The university in Abōeo was as grand of a building as had ever been built, all black stone and ornate work, wrought by the hands of history. Two thousand years, the stonemasons of the original fortress that were now the illustrious stonemasons of Abōeo, and the university stood.
A testament to the skill of the Nola, a moment to what was truly important here in the grandest city in the world. The Orroyelans had their court, the Sakaxhy their cities and the grand fortress architecture that stood against the nights so long, as seasons… Come and pass.
He remembered the whims of the university as he walked beneath its ancient stone halls, wind blowing- step after step. Forward. He could almost feel Iri behind him, her steps light, het-
Heavy as all the world, with a regret that he didn’t understand but knew… as darkness came, so did he. The shadow of the sibilant, long in the evening light as they walked through courtyards that were never deserted, always full- courtyards of beauty. Green places where there was always green, where they had always. Power. The people of the university were some of the most powerful in the city and they knew it.
All the lords attended some sort of class here, despite their relative uselessness in the grand scheme of Nola politics. Even the clergy studied here- it was, after all, the center of learning. The greatest concentration of information in the world.
The greatest concentration outside of the minds of the sibilant, outside- dark places, shadows growing long as the sun set itself beneath the horizon and the world made itself into a game of when. He glanced up toward the sky, an overcast sky that had only just begun to fray back into the beautiful blue of a sunny summer day.
Every moment. As they passed through one of the grand halls, watching as so many walked along with books or self-imposed righteousness, making their ways through the halls of a place that was beyond them, that had been behind every member of humanity since it had grown beyond a simple place of learning and had become Nola-
The university in Abōeo was a Nola university, and to the university the Nola were theirs. They might as well be… the bonds forged in the depths of the university, the things made here went on to influence the world.
He almost laughed- he’d been made here, and even if he wasn’t the son of a grand clergyman, he had done more than they ever could. He had touched the conflict of the ages and had made it from a simmering into something that would fire the world. He had touched the world of the sibilant and in doing so had put himself beneath the infinite eyes of God-that wasn’t, the weight of the Eternity Falling.
The power of genesis and destruction and every, shadow, darkness, the orange bright light of the sun looking out and spearing through windows and through every little nook that it could find, washing the city and all her sails and all the people of Abōeo in its gentle glow.
They didn’t know. How could they… still, the people who saw them gave them strange looks, fearful sometimes but more often than not interested. They’d never seen someone like iri, even if she mostly wore the restrictive clothes that he’d given her.
She picked at one of them, looking out over the courtyard they’d entered through an arched gage and the way briar. “These are… uncomfortable. Restricting- all I need is the cape. It is the totality of sibilant…” Her eyes gleamed with confusion as they passed through another building and out into what must have been the tenth or eleventh courtyard. “Where are you taking me? We’re not walking in circles, but this seems like a pointlessly large amount of open space.”
Siqxhe chuckled softly, stopping in one of the courtyards with its immensities of black stone and the power that made them, the wrought strength of knowing that this was a place of power. “It was in the original design of the university. Something that the council of clergy who ordered its constructions were going to use it as a place- that would explain the extravagance, but others think that it was purpose built for being a place of study.”
Either theory would make sense, and nobody would ever know the better. He frowned then… perhaps one of the sibilants, one whose memory hadn’t been quite as frayed as Iri’s… perhaps they’d be able to tell him.
They’d been apart from humanity for too long. “The sibilant. They were with humanity, helping them?” It was a soft question, soft not for the fear that someone would hear but rather just through fear. The sibilant were powerful…
“Helping them? Maybe. They were… caretakers, but also equals I think. It’s hard. I don’t remember as much…” Iri shivered, that impossible motion through the flexibility of steel that for all means should have been as stiff as the will of wind. “The captain of the Eternity Falling- yes, as any ship it had a captain, appointed in crown and tasked with the will of-” she switched into that language, that songlike speech that seemed to fit the nature of her voice far better than human speech did. It was why, he supposed, they were called sibilant.
