The Song of a Soul

(11:3:2)

An uneasiness trembled beneath the usual hazy brightness of Soulspace.

Moving down the channel towards his destination, Seih couldn’t help but feel it creep into his own soul, menacing at the edges of this flickering, dreamlike world, hidden in the shadows beneath neon signs designating rooms to chat in, the imaginary street slicked with glints of rain. Soulspace always changed, flowing with the slow collective creep of all the people who impressed on it, but the dark skies and overcast feel lingering at its edges reminded him... too much of his own dreams, lately.

Dreams of a dark, unstoppable menace, rising up over the horizon....

He swept clear of other consciousnesses streaming past, firmly refusing to shiver under the phantom impression of raindrops as he turned down another channel. Adding his own uneasiness wouldn’t help clear the skies.

Trudging down the lane, half-imagined puddles glinting impossible colours, he headed towards the glow of a lantern through crowded house-like constructions with angles that warped at the bounds of physics leaning over the path, narrow alleyways slipping between and ivy twining over wooden ridges. The sign at the door of the tall, rickety construction dominating the... more circle than square, at the nexus of the street, swung above his head to greet him as he pushed inside out of the brooding chill and into a hubbub of noise and chatter known simply as “the Hub”.

He’d been told once that it resembled something called a “pub” in Aphox, some sort of place centred entirely around alcohol and drinking. As if they had to congregate in a building to get drunk.

Then again, if pubs were anything like this, he mused as he squeezed around tables and wooden columns wreathed in leaves, then they were also the centre of the community, and that he could understand.

Shouting from the middle of the room caught his ear, and he had to crane his head over a group settling at an empty table to see the central stage occupied by a debate. Unsurprising, considering the current climate—the Hub had probably become a warzone at the busiest hours since he’d last managed to make it.

Well, since Dragon’s Crown, anyway.

|Hoi, Seih! Haven’t seen you in a while. Glad you could make it, lad,| the burly barkeep, another term he’d learned here, called across the crowd. His voice carried, perfectly clear, in the odd way directed calls always did despite all the public noise.

|Ho, Blassin,| he greeted him back, pulsing a general greeting and drawing a chorus from the other regulars he interacted with all sitting at the bar.

|Our resident councillor himself!|

|Been a while, Hestas.|

|Must be busy inside the Ripple, eh?|

|It is.| He took the stool that materialised with a puffing exhale, not bothering to correct Crosc for the hundredth time. Calling people by their last name was just a cultural quirk of Petrahns. |Despite everything getting nowhere.|

|Sounds like Firemount. All the inners like to sit on their robes all day, don’t they?|

|I forgot you were a councillor,| one of them, another from Aphox if he remembered correctly, mused.

|It’s mostly just debates on how to deal with a hysterical populace.| He gestured towards the centre stage, half the crowd idly following along with the heated debate. |Looks a lot like what’s going on here, actually.|

|The usual?| Blassin interrupted, and he nodded, flicking him an archive link as payment. |I see you’re gettin’ up with the north tonight.|

He pulled the end of the scarf tucked around his neck loose. |It’s becoming a trend down here. Scarves aren’t that different from a toga. Useful for cold weather like the rain outside, too.|

Crosc sniffed. |That’s not rain, lad. And that’s nothing like one of your useless robes.|

One of the others coughed. |I heard something about the Light Scale putting out a word a couple of weeks ago. Did it really predict Dragon’s Crown going wrong?|

|It’s still being confirmed whether it said anything in the first place,| he answered by rote. |You’re from Loh, aren’t you, Pallis?|

|So you have heard the rumours.|

|Nothing more than rumour.| Trouble up on the northern border of Loh, talk of strange happenings. Troubling rumours.

|Nothing more than that for me, either. People going missing, monsters in the mountains.... They say there’s a darkness hovering around where the Black Scar meets Sky’s Peaks. I say it’s probably just the weather being moody.|

|I hope you’re right.| He took the tall, sturdy glass Blassin slid across the counter and took a sip of spiritual spiced-mead, listening with half an ear to the debate on whether everyone was overreacting or not to all the strange celestial markers and whispers of prophecy. In a way, they were right. Nothing had really happened yet, just murmurs and rumblings. Only rumours of strange goings on. Just distant things muzzed by the warm glow of the imagined lights in the pub and idle chatter.

His wandering gaze landed on the corner, catching at a shock of blond and a glint of yellow, and paused. Sitting by... himself, he settled on after a long moment—and only from the style of clothing— a soft-featured boy watched the debate with unblinking, unnaturally golden eyes.

There was something... off, about him.

|Have you ever seen him before?| He asked the group in general.

|That kid in the corner?|

|Unusual representation, isn’t it? Wonder how he managed the eyes.|

|Can’t say I’ve ever seen him.|

|Hm.| He watched as the boy got up, eyes flicking around the room to their general direction before he turned, fading into the crowd and probably resurfacing in the physical world.

|Looks like he’s just gone, in any case,| Blassin noted. |Well. You’re not getting into the debate today, Seih?|

He shrugged and turned back to the bar, taking a draught of his mead, mildly thankful that it wasn’t the real thing and wouldn’t make him blind drunk after a pint of the stuff. |We’re in recess right now. And frankly I’ve spent enough time scuffing over this subject to last till evenaste. Wouldn’t mind hearing more of these rumours about Loh if you have any, though.|

Pallis snorted. |Well, general consensus has it the Drillers are poking their ugly feelers out of their holes again....|

(11:1:4)

Winds blocked another hit, his hard flesh registering a dull twinge—not forceful enough to damage.

