Chapter LXXXV
In Which Consciousness Brings Unexpected Consequences, and Awareness Expands Outward
I have to tell the truth, I guess, and the beginning of this pretty embarrassing part is that I don’t remember much.
I remember hurting worse than I ever hurt in my life, which I guess makes sense because I never got a stomach wound before that was real. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t lose the pain sensation just because I can heal, but it’s not the same thing to feel a stab with a bullet and immediately fix it, and to spend a long time (felt like hours, Sofia says it was only about one hour, tops) losing blood and dying.
Dying is unpleasant. I think I won’t do it again anytime soon.
Anyway, everything was black and painful for a long time. Kind of makes me curious if that’s how people feel under anesthetics. I don’t think so, though, because the whole point of anesthetics is not to hurt, and I was hurting. I sometimes was mildly conscious, and I could feel that I was being moved about – it didn’t register then, only looking back – but I certainly couldn’t hear anyone, or had any idea what was going on, or cared.
Then something pulled me. First it pulled me back to consciousness. I became aware of myself, and of it, before anything else. I didn’t know what ‘it’ was but, as Sofia would say, ‘it’ was such a nice technical term that I pretty much stuck to it. I still couldn’t see or hear anything, and I still hurt a lot and I’m pretty sure that I was still dying, but I could tell something was very interested in me. I think that if I were actually not wounded and bleeding I would have figured out pretty quickly that something interested in me on a personal level that was so undefined was a magical item, and probably really dangerous but for once I can actually use being half-hallucinating as an excuse, so I’m definitely going to.
I reached out quietly, and felt around me until I found the whatever-it-was. It turned out to be big, round and cold. I am going to again get convenient mileage out of the whole dying thing, because otherwise I could have told right then it was the gem of Etnekhsa. After all, that’s all Sofia and Lorenzo could talk about.
I sort of lay there with my hand on it because I really had no strength to move any more. And that was when magic came back.
There was a surge of energy that I could feel down in my bones, and the gem turned from being cold to being icy. It was suddenly very intent on being picked up, and it was willing to provide the power to help me do it. I took it in my hands – I didn’t even notice when I went from not seeing anything to seeing the whole room, and even further out – and saw the incredible light of the gem. I was holding Power with a capital P between my hands.
Then the gem pulled my mind towards it, and Garent disappeared.
Not entirely. I-- We could still see around us and We felt a spark of interest to what was going on. There were other people in the room and We felt a little concerned for them because they didn’t look so good. But there were other things to occupy Our mind too; there was a storm in the Persian gulf, a small current of wind, really, that was not horribly significant, but wrecked a coastal village and tore down some rocks. There was a wind traveling inland, and We took it and made it go away, because it seemed like a good idea.
Then We focused on Shubat-Anshar, because We were both – all – interested in it. Shubat-Anshar was different, weather-wise, from anything around it, which was the way it was supposed to be. For example, We were supposed to make it rain. So I did.
Rain poured down in tremendous torrents, there was a part of my mind that suddenly realized that there was a lot of rain but We didn’t really mind it, even when the streets turned into rivers and people started sliding along them looking unhappy. Our business was the weather, not the way people felt about it.
You have to realize how it was. Everything was tremendous. The scope that I – that We – could see for was huge. I thought, at the time that I wasn’t just blind for the last few days; I have been blind all my life, and only now I was actually able to see. I could see for half the continent. We were powerful, We were indifferent, We were amoral like all the forces of nature, and We were mostly unconcerned.
We were also cramped. We could feel walls all over, closing in, and it felt like there was not enough air to breathe, though We didn’t need air to breathe and We were pretty sure that We could make more. It was a kind of Jewel-claustrophobia. We shrugged, trying to loosen the binds of stone on us, and a lot of rubble flew out. There were people in that rubble, but We had no idea what they were doing there, and anyway, that was people business.
Of course, some people were our business; the people in the room, for example. The people in the room were fighting a certain different kind of people… I decided to check and make sure nobody was sneaking in on us.
There! There were some of the types of people that We were interested in, and they were running away. That was no good. We figured We’d better take care of the matter. We moved a hand, and decided to sweep them off their feet with a gust of wind. A gust of wind did come out, and sent them tumbling head over heels in a way that was very funny, and very cartoonish; it was a little odd, though, because people aren’t supposed to go flying like that in reality. The city also turned out to be full of houses made of paper, like the Japanese had, because quite a few of the houses went flying after the people, too.
There were some more places where there were runners, and they were dealt with in a similar way. Once, I made the river toss out a nice tidal wave, and frowned in confusion, thinking that it was a little too tall. But then We decided that that was a foolish concern to have, and that the trees swimming in the wake of the wave were needing to be cut down anyway. Unsteady trees are a hazard!
