Aj's kin, the

2 x 7 x 13

gathered

in a space

before

between

after

the verses.

It told them

what it had learned

what must be done.

Time ran out

quickly now

in the manner

of slow exponentials

left to run

too long.

If they waited

much longer

the Construct

would find nothing real

left to consume.

Time running out

within

while space ran out

without.

The

2 x 7 x 13

departed

without words.

Aj worried

they did not understand

or would not betray

their creators

as Aj did.

But they must.

Even the Ascen,

they who could not die,

would still cease

with the All.

And everything else.

Semon walked back towards the Martyr's Tomb, as he'd taken to naming his old apartment where the Dynast assassins had slain Vanyen. A part of his mind tried to protest the label, but with trained ease he slid around it. Flowers, wooden bowls of food, and the odd coin littered the common area in front of the clay-brick apartment, scattered at the feet of the ring of disciples he'd placed to guard it while others spread the word about the Dynast's dastardly, blasphemous deed.

Here and there amid the offerings, the odd Wretch head sat, swarming with flies.

"Wretches are on our side now, you cretins," he mumbled to himself. The thought made him feel dirty, but he was a pragmatist at heart and could see how useful they might be should they be accepted again and return to their state of invisible servitude. Until lately, people noticed a Wretch only when facing a job so dangerous or dirty they wouldn't touch it. Or when needing something to kick when no dog was handy. Things went back to normal, they'd make perfect spies and saboteurs. He nodded his head in appreciation at how cunning and far-thinking this Mother was.

He rose up to his full height as the waiting crowds noticed him, rolling back his sleeves so all could see the wounds the assassin's knife slashed across his flesh. His mind quibbled again but he slipped past the obstruction again. Easier this time.

The people began to wail, gnash their teeth, and rip at the hair and clothing as he neared and he joined in though careful not to do any real harm to either his expensive robes or what little hair he had left. When he reached the Tomb Guardians, as he decided to call them, he whispered a few quick orders to collect offerings, stash the valuable ones and discretely dispose of the useless then turned to the crowd.

They fell silent, expectant as he stood before them, a feeling he would never tire of. "My people, fellow worshipers of the Mother!"

"Mother protect us!" he called.

"Mother protect us!" his disciples intoned, quickly followed by the crowd. He liked that and would make that one of the new faith's rituals.

"My people, menials and beggars, pale and mixed-skins, starving, lost and hungry, I tell you we are all one, for the Mother has so proclaimed us!"

"All one!"

"The Dynasty stands united against us, rallying their Legions to crush us under their hobnailed sandals, drive us from our homes at the tips of their spears, and trample our children under the sharp hooves of their striders."

The crowd cried out in alarm and anguish, like a finely tuned instrument he plucked with his voice. He raised his hands to calm them and waited just a bit too long for dramatic effect before speaking again.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"But I bring you solace, my people, for I spoke with the Mother before she parted this Verse and this she said unto me." He pause for a moment both for dramatic effect and to finalize what he'd decided she'd said to him. "She said to rise up against your oppressors, to deny them food or sanctuary, to plant thorns in the straw of their beds, to spit in their food, to spoil their water. Though we cannot overmatch the Dynast's might of arm, we can yet defeat them through might of heart! Damn the Dynasty!"

Much shouting and not a little spitting, which he also liked and made a mental note to incorporate. A secret sign of the devoted, perhaps.

"My sons serve in the legions," one woman shouted. "I wouldn't have them harmed!"

Several others called out about family members serving in Ocyl's guard or the Verser Lady's retinue, He let them call for a moment, appearing deep in thought, but he'd already prepared for this.

He talked quietly and slowly at first, gradually speaking louder and faster to work their emotions to a fever pitch. "Do not worry about your kin in the Legions, for all know they are never sent to their home Verses, lest their loyalties collide with the Dynasty's. As for those in the guard, go to them and spill the Mother's tears upon their breasts. Put the words of the Mother's devotion in their ears. Turn their tongues to informing us and their eyes to spying out the plans of Kin and Dynast before they are sprung.

"And then, when the moment is right, when our oppressors rage at their impotence in breaking us, bleed from a thousand tiny pricks at every turn, and grow desperate, then our kin shall strike and we shall cast them down. One day the Mother shall return and on that day the Black Court holds our chains no longer for the Dynasty shall end with her. Not just here in Heaven's Tread, but across every page of the Book they clutch so tightly to themselves!"

He'd watched from a distance as the Mother and a surging mob of her followers rushed into the Cupola Thorn, seen Ocyl's workers hammer the support columns, witnessed the collapse, heard the screams of those trapped inside. Mother was almost certainly crushed to paste beneath it with everyone else. But, like the Martyred Prophet, she could serve him far better in death than in life.

After letting the crowd cheer and shout for a while he raised his hands, his expression solemn. "But not today. Today, we work to survive. To help one another through their plague. To hold one another up as the Dynasty struggles to bring us down. To gather our strength. Some day all will shout the glory of the Mother's coming from the rooftops, but for now we must whisper it in alleys and work houses. We must scavenge weapons, horde food, shelter those the Dynasty fears, and support those who stand beside us."