Then again, he didn’t know. Anything- anything could be true and anything could be a lie. He looked up toward grey skies and immense blankets of clouds, wondering. Wondering about truth… “Let’s continue… the libraries are where we-” He froze, eyes meeting- the dark eyes of someone he recognized but someone that he would have liked to see so many times of the years.
Someone that he had put out of his mind in the terror of darkness and the pressure, but he was there and they collided with a hearty embrace. Old friends, reunited, and when the man spoke it was with a deep ring to it that sounded like the essence of bells itself. “Siqxhe in the flesh! The grand doctor sees fit to make his return! Find anything?”
“Only war.” He had tried to make it a joke, but it didn’t sound like a joke. He had only found war. War between the Sakaxhy and the Ilyaochi, the Nola and the Sakaxhy, the Paqaboōf… an ancient conflict, the will of a God that by all rights could not be the will of a being so fickle.
God was not Fickle. God was not God, but for all its power might as well be, a ship above the world and eyes as bright as forever… he shivered, slowly letting go of an embrace that had turned more to one of comfort than reunion. “It’s really as bad as I thought it was going to be, and worse besides, Xhiōf.”
Xhiōf raised an eyebrow as if he was asking him to speak of it, and when no answer was forthcoming slowly turned his gaze to Iri. There wasn’t shock there- but there was something else, a dull undertone of uncertainty that wrote itself beneath his gaze. This was something beyond the knowledge of an academic, and that made them uncomfortable. “You are one of the people of steel, then. I thought they were…”
“Polarity Iridescence, lord among equals. Sibilant.” She had adopted a far-off look, something she’d started to do more and more as of late. “I… can you help? I have a task. A task more important than anything and everything and all the life on the surface of the planet. It is nothing…” She shook her head, and shivers that disconcerting shiver. “I need access to your libraries.”
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Xhiōf laughed a hearty laugh and started to walk toward those buildings, those areas that held the weight of so much knowledge, collected and stored here to finally be safe. “You should have asked! No need for the speech- the libraries are open for anyone with an invitation from a member of the university in good standing, and you won’t find anyone in better standing that Siqxhe.” His voice was easy, but beneath it there was a slightest hint of… something.
Siqxhe noticed it. He’d known Xhiōf long enough not to… they came to the grand library of the university in Abōeo, though, and they quickly forgot everything else.
This was the place where knowledge ends- he had always had that feeling, the unshakable nagging belief, no matter how untrue it was. That this was the ocean and all of knowledge was a stream, come down to this one place to accumulate and grow and be made whole with the rest of its like. Now, though, he hoped almost desperately that it would be enough. That even the smallest hint of what they were seeking would be found.
They started with the books that were most directly related to the Eternity Falling… creation myths, world spanning beliefs that laid the foundation for every culture and work of man that had ever been made. They were the threads that bound, and there were so woefully few of them.
The moon was broken. Several agreed on that, though several more disagreed with vehemence, and it was all complicated that the shape of the shattered moon was always changing, stretching out since the time these myths had been first laid. Back when men had awoken to find a world made green and the memory of the fifth as shattered as Iri’s…
The tears of God spawned the races of men. That one was stranger, but far more prevalent. Almost every single culture seemed to have some variation of that one. He found it strange that he’d never hear of it before, that his ignorance was the exception and not the norm. Name someone who wasn’t Nola or Orroyel, and they’d easily recite to you something along those lines… then, he thought again that most of the world now had its ties to the Nola or the Orroyel.
That was the one they focused their attention on for the most part, trying to find some obscure text that referenced a tear found anew, especially in those rare cultures that considered the tears golden and not silver. That was rare…
In those hours, hours which became days beneath the watching eyes of time, the sibiland and the ending of things, he learnt so much, and he learnt nothing.
………
Siqxhe stalked the halls of the university of Abōeo, frustrated beyond… there was nothing. Nothing that even so much as hinted toward where Polarity Light was. Iri would say something tantalizing- one she said they were close and they spent three hours hunting down useless rabbit trails before she’d clarified and meant that she was just being encouraging.
