Life is fundamentally about incongruity. That is what distinguishes the living from the non-living: unpredictability, mutation, humor. Ugliness and madness are virtues to be extolled for exemplifying that which is most alive, the true nonconformist. True noncomformists inspire discomfort through their asymmetry discharged in laughter. Laughter is the quintessential expression of the path of wisdom. Especially loud, lengthy laughter at inappropriate times.
Followers of the great sage Wastoraskalix, students of the School of the Wisdom of Untimely Humor, erroneously called Laughers by other Anakarix, are widely ridiculed - just as they intend. Not only ridiculed, but also shunned, because the Laughers tend to do what is least expected. They are unpredictable, rude, downright offensive even, and they laugh in the faces of those who get flustered by their antics.
Which is precisely what was happening to Shadowfang.
Starting even before the battle with Goshi something had been making the refugees and soldiers uneasy. Nightmares were increasing in frequency. People sleeping in their tents awoke in the dark screaming, and the SDF continued receiving reports of missing individuals. The idea of looking for a lone missing person in a crowd of 100 million on the eve of the most important battle ever fought was ludicrous. It didn't end with missing persons, though. The nightmares grew worse.
On the first night of the fight the soldiers wept and prayed to the First Minds because every time they closed their eyes they were haunted by visions of their own death. For some that death came on the battlefield, but others never made it through the night. Bodies were found eviscerated in bunkers, spread over 20 meters of tunnel, and bleeding out under their blankets. Some died of lacerations, others from high-powered bullets, others were crushed. There were no patterns except that no one described the killer the same way. Rumors began to spread that the camps had been infiltrated by dozens or hundreds of Goshi assassins.
The panic was the worst part. Among the refugees intense distrust and even violence flared up. The stress of the war compounded by the fear of shadows made people go mad. With every soldier tied up on the front lines, all anyone could do was pray that riots did not break out.
Disdaining participation in the conflict with Goshi, and offering only hearty chuckles for explanations, the Laughers followed the stories of Shadowfang with interest. Through means no one had time to understand the Laughers tracked this silent disturber of the peace. They tracked him, and they pulled his tail.
Up in the forested mountains around Stardown just before dawn, while the whole world flamed furiously with war, a merry game was being played. The Laughers danced, acrobatically around the most imposing Jevumm ever seen, tugging and tweaking his tails, his whiskers, his ears. A flurry of claws and a terrifying roar followed each such taunt. With terrible elegance the cat sliced through lizard scales spraying blood into the air, but the Laughers only giggled louder each time. The wounded party would scamper up a tree out of reach as others took his place. Perched in the branches of the tree his wounds would begin to close of their own accord.
There are nearly 300 students in the School of the Wisdom of Untimely Humor. Every single one of them pinched and prodded and ridiculed Shadowfang mercilessly throughout the night driving him farther and farther into a berserk fury. The roaring of the tiger was drowned out by incessant, maddening, crazy-making laughter. And as Shadowfang grew wearier, the sun was rising and the Laughers were only beginning to wake up.
That is when Boristakan, the Ridiculer, twice ranked Philosopher Degenerate, winner of forty-three debates, the first disciple of Samaranthine the Grotesque, and master of the esoteric art of Qibui dropped into the clearing. Shadowfang wheeled, and recognizing him as the leader hunched in preparation for a leap. Boristakan clacked his lizard tongue against the roof of his mouth in a mocking noise and bobbed his head like a bird. In one breath the Jevumm crossed the intervening space, flying through the air, but Kufu's howl of rage became a whimper of despair.
In Boristakan's hands purple flames sprung to life, doing a merry dance that was reflected in his eyes. Too late to change his direction, Kufu bowled into the chortling Anakarix, feeling indescribable pain as the fire singed his face and neck. Then the whole School was upon him, fists alight with fire, scourging the fur from his body. He twisted and heaved. With Gogajin strength he threw his assailants aside. With Biomade dexterity he sprung through gaps and tried to escape. With Zipsum speed he burst free of that throng and fled squealing across the horizon with his tail on fire.
The members of the School of the Wisdom of Untimely Humor collected themselves. They climbed to the tops of the trees to heal their wounds and greet the rising sun. And they laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
Showing posts with label Anakarix. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anakarix. Show all posts
An Impossible Situation
Night is a time to let the mind wander shaded paths, to slacken one's bright focus. Heavy-lidded, Jin-Kalys is curled around a low table in an out-of-the-way tea-house in Stardown. He has been given freedom to move throughout the city, and is learning to ignore the Cheldrun who are curious to see an Anakarix sitting a tea-house, or going to a public bath, or walking down the street, or buying food with the city vouchers he receives. In the press of refugees and others who have come to the city, it is impossible to hide or to move about surreptitiously. Engineers are busy constructing temporary shelters and buildings on the outskirts of the city. Some arrive with supplies in tow, but as many others do not. Wherever possible, refugees and freedom-fighters are conscripted to work building shelters, digging new drainage, laying new pipes and power cables and so on.
There is the sense that, though there is a great deal of work to do, it need not be of lasting quality.
This will be over all too soon. Word has reached the city (by Zipsum, if nothing else) that Goshi has retreated to Marina, and is organizing some kind of massive military offensive. The hammer is being drawn back, and will be brought down one last time, not flickering Hei-Shi but the whole remaining might of Goshi Mining Corporation, wounded, hemorrhaging money, but far from dead.
Jin is distantly aware of this. He has two tasks in mind as he lounges in the tea-house, relying on the warmth of the tea to help him concentrate. Working after dark is for mammals. The first task is the completion of a sizeable letter in tiny, even, angular script to be delivered to Sighing Web of Trees via well-paid Zipsum messenger. Fortunately, food-vouchers can be traded for candy. In the letter, Jin is primarily concerned with describing his various adaptations of Nine-Branches Formal Logic. Stories of world war are of secondary interest, mentioned only as illustrations. Anakarix can be fearsome opponents if they are defending their tree-villages and particularly the tombs of the sainted lizard sages, but they are hardly a people to trek hundreds of kilometers across the continent to help Cheldrun fight Cheldrun.
It is difficult, but possible, to translate rational argument into purely written form. Jin is relying on an archaic script which retains markings to represent posture and positioning, as if the speaker were physically present. Someday, when this is all over, Jin hopes to return to Sighing Web of Trees to personally defend his theses.
The second task is...difficult to describe. Before he left his village, what seems like years ago now, Jin had made a crucial argument for non-rational processing, ultimately earning his most recent dewlap piercing. He is finding, however, that speaking is easier than doing. To clear the mind, to silence it, to wait patiently for answers to arise - almost impossible.
The conclusion he's reached about the energy-nullifying field that is currently spreading in the center of the city can't possibly be correct. If it is, then the city is doomed until the energy feedback runs out and begins to revert to a static state...and it is very difficult to predict when this will be.
The problem is a simple one conceptually but an impossible one practically. The energy-field steals kinetic energy around it. The obvious result is the intense cold that surrounds the device. Of course, any Anakarix more than a few years out of the Ovumcreche knows that Sol burns because it moves. A poet would say that it dances, spinning recklessly, dizzyingly. The movement, coupled with its immense mass, radiates warmth to the whole solar system. Karia, moving far more slowly around Sol, is far cooler, so that instead of fire, there is warmth for life, arising from the planet and radiating out from Sol. Planets closer to Sol are faster, and therefore of course, hotter, while those more distant are far cooler, moving in far larger ellipses. Karia, at the perfect distance, is the sole world with life, or so the sages say.
Obviously, some kind of intelligent being will have to get close enough to the device to alter it sufficiently. This being will have to carry with it a tremendous amount of kinetic energy, because it will be immediately sapped when it enters the nullifying field. Based on measurements taken at the edge of the field and Jin's careful calculations, aided at many points by Sousauryoku and his various calculating devices, this creature would have to be traveling at a speed that is many times that of sound. This amount of kinetic energy would burn said creature alive, incinerating it even if there was some contrivance by which it could be brought up to that kind of velocity.
There is a second solution, also impossible. The creature could be somewhat slower in the approach, only perhaps as fast as the fastest Zipsum on Karia, but it would have to continuously accelerate once it entered the field. The force required would be tremendous - more like one of the Cheldrun bullets leaving the tube of one of their guns.
Either way, once it reached the device intact, it is...possible...that something could be done. A great deal of energy must be introduced into the system, in order to buy Stardown time and achieve the two ends of the operation: 1) maintain the shield so that Hei-Shi don't rain down on the city and 2) prevent the city from being doomed to a frigid stasis, killing everyone under that selfsame dome.
If this theoretical bullet-creature could reach the device, it would be actually laughably simple to impart tremendous energy into the system - but impossible for any such creature to survive the interaction. Once the energy was imparted to the device, the creature would be left there, frozen and trapped, if it was not obliterated by the impact.
Sousauryoku has another solution, which, on the current theoretical level, is fascinating. He is designing an engine to be placed in the device. The metaphysical problem, of course, is that the device is currently powered by sacrifice, for all intents and purposes. It is fueled by lost potential. But Sousauryoku seems unable to clearly perceive this fact. He wants to understand it in terms of a particular kind of energy as the Cheldrun narrowly perceive it.
The Cheldrun cannot see - their devices are powered by sacrifice. The artifacts that they attribute to their First Minds exact some kind of price. In many cases, they pay it intuitively, not understanding why it is that ritual observances sometimes activate the devices. Even in their mundane technologies - something is expended, lost, in order that something else is achieved. The Mechified burn Blackrock. The Allskins burn incense and chant and hold to ancient ways. It is the Biomade who sacrifice most, but who understand their sacrifice the least, because it is of a kind that even Jin must admit he cannot comprehend precisely. They sacrifice aspects of themselves. They think they are being perfected, but they are only being pared down. In carving a plank, much of the tree is lost. Is a plank better than a tree? The Biomade think so. Jin couldn't disagree more...but it isn't his place to point any of this out.
In the end, however, the rule is the same. It is no different from the ancient stories of the Karians - in the beginning, the Dusk Sages created, and as they did so, they diminished. It is the nature of things.
Jin sighs and puts down his pen, massaging one clawed hand with another, staring off into the night. What will have to be sacrificed, what will have to diminish, before this is over, for better or worse?
He shakes his head abruptly. I need more tea. There is still a lot of work to do.
There is the sense that, though there is a great deal of work to do, it need not be of lasting quality.
This will be over all too soon. Word has reached the city (by Zipsum, if nothing else) that Goshi has retreated to Marina, and is organizing some kind of massive military offensive. The hammer is being drawn back, and will be brought down one last time, not flickering Hei-Shi but the whole remaining might of Goshi Mining Corporation, wounded, hemorrhaging money, but far from dead.
Jin is distantly aware of this. He has two tasks in mind as he lounges in the tea-house, relying on the warmth of the tea to help him concentrate. Working after dark is for mammals. The first task is the completion of a sizeable letter in tiny, even, angular script to be delivered to Sighing Web of Trees via well-paid Zipsum messenger. Fortunately, food-vouchers can be traded for candy. In the letter, Jin is primarily concerned with describing his various adaptations of Nine-Branches Formal Logic. Stories of world war are of secondary interest, mentioned only as illustrations. Anakarix can be fearsome opponents if they are defending their tree-villages and particularly the tombs of the sainted lizard sages, but they are hardly a people to trek hundreds of kilometers across the continent to help Cheldrun fight Cheldrun.
It is difficult, but possible, to translate rational argument into purely written form. Jin is relying on an archaic script which retains markings to represent posture and positioning, as if the speaker were physically present. Someday, when this is all over, Jin hopes to return to Sighing Web of Trees to personally defend his theses.
The second task is...difficult to describe. Before he left his village, what seems like years ago now, Jin had made a crucial argument for non-rational processing, ultimately earning his most recent dewlap piercing. He is finding, however, that speaking is easier than doing. To clear the mind, to silence it, to wait patiently for answers to arise - almost impossible.
The conclusion he's reached about the energy-nullifying field that is currently spreading in the center of the city can't possibly be correct. If it is, then the city is doomed until the energy feedback runs out and begins to revert to a static state...and it is very difficult to predict when this will be.
The problem is a simple one conceptually but an impossible one practically. The energy-field steals kinetic energy around it. The obvious result is the intense cold that surrounds the device. Of course, any Anakarix more than a few years out of the Ovumcreche knows that Sol burns because it moves. A poet would say that it dances, spinning recklessly, dizzyingly. The movement, coupled with its immense mass, radiates warmth to the whole solar system. Karia, moving far more slowly around Sol, is far cooler, so that instead of fire, there is warmth for life, arising from the planet and radiating out from Sol. Planets closer to Sol are faster, and therefore of course, hotter, while those more distant are far cooler, moving in far larger ellipses. Karia, at the perfect distance, is the sole world with life, or so the sages say.
Obviously, some kind of intelligent being will have to get close enough to the device to alter it sufficiently. This being will have to carry with it a tremendous amount of kinetic energy, because it will be immediately sapped when it enters the nullifying field. Based on measurements taken at the edge of the field and Jin's careful calculations, aided at many points by Sousauryoku and his various calculating devices, this creature would have to be traveling at a speed that is many times that of sound. This amount of kinetic energy would burn said creature alive, incinerating it even if there was some contrivance by which it could be brought up to that kind of velocity.
There is a second solution, also impossible. The creature could be somewhat slower in the approach, only perhaps as fast as the fastest Zipsum on Karia, but it would have to continuously accelerate once it entered the field. The force required would be tremendous - more like one of the Cheldrun bullets leaving the tube of one of their guns.
Either way, once it reached the device intact, it is...possible...that something could be done. A great deal of energy must be introduced into the system, in order to buy Stardown time and achieve the two ends of the operation: 1) maintain the shield so that Hei-Shi don't rain down on the city and 2) prevent the city from being doomed to a frigid stasis, killing everyone under that selfsame dome.
If this theoretical bullet-creature could reach the device, it would be actually laughably simple to impart tremendous energy into the system - but impossible for any such creature to survive the interaction. Once the energy was imparted to the device, the creature would be left there, frozen and trapped, if it was not obliterated by the impact.
Sousauryoku has another solution, which, on the current theoretical level, is fascinating. He is designing an engine to be placed in the device. The metaphysical problem, of course, is that the device is currently powered by sacrifice, for all intents and purposes. It is fueled by lost potential. But Sousauryoku seems unable to clearly perceive this fact. He wants to understand it in terms of a particular kind of energy as the Cheldrun narrowly perceive it.
