Failed Assassination

Hydrous Talk

I met Fergus, the legendary ii warrior of Lutianen before his name became noticeable outside the circles of his own caste and city. I was using a feminine shape to reach an important merchant of Micula in the more exclusive taverns of Insular City, I dance for my target, and almost ended in his bed, where had things being better his life would have ended as peacefully as this things can end. He was interrupted by some business proposition and left the place to see some ship or armour. Since no one knew my true specie I easily allowed the slave collar to fall through my body and discretely left the place as a man, wearing the clothes of the young nobleman who took me to his room. Having little time and no interest in this boy I left him drugged, sleeping, but alive. Was a could night, and the salt wind coming from the Sea made hard for me to follow my target by smell. I was lucky, to be honest, I walked blindly through the night to find my target in front of me in a square, being arrested by Palatial Guard. I stopped to search for signs of magic in the group, and was relatively convinced that there was no sigrax among them when I decided to make my move before the man disappeared in the convoluted legal system of Insular City. My tranquility coming from the certainty that no human without magic could stand my attack. I would kill my target and be back in the ocean before the guard could call for magical reinforcement. This one guard who noticed my intention before I reached the merchant decided to fight. He did not knew he was fighting a hydrous, but guessed I was not human by my movements in sword-fight even before I start moving my limbs in directions human limbs can’t move. Somehow he deduced that my head was the vulnerable part or my body, and noticed that his sword passing trough it slowed me down a bit. We fought for a time, with his surviving companions keeping the merchant, their prisoner, beyond my reach. Until finally Fergus manage to push me from an edge of ladder. We felt, and he smashed my head with his shield, and the weight of his body. I recovered faster, but looking at his body on the street, suffering from many broken bones, I had to admit his victory. That night I abandoned my target and barely escaped the island.
Three weeks later I killed the merchant on the deck of his own long distance ship. Just one more contract, was the guard’s determination and amazing fight instincts that made this mission memorable to me.
Years passed and I found that guard again, this time we both where locked inside Shirshan. City was closed thanks to a war in curse against two enemies: Lutianen City and a barbaric tribal leader of Giant race. The Trine War that killed an Age and started the next, so to speak. We where both hiding, and giving the high level of security imposed by the Virshan I could not just assume a winged shape and leave the city flying. Not without be detected and kissed by the sigraxes. Only way out was through the sewer, and even my kind will only risk that in the most desperate case. The sewers of Shirshan could only the travelled with guidance and even whit a trustworthy guide they were more dangerous than any mission I would willingly accept. Fergus was a spy for his city, I was a independent agent, and our respective support nets put us in contact short before they fall to the secret police of Shirshan. We formed an alliance to stay alive. This time my false identity was of local citizen, but I was not ready to keep that for indefinite time. It was taken for a brief incursion and would not hold scrutiny. I could not take another form within the limits of Shirshan without trigger the magical alarms in place, what would be fatal. We found shelter for days in the attic of a temple of some Earthling religion. During this time we talked, and somehow the Warrior Caste noticed that I am not human. Given the mutual respect I confirmed his suspects and confessed my real nature. That decision allowed him to save my live later, helping me to avoid magical detection. After the war, and before the Misfortune of Shirshan, Fergus asked if I would sit with his friend Altair of Lutianen, another ii from Earth, and contribute whit his plans of write a book about Planet Sharitarn. That was the same man who would be Archmage, and become know as “The Infamous”, but at the time he was just a sigrax representing his nation in the negotiation with local forces and the giant tribes of Zaiaz.
We don’t talk much about ourselves because do that is unhealthy for a specie that survives hiding in plain sight. Despite that I agreed in share some general information in exchange for a handful of valuable items from the spoils acquired by Lutianen in the war. I wanted to leave Green Poison city whit some profit after this long period of captivity up there. “I will not tell you anything personal, except that I was born here. In this regard I am not a ii like you and our mutual friend. On the other hand, my specie certainly is from other Universe. Our first members came to Shirshan about eleven thousand years ago. They helped other hydrous races to create the period you know as Age of Hydrous nine thousand years ago. Any name I give you will be a lie, because my specie do not use sounds for communication among each other. We only use it to fake our identity among solids. In my home word there is many solid species capable to talk, and according to the elders among my race they are not too different from those here. We do not have the Vortex throwing involuntary immigrants up there, of course. What we do have is a net of intergalactic portals installed on our planet by an alien race, it allow fast travel to billions of billions or planets, million Dyson spears and more strange structures. Do not surprise yourself with my use of scientific terms from your planet, I learned them same way I learned English, and another dozen languages. I will reach that point soon. The nature of the Vortex make necessary to admit that this Universe had similar structures, since their scale is Astronomical in size. Or, at least, this Universe had the structures by the time when it tuned my specie native world. In the first case that makes inevitable the conclusion that in your home Universe there is life with advanced technology outside your planet, if that is relevant to you or not. You call us doppelgangers, that name is as good as any. We are, in the terms of locals, “false hydrous”, or “imperfect hydrous”. Both names carry the insulting implication, of an imperfect of deceiving nature, but as I mentioned before we do not worry about words since they are not “our way” of communication. We can feel each other, internal voluntary changes inside our bodies give us a mean of communication that reach a couple of miles in open spaces. What is ironic to say the least, since my specie is not found of open spaces. Our “falsehood” came from the fact that we do have some gelatinous organs inside our bodies which cannot change shape as completely as the rest of us. Their general shape is of a skull with the backbone attached to it and it can be compressed to some extent or pierced suffering no permanent damage, but can’t be cut in two or reshaped to pass behind a door. “True hydrous” are completely free in terms of form. We can reproduce in any number above one, but is traditions to join in odd numbers. Some numbers are better than others, and the auspicious ones have strong meaning for the most traditional among us. So, we do not have genders as your specie does. On our home world we lived spread in the middle of other races, as some sort of secret organization of thieves and assassins. Is said that we do had large cities deep in the underground. In ancient times we ruled the surface, stand our Scholars. Here on Sharitarn we participated in the govern of large areas during the Hydrous Age, and had our own cities on the surface as well. Together the hydrous spaces became almost as powerful as humanity during this period. Eventually your Mage’s Brotherhood reorganized itself and ended our power, few of my kind survived and those moved for thousands of years to caves and sewers. Shirshan was founded by imperfect hydrous as well. Not us, but we do have a sort of distant kinship among us. Because of that was a heavy blow to us when humans took the city and forced the Glass Serpents into a sort of glorified slavery. Glass Serpents never age, and they eventually found ways to escape into deep darkness. My kind do ages, and dies. Our natural live lasts about one hundred years, but we have a way to extend it indefinitely. We can enter a state of hibernation that consists in assume a spherical shape and quiet ourselves. In that state we heal, we dream and have a perception of our surroundings but it is not the common perception of every day. In this hibernation estate we cannot interact with the world or talk with each other, and became barely invisible to the natural senses of our specie. More important: we do not age. We have a sort of “Scholar Caste” that places itself in strategic points and stay there for millennia. Just to came back and teach about the ancient times and what they perceived during the long sleep. Our other way of get information leads to many conflicts with solid species. We can absorb your memories, up to the deepest feelings and secrets, by digesting your brain and backbone inside us. During the time we have a sigrax or mage inside us we can even fake their identity registering as magical users when we are not. Some claim to became able to make spells, but I never saw any prove of that. Needless to say: our kind has its own alchemists and sigraxes. Mages we have not, there was a few in the past but your specie control all Magical Universities and as you can imagine we don’t get acceptance in one easily, We keep the knowledge we steal, and we could share it among us but that almost never happens. Because we are not very cooperative, even among ourselves. Our culture abhors gifts, nothing can be offered by nothing, and the most traditionalists will not charity even if their lives depend on it. That is a tip for notice them in some occasions, if someone who practices selfless actions often stops to do that without plausible reason you should stay in guard against this person. We are not all like that, I myself have no problem is expend a few coins to stay in character if I have to. Today we are back to a secret society structure, where we get mercenary jobs as spies and assassins. Most treaties between cities forbid the use of our services, mostly because that ability of pass as mages is taken as personal offence by Mage Casters. I assume.” That resumes the information I shared with Altair of Lutianen in the majestic house given by him by the occupation forces of Lutianen on Shirshan. I neglected mentioning the most effective ways to kill or mutilate my specie. He was polite enough to not ask about the subject. Stands to reason that we are vulnerable to magic, not mind-spells unless you happens to be an archmage Mind Carver with a prisoner in your hands and time to spare. Healer magic will kill us as easily as it kills humans, and any thing that raises our temperature above the melting point of red iron will do the trick. Perforations and cuts will do nothing unless they hit our gelatinous organs, and they will only bewilder us for a few moments unless it separates those organs in two or more parts. A cut spine make we loose corporal mass, while a severed brain can in some cases kill us. So, if you must face one of us go for a nice two hands axe and aim for the head. Avoid that situation if you can, my kind has fast reflexes an most of us acquire excellent fighting skills as soon as we can. A siege weapon like a catapult kill us for sure, if you can hit the doppelganger in the head and smash it. A non-magical sword will do you not do the job. What else I can tell you? We can take any shape that does not violate the limits of our gelatinous organs. As long as it is not more than five or six times larger than our minimal size. That allows us to fly as winged beasts, swim as sea creatures, and even pass as intelligent octopuses. We do not breath, and we cannot be poisoned either. Our intuitive sense of chemical composition means that we will know if you try. Most of us can fake wounds, and we prepare ourselves to fake wounds, even mortal ones, when we take the form of a solid creature. You will not smell or feel any difference in the blood we leave on the ground in those cases. Finally, and whit that information I end our contract: we can reproduce with humans. Basically, with any specie we can imitate except rare exceptions. The hybrid will look like a normal member of the solid specie and behave like one until something trigger his doppelganger side. Then he will get some superficial capacity of shape shifting, but become susceptible to a kind of mind-control. “Control” is possibly an exaggeration, in strong personalities it works more like a strong influence from distance. They are biologically programmed to serve our species and their best shield against abuse is to plead loyalty to one of us who can protect them against the others. On the home world those half doppelgangers served as slaves in out cities. Here they cannot hide as easily as we do, and seldom serve any purpose. I have met individuals who feel attached to their mongrels as human parents to their children, that is absurd in the eyes of most traditional fellows but do happens. I thing in a few more ages we will adopt human culture of Sharitarn entirely. Our original ways becoming just academic curiosity. Even for someone as unconventional and iconoclastic as me contemplate that possibility still causes some sorrow.

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