*Day 17 - Beneath the Forsaken City of Kharis*
The entrance wasn't visible until you were already falling through it.
One moment, Ora stood on solid ground in the ruins of Kharis—a city that had tried to remain neutral and paid for it with obliteration. The next, reality hiccupped, and she was tumbling through space that shouldn't exist.
*Don't fight it,* Pyrrhus advised through their bond. *The Market decides who enters.*
Her breath misted in the warm underground air—five degrees below normal now, her corruption deepening.
She hit ground that felt like compressed screams. Around her, the Underground Market sprawled in impossible directions—a bazaar built in the spaces between spaces, where the broken came to trade pieces of themselves for things that might help them continue.
"First time?" A child approached—no, something wearing the shape of a child. Its eyes were older than the dragon wars. "You smell like corruption and binding. Interesting combination."
"We're looking for allies," Ora said, standing carefully. The ground kept trying to tell her she was actually on the ceiling.
"Everyone's looking for something. Question is—" The child-thing tilted its head. "What are you willing to trade?"
Water froze where her fingers touched the table—ten degrees below normal, winter incarnate in human form.
Behind Ora, her companions materialized one by one. S'pun-duh landed hard, mushrooms immediately sprouting from his impact crater. Kaelen appeared mid-sentence, still explaining something to Marcus who wasn't there yet. Vash'nil simply existed, his broken form adapting instantly to the Market's wrongness.
Malakor came last, and his arrival made the child-thing step back.
"Vorgoth's son," it whispered. "The failed weapon. You shouldn't be here. Your father had debts."
"My father is dead," Malakor said, all his aspects speaking in unison. "His debts died with him."
"Debts don't die here. They transform." The child-thing's smile showed too many teeth in too many dimensions. "But perhaps we can negotiate. The Market always needs broken things that refuse to stay broken."
They followed the creature deeper into the Market. The stalls defied physics—some existed in multiple locations simultaneously, others flickered between being and not being. The merchants were worse.
"Memories! Fresh memories! Trade your pain for power!"
"Futures for sale! Ten years of possibility for one moment of transcendence!"
"Names! I collect names! Give me yours and become anyone!"
Ora felt the Market pulling at her, trying to categorize her corruption, price it, package it for sale. Sussurro-Vel hummed warnings at her hip.
"Don't look too closely at anything," Kaelen warned. "The Market feeds on attention. Look too long and you become merchandise."
They passed a stall where a woman sold her reflection to a mirror that ate light. Another where a man traded his shadow for the ability to exist in two places at once. At a third, children—real children, not Market-things—bartered their ability to dream for food that would keep them alive another day.
"This is monstrous," Marcus whispered.
"This is survival," the child-thing corrected. "When the world breaks, the broken must adapt or perish. The Market provides options."
"At what cost?"
"Everything costs. The Market just makes the price visible."
They reached the center of the Market—a plaza that existed in seventeen dimensions simultaneously. Here, the serious traders worked. Not merchants of memory or dream, but dealers in revolution, suppliers of apocalypse, brokers of fundamental change.
"Ah," a voice like silk over steel spoke. "The corrupted princess. We've been expecting you."
The speaker stepped from shadows that had too much depth. Beautiful in the way poisonous things were beautiful—perfect features that hurt to perceive directly, dressed in clothing woven from the last words of dying gods.
"Nethys," Ora growled. The Death Angel who'd failed to kill her. Who'd been transformed by that failure.
"Former Death Angel," Nethys corrected. "The Market gave me new purpose after you corrupted my essence. Now I'm a broker of impossibilities. And you, dear Ashkore, need the impossible."
"We need allies."
"No. You need an army of the broken to fight beings of perfect unity." Nethys smiled, showing teeth that existed in spectrums humans couldn't see. "Lucky for you, I know where to find them."
"For what price?"
"Oh, not from you. You've already paid—your corruption spawned a new form of existence when it touched my death-essence. I'm something unprecedented now. Angel and demon and neither and both." She spread wings that were also shadows that were also mathematical equations. "I should thank you. But instead, I'll help you. The Forsaken are gathering in the Deep Market. The ones the Distillers rejected. The ones too broken to perfect."
"Why help us?"
"Because the Distillers want to make everything uniform. Predictable. Perfect." Nethys's expression turned predatory. "And I've grown fond of chaos. It makes things... interesting."
She led them deeper, past the regular Market into spaces that even the broken feared to trade. Here, reality wasn't just negotiable—it was actively hostile. The air tried to convince lungs they didn't exist. Gravity argued with itself about which way was down.
"The Deep Market," Nethys announced. "Where the truly forsaken gather."
