Scene Archives

isn’t very good at sitting still. She stands up, breathes in and out, then heads towards where Qarina’s quarters are. She announces herself with a knock on the wall.

has been sitting with her brother for awhile, and is done crying for the moment, it seems. “Yeah? You can come in. I’m okay.”

comes in. “Are you okay? I really wouldn’t be, in your shoes.”

: “I mean. No one’s dead. We got ‘em all. I’m…not having a great day. I would really like to not have had this day. I…don’t know?”

nods and takes a seat in another one of the strangely heavy wood chairs. “I … hm. It seems like Chaya is a good friend who cares about you a lot,” she says it with a smile, “and I know you have your brother. But I wanted to … as your friend, if you still want to be friends, I wanted to be here with you too. To help in whatever way you might want. Even if that means yelling about it.”

tries to laugh a little, “I think I’m good on screaming for a bit.”

: “I still want to be friends. And yeah, Chaya’s real good about taking care of her people. I’m glad I count as one, even though I don’t live out here.”

: “I guess I understand why your boyfriend kept asking me to play music now though. Is that…normal for you guys?”

snorts. “Sort of. We all have—a song, or songs. There’s more music that underscores the world—certain places, or people. Anyone mentioned in the Traveler’s Guide has a song.”

: “I really didn’t think my life was going to get any weirder than being a one of a kind experiment made to fight violent spirals of nothingness.”

: “There are … certain kinds of people who have more control over when their song plays than others. We generally—hear the music of the other starwatched—that’s Aury’s name for the people in the Guide that aren’t the rulers of their respective planes—when we first meet them. You’re different in that you’re like us, and have some control over your song playing.”

laughs a bit at that. “Yeah it does seem like you should’ve maxed out on the weirdness.”

: “I…don’t think I meant to play a song. It just kinda happened. It was kinda cool before that that you guys got a little hype song to start the fight though. I could get used to that part. Even though…I don’t Rite things.”

: “Well, like I said, you have some control. It’s … Aurelius is particularly good at understanding how a certain layer of reality works, and he has far more control over stuff like this than, say, I do—definitely than I did, before I started watching him to learn everything I could. But mostly the music happens when something meaningful occurs.”

: “Starwatched, huh. I guess that makes sense. You do have a Mask.”

: “He’s still a wacko, but he’s cool.”

: “Okay, so you’re all watched by the stars. And the stars give you cool music to fight to. And dramatic music to scream about. What happened when your song played?”

: “Hm. Well. It’s sort of complicated for me. I don’t know how much of the stuff you’ve read via tomestone, about what being the Sword-Saint means? I promise I’m getting there.”

: “I read a bunch of things. Yeah. I looked in the thingy. Tomestone? I understand…some of it? The mask is like a big stack of memories? I did not know a bunch of the big words, I would have needed Dyu.”

nods. “There’s only ever one Sword-Saint. The Mask is—yeah, a big stack of memories. It’s kind of like the Fathom, if the Fathom was like reliving memories and not very precise. My song is about being the Sword-Saint. It could have been any Sword-Saint’s song, really. I was really sad about it, because I didn’t think … I mattered very much as a person, so to play it for Aury and Awa I did a very ridiculous—dance, sort of like how I’d perform a duel as the Sword-Saint—I did a lot of mock-duels to tell stories. I could’ve just played it at will at that point, but I like showing off.” She shrugs, blushing a bit, chagrined. “And then I had a second song, one that was … more about me than about being the Sword-Saint, and that happened because I got weird and sad enough on Samudra that my thoughts accidentally generated an alter-ego we had to fight. So.”

eyes go big right at that end part. “Okay, so it’s just kinda always like this for you guys?”

chuckles a bit. “I mean, define ‘like this’?”

