ConfusedPotato
Unverified Verifier
- Location
- Australia
[] Mary's Choice
Last edited:
The Secrets' Crusade
- Thread starter Snowfire
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
You are currently attempting to make that choice at the moment, so this vote is difficult to count.
[X] Depth - Focus on the connection, try to follow it, to understand.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Neither - Mary is safe now. Let this grow into whatever it ought to be.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Weekend's been a bit busier than planned, so I'm only a thousand words or so into the interlude instead of having it finished. I'll hope to get it done after work tomorrow, so I can get it out in the evening. I think it's shaping up rather nicely, and I've made enough of a start that the scene has good form in my mind.
Voting remains surprisingly close, so if you've still an opinion to express on the matter, now's the time. Tally below:
Voting remains surprisingly close, so if you've still an opinion to express on the matter, now's the time. Tally below:
Last edited:
- Location
- Staring into the void
[X] Depth - Focus on the connection, try to follow it, to understand.
Vote closed
Dmol8
The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web
- Location
- Belgrade,Serbia
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
I did not, in fact, go thud. I have a mattress to sleep on instead of a board.Fixed that for you.
Dmol8
The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web
- Location
- Belgrade,Serbia
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Oh a soft mattress user. OK what is the appropriate sound for lying oneself onto a soft mattress slowly? Something crunchy? Or a cloth purring like a cat? Or something else?
You've got me genuinely curious about this now.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
It's "Plooof". Add more 'o's to imply faster falling.
Warding Paths
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
It was an ancient place, where they gathered. A place far from spires and stations, in the bowl of what had once been a great mountain. Trees had grown down along its slopes and the season was late enough that the gentle winds lifted great gusts of silver needles from them, where they shattered rays of pale radiance apart. It cast the entire valley in shimmering dispersion, a beauty that had long ago seemed doomed to destruction.
Down through the trees a clearing stood, its edges marked by towering sentinels whose branches had grown together over centuries, forming natural archways threaded with luminescent vines. The ground beneath was carpeted with fallen needles that had faded to deep copper, their metallic sheen catching and holding what little light filtered down. Gentle paths had been carved down through the clearing, the result of countless footsteps, and at the centre of them all stood a glimmering fragment of ancient metal.
It was a small thing, barely high enough to reach the waist of most adults, yet that very size belied its importance. Deep fractures radiated out around it like cracks in a shattered mirror, their edges long since worn by time. The shard itself had been smoothed from its more jagged shape by that same vast passage, until only this remained of something that had once survived entry from orbit.
The air here held a peculiar quality, thick with the sharp, sweet scent of the needle-trees' autumn release and something else – older and deeper, like the breath of the fallen mountain sighing up through ancient fissures. Once, long ago, it had been marred by the choking smoke and screaming air of a world set ablaze. But this quality had been there even then, or so you believed.
When those who would become the Hearthguard first looked at one another across this broken ground, in the ashes of an almost genocide, and found in it some hope of salvation. Not for yourselves, but for those your actions had nearly destroyed.
Entara sighed next to you, the lights around the Gysian Survivor shuttered and dim compared to even her more usual, solemn tones. You'd asked her many years ago why she never let the light brighten beyond the gentle shimmer of this season. Her answer had been quite simple.
It's how I remember.
You wondered if that answer would be the same. Or if what she remembered would be. You knew that your choices in leading the Hearthguard in the leadup to the Fifth Sorrow had deeply shaken the Gysian's belief in your shared purpose. Perhaps if you'd acted more stridently in fighting against the slow twisting of Contact into what it had become by then. But that past couldn't be changed. All that you could do now was try to shape the future.
Three other figures emerged from the treeline around you, silvery footsteps carrying each of them down the paths to where you waited. You had arrived first, as was tradition. Yet you hadn't come from your Sorrow to be here, which was very much not. You wondered who would be the first to comment on that, as they approached. You hadn't left the Third Sorrow in person for an age, not even for your recent address to the Authority. The reasons for that trip must be on some of their minds.
