Six

Section 3

The inside of the room was as plain as the key and almost difficult to see. It was so thoroughly unremarkable that it could have been any room in any building that the two had ever been in. It evoked no memory, resembled nothing, and left no impression. The only oddity about the room was a second door with no visible means of opening it on the opposite wall.

Jin walked over to the second door, examining it. It looked like it could be opened; it had hinges and a plate.

"That door isn’t for you," a familiar voice said quietly. Jin turned toward the voice, startled slightly. He hadn’t seen anyone in the room.

The owner of the voice wore a long black cloak with a deep hood. There was a clasp at the throat of the cloak that resembled a thin crescent moon. He was well hidden, but his whisper soft voice belonged to Allen. Jin assumed he was another like Al and Six of Night.

chaos joined Jin after a cursory examination of the new avatar and the nondescript room. "Hello," he said, to the cloaked avatar. He had not seen him when they entered either.

This one just nodded, allowing the two to catch a quick glimpse of his face beneath the hood. He was as they suspected.

Jin asked, "What is this door used for?"

"You’re quite curious, aren’t you," the cloaked avatar answered.

Jin smiled slightly. "I have been known to wonder—I am a scholar of sorts."

"And a seeker of mysteries, so I hear. It will do no harm to answer you, since you are present and hold the keys. The door, this path, is our way of defense, offense, and one would think peace of mind, but it has been a long time since we gained any of that through this portal. It is also our life." The one in the cloak stepped over to the door and set a hand on it. The door became translucent.

That it was not transparent was a blessing; beyond the door was a blue-violet maelstrom that only made sense when glimpsed through the corner of the eye. chaos easily turned away, but Jin was caught. Jin kept catching shadows of sanity and order in the storm, but every time his mind latched on one, it fled away and resolved back into madness. It was ordered enough, bore enough logic, that Jin felt as though he could make sense of it if he just tried hard enough. He took a step toward the translucent door.

A hand touched the door again, returning it to its solid form. Jin blinked several times, making an effort to get his mind off what he had seen now that it no longer entranced him.

"Six of Day said that no doors are closed to you, but if you are allowed to open a door and pass through it, that does not make it wise to do so." The cloaked avatar tilted his head. "I wonder what would happen if you did pass through the door and onto the path, with your consciousness here. Would you recurse until it obliterated your mind?" He tittered, a wholly unpleasant giggle. "Or would you become us? Would Six become Seven?"

chaos asked, "It seems to me a bit strange that you have names."

The cloaked one smiled, but it was difficult to see in the shadows of his hood. "We’ve taken names for ourselves. It is a defensive measure."

"I know one of you has not taken a name, and refused the concept—he only allowed us to call him by a name Jin chose because it would make it easier to communicate with him."

A faint snarl sounded from the deep hood. "Some of us haven’t accepted that we need names. I presume you mean Six of Day. He has not been convinced of the need. I am Six of Twilight, and I believe you have met Six of Night. Six of Dawn accepts the name, but then, he’ll accept as his name every name anyone calls him. He’s confused; he thinks he’s more than he is. But I chose my name, as did Six of Night."

Jin asked, "Why do you need names?"

"To operate freely. To be."

chaos looked at Six of Twilight sharply. "You don’t need a name to be what you are. A name limits you."

Twilight nodded. "Yes, it does, temporarily. We will not need names later."

Jin twitched a shoulder in something resembling a shrug. "Where does the door lead?"

"The paths are endless, Jin. We don’t know all the ways, but if the rest would take their names, we could find them, claim our birthright."

"What is your birthright?"

"That!" Six of Twilight pointed to the door. "We are a god, Jin, a lost god. When we find the paths, when we walk down them, there will be nothing that can be denied us."

chaos glanced at Jin, expressing with his eyes what he didn’t want to say in front of this avatar.

Jin caught the look then said to Six of Twilight, "Would you excuse us? We’re here looking for someone and we’d like to find him soon if we can."

Twilight bowed slightly to Jin. "Of course. Good luck in your search." The cloaked one then melted into the shadows again, becoming nearly invisible.

Jin turned to leave the room and chaos followed him out. When chaos shut the door, he said, "I think we’ve found our second culprit."

"I agree...although I must confess, of the two, I dislike this one the most." Jin looked at the door in disgust.

"Why is that?"

