Difference between revisions of "This/Survivors song"

A fragment of the Garden of Remembering
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Coraline awoke face-down in the dirt. Not sure where she was, what was real, or even, for that matter, what had happened, she rolled over and peered into the early-dawn light.  
Kalona was a cliché. The size of shopping area, perhaps, or an apartment complex, but it was the entire town, walled about in stone and eerily silent, an oasis of silence, cradled amidst the trees. Not even cawing disturbed the whispers.


It looked like winter probably looked in a much more moderate climate - namely in pretty much anywhere on her world further south than where she was from. But this wasn't her world, was it? If it were, why would she be further south?
And there should have been cawing. The heavy gate was ajar, but before it were the bodies: three of them, collapsed in the road, discoloured corpses chilled but not quite frozen, arrows protruding from their backs. No sign of the shooters on the walls. No sign why the gate would still be open, if it were so imperative that nobody get out. But that would had been almost two weeks ago now. Now there was only silence.


Even so, the dreary light looked dreadfully normal, and the pain in her head and general whinging of her sore muscles seemed pretty insistent that there was absolutely nothing supernatural going on here - probably just a particularly bad hangover or something? Not that she drank, but a bad bowl of noodles could do much the same.
As she approached, Coraline gripped her staff. She felt strangely vulnerable. This wasn't like the games, where one hit never kills and the player character could always be sure of a quick way out in case of danger - be it a powerful spell or simply running away.  


And the whole conversation, the whole night and day before that she remembered, why, that was probably just a dream...
This was much more interesting.


Probably? So where the hell was she, then?
Coraline ducked through the partially open gate and tried to take in everything at once, staff at the ready. It didn't work; instead she nearly hit her head with the staff and got her foot stuck in an upturned wicker basket she'd failed to spot on the ground. She stopped and tried again.


She sat up and looked around more carefully. She was sitting by a small creek, almost frozen over, with leafless trees lining the banks, and brown grass and curled leaves all around. A light frost glittered on the edges. Her staff - the staff Sherandris had given her - was a couple metres away in some dead-looking shrubs, so clearly that much wasn't a dream. And dead-looking... the proliferation of twiggage suggested that it was definitely not actually dead, just waiting. So yes. Winter. Probably.
There wasn't anyone about. No movement amidst the houses and workshops, though something creaked somewhere. Within the walls, the streets widened considerably, but they were strewn with objects that didn't make much sense, out of context and unrecognisable. A pile of sheets? Half a cart? A kitchen chair, a shovel, some rocks. A foot.


So it was real. This wasn't her world. She didn't know what it was, or if it even had winters, but supposing it did, this would probably be it. Right? Maybe. Sure. Why not.
She heard a creak again, but nothing of the view had changed. Above her a flag flapped half-heartedly. She pulled the basket off her foot.


She got up, despite the protestations of her back and legs, and picked up the staff. Here she was, then, wherever here was.
The buildings were empty, at least of people. Not knowing what to look for, she searched for books, but found none. No people, no books, not even any bodies within the walls. Nothing besides the foot that had been lying so lonesomely in the street, in that graveyard of misplaced objects, simply empty houses. It appeared as though the occupants had tried to pack up and leave, with shelves bare and tables cleared quickly, while others... in others, it was as though the occupants had simply vanished without warning. Fires burned down to ash, tables set, food out, tools in their places, like a proverbial ghost town.  


There didn't appear to be any signs of civilisation in any direction, though the trees made it somewhat more ambiguous. She pushed through the shrubbery to a better look away from the creek - it appeared to be only grassland beyond, not even cultivated fields, just hills and grass and the bones of trees, and some low mountains in the far distance. Same in the other direction? Seemed to be.
Leaving one of the houses, she heard the creak again behind her, much louder. She jumped and then realised it was the door, simply reminding the world that it was still there. It was still a door. It still functioned.


But there was, of course, a very good chance she was missing something obvious. Despite a youth spent running around barefoot in the forest that spanned the county where she grew up, she had never been much of a practical outdoorsman, and the onset of a computer had pretty much cemented it. Ah, computers. They had certainly changed how people interacted, for some even negating the need to go outside at all for long stretches of time. Coraline wasn't one of those, and she certainly didn't quite take it to the extremes of considering the countryside 'unnatural' on account of too many trees, but... bah. Where was a ranger when she needed one? Or a sandwich?


