[Closed] Distance is Relative

[Lilanee Kuleda]

17th Vortas, 2719
KULEDA BATHROOM| LATE EVENING

Alethia noticed it, maybe before any of them, the thick swirling mist that rose from the ornate mirror laid on the fancy Bastian tiling. Her dark eyes held something different now, not contempt or disbelief. No, Alethia’s brow furrowed and her field drew close with concern and fear. It sat, like a heavy meal in the pit of the stomach, cold and immobile. Her eyes looked at the Incumbent, the mirror, the Hoxian and finally her daughter. None of them would see her though, their minds so entwined it was like one entity. She spoke, though the sound seemed to fall on deaf ears, as the trio cast their spell and held each other tightly within their minds and their fields.

Lilanee opened her eyes, thinking of her fathers own periwinkle gaze, looking at the mirror with a flutter of something in her aura. It didn’t feel right in here, with that steam clouding the room—

No that wasn’t steam, that was something from the mirror.

Something familiar? No, that couldn’t be right.

Her breath caught, stolen by a bright searing flare of something consuming the space around her. It was the mona, but no. It wasn’t. It was…something so unusual and yet so familiar. Like deja vu. The teenager felt nauseated, and almost weakened by the sensation. She felt as though she was clinging to her field, to keep it steady and sure. Her mouth felt dry and her tongue leaden, and unbidden her hand clung to the edge of the bathtub as a word strained scared from her lips.

“No.”

The trio seemed to slip through the mirror, squeezed through too small an opening and rushing through the space between here and there—wherever there was. Lilanee panted, terrified as buildings and sky and ground and trees wizzed past faster than anything she had seen in her entire life. She reached with her field for Tom, for Ezre, feeling like she’d been pulled apart from them both and yet still entwined tightly. The dark was heavy, the stars in the sky streaks of light. Around them all the mist was thick, thicker than any steam or smoke any of them would have seen before. They moved faster, and faster and faster. So fast the connection to the Kuleda bathroom felt tenuous at best.

And then sharply Lilanee found herself stopped.

She winced at the sudden snap to stillness, surrounded by the thick mist that was escaping the mirror. But she wasn’t in the bathroom. She was in a cloud, a thick cloying cloud of mist that pressed heavy against her field. It pressed so intently, as though trying to find an opening in her aura, and the fear clung to her.

Ezre?! Tom?!

The Hessean shouted, though nothing came from her mouth. The mist was so thick. So heavy. It was so silent, ringing in her ears it was deafeningly so.

A sound. A hiss.

Lilanee looked around, calling for her companions, catching shadows in the corner of her eyes. She looked up.

There! She could see them, like a portal through the mist, so far far away. Tom was there, facing away from her, his hand wrapped around the Hoxian’s ankle.

Tom would find himself there too, lost in the mist, a hand around the Hexx’s ankle even if it was but a manifestation of their bodies (right?). He would feel the press of the mist, like it wanted him for itself, though it was confused by him. What was he? It writhed against his aura, searching for the cracks with smoky tendrils. Sounds would come to him, in the mist. Hisses, and shadows just beyond sight. The mist pushed at his grasp on Ezre, seeking to remove it, searching for a weak spot. If he looked up, Tom would see Ezre stretched up from him, stretched too far and to thin like fabric pulled to much.

Further still, Ezre would find he was still travelling, still moving forwards across the dark word of Vita. He was stretched, field feeling like it was being pulled away, sucked upwards. He would slow though, eventually, and find himself surrounded in the same mist and the same hisses and the same shadows. He would be lost in mist, only there was no opening above him like the others. Instead it was around him, all around him. Close. So close. So familiar. So heavy.

So hurt.

There was a sense of deep, deep sadness there. Hanging all around him, filling his mouth with the dank taste of old damp soil and musty rot. It was heavy. A needful thing that wanted him, wanted his company.

A faint, tinny voice sounded in the misty surrounds, somewhere far and yet close. The needful feeling shifted, turned, listening whilst Ezre listened. Looked whilst Ezre looked. The mist would thin, and something would show itself in the haze. Trees, dark and thick evergreens, overgrown and tangled together. A fire, burning low and careful, edged by a stone hearth. A hide tent, low to the ground, covered loosely in brush.

Around Tom and Lilanee, the shadows in the mist moved, stalking around them. Watching. Waiting.

[Tom Cooke]

The Kuleda Household • Uptown

Evening on the 17th of Vortas, 2719

H
e felt It, first, as his field flared and spread etheric, as the air thinned and thinned and warmed like the rising of an aeroship above the clouds. Familiar-unfamiliar-strange. It threatened to flip his stomach; he shut his eyes and grit his teeth against a wave of something that was more like sadness than nausea.

When he opened them, he could no longer see Alethia through the veil of mist, or the elaborate claw foot tub, or the silver-bright lines of chalk and blood.

As the conduit, he was closest to the mirror – he knew this – but he felt he was everywhere at once. He felt the everything-nothing of Ezre, bodiless and floating.

He was looking into the mirror, he knew; he saw something, some spark of light in the distant smoke. He felt they were tipping over into it, spilling out of the Kuleda house’s sumptuous bathroom and into – where? Had the bathroom ever been real?

He could no longer feel his own body. He could feel the clairvoyant mona, a blanket of shivering particles around him; he thought he must’ve had ley lines, but he had no hands, no feet to brace on the solid ground, no voice to speak. He saw without seeing; he heard without hearing.

Had he lost his body again? Was he drifting?

The ache filled him, deep and old. He remembered.

Maybe none of it had ever been real. Maybe he had never left that place. He thought of a woman’s dark eyes, glittering with fire – when I was still a man – fought to wrestle the memory back from his vestibule, back behind the lines of the prodigium. He didn’t know why he fought; he knew there was something important in the keeping, but he couldn’t’ve said what.

He missed – not the smell of patchouli, not the broken-bottle chimes in his lover’s garden; something older, deeper and older – some solace he could not name. Perhaps he was a ghost. I was a man, he wanted to cry into the dark, I was flesh and blood, once.

The cold he remembered, and the hunger too, vicious and strange and new as a wailing infant’s.

Ezre—?
Tom?

