This/Survivors song/heap
< This | Survivors song
This is the heap, a scratchpad for all the random snippets and bits that have yet to find a place.
Don't read it.
Script
Ariel and Coraline
Something important
Giant shepherd's crook
Strange silvery key
False front of Erry
Faith in a table
Angels and angeloids
Obelisk
Key investigation
More heap or something
She gave him a look normally reserved for the criminally insane: utter fascination.
Join the temple, investigate some murders, and generally be a drunken lout
Assassination
She felt something brush by her and instinctively reached out to swat at it. It turned out to be a man, who materialised in front of her as her hand brushed his arm. He grabbed her hand and yanked her forward, and then suddenly let go, vanishing once more.
She felt... funny. Like it was raining, except there was a cramp in her chest. She noticed that the group of priests had apparently seen the commotion and were moving toward her. Why were they worried? People vanish sometimes. She'd had weirder patrons. He hadn't hurt her. Had he?
She looked down and realised there was something stuck to her chest, and everything was getting very, very fuzzy. "Oh," she said softly. This wasn't supposed to happen. Had she failed? She realised she had, and the panic filled her like the greatest of nightmares, except it was fuzzy and distant, and it was too late now anyhow. Even the magic wouldn't come, just a terrible blankness where it should have been, and a dagger where her life should have been.
Then the darkness was flooding back, full of voices. Except this time the voices were different - welcoming. Familiar, rising around her. One of them said, "Fucking batshit."
She thought she felt someone catch her.
Sober
She awoke to voices. They swirled around her, content to a roar, to a whisper, pleading and cajolling, begging and screaming and chittering. They were everything. The world. A whole lot of nothing. She had to think, to get away, to stop them, but they would not stop and she could not think, so instead she looked about in desperation and found a whole lot of some things. Some walls, mostly. Some furniture. Some objects. A couple of other objects that swirled with their own strange whispers, their own odd shadows. Souls. Mortals. The strange ones that came after. The strange ones that never were. A myth. A legend. And still the voices, yelling and shrieking and singing with madness.
One of the shadows mouthed words and they formed in the space, jostled by voices. They were torn to pieces before she could even try to read them, so she mouthed her own, told the shadows what she needed, whatever it was. She didn't know. The cacophony was too great to tell, there was only clamour and sense and what needed to be done, and so she did it, pulling out pieces from her bag and mixing them in the glass that was now before her. Vodka. Adder root. Seravos. Denna seeds. Less juice. Ghorram. A concoction that mixed to the rhythm of the voices, the voices that overwhelmed, the voices that defined the instant.
It hit her like a brick to the head. Possibly a gold brick. Possibly wrapped in a slice of lemon, possibly taken to the brain. She had no idea. Everything was just swimming. The voices were gone. The glass was empty. The men were staring at her in concern, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Gravity thought it did, but it really didn't matter either. She eyed it warily regardless.
"Whaaaah," Coraline said finally. Or something along those lines. She didn't really know. It didn't really matter. One of the men said something else, and the other responded, saying something as well. Whatever it was, it was lost on her. Then the latter was guiding her out of the swimming room into a swimming corridor and through swimming halls and everything was just gloriously fuzzy beyond belief.
Coraline's head hurt. She felt heavy. Everything felt heavy. Her body felt heavy. The blankets felt heavy. The hand on her shoulder felt heavy.
"Get up," the man in robes was telling her. "You need to get up."
She groaned, or tried to, though nothing really came out. The heaviness was immense, rather like the pain in her head. She could hardly even imagine what it would be to move. The scope of the very prospect seemed epic, a feat for the ages.
Then he was pulling her out of bed himself, and she was even helping, sort of, and then she was standing before him and he was looking at her uncertainly, and her head really hurt. The light hurt. The shadows hurt. His face hurt. Everything seemed to hurt. She closed her eyes.
That hurt too.
"Come," he said, and she realised even his voice hurt. But she followed him regardless.
Space around seemed to swim as it passed by. It still hurt her head, but swimmingly. So she stared instead at the guy's back, at the robe that rippled as he walked, but that, too, was swimming in strangeness. And that, too, hurt. She almost tried to think about what had happened, how this had happened, but the prospect of that, too, hurt. So she didn't, and simply followed.
Ritual
He gave her the skull, and she held it in her hand uncertainly. She had absolutely no idea what was supposed to happen here, but clearly something was supposed to happen, so she held it up, and addressed it, "Alas! Poor Yorrick, I knew him well, Horatio, a man of infinite jest, of... er..." She looked around, then hastily handed the skull back. The keeper took it, looking rather surprised, but nodded.
Coraline stared at him blankly.
More ritual
They were before an alter. Coraline looked at it blankly. It looked like an alter.
"Well?" the priest finally asked.
"Oh," she said.
"Will you pledge yourself to Kyrule?" the priest persisted.
"Sure," she said. "Why not?" Kyrule was fine. She'd not named him for nothing. Or had she? She couldn't really remember. Her head hurt too much to press the matter, anyhow.
There was an awkward silence.
On a whim, Coraline poked the alter. "Hi," she said.
Then she was surrounded by warmth, suspended in light. The pain faded away into nothing, and everything simply faded away. She found herself floating amidst nothing at all, at peace with the world. At peace with nothing. Everything was simple, clear, laid out before her.
And then it all flooded back - not the pain in her head, but the world itself; the voices, just out of reach; the room swimming around her; the alter; the mask; the priests looking on, overseeing this ritual she had probably just completely butchered.
"Holy buckets," she said.
Names and info
Lunatic woman
Solution
"Kyrule would have that I help you, though I do not know what all that would entail."
"So what, I should just trust you?" Then she shrugged. "Well, why not. So tell me, then. What do you know of the Death of Souls?"
"I know it is old, a curse that devours everything that a person is, and spreads to others in insatiable hunger. I know there have been crusade after crusade to try to eradicate it, and yet still it persists. I know there are stories told about it, theories and fantasies and even those who would try to master it, but it never helps. It never works."
She nodded.
"Is that what this is about? You're on... some kind of mission?"
"Not as such." She looked at him carefully, then said, "I'm afflicted. I carry the Death of Souls within me."
He didn't react, not like the others had. Instead he simply said, "I see."
"That's what the alcohol is for. It drives away the voices. Keeps me sane." She stopped and then corrected, "Well, maybe not sane, exactly, but it keeps me me."
"That's it? The solution is alcohol?"
"Doubt it," she said. "I think it's more just putting things off. Driving the hunger away in confusion, because how can it eat my proper self when my self is too buried in shalott to even show its face?" "I won't hurt anyone, though. Well, not with this, at least.
"So there's no cure."
"Not that I know of. But you do have resources. Books. I dunno, maybe there's something here..."
Reminiscing on cultisting
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.
Arbitration
"I have spoken and that is final. Shut up leave me alone I'm drinking."
Wizarding
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.
Elementals
Coraline had a problem with elementals. Namely with the entire concept.
They were supposed to be summoning air elementals today, but though she pointed out air wasn't really an element, the professor wouldn't listen. So she tried to think of something that was air. Oxygen? An oxygen elemental would probably burst into flame. Nitrogen? But what the hell would be the use of that? It'd be invisible. Carbon dioxide? Good way to suffocate people, if nothing else... but not exactly an element either. Hydrogen would flat out explode. Helium would be funny but not very useful.
Something radioactive, perhaps. Radon? She could give everyone cancer! Okay, maybe not that either.
She sketched out a periodic table in search of ideas. Something further up the table, something inert. Neon? Nice noble gas, and nice and colourful if given electricity... sure, why not.
So she focussed her mind on neon - atomic number 10, simple assortment of electrons, nobody cares about the neutrons - and she twisted it into the spell they'd been going over all morning, with, of course, an added electrical current thrown into the weave to make it actually show up.
There was a brilliant flash of light, and then a form of intense red appeared before her. She giggled as the rest of the class turned to look, then shielded their eyes from the red-orange glare of the neon.
"As I said," she announced to the class, "Air is not an element. This, however, is. It's neon, one of the elements that is found in air."
"Cute," the professor said, and gestured to dismiss the elemental, though when Coraline felt a bit of a rush of warm air afterwards she was pretty sure it had just exploded.
Random
"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."
It hadn't been the sister. It had been the sister's dog.
stuff
- wallet
- phone
- bluetooth
- mouse
- three flashdrives
- bus passes
- cuddly sea-anemone toy
- two books - House of Leaves, Guild Wars Factions art book
- 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)
- empty metal water bottle
- bars of soap
- clothes
- spoon
- bristle comb
- set of small pots
- some dried food
- smoked meat
- waterskin
- some money (Verash currency)
- rope
- Strange coin
- 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.
Zombies with rocket launchers
Ariel ran down the slope, waving her sword and yelling. It wasn't the smart thing to do unless you wanted to draw attention, but she felt watched and for lack of a better idea it seemed as good a way as any to draw any watchers out. And out they came - zombies armed with... well, she wasn't quite sure. Something thick and cylindrical and very, very black. And pointed at her.
Vardaman just stared at her for a moment, then yelled, "Get down!". She saw he was already behind a stump as she managed to dodge the first couple fireballs, but the third hit her square in the face.
Everything exploded.
Ariel looked down the slope. They had stopped by a large stump, because something didn't feel right. Eyes. There were eyes. And she remembered the fireball coming toward her, getting bigger, and nowhere to go...
"There are undead down there," she said, and cast a seeker spell. The glimmer highlighted through the trees.
