-Aj / 102-

There.

That being

deep within the verse.

'Aida' they call it.

That is the one.'

-Da / 1n-

'The one come

from beyond

The All?'

-Aj / 102-

'Yes.

It was she

who awakened me

to the way out

of our growing doom.'

-Da / 1n-

'So.

It is true.

There is a place

beyond The All

as we've long thought.'

-Aj / 102-

'Yes.

The place from which

the Construct endlessly drains

energy

space

time

from

a finite place.'

-Da / 1n-

'I will explore

the pathway from which

she entered.

To see what hope lies

beyond The All.'

Aida's heart broke as the knelt at the Professor's side. Someone had taken machetes to a living tree a kilometer into the Tangle and cut it to a point at the height of a man's head. She wasn't sure how they gotten him up on it, but the Professor lay impaled at the base of it, his blood and viscera staining its length.

She was no doctor, but even with 'modern medicine' on Earth she doubted there was much they would be able to do for him. Here, he was absolutely doomed. Tears streamed freely from her eyes as she pushed through the quiet ring of Wretches gathered around him, each extending a hand to touch him and lend comfort. Aida prostrated herself on the ground as he had done when she'd stood up to protect them back in the villa in Jadeye.

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"I'm so sorry," she said. She looked up as he rested a hand on her head, shocked to see him manage a bloody, pained smile.

"There is no sorry," he said, his deep voice now strained and faltering. "I am grateful to have been able to serve you and... see you walk the road that will lead... my people from our long trial. In spite of all the hate and suffering... we've faced since the birth of the Dynasty when Ebon... condemned us to this fate, we've held out hope that someday... someday we would be free. You are that freedom."

"I will do all that I can to live up to my promises," Aida said, clutching his hand tightly. Remembering something she'd learned from Aliasara, she unbuckled her sword belt, crawled forward, and lay it across his chest.

He looked surprised as he feebly laid a hand across it. "What is this?"

"Professor," she said, rising to full height and thrumming her voice to near-maximum volume that the Wretches and the gathering crowd that trailed them from the Shanties might hear. "I here proclaim you Kin and First Verser Lord of the One-eighth. I do this out of gratitude for your unquestioning, unflinching service to me and my people."

A tear ran down his cheek even though he'd been dry-eyed through what had to have been agonizing pain that he lay in. He reached out his hand and she knelt again to take it, pressing it against her chest.

"In all my days... never would I have thought it." He smiled again. "A Wretch as Kin."

"You deserve it and ten times as much besides. I wish I could have given you more." She rose and turned to all gathered, tears running freely. "I wish I could give you all more! I wish I had food and medicine, shoes and shirts, tools and shelter and everything that I offer you. If it was in my power to give, I would give it now and I promise I will try harder to provide what you came here hoping for. I failed you in... I didn't... couldn't..."

She broke down, fighting back sobs. The Wretches clustered about her, touching her as they did the Professor as they led him back to his side. His face was turning gray and his breaths growing more shallow.

"More than. Enough," he whispered, his breaths rasping. "You gave us... freedom."

"I can give you one more thing," Aida said, face hardening. "Tell me who did this."

"I forgive... forgive them," he said, his eyes fluttering.

"I don't. I won't!" she said, grabbing his shoulders and lifting his head. "Tell me who did this!"

"Forgive them," he said, his hand cupping her cheek. She wasn't sure if it was a confirmation or an order.

With a last, pained, rattling breath, he fell still.

"Goddammit," Aida cursed as she launched to her feet. She stormed a dozen paces into the Tangle, knocking spores lose from a massive fern and almost stepping on a small, brightly-banded snake. The thrum in her throat had started without her noticing but amplified rapidly to a deafening ring. She unleashed it in a tidal wave of sound that ripped an amphitheater-sized chunk of jungle to leafy shreds in an instant.

The outburst served to rapidly deforest a decent bit of acreage and relieve some of Aida's anguish at the same time. With the edge taken off sorrow, a bright core of anger lay uncovered and burning in her chest. Storming back, she found Alerestro with his head bowed among the Wretches as Ghillie closed the Professor's eyes. When he saw her coming in, he rose to something like attention. "I can tell you have use for me."

"Yes," she said, scanning the still-growing crowd and the Tangle beyond as though she might somehow pick out the perpetrator with a single sweeping glance. "I want to you find anyone who knows anything about who did this. Who saw the Professor last. Who was with him. Who said anything to anyone. I'm going to find whoever did this. I think they might be the first exception to my exile-as-capital-punishment rule."

He nodded his head and bowed slightly. "It shall be as you wish."

"It better be." She turned to the gathered crowd. Glanced at the Wretches huddled about the Professor, their mourning quiet and somehow refined. As hard as The Book was for and on most people, no one knew suffering quite like the Wretches.

"Everyone gathered here, know this and tell everyone you see hereafter what I'm about to say." Turning slowly, she looked hard at every individual in turn as if staring into their souls. The intensity of her stare made some flinch and most looked away after even a second of direct eye contact.

