Now, where was I? Ah yes: the D'zd.

From the way the municipal authorities responded to the terrorist attack, it was clear that this hadn't been T'kznd's first time facing the unthinkable.

Clean-up started mere minutes after Brrk'zk Szr't't—who had calmed the fire—and a local elder had determined the fire was dead enough that people could approach the demolished building without fear of dying from the extreme heat. Soldiers took care of most of the grunt work. The threat of the coming cold night cleared away most of the bystanders pretty quickly, which helped the soldiers proceed swiftly in their work. Several topless, vrr't'k-towed wagons had been brought to house the rubble being salvaged from the ruin, so that the stuff could be sorted through—the reusable parts being recycled—come the morrow. Other, bulkier soldiers—Rzt'zk included—got to work butchering the dead brzht, slicing the creatures open with their scissorblades.

Subcommander Dk'brr, however, stood by us, holding his vrr't'k by the reins.

In the distance, the sun had set behind the mountains, leaving cold winds free to blow about the streets. Dangling charms and tchotchkes rattled in the breeze. Plants in hanging pots retracted their fleshy leaves and thick, fanged tendrils, while tarps and awnings shuddered in their frames.

Brrk'zk Szr't't turned to Subcommander Dk'brr.

"I would have been here sooner if I hadn't been waiting for you," the Brrk'zk said. "You were supposed to return before sundown. What happened?"

At first, the concern that the Brrk'zk showed for the soldier struck me as out of place, but then I remembered: the Dk'brr was the Brrk'zk's son.

Dk'brr's abdomen twitched, tail flicking behind him. "We were attacked," he said.

"Vvz'zsh?" the Brrk'zk asked.

"Yes," Dk'brr replied. "There were… losses."

Bending his arms, Brrk'zk Szr't't brought his hands together, fingertips against fingertips. "They were likely part of the same war party as the fiends that caused this mess." He glanced at the dead brzht.

Off from the side, a meek figure skittered into view. He tilted his torso toward the ground, bowing to the Brrk'zk, showing off his four arms' drooping sleeves. A thick cloak covered his back and abdomen. "Forgive me, your Excellency," he said, "but the yeomen demand your presence at the feast. They consider your absence a great affront."

If this guy wasn't some sort of retainer or attaché, I'd eat a hat.

The Brrk'zk tapped one of his forelegs on the pavement. "If they keep pushing me, I'll sing them into an early grave." He twitched his abdomen in frustration. "With allies like them, who needs enemies?"

"If it really mattered," Dk'brr asked, "why not send one of the elder Chanters?"

Brrk'zk Szr't't turned to the ruined building. "You saw it yourself."

"What happened?" I asked.

"As I was told," the Brrk'zk said, "a soulbroken brzht broke into the storehouse beneath the barracks and broke open the kiln." His arms sagged. "All the fuel ignited, burning all the plants in the storehouse. Everyone inside perished." He looked up. "If I hadn't come to stop it, half of the townsfolk might have burst. There was no room to second guess myself." He glanced at his retainer. "Maybe in the swamps of Mzzt't't (Imzut'tit) you are familiar with, Tchk'tk (Chicktuk), the Brrk'zks have the leeway to neglect their madrigals. But here in the Northlands, Chanters and fleshworks are the difference between life and death. I take my duties seriously, and I expect others to do the same. I was an integral part of the Chantry before I succeeded my progenitor as Brrk'zk, and my ascension to the role does not change that. It never has."

"The yeomen insist you recuse yourself," Tchk'tk said.

"As they have since time immemorial," Brrk'zk Szr't't replied. "They want someone more beholden to their interests. But a D'zd can play more than one Tch'rr (Chirra). I know I do."

But the retainer wasn't having it. "But sir!" There was a sickly vibration to his light that smacked of his distress. "The yeomen!"

"Enough," the Brrk'zk said, with a wave of his sleeves. "If the new yeomen can't learn to put the community's needs above their own petty demands, the Vvz'zsh will teach them that lesson the hard way."

Dk'brr detached a satchel from his vrr't'k's flank. "Shining of the Vvz'zsh," he said, offering the bag to the Brrk'zk, "we managed to capture one of them."

Brrk'zk Szr't't glanced at his retainer. "Hear that, Tchk'tk?" He jostled the bag up and down, making the soulbroken shrimp-snake within writhe about. "You'll have a Vvz'zsh to interrogate to your light's content."

The retainer turned to us, pressing his four sleeved arms against each other. "Rather, Dk'brr, I'd like to know why you've brought three nudists to zyr Excellency's presence."

"They're with me," Dk'brr said, "isn't that enough?"

"Has it ever been?" The retainer replied, in open contempt.

Crossing his arms, Dk'brr ruffled his flower, and crept up to the Brrk'zk. Craning his neck, he lowered his light to a lambent whisper. "They're Messengers from the Vyx."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Brrk'zk Szr't't staggered back, flicking his tail in shock.

"You're serious, aren't you?" the Brrk'zk asked. His flower's petals stiffened.

"Deadly," Dk'brr replied.

"Oh, just wait till the yeomen hear about this!" Brrk'zk Szr't't said, and though he didn't have anything in the way of a face, let alone a mouth to smile with, I couldn't help but imagine him grinning.

— — —

"I imagine this must be quite disorienting to you," Brrk'zk Szr't't said.

"Oh, you have no idea," I said.

We were at dinner. I know that seemed like a minor detail, but in this context, it very much wasn't.