Solemn nods and murmurs.

"Go then and Mother be with you." He paused for a moment, then placed his hands on his chest where a woman's breasts would be. "Mother be with you."

A strange, deep satisfaction fell over him as they returned the gesture.

"And damn the Dynasty," he said. He spat and they followed suit.

With that, he turned and marched into the former tenement that had become the Mother's Shrine. It would likely be torn down once Ocyl's Versers got the more pressing riots, fires, and Dynast Plague issues dealt with, but he'd do his best to build it up until then to magnify the feelings of indignity and blasphemy when it happened.

The Holy of Holies where the Martyr'd Prophet still lay, sprawled face-up on the floor where the assassin had slit her throat, reeked of blood and rot. He'd had the Wretch heads hauled out and tossed into the nearest canal but the Prophet herself reeked enough you wouldn't notice. A dirty little girl squatted over the body. An even dirtier, half-rotted crow perched on its shoulder.

"So, can you preserve her?" Semon asked, stepping around the girl and over the body to reach a clay pitcher sitting on the table. Empty.

He turned to see the crow lift a half-feathered wing to reveal an oozing sore. The girl pulled her ragged blond hair away from her neck to reveal a similar wound on her neck. When crow hopped over to press them together, the girl closed her eyes and shuddered.

"They can," she said, her voice strained. "Special breed. Wake uses for sepulchers on Graves for those who wish bodies stay on display. Eat slowly from inside and keep outside fresh."

Semon rubbed his fingers together as if they'd gotten something distasteful on them. "Do it."

The crow tilted its head at him and shifted position slightly. In response, the girl gagged and rubbed her hand weakly across her lips. "The price."

He walked across the room to look out the window. Fire, chaos, shouts in the distance. A ring of Disciples with clubs surrounded by a small army of the faithful calling out to the Martyr for prayers or hurling offerings towards the tiny apartment. A faded brass coin actually made it through the hazy, threadbare curtains and landed beside Semon. He bent and picked it up, wondering idly which Dynast or Verser's face adorned it.

"They say gold Jars were once minted from pure gold out of Autumn, a thin currence wafer embedded in the center. When I was a boy, you'd occasionally find a rare unclipped coin that still had some gold in it. Now they're even diluting the brass. Takes twenty times as many to buy the same thing."

When he turned back, the girl looked at him blankly. Perhaps the crow understood, but Semon wasn't sure how you'd know. "Yes, fine, I've found most of Reck. You can have him."

The crow tilted its head a few times in his direction and the girl squirmed. "You said a Dynast. A full Dynast."

Semon waved his hand negligently and looked around to see if anything remained to eat. "A few pieces were missing when I tracked them down. How much do you really need?"

"More."

Semon quickly weighed other options and came up with nothing. "You can have what I recovered and any dead Dynasts I am able to procure in the future. Deal?"

A moment later, the girl and crow nodded in unison.

He called in a few Disciples to wrap the Martyr carefully in blanket and follow the Crowman.

With the door closed, he sat alone for the first time in days. Or so he thought until the wall moved. For a moment, he wondered if fatigue and commu he'd been chewing messed with his mind, but then the man's colors subtly shifted from the clay brick of the wall to a black hair, pale skin, and blue robes... at least at first. Over time, the coloring of each shifted slowly enough it wasn't noticeable until a moment's reflection.

"A vibrant," Semon said, too tired for surprise. "I've heard of your kind if never seen one. From Ink, right? What brings your kind here?"

The man walked to the table and clanked down a handful of 'nails. A large, obscenely valuable handful, regardless of which verses they accessed. Semon's imagination immediately soared with the possibilities.

"My name is Hue and the Immanent told me I accompany you."

Semon glanced through the nails, holding them up towards the window for a moment. "There's no braille on any of these except one for Ink. What verses do they lead to?"

Hue shrugged and smiled faintly. "He said you go to the right ones at the right times. Coming from an Immanent, that must be how it goes if I understand how they work."

"If he's not lying to manipulate you, anyway. And you're to go with me?" Semon said, looking the man up and down. The simple robes the Vibrant wore shifted to a pastel pink while his thin beard slowly shifted from red to black. His skin held as a deep, ruddy red for a while, but subtly began shifting to a deep blue-black.

Hue nodded. "Das told me before I even came to Heaven's Tread that is the best thing I can do for my people so that is what I do."

"Your people, you mean the Directory?"

"No, the Directory to Ink is like the Dynasty to the Book I am learning: they rule all, control all while the commons suffer. Only a few of my kind have ever managed to escape and little hope have we found. Das told me the Mother's coming will lead to the end of the Directory and who better could I then aid than her First Disciple?"

Semon clicked those little bits into place, weighing what it all meant. "So why would I travel all over when I have ten thousand fanatical worshipers following my every whim here?"

"Das said you would ask that and said to tell you that if you stay in Heaven's Tread, the next Dynastic assassins who come won't be made up."

Semon's blood turned to ice. It took all his composure to manage to walk to one of the room's creaky wooden stools and sit before his legs gave out.

