Narrative Engine Podcast

Moses Sukumaran

Short fiction, craft notes, and narrative experiments about pressure, systems, myth, bureaucracy, and the machinery of story. mosessukumaran.substack.com

  1. Oct 6

    I read this, I want to tell you about it #1

    This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mosessukumaran.substack.com

    I read this, I want to tell you about it #1

  2. Oct 4

    Transcendent - Chapter 6: The Starboard Law

    Ofran of the Starboard Law stood amongst the wreckage of a tower and touched a brick with his right hand while the stump of his left lay tucked in the small of his back, just under his favourite belt. The brick was an old brick, a sad brick, a brick that had watched a line dissolve because its rights meant nothing under the birth of the new. It was also a poor excuse of an existence when transcendents met. The right halves of bricks held memories adequately, though they refused to see. Ofran sighed. This land itself reeked of past sadness, and it would not show him the moment the new transcendent was born. On an ocean he’d be able to glean far more, but most of the new transcendents refused to take the proper path on the water. Nonetheless, the land and bricks and sky and even the taciturn earth breathed of the Cut. Ofran fiddled with his threads, tracing the moment he’d left the Empire and its consequence with this place. Yes, this was the correct location, but unfortunately, the incorrect time. Three Steps Back had sensed this future, but only Ofran could arrive in time, and he hadn’t. All remained according to his law. Now it met this new presence here and it would be…new and interesting and fascinating. Hopefully. The brick in Ofran’s hand had once been a happy brick, content to bask with its brothers. One half could be happy again. They would be. He expressed. All the broken bricks lost their coarse, left halves. If their right was broken, Ofran made it the brick’s left. The tower’s left dissolved and its right reconstructed. He summoned the chair that always hung in his threads. The chair wasn’t new, though the enhanced steel replaced the left legs, which wore down the fastest. Ofran sat down and faced the city whose name was not here. The gods had interfered, and he couldn’t tell why, though he could feel the trade. Exchanges satisfied Ofran; they reminded him of the sea, but trades were poor when they were uneven. Ofran threaded the broken tower with his Starboard Law and felt warmer, the chill wind banished and the warmth recovered. Cold was the left when the suns were out. His right hand brushed the armrest of his chair, and he considered the reconstructed tower for a moment. It had been many years since he’d left the Empire and decades since the last time a peer decided to wake up. The meeting place must be memorable. The thought flickered for a moment, and he considered suppressing the desire, but let it flow. His expression widened. His reconstructed tower twisted to the east, half alive and robust, its shattered opposition hidden in the shadows. He asked the Cut to meet, and the Cut arrived amidst a line. Ofran smiled. Interesting. Linear convergence, upright yet jagged, bold yet restrained. Pure. “Starboard Law?” The Cut’s eyes widened, the words spilling from his tongue at the sight of Ofran. Ah. Self-defined and able to feel him so soon. “Cut.” Ofran raised his right hand, and Cut glanced at it. Mistake. Transcendents didn’t glance. “Your old name?” “Nazran.” Cut grimaced, eyes roaming Ofran’s fingers. They were beautiful fingers, of course. Composed entirely of his threads. A sharpness rose, a true sword, and Ofran turned his head to one side. “Why fear me?” Cut blinked. “I don’t know. I don’t like your hand. Its…lines don’t make sense.” Ofran smiled wider. “My hand looks like lines to you? Interesting.” “That’s not what you see? But…” Cut mumbled, then flickered to the second floor. Taking another angle to watch Ofran from Cut’s own right, presumably. “What do I look like to you?” Ofran didn’t answer immediately and instead looked to the sky above Cut’s head. Glancing was a mistake, but observation—that was necessary. A wound rested upon the sky. The world was rent around this new transcendent, and he carried its scar with him at every moment. A whirlpool. A great waterspout threatening the deck. Internal manifestation, external expression. The Cut appeared to be true severance, not the paltry imitation Ofran could create. It was incompatibility, delicious incompatibility, yet not an opposing line of thought, a perceptual understanding centred around removal. Cut could, if he chose to, reject reality. Ofran’s senses danced, threads of law descending from the sky to his starboard, black and white, gold and dust, live and dead, to trace the linear paths in Cut’s existence. Extrapolate, define; transcendents failed when defined by others, but Ofran chose to try. Cut was new, so maybe… “You touched me,” Nazran of the Cut declared, and the left of him expressed: voided; innumerable lines forming a shear plane to disconnect Ofran’s threads. “You