OSOS 0x19
Decursio
{ √Δ }
East of the Lost Wilds dungeon, far into the sprawling yellow-orange fields of fire-grass, an army of thirty-thousand strong marshaled under the maroon banners of Redonia. Thousands of tents were in the process of being erected throughout the entourage, setting up stations for command and supply with equal measure.
The call had gone out two weeks prior, nearly every squadron that could be spared received a missive. From the southern peaks to the western shores, if they weren’t absolutely necessary to strategic defense, their boots were now stomping down the wild wheat-like fields with very little idea as to why.
Rumors abounded of course, ideas of a great evil welling up within their own nation, but outside of the magically sealed command tents, not a single word of what was really going on had managed to worm its way out. However, as debriefings spread down the command tree, the grim looks of each squadrons’ respective commanders conveyed enough for the rank and file to know they weren’t here for the seasonal weather.
The source of all their woes stemmed squarely from one of the larger tents near the center of the encampment marked only by a small flag outside bearing the crest of the crown, a golden lion’s mane woven into blood-red textile. However, aside from the small flag mounted nearby, and the two guards posted outside the tarp, nothing else would signify that this tent housed not only the king, but his second in command, the new leader of the Mage’s Circle, and the former branch head of Redonia’s adventurer’s guild.
Inside though, it was clear that the sour mood spreading throughout their ranks came straight from the source. The burly giant of a king had several empty bottles strewn between the reports on his fold-up desk, and it was clear he had a lot on his mind.
Across from him, the other three stood around his desk discussing what steps they could make, and what steps they should. From Madison’s scouting, and from their own other-worldly knowledge, they had done their best to describe the symptoms of radiation, but without the tools to measure it they were working on minimal assumptions at best.
They’d at least confirmed the strange rocks Mads had brought back tinted some sample dyes on prolonged exposure, so they knew it was a factor, but there were still more than a dozen mages working out spells that could detect and protect against this new, foreign force.
Polymese sighed and tossed the papers he’d been holding back to the table. Nearly every soldier present, unless they could develop treatments for it, were likely looking at a much shorter life-span. For now, the best they could do was station at a distance and continue to focus on research and development while they coordinated on containment and dungeon suppression.
“We don’t have enough soldiers for this. From the guides we’ve consulted, we’re looking at an accelerated outbreak in the next three months, and with Merlin’s mass-teleporting of the wildlife, we don’t have accurate migration maps anymore.”
Thelma mimed his gesture, tossing her papers up in a jumble, indifferent to where they would land.
“Sounds like I’m being forced out of retirement then. Suppose they’re all just vacations eventually anyways. I’ll head back to the guild and redirect some efforts, though I doubt you’ll get more than ten thousand freelancers, and even less if we don’t figure out some ways of handling this.”
The last of the three, Madison, actually opted to pick up a few additional reports from the table and chucked the combined stack into her ‘inventory’.
“Well… I can’t make any promises on my end, but I will say that there are several eager academics back at the capital that are practically chomping at the bit for my return– Speaking of which, Thelma would you like a lift? You’re headed back to Uallach as well, right?”
“Yeah– Unless you two need anything else from me right now?”
Polymese looked to the king for confirmation, but all he found was a man looking for the bottom of a bottle, and made an executive decision in his stead.
“No, I think you’re fine. Send a guild rep out here when you get settled though, we’ll have a better idea of what we’re doing by then. Oh– And Mads? Get someone out here that can set up a shift-ring.”
Nodding, Madison took Thelma’s outstretched hand and vanished them both in a burst of purple flames, leaving Polymese alone with his solemn king.
Sighing once more as he watched the embers dissipate, Polymese turned back to the sorry state they’d dragged out of the castle. Their relationship was an odd one, almost like father and son, and they reasonably would have been if one hadn’t been a man-child, and the other a reincarnated thirty-something trapped in a pre-teen’s body.
Well regardless of how his adoption into the crown looked, Polymese had always been the adult behind the paperwork while his supposed ‘father’ was far better suited towards a level of overall immaturity, ranging from childish humor to an overuse of brute force, regardless of the situation. However, throughout their many years together, Polymese had never seen this side of him. A sadness so deep, it threatened to boil into an untempered rage in need of an outlet.
