Category: fiction

One Wing, One Eye, Chapter 3: A Restless Homecoming

“But this has not yet become a story about the knife.“
–Three and Two and Two

“Godshell, I–I don’t even know what to say, Dog Boy.  This is beyond the pale.”

“I don’t either, Gene,” Bleeding Wolf muttered, ducking in through the door to the jail.  “It’s why I came here.  To figure the details.  Sort my thoughts.”

“That ain’t what I mean!” Gene retorted, loudly enough to catch Michel’s attention from behind the warden’s desk.

“Evening gentlemen,” he called.  “What brings you, uh, here tonight?”

“Town business,” Bleeding Wolf replied.

“The shell it is, Dog Boy!” Gene interjected.  “There shouldn’t be nothin’ to figure!”

“What sort of business?” Michel asked, frowning.  “Incidentally, Anita and I did want to thank both of you for helping out as much as you have these last few days.  It’s taken a load off both of our backs.”

“Don’t mention it.”  Bleeding Wolf didn’t much care for effusive thanks, but he was happy to help.  “This place is home for me, even if I’m given to spend time away.  Anyway, Gene, if there’s nothing to figure, then who would you fork over to the whitefrocks?”

“No one!  That ain’t our right!”

“That’s neither an option nor your call,” Bleeding Wolf growled.

“Uh, what’s all this then?” Michel asked, taking a nervous step back as the argument reerupted.  Bleeding Wolf raked his claws through the stubble on his face.

“I’m sure word was gonna reach you soon enough,” he said.  “Meetin’ with Holme went…meh.  Sculptor wants a sacrifice in exchange for the Holmite lives lost.”

“But…didn’t they attack you?”

“Yep.  John wants to keep ‘em happy, though.”

“They don’t get to demand our blood if it was their fault!” Gene objected.

“I mean, right,” Michel agreed.  “They shouldn’t…well…”

“Well, what, son?” Gene spat.  Bleeding Wolf put a hand on the old man’s shoulder as Michel frowned, nervous.

“There is the Masson boy,” he said.  “He’s still here.”  Bleeding Wolf raised an eyebrow as Gene’s face fell.

“Masson?” Bleeding Wolf asked.  “What’d he do?”

“Vince Masson,” Michel clarified.  “Young man set fire to his house a few years ago.  His family was inside, and the fire spread too.  Took out a whole district.  Ten or so died, dozens more were hurt.  Kid was sentenced to hang.”

“But he’s still here?” Bleeding Wolf asked.  Michel shrugged.

“Mayor Bergen commuted all death sentences when he was elected.  There was a vocal portion of the town that thought we were going too far, killing a sixteen-year-old.  So Mayor Bergen changed the sentence to jail and mandatory labor.”

“For how long?”

“Rest of his life, which…”  Michel glanced back toward the hallway which housed the jail cells.  “Which isn’t great logistically.  This place wasn’t made to have permanent tenants.  We’ve had to hire temporary jail guards, put him fully in the care of the caravants he’s working for–not totally humane, those contracts.  They treat him like an animal, and he’s come back a few times with serious injuries that Brill has had to treat.  I’ve wondered a few times if it would’ve been kinder to just follow through in the first place.”

“An’ now it’s convenient to flip-flop, John’s doin’ it,” Gene muttered.  It was a fair point.  Though that didn’t mean it was the wrong answer in this instance.

“Politics, indeed,” Bleeding Wolf growled.  He agreed with Michel, for what it was worth.  It sounded like the kid did a bad thing, probably for bad reasons.  If the town wanted to kill him, they were well within their rights, but this “leniency”, the process, the spectacle of it–bigger pieces of shit marched through the Crossroads every day, and the seriousness with which the mayor pretended at justice here felt like a mockery.  It almost did feel kinder to hand the condemned man over to Holme.  Except Bleeding Wolf knew what the Holmites did with their sacrifices, and he suspected Mayor Bergen did not.

“A town meetin’ in the gaol?” came the twisting syllables of Atra’s accent from the doorway.  “I must’ve missed quite the development today.  Michel, here to relieve ye.”

Bleeding Wolf turned to regard the woman sweeping into the room.  He knew that at this point, Commander Atra enjoyed quite a bit of the Crossroads’ respect, and he could see why.  By all outward appearances, she was a reassuring protector.  Even-tempered, muscled, battle scarred, yet still clearly in her prime.  Bleeding Wolf trusted her about as little as it was possible to trust an ally–and less than many enemies.  When they met, he had caught a glimpse of the magical power she was somehow keeping hidden.  He was certain that she had not accumulated that much death from even-tempered protecting, but what she had told him of her goals–forthrightly, honestly, that she wished to meet the Blaze in battle–made no fucking sense.  And he had a feeling that she was dragging the Crossroads into the fire more than she was shielding it.

“Thank you, Commander,” Michel said with a respectful salute.  “Have a good evening, gentlemen–I’m sure that you and the mayor will come to a reasonable solution.”  Bleeding Wolf waved him a halfhearted goodbye and faced Atra.

“What ‘reasonable solution’ are ye debatin’ then?” she asked.

