The Bodies VII.

            As the metal woman emerged from the crimson fog Rel understood beauty at last.  His words fled his mind, slipping of the Fairxi’s burnished skin like oil, and he was fine with such failure.  This was art untouched by the Slavemaster’s hand, beauty unfettered.  Even Iyali, so close a mimic to this jeweled creature, displayed subtle flourishes of her decadent creator.  Now, in the Fairxi, the boy knew thunderstorms he would never see, hurricane seas he’d never travel, the vision of absolute things beyond his experience.  Another emotion bubbled up inside him with green intent.

            “She’s dying,” said the Fairxi to Rel, who had no answer.  “There is little time left.”

            The Trumpeter began fighting through his coat while the Fencer slouched against a wall nearby, dazedly staring off into his pain.  Only his sword arm lived, animated by glassine Dhala.

            Finding the right vial, the Trumpeter poured the magenta concoction down the concubine’s throat.  She moaned at lost paradise but her eyes calmed and her breathing slowed to normal.  Before the Trumpeter could exhale his relief the Fairxi snatched away the empty glass.

            “Magic,” she chimed reverently.  “Where did you get this?”

            “An inheritance,” said the Trumpeter, splitting his attention between the two near-sisters.  “Why are you so interested?”

            “It reminds me of lost days.” 

            Scarcely had she said this when a bizarre series of tones echoed through the palace.  Paradoxically this noise seemed both organic and artificial, as if produced on an instrument carved from still-living bone.  It repeated with some variation, each time growing closer.  The Trumpeter smiled down the dark halls.

            “Do you see something?” said the Fairxi, following his gaze.

            “Only hoping,” he said. 

            “What are we to do?” asked Rel as he crouched next to the Fencer, seeing to the arm full of needles.  They were in disarray now, many pulled out, and others driven further into the flesh, probably to the bone.

            “Why, anything,” explained the Trumpeter.  “I suppose at some point we’ll have to mend the Fencer.”

            The exhalation of alien notes repeated, closer.  Before the Trumpeter could produce another healing vial the source presented itself.

            Dead eyes hung from its central mass like wilted flowers.  Necessary appendages grew from the thing’s cancerous gold flesh center, shot out silently and propelled the core along.  It sang its little song and picked up speed once the assorted slaves and adventurers heard the notes.  The eyes were leftovers of its past form, now the Servitor listened to the echoes of its own music to find prey.

            “Back for an encore,” was all the Trumpeter could say before the thing crashed into him.  In an instant it tore the silver trumpet from his grasp and flicked him against a marble wall with such force that what little sense he had was knocked out.  Without turning the reformed Servitor beast whipped towards the Fairxi.  Her being elicited such attention.  What it met was competition.

            Rel scrambled to attack with crystalline Dhala in his hands.  How it burned, cold.  The Servitor shrieked at the dark weapon’s icy touch.  These notes flooded the air and followed the boy’s movements.  Feeling the sounds it anticipated each swing and never did the icy blade meet the golden foe. 

            There could be no victory for the boy, only devotion.  He looked back to see the Fairxi but she was busy about the Fencer.  Rel felt a twinge as the monstrosity took hold of him. 

            With one move it flattened a pseudopod against his chest while a few more took off his arms and slapped the offending sword away.  Pain and blood welled up as his golden prosthetics were ripped right out of the flesh.  His scream joined the chorus.

            Through this a blade of black ice fell like silence.  Cut free, the floor seemed to rise up to meet him.  There Rel curled up, hugging his maimed arms close.  Through black-tinged vision he saw the Fencer battling the gold monstrosity.  The man’s wounds unwound themselves, needles falling out, flesh knitting back with machine-like grace.  This was the swordsman in top form, like he had been down below in the Winter estate when he battled the Slavemaster’s hordes.  There was something of beauty in these movements, as if they came from a dream.

            Under the flurry of sticking arms he flowed about, weaving through the assault.  An opening presented itself and he dove at the core.  Instantly a score of pseudopods grasped the blade.  A thousand dissonant wails screamed from the creature.  Where its flesh touched the nightmare sword black frostbite grew like mold.  This was a Summer creature after all and unsuited to harsh Winter.  It was nothing if not adaptable though.

            With a metallic bellow it pushed the Fencer away and at range unspooled.  Sunlight filaments glittered in the air and flickered, dancing up and after the swordsman.  Where these wires touched stone opened up and marble fell apart like a hot wire through wax.  With but a touch the hair-like strands cut through anything.  Now the Fencer faced a thousand atom edges, while he held only one, and the odds grew increasingly in favor of his protean enemy.

            It was beautiful, thought Rel, as the Fencer fought an increasingly desperate battle.  It had started off so ugly, another fleshy monstrosity of the Slavemaster’s design, but through its programmed evolution arrived at increasingly refined levels of being.  Even now it continued to develop, dropping frost blackened flesh in favor of more burnished strands of monomolecular grace.

            How it retained any sort of intelligence was for only the Slavemaster to know.  At last it was a glittering cloud of the filament stuff, so fine that it quivered with every breath of those present. 

            Rel noticed a strange tactic at play.  The Fencer deliberately kept his blade away from the golden beast, dodging around as fast as he could from the tumble of matter-flensing cilia.  He let the thing develop into an absolute offensive force and it leaped forward eagerly, changing into faster, more aggressive forms, sacrificing flesh and durability along the way.  At any moment it would catch the man, who was limited by a static body.  Grazing filaments already left a few red signatures on the swordsman, who smiled for some reason.

            Knowing the right time, the Fencer ended the duel.  He tossed cold Dhala at the thing.  Down the blade fell into the mass of gold and all at once that quivering death machine stilled.  The sword’s aura was harmful enough.  There was a pop as even the air froze around the beast.  Matter so fine froze quick and brittle, crumbling, dying into a pile of flaky remains.  The sword sunk down to the hilt in the broken marble floor.

