ꙮ The Game Room, in the Annex. It’s much more of a lounge than a game room, really, although there’s been at least one (1) game of darts (sort of) and one (1) game of pool (much more definitively) played here.
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#awoken
sits at the bar counter, atop a stool. A highball glass is filled with one (1) perfect sphere of ice, and a mixture of the sietch’s orange water with a potato-based liquor. ‘Vodka,’ as it’s known in some places. The Awoken Prince is dressed in his original, modified regalia, glimmering softly in the low light of the lounge.
: “If I were to sing a song of the worlds… I’d have many a story to tap a toe to.”
ꙮ Archie’s kitchen has some kind of Contraption that makes perfect orbs of ice. It’s incredible. Effortless. Beautiful.
: “The lives, the joys, the triumph, aches, pains, miseries, and grieves.”
takes a sip of the drink. It’s refreshing, calming.
ꙮ The ice makes a pleasant sound against the side of the glass.
: “One world lies yet unvisited, and there, I expect to find the final shattered fragments of what once was.”
: “The void carries its own song, such that we have heard.”
ꙮ You have been adrift among the strange paths, to be sure; you have heard Ember’s song.
: “And yet,” he stands from the stool, placing the drink upon the counter. “The eponymous Song, the Song, of The Stillness and the Song, which once wailed in rending dissonance…”
: “I think we have not heard the song of the universe.”
ꙮ Or, if you have, you’ve not recognised it as such.
nods. “True, true.”
: “But there is no doubt it still plays, us creatures of bone and blood and light acclimated to its beat.”
inhales, every cell in his body pulsing red with oxygenated support, trading chemicals with nearby plasma.
: “It’s above us, always. But it is not out of our reach.”
: “We know we can perform miracles. Some of us may have already done so.” His deft hands idly roll a single pearl along his knuckles.
: “And it is not with silence that our wills brush up against the harp of creation.”
ꙮ Too close to you, you think, to ever truly be out of reach. One would simply have to reach in a new and unexpected direction.
: “And I know, even if I do not remember, that I have done so before.”
: “There was a word for this, once.” He palms the pearl, tucking it safely and subtly away.
ꙮ There was a word for many things, once.
raises a palm high, as high as his arm will let him. He unfocuses his eyes, the edges of his vision darkening. In the darkness, maybe his arm stretches higher than it should. It would not be impossible. You couldn’t say it wouldn’t happen.
ꙮ I could not, in fact.
feels the cool air of the lounge haze across the surface of his hand. Within each fingernail, it caresses the cuticles. The universe itself is absorbing his heartbeat, which pumps to sustain the life of the beloved.
But, he thinks. Don’t pull away.
You live too, in a different manner.
ꙮ There is a certain continuity between observer and observed, carried on that cold and grasping and glorious wind, isn’t there?
knows the Song continues to play, even if only an orchestra of one. This warmth wills you, to hold strings to mine. The ice softly melts in the glass, a tiny chip of it dropping into the drink. The nigh-imperceptible echo of the shard crashing into the surface tension of the drink makes a sound. The Awoken Prince listens to it, and lets it play across his palm.
is listening for every sound you make. Each beat in the time signature.
hears it, and lets it play across his palm. They react– the grooves in his fingers, light hairs across his knuckles, plains of nerves waving across the landscape of the infinite. His vision darkens more, with his palm… is it even just his palm, anymore? It’s harder to see. Maybe he’s reached his whole arm to the sky.
His arm is adrift, amongst the kaleidoscope of colors between worlds.
ꙮ Notes bend, and twist, and fail to constrain themself to the known and quantised; you are aware of something familiar, so familiar by now, but–
hears it, his body feels it, the vibration of space-creation. To know if the coin you tossed is heads or tails… your hand knows the result before you open your catching palm to see.
ꙮ This space doesn’t play by the rules, and neither does its song, and neither do you. Isn’t that right?
