[Veltzeh]: 39.The Heritage of Humankind.Tales from Kyerrion.17

"Okay, that's about it." The prison boss spoke calmingly to the brand new guard as ey signed the working contract. "You know the routine. Guard Greenel will help you a bit with some practicalities. Off you go!"

Darret nodded and left the prison boss's room with the older nicod. "It was 'bout time I got to be on th' right side of this thing." Ey waved eir new shortspear around.

"Don't get too comfortable with it." Greenel was obviously bored to death. "If ya do a lot of malpractice, the boss'll just throw ya back in an' well, ya know how those people end up."

"Yeah yeah."

"Anyway, you'll be feeding 'em. Just give each of 'em one portion an' no more. One exception though. See this cell? There're two people there but the other one's always hiding. So ya leave two portions."

"Right." Darret peeked into the cell and saw a gewacod whose right leg was missing. "Errrhhh..." They continued the round.



The next day, Darret left the gewacod with two portions of food. The following days, ey forgot it. After a week, an odd smell caught Darret's nose in the cellblock. The place always smelled of waste and excrement, but this kind of smell was uncommon. Ey did, of course, recognize it since it was obvious.

"Someone died in that block."

"Oh really?" remarked Darret's supervisor, sitting in eir chair. "Then go find the body."

"What, me? I'm a gzoozzing food-person."

"So maybe you got a nose? Aioii, you. Greenel, go with em."

The two guards walked down the hallway, checking the cells and making a bad ruckus so that the inmates got animated enough to display their liveliness. They came to the cell where the one-legged gewacod was.

"Hey, ya prosht! Move!" yelled Greenel. "An' ya idiot gecod! Show yerself!"

"What? There's someone else there? A GECOD?"

Greenel looked at Darret, very disappointed and managing to look a bit angry, though ey honestly could not have cared less. "Ya gastin' idiot of a prosht! What'd I tell ya?! Two people in th' cell! Leave two portions! Ya've been leaving just one haven't ya? An' now that crazy gecod prosht killed that one because ey wasn't getting eir food. REAL NICE. WELL DONE. Groshje, ey's been dead for a few days! Ey hasn't even been moved! An' you didn't notice anythin'? What're ya, blind?"

"Ey's got one gzoozzin' leg! I didn't even know ey could move! An' where th' groshje is that gecod? GECOD? You're a bloody prosht yourself!"

"Gast you!"

"Hork!"

Greenel started walking toward the supervisor's spot, Darret walking worriedly and angrily behind em. "That one-legged gewacod is dead. This gzoozzing stupid prosht forgot to feed em."

The supervisor stared at Darret, eir expression going reticent. "Right. Okay, Darret, now tell me why the gast I shouldn't lock you up in that cell where ey died?"

Darret did not reply. Ey thought that everything ey would say would just make it worse. Then ey thought ey could just claim that the gewacod had taken both the food portions and that was why the gecod had killed em. "I... I DID give them two portions." Ey made emself sound very reserved, as if ey had great difficulty saying it because of eir own emotional state. "Ey... that gewacod must've... kept 'em for emself an' that gecod killed em 'cause of that."

"Right." The supervisor did not give any sign of acceptance or disbelief. "Now you two proshts go an' get that filthy body out of there an' take it to the first left wing exit."

Greenel took the cell key and the two left. "Darret, ya gasted bastard." They shoved each other right back to the cell. The prisoners were yelling garbled words and they honestly did not care why or what. Greenel shoved the key into Darret's hand and Darret opened the cell door, looking around for the gecod, holding eir spear at the ready. But honestly, how much could one little gecod—a gecod on top of everything for stars' sake—do?

Darret screamed. While ey and Greenel were with the supervisor, the gewacod's somewhat rotten chest had been torn open and several of eir ribs had been broken off. Darret heard a gargled scream behind em, felt something hard go through eir throat and during the last two seconds that ey lived, ey heard a gecod's voice say: "None of you deserve nothingness." The inmates yelled and shouted.



"Well. Tell me what happened." The jinhaliare, an ambassador and advisor, stood outside the prison with the prison boss. Ey did not want to go inside because the building was too small for em; ey was huge, even for a jinhaliare. Ey had just come from the nearby city, Aolkheine, to check out the situation.

The prison boss shivered in the rain. "Yes, soo. Um, the... the inmates... most of them said that one of the killed guards forgot to give the gecod and eir cellmate enough food. So the gecod killed eir cellmate, and when they went to take away the body, ey attacked, killed all eleven guards on eir way an' ran away."

"And somehow you managed to miss em with bows, too." The prison boss shook eir head. Ey was helpless. "Useless prosht."

"Yes, soo."

"I hope some of you were smart enough to note which direction ey ran to."

"Ey went north."

"Right. Let's leave." Ey looked at the femehan far-walker who was traveling with em. The prison boss went back inside, relieved that ey had seemingly got away with eir so-called mistake. The jinhaliare and far-walker went into the wagon with which they had come to the place.