            “We should leave,” said the Fencer before retrieving the blade with held breath.  Even the tiniest mote of the dead Servitor would zip through flesh and skin and a full intake would certainly make for bloody lungs.

            By now the group was all up and moving.  Iyali blinked heaven from her halcyon eyes as the Fairxi helped her walk off the effects of the celestis.  The Trumpeter nursed a bump on the head but was otherwise unharmed.  Rel was the worst off, having to lean heavily and bloodily on the Fencer.

            “What are we to do?” moaned the Trumpeter as they stumbled into an opulent sitting room where they might gather their thoughts and tend to their wounds.  “Whichever our way there’ll be more of these games.”

            “What does he mean?” asked the Fairxi as she looked at the boy’s maimed arms with her precisely cut eyes, delicately inspected them with platinum fingers.

            “We should make for the top.  If the Slavemaster is anywhere it is there.  As long as he breathes we won’t know peace,” stated the Fencer, sidestepping the question.

            “You know that’s not true,” said the Trumpeter accusingly.

            “We’ve had our share of despots and adventures,” explained the Fencer who paced about.  “We can go up and face increasingly twisted horrors as we ascend to his seat of power or we can flee bellow and deal with the hordes of the Winter estate.”

            “Surely there are more options than that,” said Iyali who basked in her cushy natural habitat.  She never took her eyes off the Fairxi.

            “Indeed,” smiled the Fencer.

            “The trick is making any sort of third way work,” complained the Trumpeter.  “Winter adores binaries.  Worse still, my mad friend has let himself become distracted from our goal.  Topple the Slavemaster and what then?  With the Fairxi in our possession we should climb out a window and take our chances out on the Glacier of Lamm.”

            “With a wounded boy and a poisoned concubine?”

            In response the Trumpeter groaned with fake pain and hid himself amongst the scented pillows.  The thud and rumble of distant movement told them their peace was a transient thing.

            “Do you have another of those healing draughts?” the Fairxi asked in regards to Rel’s arms.

            “We do,” explained the Trumpeter hesitantly.  “One or two more, but they won’t fix his arms.  Old wounds never heal.”

            “Why did you take his arms?” she asked.

            “What arms?” 

            Before he had the words out of his mouth she reached into his coat and produced Rel’s two golden arms.  She turned to the boy, who felt his heart bound to the top of his head at such attention.

            “Which is less desirable; transient pain or permanent infirmity?”  Her eyes took up his.

            “Infirmity, I suppose,” he rasped. 

            Before he could elaborate her metal fingers plunged into his wounds.  Platinum mixed with blood as she redid the Slavemaster’s surgery in seconds, reattaching artificial cartilage to the proper muscles and tuning the fine machinery which moved the fingers and joints.  Bright light and encroaching dark fought for the boy’s vision.  The Fairxi seemed to blur, though perhaps that was just the pain.  Before the others could stop her she was finished, red speckling her perfect form.

            Instinctively Rel slid away from her and found his mechanical fingers helping.  Pain arrived with each muscle movement, but it was a good pain, a pain which meant something.  With these hands he might claw his way through the future.  For some reason he was reminded of the dead girl Xyl and her fatalistic, toothless smile.

            “How did she…”  The Trumpeter trailed off.

            “Magic,” explained the Fencer with a complex tone of voice, a strange mix of distaste and wonder yielding a flat result. 

            “Oh of course,” smirked Iyali from her cushion. 

            The Fencer slid his spare weapon over to the boy, the serrated blade jangling on the marble floor.  “I think you can make good use of this now.”

            “He’ll die without even drawing it,” said the gilded woman while she absently worked a spiral into the plush flesh of her cushion with what she considered the second most beautiful finger in the room.

            “And why is that?” frowned the Fencer, temper flaring.

            “I’ve seen the upper chambers, some of them at least, and you’re right, they do become stranger and more dangerous with each level.  Up there the halls are thick with poisons to which only the Slavemaster carries antidotes.”

            “Are you saying I can’t make it?” asked Rel, desperate to look strong in front of both the Fairxi and her snide copy.

            “None of us can.”

            “Except me,” contended the Fairxi with her even words.  Iyali’s wry smile fell at the remark.  “I do not breathe, I have no blood, poisons have no effect on me.”

            “And you’d face the Slavemaster for us?” asked the Fencer.

            “Yes,” the automaton said evenly as a smile crept across her face.

            “Why would you do such a thing?” asked the Trumpeter.  “Not to be rude but you’re just a doll, a body which moves according to another’s wishes.”

            “And what do you wish?”  She looked at Rel as she said this.

            “Me?” he said nervously.  “I want…I want to not be subject to the Slavemaster’s beauty anymore.”

            “Then that is my wish as well.”

            The company was silent a moment.  Far off plots clanged and rumbled through the strange palace.  The mad experimenter and his body riddle world whirred up a frenzy.  There were games to be played, bodies to live and die, and strange flesh to entertain.  Below and above, it didn’t matter, there waited beautiful horror, if the Servitor had been any indication. 

            “We’ll split up,” stated the Fencer at last.  “Fairxi, I want you to ascend to the Slavemaster’s.  We’ll go below.”

            His words were inclusive.  She wasn’t just an object anymore.  The object had become a fellow subject.

            “And what will we do there other than catch a cold?” groused the Trumpeter.

            “There we’ll discover which has more power over the slaves, Winter’s Riddle or the riddle of the body,” said the Swordsman at last, moving off, not waiting for any sort of reply.  He tested the air with Dhala’s atom edge; it sang.   

The Bodies VI.