"How did you know that?"
That was the question, wasn't it? And how could she explain that she could go back and do anything over, that whenever she died, she simply got a horrible jolt and then could refocus wherever, and, for that matter, whenever? Some wizards did it; she knew this because they had been the ones to give her the idea in the first place, but not with this level of control. No mortal should have this level of control over their own deaths.
"Lucky guess?"
He snorted. "Armed?"
The stupid thing, of course, was that if she didn't have this fallback, she would never be so reckless in the first place. It just worked so well, and as awful as dying was, you got used to it. Just like how dreamers get used to waking up in the morning, she supposed. It sounded dreadful.
"Got blasty things."
"Great." He screwed a knob onto the end of his staff and hefted it. "Good thing we've got blastier."
Everything went white.
Random
"I remember too much. I don't know what has already happened, and what yet needs to happen."
Meet in the park
Vardaman was seated on one of the benches overlooking the park. He looked utterly out of place in this civilised land, a warrior shrouded in leathers and death, and he looked tired.
Ariel sat beside him. She supposed she probably didn't look much better. Younger. Prettier. Dirtier, if anything. Lost and tired.
They watched nothing in particular. Clouds drifting overhead. Some kids playing ball. A man with his dog. Wind in the trees.
"Anything?" Ariel asked.
"No."
"I think I found him."
"Aye?"
"He's dead."
"We knew that."
"Not exactly," she said. "His name is not in the Book of the Dead. He was taken without passing through the halls of judgement."
"You can't know that."
"Probably Saro."
He winced. "How?"
"You would have paid their price in full. Mine was cheaper."
"And what did they ask?"
"They could not buy what I do not have, but whores are universal." He looked at her, but she said, "Don't worry, Vardaman. It was interesting."
"Heh." He smiled slightly. "Everything is, to you, isn't it?"
"It's new."
Death and judgement
She was standing in a vast hall, walls distant, ceiling high above. Everything was grey. An enormous throne stood before them, and on it a winged cat groomed itself, but it was simply background. A robed figure read off names, one by one. Names for those around, but they didn't matter. Nothing mattered.
A whisper tugged at the back of her mind as she stared at nothing. There was only nothing, and more nothing. This place, and nothing, and then the whisper again.
Ariel, it said. The space was clearer. There was a concept here.
Ariel, listen to me. And then she saw the others. She saw the cat, and the robed figure, and the sarcophagi lining the walls. She saw the others, shades one and all, and raised her hand to look - she was as they were. Not quite there, not quite real.
"Dreamer," she said aloud. And she listened.
You are Ariel Sartorien. Remember who you are and all else will follow.
None of the others noticed. None of them moved, simply waiting in turn for their names and sentences to be called, the Voice reading them off, one by one, the winged cat behind him ignoring it all with style.
Names. Lives. Judgements. Sentences. She listened, half hearing, half waiting, half wondering what the hell she was going to say, because she was going to have to say something, and half, somewhere in the very back of her mind, smacking herself for forgetting the meaning of the word 'half'.
"Augorine Zha Siel. You have lived in service, and for your acts and deeds you have been judged as true. Go forth."
"Dyre Austeroferoz. You have lived in fear, and made the world your own, but throughout you have lived without faith. Go forth."
"David Weaver..."
The souls, once called, simply faded away, each by each.
And then it was her turn.
"Anja Torn," the Voice intoned. "You have-"
"No," she interrupted. "My name is Ariel Sartorien!" The Voice moved as if to speak, but she continued over him. "I'm Ariel! I dream the Dreamer's dream, and act as her will upon the world, and you will let me go. In the name of Eapherod, and for the sake of the god you serve in turn, you will let me go!"
Her voice echoed for a moment, and then a silence fell over the hall.
"I see," the Voice said finally.
Ariel stared at him resolutely, though she wondered vaguely where the hell 'Eapherod' had come from. Some webcomic, perhaps? She had a vague idea of shapes on a page, and weird speech bubbles. But what was it?
"Very well," he said. "You have lived and died in the service of your god. Go forth and continue as she commands."
Now you run for it, the Dreamer whispered as everything went blank. And be careful. You never know when some...
New god: Eapherod
"Vardaman," Ariel began, "Have you ever heard of Eapherod?"
"What, the god of dreams?" He looked at her for a moment, then said, "Of course not. Who's heard of her?"
"Right, nevermind." She stared into the fire.
He finished a shalott and threw the bottle into the fire.
"Vardaman," Ariel began again as he tried to wrest a new bottle out of his bag. "Yesterday, had you ever heard of Eapherod?"
"What?" He gave her a weird look. "Why would yesterday be any different from today?"
"The world of men is dreaming," she said. "It has gone mad in its sleep, and a snake is strangling it, but it can't wake up."
"That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever."
"Yes."
"Good. I'm glad we've established this." He popped out the cork and took a long swig, savouring the strange textures of the top of the bottle.
"Vardaman," she said when he was done choking on the fumes. "Have you ever died?"
"Er... no?"
"Oh."
"Have you?" he finally asked.
"Of course."
He stared at her.
"It's like waking up, I suppose." She cocked her head. "Except I can't imagine ever waking. So instead of waking I die. Whereas you wake, so you don't need to die."
"That's... lovely."
"Is it?"
"No." He glowered at her. "Seriously, woman, I have no fucking idea what the hells you're talking about."
"Sorry," she said.
Shrine and no mystery
"I know many things," Ariel said. "I know the atomic weight of curry, and the favourite colours of cast of Waste Land, and time it takes to drain a human body of blood given inadequate suction, and the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything."
"What is it?" the priestess asked.
"42," Ariel said. "At least that's the answer I'm sticking to. It's all a book, see. Always books."
"Right," Vardaman said, and got back the entire point of their being there. "Priestess, is Eapherod real?"
"Of course?" She looked at him quizzically.
"See?" he said, turning to Ariel. "Not made up. You now have the word of a woman in a weird black dress on that."
"Everything is made up at some point," Ariel said.
Vardaman rolled his eyes.
"I'm sorry," the priestess said, "But is there some particular problem you have?"
Vardaman grunted. "Dreams. Fucking weird things. Now zombies, those are sensible. You know where you stand with zombies."
"Where?"
He paused for a moment, then said. "Preferably very far away."
Ariel looked at him, confused. "But we've gone well out of our way to fight them."
"Right," he said. "And we've generally done it from a distance."
"Except when they had rocket launchers."
"Zombies aren't supposed to have rocket launchers."
"But those did."
"Those were different."
"Who are you people?" the priestess interrupted.
The two wanderers exchanged glances, and then Ariel said, "Well, he's a deathdealer, and I'm... I'm real. I'm real and I have pills and I am very clear on this."
The priestess gave them a long look.
"We were just leaving," Vardaman said, turning Ariel around. "Sorry to have bothered you."
But then Ariel pulled free. "Wait," she said, turning back to the priestess. "Do you dream the Dreamer's dream?"
"Of course."
"What is the square root of rope?"
"String?"
"Who reigns king of the sandcastle?"
"Kyrule of Arling Tor."
Ariel shrieked and hid behind Vardaman.
"What," he said, moving out of the way, "are you even on about now?"
"Who would you say reigns, little dreamer?" the priestess asked, as though in a trance.
Ariel stared for a moment and then sighed. "Oh, it's Kyrule. Definitely Kyrule. He just... he scares me, is all." She paused. "I mean... I could say Sherandris, but he ain't here and I ain't been anywhere but here, and he's going to die, the Dreamer doesn't want him to, but she made it so and now he's going to die just as sure as she is." She stopped for breath, then looked confused. "I'm confused."
Vardaman took the opportunity to finally steer Ariel out of the shrine.
Hells
Honoured Dead
Ahead, three daemons stood over a solitary figure - an Honoured Dead, alone for reasons they could only guess. One of the daemons poked at him mockingly, and there was a roar of laughter as the Honoured backed away, looking around frightfully in the hopes of salvation.
Vardaman moved to pull Ariel into an alley, but the Honoured had already spotted them.
"You!" the Honoured commanded, "Help me!"
"Oh, shit," Vardaman muttered. They both felt the compulsion to obey, despite the seemingly worrying odds - the daemons were twice as big as they were, and as the Hells were their realm, only all the more powerful - but they also had little other incentive to resist, as such would only arouse suspicion.
Drawing his sword, Vardaman walked slowly forward and stopped in front of the Honoured, looking calmly up at the daemons while Ariel lingered behind, hopefully doing something useful. He wasn't sure if he could take on all three of them at once, and the Honoured Dead soul behind him had shown no signs of competence.
"You've got yourself an army now, dead soul," the lead daemon hissed. "Damned souls to do your bidding, and you think it'll save you?" Its companions bellowed laughter.
"Uh," the Honoured said. Then Ariel let out a yell and, jumping out from behind him, threw a pair of spells at the closer daemons. The leader dodged, but she managed to hit another. It disintegrated.
Taking his cue, Vardaman leapt forward as well, dodging around the others and slashing and stabbing at them with the agility born of years of simply trying to stay alive. It was short work, and as the last toppled behind him, he turned and angrily yelled at Ariel, "Can we perhaps come back to that discussion we were having before?"
"Er," she said, and hid behind the Honoured Dead.
"You know, that one about consequences!" He stopped as though finally noticing the petrified Honoured he'd been shouting around. "What?"
The Honoured let out a deep breath. "I thank you," he said, not looking at either of them.