The Cheldrun cannot see - their devices are powered by sacrifice. The artifacts that they attribute to their First Minds exact some kind of price. In many cases, they pay it intuitively, not understanding why it is that ritual observances sometimes activate the devices. Even in their mundane technologies - something is expended, lost, in order that something else is achieved. The Mechified burn Blackrock. The Allskins burn incense and chant and hold to ancient ways. It is the Biomade who sacrifice most, but who understand their sacrifice the least, because it is of a kind that even Jin must admit he cannot comprehend precisely. They sacrifice aspects of themselves. They think they are being perfected, but they are only being pared down. In carving a plank, much of the tree is lost. Is a plank better than a tree? The Biomade think so. Jin couldn't disagree more...but it isn't his place to point any of this out.
In the end, however, the rule is the same. It is no different from the ancient stories of the Karians - in the beginning, the Dusk Sages created, and as they did so, they diminished. It is the nature of things.
Jin sighs and puts down his pen, massaging one clawed hand with another, staring off into the night. What will have to be sacrificed, what will have to diminish, before this is over, for better or worse?
He shakes his head abruptly. I need more tea. There is still a lot of work to do.
The Trial of Jin-Kalys
Jin is getting better at speaking to Cheldrun. It is an intriguing endeavor, and his accent is improving steadily. For example - a rise in volume is interpreted as passion. This adaptation to the unfortunate lack of dewlaps is understandable in retrospect. There is also nuance - a rise in pitch and volume is distinct from a rise in just one or the other. Lowering pitch can be accompanied even with a reduction in volume to lend psychological force to the words. When threatening, for example, or even, oddly, when seeking a mate to fertilize your eggs. No, not eggs. Bare embryos.
Jin has the opportunity to put his newfound knowledge to use. The Stardown Council, such as it is, has convened an impromptu trial for the purpose of dealing with Jin's humble self. The issue of certain injuries (and fatalities, he thinks, glancing at Varissa, restrained nearby) sustained by security officers at Stardown Technology and Research, as well as various instances of property damage, including the manipulation of a sacred First Mind artifact, need to be resolved legally.
Briefly stated: there are a large number of angry, confused Cheldrun who aren't sure whether to execute him or reward him. Drawn-out proceedings have not served to clarify the matter. (Oddly, Sousauryoku has remained silent throughout, watching Jin thoughtfully.) As the trial has dragged on, Jin's breathing techniques have enabled him to control the bubbling impatience swelling inside of him at the sight of so much addled and imprecise cogitation.
Jin has his thoughts on the matter of his execution, of course, and they are now expressed in a well-carrying, lowered voice, in order to impart intensity of feeling without the implication of desperation.
"Ladies and gentlemen. August personages of the Stardown Council. There are a plethora of reasons not to execute myself and my companions at this time. At your invitation, I will now endeavor to humbly present some of them before you, at which point you will of course deliberate and render your judgment in this matter.
"A large portion of our story has already been rendered to you, piecemeal, I believe you would say, so I will not belabor those points. What seems to be germane is my intent in coming here, and the extent to which my actions were commensurate with achieving that intent within the confines of the law.
"I am not versed in Cheldrun law, but I will offer the statement that I did not in fact kill or permanently injure any Cheldrun, and any of my companions'...indiscretions...can perhaps be attributed to the matter of expedience. That is to say, as you can see, it takes a long time to explain what it was we were attempting.
"In coming here, I was guided by a mathematical and philosophical model which is, among other things, a polyvalent heuristic discernment device." Nothing. "Hem. That is, the model enables me to take into account certain discrete data and to analyze and refine it for the purpose of perceiving interconnections and predicting future ones." Some blinking and open mouths. Am I speaking to fish!? "Rather...it enables me to...mathematically predict the future."
Now they understand, but they are quite unconvinced. The bailiff, who is monitoring Jin's allotted time, shouts for silence until he's finished. About half of the gathered mob is no longer really paying attention. Jin smooths a dewlap and remembers to count his breath.
"If you are seeking verification, you could of course turn your attention to the vast purple energy field which is currently protecting you from Hei-Shi attack. I was able to determine how to accomplish that feat, from a considerable distance in time and space, using this model. I was able to locate an underground research facility, and to utilize a seemingly unconnected resource, that is, the last Vorax egg on Karia, to charge the device in such a way as to accomplish my task." Sainted lizard sages! This is a fine feeling. No piercing for this, because these are hardly worthy adversaries, but they are listening now. The facial expressions might be deemed...grudging, but still.
"Feel free, if I may say so, to explain all of that however you like. It was not even my primary objective in coming here. I believe that you are now aware of the threat that is approaching. Has, in fact, already arrived. You call it the Enemy. I would call it a Probable Extinction Nexus. Regardless..." the bailiff is gesturing to Jin - his allotted time is running out in which to make his legal defense, though he has abandoned thoughts of legal defense at this point. They will hopefully perceive that legal considerations are indeed ancilliary to what is truly at stake.
"Regardless of our differences in nomenclature, we share an existential threat that will either exterminate everything...or it won't. That threat is connected to the Wandering Star. It is, of course, not a star at all. Whatever it is - and I am quite determined to discover this - whatever it is, the Probable Extinction Nexus is connected to it inextricably.
"And so, I propose...no, I intend - to tear it out of the sky, to bring it down in a holocaust of friction as it plummets through the upper layers of the air, to finally be rent apart and incinerated when it impacts the ground. It needs to impact the ground so that it does not cause a tsunami which will threaten coastal settlements. It will doubtless expel millions of cubic meters, in your measurement system - which is quite an elegant base-ten system by the way once one learns to utilize it - of particulate...but the Wandering Star will be gone. I have the entirety of my calculations in your notation if anyone is interested..." Jin eagerly proffers a stack of mottled, slightly burnt paper with tiny, precise handwritten numbers and symbols and diagrams covering both sides of each page, the painstaking work (especially since much of it was actually done while camping in the jungle with a Gogajin and a Jevumm) the result of months of meticulous effort.
Slowly, Sousauryoku's hand goes up, and Jin allows himself a smile. Sousauryoku merely stares enigmatically. Everyone else in the room is staring at Jin, but they express no interest in the fruits of his cognitive labors.
No one else in the room matters.
"I know how I can accomplish this. I created the field to prevent the Primary Dissolutionary Element - in this iteration, Goshi Corporation - from interfering. At this juncture, it is necessary that we...that we tip the balance in favor of not becoming extinct.
"I see my time is up. Thank you."
Sousauryoku stands up from the plaintiff's seat before anyone can rally any kind of response to that kind of barrage.
"August members of the Council, I hereby drop all civil charges, on the condition that this Anakarix and his two companions be remitted to my care for the duration of their stay in Stardown." He walks forward - the bailiff, somewhat flabbergasted, does nothing to intervene - and gently takes the stack of paper from Jin's clawed hand.
"If this is garbage, I'll know soon enough, and you will disappear." He has lowered his voice, and the intensity is no doubt intended to be interpreted as threat and confidence.
Slowly, Jin's dewlaps extend, displaying an arresting motley of crimson, violet and bright solar orange, immediately making him appear larger and more threatening in a cold, reptilian sense. His piercings, the marks of honor and of the victory of ideas, clink together musically. "If the work of the sainted and eternal lizard sage, Asterakalys, the Helio-Synthesis model, as I have applied it through nine-branch formal logic, is proven to be garbage, then you can do with me what you will."
Jin has the opportunity to put his newfound knowledge to use. The Stardown Council, such as it is, has convened an impromptu trial for the purpose of dealing with Jin's humble self. The issue of certain injuries (and fatalities, he thinks, glancing at Varissa, restrained nearby) sustained by security officers at Stardown Technology and Research, as well as various instances of property damage, including the manipulation of a sacred First Mind artifact, need to be resolved legally.
Briefly stated: there are a large number of angry, confused Cheldrun who aren't sure whether to execute him or reward him. Drawn-out proceedings have not served to clarify the matter. (Oddly, Sousauryoku has remained silent throughout, watching Jin thoughtfully.) As the trial has dragged on, Jin's breathing techniques have enabled him to control the bubbling impatience swelling inside of him at the sight of so much addled and imprecise cogitation.
Jin has his thoughts on the matter of his execution, of course, and they are now expressed in a well-carrying, lowered voice, in order to impart intensity of feeling without the implication of desperation.
"Ladies and gentlemen. August personages of the Stardown Council. There are a plethora of reasons not to execute myself and my companions at this time. At your invitation, I will now endeavor to humbly present some of them before you, at which point you will of course deliberate and render your judgment in this matter.
"A large portion of our story has already been rendered to you, piecemeal, I believe you would say, so I will not belabor those points. What seems to be germane is my intent in coming here, and the extent to which my actions were commensurate with achieving that intent within the confines of the law.
"I am not versed in Cheldrun law, but I will offer the statement that I did not in fact kill or permanently injure any Cheldrun, and any of my companions'...indiscretions...can perhaps be attributed to the matter of expedience. That is to say, as you can see, it takes a long time to explain what it was we were attempting.
"In coming here, I was guided by a mathematical and philosophical model which is, among other things, a polyvalent heuristic discernment device." Nothing. "Hem. That is, the model enables me to take into account certain discrete data and to analyze and refine it for the purpose of perceiving interconnections and predicting future ones." Some blinking and open mouths. Am I speaking to fish!? "Rather...it enables me to...mathematically predict the future."
Now they understand, but they are quite unconvinced. The bailiff, who is monitoring Jin's allotted time, shouts for silence until he's finished. About half of the gathered mob is no longer really paying attention. Jin smooths a dewlap and remembers to count his breath.
"If you are seeking verification, you could of course turn your attention to the vast purple energy field which is currently protecting you from Hei-Shi attack. I was able to determine how to accomplish that feat, from a considerable distance in time and space, using this model. I was able to locate an underground research facility, and to utilize a seemingly unconnected resource, that is, the last Vorax egg on Karia, to charge the device in such a way as to accomplish my task." Sainted lizard sages! This is a fine feeling. No piercing for this, because these are hardly worthy adversaries, but they are listening now. The facial expressions might be deemed...grudging, but still.
"Feel free, if I may say so, to explain all of that however you like. It was not even my primary objective in coming here. I believe that you are now aware of the threat that is approaching. Has, in fact, already arrived. You call it the Enemy. I would call it a Probable Extinction Nexus. Regardless..." the bailiff is gesturing to Jin - his allotted time is running out in which to make his legal defense, though he has abandoned thoughts of legal defense at this point. They will hopefully perceive that legal considerations are indeed ancilliary to what is truly at stake.
"Regardless of our differences in nomenclature, we share an existential threat that will either exterminate everything...or it won't. That threat is connected to the Wandering Star. It is, of course, not a star at all. Whatever it is - and I am quite determined to discover this - whatever it is, the Probable Extinction Nexus is connected to it inextricably.
"And so, I propose...no, I intend - to tear it out of the sky, to bring it down in a holocaust of friction as it plummets through the upper layers of the air, to finally be rent apart and incinerated when it impacts the ground. It needs to impact the ground so that it does not cause a tsunami which will threaten coastal settlements. It will doubtless expel millions of cubic meters, in your measurement system - which is quite an elegant base-ten system by the way once one learns to utilize it - of particulate...but the Wandering Star will be gone. I have the entirety of my calculations in your notation if anyone is interested..." Jin eagerly proffers a stack of mottled, slightly burnt paper with tiny, precise handwritten numbers and symbols and diagrams covering both sides of each page, the painstaking work (especially since much of it was actually done while camping in the jungle with a Gogajin and a Jevumm) the result of months of meticulous effort.
Slowly, Sousauryoku's hand goes up, and Jin allows himself a smile. Sousauryoku merely stares enigmatically. Everyone else in the room is staring at Jin, but they express no interest in the fruits of his cognitive labors.
No one else in the room matters.
"I know how I can accomplish this. I created the field to prevent the Primary Dissolutionary Element - in this iteration, Goshi Corporation - from interfering. At this juncture, it is necessary that we...that we tip the balance in favor of not becoming extinct.
"I see my time is up. Thank you."
Sousauryoku stands up from the plaintiff's seat before anyone can rally any kind of response to that kind of barrage.
"August members of the Council, I hereby drop all civil charges, on the condition that this Anakarix and his two companions be remitted to my care for the duration of their stay in Stardown." He walks forward - the bailiff, somewhat flabbergasted, does nothing to intervene - and gently takes the stack of paper from Jin's clawed hand.
"If this is garbage, I'll know soon enough, and you will disappear." He has lowered his voice, and the intensity is no doubt intended to be interpreted as threat and confidence.
Slowly, Jin's dewlaps extend, displaying an arresting motley of crimson, violet and bright solar orange, immediately making him appear larger and more threatening in a cold, reptilian sense. His piercings, the marks of honor and of the victory of ideas, clink together musically. "If the work of the sainted and eternal lizard sage, Asterakalys, the Helio-Synthesis model, as I have applied it through nine-branch formal logic, is proven to be garbage, then you can do with me what you will."
At a Loss for Words
All the noise makes reading very difficult. The irritation is like a itch that doesn't need scratching just yet, but you might pre-empt it with a lazy claw before it gets out of hand.
"Would you kindly quiet down? I need to concentrate."
Sloan grunts as he plants the blunt end of the haft he's holding into yet another security soldier's face, snapping his head backward and making his knees buckle. He flinches as a shower of stray bullets tears past him and hammers against the far wall.
"I swear by Ben Hamor that if these bloody ::grunt:: bastards ::crack:: ever get tired of gettin' knocked on their asses ::thud::, I'll bloody well kill you!"
Gogajin. So excitable! Amazing they have any semblance of society at all.
Varissa is out of feathered shafts and is behind Sloan, crouched, ready to hamstring any that get past with her wicked curved blades. She glares at Jin and shows her teeth to him.
Jevumm, of course, have not even a semblance of society, and not for the first time, Jin is happy that the blood covering her arms up to the shoulders is not his; yet at the same time regretful that he has been forced to endure such odd bedfellows (as the Gogajin say - something about mammals sleeping in groups).
But there are more important things to concern him now. Jin needs to activate this fantastic Cheldrun device, and he can't find any kind of instructions anywhere on it.
The device itself offers no hints as to how it functions, exactly. It does not draw on a visible power source (the Cheldrun use veins called cables to carry mechine-energy, Jin knows). It is simply a textured cyllindrical object, dull black, with six spokes rising up from the edges of it, a bit like metallic teeth. In the center on the top a small circular depression is visible. There are what appear to be written characters etched into the surface at regular intervals - not Cheldrun, even more alien.
Jin sighs, and for a moment notices that Sloan is on the floor grimacing in a small pool of blood. Varissa leaps through the air, shifting into a massive hunting cat in mid-air. She slams into the first soldier who tries to enter through the wrecked security door and disappears in a spray of gore. Jin blocks out the screaming from outside the room which is now echoing in the hallway. He notices a device he's always been curios about.
