Aj returned to the place
before
between
after
to find another of its kind.
Waiting.
-Aj-
'Da'
-Da-
'Why that name
of my many, 102?'
-Aj / 102-
'A name
the humans use
for one that came
before them.
Should I call 15 then?
Why do you come?'
-Da / 1n-
'Da is sufficient.
I come
so we can together
find the right end
of the path
you've set us on.'
Reaching the apex of the turtle's immense shell, Aida rested her hands on her knees. A cool, humid breeze gusting through felt amazing in spite of its sulfurous undertones. The newcomer Immanent had already disappeared off to wherever Eth deposited them, leaving Eth sitting beside Parathas the skinscribe. They stared off into the distance, deep in some sort of conversation.
The blond, teenage Immanent looked haggard. Her acne had flared up and deep bags hung under her eyes like she'd stayed up for two days straight studying for finals. Wind rustled the stained, pale blue fabric of her light, sleeveless shirt and flowing skirt. The burden of knowing the future had to be heavy; seemed like too much for a girl that back in the USA would be taking SATs, worrying about her crush, or fretting about something someone said about her on the Internet.
In her especially annoying way, Eth spoke without looking at her. “Aida, you finally made it.”
“Hope I didn't keep you waiting long, your Imminence.” Aida plunked down next to Parthas, the scribe wearing faded, orange-ish canvas clothing shuffling a bit to give her room as she joined them in staring out across the once-bleak, now green, gorgeous, and dangerous span of her verse. “I don't suppose you're waiting here for me so you can tell me what I do to change the One-Eighth into something other than a deathtrap?”
“You'll figure it out after I go.” Eth scraped windblown hair from her mouth. “I'm taking your skinscribe.”
“Good to know I'll... what? Go? Taking him where?”
“To replace Rustrovan. Of course he is, or will be soon. And yes I know it's annoying.”
“Rusty? Is he dying? Grr... do you know how...” Aida trailed off, glaring at Eth as she picked at a hangnail. If the Imminent carried some tiny shred of a sense of humor she'd be almost tolerable.
A bone-rattling bellow interrupted their conversation. They turned towards the literal mountain of a god endlessly dragging itself across the horizon. Though it moved rarely and the distance to it was still great, the impossible creature loomed larger and closer than when Aida first saw it that first morning after their flight from Heaven's Tread. Her brain still struggled to process the beast's size, something she felt would be true even standing right beside it.
“I call it the River Draggin. See how its weight dredges wherever it goes? Looks like it's dragging a river behind it. Get it? River. Draggin. Dragging? Dragging a river? Draggin'? No?”
Eth's teenagerly look screamed “you're a boring, lame, stupid adult” loudly enough the Imminent didn't need to say anything to convey her attitude. She said something anyway. “So you want answers to all your problems?”
“I'm not nearly so greedy. I'd settle for the answer to one even.”
The Imminent put her face in her palm, then rubbed her hand down to her chin. “I really don't know why I keep trying, but kill him now.”
“What? Who? Parathas? He's right here you know.”
Parathas glanced at her, squinting as the sun struck his tanned, weather-worn face. For all the words brailled on his skin, the man didn't talk much. She wondered if someone forced him to become a scribe over his true calling of mountaineer.
“Not Parathas, Cleft-Hand.”
Aida blinked. “I don't even know who that is and you want me to kill him?”
“People will die when you don't. Been debating staying, but that might screw up-”
“Wait, we're leaving?” Aida stood up.
Eth sighed. “No, I'm leaving. No not now.”
“Now? I can't... I have a verse to...” Aida's mouth flopped open and closed as her mind caught up with Eth's words.
“You know the worst thing about you?” Eth stared at her in that way she had of making Aida feel like an object, not a person.
“I'd guess but I'm sure you'll tell me anyway.”
“You've always been quick on your feet.”
“Okay.” Aida waited for the punchline. “That sounded suspiciously like a compliment.”
“Too quick. If you were even a little bit worse maybe you'd have learned to plan. To really lead. Also you don't take anything seriously enough.” Even while criticizing Aida's whole approach to life, Eth managed to sound like a whiny teenager complaining about her mom to her friends. “By the stupid, short-sighted Ascen, why did it have to be you?”
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“Some days, I'm right there with you, sister. In my defense, I think not taking everything maximum serious is how I lived to a hundred in the first place.” Aida stepped carefully on the slippery moss, angling towards the ascent lines. “If you're just going to tell me what's wrong with me and order me to kill people I've never met, I'll be going.”
"You met Cleft-hand briefly, when he earned his name." Eth rose also, staring out into the Tangle. “On another note, don't break his heart. He must love you until he dies.”
Aida whirled and raised her hands. “What? Who? The Clef-hand dude you want me to kill?”
“You know who. Whatever you feel, he must continue to believe.”
