Narrative Engine Podcast

About Narrative Engine Podcast

Short fiction, craft notes, and narrative experiments about pressure, systems, myth, bureaucracy, and the machinery of story. mosessukumaran.substack.com (https://mosessukumaran.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Moses Sukumaran

Category

fiction · fiction

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

6 Jun 2026

Latest episode

6 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

13 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   6 Oct 2026

   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 (https://mosessukumaran.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   4 Oct 2026

   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 your ambassador offered. I can still have those?” Cut asked. Ofran laughed. For the first time in decades, he let out a deep laugh from his very core. “Do you need knowledge from others? The definitions of those below? For the other two in the Empire who built their crossing in the eyes of others, it may help, though our last spar showed me they had regressed. No, you’ve crossed yourself.” Cut shivered. The lines converged on him, and he held his breath. Ofran wanted to sigh. Again he held his breath. “I am Nazran.” Cut whispered. “Of the Cut.” Ofran shrugged. “Or severance, or void. I used to be the Port Coil.” Ofran’s left hand struggled again. The cursed thing was left behind centuries ago, yet it still tried to define him. All of them needed to define themselves. They had to. “You could learn from that lady in the North. The eternal frost. If she lets you get close. Hot and cold at the same time. Wonderful, oh so wonderful. Or the four in the bliss kingdom. The twins in particular are mad enough to be ahead of us all.” “Learn? You’d teach me?” “Again. You stop time so we can talk, and you want to study under someone? I said you can learn.” Ofran leaned back in the chair. He pulled at his lip in thought, then stopped. Terminus made fun of him for that habit. Despicable that the man was part of Ofran’s childhood. Maybe Cut could remove that part of his past, or memory, or even just remove Terminus. Cut shuffled like a crewman caught with their hand in the rum. No. Not yet. Today was just a greeting. No need to create leftness. That’s why he’d left the sign, a greeting gift. “So I just watch them? Watch you?” Cut returned to the second floor of the tower, one hand reaching for his waist, then freezing. He turned a three-quarter circle to his right to point along the road. Two lines drew a mark. This would be visible to everyone, and protect whoever was making their way here from their presence. A Cut to protect. Was it instinct? Cut’s expressions were vivid and far too many for a new one. Purity. It must be the alignment to the way of the sword. Cut stared at his hands. Hands which grew lines in Ofran’s sight and were absurdly perfect for a citizen, yet they were beyond that for a transcendent. So much of what he was, condensed within Cut’s hands. A line stretched across the sky, diving into the whirlpool of Cut’s wound and driving blistering streaks across the nameless city. “No, don’t come,” Cut whispered and shook his head. Splinters of reality were severed around him. He stared at Ofran’s right hand. “Why do I only see lines to your right? And what are those threads around you?” Ofran smiled. He would not teach. Too boring. “I’ve never heard of you.” Cut turned his head to the sky, to the suns, watching Ofran’s threads maybe. They hovered near Ofran, too afraid to leave yet too proud to coil around him. “I’m old. Death doesn’t like me anymore. She hates most of us. Every century or so, that first Emperor of ours crawls out of his tomb and wanders around. Terminus is an insufferable madman, and I won’t call him Emperor, doesn’t matter how many times he demands it. Further, let me tell you a secret: I think he has a thing for Death. Would have made her empress if the council hadn’t stopped him, I heard.” Cut shook his head. Rejecting good gossip? Too serious. Most generals were. Not like honest sailors who drank and navigated and watched the sea consume their entire lives. Ofran looked at the sky and saw night was about to approach; the suns about to run. He could ask them to wait. It went against the Starboard Law to break the rules, but time would listen to him rarely. He considered Cut. Raw. New. Close. Fascinating. But it wasn’t worth it and he hated talking at night. “One more question for now.” “What if I want?” Cut looked at the city and gripped his sword. Oh, now that was fascinating. The sword was there, but not there. Ofran hadn’t even noticed it. It was a shroud, a blanket warm and cold. So close. So new. He was tempted to spar. It was too early. He’d broken a few new ones, though they were poorly defined, not like the beautiful Cut that carried a scar in the sky. Stow the oars. Furl the sails. “Then want. Discipline defines,” Ofran said through clenched teeth. “The second coda,” Cut breathed. Ofran’s hand twitched. He wanted to slap that dull face. What transcendent swordsman thought so much about the codas? What master, even? “Of course it is. The first three codas are the basis of every transcendent and the three you created yourself, and…you’re smarter than you look…is this part of your Cut? Making me talk. Did you sever my inhibitions?” Cut grinned and shook his head. “The gossip was good. You want to talk.” “That I do. Most of the others like to play lord or hermit or set pieces on the board and play with armies in the field. Only that lady in the North is an actual royal after all. The rest are children playing with toys without spending time on themselves.” “Armies. If I fought…nothing could survive. I would,” Cut frowned. “Why aren’t there words for what we do?” Ofran raised his right hand. “Because there’s no need for them. Talking reminds us of what meaning is, because it defines, but expression…” Ofran expressed his threads, his right hand, his Starboard Law and the Cut’s lines spread, clashed, drew multicoloured beams in their vision. Information passed between them, the terms of expression, the laws of the other few and Cut’s memories, a dead plague and the violence of red. Ofran wanted to close his eyes and savour the touch, just shy of a spar, but a clear sense of who and what they were prevailed. It was a moment in forever because Cut held his breath and Ofran was thankful time acceded to Cut. When it was done, Cut released the sword, and his expression—the expression he’d used to keep others away—weakened. Tiny lines cracked across the sky, drawn from somewhere within the nameless city. An expression of the Cut, yet not by the Cut. Fragments arrived, composed in flesh and bearing companions to the silent sword by Cut’s side. They bore something in their eyes, a reflection of the wound in the sky and the shroud that pretended to be a sword. Cut followed Ofran’s senses and raised a hand, severing Ofran’s gaze and cracking the will the Starboard Law was bringing to bear on these puppets of violence. He’d wanted to see inside. Sunset approached, and the itch in Ofran’s left hand demanded he express or depart. “This, Cut…is new.” Ofran’s threads occluded the sky once more and interwove with the lines severing around them. He tried to touch, but even with nascent understanding, Cut was too sharp, too violent. He was beautiful. The suns told him it was time to leave, and Cut knew. The lines spread, creating a gap. “What’s the sign?” Cut called after him, sword unsheathed, and a dark shroud bleeding across the sky. “A gift. A prank. A memory of when Starboard Law and Cut first met.” Ofran laughed. Threads split around him and the chair. Ofran stepped right to leave the city. He arrived at the border before the suns set and slipped into a small way station marked with his sign: the half helm. He breathed out slowly. The lady in the north had to come. The Cut was fun. Fun. Fun. His left hand came back for a moment. Ofran drew his blade from the threads, the sword whose name bore his past and couldn’t be spoken, by him at least. He severed the left hand and let the threads shred it. Was it also excited? Was this a moment for left and right? He stopped. The Starboard Law never sank. He closed his eyes to wait until dawn and thought of all the games they could play. Thanks for reading Narrative Engine! For more of the awkward mind of Moses bombarding your email. Subscribe 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 (https://mosessukumaran.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   30 Sept 2026

   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 (https://mosessukumaran.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

4. 

   28 Sept 2026

   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 to die. 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 (https://mosessukumaran.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

5. 

