I found the strangest thing. Its not so strange as things go, but its strange to have found it here. It's very stylized, causing me to wonder what time period it was from, and what other objects made then looked like. Its sharp angles, long, prong-like legs with pointed feet, and slim ears like a pair of conductors, speak of a time so steeped in minimalist artwork that even toy animals had such pre-modernist flare.

I've lost track of my place in Clarion. This upper compound is deceptively immense, cutting into the mountain in a way that obscures direction, and sometimes I feel like I've been traveling for months, when in fact its only been hours or even days. Most of the walls are bare, and where there was evidence of work done they are especially so, unless that room be a medical facility. Then there are signs of frames having been hung on walls, but only one per room, two at most. In one I found a fragment of the painting. It was a blue as bright as my eyes, cutting into hills of some green, bladed substa... grass. Yes, grass. The first of us knew it well. Victor Zero, our- father?

The dwellings here were comfortably decorated and furnished, that I can tell for sure. They are vast in comparison to the quarters at Haven, though minute next to those I saw Victor 1's close elite dwelling within. Some of these apartments housed whole families, judging by the amount of rooms. While there were odd bits of furniture here and there, for the most part the place was bare. But where there was once life and distraction, there were always signs, especially for one so accustomed to strolling through untended graves. Scuffs on the floor from children's hurried shoes, chips in the wall where a pet had scratched, rings from vases on countertops and mantles, and patchwork repairs on long dead utilities. Truly remarkable was the view when I employed my ghost sight. The fabric of all things wrapped in mysterious ways to show me the imprints of the souls who haunted these barren halls. Only one thing marked that they fled an internal disaster. On the toy... horse, feathered heels crashing through spray, Sunlight painting the edges of rich black manes, russet pelts aglow with muscles strong enough to pull great weight, water made of Sunlight crystalized within its sweating glass jars... whose memory was this? Certainly not Victor the Father's. It is much too old. The toy horse, or dog maybe, had burn marks on its feet, and the ears were chipped. I know this because I've seen them unmarred. They littered the floor of many a child's room in Red Side of Thirty-Third Day.

Half the children present spun them round in their pudgy fingers while Dathan Shah told of the singing of Great Lord Victorious, whose sweet tones of purity called to the true Sun, buried deep beneath the earth. The true Sun sent no evil to us, Dathan Shah said; it only warmed us from within, while the cold thing in the heavens pelted us with mighty stones and worse, and brought the Devils upon us in its pointless fury. I struggled to remain in the room and endure the blasphemy, but the strain could not be hidden from my features.

"I'm glad you share stories," I said, "but I have seen things that contradict all you've said. I am a being much like your lord, and I have walked the lands outside this city, and I have seen with my eyes that the Sun, the only Sun, is a lifegiver, and remains unrivaled above the clouds that mark our ancient sin."

I could not tell who was closer to crying the children, or the old man.

Tythus and I sat on one of his many favorite balconies. This one was across a chasm of total ruin. Opposite us was an upright beam the size of an entire quarter of Haven's fuselage. While enormous, it looked buckled, bolstered somewhat by a hodge podge of slapped together braces. Some of the bandage was welded, some was bolted, all was groaning under the incalculable weight of the aging magnacity.

"How does this place hold together?"

Tythus kicked an piece of loose slag off the balcony. I, as usual, had my back to the wall while he skipped about, or sat with his face to the bars of the rail looking downward, his skinny legs dangling over the edge.

"I've heard stories, but I can't be sure. I think Lord V does it somehow."

I shook my head in frustration. "How could he? This city is massive. He's only one man, and less advanced than me."

"What are you two?". He asked with the tone of a curious child, then looked at me nervously. "Your pardon, my Lord of Eidolon."

I shook my head and stated firmly that I was no one's lord. "What do you know of the Batch?".

"Only that Our Lord and his aeons are of it."

"That word, aeon, what does it mean?"

He shrugged.

"Well, I am not it."

"Then what are you?"

"I am the man I became in the world outside. When I leave this place, I will be the sum of its engagement with me as well." Tythus stopped kicking debris off the balcony and leaned over the rail, not saying a thing.

"So you'll go back home one day?"

I stood and walked next to him, leaning down so I could fold my arms over the rail as his were, though he had to rise to the tips of his toes.

"I have no home. But I will leave this place, eventually. You're welcome to come with me."

"Is it better or worse out there?"

"It's difficult for me to say, as there's a great deal of this city I still haven't seen."

"The world outside must be huge."

"What makes you say that?"

"You call our world a city."

To that I nodded my head. "It's a very large city, though. But the world is not so large a place as it once was. I've heard that most of it is now devoid of life, and the small stretch of it I've walked might be all that's left."

