Chapter 21: Chapter 21: Crossing Over

 

The elf stares with wide eyes at the wreckage.

 

Broken wood, twisted metal struts, and other destroyed constructions of the like jut out in all directions, as if she were amidst a wasteland.

 

Screams fill the air; the caravan has come to a sudden stop in the ambush. The crashing of the carriages, tripped up by debris thrown into the way, had flung her out of her seat and straight across a clearing, where she rolled and flopped over a few times before coming to a stop in the grass, covered in scratches and marks.

 

“…Ah…” mumbles Shauhska, her head spinning with dizziness and nausea as she sits upright, holding her forehead, strands of loose, matted hair falling down past her face as she watches in blurred vision as people fight. Humans and monsters of the darkness engage in frenzied combat, which is being won by the latter.

 

The elf blinks heavily once, tightly pressing her eyes closed for a moment in order to let her vision reorient itself by the time she opens them again a second time.

 

By then, the fighting has mostly stopped. The animals that pulled the caravan along have been put to silence, and the people aboard it are being dragged off into the dark forest around them, screaming as they claw into the dirt.

 

Shaushka sits there in the dead grass of the forest, looking at the trail she left behind herself where she rolled over after impact.

 

— Her vision of the spot is blocked as something large and imposing moves. Beads, strung together on chains of bone, click and clack in the night like a baby’s rattle as the giant moves — moving, gliding, more like a ghost than like a person or a beast, which is bound by steps and strides.

 

The elf tilts her head, staring quietly as she sits there.

 

Is this the next thing?

 

Minute by minute, the night loses its voice as the last people are wrenched out of their hiding spots and torn into the darkness by so many monsters, all of which simply ignore her, together with the odd survivor who tries to run away past her and past the giant too.

 

Then, after a time, it is done, and all that is left is the voice of crackling fire, spreading from broken lanterns and lost torches.

 

The entity, the giant mockery of the shape of a man, adorned in the regalia of the old kings of the deep forests, turns its head away from the destruction to look over its shoulder and then down towards her.

 

Shaushka blinks.

 

“Ah?” she asks.

 

The monster silently turns its head away, looking back into the darkness before moving, gliding away towards the north.

 

She rubs the back of her head and then her sore back and bottom as she gets up, her hand covered in the same ash and mud that paints her body as she rises to her feet, watching the Demon-General vanish into the ashen, scorched woods.

 

The elf looks around herself, not seeing anything else. She shrugs and then runs after the levitating spirit and the screams, wondering where they’re going to bring her next.

 

---

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Swain sits, his hand resting on his massive fist as he stares at the windows that have appeared through his great and terrible efforts of… sitting quietly on his throne.

 

The man looks back out over his throne-room, at the Gallu who stand there and clap. The spirits hovering all around them fly, recoiling in their ever-present terror.

 

“Save your praise,” says Swain, watching as their bodies grow to match his strength, as they are tied to his level as his loyal servants. “This power means little,” he says, staring back down at the paper on his lap, the edges of the sheets crumbling and smoldering from the heat of his body, tufts of smoke rising into the air.

 

“The humans are progressing well, my lord,” says Cartouche. “They’ve reached floor twenty,” explains the dancer. “Only ten floors separate them from us now,” she remarks. Swain looks back up at her. “Should we construct more floors? It would be trivial,” says the demon, as magic condenses around the tips of her fingers, already starting to sway in a dance that is meant to flow into her body.

 

He lifts a hand, stopping her. “No,” says the Demon-King, interrupting her.

 

“My lord?” she asks.

 

The Demon-King looks down at his writing. “The greater work is a sum of many parts, Cartouche,” explains the horrific monstrosity. “Each piece belongs to one of us. It is important that no voice reaches dominance over the others,” says the Demon-King, his fingers tapping against the throne as he thinks. “Each of you has contributed one section of the whole,” explains the beastly king.

 

“I haven’t!” says Kirsch, the ghost.

