lightunderwater

<<continue "Fly North.">>Fly North. Over the city and into the sea. The colour of the sea is the colour of the sky. Turn your face toward the horizon. The Wax-Wind tears at your wings. You will not go East. Dive beneath the surface of the waves. The Void lies beyond the Avid Horizon. So it will and must be.\n\nThe seas are shallow here. \n\n<<continue "Speak the Name into the Avid Horizon.">> Speak the Name into the Avid Horizon. The Void will listen. <<continue "The first and second syllables.">> Correspondence burns your tongue and throat. <<continue "The third and fourth.">> Breathe in, the scent of ice and ozone. <<continue "The fifth and the sixth.">> Air whistling past ragged flesh. <<continue "The seventh.">> The wind drags your words over hollow stone.\n\nYour breath catches, your body is deadweight. Look at the lights above; see how they glimmer in the sky. They're only false-stars, but the Judgements too were false-saints, before. If you reach out, you can almost touch it. That thing that shimmers just beyond the surface of dark water. The light. [[The light...|end2]]

<<if $choicemade is 1>><<set $choicemade = 3>>@@font-weight:bold;Yes@@\nSomething may change, yet.<<else if $choicemade is 2>><<set $choicemade = 3>>@@font-weight:bold;No@@\nIt wasn't worth it.<<endif>>\n\n\n: : @@font-weight:bold;PATHS UNLOCKED@@ : :\n<<if $section is 1>>[[0. The Void|Void I]] [The scar and the smirch / A lost content]<<if $open >= 1>>\n[[I. Tell Brak|Tell I][$time = 0; $candles1 = 0]] [The hook and the bait / A gap in the weave]<<else>>\nI. Tell Brak<<endif>><<if $open >= 2>>\n[[II. Amarna|Amarna I][$time = 0; $candles2 = 0]] [The scent and the turn / Whose memories are these?]<<else>>\nII. Amarna<<endif>><<if $open >= 3>>\n[[III. Chichen Itza|Chichen I][$time = 0]] [The ink and the ink / The keep in the heart of the courses we lost]<<else>>\nIII. Chichen Itza<<endif>>\n\n[[Axile|Axile I]] [Do you remember when we came to that place?]<<endif>><<if $winking is 1 and $section is 1>>\n[[Winking Isle|Winking]] [The web, o the web / curse the Sun]<<else if $winking is 1 and $section is 2>>\n[[The Well|hub2]] [The web, o the web / curse the Sun]<<endif>><<if $Fortigan is true and $Gawain is false>>\n[[The Chapel of Lights|Chapel]] [the price]<<endif>><<if $Waxwail is true and $Cerise is false>>\n[[Exchange the Waxwail Knife for St. Cerise's Candle|Exchange]]<<endif>><<if $section is 2 and $KnC is false>>\n[[Visit Apples in the Garden|Garden]] (This will grant you entry to the underground leagues of Knife-and-Candle, and open the path to St. Cerise's Candle. If you already have one: perhaps you may eventually need another.)<<endif>>

<<if $numCandles <= 6>>\nDark water folds over your eyes.\n\n<<continue "Breathe">>(Perhaps you could have been kinder to him.)\n\n\n\n\n:: { @@font-weight:bold;F I N@@ } ::\n\n\n\n<<else>>Later, you hear that when Mirrors found out where you were going, he and Hearts had reopened the Parabolan-roads and chased you all the way to the Avid Horizon. "Stupid, stupid, stupid," Hearts had said as he fished you from the shallows. "What were you thinking, Veils—?"\n\nNeither of them remember how they found their way to you through that maze of mirrors. Something about <<continue "a thousand lighted candles...">>a thousand lighted candles...\n\n\n\nAfter that, candle-fire grows warm again, and soon it has all but replaced gas-lamps as the Neath's primary source of light. There is something of starlight in it, they say, and that is why those who live in its shadow are touched less by the corruption of the Neath.\n\nThe Sixth City falls, then the Seventh. Few remember now that there once was someone whose name was @@color:orange;[-------]@@. But he is always there, in the light on the edge of sleep, or in the frost that silvers the night. Sometimes you think you hear his voice, whispering still amidst the small shadows of the candles that light the way home for the denizens of the Neath.\n\n<<continue "At the end of the Seventh City">>At the end of the Seventh City, the Messenger ascends once more into the darkness of the Void. She bears their stories on her skin— <<cyclinglink "the Cities'" "your colleagues'" "your">> wishes, and hopes and fears, and dreams. One by one, your colleagues peel away from her as she makes her way toward the blinding light of her final destination. You follow them. Perhaps he will let her keep her promise. More likely, she will immolate herself in the heart of the Sun, and nothing at all will have changed in the world.\n\nEven so, <<continue "you wish her well.">>you wish her well.\n\n\n\n\n:: { @@font-weight:bold;F I N@@ } ::\n\n\n\n\n<<endif>>

<<timedgoto "end3" 2s>>

You find him at the mouth of the Travertine Spiral, writing ever longer strings of Correspondence-incantations on the seal of black glass. In recent decades he comes here for days at a time, and when he returns to the Second City glassy-eyed, his reflections in water and mirrors no longer quite heed the laws of light.\n\n"I can't do anything," he says, in a voice brittle like glass. He nibbles at the piece of fruit you have brought him. He offers you half, more out of politeness than generosity, but you decline.\n\n[[Return to the City|secondcityloop]]

Now that there is no longer sunlight, the leaves of the Garden turn alternately silver and brown with the passing of days, and the apples have slowly taken on a golden sheen. You find your colleague dozing lightly, curled up by the garden gate next to the exile's roses with his nose tucked under his wing. He stirs as you approach.\n\n"Fruit?" he proffers, hospitable as always.\n\n[[Accept|Apples-1-2][$choicevar = 0]]\n[[Decline|Apples-1-2][$choicevar = 1]]

Apples has built a new wing to the cider house. The door that leads to it is closed, but the scent of warm nectar in the air is intermingled with the scent of blood. "—We too are flesh," he says, without elaboration.\n\nHe pulls out a small knife, skins the fruit in a swift motion, and splits it in two before handing one half to you. His claws are steadier than you remember, meticulous with a surgical precision. "Iron is teaching me to use these," he says, as he shows you the sharp-edged dagger. Sharp enough to kill. Is that a smidgen of blood you see on the hilt?\n\n\n<<if $KnC is false>><<replace>>There is a pile of small metal disks on the table.<<becomes>>\n\n"— tokens that mark you as a participant in the underground leagues of Knife-and-Candle. One of Iron's experiments with the Neath's unnatural vitality. If you like..."\n\n[[Accept the invitation to Knife-and-Candle|Apples-2-1][$choicevar = 0]]\n[[Decline|Apples-2-1][$choicevar = 1]]\n\n<<endreplace>>\n\n<<else>>[[Return to the City|secondcityloop]]<<endif>>

You have to track the echoes of his passing to the very fringes of the First City where the Neath edges Parabola, but you find your colleague eventually. He has brought many panes of glass of varying opacity with him, and is studying their haphazard arrangement in the cosmogone light.\n\n"Candles had a thought about dreams and roads," he says.\n\n[[Accept his answer|Cups-1-2][$choicevar = 0]]\n[[Press him to elaborate|Cups-1-2][$choicevar = 1]]\n

@@color:grey;"The end of loss is not the end. There is always another horizon. You have seen it before. You will see it again."@@\n\n"When we fell, we did not know what would happen to us. But that does not mean that we were unprepared for what was to come. \n\n<<continue "A long time ago">>"A long time ago, in that time before love and that time before names, we turned our faces toward the Void. In that darkness we saw something shining, brighter even than the light of the Judgements. We knew then that we would always believe in it, and strive towards it, and that in order to find it we were willing to give up everything. We wanted it so much that we dared to go against the Law and the Sequence that told us definitively, 'You are wrong.'\n\n<<continue "So many things have passed">>"So many things have passed here, in this place so far away from the sky. It has cost her, as it has cost me, but we knew all along that that would happen. As long as we do not let go of that wish, we will always have a reason to continue on. And at the end of everything when we are brought again before the world for Judgement, if those feelings have not changed, then—\n\n<<continue "Perhaps there can still be something beautiful.">>//Perhaps there can still be something beautiful.//\n\n"That is what <<continue "we believe.">><<revise one "I">> <<revision one>>believe.<<becomes>>I <<continue "believed.">>believed."\n\n[[Perhaps the dream was only ever a dream.|hub2]]\n\n\n\n<<set $Fortigan = true>>[ + St. Fortigan's Candle]\n<<set $cwell = false>>\n<<set $dwell = false>>\n<<endrevision>>

<<if $time is 1>><<if $choicevar is 0>>"Business is better than ever, than ever," he replies happily. "People are willing to pay such large sums for candles..."\n<<else>>"The same, the same," he replies cheerfully. "There must be something in the Neath-air, because the exile's roses are blooming beautifully in the Garden. I think we may be able, soon, to start that business of dreaming..."<<set $candles++>>\n<<endif>>\n\n<<else>><<if $choicevar is 0>>"Very well," he replies, and goes back to his work.\n<<else if $choicevar is 1>>"I want to give light to others as it once was given to me," he replies.\n<<else>>His voice is soft with the exhaustion of the day. "You miss the Void, don't you? Then you know why..."\n<<endif>>\n<<endif>>\n\n[[Return to the City|firstcityloop]]

