Ten years after Tammy first found Avi beaten and bloodied in an alleyway after her first assassination attempt, the pair find themselves on the hunt for their next target. He’s 16, she’s 17, and they’re walking side-by-side on an empty street.
Their mission has brought them to a vast city built inside an artificial valley cutting through a mountain range. Gargantuan formations of rock jutting half a mile into the air, with the mountain range stretching from north-west to south-east like a great scar across the planet’s singular continent. The Gurant Empire came to this world four centuries ago and quickly conquered the land that laid on the western half, but their navy wasn’t capable of facilitating an invasion of the east. As such, the gurant spent a decade, millions of tons of explosives, and the lives of about 300,000 slaves to carve a path straight through the mountains.
This city, which the gurant creatively named ‘Mountain Pass City’, is 145 miles long and two miles wide, forming a straight line from one side to the other, and stretching across the flat valley below the carved mountains. The city is arranged in a three-dimensional grid, with every road cutting at a 90-degree angles, and four distinct layers built atop each other.
The gurant’s idea was that, in the event of rebellion, only one side of the planet could be taken. The rebels would need to expend millions of lives to cleave their way through 290 square miles of brutal urban warfare. But the planet was pacified centuries ago, there have been no major rebellions capable of talking even half of the continent, so the upkeep of the city has been diverted to other projects of the gurant lords. Entire sections of the city have fallen into disrepair, layers have fallen onto each other, generators broken decades ago have left tens of thousands of homes on the bottom three levels to wallow in permanent darkness.
The only region of the city which has seen consistent maintenance is a set of four, stacked, 16-lane roads that form the main artery of the city. They allow travel from one side of the mountains to the other, and the combined 64 lanes ensures traffic is never a problem. Given the threat of layers collapsing, the wealthy denizens of the city coalesce around these main roads, even if it means living on the lowest level, and the poor are pushed to the sides.
Two temporary occupants of the city are walking along the bottom floor, far to the right side.
Tammy and Avi are 6’, and 6’2 respectively, towering over the impoverished masses of the Gurant Empire. They’re dressed in baggy clothes and ponchos, covered in industrial soot from one of the many factories, and tattered with small rips and tears meant to signify years of use. They’re walking on the crack-covered road, as only the distant echoes of vehicles can be heard from the 16-lane road to their left. High above them sits the bottom of the next layer, with industrial strength floodlights hanging down, though most lights are either dead or flickering. The dilapidated buildings around them are made of dark grey bricks, uniformly shaped and three stories tall until their walls flow into the ceiling.
Avi’s long, boney tail swishes behind her, “haha, you’re lost.”
Tammy frowns, “I’m not lost. I have no idea where we’re going in the first place.”
“You know what that sounds like to me?” She turns and pokes her husband’s cheek, “sounds like you’re lost.”
He slaps her arm away, “then guess what, idiot, that means you’re lost too.”
“Nope!” She jumps in front of Tammy and walks backwards, her hands resting on her hips. “My job is just to follow you around, so I know exactly where I am. Don’t like it? Maybe you and dad should start inviting me to mission briefings again.”
“So you can instantly get bored and start fucking with my hair again?”
She rolls her eyes, “I did that one time.”
“You did it five times out of the last six briefings you attended.”
She smiles and wiggles side to side, “aww, I didn’t realize you’ve been keeping tabs on me.”
Tammy shakes his head, “it’s impossible to talk to you,” he reaches into his undershirt pocket and pulls out a photograph. “Here. This is who we’re killing.”
Avi slides to Tammy’s side, their shoulders touching, and looks down at the photo. She matches his gait perfectly to synchronize their steps. “Just a normal gurant,” she says, taking note of the black, marble-like eyes, the green, wart-covered skin, and the thick neck that rolls into his chest as if he doesn’t have a bottom jaw. The photo depicts the 8-foot tall toadman standing in a crowd, somewhere on the city’s upper level, talking to a group of 5-foot humans as if he’s barking out orders. “How does dad expect us to find this guy? Did he give you any direction?”
Tammy waves off her concern, then takes a high step over someone who’s either sleeping, drunk, or dead in the middle of the road. “There’s plenty to go off. It’s a female gurant of the gerakasuragina lineage, even tempered, ambitious, clearly calculating and with a high tolerance for shame.”
Avi glances to the photo, then swings her gaze to Tammy, then looks back at the photo. “You can tell that from a picture?”
“It’s giving orders to humans, but look at its hands: no blood. It hasn’t crushed anyone’s skull yet, meaning it’s even tempered. You can tell by the background that it’s managing some sort of construction or industrial project, and since it’s getting involved personally and not delegating the work, you know that it’s ambitious. It wants the job to be done right, and is most likely looking for a promotion.” Tammy traces a finger around the gurant’s stomach, “you can tell by the ovalish shape that it’s female, even though its clothes are a bit loose in that regal, ‘add more fabric than necessary just to show luxury’ look. As for being part of the gerakasuragina lineage, all you have to do is look at the distinctive size and location of its nostrils.”
Avi squints. “…what?”
“I can tell due to magic,” he corrects himself.
“Ah! Now that makes a lot more sense. So how do we find this girl?”
“We find this thing,” Tammy says with particular emphasis, “by looking over records in the city to find which industry is an outlier in terms of output. A construction company which has built or repaired more buildings than average, a factory which has put out more product than normal, something like that. This gurant is ambitious, so it’ll definitely try to stand out in order to gain the eyes of the mayor for a promotion. That ambition is dangerous, hence why your father found us a contract to kill it before it can grow too influential.”
Avi nods along, “so we need to find some tax office or something, then read records to find the target?”
Tammy raises his chin with a smile, “pretty well thought out, I’d say.”
“But there is a problem.”
Tammy looks to her with a raised eyebrow.