“Ryk? Why would I not like Ryk? He's perfect.” Aida looked towards where Eth stared, hoping to see the Paragon. No dice. “So now we're done with my personal failings and on to my love life? How about anything about shelter, food, water, or every new batch of arrivals shitting in the waterholes and trying to kill our Wretches? What about Ryk packing half the metal in the entire verse with barely a scrap of bronze to be found among all the rest of us? We're practically in the Stone Age here!”
Eth walked over to Aida, standing uncomfortably close. “I already told you. You figure it out after I go. Plus steel. No, not steal. Steel.”
“Steal not steal? What are we supposed to steal? I just told you no one who shows up has anything!” Aida gritted her teeth and took a deep breath. “Okay, if you won't answer any relevant questions, how about fielding a few I've had bouncing around in the back of my mind the last few weeks while you've been off eating all the Book's Imminents or whatever you do with them?”
She took Eth's abstention from dropping a snarky comment as permission to continue.
"Right. First, I got caught up in everything going on and forgot something that seems obvious now: why don't we make a quick pit-stop back at Earth? I mean, you got me from there, why don't we go swipe some stuff? Penicillin, guns, some encyclopedias and medical textbooks. Oh, and some pants that don't wear out in a week."
Eth gave a sigh worthy of Fallon and shook her head. "The Valeer is dead."
"The? Singular? Can't you just make more?"
"Yes, but it's painstaking. They must visit all the Verses they will know while being Slavanted. And he was the only one who knew where Earth was, it being on the Forbidden Verses list and all."
"Well, it seems kinda important. Can't you just look into the future or whatever and find when someone goes there next. Get where it is that way?"
The teenager gnawed at her hangnail and stared off into space for a moment. Aida was about to shake or maybe slap her when she finally spoke up again. "It seems like such a simple solution that it's frustrating. It's the only verse on the Forbidden List twice. I don't know what happens if we go there too soon, but the Imminent in the Vale Walkers are certain it's a warning."
"I get the frustration since everything about you people is frustrating. A warning from who?" Aida said.
"From us, presumably." She paused. "From an alternate path where we did so. The Vale Walkers refused aside from making a 'nail which hopefully we retrieve again since, well..."
"Well what? A nail to do what with? We’re a bit short on hammers if you hadn’t noticed.”
An eye roll. "Was Fallon the incompetent one, was it mostly you, or did we just pick terribly all around?"
It took Aida too many deep breaths to rein her temper in under Eth's belligerent glare.
"Stick it out or you get no answers at all," she reminded herself. "Pivot."
After a long, deep breath, she changed subjects.“Okay, Earth's off the table. Sucks, but I think I kind of understand? Like, you tried it once upon another time, everything went haywire, and you left yourselves a warning not to try it again?"
Eth's arm-crossed, hip-thrust, head-tilted look said either Aida was boring her or that she was stating the obvious.
Aida took another deep breath to calm herself and stay on track. "Okay, so how about the 100th Dynasty? Have there really been that many generations of Dynasts? How do they track it if they're immortal?”
“Immortals still die. Accidents, assassination-”
“Okay, so they live a few centuries until they get hit by lightning or fall in a vat of molten bronze or whatever. When does the 101st Dynasty start?”
“It doesn't. No more Dynasties begin.”
“Because of...” Aida sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Wait, I have the feeling this gets blamed on me too.”
Another silent answer.
“Okay, good to know. So the I keep the 101st plus Dynasties from ever getting off the ground. Great. Would things be better off if I just killed myself?” Aida tried not to sound bitter, but looking down at Aliasara's family trudging back from the Crowmen's swelling zombie pens didn't exactly make her feel like dancing.
“You're not the type. And no, it would make it even worse somehow we're pretty sure. Believe it or not, you're the best choice we've found. You have to be. Why do you think I'm here?”
“I figured it was to punish me for having the gumption to get kidnapped and have immortality tortured into me.” Aida thought about the pandemic raging through the already-suffering people of the Book and wondered grimly how it could get worse from here. “So, great. I'm only the second-worst thing to happen to the Kiloverse?”
“I didn't say that.”
“You always know just the thing to cheer me up. Okay, I've got a couple more." Relief at finally having the chance to ask some of the hundred questions welling up inside her warred with the frustration that packed every interaction she had with the semi-omniscient brat. "White Spiral and Feral, the first Feral. What'd they do to get doomed or whatever?"
Eth rolled her eyes in that way that made Aida want to slap her. "All the important things you might ask and that's what you want to know?"
Aida put her hands on her hips and glared. "Yes."
The Imminent sighed. "I don't know because I don't care."
"You finally don't know something?" Aida put on the biggest expression of mock-surprise she could muster.
"I only know important things."
"Now you sound like Fallon." His name caught in her throat a bit. Not wanting to let emotion mess up this opportunity to get something out of Eth, she pressed on. "Speaking of Fallon, why was he so pissed off? Something about his father, right. And as long as we're tugging at that thread, who is my father?”
“You'll meet Fallon's father. Your father is the one who left you the necklace.”
"Can't wait to tell Fallon's dad the news. Though if he let people half-slavant his son, maybe he'll be happy to hear it." Aida tilted her head and cupped her ear. “And did you just skip an opportunity to show how much you know and somehow insult me in the process?”
