158 - A Knife's Sermon
GraftingBuddha
Retired Pooh-Bah
158 - A Knife's Sermon
Vicky didn't quite know what to make of the woman that came through the doors of the tea shop on a particularly grey and unremarkable Wednesday. The median of a week, with the temperature hovering just slightly above comfortable, the clouds hanging low and morose above the huddled mass of buildings that constituted Brockton Bay. Vicky had been seeing the city differently ever since her… misadventure in the depths. Taylor had tried to explain elements of it. Her power was rebelling against her, but it also wasn't, and Taylor had fixed it, somehow. The only thing that had made sense throughout all of this had been the damn charm, which still contorted in her hand. No matter what she did, it always seemed to find its way back there - sometimes she woke up already holding it, and the figures seemed to nuzzle into her hand, momentarily entering her into their weird embrace-struggle. Sometimes it cut into her palm, and she swore she could feel something there, her skin parting, her blood flowing, the figures unwinding to lap greedily at it, whispering sweet nothings of what it would be if she just gave in and - then she was back in the world. In a city she increasingly failed to recognise.
Vicky was fairly sure she used to know Brockton Bay. She was relatively certain that, once upon a time, every street was well-known, the shortcuts were properly established in her mind, the entire place was known like the inside of her hand… but these days, an unknown charm found a home there, and appropriately, the city likewise became a swirling mass of unknowns. Every alley shadowed from her when she was in flight now seemed… painfully alien. Every derelict in the Ship Graveyard felt like it could be home to something else, something that swam in the rusty water and lapped at the caked-on foam from the endless ocean. The history of Brockton Bay, once something she'd maybe given a little thought from time to time, now became a topic of the utmost concern for her. And every page just raised more questions, presented holes in the narrative where anything could be hiding. In 1892, a whaling vessel came ashore after a series of awful storms, and apparently the captain and his chief harpooneers had gone mad, diving off the side in search of pearls. In the middle of the Atlantic during the depths of winter. Did she need to worry about pearls now? Did she need to worry about every major body of water? Did her sister need to avoid looking out of the window, unless she should see a pair of sea-green eyes staring up, glimmering softly. The pearls that were once eyes.
How many secrets was her city hiding? How many abandoned buildings had huddled groups praying to things she didn't remotely understand? And how soon would it be before she understood those things, whether she liked it or not? Worse still, she was fairly sure she did like it. She needed to find out exactly what was happening - and she had leads. Taylor was feeding her information piece by piece, more and more in the few days since Ahab and Sanagi had attacked that infested brothel. The termites were supposedly unnerved, moving quickly, trying to escape the city. But Taylor thought there might be something worth considering in the power plant outside town, for some reason. Normally Vicky would question her on the point, but… the answers she got only confused her more. Feelings. Senses. A hint of something more which only Taylor could detect. Shit, she was still going to trust her judgement. If there was one thing she knew, it was that Taylor wouldn't rest until these things were driven out completely, ground up until nothing remained. They might disagree over how much information Vicky should be privy to, and Taylor might be continuously stubborn about talking about Bisha, and by extension, Dean. But… she'd still saved Vicky. Twice. And the look of revulsion on her face when she saw what that brothel owner had been up to - Tsiao, or something…
She couldn't imagine some absolute monster doing that.
Honestly, the look in her eye when confronted by some horrific injustice was one of the few things stopping Vicky from picking her up and throttling her until she talked.
That and the fact that, in her more vulnerable moments, Taylor looked her age. Younger than Vicky. Thin. And far too scarred - inside and out.
She'd been poring over a book when the woman entered the shop. The inscription over the entrance to the tunnel… didn't look like any language she knew, but she was trying. Barnabas College had a linguistics department, but half of the tenured professors in the place had decided that the Conflagration was an amazing time for taking several very long sabbaticals. And that meant guiltily haranguing a small cadre of overworked younger academics who really, really just wanted to get back to their marking so they could afford to live in their university-supplied shoebox, and maybe, maybe, aspire to the vaunted heights of a hatbox. It'd taken a few days for them to get back to her - an idle comment that it resembled an Algonquian language, one of those spoken by the Native Americans that lived - or used to live - from the East Coast up to the Rocky Mountains. Beyond that, nothing. Further investigations down the tunnel were out of the question. Even if the place was totally safe and devoid of mind-melting termites… she'd checked out the place, and it was locked up for repairs, funded by the Sewage and Environment Taskforce, some new initiative the city had started up recently.
Typical.
But… maybe she'd been a bit rough down there. Wrecked more than she really should.
…best not to poke too deeply there. Weird that they'd come along so quickly, but the moment she looked at their logo, at the interlinking angular shapes aligning into a single, perfect circle…
What had she been thinking about again?
Right.
Amateur linguistics.
She'd had to scavenge desperately for dictionaries, a task that had taken the better part of a day. Algonquian was a category that covered a lot of languages, but Vicky had elected to narrow things down to the coast - if she went too wide, she'd be up to her nose in texts for even longer. From what she'd seen, didn't look like Abenaki, Mohican, Lenape… hard to check properly, given that the dictionaries were in English, meaning that she had to just flick through page after page hoping to find something useful. For hours and hours, most of them at weird hours of the day, there'd been nothing. And then she'd stumbled on an older text. Josiah Cotton, judge and missionary, around in the late 18th century. Wrote a dictionary of the Massachusett language, same that was spoken by the Native Americans who lived roundabout Brockton Bay way back then. Timeframes lined up at least, he died in 1756, so by the time the inscription was made (1761, apparently), the usage of the Latin alphabet for Massachusett words would've been established for some.. His dictionary was mostly religious in nature, but a little scavenging yielded a few useful scraps.
The inscription had read:
Wawaenin
Pussoqua weyaus
Ween wutch manittooonk
1761
And if she translated - a fairly easy task, given that it was using a limited number of words with few complicated grammatical constructions…
A witness.
Corrupted flesh.
The marrow of divinity.
1761
And as she sketched out the translation, she felt a shiver run over her. She found it hard to remember everything from that tunnel… but she distinctly recalled there being something down there. A rusting door, grown into the living rock. And the stench of ozone. The black ink loomed wide, and she thought she could glimpse something at the bottom, something whirling round and round, dancing on the edge of some unthinkable change. She saw a flash of teeth, some bone-white, others the red of a setting sun. Bloody stars hanging in the sky.
Then the woman had entered, and the feeling ceased, replaced with a new one. Memory gave way to the present, the latter dividing the former like an alarm clock divided sleep. Her charm sang to the woman, practically trying to squirm out of her pocket to reach her. She looked sharp. Her nose came to a point, her fingernails looked ready to rip someone's face open. Nothing soft, everything sculpted from flint. Looked Middle Eastern, but Vicky wasn't confident on where exactly. Her hair hung around her head freely, and tiny pins were laced through it, holding the curls in place. Luxurious, that was the word, but the pins gave her the feeling that anyone thinking to run their hands through it would have a nasty surprise waiting for them. She looked down at Vicky, and her eyes… no, just a weird vision, probably inevitable after spending so long staring at a page of angular letters. For a second, she'd thought that her pupils had no curves to them. Just… a polygon with thousands of sides. Imperceptibly small, but undeniably eerie to look at. Even her eyes had edges.
She sniffed the air.
"Ah. So you're the one with the charm."
Vicky blinked, and at that moment Taylor strode in from the side room, carrying a replacement loaf of bread for the shop. Her eye looked suspicious from the moment she entered - probably used her insects to feel everything at. Never got used to that, how she knew where everyone around her was at all times.
"Samira, thought you'd be here later."
The woman - Samira - sniffed again, this time derisively.
"I arrived. Is there anything more to be said."
"Nice hair."
Samira instinctually, almost self-consciously, reached up to touch it. Vicky flinched… but the needles flowed around her fingers, expertly arranged to refrain from cutting her hand. Or there was something stranger going on. At this point, she honestly couldn't tell where remarkable reality ended and the definitively alien began.
"...thank you. It's been some time since I wore it with any ornaments. Not since…"
She coughed lightly, and Vicky could feel a raft of implications in that silence.
"Anyhow. This is the one?"
"Yeah, that's her."