 

He looks at her. She is indeed one of his servants, but she is not a gallu. She is something entirely different. “Thank you, Kirsch,” says the Demon-King. “But this is not something you can contribute to, I am afraid,” he explains, looking at the ghost.

 

She lacks an artist’s soul. She is merely a being that exists, joyous and carefree and capable of escaping the ugliness of humanity, yes, but incapable of producing a piece upon the canvas as she lacks the drive, the passion, and the desire to create at all costs.

 

She frowns as he looks back down at his poems.

 

One castle per king. One section per gallu.

 

These rules are perhaps arbitrary, but they are his. The Demon-King plays fair. To utterly crush humanity, to simply wipe them out as he could very well do isn’t something beautiful. What’s beautiful is the story, the attempt, and the act of their climbing and fighting towards the spire of his cruelty with every drop of blood and sweat in their body, only to then be crushed at the precipice — or not.

 

This is what is beautiful about the act in the play that is happening here on the stage he has set.

 

It’s not about the act of winning or losing. As he is going to win anyway, that much is certain.

 

It’s about the act of doing so beautifully.

 

Swain’s eyes on his body shift, sensing something in the distance. The Demon-King lifts his head, staring off to the side for a time, looking at and through a wall.

 

---

 

 

The floor shakes beneath her feet, the gilded metal of the great bowl creaking as it moves, hanging downward with the weight of the thousands of people who stand in it. Violent energies press past her face, whipping the strands of her azure hair back behind herself as she holds her hands out ahead of herself, shooting a torrent of water across the chasm towards the beast on the other side — a serpentine monstrosity with no scales of its own. Rather, in the place of each scale is a face, a porcelain mask.

 

It writhes, lashing and whipping out as the faces all along its body change, moving from expressions that carry smiles to those that carry screams in some places, while other masks carry the smirks of clever children and others the harrowed faces of mothers who have lost their young. Thousands of faces, masks, turn and move to face them from the other side of the scales, from the other bowl.

 

Floor twenty of the Demon-King’s castle lies in a great chasm, in the middle of which stands a statue of the spirit of justice, larger and grander than any monument ever hewn by man and standing taller than mountains with its impossible height.

 

Hanging from her hand is a two-bowled scale that acts as a bridge between the two floors, above and below. On one side of the scale is them, the crusade and on the other is the beast with one million faces.

 

“COUNTER!” yells a voice in the crowd as the serpent rises, sending hundreds of its masks flying into the air from the impact of their spells and arrows. The fallen masks, the broken faces that have crumbled off of itself lie in the scale all around it, revealing a mass of writhing eyes beneath its shell. The revealed eyes pulsate, gyrating sickly in circular motions, filling the air with a wet squirming, squishing squelching. The mouths on its body, made up of porcelain, move.

 

Ruhr looks around herself as the air shakes and the mind-influencing magic of the beast flows towards them in its counter-attack.

 

“Ruhr! Ruhr!” calls a voice to her side.

 

The elf stops, lowering her hands, and looks around herself at the crusade, all of them having been with her a moment ago in their thousands in number. There they still remain, all present but changed.

 

All of them are wearing masks of varying expression, born of the same porcelain as those that cover the boss monster’s exterior. They look around at one another in confusion, seeing that they’re all covered in these things. Ruhr touches her face with her wet fingers, feeling the glass exterior there too, covering her skin in an expression she can’t know, as she can’t see it.

 

Whose voice was that?

 

It wasn’t Zac’s.

 

Ruhr blinks, looking around herself and then towards the other scale where the boss was a moment ago, a titan. It’s gone now.

 

The scales, unbalanced, begin to realign, their scale lowering itself into the abyss below.

 

“Get this fucking thing off me!” yells someone to the side, panicking as they claw at their face, their panic spreading to those around them as people fall into chaos.

 

“Ruhr,” says a familiar voice.

 

“Zac!” calls Ruhr, looking at the man. “How did you recognize me?” she asks. The man reaches over, lifting up a strand of her long hair.

