What Makes A Monster - Chapter 15

When Tsunyin’s twin moon Dzaik next deigned to show the entirety of his face, the ‘younger’ portion of the residents decided to have a little impromptu midnight feast. That night, Chennae had called upon all the present senior assistants and they did God knew what in Chennae’s private laboratories deep underground.

The scientific explanations to most things at the Residence made Imyra suspect whether Chennae dealt in magic at all. If history’s greatest sorceress wasn’t a real sorceress, did sorcery even exist?

Although sorcery and magic had the terrible reputation of being tools of devils, Chennae had usually been absolved of her use of magic because she never ventured into the practice of the ancient ‘devilcraft’ of zhorne. But then, zhorne and other mystical magics and devilcrafts were theorised to be propaganda and a fictional tale constructed by Thronekeepers of old who needed to control the population through fear and an external enemy to keep civil dissent at bay. Nowadays, it was all fodder for artists and writers.

Having been freed from any and all responsibilities for that night, Olivia and Nara had pilfered the absent Vera’s stores and arranged a secret food fest in a picturesque roof-less gazebo in a meadow, deep in the woods. Like the Residence, it was adorned by teralia vines wrapping themselves around the stone pillars with long worn out carvings that seemed like vestiges of opulent intricacies. The teralias around the large gazebo were all yellow, granting the curves of the teal vines a green sheen. The moons shied behind clouds and were barely visible so the petals of the flowers that bloomed only at night shone brighter than usual.

Imyra still did not understand the principle behind how they kept wild beasts from attacking them, but somehow they did. Just like the vicinity around Chennae’s cliff-side estate, the beasts of the forest did not go near the gazebo and hid beyond the shrubbery and trees at the edges of the meadow, despite the heady fragrances of the various assorted delicacies wafting around the area.

When Imyra asked why such a structure existed in the middle of nowhere, Nara answered with a mysterious smile, “It’s one of the few things left of the old palace. This little gazebo was a tiny part of what used to be a princess’ private but grand gardens constructed as a gesture of love the king had for his favourite little daughter. According to Chennae, anyway, so take it with a grain of salt.”

“Did you know that it was that princess who, in her later years, long after becoming queen caused the downfall of her dynasty? The whole estate was one of the few parts of the palace that survived the tests of time. That monarchy was supposedly around a long long time before your ancestors, Arlan and Sylri even.” Nodding, Lexi told Imyra, as she helped set out the food. Lexi was the resident book-worm. While Nara loved to gossip about the residents of the Residence, Lexi loved to gossip about obscure long-dead people who nobody cared about.

“I have to doubt the credibility of that. I bet you read that in one of Chennae’s journals.” Olivia added.

“Chennae may lie through her teeth, but she always writes the truth as she knows it. Especially in her journals.” Lexi defended.

“You can’t ever know. She might have just written things down the way she wants them to be remembered and not how they really were.” Olivia told her sceptically.

“Whether true or false, it comes as a slight relief to hear that the Residence wasn’t single-handedly carved into the mountain by Chennae. As for how she knows about kingdoms that reigned over thirteen thousand years ago, before even Arlan and Sylri, I will chalk that down to her interest in history. I refuse to even wonder whether she was alive back then.” Imyra muttered under her breath. In response, everybody laughed. Even the newly healed but still sulking Tona chuckled.

Briefly, Imyra wondered whether they were laughing at her or with her. She supposed it matter little. Perhaps it was good enough that they did not treat her as an outcast. After all, she didn’t come to Chennae’s Residence to become a permanent resident.

This impromptu picnic was held a week after one of Olivia and Tona’s destructive fights and Tona’s injuries and her many broken bones had mostly healed. Imyra had been at the Residence long enough to take that ridiculous speed of healing in stride. Tona was persuaded into coming along by Nara with Zuran’s presence as bait.

Olivia, on the other hand seemed to have let go of all her grudges against Tona and treated her the same way she treated everyone else. She disregarded her and even smiled every time Tona snubbed her. Whether Olivia did it on purpose or not, this riled Tona up all the more.

It was a wonderful evening for the first part. Vera’s hand-made delicacies were there and Nara’s exotic wines that she’d procured on her previous trips to civilisation were too. Imyra was surprised that Olivia was allowed to drink. She remembered what had happened the last time she’d seen Olivia drunk.

