The Lords and Ladies

888

The numbers flared on the page; Talon tried to focus on them, on their connections, but the thought of the stranger he met yesterday intruded. Yet he kept answering the questions the proctors pressed onto the board at the front of the room, the mathematical liturgy continued. Looking up, he could see them twist and swirl in three dimensions and yet another, and in his hand his writing utensil seared across the page, but he could see other things in the numbers, shadows, monsters. Soon enough a bell rang, and soon enough the children sat back as if exhausted. Like Talon their brains were numb with numbers and figures and the intrinsic connections between them and those values' intrinsic connection to reality. He closed his eyes as the proctor collected his reams of paper. His head lolled back over the backrest of his seat.

"Mr. Dulsur, you may be done with your revelation for the day but it is inappropriate to sit so slothfully." The proctor critiqued from the front of the room as hefted the reams of forms he'd collected from the class onto a desk.

A bell tolled the children roused from their numb state to one of mild excitement. The proctor sniffed and looked across the room and then with a seemingly disappointed sniff of acceptance nodded.

"Yes, line up children. It is time for the midday meal, make ready your thanksgivings to the Lords and Ladies, for such an indulgence." The proctor said, as the children scrambled from their seats. "Orderly now, orderly, you're not a mob of ne'er-do-wells, your surveyors for the revelation of the paradigm! Act it!"

The scramble shunted into a shamble then a finally coalesced into an orderly line as the children filed out of the room. Talon walked within his line, down the stairs to a commissary, he grab a tray and was dished out food, sticky, filled with carbohydrates, proteins and fats, mostly in the form of oils, but gray, nearly flavorless. This was the indulgence of the lords and ladies, nutrition without the 'baggage of distracting flavor or texture'. He frowned at this and sat down at a table, with other children from his 'revelation'. His mind went back to the stranger he'd seen, some days ago, whom he had helped hide from the magistrate guard. He was strange man, a man that said things against the proclamation, against the order. He had cast aspersions against the Lords and Ladies, saying they were not as they seemed.

There was a chime, and then over the communication trumpets came the muffled but loud voice of the secretariat. "Will Talon Dulsur come to the principium's office? Talon Dulsur to the principium's office."

The children at the table 'oo-ed' loudly and looked at him. A larger boy, named Hiltas shouted.

"What happened Tally, get zeroed out on today's revelations again?" the boy shouted, a crowd of other children laughed and pointed.

"I've never been zeroed out, Tass! Unlike you!" Talon shouted, standing up and glaring at the boy. Hiltas glared at him indignantly. Talon steeled his glare and reported sharply. "I've heard the proctors talk; they frequently are disappointed in your scores, Tass!"

The older boy scowled, but stayed silent as Talon turned and started to walk away. He had never zeroed out, at least when they finally went about properly looking at what he'd written. The proctors had said he had a disability, a failure for his brain to arrange the script in the correct order, as such his scribblings were often difficult to decipher but he wasn't stupid. He wasn't blind to the paradigm as many suggested, he wasn't incapable of revelation, often times quite the opposite.

Talon climbed the stairs up to the office of the principium. He stood in front of the door for a few minutes, judging if he should announce himself or not. Inside he feared that this was not about revelations, but about the stranger, the heretic. He'd helped hide him, helped him get away. What if someone recognized him, what if the principium found out, to help a heretic, to assist them in their heresy, he would be sent home his family disgraced or worse, labeled heretical.

As he mulled the choices in his head, limited as they were, the door swept open. He looked up to see the principium in front of him. A man of average height and, verging advanced age, his hair white, his eyes gray, his skin with the early fractures of age. A mustache pivoting on his upper lip, and brushy eye brows bunching and unbunching as he looked down at Talon. His hands folded behind his back, pressed against the beige robes of his office. His largish nose flared as he sniffed sharply. Talon gulped, they knew, his life, his family's lives were over.

And then the man's face softened he smiled and reached forward and patted Talon on the head, ruffling his brown hair.

"Talon, today is a great day." The principium said as he invited the boy into his office.

"Is-is it, sir?" Talon asked as he stepped into the office.

