Elsewhere in Dreams

At work these days, I really can’t do the amount of work that’s put in front of me. I really can’t. I’ve mentioned this before, and recently, even, but it’s just getting worse and worse.

We have three salesmen, where we once had no salesmen. These are people dedicated to getting us work, and they do. Unfortunately, Ed and Jerry both used to help around the office, but now spend most of their time actually selling stuff. So I’ve lost those two helping hands. Elyssa is pregnant, and leaving in a few weeks. So I’ve lost that set of helping hands. Margaret helps out a lot, and there’s still Rebekah. So basically there are two people to handle all the grunt work. Where once there were at least four, and sometimes five.

I have no one to delegate to. I have to do everything myself. I have no help to do things that need to be done but are secondary tasks. I have no associates, no team, no nothing to help me get the work done. Not a living, breathing soul to keep me accountable, to make sure that I’m actually getting stuff done, to work with me to eliminate errors.

It’s not that these people are hard to find. Office workers are pretty much a dime a dozen, if you’re willing to train them. It’s not like they’re terribly expensive either. I mean, I understand that your human cost is high in any company, but it’s a necessary cost, you know? Eliminating jobs by attrition may be good for the bottom line, but I doubt it’s a very good strategy overall.

So I don’t know what I’m going to do around here. I can’t keep saying, “Well, that didn’t get done because I didn’t have enough time in the day to do it,” because that’s starting to sound like a line, I say it so often. I work ten hours a day here, regularly. I’m not stupid. I’m not working dumb.

And it’s not just me. Everybody here is pretty much either underpaid or overworked, and sometime both.

I’m still not sure how to make this work, you know? I’m getting extremely stressed out with the amount of work I have waiting for me. It’s like this huge thing, always trailing behind me. And it’s really getting on my nerves.

Two Empires (Original Post)

When the last of the servants had left, bearing empty plates and bowls to the kitchens eight levels above, Orrenkhendis scanned the room for any remaining people and unrolled the parchment. It covered most of the table, brightly coloured, highly detailed. He placed an iron triangle on the map, and sat back. “We’re ready for the Don Ampheti,” he said, pursing his lips. “You concur, I think.”

The woman to his right, the only other person in the room, nodded. Her face was hidden by an intricately carved red mask, its eyes and mouth slanted in a perpetual frown, her voice muted from behind the polished wood. “Only one more city, and a few nomadic tribes, Orren. Not difficult.”

“But which path?” he asked. “The army will be vulnerable in the mountain ranges, the plains are no more than a pleasantly-named desert, and we have no ships to send by sea.” He motioned to the body of water that lay beside the city, the sea into which the river Amphet emptied, after which the city and its surrounding fertile areas were named. “At least not in the time frame we’re looking at.”

“No,” the woman replied. “Though we could hire Don Khellev mercenaries to ferry the Twelfth, if we could trust those butchers with anything more than wheat and glass beads.”

Orren grunted, and was about to say something.

When the iron doors split open in a burst of sorcery, and figures began to spill in, scimitars drawn. Behind them a mage, Theriar perhaps, hands reaching out, fire extending from them and into the throne room. The table splintered and the map burst into flame before Orrenkhendis threw a ward up around himself and the Mask. Fire began to lick at the sides of the ward, rising against it as if climbing an invisible wall.

A strong mage, then, drawing on the Canton of Fire. Almost enough to overwhelm Orrenkhendis, who felt a flicker of fear, unease at the power displayed in the room. No mage he knew had such sorcery at his command. None except himself, and even he disliked the Canton of Fire, for what it did to those who used it. What it took out of its practitioners. No, Orrenkhendis was a practical mage, drawing even now on Elnomia Serrc, Realm of Dreams.

But fire can only be tricked for so long. The wall that was not a wall began to collapse. The sorcerous fire began to seep though, as the figures beyond held back, scimitars still drawn. Orreen could sense the fear in them, and the terror in the heart of the Mask. Something new. He had never known the Mask to afraid of anything. So, he would have to be unpredictable. Do something different. Redoubling his call on Serrc, Orrenkhendis prepared to call also upon Elnomia Jekkhyr.