 

He shakes his head. The strong, plain face of humble neutrality adorning his head. “Your weird hair is hard to miss in a crowd,” says Zacarias.

 

“Wow. You’re such a romantic, Zac,” replies Ruhr snarkily, pulling her hair back out of his fingers. “That face suits you, by the way.”

 

“I should say the same,” replies Zacarias, turning to look at the scale opposite theirs, where the boss is missing. The other scale is rising up into the air, whereas theirs is sinking, presumably to a place that is very bad, if she knows the Demon-King and, honestly, she thinks she’s sort of pinned him down a bit at this point.

 

She blinks.

 

“Wait, what’s mine?” she asks, feeling her face.

 

“Don’t worry about that,” says Zacarias. “What the hell is this?” he asks, receiving a very well thought out shrug in return.

 

The scales seperate further.

 

“We’re too heavy,” replies Ruhr. “Should we throw some people off?” she asks, pointing over her shoulder.

 

Zacarias grabs her wrist, pulling her pointing hand back down. “We will not.”

 

“Ooh, do that again, Big Daddy Zac,” says Ruhr, moving her wrist that he’s gripping tightly.

 

“Get a grip, Ruhr,” replies the man, letting go of her and shaking his head. “We’re about to die.”

 

“Exactly,” she replies, as he looks around for a solution as they descend down lower and further towards the darkness below, in which an eternal gnashing of teeth can be heard, coming ever closer and closer. The void is like water full of hungry monsters, and their bowl is dropping towards it, ready to be filled to the brim with screams and claws. “This might be my last chance, Z-”

 

Ruhr stops, as Zacarias’ hand now suddenly rests softly on the side of her face that he is shamelessly touching. “- Z… Zac…” mumbles the elf, her ears softly drooping as he looks down at her from up close. Something warm squirms in her gut. The two of them stare for a moment.

 

Was his hand always this big? It feels like it’s covering her whole face. It’s… He’s…

 

— His fingers grab the edge of the mask, ripping it off of her face with ease. It comes off as if nothing had ever held it in place.

 

Indifferently, Zacarias looks at the mask, which is very clearly painted in the expression of a spoiled, crying child throwing a tantrum, and then simply tosses it over his shoulder and into the void, shrugging.

 

The others of the crusade, seeing this or having figured the trick out themselves, do the same. The masks can’t be removed by oneself; it always requires someone else, someone with a different expression than the one any individual is wearing.

 

“It’s a metaphor,” explains Guardsman Zacarias, looking up as the great scales slowly rebalance themselves as hundreds of heavy masks are torn off of faces and cast into the darkness. “You know the Demon-King loves this kind of pagean- Will you knock it off?!” he barks, looking down at Ruhr, who is hammering against his armor with her fists and kicking at his bad leg at the same time, her mouth chewing on his hand like an animal as she glares up at him.

 

The scales wobble as they come to equilibrium, and the masks, which they had cast into the void, float back up as if they were disembodied heads, returning to the great, roaring beast on the other side as the fight continues now that they’re on even footing.

 

---

 

 

The wizards run around behind him, preparing their grim work.

 

Amazing!

 

Look at it. It’s not giving an inch.

 

Hot, scorching winds roll past him, rising up out of the massive ravine that he stands on the edge of. The hot air crawls up from below, as if the spirits of demons from the pits of hell were reaching around his legs as they come unto the continent. The drop before him is long and substantial, being far more than enough to kill any man or beast. Down in the distant valley below, there is a river that runs through it. Peribsen watches as the long, corded suspension bridge sways back and forth across the valley. It’s not just a simple rope bridge, like you’d find in any old hick town with a few bumps and hills.

 

No. This here is the sum total of his life’s work.

 

He’s spent years planning this construction out, years begging for funding and crawling around noble estates, trying to convince them of the economic promise this bridge would bring them.