"Oh, quite yes, very rare for a surveyor as young as you to score a triple extension on their revelations." The principium said as he walked around his desk to a stand behind that bore a reddish cloak. "I dare say I was quite shocked. I've only seen it twice in my career and I've been doing this for many annum. Possibly as long as your parents have been alive, my boy." The principium stood still for a second as if reminiscing before continuing onwards. "On all of Arcadia, it happens only once in a million revelations, very rare." The man reached up and clasped the cloak, pulling it from the stand and sweeping it over his shoulders. "So rare that such an event is directly reported to the Lords and the Ladies…"

"The-the…Lords and the Ladies?" whispered Talon fairly shocked. A small agate of fear coalesced in his soul though. They knew about him then. He was in their sights now.

"Yes, my lad, and you know what?" The principium said, walking towards Talon. Talon silently shook his head in dissent. "They had reviewed the filings themselves and said that it was in fact quintuple extension. The progress towards enlightenment had been extended almost twenty years!" the man said in a cheerful bolt that shook Talon's view of the man whom he'd only known as a stern taskmaster. The principium clapped Talon's shoulder. "The Lords and Ladies wish to hold audience with you, young Mr. Dulsur."

"M-m-me?" Talon gulped.

The principium nodded.

"B-but I thought they lived aloft beyond the world frame!? How can I hold-" Talon's questions flooded forth.

The old man lifted his hand. "Now, now, they work in ways beyond our conception."

Talon stifled his questioning mind, refocusing it as it were to the other issue at hand. The silent issue, the one that maybe was far more pressing than the mechanics of an audience with gods. His dour face must have been obvious as the principium put his hand on the boy's shoulder.

"This is a great reward for preternatural vision, my boy, do smile…" the man said teaching by doing with a thin, but encouraging smile. "We wouldn't wish to disrespect the Lords and Ladies, now would we?"

Talon finally, weakly, insincerely smiled and nodded to the old man. This seemed to quell the man's fears and he led Talon down the hall at the end of the hall was a large, leaden door, covered in strange insignias, it was a door with no locks that yet, was confoundingly locked. There was a sign that said 'administrative staff only'. Many a surveyor had wondered what behind that door, some had rumored it was a secret contraband room, or a special room filled with sweets or fruit, or other such delectables. Others had claimed that it was a secret room that had the fullness of the revelation therein, and if only the surveyors could gain access to said room they would never have to take revelations again.

The man reached into a secret pocket in his robes and pulled out what looked like a wand of some sort. It was made of metal and some kind of hewn glass, the glass glowed with an unnatural light. The principium pointed the wand at the door in several places, and loud 'ker-chunks' could be heard from the door as if heavy locks had been opened. After about seven of these locks opened the door seemed to hiss, a waft of cold air swept past Talon and the old man, who clutched his cloak against himself. The door then, on its own volition slid to one side, revealing a dimly lit corridor.

The principium's face hardened and he stood slightly straighter than before. He gave a sharp glance to Talon who catching the glance affected the same stance, and then following the older man walked forward in a sort of half march, stepping in full stride forward, side by side. Talon tried to see everything he could but the room was surprisingly poorly lit, given the large domes of glass the seemed the dot the conical archways of the corridor, the glass was a similar hewn glass as to what the principium's wand had, and glowed with a similar unnatural vaguely white light.

In the back of his mind something felt wrong. The air was cold, sterile. A cutting cold, the kind you felt during the first shock of winter and then again in the depths of it when it somehow, beyond reason got worse. But it was not the chill that was the problem. Talon stopped and turned looking back towards the door they'd come from. It was now many spans away.

"Do not doddle." The principium sniped, his tone seemingly completely reverting to the authoritarian administrator that Talon remembered him for.

"But, sir, this is impossible." Talon said looking back to the older man.

"Not now, Talon-" The principium groused.

"But we're well beyond the institute's outer walls, at least three stories above the ground." Talon said quietly. His eyes fixed in a quizzical look to the principium. "How is it-?"

"Tis the power of the Lords and Ladies; it is not ours to question or comprehend; the longer we make them wait the more they will take offense." The principium insisted swiping his hand to his side, his index finger extended commanding without giving the words chance to pass his lips.

Talon nodded sharply and fell into step and they continued onwards. There was a hum or a rhythm that seemed to permeate the corridor as they continued deeper. Talon could feel his mouth eager to ask the question but his mind quickly stifled its desire, as he looked surreptitiously to the ever increasingly stern-faced principium.

