"Judicator will see you now, Aeon."

And the door slammed shut. Janus had the strangest idea of service, employing brutes and fomorians for all tasks, uniformally devoid of grooming. They did not lack for breeding, though. In fact, they were overbred, just like their master. I rose from my cot (a luxury for the Judicator's guests), and followed the cretinous footman through the narrow hallway with its sterile gas lighting that wound by sharp angles inward so that without a guide one could not find their way. The thought struck me that I might need to make a quick egress, and on a whim I tried a trick that to my delight worked perfectly. I brushed my fingers against the walls, slipping the tips through the plane, and then I turned my head. I saw something, though I could not tell what. I allowed my steps to swerve so that my entire hand went beyond the space the wall inhabited, and when I looked again the blur became a curtain. Wrist deep, and I could see a man-like thing struggle to stuff a poorly placed arm into its trousers along with its leg. Passing that room, I saw a well sanitized latrine, and then a long room with benches where a physician examined a young boy who except for a pair of stubby horns looked fairly standard. I could not at the time be certain, but it seemed the doctor looked at me with eyes that glowed.

It felt like a wall, so stoutly was it built. I'd blundered into the thing while contemplating whether or not the doctor saw through eyes like mine, not realizing it had stopped before a door of drab green steel held shut by a network of actuated arms. My guide turned its head and grunted, then rolled its eye and opened the door with a series of precise movements shielded by the brute's broad back.

"He'll want you to take your helmet off," said my guide.

I said nothing. I was here to speak to Janus, not his auxiliaries.

His full assembly was gathered, filling the laboriously grim audience hall with blustering and practiced shouts. I looked first for Tythus, nodding to him when I found him in the mob behind me, then, and only when I saw that he was not being threatened, I turned to the Judicator.

"Janus!" I shouted. I raised my arms in mimicry of those he held his twin tipped spears with. He stood motionless, not showing any emotion, which I took to be an expression of annoyance. I felt a presence behind me and sharply turned my head. A pale, hairless man in a white robe emerged from some unseen door and was now watching from the wall where I myself had come. Beyond his attire, I knew it to be the physician, and I squinted to see his eyes. Green irises reflected the stark white light from the flood lamps in the Judicator's high ceilinged hall.

I heard a spear tip hammer into the floor and slowly gave Janus back my attention. "Janus!" I shouted again, renewing the jubilant lift in my arms. "I like spears too, Janus. But Brutus took mine."

A monstrous guard with a skull full of eyes rushed toward me with his club over his head, but another pound from the Judicator's spear stopped him.

"Yes," I said gleefully, "your lord's will becomes you. I took off my shroud, reveling in the hush that swept over the room.

"What's tha?" asked the voice behind. Its difficult to explain, but while it sounded young, and eager for its point ot be proven, it sounded tired in a way only one of many years could feel. Some words were not finished, and it was desperate for what it couldn't see to be described.

"What did he do? Why is everyone quiet? Is it true?"

The old face that faced me pursed its wrinkled lips as it nodded affirmingly. "He looks the part. Janus seemed to float as he walked. Down the dais on which he strode, his long crimson skirt dragging behind his four plodding feet. He made a swift motion with his head and four of his goons came to take his spears. Then he came very close to me, oddly silent.

"Will you prove your Lordly kinship?" the old face asked. His voice was an event, and, mocking him as I previously had, I dared not interrupt his speech.

So I nodded, expecting my vitality to be the object of the test. What I did not expect, was for the childlike arms to pull a thin bladed knife from inside their headless doll, or to move as swiftly as they did. Had I expected the attack, I could not have dodged or parried. I felt suddenly weak as my throat emptied itself onto the floor, but before I could feel my anger rise there was a flash of light, and tiny pincers pulled at the skin around my wound. More quickly than ever before, my body stitched itself back together.

"Show me!" the desperate young voice shouted.

"Be quiet," said the old, vibrant one.

"I saw the light!"

"Then you know all you need to know."

His face was grew strained, and for a moment he seemed to be struggling to keep his head from turning.

I looked around at the mob, seeing that there was a clerical bunch in robes like his; crimson with gold Sunbursts embroidered from hood to hem in varied sizes and fonts. Why they wore their hoods up and their master didn't, I wondered. But then, I wondered a great many things, including how this megatherian attained this post in what I'd seen to be the human quarter of the upper city.

"Aeon," said Janus, stepping slowly back. Then he lurched forward, clearly irate, and the voice behind shouted. "He is the demiurge! Don't let this stray demon sway you! Our Lord knows no rival!"