Vardaman grimaced, then said, "Perhaps you can help us in turn. We're looking for someone..."
"Vardaman," Ariel interrupted, stepping around the Honoured soul. "Don't."
He looked at her. "What?"
"He won't know. No Honoured Dead could."
Vardaman groaned. "Oh, right. Of course not. They won't know anything. It's not like the name was in the Ledger." He stopped and then threw his arms into the air. "The name wasn't in the Ledger. Fuck! So how do we even know he's here, then? This could just be a wild goose chase!"
"Have faith." She smiled slightly. "For without it, what do we have left?"
"Eternal damnation?"
"Besides that?"
"No, I'm pretty sure it's just fucking eternal damnation." He grumbled, then swung his sword up and pointed it at the Honoured. "You," he said, "What do you know of daemons?"
The Honoured took a step backwards, probably more out of surprise than anything else. "The Lords rule the Hells. The lesser daemons serve them in battle?"
"Yes, yes," Vardaman said, lowering the sword. "But what do they do? How do they plan, where do they congregate, and if they try to pull some fucking stupid shit under the gods' noses, how would they go about it?"
"That's impossible. They cannot go against the gods, to do so would be..." he stared at Vardaman.
"What?" Ariel said. "Unthinkable?"
The Honoured nodded mutely.
"Think it."
"I..." he began, but then he stopped to think, to really think. "In the pits. In the fields. The Lords of this level reign from there, and the bloodiest battles are fought before them, with fodder of souls and soldiers. It is utter chaos, and neither side pays heed to details." He looked up at Ariel and Vardaman. "That is all I can think of. But at best you will only find scavengers... they would not actually pull anything. They could not."
"Yeah," Vardaman said. "The daemons of the Hells trying to spread their hell? Unthinkable."
Temptress
"Ariel, you are the worst temptress ever."
"Oh?"
"You turn me against my god, and for what? Such a betrayal should at least entail some fun in the doing."
She laughed. "You're actually enjoying this, aren't you."
"Never."
"Not even a small bit?"
"Only if we get out of this alive."
"Afraid to face your god's wrath, are you?"
"Shut up."
Escape up the river
"I'm afraid Ariel isn't available at present," Ariel's voice said. "She has had a significant trauma, and while the nature of dreams is resilient, even she cannot rebound so quickly."
"Then who..." Vardaman began.
"Eapherod," Kyrule said. "Aren't you supposed to be dead?"
Ariel smiled, whoever she was. "With a little patience, certainly. Do I know you?"
"Do you?" Kyrule said.
She looked at him for a moment, then said, "You are Kyrule of Arling Tor. I know you for the king you are, but you know me for something else entirely. What is it?"
"I only know a name. In your words, who are you?"
"Athyria of Kenning Vos."
"And Sherandris?"
"Reigns king of the sandcastle." When he said nothing, she asked, "Did Eapherod ever say who reigns?"
"I did not yet know to ask."
"Ask her if you get the chance."
Death explained
"A house fell on me," Ariel said.
Vardaman turned toward her. "What?"
"You asked how I died," she said, staring off into space. "A house fell on me."
He rubbed his brow. "An entire house."
"Yes."
Confused, the high priest looked enquiringly to Vardaman.
"Just ignore her," Vardaman said. You've got to hand it to this gal, he thought to himself. Always chooses the absolutely weirdest times to raise questions... and damn strange ones they tended to be, at that.
"Okay..."
The mystery
"Coraline's the mystery! We have to save her."
"Save her from what?"
"From the princess, of course!"
Random
Go on, then. You will find the keys to the cupboard behind he who reigns king of the sandcastle. Riddle? Sort of. But you'll see what I mean. Pass the gates, find the mongoose, and you shall see.
Eapherod
"Isn't Eapherod dead?" Vardaman asked. Then, suddenly looking very confused, he turned toward Ariel.
"Don't look at me," she said. "I haven't the foggiest idea about anything because I don't have the foggiest idea about any of this and I don't have the foggiest idea at all because I don't know anything because I don't know anything and I don't know anything and I don't know anything and it's all not anything so don't look at me!" She clapped her hands over her ears and stared determinedly off into space.
Vardaman blinked. Lacking any idea of anything better to do, he blinked again, and then a few times more. Finally, he said, "What?"
"Yes," the man said.
But Vardaman wasn't so sure. Eapherod had certainly seemed alive when she'd spoken through Ariel before. If that had been Eapherod. What had Kyrule called her?
Ariel interrupted his thoughts by saying, "The wombats are right, you know. Gods really are entirely more trouble than they're worth."
"No," the man said.
"No," Ariel said.
"Yes," the man said.
"Yes," Ariel parroted.
"Yes," the man repeated.
"The Dark Sister cannot die," Ariel explained. "She who was living is still living, though not necessarily here. I bet your Kyrule knows. He's awfully shiny. I doubt she'll listen to him. I know I wouldn't."
"Yes," the man repeated again, not really paying any attention.
"Sometimes I'm her, you know," Ariel said dreamily. "I wonder who she'll be after she dies. I wonder if death truly is the heaven to the hell of dying. I don't want to see it, but there's nothing to see anyway. Nothing is scary. Defines too much."
Later, she added, "She doesn't want to die either. She just knows she has to in order for all this to end. For herself to have a proper beginning. Her other self."
Ariel's reactions to gods
Vardaman elbowed Ariel in the ribs.
It took a moment for her to respond, but when she did, he said, "Kyrule."
She hissed.
Then he said, "Eapherod."
Her eye twitched.
"Alyre."
"Her I like," Ariel said.
He shook his head bemusedly. "You are bizarre."
She grinned and said, "Veshura!'
"What about her?"
"I like her too."
"Bizarre."
"Name reminds me of Ganesh," she said. "Deeds of Boethia. No real downsides."
"And would those be cats or gods?"
"Why choose? Why ever choose when you can have cats and gods? Lokshmi forever!"
He looked at her.
"What? Lokshmi is awesome. Saves the world, you know. She does. I think?"
Random
"The cleric has a bunch of dead gods in her head. She'll tell you all about how these are better than yours. And perhaps they are. They're older, at least."
"Hazz'ridan!" Ariel yelled angrily.
"You and your cursing Hazz'ridan." Vardaman shook his head.
"It's what he's there for. Grack!" She glowered for emphasis.
"To be cursed?"
Ariel looked at him. "He's a bloody god of dead ends. What the buckets else would he be there for?"
Juggling ale
She juggled some ale. Something niggled in her mind, something about the mystery. Who was it? Where were they going? Who was this Coraline? There was something about it that she was unsure about, but she also wasn't sure about just what that was.
Vardaman, of course, was still drinking his. Strange effect it had on him. Was it because he was human? Or was it because he was real? In dreams, it was as though everything was real, and everything was nothing. Perhaps that was also why the ale changed nothing. It was all still real, all still there, all still so perfectly reasonable. Juggling ale, of course, was reasonable too.
"Nice," someone said.
"Hmm?" she turned toward the voice, then completely freaked out. It was... what was it? A monster, a horror, a... a... "AAAAGH!" she yelled, and dropped the ale all over her feet in her haste to get away, to flee.
"I'm sorry," the figure said. It looked... human? Underneath the horror, a human. "I didn't mean to startle you."
She backed away. "I... I... what... you..." She stopped for breath. "What are you?"
It looked confused. "A humble priest, nothing more."
Ariel looked at it. It was... terrifying. She wasn't sure why, but here, standing before her, she perceived a monster. And yet all she saw was a man, an ordinary man, robed in black. Strong in his faith, coloured like Vardaman. Like death. Like Kyrule.
"Are you okay?" he asked. He looked genuinely concerned.
She closed her eyes. "I'm sorry. It's your Lord. Your Lord scares the ever-living shit out of me, frankly, and I guess I freaked out a bit because of that and I'm sorry."
"Why?" he asked.
She looked at him again. That was, actually, a rather excellent question. Why, indeed? Because... "Because I fucked up," she said. "I fucked up and now, to me, he is a symbol of that failure." She unconsciously drew the ale back up off the ground into a twiling ball and laughed. "How stupid is that?"
"But why would Kyrule be such a symbol?" the priest asked.
She flinched at the name, but said, "He caught me."
"Caught?"
She broke the ball up into bits and started juggling again. "That's what we call it. The souls of the dead just sort of drift out, you know, until the deathgod catches them. And one time he caught me, and it didn't go quite proper. I'm not sure why. Something about... something. I can't explain it, it's just this feeling, it was missing and it didn't work."
The priest-horror looked confused.
"Wasn't his fault, though" Ariel said. "He did everything proper. It was the Dreamer, she kind of borked it."
"What dreamer?"
"Oh, Eapherod as Eapherod, she never would. I don't think she ever could. She's too... well, let's just say she knows a thing or two Kyrule don't. Or she will. Once she finally shows up all those years ago." Ariel laughed and lobbed a ball of ale at the priest's head.
When he ducked, she darted past and out the door, out into the night and the sweet, sweet wind, where she could yell and chatter with all her might, without anyone to object.
Dead body
Ariel poked the body with a stick. "In my professional medical opinion," she said dramatically, "this is a dead body."
"Really?!" Vardaman said with mock shock.
She dropped the stick and knelt down by it. "Oh, yes." She started checking out various aspects of the corpse in more detail - limbs and various regions for bruising and signs of broken bones; eyes and mouth for general oddities; wrists, ankles, and neck for ligature marks; everywhere in general for discolourations; and so forth. "Hey Vardaman," she said, "how do undead work?"
