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Chapter 28: Decompression

Chapter 28: Decompression

“Do you have any idea what it felt like to have my mind slowly slip away?” Ink-Talon screeched at the Guardian, using his very real anger to mask any indication that he may be lying about what actually happened afterward. “All for what? The possibility that the Scholar was still in here somewhere? Is that what the College considers a worthwhile reason to torture someone? A wild guess?” Golden-Streak cringed at the accusation. He was hitting a nerve. Good.

He was currently being kept in the empty room across the hall from the lead-lined “treatment” chamber, where Guardian Golden-Streak had been watching him recover from the ordeal. This, unfortunately, had involved going through the same process again in reverse. It wasn’t any more pleasant the second time, but this time he had two things to make it easier: a mission, and completely justified fury.

“Also, I’m quite familiar with the metal that room is lined with. Some of you had to know that lead is incredibly toxic when ingested or inhaled. Did you consider that, perhaps, a panicking, impaired creature’s first instinct would be to bite and scrape away at it desperately in an attempt to escape? You’re lucky I can tell how much of that actually got into my body, and that it won’t cause long-term harm so long as I’m not exposed to more.”

The rant continued for quite some time, with the crow making sure to drill into the Guardian’s head that absolutely nothing worthwhile had come of their little experiment, so as to keep them from trying again with one of the others. There was no way of knowing how any of the other “former occupants” would react to an opportunity to regain control… or how the other humans would react to the opportunity to “give up” and disappear. Even the Scholar admitted that it would have accepted his offer to take over if there wasn’t something more important at stake. Neither of them had been able to come up with a good solution to the problem, though, so they had resolved to try and find something that wasn’t a zero-sum game before allowing such a binary choice to be an option.

“I get your point.” The leopard huffed, raising a paw to interject. “Please stop. You should be resting, not causing yourself further stress.”

“Oh, so now you care about my well being?”

“I always have!” Golden-Streak’s tail lashed as it rose to its full height and growled, making Ink-Talon wonder for a moment if he had pushed things too far. “Why do you think I agreed to do this in the first place?”

“But I’m not your Ink-Talon!” One final screech and the room fell silent, with both animals glaring at each other and breathing heavily. Eventually, the crow regained enough of his composure to properly conclude his thoughts. “I don’t know what your relationship was like, but I’ve heard enough about the Scholar to know that it wouldn’t want you to treat anyone like this, even for its sake. If you really cared for it, do better than this.” This was a half-truth. The Scholar had explained their relationship, but he wasn’t about to let on what he knew. The Guardian remained silent. He couldn’t tell whether it refused to respond, or didn’t know what to say. “I think I’m well enough to walk now. I’d like to return to my room.”

“Someone outside will escort you,” the leopard sighed. “I need to report the treatment’s failure to the Lead Guardian. I cannot stop you, but things will be simpler if you do not give too many details on what happened here to your companions. It will only cause undue stress and conflict, and they do not need any more of that.”

“That, we agree on. I’ll try not to worry them. Don’t give me a reason to change my mind.”

The walk back was slow, but uneventful. The sun had apparently set while he was gone, and thanks to everything that had just happened, Ink-Talon was barely awake, with his Attunement making him keenly aware of just how exhausted his body was. He was going to crash hard the moment he settled down. And honestly? That was fine. There was no need to rush. It was going to take time to unpack everything, literally and figuratively.

There was one small flaw with Scholar Ink-Talon’s “lucid dreaming” method of delivering information that it had failed to anticipate before he returned to the waking world. The actual memory of their conversation was… compressed, for lack of a better term. He hadn’t forgotten any of it, but it was as if he’d experienced it all at once. In a sense, he actually had. It made it difficult to process, and he’d have to sort through it all in the coming days. But one key part of the conversation stuck out in his mind.

It was the part that was going to make sleep difficult no matter how tired he was.

”Signal Theory is the idea that our Gift of Understanding does not reside within us, but rather is transmitted to us. It is why this room suppresses it, the signal cannot penetrate a barrier of lead. For much of recorded history, it was assumed that the land itself bestowed the Gift upon us, as it fades if one attempts to travel out to sea. We know that the Known World is not the entire world, but without Understanding, we cannot explore beyond its borders. The fall of the Lost Lands introduced a new idea, however. Its borders are well charted, and have remained static since their creation. Over the years, those with a mind for geography have noticed a pattern. The borders are all equidistant, not from the center of the region, but from the nearest Beacon, and of the five Beacons we know to exist, one resides in those Lost Lands. The conclusion we can draw from this should be obvious.”

”That ’the Beacons are the means?’ You wrote that as a question in one of your poems. You clearly weren’t sure about it yet.”

