234. [INTERLUDE] Dawn Is Dusk

  ToDay, like all Days, Oriole ere’Quinlan heeded first and foremost his own instincts.

  No easy task. For the Gloaming mists spread around, across, over, under, past, through, into, out of, behind, and beyond. The VEILS were everywhere and everywhen at once. Which, naturally, made them impossible to navigate.

  One small step could take Oriole from the abyss of prehistory to the precipice of the known world. No landmark, no guide-rail, no Waystation. Only a Realm rent from time and space, its resident souls landing where they might as their Keeper had (or hadn’t) willed them to.

  Oriole, as a true bearer of [the Mark of the Oathless], landed where only he could. Denied the momentary release of [Unmooring], he’d been doomed to wander the ceaseless Gloam. An existence out of time and space. No beginning and no end yet both at once. ToDay was like all Days because it really was just the one infinitely long Day.

  “Maybe this is how the Keeper exists,” he found himself murmuring aloud. “Against all odds, and out of all the smart, brave, and capable Tiryagas who ever lived and died, somehow I, Oriole ere’Quinlan, have come closest to understanding the Keeper.”

  His quiet musings were met by a loud slap upside the head.

  “Don’t be daft!” Caraway ere’Lochlan was there to chide him, as she’d ever been—before, after, and always. “Yer too daft to have such lofty thoughts rolling around in yer head. Sod the bloody Keeper who, need I remind you, put us here in the first place! Just focus on being Ori, so you can get us out of here.”

  Oriole smiled, even as he rubbed his head. Caraway’s slaps always managed to smart something fierce without ever incurring real damage to its Wayfaring victim. A kind of magic solely unique to the Anchored calico.

  Where would he be without Caraway? Oriole shuddered to imagine being utterly alone in this ceaseless Gloam. He was thankful Tidereigners rarely were alone, even when they were everywhere and everywhen at once.

  Caraway brought him back when he got carried away. She made him laugh in the utter absence of joy and humor. She kept him sane in the incomprehensible face of infinity.

  She was also his purpose. The reason he couldn’t dawdle even as time and space stretched and twisted with no beginning nor end.

  For time did pass for the two souls who’d bundled their way into an endless space. And with every passing Ksana that might as well have been Kalpas, the [Mark] upon Caraway’s chest faded, bringing her ever closer to an end if not the end.

  Oriole had, of course, tried to ‘re-apply’ the [Mark]. Gruesome (and painful) as it was, he’d uncovered Caraway’s self-inflicted wound and pressed THE PLEDGE into it, hoping it might buy her some time.

  It didn’t work. Here at the intersection of everywhere and everywhen, the Keeper had finally deserted him. However Oriole hoped to magic himself and Caraway out of their predicament, he’d need to find the solution from within… or perhaps with the help of another, somewhere in the universe.

  They never talked about it. Would rather talk and laugh about anything else but that. But they both knew. And so, tabby and calico searched desperately for an outlet—a Path to lead them out of the Gloam and back onto solid, enduring reality.

  ToDay, like all Days, Oriole followed his nose. Searching for a scent of salvation.

  The scents too were everywhere and everywhen. They were many things and nothing at once.

  Oriole even recognized some of them. Knew well the souls they belonged to. Moonshine and cinnamon—Loosestrife. Hotchpotch and kindness—Feverfew. Dewdrops on fallen leaves—Zacko. Dirt caked on rusted metal—Renna.

  Yet, try as he might, he couldn’t reach them. Couldn’t untangle the knots and kinks that kept souls and realities bound to the all-enfolding Gloam. The scents tempted him with their infinite possibilities, only to shut the door as soon as he got near.

  The more he tried—the longer he walked—Oriole had to fight harder to ignore a terrifying, despairing thought. That there was no solution. At least not one Oriole could conceive on his own. That he and Caraway were doomed to wander the Gloam until they no longer could.

  How far had they walked? How many abysses to sidestep, precipices to turn away from? How many tales from the Quinlan family vault? How many recollections of starry Nights and festive company? When would they run out of stories to tell, bereft as they were of the time and place to make new ones?

  Yet ToDay, unlike all other Days, light pierced the ceaseless Gloam.

  Oriole could hardly believe it. He dared not move at first, for fear he might lose sight of it, that the VEILS would shift and throw him to the other side of the universe. Yet again, Caraway was there to ground him. She grabbed him by the arm and gave a firm nod. I won’t let go if you don’t.

  Step by lockstep, tabby and calico inched their way forward. The strange light was their only landmark, and a frighteningly tenuous one at that. A single, iridescent ray cut across the Gloam. Yet it floated above the knots and kinks, adrift and absent safe harbor in which to set down anchor.

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  Oriole understood. That this light too wandered. It too sought Paths that refused to reveal themselves. At any moment, the light might float away in search of another lead, lost as it was amidst an endless expanse.

  No, Oriole thought, desperately willing the light to stay. Don’t go. You’re so close. I can see where you’re meant to shine, if only you’d let me guide you!

  Another nudge from Caraway. The grounding force in Oriole’s life, whenever things threatened to get away from him, as they too often did.