requested,” Ofran replied. He turned to his threads and pointed right. They stabilised and Cut’s lines dissolved. “Defining any transcendent is a poor choice, but you seem particularly dangerous when it comes to keeping yourself isolated.” “I’m not alone. What you did was unpleasant. Don’t.” Cut circled the broken tower’s second floor. Always counterclockwise, and never by turning left. “What did it feel like, Cut?” Ofran asked. This time Cut didn’t glance. Lines drifted from him, splintering into thin cracks that devolved into planes across the sky and ground. They collapsed in the face of the earth and Ofran’s threads and lasted for the moment Cut decided they should. What a fascinating method of definition. Ofran was tempted to interfere using his threads. Just to see what the interaction would do, but the lines were proliferating chaotically, almost uncontrolled. The suns overhead waited, and Ofran yawned. Transcendents who played with time were annoying. Better to follow the law. He looked to his right and summoned a broken sign into his hand. One thread slipped into it, and half the sign turned to ash. With a grin, Ofran placed the imbued sign on the side of the tower facing the road. “It felt like you looked inside me. Or tried to.” Cut released his breath, and the suns stuttered along their path. “Why can’t I see you? Why are you here? Who are you?” “You know who I am,” Ofran declared. He shuffled a little in his seat, letting his left arm push into the groove he’d eroded in the backrest over one hundred and thirty-three years. It was a nice groove, a soft groove, and an angry groove. Cut tilted his head to one side. “I can tell you’re the Starboard Law. This tower bleeds it. No, that’s not right. This tower commands it. Everything here speaks of your existence, but that’s not a name.” “Isn’t it?” Ofran chuckled. “If you need a real introduction, then so be it. Greetings Nazran of the Cut, I am the current First Sword of the Ver Empire, Ofran of the Starboard Law. A truly great, fun, pleasure to meet you.” “General Nazran of Hind. Baron of Jaipora,” Cut’s voice slowed, “of the Cut.” “Hind and Ver,” Ofran chuckled. “I remember Hind. An ancient kingdom with young rulers. Always young rulers. So, General Cut, I’ve come all this way to meet you and it’s quite amusing. Do you have any questions for me?” Cut circled the tower further, flickering to the ground behind Ofran’s chair. The wound he carried shifted in the sky, always keeping him at the centre. What a beautiful expression of existence. This was a true swordsman. How many of them had forgotten the sword? “Why have you come?” Cut asked, breaking Ofran from his contemplation. “To meet you. I told you that. I’d have expected a general to pay more attention.” “Your ambassador is here,” Cut growled. Anger? Fear? The lines trembled. Uncontrolled, or just who he was? A frustrating problem. Transcendents were harder to separate from themselves. A citizen’s definition was less inclined to rigidity. “Who? What does an ambassador have to do with me?” Ofran knew many ambassadors, and some were still alive. “He offered friendship.” The wound—turned. It brought its attention on Ofran. Ah, a great sea beast turning its massive eye and spreading its tentacles wide. Ofran’s left hand: the hand that didn’t exist wanted to come out and play. It didn’t exist. It didn’t exist. The threads from his right hand wove new law, and Ofran coughed. He couldn’t bleed anymore, but the dust of a few broken organs escaped. The Starboard Law never sank, he expressed to himself, and his insides grew right-side left. “I think you misunderstand. I may have come for friendship. But I came for a meeting.” Cut continued his circle until he was before Ofran again, but closer. Within the range of a sword strike, though distance mattered little to them. Instinct, possibly; training, certainly. Ofran also preferred to be within his sword’s range when conversing, but his sword decided to hide today. It shouldn’t be afraid, coward that it was. Today was just a day of leftness. “So, you’re not here on behalf of your Emperor?” Oh, he was one of those. Ofran considered pointing with his finger to emphasise the point, an old habit and one he’d quite liked, but as his finger shifted lines pointed down. How fun! Direction was threat? What a pure swordsman. “Emperors try to order us. Death is not the fear; I can see it in you already. The understanding is clear. For us, knowledge is the sweetest poison, and that knowledge is ours to define. Friends. Enemies. Join the Empire, don’t join. Fight, don’t fight. Try to kill me, I try to kill you. Maybe we stand and watch the ocean in the east today and cross the impossible mountains in the waste to level a horde. You’re fast enough. What orders us? Who can order us?” Cut made one more circle, hand squeezing at the air as if reaching for a hilt. Lines spider-webbed from his clenched fist each time, slicing into the earth, sky, and the tower. The bricks were happy for the company; the sky didn’t care and the earth repelled Cut. “The books? The records yo