Rinel seemed as bold as ever, and perhaps even moreso, the angles of his veil flickering around him as the youngest of the Wardens approached. Always alive with passion, he seemed far more focused than you'd ever seen him. As if the shockwaves that had ripped through the fabric of your society in recent weeks had only grounded him.
Vlesen and Yarin were more sedate in their journeys down the paths, yet each had clearly been affected too. Yarin's veil had shifted into a pattern of waves, spiking jagged at a handful of points, not that it was hard to tell why. Your old comrade had lost too many friends over the years since joining the Hearthguard at its founding, but none more than during the Fourth Sorrow. Of course the idea that all those lost friends need never have been lost would affect him.
Vlesen, though? Their manner surprised you. They'd had been elevated to Warden of the Fifth in response to the Hearthguard's failure to prevent that Sorrow, chosen by you all to act as a counterweight to the surging frustration at that outcome. It hadn't been a decision you'd wanted to make, but you'd all agreed that it was the right one. But the set of their veil today was far closer to Rinel's, and you wondered why.
Could this be easier than you'd feared?
"Welcome, Wardens," you greeted them all. Your veil was very open today, smooth planes of simple, albeit hesitant, truth – a far cry from your usual control. Entara's lights flickered beside and around you, the Gysian's recognition of the words. "Thank you all for coming so far."
"Fair greetings, Wardens," the three chorused. There was a pause, then Rinel chuckled and spoke.
"I feel like we all know what this is about," he said. That was the next part of the traditional ritual, the reason for the meeting once all had been welcomed. "Shall we skip to the crux of things instead?"
Yarin signalled in the negatory, but the motion was half-hearted. A gesture made because it was expected, rather than being believed in.
"As much as it would pain me any other day, I must agree," Vlesen said calmly. Another surprise, but less of one. The set of their veil had made their feelings clear, even if the reasons remained shrouded.
"To have it done, then," you said, thanking each with your veil. It would make this much quicker.
"Five days ago, I met with High Fleetleader Taldor," you began. There was no shock to this; everyone here knew that had happened. The news feeds hadn't been able to shut up about it. "We were close friends, back before the War of the Sphere, and his departure to Storage. But this was not a social call. Officially, I was there to provide counsel in his acclimation to the new reality of our people.
"Unofficially, I was there to answer questions on the nature of the discovery at the Third Sorrow." You took a breath. "Specifically the true nature of those who made it."
That silenced the grove, each member consulting feeds and personal vision, as if expecting agents of Central Intelligence to phase into existence around you all. As it confirmed what they'd all clearly suspected, from their own interactions - or observations in Vlesen's case - of the party whose actions had so shaken your civilisation.
But that was the perspective of more ancient times, times that Taldor had lived beside you for millennia. Times that you'd all been shaped by, to be here, but had also almost entirely forgotten. The only one among you who hadn't, who'd refused to let go, had been Entara. And now, just as you'd hoped, she stepped forward.
"We all guessed," she said. "And I'm glad that you can still find it inside you to believe, even if it had to come from somewhere else." The colours around her twinged, deep tones of sorrow cut by more recent pain. It wasn't hard to guess what she hadn't said.
That it had to be someone other than me.
You owed her a debt for that, all of you, and in something far more than words. Because she was right. You'd all forgotten, at least where it truly mattered. You'd tried and failed and seen that as all you could do, but it wasn't. It never had been. The reaction to your words at the Authority had proven more deeply than anything how much your people still listened, though part of you still tried to dissemble, there. That it was only so great because of what you'd come to say.
"For myself, there is only one answer to this truth," Entara said. Light spun around her, solemn golds through a weave of heart-true silver. "It must be defended. That is the duty to which you all swore, to ward the souls of our people. It is a task we have failed, but that cannot be the end of it. Not again."
She cast her gaze across your silent veils, and the world around her brightened, flares of amber and gold that cut the gentle haze. How she remembered, but what worth was memory if the history was forgotten by the world? A challenge, to each and all of you. That you would finally agree to use the power you'd gathered across the millennia.
