The Story So Far... (short story)

 was the second promotional short story released in The Book of the Peace Dossier.

Summary
Mother and Father, the keepers of the Shadow Spire, call upon a loa to show them the Faction Paradox survivors of Lolita's attack on the Eleven-Day Empire. They're shown older members of the Family hibernating in surviving moments of the Empire, then Mathara's warship fleet and its destruction in an invasion of a cloneworld. Mother and Father ask for survivors of other Homeworld deaths, and are shown first the Elementals then members of the Faction on long-dead ruins of Homeworlds. The loa shows one final Faction survivor, the new Grandfather. Mother and Father decide to open the Spire to all the living Faction Family they've been shown. They ask the loa to show the location of a weapon, and it gives a flash of a green snake writhing through history before vanishing.

Characters

 * Mother
 * Father
 * Mother Mathara
 * Kristeva
 * The new Grandfather

Continuity

 * The Shadow Spire previously appeared in PROSE: A Bloody (And Public) Domaine.
 * The Mother and Father see the Empire crumbling into the event horizon of "a cruel, lipsticked sneer". (AUDIO: The Shadow Play)
 * Some of the Faction survived in their private moments of the Empire, (AUDIO: The Shadow Play) some sharing their bubbles with "loves". (PROSE: Nothing Lasts Forever)
 * The Mother and Father see Mathara's invasion of the corrupted War Queen's Homeworld, with a false Grandfather under an edifice shadow, which ends in the Homeworld's detonation. Some Homeworlder survivors fall from Warring Heaven, (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) their hearts decaying (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street) and their timelines rotting into "patchworks of broken memories", (PROSE: The Burning, et al) while Mathara's fleet crumbles into shadowed virus souls ticking with poisoned gearwork. (PROSE: Anachrophobia)
 * Mathara's fleet are skeletons "pulled from the influence of the Infernal Sphere". (PROSE: Interference - Book Two, T.memeticus: A Morphology)
 * Uncles wait in the holds of Mathara's fleet. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles)
 * The Homeworld invaded by Mathara is a "sheath echo". (PROSE: The Brakespeare Voyage)
 * The Mother and Father see the Elementals' forgecity Throneworld (PROSE: Hope) beneath "the Needle's gleam" (PROSE: Father Time, et al) in sterile greyness, (PROSE: Unnatural History) its Emperor in an "exile's century". (PROSE: The Burning, Escape Velocity, et al)
 * The Emperor's Magistrate toys with his rosette. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, The Infinity Doctors)
 * Other Faction survivors huddle around campfires on long-dead Homeworlds (PROSE: Cobweb and Ivory) including Ardethe, (PROSE: Deadfall) New Alexandria, (PROSE: The Crystal Bucephalus) and an ancient Wonderland. (AUDIO: Zagreus)
 * The new Grandfather has red hair and green eyes. (PROSE: Alien Bodies, AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire) The Mother and Father watch her speaking to her "cavernous home and companion". (PROSE: Spinning Jenny)
 * Marielle Duquesne briefly saw something in the Time Vortex resembling a snake in PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet.