————

We set everything into motion. Lilith's aunt had taught her a spell for looking into the minds of others. This was years and years ago. But still it was simple enough that she remembers it. You have to make an unbroken circle around the person. And you have to speak three truths about who they are in their soul. You have to concentrate your energy towards going within them. And then you will see what is inside their mind. To go in one's mind we had to modify the spell somewhat. The spell gets its power from speaking the truth of what someone is. For it to get more power, get all the power there is to get, we must speak all the truths of what a person is. And with the spell charged, we must focus our will on not just seeing but going within the mind of the other person. And it should work.

Amaria, a field slave who often does tasks in the house too, kindly takes up our offer of delivering the necessary herbs for the sleeping potion. We don't tell her what it's for. We talked about whether to tell her or not. We decided not to though Lilith and I are still not sure about that decision. We want to keep her safe in case anything goes wrong. Still though, she deserves to know what she agreed to.

The way she looks at us, and her tight yet mischievous smile, tells us that she has caught on to more than she was telling, though.

Katapa mixes the leaves and roots and stems and shoots together carefully, while Lilith prepares a blend of spiced lemonade that will hide the taste well. I'm not here for this but I do watch the clock for until it is time to begin. When the clock hits half past seven I smile tightly. Mischeviously.

Niamus orders his post-dinner snack of delectable treats just when he normally does. I sneak into a closet just outside his door, the meeting place we had agreed upon. Kata strengthens herself and brings the tray full of food - and of lemonade, and of poison, to the man who won't be our owner for much longer.

If we are found we are dead. But a chance to destroy the system is absolutely worth death. We would go to death with our heads held high. It's not like any of our lives are worth living anyways.

Katapa lets herself into the closet where the rest of us are. We take a minute to charge our spiritual energies. In the way that Lilith's aunt had taught her. We all hold hands and softly hum and whisper our intent, so low only we can hear.

Anderei gets a broom from the closet and pretends, just pretends, to sweep that hallway that had already been swept.

He peaks into the spacious room that the towerperson sleeps in. And he finds the man passed out on the silver and red couch.

And he calls the rest of us in.

We see the man lying there framed in silver and red and we look at each other. Lilith's eyes are decked with anger and hope and even amusement, and she gives me a smile that is equal parts tragic and victorious. Anderei's eyes are disbelieving. But they also look like the thing he's always had faith in finally happened. He looks around, at us, and his eyes are filled with a lowburning confidence. And there is the smallest trace of a smirk on his lips. Katapa looks resolute, oh so resolute. Like nothing can change her mind now. Nothing can change my mind either.

I take the key from his pocket. I turn the lock.

We are more we are more we are so much more than they think we are. And we have each other. We always have each other and we always will.

We smirk. We hold hands. And we stand there, hand in hand, in a circle above our passed-out so-called owner who is at our mercy now.

———

Here we are. At the moment of truth. In a room which feels like a trap, in a mansion that feels like a trap, in a circle with people who give us the freedom and the frigid energy of cold rushing rivers. Of green growing plants.

We stand in a circle. Hands clenched tightly, lips set resolutely, gazing at each other in disbelief, in terror, in grief, in hope, and in overwhelming anger.

We shut our eyes tight, feeling nothing but our hands together. We didn't think this part of the plan through to be honest. But that is okay. Because we know what we have to do.

We have to get to the core of Niamus's heart. The core of his beliefs, of his thoughts, of his dreams. We have to get into his religion. We have to get into his very towerish soul. And from his belief, his worship, we can find the Fates. And fight them.

We share our consciousnesses with eachother. I close my eyes and I see nothing and everything all at once. It is dark, a void. But a void that connects everything, a void that seems to be vibrating and buzzing and silently singing with the souls of every slave. It feels, it feels, it /feels/ so overwhelmingly beautiful and devastatingly miserable and so unyieldingly hopeful all at once. I am in some kind of space where the hearts of slaves can reach out and hold me. I swim through a dark void, a beautiful void of warm-cold love and each other. The ringing voices of all the slaves. The hope, the fear, the terror, the trauma, the rage. The voices of our children and their twisting sorrow among them. The voices of all children and their twisting, twisting sorrow among them. The voices of every parent and grandparent and child and sibling and friend. All of them. Glory, glory, glory to us. Glory glory glory.

We have to call him out for who we is. We want to call him who he is. We have to call him and name him in order to gain access to who he is. To gain access to what he believes. To gain access to Niamus himself.

"Bigot," Lilith says out loud. I remember the way he says our names. With a smugness beyond smugness, a disdain beyond disdain. And I feel happy to be able to call him out.

"Egotist," Katapa states. I remember how much he basks in the gilded praises of other towerpeople.

