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“You’ll need this, waif!”

SkekSept ducked as Augrah thrust something at him. Old habits are droll. Oh dear, what manner of ill-natured thing had she bestowed on him?

The young skeksis dared a peak and found himself ogling something rather … shiny. A broach, plain in make but clearly made of riches; the design needn’t be extravagant when the material was so rare.

“… What is it for?”

“They should remain you ‘question’ eh?” Augrah leered from somewhere. He could pry his eyes away from the thing hovering in his face.

…

The stones weren’t a tried and true method. But UrSaat felt something. Not quite restlessness. Things like feelings couldn’t puncture the fog in his soul. It was both sheltering, and a tad frustrating – or as close to frustrating as a thing could get for a Mystic.

Jen’s pipe carried over with the brewing storm. Mingling with the growing winds, not a calm but a rumbling aria. It felt as though the weather was stalling.

UrOnze seemed content to ignore the tremor in the skies and was idly strumming the harp the musician had made for him. A familiar three-note trill, the same one that had made his counterpart shudder.

I know that song. The song that called.

He let the small stones, rounded and marked, slide through the space in his fist like sand through an hourglass, one by one onto the ground to fall where they may.

You couldn’t count on the face they fell, but you could control from which spot they fell.

One’s attacks could be from different branches.

Click. Click. Click. The stones fell. UrSaat could not see them. His last traipse to the castle had used up the energy of his youth, it seemed, for an UrRu only acts when the time is right. It is impossible otherwise.

When all is said and done, my friend. I know you will return.

…

SkekSil was a little perturbed.

The boy had come again into his plans, this time by his own choice – or so he’d presented it that way. There was no other path; he had to integrate or rot out in the wastes of this world. But drat it all, it would have been easier if he’d snared his trust beforehand.

If only the youth could see that ridding himself of the blind one – both blind ones, UrRu and Skeksis alike, had been the wisest thing for him. How he’d damaged his chances with that … attachment. That attack on him when he first brought him back to the castle – none of it would have been necessary, if the blind UrRu hadn’t been then to counter SkekSil’s assurances and honeyed words.

And now this SkekHdax was growing too talkative for his liking. At their birth, all skeksis had been rather … primitive. Raw. More entuned with nature.

(They hadn’t even worn anything, sans ornamental wings and head-dresses, taken from rare animals.) The sight of SkekHdax, though scruffier, brought memories of even earlier times.

But though SkekSept had skipped that stage … perhaps the golden youth was finally shedding some of that feral behaviour. Some of it.

Boggled in the head, that one! SkekSil ran a hand down his collar in thought. SkekOk was nearby, scribbling incessantly. He had been one of the most difficult to convince – especially after the stunt the two had pulled.

SkekSil’s eye happened to trail to the left, where the dark corridors lay.

And the sheen of a pair of eyes twinkled back at him. Fright streaked through his veins, but when he blinked, the eyes were gone.

He stood still for a moment, in thought. Couldn’t be the blind one. Who on earth was skulking?

…

SkekSept moved through the darkened hall, listening to his footsteps echo, and bounce to greet him again. They were about the kindest thing in here.

He felt rather mellow; the mild fear that always seemed present on his skin was going number by the day. Was that a bad thing? Perhaps. One shouldn’t get too comfortable.

He paused.

Why had he stopped? There were bumps along his skin, and the cold in the hall seemed too crisp. Hm. Maybe UrOnze felt chilly…

But even as he waited for the feeling to subside, he couldn’t shake the inkling that something was wrong.

Down the hall, something moved.

SkekSept’s heart leaped in his chest. It had been a month or so since his last bad shock – he hated the feeling of blood rushing around his body, yet his frame being unable to move.

It … looked like someone was poking their head around the corner.

Then, as if by some strange trance, he found himself moving forward. Further in. To the deeper regions of the castle again, where the dank smell turned fowl.

He wandered through maze-like halls and noticed an incline in the floor – going down.