He knew why he was so upset of course, but what had happened, happened. Past tense. They didn’t have the time or the luxury to mourn, but Polymese still nurtured a soft spot for his ‘old man’, despite the fact he himself now looked far older with all the grays he’d been developing as of late.
Opting to organize the mess of their meeting table instead of poking the cactus in the room, Polymese started piling papers into relevant stacks and collecting the near-dozen empty bottles that had built up.
Finishing off the last of the bottle in his hand, the king carefully set it down next to the others Polymese was shuffling together.
“I’m leaving.”
Polymese froze, hand hovering over a piece of parchment as his brain caught up to what his ears had just heard.
“You’re what?”
Pushing back his chair as he stood up, golden mane ruffling in the sudden movement, the king took the crown off his head and plopped it onto Polymese.
“You’re king now.”
Blinking as he struggled to come to terms with what was happening, Polymese, a man always ten steps ahead, found himself surprised for once. Their arrangement had sufficed for nearly forty years without alteration, the king was the champion of the people, and Polymese made sure there was a throne to come back to.
So, if the king was abdicating, then the people were about to lose their champion, just as they’d lost the greatest mage of not just their generation, but any generation. And now, their Hero was about to do something equally stupid.
Polymese had a billion arguments against his course of action, but he knew they were all moot to a man looking for the end of more than just a bottle. So if this was going to be the last time they talked, the last thing he was going to do was beg and plead. He had a thousand other things he could say, but the emotions that came with them were… complicated, so he defaulted into emotionally-dissociative formality.
“It’s been an honor sir.”
“An honor huh? Well then I’ll say it’s been a privilege. No, a blessing. I couldn’t have asked for a better son to leave my kingdom to.”
For a moment, both men stood an arms-width apart from each other, neither saying anything, just… existing in between one breath and the next.
Polymese wasn’t sure what to say. They rarely spoke to each other as kin, it was always just ‘straight to business’. But in that fleeting moment, in that breath between heartbeats, he found himself wanting to reach out, hug this man who’d stood by him through thick and thin in this new world and thank him for being the father he never asked for, and definitely didn’t deserve.
Finding the right words was like pulling teeth, but as his former liege approached the entrance to the tent, Polymese adjusted the heavy burden laid upon his head and called out once more.
“Thanks for everything Arthur, I won’t let you down.”
M{ -.- }RA
So what is Turing Complete?
Mara punched the search query into her phone, still piggybacking internet from her ever-crawling net-worm. It had been more than a decade since she’d been tested on that bit of trivia in college, and she still had a working idea of it, but it was better than not to pull up real data now that she had access to the net again.
The basic idea of a Turing Machine was that of a machine that can read, write, and move along a set of instructions. So, by necessity, if runes were Turing Complete, they’d need to at least be able to make or modify the sigils within. However, describing that in a rune… Well, that was going to be a bit of a headache.
Those fucking sigils. How did Trace know what shapes to make for each word? I only have six so far to go off of, and like hell I’d be able to replicate those from memory alone. I was practically freezing to death back there, barely able to feel my fingers, let alone toes.
Leaning back in her couch as she let her phone rest on her chin, Mara’s thoughts went back to the iced over garden in ‘fantasy land’. It was a whirlwind of a moment, tempestuous by every definition of the word. Her first rune, and a hell of a whopper at that. She’d ripped herself straight out of her own shoes and now had zero chances of finding Debug unless she could figure this out.
She’d been sent here for a reason, that much she was sure of. Trace had never shown her sigils before, but they’d actually resolved as a functional rune! Albeit, not in the way she’d been expecting, but considering it worked at all given the difficulty she’d had up till this point, it felt more like this was deliberate than not.
“Still… How the fuck do I approach this? I get the visualizing bit when casting, and the use of latin, for whatever reason, but these sigils are like an extra layer of ‘fuck you’.”
How’d someone even figure this shit out in the first place? Or– If it was designed, said architect was clearly not an advocate of reasonable learning curves.