"Undeserving," Anderei says. Bold. True. I like it. I remember when Niamus and I were children together. He always seemed to get the best of the best while I got the scraps. He had rest and food and education and attention and compassion and kindness and beds and clothes and everything. While I existed in the edges of the world. I always felt like I was undererving. Undeserving of respect and equality. Even when I knew better, the sheer intimacy of how these life experiences got rubbed into you took their toll. But now I feel something break. I hate him. I hate him for what he did to me, and for what he allowed his family to do to me. To all of us.

And my senses were already flooded by the overwhelming feelings of ... so, so many feelings. But now a raging feeling of victory, of cheering, singing, laughing and screaming victory, rises up and up and up. The strange space we were in seems to shift, to tense as if in glorious anticipation. Whatever this is it is working.

"Greedy," I call. He is. He is so greedy. Food, clothes, furniture, jewelry, sports, music, entertainment, women, horses, silver, gold, silk, velvet, things, things, things he wants more and more and the finest and the best. And it is us slaves who break our backs every day and often starve every night to get him his precious things.

And suddenly the sense of freedom, the sense of white-blind blizzard, the sense of breaking bonds floods us.

"Selfish." Anderei. The tips of my fingers tingle. My heart is melting in the best possible way and freezing in the best possible way all at once. Niamus though, had been taught to think that he was better than everyone. Everything he does he does in order to stroke his precious ego or sate his cavernous desires or to have, have, have, money or pride or things or praise or power or whatever, to have it for himself.

"Narcissist." Lilith. He is absolutely a narcissist he wants everyone to worship him.

"Big-headed." Katapa. I smile. That is exactly the word. The void or whatever it is around us fills with laughter. It is a wise, serious, joyous sort of laughter. Voices young and old, male and female and both and neither and more, all intertwined to make this glorious laughter.

"Pig-headed." Lilith. I smile. The feeling of escape within myself grows even stronger.

"Cruel." Me. The void around us melts and freezes and vaporizes all at once. It ebbs and flows.

"Heartless." Absolutely.

"Shallow." Yes. He isn't connected to anything except his elitism and his greed and his pride. He isn't connected to the universe in the way that the dirtpeople are.

"Thoughtless." Always. What we're doing right now is reaching out and feeling all the threads that tie all people together. Threads that connect us with love and hope and wanting and shared experience.

"Ignorant." Completely. We're reaching out to feel the threads that connect all the different people. And we're using them to lead us, to pull us into where we need to be.

"Prideful." Very. These threads are things the towerpeople don't know about. These ties of faith and love are things that they are ignorant of, things that are the secrets of people like us.

"Closed-hearted." Absolutely. He is. He never considered us humans. He never considered the teachings of his parents or his people to be wrong. He never once looked at us in a way that someone who is trying to learn, trying to know, looks. He has no room in his heart or in his soul to understand or care about the people he calls himself better than. He said he understood but he did not. And damn him.

"Uncaring." Incredibly. He has never spared any slave from the cruel eyes and the upturned noses and the power of the Towerpeople. Why would he? He's one of them.

"Self-righteous." The perfect word. Everything seems to ripple. The sense of truth, truth, overwhelming truth cheers inside me. What we have just made feels so right. The sense of escaping the physical world, of coming closer to our destination, strengthens.

"Gluttonous." Energy seems to be rising up from our feet.

"Disrespectful." Beyond. Words can't really express how much the "young prince" sucks.

"Wrathful." Terribly. How hard it is to live under his heel and the heel of his people. He ... he stole our kids. Sorrow, sorrow, sorrow is streaming in, seeping through every part of me. But there's indignation mingled in with the sorrow. The idea that the sorrow isn't deserved pervades and damn.

"Exploitative." Ever so.

"Liar." All of us feel connected with every other slave in this world. And the very threads of our reality seems to be both singing and screaming.

"Malicious." Our souls vibrate along with the life force of every oppressed being.

"Self-important." We clutch our hands tighter as reality itself starts wavering. We need to stay together through this.

"Bully. Always has been and always will be." Not just Niamus. Every person that has done as he's done, lived as he's lived.

"Materialistic."

"Self-absorbed."

"Remorseless."

"Sadistic."

"Hurtful."

"Apathetic."

"Egotistic."

"Ignorant."

"Prejudiced."

"Discriminatory."

"Wisdomless."

"Immature."

"Lazy."

"Pathetic."

"Bigoted."

"Spoiled."

"Terrible."

"Horrible."

"Absolute garbage."

"Evil."

"Not any better than any of the slaves." We say these words in chaotic semi-unison. I feel a deep reverberating feeling going through me. Something beautiful and terrible and so so so intrinsic. The world feels like it's cracking. The threads connecting all of us slaves, the threads connecting nature, they pull me pull me every which way until I am one with everything. Then I black out completely.

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