The Sketch Rift: The Seal of Demons

You Can Run But You Can't Hide

Moth was escorted from his caustic near-decease by a squad of scrupulous near-defectors, dragging him from a supernatural brink six hours after his cathartic triumph over Hemingway and into Domus Lepidopterus, now little more than an asphyxiating cage for the miserable Ambassador, reassuring control of the city after Myepe's sudden and inconsequential disappearance.

Miserable was the valley's tone on August twenty-ninth, consuming all of its denizens, Hendera conquered by fear. Among them, Soal had watched his ancient accomplice -- Moth -- warrant his own doom by challenging the formidable Sulord four days before September would certainly wipe him from his arrogance. But Moth had returned. And as more of Hemingway's refugees in Northwest Waise trickled back into the adobe shanties they once called home, the more it seemed like the removal of the drunken Myepe was actually more justified than the disquietude that the absence of the popularly berserk Ambassador would have instilled.

Soal's beliefs, in that regard, were rigid. Hour by hour, Hendera's population oscillated, Northwest Waise migrating to its boundaries while suicides, attempted escapes and departures escalated to the degree of alarm. As Soal witnessed firsthand the devolution of a dynasty of dauntless defiers and distingué diplomats into a moor for the irremediable in the course of a couple of waking days, his sympathies rested deeply with both the cowardly and the intrepid. The situation had fallen irreversibly into Moth's hands before, but now that they were fried by the Reacsoa Hand -- which was now quarantined and prepared for the yet-unknown Blessed One -- he was confined to issuing orders while the healers mended his burns in Domus Lepidopterus. That would be if there were any to give. To that end, it was not only Hemingway's words bouncing in Moth's mind, but Anter's as well.

"Be rampant to brand me unsatisfied and unintelligent," Moth had glumly wheezed to his officers, "for killing Charles Hemingway. No such idiocy was there in the past -- ambiguously morally, but primarily strategically." The Sulord had destroyed his entire firearm supply, and the kiwis would not trust him enough to return to their realm -- or any Un-Character, in fact, as Synthor's disdainful letters to him appeared to admit that his kiwi colleagues had placed it under their jurisdiction that any Un-Character to willingly return to their world would be sacrificed. There would be a terrible price to pay, even for the Blessed One, to truly obtain the Reacsoa Hand, despite there only existing a single barrier to deter them. The Sulukridgers' extinction also looked to be finally underway, once a success, now a setback, for the Henderian regime. Myepe and Berior had vanished, while Nathaurus and Sabon had been rendered Soulless by Hemingway, in whose possession his earthquake-worthy Vorren was still unclear. All of the others had been murdered at the height of their powers in 2098, or amidst Ivel and Moth's rampages in more recent times. Everything had changed. But there was no time to process it. It was August twenty-ninth.

Of Soal's crises, one was familial. Alice continued to dwell in Hendera, circumambulating Hendera with her alienated daughter, and traipsing the streets in search of an outlet through which she could funnel her desolation. Abandoned and estranged in an alien environment where not even her son could guide her, with a daughter who hardly recognized her mother, her desperation exceeded that of the nonexistent irrationally calm. Without Sulukridgers to return her home (or to bring back Irene), the course was set in stone. Luck had to enforce its glare on the living, and on the potential mortal who was now bound to cross a fifty-fifty gridlock.

The three congregated in the "hospital" of the city, where Isabel fiddled with a knife to her now preclusive curls, repeatedly shooting glances to the semi-Master Bringer in an attempt to connect him with her numerous unfiltered memories. This was their fourth meeting since Isabel was ripped from what Moth described as a "ceaseless hellhole of malignity," but her intellect had not been fettered by such a decrement to her second upbringing. "Time's running out," she sighed. "I may have a home here, but it is not the playground Hem...ingway taught me to respect. We need a place to hide. You both need to listen this time. Really."

"There's nowhere left to hide. We have to face what we must," Soal stoically and blankly echoed the billboard at Snohalerat. "We can run, but we'll hit a wall. I would take the blame, but it's far too late now to self-deprecate."

"Almost," Alice shivered. "We have three days to get out of here. It's most important that we all do together, at this point. Sam, though... I know you can pull them through. It doesn't matter if you're the 'Blessed One' or not. You've done these things before... you can do it one more time. Just... don't ever do it again afterward. It's given us too many heart attacks and cost us too much weight."

"And for me, too much of my life," Isabel shrugged. "You've heard this speech too many times before, from what I know. But with him gone, you can fulfill that niche, Soa... uh, Sam."

"Soal is fine," the semi-Master Bringer apologetically fitted the kiwis' name change into his family's interpretations. "But I think there won't be a Blessed 'Soal' anytime soon."

"What do you mean?" Alice and Isabel erupted in unison, their fearful query overtaking Soal's initial ideal.

"I mean that we need Irene back," Soal burrowed into his own despair. "Not only is she the only one who really understands... but if only I'm there, Sulukrita will win."

"If only you're there," Isabel decreed, "then Sulukrita will cower."

*     *     *

Sogbury, long Hendera's most significant source of nourishment, had been atrophying since the Slicer Swarm. But only when Soal sauntered to its resplendent shores was he one to diagnose its devastation.

The pier had collapsed into the shallows; the steamboats had capsized on the most earthbound docks; the oaken boards comprising its terrestrial chambers had been separated and smashed or singed onto the grass, where the shells of charred insects had merged with the soil. The most prominent ship had vanished altogether, although a shard or two of its composition had meandered to the surface acres away, awaiting the waves to carry them home. Only the sweltering red sun had made itself a fixture of the scene.

There was someone else there.

Soal appropriated his penultimate expression to a disinclined guffaw, raising his eyebrow to the maximum extent as Byron, the long-obscured Revolute alarmist who famously seized the Vorren of Sulord Revaw in battle, attempted to venture from the harbor, rowing vigorously against the rollicking tides in a measly canoe (the same one Hemingway used in the Waise Wells?), a package of all of his most important belongings rested by his feet, his entire body throbbing with the anxiety of failure.

"Commander Byron, what are you doing?" Soal called him from afar for falling back to his old infamy. The runaway glared at Soal degradingly but never responded. He had already rowed out of the harbor and continued to flee, the same distress that had consumed those who had already died appearing to envelop the escapee.

Soal turned his back, but could not tempt his own curiosity to leave him. Byron and his canoe were gone when he inspected the waters again.