Janus staggered to regain his poise, then angrily struck the back of his own head. I heard weeping.

"I'll be happy to gag him for you."

I didn't expect Janus to smile at that comment. "Be my guest," he said.

He turned, and amidst my horror was pity. His other face was part of a head that emerged from the back of his skull. The thin membrane between was stretched and veiny. The face itself was a sagging, melted taper, its mouth almost draped over its chin on the left side. Its eyes looked empty; a pair of tunnels where worms no longer dwelled. But somehow, it saw. Its flattened nostrils flared and struggled to breath, and the closer I came to it the more frantic it got, until it screamed. Then Janus struck it again, this time hard enough to knock it unconscious.

"Now," he said, turning, and wiping his lip as if it were the one that was struck. His doubled hip and four legs seemed more an encumbrance for his body than an advantage. "Allright, now that you've humiliated me before my whole assembly, tell me why you're here, and what you intend to do while you are."

I remember feeling unexplained guilt for having mocked this man. It struck me then that he might very well be the only bastion against absolute chaos in these remote stretches of Thirty-Third Day.

"Forgive me, Judicator." I bowed, and to an extent, I meant it.

"I will, for now. Answer my question."

And I was honest. "I have no clear idea why I felt inclined to come to this place, and my purpose here has yet to be revealed to me."

Janus laughed. "That is refreshing to hear. You may last a while, so long as you keep up your stupidity. This advice is free; being interesting will save you. Now go, before the child wakes up. I've no more patience for his bleating."

Again I bowed, thanked the Judicator, and collected my little guide before going on my way.

"One thing," he said, halting my departure, "explain that name you called me. Janus."

I smirked. "It's a complement." What I did not say, was that it was borrowed knowledge that inspired the name. Reflecting on the thoughts that accompanied it sadden me.

Half a day later I had finished what passed for processing and acquiring citizenship, being allowed an abbreviated version due to my nature. When I'd been taught the hand signs and words of passing, and given a badge to wear that warned off law enforcement (I use the term very loosely) from accosting me over petty crimes, Tythus and I sat on an exterior patio that overlooked a wrecked courtyard. We faced inward, and so while we could see the sky, only the distant inner walls of Thirty-Third Day formed our horizon. I was beginning to see why Tythus thought of that city as all of Tarthus.

"I've been up there," I told him. We both sat on the cold steel floor with our backs propped on a wall embossed with Sunbursts. The courtyard below, a heap of riven flagstones, had stylized Sunrays on its partially preserved outer rim. Above us the sky roiled, and in the churning of the clouds the faint moonlight dreamily swirled.

"Is she pretty?"

"Is who pretty?"

"The Lady Luna. Who else?"

I shook my head. What is Victor 33 teaching his people? I wondered.

"I only saw the Sun. The unconquered and indomitable Sun."

"What does it look like?"

"A perfect sphere of brightest light. And you can feel its power stretching across the void. It's almost as if it's alive."

"But it's not."

I turned toward the boy and raised a hairless brow. "You know this, do you?"

"Everyone knows it's dead. The living Sun's underground."

I thought carefully before speaking. "I've seen many things you doubtless have been told are merely legend. The difference is, I've seen them. So as surely as I am here right now, so are those things real. But I'd be guilty of the same atrocities of influence as my counterpart if I were to try pressuring you to believe me."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

And then the bomb was dropped. "Our Lord never taught me of the Suns."

"Then who did?"

"I learned from the Haruspex in the Enhancement Guild. I served them before..."

I let the silence hang for just a moment, as there are times when comfort fails if a sufficient amount of pain is not allowed to blossom. "Before you became a subject?"

"A lab rat, they called me."

"Who taught this Haruspex?"

"He's a Dagon. They learn from... Come to think of it, I don't know."

I nodded and gave his shoulder a pat. "These are the questions a person must learn to ask."

The boy looked up at me and smiled, and I had a sense that he had never smiled that way at anyone in his life.

"I'd like to visit this Enhancement Guild."

His smile fled, and I think he might have shuddered. He shook his head violently, that I'm certain of.

"Are they close to your lord?"

He nodded. "Closer than the Dagons."

"But you said the Haruspex is a Dagon."

"Yeah, but he had to do some messed up things to become both. Most are one or the other."

I nodded. I had many questions, but did not want to torture this abused child, so I asked him what he would like to do with the rest of the day.

With a shrug: "I should show you around. There's a lot you'll need to know if you're to survive."

"Survive?"

He pounded his chest. "In here." He tapped his skull. "And in here."

I nodded. "Show me around, then."