“You want me to believe you don’t already know?” he growled back.  Her calm smile somehow made him feel both remorse for the sudden aggression and even more anger for the accusation’s little visible effect.

“I’m runnin’ a militia here, Bleeding Wolf, not a spy network.”

“And yet.”

Atra shrugged, walking past them to the warden’s desk.  She lifted a piece of parchment with a convincing veneer of assiduousness.

“Mr. Jens spent his 24 hours here,” she muttered.  “Best be lettin’ him out tonight.”  She looked up.  “Yer deliberation’ on whom to send to Holme, then?”

“You have been spyin’!” Gene snapped, almost shouting.  “And we ain’t sendin’ nobody!”

“Well, Bleeding Wolf’s right, and there’s no point hidin’ it: I do keep informed.  But ye’ll forgive me for takin’ a turn at disbelief, seein’ as the decision of whom to send isn’t yers to make.”

Gene’s face slowly reddened as he grasped the meaning of Atra’s roundabout phrase.

“It isn’t mine, either,” she added, lifting a keyring from a hook behind the desk.  “So there’s little warrant for the blame yer bringin’ to me, Gene.”

And yet.  Bleeding Wolf didn’t need to say it again–the thought hung in the air obviously enough without additional vocalization.  He couldn’t tell if his intuition was being clouded by what he had discovered of Atra’s prowess–by how incredibly intimidated he realized he was–but he couldn’t shake the notion that the particulars of the arrangement with Holme were material to her interests.  It was obvious that she would want an arrangement with the Sculptor’s military, of course, but what made no sense–and yet seemed inexplicably evident–was that an offering of one of the Crossroads’ own to those horrifying statues was exactly how she wanted it to go down.

If she was concerned by Bleeding Wolf’s anxious calculus, though, Atra did not show it.  She simply returned his pensive glare with a pleasant smile and left the room, proceeding down the jail hallway, keyring jingling as she walked.

“I’m startin’ to get damned tired of everyone tellin’ me my opinion don’t matter,” Gene muttered quietly.  Bleeding Wolf listened as the metallic jingle receded to the far end of the hallway.

“It’s a distraction to think of it as an insult, Gene,” he replied in a similarly low voice, though he doubted there was anything they could do to prevent Atra from eavesdropping at this range–even Bleeding Wolf’s magic was capable of augmenting his hearing enough to catch isolated whispers fifty feet away.  “If you look at the big picture right now, you’ll notice that no one’s opinion matters that much.  I don’t know if you realize how much political fuckery it takes to engineer a situation that everyone disagrees with but no one can gainsay.”

Gene raised an eyebrow, evidently rattled, though he didn’t have time to respond.

“Gentlemen!” a voice boomed as the jail door slammed violently open.  “I have need to interject upon your arrangement with Holme!”  Bleeding Wolf whirled, annoyed at what was becoming a stream of interruptions, as Lan al’Ver glided through the doorway, brandishing his umbrella like a showman.

“Where the hell have you been?” Bleeding Wolf spat.

“The Chateau de Marquains, Mr. Wolf, retrieving our dear Orphelia and more–”

“What?!”

“Pay attention!  You are to travel to Holme, and we shall join your caravan.”  Bleeding Wolf blinked.

“To…Holme?” he asked, winded.

“Indeed,” al’Ver continued dismissively.  “To secure the iron you promised the Doctor’s ward.  Have you forgotten your own priorities in this crisis?”

“Crisis?  How do you…?” Bleeding Wolf sputtered.  He shook himself, rapidly reacclimating to al’Ver’s infuriating gift for putting him off balance.  “We aren’t going to Holme!”  Al’Ver rolled his eyes.

“Of course you are,” he said.  “There is no one here you trust to take charge of that exchange.  You will be going there, and as momentous events await beyond that bend, I will be accompanying you.”  There was a moment of silence.

“Did you say Orphelia was at the Chateau de Marquains?” Gene finally asked.

“Now yer to go straight home.  No stops at the tavern–ye worried yer family bad with this last stunt, so don’t ye go worryin’ them more.”  Atra’s voice preceded her entrance from the hallway, escorting a gaunt, disheveled man whom Bleeding Wolf did not recognize but assumed was the “Mr. Jens” mentioned earlier.  “Ah,” she said, looking to the three of them.  “Captain al’Ver, welcome back.”

Al’Ver was silent for about a second longer than the greeting warranted.  Bleeding Wolf glanced back at him and noted that–for perhaps the first time in his memory–Lan al’Ver seemed surprised.

“Atra, my lady,” al’Ver said belatedly, though with recovered composure.  “It is a pleasure to see you again.”

“You’ve met?” Gene grunted.

“Had the good fortune of meetin’ the Captain on the way here,” she replied with a smirk.  “As I understand many do.”

“Indeed,” al’Ver corroborated disinterestedly.  “But once again, you have me at a peculiar disadvantage: I did not expect to find you here, and so I am unsure what to make of it. –”

“The mayor here issued a call for fightin’ folk to train a militia while ye were on yer latest voyage, Captain…”

Bleeding Wolf stared at Atra as she explained the situation, Bergen’s nominal concerns, progress in the Blaze’s advance in the weeks al’Ver had been gone, all of it logical and intuitive.  Al’Ver nodded politely, adding his stupid, self-important quips and affirmations as he would, but Bleeding Wolf had heard it: the jolt at the end of his expression of confusion, as Atra offered her explanation just slightly too quickly.  It was impeccably smooth, but she had interrupted him.  Why?

