File: The False Smile, and Despair.jpg (3.4 MB)
I'm not dead?
That is the first thing that comes to mind when you awaken in a bed of frost and tundra. All other things proceed from the fact that despite your best efforts, you remain the living vessel of an apathetic and nihilistic entity that could be very easily mistaken for a god. Falling into the void should have spread you so thin across time and space that your frequency would have returned to the primordial chaos. Lost to all but to those who are searching for you, and even then they would need the right equipment. Perhaps that lovely man will succeed, in time, to separate your frequency from the void
Perhaps he already succeeded. Perhaps that is why you are here in the snow, naked and cold, rather than drifting alone in the void with all of your senses blinded - your existence finally given meaning through its cessation. Could this pain you feel be "happiness"?
[No, that is frostbite] The Threnodian's song echoes in your mind, its babbling more sensible than usual. [The pen moves in admiration of pointless frivolity, for the hand that grasps it would only be used for fruitless endeavors. The desire to fill a vessel born to die with the fruit of life is an admirable thing, yet we are but false words upon the page-]
"Shut up," you growl, taking to your feet. You've no desire to listen to the mad ramblings of Aleph-1 any longer than you have to. "If you've nothing meaningful to contribute, then keep quiet."
[Voidmatter, then.] The Threnodian sings a new tune in your mind. [This place runs thick with it, thy birthright as a childe of stardust. Afore the author's pen sinks too deeply into perverse admiration of thy shape and coloration, twist it into-]
"I remember how to shape it," you grumble.
The thing is right. The Voidmatter is thick here, thick enough to form a Void Storm and yet so mysteriously stable that it does not. It bows to your command, the command of the Threnodian with which you resonate - with which, you are one - and slides between the pattern shaped from your own unique frequency. You do not weave it, but rather allow it to take shape... and its final shape surprises you.
Somewhere between the clothes you wore beneath the ice of Lahai-Roi and the gown you wore into the void. The thousand star-spangled hands of Aleph-1 grasp your arms and legs more gently than before, shaping into a facsimile of gloves and stockings. The rest of the dress is of the night sky as your gown had been, yet punctuated with the warmth that Sigrika insisted upon with every outing to see the Exoswarm.
[This suits you more than the false smile and despair.] For once the wretched creature to whom your frequency is bound says something you can agree with. [More honest, but not the whole truth, for the whole truth does not suit such a devious woman woven of power and lies-]
"I believe I told you to be quiet," you remind the Threnodian before it starts rambling again.
Showing all 16 replies.
>>
>>6424967
You call forth your staff - in truth, a bubble maker you bought from Lollo Logistics, modified for your own purposes - and with it create a bubble of your own frequency to carry you through the sky. Once you've pushed it in the right direction, you lay down within it for a nap. While you haven't had any good food, and you're missing your good friends - especially him - you can, at least, get some good sleep.
While you rehearse for your death, what direction have you pushed the bubble in?
>North, towards a great wall some three hundred feet tall.
>South, towards a swamp and the riverlands.
>East, towards a city that's been bleached white.
>West, towards a castle under siege.
>You let the winds carry you without a thought.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
File: Our Girl.jpg (4.5 MB)
When you awaken from your nap, you can see a city sprawled out beneath you. White stone carved from the cliffside into an old and venerated sort of architecture that reminds you of pictures that you've seen from Rinascita, or perhaps Septimont. He showed you some of those, before you sank into the void to sleep forever and ever. Alas, now you are awake as the city beneath you prepares to go to sleep.
And with wakefulness comes certain needs.
Your stomach growls and your head pounds for lack of food and water. As much as you would love to drift off through the sky in the cradle of your bubble, starvation and a migraine would do your sleep no good. How long has it been since you've eaten anything, anyways?
[The kalpa turns swiftly when seconds become aeons and aeons become seconds.] The voice of Aleph-1 babbles in your head. [The distance is meaningless until a needle pierces the event horizon, for how can you traverse to that which cannot be observed?]
"Shut it." You command, and for a moment the babbling ceases.
Your bubble drifts down towards the city, though the people going about their day would not notice it. Aleph-1 did not lie when it named you a deceitful and devious woman, for you have a talent for trickery and showing people what they want to see rather than what is truly there. In this case, wrapping your bubble in a refraction of light is a simple matter, no more difficult than conjuring clothes from voidmatter.
The bubble pops when you touch down in an alleyway. It makes no noise, not at any frequency that a human could hear, though you do see crows scatter through the air from the sound. Your hand goes for a terminal that is not there anymore; like your original clothes, it was without a doubt lost to the void, though it was designed to survive even the worst case scenarios. It contains an imperfect record of your soul, meant to be studied in the case your frequency collapsed and became one with the void. All researchers had one.
Perhaps that study is why your frequency appears to have dropped out form the primordial chaos? Or perhaps this is the depths of the Somnoire, and you are just an echo of your self.
Hm. Usually Aleph-1 would chime in with something nihilistic when your thoughts trail down such a road.
[Thou hast requested mine silence]
"You never listen," you complain. Well, none of this matters anyways, so you take your staff and you leave this quiet little alley to get a better look at the city.
