Since and Yet. There lay a cyclops-monk with poisoned wounds, holding with her other hand around her neck: ornate these-beads of oaken-stone. Shay reeled back, though Serib was quick to kneel supportively by the monk.
“Aren’t you a dear…” The monk smiled with Serib and clasping at her beads, she began to speak peacefully - with words long rehearsed it seemed:
“A book of threads was delivered to our library at Ba’yt Al-almaerif. The cover was tapestry, and every page not paper but embroidered thread by Fate herself. Seam-scenes in the place of ‘chapters’. For Time… has been murdered… up in High Courtdom…and Fate tries to hold together what now frays into the parts of Apart. The book of threads fell a-many of us into a despair, perhaps The Despair of our age and all ages Since and Yet. That dire voice you heard searching for Serib and strangling others… it is our new leader, Heir-Scholar Gargarensyr, servant of Argus Ynoptes The Ersecutor, turning not to The Despair but to The Hope, trying to stop what Lay’d Payn has planned in her Timeless Tayl.”
The monk smiled oddly, and Shay noticed the odder position of poisoned blades nearby and neatly - it was clear to her this monk had stabbed themselves when their comrades had been distracted in the fighting, or at least allowed themselves to be wounded.
∞
They spoke then as in reply to Shay’s thoughts, and her soul shivered that she had so easily been read. As a page:
“I did this to myself for I am leal to The Great Freedom and The Lay’d Payn… she say’t to me what my death would mean, and here I am to warn you, heroes of Heirtayl. Going this way-away from Gargarensyr you will instead find him, for these last aeons are the strangest of all. Our Lay’d has seen played out that lineage. Turn back and towards! One of her riddles for you…”
The monk laid there dying with a peace incomprehensible to those that still would wish to live, and observed Serib and Shay, as old eyes looking at birds in the garden.
∞
The tunnel’s darkness gulped tighter, as one bulb of too few went out. Shay nudged at the blissful monk:
“You owe me nothing, but I have an idea.”
“Oh… my Lay’d did not speak of this part… what have you in mind?”
Serib’s eyes meanwhile were glued towards the echoing of Gargaransyr’s voice coming their way. This way. Shay asked:
“The dark is our ally here - can you distract them?”
The monk gave another odd smile, closing their one great eye and fussing with their these-beads. Shay pulled Serib into bloody shadows:
“This won’t be nice…”
∞
She laid there among the dead, shifting herself underneath their draping clothes, trying to leave a spot for Serib. As the little shaman began also to shuffle there the pursuing echoes of Gargaransyr bellowed louder and closer. Bladed assassins leaped into his way. Yelling. Swinging. Swords breaking. Serib winced at the dull then fleshy thump of his fists and feet into outmatched foes.
∞
Shay and Serib waited there curled as cats in hiding. Their faces buried out of sight and unable to see what was happening. The strike of rushing yet light footsteps drummed their echoing hearts faster.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Lord Brother…” the dying monk yelled towards the equally echoing steps. “…so here must part our sight, hmm?”
∞
There was a crunching sound of feet or footwear across the ground, and Shay gripped Serib’s hand, knowing the girl was about to flinch or worse. Gargaransyr’s voice was kinder now:
“What brutes rely on such heinous tools…” metal was thrown across the tunnel in a rage. “…dipped in deceit. Have we not left Need's age behind us...”
“I don’t recall this in the pages…” The dying monk scoffed.
“Must now you jest? When our enemies make shoes of book covers, trampling over all that matters while reading such filthy wastes of ink such as ‘Time is dead’…”
There was another rustling. A quiet arrival. A discordant breathing, and Shay thought there must be a whole group of quiet monks now there, waiting for their leader. Gargarensyr mourned on:
“Must now you rest when most I need you? When I can barely see you in this blotchy, blinking darkness. Have you your beads at least…”
Beads shook in reply. A group of footsteps left towards where Serib and Shay would have headed, had the dying monk not veered them. Gargarensyr spoke a muffled chant and Shay even heard him sniff away a sob or tear.
∞
“May their ruffled chimes take you to The Tree, Lord Sister - and upon those branches fat with Life, we in Fated Balance meet again after Indifferent Death. And we will not know...”
“Go’n, Lord Brother. No matter how bloody must be your sleeves as a hopeful, go’n. This poison… I can little feel a thing; I will softly fade. Go’n…”
The steps of Gargarensyr while quietening away, did not ease the hearts of Shay and Serib. Both were afraid to move, waiting until they were stiff as the dead. Shay eventually tapped Serib and both emerged from their nestled place, half dreading Gargarensyr would be there standing over them - far from fooled. Thankfully they tipped their way forth as to keep quiet their own scraping shadows, and saw no such trap. The dying monk had died without further pain.
∞
There were more dead assassins than monks, as though the masters of ambushes themselves had been caught by all surprise, though hidden were their doors to normal eyes. Serib held Shay’s hand through the bleeding and poisoned darkness. She noticed a glint shining and swiped it from a body as they walked. Keys jangled as she smiled and said:
“Much easier.”
She examined each cold key as she went on, avoiding stepping on hands or faces. She turned to Serib:
“Eh, all fake.”
The girl wondered why she was keeping them.
∞
They came to a lighter room where only monks lay eviscerated, made all the more gruesome by a dim and stiff bulb shining down on the dead. Shay and Serib tread carefully through the patchy gaps of free space between severed bodies, becoming scarcer closer to the door ahead. It was sealed, splattered in blood and else, as Shay flipped through the false keys to find the real one:
“Weighs less than the others.” She nodded to Serib, discarding the rest.
“I thought they were all fake?”
“The real one isn’t even a key. Looks like a key, but it’s a magnet… not much good if you don’t know… just need to… there…”
Shay reached with the ‘key’ not for the handle or keyhole, but towards the hinges itself and other apparently random points on the door. Muffled on the other side of the locked door was a familiar voice:
“Even easier than keys is this…”
The lock slotted with a satisfying click before Shay could finish opening it, and the door seemed to swing open by itself, revealing Woid, leaning hands-in-pockets against the dark brickwork. His fancy shirt scuffed as his face.