: “I mean, I started today with a pretty solid understanding of the world I’ve lived my whole life in. And like, now, it’s completely topsy-turvy, I lost part of my voice, I heard lies that were true or maybe truths that were lies. I don’t know.”

considers for a moment. “Then yeah, I’d say it’s always like this in some ways. I don’t—I don’t think we’ve ever upended someone’s existence quite the way yours has been upended. We didn’t know anything about the Elementals before coming here though. That wasn’t a secret we kept from you. I can tell you that.”

: “Yeah, that doesn’t seem like a thing any of you would do.” Qarina shakes her head. “You all seem really nice. Real weird. Also, the really tall one with the small fuzzy animal in the pocket. Not a guy in armor? Just a metal-person? With LASERS?”

: “He just…like can open his chest and shoot Rites out of it?”

blinks. “Oh. Yeah I guess that would be weird. Yeah, that’s Luĉja. They’re … something called an Endjinn from the Beast. They’re part fiend and part human. But they’re definitely not, er, fleshy? They do a pretty good party trick where they eat rocks.”

: “God you are all so weird.”

: “I’m pretty normal?”

: “That’s true. Minus the part where you accidentally made a version of yourself you had to fight.”

laughs. “I was having a lot of emotions.” And then she gets a bit more serious, though she keeps smiling. “I mean, that’s sort of—I don’t think any one of us have not had some struggles or issues on this journey. And sometimes it’s because you’re filled with self-loathing and sometimes it’s because people have learned truths they’d rather have not known. We can only really try to be there for each other? And you’re a part of that too, at least to me?”

has the beginnings of a couple tears welling up, but she’s trying real hard to not cry again. “Thanks. This whole thing has taught me that I’ve got a couple more people than just my brother. It..feels nice.”

: “But yeah. Like. I don’t know what to do. I gotta go back at some point. And…I just can’t even figure out how that works.”

looks up at Salme, “The Elementals knew my name.”

: “This is gonna sound crazy.”

: “Again. I really thought the craziest thing was being a living weapon.”

: “They always just kinda scream at us when we crush them. It…doesn’t sound pleasant. But this time…they knew me. And when they talked…I don’t know how to describe it. But even though The God doesn’t talk to us. I knew it was his voice? And that can’t be an okay thing to tell anyone. Let alone the part where they told me The God wasn’t real.”

offers her hands to Qarina, in the event she’d like to have her hands held, but she doesn’t grab her. “It doesn’t sound crazy, at least to me. It does sound confusing and overwhelming, but it doesn’t sound crazy.” She considers for a moment. “Did you know it was the voice of God because it sounded like this? Or was it something else?”

crawls back in her chair a little. “Kinda like that? Like, the not-guy metal-guy did a thing like that with their voice. But that wasn’t God. It was close, but not right. Like your voice right there. It was you still. It was like, terrifying and the coolest all mixed up together, but imagine if you talked like that. But there was none of you left in it?”

tilts her head. “I. Hm. I don’t know if I can imagine that precisely, but that gives me a good idea. There’s a trick to talking like that, by the way. If you’d like to know. And if you’d rather not know more things, I understand. But it’s just a particular mindset. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything.” She’s quiet for a moment, considering, and then says, “Would you be comfortable telling me what else they told you? Aside from knowing your name? The one in the Red Column was familiar with you, but it called you ‘The Weapon,’ not ‘Qarina.’”

: “Wait you can talk to them?!”

: “Could you hear them?”

shakes her head. “Only the one in the column, and only, I think, because of the Mask? I noticed something observing me, and was able to communicate, in a sense. Otherwise, aside from the one that screamed about making us suffer as it had suffered when it was defeated, I haven’t heard them.”

’s head droops a little. “Oh okay. Weird. I don’t even ever fight that one.” She thinks a little bit, “The next thing they yelled was “You feed the fathomless. And like…why would the Elementals even have a Fathom? They wouldn’t.“*

: “And after that my brother helped me a lot and I just screamed until I couldn’t hear them anymore.”

frowns. “Yeah that—I’m not sure what that means. ‘Fathomless’ is a word that means … something too deep to be measured, or something impossible to understand. It’s … the opposite, isn’t it? Of what the Fathom represents—‘all things true are kept, counted, and known.’ Hm.”

