Hubris - 25. No Place to Hide

“Come to the cave tomorrow night if you're feeling better. Let me show you how beautiful I think you are.”

The practitioner opened his eyes to the sound of a familiar voice. A voice he hadn't heard in almost a year. A voice he thought he'd never hear again. “Bennett,” he breathed. He couldn't believe what he was seeing…it had to be a dream or a trick of the mind.

Bennett looked down at him, dressed in a worn battlefield uniform. A gold diamond was emblazoned on the front of his blue coat. He held a musket with a bayonet attached to the muzzle. His face was covered with dark streaks of gunpowder. The older boy smiled at him, a smile that resembled the one he’d worn on the day he’d pulled Crowe out of the basement. “Is something wrong?” His smile fell, downturning into a frown of concern.

“You're not supposed to be here,” the practitioner whispered.

Bennett winced as if the sorcerer had struck him. “Why would you say something like that? Why wouldn't I be here?”

“Because you're supposed to be dead in a ditch, you're guts leaking out…” Crowe swallowed, wincing. The inside of his throat felt like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together.

“You don’t mean to tell me you honestly believed that old fool, did you?” Bennett’s eyes were wide, pleading. He was thinner than Crowe had ever seen him before…malnourished. Pale. Sickly. Not the Bennett he’d always known. Like his father, Jeb, Bennett had taken a lot of pride in his physical prowess. That’s because this isn’t Bennett. This is a trick from the necromancers.

Crowe rose to his feet. He glared at the thing who wore Bennett’s face. “I know what you are, foul creature!” he spat. He wrenched his necklace from around his neck and thrust it towards Bennett. “If you think your mind games are going to work on me, think again…”

Bennett’s lips spread in a grin. A grin that widened until it bisected his face. A grin no human being was capable of. Eyes black as night zeroed in on the trinket dangling from Crowe’s hand. It took a step back but no more. “Doubt clouds your mind. You’re exhausted. Torchcoats comb the lands, enslaving any practitioner they find. But if they catch you and your beast lover, they won’t send you to build the railroad or to the Black Diamond. They’ll burn you at the stake at best or quarter you at worst. I’m going to have fun destroying your mind from the inside out.”

“I said back away from me, foul spirit!” Crowe brandished the Lion-Headed Serpent at Bennett’s face again. “Go back to the Black City where you came from. Go back to kneeling at the feet of your master where you belong! As long as I stand in the light of Monad, your corrupt fingers cannot touch me!”

“We’ll just see about that,” the spirit said, still grinning.

It dissolved before his, shrinking into a black cloud of smoke. The practitioner caught the hint of reptilian wings before the smoke streaked away, smashing through the wall of the stable in a shower of splintered wood and hay.

An explosion sounded outside the stable, rocking the walls. Crowe screamed. “Barghast!” he cried. He ran out of the stall, searching frantically for the lycan, but Barghast was nowhere to be seen. What? That’s not possible! He wouldn’t have left without saying anything first.

The stable was changing around him: walls shifting, becoming porous, turning into wreaths of smoke until he knew not where he stood. He whirled around, searching for something familiar in every direction. He was completely and utterly alone. The sky and the horizon in every corner was a smoky purple. No wait, movement to the East.

A single figure walking away from him, looking at him over his shoulder. Beckoning him to follow. He recognized the flash of blonde hair, the familiar teasing grin that hid more than it revealed. Bennett!

Crowe burst into a sprint.

Be it a dream or a trick of the mind cast by the spirit, Crowe had no intention of remaining lost in this alien place. He would get back to Barghast no matter what it took and they would move on. “Get back here!” he shouted.

Trees loomed out of the smoke. The ground beneath his feet turned into a snow-covered fielded surrounded by pine trees. The sky turned from violet to a wintery, uncaring gray. He slipped over half-melted puddles of snow and the blood of practitioners and torchcoats alike, the soil beneath his feet turned to mud. A cannon smacked into the ground on his left. The detonation tore a furrow into the earth, pelting him with smoking clots of dirt that seared his skin. This isn’t just a dream! he thought. It feels too real to be a dream!

