"Why did they think this would be a good idea? Didn't they...I mean-...God! What were they thinking?"
"They were thinking, Dear Sister, that out of every horrible deed born of necessity, something inevitably good must arrive."
"That's a Crock of shit!"
"Yes, quite."
~Peter Sims and Patty Sims~
He sat upon the Throne, a jaded gleam in his otherwise dull eyes. The iron beneath him was jagged with assassination attempts, carved of it's once velvet pillow and swimming with the debris and grit of a half dozen explosions from a dozen concocted follies. The warped bannisters that served as arm-rests, when used, spun his limbs out and away from his body, flung with the urgency of combined regret and indecision. A flapping spaniel Jadit had commented once.
The once proud spires that jutted from either post top, depicting the carefully etched and carved remnants of the same spires that once stood on this very Keep's highest summits, were melted and bubbled, frozen in a grotesque yawning puddle, that seemed eternally dripping and yet undropped. Hard black glimmers flushed the work of the mismatched pillars of unwrought iron posts, making each a garish sceptre; hallmarks of Calamity. Ribbons of the former mauve velvet, fell to either side of the horizontal seat, twirled, twined and spun together in a tangled and unmitigated mess, while the once clawed feet that dug in each direction, pooled into the cobbled cracks of the dais upon which the throne sat, spinning outward. The Iron had turned to a coward not long after the fires first struck, sluicing through the cracked marble floors until they'd run far enough to cool. The cracks had expanded, settled dust strewn outward in great swathes and layers.
He shifted in place, wincing with each motion, trying desperately to find some comfortable purchase. It was little use. Each new settling of weight, brought a sharp prod of memory and, not for the first time, he bellowed his frustration and scorn.
"Jadit!" The halls rang with the sound, soot tumbling from the rafters with lazy aplomb. Silence ran back to greet him, the echoes choked before they ever reached the farthest of the walls or the nearest of the standing armours, each painted as black as the rest of the hall. Nothing had been spared the fire's touch.
"Jadit!" He bellowed again. Then, quieter. "You insufferable harpy, where are you hiding?"
The air grew crisper for a moment, as if a draft had crept in from someplace and all at once he threw a sigh out into it, leaning back into the throne with another wince and a grimace of rapidly dwindling tolerance. The next moment and the air seemed to vibrate at the immediate base of the dais, rippling outward in great pock-marks and whorls of disturbance. Then, with an ear clapping shriek, existence sundered and something unfolded itself from the space between seconds. She took a moment to re-organize herself from that crooked morphism, a multitude of shattered and euclidean-challenged limbs reaching in on themselves, using a plethora of cracked and broken digits to straighten themselves out one by one. Eventually and with great precision, where once stood a mass of impossible, there was a woman;
Her hair was midnight, a tumble of jettisoned exhaust, frazzled and spread to all corners and airs and directions, bunching about her brow in frizzy bangs that half-hid a pair of small but startlingly violet eyes. Her nose was a button, small and just so, while her mouth was a broad thing that vanished at the corners, when she smiled. She was heavy in the chest, small of height and broad of hip and each limb looked powerful enough to flex a timber in half. The slight cleft of her chin gave her a snubbed look, that she eternally tried to deny with a frank sort of wrinkle and the purse of plump lips off to one side.
Jadit, draped in a black spider silk shawl and traveler leathers, set either gloved fist on either bunched hip and narrowed her eyes at Jadit with something like annoyance.
"Do you recall at all, Dear Lord, how much your little summons hurt?"
He snorted, leaning far forward in his Throne to cast a palpable glare down at her. A glare, she was used to and ignored with impudence.
"Are you unaware of just how uncomfortable this blasted seat is?"
"Apologies, lord. I wasn't aware you twisting your posterior to the shape of that slagged heap was comparable to the restructuring of one's physical self in the name of Other-laws." She smiled primly, hands suddenly infront of her, laced together while she tip-toed in place. "I shall endeavor to remember that discomfort the next time I'm searching-"
"Oh enough!" He attempted to throw his limbs up in exasperation, only for the sleeves of his fine long coat to be snagged in a half dozen places along the once-arm-rests. This drew a titter from the base of the Dais and earned Jadit another glare. "Would you just Report already?"
She calmed, clearing her throat and inhaling mournfully. It brought a grimness of expectation to his face.
"Alas, there's no sign of a trail. None noticeable to me, at any rate."
Jadit prided herself on being one of the best Trackers in this plane and any other and few could dispute that. That meant there was no trail to find.
"Whatever means they used to untether us from the mooring chains left not enough of a sign to sniff, scout or snort." Jadit's hand absently rose, a finger extended to twirl and circle in the air, which responded with the faintest mournful howl, caught somewhere in the distant wallow of the hallway's echoless volume.
