A Snowed Abode

Abyss

One of the top corners was suddenly broken free of its pulsating cage, the same side where the room sat in the grand scheme of things at this fortress, one side of the square. No one knew how suddenly, just because some large insect got some glowing globe, the energy beam disappeared, but some might think it might have been connected to its very will to keep on standing guard for no apparent reason, with its only role to dish out random non-sequiturs to whoever, not too dissimilar to a sphynx, one supposes, except the poor insect never got to lie down all feline just because somehow it grew and evolved a way to stand up on its hind legs, as opposed to crawling on all four. To this day no one is sure, either, why there are sometimes such consequences for random branches of evolution, but someone and their archetypes might know... or perhaps they are more like epigenetics, where changes do not take centuries?

Indeed, though, before going through this new portal to chambers unknown, Pax and his companion thought it better to pore over the items at the back of the room which the insect previously blocked. There is one advantage to sudden disappearance, unless for some reason the atoms connecting all things lost their connectivity and anyone could go anywhere...

At any rate, the nearest pamphlet to the entrance, a slightly ageing piece of cloth that lay there, left by who knows exactly who, seem to have had written on it...

"The monarch hath, since time immemorial, co-existed with the people, but where would one be without them? Always consulting them, this is how the people came to respect, for that is never just demanded and given for no reason... but, then, what else could there be that could one want? What one could not get from fear, one gets from understanding, but what if that runs out? What if changing the opinion of the populace was impossible? What if..." The writing stopped abruptly, but so did Pax pause in order to ponder upon this in such an eerie chamber as this... do they really think about all that? What if, instead, they never care at all? Why, many have always seemed to think that if, through fear, the same, or even better result than through respect, then why go with the latter at all? But, Clemens suddenly chimed in, we do not know who the author of this is, and as such we can not exactly verify the perspective that was held and why. Just as Machiavelli began to write The Prince after being expelled, so it is with anything else that context is useful. Pax seemed to concur, but really just wanted to read more...

"Why, it is never impossible", replies the voice "for often it does not even need changing." It continued, in a haughty tone, "do archetypes even need to be summoned when the state of affairs barely changes?" This was clearly, then, when they begin thinking about these beings from the abyss, these strange concoctions... but when did they take over, if they did? What exactly, then, were they thinking... is it merely to change the opinion of the populace? But how ever would that be possible with these so-called archetypes? Are they not extensions of strength, or such? Or are we getting the wrong end of the stick here? Whose voice, also?

They then went to a book opposite to where they currently were, on the other table near the aforementioned lamp, and adjacent to the... bear plushie, not that that had anything to do with these writings the two assumed, being merely some odd inclination that the insect had and happened to forget to disappear with for some reason...

"Why is it that the aspect and concept of mutuality is in existence? That is to say, the way one relies on the other, and vice versa, although this seems to break down when relations come into being. The question then becomes, what use is there to relations? What use is there to reliance when parasitism seems to be functional? Why, the cuckoos have flourished, and they do not even declare themselves a point in any relational continuum." Why, Pax thought, there might be a naturalist in the castle after all... or an anthropologist covertly studying the strange machinations of someone who wants to cling on to superficial regard to such a degree they would use some bizarre physics which no one yet knew the workings of?