Tales of Midbar: Secret Priest

“You think you’ve got fornicating problems!” screamed Attan. “I’m sick of being in this stupid fornicating family and I’m not joining your stupid fornicating organization! What’s the point anyway?”

“For to breedeth and traineth psychics to acteth as prophets and Holy Women for Yohoism,” said Dwendra.

“It isn’t Yohoist!” gasped Kiard.

“Hereafter it shalt breedeth and traineth them fort Scriptural Winemakerism which ist truer unto Yohoism than Scholarly Yohoism ...”

“It isn’t Yohoist!” said Kiard, louder.

“... because it followeth the scriptures rather than the scholars which meaneth recognizing Yoho’s avatar ...”

“It isn’t Yohoist!” scremed Kiard.

The healing machines started beeping and whining loudly.

“... because he fulfilled the prophecies.”

“You’d better leave!” said the older hipsickah who rushed in with the younger one and started seeing to Kiard and the machines.

“I’m going!” said Attan.

He opened the window and jumped out. There was a crash and a scream.

I went to the window and lit a mage light to illuminate the area below. Attan was laying on the ground near a knocked over tub of plants. I jumped after him, followed by Dwendra and Breeze.

“Get away from me!” said Attan getting up. “I’m leaving this stupid, mad, fornicating family! I hate psychics, I hate magi, I hate magic, I hate religion and I hate you!”

“That’s very korbarist and religionist,” said Breeze.

Attan started hobbling away.

“You do realize your religion’s your beliefs about morality and the paranormal,” I said, “so you’ve got to have one!”

“I don’t fornicating care!” he shouted.

“Clindar!” Mum shouted from the window we’d jumped out of. “You can’t let Dwendra take over Benai Nibeyim!”

“Get out of here!” said one of the other hipsickot.

“She’s got no idea what she’s doing!” shouted Mum.

“The last leaders hath done such a great job,” said Dwendra, sarcastically.

Yoldasia’s former residence was a large house right next to a high wall around a complex of large buildings that had to be the mental home. We could hear some screams and shouts from inside and could smell burning.

“Do you think we should do something about that?” I pondered.

“I’m sure there’d be alarms going off if it was serious,” said Breeze.

“Yeah, I expect you’re right,” I said.

There was a sign on the door of Yoldasia’s house saying it was a fertility clinic. Getting there before Garis hadn’t been a problem but the whole place was covered in associates making detecting the key very difficult. Then there were lights on and it was clear somebody was home. Rilletteecket, Hubril and Vrenloa had joined us as it would make sense if six of us searched instead of just three.

“Yoldasia had another daughter and a son by her first husband,” I said, “in addition to another daughter by Garis. I think the oldest daughter’s married.”

“How reasonable art they?” asked Dwendra.

“Don’t know. We’re the only ones who are Benai Nibeyim so perhaps we should go in first and see if they’ll be reasonable and if not, we’ve got a magis and five other magi and we’re all anavim.”

I felt weird saying that.

“None of us can do anything against Old Magic,” said Breeze.

“I canst neutralizeth it,” said Dwendra, “but Ice didst warneth me that interrupting a spell couldst be more dangerous than allowing it to be completed.”

“You have to set fire to something or kill or destroy something to do Old Magic,” I said. “If it looks as if they’re going to do that, we’ll just have to use knockout spells.”

“You probably should heed Ice’s warning,” said Breeze, “although Old Magic can be dreadful if it does work.”

We went up to the front door and pressed the button for the buzzer. Some dogs started barking and we heard somebody talking. Then the door was opened and a rather soppy looking dog stuck its nose out and barked right close to us.

A hipsickah who looked similar to Miandri, including the very large breasts, but a bit older and shorter with light brown hair was standing in the doorway sucking on a gas ball. “Yes?”

“Er, hi,” I said, “I take it you’re one of Yoldasia’s daughters?”

“Yes. Aflingia. What’s this about?”

“I’m the new Grand Priest of Benai Nibeyim and I’ve got some bad news. It’s probably best if we come in.”

The dog stopped barking and waddled back into the house.

“It’s late!” said Aflingia.

“This is important and rather urgent,” I said.

“Aren’t you rather young to be grand anything?” asked Aflingia.

“There wasn’t much competition for the job.” I got out my key (this was one I’d been given that Buxnir had kept in his house, it was also a small computer but looked different from the one Breeze had extracted from Miandri) and tried looking up the protocol. “Sorry new at this and I wasn’t given a lot of training. Ah here we are. ‘Veldio walks in the ruins of Scriaclat.’”

“Feces!” said Aflingia and turned to look into the house. “What’s the identification protocol for the Grand Priest?”

There was some banging around and muttering and a man shouted, “Veldio walks in the ruins of Scriaclat.”

“Really?” asked Aflingia.

“That’s what it says here!”

“Suppose you’d better come in then.”

She led us into a large living room. There was a large computer screen showing a sports game. There was a girl of about twelve with dark hair and two men, all faharni hipsickim and all with gas balls. The large dog was now curled up with a smaller one and there were two cats asleep on the top of the sofa.

“Glildac?” said one of the men.

“Faharni,” said Dwendra.

“Mum said something about a mad glildac girl,” said the man. “She wasn’t very specific but I think she was doing something Mum didn’t like.”

“You might like to sit down,” I said.

“I’ll stand!” said the man who didn’t like glildacs.

I sat down to get on the same level as most of them. “There was an attack on the leadership meeting by the same group of Monsters who attacked the mage conference and destroyed the temples of Strumeg and Denadria.”

“I thought some of that group were killed and some of them are human,” said the man who didn’t like glildacs.

The others looked shocked and had probably worked out what was coming.

“This seems to have been the same organization if not all the same individuals,” I said. “This isn’t a good time to argue about what constitutes a human or a monster. We really need a better name for this group. Anyway, all the Benai Nibeyim leaders who were at the meeting were killed, including your mother and my predecessor.”

They stared at me.

“This is a sick joke isn’t it?” asked the younger girl.

“Where’s Garis?” asked the man who didn’t seem to have issues with glildacs.

“He’s on his way here from Laraget,” I said.

“Fornication!” said the man.

“You’ve never liked him!” said Aflingia.

“He sexually abused you,” said Dwendra, looking at Aflingia.

Aflingia turned about as pale as a faharni can and said, “That’s not true.”

“What!” said the man who didn’t mind glildacs.

“It wasn’t really like that!” said Aflingia. “You knew I wasn’t a virgin.”

“But your step father! When did this stop? Did it stop?”

“He’d never do anything like that!” said the dark haired girl.

“You art his biological daughter,” said Dwendra, “men usually abuseth only their step-daughters.”

“It wasn’t abuse!” shouted Aflingia.

I cast a small explosion spell. It sent the cats running and the dogs looked up but Yoldasia’s kids kept arguing.

“I’ve always hated the way he keeps bossing me around when he isn’t even my father!” said the man who didn’t mind glildacs.

“Well he didn’t love you the way he does me,” said Aflingia.

“Are you still fornicating him?” asked the man who didn’t like glildacs.

“It’s none of your fornicating business!” said Aflingia.

“I’m your husband! Of course it’s my fornicating business!”

I used a calming spell, similar to the one Mum used to use on me but hopefully it didn’t make people feel so terrible.

“There’s some more urgent business to address,” I said. I put my arm round Dwendra, “This is the new Grand Vine Grower.”