Disclaimer: The Keys to the Kingdom series does not in any way belong to me, it's the property of Garth Nix, etc.
Break
It did not hurt, before.
The breaking, that is.
She split the Old One from herself so long ago that she can barely recall what it felt like to be whole; her senses are dulled, power weakened - she was less than she used to be, but now she is even weaker.
They break what is left of her into seven parts; her arrogant (trusted), treacherous (chosen) Trustees.
At first, she does not realize what they have done. She helped them do it, after all; her first son, Sunday, had said that the fulfilling of her clauses would proceed more efficiently if each of them focussed on separate parts.
She is tired of existing, bored of existence. Anything to speed the end is welcome. She is simply pleased that they are so accommodating - but then, that is how she made them. Mortals were a surprise; her Denizens were created to serve. Sunday and her other two sons are something in between, but rather more Denizen than mortal in any case, especially Sunday.
This pain is transitory; soon it and she will be no more. Anyway, it is a slight change from the monotony that had consumed her; the novelty is a welcome distraction.
Time passes, as is its wont. Time is, perhaps, the only thing that has outlived (outlasted) her.
Well, Time and Nothing.
Time passes and Nothing endures, and none of her clauses are fulfilled. Her Parts are scattered, across Time and existence.
The Trustees lied to her, she realizes.
She is angry, she realizes.
No; she is furious.
She did not need to create a Will; she had no obligation to the things that she had created, directly or by accident. She could have destroyed them all, willed them to be swallowed by the omnipresent Void.
She chose not to. She gave them a way to survive, and this is how they repay her? With this betrayal.
How dare they.
How dare they-
It is many millennia before Monday's Dusk gifts a snuffbox to a hapless Inspector, and, well.
She has not been good with the passage of Time for much longer than that; these petty delays and futile attempts to circumvent her are tedious and infuriating. She has had more than enough of tedium and infuriation; she is done, she should be done, how dare they do this to her-
Separate, alone, all she can do is wait.
Wait, and seethe.
"I had wondered if you would come," the Old One says, his gaping, bloody eye sockets pointed unerringly in her direction. "Your Heir has defeated Monday, then."
She raises her chin, though he cannot possibly know she does so. Even bound as he is, he is still more whole than she. But she has a Key, and freedom; he is chained to his prison, until the end of creation.
The end that is approaching, though not nearly as quickly as she would have liked.
"Indeed. The Lower House is mine."
"You mean Arthur's." And although he has no cause for amusement, the corners of his lips curve upward anyway.
"Semantics." Her voice is sharper than she intends, and bitter.
"To think," the Old One says, "that I would come to see the day - well, not see, my eyes have not grown back yet - but that I would come to bear witness, perhaps, to the day that the Architect would admit she was wrong."
"I have admitted no such thing." She is always furious, these days; consumed by the betrayal committed by the Trustees. But she had forgotten the first betrayal that had started all this - her other half's rebellion, and the fury that had incited her to chain him here.
"Of course not," the Old One says. "Words have power, after all. Better to leave them unvoiced."
"Do you care nothing for your own freedom?" she demands, for she has been locked away for ten thousand years; she is locked away still. The Old One has been in the Deep Coal Cellar for much longer, and has been punished every single day of that imprisonment.
"Ah, now you wish to hear my opinion," the Old One says, reclining against the minute hand of the clock. "Unfortunately, I am not inclined to voice it."
She clenches her hands into fists; she longs to draw the First Key and strike him, not that it would do much good. Not that it would do any good.
"Are you surprised? That we should both be so unyielding? Have you considered that I am not so desperate to have my existence cease, for all that I have endured far worse than you have these past years?"
"That is not the same," she says, snarls really, "as not wishing for your existence to cease."
He laughs, the sound echoing away across the vast pit of the Cellar.
"We were one, once. We were bound to agree on something again, eventually."
She turns away and raises the Key, intent on re-entering the Improbable Stair.
"Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, after all," the Old One adds, thoughtfully.
Monday does not look surprised, when she comes for him; nor does he beg for forgiveness.
She would not grant it, in any case, but her vengeance tastes bitter. It would be more satisfying, she thinks, if he had pleaded with her.
Tuesday will be different, she thinks. Monday was restored; his mind was unclouded, certainly he must have remembered why the Trustees betrayed her. (The reasons are beyond her; she still does not understand why they broke her and refused to face reality, but she no longer cares to understand, either.)
They were foolish to think they could circumvent her. Their very natures were twisted by their betrayal; their actions would have, given enough time (and that is the one thing she has in abundance, though she wants nothing more than for it all to end), led to the destruction of the House.
Tuesday raises his chin but does not otherwise resist her. She does not even have to incapacitate him; he falls silently into the grave he had been digging for thousands of years, robbing her of even the petty pleasure of disposing of witnesses.
Wednesday is, perhaps, the only one she might have spared. It is a moot point anyway; Wednesday's condition is terminal, and she does not have to decide.
She taunts Thursday, her tongue forked more often than not.
"I have listened to your venom for ten millennia; do me the courtesy of ending that misery," Thursday says. He does not get angry, and his words are not really pleading; they are matter of fact, unafraid.
She is furious enough to summon the Void itself; it consumes him in an instant, leaving behind only his Immaterial Boots and the feet within.
She was not strong enough to call up Nothing before, but now she is more than half whole.
(Four-sevenths of a shadow of half a being; semantics.)
Friday begs her for death; it does not give her the satisfaction she expected. But then, she is nearly done: Arthur is in the Upper House, and it is only a matter of time before he defeats Saturday and from there-
It will not be not long now.
The Trustees could have had their existences back, if they had only fulfilled her clauses. Instead, they betrayed her. She is not a being inclined towards mercy. Any such inclinations that she might have foolishly held in the past are long gone.
The Drasils are withering; the Incomparable Gardens draw nearer.
It will not be long now.