Samira extended a hand, and Vicky hesitantly reached out to shake it. As her fingers made contact, she felt something that could have been a spark of static electricity… before the woman hauled her up. Vicky's eyes widened as she was dragged to her feet. People didn't do that. She wasn't moved unless she wanted to be moved, or something the size of a semi truck had slammed into her. But for some reason, her powers felt… sluggish. The woman smiled toothily, a flash of aching white which reminded her of the pale wood visible when a tree was sliced apart. She almost felt like floating a little - just to exert some control over the situation, and make up for the height disparity between the two of them. But her flight was clumsy. Like moving through honey, everything in slow motion except for her thoughts, which demanded that she should be moving faster, there shouldn't be any resistance… but she wasn't, and there was. Samira finished shaking her hand, still looking down on her. Up this close, Vicky could see obvious stitches in her clothing. Homemade, looked like. A military-green shirt, thick enough to weather the elements, and a pair of faintly red-tinted trousers. Finished off by shoes which weren't military at all, but looked sturdy nonetheless, made from the hide of some animal she couldn't quite recognise.
"Name?"
Vicky stammered it out - come on, she was better than this, just a… completely weird woman that was setting off every single danger instinct she possessed.
"Vi… Vicky. Samira, right?"
"Indeed. And… another parahuman? You make interesting friends."
More freakishness. More hairs standing up on the back of her neck.
"I'm told that you require instruction in the principles of the Unceasing Striving. Is this correct?"
Her tone was clipped and brooked no conversation. Vicky tilted her head to one side, still feeling the imprints of the woman's hand over her own, despite the shield.
"Unceasing…"
Samira scoffed.
"More ignorance. The charm, girl, the charm. You've become familiar with it, I believe?"
She stiffened her spine, looking the woman dead in her eerily angular eyes.
"Yeah. Found it. Good to know that it has a name. Well, Taylor's been trying to teach me-"
"Unsuccessfully, based on the look of you. All curves. No edges. An adept cannot be wounded, an adept breaks all knives upon their skin. You… you look as though you'd part like butter."
She bristled.
"I'd like to see you try."
"I assure you, I would very much like to. The first lesson, then - wounds are doors. A soldier shatters the lock to those doors, and us adepts have the unique privilege of learning how to repair the locks, or indeed to pick them with utter delicacy. You only know how to open, and clumsily."
She released Vicky's hand.
"Look."
She glanced… and blinked. Her hand was running red with blood. It took a moment for the fact to process. Tiny cuts riddled her skin, each one so delicately and swiftly carved that she hadn't felt a thing, her shield hadn't remotely protected her. It was like being sliced with papercuts, nothing in the moment, barely even a dim realisation that one had been cut at all. And it had gotten past her shield. That should be impossible. That was impossible, how had… the pain began to filter through, and she hissed, instinctively bringing the hand closer like a wounded animal clutching an injured paw to its body, desperate to keep it out of harm's way. Samira clucked in a tone that, surprisingly, reminded Vicky of her mom. The same air of hard-worn and long-suffering experience which removed all soft edges. The game face she put on before going into court - no emotions, just a passionless drive to do what was necessary. Indignation began to manifest, more delayed than usual. Her feet left the ground, her uninjured fist balled up, her eyes burned. Her aura must've begun to manifest, but she didn't pay any mind to it.
"What the fu-"
"Kir. You consider yourself experienced - if this is true, then cease. Ask yourself questions, do not dwell on the pain."
"I'm not doing shit, you cut my fucking hand open."
Samira sniffed, and turned idly to Taylor, who was standing by with a look of faint exasperation on her hard features.
"She's disappointing. I'm tempted to leave."
"We had an agreement."
"...hm, very well. Girl, ask yourself the correct questions."
Vicky tried, out of sheer spite. It was either that or throw something at her. It was solely out of respect for Taylor's tea shop that she didn't pursue that particular option. Questions… what did she mean by the 'correct questions'? Her hand was throbbing, distracting her thoughts very slightly - she wanted to get some bandages, some antiseptic, something… fuck, these cuts felt deep. Were they? Did it just feel that way? No, those felt like unimportant questions, the pain was a hazy red fog which clouded any accurate judgements - painkillers in her veins only made it worse. Correct questions, correct… how did she get past her shield? How did she make these cuts at all? She said something about… locks, doors, that kind of thing. If that was true, and this woman was an 'adept' - just thinking the word made her feel like laughing in Samira's face - then could she seal them? She thrust the hand into the woman's face, a few stray droplets of bloods landing on her shirt, red flowers marking the hand-stitched green material. Only now did she notice, her mind fixating on strange, minor details, that the shirt was fastened with buttons she didn't quite recognise - bone or horn or something, but exquisitely carved.
"Heal them."
Samira raised a single, immaculately sculpted eyebrow.
"Ordering me around?"
"You said your… sort could heal wounds, right? Go on. Heal them."
"Why not do it yourself?"
"I don't know how, I can't -"
Taylor murmured something while she prepared tea for the three of them - blase son of a bitch. Huh. Weird how that felt much more mild than just calling her a bitch.
"The charm."
The charm? What about… it was still in her uninjured hand, clenched so tight she thought the charm would break, but for some reason it endured when anything else would've shattered. When she put it out of sight, it moved. It wriggled. At first the movements had been impossible to interpret - just an itch on the edge of her perception - but now there was something more to it, something more detailed. Taylor had talked about… mating, fighting, and the charm felt like it was doing both. No humour this time. It was too weird to joke abo- ah, who was she kidding, joking took the edge off things, and if there was one thing she needed right now, it was less fucking edge. The fuckball was squirming away, her hand was throbbing in pain, and… and what? What was she meant to do here? How the fuck could a fucking fuckball help her fucking hand? It was hot. Not the fucking element, that was distinctly uncanny, but… the charm itself was warm (fuck, why couldn't she think of the non-sexual word beforehand? Fucking hormones). She tried to focus on it… memories sprung up. Brutality. Iron masks. An arena - not the ancient kind, a modern one, with shining wood instead of stone and sand. The feeling of breaking things, taking something beautiful and smashing it open like a hollow egg, no mind for reason or restraint, no mind for fucking disciplinary measures.
Her wounded hand was warmer. Much, much warmer.
She could feel something in it, an inclination to close, but… the edges kept slipping past each other. She had the key. She had the lock. But it was all refusing to align. What the… what was happening? Her mind revolted against the idea. She knew what was possible. She knew what was impossible. And even if her experience had taught her that the distinction was very hazy, her consciousness hadn't quite gotten the message. Glory Girl couldn't heal wounds, if she could, she wouldn't need to traipse to the Rig for healing from her sister. And… perhaps she was imagining Taylor's own scars. Shining. Silver. A reminder that she'd been branded by this weird world she engaged with. Owned by it. Part of it. And unable to ever really escape.
The feeling slipped.
The charm felt cooler.
…and somehow, the bleeding had stopped. Samira sniffed, and Vicky saw that the bloodstains on her shirt - the word uniform kept coming to mind, practically without prompting. Taylor had set some tea in front of her - gunpowder, felt fitting - before extracting some wet wipes for clearing away the errant blood on her hand, the table, the floor… gosh, she'd really become a faucet, hadn't she?
"Sorry."
Samira narrowed her eyes.
"There's no need to apologise to me. You simply failed. But… at least you're making less of a mess. Even more primitive than I feared - I hoped the charm might give you some advantage. Another method is required - we must begin from the basics."
Before Vicky could retort, Samira hauled a battered leather briefcase onto the table, setting it down with a very suspicious thump. Clicking it open, she withdrew a few tools. A whetstone. An oilcloth. And… that was just a fucking sword. An old sword, too, but… not a speck of rust on it. She brandished it proudly… looked like something she'd seen in a museum, but stained with the grime of centuries, no, millennia. If she was going to pin a name to it… gladius, that was it. A gladius. Where historical knowledge failed, practical knowledge took the strain. Short, designed for stabbing, good for use in large groups or in cramped conditions. Not easy to hide, though… but easier than a broadsword. Once parahumans had emerged, swords had come back into style for a good number of brutes and tinkers, so she'd had to learn quite a bit. Designed to kill - slashing just produced long, ugly wounds, good for getting scars but not astounding at the whole killing thing unless you had unnatural strength. Only capes willing to abide by the unwritten rules waved things like this sword around. This, though, was meant to go deep. Killing in the most efficient manner possible. Samira let it catch the light slightly, and Taylor narrowed her eye. Probably checking to see if anyone was hanging around to catch a sight of something that definitely belonged somewhere that wasn't a tea sh- nah, she'd seen Taylor's guns, the sword was only faintly peculiar by comparison. Samira was speaking - right, probably should pay attention. Her hand was still stinging, but the bleeding had stopped, and the cuts were so clean that she expected them to heal over pretty smoothly. Taylor's scars gleamed as she moved to check the door, and she shivered, imagining her hand covered with those flecks of silver…
"Before we begin - this sword is old. Very old. My family once wandered the deserts that comprised the nation you called Persia. This was claimed from a doomed Roman expedition."
