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System Lord News: Summit for 'Opening Thread' concluded... Personal story development time
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Loose Ends; "Brushed aside for others of import, yet not forgotten."
Topic Started: Jan 17 2015, 09:40 AM (39 Views)
Ma'ahes
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Southern Continent "Iyrm", Coastline
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Haevris was, for all intents and purposes, a living monument to Kualpuch society. The military world of Xibalba held countless stone structures purporting to hold meaning and memories, but the true heart and soul of Kualpuch beat in the depths of Haevris. The very soil was sacred to Kualpuch citizens; as such, there was little in the way of civilization on the majority of the moon. While their journey through the void had necessitated some semblance of construction, even then it primarily consisted of digging ditches for sanitation as the population lived in overcrowded dormitories meant for a librarian population a fraction of the size or pitching up tens of thousands of tents in the plains leading up to the Library's carved mountain.

This was not where Joha found himself.

Far from seeing the gleaming peaks of the Library's spires or from the military craft hovering over the population like a mother bird, Joha trekked through the dense foliage that littered the forest floor two thousand miles away. The cool ocean breeze tingled on Joha's skin, making him acutely aware of the buckets of perspiration somehow clinging to every exposed surface. Ignoring the sting of a bead of sweat that snaked its way from his brow to the corner of his eye, Joha slashed the fronds blocking his path. With the small amount of light that forced its way through after the action, he could discern a wooden hut sitting precariously on the cliff's edge. Joha grunted to himself and hacked again.

***

There was a knock at the door.

A shadow flinched at the unnatural sound. A bird hacking away at a tree's trunk is an organic expression of life, but for some reason the idea of knocking on a door seemed to the shadow a bit too much like playing the xylophone with the ribs of the dead. The shadow remembered the ram horns whittled artistically for children, so that they might amuse themselves with the sounds. How odd it was that one never stopped to think about how much progress is made on the backs of the dead. The shadow sighed and looked around its surroundings for a response, as if the action was witnessed by anyone other than the shadow and some higher power. The shadow was a much better warrior than philosopher, it had realized.

Another knock.

The shadow said nothing. It simply stood up from the creaky chair which protested in its usual manner; across the floorboards which reminded him that one board needed another nail on the right, and that the further board would soon give way; past the painting whose subject was forever intimate with the wall it was unceremoniously propped up against; to the door, in all its profound simplicity. The shadow grasped the wooden handle and held it there for a moment, taking in the coolness of it in the humid day. A flick of the wrist, a contraction of the arm muscles, and the threshold was clear.

A disheveled figure stood on the other side, a lop-sided grin permanently fixed on his face. Short gray hair, normally neatly combed across, seemed almost black from the sweat. The figure's body was oddly in normal clothing, and not in its usual attire of heavy cotton robes. All in all, the shadow even surmised the figure had lost some weight.

"Hello, Nasif," Joha said. "Mind if I come in?"
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Ma'ahes
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Library, Sub-Spiral 19, Upper Level 17-A44, Room 3Y

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"Ah, I see you're awake," Joha said to the woman sitting absentmindedly on a chair. She stared through the reinforced window with unfocused eyes and didn't respond. "I went and saw Nasif...you remember Nasif, don't you? Big fella, always stern, saved my life during the war...you know, that guy."

"Is that name supposed to mean something to me," the woman asked, causing Joha to jump a bit out of his skin.

Well, he thought, at least now I know it isn't Lilith in there. He drew up another and sat next to her, arms resting on the backwards-facing chair, following her gaze out the window. The Library itself looked from afar like one gigantic spire carved out of a singular mountain, but in reality there were dozens of smaller spires that sprang forth for several hundred feet here and there. Traditionally, they marked a singular house's devotion to the mountain of knowledge, a personalized tomb of information specific to a genetic line. There were others, however, that specialized in knowledge branches that were either too important or too narrow to relegate to the remainder of the Library. This particular branch was one of the most important ones, maintaining its own garrison, power source, and shield generators. This spire held the detailed history of the beginnings of Kualpuch, and most importantly to Joha it contained the knowledge behind the construction of every major project in the now-demolished system. This included the schematics behind the Spire.

Well, should have contained.

When Joha was granted special permission to stay with Lilith at the Library to determine what was causing her genetic scrambling and how to reverse it, he rushed straight to sub-spiral 19 to delve into the background of the Spire. What he had found, unfortunately, was of little help. In lieu of schematics, scientific notes, and a detailed theory, he found poetry and random pictures. He did find the formula for altering the genetic code of the host and symbiote to synchronize with the Spire's historical database, but that was common knowledge and had already been ruled out of the reason behind the breakdown of her genetics. What he needed to know what how the Spire worked, so he could figure out why it encased her in crystal in the first place, and how it accessed such vast knowledge instantaneously and without error.

"No..." he said solemnly, "no, I guess it wouldn't."

"Explain to me where I am. Where are the Titans? If I live, so must Esidor. Where is he?"

Great. It's this crazy one again... Joha slowly let his left arm drop down beside his torso, hand within easy grasp of a stun baton.

"I don't know what to tell you, missy, but Esidor is long-dead for you to be asking about him."

"You lie."

"I'm afraid you're dead as well," Joha said softly. "Only way you'd be in this poor girl's body is because you died over ten thousand years ago. You're just an echo."

"I have looked in the mirror," Joha noticed a tear break from the corner of her eye, rolling down the small crease beside her nose. The liquid caught in her pursed lips, slipping into her mouth as she spoke again. "I know this body is not my own, I did not ask to be ripped from my time to answer questions, Joha."

He sat upright and looked at her. She smiled weakly at having played what little

"I don't recall ever telling you my name...or can you access Lilith's memories?" None of the other personalities--they were over one hundred at this point--had ever shown the capacity to access any memories other than their own. Alas, she shook her head.

"No, but I was part of the Titan fleet that came to your rescue," she said. She took a deep breath, closed here eyes and then opened them. The glow was gone, as was the modification to her voice. "You fulfilled our destiny that day, Joha, when you used this body to tear open the fabric of space and time to speak to us...all the way at the beginning of time itself."

"We were his dirty little secret," she said with the coyness of a five-year-old who was trying hard to keep a secret in front of adults. Her smile quickly vanished, replaced by a grim realization. "But he demanded balance. Though we waited for millennium and built his army to protect the future, we were cast back into the same hell we escaped so long ago. He granted us refuge as long as the threat remained, and with its passage so was his...generosity. So yes, Joha...I know of you, and of my limbo. And if I knew how to end this wretched existence, I would have done so the minute I surfaced within this mind."

"Her body is dying, you know that."

She nodded solemnly. More tears fell, but he knew it wasn't over the plight of Lilith.

"When I am present, I am here. I feel as though this were my very body. I can make it do whatever I please. But it is not my own. The sinews of my muscle do not feel the same...she is a warrior, I am a commander. She has seen much combat, while I study from afar and send others to their doom. Her eyesight is better than mine, and this body..." she gave a genuine, though still-teary, smile to Joha. "Let's just say my old body never filled out a robe quite like this one. I can see why you wish to save her, you dirty old man."

"She saved my life once, just as Nasif did. I cannot abandon her to the Fates, not yet."

There was silence for a while, not really because neither could think of anything to say, but because there was nothing to say. They mulled over the awfulness of destiny, that immutable future that makes pawns of everything and everyone.

" For as long as I inhabit this body, no matter how limited, I will help you," she finally said.

"Well alrighty, let's get to it."
Edited by Ma'ahes, Jan 17 2015, 09:49 AM.
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