My excitement prevented me from attentively listening to the first moments of the conversation, and from properly responding to Turk's coldness. I assumed he was putting on an aloof air in front of V as a manipulation, and ignored the personal offense I took. If there was anyone I was prone to make excuses for, it was Turk. I went so far as to imagine us speaking alone after the meeting with V. He would apologize for being brusk, and explain that it was necessary in V's presence, as I had assumed, and I treated this reverie as a true event and forgave Turk preemptively.

Then I looked at Jadus's physician.

"I remember you," I said with a squint. There was silence, and I realized I had interrupted Turk mid sentence. I pretended not to care.

"Victor," said Turk, "we can speak later."

I gestured towards V with a nod and patted the arms of my chair, but Turk's gaze did not soften. I looked at V.

"Before he entered," V said, "I was explaining the new batch's education process. Victor here is mentoring one of the boys.

"The New Batch?" I was incredulous.

"No," said V. Batch as in a batch of muffins, not the witch's brew you and I were conjured from."

At that, I was curious, so I determined myself to sit quietly, only to be asked to speak.

"How is that going?".

I looked at V, and found that I had trouble reading his eyes. "Well."

"Eliezer has concerns, but..."

V then turned his head from me to the door, which slid open. "Speak of the devil..."

A handsome older woman entered, wearing a very clean, featureless red gown. "Ellezer apologizes for interrupting and wishes a brief audience."

All V did was nod, and the woman left, but the door shut behind her and Eliezer never entered. V was silent for an instant, then resumed his talk.

"You've encountered the model already, and had a remarkable impact on the boy, and he on you. So I've told Eliezer to keep his concerns to himself. This is not a Dagon matter. You say it's going well?"

Again, I was curious, so I nodded. "Why are you growing children in batches? Does all Thirty-Third Day hold to the Dagon's absurd thoughts on reproduction?"

The physician laughed.

"Before Turk waged his war on Blitzkrieg, there were quite a few more people in the world. We're searching for ways of replenishing the ranks, among other things."

I leaned back and crossed a leg while folding my hands over my abdomen. "So Tythus and Dante, they aren't truly... people?"

V, leaning back with a leg crossed, but one elbow on the table, smirked. I thought I heard a faint chuckle. "They're as true as you and I."

"Moreso," said the physician.

"Yes" V agreed. "Much moreso."

"How?" I asked.

"Victor," said Turk.

My forgiveness was withdrawn. "I'm here now, Turk. You'll have to wait."

"He's come a long way," said V.

I can't say why I felt so suddenly stirred, but my reverie was exposed for what it was, and I was angry with Turk. "So have I."

"I was talking about you, Victor."

And then, before his words could sink in, I was angry with V as well, taking exception the his tone when he said the name Victor. "It pains you to say our name, does it?".

"It pains me to say your name. I'm going to side with Turk if you just came here to vent frustrations."

I have to admit that I felt very much defused. The revelation of Dante and Tythus's nature was largely what I had come to learn. The rest was, as V had called out, of a personal nature between him and me. Even the physician's presence had been explained. But my curiosity was not completely extinguished, so I looked at Turk.

"The Devils are gone. What could you possibly need new soldiers for now?"

After a long pause, he said that there would always be a need for soldiers in the world we lived in.

"Yes," V replied, "in the world we live in. Imagine living in a world without the need for soldiers. Victor, (he said my name less contentiously then) that's the discussion you barged in on. Will you join it?"

I too considered my response for a moment. "I came here for other reasons, but I would like to take part in this discussion. I'm sorry for the manner in which I came here."

"And he was doing so well," said the physician.

"He's doing better than any of us hoped," said V.

Turk's eyes glowed hotter than I'd ever seen, though he remained as still as a mountain in his seat. I became aware of a centipede crawling along the vast conference table, and as I thought it, V mouthed the word precious. I could hear his voice in my mind, and was troubled by how similar it was to mine. But, I think, what really troubled me about it, was that it was similar and not identical. What caused the differences between us? I with my hairless body and sterile dome, and he with his albedo crown that draped over his shoulders like a hood of spun sugar.