It is, he believes, a data port. Data, as in ontologies; port, as in the place where Cheldrun oceangoing vessels accumulate to disgorge their cargo. It appears to have two cables attaching it to a pair of orifices in the wall. He touches it gently with the tips of his claws, presses the button that bears the symbol the Cheldrun use for the transmission of energy into or out of a mechanical device. The data port lights up and he flinches back as a ghostly, pixellated image erupts out of the device.
He smiles a long smile, and begins manipulating the keys of the machine, assembling Cheldrun words in order to instruct the machine to reveal what it contains. He quickly finds the collections of information pertaining to the device in the room - the data port seems to have been used as supplemental memorization for whoever has been working with the device thus far. The notes are laborious to read, clearly written by a borderline imbecile who needs to record every detail of every activation method attempted.
Finally Jin finds what he wants, slows to read very carefully, unblinking.
Both Sloan and Varissa are outside the room now, shouting to each other. There is the percussive thudding of bodies against floors, walls...ceiling? A collective shout and Sloan is driven back through the door into the room, his feet sliding in the blood on the floor, grappling with four soldiers. A fifth soldier climbs through the wreckage, sees Jin near the wondrous device, and raises his weapon.
A small sign escapes before Jin's dewlaps erupt in a riot of bright colors. His mouth opens suddenly and with a coughing sound he sends a spray of acidic fluid into the face of the soldier. He falls back, wiping frantically at his face and then beginning to scream as he drives more burning fluid into his eyes. The other four soldiers have dragged Sloan down the floor and they are trying to beat him into submission. Jin hunches and leaps, catching one of their helmets in his claw as he passes over the mound of struggling mammals, jerking the soldier's neck and unbalancing him - Vorax-Snatches-Zipsum. Another tries to rise and Jin ducks down, whirling, his tail slamming into the soldier's shaky legs and sending him sprawling - Rising-Water-Trip. As he falls Jin snatches a truncheon from his belt and cracks the temple of a third soldier who has lost his helmet entirely.
The first soldier has righted his helmet and lunges at Jin. They fall in a tangle, but Jin quickly maneuvers out of his grasp, scuttles around to his back and grabs his limbs with clawed feet, left hand, and tail, immobilizing them with a Relentless-Clinging-Vine technique. With his free hand, Jin pulls off his helmet and beats his skull with it until he goes limp.
Sloan, covered entirely with blood, rises to his feet, gasping for air, looking at Jin with his mouth hanging open. "You -"
"Behind you."
He turns just in time to grapple with a fresh soldier. "Reinforcements!" Varissa shouts from out in the hall. Sloan grimaces. "This had better be worth it you bloody lizard." Jin just watches, unblinking.
He turns from the tumult to the device, bends down, and begins depressing areas around a specific series of "First Mind" runes (whatever Cheldrun fallacy that represents). With the last one, the device begins to shift and change. It comes alight, the runes shining out and projecting their images on the walls in bright purple light. As the device shifts and swells, the runes move in whirling patterns. Jin steps back, watching raptly, revealing its internal workings.
There is a chamber at the center through which its energy passes, from the Power Core to the Differential Layer. It is designed to hold a special substance in inertial suspension, altering the charge of the energy passing through before it is projected outward. But the machine has an immediate effect as well - the room quickly begins cooling as particles slow and vital energy dissipates. Jin feels a tremendous weight when he tries to move, and the hallway is suddenly quite quiet. He slowly, gruellingly reaches down into the padded satchel that he's been carrying for months now, reinforced by a careful geodesic latticework of reeds to protect the Vorax egg from being broken. Jin heaves it out of the satchel, already slowing down drastically, feeling an overwhelming need to go to sleep. His steps shuffle forward toward the device.
Clawlength by clawlength he heaves the egg outward and upward, bathed in flickering purple light, until it comes into contact with the stasis field at the center of the machine. Suddenly it slips into the field effortlessly. He watches, heavy-lidded, a distant part of him grinning in triumph, as the egg is burned, cracks, and is incinerated by the energy, rendered from sold and fluid to a colloid inside the chamber. The colloid has its effect, imparting its unique charge to the energy passing through the chamber.
There is a blinding flash of purple light that passes through Jin's body, through the walls of the chamber, outward until it passes through the streets of the city, outward and upward, a rising tide of shimmering purple light, First Mind runes crawling across the surface of the bubble of radiance that is quickly rising to cover the entirety of Stardown, stretching even further, kilometers in every direction, passing over villages and towns and farms, until it comes to rest at last, a vast purple dome.
At first there are screams, panic, scattering, shouting, alarms, and then the sounds die away, until the vast city of Stardown falls silent, watching the dome of light cover them until even the light of the sun takes on a faint purple tinge, seeing the ancient runes on its surface and feeling that they are somehow both alien and familiar, like a half-remembered dream.
Hei-Shi break from their stupor of suprise, their ear-pieces exploding with frantic traffic. They attempt to activate their Dis-Locators...and nothing happens. There is a faint sound of burning circuitry. Nothing.
About this time, Stardown rises up. Hei-Shi blood flows, broken blue armor is stuffed with straw and rags and burned in effigy. Goshi representatives sent to maintain the peace are chased through the streets and beaten by mobs. Goshi monitors are smashed and torn down by shouting revolutionaries. The city scrambles to find some way to respond.
They are suddenly at war.
"Would you kindly quiet down? I need to concentrate."
Sloan grunts as he plants the blunt end of the haft he's holding into yet another security soldier's face, snapping his head backward and making his knees buckle. He flinches as a shower of stray bullets tears past him and hammers against the far wall.
"I swear by Ben Hamor that if these bloody ::grunt:: bastards ::crack:: ever get tired of gettin' knocked on their asses ::thud::, I'll bloody well kill you!"
Gogajin. So excitable! Amazing they have any semblance of society at all.
Varissa is out of feathered shafts and is behind Sloan, crouched, ready to hamstring any that get past with her wicked curved blades. She glares at Jin and shows her teeth to him.
Jevumm, of course, have not even a semblance of society, and not for the first time, Jin is happy that the blood covering her arms up to the shoulders is not his; yet at the same time regretful that he has been forced to endure such odd bedfellows (as the Gogajin say - something about mammals sleeping in groups).
But there are more important things to concern him now. Jin needs to activate this fantastic Cheldrun device, and he can't find any kind of instructions anywhere on it.
The device itself offers no hints as to how it functions, exactly. It does not draw on a visible power source (the Cheldrun use veins called cables to carry mechine-energy, Jin knows). It is simply a textured cyllindrical object, dull black, with six spokes rising up from the edges of it, a bit like metallic teeth. In the center on the top a small circular depression is visible. There are what appear to be written characters etched into the surface at regular intervals - not Cheldrun, even more alien.
Jin sighs, and for a moment notices that Sloan is on the floor grimacing in a small pool of blood. Varissa leaps through the air, shifting into a massive hunting cat in mid-air. She slams into the first soldier who tries to enter through the wrecked security door and disappears in a spray of gore. Jin blocks out the screaming from outside the room which is now echoing in the hallway. He notices a device he's always been curios about.
It is, he believes, a data port. Data, as in ontologies; port, as in the place where Cheldrun oceangoing vessels accumulate to disgorge their cargo. It appears to have two cables attaching it to a pair of orifices in the wall. He touches it gently with the tips of his claws, presses the button that bears the symbol the Cheldrun use for the transmission of energy into or out of a mechanical device. The data port lights up and he flinches back as a ghostly, pixellated image erupts out of the device.
He smiles a long smile, and begins manipulating the keys of the machine, assembling Cheldrun words in order to instruct the machine to reveal what it contains. He quickly finds the collections of information pertaining to the device in the room - the data port seems to have been used as supplemental memorization for whoever has been working with the device thus far. The notes are laborious to read, clearly written by a borderline imbecile who needs to record every detail of every activation method attempted.
Finally Jin finds what he wants, slows to read very carefully, unblinking.
Both Sloan and Varissa are outside the room now, shouting to each other. There is the percussive thudding of bodies against floors, walls...ceiling? A collective shout and Sloan is driven back through the door into the room, his feet sliding in the blood on the floor, grappling with four soldiers. A fifth soldier climbs through the wreckage, sees Jin near the wondrous device, and raises his weapon.
A small sign escapes before Jin's dewlaps erupt in a riot of bright colors. His mouth opens suddenly and with a coughing sound he sends a spray of acidic fluid into the face of the soldier. He falls back, wiping frantically at his face and then beginning to scream as he drives more burning fluid into his eyes. The other four soldiers have dragged Sloan down the floor and they are trying to beat him into submission. Jin hunches and leaps, catching one of their helmets in his claw as he passes over the mound of struggling mammals, jerking the soldier's neck and unbalancing him - Vorax-Snatches-Zipsum. Another tries to rise and Jin ducks down, whirling, his tail slamming into the soldier's shaky legs and sending him sprawling - Rising-Water-Trip. As he falls Jin snatches a truncheon from his belt and cracks the temple of a third soldier who has lost his helmet entirely.
The first soldier has righted his helmet and lunges at Jin. They fall in a tangle, but Jin quickly maneuvers out of his grasp, scuttles around to his back and grabs his limbs with clawed feet, left hand, and tail, immobilizing them with a Relentless-Clinging-Vine technique. With his free hand, Jin pulls off his helmet and beats his skull with it until he goes limp.
Sloan, covered entirely with blood, rises to his feet, gasping for air, looking at Jin with his mouth hanging open. "You -"
"Behind you."
He turns just in time to grapple with a fresh soldier. "Reinforcements!" Varissa shouts from out in the hall. Sloan grimaces. "This had better be worth it you bloody lizard." Jin just watches, unblinking.
He turns from the tumult to the device, bends down, and begins depressing areas around a specific series of "First Mind" runes (whatever Cheldrun fallacy that represents). With the last one, the device begins to shift and change. It comes alight, the runes shining out and projecting their images on the walls in bright purple light. As the device shifts and swells, the runes move in whirling patterns. Jin steps back, watching raptly, revealing its internal workings.
There is a chamber at the center through which its energy passes, from the Power Core to the Differential Layer. It is designed to hold a special substance in inertial suspension, altering the charge of the energy passing through before it is projected outward. But the machine has an immediate effect as well - the room quickly begins cooling as particles slow and vital energy dissipates. Jin feels a tremendous weight when he tries to move, and the hallway is suddenly quite quiet. He slowly, gruellingly reaches down into the padded satchel that he's been carrying for months now, reinforced by a careful geodesic latticework of reeds to protect the Vorax egg from being broken. Jin heaves it out of the satchel, already slowing down drastically, feeling an overwhelming need to go to sleep. His steps shuffle forward toward the device.
Clawlength by clawlength he heaves the egg outward and upward, bathed in flickering purple light, until it comes into contact with the stasis field at the center of the machine. Suddenly it slips into the field effortlessly. He watches, heavy-lidded, a distant part of him grinning in triumph, as the egg is burned, cracks, and is incinerated by the energy, rendered from sold and fluid to a colloid inside the chamber. The colloid has its effect, imparting its unique charge to the energy passing through the chamber.
There is a blinding flash of purple light that passes through Jin's body, through the walls of the chamber, outward until it passes through the streets of the city, outward and upward, a rising tide of shimmering purple light, First Mind runes crawling across the surface of the bubble of radiance that is quickly rising to cover the entirety of Stardown, stretching even further, kilometers in every direction, passing over villages and towns and farms, until it comes to rest at last, a vast purple dome.
At first there are screams, panic, scattering, shouting, alarms, and then the sounds die away, until the vast city of Stardown falls silent, watching the dome of light cover them until even the light of the sun takes on a faint purple tinge, seeing the ancient runes on its surface and feeling that they are somehow both alien and familiar, like a half-remembered dream.
Hei-Shi break from their stupor of suprise, their ear-pieces exploding with frantic traffic. They attempt to activate their Dis-Locators...and nothing happens. There is a faint sound of burning circuitry. Nothing.
About this time, Stardown rises up. Hei-Shi blood flows, broken blue armor is stuffed with straw and rags and burned in effigy. Goshi representatives sent to maintain the peace are chased through the streets and beaten by mobs. Goshi monitors are smashed and torn down by shouting revolutionaries. The city scrambles to find some way to respond.
They are suddenly at war.
Accidental Freedom Fighter
Jin blinks slowly. He can see the glistening scratches curving evenly along the inside of the gun barrel - "rifling" is the Cheldrun word for that method of scoring the barrel. To impart a rotational force on the round when it is expelled, helping it maintain its trajectory for more of its swift parabolic arc. In the darkness, deep in that barrel, he knows there is a bullet, surrounded by a casing, seated on top of a charge of explosive powder. They make the powder in it from charcoal and urine, if such a thing can be believed. The barrel is shaking slightly, making it hard to see more of the mechanisms clearly. How are old casings expelled to make way for new ones? Perhaps the explosion itself provides the motive force...
"Just...stand right fucking there and don't fucking move!" The Stardown Technology and Research security soldier holding the weapon is already sweating, though the ambient temperature and humidity inside this building are carefully controlled. The machines are called "compressors" and Jin is anxious to see one in action. The soldier speaks into a box on his shoulder. "Captain, captain...we've got a...a fucking lizard up here, and...what the fuck? No one's supposed to be in here!"
"I am not a lizard, I am an Anakarix, which any reasonably educated -"
"Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Lizard." With the last explosive phonemes he jabs the end of the weapon into Jin's chest. He doesn't even ask how I can speak Cheldrun. I suppose only their leaders are ingenious, and use ones like this for menial tasks.
The Cheldrun grunt continues to mumble into the box on his shoulder - doubtless a distance-communicator of some sort - and Jin has time to reflect. He'd wished that his first close-up view of a gun would be at a time of more leisure.
***
When it came down to it, Jin was unable to convince the Griolsa to mar their sacred Blade, so it became necessary to travel up and over the roots of Ben Hamor to the ancient site where a star had fallen to earth long ago. The contours of a telltale impact crater were clearly visible, and using a lodestone floating in a bowl of water, Jin was able to locate a fragment of the superheated star-metal which had been used to forge the Blade. Taking this back to the village, Sloan had successfully, under Jin's direction, forged a sort of chisel, which was then mounted on a sturdy hardwood haft and reinforced with steel.
"This should suffice." The edge, laboriously sharpened to a brilliant keen line, caught the afternoon sun. Jin couldn't even lift the thing, but it was like a training-rod in Sloan's meaty fist.
"How d'you know?"
Jin pursed his lips and said "Heuristics of course." Which settled nothing, but the longer explanation helped not a whit.
***
When they encountered their fist logging camp, still many days from Stardown, Jin insisted on going to speak with them and see if they could find a way to negotiate safe passage. He was immediately accosted and tackled to the ground, then wrapped in a net by two impolite Mechified guards who handled him like a bundle of twigs - until a bloom of thick arterial blood blossomed in one of their throats, the shaft of Varissa's arrow buried almost to the fletching.
