Luni answers as best she can, “I don’t know sweety, I don’t think you’re ready yet. It isn’t time quite yet. If you don’t get it all, then you shouldn’t get it. Don’t try to put the pieces together, don’t push. Please. I can’t lose you— again.”
I nod as I grip my aching head. The recent revelations fight to find hiding spots among my mind, sending waves of pain pulsating through regions like my temples. There was something, something that somehow amused me and confused me simultaneously. What— what was I thinking about?
I glance up at Luni while groaning in pain, and she offers me a sad smile before helping me up. When did we even end up on the floor? What the heck? I check my telekinesis, and it seems to be operating fine, there’s none of the delay to enact either telekinetic use that occurs when one of the grips gets shattered. How did I fall off? Did I have a spasm because of my cored-out nerve tunnels, and internal electrokinesis?
Luni’s face is about the saddest I’ve ever seen it. I suppose I can understand. She just lost someone that she had mixed feelings about, who was still kind to her. Plus, we just took a tumble, and Lil’s off doing some hunt with Lucky, and Teuila’s stuck guarding T-whatsit. Ugh my brain. What was that name again? Tarkoolaid? Terk?
Luni offers, “Tairkul?”
I chuckle, which hurts, then nod, which hurts even more, as I say, “Oh yeah, that’s it. Jeeperz cripes my freakin’ head. Are you okay Lu? My beloved Anchor. If I accidentally hurt you I’d be afraid to ever use telekinesis aga—“
My Anchor quickly interrupts, “No, no. You definitely didn’t hurt me sweety. It’s okay. It’s all okay. You can use your power just fine, it wasn’t that. I can’t tell you what it was, but it wasn’t that. It wasn’t you. Okay? You’re our Hero, *My* Hero, always have been, always will be.”
I flash Luni a weak smile, feeling like I don’t deserve the title, or the nickname. Ugh, I wonder if Tarkoolaid, err, Tairkul’s brainblast did any permanent, or lasting damage. Flexing my jaw and facial muscles, I attempt to reduce at least the secondary tension headache layered on top of the migraine. I definitely need to learn the runes for the anti-brainblast thingy from Tiktik, or someone. Any sort of psionic or psychic or telepathic dampening or resistance or whatever that might protect this foolish, crowded, constantly-pained brain of mine would be really nice.
Luni chuckles and agrees, “Yeah, yeah you do that. First thing, as soon as you do whatever Kinzul told you to do, work on protecting your precious brain. It’s the only one you’ve got. Library’s a little ways down that way, and I needed to stop by my bedchamber for some art supplies.”
When I raise my brow in curiosity, Luni explains, “I don’t think Kinzul’s going to be able to appoint another Seer, even if someone else has the Latent. It cost her too much with Aims. She probably can’t do it again, especially not after appointing a Hero and a Guardian. I’ll try to pick up the slack for, glp, poor Aims. So, yeah, art supplies.”
I think that explanation gave me more questions than answers, but I can extrapolate fairly well. Aymestue was someone with something called a Latent, likely a latent, dormant talent for clairvoyance, or maybe precognition, or something along those lines. That’s at least something I can help Kinzul out with later. But the bit about where it costs Kinzul to appoint people? It sounds like she can awaken latents, but does that take her dragonforce? Is that why she said it was spread so thin?
Luni mumbles affirmatively, “Yeah, one of the reasons anyway.”
Phew, I loose a low whistle of appreciation, realizing a tiny bit more about just how much Kinzul has already invested in me, and what it cost her to make that investment. That’s her very lifeforce on the line. Kinzul is literally staking her life in hopes of swaying the outcome in the favor of the Onyx Dawn. Normally when people say everything is riding on some act, or some grand gesture, or hope, they’re being at least somewhat figurative, but for Kinzul it’s fully literal. Hell’s bells.
Still, it would help if I knew exactly what I was fighting for, why it needed to be fought. I mean, I’m down for taking down Terrorzin for sending Olashax and Astridus after the Derbrightmine dwarves, and The Gap kobolds. Oh, also for having Astridus ruin the entry to Noirdivinhoz, and somehow open a freaking portal for the Felgre hordes. Okay, yeah, Terrorzin has to effing go, no questions asked. Luni chuckles at the rapid train of thought that brings me right around to being fully on Kinzul’s side. I can sense the agreement in her emotions though, that she feels similarly proud to stand with Kinzul, and of course Lil.