It's barely a city, by your standards. The streets are too narrow for automobiles, and the lampposts appear to hold oil lamps and torches if they hold anything at all. The ever present hum of electricity in the air in the deep of Lahai-Roi and at its surface stations is conspicuously absent, making it feel more like the Frostlands on the surface. Even then, every creature you see is made of meat and blood, with not a single exoswarm or soliskin to be seen.
>>
>>6425289
Good. Exoswarm never liked you, and you detest soliskin. Not for what they are, but what they represent. The dead should be allowed to sleep, and should not be processed into such horrifically whimsical creatures.
The buildings of the city are well made, well cared for, and - perhaps most importantly - well planned out. A white castle looms from on high, and white stone buildings rise in neat and tidy rows going down to the harbor. Colorful banners hang between the buildings, breaking up the cold and white colors into something much more lived-in. The people adorn themselves in simple clothes that almost remind you of the Frostland Roya; though the colors and patterns are very different, they remain designed for warmth above everything else.
They seem to give you a wide berth and wary eyes. You cannot blame them, for you stand out like a sore thumb. The dress you wear has some Royan motifs in fluffy trim and patterns, but your gloves and stockings glimmer with the thousand colors of the starlit sky. What's more, none of them have a starstack - which, you suppose must be rare outside of Lahai-roi - while your own is... a custom job to say the least.
Rather than a ring constellation of stars, yours is a black hole. The same black hole that peaks through your wide band tacet mark set upon your breast, though you've left that largely covered by a fuzzy, comfortable capelet.
No one comments on it, they're just very wary. Very wary. It's like they've never seen a resonator before.
You follow your nose to a stand that appears to be selling some sort of pastry stuffed with meat and vegetables. Eyeing the coins behind the counter, you reach into your purse and quickly shape voidmatter into their likeness. Copper stamped with a star, silver stamped with a stag. The coins you make carry the same properties of copper and silver - as well as voidmatter's more exotic properties - and will remain in that shape indefinitely.
"How much for one of those?" you ask the man behind the counter.
Unfortunately, he's a bit distracted by your starstack. Maybe recreating it as part of your outfit was a bit overkill, but unlike your terminal you know all about it's inner workings and were able to reconstruct it. It monitors your Rabelle curve, the local environment, and if there were any robots around you'd be able to interact with them and issue some commands. The fact that it might distract the locals did not occur to you.
"Hello...?" you wave your hand infront of the gobsmacked man's face. "Is there anyone in there...?"
A few people in the square whisper to one another, giving you an exceptionally wide berth. You can't really pick up what they're saying, but given their dress they're probably making some sort of commentary about how you're showing off your ankles. The guards seem rightfully wary of the obviously foreign person, but they certainly don't look like they're about to arrest you for spooking the locals.
>>
"Uh, yes..." the man finally speaks, though you had to poke him on the forehead a few times to reset it. What did Siggy call it, percussive maintenance? Maybe this fellow's some human shaped sort of exoswarm, like the fellow he spoke about, who purified corrupted soul records? "What would you have of me, mighty sorceress?"
Eh? Sorceress? Well, you suppose a forte can look like magic, though you haven't really done much with it. Maybe he thinks the starstack is your forte? Whatever. You point at the pastries and ask, "How much for a dozen of these?"
"For you, mighty sorceress, they're free!" The man says something absurd, and you can hear fear in his voice. Really? "I would not want to offend a practitioner of the mystic arts."
"And I would not want to offend those mermaid men over there by stealing from you," you say, pointing at the guards. "So, how much. Is this enough?"
You place one of the silver coins on the table, and the man takes a long, drawn out breath before stilling himself. "You would be overpaying by a factor of three, mighty sorceress."
"Then give me three dozen," you tell him. "I'm hungry."
The man gladly hands over three dozen of those pastries, which look like the microwave sandwiches that Professor Mornye would eat for lunch, but taste far less of preservatives and chemical sweetener. He's gracious enough to give you a bag to carry them all in, and after sealing that up with a small bubble to keep the microbes out, you put them into your purse. He arches an eyebrow when you manage to fit the much larger sack inside of your purse, as though he's never seen a resonation inventory before, but he doesn't comment upon it.
Taking your leave from him, you buy a large mug filled with some sort of juniperberry drink and are on your way. Food status is good enough, sleep status was good enough, if only your good friends - or maybe just him - were around to share it with you.
As you turn out towards the docks with the intention of booking a ship bound for the east, your way is cut off by two of the mermen.
"I didn't break any rules, did I?" you ask, wondering if they noticed you copying coins.
"No, honored sorceress," the guard says. Honored this time, rather than mighty - less fear, and more respect. Wary, wary respect. "On behalf of Lord Manderly, you have been invited to guest at his estate for however long you intend to stay in our fair city of White Harbor. Our Lord assures you he has no intention of standing in the way of your business here, though he would be most honored if you were to attend the feast he is holding for his son's birthday."
You perk up at that. He had brought you a birthday cake, but you never got the chance to taste it. It would have been your first time having birthday cake, so an opportunity like this...
>Isn't one you can pass up.
>Isn't something you're interested in. You want HIS birthday cake to be your first.
>Is one that you need further information on.
>Write in
>>