Chapter Seven: Through the Eyes of the Oppressor
Written by Jeff
The tip of the fang saber pressed into Ja’s shoulder, breaking through the outer layer of skin before coming to a stop. Even in the dim underground room, the light seemed to shimmer off the Blood Summoner’s filed, pointed teeth, imbuing them with a ferocious glinting sharpness. As the blade dug into Ja’s shoulder, the hooded man bent down and brought his face in close, hissing his words with vitriol.
“Do you have any idea what you have done? Any idea the power you are trifling with? You warp from world to world, upsetting the balance, killing an elder statesman and then taking his relics as your own?”
As he spoke, the Blood Summoner pressed the fang further into Ja’s flesh, but the young man did not cry out. Instead, his hands tightened reflexively: One into a fist and the other firmly around the handle of the jawbone mirror. Kaia saw the sabre sink down into her friend’s skin and almost cried out, but was simply too petrified to make a sound, cowering next to the stone table covered with mirrors. The Blood Summoner eyed the necklace on Ja’s chest, then the mirror he held at his side.
“Do you even know what those are?” he hissed. “Do you have any idea what sort of men have wielded them in the past? Of course you don’t. You are no warp walker. You are fodder: the blood upon which I feed. You did not earn these treasures. You are a lost child that has stumbled into unrecognizable fortune.”
“I do know how to use them,” Ja said through clenched teeth. “The tongue chose me.”
The Blood Summoner gave a condescending laugh.
“Chose you? I do not believe it for a second.”
“Believe what you want,” scoffed Ja. “I’ll prove it.”
The pressure on Ja’s shoulder released and the Blood Summoner flashed the man an amused smile. Ja had used the mirror only once to close the portal that the gray-haired man had opened into the Putrid Coast. Still, Ja knew that he could communicate with it, just as the tongue had said. But what good was a portal now? Perhaps Ja could open up a doorway to a new world, but there was no way he and Kaia would be able to escape through it. The Blood Summoner had him pinned. Like always, the Blood Summoner held all the power.
It had only been a few days since Ja had escaped from the compound and yet the feeling of being dominated by others already seemed like a distant nightmare. He had become so accustomed to having power exerted over him; the other men in the compound made a ritual of humiliating the young man in every way their uncultivated minds could conceive. For a short, sweet moment, it seemed as if Ja had moved past being the subject of other people’s aggressions. But now he was right back where he started, in his own world, violently forced into submission. This time, the degradation made his blood burn in a way he had never experienced in the compound.
Keeping his eyes locked on the shadowed eye slits beneath the Blood Summoners hood, Ja lifted the jawbones as far as his pinned shoulder would allow. If the mirror could open up portals to other worlds, perhaps it could do more as well. He stated a simple desire:
“I want his power as my own.”
The mirror began to softly radiate in the young man’s hand, but Ja didn’t turn his head to look. It was the Blood Summoner who broke away from the staring contest first, averting his gaze to see the shimmering glass surrounded by jawbones and teeth. With newfound confidence, Ja held the mirror up for the Blood Summoner to see, catching his own reflection on the back side. As the mirror came parallel with the shaman’s face, both sides of the glass let out a blinding flash in the dimly lit cavern. When Kaia’s vision cleared, she saw the Blood Summoner stumble back, releasing his hand from the fang saber’s grip.
The pain in Ja’s shoulder immediately disappeared. His hand shot to where the saber had pierced him, but there was no blood or wound. Instead, there was cloth. That was when Ja realized he was standing now, not sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall. He looked to his side and saw Kaia huddled there and took a step towards her. She recoiled in fear. As Ja instinctively stepped back from her, he was tackled from the side and went crashing down onto the stone floor. A young man was pounding on him with fists, striking him in the face and chest, but the blows weren’t strong enough to cause any real pain. The young man screamed and frothed. Where had this feral creature come from? It wasn’t until several more blows had landed that Ja realized the person attacking him was himself.
