Archive of Our Own

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Time.

Rummy old thing, that.

In fact, one could make a salient argument that it is an even rummier old thing than Life. It is at least an older thing, although at a cursory glance it would seem that the latter is tightly woven with the former, that Time may be considered a sort of corridor that propels Life forward, that Life cannot happen without this framework of Time.

Except when it can.

To Sethys—and at this point, he was only reasonably sure that was his name, and Reason right now rather felt like the whites of an egg smashed in the palm of his hand, oozing through splayed fingers—Time was something, everything, nothing all at once. It was all he knew, it was nothing he knew. It was Life.

Being caught in the blast radius of an astronomically miscalculated Vas Tym Ex, a spell of the 9th circle with the rather unassuming name Time Breach, tended to blur such distinctions. Of course his fellow Ophidians were largely unaware of this particular side effect of this particular spell, as spells like this were considered Bad News. Vas Tym Ex was Forbidden Canon, unrecorded in legal grimoires and thus untested, no doubt due to the potential it had for irrevocably warping, even tearing holes clean through the fabric of the Time-Void Continuum.

Thankfully such effects were highly localized but incomparably destructive just the same—try to imagine, say, a large Ophidian temple and its immediate surroundings, instantaneously hoovered like cosmic biscuit crumbs through a vacuous aperture in the aforementioned. Sethys could say an awful lot about his predicament therein but one thing that he couldn’t say was that the spell name wasn’t sufficiently descriptive. As for the sort of News it heralded, being temporally ingurgitated wasn’t all that Bad, especially when compared to the harrowing fates of the temple’s other victims.

When Great Hierophant Sheshevra I founded the Temple of Tolerance, she did so with the explicit purpose of creating a refuge for all manner of misfits, whether they aligned with Chaos or Order or both or something else or nothing at all. For centuries thereafter, the outcasts of Ophidian society could take heart in knowing they would always have a home there, so much that when a band of malcontented Chaosites ransacked the Temple of Harmony and sent its last few adherents scattering to the seven winds, Tolerance was the first place Sethys thought to go while most of his colleagues fled to the Isle of Crypts, presumably to spend the rest of their cloistered lives dusting cobwebs off sarcophagi, rigging sarcophagi with exciting new traps, and working out novel but ultimately indecipherable ways to communicate the dangers of these exciting new traps to any Avatars who might think to plunder the place 8500 years in the future.

But as it turned out for Tolerance, moving all of those pariahs into one barely defensible place proved quite the boon for their enemies in Ethicality. The siege was brief, the subsequent invasion even briefer. The residents of Tolerance flew every shred of white fabric they could find in the place but this did not stop Order’s soldiers from slaying whomever they could within a handful of minutes, then stripping the few survivors of nearly everything they had and herding them into the temple basement, where many Automated hands were already making light work of transforming classrooms and closets into prison cells.

Sethys’s captors informed him of his sentence without emotion or appeal: For all his offenses—refusing to denounce Balance, espousing pacifism and withholding information critical to the war effort (whatever that meant)—he would be the last to be interrogated, probably tortured whether he cooperated or not, then finally allowed the mercy of death by burning unless they decided to hand him over to the Hierophant’s people in Shasavrah, where the whole process would repeat itself. Indefinitely, if Calithiss willed it.

Until then, he could only wait.

Until it happened: The whole Vas Tym Ex business, which Sethys supposed could count as a kind of rescue, although he was not precisely aware of the why or the who, whether it was an Order mage who made a rare mistake or if this was the overly-Enthusiastic handiwork of a would-be savior from Chaos, or even more improbably, one of his former fellows in Balance. The last cogent memory he had prior to the mishap was that of a face he could never forget, of the person responsible for leading the attack on the temple and imprisoning all within, of someone he once considered a friend.

One morning or evening or afternoon, for it was impossible to tell without the guidance of the sun or the moon or a lodestar or even a digital watch, he was jolted from a shallow and fitful nap by a woman’s face appearing like a spectre before his barred door, wan against the basement’s impenetrable darkness, horror-struck and screeching to the tune of:

He remembered the unnerving silence that followed.

He remembered waiting, for just a minute or two.

