Distant rain. “Woid lad, off to the pits?”

The Dorns squelched over to where Serib sat with Argus under the makeshift rain cover, having to pull their feet out of the mud with each step. Woid was already through-shadows by Serib's side:

“We were, actually.” he lied, thinking he would not mind that at all - there with Shay when numbers still reigned. And in his daydream, he took Serib with him.

“Who might this be?” Vinoillo shook Serib’s small hand. His palm was rough, defying all moisture. “A nice cover you’ve made for us to stand under.” He clicked his fingers and gangsters trotted in from the rain to escort Argus while others kept the cover taut over their heads.

∞

Serib was not sure if she should answer, feeling almost royal as the group walked with escort towards the observatories, while Argus was pulled and pushed along, sliding and falling in the mud under his heavy helmet. She glared at those guards that were being rough with him - lightning flashed across her gaze - and Argus was treated with greater respect.

“I’m taking her up to the prison after; just fancied a few rounds first.” Woid moved in his uncertain umbra-step way, unsettling the lessers.

“Greed’s new arenas are very popular with you scratchers, aren’t they?” Villifrado winked.

“The prison, Woid lad?” Vinoillo almost objected.

“Yes.” Serib stated, puffing herself up as she sensed caution in Vinoillo’s voice. “So, watch out.”

Vinoillo laughed and Woid gave the back of her head a whack that looked more convincing than it was - just throwing her locks of hair around.

∞

Vilifrado took more of an interest now in Woid’s prisoner:

“What fine fabric, and such techniques.” He admired her lightning robes; his and his brothers’ clothes, sopping as they were, indicated they were no strangers to such lovely things. “Fate’s design at least, finished by an imitator if not by her own silk and skill?”

“Really?” Serib realised how the robes had adjusted to her size the longer she wore them, being at first too long to run in.

“Unmistakably.” The spectacled Dorn affirmed.

∞

Knowing Fate was an enemy of Lay’d Payn, or perhaps the enemy, Serib leaned into Woid as he shifted about:

“What if things change passing through the observatory doors? Like it did in the tunnels?”

Woid shrugged from his pockets, already leaning up against the entrance ahead, yelling sense to her and nonsense for everyone else:

“And at The Club, The Station and everywhere else. We grin and go along with it. We’ll not find her staying here.” He referred to Shay, keeping her name away from The Dorn’s ears. “Stay close, so that hopefully we slip into the same.”

The Dorns returned to their own hushed conversation:

"Does she seem like a prisoner to you?"

∞

The doors were the first dry thing Serib had seen for a while as a long canopy stretched over them, and in the deep of that canopy spiders waited above, not moving but staring with their sprawl-curled stances, some large as hands. Prey of all sizes were bundled between the massing legs. Bound. Moveless. Bulging full of venom. Silent grinning mad in other-dream unknown to us that still live. The doors opened as hairy and many-eyed arachnid loyalists, robed in similar ways to Argus, allowed entry unto a domain not long theirs.

∞

Already their webs caked with bridges the walkways and climbs inside the observatory, making quick their navigation. Halls where titans would not bump their heads on the stars of these ceilings unknowable, mirrors staring into themselves infinitely higher and deeper and wider. Doubling-helix stairs spiralled upwards and downwards at once through it all sprouting reflections of itself, and more than eight Woid’s sat atop them completely dry, banquet-ready in wonderful garbs while the group from outside were ringing their excess drips onto the carpet. Serib was unsure why nothing had changed, the scenes seeming linear from one place ‘outside’ to the next ‘inside’. Woid threw one of his thumbs in the air towards her vague direction noticing it too was invisible, and only three fingers on that hand could be seen. Curled into an incomplete fist. Serib looked outside through open doors and the rain sodded on; the remaining gangsters cheerfully dragged the remaining bodies into the grave once intended for Argus.

“What’s a grandclock doing in here?” One of them shouted at the others. “Size of it!”

∞

Panzjrah The Killer soon followed inside, his jacket dripping everywhere as he disassembled his long rifle into smaller pistols for his holsters. A small device on his wrist he paid some attention to. Servants ferried The Dorns away - the two of them engrossed in coded discussion - to change out of their wet clothes. When those same helpers came to assist The Killer, his glare did not allow them close enough, making known his indifference to their breathing and clear disapproval of their invading his tangible perimeter. He looked mechanically around this section of the observatory, at exits and entrances. At bodies still breathing. Measuring potential threats.

“How many d’you count?” Woid started winding and poking fun beside him, knowing there were more points of interest than eight, equally unsure what the exact number was.

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He put his arm cordially around The Killer, vanishing before suffering any retaliation.

“Feel as though I’ve been here before.” Panzjrah grunted, staring particularly at the stairs mirrored into infinity, the corridors of each floor a lattice continual.

∞

Visible through the many-mirrored place, reflecting surfaces bounced light short and long off one another. There Panjzrah saw deeper inside, the arachnids were in microscopic realms erecting bulky many-legged shrines. Some were being unearthed having long already been here, throwing dusty sheets off of them. Forgotten relics.

