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This is the place to be for the end of the world show. 

Coraline knows it, in her heart of hearts. The throne there, the vast hall before it, the Voice speaking the interminable verdicts upon all the souls that pass through this place...

Except they are not truly his verdicts. He is, after all, only the voice of the god...




The gods gathered in the darkness, in the unnatural glow, in anticipation of the apocalypse.

Alyr there, the lady of temptation, goddess of cats, with spear at the ready...

Kyrule there, lord of death, keeper of souls, waiting, always waiting...

Nausica there, lord of the depths...

Eapherod saw them, and others, and smiled. Almost there. The plan, Coraline's plan, would soon come to pass.

Darkness swirled in the depths of the abyss in which they stood. 




This is not the beginning. There are no beginnings. Only places in which things happen, and places where events pass by...




Her name was Coraline Henderson. She was the dreamer behind the masks, the woman behind the dreams, the world before which it all took place. She was, all in all, quite utterly bonkers.

And she was a librarian.




Life is not always what it seems. Seen through the eyes of sobriety, seen through the bottom of a bottle, or seen through a particularly nice batch of weed, it will seem whatever it seems. We see it as we see it, and in due time, it passes us by.

Coraline was, as was her way, entirely sober. The words which faced her were another matter; they came as if from a dream, facing the world of the living and wakeful through a haze of something indistinct, something small but monolithic, like history itself... they were, indeed, the words depicting a great and massive battle, though most would never know it from the form they took. The were the words of the Angler, the Lady of Serpents, and those all who would stand against each other amidst the world known only as the Internet.

They were, of course, only words - words to take her heart away, words of a Ravenous Thing, words of a Dark Lord, and words that, no matter what she did, would stick with her all her life. And though they were only words, they had power - so that even now she returned to them, skimming through the comments that remained, even now.




"What just happened?" Corn asked.

"Vardaman tried to turn her," Kyrule said. "A rather unexpected move."

Eapherod had appeared beside him. "Did you see that?"

"Darkness." 

"Yes," she said. It had flickered about Coraline's form like smoke, visible only to those who knew what it was. And Kyrule was learning quickly.




Coraline looked up from her books. As fascinating as the history of organisational systems was, she just couldn't keep at it any longer. She needed a breath of fresh air, but the bread was still baking.




Vardaman was not what we would call a typical doomguide. He was, in fact, not at all a typical doomguide. What he was, however, was a typical drunk. 

He looked at his shalott. He drank his shalott. He sighed vaguely and stared off into space.




Space, of course, is very vast. Most folks know nothing of it; only on the larger worlds, where there has been more time, and more science, and more madness and depression, is anything indeed known of space.

And that is really not very much, generally speaking.

Coraline knew a bit. A thing or two. Enough to say with a fair amount of certainty that a star is indeed a star and a world is indeed a world. But that really wasn't her field of expertise. Books were.

They called her the Librarian, and librarian she was. Degree in information technologies, truck full of books, and seven cats rendered her very much a librarian of lore, and she knew exactly what was where and where was what. It was her job, and it was who she was. 

At least part of who she was.

There was, of course, a good deal more to it.




People often forget that the God of Death began his divine career as the God of Practical Jokes. They especially tend to forget that he never stopped.

Sherandris, of course, remembered. He remembered most everything, at least so long as he deemed it worth remembering, and since he wasn't really sure about the bulk of it and erred on the side of caution, that really did mean everything. For the most part. There had, after all, been that time he had spent dead - he didn't really remember that, of course. But he had been dead. Perfectly excusable, and as for the Duty, the Dark Sister would surely have seen to that.

Because Sherandris was the God of Death. He was not what most people expected, of course, but by the time it mattered, it really didn't matter anymore anyway. They entered his realm, what he called his Room, in the space outside of space in the time outside of time, and everything faded away. The dead were laid out according to the customs of the soul, and he passed them on into whatever next life was appropriate. And that was that, as far as he was concerned. 

This left plenty of time for meat.

Sherandris rather liked meat.




After 200-some years, Abearanoth was different. It still had the general vibes of myth and legend, and the strange, strange sensations of perfect normalcy, but it was, all in all, a different world. Technology and Progress had passed by, though as far as Coraline was concerned they were still well behind anything she was comfortable with, even outside of the Angler's Internet realm of stolen Star Wars monikers and impossible science. This, she supposed, was more... Victorian, perhaps? She wasn't sure, something about having spent her recent History courses reading Discworld instead of actually paying attention to the lectures, but it was probably something along those lines. Not that the Victorians of her world had ever done much by way of blimps.

Whatever the case, the world of Abearanoth had passed her by without actually catching up in the slightest. They had phones and such and magic and such and some semblance of industrialisation, but that was about it. It was still pretty damn backwater, really. 

So Coraline was lost, standing on a street-corner as carriages, horsemen, and pedestrians passed her by amidst the general hubbub of city life, where people came and went full of purpose (or at least direction). She felt like the entire thing was just some distant dream, except she knew it wasn't - this was real. This was the reality she had yearned for, the freedom of the real world, the world of the living, the world of change. The world where she had previously spent an important part of her life, such as it had been, utterly and unequivocally drunk.




The Dream awoke in darkness.

She saw things around her, not from vision as much as general perception. She was in a room - large, vaulted, and somewhat run down, full of dust and skeletons and History, though it was meaningless to her. It was all quite meaningless to her.

So she lingered in this space, and observed the changelessness of Time. 




Vardaman was drunk. A fourth round of 20-stone shalott will do that to you. In fact a single round of 20-stone shalott will probably do that to you, and even, just as likely, cause you to completely pass out from overkill already, but Vardaman had a very significant alcohol tolerance. He was, in fact, only reasonably drunk, and was currently waiting on the next round of shalott to continue him down along the road to utter and complete inebriation.

This was Av Aril, a village on the eastern end of Kartheldrin, a country of hills, junipers, hills, more junipers, and even the occasional yucca, but mostly junipers. It was hot in the days and cold in the nights, which suited Vardaman fine - cold nights were perfect for passing out drunk, and though he was here for a reason, that could wait until the hangover wore off.

The important thing for now was that Av Aril had a good tavern.




There was a smell of something burning. It lingered and dissipated and then lingered some more until Coraline simply couldn't ignore it any longer.

She checked the oven.

