Early 919, 9th Era, in the weeks after Returning
Various Places in Italdor

Start Over

It was the way of the world, after all. Old world, or new.

The truth, acknowledged though she had some years earlier, did nothing to ease the hard knot in her ribs through the weeks that followed her passing through the White.

Change: The Octurne crashing down, the impossibly tall tower spearing into the earth to the north.

Loss: each of them departing Galoring, by ones and twos, openly or under cover of night with only a message.

Change: Departing herself, to the North, to find answers.

Loss: Losing all contact with the others when the skies cracked and Sending–among many others–shivered and failed.

Change: the lengthening days, the shifting axis of the world.

Loss: Nurie’te, abandoned, broken, much as he had been when they’d rescued him from the Swan caravan.

Change: the entire world as she knew it.

Loss: the entire world, as she knew it.

Change: the powers she worked, the warp and weft of the Stuff and how it came together, rendering some of the things she’d known null, enabling others she’d tried before but not been able to work out.

Loss: the only friends she had. Again.

This was usually the point, if the day hadn’t been quite long enough to send her crashing to sleep before her thoughts started spiraling, when Aloysius would flap his ears, yell in her face, and then lip her hair. It was not always successful at keeping her from weeping, but tears dried better on wiry goat fur than on her own arm.

A World Away

Not all change and loss was negative, however. It took only a few days for Sav to discover that the loss of the old land meant the loss of Isendelian prejudices. As was their wont, they went into the first settlement they found under heavy disguise, a handspan taller, broader in chest and shoulder, pale in skin and dark of hair, to all outward appearances rugged and male. Some lurking near the well in the center of town, refilling his waterskin, gave Sav the welcome news that he could understand people’s speech - they had a strange accent and some odd turns of phrase, but it was decipherable. (That made him think that perhaps this land wasn’t so far away from his own, but later examination of the stars disabused him of that notion.)

Listening as intently to the chatter around him as he could while doing his best to appear like he wasn’t listening at all made him nearly miss the moment when one of the nearby gossipers emphasized a point with a snap of a finger and a sudden sound of crashing cutlery. He jumped, but the motion was lost in the general laughter at the punchline. Over the gossip’s hand, a rain of translucent broken dishes pattered down to their palm, accompanied by the sound of shattering.

Sav stared, forgetting to swallow the water he had put to his mouth. A sudden seeping cold around his coat collar brought him back to the present, and he hastily lowered the waterskin, brushing himself off as best as he could.

So magic wasn’t feared here. He recognized the cantrip, of course; it was one he’d used quite a lot himself. He hadn’t noticed anything else overtly magical, but…

A duck into a public outhouse, ten minutes and a Sense Stuff later told him that, while magic was not available to everyone, it was certainly present. The biggest shock of all was, after some guarded inquiries, being pointed toward the home of the person he was informed was “one of the better defensive mages in Yyolwood.” One of the better. Not the only. Not only doing healing magic, which had a likelier chance of being accepted than what he did.

Change: being able to practice magic, in the open, and simply be regarded as another person with another tool in their kit.

She still kept the main part of her abilities under wraps, of course. After a cursory investigation of the abilities of some of the other mages in the towns and cities she came across, only a handful seemed to have capabilities approaching her own. At least of the sapients, of course. The monsters were another matter. Going between settlements, Sav learned to tread as cautiously as she ever had as a powerless orphan living on the streets of Galoring.

Though it wasn’t always easy to tell who was a sapient humanoid and who was a monster, here. It was common enough to see skin colors far outside the range of earth-tones they were used to, not to mention fur, or scales, or fangs, or people with entire heads or limbs of another creature entirely. Feeling very much like a country rube amidst all the types of folks here, and not wishing to highlight themself as any more of a foreigner than their accent marked them as, Sav tried to limit social contact with people and did most their research the old-fashioned way - breaking and entering into places of learning or wealth that might have information.

