Heir lair. We return to where last we left Syrib The Spring-Sworn, renamed Minim by Her Lady. To that woven place of Lady Fate’s unwind where the corners speak. Where too-many-legs thud meatily across knitted ceilings and layered skies.

∞

Minim was caught in a strange web unsure if the smell of lavender in that realm was reeking and she was as a moth repelled, or as a moth to amethystine flame unable to turn away. Looking for the moon confused.

∞

Such ambitious flames burned there only in imitation, flames made of wool or cloth climbing high and flowing low, here bright and there dark, still-yet-with-motion all cold and all lifeless. With flame’s semblance though none of its substance, just as there were walls in Frac’tralien, ceilings and floorings all rippling and soft these torn flags in forlorn winds. These - Fate’s beginnings obvious with schematic and scaffold - unable yet to fool us fully

Will there not eventually be woodlands woven-whole under nebulae of gauze for undead Stalkers and lonely shamans to lose themselves in?

∞

Minim knelt before the tapestry that foretold of her power. There across its weaves she was shown in Human Fable as a warrior having wondered and wandered, full of worry from the start and all the while since. Her tusks were sharpened into fangs. At last she attained a crown on the tapestry's final square, The Lightning Crown, with which her wilful glare could command mountains moved, and slowly she would learn demystifying sequences all the more profligate; that Nature’s great entwine of Life and Death would be hers to set. The unborn will remain so, the living shall not die.

∞

All of Need and Want cured by her march and mantra. All stars scattered would return home and there would be only one star, one world and its moon in a blackness navigated.

Lady Fate’s depiction of that crown all powerful was more a cage wrapped around Minim’s older face, not only her brow, bolted under her jaw and that older countenance was not serene in power but severe with pain.

For are crowned heads not bowed by their weight and if not, is it a crown at all they bear?

∞

‘The unborn will remain so, the living shall not die’ - a phrase repeated in Minim’s hopes, her own shared by those that had come before her and changed their names as well.

Gadail sat with her and her memory of him set his Reason to her quest. What of those already dead? Could she Timeless reach into such realms-gone and pull the dead from their sleep? Should she? Not all the dead would be worthy of raising from their graves - those Rabid souls of Falsehood’s ages dark and cruel - would they be raised and educated, these ghouls strapped down in lecture halls until they were as us? And should the worthy not be given choice, what if paradise is already theirs? What does she know of Death’s beyond?

These, the extrapolations he would have asked, and having been his pupil she too was asking, giving his face to those questions in her loneliness, talking to no one there in a rippling-everywhere.

∞

She had only half the answers she needed, for there was another crown, one she would not wear. Beyond compare the crown Lady Fate had chosen for herself. The Synarchy of those Two there in silk divine.

∞

Tears from Minim’s eyes as she watched the scenes, kneeling before its presence an altar. A dark joy that she was closer to her Far Sight’s dream, where only Joy was bright, and Suffering made to starve as it has to so many others left its voids, and Suffering would be no more.

∞

She could not hear Iron-Chest panting nearby as he had been - stitched out of this present and into another moment - or future or past. We of course know where and to who he has set his old allegiance. Though Minim dwelled not, thankful as she was, and when the crown was hers she thought, she could find him again and give to him all he wished for.

All she imagined he wished for.

∞

She asked Lady Fate in the unfolding darkness: “What is this ‘hex’ you speak of… why did my master hide it?”

“There first is more for you to see and souls yet to meet. Something bothers you about my work…”

∞

“Half of this tapestry is missing.” Minim stood from her woven altar and stated to the dark place, its fabric floors moving as submerged hair.

As she spoke, unsure where or how she stood on Nothing’s curls, the stiff tapestry fell against her stand having lost support and mingled indistinguishably with the rest of the threaded room articulate. Unknitting and knitting itself back together changed through variations improving over and again and to Minim ‘down’ seemed not beneath her nor above nor any other direction she could understand. The room without dimensions known to the Nature she knew, a new nature being unpicked and rewritten.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

“Missing as is Time…” Fate’s voice taunted, The Lady speaking her cornering or cornered words. “…tell me more.”

∞

Minim’s eyes bright with bronze shone across the lacey walls as torches not pushing back the dark but summoning of it more, her tusks sharp against the silky air as she spoke her darkest thoughts to Fate. Dark to shamanism. Dark to reality. Thoughts when spoken aloud in the past, Gadail had never once banished, he had encouraged, for he had once thought the same dread things in his youth. Such thoughts a road of questions we must all must walk; always when encouraging Syrib’s darkness, he hoped it would evolve into her light. That same girl told Fate:

“Nature needs to be controlled… Life and Death therefore… the end of all Tragedy. That has been my aim since I knew it was possible, with your words on the wind. My aims that once were only dreams. Who are you, Lady Fate? Who would be any soul that seeks to control all of Human Nature? What Hubris must gorge on you? Why would I assist you in that task? What right have you to subjugate all that can be? If Nature is remade perfect and Tragedy erased, Human Nature will be perfect too.”