The ice would probably kill everyone in the royal house, saving only himself and the Mask from being trapped in the glacier this building would become. Perhaps an entire section of the city.

He prepared to draw upon the Canton of Ice as the fire consumed ever greater portions of the room. He prepared, but never had the chance. Orrenkhendis and the Mask disappeared, the ward vanishing with them, flame engulfing where they had just been.

Just outside the double doors, the mage blinked and lowered his hands. In a moment the fire snuffed out, smoke disappeared, embers glowed brightly and turned to ash. The mage swiped the sweat from his brow, at the same time feeling where his ritual tattoos had grown, where the scars had deepened, where his skin had become more like leather than before. He felt old, but even at his age had not seen anything like Orrenkendis’ disappearance. This is ever so slightly odd, he thought.

* * *

The fire had disappeared, the throne room had disappeared, everything had disappeared. The Mask looked around shakily; they were somewhere… else. Somewhere she had never seen, a place out of a nightmare. Above, the sky roiled in slow, ceaseless movement, different shades of grey moving in and around eachother, hiding whatever sun provided the seemingly sourceless light. Warm and moist, the air seemed to move in concert with the clouds as if driven by some unseen force, a push that could not rightly be called a wind.

As she scanned the area, the Mask saw countless ruins, packed together. They were standing in what had once been a city, and a fairly large one by the look of it. A city so old that what was left of it was little more than stone and rubble. Pillars rose from the ground, supporting nothing. Flagstones tilted at strange angles, fissured strangely.

An intake of breath to her left. Orrenkhendis, staring wide-eyed at their surrounding, and then almost smiling, as if he recognised the place. “You know where we are?” he asked.

The Mask shrugged. “A dead place.”

Orren rubbed his hands together in obvious delight. “No, much better than that,” he said. “Much, much better than that. This is the Canton Elnomia Serrc.”

“Even I know that Canton isn’t a realm proper,” the Mask said, frowning. “There’s no way to get there because there is no there.”

“An impressive elocution, dear Mask,” Orrenkhendis replied, “and entirely correct. But it appears that the Canton of Dreams has been deceiving us, after all this time. This place is thick with the scent of it.”

“And things decaying,” she said. “But enough talk. We have a situation to attend to.”

“In the palace? I’m sure they’ve figured out we’re not quite there anymore. And no one’s going to launch a coup if the emperor can’t be found. I could poke my head out — or in — any minute.”

“So what, we explore?”

“We explore. Come.”

Orren took off briskly, the Mask following him, their shoes kicking up dust that, as far as they could tell, hadn’t been disturbed for hundreds of years, dust that mixed with an oddly cold low-lying mist that came and went. Only a few feet, and the Mask laid a hand on her companion’s shoulder. “Look,” she said, pointing past a pillar, to a dead tree rising from a pile of rubble.

“Most strange,” Orrenkhendis said. He stroked his beard, contemplating the tree. “Now who would have the sheer strength to do that?”

A massive demon had been nailed, four limbs stretched out above and below its head, to the tree. It had six eyes, a gaping maw lined with crooked though deadly-looking teeth, and fingers tapering to almost delicate points.

The Mask stepped forward, examining the demon more closely. “I wouldn’t want to meet this thing in a dark alley.”

“Indeed, you would not,” it said, or rather, hissed. Orrenkhendis and the Mask both gasped and stepped back. Two of the six eyes opened, staring at the emperor and his consult. Pupils like a cat’s set in blood-red eyes. An off-putting look.

Orren recollected himself quickly, and addressed the creature. “Demon, you are a resilient sort of beast, aren’t you. Nailed to a tree for how long and yet still alive?”