It only took Ja running his tongue along the tips of his unnaturally sharpened teeth to know for certain he was inside the body of the Blood Summoner. Another tepid blow landed on Ja’s cheek and he sprung to his feet, grabbing the flailing, half-naked body and pinning it against his own. Ja had never exerted physical strength over anyone, and the sensation of debilitating his old body with such ease gave him a rush of endorphins.
“You fool!” screamed the Blood Summoner. “You absolute fool! I will drink you down to a withered husk for this!”
These word’s coming from Ja’s body made Kaia’s mouth go slack. She looked up at the robed man in utter confusion. Ja turned to her as well, flashing her a satisfied grin of unnatural, sharpened teeth.
“It worked!” Ja exclaimed. The childlike exuberance with which he said it seemed wholly out of place coming from the Blood Summoner’s body. “The jawbones gave me his power!”
“The jawbones did more than that,” whispered Kaia. “They gave you...all of him. And it looks like they put him in your body.
“He can have it!” Ja laughed, instantly drunk on the first power he had ever tasted.
The small body continued to thrash against the Blood Summoner’s robes, screaming curses and obscenities, until three men came rushing into the chamber.
“Sir, we know you don’t like to be interrupted,” one of them began, “but we heard yelling, and we didn’t see anyone come down here. Is everything alright?”
“No! Everything is not alright!” screamed Ja’s body. His mouth was quickly covered by a clasping hand with long, razor-sharp nails.
“Thank you for checking,” said Ja. He tightened his grip. “This one is quite the problem. Please, put him somewhere secure, but don’t harm him. Bind his mouth and hands. Don’t believe anything he says.”
Confused, the three guards pried the gnashing, wriggling body from the Blood Summoner’s robes. As they did, Ja reached down and retrieved the Tongue of Kathaka, then placed it around his new neck. Ja’s body shrieked at the three men, swearing to end their lives as they dragged him from the room and up the stone corridor. When the screaming had faded away, Ja and Kaia each let out a sigh of relief.
“Ja,” Kaia began, not knowing how to continue. “You...you look awful.”
Ja held out his robed arms and admired them, then looked over the rest of his new, fully-adult body. His skin was scaly and tough and it was clear his eyelids were a different shape, as his field of vision had altered significantly. The tip of his tongue was bifurcated and felt strange resting inside of his mouth. But Ja could see from his own perspective that he now stood tall and broad. This body was strong and lean and tough like sinew.
“I feel fantastic!” Ja exclaimed. “I’ve never felt this good!”
“That’s good, I guess,” Kaia said, feigning enthusiasm. She looked around the room. “So. We’re home.”
“Yeah, I guess we are.” Ja’s face soured for only a moment before brightening back up. “I think it’s a good thing. We’re not going to have the same problems we did before.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“Because all of our problems before were caused by the Blood Summoner. And now, I’m the Blood Summoner.”
“You can’t honestly want to stay like that, can you?” she asked. “I mean...just look at you. Ja, you’re a monster.”
“I’d rather be the monster than be eaten by it,” he said coldly. “Kaia, I’m in charge now. No one else has any way of knowing that it’s me in this body and not him. You liked it in Orn before you were exiled, right? Mostly?”
“I liked it better than being in the compound,” she conceded. “But it was still its own kind of prison.”
“It won’t be anymore.”
The next time a stranger came to the door of the chamber it was to bring the Blood Summoner his dinner. Ja instructed the woman to bring a second helping for Kaia and she did so without question. Later in the evening, three women arrived. When it became clear that Ja did not know what concubines were, Kaia took the initiative and proclaimed to the trio that she was the Blood Summoner’s only consort from now on, aggressively nodding her head at Ja to substantiate the claim. It took him a moment, but Ja caught on and told the women sternly that they needn’t come down to his chambers anymore. Hours later, when Ja realized why the women had come, he silently cursed Kaia for having sent them away.
Over the next day, Kaia told Ja everything she could remember about the inner-workings of Orn. She explained that the Blood Summoner was rarely seen in the village and that there was a group of elders who oversaw the minutiae of everyday life. But in terms of hierarchy, she knew of no one who outranked the shaman. That said, he was rumored to part of a larger sect called “The Great Serpent”, but no one in her social circles had more to say about it than gossip or hearsay. The Blood Summoner was a daunting figure that towered above the community. Unsurprisingly, all number of fictitious origin stories and devious associations had been fabricated about the man, and it was impossible to know what was actually true.