Who was Ezre? Who was Tom? He had a grip on something, like a fisherman a line; he knew this, with a jolt. He didn’t know how.

But he held on, as tightly as calloused, scarred human hands could.

The hunger was not his, not this time. He felt another presence reach out for him; he had two hands to hold. Clairvoyant mona mingled with physical. It’s going to be all right, he breathed into the mist.

He wouldn’t lie. He knew he was a thing that cared for truth, whatever else he was, and he would make sure he did not make of himself a liar.

A hiss from the mists. The line pulled them on, toward the light, through the hungry dark. His knuckles ached, and the mist tried to push itself through the cracks of him, to make his grip slippery. He held on. He felt impressions – stones edging a firepit, glowing fresh and warm; rippling canvas. The image grew clearer and clearer, mirror-clear.

Jonathan Emmett. Periwinkle eyes. He knew the bright bird whose ankle he held. He remembered all of it. A campsite – it whirled through his mind – a fire, recently tended. Signs of life. Did that mean—?

There was no time. There was something else here; he felt its hunger, as surely as he’d once felt his own. He felt its curiosity and its confusion, too – and most of all, he felt it narrowing itself down, garroting Ezre, chill and rot-reeking.

Ezre, Lilanee, we can’t stay here. He put every bit of what he was into his voice; he held onto Ezre with an iron grip, though the Hexx’s mind threatened to unravel into the grey.

Where was Alethia? He might’ve shouted, but to what end? If they brailed, would they be lost here forever?

We can’t go any further. Whether this means he is alive or dead, we have to go, now!

[Ezre Vks]

nowhere. everywhere.

the 17th of Vortas, 2719 | late evening

Ezre was adrift, balanced with a delicate buoyancy in the tub. Every slow inhale, he rose just a little in the warm water, and every slow exhale, he sank just the same back down again. Floating between each breath, he felt the caress of monic particles that were as strange as they were familiar, sifting through the flutter of thoughts from his companions as if he was untangling a knot of thick wool thread, but just as he was sure he had each strand separated in the metaphorical representation of his own inked fingers, his stomach churned and his breath hitched, the sensation of being tugged, of being poured as if someone had opened the drain and he had become one with the liquid consumed him and they were all moving, moving—

Flowing through what felt like such a small, impossible space, squeezed together, pressed into one single thought for a heartbeat or two, there was a collective moment of confusion or fear or excitement before they were suddenly expanding into something new. Liquid became air as his body evaporated and their combined consciousnesses were hurtled over some tapestry of landscape far faster than he'd anticipated, far faster than he had any control over:

A shared vision that danced swiftly past.

Just when he began to question whether or not he'd ever been in Vienda, whether he still was, and whether he'd not been traveling forever instead, just as suddenly as he'd lost himself to the thrill of movement, he stopped.

They s t o p p e d.

They had arrived.

They had always been there.

They had never left.

We are here.

Ezre's ineffable calm had traveled with them, seeping into the cracks in everyone else's resolve, pouring into their cold fear like the inescapable heat of the lava of Bash's own blood. He found himself looking down, squinting through the mist. He was the bright bird with dark eyes, held by the memory of strong hands and anchored by the weight of an eager heart,

It is alright.

He felt as though he was still being poured, a cup almost empty, stretched thin. His friends, Lilanee and Tom, stayed still then, rooted, and he continued to drift after that initial jolt, floating away.

Higher.

Further.

The mist tingled against his senses, trailing over ley lines. Vaguely, just barely aware of his body left far behind him, his sinuses ached and his inner ears stung, but he was so disconnected from any sense of pain that it didn't at all seem to matter. He heard the thoughts of the others, felt their rising sense of worry like a cold hand on his bare chest, shoving him downward in the bath, pressing against his tenuous equilibrium.

When he finally slowed again, the Hexxos Guide inhaled sharply and attempted to gain some sort of understanding of their surroundings. He knew nothing of Western Anaxas. He didn't know what it should look like, let alone what it looked like now. He heard the growls and the whispers as if they were ripples in the water he was floating in, reverberating against his whole self, attempting to crawl into their shared consciousness and claw through their connections with each other with an uncomfortable urgency.

He had no footing, surrounded by mist. He had no sense of direction, flowing and free. Still, he strained, he reached, he held tightly to his experience as he attempted desperately to drift toward some solid ground, to establish himself into the consciousness of someone else, of the person he'd asked the mona to find:

Jonathan Emmett.

Were these real hatchers? Or were they memories of hatchers in Emmett-vumash's vestibule? Where was the boundary between vestibule and latibule? Was there one at all? Had he traveled too far into a mind that wasn't his? Had they even succeeded? Where had their spellwork taken them? Was this even Jonathan's mind? Was this something, someone, somewhere else?

He felt the heaviness. He felt the press of grau, weighing him down more as if those hands of doubt on his chest were being replaced one by one with stones. The fragrance of incense that had followed them from the distant, open window was slowly replaced with the scent of petrichor, decay thick at the back of his throat.

Need—

Hunger—

Loneliness—

Go? We just got here. We are not staying—

Ezre resisted both the voices of his companions as well as the desire that called to him from the mist, firm and full of indescribable curiosity and confidence, overflowing with bright colors like some bold, flaming torch in the cloying, heavy mist. The Hexxos Guide was here for a purpose, and his chan-empowered sense of duty fueled the fires that gave him so much light,

—but are not leaving, either. Not yet. Hold tight. Just a little longer.

He exhaled, long and deep, nicium-laced water lapping at his cheeks, thin trails of red coloring the liquid a rich purple near his ears. Monite rang out against the tiles of the far away bathroom, and the Hoxian might have tasted copper on his tongue had he not been so focused on strengthening their connection, tempering their travel, knitting them tighter together in an attempt to keep them safe.

If this was a vestibule, if this was someone's mind, it was far more lost than any mind Ezre had ever visited. Perhaps Emmett-vumash had been in the wilderness alone for too long and lost his mind to the mist. Perhaps Emmett-vumash had simply been gone too long—

No. Surely not.

No one had ever really reached that far.

Had they?