            Beauty stirred across the relentless cold of Winter.  The planet was an icy jewel, facetted with contradictions, each reflecting differently at different times and in different ways according to light and the angle of the eye.  There were no passive observers on the endless snow plains, no gawking tourists.  And now the travelers and their acquaintances experienced the sublime, expressed as either a metal woman or a nightmare engine of death clicking faster and faster on milk-colored claws.

            Iyali stared at her bright mirror twin, lost in wonder stretching towards horror.  The creature was exactly like her, with flesh of platinum, woven bands of the stuff when seen up close, pulling and flexing with a mechanic much like living muscle.  Her hair didn’t seem like gold, it was gold, her eyes, each cut from sapphire set into frosty quartz and inlaid with jet pupils, stared out with cold precision.  These were far more perfect attributes than even the gilded woman’s own.  In comparison she was a pale imitation.

            “Describe yourself,” demanded the Fairxi again.  The automaton seemed distracted, unfocused, an empty vessel. 

            “I’m something like you,” rasped Iyali, half-unconsciously.  That seemed to quiet the Fairxi who now simply watched whoever moved with detached understanding.

            “What are you?” demanded the gilded woman.

            There was no response.  The Fencer sighed.

            A terror rose up in Iyali’s soul, it clicked down the halls of her soul like the strange servitor after Rel and the Trumpeter.  Both were props of the mad mind of the Slavemaster. 

            Rel gaped at the creature as it whisked towards him.  Its body a whipcord of ashen muscle, narrow, tall enough that it bent in order to fit under the carven marble.  Several arms hung like chimes, each ending in six-taloned digits.  Of legs it had many, perhaps these were also arms.  It was difficult to tell as it raced towards the trespassers in a blur of motion.

            Eyes were placed in seemingly random assortments across its body, five here, eight there.  These watched the tall man pick up his cone of silver, lift it to its lips and puff out his cheeks.  All of the creature’s sound organs took in what came next.

            The music was so loud it seemed to brighten up the air.  A single sense couldn’t describe the noise.  The blast caught the servitor and tore its flesh from its bones which clattered to rest on the stone floor.  The sopping remnants leaked blood all over the Slavemaster’s sumptuous quarters.

            “I think I put a bit too much into it,” said the shocked trumpeter.

            “What was that?” asked Rel loudly, partially deafened.

            “This?”  The Trumpeter flourished his instrument.

            “No, the thing which extended out from the silver aperture.”

            “Oh, that is music,” smiled the musician.

            “I think I can safely call that beautiful,” considered the boy.

            “Any appreciation should be done as we take our leave,” said the Trumpeter as he began stuffing potions and other junk into his pockets.  “Critics will be along any moment to prove that beauty is subjective.”

            Rel took whatever the musician didn’t, tucking rations and keepsakes into his coat pockets.  At last he also took the Fencer’s fell weapon, bundled in a sheet, and together the two raced off into the sculpted halls.

            The thing on the floor wasn’t dead, just changed in form.  The Slavemaster had taken death away from it.  Instead it flowed and changed, adapting like the course of a river through uneven geography.  It was an ever growing bad idea, something indisputable and hideous, much like that which grew inside Iyali’s mind.

            “She won’t talk to you,” the Fencer said at last.  “Not because she doesn’t like you but because you aren’t responding with the proper phrase.  Her mind is locked.”

            The Fencer approached the object of this whole endeavor.  At first he was cautions, such was her beauty, but he quickly remembered himself.  To Iyali it seemed that he invaded the creature’s personal space, that invisible barrier all persons keep between themselves and others, but the Fairxi showed no care.  She took in his attentions with a clever grace.  At last he remembered what he was supposed to say.

            “Bones dream towards a flesh and muscle wonders after skin, minds quest towards souls in a war which bodies win.”  The prose was out of character for the Fencer who coughed out the words clumsily.  It didn’t mean anything to Iyali but to the Fairxi it was everything.

            The metal woman shifted upon hearing this, blinking into life.  Now she was more than a mannequin or doll, a spirit possessed the body.

            “Where is Narenaree?” she asked.

            “Your master is long lost,” responded the Fencer, “along with a great many other magicians and monsters.  Much has happened.”

            “What are you,” asked Iyali, almost as a whisper.

            “A curious thing,” explained the Fairxi. 

            “You are also a knowing thing, yes?” demanded the Fencer, interrupting.

            “My curiosity often leads to knowledge, for what it’s worth.”

            “Then tell me of Winter’s Riddle,” he said.  His whole being leaned towards the answer.

            “No!” demanded Iyali.  “I want you tell which of us is real and which a copy.  Were you built in my image or I in yours?”

            Before the bewildered automaton could answer either query they were interrupted by a sliding curtain.  There stood the smiling Slavemaster, holding some sort of quill in his hands dripping an amber fluid.  An ornate scimitar hung from his waist alongside a hideous porcelain mask.

            “I’m afraid,” he began wistfully, “some mysteries will remain just that.”

            The Fencer drew his sword but the Slavemaster held up the quill’s point defensively.

            “A reasonable man would stay where he was.  This is celestis, one of my most deadly toxins.  As one writhes from a mere drop applied to the skin their mind beholds the most perfect vision of paradise.  It took over a hundred generations to create the glands capable of producing the stuff.  Consider this a special occasion.”

            “You let us get this far,” grimaced Iyali, falling deeper into despair. 

            “Idiot,” sighed the Fencer.  “Even if that wasn’t true now he can claim as such.”

