When the Year is not Kept
And the Details are Hammered out with Veteran Hammers and Baboon Nails
She does not arrive without her procession. She does not arrive without her elite foot soldiers. She does not arrive without their support beities. She does not arrive without her support beities' human slaves.
This brings with her a great many creatures, big and small, and necessitates quite the space for them to make and break camp. When considering Staircase, the front of Staircase since it could not be approached from any other angle, the nearest such space was a bowl in the Earth, into which the flesh-dense vines had grown and blanketed. Now they would serve as natural bedding for the forces of the arriving Assaulquus, the Trojan Horse, the Wild Trinitarian of war.
Four times as high at the shoulder as the horses ridden by man, she was ridden only by her armor. The Wild Trinity was of fear, of vice, and of war, so one might think her the most amenable to human designs for the craft, but she was not. Her armor was not crafted by human hands, nor did it contain metal of any kind.
She ascended to her position by making war, and making it better than any creature had before, man included. Man overshot war, made it happen at ranges where it stopped existing, confused it with poisoning, tried to deploy the chaos of it as jut another weapon. These follies disgusted her, and if not opposed by most of the other beities who enjoyed their slaves she might make war until the last human was a memory, and then she might make war on memory until the last image of man was a shapeless crater reminiscent of nothing.
A war of Assaulquus could only end in victory, but as with the mountain-stumps that victory could take countless seasons. Always she managed multiple fronts, even from afar, mostly doing battle with the forces of beities who wished to ascend into the Wild Trinity themselves and take one of their places.
Her defense of Phobopan's throne was not out of deference, or a belief he couldn't defend it himself, but for mutual benefit. She liked to make war, and he liked to make fear. The same could be said for the golden fleece, who would suffer greatly if ever made to lift his head in effort.
In order to make her armor she made war. Refusing to be sullied by human thumb, and viewing even the ironwoods, even the heartwood of the ironwoods, to be insufficiently strong, she turned to the only creatures of the Earth that could create such pieces with their natural lives: snails and shellfish of the ocean.
At first it was a request. To fulfill it would be an honor, the shellfish said, but they could not. It was not within their power to purposefully grow their shells to her specifications, and even if they could it would require the sacrifice of their lives to make them into gifts for her. They pleaded her forgiveness.
Her response was to change it from a request to an order, but the spineless creatures of the ocean floor still assumed they were not capable of obeying. When the order was confirmed, delivered by symbolic seahorses, their disbelief became resentment. The high and low names among them whispered to each other, scorned her audacity, wondered if she could even reach them, for mighty as she was she could not breathe underwater, intentionally sink to their level, or even move through it with a speed matching their slither.
Assaulquus did not solely make war on her own though. She was the greatest commander the world had ever seen, across any species. Part of that skill was knowing exactly who to command. Here it was the hermit crabs, always ready to take a new shell as a spoil of war, perfectly willing to eat its creator right out of it morsel by morsel.
The Trojan Horse found the best beach to begin, raised up her army of crabs. Already her quarry was somewhat cornered, for they could not move past the patrolling crabs and could not retreat into currents where the waters were too cold. In one step she had shrunk their limitless ocean to a fishbowl.
The crabs raised a city; their names became high. Through war they made everything else, and only through the Trojan Horse could they make such perfect war. For her, for shells, for their new greatness, the hermit crabs marched from the beaches into the sea million by million, armed with the claws her breeding had sharpened.
Conch, clam, cowrie, cone, and scallop did not go quietly. They made war as best they could, lining up their heaviest shells in the front line, with those shells from lineages that hunted by launching harpoon-tongues loaded with the deadliest toxins. A mere prick to a human in their age would fell them in five seconds.
Some hit their mark, but not many, for the crabs were infinitely more agile, able to spin about and approach backward at full speed, shielded by stolen and scavenged shells. And from each battle they scavenged countless more, each serving multiple purposes. A large shell could be armor for an elite unit, or a home for innumerable spawn, or goods for bartering.
It took several spineless generations, but the denizens of the deep found themselves boxed in on all sides, contemplating extinction. Then, as an insult, the request came again. Make the horse her armor and slip free from the grip of her war. Acquiesce or die.
Now attached to the chips on their shoulders, the shellfish resigned themselves to a new subservient task: breed into unnatural shapes to clothe the Trinitarian. She wanted helm, interlocking neck plates, pauldrons, saddle, and haunch covers, as well as bracers for her hooves and ankles.
Each species begrudgingly accepted a section they were already closest to, then formulated what they would tell their spawn as they grew so their lives did not feel monotonous and constrained.
The reshaping made them worse at everything, from foraging to defense, but the latter was no longer a concern, as they were officially under Assaulquus's protection while they were in her service. If a wayward fish gobbled them up it would be swallowed itself within the day. Most insulting of all, their main protectors were now the hermit crabs, tasked with being by their side for most of their lives, shepherding them in the servitude that reshaped their very silhouettes.
With this task driving them the crab city did not falter after the war ended. It continued to flourish, and its prosperity meant her perfect soldiers were motivated to become perfect shepherds. This was perfect war, raising life to the height of an animal's taming, then fading without damage. No human could make such war. They couldn't even select the right battlefields and the right soldiers.
One day Assaulquus stood upon her bested beach, staring out at the water, waiting patiently. Out of the surf came crabs, escorting shells with no hosts, each one tailored to fit. She donned her helm and the rest of her shell, found none of it uncomfortable, and all of it light as a shawl of feathers to her.
Her armorers would stay the course, every death providing a replacement, for she sometimes suffered blows in the wars that actually caused her concern. Her caravan of servants served many purposes, but one of them was the transportation of her replacement armors, kept pristine and polished.
Wherever they made camp the resting armor pieces stood as statues decorating the grounds. In order to liven up their servitude, to forget that their success meant their initial evisceration in war was pointless, the shellfish had taken to experimenting with color and pattern, meaning Assaulquus could select whether she wanted to gallop into battle wearing banners of flame, or snowfall, or screaming flowers.
But as she rested on her belly in the verdant bowl outside Staircase she did not need anything flashy. War was not being made, just an example. She wore regal stripes of purple, which she sometimes wore to sleep, as she'd never been without her armor since donning it, not entirely.
While camp was being made there were other decorations that took longer to form than her extra armors. Among her procession were many spiders of high name, who spent their time in travel asleep, wrapped about the necks and chest of humans like breastplates. These were not trappers, but designers from lineages even longer than her armorer snails.
Naturally they produced colored silks, and when Assaulquus set down to rest and humans set tent poles about her the spiders then clothed the tent, in less than a day, in murals that recounted her many victories. The tent's open door represented the losses they could not recount in silk, for there were none.
Slow and ponderous when upon the ground with their eight legs, the spiders were somewhat decorative themselves, adorned with beads of natural glass and gemstones dangling on twine, sometimes turned into walking mops by copious silken tassels. They jingled and jangled as they went about their work, combining with evening cricket song to form a calming chorus belying the intensity with which the Trojan Horse handled all her affairs.