The second died similarly. That night, Varissa dined on all the raw Cheldrun she could eat, while Sloan and Jin exchanged queasy looks and shared the last of Sloan's mashed oats.
Jin never asked how many she killed, but she smiled for days.
***
It was surprisingly easy to enter Stardown. The city had descended into chaos as various groups attempted to resist the grip of Goshi. When challenged by a particular group - the Stardown Freedom League - Varissa was able to produce a pair of severed Hei-Shi heads, communicators still in their ears, wearing almost comical looks of surprise. One was missing an eye because she had replaced it with an arrow. Jin could still see the image of her languorously licking it clean after she removed it.
Predictably, the various resistance groups failed and were forced underground, or in less fortunate cases executed on closed-circuit viewing screens mounted throughout the city. Otherwise, the screens showed flashing Goshi commercials and news of Goshi victories as city after city was forced to surrender, either by the teleporting Hei-Shi or by Washi San mecha.
The message: The age of corrupt politics is at an end. Commercialism is the new world order, and the market shall rule forever after.
Roving death-squads made people view the claims of meritocracy with more than a little skepticism.
But none of this concerned Jin. He was busy reading - every leaflet, every scrolling news story, every broadsheet, ever official document, street signs, trade-'zines, everything. Sloan made the mistake of asking.
"The heuristic process begins with information-saturation. From this information is derived the salient question, and from it variables are also inferred. We then move to the algorithmic stage wherein mathematico-logical processes are utilized to eradicate the erroneous terms, leaving only the ontological relationship expressed in its most elegant form. This form, a system of mathematical relation, is then applied through the governing model, in this case a modified, shall we say nona-iterational -" he took a moment to savor the invented word, then continued "heliophilic formal logic, essentially nine-trees formal logic squared, differentiated and then reintegrated. The resulting schema will give you the two foci. The second focus is the mathematical representation of that which you have found. The answer."
After that, Jin found he had all the alone-time he needed to run the numbers. Once complete, the answer was clear. Obvious, really.
***
Stardown Technology and Research had been working on a final prototype of a revolutionary inertial dampner, a kind of fail-safe security system which would immobilize everyone within its field of effect, sapping the ambient kinetic energy away from them. Given enough time, it would in fact freeze them, but this would be sufficient to stop any kind of violence, incursion, and so on. The head of the project, an Allskin genius (Jin didn't use the term lightly) named Sousauryoku, was widely considered certifiably insane. He was famous for having invented an incredibly inefficient weapon which fired metal projectiles using only electromagnetic force, claiming it was based on lost First Mind technology.
What wasn't widely known was that he did in fact have a First Mind artifact, and had discerned how to activate and, to a degree, control it. It was designed to manipulate forces at a distance - hence the idea for the revolutionary defense system.
***
Which brings us to Jin, standing near a security door in the Stardown Technology and Research facility, staring down the barrel of an automatic rifle. (Sousauryoku's electromagnetic gun design was far too expensive to actually use to equip mere security personnel.) Until now, security had been quite light. The real difficulty was in finding the installation, deep beneath the city proper, built in an abandoned underground train-tunnel purchased from the government years ago. And of course, once the necessary conclusion became clear, Jin realized there was only one place it could be.
Suddenly, Jin throws his arms in front of his face (they can't stop bullets!) and collapses to the ground, just as the soldier's knees buckle and he collapses bonelessly to the concrete floor. Sloan is standing behind him, hefting a rifle he's using as a bludgeon for a second strike.
"I think" Jin says, standing slowly, "that will be sufficient. Just smash open that last security door, and we'll be there." Jin's clawed hand unconsciously slips down to rest on the thick, padded pouch hanging from one shoulder. It is thoroughly reinforced to resist impact and insulated against heat and cold, but it is a gesture of habit. Sloan drops the rifle and hefts the heavy chisel forged from the star-metal.
The first blow hammers deep into the metal of the door like an axe to balsa wood.
Jin wonders when Varissa will be finished and will rejoin them. If ever. In a few minutes, it will hardly matter.
"Just...stand right fucking there and don't fucking move!" The Stardown Technology and Research security soldier holding the weapon is already sweating, though the ambient temperature and humidity inside this building are carefully controlled. The machines are called "compressors" and Jin is anxious to see one in action. The soldier speaks into a box on his shoulder. "Captain, captain...we've got a...a fucking lizard up here, and...what the fuck? No one's supposed to be in here!"
"I am not a lizard, I am an Anakarix, which any reasonably educated -"
"Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Lizard." With the last explosive phonemes he jabs the end of the weapon into Jin's chest. He doesn't even ask how I can speak Cheldrun. I suppose only their leaders are ingenious, and use ones like this for menial tasks.
The Cheldrun grunt continues to mumble into the box on his shoulder - doubtless a distance-communicator of some sort - and Jin has time to reflect. He'd wished that his first close-up view of a gun would be at a time of more leisure.
***
When it came down to it, Jin was unable to convince the Griolsa to mar their sacred Blade, so it became necessary to travel up and over the roots of Ben Hamor to the ancient site where a star had fallen to earth long ago. The contours of a telltale impact crater were clearly visible, and using a lodestone floating in a bowl of water, Jin was able to locate a fragment of the superheated star-metal which had been used to forge the Blade. Taking this back to the village, Sloan had successfully, under Jin's direction, forged a sort of chisel, which was then mounted on a sturdy hardwood haft and reinforced with steel.
"This should suffice." The edge, laboriously sharpened to a brilliant keen line, caught the afternoon sun. Jin couldn't even lift the thing, but it was like a training-rod in Sloan's meaty fist.
"How d'you know?"
Jin pursed his lips and said "Heuristics of course." Which settled nothing, but the longer explanation helped not a whit.
***
When they encountered their fist logging camp, still many days from Stardown, Jin insisted on going to speak with them and see if they could find a way to negotiate safe passage. He was immediately accosted and tackled to the ground, then wrapped in a net by two impolite Mechified guards who handled him like a bundle of twigs - until a bloom of thick arterial blood blossomed in one of their throats, the shaft of Varissa's arrow buried almost to the fletching.
The second died similarly. That night, Varissa dined on all the raw Cheldrun she could eat, while Sloan and Jin exchanged queasy looks and shared the last of Sloan's mashed oats.
Jin never asked how many she killed, but she smiled for days.
***
It was surprisingly easy to enter Stardown. The city had descended into chaos as various groups attempted to resist the grip of Goshi. When challenged by a particular group - the Stardown Freedom League - Varissa was able to produce a pair of severed Hei-Shi heads, communicators still in their ears, wearing almost comical looks of surprise. One was missing an eye because she had replaced it with an arrow. Jin could still see the image of her languorously licking it clean after she removed it.
Predictably, the various resistance groups failed and were forced underground, or in less fortunate cases executed on closed-circuit viewing screens mounted throughout the city. Otherwise, the screens showed flashing Goshi commercials and news of Goshi victories as city after city was forced to surrender, either by the teleporting Hei-Shi or by Washi San mecha.
The message: The age of corrupt politics is at an end. Commercialism is the new world order, and the market shall rule forever after.
Roving death-squads made people view the claims of meritocracy with more than a little skepticism.
But none of this concerned Jin. He was busy reading - every leaflet, every scrolling news story, every broadsheet, ever official document, street signs, trade-'zines, everything. Sloan made the mistake of asking.
"The heuristic process begins with information-saturation. From this information is derived the salient question, and from it variables are also inferred. We then move to the algorithmic stage wherein mathematico-logical processes are utilized to eradicate the erroneous terms, leaving only the ontological relationship expressed in its most elegant form. This form, a system of mathematical relation, is then applied through the governing model, in this case a modified, shall we say nona-iterational -" he took a moment to savor the invented word, then continued "heliophilic formal logic, essentially nine-trees formal logic squared, differentiated and then reintegrated. The resulting schema will give you the two foci. The second focus is the mathematical representation of that which you have found. The answer."
After that, Jin found he had all the alone-time he needed to run the numbers. Once complete, the answer was clear. Obvious, really.
***
Stardown Technology and Research had been working on a final prototype of a revolutionary inertial dampner, a kind of fail-safe security system which would immobilize everyone within its field of effect, sapping the ambient kinetic energy away from them. Given enough time, it would in fact freeze them, but this would be sufficient to stop any kind of violence, incursion, and so on. The head of the project, an Allskin genius (Jin didn't use the term lightly) named Sousauryoku, was widely considered certifiably insane. He was famous for having invented an incredibly inefficient weapon which fired metal projectiles using only electromagnetic force, claiming it was based on lost First Mind technology.
What wasn't widely known was that he did in fact have a First Mind artifact, and had discerned how to activate and, to a degree, control it. It was designed to manipulate forces at a distance - hence the idea for the revolutionary defense system.
***
Which brings us to Jin, standing near a security door in the Stardown Technology and Research facility, staring down the barrel of an automatic rifle. (Sousauryoku's electromagnetic gun design was far too expensive to actually use to equip mere security personnel.) Until now, security had been quite light. The real difficulty was in finding the installation, deep beneath the city proper, built in an abandoned underground train-tunnel purchased from the government years ago. And of course, once the necessary conclusion became clear, Jin realized there was only one place it could be.
Suddenly, Jin throws his arms in front of his face (they can't stop bullets!) and collapses to the ground, just as the soldier's knees buckle and he collapses bonelessly to the concrete floor. Sloan is standing behind him, hefting a rifle he's using as a bludgeon for a second strike.
"I think" Jin says, standing slowly, "that will be sufficient. Just smash open that last security door, and we'll be there." Jin's clawed hand unconsciously slips down to rest on the thick, padded pouch hanging from one shoulder. It is thoroughly reinforced to resist impact and insulated against heat and cold, but it is a gesture of habit. Sloan drops the rifle and hefts the heavy chisel forged from the star-metal.
The first blow hammers deep into the metal of the door like an axe to balsa wood.
Jin wonders when Varissa will be finished and will rejoin them. If ever. In a few minutes, it will hardly matter.
...For Binding Things Together
(This is Part 2 of A Talent for Binding Things Together - Part 1 is the previous post)
Sloan is with Angus as usual. He's spent a lot of time with Angus as he recovers, slowly but surely, wounds healing and leaving scars, scars smoothing out. He's still marked; he will be marked forever, but Sloan is helping him pull himself back together. He's out working, was out soon after he came home, but now he pulls his weight, stands tall, is proud.
There is a soft knock and the sound of a throat being cleared. Its the noon rest-time, gleanings from the field still lying out in heaps, to be gathered when the air starts to cool.
Sloan gets the door, and standing outside is a lizard standing on its hind legs, swaying slightly, bright-eyed, carrying a chunk of slate in both hands like it can barely lift it. Its covered in some kind of scratchy scrawl and whorling lines intersecting each other.
It blinks. "You must be Sloan. I was told I could find you here."
"You were told right." Sloan flashes a grin, but there's a suspicious gleam in his eyes that doesn't leave. "You looking for me?"
It nods. Smiles uncomfortably. "Yes. I was. Am. We need to talk, you and I. I have a proposition for you."
"A - a what?"
Pause. "A quest."
Sloan's look smooths, says 'go on...'.
"It...it involves a Jevumm." He tenses. Jin quickly continues. "And the Griolsa Blade. And a great deal of mathematics, which - don't worry, that's my part - where was I? Yes. And a city called Star-Down. And saving the world."
Another pause. A laugh that threatens to swell out of control. "You too, eh? You missed your caravan, friend. All that's here is work and rest and mead, and every other good thing. I've got no notion of leaving."
"I have thought of that. Perhaps you are thinking that you are needed as a worker? In exchange for your help, I will help your village for years to come. I can design a barn from local materials which will reduce the amount of grain you lose to pests in the fall and winter dramatically. That means less hunger. No lean times, at least until your numbers swell healthily once again, and then you can build another barn like it. And the drainage of your fields encourages insects to lay their larvae in the standing water. You are all quite robust, but it would help not to get fevers every spring, yes? A few days of hard work and you won't have to worry about that."
"Look, lizard, I mean no offense, but -"
Surprisingly, Jin steps closer. Sloan can smell his breath, a slight burn in his nostrils. "Listen. I can't make you come with me. With us. All I can do is talk to you. Yes? So let's talk. You have some respite before you have to return to the fields. I will help your village either way, because I see that I can help you and not delay my mission significantly. A lot has happened recently, some of which you know, some of which I can only guess. But I can connect some things for you, bring some sense to it. There is...an elegant underlying symmetry, which is manifesting as we speak. It is elegant like an adder - if we do nothing, it is just as lethal. And you are part of it. Let me talk, and you just listen, for two hours. Then we will call your clan together and I will explain my plans for the barn and for the improved drainage. Then, if you wish, we will 'raise the barn', I believe the expression is, and dig the new channels. Then I will go, and I hope you will go with me. Yes?"
Sloan watches him for a moment, sips his mead, then sips it again, longer. "How did you learn Gogajin?"
Jin blinks. "That is another story."
"You want me to come with you, you say. But we just met."
"I can see patterns. I have someone with me who can seek things out. I need someone with a talent for binding things together. You may not know, but he" Jin points to Angus "will live a long, happy life because of you. You are capable of much more. Just two hours. Then we help your village. Then...then we will see."
Sloan nods slowly. "Alright. Talk, lizard, but I'm not going to stop drinking."
Jin's mouth quirks at the corners. "That is for the best. The alcohol will likely help. Now..." he enters the house, puts the slate down with a sigh and shakes his claws to get blood to return to them. He continues, "Now, imagine that you are the sun, standing in a flat elliptical field, surrounded by nine trees..."
It takes a lot longer than an hour.
Sloan is with Angus as usual. He's spent a lot of time with Angus as he recovers, slowly but surely, wounds healing and leaving scars, scars smoothing out. He's still marked; he will be marked forever, but Sloan is helping him pull himself back together. He's out working, was out soon after he came home, but now he pulls his weight, stands tall, is proud.
There is a soft knock and the sound of a throat being cleared. Its the noon rest-time, gleanings from the field still lying out in heaps, to be gathered when the air starts to cool.
Sloan gets the door, and standing outside is a lizard standing on its hind legs, swaying slightly, bright-eyed, carrying a chunk of slate in both hands like it can barely lift it. Its covered in some kind of scratchy scrawl and whorling lines intersecting each other.
It blinks. "You must be Sloan. I was told I could find you here."
"You were told right." Sloan flashes a grin, but there's a suspicious gleam in his eyes that doesn't leave. "You looking for me?"
It nods. Smiles uncomfortably. "Yes. I was. Am. We need to talk, you and I. I have a proposition for you."