The space opened into an impossible amphitheater. Hundreds—thousands—of beings filled it. Not just humans or elves, but things that had been twisted by the world's breaking. Former angels with burnt wings. Dragons who'd been turned inside out by guilt. Creatures that existed in multiple states simultaneously, never quite settling on a single form.
At the center, on a stage made of crystallized regret, stood three figures.
The first was wrapped in bandages that bled continuously—not blood, but liquid sorrow. The second existed as a collection of floating bones held together by will alone. The third was shadow given substance, darkness that had learned to think.
"The Triumvirate of the Forsaken," Nethys explained. "They speak for those too broken to have voices."
The revelation made reality hiccup—like glass breaking in the space between thoughts.
The bandaged one noticed them first. When it spoke, its voice was the sound of hearts breaking:
"Ashkore. Corruption-bearer. Dragon-bound. You come seeking army."
"I come seeking allies," Ora corrected.
"No difference. All are weapons in the end." The bone collection rattled, forming words: "Question is—will you wield us or fight beside us?"
"Beside," Ora said without hesitation. "The Distillers want to perfect everything. I want to keep things broken enough to be real."
The shadow laughed—sound like light dying. "Real. Such a simple word for such a complex concept. What is real when reality itself is negotiable?"
"Choice," Kaelen said, stepping forward. "Choice is real. The ability to decide, even when all decisions lead to doom."
"The scholar speaks truth," the bandaged one acknowledged. "But truth costs here. What do you offer for our alliance?"
Ora looked at the assembled Forsaken—broken, twisted, wrong in every way. But also surviving. Choosing to continue despite everything.
"I offer purpose," she said. "Not meaning—that's too much to promise. But purpose. Direction. A reason to use your wrongness as weapon rather than wound."
The Triumvirate conferred—the bandaged one's sorrow mixing with the bone collector's rattling and the shadow's whispers. Finally, they spoke as one:
"Show us."
Ora drew Sussurro-Vel. The blade sang with harmonies that shouldn't exist—corruption and purity twisted together. She held it high, and her corruption responded, spreading from her like inverse light.
But instead of consuming, it revealed. Every Forsaken's unique wrongness began to glow, to pulse with potential. They weren't just broken—they were broken in ways that could break other things. Their wrongness was weapon, shield, and identity all at once.
"The Distillers fear you," Ora said, her voice carrying through impossible dimensions. "Not because you're strong, but because you're unpredictable. They can perfect order. They can't perfect chaos. You are chaos incarnate."
"Chaos doesn't win wars," the shadow observed.
"No. But it makes winning irrelevant. If we can't defeat perfection, we can at least make it impossible to implement. Every one of you is a living impossibility. Together, we're an army of contradictions that can't be solved."
The Forsaken stirred. Hope—or something like it—rippled through them.
"And after?" the bone collector asked. "If we fight and survive? What then?"
"Then you choose. Stay broken. Heal wrong. Become something else. The point is you get to choose, not have perfection chosen for you."
The Triumvirate stood. The bandaged one unwrapped a single strip, revealing an eye that had seen too much. The bone collector assembled into something almost human. The shadow took form, becoming solid enough to shake.
"We accept," they said. "The Forsaken will fight. Not for you. Not for the world. But for the right to remain wrong."
A cheer went up—or down, or sideways. Three thousand broken beings celebrating their wrongness, their chaos, their impossible existence.
"There's more," Nethys said quietly to Ora. "The Market has information. About the Distillers' true plan. But the Broker wants to meet you personally."
"The Broker?"
"The one who runs all this. Who decides what can be traded and what costs what." Nethys's expression was unreadable. "She was like me once—angel and demon both. But she chose a third path. Became Transaction itself. She exists only as exchange."
"What does she want?"
"What everyone wants. More. But in her case, she wants the most valuable trade possible—your corruption for her cure."
"I'm not trading my corruption."
"Then offer something else. But know this—the Broker's information could change everything. She knows where the Original Distiller comes from. And more importantly... she knows how to make it choose."
Ora looked at her assembled army of wrongness. Three thousand Forsaken, each one a weapon against perfection just by existing.
"Take me to her," she said.
---
**The Broker's Domain**
The Broker existed in a space between the Market and nothing—a place where all transactions originated and ended. She had no fixed form, appearing to each visitor as what they most wanted to trade.
To Ora, she appeared as Lyra. But wrong. Lyra with eyes made of ledgers, skin of contracts, hair of dissolved promises.
"Don't," Ora said, hand on Sussurro-Vel's hilt.
"Don't what? Show you what you'd trade everything for? That's my nature. I am Transaction. I exist as exchange." The not-Lyra smiled with too many mouths. "But I can be someone else if you prefer."
She shifted, becoming a mirror that reflected not images but possibilities. In it, Ora saw herself uncorrupted, whole, human. She saw Crysillia rebuilt. She saw a world that had never broken.
"Pretty lies," Ora said.