Though Ja and Kaia were safe at the bottom of the caves, neither of them wanted to live exclusively inside of a dank stone room. If they were going to be able to live freely in the community - and free from the aspects of it that made life miserable before - Ja was going to have to speak to the elders and inform them that changes were coming. Specifically, that he had hand-chosen Kaia to return from the compound, ending her exile and vaulting her to his most trusted companion.
The prospect of this made Ja deeply nervous, but he agreed that it was the only way for he and Kaia to actually live as part of the community. Before the elders of Orn assembled to hear the Blood Summoner’s commands, Ja held the petrified tongue and asked it, “How do I speak in a way they will listen?” and felt an odd, tugging sensation on his own tongue. He spoke to the elders with fervor and authority about reinstating Kaia in the community and they nodded back to him in deference. When Ja saw the elders react submissively, he felt Kathaka’s grip loosen in his mouth and began to confidently make more demands: From this day on, the blood sacrifices would cease. This made the elders visibly bristle, but they kept their heads bowed, nodding. Those currently imprisoned in the compound were free to leave, but the men were not welcome to rejoin the community. There would be no more exiling from Orn except as a consequence for intolerable acts.
Kaia had no issues rejoining the community as an elite. She stood at the right hand of the Blood Summoner, so even the most venerated elders interacted with her delicately. Word spread quickly that an exiled life bringer was now the most powerful woman in Orn. It was the biggest scandal the village had ever known, but no one dared say anything negative too loudly. Even if the exiling was theoretically finished, it was still far too dangerous to speak ill of such a powerful man and the company he kept. Few took the risk.
Kaia didn’t care what anyone thought or said about her. For the first time in her life, she felt invincible. There were no expectations of how she spend her time or live her life. She was waited on hand and foot, when she allowed it. Kaia was left alone to do whatever she pleased, allowed to spend time with whomever she wanted. Mostly she stayed with Ja, but when the two went their separate ways, she almost always found herself going to visit with the hunters. This was the group in which she always felt she had belonged, but wasn’t allowed to join because of her prescribed duties as a life bringer. The hunters had always enjoyed Kaia’s presence and only sent her away due to social pressure, so they were happy - if a little confused - to learn that there would be no more stigma with her tagging along with the group.
As much as Kaia would have liked to use Ja’s newfound power to deconstruct and destigmatize the entire caste system of Orn, she knew that such wild demands would only put a target on their backs. She wanted to unshackle all of the life bringers and allow them the chance to live the lives that they wanted for themselves. It felt selfish to not try. But the harsh reality was that self-preservation had to come first, and Kaia was in a precarious position in Orn that would require a deft hand to preserve. Kaia wasn’t respected, only feared. She didn’t have real agency; she didn’t even have her own chambers. She still slept in the same room as Ja to keep up appearances that she belonged to the hideous shaman. Kaia wanted to raze the whole system in Orn, but change would have to start small, with her as an example that people in the community could be something other than what they were designated. So, Kaia went to join the hunters. Before long, she was disappearing into the jungle with them for weeks at a time.
The people of Orn definitely found it strange at first when the Blood Summoner began regularly emerging from his chamber and ambling lazily through the village. But with repetition comes familiarity, and by the second month in his new body, many people in the community waved at Ja as he strolled by, no longer outwardly terrified of the man who had ruled over Orn with such terrible power. Ja preferred to spend his days with the oldest members of the community, some of whom had positions of power and others who did not, conversing for long hours about anything and everything there was to know about the world. The grey-haired man was the oldest-looking person Ja had ever seen, and definitely the only one with hair that had lost its color. None of the “elders” of Orn seemed even half that old, but they still were full of wisdom and knowledge that Ja had never known inside of the compound. With each passing day, Ja felt his mind sharpening and making new connections, and he could see that his conversation partners found this new, regular exchange of ideas thrilling as well.
