Snakes in the Garden

For nearly a century, Itza trained in the secluded hilltop fortress of the Atoye. Every day was spent following the same rote routine: waking up before the crack of dawn, pushing her body and mind to the limit, eating her meager share of tasteless rations, doing chores and keeping tidy, all before returning to her cot and waiting until her body entered trance out of pure exhaustion. Ixapan wasn't built for luxury. In truth, it wasn't built for living either. Almost a thousand years prior, Ixapan was made to endure a siege by religious reformers from neighboring city-states. Nestled into the hills above a small village, the castle is made of a series of winding passages, steep cliff-like walls, and soaring towers linked by narrow bridges. It had been repurposed as a vault under a particularly paranoid diarchy and the Atoye had used it as the perfect training grounds for their impressionable young devotees ever since. The Atoye don’t believe in anything coming easy and only promoted those with the utmost physical and mental capabilities. This meant that each trainee was given near constant examinations to see how well they could overcome adversity, maintain secrecy, and stay loyal to the Nosticov clan. Outright brutality was discouraged, but trainees were often pitched in rivalry with each other and fights weren’t uncommon. If you became too weak to continue or were otherwise unfit, it was seen as your cohort doing the trainers job for them. Itza wasn’t thrilled by the idea of being her family’s silent protector but being relegated to eternal broom-sweep for some forgotten Nosticov estate was an even worse fate. No, Itza was destined for greatness, she knew it.

In the aftermath of their naming ceremony, Ahtziri found themselves back in the same place they spent their youth. With such a scene and without their twin, Ahtziri was a lost cause. Dead weight for the royal family to keep around in case Aakna and Xmucane encountered an unfortunate demise. Babajide and their spies worked magic and soon the whole affair was kept behind sealed lips. What was worse, is that Ahtziri was still pampered. They still ate fresh food transported by ice-cart up the hill, they could watch the dragon dancers if they’d like, or sip cool lemonade in a private veranda in the palace’s secluded eastern wing. Ahtziri found this more infuriating than anything else. They knew their sister was out there, suffering at the hands of some sycophant or another, yet that could not stop them from indulging. Z hated lots of things about their life but they hated their cowardice most of all and filled that hate with the luxuries they hated themself for consuming.

"Strength in secrecy," the Atoye motto. It was reiterated time and time again in lectures and in loyalty reviews. The acolytes were instructed to keep to themselves and treat information as a luxury to never be given freely. On a particularly unpleasant afternoon, Itza was made to sweep the far tower but was unfamiliar with the layout of the rooms. When she asked where the nearest restroom was for her to excuse herself, the fellow acolytes and even the taskmaster refused to answer plainly. While basic information seemed hard to grasp, gossip flowed like wine and soon the whole fortress knew about the would-be princess. She would have owned it, maybe she could have swung the group of violent adolescents into subservience, but she wasn’t that kind of woman yet. For now, she’d rather hide the target on her back than wear anything with pride. Solitude was hard on the young elf. She had never felt alone before and even though she was now one of many bodies wordlessly passing through the colonnades and cramped spiraling staircases of Ixapan, she felt far more isolated here. Itza tried to reignite the joys of her youth, exploring and making trouble. Quickly, she found the world less forgiving of her eccentricities without her noble privileges and even her attempts at exploration were nipped in the bud. Secrecy was sacred and knowledge was not given freely here, so Atoye guards were obligated to dole out severe punishments for being caught in restricted spaces. Silence was the only companion Z was allowed to keep while at Ixapan.

The halls of their childhood seemed bigger now. Ahtziri may have stood taller but their demeanor shrunk in the absence of their sister. Aapo and Babajide had simply forgone their youngest child so it was Aakna and Xmucane who came to Ahtziri in those rare moments. Ahtziri found things out about themselves when they were alone with people. They were loud and brash and often quite uncouth. To keep their tongue hidden felt like keeping boiling lead in their mouth and they had taken to the nasty habit of blurting out whatever was on their mind at a given time. Aakna, the eldest and most responsible sibling, tried to get Ahtziri to pursue a practical scholarship and took the young elf to meet with the family archivist. There was honor in recording the harrowing events of their forebears, the Nosticov family line had inherited all the honor of ancient elves and Aakna believed their bookish sibling would perfectly capture the exploits of distant and deceased relatives. Ahtziri felt smaller in the shadow of a mountain of parchment dedicated to the great Nosticov family. Xmucane took a different approach. Smooth like carved jade and warm like the summer sun, Xmucane could convince anyone of anything and Ahtziri, despite their pig-headed insistence to stay in the castle and rot, was lured out to the Academy of Seven Serpents. Ahtziri had felt like they lost their spark for history and maybe they had, but Xmucane reminded them that a dying flame is still worth tending to. They enrolled soon after, excited at how small the world around them seemed.

