Light and shadow. Serib and Woid were at last able to hear each other breathe and laughed a moment insane in glee, as though freed from an aeon of silence too long. It was no simple deafness, but a part of themselves too was missing or had been - in the presence of The Black Angel - they both agreed having breathed loudly as they liked. Courtly voices were hollering and hacking beneath them meanwhile as the blackened smoke cleared, and sparkly bulb-lights shone from below.
∞
The floor of the long corridor was now heavily scratched glass, as Serib and Woid both peered down through it. Some of the souls beneath were pointing upwards vaguely in their direction, holding iced or steaming drinks in their other hands, though not with alarm but musing and admiring whatever artworks they saw instead across the ceiling. Being unable to umbrastep down there - (much to his annoyance and confusion) - Woid checked the mirrors in the room from what angles he could, and showed Serib to settle her nerves: while the floor to them could be seen through from this side, the mirrors proved it was just a decorated ceiling to those below.
∞
To either or any side they could find no way out of the remaining smoke that smothered the corridor. It was not solid, though as they tried to walk past a soft pressure or temperature kept them from passing through. There were soft rumblings distant ‘outside’ the corridor, but none of the chattering souls below reacted to them.
“Safe.” It occurred to Serib, clicking her fingers and cracking her knuckles with satisfaction.
“It was a moment too many of that deafness.” Woid grit his teeth. “I thought we were stuck there.”
The little shaman gazed upwards. Above them through the dwindling smoke stars of oval shape shone and shied, being swallowed into yet darker places among the Spacious dark, swirling in exponential natures. To all things a ceiling.
∞
Unable to advance elsewhere or anywhere in the strange corridor they watched and listened to deliberations they little understood from the rooms below. Serib recognised The Dorn twins dressed as gangsters, down there with other such dignitaries and lords. It is not clear which lord of them posed this first question:
“As souls are emotion, colour and sound of equal parts, what are we to do about the sightings of this Silence, The Black Angel?”
The room beneath was all finest oaken-stone or oak an’ stone, depending on the translation.
“We could well set The Black Terror upon them.” Was suggested, perhaps in jest by a cyclops, wearing upon her thumb a startling signet ring. She was guarded by similarly one-eyed, large-horned kin. Her skull showed no horn at all but for its stump, severed or born without.
“The Duke of Everwere is else-and-‘totherwise engaged.” An arachnid-sort refuted, unknown to Serib and Woid, but this was Sla’ev, whom met Shay briefly at the temple-factory.
He used a nearby device to assure his chatty hatchlings all speaking over each other, he would be home shortly for their trip to the beach; there would be tall trees there to weave their webs across for bird-catching. A servant took the device away, almost bumping into the next speaker:
“The plague is still going on?” An angel scoffed, walking to a showy fireplace, leaning on their hip as they stirred a tall drink for themselves. Their large wings were those of a moth or butterfly, smothered in sparkling dust or pollen.
∞
“The Viridian Smog, Directore, I must correct you.” Someone else started. “No plague so bewitched that Courtdom has ever seen!”
The flippant angel sighed. “What is so awful about it?” they moved away from the fireplace, giving it a strange look, as though the fireplace itself was giving them a stranger look.
“The Viridian Smog only affects humanity, Directore, leaving nature mostly untouched. It is no coincidence; it was designed. Such an… anti-ism! Malice has never known such scope and scale.”
'Malice' they misunderstand.
“Surely The Duke should need more resources than the Were-tribes under his banner?”
Speaking of banners, one such flag hung in a darker corner of the room. Upon it was an octomni depicted, having yet two legs arachnid, yet two legs the lengths and heads of snakes, yet two legs webbed or winged, and at last two suckling-limbs its own. The limbs of crabs and scarabs decorative in floral patterns.
∞
“The Were-Duke assured me in confidence this is a personal matter with The White Rat.”
Serib and Woid could little track who was speaking or what they were speaking about.
“Somesoul ‘rat’ with a grudge against The Black Terror?” the scoffing angel shook their wings. “And all Their ‘Dom is suffering for it? Praised it is that Haven flies high above the wretched little woodland.”
There was a unanimous rolling of the eyes at this comment.
∞
“Might we back to the matter of The Black Angel, my lordfellows?”
The cyclops with the dominating ring waved her hand, and the room fell more still, ogling the great ring as went her word:
“The concerning behaviour of Argus Ynoptes is a far more difficult matter than these sightings and rumours of a myth unfounded. Follow the Alinanic Method, and present later your conclusive findings - your categorisations - and frankly, your solutions. This should not require restating.”
The room waned into obedience and agreement, listening on to her: “Now for Argus first there is sentencing, and then, whom shall command the observatories following his departure? It would be my proposition that my lone-eyed kin are not suited to the task.”
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
Villifrado, the economist among the twins, stepped forward, dressed dandy as you would or would not like, flowers in the breast pocket and three-tone shoes, while his brother in more muted tints was having a whisper with someone else. Moss grew instead from his breast pocket. Glowing as he bent his head towards it.
“Empress.” Villifrado graced the great Ring-State upon her hand with his forehead. “How goes The Cog and Sword system I proposed?”
“Very well since the fall of Falsehood.”
