H - 130: How Unkind (Patreon)

Gregarious Greg the One-Man Bard sat upon the flat roof of the watchtower attached to the headquarters of the Verdi Herons, surrounded by tools, mechanical parts, and pieces of musical instruments, rebuilding his own grand contraption from scratch and enjoying the day.

It was a particularly beautiful morning, nearly cloudless but not uncomfortably warm, and the sights and sounds of the city were on balance joyous.

The news had spread by now, and Boisverd along with the entire rest of the Evervales was incredulously cheering the death of Atraximos the Dread. Along with the surprising addendum to that world-shaking news: the age of dragons terrorizing the Evervales had not only ended but flipped, as the very first action for the Dread’s offspring once out from under his control had been to fly to the aid of mortals.

Boisverd itself was wounded but not reeling; there was construction absolutely everywhere, but the tone of shouting that Greg could hear from the surrounding streets was cheerful. Thanks to the dragons’ aid, the damage, though widespread, had been superficial. Nearly every structure needed at least windows and shingles replaced, but none had burned down or collapsed. Better yet, casualties had been minimal.

The Verdi were struggling to come to terms with the fact that they owed that mercy specifically to dragons, but too many had remained outside the shelters and seen what followed for any denials to take root.

Also, Lilith’s great spell had sent only the living colossus spiders home, and the Verdi had just collectively discovered that colossus spider legs were as huge as the name suggested, and tasted exactly like crab legs. The labor of repair and discomfort of holes in walls and roofs was greatly mitigated by days of free feasting. Everyone not rushing to fix their home had rushed to preserve as much meat as they could; alchemists and all sorts of craftspeople were experimenting to see what they could create from the vast amounts of spider chitin left lying around.

The Herons’ roof had been repaired quickly, and Greg now had his perch entirely to himself. He hummed, wearing a small smile as he worked, enjoying the combination of pleasant weather and the good-natured sounds of the city spread out around him. He could hear the optimism of the common folk and didn’t have to listen to the scheming of those now planning to unseat the Queen or in some other way take advantage of this massive shakeup in the status quo.

Sooner or later, that would demand his attention along with everyone else’s, but this? This was a good day.

“Now, stop me if I’m wrong, but I thought there was an understanding in place.”

The sun was high; the shadow pooling around Greg was a squat little thing confined close to where he was seated. It had to stretch out significantly as it addressed him.

“Funny,” the bard said mildly, “I don’t recall agreeing to anything with you.”

“Come now, let’s not be disingenuous. This is universal and ancient—if we just threw ourselves into the fray willy-nilly, who knows what would happen? You’re taking an awfully direct hand in matters. One might say, an excessively personal one.”

Greg chuckled, lightly tapping brass bolts into place with a chasing hammer. “That’s right, lecture me on the ancient ways. There’s no way this’ll end with you looking foolish.”

His shadow stretched, seeming to struggle against its bonds for a moment, and then detached fully, floating upward in a translucent shape that was barely visible in the bright sunlight. “Now, now, no need to get personal. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t go around policing the implied rules when I don’t have a stake. This is only of interest to me because you seem to have decided to involve yourself in my business directly.”

Greg paused in his work, looking up at the floating shadow with a dangerously bland expression. “Ohhhh? You have something you wish to take…personally?”

“Easy, there, tiger,” the shadow soothed, shifting in a manner that suggested hands upraised in surrender. “Look: here I am, not starting a fight! Let’s have us a little chat about this like civilized people shall we? There’s no need to get territorial when we can just clear the air, set out some ground rules, and henceforth know how not to accidentally ruffle each other’s feathers! That’s how I worked things out with the Shepherd. She’s lovely to work with, by the way! But look who I’m telling.”

Greg set down the hammer and picked up an awl. The leather strap he was attaching needed another point to be bolted on securely. That was the sort of thing that any serious craftsman would have measured and planned out ahead of time, but his work was always somewhat improvisational.

“It’s downright cute, the way you bring that up as if I didn’t know how that worked out for her. Perhaps this would be a good time to let you know I was aware of that chain of events before she was.”

“So you see how things can start to spiral as soon as everybody’s not operating on the same—”

“Just stop,” Greg ordered. “You should go away now. This was a bad idea.”

“Cards on the table,” the shadow insisted, “I would really love to come away with a mutual understanding, here. Just a little something to help everybody operate without tripping over each other’s feet in the dark. But if you’re not up for that, it’s still fine. I still don’t mean you any harm, and I will very gently suggest, as one who aspires to be a friend, that the way you’re going will bring you trouble of the kind that affects a lot more than you. So… Can we at least agree to all just get along? Maybe settle on some common ideals we can work together toward?”