"Tell me about this soldierless world," I said.

"Gentleman," said V, "if you'll humor us. Helios, rise!"

I saw a thing that left me breathless. Much time had I spent in the company of djinn, but none so grand as this. All the room went dark, and it was so quiet the noiseless legs of the centipede pounded like hammers in the hands of an army of masons. Then there was light, a tiny sphere, barely perceptible by virtue of size, but anthemic in its brilliance. From that pinpoint I heard a gentle voice respond to Lord V's summons.

"You sense a stranger in the room, Helios."

"Clepius, Basil; recently taken into employ of Binary Aphelion."

"Helios," V's voice was cautioning, in the manner of a parent teaching directness to their child.

The voice resumed, this time with a more fluid affect. "There's a near dup- Batch -tree, not prev-corded. Shall I proc- him, -Lord?"

"No, Helios. Show him the Fall."

"Yes, L- V."

Helios disappeared, and in his place was Hyperion, uncloaked and crowned with creation itself. A streak of light rose before the Sun crested Luna's rim, spurring a rapid wheeling of the stars. Then, from the gem encrusted distance, in those black recesses where there seems at first to be nothing, another light began to appear, and when I could be certain that I saw it it splintered into three, then again and then again until there was an uncountable cloud of icy plumes. I thought to see vessels like Icarus Arc, or Tyriel's craft, but I did not. From somewhere in the farthest of horizons, the hand of a giant threw a hailstorm at us, and all went dark.

in a pink mist

The room remained dark long enough for me to think that Helios had finished his lecture, but then I heard voices; a monolithic groan that slowly distinguished itself into many. It was the sound of a trampling crowd that quickly began to grow quiet, a few muffled screams at a time. Wings fluttered, eggs hatched, arbalests fired, and constantly adding to the unseen din were trumpets and heavy drums. There was a faint clarion, but that is when the red light showed, which slowly took the form of an orb of liquid fire. Around it cropped up a city, and from the sounds of parliament and lighthearted debauch I assumed the city prospered.

Turk did not wait for the lecture to end. "You're seeing the home of the Devils, Victor."

"We're seeing the home of all things," said V.

"Well," I said, when the squalid lights lining the walls were lit again, and Helios had retreated to his vessel, "it all seems a bit vague."

"But you've seen more," V replied, "and we who've seen the past can make sense of these fragments. The Fall was not ours, but theirs."

The absence of luciens, tyflochs, tarrasquin and antagarthans in the under city then made sense. What did not, were the memories of a sapphire sky. "Helios." He returned and called me Lord. "Show us the city of the Devils again, but this time up close."

Silence.

V smiled. "He knowns my voice from yours."

"Will you not command him to show us then?"

Basil yawned.

"As you impugned earlier, Turk has come a long way. This is all I'll show you for now. We can have a more in depth discussion some other time."

I sat still then, trying not to look despondent, while Turk and V debated the accessibility of this underworld, and whether or not it remained inhabited.

"We've got weapons to fight them with," Basil added, "if they're still there to fight."

"Thanks to you," said V, looking at Turk.

"I turned their poison on the Devils. I will not use it against civilians."

Then V looked at me.

"Victor, what were you before Turk put that old spear in your hands?"

"A militiaman," I answered, only a little smug.

"Were you, though?"

My smugness died. "No. I was a library custodian, and abandoned soldiering to be a husband."

"Are we to assume that in this prosperous city that hoards the warmth of the sun, there are no men or women like Turk, or Basil, or myself? Are we too assume that a land with the ability to craft a monstrosity such as Pandemonium, and too train an equally monstrous brute such as Blitzkrieg, could not quickly send more monsters to harry us? You walked the surface, for a time. Have we the resources to compete?"

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

"Regis comes from the same source, does he not?" At last I got a smile from Turk.

"Yes," said V. All the monsters come from there. And they will keep coming from there, unless we act to save ourselves."

"Not with the poison," said Turk. "Our salvation lies in Clarion."

V laughed. "I expected you to say in Elvedon, which I still would have balked at. Have you really gotten this desperate? You heard the sound of it. It was a dying horn call, and all it did was cast our eyes downward."

