SANITY LINE
IX. From the Ashes
Truth be told, Alexis Coultier had never cared much for military programming – novelizations, dramas real or fictional, films, and so forth. She found it had glorified a profession that required a certain selflessness, creating a culture of would-be heroes with an overlapping idea that soldiers were somehow exceptional. In truth, most, herself included, were quite ordinary people.
Still, it had been impressed upon her from a relatively early stage in her career that an officer had two duties in her situation – ensure compliance with the directives of the imprisoning power until such time as she and her men were no longer in custody, and, wherever possible, affect the escape of the greatest number of people possible.
This was a situation made more difficult by the small size of her unit of survivors – eight in total, all officers – and the modern design and construction of the stockade facility. Unfortunately, however, the lack of ongoing training had left the good Major with a surplus of spare time, and time was something you could bend to just about any end.
Stepping out into the cold night air, she did her best to hide her shock at the dismal state of the harbour. The commotion of the morning had been well-deserved. Gantries lay in ruins, the upper portions of ships' superstructure dotted the positions near once they had once floated, like hands groping over the surface of the waves. She shuddered; briefly back in the water, weighed down by her own faulty life jacket.
When this was over, she was making sure her unit stayed in the desert where it belonged.
Her and her fellow officers were counted by roll-call and placed onto a bus with mesh-barred windows for transport to some other facility. The seriousness of loss of life aside, it pleased the competitive streak within her that the damage from whatever had happened was so severe that her contingent had to be moved to some countryside facility. Whatever the Deans had encountered, eight unarmed soldiers from the Union now posed a threat. They weren't wrong.
Time was central to military life. Alexis liked to keep it with atomic position. The wristwatch she wore, per uniform allowance, seemed sufficiently simple for all intents and purposes – black leather band, tritium-tipped indicator hands. Under the hood, though, it ran a miniaturized atomic clock for those moments when, as now, it was unable to check against satellite or national clock signals. True, it consumed power like no watch ever should.
Still, it was information enough to know the precise moment when she was to say, “... Getting to be about time for supper, back home.”
An officer near the front moved, placing his hand on the screen between himself and the driver, and releasing the tension on the banded spring up his sleeve. The nylon stolen from his underwear did, as all elastic substances do, everything in its power to remove the obstruction and return to a relaxed state. In order to do so this time, it drove a rod of compressed, compacted paper into the back of the driver's neck. Accordingly, the vehicle lurched sharply to the left, impacting firmly with the wall of a department store and emerging into the electronics department that was situated on the far side.
Her men moved at once, shimming open the cage door and emerging into the department all at once. “Outerwear only, and only what you can wear over your uniforms. Jackson, twenty-four protein bars. Muster's at the entrance to the stock area. Ten minutes.”
“Yes ma'am.”
She stared at the bus for a moment, sighed, and turned on her heel. The areas around the docks were seedy, slummy, and full of Galba Dea's worst citizens.
Play their cards right, and they could stay here for weeks. Not that she meant to be here nearly that long.
---
Hell, Vidcund had decided, was an improvement over Carcosa. Or, at least, the Infernal City was. The place carried with it that same unplaced familiarity which Edward Coultier had. From context, and his limited exposure to the Moses Reports, the agent could surmise he had been here before. As the roads had unfolded around him, and certain buildings seemed either familiar or out of place, he realized that he had, surely, spent a considerable amount of his life here.
If anything, this made him even more uneasy. Their host – as Aaron Cluny turned out to be – put them up in residencies which populated some of the upper floors of the Magnusson Building, so called as it was the headquarters for Magnusson Arms. This was, of course, a great surprise to Vidcund personally. Magnusson was a major supplier of small arms and specialized equipment for the Zaxtonian Union, supplying the National Police Force, Self-Defence Forces, and even Agency – not to mention their considerable civilian sales - yet here it stood, headquartered in Hell.
