The Tender. Flames danced above in the mouths of distant Corridoors through the constant staircases. Battered as they were, Shay and Woid had to drag and carry Serib though she had been first to pull them from the all-tapestried floor. She scrambled trying to ‘go back’ to the loom-room. Speaking of things to them she could not know with certainty if Timelessness is without structure; that Argus was there wounded and could yet be saved, though they had seen him fall into stormy peril with Gargarensyr. She had tripped and tranced in shamanic-way all this way to try and end suffering by obeying Lay’d Payn’s plan, finding only more and more of it. Shay and Woid’s devotion to her, Argus’ sacrifice, both kept her from the darkness and the doubt.
Attention a torch had passed from one to another, from old to young.
The observatory becomes a lighthouse.
∞
Woid scouted ahead, bruised and limping into shadows rather than umbra-stepping proudly out of them. He waved for Shay to follow with Serib when all was clear. There was the stink of old-old books as they turned another corner; seeing the creatures that monks become in later lineages, perhaps the ‘Spine-eaters’ this tailed-tome so far has hinted of. They yet were dead, their enormous stretch-mouths clinging web-like to bookcases, or having half-swallowed their opponents lay there as fanatics heaped with heretics. Corroded wallpaper. Torn carpets. Flame's shadows still pranced around every corner welcoming, their source unknown, and Shay’s heart fell when Woid had been spotted peeking his head around such a corner.
“There you are…” the coughing voice sounded, and moments later the weight that had taken her heart was given back.
∞
The Dam’e herself was there suddenly, not stepping forth from burning shadows but ‘vanishing with appear’ it is said, robed in black and fully wrapped with bandages underneath. The fiery light all this while had been from their sword they needed as a walking cane which was wreathed in white flame. A blade ablaze. Walking in all places at once with an umbra-step technique higher even than Woid’s, here coalescing into one. Armed Shadows appeared from their unknown nowheres, all with masks their own similar to Shay's yet lesser. Sharpening and cleaning their blunted or bloody daggers. Looting the dead.
“Dam’e…” Shay bowed as Serib stared, while Woid took the chance to have a good relieving-lean somewhere.
“That is but one of my guises, one of so many sprawled and spread. As grains of sand.” The figure coughed, strange and burnt their voice, speaking through their bandages. "Shay, I know in Fract'ralien you met your future self, saw bandages and black robes in her stores. Serib and Woid found similar props at my desk in the club. All decoys and distractions to throw Lady Fate to follow a different seam. I am no longer needed as The Dam'e. My name is Dominae or Dominic. To some I am Lord, to others I am Brother, to you I am leader of The Shadows, and all Darkness is mine. In the lineage I go to or come from, I am Silence, The Black Angel. For Truth is not one thing in all places. Though all these are not my true name but roles I have had to play.”
Serib’s eyes widened and she stepped forward, though Shay held her back. Being The Dam'e no longer, Dominic’s voice was grave and gravelly - he turned to Woid:
“Gargarensyr got you proper, old friend. My umbra-step styles were of less use to you then I had hoped.”
“These two are safe - that’s enough for me.” He would have fallen completely out of exhaustion were it not for the generously strong wall.
∞
Dominic held out his hand, and the nearest shadows culminated into black clouds.
"Rest on my darkness."
One cloud was long enough for Woid to lay happily down on, so tired he knew no caution, no sense left to question how smoke could be solid though soft as a bed. Still there was space enough for Serib to sit with him on the black cloud and so she did as weary youth. Shay walked beside it, preferring caution always, as the cloudy stretcher followed Dominic and The Shadows into even fierier light down the dead-strewn Corridoor. Shay began to wonder if they had ever left Lay’d Payn’s Speaking Manor at all, if all her life she had ever been anywhere else.
∞
“Serib.” Dominic coughed. “I apologise if it hurt when you reached out to me in kindness, to my blackstone form of Silence - in that illusion I spun from smoky light to keep you and Woid hidden. After your tea and cakes. Though mighty you are only an apprentice far from your master; so we will meet again. When you are even braver.”
