Project: Ashes 003

 Chapter 3 Encounter

“They won.” Glorious Idiot said, “They won…”

“Yeah, I noticed.”, she said.

“But the back-up plan worked!”, he beamed at her. She wasn’t sure, could teeth glow, she and the Endless Sea were pretty sure that teeth weren’t sources of light, but Glorious Idiot’s grin was irradiating.

“For what, it’s worth…”, she said. His reaction, combined with her reaction told her that this had been Glorious Idiot’s plan.

“For what it’s worth? You saved the entire universe!”, he looked around again. “In a way at least. Where are we anyway? This place doesn’t look familiar. But it feels… secure?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. As far as I can tell it just appeared when I returned. It seems to be a mostly potential place that seems to crystallise when I interact with it.” The Boss had to push the Philosopher and the Explorer back with force. Both of them were fascinated by the idea of a place that became real by interacting with thought and the wishes of the sentient beings it interacted with.

“What if I interact with it?”, he asked.

“How should I know?”

“Hmm…”, he rubbed his chin, then looked at her, his eyes suddenly ablaze with a gleam that ignited a reaction in her she wasn’t happy with. He smilled, pointed with both hands to her and let him self fall backwards to the floor. She was alarmed, did he suddenly lose consciousness, had she failed to bring all of him back? With a floooomph sound he was caught by a big, soft comfortable chair.

“Niiice!”, he said, “It’s not just you, its both of us.” For a moment he seemed lost in thought. “I could really use something to drink right now!”, he exclaimed and started to stare. She thought that he looked slightly constipated.
“It worked!” he held a glass in his hand filled with a weird looking liquid the colour of a sunrise. What was a sunrise?

“How did you do that?”, she asked.

“I really, really needed a drink.”, Glorious Idiot said, “And this might just hit the spot.” He  took a bog sip. His eyes went wide and he started coughing. “Oh this is really strong stuff…”
After he recovered he took another sip. “ ’tis good though.”

“What is that anyway?”, she asked.

“I have no idea. I really like it though.”, he took another sip, this time only a very small one. “Ahhh much better…”

She rolled her eyes. It was typical for Glorious Idiot to have a drink at a time like this. The universe apparently had ceased to exist and the remnants of it where slowly evaporating and the first thing he did was summon a big gaudy chair and a drink…
She looked at her eternal, connecting it to the streams of… what ever the streams of of what made the universe the universe were made off, to the Glorious Idiot, his glorious drink and his idiotic chair. The device showed her that what ever he was sitting on was sadly not an illusion, but rather another strand, that had been pulled out of the repeating echo of what was left of the universe.

“That reminds me,” she said, “the silly spiral thingy… that was your thing, right?”

“Spiral thingy… Oh! The cascade spiral! That is a principle and it was kind of my thing, I build the… machine… the spiral device… the… I forgot its name…”, his face had lost all joviality, his brow was furrowed and he was squinting as if that would make is hazy memories sharper.

“Well I think it worked… see this?”, she asked turning the Eternal towards him, which started projecting the information she had reconstructed so far into the space between them. Glorious Idiot didn’t seem surprised at all by that, in contrast to her, at that moment she discovered another shard of herself called Brilliant 4 Hours to Late, Usually While Almost Asleep, Sometimes Under The Shower. A very good friend and often times companion of the sisters I’m A Failure and Why Am I Always So Embarrassing.
While the Boss struggled with the trio, the Observer pointed out that Glorious Idiot hadn’t noticed and maybe the investigation department should take over.

“So that in the middle is us?”, Glorious Idiot asked.

“Yes.”, she answered.

“And that shifty stuff all around?”

“Presumably all that’s left of the Universe.”

“Fascinating,” he said his eyes starting to glow again. “So the cascade worked… wait… was that a glitch in your programme? Something just happened.”

“That’s the reset. It happens in regular intervals. See that number over there? That’s how often it went through the cycle since I came back.”

“Forty-eight times? That’s a lot.”, he said.

“No idea. It might be. Do you see this colour gradient?” He nodded. “The deep blue stuff is still stable. But as you can see in the fringes and where the… strings?… are thinner how it turns slowly red? Look closely.”, she pointed at a part far from the centre where an out lying spiralling arm had split into several thin filaments, the outermost the deep red of a dying ember. As she pointed it came into focus and the picture expanded so that they could see it up close. ‘Yeah… it does that too…’, she remembered this time with a close to, but not quite zero amount of shame.

He looked closely. Before their eyes the outermost filament turned into little red motes, glowing one final time in a clear white light before dissolving into ash and then into nothing.

“Yep.”, he said nodding again. “The cascade spiral, takes all there is, siphons the energy of the annihilation, uses it to amplify what’s left of… everything and keeps it going for as long as possible. But something is always lost in every cycle, because…”

“The ring is broken.”, she said, her heart almost stopping, the warmth leaving her body, leaving her with cold terror.

He gasped, eyes wide. “The ring is broken.”

“What does that mean?”, she asked him, trying to get her self back under control.

“I have no idea,” he said his voice hoarse and breaking, “but I know it´s horrible.” Tears were now streaming silently down his face. “We were to late… This shouldn’t have happened.”

“No.”, she said, the Boss back at the front again, “Not everything is lost. The last resort, it worked. I am here. You are here. And all that?”, she pointed and the moving map, floating between them, “All that is still there. And we can save it.” She tried to remember someone, his name but almost everything about him apart from the knowledge that is was all his fault had vanished, so she decided to improvise, “Reprehensible Fuck, may have broken the ring, but with your cascade machine and my knowledge about the threads, we can bring back at least some of it back.”

“But so much has been lost already…”, he looked at the map in front of him noticing all the beautiful shining motes of light, which he had thought rather pretty only a moment ago. “I don’t even really remember how I am, or even my name… What if there isn’t…”

“Could you please stop?”, she said interrupting him, “You got your horrible chair and what ever it is that you are drinking there, right? Right now, its not the time to be a weepy idiot, it’s time to be a glorious one.”

“Yeah,”, he said, focusing for a moment, his face relaxing again. He stood up squaring his shoulders taking a sip of the burning but delicious liquid. “So where do we start.”

“The first thing would be bringing back your machine, I know this will help us pull things back into being. Then we can see who and what else we find out there, and with a bit more help, who knows we might be able to bring a whole universe back.”

“Right, let’s do that.”, he said now full of drive again. “Wait… did you just call me an idiot?”

“Maybe.”, she smiled.

Project: Ashes 002

 

Chapter 2 Somewhere

Returning to being was catastrophically easy.
It was also unimaginably hard.
Like climbing up a mountain, while the very same mountain came crashing down the slope of an even larger one.
Sorting through the strings to find those which were ‘her’ and not ‘other’ should have been harder thought the Investigator, but the Investigatrix pointed out that, she had done all that while she was still beyond time and space. Complexity, stress, deadlines, didn’t exist. There was only the clarity she brought into the void.
At first there was the chaos, the Endless Sea pointed out the parts she recognised and the shards decided where those threads had to go. There was no time. There was just a constellation of chaos, the work of her being that shifted it into a constellation of order.

    And there she stood, all parts of her that should be manifest in the idea she had of her fingers, ignoring the screeches of the Harbinger and the Sycophant, who intoned the million ways this would all fail. As she pulled, her body came together. That was hard at first, a lot of resistance to overcome to make all the aspects come together in just the right way.
The Boss had to throw the Bookkeeper, into the same hole as the Harbinger and Sycophant as she wanted to see and check how everything precisely came together. This was not the time to worry about spleen orientation. With a booming voice the Boss, summoned the Endless Sea and she washed away all the voices, her undertow pulling at the strings, with the slow but inexorable force of nature.
This was the hard but easy part.
The pieces began to fall into place, first like the first rain after a long draught, then like hail and finally like a rock slide.
That was the easy but hard part.

Suddenly she was crushed…
    …by her body coming back together. Everything had substance again. She never had noticed how many hard barriers she was made out of. One moment she’d been all and now she was this incredibly limited piece of meat.
    
    …by the air crushing her body from all sides.
The weight of it! And it rushing, pushing, breaking into her lungs. Making her gasp.
    
    …by the temperature. It was cold. Not freezing, just to cold for comfort. Now there was a skin, that hated the cold. Full of tiny muscles, each connected to a hair, which now where all pushed up in silent protest. The wave of cold pushed further into her flesh making her shiver. At least her bones didn’t seem to mind. They were just being heavy and unweildy.

    …by floor solidifying beneath her, and with it gravity, who brought its simple single minded order to the world. “No matter who you are, come into my embrace.”, it declared and pulled. All of her insides heard gravity’s call and followed it.

She tried to scream, but she only produced a gurgling sound as she pushed… a liquid? Out of her lungs and mouth. Water? No, raw essence, parts not her, but which she had used to prop her insides into the right place when she had reworked her being.
Now that she expelled it, part of it fell down and became fluid. Mostly blood, a good part of mucus, water, things the essence felt(?) it should be if it had just been expelled from a panting body.
Other parts drifted into the air. Became the air in the first place. Others turned into light. The light turned into a swarm of fireflies. Glowing? Alive? Flying? Firefly. It made sense. Others less prosaic pieces of reality banded together. Warm. Up not down. Shining. Light orbs. The latter split into two groups again, the once happy to smugly pretend as if they didn’t hear gravity’s passive aggressive suggestions and threats; and those who drifted further up until they reached the concept of the ceiling. Without our light, your dark would just be empty space. The ceiling disagreed but didn’t really care one way or the other.
From the ceiling lights, following another fading memory from the mind that had given them reality, parts of them coloured in warm red, soothing green and a bold regal blue flowed in tiny lines into different directions, implying paths, a layout, the shining raiment of a building.

