CHAPTER 25: An Explanation

As the day stretched onwards, the trio, each involved in their own investigations of Lum, eventually caught up with some rest. Jake took a nap propped up against a blue house, while Vino, after a hard few hours, had fallen asleep at the workbench in his commandeered base of operations. Orsel’s core, however, had laid still and silent since the wee hours of the morning when he had been given free rein of the city. The dark purple stone was wrapped and nestled within his cloak, with his crookshank leaning against the wall. Suddenly, he felt something disturbing his sleep— a light poking feeling. With this sensation, Orsel reformed his body within his cloak, siphoning the room’s darkness like layers of paper stacked on top of one another to return his body to its usual shape. Even after he was brought back, he still had trouble wrestling open his peepers, especially with the bright daylight shining into the room. When Orsel could finally get a sense of his surroundings, he found that he was being prodded by none other than Hope herself, kneeling down with the blunt end of his own crookshank pointed at him. After giving one more poke, Orsel’s confusion grew to annoyance.

“Alright, I’m up! What do you want?” He snapped, grabbing the crookshank out of Hope’s hands.

“Sorry about that, It’s just… I have some more questions for you that I’d like answered.” Hope answered bashfully.

“Look, I already told you the truth about why we’re here. We were lock—”

“I already know that. I just need some more info on Shaydon.”

“What do you mean?”

Hope looked away for a second, then back at Orsel with a smirk.

“You want to see what I’ve been working on?” 

“Sssure.” Orsel answered hesitantly.

Just then, Hope instantly disappeared before him in a flash of light. Startled, he got up from his resting place and looked around for her.

“Hey, where’d you—” Orsel asked, until eventually he saw her at the base of the steps of the palace. “How’d you do that?” He asked, shocked, looking between where Hope was now and the ruins they were in before. 

“We call it ‘blipping’,” Hope explained, demonstrating again by teleporting herself a few feet up the steps. “Light is a very fast thing, so some of us lumans have trained ourselves to use that to move to places almost instantly.”

“That’s amazing!” Orsel stood, astounded

“We can’t do it too much, though, or it gets a bit… well… disorienting. But come, follow me!” With that, Hope blipped herself to the top of the enormous stairwell, with Orsel grimacing at the thought of having to climb up that wretched thing again. Then again, following the orders of a grand or grandess wasn’t something he was inexperienced with.

Orsel, wheezing, finally had made it to the top of the stairwell, braving the harsh daylight and exhaustion. He used his last jolt of energy to leap into the shade provided by Hope’s throne room, laying flat on the floor in exhaustion.

“Oh my, are you alright?” Hope stepped over to him, concerned.

“Just… need… rest…stairs…too high.” Orsel panted. 

“Well, whenever you’re ready, we can start. Take as much time as you need.”

After a couple of minutes, Orsel had regained his bearings and sat down on a nearby chair. He noticed that Hope had actually cleaned the place up a bit since their first visit… Although, the word ‘clean’ was still a bit of a stretch.

“Alright,” Orsel queried, “So what do you want to know about Shaydon? I’ve got a bit of an axe to grind with them right now, as you can probably tell.”

“First things first.” Hope grabbed a pen and a sheet of paper. “What’s it like living there?”

“It’s dark and dreary, which is nice, but it’s also cutthroat and cruel.” Orsel replied, folding his arms. “You wouldn’t catch me going back there in a hundred years.”

“And why is that?”

“Why ISN’T that? Everyone higher up than you treats you like garbage, and star is hard to come by if you just want to live honestly.”

“I see.”

“I mean, the weather’s always pleasant, and it is where I was raised, but The Seven have made it so hard to-”

“The Seven?” Hope perked up. “What’s the Seven?”

“A bunch of shayd Thead keeps around to run the city and all that. They’re a bunch of jerks, but y’know, they keep things running… or limping…”

“Do you know their names?”

“I think I forgot a couple of them, but I know Edrip’s kinda their boss, then there’s Yuttoguln, he’s the police chief, then Eyve and Ven, who we’ve told you about before… uh…”

Hope was furiously scribbling down Orsel’s descriptions on her sheet, to the point where she hastily grabbed another.