Although Brrk'zk Szr't't had been in dire need of getting back to dealing with the yeomen, in his own words, he "wouldn't dare" to let Messengers from the Vyx go unattended.

So he brought us with him. Rzt'zk and T'zz were there, as was Dk'brr, who'd had to go on a detour to take his vrr't'k mount to one of the ritual cleansing baths—a mikvah—in the Eggery, the building where the D'zd kept their young—"the D'zd" being what the mantises called themselves.

They'd given us some simple garments: short-hemmed robes with four, small sleeves that covered only about half of our arms. They were quite comfortable. They felt smoother against my body than what I'd been expecting, though it was possible that was only because D'zds' sense of touch was less sensitive than a human's.

All in all, things had been going pretty well, considering the circumstances. I'd already learned quite a bit, as the Brrk'zk and many others had been more than happy to fill in the details.

The town of T'kznd (Tih-Kuzoond)—Szr't't called it a town, but Dk'brr insisted we call it a "city"—was part of the T'dzd'ch (Tud-Dzoodche) Dominion, the primary political entity here in the Northlands, one of the principal regions of the continent of Dj'tk (Jetahk). From the sound of it, the Dominion had strong "Empire" vibes. In terms of standard fantasy tropes, I'd describe them as a wizard-run empire with a medium-strength biopunk inflection—the "fleshwork" the Brrk'zk had mentioned earlier. Alongside the programming they put into animals to turn them into biological machines for heavy lifting and other laborious tasks, they'd gone to town breeding and enchanting their world's—seemingly carnivorous?—flora to do everything from serving as radio towers (my guess had been right on the money), to even playing music⁠!

As the Northlands' cold weather posed a constant threat to the D'zd—the aliens were very sensitive to temperature changes—the region was considered a backwater by the inhabitants of the older, richer Dj'tk Southlands, a land of monsoons and sweltering jungles where cities threaded through gigantic trees and floated atop river and lakes in herds of migrating lily pads.

Really, everything in D'zd-world was topsy-turvy; literally so, in the case of our dinner.

Brrk'zk Szr't't had brought us back to his estate to join him and his hangers-on for the splendid banquet he was holding on behalf of the aforementioned yeomen. The Brrk'zk's manor—three smaller buildings, joined as one—was a squat, bowl-like building larger than any other I'd seen, flanked from behind on either side by two round-capped towers.

Even from the outside, just by looking at it, I knew there had to be some kind of feasting hall inside the middle bit.

I was not disappointed. The interior of the bowl-like central building was built around a large dining area. The "tables" reminded me of Cranter Pit—craters, to use Suisei's word for them, ones with noticeably raised edges. It was as if someone had stuck a broad, shallow bowl on the ground and pressed clay on it from the outside until it had formed a cylinder, and then lumped more and more clay until the ceramics formed a slope you could lean against while you let your limbs dangle inward over the edge.

D'zd "chairs" were set against the dining pit's slope at regular intervals, while the actual food—plants, freshly killed animals, and piles upon piles of electro-potatoes— were amassed in the pit. Proper table manners consisted primarily of waiting your turn to reach out and grab—or rip—a chunk or three, pull it close and stab it with your claws or stinger to drain it of its life-giving Charge. When we asked what to do with the leftovers, we were told to cast the refuse back into the bowl, which we did. Juices trickled down the rim in constant rivulets, as a result.

I think the lights were my favorite detail They used plants for lights; lightleaf—kz'dk-vvz (kuzdek-voovz)—they called it. It seemed to have once grown naturally, but long ago, the Chanters had modified it further into something far more formidable. A lightleaf plant was a small rosette of fleshy tongues from which a tangled mess of vine-roots would grow. The D'zd kept lightleaf in cage-like lanterns that hung from hooks on walls and ceilings. The frequency of the electromagnetic emissions given off by the plants' vine-roots could be adjusted by draining Charge from certain leaves. At the moment, they were giving off low-frequency emissions that filled our surroundings with a soft, sandy glow—sandy as in texture, not sandy as in color. Gnat-sized aerial plankton—bz'dzrt (Bizzdzert)—buzzed like moths around the vine-roots, but as soon as they touched the roots, they got stuck and died. Curiously, the plant didn't drain the planktons' charge. Instead, it seemed to feed off their bodies directly, like one of those Vineplain fly trap plants.

The light the plants gave off was also not so strong as to outshine the D'zd language. As a result, I got to watch the play of the electromagnetic shadows left in the wake of the many conversations going on in the dinner party's, most of all, our own.

We all sat together in the same quarter of the dinner pit. Nina sat to my left, and Lark to her left, while the Brrk'zk sat to my right. "Sit", though, really isn't the right word to describe what we were doing. Unlike human chairs, which supported the sitter from underneath and behind, D'zd chairs were recliners that held the front of your body up from below. In my case, my legs dangled off either side of the cushioned plank that supported my abdomen. From there, the chair rose up at a nice angle, giving my chest a place to rest by comfortably supporting my torso. The chairs' scalloped sides allowed for unrestricted arm movement.

The Brrk'zk's chair was the largest, most ornate one in sight.

In addition to the chairs around the dining pit, there were chairs scattered all around the large room. Some were on the ground, while others chairs jutted out from the walls, or even from the ceiling, upside down

Yes, really! And they weren't empty!

For the D'zd, a room's "floor space" included walls and ceilings. This was clear from the moment I first stepped into the Brrk'zk's manor and saw Szr't't's guests casually chatting or dining from the comfort of said walls and ceilings.

I will say this: crowd-watching was a lot easier when two-thirds of the crowd was on the walls and ceilings.

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