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It is night, on the fourth day. At the beginning of Calibration, the Bishop of Strife began his journey across Cecelyne, the Endless Desert. For four days he has traveled across the bleak wilderness that lusts viciously for his skin, and he has remained whole...
His peerless calculations tell him it is night, though he has no signs to guide him otherwise -- from the moment he entered the desert, the sky has been a deep, unchanging black.
Bishop: The Bishop of Strife knows not cessation! Adjoran's infernal wind rend his coat and robe to fraying tatters of red linen and silk, the vermillion lacquer covering his armor is scoured bone-white. For the first time, though, the Bishop pauses, observing a peculiar string of symbols carved into his starmetal left fist by the hateful winds. An enumeration of the before, figures prime and perfect, split by the divisor of agelessness.
Bishop shrieks in laughter! "Blow, wind! Rage and howl, no fury in Hell shall turn aside the Prince of Soldiers! Already I divine your mysteries! Your being may trickle 'twixt arthritic fingers today, but that hand will clench strong on the morrow."
pigeon: The wind blows ever more strongly for a moment, and the sands clutch at the Bishop's feet, giving under him with a sickening liquidity.
Bishop laughs all the more, kicking wildly at the sand! The kicking soon becomes a giddy rain-dance, and he casts off the ruined silk robe, letting the wind carry it away and eat it.
pigeon: Suddenly the bishop becomes aware of the soft sound of his capering feet on the sands; of the infinitesimal grinding of grain against grain that is the eternal suffering of the desert. The wind is silent. Adorjan has come.
Bishop: "A-HA! You, get thee hence! Cur and coward, the Bishop will have no more of your petty shrieks; here, I shall give you need for that voice and good cause to use it!"
Bishop kicks sand about, spitting and cursing. White fire wreathes his fist, and he brandishes obscene gestures at the emptiness; but then turns suddenly, grappling an absent foe with his right arm as the alabaster comet of his starmetal left fist collides with its nose!
Bishop: "Begone! Or shall your children sing a tune for you? Away! You frighten no-one; children laugh at your name!"
Adorjan: The silence becomes deafening.
Bishop: "Stop it! Stop it, I say, bad form! I'm telling your mother!"
Bishop produces fistfuls of tiny conch shells, each peals like a bell full of children! They glitter in the nonlight as he casts them about himself, forming the Penticosahedron of War
Adorjan: The twinkling of the shells as they slowly roll to a stop shatters the quiet of the desert. After a few moments, there is a voice.
Adorjan: "Why have you come to Malfeas, servant of the Maidens?"
Bishop: "I've business with She Who Lives in Her Name! You will note that, according to the seventy-fourth article of the Conditions of Primordial Defeat, you cannot legally demand more explanation than that, nor may you hinder my efforts!"
Bishop produces a scroll of jade and unfurls it
Adorjan: "What business do you have with my sister? The Yozis do not entertain guests."
Bishop: "Ah, but they do tomorrow!"
Adorjan: "We cannot prevent you, but neither do we welcome the servants of those who chained us."
Adorjan: "If not for the shells you have brought, you would be dust."
Bishop: "It's not as though I asked for tea."
Bishop: "HOWEVER!" He draws himself up to his full height, radiating centuries of martial expertise and personal power. "I am not here for you! Dismiss yourself from my presence and leave me to continue my journey unmolested. If you refuse to do as I command, I shall unmake your self, and forge your remains into undergarments for my mistress! I have no patience for the babble of imprisoned lunatics."
Adorjan: There is a silence. It is difficult to tell, exactly, whether this is the silence of a person searching for a response, or the silence of Adorjan's consumption. Regardless, it passes; abruptly, the wind howls once more, spitting sand into the Bishop's face. The bright twinkling of the shells vanishes in the din; Adorjan has departed.
Bishop sneezes and spits and bats ineffectually at the sand in his face, but resumes his journey
Adorjan: The Bishop continues on for a few hours, uneventfully...then, abruptly, a step forward finds nothingness, the sand smoothly descending beneath his foot. Behind him, there is a whirl, and from nowhere comes a stinging sandstorm, the grains hot as coals.
Bishop spins on his heel, the last remnants of his linen coat falling away forever, and brandishes his starmetal fist and the jade scroll menacingly!
Cecelyne: There is a voice, harshly coated, formed of the rustle of the endless desert.
Cecelyne: "Why have you come to Malfeas, servant of the Maidens?"
Bishop: "This never ends, does it? Now see here! I've business with She Who Lives In Her Name!"
Cecelyne: "What business do you have with my sister? If I am to convey you on your journey, the minimal courtesy you might show me is to satisfy my curiosity."
Bishop: "My dear, I'm afraid it is deeply personal."
Cecelyne: "Perhaps you do not understand your position, creature. I guard the boundaries. Without my aid, you shall never arrive."
Bishop: "Well, if you must know, I have a date with She Who Lives In Her Name. We're going to have breakfast and a ... casual chat."
Cecelyne chuckles, the sound of a hissing snake as it wriggles away to avoid the Bishop's boot.
Cecelyne: "Do you think she will welcome you?"
Bishop shifts his boot as though squashing the snake's head. "But of course! I'm the friendly sort, and an excellent conversationalist. Additionally, I promised to prepare pancakes for her."
Cecelyne: The sand rustles.
Bishop: "Not precisely the resounding welcome I'd hoped for."
Cecelyne: "Continue, then. I will have mercy on you. Her decisions are her own."
Bishop: "Thank you, dear. You're so kind."
Cecelyne: Abruptly as it arose, the sandstorm dies.
Bishop: The Bishop resumes his journey, forging ahead for the gates of hell.