That meant this was a curse placed upon him by the necromancers. Ignoring the cramp of fear that tightened in his belly, he pushed on, half crawling half running after the entity that had stolen Bennett’s shape. All around him men screamed, men died. In one glance he saw the gold diamond against blue backdrops, marking those who fought for the practitioners; in the other, the silver torchcoats of Pope Drajen’s side. It occurred to him this was the only difference. In their blood was the same color. Wasn’t it Petras who had always told him it took the blood of men to keep the warmachine running?

He skidded to a stop. He’d almost fallen into a large trench that had been dug in the center of the field. Hundreds of bodies…practitioners and torchcoats alike filled it almost to the top. At the top, lying directly in the middle, looking up at the practitioner with accusing eyes, was Bennett. His body convulsed with the final shutters of life. His hands were placed over his belly to staunch the bleeding but Crowe could see his guts leaking through his fingers. In the end Petras had been right; he would die from the shrapnel in his gut. In the end Petras was always right.

“I’m here because of you,” Bennet said, spraying blood on the front of his uniform. “I’m where you should be…”

“No, you’re here because of your own choices.” The doubt in his voice reflected the panic that threatened to smother the practitioner from the inside. Don’t let this spirit get into your head. It is manipulative. It will use your greatest fears and weaknesses against you. Remain steadfast. “Petras told you…I told you what would happen if you went on that last day, on the porch. I told you that if you were to go to war you would die…”

Something wet, something red dropped on his forehead with a watery plop. Blood. It fell all around him, marking the snow in crimson. He blinked. Gone was the field. Gone was the ditch full of dead soldiers. Gone was Bennett. He stood in the center of the courtyard, facing the church. The church of the Theocracy. The torch fountain was directly in front of him. He looked down at his hands, his body. He was completely naked without a stitch of clothing on.

He whirled around to face the stable. The doors hung wide open from where he’d gotten up and left. The spirit had tricked him into stepping out into the open, exposing himself. He opened his mouth to scream Barghast’s name, a creaky old voice said, “If you so much as utter a squeak, I’m going to put two holes the size of gold crowns in you.” This was followed by the click of a weapon being cocked.

Crowe raised his hands above his head in surrender. Slowly he turned, his heart pounding in his throat, remembering the hunched shadow he’d glimpsed in the window of the church.

The gnarled cleric stood a yard away, gripping a shotgun with clawed hands twisted through with arthritis and liverspots. Eyes narrowed down to slits glared at him with the righteousness only seen in the overly pious. “I’ve alerted the Theocracy via the telegraph machine I keep for purposes just like this. They’re on their way.” He inched closer to Crowe as he spoke. He drew the double barrel shotgun back before slamming the handle into the bridge of the practitioner’s nose.

Stars exploded behind his eyes, knocking him down on his ass. Blood rain came up to his hips. More blood spouted from his nose, soaking his chin, his chest, fresh over the new. His face was on fire. His nose was a throbbing, screaming nerve. He raised a finger to the bridge of his nose. It was bent at an awkward angle. The old bastard broke my nose…

No sooner had this thought passed through his mind with shock, Father Monroe pressed the double barrel to his forehead. “On your feet, practitioner scum! We’re waiting in the church until the Theocracy gets here. And I’m going to give Elise both sides of my hand…foolish girl…”

The practitioner knew all he needed to do was scream the lycan’s name and Barghast would come from him. But no matter his skill as a sorcerer, he was not faster than two speeding bullets. The priest is old. Clearly senile. The moment he falters…Crowe didn’t want to think about what he would have to do. He didn’t want to harm the old man who stood under the same accursed sky as he.