”It is not a popular theory, and is difficult to accept. Not because it is implausible, but because it implies that the Lost Lands came to be because Central Beacon failed. That any or all of the Beacons could eventually fail. And that there would be nothing that any of us could do about it…”

“Ink-Talon!” A very loud, very concerned squeal brought the crow out of the recollection as Quiet-Dream scampered down the hall to greet him, weaving around the Guardian on duty. “What happened? The bat said that a Guardian took you somewhere, but nobody would tell me where you were going. They’ve always been open about who went where before, so I knew it was something serious. Are you okay? You can barely stand! Get inside, lean on me if you have to.” The squirrel was frantic, gesturing wildly and nearly overwhelming the crow on the spot.

“Calm down, I’m fine.” As if to mock him, his left leg gave out for a moment and he stumbled, only staying upright because Quiet-Dream had darted to that side to prop him up. “I’m just tired.”

“This is more than ‘just’ tired. You look like you just picked a fight with a brick wall.”

He was right, of course. It only took a moment for his Attunement to confirm that his beak was noticeably scuffed, two of his talons had broken tips, and the feathers across his breast were visibly thinned from the amount that had gotten plucked when he slid across the lead floor after being tossed. Everything ached. On top of it all, his mind felt like it was moving through sludge. He’d clearly gotten moving before he had recovered enough, and was paying the price.

“You’re not that far off, all things considered.” Ink-Talon sighed, letting his weight sink into the squirrel’s soft fur a bit more. “I’ll explain once we’re not standing in the middle of the hallway anymore.”

”What about Keen-Ear? Or your kits?” His own question to the Scholar echoed in his mind as another part of their conversation bubbled to the surface of his woozy brain. ”I don’t like being the person keeping you from your loved ones. And Quiet-Dream has basically been tearing himself apart over it from the start. Should I… say something to them? Pass along a message?”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

”I miss Keen-Ear more than you could ever know, but it would not do it any good to try and communicate. If you did, I do not believe Quiet-Dream would take it very well. And if he were to do something reckless as a result, Keen-Ear would never forgive me for letting him come to harm for its sake. I chose Keen-Ear as my life-mate precisely because it refused to compromise on its convictions. It staunchly believed in our society, and our capacity to come together and thrive despite our differences in our forms, origins, and capabilities.That includes you humans. As for the kits…”

“Ink-Talon! You’re hurt!” The familiar chirps of Black-Leap interrupted the memory. He’d been brought all of the way into a room without even realizing. Probably Quiet-Dream’s as his was all the way at the far end of the hall. “Did you fall out of the sky?”

“Not this time…” He took a few steps away from Quiet-Dream and collapsed awkwardly into the pile of blankets the squirrels had been bedding in. “Just had a disagreement with Golden-Streak, is all.”

“That leopard scares me.” A second, quieter voice belonging to the second, yet-unnamed kit came from under Ink-Talon’s left wing. He hadn’t looked before falling into the bed, and had landed right on top of it. “I can never tell if it hates us or is sad about us.”

“Or both!” Its sibling chimed in.

“Definitely a mix of both,” Quiet-Dream agreed.

“Can you let me out? I can’t move.” Ink-Talon wiggled to the side to let the gray kit pull itself free. “Thanks.”

“Sorry about that, you’re just small. Easy to miss…” The crow trailed off as his mind once more drifted to the previous recollection.

”...I care deeply for the kits, and it is wonderful to have seen them grow through your eyes, but I cannot rightfully call them my own. A true parent is someone who actively cares for and raises a child. Neither I nor Keen-Ear can claim that role anymore. They cannot even remember us, and have taken almost exclusively after you and Quiet-Dream.”

”I’m no parent, either, I’m just-”

”A friend, I know. But a good friend can make a passable parent if the situation requires it. I learned that the hard way when Golden-Streak was a cub, though I was only barely fledged at the time myself…”

“Black-Leap, go find Maggie and tell her that Ink-Talon needs a Physician right away. Gray, follow her and don’t let her get distracted. I need to stay with him and make sure he doesn’t pass out.”

“Okay!”

“...Gray?” Ink-Talon tilted his head as the kits left the room.

“I got tired of referring to them as ‘the gray one,’ and asked if I could just shorten it if they were so intent on not choosing a proper name for themselves.”

“That works, I guess.” The kits had come forward about Gray’s state of mind a few days ago, at the urging of Scribe Swift-Paw. While he could comprehend on some level the desire for unawareness, there was a certain… endearing, stubborn childishness to the kit’s attitude. As if after getting over the initial shock, it had settled into complaining about needing to be sapient the same way a human child would complain about having to get out of bed and go to school. Sometimes it even seemed to enjoy defying the expectation that it do things like "have a name" or "be a person." Of course, it ended up distressed over it just as often, so it was still a delicate situation. He hoped that treating it kindly and giving it time would be enough.

