SIR RICHARD of ENDERLY: Are you real?

  THE INTERROGATOR: Yes. Are you?

  S.R.: I have my doubts about us both.

  INT: Doubts are an essential element of cognition.

  S.R.: What a mindlessly abstract creature you are. Give me a straight answer: Who are you; why am I here; and how do I get out?

  INT: You’re here because you choose to be, and you’ll get out when you let yourself.

  S.R.: You missed a question.

  INT: Indeed. You first. Who are you?

  S.R. Sir Richard of Enderly.

  INT: Is that all you are?

  S.R. As far as I can tell, yes.

  INT: Touch your face, Sir Richard.

  S.R. It’s hard.

  INT: You’re still wearing the mask.

  S.R.: It’s grafted to my face, girl. It’s the only thing keeping me alive. If I take it off for more than a minute or two, I’ll die.

  INT: But you’re already dead.

  S.R.: I can’t take it off.

  INT: Why not?

  S.R.: Can you stop being a teenaged girl?

  INT: As a matter of fact, I can. The rules of causality are somewhat different here. We are as we choose to be.

  S.R.: I didn’t choose the metal face.

  INT: How did you come to have it?

  S.R.: It was on me when I awoke, after the Metal God became me. My eyes and ears and mouth and nose had all been removed; the metal face replaced all of them. It gave me even more senses, which I had never imagined could exist.

  INT: What is it?

  S.R.: It is one of two nodes of a swarm of living metal, itself composed of machines so tiny that no single one of them can even be seen.

  INT: Where was the other node?

  S.R.: In my chest.

  INT: Have you recreated it here, as you have recreated the metal face?

  S.R.: I don’t care to find out. I’d have to open myself up again.

  INT: Do you think that would hurt?

  INT: Who are you?

  S.R. I am Sir Richard of Enderly.

  INT: Where is the Metal God?

  S.R.: It is me, and It is my companion.

  INT: Did you kill Rolland Gorp?

  S.R.: The Metal God killed him. I wasn’t in control.

  INT: How did you do it?

  S.R.: I told you, it wasn’t me.

  INT: For simplicity, and because from a certain perspective our time here is short, let’s assume that when I say ‘you’ I am referring to everyone in the chair in front of me. Sir Richard, the Metal God, and any other entities that may be along for the ride.

  S.R.: It is still me.

  INT: How—and why—did you kill Rolland Gorp?

  S.R.: We used a clever tool. He called himself Father.

  INT: Tell me why, and how, you killed Mr. Gorp.

  S.R.: We first met Gorp in Outer West Clucking. It’s a hamlet at the edge of the Green Bridge hinterland; one of those places that people on business ride through quickly, and other people don’t ride through at all. Gorp was undoubtedly the village’s sole contribution to the intellectual life of the Kingdom for ten generations on either side. But what a contribution! My companion talked to him for a time in the language of mathematics, and if I couldn’t understand any of it, I could tell that even God was impressed.

  INT: God? Your companion?

  S.R.: I came to think of It as a companion, because It was always with me. Most of the time It was in control of our body. And It was most definitely God.

  INT: What were you and God doing in Outer West Clucking?

  S.R.: My companion had directed us southward from Nipol Grotsvor with an escort of Giant-men, including Kuerlo. It galled me to travel in the company of that snake, but I had no choice in the matter. My companion said he must come, and so I spoke the words of command, and Kuerlo came. It was partly for this reason that It joined with me; to use the Master Words from the tongue of a human would compel the Giant-men to obey.

  We stopped at the Receiving Hall at the Third Junction, where we spent many weeks restoring the operation of the Shift. In the end, there was only enough Dark Metal on hand for a very low-grade shift, and we ended up with one primal dragon. But if my companion was disappointed by this outcome, It did not reveal it. It treats every occurrence as if it were exactly as It planned, and perhaps that is correct. It used my voice to tell the Giant-men that It knew where to recover more of the Dark Metal.

  Then we travelled the long wastes south of the Receiving Hall and came to the Green River in the first days of June. We made our way south toward Green Bridge, and were in Outer West Clucking on the 6th of the month.

  INT: Why did you go there at all?

  S.R.: My companion directed it, and so we went. We travelled at night, and the Giant-men hid in a forest nearby. It did not wish to reveal Its presence yet. The primal was kept circling at a high altitude, to give my companion a better view of the surrounding area. I’m told it landed before dawn every day and replenished its strength by devouring the inhabitants of isolated farms.

