II-122 Trine

A tribe has been reborn. They have been restored.

This cannot be. This cannot be allowed. The Creator’s song must never play again. The life of existence, the light of creation, must never scar us again.

Muster the fleets. No more arguing. No more internecine. We gather ourselves. We go to war. We go to war against the claimed hells. We go to war now. No waiting. No more time. Now. Now. Now.

-Netzach The Everlasting

II-122

Trine

The Faeblooded, once a group of three, now stood fused before Wei. They were radiant, their eyes like small suns lodged within their skulls, their hair drifted, dancing, not like strands, but strings, strings of melody and symphony. They looked upon Wei with an expression of satisfaction, of gratitude, of genuine love, and the young master stared back, stunned at their presence.

“How,” he said. He even ignored how the Facetaker was holding on to the Trine’s leg, begging like some whimpering dog. “You vanished when you passed through that gate… when you got to the city…”

The united Trine smiled. “When we passed through the gate, we entered that final refuge, that final threshold between our reforging and the broken realm of the creator. We remembered who we were, we remembered the original song. It held out a hand, and we remembered you, for all you have done for Roggi, our faithful guardians.” The Oathbearers stood, their faces alight with pride. “At what you have done for us.

Wei offered a slight bow. “It was nothing. I still know very little about you, but in the time since you were gone—”

“We heard you.” The Trine interrupted. They held out a hand to him, and Wei felt his glaive rattle and shake, but it did not break. Rather, a song began to play from it, a song of high strings and brilliance, a song that shook Wei’s very soul and made those around him take a step back to marvel at the floating Eidolon.

The Trine hummed joyously. “You have faced an echo, a memory. You have faced a Celestial Vanguard.”

“I have,” Wei said, “during my Class Specialization Evolution.”

“Very, very respectable,” the Trine replied. “Its position now belongs to you, Scion of the Celestial Flame. You are as much a guardian as any Oathbearer, as any who stood for the creator.”

Agnesia looked between them and frowned. “What is the Creator?”

“A god. A god of creation, god of music, a god of wonder and originality, a god that now lay in ruins, that is broken, swallowed, and corroded by the Unfallen.” The Trine’s voice turned mournful. “They still seek us. They will hunt us. But we are the first, first to be reassembled, the first shard that will sing to all other shards, and in time, perhaps, the light of creation will spread across existence once more, and it will be because of you, because of your valor, what you did, the righteousness you did, and it is thanks to you.”

Wei looked on, stupefied, and so were most of the people around him.

The Trine continued.“We offer our blessing upon you, young master, defender, patriarch, and we offer our service as well. As you have protected us in our time of need, we will return as you prepare to embark on yours.”

Wei asked. “Mine?”

“Yours!” A new voice suddenly sounded in the room. Wei nearly jumped out of his skin as Mepheleon stood beside him, by his desk and looking at the many contracts there.

“Ah!” Rafael cried. “The arch-capitalist!”

“Ah!” Mepheleon replied. “The pretend communist.”

 “Don’t you dare call me that!” Rafael seethed.

“Harbinger,” Wei acknowledged. “What brings you here today? Have you come to explain to me why the Trine has returned?”

“What, the Trine?” Mepheleon said. “No, they’ve already explained that to you themselves, cryptic as they are. I’m here to simply warn you that the Unfallen are about to throw a very large tantrum, and they are coming back. They’re likely going to try to engage my Claimed Hells in a war.”

“But by the time you finish with the rest of the challengers,” Mepheleon said, looking at his fingernails and frowning, “well, I think they will only arrive then, and that will just make the war more exciting, more chaotic. But you must… you should hurry.”

“I should hurry,” Wei replied. “Why? What is about to happen?”

“That will be telling.”

“Mepheleon,” Wei said, “I need to know.”

“You need to know very little, Wei,” Mepheleon said. “You need to be frustrated, and you need to get a move on. You need to deal with all the other threats, and then you need to meet with my counts, and my princes, and my kings. You need to face them, you need to cow them somehow, before the proper proceedings can begin. There’s still a few more. Mary Antoinette is among them. That strange hivekin still must be regarded, but I suspect that from now on you will not be recruiting so many. Rather, the time to use that scythe of yours is nigh.”

“You’re losing your subtlety,” Way said.