            “You’ve given me so much,” laughed the Slavemaster.  “Entertainment and toys and a book of green puzzles, rare magic in stopped-up little bottles and petrified memories.  I cut up a dozen slaves with your weapon, Fencer, and it seems that those who survive the initial encounter are beset by some sort of dreaming disease shortly after, a terrible thing really.  But greatest of all is that journal.  While the cipher was troubling for a few hours it soon revealed the lady’s heart.  To think she was a fraud.  Hmmm, and those treasures of hers scattered across the ice, hidden away, like a thieving magpie.”

            “Who is that?” asked the Fairxi and the Slavemaster slackened like he was about to faint.

            “She…speaks?”  He was in ecstasy.  “For so long I have labored after the secrets of the Fairxi.  I paid green Clea much gold for her only to find the machine’s thoughts locked, the key hidden.  That witch knew it after all.  Ah!  I see now, that random poem!”

            The Fencer readied to jump the madman now that he was distracted, but the gilded woman interrupted.

            “What am I?” asked Iyali, approaching her master.

            “You are a best attempt,” he said, appraising his work.  “If I couldn’t posses the whole of the Fairxi then I would create a mimic which I could.”

            “Why?” the Fencer asked, trying to buy more time.

            “There is something called beauty, which the average icebound mind is incapable of understanding.  Oh, they are sure to use the term, incorrectly, according to their lusts and desires.  This is the body riddle to which they can only answer with blood and other fluids.  They most often express the notion that beauty is subjective, obeying only the caprice of certain experiences with particular people at set times.  I know differently.”

            The Fairxi appraised this man whom she had just met and wondered after his words.  Not since the passing of her old master had she witnessed such a curious mind.

            “Yet there is the sublime,” continued the Slavemaster.  “It stands taller than the mountains, higher than the clouds.  Its presence is that of a thunderstorm or a volcanic eruption.  This is true, indisputable beauty; this is what I wished you to be Iyali.”

            “All those things occur naturally,” said the Fencer.  “You thought you could cause the same through vulgar surgery and mutilation?”

            “Magic is also sublime and it is a made thing,” smirked the Slavemaster who approached Iyali.  She didn’t recoil from his hand which gauged the work his drugs and surgery had wrought.  “You are my magic.  The closest I’ve come to regaining what I lost that day Sol defeated my would-be tutor.”

            He abandoned her and walked towards the Fairxi, who observed all with some agitation.  Iyali seethed and tried to whip her creator around, he did, and in doing so the amber quill brushed her arm.  She fell laughing and the Fencer leaped at the man.

            The Slavemaster dodged most of the strike, only a glancing blow landing on his arm, sending the quill spattering into a curtain.  With chemical grace his scimitar flickered into his hands that the same moment, just in time to deflect the Fencer’s next slash.  He showed no sign of pain at the terrible gash in his arm.

            The blade’s jagged teeth caught against the tyrant’s.  The Fencer tried to force his opponent back but found his strength as nothing compared to the Slavemaster’s.  With a laugh he was cast back next to the Fairxi.  The scimitar rang down and he rolled away just before it clanged against the marble.  The impact’s force dulled the blade.

            Staring into his opponents eyes the Fencer saw that he didn’t just contest with flesh and blood but a possessing drug.  The Slavemaster’s eyes were fully dilated by whatever he had taken to make him this fiend of the blade.  His muscles twitched to the tune of his magic memories, ready and desperate.  While he watched the tyrant straitened the sword with his bare hands.

            Fatalism weighed the Fencer down, his deadened right arm putting him off balance.  Inwardly he cursed his body, for its weakness and its vulnerability.  If only he could act as he thought, then he would always be victorious. 

            The Slavemaster came at him in a whirl and the swordsman gave way, fighting defensively.  No man knew how much self-experimentation the madman had undergone or how much of his being was enhanced through chemical and surgery. 

            The black-eyed attacker forced the Fencer into a corner but he slipped away underneath a curtain.  Following, the Slavemaster found himself in a maze of his own design, bordered by luminous silks lit by heavy votive lamps.  His breathing was quick and excited, a side effect of the combat drugs.  He lashed his scimitar as he searched, hacking through the veils. 

            In this noise the Fencer attacked.  With no time to bring up his weapon the Slavemaster smiled and caught the jagged sword with his bare off-hand.  Laughter and blood welled out.

            Iyali’s mind transmuted all these things into ever increasing light.  As the celestis progressed to her brain and fired down her nervous system a sort of synthesia overtook her senses, the sounds of combat and the smell of incense becoming color clouds and fractal spirals.  Here she flew, free of constraints and worries, clouds vanishing one by one as she ascended.  This was her brain shutting off bit by bit, drowning in its own chemicals, revealing the unadorned spirit.

            “Will I see Summer?” she asked her reflected self. 

            “What is Summer?” asked the Fairxi.

            “It’s like here but real, not a copy,” giggled the gilded woman.

            “How can you tell the difference?” reasoned the machine woman.  “Any real Summer you happen across should be treated as a symptom of the highly aggressive toxin from which you are currently dying.”

            The Fencer crashed back into the room and landed painfully next to Iyali.  He was followed closely by the Slavemaster who held a bunch of needles in his left hand. 

            Indescribable pain etched itself through the Fencer’s body.  With the locking needles gone the torture from before continued in tones of cold fire. 

            To the Fairxi this was all so interesting.  The two being before her lay close, both dying, with one descending into unbearable pain and the other drifting into euphoric heaven.  The third man, this Slavemaster, swaggered towards the scene laughing, eyes drinking up his latest work of art.

            Through the darkening pain the Fencer heard something familiar clang next to him.  His opponent was fast but he was faster, picking up the bit of ice and shredding the scimitar in a scream of metal.  Dhala’s cold numbed the hurt, cooled his mind, and in this state of frozen grace he prepared to take the fight to the Slavemaster.

            The Trumpeter was there, Rel too, skittish and worried now that he faced the strange lord of the Summer estate.  They joined the Fencer in his bid to end the ordeal.