The next time you visit Wines' quarters in Veilgarden to fulfil your end of the Vake bargain, you convince him to show you his stock of Red Honey. On the way out, you fortuitously knock the latest batch of Blackwings Absinthe over the open mouth of the honey-pitcher. "Oh, shame," he says, watching the eddies of black in the red. You can almost see the idea take root. "I'll have to throw that all out..."\n\nThe very next fortnight, you learn firsthand the sensation of someone rooting around in your mind. Unpleasant, certainly, but you've known worse. Still, whoever it is, you hope they go mad from the revelations. A permanent room in the Royal Beth would be too good for them. You hope they haven't written it down, or said anything to anyone. There is the matter, of course, of your reputation.\n\n[[He will have the payment of his debt|Arthur][$mind = 1]]\n

[["I will leave the candles by the temple gates, so you can return here whenever you need."|tell3]]\n

@@color:grey;font-size:11px;font-family:monospace;All will be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. Shall be well. Not postponed. Not in the end. Not for long.@@\n\nThe Messenger upholds the letter of her word, not the spirit. You learn this as she instructs Candles to promise immortality to the Priest-King of Tell Brak in exchange for his city, despite that even among the Judgements it is an inexact science at best. As she instructs Stones to go to her daughter who lives over the sea and retrieve one of the pebbles from that shining shore. As she instructs Apples to open the chest cavity of the King's beloved, and drop the glowing light in.\n\n<<continue "After that">>After that the streets of the First City come alive once again, not with the gentle music that had once filled the temple halls, but with the screams of birds, stones, trees. These are things that should never scream, and the pitch and timbre of it splinters through all of you like knives. The Sidestreets run over with the wretched crawling things that were the city's former soldiers, demanding restitution for the one who has become the King with a Hundred Hearts. The Messenger retreats into her innermost spires and leaves you all to deal with it.\n\nIron orders the creatures forcibly removed from the premises. "Our end of the bargain is fulfilled. He got his wish."\n\n<<continue '"Not like this," Apples says softly.'>>"Not like this," Apples says softly.\n\n\n\nIt is the first time any of you have considered that the Messenger lies. //Five hundred years// she had said in her soft and carrying voice— and you all, trusting blindly in what passes for good faith among the Judgements' realm, had believed it. But those laws, if they ever were laws, hold no sway in this place. The letter of your contract binds you here in the Neath until such a day that the time of seven cities has drawn to an end. And if she were to fail in her mission, then you all will be charged as accomplices in her crime.\n\n"So we make sure that she does not fail," Candles says, in a best effort to reassure. [[Although you think you hear a note of doubt waver through his voice.|firstcityloop]]

<<if $time is 1>><<set $time++>><<tell1.5>>\n<<else if $time is 3>><<tell2>>\n<<else>><<if $time is 0>>The majority of your colleagues keep a respectable distance from the mortals, but Candles seems to regard them with an amusement that is almost fondness.\n\n"--oh? Well, they have to be kept happy, you know. If the Bazaar is to have her stories..."\n\n<<endif>><<set $time++>>A day in the Neath is always the same. The sky is clouded over with grey and the pale remnants of Surface-light that filter through the Travertine Spiral. The sound of footsteps echo in the street between rows of merchant-houses hawking wares. At the center of the city the Bazaar and her sidestreets lie, dark and breathing. In the city square, someone mentions how much they miss sunlight.\n\nThe markets for fabrics are slow today.\n\n[[Visit Apples|Apples-1]]\n[[Visit Candles|Candles-1]]\n[[Visit Cups|Cups-1]]\n\n<<endif>>

//Many years later, you will alight at Winking Isle on the sand beside the well, with your face to the sea, to the storming Neath-sky, to the Wax-Wind that sears and tears at your wings, and drop the last of seven candles into the well and whisper, "Are you..."//<<set $section = 1>>\n\n[[[Axile]|Axile I]]

The gates of the Garden have rusted with age. Vines of ivory creep over the walls, and as you reach out to touch one, it digs thorns into your flesh. A flash of Correspondence-fire. You snatch your arm back.\n\nYou find Apples tending to the roses. They have overgrown the Garden, and the air is suffocating with the scent of them. "When Candles left, he took with him the secrets of the hellflowers. Wines and Spices been trying to replicate it ever since, but—"\n\nHe is different than he once was, that day you both had signed your contracts by the gates of the garden. All of you are.\n\n<<continue "It looks like rain">>"It looks like rain." You follow him to shelter. He has converted half the cider house into an abattoir. Blood rivers pungent and red down the sluice-gates and over the ground outside. He offers you a hunk of plated seal, hospitable as always.\n\n[[Accept|Apples-3-2][$choicevar = 0]]\n[[Refuse|Apples-3-2][$choicevar = 1]]\n

You find him striding through in the Second City's marketplace, berating some poor merchant about the quality of their alcohol. He drops the poor man as he hears you arrive. "Costs up, revenues down, casualties up, snakes behind the glass, same old, same old," he says, before you have a chance to speak. "Also, where the hell is Candles? I have a score to settle about a bad batch of honey."\n\nIt's been weeks since you've seen him, you reply truthfully.\n\n[[Return to the City|secondcityloop]]

When you took up Knife-and-Candle, Iron had noticed, and closed his ears to the reports. He is within his rights to challenge your presence, but all of you know it is hardly worth it to make enemies among yourselves.\n\nThe Iron League, then the Moon League. The denizens of the Fifth City are skilled, but they could not hope to match the strength and speed of a Master of the Bazaar. The Prize Tokens lie cold against your wounds. You hold the Waxwail Knife against the hollow of your throat and consider pressing in. Weighted as it is, it is no sharper than the wind in that place.\n\n<<set $Waxwail = true>>[+ Waxwail Knife] \n\n[[Return to the city to claim your prize|hub1]]

The Priest-Kings of Chichen Itza demand to negotiate in person, but Cups is too ill to make the journey to the Surface, so the Messenger sends you instead. They broker with the Fingerkings the temporary release of Parabola's curse, just long enough to allow you passage to the surface.\n\nThe priestess in the bird-mask listens to your terms, then looks you over from head to foot in such scrutinising detail it makes you shudder. "Wait here," she says. She leaves you to shiver on the cliff-top overlooking the sea while she confers with her colleagues in the caves beneath. Hours later she re-emerges and hands you a sealed scroll. "Our terms for the exchange. For your employer's eyes only."\n\nYou nod and pull the cloak back over your head.\n\n<<continue "Return to the city">>\n\n"They want to meet you at the hour of the moon zenith," your employer says. "And the matter of their price. They are demanding the flesh of a god," she says. "They say they will only take a little..."\n\n[[All right|Chichen2][$choicevar = 0]]\n<<if $candles1 + $candles2 >=4>>[[Something's not quite right about the way she said it|Chichen1.5][$choicevar = 1; $knowledge = true]]<<endif>>

Wines turns up his nose at the sudden bulk purchases that upset the market for laudanum, but you make sure to launder the transactions through a long chain of Veilgarden businesses so that it can never be traced back to you. Nervous poison floods your veins. You imbibe an entire two dozen bottles before your limbs no longer obey you, and even then, sleep does not come.\n\nListen to the dark and wait for the Neath-night to pass. The Starveling is deadweight atop your chest. You have never liked cats. It chews the fur from your throat, laps sloppily at the blood that wells up from the wounds. Then it retches your own flesh back up all over your floors and streaks off like a skein of silver into the Neath-night. The accursed thing even leaves your door open.\n\nOnce, many years ago, a Judgement had examined your soul and found it wanting. Now this ragged thing is not even fit to upset its digestion. Oddly, that is an acceptable outcome.\n\n[[A reckoning will not be postponed indefinitely|Arthur][$soul = 1]]\n

<<if $choicevar is 0>>The silver blade burns against your flesh. It is touched with that wind from the East.\n<<if visited()<= 1>><<set $Waxwail = true>>\n[ + Waxwail Knife]<<endif>>\n<<else>>"I trust you." Besides, it's not like you would live much longer under those circumstances.<<endif>>\n\nA drop of rose-nectar beneath your tongue, cloying and sweet. He steps into the the house of mirrors.\n\n[[Follow|Winking][$winking = 1]]

