• • The Royal Bastards of Galagan
• November 8, 2026

The Royal Bastards of Galagan (Chapter 19)

The Royal Forgiving

“The end of hate does not mean the beginning of forgiveness.”

Lady Zohra Sha

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Calcutta Sha

“I brought help.”

That little girl’s voice was going through my head again. Whenever I tried to do this stupid meditation thing, I always heard her say those words, or some variation of them. The words were so simple, they’re weren’t special or anything, so why was this Pyrie making sure that they haunted me.

I brought help, who cares?

“Master Koki, may I have a moment to speak with Calcutta alone?”

Koki had me meditating when Haskel walked onto the patio balcony. That snapped me out of my meditation.

Without hesitation, Koki and I answered together.

“Fuck no.”

“Sure.”

“Excuse me?” I sniped at him, already out of my mediating form.

Without missing a beat, the little shit told me, “It’s not like you’re making any progress.”

My eyes narrowed into blades if you can believe it. “Wanna run that by me again.”

Koki looked up at me with real snark in his eye. “It’s not like you’re—”

It was like a dial went off in his head. His eyes flashed open, showing me just how big they really are, and these little flaps where his ears should be turned up. I didn’t even know Pyrie had any of those.

He looked away from me, to the sky as if he was receiving a call from his doctor. Without much explanation, he said, “I must go, emergency, nothing to do with you or yours, Calcutta.”

I crossed my arms as I said, “I didn’t think—”

Whoosh!

“Asshole.”

What was the point of a master’s supervision if he left his most dangerous student alone with someone she could vaporize?

I could turn Haskel to ash with a flip of my hand. Lupians don’t have cakra control like the average Galagan warrior. There’s no way he has even use the most basic of shielding. I could shoot a hole right through him.

Why am I not fucking doing it? I could vaporize the ashes left over from when I vaporize him. It would hardly take any effort to cover it up. And the Pyrie aren’t telepaths, their empaths, what different emotion would I have to some random civie’s death?

So why didn’t you raise your hand fucking do it you dumb bitch?

Instead, I shook my head, called him by his first name, “Haskel,” and asked him, “what the fuck are you doing here?”

He raised his hand, but they fell at his sides. I’m not familiar with Lupian expression. I couldn’t tell you if his open mouth was shock, regret, or sheer defeat. Could have been all three based on what he just said. “I’m… I came here to… forgive you I guess.”

I don’t know how long I was silent for before I scoffed. Then I started laughing. Forgive me? Who would have guessed that.

I was laughing when I asked him, “What the fuck is wrong with you? Why would you forgive me? Much less for shit I’m not sorry for.”

“Are you even able to be sorry? For the longest time I thought you were just a monster, but you’re a victim too,” he paused when he saw me roll my eyes. I could see the hesitation in his eyes to continue, I could hear with the breath he took before speaking.  “I don’t… I don’t quite forgive you for killing my family, but I think I can forgive you in that I don’t hate you anymore.

“You… deserve punishment, but life has been punishing you in ways I didn’t know. I think… honestly I’m not sure, I just… it felt wasteful to hate you, when there was nothing I could do about it. Hating you ain’t going to get me my family back, it isn’t going to help me kill you, and it’s not going to make me feel better. That’s what my master has been trying to tell me, and honestly, I hate that Koki was probably right.”

I’ll be honest, I was a downright cunt as I was listening to him. I was nodding head back and forth like I was counting just how many people I killed when I blew up Pantera or whatever planet he’s from. I was trying to get him to snap and he wouldn’t. If there was one thing the wolves were, was patient.

Then I heard who his master was.

“Koki is your master,” I repeated.

That bothered me, and I could think of nothing else but what that meant. That’s not a coincidence, not in the slightest. Koki being the acting master for a guy from the planet I blew up? A planet that Poppy took credit for destroying?

Someone needed to get vaporized.

As if I asked a question, he answered, “Yeah, he thought that if I could help you, I’d do so much more to prevent what happened to the people I loved than if I try to kill you.”

“Oh, you’ve been thinking about trying to kill me,” I put my fingertips to my chest like a stupid princess and mocked him, I’ll admit. “I’m so touched right now, and here I haven’t been thinking about you at all.”

He paused to stare, and for a moment I thought I had him.

“I think he was right,” he started talking, but I had better things to do, “he was…”

Whoosh!

I teleported, so I didn’t hear what he said, but he told me later.