Until it happened: The whole Vas Tym Ex business, yes, though it may surprise one to learn that being swallowed up by a Time Breach doesn’t really look or sound or feel like anything terribly momentous. Bad News, yes, but nothing overtly painful at least. To Sethys, it was the curious sensation of being de-threaded, unraveled like a hand-knit woolen mantle he once wore daily until relatively recently, when a loosened bit of yarn got snagged on a lamp post and he failed to notice this until well after he’d left a meandering trail of yarn all the way down Free City Thiriastith’s main drag.

The mantle into which his own mother wove so much of her love and concern, reduced to a mere shoulder shrug. Heartbreaking at the time, but now it seemed somehow appropriate; Vas Tym Ex left him with nothing but Time and nothing to do but to take it. Fate would also take her own sweet time before dragging Sethys back into her intricate machinations—roughly eight and a half millennia, give or take a century or two, spent entirely in static solitude, forgotten in a frigid dungeon-ex-closet that used to house the Temple of Tolerance’s spare blankets and holiday decorations.

To his credit, Sethys always went for the academic approach when facing the vast unknown. He served his temple as a counselor and apothecary, but at heart he remained a scholar and one of Harmony’s finest—or at least one of their most willing to subject themselves to whatever ill-advised experiment they came up with to satisfy some arcane curiosity. Although he had to admit, learning what it feels like to get swallowed up by a Time Breach was not something he would have come up with on his own, it nevertheless appealed to the part of his brain that still cared about fine scholarship.

He was also an incurable optimist, usually at his own peril.

Alas, his entanglement with the Time Breach meant that he could no longer discern one second, minute, hour, year, decade, century from the next or the one before it, which made forming any kind of intelligible opinion on the phenomenon an impossible prospect. Either everything (or nothing) was (or was not) elapsing forwards or backwards, either instantaneously or infinitely. Without realizing, he transcended the need to eat or sleep or even subject his findings to a peer review. Meditation became sustenance enough but the sound sanctuary of his mind was fast undermined by a maddening desire to leave this place, to unearth himself like a ripened mandrake and draw a lungful of new air. To behold the grass, the trees, the morning sun softly filtering through them as it warmed the earth and roused the sparrows for their dawn chorus. A yearning so powerful, at times he believed that it too could melt iron bars, if only he could pray hard enough, if only the Great Earth Serpent could still hear him.

But more than any of this, of the fresh air and sunlight and chirpy little brown jobs, he wanted his old mantle back.

He’d even settle for just a shrug of the shoulders—he was so cold.

Perhaps he was still dreaming. Perhaps he never really stopped dreaming. Perhaps a part of him was simply adrift in the Void somewhere, a star so distant he could never be reached.

Except when he could.

The first cogent memory he had after the mishap was that of a face appearing like a spectre before his barred door, wan against the basement’s impenetrable darkness. A stranger this time, a dour-faced man in a fur-lined parka, hood drawn to keep out both the cold and the straying ashes from his torch. Its searing orange blaze made Sethys blench and cover his eyes.

The absolute reality of it was nearly too painful to bear.

“What is this?” demanded the man, his voice naturally paternal, marred with a hint of scorn that could be jarring for those who did not recognize him or his deeds elsewhere.

One could only imagine what was going through through the stranger’s head as he beheld Sethys, still clad in his clericals that spoke of an era so distant as to be alien. As the stranger repositioned his torch he noticed the dull glint of a discarded serpentine sword by the prisoner’s feet. Hardly a threat—it was practically more hilt than blade by this point, battered and blunted as if someone had once tried to break a hole through a stone wall with it.

“Please, please, t-thou must…” Sethys struggled mightily to crystallize some thought coherent enough to vocalize. “Thou must…”

“I must what—?” Furrowing his brow, the man leaned in closer to the bars, trying to get a better look inside. “Who are you?”

To his right, another hooded form emerged from the shadows, though his face remained completely concealed due in part to his impressive height. “To wonder if this is a ghost,” he rasped.

“Looks real enough to me,” said a third man, large and dark-skinned, leering from behind the first man’s left shoulder. Unlike the other two, he seemed almost jocund. “You some kinda ghoul? Shambling dead? Eh? Well, if you hunger for brains, I reckon you might be disappointed.”