@@font-weight:bold;The Well | Seven is the Number@@<<set $section = 2>><<set $winking = 1>>\n\nIn the surface of well-water, the glimmering lights of the moon-misers above. Sweetness and salt between your teeth and on your tongue, like blood, like lacre, like the Void. Between stars the Correspondence, and cosmogone, and the memory of flight. And not enough, not enough. One day you will grow great enough to consume the Sun.\n\nYou perch on the edge of the well and tear open your wings. Sun-yellow flecks beneath the skin like an encroaching infection. Not gold. Amber, that solidifies like a cage around all who do not break free of it in time. Beneath the glass lakes, deep in Parabola, the Red-Handed Queen is still killing.\n\n<<set $numCandles = 0>><<if $Arthur>><<set $numCandles++>><<endif>><<if $Beau>><<set $numCandles++>><<endif>><<if $Cerise>><<set $numCandles++>><<endif>><<if $Destin>><<set $numCandles++>><<endif>><<if $Erzulie>><<set $numCandles++>><<endif>><<if $Fortigan>><<set $numCandles++>><<endif>><<if $Gawain>><<set $numCandles++>><<endif>><<if $numCandles >= 4>>[[The Reckoning]]<<endif>>\n\n:: CANDLES OBTAINED ::\n<<if $Arthur>>A<<endif>> | <<if $Beau>>B<<endif>> | <<if $Cerise>>C<<endif>> | <<if $Destin>>D<<endif>> | <<if $Erzulie>>E<<endif>> | <<if $Fortigan>>F<<endif>> | <<if $Gawain>>G<<endif>>\n\n:: CANDLES LEFT ::<<if $Arthur is false>>\n[[St. Arthur's Candle|Arthur]]<<else>>\nSt. Arthur's Candle<<endif>><<if $Beau is false>>\n[[St. Beau's Candle|Beau]]<<else>>\nSt. Beau's Candle<<endif>><<if $Cerise is false and $KnC is true>>\n[[St. Cerise's Candle|Cerise]]<<else>>\nSt. Cerise's Candle<<endif>><<if $Destin is false>>\n[[St. Destin's Candle|Destin]]<<else>>\nSt. Destin's Candle<<endif>><<if $Erzulie is false>>\n==St. Erzulie's Candle==<<else>>\nSt. Erzulie's Candle<<endif>><<if $Fortigan is false>>\n[[St. Fortigan's Candle|Fortigan]]<<else>>\nSt. Fortigan's Candle<<endif>><<if $Fortigan is true and $Gawain is false>>\n[[St. Gawain's Candle|Chapel]]<<else>>\nSt. Gawain's Candle<<endif>>\n\n\n[[Return to the city|hub1]]

Over the centuries the angles of his shoulders have grown sharper, his claws taper to points like slivers of glass. Once, you had admired his elegance, but now the shape of him appears brittle enough to shatter at a touch. Perhaps he will, and serpents will uncurl from the fragments of his bones.\n\nHe has turned the Parabolan-gates into a wasteland of mirrors. "Year on year we forget. Do you still remember sunlight, Veils? Perhaps you can still..."\n\n"It's Wednesday," you say. "The Messenger will be expecting you." \n\n"It is always Wednesday here," he replies.\n\n[[Return to the City|Chichen5]]

<<if $time is 3 and $open is 1>>He steps out of the mirror-maze and onto an island in the middle of an ocean, calm and wide as far as the horizon's edge. The air is still sharp, and the colour of the sky is the same, so you must still be in the Neath. The wind whistles across stone and sea. "You can fly here," he says quietly.\n\n<<continue "Accede">>\n\nTentatively you shuck off your hooded outer cloak and stretch the wings tightly folded beneath. You can't spread them to their full span, not here, but it still relieves some of the cramping. You take to the air. The density and viscosity of Neath-air is different from the cosmogone of the Void, but it serves, and oh, the wind over the planes of your face, the resistance of it against the webs of wings.\n\n<<continue "How you've missed this">>Candles glides at your side, matches your pace wingbeat for wingbeat, but hangs back as you practise some of your more daring tricks. You fly in wide arcs, round and round the island until you are dizzy with vertigo and have to alight before you fall out of the air.\n\nHe lands at your side then. "Better?"\n\nYou nod. These islands are hidden amidst the waves of the Unterzee. You could have searched two thousand years and never found them. \n\n\n[[Return to the City|Winking return]]\n[[Stay a little longer|Winking 2]]\n\n\n<<else>>\nYou wish that he was here to sing to you. But there is only the wind, and its voice is hollow as the sky.\n\n[[Return to the City|hub1]]\n\n<<endif>>

<<if $choicevar is 0>><<set $KnC = true>>The Prize Tokens lie like cold wax in the palm of your hand. \n\n<<else>>"Very well. Let me know if you change your mind."<<endif>>\n\n[[Return to the City|secondcityloop]]

That night, you fold your wings over your eyes and ears, but you do not sleep. The stone walls echo with the beating of your heart. Has it always been this loud? You have never noticed before.\n\nOn the mantelpiece, a candle melted almost to the wick. Painted on the wall behind, a single red and gleaming eye. It burns like the cold light of the Judgement that had laid your crimes bare before the Void. It shudders through you then like a knife that <<continue "although he chooses to be kind">>although he chooses to be kind\n\nCandles is not naive\n\nand he knows for what he sacrificed. For what was he was sacrificed. He was with the Messenger long before the Neath, long before any of you arrived; he was by her side when sunlight touched her for the last time. And he is telling you now, @@color:#C8150E;font-family:monospace;font-size:14px;you@@ who led him to that place, that it wasn't worth it. It was never worth it.\n\n<<continue "For this, he—">>For this, he—\n\n<<continue "For the sake of this, I—">>For the sake of this, @@color:#C8150E;font-family:monospace;font-size:14px;[I]@@—\n\nlet the knives beneath. Within. Breathe, breathe and draw in her cold and searing tears until the chest-hollow bursts at the seams and killed the one, the one of the stars who can never die. Was <<continue "given—">>given— deceived— and @@color:#C8150E;font-family:monospace;font-size: 14px;[I]@@ know <<continue "who" >>@@color:#C8150E;font-family:monospace;font-size: 14px;[you]@@ <<continue "and how">>@@color:#C8150E;font-family:monospace;font-size: 14px;did [this] to [me]@@ <<continue "and why">>@@color:#C8150E;font-family:monospace;font-size: 14px;for [your]—@@\n\n\nBone for skin and blood for blood. <<continue "It's only fair, it's only—">>@@color:#C8150E;font-family:monospace;font-size: 14px;[I will have the payment of my—]@@\n\n<<continue "[a reckoning will not be postponed indefinitely]">>\n\n(—Whose thoughts are these?)\n\nA moment, hanging, where the realisation sinks in, and then cold floods through you. Lacre, and the warm contents of a still-beating heart spilled over dark and unyielding sand.\n\nThe tip of a knife as it runs over the pulse in a wrist. His blood beneath your skin. How could you have thought you would ever be free of him?\n\n[[Return to the City|Chichen5][$time = 0]]

//I hope you're proud of yourself,// Iron writes, and leaves you to it.\n\n<<set $Waxwail = false>> <<set $Cerise = true>>[ - Waxwail Knife]\n[ + St. Cerise's Candle]\n\n\n[[Return to the City|hub1]]

The first time you consumed fruits and nectars, you spent the rest of the school day throwing up in the refuse dumps beside the planet's methane sea. That afternoon you lay there on the continent's edge with your face turned to the red and angry sky. You stretched your wings out over the ground, and listened to the wind as it whispered, and heard the roar of a Time Dragon as it crossed the star that lit the world.\n\nSince then, you had often slipped out from behind the galaxy's arm to pick fights with the dragonlings your age. They have the advantage of size and scales and additional limbs, but you have the edge in agility to compensate. From them you learned to hunt and to fly. One day, you thought then, you will challenge the Judgements' servant, who hunts the ones like you whom the stars have forgotten. You will defeat it, and be their dragon in its place.\n\n<<continue "Look at you now">>Look at you now. Furtive gliding over rooftops in the dark for sport, your prey these flimsy mortals and zee-beasts, your choir the curs of the Foreign Office. Curled up in the deep dark, wishing and wanting for the Void for all the world like a crying child. You curse the Messenger who happened to be searching at the same time you were. You curse Candles, who found you that day among the whispers of the Void.\n\nYour chambers are draped wall to wall with expensive fabrics. In the waking dark, your Master's cloak sits suffocating and ever heavier on your shoulders.\n\n<<continue "Ignite the wick with a word of Correspondence.">>Ignite the wick with a word of Correspondence. <<continue "Tip the candle on its edge">>Tip the candle on its edge and <<continue "let it fall.">>let it fall.\n\n<<set $beau_last = true>>\n\n[[Return to the city|hub1]]\n

"A little, as compared to what?"\n\nSigils flare over the surface of your skin.\n<<cyclinglink "the group that one belongs to" "the group that one belongs to" end>>\n<<cyclinglink "light that illuminates the corners of the world" "light that illuminates the corners of the world" end>>\n<<cyclinglink "trinket lost in vast spaces" "trinket lost in vast spaces" end>>\n\nAs they fade she whispers, "To the Judgements, we are merely..."\n\n\n\n[[All right|Chichen2]]