Greg’s hands stopped moving. For a moment he sat in silence, staring without blinking at the leather strip he was in the midst of working.

Then he smiled.

“So we’re friends now? Well all right then. C’mon, give us a hug.”

He looked up at the shadow, smiling broadly, and his eyes were dark portals into eternity.

The shadow started to shy backward, but then reality flexed against it. This was no weak, fumbling indentation made by a half-formed godling, nor even the comparatively well-worn channels wrought by a thing like the shadow itself. The universe bent instantly, to such an extent that the concept of existence twisted out of the way to make room for the weight of something ancient beyond comprehension, something powerful beyond the capacity of language to express.

This was no groove in creation guiding tendencies along its own engraved path. Existence itself contracted to a point like the power of a black hole; the shadow was pulled down by a force which eclipsed its own by orders of magnitude.

Except that there was no singularity at the bottom. The universe and all in it were pouring in a torrent through a ragged hole punched through reality. Struggling desperately, the tiny god was swept over the edge—

And beyond, in the divine realm of the Jongleur, there was only darkness. And for one infinite moment, silence.

But immediately, as a new presence intruded upon their rest, the souls of countless generations of the Jongleur’s faithful began to awaken.

And then they began to laugh.

They saw it—they saw through it. Every plan, every aspiration, every part of the deity’s being laid bare before the judging eyes of uncountable mortal souls. Souls who had seen everything and were tired of it; souls who in life had come face to face with the brutal truth that the universe was so vast that nothing in it particularly mattered, that everything anyone had ever done was no different from what all the people before them had, that existence was nothing but a spinning wheel of meaningless repetition… And that the only thing anyone could really do about it was laugh.

So they laughed.

It started small, as laughter sometimes did, but the first giggles awoke more observers to see what was floating helplessly before them, and the torrent grew. It was bitter, mocking laughter. Judgmental and snide, the gaiety of an endless throng who saw someone in their midst still suffering from the delusion that they mattered. The laughter grew, pressed inward with an all-annihilating force of its own.

This was a realm in which no one, not even a god, had the power to take themselves seriously.

A much older and more powerful god than the shadow would have been brought low here; a god might outclass any mortal by such an extent that there was no comparison, but the Jongleur was older than his peers, older than the idea of civilization. He remembered the birth of dragons, the rise and disappearance of the Timekeepers, and still more beyond. His faithful spanned eons; their numbers had grown since before numbers were counted beyond the tally of a biped’s fingers and toes.

The mocking dead were a force that could crush anything in the cosmos which dared to presume it mattered.

And just as the pressure of their derision was pressing the Entity into the verge of oblivion, the universe flipped upside down and spat them back out.

Greg was sitting on his sunny rooftop, working on his machine. In the interim he seemed to have finished affixing the last leather strap to the main casing, and begun assembling a collapsible mechanical arm out of springs, hinges, and lengths of metal.

His shadow was still disconnected from him, but no longer floating in the air. It was a quivering discoloration upon the stone platform, its edges wavering, seemingly unable to hold a distinct shape.

“It’s a metaphor, see?” Greg said lightly as he worked. “Once you cross that epiphany, once you truly understand how little anything matters… Well, people go one of two ways. Some take it as a pretext to be as much of an uncaring dick as they can get away with. But those who possess a shred of emotional intelligence come to recognize that meaning is created, and every last one of us has the poer to do it. The universe may not care about any of us, but that’s fine. The universe is nothing but numbers. Consciousness is an emergent property that pops up by sheer accident, and the trap for consciousness is recognizing that fact, and recognizing that the fact that it doesn’t matter…doesn’t matter. Caring about something gives it weight that nothing else can.”

He finished affixing a spring, pulled it back to test its tension, and smiled at the dark tone which emerged from the shivering coil of metal.

“Below us, in this guild headquarters, in a little crack in the mortar of the walls in a basement, there’s an ant. A creature with a consciousness so primitive it barely counts as one. Nothing but a bundle of instinctive impulses, really. One of five hundred thirty-eight thousand, four hundred and twelve sisters. She’s found a crumb on the kitchen floor that’s just slightly too big for her to carry, so she’s heading home to get help. Hoping she can bring back more workers to retrieve it before it disappears. If you consider the true scope of the universe… She isn’t any less significant than the supermassive black hole around which this galaxy rotates. What true, objective argument can be made that her concerns matter any less than yours?”