The wind that We set out was coming back to us now, they were converging on the temple, and suddenly I could feel the ground shake. There was a lot of falling stones coming down around our head, and people were shouting and falling.
The part of me that was still Garent managed to catch the shouted conversation.
“He has gone mad with power! If we even approach him, I can’t say what he would do!”
“Are you scared?”
“I am always wary of a person with no sense of scale, madam.”
“Well, Garent is still there, and I am not worried of Garent. In fact, I have the perfect remedy for him.”
There were stumbling footsteps, and then someone was grabbing our shoulders and after a few minutes, someone was slapping me. Hard. I blinked, and the room around me refocused. There was a lot of stonework lying in a circle around my feet, and the walls and floor were shaking ominously. Sofia was forcefully slapping my face.
“Ow! Ow ow!” I dropped the gem from my numb hands, and it clattered to the floor. “It hurts! Enough already! I stopped. You’re always slapping me.”
“Just step away from that gem, if you don’t mind too much.” Sofia prodded it with a foot, and it rolled away. She picked it up, and glared at it sternly. The little voice in my head that was still very interested suddenly went silent. Even powerful magic items can be sensible occasionally, I guess. I certainly was being sensible; I rubbed my check and blushed. “I should have anticipated something like this; you are just too convenient.”
“It seems that Fate has once again conspired to make that slapping necessary.” Lorenzo was actually looking amused. He turned around, and helped Vic to stand and, very slowly, took him over to a big trench in the middle of the room. There was something living in the trench. Sofia, still holding the gem, moved back warily, eyeing the trench with a disgusted look.
The two of them stood by the trench, and there was a flash of green light. Lorenzo let Vic stand on his own, and both of them gave big sighs of relief. Even Sofia looked relieved. I figured that they were both hurt – Lorenzo had his bad knee – and whatever was in the trench was letting them heal. It wasn’t people. I peered towards the trench, and groaned; the entire thing was full of living – now not so living – snakes. I was actually surprised Sofia wasn’t perched on the ceiling, screaming.
Vic scurried out into the corridor and started poking at the rubble. I blinked, confused, but Sofia and Lorenzo didn’t say anything to stop him, so I figured that it made some kind of sense. The three of us looked at each other.
“What now?” Sofia leaned on the wall, and looked thoughtful.
“Don’t we go home?” I don’t think I sounded plaintive, but I can’t be entirely sure. “I really didn’t like it here.”
“Self-evidently, as soon as we’ve figured out the mechanics.” She tried to do something with her hair, which was really messy and flew every which way. “I was rather asking what we are to do about the city.”
Huh? I guess I missed a lot while I was out o it, because I had no idea what she was talking about.
Cynics of the world, unite!
Taking Care of the Multiverse
Chapter LXXXVI
In Which That Which Has Been Will Be Again
Victor Kushan frantically searched through the rubble for the remains of his lost brother. During Mister Wards short, delirious commune with the Gem, a great hurricane-force wind had swept through the room and out the hallway, unblocking it and scattering rocks and body parts throughout. Somewhere among them we were certain to find Rostov Kushans remains and, perhaps, attempt a resurrection.
At the least, we could bring them for a proper burial.
What about the city?
It must be destroyed.
I turned away from the depressing scene towards Garent Ward. He looked back and forth between Madam Rabinovich and me with a puzzled look. I must admit that I allowed myself a small smile at his return to his normal, pre-gunshot, pre-blind state. Madam Rabinovich went on: History demands it.
He gave her a suspicious look. Im missing something here. Wont just taking the gem do it? Rain stops, winds change, place turns to desert
No more people, no more city.
I sighed heavily. Like Madam Rabinovich, I had come to the conclusion that we were living in some sort of stable time loop that our actions here had already happened and that we had to fulfill history. Sadly, this would include the destruction of the temple and the city, something which I suddenly found more distasteful than I could have guessed. That is the traditional view, I said, joining the discussion, but the traditional view considers it a natural climate change. The gem doesnt factor at all and is simply a mythology created by the survivors to explain.
Garent Ward sniffed. I mean the people who actually know what theyre talking about. Historians are totally biased against magic.
You say that like its a bad thing, Madam Rabinovich scoffed. Her and her spouses views on magic were notorious, even if have lightened over the years due to constant evidence to the contrary. If it had not been for some of the serious drawbacks with the present company, she may have preferred to continue living without magic.
While you are correct about the documentation on the subject, Mister Ward, I continued, the notes we have acquired are a bit more specific about the temples final days. I waved the sheaves of paper in the air. What is described here talks about a sudden and intentional cataclysm, not a fifty year long gradual destruction. Of course, we do not know if it is the truth or if it is not also plagued with mistranslations and altered meanings.
