Entropy’s sibling. “Moth?” Serib grunted through her tusks at The Hunter Lord as a branch scratched into her hair and scalp. “I thought I was an illiterate?”
“Both. Eating away at the fabric of things, drawn to perilous dawns without really knowing why. Keep to the path with me and ask as you will.”
“You said you would tell me all you know.”
“You needed much encouraging…” The dwarf’s beard was too thick to show his sly smirk - his eyes a strong stare. Blank. “…as I was told you would. A heel in your back to start your trajectory. There have been worse beginnings.”
∞
Ahlzvyr began foraging through berried bushes, his thick fingers sorting the sweet from the poisonous from the unripe when Serib refused:
“I am far from home and master - from sense at all - why would I go anywhere with you? Killer, scout and hunter… flies and vultures follow you. With Time’s disappearance, I can go where I must, in search of my totem.”
She spoke, though unsure if she believed her purpose. An instability The Stalker seized:
“Ah, your nose and your eyes tell you enough? That I stink enough for flies, bones in my breath and my earned scalps offend your sight? What else was Courtdom built upon if not the age of Violence first and Greed thereafter? Do you know what hunger is? Have you ever been hated for your body or beliefs alone? Nay, all cured great before your ages. And all was well for a while longer than any while that was well preceding. And where else after that stability from the spoils of Violence and Greed, for in those hordes was a gem illusory: to be Free From Evil. Where else from there, other than to Freedom absolute, ideas too far that have us in this Timeless mess? Humanity thought it had cured everything else and even Nature was no longer safe. And when you shamans devised your rites, tasks and trajectories for lost Humanity, who do you think was first sent into chaos to chart and map the disorder? How else would a Stalker appear, if not as I do? From frontiers where war is law and lore. What will your ears hear in my words if you listen further than your fear allows?”
He seemed to her a soul that had too long walked alone, and said everything that long had brewed on his solitary mind.
“Totemless moth - Earth is first for you lot, eh? Then Fire, Water’s space and Wind the last. Why the wide eyes? I have seen the journeys. I have helped and hunted many of your kin and know your ways. I have long obeyed when it was necessary. Earth is in all you can touch, so here. Better know me - and see as well there are worse than flies and vultures.”
He reached to shake her hand as to help Serib understand the answer: what if Time did not return? The end that Ahlzvyr was trying to avoid.
∞
Scowling she grasped him to his elbow and he to hers. His rough or hairy grip was a vice about her arm, a hand that had traced the tracks of many a soon-doomed prey and seen to the demolition of rogue stars, and other such hunts impossible.
“Why those stars?”
“Well asked. I was told they were in the way.”
There was certainty in his strength, his stare and grip were one severe force. She looked into his eyes and saw he could not deceive. Truth was his only task, as was the way for all under Truthdom; following Truth wherever it lead. 'And so was Courtdom raised' they say.
∞
His certainty in himself and task was the sort Serib had searched for in herself, holding bricks and stones to try and centre herself. The Hunter Lord was grounded in the sense that Gadail was, the same almost peaceful state that Gadail wished for Serib - the peace of knowing one’s purpose and becoming its adherent, of giving oneself wholly. His words still home:
‘…when we return to Nature’s cliffs and meadows where vultures prey, more than you ever need will be yours, and you will spend your life giving what you have taken; what you have been gifted. And you will be the gift you are.’
How things began in Violence is not how they shall end.
∞
Having released from each other’s grip, Serib then having absorbed all he had said - as even stones can grow damp - clearer saw through all distraction and asked:
“The grave-leaf my master sent to you with his breath… back at The Winged Wall… he guided you here? To help me centre myself and find my first totem?”
“Better, eh?” The Stalker grunted. “An old favour called. When all the muck and mess is brushed aside: the rest straight as arrows. As I said - keep to the path. Away from the Viridian Smog.” He implored, walking off along the sun-tread and foraging as he went, offering Serib not a morsel: “You were to meet an earthen ancestor here though all that remains of him in this aeon is a statue.”