One of these spiders, clad in black silent raiment, came into the largest tent, housing his master, and began his work as the others filled in the final holes. By the high name Nyctolatro, his sole purpose in the coterie was to weave veils of draping black silk, the most lightless of the world, to serve as catchers and bunchers of shadow.
His curtains were placed furthest from the door of nonexistent losses, where the light from campfires entered, and served as a door as well, through which only one particular creature was meant to come: her brother in rank Phobopan. He was expected this evening, as the affair concerned his city.
The placement of the shadow gate was an extension of professional courtesy, as she had no desire to irritate him by making him arrive somewhere nearby and suffer escort to her war tent. While Nyctolatro neared completion she welcomed in the rest of her advisors and audience for the evening, composed of her battle and hunt elites and their human attendants.
Assaulquus had commanders, tacticians, and strategists, but they rarely joined her on the warpath, deployed as they were as satellites of her will to various fronts. Often such beities were physically weak, at least comparatively, valued only for their cunning and clever minds. Even insects were among that group, for being the least emotional of the beities afforded them unclouded vision in war.
With her were fighters, creatures so hardened by combat, or forged in it, that they knew little else, and could be said to be thoroughly addicted to it. Only in the currents of blood about the Trojan Horse could they keep their heads above the flow. Among them there were a few so steeped in bloodlust that they no longer knew regular lust, and viewed the continuation of their line to be the ending of others. Some even called these soldiers cauterizers, for the burned and scarred finality of the blows they dealt.
In that nearly complete tent that evening there were four, not considering the segmented creatures of typical size that followed the caravan in burrows beneath, scorpions, centipedes, racing iridescent jaw-beetles, who only participated in wars on a smaller scale than those that earned names for their battles.
Two cats were there, a lynx and a cougar, each as large as a low-name horse: Phalynx and Pangapuma. The former, gray and spotted, had a bib of white fur now permanently stained red by battles and hunts he could no longer tell apart. It was said that if his golden pupils narrowed upon you you were both targeted and judged. In that act was a perfect determination of predator or prey, and if you were labeled prey he would never cease in the hunt until you were dead, and the only way to escape that fate was to skirt his close attention entirely. Always his slaves wore the circular pupil as symbol, to keep him calm.
Beside him, lounging with chin flat upon her favorite cushion, with two servants scratching behind her ears and whispering peaceful things into them simultaneously, was the tawny Pangapuma. With nothing extraordinary about her appearance, she was nonetheless watched closely by any meeting her for the slightest bristle in her fur, for that was what she trusted. If you unsettled her, brushed against her the wrong way, you were just as dead as any subjected to the narrow eyes of Phalynx.
Bigger than either cat, encompassing them both when curled around them, long snout touching the tip of his own tail, was the monitor lizard Cultivar. A rare reptile for those colder northern parts, he took his heat from conflict, and was said to bask in volcanoes when given the chance, to no deleterious effect. His most famous tactic was swallowing his opponents whole, and he was fully capable of disgorging them alive if he felt them kneel in defeat internally.
Equally famous was his nemesis Mawgobomb, the fire-bellied toad, who had been swallowed by Cultivar countless times, admitted defeat when the toxins in his skin did not sufficiently irritate the lizard's guts, been vomited up, and then proceeded to rescind his surrender and leap into heated battle again.
Their duel continued, on and off, to that very day, and it was rarely known whether or not the toad was currently inside the lizard, worsening his mood with defiant kicks and an itchy throat. Technically Mawgobomb had been present for enough war parties to count as one of the Trojan Horse's elites, having heard strategies through the lizard's body wall, but it was not known if he ever contributed from within or without his fleshy prison. He is not included among them now, for if he was present he did not emerge from Cultivar's mouth.
Last to see Nyctolatro pull his final section of draping shadow tight was the flying opossum Decapetaur, the head-eater, the omnicarnivore. Though no bigger than a man's torso she could be considered the fiercest of them all, for she had rebelled against the nature and diet of her kind, eschewing the generalism of fruit, insects, eggs, and small rodents for pure, unrepentant, and extreme carnivory.
She consumed all meats, and only meat, often diving into large carcasses and swimming through them. Her fierceness made her mind sharper as it did her dentition, with one swoop generating sufficient force to rob a human of their head without immediately knocking the body over. Decapetaur hung from the freshly spun ceiling, wrapped up in her own gliding membrane, black eyes sparkling just above a fold.
Little escaped her perception, so when the shadow gate billowed and knocked Nyctolatro loose it was she who swooped down and saved the stiff creature from impacting the ground. He scurried away as she resumed her position above, all before the black paw of Phobopan stepped into their company.
"You seem hurried; I hope I haven't kept you waiting," Assaulquus said. Up a human came on a stool, just under her chin, and fed her a green seedless apple. Any seeds that passed through her system intact would grow into the mightiest trees, and the nearby mountain-stumps would not appreciate such an intrusion. The horse would not acknowledge the feeding hand, or its attached human, unless she should descend for another morsel and find nothing between her teeth.
"No, no, I am just entertained in a way I haven't been in quite a while," assured the lion with the ashen mane as he emerged fully, similarly ignoring the human that was now knelt directly under his chest fur. They were one of Phalynx's, wearing his full moon pupil, and they were petrified.
Aside from their duties to their tuft-eared master, it could be said it was their position to be petrified, as they were assigned to the task of becoming fearful whenever Nyctolatro went to work, to put a scent of terror in the air that could waft through the shadows and let Phobopan know he was welcome.
They were very practiced in speeding their breath, trembling their hands, and calling up waking nightmares, often achieved by removing their pupil protection charms and sensing their master's gaze upon their back. Some even used the surname Stokefear when referring to them, and they earned it too much to live a happy life. Even as Phobopan passed overhead, ignoring them, they still feared they would be punished for calling the lion prematurely, before Nyctolatro had quite finished. They feared the barbed tails of the listening scorpions that could emerge from the dirt and strike their soles at any moment. And they feared what came out of the darkness after Phobopan, another cat, perhaps an executioner of inadequate humans.
Curious of the Stokefear, but unable to linger on them thanks to her curiosity over every other face and facet within the war tent, was Grinjipan, who followed the fear-full lion out of the gate and settled down next to him to get comfortable.
"I'm eager to speak," the Trinitarian cat purred smugly. Servants swarmed him on fleet and silent feet, taking the finest brushes to his mane and fur. One tilt of Pangapuma's head in Grinjipan's direction was sufficient to have a few humans break away and provide the same to the reverse-tiger. Both lithe cats shared a knowing nod, which did not escape Assaulquus's notice.
"Who is this with you?" the horse asked, almost jealously. "Rarely do you share your dark trails, and when you do it is with a derelict soldier in need of a commander like myself."
