Xindii put his shoulder to the old wooden door and heaved. It gave way to a coarse chorus of old joints and damp wood, followed by a faint sprinkling of age-old dust and falling silk from long abandoned webs.

There was a deathly chill to the room – something which it had never been. The room, or study if you wish had been a place of learning and reflection. That's the way it should have been. That's the way it was supposed to be. The room remembered the last act committed here and it had turned its back ashamed, hence the cold. Where there had been light and learning and laughter the final act committed had been enough to suck the air and life from the room; a forefinger and thumb snubbing the flame leaving only echo and taint. A tarnished memory diminishing with a rapid speed.

Xindii brought himself to the chair and fingered the frame gathering a drift of dust.

'Has it really been so long, Josiah?'

The Mapper knelt beside the chair on the worn rug remembering his old mentor and friend.

'Have I come so far without you? It doesn't seem possible. Yet I have come to ask your counsel yet again but nobody is home.' The Mapper smiled effortlessly. 'I miss you old friend. I fear I am at a loss . . . I face an entity that has no boundaries, a worm that has woven itself into the fabric of the very thing we practice and preach . . .' The Mapper sighed deeply. 'I fear I am the only one to stand at the threshold . . .' Xindii's mind wandered. 'Loquin and the white bat at long last. Every man has his day. Every man must take up arms against his leviathan . . . you knew this day would come you clever old bugger.'

Xindii started to laugh and then noticed the faint breeze gathering a cool haste across the back of his fingers. He pulled himself up and made his way to the bookcase, dragging his fingers over numerous volumes collected over centuries of cherished consumption.

'Why? Why am I here?' His index finger carried itself up and across. He closed his eyes and probed its spine. He then gathered his other digits to it and yanked the book toward him. A faint whir of machinery cranked and turned releasing a stuffy combination of grease and oil and the bookcase shifted slightly to the left bathing the Mapper's face in cold musty air.

The dark beckoned him in, the allure of a Mapper's repository proving a temptation all too enticing.

'You've been holding back, Josiah. Every man has his secrets.'

Xindii entered and felt the piece of cord hanging across his face, at first he thought it was some remnant of a spider's web and flinched naturally. But the texture was too coarse. He pulled the cord and a faint amber light bathed the repository in all its misshapen and disorganized glory.

The Mapper waded through the varied papered and papyrus maze of learning, leaning walls of tomes and texts ready to give.

Xindii made his way to Josiah's desk, even in death the old Mapper was tidy, the tools and scientific apparatus of his trade strategically placed in certain quarters of the desk. Pen and paper yearning to be used, an abacus from the forest of Muir, a gift from its Kissledawn residents from his two year sabbatical of years ago. One of his most cherished memories: Learning from the people of the veil; the only people in the multiverse who had defied the odds. The elf-like race had remained hidden for eons, casually slipping through the cracks of space/time to give authors and imaginers food for thought, but like every crack and hole rot would set in, entropy was not picky, it spread through the realms of the Kissledawn like wildfire, devouring the beguiling vistas of the Evermore, the Sky Gardens and the Azure Temperance, places that had stood proud since God tinkered with chemistry and sentience. Defeated they fled into 'the flat', their word for God's realm, and heard the call like every other species, the beacon that led to the Construct.

Xindii leaned over the desk and turned the lamp on. Immaculately stacked mail beckoned him to sit down on the dusty chair. He did so without brushing the seat down. The gravity and languid dark of the place drained him. Or maybe it was the memories. The last of them. He shook the thought from his head and sifted through the mail. It was like the Ravnor hadn't just claimed his friend but the surroundings of where he died also.

He felt a pang of darkness shroud his heart and he put his right hand to his temple.

'Why? Why did I come? Why?'

The Mapper tried to quell his mind, this place had brought a tide of neurosis with it, dank and cold-like ghosts with sharp teeth ready to pluck his soul from his chest.

Why?

'WHY?'

'Why?'

'Why? What? 'asked Josiah.

'You should be in Church.'

'I should not. I wouldn't claim a bed for someone who needs it'.

'And you don't?'

'I think I am beyond such comforts, Xindii. Besides, this is home, or as close as one gets in his last –'

Xindii looked to the floor.

