“Fallow?”
“Please watch your step, and do keep moving. Lingering can expose you to other effects here. So can a misstep. Things broken here do not always mend as you hope they would. You can hastily patch up a wound that may take a lifetime to heal, or you can allow things to become something else altogether, after the breaking. I doubt you want to do either, if you happen to fall through the floor and break a leg.”
“Point taken,” I said. I picked my steps carefully, avoiding the increasing number of weapons that littered the area, the parts of the floor where damage, holes, or fire had left the footing unstable.
I elected to pull off my jacket, because I preferred being too cold to being too hot, and it seemed I wasn’t going to get a middle ground between the two.
“To be in Conquest’s domain is to be in a constant state of transition. Emotions rise and fall, there is fire and rebellion at first, then we make peace with the state of things. Broken things erode away, and then there is only defeat. But to be the Conqueror is not a simple thing either. They either take on a different role, which my lord cannot do, or they find new territory to seize, people to subjugate. The territory changes as he finds new ground.”
“I didn’t know a demesne could be this… out there. I mean, I read about apartments covered in flesh, but…”
“This isn’t a demesne, as you understand the term,” he said. “Some beings are strong enough to influence their surroundings simply by residing there.”
“Ah.”
I continued forward, leaving ruined walls behind me as the hallway continued, unsupported by anything beneath. A bridge of broken stone and tile, slow going when I had to pick my way around skeletal remains.
It wasn’t a long fall to the ground. Fifteen feet or so, maybe sixteen if the snow was deeper than it looked. But somehow, I didn’t get the impression I would be able to get back up if I did tip over.
The bridge reached a hill with more ruins at the perimeter, walling it off from the surrounding region. The sun, somehow, was now directly above me, pressing down.
The light, however, seemed to come from the snow that dusted everything.
Conquest stood across from me, sitting on a stone. He had a bit of a mullet, a white colonial-style jacket with a fleece collar and several belts, a rifle with a bayonet resting against one leg, and a badass beard with a waxed mustache. Two aboriginal men were kneeling beside him, shirtless, with heavy collars shackled to their necks, chains leading up to his hand. His other arm was outstretched, resting against one knee, hand open, with large green beetles crawling around the palm.
His eyes didn’t look human. When I let my brain draw the connection, my first thought was ‘painting eyes’. They were the sort of eyes I might expect to see in a really well done painting… every detail in place, but lifeless and flat.
When I looked him over again, I saw the entire thing fit. I could have seen something similar on a tarot card, the posture, the very careful arrangement of elements.
A composition, a living symbol. And somehow, this landscape was an extension of him. It was like he was ink, bleeding out onto the paper around him, and this… diorama was the end result. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
“My lord,” the nameless practitioner said, “he holds a weapon. I agreed to let him carry it in.”
Conquest nodded slowly, then turned his painted eyes to me.
“I would offer you a seat,” he said, “But the only seat available is the ground, and I have no reason to make you debase yourself. You may continue to stand.”
“Then I will do so…” I almost said sir, then reconsidered. “Lord of Toronto.”
That seemed to do okay, as far as acknowledging his position. I wasn’t dead yet.
“Hello, little morsel,” a voice murmured, just to my right.
I broke eye contact with the Lord of Toronto, and I very nearly jumped out of my skin.
She was big. Maybe, if she’d been human-proportioned, she would have been two or three times my height, going by the size of her head and upper body. But her body from the waist down was that of a great cat, the rise and fall of the muscles beneath the short fur very distinct. Great feathered wings were folded against her body, the snow piling on them.
“Hello,” I said, my attention now caught by this new figure. She might well have been the biggest living thing I’d seen in person.
She wasn’t beautiful, but she wasn’t hideous either. Her hair was well-tended, falling in dark ringlets over her breasts, where the hair obscured the nipples. Her fur and wings were pitch black. Between pale flesh and dark fur, I’d completely failed to see her where she reclined. Her human arms were folded beneath prodigious breasts, one of her feline front paws were folded over the other, and all of her sparkled with the moisture of snowflakes that had fallen onto her and melted.
I looked away, before I could break some rule, and I saw the others. A man, bedraggled, in rumpled clothing, with two handsome men and two attractive women attending him. He sat on the trunk of a tree that had grown horizontally, low to the ground, stump to his left, sparse branches fanning out to his right. A bottle dangled from his fingers, the contents swishing as he tilted it one way, then the next. His gaze was hard, penetrating.
The other local was a woman sat on a fallen chunk of masonry, her legs folded beside her. Her hair was blonde, and she held a golden spindle. I might have pegged her at thirty. I almost thought she was a Duchamp, but the facial features didn’t fit the general mold I’d seen before.
“Allow me to introduce Isadora, apocrypha, sixth daughter of Phix,” Conquest spoke.
The sphinx smiled.
“High Drunk Jeremy Meath.”
Jeremy didn’t move an inch, but his underlings did bow their heads, flourishing some.
“And Diana Thompson. Astrologer.”
“I hope we can get along,” I said.
“Your name?” the Lord asked.
“Blake,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I had another answer.
“Blake,” the sphinx said. “From English. The name means ‘the pale, blond one’, also ‘black’. A name of contrasts, hinting at duality.”
“Hush,” Diana said. Her eyes darted from Isadora to the Lord, who was looking a touch irritated.
“Not in attendance is the Sister of Torches, the Shepherd, the Knights of the Basement, the Eye of the Storm, and the Queen’s Man,” Conquest said.
As I looked, I could see the other spots around the perimeter of this space that others might have found ‘seats’. Stumps and bits of rock that might serve as chairs in a pinch. Better than sitting on the ground, in any event. It seemed this place was more like the government, where attendance wasn’t mandatory, and only certain seats were filled at certain times.
Between Conquest and the sphinx, I had the general feeling that I was well out of my depth.
“I’m hoping I don’t violate any protocol,” I said. “I don’t know the particulars of this sort of meeting. But I was told to bring a gift, and I would like to present this to you, Lord of Toronto.”
I held out the rolled up piece of art.
The nameless practitioner stepped forward from behind me, snatching the image from my hand. He carried it to Conquest, handing it over.
Very strange, to see an otherworldly being like Conquest Given Form rolling the elastic down the length of the rolled up paper. He unfurled it.
The image in the center was a man in a long coat, sketched out and filled in with watercolor and ink, the painting done in high detail. The edges of the coat, and the edges of his indistinct weapon, which could have been a sword or a gun, were explosions of paint, spattering outward.