[i]“Bajaga Garul, get hammer!”[/i] Tarhara Maka squeaked, its secondary sinistral arm, which terminated in four needle-thin fingers, extended in expectation. Quick as beta-decay and ever obedient, its spore and apprentice scuttled on five reticulated tentacles to the tool rack. Moments passed, and even the mites on the wavy glass walls felt the swollen intensity of Tarhara Maka’s ocular tic, a chartreuse pulse from a singular central eye that briefly overwhelmed the forge light. Once in position, Bajaga Garul scanned the numerous instruments and moved to select one, but— [i]“No, pointy-face, not that—other!”[/i] squealed Tarhara Maka. Time ebbed, but that was merely an irritant rather than an obstacle. Intricate and ornate were the two preeminent qualities that distinguished these artisans’ workmanship, not timeliness. The present labor manifested as a truncated japa mala, a chain of polished beryl just lengthily enough to wrap a Cizran-sized fist and engraved with a trilogy of black lines that danced tribally across its surface, bringing unity to the individual pieces. Closer inspection of the lines revealed three passages from [i]Ci’zaria su-to Tóth[/i], rite of the Sacred Form, a banned scripture, which began: [i]What labor transcends the reeds and wake, denies streams dilute the sea or storms harass the somnolent sand? One is not the whole. Rebuke all gods; decry the fading star and waning soul; strip bare divinity and inward curb the tide of time. Ascend beyond the broken light. Carve heresy into bone. Absent these, effort is meaningless; persistence is meaningless; passion is meaningless—the chasing of the wind, the flooding of the sky, the victory of the slaughtered. One is not the whole.[/i] Were their commission divulged, these two tiny artisans would be doomed to await eternity in the portals of Gereza. [center] . . .[/center] Upholstered in virthian slath hide, a stool, one of twelve, and the only occupied, gripped his rear with a thousand spongy fingers; likewise, an under-lit translucent gneiss counter chilled his elbows. The space was mellow with a lazy instrumental, sweet incense, and metallic cinders. In it, Eti was almost drowsy as he sat alone, hunched over, his chin cupped in his paws. The tavern was called [i]Elsewhere[/i] and framed an intersection with four similarly titular houses: [i]Nowhere[/i], [i]Somewhere[/i], [i]Anywhere[/i], and [i]Where To Find It[/i]. Located in Zöld’nach’s Ayatel district, they weren’t all bars, or even fronts that pretended to be, although most boasted ties to an unsanctioned marketplace. He wasn’t particularly finicky in where he drank and merely remained in the first that made no effort to seduce him into service as a sex slave, which made Elsewhere his third port of call. Elsewhere lent itself to a sporting motif complemented by a holodynamic mural set behind rows of bottled alcohol across from the bar. Portrayed was a slath bull, the dingy brown of its striae interrupted by dangerous neon orange and further camouflaged by layers of dirt, peat, and broken vines that clung to its horns and hide. It lunged through a mire, spears in its back, propelled both by terror and millions of rock hard cilia along its belly. Above him, an inapt lantern lurched on its chain, its chassis an amplifier of its tiny alien inhabitants. Most beings evolved to suit the needs of their environment and were unable to detect the noises emitted by Kantencans, but Eti was engineered to perfection, at least inasmuch as his capacity to serve his master was concerned. The exchange amused him and the longer it went on the less successful was his attempt to remain composed. Within minutes, with an almost untouched pitcher of machine-infusible liquid kilowatt, colloquially known as milk, before him, he was seized a fit of snorts, coughs, and giggles. Viscous white drops clung to his whiskers and snout, shook free, and landed on the bar in a weirdly infinite pattern. Then a Q’ush disturbed his private moment and claimed the stool at his side. [i]“You returned, just as you said.”[/i] The query chilled Eti’s laughter, which died at his lips. He glanced around the establishment just to be certain he was the only other occupant beside the automated tapster. Empty. Unless, somehow, the Q’ush referred to the Kantencans, but his suspicions led him elsewhere. [i]“Excuse me?”[/i] [I] “You sat just there and implored me to return here at this now for each traversal until we again met,” [/i] began the Q’ush, its finger, marked with the patina of abuse, directed toward Eti’s stool. Eti gazed at the Q’ush blankly. He didn’t recognize the creature; however, he did not doubt its claim. Weirder things weren’t unknown to him in his exploits with his mistress. The Q’ush raised a finger toward the lantern, the remaining trio of digits contorted in a sinuous green web; a gesture that lent further suspense to the moment as the unnamed intruder continued, [I] “That I may escort you, contingent on your mistress’ absence, with his token to our Lord to the gala. You told me, your memory, I ought highlight the pathology of your whims. Not so unpredictable. You would be here, seated there, just so, unslaked, forgetful, late.” [/i] With that, the Q’ush stood up, plucked the lantern off its hook, and made for the exit. There, it glanced over its shoulder, gestured for Eti to follow, pointed, this time toward the wall, and prodded, [I] “Your hat.” [/i] He hadn’t come in with a hat, but, as he looked at the rack, he noticed something vaguely familiar. For whatever reason, Eti assumed he had misplaced it; a very unusual event for a being such as him. Yet, there it was. Secured by an bio-rejection discharge field, it was gaudy, rusty, bedecked with a bandoleer, and undeniably his style. He picked it up and followed the strange Q’ush out of the bar. In the back of his mind, he noted that it felt heavier than it should. Not by much, but enough to perhaps look into later. [I] “Mind if I join you at the gala?” [/i] Eti asked, although he already knew the answer. [center] . . . [/center] Pillars of molten glass issue from celestial apertures tessellated in a nepheline vault and drown