New January

Chapter 2

In some part of his mind, Arthur had known this day was coming.

It was a certainty, buried deep within his subconscious that had never gone away. He always remembered the ways he was drawn back to the House, whether by creature or companion, there was always a reason for his return, whether he had known it or not. His nightmares often included watching Leaf being swept away by the waters of the Border Sea, or fleeing from the Scoucher, running for her house.

He'd always dismissed it though. He thought he'd escaped it, that part of his life. He'd grown up, got a girlfriend, moved on. He'd never been contacted before, never seen anything even related to the House. His life had gone back to normal.

Then this had happened.

The world was frozen, around him and within his mind, as an internal conflict broke out. A decision had to be made, now, before all of it started again. All the memories began to resurface again, the ones he'd buried away. Did he really want to subject himself to that again?

Back then, he'd done it out of a sense of heroism, that what he was doing was the right thing. Then he'd realised that they didn't care about heroism. They'd just needed a catalyst, to start everything off, to restart the universe.

He couldn't let himself be used like that again.

"No."

The answer slipped out, with a surety behind it.

"I'm sorry?" The New Architect asked, with confusion in a voice that sounded an awful lot like Arthur's now.

"I said, no. I don't care what the problem is. You can figure it out yourself. I don't see why you, the creator of the universe, would need help from me." Arthur tried to say this with calm and clarity, but he couldn't help but let a bit of anger bleed through.

"You think if I could solve this problem, I'd be calling you?" The New Architect stated, and Arthur had to admit he had a point. "Look, I need help on this. I've never encountered this before."

"Architect, I don't want to get involved again." Arthur said, plainly. "Find someone else."

Arthur had begun to lower the phone when the New Architect hurriedly cried "It's about Suzy!"

Arthur paused. "What?"

There's hesitation on the other side of the line, and Arthur brought the phone back to his ear. "What's happened to Suzy?" He almost shouted.

"Lord Arthur." The New Architect said. Arthur heard worry in his voice. "Suzy's missing."

The colour had returned to the world by the time Arthur had reached the front entrance. The last of the student body was beginning to trickle out of the school building. Leaf was already gone. That was good. If she'd seen the look of deep thought on his face, she would've suspected something.

His pace was quick as he walked through the streets of the City, his head down. His destination was near to the school, so he wouldn't have to worry about walking through his or Leaf's neighbourhoods.

He went over the information the New Architect had given him. Suzy was missing, and had been missing for some time, since the beginning of January in his Realm, if He was right, which He insisted He was.

At first, Arthur had been sceptical. He was talking to the New Architect, the creator of the House and all the Secondary Realms. Surely he could find her if he willed it. But, as he had explained, something was blocking his ability to do this, and had been for some time, which did not bode well.

What kind of power would you need to block a god? Arthur had thought.

Pedestrian traffic had begun to die down as the end of the day drew near. Rush hour had passed, so Arthur had a relatively easy journey to the street that lie close enough to the school to be reached, but far enough away to be avoided, as Arthur had been doing for the last three years. He now lived on the opposite side of town, so fortunately his route to school didn't even go near it, even though he knew he wouldn't see it there.

Now he was making a beeline for it. He took a deep breath as he turned the corner.

On the right side was a row of regular houses, like a regular street. Some had slight variations to their design, such as differently shaped windows, or walls painted a different colour, but they retained their complete and utter normality.

On the other side of the street was the House.

It was as Arthur remembered it. Wherever he looked, he couldn't seem to pin down the exact details of the building. He saw turrets and balconies, towers and pagodas, walkways and windows of all different sizes and shapes. Wherever he glanced would look different when he glanced back. The House was surrounded on all sides by a flat, ten foot high white marble wall, with no notable features or decoration.

Arthur walked up to the wall, staring at it for a good few seconds. Did he really want to do this? Did he really want to get involved with this strange House again, after everything that happened to him and Leaf and his family?

He already knew the answer. His experience had been terrible. He'd been used to unwillingly fix a mistake by an unknowably old deity, and in doing so had almost ended an uncountable amount of lives in an infinite amount of universes. But throughout that time, he had never forgotten or abandoned his friends. He'd crossed the Border Seas with a broken leg and ridden a submarine into a whale's stomach to save Leaf.

Suzy had saved him once, when he'd been imprisoned in that Coal Cellar, a lifetime ago. Now it was time to return the favour.

He pressed his hand against the wall. Immediately, a door appeared.

Arthur raised an eyebrow. He'd expected that he'd have to run his hand along it until he found the door, since he didn't have the First Key like he'd had last time. However, he realised, that time no-one had known he was coming, and he had been, effectively, sneaking in. So, he shrugged, and looked the door over. Simple dark wood with a brass doorknob.