Jin thought about it for a moment. "He feels slippery. At least Six of Night was openly hostile."

chaos nodded. "It might be his nature...I don’t know quite what these entities are, but they do seem to have distinct personalities. And jobs...Al said he was ‘the maintainer of order’. I wonder what these two do? I’ve never been involved in an Encephalon dive where I’ve seen anything like them, though."

"We’re not going to find Allen in here, are we?"

"I think we have, in bits and pieces. If Six of Night and Six of Twilight are two of the ‘ghosts’, and assuming we’re right that the watcher entity was Allen in some form, then they must be, too."

"Is that unusual?" Jin asked. "Outside their ability to manifest in the real world."

"Honestly, I’d have to say yes. At least in my experience, this entire Encephalon is unusual."

Jin nodded, then shrugged. "Shall we go explore then? See what else there is to find?"

"Lead the way," chaos answered.

chaos frowned deeply when he and Jin walked up to the second door in the hallway. Someone had badly defaced the previously beautiful door, scratching hundreds of unknown words all over it. Not all of the words were foreign, however, at least not to either him or Jin. Some were in ancient languages, others in modern but unusual dialects. All of the legible words spoke ill of the contents and occupant of the room, naming him "Six of Midnight" but calling him all manner of vile things. The gist of it was that Six of Midnight was a useless creature who spent all his time obsessing and wallowing in misery that, the defacers claimed, forced them out, forced them to lie, to mangle, to harm. The Master of the Vicious Ring and Source of Misery was a common title bestowed on the one behind the door.

Jin ran a hand over the door, finding a particular motif carved into it that somehow the defacers had not been able to completely eradicate. "A sun, a moon, and several stars...the moon is in full phase."

"I suppose we should go in... I wonder what could be so awful about the room and its occupant that they would enrage the others in this house so much," chaos asked softly while searching the key ring. Fortunately, it wasn’t difficult to find the correct key; it also held a motif of a sun and moon accompanied by stars.

The key turned easily in the lock, and the door opened a crack on silent hinges. chaos peeked inside the room, finding it dim but not so dark that he couldn’t see. He opened the door fully and motioned for Jin to follow him inside. After entering the room, chaos closed the door enough to keep it shut but not to latch it.

Neither man could say that they were not surprised at the content of the room. In the dimness, another ‘Allen’ sat, tears running down his face, cloaked in soft blankets and apparently, holding a doll. Across from him, there was an ornate shelf covered in more dolls. This was the ‘source of misery’? There certainly could be more to him and the dolls than it seemed.

Jin went to examine the rows of dolls while chaos approached the one called Six of Midnight. The white haired man sat down next to the Allen persona, catching his attention as he did so. The avatar turned to look at chaos, unashamed of his tears. In turning, he gave chaos a better look at the doll, which looked remarkably like a plush Shion.

"What’s wrong?" chaos asked, voice soft.

After a moment of watching chaos, he answered, "No one I love gives me their pain."

"I see...I understand that." chaos pointed at the Shion doll. "Are you crying for her?"

"Yes. For her, but not with her. They think it’s pointless, but I can’t help it."

chaos nodded in sympathy. Allen had said something very like that to him not long ago. "Who are ‘they’, if you don’t mind my asking?"

The avatar tilted his head a bit, stroking the yarn hair on the Shion doll. "They are nearly everyone I know. They don’t all say it with words, but I’m not oblivious. They all think it’s pathetic, obsessive, pointless, some blame me for making them miserable, but I can’t help it. If I stopped I would die."

"Die?"

Before chaos’ question could be answered, Jin said, "What in the world is this?" He indicated a doll on the shelf that bore an uncanny resemblance to himself, and reached out to pick it up.

"No, don’t do that! Don’t—!"

But Jin had already grabbed the Jin doll from the shelf, Six of Midnight’s warning having come too late. He clenched the doll in two fists, his knuckles white. "Oh, save me," he whispered, eyes tight shut. He doubled over, and chaos shot up in alarm, trying to support him. All chaos could do is ease his fall—Jin curled in on himself, still clutching the doll, and he shivered like a falling leaf. One hitched sob escaped him.

The Allen avatar set aside his Shion doll and moved over to Jin’s side. He held an arm open and said, "Give me at least this—Jin, you have to give me at least this."

Jin shook his head, but for some reason moved closer to Six of Midnight. He was shaking hard now, and chaos was tempted to try to wrest the Jin doll from his grasp, since that seemed to be what was causing him so much pain.

