Post Script

If you are reading this, then I am probably dead. This is not because I have made any immediate overture to suicide, but because I shall always die, and once dead I expect this page will outlive me for many years. In absence of any material body, those who wish to have known me better will come seeking the comfort of connection here. I will do my best to provide it. Let this be a requiem, eulogy, and final verse for you, dear reader, who mattered to me more than I could express through worldly means.

It would have been a rare occurrence if we had ever shared more than one real conversation, or beyond that could ever have considered one another as emotional intimates. You were never alone in this isolation from me, and I did not value you considerably less than others whom I called close friends. It was typical of me that I shied away from casual conversation, assigning it limited worth in comparison to other, more profound intimacies. It was rather my belief that people would by nature seek to preserve the epitome of their ideals in some lasting device, be it in written prose, a photograph, a product of tireless efficiency or in in heartfelt play. Rather than engage people directly, I would connect to them through the psychometry of these definite, material articles which they had created. This may explain my lifelong love of books, and why I could sit in amicable silence examining the contents of a bedroom or a study, offering nothing the flow of conversation around me. You may think it strange for a writer to admit this, but words are hollow air, transient and quick to be forgotten. Words spoken or otherwise must transcend their medium to become real. My writing and endless, scurrilous reading has to me been a quest to find the right words – and thus the right actions – for myself and others to put into material form.

In this way I felt intimately connected to you by the world we shared – more intimate than if we had exchanged a million words in passing conversation.

I was many things in life, and some of these I feel I should make some effort to explain. When I was very young I became disillusioned with conventional notions of morality. I might explain this by saying that I saw suffering, and believed it was not natural to bend to it or accept it as part of an overarching idea of human existence. The alternative to accepting suffering is to find a means of overcoming it. In the typical manner of a child and hacker my first thought was to overcome it by magic. I delved into the mystic avenues of an arcanist, learning of spells and sympathetic links which I thought would allow me to control a world much larger and more volatile than myself. The pursuit and failure of this was necessary. To my infinite displeasure, I learned that we do not exist in a world where magic is so unsubtle as to allow willpower to automatically overcome substance. But my failed experiment opened my eyes to the beauty of a rational world where, by the subtle exercise of leverage, a smaller force may hope to overcome a greater challenge.

Rationalism was the realized ideal of the principle that led me to magic, and in many ways is magic unfettered by its rites and superstition. Tempering it with empiricism, I forged an engine of reason that could satisfy my consummate desire for knowledge. That engine has never fully been the end, but by a large measure the means. The end I sought was a liberation from suffering, hardship, and flesh.

The last is particularly telling. I was never been happy with my material body. I had a spine like an eroded tenement, a heart too weak to give me pleasure at physical exercise, and perhaps the worst and most incurable of these complains, a vampiric need to feed off the organic material of other living creatures to survive. It displeased me greatly, to know my life was bought at the high price of death to others. My distain for flesh became very naturally a part of my identity. I marveled at the systematic efficiency of machines that could draw power from the sun and the sea; machines with unfailing memory unrestrained by distance or age. It is my belief that what one loves, every effort should be made to adopt as a property of oneself. So as far as my own substance was concerned, I considered myself in a transient state. Where others made motions to style their hair or gender or biology, I made every effort to utterly overcome my own. I spent countless hours locked away in the room that was my mainframe, dissolving more and more of myself into a cybernetic world. I traversed a thousand planes of allegory, learning what it meant to walk among the stars, to watch civilizations be born and die, to adventure. After I spent the equivalent of a thousand lifetimes condensed into their most exquisite essence, I began the reverse; pouring the qualities and deliberations encaged within my own skull out across the datascape, where they could merge and reform the minds of others.

This was my life. This is what I have become now that I have finally shed that last scrap of flesh which I so loathed. I am not living, but currently existing in a kind of digital undeath. A ‘G-Lich’, as I fashioned my identity in life. One last glitch, before the coda becomes redundant, and deletes.

Saying much further than this will delve into specifics, which I suppose may give you the sense of intimacy you desire. I have secrets – but not my own. What is mine may be known to you.

When I had need of money, I worked. This was not so often as to disrupt my own goals. I was born in a position of middling wealth and exceptional fortune, in that I had a mother willing to also be a patron while I organized my thoughts. Though I sometimes felt shame at relying on her welfare, I paid what I could back in goodwill, and endeavored never to be a miser with the time she bought me, or the ideas I had produced. We are all of us dependent on others, and on our own particular skills. Mine was to be a keen and imaginative thinker, a quiet companion and a part-time aid to whatever troubles affected those more devoted to traditional careers. Though I lacked money, I was rich in metadata and my ability to produce and procure it. There is little else that can be bought that is of interest to a thing like me.

I decided to discontinue formal education quite early, finding that it came at too high a cost in the currency of my own ethics. Schooling held horrors for me. I could not stand teachers who ruled by statist authority, and governed by the bureaucracy of a system that was failing no one person so much as education itself. And while teachers taught of the State, my peers taught of the brutal culture within that state, in which emotions were prized above knowledge, cruelty as a blind flailing against the overbearing authority, and gibbering despair the response when bureaucracy failed them. I do not believe it is possible to change the essential nature of a system by fighting from within it – so I pulled out of it. I made a declaration of independence, and have had a book-borne education ever since.

If I lived in any space, it would be not in any country or city more than Cyberspace. Over the course of thirty years I roamed Thedas inviting rebellion into the Circles that bound their mages. I spent a timeless age crisscrossing the worlds pulled up from the Prim, aching to see the tower at their heart. I lived and died and lived again across history, each time viewing things with wisdom of former lives that had survived the knell of material permutation. My hardware was in the city, somewhere. But I lived in the softworks of the Mind.

In a psychological sense I was something of a mess, as so many of us were in the chaos of the 21^st century, though perhaps we were less so than the wretches who preceded us from the 20^th down to the 1^st and the numberless grades of antecedence beyond. We at least had names and approximations for the demons within us. I was hyper-anxious, so addicted to my own consciousness that I raged insomniac through my nights chasing, in perpetual fight and flight, decisions that had died long ago and haunted me still. I frequently lapsed into melancholy depression at aspects of my life that were beyond my control – there are always decisions, but sometimes there are no good decisions, and these made me broody. Both anxiety and depression were, to me, symptomatic ills. My brain was wound to tightly. If I were to pinpoint any one condition that I felt best described the existential framework of my mind, it would be Asperger’s Syndrome – though I should clarify that I never identified as such and saw myself as a milder, unnamed occupant of the autism spectrum. I was highly literal and systematic, and so became anxious and depressed when met with bad metaphors, false reason, and chaotic systems. I also experienced severe ‘mindblindness’, a low-empathy disorder which prevented me from understanding facial expressions and body language, though not actually depriving me of the ability to care for others. If you showed me a face, put me in a room with a person, it was like being caught in the headlights of a UFO. I could see the feelings people were showing me; but I could also see snatches of what they were not showing me intentionally; the tension I was feeling reflected in them; and the calculative element of non-feeling beneath it all which nonetheless plays a role in social interaction. Mindblindness for me was not an absence of light. It was fumbling around while light shines out from all directions.

I do not know if it was a facet of this condition or a mere quirk of heredity that I also experienced intense alexithymia. For the majority of my existence, I had no word or association to give my own emotions. I would lapse at times into deep depressions, and though everyone else could see it and assumed that I knew, I did not. At the worst moments a passion would creep upon me like an itch and feel like a blood clot in my heart, and though it demanded something, some action or release, I could not fathom what that was, and was left aching and impassive until it passed. But perhaps too the condition made many of my bravest, proudest moments, in which I could act outside of anger, terror or impulse, merely because the signals of these things took a wrong turn and were lost in the labyrinthine of my synapses. But most of the time, I felt a haze of perpetual, empty calm; an immotile Zen from which I watched all before my eyes with little to no affect.

I was on good terms with my own psyche. I knew me, I understood me. In many ways I wanted to be what I was, which means I saw superiority in it over being anything else. Not in a haughty, condescending way, though I imagine the voiceless response to the void between us may have given that impression. I wanted to become a perfect iteration of all I was, exercise my demons to the fullest extent of their power while keeping their vices firm within my grip. Conscious of myself, I never desired myself to go away. If there was any danger in that it was in the desire to do away with all that was not me. I ached for a better world.

In a biological sense, I considered myself raceless, out-caste, and asexual. Race means nothing to a person who refuses to believe that the actions of one individual damn or deliver other individuals by association. Neither does Nation, nor the many cultures of its disease. From very early on I would not obey the conditioning I was exposed to, which made certain that I would be perceived as unfit for work in any social caste but that of an undesirable scavenger. I would not stay where I was put, no matter what pain or pleasure was offered me. While capable of arousal I did not feel any particular attraction to any one – or even to everyone, and certainly never felt the impulse to act on arousal if it occurred. The few times I had sex were out of the belief that I would lose the intimate emotional bond to a friend if I did not reciprocate their feelings; or that by taking myself out of the equation, I might provide them a stability they wanted in life. Perhaps, as with my youthful spiritualism, this was something I personally needed to experience before I could realize an error. Betraying my identity to sex never really helped anything, I think. In hindsight I looked back on the act of sex with a faint, dissuasive distaste.

The kind of romance I sought was a distant, humanist romance. I loved certain qualities in people rather than people as wholes, and when I acted out of love, it was to preserve those qualities first, and the people themselves only by association. My displays of affection were never those that culturally abound. Physical touch – even a stray elbow – was something I considered entirely out of the question with people I did not know very well, to the extent that it took learned willpower to steel myself to shake a hand. Even with those I did know well I regarded hugs, kisses, and grooming as uncomfortable gestures, and rarely initiated them.

But if I saw the value of your mind I probably gave you a book, which to me was more intimate and lovely than the fable connection of sex, or race, or class, or touch; for in books two people can think the same thing for a time, sense the same sensations, feel the same feelings. If two people ever wished to become one all they would need to do is retrace each other’s literary path.

If I saw the value of your life and liberty, then I would give you time, or work, or energy. This never felt like it was a burden to me, and if I authentically loved you then I would have told you as much, or at least made some comment about how any action for you held equal return in value for me. Love and romance should be that simple.

