Firstborn of Rape.

Luorvas the 2nd, Nesvyn, 7╥576;

Düqs prevail by means of Arlen DuShaffte;

May the wombs of his ancestry forever weep in shame.

One hundred thirty-five years. It proved to be such a stretch of time that to most mortal men, it was absurd to peer at the date that each passing hour belonged to, and gradually come to the level of self-awareness required for giving thought to age.

From down here, time flicked by in uncanny, upside down silence. Meanwhile, the garbage that passed for entertainment displayed in the wall flickered to give way to a new image.

The room chimed, Marqisian grunted, and his blue-eyed, blond father took up the wall he’d been inattentively staring at.

“Shaajka’s breath! Will you ever put an expression on your face?”

Marqisian stared at him with the dedication of a corpse. “Egh.”

“You’re so much like your mother.”

“Then disown me.” His voice never changed from a disinterested monotone.

Arlen bristled, then huffed and shook his head, letting his upset pass. “I’m asking you for a favor.”

“Mn.”

“I’ve been too lax on several fronts. Bad enough the Founding Families have deserted, but now the media’s spewing every sort of damaging thing at me!”

“You’re the Arch Ganton.”

“So?”

“Snap your fingers and fix it.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“What do I have to do?”

“Take a trip to the DuFontean hills and see if you can hold audience with Tyrafiel DuClarde.”

Marqisian’s brow twitched.

“You’re grafted in as a DuShaffte. They’ll have to take you.”

“You cenna go… why?”

“I don’t want my wife and daughter crucified.” Arlen sighed, “There’s also this ‘ostracized Marsh Boy’ thing. Kinda like they’ll slaughter me on sight if I show up around there… So you’re the only one I can ask.”

“Right. What’s your offer?”

“Anything within the boundaries of Konstaneah, out of all Malzeyur, is open to you.”

“The Gantonry.”

“Of course!”

“Supreme Ganton.” He watched with a lukewarm sensation sitting unenthusiastically in his stomach as his father narrowed his gaze and clenched his teeth.

“Any seat in the realm of Gantory is yours, Marqi. All but mine —”

“Goodbye.”

“Wait, wait!” Stress rose in Arlen’s voice. Then the wall flickered, and returned to being the senseless distraction from the lagging monotony of time.

Several times did his father call back, and for each of those, he remained bent over the arms of a recliner, his head and shoulders on the floor, peering at the ludicrous garbage that infected and manipulated the ‘open minds’ of what had become a reformist population.

Again, Arlen tried.

This time he answered. “So?”

“Consider yourself Arch Ganton as of this moment.”

“Excellent.”

“Your authority is honorary until you return with news that I expect to hear: that the DuClardes and their subsequent surnames have favorably returned to me.”

“Full reign of the regime or null —”

“YOU WILL NOT — SWINDLE — the Absolutes from under me! There isn’t a damn in Dyjian for that, what, the afterbirth by the schemes of some rapist slut. Sure. But I’ve swaddled you in great esteem, Cheat. You will not force this on me.”

Marqisian grunted. “Of course I love you. Since the moment you held me at breastside, of nothing else could I be sure.” For that moment his eyes were focused and glossy.

His father sighed, and all the tension painted across his pale face flushed down like bile in a sewage pot; Arlen calmed down.

“That doesn’t mean that I agree with you,” Marqisian said.

“The World of Human Regime is moving ahead at incomprehensible speed. Konstaneah will fall into antiquity unless we keep pace. Sacrifices must be made to pursue the future, and I am taking every liberty to ensure —”

“Whose future? Ours? Or theirs?”

Arlen’s silence betrayed the disharmonious rhythm between the beats of his two hearts. “It’s not like we’re going toward extinction…”

“Modern life comes with a slew of conveniences, and a myriad more of unprecedented detractors.”

“Re-enlivening that asinine and archaic way of life, along with all its ideologies, is not how we, as a race, should progress!”

“We’ve all embraced the common comfort of ease of transportation, the exchange of common and exclusive goods, let alone the Hydrophobiome. Stands to say that we are modern. But before we were this, or what is yet, or any of these things, we are Malzeyurites.

“The Bog speaks, and he makes his demands known long before the cries of Boys reach the feet of their Lordes — I will see you stripped!”

“So good to feel your passion — however misguided…” Arlen sighed, his shoulders drooping from an entitled position to one that was near that of defeat. “Then go. As the bastard son of an emasculated boy, and a punic, back-faced slut, maybe they’ll enlegend you.”

Marqisian snorted.

Arlen vanished from the wall, and the mind-numbing trash returned.

In his mind, the actions happened immediately: departure from the cheap hovel he called his ‘apartment’; two days trip to Kneitun’s northwest peripheral town; a skin, a face, and a Grazthoq. 

Then the spirit of Malzeyur rose from the sludge and the debris and the wet just some yards from the civilization they called Konstaneah. Not even his toes bothered to deign so as to near the lip of the town, as his feet surfaced and he stood tall as if with the authority of Amonthé, the Shaajka.

Ribbons of rain shifted with the beckoning gesture of his arm, and again when he pointed into the swamp, into the deep bog, and his mossy hair shifted from one shoulder to rest on the other when he faced Marqisian, and the symbol of a Founding Family’s blood blazed in the darkness of his gigantic, hollow eyes.