“I’ll be here, Calcutta, I want you to heal, I think it may be how I can finally heal.”

*****

I’ve only ever saw my father look up at one person in his life, and that was my mother.

Literally.

Aliens usually thought that I got my height from my father, but that’s only because they had never seen a Sha woman before. In truth, my father’s genes made me shorter than both of my parents.

She was nearly seven feet tall, and in her Niqab — customary of our Diadect’s matriarchs — she drew more fear in Diadect Sha than me.

The soldiers would look at her, then look at me, and it all suddenly made sense.

Freaks tended to spawn other freaks.

“What troubles you, Calcutta?”

I always struggled with thinking about nothing. I could never fish, or paint, or do anything that necessitated waiting and being slow. That meant I was always thinking, and when you had thoughts in the house of Sha… your mother always wanted to know them.

“Nothing,” I told her, as I leaned back in the chair, and kept my foot on the table.

I was in the kitchen as she was washing the dishes. It was mundane, simple, by design. We of Sha did not need much, and thus did not ask for much. That wasn’t to say there weren’t lavish palaces and places of beauty, but they were not places rest one’s head. They were places of government, of art, or hubris. They were places people visited, contributed to, and used to showcase who we were in our minds.

Places I was not wanted.

Houses were just some place to rest our heads and eat. Storage boxes for records, and the material items we were supposed to be spiritually beyond.

So suffice to say I kept a sword or two by my bed. It was easy to argue their function, but I thought they were cool. A pair of scimitars I took off a corpse of some noble shit from Diadect Sukuna. Idiot challenged me to a duel, thought he might win my hand or get vengeance… I didn’t really pay attention to what he said, the dregs sort of blur together.

But to the point, I wanted to eat an apple, and the rules were that we only ate in the kitchen. The unspoken rule was that if I was in the kitchen, she would find a reason to be, and on that day, a couple years ago, it was to wash dishes.

What a domestic life for a woman of her stature.

“You’re always thinking about something,” she told me, “have you been taking your atomoxetine?”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t need it.” How does she even pronounce that so well?

“It would help you focus.”

“I don’t need to focus, I need to be aware of everything.”

“Halim Above would have us treat our bodies as we treat our own temples, my Calcutta,” she said as she slowly came up behind me. Her hand moved over my forehead, as if to massage it, to make me close my eyes and imagine He That Loves, and how He loves me.

I didn’t close my eyes and I opened my mouth.

“Shush, and listen.” Her voice was so soft, as were her hands, despite how grossly moist they were from the sink water. “Temples should be as clean as the clothes we care for, delicately, so that it may help us keep our minds and souls clean as well. Since our bodies are temples, protecting our constitution is just as important. Our love is not only for him, but—”

“For ourselves as well, I’ve heard it all before,” I said as I shuffled her hands off my head, and shut my eyes so I did not have to look at her judging stare.

“Forgive me, with the way you behave, one would think you’d never read a book.”

My fingers sparkled with the light of a power the Shas wishes they had. The white light of my cakra pushed the natural light out of the room until there was only my light, that which brightens up my face.

“Here’s the thing, mother, I tend to burn temples down.”

I let the spark fade, as my mother stood over me, her brown eyes looking down, but her head refusing to lean anyway but up.

She raised her hands to she could hide them in her opposite sleeves. “Well, the hallowed verdicts of the Khan never did… mesh well with the texts of Halim Above.”

That made me chuckled a bit. “You could say that.”

“Come with me, my dear,” she said, and with a beckon of her fingers while she was at it.

“For what?” I called after her, still in my chair.

“If you’re going to be young, stupid, and ignorant to the ways of your mother… at least learn our arts of war.”

I actually fell out of my chair, and stumbled to my feet to find my way to her side. I caught up to her as she was opening the door to the outside. “Do you mean what I think you mean?”

She looked down at me, squinting her eyes with this smug kind of happiness. “Oh, now I have your full undivided attention, do I?”

“Do you mean what I think you mean?” I repeated. The ignorance went both ways.

My mother pressed open the door to the winds that blew just a few feet ahead, and a cliff that would have sent most to their deaths by a fall of several thousand feet.

She raised her hand before her with her fingers pressed together. In an instant her fingernails lit up and from them sprouted a substance that formed a blade of light.

“Oh this?” she taunted me. “You don’t want to learn this, you don’t want to harness the light of Halim Above.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re focusing your cakra into hardlight, your god isn’t doing jack.”

