-Aj / 102-

Aj knows now

how to end this.

-Da / 1n-

What is

the source

of Aj's

new understanding?

-Aj / 102-

A human

encountered by

one of my

manifestations.

Many things

Aj learned.

Humans collect

frozen time,

call it 'currence'.

It will serve

as a trap

for the Chronosite

which The All

was first meant

to contain

before the Ascen

fell in love

with their creation

and became

trapped within

themselves.

-Da / 1n-

So there is

enough time

after all?

-Aj / 102-

There could be.

Thanks in part

to killing gods

slowing

the Construct's weave

of time/space.

-Da / 1n-

All the

2 x 7 x 13

have been killing

the gods

of all

their verses.

Following in Aj's footsteps.

-Aj / 102-

Aj also learned

of a tether

threaded back

through the past

to the first

of the 100th Dynasty.

They call them

the Imminent.

-Da / 1n-

But how

could they

do this?

-Aj / 102-

They haven't.

They will.

By ensaring

the Chronosite

and unravelling

one of my instances

at the moment

of its arrival.

Weaving Chrono-stuff

Aj-stuff

verse-stuff

100th Dynasty-stuff

time-stuff.

-Da / 1n-

And use

the Chronosite

itself

to change

the flow of time?

This seems

beyond survable.

-Aj / 102-

Not flow

but memory.

And it is done.

Will be done.

Has been done.

Aj just needs

to unravel

one of these

Imminent

to understand

how they work.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

-Da / 1n-

To do this

the similar unraveling

of one

Aj instance

-Da / 1n-

To do this

the unraveling

of one instance

may unravel

all instances

of the Aj.

Or even of all

the 2 x 7 x 13

-Aj / 102-

Good.

None of this

should be.

Let us all

return

to the real.

-Da / 1n-

Then

so

shall it be.

Terminus sucked.

Cold, gray, gusty, bleak. The dried, crusty coat of monster goo she'd been coated with as her strings pulped the demons hurling themselves into the Thorn's curl after her back in Stacks didn't help either.

She wrapped her arms about her and looked about the bizarre landscape of stone arches - some natural, others clearly artificial - stretching in all directions as far as she could see. Eth lounged against one chewing on a fingernail and staring into space. Ghillie, uncharacteristically, napped against the base of another.

"Why couldn't we just have done whatever this is at the One-Eighth?" Aida said for the third time, glaring at Eth and gesturing at her filthy, tattered pants and shirt. "We could have at least gone in for a change of clothes when we dropped all those refugees from the Stacks off."

"They're here," Eth said, pushing herself off the stone and turning towards the Thorn stabbing out from the side of yet-another stone arch.

"The refugees?" Aida said, confused. She stared at the Thorn, searching for any sign of movement or mirage-shimmer. Just as she opened her mouth to ask Eth for some of whatever she was taking, it rapidly uncurled, blurred, and whipped back.

A dark-skinned man in Imminent blue stood there beside... Parathas?

The skinscribe-cum-mountaineer in his same fading orange robes smiled and waved shyly at her before she strode over and wrapped him in a hug. "How is your family?"

"Safe. Well." He said, smiling. The smile faded. "Well as could be considering what's going on at the One-Eighth anyway."

"What the hell is going on at the One-Eighth?" Aida said. She wished she had the Valeer so she could leave without having to rely on Eth. During the chilly, exhausted hours they'd spend waiting in Terminus, she'd debated taking a couple 'nails from Eth by force so she could get back and do something.

"There's-" he began, but trailed off as the new Imminent turned towards Eth and began to speak, his voice shaking as much as the man was. He didn't look well. Scared shitless was her read. Thin. Bags under his eyes. Moved like a Highschooler heading to school to sit in detention all day.

"If that's what knowing the future does to you, I'm happy with ignorance," Aida muttered to herself.

"You must be Eth. All is done. Our pieces all stand near their final configuration and the others move as intended."

"You must be Das. Well done." For some reason, Eth wouldn't look him in the eye.

"They don't know each other?" Aida said, leaning close to Parathas. Seeing movement, she nodded to Ghillie as the Feral rose and walked to her side then gave the girl an impulsive hug.

Ghillie hugged her back, then turned to regard the meeting of Imminent solemnly.

Parathas sighed. "She's met him before. There's a reason they all have skinscribes since they-"

"I suppose it's time for the three to become the two," Das said, his shaking intensifying. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then opened his eyes again and looked around as he continued. "Strange to stand here at the end, not knowing what I've done but holding only the feeling of having done great workings, of putting forth the effort. I hope it ends up being all worth it."

"I hope so too," Eth said simply, wiping a tear from her eye. For some reason, she flicked a glance in Aida's direction.