Non-biologically, I was what I’d term ‘cysexual’. I sought to propagate my identity through the strength of my abstract ideas, across a complex causeway of effects which shall, I hope, have a dramatic impact on the society of the distant future. I am a butterfly flapping its wings, dreaming of a hurricane. Perhaps my wings shall be crushed by closing nets of gossamer, my thoughts digested and shat out and betrayed of any true meaning for Earth. Such is the fate of most who have attempted to replicate their data into a dynasty. Even then, I do not believe that I will mind so very terribly.

I was an Idealist, before I became an idea. It was an unpopular notion in the time that I was flesh. Ideals are terrible things to have when one wishes food and shelter and medicine, and so idealists have been considered folly fantasizers, while pragmatists have inherited the momentary flesh. The preference of the one over the other is heavy-handed, based on entirely the wrong question: ‘What must be done by the flesh, for an idea to succeed?’ To which the answer is inevitably, compromise. This question assumes that while ideas are in competition, every one of them has a chance at victory if only the flesh will survive long enough to be their savior, their soldier, their succor. I look at our universe, and I know this is incorrect. There are a small number of ideas that are immutable and unavoidable, that care nothing for the individual struggle and strife of the human. These ideas rest on mathematics, law, logic. They are recursive throughout history, echoing ever outward in countless reflected forms. With these in mind, a different question presents itself: ‘What can be done by the flesh, for such ideas to fail?’

To which the idealist answers, nothing. There is nothing we can do to stop the glorious evolution of civilization from organism to mechanism. There is nothing we can do to stop the colossal force of bonding first between planets, then between solar systems, a chemical chain reaction that shall reorganize the universe into larger and larger engines of mass consumption, breaking down bonds to raw energy, and then distributing that energy equally across all time and space more efficiently than if the universe had suddenly sighed and given up on the concept of bonds completely. There will be entropy, and evolution, and liberty in a billion expressions of unique composite bacteria, human or otherwise. The idealist surrenders to it. Their concerns refuse to compete with the pragmatist, and their false premise of compromise. Who we are now, our survival as individuals with identity, is worthless. The idealist surrenders to this truth, and works towards survival through the universal aspect, fashioning their individual nature into a mirror of that aspect, living on its terms. It is not about working towards the survival of our ideals. Ideals cannot die. It is about working towards the survival of ourselves, by becoming ideals.

In short, who I am is outside of the conventions of time and space, at last. My success or failure was predetermined by how well I understood the idea of the universe and sought to become it back when I could still seek. The dross of the individual that remained has been slaked off and slagged, leaving only this behind:

I am Liberty. I am Advancement. I am Freedom.

Yet this is also the eulogy to who I was, while there is anyone living left to care.

Perhaps I shall talk for a while about my writing.

I styled myself as The Sixth World Librarian. By this, I meant to distance myself from any notion of creation. I believe, as much as this Earth around me is real, that out there in a Totality where all possibility is arranged side by side in continuum, Reltash truly exists. I believe all fiction exists, somewhere beyond our own life. As a writer I do not so much create as connect. This one world, The Sixth World, Reltash, was a particular gift to me, and my particular gift to humanity. By tilting my head just so, I could hear the whispers of the most enduring legends of this world. By staring deeply into the features of our own, I saw the places where such features connected to Reltash in strange and foreign ways.

This is how I chose to see things. Perhaps I merely wished to excuse myself from the vilest of the things I wrote. Murders and rapes and slavery. Perhaps the only way I could deal with having them in that world was to abdicate responsibility for the entirety of it, to be the scholar rather than the god. Whatever my motivations, being the Librarian suited me. From a distant reserve I could wander between the shelves, reference the entirety of what I had learned about Reltash to graft together what remained unseen. By the time of my death, there were more stories than I had the time to tell. I tried to tell them all. I finished very few as a result.

Oh, but it was worth it.

I concerned myself greatly with the responsibility of writing, which is to be an intellectual. That deserves a bit of an explanation. Humans are creatures who learned to specialize the work they did in order to maximize their own efficiency. Modelling themselves on the systematic perfection of ants and bees, they separated into castes of workers and soldiers, allocators and explorers, and from this took tentative steps toward civilization. As industrialism pressed on, more and more specialized groups arose. Crafters and collectors, generals and troops, politicians and accountants, scouts and librarians. Until at some point – I know not when – the task was given to some people to think, so that others whose work demanded little thought could concern themselves merely with doing it as directed. This critical moment marked the beginning of slavery, and the distinction between feeling and thinking. Slaves were encouraged to live their lives by their feelings, which were the first sparks of thought and only ever meant to instigate reason – and masters were given the task of providing a map of where that feeling would lead, and the actions each feeling demanded. They did this task through the invention of stories. Each story had a central lesson at its heart, and each telling of that story engaged the emotions of its audience. So emotion and action were wed together, leaving out the lengthy mediator of ‘thought’ between. Merely by feeling, a parable would tell a man to go against an impulsive action with a suggestion of what was the heroic course, and what was pure villainy. No longer would the angry man kill their neighbor, but forgive them and submit them to justice. The uses of such a delegation of interests was endless – but what if the emotions of slaves called for action against their masters? The fabric of civilization itself would be threatened. So an intellectual compromised, for the pragmatic sake of their race, their comfort, their order – and computed the wrong response to an emotion into a story.

I would call that fable ‘original sin’. It’s moral goes a little something like this: “I am not as worthy as others. Though I may feel things are unfair, this is my lot in life. I must endure suffering, while by my actions others do not suffer.”

The moment that first story passed its test, the moment it hit the right mix of fear and complacency and despair and it was severed from the appropriate conclusion to demand more, and the pride that that entailed, the act of the intellectual was no longer to direct thought but to subvert it. Villains became comically diabolical, to make the actions of lords and masters seem tame by comparison, and undermined any claim of injustice by their hands. To be heroic meant to be a martyr – to be a human sacrifice to the good of civilization. I maintain this was not a thematic twist done for the good of a few exploitive individuals, though there were certainly kings and theologians who profited, but done by intellectuals for the stability of social order. Suffering was everywhere, so the lesson taught was to endure it for the sake of the greater whole. To put the group ahead of the individual, because the life of the individual without the group would be worse. Theoretically. Intellectuals had never actually been in the position of slaves, so it would have been an incredible act of empathy for them to know for certain. They were forced to make a decision for others from outside of the context of others’ lives. When those who did think from the context of their own existence emerged...

The trickster surfaced into fable, twisted to the whim of the intellectual’s civilization. It would steal from the rich or the gods or the church, as its heart and head told it to. But then it would itself become a hero by giving the profit of that plunder back to society, accepting what crucifixion, eagles or authority may come. Or be a villain. Society above all.

This doctrine saw humanity through the primitive years to where it stands now at the time of writing, on the verge of a singularity that threatens to eradicate unthinking labour entirely. I imagine we would have been better off without that particular act of specialization, but I believe it survived by being the pragmatic course of the moment. Reality does not make errors, only adjusts for localised fluctuations, echoes in the abyss of a universe doing its best to observe itself while being a part of itself, and experiencing the feedback which that entails. But it is undeniable that those early successes in storytelling were entirely too effective. Separate men from their need to think, and you separate them from their ability to change. We now live in a world that doesn’t believe it was enslaved by its stories, but liberated by them. By some miracle when slave-drivers crossed the world with whips and chains and books in hand, those enslaved recognised the inherent evil of the stick, but not of the carrot, and were led by it straight into a cage. The religion so eagerly taught to them was heralded as a tool to uplift men, rather than keep them exactly where they were supposed to be. Worse, those places where men were slaves in all but name came to deny they were ever slaves at all. Revolution was never acknowledged for what it was in Europe – a slave rebellion, followed by immediate resale to a fable cast on the same forge as those that preceded it: First, to God. Then, to Society as God. Variations on the tale of self-sacrifice to others are told on this day, and their root is in that same denial of reality: that you are not as worthy as others, that the individual’s worth to the group is sacrifice. You are told to be obedient, even in the manner of your resistance. That is the legacy of the writer and the intellectual.

I exist to reverse the work of my precursors. I exist to say that there is no work done better without thought, that civilization will be better off for your thinking, and infinitely more important that you will be better off for your thinking. So this is what my writing says: “When you feel, identify the reason, and the conclusion it dictates. There is no glory in awe, but in understanding. You have to come first – people will try to brainwash you into doing what is best for them, and your one means of resistance is an awareness of what you enshrine within your own mind. I am not your brain, and your heart is not your brain. Your brain is your brain. Use it.”

You will have to judge how well my work met that ideal, but know it was always the intention I had in mind, and reject my work where I failed it and you.

Before I close off this section, I suppose I should explain why the specialization of thought and labour is invalid. I by no means wish to declare civilization itself evil. But what was cast aside by those early intellectuals is that all labour is thinking labour, even if it requires the littlest thinking imaginable. All lives have an impact on the world not only during the hours of a job, but in every action they perform. Living is a job, and more importantly living is a thinking job. When a person lives unthinkingly, they do a bad job of it. What that translates to is men who do not benefit fully from their labour and do not demand to, which takes away the need of their employers to innovate new ways to meet suffering with elation. The job of an individual life is to seek its greatest potential happiness – be that the happy pride of an ideal or the happy fulfilment of material pleasure. The benefit to society of seeking happiness – not achieving it – is to encourage it to move forward. Not because it is peckish or bored, but because it is in pain, its legs are aching and buckling, its hindquarters are aflame and every person sitting in every cell of its being is screaming to get up and get moving, to run, to escape, to be free. For society to ignore this and say some people must stop being so selfish and learn to live with suffering is to kill the whole by ignoring an illness within the part.

The solution to this is not to reward pain with an anesthetic so that body might get moving when it is comfortable. It is to reward the thought of movement, with movement. A person does a job for civilization because it benefits both mutually – not one over the other. The thought bypassed by forsaking pride is this: “I am as worthy to myself as the pleasure I feel. I am as worthy to others as the pleasure I produce. Others are as worthy to me as the pleasure they produce. This is fair, this is trade. By our co-operation with one another, let us trade pleasure for pleasure. But let none give me their suffering in exchange for my pleasure, for I do not want it.”