For the most part, Vidcund had kept to his small apartment, not even venturing down the corridor to see Edward. Partly, he was glad for the respite from pretending to know himself better than he did. Partly, he was simply glad for solitude. Some invitations, however, could not be refused, and so he now found himself being shown into the portion of the fifty-eighth floor which housed Aaron Cluny's “quarters”, ad he had called them. A receptionist guided him through an office, the glass walls of which showed off magnificently the City rising from the great and featureless Void beyond, and into a more private living room or study. There was a couch, situated toward an interior wall upon which a television hung, a small bar, the tidiness of which suggested it was more ornament than utility.
Left to his own devices, Vidcund set about to analyzing this room. Aaron was a very private person – you could tell that from the lack of anything the least bit personal in the space. There were no photographs, or certificates, or anything else adorning the walls (for the most part) save in one corner on which a wall scroll hung, over top a small stack of tidied cushions. The AR overlay in Vidcund's glasses detected his eyes passing over the scroll and immediately provided a translated subtitle of the kanji, which read “Original Face”, a term with which the Agent was not familiar. All the furnishings were of a supremely minimalist nature – dark grey accents in a sea of white surfaces, suggesting Aaron was, himself, conscious of appearing gaudy in wealth. Old money, then.
Less of a surprise, really, considering he was a Cluny.
“You can tell a lot about a person, Mr. Dark, from how they behave in an unfamiliar environment.”
Vidcund turned, somewhat surprised to find that Aaron had entered from the office and not deeper in the apartment. Their host was a younger man – black hair worn long, and clothing somewhat casual by the local standards – no tie, dark blue-grey in place of black and white. This was highly unusual in Hell, particularly for the corporate-minded denizens of the Devil's Quarter. Infernals themselves aged in strange and circuitous ways. Few, though, chose to maintain an appearance anywhere under human middle age.
“You can tell quite a bit from the way they cultivate their own environment, as well,” Vidcund countered.
Aaron nodded, the faintest suggestion of a smile colouring his otherwise unmoved features. “I am certain we are both come confident in our analysis of each other than we deserve to be.”
The young magnate – if he truly was as young as he appeared, he would be ten years Vidcund's junior – stepped to the wall, overlooking the city. A forest of crystalline, regular buildings stretching up and down into an inky blackness. The road, which Vidcund knew damn well should have appeared, was seemingly lost in black fog. The city was a sea of silver and neon, mingling in the middle. They were overlooking the Passage, that central district of the city where the disparate Devil and Demon Quarters met and mingled.
“You are of a businesslike nature,” he said, folding his arms. “The sort who never switches off.”
“I can carry on a conversation, if that's what you're implying.”
At this, Aaron actually did smile. “I have no doubt. Either way, I'm certain we have little small talk to cover. You surely could give a damn about the state of the Ephemera Markets, and I can assure you I have little care for sports.”
Vidcund smiled slightly. “Surely. Which means, I suppose, you have some big talk.”
Aaron nodded. “Big enough I have taken the liberty of ordering us lunch.”
A silence passed. Aaron's eyes shifted from point to point on the skyline. “... Have you ever heard of Project Moses, Special Agent?”
The tiefling now had Vidcund's undivided attention.
---
Fae had natures. They were bound by their tales. For them, fate was not merely something to blame or bless for their lives, but a Damoclean impediment hanging over their decisions and dictating their paths. No matter how they tried to defy it, their hand would always be forced.
Holly Bell was in something of a hurry. She knew the time was coming. Soon, she would have to face the choice. Surely, Rainwright had reached the bounds of his tolerance for the magic combination that was her seeming-incompetence and the very real threat she posed to him. She was a Traitor – a feature of her story as real as her name. She was doomed to a litany of Masters, all of whom would eventually gain her ire, either by their abusive nature or, once, by her own failure.
She could feel the time was coming. Rainwright was a dangerous man – dangerous enough that he could afford to dispose of his servants as he saw fit. Some time now, she would find some way to trespass which would be, for him, the final straw.
Desperate for reprieve, both from fate and from his intentions, Holly had decided to try a tactic she hadn't yet – an early escape. She had returned to her quarters in Rainwright's townhouse-laboratory in secret, coming by way of the dead of night, using all her slaugh magic and assassin tradecraft. No mouser would have found her, let alone clumsy human sentries.