  “This is it, Ori,” she whispered, sounding oddly awestruck. “This is the why of you. Why the Keeper decided, once upon a Dawnbreak, to give you a gander of the other side. Yer the one that needed to be here, in this very moment. You and no one else.”

  Oriole understood. Immersed in the Gloam yet forsaken by his Keeper, he looked within for the solution. The darkness that was at once his curse, his refuge, his greatest weapon.

  For the only way to get through to [Light] was to speak with SHADOWS.

  [Oathborn Technique: SHADOW CHASE]

  The light cast new SHADOWS at Oriole’s feet. His own. His and only his to command. He bid them bound across and along the ray of iridescence, showing a Path for it to follow.

  SHADOWS talked, and the light responded. It followed Oriole to a knot in the Gloam, one scented by dewdrops on fallen leaves. The light shone, grew, intensified. Until the knot unraveled into a gossamer ribbon, delicate yet distinct from the rest of time and space.

  For just one Ksana that really was a Ksana and nothing more or less, Oriole saw it. The past, present, and future contained within a singular VEIL. Zacko stood tall under a flickering SKY, fists up to protect Anchored souls cowering behind his back. The apparitions faded as the moment they depicted settled into something solid and enduring.

  The Path widened. The light grew again. It was the outlet Oriole had been searching for—same as someone else on the other side of the VEILS. Together, and only together, they could undo the entanglements that plagued an entire Realm. Give its people—and their Keeper—a blank canvas to paint anew.

  Oriole SENT his SHADOWS for the light to chase. More knots loosened. More kinks straightened. More VEILS fell and settled, together with the choices made therein.

  Along the way, Oriole witnessed more of the Upheavers’ work. Zacko saving a Mriga couple from certain death (very Zacko of him!). Renna digging around inside someone’s brain (that’s… also very Renna of her, I suppose). Disparate actions spanning centuries, millennia, Kalpas, and more. Yet they were all connected. They all led to this moment in time.

  Eventually, the light became so strong and so assured as to all but fill Oriole’s vision. It was across this the thinnest membrane between light and darkness that he met her again.

  Roses bloomed. Butterflies flew. Serene doe eyes upon a melancholic smile. Face to face under the same, expanding sky.

  A slender hand reached out from the light. Oriole answered with his left hand—bare save for an earthy-red gemstone on a copper ring.

  Their hands touched. The briefest of Ksanas. Just enough for the ring to pass from one hand to the other. A PLEDGE fulfilled, at long last.

  The woman faded from view, work still to do. The light remained, but to show the fruits of that work.

  Oriole found himself atop a grassy hill. Above him spread clear skies lit by golden sunlight. Warmth, but not in the way he knew. Well, perhaps he had known it, once upon a long-forgotten dream.

  Overcome with emotion, Oriole reached again for someone to hold onto. A hand answered immediately, belonging to the one soul who was ever by his side—before, after, and always. He drew her in and held her tight.

  “Are you seeing this, Cara?”

  “Yes, Ori, but… yer ring. Her ring. Will you be alright without it?”

  Caraway’s viridescent eyes were wide with alarm—and perhaps something else held back beneath the surface. Oriole understood her concern, yet somehow, he knew he didn’t have to share it.

  The ring was back in its rightful place. Oriole had lost his last connection to the [Mark]. Yet somehow, he knew it would be alright.

  He’d done what he could. Followed his nose to the grandest discovery. The VEILS had parted, opening a Path for tabby and calico to follow home.

  He’d done what he could. But he also knew this wasn’t a one-Upheaver job. Or two-, three-, four-, or even five-, and besides which… who was counting?

  One final knot remained in the Gloam. The tightest, densest, gnarliest of them all. It sat as a VOID at the center of all things, threatening to swallow all light and even darkness—to reject and nullify the struggles of an entire Realm.

  This knot too held a distinct scent, one Oriole knew well. Ash. Embers. Fire that refused to die, until it consumed all in its Path.

  It belonged to Serac.

  Oriole remained motionless a while, lost in thought. He felt a tug at his arm. He turned to see Caraway’s brow still creased in concern.

  “Stop yer worrying,” he purred, brushing his whiskers against hers. “I ain’t going anywhere.”

  And he meant it. He sat down to watch the sunrise, relishing the feel of solid ground after the Keeper knew how long wandering the Gloam. Caraway joined him in short order, adding her scent to the sunlit grass. Marmalade breath over floral perfume. The one constant in all of Oriole’s travels and travails.

  Together, they watched the world be reborn.

  The job was out of Oriole’s hands. It was all up to Serac now. One last knot to untie. Besides, he didn’t think he’d be much use anyway… now that he was no longer a Wayfarer.

  Yes. He’d understood the moment it’d happened. He’d relinquished his Instrument, thereby severing his capital P Path—his connection to Pathsight and all that it manifested.

  And in fact, he found he wasn’t much bothered by it. After all, he’d sort of stumbled into this Wayfaring thing, hadn’t he? Less the universe ceding to one soul’s force of will, and more a crossing of wandering stars.

  Besides, after all that bumbling and wandering, Oriole now knew the simple truth of it. That what he’d been chasing all his life had—all this time—been right under his nose.

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