The Sketch Rift: The Seal of Demons

Halmaven Will Come

The Fviron Chieftain's robe sagged across the withered steps on its passage to the sealed Northwest Waise. A blazing, transparent purple dome churned at its trapezoidal boundaries, daring to disintegrate any passing intruder. But the Chieftain was blind, struck in the eye by a rampaging Ambassador, and traced by the final handful of its terrestrial counterparts. It could only hobble to its newly pledged master, a seclusive pseudo-Sulukridger seeking vengeance against the Chieftain's crippler. Amidst the bloodbath, even its translator, filtering what to those beyond was unintelligible warbles into semi-legible communications, had fallen -- but there remained a sole aforementioned figure who had once, and still could, speak to their dismantled desires.

Charles Hemingway mentally breached the shield to allow their admission, to the eyes of a crowd of none, huddled behind the alpine gales within their transitory pavilions. With thrice the arms to the Fviron came thrice the pain of a limp, and the pseudo-Sulukridger silently recognized this natural irritation, heralding their entrance and escorting them on foot to the insides of the central structure that their kind had built centuries earlier.

Hemingway settled upon a seat that was once molded by the many hands of the Fviron, subsequently adjusted by the fingers of Hemingway's kin to match their ideal form of comfort, and then depressed again under Hemingway's charged line of sight to suit its creators'. His leathery coat was more elusive among Henderians than their typical patchwork, but it shone through as a juxtaposed symbol of mundaneness on a highly anomalous harborer of these longtime foreigners.

Hemingway only listened intently while the Chieftain uttered countless chirping statements of disbelief at Moth's rise to power nearly to the caliber that Hemingway did. Only now did they begin to converse via their thoughts alone.

I may heal you, the pseudo-Sulukridger telepathically mused, but you will no longer be able to carry out your ceremony at the Great Waise Temple.

The Chieftain's cognitive whirs visualized into perceptible emotion through Hemingway's mind. The Temple is yours to defend now. We Fviron have come too low, too soon, as the Ambassador to the Kyueb Reacsoa only sees us as an expedient for his conquest of the Reacsoa Hand, rather than his disciples.

So what will YOU do?

The Time-Bound Thief of ours has fled, and the Soulless armada that grew conscious and overthrew us so long ago is unreachable. First, we mobilize. Then, we defend. Then, we counterattack. Then, we watch them atone in the ninth month... or, we pray for our own rescue.

Hemingway leaned back and placed his head over his hands, stretching to sustain his poise. Describe the method to me.

You had your own.

Yes; but it would only worsen the crisis. The Sulukridgers may go extinct without me -- no, without us.

Grappling with that is your only justification? We would scoff, but the Fviron are fathers to you. We taught you to desert fear. We taught you to exemplify suffering and curb it into faith, to curb it into leadership.

That is what the Thief did.

An acutely glum messenger, by the humble and familiar title of Sigjire, reprised his Revolute tradition of bearing perilous advancements (or setbacks). Now, instead of rushing to the aid of the Green Phantom and her Zillyroi accomplice in their high-lying window to clash among Gauntletes, he panted from his sprint in giving Hemingway a verbal note. "It is of dire importance," he wheezed. "The Time-Bound Thief is dead." Consequently, he departed from fright, awakening a shivering Northwest Waise in the process.

I need to go, Hemingway departed the scene as the Chieftain and his followers processed the information.

*     *     *

"Charles, there is something that must be accounted for," Nathaurus confessed within a separate chamber of the Fviron construction. Hemingway stood across from her, more contented to be with a more encouraging ally. "Multiple things, in fact."

The pseudo-Sulukridger exhaled visibly, the air crisply wintry, even in the typically humid mid-August. "You can depend on me for such revelations."

"Firstly, I was the one that shattered the Kyson Scepter. That's twenty Vorrens... that's double the amount I had. It's forty."

"I know, Natasha."

"What Sabon sapped from the Waise Wells was ten, the other half dispersed in the traitorous Myepe. That's... that's how many for you?"

"Just eleven, Natasha."

"And I let Berior escape."

"I know, Natasha." Hemingway was behaving oddly complacently in comparison to his ordinary self, whose presence emanated a frigid deflection. "We are the only survivors. That is, unless Berior worms his way from Hendera, but I am in denial of such a feat. We can count on the fifty-one we have. Together, that puts us above Sulord Revaw."

"But, Charles, that cannot be enough," Natasha insecurely admitted. "Mathematics is not the only competitor against Moth. We need a strategy. We need the Blessed Ones."

"We need the Blessed One," Hemingway raised his finger knowingly, softly tilting his head to signify a retort, "and we may already. It is only a matter of time until they migrate back to us from across time. Only a matter of time before the pestilent Ambassador sends them off independently on a possible suicide mission. With the Blessed One, 9101 will be a cakewalk."

"Charles, that was not my intention to be found within a discussion," Nathaurus bleated, seemingly cowering under Hemingway's ever-looming personage. "Your life is not a numbers game, nor a board of Risk."

"Until September First," the pseudo-Sulukridger impugned, nearly entirely monotonously. "The sky will burn until our victory."

"I was just going to say... er...ah...."

"Yes?" Hemingway folded his arms, relaxing his fists from a spike in the cavern of a neo-Hemingway fury.

"Well, you deserve a cape. And, um... We can speak later."

Puffs of smoke surely were not the only form of transportation, but they were a favorable and instantaneous trick among the last of the Sulukridgers.