   25 Sept 2026

   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 another. Insecure, definitely, unsure of himself, but Oil was not afraid of them. Surrounded by knights and beneath the royal flag he stood as straight as his body allowed. “Got paid. Hey, not many who know how to oil the world here. The rest of us don’t leave the city much, and Lady Aarti said the general wanted the pole shiny coz some important person’s coming.” He shrugged and rubbed his hands together. “The Lady asked, so I came. My oil’s the best. Dabbed it on the general’s sword, and he gave me a sack of grain for the trouble. The sword thanked me too, but the General had it thank my boy’s youngest girl instead.” “The sword thanked you?” Jinnai asked. The man’s face scrunched tighter, folds wreathing around his eyes to make the glimmer they held even brighter. “Hey, you should have seen it. All pretty like and blessing us. A ‘Cut to mark talent’ the general said. That girl carries it on her hand.” He nodded a few times. “Oil’s good business, My Highness.” Saha considered the words. A sword’s blessing? Superstition? He remembered Inayi Muran’s eyes. “It is. What’s it like in the city?” “Same as always. Prettier maybe.” Oil turned his head to one side and spat. The knight raised a fist, fury in his face, but Saha cast a spell to hold the blow and shook his head. The man didn’t know better, yet stood tall. “Why is it prettier?” “No red.” Oil met Saha’s gaze, and his eyes—those eyes, were normal yet still bright and sharp. A general’s eyes in a citizen. “Red is the enemy.” The blue in Oil’s cheek brightened, veins underneath shining under the suns. The knight reached for his sword, and Jinnai shifted to pull Saha back into the carriage. “What do you mean?” Saha asked from over Jinnai’s shoulder. Oil looked puzzled, as if Saha had asked why water was wet. “Forget it. Why were you arguing with that officer earlier?” “Vivek? He wanted me to carry a message to the General and Lady Aarti. Talked about the sword grave, but I plugged my ears.” Oil spat again. No need to ask what he thought. “What message?” Saha asked at the same time Jinnai said, “Sword grave?” “Hey, I don’t listen if I’m not going to do it. Oil’s a business for honest men.” Oil bowed to Saha then made a rough salute to Jinnai. “The place where they left those dead swords. Sort of stupid to face the general. Even the kids don’t point sticks at the general.” Dead swords? The mad words of an old man around a city that shouldn’t exist. The magic in Saha’s veins didn’t help control the feverish spirals his mind was taking. “You said others don’t leave the city?” Jinnai stepped out of the carriage and to the left. So she could strike across the entryway faster if necessary. She’d explained her precautions almost every other day since their wedding. He understood the principle, but the mechanics were vague. Stand here, magic this, avoid that, then you’ll be safe while I cut up our attackers. “I wouldn’t have either. Some of the farmers—Mynak’s boy and his friends say the general needs food so they came to the farms, but they’re back by nightfall. Those flower kids are still doing their rounds and they seem happy whether in or out, but the rest of us…hey, an oil man stays safe and the rest of them, the thinkers, they like being near the plaza.” “Why?” Saha breathed. Citizens were refusing to leave. They kept going back. No one was being forced, it sounded like, but this was only one man. Oil looked back to the city, its ancient spires and walls, a legacy of the kingdom, faint in the distance. “Nazran of the Cut lives in the city.” The air shifted. Wind stopped. It reversed and flowed across the plains back towards the city. The banner in the distance cowered, flapping pitifully before turning east. Saha breathed in hard and found himself looking west. The direction of the air mattered, and his body complied. He shivered under his cloaks and coat and thick woollen shirt. Oil stood straighter, a proud smile on his face and eyes closed, the wind blowing through his hair and raised hands. “Hey, My Highness, the wind’s been good to us too. You’ll like it now that you’re here in time.” “In time for what?” “The name-giving ceremony. Too many died during the plague, and we didn’t have time, so we’ll have a big one to let the people’s names return to the Thousand.” Saha returned to the carriage after ordering the knight to give Oil some money. Oil took the coins and bowed to them before whistling and walking away. He was already arguing with Vivek and applying oil to the pole as they left. They sat in silence, but Jinnai had Vannu across her lap. Still sheathed, but ready. Saha cast some extra defensive spells, taking time to affix them to the carriage. “Why didn’t you summon the commanders?” Jinnai asked after they reached the four-mile waystone. “I’ve read their reports. Some ask for vengeance, some to establish authority, but none are willing to approach the city. They know what’s near, but refuse to learn what’s inside, so what good are they to me? If it wasn’t for my father’s orders, I would have removed them from their positions and sent them to their estates in shame.” “And…Oil?” Saha glanced out of the carriage. The encampment was too distant to make out now, even with spells, and the suns were heading to the horizon. Better to enter the city before nightfall. His body quivered occasionally, and every time he thought of turning away or slowing down, his magic would rise and pull him along the road. Not physically, but it would drift from him and create a halo only he could see, pointing east. The goddess of magic was telling him to go to the city. Or he was. Being a chosen was confusing in that sense. “Oil is a normal citizen. A happy citizen who does not fear us.” “Should he?” Jinnai was stroking Vannu’s hilt. “Could he?” “My grandfather ruled by fear, my father by compassion. I…am not so sure, Jinnai. As for whether he could.” Saha shrugged. “Even I feel the weight of this land, where wind turns at the whim of words and flagpoles follow orders that I cannot calculate. I do not…I believe we have come to the sword grave.” Jinnai followed his gaze to a small hill of steel and leather. Broken swords, too many to count, lay in a shallow pit. Each sword was dull, the steel refusing to shine in the sunlight, laid to rest with blade and hilt together in some semblance of what it once was. It wasn’t a hill, Saha realised as they approached; the carriage slowing without any orders as if the death of so many swords demanded solemnity. It was a shattered pyramid: a clear base rising up until the swords became more broken, incapable of holding their shape and the design they wished for, creating loose pillars of association and… Saha tore his gaze away. The trembling in his body increased, his mind spinning faster and faster. Those swords had birthed agency just to die. That was the only thing he had seen. “Incredible,” Jinnai whispered, a dreamy look on her face and Vannu half-drawn from its sheath. The sword…hummed and Saha reached out to grip her fist. The air thickened around them, only metres from the grave. It was right beside the road, shards of steel reaching right up to the stone and stopping. The steel would not escape the pit it seemed. The air grew heavier and heavier, but Saha’s magic tugged his head to one side, and he looked beyond the grave to a shattered guard tower. The sky above the tower cracked, a paper-thin void that consumed all, surrounded by threads that demanded Saha pay attention to the right. “It feels like two swordsmen, but I’ve never felt anything like this. No sword force, only…I don’t know.” Jinnai had Vannu out with both hands on its hilt and pointed to one side, as if she could not bear to aim her blade at the sky. “Attention,” Saha said. Certain. Two competing thoughts demanded he observe, and the magic within him begged him to go and see. The sky demanded attention. 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 (https://mosessukumaran.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

6. 

   23 Sept 2026

   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 (https://mosessukumaran.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

7. 

   18 Sept 2026

   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 only be youth. Only one finger could reach her blade, but it was enough to flick the sword’s path into my shoulder. It punched through and out of my back. I clenched my muscles and pulled mana around the wound to lock the sword down and I advanced. My sword thrust was aimed down, through her gut and towards her spine. The screech of it mangling her core was the moment I needed. Her grip loosened just that little bit. Their formation lost cohesion just that little bit when their officer fell. I was among them. She struggled to breathe as I walked back through the swordsmen still standing. That canister took life. Captain Manasses would have said their time was stolen. A poetic man. The officer on the floor removed her helmet with trembling hands and saluted me. She pointed at her sword, still in my shoulder, and I smiled. I returned it to her, and her irregular breathing steadied for a bit. “Brilliant. How difficult it must have been to hold the rage in. To wait for a perfect moment to strike. You remind me of the Hundred, ten years ago.” I thought for a moment and raised the earth into a small mound behind her head. “L. Vinas remembers you.” I inscribed. “It was an honour,” She breathed and closed her eyes. I chose not to die on the hill because it already held the bodies of brave souls and they needed their own home. Banners moved in the distance as I sat beside the officer’s cooling body. Her breath was very faint, but soon she would be gone, the spell I laid down to take her pain an odd mercy for me. I thought resting for a moment would be good. It was. Korhak knew stillness, despite all the money he lost gambling. I missed him. Them. Horns blared. An old thing from before this age of war. When armies marched in order and violence was a game. Until winning mattered. I stood and tested my left hand. Limited flexibility, so no delicate magic, beams and raw force only. The right would hold my sword. My boots were basically gone. I searched the bodies and found a pair in crimson that looked pretty and thanked the woman before burying her. The horns rose again. Mournful; a memory of those who died. A song for me. Another army was crossing the only bridge across the Finelle. Two armies. Drakes were bearing down on the hill now and the aerial scouts from the army in the west were coming closer. Copters. It wasn’t one country coming for them. When outnumbered, use the environment. I could flood the river. We’d used that trick up in the north. The copters were a nuisance, but I could probably steal a drake and bind it with necromancy for a few minutes. The horns meant old glass-eye was coming with his tanks. There could be a few geothermal vents underground. Sulphurous steam was nasty but effective. Maybe a surface-level magma flow? I drew a breath and unleashed a real powerful strike into the sky, wiping out the squad of drakes five hundred meters away. Options. Options. Violence was always options. But what did I need with options? The battlefield was always mine. I grinned and jogged to one of the dead drakes, trying to recall the spells I needed to make the ugly thing fly. # I chose not to die in the sky, because it was a battlefield too new to understand. The copters died as I pulled their magi tech into chaos, hopping from the corpse of the drake onto one of the strange machines to toss its pilot free and yank the control stick into an uncontrolled spin. Mistake. Tracers and bullets were rising around us, hitting them more than me. At this height, it was a wonder we were getting hit at all. Ah, the crossing had stalled with that stampede of cows I’d driven towards the bridge. I was still scarier than an army. # I chose not to die by the river because an old friend lost his friends here. The flood took a lot of me, but it shattered the bridge and sank a few tanks. Old glass-eye hacked up blood at my side, sadness in his gaze as he stared at his nation’s army, or maybe at my missing leg. That group of tanks was especially skilled, and I’d sheared one of their turrets to serve as a prosthetic. I offered glass-eye a clean end, and he kissed my ring. Traitors rarely received such a generous burial. # I chose not to die in the heat of the earth’s fury because sulphur smelt terrible and I wanted to be buried more or less whole. The geothermal vents seared off one of my eyebrows, but I wasn’t close enough to hear the screams and a few divisions near the hills were wiped from existence. The magma flow was too deep. A true disappointment. # I chose not to die at the hands of a recruit, though it would have been a great story and the few peers of mine who remained would remember me forever. A young soldier clipped my ear off with her steam rifle. She’d caught me by surprise and my reflexive strike wiped her entire squad out. The rest of the company attacking me fled. Recruits. # I pulled the Hundred free of their rest at the granary and we marched to a small house in the village where I entombed them. I wrote their names across the bricks of the house and placed a stasis spell with an amnesty mark. Even after everything, the mark was sacred. This was the tomb of the Hundred. This village would do. I sat in the central plaza, a small little cobbled area, the only real road in this place. I’d broken a few armies today, but I was tired and parts of my body didn’t work well. I served well. Played the game well. Lost some friends along the way. Should I leave something profound here? I’m not sure they can come and kill me in time. Manasses had excellent poetry, but nothing he’d said came to mind. Korhak could toss out a line about coins and luck that would have women at his side in seconds. Maria was always witty. Most of the Hundred were. I looked at my sword, the only thing still whole. I suppose this thing also deserved a name. Gamechanger, I seared into its base. “What would my last words be?” I said to no one. I really should leave something smart. Intelligent. The end of an age arrives with my passing. Profound enough, I suppose. No wait. Two more lines. Come finish the job in the afterlife. I chose to die here. 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 (https://mosessukumaran.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

8. 

