The Quadrangle Equation

It’s never easy to know what to do next. At any moment, you might need to make a decision. I’ve been doing it for a long time. I do it without others’ opinions, which doesn’t sound particularly special and it isn’t, as most people do the same. I am a Final Man and in a way that makes my decision-making different. Being born knowing you’re the last of your kind is a burden to carry. There were other Final Men. Like me, they had at their hearts’ centres the knowledge that they were special. All of us shared the implicit truth that we were the last creations of our Lored.     Loreds are the makers of peoples — races if you like. There are Loreds for each race; Lored Tyger, Lored Dogg and Lored Dogg’s best friend, Lored Mann. Lored Mann is my maker — all Humanity’s maker. Note I didn’t say master or judge. Lored Mann isn’t around to judge. Something tells me he knew he wouldn’t be around to make decisions about his ‘creations’. He made some of us into judges. I assume it’s because he knew there’d be a need for that and that he wouldn’t be able to manage. He’s long-gone. Wandered off, as best as Human scouts and other races’ best trackers could get at. Some cling to the idea that he’s biding his time — that Lored Mann will return to ‘save the day’. Save what day though and what about the day that comes after that? Who comes to the rescue on the days after the day of reckoning? These are my thoughts. I’ve no idea if my Lored thought the same. We’re called Final Men. He called us that which says he had done with making us. Tired of it, maybe? Perhaps he couldn’t make more? Power used up? I’m not sure about that. It could have been boredom. It could have been that he was tired of it. Tired of Making. It’s possible, people often lay their tools down. Someone will pick up the tools and try their hand for a time until they lose interest as well. Who’s to say that a Lored might not as well?     My own interest in things has been varied and I think that’s why I haven’t retired myself. For a time, my interest was in metals. Not generally, not for long, that is. Pretty quickly, I got straight to learning about which metals could take an edge or better still, take a great deal of abuse. It was me who gave the use of iron to others. Not my proudest achievement but it it’s undeniably my doing for good and bad. That led to all kinds of problems with steel which even now are being resolved. I moved on to other things. I spent a fair while recording aspects of those who stand apart. Not just Humans either but the Veer types and the Diminished and the Vast. Not all of these, just the ones that acted independently. Aloof is not quite the word but something akin to this. They weren’t concerned with the rest of their kinds’ doings. I found people who had this reserve fascinating. Some time later, long after I’d moved on to other interests, some of these types came to be known as being representative of a thing called the Staff of Runes. A staff is a tool of leadership. Runes are like symbols. Symbols have no fears, wants or needs. A staff of runes as a thing to follow is an odd way to proceed but many chose to do exactly that. An object containing symbolic ideas is a pretty detached thing to expect answers from. I couldn’t follow that kind of thing regardless of its power. Others could and did. It was their ‘Fate’, as they called it. They made a distinction between Fate and destiny. Destiny being a different thing. I guess I agree with them on that score.     In my catalogue of interests there’s the period I decided to learn more about Chaos. That’s as it was called at certain points in time. Before and after Chaos was named other names but one specific time it was called Khoascil. Khoascil was the time of Chaos that impacted on me the most. It was in the time of Khoascil that I met a woman who came to mean a great deal to me. Her name was Syrynx. She was a noblewoman of Khoascil, a Duchess of the Courts of Chaos, daughter of House Sax and she became my life’s secret. We came together quite by chance and that to her made it appropriate for a first and casual meeting. I was no courtier of Khoascil and for that I remain grateful but never more so than at that first meeting. She was taken with my nature, so different from those she knew better. I travelled her beyond the influence of the Courts. I showed her the Kingdoms of Dead Gods and the plane of the Staff of Runes. We didn’t stay in any place for long. Our journey was a necessary whirlwind; both to keep Syrynx’s righteous pursuers behind us and between us as our bond grew closer. I know my emotions swept me away as I watched her ride at my side. It was clear she felt something similar. The journey needed to end. Her family wouldn’t rest until she returned. She went back but not before times and places were agreed on, where we could meet. Each meeting was important to me. I lost my wanderlust. I knew my path for what it was. She was where my compass needle always pointed.   There were children. She kept these moments from me. Syrynx knew me too well. In time I grew to understand that my nature would not be sufficient to keep our children safe from the Courts’ ‘tender mercies’. I wasn’t in a position to deny her chaotic mind or mother’s love in these matters. I have not had a chance to ask her if she regrets the decisions she made. I do know that things might have gone better for both my son and my daughter. There’s no means to make those days of childhood over. I know I do have my regrets… Not long ago, I decided that I needed to do something about the situation. I knew some details of the boy, Maldon and the girl, Amplithress. As an absentee-father I admit, I was leery of either of them laying eyes on me. I deserved whatever dislike they might bear me. Shame is not an easy cloak to wear. I chose to seek out my daughter first. Call me naïve but I hoped a daughter might be less spiteful than a son. I’d find my son afterward with the benefit of the experience of meeting my other child behind me.   