Coughing engines. Woid stood there shivering, hands under his arms in a coat bigger than himself waiting for Shay to decide. They both were gripped with indecision, opting finally to follow the thunder despite the crimson or violet words all over the station warning them away. Having reluctantly boarded the icy shuttle waiting for them, passing through its doors they found the dilapidated conditions outside were mirrored inside - while the cold temperature did not at all. Woid immediately threw off his big coat in a huff:

“Eugh! Boiling. Problem with slipping in and out of different ages is you can scarce decide what best to wear.”

Shay smiled as she surveyed through her mask: a train carriage of sorts. Debris filled most seats - waiting to leave. Outside the scene had changed; dusty heat blew through the sandstone station. Our two rogues squinted against the strangest light of too many suns all competing their shine through the shuttle’s wounds. Baking Imirka insufferably. Strangest light I say for the suns were broken and ‘leaking’. Spheres no longer.

“Bit like a popped egg yolk.” Woid remarked.

∞

For no reason at all and just as they both were figuring how to get the thing moving, the craft took off, with engines gulping deeply between breaths, losing and gaining altitude as it did so. The shuttle’s openings and damaged sections more or less covered themselves up as though in protocol. Repurposing excess. The two assassins quickly seated themselves after brushing old debris aside.

“Careful that those cakes don’t come back up.” Shay put her arm around Woid through the turbulence. “Thank you for trying to settle Serib at the club.”

“Oh, I’ll give it a go…” his voice heaving. “…and yeah - she’s not an indoor cat.”

“Leathers were a bad choice for this heat.” Shay admitted after a while.

“I don’t think Imirka’s ever boiled like this. And what’s wrong with those stars?” Woid winced against the broken suns, their number as though drawn in by gravity misbehaved.

Being but small against those stellar titans leaking weirdly their light, Shay and Woid huddled close despite the heat, neither of them being pilots or engineers of a kind, able only to hope the shuttle would safely go. To the prison where I am kept.

∞

Soon enough and thankfully the flight settled into a more constant thrumming, leaving turbulence behind. Woid even nodded off to snoring sleep, the heat making him pant like a dog. Shay was disheartened she could do little to help him cool down; though at one point he awoke very parched and she had scavenged some icy water from a spluttering machine on the craft. She handed him a flask. His relieved sips and sighs moved her, and again he drifted off less restless than before.

∞

Watching him sleep as soft lights and warm shadows rayed or wobbled through the shaky craft, the ‘kissed’ version of her life came to mind. Half of her tried to bury those thoughts, though the trusting weight of his head on her shoulder she could not ignore. And she no longer did ignore. Amneshay there waited peripherally, sitting among the debris-littered seats, ticket on her lap waiting, fiddling with a misplaced or replaced jaw. Whenever Shay glanced over, Amneshay remained always in the corner of her eye, occupying a different seat or corner. Offering her needles with itch rather than word. Similarly syringed fingers.

∞

Woid snored loudly, curling himself closer. Shay turned away from herself and faced a window, haunted by her prosthetic arm. Of mind its own making a drum of her knee without her wishing it to. All Imirka’s townships were drifting further away, becoming more and more spherical. Floating unhinged. Indeed for a while was the shuttle moving or the townships themselves? Sweat glistened off the sweltering buildings. Melting clock towers looked down into reversed structures that grew into the earth rather than out of it, perhaps to hide from the relentless heat. The long once-hands of such clocks dripped in drops onto the townships, quenching nothing. All their numbers were one such nothing-anymore. There was another brief bout of turbulence though not enough to shake Woid from his sleep. As though he were a cat sleeping on top of her, Shay slipped gently away from under him, leaving him there undisturbed. She opened a set of steel sliding doors through to the control centre, to better see where they were headed. A stale unpleasant smell hit her.

∞

Chunky dust that may have once been bones vibrated here-there along the metal floor. The shaking peaked and ceased having finally left Imirka’s atmosphere behind with a final thrust of engines. Looking out of the port-al windows Shay could smell lavender instead, and with that she was suddenly a little girl, up to her waist in a foul swamp following flashing bulbs of violet and red - blinking - through the jagged slots between slimy trees. How strange. For there she saw it - here again among leaking stars just as she had seen it in that marsh my pages have not yet visited: dimensionless it, flickering in and out of space or time.

“What is it?” Woid yawned beside Shay.

“Entroprison.” She replied.

A placeholder name, I confess, as the true name is long lost. Some having dedicated a life of effort and research called it Bardfall, though just as many disagreed. It was once The Crimson Palace of Lay’d Payn: now it is her own prison. Drifting through distorted space. Amalgam of different royal tombs and towers. It soon blocked out the stars and their darkness with its rooting and branching size, and came to Shay the rumours other versions of her-Amneshay had heard, that this place and prison was kept always in motion, hidden in a labyrinth of black holes, the paths to and from always changing.

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“Well…” Woid was unsure what to say. “How’re we to get in or out again?”