Content in her loneliness, she re-garbed, arming herself with the best of her gear and the studded leather armour she had worn when she confronted the angels. She had little by way of possessions – though Rainwright had not conditioned her lack of self-identity, he had done little to alleviate it. She had returned mostly for her treasured equipment.
She was on her way out, emerging from that secret inverse stair which afforded access to the servant's quarters when correctly positioned, when, to her surprise, she found she was not alone. She knew Walter, the blind butler, had been in his office off of the front hall by the sound of his stylus on the pad and the scent of his understated cologne.
She was not expecting that Rainwright should just now be emerging from this office. He froze, when he saw her, removing some of his weight from his cane, tucking his hand into the pocket of his house coat as he lifted his chin, eyes narrowing upon her.
She saw his grip on the cane shift slightly, as he own palms itched for a bit of steel against them.
---
Aaron had some manner of an obsession with water and its forms, as Vidcund was beginning to realize. It had been provided for the meal, flavoured with citrus and mint (which Vidcund realized only now he had been craving somewhat badly). They were taking a light lunch of sandwiches and soup in a nook off of the living room, which again offered a view of the city, this time as twinkling and distorted light behind a privacy screen in the form of water flowing between panes of the window. The table itself was glass, octagonal, and etched from beneath in a manner suggestive of snow crystals.
The sandwich, on the other hand, was particularly good, being your classical BLT, and the conversation made up for the eccentricity. “I won't go into too much depth. We won't have the time. And I won't ask you what you know about the project, since it would be a violation of your non-disclosure agreements.”
“First, you have to understand that all phases of Project Moses were Slipher Corporation projects in one way or another. Phase One was handled by HELIX Inc, Phase Two was handled by the Infernal Projects Division of Magnusson Arms, and Phase Three was funded by the corporation directly.”
Vidcund nodded. Of the Infernal corporations which operated in the real world, Slipher was the most well known. Under their final manager, Richard Cluny, Slipher had been in the early stages of preparing a coup d’état against the College of Judges which the Anfangsburg Incident had transpired. Slipher lost their headquarters, and in the subsequent investigation, lost their permits. Agency had proscribed commerce between the Infernals and Humanity after that, not that the masses knew the difference. Or so Vidcund had thought, before he learned Magnusson was still around.
Or that Richard Cluny had apparently had a son.
“HELIX is one I haven't heard of.”
Aaron nodded slowly. “That's less surprising to me. It was a small LLC set up to handle a few vaguely-related genetics and bioengineering projects Slipher pursued when they were thinking of solidifying their medical sector holdings. Moses I was the biggest, and the most expensive.” He sipped from his water. “I would argue it was Slipher's biggest failure.”
“What happened?”
“Moses I aimed to create a prototype of what would eventually be a Slipher Pharmatec product – a small suite of retroviral and epigenetic modifications meant to enhance human capability. The intent was twofold – one marketing protocol for Magnusson Arms to sell to humans to satisfy your need for Bigger Army Diplomacy, and the other to be used more generally. The overall hope was to make more money, though notes from the lead researcher on the project suggested he also expected it to... improve humanity's willingness to acknowledge there are other races in the universe. To reduce xenophobia by putting you on a perceived level playing-field.”
Vidcund considered that carefully, taking a deep drink of water himself. “... What went wrong?”
“Nothing. The project was entirely successful. The first prototype Carrier was born healthy and alert, accelerated to adulthood, and well educated.”
The agent leaned back in his chair somewhat, raising a pallid eyebrow. There was a silence, under which Aaron eventually wilted. “The project later went off the rails when the carrier was transferred to Magnusson for martial fitness conditioning and trails. He took exception to the experimental nature of his treatment and eventually... discontinued it. Violently.”
Vidcund gestured for Aaron to continue as he took a bite of his sandwich.
“The original project laboratory was destroyed, along with the head of the program and most of the specific equipment, though records enough remain if we ever feel stupid enough to try it again.”
“And the carrier?”
“Still alive, as I understand it, and living what is for all intents and purposes a very ordinary and peaceful life in the human world.”
