Epilogue

1039 A.G. Paulin 29th, Gannday at about Monnihigh. The night had already come and blanketed over the sunshine a while ago, leaving a greenish blue or bluish green hue from the moon illuminating the night sky. The Sanbi capital was bustling alive, with lots of live music, chanting, drinking, fighting, gaming, and socializing all around as the weekend, Forrday, was about to officially start—but not like anyone was staring at their timekeeper anyways. Meanwhile, in the Sanbi castle, things seemed relatively quiet as there weren’t any dinner shenanigans or the usual rowdiness between the princesses. The only Sanbi Royal crowd present was the four leaders plus Princess Nina, who was fast asleep after again filling her belly with nothing but rakuja. Itagiba seemed to be the one that would be rowdy tonight, conceivably drinking to compensate for the emptiness of the castle. However, this time, Queen Neferteri prevented him from going halfway to shitfaced hammered drunk—technically known as being schnockered. Now the queen dragged her drunken husband to meet up with the courtroom scientist, Kibe, at the lab after he was a no-show during dinner.

I presumed threatening Kibe with more work would compel him to research this matter quickly, but I undoubtedly underestimated how effective that persuasion attempt would be. Neferteri glanced at Itagiba playing with the test tube in his hand like a curious toddler—at least not going as far as putting it in his mouth.

Itagiba rocked the glass tube from side to side, letting the bluish-accented fire inside clump from one side to the other in a yolk-like manner. He then started shaking it violently in hopes of achieving something—whatever that might happen to be.

“Honey—maintain the test tube flat.” Neferteri touched her husband’s manly arm.

With a half-baked, caught-in-the-act inward laugh, Itagiba did so. “Yeah—I’m just testing out—oh? Is that like the fire that goes up in the arm!” He burped as he tried to concentrate on the white and bluish fire pattern emerging inside the tube.

Seeing the test tube in her husband’s hands, Neferteri’s watchful gaze then crosschecked the two lit-up boxes by his feet with at least a hundred test tubes each, all with the same whitish and bluish fire inside. Luny better not be act outside my expectations by pulling a lark over our eyes and pushing our kingdom to yet another failed experiment. One box was marked as CONTROL while the other was FANBIRO. She softly hummed, “Are you close to a verdict?”

Kibe gave away his freshly sloppily written notes to the queen. “It’s all the same thing!” he blurted out, massaging his tired-looking eyes.

“Including the reference fanchaki?” Neferteri read the sloppy notes and rough drawings of past test tubes. Three hundred and fifty expected test tubes? This has to incur quite a significant expenditure on BOM alone.

“Both of them! Gabiro isn’t here anymore,” Kibe nodded, watching the sparks emerging more and more within the boiling nari gel within the glasses above the portable stove.

Itagiba carelessly let go of the test tube into the CONTROL box, letting it shatter against a few more test tubes. The flames from the cracked tubes oozed into one another, suddenly causing a bright white flame to shoot up from the box like a silent supernova explosion, blinding the whole room. “OW FUCK!”

Kibe froze up as the flame literally emerged by his side. At the same time, Neferteri and Itagiba jumped back, with Itagiba putting himself in between the silent roaring flames and his wife in what had to be a sudden love-fueled stupor of sobriety.

“Dear?” Neferteri stated in an orotund manner towards her drunk husband, looking at his muscular black-and-whitish cape preventing her from seeing much of the action. She poked her head out from the side and saw the roaring flames dying down, disappearing into nothingness. With her heart ticking slightly faster than usual, she steadily approached both boxes and saw that the rest of the tubes that were still intact within the CONTROL box still held their flame securely inside. The sudden heatless bright light was precisely what the witnesses briefed to the agents. Neferteri felt her plans developing a crack of their own—even more so than the cracked test tubes. If not Luny herself, someone will correlate the incident to Gabiro’s book series from 986 A.G and expose the truth of uncaringly performing research. Worse yet, they will adequately have enough evidence to accuse the Sanbi Kingdom of going over the boundary into taboo for being at the crux of the failed experiment’s lost memories. A not-so-bubbly feeling arose deep within Neferteri, making her clench her jaw to keep it bottled inside as unwanted thoughts surfaced in her mind. Damn you to soul death, Gabiro! You’re nothing but an intellectual sphincter! I now have to dramatically change tactics and strain my network even further, all due to your disobeying my request.

“*Hic—*so this is the stuff with Luny where she said—is basically an old book from Gabiro, right?” Itagiba crouched to look closely at the purple flesh dancing in the boiling water, with small pockets of whitish and bluish fire forming all over the flesh, turning it into a pure fire glob.

“Correct, dear.” Neferteri handed back the sloppily taken notes. Forcing Gabiro to retire will suffice in quenching the populace’s demand for action. Regarding satisfying the inquisitive ones—we must establish enough valid and reasonable explanations to prevent a sense of covering up. Neferteri glanced over at the boxes packed full of test tubes, full of whitish and bluish fire that seemed to have given her a myriad of opportunities ahead.