            No such luck though.  The tyrant laughed off this assault and retreated, taking up the porcelain mask at his side. 

            “While you exist,” he gestured to the demure Fairxi, “nothing will keep you from me.  All this strife merely makes the conquest more cherished.  To the rest of you I hope my hospitality will be to your liking.”

            With that he donned the mask, a thing with a sort of meshed box in front of the nose and mouth, and dropped something which broke upon the ground.  Instantly a cloud of red frothed up.  To the mind it seemed that the earth pulled them down, their minds crushed under such gravity. 

            They staggered from the room and collapsed.  The Fencer knew he had abandoned Iyali to her poisoned fate but was unable to move his legs any more.  Exhaustion, fumes, torture and starvation were taking their toll.  Looking over the others were in a similar state.  Then something glimmered in the red cloud.

            One twin carried another though the curtains.  Once she was through the veiled clouds of crimson death her platinum face showed bright.  Finally the Fairxi had acted.

The Bodies V.

            “Let me help you with that,” was what the Fencer said as he leaped upon the closest bundle-carrying guard. 

            The strangely muscled creature flung his armful of drug-soaked rags in defense but the sword still found him.  Catching just below the armpit, the jagged blade sunk in the guard’s torso and dragged out in a gush of red.  Then the rest fell upon the lone attacker and were met with a maze of steel.  They tried their torture media upon the Fencer but found each implement deflected or turned against them.  The first fellow with the grand idea of tossing his stoker full of coals managed to set fire to the strange drugs carried by another, who combusted into a spectacular bonfire.  The swordsman flowed around their attacks despite his wounds.

            Covered by such chaos Rel snuck back towards the secret exit only to have a metallic hand grip his shoulder. 

            “We can’t leave,” frowned Iyali.  “If the guards see us take the portal they’ll be sure to follow.  We have to place our hope in that swordsman or begin making up excuses to placate the Slavemaster.”

            “Ahem,” coughed the Trumpeter, gaining their attention.  “I might have a faster cure than the lout with a sword.”

            He didn’t wait for them to comprehend.  In his hands the tall many carried a menagerie of things; a small cask of potent liquor, a packet of pungent incense, and a wide variety of euphorics and narcotics.  All of these easily gathered from the great hall where so recently the Slavemaster entertained.  While a pitched swordfight raged about he carefully measured out certain quantities and when he was sure of the mix tossed it onto the still-burning guard.

            A great bulbous monstrosity of scarlet smoke plumed out.  Rel and the gilded lady went blind from tears in the moment it took to cover their eyes.  The noxious stuff insinuated itself, assaulting the sinuses and tickling the throat.  It was a natural reaction to cover the nose and mouth but the unprepared guards fared poorly.  Their perforated helmets did little to protect them and they fell writhing and senseless on the ground from the more advanced effects of the gas.

            “My thanks for the pyrotechnics,” coughed the Fencer once the air cleared a little. 

            “I couldn’t let you steal all the glory,” smiled the Trumpeter through rheumy eyes.

            “Now the whole compound will only have to follow their noses to find us,” smiled the Fencer in return.

            “I endeavor to spread your fame,” said the Trumpeter helpfully.

            The two travelers made to for the great doors but Iyali showed them the secret way out.  Slipping off before more guards could arrive they stumbled through the hidden places of the Slavemaster’s abode.  Every once in a while the Fencer let out a gasp of pain as one of his needles brushed against the stone walls. 

            Looking for a place to clear their lungs and catch their breath they took the first room they came upon.  Statuary, polished, unfinished, grotesque and fair, dominated the sculptory they entered.  There were no other exits, leading them to believe this was one of the Slavemaster’s secret chambers.  How the several tonnage of marble, alabaster, jade and the like had been brought up lay beyond their ken as they slouched against bestial faces and ecstatic female forms uncaringly exhausted. 

            Rel’s eyes cleared and he beheld the visage of Iyali.  There was some dilating property to the smoke and in the bright lamplight the woman seemed particularly radiant and unearthly.  Perhaps it was the setting; she was as one with the myriad sculptures.  An unnatural thing, she seemed barely affected by the noxious cloud, only sniffing a bit from a slightly reddened nose.  The Fencer saw this too.

            Curious of how the other man perceived and judged the woman Rel watched the swordsman, wondering what he saw in her.  She seemed heavily augmented by the Slavemaster’s treatments and surgery.  Her long hair was metallic, something like chrome, all piled and knotted, festooned with beads, pins and clasps.  This framed a youthful face of soft features, sapphire eyes hemmed by golden lashes, and full lips of likewise many karats.  The skin of her perfectly formed body had a platinum sheen to it and there was much to see as her silks were thin.  He watched her claw away at the collar around her neck with those alloyed nails of hers. 

            His scrutiny didn’t go unnoticed and she stared back with eyes of crystal.  Was this beauty?  Did the Fencer think so?  Could they each think differently on the matter?  These thoughts came to an abrupt end.

            “What are you curious about?” she said, turning her head accusingly at the Fencer, who flinched a bit as a man caught.

            “My companion and I have a wager,” said the Fencer through his gloomy pain.

            “Fifty bits of silver are on the line,” coughed the Trumpeter.  “We disbelieve our jaded eyes.  My friend here contends you are as you seem while my extraordinary senses imply you are a carefully disguised male.  Perhaps you could determine the losses for my friend here.”

            Iyali swayed a bit under the rapid assault of the Trumpeter’s wager but came up with grace and a smile.

            “I don’t need to prove myself to you.”

            “I’d be willing to pay, say, twenty silver for a positive endorsement,” contended the Trumpeter insanely.

            “What use is money in a place like this?” she said bitterly, busying herself amongst the statuary in an effort to find more secret passages.

