Threadbare

Once upon a time Threadbare had seen some dioramas. The Council of Cylvania had decided to host a gathering of artists, since they had a little extra money left over from the festivals of the year. And artists from all over the country had packed their displays and wares and traveled to the city square to show off a great deal of interesting things.

But the things that had interested Threadbare the most were the very small sculptures that their sculptor had called dioramas. They were like paintings except you could look at all angles of them, pick them up and turn them around to get a different perspective. Little houses, rivers, forests, mountains, and even a small village, complete with little figurines of peasants working the fields. The sculptor's eyes had lit up when Threadbare told her what Animators could do with that sort of craftsmanship, and she happily accepted his offer to teach her the job before she went back to her home in the west.

Celia had bought him that peasant village diorama for his birthday, and he played with it when he was at home sometimes, moving the people around and using them to tell little stories.

And right now, here in this dungeon with everything on the line, the only thought he could muster was that he was standing in a broken diorama, a very large one, that had definitely seen better days.

There were houses, and fields, and mountains in the distance, all made of terracotta and metal and lacquer, but most of them were broken. The gutted carcasses of automaton oxen lay in flooded and torn rice paddies, clockwork gears that had been inside them torn out and rusting before their dull glass eyes The sky was ripped and jagged, drooping strips of painted silk showing where the backdrop had been torn from a dull black firmament far above, and the stumps of trees sat in a forest of broken terracotta branches, their metal cores exposed and gleaming in the dull light of the half-lit artificial sun.

And scattered through this were heaps of black, steaming goo. Threadbare didn't need a nose to tell they probably smelled horrible. They marred the diorama like pinpricks to a void below, their black surfaces shiny yet reflecting no light, in a way that made one question the possibility of such a phenomenon.

“This isn't how it was,” Midian said quietly. “There should have been an opportunity to challenge. We should have been met at the gate. This is bad.”

“Let's not give up hope yet,” Threadbare said, looking around. “I'm going to suppose that the Emperor is probably in that palace? It seems like the largest building.”

It made the ruined keep that Threadbare had turned into a golem look positively new by comparison, but it was still recognizably a palace. So, they started making their way over there, taking a zig zag path to avoid going near the goo puddles. The tarry stuff seemed to ripple whenever they passed it, reinforcing their unease.

All save for Karen Mousewife. Twice they had to stop to tell her to catch up, as she hung back to try and pick up broken shards of pottery or tidy a random doorstep.

“Sorry, mum,” the Mousewife apologized to Midian, as she hugged her tail to herself. “When I sees a mess like this, I just feel like I have to make it better.”

“Hey shortstuff,” Threadbare heard a whisper behind him and turned and looked up to find LivingDeadGrrl squatting next to him. “Why'd you bring the muppet again?”

“I'm not sure what you—”

“Her.”

“Oh. Well...” Partly it was because she was one of the few experienced golems he could find on short notice who wasn't tied up with the Eidolon war. But that wasn't the whole reason or the only one, by far. And it wouldn't have been polite to say “well, she was available,” so he summed up the other things. “She's brave; she's kind; she's been through danger with us many times before, and she knows she's not a fighter, so she stays out of the way when fighters fight and takes care of little things that we might not think of.”

“Okay. Total Sam to your Frodo. Got it.” She poked his shoulder and stood up again. “Let's get a move on. I'm getting hungry, and my clown supplier ain't here.”

There was one more reason he'd brought her, but he kept that to himself. He wasn't sure who was listening in this place, and he wanted to keep that particular trick secret, for now.

The great doors to the palace stood ajar, which was good, because the great chains of their counterweight mechanisms lay like entrails strewn across the tiled floor. Dust and ash drifted down from someplace above, and a smokey haze filled the high, vaulted chambers as they walked past broken statues and even more piles of goo. In an inner courtyard they found two whole ponds worth of the stuff and wordlessly went back and tried to find another way around.

It was huge and crumbling, this palace. And deserted, everywhere they looked.

Until they came to a throne room, with an empty and shattered throne and an open door down a short side passage. And from this door, they could hear a creaking of wood and rope, and a slow grinding of stone on stone.

“Let us take the lead,” Midian said, glancing back at LivingDeadGrrl. “He knows our faces.”

