The Request Heard 'Round the World

Atka bounced her leg in the small room, wondering if he’d actually show up. Her anxiety told her that he wouldn’t, but he had always come through for her when she needed him. Knowing that Nomad would surely come logically, yet doubting it anxiously, was exactly what she and Ilanir worked on together–her imbalance. She began to drum her fingertips on the table that she sat at, forcibly stopping her leg from bouncing.
 
“Relax,” she said aloud to herself, “He’s not even late yet.”
 
How was she going to start? Atka began to go over talking points in her head, but this was no easy task. She was going to have to sell it. How do you sell fire to a devil, she wondered, and chuckled to herself… Nomad wasn’t a devil, but she sort of was? A bit? She shook her head to try to banish the thought, nervously clicking a flame on and off in her palm for a minute.
 
Atka began to obsess about the way her clothing was falling on her–anything to take her mind off the waiting. Readjusting the chemise and kirtle, she then brushed off any particles that may be on the linen fabric going down to her ankles. She hated kirtles. The dress-like quality made them impractical for a fighter to dress in, but this wasn’t going to be a fight. Was it? No. Nomad wouldn’t fight her for requesting this…
 
Kirtles. Atka stood up and looked at herself in the mirror on the wall behind her. She doubted anyone would be threatened or even attracted to her in this. Her tail was restricted underneath the gown, and it was bothering her a bit. She began to tease her black locks around her protruding horns, so that they began to fall neatly behind her.
 
“Atka? Well, don’t you look nice?” Nomad’s voice entered her mindspace just as he entered the room. She smiled at him in the mirror.
 
“I hate kirtles,” she beamed and placed her hands on her waist. “You’ll never see me in one again, so, just drink it up.” He chuckled, mask and hood alienating her a bit. Still now, he was not quite comfortable with her, she had determined. Or maybe with himself? She didn’t really know, and this was not the time to ask. Nomad shut the door, sat down at one side of the table and “drank it up” until she spoke again, “I’m glad you came.”
 
“Of course. You sounded pretty uneasy when you asked for me to see you. Is everything alright?”
 
Atka sighed, looking to the ground and wiped her hands on the front of the kirtle. Sliding back into the seat across from her comrade, she shook her head softly. “Not even a little. Did you schedule some time for this meeting?”
 
Nomad leaned back into the chair and Atka felt his curiosity and concern as she placed a hand on her abdomen. “You have me for as long as it takes.”
 
She didn’t believe him, but she didn’t have to. “I have a request, but before I ask, I want to tell you a bit about how I am coming to ask this at all. Nomad, how much have I told you about my brother.”
 
Nomad scoffed. “Very little. Renaer told me more actually.”
 
“What did he tell you?” Atka whispered, eyes and hands in her lap.
 
“Nothing I’m happy to hear…” muttered the older warrior. “What about him?”
 
“It’s important that I know what you know, and how you understand it,” Atka redirected.
 
Nomad cleared his throat a bit, pausing at the redirection. Clearly gathering his words and thoughts, most likely remembering Renaer’s recount of what happened, he began to speak, “He has a certain power over you. He made you unable to move? He almost hurt Renaer as a way to ‘free’ you from Lord Neverember. Am I close?”
 
“It’s not about what’s right. It’s about how you understand. And yes, I imagine that’s exactly how he would’ve understood Mamnen. He thinks he’s manipulative and controlling and means to harm me.”
 
“Does he?”
 
“Renaer? Yes, I think that’s how he understands it–”
 
“No, does Mamnen mean to harm you? Is he manipulative and controlling?”
 
Poignant questions. Straight to the point. Atka remembered her talking points and lifted her eyes to look at Nomad’s face, at where she thought his eyes might be. “Mamnen and I are twins. We’ve constantly been close, even when I left him to find out more about how to save my mother. I felt his feelings here…” She looked down at the hand on her abdomen. “I knew the minute he stopped missing me.”
 
Nomad said nothing, which she was grateful for, because it meant that he was listening and not hastening her to ask him her request.
 
“It was about two years after I arrived in Neverwinter under Lord Neverember’s direction. It was like a knife cut a hole into my gut. It’s never gone away or filled up the same. Whatever happened that day changed him from the brother I knew and loved, and who knew and loved me, into someone else.”
 