"What's it made out of?"

I let out a laugh, then reflected with some irony on how little I knew of geologics. "The natural world is made of many things, and all were there before the likes of us."

"Is it soft?"

I remember how quickly the words leapt up to my lips, and how sad I was to gulp them back down. "No. It can appear soft, but the things that look soft, such as sand, are really hard, and will cut you. Ashes are soft, but they are born of death."

"No grass?"

To that, I surely looked alarmed, despite the oneness of my eyes. "You know of grass?". I had only seen such a thing in dream and borrowed memory.

The boy nodded as if such a thing were not incredible at all, and when I asked him where he'd seen it he at first told me 'here and there'.

"I'll point it out to you," he added. And then, "Lord V has most of it in his gardens."

For the first time since entering Thirty-Third Day, I felt the desire to meet my wayward counterpart.

"If there is grass outside this place, I have never seen it. There are trees, and smaller funguses, and there are a great many sage brushes and tuff roots, and in some places the spreadfinger vines reach up from under the soil in vast amounts, but I have seen no grass."

"Then how do you know what it is?"

"I've seen it in dreams."

And the boy won me over then, expressing in one look both his disbelief and mockery.

"You can dream of things you've never seen, and you dream of grass?"

I chuckled, and then I said "If you'd spent your life under the terrible shroud over our world, walking the cold, nightmarish warscape, watching the world slowly die under the bulk of its own useless weight..."

I stopped, and then my voice resumed, this time guiding itself, devoid of the bitterness I carried ever since my Eris died, and instead I spoke to Tythus of the relentless attempts to survive, the tyflochs with their prosthetic wings, the homes beneath the ground, Matoya and her salvage shop, the Vandals of Icarus Ark, the nomadic giants, and all the many I'd seen who refused to give in to the sadness and defeat omnipresent around them.

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"So yes, having lived in such a world as Tarthas, I do dream of grass."

"I'll point it out to you."

And would you know, we saw some on out way to the story tellers hall. That room was quite large, with a floor of some smooth polished surface, nicked quite a bit from generations of foot traffic with little repairs done. There were rows of benches lining the walls, and a dais in the center of the room surrounded by chairs for the infirm. And so I heard a story of the Fall and the Sun, and the future when the bright and burning star would breach the veil and burn away the rot within our cells, and how this would be accomplished by the bringing of the past into the future, that the present might be turned into a healthy thing. I marvelled. And then I noticed the absence of Anpiel and all but one of her mandmaids.

"Anpiel is not here," I said, because the obvious it seems needed a champion.

"Yup," Tythus said, clearly proud of himself. "It seemed to make you sad that you couldn't do your job, so I brought you somewhere you could. These are the smartest, nicest people I know. They might even listen to you."

"That handmaid..."

"Anastasia. She won't rat you out, or she'll be ratting herself out. You could say 'hi' to her, and then it won't be awkward."

I did, before she managed to leave.

"Please stay." I'd caught her hand at one of the side doors under the red runic lights that marked each postern.

"I can't."

"Because I came? I will tell no one I saw you here."

"I'm free to go wherever I want."

And yet she lingered. "But?"

"But, I'd rather not explain to my Lady."

"Will you be mocked?". For once in my life, I guess at another's hear correctly. "Then why do you come here?"

And with that she left, a smile and an apology being all her explanation. So I went to those who'd stood on the dais, leaning over a smoothly painted podium.

"Is the talk over?" I asked a handsome older man in poor, but well arranged clothes. There were no robes here, rather tunics, trousers, and rather smart looking coats, and the women wore plain but clean gowns. There were long tables on one side where food was served, and somehow these people had found fresh funguses, and greenery more crisp than I had ever seen. Somehow the stark light from the cold ceiling lamps felt warm.

"We'll be speaking for a while yet," the older man said. "I've got work to do, but anyone here will answer your questions."

I turned to who turned out to be his wife. She too, though I might not have thought it in another circumstance, certainly not among the pomp of Lord V's outer court, but here, this plain faced, much older woman looked dazzling.

"I've seen the Sun," I blurted foolishly.

"Your friend has taken you to one of his courtyards?"

"We sit there often" I said.

"But that's not what you meant."

I shook my head. "No. It seems to be a hidden truth, but there is a wide world beyond yours, and I come from there."

Her smile was as genuine as my words. It felt wonderful to be treated with decency, though I can't say this was truly the first time. Still, I found myself forgetful of the affectionate friendships I've had with women in the past, and I longed to be this woman's son.

"I am VIctor." Again, I spoke without thinking. She laughed gayly.

"Well, I figured that."