Gathering her thoughts and shards and the Endless Sea, she focused on herself. She lay still twitching and gasping naked in a pool of viscous fluid. Naked? No, that couldn’t be. So the liquid still coating her turned into her clothes. Fitting her form. Comfortable. Growing armoured. Armour? Her sword and her multi caster returned, first to her hands, but that didn’t feel quite right so the melted and flowed to her hip.
But what was in her hand. She could have sworn it was her weapon. She focused. No longer wet, no longer cold, no longer in the dark. She was in a large black room, that didn’t quite come into focus. In her hand was… her weap… her Eternal, a book that was all books, a tool that was all tools. (Not all the Bookkeeper intervened, only a plurality of texts and tools relevant to our skills and undertakings, which could be put into a device the size of an Eternal… Poet, appeared and silently shook its head. ‘Oh, did I do the thing again?’, Bookkeeper asked. Poet nodded. ‘Oh, I’m sorry!’ Bookkeeprs eyes grew wild, but Poet stopped her with a smile, put an arm on her shoulder.)

“That’s right.”, she croaked, in a voice she wished wasn’t hers, but most certainly was. “I am a war-scholar. I bring knowledge and wisdom, into the rising darkness of war and keep the light of science shining even in the darkest storm of ignorance.” That was part of the mantra. She hated it. (Poet laughed at herself, she loved the mantra. But Very Serious Professional was afraid that liking it too much would make her look like an idiot, who no one would ever take seriously.)

She stood up.
The boots she was wearing went from stylish to practical as she did so.

“Where am I?”, she asked.

Silence.

Inside her mind Observer thought: ‘This is a good question, but this is not the right time for it. There is one that is more important.’
Which one…?

“Where is everyone else?”, her eyes grew wild. The Endless Sea bombarded her with a stream of invisible pictures. Panic. Forced calm. The desperate plan. Ignoring everything around her being destroyed and one by one all of ‘us’ dying. She needed focus, because she was the last anchor. Glorious Idiot! His last words where… “Of fuuuuck…”, he had turned back towards her, the expression of utter horror slowly melting as he focused on her, smiling that crooked smile of his, that she hated to find so sweet, “…looks like its, all up to you now. I’ll start the cascade spiral. Good luck.”
“Fuck luck!”, thos had been her last words to him.
He had grinned, for a second the world had been normal.
“Right, you don’t trust in luck, you trust yourself. Success then!”
She had nodded.
He turned around.
A few moments later everything has unravelled.

“Glorious Idiot?”, she tried. Of course that didn’t work.

This had been part of the plan. The cascade spiral, god that name…, had been Idiot’s thing. That had done something, beyond buying time.
The Endless Sea, pushed the Eternal to the front of her mind.
She looked at it, activated it. Inside its crystal body a flow of lines appeared, a sign which she didn’t recognise but knew was hers in the middle of it. She was at the centre of a galaxy of strings rotating around her, not centred on her, but with her nested in its middle.
The strings drifted apart, getting entangled and annihilating each other or just fading away. They were moving along a rather simple path. But then she saw something strange. A glitch in the display? She focused on it the Investigator and the Investigatrix, both utterly focused, the first trying to see where the error in the system was, the other if she could see a pattern in the glitch.
“It happens in regular intervals.” The Investigator thought, adding a time stamp to the display. Super regular intervals.
    “It is repeating.” The Investigatrix thought, adding ghost images of former versions of the flow on top of each other.
She tilted her head to one side, her eyes narrowing as she focused on it.

The Investigator and the Investigatrix, both noticed it at the same time.

“It’s decaying!”, she said. Eye growing wide again. She felt her heart as it started racing again. The world around her, the Universe, was decaying and evaporating.

“The stupid spiral…”, this was the part Glorious Idiot had played. His device was keeping the last remaining strands of the universe together.
And she was the weaver.

She let the Endless Sea take over, trusting it to know what to do with the eternal to find the Idiot among the millions of dissolving strands. His sign appeared. So grandiose and silly… at least it was easy to find.
She adjusted the settings. Giving her a better idea of her own position, relative to her and where ever they were now. She started feeding the fragments of his thread to the Eternal, when ever she felt a part of his thread passing through her fingers, she stuck them into her device. Then the cycle began anew, and all the fragments where gone.

She screamed in frustration and nearly threw the eternal against the nearest wall.
There now was a nearest wall.
There was also a short flash of memories. A much younger her. Frustrated had thrown an Eternal and broken it. They aren’t that Eternal when thrown in anger against hard surfaces. Going on the long pilgrimage, working with holy artificers how ever took an eternity. As did her mothers lingering annoyance.

“Let’s try this again…”

And again.

And again.

Something red when bright on the Eternal. It told her that some major threads had now completely frayed and vanished from existence. After the next cycle the warning was gone. She looked for it. But that part of reality had never existed in this cycle.
She had to force many of her shards to silence.
This was an all boss moment. No other voices were allowed to have control now.

By now, the Endless Sea could collect most of Glorious Idiots strands, while the Shards could concentrate of piecing them together and building enough of a contiguous strand for her to pull. The timer on her Eternal had started blinking. 30 seconds until the end of the cycle. She should have enough… if not… well she hoped that it would not damage the Glorious Idiot to go into the reset half unformed, half manifest.
25 seconds.
She started a sub-routine she had written into the eternal, which kept the thread taut and spooled it in automatically in when ever it went slack.
20 seconds.
Now she had to wait until the thread was puled into the Eternal as far as possible.
15 seconds.
The Eternal started to struggle, starting to vibrate every now and then. She placed her fingers around the thread, felt it, synced with its rhythm.
12 seconds.
With the rhythm of the Eternal.
10 seconds.
Compensated for the intervals getting shorter and shorter.
8 seconds.
Here breathing, went in and out with the breath of the universe.
6 seconds.
And her heart followed.
4 seconds.
She focused her power on the thread.
2 seconds.
Let it flow into the the thread, anchoring in her self, the room around her.
1 second.
And pulled.

Project: Ashes 001

 Nothing

Pure existence is a strange thing. The entity not quite conscious, yet able to feel existed.
It didn’t know it yet.
It was just there and felt… nothing at all. There wasn’t the pull of gravity, nor did it feel the presence of its organs, the pulsing of blood. It wasn’t hot or cold.
Later, this moment would remain vividly in its memory as this was the first impressions that had left an imprint on its mind. It would also be something that was incredibly hard to explain. They would search for words to explain a time and a place where space didn’t exist and time if it flowed at all left no traces at all.
However the others she tried to convey her thoughts to, the ones who were as old as her, would all nod. They understood. They had been “there” too.

For now it, it had no concept of her herness just yet, felt its exitence on its most basic level. Which in a strange way set off a chain of thoughts, that stirred its mind along the long path towards conscious thought.
It discovered that it existed, deep down in its core, it know it was. It felt good. This space (?) was, safe (?) and resting was good. Why?
It stirred. But it felt wrong. She… now it had happned, without noticing “it” had become “she”, and stirring she felt should feel… different.
It was dark and quiet.
She tried opening her eyes. But there was no body to command.

“?”, she thought.
Everything around her felt safe, but utterly wrong.
The darkness was not an absence of light it was an absence of everything. She had no eyes to open. There wasn’t a body that could have held those eyes. She wasn’t suspended in anything. She floated because there was only her. Nothing else. Not even space.

“?!” she almost panicked. But didn’t which filled her with an abstract apprehension. Again her body failed her, by not existing. Thus her “shock” didn’t feel like anything. There was no skin for her to grow hairs from that could now stand on end. There was also no heart anywhere that could start to beat faster. Nor lungs with which to breath more quickly.

All of this “…is really weird.”, she thought. Having no eyes they did not grow wide in shock, as she discovered her voice. Her consciousness passed another peak. “Is this a dream?” she asked herself. She remembered dreams. She knew that there were two worlds. The “real” world and the “dream world”. Right now the difference seemed deeply illogical to her, for how could there be two realites, but one of them actually real and the other one just… an illusion? She also remembered / knew all along, that she always spent some time in the one world and some time in the other. One always following the other. She also seemed to remember that sometimes her mind, got trapped in the dreamworld. It happened to almost everyone… Everyone? There were other people in the real world… But no in the dream world, there she would always go alone… but the dream world was filled with people, often copies of the people she left behind in the real world… “What?”, she failed to say aloud.
She remembered the concept of insanity. But for some reason this twin realities thing was considered normal.
Where was she… a yes nowhere… and probably in the border-marshes between the alleged “real” world and the dream world. Sometime you could get stuck there. When the mind woke before her body did.

But… she had no body. There wasn’t even a space for her body to be in. It was just her, existing and knowing without context more and more things.
She should be in bed if she was sleeping… or on a sofa? Or if she had alooot to drink then maybe she was lying in the garden, between the bushes, in front of her house… Yeah hopefully not that… also that happened like once… during her young wild years. Which had been… not as long ago as she’d like to admit.
For a moment she felled vaguely ashamed, but then was distracted by the fact, that she knew things like what a party was, or getting drunk, she even remembered what having a head was like especially because it could lead to forms of pain that mad her wish to not have one.
“Well at least that’s sorted then…” she thought. Without a head? She knew that wasn’t possible. Also… houses, people lived there, parties, people went there. She remembered people. Those were others, like her but not like her. Friends, many, many, so many individuals that existed but she didn’t think or care about and enemies. Enemies where the worst. “Like…” and there was the problem, enemies like… who? Her presence knew that it should now be feeling something. The enemy thought was connected to a very small select group of other entities. But she didn’t remember any of them. Or any of her friends… Or her family. Another concept that came naturally to her but was as bewildering as the wakings world/sleeping world thing. Family was a peculiar mix of friends, enemies and a small but not insignificant number of people in a category she called “ah, yes… them… meh…”. No names. No faces. Nothing.

“Am I dead?”, she asked herself. Again, the reflex of fear, leading to nothing.
Something wasn’t quite right here though.
O.K. something was even less quite right  than everything else. She knew “If I’m here, I’m not dead. I survived…”
She felt a sense of intense relief and joy, which startled her disembodied mind so much, that it lost this corporal sense almost immediately again. Was that her body? No… if she was here, her body was gone.