"A - a what?"
Pause. "A quest."
Sloan's look smooths, says 'go on...'.
"It...it involves a Jevumm." He tenses. Jin quickly continues. "And the Griolsa Blade. And a great deal of mathematics, which - don't worry, that's my part - where was I? Yes. And a city called Star-Down. And saving the world."
Another pause. A laugh that threatens to swell out of control. "You too, eh? You missed your caravan, friend. All that's here is work and rest and mead, and every other good thing. I've got no notion of leaving."
"I have thought of that. Perhaps you are thinking that you are needed as a worker? In exchange for your help, I will help your village for years to come. I can design a barn from local materials which will reduce the amount of grain you lose to pests in the fall and winter dramatically. That means less hunger. No lean times, at least until your numbers swell healthily once again, and then you can build another barn like it. And the drainage of your fields encourages insects to lay their larvae in the standing water. You are all quite robust, but it would help not to get fevers every spring, yes? A few days of hard work and you won't have to worry about that."
"Look, lizard, I mean no offense, but -"
Surprisingly, Jin steps closer. Sloan can smell his breath, a slight burn in his nostrils. "Listen. I can't make you come with me. With us. All I can do is talk to you. Yes? So let's talk. You have some respite before you have to return to the fields. I will help your village either way, because I see that I can help you and not delay my mission significantly. A lot has happened recently, some of which you know, some of which I can only guess. But I can connect some things for you, bring some sense to it. There is...an elegant underlying symmetry, which is manifesting as we speak. It is elegant like an adder - if we do nothing, it is just as lethal. And you are part of it. Let me talk, and you just listen, for two hours. Then we will call your clan together and I will explain my plans for the barn and for the improved drainage. Then, if you wish, we will 'raise the barn', I believe the expression is, and dig the new channels. Then I will go, and I hope you will go with me. Yes?"
Sloan watches him for a moment, sips his mead, then sips it again, longer. "How did you learn Gogajin?"
Jin blinks. "That is another story."
"You want me to come with you, you say. But we just met."
"I can see patterns. I have someone with me who can seek things out. I need someone with a talent for binding things together. You may not know, but he" Jin points to Angus "will live a long, happy life because of you. You are capable of much more. Just two hours. Then we help your village. Then...then we will see."
Sloan nods slowly. "Alright. Talk, lizard, but I'm not going to stop drinking."
Jin's mouth quirks at the corners. "That is for the best. The alcohol will likely help. Now..." he enters the house, puts the slate down with a sigh and shakes his claws to get blood to return to them. He continues, "Now, imagine that you are the sun, standing in a flat elliptical field, surrounded by nine trees..."
It takes a lot longer than an hour.
A Talent...
(This is Part 1 of A Talent for Binding Things Together)
Gentle, cool rain falls off of Jin-Kalys' scales in rivulets. Spring in Griolsa territory.
But he doesn't notice the rain, except to note that it is making him sluggish. Sol is hidden behind glowering clouds, promising more precipitation. About thirty reaches ("meters", the Cheldrun measurement he's learned, rises unbidden to his mind) distant, a trio of massive Gogajin are huddled together, speaking softly, glancing at him periodically. Nearby there is a pile of stones.
Upon reflection, Jin is reassured that no one is trying to eat or maim him. Gogajin are vegetarians, of course, but perhaps he should amend the thought. No one has tried to main him yet.
Perhaps it is a compliment that Adana Griolsa herself is the one who hunches down and lifts one of the stones off the ground, over her head. She tenses, and heaves.
Jin feels his cloaca clench.
The off-white stone sails into the air, turning ponderously, making its way to him. Its motion appears to slow, the raindrops on his scales becoming a periodic typmany. Its arc is true, and it is heading straight for him.
No...no, the arc is off. Its parabolic path is bent, the exponent increasing erratically. Something is wrong. Gravity is constant. The mass of the stone must be constant. What is the variable?
The wind is at his back, pelting him with little drops of rain. The wind. Of course. Trust. The Gogajin are concerned with trust. If it were warmer, he would have seen it immediately.
Jin opens his arms wide to receive the stone, grinning to himself as it shatters on impact, showering him with moist globs of some kind of plaster, already falling apart in the incessant rain. The Gogajin cheer, and he wipes himself off assiduously. Trust indeed. How very quaint! If Jin were a mammal, he imagines that the feeling would warm his blood. As it is, he blinks sleepily as the Gogajin come stomping over, shouting.
The embraces will hurt far more than the stone did, but Jin accepts them quietly.
***
Varissa does not fare so well, and is relegated to the edges of the village. She is instructed to avoid contact with any roving adolescent Gogajin she might encounter. Its been a hard winter, and they'll be closer to the village than normal, hoping for occasional gifts of food from concerned family members. Left at a careful distance, of course. She spends the night up a tree, growling to herself.
***
Thanks to his breathing exercises and powers of concentration, Jin is able to make the room stop spinning. Briefly. Long enough to feel vaguely ill. And to ask "Could you repeat that, please?"
Adana grins, takes another drink of mead (how can they drink this?), and says in clear, unslurred Gogajin "As I told you, you're not the first uncommon visitor we've had of late. There were another couple of groups been by; one Cheldrun with a Zipsum guide - city Zipsum, mind - and the other the strangest we've ever seen. Three Cheldrun, three Karians, headed up to Ben Hamor to meet the gods."
"How many Cheldrun in the first group?"
"Three Cheldrun - and they brought back our Angus! - and there was the Zipsum. Now, one of the Cheldrun is dead, eaten by a Jevumm if you can believe it, then other when we were attacked. A second, big metal fellow, left on his own with the Zipsum, headed home I guess. The last one, Reeyoo No Sookay was his name as I recall" there are scattered nods at the strange sounding name "broke the hearth law, then disappeared."
Jin feels it is appropriate to touch the mead to his lips again, blinks at the way it makes his nose burn to smell it so close. "Broke the hearth law? How was that?"
"Stabbed another Cheldrun, up on this very roof, when the mad Zipsum attacked." Those gathered in the longhouse grow quieter now, looking down, thinking of the past. Jin waits what he thinks is an appropriate amount of time.
"Yes. You spoke of them, and there are still...marks which winter has left behind. The eyeless Zipsum." There is another long pause, as Jin touches the mead to his lips and then sneezes, spraying mead out of his horn. It is an incongruous moment.
"Ah, so...would you tell me more of the other...six visitors you had? The three Cheldrun and the three Karians?"
And she does, with eager additions from the others there. Some stand to drunkenly re-enact the battle; others have rendered parts of it into bawdy, roaring songs. Jin gleans a great deal from all that they offer, and a feeling grows in the pit of his stomach. It has been growing since he arrived, since he learned of the many strangers who have passed this way already, of the apparent visions of the gods on Ben Hamor. He learns about the blade, which explains a great deal that he sees no reason to try to explain now.
Why did they move on? What are they thinking? Where are they going now? Do they know who they are -
"...and that's when the eyeless Zipsum came at us, in waves!"
The answer is there. Wait for it. It is...something. Jin sees the branches breaking apart, settling, bending into new forms -
"...was huge! Like a great house of a machine-man, swinging his arm like a mattock..."
No. Not nine branches. Nine trees. Nine trees! Each tree stretching out, twisting in response to the pull of unpaired loci -
"...stabbed him on the roof, the bastard, but then the Vorax got him -" "...a Vorax! Still can't believe it..."
Nine trees stretching upwards from the eccliptic into the future, roots reaching downward into the past, branching potentiality, tendrils of causal precipitate-
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I have to go. Do you have a piece of slate I can use? Very sorry. And some chalk? Mine us used up..." Caught up in the story, the Gogajin hardly notice that the audience has excused himself.
Hours later, he has an answer, a new algorithm, and shortly after, a name.
Gentle, cool rain falls off of Jin-Kalys' scales in rivulets. Spring in Griolsa territory.
But he doesn't notice the rain, except to note that it is making him sluggish. Sol is hidden behind glowering clouds, promising more precipitation. About thirty reaches ("meters", the Cheldrun measurement he's learned, rises unbidden to his mind) distant, a trio of massive Gogajin are huddled together, speaking softly, glancing at him periodically. Nearby there is a pile of stones.
Upon reflection, Jin is reassured that no one is trying to eat or maim him. Gogajin are vegetarians, of course, but perhaps he should amend the thought. No one has tried to main him yet.
Perhaps it is a compliment that Adana Griolsa herself is the one who hunches down and lifts one of the stones off the ground, over her head. She tenses, and heaves.
Jin feels his cloaca clench.
The off-white stone sails into the air, turning ponderously, making its way to him. Its motion appears to slow, the raindrops on his scales becoming a periodic typmany. Its arc is true, and it is heading straight for him.
No...no, the arc is off. Its parabolic path is bent, the exponent increasing erratically. Something is wrong. Gravity is constant. The mass of the stone must be constant. What is the variable?
The wind is at his back, pelting him with little drops of rain. The wind. Of course. Trust. The Gogajin are concerned with trust. If it were warmer, he would have seen it immediately.
Jin opens his arms wide to receive the stone, grinning to himself as it shatters on impact, showering him with moist globs of some kind of plaster, already falling apart in the incessant rain. The Gogajin cheer, and he wipes himself off assiduously. Trust indeed. How very quaint! If Jin were a mammal, he imagines that the feeling would warm his blood. As it is, he blinks sleepily as the Gogajin come stomping over, shouting.
The embraces will hurt far more than the stone did, but Jin accepts them quietly.
***
Varissa does not fare so well, and is relegated to the edges of the village. She is instructed to avoid contact with any roving adolescent Gogajin she might encounter. Its been a hard winter, and they'll be closer to the village than normal, hoping for occasional gifts of food from concerned family members. Left at a careful distance, of course. She spends the night up a tree, growling to herself.
***
Thanks to his breathing exercises and powers of concentration, Jin is able to make the room stop spinning. Briefly. Long enough to feel vaguely ill. And to ask "Could you repeat that, please?"
Adana grins, takes another drink of mead (how can they drink this?), and says in clear, unslurred Gogajin "As I told you, you're not the first uncommon visitor we've had of late. There were another couple of groups been by; one Cheldrun with a Zipsum guide - city Zipsum, mind - and the other the strangest we've ever seen. Three Cheldrun, three Karians, headed up to Ben Hamor to meet the gods."
"How many Cheldrun in the first group?"
"Three Cheldrun - and they brought back our Angus! - and there was the Zipsum. Now, one of the Cheldrun is dead, eaten by a Jevumm if you can believe it, then other when we were attacked. A second, big metal fellow, left on his own with the Zipsum, headed home I guess. The last one, Reeyoo No Sookay was his name as I recall" there are scattered nods at the strange sounding name "broke the hearth law, then disappeared."
Jin feels it is appropriate to touch the mead to his lips again, blinks at the way it makes his nose burn to smell it so close. "Broke the hearth law? How was that?"
"Stabbed another Cheldrun, up on this very roof, when the mad Zipsum attacked." Those gathered in the longhouse grow quieter now, looking down, thinking of the past. Jin waits what he thinks is an appropriate amount of time.
"Yes. You spoke of them, and there are still...marks which winter has left behind. The eyeless Zipsum." There is another long pause, as Jin touches the mead to his lips and then sneezes, spraying mead out of his horn. It is an incongruous moment.
"Ah, so...would you tell me more of the other...six visitors you had? The three Cheldrun and the three Karians?"
And she does, with eager additions from the others there. Some stand to drunkenly re-enact the battle; others have rendered parts of it into bawdy, roaring songs. Jin gleans a great deal from all that they offer, and a feeling grows in the pit of his stomach. It has been growing since he arrived, since he learned of the many strangers who have passed this way already, of the apparent visions of the gods on Ben Hamor. He learns about the blade, which explains a great deal that he sees no reason to try to explain now.
Why did they move on? What are they thinking? Where are they going now? Do they know who they are -
"...and that's when the eyeless Zipsum came at us, in waves!"
The answer is there. Wait for it. It is...something. Jin sees the branches breaking apart, settling, bending into new forms -
"...was huge! Like a great house of a machine-man, swinging his arm like a mattock..."
No. Not nine branches. Nine trees. Nine trees! Each tree stretching out, twisting in response to the pull of unpaired loci -
"...stabbed him on the roof, the bastard, but then the Vorax got him -" "...a Vorax! Still can't believe it..."
Nine trees stretching upwards from the eccliptic into the future, roots reaching downward into the past, branching potentiality, tendrils of causal precipitate-
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I have to go. Do you have a piece of slate I can use? Very sorry. And some chalk? Mine us used up..." Caught up in the story, the Gogajin hardly notice that the audience has excused himself.
Hours later, he has an answer, a new algorithm, and shortly after, a name.
To Everything, A Purpose
At last the sharp talons release their steel grip, and Jin-Kalys impacts with the hard ground, rolling and sliding to an abrupt stop. He lays still for a moment, taking stock of his condition and coughing quietly in the dust. Up here the cold wind is whipping in from the coast, and he feels sluggish and heavy.
He slowly pulls himself together, realizing that they are all around him. He is surrounded by Vorax. They are tall and fierce and angular, feathers blowing in the sharp wind. And they are very, very angry.
He stands awkwardly, to appear as little like cowering prey as possible.
One of them, not the male who snatched him from a tree where he was resting but another male, older looking, sneers. "I wouldn't believe it until they showed me. An Anakarix. Your people were once wise. Perhaps they still are, but you are some kind of...pariah. But I never would have believed it. An Anakarix, hunting us." He spits on the ground in front of Jin-Kalys. "Sickening".
Jin blinks blearily, clenches his jaws to stifle a yawn brought on by the sunless weather.
"Ah. Now, you see...there has been a misunderstanding -" he begins, but just then a Vorax on the outside of the group yanks on a chain and Varissa comes into view, her eyes darting around and her muscles so tense that she is shaking slightly. "Ah."
The older male continues - no one has introduced themselves thus far. "A misunderstanding? Maybe we jumped to conclusions. From the look of it, you are helping this Jevumm hunt us. Following us from nest to nest like starving vermin. We could've easily evaded you, but I thought perhaps we should talk, before we kill you both."
As a matter of course, Jin-Kalys seems destined to be threatened with death on a regular basis. Gogajin threaten to pummel him if he won't 'shut up about tha bleedin' sun already!' Jevumm want to eat everyone, but can be placated with poetry. Zipsum are disappointed that he is unimpressed by their exploits, and as it turns out, they are also quite territorial. Prill...well, Prill have yet to threaten to kill him, which is quite nice. But these are not Prill. They are about five dozen glaring raptors, flexing claws, shining eyes and beaks.