With knowledge of her stunt atop the Pyramid of Ioun spreading like wildfire through the cohort, Z wasn’t particularly well-liked. Not helped by the enforced stillness of the sanctum, her stubborn pride and tendency to pick fights gained her few allies and fewer friends. That is, aside from Pakal Kuchar. Pakal was tall and well-built with blue skin tanned to indigo from their labor in the Selasi sun. A noble like Itza, they were disowned by a petty aristocratic family for proposing to a sea elf from Myth'Alora. Almost half a century her senior, Pakal seemed wiser and more settled in the life of the Atoye and took pity on the scrappy little thing from the palace's walls. Z, unfortunately, had very few practical skills and would have found herself at the mercy of the crueler Atoye monks if not for Pakal's advice and assistance. In turn, Z's brashness and growing skill in combat let her repay the favor as Pakal found themself the target of some of the more bigoted residents of the fortress. In a lot of ways, Pakal was like how Itza remembered Ahtziri; more of a lover than a fighter, kind and level headed, a good balance to Z’s foolhardy recklessness. They even had similar interests in the ancient past and talking Itza’s ear off about some boring tidbit or another. However, Itza never felt that same level of connection with Pakal. In the long hours between curfew and her body forcing herself into trance, she felt genuinely, deeply, and completely empty, as if a part of her was gone forever. If there was one man who seemed to understand her, it was Grand Master Cocomatz Andrasko himself. During her time at Ixapan, the sensei was the imposing but lithe and somewhat petite moon elf who had served her family when her parents were young. He was by no means a kind teacher and perhaps was even tougher on Z than his other pupils. Nonetheless, he saw something in Itza and parted the veil of quiet secrecy with the young elf enough that Itza found herself modeling actions after him. Finding drive to achieve the prestige Cocomatz had acquired.

Ahtziri grew a reputation at the Academy. The noble princeling upstaged by their sister became known for arguments with their teachers and showing off their intellect to any who would listen. Without Itza, Ahtziri felt like a pufferfish in a room of piranhas and constantly had to blow hot air around themself to keep from being eaten. It’s not a surprise that this didn’t grant them many good fellows but, enshrined by the Nosticov name, they made few true enemies. Elven colleges are not quick processes and many years are usually spent preparing a student with basic knowledge of arithmetic, geography, astronomy, religion, and history before a student is expected to pursue a specific line of inquiry. The Nosticovs had joined with other Selasi nobles to foster these houses of learning and the Academy was meant to be the continent’s capstone. A massive library was constructed to house new and old learning alike and the university's campus stretched into the glimmering new city on the western bank of the Vtralus. Of course, this was many years ago, when the river was the heart of the continent. Now universities in Myth’alora and Ylsinore attract more aspiring Selasi scholars and the scholars of the Spire have begun to poach greater minds from Selas’ shores. Ahtziri, a big fish in a rapidly shrinking pond, was seen for the opportunity they were by wise faculty at the Academy. A doctor of history overheard Ahtziri arguing with a librarian over the biases found in old Nosticov texts and introduced herself as Dr. Osol Bactuun. Bactuun told Ahtziri that they could walk away from the Academy with a single, primary level degree and waste their talents in some recording room for some noble family, or they could do “real history,” make an impact on their terms, and walk out in a century or so to do whatever they so pleased on the other side. Ahtziri didn’t feel like a dreamer without Itza there, but a century away from their family was simply too good of an opportunity to miss.

Both twins began to live for the scant few days they could manage from their rigorous training. Every month or so Itza would charter an oarsman to take his canoe from Ixapan’s rural village to where the river met the Vtralus. Ahtziri would find a cart taking farmers out to the southern valley from the old town’s square and pay a handful of gold to transport them without question. Itza would secret away little pieces of the old fortress and Ahtziri would smuggle hearty drink and good cheese and bread. They would meet on a hilltop overlooking the valley to the south amongst overgrown ruins of a monastery. Distinctive red-brick nestled between thick, tall grasses and strangling vines usually only hosted wild animals and penitent travelers, but once a month it became a raucous space of reunion. It was awkward at first, as reunions tend to be, a chance meeting winding the twins back into each other's lives. Soon, it became like taking a long deep breath in and for the first time in a long time feeling every part of your body settle into place. The twins laughed deeply and loudly, they traipsed through crumbling cloisters, and argued as siblings do. Letters were strictly banned from entering or leaving the Atoye’s compound so the base of an old sweetgum tree became their amphitheatre. Ahtziri would ramble about their seemingly endless path to their degrees or their ever evolving universal theories while Itza would carve funny shapes into the roots. Itza would blabber about some scrap she avoided or some new trick she was able to go unpunished for and Ahtziri would draw her like a knight of yore. Together like this, Itza felt whole, brave enough to talk unhindered. Ahtziri felt safe, secure enough to quiet down into gentle smiles and platitudes. Often, in later moments in the twins' lives they looked back and wondered how they could ever feel so again.