A Calling Like a Dream

It was in the midst of one of these research trips that the blue-skinned, white-haired man appeared in front of her, hazy and indistinct, babbling desperate fragments. She very nearly folded space to get out of there, thinking that she’d been discovered by the owners of the bookstore she’d broken into, but a wash of familiarity stayed her casting hand. After a moment, she realized that she’d seen him before, in the dreams that had invaded her sleep every night. She’d thought them simply a result of the mess she’d found herself in, her dreams restless and dwelling on those she’d left behind and perhaps throwing in random pieces from who-knew-where.

Another few words, and she realized that not only had she seen him, she’d spoken with him. Maybe two Turns or so ago now? (Had it really only been that long?) He seemed… less confused, this time, but more careworn and erratic, white hair wild, his voice cracking as he tried to force words through whatever barrier was stopping him. Instinctively, she stepped forward, lifting a hand as though to try and pull him through.

With one last flicker and an urgent, “Moon!” he winked out.

She heard the actual owners of the bookstore coming down the steps, then, and did fold space to get away, stepping through to the pigeon coop she’d scouted out several streets over. Surrounded by the sleepy coos of pigeons, she squatted down, heedless of the droppings coated around her, and pulled out a notepad to jot down the moment as quickly as possible. Aasimar. Confluence. Angels. Moon.

The moon. That was a fabled word, spoken of in ancient tales that came from before the Cataclysm. There had been the Octurne, of course, but the “moon” had apparently been a different thing, round rather than eight-sided, natural rather than constructed. She’d seen similar bodies around other places in the sky, orbiting around other planets like the Stones here did or the Octurne had, but many of them had been small and erratically-shaped rather than perfect spheres, and many more merely bright dots through the telescope of the Observatory, impossible to judge the shape or size. The singular was interesting though. Legends mentioned moons, but they spoke of moons plural, two of them. Now there were none, of course, just the trail of rubble scattered across the sky she’d known as the Shepherd’s Path, among many other names.

Interesting also that aasimar and angels were spoken of separately, when she’d mostly seen them as two words for the same beings. Was he differentiating between the normal skyfolk, like Danica, and what Aluvyn’dralor had become, that corrupted tentacle-faced being? Or perhaps the angels that the people here spoke of, who inhabited the Great White City at the top of the world where the Tower was? If indeed there was any difference between the corrupted skyfolk and the angels here.

Confluence was a word they knew, but nothing of specific importance attached to it. An alignment of the aasimar with the angels? An alignment of a moon with something else? A convocation of some sort? This they left with blanks, having nothing of worth to fill in next to it.

She dreamed again that night, as she had every night since arriving here, of faces past and faces unknown. One of them she could now put a name to. Esmund Clockwright, air genasi. And an urge, pulling her west, along the mountains.

A map on the wall of a tavern, run by a tavernkeep who fancied himself a worldly traveller, gave her a name to head towards. Ivakar’s Passage, a tiny dot said, placed on the eastern side of a range labeled The Daggered Spine, which stood athwart the direction the vague but deep urge was drawing her. Casual questioning led to the answer that it was just a passage-town—”Not grand, you know,” Helmund said, a bit disparagingly, “but has enough for travelers trying to get through the Spine to stock up and make their way through, seeing as it’s the only town of any size along that route. It’s under Lominia’s sway, which is a bit of a strange place, but Lominians aren’t as peculiar as Barylites, at least.” To which Sav nodded politely, them all being strange to her, and left a coin for the meal before departing.

“Oh, yeah!” a dwarven child told her, nodding vigorously. “Me da says we’re descended from Ivakar! Or related somehow, like our great-great-great grandparents were the same? He was sposed to be a great king or something.”

“Does that mak ye Lominian, then?” Sav inquired, curious, to which the urchin wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue.

“Nooooo, ugh, of course not, they’re weird,” but when pressed could offer no explanations beyond, “You know! Weird! Say, you’re not Lominian are you? You do have a strange accent.”

That was not the first and would not be the last time Sav heard that, but at least the child was easy to distract and send off with a simple puppet. It was also simple enough to steal the map off the tavern wall. Rather than steal their next mode of transport, they bought the goat-cart and harness from a farmer, who said she had no more need of it since she was closing down the farm and moving into town nearer family. “Too dangerous out here these days, even just a few hours away,” she said, eyes squinted under decades of perpetual sunset flicking constantly between Sav and the horizon, keeping a watch on her surroundings. “Feel like the monsters’ve gotten more aggressive, and I’m gettin’ too old for this. Living on the fringes is a life for the young and the cussed, and I’m only half of those.”

