Portraits and timepieces.
Arron marched the upper cathedral halls with unsure purpose. His anger was sharp against the cold beauty of the place. Cold ceramic and sterile metals.
Another friend is gone. And what's to show for it?
A half burnt note.
When would it be enough?' He wondered to himself.
And it's all for what? A bunch of bureaucrats who should know better. Who should've been better?
He didn't know what was taking him here. He hadn't spoken to the thing in years, and hadn't wanted to.
In truth the builder frightened him, his age and his knowledge. Its constant unblinking gaze.
It was too much for this age. too much for a century at least.
Arron pressed his palms into his eyes and dug his nails into his grey hair as he walked the empty place. He hadn't cried for her.
He'd stowed himself against that imperious place, house of dying divinity.
But his head wouldn't stop hurting. Like he wanted to rip out his own eyes. Ironic as that was.
He'd gotten Laurence's message, and asked him to pass on the news to Torrin. He wouldn't take it well.
Nobody but him had been in the cathedral for fifteen years and it was starting to show.
Lights were dying and surfaces were dulled by lack of care.
The air was heavy with time in that place.
The hallway itself was large and his steps rang the halls as he went. They sounded as solitary as he felt.
He reached a large staircase that narrowed toward the top. Stopped on the step before the door.
Opened it.
Inside was a beautiful round room. High pointed roof, copper and gold guilt inlaying nearly every surface. A mix of concrete and ceramic. perfect in a cruel way, sadistic even.
A beautiful cage.
The marionette. His body of clock work and ceramic. Micro-tiles and other technology beyond his understanding. Similar to Torrin's arm.
Arron described it as a he. Though it's androgynous. Taller than any human, that was obvious even in its slumped position. Its head was tilted over a timepiece, a small screwdriver in hand. Its incremental twist of the tool acted as if planned for years. In a way it had.
"It's been a long time since you last came. Distant friend." The builder said.
It sat naked lacking all genitalia on a brass stool.
One of the only pieces of furniture in the room other than a few tables. The rest was paintings of space and strange ships that leapt through galaxies. He didn't look at them, they unnerved him.
And as if to play on that anxiety the minuscule plates that overlapped it's neck and like an owl it's head twisted. The plates formed back again once it was facing Arron.
He stood two score feet away, he still took a step back toward the door. It hadn't done that before and he still didn't know how fast it was.
"Come in." Its face twisted into an attempt of a smile. Like it had forgotten how. It added to the effect he'd made with his neck. It didn't stop working.
Arron did as it asked, stepping into the room.
"You've aged." It said as he drew closer. "How many years has it been since you last came? Thirteen?" It pretended not to know.
"Twelve." Arron said, still trying to find words. He knew it had time to wait. It stood. The marionette's body turned to catch up with its head.
"Yes." It said in a soft foreign accent. "Have your endeavours succeeded?" It asked. "Your peaceful world."
"No." Arron said, impatient for a conversation he didn't want. Maybe it would help him understand his purpose again. Maybe it would finally allow him to abandon it.
"I assume you knew that though."
The artistry of its body was truly magnificent. Difficult not to look at in awe, horror also.
"I did." It said, "but I would like your view of events, the lies you tell yourselves are so very informative." It put out a hand gesturing toward the seat. He obeyed again.
Sitting, he glowered at his god.
"What is assimilation?" Arron asked bluntly. "What is it really?"
It didn't answer but it made it's strange smile again. Cold to match the concrete, garish the ceramic. Imperial for the gold, a tool like copper.
"I cannot give you foresight." It said, putting a new canvas on his stand, facing away from him. "Your species dulls under that knowledge. Becomes lazy." It began painting.
"You came here first when the war began." It started.
"No." Arron said. "It was before."
"Was it?" it glanced up from the canvas for a second. What game was it playing?
If anything it did look like an artist at that moment.
Strange how something so unnatural does all its tasks with such natural grace.
"Why gift my warden with knowledge." It asked, its voice sounded like a different part of its mind was saying it, a secondary channel of thought. Or whatever constituted a thought for that abnormal creature.
"Why would I trust a god that doest want to be understood? By his people at least."
"You are not my people." It stopped painting, looked up. "They died three hundred years ago. They betrayed me." Was that emotion in its eyes? Anger?
Arron had only spoken to the Builder four times in his life but he could tell. Something had changed.
"A faraday cage is built around this room, an underlayment of silver and steel. Not that you'd know what that is."
"We all have our cages." Arron said dryly. "Ours. are stations."
Glaring at the god. It ignored him, as gods do.
"Tell me what the ascension is." he pressed. It continued painting. "The singularity."
Arron held back his anger.