“Anything else about them?”

“Well, I know one of them is Caverai, but I think he got replaced a bit ago… Ooh, Loth! He’s in charge of entertainment, I think.”

“Soo… is each one of them in charge of a different professional branch of Shaydon?”

“Probably. I suppose some of them overlap, though… I dunno, I never looked too deep into how stuff like that worked.” 

“What would you say is an average day in your life?” Hope asked, interested.

“Well, today is certainly the worst example of that.” Orsel joked, spinning the staff of his crookshank against the ground. “But usually I wake up in my apartment, then take the barge to my job-”

“Where do you work?”

“Uh, SMC- Shaydon Municipal Construction.”

“Really? What kind of things have you been building?”

“It’s just been standard buildings mostly— apartments, businesses, stuff like that.”

“Hmm.” Hope scribbled something out on her paper. “What do you usually do after work?”

“Well, sometimes I just watch my visbox. Reception’s kinda bad, but I was hoping to save up enough star to get a new one.” Orsel looked to the ground a bit in sorrow. “I guess that’s out of the question now.”

“Anything else you do? Like, say you have a day or an evening off?”

“Well, that’s been impossible for the last cycle, considering the curfew they put in place.”

Hope perked up at the word, and began to scribble a bit more intently on her sheet. At this point, Orsel couldn’t help but take some interest in Hope’s observance. 

“So, why all the questions? From what I’ve heard, you already have a history with Shaydon.” Hope froze in place, eyes blank with shock. She looked as if she was about to snap the pen in her hand in half.

“Oh, it’s just— well, uh… I’m… very fascinated in current events, is all. Anyway, is there a particular reason for this curfew, or…?”

“I don’t think we ever got a straight answer. Something about safety or rising crime rates, but I never noticed anything different. It’s been in effect for a couple cycles now.”

“Interesting… Interesting… Now, how likely do you think it would be that Shaydon, Oh, I dunno, does something… bad in the near future?”

“Uh… bad how?” Orsel asked, skepticism coating his words. “Because from the looks of it, they’re already doing experiments on innocent people.”

“Hmm, I mean, uh— hold on.” Hope fumbled with her words as Orsel grew more confused.

“Look, what exactly is this? I mean, all of this!” Orsel stood up and began to rifle through Hope’s files and papers. “What’s with all these plans and maps and secrecy? I just want a straight answer! The least you can give after all these years you were allegedly missing is to shine some light on some of this.”

Hope sat, slumped, contemplating Orsel’s request.

“No pun intended, of course.” He continued. “I mean, it just seems-”

“No, you’re right.” Hope answered, waving her hand at Orsel, still looking away. “I’ve just, I’ve never been one for subtlety, y’know?” She smiled weakly before her face returned to sadness.

“I’ve spent the last decade up here watching everything that’s been going on in the world.”

She pointed over to the mechanism that encircled the beam of light in the center of the room.

“Do you know what that is?”

“I can’t say I do.”

“That is a dayfinder. It’s a machine used by Luman royalty to allow one to see everything that goes on under the sun. I’ve been using it— and that radio I got from one of the houses below— to observe… patterns of what’s going on in Crux.”

“So you’ve been spying on everyone the entire time you’ve been up here?”

“I don’t like to use the word ‘spy’. I’d say… observing, or people-watching. Look, what they don’t know won’t hurt them.”

“Alright, fine, but if you can see everything, then why ask me for stuff? You can see Shaydon at any time, right?”

“The clouds that hang over the city deprive me of seeing anything within its borders,” Hope explained, “Which is unfortunate because my entire theory revolves around them.”

“What theory? What are you talking about?” Orsel snapped, confused.

Hope looked out the open door, directly into the sun.

“There is a war coming.” She explained, “One that would dwarf the Umbral Incursion, or even the War of Life. I’ve seen changes. Training drills across the world, illicit-looking dealings between… people here, and— hold on.” Hope rushed over to her piles of documents, picking diagrams and descriptions of people out from the stacks upon stacks of hastily-scrawled papers. 

