Difference between revisions of "Black Book"

A fragment of the Garden of Remembering
 
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{{#CSS:
{{collapse|Original character: '''Ense Vardaman'''|
.toclevel-2 .tocnumber {
* '''Age:''' 13
display: none;
* '''Trade:''' Assistant to his mother, the village hag
}
* '''Homeland:''' Iliesk - small state on the Hieriacca coast of Cerris, tropical climate, very pleasant all-year-round. Pre-industrial age, but magic and gods play a major role in daily life.
.toclevel-2 {
* '''Hometown:''' Varta (about a day's journey by foot to the nearest port city)
display: inline;
* '''Background:''' Always working to help make ends meet for as long as he can recall. No father or other family, just him and his mother. Picked up a lot of basic skills - cooking, herbology, construction, medicine, animal husbandry and tracking. Mother always telling him he was meant for greater things, that he would one day go to Abearanoth and serve the gods directly; when she was killed in a pirate raid, he sold everything they had and tried to make it true.
}
* '''Problem-solving approach:''' Apply grit and determination to see things through. Don't stop fighting, no matter how impossible the odds.
.toclevel-2:after {
* '''Medical problems:''' Various common childhood ailments. Got pneumonia bad one year to they point where they had to get outside magic to fix it; were fortunate to be able to afford it at all. Rather small for his age as a result.
content: ' • ';
* '''Travelling experience:''' Prior to getting passage to Abearanoth on a trade ship, none.
color: #aaa;
* '''Weapons:''' Knife. Semi-capable in a fight, as much as a rather small boy with no real training can be.
}
* '''Vices:''' Pride - does not respond well to slights or insults
.toclevel-1 ul :last-child:after {
* '''Sociability:''' Somewhat of a loner, and awkward in social contexts. Good at small talk, but also very to the point, sometimes enough to alienate people. Does not make friends easily, but always remembers who they are.
display: none;
}}
}
----
.cat {
{{collapse|Stand-in replacement: '''Jennifer Mar'''|
font-variant: small-caps;
* '''Age:''' 28
}
* '''Trade:''' Software engineer and designer, writer, miscellaneous hobbyist
* '''Homeland:''' Wyoming. Hot summers, harsh winters, thin air. Wind and grasshoppers possibly the prime inhabitants. Also contains some cities.
* '''Hometown:''' Casper (middle of nowhere; has a local airport, but it's tiny and very expensive, and the closest hub is about four hours away by car)
* '''Background:''' Degree in software engineering, with studies in psychology. Grew up always reading and making things - drawing, painting, sewing, building little tiny huts for fairies. Had a difficult time getting into the job market due to unusual background - emphasis on open source and volunteer system administration and development, and the fact that as a software designer, she didn't actually have a degree in anything 'design-related'. Would constantly complain about how stupid this was because actual design degrees often didn't cover any of the important stuff - the software itself, or the psychology of the users. Puttered around doing freelance for awhile, then finally actually tried to get an actual job with a mapping firm, got it, and loudly declared her life on track. Most of her spare time spent playing videogames, writing, and surfing the internet.
* '''Problem-solving approach:''' Set things in motion and then wait and see what happens. Alternately, just step back and wait and see what happens. Pretty common for the field, where even the smallest changes can have unexpected impacts, and even the most successful propositions begin with essentially a gamble.
* '''Medical problems:''' Can't wear shoes unless it's cold. Possibly has various psychological problems, but never bothered to see anyone about it. Terrible memory. Does not eat well - considers root beer floats a perfectly reasonable lunch, and often winds up eating two dinners, one in order to not crash, and a second due to socialising. Has trouble at high altitude getting enough air when doing anything remotely strenuous and has taken this to mean she's horribly out of shape, but is really mostly just fairly average. Often gets colds when travelling.
* '''Travelling experience:''' Occasional road trips, a few flights per year to visit friends, mostly in-country, a few in Europe. Ski trips, hiking trips, random trips on trains. Conferences all over the world. Has gone gallivanting off into random other countries just because she had a day to kill and no idea what better to do with it.
* '''Weapons:''' Six-foot pole (steel or pvc depending on mood/importance of not breaking anything). Mostly just carries it around using it as a walking stick, balancing aid, thing to poke stuff with. Sometimes has to smack wild animals with it. Also various knives and a sword, but these aren't really used as weapons.
* '''Vices:''' Laziness, apathy (somewhere along the way lost the ability to take deadlines and the like seriously and has major struggles with motivation), stories (can't put them down until she sees them through to an end)
* '''Sociability:''' Quick to make friends, but even quicker to totally forget who they are. Doesn't much care for normal socialising or small talk and prefers to focus on practical, interesting, or productive things. Very loyal to friends if something does come up, but unlikely to be the one to even ask about personal matters.
}}
}}
----
__TOC__
__TOC__


You Dream.
How easy it is, and how hard, to write the story when you already have the transcript... all the creative elements removed. So much that needs to be added. Because it's all just ''words'', before you add in the ''truth'' of them... the feeling. The experience.


== 0 ==
People like perspective, right? Whose perspective do we use?


You're you. You've always been you, lived your life, dreamed your Dreams. And yet... when you turned the page, you did not expect it to happen. You did not expect suddenly be... ''here''.
== Prologue ==


You're standing in a street in a shadowed region of the city, the overhang of the higher levels glistening wetly in the reflected sunlight. Abearanoth. You'd always imagined it a bit like a layer cake, but here it's more like a deep, echoey cave full of chatter and magelights, the roar of the waterfalls a hollow sound behind it all, with a wide shelf of even more city sticking out into the sun. And if you walked out into the sunlight, you might see the other layers, all stacked on top of each other, lined with trees, the waterfalls crashing down through the middle of it all with misty abandon.
<screenplay>


You make your way out of the shade, and the sun hits you in a wall of dripping heat, blinding. Your sunglasses aren't helping, but then you realise you're wearing safety glasses, not sunglasses; your sunglasses are still up on the top of your head. You swap them, and look around. This is it, all right. The next level up hangs out in a tangle of elaborate architecture, buildings sticking out hanging extensions and connecting to the taller buildings from the layer below. Trees poke out seemingly at random. It looks decidedly unsafe.
EXT. Garden of Remembering


"Elves," you mutter.
It's a wide space, with stretching horizons and open skies, and distance, in every direction, a sense of unending distance, even beyond the horizons themselves. It's not so much white as the idea of white, all colours, unseparated, waiting for a seed, a reason to form. Everything here is ideas, dreams about to happen, happening all at once, and not at all.


You know this place implicitly. It's your city, your world. You've been writing it for years, always drifting in the shadows of the higher levels as you followed your characters from story to story, loitering about the temples, laughing at the breweries. The whole joke had been that the place really didn't make sense - and it was because of the beer. The ancient elves had built so many breweries that they'd subsequently just gone ahead and made the rest of it like this anyway, sense be damned.
But it's also a garden. The ideas of trees loom around a notion of a courtyard in shapes and volumes, and beyond them, glittering concepts of buildings, cities, and giant floating babies. A fountain lingers at the courtyard's centre, utterly still, full of sea cucumbers. Flowers drift and change in a not quite breeze, in arrangements as shifting as the flowers themselves. Through everything drifts notes, discordant melodies, fragments of conversation, half-formed thoughts, forgotten dreams, and the bones of memories, huger than anything. Sometimes the dreams and memories touch the landscape, sometimes the trees, sometimes the statuary, sometimes each other, and for the briefest moment, become Real.


People pass you by, many more humans than elves, some giving you curious looks. You stand out, you realise, in your linux t-shirt and sunglasses and safety glasses and long, layered skirts. And your belt, with sword and purse, done out in a quality unfitting this world. Everything about you is pristine and modern, unnaturally even; everything they're wearing is simple and to the point, loosely-hanging and providing shelter. Even the nobles are wearing fairly simple clothes, making up details in finer fabric and jewellery. They don't double up their seams. They don't use lace as a filler material. They're not wearing relatively warm clothes meant for a brisk spring day in central Wyoming.
Scattered about, loitering on various unreal surfaces, pouncing after melodies and dreams, are sphinxes, no more real than the dreams themselves. Too real, almost, for this place. Half transparent, catlike, winged, changing, masked: tragedian, comedian, fool, doll. When the masks fade out entirely, behind them are no faces, only the blankness of a hungering void. There is something about them, something important. The feeling you get in a dream...


The page had been simple enough. A repeat of the index line: ''You find yourself in the world of your favourite character.'' Below it, the catch: ''This character is gone, disappeared. But as long as you are there, the world will know you to be them. How do you proceed?'' Vardaman had come to mind. Always an interesting one, you never did quite know what was going through his head. So how indeed, you wondered. And then you turned the page...
The drifting fragments shift and turn, dreams bubbling outward, memories taking immediate form, songs bursting into focus. The current shifts its flow. Eddies form. Shapes dance, almost.


You regret this already.
For a moment holes bubble out of the membrane of the space, small, black, gaping, all around the courtyard, forming, and then unforming almost as quickly. Sphinxes hiss, and shy away.


You, frankly, have no idea how to proceed. You take stock. You're here, in the world. You're... who are you? Still you, as far as you can tell, still wearing exactly what you were before. Your hands are the same, your hair is the same tangled blob wadded up on top of your head with a pair of collapsible chopsticks...
The moment passes. The holes cease.


And Vardaman? Can you believe the Black Book, that he is really gone? Can you risk it if he is? Without him, the whole world might fall... and what else can you do?
A much larger hole forms next to the fountain, and then twists on itself, unforming even as it deposits two figures on the brilliant, crystalline, chromatic, white, not-quite-idea-of grass. One is a woman, an elf in dark dress, black but glittering, shifting in fragments not unlike the Garden itself: EAPHEROD. The other is a man, an elf of another sort, in a leather greatcoat and wearing jeans and a t-shirt that says 'I'M WITH STUPID' with an arrow to the side: KYRULE. Both are wearing masks. Both are gods.


So what are you doing here? Or would Vardaman be doing here? You really don't know. Vardaman's early life never factored in that much. He was always the grizzled old man, never someone your age. He never was in your shoes. He wore boots.
Everything has quit moving around them, frozen, thin, dark. Time has stepped out for the moment.


You look down. You're not even wearing shoes. You're barefoot. Your toenails glitter in the sun, sparkling in shades of blue.
EAPHEROD
They know we're here. They know what we've done.


This isn't working.
KYRULE
That's impossible. We've gone back. It never even happened.


But this is your story. Vardaman is your character. What do you know? He was a Deathdealer, a warrior priest of Kyrule, the local god of death. But before all that, perhaps that's why he would have been here: to join the temple in the first place. And the Great Temple of Kyrule is here, in Abearanoth. You could do this.
EAPHEROD
It did. Memory clings to the spirit even when you remove all. You'll have to be quick.


You're a woman. If you're really going to be a Vardaman, you're going to be a genderbent Vardaman. A very lazy genderbent Vardaman with weird health problems, no coordination, and a general inability to... wear shoes. But on the other hand, you don't really have any other leads as to what you can even do here, do you? None of your own skills are likely to be the least bit valuable. Your skills are ''weird''.<ref>Including, but not limited to, getting useful feedback out of online users; designing dresses that stand up to 50 mph wind; making perfumes with the delightful scents of ''Putrescence of Orchid'' and ''These Mushrooms Are Secretly Onions''; and carpentry in which your wood stock is entirely comprised of old doors; and disturbingly little in between.</ref>
KYRULE
What are you saying?


Or you could just go to the temple and see what happens. You turn in the direction you feel like it should be in, to the north; there was always a sense of going in this way, though you never wrote it down. The whole city is north-south, built into the mountainside, jungle all around. It's big, noisy, full of people, with streets winding around under towering buttresses and suspended tarps casting welcome shade from the tropical sun. You never really grasped how big it really was, or how dense, or warm.
EAPHEROD
(she smiles sadly)
They sense it, the spirit of my duplicity, how I betrayed them all. So use that. Prove your innocence and stop me.


You don't know where you're going. The Temple is probably not even on this level.
KYRULE
From doing what, then?


You stop at the side of the road, trying to get your bearings. None of this makes sense. How is it even possible? How are you here? Your world has no magic, no gods, nothing but the harsh, cold reality of being alone in a vast and uncaring universe. Or so you believed. If this is real, if you're actually here now - and it sure feels real; the humidity alone makes it feel like you're swimming in the air, and the smells are a wonderful combination of leaves and humanity and garbage quite unlike anything you've experienced before - then you were wrong. About everything. Magic was real there, too.
EAPHEROD
I don't know. We'll find out? We can't have both of us fall...


