Orblez’s short story, We Who Have Been Spoken For, presents itself as the documentation of a fictional novel, The Chapterhouse Murders, in which Orblez’s fictional narrator, Andreas Paz, is gradually driven mad by a sort of existential terror over the course of reading the book. The plot of Chapterhouse can be summed up simply enough: twelve people find themselves trapped in a house in the middle of nowhere, and one by one meet gruesome deaths until the novel’s final chapter, in which the unseen narrator of Chapterhouse is revealed to have been the murderer all along. As Paz proceeds through the novel - which he describes in architectural metaphors, as if he is venturing deeper into a structure as he goes - he discovers that previously-read chapters of the book have been defaced in a similar manner in which their occupants were killed: the pages shredded, burnt, waterlogged, blood-soaked, spindled, mutilated, etc., all made unreadable. The nature of the murderous narrator (from hereon used to describe all instances of the narrator of The Chapterhouse Murders), as well as the ambiguity of the story’s ending, and that of the novel-within-the-story, have been the subject of much academic discussion.

As none of the text of Chapterhouse is ever quoted directly within Orblez's short story, all guesses as to its prose structure must be reconstructed through the ramblings a secondary unreliable narrator, Andreas Paz - a meta-narrator, essentially - as he succumbs to madness. From Paz's narration, we can glean several clues as to the nature of the work: Each chapter is told from the point of view of the character who meets their end within it. The characters are called occupants by Paz, but notably only in the sense of them 'occupying' their fatal chapter; i.e. Paz only begins using the term after the first death, and only to refer to characters during their respective POV chapters, or those who are already dead by that point in the narrative. In the infamous final chapter, the last surviving occupant, Herman Silva, begins to hear a mysterious 'disembodied voice' approaching him. Paz identifies the voice as the narrator's, suggesting that Silva is hearing the text of the novel itself spoken out to him. Paz describes the effect as 'echoing', 'maddening', and at one point writes frenziedly that 'the walls [are] closing in!' We are told that Silva, too, dies at the hands of the narrator, but the exact nature of his death, and the ultimate fate of Paz, are left unknown.

Part of the effectiveness of Orblez's short story is the metaphor of novel as haunted house, the suggestion that text itself is inextricably haunted by the 'ghost' of its narrator. The narrator may be read as some sort of malevolent entity capable of extending beyond the limitations of text, tormenting Paz the reader, and then by inference capable of progressing metatextually to potentially haunt the very much nonfictional reader of We Who Have Been Spoken For. On one level, this may literally be true - the nature of the written word, persisting past an author's lifespan, allows a current reader to be piqued, disturbed, aroused, tormented, etc., by the words of an author long since dead. But, then, what are we to make of the narrator's slaughter of the characters - would not all the characters in a story be equally undead, sustained only by the narrator that creates them? 

Much discussion of the short story focuses on the apparent contradiction of its climax, which proceeds as follows: the final chapter is supposedly told entirely from the point of view of the last surviving occupant, Herman Silva, who ultimately also dies at the hands of the unseen narrator. This would seem to be incompatible with the reveal that the narrator is the killer, as surely the final confrontation would have to have been told from the narrator’s point of view. And if each chapter is told from a different point of view, then how can the narrator be considered as a singular entity throughout the entire book, much less the one responsible for the murder of all its characters? 

As one potential resolution to this conflict, consider Paz's repeated descriptions of the final chapter as 'echoing.' Silva, he implies, can hear every word of the narrator, presumably including the descriptions of Silva's own utterances and thoughts, and so we might imagine his final confrontation with the narrator as a sort of feedback loop, Silva forced to constantly react to an accounting of his own reactions. Attempts to reproduce such an effect in various fanworks have achieved varying degrees of success, but we might imagine Silva's torment as that of a consciousness examining itself, turning ever-inward recursively. The ambiguity of the murderous narrator might then be seen as the shifting existence of the self: is self-examination ever truly possible without slipping into a similar feedback loop? If I narrate my own thoughts out loud, is there not then a necessary distance between the spoken word and the thought in my head - a necessary process of editorializing that elides the fact of my own self-examination and instead speaks out my words as if describing a stranger's? Is this shortcoming not present in every attempt at communication? In her review of the story, Piregu imagines the infamous final chapter of Chapterhouse as recursing into smaller and smaller text, overwriting itself, and that it is this glimpse of infinity which drives Paz to madness.