The bright bird they saw as Ezre flared in white, warm luminosity, sheltering the precious minds of his companions against the shadows in the mist, lighting a path toward the tent, leading them with all the bravado the young Hoxian could summon from the churning hot magma of his innermost self. He was Vjer'a—way finder, path lighter, guide between life and death—and he trusted in the wisdom of his people that had been passed onto him as much as he trusted in his friends.

Lilanee, you are here because your father knows your voice best. Not mine. Not Tom's. Call to him, but keep your distance, no matter how tempting it is to rush in. I am undecided about this destination, but I believe can keep us safe for a moment or two longer. Tom needs to see clearly. We all do.

[Lilanee Kuleda]

17th Vortas, 2719
KULEDA BATHROOM| LATE EVENING

Lilanee didn’t hear Tom so much as she felt him, like a voice inside her head, a consciousness that breathed over the fear and strange sounds in the mist. The young woman knew this couldn’t be real, this had to be something of an illusion they were all sharing in Ezre’s inebriated Clarvoyiancy, and yet it felt real. Her skin felt cold, goosebumps rose and the tiny hairs on her arms stood up, and in the mist she looked up at her companions.

It’s going to be all right,

The teenager nodded, though she didn’t feel it. It felt like telling Madeline that it would be alright when ghosts were very real and very active. It might not actually be alright, but you said it anyway.

Around Tom, the mists were closing, pressing down on his form and the russet haired Hessean felt panic in her chest.

Ezre, Lilanee, we can’t stay here.

The voice was fainter, like the poor connection through a scrystone, fading in and out. Lilanee ignored the shadows in the mist around her, looking up with wide eyes as the image of her companions above her became cloudy.

“I agree. This doesn’t feel right. We shouldn’t be here. Tom? Tom can you hear me?” The ninth form called out, heart racing and pulse in her ears, as the man’s form completely faded into the thick swirling mist.

or dead, we have to go, now!

The last word echoed powerfully around her, and in the mist a horrible screech sounded. A scream, a growl, a hiss. It was all of these and nothing, and her panic was unavoidable. Lilanee looked around her, snapping her head as shadows moved faster and closer in the mist. She stepped backwards, though there was nowhere to go. Tears formed in her periwinkle eyes and she felt as though she was lost, lost somewhere between the ornate bathroom and Western Anaxas. Not here, not there, but somewhere else.

Lilanee, you are here because your father knows your voice best. Not mine. Not Tom's. Call to him, but keep your distance, no matter how tempting it is to rush in. I am undecided about this destination, but I believe can keep us safe for a moment or two longer. Tom needs to see clearly. We all do.

The Hexxos’ voice echoed in both of their minds, and Lilanee closed her eyes to focus on it. They sounded so very far away. So very very far away. She inhaled, and exhaled, feeling the press of the mist around her. The sound faded, the vicious screaming, nothing but a dull noise in the background as she focused her mind. This wasn’t real. Ezre held them, had them safe. They were safe. This was safe.

“Father? Are you there? It’s me, it’s Lilanee.” She called out, awkward in the mist. The words echoed around her, and felt intangible, as though she was talking to an inanimate object. It felt cold, clinical, and around her the sound fell quiet.

It felt like something was waiting.

Taking a deep breath, Lilanee drew a word from the depths that she’d not used in years. Something that resonated in her, that warmed in her chest. Something Jonathan Emmett would know.

“Opaji?”

The screaming returned, and it was deafening. It reverberated in her head and rattled her teeth. The teenager’s breathing was rapid, and her hands shook. She called out for Ezre, for Tom, for her father, but there was nothing but the screeching in her ears.

“Lilanee!”

A firm hand on her shoulder, shaking her.

A fearful, yet firm loud voice.

Dark, concerned eyes staring at her.

The girl blinked.

She was still in the bathroom, her hand gripping the hard side of the tub so hard her knuckles were white. Her mouth still chanted the monite, and her feet were still firmly on the Bastian tiles. Beside her, Alethia was shouting her name, shaking her shoulder.

“They need to come back.” She managed to exhale between the spellwork, before turning her blue eyes back to Ezre. They were still there, in the deep blue water of the tub, or at least their body was. Their mind, she could feel it still, was away. Calm, and concentrated. Their field still wove with hers, and Tom’s, grounded and together. She saw the purple streaks in the water, though what it meant she didn’t fully grasp yet. Glancing up, she looked at Tom, reaching for him through the spellwork. He was still there, like her, still standing in the bathroom. His older galdori body at least, though his eyes were so far away. His mouth still moved, still chanted, but whatever was happening in his mind it happened away from here.

Tom would feel the mist pushing at him, digging around the edges. It tried this way, and that, to break his hold on the Hexxos. Shadows in the mist, hisses in the unseen, it didn’t know what to make of him. Here, a mind, though not the mind it should be. Frayed, and slightly off, like a bowl thrown on a pottery wheel with a minor imperfection. Not quite round. Curiosity, it came through the strange mist in waves, and in the space above where Ezre stretched on, the clearing vision of a campsite sat like some strange moving spectograph. The Hoxians voice would come to him from above, talking to Lilanee, bidding her to call for the patriarch.

Opaji?

The word would feel warm, like butter melting on hot bread. Or like a stoked fire on a winters evening. It filled his mind, oozing in the furtherest reaches. Without knowing the word, Tom would know it. He would feel it, like those same feelings he remembered with his daoa. Like Ezre’s with their umah.

Something would echo in the mist around him. A sound far off. A rumble like falling rocks in the distance. The grating of a screech far away. Far far away. He would feel a field, familiar but not one of his companions, brushing with concern against him.

A warm hand on his arm.

A firm voice.

“Incumbent!”

Whether it was the word or the touch on his arm, it would be enough to ground him. Tom Cooke would find himself back in the bathroom, Lilanee looking at him from the bathtub with concerned blue eyes and Alethia beside him with the almost smug look of someone who thinks themselves some sort of hero.

“Lilanee said you needed to come back.” She said matter of factly, not at all perturbed by the fact he was still chanting monite. Clearly whatever spell the three of them had woven had been Hoxian. Only Hoxians, with their high and mighty ‘holier than thou’ could make a spell so strange.

Hoxians.

