{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/fiction/endless-stars/i2b",
  "path": "/posts/fiction/endless-stars/i2b",
  "publishedAt": "2019-04-20T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "::: subchapter\nAdwyn knew it was mistaken, but sense was sense.\n\nThe schizon-clad drake lighted down on the granite hall like the pupil\nof Gwymr/Frina. One glance was spared to the male assistant barring the\ndoor. Then the adviser scanned the four guards watching.\n\nHe smirked, and strode right up to the assistant. \"I must speak with\nMlaen.\" The words came piercing like light, and his studied glare shone\nupon the assistant.\n\nThe other drake could have flinched. He swallowed and said, \"She went\nout looking for you.\" He didn't mean Mlaen.\n\n\"A shame. Yet not my concern.\" He took a step.\n\n\"She's at the Berwem gate⁠ ⁠---⁠ thought you might fly that way.\"\n\nAdwyn glanced at a guard. \"They have mirrors. Tell her to come back.\"\nHe took another step. \"Or don't. Wait until I leave.\"\n\nThe assistant still stood in front of the door, albeit with a coiled\ntail and dew that could have been spicier.\n\nHe asked, \"Where have you been?\"\n\n\"Can I not fly out to talk to a friend?\"\n\n\"You⁠ ⁠---\" He stopped to collect himself. \"You were summoned by an\nInquirer, and you refused to let us accompany you!\" The smaller\norange drake glanced away. \"Something is up.\"\n\n\"Precisely why I must see Mlaen. Surely you aren't holding that up?\"\n\n\"She'd going to bite you when she gets back.\" But he stepped aside.\n\nAdwyn slinked his way down the twisting ramp, and paused frowning in the\nlobby.\n\nHe could have kept straight, gone down to the sleepless red wiver.\n\nHe went right, down the same corridor from earlier. Past the threshold\nof the Dyfnderi's room, he was pulling down a pycnofiber curtain, and\ncovering the doorway. It would stop no one; yet his assistants were not\n(to his surprise) foreign to politeness.\n\nWhen Adwyn lay down, one lamp shone in this dim room, the one sitting on\nhis desk. He stared into it, and reflected.\n\nThe scarlet drake had always been a chimerical hope. Adwyn'd always\nknown he was somewhat older and foreign, and that was if he'd even been\ninterested at all, at all. But they had complimented each other\nfinely. And for Adwyn there had always been one more matter, on other\nthing to address, which kept him from seeing how bright it could shine.\nKept him from ever asking.\n\nWould it have been better to lose hope earlier, or later? Or never?\n\nAdwyn sighed. There were clearer ways to deal with this⁠ ⁠---⁠ that old\nking had convinced him into at least some time in a monastery.\n\nBut to just accept it, to acknowledge what couldn't be denied, to\nmove past? Adwyn couldn't tell you it wouldn't work. Couldn't tell\nyou some half of him didn't want it. Logic, rationality, philosophy,\nthe disciplines of order and sundry, they all had come as easy to him as\neverything else.\n\nAnd yet. Still there lingered some succulent complexity, some verity\nthat dwelt in his feeling that he wouldn't release so simply.\n\nHe liked the scarlet drake, fancied him. But Adwyn didn't know what he\nwould do about the feeling⁠ ⁠---⁠ but mere acceptance, stoic\nforgetfulness, seemed too abject.\n\nAnd just as it had been with expressing his feelings beforex, right now\nthere were still other tasks to be completed. Then, Adwyn could deal\nwith matters of the fangs.\n\nThe high alchemist, his wife, and the high guard. None of them could be\ntrusted. The wife and the high guard at least gleamed sympathetic about\nit, but the alchemist⁠ ⁠---\n\nIt was a threat. And an alchemist was the last dragon you wanted\nagainst you.\n\nAdwyn could cede. Go to sleep now, and in the morning find something\nless... dangerous to occupy his attention.\n\nWhat, truly, was at stake? Mlaen said it herself⁠ ⁠---⁠ concern for the\nlaw was rich, coming from him. Adwyn knew laws were just finely\nengraved stones. Treason, conspiracy, trespassing, theft of what truly\nwasn't theirs⁠ ⁠---⁠ it was all pale, victimless and abstract.\n\nTruly, Adwyn was guilty of worse.\n\nBut even if it weren't about the law, Adwyn had to solve this mystery\nand he'd known it since the puzzling existence of the Dychwelfa revealed\nitself, even more with the baffling appearance of the humans, and most\nwith the perplexing actions of the thieves. It was what the adviser had\nhoped to find (and disappointed not to find) in the sky-dweller exile; a\nsight for answers and a sight for knowledge. Adwyn had to know.\n\nSo perhaps morals didn't shine, here. Adwyn decided he wouldn't rest\neven if the thieves were actually heroes. It was a puzzle, to see\ntheir true face, to scry their true motive. The Return of Dwylla? The\nhuman demonhunters? The old pillars of Gwymr/Frina?\n\nIt all piqued, and if nothing else, Adwyn would sate his curiosity.\n\nAdwyn rose and advanced once more to the threshold. Still, one more\nchoice prickled: should he tell Mlaen? The alchemist's threat\nlingered. Do not inform the faer.\n\nWould the black ascendant stand opposed to an ancient alchemist? As the\nscarlet drake would say, there's confidence and that's too much of it.