When Gnyphe rounded the corner, Tactan was hanging from a darkened second-story brothel window by the tips of its fingers. Gnyphe put her hands on her hips, glaring upward at the jhar-voor. Its body was humanoid in silhouette, but the comparison more-or-less ended there. Its body was composed of a purple, meat-fungus substance with some spring to it, so it bounced up and down—its arms stretching slightly—as it readjusted its grip and pulled its teardrop-shaped head level with the window, staring inward with milky white eyes. Under its jaw, mandibles twitched and clicked as it said, “Human conjugal relations are so. . . unnecessarily complicated.”
Gnyphe could hear a muffled gasp from the other side of the window, then an expletive.
Tactan tapped the window, holding itself up with its other hand, and waved a six-fingered hand. “Hello, humans! Why are you spawning offspring at this time? Is it your wish to perish?”
“Tactan, you’re giving them nightmares. They don’t want to talk to you. Get down,” Gnyphe said.
“That gesture, I believe it is a rude one among your kind,” Tactan responded, pointing through the window. “It was a simple question.”
Gnyphe was very short for her age, so she couldn’t reach Tactan’s feet to pull the jhar-voor to the ground. Or, she assumed she was short for her age; she didn’t actually know how old she was, or anything about her past prior to waking up in an alley five years ago. Her body acted as a woman’s did every month—an experience that initially terrified her—so she knew she wasn’t just a girl, but her height combined with her thin frame and short, dark hair led many to believe she was an adolescent girl or boy. Others compared her to a ghost for her pale skin and the quiet way she moved from shadow to shadow. She didn’t like either of those comparisons much.
Gnyphe glanced around. The building Tactan was hanging off of was three stories tall. Like most buildings in Chapelport’s Ground City district, the second floor was larger than the first, creating a buttressed overhang from which the second and third stories extended. The entire alley was shadowed, but not quite enough to completely obscure the jhar-voor. Part of Tactan’s body rested against the dark, speckled stone wall, while its legs dangled in open air below the overhang. Not as deep a shadow as I’d prefer—this will take extra effort, she thought. Gnyphe kissed her teeth as she crouched and pressed her hand against the stone of the cobbled ground.
“Oh, I know that sound—you are frustrated,” Tactan said.
The light shadow on the ground resisted, then Gnyphe’s hand and half of her forearm sank into it, sudden movement like she had pushed open a stuck door. At the same time, her forearm and fist came out of the shadow between the wall and Tactan, striking the jhar-voor’s chest hard enough to make its hand slip. Tactan fell with a yelp; a beam of light then broke over the mountains, dispelling the shadow where Tactan had been and where Gnyphe’s arm was sticking out of the wall. Her arm was forced out of the shadow on the ground; she winced at how numb that made her forearm and habd feel and started massaging life into them. That happened every time a shadow disappeared while she was partway through it.
Tactan stood. “Needlessly confusing!” it announced as it brushed itself off. “If they were opposed to friendly inquiry, why the window? That was clearly an invitation.”
Gnyphe rolled her eyes. “One of them paid good money for some privacy. You should have noticed the darkened glass, or that you had to climb to get to that window in the first place.”
Tactan paused, then looked at Gnyphe. Its mandibles were fully extended, a shocked expression. “Humans must exchange currency to spawn offspring? What an absurd practice! It’s hard enough just to determine how there are so many of you when it takes two to procreate. Is that where humans spend all of their money? Where is Kat’s offspring, then? Or is she only alive because she has not yet had offspring?”
Gnyphe shook her head. “No, those two were just doing it for fun. They weren’t. . . spawning offspring. And as for Kat, I can guarantee that having children with a customer would be the last thing she wants.” Gnyphe turned and began running down the cobblestones of a side street. “Come on! We’re making Little Jonno wait.”
“You did not truly answer my questions,” Tactan said as it jogged to catch up with Gnyphe. “If you humans must exchange currency to spawn offspring, how does that work in your cultures that do not use traditional currency? Is a goat worthy exchange?”
Gnyphe looked down the alley they were taking a shortcut through and noted, to her relief, a deep shadow at the far end, one that wasn’t true darkness but that would make it difficult to see her once within. Gnyphe glanced up at Tactan with a grin and said, “Race you there!” Before Tactan could respond, Gnyphe stepped onto its shadow and dropped as if she had stepped into open air, reappearing through the deeper shadow at the end of the alley. She smirked impishly and dashed off with a flare of her cloak.
“That is hardly in the realm of fair sport!” Tactan protested, but Gnyphe had already turned down another alley.
Feet slapped against uneven stone as Gnyphe flew down the cobbled path. She threw her arms wide just for the fun of it, enjoying the tug of her cloak on her shoulders as it fanned out behind her. It felt good to run through the brightly-lit streets of the Ground City—it smelled so much better than the Chamberpot! And she could enjoy herself a little without worrying whether anyone would wonder if she had anything worth stealing. It almost made her wish that she could stay here, lurking among the homes of the middle class, where life seemed simple.
As Gnyphe’s thoughts became longing, she felt her darkness agitate in her stomach. It began with a small vibration, almost like a stomach growl, but sinister. Out of the corner of her eyes, Gnyphe noted the shadows in the alley begin to bend, curling into fanged grins. An idea that wasn’t her own formed in her mind—she could easily use her powers to sneak into a home and surprise an unsuspecting family, kill them, and claim the house as her own.
“No,” Gnyphe whispered, recoiling from the horrible idea. It morphed a little, tempering into her terrifying the family into leaving, but Gnyphe shook her head again. “Begone, shadow,” she whispered. “I belong in the Chamberpot.”
A tenseness in her chest, then her darkness melted into her stomach once more and settled. The shadows of the alley resumed their normal shapes.