            “Forget the wager,” mused the Fencer.  “My contention doesn’t lie with the Trumpeter but with the Slavemaster, and unless you are a sorceress then you must be some creation of our surgeon host.  And if you are a creation then might you not also be a servant, perhaps a spy?”

            The gilded woman stopped at her task.  Framed by a luscious agglomeration of cubic statuary she turned on her accuser.

            “You may find it surprising to learn there are more than just thugs, tyrants and victims on the cold face of Winter.  Today’s cutthroat might be tomorrow’s bandit king, and some of those thieving royals will last, becoming true sovereigns over time.  My father was one such creature.  He had a weakness for the fair things provided by the Slavemaster and was often a guest to these halls.  A weak man ruled by his addictions, he soon became indebted to the proprietor and in payment sold me.  For whatever reason I became a focus for my owner’s affections.  Through certain chemical immersions my being has been fused with various metals, all towards some mad aesthetic.  My father never defeated his lusts.  Eventually he incurred such a debt that he went to feed the Slavemaster’s other guests.”

            “Even if true it doesn’t make me any less suspicious,” said the Fencer.

            “I suppose that story sounds reasonable,” sighed the Trumpeter sadly, realizing that if he ever found his possessions again he would need to find a way of losing his pouch of silver.

            Rel wondered at the story.  Most of the higher consorts had their minds as well as their bodies altered by the Slavemaster.  They were pliant, dominated things, captivated by the will of their maker. 

            “Oh,” said the woman with sudden realization.  She then went to a side wall and stamped about on the ground until a large door slid open with a grumble.  Beyond, a larger passage lay.  “That explains how all this stone is brought up.”

            “But which path, if any, leads to our lost treasures?” fretted the Trumpeter.

            “A better question lies in regard to the Fairxi,” said the Fencer, frowning at the cruel blade he had liberated from the guards above. 

            “What is this thing which drives the Slavemaster mad?” said Iyali.

            “A machine created by a dead mage kept alive by powerful magics, now gone from Winter since the Uplifting,” explained the Fencer carefully.  “It is an intelligence of extreme beauty sold to the Slavemaster for a great sum.  We intend to reclaim it.”

            “I think it is fine that we honor the spirit of your dead lover, Fencer, but a more reasonable move would be to find our implements first.”

            “And you don’t know where either may be?” said the swordsman, confronting the suddenly thoughtful woman.

            “The Slavemaster keeps his secrets tightly bound.”

            “Then I propose we split up.”  Before he could specify the Trumpeter interrupted.

            “Come then my friend, I’ve just about run out of patience and we should leave these two arguers to their sly words.”

            As he said this he took a startled Rel by the hand and whisked off through the larger passage, a second pressure plate sliding the wall shut behind them.

            “Not the quietest pair,” grumbled the Fencer.    

            Without explaining what he was looking for the man then searched the workbenches.   Iyali had no clue what the man was after until he picked out a chisel and handed it to her.

            “For protection,” he explained before reentering the passage they came from and exploring further.  Smiling, she put down the implement and followed.  The swordsman, in his silence, resembled something sculpted from rock, worked by the cold hand of Winter and she was growing to admire this coarse and honest expression.

            The Trumpeter smiled all the way to the first laboratory.  He quickly stopped at what his mad interest revealed.  Initially there was a briny smell, like sweaty clothes worn for weeks on end, but as they followed their noses it took on a greater size.  The door itself was easy to spot; a bit of wall under which ruddy stains swept, like brushstrokes.

            Here the Slavemaster kept living materials.  There were vats of flesh burbling in nutrient slurries and pickled organs floating in obscene crowds.  These things were still alive, kept so through means just short of magic.  Eyes watched them with autonomic interest, and as if in agreement a guttural chorus of mouths groaned hungrily as soon as they entered the room.

            “Why are we in this terrible place?” asked Rel, looking about fearfully. 

            “I have a theory about men of power,” said the Trumpeter, gingerly avoiding contact with every bench, vat and beaker.  “They love to multiply their uncanny habits, to collect their oddments about them in such concentration that they create a talisman against the chill and hardship of Winter.  Following this logic we should keep to the strangest of rooms, doing so will lead us to the treasures we seek.”

            A scratching prevented any debate.  Something hunted for the hidden button which opened the door.  Quickly the pair made their own search for means of escape.

            The thing outside was clumsy, the noise it made that of harsh claws on stone.  As the tenor of the gibbering mouths rose in disgusting volume so too increased the frantic workings at the door. 

            The Trumpeter found a series of hidden safety levers behind a panel on one wall.  Heedless of whether these were designed to keep something in or out he pulled free all the locking devices and together they scrambled into a darkened hall, the door shutting automatically behind.  No chemical lights illuminated the darkness and they soon realize they were not in a hall of any kind but some sort of closet or holding cell.  Thankfully it was currently occupied only by the smell of blood and burnt hair.   For a time they were forced to listen as the thing in the next room clicked its way around the flesh room.

            Then the noise stopped and with it a dread worse than discovery.  Straining their ears they heard nothing like breathing, no sound of weight being shifted from leg to leg or whatever appendages the thing might possess.  If it had left then there was no telling.

            At last a sound came.  The metal tips of Rel’s curved slippers jangled with the boy’s fright.  Having enough, the Trumpeter slid the door open suddenly, ready for what might lay beyond. 

            Many eyes fell on him, unnerving but not new.  The room seemed empty, as they had first discovered it, except the open metal cylinder on a bench beside the vat of mouths.  A meaty reek emanated from the container and clumps of bloody chum trailed from it to the mouth vat.  These were quiet now and upon closer inspection this tub contained not only mouths but esophagi, stomachs, and intestines, all tangled and bobbing like flotsam on a gelatinous sea.  The mouths were no longer hungry. 