"I was the last," Cultivar said, and though the statement was mild it was not without weight. Reptilian beities were short on words, shorter on plans, and when they spoke it bred questions in the more talkative kinds.
"Yes you were," Phobopan acknowledged, "and we would've spent longer together my friend, if only there was warmth for you in the dark." His heavy but elegant head moved to the tiger. "Here is Grinjipan, of Bagogreen, who has been most helpful in providing information about the situation that brings us together this fine evening. They have an interest in some of the parties involved, and they have my favor here tonight. I hope it is no great imposition sister."
"No, let her stay in mirth," the horse declared. "Shall we dine?" The lion's acceptance sent a few humans, all but invisible against the backdrop in their multicolored silken cloaks until they moved, scurrying out to fetch victuals. It seemed the meeting was ready to begin, but there was one more relevant party who was only semi-present, which the horse just then recalled. "Cultivar, produce for us that messenger who wandered in this past hour."
Obediently the great lizard lurched, tiniest of lumps rising in his throat. In a wet blast of breath he produced a writhing mass that bounced across the carpeting vines and rolled to a stop in the emptiest part of the tent, highlighting its pathetic size. A traumatized marmoset unfolded, looking up with eyes so wide that he seemed to judge his new surroundings as even less friendly than the lizard's cold gullet.
"Master," the tiny primate squeaked, bowing to the Trojan Horse. When his head came up he saw the fear-full lion. "Masters!" He bowed again, and then saw the elites of which he had heard tell, and the reverse-tiger too. "Masters all! I am but a humble low-name! Please forgive my words, which are not mine, and are simply meant for your ears."
"And this low-name of yours?" the horse asked.
"Ellapock," he answered, trying not to shiver in his jacket of lizard spit despite the radiating body heat of two Trinitarians and their cadre. "I have been sent from Staircase, where I was a prisoner, to speak on behalf of the Bloo- the much-hunted from Compassleaf."
"They have no say in these negotiations," the horse said, immediately filling the lower beity with dread of the stomping hoof. "They are between my instinct to make war and my brother's to make fear."
"True, but I am appreciative of all the details in this case," the lion interjected. "Something vexing is afoot, and it is a thing I cannot smell or hear." Assaulquus considered his words carefully, for she knew her brother to be as dedicated to his craft as she was to hers. If he was vexed it would vex her as well.
"Very well, then the low-name will be heard, and will return with our decision to Staircase." In between bouts of fear over the second-swallowing that would move him to Cultivar's stomach proper Ellapock had carefully constructed his now-useless plea that the Trojan Horse free him and let him return to Weaviranch. As much as he desired home, he would not raise a single word of argument against any of the monstrous wonders present.
Enticing scents arrived in the tent moments before the food, each offering carefully selected for the creature it was placed before. A mat of woven bamboo was rolled out for the horse, and her bites rapidly assembled under her nose. They were laid out in a line, each composed of the finest sweet grasses woven together as ropes, knots holding in place luscious yellow tomatoes and black grapes, each section spaced to perfectly catch on her prehensile lip.
Ellapock was served as well, by a petite woman who circled around behind him, enclosed him in her arms, and assembled the meal. Comforted he was immediately, reminded of his most companionable Chamberhands when he smelled her perspiration, but her skill with her hands was not comparable, instead far greater.
This was the Wild Trinity after all, and the greatest treasures of the planet came to them, earned and given as tribute alike. The only better cooks and servers to live were owned by Vissovis, who put the utmost stock in carnal pleasures and appetites.
How this server's hands could be so nimble was a mystery even to a marmoset who had watched man-fingers build his entire social life, for she was missing the last joint on every finger and the nail. Everything she did she did with the smoothest nubs, from setting out a waxy platter leaf to placing morsels in the order he was supposed to consume them.
Perhaps they had been bitten off to help her perform this task, as human nails were notorious for gathering dirt, which might contaminate foods that needed to remain pristine for the Trojan Horse's guests. With a truncated little finger she dipped into thimble-vessels of sauce, smearing them across the rinds and skins of the nuts and berries on offer, some so rare in color that Ellapock could not identify them.
As he ate he struggled to maintain his composure. The taste almost made his misfortunes since the Shedlands worth it, and it might have if he was not already expected to return to his captors. In each blast of juice he could taste entire fields working together to grow in character, overseen as they were by the equine lord of war. It was the same devotion that shone in the lilac stripes of her lounging-about armor.
For Phobopan and his guest, the most refined selection of all. They were served slabs and cubes of fatty meat, drenched in a red-amber sauce, topped with single salt crystals grown as branching centerpieces.
"What a divine aroma," Grinjipan complimented, unable to play her usual coy self in the face of such luxury.
"Yes, who is this sister?"
"That is none other than the rich belly of Troffelsus," said the gray horse, reverent somber tone now matching her coat. "You'll remember him brother; he was a friend of my father, Unterquus the defeated, the dreary-black, the shame-dappled, may he rest in disregard. But Troffelsus was always a better sort, word as tough as his tusk. Don't know as I've ever known a tougher hog.
Less than a season since he passed, and requested his scavage be served at my table. I'm told by flesh-eaters such as yourself that his fat is creamy beyond measure, no doubt enriched by his high spirit. Do honor him with your bite. He is perfectly preserved, wet-aged in chili and vinegar."
The two cats did so, and were transported by the ecstasy upon their palates. At this tier of dominance, scavage was not merely rations. Great beities requested to be fed to other great beities upon their deaths, passing strengths laterally to other kinds. To be made a good meal of was to add another story to your legend, and even another title in some cases, such as most toothsome or nourishing savior.
In Troffelsus's belly fat they tasted all of his unkept hundreds, and his death from old age, and everything that preceded, including great truffle hunts with quarries so elusive they moved under the ground, wars over coveted salt-lick caverns, and his time serving the will of the land at the purest watering hole Oasis Elevatus before its fouling by the putrid nine-humped camel.
"I do recall what a fine fellow he was," Phobopan said as he savored his old acquaintance. "Kept his snout down, but you knew his inner smile. Said 'if a hazelnut falls on it I will concern myself with it, and otherwise it is yours.' Forager wisdom I'm afraid; it passed me right by."
"Well I will send you off with one of his bones," Assaulquus pledged, "so that you may chew on the thought at length and eventually learn the meaning. His back right knuckle is yours brother." Then they ate, for even the Wild Trinity retained the singular focus of animals at their meals. Talk worsened taste, unsettled stomachs in their rustic labors. When they were finished the humans swept away what was left, none of them returning, for the business of war was not theirs.
"I confess to being called here largely on instinct, and have not been attentive with the reports," Assaulquus said when all eyes were back on her and the last lip was licked. "Forbidden Thumbs have been violated, and multiple hunts have not brought the perpetrators to justice. They have taken refuge behind the stairs, which looks to me now like an enemy fortress that needs to be assailed."