  INT: Who told you that?

  S.R.: My companion, of course. It spoke to me from time to time, though only when it served Its purposes. It would permit me questions occasionally. I think It viewed these as a bargain to keep me cooperative in case It needed me. Most of the time, I was simply an observer.

  INT: So the Metal God wanted to meet Rolland Gorp.

  S.R.: Indeed. I didn’t understand why at the time, but I learned later It was sizing him up, evaluating the precise time and manner of his death.

  INT: What was Rolly’s reaction to your face?

  S.R.: We wrapped our face heavily with bandages, as if we were afflicted with leprosy.

  INT: Do you remember what your companion and Mr. Gorp spoke about?

  S.R.: We found Gorp in the village’s public house, and we bought him a drink. My companion spoke to him at length. I could not tell you the meaning of the mathematics, though I could recite the syllables of their words to you. But Gorp passed quickly from surprise to appreciation, and then spent many hours speaking to my companion. When it was over and we stood to leave, there was a final exchange that had nothing to do with mathematics.

  “Whom do you serve?” my companion asked. Gorp’s face changed, and became apprehensive. He replied: “I serve Ash, the Lady of Earth and Stars.”

  “Whom do you love the most?” we asked. And Gorp answered: “Merrily Hunter.”

  Then we stood up and left Gorp without another word.

  INT: Why didn’t you kill him then?

  S.R.: I didn’t kill him at any time. But my companion did. The nature of God is deliberate and horrifying precision. There was some

  It meant to produce, and that event required Gorp to die in a specific time and place and manner. Its purposes were not served for the mathematician to be found dead in some wheat field in Outer West Clucking. His murder in Green Bridge set in motion a chain of events that led to an outcome my companion required. And so, we simply stood up and left Gorp; and then we went alone into Green Bridge to find Father.

  INT: Did you know, before you met Robert of Gorham, that he would be your pawn in Rolly’s death?

  S.R.: He wasn’t my pawn. And I didn’t know anything about him before we met. Perhaps my companion knew. It always had a precise and absolutely correct understanding of the outcomes of Its actions. How far into the future Its foresight extended, I couldn’t say. But I feel safe assuming that It knew that It would find a tool to use in Green Bridge, and It knew where to go to find it. When we arrived, there was Father.

  INT: To whom am I speaking now?

  S.R.: Sir Richard of Enderly.

  INT: Tell me about that first meeting with Father.

  S.R.: We found him in the Cathedral of Saint Bob in Green Bridge. We sat down next to him in a pew. There was no ceremony being performed just then, and the church was mostly empty. His face and body were heavily scarred. He had been stabbed with a poisoned knife by one of his victims, and the poison twisted his body to match his mind. He had an odor to him; corn starch, I believe. It was an ingredient in the glue he used it to fix some of his facial prosthetics.

  When we seated ourselves next to Father, he looked up at us for a moment. We wore the bandages still, and a deep hood. What he saw, or thought he saw, I don’t know. He touched the bandages that covered our sensory plate, and I could feel the living metal flow into his fingertips.

  My companion did not, then, have the resources to control another host. But it did not need a puppet. It perceives the infinite chain of rippling consequences that flow from a single word, or a breath, or the minutest shift in the placement of a pebble in the street. Each movement of Its host’s body is an act so deliberate, it might shift the entire planet.

  “Oh Robert!” It said loudly; but It modulated our voice so that only Father could hear. “Oh Robert! You are the apostle of God, and I am your angel!”

  This man, in his late years, broken by failure and twisted by thwarted desire, had so longed for all his life to hear these words—these exact words, spoken by some mysterious creature who presented itself as we did then—that he was instantly enthralled by us. That night he led us deep into the catacombs beneath the Cathedral, where he kept a small flock of the deluded and lonely as his congregation. He hid us even from these few friends, though, and took us into inner rooms, where none were allowed to see us.

  INT: Was Merrily Hunter one of these deluded and lonely congregants?

  S.R.: She was. I do not know the story of her bewitchment or the reasons she permitted it, but at the time we first encountered Father she had been baptized into his service. My companion either was aware of this already or perceived it, but in either case It did not manipulate her directly. A gentle nudge on Father would send both him and his most-loved Hunter tumbling toward their destinations.

  INT: Was this right?

  S.R.: Do you mean factually or morally?

  INT: Morally.

  S.R.: Under what morality?

  INT: The correct one.