"You all know how much I lost to the Fourth Sorrow," Yarin said, his tone and veil marking out lines of deep discomfort with the topic. Yet your old friend soldiered on, as ever. "To imagine that they could still be here, still be part of this galaxy, along with so many others? I can't disagree with you, Entara. And I'm shamed by how I did, before."
"You weren't alone in keeping to the sidelines that day, old friend," you said softly, reaching out to brush a hand across his veil. "It was my vote that kept us there."
"On the sidelines whilst we let our people fall," Rinel bit out. For a moment, true fury burned along the lines of his veil, the memory of his words standing beside Entara's in the ashes of your failure to save the Zlathbu on the floor of the Authority. The two of them pleading with you to stop the coming atrocity.
They'd begged and demanded and been given nothing in return. Only that the Authority had voted, and that the only other option… Was what you were considering today.
"Quite correct," Vlesen agreed. After two surprises, maybe this shouldn't have been one. And yet, it was. Rinel and Entara whirled towards the Warden of the Fifth Sorrow, light and shape raised in wordless demand. Their own veil barely twitched.
"I admit it," they said simply. "I was wrong. What has been found at the Third, given to us by a race who even now many brand as a true Enemy, is proof of that. But I will offer those words, too, because they are correct. And as they are, your answer is too, Warden Entara. The only one we can offer, if we are to be true to the last of our oaths."
The quiet settled again, as the attention of your fellows shifted entirely back to you. Because in the end, your word on this mattered. Entara's status granted her enormous power, but it was a fragile thing. And without the Hearthguard to support her fully, without you, it would remain that only. Together, however, it might be enough.
But then, of course, was the other question.
"Kicha?" Yarin asked. "What did Taldor say?"
It was a question with many possible answers. Some of them would take hours or even days to work through in full. You discarded them all for something simpler.
"Recent events triggered two clauses of his Storage agreement," you said instead. "One was the marking of humanity as an Enemy, and the calling to war of our ancient soldiers. The other was my announcement that the challenge of the Third Sorrow had been answered."
A smile flitted across your veil for a moment. "He asked me how special they were. The ones who might have saved us. I told him the truth. In return, he asked me to remember who I was always, to hear him tell it, meant to be."
It was an answer, yet also it wasn't. But it did for now, as you gathered yourself. Once said, these words could never be taken back, and yet you found yourself far less afraid of them then you'd believed possible.
"The last of our oaths was to keep our people from the path of monsters," you said. Your veil rippled with the weight of the oath, something hot burning at your soul as you forced yourself to recognise how terribly you'd broken it. "We charged ourselves to ward them from the darker natures of our existence, but when presented with failure, we refused to commit.
"Yet still we call ourselves Wardens," you continued. Light blossomed around Entara, the Gysian woman's fragile hope recognising a shared insanity in your voice. "That term meant something once, something that we stood beside even on our darkest days."
You looked between hidden faces, recognising the agreement surging from veils and colour. Hesitant and worried in some cases, but there nonetheless.
"Would you stand by it again?" you asked.
Agreement surged back. "Yes," they chorused, "to the end."
Something broke inside of you. A human would have called it tears.
"Then so shall we all. All Hearthguard. Everywhere." You reached up, calling an interface with a thought. You could have done everything else that way, too, but the physical action seemed important. "And when we are challenged, this time we shall not bend."
"Even to the end?" Enatara asked. It was more a demand, truly. But how could you deny it? You owed a debt. All of you.
"This is the path we walk now," you told her, told them all. "If that is where it leads, then so be it. No more compromise."
"We shall not bend."
Down through the trees a clearing stood, its edges marked by towering sentinels whose branches had grown together over centuries, forming natural archways threaded with luminescent vines. The ground beneath was carpeted with fallen needles that had faded to deep copper, their metallic sheen catching and holding what little light filtered down. Gentle paths had been carved down through the clearing, the result of countless footsteps, and at the centre of them all stood a glimmering fragment of ancient metal.
It was a small thing, barely high enough to reach the waist of most adults, yet that very size belied its importance. Deep fractures radiated out around it like cracks in a shattered mirror, their edges long since worn by time. The shard itself had been smoothed from its more jagged shape by that same vast passage, until only this remained of something that had once survived entry from orbit.