After several minutes of walking, which by Talon's estimate should nearly have put them in the middle of town by now, the corridor opened up into a large dark abyss for which in the very distance he could just barely make out the faint glowing of the hewn glass in tiny lines that seemed to vaguely make out the outline of an arching ceiling. The principium seemed to take a deep breath and bowed slightly and very quickly Talon got the impression he should also be bowing, and thus did so. As they bowed a bright light came down from on high. Both the principium and Talon winced, though Talon far more so than the principium, promptly a muffled grunt of dissatisfaction from the principium.

"Adlas Tova, is this the child in question?" A voice called from above them. It sounded like a woman's voice sort of, but Talon felt like something was off.

"Yes, my Lady." The principium replied slowly straightening. Talon followed suit, slowly, looking up to see a woman standing above them apparently on a dais but it was hard to tell as the light was very discreet in its presence and fully consumed in darkness where it wasn't.

She was tall, blonde, sharply blue eyed, her skin pale, almost luminescent. Her cheeks and face seemed rigid as if the muscles were made of some kind of unmalleable metal. Her expression was, empty, cold, distant. Her head turned, but it seemed, wrong, both too smooth and yet the movement seemed unfamiliar to the form it had, her eyes stared at Talon, or through him, into him, beyond him. It made him uncomfortable as if he had been stripped naked in front of her, and she was drilling his soul out of his body.

"You are Talon Dulsur? Descendent from the union of Kivmas and Nodra?" The woman asked. Her voice was still wrong, something was wrong, it was cold, and the intonations were off. It was like listening to a Tryka who had been trained to mimic speech.

"Answer." The principium hissed.

"Yes-" Talon said quickly.

"My Lady-" grunted the principium.

"My Lady!" Talon added sharply.

"We have evaluated your revelations." The woman said, almost completely unphased by Talon's response, as if ignoring said response. She glided it seemed, it was hard to tell, with the lighting and her long robes seemingly obscuring her feet, to a podium and seemed to be looking at some kind of report there on. "These results are quite exemplary."

Talon heard it this time, a weird emphasis on the front of the word 'exemplary'.

"Th-thank you-," Talon said and then quickly remembering added, "-My Lady!"

Talon attempted another bow, which morphed into an ill-fated half curtsy.

"Most, unEXpected." The woman said, her eyes turned and cast down upon Talon.

Talon gulped, he felt a stinging pain in his forehead. There was a flicker, a sharp transition that lasted for half a second maybe less where the woman was replaced with some other form, something that was decidedly not a woman. Talon lifted his hand to his forehead slightly.

"Talon, stop fooling around," hissed the principium.

"Apologies, I just…" the pain subsided and Talon resumed his erected posture.

"Is the child, impaired?" the woman asked, coldly.

"It is nothing, My Lady." The principium said, putting his hand on Talon's shoulder, gripping it tightly though not so much in support but as in a form of control. Talon winced slightly. The older man looked up towards the woman. "It is just that he is overwhelmed by the beneficence of your presence, My Lady."

Talon looked up at the woman, and the stinging started again, sharper this time, the flash was longer, the shape of the woman disappeared for a full second, replaced by some creature, some thing, not a person, not like him or the principium, more like a machine of some devising. That was impossible though, machines were heresy…there were no machines on the entire world frame of Arcadia.

Talon shook his head. The principium's grip tightened, causing a countervailing pain that bounced from forehead to shoulder and back to forehead. He looked askance at the woman who seemed to be inspecting him; her eyes seemed to twitch slightly as they scanned him.

"Is some-thing wrong, Ad-LAZZzz?" The woman asked. Her form flashed again, this time the machine form held for longer, and even when the woman's image reemerged the shadow of the machine remained. A pair of hewn lights at the top of the machine flashed. "Annzzerr Ad-LAZ!"

"I'm not sure, the boy is often immature." The principium simpered towards the 'woman'. He turned his attention to Talon and his voice found metal. "Stop this indecency in front Our Lad-"

"It's not Our Lady!" Talon shouted, glaring up at the woman. "It's a machine! A heresy! I've seen you, during the revelations, you are in the numbers! WHAT ARE YOU!?"

