Under the aural light of the surfacing retrievers they gazed into each other’s core, as the sea —with all its tails, with all of its ears and the endless fluff and drool it contained— closed. One standing at the bottom and the other at the top, separated by countless layers of dogs as the wound in the ocean healed, she who was at the top made a petition. “Seek me when the dogs eat the spires!”
And so he agreed, raising a hand to seal the promise. “I’ll find you when the world ends. No matter what it takes to make it anew.”
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The top of the few remaining spires had been nibbled by the descending tides. For the inhabitants of the bottom, for those whose existence was illuminated by the coats of the surface retrievers that floated above the spires and contained the sea of dogs, the world was about to end. And Dirofil had a promise to keep, as his helical cogs moved his arms and legs, as the crystal that kept him alive shone still bright and white. So he stood from his sitting position, at the turquoise heart of his spire. A spire soon to fall as the waves came from the sealing and lapped and bit with cute tooth at the top of it. With a hand on his crystal heart he commanded the rusty articulations of his legs to take him away from that decadent place. The left foot dragged its claws.
Someone had taken the tail while he contemplated existence, during all those years of idly ruminating, of feeding the thoughtcrystal. His second left hand, likewise, was gone. But at the other end Shadiran awaited, a promise that he had to fulfill. A whole sea had settled and grown between them. A sea that would whittle and gnaw at the alloy of his form, that would lick and sniff and savor his core once the protective layers faded away.
He blamed himself as he shuffled past the fallen turquoise stones, pieces of walls that wished to give in. His only remaining eye had become lazy, so he had to emit pulses of energy from the thoughtcrystal to have a complete image of his surroundings. Psycholocation, expensive for he who wants to nourish his core, but the only way to maneuver down the ruined staircase. Seventy-eight steps to the bottom, none fostering a cobweb, none very knowledgeable of feet different to his own. No cold wind blew down there, no dark mist settled on these retriever-lit ruins. Yet ruins they were.
“Shadiran,” his voicebox weakly whistled. “Wait for me. I’ll repair. Steal the pieces I need.” Another wave of energy from his core bounced on an obstacle, making him step to the left before descending. “The body was neglected. I thought too long. But concurrently the crystal grew strong. I will be able to… repair, soon.”
The thumps of his heavy feet resonated through the spiral staircase, upwards, until they reached the howling sea. Little lumps of stone fell from a fainting structure, hitting his shoulders, clanking against the alloy scapulae only to reunite with their equals on the floor.
A wound of on the wall bled light upon his right side, and the warm light of the retrievers felt abhorrent to him. He needed to reach the door and come out, walk over the floating spheres and reach the Would-Be Last Spire. The elder was there, thinking. He knew the elder was there, and that not many a scavenger would dare pick on him when there were others deep in meditative slumber. He wondered if it was the same at the other side of the sea, where the waves rose instead of descending; where the world was lit by a core like the dark one below, but ablaze, and not by the warmth of dogs composing the sea’s surface. He wondered if there, too, someone had taken Shadiran’s eyes, or legs, or arms, or tail.
He wondered, then, if she would be waiting at the other side, as promised. If time had not consumed a neglected thoughtcrystal, obliterating her existence. And thus he realized that it was pointless to worry about that: whether or not Shadiran waited for him at the other side, the world was ending. The time to think was over, and the time to act, to move, had come.
Another step was taken, and how it invigorated him to flex his articulations! to make the energy he had so jealously gathered during eons power his legs! It was time to move, indeed!
Stolen novel; please report.
Slowly but surely, and with all the dignity his derelict form could muster, he approached the exit of his spire. He pulled on his cape of interlocked chains, covering his metallic and crystalline parts with it. and crossed the portal, whose twin columns of azure still stood, but threatened to succumb to the gentlest breeze.
The fluffy tails above waved in unison, as if to salute the next victim of the dog ocean’s growth. It was the natural course of things: the spires that had stood there since the world had begun got swallowed by the sea, and their inhabitants with them.