He grabbed the doorknob and twisted, hearing a click as the door unlocked, and stepped in, assuming that there would be something on the other side. He was expected after all.

So when he stepped onto nothing in the pitch black, he was more than a little surprised. Perhaps a denizen would've sighed. As he fell into pure darkness with the door shutting behind him, Arthur just screamed.

He couldn't tell how far he fell before he stopped, since there was no true frame of reference nor was he any good at calculating distance based on time and speed ('A basic piece of trivia' his math teacher had once stated, though Arthur doubted anyone else in class had known it either). What he did know, however, was that he was cursing all the way down, mixing words that Bob would've most definitely frowned at with insults aimed at the Architect, who apparently possessed a sense of humour completely foreign to Arthur's.

It was in the middle of this tirade that Arthur felt his stomach flip as he rather suddenly halted. This caused him to pause as he floated there, waiting for something to happen. That's when a very familiar voice spoke up.

"You know, you could've knocked."

Arthur twisted himself around, finding he could do so extremely easily, to face the speaker. Walking up to him on an invisible pathway was a frowning young man, wearing an old-fashioned uniform consisting of a blue swallow-tailed gold-buttoned coat with a single gold epaulette on the left shoulder. Under this was a white shirt, tan breeches and polished boots that went up to his knees and turned down at the top. Within his hand was a tall sword that glowed with blue fire, providing illumination for Arthur to see both himself and the young man standing before him. Even after all this time, even with the odd clothes, Arthur still recognised him.

"Fred?!" Arthur exclaimed, unable to hold in his surprise.

"That's 'Lieutenant Keeper of the Front Door' Fred to you, Arthur." Despite the tone of the correction, Fred's clearly fake frown split into a wide toothy grin. "I worked very hard to get to this position!"

"Yeah, you grabbed a sword. Seems like an easy promotion." Arthur's smile matched his friends. "It's good to see you."

"You as well." Fred agreed, and they shook hands, which felt very strange considering Arthur was still floating. Arthur truly couldn't believe he was seeing Fred again. They'd met during Arthur's somewhat brief, yet rather traumatic time in the 'Glorious Army of the Architect' serving under Sir Thursday and had become friends immediately. He could see that the boy who once applied gold leaf to numbers (a job he'd been happy to leave, Arthur recalled) still retained his optimism and cheer. "I suppose you know why I've been sent."

Arthur's smile disappeared and he nodded. "Suzy's gone missing, right?"

"Yeah." Fred's smile disappeared as well. "Follow me, the Front Door's nearby."

Arthur felt a platform forming under his feet. Carefully, he righted himself to a standing position and glanced around, looking for the point of light he remembered from the last time he used this entrance. He could see only darkness. "I don't see it." He stated as Fred turned and began to walk, Arthur following after him.

"We've had to block all of the doors to and from the House while we search for Suzy, so it's not as easily visible as it used to be." The Lieutenant Keeper explained. "We had hoped that this could keep whoever has her within the House."

Arthur nodded. "Only it didn't."

Fred stopped and spun around so fast Arthur could've sworn he felt a breeze. "What do you mean?" he asked, looking at Arthur intently, eyes wide.

"I saw Suzy in my world about a week and a half ago." Arthur explained, and he saw Fred's eyes widen even more. "I thought it was odd, but I didn't know at the time she'd disappeared."

"A week ago?" Fred suddenly let go of the sword, which surprised Arthur, since he remembered the Lieutenant Keepers weren't able to do that until they gave up their position to another. However, as he watched, a gold chain about half a metre long appeared, attaching the sword to a gold wristband Arthur hadn't noticed Fred was wearing. The sword seemed to swing itself upwards, barely missing Fred, finally stopping dead at the apex of the swing, pointing upwards and hovering above its owner's wrist.

Arthur almost gaped. "That was… neat."

"New feature." Fred said, clearly distracted, using his now free hand to reach into his jacket to retrieve something. He muttered something along the lines of "Should be around here somewhere…" before pulling out a clipboard from… somewhere… with a triumphant "A-ha!"

"What's that?" Arthur asked, craning to look at the pile of yellow papers clipped to it.

"'The Official Activity Roster for the Front Door and all Similar Entrances between the House and its Connected Domains.'" Fred recited. "I use this to log in any and all travel to and from the House. It's helped a lot, actually."

"Could've used a shorter name." Arthur observed. Seriously, the New Architect chose to keep all those over-complicated titles? What was wrong with 'The Travel Roster' or 'The Official House Logbook?'