You have little choice! Petras’ voice snapped in his head. You know what needs to be done. Sometimes you have to make difficult decisions…

“I’m sorry,” Crowe wheezed. “I can’t let you do that. BARGHAST!”

No sooner than he’d screamed the Okanavian’s name, the double barrel shotgun bucked in Father Monroe’s hand with an explosion. Crowe screamed again, expecting to feel the passing heat of death. Fortunately it seemed the Iteration had other plans for him: the shells went wide, slamming into the stable door. Crowe straightened just in time to see Father Monroe shutter. The wind whipped brutally at his face making it a strain to tell what he was saying. It took him a moment to register the dark, slender shape that towered over the Elysian priest from behind. He couldn’t understand why the old man was bowed inward like that until he saw the blade pressing in through his chest from his back. His eyes climbed past Father Monroes quivering face to the hollowed face of the revenant holding the old priest up so that his slippered feet dangled uselessly above the ground.

Behind them a thin cackle broke over the crash of thunder. He recognized that sound and knew he would never forget it. A worm of dread wriggled in his gut.

The necromancers had found them.

The female…her name was Tara…how do I know that?...sauntered alongside the older necromancer. Pa. Fear made his legs tremble and his legs knock together. He bolstered his courage, forcing himself to straighten to his full height. If Barghast and I are going to survive this encounter, I will have to be smart. It will take everything I have.

Father Monroe’s limp body slipped off the blade with a wet sliding sound. He landed on his chest, his face submerged in blood.

A white flash and the spicy stench of gunpowder sparked from the corner of the practitioner’s vision. Barghast stood in the rain, rocking back with the shot from his musket. Already he was moving for another shot, his movements nimble and fluid. He had the experience of someone who knew his way around a bathroom, an experience that was more than just intuition born of lycan instinct. The first shot had Pa and Tara ducking out of the way. Barghast fired a second shot, driving them behind the fountain.

The hairs on the back of the sorcerer’s neck stood on end. A cold chill slithered down his spine. He turned just in time to see the curved blade of a hook flash towards his face. He fell back with a cry, ducking just in time to save his face from being split open like a seam. Another revenant lurched towards him, its movements far quicker than what it should have been capable of given the state of its body. A voice in the back of the practitioner’s mind wondered why Pope Drajen feared practitioners so much when it was Hamon’s servants who possessed the power to raise the dead.

Already the undead creature lurched towards him, raising the hook above its head. Crowe backed away, pulling his fear into his hands. A wall of flame so hot it made the air sizzle shot from his hands, engulfing the revenant. Still it advanced towards him, undeterred by the scorching inferno. Like the bear creature from Timberford, a voice in the back of his mind told him the revenant would not be easy to kill and there was more than one of them.

“Crowe!” Barghast started across the courtyard, eyes flashing under the night sky. Before the lycan could reach him, Tara rose up from behind the fountain. She shouted something with a wave of her hand.

The flap of wings and the inhuman screech of a reptilian creature was the only warning Crowe was given; just as his fingers were about to graze the Okanavian’s, a black cloud enclosed the sorcerer, blocking him from all sides. Knowing what to expect he tried to back away, but already he felt sharp claws slicing into his cheek hard enough to draw blood.

Not this again.

He pulled all his fury and fear into himself. When he opened his eyes they smoldered white with mana. He spread his arms out, releasing a wall of kinetic energy that rippled in all directions. The cyclone died with a fatalistic screech. He felt the death of the creature in his gut…such entities were only given shape, only given life by the master who summoned them into being, therefore, while effective in breaking down the minds of the summoner’s adversaries, were weak.

No sooner had the wall of black smoke cleared, Barghast’s paw closed around his. He yanked the practitioner to him before steering him in the direction of the stables. The sorcerer caught the flash of his claws slicing through the air. A glance over his shoulder showed the burning revenant’s head roll off its shoulders into the rising puddle of blood rain. Its body fell heavily to the ground.