Jin sighs. "Yes, we were hunting you." There are sounds of surprise and confirmation in the group, and a few produce weapons. Jin quickly continues "But! Not to eat you. I needed to find a Vorax - a particular Vorax - and Varissa was the most direct means by which this could be accomplished. She was...demonstrated to me. It doesn't mater. Now we've found you, or perhaps more accurately, you have found us."
They stare silently, a few coming closer with downright predatory looks. There's only one escape. Keep talking.
"I know what you are doing. What you intend." Surprise, suspicion, growing resolve to kill him. "I know, and it is a hideously terrible idea, and I know that I cannot stop you - I will not even try to do so. Rather, I simply wish to speak with one of you. To speak, briefly, and that is all. After that, I ask that you let me go, and continue with your...intentions."
A few of them exchange glances. They look to an elder Vorax, near the back of the group, who Jin can barely even see. There is a nod, or some other small movement. A new Vorax speaks to him.
"The taste of lizard is disgusting. And we're keeping the Jevumm, to deal with ourselves. But we'll let you go. We have nothing to say to you, but we'll let you go."
Jin swallows, winces slightly. Sighs. "I brought the Jevumm - Varissa - here. I found her, convinced he to help me find you. I cannot allow her..."no, change, bad idea "I cannot...leave her to be killed. Please. I just need to -."
One of the Vorax rushes forward to stand inches from Jin's face - only his long training in meditation keeps him from frantically diving backward. "You need to leave. Now. You've said enough." Then breathing silence. Wind. Distant sea-noises. Predatory silence.
Failure.
***
That night, Jin is surprised by two visitors. The first is a young, lovely, sad Vorax. She hands him a leather satchel, heavily insulated with feathers and fur, reverently. She looks into his eyes. "I knew you would come. Remember us. Tell of what you see tomorrow - our final flight. The last thing the Vorax will do in this world, until we fade and are lost forever." And then she is gone.
The second is Varissa, holding the broken wreckage of her heirloom bow, covered in cuts, scratches, and bruises, limping, furious, ferocious. She hurls the pieces of her bow into Jin's fire and looms over him.
"What could possibly have been worth that? No, don't answer. I'm going to gut you."
Jin doesn't answer, but reaches into the leather satchel and retrieves a single, fist-sized egg.
"Worth it? We'll see." Varissa stops, teeth bared, and slowly relaxes in surprise.
"Is that -"
"Yes. It is. And no, you may not eat it. We have a lot of work to do. If watching this world die doesn't interest you, you need to listen to me, and then we need to decide what to do next."
He slowly pulls himself together, realizing that they are all around him. He is surrounded by Vorax. They are tall and fierce and angular, feathers blowing in the sharp wind. And they are very, very angry.
He stands awkwardly, to appear as little like cowering prey as possible.
One of them, not the male who snatched him from a tree where he was resting but another male, older looking, sneers. "I wouldn't believe it until they showed me. An Anakarix. Your people were once wise. Perhaps they still are, but you are some kind of...pariah. But I never would have believed it. An Anakarix, hunting us." He spits on the ground in front of Jin-Kalys. "Sickening".
Jin blinks blearily, clenches his jaws to stifle a yawn brought on by the sunless weather.
"Ah. Now, you see...there has been a misunderstanding -" he begins, but just then a Vorax on the outside of the group yanks on a chain and Varissa comes into view, her eyes darting around and her muscles so tense that she is shaking slightly. "Ah."
The older male continues - no one has introduced themselves thus far. "A misunderstanding? Maybe we jumped to conclusions. From the look of it, you are helping this Jevumm hunt us. Following us from nest to nest like starving vermin. We could've easily evaded you, but I thought perhaps we should talk, before we kill you both."
As a matter of course, Jin-Kalys seems destined to be threatened with death on a regular basis. Gogajin threaten to pummel him if he won't 'shut up about tha bleedin' sun already!' Jevumm want to eat everyone, but can be placated with poetry. Zipsum are disappointed that he is unimpressed by their exploits, and as it turns out, they are also quite territorial. Prill...well, Prill have yet to threaten to kill him, which is quite nice. But these are not Prill. They are about five dozen glaring raptors, flexing claws, shining eyes and beaks.
Jin sighs. "Yes, we were hunting you." There are sounds of surprise and confirmation in the group, and a few produce weapons. Jin quickly continues "But! Not to eat you. I needed to find a Vorax - a particular Vorax - and Varissa was the most direct means by which this could be accomplished. She was...demonstrated to me. It doesn't mater. Now we've found you, or perhaps more accurately, you have found us."
They stare silently, a few coming closer with downright predatory looks. There's only one escape. Keep talking.
"I know what you are doing. What you intend." Surprise, suspicion, growing resolve to kill him. "I know, and it is a hideously terrible idea, and I know that I cannot stop you - I will not even try to do so. Rather, I simply wish to speak with one of you. To speak, briefly, and that is all. After that, I ask that you let me go, and continue with your...intentions."
A few of them exchange glances. They look to an elder Vorax, near the back of the group, who Jin can barely even see. There is a nod, or some other small movement. A new Vorax speaks to him.
"The taste of lizard is disgusting. And we're keeping the Jevumm, to deal with ourselves. But we'll let you go. We have nothing to say to you, but we'll let you go."
Jin swallows, winces slightly. Sighs. "I brought the Jevumm - Varissa - here. I found her, convinced he to help me find you. I cannot allow her..."no, change, bad idea "I cannot...leave her to be killed. Please. I just need to -."
One of the Vorax rushes forward to stand inches from Jin's face - only his long training in meditation keeps him from frantically diving backward. "You need to leave. Now. You've said enough." Then breathing silence. Wind. Distant sea-noises. Predatory silence.
Failure.
***
That night, Jin is surprised by two visitors. The first is a young, lovely, sad Vorax. She hands him a leather satchel, heavily insulated with feathers and fur, reverently. She looks into his eyes. "I knew you would come. Remember us. Tell of what you see tomorrow - our final flight. The last thing the Vorax will do in this world, until we fade and are lost forever." And then she is gone.
The second is Varissa, holding the broken wreckage of her heirloom bow, covered in cuts, scratches, and bruises, limping, furious, ferocious. She hurls the pieces of her bow into Jin's fire and looms over him.
"What could possibly have been worth that? No, don't answer. I'm going to gut you."
Jin doesn't answer, but reaches into the leather satchel and retrieves a single, fist-sized egg.
"Worth it? We'll see." Varissa stops, teeth bared, and slowly relaxes in surprise.
"Is that -"
"Yes. It is. And no, you may not eat it. We have a lot of work to do. If watching this world die doesn't interest you, you need to listen to me, and then we need to decide what to do next."
Shrouded House of Bones
Jin-kalys stares, sputtering, into burning golden eyes framed in a face of bright orange and black. The creature lounging easily before him thrums with power barely withheld. It yawns, showing teeth shining like blades, then transfixes him once again.
"Tell us a poem." The voice vibrates the air and Jin feels it thrumming in his chest cavity like a Zipsum drum.
A poem. Oh gods.
A full season past, Jin-kalys departed Sighing Web of Trees, the village where he had lived his quiet life up to then, leaving the Academy where he had been carefully trained in the sophic arts and sciences at the feet of the Great Doctors of Arborealis Heliophilius, in the ways of curves and lines, of truth's vertices offered in sunlight's verity.
He has since wandered, seeking something he cannot comprehend, but which he knows is crucial. The calculations are...inerrant. Inexorable. The ineluctable Nexus drawing ever closer. It comes to him - nine branches. Each branch is necessary in its own way, providing the balance of angular measurements at the vertices he's found, meeting at the Apogee and Perigee and bending on their course through time, aligned to intersect with the Chronologic Ellipse. Instantaneous angle is approximately equivalent to the distance in time between each as they pass into the Eccliptic, at which point, they resolve as one would expect, intersecting at the Nexus. The key is the curvature -
"Lizard. Give us a poem, or give us your flesh."
Jin is wrenched back out of his reverie. "I. Ahem. Yes. A poem." He closes his eyes and lowers his tail and slows his breathing. The breathing of the Jevumm standing around him in a semicircle is utterly unnerving. He smells their predator stink and the musk of their terrible meeting-place, deep in the jungle.
It comes to him when he's finally calm. Saborakalys. Of course! The first poem he ever learned, in an ancient mode inherited from the Dusk Sages themselves (or so it is said). Jin clumsily renders it into his halting Jevumm, hoping the syllable patters translate -
Dawn burns, sets alight
Kindling the mind - molten gold
Mist is departing
Slowly morning stirs
Sluggish blood thaws and slips free
Murmuring gently
We inherit dawn
Speakers of the love of Sol
Loving speech of leaves
Incline inward, now
Sitting quiet breathing with
Sighing Web of Trees.
Bright golden eyes narrow. Isilo Govelara, his muzzle whitened to show his age, power undiminished, smirks, if such a thing is possible.
"You have brought no fire...yet neither do you bring offerings. You say you come here in peace - it hardly matters. You will be eaten regardless. But we are curious. Your poem has purchased some time for you. How do you wish to use it?"
Jin's vision swirls madly and a great fist clenches his heart as it hammers against his chest. Eaten. No! Not now! I've only begun! He looks around, eyes wide. They are all watching. A few draw closer silently, and he can almost feel their breath.
Behind Isilo's massive form, there is the Bone House, the ancient meeting-place of the Govelara Jevumm of this region. There is no broader Jevumm culture, only local cultures. Truly, somewhat like the Anakarix, though two races could hardly be more opposite.
The Bone House is constructed entirely of bone and sinew taken from the victims of the Jevumm for generations. At the base, filthy bones are yellowing and cracked. In places they have been replaced with gleaming bones, fresh from Jevumm jaws.
A low growl of impatience snaps him back to his awful present, out of reverie.
"I...Great one, lord of the G-Govelara, Isilio Who Sups On M-Marrow, I...I introduce my...h-humble self, Jin-kalys, student of Helio-...student of great m-masters of Sighing Web of Trees, far from this forest. I. Yes. I come in peace, of course. I come t-to...to speak to you, Great lord of hunters. And-and your people."
How can I say this? With a mathematical schema scratched in the moist dirt with my tail!? A detailed chain of argumentation drawing on rich sophic traditions they've never heard of!? Gods! That one licked her lips!
"Great lord. Karia is dying! If you will help me. If...if a particular one of you will help me, and if we can find others...we can save her."
The laughter of the gathered Jevumm is terrible to hear.
There is no sound when one of them slams into him, bearing him down, grinning, crushing him beneath its weight. She begins to laugh with the rest, mouth wider and wider, coming down to crunch out his life.
"Your name is Varissa! You have walked the earth for thirty-three journeys of the sun! You've taken a-a bullet, whatever that is - the wound lingers! And-" he can't go on. Her eyes are wide and her paw is lighter on his chest. The clearing has quieted.
"What is the meaning of this!?"
Varissa ignores him for a moment, pretending to be caught up in the kill, risking retribution despite the blood-hallowed ground. She leans close until her great head is all Jin can see.
"How do you know this?"
Despite himself, he leans forward a bit, painfully, struggling to breathe under her weight.
"I'm. Wisdom. Of Karia. I. Know. You. ::wheeze:: Hunt. Vorax."
She leaps back, snarling, looking around in alarm, but Jin was quiet, so only she would hear. He braces himself against a nearby tree and pulls his battered body upright. They are all watching now, intent. He has to be careful.
"Yes. I know. And I need you to find...to find one for me. No one else can. Then, we need to -"
"This is foolish. Stop playing with your food. Are you eating this lizard or not?"
Isilio is standing, now, larger than the others, some of whom melt back into the jungle before evening falls, no longer interested in what seems like abject foolishness which could become much worse, fast. They depart silently, with no goodbyes, for this is a rare meeting, and will not occur again for many seasons.
Varissa glances to him, but pins Jin with a glare of mingled hatred and shock. "No. I will not eat him. Yet."
"Then go. The kill you offered pleases the spirits, and its blood has fed the land, mingling with the others. Go and take that lizard with you, to do with as you wish."
She slowly changes to her two-legged form, and Jin is unmoved by her feline beauty. He sees only his mission, his vision, his very life, hanging by a whisker-thin thread. She says the ritual words to Isilio without taking her eyes off of Jin. "Feast on the marrow, and may the spirit-gift sleep within you until Karia claims you."
She shoves him ahead of her, still far stronger than he is, taller as well, radiating hatred and musk. Jin's tail is rigid with fear.
When they are a few dozen meters into the forest, out of sight, she grabs Jin by the dewlap and slams him into a nearby tree with bone-loosening force. Her grip moves to his throat and begins to squeeze. She hisses and growls in his ear.
"Now, lizard, explain yourself, and I might not tear you apart."
"Tell us a poem." The voice vibrates the air and Jin feels it thrumming in his chest cavity like a Zipsum drum.
A poem. Oh gods.
A full season past, Jin-kalys departed Sighing Web of Trees, the village where he had lived his quiet life up to then, leaving the Academy where he had been carefully trained in the sophic arts and sciences at the feet of the Great Doctors of Arborealis Heliophilius, in the ways of curves and lines, of truth's vertices offered in sunlight's verity.
He has since wandered, seeking something he cannot comprehend, but which he knows is crucial. The calculations are...inerrant. Inexorable. The ineluctable Nexus drawing ever closer. It comes to him - nine branches. Each branch is necessary in its own way, providing the balance of angular measurements at the vertices he's found, meeting at the Apogee and Perigee and bending on their course through time, aligned to intersect with the Chronologic Ellipse. Instantaneous angle is approximately equivalent to the distance in time between each as they pass into the Eccliptic, at which point, they resolve as one would expect, intersecting at the Nexus. The key is the curvature -
"Lizard. Give us a poem, or give us your flesh."
Jin is wrenched back out of his reverie. "I. Ahem. Yes. A poem." He closes his eyes and lowers his tail and slows his breathing. The breathing of the Jevumm standing around him in a semicircle is utterly unnerving. He smells their predator stink and the musk of their terrible meeting-place, deep in the jungle.
It comes to him when he's finally calm. Saborakalys. Of course! The first poem he ever learned, in an ancient mode inherited from the Dusk Sages themselves (or so it is said). Jin clumsily renders it into his halting Jevumm, hoping the syllable patters translate -
Dawn burns, sets alight
Kindling the mind - molten gold
Mist is departing
Slowly morning stirs
Sluggish blood thaws and slips free
Murmuring gently
We inherit dawn
Speakers of the love of Sol
Loving speech of leaves
Incline inward, now
Sitting quiet breathing with
Sighing Web of Trees.
Bright golden eyes narrow. Isilo Govelara, his muzzle whitened to show his age, power undiminished, smirks, if such a thing is possible.
