Slowly the plaza filled with more and more people to the point I could hardly see from where I stood to the other end. Their chatter blended together in a tapestry of words that caused my mind to create phantom conversations that sizzled and dispersed like sparks in a fire and I felt an odd mix of invasiveness and detachment to hear them. While I couldn’t see the ground in front of me, I could see the amphitheater in the center of the plaza. It was a large marbled grey island on the top of three enlarged steps. A tall wooden scaffolding had towered above us with its shadow wrapped around the closest onlookers like a rope might corral farm animals together. Since I had not seen it before today, I could only assume the big city shared Duskhovel’s tradition of only raising an execution ground the night before the sentence then tearing it down afterwards. From its peak hung a frayed rope knotted into a loop at its end that hung at just the right height an average person might reach. This noose would be the means by which her majesty Queen Seidria Slumnier would be put to death for the crimes of infidelity, abuse against the crown prince, and therefore treason as well. She was, suffice to say, a hated woman and there was hardly a misty eye to be seen in the crowd. I did see, to my surprise, Colonel Ray out of uniform and not stationed with the perimeter of royal guards. On his face was not misty eyes either, but instead an expression I couldn’t quite fathom. He noticed my attention with a grimace, so I looked away not wanting to interact with him further.
Past the gallows stood two tall buildings, though only one of them was directly relevant to today’s execution. That building was Monderlow’s hall of justice, the same building in which I had attended the hearing that led to the queens sentencing. Four tall ivory podiums held up a wide entrance at the top of a stair case. Its shape was flat and stark with the lack of protrusions coming from the roof somehow making it appear all the more monolithic. It pulled the eye, but at the same time made one hesitant to approach, not dissimilar to the effect an officer walking through town might have. It was technically stationed behind the amphitheater, but from my perspective the beams of the hanging post were crowned by the second story archway of a cathedral of the dreamless. It bridged over a balcony that jutted out in a semicircle from the white wall under a conical blue spire. On that wall was a window of stained glass that depicted a maiden made of colorful angular segments. This maiden of long black hair and a red ceremonial dress was a religious figure who would supposedly lead the spirits of the dead through the ether ways to the side that opened up into a dream world. According to their doctrine, no matter what direction these spirits walked in, if they were not being led by her, they would instead fall into the pit of nightmares. Overall, the building carried an austere weight that stirred spirituality in all despite average sentiment being dislike towards the dreamless. It was, perhaps, the reason we adopted so many of their traditions and myths outside of faith.
I looked away into the crowd and gave a jolt when I spotted her. She was with Paula of course and her eyes met mine as soon as I turned her way. I nearly adverted mine, but somewhere deep inside me, something told me I had to at least just look. She was, quite frankly, a breath taking sight as always. Her cheeks were slightly rosy from the cold and tiny snowflakes from the light snow clung to her wispy hair. Her eyes were uncertain and questioning above her unreadable smile. We continued to lock gazes for a long moment and I tried to will my eyes to say that I was looking at her, really looking at her. I wanted them to convey everything I couldn’t tell her at this distance, but I still wasn’t ready to articulate what that was. Somehow, in an interim I didn’t quite understand, my first reaction was not my own discomfort. I could only hope that would be enough, that the gap between us that my flight had laid bare was one we would be willing to cross. I couldn’t yet understand why I felt this way so our connection was easily broken by the sound of the doors of the hall of justice opening.
Her head hung low as she was carried by two officers with her elbows draped over their arms. Dark shadows highlighted her empty eyes that stared only towards the ground before her, unwilling to face the crowd. She wore neither a jeweled tiara nor any other royal finery. Instead grey rags that may as well been a ripped sack tied around her covered her body. To look at her you could believe she was a beggar who had been caught pick pocketing on the street. Her blond hair was sharp and hung down only halfway to her shoulders, becoming wavy at the end and was the only feature that still retained a level of stature. The king did not walk with her, he stood to the side of the gallows with a familiar group of court officials and the hangman. When what must have been the periphery of her green eyes that were darting anxiously under her stooped posture met his she flinched at his stern unforgiving face. She did not seem likely to cry or beg. She seemed more like someone whose words had ceased once they found themselves in an environment where they held no purpose.
She was dropped to her knees before the rope and the hangman began to fasten it around her neck. I felt as if I could hear the course gripping texture of the rope in its creaking as it swayed only slightly in its fixture. Again, there was a plea inside me to look, but different this time. I would not advert my eyes. She was surely deserving. For her simultaneous disrespect to her husband and the crown at once, for her mistreatment of her own son, and for giving little care towards the struggles of her own country for which she herself was a cause while living a reportedly flippant lifestyle. But, were any one of these verdicts an issue for me? I did not stand there to condemn a wicked woman. I stood before the gallows that day for the assurance that an obstacle would be removed, because, whatever spell I might have been under, I still deeply feared the unnamed scholar and his demon. Maybe only a day before I might have tried to advert my eyes from this truth, not in its entirety, but by placing it in my periphery the way I would the filth when I cleaned. But that day I would look until the very end if nothing else.