“I’m losing my patience,” Mepheleon replied. “We are balanced on the thin thread here, Wei. And despite me being the unsurpassed, unrivaled, and undisputed ruler, even I do not function in a vacuum. Even I cannot be king without a people. You must do this without the Claimed Hells fracturing into bickering and indecision, and you must do it soon, quickly. And if you listen carefully, I will tell you how.”

Wei took a step forward. “Very well. What should I do first?”

“First, you deal with the remaining challengers, but do not simply kill them. Now, you must break them and break those associated to them.”

“This one here,” Mepheleon said, gesturing towards the Facetaker, “he’s owned. You will be sued by his owner soon for taking him out so vulgarly in front of everyone. The Tribulators will come…”

“And I will face them,” Wei declared.

“No, no,” Mepheleon said with a sigh. “You are not nearly powerful enough for that yet. Don’t be fooled, boy. Now, they will try to take him back. What you need to do is deal with the ones that owe him first, quickly, mysteriously. More mystique, more threats. And then you need to show them what you can do. And I don’t mean killing. I mean what you can do with the shards. Use their greed. Use the sins against them.”

“And that is all I must say for now. But understand that each of them have a flaw built in. They’re practically wearing their demise on their face. Use it against them. Do it quickly. Do it quickly. Do it—”

Mepheleon cried, and a wound appeared on his chest. A wound deep, crimson, and festering. Wei took a step back, surprised by how sudden the injury came, and the fact that the Harbinger could be wounded at all.

“What the hell?” Bishop muttered, equally stunned as Wei.

“It is nothing,” Mepheleon said, holding himself up using the desk. “It is just another version of me being attacked by the Queen. That utterly, utterly inconsolable child of a woman.”

Mepheleon swallowed. “I must go. I must devote my entire focus to her before she tears a massive gouge into my entire realm. Remember what I said. Be quick, and tell no one about this meeting. No one.”

And suddenly Mepheleon was gone. No essence. No anything. Just gone.

Still on his knees, the Facetaker whimpered as he reached up to clutch the radiant white blouse the Trine was wearing. “Master, I… I need one of your faces.”

They reached down and pet him, as if he were actually a whimpering dog. “Come, show us the body first. We will need more than one to resemble anything of our prior wholeness.”

“You bear another fragment, don’t you, child?”

William rubbed his face and sighed. “Wei! Suggestion?” The young master stared at his father, but slowly angled his head in acknowledgement. “I think you should deal with whatever the fuck this is,” he gestured at the Trine, “before you deal with whatever the fuck Mepheleon just told you. One problem at a time.”

“But this is not a problem,” the Trine declared. “This is a revelation. Come, Master Wei. Come, and we will show you what has been hidden from the world for so long. I bid the rest of you wait. Wait, and be rewarded.”

***

And so away went along with the trine, allowing them to lead him beyond the unblossomed. And the trine somehow knew the direction that the Facetaker wished to go.

Once more, they embarked out into the city, out towards Envy, just in time for a lawyer to come seeking the champion of Envy.

At first, the lawyer seemed to be shaped like a hole. Wei flinched back, expecting it to be resemble one of those horrible monstrosities from Lost. But instead, the whole developed arms and legs and a head, and Wei realized it was a whole metaphor—the hole being the little being’s heart.

“Hey! You!” The lawyer pointed at Wei. “You have unlawfully taken someone owned by Envy!”

“I am not detained,” the FaceTaker said. “I am… I am going to the master.”

“Please don’t speak right now, Mr. Alan. We’re dealing with important matters,” the lawyer declared.

“Alan?” Wei said. “Your name is Alan?”

“My name is not Alan. I have no name,” the Facetaker repeated, swallowing as he refused to look at anyone.

“Regardless,” the lawyer continued, “you must return to the Circle.”

“No,” the Trine declared, all three faces peaceful. “He does not have to do any such thing.”

“What?” the lawyer asked. “And what are you?” The lawyer stared at the Trine.

“We are simply a creator, a fragment of creation. Would you like to hear a song?”

The lawyer tweeted in frustration. “No, I don’t want to hear a song—”

And then the Trine opened its mouth, and it sang. The melody was so sweet that time began to distort. Suddenly, the outside of the Trine was moving far faster than the inside. In the seconds it took for them to finish the song, they were already arriving to the station.

And the lawyer stared on but seemed inanimate now.

“What did you do?” Wei asked.