We went by a path I forgot as soon as we walked it, passing under a narrow arch of twisted timbers into a close living space that could have been found in the mid levels of Clarion. Tythus rummaged through a sideboard when we entered the kitchen, then a chest in the largest bedroom, and then we moved on. There seemed to be no way of exiting the apartment, but there was a hole in the floor of a particular closet. dropping through that portal took us to a series of dark hallways. Tythus was surprised to see that I did not need any torch to find my way, though without him, even with my dark adaptation and right of passage between planes I might have still become lost. Lower we went, climbing as far as we could down half wrecked ladders and dropping onto catwalks that nearly gave way beneath us, until we stopped at a door. Tythus pressed his ear to it, and when I passed my head through I saw a large tarrasquin sleeping against the opposite wall.

"Does he have a broken horn?" Tythus asked, very quietly whispering into my ear. I looked again, then came back and nodded. Tythus sighed with relief, then produced a small, dim red crystal from a pocket in his ragged trousers. He held it to where instead of a lock, there was rectangle of the stuff gemstones are made from. It glowed softly until Tythus twisted the crystal down and to the left. The light grew brighter, as did that of the crystal, and when the two glows matched the door softly opened. The tarrasquin stood and grasped a metal club that I hadn't noticed from under his chair.

Tythus hurried to him, holding a locket in one hand and a crumpled ration tin in the other.

"Is that..." rumbled the saurian. I looked at him more closely than before, and saw that not only had he a broken horn, but there was a gash running down his skull from the break to his upper lip. It was so deep and wide it disfigured his face, and his jaw clicked when he spoke.

"Ovaline," said Tythus.

The saurian ignored the locket and took the tin greedily. So enraptured with it was he that I had gone completely unnoticed. Tythus put the locket in his pocket, then turned and gestured for me to remove my shroud.

"I just brought my friend from the Judicator," the boy said. "He's a Lord of the Batch."

The saurian laughed while poking a claw through the top of the tin. He dragged his finger in a circle and popped the lid out, then went to a refer closet on the west side of the room. He took out a glass jar of milk that came from what creature I dare not guess, and poured the powdery contents of the tin into it. The liquid turned the color of mud, and the tarrasquin gulped it down. Then, after a long, hearty belch, did he see me. The glass jar broke when it hit the floor.

"Please," I said, waving my hand, "don't bow. I'm no lord."

I watched them both closely, and while Tythus smiled, the tarrasquin looked the way a man does when a debtor has forgiven him a mighty sum without reprisals. After a prolonged and awkward silence, he dropped the club and held his hand out to me. I grasped it, and soon he was in my arms, weeping piteously.

"He says there's a world outside Tarthas."

Now the saurian looked like a man told a truth so profoundly different than his beliefs it wounded him; or, rather, as a woman does when her dead child twitches, and she is on the verge of realizing the fever has broke, and those years of agony she readied herself for would be bestowed upon another.

"Show me," said the saurian.

"Brother," said I, "what is your name?".

He gasped, recoiled, then smiled. "You're really him. You're the radix. The First V."

I smiled, hating every second of the lie I told out of sheer, stupid, unprepared awkwardness. When we were again alone, walking through a hallway behind Sleeps Under the Sand, I told Tythus never to put me in such a situation again.

"I can tell you, or I can show you," he said. "The difference is, now you've seen it."

"What do these people believe that the Judicator doesn't?"

Tythus smiled, and I recalled how angry I felt when the shadow I called Astus whistled into my unconscious while I slept. The halls we passed through turned from bare walls and breaker panels to locked doors watched by stout men bearing goodendags.

"Pantries," Tythus said. "Food is the most precious thing here, and water. You might fetch a middling deal for some clothes, so long as their fresh and clean, or exotic narcotics, if they're something not in circulation here."

"Narcotics?". I knew of pain blockers and adrenaline boosters given to soldiers, though Turk would allow no such thing among the Cataphracts or us conscripts.

"They take the pain away."

"For the wounded? The sick?"

"The sick of heart." Tythus pounded his chest again.

We were led to a spacious room where armored men and robed women sorted through bags of various salvaged goods. Many seemed to be personal affects, and the general plan of the sorting was between that wich served utility and that which did not. Most in the room were human, save for a handful of tarrasquin who by the commonalities of their gear I guessed to be a mercenary band, The only other kindred I saw represented was in the center of the room, where a tall, graceful tyfloch woman stood over a table and looked at a series of charts. Flanking her were who I took for the captains of the two armed companies; the saurian and the human. She was not robed like the other women, but wore a soiled gown that perhaps had been white. It was sleeveless, and her long arms were marked by sores where the rot had begun. Also not hidden were her withered wings which jutted piteously out of slits in her gown. She was adorned with simple, elegant chains about her head and neck, and wore a silver ring on her right forefinger.