    Transcendent - Chapter 6: The Starboard Law

  3. Sep 30

    Badge of Dishonour

    At some point, I discovered the word ‘badge’ held a tragic meaning in the semi-studied realm of UI/UX design. It refers to the tiny coloured circle attempting to mount applications, tabs and other virtual ephemera, and its insistent, insidious numerology. A badge will tell you what you’ve missed until the moment a threshold approaches and the strange ‘+’ sits beside the number. It’s strange because positivity shouldn’t demand your attention and shame you so pervasively. Now, if we examine the badge in its natively offensive environment: the Home Screen, we receive a patently academic dissection of our own failures. How many messages await your attention? How many emails do you refuse to entertain? What apps have you given permission to remind you of their intrinsic capability to consume the limited capacity your eyes hold? It’s called an attention economy because the most precious commodity is your line of sight. Messages contain our connection to the world. There can be no illusion of how entwined they’ve become to your very mode of existence. The badge reminds you who needs you. Silenced groups of strangers, associations of neighbours, colleagues attempting to ignore reality, and relatives brush elbows under the glare of the badge. That innocent increment applies itself equally to an advert and a love note. Badges rarely last long on my messaging apps. They irk me. Very plainly, I abhor a reminder of failure. For it is a failure of a responsibility willingly chosen, as much as I expect the reciprocation from the poor fool on the other end of the chat. That reciprocity oozes faux sincerity and relationship dynamics constructed under the ambit of a deranged social relevance because you want to be seen. Forget for a moment the social media giants of the golden age of consumption and consider the humble SMS. Short Message Service, the non-short expansion, was an expensive, cumbersome method to punch letters into existence on a numerical keypad and despatch your request for connection to your target. At this moment, I have refused to research the icon of the magical days of the indestructible Nokia and nostalgic Snake. I have refused so I can recall the void in my memory of its appearance. I do not recall what it looked like because it cost so much. Back then, calling was cheaper. There was no magic in hearing someone else’s voice because I grew up with telephones; however the marvel of walking metres at a time while trying to ask my father when he was coming home is the imprint of an age where the demands of attention were budding. At home, I wanted to have my parents pay attention. At school, I wanted to be acknowledged for my grades. Among friends, I wanted to be a friend because friendship was also a form of communication I excelled at collapsing into inane chatter. It was an envelope, the Nokia icon, accompanied by the literarily appropriate “n” message(s) received. The badge of the age carried a simple decision: People won’t keep many unread messages. Then the internet became cheaper, and it became easier to talk without talking, converse without a conversation and commune without communicating meaning. A convenient metaphor for distance, but apt for an age where information itself inundates us. Email came first, before apps. It was a transition period shorter in my memory than it should be. I lived through that era in school and college, graduated and realised, email was for official records and messaging apps had become the de facto standard of information governance in corporate unreality. For me, my first job was far from home, in a land I dislike remembering, yet return to with every note, essay, and recursion of thought. I started my work on a computer, managing others and occasionally walking construction sites in the searing heat, managing drawings and the transformation of information across multiple stages. On my first day, or third, or possibly a week in, just early, an older, less wise, yet perfectly appropriate man told me to buy two SIM cards and a new cheap phone. Use one for the office and one for personal use. I separated work against life and created two sets of badges to track. My severance of spheres of responsibility created the lovely consequence of expanding my tracking methodology. When to silence one phone, when to check messages, which messages I could avoid. I used to place both phones on my desk, one to the left of the keyboard and one to the right. I am ashamed to admit that for the longest time, the office phone was on my right, easily accessible. There exists a terminology for this segregation of responsibilities: the office phone and the personal phone. My personal phone accumulated message badges slowly; conversations with family and the occasional friend the only demands on my time. My girlfriend, then fiancée, eventually wife transitioned from more to fewer messages, yet fewer to increased photographic evidence of her existence away from me. Her badges rarely remained for long, and I increasingly returned to my personal phone to avoid my office phone. There, we discussed in groups. Conversing with one another was inefficient. We had to shout at each other in a multitude of combinations because I needed to talk with person A and B while Manager C watched to ensure surveys. For procurement engineer D and manager Z a separate group was necessary so they could hate each other in silence while store manager X happily pasted daily reports no one ever read. Then badges infiltrated deeper into applications, or maybe they decided that showing your failure per contact was far more effective to punish you. You’ve ignored twenty-five messages overall and your wife occupies three of them, while six are adverts for websites you forgot you visited, two for ones you’re sure you didn’t and twenty for everything else because while you were looking the number increased. The number always increases. Every moment of every day. When time zones refuse to matter, like they do when you work away from your home, the phone waits for you to wake up, face down so its light doesn’t abuse your eyelids until you clear eyes that are more tired every year to stare at the screen. And you smile at the funny ones. That’s the problem. The fundamental issue of the badge is how much junk you have to wade through, but you wade through it with bared teeth and a smile on your face. You build your own methods, hitting read all and remaining unconcerned that you’ve voided the attention seekers of three a.m. and relatives who think sharing videos of babies you’ve never met or sob stories you don’t want to have time for, yet carry for the rest of the day while your office phone adds its own tune of buzzing against wooden tables amongst the soft clicking of mice and emails on the screen which you can’t ignore even if the FYI burns your eyes since the accumulation of information for you is not the accumulation of relevance or choice or decision or even the capacity to make changes while a worker dies in a different city and you receive a small note requesting your humble attention for the worker’s charity for the family they left behind because that’s just how a company makes you feel connected to someone whose name I’ve already forgotten because the badge that accompanied his email was quickly parsed with a single click of indifference and sorrow. You do it. You wait for it. I did. Do. Why don’t the people I care for fill my badge more? Why can’t I stop waiting for someone to see me? I’ll wait for the badge to see who liked this post. Who agrees. Because the connection matters, and the badge tells us the sweet lie that we matter to everyone. My wife matters. My family. The bloggers I follow. Youtube channels. I never got twitter/X. I don’t have time for Instagram, and I struggle with every video someone forwards me. TikTok is illegal here, a small blessing. Bluesky is something I’m afraid to use. Snapchat is a thing? There’s more. Far more. Those are outside. They can be defended against to some extent. Bulwarks of spam filters and setting changes and the ability to understand how the ‘don’t bother me’ design is hidden but available. Inside though— Pictures of cats fill my phone, and I created a script to send those angelic monsters’ images to me twice a day in Telegram. A badge I look forward to, then immediately corrupted by filling it with server notifications and database-backed reminders to clean their litter boxes and water fountains. Today, someone will receive a badge on their app or their email to show them that I cared enough to inform them that I’m complaining about the badge, but want their attention. Your attention. It is the syrup these words will feast upon before they’re drowned out by whatever else the you of yesterday thought was important. I won’t give up my phone. I’ll keep doing read all because I can’t stand badges. I’ll immediately lift my phone or tab to my email, to see what is worthy. To someone, it all is. I’ve followed adverts to find deals and knick knacks. I’ve discovered shows I shouldn’t have liked and people whose friendship is faceless yet vividly bright. To me the badge glares like an evil eye, then smiles. It knows me. Thanks for reading Narrative Engine! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mosessukumaran.substack.com

