Vied tenses. Shay turned and tried to see what doorway or archway she had stepped through to spark or trigger such change in the age around her, though none she found and only one thing was different. Strange of her to think it is only her motions effecting the flickering epochs; or perhaps not strange at all. Aren’t we all a bit like that? At the centre of ourselves.
∞
Though that one different thing bled and twisted and tore, changing soon everything else. Frenzied travellers now had the strength and breath to scale the steps above, for they ran from the changing. Rushing there or down the steps gathered here from other ages and older worlds, rushing and spilling off the sides of sense, in their panic leaving Shay and Gargarensyr almost alone with the giant statue now a menace over them.
∞
Yet it was not the statue that changed. Shay’s eyes knew no other way to understand what there flexed and throbbed in the air or sky. Her eyes said gaping tumours throbbed and flexed in the sky or air, malignant, belonging to no dimension yet spreading to ours. Her heart said hope was ending. The summery sunshine, as a fading bulb, struggled to stay alight. The stars were being eaten. And what most sniffed her nerves unsettled: was she could not tell if these incomprehensible gapes were staring from many leagues away, or right in front of her ever-widening eyes, such was their dimensionless nature, until.
∞
Until the wind blew not the clumping hair that slabbered from them hung, and their growths toothed at forces not there expelling unknown fluids with colours not seen and survived, the whole things tensing and relaxing open or closed. Infinity their form. And from these vile rhythms spewed scraping forth: the boiled angels of stone, wet with slime. Aloud Shay’s voice and others too all asking:
“What are they? What are the angels coming from?”
∞
Hanging gargoylian those demons, throwing themselves from the edges of The Ends into the cyclonic formations of one another. And half the souls of the worlds praised, and raised their weapons with the angels, and the other half raised their weapons against.
∞
“How dare… make profane Heir image?” Gargarensyr trembled to the steps, and even fell down a number of them.
Shay ran to support him, and together they saw yet further change.
∞
No longer shone there the azure-blue of our known skies: the tumours grew and the firmament lost all atmospheric pressure as though popped, and the cosmos beyond bled visible. Unimaginable cold crashed down from starry Space in betrayed deluge. And where stars should be shining they instead were dropping from their orbits down as marbles or spiralling out from all control, swallowed by the gaseous screams of nebulae. Taking their systems with them. Other monks were staring as though captured, falling into The Despair opening. Shay had to get away, alas she saw through Gargarensyr and could not go, trying to drag him to some other safety.
∞
Though his eye was defeated with tears, his posture belied a deeper belief, and he stood a moment taller over his writhing monk-fellows, pulling himself away from Shay.
∞
Shay’s attention had long been taken by Gargarensyr, trying to pull him away: such that she had not seen as he and his breathren. There above it all in the haemorrhaging sky was not the statue of The Great Freedom massive, but Grey Heirself alive, returned with moonshield high and bloodied hammer-spear forth, leading Heir atrocious leagues never before known. Freedom To, come to dethrone Freedom From.
∞
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To Heir command, Boiled Angels landed their slams at the foot of the temple steps, battling whomever there dared fight them. Shay could not wait any longer: she ran up the steps without Gargarensyr, though she heard his yell from above and there he was atop the massive head and hood of The Great Freedom’s gigantic statue, bloodshot the white of his stare, distraught with bitter tears:
“I dread that we must part… serve Courtdom well from darkness, Shadow of Truth! And I from light shall serve. A fond thing was our walk, I daresay. It shall not my last...”
He reached up his trembling fist, leaping and spinning brought himself crashing down into the statue with ultimate technique. The force of it threw Shay down to the steps, and the already fallen monks were crushed by a new weight emerged, standing yet stronger for it, and down the gathered steps tumbled boulders of what once were muscled arms, shards of what once were sharp batwings, crushing Boiled Angels before they could return to flight. Screams were expelled from their punctured hulls, when fists or swords broke their statues, scalding water pouring as fountains out. Across the land yet more tumours poured out their fighting hordes.
∞
Shay stepped with and into the shadows of the rushing travellers, making swifter her advance up the gathered steps. It did not seem a sound plan, entering the same factory she was running away from before; alas she could turn no other way.
∞
The steps ahead were swarming with arachnid restorators helping the struggling souls into their temple. Shay ducked low to avoid one hairy leg of their brood, weaving silken and sticky webs across the path, as to keep at bay whatever next would come chasing. She could hear the fists of monks striking the solid Boiled Angels getting closer.
∞
One such official of the spidery brood she saw was herding the chaotic crowds into more organised lines awaiting turn. Their stinger-tipped abdomen was large as Shay, swaying bulbously around, supported by the six of their legs meant for walking, while the rest of their shawled body was more upright, and their remaining two limbs armed them in an almost human way. Their woodland of hairy urticating bristles moved arrow-like, defensively, depending on where the arachnid soul was facing.
∞
“I need to get-set through.” Shay pushed up against the other reams of souls.
The dark many-eyes of this official arachnid looked hungrily at Shay through the masses, in them stirring the darkest tones of all colours. Adjusting their body to face Shay, as tipped and tapped their legs sprawled across stairs of varying heights, their predatory mandible uttered deeply and almost dismissively:
“Plenty of a-shadows here for you to step through.”
Shay felt caught out of her guard, having perhaps been spotted on the lower steps putting to use her skills.
∞
“What are the first colours that come to mind?” The arachnid asked calmly in the slowly receding rush.
Whatever light remained from the breaking skies twinkled out, hidden by the shrouds of webs being woven behind by other arachnids, and the sounds of battle were hushed.
“Crimson and Violet.” Shay answered without a second or second’s thought, feeling trapped.
∞
“Jolly good. I was informed to expect not one of your sordid sort, but many - the others so far…have failed the test.” Their mandibles rubbed together.
“Sordid?”
“The age to come is not one for the respectable; it is for the good of things that we are sordid.”
Numerous arachnids were ushering and leading in all the better-organised groups of weeping and shuddering souls. Shay could not budge an inch forward, and feared stepping through a Time-changing doorway too hastily. As moved the lines neatly into the temple, one scuttled over:
“Sla’ev, panyi!” they addressed the official. “Nothing untoward to report. Proceed with The Pantipodya?”
“Absolutely, panyi! Hail and Truth to Payn. To all that Truth will be.”
∞
“The tunnels you seek’ll sink this way.” Sla’ev lead Shay towards the temple doors, away from her line.
Shay now had a better look of the factory, though having not yet stepped inside. The loom-shrines each had eight leg-like parts moving against others. Though much else was different - they grew from or were planted upon, what Shay guessed were corals, the leaves of which moved as though water here reigned instead of air. The creature a closest shrine mimicked was more octomni than arachnid. Woven fabric was being replaced by inky parchment.
∞
“Returning to The Whence of Once Ago.” Sla’ev began triumphantly, having entered unto the temple proper. "Ink over thread!"
Shay behind and not yet in the temple, could see yet more and more loom-shrines, and the building inside stretched further than she could imagine it to from outside. There was a horizon of hills, a landscape of such shrines, and in the centre of this different world a yet greater temple stood, a Crimson Keep of oaken-stone, and an oval star above it shined. Shay did not want to take a step closer.
“Hail and Truth to Payn!”
Ink and blood dripped from the unknown ceilings, drowning in red all of Fate’s remaining fabric, hanging there trying to dry. The wall of webs behind Shay was shaking with battle, and she took her only chance - umbrastepping into Sla'ev's shadow and thus herself into the temple proper.