"I've seen my own fragments of the past, V, and I'll interpret Helios's broken ramblings my own way, for what they're even worth."

"You'd have done well to wait," Basil said, looking at me. "Been at this for hours, round and round in circles."

I slipped through materium and emerged in the seat next to Basil, revelling quietly in the fright it caused him. "We can have our own conversation then."

"Very well." He was smirking, but there condensation on his brow.

"Why was it so important to make sure I hadn't any hair?"

Basil nodded towards V, who had turned his scowl from me to Turk and resumed their arguing. "Look at him."

"But what does my hairlessness mean? I know so little about the science of the Batch, though I am myself a seed of Neophilus. A crime, wouldn't you say?"

I quickly grew to loathe Basil's smile. "Can torch kindle itself? It's common, you know, for a thing not to know itself."

"Yes, I suppose so. Now, why is my hairlessness significant."

"Well, it means you're less human, more Batch. They didn't go far enough with Lord V, so they kept going, until they got to you."

"They being the Dolomites?"

"Call them what you like. Turk here made some very bold claims about you to Jadus, and Jadus wanted to know for sure."

"And what is it, exactly, the Dolomites made us for? I can't get a straight answer out of anyone."

Basil laughed so loud the other two stopped bickering and looked at us.

"Thirty-nine here wants a straight answer about the Batch! What is it, he asks. Wants me to tell him exactly what its purpose is. I'll answer for them, thirty-nine. No one knows. That little slideshow we just watched is the most complete record anyone has of anything. So how about you keep doing what your told until something jogs that memory you and Our Lord share, eh?".

I looked at V. "Is that why I'm being babysat by the Dagons?"

Turk stirred. V might have noticed if his eyes weren't fixed on me. I felt a certain sadness looking into his eyes that reminded me of Belial's. I could still taste the reek of his feverish breath, and see the mania in his eyes, rekindled to a faint light in a way the seemed like a corpse being exhumed, as he pounded me like a ragdoll onto the ground. Then I saw the look of terror in Anpiel's eyes as Blitzkrieg lifted him off the ground by his wings, a fraction of a second before tearing them from his spine.

The Fall... in a pink mist... who was your Kendra... Clarion... and as I watch the canopy over the bed sway in the breath of a lone rattling vent, prettily dead with its filigree border gone to rot, I imagine that very few people must have seen inside these walls, and I find it a fitting place for me. I may stay here a while. I may stay here a while.

I awoke in water... cold, splashed on my face, woke me, no, dabbed on my forehead by a cloth. Turk was in the room, and Dante, and two others; a big man about my age, and another big man much older. There was something familiar about them both. I was in the middle of a thought. I was wondering why Fergus and Alabaster hadn't taught anyone in the upper city of the world outside, having lived down here where such things were known. Perhaps it was too much, too wild a notion for too people, no matter how nice, to spread. Or, maybe that had, and I just hadn't been around them long enough to see how much truth they'd spread. They were good people, and meeting them gave me hope. I wanted to save Red Side, Ulster and all. I thought of the Judicator's older, smarter half, and I thought of Caduceus and his ugly children, and his wife and their troubled marriage. His daughter had clung to me, and I could tell even then that I represented peace to her. Then I thought of Kendra singing, and how soft the bed I lay on was, and I remembered how much death I saw when the sellswords turned on the sanctum. I still hadn't decided if I believed them to be opportunists, or if they simply acted out of fear. Much was disrupted by the Dolomites' dementia.

The bed I lay on was soft.

"He's coming around, General," said Master Astartes. Martas dabbed my brow with another cloth. I bolted upward.

"You! You're alive! How?"

"I took you to Elvedon, and still you ask?"

I looked at Turk and blinked, then looked around the room. I was on a divan covered in silk sheets and velvet cushions, and from the many curtains above me that while colored like satin were as thin as gauze, so many slender faces on so many slender neck descended like rainfall.

You asked me how she appeared to me, V. I can answer that now. She appeared to me as a serpent. Or a hydra?

