Something about a few days of peace caused Lilijoy to think about momentum.
It was a word of importance, of moment, in the moment. Physics and behavior intersected in the concept, but she couldn’t help feeling that the word itself was too small for the concept, that it should be somehow turned inside out, as if a ball could be inverted, defined to contain all the space it did not hold. Momentum was persistence, and more than that, it was the concept that made reality… real. Existence itself was momentum, and time was nothing but moments unfolding inevitably.
Much like the simulation hypothesis, she wasn’t terribly interested in contemplating the problem of free will. It was much more valuable to ponder the concepts that interacted with momentum: intent, meaning, creation. She felt that only the scope was relevant. One could change the momentum of an object with a behavior, change the momentum of behavior with intent, change the intent with meaning. Did that chain of actions end in some universe-scale inexorability, such that the beginning contained the end and time was but an unnecessary figment? Or did it sprawl in a matryoshka of overlapping intent to infinity?
It didn’t matter. As long as that hypothetical ceiling was far above her head, it might as well be the sky.
Still, she thought about momentum, fluff carried by the wind, then becoming the wind, then… what? Becoming the differences of heat and atmosphere that caused the wind, or the spinning planet itself? The question of self determination, of agency, was ever receding, yet meaning could turn the whole thing upside down, because maybe the earth spun only to serve the moment that the fluff was borne aloft. Through perspective, the witness became omnipotent.
But really, it was this temporary stillness in the rushing current of her life that made Lilijoy feel the weight of the past bearing down on her more acutely. The ruined city all around served as a global memento mori, pulling the scant shadow of the great arches to their own state as future ruins. Perhaps it was her ongoing work on the disassemblers that made her melancholic, for there, success was a quickening of entropy, a heightening of the sense that everything, herself included, was rushing to become the past, to break down into components.
She was meditating on the roof under an ocher banded sky when she became aware of Mo’s approach. The past couple days had given her ample time to put down roots, to seed her environment with herself, such that no event of any consequence escaped her notice within a kilometer’s radius, so it was no problem at all to see where all the members of her group were at any moment. Indeed, the real problem was one of too much awareness, to maintain consistent and reliable filters for her senses so that she was not distracted by every spoken word, every quickened heart.
Mo watched her for a time, long seconds for him, minutes for her, and she could read his body language, see the hesitation in his approach. She sat cross-legged, facing away from him.
“Hello, Mo,” she said, after a time.
“Oh,” he said. “Hi. Sorry to bother.”
She debated whether to turn around, whether to open her eyes. Not surprisingly, Mo did not inspire terribly fond feelings within her, though she had become used to his presence in the background of her life. It seemed he was very aware of this, and until now, he had made every effort to stay in said background.
“What is it?” she asked, turning to face him.
“Look,” he said.
“All right,” she replied.
“Sorry. I’m not good at this sort of thing.”
She had to admit, watching Mo struggle was a little satisfying.
“What sort of thing would that be?”
He ran his hand over his head.
“Apologies, I guess. And thanks.”
“So basic human courtesy?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. Hasn’t been, what you could call a feature, I guess, of my particular… idiom?”
“Was that a Holy Grail reference?”
“Holy… shit, girl. How do you know that?”
“I have my ways. You were saying?”
Mo shook his head. “So, I just wanted to thank you. For helping Maria. And for not… giving me what I deserved.” He held out a hand to stop her from replying. “I’m not trying to weasel my way into anything here. I don’t want your system. I don’t even care about the green skin, or the hair thing. Hell, I was losing it anyway.” He looked over her shoulder and his eyes lost their focus for a moment. “Wow, Yum Kaax really likes you.”
“Should I be concerned that you are hallucinating Mayan jungle gods?”
“Not on my behalf,” he said. “I’m used to it. That guy is one of the good ones anyway.”
She resisted the urge to check him for brain damage. She knew what she would find anyway. When she had destroyed his previous system, it had not been a gentle process, and the way his brain had adapted to the loss was remarkable, in the sense that it was remarkable that it functioned at all.
“How old were you when you got your old system?” she asked.
He blinked, and it took him a moment to reply.
“Twenty-three. Wasn’t my first though. Started bare bones at seventeen. Why?”
She shrugged. “Just curious.”
“About how fucked in the head I am? All signs point to Houston.” He looked down at his feet. “I don’t blame you. Like I said, I’m here to apologize.”
As in ‘Houston, we have a problem’? she speculated, but didn’t feel the need to clarify.
“Why bother?”
He waved an arm expansively. “They keep bothering me about it.”
“Huh. Seems like odd behavior for gods.”