Ja wasn’t sure exactly how old the Blood Summoner’s body was; it was strangely hard to tell. Somehow, the body felt simultaneously ancient and perfectly tuned. The skin was such a strange texture that it was impossible to judge its age by wrinkles, and there was no hair on his head at all, not even eyelashes or eyebrows. Out of caution, Ja never looked in the mirrors that lay on the stone table, but he did look at his reflection in the jawbones one time. That one look was all he needed, and then he would never have to see the face again. Kaia wasn’t wrong - he looked like a monster. Thankfully, he didn’t have to look at himself. Still, when he was philosophizing with others in the village, Ja always kept his hood drawn and his face from sight.
As the months drew on, Ja and Kaia saw less and less of each other during the days, when Kaia was even in the village at all. She knew that her friend was inside that frightening body, but no amount of time spent sleeping in the same room as the Blood Summoner kept her skin from prickling or her heartbeat from racing when her eyes found him in the dark. She didn’t feel guilty for separating herself from Ja, though; he hardly seemed to notice or care that she was gone. Both of them were getting everything they wanted from their new lives in the community.
As months of this routine stretched on, Ja gradually began to feel his body growing weaker. Not alarmingly - barely noticeable at first - but then a series of ailments worsened and combined until the issue was suddenly unavoidable. He seemed to hunch when he stood up now, unable to straighten up into an intimidating posture as he once could. His skin was slackening and felt almost gelatinous, no longer tightly stretched across lean muscle. It was as if his body was aging at a hyper-accelerated rate. Distressed, he turned to the only source he had that may have an answer: The Tongue of Kathaka.
“Do you have any idea what’s happening to this body?” Ja asked, holding the petrified lump up close to his mouth.
“I give you the power to speak to all things,” said the tongue, “not the answers to all of life’s questions. Try asking the body.”
The suggestion gave him pause, but Ja hadn’t had any problem communicating with the mirror, so why not a body? Closing a portal and body swapping with the Blood Summoner had been as simple as giving a command. So, Ja looked down and spoke.
“What’s wrong with you?”
The answer came not as words, but as a craving. Dopamine surged and it was as if his entire body was salivating. Begging. Crying out. For blood.
Of course. Ja cursed himself for being so naïve and shortsighted. This was knowledge he had always had, but had chosen to ignore. The Blood Summoner gained power from the blood sacrifices; he had become powerful in part from Ja’s blood. As a result, the first thing Ja did when he seized power in Orn was to put a stop to the rituals, never thinking about how his new body required that very specific type of fuel to function. This body now truly felt ancient, so decrepit that he began to long for his original body, but there was no way he was switching back now. Instead, Ja ordered that a whole, freshly-slaughtered goat be brought down to his chambers. After months of the Blood Summoner acting like a seemingly normal person, the request raised eyebrows, but was fulfilled nonetheless. There was little time for Ja to be uneasy about drinking the blood from the still-warm animal. As soon as the goat was brought to his chambers he practically pounced on it, drinking deeply of the creature’s essence and refilling his own.
As the days and then weeks passed, Ja’s condition steadily improved. Since his temperament remained positive, the people of Orn didn’t worry too much that the shaman was back to performing blood magic - at least he was sourcing it from animals now. It seemed as if the crisis had been averted. With renewed vigor, Ja happily continued his days discoursing and debating with the inquisitive men and women of the village, while Kaia became further ingrained with the hunters. Ja learned second-hand from one his conversation partners that Kaia had become one of the most efficient and successful stalkers in the entire village. The elders spoke of her skills with reverence and Ja was pleased to learn that his friend was building renown of her own. It never felt right that the people of Orn only knew Kaia as the Blood Summoner’s concubine, a dubious role that couldn’t have been farther from the truth.
Still, it stung when Kaia returned from the next hunt and then didn’t come back to stay with Ja in the Blood Summoner’s room, choosing instead to sleep in the cavern with the hunters. Kaia had marked twice as many kills on the trip as the next stalker, so her peers decided to celebrate her with a boisterous feast. Ja didn’t attend.
