Tightening my grip on the boxes, I look back to my friend as she slowly slugs her way up the airship ramp. She comes to a stop in the corner of the bay area and slides down onto the floor with a heavy thunk. Nin and the other two carry on inside to the other part of the airship. Quickly, I watch the ramp come back up and then put the boxes down.
The airship roars and my gut goes down.
"Uh, excuse me, Grandguard, is it possible for you to drop me off at the nearest spiral-train station? I need to do something in this part of the country." I ask of her, explaining my situation briefly and becoming the centre of attention because of it. She puts a finger near her lips and seems to consider the request. My hands tighten and flex, the action repeating in this daunting moment.
I guess it's not too big of an issue if I don't get what I want, it just means the train ride will be longer...
"Pilot, make a detour towards the nearest mountain-state under Thrurstradtur-Suhurlodst's influence. Make sure it has a spiral-train line heading further south." she orders and I breathe a sigh of relief, smiling a little.
"Thank you, Grandguard. Now, uh, can I get my stuff out of the box...?" I ask right after, my mind on edge in case I am asking too much of her. She certainly doesn't give a welcoming or helpful impression with how Liadanann is currently feeling. Though, at the same time, there are not a whole lot of valid reasons to keep my temporary property away from me.
"Of course." she answers, her fingers inputting the needed code and bringing up the storage space.
"Again, thank you." I tell her, quickly grabbing up what I need to give to Ioike and going back out to my friend. I put my stuff down and sit next to her. Liadanann shuffles closer to the wall and curls in on herself. Putting my hand near her back, I do my best to offer some kind of condolence and pat away. She growls quietly.
"Go away..." she warns, armoured fingers scratching at mailed palms.
"I can't do that, Liadanann." I tell her and she twists about, a fist rising at me. Blinking at the hollow threat, she backs away and slumps back into the depressing mood.
"Just go away. Leave me alone." she repeats and I shake my head again.
"I wouldn't be a good friend if I did that now, would I?" I point out.
"The other two are just fine leaving me be..." she bitters under her breath and I pat her again.
"Those two are right in leaving you alone for the moment." I point out, minding what they've done thus far, good and bad.
"My other friends are fine with leaving me be, so off you go." she repeats and my head shakes firmly once she peeks up from her arms.
"No." I go, keeping up the pats until she opens up with a sniffle. I offer her my softer sleeve and she takes it so her eyes can be dry for once. She tries to find a little humour in it by blowing her nose on me too. Taking my sleeve back, I ick my eyes at the mark and huff the amusement away.
"What am I going to do, Baltanthan? I couldn't do anything inside the mountain and I couldn't save it either." she mutters and I start to tut.
"Now, I know full well you watched me take some boxes out, so, stop acting like you've lost everything." I remind her and she flushes up a little and looks away.
"Why did you...?" she asks as I lean over to grab one of the boxes.
"I had a feeling something was going to happen so I took some of it outside." I explain before leaning up against the metal of the airship. The rumble of the engines gets into my head and she clumsily opens up the box. Her arms freeze up and the box goes still before she even dares to take out the contents.
Digging one finger under the old, mostly whitish-red cloth, she lifts it out of the box and starts to unfold it. While she does not go the full way, I quickly find both my hands filled with some of it. Moving my arms a little, I try to keep it stretched out so we can see all of the details of the tapestry. I look at some of the details but wait for her to be ready in case she wants to open her mouth.
"So, what am I looking at?" I ask and she frowns. Slowly, her head starts to shake and she shrugs into a miserable sigh.
"I do not know." she eventually answers, her grip growing weak. Moving one arm over the length of fabric, I point its index towards a familiar detail.
"We know that this is a robot." I point out, making sure her attention is on what appears to be an army of them marching on something. There are three other kinds of machines with them, well, I assume they are anyway. The shape is roughly the same, only, they either have new parts or are notably bulkier in comparison. Liadanann doesn't seem to remember them or know what they are.
However, that doesn't stop me from trying to figure some things out. There's one with what looks like gun barrels on its shoulders which suggests something fairly obvious. Around the edges of this machine army are slim ones with some kind of magic propulsion, a cone of speed lines at their front. Then, there's the ones with these massive, heavy arms and I can only imagine that they're going to be a smashing experience.
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I smile a little at my friend and she tries to return it until we move the tapestry along. A city of some kind comes into view, crimson-painted a lot like everything else her people seem to do. I guess it makes sense, the Singular God is red-skinned, much like them so it must be a holy colour. I suppose as well, that the figure the city gives way to is her god?
"Who's this meant to be?" I ask, pointing out the armoured, winged figure. Whatever power is surrounding him, it reminds me a lot of the amulet Liadanann has. However, what has her attention most is the title that seems to hang from some kind of divine creature. Carefully woven into the fabric, a familiar but unreadable word.
