Oh, the Worldly Glory Goes

"Sic transit gloria mundi," said the one beneath the black cloak. The fabric was nightworm silk, fine, glossy, and blacker than the darkling night outside. From the slits in the stone walls you heard the wind mutter, and it was louder than the murmurs inside the room. Stabs of moonlight came in from those slits, cutting soft patches out from the shadows. Even still, the black cloak was in utter shadow, but not the six others to whom he spoke. "So slows the pulse of the earth." The reply came from a yellow cloak beside him, of course it did. Only that bird had the wit and tongue to match, always. The one across from him, a white cloak, spoke now, rattling in his throat and saying, "Slows? It stops. We've ripped out the hearts of the earth. It is a corpse now, or will be." Beneath the black cloak, he shifted and its extent seemed to be expanding, playfully, mirthfully --- even as the edges blended indiscernibly with the darkness and any motion could have been a trick of the light, a dance of the shadows. His face would have told you; but he was masked as well as cloaked, they all were. In reply black cloak said, "What is every corpse but the food for new life? With the hearts we can fledge a new world. Our new world." "Always with the moribund metaphors," White muttered. Beneath the yellow cloak a wing twisted, some gesture of interruption. "If we're building a new world, first of all we should free the slaves and grant them a say in the order of things." Black cloak seemed to bring two wings together over his breast; but a smile couldn't be seen. All the while, the bird who was under a violet cloak had been fidgeting, as if the garment itched, as if she wished to tear it off and tear off everyone else's and be rid of these theatrics. "Really?" she said. It was the first word she spoke this meeting. You could tell by the short silence after, by how she bounced demandingly forward, that she wished it could be the only word. Just a verb slap, slapping some sense into these playacting fools. But she followed it up, she had to. She said, "We're fucking scholars. Fledgling fucking scholars. We've barely a dozen scrolls writ between all of us. And only two of us --- if that many --- have the gilded robes at all. We could hardly make a book, let alone a world." Under a blue cloak, at least, there was a twist she suspected was a head spun in agreement. White merely cawed sharply, affirmation or just acknowledgment. Black, though, was shaking in anger, that much she could tell from a look to his dark corner. Or it had just been a particularly intense cloud which passed before the moon. White spoke. "She is right. We're like hatchlings dressed as ghosts." The eyeholes of his mask --- through which you saw a gleam of silver, his eyes --- passed over Yellow and Black. "Which of you had this stupid idea?" It had to be one of you. He didn't say it, but all had heard it. "I had thought," --- Yellow speaking --- "that it would serve to get you, get us, in the right sort of attitude. Sworn rebels about to upend society. Dark conspirators plotting the fate of kings and proles. Secretive wizards meeting for a ritual to seal it all." "Rebels, conspiracies, wizards," Violet croaked. "Really demonstrating seriousness and maturity fit for building a world." "Ambition, imagination, a little humor," Black was jumping to the defense before she'd even finished, cutting her off. "Are these things you'd want absent from the rulers --- from your world?" "Interesting slip, there." White had the tone and the words that seemed to cleave. "Shut it, shut it, the both you." Someone who hadn't spoken, who'd patiently, silently, waited --- a green cloak, bigger than all the rest but not taller. Deep voice, but she spoke quickly. Eyes like stars. "Look at it, we're already here in the cloaks --- and it makes Eythe smile, clearly it does. All of us are friends here." She waited. No one said anything. "So act like it," her quick voice slowed just a tad for this. She looked between the black cloak and the violet one, expectant. Apologies, or at least gestures at apologies, were in order. There was at least enough respect and dignity remaining between them that she didn't yet coax them out like a stern parent. Black spoke first. "She's afraid, is all. Of the power we've unearthed and now wield, and the great, terrible things we could do with it." Stillness, utter stillness after the brazen words of the cloaked speaker. There was, faintly, the smell of bloody lunch from the breath of someone with mouth agape. He followed it up with, "In all fairness, I am afraid too, I should hope we all are --- it's what caution starts with. But, I for one have enough trust in my, uh, friends." More stillness, more silence. "So," she in the blue cloak started, "we're just going to move on as if that didn't even happen, and hopefully this festering mess of a meeting stops being a waste of time." She had taken up speaking, briskness