The second revenant - the one who had killed Father Monroe - pursued them with the necromancers loping after it. Disoriented from the pain of his broken nose and eyes raw and puffy from exhaustion, Crowe yanked the doors of the stables shut. He slid the steel bar through the handles grafted into the door (a precaution he should have taken the moment Elise, the young nun who had so graciously helped the Okanavian and the practitioner in their hour of need, had left the building). He prayed it would buy them a few seconds. Long enough to grab Mammoth and escape through the back.

Crowe turned to Barghast. Quickly, he held out his hand, closing his splayed fingers before raising it to place his thumb on his right temple. He bent and unbent his fingers three times. “Horse,” he said. “Grab horse.”

The lycan cocked his head in confusion. His eyes shot from the practitioner to the stable doors. The door buckled and splintered as the remaining two revenants began chopping their way through with their crude weapons. Their relentless blows and inexhaustible stamina would make it an easy task to get inside.

“Run all you want, herald,” Tara’s voice sang mockingly through the driving rain and the crash of thunder. “It won’t matter. You will make it to the old fleshbags in the North…not this time.”

“Give it up, practitioner,” croaked the voice of the older necromancer. “Hamon will not be defeated a third time.”

The sorcerer faltered where he stood. The very sound of their voices, their words, stirred something in him…the echo of memories from another life, perhaps. He shook the thought from his head, grabbing hold of the Lion Headed Serpent around his neck. It’s nothing more than a distraction to keep me pinned here, he told himself. I won’t give up now.

Barghast still hadn’t moved. He faced the stable doors, aiming the rifle. His eyes were wide, his tail was tucked in between his legs.

“Barghast!” Crowe screamed. “Get the horse! NOW!”

He felt an instant stab of guilt when the lycan straightened up with a whine, tucking his tail between his legs. I’ll apologize for it later, the practitioner told himself. Now was not the time to be weak. He grabbed the aether branch from the stall where’d he’d been sitting just moments ago…Only it was no longer merely a branch. He’d whittled it down to a shape of his own making, until it very much resembled his old staff. Runes burst into light at his touch. He had no memory of cutting the runes and sigils into the wood, but it felt as familiar to him as how own limbs. He pushed his fear, his exhaustion, his determination to survive - all of it - into the staff. Sparks shot half-heartedly from the staff before dying with a weak fizzing sound.

It wasn’t finished. There was a small patch of the branch still uncovered. If he’d had a few more minutes, the staff would be done and he wouldn’t feel so defenseless. So naked.

I’m tired of running. I want to fight. Even if it means I lose in the end…Just so I don’t have to run anymore.

It was not the way of the Cycle, this much before. Even now he felt an invisible cord tugging at him, urging him to make haste to the North. He had no choice but to run and hope to live to fight another day.

“Twin o’rre!” Sitting atop Mammoth’s saddle, Barghast reached down.

More and more holes appeared in the wall. Through the holes Crowe could see the revenants…the endless black pits where their eyes should be. What kind of entity was cruel enough to create such beings? Had they ever been human or was this the way they’d always been? I won’t find out tonight. He grabbed Barghast’s paw, letting the lycan pull him up. The moment his rump touched the saddle, the Okanavian’s broad arms closed around him like silver bands and he was steering the horse around to the doors opposite them.

Just as the doors at their back burst open, mana shot forth from Crowe's outstretched palm. The wall burst apart, throwing rusty tools and bales of hay in every direction. Mammoth raced forward at a full gallop. Each jolt sent made Crowe's broken nose burn freshly anew. Each breath he took sounded like a labored hiss. Hot tears burned his cheek.

They charged through wreaths of smoke and billowing flame. He could hear Tara scream behind him, her voice raucous and full of impotent rage. He looked over his shoulder just in time to see a revenant step out of the gloom. The frightened scream of the horses they were leaving behind turned Crowe's blood to ice. We can't save everyone. Father Monroe's corpse was proof of this. And what of Elise, the nun who had risked life and limb to save them?