'I'm sorry, Xindii,' the old Mapper declared.

He shook his head. 'It's . . . it's not a problem . . .'

'I think it is . . . I give you hope for the first time in your life and snatch it away.'

Xindii leaned forward in his chair. 'It's not your fault.'

Josiah shrugged. 'It should be. I can see your concern, Xindii. Feel the disappointment that burns . . . it's why you have taken so long to come.'

The young initiate wiped his hands across his face and sighed. 'That damn fox.'

'Don't be so hard on him. You will need him now, more than ever.'

'I should have left him in Tattermovish.'

'Always on the defence. Even now?'

Xindii scoffed. 'What do you want of me? What . . . what am I meant to do?'

Josiah swallowed hard. 'I need your help . . . I want you to help me die.'

Xindii pulled himself from the chair and paced the room leaving Josiah to explain himself.

'The procedure isn't difficult. Just an injection into the artery and then my long sleep . . . it's not how I imagined my demise. Was hoping for a skiing accident in the Delve or maybe rock climbing in the Gravity Wells, no such luck hey? But I suppose, if we all got to choose our ends then life would be a lot more extravagant. Still, can't say I haven't had a good innings. The Auditors will probably party like it's the End of Days tonight. I fear they have been waiting with bated breath for this day.'

'Don't encourage them, Josiah.'

'I don't think the Pope of Numbers and his brethren need much encouragement, Xindii.'

'You're a hero. Heroes shouldn't die like this.'

Josiah closed his eyes but was too late in stopping the solitary tear rolling down his cheek.

'Careful. Xindii,' the old Mapper joked, 'you place me on a pedestal too high.'

Xindii came back around to the chair and faced his mentor, kneeling down in front of him, taking his benefactor's frail hand.

'You were ready to give up everything. Just for your belief in a kid that had murdered four people. I don't know about you Josiah but there aren't many people about like that. This hero turned the streets upside down to find that kid and when he did, fought tooth and nail to keep him. Stood as his advocate, gave him a home. Turned a frightened child into a man. Sounds like a hero to me.'

Josiah smiled and came with it a horrendous seizure in his chest, producing a small but uncomfortable exodus of black blood from his mouth and a cough as coarse as gravel.

Xindii held his hand tight until the Mapper regained what composure the Ravnor hadn't eaten.

The young initiate held back the sorrow and looked his old mentor in the eye. 'What must I do?'

Josiah pointed to the bureau in the corner. 'The black box over there. It contains my last adventure, alas.'

Xindii walked over to it and opened up the ornate case revealing a syringe and a phial of the darkest substance he had ever seen. He placed it up to the light of the lamp but the liquid was so dense no light pierced it. Xindii looked to his mentor, eyebrows raised.

'Your last lesson, from me at any rate. Say hello to Reaper. Blood harvested from the veins of mermaids, the ultimate in poison. No going back here.'

Josiah held out his hand, beckoning Xindii and the case over. The young lad did as he was bid, placing the phial in the Mapper's hands.

'When a mermaid bleeds out the blood it is a pearly white, it's after it is bottled and kept that the taint begins. It's kept in darkened rooms for years, decades until it is as black as pitch.'

Josiah held it up to the light. 'This one is a particularly potent vintage. May have me rambling on like a mad man at the start but that will subside into a dream state and then sleep. A long sleep.'

'Mappers use this?' asked Xindii.

'Only in the rarest of cases. We induce the Reverie ourselves as you know but in the most extreme cases where the accused is clever enough to escape our designs then Reaper must be implemented. A last resort.'

'But, but you are using it to euthanize yourself,' Xindii asked, his bottom lip quivering 'to kill yourself?'

Josiah leaned over and touched the boy's shoulder. 'One last sleep before the Auditors collect their number. It's painless Xindii. The only thing I will feel is a longing to close my eyes and sleep, I promise.'

Josiah handed his student the phial and Xindii slowly placed it within the carriage of the syringe.

Xindii looked up to his mentor and smiled. 'Thank you.'

'It was a pleasure, Heironymous Xindii. The boy from Jeppa.'

The Mapper rolled up the arm of his dressing gown and Xindii kneeled in closer, placing the underside of his thumb on Josiah's white skin, looking for a willing vein.

