Yutzen

"So far, so good. This little team of so-called rejects I've gathered has given me results, and in these terribly uncertain times that's all I can ask for. The real question is whether it will be enough results to sate my newfound wardens. So far so good, but that's with great emphasis on 'so far'."

The sound of pen upon paper came to an end, replaced by a brassy hum - which was followed by a long and forlorn sigh.

In the flickering candlelight, the fuzz-framed face of something very much like a cyan-furred moth could be seen in darkness, and even in their lidless eyes - reflecting hundreds of pinprick-sized flames - their annoyance was visible. "What do you want now?", their whispery voice asked to the murk behind their wings.

The Nirhaq tried not to wince when a single hand was laid upon their collar, a hand with four long and thin digits ending in perfect points. They didn't need to glance back and see the intruder looming in to know exactly who it was. The faintest hint of a deep, violet cloak - one tesselated with triangular and quadrilateral patterns alike - drifted into the corner of their vision, and that was all the confirmation they needed. Yet the voice that followed settled it, a ringing declaration that seemed to come from the very walls rather than the figure behind them: "Agent Felmyzhunn. The Chalk Sage wanted to see the progress in your current work".

"In these quieter hours I need to remind myself that I've been lucky. As far as failures to crack the Vaults go, I certainly got a little fortunate. As far as sudden, unwanted meetings face-to-face with the bloody Chalk Sage go, I may be the single luckiest of all. But as far as escapes from the Vaults go, or raids of their particular knowledge like the one I attempted, or even just uninvited visits to the Tower... I could've been far luckier. There's so many out there, within the Hives and outside them, that didn't end up saddled with a construct as problematic as this one - in far more senses of the word than I'd prefer."
"Ironic, really. Some of the Bannerbound clans do consider their total number lucky. I wonder if that's why my warden tries so much to look like one."

A click preceded the moth's next few words, with a singular fuzzy limb pointing a pen into the dark. "You can see most of those results in the workshop, if you had bothered to pass by it on the way to my study. But you had to be thorough, I'm sure." A shake of their head scattered tiny scales all over their desk. "Well, I can give you thorough: All the assorted good and plenty you've asked for is either gathered there, or on the way here in an unmarked crate, hidden among a book shipment. I've kept perfect track, and I can show you the math; I know you and your boss love that."

The feeling of those pointed fingers on their collar vanished... or rather, flickered, returning within moments as the one behind them became just a little more visible: The all-encompassing cloak, those elongated fingers that didn't seem to have actual joints... And the face beneath the hood. Easily mistaken for a Bannerbound thanks to their glowing indigo eyes - and their abundance and distribution didn't hurt, either. An odd number of eyes wasn't unheard of for them; three in a line with two above and below each edgemost light was perhaps too symmetrical, but not too odd.

Yet the obsidian head that held them - with a kite shape as the face and six triangles to complete the rest - would be much harder to explain. And the voice that rang out, one that sounded like the very room had become a bell, would be a dealbraker: "I have certified it. Your progress, collectively, is acceptable. However, the matter of you remains. Have they become aware of who you are?"

The moth groaned in response, rubbing the sides of their fluffy head with their graspers. They sounded slighted by the question while they answered it: "They know me as five different people, so no. Their boss has seen me as only three of those, in fact. So the misdirections are all in place as usual - that's my specialty, remember?" Antennae flicked in the air, and wings flapped in irritation, scattering dust... But their colors remained utterly dull, coal-black and without any patterns nor glyphs upon them. Why bother, before a creature(?) that saw right through it? Why try the Bellbound's tricks on someone as detached from linguistics as this one?

They then snapped themselves out of that thought to add a few muttered words. "That was rhetorical, before you say anything. You know it is my specialty, one of the reasons why you're here to begin with."

"As far as I'm aware, the creature I'm burdened with has more in common with an abstract musing, or the clicks of a calculator machine, than with anything that breathes. One of the Chalk Sage's little tricks I'm sure, bringing something like this to life (in a manner of speaking). A walking hovering conundrum with a solid conceptual base around which everything else gravitates. An unsolved equation that they've tasked me with, and it will keep tasking me until it's solved - presumably, with a process and final answer that the angular bastard approves of."

Another flicker of the figure behind them, now coupled with the distant shuffling of items - mostly paper - all over the abode, and the room-rattling voice buzzed his ears again. "I have certified this to the best of my ability. This adds up correctly. Therefore, the matter of your next steps remains. You must be made aware of them if you aren't, and be reminded of such if you've forgotten them." Lord below, even if it didn't even rattle the windows or any of their cups, it sure felt like it was going to bring this place down. And again they felt digits upon their fuzzy collar: Three on one side, four on the other. Pointed and perfectly smooth...

And they shrugged them off, practically climbing onto the desk to avoid the entity's touch. They refused to look at the intruder in the eye, yet couldn't help but turn their head towards them just for their voice to be heard in its aggravated entirety. "How exactly do you expect me to forget the rest of your plan, when your maker took steps to practically burn it into my mind? Damn near made it a fundamental factor of my life - maybe literally! Narrowed me down to a line in a blackboard where a letter is this whole arrangement. I know how they work."

Yet the intruder didn't even twitch. They only brought back that damned brassy voice that drowned out all thought. "Your awareness of the process is a concern. In knowing it, you may interfere. In your knowledge of cognitive linguistics, you may have dictated unknown terms to yourself, and with them detached your mind from the task. I will not permit this, and must ergo confirm it has not been attempted. Please remain still."