What would become of her?

It's too late to do anything about it now.

The stable and the church were shrinking in the distance. The storm had not lessened in the time Barghast and he had spent huddled under its roof but raged on in defiance of their escape. Hateful gales of wind whipped past them, making the surrounding trees groan and shake. If not for the lycan's unbreakable embrace, the storm would have sent the sorcerer flying from his saddle.

Did he dare allow himself to breathe a sigh of relief? They were putting distance between themselves and the servants of Hamon, but the necromancers had found them and Crowe knew in his gut they would find them again? It was only a matter of time.

                     …

Tara watched the herald and his beast companion shrink until she could no longer see them in between the trees. She wanted to scream. She wanted to throw herself to the ground and beat the earth until she bled from her knuckles. They'd been close. So close. Another few seconds and they would have had them.

The two remaining revenants stalked in the herald's direction, in no hurry to get to where they were going. Too mindless to understand the importance of their task. She couldn't take her fury out on them. She needed something living. Something that felt emotion. Something that could suffer. Her attention turned back to the church. Yellow light glowed in the window. Someone was still home.

“Do you see, Tara?” Pa croaked. He stood a yard away, watching the revenants drift further and further from view. “This herald is different…”

Was it just her imagination or did she hear excitement in his voice? She ground her teeth together and forced herself to remain calm. As calm as someone like Tara could be. “He’s just lucky.”

“No.” Pa shook his head disapprovingly the way a tutor would at his student. “The past two herald's would have stayed. They would have fought to the death. This one…escaped.”

“Because he's a coward!” the younger of the two necromancers snapped acerbically. “I’d enjoy feasting on his balls the same way I did on that torchcoat’s if I thought he had any.”

“You’re missing the point.” Pa whirled around to face her. The impatience he felt towards her was visible in the tense line of his shoulders. “Things are not as they should be. Things have changed.”

It was not unlike them to get into squabbles. They’d been lovers since the early days of the Second Iteration and friends even longer. Something about this felt different. This wasn’t the occasional lover’s spat. There was more than a tinge of resentment in his voice and it stung Tara to the core. It pained her…pained her in a way she hadn’t felt since she was a young girl. Long before she’d sold her soul to Hamon for protection and power. It made her want to bare her teeth at Pa, something she’d never dare do in the almost-three Iterations they’d known each other. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I don’t like it. Not one bit. You haven’t been acting like yourself. Where is the man who would slaughter innocents without hesitation? Without a second thought?” When he did not respond she shouted, “Answer me, damn you!” She wanted to strike him. Anything to get rid of this feeling of fear that fluttered around inside her gut like a school of black butterflies.

“It’s been a long three Iterations,” was all Pa said, walking back towards the church.

She threw her hands up in the air. “That’s all you’re going to give me.”

“That’s all I have to give.”

Tara followed him, muttering under her breath. She stopped when she saw a flash of movement coming from the top window of the church. Someone’s still home. Maybe there’s more fun tonight to be had. The revenants would continue to hunt the herald. Despite their lack of intelligence they didn’t need to stop to eat or sleep or shit; it was one of the things that made them such efficient predators.

She sniffed the air, detecting something sweet through the blood rain. The smell of honey. The smell of innocence. The smell of a virgin. She grinned to herself. Nothing tastes better than the flesh of a virgin. Quickening her step to catch up with Pa, she said, “I think I know just the thing to cheer you up.” She kicked the unmoving corpse of the Elysian priest with a satisfied grunt.

She led the way into the church, kicking open the double doors with a satisfied grunt. With a flick of her hand, strands of shadow dispersed from her, swinging through the air, smashing windows and ripping framed paintings off the walls and overturning pews. She laughed and sang, skipping to the beat of her own chaos. At the altar she raised the skirt of her robes, squatting before the statue of Elysia. The Good Mother stared benevolently ahead, holding her torch proudly in her hand. “I shall worship no other master the way I worship you, my lord Hamon,” she whispered reverently, her piss pooling on the floor. “I piss in the temple of the Elysian whore so that I might bring honor to your name…”

Her flesh did not burst into flames. Lightning did not smash through the ceiling to strike her for her act of sacrilege.