Vidcund frowned, swallowing a mouthful of his sandwich. One more slipping through the cracks. “And the second Project Moses? The one I was involved in?”
“Produced by,” Aaron corrected, leaving a pregnant pause for the reality to sit in. He watched, impassively, as Vidcund slowly digested it. “You were not a modification of an existing person, Vidcund. Well, I mean, you might be now. As I understand it, Agency Division's conditioning is somewhat aggressive. But no. In this respect, you were very much created from whole cloth.”
The agent sat now in silence, the balance of his lunch forgotten. The notes he was given on Project Moses were very heavily redacted and piecemeal. Eventually, his jaw set, and he removed his glasses. “... For what?”
“Moses II was an attempt to sort of... narrow the broad and sweeping powers given to the carrier from the first phase. I would argue that the end of the project was the best reason to not attempt Phase II, but I have been told, more than once, I would have been wrong. For a single person to have done what was done to the lab...” Aaron trailed off. He glanced out the window for a long moment. “Richard Cluny was, at the time, in the market for a way to break the monopoly of the Sirens on the private military contractor market here in the Infernal City. He hoped to create a malleable but useful tool. Moses I's psionic enhancements were toned down into something more limited.”
“Remote Proprioception,” Vidcund offered, slowly. “The ability to... move the mind between bodies.”
“And occupy a number at once. Not that I think it was ever tested – our notes on the subject are heavily redacted by the Lead Researcher.” Aaron tented his hands, studying the other. “... A number of clones were produced with these enhancements for testing purposes. Eventually, about a hundred in total were made. Conditioning was put in place to turn the subject – that is, you – into a usefully loyal tool, and you wound up heading Slipher Black Ops for a time.”
“For a time?”
“Well, of course, in the end, you did betray Richard.”
Richard Cluny. Vidcund swallowed slightly, suddenly deeply aware of his mortality and vulnerable position. “Where does that leave us?”
---
It was an elementary teaching of the Wheel and Pinion Society that eternities could unfold in a second. While they were not so obsessed with the passage of time as the Fraternal Order of Librarians, time was none the less one of the fifty-three operations of the Great Machine, and an understanding of its passage was necessary for true scholarship of the deeper mysteries of the order.
Of course, as Grand Master of that order, Rainwright had more than a passing understanding of the Time Mechanic, and so could stand comfortably in the duality of the short and gruelling nature of his encounter with Bell. Had he expected such a confrontation, it would have been perceptually and temporally brief. Sadly, though, he was not.
He moved just before her. Her arm swept up from her belt as the head of his cane struck against the parquetry, subtly diverting the half-dozen needles which she had cast against him. He ducked left, habitually faking the weakness of that knee, and brought his cane back up, hard and fast, punching so that he could hit her with the head of the weapon while the shaft of the cane protected his arm from the knife in her other hand. Potent magic rested in the carnelian ornament at the head of the cane, and magic was as much fae's bane as boon.
The blow never connected. Her chest retracted impossibly, as a suddenly serpentine arm coiled around his, twisting him off balance and stopping him from blocking her en passant blow as she released his arm and rushed to the door. As she moved he involuntarily relaxed his grip on the cane. It struck the floor a moment before he did, bouncing just barely out of reach as the door slammed shut behind her.
His voice laboured under an onrush of ferrous-tasting fluid in his throat. He clutched the wound at his neck, and rolled, groping once more for his dropped implement. “Walter!”
The butler's hurried footfalls were the last thing Rainwright clearly remembered hearing, as the seconds grew longer and longer.
---
“I honestly don't understand the Dean obsession with fish and chips.”
Niles sighed more deeply than he probably meant to, trying to ease more comfortably into the driver's seat of the rented Passat that he and James were using as a portable office in an attempt to avoid becoming too regular at any of the local pubs. Something had been bothering the former detective ever since they arrived at their present run-down intersection for a bit of parking, lunch, and strategizing.