And those digits all planted themselves onto their body again, sinking through the fuzz to reach the chitin beneath. The singular second that followed was utterly unpleasant, one of the deepest violations of privacy they could conceive.

"But it isn't just math, clearly. That's too raw to be brought in like this beyond one of that one's usual instantaneous tricks. This is a a thinking entity, and thus a manner of thought had to be put in there. Knowing a little of how those esoteric mathematics work, a little bit of symbolism had to go in there, something with some subjectivity. A thoroughly comprehensible core at the bottom of it all, that can have more meanings than just its simple mathematical value."
"And so, I've come to understand the base of this entity, the very base of the equation it represents, the bottom that forms the depths of the X (though not the whole, because then I'd be free), is a singular, one-digit number. "
"By all the hints I've had, I've narrowed it down to seven."

"Your adherence has been certified." Thank goodness for that, the Nirhaq thought as their mind stopped reeling from the intrusion and those damn fingers pulled away from their fluff. They thought about yelling, calling it out on personal space, but after a hard grip that threatened to crack their pencil, desisted. What would a being like this know about privacy?

Still, they offered the biggest snub they could by turning back to their writing, talking to the darkness rather than to the being's face as the sounds of scribbling returned. "Anything else you need to metaphysically manhandle me for? Or are you done checking on me, and will actually let me do my job? You and I both know we've got a strict time table, and that your very presence here is an interference. I know, you're going to call it irrational - tough luck, I'm what you've got."

"More than once I've wondered: Why seven, of all numbers? A ten would've been perhaps more powerful, and certainly more imposing. A one is something I would've never evaded, simple as it'd be. And some horrendous prime number making a mess of any equation, that would've been the doom of me if I had tried working through this in any other way. Or would it?"
"As I thought more about it, however, I've had my realizations. A ten is too simple, as would be a one, I would push right through even with their great subjective meaning. A three or four digit prime I would've pushed right through, because such numbers are so unheard of they hardly mean anything, even to an experienced mathematician. Something else would've been more proper."

Again the room was rung like a bell - or so Fel's perception would say, they still hadn't figured out how much of that was real. "This is correct. The report is complete, and for the most part satisfactory. But the matter of their inquisitiveness remains. You have chosen effective but dangerous proxies, and you will need to either temper or misdirect their curiosity before they find who you are, or your link to the Chalk Sage."

They could only groan in response, at first. "Don't you think I know that already? You never get good results with fools, so you have to play it dangerous, as I always have. Believe me, them not finding out what I am, let alone who, is in all of our interests. I'm working on that, taking active steps, you'll see those soon enough if you just let me take them." They finished with a dismissive wave of their empty grasper, towards the distance. "Now shoo."

A flicker, and the intruder was gone. Neither cloak nor polygon were there to reflect the candlelight... In part, because with its sudden departure, said candle had gone out.

"And it came to me, after pondering that most of the math done by folks is on the lower end, in head and paper, and oft with at least one number below ten - and so those numbers would pack the most thought-borne heft. Five and ten, despite their size, are simple, far too much of a base - the Chalk Sage wanted to impose something complex on me that I couldn't wiggle through with ease, forced to follow their steps. Yet eight and nine can be decomposed to threes and twos with ease, so they could hardly count."
"Seven, however, is a deceptive prime, low enough to underestimate yet high enough to be bothersome in such napkin mathematics. Even those with quick heads for math can be tripped up or bogged down by a stray seven, unable to separate it into neater multiplications. Not to mention a genuine bother to divide with, one very good way to start getting complicated number strings. Even its additions have their little surprises if you rush through things."
"And therein the thing. That is why it's a seven. A number all are familiar with, that some cultures even assign meaning to, in the perfect decimal sweet spot to trip me up, as I metaphorically try to solve the equation throughout any path that isn't the one the Chalk Sage has laid out before me. It's almost diabolical, really. But I wouldn't expect anything less when it comes to ideas brewed in the shiny black sphere that one calls a head."

Felmyzhunn sighed, and searched for their lighter under the desk. "Even in this they all have to be so difficult", they muttered throughout their rummaging. Finding the flinty little thing quickly enough, the moth brought back the light and continued to write upon the journal on their desk...

With florid, twisty calligraphy, the Hivetongue words blending together with each other until parsing them was a puzzle. Less of a journal page and more of abstract art where each brushstroke was a singular word, curving and cursive, spread throughout the paper. Not the greatest cypher against most spies Fel knew, even if it would stall them for some time, but perfect against a being of order and logic, that would parse normal writing in a millisecond.

The moth's wings flicked in place now that they were alone, and slowly, over several seconds glowing azure glyphs manifested upon them, filling the air with glimmering blue scales... And in the blink of an eye that wasn't there, to any such partial onlooker that might've cracked the code, those glyphs were gone, as were the wings, and the very moth that bore them. Instead, hunched over the exact same desk with the exact same pen in their slimy hand, an azure Ifchi with drooping cyan gills continued with the exact same sentence the moth had started. Or at least, so it would seem.

"Alright Fel", the axolotl spoke to themselves (or perhaps himself right now), "let's pull this off. Next step: A dead drop for the bat. She does need to know her catch arrived safely anyhow."

"Still, I will figure something out, towards a path I like better. And maybe that this lot likes better. It's going to be difficult, and it will probably bring some stumbles, thanks to the nature of my warden. But I need to persevere. I'm not going to be free until I've pushed through to the end, or until I've been dragged to the end of the Sage's path instead because I failed, which I hope I won't."
"And I'm quite sure I won't. In the end, when you look at it, mathematics are just another language, and like any other, I will speak it as fluently as I must. As the Bellbound do."