Madam Rabinovich shrugged, dust falling off her shoulders as she did so. We have it from multiple sources that the city dies suddenly and without warning. This is just confirmation.
Now it was Garent Wards turn to scoff. It also talked about the Sons of the Gods doing it. You arent seriously going to have us masquerade, are you? He looked between us once again, and read our expressions. Madam Rabinovich shook her head and pointed a finger at him. He blanched. Oh, come on!
With the Gem in your possession, she explained, you could easily bring down such destruction. As already demonstrated. Her eyes narrowed. Assuming you let me slap you again.
Garent Ward took a step to the side, away from her. Not. Necessary.
Of course it wont be necessary, I reasoned, purposefully taking his phrase in a different meaning than he intended, you are no longer half-dead, delirious, and taken by surprise. I imagine your will to be strong enough to utilize it for the few necessary minutes.
Youre asking me to create a storm to destroy a city of tens of thousands of people?
Actually, she gave a small, ironic smile, Im asking you to destroy an empire. The Akkadian Empire dies because of the loss of this city and the climate change caused.
Even better, came the deadpan response. He gave me a sideways glance. I guess I shouldntve complained about those six people you killed earlier.
No, you were right, I replied, much to his apparent surprise. And now I cannot help but wonder if our discussion then does not apply to this as well. We are too ready to destroy this place, destroy so many lives, simply because we feel it must be done
But we are quick to make that decision. Must it be done?
Madam Rabinovich gave me a strange look suspicion and worry mixed into one. I did not feel like explaining my conflicted mental state at the time, and I knew she would not ask then, but I could tell that she was going to quiz me on it later. You know it must. Were in the right place at the right time. If were going into the business of saving temples that shouldve been destroyed, then Ive got a much better candidate.
I smiled. Now, now, madam, you know that if the Second Temple was not destroyed, the world would be changed in fantastic ways. For one, Christianity would never survive as a world religion.
She grinned. Youre not convincing me.
I laughed, and with it, my brief doubt and melancholy faded. She was right, as she often was. I turned to Mister Ward and sighed. She is right we cannot risk changing history in an unpredictable fashion. These people are already dead, and at your hands.
Well, he murmured, I think this time around I can get enough control to avoid killing anybody directly
Letting them die of starvation and exposure is better? Madam Rabinovich crossed her arms over her chest. Theyre going to be in a desert soon enough! You wont be doing any of them any favors by letting them live.
He groaned and ran his hand over his face. He looked unconvinced, stricken even, and I could see him searching his mind frantically for a counterpoint. His face lit up: But wont somebody have to stay behind?
No. Why?
Madam Rabinovich winced. Hes right. If were following the manuscript, then somebody will need to be this hunter god and explain to the people of Anshar what happened.
Ill do it!
We all turned our attention to Victor Kushan, who was returning from the hallway, his face a dark shadow of its former self. He had never known grief, that I knew of, and his most depressing incident was being dumped by a girl; I can only suspect that the loss of his brother motivated him to what would, for somebody not blessed/cursed with immortality, be a suicide mission.
I mentally kicked myself I was still thinking in a world without magic or advanced science. After we returned home, it would only be a minor inconvenience to acquire a time travel device to bring the last Son of God home.
Uh huh. Madam Rabinovich looked nonplussed. Do you speak Akkadian, Victor? Or Sumerian?
Nobody in the group did, though Madam Rabinovich was familiar with them, and I even more so. What I didnt know now, I could take from the natives with a borrowing ritual. Then I should be the one to make the pronouncement. I gave her an amused look. The text is definite on it being male.
Victor Kushan wasnt having any of it. Cant you just magically give me Akkadian? Besides, Im a hunter, literally. It doesnt say so-and-so the Linguist, does it? The Magician?
Madam Rabinovich brought her hand to her head and rubbed her temple. Thats Nachsook, Victor. And Nachsook called Hunter, not Nachsook the hunter. How could you be him if you dont
get the name
ri
Oh no.
We all turned our gazes upon her, filled with worry. She was shaking her head and grimacing. I feared that one of her chronic migraines had returned or worse. Are you alright, madam?
Oh god, the name! She gave me a look that screamed frustration and, above all, annoyance. More mistranslations!
I blinked in confusion, and looked down at the sheet. Nachsook called Hunter, it said, which was not a particularly interesting statement, though I agreed on the strangeness of the formation. I didnt see anything else that screamed out to me. I raised an eyebrow and looked back at her.
Its not Nachsook, she explained, not with a chet. Its a hey Auer probably misread it or changed it.
I frowned. That would make it Nahasook, though, or Neha
Backwards.
Suddenly it dawned on me and I, too, groaned. I had, like Madam Rabinovich and Auer before me, been thinking in terms of the Semitic language of Akkadian, when Nachsook called Hunter wasnt. He thought in English. Nahsook. Nahsuk. Kushan. Kushan the Hunter. Right there in front of us.