Amplithress wasn’t an easy quest. I found her trail and lost it again at least a half-dozen times. She was a more-strange combination of her mother’s blood-magicks and mine, than my son. Not that he was ‘normal’. It was more that Amplithress was so very far from the norm. At her maturation – or should I say – when she came of age in the Courts, she was a striking near-image of Syrynx. Her features mightn’t have been quite so perfect but she still was striking. I will take the blame for the less than perfected parts of her but as I say this, I realise I am being too harsh and that few seeing her would see anything less than beauty, when seeing her. Amplithress was only too aware of her mother’s surpassing comeliness. It had tended to cloud their relationship. This isn’t unusual when it occurs. My daughter became stubborn in her attempts to find her own place in the Courts and this led to several encounters that made her a most difficult person to keep track of. She was willful and certain of herself. This took her away from the Courts. The Sax watchers that were assigned to her care were outclassed and lost her whereabouts. She would become a pawn in a strategic game of would-be rulers. I feared for her but my chance to save her came and went before I knew of it. Others tried to save her and managed to make good her security. When I finally got to her she was as closed to me as any great scion of the Serpent might be to one not of their kind. She acknowledged my being her father. That I was this she titled me but in the same breath, told me to absent myself or feel her poisons. I took myself away but not without telling her I would be there for her should she ever call on me. To make this a real thing and not just wistful wordings, I took from my neck one of four necklace chains. These all bear a key hanging from them. The one I gave her was the ‘Key of Stars’. I explained how she might use it to summon me with it. Diffidently, she took it from me. I take solace in that she did not refuse it. I had hopes she might use it in the subsequent days but she didn’t. She still hasn’t. Whether this means she never will or that she may have lost it or her own life, I can’t be sure.     My son, Maldon is another matter. I still have my three other keys hanging around my neck. I know he might have an interest in at least one of them. I also know he is too wisely suspicious to welcome a gift from ‘the old man’. I do owe him a visit though. He deserves a chance to look me in the eye or spit in it. He might not be willing to hear me out. What I have to tell him may not suit his present circumstances. He has managed to get to the Canticle so that gives me a small piece of hope. The place is a vital part of what the Realms have been directed toward since my youth. Does he know of the Quadrangle I wonder? Has he any idea of the other great energies of the universe that work within it and without it? Can he see reason being of chaos? This last is perhaps the most critical thing in the boy’s makeup. I fear chaos is everything to him. How could it not be, given my continual absence? He has sacrificed his place in the Courts. Has he come to terms with that destiny or does he give sanctuary in his heart to a thought of returning to the breast of Chaos? Can’t blame him if he wishes for this. Will he listen to me if I tell him he should now look to his spirit’s other half? Even if he might, will he hear it from me in particular? So many doubts…     There is his companion. Greatly imbued, this Osric Barimen. Imbued but not destined for greatness in a direct manner. His destiny is a fate instead. He can’t ignore it. It comes at him like the charging minotaur of myth. He can’t escape the minotaur’s labyrinth either. Wherever he might venture he will circle back to have to face his personal monster. He won’t survive it. That’s fate for you. Does he accept this though? The Barimen are a stubbornly proud bunch. Rightly, I suppose. Even the maddest ones have a certainty of their bloodline that acts as a touchstone. They can wander aimlessly, act the wastrel or the thoughtless ravager and still wind up exactly where they are most needed. Such is the manner of the first of Lored Mann’s makings. Barimen’s great gift and their great burden. I have met both of the elder Barimen most recently. Oberon was as proud as ever. Gerard was no less a changed man. I couldn’t decide which was more impressive; the constancy of the King or the evolution of the Warden.     