ELLIPSES... by Gabriel Archer & Jack Canaan Smashwords Edition Copyright©2012 MetaFic, Inc. All rights reserved. Talk dirty to us, o Muse... On her knees, she gags. There are tears in her eyes. Had she worn mascara, it would have surely run, but she hasn't put it on in weeks. Leaning with his back against the file cabinet is her john, John. He's a marketing executive, which means a sharp looking shirt, sleazy suspenders, and a recreational coke addiction. He doesn't pay any attention to what she's doing. He's feverishly writing something on a yellow pad. A few lines are already crossed out: UltraVision: The picture of perfection! UltraVision: Your eyes in HD! UltraVision: A see of sights! John's face gets skewed, as if he's having a stroke. What he's really having is a stroke of genius. "Ahhhhh!" He cums: UltraVision: A Sight to Behold!!!! This little doozy gets e-mailed around the office at fiber-optic speeds. UltraVision, LLC is going to love it. While John runs to the bathroom for... sniff... some celebration, she is left alone, on the floor. Next to her is the crumpled sheet with the crossed off marketing slogans. She uses it to wipe her lips. Payment has been exchanged without anyone even noticing. She stumbles out of the office. Eyes unfocused, fingernails scratching at her ribs that poke through her sallow, drooping skin. She trembles. One would think she should be satisfied for a while, but in fifteen minutes her limp hair and drained tits swing inharmoniously to the computerized music of a greeting card. Its Jingle Bells... obviously. All that's missing is the line of cleverness that will make consumers smile all through the holiday season. She doesn't even know who's fucking her, she just knows she needs it and he's giving it. In the corner of the room is a garbage pale with a toy basketball hoop attached to the rim. So far it looks like the Knicks having a usual game. Balled up ideas are everywhere except the basket. Carl doesn't give up. His pencil keeps scratching at the lined paper, like a live man scratching at the lid of the closed coffin, and just as successfully. For her, time is unperceivable. She doesn't care how long it takes, as long as she gets it in the end. But today Carl surprises everyone. He prematures one. Under the picture of the Christmas tree, where a polar bear is holding out a wrapped present in its paws, Carl wrote: I come BEARing gifts! He gives her a slightly apologetic look. He knows it's not his best work. She doesn't care. She got her fix and fumbles out the door. Besides, she's had worse trips. A tossed salad gets her a somewhat creative obituary. She almost wishes it was her own. Scratching at an insatiable itch, she finds herself sandwiched by two comic book writers. Wham! Bam! Then she's gang-banged by the writing staff of the network's hot, new high school drama. Christmas. The long snowy road from Virginia to New York. A blitzkrieg of Christmas jingles on all stations at all times. Once in a while, a blessed burst of white noise, and then "White Christmas." Jack is on autopilot. The heat is up. A cigarette slowly smolders. A cool gust of wind from the window keeps the smoke out of his eyes and his eyes open. The cheap cup of coffee he purchased at the last gas station is not cold yet. As soon as the latest cover of "All I want for X-Mas is You," is over, a sexy voice, backgrounded by a quiet orchestra, relates how wonderful it is to see your children frolic – Frolic? Who says frolic nowdays? – how beautiful sunsets are, how only UltraVision lenses can make all of this... A Sight to Behold! The commercials, the snowy waves along the road, the patches of light that his headlights liberate from the darkness, all fade to the back of his mind. The same intrusive idea begins its habitual circles in his head. This thought is about a novel. Actually, he's not sure. Maybe it's just a long short-story, maybe it's something else entirely. But what does he even know of these things? He never wrote anything other than what his pocketknife could carve into a tree. But at least everyone now knew that "Jenny is a Whore" and that "Jack + Lisa = ♥" But still, he can almost see the outline for the story. He already has some witty lines and a few clever gimmicks. How hard could it be? Jack blinks a few times and realizes that he is standing on a red light in some small Virginia town. A new cigarette inhales the dying breath of the last one. Someone knocks on his window. He jerks back, dropping the cigarette. It takes him a few moments and a few winces to snatch it up before it rolls its way to the crotch area. He peers through the passenger side window. The woman that stands there does not inspire confidence. Her dress, as much as he can see, is ripped. A ragged, old biker's jacket is around her shoulders. Her nose is dripping snot and she has a wicked bruise under one of her eyes. The light turns green. He slowly presses the gas peddle and his car starts to roll forward. Then