The demon closed its eyes again. “Ah yes. You two. I was set here seven years ago to watch for you, Orrenkhendis and Doth Leane. Or as I believe you call yourself, the Mask. Appropriate for the Realm of Dreams.”

“Ah, so it’s as I thought,” Orren said, grinning. “Very much a Canton in its own right, is it not, demon?”

The demon approximated as much of a shrug as he could manage. “More no than yes. Depends. Look at it right and yes. Or no. But hold, Anachronist approaches.”

They turned to see a cart drawn by five lumbering oxen, a broad throne mounted on top. A dessicated figure sat atop the throne, wrapped in a grey cloak and hood. The fabric seemed to swirl and twist with the clouds above and mist below, though the Mask couldn’t tell whether it was moving itself or simply reflecting its surroundings.

“You may leave,” the figure spoke, low, coughing, as if the effort of the sentence was almost too much. The oxen scampered off — not quite oxen then, the Mask thought, noticing the way their limbs bent the wrong way — though whatever had bound them to the cart had vanished. Or had simply never existed.

Orrenkhendis regarded the figure on the throne with a smirk. “You are the god of this place,” he said. “A broken god by the look of it.”

“Brave, mortal,” the figure replied between hacking coughs. “Not so long ago… I would have made you regret it. When the name Anachronist was a curse on the tongues of men… and gods.”

The Mask surprised herself by speaking. “Then you either can’t, or don’t want to. Why?”

A shrug. “I am dying.”

“Then you should seek the Canton of Life, not mere mortals,” she replied.

“Mortals… are almost never mere,” the god replied. “And immortality almost never as immortal as one might imagine.”

“You seem to have garnered an impressive talent for alliteration,” Orren said. “Tell us why you brought us here. Your purpose in this.”

“It is a long story. I would… tell it you. But I am afraid my time is almost… gone. My worshippers disappear from the earth, mage. They… are few. And only in my weakness… only in my weakness have I sundered the seal on this Canton. And… only then to save you, Orrenkhendis.”

“Me,” Orren said, scowling. “But not the Mask.”

“Room for everyone. The mage and the Mask… yes this is good.” The god laughed a rasping laugh that sounded rather like a series of gasps. “How would you like this… this place?”

Orrenkhendis no longer smiled. An entirely different expression worked itself across his face, a look of realisation. And cunning. “It seems like a bad place to die.” The Mask glanced at him. He had begun to lose her.

“All this… for one task.” Ah, that was it, then. A commission from a dying god, and a reward to go with it. “A small thing.”

“We’ll take it,” the Mask said, suddenly. It dawned on her what this meant, then, what all this was for. “Depending on the condition. You agree, Orren?” The emperor nodded.

“A wise choice of… words,” the god hacked out. “And more than you realise, I imagine. One task… to carry me to the Taken Hold.”

Both caught off guard. The Taken hold — suicide. “So we must die with you, is that is?” Orrenkhendis demanded. “Not much of a bargain by any measure I know, Anachronist.”

“Take does not always take,” the figure said, shifting on his throne. “Besides… he is my brother.”

“A revelation,” the Mask said. “How are we to do it?”

* * *

A tear in the fabric of Elnomia Khyrkhul, a red-lined rent, a sound like thunder, and they were through. If the Canton of Dreams had been a place out of a nightmare, the Canton of Death was a place out a nightmare’s worst nightmare. At once pitch black and suffused with a dull, sourceless light, there was nothing in every direction. Nothing at all. If there was a sky, it wasn’t visible; if there had ever been topsoil, it had blown away long ago, replaced with a smooth slate. In the gloom, everything seemed grey, or black. Or a deeper dark than black itself.

Orrenkhendis, himself wearing a duplicate of the Mask’s disguise, stepped through the fissure, followed by the mask. In his arms the surprisingly light form of the god Anachronist.

Glancing around, Orren shook his head. “Take isn’t much for decoration, is he.”

I know, you’re sick of the constant whining. But I gotta say this, I really do. 680 News sucks. Big time. The only thing that sucks more than 680 News is talk radio. Which, as you might imagine, leaves this void on my radio, where most of the AM band is garbage.