Midnight held out his other hand toward chaos in a warding gesture, never taking his eyes off Jin. "This you must give me, you don’t have a choice. It’s not yours, although I know it feels like it is. Give it back to me, and at least...let me take the pain it caused."

Still shaking his head in refusal, Jin nevertheless found himself crawling into the Allen avatar’s lap, hunched up like a child. As soon as he was there, Six of Midnight pulled the Jin doll out of Jin’s suddenly nerveless fingers and set it next to the Shion doll. Then Midnight enveloped Jin in his arms, in his blankets. He set his cheek on the top of Jin’s head, which was barely visible beneath the blankets.

The room was silent. chaos wasn’t sure what to expect; except for that one strangled sob, Jin had not made a sound. Now he could see very little of Jin...how the smaller entity had so fully covered Jin he didn’t know, but he had. Midnight was also silent, simply holding Jin and stroking his hair, tears streaming down his face. He looked happy, somehow, and a feeling of peace pervaded the dim room. chaos found it difficult not to smile. Despite the fact that all of the Allen avatars he had seen here so far were identical in appearance, this one looked the most like Allen, although chaos was hard pressed to figure out why, since Allen rarely looked at peace.

There was a shift in the air, and chaos looked toward the disturbance. Somehow, another Allen avatar had entered the room, but this one was wild in appearance. From his hair that seemed to be pulled back by a stiff wind, his dangerous, piercing stare, the clothes he wore that looked more like a billow of white and gray flame, to his vast white eagle wings that feathered to black at the tips. His black-tipped wings shivered at full-span, brushing the edges of the room and making it seemed cramped. Then he folded the wings back, and while the sense of wildness never left him, his flame-clothes and hair had calmed considerably. This ‘Allen’ stepped, no, floated to the other ‘Allen’, then leaned down to pick up the two dolls. His sharp gaze fell on chaos as he set the Shion doll on the shelf and returned the Jin doll to Midnight’s side. chaos gazed back at him, and the wild ‘Allen’ smiled. It was feral, full of dagger teeth, but kind. He gestured quickly to one of the dolls, then crooked a taloned finger, indicating he wanted chaos to follow him. chaos glanced at the doll and inhaled sharply when he discovered it bore his own image. He narrowed his clear green eyes at the wild one, but followed him out, leaving Jin to the care of the one some called Six of Midnight.

The room chaos followed into was as bright as the last was dim. All along the walls were charts, graphs, holodisplays, and stacks of data chits. "I don’t like the name, but some call me Six of Midday. Our heart will be a while with that beloved fool, so I brought you here. It will be easier." His voice was soft but had the same feral sound as his appearance.

chaos looked around the room, staggered slightly at its size. And it was full to bursting with information. "I realize that you all have your own jobs to do," he said. "May I ask yours?"

Six of Midday fluttered his wings. "I watch, I watch like the hawk and the eagle, I watch and watch, I note and watch, taking in everything I see. Little escapes my attention, divine chaos."

"Uh?"

"I watch and watch and watch, watch all, over all I find under the care of the heart. Yes, divine chaos, Yeshua the uncertain...I watch and watch, and note it all down. Don’t worry though, it’s all guarded, divine chaos."

"What all do you know?"

Six of Midday shook out his wings again, revealing some long trailing feathers that curled up and around him. "I know a lot. A lot. Not so much about you that you should be worried, Yeshua—you’re very good at keeping yourself unwatched. But I watch, and tell the heart so he might live, and the heart lives."

chaos frowned deeply. It was disconcerting to have a strange creature-Allen know his true name, potentially more than that.

"Why frown divine chaos? You don’t want the heart to live? He needs to know these things, he needs it, someone has to find out and share with him so he won’t die and in dying take all with him."

"I don’t want anyone to die, no. It does...well...why do you think I’m frowning?"

Midday fluttered. "Divine chaos doesn’t want to be known because it’s not time yet. I told you not to worry, didn’t I? I watch and watch and tell the heart and the heart holds these secrets like treasures. The heart makes dolls, because that’s all the heart has been given...although I hope that the beloved fool will share more now that he was a fool to begin with."

"The heart...Six of Midnight?" chaos asked, although he strongly suspected the answer.

"That’s something he’s been called." Six of Midday’s hair and flame-clothes whipped furiously, caught in air chaos didn’t feel. chaos was certain the other was angry about the name.

"Why does he have dolls? What purpose do they serve?"

