The Sketch Rift: The Seal of Demons

The Sketch Lives

Daylight pelted Sulukrita's womb of metal. Where the Seal of Demons once dwelled, there was only a bottomless burrow wreathed in wreckage, extending forever into darkness no mortal dared to explore – nor did any wish to. It writhed and spiraled on the path down like its progeny between transitional Rift-strings, but unlike him this open mouth was lifeless and uncaring. All pebbles it consumed were flukes, not meals, tumbling toward the ramparts of infinity.

On a block of debris nearby, Synthor sat.

Moth appeared, groaned from exhaustion, and sat down next to him.

For a minute, both contemplated the Seal's ghost in silence: boundless, bewildering, but by the nature of this plane, hopeless to comprehend before greater curtains closed.

"Was it comfortable?" Moth eventually concluded the quiet.

"As I said," Synthor replied. "Fleeting."

Another pause followed.

"It wasn't the outcome you foresaw," Synthor resumed, "but you did well enough. You kept up the bargain. Thank you for that."

"We've done better," Moth snorted, self-effacingly. "You have. I deluded myself that my quest was anything but myopic, but you knew what was noble, and you saw it through."

Synthor harrumphed, as though to signify they had already discussed such matters. "Be more uncertain," he advised. "The act preceded the moral."

They devoted another conversational hiatus to peering into the abyss the Seal had uncovered.

"I came to a Sketch called Fluntons," Synthor delved into specificity, maintaining eye contact with the pit. "My tenure there was nearly complete. The rain of Xilling Elixir wasn't enough to whisk away the snow. I'd evacuated every villager on one mountainside. Save for one."

Moth nodded, engrossed.

"I trudged through the drift and found her cabin, far-flung from the bulk of the village. An old woman on the verge of death – another Interloper, and despite hailing from discrete worlds, we recognized each other as such immediately."

Synthor exhaled.

"I told her the hour of departure was here... that all she needed to do was step outside. She didn't deny me, but she laughed. She refused."

He broke his gaze with the void.

"She resolved to stay for the Writer's Fluke," Synthor shook his head bittersweetly. "It took gall, but I let her." He turned to Moth, violet eyes welling with tears. "No army, no individual, no Hand, no one saved this plane on 9101. It was thousands of outliers. Thousands of... her. Sacrificing themselves for a world they knew they were never born to see. For a mere idea."

Moth remembered. "...So we reciprocated."

Gently, Synthor slid the Semblance from his pocket, vigilant not to allow any stray breeze to snatch it away.

"Who could have guessed...?" he chuckled. "Y. L. Revaw journeyed across countless dimensions to locate you. I managed the same feat, at first, solely to spite you."

"I'm uncertain of it," Moth obeyed an earlier command. "With or without me, you'd have done it for them."

Synthor's countenance creased, tossing Moth's doubt into doubt. The loftier Ambassador reviewed the scenario from his peer's perspective, and discerned a kernel of truth.

"To abandon your home Sketch to the Seal..." Moth noted, "takes excessive spite."

"Not abandonment, per se," Synthor elucidated. "Call it reallocation."

He proffered the Semblance to Moth, who hesitantly accepted.

"When we reunite, in another iteration," Synthor smiled, "we'll know."

"I guarantee it," Moth mirrored the look, albeit more poignantly and without a protruding beak. "Thank you... for it all. Dearly."

"Think nothing of it," Synthor scoffed, teasingly. "There is just one more fact... to bear in mind until the end of things."

He leaned in and whispered something in Moth's ear. The Ambassador's eyes widened and his demeanor stiffened, half-haunted and half-redeemed, but this would soon be the least of his stunned beguilements.

A shimmering sky-blue bubble materialized around Synthor, encapsulating him entirely. It soared up a pole of light, into the stratosphere, and vanished.