Around the room, the mist was still laid down, a layer across the floor that came to their ankles, through the glass of the mirror. If Tom were to look at the mirror, he would see that same vision he’d seen from within. A campsite, with a low tent covered in brush, and a fire. He would see what Ezre could see now, still lost in the space between here and there.

Ezre, lost there. Stretched so thin. The smell was thick around them, the decay and the damp. He was closer now, his mind there in the campsite. The fire, it should have the scent of smoke, but it didn’t. They were sitting in front of the fire. Looking at it.

Perhaps it’s early Bastian. They did spend time… A voice came again, tinny and hard to hear, but it was here. It was him.

Hands in a lap, dirty.

A chewed pencil, an open notebook with dog-earred pages.

A leg, splinted and wrapped in torn clothing. Dirty.

A crack in his vision, glasses. Broken glass.

Tired.

Hungry.

Scared.

Opaji?

The word echoed around him, around the campsite, filled with all the warmth of an over-sized woolly scarf on a cold day or a cup of hot tea in a familiar library. He looked up from the fire. Turned his gaze away from the campsite.

Trees.

Mist.

Shadows.

“Lil?”

[Tom Cooke]

The Kuleda Household • Uptown

Evening on the 17th of Vortas, 2719

O
paji.

Tom had been trying to push down his panic, but he felt it spilling across the ley channels, lapping out across the lines of the prodigium like an anxious tide. Lilanee’s voice had been fizzing at the edges; he had felt – with increasing terror – nobody had heard him cry out. Bright-bird Ezre flared, but not even the warm glow of duty was enough to hold him in place. It was pulling him up, away, and Tom’d been helpless but to hold on tight as he could, to keep the link intact even as the mist swallowed all color.

But opaji swam from the mist, surfaced from the water, and he felt in it what it was. Woodsmoke and buttered bread; warm scratchy wool, familiar-unfamiliar bitter tea-scent. It rustled up older and more familiar things, things that drifted out on the lines: cigarette-smoke; skinny, long-fingered hands littered with rings; old hands with long nails braiding his hair, a raspy voice weaving in and out.

It brought the vestibule – it had to be a vestibule; this wasn’t just some grey oblivion – into focus. (His eyelids flickered, fluttered; his brow knit, though his lips kept moving with the murmured incantation.)

A distant susurrus, rock crackling and shifting on rock. Another hiss, more like steam through a vent than a cat. Or more like –

He jolted at the voice, at the hand firm on his arm; the chill tile underneath him came rushing back, and the flickering shadows, and two glittering dark eyes fixed on his. He nearly stumbled over his monite, but kept his tongue aright. There was mist even here, swirling round their feet, but he was viciously conscious of the smell of incense and the chill Vortas breeze through the open window.

His lips kept moving. He kept chanting, even as he identified the field that tangled with his. Alethia Kuleda. His heartbeat’d leaped up to his throat, pulse hammering and aching in his veins; the breath was raw in his lungs. For a moment, even as he spoke, his lip curled with anger.

You can’t come to the mona with such things. He knew this; he was casting, still, and he’d already slipped too much. His eyes jerked away from Lilanee’s mother’s, toward the tub, where a few strands of dark color were swirling up through the misty water.

Blood?

No. One, two, three, four – he found the rhythm of the monite, despite his hiccup; he repeated the invocation once, twice, thrice… – he found the rhythm of his breath: one, two, three, four…

In, out. He let it fill him up to his diaphragm, breathed the words out like he was exhaling smoke from a spur.

Did she expect him to speak? Did she mean to interrupt the spell? He thought again of her perched expectant in the corner, watching Lilanee with a line between her dark brows; he thought of the bloodstained bandage wrapped round Lilanee’s hand, of all this strangeness writ on her tiles.

He felt a pang; he felt a brief flare of anger, cracking out across the tenuous ley channel. Lilanee had agreed with him – they’d both felt it safest to leave – and Ezre had insisted.

Tom might’ve been juggling a dozen things. He couldn’t think; he had to hold onto the spell, for fear of brail and backlash.

Past Kuleda, still propped in the middle of the chalked lines, the mirror stood, misted. But through it, he could see a fleeting, flickering image: dirty hands on dirty, torn cloth. He saw the line of a splint tangling stained trousers – and he felt it, too, a lance of pain through his own leg. He winced.

The voice was familiar, in that strange unfamiliar way. It burbled something out about early Bastians; it was hard to make out, like a snatch of a conversation overheard in a swarming marketplace. But then, like the echo of a rung bell – opaji – he heard it clear and focused: Lilanee?

He could see nothing; a line of trees, perhaps, wreathed in shadows. A hairline crack, as if the mirror were broken, though he knew it was whole.

The first thing he felt was not relief; it was fear. For all the image was clear, it was becoming harder and harder to hold the ley channel that bound him and Lilanee to Ezre. So what if he wasn’t the messenger of one kov’s death, if he was the messenger of another’s?

He looked back at Mrs. Kuleda, staring up at her wide-eyed. He couldn’t speak, knee-deep in voo, but he held up one finger and jabbed it at the mirror – once, twice, thrice. Look. He grunted, feeling helpless.

Then he pushed past her, toward the tub. Ezre? I need you to listen to me. We got what we came for. You need to come back. His anger revealed itself for what it was: deep, old fear. It was a fear that tasted like whisky and a churning stomach.

Duty for Ezre was a buoyant thing, not a sturdy rock. What about your duty, he wanted to demand, to Lilanee’s mother? What about your duty to your own umah, to come back to her intact – all the lost souls you’ve got to live to guide? What about your duty to that inked flesh of yours? What the hell about your duty to Lilanee?

He steadied himself the edge of the tub, white-knuckled. With red-rimmed eyes, he met Lilanee’s gaze briefly; there was something apologetic in his eyes.

Then, slowly, he began to curl the spell. He closed the clauses he had opened; he exhorted the mona to bring them back from their wandering. He tasted blood on his lips and wiped away a nosebleed.

Ezre, whatever the hell it is, now is not the time.