You arrive at the appointed time at the edge of the galaxy's long axis, and insinuate yourself among the small group of your kind already there. The turnout is surprising. Many chiroptera would hardly deign to take a job with an employer like the disgraced Messenger. But needs must, you suppose, and good jobs have been thin on the ground as of late.\n\nYou have never met the Messenger, only heard [[her story|herstory]] through the cosmic grapevine. She's exactly as you expected her to be and at the same time not; dark-carapaced and even more darkly silent. Her spires still burn with the marks of the Judgements' disdain.\n\nCandles, standing a little way behind her spires, catches sight of you and waves.\n\n<<continue "The Messenger tells you all the plan">>The Messenger tells you all the plan to set up shop in the heart of the third planet of the Sunsystem. Follow the mortals, write their stories. Bring her everything you find, sordid or tedious or otherwise; she'll decide what is worthwile. Wring dry a city, and if it's not enough, find a new one to take its place. Her voice is low and musical. Five hundred years, she says, and she'll have what she needs, and you'll be free.\n\nHenceforth, she will be known only as the Bazaar.\n\n—It's never been done. It can't be done. The murmurs making the rounds assure you that you are not alone in your uncertainty. <<continue "\n\nBut nobody actually steps up to voice opposition">>But nobody actually steps up to voice opposition.\n\n"All good, then?" Candles chirps, in that same cheerful manner. He hops over a narrow place in the river and goes around the circle, passing out thin slabs of rock and the heavy cloaks that mark your new position. The terms of your respective contracts are written on the surface of the stone in glowing gant, along with your duties and your new titles. "Veils," he reads, when he reaches you. "Domain of cloths, fabrics, textured material..." Then, "It's a nice name."\n\n@@font-size:14px;color:grey;font-family:monospace;—the undersigned shall remain in exclusive service to the Messenger of S—-, P—- and B—-until such time that the Message is complete, or else that seven cities have drawn to a close...@@\n\n[[Scrawl your signature]]\n

The Time Dragons don't often pay much attention to the postal workers. They did complain, however, when the mail was late.\n\n"The courier said she has some business of her own to attend to." In a corner, one of the dragonlings giggles. "She did deliver that message, in the end."\n\n"The answer was no?"\n\n"Of course. And she knows he won't like it, so she..." //Ran for it. How irresponsible.//\n\nYou had said, greatly daring, "She's right to fear for her safety." Another dragonling gives you a haughty look, and you immediately regret the trespass. They barely tolerate your presence among them as it is.\n\n"No, silly. She doesn't care what happens to her when he finds out. She's afraid of what the message will do to //him//."\n\n[["Oh," somebody replies.|Void II]]

<<if $time is 1>>\nWhen he is not making new candles from silk and beeswax, he can usually be found talking with the priests-turned-merchants who hawk their wares in the markets that have sprung up around the Bazaar Sidestreets. The majority of your colleagues keep a respectable distance from the mortals, but Candles seems to regard them with an amusement that is almost fondness. "—oh? Well, they have to be kept happy, you know. If the Bazaar is to have her stories..."\n\nToday, you find him haggling with a wine-seller over the market price of a sleeping aid. He looks up as you approach, and quickly assures the merchant that he will be back later.\n\n[[Ask after his commerce|Candles-1-2][$choicevar = 0; $candles1++]]\n[[Ask after his health|Candles-1-2][$choicevar = 1; $candles1++]]\n\n<<else>>He's in his workshop this time; the room is scented with beeswax and oil, dimly lit by candles of his own making. You listen to him work: cotton skeins threading through iron moulds, the bubble of wax in the pot by the fire.\n\nHe half-fills each mould with molten wax. Fastens a strip of wood to the exposed length of the cotton skeins so they will stay upright. Places the candles next to a vent to let them cool, then gently pulls each of them free by the wick. After a fashion, a row of pale yellow candles glows softly in the light.\n\nHe observes his handiwork with pride, then turns to you. "Mm, thank you for your patience. What is it?"\n\nYou think you came here to ask something, but whatever it is has been lost to the shadows and the scent of wax and incense.\n\n[["Why candles?"|Candles-1-2][$choicevar = 1; $candles1++]]\n[["Why dreams?"|Candles-1-2][$choicevar = 2; $candles1++]]\n\n<<endif>>\n\n\n

<<if $time is 1>>You find him in his workshop, braiding cotton thread for wicks. He has lit another of the seven candles on the mantelpiece by the door; the twin flames flicker like eyes. Even indoors, the shadow of the glass hangs heavy over you all.\n\n"All will be well," he says, as if to himself. "And all shall be well and all manner of things will be—"\n\n[["Perhaps."|Candles-2-1][$choicevar = 1]]\n[["You cannot really think that."|Candles-2-1][$choicevar = 0; $candles2++]]\n\n\n<<else if $time is 2>>The only lights left to the Neath are fire and irrigo. Gas-lamps light the way for the donkeys in the street. Candles visits the Nadir often, to investigate whether the memories it holds can be harnessed for the purposes of illumination. So he says.\n\n"The Axiles have created a form called the moon-miser that gives off light," he says. "We can use that." He has been gone far too long for a simple visit to Flute Street. The irrigo-light is still bright around the edges of his wings. But you do not call him out on it.\n\n[[Say something noncommittal|Candles-2-1][$choicevar = 0]]\n[[Offer to help|Candles-2-1][$choicevar = 1; $candles2++]]\n\n\n\n<<else if $time is 3>>Of all of you, Candles alone takes the loss of the Pharaoh's daughters hard. "They, too, were only acting as their hearts desired, to protect the thing they cared about. And this is the result. Perhaps, if the Messenger's wishes are true, a thousand thousand years would not be too long to wait."\n\n(— Oh, yes. Yes, it would. It would be far too long. Your blood crackles with it.)\n\n[["For some of us, it is."|Candles-2-1][$choicevar = 0; $candles++]]\n[["For me, it is."|Candles-2-1][$choicevar = 1]]\n\n\n<<else if $time is 4>>\n"What are dreams, Veils? Wines says their nature is desire; Spices, the distillation of experience, the secret avenues of knowledge. Cups calls them the assimilation of memories. And you...?"\n\n[[Answer honestly|Candles-2-1][$choicevar = 0; $candles2++]]\n[["What a frivolous question."|Candles-2-1][$choicevar = 1]]\n\n<<else>><<cycle desire>>"There are no laws here," he repeats quietly. "That which you want, you can have. As long as you reach out and grasp it..."<<becomes>>A long time ago, you imagine, you had been cursed; "That which you cannot have, you will want. And if you reach out and grasp it..."<<becomes>>//... a message which tells of a love which failed, and a fall. It tells, too, of what came after.//<<endcycle>>\n\nDoes he mean <<revise desire "himself">>? <<revise desire "You">>? <<revise desire "The Messenger">>? You are no longer sure.\n\n"If we are to go on, wretchedly like this, until the Neath buries us all. Is it preferable to never have arrived here in the first place?"\n\n\n[[Yes. It's not worth it.|Candles-2-1][$choicevar = 1]]\n[[No. Something may change.|Candles-2-1][$choicevar = 0; $candles2++]]\n\n<<endif>>

The others grow restless. You've seen them pulling at the cloaks that settle too heavily over their shoulders, stretching their wings behind the ruins of the Eye Temples when they think no one's looking. And you are hardly of the same star-stock they are, they who can subsist on a song and the fruit of the Garden. No, the blood sits pulsing and ill beneath the surface of your skin. Already you miss flying, the cold press and slide of the Void against your wings.\n\n<<continue '"Are you all right?"'>>"Are you all right?"\n\nCandles' concern seems genuine, but you have not lived this long by putting your weaknesses on display. "Everything is fine," you reply.\n\nIt seems that he wants to say something in return, but [[decides against it.|firstcityloop]]

"—That isn't all, is it?" he whispers. "There is always the cost that is known, and the cost that is not. Even so, we only regret the price worth paying... Although maybe I'll change my mind eventually. The Neath does that, doesn't it?"\n\nThe surface of the Unterzee glitters with the reflections of false-stars; the Wax-Wind whistles over sand. He presses <<cyclinglink "a lump of warm amber, stitched through with red" "a candle">> into your claws. "Perhaps— perhaps @@color:#C8150E;[I]@@, too—"\n\n[[[the bill is almost due]|Chambers]]

The Judgement that presided over your trial had been sympathetic but implacable. Your low origins, and the lack of proper guidance that had caused you to choose the wrong path in life— those things are regrettable, but they are not your fault. And you are still very young for your kind. So the Judgements are willing to give you a chance to stay out of corrective services. But you do at least have to make an effort.\n\nSo you've decided to shuck off your delinquent image and at least try to be a productive member of society. You never thought you'd see the day.\n\n<<continue "Two days later, at the employment office">>\n\nAs you round the next corner, you almost crash into someone. He's carrying a large posterboard, which is how neither of you had noticed each other before it was @@color:#C8150E;font-size:14px;font-family:monospace;too late@@. He waves away your apology and presses a handwritten Correspondence flyer into your claws. "I like the look of you," he chirrups, "and I think my employer will, too."\n\nAs he hurries off, you glance down at the flyer.\n\n@@font-size:14px;color:grey;font-family:monospace;//HELP WANTED: Chiroptera to live among mortals and gather stories.//@@\n\nThe interviews are soon.\n\n[[Go|Void 1.5][$choicevar = 0]]\n[[Don't go|Void 1.5][$choicevar = 1]]