 

This chasm has always been a large problem with the nation’s trade routes. There’s simply no easy way across it, and a conventional bridge, given the length, would have been far too expensive given the unique geographic constraints of the area. The high winds and the strong pressures involved in a span like this needed special ideas to surmount.

 

Peribsen holds a hand against the frame, watching it sway in the air.

 

The Demon-King’s rise has caused an unusual cascade of biological and climate phenomena. Ignoring the demons and the monsters and everything else, the sheer heat radiated by the monster’s presence, together with the perpetual night that covers the world, has led to a massive temperature exchange. Slowly, over the course of these few days, everything outside has been losing its stored heat, growing cold to the point of almost freezing.

 

But there is a central generator of heat, which is the Demon-Core. Add in to that the heat generated by human settlements and cities, the gatherings of millions of people, there have been actual shifts in the passive air currents of the world to a notable extent.

 

Especially here.

 

The hot air coming from below from the natural hot-springs in the lower valley rises up past the bridge in an updraft, past his wide-open eyes that stare in childlike wonder, as it comes to meet the cooling air of the night that falls down back over all of it like a smothering blanket.

 

Peribsen gets down on his knees, crawling forward to look over the edge.

 

— But not down at the valley; instead, he looks at his bridge. It’s a masterpiece. It’s his great work, the fruit born of his soul, his gift to the world. This bridge is the reason he was put on this planet.

 

He observes the fasteners below, wrenched deeply into the rock of the cliffsides, as the suspended body of the bridge sways in the violent currents. His hand rests on a beam, feeling the movements running through its body, coursing into his fingers as if it were a living pulse, a rising of a chest full of breath and as it sways, groaning back the other, he exhales together with it as if they were both the extension of one another.

 

It’s just… It’s just… So…

 

“…Amazing…” mutters Peribsen, his strands of sharply clumped, straight woodland-black hair blowing in the heavy winds that steal his words and breath. He turns his head, looking at a man standing there. “You know, conventional ropes couldn’t hold this weight,” he explains, nodding his head to the bridge. The wizard, who hadn’t said a thing, looks his way. “We thought about chains first, but they would’ve been too heavy and too bulky. The metal would have rusted and worn through eventually. Too dangerous and risky to replace,” explains the engineer, unprompted, as he looks back at the construction, dancing in the air despite the impossibility of it, like a wingless angel adrift atop the sea. “So we used Vildt hair.” Peribsen gestures with his hands. He plucks out a piece of grass, holding the blade between his fingers on both ends. “Human hair, even fashioned into a rope, has a very poor tensile strength,” explains the engineer, pulling on the blade of grass until it pops in the middle. “But Vildt hair…”

 

“Uh…” starts the wizard.

 

Peribsen ignores him and takes another blade of grass, then rolls it together between his fingers into a cylinder, repeating the motion as he pulls on it. “It has such an unnaturally high tensile strength that it’s actually one of the strongest building materials we could have hoped for to make this,” he explains. The grass doesn’t give way at all. “Thousands and thousands of bushels of long hair had to be imported from the east and fashioned into ropes,” explains the engineer, rising to his feet. “It was one of the largest trading projects between continents in decades. Bet you never even heard about it, right?” he asks, looking at the wizard.

 

The other man stands there, looking at him with an off, curious look before waving him away. “Settle down, weirdo,” says the caster. “We’re blowing it in a minute, so stand back.”

 

The engineer stares at the wizard as he turns away and walks off. The man’s shoulders droop, as he looks down at the blade of grass in his hands, which slowly begins to unfurl now that he has let go of one end.

 

Peribsen sighs, loosening his fingers. The wind takes the blade of grass, blowing it away and into the ravine, and he watches it sail into the distance, vanishing into the storm, his hand touching the wet strut of the bridge. He runs his fingers up it, feeling the damp material.