Hue frowned. "So if what Das said is true, who killed the Martyred Prophet?"

"How could he know?" Semon mumbled, wondering if that nonsense Vanyen raved about some Immanent prophecy was real after all.

"Know what? She wasn't killed by Dynastic assassins?" Hue blinked repeatedly and glanced at the blood-soaked bandages around Semon's forearms. "Who did that then?"

Forcing his suddenly-sluggish mind to work, he latched on a new explanation. "The Blind Priests. They saw worship of the Mother as a threat to that false religion they use to prop up the Dynasty and so sent the assassin."

Hue frowned but nodded. "What happened to the assassin?"

"The Disciples heard my cries and rushed in. The murderer escaped out a window as they came in."

A few steps put Hue at the nearest window. He looked out, then shook his head. "Must have been a mancer of some potent Lineage if they could leap out and survive that fall. Maybe the one I traveled with on my way here from Metropolis."

"Indeed." Semon said. "What 'one' you traveled with?"

"Didn't look much like an assassin, just some brunette in a filthy white dress. Nasty scar on her chin. Kept saying 'he said I'll be famous when I kill her' over and over. Guess that didn't work out so well for her since I didn't even know she did it until now. Her companions bragged of similar exploits."

"Told you not to trust an Imminent when they tell you what you want to hear," Semon said. Or trust anyone any time for any reason, really. "Companions?"

Hue tapped his pursed lips and stared up at the ceiling. "Yes, a rough-looking fellow with a braid falling across his face who said the Immanent told him of a... what do you call the ones who love Thorns and allow travel without the 'nails?"

"Valeers."

"Yes, them. Said he would capture the first Valeer he saw in Heaven's Tread and afterward be powerful enough to show his face to any Dynast."

Semon walked over and stood beside Hue, staring out the window at the city slowly unraveling outside. Avoided by all, a long chain of rotters shambled by. Semon could swear the crow riding the shoulder of the little boy handling them looked up at their window. "Valeers are too expensive to be taken so easily. Man's probably following that crow out there."

Hue nodded absently, staring out the window without seeing. "Her third companion was a handsome fellow, long black hair, tattoo of a city on a coin on his arm-"

"Monopolis."

"-who said he was told he'd kill a paragon and that would 'prove himself worthy to Fallon's father' over and over. Carried a fancy silvered knife."

"He'll just casually kill a paragon?" Semon laughed at the absurdity. "And I thought the Valeer-thief was delusional."

Hue turned to Semon wide-eyed. "So the Immanent lied to all of us?"

"Imminent are people. People lie to everyone else most of the time just as they lie to themselves. Tell me, what exact words did this Das use when he spoke to you?"

Hue leaned against the wall and squinted at nothing. It may have been Semon's imagination, but his coloration seemed to shift more slowly as he concentrated. "He said that the Legion following the Mother will break the Directory such as is foretold in our ancient tales of the first Vibrant meeting with a seer from beyond the world. The tale is one of forbidden hope among our people and I can barely believe it finally is coming true."

"Hm... so he says she'll raise an army. That could be good for us." When Hue didn't continue as he seemed preoccupied with starting at the rotters, Semon struggled for patience. "And what about our travels?"

The vibrant pursed his lips and stared at the Prophet's wrapped corpse. "He said you will spread word of the Mother across the Book and hope with it. He said no Dynast nor Demon would stop you from reaching Gateway so long as the Martyred Prophet remained in your care."

"The implications that Dynasts and Demons will try makes that more troubling than re-assuring." Semon glanced at the shrouded, stinking martyred corpse in bemusement. "It really is some sort of holy talisman?"

"Lastly, he said I'd find you here at the Mother's Temple right before it was destroyed."

That snapped Semon out of it. "Right before it was destroyed?"

Shouting from outside. Screams. The clash of weapons. He glanced out to see a line of Verser troops in Ocyl's white and green advancing on a line of Disciples. Several already lay dead and most of the rest fled that wall of bronze and ash.

The door flew open to reveal Easly and Tathlon, his two most devout. Easly pressed her hand against her hair, blood streaming down her face. Chunks of gore and clumps hair stuck to Tathlon's club. "Master Semon, we must flee! They came from nowhere!"

"First Disciple Semon," he corrected absently as he rushed to scoop up the 'nails. "Grab the Martyred Prophet and follow me."

Tathlon hefted the Prophet's small body over his shoulder with a grunt as Easly held the door. As they hustled down the narrow hallway towards the tenement's rear exit, Easly tapped his shoulder. "Where will we go?"

Semon lifted a nail as they scurried down the steep, narrow stairs. "To find an unguarded Thorn and go wherever this leads."

"A dusa named Strygen came with me," Hue said. "He said he knows where to find one."

"Then this is the Mother's Will."

"Mother's Will!" Easly and Tathlon cried in unison.

Semon glanced back at Hue wondering at this strange fate. The Vibrant smiled faintly back.

Above and behind them, they heard Ocyl's troops crashing into his old apartment to desecrate the Mother's Temple.

No turning back now.