the wailing gullets of bestial statuary chained to abyssal pedestals of polished basalt. While colossal, a predatory silhouette diminishes the otherwise daunting cleansing chamber’s scale. No sculpture, the figure, restless, obstructs and contorts the searing gamboge glare, casting the space in writhing cacodaemonic umbras that shift upon the floor and walls as a host of menacing imps parading around their prey. Substance decays into the pure experiential as a solitary scream gilds the portrayal of Nattini’s [i]Consiglieri Fraudolenti[/i] in truncated horror. Gravity, panicked, flees; motes of ash ascend to drift in an accretion disc of otherworldly limbo; and the fiery columns arc and deform into a multitude of serpents-turned-ouroboros. A low vibration permeates the space and crescendos in a relentless wave of noise that whelms the senses. In bedlam’s midst, Ec-shavar looms, his carapace lashed by ropes of liquid fire. Yet, corporeal pain neither dulls nor quenches the cerebral din of his ruminations, failure after failure to ascend mounting in his mind. [i]I will become a god,[/i] he insists inwardly, the frailties of his genetic heritage lain bare by force of mind and will. Deftly, his mind sharpens to a scalpel and cuts away the flaws. Suddenly, it is as though a third eye manifests. He feels the tempo of life throb throughout the Jade Fortress, Q’ab, and the entirety of his cosmic domain. He senses the decline of his servitors, the threats from within and without, and the nearing of the heavenly interstice. Urgently, he carves into the limitations of his empathic organ; let him die in the minds of his brethren while he walks amongst them, invisible yet omnipotent. [i]I will be a god.[/i] [i]The whole is not one.[/i] Ec-shavar collapses, the session ended. Within the cleansing chamber, silence and darkness takes hold; the pillars, once more mated to mouths of dead stone, dim and harden. After a while, he stands up. Something is amiss, he realizes. His hold on a kukull—gone. A small matter, he dismisses it. He has a gala to attend. Standing up, a cape of living flesh cascades from his shoulders and conceals three of his six legs. His translucent teeth flash for a moment as he tastes the acrid air. It tastes of progress. After that moment is spent to assess his surrounding, he departs. He does not walk long, for the very chambers of his manor shape to speed his passing. Soon, trumpets are blaring and obsequious fools kowtow in honor of their governor, their lord, and their god—he, Ec-shavar. Everyone fearing him, obeying him, celebrating him; everyone except for Plangó Felho'Te-vesztø. [I]“I sense a weakening of your spirit,”[/i] opines his Cizran guest. [I]“To the contrary,” [/i] Ec-shavar retorts, [I]“never have I been so mighty.”[/i] [center] . . . [/center] Magnificent, imposing, boundless—all these described the Hall of Records in Samarra, Cizra Su-lahn’s capital. She worked there, but never saw it. Instead, it was her lot in life as Cizran slave to toil twenty-three levels beneath the grand edifice in a labyrinthine catacomb of soul-crushing cubicles and dingy offices. Despite this, the work was rewarding. While rare, a Cizran misstep in the complex dance of bureaucracy was not unheard of; even rarer, yet vastly more exciting, was when one of the masters were systematically dismantled by the system. Such was the dramaturgy for which she, and millions like her, lived. With that in mind, Junior Audit Servitor #397 sat promptly at her desk. Her thumb still tingled from the sting of the biometric access scan, her morning coffee—in its inveterate skull-embossed red mug—was warm and aromatic, and she was eager to trudge through another dull day of audit logs. Today her information portal scheduler notified her that Gareza Prison Complex was slated for an ad-hoc review. Another biometric scan confirmed her security clearance and, within minutes, the data dump finalized. JAS-397 cracked her knuckles, cleared her mind, and dived into what she knew was going to be an extensive review. Most of the data dump involved videos and documents pertaining to prisoner booking or release, which she reviewed to make sure every [i]i[/i]was dotted and every [i]t[/i] was crossed. Then, three-quarters into her shift, she came across something unusual. There was an alert that a cell in sector 12E9, block A3, quadrant 2 temporal stasis briefly malfunctioned. No inspection report was filed; indeed, no documentation of any kind accompanied the automated alert. She sighed. There was no reason to get excited; practically every time this type of incident arose, it ended up being a fluke—cosmic rays, electromagnetic surge, unexplained anomaly. Even so, she made a note to file an official reprimand requisition against the prison maintenance. That done, she decided to undertake a review of that cell’s live information feed. She signed, opened up the video feed, and saw … nothing. Nobody. Maybe it was just empty. She checked the logs. Prisoner 3091, self-referenced as [I] ‘Eal Sermonde’ [/i], was booked over twelve days earlier. No release record. She went from live to backup feed, opened up the date, and confirmed his presence in the cell. Ugly little man. So, sometime between then and now he managed to escape. She gasped audibly. Appalled at her lack of discretion, JAS-397 covered her mouth and glanced around to see if anyone noticed. No, all her fellow servitors were assiduously engaged in their work. Just as she should be. Next step was confirmation. She put the feed on fast forward; it would stop automatically when it caught up to the present. She didn’t have to wait that long. Within the last three days, he vanished. She isolated the exact minute, played it back on slow, and watched. What she saw next shocked her to such an extent that she [i]stood up in her cubicle and knocked over her chair[/i]. [I] “This is it,” [/i] she said aloud, throwing circumspection to the wind. [I] “This is really happening.” [/i] She locked her portal and practically [i]ran[/i]—which is to say, strode at a brisk pace—from the cube farm to her manager’s office. There was paperwork to file. Mountains of it.