"Pretty possibilities. All achievable. For the right price."
"Name it."
"Your infection. The corruption spreading through you. It's unique—not just void, but void with purpose. I could extract it, refine it, sell it to those who want to become nothing productively."
"And in exchange?"
"Everything you want. Crysillia restored. Your sister alive. The world unbroken."
"That's impossible."
"I'm the Broker. I trade in impossibilities. Observe."
She produced a vial—inside, liquid light that wasn't light. Ora recognized it instantly. The essence of the Original Distiller, from before it chose perfection.
"This is what it was before it became what it is. Pure potential. Unchoosed choice. With this, you could remake everything. Undo the dragons' attack. Prevent the Distillers' rise. Edit history itself."
Ora stared at the vial. Everything she wanted, right there. All she had to do was give up the corruption that was killing her anyway.
"No," she said.
The Broker tilted her head. "No?"
"The corruption is what makes me capable of fighting the Distillers. Without it, I'm just another elf with a sword and a grudge. With it, I'm impossibility incarnate."
"You're dying incarnate."
"Same thing, different perspective."
The Broker laughed—sound like coins falling into void. "Interesting. You value purpose over preservation. Very well. Second offer—information for memory."
"What information?"
"The location of all seventeen Sanctuaries. The nature of the God-Eater protocols. The timeline for the Last Cacophony. Even the way to force the Original to choose."
"What memory?"
"Your last memory of Crysillia before it burned. The moment of perfect harmony before perfect destruction."
Ora considered. That memory hurt more than the corruption. Maybe losing it would be relief.
"Deal," she said.
The extraction was neither painful nor painless. It was something else—like having a tooth pulled from your soul. The Broker worked with tools that shouldn't exist, carefully removing the crystallized memory from Ora's mind.
"Beautiful," the Broker breathed, holding the memory like a gem. "Ten thousand voices in perfect harmony, about to die. This will trade for impossible things."
She provided the information as promised—maps that showed reality as the Distillers saw it, timelines that revealed when each Sanctuary would activate, protocols that explained how the God-Eaters would unmake choice itself.
"Seven days," the Broker said. "In seven days, they activate all seventeen God-Eaters simultaneously. Reality won't survive. It will be perfected, which is worse than death."
"Unless?"
"Unless you can make the Original choose chaos over order. But that requires something you don't have."
"What?"
"Unity. The Forsaken are chaos. The dragons are guilt. The humans are stubborn. You're all pulling in different directions. The Distillers are unified in purpose. That's their strength."
"Unity is what we're fighting against."
"No. Forced unity is what you're fighting against. Chosen unity—temporary, voluntary, revocable—that's different. That's jazz."
"Jazz?"
"Music where everyone plays differently but together. Chaos with intent. Discord that harmonizes. You need to make your broken army into the most beautiful cacophony ever heard."
Ora left the Broker's domain with maps, timelines, and a hole where her last perfect memory had been. But also with understanding. They didn't need to become like the Distillers to beat them.
They needed to become the opposite—so chaotically unified that perfection couldn't process them.
---
**The War Council**
They gathered in the ruins of the Market's amphitheater—three thousand Forsaken, Ora's companions, and surprisingly, three dragons who'd been drawn by the chaos.
"Seven days," Ora announced. "That's all we have."
She shared the Broker's information. The seventeen Sanctuaries, each one a test case for a different form of perfection. The God-Eaters that would unmake the very concept of choice. The Original Distiller, waiting to impose its non-choice on everything.
"How do we fight that?" someone asked—a Forsaken whose body was inside-out but functional.
"We don't fight it. We confuse it. Every Sanctuary expects resistance or submission. We give them neither. We give them transformation."
"Meaning?"
"We attack each Sanctuary with its opposite wrongness. The Harmony Sanctuary gets discord. The Silence Sanctuary gets cacophony. The Unity Sanctuary gets multiplicity. Not to destroy them—to give them choice."
"That's insane."
"That's the point. Sanity is predictable. Insanity is possibility."
Malakor stepped forward, his aspects finally synchronized. "I can modify the God-Eater I carry. Instead of unmaking, it could... remake. Transform perfection into imperfection."
"That could work," Vash'nil said, his three heads tracking different timelines. "I see possibilities where it works. Also ones where it destroys everything. But that's better than certain perfection."
"Then we have a plan," Ora said. "Seven days to create seventeen different impossibilities. Seven days to prove chaos is sacred."
The Forsaken didn't cheer. They did something better—they laughed. Three thousand different laughs, no two alike, creating a sound that made reality question itself.
It was the most beautiful horrible thing Ora had ever heard.
It was perfect in its imperfection.
The war against perfection would begin with that sound—the laughter of the broken, refusing to be fixed.
---
*End Chapter 16*
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