An Age of Mysterious Memories

Luni, behind Lil, seems demure, especially after my overly-dramatic recent thought of nothing good lasting forever. Lu, My Anchor, I want to get us all through this, but the reality of the situation hits home harder and harder. Kagired is out cold, maybe in a permanent coma. The siege is now starting to hit Solace from the ground and air simultaneously. And I’m the only one of us that can realistically reliably recover between engagements.

She locks eyes with me, hers glistening with tears as she nods, acknowledging the facts. I try not to imagine what the losses of any of these people would do to me on individual levels. They’ve all grown to be part of my heart. Farzhis and Veril would leave me crushed, not getting to see them blossom into the best versions of themselves, or explore what their relationship might become. Illy would leave my heart shredded. Kinzul—we know it’s coming, and I still rail against fate.

Nala, Curator, our grumpy librarian-turned-inventor, her new friend; Tiktik’s lover, Littlebit, losing either would torment me. My eyes itch as my vision blurs, wetness abounding on my lids. Everyone, everyone here is precious. Yui, Yuri, Shiz, Atter, Zelshiz, Miraina, Prinrin, the strategists-eight, our Queens, and more and more. But this is as much wallowing as I can afford, as much time as I can spare to contemplate the upcoming grief in advance.

Xayla hangs out at the edges of the crowd, intensely uncomfortable, and I can certainly relate. Even moreso when Kinzul begins, “All gathered, please heed Schism, for anything that need be said or done this eve. Like our Sun and Tenith, they were instrumental in our salvation this day.”

I wilt more than slightly when all attention suddenly turns towards me. I can feel a thousand eyes boring into me. Well, closer to a few hundred, since there’s not that much space to be surrounded by—Reggie just focus. Right, yeah. Kinzul has done me a favor and gotten people ready to pay attention and return to doing what needs to be done. Alright, let’s get to it Reggie.

Poor Leezahna, she’ll have a permanent tie to my mind in a few minutes. The mind of someone that bullied and terrifies her. Hopefully it comes across the way it’s meant to though, that she’s cared for, appreciated, and protected. I mean, she accepted. I wouldn’t be adding her to psychic networks without her consent. So she, on at least some levels, knows what it means.

While I’m setting up psychic networks, I have Lil work on dumping out the loot he managed to snag from Al’pa’ca’s hoard. And as he’s doing that, I toss everything I’d been able to snag from the horde into the pile as well. There’s a lot of magic in that mound of trinkets, and a fair bit of wealth, which is going to be spent enchanting.

Before I get too caught up in other tasks, or forget, I approach Nala to express my gratitude, “Nala, the elemental focus was, well, pivotal. It won us the engagement, and saved our lives.”

Nodding, Nala’s terse response is, “Yes yes, fine, good that it served its purpose. Unless you need something, shoo shoo Schism, I’ve almost got something here.”

She then balks, and lifts her head from her project to turn her gaze to me as she adds, “Oh, friend Reggie, that was fairly rude of me wasn’t it? I’m sorry. I really am glad you’d been able to put it to use, and made it home. It wouldn’t do to lose our Hero, Sun, or Tenith, let alone all three. I’ll always prioritize projects you hand me, knowing how vital a role they might possibly play.”

Offering her a half smile, I nod gratefully while commenting, “I’m glad to hear it. We’re good, and it really is thanks to you and Littlebit, and whatever confluence of events led to the focus. If you have some time, or can split your own focus, could you curate the items we liberated from Al’pa’ca’s hoard, with the idea of imagining who they’d best go to?”

As I’m asking this, Lucky’s roughhousing with Lil while Lil stacks items and trinkets. Unfortunately, they’re both big, and a bit clumsy when not in battle-focus mode. Disaster strikes. My heart drops into the pit of my stomach when I hear shattering glass. Thankfully, it isn’t accompanied by the sound of metal chains shearing that would indicate derezzing. Less thankfully, what shattered apparently contained something dangerous, or some dangerous things.