Damn, she thought. So much for that plan. Add an extra teaspoon of baking powder, and apparently the pumpkin bread just overflows. A bit disappointing, really, but at least that explains what the baking powder is there for in the first place... 

She closed the oven. No way were the loaves actually done at this point; that the overflow would burn is expected, but the loaves themselves still need to cook through. She glanced back at the clock - probably another 15 or so minutes - almost to the middle of the night. Doable, though. It was a holiday; no need to be up by any particular time.

And that left plenty of time for her books.




Time, of course, is an illusion - and it is a widely accepted fact that lunchtime is doubly so. That does, of course, assume that you believe in lunchtime at all; if you're the sort of person who gets up whenever and eats whatever whenever if you happen to be hungry, this doesn't really apply.

Kylie Jacobs was one of these people, and her brother Jeremy was if anything more so. As it was, it was three in the afternoon and he was still passed out on his bed and Kylie was done waiting, plain and simple. She had gone to the trouble to come all the way to a colony in another galaxy, and gone through more stages of jet lag than she had even previously known were possible, and she had had it. She was done waiting.

She poured a bucket of whitewash on Jeremy's head, not because this was normal or accepted behaviour, but simply because she'd always wanted to try it.




The burning smell was gone. The timer went off. Coraline sighed, unsure if she even wanted to know what she would find, and went to check the pumpkin bread.

Strangely enough, it was done. Toothpick came out clean, edges slightly blacked, hand mildly burned from running into the shelf when trying to get the toothpick in in the first place, and no doubt about it. Done. 

She took out the loaves, considered the overflow, and then scraped it off the bottom of the oven with a pancake turner. Some of it even appeared edible, so she tried it.

Not bad, really. Now if only her fingers would quit hurting.

Still needed to get it out of the pans, but they were much too hot to handle. Nothing for it but to wait, then. Coraline went back to her books.




There was a wall. It was not a particularly interesting wall, but it was there, in front of her, taunting her with is solidity, lingering, loitering, being a wall. 

Rahah stared at it. Such a wall it was. A wall. Walls were everywhere, of course, but this one, here, was in front of her now, and now was the pressing point. She didn't really understand the concept of 'now', of course, but is was clearly important, and since this was it, she spent it staring, now, staring at the wall.

It really was quite the wall.




The end is simple. Everyone went home. Some people got terribly drunk. There was a fair amount of partying. Someone's brother pulled someone's hair and screamed "Crivens!". Coraline returned her library truck.

The end isn't particularly interesting.




The middle is madness.




Coraline woke up one morning, walked into her pub, and was immediately surprised to find that it was indeed a pub and not a library, though really the only significant difference in practice is that libraries tend to be more dangerous. Even without wheels.

So it was going to be one of ''those'' days, was it? Fine, then.

This was, after all, very much her pub. The counter gleamed because she made it gleam; the busboy scurried because she made him scurry; the shelves were full because she kept them full. So she didn't know all the mixes by heart; if someone wanted something special, they could either tell her what to do or suffer. She knew enough. The basics, at any rate. The usuals. 

And she knew breakfast. Breakfast was what she had for lunch, and it usually involved an egg, some toast, a whop of coffee, and more brandy than she was likely to admit, and this she made now, munching her toast as one of the overnights came down burdened with a hangover. Wordlessly she passed him a coffee and moved onto a vague cleaning of a random glass. Barkeeps were always cleaning a random glass when someone else was around, so she did this too.

The overnight stared glumly at his coffee, disinclined to move.

"Drink it," she said. "It'll help." Not that she'd know. She had never had a hangover in her life. The odd headache waking up, yes, but when it was solved so simply as by drinking a glass of water, that hardly counted as a hangover, so far as Coraline was concerned. Hangovers were something else, something more mysterious, involving the aftereffects of alcohol killing various parts of the body, most assuredly. But these were the remedies, and so she administered them, good barkeep and innkeep that she was. Shuffled those too drunk into rooms for the night, administered to the hangovers in the morning, and wandered off into the day that was the afternoon.

It was a life, of sorts, though not what she would ever have expected. Coraline was a librarian in her heart of hearts, and she had trained to be a librarian. She even had a piece of paper attesting to this, though it was in another world in another language, where everyone had probably assumed her missing, and then, as the months and years went by, probably assumed her dead. But this wasn't that world; here words were precious, and libraries were rare, and trucks were at best a distant dream, so here she did what had a market, and that was booze. It was really the same sort of thing, just liquids instead of words. Strange that either one could be so very effective at passing others into the worlds of dreams, but that suited her fine.

"Seriously, drink it," she said. 

The guy, dressed in the typical rural attire of the area, stared at his coffee as though it were some strange and foreign potion, then downed it in three solid gulps.

Well, that'll do it, Coraline thought, absently wiping a random glass mug.

He stared at his own empty mug.

He seemed to stop.

Then he startled, twitched, stood up suddenly, and fell over.

Coraline peered over the counter, somewhat worried about what she'd find, but the guy was already getting up. He shrugged himself off, looked at her suspiciously, and then asked, quietly, "Er, how much will that be?"

"Eight cela, including room and board. Breakfast is also on, if you want it."

"Er," he said, passing her the coins, "What's breakfast?"

"I made toast." Coraline was not known for her culinary expertise, something about how she usually didn't bother since the ingredients on hand around here tended to be absolutely worthless anyway.

"Okay," he said.

Wordlessly she passed him a piece of toast. He wandered out, munching.

Some life, but it was a life, and a fairly stable one. Even the voices were passably quiet now, since so long as she kept at the booze they just faded to the general buzz of the background. And there was no lack of booze here. No lack at all. 

She leaned on the counter. Some life, but she was alive, and that was what mattered. She had, after all, promised that.




The beginning was simply one among many. Everything is the beginning of something, the end of something else, and the middle of other things entirely. Such things, after all, entirely relative.

And the order? It's just an illusion.




Names have this funny way of showing up everywhere, not only places where we least expect them, but even in places where they might actually make sense. Names also, however, have this horrible tendency to be decided by people who have no right to be naming anything, ever.

It was because of this that a small girl named her cat 'Cat' way back when in the mists of time, whatever those are, and thus laid down the basis of the future of what would later be known as the deathgods. It was also because of this that a world was named 'Earth' such that it stuck and the world really did become known as Earth.

