Hush and heed. The spinning disc carried Serib and Iron-chest down to the sundered Hadaeon-world ahead of their awe. The Greatmount Nain’mahuin was halved, split aside-struck by some greater force. Coughing through smoke they arrived as the landslides crumbled foaming into oceans under storm-swept skies many leagues and regions away, now bereft of what had been their names.
∞
Just when they thought the disc had stopped, it would move across the desolated Greatmount then higher or lower, its craft in no way designed for Timelessness. Destined to return to Haven, alas if the mountain was here, the city of its ore could not possibly be as well.
Who knows what other fragments of frayed dimensions too were calling to it, and so in this aimlessness it patrolled the routes of once and never.
∞
Waiting until the disc was low enough, Iron-Chest yelled over the chaos: “To my shoulder, strong. My legs shall make swift of this… you need only bark out where is best. You sense it?”
“I do.” Serib replied, her shamanic senses attacked by elemental plight and History’s ending. “The fallen starspear.”
She thought or already knew: had The Spring-Sworn come here searching for what remained of Ithuriya’s weapon as well? This and more she tried to consider with what mind she had left; here momentum was her only recourse, that every step was twofold. Determination had settled in her and she leapt atop Iron-Chest’s back holding the hilt of his greatsword for balance, and he with ease left the disc to rove in its chartless patterns, leaping from it to an evergreen patch of treetops still braving the fumes.
∞
He had travelled such butchered terrain once before, and in the Autumn of his life made quick work of the divided chasms, the crags full of boiling rain that could have been gentle ponds alas, as Serib called out the path. It led to no surprise upwards, the mountain fragile the higher they advanced. Geysers of flame hissed from beneath the rubble-surface, blood the stench on their breath of underneath leaving calderas in aftermath a scatter of pockmarks.
Will there not be more and more of such marks to come?
Will they not spread into others and of the world make a hollow?
And even later, an ocean we will never see.
∞
In a calmer clearing perhaps above the clouds at last they saw a halberd-tall sticking out of the uneven ground, flagless, and a soul sitting beside on a steaming pile of rocks once a mossy boulder whole - it was Ahlzvyr, The Stalker and Hunter Lord. Beside him Dromiya, hatchling of The Grand Scarab bulged huge with mandible wide enough to swallow them all, posed as a statue tall with symbolism, its shell bright with glyphs. A scarab clawed as a crab, scythed in some texts, posed in all, and in such stances harnessed energies from the decimation that could become creation.
Where we see ages coming to their endings, Dromiya’enanti the grub still-growing, saw pages to be read. A beginning in need of a monarch, an Heir to find or become.
∞
Iron-Chest slowed his pace and Serib leapt down to walk by his side. The Stalker made no acknowledgement of their arrival. Serib went a step too far before realising Iron-Chest was kneeling beside her. As one stunned he knelt, having remembered again the dread words of Lady Fate, as the scene before his eyes was the same he had seen on her tapestries:
‘Yes, you will defend her, Sentinel.’
∞
“What is wrong?” Serib tugged on his forepaw. “Has The Stalker laid some trap for us…” she scanned the loose stones and it was difficult to tell them apart, their burnt colour all wrapped with steam rising from beneath their crumble.
“Worse than that… see beyond him. See his halberd sharpened on these stones.”
And Serib’s eyes having been so drawn by The Stalker did see; Ahlzvyr had prepared himself for battle and laid unseen traps indeed but not for her nor Iron-Chest.
∞
Traps he had laid for a terrible darkness, visible in ‘human’ silhouette on the other side of an unnatural ravine that beast - an ocean-wide bay - where all between was still being pulled apart, filled with quakes and ash. Serib placed her palm to the vaporous earth and knew wounds there and afar. Her bones ached with the world and a dark figure she felt or saw many leagues far off. Standing on her own flesh she felt it; its feet not upon the earth but pushing the world down; a way to be made for its coming.
∞
Taller than her it turned to face her, no child but a woman strong, its scalp embedded with living eels all shrieking at Serib-small, eight constricting snakes where two legs should be, and she wrenched her hand from the ground too late. She beheld as The Sentinel and The Stalker had both explained to her in their own ways:
Alas I found no lords in Ehl’yiteth, for its lands, rivers and fires had come under dark ruin. Only the winds were still free; in all my travels I’ve seen no such despair as Nature in chains. Few were the known routes through that maze of loss and anger as all roads seemed to move or disappear into the changing world.’
‘…she leaves blood in Water’s place, illiterate - screams echo against Wind’s breeze. Flames burn longer than their fuel and into acid coil. Broken cliffs and unnatural divides are common of her presence, landslides muddying any tracker’s route though all leading somewhat the way to her Throne of Craters.’
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And now, The Spring-Sworn knew where Serib was. Her mind reeled from the similarities, a girl staring at a woman though a great distance lay between them. Lightning robes both, tusks the same shape, and both their hearts the heart of Fear from Future’s grief-to-come.
∞
Serib saw the woman in shadows and silhouettes against the chaos of her own making - The Dark Shaman, The Dark Spirit, The Spring-Sworn all her names across these variables rearranged and constants ever the same. Her totem a mauling hammer in her hands, cruel with bronze-steel spikes, a weapon meant only for shattering things that they could be remade, and perhaps not even that. Eight eel-like limbs her hair where thick-grown locks once flowed Serib had seen and could not stop watching how tethered their gait, how wretched, and a cage-crown fierce with unholy lightning across her face.
∞
Having seen The Spring-Sworn, haste was Serib’s heart. She set her gaze to climbing the woodland of scorched trees leading up the fallen mountainside. “We must hurry, the spear is close and can aid us in this fight.”