He wasn’t moving fast. In fact, he was going slower than he’d thought possible. What was he doing, he thought to himself with ire. Moseying around like this, it was silly.

“And here I thought you had some sense.”

An unfamiliar voice rang out from the left. SkekSept jolted on the spot, swerving to see who it was – but only the dark answered.

No. Wait. He could see a shape; the reflection of the light on the rocks from the previous halls let him see it.

And a pair of eyes were gleaming in the shadows.

On cue, the creature stepped forward. The staff came first – a large wooden branch moulded haphazardly into a walking cane, grasped by thin, skeletal fingers.

Then the beak, hooked painfully at the end and completely unique – it wasn’t one of the elders. That he knew.

The skeksis was small, and bony, and his skin and whips of hair were whiter than anything the youth had ever seen. Yet his gaze was clear; his entire bearing … sharp. His robes mere rags, worse so than the Chamberlain’s had ever been.

“… who … who are you?” SkekSept breathed.

The malformed beak curled into a smirk as the unfamiliar skeksis cocked his head.

“Look at you. As clueless as the rest of them.”

SkekSept moved back.

The stranger laughed, a halting, harsh thing. “My name is SkekSik. And I have been waiting to meet you for a very long time, little seven.”

“You’re one of the dead.” The words came unprompted.

“Oh, they’d have me so if they could. Your dear Chamberlain must’ve wormed his way back in with you on his arm. You really believe you can trust him?”

“I don’t! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

SkekSept didn’t like this stranger.

Something about him reeked of danger, malice, and cunning.

“Don’t be obtuse. There’s far more at work here than your revenge.” SkekSik’s laugh make a comeback – SkekSept’s shock and fury must had been apparent on his face – “Oh yes, I could guess your reasons for being here. You’re a skeksis, after all. You wouldn’t just let what that mewling oaf did to you go.”

“How did you …”

“A little bird told me.”

Silence. SkekSept failed to see how small birds could –

With a long-suffering sigh, SkekSik rolled his eyes, “A figure of speech. I have my ways of keeping an eye on you lot.”

Oh, again with the omnipresent people.

“That aside. I suppose I’m hear to warn you.” The pale skeksis leaned back, both hands placed on the cane. The other narrowed his eyes,

“Warn me? You did mention something about … something else going on.”

“Hm-hm. The stars are moving. The suns align. Augrah is growing more inane by the day. And … well, we both know about the gelfling.”

Another jolt of shock, this time waved away by SkekSik’s dismissive hand, “Don’t prostrate yourself; I’ve known for little over a year now, and haven’t went shrieking to the Court.”

… He hadn’t?

“You could’ve earned your place back.” SkekSept voiced that thought aloud, “Why didn’t you?”

For that, SkekSik didn’t answer, but kept his wry smirk in place. “Never mind that. I am here because the course of history has been changed … for us. I do not have time to explain the idea of time and space and lives lived elsewhere, but I will point this out – you two weren’t supposed to be here. Things will right themselves.”

SkekSept was suddenly aware of his heartbeat, beating, beating. “… what is going to happen?”

“You can’t stop it.”

SkekSik stepped forward; the clunk of his cane like a drum; final and loud as he came to stop right before SkekSept, so their eyes locked with horrible intensity.

The smile was gone.

Now was a time for bluntness.

“When it does, do not fight. But I doubt you will. You will know in your soul – in half of your soul – what is about to occur.”

SkekSept searched the elder’s face for some kind of clarity, and found none. He was bewildered, frightened, yet he sensed no lie.

SkekSik cocked his head, voice lowering. “Now. Pop down to the sewers. Might want to leave your pretty clothes in your room. I’m sure you’ll be surprised.”

And the old man moved back, and into the dark again, leaving SkekSept with precarious information in his hands.

….

SkekSept loathed being lead along by others than this.

But it was new to have a choice. SkekSik knew as much. He could tell the elders. The Emperor. He could further his status, and turn the old man in, and stop whatever he was cooking up. Ignore his ramblings, continue their plot – and get revenge on the Chamberlain.