    Badge of Dishonour

  4. Sep 28

    Trousers/Pants

    I wish to discuss pants, or trousers if you will. I want to talk about them because I have two extra ones sitting in a cupboard, within cocoons of plastic, because the air would possibly offend them; maybe attack them with a sort of errant methodology within a campaign of negative coexistence. They’re new, for new is the sort of word we utilise to describe unused, even if the actual acquisition date could be several months ago. Factor in how much farther back the trousers were stitched together, or consider the threading of the fabric, or its initial plucking from the farm, or fractional distillation from crude oil, because I think polyester has something to do with oil, and plastic and complex hydrocarbon chains that had me drawing lots of C’s joined together with innumerable H’s and the occasional, sad, lonely O. I was a science whiz with impeccable grades and a deep hatred of valence electrons. They just refused to decide to bond, possibly just living together like a common-law couple until one day, one of them wakes up literally on the wrong side of bed and files for a common divorce, or separation or whatever horrendously sad thing we call the end of a relationship today. Terminology is important when discussing the end of a relationship and what to do with your leftover, new, unused pants still in their plastic and covered in layers of sneeze-inducing dust and cat hair. My marriage is fine. That’s not a deflection. It really is fine. I just watched too much television where somehow common law tenancy, or immediacy, or legal inaccuracy, results in detectives unearthing timelines, because murder requires spreadsheets to establish motive and blood can get on pants in every scene without somehow being the evidence required in the case. I love detective shows where they reveal the killer in advance, and love detective shows where they don’t. I never try to figure out who did it, because part of the whodunnit is dependent on why I never did consider the murder of some random person and the tiny slice of life we get to see before their spouse, lover, friend, enemy, best friend’s third cousin who’s in an affair with the main character’s stepsister’s son, yet is also the CEO of the major corporation funding the police and putting pressure on the investigators to stop the detective, or psychic, or psychic detective and his buddy from elementary school—I love Psych—offs em. I don’t think of the reason because murder is a poor choice of an ending, its consequences are brutal, inelegant and end the life of its victim and perpetrator irrespective of the pants they wear. Life ends for the victim in a detective show and begins for us with a chalky outline in which the victim lies without rigor mortis within their pants. Rarely shorts, bare only on SVU, and mostly with nicely tailored shoes, possibly because costume departments have budgets and no one really pays attention to the murder victim’s pants. I don’t. Didn’t. Am not. I’m just reflecting on the upcoming death of my current pants, which are surprisingly tenacious despite an increasing waist size and an offensive readjustment of the thread which holds it to my ample, comfortable, beloved-by-my-wife, belly. I’ve started a diet. Not to save my pants. I don’t use them enough. Those new pants I subtly alluded to are unused because I calculated trouser utilisation ratios on the basis of changing my pants every day. Fate granted me a work from home job and I realised, shorts are infinitely more comfortable at home and they don’t accumulate cat hair in the way that other people notice, and then point out, which if they point out that it offended them, I delete their names from my phone, burn their business cards and wish them a slow death in their tight-fitting jeans upon the altar of eternal loneliness. Not murder. I’m a nice fellow that way. Nice but chunky. I abhor the word fat, not that it’s not moderately accurate, but I just don’t like utilising words with a single syllable to describe myself. Obese was an option, but my BMI somehow remains below that precarious number 30, which I recently discovered is not as accurate a measurement of cardiac risk as your waistline—ergo diet. That diet is working. Most of the time. When I choose to follow it. My association with dieting is like a cat’s association with a ball of string. It’s fascinating, worth chasing for a while until boredom sets in, then you walk back, see it on the floor and maul it, break a piece off to eat and then have to have it lovingly extracted by your parent, me, from the puckered rear of your beloved feline form. Cats don’t wear pants either, you know. You can try. I’ve seen people attempt posterior canine encompassment with dogs, but the ability to access your interior with the exterior of your tongue is a skill that can only be precluded by the use of a cone, doughnut, or plushy ring thingy whose name the parcel refused to accurately espouse. Spouses tend to avoid espousing parcels when it restricts their children, because our babies: the cats, you have to explain that they’re babies to long suffering looks from actual parents, but I’m not saying it’s harder for you, just that I have equally taken responsibility for an annoying little thing, several to be precise, three to be exact; who make sure to be suitably adorable for photos I will never share, yet incomprehensible to the corners of the house as they sit and yowl at the plaster for the thirteenth time today despite the neutering. I think about having kids and how long their pants would last. Probably a few months when smaller, a year when older. I seem to remember wearing baggy clothes a lot because I’d grow into them. Ha! Take that, parents. I grew way too well into these pants of mine, with their grey, and black, and dark blue, and all the neutrality of Switzerland without the deliciousness of their cheese and chocolate, though non-Swiss cheese and chocolate certainly exacerbated my predicament. It also exacerbated my love of cornflakes because it could be construed as a suitable diet food, if you avoid the chocolate ones. Which I do. I prefer honey. Honey is healthier than chocolate or sugar. Has to be. Have you ever seen a chunky bee? Round ones, sure, but that’s an acceptable midriff range for an insect with wings and a stinger. Insects don’t wear clothes, obviously, though moths can eat pants. They have a penchant for the undercarriage or pockets. I worry about my pockets and the things inside them. There’s a surprising amount of valuable junk which resides in your pockets, excluding lint, and old pieces of paper that you folded, got washed and now have accumulated into a horrendous pile of white and blue and pink because you forgot to pay the fine and stuffed the insurance paper alongside it and are still thankful for digital copies of everything. Your wallet’s important, sure, but it’s the parking slips that matter. You can get by if your wallet is left at home because your phone in the other pocket holds enough funds, family and frenetic capacity to annoy everyone with ten digits, to live life freely, but the parking slip keeps you away from your car. And you have to pay extra because somehow the slip stops your car from being yours, even though it’s the one whose papers have your name, insurance takes your cash, and is covered with enough of your dead DNA, a CSI investigator would gleefully be bagging it for the next three weeks. The bureaucracy of parking structures demands the paper slip and woe be unto you foolish mortal who stuffed the ratty little thing into one pocket of your used but recently cleaned pants and thought it was a tissue to wipe your hands with or a receipt for a nice book or the churros you bought while reading the calories of the brightly lit menu which assures you it’s not gonna damage your diet too much. The diet which should help you stop the blood pressure medication, but it’s such a small dose you wonder if it’s worth it. Your wife wants you around more. It’s why she stitched the pants. My pants. She wants me around. It’s why, despite my naturally bouncy tendencies, I work on the diet and keep walking and drinking water and staring longingly at all the wonderful cheese I can’t eat anymore and the trips to Switzerland I won’t take because of its damage to my pants. I call them pants, yet sometimes trousers because it matters who I’m conversing with or talking at or pretending to listen from. Pants feels good, but it also means underwear in some places, and those places taught me English, but refused to explain grammar, or maybe they did and I thought it’s one of those things you can feel out until you’re staring at a spell checker at 2 a.m. and wondering what the hell a comma splice is doing in your sentence until you learn that sticking a semi-colon there silences the demons of grammatical infidelity and somehow doesn’t change how you read the sentence. Marriage is a sentence like prison. Not because you’re jailed, but because you’re the warden, imprisoning a lovely spouse whose one foolish mistake in life has me prowling her premises and stalking her steps with cats because she refuses to come back from work in time. She spends tons of time with us when it suits her, which, if I calculated it, is most of her time away from work, which in and of itself is only a slightly exploitative 54 hours a week. Hours I spend thinking about when I can shift pants because we spent the money and they sit there haunting my cupboard under a lounging cat and next to the drawer that holds my wallet and the keys to my car and the parking slip I actually had but thought I’d thrown away, coupled with an extra tablet of my blood pressure medication in case it spikes and a prophylactic I haven’t used in a while because we’re hoping little Mira will come along soon. I choose to love my pants, though they’re too stubborn