In an attempt to remain civil, he tried to carry on a conversation he could have given a damn about. At least, he thought, Professor Derrida wasn't getting all excited about being on a real live stake out. “Lot of people in a small area, agriculturally speaking. Fish'd be a big part of their diet.”
“You can do more with fish than batter it and fry it, though.”
Niles considered that for a moment, trying to eke a little more cola out of the bottom of his cup. “Fair.”
“All right, out with it. What's the matter?”
A frown crossed the detective's face. He couldn't decide, lately, if it was more annoying having James read his mind, or pointedly avoid doing it. “Don't stare and don't point. There's a male, about six foot, three doors down in the leftmost window at the front of the building.”
James looked, casually, between mouthfuls of fries. “Military haircut, blue pullover?”
“Yeah. Took me a minute to realize it, but I'm pretty sure he's been staring at us since we parked.”
James shrugged. “Probably thinks the car is too nice for the neighbourhood. Want me to scope him?”
Niles considered it for a long moment. Scion's powers could be applied over considerable range, but the last thing he really wanted to deal with was some pointless side-duty that didn't address any of their real problems. “Nah. Probably just a bootlegger or a coke head worried we're the fuzz.”
He turned slowly and stole the piece of fish James had been ignoring from the takeout box. “All right, let's go over the curio room footage one more time.”
James nodded, reaching to the back seat for the laptop. “This is all well and good but we really need a way to get up there in person. Someone should kill Rainwright for us or something.”
Niles glared uncomfortably at the professor for a long while. Political assassination, he figured, was just about the Grey Angels' speed these days.
---
The townhouse was, frankly, the easier complex to escape – far less isolated than Rainwright Manor in the upper highlands. In theory, all Holly should have had to do was step out the front door – once there and in public she was effectively immune to reprisal, since it was not yet late enough in the evening for a scuffle of any kind to go unnoticed, and Rainwright's dumbest foot soldier was not nearly so gauche as to attempt to subdue her in so noteworthy a way.
As her shoulder met the door, however, she heard an authoritative click behind her, the sound of brass on wood which sent a chill up her spine, and she was therefore not at all surprised to find that the door opened out onto the broad stair over the sweeping lawns which surrounded the country manor. Such discontinuities, however, were nothing new to the slaugh, who had their own special roads that rarely went from A to B as directly as a purely human mind would suspect.
She let her momentum carry her down the steps, fanning out ephemeral wings. In absence of witnesses she was carried several metres past the foot of the steps by her own momentum and the action of aerodynamics. Landing at a run, she elected to take the most direct path toward the main gate – there was a storm drain nearby that would carry her down to the river, and from there she could have at least a solid head start on a plan of action.
She covered the first hundred metres unopposed. Where Rainwright was not in residence, his complement of Special Service bodyguards was on significantly lower alert. The sudden illumination of the lamps along the drive, however, told her she had either been noticed or the Butler had had the presence of mind, after altering her path, to alert the guards to her presence. In calmer moments, Holly would realize that Walter had no doubt had such a plan held in reserve as contingency, possibly for many months. The Blind Butler was supremely patient, that way, and rarely caught in any compromising way.
The estate was, predictably, gated, with a gatehouse staffed by (to Holly's memory) a single, armed guard. When the lights went on, she threw herself violently into the hedges that lined the lane. It was not the strongest strategy, but it removed her from immediate view, to where she could work her magic more carefully.
Since then, she had slowly worked her way down the balance of the lane, taking advantage of the unique fluidity of her body to not so much crawl as flow over the lawns and, now, to a shady vantage point between the wall of the guardhouse and the planter box placed against it. The guard stationed here was as alert as she had expected – standing outside the guardhouse, looking down the road. His cigarette irritated her sensitive nose, and she could almost taste the disinterest radiating off of him. He knew damn well their intruder wouldn't come this way. Only an idiot would flee along this one illuminated, checkpointed path.
