Scene Archives

blinks for the first time in what may as well be hours. It feels like the inside of his eyelids are made of sandpaper. His eyes focus intently on whatever he’s looking at - a little more gnosis here, then there, adding a runic glyph to complete this circle, then making sure things are still in alignment on the other side - but his peripheral vision has begun to fade slightly, as if seeing the world through a vignette filter, if that filter happened to be pulsing barely perceptibly in time with his heart. Every muscle in his hands hurts with the tension needed to keep them perfectly still as he draws his enchantments, every joint threatening to stiffen entirely if not given a chance to unfurl. His stomach shoots in pangs of hunger, as if pleading with him to remember that his exceptional and singularly-focused mind still inhabits a physical form that demands sustenance. But he keeps plugging away, allowing the sensations to come and go, untethered like a mangrove in the seas. None of these feelings matter. Not as much as the feeling of being so close to the ones he was told had been lost, the ones (or perhaps, just the one) he felt most lost without. And so, like any good member of the Academy, when faced with the sense of loss, he seeks. A path forward, a solution, a way to dispel the last of the accursed static barring the door between him and his.

knows that, for all his fiddling and scampering and tweaking and revising, his progress has become agonizingly slow. What started as a series of relatively obvious fixes with immediately noticeable results - a broken circle over here, a missing glyph over there, a whole chunk of stone that had to be delicately mended and replaced - crept to a frustrating slog of triple-checking every detail, certain that there must be a fault somewhere, but unable to locate it. Something missing? Something wrong? Something broken? Something to elaborate on? An incorrectly nested statement, perhaps? For the first time since he started working on fixing the portal, he allows his movements to slow, rotating the problem in his mind and allowing his body to collapse, lying flat on the stone floor of the Road, even as he does not dare to untense his muscles or close his eyes. He still has work to be done. But what, and how? 🙧

searches his mind and the gnosis in the air around him for traces of lingering resistance, for a method by which they may be mollified.

resists the urge to thud his tail in frustration. “Very funny,” he says to the sky, words barely uttered aloud, directed towards no one and nothing… except You.

grumbles, a touch of sullenness creeping into his voice. “To all of us? Even you?”

softens. “Something true. The Lantern-in-Eye. Do you want to know something true about me? My eyes don’t have to glow every time I enter battle. Though I’m sure you knew that already. It’s just the tiniest extra expenditure of gnosis, but when I do it, it’s a reminder to myself of It. What little I perceive of You appears as so many eyes. Are You It?”

takes the question seriously, considering it. “Under normal circumstances, I would readily say I’m not. But I can neither prove nor disprove such a statement. I am connected to these worlds, the one we hope to visit next in particular. I had always imagined the constellations as something else, somewhere else. Incarnations, maybe, though incarnations can change form as the situation demands. Are you asking because you do not know, or because you’re curious what I might say?”

nods. “That makes both of us. I don’t suppose you’d be able to lend a hand here and there? Or willing, as the case may be?”

lets out a stifled laugh. “If you mean to preserve the integrity of your observational studies, if that’s what this is about, it seems a little late for that. You tell us what we think and how we feel, sometimes when we don’t even know it ourselves. You describe our environs, the people which inhabit them. You know exactly how hard every task set before us will be. Without you, we’d be… senseless, in the most literal meaning. We would be devoid of our senses, our ability to perceive and interact with that which surrounds us. You’re already in it with us now. Or against us, if that’s your angle. But it’s too late for you to sit back and claim objectivity, I think.”

tenses slightly, sandpaper eyes glazed over with thought once more. “I hope I know whose side it is, but it seems you’re here to stay regardless.” He notices the faint sound of approaching footsteps. “We’ll pick this up later.” He leans his head to see who approaches.

hums softly as he approaches–part in his habit, and part so as to provide a little warning. He’s carrying something in his hands, covered in a cloth, which he sets down on the ground–in Archie’s reach, but not so close that it would get in his way. It smells, not very faintly, of stew–steam curls from beneath the cloth. ⁂

: “Have you eaten?” His voice is soft, low, gentle. 🙧

feels his stomach pangs with renewed intensity at the smell of the stew. “… Not yet,” he mumbles, almost a little sheepishly, lifting the cloth off the bowl. “How did you manage to get food here, anyway?”

chuckles softly. “Well, I thought we might have to get by on simpler rations, but it seems that Unua cooks.”

smiles, though faintly. Now that he’s allowed himself to focus on the experiences of his body again, it’s clear the exhaustion is starting to catch up with him, and there’s the tiniest tremble in his hand as he brings a spoonful of stew to his lips. “Surprisingly well, at that.” Even just one bite of food seems to perk him back up slightly, as he goes back for another.