   16 Sept 2026

   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 Prince Saha was a great man. An honest man ill-suited to the times. A blessed man, tied with the gods. Indrani hummed, and Nazran felt the otherness surrounding the city—vibrate. A small shift. Not in the air, but in the lines. A new line drifted in the distance pointing to the west, towards the Courier and the capital. He exhaled and felt a hand on his shoulder. “I felt that, General.” The squadsman said and the other soldier guarding Nazran arrived quickly, their gazes turning to the west. “What did you think?” “The Prince. And the city. There’s a cut there. At the enforcement line. Something great, yet with small participants.” “No one told us what the enforcement line was. Just to stand and walk it.” Nazran nodded. He’d given the orders. They’d briefed him; the other generals. A bargain was struck, they said. Aid from the Thousand to hold the line. “It may be important.” The squadsman began but Nazran shook his head. “No. Not worth the thought. The city is. What about food? Grain, pulses, onions?” “Lady Aarti will know more, but prices have stabilised, and the hoarders were burnt on stakes at the eastern plaza, among the temples as they’d requested.” “My parents loved onions.” Nazran said and felt the suns. Their warmth streamed down, their lines faint but present. Something about the suns’ lines wasn’t quite here. “So do I. Keeps kisses away, my steward says, and moans about my successor.” “I didn’t used to.” The squadsman murmured. “Now my sword can’t get me to eat enough onion.” “I’m sorry.” Nazran breathed, and the city paused for a heartbeat, leaving him and this squadsman to watch people halt and dust freeze; leaves deciding their descent could wait and fire believing its desire for the sky was worth less than the time Nazran could offer the squadsman. Nazran turned to him and let the sword in the squadsman’s eye face him. Sight lines strengthened the tie; filled the Seven Squads with more of him, more of them, and took away the empty space which they shared. They were older than his old friends; blades he could wield and people who served the Cut. “It’s a wonderful world, General and I’m thankful I can share it with you.” The squadsman, Murad, placed his hand across his chest and bowed. Nazran held his breath. Refused to let it go. Murad straightened. Nazran released, and the world moved. In the east, birds rose over the gate and pierced towards the Ring of Fire. Under the tree, a group of people huddled around the children’s cart and strapped the axle together while chatting and laughing, cheap alcohol in a leather skin being passed around. Even the children received a small sip each before they took their cart away, cheeks stained with a faint blush that deepened to blue, because red was the enemy. In the sky the suns thought to move faster, but Nazran refused and they continued on their way. In the west, a carriage crossed the enforcement line, and the lines among the squads flared briefly as they relayed the intrusion. Nazran smiled as the words arrived and he pushed them along the lines in surges, sending packets of conversation between the squads, pushing and pulling until Karthik angrily consolidated the information. “The banner of the Ver Empire.” He said. Aarti remained silent, lost in her research or maybe just sleeping. Nazran raised his leg and Murad and his companion came to his side. The world hissed as he connected to a green line. Traversal was a single step. Green lines led to places nearby, yellow ones he didn’t prefer; there was an itch when he travelled, and others couldn’t come with him. Within a breath he appeared, a hiss spiralling out as something Cut at the edge of the line for him to pass through. Horses reared and knights in shining chain mail fell. A carriage rattled, and muffled curses burst from its passengers. The knights rolled to their feet and placed themselves in front of the carriage with weapons drawn. Murad and his companion raised their hands. Their swords rose from scabbards to hover above their shoulders. “Halt. State your business!” Murad declared. “Imperial Ambassador Lossinian Jaharl requests an audience with the Lord transcendent.” The driver called once the horses calmed. “The General is not accepting visitors.” Murad said. The knight’s discipline showed: shields and weapons interlocking as they eyed the floating swords. “I apologise Lord.” An elderly man in purple robes slid from the carriage with an attendant’s help. His eyes were fixed on Nazran. No. Not on him. Beside him. The man didn’t look. “I’ve come a great distance to make your acquaintance.” He bowed. “How do you know who I am?” Nazran defined the man. Not a swordsman or a mage, but a man who had terminated much. There were endings around him, innumerable decisions where he severed things. Nazran blinked, eyes glazing as the man’s terminations blossomed in his vision. Each a little line of its own, starting within him, ending somewhere far away yet passing through nothing to get there. He felt those in the city, ignored those in the camps, and defined this ambassador. “The empire offers its ambassadors some relics.” The man held up a small disc, glowing with a chaotic mix of colour. He couldn’t sense anything special about it. “It allows to know when we are in the presence of a Lord such as yourself.” “Myself? What am I?” “A transcendent Lord.” The man smiled. “A great Lord of the people.” Of the people? The Imperials loved to consider themselves the only people. Did they truly understand what he was? Could they see him? “No. What is transcendence?” Nazran’s gaze sliced across the Imperial party. “Look.” They turned their eyes up to stare into his, and dozens collapsed. A knight threw his sword to one side and pulled his shield tight. A maid screamed and the ambassador’s attendant turned and fled. The ambassador remained upright, but a line rose from his brow into the air. The relic in his hand twisted and Nazran’s Cut bore down on it. “What am I?” “I…do not know, Lord.” The ambassador’s robes twisted, purple fading to a pale blue. “The Emperor does, as do the three Lords and Ladies. I am here only to offer assistance. To offer knowledge and the Empire’s friendship.” “In return?” “Only friendship, Lord.” The man fell to his knees, ancient hands trembling, and robe straightening once only blue remained. Friendship was never so easy. “Friendship?” “We have books. Knowledge. The greatest library with the teachings of our first Emperor: ‘The Terminus of Justice’. Notes of other transcendents. For a Lord such as yourself, you are free to peruse.” Nazran hesitated. He lacked knowledge, about himself, what he was doing to others. “Again. Tell me what you wish for in return. Protection? Defection?” “Lord. We only ask for friendship. Your friendship is the most valuable of all.” The ambassador bowed with a soft, confident smile. While the ambassador’s soldiers lay in disarray. Again friendship. Friends. Lines. Distance. He couldn’t remember the Courier’s name. Murad had tears in his eyes. The other squadsman raised a hand to Nazran. The suns decided to look down at him. They seemed confused. Nazran had not thought about his parents in years. Why had he talked to Murad about them? Friends? They thought to replace. The lines bent. The sky darkened as his desire rose. Here. Now. Did they not see his friends? The Seven Squads? Aarti? The Courier? Even after everything they were still here. “I have them. These few. With me always, who I can trust and share anything with? You want to replace them!” “General, I think they’ve had enough.” Murad pulled on Nazran’s sleeve gently. The Ver Empire’s banner waved proudly in the wind, its people trembling in its shade. The ambassador was so old, and so far from home, his eyes bloodshot but blue. Many were bleeding, a deep blue blood that stained the land. The pressure Nazran released vanished. It came because he asked them to face who he was now and they did not understand. It went because Nazran lost interest. “How?” The ambassador scrambled to his feet. He stuttered and took two steps towards them, froze, stared at the disc in his hand and raised a wavering finger. “How can you touch him?” Why did touching him matter? The lines could always intersect. “You said it yourself, ambassador Jaharl.” Murad stood between Nazran and the ambassador. He was taller than Nazran and trying to block the ambassador’s gaze. Or Nazran’s gaze. “The general’s friendship is valuable.” He waved his hand and the other squadsman turned Nazran away, back to the city and bowed. Nazran breathed deeply and felt a swelling in his chest and a convergence of the lines of his people. He pulled them back to the city and left the ambassador with a few words carved in the earth. “You are free to come and visit. But not to demand my friendship.” 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 (https://mosessukumaran.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

9. 

   14 Sept 2026

   Weekend Villain

   To change a mind, a slippery mind or a rigid mind, is temporally dependent on their fragment of a lifetime. But a society? Societies are eager to regress, restrain; replete with memory, conditional catastrophes that yank the vectors of progress into cycles of reductive reasoning. Charisma was the first step, the origin of the error, the erroneous moment I told the truth. Hatred followed. Pure, beautiful, magnificent hatred. Purity carried the import of the moment, and the shining eyes baying for blood were conjoined masses of neural negatives. The many wanted me dead. The individuals demanded my head. My mistake? The error I alluded to was not that I spoke the truth. It was the frame of reference, the temporal reference. I asked them to change in a year when I should have bent them over a century. I wouldn’t live that long, of course. Maybe I could spend time on immortality, but that was focus departed from the great design. From the cave they called my lair I began. Religions deconstructed, philosophy pondered upon with the like-minded. There were more than a few who came to my aid. The brilliant and the benign alike, they came in trickles, then a flood. For rebellion demands a certain appetite, a forthright character, and a malicious mentality under the skin. Beneath the lies they tell themselves, they gauged the key factor, the deciding change. Profit. My profit, the worker’s, the agent’s, the politician’s, the corporation’s: the list was endless, yet just a fraction of them could see the true profit. It began with my words, the ones that had called the mob. My life was never in danger, mobs of the mind slash at social stability and economic existence. They tear and gnash. I was a villain. I still am. The sort that stalks the night and brings tears to mothers faces and chills to a fathers bones. The kind that makes grandparents roll in their ashes or graves and children scream in delight. All villains begin with that childhood spark. The reason. The ‘origin story.’ I hate that term; it disagrees with my diet and collapses reasoning and mental faculties to a phrase. My reason was the desire to control time. It was the domain of nations, religions, and cult leaders. They owned the ability to define it, to set it, to follow their odd calendars of the moon and the equinox. The sun. Now the sun! What an instrument of cosmic providence! A stable reference right in the centre of this system. A metronome to measure the year. Let it be my stable reference. And so it was. I designed the final chart: the final calendar. I became cult leader and politician, theologian and mathematician, and slipped my thoughts into business magazines and international conferences. The individual nations wanted their independence days, so they had to go. The religions moved with the moon and the stars, so they had to be dissolved. The cults were too mad to keep, so they were squashed. The businesses saw the productivity gains and received their profits. They were my first line, the soldiers that undermined the strength of nations. People rose in my name: to gain their time with love and peace. They saw what I wanted and approved. Some did. Most did not, but this was a plan for a century, and it would happen. If not now, then in the future. Each moment saved was incalculable profit. What could be achieved with that time? I had calculated it. I would create a world with eternal three-day weekends. 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 (https://mosessukumaran.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

10. 