She checked her bag, but all it had for food was half a box of crackers she'd grabbed for breakfast the previous morning. She pulled out a handful and stuffed the box back into the abyss of her bag of miscellaneous junk.
The sun was higher. The frost was gone. Twiggage rustled in the breeze. There was nothing here but loneliness.
She had wound up on this world, alone in the wilderness with nothing but her wits, a staff, and a bag full of random stuff, no idea where this was, how it was, or really anything at all about it, simply because of a promise. This promise was why was there, and it would drive everything she did, but she could not admit to it, because to do so would break the promise.
She started walking. She followed the creek, because as much as the videogames she had grown up on tended not to adhere to this, in real life water always leads somewhere.
She encountered the usual problems, of course - what to eat, where to sleep, how to boil the water so it was actually safe to drink, but she used what she had and it worked. She tested the staff and it bled a hole in a nearby tree, smoldering on the edges. She tested it again and achieved far more precise results - good for hunting, but also good for starting fires. Her coat was thick, probably more than needed here, and though she heard murmurs from time to time, it seemed she was indeed alone. Just the birds and the gophers. Some deer on the prairie. A huge winged creature soaring overhead, neither dinosaur nor bird.
She was out of crackers. It would be all gopher meat from there; though she realised the danger in that, she knew nothing of the local plantlife, and thus nothing of what would be safe to eat or otherwise. She considered a deer, but had no idea what she would do with it all.
And the landscape changed. Hills gave way to valleys, plains gave way to forests. The days were long and the nights were cold, and though she sometimes heard shrieks in the distance, they could have been anything. Valley cats. Mountain cats. Not cats. Who knows. Doesn't matter. Snow fell. Winds blew. At night she stirred the fire. Sparks rose and joined the stars when they came out, but she recognised none. Come day, she walked. Down, down, down, out of the highlands, out to the sea. Or that was the direction, at least.
The creek was now a river. Tributaries flowed in, little and big, and the crossings took time. The hills around had risen into sheer cliffs; the valley was a gorge. Birds sang like voices in her head. Shielded from the wind, it was much warmer down here, and the plants much lusher, though many were still without leaves, merely mossed twiggage reaching for the clouds. Some of them almost looked familiar. Almost.
And then she found the road, a high bridge crossing her river like a figure out of legend, an elegant contraption of stone and more stone. She climbed to its start, up the hill and through the trees, pulling on vines like guide ropes. It was a road, and maintained, but not like one she had seen in years. Cobbled, brick foundation with stones on a layer of sand, she found, and put the cobbles back. Like the roads in ancient Rome, perhaps? And narrow. Road and bridge might suffer a single vehicle, but poorly. A bug perhaps would have managed, but with nothing on either side. But this wasn't a world of vehicles. Even now, she knew it. This road was made for walking - and probably for riding. But riding what? And what...
And then she realised. This was another planet in another universe. Roads, of course, were probably a fairly universal concept, but what of the builders? What would they be? Would there even be a way to communicate, any common ground at all? And what would they make of her, in her jeans and t-shirt and big fluffy coat?
But as ever, there was nothing for it but to walk. Pick a direction and move forward. Follow the road and find out, see where this story went. So she headed north, across the bridge, away from the path of the sun, not because north seemed like the best direction to go, but simply because of the bridge. A bridge like that clamoured to be crossed.
The road cut around hills, up and out of the gorge, back to the plains, though these were different from before. Rockier. Hills and ridges. Smoke in the distance, but it could have been anything. Stay on the road. The road was safer. She had what she needed right there; in the cold, water lasts, and saved meat lasts longer.
Stone piles marked offshoots, smaller paths heading away into the grass. They didn't look travelled, but she followed one for the hell of it, breaking through patches of old snow untouched but for rabbits and game. It led to a husk of a village, years gone, or perhaps weeks, burned out and empty. Stone walls jostled with charred logs, crumbling into rubble. Old bones poked from the snow. In the centre, the square, or perhaps what they would have called the green, dessicated bodies were piled around a stone obelisk. There were no scorch marks here, and no scavengers had touched them, but the elements had worn them down to bone, skeletons mummified in their clothes.
They looked human, the dead. It was unclear why or how, but the air felt strange. It was wrong, here, in this place, and she knew it. Where buildings once shielded the green from the wind, it should now tear through their ruins, but everything was still and silent, simply her and the dead and the obelisk, unmarked. There was nothing to be done. She turned back to the road. Even if she should find something left to scavenge, she would not have trusted it, not from this place.