“Learn how to do it and prove me wrong then.”

I pointed my finger in her face and her sniveling, conniving eyes. “You’re trying to use reverse psychology me, it’s lazy and I’m disappointed in you.”

“Is it working?”

“Working? Bitch, I already wanted to learn it!”

Her eye twitch when I cursed at her, but then she got in my face, and taunted me back. “Then you better follow me, bitch.”

Then she fell backwards out the door and started falling down the cliffside.

“What a foul mouth on that one,” I told myself as I jumped out after her. I entered freefall immediately, and maximum velocity in seconds with the help of the powerful winds flowing down.

The world of Diadect Sha, Samak, was deceptively small. The gravitational fields, the magnetic fields, and ozone layer were all out of wack, with triple the distance between them and the surface compared to every other planet. Despite the central shape being the size of a moon, the plant didn’t lack that much mass, because most of it had been formed into floating mountains that floated over the sky.

That’s where the Sha’s made our home, and its where a culture of people who could use their cakra to fly could live unbothered… until I came to visit.

If only there weren’t people on this planet, it would be my favorite place to be.

I spun like a twister as the wind carried me down and kept me the perfect distance away from the cliff side. I pulled and twisted, as if descending like a spinning drill about to punch a hole into the ground.

Then I saw my mother, and her black form pulling up, easily defying the winds of nature’s whim. She spread out her arms and the ends of her long sleeves still bellowed in the wind. Then she took control of it.

Her sleeves stopped and suddenly she was flying right at me. I spun out of the away, and before I found my way again, with her upright and staring down at me, as if the air she was standing on was flat ground.

“Race you,” she said, before shooting off around the rock, leaving a silver cakra trail behind her.

“I don’t even know where we’re going!” I yelled as I quickly flew after her.

We fly around and around the floating mountain. I’m sure if someone had been looking from the outside, it would have looked like we were wrapping a basic looking ribbon around it.

When we reached the top, there was a circle with sand and dirt in it atop the stone surface.

Diadect Sha could claim to believe in He Who Loves all they want, but they were still Galagans, and we were a people of battle and war. We always had a spot to train, big or small, marble or sand and dirt.

I never let mother’s Halim Above try to tell me different.

“Are you ready, my dear?” my mother asked as I landed.

The winds still blew around us, flowing from the edges of the clifftops, and wrapping around the sky mountain. It streamed from the rocks like were on the opposite end of a turbine, but it was quiet enough that I heard every petal waddle in this dull arena.

“You haven’t shown me how to do it yet,” I reminded her.

“You haven’t shown me that you can learn it yet.”

Oh, was that what she wanted to know? As if power itself wasn’t constantly flowing through my fingertips. Of course, I believed I was ready.

Of course, I did…

I thrusted my palm out and sent a blast her way. It was enough to blow an unprotected arm off.

She dodged it.

I hid my confusion with a taunt. “Was that enough power for you?”

She slowly moved her shoulder back to where it was, her eyes never leaving me. “It was never about power, you’ve always had plenty of that.”

“Then by all means, tell me what I need,” I gestured to the clearly belligerent crowd around us, “we’re all waiting.”

“Even your sarcasm has gotten lazy, nonsensical even.”

That’s when I went for her.

With a Puff, I flew right at her, and in blink of the eye she left only a dust cloud after her.

I immediately turned around because they always go for the back. Yeah, well, fuck me I guess, because as soon as I turned around she shoved me from the side.

“What the—”

Fip.

Before I could finish cursing my mouth off, her cakra blade was inching close to my neck. She tilted her head along with the blade, taunting me in turn. “Caught you off guard?” she asked me. “We all make mistakes.”

I responded by powering up. Doesn’t matter what Diadect she’s the head of, she never has and never will have the energy to compare to mine.

The force of my energy sent her sliding back, and I was on her again. This time when she dashed to move, I saw it happen in real-time, and followed her.

She kept pacing back and forth, trying to dodge away from me, but she was far too slow to lose me. Then I charged up again to remind of who exactly her kid was.

My cakra flowed around my fist and flew so fast for her face that her eyes went wide.

Swaft!

My fist made strange sound as it connected with her cakra blade. The reaction between my cakra and my mother’s caused an explosion of energy to send her reeling back.

My hand was still raised as hers trembled; my fist smoking as her cakra sword fell apart.

Fighting tended to feel so pointless when it wasn’t a contest.