I'd stowed my shroud in my sabretache before entering the hall, wanting not to hide a single thing from those I met. Embarrassed, I nodded and gave a little shrug. "Of course you do. I enjoyed the symposium about the Sun."

"Thank you. You said you've seen it? What did you mean, specifically?"

I went ahead and told her the story of Jadus and Turks horse thievery, and the transcendence of my involvement. Again, her smile was real.

"Believe it or not, I've heard stranger stories, and have a few myself I'd be afraid to tell. Some of us may struggle conceiving of truths outside our own, but we've all come from somewhere else, so please, do not keep your truths to yourself. Tell everyone here what you've told me. And be patient with us, because we have not seen the world outside of ours."

"Thank you for being kind."

She took my hands in hers and again with that warm, 'We just made dinner. Won't you come in and eat with us?' smile.

"You're not lying to me. You've seen incredible things, Victor. You're who you are, and so the only story I wouldn't believe would be a more believable one."

And I laughed, loving every word of that profound, preposterous sentence. And then she said it. "Have you eaten?"

"I don't eat," I said, thoroughly disarmed by her honest acceptance. "I'm not entirely like the rest of you."

"But I don't think you're all that different, either. I've heard Lord V doesn't eat either. But I do, so come with me and we can talk before my stomach starts making all the noise."

I met a great many people that afternoon, and was invited to sit next to Alabaster and her husband, Fergus, who I learned was once a red robed Dagon, the pseudo priesthood that determined tax rates. Alabaster told me she was a warden at a debtor's internment camp.

"Why did you both come up here? Was your life not easier in the depths?"

"No," said Fergus, who was a very strong man, but as genuine as his wife. I admire meekness. Might without restraint is childishness, and the lack of might is a most deplorable and wanton failure. There is no shortage of heavy things to lift in order to strengthen one's limbs, and there is an abundance of puzzles on which to sharpen one's mind.

"We had privilege, to be sure," Fergus elaborated, "but there were terrible expectations."

"Unnatural expectations," Alabaster added.

I looked at the gentle demeanor and polite manners on display with this group of listeners and believers. "It seems there would be more expectations here."

"Oh yes," said Fergus, "many more. But they're expectations worth aspiring to."

"The worst thing that could happen here is being poorly judged, and maybe miSunderstood, but when that happens the fault is on the friends who looked down on us, and we find it easy to forgive."

"Are there many groups like this?" I hoped so badly for a yes, but if that were the answer, I may have never left, and so its good they told me their number was growing but still very small.

"Anpiel thinks she owns Red Side," Fergus explained.

Alabaster laughed. "She wouldn't last a day where we came from. But she has influence here, and she gives people what they want instead of what they need."

"What needs are there?" I asked. "I've seen food wasting in rotten heaps, and you all clearly get water from somewhere."

"There are cisterns," Alabaster said, "and pipes that pump it in. We purify it, of course. No trusting anything from the under city."

"And we know from experience," said Fergus.

I tried their habit of handholding on them, taking one of each of theirs in one of each of mine. "You come from a place most up here have never seen. I com from a place outside that none of you have ever seen."

Fergus looked at my hand and laughed, then kindly freed himself of my grip. Alabaster took hold of my arm as if I'd done something to make her proud.

"There's others who served Lord V in some fashion. In fact, this particular group was founded by us and others of our former walk. We found this district while evading our pursuers."

Alabaster's eyes turned down, so I tightened my fingers around hers. "We lost good people those days. But we've gained far more than we've lost."

"I need to meet with Lord V if I'm to succeed."

"In what?", they both asked.

"I've begun to learn how the sky can be cleared. What I don't know, he does, and as you can see we are fated to meet."

"A piece of you is down there," Fergus said with a nod. In his eyes I read 'A man's gotta be whole, son, even if he doesn't like what he's left behind'.

I stayed for the rest of the day, listening happily to all that was said. While I disagreed with a few frivolous details of what was said, these people had somehow constructed a rational model of our world within their own critical thoughts, and if they were somehow wrong, they could not be far off. I counted myself as one of them, learning many names and receiving many hugs before I sadly followed Tythus back to the place were eyes had watched me dream. Its just as well we left, for these people had left their struggles behind, laid down their arms, and found their peace. I was still a soldier, and my struggle was waiting for me further down my road. As for peace, I would have to find a way to unbind the Dolomite's curse of renewal to be given that reward.

I loved spending time in that hall, and were I not the schismatic man that I am, I may have spent an entire lifetime in the company of those kind, genuine people. But I was in no condition to live with them, and what I told them merely meshed with what they already knew in their hearts, so I parted company and asked Tythus to lead me to where Anpiel and her handmaids might be, as it was they we were in need of the revelations I brought.