421 - Quill and Ink

garrett · October 24, 2024, 3:33am

Charlotte Palmer has vanished in a strike of yellow lightning from the Eigendrake.

Aboard the ghost ship crewed by the Buccaneers of the Beyond, the lookout shouts down the news from the crow’s nest.

Others in the crew hesitate. But only for a moment. There’s still a job to do.

The Eigendrake uncoils itself from Cairo. The souls it planted in the citizens of the city, to live out their afterlives, are drawn back into it, and Egyptian citizens find themselves waking up.

“It follows!” shouts Zheng Yi Sao, the navigator. “Through the portal!”

The ghostly vessel turns, heading for the doorway between the physical and the spiritual that Charlotte’s sorcerous companions had opened for it before. The Eigendrake pursues, yellow lightning playing over its phantasmal serpentine shape.

The splash of an infinite ocean marks the ship’s return to the Sea of Thought - the astral expanse of dreams, nightmares, accomplishments, and imagination. Charlotte once thought of it only as the underworld, or the afterlife. It is more - far more - and the Buccaneers sail it like experts.

“It will follow us until it retrieves the souls we took,” concludes Haam, the chief pirate. “Nothing else matters more to it.”

He turns his attention to Bodark, Vermillion, and Manny, who’ve come aboard to help with the attack on the Eigendrake. “We will lead the beast on a chase. We will sail to the End of Everything. You must decide how–”

The roar of jet engines overhead - not a common phenomenon in the afterlife - distracts him from saying more.

The group look up to see Leah Snow’s Garuda flying overhead and alongside. Haam resumes his thought with a smile. “You must decide how to proceed. It seems your friends have use for you, however.”

The side hatch of the flying craft opens, and Equity leaps out. She drops to the deck of the pirate ship, and beckons to the undead trio. “C’mon. We have a lead. A really important one.”

Bodark, Vermillion, and Manny look at each other in curiosity and confusion. But they allow Equity to boost them off the deck and into Garuda.

Beneath them, Haam’s ship and the Eigendrake dwindle into the distance. Ahead of them looms the portal, and a return to the real world.

On the ground outside Cairo, the returning trio disembark and are immediately accosted by Maury Jones.

“Hey, V. Show me that card. The one with the symbol you showed to Charlotte. The one uh, the Timeless Tower symbol.”

The card and the symbol were revealed in “306 - The Dueling Duo”. It was also seen on towers in the middle of a destroyed Earth, in “405 - Attack on the Multiverse!” – Ed.

Vermillion pats down his coat, and produces the card in question.

Maury holds it up, then pulls out a table napkin and holds that up beside it. Someone has drawn a symbol on the napkin. It’s the very same symbol as on the card the vampire has carried since leaving Russia.

“We were contributing to the rescue work at Cairo, as people were coming out of their trances. One of the fire-fighters brought this to us,” Maury explains. “They said someone told him to bring it to us, but didn’t know who.”

“To be sure, a remarkable concurrence, but hardly a productive one, yes?” Vermillion asks in annoyance.

Manny perks up. “Show me that again, lass,” he prompts. Maury holds up the paired symbols again, and the flaming skull stares.

“Lay this paper across thy skin, as though a tattoo, would ye?” he asks after a few moments of inspection. Maury shrugs and complies.

Several more seconds of inspection follow.

Finally the skull spins up and about in excitement, leaving a fiery green trail behind. “Ahh! I remember! I had such a thing upon me own flesh! One of me many tattoos!”

“When did you get it?” Maury demands, journalist first and foremost. “What did it mean to you?”

Manny descends again, now more restrained. “Ah. Well. That be difficult to explain. I don’t properly remember.”

The others look at him, a combination of shock, disappointment, and frustration on their faces.

“Kinda an important thing to remember right now, dude,” Daph suggests.

Bodark voices a sudden insight. “Ah! You probably forget because you were drunk when you get tattoo. Eh?”

Manny pivots to look at the stocky werewolf. “Actually, yes, that be the most likely explanation.”

Maury sighs, and puts the napkin away. “Then what was the point of this…?”

“There be a way.” Manny brightens up. “We retrace the voyage of Cap’n Quill. Me soul be me memories, yes? I am not deaf to the things the mystics of this quest have said. I will regain me body and me ink at long last. Then we will see what we must see.”

He turns to Mini-Jason, who has been piloting the Garuda in Leah’s absence. “We need not sail as on ships of old. Thy flying wing will serve, yes?”

The young man grins. “Of course. And I get to hear more about this ‘Captain Quill’, right?”

“Of course!” The ghostly pirate’s voice is full of renewed gusto.

“Then let us board and depart,” Maury suggests. “Manny, you at least remember where this voyage started from, right?”

Manny pouts as much as a creature without lips can. “I be sorely wounded by thy doubt, lass.”

The journalist chuckles in return. “Tell you what. I’ll document that voyage more thoroughly this time. Tattoos are hardly the ideal way to write history.”

garrett · October 31, 2024, 4:53am

Maury Jones is an accomplished people-watcher.

She shepherded the younger Ponies through their various hardships while in her mid-20’s. She built a - well, not thriving, but successful - career as a vlogger on YouTube out of guts, ambition, and a great radio voice. She’s pried secrets out of interviewees that wore literal and metaphorical masks.

Now, sitting in the Garuda with the others, she can tell that everyone here is doing their best to cover up from an increasing apprehension.

Mini-Jason - the tween version of Jason Quill from another universe who was somehow de-aged along with his entire team - is at the controls of the flying wing. His nanobots make up for the cybernetics Leah Snow used to supplement her piloting skill at the craft she invented. Now she’s gone.

Charlotte is gone. She was struck by the lightning of an Eigendrake as she was trying to steal souls from it, to lure it away from Cairo. She was wearing a suit that should have made her undetectable to the thing, yet it found a way to feel her out.

Other Charlottes are working on the problem of the Eigendrakes - the carriers and protectors of souls from some distant corner of the multiverse, come here to escape some inconceivably vast calamity. One of those Charlottes came here with a version of Harry Gale, “Harold the Fleet” from a world where magic stood in for superpowers. He’s gone too.

His Charlotte, and others, and Alycia-25 and people named Astra and Resister, are elsewhere. They’re doing what they can to sort this out in their own way.

Maury looks about the cabin.

The werewolf and the vampire who work at Charlotte’s cafe, Bodark and Vermillion, are in an animated argument in Russian. They’re gesturing elaborately at each other.

Daphne Palin, now going by the name “Equity”, is the priestess of a god of vengeance. She’s got some kind of tiny paperback she carries in the inner pocket of her jacket, and she’s reading it with easy familiarity. But she’s not at peace.

Manny the Skull, a literal skull wreathed in green flame, was - by his own possibly exaggerated account - once a sailor, swashbuckler, and scoundrel. He claims to have once had a particular symbol tattooed on his body, a symbol that matches one the group has been seeing over and over in their travels. Now they’re flying back to their home world, to retrace the voyage of a mysterious Captain Quill, in the hope of understanding what the symbol means. He’s floating about in the cabin, watching Mini-Jason operate the controls, watching how a craft is operated that’s centuries in advance of his.

Maury almost bursts out laughing, and harshly chokes it off before a sound gets out. How ridiculous this is. How improbable that any of this is going to bring Charlotte, or Leah, or Harold, back from wherever they got to - if they’re anywhere at all. What a slim thread upon which to hang one’s hopes.

Her aborted laugh would have been her own sign of desperation. Because come on. There’s no other source of hope right now.

Emmanuel had come to his first ship in chains, as the result of a deal with the court. Serve a sentence out in the gaol, or serve the Royal Navy at sea. It was no choice at all for an illiterate young man. At least on a boat, there might be some chance to swim for shore in some distant place where his name and crimes were unknown.

It was among his fellow sailors that he’d gotten his first taste of dignity. He worked hard to avoid the lash, and learned the ropes quickly. Yet the men with him were appreciative of his service, and said so. Praise was like a rich banquet to one who’d been starving his whole life.

His time aboard the HMS Bonadventure came to an end when the pirates attacked.

Fionn Ó Cuill was the Captain. He could be nothing less. Emmanuel couldn’t imagine the man ever being an ordinary sailor. He must have burst out of the ocean in a spray of foam, landing on the deck of his first boat fully formed, and taken command right then and there. He had a shock of blond hair, a thick and bushy beard of the same color, and skin that had been tanned by the sun but not hardened into leather by it. Among the English, he called himself the more palatable Finn Quill.

He was Irish and let nobody forget it. He hailed from the “rebel city” of Cork. He was full of tales tall and short, and said it was in his blood to be a bard - a spinner of legends. Yet here he was, on the deck of a ship, chancing his fate against the caprice of Neptune. God forgive such a sinner as he, for he’d have it no other way until he’d spun his own legend larger than any he’d told before, he would say with a wink.

Quill and his men took captives of some of the Bonadventure’s crew, and left the rest adrift in the ocean. Once away, he revealed three things.

First, that he’d known that every man jack he’d taken from the Crown’s warship had been forcibly impressed, rather than signing up of their own will. Second, he was short-handed and was willing to let his captives off at the next port, but that he’d take any man willing to sail of his own free will. Third, he’d acquired a map that pointed the way to untold riches and sights never beheld by living eyes. Moreover, he could demonstrate some slender fraction of the treasure he’d already acquired.

“Only I know the secrets of the map,” he’d said with a strange smile. “It was a gift to me from Henry Every, the arch-pirate. You lads may inspect it for yourselves to see as much. Any man who thinks to overthrow me had best consider his mates, because only under me will you see even a coin of what’s to come our way. Yet sail under my colors, and you’ll live like kings.”

Manny finds himself staring at Mini-Jason. Although he no longer has eyes, it still feels as though he does.

The kid catches the attention, and looks over. “Was this ‘Captain Quill’ really my ancestor, d’you think?” he asks, in an excited, uncertain voice.

“I be considerin’ that possibility just now, lad,” Manny admits. “The Cap’n was always keen on adventure. Ye have his name, and his hair. Not as much of it, but ye be young still. Perhaps ye have his spirit. I know not if his blood runs in thy veins. But take heart in that he’d have greeted ye as an equal.”

Mini-Jason shifts in the pilot’s seat. “Hey, can I ask you, y’know, more about this?”

Manny feels surprised at the sudden diffidence. Skinless, he can’t properly smile, but he nods his head - the skull, all that he has left. “Aye, lad, say on.”

The kid frowns. “Well. I - that is, my dad - he was a big influence in my life. The big influence. Him and Rusty, his bodyguard and partner. But I didn’t really have any other family. No uncles or aunts, really. Just government officials, superheroes, people my dad would consult with. I don’t even know about my grandparents, only that something happened to them when I was really young. So… so I guess…”

Manny can guess too. “Ye dream of family, having naught,” he says softly.

Jason looks over, his eyes scrunched up and his mouth turned into a puckered frown. “Yeah. That’s about the size of it.”

Manny pauses. “There be one other point of similarity. I be unlettered, but the Cap’n told many a story. Thy name be Jason?”

Mini-Jason grins. “That’s me, Jason Quill.”

Manny nods along. “Aye. Well, The Cap’n named his ship the Argo.”

Aboard the Argo, Emmanuel learned of his new duties. He would be a seaman. He would coil rope, tie knots, trim sails, swab decks, catch fish, stand lookout, extinguish fires - in short, see to the running of the ship.

There would be alcohol, and music, and rest periods. There would be no lash, no stern faces shouting obscenities, no punishments for failing to respect a far distant Crown or its emissaries here. There would be only the disapproval of the other men aboard ship, should he fail to perform.

That alone was motivation enough.

Bodark could use a cigarette. Somehow, he feels like it would be rude to smoke in this enclosed space, especially with a little kid flying the ship. And he’s running low. But he’s on edge.

He has been arguing with Vermillion for the better part of an hour. It’s mostly to pass the time. Neither man is committed to any position that sparks real opposition. Rather, when one brings up any point, the other seems compelled to counter it. At least he feels no self-consciousness when speaking Russian. That alone makes any conversation worthwhile, however fractious it becomes.

Finally he comes round to a point he’s been avoiding.

“Listen, my vampire friend. Charlotte Palmer needs our help, and we’re doing the right thing by going on this trip. Your card with its mysterious symbol. You never told her where you got it. Nor me. You act like this is a fool’s errand, but what else is there for us to do?”

Vermillion rolls his eyes as elaborately as it’s possible to do. “Perhaps we should be mindful of the business at hand. The Eigendrakes. What worlds are they shattering? What lives are they ruining?”

Bodark leans forward. “And what of Charlotte? You’ve no loyalty to her? She’s harsh, but she has been kind to us. She took us in when that hunter pursued us. She’s given us a place to be ourselves, and accepted us for who we are.”

Vermillion turns away suddenly. “Loyalty has never been my strength, nor my weakness,” he says in his typically ambiguous way. “I simply wonder if there are other paths we might walk.”

The werewolf sits back in his seat. “You’re lucky you have told us that it’s your vampire nature which forces you to lie so often. Otherwise I’d think that you are this arrogantly unhelpful on purpose.”

Bodark has stopped talking and is staring ahead, at the viewscreen of the Garuda.

Vermillion has given up trying, and now contends with his own thoughts.

I cannot be sincere. I cannot speak the truth. Undeath’s curse is not the loss of my life, but the loss of my heart’s voice.