“Look, this guy here? Leochu, he got a ton of star to open this casino because he’s been trading with this lady— wait, this should be…” Hope scrambled over the last decade of her work, while Orsel just sat in his seat, irrevocably confused. “Alright, look here! Up in Crystolia, there’s been a surge in enforcement against the local quasi, and this radio! Here, if I turn it to this station…”

She flicked on the radio, and it repeated an automated weather report.

“Alright, it’s supposed to have this beeping in the background. Just… listen closely here.”

Hope stood eagerly before the radio for about a minute before Orsel stepped over, disinterested, and turned it off.

“Look, Hope. I can’t begin to imagine how hard it’s been for you all this time, but I’m not sure any of this is… y’know… real?”

“It IS real!” Hope protested, clutching her stack of papers. “I’ve lived long enough to know when something big like this is about to happen, I mean, the Umbral Incursion was my-” Hope froze in place and turned back around to face the work she had done in her isolation. The bales of documents and web-woven strings of yarn encompassing events and people throughout Crux.

“You have to believe me, please. I know this all looks a bit messy, but I can guarantee you that a war, or maybe something even worse, is coming.” Orsel began to back away from Hope, towards the door to her throne room.

“I’m just finding this a little hard to believe, is all. Look, if you can find something that actually proves your point, then, sure— maybe I’ll be inclined to follow all this. As it stands, though, it all looks a little…” Orsel looked at the disheveled documents strewn across the room as he searched for the perfect word to use.

“… Scattered.”

Hope knelt to the floor, thumbing through the pile of papers she was still holding.

“Do… Do you have any more questions for me?” Orsel asked, cautiously approaching the Grandess.

“No, no, that’s enough.” Hope conceded. “You’re free to leave.”

“Alright,” responded Orsel, looking around at the piles of stained papers. “You know, I could come by later and help you clean this up if you need.” Hope didn’t respond, instead tending to her curated papers. Judging from the atmosphere, Orsel assumed he had no reason to stay.

CHAPTER 26: Equal

The day stretched onwards as Orsel looked around for his partners amongst the empty expanse of the city of Lum. The thought of discouraging Hope’s theory weighed heavy on his mind, but what was he supposed to do? Play along? She may have been alive long enough to know when a war is happening, sure, but Orsel had lived in Shaydon long enough to know that nothing ever really changes. Sure, maybe things would get a little worse as time went on, but as far as he knew, people were begrudgingly content with how things were.

The most frustrating part for Orsel was that, to be completely honest, an infinitesimally small part of him did believe Hope. It was no question that Shaydon’s leaders would be bold or stubborn enough to start another war against the world, and the existence of Eyve and Ven’s awful experiments would raise anyone’s eyebrows. The only reason he felt forced to dismiss it was because Shaydon was the last thing he wanted to worry about after putting his life on the line to run away from its thankless clutches.

Orsel stuck close to the walls and alleyways as he walked aimlessly through the dead city, careful as to not touch the sunlight with the parts of his body that weren’t obscured by his cloak. He had lived his entire life beneath the shrouded skies that Shaydon held dear, and life beneath the clear bluish-purple sky was a harsh adjustment to make for someone of his disposition.

“There has to be a better way.” Orsel griped after ducking beneath a precarious group of rays of light, flitting through the tattered holes of a large banner. Eventually, at the gateway of a sun-bleached courtyard, Orsel decided to experiment. He propped his crookshank up against the wall of a nearby building and, with some hesitation, rolled down the left-hand sleeve of his cloak. As was common for most shayd, his arm was made of three long, braided tendrils, which frayed at the end of his arm to form his hand and fingers. He carefully inched his arm out from the cover of darkness into the direct sunlight, holding what would be his forearm with his right hand in an effort to steel himself. First, came the tips of his fingers. It was a sensation not unlike entering a hot bath after spending a day in the cold— a temperature shock that lingered and seeped through the body, and never seemed to fade away. Orsel hissed and winced at the pain, but he was determined to build up at least some resistance to this wretched element.

Next, he engulfed his entire hand in the shower of light from above. It was like dunking it into boiling water— the pain causing his tendrils to wince and writhe, with fumes of pure shadow pouring from his form. Orsel’s breaths shortened as his eyes clenched shut. After three more agonizing seconds, he had decided he had enough and retracted his hand into the cover of darkness. At last, he was safe and content, the pain and trials melting away as abruptly as the sensations began. It was always safe in the shadows, but Orsel knew that his future, whatever one it would be this far away from Shaydon, would have to be at least a little closer to the light. 