Everything is gone.

That was a fundamental truth which overwhelmed her.

It was such an intense realisation, that as a reflex she stopped. She had stopped everything, apart from existing.
“Oh…”, it dawned on her when her consciousness dared to move again. Her mind split into two patterns. One that wondered about the concept of time. How long had she been still? Where ever she was if time existed, there was no way to measure it. Utterly fascinating.
Her other shard, was cautious but had the impulse to put the puzzle pieces together.
A third shard manifested, just appearing a noting, that she used to love to solve mysteries, puzzles, understand complex systems.
The second shard observed, that she was here, that she felt safe and that she was absolutely not dead.
A forth shard, a close friend of the seconds, appeared to point out that believing not to be dead didn’t mean anything. Shard two the Investigator and shard four the Sceptic started a lively debate about the definition of life and death.
Until the third shard the Observer reappeared to point out that they were drifting away. The Sceptic was told to go away and let the Investigator do its job.
 The Sceptic didn’t want to leave, as “taking shit for granted” as she put it was the perfect way to believe all manners of false bullshit.
The first shard the Philosopher was a bit sad to let her thoughts about the nature of time go, but took it upon itself to take care of the Sceptic so that the Investigator could continue doing its job.

“So where was I?” the Investigator thought, opening its mind to the Endless Sea, the Endless Sea had no voice, it just knew things, felt them, connected them, analysed them and whenever there was a need for something “She” knew, the Endless Sea would manifest it to the shard who needed her help. The Investigator were old friends and a good team.
The Endless Sea showed the investigator a lot of empty vessels. These should contain specific information. But the Sea had lost them, she was endless after all…

“The… horrible thing…!” the investigator said and the Endless Sea manifested.
There had been something incredibly dangerous and sinister and there had been “the Plan”, another empty vessel, bright and shining.

“So the plan worked…” the Investigator said.

“Yeah”, she said breaking in two so that she could talk the situation through with someone else. The Investigatrix said, “We seem to be alive; don’t even start…”, she said casting a sharp look at the Sceptic who kept mumbling in the background. “Which means the Plan what ever it was worked.”
The Endless Sea showed them, that this fit into the way the Plan was formed. It showed them a path that the plan had to follow and they were at the beginning of it.

“So the plan hasn’t been completed?”, the Investigator said.

“Hardly,” said the Investigatrix, “as you can see over there,” she pointed at the Sceptic, just waiting to be able to enter the fray again, “this isn’t really what I would consider survival.”

“I and we.”, said the Philosopher. “I was not alone. And all of us is I.”
The other three looked at the philosopher, confused.
The Endless Sea moved showing them a strange mirror, they all saw themselves and saw that they all were I.

    “Wait, so all of this is me…?” said the Investigatrix.

“I am, I. All of these are just my voices.”, said the Sceptic, who when she confirmed something removed and doubt. And the Endless Sea washed over them letting them know that this was true.

    “So we here, is me.”, said the Investigator. “But there are others, out there… we all worked on the plan. And it worked.”

“Partially,” said the Investigatrix, “we remain sentient,” the Sceptic liked that wording and smiled, “so that part worked. But we need to return. If we can’t return, this might be what… that other one the… glorious idiot…”, the Endless Sea showed them a vague shape and the knowledge of another person, close, a friend, a partner and always annoying but in a delicious way?

Another shard, the Seductress appeared for a second and smiled. The others stood for a second in awe, then sent her back to where ever she had come from. She gave them all a knowing look, went away yet lingered on.

“So the glorious idiot,” the Investigator said, clearing her throat. “We need him… er… we need to return and prove him wrong?”

“In a way,” said the Investigatrix who was back on track, “he said that one of the ‘What’s the worst thing that could happen’ scenarios would be, that we escape the cataclysm” that sounded way better than ‘the horrible thing’, “but are then lost beyond time and space.”

“Oh!”, said the Philosopher, looking around the nothingness, it was in. Not quite easy. As it was now both inside her own mind with all the other shards that was her and also in the not-place that was beyond space and time. “Fascinating. It is so incredibly simple once you are here…”

“…but try to explain that to anyone has not experienced this.”, the investigator finished her thought. “It is literally impossible to describe. I know now what it feels like that there is no space… but… all concepts I have can’t describe it.”
The Endless Sea disagreed. It showed her “beyond time and space”. The Endless Sea didn’t really have a personalty like the shards, but somehow the Investigator felt, that the Sea was a bit smug, for she understood this not-place perfectly even as it eluded the abilites of the Shards to describe it.

“Hey!”, the Investigatrix said, “We can contemplate all this later. I’m pretty sure that it is imperative that we return. We will have other people that we can talk this through with once we are back. Or if we fail, we will stay here and will have all of eternity to consider it.”

“Or to find out if there can be an eternity in a place where time doesn’t exist.”, said the Philosopher.

“Or try to find a way to show that time doesn’t exist or if it it is just me who, without having something to measure it with, who doesn’t know that time is passing.”, said the sceptic.

“Can time exist if you can’t measure it?”, asked the Philosopher.

“Good point,” said the Sceptic, “while we take it for granted, it is axiomatic in nature and it looks suspiciously like a purely abstract construct.”

“Enugh of that.”, a new shard appeared, the Boss, who got things done, “Time to follow the plan. What do we need to do now?”
The Accountant one of the Boss’s most loyal lieutenants appeared beside her, “according to the Plan”, the Endless Sea showed them the next steps, “we need to focus on our return, for that we need to focus our being back into reality.”

“And hoe do we do that?” asked the Boss.

“I’ll take care of it.”, the Professional said. “You all need to shut up,  and follow my lead.”

“Alright, your’re the boss.”, said the Boss.

The shard, Silly Potato giggled at this joke.

The professional didn’t even notice, she dove with both arms deep into the Endless Sea pulling out the strings that lay submerged within her, connecting her to herself and her self to the world.
Once she felt all the strings in her fingers, she started to pull. Herself together. And back into the Universe.

Project Skyshell /edit 001

 Very late to the NaNoWriMo party,

No new story this year.

Instead I return to Project Skyshell from 2011 which remained close to my heart to this day and is the only story people that I don't know personally asked about years later. 
So I thought, having hardly any time on my hands, that I could go back, take what I have already written and try to polish it using with what little knowledge about writing I have gained in the past ten years. I could rush through the existing chapters in a week or two easily reaching the NaNoWriMo 50k words and afterwards go on writing and see if I can't get this story closer to the finishing line.

I was so very, very wrong. I what time I had so far rewriting the opening chapter. It changed. A lot. And it's not done yet. However trying to stay somewhat in the spirit of NaNoWriMo here follows the first part of chapter one.

If you want to have a look and compare with the original, you can find chapter one 

here: https://lordsunjumperspalace.blogspot.com/2011/10/project-skyshell-001.html

and

here: https://lordsunjumperspalace.blogspot.com/2011/11/project-skyshell-002.html

With that out of the way, this is Project Skyshell again. Enjoy.

Chapter 1 Desceding Fortune

Anira Leyma had left ambassador Nahalka's party in quite a hurry. Through one of the large windows providing a fantastic view over the great metropolis of Dahiri far, far below. 

The evening had started so promising, having masterfully infiltrated the party of the ambassador to the Nomad Empire on his floating island. Mingling with the guests, making idiotic small-talk, almost convincingly laughing at the jokes of the many guests who’s power meant that they could forgo trivialities such as wits. She didn’t even punch anyone. She’d been spectacular. 

She‘d gotten into the office undetected. Used her mind-force to unlock the door and, she was rather proud of this, convinced the door frame that it was perfectly fine for her to pass through. No cause for alarm. No cause for drama. 

Inside the office itself, it was standard work, stretch out her awareness, feel for anything that was suspiciously magical, or suspiciously mundane. There wasn’t that much security installed. It made sense, no one was supposed to come this far uninvited anyway. Yet there were some well placed security measures here and there, designed to catch the amateur and the overconfident alike. She’d even been somewhat impressed. 

Some people, well most people, thought that Anira had a tendency for being a bit too smug for her own good, she preferred to see herself as someone taking pride in her craft and enjoying it. Smiling to herself she had taken the crystals containing the data she was supposed to get, feeling the rush of a job well done slowly rising in her. She just had to copy the information on the crystals, put them back in their hiding-place and return to the party. Easy. 

All these plans went out of the window, her following shortly after, when that idiot of an ambassador had tumbled backwards, an indecently gorgeous young man held in his arm, into his office. 

The time it took him to notice Anira, was the time she needed to recover from the shock. She had not felt him approach, at all. Magically dampened office? For fucks sake… 

Well, no time to think, only time to act. 

As the young man looked at her, a roguish smile appearing on his lips as he saw her, she drew her hand back already forming hand-seals to harness the essence surrounding her. 

The ambassador turned around following his paramours glance. His eyes growing wide in alarm, as he saw Anira, his mouth sucking in air to call for the guards. Anira pushed her hand forward, her fingers straining to pull the essence threads they had grabbed with them. A wall of compressed air crashed into the ambassador and his companion sending them flying out if the door. They were still in mid-air when Anira’s hand closed into a fist, grabbing hold again of the essence she had just released, continuing her punching motion around her, teeth gritted, strands of essence igniting under the strain, turning back towards the window. The ambassador and his affair did not touch the floor before the were pulled back into the office, only this time Anira’s magic had grabbed hold of the large desk and the chair behind it too, sending it flying towards the window in front of her. She released the power sending the the two men crashing into the floor and the chair and desk through the window. Using her forward momentum to fall into a sprint, chasing behind the shock wave she dove out into the open, pushing past the broken glass and wood splinters, ruining her dress and covering her in little cuts and bruises. She jumped far away from the building and the flying island it stood upon right into the night sky kilometers above Dahiri.

