The torture was fruitful, both during and after the festival. But soon the halls were cleared of the penitent, and the sanctum entered a time of rest. During this time the boy and I attended classes, and by virtue of my diligence as a cloister guard and my duties to the boy, I was elevated, much sooner than a normal initiate ever would be, and was taught, as it was called, the Truth of the Sun.

In the simulacrum, which had been named very unimaginably 'The First Dream', we saw crows come down from the sky, and doves being herded underground to avoid the corruption of the crows. Sin was spoken of often, and I managed to whisper into the boy's ear that in my training as a marksman, I'd learned that the word 'sin' meant simply to miss a target. This seemed to put things into context for him, as he seemed to feel less threatened by the lessons and was more inquisitive. In particular, when we were told how the bloat of sin caused the world to swell beyond its proper size, he scratched at his head. A clump of hair came loose in his hand, and he turned to me.

"Is this how yours came out?"

"I never had any," I whispered. Tythus had hair. The difference helped me feel more at ease around the boy, though I worried for him. Eris and I never spoke of children, and I was glad for that, as I have never felt cut out to be a father, and I often suspected that my seed would never grow at any rate. At times, I would daydream about some stray brood wandering by our mausoleum after Haven's destruction, and what it might be like to take them in and be their surrogates. But it never happened, and either I or Eris were incapable, and it is just as well, seeing what tarthas had in store for us both.

Tarthas, as the Dagons claimed, is not a natural world, but a shared dream crafted for our punishment, meant to be lived over and over for those minds linked to its source, which they claimed was... oh it's too ridiculous to repeat. Elvedon, the First Dream, and all other simulacrums were, according to them, portals into the true reality, with Elvedon being specifically a window into the world of the dead. Only when they showed images of the Sun did I lean forward. I had seen that blessed thing, and could not believe when I was told Lord V had sent his scouts to view it as well. But here was proof, and some of the shots were from a vantage far clearer than what I'd experienced. Great telescopes had been found adrift in the void, and one had been revived and its custodian shackled, so that the Sun could be seen as if it were much closer. What I saw was terrifying. Brilliant and indomitable from afar, on closer look its surface was the very definition of war, all the result of its own dynamic nature.

"They call this the Sun," said Eliezer, "they who are cursed to dream only of wastelands. But we who sin much less know better. This is our true giver of light and warmth."

And the room went dark, the close look of the Sun having faded, and the room was soon alive with a dark red glow surrounded by black fog. The fog became solid, a rocky tunnel with deep groves that drew my eyes into them as they passed, and the distant red glow became gradually brighter, until the center of the scrying chamber was consumed by an ocean of congealed flame.

"Water is the giver of life," said Eliezer, "not the vile thing beyond the firmament. That is the heart of Ares, bringer of war! Beneath us is our precious Inanaleth, who sends her radiance upward."

Of all the boys in the room, only mine seemed to have any independent thought. I'd like to think it was because my the little clarifications I whispered to him during the lecture. He raised his hand first when the jinn returned to its vessel, taking Lord V's images of earth and sky with it. I admit that I was troubled, having seen visual proof of factors I had not before considered, but could in no way deny. Yes, I'd seen each source of light and heat with my own eyes, but I had not contemplated the extent to which V's scholars might have studied these things. Suddenly my own knowledge seemed scant, and my feelings on the matter desperate and childish.

"Boy who has yet to be named," said Eliezer. Thus far he had found our journey for the boy's name an endearing concept.

"How long will we be in prison for?" was his question.

Eliezer laughed. "Surely my lectures are not that unpleasant."

"No, that's not what I mean. I mean Tarthas. How long will we all be in tarthas for? Won't we ever be forgiven? This can't go on indefinitely."

Eliezer shot me a look before replying, which he did slowly, with much smiling and steepling of the fingers.