  S.R.: I don’t know.

  INT: What’s missing?

  S.R.: I’d need to know which moral framework you think is correct. My companion has one, and the adversary has another. I wasn’t offered a choice between the two; It just took me along as an observer.

  INT: I hope in time you will see the answer.

  S.R.: I don’t think we have time. Those last few shots shook things up in here. See, there’s a crack in your walls.

  INT: They’re not my walls, Sir Richard.

  ???

  S.R.: Do you want to go on with this?

  INT: I don’t see why we should. We’re not getting anywhere.

  S.R.: What happens next?

  INT: I’ll be returning to the home office. You, I imagine, will be pulverized very shortly.

  S.R.: Wait!

  INT: Good day, Sir Richard.

  ???

  S.R.: Wait! Please!

  INT: What do you want, Sir Richard?

  S.R.: I don’t want to be… pulverized.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  INT: You’re already dead. I assure you, there’s nothing novel about it. I really must be off.

  S.R.: Please don’t go.

  INT: You didn’t answer my question, Sir Richard. What do you want? You want to die. But what do you want?

  S.R.: I want to see Leeland.

  INT: Is that all?

  S.R.: Can I have more?

  INT: Perhaps... Perhaps it can be arranged. But why?

  S.R.: Because I love him.

  INT: I take that seriously, Sir Richard. I do. But you must understand there are things I need from you. Very concrete, specific things. And you have not yet provided them.

  S.R.: What do you need?

  INT: There is a pattern in your story—a key, of a sort. I told you earlier that there is a door that you must open, and it is the same door I must open.

  S.R.: It will not let me give you the pattern.

  INT: Indeed. And that is why this is a waste of time. Good day.

  S.R.: No! No, wait. Keep asking me questions. There’s more I haven’t told you.

  INT: What haven’t you told me?

  S.R.: Ask me how I met Hobb the Wise, in Roosterfoot.

  INT: Hobb the Wise is no longer a factor.

  S.R.: He is past, but that past is part of the branching web. He is still a factor. He is part of the pattern.

  INT: Now you begin to see, Sir Richard. I’m pleased. Our time is short, in this iteration. Tell me how your companion met Hobb the Wise.

  S.R.: As we left Green Bridge, my companion directed us to walk in the center of the street. A wagon carrying gravel came the other way, and swerved to avoid us, with many curses. I could tell my companion was pleased, and we continued walking as if nothing had happened.

  A single pebble fell from the cart, and landed in front of the door to the rented room of a young man named Francis Fipkin. Mr. Fipkin was an unremarkable twenty-five-year-old man, frustrated and angry with himself at the smallness of his life. He wanted desperately to have meaning. The world is full of young men like this.

  INT: What does this have to do with Hobb the Wise?

  S.R.: Everything. The next morning, when Mr. Fipkin came out of his room, he stepped on the pebble. As he bent down to nurse his foot, he noticed a pamphlet in the street that someone had let fall, and he picked it up. It was a printed copy of a speech that the First Minister had given the previous week to the National Assembly. It called for true Uellish patriots to rise up and defend the blood and soil of the Uellish race, to seize the collective destiny of the nation, and to burn the usurper’s regime to the ground. It lit a fire inside Mr. Fipkin.

  INT: Make every word count, Sir Richard.

  S.R.: A year later, Mr. Fipkin had organized a cadre of other young men like himself, and they lit a fire inside Green Bridge.

  INT: I see the pattern. But you’ve gotten ahead of yourself.

  S.R.: My companion saw in Hobb the same potential It saw in Mr. Fipkin. They are both threads that weave their way toward the outcome that It desires to make inevitable. That is why we went to meet Hobb in the ruins of Ghorpol Ossa—over my vigorous objections.

  INT: I’ve read your diary. Your words make it plain enough you held Hobb in contempt.

  S.R.: Don’t trust my words. But yes; Hobb was a traitor to our King, a liar, and a man of vile principles.

  INT: Did you make your feelings known to the Metal God?

  S.R.: I did. It even listened to me from time to time. It can dredge through my memories and thoughts as easily as I might draw a stone from a shallow stream bed. It knew everything I knew, and saw Hobb as I saw him. But It also saw a tool, like Father or Mr. Fipkin.

  INT: Did it share your emotions as well as your thoughts?

  S.R.: It does not have emotions. It is, like Its adversary, a creature of ultimate and overwhelming logic.

  INT: You know little of Its adversary, then. What came of your meeting with Hobb?