Vicky's eyes widened.
That belonged in a museum.
That shit was priceless.
"There is a force which removes the rust from metal. It revitalises. Recharges. It is the striving drumbeat of the world, the patient, warring core which observes and inhabits all conflict. Some taste it. Few embrace it. My family knew how to harness this force - and through it, our knives are kept sharp, and our minds are honed to the consistency of razors. Others forgot their pasts. We did not. As we stepped further apart from the world, the conflict increased, and we became more learned in the Unceasing Striving. Now. Listen. And listen closely."
She began to draw the whetstone across - a single pass, to begin with. A jarring rasp filled the air, stone rubbing at metal, brutalising away imperfections, warring with the weakness of the metal, carving it thinner, sharper, better… the pass finished, the sound faded, the feeling vanished.
"Listen. In the old days, we sang when we sharpened our knives. In time, we learned how to sing without words or throats. Listen. And keep a kettle warm, girl. I will require tea in time."
Taylor strode past, pausing for a moment to pat Vicky on the shoulder. Goodness, contact from Taylor that wasn't in the form of a fist, or straining muscles keeping her out of a seething river of rust. That was new.
"Focus. And… good luck. Don't mind Samira, she's alright. Helped us find Bisha in the first place, without her showing us the way the city would've probably been burned to the ground."
Vicky looked at the woman with… not respect exactly, but curiosity. How had she done that? If she was so important, why hadn't Taylor mentioned her before, why hadn't Vicky met her? Again, she was reminded that Taylor had a life outside of their investigations into the termites. Friends, acquaintances, enemies, all unmentioned. For someone younger than her, she sure seemed to have a rich life… well, except when Vicky saw her in the later parts of the day, when the yellow light of sunset cast over her. And all of a sudden she looked like a gleaming skeleton covered in parchment-yellow wax, and her eye looked so very tired. Samira sniffed again, haughty, and passed the sword over the whetstone once more. The rasp filled the air, like a snake hissing, like machinery whirring, like feet scraping the edge of a churning canyon filled with boiling mud. For a second, she smelled dust and sulphur. For a second, the angularity in the woman's eyes was greater than ever. For a second, she felt the rasp resonate down her spine and into her legs…
"Stop. You're not paying attention to the words - listen."
The scrape began again, down, down, down, bringing up a thin film of barely perceptible dust, the dust which had once hovered over old battlefields… no, no, beyond the ephemera, what did she mean about the words? She was scraping a sword, not singing, there was… come on, get past the impossibilities. She'd felt this before. Now Samira was articulating it. The scrape came once more, a long, teeth-aching rasp, and… for a second she thought she got something. Right? She sure as hell felt it - wait, there was that feeling in her spine, her legs, if she focused on that, the quivering of muscles, the vibration in her bones, in her marrow, in her bloodstream… a churning, quivering thing which told her that something was being said, words garbled beyond recognition… or was this just the charm, rumbling away to her, whispering of what she'd be like if she let herself be scarred all over, turned into something perfect and silver and-
A hand slapped her in the face, and she felt her flesh want to give way, eager to sever under the influence of a truly sharp woman.
"Idiot. A fool dances to the rhythm of the drumbeat, a wise man learns how to play it, how to arrange other instruments to accord to the beat. A dancer is enslaved by the scraping rhythm. Are you a slave?"
Her throat was dry, speaking felt like air was scraping past sandpaper.
"No, I'm… look, can you explain more? It's all just… bullshit metaphors, can't you say something more concrete?"
"There is a gulf of difference between explanation and understanding - think of it like this, if you will. In Islam, there are three modes of waḥy, or awḥá - divine inspiration or revelation. In one, a messenger delivers a great truth. In another, a word is heard from behind a veil, for none may look on the face of God. And in the last, there is simply a feeling felt within one's heart. This is the mode in which I communicate now. If I tell you every formulation, every principle, you will understand nothing - hear the messenger, hear the voice, but understand none of it. Because such an understanding is passive, you do not carry the meaning, only the words. I seek to transmit meaning, and to do such a thing, you must feel it in the beating of your heart, in the rushing of your blood. It is a meaning beyond words. Do you understand?"
"...it's irrational. I know that what you're saying makes sense, but… it goes against everything else I've learned."
"Then what you have learned is wrong. I sliced your hand open despite the shield you wear, this… coward's armour. This, I believe, should be impossible. Yet here we are. Your understanding is flawed, this is the essence of things.
"So how do I get past that? How do I get past that wall?"
"...wall?"
"My understanding. I can recognise what you're saying, I can recognise your logic, but it just won't click. How do I get past that?"
Taylor chimed in from her part of the tea shop - always watching, rarely commenting. Downright eerie, really - no wonder some of these termites were scared of her, even knowing her as Vicky did, she felt a faint air of unease every so often. Like she was being watched by too many eyes at once, peeled apart into slides like some poor lab experiment.
"Desperation works. Or… you saw something in that tunnel. Focus on that. Focus on the feeling of the world no longer working by its own rules."
Samira cut in.
"But also pay attention to the scraping of the sword, the scraping is vital."
Yay. Multitasking.
Another scrape, seeming to go on longer than it had any right to. She kept her eyes wide open, staring at the sword. When it tilted slightly, it almost seemed to completely vanish from sight. Too thin. Scraped too often. Reduced down to a cutting edge and nothing more. Maybe, in a few more centuries, it'd cease to be visible from any angle - just a handle, and a pile of limbs severed so cleanly that they could be used by medical students as models for muscle contraction, vascular constriction, the inner structure of bones, the spiralling spiderweb of nerves… no, no, still ephemera. Still based on her own observations. Needed to get past it, into the realms of the profoundly irrational. The tunnel, the tunnel… the feeling of the universe no longer obeying its own rules… or was it just obeying rules she'd never glimpsed? Did the average person go around aware that… say, redshift or blueshift existed? That wavelengths from the stars were lengthening and shortening constantly, affecting perception, affecting our very understanding of the night sky? Of course not. But that didn't mean the rules weren't there, ticking away constantly in the background. You could live without ever knowing about the laws which underpinned the universe which were so abstract as to have no bearing on everyday life… which they nonetheless did.
The tunnel had shown her that. She'd seen… what had the inscription said? The marrow of divinity. The spongy core which made everything work, but was nonetheless invisible until everything was cut open. The termites swarming, the candles ready to peel her skin away, the feeling of wrongness, like her own mind was revolting against what it saw… something was clicking. She could feel it. Something was moving. Her mind was realigning - old perception failing, new perception infesting. Her skin felt like rubber. Her mind was soft and porous. Something was in her skull. Something was in her teeth. The world itched. Heat, sticky and strange, unnaturally emanating from the walls… the scraping, the fucking scraping, louder, louder, louder, and she could begin to hear something under it. A song without words, instruments… only a tune. Only a tune burrowing into her skull. Earworm. Her lobes itched - had them pierced when she was younger, before her powers, and now she was regretting that fact, regretting it deeply. Wounds. Doors. Gates. Swing open, swing wider, swing low, bleeding chariots…
The needle. The sword. The cutting edge - all conquest happened on the cutting edge, all change, all revolution, all revelation. Was she getting it? The charm was warm, a second heart, pulsing away, the faces of the two figures twisted in her direction - her own, in miniature, sculpted so perfectly it was unnatural, grinning, showing pearly teeth and sinking them into one another, tearing and healing, undoing and redoing, scars, scars, scars like jewels… she was getting it, it was clicking. The song was audible, and it scraped at her eardrums…
But the world was getting stranger and stranger. Too strange. Her grip was fading.
Was there a need for hands when her mind could sense everything in crisp HD?
The sun was staring down. Apathetic. Malicious. But not benevolent. It churned, and vomited out gouts of fire. Look too close and have it imprinted onto the retina for all time.
Light was seeping through the cracks of her mind.