Xindii held back the tears and the gaping abyss that was now pulling his heart into a vortex of abandonment. The realisation that he was about to lose his old friend reverberating down his arm making him drop the syringe down the side of Josiah's chair. He stepped back, shaking, scratching the surface of his head, pulling at the greasy matted tufts close to the scalp, probing the topography of the congealed hair with nail and finger, pulling and fumbling at the greased flats, searching for a doorway into his brain so his soul could leap out and run for the hills.

The old Mapper pried himself from the well-worn chair and hobbled over to his protégé, arms outstretched; welcoming. Xindii fell into them crying and the two friends fell to the floor, Josiah's embrace unbroken.

The young soldier cried against the soft fabric of the Mapper's gown.

'It's alright, Xindii. I should be ashamed of myself, asking this of you. As if you haven't been through enough. Selfish old Mapper,' he said, kissing the soldier's greasy scalp.

'Do you ever wonder what happened to Jia and Basquiat? I miss that old butler of mine. Had a penchant for chess and flower arranging you know. Always useful with a whisk too . . . I wonder where they are Heironymous. I would like to know . . . maybe I will find out hey? The bugger owes me a fiver too, bloody rapscallion. How ridiculous of me though, talking in the first person . . .'

Xindii then pulled himself out of Josiah's embrace and looked into his eyes. 'No, no you crazy bastard. I was meant to do it. Why?'

The old Mapper swayed on his knees and looked straight through Xindii, the syringe fell from his grasp and landed effortlessly on the brown rug. 'You really have the most sensational aura about you my boy. Like a Kissledawn sunset. Have you ever seen one? You must,' he demanded, his robe starting to come away and show nothing but bare flesh and scars and the darkened upper reaches of his pubis.

Xindii leaned forward, fighting back the tears once again, remaining strong, and took his mentor in his arms, both sitting in front of the fire.

'I'm getting a bit sleepy. Shit. I've only gone and done it haven't I?'

Xindii nodded, almost smiling at the Mapper in his addled stupor.

'You should of let me you crazy old fart!'

'Never meant for you to do it. I just . . . I just wanted someone to be here. It's a lonely business, death.'

Xindii nodded and smiled, holding him close, never letting go, because that was what Josiah did all those years ago.

'Is it Grox Eve, Xindii? I love Grox Eve.'

The Mapper initiate held his chin softly over his mentor's head. 'Yeah, it's Grox Eve. Here come the jip pies now.'

Josiah smiled in his reverie, sniffing the air and licking his lips. 'Tell Esme that Herrick needs to lay off the taters, the gumbledak honey will expand his waist line.'

Perplexed, Xindii didn't know to laugh or cry. He just held him close. The Mapper's voice suddenly breaking down into a faint whisper. Xindii couldn't hold on anymore. The tears cascaded down his red cheeks.

'Mar-g-ery, I lo-ve-ed y-o-u . . .'

The fire burned for hours and so Xindii held him until its last ember diminished.

Xindii looked through the deceased Mapper's correspondence. A letter postmarked from Salt, unopened. Another from the territory of Dahri, west of Kissledaw. He felt the urge to open them but thought better of it, placing them on the inside of his breast pocket. Maybe later. If they had been waiting for a response than they would have surely given up by now. Perhaps they were dead themselves.

He came to the last and felt his heart timber into the pit of his gut. A blank envelope with just the name XINDII written across it in the Mapper's handwriting. He felt the contents with thumb and forefinger, a slight bulge protruded through the paper as he tilted it at a thirty degree angle. Curious, he shook it. A faint and coarse rubbing propelled him into a fascinated posture, gently opening the envelope with the opener in hand.

Peering into the forced opening his face fell when he saw the red sand scattered across the inner surface. Deflated he placed the envelope back on the desk and sighed, deeply, flipping one of the red beans on the abacus across the wire. Then another, then another . . .

He noticed the deep red of the beans and then tore the envelope open and compared the hues. He licked his lips and poured the sand into a jar from the chemistry table.

'Breadcrumbs . . .'