Either you've finally gone totally barking mad and fallen into your own story, or everything you understood about the nature of your own world was wrong... and you've fallen into your own story.
Eapherod takes off her mask and presses it to Kyrule's face instead, pushing aside his mask and replacing it, leaning forward almost as if about to kiss him as she does.


"Excuse me," you say to a passerby, except it doesn't come out right, and you realise you're trying to speak a language you only half know. But half is... something, at least. You'd forgotten the language barriers, and yet somehow you do seem to know at least a little bit of Desh. A quirk in the magic, teach you the languages Vardaman would have known?
EAPHEROD
(whispering)
Make it good, my love.


The woman pauses and looks at you curiously.
Eapherod pulls back, drawing out shapes of magic in front her, her fingers tracing glowing lines and intricate forms in the air, speaking softly the words of creation.


"Directions?" you ask.
Kyrule backs away as well. He understands. He readies his stance...


After a bit of finaggling, you manage to communicate what you're after, and she points you in a direction, and up a level. You try to thank her, and go on to get a little lost, and a little confused at the teleporters, before someone else just activates it for you.
Time resumes, almost with a crack, as the not-quite world comes crashing back. Dreams and memories drift around them. The sphinxes rouse, watching curiously, peering over, stirring on their perches.


And then you see it. The Great Temple of Kyrule - it turns out to be a partially walled-off complex of similar, but not quite congruous, architecture to the rest of Abearanoth. A grand archway frames the road as it continues into the complex itself. Embedded into either side, in some grey metal, is the insignia of Kyrule: the mask and skull that you had managed, once, to put onto a disappointingly low-resolution raster image of a coin. Writing in a script you don't recognise at all is engraved down the stone. A couple of guards, wearing the same insignia, are loitering beneath it. They regard you, and a few others also headed in, disinterestedly as you approach.
Eapherod presses her hand against one of the glowing shapes in front of her, pressing her will upon it, as the shape builds upon itself and grows... pieces drift away...


You stop beneath the arch, looking up, and then around. One of your other characters had been unable to pass this after being turned into a vampire, and now you're curious - where would that point have been? How did that work, exactly? You poke at the ground with your foot. One of the guards asks what you're doing, and you almost freeze up trying to come up with the words before managing to just force yourself to try, and ask him where the edge of all this is. He comes over and shows you, indicating the outward side of the walls and archway. You step out and nudge at the space in the air with your hand.
Kyrule doesn't draw his sword, it simply appears in his hand... but then he hesitates before he strikes.


"Interesting," you say.
KYRULE
Eapherod. Don't do this, I beg of you.


"What is?" he asks, almost laughing.
Eapherod just smiles, flicks at him with a spare hand. He's pushed back, and then he's right there next to her anyway, striking suddenly, immediately, full of force and power. But Eapherod is ready, her black scythe in her hands as well as she blocks him, pushing him aside once more, still focusing on the shapes sketched out in the air before her. They flicker, waver. She whispers words to maintain the spell, but Kyrule attacks again, disrupting it entirely, and the shapes vanish as the power is released.


You shake your head, and resist the urge to squee. "Really big story," you say. This is real. You're here. So many of your stories converged at this temple. Began here, ended, waypointed. You could take a lifetime exploring it, retracing all your characters' steps, and for the first time, you think you understand how the pilgrims in Jerusalem felt, remembering as you'd walked among them in the shadowed temples, the open sun. Touching the wall, the rock, the altar. This is it. This whole world is your Jerusalem....
Her attention no longer divided, Eapherod now focuses entirely on Kyrule, attacking, deflecting, swinging, slicing. She doesn't bother with magic. The blade of her black scythe cuts through his spells immediately. The force of her onslaught pushes him back relentlessly. It's all he can do to keep her from even hitting him directly, to keep that black blade from reaping ''him'' like the last piece of the harvest...


But you can't afford to just go pure fangirl here. You have a role to fulfil, a part to play. You're Vardman. You're... a kid in a strange and unfamiliar place, with nothing, having left home for the first time in your life in order to begin anew. This is all new to you. You're not at home at all, and you've certainly never seen anything like it.
Eapherod hits hard, twice, yanking his sword out of his hands and knocking him down.


...you're a bloody writer who's travelled the world over. You've spent your whole life exploring new places and cultures, first in books and film, and later on, even in person, with friends from even stranger places along as your companions. And now you're in an ancient elven city on the mountainous coast of the equivalent of the godsdamn Amazon. You're at a temple to a god you made up. It has featured in your dreams, in your stories, showing up time and again in all the different fragments, becoming a fixture in your imagination. And it's right here.
EAPHEROD
(raising the scythe)
Fool.


You squee, just a little, and run off, grinning, almost giggling, into the courtyard beyond.
A blast of sheer power knocks her down before she can finish, sending ripples through the entire realm. Another god, DARU, is there, now, standing over them.


"Right, then," the guard says.
DARU
I am not blind, Eapherod.


You force yourself to slow to a walk, to pretend you're normal, calm, just like all the other people here. Most of them seem to be headed for the main temple building just ahead, so you go that way too, passing other courtyards mostly walled off, and myriad buildings of sundry function. You find yourself wanting to comment, wishing you had people with you to talk to, a group of friends, with all the in-jokes. The ones who would understand the comparison you really want to make about all this being like walking into a big damn furry convention. When you're the biggest furry of them all.
Around them, the other gods are appearing, in their many forms and unreal shapes, all embodying their various functions and values to varying degrees and literalness. Most attack immediately, getting in front of and protecting Kyrule, focusing their terrible wills on Eapherod. DIS, GHAURAN, ZEAHNE, ROSHAR, AUGH, AKKAI, LASHALISS AZALL, LIRIA, SONMI, ORIN, NAUSICA, DARU. Gods of order and chaos, wisdom and knowledge, war and fury, suffering and betrayal, of all of the elements of the seasons and growth, come to take down one of their own: the god of dreams and death who had betrayed them all.


The threshold is a wall of coolness, the thick stone blocking out the tropical heat, and inside, in the entryway, is a statue of a shrouded, kneeling figure, holding before it a tattered cloth. Some of the folks ahead of you touch the cloth, a couple whispering prayers, and you brush your fingers across it as you pass as well. Your fingertips tingle with a strange warmth as they come away, but you hardly notice. You've stopped. You're staring at the mural on the far wall, a vast painted relief depicting what looks like the entire abbreviated history of Kyrule - including quite a few things that definitely haven't happened yet.
They don't know how she betrayed them. Only that she had. Only that she was still doing it.


At least... not if the year is what you think it is.
Eapherod reacts immediately, shifting back, and attacking the entire lot of them right back, hurling the full power of her unreal realm in their faces. Dreams shriek, memories unfurl and become real, sphinxes hiss and growl.


You go over, getting close enough that there's noone in the way, and read it like a story, piecing together the ideas and events - the old gods, the ascension, the fall, the slaying of Eapherod, the breaking of magic, the Exodus. You're guessing, but it's a fun game. Winged cats following a masked figure - Kyrule when he tried to shoo them out of Eapherod's garden, most likely. The Guardians kneeling around one, who's sacrificed - you're not sure who it is, but you have a worrying feeling it might be you, or perhaps the other character, Coraline. A dragon, spreading its shadow across the world. A Dead soul in chains held up as judgement is passed - definitely Coraline. The return of Eapherod. The Keepers, speaking, telling the stories. Something you are absolutely convinced is a hovercraft full of eels and badgers, though it looks more like a sailboat and the figures aboard appear more elven than badger. Worlds breaking. Tendrils seeping. The final battle where all the gods gather and face the dragon with their armies before them, and above it, almost hidden in the clouds, two robed figures before an enormous throne, guiding them. At the end of the battle, and the mural, more winged cats are practically falling off the edge.
Kyrule, too, recovers his sword and his focus and rejoins the attack - no longer alone, he is spared the brunt of Eapherod's wrath, and can now actually hit her.


You realise you're gaping at it and quickly shut your mouth. How did this thing go from 'dragon!' to 'entire damn story written in stone from the start'?! The only way it could be more accurate is if the sphinxes - the cats - at the ending had formed a giant ball. Suddenly this whole thing isn't fun at all, and you don't know what to make of it.
Three gods, though, do not attack, simply observing: VESHURA, AZORRES, VITOI. Together, they look stranger than strange: two gods of failure, dead ends, eternal suffering, the hunger for power, and impossible loss, and between them the very embodiment of goodness and life. They understand, perhaps, what's really happening. Or they're not so sure. Or they just don't care. They don't comment.


It was just supposed to be a mural. Ambience. Plot contrivance.
The attacking gods push Eapherod back, breaking through her defenses.


You sidle off into the main chamber, now almost afraid to see what you'll notice there.
Orin stops, relenting, to try to reason with her. Lashaliss Azall, Zeahne, and Augh also pause, following his lead, standing in the way of the others.


It's a vast hall, with more reliefs on the walls, and elaborate decor on the pillars. At the far end is an immense shrine with statues and altars and candles and all the things, with much smaller shrines around the hall as well. The place is packed, in particular around the main shrine, and people pushing toward it even as others squeeze their way out, but you stop closer to the middle of the room, looking up. The ceiling is oddly plain, but with shapes of circles forming an unusual architecture of their own. It almost matches the rest of the hall. Almost, but not quite. The real ceiling is higher up.
ORIN
Stop this, sister, please! You cannot win.


In your mind, you picture it - a couple of the circles just crashing down out of the ceiling in a shower of masonry, two elves falling down with it and scrambling away. Neither of them are terribly concerned about the damage. Both are total nerds. All the other non-nerds they crash down into the midst of, however, are understandably far more concerned, because they don't know what's going on or why the ceiling would even have been breakable...
LASHALISS AZALL
Trust us and submit. All true justice is tempered by mercy.


"This isn't the usual attraction," someone comments. You glance over and find a priest standing next to you, and he gives you a curious look. "Whatcha looking at?" he asks.
EAPHEROD
Mercy? You are fools all!


"The..." you say, pointing up. You motion circles with your finger. "The thing." On the plus side, you probably don't need to worry about blurting out spoilers when you can't even explain a circle.
Daru bears down right past them, striking hard, and it's all Eapherod can do to block him.


"What... thing?" he asks, peering up at the ceiling.
DARU
You're right. There can be no mercy for betrayal.


"It is a piece of history," you reply. "I... think."
He strikes again, but this time all he hits is an image, which shatters. Dozens of other images of Eapherod are scattered about, all around them, attacking in figments and fragments. The gods fight them all, and the other images shatter too, one by one.


He gives you a somewhat more confused look, and you just shrug. Your stomach growls, and you drop a hand to your purse - it's a small one, just an extra pocket on your belt, really, but you find half a protein bar amidst some random tools and a thing of glue.
VITOI
(nudging Azorres and pointing)
Look, look. A dead end.


You take a bite and immediately recall why you didn't just eat it all in the first place.<ref>Great Value Chewy Protein BARS! The entire wrapper is a hodge-podge of mismatched fonts and jarring colours, except the fact that it's a Wal-Mart store brand protein bar ''isn't'' the problem. The fact that it's a ''protein bar'' is.</ref>
Azorres turns away, and Veshura takes him into her arms, embracing him gently, sadly. But she turns him back toward the others...


"So, er," you say to the priest, "If I want to join the temple, how do I do that?"
VESHURA
You must look, little brother. Feel her pain. Take it into yourself, and understand...


"Oh, is that why you're here?" he asks.
The battle continues. It is violent and flashy. The attackers don't hold back, though a few others hang back as support. Akkai is destroyed, and then Lashaliss Azall, and especially for the latter, Eapherod is heartbroken, but nor can she stop. She is backed into the corner, a dead end (Vitoi points again, looking terribly pleased with himself), no way out, and so she fights with everything she has, even as the other gods strip it all away from her, piece by piece by piece, the garden becoming progressively more unmade around them as well.


"Yes." You try to look convincing, but you're dressed like a weirdo and holding a protein bar.
Eapherod flees, slipping through the spaces between the planes, but the other gods pursue her into the black, missing nothing.


He seems to buy it. "Follow me," he says.
The three observers follow, too, on scuttling tentacles.