"If I may, Lord Assaulquus," Grinjipan said with a deep nod. It took the horse a moment to concede the floor, but she did with a rippling snort. "I was there when the initial infractions occurred. Our central human is one Loric Shelvtale. In a storytelling performance for Krakodosus the thundercoat, Scion of the Salmon Run, the use of an extinct word was noticed.
Through clever use of stagecraft, Loric escaped without immediately being pursued. From there he infiltrated the dental facility and interrupted my cleaning appointment."
"Twice in one day? How unlucky for you," the horse commented.
"Or fortuitous, for it brought me to audience with Phobopan, and with you my lord." Her manners were too good to expel her, which irritated the Trojan Horse greatly. Her brother was respected, and her elite cats, but otherwise she did not like the creatures, preferring obedient hounds. Cats had difficulty separating their personal vendettas and treasure hunts from statecraft, were very skilled in abandoning their responsibilities on the whim of a rodent disappearing into a hole.
"I must admit failure," the reverse tiger continued, pretending at shame, "for I was stunned when the storyteller burst in and activated my dentist's Bloody Mouth. Tell of any Bloody Mouth risk west of the turkey trails had not reached me. The loathsome creature already had a weapon to the root of my fang, and marched me under threat of its removal practically out of the city."
"Practically?" the Trinitarian interrogated with the precision of a charge order. "How is it these two humans left your side with their skins still on?"
"I was distracted by the frankly incompetent baboon who first noticed the extinct word, who was arguing brashly and openly with the Scion, trying to arrange a cockamamie hunt for prey that was within earshot." Cultivar flinched, settling back down by shaking his neck like a wary cobra. "As he howled the dentist slipped a needle into my fang and extracted her hook before slinking away."
"Our concern is not the animals of Namstamp failing in their hunts," Phobopan interrupted, "but that Shelvtale is literate. As a storyteller he poses significant risk of spreading the skill with abandon. My eye was caught because it is unknown how he acquired this ability in the first place."
"And you have not killed him because you would like to know?" his sister asked.
"Hardly," the fear-full lion scoffed. "I'm perfectly content to remain curious and never know. It is the curiosity alone that entices me." The horse snorted again, surrounded as she was by utterly typical cats. Many more elites were at her disposal, Phalynx and Pangapuma chosen primarily for their physiological ability to handle stairs well, but now she regretted having a pride of the prideful creatures stuffed into one tent.
"So far we have gone where the fear has taken us," Grinjipan added, already testing the waters with her language, making it sound as if she'd been walking Phobopan's dark and treacherous trails for centuries. "We have not had opportunity to discover the source."
"And now you may never have it," Assaulquus concluded, "for they have sequestered themselves within and behind Staircase." She turned to Phobopan. "It is your city, but you prefer not to show yourself there, yes?"
"Excellent memory dear sister," he answered with a nod and a glint in his quicksilver teeth. "If I come as a figure of justice they will worship me, and not fear. If I come to punish their fears take definite shape, and grow less potent. As with fear itself the city is delicate, grows more fragile as it is heightened.
I know you wish to assail it now, so I'm here to see if I can't make both of us happy without you disrupting my cultivation. Use that excellent memory of yours to recall that Staircase is but the rarest plant, and all of the continent the orchard."
"Like yourself I seek only what is mine brother. War is mine, not justice. That is the purview of lower beities, who must muck their feet in parts of the Tame we have ascended beyond. I too think their failure to bring it about is incidental, and care not for the risk of literacy.
After Shelvtale has done it, and raised an army of readers, who will presumably defend letters to the death, whichever ones are most important, then it will be my concern. I will meet him and his in battle and defeat them utterly, bring them as low as my father, dapple them with shame from the rears of my least soldiers and kick the first dirt into their graves with a bloody hoof that took the blood from their mouths!
But not a moment before. I'm here not because there is a war. It is a mere itch, caused by the failure of the Scion to contain these crawling thumbs. Still, I will scratch, and I'm happy to negotiate with you over how many claws I use, and what fervor drives them. I will be heard brother! There is to be a battle!"
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
"Long has the city been tasked with its own defense," Phobopan said, diving right into the negotiations. Try as she did, Grinjipan had not convinced him to divulge the nature of his plans until that very moment. "They will fight back. All that needs settled is the size of the armies, and the conditions upon which the battle will end. If I may suggest, as Shelvtale and Fixtooth are the cause of all this itchy feeling, the battle will end when they have left the city, been taken into beity custody, or perished."
"Simple and accepted," the Trojan Horse said, pleased with the speed of affairs. At this rate they could schedule the battle for the following morning.
"Then on to the troops," the lion said. "The battlefield is the only one that Staircase will ever use, as long as it stands: the stairs themselves. Only so many of its people are trained and equipped to fight there, and only so many fit. You already know what you are up against, and I trust you will set forth a force roughly equal in strength."
"I'll have to do very little," she said, as close to giddy as such a powerful beast could be, "for perfect waged war makes it appear that the victor has hardly lifted a limb, or heard horns clash in the distance. Those in the tent with us will fight, for otherwise they would suffer withdrawal, and then everyone around them would suffer as well.
Beyond them, this situation has already provided its own relevant troops who will submit to my command. Cultivar?"
The lizard's head reared back, saliva bubbling up in the cauldron of his veteran gullet. A lump many times larger than the cowering Ellapock rose and was spat up, with Grinjipan surprised to see a second primate produced that way in such a short span of time. It suggested the lizard had swallowed a whole community of the things.
"If it isn't Mojopap. I was just talking about you," Grinjipan purred, but underneath her tone her whiskers were hot with rage. It was all she could do not to anchor her claws in his flank and drag him into a position from which she could take bites for the rest of the evening, only culminating in his miserable death with the rays of dawn.
"Oh? This is the baboon that didn't know his place?" the Trojan Horse commented. "I should have known as much, given that his place is wiping his bottom with pages in a Compassleaf tree, and he is instead here, and dared to interrupt my procession with forged metal in hand, held like the banner of a Forbidden Thumb faction."
"Aw-gah! No Lady Assaulquus!" the slimy fretting baboon wailed, bowing a head dreadfully skeletal with his mane shaved away. "The scalpel was just to match the hook and the mirror stolen from my city! I swear! Back to the armory it goes as soon as the reader is dead!"
"As if that's my concern!" the horse snorted, offended enough for her armor to clink in sequence down her neck and across her back. "Raise that infernal abomination against as many beities as you like! It will never serve you the way such weapons serve man. It is their dominion, and it has been destroyed, so when you hold it you hold nothing but a crutch. It supports your quivering legs, for you do not wield it on the field of war, but in the wasteland of fear, so see what my brother thinks of it!"
The baboon whirled his head, jaw agape, only now recognizing the presence of the fear-full lion. Both eyes fled from each other as they tried to look at each Trinitarian at once. It sounded as if his fate had been handed over to the cat, so eventually that was where his focus stuck.
