Episode 145: Takeover (Nim)

There were moments in life that were completely, utterly, stupidly wasted.

Like right now.

Nim was debating who got to sleep first and for how long with Soren, instead of either of them sleeping. Seconds ticked by and neither of them slept, but they almost had a schedule decided. Almost.

Then, some jerk knocked on the door.

She stopped breathing and closed her eyes. Please don’t wake the babies, she hoped.

The jerk knocked again, “Nim?”

Oh, good, it was Konrad. She could call him a jerk to his face and he just wouldn’t even care. Perfect.

“She’s dead!” Soren yelled.

He was a jerk too, because now Tsura was screaming. Nim picked her up and helped her latch, and said to the door, “Come in.”

Reason, people. Don’t yell with newborns. How many times had they been surrounded by babies? Konrad had four of his own plus Robert and he was alive, therefore he knew how to be quiet.

It was a choice. Nim would have vengeance in the form of steamy, stinky, kedgeree. For Nell’s kangaroo. It would have egg gas all night long and they wouldn’t sleep.

Konrad came into their room.

“There’s been an unexpected set of circumstances,” Konrad began. “As oldest remaining heir, we need you to take over.”

Her ears bled. Literally bled, everywhere.

Everyone was dead.

“Now?” Soren asked, because he had screamy Caden and Nim was trying to feed them both. Meldrey was at the festival, hanging out with Talise’s kids.

Talsie was dead. Somehow, really really dead. And her mom and her dad and her brother Acheron and …

This is what she got for having sex in his new spa.

“Please,” Konrad said. “I’ll have someone watch your children.”

Nim looked down at her new babies and felt tears, tears that were not allowed to exist, kind of dribbling down her cheek like they might exist.

She made them go away (with magic), and stood. “Okay.” She looked at Soren. “We can do this. They just ate. I’m ready.”

She handed both babies to Konrad, because even if he was a jerk he at least had big kids. Merlyn was huge for his age. He was healthy and strong and agile and… yeah Konrad could handle the scream cadets.

Sleep was out. She would kill Soren after they passed their trial and he could go hang out with all the dead people and ask them what the fuck they did to all die at once and why she was left out.

“Thank you,” Konrad said in his calm voice. Maybe he was upset because he loved her mom and she had died. Maybe he just hated how inconvenient this was, and what if they trial took days… they didn’t have days. What if they failed? They’d be gone too, in some way.

Or Soren would barter with the selkies, like he did with everyone else, and all would be well.

She took Soren’s hand. He would barter their way through this.

“I suggest avoiding the pole for the time being, the girls have been arguing.”

The selkies were both female, because selkies were female. Gancanagh and normal pointy eared magicless things were male, but selkies were female. They had seal skins. The selkies ran the temple, and apparently they had a pole in their temple and they were arguing. Soren needed coffee before he tried to get them through this.

“Okay,” she said. Coffee, no poles, pass the trial, kill Soren – task list sorted.

“Is everything okay?” Soren asked.

No it wasn’t okay! Everyone died.

“I think the attack has set everyone’s nerves on edge,” Konrad commented. Worthless words, like worthless arguing. They were going to fail their trial like thy failed to sleep because Konrad had to make sure they knew people were on edge after the king, queen, crown princess, crown prince, next prince, and probably his boyfriend died.

You know who should have died? The guy in front of them: Mr. Head of Shit Going Wrong Fixingness.

“Do you need anything, before I go?” Konrad asked.

Nope, they just needed to go now.

“No, thanks,” she said.

She kissed both babies and they didn’t smile, but if they were like a month or two older she bet they would have.

“I’ll get them to Yishti,” Konrad commented. “Good luck.”

Luck was what she needed.

“We should be okay,” Soren stated.

Yeah, once he had some coffee.

Or tea… was it tea that he liked?

So they left, their room and the palace. They took the main hallways even though there had just been an attack. Everyone seemed calm and cool, but that must have been training. Once they were in the conference room Nim snagged an insta-coffee mix and made Soren a cup. “You need this,” she insisted.

He drank it, which was great because that meant he probably liked coffee and she wasn’t so tired that she had forgotten. It felt good to know she at least had that down, because who knew what their trial would be about. Not coffee vs. tea, that was off the table now.

He downed it.

That must have burn- wait. He had fire magic. Didn’t burn, then.

“We’re going to have a mess when we get back,” Soren said.

Yeah, no shit. Everyone was dead.

“We can do this,” Soren added. That was nice to hear.

“I love you,” she told him. “I believe in us. We’re amazing.”

It was sort of a pep talk sort of a lie situation, and if lying came up in the trial she would confess all one of them she had ever told him.

What if white lies counted? What if she had forgotten a small like like, yeah you looked like a natural dancing with those people. Except he always did. That she could remember.

“I love you,” he insisted back. He kissed her, and if things weren’t so horrible in the world she would have kept kissing, but instead she pulled away.

Soren pulled his hands into a folded cross arm you can’t take me with you stance. Nim stared him down. What happened to the we can do this talk?

“I just have one thing before we do this…” Soren said.

He was an air fairy, he wasn’t allowed to be stubborn about things.

“What?” she asked.

His arms unfolded and he grinned, “When we’re ruling, can our flag have an ear of corn on it?”

She laughed and took his hand. They could do this, because he was amazing. “Okay,” she agreed.