He takes you to a room with a mish-mash of other random folk in it. A woman is in front giving some sort of speech, prattling along about the temple and great things and purpose or whatever, with some other priests also around. "Just pretend you were here all along,"  he tells you, winks, and slips back out.
In desperation Eapherod brings down the entire idea of herself upon the other gods, shattering her own remaining vestiges of power. Nausica is blown away, broken, and Kyrule and Augh are also wounded. Azorres steps forward to shield Veshura and Vitoi, and is hit as well.


You nod, and turn to the front, vaguely listening as you unhappily finish the protein bar, trying not to crinkle the wrapper too much, though you can only really understand some of it.<ref>It reminds you of your university orientation, and probably is the general equivalent. And probably about as useful.</ref> So you look to the people, instead - there's 20-some of you here, mostly random younger folk, kids, really, mostly peasant-looking, with a couple who might have been tradesfolk, or failed tradesfolk, and in the back, next to you, three much better-dressed guys of rather varying heights who look more like nobles of some kind, and have swords. Some of the folk seem enthusiastic, others fearful, though it's hard to tell exactly from behind. There's a bit of shuffling about. The sword guys seem downright disinterested, and talk quietly in covered whispers.
But the rest do not stop, tearing at Eapherod, beating her down.


The woman finishes and one of the other priests starts talking instead, saying something about glory and service and something about a tree, but his thick accent makes him almost impossible for you to follow. The sword guys, however, actually start listening to this. One of them notices you looking at them and gives you a slight salute.
And then there's nothing left, and Eapherod finally falls, defeated, before them, stripped of all.


Later, when the priests are done orientating, or whatever it was they were even doing, they ask if anyone has any questions. You have many, of course, not the least of which is if anyone here speaks a language you actually know. But asking that doesn't strike you as likely to be particularly useful in practice. The sword guys, meanwhile, start nudging each other, telling each other, 'you ask', 'no, you', 'go on, ask', even as most of the room turns to eye them.
Infinite blackness surrounds them, but in this space, all they need is foreground, and Eapherod is the centrefold.


"We can hear you, you know," one of the priests says. "If you have something to ask, ask it."
Kyrule picks up the scythe, bleeding starstuff, moving as much by idea as actual motion. He looks at it, looks at her.


They stop. They exchange glances. "When can we pledge our swords to Kyrule?" the tallest one asks.
KYRULE
Why?


The priest sighs. "In time. Does anyone have any more... immediate questions?" he asks.
EAPHEROD
You saw it too. Don't you ''know?''


"Is there food?" you ask. A sword guy sniggers.
KYRULE
I saw... you.


The priest turns away, throwing his hands in the air, but the woman who had been speaking earlier puts a reassuring hand on his shoulder and steps forward. "All who serve the Eternal will be fed and clothed. We look after our own."
They're good actors. Very good. They're also... not acting. He doesn't know. He didn't see. That's sort of the point.


Some other folks have more normal questions, and these are quickly addressed as well. Then you're all escorted to a dormitory of sorts, given bundles of clothes and such, and told to report to the initiation chambers in half an hour.
Except there's also the slightest instant, where he sees something else. The ''truth'' in his words. Just what it was that he ''did'' see...


The others start divvying up beds and arguing about who gets what. A few stand around timidly, unsure what to do. You ignore them for the moment, and instead eyeball the folded grey bundle in your hands uncertainly. You shake it out and a pair of trousers and some other random things flop out onto the ground. You scoop them up, realising maybe randomly in the middle of the room wasn't the best place for that.
And then it's gone.


"You. You're with us." One of the sword guys, who is very short,<ref>Though really you consider anyone shorter than you 'very short'. You're not even short. You're just used to everyone normally being taller than you for some reason.</ref> is looking up at you expectantly.
And he still has a part to play. He knows this. He looks to the others, all around, the gods of this yet unnamed realm...


"What?" you say.
The other gods draw away, forming a circle around the two of them. This is Kyrule's right, his burden, his responsibility. His trust betrayed most of all, his insight that had seen it through to try to stop her even when he would have known he could not succeed. He knows that this is what they believe, and he knows that this is how it must be.


"We've got the corner," he says. "We saved a bed for you."
He is judgement, finality, and now, holding Eapherod's own weapon, he is death itself.


"Why?" you say.
And there is nothing in all the worlds he wants ''less''.


"Because you're cool," he says.
He doesn't hesitate. He simply stalls. Binds Eapherod in will and power, speaks words of making and unmaking into the black around her, around them all, and they crash back into the garden in a horror of light and sound.


You glance down at your linux shirt and only barely manage to avoid giving him a very dubious look. ''Linux,'' it says. ''Under-priced and overqualified (as am I)''. Not exactly the shirt you would have chosen to wear to another planet, and in light of your current predicament, you're sort of glad nobody is likely to be able to read it, let alone understand it.
Chains bind her to the shifting ground, more real than she is, wounding the very reality of this place by their presence.


"Oh," you say. "How many years are you?"
KYRULE
Why, my love?


"Sixteen," he says proudly.
Eapherod doesn't answer. She doesn't even look at him. Looks, instead, to the ground. Looks, for a moment, to Vitoi.


You try to remember when you were sixteen. First you draw a blank, but then a bit of math tells you that would have been mid-high-school, and you vaguely recall being a total nerd, sleeping through calculus, wearing a cloak, and painting in every class but art, at which point you put away the entire set of paints you'd been hauling around... and pulled out a history book. You weren't exactly a rebel, but you certainly didn't do what anyone said, or what made sense, or that fit in, in any way whatsoever, with what everyone else was doing, either.
Vitoi wiggles a tentacle, and then just sort of shrugs it.


"Oh," you say. The sad thing is, you haven't really come that far since, either. Also you're almost twice that age now.
Veshura gives him a weird look.


"What?" he asks.
Kyrule holds out a hand, drawing forth from Eapherod layers of memory and dreams that drift and dissipate into the space around.


"What year it is?" you ask.
She gasps. Shudders. Doesn't answer.


"Screaming leopard, wasn't it?"
KYRULE
Why?


You stare at him blankly, not even recognising the words as words, before you remember that all the years had weird animal names for some reason. "Ah, the number?" you ask.
A flick of his hand. More layers. More memories. More substance, simply gone. He's hurting her, and he knows it, but she hardly even responds to the pain, let alone the questions.


"1864," he replies. "And that I am actually certain of."
KYRULE
What were you trying to do?
What did you hope to achieve?


You have him repeat it just to be sure you're understanding the number correctly, and try to remember. The story began around the year 2000-ish, after the Exodus. And Vardaman was pretty old, which means... this could actually be around when Vardaman's journey would have begun. Maybe? You're not sure.
And so it continues. The questions, the removal of her very being. Slowly she fades, gets smaller, as the other gods look on. Still it continues, and still she says nothing.


"I know, I know, the names are so weird," the guy is saying. "And random. And they give no context at all! How is anyone supposed to work with a dilapidated badger or seventeen muskoxen or the grey blight? It's nonsense."
And then all that's left is the naked dark shape of her, faceless, colourless, empty.


You nod blankly. "They are... really not good when you do not know the language," you point out.
Kyrule just stares at her, expressionless. He's buried his anger, his revulsion and disgust. He's buried his love, his compassion and regard, all feeling, because otherwise it isn't her he'd attack, but all the others around them, watching, forcing this terrible charade.


"Ah! Yes, I can see why that might be a problem, too," he says. "So... will you join us? We'll teach you the language."
He buries his confusion, too. Why is she allowing this? He's seen her true power. He's seen how the mask of the ''god'' was a limit to it, not the source, knows that by removing ''that'', she is made far, far more dangerous. And the other gods have no idea. No idea at all.


You shrug and follow him over.
He looks around, watches them as they watch back. Watches as they search the dreams, dismantle the very realm around them, shoo the sphinxes out beyond its borders, looking for any clues, any hints as to her actual intent.


The other two sword guys are getting into their robes, but they nod at you as come over.
And he takes her followers, for he is now death. Searches their souls, for he is now judgement... but they, too, know nothing.


"You're not much like these other folks, either, are you?" the tall one says, putting his sword back on over the whole ensemble. "I'm Juane of Atkis, that's Kerka, and he's Leifos da Nereimen." He indicates the 16-year-old who had been sent to fetch you last.
Eapherod says nothing, only sits and waits, powerless, unmoving, a silent, empty form.


"Leifos," you say to him.
DARU
It is time. Let us end this, and pass our judgement.


"Yeah," Leifos says, and then starts stripping off his town clothes right there. He's the shortest of the lot, and very lanky. Juane is the tallest, and rather well-built as well, whereas Kerka is more just wide, and about the same height as you. Their brown hair and similar features, however, suggest they might all be related.
KYRULE
What judgement shall that be?


"Vardaman," you say. You dump the bundle onto a bed, shaking it out for real this time, and find a tunic and an outer robe among a bunch of other various sundries. You put them on over the clothes you're already wearing.
DARU
She has gone too far. End her.


"You know, aside from the colours, that almost works," Juane says.
KYRULE
(kneeling)
I beg mercy. We have wounded her, taken everything from her already. She is no threat.


You switch which skirt is on top, tucking the bright green-blue-purple one into the black one underneath, and then put your belt on again over the tunic. It's a wide circle chain belt, and it stands out, terribly bright and shiny, against the very plain robes, but the belt that had come with the bundle was too simple to clip anything to. You give it an annoyed look.
DARU
No mercy. This is my judgement. End her.


Juane gives it an amused look. "That does work," he says.
KYRULE
 
Please, All-Father. Let me take her sins, give...
You really want to loudly exclaim 'Fashion!' in response, but have no idea how to actually say it. The guys, meanwhile, move to regard the rest of the room. Everyone else is also changing, and even the more timid stragglers seem to have found spaces to call their own at this point.
 
"So what do you make of them?" Kerka asks.
 
"They lack purpose," Juane says.
 
"They'll get it," Leifos says, trying to get his tunic to stop bunching up. You give him a hand, straightening it out so it at least hangs better, but it's at least three sizes too big for him.
 
"You are really small," you tell him.
 
Leifos bats you away and pulls on his robe. "Well, we're doing this," he says.
 
"Yes," Juane says.
 
"They are also," you say.
 
"As well," Leifos corrects.
 
"Right."
 
== 1 ==
 
Initiation happens. Half the initiates are late, apparently because they couldn't find the room, and arrive in a big gaggle while the rest of you stand around waiting,<ref>Aside from your group. You and the sword guys are sitting down on the floor.</ref> with the head priestess woman standing by an altar of sorts, looking very disappointed.
 
Then they show up. Things get on with. She makes another speech. Everyone sort of queues up in front of the altar, and somehow your group winds up in front, possibly because all of the others shrank away, and you lot didn't.
 
You glance at the sword guys enquiringly, and Juane gestures for you to go first with an elaborate flourish. You give him a dubious look, but step up to the altar.
 
"Name?" the priestess asks.
 
"Vardaman," you reply.
 
"Place your hands on the altar," she says. When you do, she continues, "Do you now leave behind all you possessed, to begin anew in the Light of the Eternal?"
 
"Er... what?" you say uncertainly, trying to buy time to parse her words.
 
"Is there a problem?" she asks.
 
"Not my shoes. These are good shoes," you say, and then immediately regret not just admitting what the real problem is.
 
She gives you a quick look, and says, "You're not wearing any shoes."
 
"Yes."
 
"Why are you here?" she asks flatly.
 
For a moment, you panic, trying to come up with the right words, and then even doubting the ones you think should be right. The priestess frowns. So you just start talking anyway, hoping it's right, hoping it even makes sense. "To give my life and soul at the Eternal," you reply. You don't want to say it. You don't like what it means, how it feels, the finality, the certainty of it. But it's something.
 
"And if the Eternal doesn't want it?" she asks.
 
"I will serve him no... so much as I can," you say, surprised. You think you got it right, at least, but that feeling. That strange flutter in your heart, that feeling is Vardaman, to you. But why? What is it? You don't even know. It feels a bit like dying.
 
There's a long pause. The priestess eyes you consideringly, before finally giving a slight not. "You are witnessed, Vardaman," she says, and places a small metal disc with a cord on the altar in front of you. "Welcome."
 
You pick it up and back away. It seems to be some sort of necklace, and you realise she's wearing the same, though with several more discs under the top one, each one a different colour and larger than the previous. The other priests also have them, but where they all have two or three, she has five.
 
Juane claps you reassuringly on the shoulder as he goes up.
 
"Name?" the priestess says.
 
"Juane of Atkis," he replies, and places his hands on the altar.
 