And Earth was, all in all, not what Rahah had expected. Granted she had come in a bit by the back way, something about a secret underground facility and a mysterious gate, but the surface was basically standard functional world and full of what she would call Artiilie and what everyone else around here would call humans. But as far as Rahah could figure, 'human' was just the English word for 'artiilie', anyway, or some such. She wasn't really sure, but she also wasn't going to argue, and the mixed coffee smoothie drinks were more than enough to give her a serious liking for this place whatever the case.

And this was just the beginning.




There were too many people. Too many fragments. Lilya Coren liked fragments, but she understood the importance of moderation - people got confused if there was too much of anything. Confused, worried, angry, fearful... that was people. So everything needed to fit, to suit the people.

The problem was, there were too many people. And Coren simply did not know what to do about this. Too many to keep track of, too many to manage. Too much to follow. The story is too complicated, the guest list too long, the party just plain and simply too large. And simplifying it at this point is simply not an option. This is the world, after all, and everyone in it has their place, and everyone has an effect, no matter how small, that affects the whole. 

So all there is to do is to go on. To smile and to mingle and to don the mask of belonging, to be a person for a little while and to be a part of the party that she had gone to all this trouble to put on. So Lilya Coren smiled, took the hand of her colleague, and walked out onto the floor, amidst the music and the colour and the vibrancy that everyone held so dear. This was the world they lived in, so she would live in it too, but though it remained alien to her, they would never know it. She moved from group to group, making conversation, noting interests and lies, and weaving all of those who had answered the invitation into her web.




It was a large table, questionably shaped with too many sides. Somehow it was just large enough, probably. Already most of the seats were filled; as Arsten and Corn approached a few looked up and smiled.

Arsten chose a random chair - namely the closest one to where he was standing - and sat down. Corn lingered, remaining standing for a bit, then for lack of any better ideas sat next to Arsten. This was, all in all, not something he was sure he should be at. Arsten didn't seem at all bothered, but he had history before him, and thus all the right in the world to be here. And what did Corn have? Nothing. Corn was but a humble acolyte, a priest in training, a young man who had been bored and in the right place at the right time to randomly follow another, in this case Arsten Dren, out of the temple.

So Corn was thoroughly convinced that he shouldn't be here, but also, in light of the mostly full table of very competent looking people at which he was also seated, entirely too embarrassed to leave.

The problem was, Arsten had pretty much invited him to come. When Corn had gotten too close and looked quizzical, Arsten said, "Huh, got a note from an old fried... you want to see something interesting? Dunno what it is, but if you want to come..." and he'd come. Here he was. It didn't seem right, but he had been interested, and so here he was.

The rest of the table was a bunch of folks he didn't recognise. Arsten had waved across to the short elf woman with the white hair when they'd arrived and she'd been the one who'd told them to have a seat, probably the old friend from the note, but the rest were just... well, far as Corn could tell, random people. There was the guy dressed in leather and furs like some sort of barbarian hero, and there was a women who wore black like a cloak of midnight and didn't seem to move with the same reality as the rest of the table, and a guy over there who seemed very determined to get completely and thoroughly drunk as quickly as possible. Already the waiter had come by twice refilling his mug of shalott and he was looking decidedly wobbly, but apparently not nearly as wobbly as he'd like to be, since here came the waiter again... and there was also a man next to the white-haired woman with a rather long beard, dressed in grey, and, from the looks of things, not exactly on the best of terms with her. 

And there was also a vampire. Oh dear.

The thing was, in Corn's religion, the undead were regarded as very bad. Corn was an acolyte of Kyrule - the god of death, as generally regarded on Abearanoth. And since Corn didn't know of any worlds besides Abearanoth, that made Kyrule ''The'' god of death to him, though to an acolyte that might well be how it goes even if they are aware of other worlds with other gods.

Point is, Kyrule hated the undead. The doomguides and the deathdealers, his greatest priests and warriors, were renowned for their skills in dealing with the undead and other unfortunate foes of the Lord. The undead were the main foes, however, with vampires at the top of the list. And Corn was sitting at the same table as one.

Uh.

Okay.

This is awkward.

Corn fidgetted. A waiter came by and asked him if he wanted anything. He shrugged, and then the vampire looked and him and said, "Root beer for him, pinch of zest."

The waiter nodded and went to get it.

Okay.

The vampire, a rather lovely, and very pale, blood-eyed and blonde-haired lady, smiled at him.

Very awkward.

The white-haired elf, who actually looked quite young, chose that moment to say, "Who are we still waiting on?"

"One more," said a newcomer as he emerged from the gloom of the rest of the inn. He was a middle-aged man with a nice haircut. He took a seat next to the bearded guy, and indeed, there was exactly one seat left empty after him.

While Corn, because of his religion, didn't like the undead, he did, because he was Corn, rather take an interest in hair. Everyone had different hair. Even haircuts that should be exactly the same were different, and different people with hair that was basically the same always had different haircuts. It was one of the great mysteries of the universe, and one, if he ever got around to it, he intended to solve. Maybe. If it was worth it.

Corn noticed the vampire eyeing the drunk. She flagged the waiter over after he gave Corn his root beer, and he poured her a shalott. Interesting, Corn thought. He'd never known vampires could drink anything but blood.

And she did have nice hair.

Corn sniffed the root beer. It smelled nice. He took a sip. Tasted nice too.

Huh.

"It's alright, you know," Arsten said next to him. "Bit of an odd crowd, but alright."

"Odd?" Corn started, then a marvelous winged woman appeared out of nowhere by the last empty seat and almost fell on the table before he could continue. 

"I am sorry," she said, balancing herself and trying to fight the chair. "It seems my wing has caught in this chair. A moment, if you please." 

The drunk man snorted and downed his current shalott, whichever it was.

Dumbfounded, Corn stared at her as she disentangled herself and then sat down. Was she an angel, a celestial of lore? Or what? What was this gathering?

The middle aged man moved as if to speak, but then the white-haired elf interrupted him before he could begin. "Perhaps," she said, as though reading Corn's mind, "we should all introduce ourselves first.

"I am Eapherod, lord of dreams, blah blah blah," she said. "But you can all call me Rahah. And, um... I like questionably caffeinated drinks. Possibly a little too much. You can ask Sherandris about that." The man next to her smiled as she coughed vaguely and looked to her right, to the barbarian-looking fellow, prompting him to continue.

Eepherod? The God of Dreams? Legend had said she had been imprisoned by Kyrule for thousands of years, and yet she...

His train of thought was interrupted as the guy introduced himself: "I'm Kerris of Attrel. Mercenary for hire." He paused, as though thinking carefully. "Hi?"