 

“These struts are wood,” he explains, feeling them and talking to nobody but himself. “Not just any wood though.” Peribsen smiles, knocking on its painted exterior. The paint is also a special blend, but he’ll get into that in a minute. “This wood is from the witch-swamp itself,” he says. “The high moisture content of the region allows the trees there to grow to become particularly pliable and soft, with a very high fracture point, allowing them to bend and sway naturally with ease.” He explains, looking at the beams. “We had to make all sorts of deals with the witches to get some of that wood, but it was worth it.” He smiles, knocking on the bridge. “No other material would’ve held like this. Just look at it!” he says, holding his hand out in front of himself to gesture at the bridge, before planting both of his palms on his hips and staring at it as it sways in the wind.

 

“…Beautiful…” says the engineer.

 

They don’t see it.

 

The nobles he had to beg and sell his soul to didn’t see it. The people he had to convince to even get this project going didn’t see it. The workers, even during construction, didn’t see it and called it a waste of their time. Everybody didn’t see it. They didn’t see what he sees.

 

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The bridge carries the ripples of the wind within itself, with separate sections of it rising up and down in midair, as if they were the waves of a crashing tide, suspended aloft in nothingness. It’s not just a thing, it’s organic. It’s a living, breathing entity made out of the principles of construction. It moves. It gives. It takes.

 

It’s not just infrastructure. That’s all that they see when they look at it. He’s dedicated his life to infrastructure. He’s built roads and canals, ditches and towers. He’s worked on houses and market places, courts and castle walls — those are all things, infrastructure and buildings.

 

But this here…

 

Peribsen holds the ropes with one hand as he stands on the entryway to the bridge. It’s wide enough for two carriages to pass one another easily enough on a calmer day than this one, with a little caution on windier days. There’s literally nothing like it anywhere in the world. It’s unique. It’s not a creation of some blueprint; it’s a creation of his muse.

 

This here is art.

 

The engineer steps out onto the bridge, letting his fingers glide along the ropes of Vildt hair, which have been treated with a heavy mineral oil first, to keep them strong and healthy and then, after a process of drying, coated with an unusually rare resin from the distant northern pines, guarded by dens of spriggans and other wild things.

 

Every component of this bridge is anything but mundane. Every board has a story; every fiber of hair, coming from a living person, has seen lives come and go, felt experiences of sorrow and joy, and carries with it these tinges. He’s sure of it. All of the feelings held by the owners of these materials and by the materials themselves, stemming from such unusual, high-magic areas, come together to form the bones of a golem — his child.

 

He could talk about it and think about it for hours and hours and hours. There’s so much involved. There’s so much to tell.

 

Peribsen hears the voices, but he doesn’t pay them any mind as he walks out onto the bridge, feeling it shake beneath him, feeling the boards move, and feeling his body sway around together with it left and right in the heavy winds — but despite that, he never loses his footing.

 

He smiles, feeling pride in his chest as if he had watched his own firstborn son win a championship.

 

The man stays in the middle of the bridge, hanging over the chasm, explaining the reason for his stability here, despite the fact that he should, by all accounts, be flying around as wildly as the bridge is.

 

“— That’s because of the double-layered balancing mechanism down below my feet,” he says, speaking to the wind. “The bridge has two layers of footing; the upper is balanced on a layer of brick webbing that's filled with neutralized slime jelly.” He touches the wood at his feet, his hand resting on it. “So even if the bridge is shaking, this upper platform will always stabilize as a counter-force.” He nods. “This not only allows the person atop the bridge to remain stable in their footing, but the counter-force movement of the jelly stabilizes the bridge’s sway.”

 

It’s perfect.

 

It’s beautiful.

 

Peribsen clutches his face, letting out a muffled scream, because there’s no way to save it.

 

The nation has ordered the destruction of the bridge to hinder the Demon-King and while he has of course thought himself about simply killing the wizards in their sleep on the way here, he knows that wouldn’t matter. Even if he stops them…

 

He turns his head, looking at the ropes.

 

The resin on them, holding the hair fibers, glistens.

