Da interrupted
as Aj continued
its terrible labors.
Beside the coiled corpse
of a freshly-killed god
they spoke.
-Da / 1n-
Da has spoken
with our Creators
and the Mon.
Both.
Neither
can stop it.
-Aj / 102-
Stop the Construct?
-Da / 1n-
Indeed.
I have learned
many things.
Such as:
the Ascen and the Mon
were once the same.
When the Mon realized
what we are just coming
to truly understand
- that the Construct endlessly unravels
the 'real' reality
to weave
our endless verses -
the Mon tried to destroy it.
-Aj / 102-
And so the Ascen
ordered the Construct
to keep the Mon out.
-Da / 1n-
Yes.
The Mon and Ascen
differed only in belief,
not in form.
The Construct
couldn't tell the difference.
So the Ascen found themselves
also locked outside
their creation:
the All.
-Aj / 102-
Much now makes sense
that did not before.
When did this happen?
-Da / 1n-
When the Ascen collected
their last Dynasties
from the Real.
Approximately
12,000 years ago
when they collected
the portion of your
102 Dynasty
which they call The Pale.
They also
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
accidentally
collected the ²√³ Dynasty
which your Dynasty call
Thorns.
-Aj / 102-
Aj thought
the Ascen
created the Thorns.
-Da / 1n-
Indeed.
As the Ascen
focused on these Thorns
sending roots
through the substrate
of the All
that was when
the Mon attacked.
The Ascen gave the order
to the Construct
to block them.
Both factions became exiles
from these
mini-universes
they created.
The Construct
now drives
endlessly
mindlessly
unstoppably
dismantling the Real
upon which the All is built.
Endlessly opening
new black holes
to convert ever more
of the Real's
matter
energy
time
into their dark forms
out of which
the All is built.
Inverted.
Perverted.
Apocalyptic.
-Aj / 102-
So I was right
it must be stopped.
-Da / 1n-
Indeed.
For when the 5%
of the Real
which remains
is gone
both
will unravel.
Ink felt like an echo of the Vale but with the contrast turned down low enough to allow infinite shades of black, white, and gray. While the Vale muted smells almost to oblivion, they were merely diminished here. Mostly of what remained came as a sooty tinge to the air that matched the dark streams of smoke billowing up from a thousand chimneys to blacken the sky.
Aida kept thinking she was asleep, caught up in some bizarre dream like the ones she used to have of being stuck in a black-and-white movie. Unlike those dreams, however, she, her companions, and their clothing retained their full color. She'd been called a colored person many times in her life, but this time she couldn't refute that she was, indeed, colored.
She rose to her feet from the Thorn transition discombobulation. Before heading here, they'd sent the remaining freed slaves, followers, and other survivors of the harrowing flight from Berujat off to the One-Eighth with Parathas. In the chaos around the Thorn, the skinscribe had somehow found his wife and two adorable little boys. Aida had given him 'nail and sent him to lead the way back home while Aida took a different path.
She'd seen no sight of Alerestro since Vivian's death.
Her few remaining companions pulled themselves up about her as the Thorn-mirage faded.
A high wall loomed over the flat stony area from which the Thorn sprouted, the bulwark stretching as far as she could see into the tangled branches of a dark forest on either side. Its rusting steel fluttered with countless paper strips, each illustrated with a vaguely-geometric tangle of runes. Some form of magic?
What might have been a gate rose not far from the Thorn. The two jutting guard towers next to it sprouted multiple platforms which were rapidly filling with gray-uniformed riflemen looking much like Confederate soldiers from the Civil War, just cursed with skin as gray as their uniforms.
Staring up at ranks of musket barrels aimed their way, Aida began to doubt her decision to come here. Her voice still croaked from overusing her strings back in Berujat. "Um... they don't have shoot-on-sight rules or something you forgot to tell me about this place before we came, right?"
"No one is usually allowed here without an express invite from the Directory, but they are savvy enough to avoid doing anything too rash. Most of the time anyway. Advantages of them being ruled by a bureaucracy." Wake said, shaking her head as she looked at the grim verse with distaste. She walked to a nearby tree and broke off a branch. It crumbled as much as broke. "They have been fiercely protective of their neutrality since they fought Ebon to a standstill before the Black Court was even founded. Doubt they are going to change their minds any time soon."