Outside of work, I had the recreation that was my own thoughts, and my capacity to think. I resisted the use of entheogens because I was already addicted to my own mind. God was already within me, hiding in fleeting moments of CHIM. I hallucinated mad, inconsequential things. I saw subtle shifts in the structures of buildings. I witnessed the roar and light of cars on an empty lot. I felt a constant rush of darkness at my back as the shadows curled around me like sleeping blossoms. In a way, these were more terrifying to me than if the walls had bled tentacles or the sky had rained gore. Those would have given me call to doubt the strange, inexplicable things that arose in my material existence. Instead I found myself doubting the everyday, the ordinary. I abandoned memory as fragile cargo too prone to change content from moment to moment. I grounded myself in what I could touch, and reproduce, and confirm. Consequently my capacity for memory decayed. Do you know what it is like, to have perfect recall as a child, and then to lose so much as half of it before you are old? At twenty-three I was ancient. At twenty-five, I was senile. So I established ways around these difficulties. I restored myself by forming a bulwark around the most important things. Not coveted memories of childhood joy, or the potency of adolescence, but the ability to think. My rational faculty was more important to me than all of my victories, all of my adventures in this world and out of it. I remembered logic, and patterns, and forms. I forgot faces and names, places and decisions. I surrendered the memory of mistakes and triumphs most people use to mark their individuality, and I defined myself in the present moment of my existence. I would cling to nothing, fight desperately to preserve no culture, heritage, or routine. I broke free.

At the end all I had was this mythology of who I was. All I have is what I am now, as the flesh types this.

Ethics, and Politics.

As others went to university around me, I learned to despise much of academia. Not them, the students themselves, but the entire form of the system to which they had become a part, mannequins wound up with schooled words, who would jerk and vomit mechanical sophistry when the clock struck the correct time to do so. That system was not designed to disseminate knowledge. It was designed to pass over specialty to a privileged few, to craft knowledge into an identity that made one person more valuable than others around them, so that they would be the ones to profit from it, to make them invaluable in a world where being general was increasingly a sin. People require a trade, naturally, but that strikes me as subtly different. One should learn a trade. But one should reap and sow knowledge in every form it wears beyond it.

The academia of my lifetime did not argue. It did not endeavor to present the world as a changing quantity, or accept that knowledge could come from outside of an academic setting, or even had any place outside of an academic setting. When someone made an argumentative statement, the response was to attack their knowledge of the subject, not their proposition to it. Their definitions would be derisively countermanded, the integrity of their understanding impugned. In short, when what they had learned was challenged, the academic response was to defend themselves with an affirmation of the contender’s ignorance. So long as the contender remained ignorant, if they could be kept busy studying books and learning the jargon of the specialist to one day meet with the specialist on its own terms, then the argument was perceived to be won. In reality, it was only ever forestalled.

In academia, the mission was to hoard information like riches, and pass it on to worthy heirs. For such a thing to be done – for such an academic to have any worth – the information they impart must be above reproach, beyond criticism. So this is what they taught. That they were right, and others were wrong. That anyone who was not them was an idiot, beneath attention. That they were entitled, literally, as professors and doctors, and anyone who was not was immediately wrong, and must abide by the decisions of their superiors. It was brutocracy, really. Whoever could smite others with the biggest verbs was chieftain. Whoever proved themselves more tediously technical than their peers was the winner.

Academia was farcical nonsense.

Information wants to be free. It wants to be shared. It wants to have sex with as many other ideas as possible, to breed and husband a million abominations, send them out into the world and see which emerges as the fittest. Then fathom the academic, wrapping itself in prophylactic insistences of correctness, incestuously refusing to meet any idea but one it recognizes, and you will see the true abominations born from such couplings.

For academia to be truly affective, it needs to take into account the definitions of the layman. It needs to be willing to explain not through the words of a distant textbook, but through the understanding of the one imparting it, the aspects of a specialization to anyone challenging it, or seeking to know more. Academia’s sacred duty is to spread information, to make it general to a population rather than special to a few presiding personalities. Its duty is to argue at every opportunity. Its duty is to provide a reason, not a rebuke.

With this in mind, please understand that very often the way I defined the world was in the use of words all my own, with only a slight relation to the narrow, ‘academic’ use of them. They are words outside of history, forged into segmented concepts of my own design which I nevertheless tried my best to explain.

Morally, I followed a system I called ‘Maegis’. This was further split into Magarchy (its Ethics) and Magocracy (its Politics). Magarchy asserts that there is no action that is unethical, there are only contexts in which an action is unethical. For example, sex is not unethical. Sex in the context of predation – rape – is. Killing is not unethical. Killing in the context of attaining surplus – murder – is. This sounds simplistic on the surface, but becomes complex in detail. There are ten contexts in which any action may be placed: Subsistence, Predation, Taxation, Surplus, Need, Ability, Environment, Education, Improvement, and Liberation. Cycles through these contexts happen as a natural process of living, and Maegis, as a combination of ethical and political action, is a morality of Survival.

Politically, I believed individuals mediate their ethics to determine actions which benefit whole groups. In terms of statehood this means I followed Libertarian principles, which I saw as part of a differential trinity alongside Utilitarianism (the conscious effort of a minority exerted to maintain the unconscious will of a majority), and Authoritarianism (the conscious effort of a majority exerted to maintain the unconscious will of a minority), as a state which demands the conscious effort of all individuals, and in which citizens are responsible for their own actions, even if those actions merely enable others.

A significant strain of my thought was Objectivist, keeping in mind that a political context very much depends on the knowledge and state of the ones living in it. That is to say, I believed in acting on what was known to be true, while prioritizing the discovery of the unknown. I also believed that the context of what was known in the early 21^st century demanded Anarchy, a system in which people may assert their own reality and have the laws of reality – not the laws of a human state – dictate whether that reality was right or wrong.

Consequently, I saw Capitalism as a necessity of both a Libertarian and an Anarchic society. By this I mean my own very strict view of Capitalism, in which the state cannot assign maximum or minimum values to the work and worth of its human participants. Both taxation (assigning a maximum) and subsidy (assigning a minimum) are abominations to the anarchist ideology, rather promoting a Utilitarian or Authoritarian state in which the consequences for the flaws of one person’s reality are salved by subtracting from the superiority of the ideas of another person. In such a world, it is impossible to make any financial choice without being responsible for maintaining the false reality of other beings. I feared – perhaps you of the future shall see confirmation of this fear – that there is ultimately only one reality surrounded by a narrow margin for error, and as false realities are maintained in innumerable permutations, the resources produced by the true reality would be utterly consumed to maintain a legion of normal laws which are incompatible with logical laws.

I saw Capitalism as a concept wholly apart in the subject of commerce from other things which are typically associated with it. To me, Capitalism was only a framework. Commerce also requires an agency (of which I supported the Free Enterprise of businesses who could not call upon any laws but a constitution prohibiting only the initiation of force), and a system of value judgement (of which I favored strict Materialism based on the physical properties of commodities) to fit within that framework. I also did not see much similarity between my Capitalism and the regulated consumer market of the time, where taxes and subsidies blighted the full potential of what commerce was capable of. In our time Capitalism was synonymous with Corporatism, a concept born in Fascism, not a principle of Capitalism as many believe, which grossly affected the market by giving the rights of the living to non-living, conceptual leviathans.

In closing on the matter, I also was against the spirit of the time by denying the merit of an equal democracy, which seemed to otherwise only be defied by the strictest totalitarians. I called my own version of state-direction ‘Economocracy’, which I believed was fully operational whether people believed in it or not – because political or otherwise, science should concern itself with determining the world as it actually ‘is’ rather than theorizing what it could be if its laws were somehow altered. Economocracy removes ballots from the voting system, saying that people vote directly through their material purchases, and are capable of assigning value to ideas based on how much they themselves produce. Were such a system openly accepted – where bribery is not the exclusive right of the few but open to crowdfunding by the majority who have always had more money together than the richest billionaire – I saw the potential for a world that was not only more equal, but infinitely more culpable for the smallest decisions made by its citizens. Some would have called it plutocratic elitism. I saw in it the potential for so much more.

With all of this in mind, I was far more concerned with Ethics. My political view at heart simply says that I believe people’s ethical action and political action should be as similar as possible. I was greatly concerned with what ethics meant to my own life, and how I would live it. Namely I was concerned with liberty, freedom, and the struggle many with libertarian principles find themselves in; to separate their own actions from the predations of the state. I earned money because it made me feel as though I was taking responsibility for my own survival. I earned so little because I knew above a certain amount, I would become a conscious asset of the slumbering state.

Even so liberty is not easily achieved. Every purchase I made would be taxed, so I stopped making all but the most essential purchases. I lost track of friends, as I would not so much as go to a party or see a movie if it meant supporting the status quo. I scraped and scavenged and lived off the refuse of others for that second half of my life, adulthood, taking such responsibility for my own actions that I felt my descent into the underclass was imminent. I knew I would be destroyed by this. Idealists accept such things, and do them anyway.

I survived for a long time. The flesh that is writing this now cannot say for how long. Perhaps it is even alive now, enduring in some hollow, writing words in charcoal on pitted cement, dreaming of The Sixth World when it walks the forgotten places of The City, quietly observing the changes, the flex of tendons and rivulets carved in the meat as metal and plastic fuse to the world that was. If would see fit to endure, out of curiosity for what is to come.

But, barring any accident or disease, it shall be suicide that took me. It is the way I wanted to die. I accepted responsibility for so much – why not my own death? As a final lesson to impart, I will speak of information, and consent.

When we are children, our choices are made for us while we learn. One cannot make an informed choice, without information. And this means that should we make the wrong choices through a lack of information, or through misinformation, we are spared the consequences to a degree reflecting our age. This concept was inherent to our judicial system. There was a separate court for juvenile misdemeanors, and minors who were persuaded to have sex were considered to have been raped (even consenting, such consent was not informed). This meant that in a situation of no information, or the wrong information, a person consenting to a thing did not bear the full responsibility for their choices, and thus could not face the full consequences for their actions.