Through the door was a small courtyard. The ruin of a small house, barely more than a shack, lay in a heap nearby. There was a pond here, with burnt stems of reeds and charred cattails floating around the edges of the water. And there were deep, deep grooves in the banks of the pond.

The creaking and grinding came from a potter's wheel, tread operated. Slick clay wobbled and formed, under the fingers of a terracotta man.

He was damaged, his silken and painted skin coming off him in strips, and his hair torn and peeled upward, revealing the backing of the wig beneath. Large cracks in the terracotta showed where deeper mechanisms worked, glinting gears and copper wires flexing as he left off his crafting and looked up.

One of his glass eyes was cracked, but the other was so well crafted that, at first, Threadbare thought he had taken a human eye and put it into his ceramic skull.

But no, it was glass, and it panned over them briefly, before he turned back to his work.

“I am sorry, but I am busy,” said the man. “There is a tea set by my house if you need refreshment.”

Midian took a breath, and bit her lip, before deciding to go for it. “Emperor, we have come to—”

“I am busy.”

Creak, creak, creak went the potter's wheel, in the silence.

It was something like the Phantom's aura. Threadbare could not tell if it was a skill or simply raw charisma, but the thought of disturbing this man now filled him with guilt. Clearly, he WAS busy.

So instead, he looked to the Mousewife, and they went and fetched the tea set. It was the finest Threadbare had ever seen, kept in a lacquered box, with sides so fine that he could almost see through it, edged in gold that gleamed in the fading light of the broken sun.

He set out the cups, one by one, then made a small fire while the Mousewife measured the tea and arranged the little ring tripod to hold the pot. His friends sat down around him wordlessly, some shaking with tension from all the recent stress, others calm and accepting of their fate, and Threadbare poured the tea one cup at a time.

He was almost done when the Mousewife looked up, gasped in surprise, then quickly set out another cup and saucer. Threadbare looked up to find the Emperor standing over them, his face torn and its layered silk muscles revealed as his mouth was trembling. Oily tears leaked from the corner of his good eye.

Threadbare poured him a cup, put the pot down, then turned and lifted both arms to the broken Emperor.

Your Adorable skill is now level 111!

He didn't even see the man move before he was crushed to a rather stiff chest and pressed into a wiry beard that was perhaps actual painted wires.

The Emperor's sobs echoed through the garden, as Threadbare hugged him.

Your Innocent Embrace has healed the Terracotta Emperor 108 points!

Your Innocent Embrace skill is now level 49!

Light flared around him again and again, and he felt his sanity start to go as the healing skill worked overtime, drawing from his mental reserves. He felt the world shudder, and he was sobbing too, losing himself in the misery as the Emperor took all the healing he had and kept on going...

...and then another pair of arms wrapped around him, as the Mousewife added herself to the mix, and Threadbare hastily willed his Innocent Embrace skill to inactive before he went mad. The light flared, until the Emperor sighed and gently put him down, pushing the Mousewife away kindly but firmly.

“Thank you. I needed that.”

To Threadbare's surprise, the man's eye was still broken. Quite a lot of the superficial damage was gone, and there weren't as many cracks in his 'flesh,' but it was still very evident that he had been through a very bad time. Threadbare realized that this man before him probably had more hit points than the dragon they'd barely managed to evade.

“My hospitality is lacking,” the Emperor said, folding his legs and taking up his cup. “I apologize.”

Threadbare nodded and tried to speak, but it was hard to think of the words. He felt very much like he had so long ago, when he was first 'born': all clumsy and clunky and barely able to put thoughts together.

Sanity, he thought. I need more. I have something for that, he realized and pulled out the Mana Mana battery from his pants pockets. Taking out its little stylus, he drew a quick sketch of the Emperor, and felt the pressure on his mind ease the second it was done.

Do do the Doodle! Mana Mana battery has healed your sanity 100 points!

The sketch disappeared, and Threadbare looked up and opened his mouth just as Midian spoke.

“Emperor. We need to pass beyond again.”

The terracotta man's lips tightened against his now-mended face. “There is nothing there for you. The abomination guards the way to the Tower.”

“The whate dragon?” Madeline asked.