    11 Sept 2026

    Transcendent - Chapter 3: Quarantine

    On the night their kingdom obtained a transcendent, Saha ordered the throne room sealed with its sole occupant: the woman who answered only to Courier. Barricades were erected with the royal guard deployed at intersections and hallways, like a gauntlet of trials but the prize was only partially comprehensible, occasionally disturbing yet certainly significant. Her true name was Inayi Muran, the third daughter of a priest to Sonna, the god of trials. Last year she joined the army for her term of service to the kingdom and completed her training in time for the outbreak of Firerash in the east to demand deployment, and the enforcement line. Her connection to the priesthood had kept her safe from the borders, but the enforcement line demanded faith as much as it demanded bodies. The devout and the capable alike had been directed to stand in the east. Inayi Muran sat against a column near the throne, that strange sword clothed in rags across her knees, rocking back and forth, arguing with herself and the blade. Her presence didn’t breathe of madness, nor did it smell of prayer. It was something new. “I would have called it uncanny.” Saha said. “That’s a mild term. Very mild.” Jinnai placed her hand on his shoulder. She had a tight grip now, calloused fingers digging into the soft fabric of his furs. Tighter than her training allowed. Softer than the wisps of sword force bleeding from her body should permit. “What would you call it?” “Horrific. Unreasonable. Terrifying. Saha. This woman. Inayi Muran. She’s not herself anymore.” “Is that what you see?” Saha didn’t explain, just placed a finger against his lips and stared at Inayi Muran. “There’s a void where my force can’t reach, a sharpness in the air. It reminds me of Kliath. ‘Ten thousand blades shielded by one hand. Cohort, cohort, if you cross you die.’” “Poetry?” Saha hesitated. His tutors had tried to teach him, but the literary arts were too strange. Arbitrary. “‘The wicked woman fears the learned, while the saintly man fears the cudgel.’” “That’s amusing in the night, Jinnai, but now…” “Inayi Muran is terrifying, but she’s only sitting there. This courier is a reasonable woman who prays to swords that shouldn’t exist.” “Courier. Inayi Muran said she was the Courier.” Saha corrected. He stressed the name. There was import in her name and magic trembled when the name revealed itself in her presence. “The Courier of Nazran.” Jinnai nodded. There was a hitch in her voice, of discomfort, of a moment she refused to recall. “You knew him.” Saha didn’t ask. Soldiers were uncomfortable when facing a superior, men in the face of competition; women choice and wives: old lovers. “We…met. Our parents arranged a preliminary meeting.” “For marriage.” Saha said. Of course, she had other meetings, other suitors. “It didn’t work out. His parents passed away, and the Duke’s succession crisis took his time and energy.” “And money.” Saha completed the thought. “It took his family’s money, and your parents lost interest.” “It was for the best.” She squeezed his shoulder harder. Her hands were perfumed with roses and sword oil, iron and lilacs. The scent of her refused to change, appeared to cling to her in the day. The night, though, left her bereft of anything but sweat and strength. “Indeed. Do you remember him? What he was like?” “A serious man. A lonely man after his parents passed. A diligent man.” “His service is impeccable. The records are clear. Always at the forefront. Always supporting the royal family. Always believing in us.” Saha sighed. “Now a transcendent. What do you think it’s like? To transcend?” “The stories say it makes mortal men greater than themselves, the Thousand themselves have granted blessings and they become infinitely close to their halls while still on solid ground.” “Poetry and now stories. At least the poetry had value, Jinnai. I’m still short of mastery, but you…can you not feel it? The edge?” “There is no edge, Saha. You master the blade, and some days you master it a little more, while others you realise you mastered it less than you thought you did. Then one day you look back at the path and see it began nowhere, you stare at the sword in your hand and see depths that stretch beyond your senses.” “Mages gain understanding. Search for it.” Jinnai rubbed his shoulder gently, not stating the truth. No mage had transcended. Ever. He sighed. His eyes returned to the Courier. Inayi Muran. Her name came to him every time he looked at her, like a compulsion, a bitterness in his heart that needed an outlet. “She was a priest’s daughter.” His throat closed. His mouth dried and his lips refused to stay still. They writhed for a moment, for another moment, then a third, until Jinnai spoke. “Inayi Muran is a soldier now. See the way she sits, how her blade never leaves her. The praying aside, her senses…it’s more like a trained swordsman actually, not just a soldier.” “Inayi Muran.” Saha whispered, grimacing at this inability to keep the name silent, to avoid it. He could measure it, could think she or her once the name was stated, but he had to say it first, had to. The throne room had gained a rule of its own. The palace felt cold now, then hot, then pleasant, occasionally sharp, rarely silent, but mostly the palace felt of the words carved into the stone. Words would always dominate action as thought overrode instinct, but near the throne room attention was flexible. Assistance was required. A being close to a god, possibly a god, the kingdom had never had a transcendent, was too small to even have an Imperial transcendent acquiesce to arrive for a diplomatic visit. “Three.” Saha barked. Jinnai turned her head, thought through the word, her sword force contracting and hand loosening. “The number of living transcendents in the Empire?” “Yes. The request for information has been quietly rejected, but their ambassador has apparently decided he needs to visit relatives in the East all of a sudden.” “How did they find out?” Saha rolled his eyes and gestured at the words requesting assistance. Demanding it. Saha thought it was a request, but the palace treated it like a demand, an order. Inayi Muran said it was a request. She had not coerced, but Nazran had left the words without stepping into the palace. “I don’t like looking at it.” Jinnai took her hand from his shoulder and placed it on the hilt of her sword: the Ender of Nights, Vannu. “It’s asking for a fight.” “How do words ask for a fight?” “Magical words do. Wasn’t there a master mage who used calligraphy to incite emotions?” “That was a story. A children’s story.” “I suppose you’re right, but these words are demanding I speak of what it is, and that’s asking for a fight. I don’t like being told what to do.” She didn’t. Until she did. Saha shook his head and tore his eyes away from the carving. The deep furrows smoked still, yet weren’t hot. An unfortunate discovery courtesy of a guard who screamed while falling over them. He’d screamed and Saha had raised his hands to end the man’s misery until the Courier, Inayi Muran, lifted him and tossed him out of the throne room. “What does it want you to say?” He knew. He’d said it before the words themselves sliced into the stone, melting it one character at a time. Everyone who walked by the throne room spoke it once. It was why Saha had extended the quarantine three corridors out, driving the head chamberlain mad because it sealed his toilet, but not his chambers. “Must I?” Jinnai swallowed and drew her blade a few inches. “I think you must.” Jinnai didn’t look at the words. She stared into his eyes. Hers were green, with flecks of gold, a magical accident she didn’t speak of, and a small scar across her lips that came from a battle with an eagle at the age of eight. She’d grown a fondness for bird meat thereafter, though Saha preferred raised poultry; the gaminess of hunting birds offended his throat. Green irises turned rapidly, and sweat beaded against her cheek. Saha pressed his fingers to her lips, then his own. He hugged her, head barely reaching her shoulders, hands tight around her waist. Even through the thick winter clothes, he could feel the tense muscles, knew the scars that wound their way around her entire being, felt her breath against his neck. “Cut.” She breathed and in the throne room, Inayi Muran stood and approached them. “Inayi Muran.” Saha didn’t release his grip on Jinnai, didn’t let her face the Courier, though she would be better suited to deal with her danger. “Greetings.” “Greetings, Prince Saha. You requested an audience with my Master?” “We did not.” Inayi Muran’s eyes closed, listening, and she frowned. “A word was spoken. It brought His attention.” “He can see us?” Jinnai pushed Saha away and stepped in front of him. “I misspoke. His attention came to us briefly, a flicker of…acknowledgement.” “Because I said Cut.” Jinnai drew the sword another inch, force bubbling around the hilt. Inayi Muran hesitated. “I do not know.” She considered Jinnai, glancing at the sword, the military coat and the strange spring shield tied to Jinnai’s left wrist. “I do not believe He knows either. He is not a god.” “You called him the Holy One,” Saha said. “He destroyed Firerash. The plague cannot exist beside him.” The sword in Inayi Muran’s eye glowed, a faint crimson flickering in its depths. “That does not mean he is a god. I understand that now.” “Understand what?” Inayi Muran hesitated. She opened her mouth and spoke. Saha could hear her clearly, but the words vanished; only the whisper of its passage remained, that moment in time where for a brief instant the words existed only for them. Jinnai’s sword flashed from its sheath, and her gaze spun to the window, to the sky, tracing something only she could see. “It seems I cannot tell you.” Inayi Muran followed Jinnai’s gaze. She released the strange sword at her side, and it floated. Hovered at her knee. “When the Cut occurred, I was nearby. We all were, the seven squads patrolling the enforcement line, but we were outside the city. We watched the…sword fall on the city, and for that moment we felt connected. To the strike and its targets. It was a moment of closeness, a breath of air where Firerash had constricted us. I have prayed, received visions and even two words from Sonna: stand tall, but the god is far and the Holy One is near.” Inayi Muran was sweating. Her brow furrowed in deep concentration, words escaping slowly, each drawn from some reservoir of thought and persistence, consideration and fear. Saha had watched prisoners under interrogation, carefully choosing their words as if afraid someone else would hear. This was almost the same, would have been if the sword in her eye didn’t spin slowly each time she chose a word. “Why are you telling us this?” Jinnai asked, sword still in hand, but loose, undisciplined. “Nazran of the Cut requests aid.” She emphasised the word Cut, her eyes locked on Saha, sword spinning back to its original position, upright and proud. “And I am his Courier.” Aid was simple; enough grain existed even in his old plan, though intended for an army, and its cost was budgeted. Yet. Yet, was grain all the aid that was required? Saha hadn’t studied the words in depth, had refused to peruse their magical qualities, even their purest quality was the words desire to keep magic at bay and supplicant. A warning. He’d considered if it was a warning, but his body felt no fear of the words themselves, only their consequence. The words were innocent. Was Nazran? Was innocence even the right description of the words? They refused categorisation, happy to…change. Jinnai saw a challenge. Saha looked, really looked at the words, the ambient magic, the scuffed stone not cleaned for days. The words didn’t scream at him; they were…uncertain. “We will send aid, will restore the city its name...” Saha paused. The enforcement line. He’d helped design it. The Thousand gods had aided, sending their powers to isolate that city, a city that…could not be named. Could not because the line was designed to separate it from the kingdom, and the Thousand demanded a price for it. The name of the city was freely offered. His eyes widened and his lips parted. “No. Do not speak it. I can feel some of it; you are close. I think…I’m only understanding it now.” Inayi Muran raised a hand. The sword in her eye spun rapidly, occasionally pausing, a faint glow both eerie and divine staining her brow. “We were bathed in His presence, and it was glorious. It…Cut…and it is taking…time. Time…to…become…new. The others—of the seven squads—will take longer. Nazran of the Cut called me and I…understood. A little more of what we are, what we are becoming. I am the Courier. The Courier.” “Thank you.” Saha said. The magic in his body had been twisting unpredictably as Inayi Muran spoke. Her every word was laced with a chaotic mixture of power. The ‘Cut’: its scale was beyond him, beyond anyone except maybe the Thousand. Certain words were dangerous, some knowledge was corrupted, dissolute, repressed; the trade with the Thousand was bleeding out from the city. “It wasn’t isolated. His transcendence.” Inayi Muran nodded, and Jinnai slid her sword into its sheath. “Others transcended?” “No. The city itself was already—different—removed.” Yes, those words were safe. “Whatever happened did…” Saha’s own thoughts—disconnected, warped—took the passage of connections and grasped them, tore them and left him with fragments. The world wavered and his head spun. He fell on one side. Nausea, a tremendous soul-rending desire to eject his lunch had him scrambling upright, and with eyes closed, his stomach heaved. And heaved. And heaved. The lunch refused to come up, digested, but acid was not so considerate, burning his throat on its way out and leaving its pathetic, sickly, sour stench on the palace floor. “Saha!” Jinnai pushed on his shoulders, shoving him into the ground. Rough, hard, protection. She was saving him from flailing before he realised his limbs were losing control. Saha shuddered. The nausea receded, leaving magic coursing uncontrollably in his body. Rampaging. He couldn’t speak. Wouldn’t. He was screaming, no, the words were screaming in him to get out. “He’s touched something.” Inayi Muran raised her sword, the rough wrapping falling away to reveal the familiar blade. A famous blade, though this wasn’t it. Wasn’t Indrani, the sojourn blade. Saha had never seen it, but knew. The knowledge; the chain of thought was cycling, trying to find a gap in his mind, in the broken rules which held it from forming. “Can’t think.” He mumbled, turning to Jinnai’s pale face. Too pale. Her sword was out, angled at Inayi Muran. His body refused to stay still, his mind kept cycling, always cycling, still cycling. “Put away your sword.” Jinnai growled. “Nazran of the Cut killed Firerash.” Inayi Muran declared and swung down. Jinnai’s blade flashed up to intercept, but Inayi Muran’s sword passed through. Through the blade, through the air, through the rules and through Saha’s body. It left no mark. It severed. Released. The thoughts calmed: shielded. Free. Whatever happened did something to the Thousand’s protection. There was conflict. “No. I’m fine.” Saha called to Jinnai, faintly. She kept her sword up and crouched by his side, cool hand smoothing his hair from his face. Inayi Muran trembled, the sword in her hand losing its lustre and clattering to the floor. It shook, trying to float and she knelt, caressing and cajoling her blade. Saha closed his eyes as the trembling vanished. What was the Cut? Thanks for reading Narrative Engine! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Moses’ odd thoughts:I wonder if the voiceover is useful, useless a boon or a detractor. I’d be curious to know. 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 (https://mosessukumaran.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