“If you don’t mind,” Bleeding Wolf said, reentering the conversation amidst a somewhat off-topic discussion of Holmite idiosyncrasies, “I would like to hear the end of al’Ver’s question.”  He looked at Atra.  “The one you cut off.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Captain!  Did I interrupt ye?”

“It is Captain al’Ver, Mr. Wolf,” al’Ver rebuked.  “And there is no need to be rude.  The commander’s explanation was perfectly sufficient.

Bleeding Wolf scowled but did not reply.  He was going to have to pry less directly if al’Ver was going to be a pill about it.

“In any case,” al’Ver continued, “this has been a serendipitous reunion, surely, but my work lies elsewhere.  We have our objective, Mr. Wolf!  Now I must determine where Orphelia has gotten to.”

“Oh no,” Gene mumbled.

“Orphelia?” Atra asked.  “I recall mention of the name from Brill when I arrived.  Is the girl prone to trouble, perhaps?”

***

Orphelia had not intended any trouble to come from her visit to the tavern.  She really only wanted some mulled wine by the fire–and to spend the two pieces of silver she had pickpocketed from Mr. Naples before he realized it was gone.  But now that she was there, it was getting difficult to resist.

Part of it was boredom, yes.  She knew it was.  The last several days on the water had not been mentally stimulating, in spite of the cool cave Captain al’Ver had found with Ty and the weird metal man who had joined them.  And she was starting to appreciate that her reactions to boredom were perhaps more of a burden than she really wanted to inflict on herself or others.  Listening to Mr. Ruffles that day she had left the Crossroads had put her and Devlin in danger–far more danger than she had even realized until Ty and Naples’ explained what the Chateau de Marquains was–and she wasn’t eager to do that again.  But she was still bored.

The other part was that the happenings at the tavern tonight were making her really curious.

It wasn’t an especially busy night.  Multiple large caravans had apparently just departed, and the room was spotted with empty tables.  But one patron, a tall, bulky, middle-aged man in ill-fitting clothes, had gotten sloppy drunk and was proclaiming loudly to anyone who would listen that during the War, he had become known as the “Taker of Skulls” for his combat prowess–or his roach body part collection, or just a habit of decapitating any corpse he came upon as an offering to the Blood God.  It wasn’t really clear to Orphelia, but as far as she could tell, it also wasn’t clear to him.  The man seemed confused, and his fit of bravado likely would have guttered quickly had Orphelia not sat down beside him and–to the barkeep’s chagrin–began requesting elaborations on his various boasts.

“I killed a hundred men at Bloodhull!” he roared at one point.

“Oh, so you were fighting for the bad guys?” Orphelia asked.

“What?!  Of course not!  I fought for Harmony!  Matze Matsua was right next to me, he was!”

“Then why’d you kill all those people?  Weren’t the bad guys mostly roaches and those tongue things?”

“Well…”

Orphelia didn’t know whether she was asking after real historical details or simply playing along with this weirdo’s delusions of grandeur–the stories her father had told her about the War of the Roaches always did seem rather fanciful.  But either way, it didn’t seem like this guy would know.  He didn’t look old enough to have actually seen the war, and he seemed too stupid to be a mage like Dog Boy.

Or like her, she supposed.

She was still processing what had happened at the Chateau de Marquains, Mr. Ruffles’ task, what he had said about her abilities.  Could she still call him Mr. Ruffles?  She wanted to, but there was a part of him now that she couldn’t force back into the stuffed animal her father had given her.  The spectral man who had guided her to the Saraa Sa’een.  Romesse of Khet.  Rom, he had called himself.

Captain al’Ver didn’t seem to trust him, but it didn’t seem like Rom had lied: She was able to do magic.  Mr. Ruffles didn’t talk to her the entire trip back, didn’t give her any instructions, but she had tried to do the things he had helped her do before, pushing away Naples’, Ty’s, and the metal Homunculus’ notice while she skulked around the raft, stealing things which she usually gave back.  It worked.  Sort of.  For a while.

It didn’t work on Captain al’Ver at all–he seemed to have an eye on her whenever she was near, whether she was attempting to “channel mana” or not.  And then, after a time or two, Naples caught her trying to lift his notebook.

“When you do that,” he said, gently taking the book from her hands, “people around you can sense the mana that you’re pushing at them.  The reason it works most of the time is because they aren’t paying that much attention–not unless they know someone’s close.  Or trying to steal their stuff.

“But once they’re actively looking for you, it takes a lot more effort to keep them from finding you.  Heck, that’s why Master Faisal taught us to look for shadow-walkers before teaching us to shadow-walk ourselves.”

It turned out that both Naples and Ty knew how to do some of the things Rom had guided her through.  It was a rare school of magic which, Naples explained, originated with a “separatist sect”–or something like that–from the city of Khet.