…And maybe that’s why…
“Seidria Thindril Slumnier, former queen of the nation of Hypnoise and daughter of Duke Rulerd Gravl of Unduroc, you are hereby sentenced to death by hanging for the crimes of treason, high infidelity, and abuse directed at royalty respectively. Due to the nature of your crimes you will not be permitted a defense, but, as is permitted for all citizens high or low, you are given leave to speak your last words before the court and the citizens of Monderlow. If there is anything you wish to be known before you are given to eternal silence, speak now.”
…My eyes picked up on it so quickly…for whatever it was worth…
She shook her head as her hair shadowed her eyes bowed low through the noose. Her pursed lips were pulled so taut that they wouldn’t let a breathe escape let alone a word. Damp salty splotches crested her eyes, but never formed tributaries down her face. Their shallow and almost dry sheen somehow pronounced a salty stinging feeling her visage painted, but even such a pitiful image wouldn’t be enough to pull in the eyes of the unmoved crowd beneath the currents of an undeserving heart.
I rubbed my eyes. Certainly, they could have only been playing tricks on me, but the vision that had slowly unfurled never faded. As the stark reality began settling into my stomach, dispersed anxious chatter leaked out of the stirring crowd in pulsing waves. Whether they had been whispering or holding their breath, I had imagined that they must have been confused as to what is was they were seeing. Afterall, The common person had never had the chance to witness the vibrantly colorful lines they left squirming in the ether ways, but I had been able to recognize them for what they were on sight despite my inability to comprehend why they were appearing before me in the stark light of day.
The first one appeared on her arm and it had given me the impression that it was acting as a vein or a nerve just beneath her skin, though on second look that impression must have been conceptual since it was clearly on the outside of her skin, almost fused to it. My mind swirled and I was pulled…no not pulled. It was different this time. It radiated out, far more powerfully than I had ever felt, and I was bombarded by unbearable empathic sensations.
The concept of what was or wasn’t deserved refused to process within me as my own prerogative was whitewashed by the guilt, shame, bitterness, and indignation. If the feeling had been so powerful that even I, who had been trained and accustomed to withstand it, was overwhelmed, I couldn’t have imagined how it must have been for the crowd around me. We felt the humiliation of being given over to another nation against our will. We felt the creeping uncomfortable despair of carrying the life fathered by a man we didn’t love within us. We felt disdain at the constant reminder of our misery running freely past our heels through the halls of the palace, carefree and unhindered. We felt a euphoric thrill in the embrace of the man who gave us a daydream that we could live within a separate life of our own choosing. We felt that daydream crash down around us by our own hand as the dark actions we had orchestrated in our petulance came back to haunt us.
Most of all we felt helpless as the forces that cornered us were operating far outside our autonomy and were not only unconcerned with us, but even with the sins we were being punished for. In everything we felt, we had not learned anything we didn’t already understand and neither did we learn anything that would absolve the woman of her actions, but it didn’t matter. Our understanding had been crushed under the heel of experience and subjugated and indeed many of us had already fallen to our knees, but the horror did not stop there.
For her part, as we had laid whimpering before her in an abstracted despondence, the queen had remained silent. Silent, but with a look of abject agony on her face. It might be that my analogy comparing the filth to nerves had not been as off the mark as I might have thought. More began to blossom over her body like a chain of fluorescent animated tattoos and as they writhed her body would arch and twist beyond its tolerance. Before long her limbs began to snap and crack and her form was stained and stretched into something hideously beastlike while retaining enough of her original appearance to create a nauseatingly uncanny feeling. She was morphing into some lithe humanoid monstrosity tinted with the color of reddish sinew and streaks of white bone bearing both a body and dress adorned with filth, but she was also breaking apart. In our ignorance, we couldn’t fathom what the end result would be, but it was clear even then that it would involve a carcass.
In our minds the horror of the queens melting form danced with the sensations that had already invaded us trapping us all in a feverish nightmare. But, I prayed, it would pass with the queen. Just like always it was only a matter of stomaching it, of living through the experience, and then, once autonomy had been returned to us, we could contextualize it back into understanding.