"What of the paths? Can you skate us a trail back to the true way?" He watched her shake her head, in a small but genuine way. "Something, Jadit! It isn't possible we've something been left adrift between it all!"
"The Mooring chains were ancient, Lord. Nothing born of our times or our Fathers times. Archian at least, probably older. They weren't meant to be broken and how that was managed, I'm still trying to puzzle through. The fact that it was done, however, also proves fallible the infallible, which means that the consequences weren't planned for in the construction." She shrugged, her finger slowing it's circuit in the air, the spooling of the currents drawing that strangely mournful howl closer, it's volume rising to a background hum beneath their conversation.
"Consequences?"
"Yes, Lord." She stared at him dumbly, finger paused a moment. "Like us suddenly being hurtled through Between without a plausible destination, path or way-point as a guide."
She stood obediently and dutifully in place while listening to him ramble off a few choice insults, the power of which was enough to solidify tracks of soot on the thick support pillars holding up the great hall, curling them inward in shrivelled agony. Several of the nearby suits of armour were left trembling in place after he'd calmed again, wincing back into the Throne with a guttural 'harumph!'.
"Well we need to figure something out, Jadit."
"Of this, I am painfully aware, Lord."
"I'm not going to be left to wing through the abyssal divide for the remainder of days-"
"I wouldn't think so, Lord-"
"-Especially with you as comapany!"
She struck her hands to her hips once again, lower lip thrust forward, eyes narrowed enough to burn the violet into ultra neon brilliance. The Howl receded, free of it's chain momentarily.
"We're in no better place or mood for your blame and accusation, Lord. It isn't as if we didn't plan for the eventualities."
"Not enough, apparently." He griped at the air, leaning to his left, arm tangling itself into a fresh position among the quartered rest. By the time he'd settled again, he looked as if he might shove his hand into his ear up to the wrist at any moment.
"Those eventualities were checked and double-checked by most of your senior staff-"
"Most of whose remains you are currently dusting your heels in, I might add-"
She clapped her shoulder, a black rinse clouding the air behind her with the motion. "...And if half of them hadn't been at each other's political throats, searching for a better place to dig their tongues a little deeper into your royal crack, we might have been able to put this off entirely, Lord."
"...Blame, Jadit? Really?"
"Oh, don't give me that!" Her scowl turned the ultra-violet of her eyes into a sheer and blistering pink. "If it hadn't been for me-"
"We'd not be in this mess."
"No, we'd be black soot and memories as the rest!"
Her voice snapped at the tail end, one of the armoured suits nearby clattering to the ground as the tremors took it from it's standing post. It continued to shiver in place where it lay, a tinny rattling flooding the nearby vicinity. They both ignored it.
"Alright, fine." He held up his hands, eyes closed and head lolling to one side in an effort to crack the tension out of his spine. "No one's to blame. Not in this. We planned for as much as we could. It just-"
"Wasn't enough." She put on her frank face once more, fists refusing to quit her hips just yet.
"Sometimes that's how it works, hmm?" He grunted again, trying the right side this time. His arm jutted out, crooked just so, ready for a serving dish for his upturned palm. "So past is past and now is now. What do you imagine our options are?"
"Out of this?" She hung her hands about her, turning at the hips to express the soot blanket of a Hall. "I'd imagine you wouldn't appreciate the answer to that much, Lord."
"No, I imagine I wouldn't." He threw himself to his feet suddenly, turning in one swift motion to punch the ghoulish face of the Thane, who's face once emblazoned the throne's back and who now seemed more a drawn down and melted vision of suffering. Iron rang loudly and he hissed off another smattering of obscenities, clutching at his suddenly throbbing knuckles. the armour that had collapsed, jumped in a sudden clatter of fits and leaps. It brought him around with a sharp glare, more soot congealing into rolled up slivers of terror at the sight.
"Would you stop that?!" The armour ceased all motion. Grew impossibly still. She snorted, loudly.
"Feel better?"
"Not terribly."
"I'd say the Iron won that one then."
He chuffed agreement, massaging his knuckles while pacing the Dais, small short steps taken, clarity struggling to rise with the motions. Anything to keep him from sitting back down again. He felt the leaden weight of the Widow at his hip, drag his balance off. It startled him for a moment, pushing a frown to the surface. He'd been sitting long enough that his reflex to adjust for the weight had taken a moment longer to ignite. This small tidbit of information disturbed him far greater than anything had yet. Jadit was being quiet at the throne's base, out of ideas and waiting to see what might materialize from her Lord's sudden plume of disgruntled airs.
"This all started with that blasted Library."
Jadit nodded, a flicker of a sneer creeping to her lips, her molars chewing on something distasteful, suddenly caught at the back of her throat.