∞

Serib sat on the floor in awe of the place. Helpers offered her a change of robes and not out of any rudeness but sheer distraction she could only see the things above. The longer she stared the greater its magnification and clarity.

“The unseen ceilings are revealing.” Argus spoke to her, kneeling weakly.

Without needing to move he was looking up there with Serib; there where small stars are made larger by glass it is read, and souls going about their humble or mundane ways are spied. Souls throughout what was once the universe. Laughing and loving, writhing and retching as embroiled in told delight and disgust, where all the pages of love and hate, of entropy and empathy in epic. And where since Once had been The Watch of Argus Ynoptes’ eyes, now peered arachnids loyal in different ways, laying out their threads. Constricting and shaping even the stars.

∞

“Being a shaman, you recognise the spirit of a place, I do not doubt.” Argus held briefly at his massive helm as though in a passing pain.

“You have always been here?” she imagined the place as his home, without a single web all its mirrors his - gleaming even greater.

“There was once a lake where Entropy sat with their sibling - Time. The Divine Twins. A lake of these stars, and from those shores they together watched over all things, older even than I. When Entropy's sibling on a sudden eve could not be found or the other way around, delegated to me was this task, such was my history as a Watcher in aeons before Courtdom raised. The Divine Twins set off in search increased and this place became my seat. From here I long have watched the patterns of all things Nature and Human Nature - with my eyes fathomed and divined fractals with which to warn Courtdom of coming graces and storms."

"Watching history." Serib held back a gasp with her hand shortly after, having spotted something in the ceiling of mirrors.

∞

“You alright?” Woid was there before she could exhale.

“My master…” she pointed.

In those impossibly twisting astral planes of glass there strung, Serib could see her home - the world that Courtdom names Ehl’yiteth, a reclusive hut there at the edge of reed-cliffs sleepy under cloudy nights. She and her master were there in some other lineage, or this same one but further or farther back and forwards, making jerky of far-bark from Spring’s trees. Trees that survived Winter's pass. Their hut around them like a hug. Argus sat defeated and Watching the schemes of spiders he once served, their threads once of Fate though dipped in Lay’d Payn’s ink.

∞

Serib’s neck ached as she too Watched a moment longer The Universe with The Watcher, and saw such spoken things. Into History's reach that is or was always ever longer and longer, following Time's journey that none thought would end. And all History could do now was coil back upon itself, observe itself, in an attempt to untangle the awry.

“How long have you watched over me?” She asked Argus as Woid guarded the moment.

“Long enough in my destined charge and prouder duty to know your fears.” Argus answered barely.

∞

There was in a quadrant of the observatory ceiling an ocean flooding a forest world, an angelic city floating besieged in storm-torn skies. Argus recited:

“’Once-Heir Angels struck by lightning into the deep,

and that lightning too struck the waves,

and the earthen beds of the deep did rage of magma,

and so the deep was boiling, and the angels drowning,

and foul was known The Crown of Dark Serib

as arose Boiled Angels from the deep.

All grey lighter or gray darker,

and one their Chief was Black stone,

having longest burned of All,

having most wings, and extinguished sword a’billow.’

The angels betrayed The Heir, seeing Her heroism in the last age turn to fanaticism in the next." Argus continued. "Her prison kept intact by their deceit and Her own dementia or amnesia. Greed has taken her place to lead the next age, leaving the age of Violence behind. Too long She has lived too long an Heir, once a living spirit and life-giving flame: now a ghost, for Change is a torch that must pass, itself subject. Boiling, the angels hoped to find death or comfort in the ocean bed, finding only the sludge that covered them and now they are the statues that will be seen invading Imirka and larger Courtdom. Screaming always inside. Made possible by your fears, Serib.”

∞

“Will be, unless you stop me.” Serib stood in front of him, knowing and dreading as he had. “It is my lightning that strikes such waves… I am one of Lay’d Payn’s pieces in her scheme.”

“And you are not deterred or undeterred by these things you see?” Argus implored. “Timelessness as it is sprawling, you see there As Observed, as though these things have already happened. They needn’t. There are yet embers visible in the ashes of Hope destroyed.”

Serib tried to help him see:

“I far-saw these things already, and Lay’d Payn found me. When I asked Why. I saw further-than, and there is more than the ending the glass above can see. You’re right, there is hope.”

“Impossible! You misunderstand. What more is there than duality and reality? And if it were more…” he thought into Doubt’s arms. “And if it were! Which it is not! Yet if it were, it would be unjustifiable; not all would believe nor concede. The Atrocity that would be birthed from that…”

“Let me try to show you, the place where you can finally rest.”

“There has always been a place to rest in Duality and it is not upon those shores. If there is Life…”

Woid leaned on Panzjrah for a moment, trying to annoy him. “What do you think they’re on about?”

“I don’t care.” Waiting for The Dorns, The Killer shrugged nothing away as Woid was already gone.

∞

“Let me try to show you…” Serib was shouting, running up the doubly-spiralling stairs, dodging those spiders that were walking down them.

“Oi…” Woid stepped into her rushing shadow.