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But, I questioned to myself, would that really be all? A shadowy figure tried to coalesce in the back of my mind. It was a memory I couldn’t quite seem to form but when I reached for it a question sprouted in my head. Would this anomaly really have manifested just to punish the queen? As I held my throbbing head in my hand, I strained my eyes and searched through he chaos, looking not only at the filth, but anything else that might stand out.
I heard a change before I saw anything. It was the whistling of the Nachtenwarb, the wind on its wings and its song joined in harmony. The fractured sunlight on its sleek black wings speed by in front of the archway of the cathedral and from its shadow a stooped shadow arose. It was stooped for the angle of its broken neck and its scraggly hair and tattered scholars vestments curled in the breeze of the birds turbulence. When it stood it was holding a large tome in its hands and the image was picturesque of the insignia of the waking hour it wore on its lapel but its disfigured countenance made a mockery of the spirit the wise sage was meant to invoke. Its raspy grating voice came out at odds with its pompous oration, but its speech was all the more powerful for it.
“Oh, what miracle is this? People of Monderlow, behold! At last, that which you have so intently hidden away can no longer be swept into the obscure crevasses of dreams. But I know you. I know you will not rejoice at this opportunity to face what should have never been anything more than appendages of our souls. You will advert your eyes as soon as they are no longer entranced. You will bury the truth as soon as it decays. Is it any different than what you would have done to this woman? After all, how many gathered here today are not guilty of sins comparable to this woman’s? How many of you hold minds just as tainted? Then certainly this is not a gathering of justice but a ritual to gather that filth all into one place and erase it! Oh, but is it really right of me to blame you when even I might take the time to wipe my blotched face? So be it! Discard your refuse, wipe your feet, and move on, but know that if you are so willing to discard a living mind as carrion by the road side, then don’t complain when the crows come to feed upon it!"
A chill ran down my spine that was utterly distinct from the other horrors that had embraced me. It felt as if it was a quality of the air and not just my own heart that made me sink. There was a palpable crack in my neck and shoulders from the tension as I redirected my attention to the crowd behind me to meet the expected recipient of his words. It wasn’t hard to see through the crowd anymore since many of the packed bodies were on the ground. At the edge beyond them, right where my vision would be cut off from the infrastructure that hid the alleys, it stood as mesmerizing and indefinable as always. I could swear its feathery cloak had been furrowed but not swaying and its spindly legs had been moving without steps.
"Isn’t it time you were shown the price of this folly. Every time you advert your eyes they will only flinch all the easier when filth is once more placed in front of them, every time you polish your tables the stains will only show up more pronounced, and every time you purge your systems, they only become more prone to infection."
Beyond it, on the tops of the same buildings it had emerged from, I could see disfigured silhouettes standing tall and watching with demons of their own at their side. Even unable to make out their faces I had been sure they were no one I had known, but I had been equally sure I knew who they had been.
"Isn’t that a shame? We have been given this chance but it’s just going to slip through our fingers. But don’t you worry people of Hypnoise! I know you fear the sting of the injection, but you will walk so much easier once the filth has returned to your systems.”
He spread his hands wide as the glare of the sun caught the stained glass at his back and illuminated him. It was as if his arms were offering some intangible gift to us all.
“Come my friends. Let not this flower wilt but cultivate it instead into a lasting remedy. Now ask your question and grant your favor!”
The demon shifted through the crowd moving between one concentrated group to another, but not once had I heard the chittering whispers that would indicate it was asking its ominous question. If it was true that they made their solicitations to the wicked and the pitiful then certainly everyone who had been present would meet their criteria, but certainly there had been a mark more enticing than the rest. If we had been nothing but insects for them to hunt, then there had been a queen among us.
When it had finally reached the amphitheater and stood before the withering Queen Slumnier, my heart had sunk for a third and final time into an even deeper pit than I could have imagined. I knew then and there that the relationship between the accused and the witnesses had swapped inextricably. A world of reason where we could have cried for what was deserved no longer remained.
The cacophony of silent noise erupted from the weaving mouth of the demon. It was as quiet as a murmur, but I could hear plainly from where I had stood like the ever present noises that might betray the emptiness of a forest. In response tears finally broke out of the queen’s eyes as she let out a dry gasp that must have scratched her throat raw and nodded her head up and then down.
When she did an unexpected voice had wrung out in protest.
“NOOOOOOOO!”
Colonel Ray had charged out of the crowd in spite of the filth’s weight and pulled a short sword from out of the cloak he had worn around his civilian clothing. He thrust it towards the demon after leaping up the stairs, but it passed through its shadowy but tangible body as if it had been mist, and when his arm had made contact, it went limp and he had collapsed onto the ground foaming at the mouth.
It had been done. The deal had been made and no longer would there be any decay to remove the monstrosity from our sight or more importantly to save us from it.