∞

Always changing, though double-edged and internecine are these things between Payn and Fate. The prison would stop eventually and temporarily its motion through the maze it is. For high is the Entropy in the heart of that prison-place, chewing mad or strange the ordered wardens and guards keeping Lay’d Payn and her allies contained, if there in her Corridoors they too long had strayed or stayed. Few are those privy to its constant location, The Dorns and The Dam’e perhaps among them. Best it is if Fate does not know these things. Oh.

∞

And so, when ceased that perpetual motion allowing mortals to change their positions on such a stage, that is when most Lay’d Payn would strike from within her imprisoned halls - and conversely - when alert and caution were highest among the prison’s defences, backstitched by Lady Fate. Entropy increasing with Time; now with Time missing, who can follow such flow? Yet Heir Scholar Gargarensyr, being the latest of many wardens, managed the prison with success even ‘after’ Time’s disappearance - leading in age, page and stage of Timelessness. This is not quite how it goes, but the only way I know how to express or explain. Shay had a sense of these things, and Woid was altogether unsure.

∞

“How can we dock in there? I hope this auto-pilot figures it for us.” Woid sat in a pilot’s chair, brushing the dust of someone off the arms.

Shay turned and the door to the control centre was shut: voices chortled loudly on the other side.

“Did you-who close it?” she asked him in her slurred manner.

“Nope.”

The scene or aeon had changed with Woid’s entry into the control room, and they were no longer alone. At least the door had closed itself. Shay clutched at the tea seeds relieved, barely or not at all remembering how all this began. Uncertainty wove its webs. Searing, sticky Imirka was long behind them, even Shay’s prosthetic hand shivered slightly as through spacious stars the shuttle drifted towards The Crimson Palace.

∞

The shuttle's engines churned to a stop yet the drifting did not cease. The palace pulled them closer and soon it was all they could see. Shay shuddered as they neared, for clear to her on the nearer bricks of oakenstone was their texture: there were human scratches on every block, and shreds of fabric wedged between the mortar, stiff or somehow flapping in the astral winds. Threads next to one another yet obeying different laws. Inky words and runes. The monitors and keyboards of their shuttle clacked to life, moving by themselves and announcing words without sound for the assassins to read:

“I am glad you saw through all ruses Yet and made the choices to end up here. Oh! If you could hear me sighing my long-welled satisfaction. The Penultimate has passed, dear Shay! Here we are! This is the final attempt. Truthdom will rise again from its own ashes Courtdom, and we individuals shall again as stars and temples.”

“Lay’d Payn.” Shay bowed. “What do you need us to do?” She waited, while Woid stared at the inscrutable situation, feeling left out.

“I have Rhymed it all perfectly.” There was tapping. Clicking. Weaving. Dripping. Scratching.

∞

Other spacecrafts were moving in of varied sizes, appearing sideways or upside. Other souls with their same Timeless reasons for being here. Some were similar shuttles to this one Shay and Woid were stuck in, others not so much and most of all (you will not believe!) was a reddish tree drifting in with purpose of all things, covered in Were’s furred and clawed - half human and half lupine to our eyes. Prowling with all their senses on the old palace, resisting somehow the absolute cold of Spacious. Some robed in tones vermillion and others in wooden armour, and one above them all was The Black Terror, whom in all the darkness existed at once, with darkly ruby eyes glowing in ‘the amongst’ of their blurry black fur. Such eyes and knived-fangs even sniffed around the shuttle of our two rogues; a ghost or myth of other aeons deciding if she and Woid were friend or foe. The screen sparkled:

“Not to worry over The Duke of Everwere there… his quarrel is older than you two.”

“Is that The Black Angel?” Woid piped up to the screen, and the keyboards replied quietly:

“It is unclear which was first, The Black Terror and The Black Angel, whom inspired the other and so on… but they are not the same soul.”

∞

Certain they may soon crash into the palace walls, Shay and Woid felt saved as enormous bricks in the prison shifted apart as would bay or hanger doors, and inside the visible tumult of wardens, cyclops guards and monks erupted. The guards began a panicked hail of laser fire on the tree that was drifting ahead of Woid and Shay. In reply the robed Were’s aimed for the lightbulbs and all bright panels with icy spells: frozen bolts and spears. The bay was soon flooded dark as space with its bulbs shattered and The Black Terror then filled the darkness with rips and shreds. Quiet. Drifting closer. The vermillion robed Were’s lit flaming torches of their hands, illuminating the murdered monks and guards. Checking. The tree trunk had crashed with floating leaves and splinters into the palace's hangar. Growing its roots and branches through the pipes, around the circuits. Integral. Integrate. Doors were battered down by the wooden-armoured Were’s and their robed brethren followed their prowling march into the facility.

∞

The guards Shay and Woid were travelling with in the shuttle - on the other side of the control room door - must have been able to see the massacre and were arming themselves primed, audibly thumping up their deflated courage with defeated spirits before the battle began - having seen The Black Terror, The Duke of Everwere himself. Other bays opened for other vessels across the palace face; reinforcements arriving to strengthen both the ambushes and defences. Allies and enemies calling one the other. Just as the mass of the palace or prison was pulling Shay and Woid’s shuttle in before, now the open bay - Black with fear and splattered blood - was clawing the shuttle closer.

Shay and Woid stayed close to each other’s shadows.