Let me explain why. Today, 680 ran a story about Arnold, governor of California, arriving in Toronto. One of the things they keep saying is that “no one knows much about his politics, but tonnes about his movies.” I get that. We’re in Canada, we don’t care so much about Californian politics. But he’s here on a trade deal, so maybe we should, eh? Yet instead of informing the general public of what the Governator thinks and does, 680 sends out a reporter to ask Torontonians what their favourite Arnold film is. Yeah, thanks for raising the level of debate there, guys.

-10 score for pointless, information-light, bush-league, tabloid journalism. You basically found a way to turn a story that could have been about the debate over stem cell journalism, or Republican politics, or the cult of personality, into a crap non-story about a bunch of substandard films.

Then, there’s a story right afterwards about A-Rod (a baseball player or something), being seen with a woman, not his wife, after partying it up at a strip-joint. I don’t even need to comment, but really? A story about a baseball player? In Canada? And not even a Canadian player? Or a player for a Canadian team?

-20 for ridiculous, sensationalistic, paparazzi-style celebrity-magazine so-called-journalism. Another in a long line of things that just don’t matter and no one in their right might gives a crap about.

To top it off, as the coup de grâce, a story about gun crime. Okay, a topic I care about, marginally. Reported on as if it were an epidemic, as if guns are falling from the sky into the hands of our precious children. You know how many gun crimes there are per person in Canada as per the UN? 0.00502972 per 1,000 people, that’s how many. Compare that with 0.0279271 per 1,000 people in the United States. Yes, that would 550% more. And of course no one mentions that though crime may be up slightly, it’s up from historic lows. Yes, that’s right, violent crime in Toronto is down, not up, at least from historic levels. Yet the frenzied calls for a ban on hand guns (a ban, co-incidentally, that no one has taken the time to explain how it will work), the frantic cries of “gun crime epidemic!!!!”, and the shrill sky-is-falling think-of-the-children rhetoric of those out to push an agenda take forefront over a rational approach to what is, yes, a problem. Who is at the forefront of this fear-mongering, you might ask? 680 News. If I hear them use the words “epidemic” and “sweeping gun violence” one more time, I’m going to… well there’s nothing I can do.

-50 score for fear, uncertainty, and doubt. A big thumbs up to 680 News for their quality reports, standards of journalism, excellent grasp of facts and issues, sterling choice of stories, and sense of fair and balanced reporting!!! Way to go, only -80 points from me today!

When the last of the servants had left, bearing empty plates and bowls to the kitchens eight levels above, Orrenkhendis scanned the room one last time before unrolling the parchment. Spread out, it covered most of the table, brightly coloured, intricately detailed. He placed an iron triangle on the map, and sat back. “We’re ready for the Don Ampheti,” he said, pursing his lips. “You concur, I think.”

The woman to his right, the only other person in the room, nodded. “Only one more city, and a few nomadic tribes, Orren. Not difficult.”

“But which path?” he asked. “The army will be vulnerable in the mountain ranges, the plains are no more than a pleasantly-named desert, and we have no ships send by sea.” He motioned to the body of water that lay beside the city, the sea into which the river Amphet emptied, after which the city and its surrounding fertile areas were named. “At least not in the time frame we’re looking at.”

“No,” the woman replied. “Though we could hire Don Khellev mercenaries to ferry the Brittle Bones, or the Twelfth, if we could trust those butchers with anything more than wheat and glass beads.”

Orren grunted, and was about to say something.

When the iron doors split open in a burst of sorcery, and figures began to spill in, scimitars drawn. Behind them a mage, Theriar perhaps, hands reaching out, fire extending from them and into the throne room. The table splintered and the map burst into flame before Orrenkhendis threw a ward up around himself and the Mask. Fire began to lick at the sides of the ward, rising against it as if climbing an invisible wall.