            Leaving in a hurry nothing but cold light greeted them outside.  They continued the search.  Rooms of widely differing nature opened up along the way.  There were surgical theatres and cushioned sitting rooms, places all of one color for the Slavemaster’s mood and storehouses for bones.  This was a hidden labyrinth tangled up with the already convoluted halls of the Summer estate.  Rel had never seen nor heard of any of these places.

            The Trumpeter, all energy and motion, pushed them on.  He wondered out loud about hidden chambers and secret vaults, all full with what he imagined lay within the Slavemaster’s powers.  His thoughts were grand, broad-minded and creative, all despite the tortures and starvation he had faced in the past.  This energy was catching.

            Together they followed the stranger rooms, places of disturbing art and grand decadence.  They took to a method of searching for hidden exits which often yielded passages leading to even more exotic settings.  Trick doors made their decisions for them on many occasions, shutting closed silently and not opening again.  Often there was no choice but to forge ahead. 

            Finally, past a jagged-edged conservatory and a pool filled with scented oil, they found a sort of study.  A bare, minimalistic place, it wasn’t difficult to find the silver and crystal implements.  They lay on a desk with the travelers’ other possessions along with a number of papers, inkwells, child bones and other keepsakes of the Slavemaster.  Of particular note was the narrow pipe from which an opiate smoke still wafted.  They were alone, but for not for long. 

            This didn’t worry the Trumpeter.  He entered the room without care and flourished his instrument, nearly hitting the low marble ceiling.  Bringing it up to his lips his joy was thwarted by Rel’s fearful hand.

            “How have you survived this long?” asked the boy.

            “Good taste,” the musician informed.

            “I’d regret that phrase in a palace full of cannibals,” said Rel, dousing the musician’s urge to play.

            Rel then picked up the Fencer’s weapon.  It was all a sort of crystal, but also subtly metallic in nature, whirling fans or plates flowing together to make a blade of facets.  At a distance he thought the thing all black obsidian, but now he saw midnight blues and indigos within its murky glass.  Crimson eyes, perhaps sphere cut rubies, peeked out, watching.

            A terrible cold filled the boy, his heart slowed and a shudder passed through him like a death rattle.

            “You’ll freeze yourself!”

            Quick as he could the boy dropped the weapon.

            “What is it?” asked a horrified Rel as he looked along his metallic palms.

            “That thing is evil, it holds a terrible cold,” the musician explained.  “Even the Fencer, who comes from a people almost immune to the polar chill, has suffered much in holding it.”

            “I have no concept of evil.”

            “A dream then,” corrected the Trumpeter.  “It is a dream crystallized by magic, a very bad dream at that.”

            Considering this Rel began sifting through the other objects.  There was dried pemikan in seal skin pouches, bladders used for carrying water, dried biscuits hard as stone, a pair of purses each containing broken bits of silver and gold, an array of polychromatic vials, worn knives, tinderboxes, a fossilized hand, a journal bound in green leather and an absurdly long scarf.  These were laid out with obscene precision and the Trumpeter took great delight in disturbing the arraignment as he gleefully reacquainted himself with his scarf.  The man then took his pouch of silver and hid it in a sitting couch with a sigh.

            “What are these?” Rel gestured to the assorted potions.

            “Clea’s magic,” replied the Trumpeter soberly.

            “And this?”  The boy picked up the green bound journal.  The writing inside was pure gibberish to his illiterate eyes.

            “Clea’s journal,” the musician said with a sigh.  “The cause of all this.”

            “And what is that?” said Rel with a suddenly hushed tone.  At first the Trumpeter followed it like a continuation of the previous dialogue and nodded along.  Then, to his growing horror, he heard the noise; an all too familiar dragging and clicking.  From the passage they had just taken it came, feverishly, hurriedly, a hunting mystery.

            They knew the blood room was commonly used because the dominating design principle was still very fresh.  Walls, floors, ceiling, all were covered with the bright red stuff.  The smell was potent but still they entered as there seemed to be nowhere else for Iyali and the Fencer to go but back the way they came.  In the middle of the room lay a white reclining bench, where one might relax amongst the gore.

            “Why do you so readily enter a room full of blood stolen from your fellow slaves?” asked the Fencer as they made their way carefully over the slippery marble.

            “Should that matter?” asked Iyali.  “And, what about yourself?”

            “I have a reason for doing what I do,” said the swordsman.

            “A reason?”

            “Yes,” smiled the Fencer.  “A goal with drives me against all adversity.”

            “Then you will surely be overcome by the whole of the world,” she said.

            “That is why I have a blade which can cut through anything,” he replied.

            Tracks left from the far exit, telling of recent use.  The marks were barefoot and male by the Fencer’s estimation.  These led off into a series of triangular halls lit by scented oil lamps.  Everything had a bright, stark quality from the white flames. 

            The footsteps ended at a patch of bare, slanted wall.  Running his hands along the triangle point above the Fencer soon found a hidden catch and with a click was able to push a segment of wall up. 

            Iyali followed the swordsman into a big dark room.  They stood in a sort of angled basin, any side of which might hide another door like the one they entered.  Ringing around and around above were layers of seating, making the visitors the focus of some sort of audience chamber.  Darkness shrouded these upper levels and from the center a huge array of tubes hung.  This was some sort of apparatus, perhaps for feeding.

            With a squeak something jumped onto the Fencer’s face.  Blood gushed freely as his one good arm frantically clawed at the fleshy creature which exuded a heady, yet pleasant, odor. 

            Iyali stepped back from the melee only to have a half dozen of the bulbous things pile onto her.  Being that her flesh was partially metallic they found none of the blood they were after and mewled with disappointment.