 

The bridge wasn’t meant to sustain heat in its center more than it would on a summer’s day, with a large margin of error. Things like wildfire aren’t a threat, given its incredible height. But with the Demon-Core coming closer, the resin protecting the ropes will melt. The mineral oiled covered hairs will catch heat and soon flame. The gel pads beneath the wood will cook through, drying out and breaking the stabilizing mechanism, like the knee of an old man with no cartilage left.

 

Even if he were able to kill the wizards, it wouldn’t have mattered, because the Demon-King is going to pass by here and it’s all going to fall apart no matter what.

 

He takes a deep breath, exhaling and then rising to his feet.

 

Peribsen looks over his shoulder at the casters, who have readied themselves for the demolition and are, by the looks of it, giving him a brief cautionary period to return to the land.

 

The engineer turns his head back forward, looking at something he had entirely missed before.

 

“Ah!” he says excitedly, running forward deeper into the open waters of nothingness. “These slats here,” he explains to himself, pointing at the downward slanted edges of the boards. “This is a really great idea. It’s so simple too!” he says with enthusiasm, following a small groove in the wood that rainwater streams down. “The core concept is that -”

 

— He flies forward, flung onto his face from the pressure of the explosion that came from behind him, the ripple that runs through the wood causing him to roll at first from the pressure and then from the gravity of the movements to come.

 

Engineer Peribsen holds on to one of the ropes, looking back behind himself at the magic-impacted construction that the group of casters had launched a combined strike into.

 

It’s quiet for a time as the smoke clears and the rain hammers down around them.

 

Then, after a moment more, it’s interrupted by laughter.

 

Peribsen slaps his leg, pointing at the burned ropes and damaged wood where the strike hit, having completely failed to make the bridge collapse.

 

A warm smile comes to his face as a tear runs down his cheek, welling with pride. He turns his head, holding a hand against one of the bridge’s ropes as he looks at it. “You did good,” says the engineer, resting his head against it and closing his eyes. “Real good.”

 

— A second blast comes, this time severing the connection, causing the bridge and himself to hurtle down into the abyss.

 

They probably think he’s crazy.

 

But they don’t get it. They can’t ever understand what he feels.

 

This kind of… beauty… the alignment of man’s will together with the graces of nature rather than establishing his dominion over it was too much for the world to understand. It was too esoteric. For them, he was just a weird guy obsessed with his pet projects. But his vision was that the creations of man need not disrupt nature; they can move with it and grow with it in the same way that a clean seed would, fluidly and organically. They could make things that sway, move, and dance and are filled with sunlight, air, and energy.

 

They could make beautiful places and creations with the world — not on it.

 

But they never saw that.

 

He dies.

 

---

 

 

With each change of the phase, the drop of their scale goes faster and faster, until they are almost in free-fall, losing their footing as they all, heaping and tumbling over one another, try to tear off the masks and throw them into the void, doing so just in time as blackness begins to eek into the bowl they’re in.

 

The scale stops dropping.

 

A moment later, it begins rising again, rebalancing itself.

 

“I’m getting dizzy, Zac,” remarks Ruhr.

 

He nods, using his tower shield to support himself. “This should be the last time,” he says, as they come into sight of the snake one more time, its body essentially just a naked worm, covered in eyes.

 

Porcelain masks rise out from the depths, returning to its exterior, but far fewer than before. Only a handful remain, as most have been destroyed.

 

“Ready!” calls a voice from the crusade as they begin to align their spells and arrows.

 

The river-sorceress rubs her face, getting ready for what should be the last skirmish against the boss of floor twenty. They’ve actually been doing well. They haven’t lost anyone, as far as she knows, which is very unusual for a fight in the Demon-King’s castle.

 

Ruhr lifts her hands, water dripping out of her fingers, running down her arms as her magic begins to grow. But something stops her. She’s not sure what it is.

 

The spell trickles down her arm, running down her sleeve, and dripping onto her leg, which causes Zacarias to snort, holding down a laugh. “What’s the matter?” he asks. “Get scared?”