: “One was pleasantly surprised.” He looks over at the portal, once filled with verdant gnosis, now filled with flickering blue. “How goes the work?” He is not particularly subtle about the way he keeps glancing back at Archie to make sure he’s still eating.

flickers a somewhat pained expression before immediately hiding it behind his bowl of stew. “It goes. Most of the work is done, by now. The fine tuning is proving a little harder, but it’s nothing we won’t be able to handle.”

lifts an eyebrow, looking faintly amused. “We? It seems to be just you.” He lets himself look back over the portal, lifting a hand and tracing fingertips over some of the flickering glyphs–from a safe distance, of course. “I have never seen spell-craft like this before, save for your ward. It seemed almost inhuman at first glance. But up close…there’s a delicate beauty to it.”

tips his bowl slightly toward Wolf, showing him that it’s empty. “You opened the gate back to your world almost all on your own. Now it’s my turn to do the same. Almachadta lives in song. Samudra lives in… certainty. Calculable. Derivable from first principles. Studied. Careful. And always certain that there’s more to know. About the world. About each other.” He looks up towards nothing in particular.

: “I see…” He half-closes his eyes, listening carefully–trying to see if he can hear the resonance of this particular type of spell-craft, or if it’s too different for him to discern. “I was surprised,” he says, a little distantly, half-focused, “How well your wards and mine combined. I had thought they would mismatch…”

listens intently for a long moment, then one eye twitches and he has to squidge a finger in one ear for a second. “Well. I can see now why your work has been so difficult. That is…unpleasant.” He tilts his head, though, frowning at the portal. “So your work is to get through that clouding resonance that’s being made?”

tilts his head slightly in thought, as if considering the problem from a new angle. “Yes… yes, I suppose so. Funny, I was so focused on the perfection of my own work that I didn’t consider that it may not be the problem. Pufferfish.” He smiles a little more fully this time, with renewed and genuine hope, then seems to realize what a strange thing he just said. “Um, ignore that last bit. Inside joke.”

glances at Archie, a bit confused, but he smiles nonetheless. “Never fear.” He tilts his head back at the portal. “I wonder who guarded it in this way? And why. That’s devilish bit of counter-work.”

: “It shifts so quickly and wildly that I’d struggle to find the tone, myself.” He chews on his lower lip, looking at the portal thoughtfully.

looks at the portal again, focusing on the static, that last hold-out of resonance. Could it be…?

stares at the portal, rotating the newest revelation in his mind. “I think I know. And I think I have a hypothesis. Not a theory, yet, just a speck of an inkling of an idea. Can I trouble you to hear it?”

smiles a little at Archie, and sits, adopting an attitude of pure attentiveness. “Of course. Please do.”

tears his eyes away from the portal to meet Wolf’s. “I don’t know exactly what this is yet, but I found it on my person when I was transferring the contents of my pockets from my jacket to my cloak.” He pulls out a little isohedron, glowing in faint pulses. “I don’t know what it is, yet. But I found it in a place beneath the waves. Before I met you all, I was studying the Ancient peoples of Samudra. They wrote of a time before sea swallowed all, a time of lands and continents. And we know that the Architect waited at the shrine of the Mask.” He trails off a little. “Do you remember that first night, when we all arrived at Sanctuary? It feels like ages ago, but maybe you remembered how sleepless I was that night, my quiet satisfaction on meeting the Omniclast. If there’s one thing to know about Samudra, if someone comes up to you thinking that being able to make things out of thoughts makes them a god, they’re trying to sell you something. If I actually believed every one I’ve met, I’d be worshipping a pantheon of twenty scam artists by now. I think the Architect is powerful, to be sure. But there must have been some reason he needed to meddle in our affairs, to keep us from carrying out what we meant to do. And based on this ward, I don’t think it’s the first time it’s happened. Tasna was able to use a Strange Path to cross into Beast, but now the way is barred. I think the Ancients had their own encounters with the Architect, and decided they’d do something about it.”

listens intently, and looks more and more thoughtful–his expression turning briefly quite black at the Architect’s name. “A time before sea swallowed all…” He closes his eyes, a troubled expression on his face…then sings softly, almost under his breath. “An old man by a seashore at the end of day / gazes the horizon with seawinds in his face / tempest tossed island, seasons all the same / Anchorage unpainted and a ship without a name…” […]

opens his eyes, looking up at Archie. “Would you believe me, my friend, if I told you that was an old and ancient song…of Almachadta?” 🙧

listens intently, and after a moment, nods. “I would. I’ve suspected for a while now that all was once one. The Omniclast’s name suggested as much. The destroyer of everything. If the Architect sees our home worlds as broken fragments, it stands to reason that when they were whole, they were joined. For another thing, I had a moment of connection to Almachadta. Honestly, if that’s how you feel all the time, I might be a little jealous! But it revealed to me that the cycle of death and renewal on Almachadta has been going on about as long as the Ancient city to the north froze over and the Polite Visitors have been around. And then there were our wards, perfectly complimentary, as if that was how they were always meant to be…” He looks at the ziggurat. “It’s too many things to all be a coincidence.”