“Where is Khet, Mr. Naples?” she asked.

“Oh, nowhere anymore.  It used to be way north, in the desert past the Gravestone mountains, but it was destroyed centuries ago by the Blood God.”

“The who?”  Naples laughed at this.

“Do you actually want to learn some history, Orphelia?”

She did not, though she did think that the “Blood God” sounded like a cool name.  Now, though, as the “Taker of Skulls” kept going on about how the powers of the Blood God strengthened him or whatever, she slightly regretted not asking about it when the opportunity was there.

“I even got some proof I was there,” the strange man grunted eventually.  “Ya see, I was in the vanguard at the assault on Roachheart after Bloodhull fell too.  Was the first one in the room where Ka done killed ‘imself.  Stodgy bastards wouldn’t let me take his head, but I did get this!”

The “Taker of Skulls” drew a small knife from a sheath at his belt and embedded it into the bar with a loud THUNK.

“The very knife he cut ‘is throat with!” he proclaimed.

Orphelia wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be impressed with.  The knife was visibly rusting, and the blade appeared to be loosely joined to the handle with twine.  The barkeep was even more unimpressed.

“Alright, I think you’ve had plenty,” she said, glaring at the new notch in her bar.  “Time to go!”

The “Taker of Skulls” slammed his fist against the bar and roared something back, but Orphelia was only dimly aware of it.  She realized with equal parts fascination and concern that despite the knife’s innocuous appearance, she couldn’t take her eyes from it.  And the sounds around her had faded.  It was as if the substantial din of the tavern–of the argument ongoing right beside her–had become background, replaced not by different noise, but by intrusive thought:

Take it, her instinct told her.

Take it.  Take it.

Take it.

TAKE IT.

The part of her that was concerned was now, of course, alarmed, but she had no other reason not to take the knife.  So she did.

The silence and stillness fell so immediately that she felt she had been struck.  But nothing had touched her.  She pried the knife from the bar, considered it, noting that it was indeed a shoddy, unremarkable piece of work.  But then she noticed that the tavern around her had not merely stilled.  It had changed.

The barkeep was staring at her.  No.  No, everyone, the whole tavern was starting at her, but for some reason, as she glanced, panicked, back and forth, she couldn’t seem to focus on their eyes.  All of their faces were…the same.  And every single one of them was smiling, teeth bared.  At the back tables, some of them began to laugh, quiet peals of high-pitched cackling echoing across the room’s high ceiling.  And then a whisper, chime-like, consonants clicking, inches from her ear:

“Awake from your dream, child?”

She sat bolt-upright, suppressing a shiver, and whirled.  No one was there.  Rather, the tavern was there, its warmth and noise suddenly returned, and not a single person was looking at her.  No one was smiling.  At least no one was smiling like that.

Next to her, the barstool where the “Take of Skulls” had been sitting was empty.  The barkeep looked up from the cask of ale she had just finished tapping.

“You alright, sweetheart?” she asked.  “Need more wine?”

Orphelia shook her head, dazed.  Then she looked down at her hands.  She was still holding the knife, and, despite its dubious construction, it felt light and comfortable in her palm.  She glanced at the notch in the bar where the man had plunged the knife moments before.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” she said to the barkeep, gesturing to the empty stool.  “Do you know where the man who was sitting here went?”  The barkeep frowned.

“You sure you’re okay, hun?  That seat’s been empty all night.”

Orphelia stared at her, feeling a pit in her stomach.  She nodded slowly, tucked the knife into a pocket inside her dress, and slid down from her stool.  Saying nothing to the barkeep, she placed Naples’ two pieces of silver on the bar and made her way to the door as quickly as she could without sprinting.

The air was cool and wet outside.  Calming.  Traffic was light, but the street was far from empty, which was good: What happened in the tavern had left her unsettled, somehow, by both crowds and solitude.  She took a deep, nervous breath.

What was that?  Did it have to do with that weird Skull guy?  With the knife?  And where did he go?  And why did she keep the knife?  Ooh.  She had no answer she could frame in words, but even the thought of discarding the knife struck her with overpowering dread.  The voice…the knife, for some reason it was all settling, familiar, in her mind.  She didn’t like that.  She knew it wasn’t familiar.  She knew she had never seen it before.

“Orphelia, my dear!”

The voice calling from the busy end of the street was familiar too.  But it was the right kind of familiar.

“Captain al’Ver…?” she muttered, turning, dazed, toward its source.

“Orphelia, what’s the matter?” Captain al’Ver asked, drawing closer.  Behind him, she saw old Gene and Dog Boy approaching as well, along with a tall woman she had never seen before.

Orphelia didn’t reply.  She just shook her head, the air in her lungs feeling fuzzy amidst the comedown from the panic.  Gene exchanged a glance with Bleeding Wolf, who ducked quickly through the tavern door, only to reemerge a few seconds later with a shrug.

“Seems normal in there,” he said.  “What’s gotcha spooked, girl?”  Once again, Orphelia had no words.  What could she say?  How would she even begin to describe it?  Captain al’Ver frowned, looking down at her empty hands.

“Where is your stuffed bear, Orphelia?” he asked quietly.