    Trousers/Pants

  5. Sep 25

    Transcendent - Chapter 5: The East

    When clouds shrouded the suns and misty mornings filled the plains and rolled along the eastern highway, Saha’s convoy was already approaching the city. For two weeks they’d travelled as fast as the horses could manage, aided by spells to reduce the weight of luggage and swordsmen to clear the path. They ambled along the highway’s hard, cobbled stone, packed with loose dirt and covered with the detritus of the previous night’s frost. The highway’s maintenance was years overdue, suppressed under projects far more important or backed by influential nobles or devout priests. Saha appreciated the monument to his grandfather blessed by the Thousand, but the vibrating ache in his back was a constant reminder of mistaken priorities. Dead grandfathers needed statues like he needed a brand new sword. Saha peered out of the rolling carriage, observing the plains filled with nothing but mist. Winter blanketed the land still, even now refusing to loosen its grip this far from the capital. There, the warm wind from the west arrived exactly as he’d calculated, and the large stacks of smoke heating the capital were tapering away. Here the wind pointed back to the capital, warmth still refusing to arrive. The carriage bounced, the old steel-reinforced wheels creaking audibly as they hit another bump. Jinnai reached out to him, gripping his shoulder and tightening the fur coat laid across his lap. “I’m not a vase,” he hissed. “Your hands still shake. I won’t have you trembling in bed again now that I know keeping you warm helps.” Saha resisted the urge to shudder. The moment he’d thought and met that—dissonance—in his mind, his body had absorbed the cold, and now the cold refused to leave him. Magic could keep it at bay, and he’d layered the carriage with a series of spells to keep the air warm without burning them. An elegant application of magic. Enough to earn him a spot at a conference in one of the academies, a strong application of existing techniques. ‘Sorely lacking,’ the master mages claimed, when a mage arrived with a new spell or advanced research that proved nothing. The kingdom needed application. Only the empire could feed itself on theory. “Maybe if I wasn’t a prince, I could have attended one of the Imperial academies.” Saha placed his palm against the carriage window, the chill panes prickling against his fingers. “And not have met me?” Jinnai poked him with the hilt of her sword. Gently. “I’m sure I could have convinced your parents. An Imperial-trained master mage blessed by the goddess of magic. Being a prince is just a dusting of sugar on my impressive self.” He tried the nearest pylon, the last one placed seven miles from the city, just close enough to connect to the pylon in the city reliably. It responded to him, but the spell returned only emptiness. Information from the city refused to travel along the pylons. Even now, the nearby encampments were using cavalry as couriers. Humans could carry word of the city; the pylons hated it. Saha rubbed his temples. Increasingly, his magic was telling him emotions. Incorrect emotions, for items did not feel, but the cold in his body searched for warmth in strange ways. The pylons needed to work, but no solution presented itself this close to the city. The carriage rolled on, and Saha watched the suns rise higher to banish the mist. Waystones became visible, marking the distance to the city, the written name warping into a twisting mass of characters unreadable by all. He gestured to the nearest waystone, an ugly rock painted white with black characters. All waystones were large rocks dragged from nearby, their sole defining characteristic a suitable size for the characters to sit. “An ugly thing. I want to cut it down, maybe cut it to shape,” Jinnai said. “I did it on the western front when I took command. Fixed waystones for a dozen miles around the Michna fortress.” She grinned and spouted more poetry: The beauty of my sword Lies in its edge An edge to end collapse An edge to hold distance No edge to condone lies No edge to mar life Saha rolled his eyes at her. She’d been quoting increasing swathes of poetry on the trip. He didn’t recognise this piece. “Did you compose that just now? Quite impressive, but I didn’t know you cut waystones at Michna.” “Came to me. It’s an elegant piece.” She shrugged. “I was bored, and I’d met another master swordsman with a chipped sword who swore that breaking his blade sharpened it.” “Did it?” “I tried for a few miles, came back and sent him to the nearest healer because his sword snapped during the fight.” Her voice was light. Airy. Reminiscing. Her fingers traced a line under her ribs on the left. A faint scar Saha had observed. He’d catalogued all her scars, and there were too many to name, except on her face. There, only the scar on her lips remained. Today, she had refused to wear a dress or ceremonial robes. She would meet Nazran as a general, she’d declared this morning. An equal. She’d debated for days, considering the political, emotional, and practical implications of each outfit before collapsing them in the face of the ever more frequent encampments on their route. Inayi Muran had left at the first encampment. “The general summons me,” she had said and then taken a step. That step—stretched—her into an ink blot that was yanked across the sky, leaving gawking knights, generals and princes in her wake. Soldiers moved along the convoy with purpose. Knights of the royal guard in their finery mixed with conscripted soldiers in their haphazard assortment of livery, leather, and winter clothing. Wealthier sons of merchants and skilled professionals arrived in pieces of plate or chain-mail. They would be officers, having purchased their commissions after conscription. All citizens had to serve, but the wealthy decided where. Soldiers came to watch the spectacle, officers to catch a glimpse, but none followed. Saha had participated in many royal convoys, and each time a train of followers would accumulate, hoping for a chance to meet someone important, rely on the skilled professionals in the convoy for repairs, or trade with merchants trailing the convoy. Sometimes, enterprising citizens would negotiate for items from the supply carriages or exchange information with the agents interspersed among the soldiers. Citizens here would face them as long as they didn’t have to look to the east. Look to the city. Five miles from a city was the regional boundary where the local governor, lord or lady would have a reception party ready. For a royal convoy, they would come themselves, but for this city, now, Saha did not expect a reception, though he hoped for one. A reception meant welcome, meant attention, and Inayi Muran had made one thing clear: Nazran’s attention mattered. Five miles out from the city stood the largest of the encampments, with the fluttering pennants of a hundred nobles over tents and temporary huts. The banner of the kingdom flew in the centre of the camp, dancing in the wind and waving proudly to the west. An old man stood below it, carefully wiping the pole holding the banner. Saha cast a spell and the old man expanded in his vision, cracked fingers and sagging folds of skin clear in his sight. He held a small tub of oil and a rag which carried its age by being more thread than rag, more black than grey. The man moved slowly, unconcerned by a nearby officer shouting for him to speed up. The carriage slowed, navigating something on the road, probably, and the old man in the distance turned to the officer. He said something, waved to the city and returned to oiling the pole. The officer’s face turned pale, then purple, then blue. Saha’s heart thumped hard, and he turned the spell from officers to soldiers, to commanders, and back again to the old man. The man’s cheeks were blue, but he seemed healthy for all his age. He stood upright, and small fissures were visible under the collar of his thin shirt. Very thin. As if he were used to the local weather. “Summon that man,” Saha ordered, and a knight of the guard broke away from the convoy. “Why does everything seem right, but wrong as we approach the city?” “Did you see how they moved? What they carried?” Jinnai’s hand was tight around her sword, Vannu. “I didn’t see them carrying anything.” Saha frowned. “Where are their weapons?” she whispered. Saha’s hands tightened in the folds of his cloak. “I see spears. Some.” “No swords?” “No.” The knight returned, the old man limping in his wake. Saha pushed open the door of the carriage and tightened his cloak. Jinnai added another cloak, and they breathed bursts of steam as their magically heated bodies clashed against the wind of the east. The old man was using a cane, a branch of some tree whittled roughly into a clear upright. Ordered to move faster, the man spat once to the side and kept walking. “What a soldier he would have made,” Jinnai breathed. “The disregard for orders?” “No. That I’d beat out of him, but he moves in measured steps. Even when spitting, his eyes never left the carriage. Focus. That’s harder to do without.” The man reached a few paces from the carriage and stopped. The knight took a few steps to the side and bowed to Saha. “The citizen Oil, brought as you ordered, Your Highness.” The old man, Oil, bowed, hand on his cane swaying briefly. “Hello. Hello, highness,” he stuttered. “Your Highness,” the knight whispered. “My Highness.” Oil nodded. “What can I do for you all?” Saha studied his blue cheeks again, the cracked, yet slick hands, and a brightness in the depths of his eyes. Like the palace staff who were warm through winter. That brightness reflected not the lack of hardship, but the desire to walk beyond it. “Why were you oiling the pole?” Saha asked and watched the man shuffle from one foot to an