“Quiet, Brunt,” said the first, impatience mounting. “I’ll ask again. Who are you?”

But Sethys continued to founder, paralyzed in a stubborn half-slumber. He wanted dearly to say something, something vitally important, but Time in this place was a riptide and it threatened to drag him under unless he could find some root strong enough to grasp, to help keep his head above the here and now.

The only thing he could really see was the flickering fire of that man’s torch. Focusing on that, he drew a shivering breath and spoke steadily:

“The… The Chaos Hierophant.”

The man’s eyebrows lifted in genuine surprise. “Is that so?”

“No! I mean—” Sethys tried again, regaining lucidity with every snap of the flame, “—the Chaos Hierophant is in terrible trouble! Yes, ‘tis the Consortium of New Logic, they’ve allied with the Dark Monks and they plan to assassinate him at the Temple of Enthusiasm, during the Harvest Moon wreathing!”

Until his imprisonment here, Sethys’s role in uncovering this plot was the most prominent episode in an otherwise humble and uneventful life. It all began shortly after the Temple of Harmony dispersed and he traveled to the Isle’s northern coast, to Tolerance…

…but, surely this already happened? Sethys sensed something slipping through his hands—he was losing his grip on Time, realizing that this episode was over, long over, long ago, and that he did indeed report his findings to Hierophant Isskevahash on the eve of his assassination at the Temple of Enthusiasm:

Ah yes…! That thing, still nestled comfortably within an inner pocket of Sethys’s dustcoat as it somehow escaped the notice of those who arrested him. It was but a simple orb of moonstone, hypnotically pretty, a milky blue color with a strange schiller, like starlight dappled across the surface of a calm midnight sea.

Its existence was a secret that, as far as Sethys knew, had stayed safe with him after all this time.

This was just as well, for its original owner could not be swayed. Isskevahash swore to embrace his destiny as it terminated with the assault on the Temple of Enthusiasm, spearheaded by the Order Hierophant herself. The man was dead within hours, his subjects as inconsolable as hornets getting a boot to the nest. The war escalated to nightmarish heights of atrocity. Sethys himself was arrested at the Temple of Emotion while trying to protect his own sister, then brought back here, just before…

…his fumbling hands found another root and held fast to it, this time sturdy and strong enough to support the full weight of consciousness. Sethys felt some part of himself snapping into place like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

Meanwhile, the stranger continued to lour, his expectations disintegrating rapidly. Alas, Time Breaches were beyond his comprehension, not unlike the muddled babbling of an apparent madman.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” he tutted in mock concern. “An assassination of a hierophant? I’m afraid you’re several thousand years too late for that, Ophidian.”

“Ophidian? Tch. Use yer bonce, boss,” said the one called Brunt.

The first man, now identified as the group’s leader at least, ruffled irritably. “I told you to stop calling me that, we’re not common mercenaries—well, maybe you are.”

“Of course! Ain’t that why you hired us? Lord Batlin?” Brunt produced a lopsided grin. “Anyroad, seems we’re dealing with some kind of lunatic,” he continued. “Maybe a fur trapper who got, uh, trapped, right? Went off his bonce down here livin’ off rats and worms, that kinda thing.”

“He could be,” said Batlin, idly studying Sethys up and down. “He could also be precisely the thing we’ve been seeking.”

“Nah, boss. Use yer bonce! He ain’t jibberin’ and slobberin’ enough to be one of them Banes. Least not like that other one we caught. Eh, Palos?”

It was the very tall, faceless figure who responded to that name. “To not sense a Bane here, no. To think he is perhaps a restless spirit, a ghost,” he said. “To sense that these ruins are reeking of strange magics. To believe they are haunted.”

“I am not a ghost, and I’m certainly not a Bane,” Sethys insisted, pressing his face against the bars. “I know what I am. I am but an ordinary man who doth not know not when he is anymore. Dost thou understand?”

“When…?” repeated Brunt, dubiously.

Batlin reached out a gloved finger and poked at Sethys’s cheek. What he felt was a deeply voltaic zap!—imagine touching a cat's head after spending 8000 years dragging one's feet across a dry carpet—complete with a live white spark that flinched all present.

“He is corporeal, at least,” he reported, shaking the numbness out of his hand.