Standing up into a big stretch and a yawn, Mara walked over to her living room window, eyes focussed on her memories rather than the twilight skyline.
Given time, and trial and error, I might be able to recall some of the sigils I’ve seen, though perhaps not perfectly. However, most would be from the runes in the Obelisk, and those I really only have shapes and feelings to go off of. And, now that I know I’m lacking their corresponding latin word, they may as well be complete gibberish as well. Which leaves the six from Trace.
“Rescindo, Caelus, Muto, Reddo, Normalitatis, and Votum.”
Or in English, Reverse Space Exchange, Restore Normality, Wish.
Now seeing the translation on her phone, Mara had intuitively arranged the six sigils into three parts. She wasn’t sure this was grammatically correct Latin, but it made enough sense in this context for her to go off of for now, and it certainly lent some semblance of an explanation to her own predicament.
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‘Reverse Space Exchange’ was likely what was happening to the garden around us, it was like space was zipping back up in a weird optical illusion. So, am I here because of the second part? ‘Restore Normality’? I would have thought that would have brought Debug back, but… Well clearly not. However… Votum… Votum-votum-votum.
“Wishes are dangerous huh?”
Seeing the translation of the last word, an idea had taken root in Mara’s mind. Maybe Trace had given her everything she needed. She had the latin, the visualization, and the shape for Mark to make, or could at least narrow it down through trial and error knowing the other two. So what if she were to cast a rune consisting of just ‘Wish’?
The idea was troublingly tantalizing. Mara was already staring at her upturned and open palm, the shape she’d used in the garden already coming back to her with surprising clarity.
“Ah, fuck it. What’s the harm in trying?”
Doubling down on her, possibly mental, idea, Mara conjured up the Mark in question, and began retracing her steps from that momentous evening.
Okay, so– Sigil, Mark plus mana plus will– A combination of the latin word and the intention behind it…
As she felt her mana begin to fill the spiral mark in her palm, Mara’s mind began to race. She was about to freaking wish for something– But what? How complex or specific could she be? There were so many things she could try to wish for first, but she wasn’t one to just dip a toe in for something arbitrary. No– For her first unaided rune, let alone wish, Mara was going big, because she was already home.
Maybe it’s just how you ‘execute’ a rune, but it being the direct translation of ‘Wish’? I can’t not try that. And it might just be exactly what I need to solve the last little riddle of Runes.
Pushing her thoughts towards the glowing sigil in her palm, Mara focussed on the idea of what she wanted. An understanding of sigil shapes. It wasn’t specific, and far from concrete, but she hoped it’d be enough to go on.
Feeling the sense of cold that predated her prior casting, Mara sensed she was at least trying to do something, but only time would tell if her efforts would bear fruit. Edible fruit at that, considering the results of her last attempt had ended up a little ‘far from expectations’.
However, unlike her last rune, the frost was contained primarily to her palm, but as she watched the tiny ice crystals begin to form, a branch of ice suddenly shot up one of her veins.
It felt like someone had just injected pure ice water into her veins, and it was making a beeline up her bicep and over her shoulder. She barely had time to register the hairs on the back of her neck had begun to rise before Mara felt a rather painful spark right at the base of her skull.
“OW– Fuck. What the hell was that?”
Looking down at her palm, Mara saw that her little ‘experiment’ was already dissipating, the rune vanishing in a mix between fading and crumbling.
Did it work? I was expecting a rush of memories or something…
Rubbing the sore spot on the back of her head, Mara wasn’t sure what to make of what had just happened. The vein along her arm was beet-red, almost early stages of frostbite and practically burned to touch– But at least there was feeling, and she had Bio working wonders throughout her system. After all, what was a bit of self-harm when it came to indulging in curiosities?
Well, I’m not remembering anything new… Maybe it’s an intuition thing?
Scrolling down the glossary of latin words she had at her disposal, Mara settled on one that caught her eye.
“Capio– I take.”
It was a relatively simple verb, but Mara was playing with an idea. How far could she bend these sigils? Clearly her will played a fairly large part in casting them, otherwise she wouldn’t have had such a particular reaction near her brain when she wished for knowledge if it didn’t at least lend some context to the casting. It might, or might not have worked, and the only real way was to try something new.