"What the hell are they talking about?" Aida said, glancing around half-expecting some doom to be approaching them. "I'm so confused but I'm still getting sad just watching them."

"Save except ourselves," Das said before looking up at the endlessly-cloudy sky, stepping before Eth, and dropping to his knees.

"Except ourselves," Eth echoed.

He looked around at the dreariness of Terminus and sighed. "Would have been nice to have it end someplace pretty."

"In the end, nothing is pretty," Eth said. She lifted her hand slowly, as though weighed as much as she could lift. "Are you ready?"

Das closed his eyes again, took a deep breath, nodded, and lowered his head as if in prayer.

For a moment that seemed to last an age, they stood and knelt there, framed by an arch and endlessly-streaming clouds lit by Terminus' diffuse light. Then her hand fell atop his head.

For a second, nothing happened. Then Das spasmed, screamed, writhed, and fell backwards.

Eth staggered back and fell heavily against the arch, clinging to it and panting as if she'd just run a marathon.

Shaken yet filled with morbid curiosity, Aida approached Das's body.

The man's eyes were gone. Thick swirls of black, vaguely charnel-smelling smoke curled from his empty eye sockets. His mouth twisted open in a silent scream.

"What the hell did you do to him?" Aida shouted, whirling on Eth.

"Made him Imminent," Parathas said, catching Aida's sleeve and pulling her aside.

"Made him Imminent?" Aida repeated, pointing an incredulous finger at his body. "Made him dead you mean?"

"For those who remember the future, the moment of death is the moment of birth. The Imminent thread passed to him, but no human can survive such a thing."

"They can't survive it? Remember the..." Aida's mind churned as her brain tried to fit the puzzle pieces skewing all over her map of understanding in search of fitting places. Then they clicked into place and she staggered at the realization. "My god! Are you saying he came here knowing nothing about anything except he was going to die like that?"

"And what we rehearsed for him to tell Eth. Months ago while I was alone in the One-Eighth he stopped by and told me what I was to remind him to say here today. I told him right before we crossed from the Vale."

"They remember the future... not the past?" Aida said, her mind struggling to imagine.

"Yes. So they each travel with a skinscribe to record their past. Each morning we tell them of their pasts they have forgotten and they tell us of their futures."

"But... but, wouldn't they forget as soon as you said it?" Aida said, frowning at the emptiness about them. "I need a drink."

"I know the feeling," Parathas said, smiling sadly and glancing at Eth. The girl now hugged her knees, rocking slightly with her eyes closed at the base of the arch. "Their memories seem to function normally over short spans, but over longer scales, they only remember the future."

"That's why Ryk was acting so strange towards the end and asking me weird questions about us!" Aida said, memories flashing across her vision. The pieces clicking into place didn't make the past any more bearable. "No wonder he was so scared; he went into that fight knowing exactly how he would die, but not remembering all the things that made it worth dying for."

"Yes," Parathas said, glancing from Aida to Ghillie then to Eth. He touched Aida's elbow, then walked towards Eth. "They carry burdens beyond imagining."

Eth glared up with bleary eyes as Parathas knelt before her. He extended his arms in the ageless, universal signal offering human comfort and solace. She tensed, opened her mouth as though about to say something cutting, then collapsed against him sobbing. The skinscribe tapped her back, murmured comforting nothings, and rocked her slightly while Aida stood staring, trying to make sense of it all.

"Seems like a goddamn waste to me," she muttered, shaking her head and walking over to Das. "Should we bury him or something? Not that there's any soil here to bury him in or even loose stone to make a cairn or something. Can't even close his eyes."

His sacrifice was enough, Ghillie signed, stepping between Aida and the corpse. The best way to honor it is to help bring what they sacrifice for to reality.

"And what the fuck even is that?" Aida said, flinging her arms about at the nothingness about them. "Not sure exactly who or what we're saving; it seems like everyone's just dying for no reason!"

She stared at the inscrutable Feral for a minute, feeling her pulse pound with directionless anger. Ghillie said nothing, but turned away.

"So you don't have any answers either, huh? We're all just-"

Ghillie hadn't just turned randomly, but pointed through the random scatter of stony curves. Three figures walked towards them hand-in-hand, the two adults both limping: A vaguely-familiar blond woman carrying a huge sword across her back. A tall, regal-yet-gaunt looking black man in what may have once been fine robes. An albino little girl, half-skipping between the two. Behind them trailed a figure wearing an absurdly-large hat and long black robes.

When they drew close, the woman knelt down and said something to the little girl, rose and kissed her husband, then turned and limped towards Aida with Big Hat shuffling after her. Eth and Parathas came to stand beside Aida, Parathas' arm still slung around Eth's shoulders.

The woman looked them all over then stared at Aida for a long moment. "You must be The Mother of Exiles I've heard so much about. I saw you in the distance getting off your barge at the Heaven's Spear before we went in. I'm Hassani."