"Do you now leave behind all that you possessed, to begin anew in the Light of the Eternal?"
 
"Yes," Juane says.
 
"You are witnessed, Juane of Atkis," she says, and passes him his disc. "Welcome."
 
"Easy," he tells you as Kerka goes up, and puts on his disc.
 
You just shake your head, and tie the cord of your own around your neck, putting it on over the ankh you're already wearing.
 
Once Leifos is also done, the four of you squeeze your way back and spill out into the corridor. As soon as the door shuts behind you, Leifos turns on you with his face shaped half in incredulity and half wonder<ref>Bottom left and top right, respectively.</ref>. "What was that?!" he asks.
 
"I..." You try to find the words to even express your exasperation. "I wish they do not talk so... proper!" you say. "It's difficult to understand. You are... easier."
 
"Ah!" Leifos says. "Right, maaaaybe you shouldn't have gone first."
 
"Well, not everyone here is from Deshland," Kerka says. "Just... mostly, from the look of it."
 
"Right," you say.
 
"You'll get there," Leifos says. "And she seemed happy once you explained yourself."
 
You look away, embarrassed.
 
"So apparently our indoctrination starts tomorrow," Juane says. "We've got all evening to... I dunno, eat food? Explore? Get hopelessly lost and have to be inevitably rescued by the local constabulary?"
 
"Except for that last bit," Kerka says, "sounds like a fine night out."
 
Nobody disagrees, so you all head off in a direction. The light coming in the various windows is rosy and angled, and supplemented now by soft blue magelights glowing slightly out from the wall. You wave a hand through one as you pass, and your fingers go right through it.
 
"And you, Vardaman," Juane says, "where are you from, anyway?"
 
"Iliesk," you reply. That's where Vardaman was from, at least, but it's an easier sell than central Wyoming.
 
"That's a long way to come," Juane says, "but you're doing well enough. You just need to talk more. And hear more. So we'll talk. And hear things. Go on, say something."
 
"Something," you say.
 
Leifos snorts.
 
"I walked right into that one," Juane says.
 
"Yes, you did," Kerka says.
 
You amble along, talking, clarifying phrases, peering into random rooms. They explain their situation a bit, saying they're from up north, a region of Deshland called Seldarch. They had a bit of a complication in which their family was ousted in some manner that doesn't really make sense to you, and they were supposed to be exiled and leave Deshland outright, but they decided, naw, let's make trouble with the temples instead. And they like Kyrule well enough, so here they are.
 
You find this all pretty funny, frankly. Religion out of spite. A good cause if you ever heard one.
 
Eventually you find food. It is, in fact, a disturbingly ordinary-looking cafeteria. There's tables and chairs and people eating, and even a great big window in the wall with a counter with trays of food laid out, complete with a very irate-looking fat woman on the other side now glaring very pointedly at your group.
 
You all go over to her.
 
"Hello!" Kerka says brightly.
 
The woman makes a disgusted noise and withdraws back into the room on the other side of the counter.
 
Kerka give her backside a wounded look, and you grab some trays and sit down. The others proceed to dig in, but after struggling a bit with your fork, which seems to be solely useful for poking things, you suddenly remember you actually do have a pair of chopsticks and pull them out of your hair. It falls down in a total mess.
 
You shake your hair out a bit and then start properly shovelling food into your mouth.
 
Kerka is watching you dubiously.
 
"Is that proper?" Leifos asks.
 
You pause, holding up a giant wad of meat and potatoes. "Yes," you say, and shove it into your face. After a bit, you manage to swallow it all, and add, "It's fast. Can... eat without seeing."
 
"But you're... picking your food up like with tweezers," Leifos says.
 
"That's fairly typical in some areas," Juane says. "They're chopsticks. Even some groups around here use them."
 
"Yes, chopsticks," you say. "Good."
 
Kerka bursts out laughing.
 
You finish eating far more quickly than any of the others as the conversation shifts to swords. You follow along, noting the different words. Many are totally new, but you piece quite a few of them together from context. Deathdealers come up, and you particularly follow this discussion, but it turns out to be mostly just speculation on how they're actually formed. You tell them it's water. They make Deathdealers with water.
 
"Vardaman?" a woman says next to you. You look up - it's the priestess from before, looking down at you with piercing blue eyes, her discs dangling over what, from this angle, you realise is a very large bosom. You don't even know what to call that cup-size. Videogame? Fanart?
 
You realise you're staring and attempt to stop. It only sort of works. "Er... yes?" you reply.
 
"I feel we should speak about your initiation," she says. "Your response was... unusual."
 
"Sorry," you reply. She's still standing over you. You wonder if you should maybe get up, or she should sit down, or something should actually happen, but she's given no indication one way or the other what she seems to expect of the situation either, at least as far as you can tell.
 
"Why didn't you simply answer directly?" she asks.
 
"I... I don't understand," you begin, but then Juane answers for you.
 
"She's not from Deshland," Juane says. "She's still a bit new to the language, and had a hard time figuring it out right away."
 
"Yes," you say, "that."
 
"And where do you come from?" she asks, staring at you, piercingly.
 
"Iliesk," you reply. "I arrived to today."
 
"Then perhaps this will be easier?" she says, except now she's speaking a language you understand perfectly. Lesk, all neatly tucked into your brain like you've known it your whole life.
 
"Aye," you say, surprised, slipping into the same. "Much, thank you."
 
She nods. "Why come here?" she asks. "All this way, when there are temples closer to home, surely."
 
...and that's the problem. You don't actually know. You're here because of a magic book you found in a thrift shop.<ref>At least, you hope so. You still haven't ruled out the possibility that you've just gone insane.</ref> But Vardaman? Why would he be here? He would have needed to be here at some point because this was where they trained the Deathdealers, but why did he actually come here in the first place? Because his mother told him to? Because it seemed like a good idea at the time? Because talking pigeons tricked him into it?
 
On the other hand, you're a writer. And you don't just write fiction - you also write ''grants'', which are a whole other level of combined bullshit promises and qualified prognostication.<ref>In which the qualifications typically consist of little lists of potential reasons why it may be totally wrong in order to mitigate liability when it inevitably turns out to be totally wrong.</ref> You always had this saying about writers, that they didn't need to be the smartest one in the room, just the biggest bullshitter, and you are very good at bullshit.
 
You open your mouth, and lies come out.
 
"I came via Ord," you tell her. "I was lost, and some folks helped me, but I... I didn't really fit in there. Everything was so big and... I don't know." You stumble a bit, putting on a sort of confused face for emphasis, but in this language you have no worry at all that the words, at least, are exactly what you mean them to be. "Anyway, they got me to a Gateway and I... came here."
 
"Why not go home?" she asks.
 
"I... don't really have a home to go back to," you reply, looking a bit embarrassed. "Not anymore. But here, maybe I can be of use. Do something good. For once."
 
She gives you an appraising look. The sword guys are watching intently, leaning over, waiting to see what she'll do as well. You eye her uncertainly.
 
"You meant what you said," she says. It's almost a question, but not quite.
 
"Aye."
 
She stares down at you for a long moment, and you stare up at her and her enormous bosom. Then she simply turns away without another word and leaves.
 
You give the sword guys a confused look.


"Well?" Leifos asks. "What'd she say? What'd ''you'' say? That sounded really interesting."
DARU
You wish to die too?


You tell them, only leaving out the bit where you made it all up. You make up a couple of other bits - Vardaman's mother might have been a hag of some sort, so you just go with that as your general background - but it's all a bit mangled because you don't really know the words. You figure that's how you'll get away with this, however: if you contradict yourself later, you can just blame a miscommunication.
Kyrule bows his head, and somehow manages to avoid saying 'yes'.


All in all, they're not really sure what to make of her response either, but they think it's really cool that you've been to Ord. You haven't really, of course; Ord is a part of this universe that just happens to be more sci-fi, which makes it a good excuse to explain your clothes and whatnot, whereas Abearanoth is on the fantasy planet.
DARU
(to the assembled other gods)
Does anyone else wish to argue? Or shall this be our judgement for one who has betrayed us all?


Later, when you all get back to the dormitory, a tired-looking old man is arguing with one of the other initiates. He turns to you as you approach.
They generally Aye.


"You four," he says, "you missed the chores assignment, so you get what's left after everyone else picked. You're on roof duty." He almost sounds gleeful as he says it, like some secret victory has taken place here.
Azorres shakes his head, looking at the rest of them a bit incredulously.


"Interesting," Juane says.
Veshura and Vitoi exchange rather more disdainful looks, and Vitoi flat-out rolls his eyes. Quite a few eyes. All over the place.


"Roof duty?" you ask.
AZORRES
(stepping forward)
Orin. Is this justice?


"Yup," the man says.
ORIN
It is the will of our Father, and mine.


You turn to the others. "What?" you say.
AZORRES
But is it justice?


They briefly explain the words, in particular 'roof' and what 'duty' actually probably means in this context, with the old man confirming/clarifying. Apparently you need to report to some guy tomorrow afternoon and... repair the roof. Or something. Even the clarification doesn't seem particularly clear.
Orin turns, looks at Azorres with nothing short of cold rage.


"Oh," you say. You're still a bit confused, frankly. "Should... not somebody with experience do this?" you ask.
ORIN
My sister was ''destroyed''. There ''is'' no justice.


"Of course you've got experience," the old man says. "Only a team with experience would choose this task."
DARU
Azorres, my dear child. You disagree with our judgement?


"But..." Leifos starts, but the old man just ambles off, humming to himself.
AZORRES
I do.


"Yup," Kerka says. "We've pissed them off already and now they're trying to kill us."
DARU
Anybody else?


"I'm sure we'll manage," Juane says.
Nobody answers.


"Maybe," you say. "Roofing is... simple, mostly. Need to... not fall?"
Sonmi, who even in her great cruelty, had hung back only as support through all of this, turns her empty face toward him, looks between the two of them. But she doesn't remove her mask. She doesn't speak.


Juane gives you a worried look, and you realise that probably came out more worried than you'd intended.
Vitoi disappears in a squelch of tentacles.


"I have... small experience," you tell them. "Sufficient to worry." You'd been on a few rooftops before. Generally just running around for the hell of it, occasionally actually doing some shingling or even putting in the rafters in the first place, but whatever they use here is probably totally different from what you're familiar with. Not that you'd been paying much attention to the rooftops.
DARU
(turning away)
Kyrule.


"How worried should we be?" Juane asks.
And Kyrule obeys. He raises his weapon (is it his sword? Eapherod's scythe? Both, now?), his face wet with tears.


"Know when we see it," you reply.
Eapherod just smiles up at him.


Only as you're getting to sleep, using your blankets as extra pillows, does it occur to you that if the priestess was a Keeper, she probably would have known you were lying. And she almost certainly was a Keeper, one of the high-ranking priests who serve as the mortal bearers of Kyrule's knowledge and power. That many of those discs, the way she called Kyrule 'the Eternal'... it wasn't even a word you'd known in that language before you heard her say it, but as soon as she had you realised what she meant.
The others look on in utter silence. Deafening.


You finger your own disc uncertainly. It's very simple, a single large symbol pressed into it, and beneath it, a single word in a script you don't know.
He slays her. She falls, one last time, to the floor, an empty form, unanswering, unseeing.


The symbol, though, you know. A circle with a line through it, like a ϕ. A symbole for ''Kyrule''.
Sonmi lets out a laugh, a single, mad cackle, almost unreal even in this unreal place.


== 2 ==
Azorres falls to his knees, and Veshura catches him, holding him close.


The next day starts fiendishly early. You get out of bed, comb your hair at some point, put on the rest of your clothes, and refuse to really wake up until you walk into a bed, two tables, a wall, five random other people, and the same door twice in a row.
AZORRES
(almost a sob)
No...


Somehow you got all the way to a cafeteria and are in fact holding a bowl of some kind of porridge in the middle of eating it. The door isn't even closed, but instead propped open sticking out from the wall and doorway, such that you apparently got stuck behind it somehow.
DARU
 
It is done. Deathdealer, hold what you have taken, and guard it as you have this day.
Kerka is watching you, head cocked.
 
"Are you okay?" he asks, looking rather amused.
 
"Yes," you reply. "I... need sleep. More?"
 
"Uhuh," he says, taking your arm and steering you out. "Sure. We're sitting over there."
 
You sit down with Juane and Leifos, also eating their porridge, and glare at them, daring them to comment.
 
"No comment," Juane says.
 
"So what were you saying when we were reciting the tenants earlier?" Leifos asks you.
 
You give him a blank look and then add, for emphasis, "Huh?"
 
"After we got up, we washed, we went to one of the shrines and they had us go through the tenants?" Leifos says.
 
"I... what?" you say. You don't remember any of that. You don't even know how to say the word for 'remember'.
 
"You don't remember any of that?" Leifos asks.
 
You shake your head, but now you probably know what word to use if this happens again.
 
"Wow," Kerka says.
 
"Well, you were mumbling something along with the rest of us," Leifos says. "Sounded pretty strange, too. Very... I don't know."
 
"I don't as well," you say.
 
"Either," Juane corrects. "You don't ''either''."
 
"I don't either," you say after him. You're starting to think you don't much care for this language, nor having to learn it on the fly like this. And this is ''with'' an apparent friend group willing to help you through all of it. Did Vardaman have this? What was he thinking, coming here? Why did he do this? Why couldn't he have been lazy like you and just seek out the path of least resistance?
 
On the other hand, your brain seems to be working better than usual. You seem to be remembering the words with little difficulty. That's... different. Isn't it?
 
== Notes ==
 
<references/>
 
{{hidden|
 
{{ dialog - pain |
 
What's the worst pain you've ever felt?
 
Er... I'd have to think about that one.
 
Then you couldn't understand. This -
 
The reason I'd have to stop and think about it is because after a point, it's all the same. It fills your whole mind and you can't think of anything else. You'd try to claw your way out through a stone wall to escape it, but there is no escape.
 
What could have caused you so much pain?
 
As much as I'd like to say my undersized son, that would only be heaping on more disappointment where there is already too much.
 
You have a son?
 
No! That's why he's such a disappointment.
 
What...
 
Don't even go down this...
 
Wait, so why did you bring up pain?
 
Shadelings disable their victims by inflicting unimaginable agony as they suck the vitality right out of you.
 
Unimaginable? Now I'm trying to imagine it...
 
What if we don't have any vitality? I have all the vitality of a dead badger. Which might actually be more than you'd think, if you count the maggots...
Now I've confused myself.
 
Guys, maybe we should be taking this... a bit more seriously?
 
I'm taking it very seriously! I'm just also contemplating dead badgers at the same time. Should have paid more attention to that raccoon carcass, but gods, did it smell. Is smell a form of vitality?
 
I don't think so?
 
Oh gods, now I'm thinking about dead badgers too. Why?! Why would you bring this up?
 
Because... oh, I don't know, that's where my mind went? Look, it could be worse. Imagine if you had a cabin and a whole family of skunks crawled into your undercroft and died there! So much for the cabin!
 
Why would animals crawl into the undercroft just to die?!
 
Because they're dying! When you're dying, you want somewhere comfortable and warm and sheltered, and stuff! So you crawl... towards the most likely looking thing? I don't know. I don't exactly have the most experience on dying here!
 
And how much experience is that, hmm?
 
Uh... well, I'm still alive, so direct experience I'd say... none? Probably? Unless you count dreams, or whatever.
 
Ooo, I've died in my dreams! You ever fall to your death?
 
Oh, totally. Drowned?
 
I got burnt up once.
 
Eeesh. I've had a lot of high-speed collisions with trees. Been stabbed a couple times. Stabbed myself in the brain once.
 
Oh? What happened?
 
I died.
 
Oh.
Then what?
 
I don't know? I might have just woken up at that point. Or started dreaming something else. I don't remember.
 
}}
 
{{ statue of azorres |
 
You hang back, and then slip away from the rest of the group when noone is looking. Noone is really paying attention in general. Noone really notices.
 
You approach the statue uncertainly, not really sure what to expect. You'd totally forgotten about this, about Azorres and the statues, how very at-odds they had been with the Deathdealers, how very helpful they had been when your other character had needed help.
 
"Statue?" you say quietly.
 
"Hello again, dear dreamer." The voice echoing out around you, huge and deep and unreal. "I feel we have spoken before."
 
You look up at it uncertainly. This... was not what you were expecting.
 
"What is it?" it asks.
 
That's the problem. You don't actually know. You don't know what to say. You don't know what to ask. You don't know if you can trust it, or Azorres, or anything. You don't know a damn thing, and it's eating at you, and there has to be something, something...
 
"Help me," you say quietly. "Tell me this is real, or... something..."
 
"And what if I can't?" The statue's voice is alien and old, a tremor of stone and steel, unmoved by time. "We do not know if any of this is real, not truly," it says. "We only tell each other we are real to affirm what we already fear to be the case, but it does not change the facts, only our perception of the facts."
 
"So what, just pretend I'm real and hope it's true?" you say.
 
"That is all anyone can do," the statue says.
 
"But I'm not," you say.
 
"You are standing there," the statue replies. "Is that not real to you? You are speaking; are the words not real?"
 
"I'm not who say I am," you say. "I'm not who they think I am. I'm not any of this, and I don't know what to do..."
 
"Who are you?" the statue asks.
 
"I don't know!" you plead. "I don't, I really don't."
 
"You know who you are trying to be. What is at odds with this?"
 
"I... I'm not him. I'm not Vardaman. He's..." You drop to your knees. You're not really sure what you can say, or what's true. "...strong."
 
"You are here, dear dreamer, asking for help," the statue murmurs. "Is that not strength? To go where you know you must? To try, even when you are afraid?"
 
"I... don't know..."
 
"Who are you, to you?"
 
There's a long silence. You try to think, come up with something, except the problem is, you're not even sure yourself, anymore. "I'm a writer," you say. "My name is Jennifer Mar. I found a book at a thrift store, and when I read it, it sent me here. To the world I was writing."
 
"A writer," the statue says. The words are huge, unbelievable.
 
"That's not really true, either," you say quietly. "I mean, I write software. This is just... a dream on the side."
 
}}
 
{{ not your fault |
 
DREAMER
It wasn't your fault. You didn't fail or screw up, you're not responsible for what happened.
 
 
 
DREAMER
Maybe I'm doing this for me. Maybe I want you to be okay, and if I see you can be okay, it'll remind me that I can, too. If I can do something to make it happen, I still have power.
 
}}
 
{{ sarathi events |
 
Sarathi Events. The universe is what we know. Existence, the planes, gods and worlds, life and death, all the rules that keep everything together. And there are many universes, some mirrors of each other, parallels progressing, and others not so much. But they all have existence, and rules. They all make up the multiverse.
 
On the underside of the multiverse is something else. Not existence, but something not quite dissimilar. A darkness. A space without space or time. Concept and creation, infinite and meaningless. Eapherod called it Midnight.
 
There's something there, not quite alive, not quite real. It snakes out in wisps and tendrils, fondling the undersides of universes, and sometimes it pokes through. There, in a space and time, the universe forgets its rules.
 
I call it SteveGeorge, and the events where it pokes through Sarathi Events.
 
It is what I fear.
 
}}
 
{{ not the real vardaman |
 
DREAMER
You know I'm not the real Vardaman.


KYRULE
KYRULE
I do not know this Vardaman you profess to have replaced. I never did. The only Vardaman I know is you
(tonelessly)
Yes, All-Father.


Kyrule doesn't even look at Daru.


Daru nods, and then he's just gone.


DREAMER
The other gods depart as well, returning to their varied reams, picking up their own scattered pieces.
Because that's the character!


KYRULE
Sonmi stays. Watches. She always watches.
It's you.


}}
Azorres just weeps.


{{ bar |
Veshura is expressionless as she hugs her little brother, the god of life, who has never seen such suffering. But she, too, is angry.


"Huaaaaaah!" excited happy noises
And then the others are gone. Only Kyrule remains, shaking, as he kneels over the ruined ''shape'' of his beloved, and Sonmi, pitiless as the sun, and nearby, Veshura and Azorres, hesitant, uncertain...


"Er... what?"
Veshura pushes Azorres toward Kyrule, and vanishes as well.


"Sorry... it's really good."
Azorres, finally, goes to him. Touches his shoulder, tries to...


"Hah, glad you like it. Usually it's a bit of an acquired taste. Too sweet for most people."
Kyrule looks at Azorres, and in in that look says far more than he should, for he is too hurt himself to prevent it, and suddenly Azorres, too, ''understands''.


"Too sweet?!"
Azorres flees.


He shrugs.
Kyrule throws back his head and screams.


"It's not even that sweet.
Sonmi mirrors the gesture exactly, and screams with him.
"Then again, one of my favourite drinks is sweet tea... and this stuff is really sweet. There was this drinks place I went to when I was younger, a lot of people criticised them for making their drinks too sweet? Usually they'd put six things of sweet in a drink. I had them make me a sweet tea once. Started out with six, but it wasn't sweet enough. Doubled it, wasn't enough.
"It took twenty pumps of sweetener to make it properly sweet. That was like half the drink at that point."


"Sounds... sweet."
</screenplay>


"Hells yeah. Get me another, will you?"
== Chapter 1: House ==


"You know this stuff has alcohol in it, right?" He pours you a refill.
<screenplay>


"Yeah, so?"
INT. House entryway downstairs - morning


He rolls his eyes.
It's a house. It's not terrible. It's full of plants. Someone upstairs, MORRIS, is yelling at his computer.


"So," another guy says, sitting down next to you. "I bet you got stories." He's a young fellow, lanky, not all grown in.
MORRIS
(upstairs)
NO! That is not what I told you to do!


"Sure," you say. "Some of them might even be interesting, but I can probably ruin those, too."
There's some clonking at the door, and then a somewhat bundled-up woman, JENNIFER, manages to get it open and stumbles in with some bags, a gust of wind and dust coming in with her. She drops the bags on the floor, pulls a giant witch hat off her head and deposits it on an entire pile of hats, bags, and luggage, shoves her sunglasses up on her head, kicks off her boots, and hangs her coat on top of another coat on the wall.


"Oh yeah? Try me," he says.
She's got on a t-shirt and jeans, and two belts with a small purse and some other random bags and stuff, including a sword, clipped to one. She drops that one on the floor as well.


"What, tell you a story?"
MORRIS
(upstairs)
AGH! What?! No! Don't fucking do ''that'' now! Fuck you, don't... on top of... FUCK YOU!


"Yeah. One of your reeeeally boring ones." He scrunches up his face to indicate how really concentrating on you he is.
A woman's voice responds, also upstairs, SHANNON.


"Oh, come on," you say, rolling your eyes.
SHANNON
(upstairs)
Hey, are you okay? What's wrong?


"Fine," he says. "How about a bottle of vodka?" He reaches across the bar and grabs some shot glasses. "Make this into a contest - the more we drink, the more interesting I bet your boring story gets."
A cat slinks out of another room and sniffs at the bags, nearly trips Jennifer as she starts fishing through them as well, and then wanders off.


"Well that's hardly fair," you say.
MORRIS
(upstairs)
NO I AM NOT FUCKING OKAY! THIS FUCKING DATABASE JUST FUCKING DELETED ITSELF!


"Gone through too many of those, have you?" he asks. "Fine." He pours himself a shot and moves to drink it, but you stop him.


"I mean it's not really fair to you," you say.
INT. House upstairs - morning


"Oh, now that's just a challenge I can't back down from!" he says, and pours you a shot as well. "Come on, then. Give me your best worst story."
The kitchen is also full of plants, mostly hanging, and also some actually useful-looking herbs and such on the counters/sills. The time on the microwave reads 18:59. The time on the stove reads 11:08. Both are wrong.


You wind up telling a story about a pine tree and how it took this guy's soul and he had to track it down and tackle it in order to get his soul back, but it kept running away. Somehow you turn a bash.org one-liner<ref>"Some pine tree had my soul one night when I was drunk. So I chopped it down and dragged it through a field for two hours and got my soul back."</ref> into a rather lengthy - and pointless - tale punctuated by entirely too many shots of vodka, and before you know it, you actually seem to be drunk. Actually unambiguously drunk.
Morris is at the kitchen island bar-thing with his laptop. On its screen are some tmuxes and a browser with something like a hundred tabs, the current one open to mariadb documentation (the page on something really basic like JOIN or DROP). It shows the correct time as 11:16.


The young fellow is nodding. You nod too, for emphasis.
He's staring at a tmux with an expression of confused rage on his face.


Shannon is standing nearby, holding a very ripe home-grown pineapple, staring at him blankly.


SHANNON
(after a somewhat long pause)
That doesn't sound like something that's supposed to happen?


MORRIS
(loudly)
NO IT ISN'T!