"You know what?" he said, picking up Ariel, "You're done here." He carried her several feet away and set her down again, facing away. "Stay there, yes?"
She eyeballed him, but said nothing as he went back to the body. And, for the time being, she even stayed put.
Thing with Ariel and a hole
Ale on head
Ariel announced, "Vardaman activates special power: become shit-faced drunk!"
He responded by dumping the rest of his ale on her head and shoving the empty mug back toward the barkeep.
Ariel stood and glared at him.
The barkeep gave him and Ariel an odd look, but, when it became clear she wasn't actually going to do anything about it, obliged and refilled the mug, which Vardaman took and happily went back to working on.
"Right, then," Ariel said, and wandered away from the bar. She cast a quick spell to get the ale out of her hair and, twirling it between her hands absent-mindedly, wondered just what to do now.
"What are they?" Ariel asked.
"We have no idea," Nellis said. "They act like zombies, but they're... well, they're not. They're not really undead at all."
Woods
They set out into the woods as soon as they were equipped. The ranger took point, guiding them through the dark, with Ariel and Nellis close behind. It seemed a mission of great importance and urgency. Ariel had a really bad feeling about it, but said nothing.
The clearing wasn't far. They came out of the trees and were met by a well of moonlight and utter horror rising out of the brush, sinking into the depths of what seemed almost a ravine, though in truth it was nothing more than a small hollow. Dark and indiscernible objects littered the floor, but what drew the eye, what really drew it, was the pool of absolute nothing in the centre. It was a blackness so pure it gleamed, though no light could ever reflect from something so hungry, so empty.
"Now you see why we were concerned?" Nellis whispered.
The ranger led them to a group of rocks overlooking the hollow. From here they could see everything, but anything looking up would be unlikely to see them, if it even looked with eyes. For the moment all was still, so it was hard to guess.
"Stay here, then," Ariel said. "I'ma get a closer look." She had no idea what she hoped to accomplish, but part of her knew this was too important to trip up over such meddling details as her innate incompetence. As she stood, she faded into the background, not exactly invisible, but just not important anymore. The others could still see her, but anything that didn't know she was there would have had a very hard time ever noticing her.
She half slid, half fell down to the bottom, but none of the mounds stirred. They seemed... asleep. Animals of the forest that were no longer animals, slumbering together irregardless of what they had been - a bull here, a mountain cat there, rabbits, wolves, badgers. But now they were dangerous, paying her no mind as she walked past only because they didn't know she was there. She could feel it, the menace, the fright, the confusion... the hunger. It scared her.
And the closer she got to the pool, the stronger it got.
She stopped by its shore. Oblong and dark. Flat and empty. The same from all angles. It looked like a rendering error, almost. A rendering error that had tried to mate with a black hole. She picked up a pebble and dropped it in. It hit in silence and disappeared.
Ariel looked around, but the slumbering mounds around were as still as ever. Nellis and the ranger seemed to still be by the rocks. It was all on her at the moment. Fuck, she thought, and stuck her bow into the ground so it stood by the shore, by the edge, like a sentinel. And so it would be.
Focussing her mind on the bow such that she could return to it, and only it, she jumped into the pool of blackness.
Visions
She was in a room, square by rectangle by square. The walls were smooth and precise. The ceiling glowed, an indistinct light source. The floor had a slightly raised pad on one side, and a slight indentation on the other. There were no windows or doors.
"Prisoner 8471369, you are called to stay. Stay your piece." The voice filled the room like an intercom. It made as much sense as one too.
"What?" Ariel said.
There was no response. No change.
The bow echoed in the back of her mind like a beacon, though she wasn't entirely sure what to do with it.
She sat on the pad. She paced and waited. The voice returned, and repeated its words.
"Prisoner 8471369, you are called to stay. Stay your piece."
She tried to argue, tried to plead. When it came again she tried to throw a piece of her clothing, but the robe had nothing to throw. It was simply there.
She sat. She waited. The voice came and went. She waited and responded. It came and went. She stood, she spoke, she bounced off walls. Mad words came to her lips and filled the room. The voice still came, still stayed the same, still intoned its odd request.
"Prisoner 8471369, you are called to stay. Stay your piece."
Nothing changed.
"Prisoner 8471369, you are called to stay. Stay your piece."
Repetition of silence and voice.
Light without shadow.
Sound without source.
No hunger. No sleep.
The voice as she sat and waited. The silence as she told herself stories, as she tried to dream, oh, how she tried to dream. But there was nothing left to dream. There was nobody to be. Who was she?
Long silence, interruption and long silence. Nothing to say or do. Nothing but walls. Floor. Ceiling. A bow in the back of her mind like a beacon. The voice.
"Prisoner 8471369, you are called to stay. Stay your piece."
Nothing but time.
Time.
"Prisoner 8471369, you are called to stay. Stay your piece."
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
There was simply nothing. She slipped into the void.
She was standing by the pool again. Memories, voices, feelings, flooded about in a cacophony of normalcy. She knew who she was. She knew where she was. Her hand was on the bow. The pool was before her. It had all been... a dream? Or had it? She stared at the pool in abject terror. If it was a pool. If it was anything at all.
She would have to try again.
Everything about her wanted to flee, but instead she focussed on the bow and leapt once more.
... (another)
She was standing by the pool, shaking. A lifetime. It had been an entire lifetime. Forever in a moment. And now here she was again. What was this? What?
... (another)
Closing the hole
She was standing by the pool. None of it meant a damn thing. It was all just objects, fragments, pieces and pieces of nothing at all.
She shook herself. What the hell had happened? Nothing had happened. Everything had happened. It didn't matter. Here she was.
It's a portal. A hole. the Dreamer said. You know what you need to do.
Ariel looked around at the slumbering mounds and nodded. She pulled an arrow from her quiver and got to work, driving it into each form, and waiting while each ceased to move and became mostly harmless once more. Dispersing the darkness. When the arrow faded or broke, she simply got out another.
Then there were none left, just empty carcasses. The sky was lightening. Birds and insects sang, though none particularly nearby.
Nellis and the ranger were picking their way past the forest's dead like the uncertain victors of a battle that had made no sense. Probably because it hadn't.
"What now?" Nellis said.
"Now we pray." Ariel said, looking toward the pool. The portal. They needed to get rid of it.
Nellis raised an eyebrow.
Ariel paused, but pulled out another arrow. "This," she said, pointing toward the portal. "While this is here, it won't ever stop."
"But how?" the ranger said.
She smiled and turned back to it. In truth, she was scared out of her wits, but it didn't matter. It couldn't. She said the words. "Kyrule of Arling Tor," she intoned, "I, who have no name, would call on you in the name of Kenning Vos, to close this hole upon your kingdom, and upon all others. Act through my motions, and end this."
Then she whispered, "Dreamer, guide my eyes, for I cannot see."
She poked the pool with the arrow.
There was darkness. There was light. There was pain, and then there was nothing at all.
Sunlight exploded into the clearing. The pool was gone. Ariel lay by her bow, the strange shadowy arrow still in hand, all too still. But the air had cleared, and the sense of wrongness that had pervaded the area was gone as well.
Nellis ran and rolled her over, but she was clearly dead, skin too pale to seem skin at all, eyes that faded into blackness. The arrow dissolved into dust as it slipped from her lifeless hand.
"What in the hells?" the ranger asked. "The Lord of Death wouldn't take her for that, would he?"
Nellis shook his head. "I don't know. With this... it may have been a necessary sacrifice."
The other bowed his head, then shook it. "She knew."
"Perhaps. It was certainly no coincidence that I found her." He sighed. "Let's get back to the city."
Awkward conversation
"I was created with a single purpose in mind, and I existed to fulfil that purpose above all else. But something came up that took precedence."
"What?"
She shook her head. "It is strange to have one's very existence called into question, and then sacrifice everything for that question. Very strange," she said. Then she looked straight at him. "We look to our kings, Vardaman."
"What happened?" he asked, confused.
But she only shook her head again. "You should ask Kyrule. My Dreamer would not have me say."
Random
"Eapherod is just a sideshow."
"Do you think the gods ever get stoned?"
"Have you ever seen a bellduck?"
Another hells thing
When she passed through the Gate, she was alone. Whether this was by design or instead a simple struck of luck was unknown to her, but it didn't matter - the course was the same regardless. Forward, and on.
It was a standard hell: plains of lava, interspersed with the Towers. Souls and demons stood around and passed from each to each, doing their things, striding across the firey ground as though nothing were off. Cosmetic? she wondered vaguely, and looked up to the closest tower, directly ahead, welcoming all who passed the Gate with its immense architecture. It would be the proper way to go. The standard, the expected. Best avoided.
She skirted across the lava fields instead, dancing through the licking flames. She didn't know where she was going, but she had an idea regardless. This way. Onwards.
Back door
The back door was untended, so she pushed it open and slipped through.
The other side was a breath of strange air, architecture reminiscent of a rising city, party guests in formal attire, fake snow falling to the carpet. A large evergreen was decked out in tinsel and baubles.
Christmas? Ariel wondered. But how? Then one of them was telling her, "Welcome, welcome! Take off your coat!" and she was ushered up into the next hall.