    Transcendent - Chapter 5: The East

  6. Sep 23

    An Essay for My Kitchen

    How many people can work simultaneously within a kitchen? How many need to? I reflect on these questions occasionally. Not a commercial kitchen, where stations are assigned and chaos mixes with order, like a role-playing campaign. TV tells us it’s a place of eternal pressure and skill. The chef I saw eating his lunch at a table alone before the restaurant opened seemed to expose the lie, but maybe the man liked dal and roti and eating with his hands while the fancy French restaurant name that I can’t recall framed his sad face through the sheer glass facade. He must have had assistants. Sous-chefs and others whose roles aren’t important enough for an outsider to remember because Ratatouille was amazing, but I remember the sharp lady’s job more than the obvious ex-mercenary Russian fellow. Was he Russian? Does it say something about me or the world that I think he was Russian? Well, them and the rat. Remy. Because, of course, the rat is more memorable than the human main character. Wait, why should the human be the main character? So many questions that mean so little because that last dish is gorgeous, claims to be simple, yet would probably require hours to slice the damn vegetables. It’s also all vegetables, no meat. What kind of climactic dish is vegetarian? A glorious movie where I remember moments, rats, and the antagonist. The real antagonist: Anton the critic, for the greatest crime in food is criticising it. My aunt would forget to add salt or add too much once in a while. It became a joke for us, and I carried one truth from her skillset. Use less salt; you can always add more. She fed us all from that kitchen in their house, a long counter with a sink in one corner that refused to stay clean, always holding pots or pans or plates. Occasional teacups would be there. People drink way too much tea. I tell that to my wife while giving her three cups a day. Apparently, that’s too much if she gets pregnant. That kitchen of my aunt’s had a two-burner stove, an exhaust fan above the window next to the sink, and half the counter was bare. The microwave was kept on a small table to one side, almost as if it were an offensive intrusion on reality, with its own socket, cloth to cover it when not in use. It sat next to the rice cooker. That used the same socket, white and pristine because it was washed every day and filled with rice. I don’t like rice that much. When I graduated, I moved to a far gone land filled with sand and silence. Great infrastructure was plotted by my hand in my innocence. I really didn’t know how expensive those acres of land I was building roads and schools for were. Too junior to have mattered, but somehow my words and sketches mattered. I didn’t see the kitchen that fed us there. I mean, I saw it, but never saw it in action. I knew the cook, a swarthy man with a ready smile and perpetually greasy hands, because the food had too much oil, because of course it did. When ninety per cent of people want heavy food because they’re working in the sun, the people who work in offices half the day have to eat less and go out more. We all eat food, but those who don’t need the calories suffer its surplus the most. Doesn’t mean it’s not tasty. Damn all that oil and butter and carbs, before I cared about carbs and my pant size changed thrice in three years. Our current kitchen isn’t that big considering the size of the house. It’s an offshoot, protruding unhappily from the living room to coil around a shaft that fills with cooking smoke from other houses and rain because the top of the shaft isn’t sealed perfectly. It also has a beautiful modular setup that uses almost every inch of space with a perfectly jaundiced finish. There was a gap, though, meant for a fridge, but our fridge was too wide. So we popped it behind the wall in the ‘family’ space—what sort of family space sits in front of two doors? I’d shoot the architect, except I’m also technically still licensed, and still bought the place. We both are, my wife and I. The gap bugged me for a few months while holding a water dispenser until I purchased a small table with a nice little wooden counter. Installed a socket into it, and it became a slot for my coffee machine and grinder, and the kettle my dad used and my wife co-opted. The dispenser moved out to continue its service in hiding, and I was able to make coffee once every n days. N being a function of when I remembered the coffee beans were about to expire and my ability to clean and operate the not-too-expensive coffee machine. We’d purchased a new microwave when we moved in and it had its own shelf. A big one. A very big one because we bought a multipurpose oven thing that we use every day. It held pride of place. The air fryer lived in shame, though. My wife didn’t think we needed one. It’s great for reheating unhealthy fried stuff. Baking healthy chicken and turning healthy sandwiches into masses of grilled butter-soaked tastiness. I said it was a small kitchen, but two people could work there. One at the sink, one at the stove. Two at the stove if bumping elbows didn’t matter. Those two were normally my wife and I. Occasionally, me and my dad—yes spell check, I know something’s grammatically incorrect. Never me and the lady we’d hired to cook. Sometimes me and the housemaid, who stayed the day with us, yet spent most of the time caring for our cats. Which was necessary. Three cats are not as independent as you’d think. Most often when I cooked, it was just me. Not because I didn’t need help, but obviously because I was as skilled as Remy and as clumsy as Linguini, coupled with the self-critique of Anton Ego and the love of food of Gousteau—that was his name. Forgive me if I’ve spelt his name wrong, because honestly, that’s an appropriate homage to someone who believed food is love. We were lucky in that sense. The lady who cooks sometimes forgets to get the spices right, loves to get the salt wrong, forgets that time is required for cooking things, and less time for pressure cookers because dal as paste is a fascinating texture and a hilarious snapshot if I used social media. Not because I don’t like sharing my life, more like I’m too lazy to. The salt was familiar, the dishes, not so much. We tried to teach her, but things were always just that little bit off. I’m suspicious now that my aunt was withholding the secret to her better recipes. With my dad, there’s an ordered negotiation. Check this, move that, watch for something bubbling over. He’d make something special whenever he could while I handled the staples, the vegetarian food, because my wife loved pretending to be vegetarian. She called it a negotiation with distance—well, she actually said the farther from home, the more willing she was to eat outside what she considered acceptable—that’s a lovely negotiation with one’s own desires that I found cute and considerably deranged. With our housemaid, she worked at the sink and chopped veggies when I was too tired to, but still wanted to experiment with food. She’d move aside when I asked politely, and I kept my distance to make sure she wasn’t uncomfortable. With my wife—she needed to clean. Even before I was finished. I spent one-sixth of my time extracting usefulness from her and the rest shooing her away so the food could get done. She’d put the salt back before I could layer it in, close spice bottles before I could taste whether enough was enough, and pack the items from my special condiment and spice shelf away without knowing where they should go and why the regularly accessed items had to stay farther back. Just because she needed a stepladder to reach it doesn’t mean she gets the theory. If you keep less-used stuff at the front, you’re forced to use it, or you end up with a small bottle of expensive truffle-infused chilli sauce that turned suspiciously black last week and smelled—sort of alright. Still, I spent time with her when I could, with my dad as much as possible, and myself most often. The food is great. When it comes to our kitchen, honestly, two is one too many, and one is never enough. Thanks for reading Narrative Engine! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mosessukumaran.substack.com

