Benno swashed waist-deep in the ocean, scrubbing his beard vigorously with a bar of soap. The smell had permeated deep. He could just cut it off, shave it down to the skin, but then August had won. And Benno wasn’t ready to concede anything—or any more—to that despicable creature. His beard was a trophy. He would salvage it.

He went through two bars of soap, a bottle of shampoo, and handfuls of conditioner, until, after nearly an hour, the stench had relented enough that Benno was confident, with a bit of time and another wash or two, it would be gone forever.

Holes floated on the soft waves, laughing and mewling as they rose and fell. Benno waded to the beach, dried himself, and dressed in a set of fresh clothes.

—dlorsulimpudlorsulquatedlorsuleten—

Onus remained hooded in his blanket. He’d insisted on seeing where Edda was buried before he did anything else, and hadn’t moved from the spot since they’d arrived. Waves lapped gently, wetting the length of the blanket at his feet.

Benno absentmindedly fingered the pyramid protruding from his forehead.

—dlorsulrosdlorsulnonac—

“How did she seem?” Onus asked without looking up.

Benno dropped his hand as if he’d been caught picking his nose. “Sorry?”

“Before she died, how did she seem? Was she calm? Was she manic?”

Benno chewed this over. “I only knew her for a few days, but… Calm, mostly, I guess. She was very… determined.”

Onus chuckled sadly. “When she was young, she once walked the length of Central Luridia—eighteen miles—in a flood, against our mother’s explicit orders, just to get a book signed by an author she liked. I can’t even remember the author’s name…”

“You two had the same mother?”

“We were yokes.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just as you said. We had the same mother. Me and her. The only two.” Onus pulled the blanket tight around him, and shivered despite the warm, humid air. “She was my yoke. She understood me. She had one of the greatest minds, with all its inconvenient complications, that ever came alive in this cataclysm of existence. A warrior. An artist. Insane. Enlightened. A radiant, inspired lover…”

Benno raised an eyebrow. “What was that?”

Onus looked at Benno from around the edge of the blanket. “I know in Realms like yours, incest is anathema. But where we’re from, there is no biological disincentive. Our offspring are strong, and we have flourished for millennia. Edda and I… Had certain events not transpired… The two of us…” He gave up.

Benno ran his tongue along inside of his mouth, trying not to betray his discomfort.

“The Everson Family…” Onus shook his head. “She took a profound risk in dealing with them. I’d warned her, the last time we spoke… Do you know what it was? That incensed them enough to chase her down and murder her?”

Benno’s stomach roiled. He hadn’t even meant to omit the part of the story where he himself had drawn the ire of the Family by meddling with their property. But it just didn’t make it into the brief version of events he’d relayed after leaving the Bathhouse. And now, with an opportunity to set the record straight, he found he couldn’t bear it. Not from a fear of Onus’ anger, but from a fear of his own shame.

“I don’t know,” Benno said. “It must have been some grievance from before I arrived.”

Onus nodded, seeming to accept this, and looked down at himself reflected in the cracked carapace for a long moment.

“Did she speak with you about it all?” he asked eventually.

“About what all?”

Onus’ blinked.

“About the Gardens?” Benno asked.

Onus blinked again, slowly.

“That was the only reason I was here,” Benno said. “Or at least the main reason.” He thought for a moment. “I know she was looking for it, and found it once. At least once. And I know your father managed to enter it. That’s about where my knowledge ends.”

“I will tell you everything.”

“I would appreciate that.”

Onus nodded, and returned his eyes to his sister’s grave, and was silent.

“Did you ever meet the others?” Benno asked. “The members of her crew?”

“No,” Onus said in a way that signaled to Benno he wasn’t interested. He closed his eyes and lowered his face. “You favored death to life at last, and welcomed your apocalypse with fiery grace, leaving nothing but indecipherable ruins in the endless rain…”

Benno focused on the lapping of the waves, and Holes’ joyful exclamations as it tumbled along the surface of the water, trying to ignore the relentless, silent words unfolding in his mind.