Corn suddenly realised Kerris was to his left and he was probably next. Then he realised everyone was looking at him and turned bright red. "Uh... I'm Corn. I'm but a humble acolyte of Kyrule. I don't..." In a panic, he looked around desperately. 

Arsten patted him on his shoulder and continued, saving him from his pain as the attention moved on.

"Arsten Dren here, historian of sorts, you know. Kind that has a gun and such." He smiled secretively like this was some kind of grand joke.

"What, like Indiana Jones?" the vampire asked.

"Exactly like Indiana Jones," the elf, Eapherod... Rahah... said. Corn had no idea who Indiana Jones was, and from the look of it neither did Arsten, but apparently it didn't matter much, as the introductions were moving on.

"I am Ilyanata, or Illya. I am the force and reality of dreams, High Priestess of Eapherod, and her will upon the world." That was the woman in black. Her hair was... okay, but not great.

"I am called Myyr of Souls," the angel said. Her hair appeared to be a mass of feathers rather like her wings. "I suffer for the will of Athan, and act in his name."

"In other words she's a priest," said the guy next to her, the drunk. "I'm also a priest, but I probably shouldn't advertise that on account of being a far more significant drunk." He waved his mug for emphasis, tried to down it, realised it was already empty, and stared at it looking betrayed.

"What's your name?" the man with the significant beard prompted after a bit of a pause. Corn suddenly realised he was also an elf, but much taller.

"Oh, Vardaman. Sorry."

Vardaman. Corn knew that name. Nobody in Kyrule's worship didn't; Vardaman was heralded as the greatest deathdealer of lore, a priest so devout he had given up everything he was in the name of his faith. This... couldn't be him... could it? And next to a vampire?

"I am Coraline Henderson, the Hand of Kyrule and his will upon the world" the vampire said. "And yes, I am a vampire." She looked right at Corn. "Sometimes there are accidents."

Vardaman choked and started coughing and was miraculously rescued by a waiter with a fresh bottle of shalott.

"Uh," Corn said, and wisely decided now would be a good time to drink the rest of his root beer. The thing was, it actually wasn't entirely unbelievable. She ''looked'' like Coraline was described to look, just... deader? Because she also definitely looked like a vampire. And he couldn't see any of the scars that would mark her as her on account of the long sleeves... a small part of him wondered if he'd failed some sort of significant test here.

Arsten glanced at Vardaman. "Yeah..." he said. "That's one way to put it."

"And I am Kyrule," said the seemingly ordinary man sitting next to Coraline. "Accident is, indeed, one way to put it. There are... others."

"Which we probably shouldn't go into," Eapherod said.

Kyrule gave her a pointed look. She raised an eyebrow.

The bearded man between them stretched melodramatically, leaning over to one side than the other, and then said, "Heh, gods."

"Har," Eapherod said.

"Rar," he said. "Sherandris here. None of you will have heard of me because I just like food. Mmm, food. I am completely ordinary. Totally. And food."

"Whackjob ordinary," the vampire Coraline said.

"Exactly," he said, "I am as ordinary as an everyday whackjob. On account of being one."

"He used to be the god of the dead somewhere else, but now he's on holiday," Eapherod explained, though it really didn't explain anything.

Corn was, by this point, utterly bewildered. He just stared at Sherandris and Kyrule, if that even was Kyrule, although he felt this strange certainty that it was, then looked at Arsten, his only real attachment to what he'd previously considered to be reality.

Arsten shrugged.




Time is, of course, supposed to be viewed in order. It's like a good landscape painting - if you only look at small pieces of it in no particular order, you might wind up seeing all of it, but it won't look anything like all of it, just a bit of tree here, some grass there, some mountainy bits, some random birds in the sky, a piece of a cow - it might be interesting, but it doesn't give you the big picture unless you look at all of it as all of it, in some semblance of order. It doesn't tell you the story unless you can see what's going on.

Coren was good at landscapes. In fact she was good at most pictures, everything from portraits to fractals to the abstract. She ought to be. She had spent most of her life painting. Painting, scamming, killing, and then trying to understand it all, because quite frankly it didn't make a whole lot of sense. Life, that is. And death, really.

The only things Lilya Coren truly understood were paint and how to kill. She was good with people, oh, she was very good with them, but she didn't understand them. She could kill them, but that didn't really help. If anything, it made it worse. But she could also scam them, and while that also didn't really help, it had made a good living for her.

It had been something, at least.

Now, though, she had more. She had, in a way, a family - people who understood her and accepted her for who and what she was, and while they weren't necessarily happy about it, neither, frankly, was she. And that helped, somehow.

And she had a job, not only that was entirely legal and paid real money, but was also, in its own disturbing way, a satisfying one. 

Coren was a hunter, and in this job was the hunt. 




Coraline awoke face-down in the dirt. Not sure where she was, what was real, or even, for that matter, what had happened, she rolled over and peered into the early-dawn light. 

It looked like winter probably looked in a much more moderate climate, namely pretty much anywhere on her world further south than where she was from. But this wasn't her world, was it? If it were, why would she be further south?

Even so, the dreary light looked dreadfully normal, and the pain in her head and general whinging of her sore muscles seemed pretty insistent that there was absolutely nothing supernatural going on here - probably just a particularly bad hangover or something? And the whole conversation, the whole night before that you remember, why, that was probably just a dream...

Probably? So where the hell was she, then? 

She sat up and looked around more carefully. She was sitting by a small creek, almost frozen over, with leafless trees lining the banks and brown grass and curled leaves all around. A light frost glittered on the edges. Her staff - the staff Sheradris had given her - was a couple meters away in some dead-looking shrubs, so clearly that much wasn't a dream. And dead-looking... the proliferation of twiggage suggested that it was definitely not actually dead, just waiting. Winter. Probably.

So it was real. This wasn't her world. She didn't know what it was, or if it even had winters, but supposing it did, this would probably be it. Right? Maybe. Sure. Why not.

She got up, despite the protestations of her back and legs, and picked up the staff. Here she was, then, wherever here was. Time to see what there is to see...




"Agh, does anyone have a toothpick?"

"If you do that again, I swear, I will... I will... why, I'll... what was I saying?"

"What do you mean, I can't be a necromancer? I've even had basic training. It's like the only wizarding I know, but I do know it."

"Actually, that would make sense. Vampire necromancer. It fits."