Then there’s Osric. Eldest of the Barmien children. What of he? I’ve watched his interactions with my son for a while. I saw what I expected. He plays the Amber game like the rest. He knows nothing of me nor does he ask about me to Maldon. His own rocky dealings with a not-ideal father is the probable cause. I can see why they get along, even if they don’t speak of their bond. His fate is pressing on him. He seems uncaring. I know he ‘s well aware of what comes but he acts mostly as though his end is far-off and not close-by. Brave or oblivious, it won’t change anything so maybe he has chosen to ignore it. Most unlike a Barimen, however… Should I make an offer to him to detour? Give him a ‘free pass’? It could be that his fate is welcome tidings to him. His death might be a release. His mind has suffered in a millennia-plus of incarceration, likely as not. His family’s machinations might bore him. The latest version of a fight for the throne might be enough to make him despair of it all. In some fashion, he has decided to throw himself into the deepest of plunges, submerging his person into a greater spirit than his own. Once he has done it, he will be one with, Tuan Zi. No more Osric. He will become only a series of experiences without much more than a Barimenic-inflected whisper in the ear of the Generational.     Tuan Zi I haven’t been watching. I might have to start at some point but not yet. He’s a notable person. His destiny is all in front of him. He doesn’t know himself as he will. In this he’s no more than any other man. I will have to teach him some things. He won’t necessarily need my words to become what he will but I’ll have a talk with him anyway. Would Tuan let Osric walk away if I asked it? Who can say? I might as well ask it for Furius instead. He too is a Final Man. He too has been fated to become a figure of whispering memory within the Generational. These Final Men are things of the past. The Generational is a man very much of the future. I probably shouldn’t interfere with any of it. I will though as I am a man.     It’s for the same reason that I will speak to others of Humanity that have made the leap from the past to the present. This will mean words with Thebes of Thebes and Renaissance. Do they want to help me? They can’t know the answer until I reveal the question. I have a key on a chain for them if one of them wants to use it. They must answer soon as their answers affect Maldon’s destiny. He may only be half-Human but he is totally my son. I will spare no other man if it might mean making a difference to Maldon’s good fortune. All these must learn of the Quadrangle.     Now I put this notebook away and turn my effort to getting to Maldon and Osric. They’re here in the Canticle’s portion of the third Realm. It’s too soon to aid those in the galaxy that need them greatly but there’s no helping that. The Galactic Canticle will come to them soon enough. They mean to travel but not to the end that I will divert them toward. It’s unfair but all men know that their lives are everything – everything but fair. They’ll get over my manipulations if they are patient enough to listen to me. If not, I will have to turn my interests to something new. There will be the same issue to deal with but I will have to find another path to fend it off.     AbsolomIt’s never easy to know what to do next. At any moment, you might need to make a decision. I’ve been doing it for a long time. I do it without others’ opinions, which doesn’t sound particularly special and it isn’t, as most people do the same. I am a Final Man and in a way that makes my decision-making different. Being born knowing you’re the last of your kind is a burden to carry. There were other Final Men. Like me, they had at their hearts’ centres the knowledge that they were special. All of us shared the implicit truth that we were the last creations of our Lored.     Loreds are the makers of peoples — races if you like. There are Loreds for each race; Lored Tyger, Lored Dogg and Lored Dogg’s best friend, Lored Mann. Lored Mann is my maker — all Humanity’s maker. Note I didn’t say master or judge. Lored Mann isn’t around to judge. Something tells me he knew he wouldn’t be around to make decisions about his ‘creations’. He made some of us into judges. I assume it’s because he knew there’d be a need for that and that he wouldn’t be able to manage. He’s long-gone. Wandered off, as best as Human scouts and other races’ best trackers could get at. Some cling to the idea that he’s biding his time — that Lored Mann will return to ‘save the day’. Save what day though and what about the day that comes after that? Who comes to the rescue on the days after the day of reckoning? These are my thoughts. I’ve no idea if my Lored thought the same. We’re called Final Men. He called us that which says he had done with making us. Tired of it, maybe? Perhaps he couldn’t make more? Power used up? I’m not sure about that. It could have been boredom. It could have been that he was tired of it. Tired of Making. It’s possible, people often lay their tools down. Someone will pick up the tools and try their hand for a time until they lose interest as well. Who’s to say that a Lored might not as well?     My own interest in things has been varied and I think that’s why I haven’t retired myself. For a time, my interest was in metals. Not generally, not for long, that is. Pretty quickly, I got straight to learning about which metals could take an edge or better still, take a great deal of abuse. It was me who gave the use of iron to others. Not my proudest achievement but it it’s undeniably my doing for good and bad. That led to all kinds of problems with steel which even now are being resolved. I moved on to other things. I spent a fair while recording aspects of those who stand apart. Not just Humans either but the Veer types and the Diminished and the Vast. Not all of these, just the ones that acted independently. Aloof is not quite the word but something akin to this. They weren’t concerned with the rest of their kinds’ doings. I found people who had this reserve fascinating. Some time later, long after I’d moved on to other interests, some of these types came to be known as being representative of a thing called the Staff of Runes. A staff is a tool of leadership. Runes are like symbols. Symbols have no fears, wants or needs. A staff of runes as a thing to follow is an odd way to proceed but many chose to do exactly that. An object containing symbolic ideas is a pretty detached thing to expect answers from. I couldn’t follow that kind of thing regardless of its power. Others could and did. It was their ‘Fate’, as they called it. They made a distinction between Fate and destiny. Destiny being a different thing. I guess I agree with them on that score.     