The young shaman smiled though tired with Woid beside her, and his lips smacked just thinking about tea and cakes, hearing the soft chatter of cups and cutlery in another sleep down another Corridoor.
"In the loom room..." Serib spoke. "...you were coming from the sky to hurt us. If we had not escaped..."
"I too was trapped in that room." Dominic explained. "I helped you escape from it and me at first, showed you that room full of Courtdom's elites chatting idly over their isles; a safer vision. And long the room's influence gripped me, I fell into old allegiances. And Woid, old friend - you must stay out of my smoke and shadows. Such things are not meant for mortal eyes - tempting as my ultimate technique may be, loyalty ever your guide. Rest now, you leal sort.”
The hidden prince did indeed so, soft on black clouds. Shay was in her own thoughts as Serib thanked Dominic, herself in need of rest. The lighting across her eyes having been fierce now was dim and dimmer into stillness.
“You are welcome, Lightning Crown. Regather yourself as well - let your fists be fingers again. This was a long journey for you to go on being barely even an apprentice. What would your master Gada’il say?”
“He doesn’t know.” Serib had a sly smirk.
“You’re definitely one of us.” Woid mumbled from his sleep, settling soon after into a soft snore. The invisibility of his hand had begun creeping past his wrist, all thread and cell susceptible.
∞
“He doesn’t know, she says.” Dominic repeated, laughing and coughing terribly. “Of course he does, and he is awfully worried about you. His runaway Spring-sworn.”
∞
Shay listened and saw the aeon remain stable as through different doors the troop of Shadows went. Leaving dead spine-eaters far behind them.
“Where are we going, Dam’e?” Shay asked out of habit.
“We are moving from the end of Fate’s tale into the beginning of Lay’d Payn’s Tayl, though where one started and the other begins is difficult to tell; 'internecinely' so. What you have achieved makes possible this starting place: this magma that will become the earthier foundations of what we wish to know. We must play it through to the end, to help Payn see. One can read History but what do they know of it? One can speak with humanity and hear them, but do they know what humanity is without being human?”
"You do not trust her?" Shay followed the shadow of his words, recalling all Amneshay had said or hinted: that perhaps she - her future self - was loyal to neither Lady nor Lay'd. Loyal only to Serib and keeping her away from Fate and Payn, to paths her own:
'this tea is everything. Helps Lay’d Pain remember when we need to, helps Lady Fate forget when we don’t. Internecine is the word, have you heard? The endless duel at last-past showed a stumble, and an upper hand regained… ours.'
"She has lost her divine way." Dominic spoke, his fire-sword cane leading the dark corridoor-path. "It is her way to lose it... for beginnings to come apart and become endings. The way of all things."
∞
"Who are you really... beyond your different masks and names. These smokes and illusions you mention." Shay reached for Dominic's shoulder robed with black, and her leathered hand returned sparkling in the firelight: spotty with black sand.
The white light of his cane caught the fabric, showing the black-weave was bloody as well as sandy, from the wounds beneath. Shay mentioned his bandages, him walking with his wounds:
"Who tried to kill you? And why?"
She turned back to see Woid and Serib had nodded fully off, the young shaman's head resting gentle on the assassin's chest. She heard the sound of tea being sipped, though ghostly and distant. Scribbles made.
∞
"Did you hear that?" Dominae asked. "I was waiting for it, for Amneshay to administer her poisonous medicine that we may speak freely here, hidden in my shadows. Forgive the corridor, endless, burning and heaped with spine-eaters. All details particular I have had to remember, as only this place in unhinged space will do. It will last as long as we need it to. Payn will write all this as she writes all things, though tea-willing she shall forget having written it, forget that she has read our loving disobedience."
"Answer me." Shay almost drew her sword suspecting betrayal, her shoulders and remaining elbow sore from battle.
"I am Time. I was Time - before the attempt on my life that began so much. Before I had 'life' at all as you know it, when I was in the realms of idea a construct. A dimension without dimensions, without consciousness. A Nature that need no name. I remember vaguenesses - the closest word you would use is 'swimming'. My tail was cut from me, a harpoon through my chest and I bled throughout all things, over everywhere I had ever been and had yet to go. Eternity barely takes my place. Behold these my wounds..."