Once she was done emptying her bladder, Tara and Pa stalked up the stairs to the second floor. They found the young nun huddled underneath the bed in the room at the end of the corridor. She screamed when Tara lowered herself to the carpet to grin at her. “Hello, my sweet.” The younger necromancer grinned, revealing to the young nun what the night had in store for her. “I could smell you from all the way outside.”

The girl was a tiny slip of a thing, easy to grab by the back of her pinned up hair and pull her out from underneath the bed kicking and screaming. Tara lifted her off her feet one-handed. She tossed her carelessly on the bed.

The girl’s sobs racked her shoulders. Tara could see by the plumpness of her breasts and the roundness of her face that she was hardly little more than a child. Too young to give her life to the Elysian whore, a commitment she would pay for dearly. “Please,” she gasped. “Please…” She shook so hard it seemed to be all she was capable of saying.

Tara backhanded her, throwing the girl back against the mattress. “You poor, poor thing,” Tara crooned sympathetically. “You thought by giving your life to Elysia, the whore of all whores, she would give you clemency. If she truly cared she would save you. But she doesn’t.” She looked up at Pa. “Do you want the top half or the bottom half?”

“Top,” Pa said. His eyes were icy pinpoints of pale light. He grabbed the girl’s arms, yanking them above her head with one long-fingered hand; he used the other to yank her head back by her hair.

Tara turned her head away in an attempt to hide an exhale of relief. There was the old Pa she’d always known. The girl kicked and screamed - screamed for Elysia to shine the light of her torch on her - to no avail. Her vain efforts were no match for the combined strength of the necromancers. They shredded her clothes with their bare hands until she was completely naked.

“T’is a shame you are to be our meal for the evening,” Pa said not unkindly. “You almost look too good to eat.”

Tara had no such moral compunctions. She held her palm up, fingers outstretched, before snapping them closed into a fist. The girl’s limbs went limp, her jaw clacking shut mid scream. “That should hold her.” Without further ado, she spread the girl’s legs open. Tara’s eyes glimmered with excitement. “Too good of a meal to eat, indeed. I will take great pleasure in dining on your flesh.”

The girl moaned but made no other sound. The falling of tears down her cheek made her olive-toned skin shine.

Kneeling on the ground before the four poster bed, Tara leaned forward, pressing her lips to the silky folds of the nun’s sex. The necromancer thought it would be a nice twist to break the girl’s abstinence before eating her…a little pleasure before death. I can be nice when I want to be. Pa also leaned forward until his robes fell across the girl. He kissed her forehead, kissed her on the lips, trailing his tongue all the way down her throat until he reached the hardened nubs of her breasts; his kisses were gentle, almost tender. Tara longed for the days when he used to kiss her like that.

When the girl shuddered, her breath catching in unmistakable pleasure, Tara’s tongue pushing into her with two Iterations of practice on her belt, the necromancer sunk her teeth into the nun’s sex. The girl’s muffled wide-eyed screams of agony were cut off when Pa’s own teeth clamped down on her throat. Together the necromancers began to dine on her flesh.

Moments later, Hamon’s servants stood before a golden-framed mirror. Round-faced cherubs lined the frame, carrying flutes and harps. A pretty mirror, Tara thought. She wanted to break it, shatter the glass with her own bare knuckles. Their bodies were covered in the blood of another. After filling their bellies, Tara and Pa had made love in bed on top of what remained of their meal.

Instead of breaking the mirror, Tara and Pa pressed their crimson-covered hands against the glass. Blood trailed down the glass, making it look as if their reflections bled from invisible wounds. The glass rippled as if it had shifted states of matter, turning into water. Tara could no longer see their reflections but the towering black spires of Inferno beneath a sky lit on fire.

