Nurgle and Isengar ascending in the style of Férnand Khnoppf, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.

  Chapter 43: Anabasis

  Moho refuge, Lower crust, Confluence dimension

  Year 42 of the Confluence Republic (local time)

  Since the release of the second book from the Erd author, Isengar and Nurgle had basically spent all their time accessing news reports, discussions, and commentary about the contents of this book. It was exhausting. At the same time, they noticed that people were probing their area deep in the planet’s lower crust with Divination magics, probably trying to locate their refuge based on the book’s very general description of it. The obfuscation they had set in place held easily against these amateur probes, but it felt like it was only a question of time until someone initiated a more determined effort.

  “Well,” said Nurgle, leaning back, getting tired of it all. “Seems we are at the end of the road, doesn’t it?”

  “How you mean?” Isengar was tired, too.

  “I mean there’s no going back from this.”

  “Yeah. Unless we want to seek refuge in the Diankoran dimension, maybe?”

  “There is always that.”

  “You know, one thing occurred to me. If we were to think like these Special Circumstances people do, then most likely all the characters have already been introduced, right?”

  “Hm.”

  “And if that’s true, then the person you are talking to, well, in those interludes, is someone already introduced.”

  “Well, it could also be some kind of plot twist, a surprise for the readers.”

  “That’s true, it could be that. Maybe Yeek and Raistlin, then, or something like a divinity or an ultrapowerful interdimensional observer. Or some other major power that no one knows about.”

  “Maybe it’s one of those Special Circumstances women.”

  “Yeah, a traitor in the SC board, lying to everybody all this time, then suddenly pulling a poisoned dagger to backstab the others in the last chapter. I don’t think so.”

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  “Maybe not a traitor but some kind of psyop.”

  “So, the SC board is in cahoots with whoever is feeding information to the Erd author, and they set up this whole thing in order to fool you into, what, taking care of the Erd shadows.”

  “Could be.”

  “You don’t understand what this story is about, then. We’re not very important characters.”

  “Huh.” Nurgle had to pause and think. “I didn’t think about it like that.”

  “We’ve gotten used to thinking about ourselves as important.”

  Nurgle paused again. “We have, haven’t we. Brainwashed by five thousand years of autocratic power. And now we’re just a sideshow.”

  “Yes. So whatever is going on here, it’s not about me and you. We’re just a remnant from the old world. Nobody cares very much, at least not now when they have something important to deal with.”

  “Hm.” Another pause. “So you’re saying if those SC people wanted to find us, they would just invest the resources necessary to do so.”

  “Exactly. The reason we’re still sitting here in our hideout is that we’re not really important. We don’t matter much to them.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “If anybody from the Confluence finds us, it will be one of those amateur sleuths striking it lucky, coming to ask us for an interview for the oddball section of their entertainment liveshow.”

  “Yikes. Is that our future?”

  “It’s more than we have any right to hope for. Shall we go?”

  “You mean, right now?”

  “Why not?”

  “What are you suggesting exactly?”

  “We send them a message, I guess. Or we just go up there, turn ourselves in at an investigators’ office.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t you even want to sleep on it?”

  “I say we just do it. It’s time.”

  “If we’re going to send a message, who do we send it to?”

  “Somebody in the news, maybe. That guy who defended us on that show, remember?”

  “I refuse to surrender myself to the media. How about that Z?rgiebel guy? He’s maybe approachable.”

  “Why not. What do you want to say?”

  “Maybe tell him something only one of us would know.”

  “Remember what Soth told us about that time he broke into the records?”

  “That will do.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Nurgle and Isengar ascending in the style of Gustav Klimt, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.

  Nurgle and Isengar ascending in the style of Gustave Moreau, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.

  Nurgle and Isengar ascending in the style of Mikalojus Konstantinas ?iurlionis, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.

  Nurgle and Isengar ascending in the style of William Blake, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.

  Nurgle and Isengar ascending in the style of Mikhail Vrubel, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.