“Though they are loath to perpetrate the wounds to the earth of mining iron, they will stick chips of obsidian into grooved boards with leather-wrapped handles…”

  “Don’t suppose that you’re going to get to speak to the Great Ken if you wait long enough,” the woman in the vibrant red robe said. “That is a privilege for the initiated. If you seek wisdom, listen to the murmurings of the Embodiments, they contemplate her mutterings.”

  “With all due respect, I have met Dread before, and without any flapper mediating. I encountered her while I was in the necropolis by Abyss.”

  “A likely story. While I will keep you from waiting, you are wasting your time. Dread does not associate with outsiders.”

  “What is it with people in the Deeps being averse to any story that shakes up… no, I suppose that’s not fair. Most people are resistant to shaking up their worldview, the Deeps just have an especially alien and entrenched worldview.”

  The woman harrumphed and said nothing more. Hexadecimal sat with the Embodiments, as the retinue of faded red robed acolytes were called, and listened to the mutterings for lack of anything better to do. She would have fetched her journal but for the possibility of missing Dread, as the Speaker would not tell her how much time she had. She thought to herself that it was not especially selfless of her to gatekeep her special leader.

  “Remembering again. Pain. Loss. What did I lose?”

  “What is loss, but the absence of something that should be there?”

  “Where are the dreams? Where did they go?”

  Hexadecimal did not attempt to engage them in conversation, mindful of their clubs and their chanted muttering. Instead, she turned her attention to the ooze below. From everything she’d been told, the very touch of the primordial ooze was enough to put someone in a daze, forgetting their own existence, so she wondered how Dread endured spending sandglass after sandglass immersed in it. She edged closer to the staircase and peered down, and thought she could just make out the outline of Dread’s head above the waters. Even the top of her head looked black and glistening, like the lightless waters below. She didn’t even have hair. Her resemblance to a wasted corpse, despite Hexa’s aura having revealed her to be living, still captivated her. Hope was now the remote one, lost somewhere in the bureaucracy of the city and guarded vigilantly by… you know, it was curious that both of them were guarded by a retinue wielding clubs and not swords. Swords, or at least axes, were often weapons of status.

  Once more, Hexa wished she had her journal. Finding herself taking up a syncopated rhythm with the Embodiments, she muttered the key notes she wanted to recall. Eventually, she heard a sloshing sound. Looking even less like a living human than she had before, Dread rose up the staircase. Her joints were starkly visible against the wasted length of her limbs, and the dripping sound of globs of primordial ooze were nearly constant. She stood in a puddle her acolytes were careful of despite their shoes.

  The Speaker immediately began shooing her, but Hexa raised her voice and said, “Dread! It’s me, Hexa!”

  Dread’s head swiveled around and her eyes—eye sockets?—widened. Her mouth hung open and she pointed at Hexa in obvious recognition. She parted her acolytes and came over to Hexa, and… sniffed? Huffed? Make some kind of strange inhalation. “You… have seen home.”

  “Home?”

  “If home is where the heart is, the rich man is truly homeless.”

  “I… what?” Hexa thought to herself that this sounded like one of the passages she had been copying over at the hostel to earn her keep.

  “The heart is the home of the soul. What pains the heart pains the soul. What pains the soul pains the Endless. Until every being knows eternity, there will be pain.”

  “Are you in pain? Do you need a doctor? I confess, you don’t look well. Although that’s… kinda…” Hexa trailed off, abruptly feeling foolish. Dread seemed intent upon a conversation with herself. She noticed behind herself that the Speaker was repeating each of Dread’s utterances over and over, adding as she went.

  “Pain is universal to living things. It is what the living thing does with the pain that tells you its nature.” Well now that was a theological mouthful. Did angels qualify as living things? Did angels experience pain? She might ask when the concept of the divine didn’t still make her a little dizzy with dissociation.

  “And what do you do with the pain?” The Speaker scoffed behind her, but Hexa thought it was a valid question..

  “I… lead by not leading. I decide when the choice is already made.” That sounded like more pamphlet phrases to Hexa. She wasn’t sure entirely what they meant, unless it was that the Oozekennen actually led by popular opinion rather than being autocratic.

  “And this causes you pain?”

  “I do not… not feel pain, but I do not attach myself to the pain. I bathe in the primordial ooze to forget.”