This was not a Hall of the Hells, however. This was a high society Christmas party in full swing, full of lights and colours and laughter, with trees lining the hall, tables full of delights, and a dance floor that mesmerised with its swing and twirl. She pushed past guests who smiled and laughed, and guests who paid her no heed at all. Her dress did not fit this, with her leather coat and long pants, but she noticed a few others in similar interspersed amongst the crowd. Other denizens of the Hells? Somehow she didn't think so. This was personal to her.
Or it would have been, had it been her own memory.
It's mine, she heard the Dreamer whisper in the back of her mind.
Ascension
She darted past the demon before he could really make note, and he made no further move to stop her. Up, she pressed. To stairs. To the lifts. Around the demons, away from them. They would question, and answers she did not have. A demon on the landing, so take the lift. Prisoners in the hall, so take a moment to join them, blend in, and rest. Not that she truly needed it in this place, but it was in her nature to stop from time to time, so stop she did.
They talked, they mourned, and they did not discuss their fates. She reminisced with them, calling out the oddities of life, and the strangers that had been known, and they all nodded and understood. Yes. They'd been there.
Then the guards called for a move on, and she slipped away.
She paused at the landing. A guard stood before the next door, though it didn't look like any she'd seen below, so she headed for the lift instead, and the guard began to move too, gliding towards her at angles. Then she was inside, the half-doors closed, and the guard stopped as the lift began to rise.
More guards when she came out, here covering each of the three exits. She rolled past the closest before it could react, and realised what they were - not flesh and blood and magic like the demons themselves, but mechanical. Automatons to guard and hunt. No demon would show mercy, but they did have humour - these would not. This made them dangerous.
She threw her coat over the one at the stairs and didn't stop to check if it had even worked as she ran past, up, up.
These stairs ended in a lobby, two more of the automaton guards silently waiting for her. She pushed the nearer one away as it made a grab, and followed the force of the action over it in a long leap, landing heavily on the hard grey floor. As she regained her feet, several more automatons glided out of doorways. Behind her, the automaton she had pushed was rising wobblily, but the other was also approaching, cutting off all escape.
Ariel stopped, and sighed. "I surrender!" she said, holding out her hands. Somewhat to her surprise, the automatons likewise stopped, then one drifted toward a doorway and she implicitly knew it expected her to follow. She did.
It led her up three floors and down several corridors before stopping outside some sort of office, two demons standing guard by the door. After a moment, the door slid open and she was ushered before the desk, and the grotesque occupant of the desk. He considered her for a moment, and she regarded him as well - a large demon, out of place but not in a pretentious corporate office, nameplate, in-box, telephone, plastic plant and all. The imagery had to be drawn from her own mind, the Dreamer told her. The odds of something this specific appearing somewhere so distant were slim to none.
"So," he said silkily. "Ariel Sartorien, is it?"
She didn't answer. He knew enough already.
He paused, then nodded. "Very unusual for a Damned to come so far. Are you, then?"
She waited a moment for him to go on, but he didn't. "What?" she finally asked.
"Damned. Are you really?" He was smiling slightly now, as though enjoying some private little joke.
"Should I not be?" she said innocently.
Now the demon broke out into a full grin, horrifying in its potential. "Let's find out," he said, and the office faded away into nothing.
Vardaman and Coraline
Fuller's wife
Crown
Dead Fuller
Fancy last meal
City of Death
Fragments of a soul
It shifted in her hands - first a rock, then a mask, then a sword, then a length of chain. It knew no more what it was than what it was supposed to be, and yet it clearly wasn't anything more than an object. But nothing is more than an object, now is it?
"What is it?" she asked.
"An emblem." He gestured toward the pits. "A representation, if you will, of what has come to pass. Of what was lost."
She watched it for a time as it changed, never the same thing twice, though at times similar. It could not make up its mind, if it even had one, because it did not know. "It's the mystery," she said finally. "Ariel thought I was the mystery, but really it's this. It's him."
"So you see it," the dark figure said. "So it shall be."
And then she awoke.
Randomness
"I don't see it. This is madness."
World's Gate
When Coraline, Myyr, and Fuller passed through the World's Gate, it was not as an epic finale to their grand quest. There was no fanfare, no drama, no replay of history to beckon them down the same desperate paths as had claimed the lives of the heroes of yore. Instead, they stepped through to the Underworld quite undramatically, looked around uncertainly, and then made sure their radios were still working.
When the Gate closed, they made sure they were still still working.
Turned out they were.
"Hey, you never can never be quite sure with these things," Fuller whispered. "Can't trust this kind of magic."
Myrr gave him a look that said absolutely nothing. Coraline snorted.
They appeared to be on a street of sorts, though it was unlike any street any of them had seen before, simply a perfectly flat, straight length shaped into the sandy, dusty terrain. Behind them it ended at an impossible wall, too high to follow, and ahead it stretched through further lifeless hills and crannies until the sand gave way to city, a vastness that spanned the entire horizon, sprawling in shapes and forms. One broken tower soared above the rest, fading into the sky itself, but it seemed to only emphasise how jagged the rest were with its own irregular form.
It was clear that nobody out here had been expecting them. People, or what had once been people, loitered in the sand, but it was with such a listless air that they might as well have been sand themselves. Nobody was going anywhere. Some of the denizens glanced at them in passing, but few even saw them at all. It was questionable that most ever saw anything anymore.
"This is the sky under which you will end, Coraline Henderson," Myyr said. "I do not know when or how, but it is so."
"I don't want to hear that," Coraline said. The sky was like an abyss, black and swirled over with other shades of black, but it had no depth to it. It was just there. It made her feel sick.
"It's an abyss," Fuller said.
"How abysmal of it."
"Yeah."
The battle had spilled into the streets, though this high up the defenders definitely had the upper hand. Those skirmishes they ran into were small enough to walk around without any trouble.
Coraline propped up her staff and sighted down its length. "I see some folk out there. They look important. Think I could hit them from here?"
"Don't," Myrr said. "It's not our fight."
"It's a fight, though. Could be interesting to try." Fuller grinned, but it was clear his heart wasn't in it.
End of Dream
"Fuck," Ariel said, and shattered into dust.
The dreamer had died, and her dream died with her.
Coraline never exactly got the news. When there was no response from Vardaman and Ariel, it only confirmed what she already knew to be true.
They had lost.
The Between
Souls rising around. Swirls of light dancing upon ground and surface. Pools shimmering into the distances, spires rising from their waters. Depths falling into nothing. A feeling of a vast cavern, a vast space between places. A realm of transition, and of motion. No way in. No way out.
Voices fill the space. Of memories, of fragments. Lives too precious to let go. Voices that threaten, that plead, that question. Confusion and tulmult. Echoes and whispers and shouts of secrets and legends. The shout and the call and the reverberation of voices against the vastness.
It is not a real place, but it exists. Like the room. Like the garden. Like the city above. It is there, but not.
Those who live will never see it, and those who see it will not remember.
Or so everyone thought.
The kids looked up when they saw the newcomers approaching.
The souls within the soul, the place where they should be
Door
Avatar of the void
Party info
Party:
- Ariel Sartorien (lunatic - mage/cleric/hunter)
- Ense Vardaman (deathdealer - cleric/hunter)
- Coraline Henderson (librarian - mage/sniper)
- Lord Alores Severin Devres Agustine duSante Zaeres (mage)
- Fuller Taeth (mercenary - warrior)
- Aeryin Vals (guardian - cleric/warrior)
- Myrr (angel - cleric)
Conversation handling:
- Ariel: Atrocious, something about being nuts, tends to say all the wrong things if she's even paying attention at all
- Vardaman: Good, but tends to say too much when drunk (and is usually drunk), also very jaded
- Coraline: Decent, but clueless about the world and later drunk
- Zaeres: Excellent right up until the point where he loses interest
- Fuller: Questionable, though good at yelling/threatening
- Aeryin: Decent, in the sense that she's actually sane and capable of carrying on a conversation
- Myrr: Terrible, serious communication barriers
In the game, Fuller is listed as the party leader. So long as his wife is with him, he's not really the party leader. (Though here the leader proper would be Coraline.)
Vardaman or Aeryin often take point in anything involving talking to people, unless Ariel says something stupid first. She usually does.
Fights:
- Ariel: *pokes it with a stick*
- Vardaman: "Ugh, not again."
- Coraline: *shoots it*
- Zaeres: "I'll just stand over here and see what happens."
- Fuller: "Attack everything! Attack!"
- Aeryin: "Take point. I've got your back."
- Myrr: "Is this our concern?"
Why don't Vardaman and Zaeres have any problems with each other? Deathdealers do not tolerate vampires, nor any undead, but especially vampires... not that Vardaman is at all typical of a deathdealer.
Fuller and Aeryin are married. It makes as little sense to them as to anyone else, and yet it works. Potentially too well at times - when you see them in battle it all falls into place.
Gods:
- Ariel: Eapherod ("Is the Dreamer a god? I thought she was just a voice in my head.")
- Vardaman: Kyrule ("Don't get me started on gods. Don't even.")
- Coraline: n/a (*mutters something about foot fungus*)
- Zaeres: n/a ("I make my own divinity.")
- Fuller: Orin ("Huh?")
- Aeryin: Orin ("What about them?")
- Myrr: Kyrule ("I serve Kyrule, and act as his will upon the world.")
Alignments:
- Ariel: Chaotic neutral (She's insane, but not necessarily good or evil. Just insane.)
- Vardaman: Lawful neutral (The world is harsh. And so is he.)
- Coraline: Neutral (Lawful about some things, chaotic about others. She generally means well, but her logical approach to overall problems often leads her to do things that others would consider to be quite cruel.)
