Apocalypse: Fairy System, Macronomicon [ebook offline .TXT] 📗

“Yes?”

“Keep a very close eye on your deputy for me, would you?” Pikaku asked.

She stiffened. “Of course, my lord.”

“My thanks.”

Pikaku turned away and walked through the dim light, his talons clicking against the stone floor as he traveled. The light gradually grew warmer as he transitioned between the dungeon and the living quarters, where he housed his true prize.

The servant standing in front of the door bowed and opened the door for him as he strode into the nursery, where a human woman of middling age was cooing over Casey the Third.

“Good evening, Casey,” Pikaku said, nodding to the frowning baby as he entered, taking off his imposing mantle and hanging it on the rack by the door. The little one watched him with a level of focus that was unnatural for any sapient child of her age.

“Your mother has instructed me to read this to you today,” he said, retrieving Green Eggs and Ham from the nearby shelf and sitting down beside the wet nurse. The woman passed the baby over to him, and he allowed the wriggling sack of chub to settle on his lap, facing the book.

“According to your mother, Doctor Seuss is an important part of human development, followed by Garfield, and Calvin and Hobbes, in that order.”

Pikaku cleared his throat and opened the book, reading aloud the first odd picture of the book.

“I am Sam. I am Sam. Sam I—ack!” A tiny baby hand shoved fingers into his nostril as the child tried to treat his beak like a handhold, crawling up his front.

“Please, Casey. Kitri noses are sensitive, and while uncle Pikaku’s is quite tough, other kitri would find this terribly uncomfortable.”

Casey clumsily hauled herself up on his beak, until the two were eye-to-eye. The baby looked at him intently for a moment, before pointing to the upper shelf, where the Mystery novels were.

“Nope, not reading Sherlock. You had bad dreams for days last time your mom read those murder mysteries for you.”

Casey the Third started bawling, her voice ringing in Pikaku’s ears. While it was tolerable, it was also annoying, but he had to have patience. Raising a proper child was an endurance game.

“I can take her for you, sire,” the wet nurse said, reaching for the baby.

“No, these are crocodile tears,” Pikaku said, picking Casey up and staring her in the eyes. “You want me to tell your mom you misbehaved while she was gone? Because I will. Green Eggs and Ham takes less than five minutes to read, and if you can suffer through, I will move on to a selection from Calvin and Hobbes. The vocabulary in those is much better. Sound good?”

Spoiling a child with limitless potential was a good way to invite ruin upon yourself. Casey had other things she needed to learn, above and beyond reading comprehension:  patience and compromise, for example.

Casey scowled at him for a moment, considering his offer before nodding.

“Very good,” Pikaku said, settling the infant on his lap and reopening the slender book. “I am Sam. I am Sam. Sam-I-Am…”

***Kol Rejan, level 57 Courier***

Kol glanced up at the sun above as he walked across the spine of the mountain. About ten o’clock, I suppose, he thought idly, his feet crunching through the thin layer of faradan as he walked. The Roil hadn’t lingered too long, so the coating was still too thin to support a keegan’s weight. It simply pushed back against his foot a bit as it descended, then cracked underfoot once he put his full weight down.

A strange sensation, a bit like walking on the mantle of a mother peruha without it trying to tear you apart or drown you.

The Roil hadn’t stayed in one spot long enough for a thick crust of the blueish off-white mineral to form. Mining it wouldn’t be particularly profitable, but the Roil chasers were obligated to remove the stuff anyway.

You know what else isn’t profitable? Trying to kill that human. Kol had been in the process of purchasing a new weapon specifically to help him murder the man when he’d seen the broadcast with the emperor shaking the human’s hand.

Kol drew the line right there. The human had become too powerful, too well-known, and too connected to murder. Far too risky. Especially not for a lousy two hundred bulbs.

Still, that left Kol’s spotless assassination record somewhat tainted. The most logical way to solve this problem would be to head back to Kalfath and put Garland Grenore out of his misery before the man could do too much damage to Kol’s reputation.

I suppose I might need to have a client who has a legitimate reason to want the slimeball dead. I need a plausible reason to kill him, or the people in the know will ask uncomfortable questions. That shouldn’t be too hard.

Actually no, everyone will assume someone else hired me. The man’s positively reviled by those who know him.

Kol was pulled from his thoughts by a keegan standing on the mountain in front of him. The man was wearing traditional keegan garb: a flowing robe that didn’t allow the desert heat to enter. He was sipping a cup of tea as he overlooked the city of Solmnath, which was just a smudge on the horizon.

Kol hadn’t seen him appear.

“Terrible weather we’re having here,” the man said before his round tongue darted out and sucked up a sip of tea. “Gonna ruin my decade, I imagine.”

“I suppose,” Kol said, putting his hand on his sword and beginning to walk around the keegan. The sudden appearance put him on edge, and he’d much rather put some distance between them.

“Come, take a seat.” The keegan patted a boulder beside him.

Kol felt a moment of confusion, his brows furrowing for an instant. Why would this man want to share tea with a stranger, especially