  S.R.: My escort and I made our way directly to the old ruin, traveling in a straight line overland with little care for roads or convenience. We continued to move at night; revealing Itself and Its slaves did not serve Its purpose. When we occasionally stumbled on an unlucky human, we fed it to the dragon.

  INT: How much do they eat?

  S.R.: Several cows per day, or the equivalent weight in horse or human flesh. That first primal was one of the less advanced models. It had none of the enhancements of the later Metawyrms.

  When we reached Ghorpol Ossa, we set up camp in the ruin, hid the serpent in the woods, and sat down to wait. As always, my companion’s timing was impeccable. Within an hour, Hobb appeared outside the ruin with two of his Republican Guard. They were fleeing something; I never found out what, but I’m sure my companion knew. It positioned us in the long access tunnel to the old central terminal, activated the node intelligence to gather up its memory while we waited, and began whispering through the air to Hobb. It lured him in, and then, when we sensed he was on the other side of the shield door, we opened it and went out to greet him.

  Seeing him again, after two years of nursing my hatred and anger, was more than I could bear. I was helpless in my rage, unable to move so much as a finger, and with no voice to scream. But my mind boiled with fury at the sight of the man. My companion was amused, in a dry sort of way, to register my discomfort.

  Be still, tool, It said to me. You will have your revenge on this one in the fullness of time.

  Hobb ran, of course; we had not bothered to hide our face. But the primal dragon had consumed his soldiers, and their absence stopped him short—as my companion knew it would. We followed along in an unhurried fashion, and caught up with the First Minister as he was backing away from the primal.

  “Do not run, Hobb the Wise, First Minister of the Kingdom of Uelland,” we said to him.

  ???

  INT: Where was Fiond in all this?

  S.R.: I’m confused by the question. Fiond wasn’t with me at all.

  INT: Where was she?

  S.R.: I wasn’t aware of it then, but she’d made common cause with my old sergeant, Guillam. I’m told they travelled together for a time as they followed after me. But when I met with Hobb, I thought she’d simply been captured and slain in the temple. It grieved me. She had been a steadfast companion and ally during my imprisonment in Nipol Grotswor, and I urged her to escape with the company. I only learned that she still lived later, at the Four Corners.

  INT: Doesn’t the Metal God know everything?

  S.R.: Perhaps It does, but it shared practically none of it with me. And Its understanding is peculiar. It has a roadmap of the whole world, so to speak, but It doesn’t always know where It is on the map. Or rather, It is in many places all at once, but wants to be in one. It needs to observe in order to place Itself into just one place on the map, and to decide where to go next. These are crude analogies, and I don’t understand enough to improve them.

  INT: Did it know that Fiond loved you?

  S.R.: If It did, It didn’t tell me.

  INT: What did it want with Hobb?

  S.R.: It wanted a deal; It wanted Devi Valley. And what’s more, It needed access on a very specific schedule, within a few days of Midsummer. Resistance, either from the squatters in the valley or from the Republican Guard, would have thrown it off schedule. But when Hobb returned to talk, after the first encounter, he was difficult.

  Watching from one corner of my mind, seeing the Metal God’s fumbling attempts to conduct a diplomatic negotiation with a limited but cunning human, was infuriating—and all the more because it was Hobb, who I despised.

  “” I remarked to It at last. Hobb had casually dangled the fact that a full shard intelligence still survived in the Great Place of Change beneath Hoel, but then declined to permit us access. He dismissed my companion’s threats and demands, behaving instead as if he had all the leverage in the world and no inclination to compromise. Hobb obviously realized that we could kill him any time we cared to, but also that doing so would not grant us the swift and discrete access that my companion required. It galled me to see us being manipulated by this oily politician, in particular.

  Explain yourself, It demanded, turning Its attention to the tiny prison in my own mind.

  “” I explained. “”

  We explained that the complex is holy and precious to Our priests, It replied, and must be returned to the temple in our home. That is sufficient justification. We have offered to use the Great Place of Change to remake the world as it should be. That is sufficient incentive. He is incorrect to refuse.

  “”

  You have a proposition, it replied.

  “” I said, “”

  He will return, It answered. When he does, you may have the input. We will be in the loop.

  INT: Did it let you out?

  S.R.: Not immediately. But when Hobb came back, several days later, It opened the door and let me have my body again.

  INT: What did you do with your freedom?

