This is back to the general characters of chapter one so it'd probably be best if ya read that first.

1.3

Interview Taken on 18/06/1971

Zeezor on his Brother

Morning, Lieutenant. Any news on my brother? No? How about the other business? No, no, doesn’t matter, I was just checking. Quite optimistic of me, I suppose. What is this about, then? You want to know about… yeah, all right, fine. No, that’s cool, anything to help along Team Arcadian. Although, before I say anything, could you just tell me all that stuff about everything I tell you being totally confidential? I don’t want to say anything about my family that’ll get out… thanks.

I can still remember the day my mother died.

I know that’s not exactly what you asked, but I think it’s very important, so be kind of patient, would you?

It was thirteen years ago. More or less. I was only seventeen. Mum had been ill for years, womb cancer; she was diagnosed just after Sothna was born. We thought it had gone – all the symptoms had disappeared for about a year – but then this one day she felt sick, dad and I took her to the hospital, and it had come back and – there was nothing we could do. Dad wanted me to break the news to some of the others, felt like he wouldn’t be able to handle talking about it six times. I agreed to tell Sîgar, Hemme and Kahtnipp. Sîgar took it quite well, and I suppose Hemme took it as well as a ten-year-old could. As for Kahtnipp – I was hoping I could dumb it down, break it to him gently, whatever you can do for a six-year-old. I didn’t know about his power, then. I just opened the door, and before I could say anything, I heard this really small voice say;

‘What does “Dead” mean?’

I shut the door in shock. I feel kind of guilty about that, but I’d like to see you tell your six-year-old brother that their mother isn’t coming back.

This only got worse over the following weeks. The whole family was staying home, so tensions and a fairly depressing atmosphere were pretty prominent. I didn’t see Kahtnipp for another month. When I did see him, it was at the funeral, and it wasn’t for long. He was bone-white, he had a weird veil on his face, and he was wearing these black contact lenses for some reason. Like I said, though, it didn’t last. About ten minutes into the ceremony he started looking around wildly. He looked straight at me with tears in his eyes and said,

‘So many voices… they don’t care about mum, half of them don’t want to be here…’

And he ran off home and locked himself in his room again.

Call me slow, but it was only about a month later, with him still in his room at this stage, that any of us realized he could read minds. See, most of us don’t actually show any signs of abilities until we’re sort of eight or so years old, which is why the hype over Sothna being powerless hadn’t started yet. Kahtnipp was an early bloomer, what can I say. Up until we figured it out, I was very worried that my brother had gone insane. Come to that, I still am.

Still, it was after mum’s funeral that the real problems started. I didn’t see him for six months – we left him food outside his permanently locked door three times a day, but only one plate of food in three ever got taken away, and even then I wasn’t entire sure it was him taking the food. The one time I ever dared to duck through the door, it was pitch dark on the other side and I was pushed heavily out with a very loud yell. He missed his seventh birthday in his little room.

Eventually he made it out of his room. He still wore the black veil and contacts he wore to mum’s funeral, managing to eat his pitifully small portions of food without taking the veil off somehow. The talkative, active six-year-old he used to be was gone – he only ever spoke to either of us if directly asked a question, and treated the servants and more or less everyone else in Cairo as if they didn’t exist.

He eventually started to go to school, but we soon learnt that he was only staying there for about half and hour a day – he just came, told the teachers exactly what they were about to teach him, and walked out again. Apparently he was spending the rest of the “school day” in a gang of teenagers. A seven-year-old in a teen gang! We talked him out of that, but even when we got him into full school days he was equally vacant. I considered asking him to go to a psychiatrist, although only when he was out of thinking range. Real good idea, huh? As a psychiatrist, what would you say the best course of action would be with a kid who knows exactly what you’re thinking?

Sometimes, though, I felt like I was the only one worrying about baby brother Kahtnipp. Maybe he sent out mind waves or something, telling everyone that he’s perfectly normal, and I didn’t get affected by them because I just ducked through them instinctively. Whatever the reason, everyone treated him completely normally. I was very wary of him, as he was very wary of me.

Up until we noticed that Sothna was powerless, of course. Cautious but easily distracted, that’s me. In my defense, I didn’t completely ignore Kahtnipp, I just kept an eye on him while I tried to keep my brothers from tearing Sothna apart. Actually, what with me enlisting part-time in the army, that was probably worse – three jobs meant a third of the effort into all three and three times as many jobs done badly, as my dad used to say. Well, a variation on that, anyway. Ok, fine, so I’m not quite sure what he said, what I’m getting at is that as stress at work increased I began to absent-mindedly join in harassing Sothna while a ten-year old Kahtnipp turned eleven and joined another gang. Come to think of it, as brothers go, I was pretty shit.

At twelve, Kahtnipp started shaving his head. At thirteen, he stopped going to school altogether. At fourteen, he talked to everyone as if he was their infinite superior. And though I didn’t actually get to know this until a couple of years later, when he was fifteen he and his “gang” killed a man.

As for age sixteen, well, that brings us back to your question. More specifically, it brings us to the infamous fourth of February, 1968. It started out quite normally – I had a day off, and so I went out hunting for the family; I decided to invite Sothna along to up his self-esteem; I went towards a Beast sighting to boost the family’s popularity.