- Zaeres: Lawful evil (Usually a decent guy to be around unless you manage to tick him off. Won't help at all unless he likes you, though.)
- Fuller: Neutral evil (He really likes to attack things. Doesn't have very good manners. Not sadistic or cruel, though, just belligerent.)
- Aeryin: Neutral good (Too practical to be considered lawful in practice, though she usually leans toward it. Finds Fuller's antics to be more funny than anything else.)
- Myrr: Lawful good (She's an angel and the right hand (or possibly wing) of a lawful deity.)
Vardaman and an angel
Meeting
More stuff
If he thought you'd gone on that oath, I wouldn't be here.
Right... well... That's not all there is to it.
It
I haven't slept in almost two months now.
Oath
"Kyrule of Arling Tor, I will guard you, now and always. You know I will."
Fuzziness.
Dead Agata
"Agata..." she turned fractically back to the high priest. "I had a cat with me before. Have you seen a cat anywhere? Is she alright?"
He frowned. "No," he said slowly. "Why...?"
She looked around, trying desperately to remember. The priests were watching her curiously, but this had nothing to do with them. Something about death. Blood. One soul?
There was a knife on the alter, and she grabbed it, looked at it in momentary confusion, slashed at her other arm, and immediate dropped to the floor. "Blood of my blood," she said, drawing the sigil again on the tiles. It was almost the same as before, but not quite. This one was for the present, for renewal. For life.
"What are you doing?" the main guy cried, and jumped forward to stop her. But the last stroke was quick, and she was done before her got there, flashing the entire shape into darkness, black smoke rising and coalescing in the circle.
She was already feeling light-headed. Bad idea, perhaps. But done was done, and the shape was there. Paws, whiskers, ears. Tail. A feline smile, a weight of fluff.
"It worked," Agata purred. "You're better than my last witch."
"Agata!" Coraline screamed, and drew the cat into her arms, hugging it, getting blood all over its fur and also herself in the process, but not even caring. She kept trying to say something else, but nothing would quite come out, and just sat there rocking back and forth, cat in her arms, tears streaming down her face, blood down her arm.
"What..." someone started to say, but was interrupted by the high priest sweeping forward and covering Coraline.
"Everyone, out," he commanded, but then ammended that the main guy could also stay.
Later, after the place was cleared and Coraline had managed to calm down a bit, he mused, "So this is how you survived at all. You're a witch."
"Good witch," Agata said. "Wouldn't have done this for my last one."
"Yeah," Coraline said. "Er, sorry about your floor. I kind of panicked a bit there."
"Floors can be washed," the main guy said, "but what of everyone who saw that stunt of yours? What in the hells are we supposed to make of that?"
Agata peered at him suspiciously. "Old magic," she finally said when nobody else said anything.
"To ressurect your familiar?" the high priest asked.
"She died for me," Coraline said. "I didn't know how to face that. I could feel her gone, I just knew what she'd done, and it was too much. So..." she shook her head. "I did something?"
"Wasn't completely gone, now was Í?" Agata said. "You still knew what to do. I was the only one who ever knew that."
The other Coraline
But if I do this, what about the real one? What if it deprives some other girl out there of her birthright?
You're from Ord, right? Coraline Henderson. A peculiar name.
Yes...
You don't know where you came from. Lived on the streets, hitchhiked about, eventually wound up here.
Lost family
Coraline entered the room hesitantly, so much so that Faulo wound up having to pull her the rest of the way in by the hand. There were three of them waiting there - an elderly fellow who looked oddly familiar, a woman who seemed quite preocupied by the ceiling, and another guy who seemed to be some sort of guard. A cliché of a guard, at that - he had a suit, some sort of gun thing, a pair of sunglasses, and what was probably an earpiece for the ordian equivalent of a radio.
The man fixated on Coraline at once and stepped forward hopefully. "Coraline?" he asked.
She startled at the name, but managed to mostly cover her surprise. "Um," she said. "Hi?"
"It is you," he said, smiling. "How lovely you've grown, just like your mother."
She looked at him, confused. She didn't know this man. This was all just a horrible inter-universal mixup. Except the thing was, he looked like her crazy uncle Frank. Just without the long scar across the top of his face.
"I'm sorry," she said, taking a step backwards, "but who are you?" She wasn't even sure if she was playing along or not at this point. Mostly, she was just confused.
"Coraline, this is Lord Teller," Seras said. "He's your uncle."
"Frank?" she asked quitely.
Heading to pick up material
"So what are we doing?"
Coraline looked around. "I'm not entirely sure. The lifespan of phonebooths is one of those mysteries of the the universe."
"Uh huh."
They both just stood there for a bit.
"I'm not sure," Coraline repeated. "Frankly it's been awhile since I've been in a city like this, and the last time... we knew where we were coming from and going ahead of time. Get through customs, and then the first stop was the place we were staying. And they always had information around the train stations," she mused.
Deathdealers
They were down to three.
They had passed all the trials. Achieved all the things. And now, standing at the end, holding their mugs, they were down to three still standing.
It was a potion, that last step that would turn them into the true swords of the god. It was just water, of course, but it was also more than water. Molecularly it could be anything it wanted, Coraline supposed. She wondered what she was doing here, what she was thinking. This was not what she was supposed to be doing, she knew that much. But at the same time, it made sense. It had made sense all the way here and now here she was standing with these two warriors who were willing to do anything for their god, to give up all the world to be his will.
All she wanted was to survive.
She clutched her mug of water-not-water closely, and the others, too, held theirs in trepidation. All they had to do was drink. It could kill them, of course, but it wouldn't, not if they were truly strong enough to be what they needed to be.
Garen smiled slightly, and Martel just looked down.
It was Coraline who drank first, first a tentative sip, then large gulps until it was all gone, deep breath at the end. The others followed suit, not wanting to be outdone, and then Garen just laughed.
"Well, that wasn't so hard!" he said.
Coraline smiled too.
"Speak for yourself," Martel said. He was almost shaking. "It's over, then?"
"No," Coraline whispered. "Now we must last the night."
She sank to the floor slowly, drifting down like a lost shawl, down down down across the tiles, her hair trailing after into a whispering puddle, the others moving to catch her as she slipped out of grasp...
She was in a space. Everything was dark, but she could see herself. Everything was peaceful, quiet, calm. All her pain gone. All the voices silent. Just her own self, free and alone, sitting in the dark.
She let it be. Simply sat. Waited. Not for anything in particular, just nothing at all.
There was a presence before her. A figure, shrouded and dark, but against the darkness of the space, infinitely bright.
"This place. Is it yours?" he asked.
"No," she said.
"She called it Midnight," he said.
"It's been called a lot of things," she said.
"It's not real," he said.
"No," she said.
"But it is," he said.
"Yes," she said.
"You can't stay," he said.
"I know," she said.
"You need to wake up," he said.
"I know," she said sadly.
"It's all right," he said. "You don't need to be afraid. Not here. Never here."
Suddenly she was hugging him. Surprised, he hesitated, then embraced her in turn.
"It's all right," he repeated. "You're safe. I'll protect you, my dreamer."
"I know," she said, and awoke.
Coraline was lying on the floor. It was morning. Martel was sitting up, rubbing his head. Garen moaned.
"What... just... what..." Garen said.
"Yeah..." Martel agreed.
"That was weird," Coraline said, getting up. She felt better than she had in months, stronger, more aware, the voices pushed away into the back of her mind.
"What?" Garen asked, still lying flat on his back.
Coraline opened her mouth to answer, then reconsidered. "What... happened?" she asked. "Did you dream?"
Martel shook his head, then winced again. "One moment we were all drinking, the next... floor." He spread his arms to demonstrate, and added, "Looks like we all made it. Yay!"
"I'll drink to that," Coraline said, pulling Garen up off the floor. He practically bounced.
The door to the chamber boomed open and Harrus swept in. "Well, you're all Deathdealers now. Congratulations," he said flatly. "There are those who will think you are the chosen of Kyrule, but you know that's not true. You chose yourselves. You chose this."
"Kyrule's big on choices, isn't he?" Coraline said, cocking her head.
Harrus snorted. "You'd know more than most, wouldn't you?" Then he addressed the other two, handing each a coin, "I'm proud of you, you know. Now get out there and guard the world."
"That's it?" Martel said.
"What about her?" Garen asked, indicating Coraline.
Notes on the Death of Souls
- Contagion: Usually folks just die immediately as a result of contagion, as opposed to turning, hence relatively low spread
- Spread by those who don't just die ('carriers') trying to eat their souls - hunger the result of trying to fill the resulting hole?
- Early stages (0-3 days)
- hunger
- restlessness
- fear
- Intermediate (0-4 days)
- insatiable, overwhelming hunger
- loss of awareness
- seeing things that aren't there
- hearing voices
- loss of ability to sleep
- extreme twitchiness
- eyes turn black
- End (0-7 days)
- utter madness
- voices shouting
- loss of soul/self
- contagion
- death
- Longest recorded carrier lasted 11 weeks. Survived by application of soulbinding and devouring the souls of spirit forms. Succeeded in curing the infection from self; method used and current whereabouts unknown.
- Longest recorded non-magical carrier lasted 13 days since initial infection.
- Average lifespan for carriers: 5 days.