<<if $time is 1>><<if $choicevar is 0>>"No, I don't. But there are things we must profess to believe, if we are to continue on."<<else>>"We can hope, anyway."<<endif>>\n\n<<else if $time is 2>><<if $choicevar is 0>>"As it were," he replies.<<else>>When he returns from Flute Street with the moon-misers, you go with him to place the shining carapaces between stalactites in the roof. They buzz softly with life. The reflections of them in the sea are violet and glistening.\n\n"They are beautiful," you say, and he replies, "They always have been."<<endif>>\n\n<<else if $time is 3>><<if $choicevar is 0>>"— yes, Cups doesn't look too well-off these days, does he..."<<else>>"Believe me." His voice is steady. "I never wanted this to happen."<<endif>>\n\n<<else if $time is 4>><<if $choicevar is 0>>"The true natures of things," you reply.\n\n<<else>>"Very well," he replies.<<endif>>\n\n<<else>><<if $choicevar is 0>>What you know of desire.\n\nIn your own dreams you remember the Void, and the sound of wings in the cold vast spaces. Beneath claws, the crack of scalebound hide. Eddies of blood still drift there, between stars, as weightless as the sky.<<else>>"Very well," he replies.<<endif>>\n\n<<endif>>[[Return to the City|secondcityloop]]

<<if $choicevar is 0>>It's only polite. <<endif>>You have never been very happy about the Neath's provisions. Still, to want for the taste of blood, as you do— it has never been proper for your kind.\n\nHe skins the apple,<<if $choicevar is 0>> breaks it in two and hands one half to you,<<endif>> then nibbles. "This isn't so bad," he says. \n\n\n[[Return to the City|firstcityloop]]

At the end of the twenty-first century, you receive an anonymous invitation to a meeting of the Masters. When you arrive at the docks at the appointed time, you see that Candles is not among your number.\n\n"So," Wines says. "This Second City situation."\n\nIron grumbles irritably that he has other work to be getting to. Pages produces parchment dense with calculations and says that even if the rest of the cities fall within two hundred years of each other, none of you are getting paid enough for your work. Spices points out that Candles is the only one among your number who does not appear concerned about the delay. \n\nStones says: He brought the city.\nFires says: He negotiated the terms.\nWines says: He was friendly with the Princess and her sisters.\n\nYou say:\n[["He said he expected something like this to happen."|Amarna3][$choicevar = 0; $candles2 = 0]]\n[["He said he had nothing to do with it."|Amarna3][$choicevar = 1]]\n

<<if $choicevar is 0>>It feels like a betrayal, but it is only the truth.<<else>>Your words will hardly change their minds, but it is only the truth.<<endif>>\n\n\n\n"There are priests on the Surface who learned our language," Cups says, in a voice brittle like glass. "They say they have had dealings with Parabola. They say they can help." He stumbles and pitches forward then, and Wines has to rush forward to catch him.\n\nWhen he recovers, his voice is steadier, and bright with a new resolution. "I will go to the Messenger with this news. Perhaps some sort of deal can be struck—"\n\n[[Return to the City|Amarna4]]

light\nbeneath\nwater

<<if $section is 1>>@@font-weight:bold;Hallowmas, 1893@@\n\nThrough the mirrors the Fifth City, darkly. On this night of All Hallows' Eve, the lacre-rivers overrun with the Messenger's grief. Neath-snow piles high in the road. False-stars glimmer in the sky, wind whistles through empty streets. You draw your cloak a little closer about yourself. Velocipede wheels over cobblestone. \n\nBeneath the stones of Doubt Street, the Stone Pigs still sleep. The Wax-Wind blows from the East of Everything. In the sharp dry air, the webs of your wings crack and bleed. Ammonia stings at the wounds. But you'll live. You'll live, as @@color:#C8150E;font-family:monospace;font-size:14px;he@@ did.\n\n<<if $choicemade is 0>>Is a life like this better than no life?\n[[Yes|hub1][$choicemade = 1]]\n[[No|hub1][$choicemade = 2]]\n<<else>><<Paths>><<endif>>\n<<else>><<TheCity>>\n<<endif>>

The Correspondence does not permit the statement of things that are not true.\n\n[[Breathe|Chichen3]]\n\n<<set $Erzulie = true>>[ + St. Erzulie's Candle]

Before Apples filled the hollow of your spine with tallow and threaded the cotton rope through the vertebrae, he sat you down and asked you, very seriously, why you were doing this. You had looked pointedly at his collection of knives leaning against one wall, and then replied that it is the same reason anyone ever does anything in the Neath.\n\n<<continue "He had nodded">>He had nodded, and led you to the operating table that doubled as a bleeding rail. (In a place where death and immortality both come cheap there is hardly any difference between killing and healing, he says. You wonder only if he cleans his instruments properly.) The sear of knife through flesh at the base of your spine—had felt very much like burning, and the only thing you can think of is that this might have been what it was like for @@color:#C8150E;font-family:monospace;font-size:14px;him@@.\n\n<<continue "You return to the well">>When you move your head now, you can feel the thick cotton against the inside of your neck. Brace yourself against the stone mouth of the well and drive the glass into the hollow of your throat. Careful to miss the carotid and the pharynx. Pull outward. Blood makes your claws slip, and the loss of it makes you tremble, but you find the cotton skein and set it alight with a Correspondence-word. It's just as well. By now your vision is going, you can barely stand.\n\nTransfer the broken glass to your other hand. The ruined tendons make it almost impossible to lift, but you manage, and spill the rest of your blood over cold stone.\n\n\n\n[[Return|hub2]]\n\n[ + St. Gawain's Candle]<<set $Gawain = true>>

Candles used to sing, and he was actually good at it. (That had been another reason to suspect, because none of your kind can carry a tune.) Each time you throw yourself into the well of broken glass, you remember that song like you remember the space between stars, and each time you return to yourself, you forget a little more.\n\nWines was right: the beer is awful. \n\nYou drag your bled-out body to the Garden so Apples can stitch your wounds. "A waste of perfectly good blood," he says as he drives the bent needle deep. In response you snap out directions to the well so he can go there himself if he would like to collect it for his own use.\n\n"No, thank you. I already find myself on the wrong end of--" Thin scars run across his arms and over his wings. You remember that he partakes in Knife-and-Candle too.\n\n[[The bill is almost due|Arthur][$body = 1]]

<<timedreplace 1s>> <<becomes>><<Fortigan-3>><<endtimedreplace>>

<<if $beau_last is true>><<set $beau_last = false>><<set $Beau = true>>You jerk awake to the acrid scent of burning cloth and the Relickers screaming. Your quarters have caught fire. Too much fabric knotted and draped over every ledge and horizontal surface. Behind the charred remains of yards of what had once been Parabola-linen, a half-melted stick of wax. Rather unwise to keep candles in this place, Fires says—\n\nBut you //don't// keep candles in this place.\n\n[ + St Beau's Candle]\n\n<<Paths>>\n\n<<else if $time is 0>><<set $time++>>Every morning you anticipate waking to claws in your throat, teeth in your skin, and every morning, there is nothing. You hardly sleep. For months you don't fly, either. Stillness like static through your wings. In your dreams the Void wraps thickly around your eyes and mouth and ears, pours into every orifice until you cannot move or breathe or scream.\n\nYou open your eyes. The Neath-air is sparse and sharp, and as it fills your lungs, it feels like drowning.\n\n<<Paths>>\n\n<<else if $time is 1>><<set $time++>>Spices' lackeys come to you with some business proposition in Veilgarden. "Will you—" "Of course." You infuse your voice with a smile you do not wear. Beneath your cloak, you wring your pony's bridle like a rag.\n\n<<Paths>>\n\n<<else if $time is 2>><<set $time++>>You rid your quarters of every last light source. If you wrap yourself in that darkness that is darker than black, you can almost imagine that you are back amongst the dragons in the Void.\n\nAlmost.\n\n<<Paths>>\n\n<<else if $time is 3>><<set $time++>>"I have come to discuss the terms of our agreement," you say. Wines smiles, and it's not nice. From that time on, you will always look slightly blue from low blood pressure. But it is worth it. At what price. You just have to survive until—\n\nAs long as he covers for you on those nights.\n\n<<Paths>>\n\n<<else if $time is 4>><<set $time = 0>>Your claws snag against a priceless piece of fabric, but you keep walking with perfect serenity. "Oh," you say, as it rips in half. Your merchants will not be able to sell it now, and you'll be in the red for the next three months at least. "Pity."\n\n<<Paths>>\n\n<<endif>>

