Eos appeared inside a small room.
He had anticipated that the being at the top of the Tower would not announce itself with scale, that it would, as all the truly terrible things did, the ones who had graduated beyond theater, et him in sothing dostic.
It was perhaps a reflection of the body that he chose to wear as he entered this tower, and he knew that this room was the Painter's reply to this.
However, he could see that this room was not a study or an office; it could be seen as a butcher's back office.
Why would he call it this? Well, it was small, practical, and it was tiled in sothing dark and smooth that sloped very slightly toward a drain in the corner.
The tiles had been scrubbed, but not recently enough. There were hooks in one of the walls, iron, clean. There was a low counter against another wall with the scarred, deep-grooved surface of a working block.
Many beings had been butchered and taken apart here, most likely the forty-three before him.
Above was a fixed light, plain, the color of a bulb that had been left on for a long ti and had grown tired of its own labor.
There was no warmth in the room, and there was no cruelty in the room either. The room was simply fitted out, with the correctness of long use, for the one purpose it had ever been used for.
Eos registered all of this in a single breath, and he did not permit himself any reaction.
In the center of the room was a table, and on the table was a board.
Behind the table was a chair, and in the chair was the Painter.
It sat with the relaxed economy of a craftsman at the end of a long day. It wore a body, and Eos knew that the Painter took a body because the ga was played better between seated figures.
The body was shrouded, as the voice had been shrouded in its first address, and this was all a carefully made decision. The Painter had simply decided, a very long ti ago, that it would not be perceived, and perception, at the tenth dinsion, was sothing that could be refused the way a signature could be refused on a docunt.
Eos saw the seated shape, but did not see the Painter.
"Co in, co in," the Painter said.
Now that he could truly hear its voice, Eos could feel its wrongness brushing across his entire being.
Eos had expected the voice to be old, and it was old.
He had expected it to be tired, and this had been his own projection, his own wishful translation of what a being at this level ought to be after so long, but it was not tired at all.
The voice was brisk, almost amused, like the voice of a working man who enjoyed his work.
"Sit down. Please. You walked the whole way; you must want to sit."
Eos glanced at the shrouded figure, and he sat.
The chair fit him because it had been made for him. Not for soone his size in general, but for him specifically; the lumbar curve knew his spine, and the height of the seat matched his legs, and the armrests were at the height his elbows would naturally fall to.
He had been expected and prepared for, because this chair was old, aning that it had been carved for him long before he had existed in any Existence the Painter had made, and this, more than anything else, told him what he had walked into.
"You knew I would sit," Eos said quietly.
"I always know," the Painter said. "That is not a boast. It is a problem, actually, knowing always takes the pleasure out of the late stages. But yes. You would sit. You are a sitter. The last one was a stander; I had to have a whole room redone. Very tedious."
It chuckled, and what was surprising was that the chuckle was warm.
"Now," the Painter said. "To business. Have you looked at the board yet?"
Eos slowly bent his head and looked at it, and he saw that the board was alive.
He had expected that, too, in the general sense, a board at this level would not be wood or stone; it would be sothing. What he had not expected was what it was, or maybe he did, because in many ways, he had recreated this sa board many tis, but at that ti, he had called it a map… the Map.
All of these experiences seed to be building up to this day.
The board was a cross-section of the Grand Void, rendered at an impossible scale, and what made it extrely different from the map he had made while a lower-dinsional being was that it was not a representation of the Grand Void; it was the Grand Void, viewed from a particular angle.
Every detail of the exterior was reproduced on it at a scale that would have been aningless in the ninth dinsion and was rely useful in the tenth.
The Origin Tree rose from one end of the board like a growth breaking through a wound. Every branch. Every world on every branch. Every life living inside every world.
Eos could see a farr in a world that had blood seven hours ago, standing in a field he had been given the evening before, holding a tool and looking at it and beginning to understand, dimly, what it was for. Eos could feel the farr's pulse. The farr was a piece on the board.
On the other side of the board was the Tower, rendered in its own miniature, with the small figures of Eos and the Painter seated inside it, the figures also rendered with full aliveness, the figure of Eos on the board at this mont turning its miniature eyes down to look at the miniature board. Eos forbade himself from following that recursion and lifted his gaze.
Between the Tree and the Tower, the substrate of the void. Compressed histories. Old strata. The quiet geology of End, subdued now, mostly silent, the screaming reduced to a deep low hum… Eos sighed and closed his eyes.
Eva was on the board, Pri was on the board, Serathis was on it, Vraegar, Circe, Fury, Victorious Genesis, Staff, the Ouroboros serpents, the Archai, all the Primordials, every mortal and immortal in every new world on every new branch of the Tree.
Every breath being drawn, every thought being thought, every small dostic act of a small dostic being in the new Existence was rendered on the board at full life, and every one of them was a piece.
Eos understood at once.
He did not permit himself to look at it for long. He was already leaking attention toward the pieces, toward the ones he knew, toward Eva in particular, toward Pri, and attention at this level was a resource and a tell. He looked up at the Painter instead.
"Explain the rules," he said.
"Oh," the Painter said, pleased. "Yes. I like it when they ask."
It leaned forward.
"At our dinsional position," it said, "we can no longer die. Immortality is ours, and so we need a way to resolve our conflict."
New Book!
Reviews
All reviews (0)