Breath bereft. A chill gust of wind woke Minim from the trance. Rock was rough under her bare feet. She squinted shying from the high sun. Dimensions had their meaning again, finding herself far from wherever that dimensionless room was woven. She breathed easier and could smell something that made her wince. She checked a stinging on her arm and the malodour struck her harder to see infinity’s scar had poorly healed.

  ∞

  The wind blew strong again and she was forced to comprehend her surroundings rather than dream them - stunned high among light and clouds - in Haven-o’er-Hadaeon she thought. She was on steps of oakenstone, and there scraped into their groaning surface was an infinity rune no larger than the palm of her young hand. Worn-over-grooved by the pass of countless feet that symbol - that a past or future self had here before or yet - and so created a path for what would pass or already had.

  ∞

  The dormant volcanoes as spires repurposed were misty with distance and their fashioned peaks mere in height compared to what she was climbing. As she turned to face the structure she stood upon, she saw no tapestry wrought with depictions, but oakenstone-carved. A legendary life and myth in tiles-relief, its statues larger than her.

  She was on The Gravestone Column, craning her neck into stiffness and pain to imagine that its peak must surely cut into the darkness around the stars.

  ∞

  She had passed through the maze Iron-Chest tried carrying her across; the maze keeping Haven and The Gravestone Column apart.

  “My strings are better hidden here.” Lady Fate spoke to Minim from the corner of all things.

  “I’m going to meet Lillian?” the shamanic runaway brushed thin webs from her robes.

  Other wingless pilgrims could be heard walking up the long stairs in choir hummed and others were already far ahead. Werewolves made the swiftest pace of all, robed in leaves and armoured with tree bark. Angels seeking Lillian easier flew though even their wings were tiring at such thin heights and they perched gargoylian on the column’s carven edges, resting their tested determination.

  “She is more than that.” Fate wove, finally answering Minim.

  As in solemn choir the pilgrims all were humming and as though belonging Minim stepped into the climbing crowds joining their journey long and they bid her no protest nor greeting in their exhaustion.

  ∞

  Spring remained bright as Minim and other pilgrim souls climbed The Gravestone Column. Her hands soon were numb, closer to the sun yet colder. Tucking them under her strong arms she pressed on, as some of the wingless-others could go no more without rest. Fires were hatched from flint and branches brought from the lands-Hadaeon below, torches elden as even the oval sun could watch no more and machines once capable struggled without Time’s pace.

  “Oval?” Minim watched the sunset strange, the star wider and shorter than it should be, pulled by two forces both and neither.

  “Without Time…” Fate crawled with her, somewhere unknown. “…the fourth dimension on which all others rested. Rested as these pilgrims on Nature’s granted certainty. The dimensions do not know rest, now. They fray from the conflict. Were it not for shamans as you continuing to observe, I believe it would be even worse… that is why you are here. Your kin are as bridges between The Two Natures, but I envision… you just as Lillian, could be far more. More than afraid, than a bridge to be trampled across.”

  As the oval sun could watch no more and set its close behind Hadaeon-world below, the cold stare of moonlight and precious dance of torches artificial or fiery lit Minim’s way. Though her feet were tough from journeys beyond her ages - perhaps those Fate had already alluded to - her hands and face struggled with the sunlight gone. Into colder and colder heights her numb shuffling and lonely grimace with company less and less.

  ∞

  Almost feverish her thoughts climbed up the gravestone-cold. Wishes, dreams and reality together, just as tapestry walls had fallen into ceilings and risen onto floors. One could not be told from the other.

  ∞

  Some while Minim advanced and thought this is how Old Gadail’s passing would feel; as more than a climb without sunlight, yet what more would others see:

  “More than afraid?” She mocked what Lady Fate had accused her of, who knows how long ago or far below. “I am not afraid.”

  The runaway hid her tears from the column she climbed, gazing awhile at Haven’s smoke, rising not from its dead volcanoes but its towers of civil war and furnaces unceasing. Some of its gardens were aflame, its parks untended as misrule made unsafe outposts of historic fountains and walks. Werewolves howled against the trumpets of angels, and in that mess were bands of angels led by one wolf, and packs of wolves by one angel led, and visitors to Haven caught between it all made stealth or best allegiance their aim.

  ∞

  As some fanatics wanted to start anew a rot was being smeared widespread; bloody words written everywhere. A rust of the silver city that could not be removed. There were efforts to clean away the words before they could be read yet there they remained in scar-like effigy for squints and guesses to surmise until they blotched and spread reeking into yet larger canvases for the same words holy to some and unspeakable to the rest.