He cannot tell this rough young Russian peasant what a pillar of strength he has been, nor what a comfort. He cannot say he’s found his company much more pleasant than he’d ever admit. He cannot say that he dreads losing him, the way Harold and Leah and Charlotte were lost. He cannot admit that he would scour the Earth to find him again.

He cannot say why he’s untroubled by Charlotte’s departure. He cannot brazenly lie about it - simply inverting the truth runs afoul of the supernatural compulsions that shackle him.

He knows Charlotte will be okay.

After all, she is the one who gave him the card.

insomn14 · November 1, 2024, 6:52pm

Yay, more Phase 3! And already Quill and Ink is promising to be an exciting adventure.

Looks like we’re in for dark times ahead… maybe!

Of course his name was Emmanuel. It seems obvious in hindsight, but I just always thought of him as Manny and never gave it a second thought.

The members of the Quill clan certainly know how to play the roguish hero. Looking forward to learning more about Captain Ó Cuill and his treasure.

Ah Manny, always the charmer.

This bodes well.

Cue dramatic sting! An interesting revelation. I’m intrigued to find out how this happened. Time travel shenanigans, no doubt! After all, we’ve got a Timeless Tower to find.

garrett · November 7, 2024, 6:13am

The sound of water gently lapping at a shore is the first thing Charlotte hears upon waking.

Overhead, she can see a sky full of brilliant stars. There are no sun and moon, but the night sky is enough to let her see clearly.

She’s lying on her back. Grass is beneath her. She puts her hands down, levers herself up into a sitting position, and looks around.

She sits beside a lake - or what might be a very placid sea. The beach is a mixture of rock and dirt. Here and there, she can see brooks feeding their water into the lake.

She turns to look in the other direction, to look upland and see the source of this water and what else might be here, and sees the Stag.

The Stag, she guesses, is just taller than a telephone pole’s height at its shoulders. Rather than a pair of symmetrical antlers, it has a single antler growing from the middle of its forehead, something like a unicorn’s. But that horn branches and spreads like a stag’s antlers. The branching reaches up and up, somehow, becoming fuzzy and impossible to view properly, until those branches become the stars in the sky. The Stag itself glows with the same light as the stars, making it clear that this impression is not accidental.

Charlotte rises to her feet, uncertain of what should happen next.

The Stag seems to be watching her. She cannot imagine such a being having any feeling of uncertainty. Is it waiting for something? For her?

If so, there’s no reason for her to be rude.

She approaches, and watches its enormous shaggy head droop down to keep her in its line of sight.

“I don’t know if you can understand or respond. Nevertheless, please permit me to introduce myself. My name is Charlotte Palmer. I don’t know where I am, or how I was brought here. I mean no harm. I simply wish to orient myself, and find my way back to my friends and associates.”

The Stag bobs its head slightly. Charlotte isn’t sure whether to take this as acknowledgement or simply a natural gesture. But it also turns, slow as a glacier, mindful to not trample her in the process, and begins walking upland. Charlotte follows.

She finds Harold the Fleet and Leah Snow tending crops on a patch of land.

Nearby there is a circular area with a fire-pit in the middle. Beyond it are a trio of buildings - a barn, a shed, and a modest house.

The pair see the approach of the Stag first, then look down and spot her as well. They abandon their tasks and rush toward her.

They don’t hug her - quite - but do come as close to it as Charlotte seems comfortable. Leah grins, and Harold looks relieved.

“I’m so glad you’re both okay,” Charlotte says, without even a greeting - she too feels the rush of strong emotion at seeing comrades thought lost. But her present situation prompts her to ask an immediate followup. “Where is this place?”

Leah gestures up at the celestial creature accompanying Charlotte. “The Time Stag here seems to be in charge, but we don’t know if we can communicate with him or not, even now. Aside from that… it ain’t reality, that’s for sure.”

In demonstration, she holds up her arms. Charlotte remembers seeing her cybernetic augmentations before, when she was piloting the Garuda - she was physically plugged into the vehicle. Now, there’s nothing but healthy human flesh. Or what looks to be it.

“I have no access to magic, no great speed here,” Harold adds. “Yet I feel no difference. It is the sensation of astral projection, but there is no corpus left behind and no silver cord anchoring me.”

Charlotte tilts her head. “The Time Stag? Who gave it this name?”

Leah points, and Charlotte looks along the line of perspective she creates. Across the lake, she can now see a promontory. An old stone tower rises from it.

“The Archetype,” Leah explains. “She’s got us working the ol’ farmland over here, but she should be visiting later.”

The woman gestures up at the Stag. “‘Time Stag’ makes sense though. That one uni-antler thing. Branches off into infinity, you know? Like timelines. Every choice a branch.”

“Who is the Archetype?” asks Charlotte, now full of curiosity.

“I think she’s you,” Harold says with a shrug and a wry smile.

Manny is telling the story of the Captain’s map.

“Maps be the keys to success in my day. Ye map the hazards and the opportunities ye find, and thus have ye advantage over others not familiar with the waters. Where the wind is becalmed and ships may not sail. Where the sea be too strong, or the storms be too great, and one’s sails will not survive. Where fresh water and fruit may be found. Ye have no idea how shocking this ‘GPS’ and ‘Google Earth’ be to one such as I.”

“De la Cosa sailed with Columbus and Balboa in their pillaging of the New World. His map be completed around 1500. Caudrelier and Pigafetta sailed under Magellan. They wrote their own account, which was seized by Pope Clement VIII and placed in the Vatican’s secret archives. Pigafetta had fought at the side of the Knights of Rhodes against the Barbary pirates, and knew their secrets too.”

“Henry Every, arch-pirate, granted the Cap’n a map seized from the Grand Mughal vessels - they be an empire that occupied that land today called India. That map contained many secrets, but lacked many keys to its deciphering. Secrets of sailing safely upon seas most serious, ye see.”

“The Cap’n came into possession of both these maps, and others of similar standing. His great scheme was to pretend there be only one map, and to create many false ones besides. The Cap’n was many things, and smithing and crafting of cunning things was one of his many talents. He concocted an oversized scroll case which contained these maps, true and false, and would divulge different maps depending on the arrangement of tiny mechanisms upon the case. Thus could he deceive anyone who thought to steal into his quarters and take a glimpse of the map.”

The skull utters a low cunning chuckle. “Such as myself, which is how I know of these things.”

“His genius let him see the correspondences between these maps - to decipher the connections. That this mysterious symbol be this island, that strange text be this landmark, and so forth. Thus did he learn many secrets. We are now bound for the first of these.”

The Garuda is flying along the coast of Spain. They pass by the island of Gaztelugatxe, connected to the mainland by a beautiful stone bridge and topped by an ancient church.

Manny grows excited. “There it be! There it be. It still stands. God bless it. Had I a heart, it would be warmed.”

Mini-Jason tilts the Garuda slightly, circling the site from the air, and the others look out to study it.

Manny resumes his thread of narrative. “The site we be visiting be two days–”

Jason laughs. “We’re fifteen minutes away, buddy.”

The old pirate turns, somehow managing to look surprised and pleased despite being merely a skull.

Charlotte kneels beside Leah and Harold. Her hands make the motions, assisted by the simple farming tools at hand. Dig a trench, plant a seed, cover the seed, water the soil. Move to the next piece of the plot.

“What are we planting here?” she asks.

“Dunno,” Leah says. “Universes. Timelines. Probably something super significant. Sure the hell ain’t regular crops.”

“How do you know that?” Charlotte asks curiously.

“We plant crops in the morning. They grow quickly enough to be harvested by nightfall.” Harold points toward the barn. Indeed, Charlotte can see the signs of previous harvests stacked up on pallets inside.

She turns back to Harold. “Wait. Morning? Night? How can you tell?”

“We noticed different things and put 'em together,” Leah explains. “My thing was that weather vane there.”

Charlotte looks. Atop the house, there is indeed a weather vane - a rooster hammered out of sheet metal, twisting and turning as the wind’s directions change. Beneath it are cardinal directions, similarly worked from metal. North, south, east, and west.

Leah grins. “I feel like a right fool for missing the other half.”

Harold swells with pride, and points down. In spite of the starry night filling the skies above, Charlotte realizes that the trio are casting shadows, and looks sharply up at Harold.

“The Sun rises in the east and sets in the west, yes?” he says with a smile. “In my world, magic is a potent force, able to twist mundane reality by the wizard’s will, but its luminaries walk the same paths as in your existence. I watched our shadows change and vanish.”

“Inconsistent… yet familiar,” muses Charlotte aloud. “Like the field here. This way of farming is the way it was done in my time.”

My time. The phrase somehow pushes at her thoughts, and she reflects aloud as she works.

“This was the way of it, for my people. My family, our neighbors. Our ancestors. Later, I learned that the peoples who lived in America before the white settlers had a complex and harmonious system of managing the land. They used animals, rain, even fire to sculpt the land and make it flourish. To us, farming was a form of dominance. Land was wealth. Crops were as much a product as a way to eat and live.”

“And then…” She turns the next phrase over and over in her mind. “Then I died. And woke up in a new era. And learned how much of what I thought I knew was mistaken. Or ignorant. The willful ignorance of people who wanted to use the land, or the simple lack of knowledge that science and progress would amend.”

“I was shaped by my time. Given memories that still control my thinking. Then shown how much I did not know. I struggled to learn. Now, I am in a new place, and must learn anew once again. Are my memories of the 21st century now equally a hindrance, if this is where we will live our lives?”

Leah pats Charlotte on the shoulder gently, then returns to her own work. “We’re gonna make it home. Everyone deserves to be home. Whatever ‘home’ means to them.”

The Garuda has flown west along the Spanish coast. Finally Mini-Jason spots the landmark Manny called out, and banks toward it.

At first the skull seems disappointed. “The Roman lighthouse be no more, I see,” he mutters.

Jason checks the Garuda’s onboard map. Although they’re literally in a different universe than where the craft originated, not everything will have changed. “Faro de Cabo de Lastres. Lighthouse of Cape Lastres,” he announces.

Manny offers his story in a soft, reverent tone. “The story the Cap’n told is of a pirate ship, laden with treasure cruelly taken. A lad of only fifteen climbed the outside of the old Roman edifice in the dark and the rain. He fought with the fareros - the lighthouse keepers - and extinguished the flame. Deprived of their beacon, the pirates foundered on the rocks. They dragged their treasure to a cave for concealment, but were slaughtered to a man by Spanish soldiers as they tried to flee cross country. As for the lad - he fell from the tower to his death.”

Daph tilts her head, then speaks up. “It was for revenge,” she says, sounding uncertain and yet convinced she must speak. “The pirates had killed his family. He had nothing left. He knew what he was doing. He couldn’t do anything else, but he did that much.”

She looks around the cabin awkwardly and taps the side of her head with a finger. “Data dump from ol’ Vengy McRevengeface. He loves this shit.”

Bodark nods approvingly. “Do what is in your reach, then die. Young man is hero. Will drink to him.”

Maury speaks up next. “Sonder. It’s a word that means the realization that everyone you meet has an inner life as rich and vivid as yours. It’s easy for us to think of ‘the tide of history’ and just chalk it up to kings and nations doing their thing while the faceless masses toil away in the background. But everyone has a life. Everyone’s got hopes and dreams and feelings. And then… those lives just sort of… go away. Nobody remembers them. Maybe nobody could remember them. Too many stories, too much detail…”

Daph replies, more sad than surprised at her own god-given knowledge. “It’s frustrating. The power I have is for revenge. Despite the Eigendrakes destroying so much, taking so much, you know… They’re just trying to preserve those stories. They’re doing what they can to keep those old lives from being lost. But, you know, even if it’s forgotten, things like revenge matter to people. We just can’t let a story go until it ends, even if it ends badly.”

Her mouth twists into a slanted grimace. “Makes me wonder what I can do to contribute on a mission like this, yannow? Is it enough to just remember?”

Manny smiles. “The Cap’n thought the same.” He turns back to the viewscreen, where Mini-Jason is lowering the Garuda to a secret cave, well screened by the rocky cliffs of the Spanish coast.

The team navigates through a narrow passage. Maury’s wheelchair, gifted to her by Otto and the other Newmans, is able to transform into a full-body exoskeleton and let her move through even the most difficult segments of the cave system. She leads the way, with the lights on board the exo-suit illuminating the path.

There are twists and turns and multiple routes to choose from, but Manny steers the group from his centuries-old memories. And in time they reach an interior chamber. Graffiti in multiple languages has been carved into the walls. There are a few coins, hinting at what must have once been a great treasure. There is a cross, planted in the fashion of a memorial or headstone, but without a grave to accompany it.

Maury leans down, and the cameras on the exo-suit track her head movements to capture what she’s looking at. She reads an inscription carved into the cross.

“Carlos. Whose ascent to Heaven brought devils to hell.”

She looks back at Manny for an explanation.

“The lad who did the deed,” the skull says quietly. “Cap’n gave him a memorial here. Took what treasure there was. Some to his crew, to keep 'em happy. Much to the village the lad hailed from.”

He looks about the cavern, and floats closer to a coin resting in the dust. And as his head tilts, the others can see a spectral hand reach out from where Manny’s body would be, and take hold of a phantom replica of the coin.

“Tis only one doubloon, Cap’n,” he says aloud, speaking to nobody. “A token of remembrance.”