11. 

    7 Sept 2026

    Transcendent - Chapter 2: Field

    The sky was filled with lines of gold. The wall was filled with lines of remnant crimson. The ground was riddled with lines of every colour. People were only lines. Lines without colour. Nazran sat on a boulder beside the grave of Urmi and contemplated broken soil. The sky was different now, and looking down meant less. He pushed a finger into the earth gently. A crack that spanned two of his old steps spidered outward. The earth didn’t break, it didn’t rumble, it just cracked. Because Nazran wanted it to. A ring of soldiers guarded his rest. One step from him. He shook his head and blinked a few times. The lines dimmed, and the bodies returned. He couldn’t use steps anymore. He’d tried, but his step could take him as far as his vision perceived. Beyond it somehow. Distance. Distance. Distance wasn’t there anymore. The thought exploded out from his mind and through his chest. His thoughts felt more real now; he could feel them move. Especially when he understood the thought and ‘saw’. He breathed. Slow. Deep. That helped to calm the thought and let it return to its rest. Inside where it mattered. Outside, others could see it and sight had become the sense that infiltrated the most. Soldiers stood at loose attention with swords floating above their shoulders, eyes scanning the horizon. Each sword was identical, a mirror to Indrani. The sojourn blade rested across his knees. Humming with pleasure and awe. It would not leave his side. He could command it to rest, to hide, but it was so lonely. They’d killed its sibling and buried Indra beside its master. Sitting near the grave helped a little. Death they’d caused held everything tighter. As his gaze passed over the soldiers, they turned to face him. They felt his gaze. Nazran’s attention was precious now. Each carried another sword—his sword in one eye and his Cut in the other. “You wish for something, Holy One?” A soldier saluted, and the sword at her shoulder bowed to him. Asha. She’d been near the walls when he struck. When he Cut. “Holy. I’m not…” he stopped. They saw the sword. They carried the sword. What did he look like in their eyes? Did they see the lines? They wouldn’t answer. “Have the supplies reached? Have the citizens been fed?” She dropped to her knees and bowed. “Forgive me, Holy One. I do not know.” Nazran sighed. Sighed and cursed himself for sighing. His sigh caught the wind and entwined around the soldiers. They swayed, and the sword light in their eyes flared. Ecstasy swept through them, and the echo of clashing swords thundered across the field, across his boulder. He raised a finger, and the sound vanished. “Go see.” He said and closed his eyes. The lines were still there, but they didn’t call to him when his eyes were closed. He breathed easier now, yet less. One breath could last minutes, but if he needed to he could breathe faster, more often, dozens of times in a second. His brows twisted as a new thought skittered across his mind. It wasn’t his breathing that was adjusting to time; time was accommodating him. His breath continued, waiting for the next moment his attention mattered. A presence approached in the window of a breath. “You’re willing to come?” He asked. “The generals are afraid.” Aarti said from outside the ring. Nazran opened his eyes, and the soldiers moved aside to let her through. Before he asked. Aarti’s arm was in a sling, and one eye was covered in bandages. A patch of her hair had been shredded, exposing smooth skin. She’d cried about the hair. Then cursed when her eye burned beneath the bandages. “And you?” She laughed and gestured at her eye where his sword hovered. “They refuse to look. Refuse to see. The sword is easier to look at. Safer.” “It would have been nice to see them bend knee,” he whispered, and Aarti blushed. She’d also bowed. In front of the gate she’d hobbled after him and collapsed at his feet, head bowing when he faced her. Bowed but returned to Aarti. Maybe the others would return. “It doesn’t work like that.” She explained and sat on the boulder. Not next to him. Half a hand below. “How does it work?” “I don’t know, but I’m here now.” “Where’s your sword?” It was in the camp he could feel, but none of these sword bearers were apart from their swords for more than a few moments. “At the camp, sitting in a pool of water magic I summoned for it. It’s a greedy little thing.” Nazran caressed Indrani, lovingly, sadly, ritually. “Urmi talked about sword spirits. Indrani and its sibling were so close to alive that I used to dream it spoke to me in its sleep. Now she’s here, in my hands and will never leave.” “And?” “She’s not a spirit.” He didn’t explain. She didn’t ask. Indrani still rested on his lap. In her sheath. Even in her sheath she was a cover, the shade, the line to blanket the sky. Nazran closed his eyes again. To push out the thought, that most insistent thought, the insidious demand he’d created when his will tore through the city, the demand to raise his hand and have everything be covered by him, by his sword. By his skill. A soft groan escaped his lips; a tight sound, a whisper of a vibration that he smothered by breathing in; taking back what he’d created faster than it existed. His fingers trembled, his heart thumped once, and his mind danced, grasping at the lines to pull them closer, away from others, beyond their being, safe from him. “I want…I want, Aarti.” Aarti raised a hand; it drifted toward him as his breath escaped once more, the stream of air carrying it closer until it touched the lines he’d drawn in. There was no moment, she moved forward, yet away, her path no longer toward him. She stood behind him now; for a moment before her legs gave out, eyes swimming and her mana trembling uncontrollably. “Wait. Let me try to undo it.” Nazran said, and loosened the lines. Cracks in the air appeared: black lines and crimson lines and sickly yellow strips and green streaks that refused to change direction as he let himself be closer to her, and she was by his side again. The soldiers all were. They stood within arm’s reach and raised their hands to brush against him; his clothes weaved through fingertips and strands of his hair fell away to curl around fingers. Dozens snaked around Aarti’s wrist, her hand going to his cheek and her eye welling, fingertips tightening around his cheek. “Don’t cry.” She said as tears rolled down her cheek. “Don’t cry, Holy One.” The soldier’s voices broke, their sadness filling the cracks. Nazran raised his hand to cover Aarti’s. He took her hand from his face and looked at their hands together. She carried scars, tattoos of magic and symbols she’d gathered over years. Her nails were filled with a purple ashen dust. Was it blood? Partly. His hands were clean, the old calluses gone. The slightly bent middle finger he’d carried because a cousin had broken it in play was ramrod straight, piercing and sharp enough to trace violence and separation wherever he wished. Always what he wished. The urge rose again. To wish. “The second coda.” He breathed. “Discipline defines. The blade follows.” The rest echoed. In the west, a piercing light rose into the sky. Far to the west, beyond the camp, across the plains and roads to the capital. It breathed of a long journey, and it was tied to him. Something was changing there. Someone had collapsed; was in danger. “Urmi said family.” Nazran reached out and pulled at the light. A woman who’d seen his Cut. She appeared at his side, kneeling, trembling shoulders straightening as his presence enfolded her; as his sword tightened his connection to her once more; as he cut away the hardship of her journey. “Your will is done, Holy One. Your coming is announced.” The courier he’d sent for orders and assistance had returned to him. The sword in her eye relayed her danger. The attack: magic and swords flashing towards her. The fear swelling at her existence. Nazran traced her path back along the line she’d come from and saw the palace, nobles and administrators huddling against walls and columns. Just as her sword showed. “The plague is gone. We need assistance.” He declared, and his words left him to cut into the stones of the palace chamber, sharp and filled with whatever he was now. He stared at the courier. Her name was on the tip of his tongue, but it drifted the moment her eyes met his. Eyes. What did he look like to her? What did she look like to herself? “Your Courier returns with your will.” She bowed and the light twisted away from his grasp, her presence shuttling along the light, bound with an agency of her own to face the palace once more. She was his Courier? The Courier of Nazran. The Courier of who he was now. What he was now. What he wasn’t anymore. “You’re Nazran,” Aarti whispered, tightening her grip on his hand. “And … made a choice.” Nazran tried to grasp the Courier’s name, but the line to her was stronger, tighter, and freer. Less of him existed. No. He breathed and felt those around him, Aarti, the soldiers, his Courier. She had become greater, more of her walked the lines. “… the Courier of Nazran of the Cut.” The soldiers intoned. They could remember. Could speak her name. 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 (https://mosessukumaran.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