 

“Shut up, Zac,” she says, her eyes shifting in suspicion. “I’m thinking.”

 

“Oh boy.”

 

“Sssht!” she hisses, her eyes glaring at him as she looks around the arena for a while. “AH!” says the river-sorceress, hitting her fist into her open palm. “Zac. Order a retreat.”

 

“What?” he asks. “We’re about to -”

 

“ZAC!” she barks at him.

 

He groans. “FALL BACK!” calls the man, receiving a barrage of wary, curious looks as they hear the order. “BACK!” yells Zacarias, the order propagating around the arena to much confusion.

 

Ruhr grabs him, pulling him into the crowd as she hurries towards the entrance. “FALL BACK!” yells the river-sorceress.

 

Most of the crusade listens, though begrudgingly, as it is commonly known that abandoning a boss fight in a dungeon will cause that boss to reset, requiring the fight to be restarted from the beginning again.

 

“What’s the problem?” asks Zacarias, trying to keep up with her as she runs, her hand stuck in the collar of his breastplate and yanking on him as they push through the confused crowd. “MOVE!” he yells to the side, pulling on another man who is sort of lost in between places.

 

“The fact that we’re fibble-fabbling dumb-dumb goo-brains is the problem, Zac!” she snaps back at him.

 

“Wow, really swearing like a sailor these days,” he remarks, raising an eyebrow.

 

“Shut up, Zac. We’re on a scale!” she snaps, pointing back at the obvious, as they exit the scale, returning to the walkway at the start of the floor.

 

“Yeah, so?” he asks, looking back at the emptying arena as people pour out of the fight.

 

A voice comes from the side. “Brother Zacarias,” says the chief crusader. “What is the meaning of this?” he asks, looking back at the boss-monster, which was about to be destroyed.

 

“Well… you see…” starts Zacarias, looking back at Ruhr.

 

She looks at the crusader. “What do you think happens when we kill it?” she asks. Ruhr points at the scales. “There’ll be nothing left to balance the scales out.”

 

“…We’d plunge down into the abyss,” remarks Zacarias, understanding now. If they kill the boss, there’s no weight left on the other side of the scales. “It was a trap.”

 

The last man leaves the scales. Metal groans, and the balance shifts; the monster, now the only thing of weight left, plummets immediately downward into the darkness below, into the ocean of eternally gnashing teeth.

 

A minute later, the scales rebalance as they now are empty.

 

They stare. “Now what…?” asks Zacarias.

 

Ruhr smiles, lifting her hands. “Now, my pious Zacarias,” starts the river sorceress. “You can fall down and start kissing my feet to worship me,” she says, water blasting out of her hands across the arena and into the other bowl on the far side, where the boss had been.

 

She pours her magic out, filling it for a time, before nodding in satisfaction and then jumping into their bowl, before Zacarias can stop her, yelping and reaching after her.

 

“Ta-da!” says Ruhr, holding her hands out at her side. She smiles, flicking a strand of hair out of her face.

 

“…Huh…” says Zacarias, apparently pleasantly surprised, which is actually sort of offensive to her. His expression of surprise signals that he hadn’t expected anything from her to start with.

 

Ruhr lifts her nose in the air, offended by his being impressed by her actions, turning around and walking across the scale, jumping over into the other one by herself, and then wading through the waist deep water until she is the first one to cross over to the other side.

 

Today, they beat the Demon-King without losing anybody.

 

“You see that?” she asks, looking down at the abyss below, narrowing her eyes. “I’m coming for you,” promises the river-sorceress, sure that he can hear her.

 

---

 

 

It could have been so much more.

 

Imagine, if you will, a world filled to the brim with the implementation of such ideas. A world made up not only of indiscriminate brickwork and gray facades. Imagine a world made up of dynamic, moving, breathing constructions interwoven with the beauty of organic life, a world in which houses served not only as domiciles but as beautiful artworks in and of themselves. A world in which roads served both the functions of mankind and those of nature, by interconnecting them with migratory pathways through reduced use of construction materials and a deeper integration of innate natural sensory memory. A world in which people understand where his thoughts are coming from.

