Tales of Midbar: Secret Priest
Dark Reaper

Sephir Evuvednin was uninhabitable, with a thin atmosphere and very cold conditions. However, there was a small human colony in an enclosed, subterranean biosphere. This had been there for centuries without obvious change and had never been visited by space ships. Haprihagfen had always been wary of visiting small colonies because they’d certainly be recognized as strangers. However, after what had happened with Midbar-Malchut, they’d changed their policy to be more aggressive about replaceing and contacting anavim in such colonies.

We’d used dowsing to track down Rilletteecket to an area of the biosphere which seemed to be used for growing plants. It was also late at night by local time (this was another sephir with the human colony on the side that pointed away from Bet) so the humans were mostly inactive. We materialized near Rilletteecket, in a narrow passage between stacks of alternating layers of electric lights and plants. She was stripped to the waste, hugging an anav. She screamed and covered her breasts. The anav, turned, stared at us and held his hands in front of him, forming a triangle with his thumbs and forefingers, but with the other fingers spread out.

“It’s not what it seems!” said Rilletteecket.

“I’m going with the dark reaper!” said the man.

He looked young, with pale skin, a heavy build and prominent eyebrow ridges. He had an untidy, thin beard.

“I’m not going all the way with him!” said Rilletteecket.

She was speaking Faharni but her companion was speaking a language I didn’t recognize.

“Do you still want to be a clamet?” I asked.

“Of course. I’m still a virgin.”

“What spirits are these?” asked the unfamiliar anav.

“It’s complicated,” said Rilletteecket in the strange language.

“We also have room for another clamach,” said Dwendra.

“Slight problem there,” said Rilletteecket. “He thinks if he leaves, other than by dying, the XT’s who left the humans here will kill some hostages who are being held somewhere off this planet.”

“You should never ever allow people to control you by holding hostages!” said Dwendra, she’d switched to the local language. “String them along until you have a good chance to attack them and maybe rescue the hostages but you must never let such a thing succeed!”

“I thought they’d been here centuries!” I said, also in the local language.

“Eight hundred and sixty two years,” said the local anav, still making his strange hand gesture at us and looking very frightened.

“How do you know these hostages are still alive?” I asked. “How do you know the XT’s haven’t forgotten all about you?”

The man stared at me in complete horror, clearly not having a good answer. “The hostages may be in suspended animation or time dilation or the XT’s will kill descendants of the original hostages.”

“People still remembered you after a thousand years!” said Rilletteecket. “These people have nanites or something that makes them live a long time and every time one dies, they arrange for another to be born.”

“Can’t we make it look as if he got incinerated or disintegrated or something?” I asked. “He’s clearly been sneaking off to be with you, how much does he have to be around for people not to notice he’s leaving?”

“What?” asked the man, clearly confused.

Rilletteecket took her shirt from where it was hung on a plant frame and said, “Can we have a word in private if you can’t stick to Faharni?” Then she switched to the strange language and said, “I must consult with the other spirits.”

She pushed past the man and came towards us, putting her shirt on. We walked a few meters away from the confused man.

“Don’t you think I’ve considered how to deal with this? Firstly he believes I’m a spirit they call a dark reaper. It’s a female spirit who kills a man by having sex with him but then he gets to be her husband in the afterlife.”

“That sounds ideal,” I said.

“No! If I take him to another sephir and teach him to use his powers, he’ll discover the truth. A big part of the problem is he has no idea how the XT’s are monitoring this colony.”

“Art they?” asked Dwendra.

“Don’t know,” said Rilletteecket. “Therefore we don’t know how to fool them, or even if any sort of subterfuge is necessary. Remember these people have had it ingrained in them from childhood that they’ve got to obey certain rules to keep the hostages alive, exactly the way it was ingrained into you from childhood that Holy Sites had to have spaceship parts hidden in them.”

“I still think he needs to stand up against the kidnappers!” said Dwendra. “Even if people are killed, they will no longer be under the kidnappers’ control.”

“You may have a point but we don’t even know what species the XT’s are and we don’t know what universe this is so we can’t try to figure out how these XT’s are likely to behave. Do you see the problem?”

“Fighting an unknown enemy,” I said, “never a good position to be in.”

“If you want to be a clamet in our clan,” said Dwendra, “I suggest you figure out what to do about him soon.”

“Do you have a beit?” asked Rilletteecket.

The Semic word ”clamach" is seldom used. It’s the male equivalent of a clamet, in other words an anav who belongs to a clan rather than being a sleg.

We materialized in the side passage. It seemed strange being back home, I think because I didn’t feel it was my home anymore and I was no longer really part of what went on there. I think the fact it was red night may have made things look more sinister. I hadn’t been away long but a lot had happened in that time. We went round the front and Dad answered the door and let us inside.