"No, Sherandris, you can't be a clown. Be a wizard. You'd be a sexy wizard."

"But I'm not a wizard."

"Learn."

"But- Yes, dear."

"Do we have a cleric?"

"No. No, we definitely do not have a cleric."

"Oh, well, we probably do want a-"

"You've never heard of sarcasm, have you?"

"Why is there an eyeball in my drink?"

"Um, what is a cleric, then? It says here 'Alle braive adventeurers should take withe them wone clerick, to tende to the illsome and deathley.'"

"Clerics is priests and healers. We've got plenty. Coming out of our ears, as me mum might say."

"Oh. I knew that."

"Anyone want an eyeball?"

"Is anyone Sheogorath?"

"Who?"

"What?"

"I think I'm going to be a necromancer."

"I'm going to be a hairdresser."

"Excellent. Could always use one of those on a trip."

"You're a mesmer, Coraline. Mesmers can't be necromancers."

"Who says? Ascended mesmers are perfectly capable of taking on a secondary profession same as everyone else!"

"But you're not ascended."

"I'm dead. 'Sclose enough, isn't it?"

"You could die in Pre."

"So? This isn't Ascalon."

"Buggrit, you damn bird, stop that!"

"Please stop falling over, then. I will not hit you with my wing if you do not fall on it."

"You also don't need to be ascended to take a secondary profession - that's just to change it."

"Will you stay out of this? You've never even played the game!"

"Just saying."

"Oh, right. Great. I hereby declare myself a necromancer. Just as soon as I figure out how to allot my traits to death magic, vast armies shall be mine!"

"Traits?"

"It's a videogame."

"A what?"

"Something that hasn't been invented yet."

"What, still? At this rate I'm going to die before they are!"

"Technically you already have."

"Shut up."




It helps to stay in motion. It helps to have a center, a place to return to, a family to turn to, a dream to cling to...

Grammar also helps, but most of us are not French.




As much as religion tended to make Rahah uncomfortable, there was something to be said for the lengths to which people could go in its name. The monuments span millenia, telling anyone who might see them later a small piece of history, even when the people themselves are gone, with stories springing up to fill in the details with ever more elaborate twists. And these stories persist even without books to record them, for they in turn become a part of the rituals that keep societies alive, telling and retelling the people who they are and where they came from. The wars that never fade from memory, persisting even in myth and legend after all those involved have long since faded to dust, for who else but those who truly believe would fight so hard, and go so far?

Temples, even those built in times of peace and well after the fact of the stories themselves, reflect the history as well as the culture of the present, and this one was no exception.  Even so, it gave her the creeps.

Of course, it was probably designed to give people the creeps, what with the carved skeletons everywhere and the frescos of the hundred or so visages of Death and so forth, but Rahah had no problem with death, as such. Death was just something that happened, rather like life, annoying neighbours, and cats. For some reason these were just four things that always happened to her, every time, but it was only the last two that ever really caused a problem. Neighbours were neighbours and cats were cats, but when the neighbours got annoying, it was what her cats would do that really left an impression.

She was kind of glad she didn't have any here.

"Impressive, isn't it?" Rahah realised she was standing in front of a particularly large mural depicting what appeared to be some sort of apocalypse, with grand figures scattered about in some sort of epic battle against what seemed to be a mass of darkness. There was a distinct lack of a dragon anywhere on it, though she wasn't entirely sure why this would be important.

Then she remembered the speaker and looked around. He turned out the be a youngish fellow supporting a very large book and a pair of glasses that, if anything, were even bigger - they looked like some sort of rather crude binoculars, and made him look like some sort of ant.

He freed a hand from the book and then managed to free his head from the glasses; it turned out he was human underneath after all. "Er, sorry. Name's Arsten."

"Rahah," she said, then looked back to the mural. "So what's the story?"

"Oh, you know," he said, trying to find a way to balance the book and the glasses and almost dropping both of them on his foot. "Apocalypse and all that. End of the world show, as Coraline would say."

"She would, wouldn't she?" That line was right out of the Reagan Library, but Coraline had always loved that thing, pile of dreams and strange lines that it was. Little wonder she might repeat it, even here.

"It's said that the gods would come to fight a great darkness that spreads across the land. This is the only picture I've seen that manages to depict a 'darkness' at all convincingly."

"Huh."

They looked at it for a bit.

"How exactly do you fight a darkness, then?" Rahah asked.

"Suppose that's for the gods to know."

"Be easier if it were a dragon, wouldn't it?"

"Why a dragon?"

"Why not?"

Arsten looked at her. "You know, that's a funny thing... it does look a bit like a dragon in some of the other ones. I always just figured they probably didn't know how to paint a darkness." He tried to gesture but only succeded in dropping the binocular-glasses.

They shattered.




"I'm thinking Kralkatoric."

"Zhaitan was cute."

"Ey, don't tell me that. I'm not there yet. I shouldn't be getting spoilers!"

"How is it a spoiler that Zhaitan dies in the end? It was practically written on the box. Hells, it might have been written on the box for all I know."

"Wasn't. I bought the box."

"Oh. Well, they mentioned it in a press release or some such."

"Probably on Facebook."

"But I knew about it. How'd I have known if they'd said it there?"

"You fought him. Of course you knew."

"Of course I fought him. It's a damn dungeon, isn't it?"

"And I'm not there yet."

"Well... what about Jormag?"

"What's he look like?"

"I dunno, icey?"

"Never even seen him, have you?"

"What, and you've seen Kralkatoric?"

"Saw the Shatterer."

"Well I saw Jormag's Claw. Thing even landed on my gal once."

"Will you two shut up already? Some of us are trying to sleep!"

As one, Coraline and Eapherod turned to glare at Arsten. He met their glares with the sheer force of disgruntlement only the sleep-deprived can manage.

"Alright, fine," Eapherod whispered, and turned back to Coraline. "But can we please not turn this into a videogame?"

"Why not?" Coraline whispered. "The Elder Dragons are about the right size, and it's definitely going to be a dragon. Too late for that."

"Because this isn't a videogame? Also that's like copyright violation or something."




Gorm, proprieter of the Empty Cistern, glanced up when he heard the door open and a waft of argument drift in. It was still fairly early in the afternoon, so the place was mostly empty, but these two looked like customers so he picked up a cup and obligatorily began wiping it, as much for the look of things as for the fact that the cup in question was quite heavy and if aimed right could probably kill an orc. He wasn't sure because whenever he hit someone with it they tended to disappear quite quickly; the Cistern was known as much for its interest in bodies (and subsequently making them disappear) as for its overpowering shalott.

