The next few hours were a potpourri of new experiences. It was almost like going to a hotel—pain, bloodsport, and threats of impending death notwithstanding.

For all the discomfort the keybranding had caused me, the end result was disconcertingly familiar: we held up the brandings to the door of our—apparently shared—residence and, after a brief light show spiderwebbing across the door, the entryway unlocked itself.

Our residence was a triplet of egg-shaped buildings mushed together on a hillock a few steps off the winding path. The bushes out in front of it bore small, shiny, delectable-smelling blue fruits. The interior, meanwhile, was pretty much a carbon copy of the twEfE dwelling I'd wandered through while spying on the Vyxit during my first trip through their Network. The one big difference was the total absence of any silvery Vyx-made appliances.

V happily explained to me that the Vyxit lived in an almost symbiotic relationship with the Vyx machinery. The Vyx surveilled Vyxit communities—called clansteads—to keep everyone safe and fulfill the environmental and nutrimental needs of both individuals and their kin-groupings.

"In a way," EUe explained, "it was a lot like how runetics got used back on UlU, only the technology is far more integrated here in the fleet than it ever was back home. But, enough talk. Let's bathe, first."

"And, after that?" I asked.

"We will talk, and I will drink," he said.

We used separate baths. Though I can't speak for EUe's, mine was almost perfect. The water was divine. There was this coral-like loofa thing that I found scraped away all my burnt feathers and bird dust. Gosh, it felt good.

Pumping my wings while half-submerged in the tub turned out to be quite a workout, but—get this—even though my wings were spraying water everywhere, there was an invisible barrier in place that bounced the water back into the bowl-shaped tub. I would have had a lot of fun with that had the hunger mounting in my gut and aching limbs soon put an end to my shenanigans.

I didn't want to eat EUe out of house and home.

They had the most amazing towels. At first glance, their ornate design reminded me of the decorative towels Grandma Liza had in her house. My grandmother had a truly uncanny ability to pick the most useless freaking towels this side of anywhere. Don't get me wrong, my grandmother's bathroom towels looked like pieces of art, but they were incapable of wicking off so much as a drop of water. But these twEfE towels? Angel's breath, the twEfE towels! They sucked up water like they were dying of thirst. And they were super fluffy. Best of all, after I'd finished drying myself, I set the towel down on my clothes and armor, and about a minute later, they, too, were bone dry. It put even DAISHU-brand paper towels to shame.

I tried my best not to think about the bird body I was currently wearing as I went about my business, though there were just some things that couldn't be avoided. Yes, twEfE were far more humanoid in their bodily lay-out than the d'zd—and thank the Angel for that—but… it was still a reminder of how I'd gotten to where I was, and by extension, a harbinger of what still lay ahead of me.

Also, I discovered that twEfE couldn't shed tears. Instead, my body made haunting birdsong as I sat in the water and ached for my wife. Thinking about Pel's death made me wonder about what EUe might have lost.

There was just so much pain, everywhere.

I considered asking EUe about it as I descended the narrow, tall-stepped stairs, but he got to me first.

"Ah, Genneth—there you are."

The staircase wound down the wall, following the building's curve. I could have hovered down from the ledge at the edge of the second floor, but didn't want to make myself any hungrier than I already was.

EUe sat on one of the steps, beside the table in the recessed area in the middle of the ground floor. Several slender bottles stood on the table, matched by the one in his hand. He held the bottle up to me, while letting his wings splay out on the floor behind him.

Like me, he'd washed and dried his armor before putting it back on. I had to admit, it looked good on him

"Take a seat," he said, patting the carpeted recession.

I did. From where we sat, we had an excellent view through the nearby window. Sunset had just begun.

Without a word, EUe leaned onto the table and slid some of the bottles toward me.

"Slurp up!" he said.

I lifted the lip of the bottle to my beak, wincing slightly at the alcoholic aroma wafting out of it. It took me a few tries, but, after watching how EUe did it, I eventually managed to draw the fluid up my beak in a steady stream by flicking my tongue in and out of the bottle. It tasted like caramel, only fruitier, and with the telltale sting of a moderate liquor. The sweetness was both overpowering and maddening; in other words, perfect.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

V, hovered over the table, staring—like I was—at the surplus of empty bottles accumulating on the table.

Most of them were EUe's.

"Aren't you worried about him drinking this much?" I asked V.

"Not on your life." EUe set his latest bottle down. "In here, the buzz wears off in an hour or so. I couldn't get a hangover even if I tried." He looked up at the ceiling. "It's just another detail of my torment."

Grunting, EUe slapped the breeches on his thighs, sat up, and leaned onto the table. "Alright, I guess I'm ready as I'll ever be. Ask away."

I decided I'd start with something simple. "What is this place?"

"Define 'this place'," EUe said.

"This… village," I said.

He sighed. "Ah… the gladiators' village. So, once your decision to throw your life to the gladiatorial circuit was approved, you'd get a crash-course in combat training and then you'd do your first fight. Gladiatorial matches are always to the death, so, you lose if you die and die if you lose. If you manage to win your first match, then congrats, you get to live here in the gladiators' village for as long as you keep winning matches. Once you earn your first championship, you can join the Gatherers' Corps if you so desire. That's what I did. However, most champions chose to stay, because once you win a championship, you can choose who and what you want to fight, as long as you fight the minimum number of matches per month."