"TALON!" The principium shouted. "Do not defile her greatness! How dare you!?"

"This – was an-tiss-ipated." The 'woman' said, the voice shifting the unnatural mimicry becoming something else, grating, screeching. "It was the fate of the others like him and the others."

"My Lady, I do not understand." The principium stammered, looking up to 'her'. "The others?"

"Those who per-ceived, the rev-e-lations of the par-a-digm!" The woman said, to Talon's ears her voice became more stilted, sharp, angry. "The child is per-cep-tive. Poss-i-bly, TOO PER-CEP-TIVE!"

The image of the woman fell away from Talon's eyes. The machine was a similar shape to the corridors, vaguely conical, narrower at the top with a wide skirt at bottom, weird lumps along its frame, a stalk protruded from its 'head', ending in a bright blue burning light, that seemed focused and narrowed upon Talon's position. The thing's metal skin was black, the lumps a burnished gold.

Talon took several steps forward glaring up at the creature, though staring at it hurt. "I have seen your form before, during the revelations, the images come to my mind as I execute the formulations, I see you, and other monsters…other heresies…"

"I'm sorry, My Lady, if the boy has affronted you." The principium stated pushing forward, putting himself slightly between Talon and the creature. "His revelation scores were impeccable, whatever indiscretions he is claiming now, must however be forgiven in lieu of his capability, I am assured it is merely psychosis brought on by being in your presence and majesty-"

"Ad-LAZ!" The creature snapped, with crackling tone akin to lightning. "SI-LENCE!"

The principium stood straight, obeying the directive.

"What do you see, child?" The creature asked, it singular eye focusing upon Talon, its voice as calm as its metallic cadence could achieve.

"A metal creature covered in bumps, a single eye upon a stalk, and appendages one ending in some kind of cup the other, akin to… I do not know. The whole of it looks like some kind of mobile engine of sorts, the kind described in the books decrying heresy." Talon replied, wincing as he looked at it. Despite him fully seeing and perceiving the creature, in his head the Lady's image still was trying to form around it, as if it was imprinted upon his brain. "You take the image of our Ladies and Lords, but you are not them, you are something else-"

"The child is obviously –"

"Cor-Rekt!" The creature said, to the principium's astonishment.

"My Lady!" The principium gaped.

"The child perceives us." The creature said. "The antecedent does not."

There was a rumbling roar from seeming all directions. "As EX-PEC-TED!" The dark expanse seemed to light up, revealing masses of the creatures, with one far larger than the others. This was the source of the roar. "This is HIS DO-ING!"

"The whole Court of Lords and Ladies!" The principium gasped and fell to his knees.

"No, they're-" Talon staggered back.

"HE has poi-soned the matrix well, in-putted our image into the rev-e-lation cycle!" The largest of the creatures growled. "Ev-ery prog-eny is in-fected. He has made it im-possible to u-tilize them to calculate the par-a-digm with-out re-vealing ourselves, our truth would de-bil-i-tate their loyalty, sub-verting the da-ta's re-li-ability. All Skay-Sis da-ta is now in doubt."

"What are you talking about my Lords and Ladies? We have toiled many annums, centarums in your service to bring you to us and allow us to ascend to you! Is this all for nought?" The principium looked up to the creatures, though Talon was certain that the old man did not perceive them as he did.

"A-scend to ussz?" The black creature who had been 'The Lady' said, its rounded top swiveling so its glowing eye bared down upon the principium. "You were ne-VER cap-a-ble of a-scending to OUR LEV-EL!"

"Purge the pop-u-lation, it is yet possible we may be-gin a-gain!" The largest of the creatures said.

"I O-BEY!" the "Lady" said sharply as it's unfamiliar appendage lifted. "EX-TERM-"

Suddenly a klaxon of some type started going off.

"A-LERT A-LERT, TIME LORD ARMADA ON APPROACH!" One of the creatures screeched.

"RAISE – TRANS-CENDENTAL BARRIERS! PRE-PARE TO DEFEND THIS INSTALLATION!"

"What will become of us then My Lords and Ladies?" The principium asked.

The 'Lady' creature turned, looked down at them both.

"EX-TERM-I-NATE!"