“What is this supposed to be teaching me?” I asked her. “I already knew I could kick your ass.”

I was always watching her eyes. With her Niqab that was usually how I could figure out what she was going to do next. The rest of her fit hid her subtle movements well.

“If you can’t focus enough to catch me—”

Whiff.

Her voice came from behind me.

“—you can’t focus enough to learn!”

I exploded with energy to send her flying back, but I didn’t give her the time to recover.

I got in her face, yelling, “I am focusing!” as I punched for her head.

She ducked, and suddenly I found three limbs wrapped around my arm.

“On the three conversations in your head, maybe!”

She threw me towards the ground, but when you could fly, you can catch yourself.

I stopped and hovered and inch above the ground, and spun to kick for her legs. Again, she dodged, this time by leaping into the air. I gave her no reprieve.

Whish!

With the same leg I tried to sweep her with, I kicked myself off the ground. This time, I spun like a tornado towards, getting moment for a kick I’d never hit her with.

When it went to connect, she went somersault over it, as I expected. When her hand touched my leg, I grabbed her wrist. She was pretty shocked, and looked at me right as my fist connected with her face.

You would think at this point she would have given up. I had landed several, consistent blows that should have broken her bones. I dodged each of her best attacks, leaving her with nothing but an empty tank.

Yet, it wasn’t over.

She blew the dust away with slash of her hand. Dust and dirt were hardly difficult for me to blow away, but it might’ve been for her.

Her Niqab was ripped on her left side, showing off some nasty and bleeding scrapes on her arm and leg.

“I don’t think you’ve shown so much skin before, Mum, it suits you.”

I really thought I did something there when she stood still and stared at me floating above her for awhile. It took me too long to realize I just gave her free time to come up with a plan while I was waiting for a reaction.

She raised her injured hand and with all of her fingers, gestured me to come. “I’m starting to think all you have are jabs, my dear.”

My mother just really wouldn’t quit.

So neither could I.

I flew right down at her. That may sound cruel, but as much shit as I give her, she’s no pushover, if that day was proving anything.

But it was certainly possible for a direct attack like that to kill her if it landed. And if she died… she died, who was around to say it wasn’t an accident.

When both my fists were connecting with the ground, suffice to say I was not motherless.

Sift.

There was this little sting on my cheek. My hands went up to touch it and found blood.

Sift.

This time I caught the blur as it cut my shoulder, and powered up, improving my sight and reaction tenfold.

That gave me harder whiplash than I had ever seen.

She was moving around me in a blur, everywhere I looked there was another frozen image of her dissipating, and in a new position, with a cakra blade out ready to slash.

Sift.

And slash she did.

Sift. Sift. Sift.

I heard the cuts before I felt them. There was this cruel delay where I would hear it, wonder where I was cut, then feel a sharp sting and trickling blood follow soon afterwards.

In seconds, I was covered in cuts.

PssssHHHHHH!

“AaaaaahHHHHHHHHH!”

In fewer seconds, I screamed and blew up the arena.

POOOMMM!!!

I reduced the floating mountain to dust. I couldn’t focus and catch her, so I attacked everywhere she could be. She had to have been falling down or sent flying with how much energy I put out in that small space. I probably should have started—

Siizzz!

My body froze up, and my cakra stopped flowing. It was moving through my body like a river, and suddenly a barrier fell and blocked everything off. My whole body threatened to seize, and bile threatened to shoot up my mouth.

I started to fall back, and then I saw the light of the cakra blade go through my chest, through my heart.

My mother’s other hand clasped by shoulder from behind and held me up. I found myself choking on air as her head loomed next to my shoulder. “It only takes one good strike to die, my heart,” she whispered, before the blade came out.

Then it all came flooding back.

I waved my arms around, stumbling through the air as my body felt… absolutely fine.

I was still bleeding from the cuts, but the seizing, the cakra loss, the blockage throughout my body was just… gone.

“What the fuck did you do to me?!” I screamed at her as I turned around to face her.

Her eyes were narrow and they curved up. The crazy bitch was smiling under her Niqab.

“You know, I never told you that this cakra sword had to be lethal. It could have been, I could have killed you with one blow,” she said as she floated closer and closer to me. My body wasn’t moving as she came closer, and I ended up letting her get so close that I could feel her breath on my face. “Instead, I let you feel what dying was like, feeling a knife force all the air out of your lungs.”

It felt like more than just air was forced out of my lungs. I didn’t even notice the air.