“I know it seems an odd one, but humanity are not so hopeless as your cynical ancestors once purported. Choice is not a variable well tampered with.”
“The freedom to choose has been, daresay’t, revolutionary.”
This elicited a good laugh from all in attendance, for some reason.
∞
“Now.” Vilifrado continued, and all hushed. “The one we represent would be most interested in The Observatories of Argus Ynoptes.” He sipped a small black beverage, waving to the well-stocked bar for another.
“And the Ring-State upon my thumb, I do not doubt. Your client desires one of everything, if the myths are not myths.” The room settled into a closer listen for her, giving her great ring their every heartbeat. “It still unnerves me that machines are used here in the place of perfectly good souls.” Her one eye judged the indifferent waiter at the bar.
“I can assure the sentencing has been handled by the relevant parties.” Vinoillo piped in softly, stepping away from whomever he had been whispering to. “Execution. It has just been confirmed to me.”
Vilifrado held his brother by the shoulder, and they stood as one:
“On topic of the machinery, the infallible truth is malleable in so much that, much as particles: truth changes depending on location - as little as possible.”
The room started into a cacophony of nods. The Empress replied:
“I daresay I am sure that in aeons long and gone after Falsehood’s fall we will be so deconditioned, and not even question such things; but here we are, souls betwixt the polarising ages! I’ll take your souls that need or prefer telling where to go and what to do, and I’ll send you my souls that never were much suited.”
“And free shall be their motions between The Two Ideologies. So simple.” Vinoillo took a comfortably armed seat. “And the deconditioning will eventually such, that The Twinedoms may become always a close One, overlapped, and the line between no longer clear.”
“Marvellous.” All were in agreement.
Serib asked Woid, whom was paying no attention at all, staring at his finger still invisible from, chapter two, was it? I can’t recall - when he misused Shay's vanishing powder:
“What are they talking about?”
He shrugged, paying now more attention as though snapped from a trance. Both of them were still trying to find a way out; any hint or semblance of an exit.
∞
Meanwhile, a soul that was mostly a snake had finished eating something whole. An uneven bulge in the side of their body. Their yellowish scales shone in the decedent light, each of them etched somehow or tattooed perhaps, we cannot be sure, with a symbol of ultimate wealth opposing or contrasting the ‘Cog and Sword’ (whatever this means to non-scholars). Their tail draped and scarved behind them, enough to be a seat for themselves while others had chosen chairs, and Sla’ev could not decide between hanging from the ceiling or crawling into its corners. Regardless, the serpentine fangs of this serpent soul were elegant as sharp, and upon one of them was embossed a Ring-State similar to what the cyclops wore upon her thumb. Their yellower scales faded blue as they spoke with slithers:
“A sad moment in history that our primordial Watcher has finally fallen ill and into Entropy. Watched us from the inky sea crawling onto the land, ever since and before, through all our shedding from one to the next. He is our Attention, or was, for our own attentions were elsewhere.” All in attendance raised aloft anything, be it their hands, drinks or chins, as though in Old Salute. “It still stands, that some measure is needed to Watch over the realms in this absence. The Shadows are our contingency meanwhile.”
Sla’ev rubbed his forelegs-or-are-they-hands together, as knitting from them patterns of spidery silk, then dismantling the work and starting over again, as though in a habit of fidgeting:
“My Lay’d could not be present, though I represent Our Lay’dyship whom needs no introduction, and she has entrusted we arachnids, if none of you object? Our Lay’dyship and Argus Ynoptes did long work closely with one another, one watching and the other weaving against what had been foreseen. Do we have your support?” he addressed the unnamed 'Lord of The Snakes'.
“In the name of Truth, and for Your Lay’d. Lord Dominic shall be informed.”
∞
Woid and Serib were still unsure who now was speaking, the conversation darting around.
“Not since the pre-Villifradean ages and the old worlds have there been such upheavals as this. Absolutely unprecedented, but The Truth will not astray.”
“The Truth will not astray.” The flippant angel murmured or mimicked. “Any word on the war?” they asked excitedly.
“We were victorious over Falsehood, of course.”
“I hadn’t been following, it would have been so silly if Falsehood won against our daring General… I wouldn’t have believed. So deep into the territories is Haven-upon-Hadaeon, we are not at all bothered by it. Thank you all for your service.” There was a ditsy cluelessness to them, Woid thought.
“With your attention to detail, it is a new wonder of the star-systems that we see any shipments of Hadaeon Steel at all.”
∞
Vinoillo sighed strongly, enough that all took notice:
“It is why we have been called here from our distinct districts and specialisations. The Order of Entropy has reigned without major incident since The Nonillion, but the toppling of Argus Ynoptes must leave us aware, going forth. You must all admit there is a clumsiness to our discussion here.”
“Compared to the meetings I am proud of hosting.” Vilifrado finished. “Let us return to our tried and True rhythms.”
Serib stood frustrated with the prattling lords and renewed her efforts to find a way out of the smoke-choked corridor that had remained maddening despite Silence’s vanishing.
∞
Woid, ever puzzled by his own vanished finger, flipped through changes of clothes and afterwards breathed a descending tune into his pipe, his worries distant - wishing those worries alone would keep Shay company wherever her shadow tread.