We play again. Zyla gets a new vial. Saegor has enough for a few more rounds at least.

  My intuition for the game is getting better. But not good enough apparently. When I bluff for six 6s, even though I only have two, Zyla calls bullshit.

  Five in total between all of us. So it's my loss.

  The vial weighs heavy as I uncork it and spill the contents into my mouth. It goes down bitter and rough, much like the saltwater cures my mother used to make for my sicknesses.

  Yet, I’m not focused on the taste. Rather, my worries lie with what sort of retribution Zyla will cook up—after all, that last question, while not asked by me, was for my benefit. Given the… amiable manner in which she accepted my apology (even though I still don’t understand what exactly I apologized for), I can only assume her resentment simmers under the surface.

  Zyla does well not to show any of that. Instead, she levels a critical look at me.

  “Why—” she pauses. Time ticks away. For a few seconds, I hope that she’ll run out of it. I certainly feel no compulsion to answer anything as of yet, so the question must be spoken—not just implied or thought of.

  “Why do you wanna kill Masaru?” she asks.

  “Zyla, that’s not—” Kiren begins, but she cuts him off.

  “You asked the same of me basically. I have a right to know.”

  “But—”

  “She’s right Kiren,” I interrupt. I feel my tongue flailing like a rabid dog, trying to expel the answer forth from my mouth. It's a strange, oddly feral instinct that compels me. “Masaru and the Elders of my clan killed my mother.”

  I expect a silence to follow that proclamation, but instead, Zyla makes a humming noise.

  “I see,” is all she says.

  That should be the end of it. Should be. But my tongue keeps jabbing at my teeth, pressing for more and more and—what the hell else could be the reason?

  Saegor notices my struggle. “You have something else to say?”

  That’s the thing: I don’t. There’s no other motivation. Yet incessantly, my whole body repels that very notion.

  Can I outlast it? How much time do I have? Can I—

  My mouth moves against me.

  “They killed her and Masaru raped her. Forced her to have a child with him. Then that child died. And I think he killed it.”

  Now comes the expected silence. Kiren’s mouth hangs dumbly open. Zyla’s face takes on a foreign visage of sympathy. And even Saegor looks aghast—as if he himself doesn’t feed on the flesh of infected children.

  My mind froths at the proclamation. After all, it wasn’t… it wasn’t rape.

  But wasn’t it? They forced her to be a prostitute—excluded us from any sort of liveable occupation besides that. So doesn’t mean Adachi, as a clan, raped my mother? For years and years and years.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  You’ve known this to be true.

  Why does it surprise you now?

  “I didn’t know that,” Umbrahorn says softly behind me.

  Apparently, neither did I.

  Rage should be all now—the world should turn red and the black sun in my chest should consume and consume and consume. Yet, it doesn’t. Instead, a bitter dread creeps in to fill the gaps of my empty heart. A dread that has stirred in the dark and waited for me to come to this realization; this realization that, when Masaru approached my mother for service, there was no way she could refuse him. He was an Elder. She was a whore.

  It’s a truth I’ve buried ever since Thraevirula showed me the past.

  After a few more seconds, Saegor sets his jangling net of vials down and sighs.

  “I think we should stop this. It seems it has gone too far—”

  “No, no,” I argue. “It's fine. I knew that. It's fair for you all to know that. Let’s continue. This is good—this game. It allows us to air our grievances, right Saegor?”

  The crooked mancer gives me a crooked smile.

  “Well said.”

  The next few rounds, I’m understandably distracted. I make mistakes. But Kiren covers for me by calling bullshit on others.

  He sets a new tone when, in his first question to Saegor, he asks the old mancer, “what’s your favorite color?” Benign, pointless questions drag us for a few rounds. Much to the delight of one-eyed mancer though.

  Focus. Remember, you have to somehow call Saegor on one of them and make him answer your questions. Though that task proves increasingly hard, mostly because Saegor is very good at this game.

  In the next round, Kiren calls bullshit on me before anyone else can.

  As I open the vial he calls “wait! Can I ask Umbrahorn a question?” He poses this query to Saegor.

  “Hmm. I guess we could just lob the shark and Raiten on the same team. Though, I don’t think the vial will work on him—”

  “It's fine it’s fine, I, a Great Spirit, have no need for truth vials. On my word, I will tell you the truth to whatever it is you wish to know.”

  “Great! I’ve always wondered, Umbrahorn, how long have you lived?”

  “I guess… a little over a century and a half.”

  “So in that time, what’s the hardest opponent you’ve ever faced?”

  A fly zips to my ear. I smack it. Throw its crummy bits into the fire.

  “No.” Umbrahorn’s voice is dark and low. I turn to him, surprised.

  Saegor straightens. “Answer the question shark, I haven’t counted out thirty seconds yet.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “It's fine, he doesn’t have to answer Saegor. I thought it would be a fun question—sorry. Didn’t mean to stir up any bad memories,” Kiren apologizes.

  “Not your fault Kir-boy, just not the right question.”

  Saegor snarls. “You said on your honor shark.”

  Umbrahorn bares his fangs in response.

  The two of them stare off at each other and my eyes flutter between them, hands unconsciously reaching for my amulet sack.

  Eventually, Saegor just sighs. “Or not. Don’t want to force you. After all, you weren’t really playing to begin with.”

  I let out a sigh of relief as well. That’s the first time in a long while I’ve seen Umbrahorn so… angry.

  The shark nods, as if having won some great victory. Yet when he thinks everyone has turned back to the game, he shrinks into himself, his body sinking further into the ground.

  Not angry. Ashamed. I’ll have to ask him about it—actually no. He can tell me if he wants to. That’s his choice. Focus on the game.

  Only three bottles remain. Three more questions.

  I need to win at least one in the next three.

  Saegor turns back to us, rubbing his hands together. “Alright, whose next?”