Then she pulled back, just before my cakra cloak started to manifest… before I decided to pay her back.

“You say you don’t need to focus,” she started as I started to swing for her, but she was faster than me. “You fight as if your inability to concentrate is a shield against those who would surround you.” I was out of breath, exhausted, and unaware of how much cakra you lose when a cakra blade makes you think you’re dying. “But that only works for weaklings, my dear child, sheep who were never a threat in the first place.” I was swinging wildly, doing whatever I could end this little life lesson of hers. “What will you do when a bear wanders into your woods? You think you will have your pack, but wolves cannot take the bear. Not in a million years.”

I reminded her of whose always the ‘bear’ as I screamed and let loose cakra that only a royal bastard of Galagan can.

I pushed other mountains out of their gravitational alinement, including the one with our little apartment. I sent floating plateaus spinning around the main floating isle. I forced the clouds to zap themselves miles away.

I made my mother start falling.

This time there was no dirt or dust to hide her. I flew straight for her as her fading strength and guile could no longer keep her suspended in the sky. I grabbed her by the neck-scruff-whatever of her Niqab and saw the whites of hers in a way I had never seen before.

“Enough with the animal metaphors!” I screamed in her face as we soared and spun around at a thousand miles per hour. “If half of what you said made any sense, then I wouldn’t be able to kill you as easily as one kills a fucking fly!”

“Oh really?” she said as I felt the cakra sword stab right through my chest, again.

I threw her away as my body went through that feeling again.

I found myself falling down towards the lowest clouds, struggling to breath and feel my cakra again. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate and breath, until I felt her breath on my ear. Her arm wrapped around my waist and suddenly we were flying straight up. We broke the sound barrier, her shooting us straight up, to the top of the mountain that made our home, a mountain still righting itself, and with a flyby, she threw me toward the ground.

I twisted and turned to dig my fingers into the dirt, to slow me down as I kept sliding. I charged up and put my back into it to stop from sliding off the ledge.

At the end, I had barely slowed down enough to keep my toes on the rockcliff. As soon as the winds from the cliffside hit my back, a hand touch it and stopped me.

“If that had been a real blade and not frail light, my heart would be still.”

I jumped and flipped around to get away from her, but she was nonplussed. Her hands were in her sleeves as she looked down at me, with only a little tear in the cloth around her eyes.

“You stabbed me, lady!” I yelled at her as she floated to me.

“Hardly.”

When she reached for my cheek, I slapped her hand away. She pulled back her hand as if I had slapped her.

My hand went to my chest, where my heart should be stabbed through two times over. “Fuck,” I gasped, “I’m more surprised that it wasn’t real.”

“How could you…” she muttered at first, before waving my words and me off, “forget it, you clearly are not capable of learning. Why do I bother?”

“Because what else are you going to do with your life?”

“Excuse me?”

With that tear in her cloth, as small as it was, I could see just how much her face twists when her eyes narrow.

“Oh come on,” I continued, “as if Diadect Sha can go anywhere without me. You already failed to become Khatun, and have to settle for being my father’s whore.”

“Be silent.”

Oh, I finally got under her skin. Her eyes weren’t wide in shock, they were wide with rage.

“Oh, did the truth make you mad?” I taunted her, opening my arms, practically begging for her to attack me again. “It’s not so bad, you are his favorite to bend over his throne.”

She raised her hand back as if she were going to strike me, and I was gearing up to make sure her arm broke on contact, but she must have saw the trap.

Her wrinkles of rage softened, but her eyes were no less sharp in their gaze toward me. “You are such a cold, cold child,” she said as she pulled her hands to rest behind her back, “and it will be your ruin if you continue this way.”

She was quick to her turn her back on me, as if that would make me disappear or deafen her to the sound of my voice.

“How else did you and Father expect me to be?” I asked her. I didn’t need her to see how I jabbed my finger in her direction. She could picture me dancing for all I cared, I knew she wasn’t deaf. “It wasn’t my decision to commit genocide at the age of twelve. I only made the decision to learn to enjoy it, and now we all get to suffer the consequences.

“So guess what, I don’t care what you think. You don’t like the way I am? Then you should have aborted me the second you knew the Khan knocked you up.”

She was turning around, swearing, “I would nev-”

But I was flying away. I wanted the last word, and I was going to take it.

“Praise Him Who Hates, may he find us still in our beds for the world’s sake,” I heard her whisper as I did.