Greatmount Nain’mahuin. Only when Serib and Iron-Chest were ready, to his lupine touch or thought, as though his will or fine heart was known to the oakenstone disc, such materials the bones of his land and world, the spinning disc’s mechanisms hissed.
∞
It dived deeper over the lake then upwards leaving the moon’s great reflection and dark ring of trees far below.
∞
Serib kept her balance strong against the humming force as on it surged along its destined journey, returning always. The Sentinel called loud over the rushing air and speed with his claw on the last remaining pillar, his furred hand splayed almost spidery in the moving darkness:
“I long served in Haven and know their winged ways. I was curious if this oakenstone still knows my touch… secret walkways of Haven are known to me and my passing, the routes of all reinforce and retreat. All the journeys this disc has made it keeps within its curve. Just as us, if our memories holdfast. As rock and wood will weather showing. Can your palm divine this as mine can?”
Serib thought that Iron-Chest, masterless and long a warrior instead, sounded more shamanic than she did.
∞
She heard less the rustling trees as higher winds spoke their renew, as towards cloudy stars the disc made flight. She touched its last pillar where the incomplete infinity rune blinked half asleep - keeping its puzzle piece safe in her robes - and oakenstone seemed to her fingers more a temperature than a texture:
“My master little answered when I asked him what oakenstone was…” her eight thick locks of hair flailed in rising altitude, as might eels ashore in search of stream or pool.
“Hmm.” Iron-Chest thought before he chuckled, the high winds harsher ruffling all his fur as well: “Even ‘before’ Timelessness - if such I can still say with good sense - there was a timeless quality to The Woodlands Old of Gap’elyhond my kin howl as home. We are the ancestral neighbours of the angels. There even once were statues on Haven’s higher walls that I was proud to clean between battles when peace was vast… statues I hope Chance shall see fit for you to see, statues of the myths that once Were’s and Angels were one. One woodland all our home.”
∞
Drifting with Serib where Fancy best dwells, The Sentinel took momentary refuge in that fantastic yore his own to which Timelessness had woven and written him closer. Serib remembered such statues from her travels, worn as they were of detail and dignity; statues of Were’s-though-winged and Angels-furred. Alas that The Stalker’s pace had little allowed her to admire them in fallen state as they had been. Little could she have known that Iron-Chest’s name was etched into the buried pedestal of one such statue. Little did he yet know himself as he continued:
“Well, that same Timeless quality is in the mountain-stone the angels took from Hadaeon to mix as bricks and marble for Haven’s heights. Its steel-winged walls, its armouries, in the chains and gemstones of their jewellery. In some regions of Gap’elyhond’s forests the trees seem more as cliffs would be. And Haven’s steps, its gardens and oldest towers though stone, groan as trees leaning in wind. Its walls where minerals and crystals common as leaves. It all the same: of oakenstone.”
∞
Feeling both closer to and further from her answer Serib pressed no further. As the disc progressed upwards through jotted layers of cloud its under-spinning half wobbled against turbulent pockets and ditches waking from sleepless slumber in the air, advancing over invisible hill-waves uncharted and unmappable.
“It is taking us higher than it should.” Iron-Chest barked, urging Serib to stay close, the will and pride of angels their ferry.
∞
The clouds soon thrashed with thunder somehow first and lightning after; summoned clouds borrowed imbalanced from other storms. As Serib remembered those exact voices of thunder, as though Nature itself was caught in a loop, Iron-Chest barked again, keeping low his prowl and balance having himself realised the same as Serib:
“Your duel with Patinya… is happening again below us.”
The disc was throttled by wind’s contortions, tilting perilously from side to side determined by design to keep its course. In their ascent upwards Time had swum backwards its ever-progressing steps to repeat a duel most dire.
∞
Serib’s eyes shot to the infinity rune and grasped for the rock in her robes that could complete its shape so they could escape the storm. Perhaps.
Rummaging she was glad to find it - a gladness fleeting - that she could hear Patinya’s focused rage echoing; her voice though an apprentice shook the firmament’s broad encircle.
∞
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As The Sentinel dug his claws into the pillar, Serib’s gaze too was fraught with her lightning-bronze and hands outstretched to beckon the lightning: to keep its force away from her and Iron-Chest’s ascent. Bolts struck her ready hands instead of the rising platform, her hands and gaze alike a shield holding not at all. And alas. Just as in the shoreside duel below when Serib’s boulders splintered under lightning's heat and those splinters tore Patinya’s flesh, those shards of rock had elsewhere flown as well.
∞
She saw it hurtling from below and could do nothing to stop its course: red with almost molten fire and huge it crashed into the disc’s underside, disrupting its momentum away from wherever Haven-o’er-Hadaeon roamed. Both Serib and Iron-Chest held strong as the disc’s revolve swerved higher and higher beyond the clouds to where even airy thought has scarce domain. Even there its climb showed no sign of slowing, leaving the world far below - the flat horizons began-all to curve - until only Hadaeon’s moons and stars were bright over its oceans of rippling storm-clouds. Icy gems sparkled across their quilted crowns as fields of nether-world there gleaming.