The image shifted, turning to the view of a large, dimly lit chamber. Pa was the first to step through the portal into Inferno, pushing one leg through and then the other, followed by the rest of his body. Tara followed close behind him, so giddy she couldn’t stop shaking. It always warmed her cold heart to catch a glimpse of home. For the briefest of moments she stood in a tunnel of brilliant white light that dimmed as her eyes adjusted. The light dimmed until the only illumination was that of the torches resting in ancient steel brackets grafted into the wall.

The chamber they stood in was circular with a ceiling and walls made of black stone. The light of Inferno’s dawn seeped through an oculus set in the ceiling. Her skin prickled with the heavy weight of a familiar gaze. Immediately she lowered her gaze, mimicking Pa, stooping in a bow of reverence. Hamon, Monad’s first creation, watched the necromancers from his throne atop a large altar. Even while sitting he seemed to tower meters above them.

He stood, rising to his full height, eclipsing the room in shadow. He stood tall enough Tara would have to crane her head back to look him in the eye…if she so dared. Not even she was foolish enough to make such an error. The Architect’s skin was more pale than milk, shot through with twisting black veins. Muscles shifted beneath his flesh with every movement. He wore a massive headpiece made from the same gold that Monad and his Architects had once used to craft the Eternal City. Bracelets of gold encircled his broad forearms. He wore a gown made of flesh torn from the bodies of his victims; those few who had had the undeserved honor of seeing him in his full glory.

Tara wasn’t sure how long they bowed before Hamon lifted a hand lazily, gesturing for them to stand. “Tell me you have brought me good news.” His booming voice filled the room. His eyes, the same color as Inferno’s boiling sky, focused on Pa, not on Tara. Had her master ever looked at her in the two - almost three - Iterations she’d been in his service? She smothered the thought before she could give it further consideration, reminding herself her master was every bit as cruel as he was cunning. He could rip the thoughts from her mind if he so desired. The thought filled her belly with warm heat.

Pa rose to his full height but did not look Hamon directly in the eye. “We have found the herald, your grace. He and his Okanavian companion.”

Hamon’s lip curved into something approximating a grin. “The cycle spins on its axis as it always will. So why have you come to me? Why are you not there, looking for him?” He waved a large hand. Ancient stone fell away, forming a hole that fell into the endless oblivion of the Void. Tara’s stomach clenched at the thought of plunging through bottomless space. The only difference in the dark she could see were pinpricks of light too small to give shape or name. Hamon’s grin widened impossibly, showing his bared teeth. He gestured casually to the hole. “Take a look at what lies before you: the Immaterial Universe. A place so desolate it drove even my dear creator mad. If it drove him out of his mind, what do you think it will do to you?”

“Of course we would not come here if we did not think it important,” Pa said smoothly. If he was afraid of igniting the Architect’s wrath, Tara couldn’t hear it in his voice. “There is something we…” He cast the quickest of glances in Tara’s direction before casting his eyes back to his feet. “...I thought you must know.”

Hamon arched a long, bushy eyebrow, stroking the shiny black length of his beard. “Go on,” he said in a tone of voice that promised a fate worse than death if Pa and Tara were wasting his infinite time.

Pa’s mouth shrunk down to a thin line before straightening back out, there one second and gone the next, but noticeable if you knew to look for it. And Tara did. Pa was afraid but he was also loyal. No matter the war waging inside his head, Tara knew he’d never defy Hamonl. He wouldn’t dare. “Something about this Iteration is different. While no Iteration is completely the same, the herald is always the same. This is one is young…inexperienced.”

“Then he shouldn’t be that hard to find or kill.” Monad’s first creation snapped his hand closed, closing the hole in the floor with it. “Do not come back unless it is to bring me his head.” His eyes flared, promising horrors not even their minds were capable of should they fail.