he shakes his head. It's Christmas. It's freezing. He stops the car and rolls down the window. He sees her awkwardly walking to him through snow. When she gets there, he is leaning across the passenger seat with a crumpled ten dollar bill in his hand. "Get yourself some soup, it's freezing," Jack offers. "I need a ride." She says, taking the money. "I'm going to New York." "Good enough," she replies, trying the car handle. "I don't think so. Not a great idea," Jack says. "Come on. Please?" she asks, giving him an 'I'll blow you for it' look. Then she says, "I'll blow you for it." She pulls some snot in noisily. Jingle bells are going off in Jack's head. Besides the fact that the hitchhiker looks unsanitary, Jack + Lisa = ♥. Still, it's Christmas and the whore is turning the blue of a Christmas tree decoration. "Get in and forget about the... you know... the BJ." She slides in. The aroma of the streets fills the car. Now that Jack has a better view of her, he sees that her nails are broken and islands of red nail polish in their middle are slowly being flooded. Her lips are cracked and at least one tooth is missing. Jack cracks the window open a little more, waits for the light to turn green again, and they're off, riding through the snow. "Can I bum a smoke?" she asks, giving him the aforementioned look and stretching her hands to the heating vents. Jack, regretting his choices, hands her the pack. She takes one cigarette and pockets the rest. As she lights up, he sees a cigarette burn on her neck. Not the usual company he keeps. "Thanks. I really need this," she says. "What's your name, honey?" "Jack." "I'm Calli," she says after a few moments of silence. "Like the Hindu goddess of death?" Jack asks. "With a C," Calli replies. "Oh." "What's on your mind, Jack?" He glances at her. She's inhaling the cigarette smoke with enviable relish, like she hasn't smoked in years. Though Jack is partial to plumper girls, her practically naked thighs make him want to touch them. "Nothing. Just enjoying the music." He nods to the radio. "Nobody enjoys this music, Jack. Not by the time Christmas comes around. But there is something on your mind and it's not the holidays, not mortgage, not Lisa," she says. "Lisa? Why did you say that name?" "It's on your car keys," she says and points with the cigarette to the ignition, almost burning him in the process. "Is she pretty?" "Beautiful, actually." "Good for you, Jack. Now, what's on your mind?" she asks. The way she asks is not like people making small-talk ask, but like she really wants... needs to hear the answer. Her thighs slightly spread. "Um... it's stupid. Just a... really, nothing important." "You know, Kafka to his dying day believed that he had never produced anything worth of value. He actually ordered all his manuscripts burned after his death." Jack stares at Calli with considerable surprise. Not something one usually learns in the University of Street Corners. "It's just a story idea." "So write it." Her eyes slightly widen, her thighs slightly part. "I think I may," Jack says. "I've never done this before, you know? I'll get home, think things through..." "No, no, no," she interrupts, taking out his pack from her pocket and offering him a white stalk of a cigarette. "Uh, uh. Write it now." "Now? I'm driving." "Pull over." "No." "Listen, Jack, I met a few writers in my day. Very few of them brilliant, the rest are a waste of ink and sperm. But what's common to both is that an idea left on a shelf remains there. If you have something right now that's choking you, you better get it out." Jack accepts his own cigarette and goes quiet. Five minutes pass, filled with the squeaks of wind-shield wipers, bumps of the tires, and the hiss of cigarettes. The car begins to slow down. The snowflakes drop slower and become better outlined. Then there's silence again. The parking lights are glowing red on the shoulder. They and the stars are the only lights in the universe. "Fuck it," Jack says. "Why not?" It's not her and her words, it's the idea that keeps circling and circling like a vulture. It burns. A few minutes of shuffling between her legs in the glove compartment produces an old car manual with the last few pages blank for "Notes." An old pencil is spooning with the tire-pressure thingy. "So the story is about..." he starts. "You write, I'll sneak glances over your shoulder," she says, moving closer. He writes. She smells of cigarettes and cum and cheap perfume. He feels her breath on his shoulder. Jack gets hard. Sing to me, o Muse... Impotence would make this look like a statue's erection. He sat with... "No," Calli says. "You have to put the title in first. A title that will order the story. A title is what a reader sees first, that's what entices him, intrigues him." Now that Jack noticed, she's not as skinny or desperate looking as before. Now she seems almost an erotic enigma. Jack nods and jots in the title at the top. Ellipses... Sing to me, o Muse... Impotence