Silence, and then:

“Aye aye cap’n. Then… a remembrance of another kind.”

The ghostly hand sets the coin gently down, matching its current place on the cave floor.

Manny rises, and presents a newly formed shoulder for inspection. Thereon is a tattoo of a coin, with a symbolic flame in the center of it. “Thus did I resolve to remember through ink. I’d take naught but memories out of this place, and pay Charon’s obol to let the brave lad pass his way through the afterlife.”

He looks down at his newly regained arm. “Perhaps that be what a ghost is meant for. The forgotten demanding the living remember them.”

garrett · November 13, 2024, 2:51pm

Charlotte, Harold, and Leah are working the fields under the perpetually starry skies when they notice a distant figure approaching from the direction of the tower.

Harold rises. “That’s her.”

Charlotte looks. She can’t discern much detail from this distance. Putting her tools down, she starts walking. As her curiosity mounts, her feet move her faster and faster.

The Archetype is of Charlotte’s height and approximate build. She wears a long robe of gray linen, with a hood that drapes across her shoulders. Her hair, of the same color and texture as Charlotte’s own, is done in a French braid, likewise draped across one shoulder. Most curiously her face is covered in a wooden mask, with eye-holes that reveal nothing behind them, and no sign of what actually keeps the mask on her face. Then again, natural law seems slippery in this place. Perhaps gravity is only present when it’s convenient?

One year ago, Charlotte and Summer tracked down Doctor Infinity - who turned out to be a much older version of Pneuma, Summer’s original identity. She has met other Charlottes, but not felt such a gulf of power and age between them as she does now.

Is this how Summer felt?

That meeting happened in “227 - The Magic Kingdom” – Ed.

Still, she is full of important questions. She must be polite, but her curiosity and uncertainty drive her past protocol. “Perhaps this introduction is superfluous, but my name is Charlotte Palmer. May I ask who you are, and what you know of this place where we find ourselves?”

The woman’s voice is strangely like Charlotte’s, strangely not. “Call me the Archetype. I did not create this place. I merely make my home here. I am the regina sacrorum, the queen of sacrifices and sacred things.”

The name comes to Charlotte from her studies. “A priestess by political appointment, from the Roman system,” she says.

The Archetype gives a slight nod. “Come with me. Now that you are here, it is time to speak.”

She raises a hand and gestures to Leah and Harold, who have been watching from afar. They start jogging down the hill as the Archetype turns and walks. Charlotte follows.

The Garuda streaks across the Atlantic Ocean. It’s night, so the window shutters are open and Vermillion can finally look at the sights without the sun burning him up.

“The purity of the ocean water may do me in, even if the sun does not,” he jokes weakly. “Thank God for pollution, or there would be no vacation destination for me.”

Maury Jones is taking notes on a paper notepad. “Bundle of sunshine, aren’t ya,” she grins, and pokes him in the arm with her pencil.

“At least I need not fear the wooden stake you wield,” smirks the vampire.

The lights of a city rise out of the ocean, displacing the moon’s diaphanous reflection on the water. “Mindelo,” announces Mini-Jason. “We’re in the nation of Cape Verde. It’s an island archipelago to the west of Africa.”

Manny recognizes the nearest island from its outlines as the flying wing approaches. “Aye this, be São Vicent. The Portuguese settled here, and the African slave trade found its way through the islands. That be why the Cap’n and others come here - to steal the stolen wealth, and to free men of their chains. Even Cap’n Francis Drake sacked Santiago more’n a century prior.”

Mini-Jason examines the readout on the Garuda’s dashboard. “Says here they’re mostly doing touring and fishing these days.”

The skull smirks, as much as any skull is able. “More palatable pursuits, to their credit.”

Manny’s memories lead them to a volcano on one of the southern islands, called Pico de Fogo. Night works to the team’s advantage. While the archipelago is remote, it is still inhabited. It probably wouldn’t do to have a lot of people asking questions. Coffee beans are grown on the mountain’s slopes, and even now there are lights from some of the houses along the beaches.

As before, there’s a cave system. This time, the group finds themselves at a dead end. Rock has collapsed the tunnel they were following.

“An earthquake happened in 1847,” Mini-Jason offers. “Maybe it happened then?”

Bodark steps forward to try his strength against the stone, but Daph holds up a hand to halt his progress.

“I got this,” she announces, with an edge of anger in her voice.

She draws back a fist, stabilizing her breathing. “For the people that were taken. For the souls that were forgotten here. To be remembered is its own revenge.”

Her punch does more than shatter the rock. A burst of energy fills the whole shaft, blinding everyone for just a moment. When sight returns, it’s clear that Equity hasn’t just cleared the block here, but the entire path.

The troupe resumes its travels into the heart of the volcano, to learn what secrets the pirates of old left for them to find.

The Archetype’s tower is built in an old style, but shows no sign of disrepair.

The interior is appointed in a variety of styles drawn from a variety of eras. There is a fireplace and a wood stove, on which a tea kettle rests, ready for use. There are wooden book cases of many shapes and sizes, groaning under the weight of the many books packed tightly on shelf after shelf. There are 20th century electric lamps that seem to have no power plugs. There is even an iPod connected to a set of speakers. The device was discontinued during Charlotte’s time in the 21st century, but she recognizes it.

“Is this the Timeless Tower?” Charlotte asks.

The question is abrupt, and she knows it. But it must be asked. She has traveled far and lost much. And here is someone who by all rights ought to be cooperative. That is what she tells herself, at least. That is what she hopes, because there is nothing else on which to hang any hope right now.

The Archetype’s face can’t be seen, but the sides of her head, her jawline, and other peripheries are visible. What Charlotte cannot see but knows is behind the mask is a smile.

“That is as fine a name as any for it, I suppose.”

She moves to a particular book case and pries a book out of the tightly packed line on one shelf. It opens of its own accord, with the easy familiarity of an oft-consulted passage. The text is for Charlotte to read, apparently, because the Archetype begins reciting from it without even looking down.

“A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone, part of an older hall. Of the old stone some had already been used in building the house in which he actually lived, not far from the old house of his fathers. Of the rest he took some and built a tower. But his friends coming perceived at once (without troubling to climb the steps) that these stones had formerly belonged to a more ancient building.”

“So they pushed the tower over, with no little labour, and in order to look for hidden carvings and inscriptions, or to discover whence the man’s distant forefathers had obtained their building material. Some suspecting a deposit of coal under the soil began to dig for it, and forgot even the stones. They all said: ‘This tower is most interesting.’ But they also said (after pushing it over): ‘What a muddle it is in!’”

“And even the man’s own descendants, who might have been expected to consider what he had been about, were heard to murmur: ‘He is such an odd fellow! Imagine using these old stones just to build a nonsensical tower! Why did not he restore the old house? he had no sense of proportion.’ But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea.”

The Archetype rests a pair of affectionate fingers on the open book, just for a moment. “A philologist and author wrote that about Beowulf and its literary critics. But it is true of memory as well. Is not poetry and literature a way to distribute memories across space and time?”

Charlotte smiles to herself. “And Manny’s tattoos,” she says softly.

The Archetype nods again. “This is important, because memories are fickle things while in living minds. We experience, we retain, but when we recall we also reshape. Our memories are twisted to serve new purposes. Nostalgia. Self-justification. Comfort. But the original feelings remain, buried beneath the rubble we leave behind during such work.”

She turns to look at Harold and Leah for a moment, then back to Charlotte. “This place exists in parallel to time. In the worlds you come from, you experience time linearly. Here, there is no distinction between past and future. Memory and prophecy are indistinguishable.”

She raises her hands, gesturing around her at the tower’s interior. “I’ve found it useful in my redecoration efforts.”

A memory comes to Charlotte. She turns to Leah. “You… your Hula Hoop was pointed at an angle, you said. From pedestrians to a pursuing car, so that we could intercept the Eigendrakes.”

Leah Snow introduced this idea in “405 - Attack On the Multiverse!” – Ed.

She turns back to the Archetype. “Is that the truth of it?”

The Archetype tilts her head. “It is a glimpse of the truth. It is not what this place truly is, but you may think of it as such. Perhaps a demonstration…”

She leads the way out of the tower, to the lake, and beckons Charlotte to look into the water. Her reflection, distorted by the gentle motion of the water, looks back up at her.

“You wished to know if this was the Timeless Tower,” the Archetype suggests gently. “Where did you hear that term? Think of it, and your reflection will be your conduit.”

The name was first introduced in “306 - The Dueling Duo” – Ed.

Charlotte thinks back. In the lake water, her reflection stands in her coffee shop, Half & Half, and listens as the newly arrived Bodark and Vermillion tell their stories. Somehow, the lapping of water on the shore carries the sound of the conversation to her ears. Or perhaps it’s that a part of her is really there, right now?

She listens to the stories a second time. And she recognizes with some uncertainty that how she recalls those stories is not how they are playing out in the water.

“A rusalka told them,” she says finally, recalling the term at the same time as she hears it. “A sort of Slavic mermaid. But I don’t know how she heard of it.”

“Find out,” invites the Archetype, gesturing.

Can I? Charlotte asks herself.

She tries.

The perspective shifts. Bodark and Vermillion walk backward out of Half & Half, as time reverses itself. It’s like watching a video played in reverse. Now that she has a frame of reference to understand the procedure, Charlotte wishes for the “playback” to accelerate. The reversed time moves faster and faster, and in seconds Charlotte has found herself watching the pair in Russia.

It feels like an intrusion. This Panopticon could let her spy on everything and everyone, anywhere or at any time she wished. Without repercussions?

She draws back from the water.

Sensing her reluctance, the Archetype waves her hand, and the lake returns to its prior state.

“This is why you are here, Charlotte Palmer,” says the mysterious woman, with a voice of authority Charlotte herself has often employed.

“You have learned the Eigendrakes are alternative versions of yourself. You wish to know how to handle them. This place is where you will learn that lesson.”

Charlotte looks up, deeply troubled. “How will I learn that?”

The Archetype’s shrug is faint, the twist of her hands subtle. “You must learn how to change your mind.”

garrett · November 21, 2024, 4:14am

Garuda glides silently above the waters of the Pacific Ocean.

It’s local night. Only Manny, Jason, and Vermillion are awake. The cabin is dim, lit only by the red-tinted running lights and the glow from the instrument panel. Outside, the sea and the night sky blend together.

Manny has two functional arms and the faintest glow of a torso. Previous visits have reawakened other memories. Now, a more recent memory makes him sing softly.

“Brandy, you’re a fine girl, what a good wife you would be, but my life, my lover, my lady is the sea…”

He looks out the viewport in contemplation. “That be the way of it for a man of the sea. At night, stars above us and beneath us. The grand disc of the galaxy. Every color, like a rainbow at night. Not the mere pinpricks of light ye can see in the bright cities of this modern era. And the sea, having no stars of its own, would answer the sky with the blue of the algae and the light of the tiny creatures that swam there. Then squid would come, or whales, and eat the light.”

“Ye cannot hear it up in the air, but aboard ship, the sea would sing to us. The creak of the wood as it flexed, aye. The whip of the sails as the wind would change and catch them anew, aye. But, ye would hear the ocean life, singing through the hull. The clicks, the calls. I know the name of it be ‘sonar’ now. There be other noises. Whales hailing each other. The eaters herding their prey.”

“During the day, the dolphins, the whales, the creatures of the sea. Mermaids? Faugh. We saw such marvels aplenty, yes, but the ordinary life was a wonderment all its own.”

The skull looks at his companions. “It be no mystery to me why men of the sea cannot escape its presence even after returning to land. More’n a single man was lost, looking into the wake at the stern and feeling its summons, climbing the rail and then…”

Vermillion’s laugh is a sardonic chuckle. “The ocean is a vampire too, the way you say it. Seducing mortals to their doom.”

Manny’s skull “grins” grimly. “Cap’n said there be a term in the Frenchmen’s tongue for it. L’appel du vide. The call of the void.”

Medea Quill woke up on the shore of a lake.

Waiting there was a familiar-looking figure: Jason Quill. She’d seen her gender-flipped self before. Now, seconds after being zapped by an Eigendrake, she was in this strange place, being greeted by him. Or a version of him?

Medea was zapped at the same time as Harold the Fleet in “405 - Attack On the Multiverse!” – Ed.

Now she walks with him through a deeply green, darkly shadowed forest, under a perpetually starry sky.

Jason walks ahead, following an unseen path with an ease that announces familiarity. How did this cognate of hers get here? And how long has it been? He’s been skillful at evading direct questions, only promising to take her to a safe shelter.

There’s a thundering sound, closer and closer. More than a noise - the ground itself shakes. Medea turns this way and that, trying to judge the source of it.

An enormous glowing stag, tall as a double-decker bus, breaks through the trees. Literally - the sturdy trunks are snapped effortlessly or explode into wood shards as the beast charges.

It sees Jason and lowers its - its antler? A single antler, rising upwards toward the sky - no, the stars - no - Medea can’t properly make it out.

Suddenly Jason is some kind of black bird, just as large as this freakish stag, and suddenly Medea can’t remember anything–

Even Mini-Jason needs sleep. Since nobody else feels qualified to operate the ultra-tech aircraft, that means they set down and make camp at their next objective: the Atacama Desert in northern Chile.