SHANNON
(putting the pineapple down)
Okay. Could you please stop yelling?


MORRIS
NO.
Sorry. What?


Shannon shakes her head and pulls some other random fruit out of the mixing bowl, and then gets out a frying pan and some random ingredients.


Jennifer comes in, drops the bags next to the fridge, and comes over and clonks a large book down on the counter next to Morris' computer, the effect of which is only slightly ruined by her having to shove a potted plant and several piles of random crap out of the way first. It's a thick volume, with ageing pages bound in a heavy black hard cover, buckled shut, almost menacing in its size and weight. Its only label is a silvery symbol of a tree set into the spine.


SHANNON
Good morning, Names. Want some pancakes?


You wake up on a bed feeling like... everything... awful. It's just bad. You don't want to move. You don't want to think. You don't want to be alive. You're not... even entirely sure you're alive at all.
JENNIFER
Eh, sure.
(leaning over right next to Morris and yelling very loudly at his head)
HAVE YOU CONSIDERED USING THE RIGHT COMMANDS?


You sit up, regretting everything. Your head lurches out your stomach. All your muscles feel like buzzing. The large guy is sprawled next to you.
MORRIS
(leaning right back, putting his face right in front of hers, and yelling just as loudly)
NO. NO I HAVE NOT.


You prod him. "Oi," you say. Your voice comes out raspy.
SHANNON
Guys, come on.


He doesn't respond.
JENNIFER
(to Shannon)
Sorry, man.
(to Morris)
Why are you up here?


You decide to just ignore him and get up and try to find the rest of your clothes. You're still mostly dressed, but a boot is lying on the floor, and most of your leathers are... under the guy.
MORRIS
Egh.
(indicating Shannon)
She bribed me. Said she'd make me breakfast if I came out of the cave for a change.


"The fuck," you mutter, and try tugging at them. This achieves nothing. You try pushing at him, but while you think you probably would be able to roll him over if you actually tried, you don't particularly want to. He's... sweaty. And smelly. And you don't really want to touch him, let alone wrap your arms around his girth to get a proper grip...
JENNIFER
But you haven't even gone to bed yet.


So you just give up. You grab your swords off the ground and trudge out into the main room of the inn. The door and windows are open to the morning air, but it still smells like beer and piss - an improvement over the room, or possibly just the guy - but not by much. You find a table that's easily to collapse onto<ref>The first one you get to at all.</ref> and collapse into a chair at it, sprawling out your arms, clonking the swords, belt and all, onto the table with a clonk.
MORRIS
What's your point?


Some other folks are around, having breakfast. They don't even try to greet you.
JENNIFER
It's lunchtime?


Tetelien hops onto the table and cocks his head. "Have fun?" he asks.
SHANNON
No it isn't!


You groan by way of answer.
JENNIFER
It's almost noon!
(indicating the stove and microwave clocks)
Those clocks are just... completely wrong.


"I don't think I've ever seen someone drink so much and live," he says. "But then, you're not really human anymore, are you?"
SHANNON
Not that wrong. And maybe if ''someone'' would stop knocking out the breakers, we wouldn't need to be constantly resetting them anyway.


"How much..." you sort of ask.
MORRIS
(to Jennifer)
Is she referring to you or me?


"You started with six cups of cider," the cat says. "Moved onto... what was it, many shots of vodka? Would have been more, but then the guy showed up. That whiskey was full when you started, and when you moved onto the shallot..."
Jennifer shrugs and grabs a pair of safety glasses off of another plant and shoves them on her face as she opens the book.


"So just like florida," you mumble. "But in reverse. I mean, there we started with the whiskey. Moved onto absinthe. The blue drinks after. Might have been some shots when Gaurav wasn't looking. And somehow it all ended with... beer. I tried to tip them. At the dive bar. I tried to tip the lady."
MORRIS
Ah, is that a new i... thing... tablet? Stone age version?


Tetelien just watches you vaguely.
JENNIFER
Yeah, it's odd...
I feel like I've seen it before.


"Deathdealers can't get sick, right?" you ask.
SHANNON
(sounding genuinely confused)
You mean an ''iPad''?


Tetelien shrugs.
MORRIS
I would never!


"Because that was my main incentive to not drink before. I'd not get hangovers so much as just lose my entire damn immune system."
Jennifer flips through some of the pages, skimming them, peering at a few very closely. Most of them are blank or don't really have much on them, though others are quite covered in various texts, symbols, maps. She stops on one page, flips back to the index, and then looks back at the page. It's familiar to her, and reads as follows:


"And how is the hangover, hmm?" Tetelien asks.
: ''Backstory. Sidestory. Supposition, the antithesis of practice. Nevermind practice. This isn't practice. This is a treatise by the narrator, an examination of could-have-beens, an aside from the GM. We can talk about anything. Let's talk about anything.''


"I'm a fucking puddle with too many bones in."
: ''You, for instance. Who are you?


"The usual, then," Tetelien says.
: ''What do you dream? How far would you go? Do even you know yourself, or will you be just as surprised as all the others when, after all of this, it turns out it was all for jackfruit? You said it yourself, the only true understanding comes from the exploration and discovery.''


"Nnng?"
: ''Shall we go, then, you and I?''


A guy who you think might have been the owner of the inn shows up with some food and several cups of... things. "Good morning!" he says and starts depositing things in front of you.
This isn't the important part.


You stare at him blankly.
Morris looks over her shoulder for a bit, and then mutters incoherently as he goes back to cloning a backup database.


"You've got coffee, juice, water, and my old gran's remedy," he says, laying out the cups. The food is a plate of... well, food. Sausages and porridge and some vegetable things you don't recognise at all. "Should clear you right up, after the night you had."
The frying pan sizzles as Shannon ladles in some batter.


"Was there a pineapple?" you ask him.
SHANNON
Oh, I never get the first one right. Who likes 'em eggy?


"A what, now?"
Jennifer turns the page. This one contains even less.


"Peas? Unicorn? Maybe a necromancer involved somehow?"
: ''He was your favourite, your least understood. His world is yours, and yet he no longer is. Can you take his place? They will know you to be him, so long as you don't give up.''


"No..." he says uncertainly.
She turns the page again, finding only a name.


"Did my clothes stay on?" you ask.
: ''Ense Vardaman.''


Tetelien bursts out laughing, a deeply unsettling thing for a cat to do.
And then all the world is pulled out from under her.


"Did you wake up in a room with a fishbowl full of peas?" Tetelien asks once he's managed to stop. "Was the unicorn ''there'' with abs painted on? Was the orc covered in clovers, or does that come later?"
</screenplay>


"Er, no," you say. "Later, I think."
== Chapter 2: Arrival ==


"I think you're fine." He turns away dismissively and starts licking himself.
<screenplay>


The innkeeper gives you and the cat a confused look.
EXT. Abearanoth underhang - day


"It's a... story," you explain. "That I'm trying not to repeat."
The air echoes with the sounds of life - a rumble of chatter, the dull hum of simple machinery, the clang of construction and fabrication - amidst the dripping and roaring of water. It's shaded, here, wet and misty, the air a clammy not-quite cold, with strange multicoloured lights hanging from poles, sticking out of beams, affixed to buildings and the stone walls of the cavern itself. The architecture is a mix of fantastical art-deco and several more mundane pre-industrial 'yo we need a house already' styles built on top of and sometimes into each other.


"I... see," he says, and backs away.
Alleys and roadways snake through it all, lined with bags of stuff, dumpsters, random plant things. Ducts angle haphazardly into and out of the ground. People pass by in various directions, mostly dressed in a garb not quite east-asian, not quite greco-roman in style, though a few wear very, very different sorts, completely out of place, and yet also... not.


Later, you go to pay the innkeeper, feeling, if not exactly better, at least more alive.
In an alleyway, Jennifer suddenly sits up, looking around. Her glasses are fogged up, so she pushes them up on her head, and they bonk into her sunglasses. Most of the stuff she took off upon coming home is also on the ground nearby.


"You're a priest?" he asks.
JENNIFER
Ghah, what?


"What?" you say, and then glance down. Your emblems are hanging half out of your shirt, and you stuff them back in. "No," you say, utterly unconvincingly.
She puts on her boots, stuffs her stuff into a spare bag, and goes to the mouth of the alley, peering down the road, noting the shaded, glowing recesses of the cavern in one direction, and harsh sunlight glinting off buildings past the overhang in the other.


He gives you a dubious look.
She glances back into the alley. It's a dead-end alley. It has some junk in it. It looks completely ordinary, or what probably would pass as completely ordinary for the rest of the architecture.


"Look, what do I owe you?" you ask. "And... by any chance... could you maybe collect the rest of my clothes and stuff for me once the large guy... leaves?"
She pulls out her phone. Time says 11:19. No service. 22% battery. A fine mist begins to condense on the surface of the phone, too, so she wipes it off. An error pops up, covering the screen ('google play services has stopped working'), and she dismisses it. The same error pops up again, and when she dismisses it again, again. The third time actually works.


"Um... sure?" he says. He comes up with some numbers, and you don't even bother to make sense of them. You're just finishing paying him off when a pair of newcomers come over. One of them is also a priest of Kyrule, the other apparently something else.
She tries to take a random picture, but then the message pops up again, blocking it.


The innkeeper turns to them brightly. "What can I do for you this fine morning?" he says.
JENNIFER
Right. Good to see you're AS USELESS AS EVER, PHONE.


"We're looking for a Deathdealer," the priest replies. "Has anyone of the sort been through?"
She stuffs the phone in her back pocket, pauses to stuff her hat back on her head, and heads for the sunlight. Some folks glance at her in passing, but she ignores them, putting on her sunglasses, as well... and then notices a couple have pointy ears. Elves? Really? Elves?


"No, can't say anyone has," the innkeeper says. "Is it urgent? Something we should be worried about?
She maybe stares a little too much at those as they pass.


"Hi," you say, giving them a slight wave.
She stops at the edge of the shade, tentatively reaching out to feel the sunlight. It's very warm, but not with the burning intensity she's used to - unpleasant, but not particularly dangerous - and she seems a bit surprised at this. Everything is dripping with humidity.


"Yes, yes, hello," the priest says, not really paying any attention to you. "Nothing to worry about, just business," he adds to the innkeeper.
JENNIFER
(muttering)
The hell is this?


"Cameron Versuth?" you ask.
Jennifer briefly considers bothering some locals before just heading on down the street to try to get her bearings, or something.


The priest finally turns to regard you properly, looking a bit surprised.
In the sunlight, the city proper looks much like the parts in the overhang, but with taller buildings and sun and shadow making it all the more dramatic. The stone of the more well-architected older buildings is various shades of pearlescent white, gleaming in the light, contrasting the dark shadows and random colours of the newer construction.


"I'm the Deathdealer," you say.
She winds up at some sort of overlook after a bit. Behind her, the higher levels of the city tower in terraced steps of elaborate skyscape, jungled mountains around, waterfall crashing through the middle, but she's looking out over the lower levels reaching out to the sea below. It's a big sea. It has islands and such. It stretches out to the horizon, glittering, and speckled with boats.


"Funny," he says.
Some suspiciously large hovering creatures cavort over the water in the distance. Some suspiciously large insects, much, much closer, buzz around Jennifer's head, and she swats at them.


"The fact that I am half dressed, clearly hungover, and have a cat on my head does not mean I am not totally normal and competent," you say flatly.
JENNIFER
Bloody hell.


"What about the fact that you're not?" Tetelien says.
She turns her back on the sea and looks back up at the waterfall, and around, noting the other landmarks. Several stand out - a group of three towers, connected by an intricate latticework on a level above; a very large singular building with a dome in the middle on a lower level; a bunch of buildings in darker stone across several levels to the... north, apparently? The city faces the sea to the east, in steps down to the harbour levels. To the west, above, is the great plateau, where the wiggle-edged lake sits hidden behind the horizon, from which the river drains.


"Tetelien!" you hiss exasperatedly, and draw your sword just enough to show the sigil. "See? I've got a sword and everything."
She knows this.


"What, really?" the innkeeper says. "Why didn't you say so?!"
She mutters, pulls out her phone. Turns it on, and then turns it off again, and then turns it back on and takes some pictures. She flicks back through the pictures, amidst the errors, looking around again, comparing.


"I... didn't want to give a bad impression," you say.
Slowly she puts it away again.


"Oh, lady, after last night, I think half the town's in love with you," the innkeeper says.
This is it. Abearanoth. Cerris. ''Her story.''