would make this look like a statue's erection. He sat with a limp quill in hand, in the fading candlelight, surrounded by empty wine bottles and crumpled parchment. He was young and had dreams befitting his age: untarnished, pure, boundless. Mayhap that was the problem. Abortions would make this seem like healthy babes. Each one of his ideas was stillborn the moment ink touched parchment. The courageous, scarred captain of the frigate drowned in a papery sea. The young knight was stabbed in the back with a sharp quill. And his adventurous maidens were too tarnished to make it onto the virgin-white page. Surrender would make this seem like victory. He threw the quill down, and ink splattered. It seems that lately all he did was try to wash the black afterbirth of his failed ideas off his hands in the basin. He scrubbed and he scrubbed but the ink spots just faded, never left. With his father's money pouch he went to the tavern's common room, to replenish from the creativity well, which was nothing short of a short barrel of wine. The company was as to be expected: middle kids of middle families with average ambitions. This one a notary, that one a student. Here an actor, there a soldier. All doomed to a life of... a soldier or an actor, and nothing more. But the sadness was not in these people's present or future, it was in their inability to inspire. The student was not going to be the next Aristotle, the actor would not be the next Shakespeare, and the soldier would not become the next Napoleon. And speaking of Napoleon – the room raised their mugs in a salute to the Emperor. Then the door opened. She would make Helen of Troy look like... just Helen of Sparta. He was struck by the unearthly beauty, though all the others remained unimpressed and went on discussing the Campaign. She took off the cowl off her riding cloak and brushed drops of Paris rain from the hem of her skirt. "Hello, m'lady," he said paying for her cup of port. Then he asked of her name, as was customary of a young lothario wishing to glance a bosom. She said... whatever it is a maiden answers when she wishes a bosom glanced. This would make the Rape of the Sabine Woman seem like a frolic. Their clothes were in tatters, as if the Grande Armėe was using them for bayonet practice. They reeled from each other's kisses as if scalded. The bed, though determined to survive, cracked like the Prussian center at the Battle of Austerlitz. Laughter, moans, and cries echoed through the halls of the small tavern. The next weeks would make Sodom and Gomorra seem like a small tavern in Napoleonic Paris. The only rest he took was to write. Ink would barely dry before another sheet would blanket it. Long, spidery lines appeared almost as if from nowhere. They described an epic of a young, idealistic Athenian poet and his affair with the Muse. And all this time, he felt her breath on his shoulder. Torn between the two, he could no longer ignore one for the other, and placed a clean parchment on his lover's lower back as he took her from behind. Oily ink and oily discharge covered their thighs. Neither of his creative instruments ever worked as well as they did at that moment. And then, before the ink on the last page was even dry, she was gone. There was victory, surely, because he now had a thick bundle of handwritten pages that contained brilliance. All his aspirations and inspirations were now locked in those pages. This was his magnum opus. He called her happily to show her the finished manuscript. He finally put on some clothes and went looking for her into the common room, clutching the papers to his breast as if it was an infant. The common room was identical to what he saw the last time, except that she was nowhere to be found. The novel's success would make Napoleon's conquests look like sandbox victories. He became rich and bought back his family's mansion, lost to the Revolution. He was greeted by his equals as a greater. Goethe himself wrote him to duel the finer points of wordsmithing. There were even battlefield legends that one of the Marshals was saved from a Russian musket by the thickness of the tome. Is it a wonder then that the years that followed were the unhappiest in his life? The mansion fell into disarray because of his tantrums. Invitations to parlors of high society were foregone for late night stumbling into sleezy taverns where she might be, but never was. His creative instruments were dry and limp. Now he was surrounded by crumpled parchments and unsatisfied wenches. Nothing great ever came from under his quill again. This would make the end seem like the first day of creation. He was in that tavern again, where he met her. In the same room where he once composed the greatest novel of the Empire. He was drinking the same wine and crying. The only addition to this oil painting were a few gray hairs and a loaded pistol. In words befitting a great author, he said "Fuck it," albeit in French, and raised the pistol to