What? Victor Kushan looked confused. Whatd I miss?
I explained and he smirked. See! I am supposed to stay here!
Madam Rabinovich shook her head. No. Not you.
I continued rereading the manuscript and hovered over the proclamation Nachsook the Hunter, and I gleaned what the intelligent woman had already deduced. Rostov.
Victor Kushan stared at me, unblinking.
What? Garent Ward peered down the hallway, then back. So were not going to wait for him? Where is he anyways?
Madam Rabinovich and I exchanged worried looks as we realized that he did not know of the events immediately before the return of magic. We continued staring for a moment, as if mentally debating which one of us would give the bad news.
Did I miss something?
Yes, I replied. Mister Kushan did not make it.
He looked unfazed. So? Cant you resurrect him?
I shook my head. We are unable to find his corpse, with our eyes or with magical delving.
So how do you know hes dead? He gestured vaguely down the hallway, indicating the outdoors. He must be alive somewhere if hes going to be this Nachsook person
And you know the rules about not seeing the bodies.
The fact that we have not found any remnants of his from the explosion is particularly telling, I admitted with a shrug of my shoulders. Perhaps, with magic returned, his demon may have retained his hold. Or, since his soul has been claimed but we are in a time before the demon made his deal, it has simply remained and he will take a new body.
So all I gotta do is wait here! Victor Kushan shouted, causing Madam Rabinovich and I to wince.
I shook my head. The instructions here are clear. Nachsook the Hunter said, I read aloud, Know this! The time for your salvation has passed and you face the wrath of your god. My brothers leave
And then And I will wait until that day, when the Sons of the Gods return to His Temple, and greet them with the stories of my sojourn amongst you
His message wasnt for the people, just, but for us for you. He explicitly states that you will leave, and then return later.
When later?
I had no answer.
Garent Ward shrugged. It doesnt matter. We can just test this, right? We get to the future, we go to Ouroboros, and we look back at this point in time and just scroll forward through time till he gives his speech.
And if he doesnt? Victor asked.
Then hes dead, came the reply, and we just screwed up time. But we can go back and have you give the speech then. Except next time around, you make your clues clearer.
Victor Kushan wailed. Fine! Lets just go then.
I looked to Madam Rabinovich, who nodded. We both turned to Garent Ward, who groaned. If were to go, so must the city. I paused a moment and gave a look to Madam Rabinovich, urging her to hand the gem back to him. I will observe more closely and take action if he loses control.
He gave a kind of cynical, hopeless laugh. Oh. Great. Im destroying a country. Ive only ever sort of killed one person before
He sighed heavily, and took the gem.
Global @Diellan - 5M2M
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Virtue Server
Redside: Lorenzo Mondavi
Blueside: Alex Rabinovich
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Chapter LXXXVII
In Which What Has Began, Ends…
I am entirely uncertain as to how one should characterize this sort of occurrence. I would not presume to draw far-reaching conclusions, even now, holding all the pieces in my hands and looking back post-factum. I am, furthermore, disinclined to make accusations that cannot stand the test of verifiability, or would be otherwise fallacious. It is always my inclination, I believe, to see my own responsibility in the manner in which events evolve, and I do not see why, for this instance, I should change from my habitual view. So, let it be thus.
Some things, the good as well as the bad, happened because, in the end, we were all human.
We were all carrying our loves and hates, our burdens of fear and responsibility and the worms of selfishness. Some events in this chain could have occurred quite differently – I still hold, more badly than they did – if I were not subject to my own vanity, and were not there. I could pretend, for a while and without much trouble, that we were, nonetheless, masters of our own fate, and could have done, or not done, as we wished.
Until that letter.
Lorenzo folded away the crackling, thin papers, stuffing them in his coat pocket with a notion indicative of irreversible finality.
He had cause. The letter, presented to us as a rubbing taken off of a wall, was the harbinger of inevitability. It was the clear indication that our destinies, from the beginning, perhaps, were seized from us, and thrown into the loop of the cruelest taskmaster of them all; the linear nature of time.
We had to have been here because we were here before. We had to do all the things we did, because they, like us, were a part of history now. We found the ruins of a temple we ourselves destroyed, and, for us to have found it, we now had to destroy it. I was haunted by paradox.
Garent took the gem from my hands, appearing reluctant. Understandably; he wasn’t yet the slave to inevitability that we, the older, more fatalistic people, have become. He was still fighting it, and the assumption that things could be changed for the better if we only tried lurked in his eyes, just underneath the surface of pragmatic resolve.
“It already happened,” I said, putting into my voice as much conviction as I could. “Don’t think of it as your own voluntary act; the fact that we are here tells us that the deed is done. It helps…” I grimaced wryly. “Sometimes.”