12. 

    3 Sept 2026

    Transcendent - Chapter 1: Dawn

    Saharashastra strode through the halls of the palace, taking steps that kept him in the sunlight to avoid the lingering winter air. His calculations placed the warm air from the west arriving in another two weeks, while the academy masters claimed it would be any day now. It was always any day now. When spring would come, when the quarantine would end. Always a day away. He tightened his cloak, adjusting the fur and trim away from his neck. It itched, tickling at inopportune moments and occasionally, small strands would delicately float before him long enough for a single inhalation to send him into sneezing fits. He paused on his way to the throne room at a hurried call for his attention. The maid, the new one who served his wife, trotted down the hall, hands stretching towards him with a small folded note sealed in crimson wax. ‘To my dearest Saha’: written in the delicate cursive script he’d come to recognise intimately. “Tell Jinnai I’ll meet her after court,” he said. “In her garden.” She loved the gardens, and the few moments spent away from her troops would find her watering roses or lounging behind bushes. The maid bowed once more and turned her head to one side, listening. Waiting. Saharashastra sighed. “And tell her I love her.” The maid squeaked, a faint redness blooming on her cheeks before scurrying back towards his rooms. He traced the elegant script on the note and glanced out of a nearby window. There was time; he could read the note. His hands brushed across the nickname. His fingers twitched. Instead of breaking the seal, he placed the note inside his coat, in the small pocket he used to carry papers and reports. Even Jinnai used his nickname within six weeks of their marriage. He breathed deeply and ducked through a side passage, startling a few birds that had built a nest above a window. He muttered a word of power, and the drifting feathers floated out of the window. His fingers twirled as the magic ran through his body, and he placed his hands behind his back. The sunlight streaming through the window danced off the walls and the ripples of his power. The birds circled the window twice before settling back into their nest as he turned to leave. Saharashastra smiled at the uneven birdsong that trailed in his wake. In the courtyard below, guards were rushing back and forth. Some fool must have broken the pulley at the gate again. It would need to be replaced. It took a moment to turn through the passages and come before the great arched doorway that led to the rear entrance of the throne room. It was installed by his grandfather: an escape route at the heart of the palace. The guards at the door were uniformed in the strongest armour his family could afford, emblazoned with their crest and the glowing tattoos that signified their rank glistening under their left eye. They bowed when he arrived, hands on heart, and Saharashastra commented on the weather with a quick clap on one of the guard’s shoulders, before stepping through the door. As he did on every occasion, Saharashastra tapped the door frame, just under the small crack he’d created as a child. He recalled the raging electricity that had coursed through his veins, still lingering in the crack, and he clenched his fist. There was an engineered dullness to the entryway. To stop hesitation, his father said. Never linger behind the throne. Today, Saharashastra paced behind the throne, behind the purple-tinted curtains that hadn’t been changed since his grandfather wrested this land from the previous royal family. He looked at his darkened skin, tanned whether he lived under the sun or not. The masters told him it was the blessing of the goddess and affectionately called him Shasa: the brilliant jewel. The children named him Saha. He chuckled, even then, at the age of five, he knew which name would remain for his life. “Humour, Saha? Today?” His father’s steady voice filled the entryway. The man could have worked as a bard, had claimed he would have if he wasn’t a member of the royal family. “I’m remembering when I dug through the library. When you didn’t explain why my friends laughed.” Saha, they called him, the broken raven of myth, the trickster. Born under a broken sky, when the twin suns vanished for a full day, Saharashastra had been blessed by the Goddess of Magic, with a light so bright it had been a beacon at the castle for assassins and charlatans. His father had dealt with the assassins, blade in hand and spells bursting from his fingers, while his mother feted the charlatans. Nobles and priests of the Thousand, the thousand gods, came to beg for a glimpse of the babe of magic, the kingdom’s shining pride. “Did you need explanation?” His father chuckled. “In the library doing research to understand a nickname.” He shook his head, then winced as the steel crown tilted and almost fell off. “Wasted effort,” Saha muttered. He turned his eyes away, refusing to meet his father’s soft smile. The smile that let lies pass. “Any news for me?” His father straightened his back, a dull click from his lower back the only sign of his age. Saha brushed his fingers against the curtain, along the plain trim and gathered his thoughts. “Winter won’t leave us for another two weeks.” Saha sighed. “The masters have been saying it will leave us any day now,” his father said. “Of course. However, we should send orders to the granaries, especially in the East, to consolidate stock and conserve.” “The quarantine has pulled much of our stocks. The merchants are beginning to raise prices.” “As they should.” Saha faced his father. “We can’t afford to keep prices down.” “The people will revolt.” His father reached up to adjust the crown. His hands pressed at his temples, rubbing the soft pads welded to the crown. It was another example of his grandfather’s odd behaviour, converting a helmet into a crown and then embedding the pads to make massaging his head easier. “Not yet,” Saha declared with a confidence his cold hands betrayed. “They fear the east. More than they fear hunger.” His father stopped massaging his temples. “Do we still not know the origin?” “Uncertain. It came from across the border, beyond the Ring of Fire. That much is certain, but the scouts that managed to return took weeks to recover, but they’re free of Firerash and found nothing in those dead lands.” “No cure. No cure.” His father muttered. He touched the hilt of his sword. “What news of the enforcement line?” Saha hesitated and muttered the communication spell he’d kept at his side since the first sighting of Firerash. It wove through the castle, a streak in his mind’s eye as it raced to the pylon embedded in the central tower, the tallest structure in the capital. The magic briefly wound through the dense spellwork engraved in the pylon, waiting for the pulse that sent it streaking into the east, amplified so it crossed the distance in the blink of an eye to meet—nothing. “The pylon at the enforcement line is silent. As is the one in the city,” he whispered. Saha raised his hands before his father could speak. “I don’t know. The Thousand themselves are quiet, refusing to answer their priests.” His father snorted. “Never there when you need them.” “There when you don’t,” Saha finished the saying, a soft smile breaking the gloom building around them. Only for a moment, though. “Father. Your majesty. It’s strange, but we have to be patient. Exposing more people; crossing the line. It will not end well.” His father grunted, adjusting his sword and glanced at the entryway. Faint sunlight poured through the small window set above the door. Too small for someone to pass through, which meant it was too small for enough light to shine through as well. Saha had wanted to change it, but his father had refused without explanation. He always looked at the window before holding court. He would look and exude the demand for silence, the pressure of a master swordsman cutting through the space, making him just that little bit—not here. Saha closed his eyes and thought about the letter. His wife. Jinnai had that same presence when she wanted silence. In his father it created distance, with his wife it hurt. His hand brushed against the letter. It would have nothing inside. Jinnai sealed empty letters as demands. Demands for his time when she felt he wasn’t paying enough attention, or was lost in his work. With a plague in the east, a lacklustre harvest this year, and Imperial tolls rising half a point, work could not be left aside. His parents needed him. Saha hated silence, though. “It will not be pleasant. The court session,” Saha said. His father hummed under his breath, but refused to step out of his quiet. “Father. Your majesty. Have you reviewed my proposal?” His father twitched, eyes opening into tight slits, bleeding presence like the soft whisper of assassin’s darts slicing through the air. “I have.” When he didn’t speak further, Saha turned away. Firerash was horrific, and they needed contingencies. Harsh contingencies to protect the kingdom. Saha opened his mouth, but froze. It could be discussed later. If the situations deteriorated. Instead, he closed his eyes and let magic run through him, filling his veins alongside the beating of his heart. Each pulse strengthened his body, brought him one step closer to becoming a master mage. It didn’t take long before his father’s voice cut through the air, heavy, yet soft. An unsheathed blade. “Come. Court awaits.” His father strode through the curtains and Saha quickly followed, ducking through the purple and brushing it aside with his hands. Saha stood with the curtain draped over one arm and blinked at the throne glistening on its pedestal. Three steps inlaid with the metal of his ancestors armour and weapons were crafted delicately and burnished daily, glistening in the soft sunlight that angled through the high windows of the court room. Before his father’s coronation, the windows were much lower, low enough for magic or explosive devices to tear into the court. His grandfather’s administration had almost been gutted, and it took years for his father to train the talent that stood anxiously in the hall. They tried to hide it, but Saha had known most of them since his childhood, had grown at their side, studied under them. Sweat covered faces though they were wrapped in heavy coats and bulky furs. “Speak. Tell me news of the Kingdom.” His father boomed before he even sat. “Grain prices are stable.” An administrator began and the court launched into a debate on the stability of prices in the west and trade coming from the north. The south was blessed with rain, enough to sate the harvest. It would be a bumper crop. Money was flowing in. The minister of finance froze while paging through his ledgers. He could speak of the taxes and tolls flowing into the nations coffers. “And the outflow to the east?” Saha interrupted, before the man could dodge the problem. As they all did. Magic coursed through his veins, or as close to his veins as the power could travel. It kept him calm, the same soothing sense of confidence from his childhood. From his birth. The courtiers shuffled, and eyes turned to look at the ceiling or the floor. Cloaks were tightened, and the soft murmur that filled any room with more than ten people vanished. Bitterness. It coated Saha’s tongue. Wound its way down his throat until it clenched his heart. It was hot. Breathing became harder. These were his people. The nation’s administrators. “You won’t discuss this? You refuse to even think about the city we wiped from the map? Look! Look East! Have the Thousand taken your tongues?” “Enough,” his father barked. He fixed Saha with a glare, and for the first time in months, Saha stared back. No one should hide when Saha had ordered the city closed. “It’s not enough. We cannot hide. The enforcement line is silent. If this court refuses to face the truth, I’ll go somewhere else. By your leave, Father.” Saha didn’t say anything else. He didn’t wait for permission. He turned to leave. “Saha…” his father raised a hand, a flicker in the corner of Saha’s eye. He’d made Jinnai wait for this. “Report! A courier from the east.” A guard dashed into the courtroom. Her eyes wide, breath laboured, and puffs of steam escaping her lips. She must have run across the palace. “What happened?” Saha returned to his father’s side and looked down at the guard. There was a lingering otherness clinging to her coat. “I…Your Highness, it would be better for you to meet the courier.” The guard refused to look at him. No. She refused to look at anyone. Saha’s breath caught. What had happened? “Bring the courier in.” His father ordered, the throne creaking under his pale knuckles. They didn’t have to wait long, but it was enough for a choking pressure to fill the court. The courtiers still refused to look east. Refused to even look at the door. The courier stumbled through the door and staggered to a halt. A young woman, flowing hair covering her face and a sword strapped tight to her waist. The sword was strange, not standard issue. It carried a hint of magic. The courier’s hands jerked up in salute. Almost as if she’d forgotten how to use her body. Saha summoned magic to his eyes and rubbed them when he saw the warping swirling around the woman. “Report,” his father barked, hand on the hilt of his sword. Other courtiers were also reaching for weapons. This woman was…filling the room. “A transcendent,” the courier collapsed to her knees, pale face twitching and eyes rolling. Saha raised a hand, and threads of magic wove around her, sealing the woman in place and digging into her body. No fever, no red of Firerash. “The plague is dead.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Dead. Dead. Dead. The plague is dead! A transcendent. General Nazran.” Her voice cracked with each phrase, and something swelled inside her. Saha leaned forward. She was there, but not there. No. Something was with her. She’d carried something here, something from the East. That warping wasn’t hers; it was coming through her. “Step back!” the king shouted, his blade out and streams of force descending on the courier. “It was glorious. Magnificent. A transcendent is born! His weapon. His blade. His sword!” She was almost screaming. His father’s strikes dissolved around the courier. She stood, eyes carrying something, a presence Saha couldn’t read, couldn’t understand. The whistling of a thousand dead duels and the blood of innumerable innocents filled the court. The death of something that should not have life tore at the very fabric of what should be. She looked to the East; wherever her gaze passed, courtiers shielded their eyes, swordsmen drew their blades, and mages summoned wards. Saha couldn’t look at her; his eyes felt like they would be— “Cut.” He whispered. She turned to him. Eyes ablaze. He could see now. A sword hung in her right eye. A rift in her left. “In the Holy One’s name. The plague is dead!” She raised her hands and collapsed. Shivering on the cold floor. No one dared to approach. 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 (https://mosessukumaran.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