And so their lives went. Day after day, month after month, year after year. The between grew less hard to bear. Itza grew to enjoy learning how to fight and enjoyed winning fights even more. The winding secret corridors soon became second nature to her and no monk could stop her and Pakal from enacting some well-deserved mischief on Cocomatz or another stuck-up scion of the order. Ahtziri fell deeply in love with the act of study and fieldwork. Spending months at a time in the old parts of the kingdom, dredging a “truer history” and learning the ropes from Dr. Bactuun, Ahtziri began to feel at home covered in mud and sharing poorly brewed ales with the workman and fellow scholars. Both twins also began to engage in extracurricular activities that, on more than one occasion, threatened more than their social standing. Itza and Pakal first snuck out together in the dead of night, drinking in local taverns under pseudonyms. Then they started catching nightly caravans into the seedier parts of the city, where the marshy banks of the Vtralus drowned the streets in muck. Ahtziri found themselves in the Scales District on more than one occasion themselves. Consumption turned to debauchery and Ahtziri seemed to try to make themselves more and more the public fool. One cold morning the first shift of dockworkers found the boisterous academic collapsed over a broken crate of mudcrabs having seemingly fallen from the warehouse rooftop above them. Upon questioning by an increasingly exasperated Aakna, Ahtziri said they had taken a bet from an aarakocra and they couldn’t let the smarmy bastard win the last of their dignity. Itza and Pakal’s misadventures seemingly rarely collided with their twins as they spent their time testing out Atoye discipline on chiche-drunk sailors. When caught, they would explain that they had simply proven the defenses of Ixapan were too weak or negligent to contain them and the sailors too weak or ignorant to stop them. They’d still spend the next couple of days locked in their rooms.

Despite the endless discipline, suffocating, deprivating environment, and near-constant attempt to break her spirit, Itza endured. More than that, Cocomatz had somehow not kicked her out despite almost constant rule-breaking. After a century of hard work, it was clear to everyone that Itza Nosticov had risen to be a top contender in her cohort’s program and was likely going to be given top assignment in the palace of her birth. Ahtziri’s efforts were not so fruitful and their century felt wasted. Dr. Bactuun was close to retirement and they had lost their passion for learning. It all felt…stagnating. The same old histories, no matter how novel their medium, are told again and again and again. Of all the things in their life, aside from the sinful delight of indulgence, the light at the end of the tunnel was Itza’s return to the capital in permanence. They had even worked with their siblings to negotiate an easier sentence for her, a position in the family court befitting a woman of her stature. In their last meeting at the old red monastery, Ahtziri was beaming with relief and expounded at length about the accommodations they had arranged for her in a quaint portion of the old city. They talked about weekend teas, of finally meeting this handsome Pakal fellow, and quiet contendness in each other’s perpetual company.

“I’m not going. I can’t.” The words fell out of Itza’s mouth like an anvil and struck Ahtziri so violently as to make them think the anvil had collided directly with their cranium. There was silence and then all at once the dam broke and more words came falling out of her mouth. Itza explained her panic and fear at the thought of actually spending her life in service to the people who stripped her of everything. She talked about how much they missed Z, how much their family has kept them apart. She wove kind platitudes in to sooth her heart-broken other half, but each additional syllable was another inch of water drowning poor Ahtziri underneath. Internally gasping for air, Ahtziri looked into the eyes of their twin and saw that fear again, the fear of the scorned child. And for the first time in their shared 114 years of life, Ahtziri sided with their parents.

Itza recoiled. The coarse grass irritating the skin on her thighs, rocks poked into her palms like daggers, the sun’s heat made her feel like she was melting. Ahtziri’s face was warm and kindly and yet they repeated those heinous words. ”The Atoye would be good for you…Let you keep your independence…Maybe being closer to chuch and qajaw could help settle you down a bit…Wouldn’t it be nice to finally pass through adolescence instead of moving through it?” Ahtziri’s eyes pleaded with Itza to hear the reason, the fear, the desperation in those words. Ahtziri begged silently for their twin to understand they needed her but their true words were sucked into the deep well of cowardice filled by a century of embarrassment and shame. Itza didn’t hear any of that, all she heard was the words Ahtziri said. All Ahtziri heard as Itza stormed off was cursing, cursing them for their cowardice, their easy-sentencing, their traitorousness. Ahtziri didn’t see Itza leave behind the veil of tears covering their eyes, but they knew when she left because her curses could no longer be heard echoing through the now exceedingly large and empty ruins.