[Ezre Vks]

nowhere. everywhere.

the 17th of Vortas, 2719 | late evening

Otsur was the Deftung echo to Hessath, though it was the warm, familiar feelings and not the word that drew forth so many memories—Ezre's chan-filled consciousness so ridiculously susceptible to the stray thoughts of others, even as he fought to find some modicum of control in this strange nowhere, in this strange somewhere, in this strange everywhere he'd willingly drifted into. The Guide demanded focus, reaching for the anchors he knew he needed on this journey because he was at least naively aware of his own shortcomings—

Until swift hands snatched the first of his tethers away!

The dark-haired Hoxian who'd been bobbing so serenely in the warm nothingness of that nicium-laced tub gasped at the loud screech that reverberated through liquid, that jarred through his thoughts, disturbing his equilibrium. He tilted, just slightly, tenuous friendship with surface tension disturbed as his legs sank toward the bottom, face contorting in concentration when water tickled his tattooed chin. He was still casting, still soaring, still arched like some carefully drawn flight path over the western horizon.

The young Guide couldn't taste that familiar metallic tang on his tongue, drown as it was by the overwhelming scent of distant petrichor that filled his senses, so intent on reaching into the space he'd found—

Again, some noise like a petulant child dragging nails down a chalk board in one of Brunnhold's stuffy classrooms, and this time Ezre felt his stomach lurch, not with the sensation of falling but with the sudden lightness of being. There was a thrill in the realization, a rush of intoxicated adrenaline that overpowered the fear that roiled through the intimate connection of the prodigium and his tangled consciousness, entwined as it had been with Lilanee's and Tom's until Alethia chose to intervene.

Oh, somewhere in the back of his distant mind, he knew. He knew it was her. He would never forget that voice, not ever. She would be forever known to the young Hoxian as the one afraid of the truth. Heathen. Unbeliever.

Ezre sank a little further there in the tub, arms waving, wings flapping.

Undaunted. Defiant. Triumphant. Persistent.

The mist filled his lungs like a warning, thick and heavier than any steam, weighing him down with every inhale, but he had promised. He had promised he would find Jonathan Emmett, living or dead, and so he did. Desperately, he bridged the gap, establishing a grip on the vestibule of a stranger—

Dru. Not a stranger. Not anymore. Not while so connected to the half-Hessean's thoughts. Strange, sure, but still someone's father.

He loved his otsur, too—the man too aware of his own mortality and yet still willing to love something, someone, who seemingly had no end—ah, Ezre felt for a moment all of his favorite memories of Tuhir, patient and kind, pillar of his childhood, threaten to drag him away from the brilliant discovery of his own hard-won, still-fought-for success—

This man was alive!

Jonathan Emmett lives!

Did they see? Could they see?

He felt it trickle through their connection, the warmth of the raen's last star of hope, the heat of Lilanee's one burning desire, filling him just like the bathwater that dribbled at the edges of his lips, seeking to flood his lungs with the same forceful excitement.

Unbound by the tethers of his chosen companions, for while they were still casting, while they were still connected through their careful prodigium, their attentions had been distracted by Alethia's interruption, leaving the Hexxos Guide there in the middle of their Clairvoyant spellwork as if they'd slipped the hood off a tamed bird of prey. Like some Hoxian condor who'd caught a volcanic updraft, elation and excitement caught Ezre's entire existence from that Viendan bathroom all the way into Western Anaxas. He was suddenly free to soar, uplifted by the thrill of truth and thrilled by uplifting encouragement.

Up up up—

—and then—

Wait!

—down down ...

down ...

Fear. Worry. Doubt. Heavy stones, plunked on his inked chest as if tossed into a pond.

Ezre gurgled, blood (not water) pooling in the back of his throat, Jonathan's recognition and Tom's words filtering through the grau at the same time,

No—

He exhaled, sinking, turning his bright bird self downward, hearing the raen curl his part of the spell. It couldn't be held. It was too much. He knew, but he did it anyway. He could get lost. He could keep going, going too far. He knew that, too. And yet, he took the risk.

Not yet, Tom. Vre'ia, say more—

Careening without grace toward the fire, toward the trees, toward the dirty, injured man in glasses, the Hexxos Guide's words were burdened by consonants, barely Estuan, and they came after his own syllables of Monite ended while the last of his willful, rebellious, teenaged self tossed all of his endurance into the moment without being able to even see it curl off the surface of the bath like more steam,

"Lilanee can hear you. See you. Your wife, too—"

Wasting no time with introductions or preambles or explanations, not wasting time with Alethia's unsavory name, unaware that when his projected feet touched mental dirt in the grey matter of someone else's mind his face had dipped below the now deep purple surface of the water, the Hexxos filled the untrained, unaware, unwitting vestibule of the only witness he'd wanted,

"There are no moments to spare. I cannot hold this. If we are to find you, you must show us something to remember. Something to find. A point on a map. A landmark. A name. A reference. A direction. Anything. Now—quickly! I cannot—"

Ezre had held his breath, held the spell, gripped the upkeep with all that was left of his frayed self. He inhaled, nostrils filling with water instead of air, dark eyes snapping open, shrouded in blue. Thin, mountain air at the top of the world the Hoxian could breathe, it was true, but liquid? No, no he could not.

For a heartbeat, still stretched over all of Anaxas, he was hardly connected to the body whose lungs screamed, whose sinuses burned, whose ley lines literally stung in what felt like electric pain. For what little was left of the oxygen in his narrow chest, he was still in front of a campfire, staring at a face he'd always known and just met at the same time, straining to make sure Jonathan was heard and seen through that mirror, by Roa's mercy!

And then, for the next heartbeat, he was there in the bath, sunk like a brick, too dissociated from his own body to even remember which way was up and too exhausted to shove in the direction his disconnected self might have even guessed it was supposed to go.

The mirror cracked with a hiss and a whine. The mist seemed to sink, seeping into floor tiles, slowly disappearing with an almost tangible reluctance. The magical particles that had crowded their circle, familiar and strange alike, seemed to tense—expectant.

Hands groped for the edge of the tub, fingers desperate for purchase, arms languidly flailing as the Guide couldn't even bring himself to break the surface,

couldn't re-orient himself to reality,

couldn't b r e a t h e.

