image [https://i.imgur.com/pMZm76y.png]

The bookseller and I fled the ziggurat’s shadow for fear that either the winged Daedroth or a slow rousing army of the misshapen little creatures that dwelled beneath would find us out in the open. I had to support him by slinging one of his long cold arms over my shoulder while he limped along worse than ever on account of his fresh injuries. The stones that had crushed him had twisted the ankle cruelly out of alignment on the leg with exposed bone, but it was a shockingly minor injury compared to what any mortal being would have suffered in such a collapse.

I wore nothing but my loincloth as the jagged spire had ripped my penitent’s gown roughly down the middle, and I now repurposed it into an impromptu head wrap and shawl. As if that weren't enough the bookseller, my once silent spectral terror, was now a regular magpie in my ear, begging for the details of the treatise's ending. I hauled him through a waste of sand and half-collapsed buildings while doing my best to recount Eophicle’s forgettable meanderings across Elsweyr to forestall him.

That night we made camp in the crumbling remains of an amphitheater, having gone up a dark spiral staircase before returning to the sour outside air in what must have once been an emperor’s private viewing booth. All furnishings were gone (indeed I saw no chairs, tables, or any other cultural artifacts of the inhabitants in all of Ourobe except within the ziggurat) and the roof had half collapsed into a heap on the floor which centuries of wind had proceeded to spread about like a proud dog after a good crap — still the walls caught the worst of the cold evening wind and partially covered us from flying eyes.

We wanted for kindling, but wouldn’t dare have a fire anyway for fear of drawing the winged Daedroth or one of his kindred upon us. My new companion was certainly something more powerful than a man, but I didn’t wish to test his potency in his frail condition.

I slumped him into the corner like a sack of potatoes before I let myself collapse back-first onto the floor. Chips of masonry jabbed into my bare back but I hadn't the energy to roll over and sweep them aside, so they remained. I wished only that they had been the tender claws of my beloved taking me into her sweet embrace, and struggled to summon her to my mind and cast aside the world as I found it.

As I stared in a sort of reverie brought about by emotional and physical exhaustion, towards a sky of milk-white stars winking past a true-black veil, the bookseller began to speak unprompted. His voice had nearly returned now, with only the mild rasp of one recovering from a common cold.

"You must have many questions for me — how I came to follow you, what my true nature may be. You have seen past my old face by now…"

I laid there imagining Aiera and I were exchanging sugar drops on a lazy morning, bathed in warm sunlight. I would have reached up to her, but my arms were too tired to move. When the bookseller saw I did not intend to respond he plowed ahead unperturbed. "You may call me Keyes, dear customer, and I am in truth a book dealer. But like all men I am more than a mere profession — we label ourselves so simply do we not? But does the bricklayer not worship? Can the priest not sweep his own floor? And I, being more than a man, must surely have even more to myself than a common man’s labor-title can provide. If I deceived you, dear customer, it was only for lack of time, for the incredible complexity of any one person does exceed our primitive means of communication — for words cost time as well as attention. Beautiful, but deadly in their simplicity — how easily we caricaturize ourselves. How rarely we are realized by our fellow travelers.'

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I should note here that the creature did not pause for breath.

Keyes continued: “However one thing I am not is a man, no, not for many years. For I dreamed of knowing better, of being more deeply steeped in the laws and truths of this world than any other. It all began for me, quite by chance —"

I must admit that I fell asleep here for some time. Before you think me rude please consider what I had just been through and that it didn't seem to bother the creature, Keyes, for when I drifted back to consciousness he was still speaking in the darkness beside me.

"—and how could I decline! Immorality, to drink from the deepest wells of lore; all of it was to be within my grasps. And so I accepted and became what you see before you, a Hydrostat of Hermaes Mora, a seeker of all the lost letters of this world's story. But such powers do not come freely — as you have no doubt guessed. I must feed on fresh knowledge just as a hound needs a bone, a man his porridge, a bird its worm — for that and that alone can sustain me."

My nap had rejuvenated me enough to speak. "And Eophicles' Treatise has somehow interrupted your ability to feed, hasn't it?"

"I lost myself," he ran a hand over his still slightly enlarged ears, "more than I knew I could. Oh pity me, the reader, lost forever in that unending book! I made copies you know, of the treatise. I read them every night after you had left and I wondered, wracked my mind really, had I copied them correctly? Were they authentic, original, and in line with the author's vision? For countless errors can creep in through the process of transcription — worms through the walls, the sacral water drained over the gutter of a lesser mind. These thoughts crowded my mind until they were my mind, and I know not what I did, only that I found myself on your trail. For you see that book, that book which owns my mind, is as an intestinal blockage on my literary appetites — by my nature I must read every book from beginning to end, to know it in its entirety in order to ever be sated and move on, yet for decades now that book has choked me… yet without its meager reread crumbs I began to waste away completely — more than I realized I could."

I sat up, stone chips clinking as they fell free from where they indented into my back skin. His still unnaturally long neck leered at me, massive eyes black by the darkness. The intensity his gaze moved me to pity and fear in equal measures for I had not forgotten the murder in his eyes when he earlier climbed the steps towards me. "But now you can be free, Keyes. I have the ending.”

“And that is?”

“Eophicles didn’t finish the book because he was embarrassed. He didn’t solve anything. That’s why noone else recorded his journey either! Think about it, it makes sense."

He shook his head. "What you have is not an ending, it is mere intuition. A true ending satisfies all questions, resolves all tensions, and closes the arcs of all dramatis personae. You say 'Eophicles failed' which is a descriptor and not an experience as all good tales are."

"Then join me on the journey south. I'm seeking a way to enter the court of the Mane of Senchal who is the only other place we could ever hope to learn more. If not I won't begrudge you if you take your book back, I haven't the strength to resist you anyway — but together we, well myself in truth, stand a better chance of surviving the journey."

He licked his lips as breeze hissed over us, pulling back his pale hair to reveal a receded hairline. His eyes flicked between the treatise and myself. "How long must we wander this desert, my fellow exile? We who have been cast from the lush gardens of fiction, history, and the binary knowable into this barren desert of the real, to cross on jagged stones of doubt. Starving pilgrims — oh, how we yearn — for truth, finality, the one true answer! For every story has its end, whether satisfying or not, and I will not be denied mine — for who owns Eophicle’s story more than the one by who's imagination it has been given life?"

He opened his mouth again but paused to dodge a pebble I cast at him. "By Hermaes's pity, a mere yes or no will suffice my friend."

He puffed his pitiful chest before deflating. "Yes. I'll aid you."