She stops walking and points to a street sign set at an intersection, “what’s that say?”
Tammy looks up to it, and squints. “…” The sign is a mess of random shapes and squiggles. Each planet in the Gurant Empire, of which there are thousands, is home to hundreds of local languages and dialects. While Tammy’s psychic powers allow the two to interpret spoken dialogue, text cannot be translated. Tammy would need to actually know the written language, but it’s impossible to know the millions of languages around the Empire. “Ah,” he says. “I won’t be able to read their records.”
Avi giggles, “yeah. Seems like that’s a slight flaw.” As Tammy’s face sets into a deep frown, Avi playfully bumps him with her hip. He’s bounced away, but Avi quickly wraps an arm behind his shoulder and pulls him into a supportive hug, rubbing the side of her face against his. “Don’t worry, I’ll still love you even if you are an iiiiiiidiot!” The length of Avi’s tail coils around his calf, with the end segment shaking side to side, rattling in affection.
Tammy’s eye twitches.
“A big ol’ dummy.”
Tammy gives a long, exaggerated sigh.
“But hey, don’t worry, it’s actually kind of cute to watch your masterful genius fall apart right in front of me!”
“You’re not nearly as cute as you think you are,” Tammy grumbles.
“Yes, I am.”
“Fine!” Tammy shouts and, with his hands on her stomach, shoves her aside. “I’ll just ask the spirits where the gurant is. Keep your mouth shut while I talk to them.”
Avi brings her hand to her lips and mimics locking it.
Tammy’s eyes glow a dull white, and he sees beyond the limited range that mortal pupils can observe. Whisking this way and that are small sprites and pixies; ancient beings that have wandered the galaxy since the dawn of creation, witnessing the slow march of time and the endless dance of life.
“[Great spirits!]” Tammy declares. His mortal mouth is shut, and he reaches out to them with his soul. This startles the spirits slightly as they aren’t used to disturbances. All the spirits on the planet—of which there are about a thousand—quickly congregate to his location, blurring his vision in a blinding white as the spirits stack over each other. “[I have come to you with a humble request.]”
The spirits layer their voices, speaking like a practiced chorus as their thoughts and intentions pool together in a kind of consensus. “[Greetings, young seer. It has been an age since a being last perceived us. What is this favor you seek?]”
Tammy, functionally blind as some spirits overlap with his eyeballs so all he can see is pure white, holds the photograph up. Spirits have no eyes to see, no ears to hear, and no bodies to feel, and yet they process information of the universe around them. From the perspective of a spirit, ‘seeing’ the picture of Tammy’s target is like reading a detailed, text-based description of the image. Like if a normal person was blindfolded and brought to a beautiful waterfall, then someone else described the scene. The blindfolded person will understand how tall the waterfall is, how much water is pouring, even how many rocks and fish are in the lake at the base of the waterfall, yet they cannot see it for themselves.
Meanwhile, Avi is taking advantage of her husband’s distraction. She’s standing in front of him and is pinching and moving his face. Forcing him to smile, pinching his nose, and opening his eyes wide. Some of the faces she makes are so comical (to her and nobody else) that she needs to cover her mouth to avoid howling with laughter.
“[This creature, a gurant. I need to find and kill it. All I require is its location, which is somewhere in this city.]”
“[Hmm… how would that benefit ascended beings such as us? Your mortal struggles are of no consequence. This ‘Gurant Empire’ has existed for a mere fraction of the timescale we have witnessed. We do know of her location, but why should we tell you?]”
“[Name your price and I shall give it. You might have no need for anything specific, but might I humbly suggest experiences? If you inhabit my body, I shall use my powers and share my sensations. Name what sensation you would like, and I will bring it about. Within reason.]”
“[Within reason?]”
“[I cannot give you the experience of death, or losing a limb, for example. My ambition in this life is to kill gurant, so I cannot do anything that would impede my ability to kill more gurant.]”
Tammy’s soul is assaulted by the feel of the spirits speaking over each other. The unified chorus has given way to a hurricane of debate as they discuss what they want. Because Spirits do no have mortal bodies, they cannot experience mortal sensations. What would it be like to see something beautiful, or feel something soft? Falling in love for the first time, enjoying hard narcotics, anesthesia failing and having to undergo invasive surgery while feeling every incision, getting run over by a tank, the primal fear of facing a demonic invasion with towering abominations of god seeking to steal your soul, world-destroying conflicts where billions die every second. Spirits have witnessed all of these over the eons, yet could not empathize.
“[Mortal,]” the chorus returns, “[we have decided. There is a local restaurant that produces a meal famed for its inedibility. You will go there and consume this dish.]” All at once, the mass of spirits enters Tammy’s body, gripping the strong thread of his soul like a horde of monkeys clinging to the same vine. The process is harmless, and gently warm. The glow of Tammy’s eyes dims, and his psychic powers change to share his sensations with the spirits. The spirits are flooded with the normal, everyday experiences that fade into the background for mortals. The gentle beat of his heart, the fabric against his skin, even the simple force of gravity is a novel rush. But the real prize is yet to come.
His returned vision is dominated by Avi, hands mushing his face around.
“Ah!” She yelps as she quickly swings her arms behind her back, “your eyes are normal. How’d it go?”
“They’ll only tell me if I go to a particular restaurant around here and eat something called the gurant’s delight.” He points north-east, “the restaurant is four miles that way, on the top layer.” He heads off, “let’s go.”
Avi raises her eyebrow and is left behind as her husband walks off. “Eat… food? That’s it?”
“It’s borderline inedible. Or so I’m told.”
Avi catches up and grabs his right arm into a hug, though Tammy quickly pushes her face away, keeping her at arm’s length. She pouts and settles for wrapping her tail around his arm, and Tammy can compromise on that.