“Left him at Brill’s,” she replied.  The world’s resolution was coming back.  She could breathe normally again.

Still, she thought, better not tell Captain al’Ver about the knife.  Better to save it for a surprise.

Oh no.

That thought had not been hers, but try as she could to contradict it, she could not.

The Dreamer’s Rhyme

A rhyme that will likely appear in some form in $20,000 Under the Sea, revealed to me, perhaps ironically, in a dream nearly a decade ago. This is the version that has bubbled up after some 10 revisions. There is a particular, if obscure, lyrical inspiration, though I’m not sure how apparent it is at this point.

On darkest side of darkest Dream
The Dreamer softly sings
He wraps himself in gilded thought
And robes and eyes and wings

One man has seen the Yellow Sign
The other never will
In synthesis they reckon with
The world He means to kill

So watcher if you like the glass
That shatters in the sky
Show me what you’ll trade for it
This hour before you die

Give me the fire in your heart
And the shards of Dream shall be
Smoothed for you, made glassy eyes
Through which, at last, you’ll see

One Wing, One Eye, Chapter 2: The Homunculus

Lan al’Ver awoke with an uncharacteristic jolt.  It was becoming more frequent.  Sleep.  Dreams.  The writhing and resonance of the Night Sky’s mind was intruding ever more upon the world’s substance.  Structure was beginning to decalcify, mana ran rich with dreamsilt, and even beings such as Lan, who had long since dispensed with the biological necessity of somnolence, were having it thrust upon them.  Unimpeded, the end would be here soon.  Perhaps in weeks, perhaps in years, but when He woke up, reality would melt into dream, and dream would melt into nothing.  Only the Dark would remain, and that was lovely for the Dark, but Lan was beginning to view the prospect of nonexistence with a new apprehension of late.  Perhaps the Alchemist had been right.  It was fortunate the man had been so persuasive during his crossing.

Lan surveyed his crowded raft.  Dawn had not quite arrived, and the sky was still a deep, whorled grey.  The others were still asleep: Orphelia and Devlin huddled inside the raft’s small cabin, Ty Ehsam the scavenger crouched against its outer wall, and Naples the scholar lounged, snoring, atop a pallet of linen bolts.  None, apparently, had noticed his lapse in vigilance.  And he had woken before they had come upon their intermediary destination, so it seemed no evidence remained for them to find.  All was still in hand so far, though the uncertainty of it chilled him.

A soft breeze blew through the reeds, the minutes passed, the sky lightened, and as his companions began to stir, Lan maneuvered the raft to the bank, just as it began to widen before them.

Seek the Keystone, and bring it to the shrine where once you ruled, Excelsis had said.  Though he was still unaware of the purpose of this errand, Ty had the Keystone now.  They had gone to some lengths to extricate it from Les Marquains’ clutches.  He would certainly be disappointed to learn he would not be handing the stone over to the Blaze, but the stakes were higher than he could know.  Even if he saved himself from the fire, taking any other course would end him–and everything–all the same.

“The shrine” where once Lan “ruled” was a flattering reference, even if it was based in historical inaccuracy.  Lan’s erstwhile incarnation, the “Turtle on the River’s Surface”, as the remaining stories recalled him, had never been a political entity, much less a ruler.  But nonetheless, for a time, there were some humans who claimed him as a guardian.  Those humans, the ones who charted and spread across the Riverlands, who became, in fact, the first Riverlanders, maintained among their disparate tribes a place of confluence here, at the fork between the Lifeline and the Artery.  Over time, its permanence in culture became permanence in edifice, and as the Turtle–the creature–faded into the background, the turtle as a symbol rose in the form of the Godshell Palace at the center of the floating city of Thago, capital of the Revián Federation.

It had been many centuries now since Thago had been destroyed, torn apart by social unrest and an opportune attack by the Diarchy of Spar, their rival to the east.  Though Lan had felt the loss of Thago keenly at the time, he had grown to understand that by then, the age of the Old Gods had long since ended.  Thago had all but forgotten him, palaces notwithstanding, and Spar had almost certainly forgotten Brother.  It had become a world of men, of their creation, and Lan’s role from then on was merely to live in it.  There were worse fates.  Though now it seemed had one last debt to pay the world he no longer guarded.

Now at the fork in the river where Thago once floated, there was nothing left, not even ruins, save perhaps some disintegrated hull fragments long stuck in mud and shielded from the eroding currents.  But Lan was reasonably sure it was the place which was symbolic in the Alchemist’s gesture and not the literal architecture.  No, he presumed–and his presumptions were generally apt–that what he was looking for here would be the Alchemist’s creation.

“Did you stop to rest, al’Ver?” Ty asked.  He had stirred, it seemed, awakened by their cessation of movement.

“Captain al’Ver,” Lan corrected, though not disdainfully.  Ty was attempting well enough to blunt his own discomfort at their decreased pace.

“Yes, of course.  Captain.  But–”

“No, Mr. Ehsam.  We have stopped because there is something the two of us need to see.”

“The…two of us?”  The question was punctuated by a moist thud as Naples toppled to the deck.


“Wha–what’s all this?” the scholar asked blearily.

