Time is my king, and I am a rebellious subject. There is a Fifth Wind, deep inside my body, that yearns to clear the sky as do the Four, but is blind, and knows not which way is up. I account for this weakness by mocking symbols of confinement. I atone by releasing my spirit to the turmoil tearing at the ceiling that our predecessors and their victims impose. I aspire to refuse that last, insidious detail suggested to me by every guide I've ever depended on. I've yet to learn how my sacrifice might be achieved, despite seeing its potential used for murder by my ken, but in my heart I've chosen it as my way, and I won't be turned aside. Somehow, somewhere, I will die, surrendering my grip on this life to the Power Surrounding, using my capacity for endurance to accomplish a goal beyond the Bibliotheca, beyond Eris, beyond Turk, beyond the Painted Lady, beyond Tyriel and his deposit of heavenly stones.

But we are in her company now, aren't we? It was impossible to determine the passage of time when with her, and there are numerous memories where I can't place exactly where I was, let alone when, or if they came before another and not after. But there are powerful messages encoded in those engrams, and I think this might be the most important part of my tale. Or, maybe not. Maybe my time with Lord V was more profound. In fact it was, but she gave me the Stylus.

I led Enith, another of the zoai, to one of Tythus's favorite vistas. The ruined ceilings overhead fragmented the sullied light coming from the veiled Sun. I found that if I looked at a patch of the dingy beams for long enough, the would imprint on my eyes, and if I moved quickly I could match them with another battery of splintered light, making a fuller picture out of their echoes. But each time I tried to match with a third, the first would fade away, and so it was a constant chase.

Enith giggled.

"You zoai come from Our Lady?"

Enith nodded.

"Well, are you her daughters? Or flakes of skin?"

"Flakes of light."

"I see." I did not, but I enjoyed the mystery, so I continued my game of failing to piece together a perfect circle of my own flakes of light. But I remember that at some point it gnawed at me, and I wanted to know more, at least a little, as I had never given myself the chance to question Astus on his nature and took him for a simple apparition.

"Are there any boys like you?"

"Of course not."

"Of course not."

The Sun seemed to race, and I watched as the moon shone its teal beams where the Sun's sullied orange had been. I missed the look of its purity as seen from above the blistering clouds.

"No boys?" I asked at length.

"We are not her children. We were dead, and when she passed over us she exhaled, and we were drawn into her wake until the might that stirred in her exhalation had mingled with our internal remains. She was very weak when she became aware of us, but not as weak as she is now."

"Did I see you training?"

She shook her head. "I am somewhat unlike my colleagues."

"How so?"

"I'm not lacking in fear."

"And what are you afraid of, flake of light given life by an angel's breath?"

She was quiet for a long time, and then, when the moon had again sped past us: "I fear a return."

"To death?"

"No. To the frenzy."

"Ah."

"You ask questions, but don't seem to care if you understand them."

I shrugged. "If you want me to, I will." And that seemed to puzzle her.

"Why did you ask if any of us were boys?"

"Because I knew a boy made of light. I don't suppose you knew him? His name was Astus."

"Was?"

And then it struck me. I stood and looked at Enith. "Is he still alive?"

She shook her head. The poor girl, being stuck there with me. "How could I know?".

"Does the Painted Lady have children?"

And then she turned away.

She was very beautiful. Her cheeks, flickering now and then in the dust that sailed in slow flocks through the stale air, were round and full, her lips pert, her eyes opened large, her hair tumbling down in curls. And her skin glowed, despite the thick gloom.

"You are untouched by shadow," I said.

She turned her head back, then smiled, and reached out to softly grip my hand. "Not anymore."

I laughed. "My dear, you touched me."

She then draped her arms around my neck and looked up into my eyes. I'd be lying if I told you I did not feel some desire, not to mention the curiosity over whether or not a man of flesh could have sex with a maiden made of light. But first in my mind was Eris, and I saw her face floating in the water.

"I have no love for the living," I told her.

She made a serious look, one of want, and she stepped back from me, slowly lowering her gown about her shoulders.

"Would you see me as I truly am before making your decision?"

I nodded, and by the time her gown had fallen in a heap around her toes, I was looking upon her in my spectral shift, and she was no mere blast of photons, she was alive! If a star exploded, it would look like her. A cloud of blue and violet and yellow and green, then turned gold and darting about like glowbugs, a spiral of icy white shine and eyes of brightest red. I tried to touch her full, almost pudgy cheek, but those million sparks of living glow dodged my fingers like a flock of trychni evading an dactyl.

I then confined her in my eyes, seeing less, seeing more, seeing what she wished was true, but not what her progenitor would ever pine for methinks.

"You made me a girl again."

"But weren't you always?"

"Before I died. Am I a woman now? Can light be female?"

"Before I met Our Lady, I never knew light could speak."

I said that, and then I remembered how the Sun had spoken words of dominion with its light. She seemed to be distressed over the question, so I told her what I often tell myself.

"If there ever comes a day where there are more answers than questions, that day will be the beginning of the end of all things. You are you, and that is good enough for me."

And she smiled.

"I'm glad I could offer you a gift."