"Then your blood is all this Timelessness..." Shay whispered through her mask as to not wake Serib or Woid, accepting both her family there resting.
"It is. To you it is so simple a thing, though long it has taken me to learn human speech. I have fled here surviving, integrating hidden in the three remaining dimensions that are themselves in a state I have never known. I am Time, Lady Payn is Entropy; my sibling, whom I believe orchestrated my murder."
"Attempted." Shay nodded, believing.
"These are not the exact words, you must understand - as I have searched and there are no suitable words. Though at this level of things, these are the words we have. It has become difficult to tell Human Nature apart from Nature; with me and my sister walking consciously among you, when 'before' we did not. We should not be here, we must return home."
It seemed to Shay that Time was exploring words, coughing and pausing between them. Being less accustomed to their use.
"Then just-must as my future self Amneshay plots to keep Serib safe from Lady and Lay'd, you are-far allied with us, against your sister?" Shay began charting new steps and contingencies.
∞
Time, wrapped in bandages robed in black, was a while silent. Finding again more suitable words:
"I do this not in malice, just as the attempt on my life was not in malice. Strange as that may sound. I scheme with Love foremost, with Reason just enough, having learned from shamans such as Serib how humanity keeps these two aligned. Light and Shadow inseparable - that is what my sister tried to do, to separate. To leave linearity and arrive in Eternity. It is all new to me, as I try to bring my sister home to our star-lake she has left on her quest. That we Time and Entropy may return to our Always. And you, Humanity, to your impermanence."
"Then there are no shores... where there is no death." Shay's legs walked the endless corridors of smoke and flame automatically, a Shadow with a contract to fulfil, her heart returning to its heaviest place.
"That is what my sister promises, and there were such shores in a variation of her tayl, though finite - as are most things. Shores where my sister's name was Empathy. Entropy unravelled them as well."
"How can we stop this? How can I help them..." Shay gazed back to her family in their slumber.
She heard the sounds of sands rushing as Time spoke, of waves hushing:
"I have seen you, I have been told, that you are a soul of grief. Much as my sister is... having comprehended all the grief of the universe she set out to end Time. Not at first... though look where we have arrived. If we all do not turn to face our fears, Serib will follow her mother's path of fear and grief. This is the inky desire of Payn, and Fate's design. The Eternity they seek is lost without. My sister found you because your heart was similar to hers... you signed her contract because the old age of your parents changed you; was already changing you. You could not find your sister, wherever it was your parents had sent her, away. After, love for you was the same as fear. Though as I have heard Serib say out in the ripples of Time and Timelessness... I think this is a truth you must learn for yourself. How can we help? From one sibling to another I say to you, we must help our sisters' go their own way, and learn for themselves. The more you and I fight them, the more we fulfill their fears. All we can ever control is ourselves, all other belief is pathology. This age is ending and Bravery is Heir of the age to come, though to be brave is to know loneliness. To know Silence. To remember what we have forgotten and save what need never fall."
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Time's smoky illusion faded or failed and so the old corridors swayed and trembled; scorched wood crumbled down landslide and ashen into metal steps malformed at first, then to reveal a staircase vast in spiral over a burning landscape of volcanic hisses, a chasm without skies. Gems never touched and only seen were glittering, giving the earthen roof its stars. The stairs led down into climbing heat. The phrase played on Shay's discomforts:
'...from one sibling to another...'
∞
Dominic settled back into lordly character:
“Your wounds will be seen to by our greatest Tender, and The Lay’d wishes to see you, when you are well.”
“I am well-swell now - would you take us to her, Dam’e - Dominic?” Shay interrupted and corrected herself.
“If you prefer, Dominae is a suitable name between.”
“Well-swell? Speak for yourself.” Woid groaned at Shay with a stretch, laying bruised over clouds with Serib still much asleep.
“Settle your here-there heart, Amneshay.” Dominic encouraged her. "When Payn is ready, she will write it so."
