And there we were, in the darkness.
Surrounded. Alone. The five of us together.
No hopes, no dreams, nothing but the uncertain truth of our situation.
There was a pool of light we could not see.
A howling scream we could not hear.
Children, children everywhere, grabbing and laughing and crying.
Thousands dead, thousands more alive.
A singular moment stretched on into infinity.
We were now, and then, and to become.
Now, I will not say that this is where the conversation ended. I will say that this is where the important and interesting aspects of the conversation ceased. Hours passed as each of us tried in turn, begging, pleading, promising, and threatening. The two Majesties did not mind our efforts, nor succumb to our pleas.
If you are interested in the fascinating, if at times repetitive and at all times impractical, conversation, you may find them in my poem The Detailed Discourse of the Two Majesties.
Oh, the Apex, the beautiful and winding words that descended from the base of the cervical vertebrae to the occipital.
Heresy. Damnable heresy for one such as I, a Sensate in good standing of the Grandiose Guild, to say I still find myself at a loss for words. What could be said to convey the glory and horror of the hallways, stairways, and byways of the Apex.
For the beauty was not in its sweeping archways, its Ivory palisades, its golden buttresses, nor its marbled cloisters.
Even with the careful and steady guidance of Nock, it took us many days to make our way out of the wooded jungle that was the Inner Wings. We traveled through the Asparitetis and out the other end, around the Oyn and about the Upper Scapula we walked, seeking egress from the foul environs, until at last we arrived at the Pollier.
Covered with barnacles and dangling vines, the Pollier was perhaps the quietest portion of our journey.
I fear the rest of our journey through the tunnels will bore you, and so I shall carefully edit out that which remains incidental. Suffice it to say that there were a great many adventures had with me and my pilgrim as we wandered; a few poems of note, though none deserving of praise.
We spoke little, though it became quite clear that we both understood that the other was searching for the Encinidine.
Down I slid, for how long I do not know. It was a descent most familiar for me, a descent most familiar to all, I am sure.
We have all fallen. Whether through fortune or failure, a steady descent surrounded by guiding sides of metal or wood, that gently nudge us to the left or to the right, in hopes the landing is much softer.
We never look up when we fall.
“I cannot fathom,” muttered Sir Juhrooz, as he turned the paper this way and that, “what the purpose of this procedure actually is.”
“Oftentimes,” Mr. Porist carefully positioned his sheers around his earlobe, “the purpose is the procedure.”
My Doppewassl friend stared at the paper for a moment more, before slowly nodding. “For seven days and six nights, I and my fellow trainees caught a drop of water as it slid down a pane of glass.
You walk forward, or back, you’ll get to where you’re going. Might take days, or weeks, or hours, or seconds, you’ll be where you are, and that’s where you’ll be.
It is at this point, the moment that my merry band plunged deeper into this ominous and portentous domain — a place laden with tales of ominous forbearance and caustic airs — that I must pause to talk of time.
“Well then,” Mx. Image shuffled about, looking to and fro. “We are, indeed, in the Sibilants, yes? And yet I have heard countless tales of its nature. Indeed, entering the Sibilants is as easy as opening the door, but leaving again, well…”
“There is no escape,” Sir Juhrooz nodded. “Bound about by sinew and custom, once you have entered the Sibilants, it is here that you will die.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” I assured my companions.
I hope you have never seen the Sibilants. I hope you have never lived in nor traveled past the Sibilants and its darkened halls and empty rooms. I have no doubt that there are those who love living among the bones of the long dead, but I cannot imagine what kind of beings they might be. They are certainly not of my ilk.
I, for my part, had never set foot behind the ivory doors that lead to the hollow bones of the Underheel, and so I was quite excited, perhaps even eager, to walk the horrid hallways of the Sibilants and meet the dark denizens therein.
