Tales of Midbar: Secret Priest

Shopping was never one of my favorite activities. Shopping for furniture was something I’d never really considered. The fact we were doing it in Rendamar, with lots of Nuharas walking around in their depressing gray robes, although we'd started in the Winemaker quarter and then went to the Trulist quarter, made it seem a whole lot worse. The fact it was white day, still didn’t dispel the oppressive feel Nuharas seemed to spread wherever they went. A lot of people, particularly Nuharas, gave us, mostly Dwendra, some very hostile looks. We were dressed like typical Trulists, which was basically the same way most Winemakers dressed. The fact I was accompanied by four young women of four different races, one of them extinct, probably got us a lot of strange looks. The fact we were shopping for furniture only made it worse.

“Are you a Nuhara?” one shopkeeper asked.

“No.”

“Because you have four women.”

“No. I only have one. One of the others is my sister and the other two are our friends.”

“Well, whatever.”

We were starting to head back uphill, up an ancient flight of steps, to Temple View Heights, when three young, male Nuharas (unshaven quippas in gray robes so there wasn’t any doubt) stepped out of a ginnel in front of us and turned to us.

“Peace in Ahmaza’s name,” I said, realizing I was speaking Quippa.

“You got a glildac,” said one in bad Faharni with an Aramatoran accent.

I think they were a bit puzzled I’d addressed them with the traditional Nuhara greeting in Quippa. However, they weren’t moving out of our way and I heard footsteps behind us.

“Glildac are extinct,” I said. “My fiance just looks like one.”

I knew Dwendra wasn’t happy about this but these were hipsickim so they couldn’t read my mind.

“That one’s using a magic detector,” said another of the Nuhara’s quietly in Quippa.

“Might be a fake,” said another.

“You go to hide behind mage girl?” asked the leader in bad Faharni.

“You’re chelases,” said Rilletteeket in Quippa, she must have been using the magic detector, “but I can still knock you out.”

“Any violence against us will be avenged,” said the leader in Quippa, smirking.

It was probably a mistake for Rilletteeket to address him as they don’t like talking to women.

Buxnir had told us Nuharas picked fights with people and, if they were killed or badly hurt, used that as an excuse for revenge, on pretty well any non-Nuharas in Rendamar but particularly Winemakers. The advice was to knock the Nuharas out and hand them over to the police, who just handed them back to the Nuharas without charging them in order to keep the peace (although this was really just cowardice on the part of the police).

“The glildac pigs persecuted us for centuries!” shouted a man behind me.

“Garbage!” said Dwendra, in modern Quippa. “Nuhara lies! You persecuted us, starting with Nuhar himself, because we didn’t agree with his lies about being a prophet when he was just a stupid, mad, sexually perverted hipsick. When we defended ourselves, you complained we were persecuting you! You haven’t changed in a millenium you’re still subhuman lying feces!”

“You’re the liar!” shouted the hot head from behind.

“This is ancient history,” I said. “Why are you still fighting about something that happened centuries ago?”

“No! Don’t!” shouted somebody from some distance away behind me. He was speaking Quippa with a North Paxian accent.

“We only want glildac vagina,” said the leader in Faharni.

“Stop!” shouted the voice with the Paxian accent from behind and I could hear his footsteps running up the stairs.

“She’s educated, intelligent and strong willed,” I said. “Believe me, she’d make a terrible wife for a Nuhara.”

“We not want to marry her!” said the leader, pulling a knife and stepping forward, towards Dwendra. “We can fornicate captives!”

Immediately his eyes glazed over and he collapsed. I hit the one on the left with a date rape spell, it would be best if he couldn’t remember this. The one on the right screamed and disappeared down the ginnel he’d come from. There were thuds from behind. I glanced back and wasn’t surprised to see two more quippas were laying on the steps.

Another quippa, also in gray Nuhara robes, was running up the steps with a horrified expression. “Get the fornication out of there!” he screamed in Faharni. “Suicide bomb spells!”

I noticed the nearest Nuhara, the leader, was breathing very heavily, probably absorbing oxygen in preparation for exploding. We weren’t going to argue about that and turned and started running up the steps as fast as we could. It occurred to me we could have run faster down the steps or down a horizontal ginnel but it was too late. Then I realized we had protective magic but the last Nuhara who’d exploded near me had ejected some very nasty associates.

We got to the top of the stairs and ducked beside a building.

“We could have just teleported,” said Vrenloa.

“We doth not wanteth people to knoweth that we canst doeth that,” said Dwendra, reverting back to antiquated Faharni.

“Our protective magic would probably have protected us,” I said, “but we don’t want people to know about that either.”

“Doth they hath associates boundeth unto us?” asked Dwendra. “The last one nearly ...”

There was an explosion from the alley, with some screams and things breaking followed shortly afterwards by several more.

“... no associates art attacking me.”

“I expect those masturbators will want revenge for this,” I muttered.

“Perhaps we should find a better beit,” said Rilleteecket.

“We probably should thank that guy who saved us,” said Egrindreth.

“He’d probably prefer that nobody knew about that,” I said, looking round the corner.

The stairway was full of steam and dust and the building on one side of where the explosions had gone off had collapsed. Several people were staggering around, looking disorientated.

“Don’t know where he went,” I said, “but I think there are injured we should help.”

By then a number of other people were running towards the scene of devastation.

Vrenloa used her familiar to blow the dust and steam out the way. I used my powers to secure the damaged buildings, which Vrenloa helped with. Egrindreth, Rilleteeket and Dwendra used their healing powers. I couldn’t help notice people grumbling about how people shouldn’t fight Nuharas but I think they were a bit shocked that this had happened in the Trulist quarter.