: “Yes. Yes indeed.” His expression is troubled. “And the Architect…far less distant and unconcerned as he claimed to be.” His voice drops to a growl. “He did not wish us to see the shrine. That much is clear.” He shakes his head. “And this place. This place, awaking, steadily, with every connection.” He looks over at where Ember must be, a ways distant.

looks over to Wolf. “I shouldn’t talk about these things, not when we’re right about to go to Samudra. I shudder to think of the thought-storms these topics could create. But if we don’t discuss them now, we might not get a chance to for a while. Too long. Can I tell you? The wriggling fear at the back of my mind?”

nods, slowly. “Of course,” he says, gently.

sighs deeply and stares at his hands. “The Ancients had a particular word that has a rather interesting history in its modern use. The word was… Help me out here?”

: “Yes. Apocalypse. It means an uncovering, a revelation. The truth. Over time, its meaning shifted to refer to catastrophically destructive events, often the most cataclysmic thought-storms of Samudra. But the truth tends to destroy, to rend asunder. The Academy teaches us that those things which the truth would destroy, should be. Even the constellation that watches over me, the Lantern-with-Eye, bears the Truth That Burns. But what if the truth is that the very things that have broken our worlds are the reason they are what they are? What if fixing things really means condemning them to the bland conformity of the Sanctuary? What if the world - the worlds, our worlds - was meant to be like that all along?”

blinks unevenly as he hears-but-does-not-hear the word spoken, but lets it slide in favor of listening to Archie. His brow furrows, and he thinks for a long time before he speaks. ⁂

: “Perhaps that is so. I cannot say it is not. But I think…” He frowns, chewing his lower lip. “I think our oldest songs, are songs of the World-That-Was. And through the Song, I can catch glimpses of their meaning. Of the world they describe.” He closes his eyes, tilting his head back. “I dream of mountains so tall they split the sky, capped in cold white blankets. I dream of pebbled shores where salt waves brush gently across gleaming stones. I dream of a sky so wide and blue that even the clouds seem small.” ⁂

: “I would lay, dreaming in the Song, for hours, seeing bright flashes of a world I knew and did not know.” He shakes his head, opening his eyes to look at Archie. “It was a world entire, my friend. It was not silent. It lived.“ He looks away, up into the void-sky, perhaps towards where he thinks that Almachadta might be. “I love my world. It is beautiful and wild. But it is trapped. And you heard the others. It is caged in part because of what it lacks. Because what it has been torn from.” He looks at Archie and smiles, just a little. “We were not meant to be apart, separate in green and blue and red and white and black.” Softly, spoken with absolute certainty: “We need each other. The Architect, in his silence, cannot…would not…see that.” 🙧

nods, thoughtfully. “What little I have learned of the Ancients of Samudra has come through the laborious and time-intensive process of reconstructing their language, bit by bit, fragmented epitaph by fragmented epitaph. There’s so much I haven’t uncovered. But if we assume, as I believe we may, that your Ancients and mine coexisted within their lifetimes, I take comfort in the wisdom your songs share.” He looks back for a moment at the portal. “Song…?,” he mutters to himself, and his tired eyes liven a bit with a glimmer of an idea. “Thank you for your counsel and your comfort, Wolf. I think all of us will have need of it in the days to come. I must admit, I think I hear my bedroll calling my name at last, now that my fears have been quieted. Was there anything else you wished to discuss?” As tired as he clearly is, he’s just as clearly sincere in asking.

chuckles softly. “No, my friend. You need your rest, and I achieved my aim.” He smiles, just a little smugly. “I saw you fed.” He stands, dusts off his robes, and makes little shooing motions with both hands towards Archie. “Go, go. Your puzzle will be here when you have slept deeply.” He gives his best stern Yeresh Look–and, as usual, ruins the effect by smiling warmly.

returns the smile, and even as it droops amd fades too soon, never quite reaching his eyes, it seems like the most genuine smile you’ve seen from him. He shuffles and scuttles his way to his room in the ziggurat. As he lies down on the bedroll, he uses the faintest flourish of Pellucid gnosis, and falls asleep watching a flimsy but comforting illusion of a school of pufferfish floating overhead.

smiles until Archie is out of sight–and then the smile drops like a rock, in favor of something much more narrow-eyed and dispassionate. “Apocalypse, hm?” He tilts his gaze up to the quiet void, eyes flickering across the blackness. “I, too, have ears with which to hear.”

: “Hm.” He stares out into the black for a long, long moment. Then he turns on his heel and returns to the Ziggurat, leaving the portal to spit static into silence.