Part 9 TOSD

Transcript:

As the door opened wide to the other side, purple robes appeared. And within the lavish garb, an elder figure was hunched over a book lain across an oaken desk. As he turned the page of his dusty tome, Amana took a new shape. Her hair took a darker shade, and the river split ran black, as void-like as the motionless deep from my incarnation. Her skin stepped darker as well, her complexion brighter than the color of her hair. She was midnight standing, stark and starless as an abyss and alluring as the spinning black in my dreams. She looked at me, her hazel gaze had assumed a deep brown, and she smiled, parting her plush pair of lips, whispering without speaking.

"Come on in!" Balthazar interrupted my daydream, "Bartholomew told me you were coming." he turned around, "My name is Balthazar. Sunny, right? Sunny Dale?" I nodded, Amana led us past the entrance, and I closed the door behind us.

Balthazar's arms outstretched, "Welcome! Have a seat!" In a swaying motion, he brought his long-robed left arm forward, and with that gesture, the action of two chairs swept beneath Amana and me, sweeping us off our feet. We plopped onto the tops of the two dusty seats, and as we did, he moved to his chair, dustless. The bottom end of his purple robe scraped across the cold stone floor, hiding any detection of a stride. He descended upon his chair like a liar upon a mantlepiece.

"What the hell!" Amana yelled as the dust settled.

"I figured you two wanted a sit & chat. And there is no chat if there is no seat to sit in, in this instance at least!" Balthazar snapped back; his voice was dry and sounded like sand sifting between four fingers.

 "Well, I'm not one for sitting and chatting unless what I'm sitting on is clean, and who I'm chatting with isn't a fiend!" Amana fired back.

"It would be wise to make friends of fiends, less your silver garden become ravaged."

"There are thorns among my garden Balthazar, and for fiendish thorns in my side, my scorn."

"Oh, oh, oh!" Balthazar chuckled, "Those silver roses need a spattering; it's in a rose's nature to run red."

"And what do you know of nature?" Amana pressed.

"A great deal, for I know, but I know far less of those who know not themselves." Balthazar rebutted. Amana's face grew solemn, and then she looked back at me. I found my daydream through her brown eyes again, so her lips moved as they did then.

"I am gonna leave now. I will be at the bottom of the spiral staircase after you are done here." Amana said to me as she stood.

"Leaving already?" Balthazar asked. Amana said nothing in return and walked calmly out of the spire, closing the door firmly behind her. The dust that had collected on the door fell into the air, and soon Balthazar and I were two among a gaudy study with a book one.

"I wonder why she hates me," Balthazar pondered, and as he spoke, I took in his fuller details. His eyes were a dim purple, his skin wrinkled and haggard, and his neck stuck out like a vulture as it stretched out of his purple garb. Interlaced silver rings draped from his shoulders, curving at his chest and back, and amethyst gems sat, fitted inside the silver circles. "Why do you suppose she doesn't like me?" Balthazar asked me, and so I thought: It is the color of your eyes.

"I thought it was my words, but you might be on to something." Did he understand me?

"I didn't understand, but I read you if that's what you were thinking. Anyway, Bartholomew let me know that I might be interested in taking a jaunt across the creases of your brain. He is a worrier yah know. He worries about what might be beneath your skin; if we are to rid the world of the lie, we must know your nature. Here is the problem; you do not know what you are. And so, I must make sure you are what we think you are." Balthazar said, and so I thought: I know who I am. I am Sunny Dale, I am a friend of light, but I am not light synonymous. The truths I glean are gifts given by a force unseen; they are scant miracles blessed upon my moments. And for what I don't know, I remember, and the memories I have, writhe for release.

"A friend of light, you say. I'll tell you what I think you are; so that as you remember, I might glean who you really are." Balthazar replied to my thoughts, and as he replied, I eyed the book lain across his oaken desk.

"What you are is a specific instance, an anomaly of space and time. An instance is defined as if one dropped the shatters of a mirror into a frame, and then each of those pieces fitted back together in a separate order to be a mirror again. You are a perfect result amidst a chaotic chain of events. You are a concept constant, persistent along a path lit with divinity despondent. And you exist to seek, to behold that which is depressed and distant. But alas, Sunny, if you were to see it that molded you, you would be unraveled by it, like the tattered wrappings of a cloth coffin." As he spoke, I could feel his presence seeping into the depths of my mind. The Lich bound my brain, but Balthazar was like a fluid. His essence ran across my mind like torrents of red wine. I was awash, drowning in his psyche. I began to recollect, or instead, Balthazar started to remember for me, and as he drew upon my memories, I stood, trembling in the knees.