Everything was faded and distant, not real enough, not real enough…
A heavy hand clapped down on her shoulder. She looked over sharply, so sharp she almost felt the air cut apart around her. She saw two faces staring down, within and beside one another. One was familiar. The other was not. The one she recognised was a thing of sharp, carved edges and surfaces crawling with nameless things, a single eye blazing outwards, the hollow socket beside it tinged with the embers of a dying yellow fire which… she couldn't describe it exactly. But it made her shudder for reasons she couldn't elaborate on. This, she felt she recognised. But not the other. The other writhed. The other was cold. The other saw her, assessed her, and her spine began to ache as if something was burrowing its way up, and up, and up, gnawing at her brainstem, the dragon at the foot of the tree, and-
Something flashed.
And the world was back. Taylor was looking at her with concern - Samira had laid down the gladius, and was studying her with careful eyes. The shop was silent. The papercuts on her hand were gone. Her ears were ringing to the sound of something she couldn't begin to understand. What was happening to her? What had happened to the world? Her thoughts began to derail again… and Taylor's hand dug into her shoulder, pushing against her shield. She could feel the unnatural strength granted by her scars. She wanted to spiral away, but Taylor kept her anchored. The shop was real. Taylor was real. Taylor had once been like her - a warning and a reassurance. Could someone who had lost every grip on reality, fingertips teased away one by one until none remained, go around running a tea shop? Investigating like an ordinary person?
…well, she'd seen Taylor talking to a TV filled with static.
So clearly there was some amount of batshit insanity. Probably stored it in the hair.
Lord knew she had a lot of it.
"Are you back?"
Vicky gulped. Her body felt unfamiliar.
"...I… I think so? What was that? What happened?"
Samira twisted her mouth into something resembling a smile - looked more like a knife-wound.
"You began to understand it. The principle."
"...felt like I was losing my grip. Wasn't sure if I could come down. Just felt… felt like my skin was plastic. Like my mind was a… a video cassette, like those little black spools, and it was trying to get out. Like someone was dragging the spool out and out, inch by inch, and the plastic was straining…"
Samira coughed lightly, interrupting her increasingly panicked speech.
"You've begun. The first mark is always… difficult. The disconnect, that is. The realisation that reality has other laws which become more potent the longer you understand them. Be wary. When I had my first experience, I wandered aimlessly in the desert for days. Almost burned half my skin off - the only thing which made me come to was the feeling of a vulture staring to poke at my stomach. It was also my first meal in… some time."
Well, that'd just make Vicky puke, given how rough her stomach felt right now. Even the tea - which was good tea, she'd had it before - looked rancid. The leaves seemed to be tiny squirming creatures. All matter was the same, at the end of the day - what was the functional difference between these half-living leaves and tiny tadpoles ready to wriggle down her throat?
Wait, there were plenty of differences, what the fuck was she talking about.
Vicky stiffened her shoulders.
"So? Have we actually made any progress? Because if this was just… weirdness for the sake of weirdness, I'll just go and grab some LSD. Chug it from a milk carton."
Samira narrowed her eyes.
"Please don't do that."
"Why not? Because this whole experience, fun as it was, doesn't seem to have done much."
Taylor coughed lightly.
"...well, I wouldn't go that far."
"Really? What exactly have I accomplished?"
Her voice was loud, harsh, verging on petulant. A natural response to almost pissing herself because she thought the room was melting and her brain was a vibrating mass of razor blades that needed to be removed as soon as parahumanly possible. Even now, the sight of the sun's rays glimmering through the window was enough to make her shiver, reminded of the absolute conviction that the sun was watching, and that it had a mind of its own. Not necessarily a sympathetic mind, either. Taylor pointed to the table - and Vicky dropped the charm from her hand out of shock. For whatever reason, though, her mouth ached when she let it fall. Something to dwell on later, because for now the table occupied her entire attention.
Something was very wrong with it. Hadn't it been less scratched?
Come to think of it, she distinctly remembered there being a hell of a lot more of it.
"...uh."
She paused, staring at her handiwork. Slices all across the surface, piercing the varnish, bringing up fresh, pale wood from a table which had long-since surrendered to the passage of time by becoming the same shade as old tobacco. A saucer lay atop it - pretty damn nice saucer, too - and when she looked closer, she saw a seam. Razor-thin, but nonetheless present. She got the feeling that even tapping it would cause it to fall apart, splinters radiating outwards, the entire thing turning to dust. She coughed awkwardly at the sight of the deeply scarred wood and sundered saucer.
"...did I do that?"
Samira smiled coldly.
"Ah. Urkel. Yes. Classic American reference."
"What? No, I didn't - wait, I did this?"
Her eyes were wide.
"How?!"
Taylor scratched at her own scars - seemed to be irritated, the skin around them was red and puffy.
"You… sat there. And suddenly the table started to scar up. Expanding field. Samira was mostly unaffected, but… I had to get close. Wake you up."
"Shit, are you alright? I didn't get you or…"
She saw a few brand-new silvery scars along Taylor's knuckles.
…first time she'd seen silver knuckles that were probably much tougher than their brass counterparts.
"Oh my God, I'm sorry, I'm… really, really sorry, I didn't mean to get you, I'm so, so, sorry-"
"It's fine. Healed."
"But I cut you, that's… that's pretty fucked up. You're already doing me a solid, I mean."
"It's fine. Ahab once got me in a headlock, pinned me to the floor, and then fell asleep."
"...huh."
"Seriously. I'm fine. Healed. I'd get worse by sticking my hand in a blender. Probably."
"Still…"
"I've been trying to heal my wounds properly for weeks. That charm's a shortcut, but… honestly, it's just nice to have the ability back. Kinda."
Samira sniffed.
"You're an amateur cartographer to need so many prompts to perform the art. And a true adept uses it as an act of devotion, not as… adaptive armour. To use a Western idiom, it's like using icons as firewood. Yes, it works, but is it really worth it?"
Taylor lowered her eyebrows in irritation.
"Well, I'm not an adept."
"This is obvious."
Vicky cut in, getting her breathing back under control, forcing her hands to stop shaking.
"OK, OK, I get it. One question, though - if meditating a bit could make anyone capable of this, then how have we not heard about it more?"
Samira frowned.
"You've been guided by a trained fidaʼi. You have a charm plucked from the New Canyon. And your mind has already touched the truth of the Unceasing Striving, experienced impossibilities and latched onto the striving heartbeat of the world. I would hardly consider these circumstances typical."
"...still."
"Still nothing. Do not discount your luck. There are scarcely any fidaʼi left in the world, and fewer still would be willing to assist a foreigner in such a manner. Now, consider that some people have minds so accustomed to the prosaic that they cannot handle greater mysteries without their identities completely shattering. You see?"
"Sure. Fine. I see."
She paused, getting her thoughts in order.
"And… again. Taylor. Thank you. You're doing me a massive favour here. I really appreciate it. Like, a lot."
Taylor looked… holy shit, she looked awkward. Genuinely awkward. Faintly embarrassed, even. Bizarre.
"It's fine."
"So you've said."
…she was interested in a hug. Hugs worked. She was good at hugs. Flying and super-strength helped. But she got the feeling that if she tried to get close to Taylor right now, she'd end up seeing exactly how Taylor had managed to kill Bisha and save her from those termites. Twice. And once from herself. Whatever her method was, she imagined that it would be really rather brutal - didn't seem likely that she solved all her problems through peace, love, and gentle slaps on the wrist. Taylor… did say she'd grabbed this charm out of the New Canyon. Which meant she'd confronted this force, alone, with minimal experience or assistance, and had come out the other side was something a little more advanced than a Blender Aura. Stay at a distance, get your will destroyed. Come too close, get turned into a fine pate. What a magical power she had.
Still. Taylor didn't look huggy.
So she contented herself with reaching over and gently patting Taylor on her newly scarred-over hand.
Taylor looked down at the point of contact, an expression of intense concentration on her face.
"...hm."
Vicky's smile became slightly stiffer. Was this good? Was this bad? What did any of this mean? Had she fucked up? Or was this how Taylor expressed gratitude? The shock was wearing off, and something else was emerging. A resolution began to crystallise, and the charm seemed to glow like a hot coal. Feeding on her impulses, gently encouraging her towards one ultimate eventuality. She was changing herself. She was entering into a world she barely understood. Taylor, in the beginning, had one massive question hanging over her, and then had drowned out that big question with a million little questions. Distraction after distraction, piling up until her original purpose was mostly lost. But now… now she knew what needed to happen. No more sitting around letting shit pile up. No more getting bogged down in the details.
No matter what happened… she was going to get some answers about Dean.
