Archive of Our Own ^beta

Granite blinked awake, saw the blurry cannon explode, and got up automatically. To the elevator, to the ship, suit up, launch. The Stranger was still marked; they got clear of Timber Hearth and let the autopilot just, fly, before they mentally checked in this loop.

Why even go back to the Stranger? They should give themself a loop… anywhere else, they’d been nowhere but the Stranger for loops. They were just, pacing around the same areas like they were an inhabitant, stuck in the same worn paths…

They couldn’t… there wasn’t much left to find, not for them. Riebeck probably could have spent years in the Stranger, pouring over every little thing and cataloging and speculating, but, Granite would rather take pictures and note reasons for this being here than painstakingly reconstruct how an alien race lived. 

They’d probably found their way into everything that wasn’t welded shut in the Stranger proper, and there wasn’t too much left to find in the dream. And… nothing they would find was going to change anything. They’d find everything, and then they’d wake up the next loop, at the same campfire, in a dying solar system, with just Gabbro as also-in-a-time-loop company. And Gabbro wasn’t bad company, just, if they’d have to choose a companion for this… well, they’d still probably choose Gabbro. They were calm, after the first few loops, they were older and had a lot more knowledge about how the solar system usually was, they handled Granite’s discoveries better than Chert was handling things near the end of each loop, and… Granite hadn’t known them that well before all this. They’d been part of the space program longer than Granite had been alive, barely. This wasn’t something they could do to, to Hal, or Riebeck or Marl, or the hatchlings…
Gossan might have insisted, if they’d known, Gossan was like that. Or Feldspar, now that they knew Feldspar was alive, but they might as well be dead, for all the good them being stuck in Dark Bramble was.

Space flickered, and Granite looked forward at the Stranger, and carefully put the ship down in the hanger, ignoring the minor damage done.

…why had they come here. Granite groaned, got up, but just went to their computer and started digging through their notes. 

Everything they’d found, compiled neatly on one screen, and on the other screen the webs of notes they’d written and moved and connected some things to others and moved them around more…

Down in the bottom corner was everything they’d found here in the Stranger, and, that included pictures of the physical slide reels they’d managed to find. 

Granite started clicking through one at random… the Isle’s reels. 

And paused, frowning. Did they miss a slide when they were taking pictures? There was a pause, between the Eye killing the inhabitants and the burnt slides, when grass was growing over the skull, and something was uncurling itself from an eye socket…

They must have missed a slide, but, they could go check the full version and write it down later. It was a pain to get into that archive compared to the first one, but, what else were they doing? Just getting caught trying to get into the final one, and, they were already here. They’d given up after two attempts last loop; two of the inhabitants had been waiting on the staircase for them, and they hadn’t been able to draw both of them away and spent ten minutes in a stalemate before one of them blew out Granite’s lantern.

Granite dropped out of their ship, walked through the airlock, and looked around the blurry, decaying ring world. Then splashed to the little stream, followed it past the ghost matter to climb into the little building holding artifacts, and then walked to the further raft carrying the bulky thing, and shoved off. 

They directed the raft through the rapids, managing to only scrape it on the rocks a little, let the dock reach down to winch them up into the isles, and paused. They hadn’t really walked around, not for loops, the last time they’d been here they were digging through the entire landmass on the front half of the Stranger looking for the burned slide room. And they did have the time. Well, not really, but, they could get into the archive in under ten minutes if they had to, so they could wander a little.

…Why was this burned- right. The temple. Granite walked inside, looking around, but it was empty, as though it would be anything else. Just, a tree that might have grown here after they burned it, and grass that should have been waving gently if there was the breeze part of them still insisted should have been present.

And, sitting ashy but intact, was the Eye, left on the burnt steps where it had fallen.

Granite looked at it, and sighed. 

It had called the Nomai here. And they had been so, so excited, so driven, to find it. Both of their cities had shrines much like this one. They’d set up the time loop that had trapped Granite to find it before they had been wiped out entirely by random chance, like the fate no one but Granite and Gabbro- and Chert, fifteen minutes into each loop- knew was staring the Hearthians in the face.

And the inhabitants had already found it. It had called them first, though they made it look like it had just been indiscriminately calling anyone. And when they got here, it had told them it would kill them, so they’d hidden it, blocked its signal so it couldn’t kill anyone. The Nomai must have just been unlucky enough to find the remnants of the signal. 