As she fell the green gem implanted on her right temple flared back to life. “Anira?”, she heard the voice of her handler and best friend Iliu fading into her hearing.

“Yes?”, Anira said trying to sound nonchalant, taking a deep breath, focusing at the fear and panic that had flared up, trying to gently send them back to sleep again. 

“Why are you back in range? Did something…”, there was a short pause. “Anira…”, Iliu’s voice suddenly carried a disappointment with it that would have lasted most mothers for weeks. 

“Yes?”

“Did you jump from the Nomad Empire’s embassy island?”

“Yes…?”

“Did you steal a falcon armour? That wouldn’t…”

“No.” Anira interrupted her friend. She had stabilised her fall somewhat, arms and legs now spread wide, slowing her fall somewhat. She wished she had opted for something less skintight or maybe a cape. 

“Why?”, asked Iliu her voice cold, slowly shifting into her professional controller voice.  

“It’s a long story…?”, Anira said hoping that this would focus Iliu on the more pressing matter of her not ending up as a performance art corpse on the streets of Dahiri.

“I’ve got time…” Iliu stressed the “I”.

“I was caught OK. You can inform me of the error of my ways once I’ve landed safely. I do have the crystals though.”

Iliu sighed. “How are you going to land safely?”

“I’m working on it.”, Anira said through gritted teeth. She now knew where above the city she was. To her right was the New Rahin district with its majestic sky-scrapers, over there she would have a chance. She could not cheat gravity, not even with her magic, but there they could maybe strike a deal? 

“If you had…”, Iliu started.

“Not the moment for the shell-art, speech Iliu!”, Anira said, trying to manoeuvre towards the skyline of New Rahin,  still fighting back the panic that was trying to take over her mind. “A bit of help would be extremely appreciated though.”

“As soon as I find something, anything, that could help you”, Iliu said her voice now much calmer, following the rhythm and flow of a veteran handler, “you’ll be the first to know…”, Anira knew that Iliu had now switched into her analytical mode, that helped ease away the panic. 

“I’m trying to reach one of the larger buildings in the centre, I should be able use one of them to break my fall…”, Anira said.

“You’re falling short.”, Iliu said.

“Not helping!”, Anira gasped as the panic leapt back up. 

“You need to correct your course to your right, towards the Towers of the Plenum.”, Iliu said.

Anira glanced towards the centre of Dahiri’s government, a tower made from many different structures everyone one of them belonging to one of the powers of the city, forming one large building. It hadn’t been the tallest building in the city for centuries now, but all the skyscrapers around it held a respectful distance to it, leaving it standing in a clearing of small city villas. 

“Why?”, Anira asked, “Wrong direction.” 

“Only visually, the heat of the day, stored in the city is rising into the night sky, causing some very interesting currents over there. I’ll guide you. You should reach a strong stream of air around the same time as you reach the top of Dahiri’s skyline. 

Anira took another deep breath, cast a last forlorn look at the buildings in front of her, that now felt really close and turned towards the Towers of the Plenum. 

“Drift a bit further towards the city edge…” Iliu said.

“Why?”

“Because I want you to survive, so that I can kill you later myself for being such an idiot.” Iliu said, her voice still calm yet Anira could still feel the affection in it as well as the thick layers of fury it was swathed in. 

Anira complied, now facing one of the few districts left in Dahiri, that was made up mostly of low, maybe 5 story buildings and the occasional stockyard. 

‘Just my luck.’ Anira thought, hoping to find that fabled current soon, Dahiri like all the cities of the Hinkyoda qun Shyosha, the Kingdom of the Hundred Cities, was by ancient law bound to cover only a specific amount of soil, so running out of space the buildings had no other way to go but towards the skyshell, yet the embassy island was floating over the ancient trader district, where it was considered a mark of status to have a house that covered a lot of ground and stayed close to it. 

“Anira.” Iliu said. “You are close to a strong gust of wind, coming from your facing slightly to your right, you’re hitting it in…”, a short pause, “in 5 seconds.” She checked her medallion around her neck. It would catch her soul should she not make the landing. If it didn’t break.

“Four.”

Even if it did break her soul was in its prime, and would survive the impact with her memories and personality intact for a while. On the other hand with the speed she was falling at her immortal essence would probably smack right through the planets outer shell directly into the Inner World and where would she get a body then? And what kind of body, she didn’t want to be reborn as some backwater shepherd, who thought the light of reason was a fancy perpetual light…

“Three.”

This time Anira had to thank her panic for getting her back into the present, if she wanted to survive, she needed to concentrate. No deep breaths now… only her magic. She didn’t have to wait for the wind, she activated her mind-force spread her hands and let her essence fly into the air below her. 

“Two.” 

Anira pulled all the essence in her surroundings she could control towards her, the warm summer air suddenly turning thin and cold. She now felt the blow of a warm air current curving towards the New Rahin’s skyscrapers. 

“One.”

She pushed all of the energy she had into the wind. It wasn’t elegant, but it worked. The wind roared, starting to faintly glow with all the power that had been pushed into it, it grabbed hold of Anira and threw her in a big arc, tumbling head over heels back towards the centre of New Rahin district.

Panic took over for a moment. It took all of Anira’s will to stop her from screaming. For a moment she was just flailing arms and legs. 

“Success.” Iliu said her voice breaking through the feeling of terror, “You’re above the sky-scrapers bordering to the night market now. You’ll reach the skyline again in 10 seconds. Enough time to get your fall under control. I’m looking for some good candidate buildings to break your fall.”

Anira’s shell-art was laughable, but good enough to push her adrenaline levels back to a somewhat more bearable level and stop her heart from exploding. Once that was done she could stabilise her fall again. The roof-tops of the first sky scrapers rushing towards her. 

She had survived worse. At least this time she was not poisoned nor did she hang suspended over a lake of molten rock or was stalked by an incorporeal assassin who would only live in a body again if she died. This time it was just her and the free fall. Her panic wasn’t fully convinced but having lost its foothold in her blood stream decided to retreat. A bit.

“Once you pass the sky line again,” said Iliu, “you have to make your way towards the new merchant avenue, around a hundred meters further towards the night market.”

“Why?”

“Because of the New Wave of High Merchant Ornamentation.”, said Ailu.

“The what…?”

“I wasn’t finished. It is an architectural style, that was all the rage until only a few decades ago.”

“Iliu, could we postpone the fascinating facts of the city bit until after I have landed?”

“Anira!” Iliu snapped, “Look at the buildings.”

Anira looked. “Oh…”

“As I was about to say, the new style brought back a lot of balconies, ornamentation, statues, little towers and other pointy things. Not ideal.”

Anira saw. The first building was now rushing towards her, she had manoeuvred close to it and was now summoning another little gust of wind to push her away again. Close enough to be able to almost touch the building but not so close that a sudden gust of wind or a navigational error on her side would skewer her on one of the many decorative elements of it. She was now plummeting between to large towers both a couple dozen meters away from her. Seeing the floors of the buildings rush past her as one colourful smear gave her a much better idea of her true speed and despite all her professional training she felt her panic rising again. She either found a way to break her fall or she would explode in a gory mess on the floor below her. 

Teeth grinding in concentration she willed her self slowly towards the tower that seemed to be a bit more frugal about balconies and outlying towers, avoiding them as well as she could. She had to force herself to continue breathing as she tried to ignore the gusts of wind caused by bits of building passing her by at distances that would be deemed scandalous in polite company. She finally spotted a nice long stretch that was nothing but a wall of polished stone decorated with shining windows. Good enough. 

“Iliu, I need to know where to jump from here.”, she forced herself to an arms distance to the wall rushing past, focusing just on the bit in front of her. A somewhat garish wall with bright intense colours that were so in style with the rich and taste resistant in the Hundred Cities. 

“Give me a second, I am putting together an escape route for you.”, Iliu said her voice strained.

Anira started to feel the wall. The flow of its essence. Once the connection had been established she performed her hand seals expanding her own power into that of the building, heating the stone using her considerable falling speed to power the process. The wall in front of her started to glow red hot and to melt right away leaving a streak of angry scarlet behind her. Whenever she passed a window it evaporated but she was losing speed. Not fast enough by far though. Below her a balcony was rushing towards her ringed by her friends the pointy spires and veteran spears that had retired to a life of wall decoration. Feeling the power of her magic flow through her into the building gave Anira back some of her confidence.

“Okay, got it!” Ailu said. “Feeding you the information now.”

Anira would probably die a violent death as that was the usual fate for a mercenary spy such as herself but not today. Cheating gravity only a little bit she crouched down on the wall beside her, her hands and feet leaving shining trails of molten stone behind her. She looked up, felt a small sting in her right temple and eyes as Iliu’s projection manifested itself in front of her. She now saw in elegant arcs of light the routes she could take to move towards the older part of the district.

“Margin of error?”, Anira asked.

“Negligible, there are three plausible routes. Green is the best one, red is a bit shit, but if you fall out of green it’s still there. Orange is the safest, but you’ll arrive very low once you clear the old buildings.”

“Green it is then.” Again Anira’s hands went into a flurry of motions as she shaped the magic necessary to redirect the force of her fall from the vertical into the horizontal. One last sharp breath, releasing the final hand sign she jumped.

Project Twin Fires 004

 Chapter 3 The Oath

A few minutes later, Adrian sat in the living room, the letter in front of him. His face buried in his hands, tears working their way between the gaps in his fingers, dripping down, staining the old parchment below.

“So you are Sam.”, said the young woman, her voice soft. She was looking at him with a guarded expression tinged with worry.