She helped Sav hitch up the cart to Aloysius, and they trundled west, following the Pull.

So Much Stuff

It took a few more days for them both to find their rhythm of travel again. Rising once rested, traveling for as many candles—no, “hours”—as they could, finding a spot to hide oversleep and conceal with a web of woven light, cooking by the smallest magical fire they could manage, all in a strange, too-even cycle unmarked by the rise and fall of the sun, which made it difficult to tell any time was passing at all. Sometimes a town or a village broke up the pattern, but lone farms and hermits to take shelter with were far rarer here than Sav was familiar with at home; the monsters made it simply not feasible for rugged individualists to survive for very long.

Sav was not particularly rugged, though a bit individualist, but they did have magic on their side. Though perhaps it was just as well that there were few eyes on the road, given the unexpected behaviors coming from the Stuff.

Their bag, for instance. Sav had not thought themself much of a materialistic person, but reaching for their bag only to find it an empty shallow skin had been shattering. When they woke up cradling the drawing of their mother to their breast, they had another crying spell and thought that perhaps they’d simply placed it in one of their inner pockets and forgotten (though it seemed unlikely, they had a good memory and they’d searched every pocket and every lining of every pocket they had, thoroughly).

Hard to assume it was only a matter of oversight when she woke up one “morning” tangled in a ladder, or another time with ninety feet of rope piled haphazardly over her like the world’s scratchiest blanket.

Without the benefit of the bag’s magic, in the interest of speed she was forced to trade or abandon the greater part of the materials collected over time as they slowly filtered back to her. Some things, when they reappeared, she had to inspect with astonishment, having clean forgotten she had it (so much for her memory). Why an enormous, reeking leather belt, hung with desiccated heads, skulls, and shriveled leather scraps of ears? Some vague memory of the mountains around Northgate prodded, but vanished when she turned her attention toward it. She contented herself with making some sketches of the skulls and burning the rest.

The gear and pulley and the fishing tackle she traded for some rations with a little regret—she’d never actually used them, and the Stuff was probably more convenient if it really came down to it, but her whispering sense of what if this all goes away and I have to use only physical tools did not make it easy to let go. The logs from the ruined Swan fort made good kindling for a few nights. She traded the use of a forge, whatever would be left over of the silver ingots and her good set of smith’s tools to do some smithing, fixing a few items, melting the steel ingots and silvering her crossbow bolts and dagger before going on her way. The tools in general were easy to trade for food or other goods, as quality craftsmens’ equipment was always in demand, and she had made sure to take care of them. The soap and the spyglass were an easy decision.

Many of the magical items and potions she’d stuffed in there seemed to have had their magic broken or their ingredients gone inert, the flow of how things worked now twisting and warping and turning unusable. Still, with the slag from the melted Suffering dagger, she nevertheless sealed it inside the core of a melted ball of steel ingots, created a hole at the bottom of the deepest lake she came across, dropped steel and Suffering metal into the hole, and rolled the heaviest boulder she could lift with Stuff over it. Just in case. Pity there was no volcano to drop it into.

Inquisitor Adelard Sylas’ correspondence proved to be a genuinely difficult choice, and they carried around the letters for a solid three grasps—or no, “weeks”—unable to decide. They didn’t read the letters between Sylas and Holland, of course—or rather, to be fully honest, pure curiosity had led them to opening one once, and then half a page in they hastily folded it up and stuffed it back into the envelope, face aflame. The letters between Sylas and Reis they’d read several times over, always with a mix of hurt and outrage, that the Inquisitor had known so little about the woman he’d professed to care for that he didn’t even know the name she’d given to their child.

When Sophronia read it once again and found herself feeling, instead of outrage, a kind of pity and indifference - she knew the false life Reis had constructed for “Safrid” so well now, and the lines of duty Sylas had penned – she figured that was a good sign that the letters could go, and burned them on her cookfire that night.