Cecelyne: There is a voice; a quiet, cultured voice, with a tinkling note.
She Who Lives In Her Name: "Why have you come to Malfeas, servant of the Maidens?"
Bishop: "Why, I am here to visit you!"
She Who Lives In Her Name: "Unfortunately for you, I am not accepting callers at this time, as I am currently imprisoned."
Bishop: "Oh, surely you can make an exception. I'll make pancakes."
She Who Lives In Her Name: "What do you seek, animal?"
Bishop: "Just a casual chat. Do you like mathematics?"
She Who Lives In Her Name: "Mathematics?"
Bishop: "Numbers!"
Bishop: "Numbers and all that they can do and represent and how the viewpoint of those representations shapes the world."
She Who Lives In Her Name: "Hearken to me, animal."
Bishop: "Lo, I hearketh."
She Who Lives In Her Name: In the eternally dark sky above Cecelyne, a single star appears; a fire, surrounded by a crystal sphere.
She Who Lives In Her Name: "In the days when the world was ours, the order of things was my bailiwick."
Bishop: "So I have heard. Do you mind if I sit?"
She Who Lives In Her Name: "I calculated, and thus divided master from servant, king from conquered, animal from man, and each to its own, and each as it was meant to be, eternally."
She Who Lives In Her Name: "This was my gift."
She Who Lives In Her Name: "This was my power, to recall to my hand, when the gates of Malfeas closed."
Bishop: "Yes, but you no longer hold sway over such things. The mathematics of the creation have supplanted the mathematics of the creators, it seems."
She Who Lives In Her Name: "You speak of mathematics? You are a worm. You will never understand the figures with which I worked my duty, the manipulations which yielded paradise."
Bishop: "And yet, my mathematics make the world go 'round. What do yours do now?"
She Who Lives In Her Name: "The systems you know are less than pale imitations of the glorious orderings which I alone defined, and which I alone know."
She Who Lives In Her Name: "How does the world fare, O Bishop?"
She Who Lives In Her Name: "Is all in rightness?"
Bishop: "Not bad, not bad. A little on the boring side, but all in all, I'm comfortable with it."
She Who Lives In Her Name laughs, a ringing tone surpassingly, unexpectedly beautiful.
Bishop: "You have a marvelous laugh, by the way."
She Who Lives In Her Name: "Are you blind, or merely dissembling, servant of the Maidens?"
She Who Lives In Her Name: "The end comes. I, at least, can see the formulas that bring Creation's end."
Bishop smiles apologetically. "Just making conversation, Your, erm, Nameliness."
She Who Lives In Her Name: "If your unworthy souls had the strength to master the system by which I ordered the universe, you too would see, and be prepared to rectify the gaps in your arrangement."
Bishop: "The formula for the end of the world. Academically fascinating, but a bit narrow on the application, I think. What of the formulae which rule the world? And, better still, the formulae which once ruled?"
She Who Lives In Her Name: "But you are animals, without the understanding necessary to see the beauty I perceive. That which you call mathematics are the scribblings of an idle child, aping his betters."
Bishop: "Curiously, though, they work."
Bishop: "But, if you would, I should like a bit more detail. Consider it the empty-minded question of an idle child, waiting for his head to be overfilled."
She Who Lives In Her Name: "If you wish, you may insist on their efficacy until the day Yu-Shan cracks, and the demons eat your soul. I will not prevent you."
Bishop: "I doubt my soul would be very nourishing. Lots of gristle, you know."
She Who Lives In Her Name: "I spare you. I refuse. My calculations would shatter you and your puny mistresses."
Bishop: "Hm. Pancakes, then?"
She Who Lives In Her Name: "Do you consider yourself amusing?"
Bishop: "No, but I do try to be hospitable! I'm sure we can find something else to discuss, since you're simply too timid on the matter of mathematics."
She Who Lives In Her Name: "I am not timid. You are unworthy of my attention."
Bishop: "But of course. I am no mathematician, and I will readily confess that my discovery and development of the Sixteen Efficacious Extensions of Space were almost wholly accidental. Except for the part where I broke every rule the gods set for spatial relations, and made them up again whole-cloth."
She Who Lives In Her Name laughs again, more cruelly.
Bishop: "I'll not bore you with that, though. I'm sure you find mathematics beyond your understanding quite tedious."
She Who Lives In Her Name: "You are so proud of your petty algebras! It amuses me to conceive of the despair you would feel if once you looked upon the Twenty-Four Eternal Approaches."
Bishop: "You cite the Approaches at me? How juvenile! While very elegant principles, they have always failed to address intricacies of existence that I'm sure you are simply too finite a creature to grasp."
She Who Lives In Her Name: "Do not seek to trifle with me. I am perfectly aware that such knowledge as the Approaches are not within your grasp."
Bishop: "I doubt your grasp of them! You have yet to show any actual knowledge! A toddler can drop a name, but who here has understanding?"
Bishop: "Now, I know you toyed with the theories, but the math simply isn't there without application - something that I know you could never quite manage." He smiles cheerily, but continues, with a tone of mild, sweet sarcasm. "But I'm sure that's simply due to the limitations of imprisonment."
She Who Lives In Her Name: "Listen well, animal, for you are exhausting my relatively infinite patience. These are the principles -- depressingly simple, but still no doubt beyond your pathetic capabilities -- that govern the Twenty-Four Eternal Approaches..."
She Who Lives In Her Name: Another crystal sphere twinkles in the dark sky as the Yozi lectures, then another, until the sky is littered with the unblinking eyes of She Who Lives In Her Name...
Bishop listened intently, but smiled inside. It's not every day that you trick God into laying the universe bare before your eyes.
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