“No.”, Adrian said. “Yes. Not really.”, he looked up, his eyes red, “I was. A very long time ago. I am someone else now. Been many different men since… this.”, he pointed at the letter. He hung his head looking at his feet, “I thought I left that behind.”, he shook his head slowly. “But right now… right now I feel what it was like. What it was like to be Samuel Everard,” a smile appeared on his starting small but quickly growing broad, reaching from ear to ear, he looked up again beaming at his guest. “Those where good times, ridiculous, often dangerous, but never boring. The smile froze, “Until I lost her…”, and shattered.
A long silence followed, he kept staring past his guest into a world that now only existed in his memories, while the woman waited for him to return.
He exhaled slowly, deflating falling back into his chair until he was just the crumpled remains of an old man. “After that I wasn’t Samuel ever again.”, his eyes still unfocused remained open and unblinking.

“…er…”, said the woman, “Sir?”

He blinked, quickly at first, then more slowly trying to force some moisture back into his eyes. “Yes?”

His guest seemed relieved to see him move again, her posture relaxing visibly. “So… who are you know?”, she asked.

“Now? Now, I’m Adrian McDougall. At least that’s who I’m supposed to be.”

“Supposed to be? Did something go wrong? Changed into the wrong body?”, she asked, a fain glimmer of curiosity starting to glimmer in her eyes, “That one you get there, is pretty old.”, she said looking at him with sympathetic sorrow.

“What? Got?” said Adrian.

“So what is your deal anyway.”, by now most signs of sympathy had faded from her face,having being replaced by something intensely analytical, she had started pacing around him examining him closely. “Do you transfer your mind to another host? Is it some kind of possession? Do you build yourself a new body?”, she hesitated for a second, “No that can’t be it. You’d not make such a body if you could.”, she shook her head. “So spiritual? Or are you some kind of ancient parasite or symbiont?”, noticing his horrified expression she said, “Hmmm, no parasite then. So some kind of regeneration? Like the doctor?”

“What doctor?”

She was about to answer that question but thought better of it. “It would just confuse you more.”, she looked up towards the ceiling, brows knit in thought, “Let me put it this way, when you die, through some kind of magic or force, your old body is remade into a new one and that transformation also changes your mind? The price you have to pay to cheat death?”

“What…no? Interesting concept though… But, no. I don’t die.” Adrian said.

She looked him straight in the eyes. “So how comes that you are now Adrian Mc…somethingsomething and no longer Sam Everard, or any of the other people you where between then and now?”, she raised her eyebrows as she said that.

“It’s Samuel, only Elinor ever called me Sam.”, he said. “And I don’t die. I’m immortal. What I do is change who I am, every once in a while.”

“So you just change your name. Man that’s lame.”

“It’s more than that.”, why did no one ever understand that. “Whenever I reach a point where my live is complete in a way, be it good or bad, or just because to much time has passed, I retire form the world, go into a deep hibernation, leave my old life behind,” he cast a quick glance at the letter, “and when I wake up again I start a new life.”

“That makes sense…” the woman in front of him said nodding slowly, “Oh shit!”

“What?”

“I have the worst timing in the world.”, she said her eyes growing wider. “I thougt you could help me, but I am to late… or to early… in an case I’m fucked.”

“I beg your pardon?”, Adrian said. “Also who in Gods name are you?”

“I am Britta May.” She said, pointing at the letter she added, “Elinore, was my ancestor and I came here to ask you to fulfil your oath.”

“The oath…”, Adrian was looking at the past, Elinor frail and old looking at him with a sad smile.

“You and your grand gestures,” she said. “You don’t have to do this. What’s important, is that you are here, with me. Now.”

“I want to.” Adrian said, trying to hold back his tears, his tears however would not be held back. “I couldn’t save you…” he looked at her, her body emaciated, her face gaunt, her eyes now cloudy, their old fire now just embers. To his surprise his heart found new ways to break even further.

“Sam.”, she said her voice calm. “I’m fine. I lived such a long life and I’ve been blessed to have you by my side this whole time. I’m tired. And as much as I would love to spend more time with you and all the others, I’m also looking forward to be able to rest.”

“This.”, he waved his hand at here, “is not right. It is not what was supposed to happen. You should not have to die. You were not even supposed to grow old… It’s wrong and it is my fault…”, he looked out of the window, outside the sun was setting, bathing the world in warm light, it would have been a beautiful evening under other circumstances.

“How is this your fault. This is the way life is.” Said Elinor. “At least for most of us. Everyone great and small, animal and human, grows old and dies.”

“I don’t.”

“You are an exception.”, she said, her voice inflected by the deep authority of a mother, “It is also not as if you didn’t try. How long have you been looking for a way dear?”

 “More than sixty years… Since the day I knew you.”

“Even before we were together?”

“Yes.”

“What if I had rejected you?”

“You did.”

As she relived her memories she began smiling again. “A couple of times.”

“You thought, I was an idiot.”, he said, pouting very slightly.

“No. I never thought that you were an idiot. I found it extremely exhausting having to listen to you waffle the whole time.”, she laughed. “However in time I came to see your charming side, your curiosity and your openness. That I really liked. Also you made a real effort to win me over.”, as she was remembering her eyes became clear and she sat up more, life slowly returning into her frame. “The impressive part, the part that saved you,” she shot him a pointed glance, “was that you made an effort to understand me and you moving closer to me. Most other men usually tried to convince me to move closer to them.”, she took his hand pulling it closer to her. Her hand was dry and cold. “I chose well and I even manged to make so much less annoying.”, the energy slowly seeped out of her again, she relaxed back into her pillows here eyes turning slightly opaque again. “You worked so long on making me immortal. You never gave up and you stood always by my side until the very end. What more could you have done?”

“Succeeded.”, he said clenching his jaw.

Elinor shook her head gently. “You are such a child.”, she sighed.

“It is one of my great qualities.”, he tried to put on one of his most winning smiles, it came out faint and crooked.

“It is a quality you have.”, she said, “Sometimes it’s even one of your good ones.”

His smile did not give up working its way slowly towards victory, when he remembered that it was only a matter of days before he would never be able to talk to Elinor ever again. His chest constricted, breathing became and effort, the smile was washed away by a new stronger wave of tears. “I don’t want you to die. There is so much left for us to see, to experience, there is so much that I still want to share with you. I…”, he sank with his face towards her hand sobbing, holding on to it.

Her voice was calm but cracking, “I know. I wish I could stay with you longer too. But I’m so very tired, my love, I need to rest.”, she slowly stroked his head, as tears began to well from her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I just can’t go on anymore. You know I look forward to find some peace. It will just be hard not to be with you, I will miss you so much.”, the hand caressing him stopped moving grabbing hold of him instead. After a while the hand relaxed, “But then I will be in Paradise, waiting for and you’ll still be here.”, she chuckled.

He looked up, his eyes bloodshot, his voice a rasp. “What if there isn’t an afterlife?”

“Really? This question? From you of all people?”, she said, shaking her head. “What did Epicurus say again?”

“There is either a heaven, in which case everything is fine, or there is nothing in which case everything is still fine because when we are nothing we also won’t care about anything anymore.”, he croaked.

“When I showed you his teachings you really got carried away by them for quite a while.”

“The man had some very good points.”, he said slowly sitting up again, wiping his tears with the sleeve of his shirt.

“Yes but you did go a bit overboard with the whole thing. As usual.”

“No sense in doing things half hearted.”, he said. “One of my most charming qualities?”

“Not half hearted, but your need to always do things,” she thought about the right way to put it, “double hearted? It can be very exhausting. But no. This is really is one of your most charming qualities. Being swept along with your newest obsession or getting you to obsess over something with me. That really makes you smile, Lucifer.”

“So I am the devil now?” he said, mock offended.

“Well you did tempt me. Over and over again.”, her mouth and eyes coming alive with a deep smile that told a thousand stories. “And you of all men shine the brightest.”

For a while the just held hands lost in each-others eyes.

“So,” Elinor said after a while, she shivered slightly as the cold night air was now seeping through the window, “about that oath of yours.”

He blinked, “It is the least I can do.”, he handed her an envelope. “It’s all here written down so that you can pass it on to our children, grand children, one generation after another until the time comes for me to fulfil it.”, he sat up straight as he said it his voice now steady, deep and full of conviction. “I could not save you.”, it took him a bit to remain steady, “But in the time of their greatest need. When they are under the greatest danger and there is nowhere else for them left to turn to, they can call me and I will help them. I will save them. This I swear, on my life, my honour and all my knowledge.”

She laughed. “You spend far to much time in the theatre my love.”, she laughed, it was warm and deep, she extended her hand with a flourish, “Well then Lord Everard, I do accept your gracious offer, may our family flourish and grow strong and should a great dark force arise to threaten one of our great scions you shall hasten from what ever great fortress you are residing in to their side to escort them into the bright light of victory.”, she took the envelope holding it close to her heart.

“I love you Elinor.”

“I know, my love.”




                    *    *    *



Adrian was still looking at the tear stained envelope in front of him very slowly rising out of the memories of Samuel Everard. The young woman was no longer standing next to him, a quick look around revealed that she had flopped down on the couch, both feet on the table staring towards the ceiling, with an expression of anger mixed with a strong dose of growing despair. Every once in a while her lips moved, but she made no sound, he hand gripping the strange wrapped up narrow cross, holding it close to her chest.
When she noticed that Adrian was looking at her, she pulled her self up a bit, putting her feet back on the floor. She looked over to him trying to push a flimsy pokerface over the storm of her emotions.

“Are you OK again?”, she asked. “You had a major senior moment there. Is that how it happens? How much time do you have left anyway?”

“How what happens? Time left?” Adrian said, trying to remember if he had somehow missed a part of the conversation.

“Before you have too…”, Britta appraised him brows raised, “…lie in your sarcophagus? Build a cocoon? No? Dig yourself in int the earth?”

Adrian did not know what to respond to that and tried out an indulgent smile.

She sighed, “You said, that once your life phase comes to an end you go into a coma to regenerate… How long do you have left?”

The confusion expanded filling the room.

“I don’t know how long it will take… er…”, he was still trying to find a way to explain what was happening in a way that would make sense to the young woman maybe then they coul start finding some proper answers.