  “To forget the pain?”

  “Honestly, these are questions any first-year disciple could answer, leave the Great Ken alone,” the Speaker moved to come between them, but Dread’s hand shot out with surprising speed to grasp Hexa’s wrist. Her touch was cold and slimy, and made Hexa’s head swim. Hexa let out a little eep of surprise. Dread was literally intoxicating, to say nothing of the morbid appeal of a skeletal woman. Her head felt floaty and the boundaries between herself and Dread seemed nebulous at best. She briefly felt certain she was dead, and merely continuing to inhabit her body for some strange reason when it would do just fine without her.

  The Speaker stood there in shock, before nodding and bowing to Dread. Dread released Hexa’s wrist and continued to stare towards her. Hexa wouldn’t say Dread was staring at her, just towards. If the waters had an effect anything like Dread’s freshly-doused touch, she was not sure whether she was Dread or Hexa.

  “So what do you feel, Dread, when you immerse yourself in the primordial ooze?”

  Dread stared towards Hexa once more, and Hexa wondered if Dread were lost as a sandglass passed, before she whispered, “Nothing.”

  “Is that pleasant?”

  “I am… incomplete. To forget that… is peace.”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “From what I know of Oozekennen philosophy, aren’t all entities incomplete until they rejoin the Endless?”

  Dread’s head swiveled unnervingly like it were on a hinge from side to side, before sighing and answering, “I suppose so. I. Me. Oh… right. I am… myself.”

  “You are. Why did you want to talk to me?”

  “You remind… me… of home.”

  “Are you not from Gargold? When you introduced yourself, you said you were.”

  Dread looked past her again, and was silent for some time. Eventually, she shook her head, a more intentional gesture than the swiveling of before. “I don’t know.”

  The Speaker spoke—augh, descriptivist names, Hexa lamented—up again, “Of course she’s from Gargold. She is the greatest success of the oldest teachers, in their most secluded monasteries.” Hexa thought this was a bit much to assert so boldly against her teacher, but she was the outsider and perhaps the Speaker was allowed so much latitude.

  Dread spoke again. “I… am from Gargold. But it is not home.”

  Hexa asked gently, “Where is home?” There was a mystery here, and she was determined to unravel it. Without unraveling Dread, ideally. “Is it with the Amonites? With Hope? Are you an Amonite?”

  Dread looked up at the mention of the name Hope. “Hope. With hope, even an orchid can grow out of the mud.”

  By this time they were attracting a small crowd, and the Embodiment, still reciting the mutterings of Dread, had spread out to encircle Dread and Hexa. The Speaker was still standing by the two of them, looking ready to intercede as soon as she had any excuse to do so.

  “I’m not sure the Amonites would like to be likened to an orchid in the mud—no? Not what you meant?” Hexa looked up at the Speaker, but she got the distinct impression the woman had had the same guess as her.

  “Only perfection in faith drives out fear.” That sounded like Scripture Hexa actually knew, for once down here. But the full quote went differently.

  “‘There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has punishment. She who fears is not made perfect in love.’ What do you love?”

  Dread looked up at the ceiling of glow worms. “God the Endless.”

  “Surely you love your people too?”

  “All things began with the Endless, because all things end but the Endless. To love the Endless is to love all things, and one cannot love the Endless without loving all things. The aspiration of an Oozekennen is to develop equanimity and love towards all things.”

  “That’s curious. I heard that the purpose of being an Oozekennen was to know the unknowable and be purposeful of action.”

  Dread shook her head. “It is the same thing. The unknowable one comes to know by immersion in the primordial ooze is the Endless. To know the Endless is to love the Endless, for it is perfect fulfillment in all things.”

  Hexa nodded. “And to love the Endless is to love all things. I see.” They sat in silence a while. “Your name is Dread. Do you dread something?”

  Dread looked at her, really looked at Hexa, and her eyes seemed to glow red. “Existence.”

  “What’s wrong with existence? I’m glad you exist, your subjects seem glad you exist.”

  “The pain of existence… is great. I am… incomplete. The wound does not heal. So I bathe in the waters of time immemorial.”

  “What pain? Are you wasting away, like you appear to be? Are you starving or decaying? What do you eat? Do you drink the primordial ooze?” Hexa realized she was getting excited, rushing her questions out as though they couldn’t escape fast enough.