The shadow gradually seemed to firm up, assuming distinct borders again. It still seemed afraid to move, or speak, or do anything to draw attention.

“You know the problem I have with you?” Greg mused, switching out the tool in his hand. “You prioritize. Oh, sure, everybody does that; we’re all limited by our own perspective. You, though, are a class of thing which should have a broader perspective, and yet you continue to draw distinctions that really only matter to you and then act like they’re fundamental properties of the universe. What the hells is the difference between Ar-Kaln Zelekhir and Cora d’Acron, that one of them got to be a protagonist while the other was reduced to a game piece for you to nudge toward her doom? For that matter, in what absolute sense do either of them matter more than any of the hundreds of colossus spiders who lost their lives in terror and pain and confusion, when all they ever wanted to do was hang around and peacefully munch on mycelium? Do you really think you conferred any meaningful change upon their place in the universe by deciding they were pointless collateral damage? The abject fucking hubris of you, you egotistical speck.”

The shadow started to move, and Greg reached over and placed the detached neck of a violin on top of it. The little patch of darkness stretched one way and then another, finding itself somehow pinned to the rooftop by that light piece of carved wood.

“It kills me, y’know?” Greg mused, eyes on his work. “All this entirely senseless ruckus you keep managing to kick up, when you could be doing so much to benefit the world. Just look at the things you’ve accomplished entirely by accident while repeatedly failing to achieve anything you were actually trying to do! Atraximos the Dread slain, a colonial invasion pushed back, two entire peoples liberated from their respective oppressors… Genuine heroes walking the world, doing good and spreading hope, because in the end they decided that listening to you wasn’t worth it, even after all the power you gave them. And, of course, the several utter disasters you accidentally unleashed because you never seem able to anticipate the obvious consequences of your actions. I’ve seen so many ironies that irony has lost all meaning, but you’re still a particularly good one. Imagine what a force for positive change you could be, if you actually tried to do that.”

“I don’t have to explain that to you of all creatures in the cosmos,” the shadow said. Its voice was still weak and hesitant, but it had rallied enough to start taking some small measure of offense, it seemed. “Things like us are less free than that ant to decide who and what we are.”

“No one is beyond the ability to change,” Greg retorted, grinning as he screwed a brass hinge into place. “It’s harder for some folks than others, is all. Change is really all there is. Once change stops, the universe will be nothing but uniform atomic porridge. Everything you think matters is just a pattern of change, and every pattern can itself be influenced to change by brushing up against some outside force. Yeah, I’m well aware you are constrained by your nature—nobody as smart as you have to be would voluntarily bring themselves directly to my attention like this. I was just gonna let you spin out in a backwash of your own self-inflicted chaos, but now that I think about it? Maybe I should help you pull yourself together.”

The shadow shrank to a tiny rim of darkness around the instrument part, while Greg finished oiling the hinge and began attaching another spring to that metal arm.

“I’ll tell you what, li’l buddy,” he said. “I’m gonna continue letting you play in my sandbox. Because at the end of the day, I like your style, I approve of your motives, and I appreciate the good you’ve accidentally done. Sure, you’re a complete fuckup who keeps creating messes for other people to clean up, but… Whomst among us, am I right?”

He grinned, reached over, and picked up the violin neck. The shadow instantly retreated to the opposite edge of the platform, huddling against its low wall.

“And henceforth,” Greg continued evenly, “you are going to keep in mind whose sandbox you are in. And hopefully, I won’t have to kick over your next little sandcastle. You wanted to come to an understanding? Well, there it is. Enjoy.”

“You know,” said the shadow, more firmly but still lacking its characteristic joviality, “irrespective of anything else, hanging around those mortals the way you do without letting them know what they’re involved in is a dick move. If they matter to you as much as that ant and the galaxy, how do you think they’re going to feel when they find out? Or do you really believe you can go a mortal lifetime without succumbing to one of your own compulsions and kicking over that turnip cart?”

“That’s the great thing about crossing bridges when you come to them,” Greg said cheerfully. “A surprising amount of the time, you just…never do. Then again, I think you’re underestimating those kids. People tend to do that. It’s one of the things I like about them. All right, good chat, but I’m busy and you’re in my sunlight.”

“Wait—”

Greg made a single, dismissive flicking motion with his fingers, and it vanished.