"Oooooh, interesting, I see you have pondered upon Batholomew; you saw beneath his guise. Strange. And what you saw was the druid before now. You saw him as growth, the precursor to time. You have an interesting perspective, Sunny. Before man constructed the day, time was shown by the growth of things around man. As I recall your memories, I have drawn a parallel between you and The Lie. Your eyes, they see the truth while his tell lies." As he continued to collect my recollections, I stumbled towards the book; as I fell forward, I braced myself upon the desk.

"Several sets of eyes peering from an abyss. Oh my- hey! What do you think you're doing?" the presence slipped out of the back of my skull as he turned his attention from my mind to my actions. As the relief from his leave set in, I gazed upon the pages of the book, and what I beheld went as follows:

"Several sets of eyes peering from an abyss. Oh my- hey! What do you think you're doing?" His presence slipped out of the back of my head as he turned his attention to me. As the relief from his leave set in I gazed upon the pages of the book, and what I beheld went as follows:”

I threw myself backward out of shock and fell on my backside, bouncing on the stone floor. Balthazar leaned over his desk and asked, "What did you see?" I began to feel his presence retake hold, so I engaged him in my ethereal sights. As I inflicted my will upon him, the sunlight bled from a window in the spire's wall began to thin. But before the night could set in, I saw the creature beneath the older man. A fiend, not knowing, but scheming. His secrets are many, and yet he is defined by one motive, one word: unity. He is the uglier piece of a greater whole, the thinking mind of a thing in four parts.

 "You seem to have seen beyond my surface. A gazer cast into our reality. I'll be sure to be gentler with your mind if you refrain from searching my depths any further." I nodded in agreement and retracted the will I cast. "A deal made is a deal struck," Balthazar said while closing the book. I thought: what is that book?

"Oh, this ol' raggedy thing?" Balthazar slid the book into his robes, and as he did, I saw its cover had a circular spiral.

"It's my Tome of Continuity," he continued. "Depending on who is holding the thing, it will display their life events chronologically, up until the present. I use it to reminisce on the times my mind can no longer remember. I have lived since knowing, and as the years have sifted through my fingers, so have their moments. But I digress; you have gained my favorable judgment. In return, do you have any questions? I should be able to answer them." I nodded in acknowledgment, then thought: As a creature of scheming, why do you choose to be an elderly man?

"A great question! Humans deem the old wise. Which I, personally, find funny. For it is through time the old forget. They forget that things change, and yet they pine for the things they had, for those things were theirs. And it is the old who forget the things they had, had changed from what they were. Such is a foolish pursuit, so I do not see moments of foolishness among the wise." I stood up slowly and began to make my way back to my dusty seat. Balthazar followed suit and sat back down in his. If Bartholomew was growth and became nature, then what are you?

"I am simple. I was the whisper in the dark; I am now the secret held behind the skin of an old man. My power was that of space, in that I was once he who bent the laws of physics. After the universal singularity, my powers over the bend of our dimension ceased." Universal singularity? I thought, and as I did, he crossed his arms and combed his fingers through his beard.

"That is the event that spurred the creation of this new world. The common tongue refers to it as the collapse, but to view it as such is to deny its dimension and scale. The event was caused by a thing named Phelix. He was my protege, the progeny of the king, and he would have been a prodigy if it were not for his short-sightedness. As I bent the laws of physics, he broke them, and it was in his reckless experimentation that the singularity occurred. Every universe, or reality, conceivable, collapsed into a singular metaphysical point. As I traversed your thoughts, I saw that you interpreted the collapse as a reformation, a period of rebirth. And as you spectated, you beheld the world taking its shape; and as it took form, you assumed it denoted yours. But you see, Sunny, you were an idea, and the shape you took from the world's recreation was essence given substance. The mortality you have now is a lie told by a tall tale-teller; it is not unlike the faces Amana wears, and yet you are not a slave to your mask." My thoughts asked: do you know of the beauty beneath the silver flowers?

"I know of her and the tale that binds her still. She Who Feigns was her title; she was a queen of Direwood in the Bleak of Lonna. Among that forest of dead trees is a silver spike, and it was a beacon for the undead after the collapse. Their breathless lives are still drawn to the thing like moths to a flame. Her father was an acolyte of a greater evil; you and I know this evil to be the lie. He worshipped the god of the hunt, and in his praise, he beckoned the creature. Eyes, the name it had given itself, had possessed the father. And as the lie took hold of the mind of the silver king, he who owned the mind became lost in what was and was not real.

As you know, the illusions the lie crafts are inseparable from reality. Time passed, and Amana Delan caught wind of her father's change. And as she confronted the creature wearing her father like a new coat, he offered to grant any wish she desired. She took the offer, not wanting to be queen anyway. Her wish was simple; it was not to be herself but beautiful. There is one issue with such a broad request. The issue is this: there are many faces to beauty, for beauty-objective is not objectified,