"And if we are to live this way indefinitely, what good would it be to complain? When our world is exactly as it seems to be, what good is accomplished by disbelief? You boys are special, grown from the trimmings of a truly marvelous oak. Do not look upon our world with fear, as it will lead your minds down many dark paths. See Tarthas as an opportunity. You have the chance to demonstrate to all the Fates that there is hope for a mortal world without sin. Take all these lessons to heart and let them define you, and as you live on beyond the span of any who lived before you, you will be made perfect in the spreading of your knowledge, having elevated the whole world around you."

I perhaps should have kept still, but I could sense the nervousness in my ward, and I clasped my hand around his trembling wrist. Later, as my fellows and their wards all milled about the antechamber and enjoyed water flavored with sweet powders, Eliezer approached me and pulled me aside from the boy.

"You comforted him, when I spoke of his purpose. Why? Is such a blessed life troubling to him? I can only imagine such thinking to come from you."

I replied slowly, with much smiling and steepling of the fingers. "Such a monumental calling is a bit daunting for a small boy. Don't you think?"

"The others were not daunted."

I let my smile fade into something else, noting how closely Eliezer studied my eyes.

"Perhaps I am the one who is daunted, as I have been thrust into the doings of people far greater than myself."

It seemed to work, as the old man turned to stand beside me and placed his hand on my back. "You have been through some trying times. Onisefirot has repeated some of your conversations to me. He told me of your wife. Pity the surface was at the mercy of Doctor Danders for so long. Our Lord has made great strides in duplicating his methods, and has forgone using ingredients that spur dependency in the consumable medicines. He treats people to cure them, you see."

Perhaps it was being reminded of Eris's death that angered me. There was no smiling or hand gestures when I responded. "Why does your lord try to work against the nature of Tarthas, if it be the way it is meant to be?"

"Because he is greater than you or I, Victor. You will see, in time, should you continue down the path you've chosen. You have the gifts, of course, but Our Lord has ascended not because of the incidental mundanities of his inception. It is his choices that have caused him to raise. And, in this sinful sleep we are all condemned to share, all things have been turned around to lead the worthy astray. Be not like those who persist in believing that down is up. Now come. You have a child to name."

In the center of the garden that the cloister surrounds, there is a tree with a very wide cap. We climbed the taller trees and leapt onto that broad porch and laid on our backs, watching the slow change of the light from red of day to blue of night, and in the time of interim when the sky was lilac and rose, I named him Dante, and when I told him the tale behind that name, he endeared himself to me even further, looking up with blinking eyes and saying that the name was perfect, citing that both he and his namesake had guides whose names began with 'V'. I suppose that in the company of the Dagons I could have been viewed as a noble pagan. I, however, saw myself then as nothing more than a soldier who'd been separated from his detail. Maybe I still feel that way, wandering the empty halls of this ancient bastion.

Clarion is far more mysterious to me now than it ever was before seeing it. My first great revelation was how lavish its inner decorum was, and how recent, though still more advanced than our present, degenerate day, the one thing I did expect. But as I ambled upward, I began to suspect if I had not been placed by My Lady's children into some other dwelling altogether, so different was it from what I saw of that lonely peak the fortress called to. Twin facilities, borrowed memory had dubbed it, and when I entered the place I am in now I saw again that I had been wrong, and that the whithered beauty I'd wandered through to get here was built much later than this austere fortress with its bare walls, sleeping gorgons mummified chimeric servitors, all slumped over the rims of their canopic tombs as if they died while trying to escape being buried alive.

Now and then I think I catch a glimpse of Astus, but it turns out to be a flickering of a rushlight. Following one of these flickerings led me to a room full of corpses. Most of them were children, with two women and a man. Their bodies were only partially decayed, and I had I not seen the craft employed at the altar to the founders I would have thought them recently dead. I sat among them until the smell got to me, then managed to waken the djinn overseeing the place and had her reseal the doors. Had my curiosity been stronger than my urge to leave, I may have questioned the djinn as to what had happened there.

Now I am outside, as there is a calm spread over the sky, though I can hear Pazuzu roaring in the distance, and now and then a rocket of light cuts downward through the far horizon. The sky is thinner now, though still barren and grey, but I can see a brilliant yellow glow where once the Sun showed only jaundice, or at best a wrecked and dirty flame. I find my victory a sadness, though, because now I can see the devastation of our world in greater clarity, and am actually missing the shroud of darkness I was able to hide within for so many years.