Luni helps me stand, taps me with the soap stone, and kisses me once on the cheek before giving me a light playful shove in the direction of the library. She says, “Go on, I think you’re one of few people that Nala might get along with, and I’m sure you’ll like her, you like everyone, even your enemies.”
I chuckle at Luni’s overgeneralization. She’s not entirely wrong though either. I can appreciate positive qualities in people. Like the Celestial dickweasel has a fairly solid strategic planning capability, which we have to be wary of. I can admire capability while still hating someone, or admire beauty for that matter, while knowing not to trust someone. Even Kinzul admitted that Ka’thuul is only tenuously maintaining her alliance.
Still, I’d like a rundown of who to trust, who’s on our side, what’s going on, and so on. I’d be better prepared with at the very least, such basic knowledge. I guess I can ask The Curator. I think Kinzul told me to do that, maybe. My brain is fuzzy on the last couple hours for some reason.
Entering the library, I pause for a few moments, sensing movement within, but not wanting to interrupt the activity of The Curator. However, minutes pass, and even after clearing my throat several times, the being that busies itself within the library makes absolutely no effort to see me, or speak to me.
Finally, a fair bit abashed, I step into a path I know she’ll be taking, and side step before she can rush past, feeling awful as I do so. It’s horrible to corner someone. I quickly try to speak, “Hi, Kinzul told me to come here to shore up some of my weaknesses, said it wouldn’t do for a Hero to fall, and she was talking about my lack of psionic and necrotic resistances, I think, since those are what took me out a moment ago. Oh, but I also wanted to ask about the state of things, a rundown on the heirarchy, list of allies, current events, all of that.”
The lovely Draconiac with the coppery scales, Nala if I recall correctly, chastises me, “Literature abounds all around, educate yourself.”
Flustered, and a bit put off, I try to smooth things over, “I’m sorry if we got off on the wrong foot, I didn’t mean to interrupt or offend you. I tried waiting patiently, but it seems you never stop or slow down. I don’t know the deadlines or limitations on time that we might have for me to accomplish things. That’s one of the things I need to learn, to talk about. I’ve been an adventurer flying by the seat of my pants, but to fight a war, I need to be informed.”
Nala grumps at me, “Now look here, you may have been adventuring around our little globe for however long in your short life, but until you’ve been in a demiplane that was locked in a state of being constantly torn asunder, forced to endure countless eons with no one to keep you company as you slipped ageless through the cracks in reality, to watch as the life was snuffed from the creature forced to bear me in some pan-dimensional womb, I’d quite like some—“
Feeling an odd sense of kinship, I interrupt, “You too? It was awful in the temple of time. I apparently took millions, maybe billions of years there, trying to fight an undeniable, inevitable fate as the world around me collapsed, consumed by a radiant void. It wasn’t a womb, but it was some kind of pocket dimension. Thankfully I was able to shove those memories into a tiny box swiftly enough so that my head didn’t explode.”
Nala’s jaw hangs slightly slack, and the clawed index finger of her right hand can’t seem to decide whether to point or to draw back towards her own chin. Her brow furrows as she peers at me, likely for signs of a lie. Spying none, she speculates, “Remarkable. Honestly and truly, you’ve experienced that which you just spoke of?”
I nod. I’m about to explain when the Draconiac woman embraces me, dragging me towards her chest. Ow, my face. She’s apparently wearing plate armor under her robes, like Luni and Teuila do with their dresses. Nala begins to fret, “I never, never thought I’d have someone to talk to about such a horrific experience that might remotely understand what I’d gone through. Certainly what you’ve described isn’t the exact same. Dear friend Reggie, may I call you that? Friend Reggie?”
Nala pauses a beat as I nod, before she steels herself to continue explaining, “I suffer moments when I’m trapped, reliving that seemingly terminal eternal torment. It’s such a frightening weight, I fear my hammering heart will suddenly cease to beat under the stress of it. I’ve come as far as, or farther than any Draconiac since the loss of Bahativimut. Yes yes, the celestial version of his name. My point being, I struggle onward, ever onward, but to know that someone else survives, and carries such a similar burden, and actually *remembers* it, it’s as if my load had been halved.”
I nod along wordlessly with Nala for some time yet. When she realizes she’d been compressing my face into her breastplate, she releases me, and works at smoothing out my hair. She also taps me with a familiar ovaloid hunk of pumice, one that contains a familiar cleaning enchantment. When I feel like it’s my turn to speak, I can only say, “Nala, I’m sorry you had to endure that, and then the world you belong to ended up sinking into this crazy mess it’s going through right now. I’d be happy to share or lighten your burden in any way that I can. I’m lucky that my brain works the way it does, being able to literally redact the memories to their own subfolder inside a catalog within my brain literally saved my head from exploding.”