Whether Taylor liked it or not.
Vicky didn't quite know what to make of the woman that came through the doors of the tea shop on a particularly grey and unremarkable Wednesday. The median of a week, with the temperature hovering just slightly above comfortable, the clouds hanging low and morose above the huddled mass of buildings that constituted Brockton Bay. Vicky had been seeing the city differently ever since her… misadventure in the depths. Taylor had tried to explain elements of it. Her power was rebelling against her, but it also wasn't, and Taylor had fixed it, somehow. The only thing that had made sense throughout all of this had been the damn charm, which still contorted in her hand. No matter what she did, it always seemed to find its way back there - sometimes she woke up already holding it, and the figures seemed to nuzzle into her hand, momentarily entering her into their weird embrace-struggle. Sometimes it cut into her palm, and she swore she could feel something there, her skin parting, her blood flowing, the figures unwinding to lap greedily at it, whispering sweet nothings of what it would be if she just gave in and - then she was back in the world. In a city she increasingly failed to recognise.
Vicky was fairly sure she used to know Brockton Bay. She was relatively certain that, once upon a time, every street was well-known, the shortcuts were properly established in her mind, the entire place was known like the inside of her hand… but these days, an unknown charm found a home there, and appropriately, the city likewise became a swirling mass of unknowns. Every alley shadowed from her when she was in flight now seemed… painfully alien. Every derelict in the Ship Graveyard felt like it could be home to something else, something that swam in the rusty water and lapped at the caked-on foam from the endless ocean. The history of Brockton Bay, once something she'd maybe given a little thought from time to time, now became a topic of the utmost concern for her. And every page just raised more questions, presented holes in the narrative where anything could be hiding. In 1892, a whaling vessel came ashore after a series of awful storms, and apparently the captain and his chief harpooneers had gone mad, diving off the side in search of pearls. In the middle of the Atlantic during the depths of winter. Did she need to worry about pearls now? Did she need to worry about every major body of water? Did her sister need to avoid looking out of the window, unless she should see a pair of sea-green eyes staring up, glimmering softly. The pearls that were once eyes.
How many secrets was her city hiding? How many abandoned buildings had huddled groups praying to things she didn't remotely understand? And how soon would it be before she understood those things, whether she liked it or not? Worse still, she was fairly sure she did like it. She needed to find out exactly what was happening - and she had leads. Taylor was feeding her information piece by piece, more and more in the few days since Ahab and Sanagi had attacked that infested brothel. The termites were supposedly unnerved, moving quickly, trying to escape the city. But Taylor thought there might be something worth considering in the power plant outside town, for some reason. Normally Vicky would question her on the point, but… the answers she got only confused her more. Feelings. Senses. A hint of something more which only Taylor could detect. Shit, she was still going to trust her judgement. If there was one thing she knew, it was that Taylor wouldn't rest until these things were driven out completely, ground up until nothing remained. They might disagree over how much information Vicky should be privy to, and Taylor might be continuously stubborn about talking about Bisha, and by extension, Dean. But… she'd still saved Vicky. Twice. And the look of revulsion on her face when she saw what that brothel owner had been up to - Tsiao, or something…
She couldn't imagine some absolute monster doing that.
Honestly, the look in her eye when confronted by some horrific injustice was one of the few things stopping Vicky from picking her up and throttling her until she talked.
That and the fact that, in her more vulnerable moments, Taylor looked her age. Younger than Vicky. Thin. And far too scarred - inside and out.
She'd been poring over a book when the woman entered the shop. The inscription over the entrance to the tunnel… didn't look like any language she knew, but she was trying. Barnabas College had a linguistics department, but half of the tenured professors in the place had decided that the Conflagration was an amazing time for taking several very long sabbaticals. And that meant guiltily haranguing a small cadre of overworked younger academics who really, really just wanted to get back to their marking so they could afford to live in their university-supplied shoebox, and maybe, maybe, aspire to the vaunted heights of a hatbox. It'd taken a few days for them to get back to her - an idle comment that it resembled an Algonquian language, one of those spoken by the Native Americans that lived - or used to live - from the East Coast up to the Rocky Mountains. Beyond that, nothing. Further investigations down the tunnel were out of the question. Even if the place was totally safe and devoid of mind-melting termites… she'd checked out the place, and it was locked up for repairs, funded by the Sewage and Environment Taskforce, some new initiative the city had started up recently.
Typical.
But… maybe she'd been a bit rough down there. Wrecked more than she really should.
…best not to poke too deeply there. Weird that they'd come along so quickly, but the moment she looked at their logo, at the interlinking angular shapes aligning into a single, perfect circle…
What had she been thinking about again?
Right.
Amateur linguistics.
She'd had to scavenge desperately for dictionaries, a task that had taken the better part of a day. Algonquian was a category that covered a lot of languages, but Vicky had elected to narrow things down to the coast - if she went too wide, she'd be up to her nose in texts for even longer. From what she'd seen, didn't look like Abenaki, Mohican, Lenape… hard to check properly, given that the dictionaries were in English, meaning that she had to just flick through page after page hoping to find something useful. For hours and hours, most of them at weird hours of the day, there'd been nothing. And then she'd stumbled on an older text. Josiah Cotton, judge and missionary, around in the late 18th century. Wrote a dictionary of the Massachusett language, same that was spoken by the Native Americans who lived roundabout Brockton Bay way back then. Timeframes lined up at least, he died in 1756, so by the time the inscription was made (1761, apparently), the usage of the Latin alphabet for Massachusett words would've been established for some.. His dictionary was mostly religious in nature, but a little scavenging yielded a few useful scraps.
The inscription had read:
Wawaenin
Pussoqua weyaus
Ween wutch manittooonk
1761
And if she translated - a fairly easy task, given that it was using a limited number of words with few complicated grammatical constructions…
A witness.
Corrupted flesh.
The marrow of divinity.
1761
And as she sketched out the translation, she felt a shiver run over her. She found it hard to remember everything from that tunnel… but she distinctly recalled there being something down there. A rusting door, grown into the living rock. And the stench of ozone. The black ink loomed wide, and she thought she could glimpse something at the bottom, something whirling round and round, dancing on the edge of some unthinkable change. She saw a flash of teeth, some bone-white, others the red of a setting sun. Bloody stars hanging in the sky.
Then the woman had entered, and the feeling ceased, replaced with a new one. Memory gave way to the present, the latter dividing the former like an alarm clock divided sleep. Her charm sang to the woman, practically trying to squirm out of her pocket to reach her. She looked sharp. Her nose came to a point, her fingernails looked ready to rip someone's face open. Nothing soft, everything sculpted from flint. Looked Middle Eastern, but Vicky wasn't confident on where exactly. Her hair hung around her head freely, and tiny pins were laced through it, holding the curls in place. Luxurious, that was the word, but the pins gave her the feeling that anyone thinking to run their hands through it would have a nasty surprise waiting for them. She looked down at Vicky, and her eyes… no, just a weird vision, probably inevitable after spending so long staring at a page of angular letters. For a second, she'd thought that her pupils had no curves to them. Just… a polygon with thousands of sides. Imperceptibly small, but undeniably eerie to look at. Even her eyes had edges.
She sniffed the air.
"Ah. So you're the one with the charm."
Vicky blinked, and at that moment Taylor strode in from the side room, carrying a replacement loaf of bread for the shop. Her eye looked suspicious from the moment she entered - probably used her insects to feel everything at. Never got used to that, how she knew where everyone around her was at all times.
"Samira, thought you'd be here later."
The woman - Samira - sniffed again, this time derisively.
"I arrived. Is there anything more to be said."
"Nice hair."
Samira instinctually, almost self-consciously, reached up to touch it. Vicky flinched… but the needles flowed around her fingers, expertly arranged to refrain from cutting her hand. Or there was something stranger going on. At this point, she honestly couldn't tell where remarkable reality ended and the definitively alien began.
"...thank you. It's been some time since I wore it with any ornaments. Not since…"
She coughed lightly, and Vicky could feel a raft of implications in that silence.
"Anyhow. This is the one?"
"Yeah, that's her."