But Brunt wasn’t satisfied. “Mate. What do you mean, when?”

“I mean something terrible happened here, long ago. Or, perhaps not as long ago as it doth feel to me. Sometimes it doth not feel long ago at all, other times ‘tis a yawning chasm of centuries since last I saw the sky. Listen thou to thy companion when he speaks of strange magics! Time matters naught in this place!” he told them, urgently. “Oh, mind thou not my nattering. Art thou here to release me or didst thou come to finish the job that Elissa started?”

“Release you?” Brunt snorted. “Why, so you can go off yer bonce on us next, yeah? Hah! Yer dreamin’, mate And we’re leavin’, post haste!”

“To not remember agreeing on that,” muttered Palos. “To defer to Batlin, as always.”

To this, Batlin appeared contemplative, carefully stroking his chin. “Hmm. Interesting. Very interesting.”

“Dost thou believe me, then?”

“I do, yes! I’ve seen stranger things on my travels,” Batlin stretched a hand through the bars again, this time for a brazen pick and prod at Sethys’s sleeve and coat collar—no zap! this time. “And now, to meet and converse with such a perfectly preserved specimen from such an infamously lost civilization? It would seem to me that there was indeed a kernel of truth within the Xenkan prophecies after all.”

“What prophecies, boss?”

“To know that Brunt was not listening to the Xenkans when they spoke of them,” said Palos. “To remember that Brunt was too busy trying to peep into a female monk’s—”

“—yeah yeah, to keep on talkin’ if you wanna become tomorrow’s demon roast,” Brunt growled.

“To like to see you try.”

“That’s enough, lads!” Batlin roared, jiggling his torch threateningly, licking the air with its flame.

“Hey hey, watch it! Sorry, boss! Sorry!”

“To be sorry,” Palos added, “but not wrong…”

“Stupidity incarnate,” Batlin grunted to himself as he tried to settle things down. “I’ll have you know, this place is enough of a drain on my precious little sanity without your generous assistance.”

“‘s like I told you before, boss. ‘s what happens when you blow all your money on brawn: You got nothin’ left over for brains,” Brunt grinned again, showing an irregular array of teeth.

Batlin seethed, silently for everyone’s sake. And he chewed and chewed on his lower lip until his tidy goatee began to warp; at least Deadeye had the good sense not to come down here and make the mood even more murderous.

“To not recall what the monks said exactly,” Palos resumed cautiously, also for everyone’s sake. “To recall that their story sounded highly improbable.”

“Ahem. Yes. It struck me as a load of applesauce at the time as well, some meaningless mumbo-jumbo from a half-crazed laundress about dark magic and ritual sacrifice and communion with this realm’s rubbish snake gods—”

“—rubbish?” Sethys’s eyes flared wide open. “I beg thy pardon!”

“No? We aren’t Ophidians, are we? After all, your people all killed themselves centuries ago,” Batlin went on, coldly. “Therefore you can’t hardly expect us to give a single toss about you or your failed society, only the immense power you evidently wielded at the height of it.”

“What power?”

“I speak of the Wall of Lights, ancient.”

Sethys took one wary step backwards, out of reach from any more wandering hands. “That thou wouldst dare to speak of such things with so little regard for purpose or meaning,” he countered. “Thou wouldst insult our ways, but plumb our tombs, steal our secrets just the same.”

Batlin nodded. “True, but I was hardly the first to do so. Have a look at this,” he said as he began to root through the dowdy leather kit bag hanging off Palos’s shoulder. “The people who colonized this accursed place in the wake of your destruction have been stealing your relics since they first broke ground, passing them around the place like party favors. You have no secrets anymore, child. See?”

He unearthed his prize from the bag and displayed it—a chunk of yellowed bone, hefty and imposing, such that even a large man like Batlin needed both hands to hold it.

Although Sethys had only see this particular relic once or twice, he recognized it instantly by shape alone: “A serpent’s jawbone,” he said, quietly noticing that Batlin had even managed to install a few of its teeth. “Where didst thou find that?”

