THE WAILING ROOM

Throughout the night, the screams had echoed endlessly through the mansion’s corridors. Cries of suffering so piercing they seemed to cleave the very stone. Supplications, desperate pleas to the Celestials, the Wills, to death itself, mingled with guttural imprecations shrieked in Nagan, filled with impotent rage.
Every stone oozed pain, and the walls, carpets, cold floor tiles… everything seemed tainted by this slow torture...

Confined to a basement room of Anadë manor, which the mūji and servants called the Hall of Lamentations, the Lady of the Tides remained there. Alone, self-mutilated, and in the throes of a crisis, bowed under the weight of her own affliction. A pain and torment so manifest, so striking, that a stranger might have believed she was its victim… And yet…

Those who had served her for cycles knew, or thought they knew, that suffering was neither foreign nor imposed upon her. Her long agony was jubilant. In the corridors throughout the manor, they whispered that the Lady of the Tides reveled in it, that she loved this pain. That her screams, if one listened closely, were mixed with whimpers of ecstasy, maniacal laughter, tears, and howls of acute pain.

When the Lady of the Tides embarked on one of her nights of madness, she systematically rejected all outside help. Neither the soothing songs of the Aziza sisters, nor offerings of Hibictus balm or gurgia oil from healers, nor shamanic rituals. Alone, agonizing in pleasure, stewing in her own excrement, the Sea Lord’s first wife would fall dead from exhaustion after these nightly crises, which often heralded the new Moon, and then be carried to her chamber by one of her guards once dawn broke.

— Pain, my eternal lover! she had once said, before lashing out at a young servant girl who had been sent to offer her assistance. The servant, a young Moon Elf named Yãma (Yay-ma), lost her left eye that night. It was torn out by the Lady of the Tides, who, in a malicious impulse, forced her to swallow it, before beating her bloody until the two mūji intervened and finally dragged the unfortunate girl out of the room.

Since that incident, no mūji, no servant, no one close to the Lady of the Tides ever dared to cross the threshold of the room again when she was in the throes of her nightly crises. All dreaded what they might discover there, or what, perhaps, might discover them.
The boldest trembled at the approach of the new Moon. While those most loyal to the Lady of the Tides averted their gaze or deserted the manor.

All, save one.

YA Bubakar, a Moon Elf who had lived for nearly a thousand cycles, a child of the Southern water tribe. Loyal advisor, protector, unyielding, from the Lubanga clan, who had sworn lifelong servitude to the Balake clan by becoming a mūji.

Always to the left of the Lady of the Tides when she left her manor, it was to him alone that she confided her thoughts and allowed herself to be approached in her most vulnerable moments when the Sea Lord was absent.
Once again, it was he, as the stars illuminated the ink veil of the sky, who had been summoned by the Lady of the Tides in the middle of the night. Dozens of messengers had rushed throughout the manor to inform him that the Lady of the Tides ardently wished to speak with him in the Hall of Lamentations.

Having arrived, albeit reluctantly, in the manor's basements, YA Bubakar paused for a moment. A slight apprehension in the pit of his stomach, facing the massive black wooden door behind which, he assumed, the Lady of the Tides had briefly fallen asleep, so heavy and oppressive was the silence.
Before the entrance, two mūji stood guard, spears and shields firmly in hand. Straight, frozen, stoic as usual, they wore the traditional purple and gold attire. Their obsidian cuirasses and shields were adorned with the Balake crest: a solid gold fish-man, crowned with the Three Moons.
At the sight of their captain, the two Alkeb respectfully bowed their heads.

— The Lady of the Tides awaits you, commander.

Then, with a ceremonial gesture, the two guards struck their spears against the ground simultaneously. Two sharp, metallic blows that resonated like a death knell in the empty, silent corridors. Finally, they stepped aside, allowing their commander to enter the small, empty room, partially plunged in darkness.
Inside, the silence was almost palpable. A strange calm, disturbed only by a faint moan escaping from a figure huddled against the brick wall at the back of the room.

It was the Lady of the Tides...

Ordinarily so beautiful and imperious, she sat there, covered in grime, disheveled, near a dying hearth, her gaze lost in the flames, as if searching for a memory she herself had burned.

After a brief, evocative exchange of glances with his two mūji brothers, YA Bubakar closed the door behind him and saw the Lady of the Tides' cat observing him with its sharp, ruby eyes.

— Oh yes… I know this amuses you, carrion… YA Bubakar said in a hoarse voice, casting a final haughty glance at the beast, which, impassive, defied him with its gaze.

As he passed the cat, YA Bubakar made his endokã shimmer and his gaze fell upon the hunched posture of the Lady of the Tides, sitting on the floor.

The heat in the room was stifling. Two cast-iron braziers roared at her feet, casting strange, dancing, menacing shadows on the walls. The air thickened with a acrid smell of charcoal and burnt wood, enveloping the space in a suffocating humidity… And yet… As usual, YA Bubakar saw steam escape from the Lady of the Tides' mouth with each exhalation. Her lips, chapped and bluish, indicated that she was shivering with cold… Behind her stood a large, cracked mirror with a dark frame, carved from blackened wood, adorned with Alkeb ornaments dating from the Necrotic Wars. Its engravings, so precise and timeless, betrayed a craftsmanship of such finesse… that it became unsettling.
Dozens of faces appeared in it, men, women, beasts, like so many presences frozen in time.
YA Bubakar, who knew this mirror too well, had heard dozens of stories about it.
Among them, an urban legend from the Three Moons that said, moon after moon, the mirror changed shape… and that the carved faces were those of Alkeb or animals whose souls had been captured. The Cursed Mirror of Aminatara the Veiled…
As his gaze, despite himself, brushed the dull glass surface, YA Bubakar caught sight of a shadow behind his own reflection. A black, formless mass, suspended and unanchored.
His heart pounding in his chest, he immediately turned around. A defensive gesture more than a reflex, only to meet the fixed gaze of the cat, still motionless. Then, without further insistence, he brought his attention back to the Lady of the Tides, resolved to ignore the mirror and its mischievous tricks.
Her fingers were clenched, dug into her own flesh, and her blood traced scarlet rivulets down her wrists, dripping onto the floor. The commander now stood a few paces from the Lady of the Tides. He slowly straightened his back, adopted an upright and dignified posture, then waited, as protocol required, for the Lady to make eye contact of her own free will before announcing himself.
After a moment that seemed to stretch out of time, the Lady of the Tides finally slowly raised her head in jerky movements. Her glassy eyes settled on the mūji, and for a fraction of a second, he felt she didn't recognize him. Her furrowed, suspicious features slid over him, as if he were just a distant memory or a forgotten dream.