Samira extended a hand, and Vicky hesitantly reached out to shake it. As her fingers made contact, she felt something that could have been a spark of static electricity… before the woman hauled her up. Vicky's eyes widened as she was dragged to her feet. People didn't do that. She wasn't moved unless she wanted to be moved, or something the size of a semi truck had slammed into her. But for some reason, her powers felt… sluggish. The woman smiled toothily, a flash of aching white which reminded her of the pale wood visible when a tree was sliced apart. She almost felt like floating a little - just to exert some control over the situation, and make up for the height disparity between the two of them. But her flight was clumsy. Like moving through honey, everything in slow motion except for her thoughts, which demanded that she should be moving faster, there shouldn't be any resistance… but she wasn't, and there was. Samira finished shaking her hand, still looking down on her. Up this close, Vicky could see obvious stitches in her clothing. Homemade, looked like. A military-green shirt, thick enough to weather the elements, and a pair of faintly red-tinted trousers. Finished off by shoes which weren't military at all, but looked sturdy nonetheless, made from the hide of some animal she couldn't quite recognise.
"Name?"
Vicky stammered it out - come on, she was better than this, just a… completely weird woman that was setting off every single danger instinct she possessed.
"Vi… Vicky. Samira, right?"
"Indeed. And… another parahuman? You make interesting friends."
More freakishness. More hairs standing up on the back of her neck.
"I'm told that you require instruction in the principles of the Unceasing Striving. Is this correct?"
Her tone was clipped and brooked no conversation. Vicky tilted her head to one side, still feeling the imprints of the woman's hand over her own, despite the shield.
"Unceasing…"
Samira scoffed.
"More ignorance. The charm, girl, the charm. You've become familiar with it, I believe?"
She stiffened her spine, looking the woman dead in her eerily angular eyes.
"Yeah. Found it. Good to know that it has a name. Well, Taylor's been trying to teach me-"
"Unsuccessfully, based on the look of you. All curves. No edges. An adept cannot be wounded, an adept breaks all knives upon their skin. You… you look as though you'd part like butter."
She bristled.
"I'd like to see you try."
"I assure you, I would very much like to. The first lesson, then - wounds are doors. A soldier shatters the lock to those doors, and us adepts have the unique privilege of learning how to repair the locks, or indeed to pick them with utter delicacy. You only know how to open, and clumsily."
She released Vicky's hand.
"Look."
She glanced… and blinked. Her hand was running red with blood. It took a moment for the fact to process. Tiny cuts riddled her skin, each one so delicately and swiftly carved that she hadn't felt a thing, her shield hadn't remotely protected her. It was like being sliced with papercuts, nothing in the moment, barely even a dim realisation that one had been cut at all. And it had gotten past her shield. That should be impossible. That was impossible, how had… the pain began to filter through, and she hissed, instinctively bringing the hand closer like a wounded animal clutching an injured paw to its body, desperate to keep it out of harm's way. Samira clucked in a tone that, surprisingly, reminded Vicky of her mom. The same air of hard-worn and long-suffering experience which removed all soft edges. The game face she put on before going into court - no emotions, just a passionless drive to do what was necessary. Indignation began to manifest, more delayed than usual. Her feet left the ground, her uninjured fist balled up, her eyes burned. Her aura must've begun to manifest, but she didn't pay any mind to it.
"What the fu-"
"Kir. You consider yourself experienced - if this is true, then cease. Ask yourself questions, do not dwell on the pain."
"I'm not doing shit, you cut my fucking hand open."
Samira sniffed, and turned idly to Taylor, who was standing by with a look of faint exasperation on her hard features.
"She's disappointing. I'm tempted to leave."
"We had an agreement."
"...hm, very well. Girl, ask yourself the correct questions."
Vicky tried, out of sheer spite. It was either that or throw something at her. It was solely out of respect for Taylor's tea shop that she didn't pursue that particular option. Questions… what did she mean by the 'correct questions'? Her hand was throbbing, distracting her thoughts very slightly - she wanted to get some bandages, some antiseptic, something… fuck, these cuts felt deep. Were they? Did it just feel that way? No, those felt like unimportant questions, the pain was a hazy red fog which clouded any accurate judgements - painkillers in her veins only made it worse. Correct questions, correct… how did she get past her shield? How did she make these cuts at all? She said something about… locks, doors, that kind of thing. If that was true, and this woman was an 'adept' - just thinking the word made her feel like laughing in Samira's face - then could she seal them? She thrust the hand into the woman's face, a few stray droplets of bloods landing on her shirt, red flowers marking the hand-stitched green material. Only now did she notice, her mind fixating on strange, minor details, that the shirt was fastened with buttons she didn't quite recognise - bone or horn or something, but exquisitely carved.
"Heal them."
Samira raised a single, immaculately sculpted eyebrow.
"Ordering me around?"
"You said your… sort could heal wounds, right? Go on. Heal them."
"Why not do it yourself?"
"I don't know how, I can't -"
Taylor murmured something while she prepared tea for the three of them - blase son of a bitch. Huh. Weird how that felt much more mild than just calling her a bitch.
"The charm."
The charm? What about… it was still in her uninjured hand, clenched so tight she thought the charm would break, but for some reason it endured when anything else would've shattered. When she put it out of sight, it moved. It wriggled. At first the movements had been impossible to interpret - just an itch on the edge of her perception - but now there was something more to it, something more detailed. Taylor had talked about… mating, fighting, and the charm felt like it was doing both. No humour this time. It was too weird to joke abo- ah, who was she kidding, joking took the edge off things, and if there was one thing she needed right now, it was less fucking edge. The fuckball was squirming away, her hand was throbbing in pain, and… and what? What was she meant to do here? How the fuck could a fucking fuckball help her fucking hand? It was hot. Not the fucking element, that was distinctly uncanny, but… the charm itself was warm (fuck, why couldn't she think of the non-sexual word beforehand? Fucking hormones). She tried to focus on it… memories sprung up. Brutality. Iron masks. An arena - not the ancient kind, a modern one, with shining wood instead of stone and sand. The feeling of breaking things, taking something beautiful and smashing it open like a hollow egg, no mind for reason or restraint, no mind for fucking disciplinary measures.
Her wounded hand was warmer. Much, much warmer.
She could feel something in it, an inclination to close, but… the edges kept slipping past each other. She had the key. She had the lock. But it was all refusing to align. What the… what was happening? Her mind revolted against the idea. She knew what was possible. She knew what was impossible. And even if her experience had taught her that the distinction was very hazy, her consciousness hadn't quite gotten the message. Glory Girl couldn't heal wounds, if she could, she wouldn't need to traipse to the Rig for healing from her sister. And… perhaps she was imagining Taylor's own scars. Shining. Silver. A reminder that she'd been branded by this weird world she engaged with. Owned by it. Part of it. And unable to ever really escape.
The feeling slipped.
The charm felt cooler.
…and somehow, the bleeding had stopped. Samira sniffed, and Vicky saw that the bloodstains on her shirt - the word uniform kept coming to mind, practically without prompting. Taylor had set some tea in front of her - gunpowder, felt fitting - before extracting some wet wipes for clearing away the errant blood on her hand, the table, the floor… gosh, she'd really become a faucet, hadn't she?
"Sorry."
Samira narrowed her eyes.
"There's no need to apologise to me. You simply failed. But… at least you're making less of a mess. Even more primitive than I feared - I hoped the charm might give you some advantage. Another method is required - we must begin from the basics."
Before Vicky could retort, Samira hauled a battered leather briefcase onto the table, setting it down with a very suspicious thump. Clicking it open, she withdrew a few tools. A whetstone. An oilcloth. And… that was just a fucking sword. An old sword, too, but… not a speck of rust on it. She brandished it proudly… looked like something she'd seen in a museum, but stained with the grime of centuries, no, millennia. If she was going to pin a name to it… gladius, that was it. A gladius. Where historical knowledge failed, practical knowledge took the strain. Short, designed for stabbing, good for use in large groups or in cramped conditions. Not easy to hide, though… but easier than a broadsword. Once parahumans had emerged, swords had come back into style for a good number of brutes and tinkers, so she'd had to learn quite a bit. Designed to kill - slashing just produced long, ugly wounds, good for getting scars but not astounding at the whole killing thing unless you had unnatural strength. Only capes willing to abide by the unwritten rules waved things like this sword around. This, though, was meant to go deep. Killing in the most efficient manner possible. Samira let it catch the light slightly, and Taylor narrowed her eye. Probably checking to see if anyone was hanging around to catch a sight of something that definitely belonged somewhere that wasn't a tea sh- nah, she'd seen Taylor's guns, the sword was only faintly peculiar by comparison. Samira was speaking - right, probably should pay attention. Her hand was still stinging, but the bleeding had stopped, and the cuts were so clean that she expected them to heal over pretty smoothly. Taylor's scars gleamed as she moved to check the door, and she shivered, imagining her hand covered with those flecks of silver…
"Before we begin - this sword is old. Very old. My family once wandered the deserts that comprised the nation you called Persia. This was claimed from a doomed Roman expedition."