The air here held a peculiar quality, thick with the sharp, sweet scent of the needle-trees' autumn release and something else – older and deeper, like the breath of the fallen mountain sighing up through ancient fissures. Once, long ago, it had been marred by the choking smoke and screaming air of a world set ablaze. But this quality had been there even then, or so you believed.
When those who would become the Hearthguard first looked at one another across this broken ground, in the ashes of an almost genocide, and found in it some hope of salvation. Not for yourselves, but for those your actions had nearly destroyed.
Entara sighed next to you, the lights around the Gysian Survivor shuttered and dim compared to even her more usual, solemn tones. You'd asked her many years ago why she never let the light brighten beyond the gentle shimmer of this season. Her answer had been quite simple.
It's how I remember.
You wondered if that answer would be the same. Or if what she remembered would be. You knew that your choices in leading the Hearthguard in the leadup to the Fifth Sorrow had deeply shaken the Gysian's belief in your shared purpose. Perhaps if you'd acted more stridently in fighting against the slow twisting of Contact into what it had become by then. But that past couldn't be changed. All that you could do now was try to shape the future.
Three other figures emerged from the treeline around you, silvery footsteps carrying each of them down the paths to where you waited. You had arrived first, as was tradition. Yet you hadn't come from your Sorrow to be here, which was very much not. You wondered who would be the first to comment on that, as they approached. You hadn't left the Third Sorrow in person for an age, not even for your recent address to the Authority. The reasons for that trip must be on some of their minds.
Rinel seemed as bold as ever, and perhaps even moreso, the angles of his veil flickering around him as the youngest of the Wardens approached. Always alive with passion, he seemed far more focused than you'd ever seen him. As if the shockwaves that had ripped through the fabric of your society in recent weeks had only grounded him.
Vlesen and Yarin were more sedate in their journeys down the paths, yet each had clearly been affected too. Yarin's veil had shifted into a pattern of waves, spiking jagged at a handful of points, not that it was hard to tell why. Your old comrade had lost too many friends over the years since joining the Hearthguard at its founding, but none more than during the Fourth Sorrow. Of course the idea that all those lost friends need never have been lost would affect him.
Vlesen, though? Their manner surprised you. They'd had been elevated to Warden of the Fifth in response to the Hearthguard's failure to prevent that Sorrow, chosen by you all to act as a counterweight to the surging frustration at that outcome. It hadn't been a decision you'd wanted to make, but you'd all agreed that it was the right one. But the set of their veil today was far closer to Rinel's, and you wondered why.
Could this be easier than you'd feared?
"Welcome, Wardens," you greeted them all. Your veil was very open today, smooth planes of simple, albeit hesitant, truth – a far cry from your usual control. Entara's lights flickered beside and around you, the Gysian's recognition of the words. "Thank you all for coming so far."
"Fair greetings, Wardens," the three chorused. There was a pause, then Rinel chuckled and spoke.
"I feel like we all know what this is about," he said. That was the next part of the traditional ritual, the reason for the meeting once all had been welcomed. "Shall we skip to the crux of things instead?"
Yarin signalled in the negatory, but the motion was half-hearted. A gesture made because it was expected, rather than being believed in.
"As much as it would pain me any other day, I must agree," Vlesen said calmly. Another surprise, but less of one. The set of their veil had made their feelings clear, even if the reasons remained shrouded.
"To have it done, then," you said, thanking each with your veil. It would make this much quicker.
"Five days ago, I met with High Fleetleader Taldor," you began. There was no shock to this; everyone here knew that had happened. The news feeds hadn't been able to shut up about it. "We were close friends, back before the War of the Sphere, and his departure to Storage. But this was not a social call. Officially, I was there to provide counsel in his acclimation to the new reality of our people.
"Unofficially, I was there to answer questions on the nature of the discovery at the Third Sorrow." You took a breath. "Specifically the true nature of those who made it."
That silenced the grove, each member consulting feeds and personal vision, as if expecting agents of Central Intelligence to phase into existence around you all. As it confirmed what they'd all clearly suspected, from their own interactions - or observations in Vlesen's case - of the party whose actions had so shaken your civilisation.
