One shot. Shay’s shoulder was stiff. Weighed by the medicine in her harness, she was thinking upon similar lines to Serib as she made her way through the tunnels now clean of dead monks and Shadows. She needed her swords and leathers against Argus, and any advantage she could muster. Before then, however, it occurred to her:
'Who moved the bodies?'
Though it seemed clearer as she went: no one had moved them. Not a spot of blood was soaking into the pipes she was creeping through. She put to practice what Serib had claimed, thinking:
‘Going through doorways changes When we are.’
∞
As Shay ducked under or leapt over any arch and fallen doorway in the tunnels she could find, the scenes changed strangely. Her nose would notice first the newer or more rusted metal of the deep subterrain, noticeable as stepping out into fresher air, or walking into a stuffy room. She could hear her feet making crisper or duller echoes thudding against the older or newer metal of the tunnels, depending on which door she left behind. She tested the theory to try and find sense or sequence in it, and the rule continued obeying itself. Every doorway she jumped through or returned to would take her from one (p)age to another age - though which - she could not control at all.
‘Things held themselves nicely together before the station – nothing weird as this.’
∞
Shay made it to an unfamiliar cross-section of tunnels, when she saw ahead three silhouettes in the barely-light. Two were walking while the other leaned unmoved. Her eyes saw well into the darkness of her three options; turning left, right or back. She made her choice; having darted left and in hiding she soon saw her past self with swords and leathers walk by unbeknownst. Woid a moment stood against the wall and did take a glance down here where our Shay is hiding, though he shared his gaze across all the tunnels checking, and soon without moving, slipped away.
∞
Serib however halted afraid at the intersection, dart-eyeing each path with worry. Eventually she too gazed down here to where the Timeless, tenseless shadows were thickest around Shay, and Shay asked as the abyss yet with a smirk to Serib’s eyes of sparks:
“What do you see?”
“A lost spirit.” The girl smiled in relief, rushing off.
∞
‘She didn’t tell me about that... or perhaps this is a different version of events?’
Shay had a dark instinct as she exited that-this tunnel and turned onto the next. She knelt and set a gas trap at the curving entrance; a tripwire leading from one to the other. Pebbles to our eyes that are not pebbles at all. Her harness the cradle of such designs. Walking off from the partition, light burst soundlessly from behind her, and where darkness once was lord she now felt wholly exposed standing in the centre of things. Glowing mushrooms grew all beside and upside the tunnels from a sudden nowhere, alive and occasionally shaking off their luminous spores. She was the new thing among ancient growths disturbed.
∞
Whatever strange epoch she had stepped into or unto, over or through, was not one she fancied: the slam of footsteps smacking on the metal drew closer to her. The Ersecutor was sprinting directly at her through the tumbling overgrown, broken sword and weighted net at the ready. His hideous helm of holes chewing into-across his shoulders dull against the pulsing shroom-light.
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∞
Leaping and kicking at the growing wall Shay hurled herself into Argus, throwing him off-charge and keeping her own momentum focused, fleeing deeper into the yawning winding underbelly of Imirka. It seemed the tripwire of her trap was gone or grown over.
“I see you in all your shadows.” The Ersecutor scraped.
Shay recognised one such glowing species of mushroom. Plucking the plump growth from the wall as she ran, it dripped with dewy moisture, more so as she ground it against her palms, more and more to a flash of heat. From this action the mushroom flesh shone with a more blinding light. Clumping the pasty matter into an almost fiery ball she launched it back down the tunnel towards Argus.
“You see a little too well.” She taunted.
∞
His beaten and scarred body writhed away from the blinding source, each hole in his helm now a weakness glared unto. Shay should have continued her course towards her shop where await her weapons, alas his pitiful form took her compassion for a moment and would not let go. Wiping drier her hands upon her clothes she watched his distant arena-tortured body squirm, as though wholly unable to close the endless eyes inside his gruesome helm. He swung his broken sword at nothing, and wrapped his net about himself cold.
“Those Boiled Angels in the burning skies you have seen…” he began, his eyes crawling over and away from everything bright. “Serib is responsible for that, at behest of The Great Freedom, that unnatural Grey Angel you saw or will see lording over the lordless and forlorn. Tending to the sick and the well.”
Shay listened closely, keeping primed her feet to move again. Difficult to find purchase against the flora. She dreaded to know how Argus knew so accurately what she had seen. Or would see.
“You are not there yet, Shay - and you need never be. Will you come with me and see as I do? I warned Fate and She has warned me, you can end what never should begin. With you begin all endings. You need only stay in Fate’s woven story and forget The Timeless Tayl. Fate can design for you a perfect life, here in History if your heart could again open… do not inject yourself with that poison. It weighs more than you know.”
He leapt now from the light and threw his weighted net, though Shay was ready and the throw fell short across the growing glows to where she had been. For reasons unknown The Ersecutor slashed his broken sword across the steel walls he could find, scraped helm and blade as he ran in pursuit behind Shay. He was far too close, but such were the dense syringes weighing her down, her speed was the best she could manage.
∞
She took every turn under each possible arch, through exits and entrances, but so continued the underbelly lit with luminous shrooms, their curving shadow against the curves of the darker tunnel, and still Argus was aloud behind Shay, making all the under scream. Her all-planning thoughts her only companion.
‘I’m supposed to slip from one version to another… any-many moment now… a different When, please…’
“You are just a board-piece to Lay’d Payn and Freedom, enemies of Fate! They will never reveal to you truly the tricks of their Timeless tools. Come with me, and see as I do, through The Grandclocks.”
Shay could smell through the stale moisture a fresher and softer breeze. Chugging warehouses throbbed above the now trembling tunnel. There was a sound of waves crashing or falling. Even sooner above Shay was a latch and ladder leading narrowly upwards, too narrow for The Ersector’s helm to follow; he slammed and butted against the entrance as she climbed, her shoulders pressing against the sides.
Though as Shay made quick her escape, too slow and weighed down had been her leap upwards. Argus stabbed his broken sword into the open latch, slashing side to side at the very reach of his arm, cutting across the base of Shay’s foot. Through boot and all. She climbed and climbed pressing her heel regardless into the rungs. Drip, drip, drip.