Going Once, Going Twice (short story)

 was the third short story in The Book of the Peace, written by Jacob Black. It was a partial sequel to Black's short story A Bloody (And Public) Domaine in The Book of the Enemy as well as to the audio series The True History of Faction Paradox, introducing new facets to the history between the Great Houses and the Osirians.

The story was also notable for featuring the apparently final death of Godfather Auteur, who met his end by being consumed by Apep during a foolhardy attempt to escape his imprisonment in the Shadow Spire.

Summary
Auteur tries to take advantage of the Crime Lady Cortalian's First Auction in Heaven to merge with the ancient being Apep and escape the Shadow Spire. However, his plans are derailed by his own insane arrogance and by Kifah and Gustav, two of the low-ranking Faction Paradox refugees now living with him in the Shadow Spire, who would rather take their chance at the Auction to rescue their lost comrade (and Kifah's boyfriend), Intrepid.

The Shadow's Overture
Locked in the Shadow Spire, a laughing Godfather Auteur writes frantically, weaving together several separate events past and future as he prepares his master-plan: the duel between "the Jackal" (Sutekh) and "the Falcon" (Horus) which destablised Mars's place in history, the youth of "the Warrior", an event which will see Brothers of the Faction helpless as the world around them shatters, and finally the rise of the Snake.

Mother and Father watch, impassive, as Auteur continued his work, lightly tapping a rhythm of four and humming a forgotten theme tune. However, Father eventually speaks up, approving of Auteur's choice to involve Gustav in the masterplan, as he believes that Gustav's strength and loyalty may be useful if "the bonding ceremony" goes wrong. Mother is more skeptical, believing that Gustav's race memories of serving the Osirans may override his loyalty to the Faction when he learns the nature of the artefact, but Father insists that his faith was shattered during his initiation.

Mother predicts that Gustav, if asked to come with Mohter and Father on the mission, will also want to take Kifah along. Although reluctant to entrust the Little Brother with this responsibility, the two Spirekeepers are reminded by Auteur that "beggars can't be choosers". Auteur also notes that they could easily lie to Gustav and Kifah about the nature of the mission if it will make it easier to make them obey.

While Auteur's attention is elsewhere, a foreign, inky narrative begins to "snake its way" into the pages of the story he had been writing.

Child of Earth
Asleep inside the Shadow Spire, Little Brother Kifah experiences vivid nightmares, which often happens to him when he sleeps in the Spire, as the "gentle cooing whispers from the floor" have a tendency to get into people's heads and stir up their bad memories. Hence, Kifah dreams back to the destruction of his old planet, "Home", and to his first meeting with Faction Paradox in the person of Cousin Intrepid. His dreams then take him back to his initiation, his terror at facing "the One-Armed Man" and the way in which Intrepid's smile helped him make it through the ordeal; he flashes forward to the blossoming of their friendship into a romance.

He relives Intrepid telling him about his own history, how he was kicked out of the Homeworld's great Academy because he was half-human and hybrids had fallen out of fashion on the "polite society" of the Great Houses — and also Intrepid's speculation about how Kifah survived the Great Houses' assault on his Home, and about the reasons for it. Out of sadism, the Spire then twists the dream into a nightmare, a wild, exaggerated imagining about Intrepid's final fate, based on the battle reports Kifah has read about the Battle of Cratosi Fields during which Intrepid went missing.

As the dream shifts again, Intrepid glimpses a great snake with green eyes taking Intrepid's empty place in his bed. Mother watches Kifah as he dreams, preparing to waken him to give him his mission.

Son of Mars
Brother Gustav, too, is sleeping in his own icy corner of the Shadow Spire and dreaming. His are pleasant dreams as he experiences visions of Mars as it was in his prime: rusted and past its prime, but nevertheless full of Martian life. He remembers playing with his brothers and sisters in their family nest, attending rituals and great gatherings of the Martian clans.

However, the dream turns to a nightmare which has him shaking in his sleep, as Father observes. Gustav's new dream is a vision of a past event he never personally witnessed: an allegorical view of Horus and Sutekh's duel on Mars, respectively appearing as a gigantic, godly Falcon and Jackal. He sees the sky of Mars cracking, and the dream-Sutekh mocks Gustav in Father's about his not being real.

