‘Authorization code four nine two seven three, contact initiated.’
‘Error, city mind is unresponsive.’
‘Contact has not provided identification.’
‘Further authorization required.’
‘Error, Contact has not provided sufficient authorization.’
‘Do you wish to override safeguards?’
‘Error, city mind is unresponsive.’
‘Override required to prevent safeguards.’
‘No override provided.’
‘Safeguards initiated, beacon has been set, dilation starting.’
‘Three.’
‘Two.’
‘One.’
‘Success, dilation has begun, your movements are restricted until dilation ends.’
‘Error, no authorized personnel nearby.’
‘Error, city mind is unresponsive.’
‘BALANCE has intervened, sufficient personnel have been found.’
‘Do you accept this list? Eloi— male, Keshel— male, Pleseln— female, Reiav— female, Tosono— male.’
‘Edit to the list. BALANCE added Foralen— female.’
‘Error, city mind is unresponsive.’
‘Error, city mind is unresponsive.’
‘Error, city mind is unresponsive.’
‘BALANCE has intervened, dilation is finished.’
‘Success.’
‘Error. City mind is unresponsive.’
-
The mind stirred slightly, remembering darkness and pain. It remembered the horrible horrible visions of falling, screaming all the way… it remembered rage, it remembered betrayal…
It remembered falling.
‘Error, city mind is unresponsive.’ And so the mind returned to its nightmares dreams, still deaf to the requests sent by the city’s AI.
Reiav was at the docking bay when it happened, trying to get information out of Ruirel. He’d landed his ship after sending most of his subordinates to the ground, and he was nearly finished loading up everyone who was even remotely important. They’d be going to Iana since it was the closest land to their current position.
They’d be evacuating.
She couldn’t get over the fact that he’d found a suiki and brought him here, exactly when it was too late. They’d likely need weeks or months to figure out how to pilot the city, not hours. Reiav wanted to throw something—to scream—to curse at the heavens themselves and fight until there was nothing left in her.
But that was when the heavens proved that they were fighting as well. It remained to be seen whether they were on her side or against it, but in the end I know exactly how she felt. She was angry, nay, she was pissed.
The city activated, at last, Keshel’s actions reaching her at either the worst or the best possible time.
Many of the niortak expected the full activation of the city to be a grand feat as ancient functions restarted and buildings reshaped themselves to match the records of Teisel before the suiki had left, indeed that is how it should have been. Reiav expected the change to feel right, to feel proper. She’d expected to feel the ground start to quake as the central tower rose into the air.
None of those things happened though, in fact, besides a dim and sudden openness that she couldn’t describe, there was practically no difference at all from before. The reasoning, as the astute listener is likely to realize, was that the city’s AI was in a bit of a pickle. So, someone contacts the city mind all of the sudden, ready to interface and perfectly exactly the right person for the job. Only, that person doesn’t have the authorization code, the city mind isn’t responding to requests, and to top it all off, there’s a deity involved somehow.
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So the city’s AI did something perfectly reasonable and calculated, it was just the AI, there wasn’t really much else it could be doing here.
Reiav glanced back at Ruirel as the moment of strange changes passed. The ground had stopped shaking and in the absence of it, the world seemed unnaturally still. She smiled at him, “Well, it seems that suiki is doing something-”
She cut off as she took in his expression and his eyes. Somehow they seemed like a statue.
Reiav stared at him, her mouth slightly agape, watching as he stared blankly at her with his eyes halfway closed. She stared at him for a long long moment before panic finally managed to set in. “Ruirel?!” She grabbed his shoulder, shaking it slightly, but he didn’t budge. “Ruirel are you alright?”
She glanced anxiously at the other people nearby, seeing that they likewise had stopped in the middle of a moment. Even Akia, who’d been standing just behind Reiav, had frozen with a concerned expression as she frowned up at the ceiling. Even… “Dad!” she gaped at the still form of her father, imposing and silent. Even her father had…
“Ruirel!” Reiav tried again, feeling tears bite at her eyes. “Ruirel, can you hear me?! Akia… Dad? Anyone!?”
There was no response.
Reiav is a very emotional person. Not to say that I’m not, but I have to mention, if everyone around me spontaneously stopped moving, they really should have expected some pranks to be played in that time.