"After those first few Wretch murders in the chaotic days when we first got here, I thought I made it clear: murderers would be exiled to the Tangle and killed on sight upon their return. I thought we were beyond such petty games of blame; a luxury for a verse already rooted in civilization but a liability out here where we hang by a thread."

As she continued the scan of her audience, she met a few gazes that didn't drop, their expressions hard and eyes filled with anger, hate, defiance, or some combination. She made mental notes about these individuals, especially a vaguely-familiar one standing front-and-center with his long black hair draping down across his crossed arms.

"This one, however, takes the cake. Not only did someone kill another Wretch, but in a horrific manner befitting what I've heard about how Dynasts are killing my worshipers." Not that she especially liked that they were worshiping her or thought it made any sense at all, but Aliasara had convinced her it gave people hope, purpose, and a sense of unity so she did her best to simply not think about it. "So congratulations, you're becoming the people you hate. And beyond that, not only did you kill a Wretch, but you killed the Professor. A dear, personal friend of mine."

She almost wiped at the tears filling her eyes, but stopped herself and let them fall. Maybe it would help her people to see she was still a person and not just some Dynast robot monster. "This death is a fate I wouldn't wish on anyone but I see someone not only wanted the Professor dead, they wanted it to be personal. Well, good news for you whoever you are: it's personal."

Ghillie broke from where she'd stood amid the Wretches to stand beside Aida as she walked towards them. Aida shook her head. "Ghillie, stand down. If someone wants me, now's their chance to take a shot."

With feet planted wide, shoulders back, head high, and arms held wide, she stood. "Bring it. If one or ten or any number of you out there have beef with me, now's your chance. Come at me. No one else will interfere, just you and me."

A long pause. Volcanoes rumbled. Critters chirped. A terrtle crawled through the Tangle. Wind tugged at hair and clothing tinged in an acrid perfume of sulfur and green growth. She kept the hum in her strings at low resonance, ready to amplify or unleash as needed for whatever happened next. "Anyone?"

Most wouldn't even attempt to look at her. Even those who'd glared back before found something else to look at when her gaze swept them. The handsome man in the front, however, stepped forward a few paces. Her heart rate climbed and she began to amplify the low hum, but after those few steps, he wheeled about and turned to face the crowd. With one hand tucked into his shirt like some wanna-be Napoleon, he cut and thrust with the other. Wanna-be Napoleon meets wanna-be Hitler.

"Ever-suffering people of the Shithole, we've been duped and lied to. That woman there-" he spared her a quick glanced as he pointed at her, the pure hatred and fury that contorted his expression and voice making Aida take an involuntary step back. What had she done to this man? "-she promises paradise and delivers hell. She rewards loyalty with death as she charges from chaos to catastrophe, dragging pain and suffering in her wake."

Aida's temper flared, but a swell of guilt and shame undercut the anger. What this man was shouting for all to hear she'd heard endlessly repeated in her own mind since before she even got back to the One-eighth.

"She claims that all here are equal regardless of what you've done in the past, whatever your bloodline, whatever the color of your skin. Yet who is in charge here? She is, yet another Dynast!"

He clearly struck a chord with his audience as well; the shared grief and pity she'd seen written on their body language and faces quickly morphing them towards imitations of this malcontent's mien as the heat in his words boiled buried resentments and sloshed them to the surface.

"Say something," Alerestro whispered sharply in her ear as Ghillie stepped up protectively on her other side.

"What?" she hissed back. "It's all true."

The handsome, hateful man continued. "... so everyone here is equal, she says? Is that right? If so, then sure, we're all equally laid in squalor, filth, and starvation. Everyone but her, our great savior. All equal except for one."

"Truth is irrelevant," Alerestro said softly but urgently in her ear. "Truth kills and poisons as often as it saves and cures. It is a tool or a weapon, not a law. Do you think the sort of truth he's sharing is what will help your people most right now?"

She looked at their faces, feeling sick, hurt, and despondent at how quickly they were turning against her after all she'd done to try to help them.

"...and if we were back in our homes and villages, our leaders would be chosen from the eldest and wisest among us, not decided for us by the Black Court. If we're truly equal, why would we listen to her shouting orders we can't refuse for fear of being blasted apart by her dark Dynastic magics? I thought we followed her to be free of the Black Court's reign of oppression and terror." He gestured to the flattened and mangled swath of jungle she'd razed. "Yet here we are. We didn't abandon everything we knew and held dear just to watch those we love die all about us in this cursed death verse while she profits by selling us to the Crowmen. When she's done, she'll not be the Mother of Exiles, but the Queen of Rotters."

"If you won't say anything, at least let me speak on your behalf. This cannot be allowed to continue." Alerestro said, glancing at the increasingly-agitated crowd. Fists and angry gestures waved her direction. Sensing the mood, the Wretches hunched down around the Professor's corpse like abused dogs trying to avoid the gaze of their violent masters.