Serib stopped walking and turned back to see the ruins left behind, though the woodland was already dense between, covered now in greenish mist unwell, and the branching marble of oakenstone was gone from view.
“Away from the smog, I said.” Serib heard, and quickly trotted after him wondering what lurked in that sickly forest air.
∞
A suspicion clouded her: she should be going off alone to earn her totem, not overseen by Ahlzvyr despite Gadail’s absence, a stranger to their ways. ‘An old favour called’. What worth would such a totem have, one to which her master had fully led her steps? Did he not trust her, or fear where her thoughts-alone could lead?
∞
She followed with her objections:
“Something has happened to Time… murdered, missing or not. You should not be here in this age beyond your own. How can you and Gadail know one another enough for an old favour, he surely is not so old? Do you know how this is possible? What happened?”
Strong enough and yet she missed her master’s guidance, his handling that would not always be there if Time went its linear way.
“That deaf angel spoke to you of last’s and penultimate’s, eh? It is these we now contend with - inconsistencies and impossibilities. You and I both are trespassers on a page not our own, both trackers trying to bring sense back from nonsense because indeed Time is not what it once was and had always been: my age ended and yet there was no rest as there should have been. A rest that I remember going into.”
“A rest you remember, because The Sifting Sands turned to dust. To ash…” Serib wondered which was true - had rest been kept from him or not? How could both be true?
“The sand-snow.” He corrected her. “And all was well a while.” The Stalker nodded without answering, spitting out the seeds of berries as he went, forgoing their crunch that more would grow where he had been.
Grow, against the strange mist out there in the woodland Viridian-green, away from the sun-tread path.
∞
Serib knew both could not be true, though knowing Time was uncertain made the twisted seem straight:
“I understand that all stalkers had masters in your ages… and their prey was yours. Who do you serve, then, far away from your own age?”
“For an illiterate you remember well enough. Truth is my answer here - though that will not satisfy you for Truth is not enough for you… just as Lillian knows your fear as virtue and will call out to you if she has not already, your fear to me is pungent. Fear is the scent I follow. The Grand Scarab, my master when youth was mine - is now one grain among the infinite sands of their lineage. I know now - they were slain by Lillian ‘before their Time’ and such are her schemes - we loyalists were all convinced that our age had come to natural rot and raised little defence for what defence is there against the way of all flesh? That is all the old stories were ever about, and we learned from them. When Boiled Angels swarmed our amber-skies… Truth had trained us to let it all go and we did to our graves. To in Change show grace. Some of us instead went to the seas we had never seen.”
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Serib noticed every step Ahlzvyr made was away from the what if’s and their if only’s, tempting as those tunnelled meadows are. He remained in soft-leaf woodlands strange to him, missing sand’s windswept course.
“Why did Lillian kill your master?”
“There is an arena.” The Hunter Lord began. “Its ultimate prize The Gift of Anything so named, granted by Greed himself. What else would satisfy as entertainment with Need no more? One’s time left was for many the only currency that had any worth. He and only he who from his piles of Everything could have imagined such contest once reserved for the rabid and other criminals. Fools though strong and victorious ask for foolish things, of course. Left with a vital frivolity to answer: what is humanity and Courtdom to do with its crown jewel: with its freedom from evil? And Lillian was the face of that discontent, veteran of Falsehood’s endless conflict, fought to the arena’s heart. What should such a soul do in such an age, to go from rogue stars to bread and cakes alone? She asked as her Gift of Anything for no armies nor armadas for spectacle further, no riches meaningless in this age of Greed, no wordplays inane. Having comprehended all the grief of the universe with Why in her own heart she asked as her Anything: Where is Fate? And with that location unheard of, she found eventually where Time resides unknown, uncovered that Time was a being as you and I. As her. As had never been before. My master, The Grand Scarab, was a defender of Time, keeper of Nature’s few secrets from Humanity, for Humanity with destiny manifest, climbs all it can.”