Was it possible? Had the clever old stick left him a message! He remembered a story Josiah had told him years ago in the Crackets, of the science of fossilizing a memory. Quite literally, a message in a bottle. It was an art, practiced with his time with the Kissledawn, to play out the memory or message and secure the imprint with blood and tears, bound by biology, until the blood dried and fossilized.

Xindii placed a Bunsen burner under the jar and warmed it in its blue and welcome flame. The heat broke down the structure, reforming into a fluidic substance; the bottle was cracking, its message unleashed, eager to be read. Heat rose from the jar forming a cloud that shifted with a faint colour, transforming itself into a face of steam and smoke, a face very familiar to Xindii: Josiah.

His face turned inward and outward, little whirlpools of smoke with flecks of deep red and green moving through the visage like streaks of lightning. Xindii upped the heat, letting the chemistry of the message fulfill itself. It steadied and gained a more corporeal countenance. Josiah spoke.

'My friend, how long it has been I do not know. This message was recorded a long time ago. This, if you like, is my last will and testament. Unfortunately I don't have a lot to offer, the Crackets went up in flames and the Booktique, well. Let's just say I owe Phillipa more than a job.

'What I have for you Xindii is knowledge. I sincerely hope you are the Mapper I always aspired you would be. But again, with a heavy heart it seems I have put the weight of the world on your shoulders once again.

'Mappers have always believed that the dream pool is evolving, that since the inception of the human race an intelligence has formed within that world we so heavily dip ourselves into.

'There is a prophecy that one day this 'intelligence' will be born to one parent, a mother; an immaculate conception and that this individual will lead us from the dark, breach the world of dream and lead us to shores yet undreamed.

'Relax, it's not you.'

'Oh thank goodness.'

'Your parentage is an unusual mix my friend but one I'm sure will come to light.

'There are forces within our world that know this tale. Forces that would gain a foothold within this realm. The Auditors have tried to access it for eons but to no avail. Even God decreed it as our secret room. There is another creature that desires this . . . Something immeasurably old.

'I first heard of this being many years ago when I studied under my mentor and since I have been fixated at the possibility of its existence. I have collected all data I know on the possibility of this beast . . . this entity.'

Xindii leaned in closer to the cloud-like face of Josiah Kahn. 'You know too, don't you you clever old stick.'

'It has no name. What aliases it has taken over the years are nothing but misnomers. The most common, The Flea King, the Dream Flea. The Gutter-Snipe, the Taint. None of these really matter. But it has left a trail throughout the centuries . . . and now it's here.

'You may know this. I hope you don't. But I fear this entity still exists. Burrowed away, warm within the minds of those who have read – or heard – its gospel.

'Within my repository are all the collected data I have on this 'Flea King' Do not read it!'

'What?'

'Burn it. Raise the repository to the ground. This entity is a living gospel. A sentient story. Its words are a disease. Don't let those words taint you or anyone else.'

'But how do I stop it? How do I stop the story? Tell me that old man?'

'Burn it, Xindii. Burn it all . . .'

The features of Josiah Kahn started to disperse, his face falling away into nothing more than vapour, his last memory nothing more than a warning.

Deflated, Xindii leant over the desk and slammed his fist down into the hard wood.

'Burn it? Why didn't you burn it Josiah? Did you falter? Did you give in to curiosity? Did you read its gospel? Why didn't you burn it?'

Xindii stood and walked round the varied tomes. 'Why didn't you burn it, hey? Couldn't you do it? Couldn't you destroy your books?'

He came to a book that jutted out slightly, as if it had heard Xindii enter and felt the need for its pages to be brushed and touched by a warm hand. The Mapper reached for it and suddenly stopped, his fingers brushing the spine. 'Déjà vu?'

He pushed the book back into its hole and the walls of the repository creaked and moaned. 'Ah, aren't you a clever little story. You tried to hoodwink me before didn't you? Sink your talons into my synapses. But the old man stopped you, didn't he?'

Xindii leaned in closer, breathing down the spines back. 'Well guess what? You're going to burn! Your gospel is coming to an end,' he stressed, leaning back and laughing. 'I don't know how I'm going to do it. But hey, I always find a way.'

Burn it.

Xindii walked back to the Bunsen burner and lit the nearest book he could find, letting the flames spread throughout the room.

'Tonight your gospel ends.'