  Dread stared at her. “Drink… the ooze. Why didn’t… I think of that? But yes, I am… wasting away. From fear.” Hexa thought she was rather wasting away from trying to escape the fear, but she was hooked on Dread’s words and didn’t want to lead her train of thought. It was then that she saw a glob of what looked like ooze drip from Dread’s elbow onto her thigh, and simply… melt into her thigh. Clearly, she was something removed from human, either by nature or by her exposure to the foundation of Creation.

  That reminded her. She had a better word. “Dread, are you a nephilim?”

  This time, the head shake came sooner. “I am not… a nephilim. You are, though.”

  Hexa blinked, all three eyes in sequence, and felt her wings tremble. “Well yes. Is that a problem? Should I go, if I remind you of… home?”

  The crowd around them was pushing at the cordon of Embodiments, but not forcefully and not noisily. Mostly it seemed they just wanted to see the Great Ken.

  “Perhaps… if I remember, I can return.” Dread shuddered. “Perhaps not. …I don’t know. Tell me about… your father. Your mother.” An odd request, but then Hexa had never been likened to someone’s “home” before.

  “My mother was a woman by the name of Melancholy. She was a geometer—do you have geometers down here?” Dread nodded. “She had no taste for men, and honestly I think she had no taste for motherhood but found that out too late. She wasn’t warm, but she provided for me. She did her best to instill… no?” Dread was shaking her head. “Not what you’re asking about? Uhm… she was a Spirithome woman?” Dread shook her head again. “My ‘father’ as much as there was one was an angel of radiance?” Dread perked up, then slouched. With a nod, she turned from Hexa.

  “Wait!” Dread froze, and turned back to her. Hexa put her hand on Dread’s forearm, feeling the cold, wet, bony length but making eye contact with Dread’s red glowing sockets. “Will I see you again? Outside attending one of the Oozekennen services?”

  Dread stared at her hand on her arm, and then nodded.

  “Tell me. Do the Amonites prevail such that there are no spirit mages? They knew what a nephilim was. Surely you can find someone to summon up an angel for you, or teach you spirit magic yourself?”

  Dread put her finger to her lip, clearly considering the idea. She looked up at Hexa and nodded her appreciation.

  “Why do you fear existence? Because of the pain? You never explained what you meant by ‘wasting away from fear.’”

  “It encloses me. I am not nourished by my colleagues, by my prayers, because fear keeps me separate from them.”

  “Humans need more than meaningful connection to survive. They need food. Do you eat? I know great fear sours the stomach. If you’re thinking of drinking the primordial ooze… I mean, I don’t even know what that would do to a human.” Dread looked thoughtful. “Did you make some kind of vow of asceticism?” She shook her head.

  “The waters waste away at the flesh. I am the flesh.”

  “So you’re spending so much time in the waters of nothingness that you’re wasting away? To numb the pain of being incomplete?”

  Dread nodded.

  “What makes you incomplete? Do you need someone to complete you?”

  Dread nodded again.

  Before the words could be trapped behind her lips, caught up in the moment, Hexa asked, “Could I complete you?”

  Dread looked into her eyes, near as Hexa could tell. She felt a flush creeping up her cheeks but met her gaze. She put a cold, damp hand to Hexa’s cheek. “Let me see your radiance.”

  It seemed a non sequitur… but no, they were talking of angels and home and souls. It was entirely germane. Obligingly, Hexa made the God-Star over her heart and let her radiance grow to encompass herself and Dread. Dread closed her eyes, somehow, but seemed no less present. Hexa had the feeling she was less shutting out the light and more experiencing it on a level more fundamental than sight. People in the audience began clamoring, only to be shushed by the Embodiments.

  After a while, she opened her eyes and looked at Hexa. “Thank you. It does not complete me, but the radiance of your soul… is nice. I… should go. We will meet again.” Somehow, Hexa did not doubt Dread when she said that.

  The Speaker said firmly, “That’s enough of that. If the Great Ken asks for you, we will let you know.” Hexa was left to ponder a woman who found “home” in the notion of an angel, a forlorn thought that seemed to sadden her even as she drew close to it, like a feral animal drawn to the warmth of a winter fire, and who seemed bewildered by the world.