: “But like…what am I gonna tell Teacher when I get back?”

: “What do you want to tell him?”

: “By which I mean—do you want to tell him the truth? Do you want to keep this to yourself?”

: “I don’t know! I definitely don’t want to tell him the Elementals talk like God and explain how I know what God sounds like and that they said God is fake in God’s voice and that nothing makes sense any more.”

: “But…I don’t wanna lie to him.”

: “He’s…important to me like Dyu is. Like my Brother is.”

nods. “He cares deeply for you. I could tell, even when I interacted with him briefly in the Gallery.”

considers her. “I think. I think, if he’s the kind of person Wolf would love, then he’s the kind of person who would hear this terrible truth that has hurt you and he’ll find a way to accept it. I think keeping this to yourself will eat at you, badly. I think—if you are scared about telling him this, I’ll stand at your side when you do and we’ll find a way.”

: “But it shouldn’t be his problem. He’s the Yazhn of Yazhn. He can’t be worrying about The God being fake. Also like…I don’t know if he’d be okay if he heard that.”

: “He’s the Yazhn of Yazhn. If anything is his problem, it seems like this would be. And if he’s not okay then we’re also here to help him through it.”

: “Like, if anyone started believing that…the whole City could fall apart.”

tilts her head. “Do you think that Ravhi, or any Yazhn of Yazhn before him, has never borne a heavy secret alone to spare the rest of the City?”

: “I mean I didn’t think that. But I also didn’t really think there would be terrible secrets at all? Like I thought the worst terrible secret would be like “Surprise, you have to change your part of The Work!“”

: “I couldn’t have imagined any of this.”

: “It’s terrible secrets all the way down, I think, a lot of the time. That’s—that’s the Sword-Saint’s thing, you know. Someone has to remember that Almachadta is destroyed again and again. Someone has to persist memory through the cycles. I—learning that was. Hard. It hurt me. It changed me. I’m still dealing with the reverberations. But I don’t regret knowing. I think. Ravhi deserves a choice about knowing. And I think you also deserved a choice about knowing, and I’m sorry you didn’t get to make that choice.”

: “Yeah…but…we’re here now. I guess I could just make sure I kill every Elemental so I never have to hear them again. I could probably do that. How would I even give Teacher that choice? Hey Teacher, I learned something awful and terrible in the desert, wanna know? If I tell him I’m having trouble he’ll just say yes. He’s not gonna make a choice for him when it looks like a choice for me.”

: “We could ask Wolf to pose the question? Or, I mean, I will. I’ve been meaning to speak with him anyway. Maybe something like, ‘if you could know an awful truth that might shake your faith, would you choose to know or would you prefer to not’? I can workshop it, but.” She shrugs, helplessly.

: “Yeah. I think I’d like some help. I think he’d probably automatically say yes to Wolf too.” She giggles.

: “Well I can go in at my most abrasive and ask it philosophically, then? I’ve been thinking anyway—“ she looks distant, for a moment, and then says, “the Work you do is lovely, and your people are lovely, and your God, if he’s sitting around waiting to show up, doesn’t deserve you all.” She shrugs. “But again, I don’t have much use for gods.”

stares wide eyed at Salme for a moment. “Maybe…slightly less abrasive?”

: “If The God is real, then he died to protect us all from something. If The God isn’t…I dunno? But like, since everyone really believes in Him.”

, for a moments, looks like she wants to protest. She didn’t even say ‘fuck’! But she does nod.

: “I don’t know what to believe. Or if He’s real. But I think either way, we all have a use for him right now. He’ll keep everyone working together and taking good care of each other.”

does not change her expression. “That is true,” she says neutrally.