—dlorsulbrevdlorsulexplidum—

Until another sound joined the waves and Holes’ shouts. A stifled, bitter sound:

Onus, fighting not to weep, his eyes leaking and his breath catching, his teeth bared.

Benno fingered his beard, conditioned to awkwardness at the sight of another man crying. A condition inherited from his father. But why should Benno feel anything but resounding sympathy? He himself had cried, and cried, and cried so much over the last seven—fourteen—years. He was not his father. What his father had inherited from his father did not need to pass beyond Benno, not anymore.

“Gemma, give me a few tissues.”

Onus took a shaky breath as he received the wad of tissues from Benno. He wiped his nose and his eyes, and then smiled softly.

“Gemma,” he said. “I remember Gemma. Though last time I saw her she was… larger.” He nodded to the coin-sized disc in Benno’s hand. “I should have one,” he said. “So you aren’t forced to provide for every single of my needs.”

Benno frowned. “This is the only one left. I buried all the others with the crew.”

“No matter.” Onus sniffled and lowered the blanket from his head to his shoulders, exposing a head of close-cropped blue hair. “We will go to the console and have a new terminal cast. It is simple.” He turned and started off across the beach, toward the lonely door of the Inn.

Benno turned Gemma slowly in his hand. “Hold on a second,” he called.

Onus stopped.

“Purely out of curiosity…” Benno looked for the words. “What exactly did you do? Or what exactly were you accused of? To end up in the Bathhouse?”

Onus’ jaw flexed. “I understand,” he said. “The Gemstoke is a dynamic tool.” He sauntered slowly back to Benno. “I am indebted to you. You saved me from an agony I cannot—well, you saw it with your eyes. And if Edda trusted you, then I trust you. Unconditionally. But I know your trust must be earned, and I respect—no I value your caution.” He looked out at the ocean, his orange eyes filling with wet light. “As I already promised, I will tell you everything. Edda should have divulged more to you about her tribulations, and her aims. Though I’m sure she had her reasons, and I mean not to disparage her now. Regardless, the time for obfuscation is over. There is work to be done. I will start at the beginning.”

#

“Edda and I were close in age. Only fifty-eight years apart. I’m older, as you can tell. But conjugal siblings born within a century of one another, where we’re from, are considered twins. I think you have a similar consideration in your type of Realm. And other than Tig and Phos—the now untrue rulers of Luridia—Edda and I were the only ones.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“The birth of a son occurs only once every ten thousand years. My father was the only son born to his, and his to his, and back and back. I am only explaining this because I believe that in your Realm, boys and girls are born with roughly equal frequency. Which seems strange to me. But of course your Realm and mine are far more similar than they are different.

“There were thirty-two daughters born before me. The eldest, Enfre, was six thousand years my senior. After her was Hollis, then the twins Tig and Phos, then Caln, then twenty-nine more daughters until me. And that should have been it; once a son arrives, there is no reason for further conjugal procreation. Byblow procreation is always ongoing, of course, to maintain the population. But inheritance ends at the son, and it always has.

“But our father and our mother… I do not want to say they loved one another, because I do not believe Horus to be capable of love, but he must’ve lusted for her, and fifty-eight years later, Edda was born. It may seem inconsequential to you, but it was a major scandal at the time.

“My rule was a birthright, and our father devoted his attention to me from the moment of my birth. My older sisters had prepared for this their whole lives, and most had already inherited outposts—if not entire Realms—from their mothers, and they were busy with overseeing businesses and colonies. So my relationship with them could best be described as… indifference with an undertone of resentment. This is normal.

“Edda, on the other hand, having never known a world without me in it… she adored me. And being so close in age, we were effectively raised together. Wherever I went, she was there. Even during palaver with my father—typically private meetings between father and son—Edda would come along. Horus welcomed her; she was not threatening to the succession of power. She was the runt. In our father’s eyes, she was an extension of me, and a harmless one.

“But the other conjugal sisters did not see it this way. Especially the Twins. To them, Edda enjoyed undue privilege. They suspected her of exploiting the chance of her birth to infiltrate delicate discussions on the machinations of rulership. Additionally, they saw her as a mistake; to them, having been born after the Lonely Son, she should not exist at all. And as time went on, their grievances worsened, and she was loathed.