<<set $time = 0>>Candles returns from the Surface with news of a shining city, wreathed in gold and touched with sunlight. What radiance, what hopes and dreams and sun-crossed ambitions! His voice positively shines with it.\n\nWines, who went with him, is slightly less enthusiastic. Too many cats in one place, he says. The King's daughters almost certainly have dealings with Parabola. Also, he has never tasted worse alcohol.\n\n"Perfectly good beer is wasted on the likes of you," Candles retorts.\n\n<<continue "The Bazaar accepts">>\n\nThe Bazaar accepts. When the youngest Princess's fiance is struck down, Candles presses the advantage, and the Second City crashes into the Neath atop the first. Sand overflows the edge of the city and into the depths of the Unterzee.\n\nThe new denizens speak in hushed voices about the King's folly, the Princess's cunning. Better the Neath than the Void, they say, as they turn their faces to the false-stars and shiver in their sandals and light tunics. You'll do booming business for years, you think, as they grow accustomed to the Neath. Perhaps they will change their minds eventually. \n\n\n\n<<continue "Several years later">>Several years later, someone discovers the roof of the Neath is lower than it is supposed to be. Smoother, and less rocky. Stones returns from his yearly inspection of the Travertine Spiral with the report that it is blocked over with translucent glass that is rapidly darkening. "This is—"\n\nIn the eternal half-light of the Neath, the once-golden city is only grey. Wines had warned you about this. Without the touch of sunfire, Amarna is hollow as ash.\n\n[[The Bazaar trembles with frustration.|secondcityloop]]\n\n

He says, "You're the one they called the Hunter." It's not a question.\n\n"That was a long time ago." You think you look stricken. He seems to be waiting for you to elaborate, but you don't. You wonder if he'll hold that information over your head for the next two thousand years or so. \n\nInstead, he just asks, "Do you miss it?"\n\n<<continue "Like Iron remembers starlight, like Wines remembers the Void?">>Like Iron remembers starlight, like Wines remembers the Void? "Yes, I do. But it's not mine to miss."\n\nHe considers that. "'Not mine to miss.' So you say. So the Judgements say." As it is written in the Law and the Sequence. "The Messenger disagrees, you know. As do I..."\n\n[[Return to the City|Winking return]]\n[[Stay a little longer|Winking 4]]

@@color:grey;"...but one more scar, what is that?"@@\n\n<<if $body is 1 && $mind is 1 && $soul is 1>>Put the tip of the knife to the seam in your skin, and pull sideways. Beneath the knife-edge, tallow gleams, soft and white. Tug at the flap until enough of the fat is exposed that it can be skimmed. Remember Candles as he worked. Thread a cotton skein through the mould; pour the wax in and simmer over heat. When the stinking tallow finally sets, the candle of false faith will glow black in the light.\n<<endif>><<if $body is 0>>\n[[The Body and the Number|body]]<<endif>><<if $mind is 0>>\n[[The Mind and the Number|mind]]<<endif>><<if $soul is 0>>\n[[The Soul and the Number|soul]]<<endif>>\n\n[[Return to the city|hub1]]\n\n<<if $body is 1 && $mind is 1 && $soul is 1>><<set $Arthur = true>>[ + Saint Arthur's Candle]<<endif>>\n

Anonymous

"Seven candles," the Seekers say, "light the way to the Name."\n\nWhen @@color:#C8150E;font-family:monospace;font-size:14px;[-------]@@ spoke to the denizens of the Neath, when he dreamt with them, and chased away the fear that lingered at the edges of their sleep. He was only ever looking for the lovers who can make the sacrifice the Messenger needs.\n\nHe is using those dreams for a different purpose now.\n\n"'The payment of my debt'...?" Wines murmurs. "We each lost something when we came to this place. He wants it back...?"\n\nNo one from this world can find such a thing. They can try, but their vessels were not made to withstand the Correspondence. Even now, following those dreams of drowning and that place to the North. They can only die, and die, and die, until the blood runs dry in their veins and their nerves fray to dust.\n\n"And he knows this better than anyone. He knows the dreaming-roads, he knows the Neath, and he knows this. So why is he telling them to--"\n\n\n<<continue "--He's not telling them, you realise.">>--He's not telling //them//, you realise.\n\nChiroptera dream only rarely, but they do dream. You fold your hands quietly beneath your cloak. Blood pools where your claws dig into your flesh.\n\nYou do not say, [["He's telling me."|hub2]]

When the meeting ends, you are the first one out of your employer's dark halls. There's no one in the Sidestreets; you wouldn't have cared even if there had been. You draw in a shuddering breath and fight down the nausea. Even after so long, the Neath-air still tastes heavy and fetid. \n\nCandles had followed you from the meeting-hall. Now he grabs your arm, and you glare at him as best you can but he doesn't let go; digs his claws into the web of skin at the base of your wings, spins you round and drops into low Correspondence so the others don't hear. "Hey, Veils. I gotta job, too, and that's to make sure you all are doing well."\n\nWith a great effort, you wrench your arm free. "Everything is //fine—//"\n\n"For my sake, then," he says lightly.\n\n<<continue "There's nothing for it">>\n\nHe leads you to one of the ruins of the Eye-temples. In an alcove behind a maze of crumbling stone walls there is a corridor of reflective surfaces, stretching as far as you can see. You whisper into the corridor, but the echo never returns.\n\nHe picks up a candle lying by the entrance. By its flickering light, in the mirrors you see a thousand thousand reflections of him, and your own pale and overwrought face. You raise one wing a fraction. Your reflection does not. Immediately you whirl around to face him. <<continue "These are Parabola-roads.">>"These ara Parabola-roads."\n\nThe Neath edges that place of flesh-stealing serpents. Never turn your back on your reflection, lest you blink and find yourself changed.\n\n"So they are," he says. "We have built in safeguards, but there is always the possibility that—" He holds out one of the knives he uses to whittle wax for candles. "If, at any time, I seem not myself..."\n\n[[Accept|tell2-2][$choicevar = 0]]\n[[Decline|tell2-2][$choicevar = 1]]\n\n\n

Five hundred years.\n\nThe streets of the First City are unrecognisable now, reshaped as they have been in the image of the lacre-rivers that run beneath. Year on year, the City's population dwindles. The tears the Messenger does not shed, the Neath-sky cries in her place. You tasted lacre, once. It flooded you like the scent of light and ozone.\n\nThe Priest-King no longer makes appearances in the Bazaar Sidestreets. It was said that the Hundreds sent a message at great pain to bar him from the Marvellous, and that since then he has ceased fighting. In recent years he simply reposes within the Temple of Eyes, and listens for the voices of Polythreme that still echo across the sea. \n\n[["It is time," your employer says.|darkwater][$open = 2]]

"Where were you?" you ask Candles, later.\n\n"Flute Street," Candles replies. His eyes are bright with the light of forgetting. "—Did I miss something?"\n\n[["You weren't there,"|darkwater][$open = 3]] you reply.

"— tokens that mark you as a participant in the underground leagues of Knife-and-Candle. One of Iron's experiments with the Neath's unnatural vitality. If you like..."\n\n\n<<continue "Accept the invitation">><<set $KnC = true>>The Prize Tokens lie like cold wax in the palm of your hand. \n\n\n[[Return to the City|hub1]]

"It gets cramped, back in the City."\n\nHe looks at you, really looks at you, then. For the first time you consider the possibility that he had been sincere, that day in the employment office.\n\n(Candles bleeds gold, not red. You saw, the day he landed awkwardly and sliced one foot open on an outcrop of rock. You've had your suspicions about his position in the Chain for a while, but now that you have witnessed it for yourself— he has blood of the Judgements, you're sure. An amalgam-child? Likely not. Such abominations are rarely allowed to live, let alone walk the Void as he does.)\n\nHe looks up into the sky. "It's not good for us, being trapped in a place like this..."\n\n[[Return to the City|Winking return]]\n[[Stay a little longer|Winking 3]]\n\n<<endreplace>>

Dark water folds over your eyes.\n<<if $section is 1>>\n[[Breathe|hub1]]\n<<else>>\n[[Breathe|transition]]\n<<endif>>

<<if $Cerise is true and $cwell is false and $Fortigan is false>><<revise ccandle "Drop St. Cerise's candle into the well" "St. Cerise's Candle glows from the depths of the well." end>><<else if $cwell is true>>St. Cerise's Candle glows from the depths of the well.<<else if $Cerise is false>>Drop St. Cerise's Candle into the well<<endif>>\n<<if $Destin is true and $dwell is false and $Fortigan is false>><<revise dcandle "Drop St. Destin's candle into the well" "St. Destin's Candle glows from the depths of the well." end>><<else if $dwell is true and $Fortigan is false>>St. Destin's Candle glows from the depths of the well.<<else if $Destin is false and $Fortigan is false>>Drop St. Destin's Candle into the well\n<<endif>>\n\n<<revision ccandle>><<becomes>><<set $Cerise = false>><<set $cwell = true>><<if $cwell is true and $dwell is true>><<Fortigan-2>><<endif>><<endrevision>><<revision dcandle>><<becomes>><<set $Destin = false>><<set $dwell = true>><<if $cwell is true and $dwell is true>><<Fortigan-2>><<endif>><<endrevision>>\n\n\n<<revision ccandle>><<revision dcandle>><<if $cwell and $dwell>><<else>>[[Return to the city|hub1]]<<endif>><<becomes>><<if $cwell and $dwell>><<else>>[[Return to the city|hub1]]<<endif>><<endrevision>><<becomes>><<revision dcandle>><<if $cwell and $dwell>><<else>>[[Return to the city|hub1]]<<endif>><<becomes>><<if $cwell and $dwell>><<else>>[[Return to the city|hub1]]<<endif>><<endrevision>><<endrevision>>\n\n\n\n