"Don't look to me either," the lion's cavernously deep voice chugged. With a tilt of his mane he poured the baboon's attention down to a Grinjipan with smirking eyes and flexing claws.
"You're the cause of all this," the tiger said matter-of-factly. "If you had only kept your mouth shut and listened to the story patiently. Loric would have been none the wiser, and this all could've been settled behind the stage curtain."
"I would never allow such a travesty to have its human-intended conclusion!" the baboon countered with earnest affront. "That's practically asking me to coauthor one of their blasphemous books! We all know what must be done with those... when..." His knuckles pattered across his chest, only for him to discover that his trophies were mostly missing. His brief incarceration within the lizard had caused many of the pages he decorated himself with to either dissolve or be torn loose from the cords that held them. Now he truly felt naked.
"I couldn't... I couldn't possibly get these back, could I?" he sheepishly asked the lizard Cultivar, accidentally ripping a fresh hole in one of the limp remaining pages when he held it up as example. Confused by such an odd request, the lizard raised himself to his fullest, balanced on one foreleg and then the other, feeling out his inner places for any way to reclaim what was mostly gone or firmly plastered to the side. The others waited either in idle curiosity or abject disgust.
"No," the lizard said with finality, settling back down to make clear there would be no argument. The Babeloon deflated.
"Reading material for Mawgobomb then," Assaulquus joked before turning her attention, begrudgingly, back to the wet shaved primates. "You baboon are in luck. Your long hunt of the storyteller will be honored, as you, and those that follow you, will attack Staircase to try and reclaim him."
Mojopap's heart nearly stopped. In looking about frantically he finally understood the value of the sympathetic eyes and ears of Lady Butterfur. Too late. A desert and a river too late. Now he was in the realm of mightier beities, and it was already a miracle he still lived. Briefly he regretted treating the blonde bunny of a bear so poorly, before turning his pity back to himself.
"But my lady!"
"Silence!" the Trojan Horse ordered with a rip from her nostrils that made all the tent walls flutter. "You are the army this situation provided, and you cannot back away now. If you desert any march of mine you may fall down dead from scorn alone. And you!" She leaned down, bringing her pristine nose close to Ellapock. "Did the spoils of my war have anything to say about this arrangement?"
The marmoset struggled to remember everything under the gaze of her glaring black nostrils, including his own low name.
"The... uhm... much-hunted... They w-wanted to request... sanctuary." None of the beities spoke, so beleaguered Ellapock was forced to continue. Despite his diminutive size, Phobopan registered his output of terror as significantly higher than the Stokefear that beckoned him. "They thought, p-perhaps since they made it to Staircase, they could be left alone, if they promised to never again leave its territory... masters."
"You tell them," the looming nostrils said, blasting the marmoset with intent that practically planted him in the ground like a sapling, "they come out of their shell or it will fill with blood and drown them."
...
Staircase showed Loric and Hygenis what a human township could look like. Having seen many images in his bottomless book, the storyteller recognized certain aspects that could look no other way. Some things were just what happened when mankind unwittingly handled the Tame between tools and trades.
All along the packed dirt streets there were stalls and stands, some with produce grown and foraged, some with hunted meat, and then many more with crafts: blankets, iron tools, and nasty brown glasswork that was nonetheless gorgeous to the fugitives.
They had not fallen into the folly of money, but something in the human spirit had them putting up stands anyway. It was almost an organic pattern, like the mathematical interior spiral of a snail's shell. Mankind was expressing some sort of universal principal of intelligence when they spread out the goods they created in front of them, always at the perfect height for others to grab and inspect.
Their guesses about spikes were correct; jagged spines of metal adorned every structure's highest points in scattered directions. Many bore organic shapes suggesting molten metal had dripped out of the forge, hardened into a stalactite, and then been broken off and used to crown a hut or watchtower.
Humans would not have been able to keep bug beities out entirely, as gnats and roaches lived where they pleased, often so self-centered they could not even recognize hostility, and spiders would live where the former lived no matter the opposition, but the stairclimbers had their lone ally in the butterflies.
Several structures were theirs and theirs alone, marked by walls of transparent cloth and artificial trees within, meant to provide cool and peaceful perches to them. With spines to repel and cloth to tangle, no bird was fool enough to descend into Staircase and then intrude in a butterfly house just for a mouthful, thus another benefit of their alliance was revealed.
Butterflies kept out all other bugs, but it was a constant battle, one which Loric and Hygenis saw take place several times as they were escorted deeper into the city. Like drunkards tossed from festivals, two butterflies would carry the intruder between them as it kicked in protest, all the way past the stairs where they were dumped.
A line of colorful expulsions fluttered to their left that the storyteller couldn't help but glance at repeatedly. That could be his own fate at any time, though it likely wouldn't be a thousand butterflies tasked with his removal. He wondered if he was but a troublesome bug to them, eyes so full of the bottomless book's cold light that they appeared alien, like the compound gems of a damselfly.
In examining the faces of the populace he saw they drew surprisingly little attention, their weapons included. The bottomless book was stashed away, their dental instruments were among their own people now, and vassal sticks as well as lesser imitations were common too. Some of the dental hooks and scrapers had been absconded with, but others were original to Staircase, reproduced in those forms because that was the technique that was known.
Children scampered about, less naked than they would be under a beity's yoke, their chubby flailing mostly hidden under long collar-dresses like giant lily pads they'd stuck their heads through, but in louder colors than such plants were known for: red, orange, and gold.
Women with exceptionally long hair sat on cascading stools, braiding idly but expertly, almost in a trance that prevented them from knowing or caring if the crop they arranged was their own. In bondage the majority of grooming effort went to the master's coat, but in Staircase it was kept close to the heart and expressed what was within.
Hairstyles made possible only through boredom and bad ideas aggressively combed-out to submissive silk stood out here and there. One woman's hair was divided into two braids that became straps wrapped about her shoulders and underarms. Another made a collar for herself like a coiled stack of rope.
These were but some of the sights of the human city, and were regrettably all the Bloody Mouth had time to take in before they reached their destination: a cave with an entrance outlined in hanging skulls. Belonging to beities, these bones were all turned, sockets staring deep into the crevice in the rock. The deeper they went the bluer the walls became, and the more the sounds of the city gave way to curated dripping. Natural leaks in the ceiling fell into unnatural buckets, marked but not labeled, probably to keep time.
Their tight escort disbanded about them in a domed chamber just large enough for a hundred men to sit comfortably without elbowing each other. There were many chairs and cushions, the former clearly created with metal tools forbidden outside the city. The blank curving wall beyond was part of a central device, a large paneled lantern atop a pole of black iron.
Inside red coals, likely fed heat from within the pole, produced a strong hellish light that cast stark shadows upon the walls, growing and sharpening them. Many men and women, turned away from the entrance of their guests, created shadow puppets for themselves and their neighbors to study closely. Most of them were muttering, and if their hands weren't employed in puppetry they were wringing their wrists, rubbing their temples, or playing their lower lips as if fingering a flute.