"They contain. I watch and watch and give what I watch to the heart, and the heart makes dolls, secret dolls out of secrets. They are that which none share but cause us pain. He feels it all. Some of it is the secret smiles that aren’t shared but cause us joy. They don’t realize, those monster-carvers, they have forgotten." Six of Midday shoved his face so close to chaos that the white-haired man backed up a step. "I watch and he feels, and no one notices it! They don’t see he has to feel, and feel so deep, otherwise he would die and in dying take all with him!"

"Why would he die?" chaos backed up another step.

"Why? Why would the divine chaos die if he could not be Yeshua? Why would the beloved fool die if he weren’t Jin Uzuki?"

"Ahhh...yes, I think I see now. Six—the heart, defines you."

Six of Midday cocked his head and stepped out of chaos’ personal space. "You could say that. If you were to take him away, all would fall with him. It would be a cold, dead place without him. But if you took me away, then all would fall blind. It would be a dark, mindless place without me. If you took away the order, then all would fall apart. It would be a place of madness without him. If you took the voice away, then all would fall silent. It would be a desolate place without him. If you took the offender away, then all would fall to erosion. It would be a waste place without him. If you took the defender away, then all would fall to the sword. It would be a ruined place without him.

"But...they are being taken away, an inch at a time. We are being sundered. I watch and watch and there in the next room you will find a doll of us as well. Only the heart is not being taken, but the rest of us, we are being taken, and we will fall to darkness, desolation, waste, ruin, and madness. And what good is a heart in a place like that? If all go, then the heart goes as well."

chaos thought about that for a long moment. "It would still be a good heart," he said finally. "One not without friends."

Midday’s wings closed around himself, and he held his hands with their claws to his face. "You’re too nice, chaos." His voice cracked, and he sank to his knees, the flame clothes settling to wisps.

"Watcher," chaos said, as he kneeled down next to Six of Midday, "we’re here to help you, if we can. You aren’t broken yet." He set a hand on Midday’s wing. "May I do for you what your heart is doing for Jin?"

"Why?" he asked, whispering. "It is only me, I watch."

"Because you aren’t broken yet, Allen."

Six of Midday’s sudden glance was piercing. Then he nodded. "Yes. If you want it, take my pain and see me."

"I do," chaos answered, then moved forward, slipping his arms under Six of Midday’s wings, trying his best to gather the larger persona into an embrace. He found himself covered instead; Midday grabbed onto chaos so tightly that his claws sunk through his jacket and pierced his skin. The world became full of feathers, wild hair, and cold flame. chaos returned the fierce hug full force, and then he was filled with misery.

Misery for hatred where there should have been love, coldness where there should have been warmth, misery for thoughtless glances, for cold names and cruel jokes, misery for being without a place. Stronger misery for going unnoticed and for the conviction that it was a cruel mockery of self-defense. Stronger yet for the hatred earned by sadistic offenses. Stronger yet for the conviction that nothing could be done about it, for the helplessness.

Strongest of all, the gut-wrenching misery that Shion would never see, never understand how deeply she was loved. Layered over that was a powerful misery that she would never return that love, but it was not even a fraction of the razor-knife hell that defined the misery that she would never know.

But then came such sweet joy that it also bore a keen blade, a razor-knife heaven. Not alone (and here was shared grief eased by the sharing—a faint sense of a samurai), not ignored, not hated but loved. And then hope. Not boundless, but there, keeping despair at bay.

Six of Midday stood up, still holding onto chaos in a death grip, and chaos’ feet lifted off the ground. Nose to nose, sapphire stared into jade. "Do you see, do you see?"

chaos nodded. "I see. Thank you, watcher."

Six of Midday stared, incredulous. He searched chaos’ face, then looked into his eyes again. "You...thank me? Divine chaos, Yeshua the uncertain, no. Thank you." Midday’s voice shifted and became more human, more like Allen’s. "You are the first, Yeshua, divine chaos, to want my pain. The beloved fool...he understands now, he sees, we are not so different, he wants much that the heart wants, he shares it too, but it was not asked for freely.

"Yeshua, don’t you know what it means to me to be loved, freely?"

chaos smiled softly. "I do now. Watcher, Allen...I thanked you for sharing because so few people have the strength to. And...and because what you shared, it gives me hope. I know you hurt, and I know how deep it runs. That doesn’t give me hope—your love does. Many people love with as much passion, but so few with as much conviction, with as much truth. I think...someday, the depth of your love is going to shake the universe."