He resumed whistling to himself—softly, so as not to drown out the sounds of the recovering city spread around him. Just a man without a shadow, rebuilding his preposterous machine in peace.

***

The island was a green-clad mountain rising out of the equatorial sea with no neighbors close enough to be visible on the horizon. Its sole city rose in a series of terraces halfway up its height, with a stone temple at its pinnacle of clearly greater age and very different architectural sensibilities than the rest of the city’s structures; at its feet spread the docks that extended from that entire side of the island into the warm ocean.

As dusk descended toward true night, as the shrieking of gulls gave way to the chirps of insects and night birds, a young woman strode briskly along one small pier at the very edge of the harbor. A single boat had appeared, drifting smoothly toward her guided by no visible hand; it had no sails or oars, and no occupants. Merely a glossy crimson-lacquered curve little bigger than a rowboat, dancing upon the gentle waves as if with a mind of its own.

She paused, turning back toward the city, at the rapidly rising sound of repeated yaps approached. With a sigh, she planted her fists on her hips and waited.

In only seconds, a pug came bounding around the corner, constantly barking, his tongue lolling so generously out of his squashed little face that he seemed in danger of tripping on it. That was probably not what caused him to lose his footing and go tumbling end over end across the dock, but he picked himself up without hesitating and kept scampering toward her.

“Shh, shh,” she insisted, kneeling to scratch the ecstatic little dog’s rump as he began gamboling about her feet. “Come on, Schmutz, you’re gonna give away the whole game! You know how I hate goodbyes.”

“Yeah, we all know that.”

She jerked back upright, whirling to confront the speaker, who had just risen from the barrel upon which he was sitting, just on the other side of her from a stack of crates. He stepped out of their shadow, looming head and shoulders taller than she and twice as wide, his craggy features set in a reproachful frown above a gray-streaked black beard.

“Rolff! How long have you been lurking there, you reprobate?” she demanded.

“Come on,” he grunted. “A bard comes stumbling into the tavern, straight off the fastest schooner out of Chandelavre, shouting about how Atraximos the Dread was killed by a godling. Like I didn’t know exactly what would happen next.”

“I should never have told you all that,” she grumbled.

“I kinda wish you hadn’t,” Rolff said frankly. “It’s one thing when you go gallivanting off to all corners of the world, sticking your sword into every piece of chaos you can find. I’ve seen what you can do, Chevalle, I pretty much think you can handle anything. Your own business is another matter. That backstory of yours gives me enough nightmares when you aren’t going back to the Evervales to tangle with it all again.”

“How do you think I feel?” she retorted petulantly. “But…my ride is here, Rolff. You know enough about me to know what that means.”

He scowled at the beautiful little boat for a moment. “Hard to imagine the Dread just being…gone. She could do that. Couldn’t she?”

“Ehh…” Chevalle wrinkled her nose. “No. Maybe she could, theoretically, as a purely hypothetical exercise. But she wouldn’t. She’d never go near those dragons, especially the Dread. In fact, him being out of the picture might make her bolder, which is its own jar of worms. This is a new godling…and still in the Evervales. I should’ve known better to hope the shadow had given up. The long gap was just… Ugh. Who even knows how many godlings are running around now? The others just had enough sense to keep their heads down, before this one. Having the Dread off everyone’s back might change that, too.”

“He could be friendly,” Rolff suggested in a tone which didn’t put much faith in the idea.

“The man is calling himself Dragonlord,” Chevalle said, grimacing. “This is at best another Lord of Chains situation. Which I was also wrong to ignore and hope it would sort itself out. That means there’s a shrinking window before it turns into another Nakhret situation.”

“Chevalle, you’re not responsible for the Lord of bloody Chains, and especially not for the shadow.”

“I’m not to blame for any of that,” she said gently. “That’s a very different question, and you know it.”

The big man heaved a frustrated sigh, running thick fingers through his already-ragged hair. “So, that’s it? Word of a new godling and you just…go charging off, back to the Evervales, without an ounce of preparation?”

“Well, let’s see!” she said lightly, doing a little pirouette. “Pistols and pants, boots and boobs? Check. Swishy sword and stylish hat? Check, check, double check!” She patted the hilt of her rapier and tugged the point of her tricorne, grinning. “I’ve got everything I need to answer the call of adventure, and it is time to adventch!”

Rolff did not smile at her little performance, though it set Schmutz to bounding around her boots again, yapping in delight.

“Your problems scare me,” he said frankly. “I wish you’d just stick to solving everyone else’s problems. You are literally the only person alive about whom I’d say that. Can’t the Evervales and the shadow just…deal with themselves?”