“This loathing pushed her and I closer together. And both of us closer to our father. Early on, things were fine like this. Horus prepared me to lead. Edda was at my side. There were whispers—and the occasional shouts—of indignation, but in our father’s good graces we were safe. None would risk incurring Horus’ wrath. And Edda was not without her allies; the byblow daughters related to her, perhaps because she was, like them, an outsider with the conjugals. And the conjugals knew this. And though it infuriated them further, it also stilled their hands.

“My role—which I didn’t ask for, of course, as no one asks to be born—was not enticing to me. It was necessary for the future of the Nation’s survival in the most literal sense, but I found the abundant copulation exhausting and, frankly, disgusting. Say what you will. I also took issue with the general aggressive comportment of Luridia’s geopolitical policy. For many, many thousands of years, the Nation had conglomerated its wealth through domination and dominion. It controlled thousands of Realms, and those Realms’ resources. The promulgation of power was Luridia’s creed. It was the Overlord of the Ensemble. A violent ambition. There were wars. Constant, endless crusades. The blood on our hands was long stained and still dripping.

“I may not have known better if it weren’t for Edda. In her heart, I believe, was an inclination for justice and peace—a rebelliousness. And she was brilliant. She read so much. Books from all Realms. She internalized philosophies and practices, theories on economics and ethics, civil engineering and psychology. She wrote—treatises and diagrams—outlining processes for withdrawing armies, restoring autonomy to colonized Realms, allotting reparations, elevating qualities of life for everyone. We laid together deep into the early hours of the morning, and she articulated a vision for the Nation of Luridia that used its immense resources to help rather than hinder. To comfort rather than control. She convinced me. I was ready to follow her. I performed my duties as my father’s heir, but obligatorily. My mind, my body and my heart were with Edda always. So yes, I wanted to rule, but I wanted to rule with her. We were ready to lead a revolution. It was all ahead of us.

“Though none of that would come to pass.

“A few years before my three-hundred-and-fiftieth birthday, something happened. I only heard rumors of it at the time: Some catastrophe in a distant Realm with which Luridia had no involvement. It was a Schema D Realm, like yours, called Chavanuck. Nothing of any consequence should have occurred there, and I gave the rumors little thought. But Horus went to investigate. He was gone only a few days—a short stretch I remember as significant because in his absence I had, in a sense, my first taste of rulership.

“And when he returned, he was different.

“At the time, I got the story from his Hand, Agnes, who traveled with him. She described a Realm in the throes of an existential panic. Something had appeared there—a force, a creature. It was infallible, Permanent, like you. But not just that. It could manipulate matter and energy with its mind, without limit. It could, it seemed, command time itself. No one knew why.

“This was Sul.

“The Realm of Chavanuck was in crisis. Governments were falling, and the populations reassembling themselves around the sudden new law Sul’s presence issued. But my father’s concerns were far more personal. As Agnes told it, when Horus entered Sul’s palace—an enormous gray pyramid erected in the middle of the Realm’s largest city—Horus’ first order of business, upon standing before Sul’s throne, was to test its Permanence. He fired upon it, which resulted only in the needless deaths of numerous bystanders. Sul, accustomed by then to being tested, seemed barely even to notice. In fact, its utter disinterest in Horus—the King of Luridia and ruler of the largest conglomeration in all the Realms—infuriated my father, and inflamed his hubris. Feelings of inconsequence and impotence were not familiar to him. He returned to Luridia with an obsession, and his own existential panic.

“Horus was always… unamenable. But in the years that followed his meeting with Sul, he became downright wrathful. His authority had never been threatened. He abandoned all duties of governance, including our palavers, and spent all his time fixating on a reclamation of his supremacy. One of the few times he spoke to me during this period, he referred to Sul’s influence as a cancer, which if not ablated would metastasize throughout the Ensemble, Realm to Realm. And while Sul was certainly capable of such proliferation, it never seemed to show any interest in anything outside Chavanuck. It never challenged Horus or anyone for dominance. So my father’s obsession was not only futile, but misguided; Sul was not a cancer metastasizing through the Realms. It was a cancer metastasizing through Horus’ mind.