"I believe you. I see it, I watch you, I believe you. Divine chaos, thank you. I’m not alone anymore. You and the beloved fool, you are my true friends forever."

chaos just nodded, taking the compliment in silence as no more words need be spoken. After a moment though, he remembered the claws digging into his back, and his reason for being here. "I have an idea, how to help, but you have to help, too."

Midday set chaos down and stood back. chaos was surprised to find no blood on his talons. Midday spread his wings to their fullest span, his clothes became like an all-consuming fire, and the unfelt wind whipped at him. He had become the image of an avenging angel. "Tell me. Tell me so that I can see and bring this sundering to an end. I am not afraid."

In the other room, things had not gone quite so smoothly. Although Six of Midnight had taken the doll away and stopped the emotional assault on Jin, Jin was stubbornly trying to climb out of the wreck it had made of him without help.

"Jin," Midnight said into his hair, "you can let it go...you have to, for your own sake."

Jin shook his head, even though surely Midnight could feel the tears falling on his shirt. The doll, just touching it, had shot through every defense Jin had, laid to waste every carefully constructed lie he had told himself. Although not every feeling in the doll had been perfectly accurate, they had been close enough to hit him in very nearly every sore spot he had. Jin wanted to be angry that somehow some part of Allen knew so much, but he couldn’t muster up any emotion past the flaying pain.

He wanted it to stop. He wanted his walls back. He wanted his excuses back.

"You can’t have them, Jin. Not right now. You took something that, while it feels like it belongs to you, does not. It’s what we see, and it was never meant to be felt by anyone but me. It won’t stop until you give it back. Don’t you see? Most of what you’re feeling know, I already knew in my own way. What harm can it be to let me draw it out of you?"

It will make it real, Jin thought through the deep ache and bright pain.

Six of Midnight stroked Jin’s hair. "Because our guesses were true, or true enough, that you can’t separate them now? Because being hit with all of that at the same time brought out the real emotions?"

Jin had no intention of answering, but he must have shifted or something, because he could practically feel Six of Midnight’s sympathy in response. Sympathy only unmanned him further and he became aware of a peculiar draw to Midnight. Somewhere inside, he wanted to dump every burden on someone else. It was a faint desire, but perhaps it was simply Six of Midnight’s talent, his reason for being, that made that desire stronger.

"Would it be so bad? Would it lessen you in any way, to share your pain, your secrets, with someone who can’t tell them to anyone else?"

There was a certain compelling logic to that statement. Jin hadn’t thought less of Allen for sharing his secrets, he’d said so himself. And Midnight already knew, or near enough, about his pain to have rendered Jin helpless when confronted with it all at once.

"I’m just being stubborn, aren’t I?" Jin muttered.

"Of course you are," Midnight said, not unkindly. "You wouldn’t be Jin if you weren’t."

Jin nodded just a little, and stopped fighting to regain control of himself. First the overwhelming pain from the doll bled out of him, and that was such a relief it made Jin gasp. Then he could feel, inside him, a gentle touch, and the feelings the doll brought out lessened. They did not become less painful, but somehow letting Six of Midnight feel them as well took the keen edge and the heaviness from them.

It felt good. Jin felt remarkable, calm. He hadn’t expected that. Jin raised his head slowly, looking Six of Midnight in the face. He thought it should feel strange being so close to him, so close to a bit of Allen that bore Allen’s face, especially when Midnight was still stroking his hair, but it didn’t. It actually reminded him of happier times when he was a small boy and his mother would kiss an owie away. "Why?"

Midnight smiled a little. "I think because you know what real love is." Midnight dropped his hand to pick up the Jin doll, which he held in front of Jin. "Keep it. If it ever hurts you again, remember that you aren’t alone."

For a second Jin was tentative but then he took the doll and felt nothing from it. "You don’t need it?"

This time Midnight’s smile was almost a grin. "Of course not. I might need to make a new one someday, but I don’t have to have dolls when I’ve shared the real thing. There was a lot of joy in that doll, too." Then Six of Midnight pulled his blankets off Jin. "I’d spare you any further wounded pride; your friend is coming back, and maybe you’ve sat in my lap long enough."

"Right." Jin gathered himself and stood, and a moment later Midnight stood next to him. Jin wasn’t completely recovered, but he found it much easier to hold onto his equilibrium now that he’d allowed Midnight to take on a large share of his turmoil. He tucked the doll into the sleeve of his kimono.