It was the natural course of things. But his promise to Shadiran was to defy said nature, to overcome it. So as he reached the sky-blue marble at the base of his dying tower, he forwarded a foot, with his three fingers extended to perch on one of the floating bubbles that lazily drifted across the furnace-orange miasma, keeper of the dark core of the world.
With his lone eye he raised a gaze to the sea’s surface, swaying to and fro, far lower than it had been the day his promise had been struck. Puppies grew into dogs, and the bubbles they made up grew into apocalypses. The Retrievers still wagged their tails at the lower surface, but their golden hue had been tarnished by time, becoming a matte yellow, a coin forgotten under the rain.
And lowering his gaze to rest it upon the alloy of his arm, he thought that such was the way of all things, and said thought illuminated his heart briefly. The Thinkers of the Core were creatures of ideas, after all, and those would never rust, never fade.
He balanced from sphere to sphere, grasped passing crystal cylinders with his hands to aid in making his path, and more than once cursed silently as he tried to use a tail that had been robbed, most likely long ago, while he fantasized, sitting idly on the throne of his spire. Someone had his tail, or someone had lost his tail, and he would need a new one. Maybe if The First Pictured had wings, he could take them too. For every Thinker knew where the other spires were and who they belonged to, but not what could have been of its occupants.
Across the orange mist he maneuvered, once again aided by pulses of his core when the lone eye couldn’t make out the next vantage point. The oldest of towers rested on the lowest point of all creation, a column of white erected the instant the world began
He swung from cylinder to cylinder, leaped from sphere to sphere, and sooner rather than later, the silhouette of his destination manifested through the reddish atmosphere.
First he reached the windless platform, a circle of ice cold ivory steps against which his brass claws didn’t struggle to find purchase. He adjusted his chainmail cape once more, and focused his eye on the opening ahead. Shaded maw of fate that awaited him, guarded by statues of the Imaginers of the World, vermiform beings whose front halves entwined in an arch. Lovers without scales, but with concrete-like spikes in their place. Dirofil stared at them for a little while. They had created him — and everything and everyone else. They had arranged for the Sea of Dogs to swallow the world one day. And they had decided how their statues would look, so their true nature was now unfathomable for the Thinkers. Not a single motive of these gods they had found stated anywhere. Not a carve, not a scripture, not a rumor. Only the snakes with more eyes than they should, with three mandibles, with tears running down their deformed faces as they embraced and meshed up.
But the time to think was over, and with it, the world as imagined by them. This sparked a warm feeling in Dirofil’s core: if he failed to fulfill his promise, at least the world devised by the cruel snakes would be over. No more thoughts. No suffering. Just an eternal ocean of swaying, aging dogs, with its layers and currents and whatever else existed beyond the Retriever waves.
As he began ascending the flawless white staircase, he began feeling the weight of his own age onto the articulations of his legs. He would change them. Not today, for there were more important things to do today. He would scavenge the remains of some thoughtless brother or sister floating adrift among Labrador puppies.
He kicked a pebble aside and intently heard how it rolled downstairs. As he suspected, his right ear was slightly defective. The acoustics of the most magnanimous of spires, however, were flawless.
As flawless as the figure sitting at the throne in the top room had been long ago. Now almost completely encased in his sprawling thoughtcrystal, the First Pictured slumbered, deep in meditation. His alloy skull had been invaded by his core, as had been his torso, and prisms jutted out of the spot immediately above his voicebox, imprisoned his left arm against the armrest, , and joined his legs with the throne’s base. Yet even in this state, the power of his core was not to be underestimated: Dirofil wouldn’t dare to steal from such a powerful Thinker.
So he knelt in front of the throne and spread his arms, revealing a rickety figure of metal, slime and crystal under his cape. “The world is ending, elder one. Stir awake, as I have a promise to fulfill.”