“The Grand Scarab was in Lillian’s way…”
∞
The more Serib heard of Lillian, the more a traitor to all things she seemed; though she dared wonder: was treason what was needed? Was Time Reality’s only way? Do words yet exist for what should be next or do old words need to change? Could Suffering and impermanent Seasons be amended? The course of things given and taken away.
It felt that as The Stalker pulled Serib in one direction - a direction of Gadail’s choice in his absence - her fear was weight and shadow towards a different path.
∞
“Then what is Enanti? An offspring of your old master?” Serib dreaded where that crab-scarab lurked, under the earth or among its leaning trees.
“An heir-hatchling, yes.” Ahlzvyr seemed for a moment impressed. “As we go I see better the glint of what Old Gada’il sees in you.” The Stalker went on to explain: “I have become Enanti’s regent, a word I use loosely as the titles of Courtdom mean little now with Time in states unsure. So I am - regent of what? Of hope that this exile in undeath is not the ending, that Time can yet be found and saved. That Time is not murdered but wounded and in hiding and can so be found, that the attempt on their life has not driven them rabid. I am hopeful that Enanti will grow and the sands will sparkle under the sun again; The Sifting sifted to fulfil what was destined, what Lillian has destroyed. That worlds will again turn with the stars of their divine, I hope. The sand-snow all turned to ash when dust should have sufficed. A sight I hope you never see lest it inspire your desires further or crush your hope completely. Though this Timelessness a weapon Lillian has unleashed is internecine at best, it shall be her downfall. I set out with only a halberd and a hound in my youth and have learned much from every prey. This hunt is no different.”
“Nothing new under the sun.” Serib added, and the hunter nodded:
“I will bring her home.”
As he grabbed a tree on his path Serib noted the contraption on The Stalker’s wrist and elbow, a small crossbow to her eyes. Bolts serrated and smooth lined his thick forearm. Her shamanic mind imagined him younger, him and his hound chasing prey, wondering on which hunt he had adapted to different tools. Her thoughts strayed from his past to his present prey; though what could he mean, that he would bring Lillian home? Was her death not his aim?
∞
“Then you are seeking Lillian… was she not in her cell, in Haven? Do you believe I can help you find her? With the runes?” Serib mentioned the grandclock to The Stalker, how its runes had from her view misplaced her from one hall to another, from the sky to the ground.
“Are even those dearest measurers no longer safe? At that point already…” he spat from his mouth a foul taste. “I always know where Lillian is - for all her power she is imprisoned in Haven atop The Gravestone Column once pride of all angels, and she is not a force one such as I can kill. There are rumours of magical weapons that may such a task, though such myths are beyond our own. Some form octomni she has taken in our aged-pages here; spewer of ink where once thread sufficed, or threads as ink disguised. Invincible as she may be to me - I can sever each of her many limbs that are reaching out of her prison, those limbs such as you… the Dark you may become or join. And so you see this Timelessness is internecine; a blade without hilt or loyalty.”
Serib froze defensively, and the clear skies churned with her thunder as the ground shook gently to her warning:
“I am no prey of yours, Stalker. If you are hunting me then why tell me all of this?”
∞
“Rest your earthquakes, illiterate - I have escaped such events before and your fear enacted would only slow the course. I share with you my partitions as we are not yet unaligned against one another. And even the extremely unaligned can come back into one another’s locus. I have tracks to find and those will lead me to my prey. Lillian is not my prey - I seek her last remaining limb: the eighth as seven I have already seen to.”
Serib’s eyes traced across the scalps sewn to his chainmail, trying to count them as he spoke on, indeed seven there hung sewn and not all were lupine:
“It would be difficult for me to explain what Lillian truly is - though imagine a spirit of Change, perhaps that spirit itself that lives in us human-all. Why rocks weather under rain ancient enough. The reason at all that chaotic stars of light were born from cold darkness-calm in the beginning of all things. Order left behind as never before and a cycle ever since of orbits and oscillations.”