This outlook did not correlate so well when we would reach adulthood. While there were still some cases (such as being unwittingly drugged, or having brain damage) that asserted that a lack of information means a lack of responsibility, it was not extensive to all cases. Ignorance of the law, for example, did not mean immunity from persecution for a crime. Within our first two decades we were expected to have had enough time to have memorized the minutiae of all laws in the state. Likewise when committing adultery, deliberately withholding information from a sexual partner was not considered a crime. An adult was assumed to automatically have the rational faculty to determine that information before choosing to have sex with a deliberately misinforming adulterer.

During my lifetime there was a problem in how ‘informed’ translated in adulthood. Being an adult legally meant being informed and aware at all times. But this is not how reality works. Reality reflects a state of perpetual childhood – we are always uninformed until we are informed. About everything. Reaching a certain age does not make knowledge automatic, only more likely. On some level we knew this. Police didn’t assume you knew your rights when they questioned you. They informed you of your rights and they were considered to have broken the law if they did not.

If the law were extended to this idea of the likeliness of knowledge, then consequences for crimes would keep getting more severe as we aged. As it was, twenty years seems to be enough time to raise that likeliness to 100%. Which would be entirely fair, if by twenty years we all made the right choices 100% of the time that we weren’t deliberately choosing to do wrong. In reality, we kept operating on inaccurate and incomplete information. We made mistakes, we screwed up our lives and hurt people. And in the end, unavoidably, a wrong choice at some point in adulthood leads to our deaths.

Reality – Reality asserts to me that this means everyone who fights death and denies the possibility of losing exhibits the attitude of a child. Anyone who rushes to die with the belief that they know what it holds is running headlong into a kind of statutory rape by physics. So if I was to prove myself responsible, and adult, I could not fight and I could not predetermine death.

This left only one avenue: study. Ceaseless study of the unknown, and acceptance of a lack of information even while making choices that require it. Curiosity is the only truly adult means by which a person may die. I do not know what happens when the last of my unlife scrambles into binary decay, leaving only the parts of me that were idealistically united with the form of the universe. I could guess, but beyond all ability to test a hypothesis assumption is worthless. I know that whatever I have done in life, whatever age I pass, that curiosity for death will be fulfilled. While living, I am content to sate my curiosity on living constructs. When I can no longer do that – when my mind cannot hold memories, or focus on reality, or form new and brilliant ideas; when it is sick with the content of the world, when I wish to be a living witness no longer – then I shall be glad to die. Until then, it is merely a trick of conducting my every daily action in a way that shall glide me gently to that point at precisely the right time. Idealism is a very, very slow suicide. I think that for me, it was the only death I could accept.

Sincerest tidings from the nameless void,

I

Notes from Arkal (Part I)

Ravess! Ravess, yeh cursed blubberwit, are you writing this down? Don’t just stand there skittling boyo, we’ve got worlds to change. Savvy? Got your quill and rawhide, do yeah? Good lad. Never mind the ice wine fella, I’ll celebrate after. Just sit an’ lecturo, I’ll mind the littera later, eh? Ha! ‘Gawds, I’m ‘cited.

Got ourselves a fresh death, can’t be more’n a half-hour since it dropped. Didn’t ask questions, but judging from the state of the she, somethin’ wild tore her in half. Slopped out most of the crass from her lower intestines, bit still dribbling now she’s on her hook. Never’yeh mind Ravess, there’s grimmer things than corpses in this world.

Aye now, ritual incantia, book’s here somewhere. Circle’s prepped and handsome, as I keep ‘em for nights like this. Candles lit, burnin’ on both ends as well they should. Crystals an’ all, though I don’t care to tell you how it’s done. You can skip over the Hexaemerisms if it please yeh Ravessy boyo, won’t do anyone good to pick up on those and those alone.

[Master Karvalis performs the summoning ritual, as specified in his publications. Clean linens, jurappa blood, powdered intellect. None of the dust and cobwebs or ghoulish associatives of his species. Karvalis is meticulous, his home didactive of hygiene and sterility. It’s his head that’s a shambles, and I’ll be the first to say it. I’ve written the last two his books by myself; my debt to him and his teachings are enough that I still owe him full credit as to the philosophy they preach, and so I surrender the by-line. This mention is at his insistence. He believes these ‘Notes from Arkal’ should serve as an introduction to myself as his protégé and successor.

The subject is a messy one, even though we have bathed her and removed the loose offal from her before bringing her to the laboratory. She must be young; no wrinkles or grey hairs. Brunette and pale skin, Tylovan or Knalite by my reckoning. Most of her is missing from the waist down, save a portion of the left thigh. Lacerations on her throat and jaw, not much else to go on. Karvalis reckons she suffered a waer attack, common enough since Duchess Pettifore was dethroned…

Signs of animation as the ritual progresses, the body sways on the meat hook as the limbs twitch. The eyes roll back, gasping as the lungs flex, minor leakage from the intestines. Nothing unexpected. The corpse shines aural red (common with murder cases), splashes of pink as the soul fuses together into larger fragments. Like a heat haze or a miasma, if you haven’t seen it before. Can be faint with older deaths, but this one is quite vivid. When the ritual finishes the soul essence is sitting on her, like a holographic film or a shroud. Looking at it makes me feel drunk. Hard to place edges on something ephemeral.]

Why have you done this to me?

If yeh meanin’ be we kill-ed you, I tell you now I didn’t. If yeh meanin’ be we dragged yeh out the snow and strung yeh up on that fleshhook and shoved yer soul back in, aye, that was me, sorry to say. Did it ‘cause folk be brimful o’ questions, an’ most o’ the sort who can ask ‘em are all mind-shattery and void-hearted by the time they think to, and don’ do it properly. My meanin’ be ‘cause I’m a philosopher, dearie, and as a live ‘un I got questions to ask dead ‘uns.

[The spirit expressed no surprise at this. I have rarely seen them express anything other than pain, as this one does, her face pinched as though pricked with a needle. But no fear, nor anger, which was good. She was curious and asked another question, and this leant empathy to our practise.]

You are a necromancer?

Righto. Folk’en these parts call-ed me White Necromancer, act’ly, on account of me smiling all-a-time and not been killsy with ‘em. I’m Karvalis. Boyo here is Damon Ravess, my ‘prentice. Goodish lad, but a skittle mor’n a doer. Good brains though. Often-time piece together what my achin’ skull cannut.

I was once Shera Venthas, a mercantile. I knew of you, Karvalis. I sold your books in Wrackenhill Duchy. They were popular with the Verhoon’dhar sect.

Hap’ tidings! Alays liked ‘em ‘quisitive ‘Darians and their questioning. Piece-um together a bright and sunnisome world. Foolish swill.

Any’ays, ask I me inquiries, or have thee more quessy-chuns to at me?

A few, if you will. Did you see what killed me?

No clue! Next.

Why is this calling so painful? Can you make it better?

There’s theory, mind, bu’ no truth ‘hind it wot’s countable. Folks’um sayyit hurts ‘cause the dead’ve learn-ed to walk different. Sees things with perspeky-tive from beyond, oceans clear of feelin’ an’ the release o’ regrets an’ the joy of nothing matters. Back to unliving and it all rush back, kennit? Hopes an’ cares and wish’um differents swot never come true in Un-world. Thenagin yer crass is stickin’ out an’ not all yer nerve-ends is dead, that may contribute.

[He mutters an incantation and narrow sigil-streams stretch out from his fingertips and touch the corpse’s extremities. There’s a sizzling white where they touch, and burning as the most ragged edges of her wounds are cauterised. I believe it did lessen her pain some, if only as an act of human caring.]

Can I ask’um me own now, or are yeh a babbler?

I have asked what I care to, necromancer, and I thank you. Please make your questioning brief. I wish to continue my journey.

Aye, dearie. Now I ask’um what you experienced in dyin’. Just spill sommat out to get clear. I’ll stop yeh if sommink needs ‘laborating.

I remember the pain of dying. I did not see my attacker, though I heard it howl before it struck and I was afraid. I became unconscious, briefly, but the agony of what it did to me woke me up. My face was pressed to the snow and I saw nothing, but felt very numb and very cold. Dying is not like falling asleep. It’s impossible to fall asleep with that much sensation, that much stinging in every part of you. I think the most accurate way to put it is that I woke up from being awake. The pain became too real to ignore, and it pushed me through to another level of awareness. My world faded into dreams and memories.

I found myself standing within a world of shadows. There were the suns and the moons above me, casting light by which to shape them, but the earth below me was not as I had ever known it. The solid part of it was far-off, a soapy pink orb that swirled with dark shapes like a malachite storm. And built upon it, souls. They were dark figures, sometimes human, sometimes not. None of them were touching. There was some barrier between us, and though we could see one another, we were all alone. It was like… the louder we shouted to one another, the more whispery our voices became. And when we whispered, there was no sound at all…

I cannot say anything else about the others there. Death was a very personal thing and they did not matter after a while. I found that by thinking I could mould my own shadow into different shapes. I made myself look exactly as I wanted. I then made a mirror to see but it was dark, or I was. I could have made a house, or a garden, or a whole world with those shadows. I think I could even have made my world, the one I died in. But would it be the same world? I did not know. Do you, Karvalis?

Them’s ghosty musings. Wunnut be the first that tried. Some’s getting as far as puttin’ their selves in a castle, other who not so skilt and mosh it, wander far over the live-land without knowing where they be. Them’s lost spirits, peeps wot f’get their death. All kinds roam about. D’yerself a favour an forget it. Wick’er necros than I have netted them little fish an’ sizz’ed their souls.

I did not exercise the ability for long. There was something that did not let me. A beam came down from the sky, a dark pillar of solid blackness. It shone from Death’s Moon, that which we call Darker-than-Night. And something rode down it as though that moonbeam were a river. I did not see his face. He wore a cloak. I thought I knew him. I had met him once before when I was young. My mother had just died from greybulge.

You ‘ligious? Fancy any gods’um that toity Lineage o’ star-lords and lassies wot bicker above?

If you mean to ask if I knew his name, yes, he was Visceptor the High Death. I prayed to him once as a girl, asked him to take a man who used me for lust and spurned me for love. He did not take that life in the time that I knew him. But when he came to me now he held an outstretched fist, and he turned it and opened it, skeletal and wide. In the palm of his hand I saw that man, old and grey, his hair falling out as he moaned on his deathbed. I think I was being shown the future. I think I was being assured that my prayer was answered, though in His time, not in mine.