With a moment to think clearly about it, Jin noticed that he had shared some of Allen’s feelings while Midnight had touched away his pain. Much of it confirmed what he had already suspected from reading Allen’s journal...it made him wonder, briefly, if somewhere inside him was a being that looked like himself and made dolls.

Soon, chaos and the winged Allen avatar re-entered the room. Jin had not seen this other ‘Allen’, and while he was not startled at his appearance, he did think it very unusual.

"I think I have an idea about how we might help, Jin," chaos said once he and the winged ‘Allen’ stood near.

Jin just raised his eyebrows to let chaos know he could continue.

"If what he has told me is correct, there are six of these entities," chaos said, but a taloned hand rose sharply to stop him.

"There are seven," the winged one said. Jin thought his voice was harsh in an animalistic way.

"Seven?" chaos asked.

"Seven." He pointed up. "Above all where we cannot reach, in the shallow water above the sky, is Light. He has a name, it is right for him, it separates him but it is right for him to be sundered from those who walk above the water. Allen Isaiah Ridgeley, Seven of Light."

Instinctively, Jin followed the clawed finger and looked up. "Seven of Light. That is what you call him? What are you to him?"

Midnight answered. "We named him before we knew what his name was, because the sky is bright and there are seven. It’s a horribly silly name, but we were very young. We are him, but you have heard the saying that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, haven’t you?"

Jin nodded.

"We must not be sundered," the winged one stated. "We are being taken away, it must not happen. We can’t be taken by names...I have watched and watched, I have seen what others have done and we can’t stop it, but we have to and we don’t know what to do."

chaos said, "As I mentioned, I do have an idea. It’s worth a shot. I think we need to confront the ones who are trying to separate themselves, talk to them, and convince them to stop. You have to do that, but perhaps with mediators the others will see reason."

"This has been occurring for a very long time, chaos. We may have forgotten how to stop. When we understood what the pathway door was, when we saw it, really saw it, and I have to take my blame in this, I saw it first...we have been breaking since then."

"Pathway door? The door that opens out into that blue storm?" Jin asked.

"Yes, that is the pathway door," Midnight said. "When we began to understand how we work, how we can reach Light without being able to go above the sky, and how Light reaches out of the water without being able to exit it, we started to break a little. We started finding other paths. We have all gone out onto the paths where we shouldn’t have. Some of us found the paths too hard to walk and so don’t go through the door in that way. Others found the paths useful."

"I would have," the winged one said, "except that I can watch fine from here. I don’t need to follow paths to watch, to see, I can watch through the door and see all I need to see. The defender, the offender, and the voice, they are better able to do what they do by using the paths. I understood why, but not the extent! They are separating, and I am losing my ability to see them." He flicked out his wings. "Let us do what you wish, so that we will stop being torn apart."

"Soon, watcher," chaos said. "I think we should find the last, the voice, and speak to him first. We’ll come back when we’re ready to go to the others and try to sort this out."

"Soon is not soon enough! But we will wait. We have waited and will wait a little longer."

Jin stood in thought for a moment. "Watcher, if you think chaos’ idea is a good one, why have you never tried it yourselves?"

The winged watcher cocked his head. "We have never needed to, so it never occurred to us that it would even be possible."

"You don’t talk to each other?"

"No, not like this." He waved his hand between himself and Jin, then glanced at Six of Midnight. After a moment, he looked back at Jin. "It hurts us to think we would ever be forced to talk, but maybe we are so broken now that we must...talk." He curled his wings around himself, and Jin could see in every part of his body language how absolutely distressing the idea was for him. He realized now that the watcher hadn’t spoken to the one called Six of Midnight at all. They had only spoken to him and chaos, never to each other.

Jin noticed the distress almost infect Midnight, who shivered a bit and pulled his blanket closer around himself. Then Midnight walked over to his shelves and pulled a doll from one, a doll that looked like the winged Allen. He turned to look at chaos, then Jin. "Please go do what you feel you need to do."

"We’ll be back soon," chaos said. Jin bowed, and the two left the room.

Once outside, chaos pulled the door closed and let it latch. He looked at Jin for a moment, then said, "You look like you want to say something."

Jin nodded. "I don’t know what to say, though."

"I understand. Maybe it’s just too much to talk about right now."