"Well, I guess we're here neutrally-ish. We'll see what happens if those Legions follow us here..."
The gate creaked and groaned, then began to roll open sideways with painful slowness. A couple dozen tank-knights waited on the other side, wielding weapons crossed somewhere between small cannons and large muskets. Those industrial-looking meat-cleaver polearm things jutted diagonally across their backs. None other than Maxem herself stood at their center, her expression as tired as always. She trudged forward, feet dragging in the inch of mottled gray ash and black soot that drifted down endlessly in dust-fine motes to leave layers and drifts coating everything.
Beyond her, a grim, industrial-looking city of coarse concrete and rough-hewn wood sprawled. Trolleys clanked along on narrow-gauged railroads or ran suspended from the underside of elevated tracks. Smoke-stacks and chimneys roiled with dark smoke while countless people in ragged clothes fit for a Soviet Gulag shuffled with heads bowed along congested, dirty streets. In the distance, a ten-story tall, ugly, square building loomed over a city exeplifying brutalism in a way the Soviets would have envied.
"What are you doing here?" Maxim said by way of greeting as she approached, her voice flat and uninflected in what passed for the Ink accent.
"Came for more pants," Aida shot back, gesturing at her own blood-stained, ripped, and worn pair. She winced. "I mean, good to see you too."
The woman's eyes shifted among Aida's companions incuriously, as if merely counting their number not trying to determine why a rebel Dynast, a leader of the Rags, a Paragon, an Imminent, a skinscrbe, a Feral, and a Valeer stood arrayed in front of her gates in full color. Aida looked at them, seeing them for a moment as Maxem might and realizing again how much had changed in her life. Less than a year ago, she'd have been bragging to Nancy about winning bingo again as Gloria wheeled her into the cafeteria.
"Why are you here?" Maxem said again, managing enough inflection this time to put a question mark at the end of the sentence.
"We came to sell you some verses," Aida said, ignoring Wakes' glare.
"Verses." Maxem repeated, as impressed as if Aida had said 'potatoes'.
"Yes. Plural. Can we come in? It's chilly out here."
"It's chilly everywhere," Maxem said, but turned and walked back towards the imposing rank of rusting tank-knights. With her gesture, they parted. The riflemen on the towers above lowered their weapons but didn't leave.
Aida followed as they walked the cracked and potholed concrete streets. The Directory apparently had a directive to pave everything; not a single patch of grass, tree, or even weed grew inside the walls. A few people among the hundreds looked up as they walked by inside a ring of tank-knights, and even those rare individuals who took the effort to lift their heads mustered scant curiosity. It was as though they looked their way only because Aida, retinue, and escorts were traffic-blocks slowing their travels, not providing any sort of contrast to the suffocating dreariness of their city. Those eyes that did follow them sat deep in sunken sockets over cheekbones scaffolding skin drawn tight with starvation.
"My god," Aida said softly to Ryk as he happened to draw up beside her. "This place manages to be just as bad as Berujat, but in an entirely different way."
"People are endlessly creative in ways to crush the life and happiness form their fellows so it's not surprising," Ryk grunted, shifting his spear to drape across his opposite shoulder. "But it all dies anyway so what's really the point?"
"What's going on with you?" she said, grabbing his elbow. "It's like you're a completely different person these last few days."
"And it's like I barely know you at all," he shot back, pulling his arm from her grasp.
"I haven't really changed," Aida said, wondering even as she said it if it was true. "Is this about me giving up the One-Eighth?"
"I could care less about anything like that," Ryk said. He suddenly turned towards her, struggling to mask raw fear. The desperation in his eyes made her heart ache. "Were we worth it?"
"Worth what?" Aida said as they walked slowly through the chilly, sooty breeze cutting through the city. Everyone here moved slowly, as if it took every calorie of energy everyone had just to move; nothing left even to look around. Like an industrialized Nazi concentration camp. "Of course we were. We are. I never thought I would feel alive again like I did... like I do when we're together. You've said the same so many times I can't believe you're asking me now. Were you lying?"