The next morning, he sent a messenger to ask Kaia to come to his chambers. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was going to say to her, or even what he wanted to say, he just knew that he had to say something to her. Everything was perfect in Orn, for both of them. But somehow it felt less perfect if the two of them weren’t in each other’s lives.
Ja heard the sound of feet scuffling down the hallway and sat up straight, pressing out his robes with his hands. But it wasn’t Kaia who came through the doorway. It was five hooded figures wearing the same exact robes as him - robes that no one else in Orn seemed to own. Their faces were hooded, same as Ja’s, but he could still see sharpened teeth when the man leading the group spoke up first.
“I think you know why we are here.”
Ja tensed, but outwardly kept his cool. “I do not. Please, enlighten me.”
“Your vein has run dry!” the man hissed, revealing a bifurcated tongue. “The Great Serpent demands tribute. What is your excuse?”
Ja stammered, then felt the Tongue of Kathaka caress and guide his own. He spoke as if the interaction were little more than a nuisance.
“These people suffer from a plague. I have seen it wreak havoc in other worlds. Until I have eliminated the sickness from their bodies, I cannot give infected blood as a tribute to the Great Serpent.”
It was a wild guess and a bold bluff. The room was silent for an uncomfortably long moment.
“These villagers do not look ill,” the man seethed.
“What do you know of illness?” Ja mocked. “What can you see? I am a warp walker! I have witnessed realities of which you could never conceive!”
In a fluid motion, Ja rose and grabbed the jawbone mirror from the edge of the stone table. He whispered to it and the mirror began to glow, then Ja used it to paint a portal into existence in the dim cavern. Yellow light flooded through as the Putrid Coast became visible on the other side. The doorway looked out upon a ramshackle structure of stone and branches. Luto stood in front of the building, peering into the portal at the hooded figures staring back on the other side. They winced at Luto’s taut, rotten skin.
“Sir?” Luto called out, but the portal closed before the Blood Summoner gave a response. Ja turned and faced the men who had come into his chamber.
“That is what happens when the sickness goes untreated,” sneered Ja. “And the sickness is in the blood. It can be purified, but it takes time.”
“Purified by what?” the man asked suspiciously.
Ja’s eyes flashed. “Darkness.”
He said it in such a way that none of the hooded figures dared challenge him, especially not after he had just called up a doorway to a sickly, plague-filled world.
“How long until the sacrifices can resume again?” asked the man. “The Great Serpent will demand a timeline.”
“I’m not sure the sacrifices can resume again,” said Ja, no longer feeling quite as confident in his bluff.
“You know that is not an option!” hissed the man. “This vein cannot run dry. Clearly, you possess great power, so we will give you leave to fix your errors, but know that your time is short. You will either find suitable sacrifices to provide the tribute, or this community - and you - will be culled away and replaced with those who can.”
With that, the five robed figures turned and stormed out of the cavern before Ja could get in another word. He was visibly shaking when Kaia crept in through the doorway only moments later.
“How much of that did you hear?” Ja asked.
“All of it, I think.”
“What am I going to do? I think I have to actually become the Blood Summoner now, or else everyone in Orn is in big trouble.”
“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,” said Kaia. “We’re going to leave. I knew all of this was too good. I knew it. I got everything I ever wanted here. There was no way it was going to last.”
“I had everything I wanted too,” said Ja. “Mostly. I did get sad that we grew apart.”
“Don’t take it personally,” she smiled. “I know it’s you in there, but it never got any easier being friends with the Blood Summoner.”
“I don’t want you to lose everything that you made for yourself here,” said Ja. “You became such a great hunter.”
“And I’ll still be a great hunter wherever we go next. This is a bad situation, Ja. If we stay, it means we have to bring back the compound, and you have to learn how to do all that awful blood magic. You will have to become the man who oppressed you. And if you don’t, it sounds like everyone in Orn could die, now that you told the Great Serpent they’re all infected with Luto’s disease. We can’t fix this place by ourselves, Ja, no matter how badly we want to. We didn’t even want to come back here in the first place! It’s time to move on.”