Her opportunity came as he turned to answer a ringing telephone that was mounted on the wall beside him. Seizing upon his momentary distraction, she bounded forth from her position, form coalescing and solidifying into something he would be more familiar with as she planted her feet, placing a hand on his shoulder. The stolen Thaumic Knife danced in her hand briefly, before she delivered it forcefully to the sweet point between the guard's second and third ribs, just to the side of his sternum, so that their combined momentum and the shape of the knife cleanly severed his aorta. While she was certain death would not be instantaneous, it might as well have been. The encounter lasted less than a second and his own backward-falling weight removed him from the blade, offering no further resistance.
The Traitor waited there for a pregnant moment, before slipping between the bars of the gate and vanishing down the well-remembered culvert that would take her dozens of yards out of the way of the road, and give her a safe place to gather her thoughts.
That could have gone better...
---
To call the necrofetal soul of Eli Sharona dead was to have done the man a disservice. Ensconced for a human's conception of eternity within the phylactery of his own making, he could have remained an invisible and very real part of the fabric of the universe for an eternity. It was the folly of others that changed this – dragged him, kicking and screaming – back into the world. Death was a state much like prebirth, as he had learned, and his long-held belief that birth was merely the first of the many human traumas was to be confirmed, in this moment.
There was really very little reason to trap oneself in a phylactery, fettering one's soul to the material world on purpose, except as a component in a plan for one's return from beyond the grave. After all, we live in our own strange aeons, and for Eli Sharona, it was very much real that old Necromancers never die.
The Thaumic Knife was an important tool, not just as a focus for the magic he had once worked on individuals like his one-time adversary, Niles Clayton, but for the magic yet to come. Slaking the thirst of the benignly-cursed blade produced a quickening, a jerking at his non-existent navel. The small chamber in the Sepulchre in which his trapped soul was interred began to throb, as though the air within the hewn stone walls was beating a cardiac tattoo of its own accord.
He came into the world as all newborns do – screaming, disoriented. Every sensory input was liquid fire poured into a mind that was still unused to having been a self. His body had been destroyed at Kraterburg, but force of will and law of magic bent the ash of generations of predecessors – the air was pregnant with the fumes of his ancestors – into something not unlike the body he had once had.
This body, neither alive nor dead, was now wracking him with pain, as his vision swam between what his absent eyes should have seen of the room and flickers of scenes which did not make sense. Luminous arrays, masked men standing over him, a blindfolded priest calmly urging serenity. Two heartbeats pounded in the room outside of the Lich, one ascending, one diminishing.
He flailed around the room, thrashing violently, destroying statuary and sandstone as easily as wet stand. His body, more mass than muscle, did not strain or tire. In his fury, he was fit to bring the whole sepulchre down upon his head.
---
Paranoia was an occupational hazard for the fugitive, and in the case of Alexis and her fellow officers, there were to be no exceptions made. Tension was so high that forcing grown men and women to sleep was a principle point of discipline when everyone wanted to stand watch at all hours. For her, it was a refreshing change – at last, she had the kind of enthusiasm from others that she demanded of herself.
Still, there was more to discipline than cracking the whip, and where hiding in an abandoned rowhouse in a slummy district of an enemy country was surely an exceptional circumstance, exceptions to the usual routine could be made. Instead of insisting upon a linear chain of report and having the officers simply keep her abreast of what they spied on their watches, the changing of each watch was done more conversationally, with all of them coming together, sharing their observations, and so forth. That's how they all knew of the unlikely Passat.
More than once, immediate movement was suggested, but moving en masse was dangerous, and splitting up to find safe passage home was more dangerous still. As a company commander, she was responsible for the safety and well-being of all of her men. And now, she was responsible for a decision.
“Ma'am. If we are going to depart, we should start preparing now.”
Alexis, slowly, unfolded her arms, standing from the upturned plastic milk-crate that had served as her seat for the last few minutes. “... No. Observe. If they appear a third time, send... Winters to question them. Subtly, Winters.”
The young woman she'd referred to nodded. “I want to know who these strangers are.”
The old house creaked and groaned as a presence emerged from the hallway. Every officer in the room turned. They were armed, collectively, with little more than pocket-knives and a couple of hammers.
The masked figure, his face replaced with a sea of dark-on-light steelwork stars, seemed to turn his attention slowly to each of them in turn, keeping his hands slightly outstretched, palms to either of them.