“Where? Why, some other man who would insult your ways and steal your secrets, who else?” said Batlin. “Now perhaps you might think me in the wrong to perpetuate the extraordinarily brazen chain of thefts that saw this treasure moving from one grotty pair of hands to the next. But I would challenge you to answer, does it even matter anymore? Does it truly? Because I would venture that the only thing that matters now is that I own it, which means that I am free to wield all the power it holds.”

Brunt burst into a loud and bitter peal at his leader’s stumping. “Hear hear! Look at Lord Batlin, wielding all that ancient power! Or at least he will be, soon as he works out how to actually use the blasted thing…”

Batlin’s mouth became a tight, thin line, stretching from cheek to cheek in his desperate attempt to remain unfazed. He considered his own brand of villainy to be a cut above the churlish clowning of his hired hands. He always regretted hiring them, always, though they did serve a purpose in that they made him look much more sophisticated than he actually was.

He sighed through clenched teeth. The likes of Brunt was enough to make him wish for the likes of Hook and Forskis, and that was saying something.

“What matters is that when the sorry remnants of the Ophidian people abandoned this place, they left their most precious, most terrible secrets laid bare for all to see,” he pressed on, valiantly. “Their artifacts, their gods sundered through dark rituals and crystallized into pure animus made manifest, tangible and brimming with such magical puissance that they can rise ordinary men to the ranks of the gods, through the Wall of Lights, yes—!”

Sethys only blinked, left agape with a feeling that he could not describe adequately, if at all. Perhaps the academic approach would be in order here as well—after all, he’d never heard such fascinating misconceptions about his own culture before.

Sundered gods…? Well yes, surely Batlin was referring to those beings the Ophidians called Banes, divine constructs that embodied each of the anti-Forces of Chaos or Order. The acolytes of Balance were the first to posit that such anti-Forces existed as a natural consequence of Free Will and were as crucial to the maintenance of Balance as the Forces themselves. However, the Banes were another matter entirely, wholly unnatural, purposelessly vicious entities that could only come into existence via the ritual sundering of their respective Serpent deities.

During the heyday of Ophidian civilization, the Bane was a purely theoretical notion, an academic exercise with no true basis in reality. Those were the days of Balance after all, where nothing—least of all the pursuit of fine scholarship—could ever be deemed a worthy enough cause to justify slaying one of their own gods.

A preposterous notion, a certain necromage might have said, had he lived long enough ago to participate in such a debate. Comprehensively preposterous, through and through.

But that heyday came and went, as heydays are wont to do, long long ago. The Banes were now anything but theoretical, but this came as no shock to Sethys. At the time of his arrest the cogs of war started to churn in a frightening direction, after Order’s newly deployed Masters of Discipline promised to turn an equal scrimmage into an all-out massacre. Although Sethys had aligned himself with Tolerance by then (as a matter of Ethics, thus preserving Harmony), even he understood that when it came to the art of waging war, Order was simply better suited for it. Sure enough, their forces quickly dominated those of Chaos and claimed the ultimate spoil of victory: To capture and trisect the enemy’s accursed god.

As Order rent the Chaos Serpent asunder, his cry of defeat echoed through the entirety of the Void and all it touched, in all dimensions. Sethys heard it in his own imprisonment, a rare moment of understanding though he could not say precisely when it happened; he knew it had to have been centuries ago but that keening was as fresh in his own mind as tomorrow’s breakfast…

But what of Batlin’s babel about pure animus, crystallized, made manifest…? Well yes, as Sethys’s fellow acolytes once purported, the Banes had to be contained within specialized crystal structures upon their creation, which would then be sealed within an impenetrable sarcophagus (preferably made of blackrock) stationed in the temple of that Bane’s opposing force. Otherwise the Bane would escape and search for a suitable host, some warm body (preferably serpentine but any living creature would do) through which they could slake their thirst for turmoil.

As an ordained acolyte of Balance, Sethys held some general knowledge of the processes involved in safely containing a Bane, but only some. The details were so arcane and so closely guarded, and so exacting that a single mistake could render unthinkable consequences for the world at large.

Meanwhile, this Batlin character had yet to work out something as comparatively simple as a serpent’s jawbone. It wasn’t a good sign.

And the Wall of Lights, yes…? Well, that was just a gate to the Void, really, and the Void was what it was. A means of apotheosis? Not likely. One would only get out of it what one would put into it. And most Ophidians had the good sense not to put things into it that they did not want coming out of it later.