The fallen weapon was a hymn on the wind, a metal ringing out from its clash. What so had frightened her in The Spring-Sworn that words were no option? Why had revulsion first belched up from within her all-shuddering as over a tomb unearthed? Had we tried to bury that which is not dead?
The Sentinel broke into no such hurry and The Stalker surely within earshot stared quizzically into the sand of his hands, waiting in an awareness much his own and apart.
∞
“What are you doing?” Serib in frustration tried pulling Iron-Chest along with her, and he spoke from his genuflection:
“I’m sorry, Serib-strong. Distant things have come into focus… a pattern I could not see when close, as a wanderer might turn back to see how far they’ve come and need a moment their own against Life’s overwhelm and, well. In Fate’s woven house I saw in thread how I would die; I suppose a curse most would say? To see one’s ending. My blade with lightning wreathed…”
Serib quickly tried to reinterpret what those sewn images may have meant:
“Your own lightning, having become a shaman yourself in a future far from here.” She believed, pulling him again though Iron-Chest would not go with her:
“Alas another’s lightning, having been struck. By a foe or granted momentary might by a friend, I do not know.”
∞
Serib knew his certainty was misplaced or mistaken, her words sharp as she tried to convince him:
“Could it not be a lie Fate wove for you? You knew you would die and chose to follow me anyway? Ancestral grace showed you death? I see no lightning here, not yet, ready as the darkening clouds may be for it. How can you know?”
Fearful of death she asked, of Old Gadail’s most of all, of a shadowy family she was made to leave behind, of the friend she had found in The Sentinel, whom had trusted her despite many reasons not to. Iron-Chest smiled in his sadness a fortress, a forest-older, having seen so many of his comrades fallen over their deployments in Duty’s lands-morale, being not afraid of Reality and the way we all are going, and from the font of those fields he took his justice and his courage. As those before him too had given back.
∞
Courtdom and Humanity’s Decline he feared, not Nature’s Decay:
“Us Werewolves dropping by the many, eh? Yes… since a pup I have dreamt of my end. Further I saw it in Fate’s tapestry, and before I saw it clearly in my dreams or on tapestries I knew it would come in some form or way. A soldier must know. Battles have come and passed where I was certain my last had arrived, and yet it was I wounded though alive or saved by chance, left to guard fallen Sentinels and Falsehood’s foreign dead alike until the vultures came.”
And there he stayed awhile on those fields no longer of battle but of Death’s serenity and its stench, before returning to Serib on The Greatmount Nain’mahuin:
“We believers in Truth must leave much to the bludgeonings of Chaos, Chance and Change, and see only Coincidence where Falsehood saw a crueller plan at work. I cannot help but be grateful for my survival. Thankful, where Falsehood may once have turned to the sky in praise and awe, a pit of silence their only reply. How else if not for these linking of chances would I have been led by Bronze light and grace to you? That I have seen my end was no curse but a blessing, so that I could with certainty devote and re-devote myself to it. What greater gift could I earn or receive than paradise regained? So it is for all souls that accept Time’s permanent impermanence.”
So he spoke on an adherent, having served for no glory other than the honour of having played his part:
“I see you restless and hope you too will come to learn this peace I have found. What place is it of mine to turn from Truth, the greatest of all forces? The only force. This is only my end, Serib-strong, this is not all I have ever done.”
∞
“You will leave me… to have a second duel with The Spring-Sworn?”
Serib heard words that would later echo, though for now in the face of Youth’s severity, they went quietly to the winds without their weight. Gadail had left her to the whim of a Timeless grandclock, to have a conversation she would never hear. Iron-Chest would leave her to whatever mercy remained in the collapsing world. Her parents had given her away. Or so it all felt as she listened on:
“You will leave me to distract her, to defend as is my way.” Iron-Chest corrected. “You are no Werewolf soon to drop I’m sure, but hold onto your tusks, Serib-strong. Courtdom’s ways and Truth therefore, now the old ways, are under greatest siege. Give me only a spark… master, that I might draw all attention from you with all my bark and bluster loud.”
“Master?” Serib looked him over confused, held his arm to implore him and she felt his skin patchy with burns again.
∞
Though short their journey together, she was the only master he had found, venture as he did from Hadaeon to Ehl’yiteth and back again in his search.
Little did either of them know in Timelessness, how their new companionship was old.
You and they shall know, by tome’s end.
∞
Kneeling he drew his greatsword-curved from his baldric bespoke and held it before her, as in other stories he had heard of such shamanic things with knighthood blurred, that his weapon may be granted elemental boon or imbue, alas Serib knew not such arts as ancestors or high blacksmiths do. What he asked she could not give.
∞
Her young eyes were tearful to see his old moon-blade drawn and mind determined, and from her fallen a Bronze starlight glowed across his blade, for she drew from his font overflowing. Even The Stalker glanced up to their moment, and to him it seemed it was a sunrise-curved that Iron-Chest wielded, a light cast far giving all the nearest earth reason to hide its seeds for the future yet. The Sentinel was surprised to see light aglow in lightning’s place, despite what Fate’s tapestries had foretold.
He barked his thanks and asked himself, what else could have been discrepancy, if light with lightning was lie or confused?
Serib did not know what her sadness had created, and to the ever-expanding ravine of earthquakes and bitter ash she stared, unsure quite what The Spring-Sworn’s sadness had created.
These, the things of Love and Reason.
∞
She could not speak. She turned her reddened gaze up to the decimated woodland, sniffing her tears away both disunited and with enrage, her high knees making near the far summit. Iron-Chest did not follow but stepped ‘away of her towards’ where The Stalker sat, and said to her depart:
“Go on, master. Up and on to wherever the starspear calls to you.” He turned to eye Ahlzvyr: “My biddings to you, Lord Stalker.”