∞
The air was no longer air such as Serib knew, thick with piercing cold a mass abrasive to shrink from, not to breathe. Iron-Chest all furred better fared though barely, and ice began to clump across his hairy broad and arms. Serib scratched and clawed her way to the disc’s pillar where Iron-Chest clung on. Her eyes ever brighter with Bronze light, she took the rock from the folds of her robes and The Sentinel taller than she could manage slotted it into the marble column.
∞
The cracked rune of all-completing shape shone with Bronze light. Iron-Chest held her warmer as the cold grew yet more intense.
∞
The tilting and swerving disc fell again level, and with weightless change closer stars were launched away-replaced by new constellations.
Greener plains grew across the surface of the pale, crater-pocked moons of Hadaeon, its craters by unnamed oceans filled, and Serib wished Gadail was there to see an other-Night that was not so blue.
From grey to colours-these, faded to dusty amber scorched, as dying stars were reborn - undemolished by the traps Ahlzvyr could lay - or had to their natural ends orbited around masses greater than themselves.
All this a vision-seemed, by Iron-Chest and Serib shared, a journey made possible by Time’s flailing, the rune’s repurposed infinity pulling close the things most distant to it; what wonder is left that Nonsense is around us and Sense so far away?
As in Timelessness, infinity has come to govern with Space as well as Time.
∞
As the disc wobbled to a stable level and there remained drifting, Serib and Iron-Chest crept to the edge and saw all below Hadaeon’s pages flipped slow, to its first ages where all was molten forming the world’s future terrains that would be named by the first words; Change with its wanton rods and crowns deciding where cliffs would become old and the beds of seas ancient from their start.
∞
As though Hadaeon as a planet had shrunk over its millennia unmeasured, the disc continued its broken advance upwards to the parched or overgrown moons, yet the world’s icy clouds were getting closer. The stars further away. As into one such cloud the disc plunged head-on, Serib was scratched by the cold collapsing around her - Iron-Chest shielded her as he could with his furred frame and they emerged finally into an open, breathable air.
∞
They could not see Haven o’er nor upon, their disc continued fulfilling its propel, heading no longer upwards but jarringly with a jolt-reversed as from tracks invisible beginning its descent. Having finally climbed high enough? Who could know - neither Serib nor Iron-Chest could see Hadaeon-world below - there were only clouds of xanthous smoke and ash making finite towers.
∞
“Chance’s cast or Fate’s unwind has elsewhere thrown us.” Iron-Chest said close to Serib.
“Heading down we must be going to the mountain…” she replied. “…or Haven is still upon the earth rather than over it.”
The ashy smoke cleared in places, and Iron-Chest’s eyes with tears were full at the sight of Hadaeon below, and Serib’s gaze was far from brave as ever. She wished her master was there to guide their fear.
∞
Iron-Chest mourned his world - not to see it in some earlier age before the woodlands were primordial - that page has already passed.
He mourned for the devastation he and Serib now could see as clouds parted, for he had seen devastation on this scale only once before, when he duelled The Spring-Sworn across Ehl’yiteth, many worlds and stars away where only the winds were still free. He mirrored the poem of his woodland kin:
“There is no vulture large enough… how are we to rite a world if we fail? Long have I guarded Haven’s walls and I know well the lands from such heights as these… this is Hadaeon. Torn… with regions…” he paused struggling to find the word: “…recomposed.”
“What is this?” Serib coughed, for now unable to comprehend what she saw or understand what had been said, as their disc sailed not through clouds but ashen smoke billowing worse.
The Sentinel repeated:
“This is Hadaeon, Serib-strong. The Spring-Sworn has come. Behold her presence and her power inseparable.”
∞
Uncertain continents were churning, masses that should at no such speeds be moving, woodlands rife with roots writhing upturned where branches should with leaves be cloaked, under acidic rains eroding, the landscape of clouds against clouds:
“Only the winds are free…”
It seemed to her these elements of Hadaeon had been assailed, corrupted and enchained thereafter to a will emblem of its age. No master shamans were there to order bridges between Nature and Human Nature, no apprentices to learn what would otherwise be lost. And Serib feared - what part had she played in that - defending herself against Patinya? She heard on those winds as quiet Memory goes, a passing lesson or lecture of Old Gadail:
‘And so an all too Human Nature could hold tight the throat of Nature enslaved, or already does, unknowingly destroying its own origin and future all at once. We must not only break as bearers of hammers, Serib. We too must help remake. So it is to bear hammer! We are no swords of this empire but its forgers and dismantlers.’
Serib and Iron-Chest were fortunate that their disc had spiralled so high, to be spared for now the The Spring-Sworn’s insanity below.
∞
“Where is all this smoke coming from…” Serib’s cough was worse, and Iron-Chest barked for his nose better knew:
“The Greatmount Nain’mahuin.”
In reply a strong gust parted the ashen smoke and there at the centre of this blasphemy to Nature was a mountain halved, The Greatmount Nain’mahuin split aside as through-struck by some greater force unimaginable. The molten landslide crumbling into boiling oceans under storm-swept skies.
And to that cleaved peak the disc-a-ferry was drifting, closer through the desolation.