Nala blinks at me several times, perhaps in disbelief momentarily. She furrows her brow once again, then shrugs. Due to our height difference, my face has been in a rather precious position constantly during our chat. Noticing my eyes as they accidentally drift level with her chest, she remarks, “I’m not a mammal you know. I’m also not fond of fornicating or copulating or most likely any affection most other humanoids share. An occasional caring embrace is plenty enough contact. I hope I’m making myself clear enough to be perfectly understood.”
I flash half a smile and attempt to refrain from laughing as I nod while responding, “Yeah, definitely, absolutely. Crystal clear clarity. I had a, hm. I lost a friend, Dawn, who was fairly similar. Though she was a mammal, a human I’m pretty certain, though I don’t recall if I ever asked.” I inhale sharply through my nose as the reminder of the sadness of losing Dawn squirms its way back into my psyche.
Nala chuckles as she turns away from me to return to categorizing books that might be of use. There’s a brief moment where she stops chuckling, and realizes I said I lost a friend. During that instant, that pause, sympathy is painted across Nala’s face, however briefly. She then immediately returns to taking down and reorganizing books and tomes.
Hoping not to annoy her, but also needing access to the resources rather quickly, I offer, “I hope it isn’t presumptuous, but may I assist your efforts? I—“ Nala is about to interrupt, but I beat her to the punch answering the obvious question, “I’m enchanted with a permanent linguistic comprehension spell. I know at least the literal translation for anything that I can see in written word, or well, drawn or calligraphied as well I suppose.”
Nala pauses her attempt to rebuff me, and adopts an impressed expression. She relents, “In that case, while normally I sort in a simple manner of sections alphabetically by subject, title’s work, and in the rare case several authors wrote about the same subject with the same title, then by author. It’s a rather standard book sorting. I am however giving each book, or tome, a relevancy score, and will be shuffling about the entire library to accommodate. It’s a hassle, but when one is crunched for time, and data is needed, one should never skimp the preparation. You never know what you might miss if you’re not carefully organized. To that end, many books will receive a rather similar, or equal score. At that point, I’d be using the standard sorting method to further categorize them. If you’d be so kind as to perform the standard sorting, while I append relevancy scores to tomes, we could be done sorting in as little as half the time. More feet in the kitchen though, never quite the same as doubling your speed.”
I blink repeatedly to try to keep up with Nala’s rapid explanation, nodding all the while. I grimace as I realize something that will likely annoy Nala as I mention, “I um, killed Yisstendahl, I mean, we did, a group effort with Teuila, so we’ll be absorbing his library, here, before Ka’thuul tries to claim it.”
Nala balks, and I can sense the emotional fight within her between annoyance, disbelief, distress, and being impressed. Nala hazards to ask, “Did, ahem, did our Lady happen to appoint you within the Order, give you an alias perhaps?”
Nodding quickly in response I explain, “Yeah, yes I mean. Lady Kinzul appointed me Hero of the Order of the Onyx Dawn, void dragon honor something, with an alias of Schism, oh, and archmage was in there somewhere.”
Nala sputters as somehow color seems to be slowly draining from her scales, “Was that perhaps honoris causa?”
I nod, still not entirely sure what it entails to be titled so dramatically, but Nala pales, the color finishes draining from her scales at my response, looking ghostly ill. It seems like every bone in her body is trying to convince her to flee in fear, and that she is somehow, still standing before me, despite that. Nala is quivering, quaking even, and her knuckles have gripped the tome in her hand so tightly that her claws have penetrated its binding.
I cast about my senses to figure out if there’s any other possible source of danger, but no, it must be me that she suddenly fears. I focus on the mana circulating through me, the residue I force to exit out the cored-out nerve pathways, and I notice a curious thing. My dragonforce is leaking. Only, it’s stretching out through my pores, not losing energy or mass or whatever it’s made out of. After a few minutes of struggle, I manage to reign it in.
Nala gasps for breath, as if a weight was just lifted from her chest, and she mutters her thanks, “You have my gratitude.”
My face contorts as I ask, “What was all that about, what just happened?”
Nala’s response is, “I think, perhaps, you and I should have an illuminating discussion after all.”