"You'll learn in time." It said a fatherly way now, apparently having remembered how to smile.
"If you knew now you wouldn't understand." it was still trying to sound fatherly. Godly even. Arron was already exhausted. For what felt like hours he sat listening to the songs of the Builder's clockwork frame.
"One of my people died earlier." Arron eventually said. "Her name was Rebekah."
The secondary voice spoke again. "Ones of yours?"
"No." Arron said heavily. "She was her own." He sounded hollow. A man bereft of anything else to give.
She had joined the Conclave ten years before.
Trained with Torrin under him. She died doing what she wanted, why was there guilt?
He'd been there a moment before, why was he spared?
The god was watching. Knowing.
"Principal still defines you then?" He said. And he wasn't wrong. Not truly.
"And it doesn't define you? You're a god." Arron hissed, fragility still in his voice.
"No. Not principal." It said, picking up and turning his canvas so Arron could see.
"choice." It finished.
Arron chuffed at that. "Says the one that calls me warden."
The Builder's eyes flicked to its painting.
it turned the stand to face him and the portrait was of Arron. But never how he would have seen himself; aged but strong, tired yet unwavering. The portrait was of him bound by his wrists to the bottom of a lake. looking up as a sunken city was rising around him.
Still soulless, like everything else the Builder created.
"You were created and sent here, do you expect me to believe you had a choice?" Arron glared.
"In that no." It admitted. "But I could have killed you the moment you came in. I didn't."
"Could you have?" Arron asked, beginning to pace the room. "Can you hurt a person?"
"If I chose not to see it as one." It said emotionless.
"Mind defining that?"
"I do." It matched Arrons pace till they had swapped places.
"Why do you want to be a god?" Arron asked, he had asked before but never got a real answer.
"Many hundred years ago when I could still walk this city there was a park." Started. "probably destroyed when your kind took their afterlife for themselves." It digressed.
"People would go there to testify, to admit sin or failure. It didn't matter who to either. Mattered to me least of all."
Arron understood the comparison but found himself irritated by it.
"Confessional park." Arron said. "The confession is always to you now though." The Builder stayed silent at that.
"Don't we have a right to it? If it's ours as you say?" Arron asked.
It gave him a wide grin. "How has it been going so far? It asked. "Did the gatekeeper allow his dead friend into paradise?" Arron clenched his fists.
"Do you have a garden, Arron?" It asked frankly. "You seem like you'd get some good from having one."
"I don't have time for such things." Arron said tartly.
"You have time to come here. to bore me with questions you don't want answers to."
"Tell me then." Arron said, voice now clipped, patience eroding again.
"Tell me what you want?" It said feigned humour in its softly spoken voice.
"What you were going to say." He stopped his pacing by a table of mechanical things. Picked one up, another clock of some kind.
"Before you cut me off so politely?" It asked, smiling again. Arron hurled the timepiece at the puppet. It shattered on the floor by a painting of a man on a barstool. Looking at his drink, morosely but with determination.
"Not in the mood." Arron told it plainly.
It sighed, clearly wishing him in the mood for sport. In truth Arron pitied the thing. His god. That being he and all of the governors of Empire had mimicked.
"If you had a garden Arron." It continued. "Then you would know that it needs to be tended."
Arron paid attention, distracted from his anger.
"Tending that garden can mean adding, subtracting. Building balance." It splayed its hands out to emphasise the point.
"That is what a god does. It's what I did." It fished, a telling anger in the machines' usually placid tone.
"And you're telling me why?" Arron asked, matching the building pose. Trying to pry at it.
"It's what you do also isn't it?" It asked simply. Picking up the painting of the man behind him, bringing it over and replacing it on the stand with the portrait of Arron.
The man only stood there for a moment. He couldn't refute it.
The builder only left him to his musings. Painting a layer of white over his previous work, Arron wondered at that.
"Why destroy old work?" He asked finally out of curiosity. He had lost himself in thought, the ticking sound, his metronome. Was this what she heard?
"Sometimes beautiful things have to die for something new to bloom." God said. Almost glowing in Jadus's setting light. Though it was invisible in the windowless room.
"Have you ever wondered if our time has come?"
"No." it said with gravitas. Theatrics.
"Mine did centuries ago." His eyes never left the canvas, Arron didn't stay to see what he painted.
"You'll be one in the end anyway, Arron." He stopped for a moment. "Singularity or not. Time will catch and pull you into the ebb and flow before I pull you into me." He clenched his fists again. Continued walking.
***
He walked the halls again. Slower, weaker.
He pressed his hands into his eyes once again and for one, he allowed himself to cry.
The doors swung open to a lift. By themselves in their strange way and then slammed shut behind him. He was alone.