\n\nBut⁠ ⁠---⁠ Ushra was old and withering. What had he done to hold onto\nthat kind of respect?\n\nGwymr/Frina had been haunted by its past long enough. Adwyn would\ncare about its future.\n\n\"You look brightly smug,\" came some growl of a voice. \"I'd tell you\nit's not a good look, but you don't care and I don't think that mug of\nyours has a better look.\"\n\nAdwyn cleared his eyes, leaving the realm of thought to discover he\nremained at the threshold, standing to block a scowling orange wiver.\n\nHe said, \"I'd tell you rudeness isn't a good flavor for you, but I don't\nmind.\" Adwyn stepped aside and the wiver did not step into the room.\n\n\"What you should tell me,\" she started, \"is what possessed you to fly\naway against your assistants? Shall I report this?\"\n\n\"Do what you will. I think capitol will care more that I stand at the\ncusp of uncovering the secrets at the heart of Gwymr/Frina.\"\n\n\"And you'll have all that honor to yourself, won't you?\" She looked\nsour.\n\nAdwyn regarded the wiver. He smirked a certain schemely smirk. \"Well,\nI wouldn't say you two are uninvolved. Why, you could certainly stand\nto make my life easier, less complicated. That should not go\nunnoticed.\"\n\nThe wiver was like a bug. But that entailed a certain simplicity, an a\nlack of loyalty. She wasn't on his side, not yet and perhaps not ever.\nBut he had a sway, for now.\n\nThe female assistant followed after him, as he walked off. He didn't\nmind, but didn't allow her to step into the room with him and Mlaen.\n\nAdwyn would unravel the secrets of Gwymr/Frina. Adwyn would descend the\npits.\n\n(And if the town needed a hero... the black ascendant could redeem his\nname.)\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nAdwyn paused a moment to see the paintings. Cynfe's work. They smelt\noddly of ink, and had the glow of the finest oils. Forms seemed to\nstruggle to life, shadows sinking away and highlights popping. One\npainting stared out over the red distance of the land of glass and\nsecrets, as it was known from its highest peaks. A land crossed and\nriveled deep with serpent-like gullies and ravines and gorges, with\nblooms of green or black life scattered all around. The suns neared\ncolorfully the horizon, and thunderous storm-clouds weighed high above.\n\nThat painting was largest, the centerpiece. Others hung meekly beside\nit. One of a cracked fire-clay mug and its twin shadows, rendered to\nexact extremes for inscrutable reasons. One of a land snail eating a\ntidbit chicken, ponderously. Adwyn saw fish, scenes of bamboo, and the\nnight's sky.\n\nWhat shined out most though, was that there were no dragons. He had\nto sift the walls to find it, tucked away in a corner. The one\npainting, with a dragon, was of Mlaen. A portrait. It could\nhave⁠ ⁠---⁠ should have⁠ ⁠---⁠ been one of the centerpieces, but Adwyn\nknew why it wasn't. The Mlaen dwelling in this painting regarded\nkindly, softness in her cheeks, a smile. As Adwyn looked longer into\nher painting, he felt a voyeur's shame ride up on him, the sense that in\nthis painting was a moment, someone's moment, and it wasn't his.\n\nAdwyn had never seen this Mlaen.\n\nHe frowned as the lights blent together in his head: the paintings had\nno dragon save one, because no dragon would model for her save that one.\n\n\"I never did expect pieces like these in the land of glass and secrets.\"\n\nIt was the male assistant, sidling up to him. He let him with a nod and\nno response.\n\nThey waited for the female adviser to get ready.\n\nAmong them settled the silence of the town hall very late into the\nnight, like the rich soil to nurture fruits of thought.\n\nIt would help, if Adwyn hadn't already found enough resolution to sate\nthat hungry thinking part of his brain. Everything was decided; he\nwould solve the town's mystery, he would descend the pits.\n\nProperly, the pits were just another sifting hazard (it was as if the\nlake collected them.) Plummeting chasms of dustone and glass out in the\nlake's center, they were like stabwounds in its battle against the sky.\nThe librarian had wondered if they were accidents of the flow of the\nglass, or sites of doomed meteors, or something odder still. They\nreached down to the caves that were like the arteries of the cliffs, and\nnatives called those caves the pits too, in defiance of sense.\n\nDragons said they didn't want to talk about the pits, but you couldn't\nshut them up if you attempted to. The superstitious prattle was\nentertaining to hear, in the least, but Adwyn knew they were deeply\nhyperbolic: supposedly, the pits had humans, spiders, fungal oddities,\nslightly animated cadavers, things too monstrous and strange for the\nlake above, things which tried to be dead and failed, and things no\ndragons had dared yet to name.\n\nIf you believed their talk, one would think the unholy pits the place of\nsome god's lingering curse⁠ ⁠---⁠ if what the natives called unholy had,\nin their godless spirituality, some meaning greater than 'it gives me\nthe creeps.'\n\nAdwyn breathed in and out, in and out. The posture of meditation came\neasily to him, and he found patience in the peace of the moment. The\ndrake beside him",
  "title": "Witness"
}