Tales of Midbar: Secret Priest

Haprihagfen mostly live in matriarchal clans who live in communities called beitim. This is often a large house but can be several houses scattered about a city - there’s a lot of variation. Usually one clan has one beit but some have more and sometimes there’s more than one clan in a beit. Boys normally leave their clan at thirteen and become slegim, roaming the sephirot, mostly being accommodated in dog houses (hostel like accommodation, most beitim have one). They often participate in more menial work at the beitim. There are ways a sleg can continue his education. As well as boys who were born into Haprihagfen, some slegim are benai goyim, born to non-anavim. There are also girls, called slegmetot, who were born to non-anavim (this is Egrindreth’s current situation). Usually a sleg will marry a clamet (anavah who belongs to a clan, she may have stayed with the clan she was born into or been adopted by a clan) and join her clan. Slegmetot are sometimes adopted by a clan or marry a man who stayed with his clan for some reason (e.g. that clan lacked girls). It’s also possible for a group of slegim and slegmetot to marry each other and found a clan.

The law of paradox avoidance states that the multiverse finds ways to avoid temporal paradoxes. For example, if you try to go back in time and kill your father before you were conceived, you will fail. This also means prophecies can’t allow you to change the event prophesied, which is why prophecies tend to be cryptic. Another outcome of this is that you can’t change things you know about. Had Egrindreth told Clinder that Dwendra had gone back in time, married a priest and died in the past, Clinder couldn’t have stopped that from happening (unless he found a way to change it while Egrindreth still believed the same thing). If Egrindreth had just told Clinder that Dwendra had gone back in time, it’s possible Clinder could have found her and persuaded her to come back to his time.

A flutter is a bat like creature, native to Midbar.

I materialized in a men’s toilet and immediately felt Dwendra’s presence. Like most things in sephir Ceralargen, it was sturdily built with brightly colored tiles and metal pipes. There was a ghostly, worm-like creature on the ceiling generating pale yellow light. I’d used dowsing to track Dwendra down. I wasn’t sure if I knew her well enough to do this without a biological sample but it seemed I did.

I walked into some sort of bar, with mostly young people, seated at tables, often with drinks in front of them. Their clothing reminded me of pictures from ancient history, I think from about a century before humans invented space travel. The men mostly wore shirts buttoned at the front and shorts down to their knees and the women wore long dresses, also with shirts and jackets buttoned at the front. Many also wore wide, fancy hats. Many of these people were accompanied by luminous, transparent entities that resembled animals or XT’s. A woman was singing on a small stage as a ghostly, six-armed monkey played a stringed instrument. I’d taken the time to dress in a similar way, normal clothing for this sephir, but I still got some odd looks, probably because my hair is darker than that of most the locals. I’d been told they believed the katchey and nibey genes combined to produce a pleiotropic effect causing an unusual appearance. A reasonable number of these people were nibeyim so they should also have known I was an anav or at least had very strange vibes.

I followed Dwendra’s vibes out onto a patio. It was on the edge of a large, red stone building and overlooked a valley surrounded by mountains and a lake. It was red night, Aleph was shining in the sky and reflecting on the lake.

Dwendra was sitting near the edge of the patio, Aleph painting her black and red. She was sitting with a large, brutish, strange looking anav. When I realized this, I felt a pang of something. Probably just that I didn’t want to have yet another girl lose her virginity to somebody else. I told myself I knew she’d only have sex with a Yohoist priest and it was unlikely this man was one. Then I’d known girls to say I was too young for them and then have sex with somebody even younger than me! When I got close, I realized he had little facial hair and was probably still in his teens. They both seemed very unhappy, with frowns, and looked at me as I approached and Dwendra said something in Semic.

“Who died?” I asked, sitting down at an empty chair.

“Tom hath spent months on an astronaut training course but hath just discovered he canst not finish it unless he learneth this sephir’s magic.”

“And that’s a problem?” I asked.

The brutish anav looked at me sadly and said, in fluent and rather posh sounding Faharni, “I need to return to the Malchut universe.”

I’d heard of Malchut in the last few days. What did I know about it?

“I didst not knoweth thou spoke Faharni,” said Dwendra.

“I have the gift of tongues and can speak and understand any spoken language,” said Tom.

“I don’t understand the problem,” I said.

Wasn’t Malchut the Earth sephir where Yoho’s avatar had been born?

“Malchut,” said the brute, “the Earth sephir, has a powerful spell on it which prevents use of magic, or even knowledge of magic. Nobody knows if this affects other sephirot in the same universe or if it applies to types of magic which were never known on Earth. In fact I haven’t even been able to determine what sorts of magic were known on the various Earth sephirot and if this anti-magic spell applied to all types. Then some types of magic are forbidden by my religion but nobody is sure what types because knowledge of magic was suppressed in Malchut. If I learn too much about magic, of any type, I may not be able to return to my universe and I’ve sworn to rescue my colony.”

I remembered now. Something seemed to be killing or capturing anavim who teleported to Midbar-Malchut so we’d been told, in very strong terms, not to go there. There was only one known anav (and no anavot) from that sephir, and this was obviously him.

“Anyway, Dwendra, I thought you’d gone back in time to marry that priest. What happened?”

“They didst not have an anav priest,” she scrunched up her nose, “just a nibey priest with a katchey grand-parent. Nice man but I couldst not teleport him and if I’d married him, our descendants wouldst have been killed in the Cataclysm. Therefore I camest back to this time to findeth a way to leaveth Midbar and findeth a Yohoist priest elsewhere. However that art proving most difficult.”

“Difficult is putting it mildly,” said Tom. “I’ve been doing this for a couple of years and there’s always something. Colony doesn’t have starships at all. Starships are controlled by XT’s who don’t let humans use them. Now they only let astronauts use starships and that requires magic I can’t learn if I want to return to my universe! I’ve tried going back in time but nothing seems to be better. Midbar has more human occupied sephirot now than in the past. I don’t want to go forward in time because then I might learn something that will prevent me from saving my colony. In case you’re wondering, there’s reason to believe the XT’s who attacked my colony have a bigger plan to wipe out all humans or something.”

I couldn’t see why the magic issue would prevent Dwendra from becoming an astronaut but I had my own agenda and decided to pursue it. “I spoke to Miandri’s mother.”

“The mother of the adulteress?”

“Yes. She lied about everybody knowing what happened to the Yohoist priesthood. I think she believes some Yohoist priests survived.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, she hates me and wasn’t being very helpful.”

“Canst thou taketh me unto her? She art a mage who practiceth Old Magic?”

“I could take you to her but it’s probably best if you pretend you’re not with me.”

“Well it sounds like you’ve got a handle on your problem at least,” said Tom, biting his lower lip. “I suppose I need to find another sephir with some access to starships. Well there’s the one in Midbar-Teradriel but that has serious problems.”