“Come on.” Said Britta standing up her eyes fixed on him, “at least a ballpark guess.”, she gesticulated waving around the narrow cross which appeared to have a certain heft to it, “Months? Weeks?”, another pause her straight posture slowly melting into a slump, “Days? Please don’t tell me it will be days…”, he arms now hung limply at her sides.

“Days?” Adrian sitting up in his chair, “No. I will be decades before I will even consider going into the long sleep again.”, he suppressed a shudder at the thought of another long sleep, “Truth be told, I’d be happy if I don’t need to go into the long sleep for a century at least. I’D even consider getting a… job.”, this time the shudder would not be denied.

Britta was looking at him finding a bit of steel to put back into her backbone. “That’s good to hear I guess.”, she exhaled, “But you are soooo old. How does that even work?”

“I’m immortal. Of course I’m soooo old”, he had to take care to not let his imitation of her expression slip into mockery, “Which is probably the reason why you came to me in the first place, right?” this was a good point though Adrian, one which he hoped would yield answers for a change.

“That’s not what I meant. I know that you are a facultative immortal…”     

“Facultative?” he asked.

Britta just waved ignoring the question, “… I did not expect you to look old. I mean, for your age you do look pretty good I guess. I was just expecting something…”, she blushed very slightly, “…younger?”

Adrian tilted his head. “So, you don’t want my help because of the way I look?”, he inhaled preparing to start a ‘young lady’ diatribe, hesitating for a second as he realised how old that would make him sound, the getting furious at himself because he even thought that.

“It’s not the way you look.”, Britta said, despite there being a tinge of disappointment in her expression, “It’s more that instead of having now less problems I can’t shake the feeling that I just made everything worse. I thought you could help me…”

“With what?”, Adrian said, allowing his patience to slowly slip away.

“Instead, I’m putting you at risk too and will need to protect us both…”, she gripped her narrow cross tighter, now with both hands, reminding Adrian of a renaissance picture of a saint turning to God in her final hours, maybe with to much reproach in her expression than would be considered pious.

It took him a moment to get what Britta had just said. “I beg your pardon?”, he said, standing up to his full hight, his back stretching further then it had in decades adding two inches to his hight and taking away 5 years from his appearance. “You protecting me?”, his voice would have made angry Moses proud. “Young lady, I have faced things you can’t even imagine. I have fought enemies beyond your wildest imagination. Things you’d not want to see in your deepest nightmares.”, as he inhaled his muscles started filling out, colour slowly returning into his grey hair, his eyes now perfectly clear regaining their glow, “And beyond that I’m still standing in the tides of time growing more powerful with each passing day where every one else has succumbed to it. Great cultures, people, kingdoms, cultures and empires rose and fell while I stood witness to them. All of them ground to sand and ashes, while I still remain.”

A silence followed that quickly transitioned from heavy in meaning to awkward. The fury that had flared up int Adrian had faded as quick as it had risen. Britta was staring at him with large eyes, she had tried to take a step back but the sofa was in the way so she was leaning back to get a bit more space between the two of them, the base of her cross pointed towards him to keep him at the distance.

“OK Gandalf,” she said, “I’ll take the ring.”

 “What?”

“It means that you can chill man… I was worried about you. Sorry I meant no offence.”, Britta slowly relaxed again lowering the point of her cross again. “You can be quite impressive when you flip out.”, she gave him a quick nod of approval.

  Now it was Adrian’s turn to relax. He sat down again in his chair. His posture remaining in its straighter conformation. “It’s OK… I should apologise too, it was unseemly behaviour on my part. There seems to be quite some confusion about our respective situations. How about this. I will go to the kitchen make us a nice infusion of Hierba Luisa, while I do that you can gather your thoughts, then will sit down with a nice cup of tea and start again?”

“Sounds good to me.”, she said.

A little while later they sat huddled over their mugs of steaming tea. Adrian didn’t say anything, waiting for Britta to take the lead, concentrating on the surface of his tea working very hard to ignore the letter that still lay on the table opening a vast abyss of memories that right now were unwelcome.

“I’m a huntress”, Britta finally said. Adrian looked up at her, the first traces of a question worming their way to his mouth, he tried to keep them away, the glance Britta shot him helped to eradicate them. “Not the dressing in green, hiding in the bushes and shooting Bambi kind.”

Adrian wondered what a “Bambi” was but decided to remain silent.

“I eliminate supernatural threats.”, she paused, Adrian had the impression that it wasn’t to impress him but that she was looking for the right words. “It is the family business?”, she tried, she grimaced, “That sounds wrong. It is a vocation?”

“A tradition.”, Adrian ventured.

Britta mulled it over for a moment. “Kinda. It’s hard to explain. We are a normal family, but then that’s what I would say having grown up with it. It is a tradition because we’ve been doing this since for ever…”, she glanced at Adrian, “…we’ve been doing it for many generations. I don’t think it would qualify as ‘forever’ for you. There were times in the past where it was our main job so to say. These days it is something done on the side. But we aren’t mercenaries… You have to pay for our services though… er…”

“Take your time.” Adrian said, leaning back sipping his tea.

“OK. If there is a threat we will become active, we have to. I mean it’s the right thing to do, right? You don’t just standby when someone is about to be murdered when you have the means to protect them.”, she said.

Adrian nodded.

“At the same time what we do is hard work, its a craft and it is built on many centuries of experience. It’s a craft. You don’t give that away for nothing. On one hand you need to earn a living, on the other hand we deserve respect and recognition, you know?”

“How much recognition and respect can be found in a coin?” Adrian asked, while the words are still slipping out of his mouth he was already cursing his lack of discipline. This was the part where he listened and learnt instead of offending the speaker. He could feel Ishraq’s disappointment wash over him from the distant past.

Britta was just looking at him blinking slowly, Adrian was trying not to wince, when he saw that she was was starting to smile at him.

“Right? I always wondered about that. Part of it is that hunting takes time and we need weapons, materials, training, you know that all costs money. Still, how is presenting an invoice making people respect you? Dad says that it is part of the tradition, mom tells me not to waste time with wishy washy philosophy and Eric is an idiot…”

“Eric?”

“My older brother.”

“Makes sense.” Adrian said.

“So I did my own research into the family history. Took me a while but I guess this happened during the time of the bright shadow.”

“Good name.” Adrian said, “Never heard of that. What era is that supposed to be?”

“The enlightenment. The light of reason began to shine in Europe psuhing away the shadows of superstition and the dark arts. It’s funny really because in the beginning the hunter clans, where highly respected, an integral part of the push towards a better age. We helped sort the wheat of true knowledge from the chaff of superstition. We hunted down the enemies of process, we helped eliminate those who would wield the arts without responsibility and seal the most dangerous knowledge until the time that the new light shone bright enough that it could again be unearthed by a humanity that had advanced sufficiently…”

Adrian laughed. “Oh those assholes!”, he quickly stifled the laugh and looked at Britta. She just returned the look with a crooked smile.

“Nah, it’s OK”, she said still smiling, “From what I read ‘we’”, she made finger quotes as she said that, “where horrible assholes. During the later years of the movement some of the hunter guilds where eradicated as they were deemed to far removed from the light. One of my favourite parts of that story. Somehow humans can’t seem to be able to turn everything into a religion and then have fanatics ruin it.”, she shook  her head, “In the end what happened next served us right, I guess. When it was decided that the world was in order, the hunters were not needed anymore. The light had cast all shadows away…”, she snorted, “As if… Well in the end many of the lines died when they went secular. The ones who survived had to get proper jobs and do the hunting on the side. Where they once were hailed as heroes, after that people made fun of them at best. The rest of time time it was calling them names, often suspecting them of being some kind of charlatans or con-men who were responsible for the problems they caused in the first place…
That’s the time when the bit with getting paid in coin, favour or what ever else, which in turn became a tradition. Kinda works too. Most of the time people don’t need us. Either the official protection forces can handle it or the people don’t even know that we exist much less how to call us. In the end we mostly work for people like you and people like you, and I mean no offence and this is with all due respect etc… call us it us usually because of reasons that they are to blame for in the first place.”, she paused watching Adrian waiting for his reaction.

Adrian laughed. “Don’t worry. Pretty much guilty as charged.”

“Also these kind of people are usually filthy rich in one way or another. And if you can pay and it is you own fault? It’s only fair to get paid in advance. We are putting our lives on the line after all.”

“I agree.” Adrian said, “But now back to the part where I can help you? You seem to be capable enough. I mean you found me in the first place, which is in equal parts annoying and impressive. You come from a bloodline of hunters. You did read the letter, so this has to be a very serious situation.”

“It is.”

Silence filled the room again, slowly expanding.

“So…?” Adrian said.

“Thing is, this is an educated guess of sorts.” She paused again, her gaze wandering. “A very well educated guess. Went to university educated. Right now making its PhD I’d say.”

Britta was squirming in the sofa, avoiding Adrian’s eyes. He just waited.

“Someone is hunting us, people like me and my family. They are being careful about it. Spread across the world. The mortality rate all in all still pretty much within the standard deviation. However, to many hunters are missing in action, no bodies, that is strange. Also the ones that leave a corpse are usually mutilated, in a way that is consistent with what they were hunting. And yet… It’s strange you know, they miss key organs or limbs often connected to their main powers and what makes it really suspicious, the monster always disappears with them.”

As Adrian listened to Britta he began leaning forward a bit, his body tensing up ready to go into action at a moments notice. “That does sound very serious. But also extremely suspicious. What do your parents say to all this?”

“Nothing.” Britta said eyes cast down.

“Nothing? You told them all this and they did not react? I… why?”

“They said they were going to ‘look into it’ and that I could relax. I don’t think that they are taking it seriously enough. When they do I’m afraid it will be to late for me…”, she said.

“What aren’t you telling me right now?” Adrian said, he knew that he was either missing an important point or that Britta was withholding some vital detail. “What you just said sounds extremely alarming and painfully obvious. How can they they ignore this?”