But it had been more than that as, when she broke free of the noose and leapt with her strange thin limbs into the crowd, filth splashed like a puddle, infiltrating even further into the waking world. It had been clear as it should have been from the beginning. There would be no more cleaning the filth, not anymore.
But is that really true? The same inner voice that had haunted me that day had me question myself once again. Never stop looking I urged myself. If the filth is here isn’t there a place you need to check for any changes? Isn’t there a place where there might be something you could do?
The spell over the crowd had finally broken as they fled screaming in a frenzy. Their bodies had collided with one another as they trampled over those who had already collapsed and fainted. The possessed scrubbers and the scholar had already vanished following the queen as she both leapt and shifted with her demon out into the city proper leaving a trail of filth in her wake. The citizens left behind, the ones that had not already fled in terror, had been a mixture of distraught and paralyzed. And among them…
Karen stood as still as a statue. She had been smiling but lifelessly and Paula beat her fists against her with tears in her eyes. I could have almost believed Paula had been more distressed by the state her sister was in then everything that had taken place.
This had to come first before anything else.
“Karen! Paula!”
She had responded to my voice, but her voice was slack when she spoke.
“Douglass…it’s over isn’t it?… the dream.”
I had been confused for a moment before I realized what she had meant. She had assumed the filth in the outside world meant the end of the ether ways. The end of the one sacred place she could be together with her sister. I clasped my hands over her shoulders, but didn’t apply any strength into my grip as I earnestly looked into her eyes.
“Listen Karen it’s not dead it’s just…changed”
The word changed had jumped unbidden into my head. I had no proof, but I had never been more certain of anything.
“It’s been changed and right now we need to find out how. Don’t despair…before we’ve even looked.”
I had felt the words even as I spoke them as if I had been telling myself as much as Karen.
Karen’s eyes had seemed to come back into focus with a slight surprise. I think without really understanding, she had been shocked by hearing something real come from me for the first time. The expression on her face, how do I put this, it was as if her smile wiggled perhaps in an attempt to grit her teeth since a light had come to her eyes. I felt at that time that she had responded well to the idea that we could do something.
“You understand right. If it’s the filth, surely we’ll find some kind of answer.”
“Yes…let’s.”
How did it take me so long to realize how reassuring that smile could be. If only I had allowed it to be earlier.
Paula calmed down after seeing her sister break out of her stupor. In the chaos that had been unfurling within the city, nobody would pay any mind to three people making their way to the scrubber’s headquarters, but it would serve as the beginning of the first counter against the advent of filth.
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Far “above” Smaragdraum, light years from the bedlam of Monderlow, a cloaked figure hung at the edge of the universe as he took one last look at the planet despite his distance. He was concluding his ritual of writing down an excerpt in a journal after reaching the end of his visit to a new dimension. It made an odd picture taking into account both his own appearance and the space he stood in. In the journal he wrote nothing of the appearance of the planet or the band of emerald nodes that encircled it creating an array of consciousness that could play with the spirits of humans in their sleep. Despite the fact that he would swear up and down to have a disdain for “perfect balance” he was much more focused on the factors surrounding his little prank that didn’t add up into anything more than a simple role reversal. He was going to alter the dimension in some fashion no matter what, that was his whole purpose of traveling in the first place, but he did like to at least have some fun with it, though, in his own words, he would speak of artistic integrity.
It was nice that the celestial mind contained within the array was no longer confined to the ether ways and didn’t have to depend on its state any longer to proliferate, but that was just a side effect, never a goal. And as for those that have already attuned themselves to create hollow filth and channel its consciousness into themselves, they may find that in the new world in which the mind could project itself down onto the planet, they might find themselves capable of more than they would imagine.
The mysterious masked figure, Alteorn Trigxt, finished his latest journal entry and turned towards the abyss of the edge where not even space dust had reached and prepared himself to slip through the unfathomable bounds of infinite empty space into his next destination, but he hesitated a moment. No one could say why, but something about his recent visit had resonated with him so he did something he had never done for any of his other stops. He took the page he just wrote and ripped it out of the journal.
If he were to speak of it, he would say that the only objects that could exist inside an alien dimension were the gods, but there was an addendum to this. After all, if taken too literally then how would anyone be able to perceive his mask? Included to this rule along with himself was any object he created without the materials of a particular dimension and indeed any object that came from the universe of origin, naturally including this ripped sheet of paper. He let it go from his hand and, embraced in his power, it would fall like a leaf through the vacuum of space until it one day would come to a rest on the planet he had just left. There it would tell the descendants of those going through this time of change the story of the visitor who once walked unseen through their home. A simple story of two ships passing in the night.