his gray temple. A moment of doubt and he... "What happened?" Calli asks, breathing heavily, her right hand vigorously rubbing under her skirt. "What happened is very simple," Jack says. "I do not want to end up like that young Frenchman." "Why don't you end it?" She asks, sounding almost in pain. He smiles and casually takes the cigarette pack from her pocket. "I figured something out. The Muse does not only inspire us, she needs us. We are her... drug of choice. She finds the freshest cut ideas, the greatest processed and treated thoughts, and she sniffs them up, she injects them into herself. Then she leaves, leaving us a dry husk with our greatest creation behind us, ourselves addicted to inspiration that is no longer there." "How... does... it... end?" She moans, her fingers rubbing quicker. "So how does one keep this crack whore of creativity loyal to your needle?" He smiles a little sadistically, letting out two jets of smoke from his nose. "You plunge the needle into her vein," he rustles the written pages before him, "but don't press the plunger." He throws the pencil out of the window where it is quickly swallowed by snow. "That's what the ellipses are, the unfinished creation. And then you got her. She's yours for life." "Tell me how it ends, motherfucker!" She screams, insanity in her eyes, spit flying at his face. "With an ellipses." Jack reaches for... An Excerpt from ASHES OF HEROES Book One of the War of Regret Series By Gabriel Archer & Jack Canaan Available Now Wherever E-Books are Sold "I once heard it said that a storyteller has but the briefest moment to snare the mind of his listeners and make them follow his story to the end. I once heard it said that one must start off the story with a grand mystery or a bloody war--something exciting." Renz's voice was satin-soft. He and Vira sat under the moonlight on a mossy boulder in a deserted corner of the fort that had seen too many bar fights and not enough tenderness. "Will you tell me of your swordsmanship, then?" Vira asked in a hush. Renz felt her shift closer to him in the way a faithful hound reaches out for her owner's fingers. "No, not swordsmanship," Renz said, adjusting his battle-ax to avoid poking her in the ribs. "You must forgive me, my sweet, but I have no such tales. The truth is, the really talented storyteller--the one who always smells of campfires and whose voice has wrought fantasies in the minds of children and noblemen alike--will describe the background before ever beginning the story of an epic battle or doomed love. Such men, the truly talented, know how to create the proper setting. They start at the beginning. A noble prince dying in the woods, handing off his infant son to--" "Was your father a prince?" Vira asked, her voice subdued with the anticipation of a girl half expecting to hear half-lies. "Had he only been one, I would be a match for you." She shifted even closer, and he heard a soft sigh surging from a place deep within her where fantasies still lived. On the wall above, the sentries exchanged smoldering torches together with their shifts. As Renz inhaled the scent of his nearing prize, he remembered his "noble" lineage. His father, like his father, his father, and his father before him, went straight from their mother's tit to an ale jug, though it much humbler in dimensions. Whenever he surfaced from that bottleneck, he had only strength enough to bed his wife and ride a patrol. One or the other was bound to be his downfall. But the man's heart was strong, so Renz's father survived the bouts with Renz's mother. His neck, however, snapped like a twig when he drunkenly fell off his horse during a patrol in the Ashes. No one was sure whether it was the fall that killed him or the leagues that his trusty steed dragged him through while evading the hot pursuit of other Silver Bear warriors who tried to save their comrade. "Well, you are no noble; you have no scars of epic battles and no Silver Claw on your shoulder. What will you capture my attention with, except those pretty eyes?" she asked in the coquettish way of a girl whose attention was captured and fettered with chains strong enough for a giant. Renz had long ago realized that his quick smile, the silver-colored hair, and the varnished silver glint of his eyes were the perfect combination to seduce common girls. More than that, what really won him favor with women was his approach--life owed him much, and he was collecting. If only the prize were greater. "If I were walking the halls of the Borian lords or even inspecting the plump granaries of the Kitaran wheat barons...surely I would have entangled the heart of a proper maiden, one of nobler blood and sultrier appearance!" Renz thought as his palm softly lowered to Vira's thigh. It was soft and smooth. How depressing it was, he thought as his fingers gently squeezed that thigh, that, alas, his talents were being wasted here at the edge of the world. Not that he was certain this was the edge