[Lilanee Kuleda]

17th Vortas, 2719
KULEDA BATHROOM| LATE EVENING

Lilanee felt the jolt as Tom came back, like the jolt one gets in the middle of the night when a dream feels more than a dream. She kept up the chant, the sing-song syllables that defined the boundaries of their boundless incantation, grateful for once that Alethia had interfered. The anger, she felt it too, and her hand clung to the tub as though to hold her shaking legs up.

Ezre was powerful, and smart, and inquisitive. And she loved him for all of these things. But he was also foolish and reckless. Even the Hessean could see that now.

Her blue eyes flicked to the mirror that the man gestured to, though she couldn’t see it from this angle. Alethia could though. She frowned as she looked into the glass, moving closer to stare at it with dark eyes and doubtful creases on her forehead.

Lil?

The russet brunette heard it, through their shared connection, and her eyes widened. For a moment, she almost stumbled over her chanting, eyes stinging and heart racing. It sounded like him.

But could it be a trick of the mind?

Her gaze swung to Tom as he moved towards the tub, forcing her to look down as the older raen’s concern flooded her thoughts and his words echoed in her head. The Hessean winced, trying to find her fathers voice again, tugged in two directions. She feared for Ezre now, a genuine and real fear. But she had heard his voice. In the foggy monic connection she had heard it. A glimmer of hope, a shred of terror. She’d heard ghosts in the Crypt before too. It might be an echo of something gone.

It might be nothing.

The teenager made a sound in the back of her throat at Tom’s anger. Tom’s real, heavy, thick anger. It was heavy in their connection, and it burned on her tongue. She smelt acrid and sweet all at once, and as he approached the tub they looked at each other, and her stomach turned.

No, no no. This wasn’t fair! They’d just heard him. They’d just heard Jonathan.

But Ezre—

As the raen shifted gears, the mona around her felt dampened, like trying to cast underwater. Blood trickled from the older man’s nose, and Lilanee heard a ringing in her ears. Her teeth ached, and fearful of the possibility of brailing if they didn’t coordinate their efforts, the young woman carefully switched the syllables on her tongue as tears welled in her vision and slipped down her cheeks. It was like approaching the porch of a homestead, late at night in the deep dark, and seeing a light in the window. Getting closer, closer, heart full of hope and home. Reaching for the handle and hearing the laughter of family. Turning the brass knob and then opening the door onto the dark bitter cold of nothing. So close, and already so far.

Now was not the time.

Ezre, you have to come back, right now. Whatever you see, it’s not important. It’s not as important as us. Lilanee thought in their shared space, not even sure she could reach him anymore. Tom held the connection to the Hexxos, she was merely the conduit for their connection to Jonathan. It didn’t matter. She had to call out. She had to try.

Alethia watched the mirror, her face full of shock.

Not yet, Tom. Vre'ia, say more—

The student looked at Tom again, eyes wide, tears heavy. She blinked rapidly, before closing her eyes and speaking the words in her mind that wanted to flow like water.

Opaji, father! I’m here! We’re going to find you. We’re going to bring you home! Lilanee gripped the tub with both hands now, wincing at the ringing in her ears. Her field reached out for Ezre, wrapped around them, around Tom. She reached for her father, with a child’s needful hope.

Within his vision, within the mirror, Ezre and Alethia would see twisting. The owner of this body looking for the source of the voice.

“Who the clock—my Lil…Alethia?! Just what is this I—” The voice of a stranger, a man of middle age sounded through the mirror, tinny and distant. Though in Ezre’s head it was loud, like his own internal thoughts brought to life. It echoed in the bathroom, and Lilanee couldn’t help the sob that jumped from her chest. She pushed past the bath to stand over the mirror, spell curling and mona drawing back as the craft was closed off. In the vision of their mind, the Hoxian would see a dirty hand lift to adjust glasses and he would sense the flow of thoughts as Jonathan Emmett tried to ignore all the questions racing through him to do as he was bid.

“I uh…just…ah—ah…Florne! Go north. Cross the river. Towards the stone gates. Do not come from Fennecky. Ther…….dangerou…..ca…ting……….impos…le.” The vision was fading, fogging over slowly, and Jonathan’s voice with it. A sudden flurry of movement; fire, tent, book.

“Anh—” The last desperate word was cut off as the beautiful ornate mirror cracked with a hiss and a whine. The mist seemed to seep away, and Lilanee dropped to her knees beside her mother, hands either side of the broken looking glass.

“No! No opaji no! Come back! Come back!” She yelled at her cracked reflection, face red and blotchy, one ear seeping blood ever so slightly. Beside her Alethia seemed frozen, unable to speak to comfort her daughter. She stared at the mirror, arms wrapped around herself.

The familiar fields that were woven so deeply with her own tugged Lilanee from her moment of grief, feeling something wrong. Something terribly wrong.

“Tom, he’s—” The name slipped from her lips, unthinking and unhidden, climbing to her feet as fast as she could and reaching for the submerged figure in the tub.

He’s drowning!

[Tom Cooke]

The Kuleda Household • Uptown

Evening on the 17th of Vortas, 2719

H
e’d heard it, snk like a knife hitting bone. He knew the crack of a mirror; he’d broken enough himself, in recent days. He knew that whatever was in the mirror had gone. He barely had time to wonder if Alethia had seen it, had seen anything at all.

He’d heard opaji’s – he’d heard Jonathan Emmett’s voice calling out her name. He could scarce imagine how it would feel; he couldn’t bear to. He imagined a mirror that could spin him Jaeli’s voice, hama, soft and lovely as his song – he didn’t think he’d believe it, either. He didn’t think there was anything he’d believe less than a vision of that.

“Fennecky,” he heard a deep voice mumbling; he realized it was his. “No” – his ears came back into focus, as if they’d been full of water – “not by Fennecky, not by… not by… by Florne, not Fennecky, north… river, stone gates…”

His lips still moved; no sound came out. Jonathan Emmett lives had spilled across his mind in vibrant feathers, lofty, soft as an owl’s down. Now, gone – for what –

The last thing he felt before his and Lilanee’s curl snipped the ley channel was this: his lungs, swelling and spasming, dry-empty; his throat constricting shut; his mouth full of water that tasted like bitter dye. As he stumbled and clawed himself to the tub, fingers white-knuckles at the lip, he felt his sinuses burning. There were tears streaming down his cheeks, and he could taste blood on his lips.

