A Fortress of Pebbles

After the birthday present ordeal, the flow of time resumed and even seemed to accelerate. At least that’s how it felt when she realized that several days had passed her by, and several more were on their way.

There were “demons” on Earth, apparently. Cassandra learned this in a meeting where a team of scribes reported on this phenomenon in the Room of Dreams – complete with a very realistic demonstration of how they came shrieking out of the sky to carry people away. With the power of mind magic, Cassandra found herself transported to a crowded New York street.

People had guns and signs, but also umbrellas, even though the sky was clear. There was a guy selling them for $100 apiece out of the back of a Uhaul. He was shouting that the demons can’t take you if they can’t–

Then, a meteor, a flash of flame, a moment of warmth in the middle of winter. The guy was no longer selling umbrellas, and people were screaming and trying to get away from the scorched asphalt. Futile gunshots went off into the sky. Others surged forward and picked the Uhaul clean.

“Play it again,” said the Master of Language. The scribe running the simulation glanced at Nessassa who nodded for him to proceed.

“Pause,” said the Master of Language a moment later. The horrified face of the umbrella salesman was clearly visible in the firelight of the twisted demonic thing whose claws were sinking into his shoulder muscle. “Where did this simulation come from?” said the Master of Language. “Were you there in-person with a recording pebble?”

“We reconstructed it,” said the scribe, “from Earth-side news footage.”

“How many of these attacks have occurred?”

Another scribe checked his notes and replied that every major city in North America had suffered at least two such attacks.

“That’s all?” said the Master of Language. “There are 27 cities in North America with more than one million people. Are you telling me that there have been less than sixty such attacks over the last three days? Across the entire continent?”

Had it really been three days since she arrived? Since the world ended? Fake-Orion nudged her and said, “You should pay attention to this.”

Over her ever-present cup of glowing cider, she watched as the Master of Language interrogated the scribes. “Where do the creatures go between attacks?” (“They disappear. Mind magic.”) “How much of the news cycle is dominated by this story?” (“Practically all of it.”) “What socio-cultural effects have been observed? (“Widespread sheltering in place and widespread protests.”) “Supply chains?” (“Increasingly run by the military.”) “Crime rates and suicides?” (“Skyrocketing.”)

“It’s terrorism,” he said, grinning for some reason. “The Rot Fortress doesn’t have enough resources to end the world directly. They want fear to do it for them.”

Nessassa was flipping through a stack of papers crudely bound. “It’s fascinating. Their handbook contains so much clarity about the events leading up to the beginning of the end, but it speaks almost in code about what happens next. Perhaps these demon attacks are what they refer to as the Horseman of Fear – 'The arrows of his bow will fall like fire upon the screaming cities.’”

Cassandra wanted to ask about the other Horsemen, but Nessassa and the Masters were off to another meeting – this one about a project referred to as “The Salvation.” Only elite scribes and Masters were permitted to attend. Something that Nessassa called “Salvation Version 1.0” was to be “launched” in less than forty-eight hours. The details had been hidden from Cassandra and the majority of the Fortress, all of the Masters were deeply involved and, from all appearances, quite excited about it.

Cassandra was sent away to wait in her quarters, a pair of rooms attached to Nessassa’s suite. They had been Aissaba’s once upon a time, apparently.

Here, she inspected the knife she’d received from the Master of Virtue. She’d learned over the last few days that no one else could see it. In fact, sometimes she couldn’t see it either. But whenever she gazed at the lines of her empty right palm, it returned as if it had never left.

She had once tried showing it to Nessassa and the Master of Language. But this had led to a conversation about the dangers of circumventing sleep. “It changes you,” said Nessassa – her eyes looking a bit like Grandpa’s always had.

Speaking of this, sometimes in the bathroom mirrors Cassandra caught a glimpse of the same flicker in her own eyes, as if an ancient candle was burning there, one lit before the sun itself had been born.

For all the cautionary lectures and warnings about the cider, no one had made her stop. Maybe it was because everyone else was doing it – trading sleep to attend meetings and make plans. Or maybe free will was just part of the fabric of the Fortress. As fake-Orion put it: “In the Fortress, people become whatever they wish to become. For better or worse.”

“And what am I supposed to become?” Cassandra asked.

No answer. But Cassandra knew – just as she knew that fake-Orion was some kind of mouthpiece for the Master of Virtue. Her fate was to find a way to plunge her ghostly knife into the heart of a rock that had more space on the inside than on the outside. The elimination of Rot. The murder of a deity.

“Is the Rot the Devil?” Cassandra asked fake-Orion as she lay wide-eyed in Aissaba’s old bed.

“The Rot is no more the Devil than I am God,” said fake-Orion, perched on her bedside and playing with the knife. And perhaps he was right. If the Master of Virtue was the kind of God that Mom and Dad occasionally seemed to believe in, then choosing a thirteen year old to play cloak-and-dagger with Him seemed a bit out-of-character.

Also, nothing had happened to the prisoner Styxx. If he had died from getting his throat cut while time was stopped, no one had bothered to mention it to her. Not that she wanted him to die – but until the knife that no one could see, given to her by a boy that no one could see, actually did something, Cassandra couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe she was going insane.

It ran in the family after all.

Lying there in Aissaba’s old bed, pondering insanity, Cassandra found herself reaching out for the blink-link. Recently, she had been unable to reach Aissaba – almost as if Aissaba were resisting it, pushing her away, pushing everyone away.

This time, though, Cassandra saw blood. It covered Aissaba’s hands. The floor was slick with it. Tears filled her eyes.

Cassandra sat upright. “Something’s wrong.”

“Oh?” said fake-Orion, unimpressed. “Are you sure?”

Cassandra tried again to reach Aissaba, but this time, nothing. “Something’s wrong with Aissaba.”

“There’s always something wrong with Aissaba,” said fake-Orion, flipping the knife and catching it. “Want me to sever the connection between you?”

“No!” gasped Cassandra.

Fake-Orion shrugged. “You can be whatever you wish around here. But beware. Take perfection too far, and only insanity awaits.”

There was a polite knock on the door. It opened to reveal the stone limbs of the Master of Maps, his severed head grinning. Behind him, the conglomeration of eyeballs and bifocals that comprised the Master of Life called out cheerfully, “Would you kindly join us in our Salvation meeting? We have a job for you!”

“Just look at the Masters if you ever have any doubt,” said fake-Orion, disappearing, leaving the knife on the bed.