Two Serpents Rise

INTERLUDE: DREAMS

Snow fell on Dresediel Lex for the first and last time, covering the bodies of men and gods that littered the streets. Where the snow fell in fire, it hissed and burst to steam. A falling god had cracked the face of a pyramid with one flailing hand, and rubble covered the broad avenue below. Rage and sorrow burned in the mottled sky.

Blood-slick, Alaxic stumbled through the city’s doom. Cold air stung his throat. Pain from the wounds in his chest, and arm, and leg, pierced and beggared thought. At dawn he had ridden into battle on a feathered serpent, bedecked with the blessing of the gods. The serpent lay dead two blocks away, and he was tired.

“Hello, Alaxic,” someone said behind him.

The voice was deep and familiar, but alien to this time, this place. He turned, fast as his wounds would let him.

A skeleton in a red suit stood in the road, between the burning corpses of two demigods. He bore no weapons save a cup of coffee.

The snow did not fall in the coffee, or accumulate on the skeleton’s robes.

“What are you doing in my dreams?” Alaxic asked.

“At the moment,” the skeleton replied, “I am pondering why of all the places and times you might choose to dream, you would select the Liberation of Dresediel Lex. This was not your finest hour.”

“It was a noble struggle.”

“You fought us and we crushed you.”

“You besieged and blockaded us. We had no choice.”

“Your people tore out my lover’s heart. What did you think would happen after that?”

“I had no part in that decision.”

“As the inquest found, or else we would have sunk you into solid bedrock, or trapped you in the corridors of your own mind, or tied you to a mountain somewhere with a regenerating liver and an eagle that likes foie gras.” A band of skirmishers ran past, bound to nowhere. “So, why do you come back here?”

“My friends died in this battle. And we do not all choose where we dream.”

“You are a strange person,” Kopil said. “You were a priest, but became a Craftsman. You do not control your own dreams. You refuse to leverage your soul, though it means you won’t survive the end of that slab of meat you call your body.”

“The Craft,” replied Alaxic, “is a tool. Not all of us let our tools rule our life.”

Kopil sipped his coffee. “Tell me about Seven Leaf Lake.”

“I heard there were problems.”

“One of your employees went mad. Killed everyone on the station.”

“Horrible,” Alaxic said. “I don’t know what I’d do if I were in your shoes. Makes me glad I’m retired.”

“Are you really?”

“Glad?”

“Retired.”

He exhaled fog into the cold. “You’ve watched me for the last few months, you and your spies. What do I do?”

“You drink tea, and you read.”

“I drink tea, and I read. I don’t plot, I don’t scheme. I don’t want the old world back any more than you do.”

A winged serpent flew overhead, and was transfixed by arrows of light. It shrieked, and fell in bloody pieces to the street around them.

“Yet you still dream of old battles.”

“And you haven’t forgiven me, in five decades, for surviving this one. You resented my success in the Hidden Schools. You opposed the Wardens’ decision to set me free after the Skittersill Rising. You plotted against me as I built Heartstone, and took it from me when you had the chance.”

“You were a rebel. An anarchist.”

“I am a populist.” He looked up to the sky, where Craftsmen clad in engines of war tore gods asunder. Heavenly blood fell, mixed with snow. “At least I only dream about old battles,” he said. “You’re still fighting them.”

A wave of night rolled over the world. When Alaxic looked again, the King in Red was gone.