"You are mother to those who live here," I said, noticing the group of timid onlookers forming around me.

"In spirit," she said, holding very still while she looked me up and down. "I assume you except me to bow."

"I'd really rather you didn't."

She was visibly relieved when I said that, and came around the table to greet me with a raised hand. I took it in mine and kissed it, as I had seen done when members of the Board spoke with their subjects at Haven. That ritual was a matter contested by the Junior Board, who labeled it as problematic. Eris told me how they had kept the tradition after they seized power, and how that was a cold warning to all that no progress would result from their coup.

My lips brushed against a patch of rot on the lady's hand, and to my surprized its texture was smooth, and its smell somewhat sweet. Still I stifled a convulsion.

"I am Victor 39," I said.

"Some might contest that."

I stood to my full height, watchful of her two captains who while pensive, were ready to draw their cleavers.

"I am Anpiel," she said.

"Your name? Or your title?"

"Both," she said after a moment of thought. "Your akin to Our Lord. He sent you to observe us?"

"No. Though I doubt you'll believe a word I tell you, still I will tell you. This place is not Tarthas, but a mere city known to those who live outside as Thirty-Third Day. There are other such cities, ruled by other lords, and many smaller communities as well. I come from a city called Haven, once ruled by a group of lords and ladies."

"Once ruled?"

"Haven was destroyed. I survived the attack and helped avenge it. You seem to know something of conquest and spoils."

First venom, then realization, and her face soon calmed. "And you clearly know nothing of how we live. What is your purpose here, my Lord of Eidolon?".

"I've befriended Tythus, and having passed the Judicator's scrutiny he took me to this place. You'd do better asking him what our purpose here might be."

She gave him a specific look that warmed to half a smile. "Ah Tythus. Have you told him the truth? Have you told him that what is given can in turn be taken? Be wary of this boy, my Lord of Eidolon."

Knowing nothing of this place or their customs and titles, I tried to correct her.

"The Judicator called me Aeon. If you insist on granting me a title, I'd prefer the one your iudex gave me."

This time she laughed. "You'd be dubbed an object over an icon? So be it. The people are clearly enamoured with you, Aeon. If you can find some way to help them, I'll see to it you enjoy your time with them. If help is not your aim, then I ask you please to hurry through your tour and pass on, and have Tythus barter your company elsewhere."

"He can help, Miss, you'll see!" said my little guide.

It was faint enough that it could have been imagined, but I had no thought to do so, so I believed and believe still that a bell rang in the distance.

"What help is needed?" I asked.

"The people need an icon," said the human captain. His accent brought back extant memories of either a place or a thing called Grey Moth.

"Yes," agreed his tarrasquin counterpart. "The Painted Lady's shadows are sorely missed. An untethered Batchborn could heal a lot of ailing hearts."

At that, Tythus smiled up at me and softly pounded his chest.

"These shadows," I blurted, "I think I've seen them, far from here. They were walking on ropes."

My comment met a wall of blank stares.

"Our Lord has khaibits of his own," said Anpiel. "So, Aeon, will you be the people's Lord of Eidolon?"

"I will be what I am, and do what I can do. I've no knowledge of what this office even is, but all my life I've been a soldier and a scholar."

"We don't need either of those," said the human with the accent. "We've got plenty of both. We need you to be an icon. Our people need someone to give them an ideal to aspire to."

I saw myself standing on a balcony above a huddled throng maddened by the sight of a man they would never actually know, and my stomach churned.

"I'll be their Lord of Eidolon, but I will spread no false hopes, validate no lies, and refuse to stand above them in any way."

"That could work," said the tarrasquin captain. "Anything he does differently than Lord V will allay their fears, and might even instill belief."

All the while, Anpiel looked at me and observed. She was not the winged mother of dream whose statue roosts on the summit of ancient Clarion.

"You took the name of another," I said, unenthused with the idea of a name I'd known since boyhood being appropriated by this gilded yokel. I had walked the wastes of Tarthas, held up my lantern from atop tall buildings, and watched the world's strongest foes wage their final battle. I'd even flown a pegasus above the firmament and saw the Sun, and this housebound tyfloch of little repute dared take the name of an historical relic! I was so angry, forgetting that I had very little knowledge of even my own truths, let alone those of the entire world.