The far-walker spoke to the driver: "Back to headquarters." Ey wrapped eir plump body in a blanket. "Soo Drength, do you really think that the gecod really went north?"

Drength, the jinhaliare, thought that the nigecod far-walker was just annoying em. "I don't need your opinion on that."

"...Apologies, soo."

At least ey could be polite and respected Drength's will even though ey did not know it. Ey was not stupid. Eventually Drength got curious, however, and asked: "You may share your opinion now."

The far-walker was quiet for a moment, but then said: "As you know, I studied the gecod's mind and found some memories of galanfetzcans. I'm quite sure that ey knows that galanfetzcans are eir only chance of getting out of this with minimal harm for em. Thus, I would say that ey's heading south, to their areas."

Drength scoffed. "Really." Ey was quiet the rest of the trip. The far-walker was right nevertheless, and Drength had not really even doubted it. A tracker had found the gecod's scent and trail leading south of the prison. Taking along a jinhaliare tracker, Drength left with the intentions of catching the gecod.

Two jinhaliare far-walkers had been on the way to interrogate em and draw every piece of information from eir brain—the femehans and their far-walkers had not been able to to draw anything out of em by any means. Despite eir resilience to far-walkers, they had still managed to reproduce an authentic torture scene and the gecod had not broken even when eir limbs had seemingly been removed one at a time. Ey had not even screamed. In fact, the only thing ey thought about was that it was such a miserable and contemptible thing to be happening and that ey wanted to die and start anew in the Spirit Plane. Most people would have already died of terror, shock and loss of will to live, but the gecod seemed to be unable to die like that. Eir body would need to be broken and killed if it was to ever let go of eir spirit. Drugs did not yield results either, even though they did make em see things and seemingly believe that ey was with the rebels and safe. Ey would not speak even then. Very surprising was the fact that no one had been able to manage to extract a fact as simple as the gecod's name.



Drength and the tracker Jenneft ran after the gecod for seven days. They were in the forest when they saw em for the first time. The gecod of course ran but the jinhaliares were faster. They all came to the edge of a cliff with a river flowing far down. Without thinking twice, the gecod jumped down. Drength ran to the edge and barely distinguished the gecod's face, twisted into an ecstatic smile.

The jinhaliares swore for a short moment and started climbing down. Seeing how the river flowed, the rocks in it and the overall composition, the jinhaliares figured that it was possible that the femehan was alive. They did not find a body, so they started combing the river downstream. After several hours of work, they finally noticed a thin stream of blood and the source of it turned out to be the femehan. Ey was only barely alive, but alive nevertheless. Relieved and yet inconvenienced to find em alive, the jinhaliares reluctantly patched up the femehan and set camp.

The femehan was unconscious for almost a day and the jinhaliares became more inconvenienced by the hour. However, ey did wake up finally and ate and drank without trouble. The jinhaliares found it very strange that ey had jumped off a cliff to an almost certain death, and still ey agreed to eat, even though not eating would end eir life right then and there. Ey did not reply any of their questions, no matter how much they yelled and how badly they threatened. Then they raped em and did not ask any more questions.

They spent over a week on the journey to a specific place and it was not the prison nor Aolkheine, the city close to it. Once they arrived, they got on a wagon and were taken away. The femehan was always kept restrained and the jinhaliares kept on raping em—ey might just as well create some new offspring for them if ey was not going to be otherwise useful.

Drength and Jenneft took the femehan gecod to a distant and badly kept femehan village at the edges of some nation whose name did not matter to them. Two jinhaliare far-walkers awaited them there. Once they arrived, Drength broke one of the gecod's shins to prevent em from escaping. After that, the far-walkers finally got to work.

Strange as it may have been, even the powerful jinhaliare far-walkers could not retract any information save for the gecod's name: Tarkavinel Airahankio. They broke em in so many ways and yet ey never managed to tell them anything. The more crazy they made em, the less sense ey made. When they finally gave up, Tarkavinel was perfectly delusional and had to be restrained at all times. Even after all the torture and hallucinations, ey did not utter one word, though ey did let out gasps, expressing different, limited and uninterpretable emotions.



The jinhaliares left to discuss the situation further. The femehan lackeys in the village were instructed to keep Tarkavinel alive and less harmed than ey currently was. The village was located close to a hiding place of jinhaliare assassins, so the jinhaliares could keep an eye on em—they did not want to bother with taking care of em. After all, though an extremely curious case, Tarkavinel was not important to them in the least as long as the information in eir head could not be retrieved.

Against everyone's expectations, in a few weeks Tarkavinel started regaining eir sanity. However, since ey did not speak, eir caretakers only noticed it after ey had started staring intently at anyone who raped em. The staring bothered them and they blindfolded em since they had been told that ey should not be permanently harmed.

When Tarkavinel's leg showed signs of healing, the villagers broke it again.