  Smoggy green, almost Viridian clouds passed in from distant lands, from other worlds, some said.

  Other fanatics wanted to go on as they always had, afraid of Change, and Fate offered no reply to The Spring-Sworn.

  ∞

  And so went the strange sun’s stranger motions against Hadaeon’s moons bald and in bloom, and Minim’s infinite scar on her arm itched as that sunset repeated itself, as grief reimagined over and over, the sun never rising again despite her ascent alone. More and more alone as faster souls had already gone ahead of her and the slower sorts she left behind.

  ∞

  A sigil repeated itself as she neared the gravestone column’s shoulders: a fiery sphere or vessel otherwise enflamed in the hard relief she made note of over and over. If the art was to be believed, these spheres were in some unknown battle thrown against imitations of a nightmare or of despair, as though with their explode to break what otherwise could not be, and make equal a fight outmatched. ‘Grave Knights’ a named faction among those grenadiers, unknown to Minim from her lessons with Gadail when she was still Syrib.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  ∞

  Yet in those inscriptions the gravestone-tall had fallen, its trunk all scattered across that nightmare-world. And it was not Lillian’s name there clear, but the name William, and from that was spun a myth of ‘The Gravestone Claymore’ his sword.

  Minim wondered if that battle had already taken place in darker ages lost to history or was yet to. Or could her actions in Timelessness even prevent it?

  Away from such histories or legends she tread, upwards and shivering.

  ∞

  The winding stairs ahead had been broken apart or left unfinished. Breathing hard against the cold wishing the sun would stay, Minim found a different path up the gravestone-tall. The statues with their blunt weapons poised or hands outstretched, the fabric recreated or trapped in stone, all gave her palms and fingers a place to plant her pulling grip, and her feet somewhere else to push from.

  ∞

  If she fell she would fall forever, she thought, or was Gadail still with her even here, he its lord wherever wind blows? Always in her heart for all guidance given and to her eyes miracle he had performed, though here climbing and runaway, she had never felt so far from his sight.

  And how could she know, having been pulled from one tayl of Payn into a tale of Fate, that if her thunder willed it two Shadows would step out of her own shadow to defend her: her sister and The Prince of Once-Ago? Alas.

  ∞

  Having climbed the mass engrave of story-told statues, far above she found sloping stairs again, though of much older design. Aching and cold with only her mighty wishes she made a careful leap from the ladder of sculpture and effigy. Upon landing she grabbed the old steps hard, afraid of falling any further.

  Here she made no mistake - for to climb was to fall.

  ∞

  The current sunset ceased as she kneeled there grasping stone, her infinite scar itched to the bone, and bluer skies crowned over Minim The Spring-Sworn, walker of climbed-aeons.

  The Gravestone Column there higher was smoother, older or younger, less defined by its reliefs. Only sketches, a chunk of rock erect. Worn by age or yet to be sculpted. Even here there was wind at this cloudy point, thin and sharp waves that Minim could not breathe well, wincing against the sudden daylight.

  ∞

  In that chilling aurora the final oakenstone steps led to what was for some a garret, others a cabin, and if one lived therein long enough locked away I am sure they would think it a cell. Though who else was there to see it but her? Where had the rest of those pilgrims gone?

  A cerebriform amalgam of things, a maze of bars steel, oak or stone, and the bones of those faithful or murderous that had tried to get in and could not get out. Grim poses warding off other efforts, all twisting and wrapping around each other. Cold Minim saw a sword-hilt thrust into the top of the massing - what may once have been a roof - and whatever sword that giant hilt belonged to, would have been too large for any soul she knew, that all the gravestone could be swung.

  ∞

  On the penultimate step Minim fell heavy with her breath, relieved to have made the climb and not one more footfall could she have made. She peered as best she could through little-pried bars trying to see what room was hidden inside the twisted form of almost organic architecture; almost she called out Lillian’s name, having not heard any voice on the wind since Lady Fate spun her lair around. She thought to herself to proudly speak the mantra, as though a key it would open the massing-closing-on-itself to her alone:

  ‘Time is dead… and we have killed them. Come, seek The Lightning Crown.’

  “I am here.” She added, alas her wispy, exhausted voice compelled no such unlocking force.

  ∞

  She could see barely through the barring maze, only if she craned and contorted herself into painful angles. Only if she was as the structure could she understand. She cared not for the bones nor the clumps still clinging putrid to them. What stench of theirs could rival that of her arm? Minute runes such as had been scratched by nails into the steel roots. She reached inside the tangled bars far as she could, eventually down on her belly trying to find the angle that would allow her entry, and all the runes were only so far as her arm wherever she tried.

