He is not alone. This is happening.
He has a sword and he is in a cavern beneath a lost city somewhere in the vicinity of the Starless Sea and he has lost track of Fate and he cannot see but he still believes, dammit.
His feet move faster now, one step and then another and another, though the thing in the darkness follows, keeping pace as they continue down a path that ends at something that feels like a wall.
“Wait,” the voice that is not the darkness says and the hand leaves Zachary’s arm, replaced by something that is not a hand, heavy and cold and curling around his shoulder.
In front of him there is a sliver of light from an open door.
The darkness makes a horrible sound that is not a scream but that is the closest word Zachary has for the screeching terror in his head and around it.
It is so loud that Zachary stumbles and the darkness grabs at him, tearing at his shoes, curling around his legs, pulling him back. He loses his balance and falls, sliding backward, trying to hold on to the sword.
Someone reaches an arm around his chest and pulls him toward the light and the door. Zachary cannot tell if the man or the darkness is stronger but with one arm he holds tight to his rescuer and with the other he stabs at the darkness with his sword.
The darkness hisses at him.
You don’t even know why you are here, it calls as Zachary is pulled into the light, the voices in his ears and in his head. They are using you—
The doors close, muffling the voices, but they continue to shudder and shake, something on the other side trying to get in.
“Help me with this,” the man says as he pushes against the doors, attempting to keep them closed. Zachary blinks, his eyes adjusting, but he can see the large wooden bar the man is struggling with and he gets to his feet, taking the other end of the heavy bar and sliding it into the metal braces set along the doors.
The bar slips into place, securing the doors shut.
Zachary leans his forehead against the doors and tries to steady his breathing. The doors are massive and carved and feel more real and solid beneath his skin with every passing second. He is alive. He is here. This is happening.
Zachary sighs and looks up and around at the space that he has entered, and then at the man standing next to him.
This space is a temple. The doors are one set of four that lead to an open atrium. It continues up and up and up in tiers surrounded by wooden stairs and balconies. Fires burn in hanging bowls, their moving light accentuated by the candles placed on every surface in lieu of offerings, dripping wax on carved
altars and on the shoulders and open palms of statues. Long banners of book pages strung from thread are draped over the balconies like flags, fluttering and freed from their bindings.
Within this sanctuary of light, Zachary Ezra Rawlins and Simon Jonathan Keating stare at each other in bewildered silence.
IT WAS EASIER than he anticipated, identifying her amongst the masked guests at the party. Initiating a conversation. Escalating it. Inviting her up to his hotel room, booked under a fictional name.
He expected her to be more wary.
He expected a lot of things from this evening that have not come to pass.
Getting to this point was so easy that it nags at him, louder now that they are away from the party chatter and the music. This was too easy. Too easy to identify her with the bee and key and sword draped obviously and gaudily around her neck. Too easy to get her talking. Too easy to bring her upstairs, to a location without witnesses save for the city outside the window too filled with its own concerns to notice or care.
It was all too easy and the ease of it bothers him.
But it is also now too late.
Now she stands by the window though there is not much of a view. Part of the hotel across the street, a corner of night sky with no visible stars.
“Do you ever think about how many stories are out there?” she asks, placing a finger on the glass. “How many dramas are unfolding around us right at this very moment? I wonder how long a book you would need to record them. You’d probably need an entire library to hold a single evening in Manhattan. An hour. A minute.”
He thinks then that she knows why he is here and that’s why it was so easy and he can’t afford to hesitate any longer.
There is a part of him that wants to remain in the charade, continue playing this part and wearing this mask.
He finds he wants to keep talking with her. He is distracted by her question, thinking of all the other people in this city, all the stories filling this street, this block, this hotel. This room.
But he has a job to do.