When his spirit returned to him, he rolled over, got up, and with only a leather trench coat on his back, departed the paltry shack he’d worked to reside in for 115 years; on the whim of a vision, Marqisian went to chase air. 

Now in Malzeyur, the understanding is that there are two kinds of Whites: the ones that considered themselves cultured, civilized, and educated; and the ‘other’ kind.

But Marsh Boys were the feature of Malzeyurite lore. The accounts of their conquests, follies, grudging alliances, and clannish barbarism sent daydreamers away on epic voyages, and entertained the minds of children.

They didn’t exist. Because who could distinguish one man from the other? Didn’t they both share the same heritage?

A Marsh Boy knew what he was, the same as he knew the balls that dangled from his groin. Likewise, he knew when he was in the presence of another Marsh Boy.

Because they experienced things no one else could.

The passageways beneath the flow of the ever-full slifh traffic were clear of most things. Marqisian casually trekked, though many wouldn’t recommend it. Something about rundown suburbs rattled people.

He was no richer than a scum dredger digging for food in dumpsters.

So he walked all the way without stopping.

Kneitun’s outskirts were as organic as the capitol could be. Trashy, littered with the kind of junk that mid- and especially high class citizens treated as the remains of ruinous devil worship. The people were a grungy, beaten-straight sort.

The novelty shop’s owner regarded Marqisian with a lukewarm, piercing, analytical gaze. His skin crawled under the owner’s scrutiny, as though the owner knew that there was something about him that was off compared to his usual patrons.

Because he looked a bit too clean, and when he took a Grazthoq from the rack and gripped it crossways with his right hand near the lowered head of the shaft, the owner snapped and beckoned him.

“Goeng to take’t, yai?”

“Steel cast’ll rot me well before I’m hurt.” He lay it across the counter, peering into the owner’s gaze as if the man had challenged him. “Know where I can get a proper skin handy? True-to skin, mask, and Grazthoq, standard.”

Two giddy customers placed their knickknacks and consumables on the counter. Shortly after they had paid and departed, the owner returned his interest.

“Yai, suwer. The natives’ar picky on tech. You bess be off with Natyl Prime. Eats the most light, yai, and they’ar quick on respect on that.” He slid out from behind the counter, locked the shop’s doors, then opened the coded, reinforced steel door. “You’av fam on sog?”

“Offshoot of DuCiarde.”

“Yai…?” The owner sighed. “Those Düqs. Ain’nother as good whenet comes near to Accleiade — back past in those days, such like ain’theng close til now. Him took up a long arm of the Fel, northern clans on his left hip, northwest tribes on his right. The force of them all heraldeng ahead, yai? The fact of his influence, see’nget gain that power shocked the Styres. Shocked them raw. Suwer, right raw — ain’ny set tread on the marsh since.”

He pulled a Grazthoq from the rack, gave it a slow whirl, and then held it on two fingers behind the ball that joined the head and the shaft.

A good Grazthoq had a titanium carbide shaft. From joining-ball to butt-end, it must be two and a half times the length of a man’s arm. Because any longer and it got unwieldy, and any shorter he may as well consider himself dead.

The head had to counterbalance the shaft to ensure an even swing. Because when the hook on the backside of the blade snagged the jaw of an ufiden in mid-strike, it had to send the tip of that blade into the meat of its throat when he swung it overhead.

And when he hurled it down into the sog by its head, a good Grazthoq made quick work of splitting the lizard’s brain and cleaving the rest of it open in one sweep.

He brought the Grazthoq and the outfit to him. But when he set the mask before the shopkeeper, the man shot him an objectionable glance.

“Son of him Arkgnon, they ain’theng to be to you.”

“Ain’to make difference to me. He’s my Genfa.”

“What? Should he be? Or did that woman force herself on him due to him’s weakness? If a woman at all. They say’d that of the Mother-Heiress. She’d do as much.”

Marqisian eyed him, never bothering to blink as the shopkeeper tilted his head back and peered distantly at the ceiling.

“There’s this story that always held me hostage to daydreams of heroes and sprawleng quests. That tale from back on days old. 

“Arkgnon suffers a fierce wrath, tasteng the potency of a force that he cenna escape, or stop. What, does scorneng her grant justice to as she’s done? Or does he get her on her underhanded schemes?

“If he so badly desired his whimsical machine, Arkgnon shouldn’t’ve let that hour slip him.” Finally, he took up Marqisian’s intense gaze. “Malzeyur’s son lives.

“He goes wherever the rain sings to him. When Malzeyur’s people cry out, he bears their affliction as one of them.

“He sees the Children that are not; and knows the dealengs of the Women who are not; and his Brothers he knows by their dreams. All of them know him by name.

“By —”

“Old tales taste savory on good ears,” Marqisian said.

Without a word more, the shopkeeper rang him up.

He paid, donned the gear and set out into the bog. 

No roads spanned the mire between cities. They had before, until it became known how quickly they deteriorated. Hence, the more sensible method for the civilized population was long distance travel by aerial carriage. Otherwise, the only options were by beast, or on foot.

Once he stepped onto the spongy debris on the other side of the trough, he was considered as good as dead.