“I…wish.” Her smile faded. “You don’t choose your family, Rolff. You just have to deal with whoever you end up stuck with. This has gotten out of control because I’ve been neglecting it. I need to stop being a coward before it gets any worse.”

“You are the farthest thing from a coward,” Rolff insisted fiercely.

Chevalle nodded. “And I’m embarrassed at how long it took me to remember that. Relax, I am not going to charge into Dragonvale and try to duel everyone. The Evervales are a big place, and I have some hunting to do before I even figure what’s going on. There are other godlings running around loose. I have to find them and suss out which of them can still be helped, before I deal with the ones who have to be put down.”

“And if you run into her?” he said plaintively.

She lowered her head just enough that the point of her hat concealed her eyes. “Then…it’s long past time. Schmutz, you’re in charge while I’m gone, you hear me?”

Schmutz barked so hard all four paws bounced off the pier.

Rolff blew out an explosive sigh. “Come on, what’s he gonna do? Schmutz’s policy platform will be six dinners a day. You’ll come back to find him round as a pissed-off blowfish.”

“And that is how I’ll know my instructions were followed,” Chevalle said, grinning as she hopped lightly into the red boat. Prompted by seemingly nothing, it glided in an arc, re-orienting itself to face out to sea. “Don’t you worry, Rolff, if there’s one thing I can handle, it’s myself! You won’t even have time to miss me.”

“Too late,” he muttered as the gap between them widened.

Chevalle swept off her hat, waving it back at them, her little boat rushing out into the night at a speed neither oars nor sails could have matched.

Schmutz barked, the wagging of his tail abruptly ceasing, and then began yapping more and more insistently, staring after the diminishing shape of his friend. As Chevalle vanished into the horizon, the little dog sat down hard, threw back his flat little head, and let out a long howl of protest.

“I know, buddy,” said Rolff, staring out to sea. “I know. Me, too.”

***

Night fell beneath the long shadow of the mountains. Here in the foothills of what rose to become the eerie world of the Highlands, which had resisted all attempts at settlement even during the days of proud Valereld, winter never truly departed. Midsummer was mild and cool; at this time of year, the night’s chill was cutting even without snow on the ground.

A small campsite huddled at the edge of the lake, the crackle of a fire the only warmth within a day’s hike in all directions. Even the lake was beginning to harden; it didn’t truly freeze, not in this season, but a thin crust of ice formed every night.

The two figures seated on logs by their fire jerked upright when the ice suddenly cracked.

It continued to crack as a figure came walking out of the lake.

She plowed through solid ice as effortlessly as she had the water itself, emerging bit by bit from the depths. Her cloak was black and seemed made of layers of old rags; the chain mail she wore beneath it was rusted and dilapidated. Her hair was an uncertain dusty color between gray and brown, and right now, all of it was soaked and plastered to her with frigid water. As she emerged from the surface, a staff of gnarled wood was revealed in her hand—held at her side, not being used to aid in walking.

The soaked woman strode forward and stood, dripping, at the edge of the firelight, not dressed for cold that should kill anyone this soaked in it, and clearly not bothered. In the flickering glow, her eyes seemed to change colors, and not one of them a shade that belonged in her seemingly normal human face. Yellow as a wolf’s, blood red, frigid white.

“It’s faster than going around,” she explained. “That’s a big lake.”

It was unclear how she spoke, given that she was not breathing.

Smiling, the woman took one step into the rim of the firelight. “I’m on a long journey to visit family. Might a weary traveler share the warmth of your—”

Valefolk might be defined by living under the shadow of Atraximos’s wings, but those who dwelled out in these far frontiers had known even before he came how best to deal with the weird things which sometimes emerged out of the wilderness.

Both mortals jumped to their feet and bolted off into the cold dark.

The woman stared after them, blinking.

“How unkind,” she observed. “But, I suppose, not a violation of hospitality.”

Stepping forward, she lowered herself to occupy one of the recently-vacated logs, setting her staff at her feet and holding out her arms to let the flames dry her clothes.

The fire itself shifted, its color fading to blue as death took a seat beside it.

For the moment, for the night, she stayed there. The fire was no less warm for being warped by her presence, and it helped banish the water that was even now trying to turn to ice in her cloak. Not that such a trifling discomfort would have stopped her…and of course, this was costing her time…

But she could afford it. The dragons weren’t going anywhere.

It was far too late for that.