of the world. Vague legends, half-baked rumors, and holy priests (all equally untrustworthy, in Renz's opinion), spoke of vast lands beyond the border. They said that the Ashes stretched into sunset and then beyond. Unfortunately, Asenthia lacked not only maidens worthy of Renz's arrogant attention but also competent cartographers who could render accurate maps. Besides, no one had the courage to truly brave the Ashes, so Renz was stuck here at the border, at the edge of the world, with Vira. Vira! He remembered and turned back to her, realizing that his mind could also use a good mapping to avoid meandering down the various side paths. "It is so because I have nothing--no lineage, no shiny coin, no rank, no great victories. Not even any future but to serve quietly in this fort for the rest of my life. Anyone else to whom you might gift your love will not cherish or remember it the way I will..." His voice faded to nary a whisper so that she had to lean closer and closer toward his lips. "You're mad!" she excitedly whispered. "I am to wed your general with the sunrise! My father will see you hanged if he finds out!" "I will chance all of that for one night, just one night--" Their lips met and interrupted the moonlight. They were out of step with each other; their lovemaking was akin to a battle. It lacked the fluidity of an old couple dancing the same dance at the annual village fall festival. She brushed her lips against his. He tried to bite them. She caressed his cheek with her fingers. He twisted his fingers in her hair and pulled. She tried to shush him to a slower pace. He snorted like a bull plowing a field. She kissed his neck. He choked hers. The cot groaned under them, its wooden frame threatening to break. Their ardor shook the nearby table, wobbling the half-full goblet of wine--the red liquid swooshing in pace with their thrusts until it overturned. A crimson river was birthed, with most of the tributaries seeping into the wood and only the heartiest taking a path of exploration: winding under the crook of a still-smoking pipe, around hills of melted wax, and by a mountain of cleanly-picked chicken bones. Eventually the stream became a waterfall, and Renz heard those drops of wine drumming off his ax belt as they fell from the table. The wine stopped dripping. Renz tensed and jerked out. His seed rushed forth onto her thighs, slowly oozing down to her knee and onto his tabard--mandatorily hand-washed for her upcoming wedding. Dragon seed! Renz thought. He rolled off her naked, sweated-sparkling body. She rolled onto him, eager to share pleasure's aftertaste. He rolled her off, using his pipe as an excuse. They were doing their awkward dance again. The surge of pleasure slowly ebbed. With it left the insatiable, insane lust he had felt just moments before. In its stead came the realization that he had just plowed the future wife of the Master of the Order. Dragon seed! He swallowed loudly, imagining what a noose would feel like crushing his throat. They would not even chop his head off. That mercy they saved for traitors, murderers, and rapists. No, his death would be far slower and more painful. He deeply inhaled the smoke of his pipe along with the smell of his room. Surely underneath discarded tunics, cloaks, and breeches was a dead rat. There was also the stale, sour reek of spilled wine and regretful sex, the latter being more distinct and accusing. A gaze around his room--anything not to look at her. Two dull daggers, thrown out of boredom, stuck out of a wall a good foot away from the crudely drawn target. In the corner was a bucket filled with water the color of sword rust. A chamber pot covered by some dirty rags completed his furnishings. The panting, glistening Vira was oblivious to these unromantic details and was kissing his shoulder as she murmured some soft words of affection into his skin in a futile attempt to add significance to an act that had none. He shrugged her off. "You should hurry, Vira; it's dawning," Renz said. "You'll be late for your wedding." Renz skirted the perimeter of the crowd like a vagabond looking for a drink. The morning was bright, illuminating everything--both virtue and sin. Renz had too few of the former and too many of the latter to push through to the wedding arc. He kept away from the places where the bride and groom could see him in his seed-covered tabard. The aroma of freshly baked bread circled the fort's courtyard, summoning saliva from mouths too familiar with stale crackers. Soldiers, moving about their errands, so accustomed to the typical layout of their fort, stumbled on newly erected spits, canopies, and tables. And those spits held wonders: pierced from tail to mouth, large hogs and muscled elk twirled over fire. Farther away, whole families of hares took boiling baths in cauldrons filled with onions, carrots, and parsley. The tang of cinnamon and thyme ruled the air, vanquishing even the stench of so many sweating bodies pressing