“No need to worry,” Lan assured.  “Please keep watch over the children.  We will not be away long.”

With that, he stepped out onto the bank, Ty bewildered but in tow.  The reeds were thick where he had moored the raft, and if there were anything hiding in the mud near them, it would be all but impossible to find.  But Lan doubted it would be so close to the river’s churn.  Excelsis, whose life’s work had been toward the preservation of the world, would have been particularly wary of erosive influences.  Up ahead, there was an outcropping of rocks which would certainly be a more fruitful ground for their search.  Lan drifted up the uneven terrain on footholds he suspected were too slight for Ty to notice as Ty, accordingly, ignored them, clambering up the rocks with impressive agility but no small effort.

“Al’Ver.  Captain,” he said, about three quarters of the way up.  He was trying to disguise his heavy breathing, only mostly successfully.  “What are we doing here?”

“We are looking for something the Alchemist left us, Mr. Ehsam.”  Ty’s frown deepened to incredulity.

“What?  No!  Absolutely not!”

Lan peered between a gap in two boulders, spotting the telltale contours of stairs hewn into the rock.

“Right here, I believe,” he said.  Ty looked through the gap.

“Oh, gods, there’s actually something here,” he muttered.  Then, more dedicatedly: “No!  I’m done with this, al’Ver!  I finally have my freedom in hand, and I’m not going to risk it for a payday on whatever manse or lair this is.  I need to get back up north!”  He turned to leave, but Lan called after him:

“It is precisely because you have the Keystone that we are here.”  Ty stopped, looking back at Lan with sudden suspicion.  “Did you think your quest was merely coincident to my journey to the Reach?”

“I did,” Ty said slowly, eyes widening with something approaching recognition.  “What does this have to do with the Keystone?”

“Some time ago, the Alchemist asked me to find it and bring it here.  I have done so.  Now we must see what that was meant to accomplish.”  Ty stared.

“The Alchemist died nearly a century ago,” he said.  “Who–what are you?”  Lan held his gaze for a moment and then turned back to the occluded staircase.  He began making his way downward.  Ty would follow in a moment.  He was resistant, but the stream had him now.

At the bottom of the staircase, surrounded on all sides by rocky walls made more of intentionally-placed stone bricks than the random boulders above, Lan paused before a metallic door.  It was peculiar–dark, almost black, not iron or steel, nor any other metal with which he was familiar, though metal was hardly a domain over which he claimed expertise.  He waited to hear Ty’s dampened footsteps behind him before opening it, stepping out of the way of the corpse that fell into the doorway.

“Fuck!” Ty hissed.

The corpse was practically mummified, its skin taut and pale-brown over its bones, though its chest had been flattened, with a large, square crater of pulverized flesh and bone in the center of its otherwise-preserved torso.  It meant they weren’t the first to find this place, though they were likely the first in some time.  It also meant something else, though Lan trusted Ty’s instincts were sharp enough for him to discern it on his own.  He stepped around the corpse and into the large, rectangular room beyond.

As he did, a number of crevices at the base of each wall came to life with a green glow, illuminating a dizzying array of symbols etched into nearly every inch of the stone walls, floor, and ceiling inside.  Lan was no metamage.  These symbols were neither within his command nor comprehension, but he was not blind to the ways that humans interacted with the residual dream and death they called “mana”.  Even if he did not know what they meant, he knew what they were: mathematics, epistemological declarations alien to his own experiential nature, memos to reality as to the specifics of the transmutations the mana was meant to invoke.  The entire room was an artifact, then, but on the off chance an entrant knew the language the Alchemist used to document his enchantment, they might glean some idea of his intent.  Fortunately–or unfortunately, as may have been the case for their semi-embalmed forerunner–it seemed Excelsis had left a separate message in a more universally understood language, and that message began to rumble to life, separating itself from the wall as Ty tiptoed in, and the door behind them squealed shut.

It was a golem, a magical constructed wielded by earth mages the world over, its anatomy sculpted to a crude humanoid shape in the same cubic bricks that made up the rest of the room’s surfaces.  This one was unique, however, in that the evocation of a golem was a somewhat demanding allocation of mana, and this one seemed to be persisting in the absence of a mage.

“Ready the Keystone, Mr. Ehsam,” Lan said.  The golem braced to charge, its intent–to the extent an unthinking construct’s will to violence might be considered intent–eminently clear.

“Ready it for wha–gah!”  Ty threw himself sideways as the golem lurched into the spot where head had been standing, coming to a halt with the force of a rockslide but far more grace than its unwieldy form might have implied possible.  Lan swatted at its “head”–a gesture which had little hope of impeding it but which might acquire its attention.  The ploy was partially successful: The construct’s torso spit around the axis of its waist, causing its arms to whip outward at the men on either side of it, stretching–in such a way that the bricks in its arms separated from each other slightly, held together by nothing but pure mana–and clipping Ty, sending him reeling back into the wall.

“The Keystone was to be brought here,” Lan said, keeping most signs of concern from his voice as he leaned out of the way of the golem’s whirling strike.  “We must find what it was to be brought to.”