But that was the perspective of more ancient times, times that Taldor had lived beside you for millennia. Times that you'd all been shaped by, to be here, but had also almost entirely forgotten. The only one among you who hadn't, who'd refused to let go, had been Entara. And now, just as you'd hoped, she stepped forward.
"We all guessed," she said. "And I'm glad that you can still find it inside you to believe, even if it had to come from somewhere else." The colours around her twinged, deep tones of sorrow cut by more recent pain. It wasn't hard to guess what she hadn't said.
That it had to be someone other than me.
You owed her a debt for that, all of you, and in something far more than words. Because she was right. You'd all forgotten, at least where it truly mattered. You'd tried and failed and seen that as all you could do, but it wasn't. It never had been. The reaction to your words at the Authority had proven more deeply than anything how much your people still listened, though part of you still tried to dissemble, there. That it was only so great because of what you'd come to say.
"For myself, there is only one answer to this truth," Entara said. Light spun around her, solemn golds through a weave of heart-true silver. "It must be defended. That is the duty to which you all swore, to ward the souls of our people. It is a task we have failed, but that cannot be the end of it. Not again."
She cast her gaze across your silent veils, and the world around her brightened, flares of amber and gold that cut the gentle haze. How she remembered, but what worth was memory if the history was forgotten by the world? A challenge, to each and all of you. That you would finally agree to use the power you'd gathered across the millennia.
"You all know how much I lost to the Fourth Sorrow," Yarin said, his tone and veil marking out lines of deep discomfort with the topic. Yet your old friend soldiered on, as ever. "To imagine that they could still be here, still be part of this galaxy, along with so many others? I can't disagree with you, Entara. And I'm shamed by how I did, before."
"You weren't alone in keeping to the sidelines that day, old friend," you said softly, reaching out to brush a hand across his veil. "It was my vote that kept us there."
"On the sidelines whilst we let our people fall," Rinel bit out. For a moment, true fury burned along the lines of his veil, the memory of his words standing beside Entara's in the ashes of your failure to save the Zlathbu on the floor of the Authority. The two of them pleading with you to stop the coming atrocity.
They'd begged and demanded and been given nothing in return. Only that the Authority had voted, and that the only other option… Was what you were considering today.
"Quite correct," Vlesen agreed. After two surprises, maybe this shouldn't have been one. And yet, it was. Rinel and Entara whirled towards the Warden of the Fifth Sorrow, light and shape raised in wordless demand. Their own veil barely twitched.
"I admit it," they said simply. "I was wrong. What has been found at the Third, given to us by a race who even now many brand as a true Enemy, is proof of that. But I will offer those words, too, because they are correct. And as they are, your answer is too, Warden Entara. The only one we can offer, if we are to be true to the last of our oaths."
The quiet settled again, as the attention of your fellows shifted entirely back to you. Because in the end, your word on this mattered. Entara's status granted her enormous power, but it was a fragile thing. And without the Hearthguard to support her fully, without you, it would remain that only. Together, however, it might be enough.
But then, of course, was the other question.
"Kicha?" Yarin asked. "What did Taldor say?"
It was a question with many possible answers. Some of them would take hours or even days to work through in full. You discarded them all for something simpler.
"Recent events triggered two clauses of his Storage agreement," you said instead. "One was the marking of humanity as an Enemy, and the calling to war of our ancient soldiers. The other was my announcement that the challenge of the Third Sorrow had been answered."
A smile flitted across your veil for a moment. "He asked me how special they were. The ones who might have saved us. I told him the truth. In return, he asked me to remember who I was always, to hear him tell it, meant to be."
It was an answer, yet also it wasn't. But it did for now, as you gathered yourself. Once said, these words could never be taken back, and yet you found yourself far less afraid of them then you'd believed possible.
"The last of our oaths was to keep our people from the path of monsters," you said. Your veil rippled with the weight of the oath, something hot burning at your soul as you forced yourself to recognise how terribly you'd broken it. "We charged ourselves to ward them from the darker natures of our existence, but when presented with failure, we refused to commit.