"Call me Aida. I think I saw you at a distance somewhere in Stacks too. As for whatever you heard, I promise less than half of it is true. What's your story, lady?" Aida said, wincing internally at her instinctive rebellion against authority, even her own.

"Long and not worth telling now. I'm told by the skin here that we don't have much time, but I'm to give you this that it gave to me for safekeeping forever ago." The woman dug into a belt pouch. "Not sure why it chose me since I've been hunted, enslaved, and dragged across half-a-dozen verses since, but I guess it worked out."

"You and me both, sister," Aida said, reaching out to take whatever it was. A 'nail, though this one unmarked by the braille adorning the base of all the others she'd seen. "Where does this go to?"

"I don't know with certainty, but my deduction says Earth," the woman said, stepping back with what looked like relief and turning to Big Hat. "Am I correct, skin?"

The figure looked up, the hat shadowing its face completely. Its voice rasped like one of the old smokers from the nursing home, barely breathed and hard to catch over the wind. "It all comes together now."

"Who the hell are you?" Aida said, then staggered as a strong gust blasted into them. It caught the hat and danced it away. Aida stared, then blinked rapidly at the figure standing there with the top of its head shredded and swirling in the wind.

"Ocyl? What the hell happened to you?" Aida said.

"Ocyl?" Hassani echoed, staring at the skin. "Dynast of Heaven's Tread?"

"My molt," the figure said, making a throwing away gesture with one hand while it tried to hold its head together with the other. "Does that make me the slave of a slave?"

The skin looked at Eth as it spoke but she shook her head. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Because you forgot about it since you only remember what happens next," Aida said, her brain hurting as she tried to imagine what it must be like to be an Imminent. She turned to the skin. "Does molt and skin mean you're literally a shed skin of my daddy-o? Is that why his skin always looks so good? He just peels out of it like a snake or something?"

The skin looked at her with a surprisingly Ocyl-like expression that broke when it opened its mouth as if to smile with no teeth to display.

"You know Ocyl's your father?" Parathas said.

"You're Ocyl's kin?" Hassani's husband said, his voice melodious if tired.

"I just found out," she said, patting her belt pouch where the apparently-now-flattened tin can and the chess piece resided. She touched the silvered-tin crescent of her necklace reflexively. "How long have you known?"

Parathas lifted the hem of his robe and traced a cluster of bumps among the hundreds dotting his calf. "Since Eth told me to record it and remind her a week or two ago."

"Did he also tell you he's a sibling of Rega and Inro? All direct sons and daughters of Holy Ebon?" Parathas said, then blinked. "Judging by your reaction, I guess not."

"Rega, like, Queen of the Ancients Rega?" Aida said, blinking as more pieces dumped onto her briefly-neatened mental puzzle. She waved her hands before anyone could get into any more begats or family trees or anything. "Doesn't matter. We should get back to the One-Eighth. I've been dumping refugees and freed slaves and whoever else there but it sounds like its the place to be for who knows who else too. Shouldn't we get going to crash the party or get it started or whatever happens next?"

Nods of assent all around.

"Okay, good. Anything else we should know before we go?"

Hassani nodded and stepped forwards. "I met the Aj."

Parathas' breathed in sharply, Eth nodded, Hassani's family looked uncomfortable, and Aida didn't know what to feel or think. "The avenging angel-demon thing from the Kiss or whatever that's been sleeping since forever?"

"Yes. It's awake and has been killing gods across The Book. Maybe The All."

Aida blinked. "I thought you couldn't kill gods."

"You can't. It has been." Hassani spoke not as if delivering revelations, but like a tired waitress on her second shift explaining the menu so she could take a smoke break.

"Okay, so you met it and... what? You had tea?"

Hassani took a deep breath. "Met it and learned how it can be unmade. And when. And why."

The woman delivered the words with finality, as if her knowing it was enough.

"Okaaaay," Aida said, tapping her foot and crossing her arms. "So how and when and why?"

"It doesn't matter, at least not yet," Eth said abruptly, cutting off whatever Hassani was about to say. "You're right. It's time to go and see to the end of things. And the beginning."

With that usefully cryptic bit, the Imminent walked to the Thorn, produced a 'nail, and rubbed it against the Thorn.

Aida looked down at the maybe-Earth 'nail in her hand, unsure of how to feel knowing she could go home. "Time to go back to Kansas, Toto?"

Not yet, Ghillie signed as they ducked under the Thorn.

"How would you know?" Aida said, rolling her eyes. "Everything coming to a head means everyone gets to be an Imminent now or something? Where do I get to drop some mysterious revelation or something?"

Ghillie's eyes crinkled in what, for her, was a grin as the Thorn dragged them off to the Vale.