The Great Game 🎲 Kollarum
Spirals
The little pink and orange spirals that emanated from Dactalla’s treasure-chest were not your average crytozoids. Qayam saw them and couldn’t take his eyes off them. It was as if they were penetrating his optic nerves and flowing deep into his brain, into parts he didn’t even know were there.
Qayam couldn’t have possibly known that these crytozoids were crafted in the unsanctioned laboratories of the Demon Priests. They had been gifted to Dactalla by Knifestream, along with the threat that they could be used against her just as easily as she could use them against her enemies. More so in fact, since the crytozoids had lain within her for decades. They might even be able to anticipate her every move. Or, so he said.
Dactalla knew the risk of dealing with Knifestream, but she also knew that he didn’t understand the risk of dealing with her. The crytozoids had a feedback mechanism which relayed information back to Fallar Prime, yet Dactalla was familiar with feedback loops, and with the vaunted ‘technological mysteries’ of the Black Horde. The Demon Priests thought themselves so sneaky and dangerous, yet the predictability of their sneakiness dulled the mystery of their danger. Dactalla knew that they wanted control, and that almost everything they did was aimed at the gratification of that urge. Sex, luxury, and opulent displays of prestige were only mechanisms that they used to get at something else. She knew what that something else was, yet she still needed to know what forms it took.
Dactalla had spent the last two hundred years making connections with species who attempted to decipher the strategies of the Demon Priests. It was for this reason that she offered herself fifty years ago to the service of the Black Horde, who set her up as a travel agent in the Middle Belt. She could be very useful to Knifestream, but underneath she could also collect other information. Fifty years was a relatively short span for Derelactans, who could live up to two thousand years.
From her unassuming post on Aatari Lok, Dactalla fed Knifestream what he wanted to hear. She then downplayed the important information, which she was always careful to send. Her strategy was to skew the data in the general direction of the interests of the other Demon Priests, especially Kaldriscat and Gascitar. The mere mention of data streams which were of special interest to his competitors, or the mere mention of field operatives to whom the two Priests were even obliquely connected, sent Knifestream into such a frenzy of speculation that he completely forgot about the implications of the other data that she sent him. This way, she could never be suspected of withholding anything.
One thing Dactalla knew for sure: she needed to get closer to the centres of Vicinese power. The most logical place to start was with those who had the most at stake in deciphering Fallarian designs: the Purple Guard. The Guard itself was shrouded in mystery, and was exceptionally hard to get at. It’s command centre, The Golden Guardpost, was so deeply buried beneath the Golden Hill that 99.9 percent of the Vicinese population didn’t even know it existed.
The dynamic between the Priests and the Guard was an even bigger mystery. Dactalla decided, therefore, to get as close as she could to a group that stood between them, a group whose sole responsibility it was to evaluate the dangerous game played between Demon Priests and the Vicinese Guard: the security agents of Aatari Lok.
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It was for this reason that she opened her chest and sent Qayam into a spin from which the crytozoids made sure he would never recover. After she told her story (which of course was a complete fabrication), she listened to the other stories, all the while collecting information from Zadar and making Qayam feel neglected and jealous. She made sure however that they paired off together, and then she let him bury his head in her chest. Every cell in his body spun, all the while his genitals locked into hers. He couldn’t tell where his feelings ended and where hers began. It was like giving chemically-laced candy to a baby.
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After this encounter, Qayam wandered around the Blue Bubble, no longer worried about who would join his magic train. He only hoped that she would call him, night or day. He would do anything to see her again. His mind was still flush with the memory of spirals, pink and purple, lighting up his neurons like golden spikes of bliss embedded in his flesh.
After their first encounter in his hotel room, she told him that she had several other meetings on the other side of town, but that she would see him if possible. He begged her to come up to his room the next day, from where they could watch the swirling blue sky together. But she had to meet with a delegation from the Crimson Stalk. His ears perked up at this, for it was very difficult to make deep contacts with any Stalker. She also told him about a strange man named Tarnar, who was worried about the relationship between the Baulians and the Vicinese. Qayam told her she should watch out for the Baulians. They weren’t as harmless as she supposed. He suggested to her that he was a man of mystery and that she couldn’t possibly understand what he knew: the Tarnese were even worse. She should get back to the Blue Bubble as soon as possible. Together they could sort it out.
Dactalla thanked him for his concern, and said that she would be very careful, even though she couldn’t imagine what to be careful about. She added that she would always cherish the good time they had together, and that she would call him when she got back to her travel agency.
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Dactalla was an expert in multi-tasking: she did all her routine travel agent work, yet at the same time she was gathering and processing information about the operations of the Vicinese. In this way, it could be said that she augmented the control of the Demon Priests. And Dactalla did her level best to make sure that what she sent was interpreted in this way.
Dactalla didn’t have an ounce of respect for the Demon Priests. She despised them. For her, the important information wasn’t about control, but about how to take apart the mechanisms of control. This philosophy was common in the Black Pulse, where it was written as a general principle in their Declaration of Independence: Shutter your wings to no species. Yet applying this principle to the Demon Priests themselves wasn’t common at all. The Priests were considered to possess a control that was evil but necessary: they manipulated things so that the unbounded freedoms of the Fallarian constitution might be ensured. Dactalla, however, wasn’t as interested in the Declaration of Independence as she was in the motto of the Fallarian Revolution: Any species can join.
What Knifestream never suspected was that her real enemy was him.
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Next: 🗽The Political Climate
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