Reiav though—devoid of my gremlin tendencies—stood there for a long, terrified moment, listening for anything as she periodically called people by their names and shook them, but it was as if the entire city had just… stopped. No machines whirred, no footsteps moved. Even the air was completely still—there was more resistance to it than she expected as she frantically checked each person for signs of life.
But as I described before, it was as if they were statues.
She shook her head, trying to banish the horror. Then after a long, terrible time, she slowly exited the docking bay, calling out, “Is anyone there?!” She repeated it over and over, with increasingly worried tones and volumes each time. Finally, Reiav cupped her hands around her mouth, yelling louder. “Is anyone awake?!”
A long silent moment passed.
And then there was a quiet response from somewhere far away, “I’m awake!”
Reiav jerked her head in that direction, yelling louder, “I’m coming!”
She ran.
Reiav wasn’t sure if it was because she was terrified or because she was more worried that something worse would happen soon and that she would be alone for it. She ran, summoning her four spectral wings and taking to the sky two strides later.
The air didn’t move as she expected it to, it was completely still, but she still got height, moving in the direction of the voice, “Where are you?” She called again once she was closer for the voice to guide her.
A head peeked out of a nearby building. He was ancient, old enough to be Reiav’s grandfather. A pair of spectacles sat on his face and three books were clenched in his arms as they trembled slightly. Eloi. Her father’s assistant who’d helped Reiav so many times in the past. On his back was a pack filled with belongings and important-looking pages—right, they’d all been preparing to evacuate. Reiav herself had simply… left all her things at the docking area. “W-what happened!” He sounded panicked.
“I have no idea.” Reiav admitted freely, glancing around at the street, “Let’s—”
“Hey!” A new voice shouted, “Reiav! I’m here too!”
Reiav glanced up at the mostly unfamiliar voice, seeing an acquaintance she’d made last week. Stars, the fact that Reiav couldn’t remember her name… that was embarrassing. The woman in question wouldn’t have cared if Reiav knew who she was, but overly bloodthirsty mercenaries are a strange lot. “There must be others around.” Reiav finally decided, “Come on, let’s stick together.”
Tosono’s head shot up as something about the world… changed.
It wasn’t a bad change really, yet it was a change. He’d lived too long around Ruirel and the others that he was immediately put on guard the moment something off was brought into the world. Even before that he’d always been wary of things that were different, especially now with a floating city falling out of the Prosperity-cursed sky.
He was at his feet a moment later, having been sitting against a wall near where his suiki charge had disappeared. Tosono blinked in surprise as the world itself stilled. The stilling was unnatural, impossible, and yet here it was.
He felt his throat go dry with unease and slight panic as he peered about the area, there was no one within sight. He thought perhaps that the specks in the sky that had been flitting about in a frenzy had stopped moving though, which was certainly different in the worst possible way. Tosono frowned at the sky, watching an airship as it hovered in the sky. It wasn’t even drifting in the wind.
It took him that long to realize that the ground was no longer shaking, and by that point, he had other things to worry about. His nerves were so taught that he nearly jumped out of his skin as he heard a strange scraping noise coming from nearby. Tosono turned sharply, summoning his spectral wings by instinct; they took the shape of a rough, pointed shield.
While he watched, the door Keshel had gone through was slowly pushed open.
At first, Tosono was relieved, Keshel was coming back and he wouldn’t have to go looking for him. He wouldn’t have to tell Ruirel that he’d failed in his one task, or solve the whole problem of what the stars was going on all by himself.
But as the door swung open, Tosono felt his blood run cold.
It wasn’t the suiki who peered back at him with cold, black eyes, or even the metalfolk who’d gone down there with him.
A creature of ebony blackness crept out of the door, blacker even than the space between the stars. It was perhaps even as black as Aeinar itself, a place of infinitely dark nothingness that could never be filled. Tosono felt his mouth go dry at the sight. He strengthened his two spectral wings and sharpened one into a point so he could ram the shield into the creature once it got closer. Hopefully it would do enough damage.
Behind the dark creature though, Tosono could see another… and another… and another…
Tosono steeled himself. He was worried about what this meant for Keshel if they’d come from where he’d left, but Tosono was determined to hold his ground. He would go after Keshel once these beasts were gone.
He wasn’t a fighter, more a scout in most cases, but Tosono certainly knew a thing or two about preventing assassinations, and he figured that had to be at least mostly similar.