Hafest’s flowing strikes moved to a rhythm, regular and repetitive, striking with a reasonable amount of speed. With his smaller frame, some of them might have threatened to unbalance him if he wasn’t inherently denser.

Moving in an opposing dance, he blocked and deflected with perfect precision, watching each subtle flare of energy, minute muscle twitches telegraphing strikes infinitesimal moments before they landed.

He never sweated, unlike the thin sheen on his opponent.

His opponent never relented, despite his human limitations.

“Halt.”

Obediently, Winds dropped his defensive position and stood to attention as Hafest stepped back, swiping a hand across his forehead and dark curly locks that had plastered to the skin, unlike the perfectly dry strands of his own lavender-blue hair. From the smile, his master seemed pleased, breathing harder but not overexerted. Self-satisfied.

“I assume you’ve heard the rumours in Loh. The people driving themselves into hysterics over a partial eclipse and a ‘bad feeling’. Whispering that villages are disappearing and the end of the world is nigh.”

Winds waited patiently as Hafest towelled off his face and went through his post-spar routine.

“Winds, here’s a question for you.” The man took a long draught from his canteen as Winds’ attention locked onto him. A question? “If the world ended tomorrow, what would you do?”

For a moment, he eyed him. Not what the rest of the general populace would do, but what he would do. An interesting request. “I would serve my master.”

“Of course, of course.” A smile played around the man’s lips. Amusement at the pedantic reply. Half-lidded grey-brown eyes slid his way. “And if you had no master?”

He did not move. “If I had no master I would be assigned a new one.”

“Let’s pretend there’s no one to serve in this hypothetical scenario.” Towel wrapped around his sweaty neck, Hafest approached him, gazing down with a glint in his eye. “Let’s say that all is lost and in one day you will cease to exist.

“What would you do, my Divination?”

(10:3:5)

“If it all crumbled tomorrow, how would you face today?”

Brei blinked at him, a half-laugh escaping her lips. “Well that’s a stupid question. They’re really asking that?”

“It’s a hot topic,” Seih said, watching others passing by on the street as they wandered down the road. “What would you do today if tomorrow never came?”

“The age-old question.” She rolled her eyes, throwing up a shrug. “Perish, I suppose.”

He glanced at her sidelong. “Really?”

“Well, what are you supposed to do in one day, really? Run around trying to do all the things you can’t do in twenty-four hours? Say goodbye to all the people you can never spend enough time with?” She snorted. “Might as well just quit my internship, lie down, and have the best sleep of my life.”

“You wouldn’t want to spend it with me, or your dad?” He prompted gently.

She opened her mouth, looked up at him; closed it again, her expression struggling. “...Alright, I’d quit the internship, and I’d spend my last day with you and Dad, and whatever it is all you exhaustingly driven people do.”

“I think I’d just spend it with you and the family.” He teased his fingers into her hand, squeezing it. “One last day out, watching the wind carry gliders across the valley.”

Her expression screwed fiercely, her hand attempting to strangle his, squeezing so hard it shook. “I did not sign up for this today. Why is everyone so depressing?”

He couldn’t quite take the sad edge off his smile as he looked away, watching a cart being driven down the road, the thickly-set beast pulling it twitching its long ears lazily, oblivious. “I was trying for romantic. But it’s hard not to be depressing when we have less than eleven Paxts left, according to the Scale.”

She didn’t say anything for a long moment as they cut across the road to his gate.

“Did you hear about Loh?” He turned to glance down at her as he unlocked it.

“I know the Hand’s said it’s probably nothing.”

She didn’t exactly sound convinced, herself. Resting his hand on the gate, he told her, “Aphox has rallied troops to help them. There are stories of twisted monsters prowling down from the north. Shadows at night.”

“Drillers?”

“Hafest and half the rest think that,” he agreed. “I’m not so sure, myself. Some of the stories... don’t match up.”

She took a deep breath and threw her shoulders up in a half-shrug, half-shake. “Well, what can we do about it? Aphox can help them, maybe even Petrah, but it’s not like we have a standing army.”

He regarded her for a moment. No, they didn’t. And he let it go, giving her a smile and patting at the gate, moving to push his way inside. “We’ll see. Fair evening, Brei. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Mm. You too. Fair evening.” She turned with a slightly distracted little wave, a frown haunting her eyes as they parted ways.

He headed for the inside of his home, the shadows of the trees stretching long across the path, swaying in the breeze. And sighed.

It was easier for others like her to put it out of mind. Easy for the rest of the council to soothe their people and caution them all to wait. Easy to say it could be nothing.

His pouch hit the shelf inside the doorway.

Waving Voice away as he strode for his chambers, he couldn’t help thinking that if they had slept like him, maybe they’d be quicker to take it seriously. Unfortunately, he had nothing beyond vague, fuzzy half-remembered images of shadows and imagined screams to show for the pit of dread in his stomach.

He fell back on his bed, lacing his hands behind his head to stare up through the ceiling window at an empty blue sky.

When he woke up tomorrow, would he see darkness instead?

Closing his eyes with a long exhale, he activated his crown and fell back into Soulspace.