“Oh, must we?!” Ty snarled, pushing himself upright and dashing away from the golem.  Amidst the chaos, it seemed he had, in fact, followed Lan’s instructions: The marbled blue medallion was dangling by its chain from his fingertips.  

Lan regripped his umbrella and drove it more dedicatedly into the construct’s cranium, with force that likely would have broken a human’s skull.  Almost surprisingly, the surface gave slightly against the blow.  Reasonable, he supposed: So mobile a configuration of stones might not be the most stable one.  Either way, it seemed he had its attention.

The golem shifted its strategy, squaring up toward Lan and seeming almost to widen.  It had learned quickly, he realized.  It had gathered that its sudden movements were not sufficient to surprise him, so now it meant to corner him instead.  Slowly, it began to stretch an arm toward him.  Excellent.  He had been hoping to see whether this would work.  As the stones in its arm once again began to separate, he jammed his umbrella into one of the gaps and levered it hard.

Golems, in his experience, were not difficult to partially destroy.  All one had to do was overpower the local mana the mage was channeling to hold a particular piece together, which, for the joints, was generally not very much.  This was only so useful in the normal case, though, since a mage would be able to regather whatever was destroyed in seconds.  Lan was curious, though, whether Excelsis’ guardian possessed the wherewithal to repair itself.  Sure enough, its arm shattered at the elbow, the stones falling uselessly at Lan’s feet, but the construct did not give him the pleasure of confusion at its sudden disarmament.  It simply rushed him.

He opened his reinforced umbrella in an attempt to blunt the impact, though he doubted how much it would matter in preventing his imminent flattening against the wall.  In the end, though, he did not find out.  Nor did he answer his question regarding the construct’s regenerative talents.  As it impacted his umbrella, the golem’s entire body disintegrated into rubble, which washed over him uncomfortably but harmlessly.  Simultaneously, every inscrutable symbol on every wall lit up with the same green glow that lined the floor.  Lan looked to Ty, standing at the opposite end of the room before a large, stone slab.  At the center of the slab, slotted into an indentation and glowing a brilliant blow, was the Keystone.  The door they had entered by swung open.

“Ah, so there is something he–ah, Captain!  There you are!”

Naples poked his head into the room, flanked by Orphelia’s diminutive form.  Lan fixed him with a disapproving glare.

“I instructed you to keep watch over my vessel, Mr. Naples,” he said, picking pebbles from his glove.

“I’m afraid you merely instructed me to keep watch over the children,” Naples replied, attention suddenly overtaken by the glowing room.  “And they are, uh, here, of course.”

“Ooh, what’s this place, Captain?” Orphelia asked, following him in, dragging Devlin, semiconscious, by the wrist.

“A place of not trivial danger, my dear,” Lan said.  He turned his attention to Ty, who was trying to make sense of the slab which now bore the Keystone–and from which, to his mounting frustration, he seemed unable to extricate it.

“Danger is fun,” Orphelia probed, picking up one of the golem’s fragments, not entirely convinced.

“Is this one of the Alchemist’s laboratories?” Naples asked, breathless.

“You call this a laboratory?” Ty shouted over his shoulder, trying to get a grip on the Keystone, to no avail.

“I suppose not, but…these are most certainly his runes.  I’m sure of it.”

“You can read the Alchemist’s language, Mr. Naples?” Lan asked, bemused.

“Not well, not well, but Master Jabez taught me a little.  Like–” he gestured to the indentation where the golem had separated from the wall.  “This seems to be describing a ‘doorman’ who turns away anyone without an…’opener’.  Or, yes, a key!  So it would…”  He glanced from the slab and Ty over to the pile of rubble.  “Perhaps you’ve already gotten that far.”

“You wanna make yourself useful?” Ty snapped.  “Come tell me what all this shit means!”  Cautiously, Naples approached with Orphelia in tow as Devlin took a seat amidst the scattered stones.

“So this is less verb-y…lots of relative and reflexive particles I don’t really follow, but the two biggest pieces are here–” he tapped a series of large runes at the bottom of the slab, “–which is a compound of ‘fire’ and ‘gathering’ and ‘place’.  I’d maybe translate it as ‘hearth’ or ‘campfire’, not sure about the context.”  He pointed up at a similarly-sized inscription at the top of the slab.  “And that’s…that’s weird.  The rune in the middle means ‘within’, but the ones on either side aren’t really standard as far as I’m aware.  That one on the left looks sort of like ‘dream’, but also like ‘night’, or even ‘mage’, which is itself a known modification of ‘death’, just with an indicator to denote it is being wielded.”

Ty exhaled, clearly apathetic to the nuance, but he held his tongue.  Lan, for his part, was intrigued.  It was a rare occurrence that he should encounter something he was so thoroughly unaware of, and he was happy for Naples’ aid in the discovery.  Moreover, he had heard the name Jabez Faisal before, upon tertiary currents.  Perhaps he would need to make a point of meeting this individual.

“And the one on the right appears to be a fusion also.  I see the distinctive marks of ‘human’ and ‘tool’ and ‘small creature’ and…’asleep’?”

“What does it mean?” Ty blurted, his frustration finally boiling over.