“I don’t know. Given how the one actual god in this world behaves, I’ll take my hallucinatory ones.”
She almost smiled. “Tell your gods I don’t want an apology. Just save it, okay?”
Mo nodded. “I get it. Like a gift you never asked for, kind of hate, and then you feel put on the spot. No problem. I think they’re happy now anyway. Ah Muzen Cab and Yum Kaax are doing a little dance.”
Lilijoy hesitated to respond, torn between her curiosity about just how Mo acquired Mayan gods, of all things, and her desire to end the interaction.
Mo continued. “Well, that’s all I got. I’ll mosey on now.”
“Okay,” she said, turning back to her contemplation, or really, rejoining the ninety percent of her thoughts that had never stopped. One little fact stayed with her, a coincidence to be sure, but the kind that stuck in the imagination. Ah Muzen Cab was the Mayan god of bees.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
***
Nykka spun in flames. There had been a time, not so many years ago, when she longed for ice. It was a childish wish, rooted in her fascination with the character she had found as a kindred spirit. White of skin, like her, ordained to rule, superior to the mere mortals she encountered, Jadis the White Witch did not need the approval of others. She was above, apart, immune. It had been clear to the young Nykka that Jadis was given a raw deal in the stories. Even her magic did not destroy, but preserved in perpetuity.
The fact that Jadis was part giant served as a minor, aspirational detail.
Doctor Quimea had taught her well to see the bias in others, to look below the surface and identify the primitive drives dressed in fancy clothes. When she read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, she saw jealousy, insecure mortals warding off their basest fears of their ultimate inferiority by characterizing strength as evil. In the character herself, she saw something else that inspired her unconscious sympathy. Loneliness.
To have no equals was to have no peers, and to have no peers was to have no friends. At the time, her younger self could not have articulated what drew her so to the character, why she could see through the propagandistic coloring and heavy handed allegory to the essential truth. Jadis was a woman with no equal, a role model and tragic, cautionary tale.
While she had put away such childish things long before she joined the Inside, symbols were still important, and her fascination with Jadis had a certain momentum for her own character, to the extent that she had adopted her name and sobriquet. Unfortunately, the Inside had considered Nykka herself far more suited to the arts of flame than water and ice. It was just as well. A few trips to the frigid parts of the Garden had taught her emphatically that the cold really did bother her anyway.
She had escaped the ugly squalor of their Outside residence for the day to come Inside more from boredom than any sense of mission. Time spent doing katas on the beach, fending off the occasional monster that dragged itself out of the surf, was time far better spent, in her opinion, than awkward conversations with Mo and Maria, the only two in the little group who had little to do. Or if they had a lot to do, it certainly and thankfully did not involve Nykka. She was curious to learn more about Anda, this powerful figure in Lilijoy’s circle who didn’t seem to fit any of her preexisting categories of people, but he had spent almost every moment on the Inside since they had returned.
And of course, she was avoiding Attaboy, fearful she may lose her temper and literally strangle the boy, which would- probably- hurt her standing in Lilijoy’s eyes. It wasn’t her favorite feeling, restraining her behavior to stay on someone’s good side, and it was additionally odd to be doing it for a new person. In her life up to the past week, she had only ever concerned herself with Doctor Quimea’s opinion, though he had many proxies and intermediaries who reported to him if she misbehaved.
She poured more mana into her dance and the streams of flame following her limbs and sword intensified. So lost was she in the moment that she only noticed what her thoughts had summoned when he was a mere fifty feet away, strolling down the sunny sand with hands clasped behind him.
She came to a stop and allowed her flames to die. She knew better than to ask how he had found her, despite her alarmed curiosity. She was even more intrigued to know how he could have possibly made it to her location in the short amount of time she had been there, but again she remained silent.
The Doctor had no patience for useless questions.
He walked up to her and stopped to look over the rolling waves.
“My father would take me to the beach when I was a boy,” he said. “Of course, those were the days when the seas had swallowed the sand, when the oceans were greedy for land. But the men of the town had done what they could to pull the beach to higher ground.” He took a deep breath of salt air. “This brings me back there.”
Nykka waited, a little uncomfortable with his reminiscence. It was something new to her, and thus extremely disconcerting, considering the source.
The silence lingered, overstaying its welcome and causing her thoughts to churn.
Why is he here? How is he manipulating me with this visit? Is it just the message that I can be found wherever I go?
All interactions with Doctor Quimea were a game of chess without turns. He had already completed his opening and she had yet to advance a pawn.
“Must have been nice to have a childhood,” she said at last. Pawn to a3.