His enflamed sword a walking stick, Dominic lead our three on and down the metal steps, their twisted spines falling into and growing out of glowing air.
∞
Serib awoke sweating in the heat, still resting with Woid atop strange-dark clouds, a bed of sorts drifting along. Shay could feel her mask filling with her hot breath as they clanked down the metal stairs that were bridging two stories together, the lands of lava breathing up their rage below. She turned back and the observatories of Argus were embedded in skyless mountains above, turning no more in their orbits, appearing as buried planets may - being excavated from the rock. Gravity strange as the excavators were not falling despite standing all upside. She supposed herself would seem the same to them. She turned back again to the stairs and could through the subterranean fumes comprehend a human settlement ahead, where carbonized columns of old that could be burned no more were being reclaimned from the burning deep. Crane-like arms of industry.
“Any wagering going on?” Woid tried to nudge at Dominic having had a good nap.
“I know a place that will suit you in Haven-upon-Hadaeon below.” The lord coughed.
‘Haven’ being the town, upon ‘Hadaeon’ the world.
'Upon' as this was not always a buried ruin, but a floating city grand.
And if you believe the stories, it will be again.
∞
There were other stairs folding down from the globed observatories moving with mirrored-wanderers their own, the same cases perhaps that held the observatories together in chapters already gone. Roots and roads. Similar paths led in from the wastes beyond towards Haven, covered in souls with the huddled and fragile look of refugees, in droves arriving or returning from the fiery darkness, displaced it could be said - by the murder of Time. Shay, Woid and Serib were led to a thankfully cooler tent after the torn stairs, on the outskirts of Haven-town where multiple souls populated single beds, needles assisting with their hydration and exhaustion from the torrid ‘scape out there.
∞
Trained tenders went this and that way with clear efficiency, dealing expertly with the endless load of souls. Some were monks of Gargarensyr’s order, though perhaps converted, yet Shay did not watch them with any less caution, nor they her. Other authorities were meeting the healed, and further behind this procedural sequence towered the open gates of such Haven. Above them it read in steel frames ‘Orphan-Age’ and other words long parched away, ending with: ‘abandon all despair’.
The tent was lit by the bubbling, flowing light of the magma-world beyond Haven’s borders.
“Brother, you have returned!” a tall woman called over that Shay recognised, her frame that of a warrior, with grey hair and eyes, though a tender’s garb or apron she wore under a Grey hood and cloak.
The woman threw a hug over Dominic. As she did so, Shay realised she was an angel, her wings leathery and bat-like, one being far larger than the other.
“You will not leave my sight again.” She was calm, and all other tenders looked to her as she spoke, that all hope was hers, and in her hope they found their own.
Not the words she said that had shocked them, not at all - but as one might see a legend and with a paused hush, gaze. Shay thought of spiders protecting eggs, not wishing them ever to hatch. To stay safe and remain in Never. She thought of Serib and looked to her, weary young thing sitting by Woid’s beaten side.
∞
There appeared to be some colouring or ticket system, Shay quickly gathered, and this tall Grey tender had more responsibility, wards and patients than any other. And she now had been given or took upon herself two more.
“This way, here - gently.” She ordered softly. The Shadows that had escorted them so far from Lay'd Payn's speaking-manor vanished into other tasks.
Shay stayed back with Lord Dominic while Woid and Serib had a bed to themselves, Woid lain and Serib sitting.
“That is Lillian Grey. You have seen her statue before.” Dominic shared quietly, fighting off a cough. “This is a most deep place of the prison that was once a palace. Repurposed by a sailor-Captain searching for Peace it is said, to be a place for all orphans. Lillian Grey the first orphan of all.”
“The Great Freedom?” Shay asked, recalling that statue Gargarensyr had destroyed on The Gathered Steps.
“I would not say this is quite where Heir story begins and where yours ends, but your actions, Serib’s and Woid’s will later mean even more. Adventure calls always to Lillian. She is the spirit of chance, chaos and change in all human hearts; with your schemes succeeding, the call shall too loudly beckon. Fate has long kept her here, in a yet deeper part of the prison than this. The buried stream is rising.”