At the outskirts the wind hit her suddenly, tearing with abandon and screaming in her ears, screaming, screaming. She turned her head against it and it almost stole her beanie, but at least the screaming stopped. What happened? What was wrong with the place? Was it wrong with the world? But there were no answers.
She strayed no more from the road.
And the road led on. Up again, towards mountains and trees, ever rockier. There was nobody else around, nobody else travelling the path. Ghosts drifted out of long shadows and dissipated in the light as she passed. Carrion birds circled above, cutting crisply through the icy air. Day and night. On and on. The cold bit in the night. Water ran low, but dirty snow distilled same as river water. Shapes flickered and dance in the fire, babbling to themselves, as she watched and drifted into sleep, into Nightmare.
In the foothills, the trees closed around like an enveloping cloak, roaring whispers in the pines, and it felt like home, recalling winters in the mountains, skiing, sleighing. Always surrounded by the roaring whisper. It was the sound of the forest, the life in the cold.
But there was another sound, too, further on. Voices? She walked faster, rounded the bend, and yes, others, other people, the first in... she didn't even know. Weeks? Months? How long had it been? But it didn't matter; in the now these figures were here. Wrapped in thick cloaks, two huddled around a third, lying against a rock. Something had gone amiss, and the worry in their voices and movements was obvious, though she could make out the words over the whispers of the trees.
Then one noticed her and stood.
"Can you help?" he said. "Adaerivyn has fallen." His features were pointed, his eyes precise. There was no age to the face, but there was fear. The situation stank of it, and she didn't know why.
"What's wrong? What happened?" Coraline went to them, and got a better look at the fallen man, Adaerivyn. He was pale, sweating, even in the cold. The other, a woman, looked up with concern.
"He was hit by an arrow when we tried to escape Kalona. Neaya managed to close the wound, but without a healer to tend to him properly, it's gone bad and just gotten worse."
"Kalona?" she asked as the woman pulled back layers of clothing to show Coraline the wound, even without waiting for any indication if she could help. It was a small, stitched hole under the collarbone, clearly infected, with strange colours and pus oozing from the stitches, but though Coraline knew nothing of medicine, the despair in the air pushed her to at least try something. She looked through her bag. Perhaps... yes. A tube of antiseptic ointment? Probably a terrible idea at this point, but what had he got to lose?
Behind her, the man sighed hopelessly. "Utter madness up there. The scourge has come, and it has fallen. Survivors ratted down, and those who try to escape shot, but it's all for nothing. The taken are taken. The rest can only flee."
Coraline looked back as she unscrewed the cap. "Taken?" she asked, and subsequently dropped the cap on the cobbles.
He just shook his head.
She rubbed a small amount of ointment onto her fingers in the hope that maybe it would serve as a substitute for washing or sterilisation, then pulled out the stitches with a solid yank. The hole came open and a rush of foul liquid oozed down the man's chest, and a foul stench quickly followed. The woman turned away. The other knelt again beside them.
She gave the reddened skin next to the hole a quick jab. The man moaned as a smaller amount of pus came out.
"Just for the record," she said, stuffing a glob of ointment into the hole, "I have no idea if this will actually help. But it... might." She wiped her hands and went back into her bag. Did she have needles? Yes, and even curved ones, at that. Perfect. She threaded one with some floss, and reclosed the wound.
The woman was kneading his other shoulder with worry. "We will pray," she said.
"Thank you," the other said, handing her the cap. "Not many would stop and help elves."
Coraline half-shrugged. She hadn't even realised they were elves, though that wouldn't have affected much regardless. Elves came in all sorts, far as she knew. "I hope it works out," she said. "So about Kalona, what, exactly...?"
The elf looked away, unable to meet her eyes. "You're headed that way, then?"
"Looks like."
"You'll only find death. The madness we fled will have died, for the scourge leaves nothing but ashes in its wake, but whatever brought you this way will leave you wanting in the days to get there."
She wanted to ask what it was, this 'scourge', but somehow it felt like a bad idea. It was something she should just know, something everyone knew, something that would immediately mark her as an outsider if she didn't, and... that would be bad. She didn't know why, just that it would be. "Maybe," she said instead.
"Don't go," the woman said. "A kind heart does not bear to witness."
"I've got to," Coraline said, moving away. She'd come this far. "Good luck to you."
And on she went, down the road, up the foothills. The whispers of the pines ushered her on, long and low, rising and falling. This world was a mystery, but in the pines there was familiarity and belonging. In the pines it felt like home.
----
==== stuff ====
==== stuff ====