: “And…I guess that means that even if He doesn’t come back. We’ll have built something beautiful anyways. And whoever comes after us will have even more green. And fruit. And shade.”

: “Well, that is another thing your articles of faith say, right? ‘The Garden will not be given unto us. We will have built it ourselves.’”

nods. “Yeah. I dunno. It certainly makes me feel way better about sneaking all those supplies out here.”

: “I think you should feel good about that regardless. It’s the right thing to do. And I think Archie had a good point about the supplies.”

: “Yeah, him and Dyu, and my brother. But I can’t just risk asking! If they’re wrong, I wouldn’t be able to bring any more.”

: “The last thing I need to be in trouble with one of three people that likes me.”

: “Four, now, I guess. Thanks.”

frowns, and then starts counting. “Me, Dyu, Chaya, your brother, Ravhi. That’s at least five.”

: “I’d bet several of my clan members like you too, since you did save our skins.”

: “I mean, that would be cool. I think with a little more practice you could take ‘em out in smaller groups.”

: “It’s that finishing move—[Mutual Assurance]—that’s really challenging. Hm. That’s probably a question for Aury or Luĉja? They’re both very good at the Rite.”

nods and smiles. She thought she clocked Aury as the dangerous one.

It’s good to be right about something, at least.

grins at Qarina when she sees her smile. “I have good taste,” she says, smugly. “Maybe weird taste, but good taste.”

can’t help herself and breaks out laughing.

: “If you believe it, Aury’s usually a little bit more restrained. It’s been a while since I’ve seen him so—animated. I missed it, honestly. Awa’s always like that though.”

: “Yeah, I can see that. He did make sure I got this right away. And like. That was a lot of knowledge to take in at once with VERY LITTLE DIRECTION, but like, it was nice of him to make sure I could figure things out. He seems like he’s real smart. And like, at least now I know why he wanted to hear a song?”

: “Awa? The other one? Do you have any idea how hard it was to not just run away from the door when he was just talking about MILKING PEOPLE AT BREAKFAST?”

: “No. Don’t you dare tell me people make milk on your world.”

opens her mouth. Closes it. And then, because she is not always a good person, she says, “what else do you think babies eat and where do you think they eat it from?”

’s face is the picture of pure, unadulterated innocence.

: “WHY CAN’T THEY JUST EAT OATMEAL LIKE EVERYONE ELSE DOES?”

: “NO WAIT”

: “I didn’t mean it! I didn’t ask!”

laughs and laughs and laughs. “Oh, but you know now, don’t you?”

: “Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo _{ooooooooooooooooooo} “

loses it completely and laughs completely helplessly, unfortunately a bit at Qarina’s expense.

: “It’s terrible secrets all the way down,” she says a second time.

: “For once, I would like a not-terrible secret.”

: “Speaking of which … the … Rite-tone Luĉja used on the Elementals. It’s … it gives the truth about a person or a thing. I didn’t—you’ve had a lot of revelations. I don’t know if … you’d like me to cast it on you? I don’t know if the information it might give would be helpful or not?”

: “I mean…at this point? Might as well give it a shot. Can’t unhear the earlier bits anyway.”

: “That’s true. It requires us to enter a Rite. I can forfeit right after I cast it, if you’d like? Most-recently-traumatized-by-babies’ choice.”

: “Or I could hit you each time you mention babies.”

laughs. “Would you like the stakes to be I never mention babies again unless it’s necessary?”

laughs “I think I could live with ‘No surprise baby conversations’ for however long I get to.”

: “Sounds like we’ve got stakes then. And if I win I guess I get to keep terrorizing you with their existence?”

grabs her hammer. “And here I thought the screaming was bad.”

in a flash, Qarina dashes towards Salme, crossing the room as the boundary settles. She winds up her hammer and grins like a maniac.

is faster, by just a hair. With quick hands, she snatches a Rite-tone into her hand, and then throws her hand out toward Qarina. “Tell me the truth!”