13. 

    6 Jun 2026

    Transcendent - Chapter 0: Cut

    To transgress the enforcement line cost wind its speed, men their blood, and a swordsman thirteen steps. Nazran sliced across the eastern plains, each step shorter than necessary, hood raised on his cloak to keep the weather away. Winter refused to leave this city, misting his breath and biting his exposed ears. Even his holdings were too cold this year. Five miles from the encampment, human presence cut off—empty fields with unharvested produce, fallow waystations, and the occasional makeshift guard post marking every half mile on the main highway. Troops shuffled along the line, swaddled against the ill wind, trudging with wilting banners, eyes darting for movement from the city. A young standard-bearer coughed. The platoon flowed around her, measuring ten steps for every breathless burst. Masks, stylized crows of crimson and burnt sandalwood were raised, warding against the air, desperation in their calls for a medic. Or a priest. “Hold! I said hold, you fools!” Nazran barged through the outer circle, three steps, then turn, one hand on hilt, sensing glyph pressed against his right eye. Azure, hints of yellow, spots of black near her stomach. Choleric—possibly mild dysentery but not Firerash. “Nothing wrong with you, Asha. Stand straight. All of you. Centurion Karthik, is this how you train your troops? If only my orders encompassed the physical.” He spat, a thick glob that punched into the fine layer of snow at Karthik’s feet. Fearing a plague was expected, but not here. Never at the enforcement line. “Commander, you’re not a healer. Our orders—” “Your orders, Centurion, are to march the line. Guard it! I am here because I understand. Not you. In the name of the Gods, you will march!” Karthik could grumble, coarse bass, metallic enough to shake the hills a mile away. Thirteen steps. Nazran drew his left foot aside half a span. The platoon backed away from him. None carried a true blade. Karthik’s neck flushed, eyes darting to the stakes punched three feet deep, ten paces across the line. They marched. Nazran watched their feet sink into snow, his own digging into ice, the satisfying crunch punching through his boots. They pushed Asha to the front, but they marched. He let cold mist shoot through his lips, hand opening and closing on the hilt. One breath closer to drawing on the troops. The sun had crawled, slipped and steadied across the horizon, smaller little sun stuttering in its wake. Time bent under enforcement. He cursed, dragging the sensing glyph down when he caught sight of the city. Crimson roared from it in waves. No blue. No black. No cure. Nazran searched for them. A tree stump here, a misshapen boulder there. Symbols to mark the distance. One mile. One mile of snow, vultures and corpses. The line was unseen. It undermined his breath, an implacable presence built by mages. Enforced by steel. He hopped onto a nearby tree, squatting on thin branches. It bowed, creaking under him. He curled toes, spread fingers, lifted an elbow, distributing weight across his body. The bough sighed. Breath carried lightness, each hum through his sore throat, bearing his load. Swordsmen valued breath, not lines. The burn of the night’s harsh drink lingered. Firerash did not belong in the throat. It entwined it. Constricting. Always tightening. Forty paces from the ground—occasionally one less when the bough swayed, Nazran stilled. Attunement to silence carried his blade. Training in steel cautioned him to watch. Execution in violence begged him to draw. Eight patrols, equidistant and rotated every hour to guard a cemetery of a million. Once gleaming walls shuddered in the light of the twin suns, guard posts empty and food carts abandoned one hundred paces from the gates. He’d ordered them to cross yesterday. To bring supplies for the residents. Some supplies. The ill wind burned his throat. Thirteen steps and he could be at the gate. Twelve and he could reach the secondary barricade where his troops could be made to approach. The rest of the army watched from the line. Enforcement was for those inside. The barricade for those outside. An army marked the line. A cut he orchestrated to remove a city from its foundation. From the kingdom. He counted the carts, as he had every quarter circle along the line. The number didn’t change. Couldn’t until tomorrow. He would order another crossing. Only he would. With slightly less food, the reduction calculated precisely by the administrators to account for expected losses, ratified by his own steward, and ignored by the rest of the staff. All the volunteers’ clothing had been burnt, their very skin seared under mage-fire and the Gods’ holy light, each of the Thousand lending their aid. The gods acted, even when kings didn’t. “Ten paces, Aarti.” Nazran called without turning back. “Stand ten paces from that tree and look. Without your glyph for once, mage.” “Are you asking me for guilt, swordsman?” A lilt of the emerald hills, masculine and proud. “You think I avoid? Defer?” “No,” he floated down, drawing deep breaths to accelerate his descent, noting the broken gate that would need mana sweeps in the morning. “I’m asking you to look and see without the Gods’ assistance. I’ve had enough of plague.” She chuckled, all smoke and sinew. So familiar, yet long past the bright laughter he recalled from the academy. Once a teacher, now—now a peer. “If you had enough, why don’t you turn away, Naz?” “It will take another ten minutes for a patrol to arrive here.” “Only you can watch the line? Only you fear the thirteen steps? You, the Silent One?” He reached for Indrani. Paused. Wiped drifting snow from his brow. She laughed louder, the heat from her gaze locked on his sword. He turned, twenty degrees clockwise, enough for Indrani to settle. The blade demanded silence. Isolation. “Let them try to cross then.” She reached out for him, hands brushing the wind aside, fingertips arcing for his shoulder. He swayed away, eyes locking with her amber stars. Those eyes devoured. “You fear me, Naz? Where are the others? Why are you here every day?” The others huddled in their tents. Shamed, but meritocracy conveniently forgotten without a battle to plan. This was a battle. Of bodies and the line. She watched his face and nodded. “So you know. Sidelined and praised.” She rubbed her hands together—for warmth—to make a point as she had during every lecture. Those gloved fingertips were steeped in mana at every moment of the day. Arcane enchantments and prayers, even Aarti herself may have forgotten. Nazran took a sharp breath, letting the world settle on him for a moment. For clarity. Beyond the mortal threshold touch carried consequence. He could not fear her. Fear demanded thought. Around a dying city, thought was the enemy. “No, mage. I don’t fear you.” He cursed her distance. From the line, the enforcement, the carrion scent of battlefields carried from homes. Aarti came to his side, observing the city. Without mana. “Did you ever visit?” “Before? Too far from my holdings.” Dragged in the name of the King for this work. He couldn’t afford the cost to avoid deployment. It had been an auction, spent with spies, court dances and the lives of assassins. Border lords like Nazran could not play. Could not afford to play. “I don’t know anyone,” she fingered the book. “Inside.” “Me neither.” Nazran gauged the distance once more. Thirteen steps. Thirteen blinks of an eye and he could be at the gate. Clouds were forming. Twisted striations so different from his memory. Redder than necessary. Brighter. “My son visited. With his family. Last year. Same season, before the crimson blooms. He brought a dozen to plant in my garden.” She reached for a small notebook hung from a silver chain around her shoulder. “I kept one pressed over the summer.” The ground shook underneath, not enough to unbalance them, but a reminder of their proximity to the Ring of Fire. The general had once lamented how beautiful the sky appeared in the glow of ember ash. In the frigid tendrils clawing their way down the northern reaches, no ember could glow, and swordsmen like Nazran had to bow. Or huddle. “I would have liked to see them,” he conceded. “Not really worth it.” “I think you’re lying.” Her lips drew a tight arc, a dimple on her left cheek he’d never noticed before. Nazran hopped back to the tree. Taking deep strides, spiked boots digging into bark as he made his way higher. Aarti settled on a nearby rock. The sun shifted by three degrees, little sun by four, and the