A strong mage, then, drawing on the Canton of Fire. Almost enough to overwhelm Orrenkhendis, who felt a flicker of fear, unease at the power displayed in the room. No mage he knew had such sorcery at his command. None except himself, and even he disliked the Canton of Fire, for what it did to those who used it. What it took out of its practitioners. No, Orrenkhendis was a practical mage, drawing even now on Elnomia Serrc, Realm of Dreams.

But fire can only be tricked for so long. The wall that was not a wall began to collapse. The sorcerous fire began to seep though, as the figures beyond held back, scimitars still drawn. Orreen could sense the fear in them, and the terror in the heart of the Mask. Something new. He had never known the Mask to afraid of anything. So, he would have to be unpredictable. Do something different. Redoubling his call on Serrc, Orrenkhendis prepared to call also upon Elnomia Jekkhyr.

The ice would probably kill everyone in the royal house, saving only himself and the Mask from being trapped in the glacier this building would become. Perhaps an entire section of the city.

He prepared to draw upon the Canton of Ice as the fire consumed ever greater portions of the room. He prepared, but never had the chance. Orrenkhendis and the Mask disappeared, the ward vanishing with them, flame engulfing where they had just been.

Just outside the double doors, the mage blinked and lowered his hands. In a moment the fire snuffed out, smoke disappeared, embers glowed brightly and turned to ash. The mage swiped the sweat from his brow, at the same time feeling where his ritual tattoos had grown, where the scars had deepened, where his skin had become more like leather than before. He felt old, but even at his age had not seen anything like Orrenkendis’ disappearance. This is ever so slightly odd, he thought.

* * *

The fire had disappeared, the throne room had disappeared, everything had disappeared. The Mask looked around shakily; they were somewhere… else. Somewhere she had never seen, a place out of a nightmare. Above, the sky roiled in slow, ceaseless movement, different shades of grey moving in and around eachother, hiding whatever sun provided the seemingly sourceless light. Warm and moist, the air seemed to move in concert with the clouds as if driven by some unseen force, a push that could not rightly be called a wind.

As she scanned the area, the Mask saw countless ruins, packed together. They were standing in what had once been a city, and a fairly large one by the look of it. A city so old that what was left of it was little more than stone and rubble. Pillars rose from the ground, supporting nothing. Flagstones tilted at strange angles, fissured strangely.

An intake of breath to her left. Orrenkhendis, staring wide-eyed at their surrounding, and then almost smiling, as if he recognised the place. “You know where we are?” he asked.

The Mask shrugged. “A dead place.”

Orren rubbed his hands together in obvious delight. “No, much better than that,” he said. “Much, much better than that. This is the Canton Elnomia Serrc.”

“Even I know that Canton isn’t a realm proper,” the Mask said, frowning. “There’s no way to get there because there is no there.”

“An impressive elocution, dear Mask,” Orrenkhendis replied, “and entirely correct. But it appears that the Canton of Dreams has been deceiving us, after all this time. This place is thick with the scent of it.”

“And things decaying,” she said. “But enough talk. We have a situation to attend to.”

“In the palace? I’m sure they’ve figured out we’re not quite there anymore. And no one’s going to launch a coup if the emperor can’t be found. I could poke my head out any minute.”

“So what, we explore?”

“We explore. Come.”

Orren took off, the Mask following him, their shoes kicking up dust that, as far as they could tell, hadn’t been disturbed for hundreds of years. Only a few feet, and the Mask laid a hand on her companion’s shoulder. “Look,” she said, pointing past a pillar, to a dead tree rising from a pile of rubble.

“Most strange,” Orrenkhendis said. He stroked his beard, contemplating the tree. “Now who would have the sheer strength to do that?”

A massive demon had been nailed, four limbs stretched out above and below its head, to the tree. It had six eyes, a gaping maw lined with crooked though deadly-looking teeth, and fingers tapering to almost delicate points.

The Mask stepped forward, examining the demon more closely. “I wouldn’t want to meet this thing in a dark alley.”