Itza didn’t go back to the Atoye that night. Instead, she traveled into town, cursing Ahtziri all the way, until she reached the E’ Chi Ixk’laq, an unpleasant watering hole in the drier portions of the Scales District. She knew Ibrahim the barman well and while she owed him more than a couple broken chairs, she knew he was good to keep her for a few hours. Just long enough for her to formulate a plan. It was in that tavern, not more than ten paces from the oldest temple in the city, that Itza realized she had a play that would grant her freedom and fuck over the good-for-nothings burdening her blood-relation. Drunk, exhausted, and very much angry, Itza snuck back into Ixapan’s walls in the dead of night. Built as a bulwark against siege, she always found it harder to sneak in than out. Itza, much more well-acquainted with the layout of the fortress than the comparatively new recruits stuck on the skeleton shift, was able to slip past the rest of the Atoye and right into the secret vault the castle was built around. You see, while the paranoid fears of the Nosticov’s original vault being insufficient had died down and much of the family's gold had been transported back to the capital, a few notable pieces of expensive paraphernalia remained. Upon entering the vault, Itza was greeted with glittering jewels, expensive costuming, relics from bygone ages, and immaculate portraiture of her family's less presentable members. Being intoxicated as she was, she wasn’t quite as stealthy once she got in as she was slipping by the guards. A couple smashed vases, torn paintings, and an unsuccessful attempt to shove a cloth tapestry down her shirt later, Itza was caught red-handed and quickly developing a hangover.

She was taken and placed in a holding cell beneath the fortress. Half submerged, the prison chamber was rancid with the stink of decay and for three days she was left without food or water. Trances came infrequently and increasingly she felt herself simply recede into blackness. On day three, she truly began to fear death. Mercifully, she was brought before Cocomatz one final time. The stoic elf looked at her with beleaguered eyes, disappointment drowning out any color within. Cocomatz read as Itza Nosticov would be sentenced by royal decree to 60 years of hard labor in the Tz’Apilik Gulag. She’d heard of Tz’Apilik, built at the edges of the polities' borders, the laborers there died in droves at the hands of brutal working conditions or spreading disease. She wasn’t going to make it 60 years. In effect, she had been sentenced to death. If it was any conciliation, Cocomatz didn’t look particularly thrilled at the results of the sentencing.

Itza was returned to her room. Pakal waited patiently for her return and wished her well before leaving her as if a century of friendship meant nothing. Itza was rotten meat and she knew it. Sitting alone in a room she would have begged to have been emptied decades prior, she felt that cord finally break and she drifted into the void, listless. Everything had gone wrong. Her foolish plan had gotten her parents to sentence her to the most direct form of death they could manage, her teachers hadn’t protected her, her friends had forgotten her, and most of all, the one person whom she loved and who loved her back in return, believed she wasn’t mature enough to live her own life. Maybe Ahtziri was right, maybe this was another foolish rebellion ruining a good thing for no reason. She should have stayed the course, lived her life out as a joyless guard to her family’s legacy watching them enjoy the life that she was entitled to. No. No! Itza Nosticov isn’t going to just accept this, she hasn’t accepted any of the shit her dipfuck parents have thrown at her before - why start now? Filled with glorious purpose, Itza grabbed her staff, her darts, and enough coins for passage. She was done with this city, this jungle, this family. All of it could rot, she was going to do what she set out to all those years ago. After removing the carriage to Tz’Apilik of its driver and sneaking into Cha’Haak one final time, she found a barge heading to Myth’Alora that was willing to transport her through customs without a second thought.

In the mists of predawn, the city looked still. Bridges teaming with market stalls, windows expelling sounds of revelry, hilltops glittering with firelight - all were silent. Itza looked to the lifeless palace on the hill, the first beams of pale gold hitting its spire-peaks. She spat over the prow of the barge and turned away. If she was going to be a queen - she’d be a pirate queen. Still in a stupor from a weekend-long bender, Ahtziri looked over the river like their sister used to do and in the cool morning air, they felt the world get ten-times bigger and a hole in their heart sink ten-times deeper.

List of Key Terms & Characters

Aakna - eldest Nosticov child, heir apparent, head of the guard
Aapo - Itza and Ahtziri's chuch, diarch of Cha'haak
Academy of Seven Serpents - premeire Selasi college
Atoye - monastic order of secret police trained to enforce the Nosticov family's will
Ahtziri - older of the Nosticov twins
Babajide - Itza and Ahtziri's qajaw, diarch of Cha'haak
Cha'Haak - riverine city of elder grandeur where our story is set
Chuch - gender-neutral term for parent who married into the family
Cocomatz - sensei of the Atoye, Z's instructor
Itza - younger of the Nosticov twins
Ixapan - fortress of the Atoye and vault for the Nosticovs
Myth'Alora - rival Selasi city on the coast
Pakal - Z's schoolhood friend
Tz'Apilik - infamous prison camp for the city of Cha'haak
Vtralus - major river in Selas, center of Cha'haak
Ylsinore - rival Selasi city on the coast