— Möara, ZA Sauda… You sent for me? he finally said, head bowed, hand over his heart in reverence.

She watched him without answering, then, her lips trembling with cold, she articulated:

— Bu… Bu… Buba… B... Bubakar… Have you found what… what I entrusted to you…?

Her fingers dug even deeper into the flesh on the back of her hands, her nails bloody and trembling.

— No, ZA Sauda, replied the mūji gravely. Not yet. We need a little more time.

The Lady of the Tides then turned her eyes away from him. Her gaze fixed on her lyr ring set with an emerald that reflected the firelight from the two braziers just a few centimeters from where she had slumped.

— T... T... Tell me… Buba… B... B... Bubakar... do you find me m-mad?

He hesitated. For a breath, the silence between them thickened.

— No, ZA Sauda, he finally said, frowning slightly.

— The t... the truth!"
She was now staring at him, motionless, one of her eyes white, translucent, and blind, spinning in its orbit, while her other eye, the left, was imbued with her electric blue endokã, which, despite her instability, she managed to make shimmer by some unknown miracle. YA Bubakar lowered his head, then inhaled slowly, deeply, like a swimmer before diving into risky waters.

— Õ, ZA Sauda, you have changed, he said cautiously, choosing his words carefully. Since the loss of your mother… and your sister. No one could emerge unharmed from such losses. And no one should bear the blame.

A silence heavier than the palace walls fell upon them, and the Lady of the Tides now fixed her two eyes on the mūji, as if trying to read between the lines. As if trying to read his mind. Could she?

— Are you… a-a-afraid of me, B-B-Bouba… B-Bubakar?

A smile formed at the corner of the Lady of the Tides' lips. A cold, mocking smile, as the cat settled directly behind her and once again stared at YA Bubakar.

— Yes, he replied without trembling, kneeling on one knee, avoiding the gaze of both the cat and ZA Sauda.

The latter let out a small sigh of satisfaction upon hearing her guard's reply, and immediately, her posture changed.

— So be it! she said in a confident tone.

The Lady of the Tides’ fingers slowly relaxed, as if waking from a painful dream and now grounding themselves in reality. Then, with a mechanical gesture, she began to caress the emerald set in the ring she wore on her index finger. Her finger traced circles on the smooth surface of the jewel, as if she were trying to appease a sleeping beast within it.

The stone pulsed.

Not like an inert object. But like a living thing. A Will, attuned to the rhythm of ZA Sauda Balake's heart.
YA Bubakar saw it. He also saw what others would not have dared to look at directly: the defilement, the bruises that marbled the Lady of the Tides' semi-naked body. Her veins, greenish, thick, and tortuous, rose beneath her skin like poisoned lianas.

They climbed from her wrist to her neck, then to her face, coiling around her right eye.

That eye, veiled, pale, seemed dead at first glance. An empty shell, devoid of iris or pupil. Many, even among the most learned in the Citadel, thought it was blind.

But YA Bubakar knew...
That eye saw... Too much. Far more than light and shadow.

It was a gift, or a curse, that the Lady of the Tides bore like a burden.
Perpetual visions of the invisible world, that of spirits, Wills, and maxetani. She saw those who were no longer, and those who had never been.
Normally, she managed, not without difficulty, to close this window between the two worlds.

But when the stone awakened, at new Moons.
When evil, lodged in the heart of the emerald, decided to reassert its grip, sometimes for no apparent reason, and to torture her, both physically and morally, the Lady of the Tides, powerless to escape it, could only endure.
Nothing could then stem the tide...

Then, the Interworld veil tore. Then, visions surged.

And with them, screams, burns, cold...
Voices, too...
All of this, ZA Sauda experienced, and she experienced it alone.

For what the eye saw, no one else could see.
What it screamed, only her ears could hear.

And that, YA Bubakar thought with silent sadness, was perhaps worse than madness.

The commander, seeing the Lady of the Tides stumble as she struggled to her feet, approached her to offer his support.

— By the Eternals, ZA Sauda... accept my help. Do not bear this burden alone…

The Lady of the Tides then looked at him.
A biting irony, as cold as her skin, flowed in her weary voice:

— I am never alone… she hissed, turning her back to him.
She then let out a long moan of pain, one hand clutched to her skull, while the other beat the air as if to ward off shadows that only she could see.

— Find him for me, that is your mission, YA Bubakar! Find the child and bring him back to me!

Without another word, the mūji bowed, turned on his heels, and left the Hall of Lamentations to the hissing of the Lady of the Tides' cat, which would haunt him once again for many nights.

No sooner had the door closed behind him, locked by the two mūji, than the screams, cackles, and cries resumed, fiercer and more desperate than ever.

Once again, in the light of this new Moon, for ZA Sauda Balake, the night promised to be long...