 Brillantes, meanwhile, has made the suggestion that a narrator and a point-of-view character, while commonly considered to be the same thing, need not necessarily apply to the same voice. In Brillantes’ own words:

We imagine that to identify himself as such, the killer must say “I”; must say “my hands around his neck”, must say, “I then slaughtered him.” But such an “I” is merely an identifier, a name as interchangeable as “Andreas Paz” or “Herman Silva” or "Ferdinand Orblez". We can tell stories in the third person, we can project ourselves, look out through a character’s eyes and puppet them as intimately as a self, without saying that incriminating word “I” even once. Who then, is to say that the narrator-as-murderer could not tell the final chapter from Herman Silva’s point of view? Is that not then our fear of colonization, of someone else telling our stories for us? If we recognize some intimate part of ourselves in a story written by a complete stranger, who is the “I” that has spoken? Perhaps we are interchangeable, then. Perhaps we can dispose of each other at a whim.

Brillantes’ proposal has inspired a number of fanworks that attempt to recreate the text of The Chapterhouse Murders, resulting in several truly convoluted narrative attempts to separate the narrator and point-of-view character, all in all of highly varying quality.

On the other hand, perhaps it would be simpler to read the work as if there is no contradiction, and to simply accept Silva the killer all along, the ‘disembodied voice’ of narration that he hears in the final chapter simply an auditory hallucination, Silva talking to himself and envisioning his own death prior to committing suicide. In this reading, Silva/the narrator’s descent into madness then parallels Paz’s worsening mental state, there being no supernatural quality to the novel, the defacement of previously-read chapters easily explained as Paz’s own actions, the knowledge of them subsequently suppressed. We may understand, then, that it is the reader who is the ultimate narrator and interpreter of any story, influencing its tone and meaning through their own preexisting prejudices and assumptions. After all, it is your voice you are hearing now, as you read this. It is you who has brought these words to life. It is you, in the end, who will lay them all to rest.

The Questing Beast was not named for the fact that it was quested after (although it was, perennially), but for the howls and yelps that emanated from its belly, "the noise of thirty couple hounds questing." Such confusion is understandable (and perhaps intrinsic), as the Beast by its nature conflates two different definitions of what it means to quest: 

As a transitive verb, to quest means to ask, or to search for, and thus is necessarily used with an object: there must be something to quest for, be it treasure or an ending or an answer. As an intransitive verb, however, quest refers to the baying of hounds on the hunt, and necessitates no such object of desire. The Questing Beast's name derives from the latter definition: the sound of thirty pairs of hounds howling aimlessly, never ceasing or relenting, never biting down, never satiated, constant as the rushing of blood through the Beast's arteries. 

Questing after said Beast was thus a confusing proposition, as it was difficult to determine whether it was being hunted or not - whether or not the questing was transitive or intransitive, and what exactly (if anything) one was tracking. From a distance there was only the baying echoing through the woods, which might have been the sound of one's own hounds, or the hounds from another hunting party, or (very rarely) the Questing Beast itself. The hounds themselves were similarly confused at trying to track down something that sounded exactly like they did, and at times kept up the baying simply out of a confused excitement, or sheer comradely instinct. Attempts to capture the Beast thus frequently devolved into a farce of hunting parties chasing each other around in circles.

Adding to the confusion was the fact that there was never quite a clear consensus on just what the Questing Beast looked like. The most widely-distributed description held the Beast to have the neck of a snake, the body of a leopard, the tail of a lion, and the hooves of a hart - in other words, a medieval attempt to construct a giraffe. Perlesvaus, on the other hand, described it as a snowy white creature somewhat larger than a hare and smaller than a fox; i.e., some sort of stoat or weasel in its winter coat. So at the very least the boundaries were set: the Questing Beast must be no larger than a giraffe and no smaller than a hare, its color anywhere between a tawny orange and a snowy white (though theorists would differ on where white should stand on the color scale, and thus on which spectrum of colors was plausible). In the heightened atmosphere of a hunt, with the baying of the hounds omnipresent, any hapless animal that should happen to cross paths with the party could easily be taken for the Questing Beast - and who knows, any of them could very well have been the Beast itself. 