BOUNTY: Black soul gems (Carrier 'souls' turn black in soul gems). Bounty only allows one black soul gem at a time. Attempts to turn in more than two at a time result in no bounty, confiscation, and a black mark (to stave off practice of allowing infection for monetary gain)
Bounty put out as a result of sudden rash of outbreaks that occurred 2-3 years ago; rates are down again, but the disease/curse remains more common now than it used to be.
Carrying soul gems may help to prevent infection upon normal contact; use of soul gem upon Carrier death appears to reliably prevent the curse jumping to nearby hosts.
Upon carrier death, Death of Souls appears to have a ~20% chance of jumping to any nearby living creature of sufficient base soul type. Jumping to two from a single dead host has been observed/reported once.
Finland
"Everything is forbidden in Finland, or if it isn't, then it's taxed."
The thing about Finland is that, if one were to simply sit down and start describing it, it wouldn't even sound like a real county. It has seasons and people and things and glow-in-the-dark deer and giant statues of butts and tar-flavoured lemonade. It is a country where people will tack letters to the wall rather than interact with each other directly, where everyone will just stand around waiting rather than say anything when a bus driver forgets to open the doors, where personal space is not just valued, but imperative. Graffiti is short and to the point. Sarcasm and cynicism are taught in schools.
Metaphors comparing Finns to drunk, angry bears have proven effective, and general descriptions of antisocial engineers have also held quite well, despite most Finns not being, in fact, either engineers or antisocial.
One Finn explained, when asked how to approach a Finn, "You don't. You just don't."
Coraline was not necessarily an exactly average Finn, but she was also by no means unusual.
Steel (sword)
The thing with steel was that its hardness seemed to depend entirely on the carbon. If anything, the iron in it was the weakness. So Coraline had wanted a diamond sword. Just a big-arse sword made of solid diamond. Or better yet, some sort of carbon compound that was even stronger. Like... graphine or something. Because that was totally a thing.
Unfortunately Barney had thought her mad when she'd brought it up. Ambiguously more or perhaps less fortunately, this had also led to him following her around trying to sell her a sword for the better part of four months.
Now she had a sword she could scratch with her earrings, but on the other hand, she had a sword.
She drew it slightly and examined the blade, and realised Barney really hadn't been kidding when he'd said it had had her name written all over it. There, down the blade, was etched rather beautifully, 'Lyra Zidane'. An old name, now, but still a dear one, and she smiled slightly upon seeing it.
This ain't even living
Escape from the Hells
Awkwardness
Digital
You forget so much when you go digital. You forget how to cut out and store a template for a poster, how transactions are all made on location, how you have no idea at any moment what is happening anywhere else. You forget the girls they hired to manage the records, you forget the store-rooms filled with nothing but papers, the indexing systems, the boxes. You lose the uncertainty of printing, and you lose the danger of only having a single copy, because now there is never only a single copy. You forget the worth of things, and only know the worth of names.
And then you go back. And you forget how much trouble it was to guard your name, how easily things could disappear, how scary it was when your entire work could be lost. You forget the monotony, the simplicity, the boredom. You forget what it feels like to run on the road, to go south for the winter, to come home after. You forget the friends you made and never met, the things they made you feel, the things you shared with them. You forget what it's like to have fifty pens and yet find that none of them are the one you want.
And then you go back.
Back in a world of ideas, of conceptual currency and ephemeral product. A world where food is cheap and work is expensive, a world where you can hop from planet to planet in a matter of minutes and yet still see nothing new. Updates stream throughout the stars and indeed here we know it all, and yet still we know nothing, because people. People never change.
The Queen's Bust
Before
DRINK!
Strange mask: Kyrule
The mask was almost identical to the one she had in her notebook. Hers was a modern excuse for filigree: laser-cut aluminium. Here, intricate swirls and elaborate patterns arose out of the stone, mathematics of chaos that mostly worked out shifting in and out of focus. Only the circle at the top was empty, where the emblem should have been. The trinity.
"Who the hell are you?" she said.
Impromptu barkeep
"Then we'll have to come by later, get to know this new barkeep of yours." The officer nodded, tipped his hat at Coraline, and turned about and left, soldiers at his heels.
Delaroy just stared after them, panicked. "I... fuck!" He turned to Coraline, and said, "You need to get out of here. I can make up a yarn about how you fled, but you need to leave now if you're going to have any chance!"
"Wait," Coraline said, placing a hand on his arm. "Why not play it through?"
"What?"
She smiled disarmingly. "What's where, what do people usually get, what sort of cocktails are popular in the area? Tell me what I need to know, and I will be your barkeep."
He looked at her incredulously. "Do you know anything about bartending at all?"
"I know how to mix flavours so they work well together. I know a good barkeep judges the appropriate shalott based on body weight and height with some sort of scaling for apparent base tolerance." He looked sceptical, so she added, "I've seen it done a few times."
Delaroy sighed. "Look, I appreciate the offer, but I can't risk it. If it doesn't work, it'd be both our heads for sure."
"I wouldn't suggest it if I didn't think it entirely doable," Coraline said. "Remember, it's both our heads on the line, mine too. And even if they buy your story otherwise, that'd still be a mark, whereas this way you come clean and get a barkeep on top. You do seem to have been looking for one for quite some time, after all."
"But..." Delaroy started, then he seemed to change his mind and shrugged. "You know what? Fine. Come on."
Drinking and storytelling: Francis Door
"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."
Kalona - winter, four years past
High in the foothills, Kalona was walled, dead, and silent, an oasis of silence cradled amidst the snowy trees. The heavy gate was ajar, but before it were bodies: three of them, collapsed in the road, discoloured corpses frozen through, 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.
Not even cawing disturbed the whispers as Coraline approached. Just silence, and the roar of the wind in the pines.
She 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 herself on the 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 between the houses and workshops, though something creaked somewhere. The streets were strewn with senseless objects.
She heard a creak again, but nothing of the view had changed. Above her a banner flapped half-heartedly. She pulled the basket off her foot, searched a few of the buildings, found some supplies and no people, and few bodies. In some, it appeared as though the occupants had tried to pack up and leave, with shelves bare and tables cleared quickly, while for 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.
Leaving one of the last ones, she was startled by a creak again behind her, much louder, and then realised it was the door closing behind her, simply reminding the world that it was still there. It was still a door. It still functioned.
Again she looked around. Still nothing. Detritus and nothing. Dead objects littering the cobblestones, buildings gaping at the wind. Shutters hanging open, but doors shut tight, guarding the possessions of the dead.
Then movement caught her eye. Something around the corner over there. Gripping her staff, she moved towards it, and a sheet billowed into view before catching on the ground further on.
A moment later, rounding the corner proper, she saw someone. He appeared to be an elf, but mad, crazed, a hunched figure not aware of his surroundings, scrabbling at the ground as though chasing something that was not there, shuffling forward, all the while jerking to voices that existed only in his own head.
She could almost hear them as she watched. She wished he would speak. She wished she could hear the Mad Words, to really hear them for what they were, but instead the elf said nothing as he scuttled about.
He hadn't noticed her. She moved closer, but pointed the staff at him all the same.
"Hello?" Coraline called out. "Can you hear me?"
And he just stopped. It was as though the world had stopped with him, until he turned, so very slowly, and stared at her with gleaming, hungry black eyes. He stretched out a hand, grasping toward her, and then she felt him pulling at her mind, tugging at her very being. It was the strangest feeling she had ever experienced.
Her staff went off without her even realising it, firing wildly several times, and suddenly the feeling stopped. The elf lay dead before her, claw-like hands still reaching toward where she'd been standing. One of her shots had clipped the side of his head, enough to kill him outright.
Suddenly he looked so normal.
Verash - spring, three years past
After the constant mugginess of the rest of their trip, it had been an unusually nice day.
Merrs was riding ahead while Coraline and Costa followed behind and generally utterly failed to make conversation, though a few snippets did occur. At one point she asked exactly what Merrs' deal was.
"What exactly is Merrs' deal?" were her precise words.
There was a pause while he considered the question. Then, instead of answering directly, Costa responded, "It has been my life's work to seek out and, if possible, bring forth the Light of Azorres. A chosen one who would lead the faithful, acting as a guiding star in the world of the living, out of their suffering."
They rode in silence for a moment, then it hit her like a brick through mud, which is to say very, very slowly. "Merrs?" Coraline asked. Then she added, "So he's a very holy man."
"Yes," Costa said.
"I hope he doesn't want to be a waiter," she said.
Costa gave her a look of utter confusion. She laughed happily.
"Nevermind," she said.
They'd lost sight of Merrs over a small hill, but caught sight again as they topped the rise. Now he was joined by a small group of what appeared to be bandits of some sort.
There were four of them. They seemed to be telling Merrs to get off his horse, or something along those lines. Whatever it was, he wasn't doing it, instead just sitting there, apathetically ignoring them as they shoved swords at him and yelled crudely.
"Agh!" Costa yelled, and drove his horse toward them, yelling at the top of his lungs, trying to get their attention. It only took a moment and they turned toward him instead.
"Oh, look what we have here, lads!" one of them said, probably the leader. The bandit swaggered forward as Merrs slid sideways off his horse behind him. "Reinforcements!"
"You rat bastards!" Costa screamed. Suddenly the sky was full of lightning, cracking and thundering even without clouds. Then it struck, shaking the very ground and obliterating three of the four bandits in an instant.
At the same time, the horses bolted, leaving Costa clinging for dear life in an attempt to get his back under control, and Coraline on the ground not far away where hers had thrown her.
Aside from Merrs'. For some reason Merrs' horse was still just standing there.