Or.

He could remember the UrRU. And Jen.

Jen.

SkekSept pulled his lace over-collar off; his secondary arms rubbing at his face, drawing down his neck as he breathed out.

Had he forsaken them? Forgotten what he was doing? That the skeksis were evil? He’d got caught up playing these silly games. What about UrSaat?

UrSaat, who he hadn’t spoken to in months.

Who he was neglecting?

Something thick and hot swelled in his throat, and SkekSept clutched at his scalp as it came upon him in aching waves.

He didn’t understand Jen’s grief. He didn’t know what a mother and a father was, and couldn’t understand that pain. But the guilt festered all the same.

He dragged the rest of his robes off, down to his undercoat, pale white and rather itchy. He draped them over a chair, and moved into the darkness, letting the soft wind blown in from the windows caress his feathers and skin.

He stretched out his other pair of arms, angled his head, and walked briskly into the old chambers.

Then down.

Past the Garthim holds, back to the sewers.

Here, old vehicles with enormous wheels sat covered in dust; broken contraptions belonging to long-dead Skeksis who were no longer around to explain to others how to use them.

“Not that they would.” SkekSept chimed to empty chamber.

He hopped over the rank water, choking down his nausea as he came to see that little gleam of sunlight from the empty moat surrounding the castle’s base.

He remembered crawling through it a few times, in and out …

Rocks scattered. SkekSept watched his footing.

Then he realised – the noise had come from ahead. Someone was there and being far more obvious than that old SkekSik was.

“… I smell death here.” A voice, soft and frightened, carried to him along the empty stone. SkekSept’s brows rose fluidly as he approached.

“Let’s keep going.”

… No. It couldn’t.

Something made a barking noise.

SkekSept’s gasp silenced the conversation at the mouth of the tunnel. Two figures stood, one carrying something fluffy and writhing.

One of them he knew.

“… Jen?”

Description
body div#devskin0 hr { }

“You’ll need this, waif!”

SkekSept ducked as Augrah thrust something at him. Old habits are droll. Oh dear, what manner of ill-natured thing had she bestowed on him?

The young skeksis dared a peak and found himself ogling something rather … shiny. A broach, plain in make but clearly made of riches; the design needn’t be extravagant when the material was so rare.

“… What is it for?”

“They should remain you ‘question’ eh?” Augrah leered from somewhere. He could pry his eyes away from the thing hovering in his face.

…

The stones weren’t a tried and true method. But UrSaat felt something. Not quite restlessness. Things like feelings couldn’t puncture the fog in his soul. It was both sheltering, and a tad frustrating – or as close to frustrating as a thing could get for a Mystic.

Jen’s pipe carried over with the brewing storm. Mingling with the growing winds, not a calm but a rumbling aria. It felt as though the weather was stalling.

UrOnze seemed content to ignore the tremor in the skies and was idly strumming the harp the musician had made for him. A familiar three-note trill, the same one that had made his counterpart shudder.

I know that song. The song that called.

He let the small stones, rounded and marked, slide through the space in his fist like sand through an hourglass, one by one onto the ground to fall where they may.

You couldn’t count on the face they fell, but you could control from which spot they fell.

One’s attacks could be from different branches.

Click. Click. Click. The stones fell. UrSaat could not see them. His last traipse to the castle had used up the energy of his youth, it seemed, for an UrRu only acts when the time is right. It is impossible otherwise.

When all is said and done, my friend. I know you will return.

…

SkekSil was a little perturbed.

The boy had come again into his plans, this time by his own choice – or so he’d presented it that way. There was no other path; he had to integrate or rot out in the wastes of this world. But drat it all, it would have been easier if he’d snared his trust beforehand.

If only the youth could see that ridding himself of the blind one – both blind ones, UrRu and Skeksis alike, had been the wisest thing for him. How he’d damaged his chances with that … attachment. That attack on him when he first brought him back to the castle – none of it would have been necessary, if the blind UrRu hadn’t been then to counter SkekSil’s assurances and honeyed words.