He turned to look at her. As always, there was something behind his pale blue eyes that she couldn’t read. “Childhood,” he said, “is just another womb.”
She imagined his pieces swirling across the board, knights flickering with moves faster than she could perceive, bishops oscillating in branching diagonal vectors. Yet again, she fought the urge to break down and ask why he was here. Some deep part of her felt good that she was still important enough to merit his manipulation. Until she realized that she was not the one being manipulated.
This isn’t about me at all. I’m just a connection now.
Her perspective flipped on the imaginary chess board, zooming in until she could only see one space in front of her, realized that she could not turn back.
I could keep this visit a secret, she thought. But that would simply be another branch he’s accounted for. As soon as I withhold information, he’s set me up to be taken off the board entirely. Maybe that would be best, but I like being on the board. He knows that.
“I’ll pass that along,” she said.
Doctor Quimea nodded, even allowed a faint smile to pass his lips, and vanished.
***
Weaver Sennit sat back with a satisfied look.
“It’s about time you cooperated,” he announced to the woven helm. Shields were one thing; flat shapes were good at maintaining themselves, pushing and pulling to stay firm where it mattered. Woven spheres though, and a helm wasn’t much past that, they did great at keeping things in, but it was quite hard to convince them to keep things out, which was kind of the point, when it came to armor.
Having a good frame was key, of course, but his first-- well, he’d lost track a couple days past, so let’s call it about twenty-- attempts hadn’t been much more protective than a nice hat against something like an axe.
“Yup,” he said. “You look like a freak of nature, but you’ll get the job done.”
He didn’t think anyone’s first thought upon catching sight of the spiked monstrosity would be to put it on their head. In fact, he thought that more timid folks might be tempted to run, on the off chance the conglomeration of spiral horns projecting from a poorly defined center might be some new creature intent on leaping to attack. It had a certain bulk to it, for sure, but hardly any weight, not compared to any metal he was familiar with anyway.
I wonder what my fine hosts will think of it?
The orcs, he suspected, would be quite taken with its threatening appearance, and equally dubious of its defensive value. Until they got a look at its stats, anyway.
Hornucopic Helm
crafted by a Master Weaver
Absorbs half of attack energy from blunt and edged attacks and
diverts it into Power and Vitality at a two to one ratio.
Effect lasts for twenty seconds after each hit, cumulative within that time.
Vulnerable to piercing
Takes item damage.
The vulnerability to piercing was a drawback, of course, but that’s what shields were for. Especially shields that attracted missile attacks. It would make for a powerful combination, he judged.
On the whole, the orcs had been surprisingly hospitable. After he and Anda were blindsided anyway. Unlike Anda, who he found out later had been dragged across the landscape, Weaver had been… escorted, for a definition of the word that included shoving and the occasional kick, directly to a small, lump of a structure on the farthest outskirts of the larger encampment. He later learned that this was to keep him well away from the orcs that would be inclined to kill him on sight. He had been placed under the direct protection of the Matrons, but even that only went so far.
Since then, things had only improved. While he was still kept away from the youngest orcs, those still untempered who would be unable to control their reactions to a hated Outsider, he had been moved to more comfortable accommodations, and provided with all the materials for his crafting he could ever want.
The orcs were extremely impoverished in their exile, cut off from ready supplies of timber and metal. They were, for all intents and purposes, trapped on the Boiling Plains, where relatively few creatures had skins suitable for tanning and resources for their traditional crafts were hard to come by. Not that they had a deep tradition of crafting to begin with; ‘take’ had always beaten out ‘make’ in their civilization, and the Boiling Plains was not the ideal venue for a cultural makeover. Instead, the orcs had focused on improving that most ready supply of materials, themselves.
They had their ways of getting some of what they needed. Missions to the highlands, the odd raid or covert expedition. The Urkaen were extraordinary scavengers and foragers, and their hierarchy, as Weaver understood it, was determined in large part by the value of those things they ‘found’ for the orc tribes. The fact that Anda had brought a master crafter willing to work for the orcs had secured their admiration and support, and Weaver didn’t intend to let him down. Soon the Orsurs would see the value as well- this new helm he had created was for them. Already, he could feel a little chill at the thought of ranks of the seven-foot bear totem orcs crowned with spikes.
That was still a ways off, but with every new item he crafted, Weaver could feel the purpose of his remaining time solidifying, his path clarifying. A lifetime of learned helplessness, of using his art for those who neither appreciated or understood, of being beneath the clans’ feet, was finally giving way to a new sensation.
“We have a little something to teach them,” he said to the helm.
.
.