“Indeed, you would not,” it said, or rather, hissed. Orrenkhendis and the Mask both gasped and stepped back. Two of the six eyes opened, staring at the emperor and his consult. Pupils like a cat’s set in blood-red eyes. An off-putting look.

Orren recollected himself quickly, and addressed the creature. “Demon, you are a resilient sort of beast, aren’t you. Nailed to a tree for how long and yet still alive?”

The demon closed its eyes again. “Ah yes. You two. I was set here seven years ago to watch for you, Orrenkhendis and Doth Leane. Or as I believe you call yourself, the Mask. Appropriate for the Realm of Dreams.”

“Ah, so it’s as I thought,” Orren said, grinning. “Very much a Canton in its own right, is it not, demon?”

The demon approximated as much of a shrug as he could manage. “More no than yes. Depends. Look at it right and yes. Or no. But hold, Anachronist approaches.”

• WORDPLAY
  The essential plots of everything, ever.
  (tags: fiction literature writing)

“Do you know what this is?” the curate asked as they circled the tree, their horses pulling strangely at the reins as if willing their riders to move away.
One of the acolytes nodded. “From the Book of Ancestors,” he said. “One of Scylgrogh’s trees.”
The curate pulled to a halt. “Yes,” he replied. “Or as they are properly called, the Lograel.”
Another acolyte had tied his horse to ancient, crumbling pillar, and was walking around it, staring at the bark. Seven faces, expressionless, seemingly ageless, stared back. Seven faces, not carved into the bark, but formed from the wood itself. Though the faces were weathered with age, the features were clear, sharp, unnaturally so.
“I recognise four,” the acolyte said, brow furrowed as he examined the three others, “but what are these?”
“The first is an uncommon race, though one very much still extant on the far continents,” the curate said. He leaned heavily on his staff, wrinkled skin tanned and as expressionless as the faces in the tree. “The other two are a mystery, even to me. Some say they are races that once existed, but have died off. Other think they are races that have simply disappeared. Others still think these are the two races that will return at the end of time.”
The acolytes crowded around the tree, examining the strange features. “Tusks,” one said. “No race on Thyr has tusks.”
The curate nodded in agreement. “And look at the size of that last creature’s face, whatever it is. Some of the schools think it stood ten feet high.”
“Then their coming would indeed be the end of the world,” someone said.
“Who knows why these trees grow?” The curate scanned his group. “Certainly one of you must remember this.”
A thin figure, hardly even a man, shorter than the others and afflicted with a strangely curved back, spoke. “They grow wherever there is a confluence. Wherever there is a massing of power.”
“Duket. Right as usual,” the curate replied, smiling ever so slightly.

* * *

“You should have been a mage!” his father thundered, towering over him with the implied threat of violence he always exuded. The warlock king seemed to reach skyward, as if his sorcery were more real than him, as if the weaving together of his power was more substance than trickery. When he called on all seven of the Paths, the power he wielded was beyond impossible, beyond reality.
And it didn’t help that he was mad.
The boy had never stood up to his father. Though related by blood and flesh and time, they were a different breed. They spoke a different language into the fabric of the world, and the friction of their mistranslations mangled that fabric. Horribly.
It began with a certain tension. You could see it around his eyes, the straining muscles, the clenched jaw. If his father, if Scylgrogh saw it, he paid it no heed, as if he was unaware what lived inside his son. With all his sorcery at his fingertips, with all of his thousand years and the piercing insight it brought, his child was opaque to him, a realm that — unlike any other realm — remained beyond his understanding. And in Scylgrogh’s burgeoning rage, he sought only to humble. He sought to beat it down, to destroy it. As always, he failed.
It began with tension, and turned into rage, the sort of white-hot rage that leaves no place for rational thought, the sort of rage that can only barely be contained.
He began to weep in the centre of the temple. The priests hung back as his passion turned to tears, and tears eventually to dull acceptance. They could see the power coursing underneath the boy’s skin, and understood that he was a Path of his own. More powerful even the Scylgrogh, filled with a sorcery more ancient than his father’s, a sorcery that had long before faded from the memory of the races of Thaepha.
A priestess comforted him then, when the memory and the power it provoked had begun to fade, a hand on his back, soothing him. A priestess of his father’s temple, whose name he did not know. She kneeled beside him, helped him to his feet, all the while weaving a web of sorcery around him, for what little good its healing might do.
The boy returned to his father’s house that night, when the memory faded. His father would be receiving reports from his armies, spelling out for his commanders what must be done. Which fields of battle must be sought, and which must be abandoned.
He wondered how many of those men hated Scylgrogh as much as much as he did. Or if any of them respected the tyrant, rather than simply fearing him. He wondered what it would be like to own seven realms of power but not own the love of anyone.
Except his mother. Why she stayed, he would never know. Why she loved the one man the rest of the world either worshipped or feared. That, the son though, is insanity.