“Oh, but that was Chennae’s stuff. Olivia is practically unaffected by any of our plebeian booze.” A tipsy Lexi informed her.

This got Olivia to ask, “Nara, you’re sure you haven’t got any of Chennae’s brews? This outsider stuff is really weak.”

Nara giggled, “None for you and none right now. Let’s leave those disasters for when Unani and Leyla are around to do damage control.”

Olivia groaned loudly and fell onto her back so that she faced the dark night sky, “I can’t even get drunk when I want to anymore. Ahh~ I hate this.”

Meanwhile, Tona, on the other side of the circle, was trying to get someone else drunk, “Here, Zuran, have some of this.”

The subject of her tipsy persuasion tried to free his arm from her vice-like grip and declined the cup with a firm push, “No, I’m perfectly happy with tea, thank you.”

“Don’t be so booring.” Tona whined, pulling at his sleeve and spilled the purple contents of the cup all over her.

Almost simultaneously, another cup flew through the air and hit her forehead. The few who were still of sound mind to follow what was happening turned towards the direction it had flown from.

Nara burped loudly and pointed at Tona,”You idiot. You ignorant child. Do you know what’ll happen if you get him drunk and remove his inhibitions? I refuse it! You!” the finger moved to point at Zuran, “These drinks are mine. You’re not allowed to touch any of them. It’s enough that I invited you here. Don’t think just ’cause I’m a biiit,” she burped again, “tipsy, that I’ll forget to keep my eye on you.”

Imyra’s ears perked up at this. Unlike everyone else who’d each already finished bottles of various types of wines, she was still on her first glass and was careful not to get drunk. Nara had offered some zorne weakening pills to her earlier, so that she could get drunk in peace without worrying about causing any ‘unnecessary disasters’, as Nara like to call them, but Imyra had refused. She abhorred zorne weakening agents.

Zuran smirked and arched a perfect red eyebrow, “Do you think an eye on me could stop me?”

Nara pointed at Olivia, “An eye couldn’t, but she could. Probably.”

“Probably,” he agreed and chuckled.

He looked like a piece of art fit for a palace wall, leaning against the teralia entwined pillar on that moonlit gazebo. The yellow petals highlighted a green glow on his high cheekbones and a fiery orange glow on his long lashes and the stubble on his chiselled jaw. Imyra glanced around to find to her relief that she wasn’t the only momentarily entranced by his appearance.

“Huh?” Olivia broke the moment by looking up from her own entrancement to the food on her plate, as though sensing that she had become the subject of the conversation.

“Don’t bully my Zuran, you!!” Tona seemed to remember her priorities and shrieked at Nara while throwing a handful of pastry balls at her.

With mirth, Imyra noticed Olivia’s sorrowful gaze following their flight. Just before they hit the floor, the meat-stuffed pastry balls stopped and bobbed their way to Olivia’s awaiting bowl.

“What’s happening? I wasn’t, um, I was preoccupied.” Olivia leaned towards Zuran and asked him as she munched on a deformed pastry ball.

“Nara’s won’t let me drink because she’s scared of me.” Zuran grinned devilishly and wriggled his fingers towards Nara.

It was Zuran’s encroaching fingers that elicited a reaction, though it did look like the doing of Tona’s thrown food. When the one pastry ball Olivia had not rescued, hit her nose, Nara’s whole body drunkenly leaped back and fell off the gazebo’s platform and onto the grass all the way at the edge of the little meadow.

“Don’t touch me, you pretty douchebag!” came Nara’s shout.

Tona howled in laughter and Zuran chuckled, while Olivia mumbled with mouth full of food, “Her paranoid drunken overreactions never get old.” Lexi was at this point, already unconscious. “Oh Zuran, please touch her, even if just to make a point.” Olivia washed the food down with a few gulps of wine and grinned with a sadistic smile.

Nara, at the end of the moon and teralia lit meadow, where trees towered over the entry to the forest, happened to hear this exchange. She shouted to them again, “If you touch me, I’ll force you to marry me!”

Zuran’s wriggling fingers paused and he retracted them. He held his hands up in submission. “Nah, ‘pologies, Olivia. That’s more than I can handle.”

“Tch.”

Just as Olivia clicked her tongue, Zuran’s eyebrows shot up and he shifted his gaze at Nara again. Imyra followed his gaze.

A black shadow shot out from within the darkness beyond the trees.