Eyeing a small work trophy she had on her bookshelf, Mara thought back to the old space-opera movies about cowboys, samurais, and space wizards. They had a particular ability to ‘summon’ things, almost like an intangible yo-yo.
Looking down at her palm, Mara hesitated for a moment, but shrugged away her anxieties. If whatever she’d done wasn’t some sort of intuition thing, then she’d really not done anything with her ‘wish’ and she’d need to try a different approach. But, on the off chance it was an intuition thing… Well then by all rights she should be able to make whatever shape that comes to mind, and it’ll be the right shape.
Trying not to feel silly that she might as well be guessing, Mara poked around at a shape on her palm. One large circle in the top right, a smaller one in the bottom left, and a line between the two. The thought of describing her intentions like a yo-yo had stuck out to her, so this was her attempt at a loose abstraction. The small circle for the finger loop, the line for the string, and the large circle representing the yo-yo itself.
It certainly had very little to do with whatever the individual who coined ‘Capio’ was thinking at the time, but she was trying to trust her gut this time, and something about this just felt right.
Sinking her mana into the sigil on her palm, Mara extended her hand outwards and completed her rune with its last component.
“Capio.”
Extending her palm upright had been the right idea, because she barely had time to react, much less process the quick-time-event that had suddenly been thrust upon her by the sudden lurch of the trophy.
Grabbing it out of the air with her outstretched arm, Mara hadn’t been expecting it to just work. Not after so many weeks slamming her head against proverbial stone.
“Heh-heh… Heh-heh-heh… Hehehehehehehehehe”
Bursting into a sudden fit of laughter, Mara looked at her shelf and picked a book at random.
“Capio.”
At her whim, the book flung off the shelf and landed in her palm like someone had perfectly tossed it there.
“Oh-ho. Ho-ho-hahahahahaha– Capio. Capio. Capio– Capio– Capio–”
The sudden shift in her luck struck her like a morphine drip, every time she whisked an item from across the room, she got a little dopamine hit that only sent her into a deeper state of giggling. Soon, she’d pulled nearly everything off her bookshelves, and just about the entire contents of her living room were now strewn about her feet.
“Ahhh… I’ve really needed this… I’ve really, really needed this.”
Looking down at the mess she made, Mara pulled up the latin book on her phone once more and found a word she thought might fit her idea– ‘Loco’, to place.
“Hehe, I’m certainly feeling a bit ‘Loco’ at the moment.”
Trusting her gut once more, Mara drew a small cube with a line twice its width beneath it, and focussed her mana towards it as she invoked the latin word and reversed the process of summoning one of her books from the shelf, sending one of the books at random flying across the room before coming to a gentle rest in one of the book cubbies.
This is actually kind of easy… But I don’t want to do this for this whole mess– What would it take to have a rune put everything back at once?
One of the words from Trace’s rune jumped out at her, a sigil she already knew worked in some capacity– But perhaps this was a perfect opportunity to see it in a different context, as well as, perhaps, narrowing down ‘Votum’.
Let’s just try wishing them back to the shelf first. Maybe there’s a reason why Trace’s rune used so many words when you can curate the effects of a particular sigil…
“Votum.”
The books and trinkets around her feet tumbled towards the shelves, tumbled being the key word, forming a new pile just in front of her and going no further.
“Huh.”
Okay, so… Just ‘Restore’ then?
Replicating the mark from her memory, Mara focussed her mana towards the new sigil and eyed the pile of junk once more.
“Reddo.”
Suddenly, a wave of exhaustion hit Mara as all of her stuff seemed to instantly clean itself of all visible signs of grime and wear.
“W-what?”
Picking up one of the books from the pile at her feet, Mara could tell she’d done something unexpected again. Not only did it smell like a brand-new book, the spine was fresh, and every page within felt firm and unturned.
Restore. Right. I guess ‘restoring’ them is certainly within the realms of expectation.
“Guess I’ll move on to the dual-sigil rune then– Though, I’m not sure how many more of these I can do… I might finally get some shut eye after this.”