Revision as of 08:16, 10 December 2013

Kalona was a cliché. The size of shopping area, perhaps, or an apartment complex, but it was the entire town, walled about in stone and eerily silent, an oasis of silence, cradled amidst the trees. Not even cawing disturbed the whispers.

And there should have been cawing. The heavy gate was ajar, but before it were the bodies: three of them, collapsed in the road, discoloured corpses chilled but not quite frozen, arrows protruding from their backs. No sign of the shooters on the walls. No sign why the gate would still be open, if it were so imperative that nobody get out. But that would had been almost two weeks ago now. Now there was only silence.

As she approached, Coraline gripped her staff. She felt strangely vulnerable. This wasn't like the games, where one hit never kills and the player character could always be sure of a quick way out in case of danger - be it a powerful spell or simply running away.

This was much more interesting.

Coraline ducked through the partially open gate and tried to take in everything at once, staff at the ready. It didn't work; instead she nearly hit her head with the staff and got her foot stuck in an upturned wicker basket she'd failed to spot on the ground. She stopped and tried again.

There wasn't anyone about. No movement amidst the houses and workshops, though something creaked somewhere. Within the walls, the streets widened considerably, but they were strewn with objects that didn't make much sense, out of context and unrecognisable. A pile of sheets? Half a cart? A kitchen chair, a shovel, some rocks. A foot.

She heard a creak again, but nothing of the view had changed. Above her a flag flapped half-heartedly. She pulled the basket off her foot.

The buildings were empty, at least of people. Not knowing what to look for, she searched for books, but found none. No people, no books, not even any bodies within the walls. Nothing besides the foot that had been lying so lonesomely in the street, in that graveyard of misplaced objects, simply empty houses. It appeared as though the occupants had tried to pack up and leave, with shelves bare and tables cleared quickly, while others... in others, it was as though the occupants had simply vanished without warning. Fires burned down to ash, tables set, food out, tools in their places, like a proverbial ghost town.

Leaving one of the houses, she heard the creak again behind her, much louder. She jumped and then realised it was the door, simply reminding the world that it was still there. It was still a door. It still functioned.


stuff

bag/pockets:

  • wallet
  • phone
  • bluetooth
  • mouse
  • three flashdrives
  • bus passes
  • keychain
  • cuddly sea-anemone toy
  • several receipts
  • two books - House of Leaves, Guild Wars Factions art book
  • one glove
  • pens/pencils
  • notebook/pad thingie
  • wad of eraser - 'kneaded rubber'
  • floss
  • screwdriver set
  • wirecutters
  • pliers
  • two knives
  • set of upholstery needles
  • file
  • pair of chopsticks
  • small scissors
  • MAGNETS
  • hairclips
  • sunglasses
  • extra socks
  • small mask (filigree-style)
  • tube of ointment
  • superglue
  • deodorant
  • lip colour (paint stuff and balm)
  • large wad of aluminium foil
  • empty metal water bottle
  • half-eaten box of crackers

...

Hells, any of it could be relevant.

wearing:

  • jeans
  • xkcd sysadmin t-shirt
  • huge-ass coat
  • scarf
  • beanie
  • mittens
  • boots

...and a staff weapon. Dzang, girl, you go into the world with an odd assortment of junk.