In my catalogue of interests there’s the period I decided to learn more about Chaos. That’s as it was called at certain points in time. Before and after Chaos was named other names but one specific time it was called Khoascil. Khoascil was the time of Chaos that impacted on me the most. It was in the time of Khoascil that I met a woman who came to mean a great deal to me. Her name was Syrynx. She was a noblewoman of Khoascil, a Duchess of the Courts of Chaos, daughter of House Sax and she became my life’s secret. We came together quite by chance and that to her made it appropriate for a first and casual meeting. I was no courtier of Khoascil and for that I remain grateful but never more so than at that first meeting. She was taken with my nature, so different from those she knew better. I travelled her beyond the influence of the Courts. I showed her the Kingdoms of Dead Gods and the plane of the Staff of Runes. We didn’t stay in any place for long. Our journey was a necessary whirlwind; both to keep Syrynx’s righteous pursuers behind us and between us as our bond grew closer. I know my emotions swept me away as I watched her ride at my side. It was clear she felt something similar. The journey needed to end. Her family wouldn’t rest until she returned. She went back but not before times and places were agreed on, where we could meet. Each meeting was important to me. I lost my wanderlust. I knew my path for what it was. She was where my compass needle always pointed.   There were children. She kept these moments from me. Syrynx knew me too well. In time I grew to understand that my nature would not be sufficient to keep our children safe from the Courts’ ‘tender mercies’. I wasn’t in a position to deny her chaotic mind or mother’s love in these matters. I have not had a chance to ask her if she regrets the decisions she made. I do know that things might have gone better for both my son and my daughter. There’s no means to make those days of childhood over. I know I do have my regrets… Not long ago, I decided that I needed to do something about the situation. I knew some details of the boy, Maldon and the girl, Amplithress. As an absentee-father I admit, I was leery of either of them laying eyes on me. I deserved whatever dislike they might bear me. Shame is not an easy cloak to wear. I chose to seek out my daughter first. Call me naïve but I hoped a daughter might be less spiteful than a son. I’d find my son afterward with the benefit of the experience of meeting my other child behind me.   Amplithress wasn’t an easy quest. I found her trail and lost it again at least a half-dozen times. She was a more-strange combination of her mother’s blood-magicks and mine, than my son. Not that he was ‘normal’. It was more that Amplithress was so very far from the norm. At her maturation – or should I say – when she came of age in the Courts, she was a striking near-image of Syrynx. Her features mightn’t have been quite so perfect but she still was striking. I will take the blame for the less than perfected parts of her but as I say this, I realise I am being too harsh and that few seeing her would see anything less than beauty, when seeing her. Amplithress was only too aware of her mother’s surpassing comeliness. It had tended to cloud their relationship. This isn’t unusual when it occurs. My daughter became stubborn in her attempts to find her own place in the Courts and this led to several encounters that made her a most difficult person to keep track of. She was willful and certain of herself. This took her away from the Courts. The Sax watchers that were assigned to her care were outclassed and lost her whereabouts. She would become a pawn in a strategic game of would-be rulers. I feared for her but my chance to save her came and went before I knew of it. Others tried to save her and managed to make good her security. When I finally got to her she was as closed to me as any great scion of the Serpent might be to one not of their kind. She acknowledged my being her father. That I was this she titled me but in the same breath, told me to absent myself or feel her poisons. I took myself away but not without telling her I would be there for her should she ever call on me. To make this a real thing and not just wistful wordings, I took from my neck one of four necklace chains. These all bear a key hanging from them. The one I gave her was the ‘Key of Stars’. I explained how she might use it to summon me with it. Diffidently, she took it from me. I take solace in that she did not refuse it. I had hopes she might use it in the subsequent days but she didn’t. She still hasn’t. Whether this means she never will or that she may have lost it or her own life, I can’t be sure.     