in her voice, and some heft. She looked to each of the cloaked figures, Black, White, Violet, Yellow, Green, and Grey, meeting all their eyes, and willed them seriousness. Not dramatic whimsy, and not the false seriousness of a sniped complaint. Real seriousness. "Let's ignore the theatrics, and get to the hea---" "No," White said quickly, voice almost strangled. "Yes," Yellow was chiming in. "Let's ease our excited pulses, and get to the---" "I said no," there was some unevenness to his voice; laughter implied like light beaming forth through cracks. "I don't see the issue," said Black. "Perhaps we're all still hot from the digging, but we should cool our blood. After all, we've struck a rich vein today, and we should discuss it before it circulates, as it will in a beat. Really, I'd love for us to get to---" "What part of seriousness don't you understand? Isn't this exactly the problem?" "Fine, fine. No fun at all." Yellow cloak was still clicking in his throat, and the rest had some twitch of reaction, but Green was looking around quite bewildered. "Get to the what? Now I want to know." She looked to Black, who would not say. Nor would Yellow. Blue too, remained silent. Green's bright eyes stared at the white cloak a long moment, compelling, before he finally decided he would have to complete the thrice interrupted sentence: "We should... get to the heart of the matter." "Hearts, rather." Yellow was smiling; he had to be. "Absolutely insufferable, both of you." And White's mask was fluttering where he puffed out air. Blue was looking between white and yellow, but decided it was just a friendly snipe. Her gaze swept the room. The cloaks which everyone wore billowed or draped widely, cut just short enough a single standing leg could be seen emerging from each's shadows. Between the single leg (almost a stalk) and the colored cloth that hung over them (almost a bell), you could see in their visage something of the slaves who strive in Antenora, hefting from the sea vast blocks of the frozen blood of the earth or acting as tireless servents in every city from mountainpeak to oceandepth. It was almost intentional. Around them, the room was bare, as demanded by he under the black cloak. The stone of the floor still was scuffed where tables were dragged out, the color of the wall brighter where paintings or shelves had once been. Yet still there were cobwebs, and in the corners and crevices, barnacles and urchins and anemones and other sessile things; for the slits had no glass, and plankton floated in and could not float out. After everything else, the one thing that could not be removed was the blinking and beeping machine, a great spellweaver, whose softly glowing screen became the ambience of the room. Centermost of all, there was a table, empty now but not for long. "What's taking the servants all this time?" "It's probably the weak, useless medusae." White cawed, disdaining. "If we could afford more amoebae they'd have carried the load here before we'd even landed." "If we could afford more amoebae we wouldn't have to meet in a dank room with cobwebs and barnacles." Yellow prodded black. "Did you, well, tell them that they could come in?" He in the black cloak paused. Then came a sigh, and an invisible swallowing of pride, and then he called out, high, sharp, three notes, and it was then that the latch was tried. It turned smoothly then stopped with a clack and wouldn't open. Quickly Green was saying, "I think I must've locked it behind mysel..." But she trailed off seeing that from the gap below the door, a black psuedopod covered in eyes, was emerging and climbing palpably the door, before latching onto the inside handle with a squish and letting itself in. The door slid open first of all on a ghost snail shell, an ashen white spiral with faint soft lines of yellow blue dancing as decoration. Below, at the shell's mouth, there exuded the retracting pseudopod which had opened the door, and a sextet of stiff black pseudopodia which upheld the shell and its denizen, each ending on soft, suckered pads. And there was a final appendage everted behind it, thicker than all the others. Nothing else of the amoeba could be seen; the rest of the black weltering mass sat tucked snug and modest inside the cracked and bulging shell. Beside and behind the amoeba were a half dozen slave medusae like a squad of floating jellyfish, each of which had a grasping tentacle outstretched. Between the grasping tentacles and the amoeba's thickest psuedopod, they lifted the object which he in black had requested. It was chest no bigger than any of their heads. Were it laying on the ground you'd expect to kick and watch it roll; but your bones would break before it ever would move. Amoebae had the strength of mountains. "On the table, right there." The high piping voice of the amoeba echoed him, "On the table, sir." They sat it there and the stone of the table cracked and the legs crumbled under it. Black