Lady, what are you, besides beautiful?

"How did you get me here?"

Her faces all laughed. "You came here yourself."

"I ran," I said, almost instinctively. The memory of my panicked flight, and what triggered it, never did fully come together.

"Through walls and doors and many ceilings," she said.

"Lady, why?"

I heard the rumbling of Turk's breath when he sighed.

"Turk, it's good to see you. I feel so alone here." I then felt my stomach churn over Dante's presence. If he knew I was here...

"No one followed me," he said, likely guessing what I was thinking while rudely staring at him. I patted him on the head.

"There's nothing to be afraid of, Victor. Lord V and the Dagons know you've come back to me, but they cannot harm you and he will not." Our Lady was always so comforting.

"What happened?" asked Turk.

I wanted to answer, but I had so many questions of my own.

"I saw something..." I looked at Martus and Astartes. "Are you really here?".

Martus smiled. He was such a big man, with a bushy beard to boot. "Of course we're here. You called for us."

"We'll always come when you call," said Brother Astartes.

I heard a quiet voice singing, and saw Kendra in the corner of the room, propped on a throw pillow, with a vibrantly colored snake dangling peacefully from her hand with its body coiled about her arm.

"I saw something..."

"We were watching the Fall," said Turk.

"I've seen it," I said. "And if I've seen it, then V ahs too. There's no way he can believe what Helios showed us. I mean, no. It's not what Helios showed us. He's come up with something else entirely, that's not what Helios showed or what the first Victor saw, or fought to save us from. It's all wrong in his head. He's gone completely insane!"

"Have I now?"

His was wavy, looking down at me through the glass. The water drained and the glass doors opened. I was freezing. Some boys in servant's livery came to me and dried me with towels. While I lay there I tried to remember what had happened. Turk and Basil were there, and I saw images of the audience chamber, and heard my own voice offer reason to their debate, leading to me awakening in this chamber. But the Lady was still with me.

What is different about V and I, besides his gorgeous hair?

Many things, but what you want to know is what the Dolomites did with you that they did not do with him.

Yes.

Have you ever done a thing in such a hurry, that you forgot exactly what you did?

I can't think of a time, but I'm sure I have.

Well, I made the lock and the door, and shut it very quickly, then ran and hid so that I would not be carried away before I could make a key. It's been a trying process for all of us, but here you are.

"Victor?" said Turk. "Victor, can you hear me?"

"He doesn't remember," said Basil.

V turned away in disgust, heading for the door out of the labrotorum, but he stopped when I spoke.

"I do. I do. I remember."

--------

Above the doors was written SOMA. But around the doors, in the same script as I saw the words before, was written that an old adage, 'The mind is the only prison.'

"Why did you have this written?" I asked.

"Because it is true. Beyond this door, you will see only the very first step in freeing us all from every jailer we're subject to. But you will be shocked. I am myself, and I am the one who has taken all but the final steps. Are you sure you want to do this?"

Asking that question filled me to the brim with want, so I insisted. Brother.

Upon rising from the simulacrum (unnamed, for V had many), I recalled that in our conversation I had tripped over a memory that promised to settle the debate between the lords V and Turk. But as soon as I realized its significance, it escaped me. All that echoed in my mind when I woke was the word Clarion. The question was simple, whatever confusion we suffered from. Up or down? But the memory had fled, and if not for V's persistence I might have refused to pursue it, but he seemed to have some inkling of what I saw, so I took it seriously. Linked to the machine's operation, he sent me back into the simulacrum in hopes that I could find it, but it was gone from that place's limited reach, so he took me to his throne.

The doors open and I entered, wondering how deep into the ground we were. His throne room was far below the city proper, and far below the caverns where we met in his audience chamber, and deeper even than the vast mansions beneath that where the elite of their society dwelled. Vaults of arms, armor, and heavily barded steeds filled the space between those mansions and the SOMA chamber. One beast in particular caught my eye. It was immense and had a brooding look, and its head drooped under the weight of two heavy canons slung from the jaw.

"You like Mammalian?" asked V.