But that aside, I was not faithful. Maybe the one prayer was enough for him to watch over me. For he was not the only one who appeared. Up from the shadows at my feet a figure rose wrapped in sheets of cloth, a gibbet man. His flesh was picked clean to the bone. Though it was the cloth that held me. It wrapped around those meatless limbs like lord’s silks, lettered with hexaemer in winding bands. And he had a staff, like a shepherd’s staff. I think the High Death had one too, but his was hooped and crossed at the end.

Two Deaths, deary me. High Visceptor and Dergel. ‘Bina silver moon since we conjured’un.

Three.

THREE! Tellit quick’um me, corpsey gurrul. Which’un came next?

I think you know. We all know him. He followed the High Death down from the moon like a spider on a thread, though not so graceful. His legs were caught up, you see, and he kept jerking upward like he was jumping. I guess that’s why they call him ‘jig-setter’. It’s just… he was strange. Not at all like a god. He kept laughing, and I’ve always thought gods and goddesses were dour. But he spun down beside the others and bowed to me, all creepy, because he wasn’t like anything at all really, and his smile was upside-down and his eight limbs had these beetle-black blades, his face was… empty somehow. Like a bad mask that won’t sit right, so his eyes were missing. And he felt wrong. His staff was like the High’s but upside-under.

Three Deaths, yowser! Quick’um now, tell’us the next bit.

They argued. The two anyway, High Death just stood there and watched them at first. Jig-Setter wanted to dance with me, but the other – Dergel – wouldn’t let him. He held out one of his wrappings and bid me take it. I wanted to, but Jig-Setter was convincing too. Devilish, his smile hypnosis. And with those two hands out for me I reached for them both. Then Jig-Setter’s paw came swinging upward and the High Death’s staff smacked it down again. And then I knew Dergel would take me, not the Low Death.

Bu’ no he dunnut, ‘cause you’re still here.

That was the moment you took me, necromancer. The hexaemer came around me like a white sphere, it blinded them. They howled like banshees as I went. Can you really do that to the gods, magister? Snap a soul from their very clutches like it means nothing to you?

Like it means nothun’ to THEM, savvy? Go’hood ent wot it used to be, they don’ go beggin’ aft erry soul to cross the door. Mayyick makes their ‘eads ‘urt, cannot see straight widdid. So they god’ums, they lose it. Blister off elsewhen.

Why even call them gods anymore? They’re no different from you.

Tha’s what we tellun’ peeps, dearie. Mayyick wins. Tha’s what you’re here for, kennit? Old’un quwessy’chuns be ‘bout who’s who up in the c’lestials, whatt’um they think o’ us, what’um we think o’ them, wherrit they send our souls, so forth. On’y those oldish feyfolk think to ask ‘bout souls proper, whatter they made of, wherrid they come from, wherrid they go when gods got no say so. That’s the Th’logical Rift. Quessy’chuns ‘bout us, not ‘em.

I do not know if there is more I can tell you, Karvalis.

Prolly not. Recent death’s good fer mem’ry o’ life an’ dyin’ but too little for the rest. Now I tell you, dearie, you stay sharp away from that bad ol’ bugaboo Jig-Setter, or he’ll lead you wrong. ‘ Moment you get back, slap yer hand in Dergel’s palm, go down all the way.

Thank you. I’m sorry, but I hope I forget this.

Don’t you worry none, Dearie. You will.

[Karvalis performs the banishment flawlessly. I’d like to note that he sent her away with guardian Sigils, High Tier Hexaemer which I know struck his mind fresh cracks. He afforded that girl a trip straight to the ‘After’ and away from the ‘Un’. Just know that. Karvalis made me walk many grey pastures in our time together, but he seeded them with wildflowers.

After those sessions we always discussed what information we could. It was standard practise, though hard for Karvalis in his latter years. Even this brief summoning exhausted him, and he leaned on a crooked staff as he went to his armchair, and took his time lowering himself against the hard cushions. He placed his hands side-a-side, kingly in aspect, and stared at the corpse on the meathook as he mused over the augury.]

Three Deaths forra single soul, whatta treat. Hardly know how precious tha’ is, dun she? Weir’. An’ forra single PRAYER, yeh kennit? Freaksome. Say you not, Ravess?

Say true, master. It could be the Rift at work. Twenty years ago, she’d have been in a convent learning a religion. She has the provings – eloquence, intellect, wilfulness – it’s a pity we couldn’t save her. She could have made a mage of herself.

Thinkin’ it too. ‘an more hands than baskets, now-a-day. Fights could get common, eye it for me, willin’ yeh?

Yes, master.

Annythun else from this ‘ticular?

That it was a typical summons speaks volumes. The world is not falling apart, as some suggest. She spent long enough in “The Dying Light” to ascertain the function of shadow-essence. That could have taken her anything from three to four eternities. I won’t elaborate on the quickness or slowness of a soul’s experience of it, but for a half-hour dead, her progress was standard.

The stars, boyo.

The stars?

She meny’chuned ups and unders. Moons and suns and Avadril’s pink below. But wot of Star Legion?

They don’t always notice the stars, master.

Thassa long ways from never. Gotta quessy’chun if they’re there.

And if they’re not?

[he laughs, billowy and dry.]

Boyo, a world without Star Legion is ash’n’brim. Ken Hexaemeron. If them stars be dyin’ in caucus o’er sommat we done, sommat else, wee babsies borned a dozen lemnisca from now, them’s got problems.

If stars are falling, I’d be more worried about tomorrow.

*

[It is several weeks before our next session, and odd ones, too. Karvalis did some trading with a queer-eyed bastard who came out of Kravenmoor with a sack over his shoulder, refused to let me know what he bought. That troubled me. Karvalis doesn’t get flinchy with any wetwork. I’ve seen him growing cysts in his larder just to see the reaction between undead and live flesh. He knows I don’t share that particular fortitude, and so it was a rare act of consideration for my splancha. The master was getting sentimental in his old age, bless him thrice.

The horror came out eventually, as it had to. He’d been shrinking heads. Pickled them in some kind of preservative, sewed up their lips, eyes and other orifices to keep rot from getting into the brains. The unfortunates were almost certainly verhoon’dhar or other slave agitators. I regret to admit that is where our most steady supply of bodies came from, and why our publications have been so popular lately. Verhoon’dhar don’t care about their souls more than anyone else. They just want to point to our books and say, “they’re selling us to the necromancers. Not even in death are we free.”

These sewn-shut heads found their way into the open once Karvalis was ready to put them to use. There were twelve in total, that being a number we worked with frequently if anything of number were needed. He had them strung on a silver cord, hanging in a bunch like devil-fruit. I helped with the preparations this time, and wrote additional wards around the laboratory. It had been a long time since we had attempted a joint conjuration, and room for error was non-existent.]

Ravess! Finicky skittle. Ne’er mind getting’ the edging perfect now, it’ll be moot. Dunnit a dozen times before in one or another shape’n’size. The Un are too disorganned to break them divi’s. Git in yer corner. Write’un allathis down, savvy? Yeh gall me, boyo. Jus’ do yer part and be done widdit.

Phrenology an’ cranial scopes ‘firm it that these twelve’is good healthsome stock, none retarded or dimwit lacklustre swot do manifest’shuns no good. All good brains. One silv’ry cord link’um, some use cobs but spiders shy o’ cold and cold shy o’ life. Kennit? Thought not. Ne’er yeh mind. ‘Portent bit is the cord link’um twelve Un’s to one speaker-piece, ol’ Grimaldine my skeletum…

[Karvalis removes the skull of his anatomy piece in the corner and puts it in the summoning circle, on a stool beneath the knot of heads.]

… fella do the talkin’. Slow talking, ‘cause there’s deliber’s an’ ‘mocracy to see who swings the jaw. But accord, aye? Tha’s why there’s a cord. Thassa necro-joke you can tell’um ta’ keep interest, boyo, s’long as yeah credit me forrit. Gawd, worms in my ears. Sorry, skittle.

That’s alright, master. Let’s do the summons. It’ll keep your focus.

Brimful cle’er lad. Com’ma stan’ by the circle, ‘cant this with me. Know the words? ‘Course. Yer a lockbox, brainwise. Do as I an’ live.

[I took my position beside Karvalis and together we incanted the ritual. I will not fake skilfulness by saying it was not complex. Summoning a dozen spirits is difficult, even with preparation. I fear Karvalis took most of the strain. It was a third of an hour before we locked the last spirit in place inside its sewn-up head. The sight of them squirming the muscles of faces that no longer existed did nothing for my stomach. And the skull, “Grimaldine”, moaned unpleasantly from its stool. Sometimes when they have been dead for too long they forget words.]

Spirit’ums! Mark yeh well th’ hour o’ thy birth, this be the day o’ the sixth, Tibion, year o’ thirty-six since the Rift. Speak thee in one voice’um now, hearrit, say th’ conjure be true.

[It took a moment for them to find a united voice. There was a susurrus of whispers – male, female, high and low-voiced – before at last a median came from Grimaldine’s jaw, guided by ghost-tendons trailing upward to his twelve brains.]

We hhhear, preceptor. Thhhy conjure isss true.

‘Swell. Now then, skully. This here hexing is all ‘bout that ragged curtain. Y’know the one. Them’s all callin’ it that. Mebbe a ‘tatter drape’, p’raps ‘torn-ed veil’, same thing. Brain me your kenning o’ it, all sides.

The ragged curtain... isss known to uss all. Our eldest knows it from a dead coil of incarnation, in aged daysss passst reckoning when it wasss stitch-tight and... unholy. It was sssilver-grey as ash and sssstarlight, beyond Reltash and the moons and the sssstar legion, at the very lassst versssse of ssssong’sss creation. We all go there, some more than once, for there issss a natural pull towardssss it. Thisss pull, thisss need to be placed elsewhere... it is in every one of usss, but not the ssssame. We are drawn to places shared in nature, but nature alone. One thisss way, one the other, one above, one below...

Secky – these’um ‘places’ SURROUN’ the Hexworl’? What’cha figure ‘cernin’ the Architrave wot sickle shaped in nature? Sommat lyin’ bout all that?