He’d left a trail of smeared chalk behind him, a teacup knocked over, spilling dregs of chan. He didn’t much care.

“Ezre! For fuck’s sake!” he snapped. If he saw Alethia in the corner of his eye – if it was damned useless anyway – he couldn’t bring himself to care.

Lilanee was behind him, clinging to the edge of the tub. She was saying something and he couldn’t make sense of the words. Opaji, he heard. He’d met her wide eyes earlier, full of wrenching grief, flooded with gratefulness that she’d begun curling the spell in spite of what she felt. And now –

Tom, he heard, out loud. Something was wrong with that; he couldn’t think what.

Drowning, he heard, the last wisp of a thought drifting like smoke on the air.

I know, he wanted to shriek, plunging an arm into the water. He was cut off from Lilanee, cut off from Ezre; his ears still rang with how abruptly the ley channel had been severed. He could hear the slush-splash of the water even as he grasped for an upper arm, a shoulder, something, but it was as if he’d been trapped at the bottom of a bottle, everything echoing through the glass.

He still felt it, like fresh grief. It wasn’t his, he knew, smelling of wool and bitter tea and woodsmoke, tasting of buttered toast. They mingled with the splashing of water and the merged clairvoyant mona and the smell of incense. He felt that something dear to him was being pulled away, slow but sure, whatever it was.

“I shouldn’t’ve let this happen,” he heard himself gasping. He seized on what felt like a clammy arm and pulled, though his back twinged and ached. His fingers dug into the skin, white-knuckled.

There was a great splash. One of his knees was braced against the edge of the tub. His sleeve was already stained with dye, plastered wet against his skin.

“Help,” he croaked, shooting a desperate backward glance at Lilanee, Alethia, anybody. “Stone gates,” he was still whispering, licking blood off his lips, “not by Fennecky, by Florne…”

Everything was slippery, and he’d no strength in his arms to hold. He thought he’d pulled Ezre from the water, and he slid one hand behind the Hexx’s back, but he felt him slipping from his grip. He’d not a damned clue what to do with someone who was drowning, and his mind was galloping so fast it’d blanked.

He patted Ezre’s back, hard. “Help me get him all the way out,” he said between his teeth. “He can’t fall back into the water, he – I don’t know what to do. F-Fennecky, Florne…”

He was breathing heavily; he couldn’t seem to stop the words.

“Stone gates, Florne… Anh… Anhau,” he whispered, choking.

[Ezre Vks]

nowhere. everywhere.

the 17th of Vortas, 2719 | late evening

Everyone's panic and worry reverberated through their shared consciousness, weighing down the body he'd left so far behind. More stones piled on his tattooed chest, shoving his flesh downward while his mind soared far, far away into the vestibule of a stranger. Dru. Not a stranger anymore. Never a stranger again.

It will be alright, he wanted to tell them both.

Calm down, he longed to say, let me do my work.

Instead, Jonathan Emmett's face briefly filled his vision. Just a flicker of the man he'd seen in spectrographs while his surprised emotions filled the Hexxos Guide's senses and his voice echoed in his ears as if shouted across a cavern full of water. There was the ruddy hint of firelight that danced like the candles on the windowsill behind his eyelids. A glimpse of a book. Water was flowing over his person, swirling around his face, pulling him downward as he clung to the connection as tightly as he could, longing for words to be heard.

The crack of the mirror might as well have been knuckles driven into his face. He felt it sharply—heard it in his skull like the impact of an opponent's hand in combat. Only when he tried to inhale sharply in pain it was not air that filled his hungry lungs but water. Nicium-laced water at that. It tasted awful. It stung the back of his throat. It reminded him he breathed air, though.

Suddenly yanked back into his body almost against his will by the curling of their careful spellwork, Ezre found that the neural connection between his flesh and his mind had no interest in working the way he'd taken for granted for so long in his life. The bath was dark, murky, and for a moment he couldn't tell if he was just lost in the mist, forever adrift in the grau or if he was actually in the damn tub. Arms that should have pushed and legs that should have moved refused to do so. Mouth too full of water, he couldn't exhale or ask for help, either. It was as strange as it was disturbing, and but he was still unable to feel at all concerned.

Hands snatched for him, fingers digging into tattooed, waterlogged skin, but he couldn't offer his assistance even if some part of him wanted to.

He was so heavy.

When had all this flesh grown so heavy?

Once his face broke the surface, however, much like it had the first time on Spar Rhavat nineteen years ago, instinct took over. Just as helpless as he'd been, born in waters warmed by Bash's blood, held for the first time by a woman who'd seen too many lifetimes pass by before seeing one she'd grown herself, Ezre was no small, fresh infant anymore. He gurgled, Tom's voice taking over where Jonathan's had left off, familiar consonants for what Ezre would later come to recognize as locations. Now? They were just garbled nonsense. All of it nonsense.

Dark eyes came into focus on the edge of the tub, desperate for it, though everything else was a blur of bodies and sounds and fields. Whether he made it out or at least partially over the edge, needing far too many hands and far to many attempts to do so because he might as well have been a corpse (the Hoxian knew exactly how strange the burden it was to Carry the Dead, after all), it was a struggle the whole way. Where a corpse was heavy and stiff, usually, by the time his job as mortician and funerary ritualist became necessary, it wasn't as though they were difficult to manipulate, honestly. Ezre was, however, not an empty vessel (nor did he want to be), not devoid of a soul to animate him, and so he was more akin to a slippery beast of unnecessary size, weak and wobbly.

He sank a few times when grasping hands awkwardly attempted to find the right purchase on his wiry frame—once, twice, a third and his fingers managed to hook the drain plug, giving himself a better chance of not drowning. The lithe Hoxian would make it to his knees with help, flopping over the tub, sputtering and blubbering in an attempt to clear his air passages of liquid.

Finally—finally!—he would ooze onto the tile with a loud, soggy slap of bare skin and no muscle tone, pooling onto the floor in a trail of blue and purple and red only to cough and gag, only to vomit chan and water and blood, a sodden choking mess without the ability to at all lift himself from the mire. His nails and every porous crease of his skin were dyed a strange blue and, upon closer inspection of his heaving, hacking self it would seem as though someone had added pinstripes to the edges of the dark lines tattooed beneath his skin, for much like iron shavings were attracted to a magnet, the nicium in the bathwater had dyed the same blue in rough-edged outlines along every tattoo on his person.