"What'll it be?" he asked the women as they sat down. A human and an elf, one in grey and the other in black; neither were dressed exactly fashionably, but the clothes looked well-made. Probably skilled workers of some sort, passing through on business.

The elf looked to her friend, who said, "Can't you figure? Shalott as appropriate."

Interesting. She knew the trade, then. "You a barkeep?" he asked as he poured them both a 15-stone.

"Was. Long time ago. Leave the bottle."

The elf sniffed her mug suspiciously, then took a tentative sip. "Ghuck," she said.

"Welcome to booze." The other grinned, downed her mug, and quickly refilled it. "You don't sip this stuff. It's not supposed to taste good, so you drink it as quickly as possible and then get a refill, is what you do."

The elf looked at her shalott. Then she drank quickly, twitched, and then said again, this time with feeling, "Ghuck."

"Yup." The mugs were quickly refilled - in the human's case, again.

Two minutes later they needed another bottle. This took Gorm by surprise. It wasn't that people didn't tend to go through a bottle of shalott very quickly - in fact they usually didn't get through them at all. These two, however, were clearly just getting started, though it was also pretty clear the elf had never actually tried alcohol before and still wasn't sure she wanted to be here. But she held it as well as her companion, probably because she was an elf.

Three bottles of 20-stone shalott later, the elf was starting to get into the swing of things. And the human was clearly in heaven as far as she was concerned.

"Man, it's good to be back."

"So this is how some people live?"

"It's how I always wanted to die."

"Is it? Why didn't you?"

"Life. Always gets in the way."

The waste disposal was almost full. Gorm normally dumped it into the toxic waste disposal outside the mages' College every month - it was just not practical to throw old shalott bottles into the main garbage because of its tendency to eat through anything it touched, including the floors of bins and garbage coaches - but that required a bin that could store it without getting eaten itself. And he only had one of those. And exploding a garbage coach in the middle of the street was not good publicity. Was it?

Then again, considering his usual clientelle, he didn't reckon any of them would mind even if it did get tracked back here. If anything they'd find it funny. They found the floor funny enough a lot of the time.

"Do you make funny fiddly drinks? With thingies. And things?" 

"Brollies?"

"Swhat?"

"Puts brollies in the colourful ones. They do."

"Who?"

"They. Them. People."

"God any fiddly brolly drinks? Them's what people do, right?"

"Shalott's what people do here."

"Needs a brolly."

Was this even possible, Gorm wondered. A single bottle of shalott would be enough to kill most men, and floor an immortal, but now these two, after quite a few more, were... well, upright, at least. Mostly. He pulled out a bottle of grog and poured them another round. Grog was, once you were drunk enough, almost indistinguishable from some of the worst shalott in the world, and they didn't even notice.

"Whaddabout that shiny god of yours, what'd he say?"

"'Snot shiny. Dreary-like, more."

"Add some glitter, then he'd be shiny."

"Be glittery then."

"Totally would."

"Not shiny, though."

"Would be kind of sexy..." She slumped onto the bar.

Coraline looked at her mug, tapped out some dregs from the last bottle, and stared at it.

"Huh," she said. She tried to think, stood up in the hopes that it would help, and promptly fell over instead.

Now this part Gorm knew well. People passed out at the Cistern all the time, and some even were still very much alive when they did. Normally that wouldn't be a problem a good heavy cup couldn't solve, but since it was still too early in the evening for even a basic bidding, he settled for emptying their pockets and dumping them out in the street to sleep it off instead.




Three hundred years ago, Coraline Henderson, then going by the name Anja Torn, had been a regular customer at the Empty Cistern, even then one of the oldest taverns in the city.

It wasn't that the place was close to where she was staying (because it wasn't), it wasn't because it had good service (because it really didn't), it wasn't because the clientelle were respectable (if anything they were the opposite), and it wasn't because the booze was good, although it actually was most of the time. The reason she went here because because nobody cared - eveyrone here was here because nobody cared; nobody cared about the law, or about propriety, or about anyone else's business. People came, they went, and they got, if not exactly discretion, a good heaping dose of apathy.

So Coraline got no trouble here walking in dressed like an acolyte of Kyrule and ordering a triple-dose of 20-stone shalott, even though it was well-known that the acolytes were not permitted alcohol. Indeed, it seemed some of the temple's higher-ups had a made a point of visiting all the bars in town to let them know, just to be clear, but they would have skipped this one.

She got the same trouble as everyone else, of course. The general suspicion, shifty-eyed watching as she passed, the curiosity of what might be wrong with her that was gone as soon as she was, but that was really it. All in all, the Cistern of the time was the sort of place where the more normal you looked, the better off you were - if you looked normal, people had to guess, and the imagination often filled in far worse nightmares than reality ever could. And aside from the robes, Coraline looked pretty normal.

The only real trouble had come the first night she was there, or might have had she responded differently. 

She had been sitting at the bar minding her shalott, wondering vaguely how drunk she could safely get and still maintain her cover, when someone sat down next to her and said, "Hey, you going to stop that?"

Not even sure what she should be stopping, she looked around. Turned out someone had died, something which often happened there - a body was slumped over a table and it sounded like people were bidding.

She took this in and just said, "I don't want him."

Somehow that settled it. The guy grinned gappily at her, slapped her on the shoulder, and left. This was the nature of the place, lawless, godless, and ruled only by the order of commerce, of what people wanted. And if someone died, that was valuable.

Of course, had she really been an acolyte of Kyrule and not just posing as one, that could have presented something of a problem. The religion was very much against the mistreatement of the dead, and selling bodies very much qualified as mistreatment in their book. But she wasn't one, and in her somewhat more practical view of things, the dead were already dead. They weren't apt to care.

Nor was anyone else, there. And so, during her stay in the city of Soransie, she came to frequent the place.


"Hey boss? Mind if I take some leave? Something's come up."

Langly looked up from her laptop, surprised. Rahah was not one to call her 'boss' unless there was something serious afoot; usually it was just Elizabeth, or if it was a particularly formal occasion or she needed someone military to know who she was referring to, Langly. 'Boss' meant trouble, though she hadn't bothered to knock on the open door, so Langly knew the answer to her next question already, but she still asked. "Anything serious?" 