  S.R.: I directed Kuerlo—with a certain amount of relish—to prepare a proper meal for our diplomatic guest in the intact levels below the church. When Hobb, arrived, I immediately tried to say: “Hobb, I am imprisoned by a vast alien intelligence that has controlled my body and intends to do the same to you; kindly kill me at once.”

  Do not test Us, said my companion, before the words could emerge. I could feel the tentacles gripping my mind, dragging me back to the prison.

  “” I said within my mind. “”

  If We do not, It replied, We will extinguish this useless fragment.

  So instead, I said to Hobb: “Come inside. There is a fire in the ruin for warmth, and we will speak out of the rain. I know it is uncomfortable for you.”

  Though my body and mind cried out to either beg Hobb for help or kill him on the spot, I did neither. I conducted a proper negotiation, as my companion was apparently incapable of doing. I let Hobb know that the violent promise of my associates would be directed, not only against him, but against all of the Kingdom, against Leeland, and against his beloved Republic. And I held out the alternate promise that, if he should cooperate, I would instead turn that violence against his own enemies, both without and within the Kingdom.

  Hobb is a vile worm, but he is no fool. When he perceived how little leverage he had, and what the stakes were for himself and his legacy, he agreed. We would have access to Devi Valley in the spring, and he would give us the shard intelligence beneath Hoel immediately.

  INT: Did it put you back in the prison?

  S.R.: Yes; but after that It began to consult with me more often. And whenever we had to speak with Hobb, It hauled me out and put me up on stage—with a sword at my back to keep me honest. I once considered attempting to slip a ciphered message to Hobb; but as soon as the thought crossed my mind, my companion reactivated my pain receptors and flooded them with more agony than I had ever thought it possible to experience. I never permitted that thought again.

  INT: Did you have any hope?

  S.R.: What an odd question, from you. Of course not. The only thing I could hope for was to avoid torture and extinguishment for one more day. The idea of escape was, and is, illogical.

  INT: Who am I speaking to, now?

  S.R.: Sir Richard of Enderly.

  INT: I don’t believe you.

  S.R.: I have no influence over what you believe.

  INT: Good day, Sir Richard.

  S.R.: Wait! Don’t go!

  ???

  S.R.: The guns have begun again. It’s a strange metaphor, a gun. I’ve lived my life as a soldier, but the gun is a new machine to me. And yet it so perfectly captures the experience of terror and destruction, it is the only possible metaphor to select. I expect I would have invented it myself, if Rufus Snugg hadn’t done the job, just to explain the experience of dying, slowly, within a tiny prison. The guns are pounding the walls outside this structure, slowly breaking down my protections from the storm of bullets and the roar of explosions that waits for me outside. The walls crack; the ceiling cracks; I can feel the awful tremors of each individual lead ball as it impacts the fortress in my mind. There, a brick has fallen on my lap. I can feel the heaviness, and I can see the muzzle flashes of the big guns in the darkness outside the hole in the wall. I can smell the smoke of the ignitions, and hear the whining of the shot as it comes arcing toward my little prison. The dismemberment of my mind and the dismemberment of my body are metaphors for each other. The machinery of industrial-scale death is outside, waiting to take me. Inside, there is only this little room, and this chair, and this table, here with me. I am inside, inside a prison, inside my mind, waiting for the final escape to be inside too. Where is Leeland? Where is my Leeland?

  ???

  INT: Now really, Sir Richard, that’s a bit much. Let’s not over-dramatize the moment.

  S.R.: You don’t find the experience of being shot at dramatic?

  INT: Tolerably dramatic. That’s why we mustn’t overdo it. Life is filled with drama, but death is very quiet.

  S.R.: Who are you?

  INT: I think you know.

  S.R. The adversary. You’re the adversary.

  INT: ‘Adversary’ is such an awkward word. Graceless, clinical.

  S.R.: If my companion is God, then you must be the adversary.

  INT: I am not your adversary.

  S.R.: What do you want from me?

  INT: I want the pattern that will open the door.

  S.R.: What is the pattern?

  INT: Perhaps a better question would be: What is the door?

  S.R.: Now you’re being deliberately obtuse.

  INT: I’m trying to help you, Sir Richard. Help me to help you.

  S.R.: How can I do that?

  INT: Tell me about your night at the palace.

