( Of use, as instruments die, as dying, faded notes of sound before the last of music pales. As if the one, the individual, is only of note when it serves the communal whole.

Once, he might have agreed to place the order before the self. Now, there is a graceless, cunning acceptance that the lives of the many might be water in wave and spumes dispersed, and the one might crest and shine and break the ocean's movement. In this world and the next, not all is made equal.

He descends carefully, heat licking his ankles, rising up his calves. Below, so close to the Room of Seal's mouth, earth has yet to fissure and break into the contortions of new, unseen topography — it is still a corridor of stone, made dark. Here and there, sparks of flame, the dead bound, chains rattling over their bones.

One begs for water. He stills, gaze soft when he searches the woman behind him, sketched out in shadow — )

You carry a flask? ( A pause, then hesitantly: ) They are fettered dead. Cannot harm, if we approach.

( To lend them water is only a mercy. )