"I... I think it's meant to be the man we found in that facility." she goes and I nod, still unable to send my focus onto anything else other than that one word. It has to be a name, there's no way it can be anything else.
"This word..." I mutter, tapping it with my finger and she stares at it blankly. She sighs and moves on, possibly too tired to even care anymore about it. I frown and reluctantly shrug off her apathy to the detail and we keep going on along the tapestry. The ground that has been fairly consistent on the bottom of the great piece of cloth makes way for a sudden stop.
Wait a minute, the detail it's largely glancing over.
"That's Thurn's Forge!" I point out with a 'ha,' somehow amused by the fact I actually know what something on this ancient tapestry is. The city that's there now isn't there, but the great bridge that crosses the gap between two continents is too iconic to miss.
"Is it?" she goes, focusing more on the great shapes in the air in front of the divinely-made bridge. I lean forward a little, eating up what small details I can and figuring out fairly quickly why she's focusing so much on them. Those things are the airships her people are on. Her kind's own personal little Ark Cities.
"I take it you used to live on something like this?" I ask anyway, just to make sure even though I am fairly confident.
"Yeah, I used to call one of them home. I think it was called... I think... The name was The Final Hope. Which, given what it ended up being used for, I imagine whoever selected that airship had a grim sense of humour." she explains and I nod along before we carry on with the tapestry. We reach a point where the details seem to be getting a lot more violent and grim. One heavily defined by what is clearly meant to be some kind of evil sky beast.
Only, when the tapestry reaches a point that the figure is clear, I can't help but find it odd. This great evil it's showing, it's clearly the great hero of old. The man the world called Thunder. The demi-god who carried with him the might of the God of Creation.
The number three comes from Thunder's divine patron, only here, it's something sinister. The tapestry is moving through segments of three, becoming increasingly apocalyptic. Soon, all that is left is that unknown figure from before and he is gravely wounded. The armies of robots and fleets of airships are fire and smoke.
The sky is something venomous with the lightning being outright sinister in its portrayal.
"And I guess we're here." I mumble, folding up what we have gone through while Liadanann loses herself in the final part of it. The man's alive but the tapestry gives it the impression of the mountain being a burial site. Whatever happened, they must've finished this tapestry and then fell back to somewhere else. A great exodus back across the bridge of what will become Thurn's Forge.
"I want to look at something else..." my friend mutters with a shiver and I get to carefully putting the tapestry back into its container. I don't want to fold it too harshly given its age but I can't leave it a tacky, loose pile either. Thankfully, the box closes back up just fine and I swap it out for another.
She opens it up and takes out the contents before I even have time to sit back up properly. The box is already on the floor and I lean forward to check it, it's empty. Glancing over to my friend, I watch her hide whatever was in it. Getting up a little, I peek over her shoulder and see that it is a picture frame.
Dull and worn out with some little golden decoration and the glass is a little scratched up.
Only, the contents beyond that protective layer have her oddly silent. She slowly touches it like she's remembering something clearly for the first time in a long time. Her hand focuses slowly on what looks to be a little girl and then it goes to a well-dressed young man. The way he's styled makes it seem like a military thing, perhaps a graduation of some sort.
"That's me..." she manages to whisper, pointing at the little girl.
"How can you be so sure?" I ask, just to be safe, she's struggled to remember a fair bit and I'd rather not see my friend go on another ride. Her heart is probably set to break given what we have been doing recently.
"I can hear it. The music, the birds, the joy in everyone's faces. Not just my family, everyone else's too. My brother, my older brother... He had just finished his time in the Officer School or something like that." she explains before she starts to knock her hand against whatever she can find. It seems to be like a metal detector, only, it knocks louder the closer and clearer a detail becomes.
"You got it?" I ask, noting how still she's suddenly turned.
"Viceroy!" she nearly screams in realisation.
"Huh?" I go.
"Viceroy! This was the ceremony in which my older brother became the elected viceroy of something. We had all gone to celebrate because of how well he had done... I remember being disappointed that my brother wanted us to go to a lower-class restaurant so he could be with his lower-birth classmates." Liadanann explains, her eyes widening and watering as she lets more and more of it come back to her. She starts to play with her fingers, like the memory of an old toy being handled is coming back to mind.
"Mmmm, though, now I have to wonder, why was this photo in that mountain?" I ask and Liadanann turns to me, only really the tears in her eyes remaining.
"My brother must've been one of those who had to leave that mountain. He had to have... though, I guess it doesn't matter. Thousands of years ago and all that..." she assumes with what I feel is too much haste. Thinking back to the ancient console and tapestry, that word she ignored comes to mind. That one word that kept flashing. Could it perhaps be her family name?
That would mean the man in the mountain is... No, I shouldn't speak of it. I don't want to get her hopes up over something like this. It wouldn't be right in the slightest.
"At least we know he made it out." I choose to lie, hoping it will make her feel better. My friend sniffles and wipes her eyes again.