Minim could hear wet limbs slipping against each other as some sea beast infernal struggling to stand, and though her eyes searched she found no clear shape against all that was draped and hung. Floating and looming. Her eyes as searchlights damned in that gloom.

“You certainly are the apprentice of Old Gada’il. Answer me, if I am Fate and there is one throne, should I or Freedom sit that throne?” Fate’s voice asked beneath Minim; quick as her gaze darted it was not fast enough, only the floor’s linens there moved in echo of the voice that had been.

“Always.” The Spring-Sworn girl replied.

∞

“And which Freedom would that be? Or the freedom of one over all others…” The voice skittered through folding-again walls. “Has your master taught you such lessons of…”

“Freedom To and From.” Minim heard a wet mouth crackle open somewhere as she replied.

Fear crept between her eight thick locks - she was sure something moved them. She grasped the dark air above her head as to snatch at puppet strings or webs there being placed.

“Yes. Which of these do you believe, if I am Fate? As there is only one throne… one that late Falsehood and early Courtdom tried to share between The Two Freedoms.”

“Freedom To.” Minim knew not if she should look up or down. “That is what I will achieve with my crown… the totem a human tower over all of Nature’s mountains once taller. A hammer remaking better what has always been broken, ever since one star became many, and suffering spread with light’s depart from itself.”

∞

As she cursed Duality aloud, Minim remembered one of Gadail’s lessons, how hammers are sacred weapons more so than swords, capable of destruction and creation both. As a crown she sought, in Far Sight she saw a greater hammer she swung - and hurriedly the ‘tapestric’ visions around her imitated that ire. A lightning-cage across her skull, and mauling-hammer enormous with plunge into shores and mountain-sheer alike. Her fearful pride all in swell, that she and she alone understood. Fate spoke from wherever's-above:

“A hammer? Very well - I leave such details in your shamanic care. I do not seek to play tricks with my questions - know this, Spring-Sworn. I am Freedom only by another name. I am Freedom From. I will show you that Freedom To once was given to Courtdom, given or found itself there born, though too few wanted it. Such a rare gift pried from Falsehood’s defeated hand. You and I shall be The Synarchy of The Two Crowns, and so you must understand, or you will go to the very end and at the last for nought turn back. Falsehood’s last king was executed as a Rabid, yes… and the rest followed. And Courtdom raised from that, hmm? As the stories go. I wish that my art could simplify what in my Truth sprawls vast… if only my skill was greater, and one symbol could explain everything as a poem short… can History’s ever-growing magnitude be summarised? Alas that I will need to show you in many more folds than these how Freedom To was unwanted; why you shall be Nature’s lord, and I over Human Nature.”

Syrib ‘saw’ Fate at last - the Lady’s horrific shape in blurry silhouette against the stars. The stars bright only for the thread of their making was white against the darker woollen blue surrounding them. Even the rays were thrice-woven lengths of cloth, and each ashen fleck adrift was lint. The silhouette of legs Minim could barely count, caught only in passing spinneret from placelessness to placelessness.

∞

“Carve one of your runes and betaken with me.” Fate enthralled.

“How?” Minim stepped eagerly forwards, no closer to any wall had she advanced yet away from the altar borne into an air not there.

“You do not remember for you were stolen away from my threaded tale… drowned with the ink of a severed tail. You are here with me again, Spring-Sworn. All the thread is dry. Feel it if you must… coarse and itching. As scars healing.”

“Stolen away?” The Spring-Sworn asked and was offered no reply.

Minim found she was covering where she stood - a harder ripple-almost-a-knot of silken fabric - its individual threads were trying to bind themselves sticky as web around her ankle. She stepped back and saw what the unfold had meticulous in its craft: an image of her arm Fate had made with threads red and darker - bloody from the infinity rune carved into her flesh.

And so explained her Spring-Sworn-motions possible, translocating wilful and precise through astral Timelessness, if the art was true. If only Ahlzvyr The Stalker knew - would he too mutilate himself in the name of the hunt?

∞

When all the room’s cloth was stretching further away from sheets and into single threads unwound, only in the corners of Minim’s eyes did her tusks seem sharp. She pulled up the sleeve of her lightning robes; her left arm exposed.

Her heart with her master, her sister.

∞

With determination beyond what she could imagine, she used her tusk in blood-rite foul, ‘making a fang of her tusk’ being the phrase later versions may use, just as Lillian it is said to have ‘made of her spear a harpoon’ striking at Time.

As depicted in Fate’s threaded scene, Minim gored her forearm, harking back to vampyric-wizard feasts of old, those fireside tales we all know well, emerging with her chin bloody and arm lacerated in purpose forthright. Blood dripped over the woven realm as not all drops fell downwards, disobeying gravity or obeying its strange new forms as yet undefined. The drops as spheres orbited her, as Nature would her crown.

∞

Bloody and glowing Bronze was her open rune as she rolled down her sleeve, bleeding quietly through weightless change.