A tar-like gelatinous ooze begins to wrap itself around Lucky. There’s no shortage of people attempting to tear it off of him or burn it off of him, but it seems to seep into his fur and flesh, his eyes and nostrils. No. No please no. Not my son. Several voices cry out, “Lucky,” or, “Hound,” or, “Hunter!” with dismay.

Lucky whimpers and whines, but seemingly more from the attention than any sense of danger or self-preservation. As I race to his side, I telekinetically surf above people’s heads to get to him as quickly as I can. Despite being desperately worried for him, most of what I sense coming off of Lucky’s telepathic wavelength is simple embarrassment, or shame. Like any other pup, he lays down and covers his snoot with his massive paws, his tail curled inwards, and his ears flopped low.

The way the goop moved, it was almost like some sort of venomous symbiote finding itself a home. Almost like—King—like a certain form I once had. That smoky-voiced sludge that crept about inside of me in my mite-hulk-king form. Oh Lucky. I hope it isn’t trying to convince you to give up control of yourself. I shoo everyone else away as I lay my forehead on my son’s. I cast about my psychic senses into our bond, but, as in the physical world, Lucky is simply laying down embarrassedly in our shared thinkspace.

Whispering a question into our bond, I ask, “Are you okay boy? You’re a good boy Lucky, no one’s mad. We’re just worried about you. I love you. We all do. Even Pidge and Trixie were trying to get the goop off of you.”

The only responses I can get from Lucky seem like words for sorrow and embarrassment. He’s basically apologizing. Alanea steps up to our side and comments, “Well you’ve certainly gotten a lot bigger since the Heart, huh boy? But not, well, any more graceful it seems. Well, aren’t you such a sweetheart though anyway? When, well, when you and Luni and Lil were at the Enclave, before we ever met, well, I guess your other parent, we certainly went through, well, our share of adventure didn’t we? You’re alright now, well, aren’t you?”

Lucky whuffs quietly in agreement. Someday when we’re not so bogged down with everything, I should really get the story of what happened in the Heart with the Triple L Squad. As is, I’m just grateful to Alanea for the assist. It seems she’s gotten Lucky out of his temporary shame spiral. He’s nuzzling her, and he’s licking her with his enormous tongue. The waves I get from Lucky’s mind are something along the lines of, “Smells like parent.”

That last bit has me blushing to high heavens. I think Lucky means Alanea smells like a Changeling Fae, since she is one, but the implication that my scent is on her, is, ahem, an intimate embarrassment I don’t need to share with anyone else at the moment. Though the minds riding along on mine flash devious grins along our shared psychic networks. Ugh, deviants, the lot of them.

Right, anyway, enough of that. Nala has come out to see the commotion, and is now inspecting the various artifacts and magical items and trinkets we’d picked up from Al’pa’ca, and—. My eyes flash wide. I slump to the ground as my head lolls weakly in a daze. Vacuum tubes. Al’pa’ca had vacuum tube technology. The other place I’d seen vacuum, besides my own voids, was Daffodil’s pump. My heart sinks into the pit of my stomach as dread washes over my countenance I find myself uttering, “Daffodil’s pump. No, no, oh no.”

Having listened in on my thought train, Te puts it together remarkably quickly as well, her own dawning horror painting her face aghast. The others on our psychic links are completely baffled. Teuila’s got that oft-hidden brilliant scientist side of herself, and I plead that she takes the lead on this one. I can’t bear to share the possibility right now. The possibility that we doomed Rayileklia.

Eyebrows around me raise fit to fly off in a flock of their own as the eyes beneath them widen in shock. Thankfully, Teuila handles explaining, “So, when we were at the storming peaky nonsense, my Airhead got a call from the Seck—“ cutting herself off from saying sexy, Teuila pretends to cough, “ahem, Sisters from the mist. Doom and gloom prophecies as usual, wanting poor Airhead to take care of fates of whole worlds and stuff. Go fig. Didn’t really make much sense at the time, since we were on our way to handle it already. But they made it sound like a catch twenty two, like a damned if ya don’t, damned if ya do. Like, all of the possible futures just vanish at some point soon.”