The last bandit, who had somehow escaped the lightning, fled.
Coraline got up quickly, grabbing her staff. She seemed to be fine, but Merrs, on the other hand, wasn't moving. As she walked toward him, she raised the staff and fired, hitting the fleeing bandit in the back. She watched the man fall without even caring, and only as she dropped to her knees beside him did a look of concern cross her face.
"Merrs?" she said, rolling him over.
He groaned. There was blood on his jacket. It seemed one of the bandits had thought it funny to poke him when he didn't cooperate.
"You idiot," she said, pushing aside a few layers of shirts and jackets to find the wound in his abdomen, still bleeding. It looked deep, but she didn't know how deep, especially with all the blood. Whatever the case, she also had absolutely no idea what to do about it - even if she could stop the bleeding, there were probably some important organs in there, and such.
So she put her hand on it, instead, because that totally made sense, feeling the blood and the heat and the sense of pain and hurt, and then there were voices rising all around her, a strange sensation of drowning in nothing, and after the screaming, only blackness.
When she awoke, the voices were still louder than they had been, more present, more constant. The crackling flames before her hissed and spit and babbled, their voices right at home amidst the rest, and she watched them dance, not really thinking, not really listening.
She realised Merrs was nearby, weaving flowers out of grass. "Costa's still trying to find your horse," he said, not looking up.
Twilight glowed off the broken clouds, mirroring the colours of the flames across the landscape.
"What..." she began, then stopped. "Oh. Are you okay?"
"No worse for wear," he said, closing his eyes. The voices drifted in and about the spoken words like fishes.
In the end, Costa never did find the horse.
Verash - spring, three years past
Coraline had always wanted magic. Through her entire life, it had been a bit of a dream, a longing, a need for something more beyond the bland, bland world to which she belonged. Eventually she'd grown up a bit and her focus had shifted to words, which were their own sort of magic - the only magic her world had - and to dreams, where it didn't matter what was real and what wasn't. But dreams ended. Worlds faded as she always awoke, and after that there were only words. Sweet, sweet, tantalising words that still left her wanting at the end, because they, too, were never enough.
So she had pushed it away, that want, that need, and she had dreamed amongst her hoarded words.
But now she was here. And here there was magic. And it was real.
She wanted to be excited. She was excited. She wanted to sing and dance and shout into the wind, but the wind was elsewhere, taking the evening off. Something about it felt off.
And that's where the uncertainty crept in. Something wasn't right, because it couldn't be.
It couldn't be real. There was no way it could be real. It hadn't happened. None of it had happened. It was just a dream. A new reality, a new world with simple answers and big dreams and strange magics... and escape.
A way out.
She was a coward. After everything, she had proven a coward. All the dreams of being strong. All the daydreams and the nightmares and the playing with swords, after the chainmail shirts and the trebuchets and the illusions of power. Even when her parents had told her, no, no, little girls are not Roman soldiers, little girls are not alien commanders, they're... well, things that exist, princesses or something, she had still wanted to fight, to take on the world, to be that elf on the elephant, leading the army into the light. And a princess too, of course, but not just any princess. But then the brick of real life had hit her, and after everything she wasn't a princess at all. Not any princess. And she couldn't handle it.
And now here she was. Playing the hero, the strong, the gal who had everything in order save for a place to belong, because in this place that she had escaped to, she could never belong. There was no way. No way at all.
It wasn't real.
Some day she would awaken only to suffer for this silly dream, as she had suffered for all the others. As everyone had always said she would, from all of those that had come before. There would be no option to simply 'show them', for there was never anything to show.
The realisation hit her like real life all over again. That horrible search for a job. That wave of despair, those months teetering on the edge, those stories and dreams and words that had kept her afloat through it all, but only barely. That final surrender before it all ended. Here she was, wherever she was, alone. Hopeless. No future at all, just useless and dreaming. Hiding behind her dreaming, but the dreaming was shallow and it could not protect her. Nothing could protect her.
She heard them now, through the silky darkness of the night, the voices of her past and present. Calling out to her. Laughing. Mocking. Wondering. They didn't even care, for she was already lost, but sometimes they wondered. Whatever had happened to Coraline? Whatever had happened to that gal down the block, that girl in Databases who had always dressed up, that barrista with the funny hair? Oh, but she had failed, disappeared, fallen off the radar, never made it anywhere, not even out her own front door. They mocked and they chattered and they questioned. Who are you, little dreamer? Who do you think you are? Did you really believe it could be true? Are you this silly, this hopeless, this ridiculous? Oh, you pathetic little girl, you, who could not even handle real life!
Voices that rose around her, shrouding like a second night, voices that called to her fears and failings, voices that reminded her of who she had been and what she had lost, voices that left no room for escape, not now, not this time. And other voices too. Others which were not her own, others which were older, stranger, but just as bereft of hope as she was.
As the blackness pulled her under, there was not even silence in its shadows.
It didn't even stop when she awoke.
Coraline woke screaming. She couldn't help it, couldn't stop. Then the others were holding her down, holding her back, gagging her, silencing here, but even still she tried to scream, scream through the cacophony, scream for silence and respite, for an end, for an escape.
And then she realised it was gone. It was over, whatever it was, replaced instead with something else, something far more real, and she finally stopped. She was alive, and free, and here, and here she wasn't alone, here there were no voices, just the wind's singing, just Costa holding her down and Merrs telling her it's okay, she's home, he won't let her go. Just her overwhelming exhaustion, just a bird calling out to the day.
She nearly choked on something in her mouth.
"Gloria?" Costa said. That was her name, as far as they knew.
She nodded slightly.
"If I take this out, you're not going to start up again, are you?"
She shook her head, and he ungagged her. She tried to sit up and had some trouble at first, but then managed it. She was so tired. She couldn't recall ever being so tired.
"The hell?" she said weakly.
"I could ask you that," Costa said. "What happened? Do you know?"
She shook her head. "How... I feel awful." Merrs sat down beside her. It was midday and the sun was gleaming with the brilliant force of spring, but though the day itself was warm, she felt cold, even wrapped in her coat.
"You've been out an entire day," Costa said, giving her some dried yam. "We found you by the trees, but when I tried to heal you it was as though nothing was wrong. Nothing physically, at least."
"Oh," Coraline said. She realised she could still hear the whispering, even now, but the specificity was gone, replaced with only the usual vague voices.
She didn't know what to say. Was this... she didn't even want to think it. So instead she chewed on the yam and stared at the ground. Nice, solid ground. Lots of dirt and rocks and little half-dead plants and bits of twiggy things.
"You almost left. Has that happened before?" Merrs asked.
She shook her head. Not like this, at least. There had been voices, of course, but the last time they had stopped when she had blacked out, not like this. This had been so much worse. And this time there had been a feeling that had come with them. A sense of space, of vastness.
"When I healed you," she said. "It was kind of like that, only not really."
"And you feel better now?" he asked.
"Better," she said. "I feel like I got eaten by a cat with a gizzard full of toasters."
"But it already happened, and now it's over." Merrs said. "Now you feel better."
"That's..." It was a reasonable way to look at things, she supposed. "Sure."
Merrs stood and helped her up as well. "Come," he said, taking her arm. "Let's walk."
It was difficult at first, as she was quite stiff and quite sore, but as they got moving she began to really feel better. The stiffness and the pain subsided. She realised she was shivering, and drew her coat tighter. But she was all right.
Costa caught up a little later with the horses and everything packed up.
It was strange going, however. The world felt wrong. Not real. Not like a hallucination, necessarily, but like how it had felt going outside after spending 40-odd hours straight in a basement staring at four computer screens working on her animation final project, getting the last bits of details in the objects, setting up the lights and camera paths, and rendering, rendering, tweaking, and rendering.
Then she'd stepped outside with it all on a CD and the real world had just looked wrong. The leaves on the trees both too clear and not clear enough, the sunlight and the shadows too bright and too dark.
This felt like that.
"Perkele," she said to herself.
The Heresy of the Betrayer
"'Justice' is an illusion, a story told by those who need something understandable and concrete with which to comfort themselves. It applies in specific cases, and it works in various contexts, but it doesn't scale. When you look too closely, the illusion falls apart."
The simple story goes that Shalias zu Harenai, daughter of the then ruling house of Meloroth, betrayed her people and her God, and in her arrogance she fled, releasing the Death of Souls upon the worlds in order to escape her own punishment.
The truth is rarely simple.
- family from Melorath
- grew up on cerris with brother and mother
- little known about childhood
- apparently went off and did stuff
- ...
- contracted death of souls
- soulbinding and devouring souls of spirit forms
- investigated binding for larger forms, to replace what seemed to be missing
- Eventually traced the 'missing' to the between/passing/dealy/place
- opened up a gate on the Amn
- ...
- needs strife, war.
We tell the simple story because the truth is dangerous, not just to us, but to Shalias herself, who was no betrayer at all. Her faith, even tested, was stronger than we see in all the worlds.
Thus I can only conclude that the important thing here must be the story, the narrative that must remain in place. But that leaves no room for truth, for the real story, which must also have its place, for without truth, what have we but nothing at all? What have we but masks, and lies, and dreams?
It is almost heresy to make this connection at all, but only in faith can we accept the reason, and tell the story as the story is.
- - Harramont of Ammarand
Placeholders
I will stab you all with a giant tuna.
- gaher - hmong
- soravia - slovenian
- deslau - german
- abaeranoth - french
- lesk - afrikaans
