The Sketch Rift: The Seal of Demons

The Sketch is Dead

Thirty dozen steps around the staircase centrifuge took Soal, the Fviron Chieftain and the most militaristicaly prone civilians (the Ambassador being no exception) to the five airlocks and the six locked doors, eleven minutes of their priceless time and an ever-rising probability that the minutes spent en route had been fortuitously dissipated. Miraculously, however, they had not. Thirteen more minutes elapsed rewinding the process and congesting the Catacombs' central chamber with just enough people not to be carried by their benign associates, so long as they, too, could stand. Thus, a majority of them dispersed into the Fviron-skull-ridden branches and claustrophobic corridors to nibble on the rations Moth and his colleagues dragged in the day before -- an ample amount, considering they had brought food for all of Hendera's original population, which would waver after about four days -- now extended to almost two weeks purely by cold, hard hypothesis. Only the Thieves of Sogbury and their sole survivor, Nathaurus, could be thanked for the chaotic growth and salvage of such food before the Battle of Hendera, at which point Moth no longer needed them.

Sulukrita had been nowhere to be found upon the retrieval of the fugitives, nor could he even be sensed to exist. Soal assumed he was lingering in the Ammeroapen, but that would be largely impractical should the Bane of the Armorillion wish to pay Soal's "debt" at mealtime. That, or he had realized the impregnability of the Catacombs (and, to further extent, the Great Waise Temple as a whole) and ignored an opportunity to snipe exposed prey in order to unleash the fury of the Third planes on the rest of the world. Another dilemma emerged in Soal's head, one that somehow had not done so earlier, perhaps because someone else had already made a decision. Still, he pondered. Would I rather live and let Sulukrita ravage the world more, or die to stop him? But then, he remembered. Was he not Blessed, privileged never to be outrun by death? But I'm not the only one being put at risk by 9101. He was one among the Henderians. Their leader, for sure, and arguably the most talented, although still a single person. So did that make him expendable? Or indispensable? And if he was either, was no one else better? No worse? Invincible? Useless?

[Author's note: Forget your insomnia, forget your insomnia...]

But even with the Rift, it would take Sulukrita hours -- days at best -- to know his course of action or to cross the seas and oceans that separated the disaster areas of the world. Maybe that would be enough time to pull him back from his potential gallops over the stiff, crusty soil and fell him once and for all. Soal was skeptical again, though. The Temple was elderly and the forces to defend it were fragile, if nonexistent. Moth had claimed to everyone that it was impenetrable, and he pretended to be telling the truth. There was only one method that could prove him false.

"If I told you myself?" the Ambassador harrumphed, seemingly appearing as if from nowhere and nearly spooking Soal. Moth led his back slide down against the wall and sat down next to the semi-Master Bringer, his legs colliding with the other side of this hall's wall, as Soal's did. "We have the Reacsoa Hand down here. Even if I can't write this book, you can, General Soal."

"Um..." Soal's voice chafed his throat. Despite blood trickling from multiple wounds, the absence of any noticeable symptom or sign of discomfort was guaranteed, somewhat unnervingly. "So why can't we run out and kill Sulukrita now? You know, by... writing him away? Why haven't we done something like that already?"

"Spite," Moth grumbled. "But if we just wait, things will go sour enough to make the Hand accessible. I know it's unfair. I know it's a costly strategy... a deadly strategy. But I have faith that the battle will have faith in us."

"The battle can't have faith in us if there isn't a battle!" Soal fumed internally but opted against opening the antiquated emotional outlets of the Ambassador beside him. "Look... we have to go out there and do something."

"Then do it, now that you can! And when you do, never forget that I heeded your fate. Call it an act of temerity or bravura, but I do not condone it."

Tremors abided overhead, both members of the Great Five nodding along to their rhythm as it tugged at the bricks of the Temple, to no avail. A vocal silence slithered its way into the conversation as well, for a minute at maximum length.

"This tonal dissonance is getting under my skin," Moth shivered. "Uh... possibly, Sulukrita wants the Reacsoa Hand...?..."

Another minute. With the addition of Soal's sniffles, irrelevant to the cause of conversation with his compatriot, contributed little to his current lack of motivation to evacuate to his throne. Why did I not ever consider this? Soal's eyes sacrificed dryness for a far-overdue understanding. Irene... she's not going to come back this time. And Marsh, Emma... they're already gone. Why wasn't I guilty? Moth attempted haplessly to interject these concepts without success. Marsh stood up for me since the beginning, and didn't even generate a reaction to his loss. Emma, too... I can hardly give myself enough reason to see Alice and Isabel. Isabel barely knows me and Alice hardly does any better...

Another minute. Moth joined the chorus, this time aloud. "The Sketch is dead," he coughed. "The saga, the world... all of it. I failed the kiwis. Maybe the Millennium Eaglet is finally having his way with his work. I let it all die. And what did it die for? The creation of that... monster. Once the day is over, even the monster should be destroyed. What for, General Soal, what for?"

Soal's spotlight of remorse switched channels to sympathy. "The kiwis... all of the Sketches, everything... they're really all gone. I can't believe I ignored it when Hemingway... told me... that...!" His mood snapped with his words. "Wait. Hemingway would lie his way through a thunderstorm if he could. Who's to tell he was wrong?"

"Such information is entirely classified, though," Moth sighed. "Even for the Blessed One. I'll only say that I can counterfeit sobbing as well as I can counterfeit balancing double the heads I do now."

"You do trouble me with something in that way. The chances that Hemingway was lying about... the Writer's Fluke, as someone put it, are, at least to me, around the same as the chances you're lying about the safety of this Temple. Whenever anyone says something is safe, they're probably lying."

"Just don't become smug. I did," the Ambassador pulled his eyebrow higher with an invisible finger, no auspiciousness exuded. "You aren't leaving this place -- this series -- without getting what you want, anyway."

"And... what exactly do I want?"

"Whom to ask that but Hemingway, Soal. An irrelevant love? Dare I say, cowardice? Or... dare I say, hope?"