            Unable to pry the thing’s five limbs loose the Fencer changed tactics.  He squeezed the bulbous sack of a body until it burst, covering him with high grade perfume.

            By the time he got to Iyali she had already clawed loose several of her attackers.  The metal of her nails proved greater than their hunger.  Together, she and the Fencer retreated through the doorway.

            Red coals glowed in the dark recesses of this new chamber.  It was a sort of nightmare playground or ruined temple, transplanted or dreamed up by the lord of the Summer estate.  Here and there curled juts of metal waved frond-like in the gloom.  Inhabitants, lean, pallid and red-eyed, clicked their talons with glee.  They stood as tall as fear and flexed their six-jointed fingers eagerly, each digit ending with a hook as large as those the Fencer remembered being used to catch deep sea cod.  During the ambush the door had switched on them, leading them to this place.

            The closest thing leaped the last few meters towards these new guests with surprising agility.  All it wanted was to see what the man’s bones looked like underneath all that skin.  Foolishly it made a sweep along the swordsman’s strong left side.

            Sculpted flesh met tempered steel.  The creature let out a fluted howl.  Others crawled into join the song even as the Fencer felled the thing, the muscle and bone along its side opening up to reveal a catalog of tailored organs.  They were pickled within, preserved like a necromancer’s cadaver, all plastic muscles and crimson jelly.

            Iyali watched the Fencer fight as a man possessed, by what she could not say.  It wasn’t that she was surprised as the swordsman wove between two of the flesh beasts with ease just as his sword split them assunder.  No, it was that he seemed so weakened by his time starving in the Slavemaster’s dungeon as well as wounded, and still fought like a demon.  More of the chemical ticks chirped from the theatre they just left.

            Something hissed and the monsters stopped their assault.  From the curving metal pipes a spray of sickly sweet gas issued forth.  They then gathered for their meal, ignoring the Fencer.  The smaller creations, bloated with whatever chemicals the Slavemaster bred them for, waddled onwards and chased the two interlopers from the room.

            Now they ran through a series of veils, a maze of mutant creations.  Each room held ever stranger horrors in various degrees of hunger.  There were many timid watchers and weeping balls of nerves, butcheries where body parts were piled high and holding cells for the tailored bodies of promising experiments.  When at last they found a door to shut they could still hear curious tongues lapping at the barrier.

            Cold steel gleamed in a subdued blue chemical light.  This meant the room was currently not in use, yet with a simple additive each blue flame could combust into full-spectrum brightness.  Brightening the place up, they took a moment to catch their breath in what turned out to be a surgery room.              

            The gilded woman was disturbed.  Partially this was natural; behind them, somewhere out in the halls, terrible things stalked.  Yet this mixed with a more existential quandary.  She tapped her golden nails thoughtfully against the metal operating table, wondering if she had ever been lain out on that cold surface.  How much of her life had been stolen in these secret places, washed away with amnesiac drugs.  It was possible that those entities left behind were kin, of a sort, perhaps even progeny.  Here the Slavemaster sculpted flesh and to him all was flesh.         

            The apparatus between floor and ceiling were carefully set according to his will.  Just like her.  He had controlled her in the past and the thought that he even now controlled her gnawed at the young lady’s mind like a cannibal on a bone.

            “Come on,” rasped the Fencer as soon as he was certain that none of the scratches he received from the mutant hordes were dangerous.  He held out his one good arm to Iyali.

            “Don’t you ever stop?” she huffed tiredly.

            “The great polar sharks never cease in their movements, for to do so is to die,” he explained, dragging her along.  “I feel this sentiment is true for my life as well.”

            Whether he was bragging or not the gilded woman went with.  It was her mood that kept her going and her mood was a strange one.  She held onto it in this warm palace of mysteries, in this manner she warded off the body-logic surrounding her.

            Ornate halls framed their journey.  Colossal was the accurate term.  Here the Slavemaster’s hubris stretched itself out with a yawn of colored rock, carven spectacle and decadent furnishing.  Perfumes and incense misted through the air. 

            At times they caught glimpses of the outside world through windows.  It was another bleak day on the face of Winter.

            The click of metal on metal warned the two.  Slipping into a side room they avoided something which shuffled and moaned. 

            In this new room various curtains extended from floor to ceiling.  And a voice came in through the veils.

            “An unknown thing comes before me.  Present yourself.”  The voice was music, like metal ringing softly.

            The Fencer didn’t respond as he swept through one curtained barrier to the next.  These spaces seemed to be reserved for the Slavemaster himself, places where unfinished contraptions rested on pillows fit for kings and sketches of strange bodies lay like carpet.

            “An unknown thing comes before me.  Present yourself.” 

            Again the voice came and again the Fencer swept aside another layer of mystery.

            “An unknown thing comes before me.  Present yourself.  An unknown thing comes before me.  Present yourself.”  Each iteration exactly the same as the last.

            “Did you notice that?” said Iyali, pointing at the point where the floor met the curtain.

            “Notice what,” flinched the Fencer as he tore through another hanging.

            “An unknown thing comes before me.  Present yourself.” 

            “There!  You see?  Every time you go through a curtain the voice repeats.

            Enboldened, the Fencer fought quicker, the voice tumbling over itself to dutifully repeat the phrase each and every time.  Then there was no need because the final veil had fallen.

            Before them something metal and familiar say primly on a cushion of woven gold.  She was something like Iyali, but more refined, pure.  This woman’s hair was gold, her skin platinum, her eyes sapphire, none of this in terms of colorful language but in true being.  Hers was a precious body cut and woven from the most opulent of materials. 

            “Who are you?”    At last the message changed.  The Fencer allowed himself a slight smile.  He had no doubt; this was the Fairxi.