Gnyphe took a deep breath and steeled herself again, put up walls; she grabbed the corners of her cloak and held them close to herself as she ran. “When I get my memories back, I will focus on how to be rid of you,” Gnyphe whispered. She then tried to direct her mind elsewhere—today she was helping Little Jonno, not picking at the mystery of her past or battling her darkness.
Chapelport’s Ground City district was largely organized into uneven blocks of long buildings, each block surrounded by streets, and each building separated from its neighbor by an alley on the sides and back. Having smaller ground floors made the alleys somewhat spacious, almost side-roads, and having large upper stories helped Chapelport cram all of its buildings and bustling population into a single long, narrow mountain pass. Getting anywhere by road required circuitous routes around blocks of buildings, so Gnyphe and Tactan stuck to the alleys that let them cut across blocks in the most direct route to the edge of the district, avoiding alleys filled with women washing clothes or children playing.
As Chapelport’s outer wall grew larger, the cobbled roads and alleys changed to stony, packed dirt. The air was filled with a cacophony of scents, ranging from the pleasant waft of wood shavings in a carpentry to the bitter bite of brews from an alchemy. A sweet scent lingered around a bakery as they passed behind it; Gnyphe wondered if it were worth the coin to take a moment and purchase a sweet roll or small cake. She looked down the side of the bakery to the main road and saw crowds of people passing by, many laughing or smiling. These folk belonged to the Ground City—their clothes didn’t compare to the aristocrats and priests up in the Ebon Crown, but they looked worlds better than the rags and frayed cloak that were all a girl from the Chamberpot had. Probably smelled better, too.
The sound of slapping feet announced Tactan catching up. Gnyphe hadn’t realized she had stopped moving—she almost started running again, then she heard Tactan say, “Ah, sporelings!”
Gnyphe glanced at the crowd, confused, then saw a mother walking by with two children. One, a little girl, caught her eye. The child’s face was freckled, her hair curled and messy, and she bounced down the street, tugging at her beleaguered mother’s arm. “Children, Tactan.”
Tactan nodded vigorously. “Right, my apologies. Not sporelings, not grubs, not spawn. Children. Fascinating.” The jhar-voor’s eyes narrowed, its only method of revealing expression on its otherwise featureless face. “She is caring for another’s child, yes? Or did only the father die in procreation? Is that why he is not present? Human families do tend to have two leaders, a mother and father, I have learned. And an astonishing number of young.”
Gnyphe stared a moment longer. Had she once skipped down the street in the sun, tugging at her mother’s arm? Were her parents, whoever they were, still looking for her? Or was their missing daughter presumed dead, with grieving the only thing left to do?
Stomach unsettled, Gnyphe tore her gaze away and began walking again.
“I should like to start a family, someday,” Tactan said. “I just need to discover how to survive the experience.”
The jhar-voor continued chattering as the duo neared the market plaza on the edge of the city district. Gnyphe walked this distance, rather than ran, to give her time to collect her thoughts and calm down. The sounds of people walking and bumping into each other began to mix with the cries of peddlers and street vendors as the scents of animals and sweat joined the air’s existing admixture. Gnyphe could feel the chaos just on the other side of these stone buildings; her darkness began agitating again.
With the sun just beginning to rise above the mountains and the stone bridges of the Ebon Crown, Gnyphe’s shadow had become distinctly hers, rather than just a darker blur surrounded by the general morning shadow that covered the district. Gnyphe looked at it and saw a line appear on its face, a wicked smile, as the shadow’s hand turned into claws and began tossing a black knife into the air and catching it. “Behave!” Gnyphe growled.
“I am behaving,” Tactan said.
Startled, Gnyphe turned to look at the jhar-voor. She had forgotten it was there; at least six inches taller than most men, she felt that Tactan should lumber about unforgettably noisily, rather than silently stroll. Gnyphe wasn’t certain why she thought tall people were supposed to be noisy, but maybe it was because of how alarming they were when she realized one was behind her. “Sorry—I wasn’t talking to you.”
“No bother,” Tactan replied. It clapped its hands together in excitement. “I do hope we see something interesting in the market today.” Tactan then held a hand out to touch the dark stone buttresses of each building it walked by, occasionally peeking through small ground windows set with glass or opened wooden panels. Its height allowed it to easily see into windows that weren’t intended to allow casual viewing. “It has been a long time since I’ve encountered a Mezzite. I haven’t yet been able to ask what they do if one of their stupid tusks get cracked. Tusks! Imagine! How inconvenient.” Tactan’s laughter sounded like chittering.
“What’s wrong with their tusks?” Gnyphe asked, although she wasn’t paying full attention to the jhar-voor. They were supposed to meet Kraw and Little Jonno around here somewhere. . .
“I can see the use of a tusk on a boar or an elephant, but Mezzites are humans! I imagine it would get in the way of one of your mating rituals, the one where you press your faces together—kissing, yes? Or, perhaps, even if two Mezzites managed to maneuver around their facial protrusions, I wonder how commonly they get stuck together? What would they do then?”
Gnyphe scrunched her nose and looked up at Tactan. “If I didn’t know you any better, I’d say that you’re jealous. Your mind has been on one topic this morning.”
For the first time that day, Tactan didn’t immediately respond. Instead, the jhar-voor carefully folded its mandibles over its mouth, which left its purplish face nearly unreadable; this expression, combined with Tactan’s hands set motionlessly at its side, told Gnyphe that her friend felt embarrassed. Gnyphe felt bad—she hadn’t meant to strike a nerve.
“Sorry about that,” Gnyphe muttered. She stepped onto a side road and surveyed it for shadows, then smiled at what she saw. “Little Jonno!”
Copyright © 2025 by David Ludlow
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