Gustav wakes up with a start when he catches a glimpse of an ancient emptiness in space trying to crawl into reality through the crack. Father, looking down at him in more ways than one, tells him to join Mother in the hall so they can discuss Gustav's next assignment.

Tell it on the Mountain
to be written

The (Bidding) War
to be written

Souls of the Spirekeepers
to be written

Just Another Homeworld Lost...
to be written

The Madness of Godfather Auteur
to be written

Heritage
to be written

The Reign of Apep
to be written

The Closing of the First Auction in Heaven
to be written

Characters

 * Godfather Auteur
 * Mother
 * Father
 * Little Brother Kifah
 * Brother Intrepid
 * Brother Gustav
 * Sutekh
 * Horus (Eliza)
 * Cortalian
 * Bishop
 * Baron of Trilermeriaq
 * Baron of Trilermeriaq's lover
 * Ice Heiress
 * Duke
 * Apep
 * Member of the Cephalopodic Coterie
 * Technosapien
 * Homeworlder

Continuity

 * Auteur and the Shadow Spire previously featured in PROSE: A Bloody (And Public) Domaine.
 * The Homeworlders are referred to as "Chronarchs" (COMIC: 4-D War) and "Watchmakers". (PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet)
 * The observer effect is discussed. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors, The Gallifrey Chronicles, The Cosmology of the Spiral Politic, et al.)
 * Auteur writes in a circular language that can program history. (TV: Rose, et al.)
 * Remembering Mars, Gustav thinks of hives, (AUDIO: Red Dawn, TV: Empress of Mars) swords, and rituals. (PROSE: Legacy, COMIC: Descendance)
 * Some people attending the auction heard cries of Peace from angels (PROSE: Hark! The Herald Angels Sing) "skulled theatre troupes", (PROSE: What Keeps Their Lines Alive) and shadows that "seeped into their bedrooms at night". (PROSE: The Ugly Spirit)
 * Cortalian's Servitors are biodata-altered versions of massive, snake-like creatures from a forgotten swamp planet. (PROSE: Daring Initiation)
 * Kifah recalls that the War in Heaven has a history with auctions, usually "an exclusive event of a select few Wartime powers and one or two lucky lesser species" over "a bit of weaponry here, an ancient relic there". (PROSE: Alien Bodies)
 * Disembodied body parts of Homeworlders are sold with under the tagline "grow your own lord of history". (TV: Journey's End)
 * Items on auction include star systems in glass bottles, (PROSE: Dead Romance) red rockets "programmed to wapr reality and knock entire cities into a postmodern nightmare", (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go) a Homeworlder hybrid shrunk into a bottle, (COMIC: Return of the Daleks) and the gear shaft of a bus-shaped timeship that crashed into the City of the Saved. (PROSE: A Hundred Words from a Civil War)
 * A technosapien attends the auction. (PROSE: Weapons Grade Snake Oil, Happily Ever After Is a High-Risk Strategy)
 * Mars is in a constant state of temporal flux (PROSE: The Ninnies on Putney Common, Iris Wildthyme of Mars) due to Homeworld experiments, the fight between Sutekh and Horus, (AUDIO: The Judgment of Sutekh) and the enemy's overwriting narrative. (PROSE: The Book of the Enemy)
 * Following the death of the Eleven-Day Empire, (AUDIO: The Shadow Play) Faction Paradox is scattered and being picked off one by one by forces such as the Houses and the enemy. (PROSE: A Farewell to Arms, )
 * Apep was created as a "failsafe" when the Great Houses, themselves masters of stellar engineering, became frightened of the Osirian Court's potential threat to the engineered sun at the heart of their own empire. (AUDIO: The Ship of a Billion Years)
 * Kifah witnesses the forced regeneration of a humanoid Homeworlder into a monstrous form. Such weaponised regenerations were documented by The Book of the War both in regen-inf soldiers and in born members of House Military such as Entarodora. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
 * Apep was inoculated with anti-time. (AUDIO: Zagreus)
 * Auteur summarises the schism and civil war among the Osirians. (AUDIO: Body Politic, Words from Nine Divinities, et al.)