“Because it only sounds obvious. Educated guess remember?” Britta said, looking up again, her brows knit together, “It would be obvious if it happened only in one country. It would still be hard to hide if it happened in Europe. However this is spread across the entire world. A hunter’s dead body is found, his liver missing, after hunting a werewolf? Weird. But there are many possibilities why that could happen. Stranger things have happened. A huntress going after a malevolent living flame disappears? Again strange, especially if the flame is never heard from again. But, you know you find some ashes, some paraphernalia of the hunt. It happens. Two brothers, veteran hunters, well known in the community drive into a town were a recently reopened mine has led to some very strange deaths and disappearances and they solve the problem but are tragically ‘killed’ when the mine collapses while they are still inside? Tragic, especially if you consider that that would be more of a rookie mistake. But how do they say happens to the best of us.
You see where this is going?”

“Maybe?” Adrian said, “If this had all happened in say… Spain, it would start looking suspicious, however if this happens all across the globe it would get lost in the noise…”

“Exactly.”

“I’m asking this from one professional to the other, what makes you think this isn’t just noise?” Adrian said, keeping his voice as measured as possible, he did not want this to sound like he was doubting Britta as an individual, this was starting to sound really interesting. It was essential at this point to make sure that Britta’s suspicion was based on more than her instincts running wild. That was Ishraq was fond to say was the ‘way of the animal’.

Britta squared her shoulders, her eyes now piercing his, after a short while she relaxed slightly but kept her gaze fixed on his face as she went on, “As I said I don’t have hard proof. It is hard to know what really is happening in the hunters world. We are not a cohesive group. There is now international association. We have contacts, we here rumours, we work with our networks and read the news looking for telltale signs and do a lot of detective work. We work in obscurity. Has its advantages, but in this case, it makes it easy for an aggressor to hide.
If you were an aggressor looking to… harvest(?) hunters. How would you do that?”

He nodded. “I see your point. This could simply be paranoia, which in your line of work comes with the territory, it is a plausible scenario at least.”

“Right. Now my information is not perfect, but I know enough to see that something is wrong. Also,” she said holding up her index finger, “there is something else. It started with the harvest of organs and body parts and then shifted to disappearances. There is almost no harvesting anymore. The ratio of hunter and monster both being eliminated has remained vaguely the same…”

“Vaguely?”

“As I said, this is all within the margin of error. If this is done by someone he or she or it has done its homework, at least when it comes to statistics. This may as well be normal and me just paranoid.”

“So what is there to convince me that you are right? If I help you keep you safe from an imaginary threat we will have a very long and very boring adventure.” Adrian asked, intrigued with where this was going. He felt a tingle in his skin, a feeling of potential energy building, this could still turn out to be a dud, but there was a strong potential in this story. He had to probe it carefully to see if it held together.

“First of all the switch from mutilation to disappearance, it happens at roughly the same rate.”, she said.

Adrian nodded, both to Britta as well as to him self, this fit, when he extended his will to gently pull at this thread it did not budge.

“Second, it starts with rookies, this makes sense the first few years of a hunter are the most dangerous, but then after about 5 years or so of active duty, veterans start to survive for a longer time. If you make it there you usually last decades. These days most survive long enough to pass on the baton to their children or apprentices and go into semi-retirement.
Here though? After the first 2 or three rookies it is only veterans who are targeted. This happened with the mutilations, then when they stopped this pattern repeated with the disappearances.”

Pull. Resistance. The faint taste of metal in the air.

“Also a paradoxical flaw.” Britta said.

“Oh?”

“Double eliminations”, she said, “Are most probable with Veterans. If you are expire inced enough to have survived over a decade it will be very hard to kill you without you taking your mark with you. This however is something that doesn’t happen all that often. The numbers in the statistics add up as long as you don’t look to closely at them. This looks, feels, tastes and smells suspicious. And when my instincts tell me that something is wrong, I do tend to listen and investigate.”

The living room was slwoly starting to glow in a weak violet light that only Adrian could see.

“How long have you been hunting?” he asked.

She grimaced, “Proper hunting? Two years.”

“Not long enough to have developed a solid professional instinct.”, Adrian said eyebrow raised, “It also makes you a rookie. Which should mean you are not a target.”

She pressed her lips together and almost looked away. Almost. “I know and I’ll come to the rookie part too. This is why I wanted to make sure. My instinct isn’t good enough and I believe that if your instinct tell you something, anything and you have the time to double check you should do it. Back to the point. Suspicious number of Veterans disappearing and they sometimes disappear under circumstances that are bullshit. I mean, a werewolf. Like in one? How high was that hunter to be killed by one of them? While losing his liver? And why the fuck did the werewolf suddenly disappear? Having just eaten a great hunters liver, it would become more powerful and either more feral or more cunning? Why leave its territory? You smell the bullshit too? And let’s say it left why was it never heard from it again? If it was mortally wounded in the battle, after consuming a fucking hunters liver mind you, it crawled away so far into the wilderness that its corps was never found? The disappearances are even worse. So this is the third point, can we agree that this smells fishy?”

“It stinks enough to make the angels in heaven puke.” Adrian said.

Britta snorted, shook her head and continued. “Fifth point and this is where things get really interesting,” she grinned, leaning closer towards Adrian lowering her voice, “the targets are all special in different ways.”

“Special how?” Adrian asked also moving closer matching her conspiratorial voice.

“First it was like taking samples all around the world. That could have still been random. A trick to not get spotted but by now all of the target have something special about them. Black hair and green eyes, for example. Or identical twins but one male one female. You see?” Britta asked.

“What about the two brothers? Where they targets in the early phase?”

“Huh?”   

“The two brothers who disappeared in the mine.”, said Adrian.

“Oh them. Nope they are special. They are known to pretty much every hunter everywhere. If you want to enliven a boring family party just ask what the people think of them. To some they are heroes, others are just waiting for the day where they push the envelope that tiny bit to far so that they themselves become targets and others still think they are idiots…”

“What’s you opinion about them?”

“Idiot heroes, sexy though.”, she grinned, “What makes them specials is that they have worked a bit to close to the enemy, they are tainted, in a sense they are themselves supernatural creatures. They also keep very interesting company. Them disappearing while pushing themselves too far? Plausible. Balances Karma. Supremely ironic. Far to funny to their enemies to not be believed. I call bullshit again though. Buried alive in a mine that was probably the main source of power of some backwater cultists? Please…
But again back on track. The fifth and the final point. The pattern kind of breaks but comes full circle.”

“You should try becoming a fortune teller, you certainly know how to talk like one.” Adrian said.

Britta just rolled her eyes. “Dude, don’t ruin my story.”

“Sorry?”

“So the last point. The people who disappear are now not only veterans anymore. It started with kind of random samples around the world, then went to veterans, moving towards veterans which all stood out in the field in some way or another and now it seems to be focused on individuals that are special in a one of a kind way.”, she leaned back her conspiratorial smile spreading on her face.

Adrian was not quite sure of how to react to that. “You haven’t told me all that to convince me that you are the chosen one.”, it wasn’t really a question. He was just trying to sort through what he just heard.

One corner of Britta’s mouth fell like the most disappointed shooting star, the other twitched slightly. “Is that what you have taken away from what I just told you?”

“No. No it’s not. But you are still not telling me the most important part. Why are you here? Why do you need my help? Or to be more precise what is it that makes you special?”, he raised his hands in what he hopped she would see as a conciliating gesture.

Britta’s face froze, retreating into a more serious expression, her eyes fell. Adrian thought, that that part was off.

“What did you do Britta?”, he asked keeping his voice as calm as possible. The young woman in front of him had been so happy to share her ideas and theories but this was a point she had been avoiding the whole time.

“I…”, she she inhaled slowly, “I… How to put this…”, she pressed her fist against her lips, “OK… This isn’T as dramatic as it sounds. But in short: I should not exist.”

“In which context would that ever not be dramatic?” Adrian asked.

“It’s not about me as a person. It is OK that I exists. This is not some emo emo ‘Oh woe! Hath I only not been born.’ shit. OK?”

“OK…”, he said.

“It’s actually fucking stupid on so many levels.”, Britta said, her colour returning to her with her rising indignation, “In our tradition, the first born child carries on the tradition as a hunter. The second child does not. The second child must remain removed from the tradition at all costs. The third born is then again taught the ways of the tradition. While the first goes out hunting, gaining experience, the third is continually trained and taught. In the end you have the main warrior with the most practical combat experience and the back-up who is also kind of the savant who knows the more occult secrets. And for the second child? Fuck all. Zero. Nothing.”, the last part she had hissed through her teeth.

“How old are you anyway, if you don’t mind me asking?” that was incredibly stupid.  She had gone from sitting with her fists closed, to standing like a rising flame, her gaze alone was enough to push Adrian back deep into his chair with their sheer fury. The she now held the narrow cross by the short end in her right hand it’s far end now pointing directly in Adrian’s face.

“I do actually mind.”, she said glaring at him. “I mind a lot.”

Adrian knew that now he had to chose his next words with utmost care. He pressed his lips together, forcing himself to resume breathing but in the most inoffensive way possible. “I’m very sorry.”, he said and he meant it, “I had assumed that you are not yet so old as to take offence at that question…”, he let that stand in the room, Britta’s rage was tinged by a hint of confusion which was replaced by suspicion. “I maybe should have asked how long you’ve been a hunter.”, the narrowed eyes and increased tension in her body told him that that was a poor choice.

“You already know that.If you had listened to me you’d…”

“You have been a huntress for 2 years now. I remember. I did listen. I was mostly concentrating on the pattern you were describing, I’m  just trying to get all the facts together…”, he waited for the reaction. The threat in front of him was still there but suspicion was ascending. In this case that was good.