“And it drove my father mad. Desperate and injudicious, he consulted with pseudo-scientists, disgraced mathematicians, rejected engineers, cult leaders and the mentally ill. He subjected himself to experimental procedures, his mind and body punished by ritualists and lunatics. He visited distant and dangerous Realms to practice baseless blood magic. He took the company of depraved individuals who promised him power with no evidence—individuals with psychotic and sadistic intentions. Among them was the Gunthean oligarch August Kane. And there were others—two in particular—who we will speak of later. They became Horus’ primary advisors, whispering in his ear about fictitious methods that would render him as unmovable as Sul—and all the while bleeding his and Luridia’s resources dry.

“After many hundreds of years of this obsession, during which Horus’ obligations to Luridia and its ancillary Realms fell largely to Edda and me—a task we struggled with given that the resources required to effectively govern, let alone make change, were still under Horus and his advisor’s control—Edda and I made a plan. It was not a plan we wished to implement, but one that was necessary. If he was allowed to remain in power, Horus would bankrupt the Nation not just of capital, but of its future. We had a responsibility, as its heirs, to save Luridia from threats both external and internal.

“And we had help. Horus’ decline had brought us closer to our conjugal sisters. Enfre, the eldest, at that time oversaw an enormous trade company. She was particularly determined to remove our father from power, lest all she had worked for in her own enterprises collapse.

“But our plan was never actioned. We were not careful enough. The Twins, Tig and Phos, betrayed us. They warned our father, hoping that doing so would elevate them in his graces and in the echelons of succession—a plan that ultimately worked.

“Horus, in his madness and desperation—and knowing deep down, I think, that he had ruined the support of his daughters and wives—lashed out at the nearest threat, which happened to be Enfre, and killed her. He thence fled Luridia, returning to Chavanuck with his clan of degenerate advisors—August and the two others—as well as the Twins.

“At that time, Chavanuck was in the throes of a great War; I know few details, but somehow a group of tenacious Chavanuckians had found a way to fight back against Sul’s increasingly destructive reign. My father and his adherents offered to fight alongside Sul in exchange for a share of its supremacy. Sul accepted, and with their assistance the War was won at the ultimate cost to the Realm of Chavanuck, which was left lifeless and desolated, an endless gray waste.

“Soon after, whatever demented pact Sul made with Horus and the others was implemented. It was surely not what they expected: August and the other two advisors were made Wardens of Realms over which they had total control, and Permanence. But they could not leave those Realms, and with unending life also came eternal imprisonment.

“The Twins were given the same Permanence, and were made Wardens of a different kind. But with it, they were transformed. Once beautiful, they are now vile and corrupted. Not just in body, but in thought.

“And my father… Sul kept his mind like a trinket and tore his body into pieces, which it scattered to his children: His intestines to Hollis, one eye to each twin, a brain to Caln, lungs to Anais, the liver to Ren… bones, organs, viscera… Something for everyone. A heart for Edda. A demented mockery dangled before his children. A taunt.

“After that, Sul altered the rhizome of Chavanuck so that anything trying to enter was eviscerated. And it dislodged the Realm, sending it floating through the Lacuna, nomadic, and nearly impossible to find.

“In Horus’ absence—and with his living eyes as attestation—the Twins exploited their Permanence and Wardenship to make a power grab. They nearly assassinated Edda, but she managed to escape, and went into hiding. I was not as lucky. They killed my associates and arrested me, charged me with insurrection, and sentenced me to six-hundred-thousand years of labor. I escaped from that camp, but was recaptured and re-sentenced to six-hundred-thousand years in their friend August’s Bathhouse. That was seven hundred years ago. In there I was deprived of information. I could only hope that Edda was hard at work. Hard at work locating the Gray Wastes of Chavanuck, and finding a way inside.”

“To do what?” Benno asked.

Onus looked at him. “To kill Sul.”