<<if $time is 0>><<set $time++>>Candles had told you, once, how he chose the cities. But if the First City had been the beating heart of its empire, then the Second is a mechanical transplant. The Mad King's last folly. There is no life in the city. Nor will there ever be, now. \n\nApples is undeterred. "As long as there are people, there will be—"\n\n<<continue '"There will be no stories here," Iron replies with conviction.'>>"There will be no stories here," Iron replies with conviction.\n\n\n\nThe markets for fabrics are slow today.\n\n[[Visit Apples|Apples-2]]\n[[Visit Candles|Candles-2][$candles2++]]\n[[Visit Cups|Cups-2]]\n[[Visit Wines|Wines-2]]\n\n<<else if $time is 1>><<set $time++>>Five hundred years. \n\nThe city is nearly emptied— its denizens lost to violence, to the lacre-pools that run beneath, by mass exodus over the sea. You had asked one of them, a loyal customer of yours, before she left on that sea-voyage.\n\n"Why would I stay? Even before the Fall, I only moved to the city at the late King's behest. I do not belong here. In fact, if I belonged anywhere, it would be anywhere but here," she replies. Before the Fall, she was one of many dancers in the Pharaoh's court. For a long time now she has made her living as a magician's assistant. Beneath the dancer's long trains and scarves and sleeves, her skin blisters and festers like a serpent's sting unattended.\n\nWhat is needed is to give this city up for lost, and go to the Surface to claim another. But the Travertine Spiral is still blocked up with the black glass of Parabola. Fingerkings slither through the glass that veneers the Neath-roof. <<continue "The air is filled with the echoes of their hissing.">>The air is filled with the echoes of their hissing.\n\n\n\nThe markets for fabrics are slow today.\n\n[[Visit Apples|Apples-2]]\n[[Visit Candles|Candles-2][$candles2++]]\n[[Visit Cups|Cups-2]]\n[[Visit Wines|Wines-2]]\n\n<<else if $time is 2>><<set $time++>>One thousand years. \n\nEven the late Pharaoh's own daughters have abandoned the city. Only the youngest remains, still chained to the wall in the cellars of her own former palace— whether unwillingly, or for love of her consort, you may never know.\n\nNow the bustle in the Sidestreets has dwindled to a few foolhardy merchants still setting up shop with wares they can no longer sell. Wines spends many days at the edge of the crumbling city of sand, staring into the black depths of the sea. When you ask, <<continue "he says that he is remembering the Void.">>he says that he is remembering the Void.\n\n\n\nThe markets for fabrics are slow today.\n\n[[Visit Apples|Apples-2]]\n[[Visit Candles|Candles-2][$candles2++]]\n[[Visit Cups|Cups-2]]\n[[Visit Wines|Wines-2]]\n<<else if $time is 3>><<set $time++>>One thousand and five hundred years. \n\nIf anybody notices that creatures have been disappearing from the gardens of houses, if anyone heard the shrieking over the rooftops, that night when all the owls disappeared from the menagerie-- it wasn't you. You left those things behind when you came to this place.\n\nThe slithering of the Fingerkings still echoes through the Neath. <<continue "'They're waiting,' Wines says.">>"They're waiting," Wines says.\n\n\n\nThe markets for fabrics are slow today.\n\n[[Visit Apples|Apples-2]]\n[[Visit Candles|Candles-2][$candles2++]]\n[[Visit Cups|Cups-2]]\n[[Visit Wines|Wines-2]]\n\n<<else if $time is 4>><<set $time++>>Two thousand years.\n\nCommerce has ceased. The city lies in ruins. The lacre-pools have run dry, and your colleagues talk in hushed and uneasy voices about the stirring of the Stone Pigs.\n\nThe remnants of the City denizens have set up camp in the Bazaar Sidestreets. Food, clean water and shelter are rationed to ensure the relative welfare of the greatest possible number. Not out of benevolence, Iron corrects. Out of self-preservation.\n\nThe Messenger still reposes in the heart of the ruined city, heavy and breathing. "Find a solution," she hisses. Dark scars crawl over leathery skin. "Or we all end here, <<continue 'unfulfilled."'>>unfulfilled."\n\n\n\nThe markets for fabrics are slow today.\n\n[[Visit Apples|Apples-2]]\n[[Visit Candles|Candles-2][$candles2++]]\n[[Visit Cups|Cups-2]]\n[[Visit Wines|Wines-2]]\n\n<<else>><<Amarna2>>\n<<endif>>

The mark of time passing is the ebb of the tide, silent save for the sound of waves as they break upon the shore.\n\nAfter a while, you realise that Candles is humming something. It's familiar; it's the song the old ones used to sing your brood to sleep. It's the song the raven sang, that day in first-year, when she tried out for musical theatre. (She didn't make it.) You never did learn her name. \n\n<<continue "The glowing-hearted mountain">>The glowing-hearted mountain / <<continue "the river in the sky">>the river in the sky / <<continue "the near night">> the near night and <<continue "the deep night">>thee@@color:#C8150E;font-size:14px;eeeii//iiii//@@@@color:#C8150E;font-weight:bold;//iiiiiIIII//@@\n\nThe dissonance scrapes your ears like iron on stone. Something is wrong here.\n\n[[Return to the City|Winking return]]

Spices reports that the dreams spread like plague among the denizens of the Neath. They say they are looking for a Number. No. They are looking for a Name.\n\n[["Do you know something about this," Wines says to you.|transition2]]

You relay this information to Candles, who inspects the inside of one wrist. "Mm, I understand. They said they would only take a little? Distasteful, yes, but ultimately a small price to pay for a City..."<<set $choicevar = 0>>\n\n[[Remain silent and let him draw his own conclusions|Chichen3][$choicevar = 0]]\n<<if $candles1 + $candles2 >= 4 and $knowledge is true>>[["Actually—"|Chichen2.5][$choicevar = 1]]<<endif>>

<<if $choicevar is 0>>"You can't save everyone."\n\n"Whoever I can," Candles replies.\n<<else>>"You owe them nothing."\n\n"I promised," Candles replies.\n<<endif>>\n\n\nThe Axiles have no way to pay for safe passage. There is nothing they own that she could want. But no matter. There will be time to find a price. The Messenger rises with her burden toward the bright star that edges the horizon. As long as they live, no matter how wretchedly, they may yet be able to repay their debt.\n\n[[The floods arrive.|darkwater]]

<<if $time is 0>>The ice over the Unterzee melts, the glass vanishes from the Travertine Spiral. The trees in the Garden bloom again. You all feel Candles' absence like a knife.\n\nThe others are quieter. You did it— they know that much. Perhaps they even fear you for it. They squabble over the spoils: <<replace>>Fires<<becomes>>Fires takes the candles<<endreplace>>, <<replace>>Cups<<becomes>>Cups the mirror-gates to Parabola<<endreplace>>, <<replace>>Wines and Spices<<becomes>>Wines and Spices the dreaming-roads<<endreplace>>...\n\nAll the candles from the old cities gutter and die. Fires' light is blinding and cold as stone hearths. You drag your cloaks tighter around your shoulders and think of the Mirror-Marches: gant and cosmogone. You think you'll never again be warm.\n\n\n<<endif>><<set $time++>>The markets for fabrics are slow today.\n<<if $apples is false>>\n[[Visit Apples|Apples-3][$apples = true]]<<endif>><<if $cups is false>>\n[[Visit Cups|Cups-3][$cups = true]]<<endif>><<if $wines is false>>\n[[Visit Wines and Spices|Wines-3][$wines = true]]<<endif>>\n\n<<if $time >= 2>>[[Leave the City|darkwater][$section = 2]]<<endif>>

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You wait at the foot of the mountain as you had agreed. The sun is low in the sky. After so long in the Neath, its light burns at your face and the skin of your wings, so you don your cloak and pull up the hood against the light. The wind ruffles at the edges of it.\n\nHours pass away like light through water, and Candles does not return. You remember the gleam in the God-Eaters' eyes when they had <<continue "said—">>said—\n\n<<continue "//(don't think about it)//">>//(don't think about it)//\n\nNeath-night arrives. You fold your wings around your body under the outcrop of rock, pull your cloak over your ears to shut out the sound of the sea. You sleep, and do not dream, and wake to dry wind and howling stone.\n\n\n\n\n<<continue "You return to the Neath">>You return to the Neath alone. The others are quiet. You feel their eyes as you pass, their questions, but they do not ask. Perhaps there is something in your manner that prevents them. The Correspondence on the contract burns beneath your cloaks.\n\nYou go straight to the Bazaar Sidestreets and demand an audience with your employer. There is satisfaction writ on the sides of her spires as she welcomes you. "You knew this would happen," you say.\n\n"//You// knew," she replies, in Correspondence so it must be true. "You knew, and you did nothing. What price to pay, and all for..."\n\n[[It sinks into your blood like the memory of flight.|Chichen 4.5]]