When Dante asked me to describe the world outside Thirty-Third Day, visions of loss and endings filled my mind. The last of the archons falling to Warcloud, Abdiel's beautiful wings being torn from his back, the giants giving their lives to slow Pandemonium's crawl, my own friend Kendra dying in my arms, to be followed later by Eris. So I told him I could only describe it by showing it to him, and thus began our journey outwards. I will truncate this now, as my memory is foggy, one reason to suspect My Lady had a hand in out escape somehow. We seemed to just miss being caught each time we rounded a corner, and stumbled on the perfect pathways through the mechanized portions of the city that gave us passage to a porch in the outer wall.

That porch was difficult to reach, as it had been covered and barred with wreckage. In the end I had to pass between to reach a beam I could move, and I almost dropped it on my ward as he passed under it, for I was suddenly pulled back into the liminal realm and stared down by a singular bloodshot eye. Dante spoke then with a sigh, as there really are no words to describe tarthas to one who hasn't seen it, though clearly I have been trying. But my words are doomed to fail. To look upon a world made of bones, an entire plane that shows no memories of life or beauty, but is only a mass grave left over from a war that while ancient, was so brutal that its wounds and gashes never healed, but were merely dried of blood... I sighed too. Then, wrapped in Lydian bandages, we turned and found our way back to Monast Favri.

Eliezer was more than a little miffed with me. I had deposited Dante at the quarters where the wards all slept and then met by Onisefirot.

"He must be pretty upset to be sending you."

Onisefirot shrugged.

Eliezer's solar was never tidy, but now it was even more cluttered, with scrolls and codices aplenty in various states of either examination or alteration.

"You'd see better with a different light source," I told him.

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He looked up from his desk and scowled, then smiled and as he stood, wrang his wrists and clasped his hands.

"Anyone can speak to a child and explain how one thing or another is supposed to be," he said as he began to pace in a circle around the room. "You were chosen as Dante's mentor because of your actions, Victor. Everything you do sends a message that his bright young eyes will observe in complete detail."

"Which is exactly why I brought him to the surface," I interjected. "What better way for a child to learn than with their own two eyes?"

Eliezer stopped his pacing. "And what exactly did Dante learn?"

"He learned the nature of his world."

"Did he? Can you learn the nature of an animal by merely looking it once? What do wish to do now? Take Dante out on walks, or perhaps introduce him to your former compatriots? Turk and that winged abomination? They're out there, Victor. Oh yes, your precious Turk is still sewing discontent, and that tyfloch savage still terrorizes the settlements Our Lord is working to naturalize. Is that who you were looking for? Don't think I'm overreacting, because i'm not. Our Lord and I spoke at great length before admitting you into our ranks. We know what you are, and whom."

"Then why am I here?"

And he laughed, because he sensed that I did not properly know the answer to that question myself.

"You wanted him to see Tarthas, I understand. Those wretched squatters in the upper ruins don't even know there is a world outside our city, after all. And perhaps you wanted to bond with Dante, having a bit of childish fun by sneaking around and doing things you're not supposed to do. But is that the sort of behaviour a prospective ruler should learn to imitate?"

"A what?"

"What did you think these boys were? You've known since you saw Dante that they could not have been naturally born. These are the guardians of our future, Victor. From them, Our Lord will choose avatars to protect order wherever it is lacking. While your friend Turk was practicing necromancy in Elvedon, Our Lord was learning to generate new life from Neophilus."

Eliezer had a way of looking surprised at my surprise after he revealed to me surprising information, and then would criticize me for not having discovered it on my own.

"Neophilus?" I asked, ready to be undeservedly chastized. "Is he... here?"

"Of course not! Look to Elvedon for the reviving of corpses. But his knowledge, Victor, that is here. All he ever learned and did, and who he truly was, that is here, under the care of Our Lord. Turk exhumed graves to use as fodder for his vanity war against Blitzkrieg. But we, the Dagons, have seen the Angels and the Devils and all their armageddons come and go until we've grown nauseated by their repetition. Our Lord, Your Lord, has escaped these foolish cycles, because he, as are you, was made to do so. You're here because you belong here, Victor 39. You're here because Thirty-Third Day is your home."