“Look I personally don’t really care. I’m over a thousand years old, to me…” ‘you are all children’ was what he wanted to say, but every animal instinct inside of him that was tasked in keeping him alive kicked in the door to his speech centre to silence him before it was to late, under the threat of violence his mind reworded this very carefully, “…everyone under a hundred years is mostly the same.”, he fought hard not to let it sound like a question. It worked. The fury was reduced to smoldering embers directed at others, while the suspicion slowly retreated keeping a hairy eyeball on Adrian.

“So why do you ask?”, she said, her voice still carrying the afterimage of violence.

Adrian wanted to shrug, but as he saw the suspicion on the other side casting a pin point focus on him, he stopped mid-shrug his shoulders pulled up. His instincts that had surrounded his mind surrounded glared at him, some with arms crossed, others cracking the knuckles of their fists daring him to say something stupid again. “It is just information. The more details I know the better. It gives me, us a better insight of what your enemy in the shadows is planning.”, he had decided that it was a good time to treat the situation as fact. “Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it does. Could be have a numerological meaning, the time of your training, compared with the digit sum of your age… er… I maybe should have asked for your birthday first, that digit sum is carries great weight in certain occult systems. You have told me enough to infer that you are the second child, you have an older brother, Eric, you mentioned,” as Adrian spoke Britta slowly relaxed,the point of her ‘cross’ dipping towards the floor. He started to relax himself a bit, not too much though as his instincts where still very close to killing him themselves to save at least a shred of their dignity.
“You also have a younger sibling.”, he said. He would have smiled at this point but did not dare to.

Britta’s now looked mostly tired, “Freya.”

“Your younger sister?”

She just nodded.

“Leaving you stranded in the middle while they get to learn all the cool stuff, right?” he saw how her expression hardened again,  this time however her anger was directed to a place far away.

“Eric is an idiot,” he quoted Britta, “and Freya is an ingrate, right?”, it took Adrian a lot of effort to make that question sound deeply rhetorical.

“Ooooh you have nooo idea. She’s the worst. I mean she doesn’t even really care about all of this. She loves the mundane part of life. I don’t get it? Why can’t she take over that part of the family. I mean we are in the fucking 21st century. You know mom said it was OK, even dad didn’t mind… much… But oh she had to do it anyway… That little… She knew I was preparing for it, that I wanted to take over.”, as she talked her anger grew again but now it was not focused on Adrian anymore. After he was done being happy of not being the centre of that particular firestorm he noticed, the immense power emanating from Britta. Her fury, no her passion was a source of incredible power.
“I was doing her a favour!”, she raged on. “But she loves to be the centre of attention. But you know what?”

“It didn’t stop you.” Adrian said.

“Damn right it didn’t. I know more then here, I train more and longer and harder. When I study the lore I really work on understanding it. Fuck, I love reading the lore. She doesn’t. She has top be pushed every inch along the way… You know what the worst part is?” she asked, the flames of her fury now fully under her control.

“No?”

“The worst part is that the idiot that has to tutor her so that she doesn’t fall behind is me.”, her eyes were windows to a furnace that just waited for anyone to come near enough to turn into ash.

“That is outrageous.” Adrian said. He meant it but he still did not dare to raise his voice. “So…?”, he implied the rest of the question.

“My age?”, she asked.

“All of your ages actually. Numerology etc…”

“Eric is 20, still an idiot though. Freya is 14.”

Adrian knew better than to do anything beyond existing in the most inoffensive way possible.

“I’m 16.”

‘Figures.’, he didn’t say.

“So?” she asked him, her gaze again piercing him, for a second Adrian feared that his thought’s had been too loud, so that she had been able to somehow hear them.

“Er…”, he said.

“Numerology?”

“Right. Eric is a 2. Nice balanced number especially in conjunction with the twenty. How long has he been training?”

“Six years.”

“Thrice two. Good. Stable. And Freya?”

“Not even a year.”

“Her number is 5 a breaking point, unstable…”

“You can say that again.”, she snorted.

“And you have been training for two years. You are a seven, twice broken number, balance in chaos, the threshold before you reach the number eight, representing higher balance. With your training that’s a nine, again an unstable number, but full of potential but also short of reaching the first tier of perfection in the number ten.”

“Yeah… maybe not…”

“I beg your pardon.” Adrian said.

“It’s officially two years.” Britta said.

“Officially? How? You weren’t even supposed to learn it at all, right.”

“Well two years ago was the point when I had pestered my parents enough to let me train. I could still walk a secular path. After all Freya didn’t want to become a huntress anyway. Also if she did… she would probably need all the help she could get, right? Lacking interest and motivation is a really big hurdle…right?”

Adrian did again not say a lot of things, he just nodded. “So, unofficially how long.”

“Four years.”, Britta said a mixture of defiance and pride in her voice.

“You have studied the occult arts and how to combat arcane adversaries since you where ten?” he asked. That was incredible. It was incredibly dangerous and foolish at that. “And your parents…”

“Didn’t know of course, are you crazy? They would have killed me if they had known.”

Of course… ”Thus unofficial.”, he said.”But how did you hide the combat training?”

She shrugged, “Martial arts and fencing with the long sword isn’t really arcane. In the first years I mostly studied the lore, the channelling arts, meditation, the flow of power through the body, the flow in the river of souls. The kind of stuff you can do alone.”

His eyes grew wide. “That’s incredibly dangerous.”

“I know that now.”, she said, “But back then it was just really interesting and I was very careful. I’m not an idiot.”

“You were ten and without a teacher.”, he said.

“Still not an idiot. The books were very clear about the dangers, the limits and portents of warning. I mean some of that stuff was really scary to me. Still is… really.”

“I am still afraid of the river of souls.” Adrian said shivering.

“Well there you have it. 16 and four years of training.”

“So that would not be a nine but an eleven.In this combination you are in a twice unbalanced position, chaos all around you. A position of extreme fragility. But also extreme potential.”, Adrian said, leaving out the ‘if you mange to survive long enough.’, part.
“It also explains why your hunter of hunters would like to catch you. You broke a scared sequence, you are right now in a state of incredible magical potential, even a second class hovel mage could turn you into a terrible weapon. And you are an unchosen.”

“Unchosen?”

“By fate, tradition and destiny you were supposed to be mundane. More so than even someone who was just born into a secular life and stayed there. You were supposed to be ward off the occult and yet here you are. You are a fate breaker by your own will.”

“See?” she said smiling again for the first time in a long while, “I am special. Makes me fit the pattern. A rookie but not like the others.”

“You are special in the worst way?”

“Are you trying to commit suicide by being an ass again?” she asked her eyes narrowing.

“No. I mean, and I am talking from a destiny/fate perspective here, you aren’t chose to anything. No greatness. There will be no prophesy about you. No portents or om,es during your birth and life. Well until you persuaded your parents to let you walk the path of the huntress, probably sealed when you sister chose not to turn her back on her birthright. When that happened and you refused to back down, you broke fate and you chose yourself.”

“Nice!” she beamed.

“In a way. You are a phenomenon that most sages don’t think about. People like you either die spectacular deaths early on before they can leave their mark on the world or they become such forces of change and chaos that they appear as chosen as the greatest of the chosen of destiny.”

“That sounds very cool to me.”, she said still grinning, “I’m not dead yet. So greatness awaits, right?”

“That’s a way to put it… Wait… something here isn’t right.” Adrian felt something, something was amiss.

“How did you notice the pattern? If it is so well hidden… What made you look? Also if you don’t know about unchosen fate breakers what made you think that you are a target?”

“Oh… Right, that’s also kind of the catalyst that made me go look for you… I was attacked by creatures of of boiling shadow and oil darker than black.”, she said her grin ebbing out a bit.

Adrian closed his eyes, for a second, he inhaled slowly, without opening his eyes he asked, “That thing you are carrying with you isn,t a cross, is it?”

“No that’s Katsa.” Britta said

“What’s a Katsa?” Adrian asked.

“It’s a name. Katsa is my sword.”

He exhaled opening his eyes. “Of course… How good are you with the sword?”

“I’ve been training with it almost every day since I was ten.”

“Good”, Adrian said, he knew know what that strange feeling was, everything about the situation had been so very weird that he had not noticed. A dissonance that had appeared a while ago which only now that he understood what Britta actually wanted. “Because your friends of shadow of oil have found you and while we were chatting were breaking through the defences of my house.”

Britta showed only a short flash of panic, which she immediately got under control, when she started to unwrap her sword.

“Britta, can you see in the dark?” Adrian asked.

“No.Why?”

“Because that would have made things much easier.”

“How?” Britta asked, finally pulling her sword free from its cloth sheath.

Adrian pointed at a window, where they could see their own reflections, which where covered by condensing clouds of a slick fluid darkness that as it came together started swallowing all light. When the shadows appeared to be holes where the windows had been cut away leaving holes opening to the deepest void. They heard the snap of cracking glass followed by the noise of it being being ground to powder.

“Because then I’d have turned off the light in the house before they could have entered through the windows and we would have run.”

Out of the fissures in the windows the dark shapes slowly pured into the room.

“And now?” Britta said, moving away from the couch and the table to a spot where she could freely swing her sword.

“Now you fight.” Adrian said climbing on his chair, while he closed his eyes and opened his mind.

“Wait, I fight?” Britta said, casting a quick look back at Adrian before focusing at the growing oil shadows again.

“You fight, while I try to find out a way to push them back.”

“So you are not fighting?” she asked, a hint of panic in her voice. She caught herself again, calmed her breath and concentrated on her blade mouthing an invocation. The blade started to fog up, tiny golden droplets of golden light condensing on its blade. “Don’t you have a weapon?”

“Apart from my sharp wit? No.”, he said.

“What kind of immortal are you?” Britta said as she raised her sword now dripping light into an offencive stance, cross guard close to her head the tip pointing towards the nearest shadow.

“A very successful one. And I’d love it to stay that way. So please more fighting and less talking so I can concentrate on opening us a way to freedom.”

“Lovely.” Britta said, stepping forward thrusting her sword forward into the advancing shadow.