Vicky's eyes widened.
That belonged in a museum.
That shit was priceless.
"There is a force which removes the rust from metal. It revitalises. Recharges. It is the striving drumbeat of the world, the patient, warring core which observes and inhabits all conflict. Some taste it. Few embrace it. My family knew how to harness this force - and through it, our knives are kept sharp, and our minds are honed to the consistency of razors. Others forgot their pasts. We did not. As we stepped further apart from the world, the conflict increased, and we became more learned in the Unceasing Striving. Now. Listen. And listen closely."
She began to draw the whetstone across - a single pass, to begin with. A jarring rasp filled the air, stone rubbing at metal, brutalising away imperfections, warring with the weakness of the metal, carving it thinner, sharper, better… the pass finished, the sound faded, the feeling vanished.
"Listen. In the old days, we sang when we sharpened our knives. In time, we learned how to sing without words or throats. Listen. And keep a kettle warm, girl. I will require tea in time."
Taylor strode past, pausing for a moment to pat Vicky on the shoulder. Goodness, contact from Taylor that wasn't in the form of a fist, or straining muscles keeping her out of a seething river of rust. That was new.
"Focus. And… good luck. Don't mind Samira, she's alright. Helped us find Bisha in the first place, without her showing us the way the city would've probably been burned to the ground."
Vicky looked at the woman with… not respect exactly, but curiosity. How had she done that? If she was so important, why hadn't Taylor mentioned her before, why hadn't Vicky met her? Again, she was reminded that Taylor had a life outside of their investigations into the termites. Friends, acquaintances, enemies, all unmentioned. For someone younger than her, she sure seemed to have a rich life… well, except when Vicky saw her in the later parts of the day, when the yellow light of sunset cast over her. And all of a sudden she looked like a gleaming skeleton covered in parchment-yellow wax, and her eye looked so very tired. Samira sniffed again, haughty, and passed the sword over the whetstone once more. The rasp filled the air, like a snake hissing, like machinery whirring, like feet scraping the edge of a churning canyon filled with boiling mud. For a second, she smelled dust and sulphur. For a second, the angularity in the woman's eyes was greater than ever. For a second, she felt the rasp resonate down her spine and into her legs…
"Stop. You're not paying attention to the words - listen."
The scrape began again, down, down, down, bringing up a thin film of barely perceptible dust, the dust which had once hovered over old battlefields… no, no, beyond the ephemera, what did she mean about the words? She was scraping a sword, not singing, there was… come on, get past the impossibilities. She'd felt this before. Now Samira was articulating it. The scrape came once more, a long, teeth-aching rasp, and… for a second she thought she got something. Right? She sure as hell felt it - wait, there was that feeling in her spine, her legs, if she focused on that, the quivering of muscles, the vibration in her bones, in her marrow, in her bloodstream… a churning, quivering thing which told her that something was being said, words garbled beyond recognition… or was this just the charm, rumbling away to her, whispering of what she'd be like if she let herself be scarred all over, turned into something perfect and silver and-
A hand slapped her in the face, and she felt her flesh want to give way, eager to sever under the influence of a truly sharp woman.
"Idiot. A fool dances to the rhythm of the drumbeat, a wise man learns how to play it, how to arrange other instruments to accord to the beat. A dancer is enslaved by the scraping rhythm. Are you a slave?"
Her throat was dry, speaking felt like air was scraping past sandpaper.
"No, I'm… look, can you explain more? It's all just… bullshit metaphors, can't you say something more concrete?"
"There is a gulf of difference between explanation and understanding - think of it like this, if you will. In Islam, there are three modes of waḥy, or awḥá - divine inspiration or revelation. In one, a messenger delivers a great truth. In another, a word is heard from behind a veil, for none may look on the face of God. And in the last, there is simply a feeling felt within one's heart. This is the mode in which I communicate now. If I tell you every formulation, every principle, you will understand nothing - hear the messenger, hear the voice, but understand none of it. Because such an understanding is passive, you do not carry the meaning, only the words. I seek to transmit meaning, and to do such a thing, you must feel it in the beating of your heart, in the rushing of your blood. It is a meaning beyond words. Do you understand?"
"...it's irrational. I know that what you're saying makes sense, but… it goes against everything else I've learned."
"Then what you have learned is wrong. I sliced your hand open despite the shield you wear, this… coward's armour. This, I believe, should be impossible. Yet here we are. Your understanding is flawed, this is the essence of things.
"So how do I get past that? How do I get past that wall?"
"...wall?"
"My understanding. I can recognise what you're saying, I can recognise your logic, but it just won't click. How do I get past that?"
Taylor chimed in from her part of the tea shop - always watching, rarely commenting. Downright eerie, really - no wonder some of these termites were scared of her, even knowing her as Vicky did, she felt a faint air of unease every so often. Like she was being watched by too many eyes at once, peeled apart into slides like some poor lab experiment.
"Desperation works. Or… you saw something in that tunnel. Focus on that. Focus on the feeling of the world no longer working by its own rules."
Samira cut in.
"But also pay attention to the scraping of the sword, the scraping is vital."
Yay. Multitasking.
Another scrape, seeming to go on longer than it had any right to. She kept her eyes wide open, staring at the sword. When it tilted slightly, it almost seemed to completely vanish from sight. Too thin. Scraped too often. Reduced down to a cutting edge and nothing more. Maybe, in a few more centuries, it'd cease to be visible from any angle - just a handle, and a pile of limbs severed so cleanly that they could be used by medical students as models for muscle contraction, vascular constriction, the inner structure of bones, the spiralling spiderweb of nerves… no, no, still ephemera. Still based on her own observations. Needed to get past it, into the realms of the profoundly irrational. The tunnel, the tunnel… the feeling of the universe no longer obeying its own rules… or was it just obeying rules she'd never glimpsed? Did the average person go around aware that… say, redshift or blueshift existed? That wavelengths from the stars were lengthening and shortening constantly, affecting perception, affecting our very understanding of the night sky? Of course not. But that didn't mean the rules weren't there, ticking away constantly in the background. You could live without ever knowing about the laws which underpinned the universe which were so abstract as to have no bearing on everyday life… which they nonetheless did.
The tunnel had shown her that. She'd seen… what had the inscription said? The marrow of divinity. The spongy core which made everything work, but was nonetheless invisible until everything was cut open. The termites swarming, the candles ready to peel her skin away, the feeling of wrongness, like her own mind was revolting against what it saw… something was clicking. She could feel it. Something was moving. Her mind was realigning - old perception failing, new perception infesting. Her skin felt like rubber. Her mind was soft and porous. Something was in her skull. Something was in her teeth. The world itched. Heat, sticky and strange, unnaturally emanating from the walls… the scraping, the fucking scraping, louder, louder, louder, and she could begin to hear something under it. A song without words, instruments… only a tune. Only a tune burrowing into her skull. Earworm. Her lobes itched - had them pierced when she was younger, before her powers, and now she was regretting that fact, regretting it deeply. Wounds. Doors. Gates. Swing open, swing wider, swing low, bleeding chariots…
The needle. The sword. The cutting edge - all conquest happened on the cutting edge, all change, all revolution, all revelation. Was she getting it? The charm was warm, a second heart, pulsing away, the faces of the two figures twisted in her direction - her own, in miniature, sculpted so perfectly it was unnatural, grinning, showing pearly teeth and sinking them into one another, tearing and healing, undoing and redoing, scars, scars, scars like jewels… she was getting it, it was clicking. The song was audible, and it scraped at her eardrums…
But the world was getting stranger and stranger. Too strange. Her grip was fading.
Was there a need for hands when her mind could sense everything in crisp HD?
The sun was staring down. Apathetic. Malicious. But not benevolent. It churned, and vomited out gouts of fire. Look too close and have it imprinted onto the retina for all time.
Light was seeping through the cracks of her mind.