Above the gasps and startled questions, Teuila continues around the sudden cacophony in order to explain our current theory, “Do any of you know how to drill for water, and different ways to pull it up once you’ve hit ground water? Never mind. So fluid volume is displaced by equal volume of—okay, I’m losing you already. If you fill a hole with something, and you yank that something out of that hole, it can drag stuff up with it. Get it? Airhead’s worried that we didn’t know how far down Alpacker’s biz went beneath the crust. Leylines and stuff, maybe all the way to the mantle or core? I don’t know. If it did, yanking free all that Worldstorm energy—.”

Surprisingly, Luni mutters, “Vesuvius…”

Do I even want to know why Lu knows the name of the mountain that steamrolled Pompei on Fakeworld? Or did I tell her about it when I named Vesuviform way back in the day? Blargh. I’ll leave it be. Could this be what the sisters were referring to? Was it a no-win scenario? We save Rayileklia from an overpowered storm-sorcerer, only to doom it to a fiery cataclysm spilling forth from its own bowels?

The snickers and giggles I hear at my mental thought line’s turn of phrase has me rolling my eyes at how un-seriously it sounds like some of my allies and loved ones are taking the news. I know they aren’t though. Humor helps us cope. What do you even do if you believe you’ve doomed the world, or that it was doomed no matter what you did? Glancing towards Luni, hoping for guidance, for some foresight that she possesses, she offers nothing save a sad frown. I silently apologize to her with my eyes for trying to put such pressure and responsibility on her to alleviate my worry.

Shrugging, Kinzul, her voice quiet, and full of regret, yet somehow also carrying a hint of resolve, and hope, says, "I know we can't undo it, and can't go back in time to fix things--."

At that, I begin to giggle, cracking up slightly. Could I do it? Should I do it? Should I risk the egg? A precious, miraculous life like Lucky's, destined to one-day hatch? Risk it on the off-chance that my Time skill allows me to send a message to myself at the right point in my own history to change the course of events? What could the message possibly even be, to which me at which point in time, in order to change this? Maybe the me during my Cosmic King transformation could warp to the depths of Stormspire, slay Al'pa'ca, and return? Just hope that no one else knows how to keep up his experimental spells? Then we'd lose—. I can't bare to think of it.

Ixeyla and Xayla realize what that would mean. My eyes wet with tears. There’s no guarantee that I’m even on the right track with what’s dooming Rayileklia from having a future timeline. Would I really risk our child, the dracorocnix? Would I risk it, and the lives of everyone from the last line of evacuees? I can’t imagine doing so. Tears roll down my face in a ceaseless cascade. I don’t know how to even begin to apologize for even contemplating such a line of thought with Ixeyla and Xayla listening in.

Ixeyla attempts to absolve me, “Hey, Schism, I’d get it. If it were down to it, between the world, and me, no hard feelings if you do what you’ve gotta do.”

Ixey’s sibling Xayla nods numbly along with her in agreement, but I shake my head. Through tears I respond, “It’s not. It won’t come to that. I could be entirely wrong about this prophecy stuff. I don’t even know if I could succeed at altering the course of events if I got a message to myself back at that point in time anyway. If I didn’t? Then I’d lose both of you, and our unborn dracorocnix for no reason.”

I hesitate to add, “Not to mention Shiz, Leezahna, and so many more,” keeping the thought to myself—well, trying to, since my brain is always on display.

Alright Reggie, get it together. People are counting on you. Stop cracking up, and stop contemplating a solution you’d never allow yourself to take anyway. Go on living, without worrying about a dire warning that you could be entirely wrong about. A warning that the sisters gave, in part, to keep you from obsessing, like this, at an inopportune moment.