 

Of course, he’s always been a little out there. He knows that. He’s always been called eccentric, strange, or an oddball — in polite company. His ideas have been vastly discredited as being uselessly pageantific by his colleagues in his field, which values mathematical pragmatism so highly.

 

It’s so hard for him to get them to understand what he understands. It’s not about a building costing a thousand Obols more or less. It’s about the long-term, global effects on society that could be had by making such apparently eccentric changes. Change a house, and you change the family living inside of it. Change a road, and you change the nature of those who walk it. By changing the architecture of the world itself…

 

— They all fail to realize that the world they are building is a tool. Like a book, like a story, like a song, buildings are tools that can be used to leverage the human soul in a specific direction, and not just one by one, but by the hundreds, by the thousands. Beautiful people don’t necessarily make beautiful cities. But beautiful cities make people beautiful. He’s sure of it.

 

But…

 

“They’ll never understand that,” says the voice of God, harsh and rough, with the reassuring tone of a world-weathered father.

 

Peribsen listens to it echo around himself and then sighs, closing his eyes as he accepts its words.

 

“Why did you make me like this, then?” he asks. “Why did you make me feel these things that nobody else felt?”

 

The water stirs, trembling as if in a quake. “I did no such thing,” replies the voice. “But the answer is because you are cursed.”

 

Peribsen reopens his eyes, lifting his gaze to stare at the source that stems from the void he is adrift in. “You are cursed to wander the lands of the dead as the only living being present there,” explains the voice. “Cursed to be the only one with eyes in the kingdom of the blind, cursed to be the man with a voice in a house of the deaf.”

 

“Why?” asks Peribsen.

 

“Because the world is an ugly place,” replies the voice, scarring his soul with its harrowing presence.

 

“I don’t believe that,” replies Peribsen, shaking his head in spite of it. “I don’t believe that,” repeats the man, adrift in silence. “It’s cruel, hard, and sad,” he remarks. “But I don’t think it’s ugly.” He uncurls himself from the ball-like position he was in. “It just…” He looks down. “…It just needs some work.”

 

“How much?” asks the voice, lowering itself to a whisper that floats through the crevices in his incorporeal form.

 

“What?”

 

“How much work?” it asks again, floating in from all directions. “Is there enough paint in the world? Is there enough metal, enough wood?” it asks. “Is there enough drive?” He floats, not able to answer that. “Even in your perfect vision, if everyone was like you, do you think there is enough of what you need for the world to be what you desire it to be?”

 

“I…” Peribsen looks down, holding his face and then rubbing it in frustration as he thinks. He feels something smear over his skin. Confused, the man lowers his hands and looks between his fingers at the sticky goo there — resin. “I… don’t…”

 

“Or could it be that in this world, imperfect as it is, there is no hope of this true beauty ever existing?” asks the voice. “Could it be that everything you long for,” it speaks into his ear. “Everything you hope for and strive for…” His hand shakes. “- That it’s just a dream?”

 

“Don’t,” says Peribsen, lifting his gaze and clenching his fist, staring into the darkness. He yells, pointing at it and glaring. “DON’T YOU DARE TAKE THIS FROM ME!” screams the ghost of the man, lashing out through the water with his fist, droplets of resin washing away and drifting into the abyss. “…Don’t…” he repeats, his voice softening as he, as angry as it makes him, knows there’s something true about what the entity has said.

 

“I would never,” replies the voice. “I’m here to give, not to take,” it assures, the seducer clawing at his soul, pulling him closer and closer towards its source, a great, blinding white light in the distance. “It’s real. It exists – that thing you want,” it promises. “But it’s not here.”

 

“…Then where is it…?” asks Peribsen, as the glowing, blinding light begins to engulf him.

 

“Just over the bridge,” replies the heavy voice, laughing as he is torn from the waters of death.

 

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