She paused again. This time, the pause was for her. “The person he became, the one that Renaer met, is and isn’t Mamnen Marduk. I can’t explain it, but I don’t think I recognize him.”
 
“Recognize him? You mean, because you’ve been apart for so long?”
 
She shook her head. “No, I mean, when I tap into him, I see someone else.” Her eyes had widened, she could tell, as if by the mere insinuation she was about to make would summon the devil. “Nomad, I see the devil that took my mother and killed my father. I see Ire.”
 
Atka felt a tension tighten the muscles in her abdomen and she watched Nomad tense up and reposition himself in the chair. “I’m not saying what you’re probably thinking. I don’t know that he is Ire or even if he is under Ire’s influence. I don’t know enough about these kinds of ordeals to make that conclusion. I know that Ire is our uncle, I suppose. My mother was his half-sister… However what I do know to be true about Mamnen is that he is very much like me in that when he gets his mind to something, that’s truly all that matters.”
 
“You said that he wasn’t Mamnen, though. How do you know that trait followed?”
 
“I said he is and isn’t him. And I don’t know enough about Ire, or my family, to know if that particular trait is genetic.” Atka said and fell silent. Both of them sat there awhile, studying the other, probably drawing all kinds of conclusions that were wrong. In light of that realization, Atka continued,
 
“Anyway, after that scenario you mentioned with Renaer, I stayed with him and he showed me his ability. He has a strong sense of telekinesis, and can manipulate objects’ motions, even people’s motions at will.” She lifted an open, cupped palm into the air and clicked on a flame. “Much like my ability, it is dependent on emotion, but he has learned to wield it as a profession. I watched him weld a greatsword and even detail it with precision. Compare that with stopping me dead in my tracks, I worry what he could do if unyielded.”
 
“Unyielded?”
 
Atka closed her palm and the flame disappeared. “Remember that time at the docks, where I had had too much to drink and flames burst forth from my hands without my wanting or control?”
 
“Gods… you think if he were appropriately tempted, he could do some damage?”
 
“On anyone he’d like. Without mercy.”
 
Nomad exhaled, obviously not liking where this was going. “So, how do you want to stop him, since I assume that’s what you want to do?”
 
“Nomad, I can’t.”
 
“Excuse me?”
 
“Stop him. He fires me up without even trying. He knows all of my buttons, most of my moves because he helped to train me, and he’s threatened to end me, and my contracts–so the Neverembers–, and my associates if he sees me again and I don’t change.”
 
“Why?” Nomad was surprised slightly by the threat, but not enough to move. The tone of his voice had changed though.
 
Atka teared up, though she fought them from rolling down her cheeks, “Because I refuse to bend to his will.” She cleared her throat and inhaled, shakily, “It seems I know his buttons too, which makes this doubly difficult. We irritate and provoke now, in ways only siblings can–TWIN siblings. My fear is that if I square with him first to attempt to subdue him–”
 
“He’ll implode with his abilities uncontrolled.”
 
“Or I will with mine.”
 
“So what are you thinking?” Nomad asked her and crossed his arms.
 
“I need a comrade in arms. Someone who can stay out of it long enough for me to try to reason with Mamnen and appeal to his sense of sanity, and if not, then try to forcibly subdue him, and if I fail, a sneaky end…”
 
“By subdue, you don’t mean…”
 
“Kill. Yes.” Atka was stone cold as she said it. “He may be Mamnen, but he is not Mamnen, and I can’t have my life dictated by the fear that one day he might kill me and everyone I have ever cared for. He’s not an honorable, venerable warrior Nomad. As a tiefling child, he raised us both with the belief that we fight by any means necessary, the dirtier and quicker the better.”
 
“You’re asking me to protect you, right?”
 
“I’m asking you to come with me and if, should the worst happen, take him out,” she said, stressing the last three syllables. Nomad cleared his throat and said,
 
“Atka, if I am anywhere in the area, and he means to kill you, that will be a natural response.”
 
Atka smiled a bit and then leaned forward to say in a more hushed voice, “Nomad, I mean this when I say it, if you give him an inch, he’ll take the mile without hesitation. Don’t let him know you’re there unless you have magic protection, and even then, I’d advise getting in and out unnoticed.”
 
Nomad nodded slightly, and exhaled with her in understanding. “When is this going to happen? We have some planning to do.”