Light can war against shape, and so her fingers, arms, body and lips warred against me. She threw her arms around my neck again with an upward leap, then awkwardly kissed me, pressing herself against my chest. A girl named... Kendra hated her. We danced, and she did this same exact thing, and Kendra fumed.

"Is there a gift that I can give you?"

I gently queued her to step back, then leaned against the nearby wall (it just occurred to me where we stood, and we were not at all far from Ulster) with my arms over my chest. "Tell me everything you can about the Painted Lady."

And Enith turned ethereal, and when she spoke her voice rang off every surface I stood by.

You are a warrior of the sky. She is a warrior of many skies. You were grown from a sprig, she was grown from an oak. You were crafted by hands, she was crafted by time. Yours was a womb of nourishing gel, hers was a womb of tumultuous eons. You are a Boy of the Batch, she is a mother of waxing flame. Your tomorrow is a return to yesterday, hers is a birth to days that never end. You row your boat gently down a stream, and she came to the stream from the constant river, the river that flows apart from all waters and whose current touches all banks.

"What will happen to her in the stream?"

"If you put leviathan in a fishbowl, how long could it last?"

I shook my head, and she guessed at why.

"You're wrong," she said. "I'm not being obscure. I've told you more than I've told anyone, and certainly more than she will say of herself with words. Now, may I ask you a favor?"

And she came close to me, and I started to tell her of my undying love for my prettily dead bride, but she put a finger to my lips.

"I know you won't have me. I am going to beg you not to mention her children in her presence, or go on asking about them. Be satisfied with this; they abandoned her to the growing power of the neophylum, and she seeks to atone herself to them by not hindering their endeavour. She tells us nothing of her deep desires, but I suspect she hopes to help them, though they've rejected her, and if you prove yourself committed, I think that might include helping you. Please, don't ask anymore. She's bled enough."

I nodded, having grown quite content with ignorance over matters that do not directly impact me. I thought to myself that anything I needed to know, I would, and when we returned to the Painted Lady's apartments I was happy to lay on a divan for what felt like minutes but seemed like days, and allow my mind to be sifted by her gentle fingers. I asked her what she was searching for, to which she said "The real you," and then we considered my nature, the symbol of adaptation and survival we call Neophilus.

The gracious dead in their salt pools stirring, Neophilus amidst the color guard of ancient sages, long guns like staves for the old fighting men with their new composite forms, near their masters in their crystal tombs, minds alive in cradles of perpetuity.

 

And Neophilus? As a researcher, Neophilus is in paradise. As an orphaned prodigy, he weeps openly, refusing the comfort encoded in the Dolomite's posthumous marquee. 'We will help you', say the guards. 'We have watched our sages and heard their every word, and have learned as much as you. Remember that ours is a culture of science. A soldier of the zep'syrah is as learned as a scholar of another species.'

 

And Neophilus? He listens to them, but has his say in his heart on many matters, and the old fighting men carry on suspicious, knowing their grasp on their masters' opus to be functional, but his to be profound.

 

And Neophilus? He is the oak. Each sapling pruned owes its leaves to him; he who is of the land, he who is of the sea, he who is of the sky, he whose dreams hark back to the ancient deep and call it by name.

 

And Neophilus? He remembers the Fall. He saw the ground plummeting upwards, the sky parting before the warheads, the shocked and worried faces at the summit, the nightmare stretching across the stars, the devouring nimbus rising from hunger, deceit and lamentable fear.

 

And Neophilus? He urged them not to take what was not given. He urged them to instead build altars to the Four, and to cry atop lonely Erebus with gold and silver clarions, and to win the hearts of giants with white poppy garlands. Neophilus rejected the laurel.

 

I remember so many things, and I know by their blank residue that I forgot so many others. Time was a whorl in her company, and when I thought I'd reached the end of a long race, I found myself at the starting line wondering if I'd ever even spurred my horse. She took me to places by the power of glass that I had ere read of in dubious codices, and when we bathed together she granted me the means to share my tale with you, my precious reader. Doused in yliastrum, we splashed and reveled as freely as children. Then she gave me such a look; a pagan grin with cloistered eyes and a shade of evanescent guilt. If you can hear me, Lady, know that I love you. She dipped her face below the conductive gel and I heard her thoughts. Not the thoughts she spoke with, but the ones she kept to herself, only they bubbled out of the bath and echoed throughout the profibius halogen chamber clear as dinner bells. Then she lifted her hands out of the bath and between her fingers were threads of brilliant light. She tugged at a string with her finger, and when she spoke of passion or rage it was red. When she spoke of the sickness of the magnacity it turned a sallow green. When she spoke of reason, blue. Peaceful things were soft yellow and cozy pink, and promises of rebirth showed in a verdant glow. In a timeless space she taught me how to use the device, and then it was a part of me, so that when I'd completed my duty I could share with you the heart of all your ancestors' suffrage.

I felt a cold shiver when we stepped out of our stasis, but not because I was naked and wet in a large and drafty room. When we were again subject to the ravages of cruel and hungry Kali, we were greeted by our host. In a robe the color of cream, he with silken main draped over his broad shoulders, and I in wild candor, we two locked eyes, 33 and 39.