From all of this, Sethys could only draw one rational conclusion: Clearly the man didn't give a single toss about fine scholarship.

It would be to his own peril.

“Still, I understand thee not. What is it precisely that thou dost intend to accomplish with such a motley of relics?” he had to ask.

“Do you really have to ask, Ophidian?” Batlin leaned in further, his jowls stretching against the bars, his voice low and hateful. “Is it not obvious?”

Sethys peered back at the man, dumbfounded.

“Then know that I serve a higher power, one who possesses the power to consume all, to destroy all, to create all, to bend all to his authority.”

“Who?”

“The Guardian!”

“Oh. Pray, forgive mine ignorance.” Sethys shrugged.

“No matter. Know that the Guardian makes your bickering cosmic snakes look like an impotent bolus of drowned earthworms,” Batlin sneered. “And know that I intend to surpass him.”

“That doth sound like a risky venture, if thou dost not mind my saying so. That thou shouldst overthrow thy master, and perhaps become a god thyself in the process…”

“Yes.”

“Using the Chaos Banes and a serpent jawbone…”

“Yes.”

Sethys hesitated. “…and, the Wall of Lights…?”

“Especially the Wall of Lights!” Batlin hissed.

“Boss!” Brunt butted in. “Don’t forget, the blackrock serpent!”

“Yes! I also have in my most coveted possession, the sacred blackrock serpent, Ophidian symbol of fathomless power untold!”

“A blackrock serpent! Really!” gasped Sethys. “Which one, I wonder?”

“Which one…?" In that moment, a hint of unease sullied Batlin's swagger. He recovered quickly: "The… The sacred one, you artless half-wit!” An outburst that elicited a chorus of chuckles from his minions. “Honestly for an Ophidian, you don’t seem terribly knowledgeable. Did your peers also consider you an artless half-wit? Poor thing. How very little you must have known about your own dweomercraft.”

Sethys acquiesced with a single, knowing nod. The feeling would be fleeting, but for now he would cherish his newfound appreciation of being imprisoned, if only because it meant he did not have to share his company with anyone more troublesome than himself. “Thou’rt not wrong, milord,” he said. “In my day I was no sorcerer but a humble cleric, I am sorry to report.”

“Sorry indeed. And here I was, hoping you would be able to provide some assistance to my cause.” Batlin tutted, mocking disappointment. “Who knows? If only you had the right sort of ambition and the strength to weaponize it, perhaps you too could rise to great heights by my side. A living Ophidian could be a worthy asset, if only for the reagents I might save by not having to cast so many Translate spells…”

“‘tis a shame, really. Nevertheless, this artless half-wit wishes thee the best of luck in accomplishing the most, uh, favorable outcome for thine endeavors.” Sethys smiled sadly, though he could not deny the sense that he’d dodged a rather large and odious missile. “I would see thy path blessed for the days to come, but in the absence of the Great Earth Serpent, thou must content thyself with my prayers alone.”

He said this knowing that a cad like Batlin would only turn up his nose and scoff at such a boon, but at least the cad did so quite professionally, with disdain practiced to the caliber of mastery; even his harrumph could curdle the kindest soul.

“Harrumph. Yes, I suspect this will be as much blood that I can wring from this peculiar little stone. Come along, men,” he said, gathering himself for the long journey elsewhere. “This detour was a lost cause, and Deadeye awaits us up top. No doubt he wonders what kept us down here so long.”

“A dead end?” Brunt guessed, following in his master’s wake.

“Too right, Brunt! Too right…”

❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧✤☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙☙

EPILOGUE

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The next cogent memory he had was that of a face appearing like a spectre before his barred door—this time it belonged to a hideous crimson nightmare of a demon, coalescing through the basement’s impenetrable darkness.

At first, Sethys was nearly too preoccupied with plaiting his long hair to notice. Up and down and back up again, for hours, days, months, years on end, his fingers working through each braid like prayer beads, his thoughts equally circuitous.

But he did notice soon enough, for the universe hosts vanishingly few beings who possess the sheer power of will to escape the wishes and wiles of the likes of the Guardian, and what the Guardian wished at the moment was to be noticed.