“No. That thing is its rival. It guards the way to my heaven. What is left of it, in any case.” The Emperor sighed and gestured around him with his teacup.

“What happened?” LivingDeadGrrl asked.

“This? Neh. You were there for part of it. The things you call old ones invaded my heaven. I slew them but not before their madness infected all within here. I had to start over.”

“Start over?” Threadbare asked, looking around at the ruins.

The Emperor walked over to the potter's wheel and took a single piece of parchment from it. He turned it around and showed them.

It was a schematic of a porcelain leg.

“There were people before,” whispered Midian in sudden realization.

“There still are,” said the Emperor. He lifted a hand and pushed it upward, slowly, palm toward the sky.

To either side of him sections of the grassy soil popped open, and two-foot diameter shelves rolled up, with rack after rack of orbs set into stands. Purple crystals glittered and glowed, with almost invisible lines of light shifting among their opalescent centers. The shelves didn't stop rising until they towered well over the group.

“Soulstones,” Zuula whispered. “What have you done?”

“When I ruled, I lost the mandate of heaven. For love of a daemon who was a dragon, I forsook the gods. There was nothing awaiting me after my death save torment, and I accepted that. But my followers... the loyal ones... they did not deserve such. And so I made them this heaven. My heaven. Their bodies are broken now, but the madness the old ones spread is fading, one drop at a time. And for each and every one of these souls, I shall make a new body, better than their first.”

“Daemon dragon...” Chase stopped cold. “The Phantom's play! Threadbare, you were the Emperor!”

The Emperor went, still as he looked down at the bear in shock. “They... still remember me?”

“Yes. You were a great hero and a wise ruler,” Threadbare said. “Though I don't think the part about the gods hating you made it in.”

“Perhaps they have forgiven me. Or perhaps time has ground even the gods down,” the Emperor said, bowing his head and shutting his eyes. His face relaxed, his jowls and beard sagging. This old, old man, listened to the wind in the broken reeds and seemed to think to himself, before nodding. He gestured with his hand, and the two shelves sunk back below the soil, their sodded tops blending perfectly with the rest of the terrain.

As they descended, Threadbare couldn't help but peer underneath. And his darkvision showed him what was down there, with perfect clarity.

More rows and rows of shelves, their racks loaded with soulstones. Thousands, perhaps millions.

How many had stayed loyal to the Terracotta Emperor in his last days?

How many had defied heaven for love of their lord?

Troubled, he drew again on the Mana Mana battery.

Do do the Doodle! Mana Mana battery has healed your sanity 100 points!

He managed four more sketches, before the Emperor seemed to come to a decision. “I will open the way to the Tower, if you wish it. But in exchange, I wish a secret.”

“Specific oah will any do?” Madeline asked.

“Specific. You and you,” he said, pointing at LivingDeadGrrl and Midian. “Tell me how you returned from the Tower.”

“I didn't,” LivingDeadGrrl said. “I ate a hole in the abomination before it killed me. Then I respawned out here. It wasn't a fun time, took me a few days to get my head together. That thing... damn. I can't even begin to describe how wrong it is. It shouldn't be.”

“I did return from the Tower, and I will tell you, but I do not know if it will help you,” Midian said, ears twitching as she looked in the Emperor's eyes.

The Emperor nodded and gestured with one hand. “Tell me.”

“I am not the me who went in there,” Midian said. “I am a Chronomancer. I forked the timeline right before I entered. When the version of me that went in there died, I reconnected with myself. But it did not go well. The barrier adapts. Once you're in the Tower, you cannot look at the world in the same way again. It changes you. I know I cannot do this again, that next time I return, I will never leave it. The Tower... you become a part of it, in a way. It assimilates you. Even time cannot conquer it. It is a place of dreams, and time holds little sway there.”

“I see,” the Emperor nodded. “This explains why none of my bodies have returned.”

He moved to the shores of the pond and raised his hand again, palm up.

And the pond became black, darkness shot through with white dots, a void full of stars.

“Will yourself to move there, and you will,” said the Emperor. “Two of you know the way, so follow them. But the abomination is there, so I will shut the gate once you are all through. Waystones will not work in there. Travel magic will not work either. You must understand what this means.”

Threadbare did.

Once they entered this place, they would never leave it.