And now this SkekHdax was growing too talkative for his liking. At their birth, all skeksis had been rather … primitive. Raw. More entuned with nature.

(They hadn’t even worn anything, sans ornamental wings and head-dresses, taken from rare animals.) The sight of SkekHdax, though scruffier, brought memories of even earlier times.

But though SkekSept had skipped that stage … perhaps the golden youth was finally shedding some of that feral behaviour. Some of it.

Boggled in the head, that one! SkekSil ran a hand down his collar in thought. SkekOk was nearby, scribbling incessantly. He had been one of the most difficult to convince – especially after the stunt the two had pulled.

SkekSil’s eye happened to trail to the left, where the dark corridors lay.

And the sheen of a pair of eyes twinkled back at him. Fright streaked through his veins, but when he blinked, the eyes were gone.

He stood still for a moment, in thought. Couldn’t be the blind one. Who on earth was skulking?

…

SkekSept moved through the darkened hall, listening to his footsteps echo, and bounce to greet him again. They were about the kindest thing in here.

He felt rather mellow; the mild fear that always seemed present on his skin was going number by the day. Was that a bad thing? Perhaps. One shouldn’t get too comfortable.

He paused.

Why had he stopped? There were bumps along his skin, and the cold in the hall seemed too crisp. Hm. Maybe UrOnze felt chilly…

But even as he waited for the feeling to subside, he couldn’t shake the inkling that something was wrong.

Down the hall, something moved.

SkekSept’s heart leaped in his chest. It had been a month or so since his last bad shock – he hated the feeling of blood rushing around his body, yet his frame being unable to move.

It … looked like someone was poking their head around the corner.

Then, as if by some strange trance, he found himself moving forward. Further in. To the deeper regions of the castle again, where the dank smell turned fowl.

He wandered through maze-like halls and noticed an incline in the floor – going down.

He wasn’t moving fast. In fact, he was going slower than he’d thought possible. What was he doing, he thought to himself with ire. Moseying around like this, it was silly.

“And here I thought you had some sense.”

An unfamiliar voice rang out from the left. SkekSept jolted on the spot, swerving to see who it was – but only the dark answered.

No. Wait. He could see a shape; the reflection of the light on the rocks from the previous halls let him see it.

And a pair of eyes were gleaming in the shadows.

On cue, the creature stepped forward. The staff came first – a large wooden branch moulded haphazardly into a walking cane, grasped by thin, skeletal fingers.

Then the beak, hooked painfully at the end and completely unique – it wasn’t one of the elders. That he knew.

The skeksis was small, and bony, and his skin and whips of hair were whiter than anything the youth had ever seen. Yet his gaze was clear; his entire bearing … sharp. His robes mere rags, worse so than the Chamberlain’s had ever been.

“… who … who are you?” SkekSept breathed.

The malformed beak curled into a smirk as the unfamiliar skeksis cocked his head.

“Look at you. As clueless as the rest of them.”

SkekSept moved back.

The stranger laughed, a halting, harsh thing. “My name is SkekSik. And I have been waiting to meet you for a very long time, little seven.”

“You’re one of the dead.” The words came unprompted.

“Oh, they’d have me so if they could. Your dear Chamberlain must’ve wormed his way back in with you on his arm. You really believe you can trust him?”

“I don’t! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

SkekSept didn’t like this stranger.

Something about him reeked of danger, malice, and cunning.

“Don’t be obtuse. There’s far more at work here than your revenge.” SkekSik’s laugh make a comeback – SkekSept’s shock and fury must had been apparent on his face – “Oh yes, I could guess your reasons for being here. You’re a skeksis, after all. You wouldn’t just let what that mewling oaf did to you go.”

“How did you …”

“A little bird told me.”