My son, Maldon is another matter. I still have my three other keys hanging around my neck. I know he might have an interest in at least one of them. I also know he is too wisely suspicious to welcome a gift from ‘the old man’. I do owe him a visit though. He deserves a chance to look me in the eye or spit in it. He might not be willing to hear me out. What I have to tell him may not suit his present circumstances. He has managed to get to the Canticle so that gives me a small piece of hope. The place is a vital part of what the Realms have been directed toward since my youth. Does he know of the Quadrangle I wonder? Has he any idea of the other great energies of the universe that work within it and without it? Can he see reason being of chaos? This last is perhaps the most critical thing in the boy’s makeup. I fear chaos is everything to him. How could it not be, given my continual absence? He has sacrificed his place in the Courts. Has he come to terms with that destiny or does he give sanctuary in his heart to a thought of returning to the breast of Chaos? Can’t blame him if he wishes for this. Will he listen to me if I tell him he should now look to his spirit’s other half? Even if he might, will he hear it from me in particular? So many doubts…     There is his companion. Greatly imbued, this Osric Barimen. Imbued but not destined for greatness in a direct manner. His destiny is a fate instead. He can’t ignore it. It comes at him like the charging minotaur of myth. He can’t escape the minotaur’s labyrinth either. Wherever he might venture he will circle back to have to face his personal monster. He won’t survive it. That’s fate for you. Does he accept this though? The Barimen are a stubbornly proud bunch. Rightly, I suppose. Even the maddest ones have a certainty of their bloodline that acts as a touchstone. They can wander aimlessly, act the wastrel or the thoughtless ravager and still wind up exactly where they are most needed. Such is the manner of the first of Lored Mann’s makings. Barimen’s great gift and their great burden. I have met both of the elder Barimen most recently. Oberon was as proud as ever. Gerard was no less a changed man. I couldn’t decide which was more impressive; the constancy of the King or the evolution of the Warden.     Then there’s Osric. Eldest of the Barmien children. What of he? I’ve watched his interactions with my son for a while. I saw what I expected. He plays the Amber game like the rest. He knows nothing of me nor does he ask about me to Maldon. His own rocky dealings with a not-ideal father is the probable cause. I can see why they get along, even if they don’t speak of their bond. His fate is pressing on him. He seems uncaring. I know he ‘s well aware of what comes but he acts mostly as though his end is far-off and not close-by. Brave or oblivious, it won’t change anything so maybe he has chosen to ignore it. Most unlike a Barimen, however… Should I make an offer to him to detour? Give him a ‘free pass’? It could be that his fate is welcome tidings to him. His death might be a release. His mind has suffered in a millennia-plus of incarceration, likely as not. His family’s machinations might bore him. The latest version of a fight for the throne might be enough to make him despair of it all. In some fashion, he has decided to throw himself into the deepest of plunges, submerging his person into a greater spirit than his own. Once he has done it, he will be one with, Tuan Zi. No more Osric. He will become only a series of experiences without much more than a Barimenic-inflected whisper in the ear of the Generational.     Tuan Zi I haven’t been watching. I might have to start at some point but not yet. He’s a notable person. His destiny is all in front of him. He doesn’t know himself as he will. In this he’s no more than any other man. I will have to teach him some things. He won’t necessarily need my words to become what he will but I’ll have a talk with him anyway. Would Tuan let Osric walk away if I asked it? Who can say? I might as well ask it for Furius instead. He too is a Final Man. He too has been fated to become a figure of whispering memory within the Generational. These Final Men are things of the past. The Generational is a man very much of the future. I probably shouldn’t interfere with any of it. I will though as I am a man.     It’s for the same reason that I will speak to others of Humanity that have made the leap from the past to the present. This will mean words with Thebes of Thebes and Renaissance. Do they want to help me? They can’t know the answer until I reveal the question. I have a key on a chain for them if one of them wants to use it. They must answer soon as their answers affect Maldon’s destiny. He may only be half-Human but he is totally my son. I will spare no other man if it might mean making a difference to Maldon’s good fortune. All these must learn of the Quadrangle.     Now I put this notebook away and turn my effort to getting to Maldon and Osric. They’re here in the Canticle’s portion of the third Realm. It’s too soon to aid those in the galaxy that need them greatly but there’s no helping that. The Galactic Canticle will come to them soon enough. They mean to travel but not to the end that I will divert them toward. It’s unfair but all men know that their lives are everything – everything but fair. They’ll get over my manipulations if they are patient enough to listen to me. If not, I will have to turn my interests to something new. There will be the same issue to deal with but I will have to find another path to fend it off.     Absolom