Come to think of it, the boost-Sothna’s-self-esteem plan was about as likely to be fulfilled as some of his own optimistic daydreams. I really should have noticed when he got knocked out behind me, though. Being ignored can’t have fed his self-confidence much.

Fact was though, there wasn’t much time. Before I could get anywhere on my hunt, the words Family emergency, come quickly, Cairo city hall flashed into my mind in Kahtnipp’s handwriting, and I turned around and ran home. I did sort of wonder where Sothna was at one stage, but I figured he would be able to get back himself, more fool me. Besides, our cousin Douggtihts can tell where any person is with his mind, so we’d be able to get Sothna back, whereas a family “emergency” was unmissable.

I arrived back in Cairo about half an hour later. Actually, now I come to think of it, Sothna must have already been going completely the wrong way, otherwise I’d have found him on the walk back, so I wouldn’t have been able to find him even if I had looked. Best not to tell him that, though – he deserves something to blame me for.

So where were we? Oh yeah, Cairo. It was surprisingly quiet in the area generally surrounding the city hall, as if there was some kind of wall around it which only the high priest family could go through. Seven horse-drawn carriages stood outside the entrance, which I probably should have noticed was odd. I just figured it was my dad and uncles, they enjoy showing off.

The hall was packed, which is hardly surprising. I take it Sothna has told you just how many relatives we have? Two hundred and seven, if we’re going up to and including second cousins. Of course the family weren’t all there, but then again we weren’t the only ones either; there was our Cairo Magic School representative talking to our cat-headed cousin Daniel, great guy; there was the son of the Pharaoh; there were the High Priests of Osiris, Anubis and Thoth – they’re all the official High Priests alongside uncle Squeekee, who is the High Priest of Amun-Ra and probably the Highest High Priest in respect terms. The other gods have high priests as well, technically, but these are only really Family Titles – dad is the High Priest of Bastet, for example, with me being the Second Priest… Sorry, I’m going way off-topic here, this was meant to be about who was here. Well, you got the picture, the family and the high in status and importance. Allow me to get on with it…

About another half-hour passed in the hall before Kahtnipp eventually stood up and announced himself. At this point, there were about 200 people stuffed into the hall looking up on him. He had chosen to give his speech on a small podium suspiciously near the door, and was wearing several layers of black robes and what looked like a spiked crown on his shaved head. But of course, nobody noticed any of this. To be honest, I barely did. No, it was the little things that set me on guard.

‘Something’s wrong,’ I whispered to Sîgar, who was standing to my left.

‘What?’ he whispered back.

‘Look at his eyes. The stupid black contacts he’s always wearing, they’re bigger. They’re covering the whites of his eyes.’

Sîgar looked at Kahtnipp and looked back at me. ‘I’m sure it’s fine. He’s just trying to look impressive for whatever he’s got planned for us.’

‘And what has he got planned for us?’

Sîgar shrugged. I love my brother, but he has a bad habit of missing the point sometimes.

I suddenly noticed that Kahtnipp had started his speech.

‘…you here today because I didn’t want this to become too public. I wouldn’t want all the… inferiorities getting in our way. But I cannot keep it in any longer. I cannot live a lie.

‘For all of my life, I have had the gift of knowing what people think. I know that this may have been classed as a curse by many. But I, I have learnt to take the opportunity as it came.

‘This was not always the case. I have not always had this… freedom. When I first discovered it, all it gave me was tragedy. My mother had died, my father was not man enough to tell me so. Nobody truly cared at my mother’s funeral, naming no names. For months, the only comfort I had was the single voice which allowed me to listen by choice, and even this eventually seemed to turn against me. I would stuff my ears, anything to drown the other, private voices out, but to no avail.

‘But eventually, I saw sense. I came to realize that the other voices were… insignificant. That the only voices that truly mattered were those as… important… as I was. And using this knowledge, I could control which thought I heard. And through the knowledge, I would receive power. Power for my future and the voice which guided me.’

By now, I could tell there was something very, very wrong. I began to draw my sword defensively.

‘This voice was my spiritual father. Not the coward of a priest who won’t stay visible. The voice was that of Seth, the God of what you call “evil”. And I must serve him, with or without your consent.’

And before anyone could react in the stunned silence, he had gone through the door, with six fellow gang members following him.

Me and my cousins Pinn and Daniel were the first to react. We ran out of the door at full speed, which for Pinn was close to the speed of sound. We were too late; Kahtnipp and his gang had gone in their carriages, which I now recognized as chariots, off towards the Sahara Desert. Pinn carried on after Kahtnipp, with the amazing speed I knew from my cousin. I saw him almost catch up with the carriages before an arrow was shot from the chariot on the far left, straight through his head. I was certain he was dead. I led the charge of priests after Kahtnipp, determined to stop my brother from any more madness.

…And according to the papers I’ve read, you already know the rest. On that note, I’d like to mention that I didn’t actually punch Sothna in the face, I just sort of… hit him. Any other psychological questions you want to ask me?

Well, that’s a stupid one, isn’t it? No offence and everything, but of course I don’t feel ashamed of him. He’s saved the world – how many people can say that? Yeah, I know that we don’t know that for sure yet, but we know he’s tried, which is by far the most important thing. So no. I have nothing but pride for that particular brother. Glad I could help.