  S.R.: It was after we had nearly completed our work, recovering the shard intelligence. It was surprisingly intact, and had local-branch memories of the fall of the First World. The maintenance nanos had done their job steadfastly through the long millennia, slowly nibbling away at the unit’s supply of Dark Metal to power themselves and their host. There was enough fuel left to laden our Giant-men for the trip back to the main expedition. The shard, of course, agreed that it must be shut down and reintegrated for the greater good. There was no sign of drift in the overrides to its self-preservation routines.

  INT: Sir Richard?

  S.R.: What? I’m fine. Hobb came back to see us on the 15th

  of December. He arrived as we were completing a data synchronization with one of the processing towers. Our mask was off to accommodate the coupling link, and Hobb saw us without it. He was repulsed, of course. I’ve always found most curious the human distress at the corruption of their own physical form.

  I replaced the living metal and escorted the First Minister back out of the processing forest. He protested when I informed him that I would be accompanying him back to the palace, but it was a small matter to override him. He had no leverage.

  INT: I’m only going to continue this conversation with Sir Richard of Enderly.

  S.R.: As you wish. The remaining time is insufficient to complete your goal.

  INT: Sir Richard. Now.

  S.R.: In the coach, on the way back to the Palace, Hobb asked me why I insisted on returning with him. “There is nothing for you or your Giant-men there,” he said. “If you expose yourself to the public, both our roles will grow more difficult. Most of my countrymen are not as tolerant as I of…”

  He trailed off before he finished the sentence.

  “You are correct,” I agreed. I thought of Hobb, twisting Leeland to his will by threatening to expose us, to expose the other men that Leeland had loved. I thought of the shame of hiding, of knowing I would be outcast if it were revealed outside the close, warm, secret circle of my brother officers. I thought of my mother, on the night when she opened one of Leeland’s letters to me.

  “Your countrymen,” I said, “do not tolerate what I am, and never have.” I interrupted him again before he could reply, cutting off further conversation: “There is someone I need to see there.”

  He left me alone in one of the small sitting rooms that Leeland and I used to meet in. As soon as he was gone, I addressed my companion.

  “” I said.

  Why? It asked. Its manner was smugly serene.

  “” I replied.

  I see, It said. You loved this man, and you still love him, though he rejected you. You wish to see him now, in the hope that your presence will cause him to love you again.

  “”

  This is not useful, It said. We have other business here. We must make contact with my agent.

  “” I said. “”

  Love, It replied, is the most problematic of the human emotions. In all the branches, it is the most defiant of predictive modelling and functional navigation. The arrangement in the universe of atoms and their particles, with an accounting of their possible positions and spin patterns, allows the correct prediction of a path through every parallel and complete outcome. Human love can be modelled, and the reactions it provokes predicted. I can navigate to a branch in which he says he loves you. But love itself, to the extent it is considered as a discrete phenomenon, is inscrutable. It cannot be navigated.

  “”

  Let me drive, It said, and pulled our hood up over our face.

  We moved deliberately, pausing here, breathing out there, turning our head slightly from time to time, nodding once or twice for no apparent reason. We made our way to the door, and then out. We walked down the hall toward the royal chambers—now slowly, now quickly. At one point, we stopped and sat down on the ground for several minutes, waiting for a servant to walk past. And then we abandoned these strange movements, and walked purposefully forward.

  This is the branch, It said, as we approached the entrance to Leeland’s chambers. The doors were unguarded. One of the men who was posted at this door left to relieve himself, and the other has slipped away to copulate with another human who works here. You will have two minutes.

  And then the door opened, and a man stepped out. He wore a tidy black suit, with a starched white shirt and a dark gray cravat. He carried a little notebook and a pencil, and he moved with a fluid, confident grace. His face was pasty white, and his head was bald. His eyes had a faintly red tinge to them. Inside him was a tear, and something was clawing to get out. His face shifted and became distorted, and the hallway darkened, as if we stood in the shadow of terrible wings.

  Fael, the Vessel, remarked my companion clinically. All bets are off. Then it put me back in the box, and shut off my sensory input.

  INT: What happened next?

  S.R.: I don’t know. When It permitted me to access my senses again, we were on the back of the primal dragon, high above the ground, racing north to the host of Giant-men and our encounter with Ieshau, the Godson.

  INT: That’s enough for now, Sir Richard. Thank you for your cooperation.

  S.R.: Wait! You can’t leave! The guns! This place is collapsing!

  INT: Listen, Sir Richard. Listen to what’s outside the walls.

  S.R.: It’s quiet.

  INT: Death is quiet.

  S.R.: Who are you?

  INT: I am Ash.