From strict point of fact, there was no reason to hunt the Questing Beast at all. There was no danger it posed if left to roam free, no rewards promised for its capture. Even the howling emanating from its belly was interpreted as a sign that the Beast's days were numbered: it hosted a brood of snarling children that would eventually tear it apart from within. Any mystical significance it held was as a symbol of some internal threat that would eventually lead to society's collapse - for some it was the tragedy of King Arthur's incestuous coupling with his own half-sister; for others, it was the Jews. In any case, the Questing Beast was merely a grim portent rather than a threat itself, and certainly was nothing to be deliberately sought after. 

We may imagine that those who hunted the Questing Beast were simply confused by its name, and took it as an imperative rather than a description. Or, rather, we may imagine that the Beast successfully conflated the two possibilities such that there was no longer such a distinction. King Pellinore, for example, hunted the Beast simply because his father had, as had his father's father before him, and so on - a duty passed down hereditarily, like kingship, and with no more justification for it. For Sir Palamedes, on the other hand, hunting the Questing Beast functioned as a form of displacement for his frustrated romantic impulses - as Palamedes could never win the favor of his love, neither could he slay the Beast (a parallel that defeats the purpose of displacement entirely). In any case, both men hunted the Questing Beast without any hope of ever catching it, suggesting that, much like a hound, they were preoccupied with the action of questing itself. 

Hunting for sport, after all, is an end on its own, and may be counted as a success regardless of whether or not one returns with game. The goal of hunting becomes simply to be hunting, to feel the thrill of the chase, to view all of nature as potential prey, to take the sound of hounds baying for blood as music. For a knight, this would be akin to the fulfillment of a single-minded devotion, taking up their swords for a quest of unimpeachable cause. Perhaps, then, it was to the benefit of all concerned that the Questing Beast could never be caught, could never be narrowed down into a single form or species, could never be resolved or be found wanting. Rather, as a portent of some impending calamity, it was ever just beyond reach and yet imminently attainable. It lurked in every forest, its howls emitting from every mouth, it wore a thousand furs and skins. It was monstrous and yet endlessly pursued. It justified every expense and effort taken to capture it. With every fresh hunting party and every pack of hounds, the Questing Beast was again born into existence.

We may then be tempted to imagine, given all these ambiguities, that the Questing Beast simply never existed to begin with, that it was a convenient fiction invented by those in power in order to justify their murderous excursions. And yet, when we turn our attention to the woods and from the depths hear the sounds of questing - ever-present, inexplicable, keening and bloodthirsty, the sounds of a savage brood tearing apart its mother from within - the Beast unmistakably sounds its call and it becomes impossible to deny the truth. 

"In the first he makes the demi-gorge equal to 24 toises⁶ in the square, 25 in the pentagon, 26 in the hexagon, 27 in the heptagon, 28 in the octagon, 29 in the enneagon, and 30 in the decagon, and all higher polygons.⁷
. . . 
"His flanks are on right lines, drawn from the center of the figure through the extremities of the demi-gorges.⁸
. . . 
"...120 toises, from the center of the figure to the middle of which he suppose a perpendicular to be drawn, and to be divided into n+1 parts (n being the number of the sides), two of which he allows for each of the demi-gorges, and three for each of the capitals⁹, from the outer extremities of which last, rasant¹⁰ lines of defence, drawn to the extremities of the demi-gorges or curtain, determine the lengths of the flanks, which are on right lines, drawn from the center of the figure, and the positions and lengths of the faces of the bastions."¹¹1. Etymologically, DEMIGORGE would seem to derive from demi-, half, and gorge, throat: a blocked windpipe, the inability to swallow. Or, perhaps, a reminder that our appetites are not entirely essential. It follows a string of false cognates beginning from Demiurge (δημιουργός, craftsman, the creator of our debased world) to Demogorgon (a deity invented wholesale by Lactantius in third century AD, Dicit deum Demogorgona summum) to Demogorge (the God-Eater, a deity invented by Alan Zelenetz and Bob Hall for Marvel Comics in 1982). The deities share no etymology or genealogy but the similarity of their names, words picked for what they sound like, stripped of any definite meaning and inviting supposition. All variants of DEMIURGE are gods or demons that rule the world, born of word association. 