"Welcome to the raked coals of memory," a man said from behind Loric and Hygenis, silencing all the muttering in the process. The stairclimbers turned themselves or their chairs to watch now; all puppets fled into nothingness.
He was large and muscular, with hands like bear paws. A vest of woolly ram fur hid the edges of a tattoo that spanned his bare chest depicting a nude woman bathing in a waterfall of swords and axes, taking not a single cut. A blade ran down between her breasts, slick and liquid against her perfect flesh.
Thick stubble was the result of his chiseled jaw being adorned with a net of fine silvery chains, the links so small that Hygenis could not imagine how they were forged. Each was anchored into his flesh with a stud, each stud topped with a jewel that looked red in the light of the coals.
All but bald, the greatest indication of his age was the gray at hist temples, for he had youthful eyes and smooth skin where it wasn't splattered with the tiny red scars of thrown sparks. He carried at his side a dental hook, but in name only. Its head was massive, bloated, and drooped asymmetrically, suggesting a ceremonial nature, though his expression indicated he would be more than happy to wield it in earnest if the situation required.
"Greetings to you, Loric Shelvtale and Hygenis Fixtooth. I am Breaka Steeljaw, master of the Staircase forges, commander of the dental descent, and your host this evening. Please, take a seat. We have much to discuss."
Loric would have sworn there were no seats unoccupied, but by the time he turned around two empty chairs were ready for them, close to the lamp. Its dry heat was on them like sunburn as soon as they sat. Breaka did not sit, instead paced about just under the lamp, speaking so that all in the chamber could hear.
It was not likely showmanship, the storyteller realized. Though they weren't as high-spirited as he knew his peers to be, something about the cloaked mumblers struck him as storyteller-like. There were other oral crafts after all, like record keeping and secret keeping. Perhaps that was what they were, all their shadow puppets like messenger pigeons, disappearing into the dark with information too dangerous for the current generation, which might only reappear after an age of the relevant hearts and heads cooling or petrifying.
"I am told you seek permanent sanctuary behind our stairs, that you are a Bloody Mouth out of Compassleaf, and that you were slaves of the Scion of the Salmon Run," Breaka said. Many mutterers repeated him quietly, tested small shadow puppets representing each element.
"All true," Loric said, sure to match the man's volume so all present would know he had perceived them and at least part of their purpose. "I am literate, and I carry with me a machine that could make a thousand more like me." Eyes darted about, but hands stalled. Was there a shadow puppet for machine? if it was made would it sit on the wall forever even when the hands left, the way the machines did? "I understand that this... cannot happen."
"Yes," Breaka said slowly. He tapped the floor with his scraper, and moments later the heat and light from the lamp increased, pushing Loric to the back of his seat. "Ultimately we are not the men of old. Many thumbs are still forbidden. No electricity. No locks. No written word or devious pictogram."
"But the shadow puppet does not linger," Hygenis said, asserting her own presence, "leaving no evidence of its meaning. It is the flame of heresy, extinguished as soon as the authority's eye might come along, just as the Bloody Mouth does." Breaka's initial response was just a nod, though it was difficult for them to discern against the harsh light behind him.
"Something comes to the forefront," the smith said. His hook blocked a shaft of light and Loric felt a cool patch glide over his shoulder, onto the cinched top of his pack. "You have a beity with you." The storyteller rolled his shoulder to gently signal Ellapock, who crawled out moments later, cringing and miserable.
"I'm not a spy," he insisted, shielding his eyes from the light.
"Still, we do not want you here, at least not for this meeting. There is a purpose for you to serve... Here I must mention the reports of our furthest-ranging butterflies. Assaulquus the Trojan Horse marches for the stairs." The mutterers knew this already, but Loric and Hygenis were caught so off their composure that their chairs creaked and groaned.
"Does she mean to make war over us?" Hygenis asked. She turned to Loric. "We must leave if that is the case. Do not close our Bloody Mouth around the throats of these countless innocents."
"I would not ask or order such a thing of you," he assured her with a grim face.
"We do not believe it is as dire as that," Steeljaw said to snatch them back from a chasm of despair. "The horse has darkened our bottom step before, often with new arrivals who are criminals elsewhere, and she has never made war. Though she cannot climb our stairs she is fully capable of smashing straight through them. Yet we still stand.
However there may be a battle. She will act with a small force, and if it is defeated upon the stairs she will take her leave."
"She would suffer a defeat and still let us be?" Hygenis asked skeptically. "A Trinitarian? Impossible."
"Then you're looking at an impossible man!" Breaka said forcefully, hammering his staff on the stone floor again. "A battle was fought so that I might be a stairclimber! And won too! Without the blood that poured down our steps I would not have the name Steeljaw, which is not a trade but an item. A totem of human greatness. Most here bear such names."
"If the battle is won we would be permitted to stay?" Loric asked. The mutterers stopped to hear the answer.
"Yes," the man said. "Assaulquus would accept defeat because she will not use her own army, but one she deems provided. What they will be, we do not know. Among them will be her elite, who have to fight to avoid madness, but they will retreat when there is no fodder left for us to churn through."
"Should they win and reach the top stair?" Hygenis posed.
"Then they will take what they are after and leave, which we assume is the both of you and your machine," Breaka said. "We are willing to fight for you, but you ask more of us than most. A Bloody Mouth is more than a runaway, as are pilfered dental tools, and that is without mentioning the machine. We will ask much of you in return, and ask it now."
"What do you want?"
"First the monkey must go; have him act as messenger. He will be taken to Assaulquus and tell them our terms, that we wish to keep you as citizens. If they have a response he will be returned to you."
Loric reached up and took Ellapock from his shoulder, holding him between himself and Hygenis so they could speak. Reason said the creature should be thrilled to be free of them, but he did not look it. His words were caught behind his shallow breaths like a hay bale.
"This may be your way back home," Hygenis said as softly as she was able. "Take it. Depart in indifference if not friendship."
"We bear you no grudge here," Loric agreed, his tone suggesting there was no point to such anger when they were all under the shadow of the Wild Trinity.
"All the same, I'd rather not explain myself to the Trojan Horse!" he squeaked. "At least if we were together it would look like I'd wrangled you!"
"Ellapock, no it would not," Hygenis assured him. "Go. If we see you again we'll be happy to see you alive."
"Yes. Whenever you're in my stories I promise your contributions will shine brightest," Loric offered, which the marmoset surprisingly accepted. A tear might have quivered in his tiny eye, but the hot air of the chamber didn't allow it. When the monkey still seemed glued to his palm Loric offered him his free index finger, curled as a bar.
Ellapock pressed down on it with both hands; Loric let it be moved. This was the silent signal that dismissed a Chamberhand, allowed a marmoset to see the world as it truly was once again.
