Page 4020

“In any event,” Ettol went on, “we’re about to meet with Parson and Damian again.”

The reaper’s petals tilted. ‘Already? We just met a couple months ago. What need would there be to make contact again so soon.’

Ettol’s jaw clenched. He had no choice here. “No,” he said with an added layer of psychic force. “It has been several years since our last meeting. This is important. Remember?”

Nerovoy remained perfectly still for a moment. ‘Yes. Several years. Of course.’

There was always going to be a risk of the reaper saying something strange or nonsensical in front of the others. It had already happened before. Ettol wanted to have more caution this time, but truthfully, there was only so much that could be done. Reapers and their old relationships always provided a difficult wrinkle in these sorts of strategies. There was an ever-present threat that Feromas or Overra would notice that something was too strange with Nerovoy’s behavior.

Ettol had certainly done his best, though. He’d spent considerable time in pan-wzrost in the lead up to this meeting, just combing over the reaper’s memories of the relationship between the three of them.

It helped that they weren’t nearly as old as some reapers. If they’d all known each other for several thousands of years, then any attempt at deception here probably would have failed already.

And they might be more knowledgeable of him and his brethren, as well.

It was a rare thing to find a truly old reaper who either didn’t know of them or hadn’t already had their memories adjusted.

Unless, of course, if one were to visit some of those enclaves. There were plenty of long-sheltered reapers souls in those places.

Here and now, though, he still needed to refine the reaper’s sense of the present. There was quite obviously a problem of lost time at play, so he should focus on stamping that out--or at least making it not so obvious.

“We have been traveling these past few years,” said Ettol, again with force. “Keeping updated on the state of the world.”

‘Yes,’ said Nerovoy. ‘We love to travel. And our work is important.’

“That’s right. We’re envoys and liaisons. We’ve just about had a breakthrough, haven’t we? Towards the greater goal.”

‘Yes. We’ve been working for so long on that.’

“Soon, we’ll be able to start our own sect within Abolish.”

‘It will be glorious.’

“And we will use it well.”