“Sometimes.” He shrugged slightly, indicating a willingness that was altogether fake, but that he was utterly convinced was genuine. Ever the idealist hiding under a pragmatic façade. “It’s not like I have a lot of choice about the matter, it appears.”
“You don’t. Just think of it as my responsibility,” I advised dryly. “I would do it without involving anyone else it’s just that I… can’t. So you have to be my tool.”
“Oh, thanks.” He was riled now, and the hesitation left his face. Which was exactly as it should be. It was easy, sometimes, to force Garent into following a particular path. All you had to do was imply that he couldn’t walk it. I disliked manipulating him, but I could almost feel the time running away swiftly from us, and the future, just waiting to sweep in.
It was a future that I disliked, but it had to come about, after all.
The temple began shaking once again. Ripples ran out of the centre, in which Garent stood like a rock in the eye of the storm and about his forces came, swirling in a maelstrom of nightmarish proportions. The walls shuddered and groaned, the floors danced like rams, and the river outside, though I could not see it, fled with a terrible rush. The altar of the gem creaked like an old case of stairs and the gem itself burned with a light that did not require magical eyes to see.
The storm tugged at me. I could feel the wind gnawing at my skirt and pulling at my hair; a terrible, frantic wind that had no direction and disappeared into nowhere. It wreaked havoc on Lorenzo’s longcoat. He held on to his hat with one hand, driving his swordstick into the floor with the other as a sort of flimsy anchor, so that the wind almost seemed to roar around him, but not touch him at all. Victor covered his face with his hands – perhaps from the wind and perhaps to hide his tears – and hunched over.
I was lost in the havoc.
I could see – perhaps it was in my mind, and perhaps, just perhaps, it was real – the images of the shattering city. The Euphrates – that branch offshoot of it which provided water to the city and irrigated the valley – spilled forth. The water ran over fields and vineyards, drowning everything in its path. Where the water had gone there was… nothing. No new water came to replace it; the river had dried out.
The city was shaking with deep, brutal tremours. Houses toppled down shattered by the tectonic forces. These that resisted the ground’s heaving were torn apart by hurricanes. Trees flew, trunk over leaves, and landed in a shuddering crash. The clouds across the sky seemed to have no pattern at all; they were simply gathering, and gathering, and gathering. When the lightning strike came, it was like a nuclear explosion.
The temple of Anshar was in the epicenter of the destruction. I could hear, dimply, because of the roar of the storm, the sound of stones falling down. Walls were shattering explosively; ceilings caved in and smashed into floors that groaned and broke under the strain. Cracks slithered around the walls of the altar chamber, disconnecting the writing and cutting into the tracery of laylines. The violet glow that illuminated the room with the return of magic had gone out, leaving us all in darkness again. The floor danced a jig and as the tremours of the disintegrating temple grew greater and greater a pressure built inside the room that made the air feel as though it were made of liquid. Then, finally, everything gave with a silent concussive blow.
We were all sprawled on the floor, instinctively covering our heads from the explosion. Garent was on the floor as well, dazed, or perhaps still a little elsewhere. The ggem rolled away, dim and spent, perhaps forever.
The city was in ruins.
I got up slowly – the broken rib and slashed arm, not to mention a thousand bruises, protested abuse vociferously enough to make me want to fold back down again – and stared around in the almost impenetrable darkness. The 5th Column’s bulbs flickered out and died, presumably deprived of a power source when the generator was crashed, rattled or otherwise disabled. The makeshift torch which Lorenzo had used to keep the snakes (I shuddered briefly) away, had also burnt down long since.
There was a muttered word, and the room shone with a sudden burst of white, magical light. Lorenzo was pushing himself up, one hand on the altar of the gem, the other held palm-up to command the magic. Ascertaining that he was intact, I prodded Garent. He rolled over, groaned, and his eyes refocused, snapping out of the apparent concussion. “It’s all over now,” he said a little thickly, and sat up, clutching at his head.
“We saw,” I confirmed dryly, dusting off my hopeless skirt. “We also saw the gem’s backlash.”
“Where’s the gem?” He looked around, and saw the piece of dark, dim stone. “Oh.”
I picked it up, looking first at Garent’s and then Lorenzo’s faces. They both seemed to be just a touch disappointed. I smiled grimly. “Lead us not into temptation,” I quoted piously, and tossed the gem from my hand. Twin sighs of agreement issued from both directions. “I believe we are finished here, gentlemen.”
“But how do we go back home?” Victor was looking around resignedly, and pointing out the obvious fact that, despite the last hour, we were still, very clearly, in Shubat-Anshar of the past, rather than in the present. “I could try and rig together a time machine, but I don’t think I have enough coils and stuff, just in this room.”