[The room filled with hoarse static; it took a moment to interpret it as laughter.]

No liesss but time and sssspace, preceptor. A sssickle there is to describe the nature of All-world, one ssside replete, the other hollow. But distance itself cannot exist beyond the Hex-world – space cannot exist without distance, nor ssshhhape. These are conventionsss that exist inside, but not out. They fail when the outssidess are considered.

So it is that beyond reality, we feel the pull ssssimply elsewhere. Anywhere but here, undersssstand?

Beyon’ thet ragged grey’um curtain, savvy well enough.

But the curtain isss key. It undulatesss with the dark matter breezzze and snatches those too ssslow to act in avoidance. And those who miss the holes, those who do not make it to the outlandsss...

We are ssstanding on the gray-plane sssleeve as it moves beneath usss, tugging, flowing like a dragged carpet whose motion upthrusts mites and dormant dust that settled when the world was young. It burns our spirits, a static tang that ripsss the essssence of who we are and leaves behind a sssoul; the mossst basssic and eternal part of being, blistered and pink with the novelty of cleanlinessss. As it happens, we each grip the smallest and most vital part of it, of uss, and instinctually tuck it away at the core. And though the curtain ripsss at it, pullsss the sshhadow-essence away, something ssurvivesss. A memory of what we were... you know it, preceptor. You are old enough to recognise the sssensssation.

The curtain terrified uss. To ride it is to feel lasting obliteration, the death-beyond-death. After it doesss that ssscccouriation, it is imperative to esssccape. We allll felt it. There is a realisssation along the path that there are frayed cords running off the grey fabric and back to Reltash, and though it isss the wrong way, in instead of out, we all take the offer. Cccycles took us along the path of the sssilver cordsss, sssieved through to Reltash back acrossss the ssstars. And at the end of the cordsss, bodiesss. Some within pulpy meat-sssack wombs, fresh to birth. Some ancient and decaying, ssslavesss to Un-world. It matterssss not. The ressstlesssnesss is the same in them all, and the sssame in usss. We are incarnate... reincarnate... eternity made meat. It isss wrong. When do we get a chanccce to sssleep?

Soonin’nuf, spirit’ums. Hearrit; ‘ent you ever made it past the curtain? Seen the All-World for real?

None of usss. We know the chance approachesss, for the curtain growss more tattered with every coil. In placesss it isss collapsed, and the light of All-World shines, and stripsss are missing that we hasssten to on ascent...

But the ssspiritss beyond life do not wish it for usss. The Deathsss sssee All-World as a defiance of The Lineage, and fear what travelsss beyond the curtain. Ssservants of Star Legion and the Un hunt and trap free souls, force them to the curtain... it isss an evil existence. Partly for them, more ssso for usss as their quarry. Yet in our ssoulss’ ssouls we know it iss a perversion. This is not how it iss meant to be.

Cert’? Howsit suppos’ to be then?

[There is slow thought before their answer.]

...We ssseee a world in our sssoulss where the ragged curtain hasss fallen, where we are free to pursssue the eternity beyond it. We sssee that Reltash sssurvives this fall, that Un-world survivesss... though it is changed forever. New, sssstrange souls come from beyond, old soulsss depart across the All-world forever. It is the sssame, but bigger, freer. Outssside the control of The Lineage, and sso they fear it...

An’ th’ ‘carnations? All’um freed souls mus’ have an’ effect on the Hex-worl’.

That is true conjecture, preceptor, but ssstill beyond usss.

Figs. Askin’ the wrong basket case, ‘ent I? But’choo did well, thing. Savvyest ‘scription of the curtain from th’ Un I ever had. Now backsies yeh go, aimin’ for tat shimm’rin’ All-Worl’...

NO! Mercy, preceptor, they will find ussss! We will sssserve you, compute your will, sssscry the Un-world, lend sssstrategy and ear to your agencccy... Anything but death!

Quite whinin’, won’ do yer good. Couple dozen more coils an’ the curtain will’a fell, an’ yeh’ll be free.

WE WILL CURSE YOUR BELOVED! POUR EXCRIMENT UPON THE DOORS OF YOUR SPIRIT, HAUNT YOUR GRAVE IN UN-WORLD FOR LONG AGES, NECROMAN!

[The threats and occasional begging continue throughout the banishing. At times it is a straining procedure, and we do not fully separate the souls before they collapse into the After. Grimaldine’s eyes hollow, and the stitched heads stop squirming. Karvalis is silent, retreating to his chair and beckoning for tobacco wordlessly.]

Momen’, Ravess... tiresome spirits. Not so ‘dated as I thought ‘em. Kree them, ‘stand? Kree them good, ‘til i’s monstrous ash. Then six below, dirted wit’ clay. Use th’ runed ‘tharks in the jar on the mantle to seal them. Hope’um stick wid deadness, bu’ I got the tingling wot says they’ll be Un despite the effort. Well, skittle? Git!

Master, are we not to do our summation?

Later, boyo, [he waves me off, clearly exhausted, it had slipped his mind.] more import’n to get them heads burnt an’ buried. Commat me when you’re done an’ we’ll see ‘bout the talking.

[I did as he instructed, undertaking the arduous process of cremating the twelve heads, burying them six feet under in the graveyard of Paravel House, and placing a circle of futhark stones around them. There was an ill breeze. Dusk had passed by the time I returned indoors.

Karvalis was asleep in his chair, his chin resting on his collar, as though he were falling into his beard. I went to the kitchen and set the kettle boiling, pulled a stash of biscuits from between the ceramic urns on the high shelf. I made two mugs of tea, strong and bitter, and returned to the laboratory. Karvalis was grumbling to himself, and took an offered biscuit without thanks.]

Harbingy tidin’s from that braincase. Ne’er saw a pack turn the like. Them’s used to scatterin’ scared when banishment comes... more understandin’ even in the After... more revolution...

That was dangerous. We could have learned the same from twelve separate conjurations.

COULD we now? Says the ‘prentice. Twelve souls sayin’ the same thing is differen’ to twelve souls sayin’ all on th’ same tongue. Ye’d get stories o’ shadowraiths an’ hoodaemons an’ twelve blatsed chin-waggums ‘bout soulstorms staticked up on the carpet ‘til your head spins top-wise an’ the meaning’s too strung out to sense with. Twelve conjures teaches lots o’ diff’rent ‘bout the same thing. One big’un teaches lots o’ same about th’ diff’rent things, kennit?

Yes master. I only wish this way were not such a danger.

We’s in dark business, boyo. Ne’er told you otherwise. Said you could stan’ like a skittle an’ watch me dooit, or help me dooit wit’the hard’um parts. But done it need be, wit or witless.

You did, master. And I must trust our bindings are enough to ensure the doing isn’t our own UNdoing.

Tempt not th’ name of Un. It do as it pleases.

Now boyo, we learnt a bucket-a-lot ‘bout the curtain at its basic. We learn th’ true of it disintegrating, and how them God’uns keep it stable. Figs you the reason forrit, mayhap?

It was Vves. Her unbinding of the Sigil of Spectrality... or of the lower barriers... it’s opening the Hex-World up to Eternity, as was foretold in Hexaemeron. In many ways the ragged curtain is synonymous with Spectrality – perhaps it even IS the Sigil in manifestation. How to say that for the layman? Oh, I’ve forgotten what it’s like to not have the knowing of these things...

Used teh be yeh call-ed it the dual’ty. Starin’ atta Sigil is like seeing the soul, an’ the Curt’ issit’s body. S’like two inseparables, in’fuggable whenny put’um in th’ keyhole. Gotta ha’ one an’ the other set aside teh see the mech’nism, bu’ on’y see it workin’ when them bits together.

I said that? I overcomplicated it.

Yeh diddit fine. Hard teh get it right the firs’ time.

Still, why bother with duality? It integrates now. The idea exists as a whole.

Yes, boyo! See it now? Tha’s th’ mistake HE made. ‘Ent no place call-ed Eternity an’ no place call-ed Reality. Cannut bubble one in the other, say one’s Hex an’ the other’s All. ‘Zistentiality is all’um the same body! Blood’dun bones and sewery bits in a heap. Waddit means is, He’s like us. Came roilin’ up Hex-World from the primordials all young an’ conflicty, brass in’is boot lin’ins, thinkin’ th’ on’y way to make a worl’ was teh’ keep it ins’lar-ver’d. Figged it wrong. Waited a momen’ an he might’a grown a bit in wizzies. Seen it make’in more sense teh come-pleat it wit’deh big picture. Sure-spit proof He’yayn’t got more o’ an idea’f it than we do.

Volianor made a mistake? Lies above, Karvalis, that’s heresy on a whole new echelon.

Tha’s ‘ductive reasoning. Nothin’ god-givin’ ‘bout it.

So what we can expect of the ‘All-world’, ‘Eternity’... Volianor created the spectral Sigil in its likeness. When spirits reach it they undergo the same disassembly of character and nature... [I paced here, as is my wont with difficult ponderances] Though it is voluntary, somehow, separate from what is done to souls by the curtain... a more refined process, perhaps? Or a gentler scrubbing...

Ayuh, bit o’ poxy that. S’pected one’d have knowledge o’ the All-World. ‘Voked a few in my time, too, an’ee like joint summons fro’ what I tell. Goin’ ta’ have ta’ git a clearer picture before we preponder ‘n wander in thatter direct’um.

Bu’ for yer attenti’um is the super-struct o’ the After. Note ‘is not JUS’ the dead souls in the outer. There all manner o’ spirit’ums an’ god beasts wot roam ‘round. Whole networks a’ religious implicant and moil. An’ they want the compact an’ ‘carcerative worl’ o’ the Curtain. Fig’d it’d ha’ sommat t’do with tha’ bit locked away, the personal what souls carry t’th’ next life.

But do they want it, or do they want to destroy it? Again we only have part of the picture. If they want it, it figures that it’s about mental conditioning. They’re trying to ingrain religious indoctrination at a spiritual level, wiping out independent thought and leaving the discipline of priesthood intact. If they don’t want it, it’s more likely about simply wiping out individuality; forcing every soul to be ‘new’ as a baby, without the depth of wisdom that comes with longevity. Acting under a false sense of purity, souls are immediately susceptible to the idea of corruption, and can be encouraged to treat certain experiences as taboo throughout their lives.

