Part 1: How Many
Monifa’s breath caught at the sharpness in Hugo’s voice. Not unkind, but edged like metal drawn without intent to strike, only to understand. She rose from where she’d knelt by the hearth and crossed swiftly to his side, lowering herself beside him with the grace of one used to pain and movement entwined. Her hand, calloused and warm, rested lightly against his chest—not to restrain, but to anchor.
"You ask what we all wish we could answer with certainty," she murmured.
"But the smoke hasn’t cleared, and the numbers we speak may already be ghosts."
Gbáyọ̀dé’s voice came from the threshold—tired, frayed.
"There’s no full count. The square’s in chaos. But I know this: a fifth of those in the Outer District rely on scraps and grace just to eat. Most didn’t even have the strength to run." His voice dropped.
"There were soldiers. But there were children too. Women. Grandfathers with bent backs and no coin. Caught in the middle."
Monifa nodded solemnly.
"They are our kin, Jagunjagun. All of them. Their survival is our duty; their loss is our scar." She gripped Hugo’s wrist softly, her voice laced with resolve.
"We’ll answer your question fully when dawn breaks and all the cries are counted. But until then… we act."
Part 2: Screams and Truth in the Distance
Then came the sound. Like cloth tearing underwater. Like grief unspooled. Screams. From outside the door, rising like the wind before a storm. Screams not just of soldiers, but of the broken. The maddened. The possessed. Something ancient stirred beneath their pitch. A wailing that didn't belong to just lungs or mouths, but to the soul.
Monifa stiffened, her eyes clouded but wide. Her fingers curled tightly around the edge of Hugo’s cot, as if bracing against a force she could not yet name.
"I hear them," she said, barely a whisper.
"The ones twisted from within. The ones no god should have claimed."
She turned toward the small altar of Vaene in the corner of the room, the flame guttering slightly as the air turned heavy. Her voice no longer carried its healing lilt—it was a demand.
Is it another?, she asked.
The answer came not as sound, but as weight—cool, certain, ancient. A presence in her marrow.
Yes, Vaene breathed into her bones.
Another daughter of the deep. Not of Lylthryal, no—
Monifa froze. Her breath hitched in her chest.
Not the Spider Queen?
No. This one belongs to Maelfazan.
The name struck her like a blade across the soul.
Maelfazan. The Queen of Mantis Shadows. The blood-scribe. The one who weaves judgment from flesh.
Monifa’s mouth went dry. Her pulse hammered in her ears.
The Spider Queen she had expected—Lylthryal, the web-spinner, the whispering mother of quiet poisons and political death. But Maelfazan? That was no game of shadows. That was doctrine made fang and claw.
Her mind reeled through the lessons of her father's house. The forbidden names carved into bone tablets. The silken voices of noble
Drow women who walked barefoot on blood-soaked stones, their mantis-blades whispering behind them.
She is the one they call the Shadowmantis Queen. The high goddess of the Drow. She who demands hearts as tribute, who teaches that pity is poison and mercy a crime. Under her gaze, only women hold power and cruelty is law.
She staggered a step back, as if the goddess’s name alone had unbalanced the room.
It is from her worship that Drow society learned its laws. Its hierarchies. Its hatred. Firstborn daughters become her priestesses. They kill, they command, they sacrifice the weak and call it righteousness. They rip the hearts from slaves and lovers alike and hold them high before the cheers of blood-drunk courts.
Her hands, trembling now, pressed together in prayer—but the words caught in her throat.
Even in silence, she commands them. It has been centuries since she last spoke to her priestesses, but that is not absence. That is trial. In her silence, they become louder. More cruel. More desperate to earn her gaze.
She turned once more toward the altar of Vaene. The fire was low now, flickering like a breath. The room seemed smaller, the air thicker.
"I thought it was the Spider Queen," Monifa whispered.
"But I was wrong."
A pause.
"Maelfazan has sent her claws into Lazular."
And in that moment, the screams outside became something else entirely—not chaos, not confusion, but ritual. Not a battlefield. An altar.
Part 3: Revelations to Hugo and Gbáyọ̀dé
She rose slowly, her bones aching under the truth. She turned to Hugo and Gbáyọ̀dé both, her voice steady despite the tremble beneath it.
"This is no lone madness. No accident of chaos."
She looked between them—two warriors from different worlds, both now standing at her hearth.
"They’re not here for the city. Not for coin or power. They’re here for me."
A pause. Her jaw tightened.
"I thought the Spider Queen’s hand had reached this far. But I was wrong. This one… she serves Maelfazan, the mantis goddess who devours secrets and carves sins into skin. Her Drow wield divine magic not for healing, but for punishment. For obedience. They come cloaked in ritual and silence."
Her hand drifted to the corded charm at her neck, thumb brushing the spiral sigil worn smooth from years of prayer.
"They could have come for me in the dark. In the alley. But they chose this. Chose to strike where the hungry gather. Where grief pools like water. I don’t know why they made this choice, but they want to break more than my body. They want to break meaning. Break mercy. They want this city to fear me before they take me."
She looked to Hugo now, her eyes dark as the earth.
"That’s why your sword matters, Jagunjagun. And yours too, Gbáyọ̀dé. Not just to shield me—but to hold the line while I understand what power stirs beneath my ribs."
A silence settled, heavy but not hopeless.
"We will not let this city be turned into an altar for their goddess. Not today."
Part 4: A Soldier’s Choice
Her words lingered in the warm hush of the room, and the fire crackled as if to answer her. But Monifa turned now—not just to the hearth or the gods—but to Hugo.
Her expression softened. The healer in her returned to the fore: steady, observant, unafraid of silence.
"You’ve stood in blood before," she said gently.
"I see it in the way you reach for your sword even when your limbs tremble. I see it in your eyes—always watching the corners of the room. You carry a discipline that wasn’t taught by kindness."
She crouched beside him again, one hand resting just above his wound—not touching, but near enough to feel the breath between them.
"You stepped into our storm not out of duty, but choice. I will not bind you to a cause that is not yours."
Her voice dropped low, calm as dusk wind through reeds.
"I know what it means to serve men who never served you. I know what it means to take orders, then bury the ones who gave them."
A long breath. A flicker of firelight in her eyes.
"So I won’t ask you to fight for me. Not as a command. But I will name the truth."
She straightened, her hand dropping to her side.
"There is a god on this street, hidden in shadows, writing her will into flesh. Her priestess walks in the bodies of the poor. And the Drow who follow her… they don’t retreat."
She took a step back, giving him space—not just physically, but spiritually.
"If you leave now, I will not curse you. If you stay, I will not praise you like a martyr. But if you lend your hands, your blade, your wits, your fire…I will match them with everything I have. And more."
A brief pause.
"Whatever path you take, Jagunjagun… walk it with eyes open. Let it be your will, not a dead man’s command echoing in your skull."
Then she bowed her head, not as a supplicant, but as an equal.
"My strength is mine. Yours is yours. No one should die wondering if they lived by another’s breath."