Silence. SkekSept failed to see how small birds could –

With a long-suffering sigh, SkekSik rolled his eyes, “A figure of speech. I have my ways of keeping an eye on you lot.”

Oh, again with the omnipresent people.

“That aside. I suppose I’m hear to warn you.” The pale skeksis leaned back, both hands placed on the cane. The other narrowed his eyes,

“Warn me? You did mention something about … something else going on.”

“Hm-hm. The stars are moving. The suns align. Augrah is growing more inane by the day. And … well, we both know about the gelfling.”

Another jolt of shock, this time waved away by SkekSik’s dismissive hand, “Don’t prostrate yourself; I’ve known for little over a year now, and haven’t went shrieking to the Court.”

… He hadn’t?

“You could’ve earned your place back.” SkekSept voiced that thought aloud, “Why didn’t you?”

For that, SkekSik didn’t answer, but kept his wry smirk in place. “Never mind that. I am here because the course of history has been changed … for us. I do not have time to explain the idea of time and space and lives lived elsewhere, but I will point this out – you two weren’t supposed to be here. Things will right themselves.”

SkekSept was suddenly aware of his heartbeat, beating, beating. “… what is going to happen?”

“You can’t stop it.”

SkekSik stepped forward; the clunk of his cane like a drum; final and loud as he came to stop right before SkekSept, so their eyes locked with horrible intensity.

The smile was gone.

Now was a time for bluntness.

“When it does, do not fight. But I doubt you will. You will know in your soul – in half of your soul – what is about to occur.”

SkekSept searched the elder’s face for some kind of clarity, and found none. He was bewildered, frightened, yet he sensed no lie.

SkekSik cocked his head, voice lowering. “Now. Pop down to the sewers. Might want to leave your pretty clothes in your room. I’m sure you’ll be surprised.”

And the old man moved back, and into the dark again, leaving SkekSept with precarious information in his hands.

….

SkekSept loathed being lead along by others than this.

But it was new to have a choice. SkekSik knew as much. He could tell the elders. The Emperor. He could further his status, and turn the old man in, and stop whatever he was cooking up. Ignore his ramblings, continue their plot – and get revenge on the Chamberlain.

Or.

He could remember the UrRU. And Jen.

Jen.

SkekSept pulled his lace over-collar off; his secondary arms rubbing at his face, drawing down his neck as he breathed out.

Had he forsaken them? Forgotten what he was doing? That the skeksis were evil? He’d got caught up playing these silly games. What about UrSaat?

UrSaat, who he hadn’t spoken to in months.

Who he was neglecting?

Something thick and hot swelled in his throat, and SkekSept clutched at his scalp as it came upon him in aching waves.

He didn’t understand Jen’s grief. He didn’t know what a mother and a father was, and couldn’t understand that pain. But the guilt festered all the same.

He dragged the rest of his robes off, down to his undercoat, pale white and rather itchy. He draped them over a chair, and moved into the darkness, letting the soft wind blown in from the windows caress his feathers and skin.

He stretched out his other pair of arms, angled his head, and walked briskly into the old chambers.

Then down.

Past the Garthim holds, back to the sewers.

Here, old vehicles with enormous wheels sat covered in dust; broken contraptions belonging to long-dead Skeksis who were no longer around to explain to others how to use them.

“Not that they would.” SkekSept chimed to empty chamber.

He hopped over the rank water, choking down his nausea as he came to see that little gleam of sunlight from the empty moat surrounding the castle’s base.

He remembered crawling through it a few times, in and out …

Rocks scattered. SkekSept watched his footing.

Then he realised – the noise had come from ahead. Someone was there and being far more obvious than that old SkekSik was.

“… I smell death here.” A voice, soft and frightened, carried to him along the empty stone. SkekSept’s brows rose fluidly as he approached.

“Let’s keep going.”

… No. It couldn’t.

Something made a barking noise.

SkekSept’s gasp silenced the conversation at the mouth of the tunnel. Two figures stood, one carrying something fluffy and writhing.

One of them he knew.

“… Jen?”