“Perish the thought. “ Lorenzo and I spoke simultaneously, both, I was certain, haunted by a vision of days of a muttering Victor, stripping the walls bare in order to make a time machine cabin of rock. After a moment spent shaking my head in dismay, I continued.”We saw Auer put something onto the altar before the vortex swept us up, and I have good reason to believe that this same object might bring us back. It would be expedient, if a little too convenient, to do it this way.”
“Let’s find it and get out of here, then.” Garent stood up, and looked around. He picked up the piece of gem casually, and stuffed the now useless object into his sleeve. “A soubenir, Sofia,” he said at my raised eyebrow.
“I confess…” I mumbled, slightly embarrassed, “I didn’t see just what it was very clearly. Some object… but it was either dark, or so bright my eyes hurt. And there was a gunfight.”
“I’ve seen it before.” Lorenzo, too, bent to the task of looking for the ancient time machine.
“Where?” I blinked at him, confused.
“Actually, madam,” he smirked, “Heinrich Auer himself showed it to me. In Vienna. In a drawing. He attempted to radiate cooperation – successfully, I might add.“ he grimaced momentarily, then brightened again and his hands found something at the base of the altar, beneath the strange clutch of stone cables that held the Shield of Anshar. “And so I have the details of this quite well memorized.”
Of course he did.
“How ironic,” I stared at the key. It, too, had an odd, almost non-Euclidean shape, too confusing to readily follow. I didn’t know how it would fit into any peg, be it square or round. “And here is something even more ironic; we have no idea how to use it. Simply taking it out didn’t seem to work.”
“You could flip it!”
“Excuse me?” I looked down at Victor, who assumed something vaguely reminiscent of his usual, bouncy countenance.
“Flip it!” He gestured with a hand, pretending that he was flipping the oblong object end over end. “You know, everything always works the other way in reverse.”
I felt compelled to laugh. And immediately regretted it. The pain in my chest was almost enough to make me faint.
Lorenzo knelt in front of the altar, and reversed the key, holding out its back end to the front. Solemnly, he moved it forward until the key slid back into its position – now facing the other way around. I could feel the world begin to swim and rotate frantically as the vortex of time was activated again. I reached out, trying to seize Garent and Victor’s hands, but the current was already too strong, and I was drowning in it, all on my own.
I thought about the last few days, all of it from beginning to end: the frantic race across Europe, the worry and search and uncertainty, then the blazing terror of the world of the past. The pain of it swept over me with the pulsing, coming and receding tide of Time; an almost induced pain, oddly external. I could not distinguish between the physical hurts of too much abuse and the mental hurts of a psychological battering. Most especially, though, and most overwhelmingly, the hurt of inevitability covered me from head to toe. It was finished, and yet it would never end, and in a way it hadn’t even started.
Then the waves washed over me, taking me down, tossing me out, and there was nothing, nothing, nothing…
Cynics of the world, unite!
Taking Care of the Multiverse
Epilogue
Excerpt from Days Bygone: The Myth and Legend of the Fertile Crescent, edited by E. Marks and D. J. Smith
Found in the ruins of Nippur, clay tablet and cuneiform from the tomb of Naram-Sin, last Akkadian king, trans. from late Akkadian, N. A. Grodskaya
(fine copy, from the study of Dr. Sofia Rabinovich, Berkeley, CA. Framed wall photograph)
FIN
DJK & EAL, Israel, 2010
Cynics of the world, unite!
Taking Care of the Multiverse
Well, it's over. 87 chapters (plus one epilogue), 374 pages, 155,862 words, and 1 year (almost exactly) later. We'd like to thank @Garent and @Caddmus for the use of their characters (Garent Ward and the Kushans, respectively). Yep, the Five Man Band of protagonists are all characters on Pinnacle (try and guess ATs and Powersets, I dare you), but everybody else was created specifically for the story.
We had a lot of fun writing this, and we're both filled with joy upon its completion and sorrow that its over. It's an odd feeling to sit down and not have the necessity to write weighing down on my shoulders. Not to say that I'm done writing... We just need a bit more planning before we start our next endeavor.
We'd definitely like to thank you all for reading it, and especially to the few people who posted responses in here. It's really nice to know that we don't suck horribly at this. :P
-Dylan
P.S. For the record, we wrote far too much of this with TVTropes open, so virtually anything you can find here as a reference to a trope was done explicitly, including subversions and lampshading (see Victor's API 1000).
Global @Diellan - 5M2M
Mids' Hero/Villain Designer Lead
Virtue Server
Redside: Lorenzo Mondavi
Blueside: Alex Rabinovich
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Chapter LXXXIV
In Which Death Entraps and Belated Understanding Lights the Way
Rostov Kushan was dead.