When Ja saw his old body hissing back up at him from the bottom of the containment pit, he could barely recognize himself. The body had aged noticeably, with hair now thicky growing on the face and chest. Somehow, the body had grown in height as well as in muscle, even though it had been trapped down in that hole for uncounted months. Ja instinctively wanted to thank the Blood Summoner for keeping the body in such good shape, but he knew it was best to get this interaction over with as soon as possible. Besides, there was a good chance his old body could put up a serious fight now; that’s probably why the Blood Summoner had been honing it. Ja asked the guards to go down and bind the man’s hands, feet, and mouth again and then bring him up for inspection. Once they had retrieved him, Ja asked the guards to excuse themselves and not interfere with his business for the next several hours. The men eyed the struggling prisoner and reluctantly agreed.
Though Ja’s body was bound, it still thrashed and attempted to break free once the guards had left the room, but stopped once Ja whispered, “I’m going to give you your body back. If you try and fight me, I’ll put you back down in that hole forever.” All fight leached out from the filthy, feral body.
The three stood on the edge of the containment pit. Kaia pressed a spear into the young man’s back with one hand and held the jawbone mirror with the other, while the Blood Summoner and Ja faced one another. Ja stared into the eyes of his old body and could feel pure hatred coming back from the man that now lived inside. Without saying a word, Ja reached into his robes and pulled out a handful of blue flowers, then stuck them into his mouth. The eyes of the young man opened wildly and he grunted through the binding in his mouth. Ja stood and chewed silently. Before he had even swallowed the petals, Ja was already wobbling and tottering, face tingling and numb. His eye slits began to close for prolonged periods and he almost toppled over, before breaking through the stupor with one final bit of resolve to say to the mirror through an anesthetized mouth:
“Give me my body back.”
Both sides of the mirror flashed and the Blood Summoner’s body fell limply down onto the ground. Kaia cut his bonds, and Ja only took a moment to make sure he was back in his own skin before reaching down and pulling the Tongue of Kathaka from the unconscious man’s neck, then pushed the body off the ledge with his foot. The Blood Summoner crashed back down into the containment pit without even a yelp. Kaia peered over the edge and then looked into Ja’s eyes, knowing without having to ask that her friend was back where he belonged.
“Where should we go next?” asked Ja.
She pondered the question for a moment before answering. “Seems like we can go wherever we want. Ask it to send us someplace nice.”
Ja shrugged and nodded. “Take us someplace nice, please.”
The mirror seemed to whirr and then stutter to a stop in his hand. The voice of the tongue appeared in Ja’s mind.
“‘Nice’ is too vague of a concept. What is nice to you is not what is nice for the man in the pit.”
“Hmm, that’s true,” said Ja. “Ok, I’ll be a little more specific. Take us to a world where men like the Blood Summoner don’t exist.”
The jawbone mirror began to vibrate and radiate light. Kaia picked up a pack and handed it to Ja, loaded with food and supplies, then handed the man a spear. He took it with a confident smile and stepped through the shimmering portal to the other side.
FATE INDEX:
1. Nothing happens when something is supposed to happen
2. Character loses one of their senses
3. Protagonist finds a source of healing/resurrection
4. Acquiring a new object has catastrophic consequences
5. People begin to question their belief system
6. An obscure side character suddenly gets a crucial role in the story
7. Traditional gender roles are switched
8. Social faux pas has serious consequences
9. The inevitable end is actually a rebirth
10. A member of the community who was heavily relied upon disappears
11. Discovery of higher technology
12. Monotony is broken
13. Character has portentous visions of a world they don’t recognize
14. Body swap
15. Too many cooks in the kitchen
16. Bodily functions begin to cause eerie physical changes
17. The call is coming from inside the house
18. Life is too good
19. A dam breaks creating massive flooding
20. Cat eat food
Outcomes Used:
14. Body swap
18. Life is too good
Added outcomes:
A bond is formed with an unexpected pet
(thanks to Scott)
Ghost story
(thanks to Brooklyn)