Fred made a noise that sounded like an agreement, and began to leaf through the forms, looking over each line of information carefully. "If what you say is true, it's not on here."

Arthur frowned. "Filing error, maybe? I seem to remember the House was not the most organised of places."

"Unlikely. The New Architect's built the whole system from the ground up to be much more efficient." Fred leafed through the forms again. "Everything is supposed to be on this form. Everything. It doesn't even require a denizen's interaction anymore, the whole thing is automated, though don't ask me how." Fred sighed and placed the clipboard back into his jacket, though again Arthur wondered how big the pocket he was keeping it in was. "Even if a new entrance is created, it should appear on the Roster. It doesn't make any sense."

Arthur's brow furrowed. "The New Architect said that something was blocking him, but he couldn't tell what it was. Maybe the Roster is being blocked as well?"

Fred considered this for a bit. "Must be. But how could you block a system that complex?" He looked off into the blackness. "You'd have to be either incredibly intelligent or…"

"Incredibly powerful." Despite himself, Arthur couldn't stop the shiver that travelled up his spine. Something was going on, something bad.

If the way Fred's expression darkened was any indication, he must've felt the same way. "Let's get to the Front Door. We need to tell Art about this."

Arthur nodded and they continued walking.

It took about ten steps before Arthur asked "Wait, Art?"

Fred chuckled. "Suzy's nickname for the New Architect. I'll explain on the way."

By the time they stepped through the Front Door (which was exactly as Arthur remembered it, a pair of giant dark-oiled wooden doors covered with wrought-iron vines and patterns between two white stone pillars), Arthur had been brought up to speed on what had been going on since his departure.

"So, you're you? Like, the you from the Old Universe?" Arthur asked, still a bit baffled, as he stepped onto the grassy hilltop upon which the Front Door stood.

"The one and only." Fred replied, stepping onto the hill after his friend, having let him through first. He let go of his sword again, and the blade once again chained itself to its owner and hovered just within the doorway, unable to leave the dimension between the House and the Secondary Realms. "Now, I believe we've reached our destination. Welcome back to the Lower House."

Arthur turned to look out over the new Lower House and a wave of recognition hit him. On the face of it, it was similar to the view he'd had last time, the very first time he'd ever set foot in the House. From the hill on which he stood, Arthur could see a great city in the distance, a mass of towers and spire reaching up into the sky. Although, Arthur remembered as he looked up, there wasn't any sky in the House, only a giant domed ceiling, the centre directly above him, hundreds of feet high.

Something was off though, so Arthur looked closer. He saw many of the buildings wrapped in scaffolding, and dozens of construction sites were visible on the outskirts. Arthur looked up again and saw gaps in the distant ceiling, ranging from a couple of yards to about a dozen metres wide. Various objects that look similar to hot air balloons floated around these gaps. "What's all that?" He asked Fred, pointing to the sites.

"Oh, right, I forgot." The Keeper looked out over the Lower House. "The New Architect only recently began restoring this level of the House. Well, relatively recently." He paused in thought. "About… five thousand years our time, maybe six months your time."

Arthur turned to look at him, slightly astonished. He'd almost forgotten how time worked in the House, how it waxed and waned in relation to his own universe's time. He'd had more than enough problems due to its ever-shifting nature. "You mean the House still isn't finished?"

"Unfortunately." Fred shrugged. "The New Architect's been taking it slow, making sure everything works better this time around. Every level is in progress, except the Gardens. And the Far Reaches. Didn't have to put much effort into those."

Arthur nodded. It made sense and, he realised, was creepily similar to what he would've done. The overall complexity of the House and its organisation had been a problem on more than one occasion. "And the denizens?"

"Oh, they're still chain-bound by tradition and protocol, but now they've got a slight measure of self-thought." Fred gestured around them. "A place like this, there's no choice. Everything has to be organised." He suddenly looked up. "Oh, there's your ride."

Arthur looked up and saw a pillar of light descending towards them from the ceiling, landing a few metres to his left, before disappearing to reveal a square construct not unlike a telephone booth made of gilded metal and wood. Arthur immediately recognised it as an elevator. He looked back at Fred. "Oh, that's good. I was worried I'd have to take the stairs."

Fred gave a hearty laugh and Arthur couldn't help but smile. "I'd better get back to work." The Keeper said, reaching over to grab the hilt of his sword. "I hope to see you again soon, Lord Arthur." He said, bowing slightly.

"Fred, you don't have to call me Lord." Arthur said, the smile still on his face.

Fred straightened back up again. His grin had gotten wider. "Very well, Commander-in-Chief, sir." He snapped off a quick salute and winked mischievously, then let the sword pull him back into the Front Door before Arthur could retort.