By the time they’d gone several sleeps without something showing up unexpectedly, they’d whittled down all they owned a considerable amount, and very little of it suspicious or notable in any way. Basic camping equipment. Some gems, for their spellcraft. The tools of the tinker trade, finding it a convenient cover that was also a truth—they did do genuine work as a tinker en route to Ivakar’s Pass. A set of lockpicks (well, perhaps that was slightly suspicious). A goat ring, no longer magic, which they kept for sentimentality and because they liked the look. A white gold-chased stone pyramid and a clear cracked sphere, also no longer magic—though of suspicious origin to anyone who knew. An ivory flute she didn’t know how to play but did anyway of a before-rest, since Aloysius and Samakhael were the only ones around. A seed, teardrop-shaped, which only a few could probably identify as a pear seed. A ragged scrap of cloth, brown with old bloodstains, a little gross, yet something she was unable to give up just in case. The charcoal drawing of Lusira, carefully brushed over with a gum preservative and fitted inside a watertight tube, alongside the letter from Star. Their journal of sketches and diagrams and notes, arcane and mundane alike, written tight in their crabbed cipher. They’d lost some pages of it in places unknown, while some of the things that still remained no longer worked, and the loss of knowledge stung. Despite that, Sav was secretly relieved when, sorting through the familiar pages, they realized they no longer had the notes for creating massive gouts of undifferentiated, indiscriminate flame. They still woke, sometimes, from nightmares of thundering flame and sizzling fat melting off uniformed bodies.

And Nurie’te, of course. Broken, though not quite as he had been before; something else was out of alignment with him, rather than his power source. Without a workshop and better tools, Sav was unable to do very much very often, stealing moments here and there to try out different ideas, most of which elicited no result.

Sometimes the dead-end paths did bring about new, unexpected results, like the thought-paths that eventually led to Samakhael. In a bid to get Nurie’te working again, she attempted to infuse Nurie’te with a little of the same principles that she used to call Aloysius. Rather than infusing the power orb in the heart of Nurie’te, a delicate tracery of gold wires and plates coalesced around the opal she was using as a base to experiment on—and surprisingly, it immediately exhibited signs of intelligence and movement, tilting and chirping at her in a way very reminiscent of Nurie’te. Over time, she started sculpting the homunculus into the form of an elegant clockwork raven, who whirred with the clicking of gears instead of cawing, and usually ended up perched on Aloysius’ horns or haunches. Samakhael proved every bit as bright as Nurie’te had been, though somewhat less powerful and opinionated; it made a good balance against Aloysius, less bright but more opinionated.

One before-rest, working on Nurie’te inside a sheltering cave by the light of a dimly glowing stone, Sav stopped at a stray thought. “Am I,” they said aloud to Aloysius and Samakhael, curled up nearby, “simply making myself more friends because I don’t have them any more?”

Aloysius bleated at her in great annoyance, and Samakhael clicked.

“I know, I’m sorry, an I didnae mean it that way. But it’s like ye an’ food. Ye don’t need it, but ye sure as Harvest want it.” This, said with some asperity. With her new pack limitations, she couldn’t carry as much as she used to, and so simply hoarding food was no longer a question—so whatever Aloysius ate, if it was real food, took it right out of her mouth. “As much as I love ye, I made ye, an that gies a different kindae relation ‘tween us. I can trust that ye’d never leave me, but that’s no because of your own choices ye made, ye ken?”

She sighed. “An I miss hugs. An’ holdin hands.” Although it wasn’t like anyone but Star had done that regularly anyway, and look at how that turned out.

They could feel themself getting mawkish, and so turned their attention hastily back to Nurie’te’s inert bulk, which distracted them enough to make it all the way to sleep without descending once again into grief.

Even so, as she curled up on Aloysius with Samakhael’s curiously-warm metal body tucked into the curve of her belly, she put a hand over the pouch with the drawing of her mother, the pear seed, and the gross bit of tatty cloth, and let her cry herself to sleep, drifting away into dreams of a desperate blue-skinned man, a blonde woman in black armor, and a collection of figures both familiar and strange. For once, Aloysius did not yell in her face, but simply rested his chin on top of her head.

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