“We are still in the prison?” Shay had already suspected.
“Always… that is where you and I live now, Shay - us who are loyal to Payn. All that is to come depends on the love we can lead forth with.” His words and hers skirted the edge of what could be spoken freely outside of his illusions.
I wonder what I mean, when I write that?
∞
Metallurgists stomped outside in machines reclaiming more land back from the new magma, cooling the flow with unknown methods. Steam-made storms were rising around as hot and cold clashed.
“Lord… I must ask of you.” Shay leaned in to hide her words, her doubts best hidden from her mind lest Lay'd Payn hear them, and despite it all she spoke aloud: “Is it true - the shores beyond good and evil? With Amneshay I remembered being a girl... no taller than Serib, and Lay'd Payn showed me those shores. Though Fate stitched me to forget it I know it - I have served ever since. Gargarensyr's words about truth not being enough... the walk I shared with him... can there ever be a place so far away from Duality? Where I do not need to fear… decline and decay. In Timeless Eternity, where Serib does not need to be so full of fear...”
“I know it is difficult to imagine as a Shadow. As a sister no less.” Dominic robed in black held up his flaming sword, the flames white as stars:
“Being Lord of both Light and Shadow makes it no easier to imagine an ‘unplace’ as Lay’d Payn calls it, an unplace of only-light. Of death and darkness left behind. It is perhaps more difficult to imagine, given my vantage. It is not a place for me.” He lowered and leaned again on his burning cane. “What is Beyond is somewhere Between, and so - Grey it is that can lead us there. Through to the end, and then she shall see. The corner we have written ourselves into.”
While listening Shay realised beyond her control she no longer believed in Lay'd Payn's dreams. So long she had turned heart and hope away from her family, fighting for a place unreal - for them. And now at last she turned to them as they were. Finite, born to die, born to joy and suffering between. She no longer believed in what could not be, yet happily she watched this Lillian Grey tending Serib and Woid - helping them laugh again after such ordeals. That place she had been seeking where she and Serib need not fear, it was not in Timeless Eternity but in Reality with Time. 'The bleak truth' we all know, the human fable we all share.
"From one sibling to another..." Dominic bid farewell in this fashion vanishing from Shay's perception, busy as lords should be - and how long did it seem or not at all - when Woid leaned grinning by her side:
“I guess we did it.”
∞
“We did. Couldn’t have known when we started - just some tea seeds.”
Woid let out a “Hmm?” but Shay was soon already sharing with him her experience with her older Amneshay, of slipping the medicine-poison-tea to Fate.
“That’s how you got back so quickly after Gargarensyr belted you! Thought you were just tough as always.”
She smiled under her mask.
“I see you - smiling under there like that. It’s true.”
∞
Shay said to him, uncaring that Lay'd Payn would hear her doubts: “I just wonder how much of all this is our choice, how caught or trapped we are in Lay’d Payn’s plans. Fate by another name.”
She could smell the moist, spored tunnels under Imirka again, remembering all the mushroom-food. She stared down at her prosthetic arm; the only limb that was not sweating. What end were Serib and Woid destined for, she thought - she sighed as he had never known her to before. Woid paused, unsure until:
“I know we’ve had this chat before, but is it all so awful? How things are - living and getting old. Temporary. Maybe there’s a way back to somehow simpler? A weird thing to say in Timelessness, but, maybe it's not too late?”
Shay had not the words to reject this, and her silence to Woid spoke for her. Serib was still with Lillian, laughing away. She was doing something shamanic with stones or pebbles that moved as she willed them into balanced structures, though it gave her a headache doing so. Other, much smaller children came to watch.
"If there was a way back, would you follow me?" Shay asked Woid, vulnerable as friendship.
"Against Lay'd Payn and whoever else?" He paused comically, similarly exposed. "What chance have they got against us three?"
All ache and sore was soothed, knowing she would not be alone, that she had never been:
“I wonder if we can fix that for you. I told you my recipe needs greater care…” Shay referred to his evermore invisible hand.
