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Chapter 2 · Mission One · night two

What Breaks, Frees

Page 1 · Still here

The quarry as the last chapter left it. One Stone dark. Two still ringing. Nobody has moved.

The blue one had just said something to me that I have not finished thinking about.

Monolyth's feet. Planted in the same two footprints, ground pressed down around them.

I had been standing in this spot for eleven minutes.

You can see where I had been standing. That is not a figure of speech.

Behind him, up on the rim, the barracks with the lights on. Small.

Everything I am for is up there with the lights on.

Monolyth from behind, shield out, the pit and the Stones in front of him.

anvilHold.

monolythI am holding.

anvilThen nothing is wrong.

Page 2 · What I was trained to do

A memory. A polished hall. A younger frame standing at a door in dress plate.

The Standing Seat took me at fourteen and taught me one thing very well.

The same memory. Boots on a polished floor, standing on a mark.

They put a mark on the floor and you put your foot on it and you do not move it for six hours.

Back in the quarry. Same posture, worse floor.

I was extremely good at it.

Nobody ever said what to do when the mark is in the wrong place.

Page 3 · Holding

Two husks break against the shield and get nowhere.
The Stones, untouched, still ringing.

I stopped everything that came at me. I stopped it for eleven minutes.

Past the shield, more of them walking up out of the pit toward the rim.

And the pit kept sending them, and they kept going around me.

Monolyth's head turning to follow them. Not moving his feet.

anvilHold.

monolythThey are walking around me, Anvil.

anvilThen they are not your line.

Page 4 · The arithmetic Orca did

Across the pit, the blue frame, wrecked and upright, pointing at a Stone.

orca (off)Monolyth. The near Stone.

orca (off)Not the husks. The Stone.

Monolyth looking at the Stone. The Stone looking like a holy thing.

Local order considers the site sacred. It was the third thing on the list and the only one nobody had to explain.

The offering cords at the base, close.

Somebody had tied those on. Recently. By hand.

Monolyth, still planted, looking at the Stone. Anvil in his ear.

anvilThat is a holy thing and we were told to protect it.

monolythI know what we were told.

Page 5 · Remodeling

The first step out of the footprints. Dust breaking.

Eleven minutes, and then I picked up my foot.

The maul takes the Stone in the flank. Not a killing blow. A shove.

monolythSorry.

The Stone grinds off its footing and keeps singing while it moves.

It moved. Four hundred years of it and it moved like furniture.

Monolyth's own hand, open, looking at it.

anvilYou are not allowed to do that.

monolythNo.

Page 6 · What breaks, frees

The maul comes down on the Stone properly this time.
The shock crosses the pit floor.
In the lane, every one of them stops at once.
And then they run. Uphill, on their own feet, toward the lights.

Break the Stone and the leash comes off. That is what the Stones are for.

That is what they have always been for.

Page 7 · Anvil is not wrong

The shattered base. Cords burned. A carved token in the rubble.

Priority three.

Monolyth standing over it.

anvilThey will take the Seat away from you for that.

monolythProbably.

anvilI am not arguing. I am telling you the price.

Two Stones left, and a hundred people still standing in their light.

Two left. And everyone still standing in their light.

Page 8 · The singer will not fall

Monolyth turns on the Hollow for the first time all night.
The Hollow is not there any more.

It did not dodge. It stopped being anywhere.

It is behind him. It takes his feet out from under him.
Down. Face close to the ground he was standing on.

It put me on the floor twice more after that. I am not going to describe them.

Page 9 · Lock

Up on the rim, in the barracks, the lights go out one hut at a time.
Monolyth's head comes up toward the sound.
His knee. Not straightening.

I told it to stand up.

The same knee. Still not straightening.

I told it again.

Monolyth on one knee in an empty churned lane, the barracks small and dark behind him.

Nothing was holding me down. There was nothing on me at all.

Page 10 · The thing about my Fracture

The granite plating, close, sigils gone hard and cold.

Granite has one failure and this is it.

It is called Fear, and it does not make you run.

Monolyth, immobile, in exactly the posture of the ceremonial hall.

It makes you stop. From outside it looks exactly like doing your job.

Anvil, the light in the granite channels, steady and certain and wrong.

anvilYou are holding.

monolythAm I.

anvilYou have never once let anything past you.

monolythAnvil. Nothing is trying to get past me.

Page 11 · Orca crosses the pit

The blue frame coming across the terraces, wrecked, taking the long way.

The blue one should not have been able to walk.

Orca stops in front of the kneeling grey frame. Does not offer a hand.

orcaI am not going to pull you up.

Teal crossing to grey. Light going out of Orca and into the granite.

orcaI am going to give you the rest of mine and you are going to do something with it.

Orca's chest going dark as it empties.

He had one thing left and he did not spend it on himself.

Page 12 · The ground I came from

Inside the granite. The Cantor's face, older, lined, eyes shut.

The Standing Seat is the Granite order. We are the ground everything else stands on. It says so on the wall when you go in.

The memory. The great hall again, and this time you can see it is empty.

There were four hundred of us when I was fourteen. There were nine when they woke me up.

The memory. Closed doors, a mark on the floor, nobody coming.

We held the doors for sixty years. Nobody ever came through them and nothing on the other side was saved.

Back in the quarry. Amber starting in the seams.

That is the ground I came from. It was hollow the whole time and we stood on it anyway.

Page 13 · Plant your feet

Over Orca's shoulder. Monolyth, still kneeling, looking up at him.

monolythI came from the hollowed ground of the standing seat.

Same shot. He finishes it.

monolythIt taught me that standing still will only ever bring me enemies.

Anvil, the amber light, breaking out of its even certainty at last.

anvil...oh.

anvilYou were never asking me.

Page 14 · Courage

The frame answers. Amber through every crack, shield up, the freed workers streaming past behind.

Fear tells you to run. I have never once wanted to run.

Courage is the other use for it. You take the fear and you put it under the line and you stand on it.

He stands. The knee straightens.
And then he walks. Away from the spot.

Then I did the part they never taught at the Seat. I walked away from where I was standing.

Page 15 · The second Stone

Monolyth crossing the pit toward the second Stone, not stopping for the husks.
The maul, up, against the second Stone.
It breaks. The light goes out of it and out of everyone standing in it.
A woman sitting up in the dust, looking at her own hands.

worker...how long.

Page 16 · Where we stopped

One Stone left. The pit half empty. People running up the slope behind them.

One still burning. The singer still up there, and not one mark on it all night.

Orca, dark, upright, standing because Monolyth is standing.

He gave me the last of it and then stood there with nothing, because I was standing.

Monolyth's feet again. New ground. Different two footprints.

I am standing somewhere else now. It took eleven minutes and a broken holy thing to move eight metres.

Far above the pit, a dropship carved like a manta banks over with its belly open, and three shapes fall out of it.

The Seat is sending more of us.

I am going to have to explain the Stones to them.

Adapted from the Antiphon Chronicle, Mission 1 Session II