: “No way you’re that fast too! Doesn’t matter.” She drops one hand off of her hammer and drives it into Salme’s ribs, before bringing it back to the hammer and Crushing Salme right in the same spot.

: “Whoa. Did you see that too, Brother?”

takes the hit with a grin and a laugh and bright, bright eyes. “You’re magnificent,” she tells her, and she means it, and flames start to flicker over her body, but she steps back and says, “However, not the time. I forfeit.”

stands proud in the middle of the room, until she realizes how silly she looks. “So…what did your not-fighting thing do? My brother said you cheated. But if you cheated, wouldn’t you have won?”

unexpectedly sits down in the middle of the floor, hard, her hammer clattering to the ground beside her

: “If the aim was to win the Rite, maybe. If the aim was something else?” She gives her a bit of a crooked smile.

sits down next to her. “What’s up?”

’s eyes are far away, like she’s listening to her Brother. “He doesn’t exactly know? But you had like, another you. And then he started remembering things, maybe? He’s confused and I think he’s okay? But he’s stubborn sometimes.”

: “Someone who’s also a part of you? Stubborn?” she nudges her shoulder, but doesn’t run her mouth anymore.

until she says, “I was able to hear him, briefly?”

: “It worked!”

: “What worked? Was smacking me as hard as you can with your hammer part of the plan?” She sounds amused and curious, but she is cradling her ribs.

: “He could talk to you! It didn’t work last time when we got gulab jam…un. Sorry. I get carried away. I uhh. I can’t heal like Dyu, but I can try?”

waves it off. “I’m teasing. Not bothered in the slightest. Mostly admiring, honestly. It was a good hit.”

: “He ran off, once I said I could hear him.” She shrugs. “Do you want to know what I learned? I don’t think it’s necessarily upsetting. It’s a little confusing?”

smiles. “We’re the best at fighting things. So like…yeah…what did you figure out?”

: “I think it’s pretty hard for him to talk to people that aren’t me. It’s only ever worked with Wolf and you, I think.”

: “Qarina tou Musterion,” she recites, “and her Brother, who had a name in no tongue spoken beneath these suns nor in that which named them; the closest your mouth can carry is ‘Suhaël’. Proof of the theorised capacity for tellurian and sidereal to harmonise and unify. They were two, and are now one, far beyond mere syzygy; a crecheborne human and a willing sacrifice (one of many) who came from afar in order to render aid. Now, they strike and act as one, a living weapon born to break the unbreakable.”

: “I’m gonna need you to explain at least five of those words.”

huffs a small little ghost of a laugh. “Fair enough. ‘Tou’ means ‘of’, and ‘Musterion’ was probably the ancient name for Mu. Tellurian means ‘of the earth’ and sidereal means ‘of the stars.’ All the gnosis-flavored Rite-tones are sidereal; all the aspects are tellurian. I’m not sure what that means beyond that. ‘Syzygy’ is … an astronomical term that was also something the Ancients used to referred to people being in a close-knit relationship. I think … are there any other words? I know several of the concepts are … well, I’m not sure either.”

: “Why is he a sacrifice?”

: “I don’t like that.”

: “I’m not sure.” She goes to wrap her fingers around the irrica bracelet, but she isn’t wearing it—she didn’t want it to decay under the sun’s light. “I have a theory, but it’s just a theory. I think it was a choice he made, though. Long ago.”

: “He thinks that’s probably right.”

nods. “I think that … I’m glad that you two get to be together now, after he made that choice. It seems like it would have been a hard choice to make.”

: “But if the choice was so long ago…why did it take so long to make us?”

: “I think … that might be a good question to ask Ravhi as well. He’s the one who did, right?”

: “I mean, I think so? I kinda gotta, at this point. Oh no. Salme. My brother was right. I’m gonna have to go read more stuff now.”

reaches out and rests a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. “That does seem to be the case, yes. I’m so sorry, Qarina.”