There was a pause, after which I brought the conversation back to Dante.

"If I am to teach Dante with my actions, then my actions must be my own, free of your or anyone else's hindrance. Otherwise take him from me and give him to another mentor."

"Very well. But mind what you teach him. A ruler will be worthless if he does not learn the importance of authority. Blithely evading security patrols is a mockery of the very thing Dante will one day need to exert."

I later relieved my heart of frustrations over a delicious and strong brew with Onisefirot. He had the most ingenious reply.

"I often find that the authority of the teacher prevents the student from learning." And he shrugged. To it all, I could only let out a sigh.

Dante and I passed the remains of that week in mundane activities. He enriched them with questions, and I cursed myself under my breath for much I was censoring my answers. Eliezer, it would seem, was an accomplished manipulator. At the close of the week I was given new clothes, these having the outrageous mitre of a proper initiate, and when I was told that in honor of my efforts, I would be granted a boon. I asked to meet with Lord V.

"Why would ask for such an audience?" Eliezer inquired.

"Because I wish to see him."

Eliezer nodded. "I'll send word."

Onisefirot came out to the cloister a day or two later, as my watch was ending. He asked if I would walk with him, bidding Dante to find his own way to the wards' quarters. The boy nodded and began walking until he realized he was going the wrong way, then seemed to fumble about until he fumbled into the correct doorway.

"It still takes them time," said Onisefirot.

"What are they?".

"Let's walk."

I had grown so attached to my work that even though I was relieved, and in conversation, that I could not stop myself from inspecting in between the columns of piers as we walked. As always, the arcade was peaceful.

"There seems to be no need for guards," I said.

"Well, that's kind of what I wanted to talk to you about."

"I'm being released?"

"No. We need all the guards we can get. Many can't be trusted, you see. Or they aren't important enough as people."

"Nothing ever happens here."

"Are you so sure? You know what happens inside the monast. People might storm the walls, trying to free their loved ones. Or someone might try to sneak in, to learn our secrets."

"What are our secrets?"

"You see one of them every day."

"I figured. What are these boys?"

"A project of Our Lord's. I was referring to you."

I didn't like what he was implying, so I returned the subject to the matter of why the cloister was guarded.

"All parts of the monast can be accessed through here. Now, tell me, Victor 39; or Virgil, as Dante calls you to the other boys, which place will be assailed more, the place that is well or poorly guarded?"

I sighed and asked him to get to the point. He gestured toward the yard, so we found a bench to sit on. There was a garden of stones sining a pool fed by hidden pipes that connected to the three rivers outside. I'd never sat in close view of it before, and found it incredibly pacifying.

"We need guards here because the place is significant, and it would be, oh, unsightly I suppose, if we didn't keep a strong guard. You're significant, Victor, and it would be unsightly if we treated you as anything less than what you are, regardless of how the public views you. I heard you asked Eliezer if you could see Lord V."

I nodded.

"And I'm assuming he gave you a tight lipped response?"

I nodded.

"You don't have to ask to see Lord V. As I said, you're significant. If you want to see him, just go see him. And you don't need to sneak around the way you did with Dante. We have an express channel and a car that will take you to his audience hall quickly."

"Is it far?"

"Sort of."

"I don't have much time between shifts. My reason for asking Eliezer was to secure some time off. I'd prefer to speak with V without constraints."

He nodded. "They do keep us busy. There's a great deal I'd accomplish if I had more leisure time. May I ask what you plan to talk to Our Lord about? I'm just curious."

"I want to ask him why I'm here guarding this cloister, and teaching this tank grown child about my duties."

"And you really think he'll tell you simply?'

"I think I'll be able to learn whatever I want from him, whether he tells me simply or not."

He nodded. "You're probably right. Well, my advice, go and see him. I'll tell Eliezer you informed me and we'll arrange for your watch to be covered until you return."

