something. 'Not that it's easy to bump into people around here, but we wouldn't have met if I hadn't come to you. I don't have a demesne here.'
'I'd be surprised if you did,' he grumbled. That would have been too much. A slip of a girl like her, with a demesne, when she wasn't even thirty? Most zmei were only able to carve out their own demesnes in zmeu country when they were mature enough, physically and mentally. With how their species was, that could take as much as a century, and usually required several decades. To establish a sub-realm in the supernatural landscape, a zmeu needed to understand themselves and have a strong will besides, though sometimes, such things were intertwined. 'But what does that have to do with anything?'
'I keep trying to mould the country's reality into the shapes I want, but it doesn't take. It's too malleable. Like trying to keep air in your fist.' Hm. That was a way to put it. Back when he'd created his demesne, he'd had much of the opposite problem: it had felt like chipping away at a mountain with a spoon, and he'd managed to pull it off thanks to his stubbornness more than anything else.
It occurred to Maws that there was some poetic irony, or whatever it was called, to be found there, with how opposed his and the girl's views were. For some reason, that irked him. It felt too much like the lessons in children's fables.
'What does that have to do with your magic?' Maws asked, more insistently this time.
'I was getting to that, you crotchety snake,' she said, glowering. 'I can't make anything like a palace, or a workshop, or a barracks.' Oh, exactly the centres of his sons' demesnes given as examples? What a coincidence. 'But the country speaks to me, even if it sounds like it's sleep-talking at the best of times. I can't make anything stable, but I can channel that power, and it's endless. The only other limit is my imagination, how much I think I can use at one time. Because I might not be able to raise anything complex out of the country, but I can use what it gives me as a battery. And magic, I know well enough.'
'Hijacking the country to cast? That is very clever. Do you get ideas like this to compensate for being this weak, or do you just have a lot of free time?' Maws asked, affecting fascination.
To his pleased surprise. she didn't fly off the handle and start tearing into him. Thank the void, some zmei closer to his age still had hair-trigger tempers, to say less of those her age. It was...refreshing.
Instead of raging, Mia gave him a bland smile, before continuing as if he hadn't said anything. 'I could figure it out on my own, though it would take a while, even with time dilation. So...why not prove you're good for more than wrecking stuff, and try to be a teacher? You can pretend you'remaking up for the mess you made of that meeting with Lucian.'
Maws sniggered disparagingly. 'It's pointless. I never faced the obstacles to creating a demesne you say you've encountered. Nothing I say could help you. And besides, what's in it for me? I help you become more powerful, and gain...what? Some memories of the time I wasted?'
'How about the certainty that if I do have to kill, it probably won't be for personal reasons?' she asked in an overly sweet voice. 'I might not even join the guys if they decide to tear you a new one.'
Maws rolled his eyes. 'Girl, they don't care. You care more than they do - what, don't you have anything to do, either? If Silva is half as disappointing as I've heard, it wouldn't surprise me.'
'Sounds to me like you're scared,' she goaded. 'Or maybe admitting you're stupid. If you know you can't teach or even give advice worth a damn, why'd you even go when Aaron called? You should've told him to piss off. It would've hurt less.'
Maws felt his lips peeling back from his mountain-sized fangs. 'You just can't let go of that, can you? What's it matter to you?'
She looked like she wanted to throw up her hands. 'Do you even talk with anyone besides the Underdweller? Why are you so surprised I'm angry? You went to one of my closest friends and told him he and his girlfriend can't really love each other because they're ruled by their lusts? You said that with such confidence, as if you've ever felt a thousandth of what they have.'
'Even if the Underdweller doesn't love as I do,' Maws said coldly, 'my heart still beats for her. And that's enough.'
Mia shook her head, hawking a flaming gobbet of fire-laced spit. It burned a three-kilometre wide hole through the ground in an instant, turning soil to a white-glowing, steaming mess, and kept going. 'It's actually kind of impressive you can spout bullshit like that, but still look at them and say it's a joke. For just a moment, forget about the sex: if they were spirits, without bodies, what would you be getting hung up on?'
Maws waved her off. 'Forget it. I'm getting a headache. Return to your inane request.'
'Why? Didn't you just tell me to get lost?'
'What did you expect?' Maws asked caustically. 'That I'd be so incensed at your insinuations of me being a poor mentor I'd take you up on it? Forget it, hatchling. This is not some asinine story where you get someone to train you by taunting them about how they're incompetent to manage. As I'd told you, it's useless.' Maws closed half of his eyes, clearing his throats. When he resumed speaking, his voice was lighter. 'But I know someone who might manage to help. Even if she can't, she's always eager for visitors.' He leaned closer, mouthing the name without making any sound. Mia's eyes narrowed as zmeu country shook around her.
Maws then turned his back on Mia, spreading his wings as he prepared to fly away. 'And just to make sure you don't drop in again to be a pain in my necks, I'll think about what you said.'
Who knew? Maybe clearing the air with his hatchlings, even if just to make sure they had nothing to say to each other from now on, would help.
And...he wanted to visit his wife again, as soon as he could without feeling guilty. Maybe he and the Underdweller had some things to talk about, too.
Statistics: Posted by Strigoi Grey — 2024-02-25 07:46pm