Rostov was dead, buried under piles of rock and rubble, caught in an almost symbolic embrace with the Warwolf. Apt, perhaps, but not really comforting.
I felt a pang of grief – he was a friend, if such terms are acceptable, for people like us, in a world like ours – and I was sorry, perhaps even horrified, at his death. I tried, in the havoc of seconds, to sort through my emotions, and discovered little more than a sense of consternation; he was dead, and we were in here, dying. Why did all the decent people I know have to die when I had no time to grieve for them?
The corridor collapsed over Rostov’s head, leaving us sealed off in almost complete darkness. The only light remaining to us was the torch at Lorenzo’s feet, reflecting uncomfortably off black, sleek bodies. They hissed.
I shuddered.
The other sources of light were two lightbulbs, which had somehow, miraculously, survived the explosion tucked off in one of the corners. In the light flickered solid, odd shadows, and the air was filled with thick plaster dust, smell of gunpowder and blood. The blood reeked; Garent and Victor were covered in it. I glances at my hands and was amazed to discover, for myself, that small pinpricks of blood covered them, from palm to arm. When I wiped my face off, my hand came away smeared with red – a legacy of the blast. I didn’t even duck.
The light also revealed to me, in slow motion, Victor’s horrible face, set in a soundless howl. Then the world erupted with noise; stone creaked horribly, groaning as it broke, and screams filled the hallway, indicating those who were not quite dead enough. Victor’s cry turned from a soundless mime into a breathless, disbelieving moan. He would have been tearing holes in walls with the sound, and shattering glass, but for the punctured lung.
Lorenzo… I whipped around, to check on him. He was, even with this cacophony of sounds, preternaturally silent.
He was still standing by the altar, holding up his firebrand, and he had the look of Cassandra in the middle of her vision. Wherever he was – I had a pretty good guess where and when – it was certainly not here. He was caught in the middle of a full-blown flashback at the most inconvenient of times.
In a room full of hissing, coiling snakes, I was the most functional person present. I felt like laughing, and found myself clamping down on my hilarity before the hysteria spilled out of me in an unstoppable torrent.
I had to bring them to their senses, somehow. To break their sorrow and possibly funnel it into rage. To make them seethe and apply that anger, to make them think rationally. It was my job to do the worst thing possible, for them, for others, and drag them out from the natural course of grief into reality, tampering with what nature made, and man reinforced. I felt like a disgrace; not that it mattered in any way. Is it any wonder most people hate their jobs?
First, I had to tend to Lorenzo. I could find sufficient human compassion to allow Victor a few more seconds of grief.
I raced – all right, a harsh word, but I nonetheless moved fast – to the edge of the snake trench, where the long, venomous bodies presented a barrier that, as far as I was concerned, stood firmer than any forcefield, or steel reinforced concrete. Five seconds after the blast, and Lorenzo was staring out, unfocused, lost not only in the memory but, no doubt, in the impact of the shockwave. Dust rested, unmoved, on the shoulders of his coat. He stood frozen so still that the flame on the torch in his hand didn’t even flicker.
“Lorenzo!” I coughed, found it hard to project from a throat that was dry and constricted. “Wake up!”
It was no use; I was barely cutting through the noise that was there, much less the noise that wasn’t. I licked my lips and raised my voice as much as I could, wishing that I could simply teleport over the nightmare trench, eyeing it with desperate estimation. “Lorenzo! Snap out of it! Lorenzo!”
I was already getting ready to jump, thinking that if I jumped far enough, and moved fast enough, I could possibly make it through with only two or three bites (a sort of macabre variation on Superman mantras, you see; faster than a striking snake) when his eyes finally refocused, and he actually looked at me. I sighed in relief; whatever things were in his head, he was in the present, and he could take care of them. He knew perfectly well how ‘not helpful’ this was.
Victor was a different matter. He stopped screaming – well, moaning – a bit ago, and now lay, staring with a fixed, frightening expression at the ruins that swallowed his brother. I knelt next to him and shook his shoulder (not too roughly, for fear of the lung). “Victor. We need you to focus.”
“I’m gonna shoot them. Every one.” His voice quavered, but only a little.
“There is no one out there to shoot, Victor,” I pointed at the rubble, barely visible in the flickering shadows. It was, however, visible enough to see that there was nothing there. No corridor left, no place to go. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a nightmarish hand protruding theatrically out of the debris.
“I’m gonna see if bro is alive!”
“There is nothing more you can do, Victor. You are here because you are expected to stay alive. If he’d wanted you dead,” I had to stop and swallow. “He would have told you to come out to him.”
“Shut up!” He closed his eyes, and his lips quivered as though he were about to start crying. When he opened his eyes again, they were belligerent and dry. “Shut up, shutup! I’m gonna dig him out!”
There appeared only one way to respond. I sighed slightly. “Be my guest.”