He scampered down Loric's back and across the rock to the entrance, where an impatient red butterfly guided him away.
"Now to the real business," Breaka said once the beities were gone. "We could be attacked as early as dawn, and we require the both of you to contribute as much as possible now, should we lose the battle and then lose you as well. I trust this is acceptable?"
Both of them nodded, though it weighed on them heavily that there was no time to rest. Neither had had a cushion to sleep on since Compassleaf, and thus no fullest sleep. Every dream iterated upon the trials of the day preceding it, leaving them with the fortitude of rickety scarecrows in the age where crows did not scare.
"Then I'm afraid I must split you for now," Steeljaw said, symbolically lowering his hook between them until it tapped the floor. "Hygenis Fixtooth must go and assist in the battle, fighting with the dental descent on the stairs. If you'll head there now my people will show you the technique. You can get a fair practice, take a meal, and half a decent sleep before it all begins."
There was no hesitation from the brave dentist, who stood as straight and tall as the shaft of her hook. She had been prepared for such a fate from the moment she smeared Grinjipan's blood across her lips. For a Bloody Mouth to conclude in an honest battle, alongside allies, and not to toxin, disease, misadventure, or the impossible odds of a hundred-beity hunt was a great satisfaction.
"Hygenis," Loric said, standing and embracing her, which she returned. Their vassal sticks clicked together in camaraderie. "I can never thank you enough, whether it was your duty or not. Nothing made you help me. You always had the power to dissolve your training inside you the moment I asked for it, to ignore my plea as madness and live the rest of your days peacefully plucking teeth.
You didn't. You saved me, and you never stopped, and you taught me all the way... more than the bottomless book." She couldn't help but scoff at that with her eyes. "You don't need to believe it, for I do. I'm not sure how I love you Hygenis, but I love you." Her more experienced hand clapped on his shoulder and suddenly he could hear her whole life in her voice. She sounded old enough to be the grandmother of a ghost.
"I love you as one fang loves the other," she told him. "You are my brother in kind. A Bloody Mouth cannot smile, lest it spill the blood behind the teeth prematurely, but the joy is there, living quiet and strong. I was genuinely happy to draft this tale with you. Goodbye for now storyteller."
As she pulled away and vanished around the rock Loric searched his emotions and found something surprising. He wasn't afraid. Not for himself. The crucial difference was the Bloody Mouth, he thought. If he were to be flung into a desperate situation now he would take up whatever was near and wield it as best he could, but not a dentist. If they had blood in their mouth it would stay there, and they would watch idly as the storyteller did his best on his own. He still felt like something, even without Hygenis.
"And what is it you want from me?" Loric asked as he took his seat again.
"Your machine, may I examine it?" Breaka asked, hand extending. The storyteller extracted it, moved to hand it over. As it slipped from his fingers he felt a twinge, strings tied around his muscle fibers, pulling. He was something without Hygenis, but was he anything without the cleverwood slate?
"I call it the bottomless book," he explained to mentally massage the feeling away. "Touching the screen allows you to navigate its contents, but speaking to it will do the same." Breaka experimented with touch and query, but only pictures did him any good, and he had seen some of those in recovered books before their destruction.
"From where do you hail?" he asked the book, which did not answer, so he turned to Loric. "Where did you get it?"
"I cannot answer helpfully. It slipped into my belongings without my noticing years ago, as I was being taken to my new master in Compassleaf... my last master."
"What sorts of information does it contain?"
"All sorts. I think it knows everything we ever knew. It knows that we've visited the moon, and that if you go you have to bring your own air with you." Several of the shadow puppeteers gave up trying to express such a thing before they knotted their fingers. "It can name the beities too small to see, who are responsible for disease. It knows the very speed of light."
"There's a number for that?" Breaka asked, taken aback by the volume of his own curiosity. Loric nodded in a slow fashion that suggested there was a number for everything, even other numbers. The larger man contemplated this for several moments, only ceasing when a mumbler cleared their throat to draw his attention, then pointed to one of the water clocks as it dripped. Breaka handed the bottomless book back, rubbing his fingers together to feel the aftereffects of cleverwood on his skin.
"I understand time is of the essence," Loric said, ready to be free of the uncertainty. If they were going to drop the third and final member of the Wild Trinity on him it was better to be crushed by a fat ram sooner rather than trampled by an armored horse or eaten by a dark lion later.
"Let us hope it is not," Breaka said, nonetheless taking the hint. "Let us hope my dental descent takes the battle and we have all the time of your lives. But for now I must introduce you to the raked coals of memory." A forest of shadow puppets sprang up on all the walls. Fingertip creatures rummaged around in the canopy.
"We are not permitted the written word," he continued as he went to the wall, weaving between the puppeteers like they weren't there. He dragged his hook across the stone, and it seemed to catch and pull the shadowy trees aside, revealing an empty sky upon which he threw up his own shadow.
"Loric, this is all we have of history, here in this room. These are our former storytellers and oral keepers. Now we call them Steeltraps, which is what we expect their memories to be. We ask them to remember lineage," a shadow puppet of a couple swaddling a child appeared next to him, "war," it morphed into a man kicking another, "and the politics of the animals." An elephant of fingers raised its trunk between its tusks.
"But memory is a weak medium. It corrupts the way wood rots. It erodes like the land. When we learn something new we must reinforce it as much as possible, brand it into the mind of Staircase. Here the Steeltraps remind themselves, remind each other, encode memories in moving shadow.
And so I ask that you open your bottomless book until its spine crackles. Spill its contents to these people as quickly and succinctly as possible, focusing on what is most important. Tell them about us just prior to the thinning of our blood. Tell of cities, and transportation machines, and thinking machines, but also of all the ways these things came undone.
Speak until your voice is raw and lost. Speak until sleep seizes you. Speak while the battle for your freedom slowly climbs our stairs. Will you?"
"We shall begin with the sinkhole," Loric said, already scrolling through several relevant articles in the book, "and finish when I fall from this chair." Breaka smiled, but there was no rejoicing among the Steeltraps. They too were soldiers, poised with weapons at the ready at the edge of a battlefield already long soiled with bones and rust.
The master of the forge took his leave, off to organize his dental descent fighting force and assist in Hygenis's lessons. Those lessons turned out to be simple enough for the dentist, as it was mostly footwork and an understanding of gravity's pull versus the material of the stairs.
Combat upon the steps had many dimensions aside from the advantage of repelling most hoofed and some serpentine beities. By the time Hygenis climbed the ladders behind she was able to look out at the unfolded stairs and see adolescents running across them bent over, brushes loaded with grease under their hands.
The coating would make the steep battlefield slippery, for both sides. Therein laid the technique of the dental descent: one hundred warriors skilled not just with hook, scraper, and scalpel. They also knew how to stay on their feet with grease under them, and with a rope about their waist.