Crafting a sigil in each palm, Mara flattened her hands together in a crude form of ‘combining’ and pushed her mana towards them as she invoked their namesakes in an effort to restore everything in her living room back to the way it was.
“Reddo Votum.”
This time, her intentions were made clear, and books and trinkets alike lept from the floor, whisking to their respective spots on the shelves like a flurry of bees returning to a hive.
However, Mara didn’t get to see much of it as her vision suddenly wobbled and blurred, and her floor seemed to leap up into her face just before a loud thud heralded her unconscious body collapsing to the floor, phone in hand.
{ √Δ }
Merlin was having a rite shit day. Absolutely nothing had been going his way, and the oddly dressed girl sitting across from him wasn’t helping things in the slightest. He was fairly certain she was an other-worlder, at least judging by the perplexing choice of garments, and their clearly foreign make. Her top half looked like she’d dressed for winter, and her bottoms, for summer.
However, it wasn’t her attire that was bothering him, nor the fact she was an outsider, but rather the fact that she was here at all. He’d long lost track of how many lives he’d lived, there was a ledger in his tower for that exact purpose after all, but never once, not even after the Sigaxi’s intrusion, had The Delta ever crept so early in his timeline.
He’d just arrived here, from Somniantes’ perspective, not even an hour ago, but by all rites, it seemed this anomaly predated even his loop. Every fiber of his being wanted to reach across the table and strangle the answers out of this girl, his frustrations were at such a point, but he knew she was likely not the one to blame– Though he couldn’t be sure, her behavior thus far had been rather… odd after all.
She’d clearly been speaking with the kids before she had come over to his table, but since she’d sat down, the strange girl had done little other than stare at him with a poker face that could run most gambling dens out of town– If Ol’ Karel had any gambling dens to run out, that is. They were about three-hundred years too early for those, after all.
Whoever she was, she seemed either intent to wait for him to finish his stew, or was trying to play mind games with him. Either way, if she wasn’t going to broach a subject first, he wouldn’t either– Despite how much he really wanted to ask her about a billion questions in that very moment.
Instead, Merlin continued to eat his stew at exactly the same pace he’d been eating it before, slowly watching the residents of the hall trickle out as he slowly made his way to the bottom of his bowl. Occasionally he’d glance back to the girl across from him, and, while he was pretty sure he was imagining it, he wasn’t sure if she’d blinked even a single time. Just constant, unbroken, staring.
Finally, as his wooden spoon clattered into his empty bowl, Merlin saw that the rest of the hall had cleared out, and he decided the direct approach would be best.
“Who are–”
“What if I could send you back?”
Before he could even finish asking his question, Merlin found himself cut off by the first words he’d heard her utter this entire time– And it caught him completely by surprise.
“Wha–”
“What if: I could send you back?”
The strange, ashen-haired girl cut him off once more, this time heavily enunciating her question to hopefully alleviate his confusion. However, it wasn’t that he hadn’t heard her query the first time, but rather its contents. What did she mean by ‘back’?
“Back where?”
This time, she didn’t cut him off, but in hindsight, he’d rather she had. Instead, she simply cocked her head to the side, almost perplexed he had to ask.
Maybe it was a mind-game, or maybe this girl was just downright weird, but Merlin found himself wracking his brain as to what this girl could possibly mean. There were only two places that he could ‘go back to’, both of which were absolutely impossible– Though she didn’t exactly seem inclined to elaborate. However, what was clear was that she was offering an exchange of sorts. Nothing came free.
“What do you–”
“Delta.”
It was just a word, but hearing it spoken aloud shook Merlin to his core. Not a single other person had ever mentioned the name, the concept was, by nature, foreign to even Arthur.
“How do–”
“You’ve been at this for how long now? Do you even know the definition of insanity?”
Cutting him off once more, the ashen haired girl seemed almost eager to tease him, but her words weren’t untruthful. He had been at this a long time. Maybe too long. Countless lifetimes perfecting the best way to bring about lasting peace, only for it to be dashed over and over again by curve-ball after curve-ball. If it wasn’t rogue country uprisings in the north, it was aliens crashing in their backyard.
“Back whe–”
“Where you’ve just come from. You get a second chance, and we get ours.”