"Wait, what?" you say.
And she's probably ''not'' dreaming.


"You don't remember what happened?" he asks.
</screenplay>
 
"I... remember drinking," you say. "A lot. And there was this guy. And then drinking with the guy. And at some point it occurred to me that if I seriously kept going I would literally die, except I don't know if I was even entirely conscious at that point. Did I... carry him? ...Cheering?"
 
"Oh, it was some impressive witchcraft," the innkeeper says. "You just picked him up like he was nothing. Everyone was cheering you on to try it, and when you pulled it off..."
 
"Did I?" you say.
 
"Guy barged in shouting about how he was going to burn the place down, take our dear Meria as his trophy, and you go up and wrestle him demanding if he can even take you as a trophy," the innkeeper says. "Now that was a sight. Now after a bit you grabbed a bottle of whiskey and started drinking it straight, and then before we all know it, he's drinking it too, and you spend the next few hours going through all of my very worst shalott together, yelling and trading stories like you're the best of friends, and in all of this you convince him to drop his entire feud and apologise to us."
 
"I do, do I?" you say.
 
"It was something else," the innkeeper says.
 
"So you didn't actually charge me that much..." you say.
 
"It'd have been on the house, but that much we can't really recuperate so easily. Also you broke two tables."
 
"Sorry."
 
On your head, Tetelien is laughing again.
 
}}
 
}}

Latest revision as of 20:49, 11 September 2019

How easy it is, and how hard, to write the story when you already have the transcript... all the creative elements removed. So much that needs to be added. Because it's all just words, before you add in the truth of them... the feeling. The experience.

People like perspective, right? Whose perspective do we use?

Prologue

EXT. Garden of Remembering
It's a wide space, with stretching horizons and open skies, and distance, in every direction, a sense of unending distance, even beyond the horizons themselves. It's not so much white as the idea of white, all colours, unseparated, waiting for a seed, a reason to form. Everything here is ideas, dreams about to happen, happening all at once, and not at all.
But it's also a garden. The ideas of trees loom around a notion of a courtyard in shapes and volumes, and beyond them, glittering concepts of buildings, cities, and giant floating babies. A fountain lingers at the courtyard's centre, utterly still, full of sea cucumbers. Flowers drift and change in a not quite breeze, in arrangements as shifting as the flowers themselves. Through everything drifts notes, discordant melodies, fragments of conversation, half-formed thoughts, forgotten dreams, and the bones of memories, huger than anything. Sometimes the dreams and memories touch the landscape, sometimes the trees, sometimes the statuary, sometimes each other, and for the briefest moment, become Real.
Scattered about, loitering on various unreal surfaces, pouncing after melodies and dreams, are sphinxes, no more real than the dreams themselves. Too real, almost, for this place. Half transparent, catlike, winged, changing, masked: tragedian, comedian, fool, doll. When the masks fade out entirely, behind them are no faces, only the blankness of a hungering void. There is something about them, something important. The feeling you get in a dream...
The drifting fragments shift and turn, dreams bubbling outward, memories taking immediate form, songs bursting into focus. The current shifts its flow. Eddies form. Shapes dance, almost.
For a moment holes bubble out of the membrane of the space, small, black, gaping, all around the courtyard, forming, and then unforming almost as quickly. Sphinxes hiss, and shy away.
The moment passes. The holes cease.
A much larger hole forms next to the fountain, and then twists on itself, unforming even as it deposits two figures on the brilliant, crystalline, chromatic, white, not-quite-idea-of grass. One is a woman, an elf in dark dress, black but glittering, shifting in fragments not unlike the Garden itself: EAPHEROD. The other is a man, an elf of another sort, in a leather greatcoat and wearing jeans and a t-shirt that says 'I'M WITH STUPID' with an arrow to the side: KYRULE. Both are wearing masks. Both are gods.
Everything has quit moving around them, frozen, thin, dark. Time has stepped out for the moment.
EAPHEROD
They know we're here. They know what we've done.
KYRULE
That's impossible. We've gone back. It never even happened.
EAPHEROD
It did. Memory clings to the spirit even when you remove all. You'll have to be quick.
KYRULE
What are you saying?
EAPHEROD
(she smiles sadly)
They sense it, the spirit of my duplicity, how I betrayed them all. So use that. Prove your innocence and stop me.
KYRULE
From doing what, then?
EAPHEROD
I don't know. We'll find out? We can't have both of us fall...
Eapherod takes off her mask and presses it to Kyrule's face instead, pushing aside his mask and replacing it, leaning forward almost as if about to kiss him as she does.
EAPHEROD
(whispering)
Make it good, my love.
Eapherod pulls back, drawing out shapes of magic in front her, her fingers tracing glowing lines and intricate forms in the air, speaking softly the words of creation.
Kyrule backs away as well. He understands. He readies his stance...
Time resumes, almost with a crack, as the not-quite world comes crashing back. Dreams and memories drift around them. The sphinxes rouse, watching curiously, peering over, stirring on their perches.
Eapherod presses her hand against one of the glowing shapes in front of her, pressing her will upon it, as the shape builds upon itself and grows... pieces drift away...
Kyrule doesn't draw his sword, it simply appears in his hand... but then he hesitates before he strikes.
KYRULE
Eapherod. Don't do this, I beg of you.
Eapherod just smiles, flicks at him with a spare hand. He's pushed back, and then he's right there next to her anyway, striking suddenly, immediately, full of force and power. But Eapherod is ready, her black scythe in her hands as well as she blocks him, pushing him aside once more, still focusing on the shapes sketched out in the air before her. They flicker, waver. She whispers words to maintain the spell, but Kyrule attacks again, disrupting it entirely, and the shapes vanish as the power is released.
Her attention no longer divided, Eapherod now focuses entirely on Kyrule, attacking, deflecting, swinging, slicing. She doesn't bother with magic. The blade of her black scythe cuts through his spells immediately. The force of her onslaught pushes him back relentlessly. It's all he can do to keep her from even hitting him directly, to keep that black blade from reaping him like the last piece of the harvest...
Eapherod hits hard, twice, yanking his sword out of his hands and knocking him down.
EAPHEROD
(raising the scythe)
Fool.
A blast of sheer power knocks her down before she can finish, sending ripples through the entire realm. Another god, DARU, is there, now, standing over them.
DARU
I am not blind, Eapherod.
Around them, the other gods are appearing, in their many forms and unreal shapes, all embodying their various functions and values to varying degrees and literalness. Most attack immediately, getting in front of and protecting Kyrule, focusing their terrible wills on Eapherod. DIS, GHAURAN, ZEAHNE, ROSHAR, AUGH, AKKAI, LASHALISS AZALL, LIRIA, SONMI, ORIN, NAUSICA, DARU. Gods of order and chaos, wisdom and knowledge, war and fury, suffering and betrayal, of all of the elements of the seasons and growth, come to take down one of their own: the god of dreams and death who had betrayed them all.
They don't know how she betrayed them. Only that she had. Only that she was still doing it.
Eapherod reacts immediately, shifting back, and attacking the entire lot of them right back, hurling the full power of her unreal realm in their faces. Dreams shriek, memories unfurl and become real, sphinxes hiss and growl.
Kyrule, too, recovers his sword and his focus and rejoins the attack - no longer alone, he is spared the brunt of Eapherod's wrath, and can now actually hit her.
Three gods, though, do not attack, simply observing: VESHURA, AZORRES, VITOI. Together, they look stranger than strange: two gods of failure, dead ends, eternal suffering, the hunger for power, and impossible loss, and between them the very embodiment of goodness and life. They understand, perhaps, what's really happening. Or they're not so sure. Or they just don't care. They don't comment.
The attacking gods push Eapherod back, breaking through her defenses.
Orin stops, relenting, to try to reason with her. Lashaliss Azall, Zeahne, and Augh also pause, following his lead, standing in the way of the others.
ORIN
Stop this, sister, please! You cannot win.
LASHALISS AZALL
Trust us and submit. All true justice is tempered by mercy.
EAPHEROD
Mercy? You are fools all!
Daru bears down right past them, striking hard, and it's all Eapherod can do to block him.
DARU
You're right. There can be no mercy for betrayal.
He strikes again, but this time all he hits is an image, which shatters. Dozens of other images of Eapherod are scattered about, all around them, attacking in figments and fragments. The gods fight them all, and the other images shatter too, one by one.
VITOI
(nudging Azorres and pointing)
Look, look. A dead end.
Azorres turns away, and Veshura takes him into her arms, embracing him gently, sadly. But she turns him back toward the others...
VESHURA
You must look, little brother. Feel her pain. Take it into yourself, and understand...
The battle continues. It is violent and flashy. The attackers don't hold back, though a few others hang back as support. Akkai is destroyed, and then Lashaliss Azall, and especially for the latter, Eapherod is heartbroken, but nor can she stop. She is backed into the corner, a dead end (Vitoi points again, looking terribly pleased with himself), no way out, and so she fights with everything she has, even as the other gods strip it all away from her, piece by piece by piece, the garden becoming progressively more unmade around them as well.
Eapherod flees, slipping through the spaces between the planes, but the other gods pursue her into the black, missing nothing.
The three observers follow, too, on scuttling tentacles.
In desperation Eapherod brings down the entire idea of herself upon the other gods, shattering her own remaining vestiges of power. Nausica is blown away, broken, and Kyrule and Augh are also wounded. Azorres steps forward to shield Veshura and Vitoi, and is hit as well.
But the rest do not stop, tearing at Eapherod, beating her down.
And then there's nothing left, and Eapherod finally falls, defeated, before them, stripped of all.
Infinite blackness surrounds them, but in this space, all they need is foreground, and Eapherod is the centrefold.
Kyrule picks up the scythe, bleeding starstuff, moving as much by idea as actual motion. He looks at it, looks at her.
KYRULE
Why?
EAPHEROD
You saw it too. Don't you know?
KYRULE
I saw... you.
They're good actors. Very good. They're also... not acting. He doesn't know. He didn't see. That's sort of the point.
Except there's also the slightest instant, where he sees something else. The truth in his words. Just what it was that he did see...
And then it's gone.
And he still has a part to play. He knows this. He looks to the others, all around, the gods of this yet unnamed realm...
The other gods draw away, forming a circle around the two of them. This is Kyrule's right, his burden, his responsibility. His trust betrayed most of all, his insight that had seen it through to try to stop her even when he would have known he could not succeed. He knows that this is what they believe, and he knows that this is how it must be.
He is judgement, finality, and now, holding Eapherod's own weapon, he is death itself.
And there is nothing in all the worlds he wants less.
He doesn't hesitate. He simply stalls. Binds Eapherod in will and power, speaks words of making and unmaking into the black around her, around them all, and they crash back into the garden in a horror of light and sound.
Chains bind her to the shifting ground, more real than she is, wounding the very reality of this place by their presence.
KYRULE
Why, my love?
Eapherod doesn't answer. She doesn't even look at him. Looks, instead, to the ground. Looks, for a moment, to Vitoi.
Vitoi wiggles a tentacle, and then just sort of shrugs it.
Veshura gives him a weird look.
Kyrule holds out a hand, drawing forth from Eapherod layers of memory and dreams that drift and dissipate into the space around.
She gasps. Shudders. Doesn't answer.
KYRULE
Why?
A flick of his hand. More layers. More memories. More substance, simply gone. He's hurting her, and he knows it, but she hardly even responds to the pain, let alone the questions.
KYRULE
What were you trying to do?
What did you hope to achieve?
And so it continues. The questions, the removal of her very being. Slowly she fades, gets smaller, as the other gods look on. Still it continues, and still she says nothing.
And then all that's left is the naked dark shape of her, faceless, colourless, empty.
Kyrule just stares at her, expressionless. He's buried his anger, his revulsion and disgust. He's buried his love, his compassion and regard, all feeling, because otherwise it isn't her he'd attack, but all the others around them, watching, forcing this terrible charade.
He buries his confusion, too. Why is she allowing this? He's seen her true power. He's seen how the mask of the god was a limit to it, not the source, knows that by removing that, she is made far, far more dangerous. And the other gods have no idea. No idea at all.
He looks around, watches them as they watch back. Watches as they search the dreams, dismantle the very realm around them, shoo the sphinxes out beyond its borders, looking for any clues, any hints as to her actual intent.
And he takes her followers, for he is now death. Searches their souls, for he is now judgement... but they, too, know nothing.
Eapherod says nothing, only sits and waits, powerless, unmoving, a silent, empty form.
DARU
It is time. Let us end this, and pass our judgement.
KYRULE
What judgement shall that be?
DARU
She has gone too far. End her.
KYRULE
(kneeling)
I beg mercy. We have wounded her, taken everything from her already. She is no threat.
DARU
No mercy. This is my judgement. End her.
KYRULE
Please, All-Father. Let me take her sins, give...
DARU
You wish to die too?
Kyrule bows his head, and somehow manages to avoid saying 'yes'.
DARU
(to the assembled other gods)
Does anyone else wish to argue? Or shall this be our judgement for one who has betrayed us all?
They generally Aye.
Azorres shakes his head, looking at the rest of them a bit incredulously.
Veshura and Vitoi exchange rather more disdainful looks, and Vitoi flat-out rolls his eyes. Quite a few eyes. All over the place.
AZORRES
(stepping forward)
Orin. Is this justice?
ORIN
It is the will of our Father, and mine.
AZORRES
But is it justice?
Orin turns, looks at Azorres with nothing short of cold rage.
ORIN
My sister was destroyed. There is no justice.
DARU
Azorres, my dear child. You disagree with our judgement?
AZORRES
I do.
DARU
Anybody else?
Nobody answers.
Sonmi, who even in her great cruelty, had hung back only as support through all of this, turns her empty face toward him, looks between the two of them. But she doesn't remove her mask. She doesn't speak.
Vitoi disappears in a squelch of tentacles.
DARU
(turning away)
Kyrule.
And Kyrule obeys. He raises his weapon (is it his sword? Eapherod's scythe? Both, now?), his face wet with tears.
Eapherod just smiles up at him.
The others look on in utter silence. Deafening.
He slays her. She falls, one last time, to the floor, an empty form, unanswering, unseeing.
Sonmi lets out a laugh, a single, mad cackle, almost unreal even in this unreal place.
Azorres falls to his knees, and Veshura catches him, holding him close.
AZORRES
(almost a sob)
No...
DARU
It is done. Deathdealer, hold what you have taken, and guard it as you have this day.
KYRULE
(tonelessly)
Yes, All-Father.
Kyrule doesn't even look at Daru.
Daru nods, and then he's just gone.
The other gods depart as well, returning to their varied reams, picking up their own scattered pieces.
Sonmi stays. Watches. She always watches.
Azorres just weeps.
Veshura is expressionless as she hugs her little brother, the god of life, who has never seen such suffering. But she, too, is angry.
And then the others are gone. Only Kyrule remains, shaking, as he kneels over the ruined shape of his beloved, and Sonmi, pitiless as the sun, and nearby, Veshura and Azorres, hesitant, uncertain...
Veshura pushes Azorres toward Kyrule, and vanishes as well.
Azorres, finally, goes to him. Touches his shoulder, tries to...
Kyrule looks at Azorres, and in in that look says far more than he should, for he is too hurt himself to prevent it, and suddenly Azorres, too, understands.
Azorres flees.
Kyrule throws back his head and screams.
Sonmi mirrors the gesture exactly, and screams with him.