"Okay… that's… kind of a lot to process," I said.

"Nope," EUe said, cheerily, "I'm just getting started."

I looked out the windows, over to the city.

"What about the city?" I asked.

Before he answered my question, EUe got up, opened the refrigerator built into the wall and grabbed another bottle of nectar alcohol from the refrigerator and stowed several empty ones inside. I watched nectar trickle into the bottles from the spigots in the ceiling of the refrigerator's interior.

"Is that all nectar alcohol?" I asked.

"Gods, I wish!" EUe shook his head. "Nah, we only get the good stuff when we win a match. Otherwise, it's just standard nectar." EUe closed his eyes and pointed his beak at the ceiling. "Ugh… what I wouldn't give for a zUzU Fresh right now."

He waddled back to the recess in the floor, sat down, and cleared his throat. "As for your question, we're in tEe-ahU, the former former capital of the Ruby Ecumene."

"Former former?" I asked.

"Do you mind a history lesson?" EUe said.

I flitted my wings excitedly. "Actually, I enjoy them quite a bit."

The twEfE pointed at the sky. "Nectar-King UlhlU-gE'E IV built New tEeahU up on one of the atmospheric islands in orbit around the planet. But everything was lost when the Blight came. All those marvels of engineering, gone forever."

He lowered our heads in dejection.

"What kind of engineering did you do?" I asked.

"Runetic engineer," EUe said.

"I don't know what that is."

"Well, it's a little bit of everything, at least in theory. Runetic engineering comes up most often in public infrastructure and personal appliances, from the communions of flight, air, gravity, and sky that used to keep the atmospheric islands up in the air and powered and maintained our airships, to the biological communions we used to augment the growth and fecundity of elU, dashcrickets, and basically everything in between. Where things get really complicated, though, is when you have interlinking not-light webs. Then you can have communions that react to external stimuli or even modify other webs on the fly. That sort of thing happens most often in the networks of webs used for domestic purposes—heating water, preserving food, washing clothes, running the Philharmonium—whether it's in buildings like this one or in the skyholders. It all gets very detailed. Research-wise, metatheolinguistics is pretty much a bottomless pit." He sighed. "I miss it."

"I can tell," I said, with a nod. "I have to say, though, I have a mental image of what a career gladiator ought to look and sound like, and let me tell you, you're definitely a mismatch. Granted, I don't know much about twEfE standards, but… still…"

"You're not wrong," V said. "And that's because EUe wasn't a career gladiator, but rather—"

EUe waved his hand dismissively. "—I'd like to tell my story on my own, V, if you don't mind." He chirped. "It's not like we get visitors every day, you know."

"Sorry. Sorry." The little Vyx module settled down onto the table.

EUe took another swig of his nectar alcohol. "But, yeah, you're right," he said. "I'm definitely not the gladiatorial type." He looked up at the ceiling. "I did my dissertation on experimental theology, and ended up working for the chemical industry. My plan was to accumulate a nice nectar surplus for myself that way, so that I could use it to sustain myself as I pursued my research, which was always my true passion. I worked at that plant, right over there." He pointed at the laboratory castle I'd seen earlier, which we could see through one of the gaps in the dome closest to the horizon. "I helped improve reaction efficiency and production rates for plastics and other polymers."

"What happened?" I asked.

The twEfE lowered his head. "How much do you know about twEfE, Genneth?"

"Not much," I said.

EUe drooped his wings around himself. "twEfE history is written in blood and nectar," he said. "Being able to fly like we can has its downsides. Our metabolism works so quickly, we can only survive a few days at most without eating before we drop dead."

"Angel's breath…" I muttered.

"That pressure has shaped my people's history since time immemorial. There used to be so many of us, so many different Colors. According to legend, when gathered together, the Colors of our feathers made even rainbows jealous. But…" he lowered his head. "When you live life on the edge of death as we do, you become desperate. I'm a Ruby. Ruby Ecumene was founded on the genocide my ancestors perpetrated against the other Colors. A great ritual was performed, turning them all to stone. Their worlds had to end in order for ours to begin."

That was what I'd seen in Lantor! twEfE, turned to stone.

Holy smokes, it hadn't been a "War in Paradise" at all—or if it had, Paradise was twEfE world, and considering the amount of violence it seemed to have, I highly doubted that.

"What was that world like?" I asked.

"Orderly, like a crystal. The Nectar-King and the Ua-kEhU oversaw the distribution of nectar harvested by the castebunds⁠; the castebunds managed the professions and everything else. We chose our professions, and joined their castebunds. As long as you worked, the Ecumene guaranteed your health and security."

"And if you didn't work?"

"If a tribunal found you guilty and willful, you either joined the gladiatorial circuit, or faced execution."

"Exe…?" I shook my head. "Isn't that a bit… harsh?"

"There could be no room for error, Genneth," EUe explained. "Crimes committed by accident or in good faith could be atoned for by joining the Ua-hUla for a time. Everything else merited death. To refuse to abide the peace was to forfeit your right to enjoy it."

"What happened to you, then?"

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.