* * *

The curate turned back to the tree, as the sky began to turn brilliant colours with the setting sun. “I have not told you this story,” he said, motioning to the Lograel. “But you are standing on ground that has seen the most powerful confluence in the history of this world, perhaps in the history of any world.”
“You mean the Sundering,” one of his students said. Eyes widened in the group as they realised where they were, and what events had unfolded here.
“Yes,” the curate nodded. “Your school has taught you that a Sundering took place, but not its method and its brutality.” He paused for breath and continued, “This is where the warlock king was killed by his son.”
More shocked looks. “What sort of son would kill his own father?”
“Perhaps,” said the curate, “you should be asking what sort of father deserves to die.”

* * *

He was eating the mid-day meal when his father stormed into the hall, his mother on his heels.
“What is this?” Scylgrogh screamed, tossing at the boy’s feet a painting. The painting that he had been labouring over for months. It clattered against the flagstones, the wooden frame cracking and splitting free. “What is this?” his father screamed again.
They both knew what it was, of course. The warlock king had no trouble understanding its meaning, its portent. There could only be one reading of it, a canvas filled with pile upon pile of dead bodies, ravaged armour, and tattered standards. It was the Imperial army, laid waste and scattered across a seemingly endless plain. It was Scylgrogh’s ambitions… destroyed.
Then it snapped. The white light of rage and power and sorcery in his head, through his body. He sought to contain it, he sought to keep it inside as the force of it gathered. He sought, and succeeded.
A confluence of forces as his father called on each and every of the paths: madness, of course, enough sorcery to destroy not only the royal house, but the entire continent. Maybe even the world, should he wish. He called and they answered in twisting ribbons of light streaming from the warlock king’s fingertips.
The boy rocked back on his heels at the detonation, but did not fall. He watched as fire consumed the hall, watched the walls crumble, watched the roof buckle and fall inward.
He watched as the painting danced like a living creature on the floor, but was not touched. Was not destroyed.
He watched his mother retreating backwards, her face a mask of terror as her skin began to burn.
And the son sought to save his mother.

* * *

“Enough energy to attract the attention of the Primal God himself,” the curate said. “It was that day this tree and all others like it began to grow. Wherever there is a gathering and outpouring of sorcery, when those who wield it too broadly meet in a place and form a critical mass, a Lograel grows. Some say the roots of these trees extend throughout the entire world.”

* * *

What Scylgrogh felt for the first time in many centuries was fear. Fear that somehow all his power was not enough. His son, that darkness he had ground so often underfoot, that void he could not plumb, had become something altogether different, somehow foreign but at the same time altogether familiar.
Something terrifying. Where the warlock king lashed out with power, his son absorbed it. Where he drew back, his son’s power filled. But in his fear and rage he forgot his wife, the queen, who stood behind him, slowly burning to death, now bleeding from her eyes, from her nose, blood seeping over her lips, bubbling out of her lungs.
One last scream was enough to distract him. And enough to seal his fate.
The warlock king whirled to see his wife, realising with a growing revulsion what he had done. Before he could gather his thoughts, he was lifted into the air, painfully, agony coursing through every nerve in his body. He screamed as he rose, as the pain grew and grew, as each moment brought a fresh wave, as each passing height of torture passed and an impossibly greater height of torture began. He screamed, and the world shook with his voice. He called with one last burst of sorcery on Path Maothurra, and felt it fracture with his mind. The Path itself torn to pieces, riven, split into countless fragments.