Eth rolled her eyes.
Aida lifted the crude silver crescent on its silver chain about her neck. "Is this special or magical or something? It always looked to me like it was part of something else."
"It's not any more special than you are."
"After you just told me you picked me out of everyone to save the Kiloverse. I don't even know how to take that."
"Didn't pick. No room to try other options or we might wreck everything enough that we can't find a way fix it again. We're stuck with you."
Aida sighed. "Do all the Imminent think so highly of me or did I just get lucky getting saddled with you?"
"We considered it too much of a risk to let anyone else try to step in since we know how this goes. You are my doom."
"Feel the same way about you right now. I'm going to change the subject before I give in to the urge to hurl myself off this turtle. So who sent Fallon to get me from-”
“Your father did. On orders from elsewhere.”
Aida took a deep breath. “So my father's still alive?”
The Imminent blinked at her, then turned to picking at her fingernails. "He's a Dynast."
“Obviously. Who? There's a thousand last I heard.”
“The one who sent for you.”
Aida's hands curled into claws and she gritted her teeth. “I know, you just told me that.”
“If you find out now, you'll do things differently later.”
“What if I beat it out of you?” Aida leaned over Eth, her strings thrumming.
Eth didn't budge, staring up into Aida's eyes. “If you were going to try it, I wouldn't have showed up here.”
“That makes a brain-bending sort of sense. Okay, fine, let's move on to another one that's been bothering me. That assassin chick from the Spire who stabbed Fallon screamed something about some guy telling her she would get away with it. Sounds an awful lot like Imminent talk to me. One of your coworkers want me dead?”
“If I wanted you dead, I'd just send my Paragon.”
Aida grinned and patted her on the shoulder. “Sorry sister, but I don't think your Paragon would do it. At least not 'do it' like you mean. Might stick me with the wrong spear. Speaking of, know where he's at? Could use some good 'sticking' right about now.”
Eth flushed and turned away abruptly. "He's probably practicing for the Hundred. You know what I was saying.”
“The Hundred what? Wait, not getting me distracted this time. So you say you didn't send the assassin chick, but yet you also sent Goldilocks off to burn herself to death when she might not have even been sick and if she somehow survived that she starved to death after 'cause she couldn't get to me. And Fallon... what did you tell him?” Her temper flared as she mentioned him again. She grabbed Eth and spun her around. “You nodded to him before he went to Jaxe back in Jadeye, before he died.”
“Do you want the truth or what I told him to ensure things happened the way they have to?” Eth said, her voice hoarse. “Can you imagine even the barest, tiniest scrap of what I do to preserve even the smallest shard of hope amid the horror and carnage already erupting in The All?”
“You're up for telling the truth now, then? You say that like it's a rarity. I'm getting the feeling Ocyl is right not to trust you.”
“Ocyl may not trust us, but he trusts everyone and everything else less, including himself. Thus, he obeys. Learn a lesson from him; he's been at this centuries longer than you." Eth pried herself from Aida's grasp and stepped away to stare out across the Tangle. "You want the truth?”
“Sounds refreshing,” Aida snapped, though a knot of dread lodged in her gut.
“Fallon was a coward. After I told him he would have to kill that Inviolate for you to escape, he asked...” Eth took a deep breath and swallowed hard, grimacing as though choking down something bitter. “He asked if he would survive. I didn't answer him until-”
“Until you sent him to die with a lying nod.” A confused, angry, hurt welter of emotions surged through Aida. She felt like slapping Eth, shoving her off the turtle. At the same time, the depths of pain in the teenager's haunted eyes made her want to hug her tight and tell her it would be okay. Anger slowly won out, though icy instead of molten. “There had to have been another way where he didn't have to die. Or you could have told him the truth and let him face his death with courage instead of ignorance.”
Eth laughed, a harsh sound. “Then he wouldn't have done it. You tell me of what could be as though you could do better. You have no, no idea how fine a line we thread with death shredding the weave a step behind us and waves of utter destruction looming so high on all sides until the only way out we've found looks more a tunnel than a valley. Mope and moan about your burden as a Dynast to someone else; every time you complain you sound like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum.”
Aida stepped away, clasping the strings at her throat as they hummed to life. Blowing wind carried Tangle critter-cries and the odd shout from the Shanties. It took several minutes before Aida trusted herself to speak.
“Final question: I figure out everything after you leave, right? So why haven't you left yet?”
“I've been waiting since you got here for you to get to that one. Come Parathas, need to get as much of Rustrovan onto you as we can before he joins the Crowmen.” Eth pushed past Aida and began the descent. She paused for a moment, glanced back, and said, "I do see what you pull off later. Would be impressive if I didn't know it was all luck and Blood rather than any skill on your part."
"Sure, thanks, whatever that means." Anger solidified into a jagged layer of resentment inside Aida as she watched the Imminent turn back and continue down the shell. “Ocyl, if you managed to put up with this crap for centuries, you're a better person than I.”