“Well I’ll be!” Orsel heard a thunderous compliment from behind him. He whipped around nervously to find none other than Jake towering behind him. “You got some core, trying out a stunt like that.”

“Yeah, I know. It was pretty pathetic.” Orsel slumped as he grabbed his crookshank from the wall.

“I didn’t know you guys did Ay’kwill.” Jake said, scratching his head.

Orsel’s face shifted to that of immense confusion.

“Equal? What?” 

“Nah, Ay-Kwill. It’s some weird thing Aquean hippies do. They say it ‘promotes balance between forces’ or some such.”

“What do you do in Ay’kwill?”

“Well, it varies from element to element. It’s pretty much building up resistance to your opposite. Aqueans do it by sitting above a fire, zephryn— I think they bury themselves alive, and from what I’m seeing, I guess shayd just… Stand in the sun.”

“Well, I don’t know about balance or Ay’kwhatever, I just want to spend time out here without being in, y’know…”

Orsel stuck his hand back out into the sunlight, then quickly retracted it as it began to sting again.

“… Excruciating pain.” Jacob clasped his hand around his chin in ponderment.

“Well, I may not know a lot about balance either,” he said, cracking his claws, “… But I do know a thing or two about pain. The most important thing is that you gotta keep at it until you don’t feel a thing.” He pointed at Orsel’s crookshank as an example. “Go on, hit me as hard as you can.” Orsel, confused, looked between Jake and his tool.

“You sure about this?” He asked, concerned.

“I wouldn’t be asking you if I wasn’t.” Jake boasted. “Now, come on, give me everything you got.”

“Okay…” Orsel surrendered. “Man, I’m dealing with a lot of crazy people today.” he muttered under his breath as he prepared a hearty swing with his crookshank. He clenched his eyes shut and thrust the metallic implement through the air with all his might, its edge singing against the wind until a resounding PLUT filled the air. Orsel opened his eyes and found Jacob’s hand on the ground, a clean-cut stump displaying itself as the point of separation from the behemoth of soil before him.

“GOODNESS!” Orsel shouted, backpedaling away. “Jake, I’m so sorry, I—”

“Huh.” Jake pondered for a second. “Those things are sharper than I thought.” He picked up his severed hand and affixed it back to his stump arm, scoring grooves into the flat surfaces with his still-attached claw before plopping it back on, good as new. 

“See? I’m as solid as firmament.” Jake announced, articulating his newly attached hand. “Ain’t nothing on Crux that can cause me pain!” He bragged, flexing both his arms above his head.

“Wow…” Orsel marveled, “You think I could ever be like that?”

“Maybe someday.” Jake laughed, “Till then, you’d have to train as hard as I have. I’ve worked hard on a ranch my whole life, and served during the Umbral Incursion to boot!”

“Amazing… Wait, you served in the war?” Orsel asked.

“As a matter of fact, I did.” Jake explained wistfully. “Weren’t much other options for us terrians during then, anyway.”

Orsel shifted his gaze towards the floor awkwardly, kicking a rock away with one of his tendrils as he put his hands to his sides.

“Hey, I have a question.”

“What is it?” Jake sighed, expecting to dig up a war story he had buried within his subconscious.

“You don’t… think something like that could happen again, could you?”

“Like what? The Incursion?”

“Yeah.”

“I dunno, probably. Hopefully not in my lifetime again, though.” Jake narrowed his gaze at Orsel. “Why do you ask?” 

“Well…” Orsel sidled nervously. “… Promise you won’t freak out?”

“Orsel, what’s this about?” Jake asked sternly.

“I don’t know all the details, but I think Hope’s got it in her head that there’s a war coming.”

“What?!”

“Yeah, you know, all those papers in her throne room? She’s been using this thing called the daylooker, or something, to see what people around Crux are doing, and somehow she pieced together that Shaydon might be setting up for a war.”