Rules can always be reshaped to fit the present. They are for the victors, the creators, the living.
knows it, that there is a form to the Song, itself following rules that it is now defined by.
Tell me why you want this. There’s no wrong reason.
It was the most obvious question, of a repeating importance. People have songs. Places have songs. Events have songs. So… what is the song, of the Song? The most direct question of the headers that guide us above- Stillness, Archives, Rite… and it lied there, bare, and unquestioned. So now, I question, because I want to know, and hear.
ꙮ How badly do you want it? That question’s mine to ask. Invoke Tenebrous, starlit.
- The Awoken Prince invoked their ⭐Starlit ⚫tenebrous gnosis [d8: (3, 5)] -> 5.
ꙮ If you had one more Arete to spend, here and now, would you spend it, in search of this? Without knowing whether or not it was required to?
I would. I’ll even answer why, as a bonus-
*Because I want it. I want the chance to go further. I want the chance to be stronger. I want the chance for my outstretched palm to catch the universe ever so slightly, as to break it open completely.
- The Awoken Prince has gained 1 Arete, and now has 3.
- The Awoken Prince spent 3 Arete and now has 0 remaining.
- The Awoken Prince invoked their ⭐Starlit ⚫tenebrous gnosis [d8: (6, 2)] -> 6.
ꙮ Your fingers catch on something that, at first, you think is smoothed. Is grooved, like the surface of your own fingertips.
ꙮ The suggestion, perhaps, of something that might be.
endless nerves ride along the grooves, and his hand– no, arm– no, form– compresses down, gently letting the heartbeating waves imprint themselves, upon a sheet of pure liminal gnosis beneath him. The reeds of feeling scratch upon the liminal sheet, which rotates underneath them both.
ꙮ The cold and grasping shadow touches the formless and unknowable, and that vibration which is the Song is trapped in– you could swear, you feel it with your own fingers. Random perturbations, fluctuations of a thousand tiny fingers, wind making grooves in stone and dunes of sand. Imagine a dune formed a pattern. Imagine the wind wrought rock into a disk of shining spiralled obsidian.
’s imagination is strong. So strong, that when he curves his fingers, he expects a nail to catch on the very edge of an obsidian disc.
ꙮ And it does. Carefully, carefully, so as not to scratch it. And then you grasp it, truly, and you know that it is not– it is not simply, it is not just, your imagination, as though your imagination could be ‘simply’ or ‘just’ anything. It is not, after all, the first time you’ve been divinely inspired, conjured a specific image out of the vast depths of time and space and immeasurable love.
’s vision clears, and he is kneeling on the ground, his left hand above an obsidian disc, extremely subtly grooved. There’s a spindle hole in the middle, surrounded by a center label. I admit, I’m curious on what color the label could even be, but if I have a choice, it’d be azure- a mark of the record presser, obviously.
ꙮ It’s azure. Could it be otherwise? Azure, with a vivid purple starburst at the centre around the spindle.
ꙮ Did your eyes, somehow, skip over the glorious, ornate horn of a gramophone, tucked against one wall? Warm wood and brass and a tiny crystal needle that catches the light like it’s winking at you. Has it been there this whole time? It must have been.
carefully picks the record up from the ground, and nods in affirmation towards the gramophone. It wasn’t relevant before, so, y’know, it just sort of faded into the scenery a bit. But now, it’s taking center stage, as The Awoken Prince approaches it, turning the crank to wind it until he feels resistance, releases the brake, and carefully lowers the record onto the spindle. As it reaches an even speed, he lowers the needle onto the edge, and retreats back to his barstool. He sits, retrieves his drink, and rests his back against the counter, listening intently.
ꙮ Crackling, at first, and then a low, daring note:
- You hear — and your Star hears — a song, echoing from the stillness: His Tenebrous Reach
ꙮ …only one track on the disc, it would seem.
laughs, bassy, from within his chest. He takes a sip of his drink.
ꙮ It’s a good drink.
: “It’s a great song.”
ꙮ It is.