"We weren't briefed entirely on the contents of the Room, Lord. It couldn't be helped-"
"Blasted Ducal Morons plucking random books without titles off shelves and flipping them open." He returned a frank look down at her, pausing in his pacing to do so at that. "I think we might have done something about that-"
"Such as, Lord?"
"Taken their heads, before they spoke" He felt a gauntleted hand fall to rest on the Widow's pommel, a comfort gesture "and convinced me this fool's errand was anything but just that."
"As we've stated already, Lord."
"Aye. Blame's not to help us now."
He paced another few steps, threw out an exasperated hand and stopped once more. His gaze fell on the Throne, the face of the Thane at it's centre, staring back at him with drooped eyes and a yawning mouth. A tongue had been made from the dripping iron, mouth pulled open by the heat to loll a serpentine and dollop-tipped protrusion past his mangled chin. He felt a surge of remembrance, reach back to the Thane's own rule and how the citizenry had paid him in fear and tributes both often and profound. He recalled the Wrought guillotines that decorated every courtyard of significance in the kingdom of those days and how readily he was willing to throw anyone, soldier, merchant, noble or peasant to the blade should they cross him. For the greatest of goods. The best of intentions. The briefest of hells.
"A mercy." He murmured.
"Pardon, Lord?" She was frowning, disturbed slightly by his sudden reverie, enough to cross the boundary between their stations in climbing the dais' first step.
"The Thane understood his people. Knew the costs and risks of their presence and what those demanded of him. In turn, he paid them their necessary function and dues and when it seemed the greatest in thought and chaos grew to threaten the whole, he put aside whatever petty sense of morality he might have been blamed for and set things right."
Jadit's incredulity was palpable. Enough that the air itself seemed to cringe away from her, stealing the colour from her immediate vicinity in an effort to flee her reach. She marched up another step, surrounded on all sides by several feet worth of the monochromatic.
"Lord, the Thane was little more than a brute. As eager to fill the stocks as he was to fill the headsman's baskets. He often retired the Executioner's to do the deed himself-"
"Yes, Jadit, he did. It was one of the reasons for his many names..."
"Grief-striker. Blood-caller. The Suckling Hound, The-"
"Far-reach, The Calamity King, yes yes, I'm familiar with them all, Jadit-"
"-Then what, Lord-"
"-What, Jadit is that beyond all those monikers, gifted him by his subjects, the only one that he claimed was the one we best know him by. That of Thane."
Jadit's frown had grown, the monochrome surrounding her having shrunk to a dense few inches, the air a febrile whisper of pleading mercy at the back of her senses. She brushed it back with a negligent wave of her hand, sending veins of colourless lightning through the empty hall behind them.
"He did as duty demanded of him and when the Between came to a head, threatened his people, he did what he was meant to do and bore what was demanded of him."
Somewhere, deep within the bowels of Jadit's mind, a stirring of emotion rose that confused her for a moment. Confusion enough that she found herself half-way up the Dais without realizing how she'd gotten there. She turned her eyes to her Lord, a resplendent creature of marbled features. Bald of pate, the whites of his brows as snow, the harsh and feral green of his eyes responsible for no few bent knees, including her own. His leathers had long since been worn and charred through by the conflagration of some days (hours?) ago and she could spy no few wounds that he'd been ignoring since then, puckered blood flakes touching at the openings in the boiled leather garments. None of that, seemed to matter however, as he paced beside the Throne, one gauntleted hand at his back, the other settled over the pommel of the Tideblade at his hip. She saw in him a dawning decision, something as immobile as mountains, as daunting as sunrises and found a word for the emotion that crept into her mind;
Dread.
"Jadit. Gather yourself." He had stopped, staring at the hall around them with something like disdain. A first time regard for something long since obsolete.
"Lord?"
"It's time we re-visited the Library. I think if we're to find an answer to our woes, it will reside where the mistakes first came."
She felt her mouth gape slightly, shocked for a moment long enough that the air whipped back into place, nudging her up the stair another step.
"Lord-"
"No, Jadit. It is time we shed our concerns. In the name of what's necessary." His hand rose from his back, gauntlet tightening with audible certainty, a fist formed before him that hung there, still. "If they would break the chains and all that was once thought true, then it is time we find a new Truth. If not to restore, than to re-build." His hand punched the pommel of the Widow to one side, thrusting the blade to dangle behind him as he moved to take the stairs down to the Hall floor, two at a time. Jadit watched him pass and then moved to follow him, trying desperately to clear the lump out of her throat in the process.
"Lord, I hope-"
"-I know, Jadit." He said gravely, soot ghasts rising, shrieking in hushed tones to either side of his direct path. "Keep your hope. I feel as if we should have it there, incase certainty and truth abandon us again."
The Great Hall doors swung open, shedding a curtain of black that wreathed them both as they exited. A moment later, they swung closed with a thunder that refused to echo.
The suit of fallen armour began to chatter on the floor once again.
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