Granite turned and left the burnt shrine.

The Nomai had come here, looking for something that would kill them. They’d lost… how many bodies had Granite seen, clustered around the node in Dark Bramble and in the Vessel, how many more were locked behind doors they couldn’t open, how many had died even before the Interloper showed up? All that death, lives cut short, chasing something that was just going to kill them anyway. And Granite was stuck in a time loop that reset just after their sun wiped out everyone they had ever known, because the Nomai had found it. And their only option, when they got tired of the time loop, was to pull out the warp core and die, and… they couldn’t. And they couldn’t go to the Eye, not after they found the slide reels, after they knew the inhabitants saw it destroying everything. That was just, pulling out the core and dying with more steps.

Granite moved the lanterns, walked down the stairs, and settled in the unsettlingly empty spot, surrounded by long dead bodies. Deep breaths, and, they fell asleep-

And woke up in the dream. Up, out, and across the bridge, and to the right.

Above them, they could hear the creak of the inhabitants pacing, patrolling, but they never came down to this floor until Granite turned the lights off in this area. Granite paused for a minute next to a railing, part of them savoring being able to see a large form pacing on an upper floor. The inhabitants must have been able to see so much better than Hearthians, they could see the other side of the cove clearly, when the lanterns were lit.

They could get to these slide reels without turning the lights off, just… it was one thing to die, because of the sun, crushed by sand, a serious fall, oxygen running out or their ship hitting the Interloper. Accidents, that they’d started caring less and less about. Killing themself deliberately was entirely different, and they wouldn’t, they couldn’t if they had the option. That was why they hadn’t just, pulled the core and flown to Giant’s Deep. 

Granite walked through a stone passageway, to the stairs and jumped over the sign that was supposed to keep them out. Down, through the storage chamber, and they hid the artifact’s light to walk past the alarm easily. 

To the raft. Granite focused the light, speeding the raft along. The hand thing they were after was to the right…

But ahead of them, they hadn’t really looked at it except once, was a burnt building. Granite glanced at the gap in the rocks and kept the raft on its course. They had time, they’d go there in a minute. 

They stepped up onto the porch. This… they hadn’t wondered, the other time they were here, they’d assumed it was another shrine like the burnt one outside. Why was it-

Right. Inside, broken like it had been stomped on, a small metallic symbol was lying in the ashes of the building. The Eye. 

Granite sighed, and picked up the most intact piece, then looked around. This was too small to be a shrine, though, this looked like a cabin…

There was a telescope, on the porch outside, pointing up. It had survived the fire somehow.

Wait. It was all, fake, they knew that, this was all programmed and they’d burnt the house and broken the symbol but not this telescope. 

Granite dropped the little Eye and walked over to it. It didn’t look like it was pointed at anything specific, just, out, at a sky more full of stars than Granite had ever seen, and the huge ringed planet floating serenely above. They weren’t tall enough to look through it and check. 

They turned back, and saw a sliver of color in the ashy room. What-?

The Eye symbol had dropped next to a couple of boards they’d ignored, and shifted something just enough to let one move and show they were shutters, protecting something. 

A… painting? 

Granite pulled it free and fully opened the shutters. 

A skull, one of the inhabitant’s skulls, covered in grass; they’d seen that, that it would kill them, but…

Growing up out of an empty eye socket, was a flower, blooming, and scattering from it like seeds, were galaxies. 

Granite looked at the purple flower, then down at the symbol, and back. 

The flower was the Eye. 

It…

It wasn’t, death, and an end. It would have killed them… and they didn’t bother to record, that it would create anew from that. 

…That was worth it, if there was no other choice, no other way out, they could collapse and be grown over by grass and let a new universe bloom from the body…

Granite breathed out, and sat down, staring at the painting. 

They could get there. It would be risky, dangerous- more dangerous than any flight they had ever made, if something went wrong, it would count- but they could. 

After. Granite felt the burning need to find out what happened here rekindle itself. If the inhabitants had known this, but hidden the Eye anyway, knowing it wasn’t just death but a rebirth as well... they had to know why. Or at least, as close to why as they could figure out.

Next loop. They could explore the canyon more without turning the lights off, and see if there was another way into that archive. And after they found that, and a way into that weird locked casket, maybe. They could finish what they were here looking for, and then…

They knew what they had to do. After, they could finish the Nomai’s work, and go to the Eye.