Arthur look at the spot where he'd entered the Door, then back out over the Lower House. He felt a stabbing sensation in his heart as memories he'd long buried began to resurface. It hadn't truly hit him that he was here until that moment, taking in the site of an incomplete House that he'd had a hand in destroying in the first place.

He shook his head. No time for that now, he thought as he turned to the elevator. I've got a friend to find.

As Fred re-entered the Front Door, he realized he hadn't felt this good in a long time.

Admittedly, that wasn't surprising. Arthur Penhaligon was the first real friend he'd ever made in the House, and he'd been with him ever since, commanding parts of his army. When the New Architect had brought him back, he'd been sad that his friend was gone, but knew it was the right thing to do. Arthur had been through a lot, and he deserved to live as normal a life as he could.

Still, he'd held onto the hope that they'd see each other again, though he wished it had been under much different circumstances. Arthur was clearly hesitant about coming back, Fred could see it in his friend's behaviour, though he was hiding it well.

However, the Keeper also knew Arthur wouldn't abandon his friends, especially Suzy, who'd been through so much with him as well. How many times had she told him about the time they flew into a whale's mouth in a rickety submarine, or the time that she'd flown down the darkest pit in the Lower House to find him?

Fred smiled as he remembered the fervour with which Suzy told her stories. It wasn't often that they got to visit one other, what with being quite literally chained to his job. When the New Architect had restored him back into being, strangely the sword had come with, along with its conditions and bestowments. Somehow He had been able to get some leeway though, the chain was evidence of that.

However, the few times he had been able to take a break, Suzy had created a small door he could use to visit her. They'd sit for hours, just talking about the past, all the things they remembered from the Old Universe. Normally, such talk would probably make them melancholy, but his optimism combined with Suzy's tendency towards somewhat outrageous claims meant he always went back to work in a cheerful mood.

His smile turned to a frown as he wondered where she could be right now. He'd searched the Front Door constantly since her disappearance, looking for any sign something was amiss. He knew Giac and Scamandros were doing the same within the House. The only clue they'd had was from the doctor, who'd apparently checked a hiding place he'd constructed for Suzy and himself.

'She was definitely there, of that I have no doubt.' He'd explained. 'An elevator was used by her to get there, but there's no record of an elevator leaving.'

'Any other clues there?' Art had asked.

Scamandros had shaken his head. 'None. Something felt… odd, though. I couldn't explain why.'

After that, the New Architect had gone down to check Himself, but had returned with nothing. Beyond that, they'd been having no luck in their search.

Until now. Fred thought to himself, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the clipboard again, scanning over the records once more. If Suzy was able to leave the House, there must be a discrepancy here somewhere. I just have to find it. He turned his focus fully onto the information, checking every name, every time stamp and every detail.

Such was his level of concentration that he almost didn't hear his attacker approach.

There was no purpose for air in the Front Door, since usually those that passed through it did not actually pass through the space itself, but instead were connected to another destination immediately. Breathing within the Front Door was aided by a bubble of air created by his own power that automatically formed around him and anyone else he'd let inside. It was the displacement of this air that alerted him to the presence of a heavy object rushing towards his skull.

He jumped to the side, forming a platform underneath him as he did so, just as the object passed through the place his head had just been. It'd been so close he'd felt it breeze past his ear. His head shot up, eyes darting left to right in search of his assailant, swinging his sword around to illuminate his surroundings. The light fell upon nothing. They were gone.

Or so he thought. A moment later, his bubble of air was disturbed again and he was barely able to turn in time before something or someone barrelled into him at speed. The air was driven from his lungs and he stumbled back, small footholds forming beneath his feet automatically.

He had but a moment to get his bearings before a clenched fist lodged into his jaw, snapping his head up and knocking him fully off his feet, leaving him floating as he lost the ability to ground himself.

He could taste blood. He tried to turn towards his attacker, but as he did so something slammed into his stomach and drove him down to crash onto a platform below him. His attacker was above him now, but his vision was blurry from the onslaught of strikes, so he couldn't make out their features. They were holding something long and shiny.

Then a familiar, shaking voice spoke up "Fred… I'm sorry…"

Fred gasped and he felt his chest flare up with pain. "Suzy?"

He heard no response, as a moment later, he'd been knocked unconscious.

Hello, anyone who is still watching this story.

I have no excuse for how long this took. I got absorbed by, like, a million different fandoms before I was able to get back to this. Still, I hope this chapter makes the wait worthwhile, though not much happens ^_^

I hope you enjoy and have a pleasant day ~Prismboss