“And whatever happened to your family… we’ll find a way to make it better, when we get back.”

“I just… with Zero… why didn’t they come back?”

She felt the too-much-water-in-her-body issue becoming an issue again, and she tried to contain it all.

He hugged her and they transported.

“And avoid the pole,” he reminded her.

Yeah, she wouldn’t be having sex again any day soon. She needed six buckets of tea served with each meal so she could just not get pregnant.

What if she was? That spa would be the first thing to go once she was queen.

They were still hugging when this voice came booming in like one of those documentary people, all regal and perfect and robotic almost because who sounded like that?

“Princess Nemethne, Prince Soren,” she stated.

Nim contemplated raising her hand, but then she realized they might be in a bad mood still, pending what pole meant, and actually she didn’t even see any poles.

“You have come to ascend?” the selkie asked.

This didn’t seem like the right place. She’d been there before, because they all had a picture of the temple memorized in case of emergency (kind of like a big red button in the brain), but the selkie had long purple and green hair and was covered in seaweed like a fashionable dress parka. At least the hair color was nice and vivid, no over the counter dye for her.

She looked like she needed to ascend herself.

“Yes,” Nim said anyway, because she wasn’t going to useless argue what the selkies looked like until/unless she failed, then she would have leverage.

“You will find yourselves in the center of a corn maze,” the selkie stated. “To complete the trial, you simply have to find your way out, within the space of a day.”

Queen Nemethne Corn the Exhausted. Or Queen Nemethne Farminger. Awesome, Soren would never escape it.

“A maze?” Soren asked, without mentioning the corn. He must not have heard it, or maybe he was about to be sick and he was trying to keep his focus on other things.

“Do you accept the terms of your trial?” the selkie asked.

She looked at Soren, who didn’t seem pukey or dying. “Okay,” she said tentatively. “Yes.”

“Yes,” Soren said.

And just like that they were in corn heaven. Corn was everywhere. They were corn.

“This is evil,” Soren stated. “Do you see a pole anywhere?”

“Poles of corn. Maybe he was saying don’t take the trial.”

Soren kind of laugh huffed, and then he seemed to finally really see the corn volume and the air escaped him (which was a really cool thing to see, since he was basically made of air).

“So,” she said looking around. “We have to overcome your fear of being a farmer.”

Soren laughed, a painful pitiful laugh of despair. “Why does it always come back to corn?”

“Because you love corn,” she reminded him. “You know you have a secret thing for it. Corn flag, corn maze, corn dreams…”

“This isn’t a corn maze, it’s a maize maze. Get it?”

She laughed, which made her thought you don’t have to say get it useless. Maybe all words were useless. Maybe everything was useless and everyone had stayed dead because they realized they just didn’t want to put up with kingdom stuff anymore.

Well, Nim wanted to live. She set off into the maze with Soren by her side. They could do this together and someday things would be amazing.

“So what’s going to try and kill us,” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Soren replied. “I vote we burn it down and walk to the edge. Nothing can kill us if it’s dead.”

There were no rules. Maybe they could burn it down, maybe this was a test on their ability to handle stupid tasks with easy answers. Maybe this was a test to see if they could handle simple solutions to stupid complex problems. Maybe ….

She heard Caden scream crying.

This couldn’t be happening because Caden wasn’t there and so this wasn’t real. He was screaming so loud and her chest hurt from her heart beating inside it. Or too much milk. Wasn’t she happy a minute ago? She was flipping out now. She needed to find him.

She took Soren’s hand tighter except it wasn’t there because she had stopped walking and he was now a dozen feet ahead looking toward the crying too and she was alone.

No, Soren was right there. Soren was right there in front of her only a few steps away and she could go touch him.

She did. She needed to, to know that he was real.

“Do you hear Caden?” she asked him.

“Yeah, he’s that way,” Soren said.

The crying got louder and worse and someone was probably killing Caden.

“We can’t go that way,” she stated. She pulled Soren away from the crying, the exact opposite way in fact. This was a trial. Caden was like the biggest heart wrenching thing to happen in her entire life. He shouldn’t even be alive, or rather he should be stuck in an endless battle of his heart dying and healing and dying and healing until someone just burned him and stopped his suffering.

Caden crying was huge. It felt trial-y.

“Nope,” Soren agreed. “Opposite direction. He looked back toward their not-son’s screams and then put his arm around her and they moved.

“It can’t really be him,” Soren agreed. “He’s with Yishti.”

“And if it is…” she tempted herself to say. “He needs us to pass. And Rhoda wouldn’t save him so he could die. She isn’t that nice. And Yishti has him.”

And Rhoda wouldn’t have saved him just so he could die.

Rhoda wouldn’t have done it.

“Yeah,” Soren agreed.

Each step she felt more confident, because she trusted Rhoda. “And we need to go this way,” Soren said.

They walked away from the screams, further into the maize or further out, hopefully out. At some point the screaming stopped, and they could breathe again. It was a relief.

“So, either he died or he wasn’t real,” Nim joked.

“Or fake him died,” Soren added. “It could be both.”

Nim laughed. They were going to do this – they were going to pass their trial and they were going to succeed at living. “Okay.”

They kept walking. There were sounds and there were little things but they were together and they were going to do this. They were going to pass.

Whatever had happened to everyone else, whatever disaster they would face when they came home… they would pass. Together.

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