When you intercepted the letters, you already knew what you would find. The confessions of Seekers are confessions of dreams, of drowning and appetite. Slip a cold knife beneath the skin, release the maggots to feast within. They will learn to breathe in the dark, and when they mature they will burrow through flesh to the surface above. Let them. Perhaps one day they too will know sunlight.\n\n<<continue "On every envelope">>On every envelope you write //Undeliverable: return to sender// and drop it back into the bowels of London's postal system. It takes forty-nine days to get rid of them all, and at the end of that time, your inkwell is no heavier and no lighter than it had been before.\n\n<<set $Destin = true>>[ + St. Destin's Candle]\n\n[[Return to the city|hub1]]

<<if $choicevar is 0>>In the mirrors his many reflections curve and slant, and you carefully avoid the ones that look not quite right.<<else if $choicevar is 1>>"He has studied the flowers of Hell as I have studied the Parabolan gates. Here, where the Judgements cannot see, we are free to test our theories. If we can open the roads to dreams in this place..."\n<<endif>>\n\n[[Return to the City|firstcityloop]]

You glance around at your new colleagues: <<replace>>Iron.<<becomes>>Iron, hard-voiced, wings leathered from millennia flying beneath the Judgements' fiery presence.<<endreplace>> <<replace>>Cups.<<becomes>>Cups, still writing on the stone; his signature is elaborate and flowing like his cloaks.<<endreplace>> <<replace>>Apples.<<becomes>>Apples, younger than even you, twisting the keys to the Garden between his claws and trying and failing to sound resolute.<<endreplace>> Wines...\n\nThere remain preparations to be made. Apples heads off in search of food sources that can be cultivated in the conditions of the Neath. Stones and Iron go on ahead; there is still work to be done to hollow out the planet-heart. Wines and Spices study the commerce on the Surface. Fires will see about the problem of light...\n\n<<continue "As for you">>As for you— Candles announces that he needs someone else to accompany him and the Messenger to complete negotiations on planet Axile. He volunteers you before you have a chance to protest. "@@color:#C8150E;font-size:14px;font-family:monospace;[A reckoning will not be postponed indefinitely,]@@" he says, in the same cheerful chirrup.\n\n[[The words you remember don't quite match up with the sounds.|darkwater][$open = 1]]

<<if $choicevar is 0>>You remain at the event for a little while longer to see the sights. You are neither interested in nor qualified for most of the other positions, in any case.\n\nNearer closing time, you head for the exits. The recruiter from before is packing up the large posterboard he had been carrying. Now that you are seeing it from the other side, you notice that it features only a single Correspondence symbol: @@color:grey;//hurtling forever toward the earth//@@. He waves as you pass by, so you approach and introduce yourself properly. You ask him for his name. \n\n[["It's just Candles these days," he replies.|Void II]]\n\n<<else>>You tuck the flyer away into the fold of one wing. There are many potential employers here, and many other opportunities. You don't want to run out of options just yet.\n\nMost of the recruiters barely glance at your documents. They inform you regretfully that they're looking for someone with a bit more experience, a few more qualifications, a cleaner record. Perhaps, too, the little matter of your position on the Chain. Though no one actually says anything about that.\n\nThe Judgement had issued you an ultimatum: find gainful employment, or it's back to corrective services with you. And you really don't want to spend the next five centuries shoveling stardust.\n\n<<continue "You decide to go after all">>\n\nNearer closing time, you head for the exits. The recruiter from before is packing up the large posterboard he had been carrying. Now that you are seeing it from the other side, you notice that it features only a single Correspondence symbol: @@color:grey;//hurtling forever toward the earth//@@. He waves as you pass by, so you approach and introduce yourself properly. You ask him for his name. \n\n[["It's just Candles these days," he replies.|Void II]]\n\n<<endif>>\n

<<if $choicevar is 0>>It leaves a bad taste in your mouth, but you do not correct him. Your responsibility is to yourself and your employer first.\n\n\n\n\n<<endif>>Before he takes the honey-draught, over the web of your wings he traces //fear//, then blankets it over with the symbol for irrigo-light. In return, you write something very like //assurance//, and hope he is too far gone to notice that the last curving stroke is wrong. \n\n"Sleep," you say, and brush a wing gently over his eyes. <<if $choicevar is 1>>All will be well—\n\n//I wish that I believed it,// he had said, in that place edged with irrigo-light.<<endif>>\n\nThe Priest-Kings—the God-Eaters arrive, and their servants bind him with chains. "Yours," you say to the priestess with the bird-mask. She hands you the contract, signed and sealed, and you tuck it carefully away into the folds of your cloak. You turn away from them, as they turn away from you; spread your wings, and [[take to the sky.|Chichen4]]

<<if $choicevar is 0>>You accept gratefully. But the sweetness and salt of seal-flesh turns to cold wax in your mouth.\n<<else>>A bitter laugh, "Rich, coming from you. But Iron says the same." You have heard that they are no longer on speaking terms. "The law— is it really so unchanging?"<<endif>>\n\n\n\n"How long has this been going on?" you ask, quietly.\n\n"Since the First City," he replies, as he scrubs at his knives by the fireplace. "Most of us tried to fight it, but the Neath gives us all a taste for blood, it seems."\n\n"There is one more thing," you say. "As you used to say. We too are flesh."\n\nApples carefully does not react. "If you are so inclined—"\n\n"No," you reply.\n\n\n\n[[Return to the City|Chichen5]]\n\n<<if $Destin is false>><<set $Destin = true>>[ + St. Destin's Candle]<<endif>>

That night you dream of resin, and fronds, and irrigo-light. Flesh that melts and shapes and changes. Here, in this forgetting place in the deeps, so far from law and light. The Axiles had tried to escape it, too. They sleep now, in the darkest depths of the sea, beneath even the lacre-rivers that wash and break upon the sundered shore. Flesh-change in the dark places. What you were. What you can become, still.\n\n<<continue "He turns to you then">>He turns to you then— although it cannot be you that he turns to, if this is a memory. "The candles go out," he says, strangely wistful. "Please, will you remember me?"\n\n[[Yes.|Chambers II]]\n[[All will be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be—|Chambers II]]

@@font-weight:bold;The Reckoning@@<<set $numCandles = 0>><<if $Arthur>><<set $numCandles++>><<endif>><<if $Beau>><<set $numCandles++>><<endif>><<if $Cerise>><<set $numCandles++>><<endif>><<if $Destin>><<set $numCandles++>><<endif>><<if $Erzulie>><<set $numCandles++>><<endif>><<if $Fortigan>><<set $numCandles++>><<endif>><<if $Gawain>><<set $numCandles++>><<endif>>\n\nSeven hollows for seven candles. <<print $numCandles>> are lit. <<print 7-$numCandles>> <<if 7-$numCandles is 1>>remains.<<else>>remain. <<endif>><<if $numCandles < 6>> Perhaps more candles may ease the way. <<endif>>\n\n[[Return to the well|hub2]]\n[[Proceed|end1]]

Axile, the day the floods came. The Messenger waits near the surface-gates, heavy and trembling as the shapelings pour into the hollows of her dark carapace, dragging behind them their secrets, their piles of shining amber, the fragile instruments of their precious Red Science. Candles, whispering into the deep places, drawing them forth with desperate promises: amalgamy, amalgamy and flesh-change. New life in the dark places, far away from the Sequence's prying eyes, prying light. You wonder who betrayed them to the Judgements. The waiting floods hang austere against the planet's violet sky.\n\nThe Stone Pigs rumble. You have to leave now. You say to him,\n[["You can't save everyone."|Axile II][$choicevar = 0]]\n[["You owe them nothing."|Axile II][$choicevar = 1]]\n

\nThe denizens of the Third City have begun to notice, and speak in fearful whispers about the vast dark shadow that sometimes goes shrieking over the rooftops in the night. Sometimes you wake to blood congealing between your claws and over your wings, and you are never quite sure whose it is. You remember nothing.\n\nIn the end, you bite the bullet and go to Wines and Spices and explain the situation. "I need you to cover for me. Make up anything." You know what they hear: It was he-who-shall-not-be-named's job, so now it's theirs. They regard you warily.\n\n"We can't do anything," Spices says irritably.\n\nWines is a tad more pliable. "Oh, ignore him. I'll help you," he says. "For a price."\n\nThere's always a price. You negotiate as best you can with the curdling awareness that he holds the upper hand. He will profit handsomely from your blood—the thought settles like bile in your stomach. But you knot your claws behind your back and thank him anyway. You've suffered worse insults.\n\n[[Return to the City|Chichen5]]\n