Rare was the soldier or police officer that hadn't at least once seen a photo or sketch of Scion. “Let me,” he said calmly, “spare you all the trouble.”
---
It was only here and now in this moment that the wisdom of allying the Fair Folk and Carcosa had come into a clear focus. The vast resources of the cosmic empire the King had amassed around the throne in Adelebran were of a limited utility locked away in shadowed Carcosa and ruined Hastur, or drilling on the cloudy surfaces of Hali. Previous attempts to infiltrate the spheres of Earth had failed – the imagination of Humanity was fast, and the Dreamlands dangerous. Attempts to bleed Carcosan reality into the world through Truth-Mused artists had always had surprisingly limited impact. Carcosa was a virulent idea, and yet, somehow, it always got lost again, vanishing in the hazy buzz of Humanity's own noise, as if the ignorant bleating of the masses was a deep and powerful magic of its own.
But now, with an ally among the powers of the Dreamlands, the King's agent, the Phantom, was free to pursue his agenda – or, more accurately, the agenda of his Queen. Cassilda had ordered the Yellow Banner to war years ago, and now the moon-beasts had consented to allow passage for the fleet along their trod between the moon and thence to Figaro by way of Dylath-Leen. These ships, baroque and resplendent, now rested at the hastily-expanded docks of the last surviving ruins of Kraterburg, taking on troops and supplies as they waited for the great-grandfather of a storm that had struck the island to pass. The Phantom himself oversaw these operations, taking leave of both his Queen and their newly-loyal Duke to walk among the quays, ignorant of the rain.
Leviathan could throw all the fits he wanted. The Phantom wasn't about to alter his plans over the stirrings of a particularly old -
A pillar of light erupted from the Far East, some unseen point far beyond either the real horizon or the much further one Truth himself could see. It pierced everything, a spear of destiny fired into the heavens, undiminished by the rains or wind or the strange almost-black fog that roiled around the city. The fae, moonbeasts, and Carcosans who were busy at work paid the phenomenon no mind.
Across that void, a familiar presence was felt, and the Phantom settled his resolve. The human who had bested him at the library was now issuing a challenge. There was little that the Phantom could do about it, at present. He had his duties to attend to, and moreover, this would-be Archangel was very far away. What would the servant of the Living God have to fear from such a presumptuous mortal?
The Phantom turned his head slightly at the sound of a steel sabaton on the wooden decking behind him. “Forgive me, Truth. Her Majesty requires your counsel.”
The pallid mask allowed no exchange of expression between Truth and the Duke. “I shall attend Her Majesty at once. See to it that those cannon are taken aboard expressly.”
---
It should come as no surprise as the earth worked by-hand under the guidance of the all-but-extinct Sharona line was not up to the exacting standards of modern engineers. This was not to say that the catacombs under the family compound which the Grey Angels called the Sepulchre were unstable – traps aside, Niles and James had been in no danger of the network's collapse while they walked beneath the ground. Still, the chamber where Eli had been interred had proven far from fully stable, and by the time the Lich-Archangel's tantrum had expired, the ground above it had collapsed. For what felt to be an interminable age, the fallen soil and stone had reinterred him, and the imposed stillness and sensory deprivation had provided him a means to rest and re-learn how to withstand the assault of the universe's noise.
When he emerged from the soil, he did little else. It was sunny, now, in the dappled shadow of a persistent birch which had refused to drop its leaves for the chill. Here, he rested again. The chaotic duality of hearts, the slipping between awarenesses, had ended. No heart now beat. He could sit here in stillness forever, waiting to wake up. The vermin could crawl over and through him interminably. Birds could perch on him, perhaps even nest in the hollowness of his chest.
Ice-blue embers burned behind his eyes, and as the clouds gathered and sun turned to rain, he turned his thoughts back outward. He must regain the Thaumic Knife, the trigger for the trap of his re-awakening, so that no repeat of the incident could transpire again.
His sudden rise and departure set all the crows in the nearby trees scattering, screaming their murderous caws into the still, boreal air, heralding the Archangel's return.