wind turned away from him. The South Gate trembled. One mile, but he could sense it. Flares of magic exploded from the East and West, indigo bursts of flame and lightning. “At least fifty from the East, a hundred from the West. Already out of the gates.” Aarti was up, fingers forming loose circles, peering through to catch the signal flares. She raised her hands and waited. The South Gate dissolved. A familiar touch. From the capital. Thirty-seven cuts delivered in a heartbeat, the energy wave carrying debris into the wind, shadows carried away in cold dust. He couldn’t see her well. Only blurred shadows. Nazran closed his eyes. The sword would be angled thirty degrees from her hip, blade-edge perpendicular to her form, leading with left foot and a deep breath to gather strength. He’d been under that edge twice in the academy. Aarti’s peer. An instructor. His instructor. Urmi took one step through the yawning opening, blade out and held at her side. One step to reach the barricade. Nazran equipped the sensing glyph. Boiling crimson, recorded only once—in an empire lost to dust and Firerash. Large numbers of people were moving inside a plague city. Aarti’s hands wavered. “Call it!” Nazran hissed. “It’s—” “I know who it is. Call it out.” Urmi took another step, and a ragged group of people raced after her. Indigo flames dripped from Aarti’s fingers, coiling for a moment before racing to the sky, fighting with the little sun for prominence. Two green streaks of lightning followed. Warning of a master swordswoman. Urmi’s third step twisted, drawn towards them. Azure lances tore from guard towers two miles back, powered by three mages each, arcing down on Urmi. Her blade flicked, an effortless horizontal arc denying magic ten feet deep. Snow bursts. Flowering out from her blade. She cut down with her fourth step, dragging the sky from the arc’s apex—tearing into the distance. Aarti cursed, and Nazran resisted the urge to turn. One tower down. He breathed in deep and shot to the ground in clouds of loose ice and torn earth. Aarti pushed mana forward, the very air humming in violence and ecstasy. Urmi’s head turned. An inch. Away from Nazran. Exactly as she had taught. Her fifth step bore down on Aarti, indiscriminate pressure a small mercy as the magic collapsed with a muffled scream from Aarti. Nazran’s blood raged, senses narrowing from inches to fractions. Aarti’s bones shattered in his hearing, the wind from her passage moaning in desperation, body drawing a hobbled crescent. A master mage’s preparation was violence. Swordsmen breathed it. He crossed the line, Indrani screaming from its sheath in standard form—three deft cuts to invalidate the wind and constrain his path. The crystal blade impressed itself upon its surroundings. On his enemy’s eyes. Urmi sheathed her blade. Stepped. The sky darkened. Space compressed in her wake, drawing the escapees into her shadow. Nazran breathed out, wind roaring at his teacher. The snowfield died, deep furrows of elemental silence to guide their path. “The wind is my path.” Urmi intoned, fist tight around the hilt of her sword. Indra, the twin to his own blade, first-born from the heart of a star. A void spun out from her, parting the clouds and smashing the earth. “Silence. Eternal Silence.” Nazran replied, Indrani howled in the presence of its brother. It longed for a victory. Nazran breathed in, disrupting Urmi’s void in a cascade of broken ice. “Raise the banners.” She cried. Nazran saw the pink hairclip he’d gifted shatter. His throat tightened. Arms sank under the weight, threatening to push him back, Indrani dipping five degrees. “Order. Six strikes.” He was forced to strike first, Indrani drawing the hexagon he was most familiar with. Urmi deflected the waves of the first two, dodged through three, and caught his sword on the side of her blade. Her breathing was ragged. She had green eyes. Overwhelming eyes. Nazran breathed out. Her blade tilted. “Family. In the name of family.” Her sword arced twice, first pushed aside by his breath, second digging into his leg. They stepped away from the city, the enforcement line silent and heavy at his back. They twisted blades, disconnecting. One half step each, right against left. His advance. Her withdrawal. “Order,” his voice cracked. Once, in his last year at the academy, he had fought her. To a standstill. A master never weakened. He strained against the pressure, the legacy, the violence of his teacher. She had no crimson. But it followed in her wake. Ten years ago—standstill. “Order demands sacrifice.” He breathed in and lashed out. One strike. Left to right. Into the path of her retreat. She staggered. Blood pooled from her side. A small cut. His breath ended her. It passed through their battle, and extinguished all life in one step. Stillness was never sweet. Silence was something he’d struggled to avoid. Nazran had read the lists. He wasn’t supposed to know anyone in the city. Each death flowed back to sit in him. Just below the throat. Just above the heart. He breathed out. Short of thirteen steps. Indrani blessed those it cut. Urmi’s eyes had crystallized. Azure and green and amber at the same time. The blood had evaporated, and her clothes were pristine. The others were grey, colour drawn out by his breath. “There’s another swordsman. Two mages. From the East.” Aarti hobbled closer and stopped just outside the lingering boundary of his last strike. Her arm was encased in mana—a temporary splint. A city of a million. Two swordsmen. Nazran crouched and turned over a body. It had fallen face down, sword in one hand, and a fierce anger marking his death. The man had always demanded a warrior’s death against the kingdom’s enemies. The king had awarded him a medal, and a fiefdom. The man’s sword had shattered, unnamed blade twisted in the wake of their passing. His other hand was tightly intertwined with a small boy’s. “He used to call me Uncle Naz.” Nazran said. Aarti dropped her gaze, searching the bodies, each recognition raising a new struggle on her face. “They shouldn’t have been here. Urmi knew better.” “The master thought she knew better. But her family was life.” He lifted Indra. It felt light. Hollow. “They need us in the East.” Aarti insisted. “They may not be masters—” “Firerash is terrible.” Nazran cut her off. Each of the bodies still carried a crimson spark that reached for him and died. “The quarantine has a purpose.” She hissed. “I hated practicing sword forms.” Nazran squatted beside the boy. “He didn’t. Every day I would ask about making cuts. Butchers, cooks, swordsmen. We all cut. Surgeons cut.” “We have to go.” Aarti’s urgency meant little. Her voice sounded farther away. The city’s crimson was swelling, roiling towards the gate. “They’ll be out soon.” Nazran stood. He brushed the dust from his leggings and adjusted his violet coat. “The army will deal with them. You have to face the other swordsman.” “I don’t have to do anything.” Nazran growled. “Surgeons also cut.” He stepped once, widening the gap between them. He took another and arrived at the barricade. Fragments of the gate were scattered around, some still aflame. The crimson reached out. To him. He breathed in and energy surged. When his foot left the ground—he froze. “The first coda: Everything can be cut.” The step was short. Only half the distance to the gate. Indrani was heavy, sobbing with his every breath. Another step to cover half of the remaining distance. Ice froze his veins, tearing the weight from his throat. Urmi wasn’t supposed to be here. Indrani was back in his hand as the first heads broke out of the darkness, tearing through the gate in a frenzied dash. “Naz, calm down!” Aarti called, but her voice was almost drowned by the stifling wind. Half a step. The shortest step. The gate was closer. The clouds fled, and the crimson hesitated. He reached out to touch it. To know it. It was just a plague. The suns called to him. He felt them as he felt Aarti. Equals. The wind stilled. The city wall cracked. Nazran slowed. His breath—shallow. A thousand thoughts, fleeting moments of the blade amongst dancing flowers, twisted between battles across cities and sparring amongst the trees at home. Urmi’s eyes, so green and bright. Now gone. Because of the plague. His sight melted the sensing glyph. Indrani, the sojourn blade keened. It fell from his grasp. One hand, voiding the sky. Crimson alone would die. Cut. 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 (https://mosessukumaran.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)