The nation of Chile is associated with many things. Easter Island, Augusto Pinochet, and Antarctic bases are only the tip of a rich and deeply complicated iceberg. Even the origin of the country’s name is uncertain; one theory is that it comes from an indigenous word meaning “the ends of the earth”. Looking out across the desert, even from afar, members of the crew can believe it.

“It looks like Mars,” breathes Daph.

“You aren’t the only one to notice. It’s been used as a double for sci-fi movies.” Maury Jones is reading facts off her tablet. Even here, she’s able to make use of Chile’s extensive telecommunication system, though roaming charges mean she doesn’t want to do so for very long.

Manny floats about the camp site. Mini-Jason is napping inside, but even so he speaks quietly. “Perhaps we can investigate the site without the lad. This is… one destination he’d be better off not seeing.”

“Grim business?” Maury asks curiously.

Manny nods. “Aye. That and much more.”

The approach of sunlight means either stuffing Vermillion into a black body bag and hauling him bodily across the desert, or leaving him inside with the sleeping Jason. Given this choice, the vampire immediately opts to stay behind.

The trek will take an hour. Before setting out, Manny cautions his fellow travelers. “Bring no water into this place. Naught in thy canteens. Empty thy bladders. Spit until thy mouth be dry. Ye will suffer in this desert, but I promise ye this be important.”

Once these baffling precautions are completed, the skull leads the way into the desert. Manny’s adventures may have grown in the telling, but there’s no disputing that the ghostly sailor has a head for navigation. The centuries and weather haven’t eroded his memory of the landmarks concealed in the dry South American desert.

The site is ringed by an enormous crater. Something fell from the skies, so long ago it’s impossible to guess, and punched a hole through the desert into an underground abyss.

“Another cave, huh?” Maury asks with a mock sigh.

“A dangerous one,” Manny cautions. He floats down, into darkness. Daph, flying, carries Bodark and then Maury down after him.

Charlotte had asked about Medea Quill, but neither Harold nor Leah had seen her. Now, all three are surprised when the Stag wanders upland from the lake, carefully carrying an unconscious Medea in its mouth. The creature dips its head low to the ground and lets go, and the woman slumps down.

The three heroes rush forward and begin their examination. It takes a few minutes, but Medea regains consciousness.

“Hey blondie,” Leah says softly. “Run into a tree head first?”

The words are sarcastic, but both Leah and Medea are from the same universe. Charlotte can feel the deep camaraderie of teammates behind the question.

What she doesn’t feel is any reciprocity from Medea. The woman stares blankly up at everyone, Leah included. “Who… are you? Where am I?”

They discover Medea can walk with assistance, and so escort her to the Archetype’s tower.

Inside, question after question is met by helpless ignorance. Medea seems unable to remember anything that happened to her - ever. Even her own name is unfamiliar.

Leah finds no physical signs of trauma that would have triggered memory loss, although in this metaphysical place that could mean anything or nothing.

The Archetype takes a break from her inscrutable studies to examine the situation. “The Magpie has taken her soul,” is her conclusion.

It takes only a glance from Charlotte to prompt her to elaborate.

“The Magpie is a being that haunts the forest. It is comparable in power and scope to the Stag, and I believe they are enemies. The little I have been able to learn is that it steals and hoards memories. Whether the Stag holds it here, or whether it came here for its own reasons, I know not.”

“How do we get them back?” Leah demands.

The Archetype shakes her head. In a quiet voice, she breaks the bad news. “I am not equipped to contend with the Magpie, and I don’t believe you are either. If it cannot be compelled to return what it was taken, I doubt it will do so on its own.”

She turns back to Charlotte. “There may be one way. You will not like it. But if you are ready to face the lake again, perhaps we can talk about it.”

The sinkhole is the driest place Maury has ever visited. It doesn’t help that the heat of the desert is still oppressive, even down here in the relative darkness. It’s like being smothered in a cotton blanket.

There’s a depression in the rock, and what looks like a pool of dirty quicksilver at the heart of it. Unnervingly, the stuff is bubbling. There are eddies on the surface with no clear cause.

Manny holds up a ghostly hand to the others, and takes a single step forward.

Like a predatory snake sensing the passing of a rodent, the liquid rises out of its depression. It takes on a sinuous aspect, with a brief shroud of wing-like extensions, and tries to strike - but the effort is enough to make it collapse again, and the substance splashes back down into the hole. It roils and churns in frustrated impotence.

“Hei hei,” Manny calls softly. “Hiram. Be you still here?”

The pool bubbles, and a voice comes with effort from its depths. “Manny… Devil take ye… How long has it been… me old fellow…”

The pool is still forming other shapes - slithering pseudopods, creeping wave fronts, criss-crossing vine-like networks - in a vain effort to leave the hole. Each attempt is definitely directed at a member of the team. Yet the voice Maury hears seems friendly.

“Been centuries, Hiram,” replies Manny. He speaks quietly, with the same friendliness, and Maury can barely hear the undercurrent of fear and horror there.

“Centuries…”

The voice cogitates. “And the Argo… Ye sailed? Ye found… treasure?”

Manny’s skinless face can’t show the emotions he must feel, but Maury can hear them welling up in his voice.

“Aye, Hiram. The Cap’n steered us true. The men made it back. Not all, but ye know the ways of the sea.”

The frustrated pseudopods show no sign of ceasing their efforts to get at the team. Maury understands now about Manny’s precautions. This thing is liquid. When its tendrils reach their longest extension, there’s simply no more liquid to sustain it, and whatever it’s made of threatens to evaporate in the heat. If it had more to feed itself…

The voice of Hiram coughs its way out of the center of the violently swirling stuff. “Ha ha… well do I know… Touch not… what ye know not… And here… I am…”

Manny has been hesitant to speak. At first, Maury assumed it was out of caution. Now she has some guess as to what he’s feeling. Yet his courage doesn’t falter.

“Hiram… Things have changed in the world. I know not if there be a way to free you from this beast. But perhaps… there be a way you can be released… to follow the Cap’n on his last voyage…”

The pool surges. “Aye, Manny… What a gift… that would be.”

And then, the surface of the pool itself vibrates like an audio speaker in an entirely different, entirely alien diction. “HE IS MINE. YOU ARE MINE. ALL IS MINE.”

It screeches out these words, over and over and over again, as Daph flies the others up and out of the sinkhole.

The team needed no encouragement to leave and resume their journey.

Mini-Jason, awake again, receives a reluctant briefing from Maury. He, too, is quiet for a time, and seems to calm himself by appealing to science.

“We know that amino acids - the building blocks of life - can form in cold interstellar molecular clouds. Hayabusa and Rosetta brought back clear evidence of amino acids even on remote comets. It’s possible… I guess… for a hypercycle to form… self-replicating protocells… and Leo’s work shows how easily neural systems can emerge…”

He looks at Maury with haunted eyes. “An alien mind, trapped on a comet or meteor or something, making a silent voyage across the universe, with nothing to do but think. And then to crash here… I can’t imagine anything more lonely.”

They hear Manny’s voice. The skull is staring down at the half-glimpsed hints of a leg, on which is a new tattoo: a hand, reaching up out of a puddle and toward a sun shining overhead.

“I thought… I had remembered him properly. In ink, to last as long as I would… It was not enough. And to think I had forgotten him…”

“We won’t forget this,” promises Daph, and does her best to pat him on what shoulder he has. “And we’ll do what we can to make good on your promise to him.”

Maury nods in solidarity. She returns to her note taking.

This is what she can do here. She can’t fight monsters or fly or build amazing gizmos.

But she’s a journalist.

She can remember.

garrett · December 2, 2024, 8:12am

Charlotte and the Archetype stand at the shore of the lake. In the distance, the Archetype’s tower casts a shadow over the water, despite the sky being its usual starry panoply.

“You said I could help Medea. You said I wouldn’t like it,” says Charlotte.

She stares at the masked woman next to her. “And you said I had to learn to change my mind.”

The Archetype gestures. The water changes, showing the battle between Charlotte and her friends and the Eigendrakes. The battle ended in disaster - Harold, Medea, and Leah were all taken, and the Eigendrakes made their nests in Cairo and elsewhere.

As the scene plays out, Harold approaches. “May I observe?” he asks. The Archetype looks to Charlotte, who nods her assent at the speedster.

The images in the water recede, and the Archetype speaks again.

“You have a commitment to do good, Charlotte. You are very particular in how you do it, as you are particular in how you do everything. Now that commitment has brought you into conflict with yourself - and your other selves.”

“You wish the Eigendrakes to act differently. They act only according to their natures. Can you change their minds?”

“Alternatively, I offer you a tool whose consequences you fear. Can you change your own mind, and embrace it?”

Charlotte looks back at her masked colleague - and possible alter ego. “You sound as though you wish me to compromise my principles, not change my mind,” she says, in a more acid tone than she intended. “This… this Panopticon that lets me see anything, anywhere in time? This is a corrupting power you tempt me with.”

The masked woman lets out a sound somewhere between a snort and a chuckle. “Make your choice with eyes open, at least.”

She beckons Charlotte observe. With a wave of her hand, the lake reflects another scene. And as it comes into view, the Archetype wades into the waters and disappears.

Within the reflection, Charlotte can see a familiar sight indeed. It’s her old home - her real childhood home, when she was mortal and alive and innocent of everything she knows now.

She watches a tiny child Charlotte race out of her room, holding a piece of paper on which she’d been practicing her letters. She remembers this day very well. She’d been so proud of her writing, and was off to show her daddy.

She watches the tiny child Charlotte run back into the room, unable to find her father. She remembers the brief disappointment she’d felt. And child Charlotte, with the mercurial energies of her tender age, throws herself down on her bed to nap.

She watches, and feels her heart seize up. The Archetype has entered her bedroom. In the waters of the lake, Charlotte can see the Archetype write a short note on her practice paper. “Good - very good”.

She remembers those words. She was so sure her daddy had come into her room and written them. Now?

The enormity of what she’s seeing comes to her as the Archetype returns from the lake. It mixes with the sadness of a childhood memory resurrected and transformed.

“My father didn’t… he didn’t write that,” she manages, struggling to control herself. “I thought he’d seen it - I thought he was proud–”

She looks in accusation at the Archetype. “You did. I see now. You don’t just see through time. You can change it. You can change anything.”

She can see Harold bristling as well. The young man has stayed silent throughout the conversation, but she has heard Harry Gale’s warnings about time travel before - and found them convincing.

She looks back down at the lake water with horror. “You want me to wield that power.”

The Archetype shakes her head. “I want you to choose. Every way forward is fraught with compromise and sacrifice. You must stop hoping you can achieve your goals without those things. If you fear being cut by the sharpness of this blade, take hold of another. Just know that it will be no less safe, because the sharpness is what you seek.”

Charlotte’s emotions boil inside her. She seeks her self-control. But that’s what’s under attack right now, isn’t it? She’s being told that her restraint is wrong. Her logical mind urges her - consider the words of someone who may know. But her feelings want to shut the gates, man the battlements, pour the oil - she cannot be so wrong!

She lashes out aloud.

“Over and over, people push godhood in my face. Devon Crowninshield. Pandemonium. Doctor Infinity’s taunting. Well I don’t want it! I don’t want it because… because…”

Her time as a ghost has not been the most pleasant. The times she became more banshee than belle–

“Protocol. Whether that is social etiquette, or the rules of a game, or whatever - protocol is how we keep from being monsters. Protocol is how people can trust me. How I can trust myself.”

The Archetype’s mask only half hides her smile. “Trust yourself… to not become another member of your family. To not wield power as a sword, but to worship at its feet. To be yourself, in spite of all who wish to use you for their own ends. You mistrust me as well. That is good.”

Harold has been holding back, and now speaks up.

“Those of the House of Mercury - the ‘speedsters’ - have already faced this choice. We reject it. We reject power without consequence because that is what we possess.”

“Once there was a circle of wizards, called the Ring of Gyges. They used their mastery of magic to spy on the vulnerable, to take advantage, to cheat and to steal and to hurt. They moved unseen and undetected among the people.”

“Such power corrupts. It always corrupts. First, you use the power only for the best of purposes. You’ve done it! You couldn’t before, but you did it this time. This must be right!”

The young man clenches a fist for emphasis. He is angry, and frightened, and he clearly wants Charlotte to share his fear.

“You keep telling yourself that, as you do more and more with the power. You justify it to yourself, because what you want is that feeling of doing right. You convince yourself it must be right, because that’s how it felt at first. Until finally you’ll do anything with it, because you must be right. And the corruption wins.”

The Archetype nods in acknowledgement of Harold’s point, and speaks on. “There is one more price for using the lake. You can undo the damage the Eigendrakes have caused. Untwist causality. Make it didn’t happen. The memories of your friends and allies would likewise be undone. They would remember their lives up until the moment the Eigendrakes appeared - and then nothing more.”

Charlotte’s voice is a whisper. “You would have me sacrifice my friends’ memories to solve this crisis.”

The Archetype’s voice is also soft, but compassionate in its cold way. “It is not an arbitrary price demanded by a capricious gatekeeper. It is a natural consequence of a possible choice. The choice still remains yours.”

Charlotte gestures wildly at Harold, no longer whispering but shouting. “Why not his? Why not Manny’s? Why must I take the burden of making a choice that will affect their lives?”