Chapter 1: House

INT. House entryway downstairs - morning
It's a house. It's not terrible. It's full of plants. Someone upstairs, MORRIS, is yelling at his computer.
MORRIS
(upstairs)
NO! That is not what I told you to do!
There's some clonking at the door, and then a somewhat bundled-up woman, JENNIFER, manages to get it open and stumbles in with some bags, a gust of wind and dust coming in with her. She drops the bags on the floor, pulls a giant witch hat off her head and deposits it on an entire pile of hats, bags, and luggage, shoves her sunglasses up on her head, kicks off her boots, and hangs her coat on top of another coat on the wall.
She's got on a t-shirt and jeans, and two belts with a small purse and some other random bags and stuff, including a sword, clipped to one. She drops that one on the floor as well.
MORRIS
(upstairs)
AGH! What?! No! Don't fucking do that now! Fuck you, don't... on top of... FUCK YOU!
A woman's voice responds, also upstairs, SHANNON.
SHANNON
(upstairs)
Hey, are you okay? What's wrong?
A cat slinks out of another room and sniffs at the bags, nearly trips Jennifer as she starts fishing through them as well, and then wanders off.
MORRIS
(upstairs)
NO I AM NOT FUCKING OKAY! THIS FUCKING DATABASE JUST FUCKING DELETED ITSELF!


INT. House upstairs - morning
The kitchen is also full of plants, mostly hanging, and also some actually useful-looking herbs and such on the counters/sills. The time on the microwave reads 18:59. The time on the stove reads 11:08. Both are wrong.
Morris is at the kitchen island bar-thing with his laptop. On its screen are some tmuxes and a browser with something like a hundred tabs, the current one open to mariadb documentation (the page on something really basic like JOIN or DROP). It shows the correct time as 11:16.
He's staring at a tmux with an expression of confused rage on his face.
Shannon is standing nearby, holding a very ripe home-grown pineapple, staring at him blankly.
SHANNON
(after a somewhat long pause)
That doesn't sound like something that's supposed to happen?
MORRIS
(loudly)
NO IT ISN'T!
SHANNON
(putting the pineapple down)
Okay. Could you please stop yelling?
MORRIS
NO.
Sorry. What?
Shannon shakes her head and pulls some other random fruit out of the mixing bowl, and then gets out a frying pan and some random ingredients.
Jennifer comes in, drops the bags next to the fridge, and comes over and clonks a large book down on the counter next to Morris' computer, the effect of which is only slightly ruined by her having to shove a potted plant and several piles of random crap out of the way first. It's a thick volume, with ageing pages bound in a heavy black hard cover, buckled shut, almost menacing in its size and weight. Its only label is a silvery symbol of a tree set into the spine.
SHANNON
Good morning, Names. Want some pancakes?
JENNIFER
Eh, sure.
(leaning over right next to Morris and yelling very loudly at his head)
HAVE YOU CONSIDERED USING THE RIGHT COMMANDS?
MORRIS
(leaning right back, putting his face right in front of hers, and yelling just as loudly)
NO. NO I HAVE NOT.
SHANNON
Guys, come on.
JENNIFER
(to Shannon)
Sorry, man.
(to Morris)
Why are you up here?
MORRIS
Egh.
(indicating Shannon)
She bribed me. Said she'd make me breakfast if I came out of the cave for a change.
JENNIFER
But you haven't even gone to bed yet.
MORRIS
What's your point?
JENNIFER
It's lunchtime?
SHANNON
No it isn't!
JENNIFER
It's almost noon!
(indicating the stove and microwave clocks)
Those clocks are just... completely wrong.
SHANNON
Not that wrong. And maybe if someone would stop knocking out the breakers, we wouldn't need to be constantly resetting them anyway.
MORRIS
(to Jennifer)
Is she referring to you or me?
Jennifer shrugs and grabs a pair of safety glasses off of another plant and shoves them on her face as she opens the book.
MORRIS
Ah, is that a new i... thing... tablet? Stone age version?
JENNIFER
Yeah, it's odd...
I feel like I've seen it before.
SHANNON
(sounding genuinely confused)
You mean an iPad?
MORRIS
I would never!
Jennifer flips through some of the pages, skimming them, peering at a few very closely. Most of them are blank or don't really have much on them, though others are quite covered in various texts, symbols, maps. She stops on one page, flips back to the index, and then looks back at the page. It's familiar to her, and reads as follows:
: Backstory. Sidestory. Supposition, the antithesis of practice. Nevermind practice. This isn't practice. This is a treatise by the narrator, an examination of could-have-beens, an aside from the GM. We can talk about anything. Let's talk about anything.
: You, for instance. Who are you?
: What do you dream? How far would you go? Do even you know yourself, or will you be just as surprised as all the others when, after all of this, it turns out it was all for jackfruit? You said it yourself, the only true understanding comes from the exploration and discovery.
: Shall we go, then, you and I?
This isn't the important part.
Morris looks over her shoulder for a bit, and then mutters incoherently as he goes back to cloning a backup database.
The frying pan sizzles as Shannon ladles in some batter.
SHANNON
Oh, I never get the first one right. Who likes 'em eggy?
Jennifer turns the page. This one contains even less.
: He was your favourite, your least understood. His world is yours, and yet he no longer is. Can you take his place? They will know you to be him, so long as you don't give up.
She turns the page again, finding only a name.
: Ense Vardaman.
And then all the world is pulled out from under her.

Chapter 2: Arrival

EXT. Abearanoth underhang - day
The air echoes with the sounds of life - a rumble of chatter, the dull hum of simple machinery, the clang of construction and fabrication - amidst the dripping and roaring of water. It's shaded, here, wet and misty, the air a clammy not-quite cold, with strange multicoloured lights hanging from poles, sticking out of beams, affixed to buildings and the stone walls of the cavern itself. The architecture is a mix of fantastical art-deco and several more mundane pre-industrial 'yo we need a house already' styles built on top of and sometimes into each other.
Alleys and roadways snake through it all, lined with bags of stuff, dumpsters, random plant things. Ducts angle haphazardly into and out of the ground. People pass by in various directions, mostly dressed in a garb not quite east-asian, not quite greco-roman in style, though a few wear very, very different sorts, completely out of place, and yet also... not.
In an alleyway, Jennifer suddenly sits up, looking around. Her glasses are fogged up, so she pushes them up on her head, and they bonk into her sunglasses. Most of the stuff she took off upon coming home is also on the ground nearby.
JENNIFER
Ghah, what?
She puts on her boots, stuffs her stuff into a spare bag, and goes to the mouth of the alley, peering down the road, noting the shaded, glowing recesses of the cavern in one direction, and harsh sunlight glinting off buildings past the overhang in the other.
She glances back into the alley. It's a dead-end alley. It has some junk in it. It looks completely ordinary, or what probably would pass as completely ordinary for the rest of the architecture.
She pulls out her phone. Time says 11:19. No service. 22% battery. A fine mist begins to condense on the surface of the phone, too, so she wipes it off. An error pops up, covering the screen ('google play services has stopped working'), and she dismisses it. The same error pops up again, and when she dismisses it again, again. The third time actually works.
She tries to take a random picture, but then the message pops up again, blocking it.
JENNIFER
Right. Good to see you're AS USELESS AS EVER, PHONE.
She stuffs the phone in her back pocket, pauses to stuff her hat back on her head, and heads for the sunlight. Some folks glance at her in passing, but she ignores them, putting on her sunglasses, as well... and then notices a couple have pointy ears. Elves? Really? Elves?
She maybe stares a little too much at those as they pass.
She stops at the edge of the shade, tentatively reaching out to feel the sunlight. It's very warm, but not with the burning intensity she's used to - unpleasant, but not particularly dangerous - and she seems a bit surprised at this. Everything is dripping with humidity.
JENNIFER
(muttering)
The hell is this?
Jennifer briefly considers bothering some locals before just heading on down the street to try to get her bearings, or something.
In the sunlight, the city proper looks much like the parts in the overhang, but with taller buildings and sun and shadow making it all the more dramatic. The stone of the more well-architected older buildings is various shades of pearlescent white, gleaming in the light, contrasting the dark shadows and random colours of the newer construction.
She winds up at some sort of overlook after a bit. Behind her, the higher levels of the city tower in terraced steps of elaborate skyscape, jungled mountains around, waterfall crashing through the middle, but she's looking out over the lower levels reaching out to the sea below. It's a big sea. It has islands and such. It stretches out to the horizon, glittering, and speckled with boats.
Some suspiciously large hovering creatures cavort over the water in the distance. Some suspiciously large insects, much, much closer, buzz around Jennifer's head, and she swats at them.
JENNIFER
Bloody hell.
She turns her back on the sea and looks back up at the waterfall, and around, noting the other landmarks. Several stand out - a group of three towers, connected by an intricate latticework on a level above; a very large singular building with a dome in the middle on a lower level; a bunch of buildings in darker stone across several levels to the... north, apparently? The city faces the sea to the east, in steps down to the harbour levels. To the west, above, is the great plateau, where the wiggle-edged lake sits hidden behind the horizon, from which the river drains.
She knows this.
She mutters, pulls out her phone. Turns it on, and then turns it off again, and then turns it back on and takes some pictures. She flicks back through the pictures, amidst the errors, looking around again, comparing.
Slowly she puts it away again.
This is it. Abearanoth. Cerris. Her story.
And she's probably not dreaming.
Retrieved from ‘https://wiki.zaori.org/w/index.php?title=Black_Book&oldid=4384’

I awoke, only to find that the rest of the world was still asleep.