"Hello, a visitor?" someone said behind her. Coraline turned and found a rather pleasant-looking woman, middle-aged, dressed in autumn colours, standing in the doorway.

"Oh, hi," she said. The words felt odd, as though they were the wrong ones, as lost as she was. And there were so many questions, and yet she didn't even know enough to ask.

"That's Alyre," the woman said. "Goddess of love, beauty, passion..."

"Masks?" Coraline asked without thinking.

The woman smiled. "Sometimes. But that depends on the masks."


...


"There is something I would ask of you."

"Oh?"

"Kill me."

"What?!"

"End my life. Send me to Kyrule."

"To...?" Coraline stared at her. "But... why?"

"I've been taken," the priestess said. "I can feel it, even now, changing me, eating who I am."

"Taken...?" She realised there was too much at stake to continue the bluff. "What exactly does that even mean?"

The priestess frowned at Coraline. "It's... a curse. A corruption. It's passed through... well, people lose themselves when they're taken. The more they lose, the more they want it back, but of course that's impossible. Gone is gone. So they take from others when they don't have - memories, self, sanity. Sometimes the others just die, if they're lucky. Other times... they wind up taken as well, and they, too, lose themselves, and they, too, begin to hunger..." She looked at Coraline, pleading her to understand. "It eats the mind, but more than that, it eats the soul."

"And there's no cure?"

"Not... exactly. But there is a way out, if you will. If I die now, my soul will be intact."

"So why can't you..."

"Do it myself?"

"Yeah."

"I've never been strong, and this... it's stronger. Fear of death is stronger, it always is. It's why the taken keep fighting so hard even after they've already lost everything. I don't want that, but I can't stop it! Not by myself."

"But I can't..."

"Please! Help me die as me."

"And what, just..." Coraline made a knifing motion, "Stab you or something?"

The priestess smiled. "That would work."

"Bit painful."

"It would be nothing to the torment I will go through otherwise."

"Nnnrg," Coraline said. "Do you have any medicine?"

"What?"

"Pills or..." but it was clear the woman had no idea what she was talking about; if she had she'd probably have done it already. "Alright, um. You're... sure about this?"

"Yes. As Alyre is my witness."

Coraline glanced at the statue and took a deep breath. "Alright."


"May you go to your gods as you."



Coraline woke up one morning, walked into her pub, and was immediately surprised to find that it was indeed a pub and not a library, though really the only significant difference in practice is that libraries tend to be more dangerous. Even ones without wheels.

So it was going to be one of those days, was it? Fine, then.

This was, after all, very much her pub. The counter gleamed because she made it gleam; the busboy scurried because she made him scurry; the shelves were full because she kept them full. So she didn't know all the mixes by heart; if someone wanted something special, they could either tell her what to do or suffer. She knew enough. The basics, at any rate. The usuals.

And she knew breakfast. Breakfast was what she had for lunch, and it usually involved an egg, some toast, a whop of coffee, and more brandy than she was likely to admit, and this she made now, munching her toast as one of the overnights came down burdened with a hangover. Wordlessly she passed him a coffee and moved onto a vague cleaning of a random glass. Barkeeps were always cleaning a random glass when someone else was around, so she did this too.

The overnight stared glumly at his coffee, disinclined to move.

"Drink it," she said. "It'll help." Not that she'd know. She had never had a hangover in her life. The odd headache waking up, yes, but when it was solved so simply as by drinking a glass of water, that hardly counted as a hangover, so far as Coraline was concerned. Hangovers were something else, something more mysterious, involving the aftereffects of alcohol killing various parts of the body, most assuredly. But these were the remedies, and so she administered them, good barkeep and innkeep that she was. Shuffled those too drunk into rooms for the night, administered to the hangovers in the morning, and wandered off into the day that was the afternoon.