"Not sure yet. Find out when I get back."

Langly nodded. Rahah smiled and wandered off. 

Back to Earth, that was. Out here in the Large Magellanic Cloud, they were pretty cut off for the most part, even with the Internet uplink Rahah had managed to cobble together from one of the subspace projectors they'd found in the ruins. Something about how it didn't even get enough bandwidth for anything more in real time than basic texting, even with all the compression modern computer science could come up with, it was just not terribly useful. Lightyears ahead of anything they'd had previously, but still just not terribly useful.

They had found quite a bit in the ruins, though. Three years in what was basically another galaxy, studying the remains of a civilisation that had vanished eons before humans had even got past stabbing each other ovor scraps of fur (okay, some still hadn't gotten past that, but big picture, here), it should have been the makings of a rivetting new sci-fi. Instead it was really fairly boring. Lots of routine, a fair amount of politics (most of which happened back on Earth, thank God), and regular finds of all manner of certainly fascinating artifacts that nobody could quite figure out what they were, or, better yet, of the sort of thing that'd show up in a swap meet, not fanciful new technologies of which they'd never conceived. That washing machine Juarez had found had turned out fairly interesting, after all. Not Hollywood, but something to write home about.

She wondered what people back home would think if they knew their governments were funding this foray into the final frontier of intergalactic clothes washing. Whyever it was all still a secret was beyond her; the only hostiles they had found so far had been a largely polite little world that had just asked them politely to stay away from their planet and then politely shot at them until they'd complied. At least, it had seemed polite since every shot had conveniently missed by about three centimeters. Pity that never worked on Earth.

The only regular action anyone ever seemed to get around here was the odd collapse in the lower ruins. It was shocking that this would happen, really, since the foundations had only been submerged in swamp for the past few hundred years. It would be the mark of a truly advanced civilisation to come up with an entirely swamp-proof foundation - that, or perhaps just plain dumb, since no place remains inhabited forever. Why ''should'' it last indefinitely, really?

It made for a job, though. Langly headed up the expedition for largely political reasons - namely that she got the job done with minimal amount of fuss, she knew her folks, and things worked out - because the politics were easier when things went smoothly. There were, of course, those who had suggested that she was in charge because she was a woman and that looked better on the papers. Or, less politely, because she was a woman and she had been having relations with someone higher up.

Her response to this had been to get the one fired and to tell the other to sod off, though not in that order.

Elizabeth Langly was a woman of action - from a desk, perhaps, but most action that has any meaningful effect spends some part of its life at a desk. And Elizabeth Langly was not a woman anyone in their right mind wanted to mess with.




"I have spoken and that is final. Shut up leave me alone I'm drinking."




"These are the words of Sherandris of Kenning Vos, King that was, and heart of my heart."




It began as a whispering. Something almost, but not entirely, out of sight, out of sound, and out of mind. A shadow of a shadow, except heard, not seen. Whispers at the edge of hearing, and even, as it were, the edge of thought.

She did not even notice them at first. Occasionally they would sneak in even without her noticing, but then as the hours and days went on, they became more insistent, more pressing, until there was nothing to do but listen.

Then they came as an onslaught. When she noticed, she noticed, and then there was simply nothing to do but notice. The voices poured in, beckoning, begging, screaming, asking, crying, shouting, an endless roar of a whisper, the torment of a thousand waves all crashing at once. And she heard them all so clearly, so plainly, 

There was no escape, no solace from the torment, simply more, and more, and more. She lost herself in it, lost track of her surroundings, her intent, and everything she was after and was. There was only room for voices, voices, voices. Speaking out of the shadows, never-ending.

She stumbled and continued, lost in the depths of her mind, realing in the voices never-ending.




If only there were silence amidst the madness. But there was none; there was only madness and more madness, voices, and no silence. 

Only voices, and shouting, and clamouring, and no silence amidst the voices, only more shouting and crying and pleading.

There was only the din, the overbearing loudness, the reverberation and roar and the place, the place that was all the same, the place that was all sound and no silence. 

If there were sound and also silence, a respite, a sanctuary against the sound. 

If there were the silence only distance, alone, without the sound, the sound of the voices, thousands, tens of thousands, never stopping, never ending...

But there was no silence.

Coraline wandered on, lost amidst the madness of the roar within her mind.




She knew nothing. She was no-one. The wind. A whisper and a shadow. 

The world was not real.

Others passed her by, but they paid no head. They were not real, and nor was she. Only the voices stood out, in their shout and their roar and their reverberation against the shadowy, flimsy backdrop of the world she saw with eyes. It was nothing.

Only the rock and the shadow, washed by the whirl of voices, so many souls that passed through, so many voices, shouting, shouting, always shouting and never heard. They were meaningless, and still they shouted, because they did not know, they could never know, but they were only the cicada, they were only the whisper, and yet they whispered on.




Whisper and whisper, shout and shout, question and question. The cacophany was never-ending, and yet all were lost within. No single soul stood out, no single voice was heard, only the masses, the unending masses, coming and coming. It was all. It was everything. Voices.

Only voices. No end to the voices, just voices shouting, voices pleading, voices lost without even hope to carry them on, but still echoing even now, for there was no hope here, only nothing, only echos, always echoes. This was the place of echos, where echoes were only all. Only echos. Nelanor. Echos.

They pleaded, the echos. They called. They whispered secrets and shouted legends, for it was all they knew, and amongst the echos there was nothing, only nothing. If only there were something amidst the nothing, no abyss, no great shadow, no deep darkess that loiters below, only something, a shadow of the world, but something, then. Something to support the voices, the echos the shadows.

But there is only nothing.




She realised she was in a place. She didn't know how she had gotten there, or what she was doing there, or even, for that matter, much of anything at all, but this was a place. Some of the whispers had mentioned places, but as they whispered on, the places faded. 

Everything faded. Everything was lost in the whispers, in the shouting, in the din.

There was a cup in front of her. Someone said, quieter and yet somehow louder than all of the others, "You look like you could use some shalott."

She looked at it. Rock, part of her though, staring at it, and then, before she knew what she was doing, that part of her drank it. Amidst the voices she didn't really notice. There was nothing to notice.




It was later. It was clearly later.

And there was only silence.

Nelanor looked up. "It is what the thunder said," she said.

"Sorry?" the barkeep asked.