For once, her loyal companion did not have a quick remark to share in reply.
∞
“Listen…” Woid muttered to Shay having reappeared with new clothes, his collar wide and thicker sleeves he was wiping his brow on.
“Thank you for always being with me.” Shay interrupted him.
He stumbled in voice and footing. “How did you know?”
Shay remembered being with Amneshay in her woven Frac'tralien, and the empty chair that was snoring, on two legs leaning against the laboratory wall. She looked at his invisible hand, affecting now his lower shirt sleeve, a thin invisible seam to his elbow.
“All my props are just right…” Woid checked himself, his fake teeth in particular.
“I’ve always known. Who else could you be.”
Woid wished he would not show his tears but there they were. This medical tent and infirmary a place of such things, as he looked around. A place of souls being honest at last by deathbeds. Why not be honest before then? He thought of all his letters he had saved, that she had never read.
“Will you take them out?” She pointed at the hidden prince's mouth. “Your real teeth are you.”
∞
The once-Prince reached into his gums and discarded his fake chewers, showing there teeth less flashy and one crooked tooth studded with a gem - a somehow kinder smile with all pretense apart. His eyebrows he removed-revealing, his cheeks were higher and jaw smaller, and all these changing parts he too threw away. And there he was, flattened by Shay’s words as she said:
“I am tired of pretending I do not care, of needling-numbing it all away. The Truth calls out that my heart is a deep-keep place my parents helped me build. And all I want is all I want, and maybe now I can have that, if I kill-kill and poison, serve and fulfil the contract I signed in a younger life-away, in a Keep above castles over swamps, when my mother was ill. When I first asked Why and Lay'd Payn found me, thinking she had recruited a friend. Thank you for always being with me.” She said again.
“You’re stuck with me.” He winked.
They hugged. Surrounded by dying souls under sweltering skies in a place where many others were doing the same. This place of imprisoned pilgrimage.
"Do you remember who she is?" Woid asked Shay, throwing Serib a glance.
"We're family." Shay stated, wondering if Woid had always known and had been waiting for her to come back from her needles.
"Go on, do you remember? Can you say it?"
Eternity for all its expanse seemed short, as Shay at last knew, and no grief-spent lightness as this had she ever known:
"She's my sister. I could never find her and she has found me."
Though still a mystery followed her: why had the two sisters ever been separated? One a shadow's path and the other into shamanism?
∞
Serib eventually with a cheery bounce in her steps walked over with Lillian, whom towered-grey over all of them.
“Thank you for cheering up Konisoki, Serib.” The tender smiled gratefully, and all in her glowing smile saw hope; under her superior height felt protected and in her words all were wrapped; kept from horror and from suffering.
Shay wondered who that was and there was a bed somewhere behind Lillian, the tent-wall open, allowing the tiny child known as Konisoki in that bed to stare at the burning world. Hair black, long and everywhere. They were shivering, and all the bandaging-blankets in the world were theirs, yet the wounds on their neck were visible: the child had been hanged and still yet lived. What crime could theirs have been?
“Who would do this to innocence?" Lillian's countenance fell darker. "We must remember why we are here, why the gates of Haven and Orphan-age are open, for the swollen and the broken forlorn with no place to come from and nowhere else to go. Have we met before?” she reached out to Shay, passing her large angelic hand over the bruises her leathers covered, looking also at the joint between what remained of her arm and the prosthetic clinging there.
Shay breathed and felt a different, more perfect temperature when held by this young yet Grey force - not so simple as cold battling heat away. A sense she could not describe to me, even after for my pages.
“Perhaps not.” Lillian let go, and with it returned the parched waves of Haven's magma. “If you head this way to the gates, tell them I have seen to you! You will be most welcome in my Brother’s employ. We need a dark sort, now - to keep the darkest away. Look at what they are capable of.”
Lillian returned to Konisoki, looking again at their neck. Dabbing with gauze-cloth. The child smiled at her and that was the last our three saw. They left the tent doing as told, intending to head for the gates named ‘Orphan-Age’ when flickering ages struck as pages turned and all was changed around them.