I'm Sick of Tired Repetitions

(9:3:1)

Smoke trailed up to a stormy sky in drifting wisps.

Seih didn’t recognise the landscape he trudged through, avoiding blackened piles of crumbled stone and wood, a howling emptiness pressing in on his ears. Even his feet didn’t make a sound, muffled by the smog.

Some part of him thought it should have been familiar. Another part of him refused to look at the remains of what had probably once been grand buildings. Did it matter what they’d been? They were nothing but ruins now.

Wilted and singed vines crawled across some. The horizon had a fiery glow to it, one he couldn’t seem to avoid no matter how many turns he took.

Am I the only one still alive?

The sky roiled with silent thunder. He had the feeling if he stepped too far into the open that it would turn and fix him with flaming eyes, swallowing him whole. So he kept to the shadows of broken walls in a ruined wasteland.

“Seih....”

A soft light filtered through the jagged edge of a broken archway. The glimpse of a white light drifted past, its glow fading down the remains of a street. Familiar....

“Seih....”

On a whim, he followed, reaching after the trailing tail of the only light that didn’t feel wrong in this place, a flickering hint always disappearing just ahead of him. Wait. Please.

“Seih....” Something kept calling his name, tugging at him, but he had to know—

It slowed, as if hearing his silent plea, looking back at him with glowing blue eyes, its long, fluffy tail brushing the ruins with a gleaming white hue. It was a wrulf. Though not like any he’d ever seen, with antlers curving up towards the sky between its pointed ears and a gaze that stared into his soul, so bright he almost couldn’t look at it.

“...Who are you?”

“Seih.”

His eyes snapped open as fingers brushed his shoulder, bright blue fading into unnatural, duller silver above him. Voice.

A dream. It had only been a—

Fallen Lights, why does this keep happening?

For the first time he could ever recall, Voice’s expressionless face almost looked concerned, irises glowing slightly brighter as they tracked across his frame while he pushed himself up. Whatever his senses told him seemed to reassure him that at least Seih wasn’t dying, though, from the way he relaxed minutely.

“Voice,” he greeted him muzzily, speaking halfway into the hand rubbing at his face, “morning.”

“...My master slept well?”

Seih blinked up at him, the Divination’s face perfectly composed despite the question he’d just uttered. Smiling at him, he pulled his hand away from his face. “Just a bad dream, Voice. Nothing special.”

“I see.”

He puffed in amusement, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and pulling the dull tightness from his muscles with a stretch, using the distraction to shove away the echoes of a broken city and a wandering ghost. “You’ve probably never had one, I’d guess?”

“I don’t sleep.”

Looking up at the other’s perfectly straight white hair, he could believe it had never touched a pillow. He could also believe he’d spent too much time around Brei if that was the first muddled thought that popped into his head. It sounded like something she’d say.

He scrubbed his fingers through his own tousled hair in an attempt to clear the fog, a slightly crooked smile twisting at his mouth as he exhaled. He was decently sure that by this point any remnants of a dead man’s soul had dissipated from his, at least, so that wasn’t a concern. “Of course you don’t. You don’t need to.”

Voice’s eyes glowed subtly again, carefully checking him over, and he nearly laughed. Instead, he opted to stand, blinking away a brief rush of vertigo and opening his hands with a reassuring smile. “I can get checked over by Stream if you want.”

“Unnecessary.”

“Well that’s good, then.” He turned with a hum, moving for the closet and casting a brief glance up at the ambience streaming through the skylight—cool and light, not red. Not red. Really, this had been the longest conversation he’d ever had with the Divination. Maybe he should worry him more often. “At least it’s not too late.”

“...There has been news from Loh. The Hand is putting forward a reassurance in a few minutes and has scheduled an emergency session for tomorrow.”

...What?

He twisted to see Voice’s steady silver eyes watching him, the pit of dread he’d been trying to ignore opening wide enough for the rest of him to drop through, every muscle stilling. “An emergency meeting? Why? What news?”

The Divination’s irises flickered. “At the first hour of dawn this morning, the news came through Soulspace that Aphox has declared a state of emergency in regards to the events transpiring in Loh.”

For a moment he couldn’t work enough moisture into the dryness of his throat to force out, “Why?”

“They are saying Darkness has returned.”

&&&

|I want anything you have on the forces invading Loh. As close to the action as possible. Any creature, anything unusual.|

Darkly glowing eyes ran their way slowly across his face, taking their time to look him up and down. |I hear talk of banning things, experiences, from the Loh region. No more collections, no more readings for the archives of Firemount. If I give copies....|

|I’ll take full responsibility.| Seih kept his hands still and open, refusing to clench them despite the roiling twist of his insides.

|...No copies.| The man took what looked like a random selection of three from the spinning shelves, his attention still fixed on Seih. |Take these directly. No more. Will be all you need to know, anyway.|

He wondered uneasily how many times others had looked for this same information, or how often Tozu had seen it, that he knew exactly what ones Seih was after.

For a long moment he gazed at the three spheres floating on the other’s palm, half-imagined flickers playing in their depths. |I promise on my honour and the fire of my soul, I wouldn’t report you. I wouldn’t use filtered imprints as evidence against you.|

|Direct. Or leave.|

He closed his eyes. The other man was determined to put him through this, wasn’t he? But he needed to know. And Tozu wasn’t wrong, either. The Hand had clearly stated that sharing of sensationalist information would be curated from now on, Divinations using their ability to pull data and skim across Soulspace in order to block this kind of thing from being shared.

It was heavy-handed. It wasn’t something he agreed with, and something he’d make clear he didn’t agree with, but there was little chance he could do much about it. Not to mention it would take weeks to roll back even if he could gain enough support quickly. Tozu was right to be cautious about something like this ending up in Divination hands.

Opening his eyes, he let out a quiet breath, his fingers twitching. It was this or nothing.

At least I know what I’m in for now.

Before he could change his mind, he plucked them out of the other’s hand and sat heavily at the table that materialised out of the flickering shadows. Reyahn help me.

Picking one at random, he squeezed it, closed his eyes.

And breathed it in.