* * *

“He screamed,” said the curate, “and the world stopped.”

* * *

The world stopped, and The’er himself stepped from his realm, light streaming through the rift. It sealed behind him, as he surveyed his surroundings. “I have watched this long enough.” The Primal God spoke in the ancient tongue, a language beyond time itself, a language of which the world itself was formed. “One world already torn apart. Six others in mortal danger. And this, the world of the humbled, containing power that does not belong to it.”
Son and father held immobile as The’er spoke, the son a dark blot on the face of the world, the father a distant spot in the sky.
“I will make an end to this now. Warlock!” he shouted into the sky. “I require of you the blood of countless races, of which I measure from your body from this day forward. You will be a seal on the whole Paths, that no such power shall be wielded on this world again. And Loathgrael, I require of you the Path that you are to yourself, which I shall measure from your body as well. Your father will seal shut, and you will break apart.”
Both Scylgrogh and Loathgrael vanished from sight. Where the son had been, a tree stood, its roots reaching deep into the earth, seven faces, one for each of the races of Thaepha. And where the father had been, nothing.

* * *

“So they died.” The curate motioned for one of his acolytes to help him back on his horse. When he had mounted, he continued, “And so the races of this world lost the memory of the other Paths and how to access them, leaving for us only the Riven, or as some call it, the Path of Tears. But come, we must not linger here much longer. The Lograel are dangerous come night.”

The tree watched them go. It watched and remembered, and as it did the faces in its flesh began to whisper, their lips moving crudely in the fading light. If the curate and his acolytes had been there to hear or been able to understand the ancient language, they would have heard seven voices correcting the story. They would have heard the most human of the faces whisper the name of his mother. They would have seen sap run like tears and fall to the ground.

Situation: The Mozilla dev team is adding a thing called Places into the 3.0 branch.

Response: People are all like, “oy vey how will this help me?”.

My commentary: People don’t know what they want before they get it. They instinctively want what they had before, unless they’re forced to accept an alternative. Like tabbed browsing, for instance.

Women, stop making excuses for your men. They’re not having a bad day, they didn’t wake up on the wrong side of the bed, they don’t just every once in a while do that, they’re not flawed but essentially good people, they’re not whatever excuse you’re making.

Look, sin is sin. I don’t talk about it a lot, but still, those are the facts. Whether your husband or your brother or your father or your boyfriend is having sex with animals or screaming curses and throwing stuff at the wall or beating you or constantly demeaning you, it doesn’t matter.

It comes down to whether you’re helping or hurting? Because I know this much: excuses never make anything better. You cover something up, it doesn’t go away. It grows.

There’s pretty much nothing in the world that can destroy that last vestige of respect, that can tear away the one tiny remaining shred of hope, that can crush whatever slim aura of dignity managed to survive, that seeing a grown man act like a spoiled, petulant three-year-old. And then seeing him do that over and over and over again well into middle age.

That’ll do it, Mr Ballmer.

A note on this list: these are actual things, not concepts.

1. MPAA/RIAA (destroyed)
2. Spam and spammers (destroyed)
3. Microsoft Windows (destroyed)
4. McDonald’s (destroyed)
5. Software patents (destroyed or drastically changed)
6. Robusta coffee (destroyed)
7. The internal combustion engine (drastically changed)
8. City density (drastically changed)
9. Films that rely on effects rather than plot (destroyed)
10. Commercials and ads sprinkled everywhere (destroyed)