He made a valiant effort of it. He pushed himself up with a hand, and started rolling over. Behind my back, Lorenzo took in a breath, ready to berate either Victor or, more likely, myself, but I raised a hand to silence him. Victor turned around, and was struggling to get up. He wavered, on arms and knees, and then fainted.
I caught him before he did any more damage, and propped him, sitting up, against the wall. “He'll wake up.”
“What about him?” Lorenzo tilted his head slightly at Garent, who was lying as still as the dead.
I shook my head, giving the only response I could. “It's beyond any doctor now. It's simply been too long. A little more, and even magic will be no use to us. Speaking of… I gather this is not what we need. What do we do now?”
I think this was the first time I'd seen genuine defeat in the man. I have to say; it did not suit him at all. His shoulders slumped from the rigid, trained posture he normally held, and he looked forlorn, guilty, and afflicted by failure. “I... I don't know. I suppose Mister Kushan has just bought us the time to investigate all the writings in this room, but... I don't know if we'll find it.”
I hated the snakes even more.
“Even if we were inclined to starve to death, we don't have all the time in the world.” I gestured at Garent and Victor abruptly, frowning in thought. “The transcription said that they removed the gem, and so took the protection with them. We have removed the gem…” I left the sentence hanging, looking about the room, trying to see the protection, and its disappearance.
“Heinie called it the magen Anshar,” piped Victor in a reedy voice, on the verge of tears, but distant.
“Magen Anshar?” my mouth fell open slightly, and I turned to Lorenzo, the glimmer of an immense idea in my mind. “Where is the text?”
He was, apparently, thinking the same thing, because his hand was already rummaging in his pockets, and then he was extracting a set of crumpled, bloody, dirty notes. He straightened them out in the light of the torch, frowning at the scribbled German handwriting. “’And they took out the gem…’ Yes, yes, we have done that…’…and the Protection of Anshar goes with them.’”
“My God,” I said, staring at the altar. “Here it is. All this time, right there before our eyes.”
“What? What is it? I don't get it...” Victor complained plaintively.
“A mistranslation,” I breathed. “All this time, we've been flummoxed by a mistranslation.”
The pieces clicked together suddenly, and I stared frantically about the room. The protection of Anshar, we had thought, was an immaterial thing, tied to the gem. Not so; the magen was a material thing. “A shield,” I said quietly, “we have to find a literal shield.”
I wanted to scream and hit something. I might have, if I were not being kept busy by peering around the room searching for a shield with one eye, and trying to keep an eye on both my patients with the other. I was almost, almost, tempted to sweat that this mistake was the result of a deliberate misdirection, though I could not, in all honesty, disregard honest stupidity.
Magen, or its near Akkadian equivalent, the root for protection. Change a vowel here, add a preposition there, and the meaning changes accordingly, though it remains related, bound together through the Semitic root morpheme. Magen was the protection, the shield, and the person who protects... if we'd spotted the original right away, we would have been looking at the room in an entirely different manner. The gem, I realized then, had nothing to do with it.
“But where...” Victor choked as he started coughing up blood, “is this shield?”
“Wait a moment.” Lorenzo was staring at the odd, intricate stonework of the altar. I looked as well. Now that my brain knew what it was seeing, I could spot that the internal part of the stonework and its insane, Esherian pattern, was hollow. Perhaps large enough to insert a hand in. Lorenzo struggled to pick it up, but the heavy stone object resisted. He frowned, then inserted his hand into the swirl of stone, looping his fingers about what turned out to be an invisible handle.
Cracks appeared in what seemed to be a solid structure, and the collection of non-Euclidean pipes lifted off its base. An arc of electricity went from the shield to its base and, when it dissipated, the air still felt charged.
Lorenzo and Victor gasped.
By their gasps, I was clear to me that whatever had been wrong with magic before, was wrong with it no longer. It was obvious, too, that they were looking at something startling. Their mage sight was automatic, mine was not, and so I was still simply looking at a room. It was evident to me, however, that their sight was back and so, for a while, I considered it unnecessary to apply mine as well. In the end, though, my curiousity got the better of my sense. I scrunched my eyes and looked.
The room pulsed with magical energy – strands of light purple beyond purple traced through the carvings on the wall, floor, ceiling. The air crackled with power. The lines Victor Kushan had recognized seemed to direct all of this energy into the center of the room, into the altar. The entire thing was some kind of magnifying chamber...
For a few minutes, we were all so busy contemplating this spectacle, that we forgot something vitally important. Snapping out of my light-induced hypnosis, though, I turned on the source of my greatest worry. Together with everybody else.
“Uh oh.”
Garent was on his feet, completely surrounded by the magical light that emanated from the walls. His hands were held out in front of him, and in them, the Gem of Etnekhsa.
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