  7. Sep 18

    The Last Stand

    I chose not to die at the granary with its semi-rotten grain and the shambling corpses of my soldiers. They shuffled within the ancient brick building, saluting each other and firing their steam rifles randomly. My skill at reanimation was middling at best, though my academy instructors had given me a passing grade. That’s what paying the school’s fee on time got you. Sergeant Korhak marched to my side and saluted, the gaping hole in his neck creating a warping, sucking sound every time he breathed. “Stop breathing,” I commanded. The body still presumed the needs of the living, so recently brought back. He still wore the medal I’d pinned on his chest last year when we breached the Imperial lines at Angkor. “It was a mistake to bring you back.” Korhak nodded, jaw falling off. I picked it up and brushed off the dust and several loose flaps of skin before shoving it back in place. The jaw clicked as it settled, and Korhak wandered back to the rest of the dead squad and sat down to play cards. I checked my pockets. My last deck. My skin tingled, and I yanked my blade free to make two quick cuts out of the window that caught screaming artillery shells two hundred meters out. Flashing lights appeared in the forest beyond the granary’s poorly constructed walls. Not high enough to stop anything more than an unambitious dog, but it was a boundary the enemy refused to cross. Because I still lived. I turned to my troops, these proud men and women: the Hundred. Companions of hundreds, or dozens, of battles, each with a name that appeared in newspapers and made every nation across the continent shudder. Men and women who’d died because the enemy decided assassinating them required an army. “It’s been an honour,” I said and cut my hand through the air, severing the necromantic spells that held them beside me. The deck of cards scattered around them, around their uniforms and worn weapons. The guns were mostly empty after two days of constant battle. Another three shells thundered towards me from a different angle. Nope. Five. They fired from the first position again. Slash, cut, spin. My sword returned to its sheath, a nameless sword retrieved from the bottom of a supply depot three years ago, a sword that others tried to name but never understood. I hopped out of the window and twisted my body when I saw the pigeon crap on the sill. Absurd beasts. I landed with a short bow to the forest. Honour in life and glory in death. Our principal called that out at our commencement. Live life like a game, my instructor had whispered to me, hand over her eyes to reduce the blazing sunlight pummelling us that day. I rose and clapped gently as I strode into the forest. They tried to stop me, steam rifles and magic zeroing in on my position, but I danced around them, flicking fingers to send a few counter spells, curses and a nasty beam of cutting fire that set the western edge of the forest ablaze. My grades in fire magic were always exceptional. I hated the screams. It was efficient to bring silence, but today I had no luxury. Flares of magic pulsed to my right, and I broke into a quick dash, covering the distance to the nearest tree in two seconds. One hop into its branches, and a push with both hands, sword held loosely to send streaks of lightning into the advancing troops. Chain lightning. In the dark, the flashes created coronal remnants around the dozens of soldiers who died in the first wave, and orders filled the gaping void around us, but I was already amongst them, sword cutting through the officers who’d survived and a competent swordsman who managed to nick me across a plate of my armour. I was down on my belly as rangefinders lit up my surroundings, the pulsing of chain guns rumbling and flamers coming alive to burn the dying, lightning-ridden troops leaning against trees. Combat in forests was messy. All combat was messy, but forests served the lone agent best. I sent tendrils of earth magic out to locate the nearest flamers and clenched my fist. Their tanks exploded, sending gouts of radiant, blazing fuel a hundred metres into the sky. I was already sprinting towards the core of the explosion, using the gap to pierce through the vanguard and into the soft lull that formed between waves of an assault. I chose not to die in this forest with flames licking its sad trees, lightning stalking marching humans, and its lack of name. It was a nameless forest. Truly nameless. The local villagers had called it ‘the woods’ before I arranged their evacuation. The maps outlined the edge of the treeline, and the enemy called it ‘krathkesh’, their guttural tongue’s version of forest. I breathed deeply of the night air. It was hotter than yesterday. Maybe the fire, possibly the blood pumping hard in my body, could be the grinding roar of drakes overhead. Sound and stink preceded a drake’s arrival. Drakes carried smell like they carried devastation. I slashed upwards and clipped two of them, sending them spiralling into the distance, and flicked two beams of fire in their general direction for good measure. Lieutenant Maria would have called it ‘a rich environment’. Only one beam hit, but it caught the drake full in the face, and its headless corpse tumbled to the ground hard enough for the vibrations to remind me my boots were old, tough, and two different colours. New rangefinders appeared, and tracer bullets punched into the trees around me, but I was already moving. Always moving. When was the last time I stopped? Caught. Made too much noise. I plunged my sword into the guts of a lucky mage who was conjuring something nasty and spun away as his partner tried to make his corpse explode. My counter-magic fought with him long enough until I could shove him into his radically unstable friend. Corpse explosions were horrendous, bone shards and internal mana weaponized to shred flesh. I launched myself into an irregular trajectory, bouncing off a few trees for good measure, that ended with me by a group of huddling recruits. You could tell recruits apart easily. They hadn’t undone the clasps on their rifles. Hadn’t hooked bayonets. I crawled past their smouldering corpses and realised I’d reached one of the edges of the forest. I glanced up at the moon. West side? I suppose it didn’t matter. My teachers had said if you weren’t sure which way to go, turn left and go west. Banners moved to the north and south. Drakes were searching in sweeping patterns. Very efficient. I stood and patted the mud off my uniform as best I could. My fingers caught on my breast pocket and the insignia. L. Vinas. It said. No rank, because my name was enough. I’d had it made special. There was a small hill nearby. I walked there. The drakes were swinging in the wrong direction, over the depths of the forest where greater flames raged. Error, but understandable. If I’d planned it, a perfectly reasonable decision. They didn’t know I was lost. We were only here for three days, after all. There was a squad at the top of the hill. Swordsmen and mages, a mortar battery and a chain gun emplacement pointed in the wrong direction. They were surprised to see me, but they moved quickly. Elites. Nullifiers were up before I stepped onto the hill and waves of magic swamped the atmosphere, trying to send my senses into chaos. Swordsmen criss-crossed into silent violence, almost random movements delaying their approach so there was an appreciable gap before each strike reached me one after the other. “Excellent.” I grinned and punched the first swordsman in the face so he stumbled into another. My other hand cut twice, knocking the sword free from a third attacker and slicing across the eyes of a fourth. The mortar whooshed, canister shot rising in a deceptively beautiful arc. A very flat arc. The swordsman whose eyes I cut roared and tried to grapple me into the path of the canister. Another three swordsmen were on me, and I was kicking and slashing fast, knee punching into one of them to create distance. I accelerated and their blades arrived on my armour. I shifted my feet, catching what I could on the plates to deflect the attacks, parrying with my sword, using my palm and fingers to gouge within the gaps in their armour. A few cuts appeared on my flesh, bruises formed under my armour, and the split neck of the blinded swordsman sprayed its quick burst of blood into my face. I flinched as the copper tang hit my lips. The mortar arrived amongst us, and I shuffled to position myself three swordsmen away from it. My sword spun up, and I summoned as much mana as I could, a local destabilisation of the nullifier. It was enough for a small shield, but the canister hit hard. With something. One blinding flash and I was rolling to my feet, clothes cloaked in heat and boots melting underneath me. Bolts of magic were cutting through the air, and I took a few on my armour before I could reposition. Limited sight. The bolts were coming in from…I flicked my hand and a massive arc of wind shot out. I blinked and launched myself into the air. The top of the hill was a glassy mess, but the soldiers near the canister explosion stood still, as if frozen in time, no wounds visible. What on earth was that? Only a dozen swordsmen moved, but they formed a loose circle, waiting for my descent and the mages who’d evaded my wind blade were marching forward, fingers dancing to cast nets of magic; occasionally firing ice shards or small fireballs to keep me on my toes. “Textbook.” I sighed, landing on one now bare foot to absorb the force and shifting to the other as the staggered blade slashes came in. It was difficult. They made few mistakes and I could only take two of the swordsmen and one of the mages down. A shift. The circle widened. I tried to turn. Red eyes in an azure helmet, black hair cascading down her shoulders, and sword already at my chest. Officer’s stripes on her armour, a fire of mana in her body that could on