She was in a bar. It was clearly a bar, though like none she had ever seen before. There were no taps and no vast assortment of myriad bottles such as marked the bars she knew, but there was the bar itself. It was very clearly a bar, long and wodden and polished, and the barman behind with apron and bottles and barrels, ready to pour whatever, so long as he had it, to whoever, so long as he could pay for it. 

There was also no lighting in the rest of the room, as far as she could tell, The patrons drank in smoke and gloom, coming forth, perhaps, only as often as they had to. And here, at the bar, there were only the three lanterns. Kerosene, if she had to guess, and no apperture for anything better. This was all they had. They made do, though. People did, when it was as far as they had come, and indeed they were proud of it. They had come this far, after all. They had achieved real lanterns, right?

Or something along those lines. She wasn't sure what was going on, or how she had gotten here. There was, however, another mug in front of her. Had she already had one? It was hard to say.

For lack of a better idea she drank it.




For the first time in she didn't know how long, Coraline Henderson was thinking clearly. At least relatively so. She was also, from the feel of it, pretty decently drunk.

Even so, she had to make sure. "I think," Coraline said, preventing the barkeep from refilling her drink, "we should hold off for the time being. There's something I want to try."

The barkeep eyed her suspiciously.

"How long does this tend to take to wear off?"

"Hour or two, I suppose, amount you had."

"Then we'll wait an hour or two," she said. "Then, if I'm right, I'll need you to refill this." It was a gamble. Problem was, if she was right, the voices would come back. She could remember them vaguely, not like something real, but like something horrible. She was good at horrible. Sometimes she was better at horrible than she was at real.

And if she was wrong, then... what? She really had no idea.

Uh. 

There seemed to be nothing for it but to wait, and to hope that if worst came to worst, that she would actually drink whatever the barkeep provided...




"It's not that I'm incredibly drunk," she said. "It's just that I am incredibly drunk."




"Fuck," Ariel said, and shattered into dust.

The dreamer had died, and her dream died with her.




Coraline never exactly got the news. When there was no response from Vardaman and Ariel, it only confirmed what she already knew to be true.

They had lost.




Some stories end badly. Nobody goes home in the end, there are no happily ever afters, and the matter is not settled. There are loose ends everywhere, but over time people simply forget and the entire thing fades away. These stories are buried. Nobody wants to tell them. They don't seem worth remembering.

The problem is, sometimes such stories are the only ones that ''are'' worth remembering.




When Coraline, Myyr, and Fuller passed through the World's Gate, it was not as an epic finale to their grand quest. There was no fanfare, no drama, no replay of history to beckon them down the same desperate paths as had claimed the lives of the heroes of yore. Instead, they stepped through to the Underworld quite undramatically, looked around uncertainly, and then made sure their radios were still working.

When the Gate closed, they made sure they were still still working.

Turned out they were.

"Hey, you never can never be quite sure with these things," Fuller whispered. "Can't trust this kind of magic."

Myyr gave him a look that said absolutely nothing. Coraline snorted - it was, after all, her kind of 'magic'.

They appeared to be on a street of sorts, though it was unlike any street any of them had seen before, simply a perfectly flat, straight length shaped into the sandy, dusty terrain. Behind them it ended at an impossible wall, too high to follow, and ahead it stretched through further lifeless hills and crannies until the sand gave way to city, a vastness that spanned the entire horizon, sprawling in shapes and forms. One broken tower soared above the rest, fading into the sky itself, but it seemed to only emphasise how jagged the rest were with its own irregular form.

It was clear that nobody out here had been expecting them. People, or what had once been people, loitered in the sand, but it was with such a listless air that they might as well have been sand themselves. Nobody was going anywhere. Some of the denizens glanced at them in passing, but few even saw them at all. It was questionable that most ever saw anything anymore.

"This is the sky under which you will end, Coraline Henderson," Myyr said. "I do not know when or how, but it is so."

"I don't want to hear that," Coraline said. The sky was like an abyss, black and swirled over with other shades of black, but it had no depth to it. It was just there. It made her feel sick.

"It's an abyss," Fuller said.

"How abysmal of it."

"Yeah."




The story here, if there ever was one, was not about them.




"It was like walking into someone else's story well after the fact, after everyone had failed and those who survived had already gone home, lived out their lives, and died of old age.

"It felt like trespassing on a cave-in."




The battle had spilled into the streets, though this high up the defenders definitely had the upper hand. Those skirmishes Coraline and Myyr ran into were small enough to walk around without any trouble.




Coraline propped up her staff and sighted down its length. "I see some folk out there. They look important. Think I could hit them from here?"




"Be glad it's not like the Forgotten Realms. In their version of the Underworld, there's this wall around it that's built of the tormented souls of the damned. It's pretty awful.

"At some point I told this old friend on Kanata about it and of course he had to go and build one of his own - not a real one, obviously, but a scaled-down fence contraption of ordinary wall and holographic technology. Thought it was a right lovely idea to have this screaming, writhing mass of hopeless horror around his house, apparently.

"Neighbours thought otherwise, of course, but all the city ordinances in the system couldn't convince him to take the thing down, since technically it wasn't illegal. Classified as a 'standard annoyance' and that was it. Efforts to sabotage it didn't go anywhere either."

"So what happened?"

"Three months later a horse appeared out of nowhere in his bathroom. Wouldn't move. Resisted all efforts to remove it. Animal control agreed to take a look if he turned his wall off, found it didn't seem to be a normal horse. They called in a mage, found it didn't seem to be magic, so he brought in some priests from one of the local religions, who called the God Impersonation Guild, who called me, and I told them, 'yeah? So what? Who do you think looked at it in the first place and called animal control?'

"I hadn't actually, but you should have seen the looks on their faces.

"Anyway, turned out it was just some god who'd absolutely had it with godding so for some reason he'd decided to be a horse and not move any more than the planet did. And he decided to do it in this guy's bathroom.

"We wound up just moving the entire house out from under the god, since it didn't budge even with the floor gone. Seemed like a good enough idea at the time, and the neighbours loved it since it meant Gellin would be moving too, and since we left the wall there as a sort of creepy 'don't ask' sign... well, I dunno. Entire thing certainly looks strange in the middle of the night, though, that's for sure. Floating horse, eerily glowing wall of souls...

"Mind, it was muted at this point. No more moans and pleas and screams and crap. So it wasn't even a standard annoyance anymore, just an eyesore.

"No lack of those in any modern city. 'Art.' Pfft."