“Are you really sure you want the Great Blades around at our wedding, as our witnesses?”
Itaviir looked up from what he was doing. Normally, he did work stuff in the Tattered Navigators’ office,. But Itaviir was hungry today and didn’t want to constantly walk from the offices to the canteen, and what he was doing wasn’t official Thantir work, so he had decided to park himself on the bench closest to the food generators and just stuff his face with popcorn chicken while he browsed through a database.
“Is something wrong, Galyn?”
Galyn glanced around awkwardly, as if checking that the coast was clear for him to talk. Once he felt safe, he sat down next to Itaviir.
“It seems… a little weird. Especially when we have Life Goddesses and Time Drakes here who are kinder and more… higher on the scale of important. We literally know children of the Final Mother in person, and routinely see another Mother, who comes here for purifications for her kids… What are you doing anyway?”
Itaviir stopped scrolling, then frowned. “I am looking for other important Beh’ens to invite.”
“What do you mean?” Galyn asked. “Are the Great Blades, literally the most famous Beh’ens ever, not enough?”
Itaviir shook his head. “They are not enough. Well… in a way they are not. If they are going to bless us with their presence and allow us to get married, they need to claim that we are no longer of sin. But just because they say so, that doesn’t mean every Beh’en will agree or understand. If we invite other important Beh’ens, maybe they will understand, and maybe I will stop being Shatterblade the Betrayer and you will stop being the otherwise unnamed Deceiver.”
Galyn inspected Itaviir some more, then went back to frowning. “This never used to bother you. Or rather, it didn’t bother you this much.”
“It has always been a little thing in the back of both of our minds. We both understand that the entirety of our race, most of them consider us in a negative light, right? Well, this wedding is a chance to rectify that. We can’t prove that we are in fact better than most Beh’ens, but we can improve our image. And we can do that by inviting as many high-ranking Beh’ens as possible to our wedding, maybe even invite a Beh’ena if we can find one. They all see the Great Blades blessing us, they all get to hear how amazing we are via Retvik, Litvir and Arkay, they see that a Mother fully trusts us, and they will finally see that we are good people, we are great Beh’ens. While yes, this normally doesn’t bother me MOST of the time, we have a chance to fix things and I do not want to mess it up.”
Galyn thought for a moment, considering Itaviir’s words, then shrugged and smiled. “You know what? That is completely fair. In fact, how can I help you with that? Like, what are you doing right now?”
Itaviir eyed Galyn briefly. “I thought you were going to fight back a bit.”
“Why would I fight back? What you said was completely valid. In fact, I feel it more than you do, since no one actually knows me by name. We are both heroes, we’ve done amazing things, we deserve to, at the very least, not be considered as fools by all other Beh’ens. So, I reiterate, how can I help?”
Itaviir smiled back. “I appreciate you, Galyn. More than you can ever imagine. In answer to your question? Well.. since we are the founders of a sect, I still have access to the Deathven Decay Lord database. It doesn’t have images, but it does have lists of Decay Lords that I can narrow down by name and region. So I am busy looking for who might be big, powerful Beh’en Decay Lords who are also Beh’ens, and seeing if I can invite them.”
“So… who have you written down so far?”
Itaviir inspected his list. “Well… I know he isn’t actually a Beh’evok, but I have Mimicblade on the list. He appears to most as a Beh’en and is a sect leader. I have got all of the Great Blades’ underlings on the list as well, but there are a few names here that I think belong to Justar Beh’ens and I don’t now who they are or if I should invite them.”
Galyn looked at the list as well. “Did you really just enter the word “blade” and see what came up?”
“Name a Beh’en that isn’t Thyel that doesn’t have the word “blade” in their codename.”
“Oh…” Galyn thought for a little too long. “Oh… Alright, you have me there. But some people have the word “blade” in their codename and are not Beh’ens, so we need to be careful.”
“True…” Itaviir grunted. “I suppose I can message them under the ruse that we are doing a survey for the Thantir, about how other folks deal with Corruption in order to better our services. Or I can just message them, ask if they are a Beh’en and if they say yes, ask them if they are ostracised or not.”
“I guess?”
“I’m thinking about it. However, something else I want to do but have no way of doing is… I would like to invite a Beh’ena to our wedding. I think that would be… quite a flex.”
Galyn tutted. “We have fathered kids and have no way of contacting them.”
“Well, we do not know if those of the Golden Warmth, those ten who kidnapped us-”
“Hang on!” Galyn exclaimed. “We were kidnapped by the Beh’ena of the GOLDEN WARMTH?”
Itaviir eyed Galyn. “You… you didn’t know?”
“Of course not! I never really knew Golden Paradise history even when we were Phantai. I… I guess I never put two and two together… And they… they used US as Dosai… That… that is insane…”
“We don’t know if they have inseminated themselves and actually produced kids yet though. And that reminds me, we need to speak to Phos and ask him about little Ilyn too. But still, I want to invite a Beh’ena and have no idea how to do it.”
Galyn frowned, then went back to thinking. As he did so, he spotted a ship landing in the parking area. It was the Deathly Soulflame, Retvik, Litvir and Arkay’s ship. And that had given Galyn a thought.
“I think… I think Retvik and Litvir might know someone who can help…” Galyn muttered. “As soon as they have sorted themselves out, I’ll go and ask…”