Meanwhile, Itagiba turned to Kibe with a deadpan look. “You’re his fucking apprentice! How didn’t you know this whole—thang would turn into egua crap?”

“What? It’s his fault for just going ahead and doing his own thing! He only tasked me with the grunt work!” Kibe sighed, whipping his sweaty hands and forehead in his robes. “That book is like thirty-something years old! How am I supposed to remember that? I’m just tired of boiling away flesh anyways! I’ve been doing it nonstop since yesterday! This fire is too hot—”

“Stop bitching!” Itagiba pointed at Kibe’s face, his finger pretty much touching his greasy nose. “I’m sorry—” Itagiba put his weight on Kibe’s shoulder as he made his way to stand up behind him. With karate-chopping hands, he kept on striking Kibe’s tight-looking shoulders in an attempt at massaging. “That was kinda mean—just fucking get ’er done! You can do it! *Hic—*use the secret mind-clearing technique after we leave!”

Bringing up this as proof that the soul energy department performed dangerous research without consulting the monarchy and economic departments will certainly retroactively explain what Kibe said at the duel. Walking over to the other side, where the containers with fanchaki carcasses were, Neferteri only saw six roughly cut pieces of flesh left and three handfuls of black-and-white feathers and light bones left to boil. “Kibe, we do not blame you. None of us were aware of that published book series, for it was written before any of us were born.”

Itagiba halted the massage to let out a wet burp that echoed in the room. “WOW! When you put it like that, it sounds fake as shit—but it gotta be true. He was older than Pa when he soul died.”

“It is undeniably true.” Feeling a dissatisfied bubbling wave of emotions surface inside her at the noise coming from her husband’s stomach speaking out loud, Neferteri closed her eyes temporarily, trying to push the wave aside. My agents stated there was an uptick in outsiders probing around ever since the explosion and that my requested misinformation tampering would only delay the inevitable truth from being unearthed. Feeling her emotional side wrestling with calming down, she took a deeper breath and glanced at the messy, expensive research Kibe was still performing. The agents had the correct prognosis all along. She silently watched over Kibe, scooping out most of the whitish and bluish fire glob from the glasses atop the makeshift stove into test tubes and corking them. Eori is in the countryside under the pretense of being on her first scientific expedition. It will undoubtedly have the prospect of someone attempting to track her activities and possibly sequester her to inquire about the events surrounding Gabiro. Having Morika wear her Fake Skin with another agent nearby will keep her hideout safe and unroot whoever might attempt such a feat.

“Nefi?” Itagiba let out a yawn. “Are you going to bed? I think I’m ready to call it.” He watched over Kibe’s experiment as well, seeing him adding more deep-blue nari gel in the glasses atop the stove, then dropping more carcasses into it to repeat the cycle.

“Yes, dear.” Neferteri placed her hand on Itagiba’s shoulder. It’s time to make Gabiro a pariah while having Kibe act as public testimony. She cleared her throat. “Kibe, we must protect our kingdom. By breaking these boxes in public, you will accuse and prove Gabiro’s haphazardly tampering with the soul of fanchakis without disclosing the perilousness of the experiment and falsifying research details to other departments. Afterward, I will follow up your accusation by stating that we are imposing a halt on all ongoing research, including the recently disclosed one regarding bigger and juicier fanchakis, until we conclude their riskiness to citizens’ safety and any possible dubious ethicality.”

Kibe looked frozen, except his eyes went back and forth between the king and queen of Sanbi.

“Hol’ up! Weren’t we trying to cover up the soul thingy?” Itagiba let out another yawn. “Or am I too drunk to follow? Do you get this?” he asked Kibe point-blank.

Kibe silently shook his head, waiting for Neferteri to continue as he held an empty tong in his hand and a floppy tongue hanging in his open mouth.

“I do realize this is a sudden declaration.” Neferteri pointed her hands towards the box filled with test tubes. “My goal was to avoid scrutiny from other kingdoms and unnecessary rounds of conversations at the Forway assembly, given the clear social unease around soul research. However, I now witness that my current strategy is no longer feasible, for other parties might divulge information or misinformation before us, forcing us to take a defensive stance—or to put it bluntly, a losing position in the face of public opinion. With that said, Kibe, you must turn yourself in as an accomplice after you accuse Gabiro.”

Kibe remained frozen. Words seemed to want to get out of his mouth, or it was just his dropped jaw.

“You shall state that you hid the truth regarding the fanchaki research intricacies from other departments, all while you attempted to resurrect Gabiro, hoping he would cover up the whole operation and bring things back to normalcy.” Neferteri let out a smile from the corner of her mouth. “We will ensure you’re well rewarded for your bravery, and we shall promise to aid in your earlier retirement—after you pay for your actions.”

Kibe looked towards Itagiba. He seemed to seek salvation from a man scratching his junk, still yawning with his mouth wide open—most likely already tuned out of the entire conversation.

Itagiba shrugged. “Nefi knows what she’s talking about—if she says that’s the way we gotta go, then that’s where we gotta go.”

Kibe nodded silently.