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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ankh-Morpork Guard" data-source="post: 2114432" data-attributes="member: 10079">Chapter 177: Eyes in the DarkShadow arrived back at the palace well into the night. The small ship simply landed, tossed her off, and then left her. Overall, to say she looked like she’d taken a beating would have been putting it lightly. It was probably a good thing her clothes hadn’t been the elaborate type that the Needai constantly tried to dress her in, because the simple ones she currently wore were as torn and ripped as she was. Unsteadily, she made he way from the landing pad to the palace interior.    Just as she stepped into the building, the palace notified her that Kato required speaking with her. Shadow couldn’t help groaning at that. Things were bad enough already, and adding Kato into the mix only made things worse. It took a long time to make her way through the seemingly endless corridors and hallways of the palace before reaching Kato’s quarters, and once arriving Shadow barely had the energy to press the buzzer.    A sharp, “What?!” echoed inside for a moment before the door opened up and Kato stood there glaring. No surprise. Many saw Kato as the sweet, pretty girl in line for the throne. It was obvious she wasn’t stupid, but she rarely let on to just how much she knew about what was going on. That Kato that Shadow knew, though, was everything but that, and definitely nothing polite. She also happened to have the knowledge that Sh...Marix was Tam-Day-U. How she knew this was unknown, but she definitely knew.    “In,” Kato snapped and Shadow followed the order in a second. A single step brought her into the room and the door shut behind her, “You have some nerve coming back here.”    The words were laced with venom and Kato made a point to claw slowly at one of the large cuts on Shadow’s shoulder. She twitched and did her best to ignore the pain, holding her voice steady, “You require something?”    Kato flicked some blood off of her fingers onto Shadow and rolled her eyes, “You will do what you came here to do and then you will leave.”    “You alone know about me outside of my family,” Shadow said with a surprising amount of anger in her voice considering the current situation and how badly she felt, “Do not think you can spread that knowledge for your own advantage. You should know the danger involved in threatening someone like me...”    A foot then connected with Shadow’s gut, getting a gasp out of her before she crumbled against the wall behind her and slumped to the ground. Kato glared down at her and kicked hard again, growling, “Do not threaten me, scum. Now get out of here.”    With that, she against kicked Shadow, this time hard across the side of the head. Trying to ignore the dizziness and knowing she couldn’t fight back, Shadow slowly got to her feet and left the room. In the hallway outside, she nearly collapsed. She was hungry...so hungry...and tired. And she hurt. Everything hurt. She didn’t have the energy to remorph, and even if she had, her orders were strictly against that. Disobeying those orders would simply make things even worse.    Eventually, Shadow made it to her room and opened the door to step in. Not even noticing Akan asleep on the bed, she stumbled past to the wardrobe and got out something that wasn’t torn to pieces before taking the next few minutes to change into them. She then took a few minutes to patch up the more noticeable wounds across her face as best as possible. The entire time, Shadow didn’t even think. She simply did what she did and then finally ended up in the bed to sleep. Entirely empty of mind, in a way she hadn’t been since the Empire’s testing on Marix. Not the Alraxian Empire, though.    * * * *Hours later but still before dawn, another transport arrived at the palace and deposited a single, tall Alraxian. He walked with purpose, quickly through the palace to a certain room. There, he waited. In a couple minutes, Kato strode in, haughty as ever. She gave him a simple nod before stepping over beside him and looking at the small image that had his attention.    “You should have just killed her, Faban,” Kato said eventually to the ebony skinned Alraxian. It was the same man that Akan had seen watching them when they’d first arrived.    He glanced at Kato over his shoulder and rolled his eyes, “Oh, really? Is she that much of a problem for you?”    When Kato just growled at him, Faban smiled, “She will die in time. But she is the Empress to be, she cannot simply be killed.”    “Even by you?”    “Especially not by me,” he answered with a nod, “At least, not in the open. And her death will be in the open.”    Kato went silent a moment to watch the image. On it, she could see Marix and Akan asleep. It annoyed her to no end that Marix had her head on the male’s chest and an arm around him. In fact, it annoyed her to the point that her skin took on a noticeable red tint. Eventually, she growled in a low voice, “What of her Nothlit?”    This time, Faban turned his two deep set eyes to watch Kato carefully. But after a pause, he said simply, “I must test him. If he passes the test, we will make the necessary arrangements.”    “Do not kill her until those arrangements are made,” Kato said very slowly and very dangerously.    But her anger only seemed to amuse the much older Alraxian, “Emotion clouds judgement. But be patient, Kato. Both of our interests lie along the same path.”“Yes, yes,” she sighed and walked across the small room, pacing some, “So you always say. But what of this clone and Halpak, hm? That little problem doesn’t seem to lie along that path!”    “If you are going to be Empress, you must learn patience,” Faban said again calmly, “Things are being set in motion to deal with all of these troubles.”    Stopping her pacing, Kato turned to glare at the ebony skinned Alraxian across from her, “That’s so very insightful, Faban! Just get things done!” throwing her arms up in annoyance, she turned and stormed towards the door, “If you require anything else you know how to find me!”    And then she left. Faban watched her go and then turned back to the small image of Marix and that boy. So she had followed orders at least. The wounds were still there. However, she had the nerve to feel still. Faban had thought that would have been worked out of her through the previous night. But apparently she had been away too long and her training had been forgotten. It was going to take much more drastic measures to get his weapon back. More drastic measures that he was already prepared for.    The link with that boy would have to be severed anyway, if he were to survive as Kato wished. Cutting the two of them off would likely make it much easier for Marix to accept her former position. Where she was meant to be. Watching them silently, Faban decided that it would be no trouble at all to speed that up. Severing that link would do nothing but good. Besides, it should never have been there in the first place if the girl had followed her orders. He’d need to find out what went wrong there, too. Eventually, at least.</blockquote>

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