Each defender would be supported by an anchor atop the stairs and two heavier assistants who would work to swing that rope and reel their charge back up to the summit. At first the supplies confused Hygenis, who did not see how dragging the warriors up bumpy steps would do them any favors, but that was where the fourth dimension came in.
Not only could the great steps of Staircase retract into a wall, there was also plenty of space to maneuver underneath them between the metal latticework of the folding mechanism. Small levers, with ropes hanging from them, were attached underneath horizontal sections of each step. Additional soldiers, watching through the slats and waiting for shouted orders, would leap and pull on the levers with their entire weight. This made the step above snap flat, turning that section into a ramp as long as the weight stayed applied.
Once she understood the concept Hygenis was able to look downstairs and predict pieces of the coming battle. Animals would struggle to climb unfamiliar structures, only to have the steps give way to a greased incline. As they slid back down a dental warrior with a polearm would swing in, sections underneath flattening just ahead of them and rising just behind, slashing at the vulnerable creature in a pass that put them back at the top seconds later, ready to descend again.
Her practice was mostly in steadying her feet, in keeping faith in the lever-pullers beneath her to track her arc and adjust as the situation changed, and in feeling the unkind grip of the rope about her waist. Those more experienced shouted advice at her as they swung by, the first a warning to keep her head low, as the rope of another soldier swung deeper and lower might pass over her. The worst that could happen was a tangling collision.
She was warned to slash and never snag, for if she dragged the weight of a beity the rope could snap. She was warned that as the battle went on it would take longer for her to get reeled in each time as her handlers grew tired. On her climb she had seen bows and arrows stored behind the stairs and asked after the unfamiliar weapons.
Sometimes they were aimed through slats or fired from the summit, but not often, as arrows did little but irritate larger beities. Once the descent had begun there was also the risk of hitting their own at the ends of the ropes. Still they looked tempting, and she wished there was time to test one before daylight.
Alas, all she could sample was some of the city's food after the practice, when the rope had come close to burning and bruising. What they put in front of her she almost failed to identify. Compassleaf was not without variety in its diet, and sometimes grains were separated, pulped, and fired into various crackers, some of which contained dried bug egg clusters for flavor, but they did not count as breads. Not compared to the cloud ripped from the heavens and simply handed to her, like it was nothing.
The softness in her hands brought tears of shock to her eyes, like holding her firstborn. A texture like no other. Warm. Moist. A sponge of ingenuity, not of flesh. Food flavored with air and fire until its source could not be recognized. Food as creation, not as preparation. Bread. Hygenis fed herself a plump fluffy shred, its tear from the crust thrilling her entire body, stomach first, spine second, skin last.
Every bubble of air could be tasted. Every toss and slap of the dough. Powder upon stone. Skin cutting through it. Thought and desire taking thick, rising, growing, consuming shape. Hygenis tasted the body of man, in communion with the old thick of their blood. She savored, and was satisfied.
"So it wasn't a lie," she told herself. "The old tooth scrapers didn't lie to me after all, as we hung there in Misugot's bags, swinging to get close enough to whisper. Their tongues were not depressors, but enriching. We can still taste it, taste it all, with the Bloody Mouth!" She raised the crust in one hand, shouting to herself, but rather than staring or mockery her sentiment was seconded with a cheer from all those around. A young man brought her a jug of juice that pooled purple and flowed red, allowing her to complete her communion with the thick blood of man.
After that she was given a soft bed, and would be allowed to sleep until the arrival of Assaulquus and her scavenged force. The veil took and cradled her as thick as the bread did, so as she rapidly slipped away she wondered why beds and pillows weren't filled with bread. While she recuperated a small cloud of butterflies was let in through a panel of the stairs, and within their shell trudged a heavy-headed and limp-tailed Ellapock.
He was back from being swallowed by the lizard, perhaps in the company of a toad, but too high in the throat to discuss anything with the baboon that passed by a little later. Back from being under Assaulquus's breath, and still tasting her hot, itchy, grassy words on his tongue. He could not see where he was going and didn't dare to step outside the butterfly bubble, just following their lead.
Taken first to Breaka Steeljaw, the marmoset delivered the horse's message, which seemed to meet the man's expectations. Next the insects took him to other leaders of the city, inadvertently giving him a much richer tour than Loric and Hygenis received.
In the spiniest building of all he addressed the chief architect before being sent to a structure with no walls to speak to the chief architect for the butterflies. After that it was off to the food czar, the census accountant, the water shipper, the medicine and comforts madame, and more, all of whom took the information in stride. Staircase was safe, in the broadest sense, but not the dental descent, and not their new assets from Compassleaf.
Finally Ellapock was allowed to return to the raked coals of memory, where Loric still sat. He was reading from the bottomless book at speed, stumbling over the occasional word, but those surrounding him were just as frenzied and wouldn't dream of interrupting. The walls were a tumult of shadow, puppets wrestling each other as they metamorphosed into other shapes. It was the process of recording, as Staircase molded it, and even with the shadows it was impossible for the diminutive primate to understand how much knowledge was being sequestered, and what techniques were imperfectly preserving it.
A bubbling lake of muttering was about them as new facts were wedged into places where there hadn't been gaps perceived at all. They were Steeltraps now, but had come from ten different oral crafts, some practically arcane in that unkept year. Shelvtales. Vaultminds. Beancounters. Truthspinners. Ideaminers. Talkmakers.
Yet altogether, yet cross-cross-referencing, they could not store information the way the bottomless book could, so every moment was a losing battle, something that had to be both endured and powered through, all to achieve a deeply-flawed mound of ethereal wisdom that was already as safe as it could be, deep in those walls, in the hot and dry of the raked coals of memory.
As their panic-trance continued Ellapock cautiously made his way up the back of Loric's chair until he was perched on the man's shoulder. It was obviously not ideal to interrupt, but the storyteller needed to know, so whenever he stopped to take a deep breath the marmoset whispered developments in his ear, which he acknowledged with glances and nods before going back to sprinklers, or cranberry bogs, or telescopes.
At some point an attendant crept in, leaving a tray of bread, mushroom-cheese, and water at the foot of the chair. Ellapock took it upon himself to rip off tiny morsels and take them up to Loric's mouth so he wouldn't have to move, which he gladly took and chewed with little effect on his speech. The monkey took samples of course, and was delayed between bites after tasting the bread.
Water was delivered with nothing but cupped hands, and smeared across the storyteller's lips when they started to crack. Loric didn't feel he had the time to slow enough to tell Ellapock that the spreadable mushroom-cheese would've been more effective at sealing in his moisture. The strain now poked deep into his throat and mind. Every wrong word could mean a tripping shadow puppet a hundred years from then, spilling wisdom from its bucket rather than delivering it.
Trembling fingers flicked through illusory pages. Loric blinked. Had he done that, or had the page just changed on its own? No time to figure it out. Only time to read, speak, share, bank. He kept going, into uncharted territory.