Sethys… His voice as imposing as his stony countenance.

“Ah!” Sethys yelped and dropped his work.

Sethys Esshalshamesh… the Guardian spoke again.

“Y-yes?”

Sethys, the Incorruptible… … (Oh no, not this one too, thought Sethys, mortified) … …Yes. Yes, I do see it now, what your insipid master was prattling on about…

“W—who—”

Silence, Time-dweller. My particulars are of no consequence to you. Furthermore I did not lower myself and assume this stunted form simply to make idle conversation. Rather, I must debase myself further and inform you that I require your assistance with a serious matter. Will you cooperate?

Although the Guardian’s tone softened perceptibly with this request, he did not smile. Sethys doubted that such a creature, with such leathery and scabrous skin, could ever manage such a gesture. It seemed that he could only wait for a response, and he would do so indefinitely in his predatory silence, glaring at the spaces between the bars with his eyes like amber beads, lit from within like votives of distilled malice.

“I do not understand. What could I possibly do for one as evidently important as thee?” Sethys answered, after some prolonged hesitation and more than a little exhaustion; only two visitors over the past 1500 years and they both had such embarrassingly high opinions of themselves, didn’t they?

Nothing. Not unless you are willing to humor my curiosity, Time-dweller. Nothing more, insisted the Guardian.

“I can but try. Of what matter dost thou inquire?”

Did you, perchance recently, encounter a fellow by the name of Batlin…?

Sethys indeed remembered the name; it impinged on his memory like a fresh bruise. “I did,” he said, “though I know not how long ago, thou must understand. Seest thou, this temple—”

—yes, yes, the Time Breach. I know all about that. The Guardian waved it off with a single hand, which also seemed to simply materialize against the fathomless black of the basement. Waste not my time, Sethys. And tell me what this Batlin said to you. Spare no remembered detail.

“Yes. Uh, well. ‘twas some unknown period of time ago when he arrived here. The first person I have seen in—”

Was he alone?

“No sir—err, how should I address thee, by the by?”

Make no attempt. Does a cockroach ask the Wielder of the Slipper how he should be addressed before he brings Death upon his puny little head?

“F-fair enough. But no, he was not alone. Two others followed him, and perhaps another awaited him upstairs. At first I had them taken for a band of tomb raiders or some such, but…” Sethys stammered lightly at first, in his struggle to organize and recount every minute of his meeting with the sage and his minions. To his dismay, the Guardian gave no physical indication of interest in the proceedings—not so much as a little nod or lift of the brow.

That is, until Sethys neared the end of his strange tale: Meseems that he hath hatched some bizarre scheme to overthrow his own god, were the words he said that at last piqued the Guardian’s attention.

Oh? His own god? Is that right?

“He did say so himself, yes. Something along the lines of, I intend to surpass him, and by him, he meant some deity whom he called The Guardian.”

The Guardian. He said The Guardian, specifically? Exactly? Precisely?

Sethys nodded. “Yes, yes, and yes. ‘tis not a god with whom I may profess any familiarity, but that is what he said, yes—”

—PIG!!

The Guardian’s roar reverberated into infinity, rattling the very bones of the Void (to say nothing of Sethys’s own severely frayed nerves). But, even the most monstrous echos will diminish into silence when given enough time; the air in the basement soon stilled, until no trace remained of the Guardian’s explosive ire.

He even smiled.

Not you. Come now, and do not cower so. You have been very helpful to me, Sethys.

“I… I have?”

Yes. And for your most worthy assistance in this matter, I would love nothing more than to give you a fitting reward. Alas, it would seem that my budgetary parameters are immutable until the next fiscal reconciliation.

Sethys, without consciously realizing it, had already mashed his relatively fragile body as far back against the wall as it could possibly go. He dared not agree nor disagree with what this creature told him; he could only croak in dread and hope for the best.

Come to think of it, that seemed to be his modus operandi for a lot of things…

“No worries there. We acolytes tend to avoid seeking material gain. Though, if it is thine utmost wish to repay the favor, though couldst but unlock this cell door for me…”

Immutable, yes yes, totally immutable, alas, alas… repeated the Guardian as his form faded like thinning ink, dissolving into the shadows from whence he sprung.