“It is a simple creature, despite all its power. They are bound to an individual’s intellect. And I fear the intellect this one was bound to rendered them vulnerable. I used a song. I told its master the truth. He heard me through the lawyer.”

“What truth?” Wei asked.

The trine turned and smiled its way, all three heads beaming that they were enough. “That envy should have never been their folly.”

“He is heartbroken now. Heartbroken. And he will be for some time. But when he recovers, he may be well again.”

Wei stared on at the trine, and he now looked away. It was odd, performing the same gesture as the Facetaker. But Wei knew that he didn’t want the trine to inflict anything like that on him. There were things inside himself that he wasn’t ready to face yet.

“There is another thing I am uncertain about,” Wei said, staring at the trine.

“And what is that, Young Master Wei?” they replied, regarding him with a smile.

“Why are we taking public transportation?”

His Omniscience caught several people looking at him. Sinner everywhere were sending messages to their friends, their families, and heaven knows who. He was in oddity in this place—just him, the Facetaker, and the Trine.

They insisted it would be important, that the song would go well this way. For some reason, he trusted them.

“It is a personal preference,” the Trine admitted. “We wanted to be back among the people again. We wanted to feel integrated, even in a place so sour.”

The trine looked in three separate directions and let out a whistling tune—a tune that cleared the air, that cleansed the world of something. Wei felt the air taste crisper, taste better, and even his clothes—and the dust upon them—parted a bit.

“I… impressive.” Wei blinked. “You learned a skill for cleaning.”

“It is not just cleaning,” the Trine said. “It is purification.”

“Now, we’ll be getting off at the next stop. Alan, please, take us to your master.”

***

Alan guided them through a dense, maze-like section of the Claimed Hells. People supposedly lived here in crevices that were too narrow, hidden behind windows that were jagged and artistically bizarre. It was a place where people spied from all angles, where people lingered in shadows, where the wealthiest lived like beggars hidden within trash cans—leering at those who stared at them, for they had nothing and thus nothing to lose, nothing to be envied for.

Finally, Alan showed them his home. It was hidden within plain sight: a door drawn on an old, moss-covered wall. It looked like a child’s drawing, but when he reached out, the handle twisted and it swung open.

A rush of warmth and color spilled outward, and Wei found himself standing within a plush living room. There were bookshelves everywhere. More than that, there were posters—theater posters, anatomy diagrams, diagrams detailing humans and something more. Several tables occupied the space, each for artistic purposes: one filled with books, one for cartography, and a final one topped with a display case. Within that display case was… is that?

Wei blinked, his omniscience observing the specimen closer. That wasn’t what he expected: another Faeblood, this one missing a face.

Wei looked at creature. “Your master was a Faeblood—one of the Creator’s many, many incarnations,” the trine said.

The door closed behind them, and Wei couldn’t quite find his way out anymore—it was just a wall there, just bookshelves. Above, a skylight glistened, and the young master found himself wondering if he had been too trusting.

“Master,” the Facetaker said, slowly reaching out and placing a hand on the specimen’s display case, “I have found you, I have found you—a face—and they have come for a body. Do you hear? You are awake again. The Dark Ones, the twisted ones—they will never, never be able to kill you again. They will never harm you again. Please—please wake up now.”

“You will,” the Trine said, “you merely have to stand aside.”

And Wei watched—watched as the trine walked forward, as a song began filling the world, and he felt his Essence grow refined within him. And just then the Celestial Vanguard—the one he bested all those months ago—flared briefly into existence, igniting with a flicker of light as it saluted him.

Wei gasped. Threads of radiance turned and coiled around the room; the glass case parted into nothing but motes rising into the air like grains of dust.

The Trine sang—sang to its fallen, broken brethren—and its brethren rose.

It sat up without a face, without any inhibitions. It reached out for the trine, and the world grew impossibly bright.

For a few moments, Wei could see nothing—nothing but light. And as it emerged, a new shape took form: the trine was larger, but more than that, they were perfected, gleaming with power.

Rather than merely wearing robes, they sported boots and pieces of armor, but also strange articulations of brass and tubes from its back. It wasn’t just a song now—there were horns in the backdrop of the celestial symphony, and the Trine’s power grew.

“Thank you, Adam.”

The Facetaker bowed and began to weep. “Master. You return. You’re alive… Alive.”

Wei stared on. “I don’t… what?”

The Trine turned to him. “We will now show you the rest. But first. We wish to nest inside your glaive.”