together. In his six years serving in the Order of the Silver Bears, Renz had never seen the fort so festive. Mundane chores had marched the love of life out of these seasoned soldiers. Guarding against the Ash Lands had a way of dousing good humor. That is not to say that these men did not have a joke or two; they had enough to fill half-a-night's watch, in fact. But most of those jokes were bawdy, and the laughter they evoked mostly cynical. That is understandable, however, because most mornings found the warriors grumpily stumping around and going about insipid tasks. Sharpen the ax, chop the wood, sharpen the ax, practice decapitating an enemy in the yard, sharpen the ax, chop the wood... But this day was truly different. Men walked around grinning, stopping every few moments to partake of the unfamiliar aromas. Some went so far as to put flowers on their scabbards and wreaths on their hair. The Silver Bears even tried to don new colors--black was replaced by gray, and brown by dun. After cajoling a flask of ale from the kitchen stewards by alternating promises of friendship with those of hounding and pain--anything in place of coin--Renz set out to find a resting place. This was not an easy task. For one, he needed a map to find the places where young recruits emptied piss pots and chamber pots; the lazy ones did not make it to the walls as was protocol. Once again, Renz wished for a good cartographer. Finally, a grassy spot of earth, comfortably cooled by the shade of the smithy and not reeking of night soil, provided a tempting resting place. Renz stretched out and glanced toward the bustling crowd by the temple. Above everyone's heads was a crook of the wedding arc. Supposedly, when the priest gave his benedictions and allowed the betrothed to step through the arc, they were married. Renz was slowly sipping the ale and watching the crowd when a column of horses obstructed his view. They seemed out of place now. Dust fled the stamping hooves and clung to Renz. The clanking of weapons and the neighing of horses obliterated the cheerful music of magdanas and flutes that accompanied the newlyweds to the arc. Chain was thrown over patched jerkins. Barbed, bearded axes and spiked, heavy maces hung off leather cords. The hunting hounds barked to the point of rasping as they weaved their way between hooves. For these men, there was no wedding this day, no festival of any sort. Today was like yesterday, like all the yesterdays put together. The Ash Lands required managing, and the owners of these bearded, sour faces were the unlucky ones to ride the patrol this festive day. The dust took a long time to settle. When it finally did, Renz lit up his pipe and deeply sucked in the thick fumes. He didn't force the smoke out; he simply parted his mouth and let wisps flee as they might. A gray cloud lazily crossed by his eyes and momentarily clung to the tips of his hair. When the mist cleared, Drean stood above him. It took his friend but a single moment of staring at Renz to determine that his warnings had gone unheeded. "Gander at him! Can there be doubt?" Drean exclaimed. "You went and took your bear to her cave, didn't you?" Drean asked as he settled down next to Renz, back against the smithy, knees bent. Renz just grunted in response and tilted his head back to let ale spill down his throat. "General Erthan's bethro--" Drean started but was interrupted when the crowd around the arc erupted with cheers, whistles, and clapping. "General Erthan's wife! Did not expect it even from you, Renz. Even from you." Drean reached over and took the flask. "Should Erthan or Master Filoran hear of this--" Drean said after a long gulp, but then he waved a hand, as if Renz wouldn't understand anyway. He took another long swill and then shook the empty flask with a frown. Renz stood up. He was tired of it all. He'd thought he had found a quiet resting spot here by the smithy, but fate appeared determined to not let him rest. "Friend, do you know what is more pathetic than a painter without a canvas or a tavern without ale?" Renz asked. "It is a soldier without a war. A flaccid cock at the village dance has more purpose than that. "Look at us! Our greatest enemy is boredom, and we are losing one day at a time. Every day I bruise my balls in the saddle riding another useless patrol through the Ash Lands, coming back with nothing but dry vomit and a headache. Every night, I stare in a stupor from the wall, waiting--praying--for the Ash Lands to unleash--" Renz didn't finish; it was his turn to wave a hand in frustration. The feast had moved away from the temple. The long line of well-wishers shouted blessings and wound to Bear's Claw tavern. On long benches, men drank mead and ale. Wooden tables were laden with dishes Renz had not seen for months. Everyone looked happy--even the groom, who was usually as emotional as a dead man. Drean shrugged; they'd had this conversation many times before. Instead of replying, he slung his