“Okay, no more dodging the question. What happened?” Quiet-Dream was physically tense. Ink-Talon didn’t need to Understand his tone to realize that. “What did they do to you?”

“They tried to ‘cure’ me. It didn’t work, obviously. My injuries are mostly self-inflicted from panicking.” He was telling the truth, at least, but he still felt bad about needing to leave out the more important parts for the moment.

“That can’t be all of it. You’ve been drifting off every other minute. You’re not falling asleep, but you can barely remain conscious. Something is seriously wrong.”

“Their attempt at a cure was…” Ink-Talon trailed off, his foggy mind struggling to describe it vaguely in a way that was still comprehensible. “They tried to erase me. Like I said, it didn’t work, so they aren’t likely to try the same thing again. But…”

“I see.” Quiet-Dream sighed, relaxing a bit. “You don’t want to worry me about what they might try to do to the rest of us. And that probably isn’t an experience you want to relive by explaining it.”

“It’s like you hammered a nail into it.” The crow shuddered at the malformed idiom. “Can I sleep now? I’m just going to embarrass myself otherwise.”

“No. I’m treating this like a concussion. No sleep until the Physician looks you over. Just to be safe.”

“Really getting into the mom role, aren’t you?”

“Stop it.” The squirrel smiled, which came off more like baring his teeth with the way his face was arranged, but the intent got across. “Swift-Paw is the team mom. I’m more like the team babysitter, scrambling to try and keep us all out of trouble and failing miserably.”

“Yeah, a team. That’s a good way of putting it…”

“This request… you said that only ‘others like me’ could fulfill it. You mean all of us humans, right?” Ink-Talon’s mind drifted again before the squirrel could respond. ”I don’t want to put anyone in danger.”

”Neither do I, which is why I am asking you personally, and you are free to decline.” The Scholar hopped over to an imagined patch of dirt to demonstrate, scratching out a diagram. “Each of you humans manifested in the bodies of creatures near the borders of the Lost Lands. Within the sphere of influence of the Central Beacon, if it were still active. If the Darksoil Beacon’s Insight is stories from your world, then…”

“Ink-Talon!” Quiet-Dream’s forepaw jostled the crow’s beak, rousing him for a moment. “Stay with me. Tell me a story. Talk about your theories. Anything to keep you in the moment.”

“A theory… Okay.” His thoughts could only go one place right now, but it was something he would need to talk about sooner or later. “I think we might be Insight.”

“What?”

“The Beacon’s Insight. All those stories. They had to have been captured or recorded from our world, then stored and passed on to the Scholars here. What if we were captured and stored? Projected into these bodies the same as those stories?” He was just relaying what the Scholar had proposed to him, but he had no reason to doubt it. It was the closest thing he had to an explanation for any of this.

“...Why would you think that?” The question was barely a murmur. The squirrel clearly hadn’t expected something that heavy when he asked for idle speculation.

“When they tried to ‘erase’ me, they did it by blocking the Gift from the outside, and I felt it. Some part of the Gift, and the consciousness that comes with it, is external. We can be cut off from it. I think it’s in the Beacons.”

“Are you saying we’re just copies of old data? That we’re fake?”

“No!” Ink-Talon squawked. He needed to cut this line of thinking off immediately. “We are as real as anyone else in this world. Whatever happened to our human selves back in our world, whether our minds were removed or just recorded or whatever, we’re still complete people as we are now. Our experiences are real. Our emotions are real. Our memories are real. Don’t start thinking otherwise!”

“You’re right, just…”

“It’s just an idea. A lead to work on. If we’re going to find and help the other humans in this world like you wanted, we need to learn as much as we can about what happened and how it happened…” He was drifting again. He’d pushed himself too much just now. But it was worth it. He needed Quiet-Dream to have hope. He couldn’t let him give up…

”The request is dangerous, but simple to explain. If you originated from the Central Beacon, and you still persist, then the Beacon must still function, if only for you. You could enter the Lost Lands without losing your Gifts, find the Beacon, and investigate it. The mystery of your existence in our bodies and the mystery of the Lost Lands are inextricably linked. I don’t know if we can actually solve them, but I want to try. Do you?”

The ex-human didn’t respond right away. The mystery was important to him, but he didn’t know if he wanted to risk his or anyone else’s life for the answers…

“Hey!” Quiet-Dream bopped him on the beak again, harder this time. “Stop it! No more hard thinking. That was a bad idea. Listen to me talk instead.”

“I can do that. Thanks.”

“No problem. Just stay with me, okay?” The squirrel sat back on his haunches in front of the crow, taking a deep breath as he prepared to try and be the best distraction he could be.

“Same goes for you, Quiet-Dream.” The crow murmured. Things were going to be okay. He’d make sure of it. “Same goes for you.”