“I, uh,” Naples stammered.  “It means ‘dream-night-mage within asleep-small-human-tool’.  Beyond that, your interpretation is as good as mine.”  Ty grunted, punching the wall with his palm.

“All that fucking knowledge, and even you don’t know what to do with this?  Dammit!”

Lan laughed.

“Mr. Ehsam!” he said.  “That was your question?  I’d thought you might spare the moment for a fascinating lesson in linguistics, the way forward being as obvious as it is.”

“Obvious, al’Ver?” Ty asked through his teeth.

“But of course!  You brought the Keystone to the door.  All that’s left is to open it!”

With that, Lan grasped the right side of the slab and pulled.  With some resistance, it swung open, the Keystone receding into the indentation where Ty had placed it.

Inside, half-embedded into the wall, was something that looked like a man but was not.  Rather, Lan noted with interest, it had a man’s face, cast meticulously and realistically in silver.  Its limbs, he supposed, while anatomically correct enough, were far too runed, metallic, interspersed with filigree and empty space for any observer to realistically mistake them for human flesh.  It was, all told, a beautiful sculpture, but more pertinently, it seemed that the Keystone, through the door, had connected with a slot on its chest, where it now rested, pulsing a soft blue.  Then, as if in answer to all of their questions, the sculpture opened its black eyes.

“I am awake,” it said.  Its voice was human enough, vaguely male, though it sounded as if it were echoing through a hallway made of tin.  “Please confirm the status of the scenario.”

“…what?” Ty breathed, incredulous.  The sculpture’s head turned very slightly to face him, though the rest of it remained perfectly still.

“Very well,” it replied.  “I will clarify the scenario subpoints: Is Excelsis dead?”

“Yes?” Ty said skeptically, taking a reflexive step back.

“Thank you.  Is the Night Sky’s awakening imminent?”

“What?” Ty muttered, but Lan supplied the appropriate response.

“It is.”  All eyes turned to him, including the sculpture’s.

“Thank you,” it repeated.  “Is the place of His awakening known to you?” Lan frowned.

“I’m afraid not,” he said.

“Very well.  Is the Great Fire nearby?”  Ty squinted.

“The Great Fire?” he asked.  “The Blaze?”

“It is not,” Lan clarified.  “Though it approaches from afar.”

“Thank you,” the sculpture replied.  “The status of the scenario is currently viable, provided the Great Fire remains ambulatory.  It is my recommendation that the place of awakening be located immediately.  I will aid you in this effort, to the best of my ability.”

With this, the sculpture’s limbs came to life, and it began to climb down from the wall.  Its motions were not graceful.  It stumbled slightly upon touching the floor, but it righted itself quickly enough.

“No, no, no, no,” Ty sputtered, moving to intercept it.  “This isn’t–fuck!”  As if struck by an unseen force, he reeled backward, clutching his temples.  “This wasn’t the deal!”  The motions of Ty’s mouth in the following sentence were slurred with hisses and grunts of pain, but Lan caught the quiet, whispered response that he knew was not really from Ty:

“This was exactly the deal,” he said.

“Are you alright?” Naples shouted, running over to Ty while keeping a wary eye on the sculpture, who merely watched impassively.

“That was my out!” Ty shouted.  “That stone was gonna save my life!”  He sank to his knees, in defiance of Naples’ efforts to help him up.

“Quit your whining,” Lan said, adopting a haughty sternness.  “Now it will save everyone’s life.  Ideally including your own.  Now construct–what may we call you?”  Once again turning to face Lan with an uncanny minimum of movement, the sculpture replied:

“I…was designated the title Homunculus.”

“Very well, Homunculus, are you able to explain the remaining steps of this ‘scenario’?  Excelsis declined to provide the particulars.”

“Yes,” the Homunculus replied.  “The objective is to bring the Great Fire into confluence with the Night Sky’s awakening, for it is fire which wards off the night.”

“Yes, yes, the business with the scarab and the broken nose,” Lan said.  “Are we to get our noses broken too?  Then off to sleep with Father again?”

“What?”  The response came asynchronously from Ty, Naples, and Orphelia, though the Homunculus’ was much the same:

“I’m afraid I do not understand,” it said.  “But to the broader context, I cannot say what the precise impact of accomplishing our task will be, merely that it should forestall the erosion of reality.  To that end, it is ideal that the confluence with the Great Fire should be both spatial and temporal, though I am equipped to correct for errors on either side, provided we locate the place of the awakening.”  Lan nodded, planting his umbrella on the floor, satisfied.

“Excellent, then.  Please join us, Mr. Homunculus.  We have a lengthy journey yet.”

“Al’Ver!” Ty hissed, climbing to his feet.  “Enough with the sweeping us all off to adventure.  What the hell is going on?”

“Put simply, Mr. Ehsam, the substance of the very world has been on the brink of dispersion for some time.  This world was created, its creator is not inclined to keep it that way, and it was the Alchemist’s last wish that something be done about all that.”

“Do you have an idea where this ‘place of awakening’ is then, Captain?” Naples asked, playing along reticently but admirably.

“Not even the faintest,” Lan replied.  “But I’m sure we’ll find it by some road.  And around here, all roads lead to the same place.”