Stone gates.

Eventually, some modicum of control gradually returned to the young Guide, the connection between mind and body separated so purposefully by magic slowly made anew. Sort of. Maybe. Mostly. He rolled, stare still somewhat vacant as he attempted to piece together everything that had just happened, everything that they'd just done.

Not by Fennecky.

Together.

Jonathan Emmett lived and spoke. Everyone had to have seen it. Right?

Florne.

Wheezing wetly, breathing raggedly, Ezre Vks managed to lay on his back for some brief moment—

—and grin.

Radiant, bright, and full of as much hope as he was bathwater, he didn't care that everything hurt or that brain functions were begrudgingly remembering how his body worked. He didn't care that red trickled from his ears or dribbled from his nostrils, dark stains on the expensive tile while he concentrated on the use of his lungs, hearing liquid rattle inside and tasting the disgusting mixture of bile and minerals and chan. He didn't care that every part of him ached, that his sinuses threatened to explode, or that his vision felt permanently blurred by so much distance.

"Zjjjjaaaai—" The Hexxos Guide was still grinning, rhakor washed down the drain, teeth and gums stained blue, and Deftung catching in his throat, grinding with molars that ached, "—Circle be praised!"

That was amazing. He didn't—couldn't quite—say out loud, choking and rolling to throw up some more instead.

[Lilanee Kuleda]

17th Vortas, 2719
KULEDA BATHROOM| LATE EVENING

For a moment the russet haired Hessean sat beside the mirror, afraid to leave the ornate looking glass lest somehow her father’s voice returned, that he might reach out without the clairvoyant's assistance.

Ezre was drowning.

Tom’s arm was plunging into the indigo liquid as the teenager stared at the glass, tears on her cheeks and breath catching in her chest.

“I shouldn’t’ve let this happen,”

“I know.” She breathed in reply to the older man’s gasp, guilt wracking her chest as the raen worked to pull the leaden Hoxian from the bath, knowing this was entirely her fault but not able to entirely accept that her words were truth.

They’d found something. And a part of her was both grateful and terrified.

“Help, not by Fennecky, by Florne…”

Lilanee shook herself from her thoughts with a horrified sound as she moved towards the tub. Her hands dipped into the warm water, scrabbling for purchase on soft tawny skin, tugging hard together with Tom. She didn’t have the strength of the wiry Hoxian, and the greying galdor before her was not exactly the thirty-year-old human he’d once been. The girl grunted, moving with Tom, tucking her arms under Ezre’s to help scoop them ungracefully out of the tub onto the chill tiled floor in a spray of indigo, slipping to her knees and losing her glasses across the room.

“Ez—” The worried galdor’s voice was cut short by the gurgling expulsion of the blue waters from within the Hexxo’s lungs and the chan from their stomach. It was a rancid flood across the expensive Bastian tiling, the sound and the smell dragging Alethia from her daze.

“Ugh, no!” She shrieked, rushing for the doorway and yowling for the house staff as the young redhead hovered over the Hoxian, dress wet and blue eyes concerned. A hand reached for their cheek as Ezre stared vacantly for what felt like too long.

“By Ophur, Ezre, can you hear me? You stupid clocking kenser can you hear me?!” She frowned, fear bubbling in her chest. The tawny creature looked as though his mind was gone, lost forever in that terrifying wrap of misty nothingness with shadows nipping at the edges. Her eyes looked to Tom for a second, field vibrantly yellow and orange with her emotions, before she looked down again.

The Hoxian was grinning.

Bloodied, wet, blue and breathless, the raven-haired student grinned like an absolute lunatic. Lilanee shifted then, grabbing for a nearby towel and using it to wipe at the Hexxos’ face.

"Zjjjjaaaai—Circle be praised!"

Alethia spun on the Hoxian as another wave of regurgitation hit, her dark eyes hard as cut glass.

“Circle?! The Circle had nothing to do with this. It is Vita who gives the gift of mona, and who set your path to whatever destination you discovered.” Glancing up at the older woman, the Hessean stood, hands reaching for her mother's shoulders.

“Did you hear him?! Mother did you hear him? Opaji! I heard his voice, echoing in there….in that place. In that mirror. He is alive! He is alive!” The ninth form yelled, her grip tight and heart pounding in her chest. Alethia frowned at her, moving her hands away with a firm directness.

‘He is an idiot, like your Hoxian. Leaving us here alone whilst he enjoys whatever exploration has kept him from us.” She snapped coldly, glaring at Tom and Ezre. Lilanee’s brow drew downwards, and she took a step back from the older woman.

“That is all you can say?! He’s probably hurt, alone. Waiting for rescue where he assumed none would ever come. Expecting that his wife probably has signed his death certificate already, so eager to claim him gone!” Alethia blinked, looking at her daughter with surprise.

“No I—”

“Leave us.” Lilanee snapped, her hands fists by her side. The older woman scoffed.

“You can’t orde—”

“LEAVE!” The singular word echoed off the tiling, loud and sharp as the flare of red shift around the teenager. The brunette Hessean jumped, shocked by the sound, eyes wide as she looked at Ezre and Tom, before coming back to Lilanee.

“This isn’t over.” She huffed, before leaving the room in a rush. The girl exhaled slowly, before moving to Tom, reaching for his shoulder.

“Tom, are you alright?” Lilanee asked quietly, a crease marring her brow in worry. Her periwinkle gaze looked at him, but it felt like it looked into him. They’d been so tightly entwined in Ezre’s spellwork, that it was almost unsettling to be so decidedly apart, like being unable to distinguish dream from reality. A feeling was shared between them for the Hexxos, and his eagerness to stay in that place left a mark. Stupidity, not bravery, in her opinion at least.

"What did you see?" Lilanee asked suddenly, direct in her question and approach. He face turned from the raen, to the overspent Hoxian on the tiles, moving to her knees beside them.

"Ezre, are you okay?" The teenager asked again, wide eyes searching his face with determination.

"Did you see him? Did you see my father?"