The Archetype seems to be running low on patience, if the exhausted tone of her voice is any indication. “Why do you contend with gods, Charlotte Palmer? Why do you set yourself as an arbiter of justice? Why do you punish the supervillains and ne’er-do-wells of your world and others? Why so eagerly enter the arena if you are so reluctant to arm yourself?”

The answer is ready in her mind. It mocks her when she is unable to give voice to it.

garrett · December 12, 2024, 7:10am

The Buccaneers of the Beyond sail at speed across the Sea of Thought.

Not far behind them, an angry Eigendrake is in pursuit.

Within the hold, hundreds of souls huddle together, whispering strange things to each other. Although most of them seem human - or humanoid enough - they were carried across the multiversal cosmos by that very Eigendrake. It wants nothing more than to reclaim them.

The life of a refugee is never easy.

The larger-than-life pirates and their captain Haam are sympathetic. But they have also seen the Eigendrake displace other lives, force those souls into alien bodies that didn’t consent to the possession, commit one wrong to avenge another.

Now they sail for the only place they can think of shaking the Eigendrake.

The End of Everything.

As they sail, one pirate asks another a question in passing. “What did ya think of that one fellow? The skull - Manny?”

“Interesting lad. One of the good ones in our trade. And to remain a ghost for all those centuries… He must have a powerful passion that holds him fast.”

“This here be Dinosaur Isle!” Manny announces proudly.

“We usually called it Dinosaur Island,” Mini-Jason says.

Maury speaks up. “Isle and island aren’t just different terms. The etymology of the words differs. These days we’d say island, though.”

“Can you three shut up a second?” Daph calls loudly, in a mixture of excitement and annoyance. “There’s fuckin’ dinosaurs down there! I wanna see this!”

MIni-Jason pulls the Garuda into a wide arc to sweep across the mass of the island. Multiple biomes are scattered across the island, with a sinister smoking volcano at the center of everything. Pterosaurs wing their way across the skies, while their land-bound cousins spend time grazing or idling.

“Dinosaurs… extinct, yeah?” Bodark asks. “This is some kind of… trick?”

“As legendary as vampires and werewolves,” Vermillion smirks. “Our world’s maker has a whimsical sense of humor.”

Once Daph has sated herself on the first course of dinosaur viewing, Mini-Jason speaks up again. “At least in my world, the species on the island were drawn from across the epochs. The island isn’t just some kind of ‘world out of time’ with dinosaurs from a particular era. It’s got creatures that lived millions of years apart. People speculate it’s some kind of weird game preserve, except there’s been no signs of the game wardens.”

“'Twas quite a bit foggier in my time,” Manny muses. “Seein’ it bare like this… and from the air, I s’pose…”

He points, with one of his newly acquired hands, at a section of the coast line. “There. We entered via those rocks. The formation… ye make a Z shape to enter the cove safely. That be how I learned one of me letters.”

Garuda lowers itself to scant feet above the water, and Manny directs Mini-Jason in piloting. Without the mist of Manny’s memories, the cove he aims for is visible well before the Garuda reaches it.

The craft sets down, and people pour out. Some stretch themselves after another long journey while seated. Others look around in curiosity.

The interior of the cove is well guarded from the elements. A rocky overhang keeps the sun and wind away. Although the lapping waters are always audible, much of the cove is separated from the eroding forces of the ocean by unyielding stone.

As a result, the barest signs of old encampment can be found here - fire-blackened rocks set in a ring around a depression that once held firewood, for example. Anything perishable has long since perished, but the stones and the indentations remember.

Manny walks a circuit around the campsite once used by his crew, recalling aloud. “Cap’n said once that there as a swordsman, the Dread Moor, who’d come here seekin’ somethin’ or other. The Moor had been a powerful wizard. Carried a sword of night, he did.”

Bodark and Vermillion perk up immediately. “Bald? Dark skin? Very polite?” the werewolf asks in a rush.

Manny turns in surprise. “Ye know of the legend too?”

“It was not a mere legend that hunted us through Russia,” Vermilion says. “It may have been the very man.”

The group is silent for a few moments.

Maury smiles, hoping to break up the tension a bit. “Dinosaurs, gang. I’m gonna try to get some drone video. And Manny can tell us what we’re here to find.”

Daph, who isn’t intimidated by flesh-eating dinosaurs, flew out of the cove and up above to get photos of her own. She wants a souvenir more up-close than Maury’s drone video, it seems. She returns hours later with arms full of firewood.

Bodark arranges the firewood in the stone pit, and lights it with a match. After centuries of ash and sea spray and silence, the pit again plays host to a warm and welcoming fire for a small party of travelers.

Mini-Jason sits next to Manny, soaking up the heat of the fire. The competing colors - the pseudo-flame that still wreathes the ghost, the natural flicker of a wood fire - cast strange patterns across the boy’s thoughtful face.

“You admire Cap’n Quill, don’t you,” he says.

“Aye, lad. The Cap’n was - well, a man of heroic quality. Ye say ‘hero’ to mean ‘one who does good’ in this age. In my time, ‘hero’ be a man who does deeds of renown.”

“He did some awful things too, didn’t he,” Jason says softly. It’s not a question. His tone makes it clear it’s a hard fact of life he’s grown to accept.

“Aye, that he did. One such deed was done here, on this island.” Manny’s voice is quiet. “I think perhaps this be where we mean to come. 'Tis on account of this place that I drank heavily for a time. Perhaps to forget. What a sin that would have been, had I succeeded.”

The team has traveled halfway around the planet. As a result, everyone’s sleep schedule is very out of whack with the solar cycle. At least this way, they can travel to their destination without having to protect Vermillion from the punishment of the sun.

Daph flies Maury. Bodark and Vermillion are both capable of fending off the occasional apex predator with their supernatural gifts, and thus Manny and Mini-Jason are free to walk.

When they finally realize their destination, Maury throws up her hands. “Hey Manny? Your whole crew sailed the world, wound up on Dinosaur Island, you visited the heart of a volcano in a search for treasure. And you recorded it in tattoos, which you are now trying to get back, to faithfully record your experiences. As a journalist I have never been more proud of a man. This is the best.”

Manny is uncharacteristically quiet.

Mini-Jason elbows him, seemingly to prompt some kind of reaction. The skull manages a weak, fleshless ‘smile’. “Save thy pride until ye learn what we took from here, and what we left behind.”

The interior of the volcano surprises Manny. Everything is dusty and dark, but it’s shockingly high-tech - a city-sized laboratory and factory. It’s left to Maury to explain.

“From what we know, several generations of supervillain have made their home on Dinosaur Island. They turned the interior of the volcano into a giant base. From Rossum the Minion Maker to the old classics of the 1950’s like Strontium the Terrifying. Then the authorities would finally muster up a strike team able to get through the considerable defenses the island has on offer, and the villain of the moment would leave. Eventually another villain would settle here.”

“'Twas all tunnels when I was here,” he says quietly. “I… I may not be able to lead ye where we must go.”

Maury rolls her chair closer to the maudlin spirit, and pats him on his spectral shoulder. “Hey. Stop that. We’re all here with ya. We’ll find a way.”

On his other side, Mini-Jason thumps him gently with a child-sized fist, but a grown-up’s determination. “Yeah. In fact, I got an idea…”

The team has set up a camp just inside the entrance to the abandoned base. Now, they split up to enact the plan.

Jason’s nanobots are powerful and flexible, but have limits. Maury’s camera drones can hover and navigate independently, but aren’t that smart. But the two put their heads together and figure out a way to combine the technologies. Nano-augmented camera drones will fan out through the complex.

Bodark, Vermillion, and Equity will lend their physical strength to clearing out passages, punching through obstacles, and otherwise making a path for the drones. They head out into the darkness of the cave system.

Jason will stay behind, projecting a 3D replica of what the drones see and what progress the pathfinders make. Manny will draw from his memory of traversing lava tunnels and caves, and Jason will weave the 17th and 21st Centuries together to see how the old paths match up to the new reality. Maury will take notes, prompt Manny if he loses focus, and otherwise organize the exploration.

At first, it seems overwhelming. There’s simply too much base, and Manny was only following his captain’s lead.

The team regroups at their camp site, discouraged but not completely hopeless. Maury passes out snacks from her well-stocked backpack, and people find places to camp out for a few hours of sleep.

It’s Manny’s excited voice that wakes people up, hours later. “The hump! The hump! I remember the route now!”

It takes careful prodding and Maury’s interview skills to elicit meaning from this strange announcement, but the gist of it becomes clear in time. The enormous villain base wasn’t just built into the existing space, but reshaped the volcano’s interior too. There were terrain features once that have long since been flattened out or erased. With this new insight, Manny’s able to reconstruct a route.

It’s Bodark who finds the well-hidden tunnel, after smashing through a steel wall. The others rendezvous with him. Together, they carefully traverse the ancient tunnel to caverns beyond.

“That is it,” Manny whispers, once they emerge into a vast cave.

The cave shows the signs of long-ago use. There is an altar carved of stone and set carefully in the center. Idols and statues, some broken and others intact, ring the cavern’s outer walls. Rusted and corroded metal pieces are all that’s left of what must have been benches and chairs. Between the fantastical decoration and the omnipresent heat of the volcano’s interior, the impression is that of a hellish temple in the bowels of the earth.

Most significantly, there is a symbol carved into the rock of the far wall, beyond the altar.

Maury pulls out the napkin, given to the team by a random firefighter outside of Cairo in another universe. Vermillion pulls out a card, given to him in Russia.

On the card, and on the napkin, and on the wall, are the same symbol.

garrett · December 19, 2024, 5:18am

All eyes are on Manny.

The sailor’s skinless face reveals no change, but somehow his expression has changed. He steps forward, toward the altar.

Maury speaks up. “Manny. The word ‘dinosaur’ was coined in 1824. But you set sail more than a century before. What did you people call this island then?”

The sailor keeps walking. “Hell’s Aviary,” he says thoughtfully. “One of the tales of the east is of the roc, a great bird who might be found on an island. Pigafetta wrote more of the same. They be memories of this island, where 'twas said the Devil’s birds make their roost. Now ye call them dinosaurs and study them scientifically. But before that…”

He approaches the altar and places translucent hands on it. “The Cap’n had only the legends to go by. He came here, to Hell’s Aviary, to ask the Devil for what God would not grant.”

The others approach the altar. And as they do, they see something behind it - a human skeleton. There’s a rusted knife laying on the ground just underneath it.

“Nobody got what they wanted,” the sailor says sadly.

The group includes a werewolf, a vampire, a ghost, and the priestess of a god. Still, Maury startles when the bones begin to rattle.

The heat of the cavern rises, and a sound grows from a faint background hum to a whispered hint of words. They become audible as the others strain to listen. “Revenge…”

The bones are no longer merely rattling. They are straining. A spectral haze coalesces into the vicissitudes of flesh that hide beneath the skin. Pulpy muscles and taut tendons weave themselves over bone. The pulsations of blood become visible as red rivers winding through the meat. Finally, mercifully, the skin spreads itself out over the ghost-given tissues.

One hand reaches down and clasps the ancient knife. The raspy voice comes again before eyes and tongue are fully formed. “Vengeance… I demand it…”

“I be here, Jens,” says Manny in a sad, soft voice. “Emmanuel is here.”

But the newly risen revenant’s plea isn’t to Manny. It’s to Equity, priestess of the god of vengeance.

Daph’s face is frozen in horror. She looks at the others, then at the corpse which is still in the midst of animating itself. “I cannot refuse him,” she whispers.

“Ye need not try,” says Manny.

Daph’s power releases itself in a wave, filling the hellish temple-cavern with a heat of its own.

As the wave washes over Manny, he too starts to develop flesh. Muscles born and nurtured by a hard life at sea grant him a shape and substance his bones alone could not. The pounding his heat is briefly visible. Then his skin takes form.

Emmanuel the sailor stands across from his former shipmate Jens. His skin is indeed covered in tattoos, earned from a lifetime’s adventures around the planet. His eyes are fierce, and his mouth is set.

“Ye need not tell me what troubles ye, Jens,” the sailor declares. “But tell them thy story. Let them judge.”

A grin slides across the revenant’s mouth. He doesn’t have all his teeth, but seemingly that’s how it was in life as well.

“Cap’n Quill came to this place, this 'ell’s Aviary, following rumors of the Devil and his sword of night. He wanted a wish the Lord Almighty 'imself wouldn’t grant. Cap’n wanted 'is beloved wife back from 'ades.”

“We came ‘ere knowin’ the stories, but not knowin’ the price. A man would 'ave to die to grant the wish. Found that written here, I did. Me, a lettered man, knew what these fools didn’t.”

Jens contemptuously spits a blob of ectoplasm at Manny’s feet.

“Cap’n didn’t even draw lots. 'e knifed me with this very knife. Right in the back. Cap’n isn’t 'ere, but you’ll do, Manny. You’ll do.”

He aims the blade at his rival’s face. As he does, the rust falls away, and the ruined handle regains its former shape. The wickedly sharp blade looks as new as the day it was forged.

Maury flashes a worried, urgent look at Daph. The priestess sees it, and can only shake her head in silent resignation.

Manny rolls his head about, cracking his neck. Likewise, he cracks the knuckles of both hands together. “Do what ye must. But I will not give ye what ye want as easily as that.”