Jin hummed an agreement. chaos supposed it might be a long time before Jin could really talk about what he was feeling, if he ever did. chaos had picked up a hint of it through Midday...he wondered if Jin had become more attached to Midnight than was wise. He couldn’t really speak on that matter, however, since he had come to know and like Midday perhaps more than he should. They were here to help Allen, not just the parts they liked best about him.

"The watcher, the others call him Six of Midday, he’s not the watching ghost. He could be though, if he wanted to be."

"I think they’re all more than they appear to be." Jin started walking down the hall. "Him...Six of Midnight, he could be just as dangerous as we think the other two are. Far worse, far worse. He could do more than make Allen miserable, he could destroy the lives of everyone Allen knows."

chaos and Jin walked in silence for a while, both deep in thought. It was true, what Jin had said. If Midnight were to become cruel, and go out with those dolls, he could very well be more destructive than the others could, especially if he were still working so closely with Midday. It made chaos wonder what those called Night and Twilight would be like if they were acting the way they should be. Not only the way they should be, but perhaps more frightening, the way they potentially could be. If they were doing both, fully realized...maybe the cloaked one was right and they were a lost god, at least relatively speaking. A godlike creature. chaos thought there was enough potential for them to be a destroyer god, if they just knew how. Of the six, yes, he thought they could be a godlike creature, but he feared what might happen to the seventh if the six should ever attain their potential, even under the best circumstances.

And what of the third, the watcher ghost, the voice as Midday had called him...what would he be like? He had asked them for help, told those outside that those inside were out of control, that they were becoming dangerous. Perhaps the voice would be reasonable.

chaos wanted to speak to Al again. Jin was right; they were all more than they appeared. chaos suspected Al, the maintainer of order, was perhaps the most powerful of them all and knew the most. He had come across so unassuming, so at peace with where he was, but chaos very much doubted he was at peace at all. He wondered if Al knew how to reach the shallow water above the sky.

There was another door the two saw, but they chose to pass it for now. There was something very dangerous behind that door, dangerous in reality, not in potential, an active threat. They would have to go there, to speak with the one occupying the room, but not yet. Jin skirted to the far wall away from the door; the act made chaos think again that perhaps Jin was becoming too attached to Midnight. Then he realized that he too had given the door a wider berth than it needed, being nothing more than a door, and a simple one at that.

"We’ve forgotten something, Jin," chaos said, concerned.

"What is that?"

"We’re affecting the order. Al said we would, that there was nothing that could be done about it." chaos swiped a hand across the wall, and watched as faint ripples moved out from where he touched, changing the shape of the wood grain slightly. "I think it’s affecting us, too."

Jin stopped, glanced at the door they had passed, then back down the hall. "I know it has affected me. No, he has. But you mean something less obvious, don’t you?"

chaos nodded. "Why did we avoid that door? Why did we even know to avoid the door? The offender is in there, and we know he is. How can we know that unless we’re becoming part of this world, or at least, part of the entities that inhabit it?"

"I avoided it because I felt threatened." He was tapping his foot and holding his chin the way he did sometimes when working something out in his mind. "Night threatened us when we first tried to enter this house, but that is not what I felt, not a vague threat. It was personal. Night wants to hurt me. Night wants to hurt me because he thinks I’m hurting Allen...because I am hurting Allen. That’s what I felt. Something else as well...I can’t place it. But it’s not me Night wants to hurt, it only feels like I’m the target."

"Yes, it was much like that. I did something with the watcher, and it may not have been wise in hindsight, but I couldn’t bear not to do it. I let him share his pain with me, but of course it couldn’t just be his and I was under no illusion that it was just the watcher’s, although it was mainly his because it was through his point of view. I sensed you there."

Jin looked long and hard at chaos. "We should be careful then. I have lost any ambivalence I held toward Allen and Midnight has given me very good reasons to like and respect Allen, but I don’t want to be part of him. Not like they are. It may have been mere coincidence that you sensed me while in such close contact with Six of Midday, but what if it were not?"

"Yeah. I think it would be best if we finished here soon, and try to keep our contact to a minimum."

"We did forget what Al said...but then, he also welcomed us and said it was to be expected. He gave you keys and told us every door was open for us. We know now that we’ve underestimated them, but that doesn’t mean he underestimated us." Jin started walking again. "He may have us exactly where he wants us."

chaos had nothing to say to that. He didn’t know if Jin were just being suspicious, but it did seem that Al knew more about what was going on than he had expressed.

Go on to Section 4