  Until - there.

  ∞

  Minim gasped or smiled to set her eyes on Lillian, though her smile was soon a sad one, then none at all.

  ∞

  An infirm angel, Lillian we assume, was sitting there facing away from Minim, a young girl though grey was the hair draping long across the floor. Batlike her wings as Minim’Syrib had never seen, angels having only wings mothy, feathered, insect-like or fins rarest of all. Infirm, for one of Lillian’s leathery wings was far larger than the other; the smallest seemingly of no use at all.

  Armour Hadaeon-steel, spear and moon-shield far too large for her a child were propped against the bedroom wall, the cell wall. Teacups everywhere Minim saw, hanging from stringy webs, and dangling swords made of thread. Shelves of books all wet and sandy, as though found along a beach and collected here all dog-eared with things to revisit and remember.

  ∞

  There were paintings, portraits each with their own tint or tone arranged into a rainbow of sorts across the massy walls. Finally The Spring-Sworn read chalked above young Lillian’s door:

  ‘The Great Freedom, Once-Heir of Courtdom’

  The room inside out, Minim thought, thinking the words should make clear to pilgrims who or what inside was interred and why chalked? Was Lillian not one, but of changing state subject to whoever was there to behold her?

  ∞

  Minim blinked and saw something step into Lillian’s scattered shadow - an assassin was kneeling there offering the girl another cup hot with steam. Masked, cloaked with darkness, an arm of prosthetic bone where flesh should flex and reach, and an indigo-toned portrait of the same soul hung nearby. The assassin looked up at Minim and was gone.

  “Who was that? They were there before… in that woven place beyond places. They hurt Iron-Chest.”

  “A construct that makes this possible. My Amneshay hurts only one soul as contracted… to help them forget certain things and be unaware of so much: she is a blessing to all others.”

  “Amneshay?” Minim joined together words picked apart. “What does she make souls forget?” she pulled herself out from the mazing-cell crawling backwards and out of breath she slumped.

  ∞

  “She helps them remember, as well… anything I need souls to misplace in Memory’s tomb or recall from it, anything at all. Decided, designed and dictated. These small victories I must one by one articulate and fabricate for now, for human will is fickle, though not far from here is our Fract’ralien realised, Spring-Sworn, where all from the start shall be predestiny, the spores of Amneshay coating all lengths and waves.”

  As Minim imagined all souls and individual strings all bound by Lady Fate, the same voice further tantalised:

  “You will see now what became of Truthdom and Courtdom’s greatest champion, when Falsehood at last was vanquished at the end of the endless war. When the blood of Falsehood’s last king was still wet on Lillian’s hammer-spear utopia should have been reflected, for Evil had been hung, cured from its own house-eradicate. And why was all not well even after that?”

  Though Fate did not expect her to answer, the girl that once was named Syrib did so:

  “Because new champions were needed in the weird new age. Ravin in his violent age gathered without realising what Gold-Hammer of Hemloch said would be needed. Champions both, but not of the age they had fought for. That torch has passed to us.”

  Lady Fate could again be heard smirking wetly, somewhere in the anywhere:

  “And here you are under the oval sun… with Tragedy on your mind… seeking to cure that as well.”

  ∞

  Minim would have asked what Courtdom’s origins had in common with her questions, though it all began to pattern-over in her thoughts, and Lady Fate knew this:

  “It all pertains to control and Chaos Ordered, as you are beginning to see. Humanity dissatisfied, insulted almost, that their dreams can grasp what exceeds their reach. From adversary to adversary, from Evil to Tragedy. Oh, that Evil cowered in the end and even Tragedy shall. Nothing can withstand our understanding.”

  ∞

  Gadail had taught Serib that if she could ground her thoughts in Haven-o’er, then earth and justice - those two words for the same virtue - would be clear no matter the storm she faced.

  And here Minim was instead breathing hard, her tired hands resting on the column’s stone, sitting on the last of its steps. For all the doubts she kept regarding Lady Fate’s true intentions, she was certain not of reality as Gadail had trained her to be, she was certain of her dreams.

  ∞

  With her palms and feet on the oakenstone she Far Saw or Foresaw: Days. Ages when Days still could complete and end themselves - before Time’s bleak depart. Lady Fate told her Minim:

  “Ah, you now are seeing as I intended… this is why I brought you here. Watch them… these Days that have ended. See the rare gift of Freedom To squandered, witness why the throne is empty! Why you and I together shall see it filled, and all Humanity shall need to do is Behold, Begone and Rejoice! You their last champion and Heir.”