Serib’s mind flashed, and she pursued The Stalker with a mad question through the trees as he had walked on:
“You think Lillian is Entropy?”
∞
The Stalker’s face moved under his sandy beard, perhaps into a smile: “When I heard Time was ‘murdered’ I thought - whose reach could possibly extend that far? ‘In Time’ it is easier to speak of motives and opportunities. Many a soul may have wished Time gone in their idiocy though with Fancy such wishes remained powerless. In thinking of means only one name came to mind and if Lillian was so accused, herself admitting it without coerce then… surely no other soul nor being could wound Time other than the Entropy humanity found at Star Lake? And so she must be. Though where did she get the idea for it? Surely no Natural font…”
Serib stopped and stood as a statue in the sunset-woodland:
“If I am kind and assume insanity has not taken you… if Lillian is Entropy, somehow…” she could not quite believe her own words. “…then is attacking Time not suicide for her? As Entropy and Time are together The Divine Twins; but these are only stories… why did she fight in Greed’s arena to ask where her home was? Could she not remember who she was… why would the divine be human among us?”
The Stalker did not dispute as though it matched his own thoughts, adding only in a sad, distant tone:
“We must wonder. What powerless hopelessness must she have felt… here we roam the ruins of Orphan’age, and what was Entropy if not the first of all orphans? Were it conscious, what origin can Entropy know? With no place to come from… with all that power, what would she be?”
“Potential.” Serib answered and The Stalker confirmed:
“Educated by whichever wayward got there first.”
∞
The stories were more than stories. When Gadail had said to Serib fireside that Courtdom used Entropy to win the final battle against Falsehood, she could not have imagined that Entropy walked among them strange with other-name, Gadail meant more that Courtdom accepted reality, while Falsehood turned its back to such Truth and left itself defenceless. She listened to Ahlzvyr through her shock, as he spoke on with his were-pelt-covered back to her:
“Motive left unclear but in means, it seems Lillian is unique in that. What of opportunity? How could this circumstance have come about? What say you, shaman… with all your knowledge of history… how are The Divine Twins Entropy and Time suddenly conscious? Human in their flaws and desires…”
A while they shared in the quiet of the woodland, as Serib almost spoke and then did not, until at last she said:
“Humanity has gone from the age of Need to the age of Greed. With all other ills such as Evil cured, Tragedy is all that remains for Humanity to ‘climb’ as you said, but Tragedy is the Truth we all must accept, if we adhere to Courtdom’s ways.”
“And why wouldn’t we?” The Stalker almost warned with a nod of agreement, and Serib answered on:
“The corner humanity wrote itself and Nature along into: Nature has responded - somehow? Retaliated. Entropy and Time have become conscious…”
“So went my measure as well.” Ahlzvyr’s tone was almost congratulatory.
“Again, if I am kind and you are not insane.” Serib added warily.
“Well. I doubt Time can die, Entropy I doubt more so. Perhaps I cannot imagine all this without them and prefer not to.” He gazed at leaves in wind and in his unwillingness he shared a kinship with Serib. “Alas that does not mean we are not in a dire state with Truth upended and in need of rejuvenation or return. Thus I seek one that can die or can be convinced not to; one that can yet be converted as a wayward returned home: I seek The Dark Shaman of Lillian’s schemes… you are similar to this dark one… similar to the trace I have of her. And then it was obvious to me - you are yet too young.”
Serib’s almost-summoned thunder simmered to more distant skies. Far aside from Ahlzvyr’s insane theories she had never heard of a dark shaman and dreaded any similarity she bore. Wizards she knew well enough having helped Gadail against them in her training, but a dark shaman?
∞
She considered, could the dark one Ahlzvyr hunted have been Gadail’s last apprentice, whom had led Werewolves and Angels once-alike to be so astray? Similar to Serib maybe, only because they had shared the same master and so his teachings.
She had drifted off in such thoughts and upon return noticed Ahlzvyr had not waited for her.