Six o'clock, TV hour, don't get caught in foreign towers

[al-shairan.livejournal.com]

An August Evening; The Tower

My daughter is ready; and so am I. Matters have come into alignment. There have been various points throughout the history of this little lump of rock when stars, skies, oceans, calendars, however one marks time, have read that this is a time of Ending, rather then Beginning. Many have tried to make use of those times to bring about the end of all things, because ever since Man was made, he has longed to kill himself and others. But despite all the rumours to the contrary, I have not put my shoulder to the wheel of Apocalypse before now. Things have been done in one of my many names, but I have not led those attempts. Now is the time for finishing, and I will begin it. With blood, of course. It is always blood. It will be when the moon is darkest. That time comes soon.

For now, I see one of my acolytes cross the field to speak with me. This man thinks he wants an end to all things, but he barely understands what it is he serves. Poor fool. I am not much given to looking human, at present, but I put on something that will serve. A man's body, aristocratic in bearing. Flame lies just beneath the surface of its glassy skin. I will not be contained for long.

[open to Foxton]
CLOSED

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[mister-foxton.livejournal.com]

In the hall, the Chronophage has stopped. Time has been eaten. The roof is falling in - quite literally, in the attics, with the ticking of deathwatch beetles. Grandmama has gone beyond my reach, and the skulls and jawbones in the Middle Room are all but silent. Mrs Betton is in bed sick, and her wretched cat -

I swallow a little: absurd to be at all moved by its loss. It's hardly as if it's a sign of anything beyond normal animal mortality. Still, I prepared its little body for Mrs Betton's sake, so that it can be a small indistinct presence in the house in these final days.

I wish that I could speak to my father. His skull doesn't answer me. I should stop wavering. This is the hour that we have prepared for, and so I go out to the Tower at last, the Tower that will not yet be shattered, though I can see La Tour Abolie plain in my mind. I was born for this, the last and strangest of us, this final turning of the great Wheel. It will be different, when things begin again.

[al-shairan.livejournal.com]

I let the tower door open, and hear him ascend the stairs. I leave the tower room empty, aside from a smell of ashes and brimstone.

"Foxton Manqueller, servant of the end," I say precisely. "You have come because it is time. Are you ready to work?"

[mister-foxton.livejournal.com]

Many things can look human. It's easy enough to see past the shell he's wearing.

"Yes," I say simply. I am very tired. I've been working my whole life. But I want this final push into nothingness and then - whatever comes. "What do you need? I have generations behind me." An offering of everything: all our work. He is the final piece, the last cog fitted into the gears of the clock to bring the final resounding turn. The power of him, so thinly constrained. I swallow very discreetly, to try and stop the ringing in my ears. I have been around powers, and Powers, since I was a child at my nurse's knee. This is simply the Last.

[al-shairan.livejournal.com]

"Destroy everything," I say, after looking at him for a moment. "All your work, and your father's, and your father's father's. Make it into nothing. That is what you can do." He and his family, they have been carefully building for generations. What use is that? All I need now are sacrifices.

[mister-foxton.livejournal.com]

I breathe out softly. "Yes," I say, very quiet. Destroy everything. The end of the Work, the greatest work. The bonefire, at the end.... We have pushed at the Wheel for all these generations; now time is stopping, and all that is left is to remove the chock that keeps the Wheel from spinning free, faster and faster into destruction. I swallow for a different reason now, palms warm. "What there is left... Yes."

He's - it's - a very beautiful sort of creature, in its way. It's quite monstrous, but it will serve, as everything will serve the end. I don't think it will see the new beginning, and I feel a sort of pity for it.

[al-shairan.livejournal.com]

I nod. There is nothing else to say about this matter, but I cannot resist a little - devilment.

"Do you know," I ask, "who killed your friend, Westin?" I touch his cheek lightly, to bring up an old memory (http://estdeus-innobis.livejournal.com/381944.html?thread=9754872#t9754872). "You could have cared for one another, perhaps. But the sheriff buried him in the woods."

[mister-foxton.livejournal.com]

His fingers feel mostly human on my face. My expression doesn't change. The sheriff, and that mayor, think they have the power in this town, that they run it. They are newcomers. They will learn, and soon.

"Why tell me this?" I ask him. "And we might have cared for one another," I had hoped, after all, foolishly, "but you know it could not have been more than - " I stop abruptly.

"You know I am a monster," I say, looking straight at him. "Perhaps it's better he was killed than that he knew that." That anyone did, besides Mrs Betton, and she is - dying, yes, I can think it here. Everyone else who knew is dead.

[al-shairan.livejournal.com]

I do not answer his question of why. Why do I ever do anything, except for my own ends? But when he says he is a monster my mouth curves into a smile, and I deliver the final blow.

"Westin Sagert loved monsters," I say. "He collected them, after a fashion. He might have loved you for your monstrosity." I stroke a fingertip across his cheek. "Imagine what that might have been like. But instead," and my voice is all regret, "he was butchered, and left in a shallow grave." I smile. "You may leave now, Foxton Manqueller. I do not think we will meet again. But I thank you for the work you have done, and will do."

[mister-foxton.livejournal.com]

I will not let him see the breath go out of me. I hardly let it go at all. I have been resigned for so long.

I make myself shrug. It's quite easy, after so long. "What might have been," I say. "Are we to deal in might-have-been, you and I, rather than will-be? I think not." I will not think about it. But. In the new dawn. Perhaps then.

I bow a little. "My compliments, then, sir," since he wears the illusion of maleness, I may as well let him have it, "on your long work. May you have the," not joy, since I think he has little of that, "satisfaction of it." I take off my dark glasses and look at him for a long moment. I do not think that the Manqueller Eye can do him any harm, though I feel it do its automatic work, and it is pleasant to look at someone straight.

I leave the tower. I am quite steady. It will serve him, his work, as he has served others. As will my own. I will have no regrets for that. I will not. There is no time.