The knife-wielding revenant rushes Manny. He swings overhand, trying to bring the blade down on his opponent’s head. Manny raises both arms to block and lunges forward in turn. His forearms hit Jens’, before the arc of the knife has a chance to complete. Jens, ready for this, kicks at Manny and drives him back.

Manny has to flail for a moment to regain his balance. Jens lets his momentum carry him forward. The knife comes down, outstretched like a spear tip, aiming for a low gut shot. Manny throws himself to one side, away from the knife, forcing Jens to spend his momentum to turn. As he does, Manny throws a right cross that only lightly bumps the vengeful revenant’s jawline.

Both men, now in the thick of battle, are breathing hard and heavy. Neither has properly tasted air in centuries, and now both are trying to get more into their lungs than they can.

Jens flips his grip on the knife in a smooth motion. He holds it edge out, point down, in a position more suitable for slashing than stabbing. He rushes Manny, empty hand out, trying a flurry of feints and jabs to create an opening for the blade.

Manny sees the attempts for what they are. He grabs hold of Jens’ wrist as another jab comes in, and yanks hard, pulling the other man off his balance and pivoting his body so the knife hand is on his far side.

Before he can follow through, Jens leans into the spin. He pivots all the way around and tries a wide slicing move with he knife. Manny drops his body weight and leans forward, body-checking the other man before he can complete the swing.

Bodark steps forward, clearly intent on interfering. He strikes the edges of Daph’s barrier and recoils. He looks at the priestess, whose face is tight with anger, worry, and other emotions. “The Wolf say, let Palamedes play. This is god stuff?”

Daph smiles ever so briefly. “Nah. More powerful. This is human stuff.”

The fighting styles of the two men are becoming clearer. Jens is adept with a knife, and keeps trying new grips and new stratagems. Manny has experience with rough-and-tumble fights, using his fists, arms, and shins for the most part. He’s good at knocking people off their balance and trying to set up big forceful punches.

Both combatants know each other well. Perhaps they fought side by side in the past. Both men are also rapidly exhausting themselves. This isn’t a competition between martial artists, or a super-battle. This is a brawl. They breath fast and heavy as their bodies struggle to gulp down life-sustaining air. Their skin grows sweaty as their metabolisms struggle with the heat created by their exertions. They bleed from split lips or shallow knife-cuts, as one or the other scores a blow. What will decide the contest isn’t merely fighting talent, but the desperation for survival.

Mini-Jason has approached Daph. He whispers, with a worried look on his face. “D’you think it’s true? Would… would the Captain have stabbed a man in the back to make a deal with the Devil?”

Daph can only shrug. Whether it’s a shrug of ignorance, or a shrug of resignation at humanity’s sins, isn’t clear.

Manny is panting. Jens is likewise. Both are staring at each other through half-closed eyes, marshaling their strength and cunning to find a way forward.

Manny’s skin pulls back in a sudden grin. “We be dead men, Jens. While ye stewed in this cavern, I learned more of the world beyond. Have ye heard of ‘the motto’?”

“What’s that, ya scoundrel?” Jens demands through ragged breaths.

“Ye only live once.”

Manny rushes forward. Jens raises his knife. The blade cuts deep, and blood spurts out of the wound. But Manny grabs hold of Jens by the throat, and begins to squeeze.

“I die without regrets, Jens,” the sailor whispers. “If all that’s left for ye is this anger, then Hell take ye.”

Jens can only choke and struggle. He tries to release the knife, to use his hands to ward off Manny’s iron grip. But his face reflects other emotions as well. Shock, surprise, and - regret? He’s longed for closure for so long. But did he really mean to murder a crewmate?

As he gasps his last breaths, a new wave of power emerges from Daph, engulfing everyone in its light.

They’re on board a ship, in the captain’s cabin. It must be. The room is decorated with books, scrolls, maps, even a desk with a globe nailed to the top of it. The sailor Jens is at the desk. He’s looking through the complicated apparatus Manny described as the captain’s treasure map, furiously reading over map after map.

The sound of the cabin door makes him startle, and he rushes to hide himself.

Captain Quill walks in - for this man can be no other. He is as heroic in his swagger and style as Manny described him.

He looks about, clearly checking to see if anyone has invaded his sanctum. His eyes narrow, and he makes a conscious effort not to look toward Jens’ hiding place. Then he leaves, closing the door behind him.

The scene shifts. It’s the temple, three hundred years ago. Pews of wood are present in the vision, rather than the rotted remnants glimpsed in the modern era. There are grimoires and tomes stacked atop strange wheeled contraptions that let a reader keep several books at hand. Jens is studying one of the books when the Captain enters the cavern.

“Come man,” he calls to Jens. “The books can wait. We’re ready to eat.”

Jens does not respond. He’s intently reading some passage from one of the forbidden volumes, and his face reflects a deep fear.

The Captain approaches. Jens’ face grows pale with terror. He whirls on instinct, knife out. Captain Quill responds immediately, grabbing hold of his arms. The two men struggle for seconds - and then Jens’ arm is pulled behind him. The blade sinks deep, and the sailor gurgles.

Captain Quill watches, horrified, as his crew member slumps dead at his feet. The curiosity of shock drives him to look for a reason or explanation, something to make sense of what happened. His eyes fall to the book, and he reads the words there, and recoils.

The vision ends as he retreats from the cavern.

Laying on the ground together are two revenants. Neither live, though both retain their flesh. Already, Manny’s blood on the knife is evaporating into ectoplasm.

Equity, again in command, pronounces her judgement.

“Jens de Vlamingh. You sought to learn your captain’s secrets by stealing into his quarters and searching for his treasure map. He found you out, but thought his secrets safe. Your guilt and fear drove you to assume the worst when he approached you. He did not seek to kill you. Your death was an accident. Yet you blamed him, and all his crew. Your wish for revenge ends here, with the revelation of the truth of things.”

A wash of emotions twists Jens’ face. He rises slowly to his feet, and with new eyes looks down at Manny. After a moment, he extends a hand to his shipmate.

Manny takes it, and rises. “I’ve learned something meself. We knew of thy scheming against the Cap’n, and trusted the matter to his discretion. We thought, perhaps… he’d done the deed, but none of us had the courage to challenge him. He’d simply said ye died, and… well, we failed to defend ye. In that, thy vengeance was justified.”

The revenant looks to Daph, whose power is slowly dissipating. “Priestess. What of me? What fate awaits me, who wrongly attacked two of my own?”

Daph holds her hands out in a helpless shrug. “Why ask me? If there’s anything to hold you here, then stay. If not, then set sail on the Sea of Thought.”

Jens looks down at his hand. Already it’s becoming translucent. He looks up again, with new understanding. “I just… didn’t want it to end that way. You understand? It wasn’t right.”

Maury smiles at the half-departed revenant. “You’ll be remembered. I promise. All of your story.”

Jens is fading fast. But he has time to return his attention to Manny. “And what holds you 'ere, Emmanuel?”

Manny looks proudly from face to face, making eye contact with his traveling companions. “Been invited on a new voyage, Jens. And I had to get me ink back. The legacy of our voyage must be remembered.”

Jens nods. “All of it then. The good… the bad… the heroes… and the villains…”

He evaporates, leaving behind a tiny hint of bone-white ash.

The crew are back at the cove, huddled around the campsite.

Daph has been building up to some kind of confession. Finally it bursts out of her. “Sorry. I had to let that play out. It was the only way to send that man on his way in peace. I had to let him release his anger.”

Manny smiles - and finally he has real skin to pull back in a toothsome grin, real lips, real teeth to show. Since the fight in the cave, he’s retained his flesh, although he’s clearly still more corpse than man. “I remembered Jens. I’m glad we were able to learn his tale.”

“We found the symbol,” Maury says. “Manny… even though we learned Jens’ story, it feels like we didn’t get what we came here for. Some hint of Charlotte’s fate. What gives?”

“I’m not sure,” the sailor admits. “I thought, maybe… the temple of Hell’s Aviary would yield something. Yet I saw naught of what we all hoped.”

Mini-Jason pulls a hot dog off the fire and carefully starts chewing on it, then winces as the heat burns his mouth. “What now? Do we pile into Garuda and keep going? Surely you made it back to port - you didn’t all just stop here.”

Vermillion is turning a card over and over in his hands. On it is the same symbol from the temple. He knows who gave it to him, but not why. Not yet.

“We wait,” he says with conviction.

“For what?” Bodark asks him, head tilted in curiosity.

The vampire stares down at the symbol. “For a promise to be kept. For a decision to be made.”

garrett · December 20, 2024, 11:00am

Through the lake water, Charlotte has been watching the journey of her friends across the globe. She has seen their struggles. She has heard their stories. And she has felt keenly the emotions they feel.

Medea now works on the farm with Leah. Her memory shows no sign of returning.

Harold the Fleet has been standing watch over Charlotte. His presence is a comforting constant, as Charlotte struggles with what she herself ought to do next.

As the lake’s depths reveal Vermillion considering his mysterious card and the others discussing their plans at the campfire, Charlotte looks up at Harold.

“I can’t just take their memories away,” she confesses sadly. “How could I do that to them?”

Harold speaks softly and carefully. “My parents once faced a similar challenge. An icy star was being brought from the heavens. It would do great harm to the world. They summoned their powers and shook the pillars of Heaven and Earth. Many were lost. Many more were saved.”

“My parents also taught me the lesson of that day. Those of us under the Great Houses - our equivalent of your ‘superhero’ - are born with the powers of the gods, but not their wisdom. And so every intervention is a sacrifice of some kind. Something or someone will be lost, because we couldn’t see what would come of our actions. Or we lack the power to act in such a way as to avert all harm.”

He gestures down at the lake. “It seems that you can.”

Charlotte allows herself a small smile. “What is it that I have here? The power of a god… and the wisdom to not use it?”

“I thought about what you said. About becoming corrupt. Or no longer caring.”

She stares back at the water. “The Epicurean paradox. I read an author from my original era state it thusly. ‘Would God be willing to prevent evil but unable? Therefore he is not omnipotent. Would he be capable, but without desire? So he is malevolent. Would he be both capable and willing? So why is there evil?’”

“There’s a whole word for arguments as to why God can still exist in the face of the paradox. Theodicy. Imagine… an entire word dedicated to the problem facing me.”

The cool water of the lake ripples from time to time as an occasional breeze catches it.

“I have the power. And I place my wants above the lives of planets. The fate of those billions, against the mores and principles of one girl, born and sculpted in a specific era on a specific continent of a specific planet…”

She turns to Harold. “I am certainly capable. Does that make me malevolent?”

The speedster shakes his head. “You need not face the paradox if you do not wear the mantle, yes? You wish only to be yourself, and play your part.”

The last sentence brings a smile back to Charlotte’s face. “That’s what she said. The Archetype. I’m struggling against myself in multiple senses. I have to change a mind like mine. I have to change…”

A revolution of revelation rolls through her thoughts, as pieces of the puzzle snap together.

“I can…” Charlotte turns suddenly to Harry. “Wait. There are questions I must ask the Archetype.”

The Archetype is reading a book when Charlotte breathlessly bursts into her tower.

“I apologize for the intrusion - I am normally more polite, yet–”

“It’s fine, Charlotte.” The enigmatic woman sets down her book. “Speak.”

Charlotte struggles to find words for the thoughts she has. “Why are we here?”

The Archetype’s masked face tilts in bemusement. “You said that the Eigendrakes had struck you with their lightning…?”

Charlotte shakes her head quickly. “No. No, no… I mean… Gah. I have so many questions. Why did they send us here? Why here and not anywhere else? We were interfering with them - they didn’t want us to interfere - they struck us - zapped us - but why here? The one place where we have limitless power to interfere? Did they know where we’d go? Could they know? How do they have the power to do so? Or did something else bring us here?”

She stalks toward the Archetype and leans in. “You have been forthcoming in some matters but I must know the truth of this one immediately. Did the Eigendrakes send us here, or were we brought here by some other force?”

The Archetype shrugs. “I don’t know. The Stag, perhaps? I certainly had no hand in it. Could the Eigendrakes have sent you here? I can’t say.”

Charlotte feels her impatience welling up. It’s not directed at the Archetype as such. It’s her sudden and pressing desire to see through the veil, to solve this mystery, and the other woman is merely in the path of the tsunami. “Well how did you get here?”

The woman shakes her masked head. “I’m sorry, Charlotte. I don’t know. You see, the Magpie took my memories. The Stag saved me, as he saved your friend. I can look through the lake to see the past, but I could be any one of a thousand Charlottes - a million.”

She reaches up and carefully removes the mask. Behind it, Charlotte can see only smooth skin. There are no eyes, no nostrils, no mouth. Simply the contours of a face, empty of all features.

The mask goes back on. “The Magpie almost took all of me,” the Archetype explains. “I have learned much since then. But for me there will always be mysteries.”

Charlotte sighs. “You have my sympathies.”

The revelation has dampened her impulsiveness, but not wholly extinguished it. “And yet, you urge me to take action. The waters of the lake respond to your manipulations. Understanding the danger the Eigendrakes pose, you seem unwilling to take the action you urge me to consider. Why?”

A little of her frustration bleeds through. “Is it that you also feel the moral weight of what you propose, and refuse to shoulder it?”

The Archetype reaches for her book. “There’s one person here who’s shouldered the moral weight of a god. Why not ask her what she thinks?”