It was a life, of sorts, though not what she would ever have expected. Coraline was a librarian in her heart of hearts, and she had trained to be a librarian. She even had a piece of paper attesting to this, though it was in another world in another language, where everyone had probably assumed her missing, and then, as the months and years went by, probably assumed her dead. But this wasn't that world; here words were precious, and libraries were rare, and trucks were at best a distant dream. Here she did what she could, and that was booze. It was really the same sort of thing, just liquids instead of words. Strange that either one could be so very effective at passing others into the worlds of dreams, but that suited her fine.

"Seriously, drink it," she said.

The guy, dressed in the typical rural attire of the area, stared at his coffee as though it were some strange and foreign potion, then downed it in three solid gulps.

Well, that'll do it, Coraline thought, absently wiping a random glass mug.

He stared at his own empty mug.

He seemed to stop.

Then he startled, twitched, stood up suddenly, and fell over.

Coraline peered over the counter, somewhat worried that she'd finally managed to accidentally kill someone, but the guy was already getting up. He shrugged himself off, looked at her suspiciously, and then asked, quietly, "Er, how much will that be?"

"Eight cela, including room and board. Breakfast is also on, if you want it."

"Er," he said, passing her the coins, "What's breakfast?"

"I made toast." Coraline was not known for her culinary expertise, something about how she usually didn't bother since the ingredients on hand around here tended to be absolutely worthless anyway.

"Okay," he said.

Wordlessly she passed him a piece of toast. He wandered out, munching.

She leaned on the counter. Some life, but it was a life, and a fairly stable one. Even the voices were passably quiet now, since so long as she kept at the booze they just faded to the general buzz of the background. And there was no lack of booze here. No lack at all.



Space, of course, is very vast. Most folks know nothing of it; only on the larger worlds, where there has been more time, and more science, and more madness and depression, is anything indeed known of space.

And that is really not very much, generally speaking.

Coraline knew a bit. A thing or two. Enough to say with a fair amount of certainty that a star is indeed a star and a world is indeed a world. But that really wasn't her field of expertise. Books were.

They called her the Librarian, and librarian she was. Degree in information technologies, truck full of books, and seven cats rendered her very much a librarian of lore, and she knew exactly what was where and where was what. It was her job, and it was who she was.

At least part of who she was.

There was, of course, a good deal more to it.



It began as a whispering. Something almost, but not entirely, out of sight, out of sound, and out of mind. A shadow of a shadow, except heard, not seen. Whispers at the edge of hearing, and even, as it were, the edge of thought.

She did not even notice them at first. Occasionally they would sneak in even without her noticing, but then as the hours and days went on, they became more insistent, more pressing, until there was nothing to do but listen.

Then they came as an onslaught. When she noticed, she noticed, and then there was simply nothing to do but notice. The voices poured in, beckoning, begging, screaming, asking, crying, shouting, an endless roar of a whisper, the torment of a thousand waves all crashing at once. And she heard them all so clearly, so plainly,

There was no escape, no solace from the torment, simply more, and more, and more. She lost herself in it, lost track of her surroundings, her intent, and everything she was after and was. There was only room for voices, voices, voices. Speaking out of the shadows, never-ending.

She stumbled and continued, lost in the depths of her mind, reeling in the voices never-ending.



If only there were silence amidst the madness. But there was none; there was only madness and more madness, voices, and no silence.

Only voices, and shouting, and clamouring, and no silence amidst the voices, only more shouting and crying and pleading.

There was only the din, the overbearing loudness, the reverberation and roar and the place, the place that was all the same, the place that was all sound and no silence.

If there were sound and also silence, a respite, a sanctuary against the sound.

If there were the silence only distance, alone, without the sound, the sound of the voices, thousands, tens of thousands, never stopping, never ending...

But there was no silence.

Coraline wandered on, lost amidst the madness of the roar within her mind.



She knew nothing. She was no-one. The wind. A whisper and a shadow.

The world was not real.

Others passed her by, but they paid no head. They were not real, and nor was she. Only the voices stood out, in their shout and their roar and their reverberation against the shadowy, flimsy backdrop of the world she saw with eyes. It was nothing.

Only the rock and the shadow, washed by the whirl of voices, so many souls that passed through, so many voices, shouting, shouting, always shouting and never heard. They were meaningless, and still they shouted, because they did not know, they could never know, but they were only the cicada, they were only the whisper, and yet they whispered on.