The soldiers and grooms bustling about the place had hurried to form two columns for us to walk between, each standing stiff as boards in constant salute. Over them all towered Mammalian.

"What sort of mount is he?"

"A baluchither. He's mine, and unlike your Northwind, he will remain loyal. I rode him to battle again recently."

"You lead the invasion of Thieves' Gate?" I asked.

He nodded, smiling. "It had been ages since I lead from the front. Ahz made the suggestion. Between you and me," he lowered his voice, "Ahz lead the battle. I merely made an appearance. It was he and the Valkyres that conquered Thieves' Gate."

"Conquered? Don't you mean reclaimed? Or liberated?"

"No, Victor. I conquered it."

Our fish-headed escort stood three abreast on either side of the elevator, which did not have a door."

"I'll meet you down there," V told me.

The arms vault we passed through ended abruptly at a transparent wall. Beyond was a chasm that seemed to never end, lit where I could see by beams of dark gold. Directly across was indeed another wall where these gold beams either reflected off of or emanated from, but my ride was to take me directly down. The elevator was a capsule of glossy black steel, doorless, as I said. So I walked through the elevator exterior, and nearly fell through the floor, because my ghost sight was triggered and I saw that there were vast pipes inside the skin of the far wall from me and the currents running through them fought to wrest control of my body from me. But I shook it off, planted my feet firmly on solid ground, and felt my stomach leap into my chest as the elevator flew swiftly downward.

I collected myself before exiting, and found that the wall i faces was in fact a door, though it did not open. As he said, Lord V was there, standing in front of the caldera doors on the ground that could not be seen from where we parted company. All around me was darkness, the dark gold beams lost in the gloom above me. There were pale lamps embedded into the ring around the doors, but they only shined enough for me to see their rim and their seam. The ovular doors parted at a hand wave from V, and I followed him into the grand mechanized egg that is SOMA.

The walls were lined with tubes that ran like ribs through deep groves. These grooves and ribs formed an untraversable floor, with only a narrow elevation that allowed travel in single file to what I could only describe as a large metallic bung, with a porthole of glass as thick as uncut quartz. I walked in front of V, at his behest, and when we arrived at the bung I stopped to look at the room in detail.

It is a very large place, shaped like an egg, with the ramp descending from the caldera doors winding down in a sort of curling zigzag from the entrance, always hugging the walls through ingenious design. Were death or injury things that I feared, I would have been deeply anxious making my way down. The walls turned out to be marked by more than piped and grooves. There were more portholes like that in the bung. We stood in the center of the room, so from there I could not see any. The floor was untraversable, as I said, due to the depth of the grooves and the extreme height and curvature of the ribbed piping. So, not wanting to be taken to this place that only Lord V himself entered with questions unanswered, I slipped through the curtain and walked upon the air, despite the pain from pulses of some strange force that stabbed at my spine, causing the sensation of tendrils tightening around my nervous system with enough force to leave my paralyzed.

I had to see what was behind that glass, so I endured the pain and rose to the nearest one. Inside was a face like mine, though green eyed, grey skinned and bearded. Pincers held apart the sleeper's nostrils so that an apparatus could be held within. Its translucent membrane revealed blue and green fluids coming in and going out of the man's nose. I went to another, and another, and saw faces like mine with an increasingly darker gradient and varying amounts of hair, and on the glass of each tomb was scratched a mark, like mine, but incomplete. When I returned to a fully solid state, next to the amused Lord V, I looked about the room and counted the portholes. There were many, but there was light within the glass of thirty two of them. V saw me counting and quickly said that not all of us had made it back. I turned to face him.

"Before you indulge in emotion," he said, far too calmly, "look into the window here."

I did, and the face inside was of a ghastly cadaver with glowing blue orbs where eyes should have been, only the bone around them and worn away from the erosion of the fluids bubbling within.

"Why is this one different?"

"Because," V stepped around me with the grace of a dancer, and trailed his fingers down the port glass, "he's very old."

There was a placard beneath the port, worn over by time and the negligence that sometimes a glut of knowledge can bring. I did my best to buff it with finger, palm and sleeve, and found the number 'one' after our shared name.