    The Last Stand

  8. Sep 16

    Transcendent - Chapter 4: Embassy

    The flowers in the little cart were blue and yellow and green and purple. They sat in silence as a young boy and girl dragged the cart around the plaza of the city, their path leaving a residue of lines that faded if Nazran did not focus on them. The path remained visible for five breaths. Unless he asked it to stay, then, it stayed for ten. The scent of blossoms filled the plaza, drifting from that single cart dragged by these children of the city. Nazran had seen them before at the gate, where they exchanged flowers for money, sometimes for supplies with the farmers who had hurried back to the nearby fields. Always fields within sight of the walls. The nobles were gone, dead or fled when they had been able to. The flowers no longer went to their estates, only to these children who walked the lines—the roads of the city. The crimson blooms could no longer be purchased, for red was the enemy and it cowered in Nazran’s presence. The red withered, as it had when the children arrived in the plaza, ragged clothes packed with old newspaper and strips of fur, small stains on their cheeks where the pustules of Firerash were Cut. Their wounds would heal, for Firerash was also the enemy; an eternal enemy that could no longer live beside him, before him, or behind him. The cart rolled along the uneven stone as the children drew slow circles across the plaza and its dry fountain, selling flowers to vendors, families and curious tourists. The tourists were out once more, free to roam the streets and flower fields, breathe the air and stand along the walls to stare at the jagged peaks of the Ring of Fire. Some were citizens of the kingdom, some, foreigners with pale or dark skin and a riotous display of hair colour. Not the black Nazran knew so well. They didn’t leave the city. Maybe they couldn’t. Their lines were bent into the earth of the city, like its residents. The lines twisted deep within the earth at a distance he knew existed, but couldn’t touch. Something about the earth was both tangible yet beyond his reach. He was connected to those lines by a thread. A single line that trailed from his feet to the coiled mass of lines in the earth. Ten thousand. A million people. They were reduced to that single line beside him. One line was as thick as a million, even though it was paper thin. The children’s cart hobbled to a halt, something in the axle giving way, from age, from strain. Nazran couldn’t tell. He could feel the severance, though; that moment where part of the axle could no longer remain connected with the rest of its body. The children argued with each other, their thin clothes, clothes so ragged, words so soft, minds so weak, they argued. It took minutes, longer than Nazran would have thought it was possible to discuss a broken axle, but they pulled out a water flask and drank deeply before dragging the cart with great effort under the shade of a tree stripped of its rust-stained leaves. Rust was also afraid to show its presence, though not as afraid as red. They didn’t look at him. No one did, except maybe the soldiers who served him now: ‘The Seven Squads’ they’d dubbed themselves as they kept peace within the city. One-hundred and forty soldiers to police a city of a million. There was little crime. The citizens knew he was here. The tourists knew. The children knew and glanced in his direction once with bright smiles. They didn’t look because they didn’t need to. Nazran of the Cut was here. “How should I address you?” He whispered to the sky, the words drawing a line through the air towards the two soldiers of the Seven Squads who sat upright on roofs overlooking the plaza. “Our names, General?” One of them replied, his voice drifting back along the line; pulled by Nazran. “I remember your names, but calling you the Seven Squads is…difficult.” The man’s chuckle ran back into Nazran’s ears and his lips twitched. Laughter was returning. “Call us what you wish. Centurion Karthik searched for a scholar to create a name, then tussled with the woman when she composed a poem. …, the Courier, she suggested the Seven Squads during her last contact.” The Courier. Now, she was the brightest line. Even hundreds of miles away in the palace, she spoke to him once a day, and the squads—he would call them the squads—could lean on his line to her, and speak. Nazran would push or pull the words, and he’d grown to cherish the speech dancing along the line, wobbling it ever so slightly with each word. It wasn’t really a pushing, or pulling. He drew his blade along the line, and the words followed in its wake, but it was not a Cut, yet his mind conjured images of doors swinging in the wind. The doors of his manor, with the small slices and chips of age and his youth. The lines had intensity and the Courier shone the brightest. Aarti retained a bright line, but she hated ‘talking to the broken air’ and had found a way to cloak her ears with magic to muffle the calls he sent. “Summon me three times if it’s urgent.” She’d declared with her sword happily rolling in its little water pool. “Come yourself if you want to talk. I’m busy.” So he didn’t reach out. He let her administer the city and liaise with the camps while he wandered the lines. The camps feared him, and the greatest mistake he’d made was returning to collect the bag he’d carried from home. Swords had been drawn in his presence, his own desire to Cut overwhelming everything and everyone. Thousands of swords had destroyed themselves rather than face him. He’d returned to the city alone, while Aarti talked to the generals and soldiers and administrators. For the last half year he’d watched this city from the outside and led soldiers to stalk its surroundings. They were executioners. Nazran had known, but they were also surgeons. The Cut had changed what needed to be severed, not its existence. The city was beautiful, but broken, its people—lost from the outside world. His teacher’s could have called this a paradise. Urmi certainly would have. She’d loved the east and its customs, its crimson blooms and late nights. She’d adored isolation; that moment where a swordsman stepped into a fragment of their own being and danced in the cold night air or along the edge of a waterfall. Edges. Blades. Edges. There were two sides to an edge, and the edge was the Cut. This city was alive, but cold. It was the afterglow of a battle, where life held meaning. It was the piece of existence a soldier stumbled into while dragging an exhausted spirit through churned mud and shattered trees; fallow land and blood stained hands, back to the camps, away from the flies, and the sharpest edge of the blade. The gorgeous edge where you’d almost died, yet you returned and were one step closer to home. Home where it should be warm and filled with laughter, laughter long gone, but still warm. The lines drawn home were supposed to be the clearest, yet his lines covered the sky, although one did lead home to his estate. It felt distant now, not as near as this city. The city faded from his view, a shimmer in the water that stained his eyes, deep rents tearing through the city, the aftermath of his Cut, and a massive rift—an otherness—drawing the thin circle he knew was the enforcement line. He could taste it, the moment it decided the city was unnecessary. Nazran shook his head and the city returned, the cart and children, the lines of the two squadsmen silent as they waited for him. “Wake me if I become silent for more than a breath.” He said. “Did you think again, General?” The squadsman asked. Voices were clear, along the lines, but neutered, stripped of emotion. Only laughter carried along the lines clearly. “Not deeply.” “We could not feel it yet.” Nazran nodded. He chuckled. They could not see or feel his nod. “That’s the dangerous moment. When you can feel it.” He rotated his shoulders. It wasn’t necessary: his muscles refused tiredness; they severed weakness. He adored it: the constant energy within his flesh and the familiar memory of movement. Rotating shoulders, drawing Indrani for three swings every evening. He’d tried his old routine, but after three his Cut bled through, or Indrani’s desire bled into his hand. One of the peaks in the Ring of Fire was still too jagged because of his practice. “I like it.” The squadsman floated down from a roof, the sword in his hand capable of many strange things. “I always hated that mountain, like it was trying to pick a fight, all sharp and piercing the sky like no one existed in its sight.” “You’re a local?” Nazran didn’t face the squadsmen, their connection was enough for him to ‘see’. Their eyes haunted him. The sword they took pride in, the Cut that carried the memory of Firerash, his transcendence and the—otherness—of this city all tied together. “Been a long time, General, but yes, this used to be my home.” “How many are able to call me General?” “More than half. The devout are finding it hardest to break free. It helps when we don’t have to cry on your behalf.” He wasn’t sad. Nazran knew sadness, had tasted its uncertainty when his parents died. A boating accident. “They were on a holiday.” Nazran said, and the squadsman nodded. “I was on some battlefield, a particularly brutal one with the Lorkanies somewhere in that horrific marsh we kept fighting over. Just a quick boat ride. No assassin, no magic strike, just a boat springing a leak and two people who didn’t know how to swim.” “Many don’t.” The squadsman sighed. “Lost a brother to frostbite because the damn fool refused to wear gloves. He was digging some kids out of a snowbank.” “An admirable man.” “If all the children survived, sure.” He hadn’t remembered his parents in years. Not since that mess with Jinnai. How was she? Another foolish soldier under the heels of parents, though Prin

    Transcendent - Chapter 4: Embassy
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About

Short fiction, craft notes, and narrative experiments about pressure, systems, myth, bureaucracy, and the machinery of story. mosessukumaran.substack.com

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  • Creator
    Moses Sukumaran
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    13
  • Rating
    Clean
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    © Moses Sukumaran
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    Narrative Engine Podcast