Whisper and whisper, shout and shout, question and question. The cacophany was never-ending, and yet all were lost within. No single soul stood out, no single voice was heard, only the masses, the unending masses, coming and coming. It was all. It was everything. Voices.

Only voices. No end to the voices, just voices shouting, voices pleading, voices lost without even hope to carry them on, but still echoing even now, for there was no hope here, only nothing, only echos, always echoes. This was the place of echoes, where echoes were only all. Only echos. Nelanor. Echos.

They pleaded, the echos. They called. They whispered secrets and shouted legends, for it was all they knew, and amongst the echos there was nothing, only nothing. If only there were something amidst the nothing, no abyss, no great shadow, no deep darkess that loiters below, only something, a shadow of the world, but something, then. Something to support the voices, the echos the shadows.

But there is only nothing.



She realised she was in a place. She didn't know how she had gotten there, or what she was doing there, or even, for that matter, much of anything at all, but this was a place. Some of the whispers had mentioned places, but as they whispered on, the places faded.

Everything faded. Everything was lost in the whispers, in the shouting, in the din.

There was a cup in front of her. Someone said, quieter and yet somehow louder than all of the others, "You look like you could use some shalott."

She looked at it. Rock, part of her though, staring at it, and then, before she knew what she was doing, that part of her drank it. Amidst the voices she didn't really notice. There was nothing to notice.



It was later. It was clearly later.

And there was only silence.

Nelanor looked up. "It is what the thunder said," she said.

"Sorry?" the barkeep asked.



She was in a bar. It was clearly a bar, though like none she had ever seen before. There were no taps and no vast assortment of myriad bottles such as marked the bars she knew, but there was the bar itself. It was very clearly a bar, long and wodden and polished, and the barman behind with apron and bottles and barrels, ready to pour whatever, so long as he had it, to whoever, so long as he could pay for it.

There was also no lighting in the rest of the room, as far as she could tell, The patrons drank in smoke and gloom, coming forth, perhaps, only as often as they had to. And here, at the bar, there were only the three lanterns. Kerosene, if she had to guess, and no apperture for anything better. This was all they had. They made do, though. People did, when it was as far as they had come, and indeed they were proud of it. They had come this far, after all. They had achieved real lanterns, right?

Or something along those lines. She wasn't sure what was going on, or how she had gotten here. There was, however, another mug in front of her. Had she already had one? It was hard to say.

For lack of a better idea she drank it.



For the first time in she didn't know how long, Coraline Henderson was thinking clearly. At least relatively so. She was also, from the feel of it, pretty decently drunk.



It was paperwork. The paperwork of the multiverse, niggling for completion.

Most of the paperwork was automatic, the random details filled in according to sender and origin, but there were two things that needed a specific answer. Choices on the part of the petitioner. Names. A place and a person. A castle and a king. Black sand everywhere. So much sand.

She blinked, not that there was anything much to see. Curtains, wall. No sand. Just a metaphor like the castle itself. Two names. Castle and king. Moonlight speckled across the curtains, trailing shadows of leaves.

"Here reigns king of the sandcastle, Kyrule of Arling Tor," she whispered. Sand drifted silently around her.

There. Paperwork filled out.

With that she fell asleep.



(possibly champion's/deathgods')

Three hundred years ago, Coraline Henderson, then going by the name Anja Torn, had been a regular customer at the Empty Cistern, even then one of the oldest taverns in the city.

It wasn't that the place was close to where she was staying (because it wasn't), it wasn't because it had good service (because it really didn't), it wasn't because the clientelle were respectable (if anything they were the opposite), and it wasn't because the booze was good, although it actually was most of the time. The reason she went here because because nobody cared - eveyrone here was here because nobody cared; nobody cared about the law, or about propriety, or about anyone else's business. People came, they went, and they got, if not exactly discretion, a good heaping dose of apathy.

So Coraline got no trouble here walking in dressed like an acolyte of Kyrule and ordering a triple-dose of 20-stone shalott, even though it was well-known that the acolytes were not permitted alcohol. Indeed, it seemed some of the temple's higher-ups had a made a point of visiting all the bars in town to let them know, just to be clear, but they would have skipped this one.