Leah seems to enjoy farming. She’s showing Medea the process of planting as Charlotte approaches.

“The lights are on and somebody’s home,” Leah reports cheerfully. “I dunno. Assuming it’s not some kinda supernatural mumbo-jumbo, maybe there’s hope.”

Charlotte glances at the amnesiac Medea, and winces at the simple smile on the woman’s face.

Could I undo that?

She turns back to Leah. “I want to talk to you about your robots.”

With Medea safely sitting down and away from sharp tools, Leah and Charlotte go for a walk. Charlotte outlines her problem, and repeats what she’d told Harold about theodicy and godhood.

She knows the story of Leo and his creations, and Leah is essentially a female Leo with some changes. But she’s still diffident when it comes time to ask her question.

“How do you bear the responsibility of such power?”

Leah smiles. “I wasn’t there when Charles - my you, if you will - was in the other world and summoned the aggrieved dead. He sure wasn’t happy to talk about it afterward. But I guess you want my insight, about creating the robots.”

She rubs her hands together. “Okay, good enough. And keep in mind I’m an atheist, so this ‘god’ business isn’t how I think of it, but… I hear believers talk about ‘free will’ a lot. And it’s like, if God made everything, and everything includes us, either all our choices have to be predetermined or we make choices out of some kind of quantum randomness that nobody including God could have anticipated. It’s like they want to do this bait and switch of where the decision comes from with the moral responsibility of making it. Like, God made me to do a thing, but it’s my fault I did it, 'cause they can’t blame God for anything bad, yannow?”

Leah’s smile is hard to read. She wants to talk about this, but Charlotte can tell she’s not eager to. It seems perhaps like a confession or absolution. The more Leah explains herself, perhaps the more comfortable she is about what she did.

“So in a deterministic universe, where, y’know, there’s this cosmic causal trajectory from God to all your ancestors and all your friends to you, and all this big tapestry of events that molded you into the person you are leads you to make a decision, can you really say you did it? But we as people are really wired to get defensive about our ability to make choices. We want to be the ones pulling the trigger, choosing door #1 or door #2, whatever. We hate not being in control.”

“So I guess in that sense you’re always forced into a set of choices based on your present circumstances. If you’re in line at the ice cream shop, it doesn’t matter what ineffable forces brought you there because you gotta pick a flavor and regular or waffle cone, that’s the choice before you.”

Leah leans forward and hugs herself. Her voice grows softer. “I made Ai and Yu when I was lonely. That circumstance was out of my control. But I didn’t make them for anything. I made Flamma… because I was lonely. It was me reacting to that circumstance. That’s really the difference. It’s Leah as inventor who pulls a Prometheus and steals that divine fire from heaven, but it’s Leah the goddess who says, ‘and woman shall have a helpmate, made of her rib and her neural connectome’.”

“My sin doesn’t devolve onto my creations. I’ve seen to that, to whatever extent I could.”

Charlotte smiles gently. “If your experience parallels Leo’s at all, I think you have succeeded.”

Leah looks up with relief and gratitude in her eyes. “Well. Good. Feels like I peaked in high school - made artificial life and all that. What’s left for me to do except atone to my creations?”

She clasps her hands together. “Alright. So I’ve been thinking about your question. How to shoulder the weight of this power. It sounds like you’ve resolved to do this and you just want to be okay with it.”

“It would be more correct to say that I see no other way at present,” Charlotte corrects delicately.

Leah snorts. “Fine, fine. So… you don’t wanna be God. You don’t want to be responsible for some new causal chain that reshapes the future. I get that. Want to be honest with yourself? Find a solution you don’t like, but does some good. Something that doesn’t serve your self-interest, but does serve your conscience. A solution you can live with, but wouldn’t have been your first choice. I didn’t know what Ai and Yu would be, but that’s the way you make robots. You let 'em be themselves.”

Charlotte can’t help but smile. “Exactly the sort of rough-and-tumble philosophy I’d hoped to get.”

“Did it help?”

Charlotte rises, and dusts herself off out of habit. “I think so.”

“Whatcha gonna do?”

Charlotte thinks. And thinks.

“I am going to make a gamble on myself. And I am going to make a deal with the Devil.”

garrett · December 21, 2024, 9:23am

Charlotte walks.

She’s seen the farm, the tower, and the lake. The forest is home to the Magpie, and she does not feel prepared for that confrontation.

And yet she walks. Her thoughts need time to crystallize.

They start with her inescapable conclusion.

During the soul rescue effort in Cairo, she was wearing Resister’s memory-shielding suit. Yet the Eigendrake sensed her, and struck. That shouldn’t have happened.

The being’s lightning sent her here.

Someone wanted me to be here.

Who?

The Archetype - another Charlotte, from all indications? The Eigendrakes - themselves the sculpted souls of still other Charlottes? Some other force?

Some version of me sent me here, like as not.

To do what?

To make the one choice this place permits. Use the lake to alter space and time and destiny. Use this mystic multiversal time travel to undo the Eigendrakes’ attack.

She’s stubborn. She resists the Archetype even suggesting that she do so. And yet she struggles, because it is undoubtedly a solution, and possibly the only solution.

I’m stubborn, but I want to do the right thing.

The thought dances in her head with the other thought. The Eigendrakes are also Charlottes.

Other Charlottes, stubborn in their commitment, but who wish to do the right thing.

The Eigendrakes - or whoever brought me here - wants me to be here, to make this choice. Even if I don’t trust myself, they trust me.

The Eigendrakes committed themselves to saving souls, damn the consequences! They would do the right thing their way. But they knew the harm it would cause. Just like she does.

They want me to find the solution they’re too stubborn to find themselves.

She crests a low hill and finds that the land has immediately ended.

An inconceivably long way down, another panorama presents itself. The Sea of Thought.

Charlotte wills herself to levitate. If the ever-present stars still let an unseen sun cast a shadow, she reasons, the nature of this place ought to grant such a relatively simple request.

It does. Her feet lift off from the ground.

She floats over the side, and descends along the cliff’s vast height, and wills herself to turn in place once it finally ends. And she sees the truth.

The lake, and the tower, and the farm, have all been resting on an enormous floating island. Water pours off the sides here and there. It flows down and down, into the Sea of Thought.

In a flash, she understands.

Memory and prophecy, indistinguishable.

What happens here flows downward, into the worlds she and her friends know. It becomes woven into the fabric of reality. The water’s ripples move forward and backward in linear time. They cause omens to appear, dreams and visions to be received. Later, they become legends and persist as myths. They spread out through space, to create echoes and emulations of the reality. The story of Atlantis is that of Plato’s allegory, but also a real empire of fish people in the modern day. The blade of Excalibur is a weapon wielded by a mythic king, and a symbol of a paramilitary demon-hunting fraternity.

She darts upward again, until she’s level with the strange world where she’s been staying. The touch of soil under her feet is comforting to the mortal instincts that shriek fear at her. This is too much, they say, this is beyond comprehension.

She dares to look skyward.

At last she can see the stars clearly. And - descending from unguessable and invisible heights above her - she sees yet another waterfall. Coming here.

Charlotte feels dizzy. She falls to her knees. Her hands reach down, clutching at the ground to steady herself.

The hope that she feels reasserts itself. She carefully finds her feet, and begins walking back toward the lake.

Whoever brought me here knows me. They trust me to do this. They trust me because they know I do not want to do it.

Leah’s words ring in her ears. “A solution you can live with, but wouldn’t have been your first choice.”

The Archetype, Harold, and Leah are with her at the lake’s edge. Medea is as well, though she still lacks her memory.

Charlotte gestures to Medea as she addresses the Archetype. “if she’s not here, she will regain herself when I act?”

The Archetype shrugs. “Hard to say.”

Charlotte sighs. “Then I will have to take other measures. Very well.”

She straightens herself up, uses her hands to pat down and adjust her dress, takes a deep breath, and composes herself.

“My friends. I am going to change things. I am going to redirect the Eigendrakes’ course. Stop the damage they’ve done. Undo our association. It will have never been. Except for those of us here - ff I understand the Archetype’s explanation correctly–”

The masked woman nods her agreement, and Charlotte resumes.“–nobody else will remember these events. They will never have been.”

Harold sighs heavily. “I can’t agree to this. Yet I cannot present an alternative.”

Charlotte smiles gently. “Well. There is a part for you to play that will satisfy you, I hope.”

She explains her idea. Harold’s face hardens at the thing he’s being asked to do, but finally he nods his assent.

Charlotte returns to looking at the lake water. She rubs her palms together in apprehension, until she realizes she must continue because she will never feel truly ready.

“To begin with, we create a path…”

A rusalka - a sort of Slavic water nymph in mythology, in reality a woman invested with great power from an unknown source - is sitting in contemplation beside Lake Belenkoye in the south of Russia.

The rusalka was described by Bodark and Vermillion in “306 - The Dueling Duo” – Ed.

She sees a figure approach, and rises warily.

“Fear not,” the figure says, in a young woman’s voice.

The rusalka pauses in her decision between fight and flight. “Who are you?” she asks in a cautious tone.

“There is a place of safety,” the figure answers. “It is called the Timeless Tower. You will meet others like you. Tell them the name of this place.”

“How will I find it?” the nymph asks.

The figure pauses. “What is your name? And your lover’s name? It may seem like nothing. But please. Please tell me.”

The rusalka looks strangely at her visitor. “Maya… I am Maya,” she says at last. “He is Evgeniy. But why?”

But the figure is gone.

In a small forest near the border between Serbia and Romania, a young Russian werewolf is fast asleep. His companion, a Russian vampire, is tending the campfire they’ve lit.

A figure emerges from the shadows, and the vampire rises in readiness to confront it. But the figure raises a hand. “I come in peace,” she says in English.

“Who are you?” the vampire asks curiously.

The figure ignores his question. “You seek the Timeless Tower. This symbol will guide you.”

She extends a hand, holding something. The vampire takes it, and inspects it.

On one side is a strangely drawn symbol he has never seen before.

On the other side is printed text, indicating that this is a loyalty card admitting the bearer to a coffee shop called Half & Half.

“I could have saved that girl,” Charlotte murmurs, after her most recent trip into the lake. “Not everyone, even. Just… just her…”

She looks around at her friends with tearful eyes. “I have to go on, don’t I.”

Leah reaches out and touches Charlotte’s arm. “Not alone you don’t.”

Charlotte sniffs, and wipes tears out of her eyes, and nods. The lake is waiting.

Hell’s Aviary, 1432. With chisel and hammer in hand, Charlotte is laboriously carving out her made-up symbol in the rock of the underground temple.

She’s also grumbling to herself. “Should have… left this here… some simpler way… too late now… I guess.”

She feels a presence behind her, and turns.

The woman wields a very familiar staff. She wears robes, and a jeweled diadem.

“I am–”

Charlotte holds up a hand and smiles. “I recognize you and your office. My name is Charlotte Palmer.”

The other woman scowls. “I came, sensing a moment of great import. Explain your part in it.”

Charlotte nods. “I can’t tell you too much, unfortunately. Just that I’m carving the foundations of the Timeless Tower here.”

The sorceress lowers her staff only slightly. “Will you submit to interrogation, with magic binding you to speak the truth?”

Charlotte drops the chisel and hammer and exhales in gratitude. “Yes. I could certainly use a break. Do you intend to use Argavale’s Soulbond, the Eternal Pale Stream, or the Thought-Delve?”

Cairo. Charlotte is holding her to-go coffee cup in one hand, and scrawling the symbol of the Timeless Tower on the cafe’s napkins with the other.

A firefighter approaches her, as he’s done with so many other survivors of the Eigendrake attack. “Miss? Ma’am? Are you alright?” he asks.

Charlotte holds out the napkin. “Listen. It’s very vital that those superheroes over there see this symbol. I’m sure it’s connected to what just happened. I’ll be fine. I just need to get my bearings and finish my coffee, thank you.”

Charlotte floats in the great darkness.

To her perception, the cosmos is a vast ring of existence. It orbits an emptiness whose size challenges the imagination. Beyond it is a similar void.

It took time. But she found the path the Eigendrakes took. Now she perceives them, like a flight of dragons winging their way across the void, toward the familiar worlds she and her friends call their homes. Their paths will cross those worlds, and wreck some of them. Other worlds will become the new nests for these creatures.

Charlotte traversed space and time to find a new home for the creatures. She was surprised by what she found. Her choice may come with sacrifices and unknown costs. But she is mortal. And she can only do what she can. Even if she is going to fail, she must try.

She radiates knowledge of her proposed destination. There is no persuading the Eigendrakes - they will do what they must do. But she can inform them of a better alternative.

They change course. And Charlotte exults.

“I’m starting to get the hang of godhood,” she tells her friends, after her most recent journey into the lake.

“Surely you haven’t forgotten our conversation so soon,” Harold says, in an acid tone and with a sudden wariness. “Do not let this corrupt you.”

Charlotte actually laughs at that. “Oh. No, I’m so sorry. I realize how it sounded. No. I mean the mechanics of it. Omens. Prophecy. A trail to follow. Nudging events to create this um… Leah, what phrase am I looking for here?”

“Stable time loop?” the other woman suggests.

Charlotte nods quickly. “Yes. Yes. That.”