“Huh…” Jake pondered, sitting down on a nearby piece of rubble. “Maybe…”

“Oh, don’t tell me you think so too!” Orsel panicked

“Nah, nah, I haven’t heard all the facts, but you never really know this kinda stuff.”

“Jake, she’s been cooped up in that room for the past two decades! She’s gotta have some screws loose.”

“Yeah, but for the past cycle your ‘Eyve and ‘Ven’ have been abducting folks from all over the world. Maybe that’s why they’ve been doing it… trying to make some living weapons or something.”

“Listen to yourself! You’re not actually considering this, are you?”

“What’s got you all wired up? I say we at least hear what she’s found out.”

“I can’t believe this. I get not even ONE DAY away from Shaydon before I hear they’re still causing me more problems.”

Jacob furrowed his brow.

“Hey, Orsel. In case you ain’t heard, a war’s going to cause trouble for EVERYONE, not just YOU,” he snapped. “Hell, it already has. I had to face the Umbral Incursion head-on, and I can say for certain that everything I ever knew changed for the worse ‘cause of it.”

Orsel went quiet for a bit, pouting. He was angry, sure, at how it seemed like escaping Shaydon’s grasp was proving to be a greater and greater impossibility. But he had to take into account that there were others besides him who had also been burned by its insatiable flames of conquest. 

“I’m sorry.” Orsel proclaimed. “I… I know I’ve been selfish, but after everything I’ve been through, It just stings to hear everything flooding back again about Shaydon.”

“How do you think I feel?” Jake explained. “I want to get everything with them over and done with, too— leave it all behind— but sometimes problems like these just… have a way of comin’ back.”

There was a brief pause as the sun rose to the highest point in the sky.

“Look,” Jake continued, “maybe you’re right, maybe Hope really is off her rocker, but I’d say it’s better to look at everything and make our own judgments before we move forwards.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.” Orsel sighed.

“Come on, let’s go pay our favorite grandess a visit.” Jake said, gesturing Orsel back towards the temple. “I hope she has some more of that tea.”

“Ugh.” Orsel couldn’t stand the thought of drinking that sickly-sweet brew again… Or climbing all those stairs, but Jacob did have a point. It was better to have at least some idea of what was going on in the world around them. Even in the worst case scenario— that Hope was right about there being another war— They would at least know about it ahead of time instead of being caught off guard like the rest of Crux supposedly would.

Suddenly, as if from the sky itself, a small stick plunged itself into Jacob’s head, causing him to momentarily stop. He turned around to face Orsel again, blindly feeling around for what had struck him.

“What was that?” Jake asked, grasping his claws around the new protrusion from his body.

“I don’t know. Where’d it come from?” Orsel panicked, clutching his crookshank and frantically surveying the sky. Jake plucked the rod from his head and wiped the excess dirt off of it to find that it looked like an arrow with a tip made from dull, orange metal. 

“Who in the pit is practicing archery out here?” he asked, also making sure to watch the skies alongside Orsel. 

“I know it landed around here somewhere.” a concerned voice sprouted from a nearby alleyway, getting closer, until around a corner came the familiar form of Vino, sporting a brand-new pair of goggles and a rather cumbersome-looking device.

“Vino!” The two exclaimed in unison.

“Where have you been?” Orsel asked, “And what’s that thing?”

“Well,” Vino answered, “I found an old lens maker’s workshop around here, so I cleaned it up and started doodling around with, uh, this.” He shoved it forwards, showcasing it to the pair.

“Is that where this came from?” Jake asked, dangling the arrow he had extruded from his head in front of Vino. “You should really be more careful where you aim.” Vino’s face turned red as he grabbed it out of Jake’s talons.

“Sorry about that, but yeah, that place has everything! Spare parts, a forge, even some shreds from some old uniforms!” Vino bragged, stretching out his goggles so they snapped back onto his forehead.

“So, what have you two been up to?” he inquired, reloading the bolt into his invention.

Orsel and Jake looked at one another, then back to Vino. 

“Well, we’re heading back to Hope’s temple with some matters to discuss.” Jake explained.

“What kind of matters?” Vino asked.

“It’s… a little complicated,” responded Orsel, fiddling with his crookshank. “We’ll explain on the way.”