Everything was faded and distant, not real enough, not real enough…
A heavy hand clapped down on her shoulder. She looked over sharply, so sharp she almost felt the air cut apart around her. She saw two faces staring down, within and beside one another. One was familiar. The other was not. The one she recognised was a thing of sharp, carved edges and surfaces crawling with nameless things, a single eye blazing outwards, the hollow socket beside it tinged with the embers of a dying yellow fire which… she couldn't describe it exactly. But it made her shudder for reasons she couldn't elaborate on. This, she felt she recognised. But not the other. The other writhed. The other was cold. The other saw her, assessed her, and her spine began to ache as if something was burrowing its way up, and up, and up, gnawing at her brainstem, the dragon at the foot of the tree, and-
Something flashed.
And the world was back. Taylor was looking at her with concern - Samira had laid down the gladius, and was studying her with careful eyes. The shop was silent. The papercuts on her hand were gone. Her ears were ringing to the sound of something she couldn't begin to understand. What was happening to her? What had happened to the world? Her thoughts began to derail again… and Taylor's hand dug into her shoulder, pushing against her shield. She could feel the unnatural strength granted by her scars. She wanted to spiral away, but Taylor kept her anchored. The shop was real. Taylor was real. Taylor had once been like her - a warning and a reassurance. Could someone who had lost every grip on reality, fingertips teased away one by one until none remained, go around running a tea shop? Investigating like an ordinary person?
…well, she'd seen Taylor talking to a TV filled with static.
So clearly there was some amount of batshit insanity. Probably stored it in the hair.
Lord knew she had a lot of it.
"Are you back?"
Vicky gulped. Her body felt unfamiliar.
"...I… I think so? What was that? What happened?"
Samira twisted her mouth into something resembling a smile - looked more like a knife-wound.
"You began to understand it. The principle."
"...felt like I was losing my grip. Wasn't sure if I could come down. Just felt… felt like my skin was plastic. Like my mind was a… a video cassette, like those little black spools, and it was trying to get out. Like someone was dragging the spool out and out, inch by inch, and the plastic was straining…"
Samira coughed lightly, interrupting her increasingly panicked speech.
"You've begun. The first mark is always… difficult. The disconnect, that is. The realisation that reality has other laws which become more potent the longer you understand them. Be wary. When I had my first experience, I wandered aimlessly in the desert for days. Almost burned half my skin off - the only thing which made me come to was the feeling of a vulture staring to poke at my stomach. It was also my first meal in… some time."
Well, that'd just make Vicky puke, given how rough her stomach felt right now. Even the tea - which was good tea, she'd had it before - looked rancid. The leaves seemed to be tiny squirming creatures. All matter was the same, at the end of the day - what was the functional difference between these half-living leaves and tiny tadpoles ready to wriggle down her throat?
Wait, there were plenty of differences, what the fuck was she talking about.
Vicky stiffened her shoulders.
"So? Have we actually made any progress? Because if this was just… weirdness for the sake of weirdness, I'll just go and grab some LSD. Chug it from a milk carton."
Samira narrowed her eyes.
"Please don't do that."
"Why not? Because this whole experience, fun as it was, doesn't seem to have done much."
Taylor coughed lightly.
"...well, I wouldn't go that far."
"Really? What exactly have I accomplished?"
Her voice was loud, harsh, verging on petulant. A natural response to almost pissing herself because she thought the room was melting and her brain was a vibrating mass of razor blades that needed to be removed as soon as parahumanly possible. Even now, the sight of the sun's rays glimmering through the window was enough to make her shiver, reminded of the absolute conviction that the sun was watching, and that it had a mind of its own. Not necessarily a sympathetic mind, either. Taylor pointed to the table - and Vicky dropped the charm from her hand out of shock. For whatever reason, though, her mouth ached when she let it fall. Something to dwell on later, because for now the table occupied her entire attention.
Something was very wrong with it. Hadn't it been less scratched?
Come to think of it, she distinctly remembered there being a hell of a lot more of it.
"...uh."
She paused, staring at her handiwork. Slices all across the surface, piercing the varnish, bringing up fresh, pale wood from a table which had long-since surrendered to the passage of time by becoming the same shade as old tobacco. A saucer lay atop it - pretty damn nice saucer, too - and when she looked closer, she saw a seam. Razor-thin, but nonetheless present. She got the feeling that even tapping it would cause it to fall apart, splinters radiating outwards, the entire thing turning to dust. She coughed awkwardly at the sight of the deeply scarred wood and sundered saucer.
"...did I do that?"
Samira smiled coldly.
"Ah. Urkel. Yes. Classic American reference."
"What? No, I didn't - wait, I did this?"
Her eyes were wide.
"How?!"
Taylor scratched at her own scars - seemed to be irritated, the skin around them was red and puffy.
"You… sat there. And suddenly the table started to scar up. Expanding field. Samira was mostly unaffected, but… I had to get close. Wake you up."
"Shit, are you alright? I didn't get you or…"
She saw a few brand-new silvery scars along Taylor's knuckles.
…first time she'd seen silver knuckles that were probably much tougher than their brass counterparts.
"Oh my God, I'm sorry, I'm… really, really sorry, I didn't mean to get you, I'm so, so, sorry-"
"It's fine. Healed."
"But I cut you, that's… that's pretty fucked up. You're already doing me a solid, I mean."
"It's fine. Ahab once got me in a headlock, pinned me to the floor, and then fell asleep."
"...huh."
"Seriously. I'm fine. Healed. I'd get worse by sticking my hand in a blender. Probably."
"Still…"
"I've been trying to heal my wounds properly for weeks. That charm's a shortcut, but… honestly, it's just nice to have the ability back. Kinda."
Samira sniffed.
"You're an amateur cartographer to need so many prompts to perform the art. And a true adept uses it as an act of devotion, not as… adaptive armour. To use a Western idiom, it's like using icons as firewood. Yes, it works, but is it really worth it?"
Taylor lowered her eyebrows in irritation.
"Well, I'm not an adept."
"This is obvious."
Vicky cut in, getting her breathing back under control, forcing her hands to stop shaking.
"OK, OK, I get it. One question, though - if meditating a bit could make anyone capable of this, then how have we not heard about it more?"
Samira frowned.
"You've been guided by a trained fidaʼi. You have a charm plucked from the New Canyon. And your mind has already touched the truth of the Unceasing Striving, experienced impossibilities and latched onto the striving heartbeat of the world. I would hardly consider these circumstances typical."
"...still."
"Still nothing. Do not discount your luck. There are scarcely any fidaʼi left in the world, and fewer still would be willing to assist a foreigner in such a manner. Now, consider that some people have minds so accustomed to the prosaic that they cannot handle greater mysteries without their identities completely shattering. You see?"
"Sure. Fine. I see."
She paused, getting her thoughts in order.
"And… again. Taylor. Thank you. You're doing me a massive favour here. I really appreciate it. Like, a lot."
Taylor looked… holy shit, she looked awkward. Genuinely awkward. Faintly embarrassed, even. Bizarre.
"It's fine."
"So you've said."
…she was interested in a hug. Hugs worked. She was good at hugs. Flying and super-strength helped. But she got the feeling that if she tried to get close to Taylor right now, she'd end up seeing exactly how Taylor had managed to kill Bisha and save her from those termites. Twice. And once from herself. Whatever her method was, she imagined that it would be really rather brutal - didn't seem likely that she solved all her problems through peace, love, and gentle slaps on the wrist. Taylor… did say she'd grabbed this charm out of the New Canyon. Which meant she'd confronted this force, alone, with minimal experience or assistance, and had come out the other side was something a little more advanced than a Blender Aura. Stay at a distance, get your will destroyed. Come too close, get turned into a fine pate. What a magical power she had.
Still. Taylor didn't look huggy.
So she contented herself with reaching over and gently patting Taylor on her newly scarred-over hand.
Taylor looked down at the point of contact, an expression of intense concentration on her face.
"...hm."
Vicky's smile became slightly stiffer. Was this good? Was this bad? What did any of this mean? Had she fucked up? Or was this how Taylor expressed gratitude? The shock was wearing off, and something else was emerging. A resolution began to crystallise, and the charm seemed to glow like a hot coal. Feeding on her impulses, gently encouraging her towards one ultimate eventuality. She was changing herself. She was entering into a world she barely understood. Taylor, in the beginning, had one massive question hanging over her, and then had drowned out that big question with a million little questions. Distraction after distraction, piling up until her original purpose was mostly lost. But now… now she knew what needed to happen. No more sitting around letting shit pile up. No more getting bogged down in the details.
No matter what happened… she was going to get some answers about Dean.
Whether Taylor liked it or not.