"You have brought no fire...yet neither do you bring offerings. You say you come here in peace - it hardly matters. You will be eaten regardless. But we are curious. Your poem has purchased some time for you. How do you wish to use it?"
Jin's vision swirls madly and a great fist clenches his heart as it hammers against his chest. Eaten. No! Not now! I've only begun! He looks around, eyes wide. They are all watching. A few draw closer silently, and he can almost feel their breath.
Behind Isilo's massive form, there is the Bone House, the ancient meeting-place of the Govelara Jevumm of this region. There is no broader Jevumm culture, only local cultures. Truly, somewhat like the Anakarix, though two races could hardly be more opposite.
The Bone House is constructed entirely of bone and sinew taken from the victims of the Jevumm for generations. At the base, filthy bones are yellowing and cracked. In places they have been replaced with gleaming bones, fresh from Jevumm jaws.
A low growl of impatience snaps him back to his awful present, out of reverie.
"I...Great one, lord of the G-Govelara, Isilio Who Sups On M-Marrow, I...I introduce my...h-humble self, Jin-kalys, student of Helio-...student of great m-masters of Sighing Web of Trees, far from this forest. I. Yes. I come in peace, of course. I come t-to...to speak to you, Great lord of hunters. And-and your people."
How can I say this? With a mathematical schema scratched in the moist dirt with my tail!? A detailed chain of argumentation drawing on rich sophic traditions they've never heard of!? Gods! That one licked her lips!
"Great lord. Karia is dying! If you will help me. If...if a particular one of you will help me, and if we can find others...we can save her."
The laughter of the gathered Jevumm is terrible to hear.
There is no sound when one of them slams into him, bearing him down, grinning, crushing him beneath its weight. She begins to laugh with the rest, mouth wider and wider, coming down to crunch out his life.
"Your name is Varissa! You have walked the earth for thirty-three journeys of the sun! You've taken a-a bullet, whatever that is - the wound lingers! And-" he can't go on. Her eyes are wide and her paw is lighter on his chest. The clearing has quieted.
"What is the meaning of this!?"
Varissa ignores him for a moment, pretending to be caught up in the kill, risking retribution despite the blood-hallowed ground. She leans close until her great head is all Jin can see.
"How do you know this?"
Despite himself, he leans forward a bit, painfully, struggling to breathe under her weight.
"I'm. Wisdom. Of Karia. I. Know. You. ::wheeze:: Hunt. Vorax."
She leaps back, snarling, looking around in alarm, but Jin was quiet, so only she would hear. He braces himself against a nearby tree and pulls his battered body upright. They are all watching now, intent. He has to be careful.
"Yes. I know. And I need you to find...to find one for me. No one else can. Then, we need to -"
"This is foolish. Stop playing with your food. Are you eating this lizard or not?"
Isilio is standing, now, larger than the others, some of whom melt back into the jungle before evening falls, no longer interested in what seems like abject foolishness which could become much worse, fast. They depart silently, with no goodbyes, for this is a rare meeting, and will not occur again for many seasons.
Varissa glances to him, but pins Jin with a glare of mingled hatred and shock. "No. I will not eat him. Yet."
"Then go. The kill you offered pleases the spirits, and its blood has fed the land, mingling with the others. Go and take that lizard with you, to do with as you wish."
She slowly changes to her two-legged form, and Jin is unmoved by her feline beauty. He sees only his mission, his vision, his very life, hanging by a whisker-thin thread. She says the ritual words to Isilio without taking her eyes off of Jin. "Feast on the marrow, and may the spirit-gift sleep within you until Karia claims you."
She shoves him ahead of her, still far stronger than he is, taller as well, radiating hatred and musk. Jin's tail is rigid with fear.
When they are a few dozen meters into the forest, out of sight, she grabs Jin by the dewlap and slams him into a nearby tree with bone-loosening force. Her grip moves to his throat and begins to squeeze. She hisses and growls in his ear.
"Now, lizard, explain yourself, and I might not tear you apart."
Sighing Web of Trees
Some seasons past...
The Sygola groan like pale old lizards on a misty night. The storm has brought darkness early and sleep is deepening in Sighing Web of Trees - a sprawling settlement named by a legendary poet, Saborakalys, after a line in one of the poems she created near the end of her long life. The trees sigh and sway and groan; raindrops drum on thatched roofs and rush down the sides of the venerable Academy, Arborealis Heliophilius; wheezing snores can be heard escaping through rubbery lips and interlocking teeth -
but Jin-kalys is not sleeping. He scratches his dewlap absently, a claw briefly catching on one of his piercings - and immediately he is reminded of eight summers ago, lit by a fine sunset mingling gold and red and green through the high canopy, when he demonstrated the irreducibility of nine-branch formal logic as a representation of rational cognition.
The piercing next to it came five years later when he demonstrated the paucity of his own theory as it came from the lips of a favorite rival, Asterakon. Rather, it is clear that non-rational processing seems necessary to resolve certain radical dichotomies - a theory which some refer to as "post-meteotropic root-ism". It is still considered a radical theory, even though its germ can be traced as far back as the great sage Monikostara and -
There is a scratch at the door. Too low to be another Anakarix. Jin pulls the door open quickly and a Zipsum blurs her way into the small room. The fire brings out bluish highlights on her dark fur and glints in her bright green eyes. Poison-Frog-Kiss of the Lighteningstrike Tribe, the nearest tribe to Sighing Web of Trees. She deposits a heavy satchel on the floor unceremoniously.
"I dunno why me but I got all the stuff you were after and you wouldn't believe the trouble it was I've had to stay in this form because of the rain and this stupid bag is pretty heavy" there is an explosion of water as she sakes off at least a gallon of rain, spattering everything in the one-room domicile. Jin flinches, unnoticed "and so listen we need to talk about payment now we agreed to the same weight but considering that I had to carry it in my mouth in this form I think that a markup is..."
"Oh..."
"candy..."
Her huge bright eyes are inquisitive and acquisitive at the same time. Jin doubts she would appreciate the etymological deliciousness inherent in the look. He's holding out a pile of gourmet candy, stacked in a careful pyramid shape on a layer of anannu leaves which can also serve as wrapping.
'Indeed. This is yours, of course, and the rest is stored in the hollow tree as we discussed..." but the conversation has ended, as with a rapturous sigh Poison-Frog-Kiss begins cramming glistening candies in her mouth by the handful like a starveling. Jin goes on, distantly aware that he's talking only to himself but also quite nervous, now that its come to it, "I appreciate your discretion in this matter. It may seem odd that I don't simply requisition these accoutrements from supplies among my own people, but you see I have made a very important decision..."
Moans are now escaping Poison-Frog-Kiss. Her soft belly is visibly distended and her paws and face smeared with sweet dark cacao and the juice of the anannu-fruit. She is languorously licking each digit on each paw the the careful attention of a starstruck lover.
Ahem. "A decision which, I surmise, my colleagues will not appreciate. At the very least, not until it has borne some fruit, so to speak." Poison-Frog-Kills looks at him, blinking dully, with a clear expression of who are you again? written across her face. "We have spoken of the Cheldrun, and I have done some of my own research on the matter, in some cases at considerable personal risk - and I appreciate your help in those matters. You have...well, you have clarified..." she is looking at him and he can't finish the sentence. She gave him a raw barrage of information that could take weeks to untangle in his own methodical way.
"Yeah, I know what you're up to. And you're gonna die."
"I...I beg your pardon?"
"Look, its up to you. At least you're not talking and shooting out that purple thingy on your head like you did last time we talked -"
"I do apologize for that outburst, you see it is merely a vestigial-"
"And anyway its fine if you want to go get killed that's up to you I've got my candy delightful by the way and I'm happy as a punched Gogagin I just don't see the point of going to find some Cheldrun when they're busy chopping down all the trees they can get their hands and roasting the last Vorax from what I've heard I'm pretty sure that they'll just blast you or eat your brain like they do but hey its your life."
She opens the door, letting in a little more rain and grimacing at the force of it.
"Its..." Jin-kalys shakes his head, making his dewlap flap to express his lack of clarity. Its about the Nexus. Plot influences as lines on a two-dimensional representational Tree and it points to Apogee. Plot the same function over time and you can determine when it will happen. It is predictable, rooted in demonstrably reliable principles, and what is predictable can be addressed preventively before it cascades out of possible control. The function is geometric, and after the Nexus, the meeting of the influences, hope diminishes quickly for any kind of salvageable result.
"Its complicated".
The Zipsum is already gone, and the wind is blowing rain into Jin-kalys's home, sending rivulets along the carefully fitted boards.
"Its the end of Karia. Of everything. Unless we do something."
Nine-branch formal logic is still quite functional for known quantities. Nine races mean that the Arboreal Model's factors are accounted for (three kinds of Cheldrun, he did get that much from the Zipsum's barrage). The Dusk Sages? They could stand for the Perigee-Curve's intersection point. But the Apogee, when the nine-branch function is applied to an Asterakalys Helio-synthesis model, represents...what? What's the opposite of rationality, of connection, of life and vitality? What is the inverse of the Dusk Sages, the turning of wisdom and power for the good against itself...most distant from the Solar Source along the great Ellipse of cyclical time?
Whatever it was, Karia would be finding out soon, too soon.
Jin feels his tail straighten in anxiety and crouches down to meditate until it relaxes. He gathers up his satchel and adds a few oddments from his home. He leaves the fire in the tiny hearth to burn itself out so he won't be missed too soon, closes the door behind him, climbs along the tree to the next, and the next, slowly and groggily now that the fear has faded somewhat. He goes a long way before he realizes that he didn't say goodbye.
He pushes on through morning, and then moves with gathering speed. He feels the lines tightening, Apogee closing in. The thought comes unbidden, like it did in the dream.
I am the revelation of Karia.
The Sygola groan like pale old lizards on a misty night. The storm has brought darkness early and sleep is deepening in Sighing Web of Trees - a sprawling settlement named by a legendary poet, Saborakalys, after a line in one of the poems she created near the end of her long life. The trees sigh and sway and groan; raindrops drum on thatched roofs and rush down the sides of the venerable Academy, Arborealis Heliophilius; wheezing snores can be heard escaping through rubbery lips and interlocking teeth -
but Jin-kalys is not sleeping. He scratches his dewlap absently, a claw briefly catching on one of his piercings - and immediately he is reminded of eight summers ago, lit by a fine sunset mingling gold and red and green through the high canopy, when he demonstrated the irreducibility of nine-branch formal logic as a representation of rational cognition.
The piercing next to it came five years later when he demonstrated the paucity of his own theory as it came from the lips of a favorite rival, Asterakon. Rather, it is clear that non-rational processing seems necessary to resolve certain radical dichotomies - a theory which some refer to as "post-meteotropic root-ism". It is still considered a radical theory, even though its germ can be traced as far back as the great sage Monikostara and -
There is a scratch at the door. Too low to be another Anakarix. Jin pulls the door open quickly and a Zipsum blurs her way into the small room. The fire brings out bluish highlights on her dark fur and glints in her bright green eyes. Poison-Frog-Kiss of the Lighteningstrike Tribe, the nearest tribe to Sighing Web of Trees. She deposits a heavy satchel on the floor unceremoniously.
"I dunno why me but I got all the stuff you were after and you wouldn't believe the trouble it was I've had to stay in this form because of the rain and this stupid bag is pretty heavy" there is an explosion of water as she sakes off at least a gallon of rain, spattering everything in the one-room domicile. Jin flinches, unnoticed "and so listen we need to talk about payment now we agreed to the same weight but considering that I had to carry it in my mouth in this form I think that a markup is..."
"Oh..."
"candy..."
Her huge bright eyes are inquisitive and acquisitive at the same time. Jin doubts she would appreciate the etymological deliciousness inherent in the look. He's holding out a pile of gourmet candy, stacked in a careful pyramid shape on a layer of anannu leaves which can also serve as wrapping.
'Indeed. This is yours, of course, and the rest is stored in the hollow tree as we discussed..." but the conversation has ended, as with a rapturous sigh Poison-Frog-Kiss begins cramming glistening candies in her mouth by the handful like a starveling. Jin goes on, distantly aware that he's talking only to himself but also quite nervous, now that its come to it, "I appreciate your discretion in this matter. It may seem odd that I don't simply requisition these accoutrements from supplies among my own people, but you see I have made a very important decision..."
Moans are now escaping Poison-Frog-Kiss. Her soft belly is visibly distended and her paws and face smeared with sweet dark cacao and the juice of the anannu-fruit. She is languorously licking each digit on each paw the the careful attention of a starstruck lover.
Ahem. "A decision which, I surmise, my colleagues will not appreciate. At the very least, not until it has borne some fruit, so to speak." Poison-Frog-Kills looks at him, blinking dully, with a clear expression of who are you again? written across her face. "We have spoken of the Cheldrun, and I have done some of my own research on the matter, in some cases at considerable personal risk - and I appreciate your help in those matters. You have...well, you have clarified..." she is looking at him and he can't finish the sentence. She gave him a raw barrage of information that could take weeks to untangle in his own methodical way.
"Yeah, I know what you're up to. And you're gonna die."
"I...I beg your pardon?"
"Look, its up to you. At least you're not talking and shooting out that purple thingy on your head like you did last time we talked -"
"I do apologize for that outburst, you see it is merely a vestigial-"
"And anyway its fine if you want to go get killed that's up to you I've got my candy delightful by the way and I'm happy as a punched Gogagin I just don't see the point of going to find some Cheldrun when they're busy chopping down all the trees they can get their hands and roasting the last Vorax from what I've heard I'm pretty sure that they'll just blast you or eat your brain like they do but hey its your life."
She opens the door, letting in a little more rain and grimacing at the force of it.
"Its..." Jin-kalys shakes his head, making his dewlap flap to express his lack of clarity. Its about the Nexus. Plot influences as lines on a two-dimensional representational Tree and it points to Apogee. Plot the same function over time and you can determine when it will happen. It is predictable, rooted in demonstrably reliable principles, and what is predictable can be addressed preventively before it cascades out of possible control. The function is geometric, and after the Nexus, the meeting of the influences, hope diminishes quickly for any kind of salvageable result.
"Its complicated".
The Zipsum is already gone, and the wind is blowing rain into Jin-kalys's home, sending rivulets along the carefully fitted boards.
"Its the end of Karia. Of everything. Unless we do something."
Nine-branch formal logic is still quite functional for known quantities. Nine races mean that the Arboreal Model's factors are accounted for (three kinds of Cheldrun, he did get that much from the Zipsum's barrage). The Dusk Sages? They could stand for the Perigee-Curve's intersection point. But the Apogee, when the nine-branch function is applied to an Asterakalys Helio-synthesis model, represents...what? What's the opposite of rationality, of connection, of life and vitality? What is the inverse of the Dusk Sages, the turning of wisdom and power for the good against itself...most distant from the Solar Source along the great Ellipse of cyclical time?