The Archetype tilts her head curiously. “I am now curious what motivated you to go through with this. If you blame me for manipulating you, I did not intend to push you into it…”

Charlotte shakes her head with a gentle smile. “No, no. Actually…”

She looks down at the water, and conjures scene after scene. Manny the Skull, growing steadily more solid over time as he revisits his journey around the world.

“Manny. He’s been a good friend. But to see this… To watch his dedication to honor his friends, protect the dignity of their lives, to see his commitment… It inspired me.”

“He’s not a superhero or a wizard. No great power to change things. Just… He did what he could. He did it his way. And he held on, for three hundred years, to make sure it was remembered. I think… He made a choice he didn’t like but that he couldn’t live with not making.”

“I have to honor him. I have to make his sacrifice worthwhile. So there’s one more intervention I have to make.”

She descends into the lake a final time.

Charlotte, Harry, Leah, and Medea are ready to go.

The Archetype shakes her hand. “If I never see you again, Charlotte, please know that I wish nothing but the best for you. I hope it works out.”

Charlotte shakes back. “I do too. We may not see things the same way. But I’m learning the value of that.”

She looks up at the Stag. “We’re ready.”

The Stag bows its shaggy head, and begins leading the way toward the forest.

The Magpie is wearing the face of Medea Quill when they find it.

“Hello there! Flag of truce, eh?” she says, eyeing the Stag.

Charlotte nods. “I’ve come to bargain.”

“You have many things I want. I have things you want. And you’ve brought an arbitrator.” The false Medea smiles up at the Stag. “Very well.”

Charlotte mentally pulls herself together. Bargains with great powers are always fraught.

“I offer you the memories of my time at this place, along with those of Leah Snow here. Our other companion Harold is to be left alone. We ask for the memories of Medea Quill to be restored in trade.”

The Magpie wearing Medea Quill’s appearance tilts its head and moves it about, as though studying something only it can see. The effect is uncanny from a human being, though it would be as natural as anything from a bird.

“Godhood. Revelation. Mystic comprehension. All to be stripped from you… for the admittedly exciting life of an Earth girl? Hmm. Why not the boy’s memories too?”

Charlotte is ready with her answer. “I don’t want godhood. Sacrificing my memory of this place means I cannot be corrupted by it. I’m on the same level as all my friends - remembering nothing about how we solved this. So I offer you all the time I spent dwelling on it. All the possibilities it entails.”

“Yet if something like this should happen again, and returning here is our only chance, Harold can remind me. He, not I, will control whether I am to use this power. And I am confident that he will not use it himself.”

The Magpie considers this.

Finally it shakes its head. “Everyone. Even the boy. The girl in trade.”

This is not what Charlotte wanted.

The universe might be at risk again. Her concern is very real.

But… Medea.

She looks to Harold, and sees him nod his silent assent. He would rather not shoulder this burden, and she knows she asked much of him to even consider it.

The pressure of choice comes off her shoulders, and she smiles. “Very well. If I am to be done with godhood, let me be truly done. Our memories of this place - only - the memories of our lives before must stay intact. And Medea regains herself.”

The Magpie wearing Medea Quill’s face smiles back. “Very well. At least let me escort you out, before I take what you offer.”

It gestures, and the group begins to walk.

In time the trees of the forest become familiar.

In time, a familiar feature can be seen. The back entrance of Half & Half, situated inside the Twilight Grove.

garrett · December 21, 2024, 12:24pm

Every so often, Half & Half will admit someone who belongs there, part of the magic of the Twilight Grove that enables the cafe to work the way Charlotte wishes. She has grown used to such visitors. She no longer sees them as intrusions in her carefully-laid plans, but rather opportunities to expand her vision for what the cafe might do.

She is still rather surprised to see Charles Palmer come through the door.

Charles was a male version of Charlotte herself. He hailed from the universe the team referred to as the “Pidgeverse”, after a character from a cartoon called “Voltron” who despite being a girl passed as a boy for a time. Members of the Menagerie in that world, and several significant people connected with them, had similarly inverted genders from the team Charlotte knew.

She’d asked Leo to explain the effect once. He’d shrugged and smiled. “It’s just a quirk of the cosmos. They’re ‘close’ to us, dimensionally speaking, because so little else is different.”

She had seen Charles and his friends during a sleepover, organized to stabilize a global magical phenomenon. Menagerie members across four parallel realities had participated. Their paths had crossed a few times since, though dimensional travel was by no means a casual thing.

Despite the fun atmosphere of a sleepover, they had been somewhat serious because of the underlying ritual going on. Now, Charlotte can see concern on her cognate’s face.

“Welcome to Half & Half,” she announces with a smile. “How may we serve you?”

Charles glances around. “My teammates Medea Quill and Leah Snow abruptly disappeared. My mystic investigations led me here. Do you know anything of this?”

Charlotte blinks. “No? But I can help you search…”

They are interrupted by a mumbling acknowledgement from the back. Leah Snow, Leo’s female equivalent from the same universe, is blearily staggering out of Half & Half’s back room.

“Why am I in a fucking coffee shop?” she demands, looking around.

Charlotte purses her lips. “I’m afraid I don’t know. But there are still many mysteries to be solved, even in my own establishment. Perhaps the two of you would like to stay and try some coffee, and we can discuss this?”

They find a version of Harry in the back. He’s asleep, and mumbles in annoyance when prompted to wake. But wake he finally does.

Medea is also sacked out in the back. She’s hardest to rouse, but rouse she does.

None of the three have any idea how they got into the back of Charlotte’s coffee shop. Ultimately it’s not magical investigation that yields a clue, but simple observation. Bodark spots three sets of faint footprints made out of fine dirt, leading to the back door. Beyond is the Twilight Grove.

“You must have come through the Grove into the back. But from where?” Charlotte asks. Still, this additional clue unlocks no new memories.

Further rooting around the cafe yields what everyone considers a satisfactory explanation: a version of Resister’s memory-shielding suit, broken beyond repair. Someone or something must have been meddling with it - probably Leah, Charlotte thinks to herself - and neither the trio nor anyone else involved can remember because of the suit’s unique properties.

The matter of the suit has prompted Charlotte to consult its creator, crown prince Gunnhvatr Azurblárson. He knows nothing of the matter, although since everyone involved in the incident was from another universe, he considers it likely that some other Resister may have been involved.

"How strange,” muses the prince. “I can only think of one place a copy of the suit could have been taken from, and that is the very place I wish to ask your help in investigating. You see, there’s a remote weapons research station - a trio of islands, high pillars rising out of treacherous waves - called Thridrangaviti. The original technology and research notes are maintained there.”

“Unfortunately it is now under assault. The Hidden Family accumulated great magical might in their time. The lingering levels of arcane power now spill over and awaken pockets of darkness. One such is assaulting the personnel at the research station.”

He gestures about him. “We know something of magic. But it is not our area of expertise. You - and hopefully any allies you’ve accumulated - should be much better equipped. Will you help us?”

Charlotte inclines her head. “It would be an honor and a pleasure to help you, Prince.”

These events originally occurred in “411 - Curse of the Draugr” – Ed.

Charlotte finds that Half & Half has moved itself to the Icelandic island of Heimaey, in the small village there. She will not need to make a return trip to the capital, where her coffee shop had unexpectedly parked itself during her discussions with the crown prince.

Likewise, her friends - Bodark and Vermillion, who work with her, Daphne Palin aka Equity, Manny the Skull, and Maury Jones the journalist, were at the capital. They followed her to the weapons research lab, and were instrumental in uncovering the mystery there. Now they are back in the coffee shop, relaxing and recuperating from the stresses of that solution.

With a mug of coffee before her, and a sly look on her face, Maury asks Charlotte a question. “Say, what’s up with you and that crown prince? Gunnhvatr?”

“What do you mean, Ms. Jones?” Charlotte asks, rather more sharply than intended.

The journalist shrugs. “Just seemed, y’know, like there’s something there.”

Charlotte lets out another, longer sigh. “I think of him as a friend. We have been colleagues on other matters, and we have an excellent rapport and working relationship.”

There is something, but it’s not what Maury thinks. Charlotte hesitates, but decides that giving it voice is perhaps for the best. She has no reason to hide this.

“He is… something I need in this new century. My upbringing taught me the value of manners, decorum, and protocol. He was raised with these values as well. He is someone with whom I can be, well, the girl I was raised to be. His mere existence does not pressure me to assimilate. In that regard, he is… a comfort.”

Maury smiles, and through her expression Charlotte reads that she does understand. She asks a more serious question. “So you’re no closer to figuring out what happened to those three who showed up in your back room. What’s your next move?"

Charlotte considers the question. “Perhaps nothing. It’s a mystery, but the nature of the explanation may be unreachable if the memories of the participants were altered. I suppose I will keep looking. But what do you think?”

Maury grins. “A good journalist never lets go of a good story. But sometimes, leads dry up, and you work on something else. So I get where you’re coming from. I suggest you feel proud of what you’ve accomplished.”

Charlotte thinks back. “It feels…”

She turns to Maury, with a look of concern on her face. “It feels like I haven’t really accomplished anything. Or enough. It’s just a feeling, but… It’s as though there’s something missing. Something I’ve overlooked.”

Maury’s smile is warm and caring. “Lady, you’ve done so much. Take a break, and let the rest of us catch up.”

Charlotte is really on the verge of losing her patience once a Fedex delivery driver walks in the doors of Half & Half.

She composes herself. “How may we help you?”

The driver looks at his tablet in one hand, and extends a package in the other. “Delivery for Charlotte Palmer. Can you sign for it?”

Charlotte wields the stylus sharply and quickly, with a mixture of curiosity and frustration vying for control. With the driver gone, she tears open the package.

Inside she finds a thick, leather-bound book. On the cover is a mysterious symbol. Charlotte recognizes it immediately. It’s the same one as was on the card Vermillion presented, when he and Bodark first entered Half & Half.

She opens the book in curiosity. It’s well-bound, solidly constructed, and empty except for a single sentence on the first page.

“The voyage is the treasure - Captain Finn Quill”.

Her first instinct was to summon Vermillion, based on the symbol. But the name is close enough to Manny’s stories that she thinks of calling him instead.

She ends up calling them both.

Vermillion has said all he’s going to say, which as usual is less than Charlotte wishes he would. Manny has talked more than he’s really communicated. Bodark, who has come along, is merely handling a cigarette. Charlotte’s strict orders keep him from actually lighting up, but he’s satisfying a desire to fidget by rolling the thing between his fingers. Daph Palin and Maury Jones, who have been sitting a few tables away, have rolled over to find out what’s so interesting.

Charlotte recaps what she’s heard. “You both have seen this symbol under mysterious circumstances. Manny, you think it might have been on the voyage you made. So why is it on this book that was just delivered to my front door?”

The skull floats about in uncertain contemplation, and the vampire shrugs elegantly.

Bodark speaks up. “Why not repeat voyage and find out? Should be fast, yes? You have airplanes and rockets and things like that. Sailing ship very slow compared to all that.”

For all of Charlotte’s feelings of displacement in the modern era, Manny has centuries on her. He seems to have adapted well enough. But what was life really like for him?

The idea awakens Charlotte’s curiosity. Manny has been a friend. So what was his life really like? Perhaps revisiting the places he saw on his fateful voyage would help her understand.

She turns to her ghostly friend. “What do you say, Manny?”

The skull bobs and bounces excitedly. “We’ve got a logbook. I’ve got me memories of the navigation. All we need is a way to travel.”

Suspiciously, there’s a knock on the front door of Half & Half.

Charlotte rises and answers it.

The cafe is currently attached to a wide boulevard in Halcyon City. Standing at the door is an unassuming man dressed in a truly archaic style, compared to the people walking by on the sidewalk. A moment’s inspection reveals his true nature to her. He is indeed a ghost.

“How may I help you?” she asks.

The man smiles. “My name is Haam. I’ve been asked to provide you transportation.”

Charlotte blinks. “Did you send us the book?”

Haam shakes his head. “No. But I know who did.”

Charlotte turns back to her friends. “This feels uncomfortably like manipulation. I’m growing increasingly suspicious of this business.”

“It’s fate!” Maury says brightly. “You like fate, right?”

Bodark sighs. “Fate just is manipulation by God. Or the Devil. Or both.”

Equity tilts her head. “I get the feeling that justice will be served by doing this. You should go, and I should come along.”

Vermillion gestures wordlessly at the symbol on the book, and shrugs.

Charlotte turns back to Haam. “On your word of honor that you’ll answer my questions about this business to the best of your ability, I think we will accept your offer of passage.”

The man places a hand across his chest and inclines his head. “On my honor, madam.”

Charlotte finds herself smiling again. “Very well. Then by what means will we be taking this journey?”

Haam gestures behind him. Out of the pavement of the boulevard, a ghostly sailing ship unexpectedly bursts forth, like a submarine surfacing out of the earth. It rights itself, as though the land were the ocean on which it sailed. None of the people on the sidewalk take notice of it, and the cars driving on the busy boulevard pass right through it.

Charlotte raises her eyebrows. “Points for style, my dear sir.”

She turns back to Manny. “I should say that this is your lucky day.”

Manny bobs and floats about in excitement, unable to give voice to his feelings for a few moments. “Then let us revisit the voyage of the Argo! All aboard, ye swabs!”

garrett · December 21, 2024, 12:25pm

This is the end of “Quill and Ink”, but the voyage will continue in “War in Heaven” and “The Timeless Tower”.