2. Demigorges are military deities, the genii loci of bastions. A bastion is a pentagrammic projection from a fortress, a promontory into a hostile sea. Despite this, a bastion is also held as a place of safekeeping and preservation. By the rules of the demigorges, the only way to defend something (our nation, our freedom, our way of life) is to assert it outwards offensively.
 
3. Demigorges are completely artificial, twice-constructed, "formed by producing". A curtain veils and reveals, serves as an element of theater. Demigorges are formed through an artificial revelation, the curtains parting to reveal what has deliberately been kept hidden.

4. Even a bastion, as an extension of a fortress, forms its own politics and political capital. Every forward thrust collects its own power, finds its own center. Pioneers build colonies, explorers found nations. A nation expands from the point of a blade.

5. Demigorges are anatomical, part of some larger organism, functioning according to bilateral symmetry. Man creates the world in his image. Demigorges are what remain between a face and an extremity, between what sees and consumes and what extends outwards.

6. A toise is a unit of measurement for length, area, and volume simultaneously. It is either exactly 6 feet, or exactly 2 meters, or 1.8 meters, or about 3.799 square meters, or 8 cubic meters altogether. Within a toise, all conceptions of distance and space fold into one another. To mark out a border is to enclose a territory, to claim a territory necessitates inhabiting it in three dimensions. Maps make fortresses, make nations.

7. As a demigorge is composed of multiple toises, it is simultaneously one-, two-, and three-dimensional, existing within all planes of order and expanding to fill the space it is allotted. It inhabits the space of higher polygons. It inhabits the space of a straight line.

8. A demigorge is pierced through its flanks, through its still-beating heart, crucified upon a divine geometry. Crucifixion splays the condemned out on display as a deterrence to other potential offenders. A demigorge, up to its extremities, is a display of the potentiality of its violence enacted upon itself. 

9. The figure is drawn, divided, sliced into parts, the capitals being accorded a larger portion of the share than the demigorges. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. 

10. Rasant: archaic, meaning long, sweeping, curving, arcing off into the distance, such that a shot fired will fall off and merely graze the target. Such a term presumes that an army's strength weakens at its extremities, that there are no weapons of war that can inflict destruction from miles away. The arc is of history, the last line of defense a wavering, dying line tracing back to a past where there was a limit to our abilities to destroy.

11. Any attempt to define a demigorge necessarily degenerates into archaic jargon and obscurantism, the words themselves imbued with a quasi-mystic power due to their mystery: the essence of the occult. Meaning is obliterated; we are left with fleeting bits of familiar-sounding phrases, word association, trying to piece together an equation we no longer understand.The demigorges stretch from the outer extremities, the last lines of defense. They determine the positions and lengths and faces, our bastion walls stare out of us. The demigorges are artificial, we have constructed them in their entirety (As we constructed squares and pentagons and enneagons? Or was that always merely our uncovering of a higher geometrical reality?). What have we created for ourselves?
 
12. A demigorge can be understood as an absence, an incompleteness, an amputation. It is a mathematical remainder. It is that which is wanting. A curtain is a court is an enclosure, is a theater of laws and security and fortification and all the promises of nation. A curtain encloses a space for playacting, the representation of something that otherwise doesn't exist. The curtains part and a barren stage is revealed, dancers with their legs amputated. Bastions project outwards into hostile territory, but the nation itself is hollow, reduced to nothing but border, nothing left behind it. Its Flank is taken away, to the Angle of the Demi-gorge.

Step 1: Take the figure of a cyclist, bent double on his bike, pedaling furiously.

Step 2: Trace an aerodynamic shape over it, like an extension of the helmet or the nose of a bullet train, such that only the wheels and perhaps the pedals and feet are left visible at the bottom.

Step 3: Reproduce the shape, pasting it beneath the first and slightly to the rear. Repeat the process such that the segments stretch backwards indefinitely in a serpentine curve.

Step 4: Voilà! A Velocipede!