"You can make those decisions? Aren't you his subordinate?"

"I'm friends with you, and you're significant."

"So you keep telling me."

He smiled, and before he stood, "If you weren't significant, would you be so quickly assigned to such a vaunted post?". And after he stood, "So far from the eyes and ears of the public?".

The message was not lost on me, but took a moment to sink in, and I asked him, on a sudden whim, if He had known Fergus and Alabaster.

"I knew Fergus, and that he kept a wife."

"I encountered them while wandering the upper ruins. I'm curious how they were viewed here."

He shuffled pensively, and I caught just a hint of luminescence in his sweat. It the blue night glow and shimmered green as it dripped down his brow.

"I didn't know the woman. Fergus, though, I may as well tell you, I replaced him. He mentored me. I don't speak of it openly, seeing how he left."

"It would be unsightly," I suggested.

"He had some wild notions. Felt that married people should have children, and the ruins should be restored, among other, more harmful things."

"So he was never truly a Dagon?"

"No. He was a disgrace to his mitre."

"But there are so many who are not Dagons. Why be so bothered by one man?"

"Because he was a Dagon. I'm sorry Victor, but you'll have to sort this one out for yourself."

But before he hurriedly left, he mouthed a word. Truth.

I followed his suggestion and left straight away, riding in a car that while a great deal smaller, was unnervingly similar in design to Pandemonium. I tried to calm myself, reflecting on how the mechanism made simple sense, and was ideal for traversing tunnels, but it bothered me so much I nearly asked to be let off. But I did not, as there was an urgency in Onisefirot's voice that manifested itself after our conversation ended, and I felt that I would do well to get to Lord V's audience chamber as quickly as possible.

The structure itself was grand, as one would expect. This was the center of the city, and its ceiling was very high. Lamps and rushlights and chandeliers of every color glowed brightly, their hues bleeding together and being swallowed by the deep purple burn of Narbondel, the massive clock tower in the city's center. Sprawling and popping and rising were heaps of accreted buildings, many of starkly different architecture from their neighbors, that from a distance looked like swarms of insects crawling over pieces of corpse flesh that had not yet rotted. The public Eliezer was so afraid of reflected the motley of their homes. Some wore silken robes, some wore oily rags, some wore little at all. I saw a house being used for recruitment by the Neohedonists, and wondered idly if Pothos was inside. The place was bustling.

Lord V's audience chamber was within the capital building; a heavily fortified structure beneath the city that could only be accessed through caldera doors as large as all the Dolomite sanctum. I entered unhindered, passed through the halls unhindered, but when I arrived at his conference room doors I was very much hindred. There were guards in armor made of phosphorus honeycombs, and an entire squad of those ill made women who trod upon spindly arms not theirs. I walked between worlds, because I refuse to be hindred.

The room where V had met with Jadus and Turk while we wrangled his steeds, and tried in vain to broker peace between Turk and Blitzkrieg, was as much a tomb as the home I made with Eris. It was shaped like a tunnel, and while that made sense for a city built beneath the ground, the trappings of royalty lining its walls and long mantles were covered in rust, dust, and centuries' old patina, giving me the feeling that I had violated the grave of a pharaoh. Every tapestry, banner and flag was tattered with rot, and the little procedure room from which I wrote for so long may as well have been the plant where this chamber's light fixtures were manufactured. Pale beams dripped from thin lamps ensconced within the tunnel walls, and, with dust in the air so thick it seemed to hang from the light in ragged sheets, failed ultimately to challenge the tunnel's stagnant depth.

But there were two bronze stars piercing the dark and calling to me, and when I came close, emerging from the ether in shades as was my habit when making an impactful entrance, I yelped and ran forward, expecting an embrace. But I didn't get one. Turk remained seated, and without so much as a wry grin he nodded and said my name. Then I looked around the room to see who else might be there. There were only Turk, V, and the physician who had inspected me for Jadus. He was holding a stack of papers in one hand, playing with their clip in the other.

V sighed, then nodded toward the chair next to Turk. "Have a seat."