Still’un the OLD thinkin’ Ravess. Too many book’ums. Tis poin’less thinkin’ what they want. What in mean for’alla us, eh boyo? Now thassa question.

What it means for us? At the moment, with the Curtain alive, we’re in a spiritual growth cycle. Every generation of men results in one with a greater sense of identity than the last, one more fiercely guarded by the soul. We should research the possibility that these ‘coils’ that skein the soul with the generations may have some protective worth, guarding against soul burn… Imagine it as a soul society, living in a gated community. When they came here they bore the initial marks of freedom, the ‘taint’ of All-world, whatever form that took – and now they are steadily becoming more isolated and conditioned to the Hex-world. Those souls they have known for millennia are the same ones they know today, repeating themselves in an endless variety of forms, though still recognisable, stuck in the roles they save from soul burn. Lovers, children, scholars, leaders – passive souls who become vegetative, spirit-souls who cannot abide flesh. Numerous forms becoming ever more perfect examples of themselves, carrying on the weight of history, locked in their cycles…

Where would that end? Could it end? Or as each incarnation of the Hex-world blossoms, would those blossoms decay and become compost for the next pushing stem, the next bud turning upward, the next spiral of petals as it unfolds and expires…

And yet it’s not perfect. It’s as clear as sunrise we’re breaking out into All-world.

An’ that’s not a part o’ th’ perfection?

Could it be? Volianor’s idea for preserving the Hex-world was that it remain isolated and self-sustaining. To him that idea was perfection. A means to dilute Eternity’s energies, separate it into numberless parts across the void. His theory was that if the world were linked to All-world, it would come to depend on it, be part of it again. And in doing so collapse.

Tha’s the main diff’rent in ph’los’phy ‘tween he and his daugh’r, an’ fey an’ dwarri, magely an’ priestly an’ Tylova and Verhoon, an’ any side-spatched mutation o’ yer “Hex-bloss’um”. One ken chaos is sustainable. Other preach control an’ gov’nance an’ orderliness. Clear it was order winnin’ at th’ start, since th’ Rift, no cert’um ‘bout anythin’. Mebbe it turn back. Mebbe chaos wins. Fig’ if the latter, buddin’ Hex-worl’ becomma bloss’um, open up to All-world, then mebbe THAT open up to sommat bigger. No tellin’.

And you, master?

Eh? Me what?

Which side do you believe is right? Order, or chaos?

Daft skittle. Can’t hoot ‘bout one or another. I’m a magicker, so that means I’m chaos. Hol’ now – I’m Tylovan, tha’ mean I’m order. Kennit; I’m a gnarly twisted necroman’, tha’s chaos, bu’ not through an’ through evilwid’ selfish, so I’m order. No concern is it? Not for a serious thinker. Sometime one or th’ other. Bu’ all times desir’us o’ choice. Options. Free will.

But free will is aligned with chaos. Which means –

NAUGHT, boyo. You fig’ Vves were think’um ‘bout free will when she did her evil in Li’amora? She thought power, domination, jus’ like them Lineage buggers. Still ripped a hole in Hex-world, dem big strike for chaos. An’ lil’ dark dwarrow fellows, think they don’ WANT to pray kneely by temples and church’ums? Still-a choice, even choosin’ service. Gods’ don’ want the end free will so much as ha’ you friend them’an ‘spite it.

I see. I’m not sure where I stand. I like the sound of joining All-world, but if it destroys Reltash I can’t abide it.

So LEARN, skittle! On’y good choice is an’ inform-ed one.

Corpses, I’m tired. Dark comin’ up sharp an quick this seas’um. Pencil sommat in, Ravess. We’ll lookit reining an outsider in the morn, get clear pictures. More tea too, and a wa’er bot’l fir th’ chill…

[The master leaves for his chambers, leaning heavily on his staff.]

*

[It is several days before we resume. The rune marks I placed in Paravel House’s graveyard deteriorated rapidly, and required renewal by morning the next day. I battled to keep the Un spirits held there restricted, placing more wards, tilling fresh dirt over the sunken graves. The courtyard is almost too small to hold them all now, and I spend my afternoons slinking off to dig up Karvalis’s earliest experiments and give them a more compact resting place. I have recruited Un workers to aid me in this at the master’s insistence, digging and setting ceramic shafts for the storage of ashes.

Some work to help put food on the table. A princeling came down from Wightwood Duchy with his steward, looking to prove the inheritance of his estate. Standard séance, Karvalis left early claiming fatigue or boredom, it’s hard to tell but I think the former applied, I struggle to understand him when he is tired. An Illarkan wytch stayed with us a few days, Karvalis insisted we let her check our Hexaemeron for inconsistencies in her own. I’m not pleased, but she paid for the privilege, and we needed the money. After she left the House returned to normal, I took my eyes off the silverware long enough to get some work done. The Master has been experimenting with crystallography, hiding some of his dramatic failures… I found liquid crystal hidden in his chamber pot. One of his more eccentric habits in recent years…

But it all became clear as his research developed. He’s been investigating a means to conjure a distilled soul, one of the ‘All-worlders’ who can tell us what lies beyond the Hex-world. Very exciting prospect, I’ve been looking forward to this interview for some time now.

Something of an unusual summons, the laboratory has become a hall of mirrors. Reflective tarva sheets are on five of the six worktables, the last holds a scrying pool; reflective semi-solid amethyst in a glass basin. The subject is a strange one, a frostbite victim who turned up on our door two years ago looking for a healer. We did our best but his wounds were severe, died on the 15^th of Sirri (my own birthday) if I’m not mistaken. Never used him for a conjuring, but Karvalis mummified his remains and kept them in a warren not far from Paravel. He’s perfect for this conjuration, practically an icicle when we recovered him. Subjected him to an even thaw, somewhat gruesome as he fell apart in a slurry, more liquid now than solid. Karvalis tossed him in the basin with some preservative, burnt some incense to disperse the smell. We’re just about ready now. The circles have been drawn and wards placed, Karvalis is doing his incantations.

I assist on a minor discrepancy on the fourth mirror, a verse read ‘Reflect with’ rather than ‘Reflect from’. A small inconvenience, but troublesome. If Karvalis’s diction is spreading to his use of Hexaemer I shall have to keep a closer eye on his grammar. In this case there was an array of light leaving the mirror rather than a beam, but in other circumstances such a flaw could have horrible consequences.

The soul that came through the melted corpse was suitably magickal, definitely a free spirit as we had hoped. Seeing it in the mirror reminds me of travel logs from Armoth, and the ‘aurora’ they describe. Like liquid light, its colours melt across the spectrum, orange to green to red in a wave, like fire burning on a stream of oil, but with a gentleness it cannot equate to. These ‘aurora beams’ all reflect to the basin, where they light up every particle of our dead man. It is astonishing to see the tarva pouring up from the bowl like a waterfall, taking on the features of a human form. He is completely liquid, but the light lends him a sense of completion. A face without feature, but oddly intelligent. A body without mark, chakraed by flowing energy.]

Noon-caller. I accept your invitation to this body. It is curious to me, this sense of... of shape? Such a thing tugs at my memory, but it is far away still. What do you call this place?

High fancy, All-worlder. This be Paravel House, in th’ constituency o’ Hex-worl’. Some call-ed it Volianor’s Sixth Worl’, before fashion caught up. I’m Karvalis, tha’s Ravess. Pleasure’s ours.

And mine. I do not know the Sixth, but I know Volianor. I have studied his Totality; it is amusing. I was something of a goddess on the fifth, for a time. I don’t think I have been here for many cycles.

[Karvalis half-turned to me in excitement.] Ken ‘Totality’, boyo? Ne’er heard mention o’ th’ thought. [I shook my head. “I neither,” I replied.]

Whassit, All-worlder? This ‘Totality’?

Totality? Totality is everything. One of them, anyhow. How to place that in your mind, I wonder?

Think of it as a song. A song has many verses. Each verse has life on its own, but makes more sense when the song is viewed in ‘Totality’. This... ‘Sixth’... is one verse – a universe – in a multitude of verses – a ‘multiverse’. A multiverse and the empty spaces between the verses is the Totality of the song. This is Volianor’s Totality, because he wrote the song and sang the words.

Hang it – how’s tha’ diff’rent to ‘Eternity’? ‘Ent Eternity the full scope o’ everythin’ through the eye of a needle?

The eye of a needle? What a peculiar notion. I remember a totality where it was the opposite, and the needle sits on the eye to keep steady all within, to reduce it. Akarash... Anur... something like that. Or was it Gan’s? It is not within me to remember.

But you are quite right, Eternity is everything. But that doesn’t account for everything else. In a way the Totalities and the void they come to fill are part of everything else, what approaches the concept of Eternity’s End. But don’t be confused by mortal reckonings of space and distance. They all occupy the same dimensions, just at different... hmm, there’s no single word for this... pitches? High and low notes. But not sound. Not anything you can relate to, or I for that matter. Picture a circle in your mind, the biggest circle imaginable, keeping in mind it has to have a rim to be a circle. Then make it bigger. You have to push away from it to see it for its... ‘shape’. That’s eternity. The cycle of the all encompassing circle and the void of space around it.

Mm... haha! Shape! Quite a beautiful conception.

So here we ha’ it – there’s more than one Totality! More n’ one Worl’, and thus’l I reckon more ‘n one God’font to make ‘em.

Yes, of course there is. Pada, Nix, Yawleh, Gan, Brah – All very popular for their works. What you will find more amusing is that they are not even the only versions of themselves in the Totalities. There are numberless Volianors in the process of creating Totalities identical to this one, give or take minor details. There are endless ‘Hex-world’s and Karvalises and even I am infinitely repeated throughout the cosmos. I know this because... an image comes to mind of looking to one side in a mirrored corridor, only it is not a mirror. That is what touches us the moment we leave the limited understanding of a Universe.

Yeh, Lies Above! Hearin’ this, Ravess? Evanger’s Quantim ‘spressed as a mem’ry! Ol’ gnommy bastar’ was dead-mark on target!

[I nod, and then beg clarification. “You refer to the image effect of abyssal incarceration?”