She got the same trouble as everyone else, of course. The general suspicion, shifty-eyed watching as she passed, the curiosity of what might be wrong with her that was gone as soon as she was, but that was really it. All in all, the Cistern of the time was the sort of place where the more normal you looked, the better off you were - if you looked normal, people had to guess, and the imagination often filled in far worse nightmares than reality ever could. And aside from the robes, Coraline looked pretty normal.

The only real trouble had come the first night she was there, or might have had she responded differently.

She had been sitting at the bar minding her shalott, wondering vaguely how drunk she could safely get and still maintain her cover, when someone sat down next to her and said, "Hey, you going to stop that?"

Not even sure what she should be stopping, she looked around. Turned out someone had died, something which often happened there - a body was slumped over a table and it sounded like people were bidding.

She took this in and just said, "I don't want him."

Somehow that settled it. The guy grinned gappily at her, slapped her on the shoulder, and left. This was the nature of the place, lawless, godless, and ruled only by the order of commerce, of what people wanted. And if someone died, that was valuable.

Of course, had she really been an acolyte of Kyrule and not just posing as one, that could have presented something of a problem. The religion was very much against the mistreatement of the dead, and selling bodies very much qualified as mistreatment in their book. But she wasn't one, and in her somewhat more practical view of things, the dead were already dead. They weren't apt to care.

Nor was anyone else, there. And so, during her stay in the city of Soransie, she came to frequent the place.



"I have spoken and that is final. Shut up leave me alone I'm drinking."



Basic Necromancy was at four. It covered the general theories, and would begin practical studies in reanimation in the next few weeks. Coraline was good at theories, but the reanimation part worried her. It sounded suspiciously like magic, and she had no idea if she could actually do magic.

Not normal magic, at any rate.



"It's not that I'm incredibly drunk," she said. "It's just that I am incredibly drunk."



"It's not like I'm worried. If I could think straight about anything I'd be worried, though."



"What exactly are doomguides?"

"What does it sound like? They guide you to your doom."

"Er..."

"Naw, seriously, they're just like... they help folks pass into the next life, and coordinate things with the undertakers so their remains are handled properly. It's not very interesting."

"I see."

"Why?"

"Someone once said I should have been a doomguide."

"Why?"

"I killed her."

He sputtered. "And that was why..." He stopped. "Er, wait, why?"

"She asked me to. Said she'd 'been taken'." Coraline took a long drink and shook her head. "The whole area had been decimated."

"What... by the Death of Souls?"

She shrugged. "Dunno. The elves called it the 'scourge'?"

"Yeah, that's the Death of Souls." He looked at her. "Fuck, woman, that... you did good."

"Did I?"

"Yes. And she was right. That is what a doomguide would have done."



"Francis Door," she said.

He took a long drink. "Yeah?"

"You know the story?"

"Yeah."

She downed her shalott and pushed the mug forward for a refill. "What do you make of it?"

He took a long breath. "Crazy shit," he said. "Damn crazy shit."

"How so?"

"Well," he paused, thinking. "You got this guy. A fuckin' normal guy. He loves a few things in life, his god, his work, his woman, and for them he'd give up anything. For any one of them he'd give up the others, if it came to it."

"Is that what happened?"

"Near enough. It was his wife's sister, if you can believe that. All the stories say it was his wife, what say it at all, but it was her fucking sister."

"What..."

"Right?"

They minded their drinks. Things swam swimmily around them, objects in space. They watched, and listened, and drank.

"Some folks would do anything for family," Coraline said. "Is that so wrong?"

He stared at his shalott and tipped it randomly. "'Snothing wrong or right about it. That's just it. Just shit what happens, an' choices what don't work out.

"'Swhat makes it all so fucked up."



"And you came out of there? Alive?" He looked at her suspiciously. "And are you... sane?"

"Define 'sane'," Coraline said.

He snorted. "Yeah, really." But he also relaxed, apparently satisfied.



What happens to you, little dreamer? Where do you wind up, you and your stories and your dreams and your loss? How does it go, if written down in words, without the words themselves to guide?

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Murdering people is heroic.