"Yet still we call ourselves Wardens," you continued. Light blossomed around Entara, the Gysian woman's fragile hope recognising a shared insanity in your voice. "That term meant something once, something that we stood beside even on our darkest days."
You looked between hidden faces, recognising the agreement surging from veils and colour. Hesitant and worried in some cases, but there nonetheless.
"Would you stand by it again?" you asked.
Agreement surged back. "Yes," they chorused, "to the end."
Something broke inside of you. A human would have called it tears.
"Then so shall we all. All Hearthguard. Everywhere." You reached up, calling an interface with a thought. You could have done everything else that way, too, but the physical action seemed important. "And when we are challenged, this time we shall not bend."
"Even to the end?" Enatara asked. It was more a demand, truly. But how could you deny it? You owed a debt. All of you.
"This is the path we walk now," you told her, told them all. "If that is where it leads, then so be it. No more compromise."
"We shall not bend."
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Many thanks to @Coda for checking this for me, and my apologies for getting it to you a few days later than I'd planned. It would have been faster but the Illuminate won't purge themselves, y'know. Anyway, here's your interlude. The other post has been largely checked at this point, though might need one addition made.
I'll post it later this evening or tomorrow. I'm leaning towards the latter just so that this update gets some time to breathe, especially as the next update has a vote.
For now, I hope you enjoy this one!
I'll post it later this evening or tomorrow. I'm leaning towards the latter just so that this update gets some time to breathe, especially as the next update has a vote.
For now, I hope you enjoy this one!
- Location
- Earth
Signs are pointing more and more to Shiplord Civil War.
That'll be a shock to all that suffered under them, because they all thought the Shiplords united.
- Location
- Omniverse #1345
So, long delayed, the hearthguard are finally reminded of their purpose. And of the fact that hope exists.
There are not enough of them to win a civil war. Not now. But they can buy time. And we are so, so very close.
I suspect if they had any idea how close the emotions at this meeting would be… different indeed.
There are not enough of them to win a civil war. Not now. But they can buy time. And we are so, so very close.
I suspect if they had any idea how close the emotions at this meeting would be… different indeed.
- Location
- Queensland, Australia
I am going to quote three parts from this Sidestory, and then quote what I said after the previous one, which was about Taldor, the Shiplords possibly greatest and most important remaining ranking Admiral, one that is extremely closely connected to many of the Shiplords waking up from isolation and stasis especially the trained and experienced military personnel who are going to be depended upon to many most of the new and mothballed naval forces of the upcoming war against the galaxy:
If the Hearthguards go to war with the Shiplords, to put down a Monster they allowed to rise through their own passivity...
The Shiplords are going to wish that it was only the Hearthguard declaring themselves against them, to the end.
This is the Final Shiplords war. It is not going to be the last time the Shiplords go to war, but after this the Shiplords are either going to be shattered, turn inwards for a while so they may return to what they were... Or they are going to come out of it as true Monsters and the Galaxy will never be able to struggle against them again.
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Dmol8
The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web
- Location
- Belgrade,Serbia
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
It won't be that easy I'm afraid even if the Animus has that power because of our repairs by then.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Stopping the war?
Animus is meant to be the control system for the Secrets. It could turn off the First, which would certainly send the war to a screeching halt, and in the ensuing causality landscape it could allow a single group of negotiators to travel at infinite speed. The speed limit on the First, I believe I can say, is a safety lock. It isn't a fundamental limit.
Winning the peace? Yeah, that's harder. We've seen enough of the Shiplords to know that there are children, and while preventing them from ever leaving their planets again might be possible, it would also be monstrous. We don't win by stepping onto the same path they've been sliding down.
Of course that all depends on completing the repairs to Animus, which I wouldn't expect to be a quick process. We can only hope it'll be in time.
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- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Do we have wog that we can actually do something like this? The limited access to a secret part, not the bit about turning one off. I kind of thought the fixing thru could do was more stuff like make it so no one could use them for vacuum collapse or whatever, not access control (beyond the understanding aspect)