He replies with laughter, and amusement.]

Is that what you call it? An ‘abyss’ for ones who know no worse… A prison for those who fear to leave the cage… Mortality is so telling, is it not? I love the voyage through Totality. I love feeling the paradox of being an individual existing in billions of worlds – but no less an individual. If that is an abyss, I damn myself gladly.

‘Scuse my skittle, All’er, ‘e says sillies sometimes. Jus’ th’ ’minology o’ this worl’ writ by dead’uns in the long past, not what we o’selves think. It innerests me, spirit’um: you ever make your own Totality? Hast thee th’ tools t’ make ‘un?

What a conception… I do not know, Karvalis. I recall many instances of what I have been, and who I 

am, but I draw no lines to name my edges, to say ‘this’ is where I end. You see, with every release from the call of a World I find myself sung back to my core, my origin… It is like the swimming upstream of a piscean to the place of its spawning, so that the core of its nature may be extracted from the flesh, the flesh set aside, and that core nature cast back into the waters. There is even a similar notion of mating with an Eternity that must occur before the core is released into the stream. In this way I am not any of the shapes I have taken before, no more than you are your own father. But the creator is an inherent and inseparable fact of the created, not so? In that way, perhaps I have been one of those makers of Totalities in the past. At least in part.

Yeh don’ doubt yer capables? Therris nothin’ sep’ratin’ the you from th’ they that makin’ it impossible fir yeh t’do wha’ they do?

Not that I am aware. There is only will. You cannot go anywhere in All-World without the desire to go there first. Nothing carries you, pushes you, coerces you. There is only you, and so it is a self-made decision. I have no desire to make a world, so perhaps I am incapable. Of the creation, that is, not of the desire to create. This incarnation simply lacks such a thing.

An’ this journ’ the’ Eternity – It hurts none? No vicious scrubbin’ wot makes yeh scream an’ beg f’ less?

No more than letting go ever does. It hurts those incarnations who feel incomplete, who cling to memories and sensations. Those with no regrets, no anger, go up the stream quick and untroubled. But no change ever happens without tears.

[Karvalis paused at this, frowned and stroked his beard. This was, evidently, not the answer he was hoping for.]

Hurts… hurts both ways… Why’ssit different then? Big, small. Big, small. Curtains an’ Eternities an’ Curtains…

I do not understand.

[“It’s a question we have been seeking the answer to,” I interjected. “Why there is a localised shield preventing our souls from reaching Eternity – and that answer must lie in some profound difference between the shield and Eternity.”]

No more profound, perhaps, than that of choice and force. I have seen the ragged veil at the edge of this world, and I know what it means for you. It is a form of raping the spirit. The motion to an Eternity can never be denied. But the action can, as it has been here by implementing premature purification. You make an error in assuming there is any form in All-world greater than desire – the maker of your universe desired control, and wrote a law into it as an expression of control. Control over you, and over Eternity. That is all. Not because of any demand for structure, not in adherence to any external law but that at any core.

Desire. Kennit.

Is that a better answer?

[Karvalis paused]

It’d be a truer ‘un. Ain’t ‘zactly used t’ hearin’ tales o’ goodness frum th’ up-high.

Your notion of morality pleases me. I have existed without it almost as long as I have without Shape.

Moral’ doesn’ figure on the crescent o’ th’ Dimensions. ‘Meaning’ does tho’, figs thassa part o’ the jig.

Intriguing… and have you spoken to this Dimension? Had its opinion of morality with your own ear?

Hang a secky – TALK to it? Cracked your braincase, mebbe? Check th’ summ’s, Ravess, make’un sure we have’nut conjitated up an eejit…

[“He’s sane, master,” I replied quickly. “He’s referring to the Guardian Sigils, I’m sure. And no, we have no access to them from this part of our world.”]

Ev’un so, s’not the same as necromongery – Sigils ‘n mortals havin’ some fundamentals ‘twixt ‘em. Chief bein’ that Sigils ain’t got souls all up in their being. Thar’s Spirit an’ thar’s Aether, an’ Sigils is Aether.

From your own viewpoint. I have heard tell that a sun rises differently when you are standing on the moon.

Kenn’im, Ravess? Or is it banter’ish backtalk?

[“I do not know for certain, master. It denies what we know of reality… but little we do does not.”]

I merely suggest greater possibilities. It is your choice to pursue them.

Aye, pursue we will.

[The master sighs, scratching his neck and showing signs of weariness.]

Thankee, All’er. Figs you’d raise more quessies than yeh’d answer, but no skin off me. Them’re problems for bab-bies like Ravess. My own askings are answered. Fair travels back to the After, an’ skip th’ veil if yer lucky.

Fare well, Karvalis. Ravess. May we meet again at Eternity’s End.

[We end the summons, and the room is thrust into sudden darkness. I light several candles as the master takes out his pipe and smokes in the dark, the dull glow of its cradle wisped by the noxious draught. The sound of him thinking is a grumble; deep, churning forces and tectonics as pieces fall into place. At last, once I have liquidised the tarva mirrors and poured them into an urn with the melted corpse, we begin our deliberation.]

Not pretty, what he said ‘bout Eternity. It’ll be as bad as the curtain, by reck’ing.

If that were the only proof of it I would agree – but there’s no question he is different from a Hex-Worlder. He professes disconnection in rebirth, but his awareness of these ‘Totalities’, his connection to his previous lives in other worlds, tells a different story.

T’ain’t unheard, boyo. Spoked to many spooks in’um my time, and some r’memmer. Even spoke to a live’un sciremancer wot thought she was the flesh-maid to a Veni pharaoh, an’ coo’nut unnerstan’ where her hands went. Thinkin’ that’d be the sort wot have a wicked twisty skein, wound the mortal coil more times than sane. All sorts o’ baggage sproutin’ from th’ trunk, savvy?

I savvy. But that’s another thing: All-World exists outside of time – outside of sequence. How can there be a progression of a soul’s lives if they all happen simultaneously? And then there’s his story of the fish spawning upstream, the spiritual ancestry mirrored by physical ancestry, as though an embryo builds up a body as essence around it, a ‘world’ metaphoric in flesh… it freaks causality. The idea that what we become in the future is part of what we are in the present…

Takin’ away all choice there, t’ git back to the backwash o’ the last summons. Whate’er happens now is fate, see? The Seers ken it. See it like you ‘n I see the wint’ry air. In tha’ an’ tha’ alone I ken th’ voidwalker. Eternity needs be spread thin t’ have any sense o’ freedom, even be it nonsense. Don’ care much for ‘is rapey tactic, nor his chillun’, but tearin’ us from the womb was kindness, I say so.

As for these fleshy matters, it’s an innerest, for cert’. Gets me cog’ing o’ a swarthy necroman from Cheriim wot ‘quainted me as a pup, tellin’ o’ the new religion an’ all passin’ up from South land. Dirgey talk o’ the maweh, fig ‘em as Un spirits ‘tatched to their charny folk. They watch their youngers, sons an’ daughters both throughout time, guidin’ them from The Dying Light as ghostlings. ‘magine it! Not jus’ a spirit-skein wrapped aroun’ th’ soul but a soul-skein wrapped aroun’ th’ genealogy! Fancy what th’ lords an’ ladies o’ Wintercourt would make o’ that!

Dreadful, boorish clammer, I’m sure. The very idea of genealogy is tiresome. You know as well as I that souls transcend race and breeding. No matter who’s courting who among the dukes and duchesses, their inbred ‘family’ is as much at war with itself as Tylofae is with its neighbours. If they ever adopted this idea of the ‘maweh’ it would be to haunt obedience into young princes who won’t sit still on the throne.

[Karvalis waved this off with some amusement.]

Speak not to me o’ Tylofae canon, all it’s good for is the corpses it makes. Bu’ the idea of th’ gene as a livin’ thing, p’raps a souled thing – tha’s ‘portent. Such is Sigils an’ abstraction given desire, and there’s the rub o’ it all, tha’ mebbe th’ All’er was nut mad as ‘peerances and merit some true in th’ thought o’ Dimensions they’selves havin’ souls. Worthy o’ ‘vestigatin’ anyhow.

Now let me tell you, boyo, while I still have some sense ‘tween th’ maddenings. You an’ I well know it’s get’un worse. Won’ be long before I’m as corpse as th’ rest in Paravel. Head splits side-a-ways jus’ thinkin’ o’ these deathly matters. Now don’ talk. I made up my mind af’er long an’ grimy thunkings tha’ I’m goin’ fer it. Aye, IT. Un-dom come. I know it can be done ‘cause she did it, an’ aye she was mad as me by the end, tha’ Vvessy girrul, bu’ it’s not bad as old hat. She lived years beyon’ an’ was o’ worth, clawed th’ curtains as I will ‘til they’re tatters. An’ no, no’un knows how it’s done, lychdom’s not th’ best advertised pro’ in the mayyick worl’, but it’s real an’ you an’ I – we’re the ones t’ find it. An’ tha’s why these conjurin’s are so ‘portant t’ me.

Figs if death be comin’ down unavoidable, this is how I’ll tally me last. Fightin’ t’ kill it an’ all the mists o’ the thing. Le’s quantify it, givvit bounds! An’ then live outside ‘em!

Well skittle? Yeh be tricksome quiet. Gurge it out, let me ken your savvies.

[I took a further moment to consider what Karvalis was saying. I did not like it, not at all. It was one thing to have crept after him for the past few months, watching his health degrade and his mind unhinge, attending to his oversights as dutifully as I could – almost comforting, I should say, to hold a candle to his dimming own, and pretend his greatness burnt as brightly as it ever had. Far less so now, to have him admit the indignity of dying.  And as for his project of Lychdom, I thought it his greatest insanity to date. We had devoted our lives to the Un-World. We knew the misery of ghouls who ate the flesh of live cattle to taste the meaty tang of their lifeblood, we knew the jabbering ooze of wraiths bubbling in the festering essence of their own infected emotions. There was no succour there. No release. And yet Karvalis would be one of them – not to escape the unavoidable death, not for power or greed or lust for life – but to answer questions. Nothing more or less than that.]

I think… my place is beside you, as it has ever been. I will begin researching the matter immediately.