Once again she’d said that, and they’d ignored it and forgotten what they’d been reading, and then she had told them that it had been true closeness. Frustration on the extreme! He kicked a rock, muttering something about how being back in Abōeo for even a few days made him want to tear his hair out. This was a foolish quest… unimportant. It was unimportant. Polarity Light had been buried for a hundred thousand years and could very well stay buried for a hundred thousand more.
It was there, fuming with anger and deeper than that, fear, that he ran into Laeo.
He was just… standing there, in the archway between the school of medicine and another one of the many courtyards, with a tired look that said he’d been there for hours uncounted and an alertness that Siqxhe didn’t think he’d ever drop, not until death. His eyes found him instantly, ever roving, sharp- sad. Sad eyes… “Siqxhe.”
Siqxhe instantly fell into a defensive crouch, ready to call for help if he needed it. Only the knowledge that Laeo could kill him in seconds and probably get away with it stopped him from calling out now. “Who- where’s the Lord of Cold Places? You won’t-”
“Do anything.” He made no movements, just staying in a slouched position by the door that seemed to suggest no harm. “I’m… I don’t want to kill. I never wanted to kill, but always wanted to help… I wanted to make Nolabo great.” He laughed, a bitter laugh that was streaked with “And now I’ll be remembered as the doom of Nolabo. If I’m remembered at all.”
“You didn’t doom anything.” Those eyes held a guild though, real or imagined… and he had doomed something. He had killed everyone who’d gone with the fleets to the top of the world and fought the Sakaxhy. He had killed the many men he’d seen beneath his care as they died to brutal wounds.
Laeo was a killer… but then again, so was he. He started the wars.
He alone put the world in the greatest danger it had ever faced, all for a chance at true freedom. “How can you still stand by his side? He means to see the world destroyed.”
“He doesn't want to destroy the world!” Laeo looked around, wary his voice had attracted unwarranted attention. “He is just someone with a conviction that is greater- someone who knows what must be done.” He shook his head, laughing a bitter laugh beneath a faint sheen of tears. “They don’t care. All their attention is focused on this Polarity Light, and they never spare more than a passing glance for humanity until it’s practically on top of them… here’s my deal. You won’t kill me, and I won’t kill you.”
As if it was a choice. At least he was getting an option. “You’ll bring Arctic down on us.”
“Obviously.” Still, even with that, it was no...
Choice-
He thought of something, eyes widening, and he knew with certainty that this couldn’t wait. He thought of things he shouldn’t know, things that were impossible-
He thought of Polarity Light and ran, leaving an astounded Laeo staring at nothing at all, not willing… not willing to do nothing, not willing to do anything at all.
………
“I found it! I know where it is!” Siqxhe bounded exuberantly into the room, excited enough to turn heads. Most of all Xhiōf and Iri- Xhiōf with his tired gaze, that half-joking regret that he’d allowed himself to be bound up in things.
Iri with a cold gazed intensity that was bright. Bright and steely- “Where? Do you mean…” Even she could not say it. Even a sibilant could not bring words to the hope that a search was finished at last.
“Not exactly, but I understand now. Polarity Light could be handled by a human, right?”
Iri nodded slowly, confused. “Of course it could. It was how they took it in and out of the…” Her eyes gazed with a furocity, her very form quivering uncontrollably. Not with rage, as had Artic, but with something that almost made the shivers bearable. Excitement… “I remember this. I remember the tone, disappearing… we thought it dislodged and the Eternity Falling adrift… but it could be.”
“The hands of men pave the path to Polarity Light. It lies with the dead… Polarity Light came to the surface and lies with the dead…” Siqxhe himself was shivering with excitement. He’d solved it. He’d solved it, and all it had taken was being human. “They took Polarity Light with them, and then died beneath the earth. All you have to do is remember where the escape pods hit the ground, where death is…” Siqxhe smiled, and Iri beamed right back at him.
Eyes, gleaming… “No…” Her voice was breath, a sibilant whisper. “No- I can do better. I remember- I remember so much. The tone! I remember the tone, and the place where the Eternity Falling likes to stay so often…” Positively radiant, Iri turned her attention back to them, and when she spoke her voice was a whisper of barely contained excitement. “Polarity Light is in Abōeo.”