Whatever it was, Karia would be finding out soon, too soon.
Jin feels his tail straighten in anxiety and crouches down to meditate until it relaxes. He gathers up his satchel and adds a few oddments from his home. He leaves the fire in the tiny hearth to burn itself out so he won't be missed too soon, closes the door behind him, climbs along the tree to the next, and the next, slowly and groggily now that the fear has faded somewhat. He goes a long way before he realizes that he didn't say goodbye.
He pushes on through morning, and then moves with gathering speed. He feels the lines tightening, Apogee closing in. The thought comes unbidden, like it did in the dream.
I am the revelation of Karia.
Winds of Change
"Something is changing in Karia Vitalus." The voice was an old man's voice, heavy with the weight of years.
--------------
In the great city of the Cheldrun, two bodies hang by a pair of ropes around their necks some two hundred floors up, lab coats fluttering in the breeze. A man and a woman, both Biomade. Though they were each attractive in life, death had done them no favors. Pale and bloated now, they swung like ghastly piñatas, waiting, oh just waiting for the chance to spill their gruesome cargo onto the streets two hundred stories below.
--------------
Far away, the sun rose over the jungles southwest of Matamos. Just above the canopy grew a single, thick, bare branch; thereupon a strange, sinuous shape rose with the dawn, lifting its cold, reptilian eyes to the heavens in silent contemplation of the wonder it beheld there; for one shining moment, a new star was born above those jungles, rivaling the sun itself in brightness. There and gone.
The Anakarix frowned thoughtfully.
Those who have eyes, let them see.
--------------
"The wind doesn't taste like it used to." The same old man had spoken again. We can see him now: he is a Prill, grizzled and weary, and there is wisdom in his countenance. "The flame that was sparked on the night of the bonfire skies spreads unchecked across the land."
--------------
In the depths of Geneva Prime, a Mechified dreamed of freedom, of revolution. As he looked down upon the body of his Biomade supervisor, the thought rang clear in his mind: ‘We are not your appendages.’
Those who have ears, let them hear.
--------------
A Zipsum raced from tree to tree, trying desperately to evade her would-be-captors. Her cheeks bulged strangely, ill-fitting around the data pad she held gently in her mouth as she ran - what she had risked her life in the Cheldrun city to obtain: the operational planning for the next great logging operation into the jungles of the Anakarix.
Hard metal bullets ravaged the trees around her, turning their trunks to so much splintered pulp, sending splinters flying in all direction: the sound of gunfire was deafening.
Pain. Burning pain. A spear-like shard of wood had lanced into her vulnerable belly. Biting back tears, she raced onwards, and soon she was beyond the reach of the bullet-spitters, and of the angry metal bees that they spat.
The shouts of angry Cheldrun echoed loudly in the woods behind her.
Bleeding from the stomach, agony racing through her mind, she ran on.
--------------
"How did it go?" Rei asked. She already knew, but it was polite to ask anyways. She walked down a corridor of light with another girl about four years her junior. There is both a striking similarity and a striking contrast between the two girls: Rei's hair is off-white and the other girl's is shockingly pink; Rei's appearance is neat and functional, while the other girl's is meant to entice; Rei moves with an unconscious grace, while Aimi's movements are deliberate and calculated, though no less graceful. And for all that, they could be sisters. They are sisters, actually. Two distinct variations on the same DNA recombined in slightly differing ways. It was like that with all six of them: genetic siblings, all of them. Three girls, 00, 01, and 05. Three boys, 02, 03, and 04.
Aimi met Rei’s gaze, doing her best not to giggle at the thought of her meeting with that young man. "You already know," she said. "You're the one who can't turn it off, after all."
Rei nodded faintly and said nothing, allowing Aimi's irritation to pass over her and through her, leaving her self unmoved in its wake. "Yes," she said. It wasn't worth it to argue over this again. She knew that the others thought her defective. "You..." she trailed off.
"If you don't say it now, you'll only mope about how you wished you had said it for the next week," Aimi said, wishing not for the first time that Rei's mental shielding wasn't quite so well fortified. She supposed it was for the best. In Rei's case, it was either intense mental shielding or near-insanity. Even so, it was disconcerting, not having ready access to someone's thoughts. More so in the wake of recent events.
“You like him.”
Aimi blushed. “That’s private,” she said warningly.
“Sorry.” The teasing note was gone from Rei's voice now, vanished like the morning mist beneath the heat of the sun. A pause. “Do you really think of me when you think of madness?”
Aimi caught Rei’s eyes with her own, blood red eyes peering into blood red eyes. “What’s all this about, Rei? You don’t usually take an interest in other people’s missions.”
"Because it is so clear, it takes a long time to realize it,” Rei murmured cryptically.
Aimi smiled bemusedly. “In English?”
Rei shook her head. “You wouldn’t understand.”
For a moment, the shields wavered. For a moment, Aimi caught a glimpse of a Mechified Labor unit, (‘We are not your appendages!’ ) and a desperate sense of... something. It was gone. She frowned. “What was that?”
“Goodbye, Aimi,” Rei said. There was a note of finality in her voice. She walked away down the vast corridor of light, leaving her sister there near the entrance to the briefing room.
Aimi watched her go, confusion writ large in her expression. She wasn’t sure what just happened exactly, but she had the distinct impression that she had just missed something important. “Rei, wait,” she called.
“Go to your briefing, Aimi,” Rei said.
Despite her misgivings, Aimi did as she was told.
She always had.
--------------
“I fear that soon this fire may consume us all.” He shook his weathered head, pausing more from dramatic effect than out of necessity. “The magic of the dusk sages must be recovered if we are to have any hope of weathering the flames.” The old Prill looked at Inari with a serious expression. “This is your task, young one.”
Inari stared at the elder, wide-eyed. His task. His task! Finally, after years and years of demonstrating his cleverness to the whole choir, he had been entrusted not only with a song, but with a Task! A sacred quest! He was not totally successful in keeping the grin off of his face. “I won’t disappoint you, Elder Winter,” he said eagerly. He did not notice the very calculating look in the old Prill’s eye.
They sat in a clearing in the midst of a vast, old growth forest. It was dreary, and the light of the stars scarcely penetrated through the gloom of the place. The ground was treacherous here for any who did not know it well: for miles around the Prill village, sudden rifts and valleys opened unexpectedly in the wood, and sharp rocks were among the least dangerous of the things one might find at the bottom of one of these.
“I know you won’t,” the Elder said. “For the sake of us all, you won’t. Now, have you gathered what we asked for?”
“Water from a well holy to the Jevuum (and plenty of mud besides), a berry from the stores of the Zipsum, an Anakarix’s talon, blood spilled after insulting a Gogajin’s mother, a Vorax’s tail feather.” Inari frowned. “Elder Winter, did we really need all these things?”
Elder Winter’s upper lip twitched, as if he were trying not to laugh. “Indeed,” he said sagely as he collected the proffered items.
Inari looked unconvinced. The two red-furred fox-ears growing up from either side of his head twitched in irritation.
They were needed, mind you. They would make the blessing much easier. It’s just that other, easier to find items would have done the job just as well. Elder Winter put the items into a small leather pouch tied to his belt. “Come, Inari. You have proven yourself worthy of the task set before you. It is time to receive your blessing from the Choir of Elders.”
Inari nodded, his irritation forgotten. “Right.” He thought about it for a moment. They may be doing this to get rid of him, but it was still an honour to be chosen for a Sacred Quest.
Together, the two Prill rose to their feet and walked towards the distant firelight that came from the outer watch post of the village.
The forest allowed their passage only reluctantly, barely standing aside long enough to let them creep through, and closing immediately behind them.
The forest knew much, had seen much. Though it suffered the presence of the Prill, there were few others that walked on two legs that it would allow passage. Wooden creaks and voices like the rustling of leaves raced from tree to tree, and the air grew hot with anger. News had arrived from the distant north: another wood had fallen before the loggers. Murderers. Axe-bearers. Creatures of black smoke and steam.
Even as the song of the Choir of Elders rose into the air, filling all the land around the village with a sense of hope and glory, the trees took angry council together. No, it wasn’t time to act yet. They would watch, and wait, and plan.
For now.
Anakarix
Philosophizing Lizards...
***
In the jungles of the southwest, unknown to the Cheldrun, there are sprawling cities resting on the top of the jungle canopy like crowns. Made from the woven branched of the Sygola trees, the Anakarix bask in the sun, gaze at the stars and debate the future of their endangered planet. The topics of their debates change as swiftly as the wind, but the habit of their long-lived race are as ancient as the forest itself. The philosopher lizards have been sitting here and thinking since the Dusk Sages first taught them to ponder.
Indeed, in those misty recesses of time, the Dusk Sages produced a remarkable change in this Karian race. Opening up to the Anakarix the avenues of critical inquiry and the philosophical pursuit of truth proved to be an addictive behavior. The Anakarix became so enraptured in their thoughts that they lost completely the secret of assuming their normal human form. Centuries and centuries of breeding have most likely removed completely the ability to metamorphosize common to the other Karians.
The Anakarix don’t regret it for a moment however. As a cold-blooded species, they associate knowledge and waking and cognition with the sun. There is no such thing as an Anakarix morning person, because of their cold-blooded state, and then after
The Anakarix can be a very still and slow-moving people, plodding at best, except for explosions of activity when startled, or angry or when engaging in threat displays. When angered they can become inarticulate and change colors or even have brightly colored flaps of skin erupt from their head or neck, quivering. However, behind these animal displays and behaviors there is an uncanny intelligence, evaluating everything, rationally and disinterestedly.
Their love affair with reason can make the Anakarix seem like a heartless bunch at times, though nothing is further from the truth. Those Anakarix thought to be insufficiently intelligent are condemned early in life to become laborers, guards and foragers and live lives of frustration. However, a grudging respect for the egalitarian nature of inspiration means that any Anakarix, no matter how dim, is able to participate in the public forums. There have been instances in Anakarix history when a despised forager revolutionized a school of thought with an unexpected insight.
While the Anakarix make distinctions based on apparent intelligence they make no distinctions based on heritage, wealth or gender. Indeed, other races are sometimes puzzled by the complete lack of difference between the genders – who knows what’s in that cloaca? The Anakarix can always tell, but they are puzzled by others’ thinking it is somehow important.
Anakarix society is arranged around vast “agoras” or open-air markets and forums that become places of debate. These agoras are usually surrounded by a host of different academies and compounds that host the different philosophical schools in vogue. Young Anakarix spend a little time being fostered to each school before choosing one school at majority for which they will be an apologist the remainder of their life. Each school teaches a distinct philosophical worldview, which purports to explain more adequately than any other the “Truth”. In tandem with their philosophical outlook the schools are distinguished by patterns of life suited to each philosophy. The Renouncers live ascetic lives, while the Diggers extol physical labor, and the Astrologists seek to overcome their sun-dependency to become nocturnal. With the arrival of the Cheldrun a new school has been gaining ascendancy – the Nihilists.
One behavior common to most philosophical schools is a ritualized form of martial art. Their martial arts are taught like tai-chi, in slow motion and without an actual opponent. They emphasize discipline and spiritual harmony over physical prowess, though they are unquestionably effective. Public debates are often preceded by martial displays which are not accorded nearly the same honor as the debate, but nevertheless serve as an opportunity to intimidate your opponent and attempt to gain a psychological edge.
***
Players who wish to play an Anakarix should decide which school they belong to and then begin to detail specifically the philosophical outlook of that school. What is your primary worldview? How do you obtain, filter, classify and make meaning of knowledge? What behaviors or life-patterns are required of members of your school? How often and well do you debate? (How many piercings are in your dewlap?) What relationship does your school have to other schools of thought? Which are similar or in harmony with yours? Which are opposed? How does your school explain the Cheldrun?
Appearance: The Anakarix are giant lizards, the size of Komodo Dragons. Varying in type and coloring from iguana-like, to gecko-like, to crocodile-esque, they are absurdly diverse. Some exhibit the bright colors of poisonous snakes and frogs, others are the muted tones of desert lizards. Most have some ability to camouflage themselves. Though they do not wear clothing they are famous for the many piercings they sport in the flap of skin below their jaws called a dewlap. These piercings, made of Never Gems, represent the victories of an individual Anakarix in debate, thus they are a status symbol and a warning to opponents. As Anakarix age, their scales turn gray and then white, thus the oldest of them are practically albinos.
Example Schools: Anaturists, Astrologists, Diggers, Heliophilists, Laughers, Naturists, Nihilists, Spiritists, Renouncers
Example Names: Asterakalys, Boristakon, Dankonubis, Hackara, Jujukamon, Keracka, Koriakalys, Monikostomon, Oblongata, Pukassa, Saborakalys, Vojashaka
Example Attributes: Armour, Environmental Influence (fog), Heightened Awareness, Heightened Sense, Jumping, Melee Attack, Melee Defence, Mind Shield, Special Defense (poison), Tough, Weapon (poison spit)
Example Skills: Acrobatics, Area Knowledge, Biological Sciences, Climbing, Cultural Arts, Etiquette, Languages, Medical, Occult, Physical Sciences, Poisons, Social Sciences, Wilderness Survival, Writing
| Anakarix attitudes towards…. | |
| Cheldrun | The riddle of the Cheldrun will be the defining question of our epoch. The school which most adequately explains this conundrum will be remembered as the greatest of all. |
| Allskins | The paradoxical Allskins are simultaneously the most exalted and the most despised caste of Cheldrun. Their tarnished glory is a moral lesson of great power. |
| Biomade | The reach of the intellect often exceeds the reach of true understanding. Observe these children of genius to learn the nature of hubris. |
| Mechified | Wisdom does not value a person according to the same standards. This caste is considered foolish by most, but they have an intelligence which pierces the mysteries of our physical world. A wise person will listen. |
| Karians | We are the answer to a question which is no longer being asked. |
| Anakarix | Does the planet know that we have been thinking about it and studying its secrets for so many millennia? Will it care when we are no longer around to ask questions? |
| Gogajin | The donkey-sons have never wondered why - a habit we simply cannot comprehend. |
| Jevumm | We can admire the cleverness of the hunters so long as we are safe in our tree-tops. They are the razor’s edge of wit – useful only to cut with. |
| Prill | The dedication of these singers to the past is remarkable. We commend their preservation of ancient wisdom and wish only that they would explore the possibilities of genuinely new insight. |
| Vorax | Even from our high vantage point we have never seen or known as much about Karia as these majestic birds. It will be a travesty when the last one is dead. |
| Zipsum | Life for a Zipsum is too fleeting to permit exploration of deep mysteries. The skip across the surface of the water, blissfully oblivious to the horrible depths below. |
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