magdana from around his shoulder and began strumming his single, eternal tune. Ding-ding-dong. Renz left his friend and walked toward the temple. His dirty boots crushed flower petals left behind from the procession. The brown, squat temple loomed closer and closer----as inevitable as death. Renz passed under the ceremonial arc, which suddenly seemed very lonely. An hour ago it was the center of attention, but now it was abandoned, sacrificed as the wind's plaything. In everyone's haste to attend the feast, they'd left the temple's bronze gates flung open. Inside was darkness interrupted only by a few flickering tallow candles. The whole place stank of old leather and ancient vellum. Uncertainty stopped Renz at the temple's gate. But having stepped through the wedding arc, Renz felt obligated to carry that uncertainty over the threshold. It was not that he'd never been to the temple. He had. Just never of his own accord. He came to this place once a week, as was mandated by the Order. He and the other men sat on thoroughly uncomfortable, low stone benches, purposely made thus so it would be harder to fall asleep. Here Renz and the others listened to long, boring sermons deliver by an equally dull Jindar-Ul. These weekly visits were torture sessions, and more than once Renz found himself listening to the end of the lecture in some position that revealed he couldn't have been awake. Before today, he had never gone inside actually seeking something. Renz did not like this feeling of emptiness that had recently been assailing him. Considered from all angles, it seemed that Renz had everything. A bed every night, two meals every day. Occasionally, even some maiden's warmth. He had friends and ale and dice. He didn't have war--probably a good thing. And yet, something was amiss. Perhaps it is here, hidden in these windowless walls. The temple looked eerie now, with no sour faces of the fellow warriors who accompanied him weekly, with no arrogant priests in white robes. But the statues were still here. Renz looked at the biggest one, the bronze figure of Panthos towering over the granite altar. The god was poised in mid-lunge, attacking...whoever it was that the legends said he attacked. The divine face was twisted with rage. Renz spun at the sound behind his back. The gates had slammed shut. The wind, Renz reassured himself, even though the gates were bronze and required two stout priests to close them. Renz squinted at the sudden gloom. It was as though he were still a child, still scared by darkness. When he wasn't looking, things moved. He was certain of it. The corner of his eyes perceived shapes slinking in shadows and under benches, but they stopped moving whenever he focused on them. The silence, the sculpture of the outraged god, and the three slowly dying candles all told him to go away. And that was precisely why he was determined to stay. Renz walked to a heavy table of oak that held one of the candles and sat down by a closed volume. The book was unnecessarily thick, with many extravagant carvings on its wooden cover. Renz opened it to a random page and peered inside. The furthest candle from him--the one on the pulpit--died. The temple sank deeper into darkness. The text was surprisingly elaborate. The letters had decorative crowns and curls and flourishes with which a normal scribe does not bother and for which a barely literate Renz had little appreciation. The language was a little outdated, which Renz supposed added genuineness to the message. As the prince lay dying, he left his infant child under the care of The armies of our God were led across the Zahir'Sad by For mighty was said unto the warriors of Asenthia. "For is with you!" "What would a man's soul be worth if of darkness "Forg death the Gods left This part of the narrative was probably unfinished; all Renz saw were fragments. Some words seemed erased by time and usage. Renz respectfully closed the volume and gently pushed it away. His fingers pulled closer a thinner book, and he squinted to read the faded title. It was some chronicles of somebody Renz could not make out. When he opened the book, whole lines were missing, even paragraphs at times. Whatever was left didn't make any sense. This book he did not bother closing; he just shoved it away. The second candle went out. Renz took the last candle and hurried to the monolithic bookcase that stretched floor to ceiling. The first book that he opened was empty. It felt to the floor. The next had pages just as naked and was flung at the statue of Panthos. Icy pincers of fear squeezed Renz's stomach. With an open palm, Renz emptied a whole shelf to the floor. Some books opened their wings in flight; others fell on their faces. But all the pages that Renz could see were empty. He rushed back to the table and opened the first book he'd perused, the one that had held fragments he could read. Nothing stared back at him. Just faded, yellow pages devoid of ink. Sizzling, the last candle died.