Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Erisia was still. Slate didn’t like that.

No gusts of wind drove through the island’s stale air, and the little that did blow in from the outer sea quickly dissipated. The waves ran shoddily against its front coast; breaking, falling, then meekly retreating back into the cold blue mass from which they came. It felt as if the entire place had simply decided to halt its passage through the flow of time, all at once.

He wandered there for a time, perhaps a few hours, amidst the brush of the cool grass. The excitement of somewhere new to explore, no matter the circumstances he found himself there under, had always been difficult to set aside. Erisia itself was not an ugly or distasteful place, at least regarding its lower section, but it was painfully obvious to Slate that it had seen much better days. Though its environment was uncertain and worn and covered in many places with remnants of the dead, grown over by thick foliage and plant-life, it was level and deliberate in a way that precluded the idea that its pathways were naturally formed. Mostly, at least.

After a not-so-meticulous search of a dark and jagged cave turned up nothing more than a few haphazardly scattered bits of coral and a room-spanning pool of simmering green acid which he probably could have bypassed if he truly felt it worth the effort, Slate finally exited through a miniature opening above a rocky overhang, chose a direction, and started walking again.

The way he chose quickly gave way to what seemed to be a large staircase made up of chipped stone and rudimentarily carved walls. As he jogged watchfully up the path, it pleased him to note that he had not encountered any particularly nasty low-lifes or creatures of the Deep during his stay on the island as of that moment, or even any distinctly living beings at all. He shrugged to himself after a moment of consideration, tilting his head up to face the sunbathed sky, and decided that perhaps the Etrean Luminant wasn't quite as bad as he'd heard.

Slate’s head snapped back down as a high, empowered shriek pierced the silence, distant and faint. Intrigued, he drew the handle of his weapon and followed the general direction the noise came from. It sounded to him like the cry of a beastly Megalodaunt, which he hadn’t heard in some time. After a few minutes of stumbling his way up across an uneven bundle of jagged stones which could be seen as a sort of makeshift pathway if one squinted very, very hard, he found himself standing above a simple cliff which overlooked the sea. It was a considerably long drop, one he could see himself plummeting down were he not cautious, but he didn’t have to be afraid of it, as his actual goal was just to its right. He could see an entrance to yet another cave, and hear from within, a kind of constant shifting noise that he couldn’t exactly distinguish.

Now, despite what some may or may not have told him in his life, Slate Sekhigi was not a stupid person. He was well aware of the threat a prowling Megalodaunt posed simply by being in the general area, thus he made his approach a slow and deliberate one. He slid along the stone walls with the uttermost patience, as if he would crumple down into nonexistence if ever he detached himself from them.

Slate listened carefully as he picked his way through strange clumps of greenish-tan coral strewn about the cavern’s jumbled floor, relatively disgusted at both the stench and sight of them. Logically, he knew the coral was just about as fragile and easy to shatter as dried clay, but to his credit, he did not give into the urge.

Peeking his head around a corner of crumbly grey earth, Slate’s eyes happened to land on the back of what he had correctly assumed to be a Megalodaunt, crouched down and busily feasting upon something that smelled freshly deceased. He noticed, ignoring the vulgar noises the creature made as it ate, that this beast had perhaps been partaking in its meal for quite some time, considering the scattered pools of blood he could see and bones with gnaw-marks covering every surface. Silently, he gave a wry smile to himself and shook his head, mildly amused at the creature’s utterly poor manners before pondering how he should go about killing it.

His weapon, in fact, appeared to the common eye as nothing more than the peculiarly-shaped hilt of a bladeless sword. Five engraved runes on both sides ran vertically up its cross-guard which extended outwards from the grip into the shape similar to that of a weird-looking flower.

It had served him as well as it could have over the years, as it held a sort of Ether-bound medium that allowed one to channel their Attunement along its runes in order to form their own blade. The ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of its inner workings went mostly over Slate’s head however, so he knew it simply as the ‘thing that lets him make a sword’, which was quite enough for him.

With muted steps Slate rounded the corner, absently brandishing his weapon as he approached. The foul thing still had not seemed able to notice his presence in the musky cavern, which wasn’t particularly surprising. Slate had built up a respectable amount of knowledge regarding most creatures of the Deep over the years, so he knew that the Megalodaunt, despite its fairly complex social structure compared to some of its associated creatures, was yet an animal. It was incapable of significantly intelligent thought, thus was likely at the moment far too enraptured by its delicious meal to leave room in its mind for any kind of spatial awareness.

For a couple of hesitant seconds which dragged on a bit longer than he would have readily admitted, Slate raised the hilt of his weapon and awkwardly hovered it to different places around the creature’s shifting back side, adjusting his stance and hand-positioning to figure out exactly which spot would be best to cleave into. Finally, he decided on a site in the general area of where he assumed its heart would probably be, and let out an empty breath of anticipation. Ether flowed through his hands with a dense hum and, gripping his weapon with both palms as a gleaming cyan blade surged from its hilt, he stabbed downward into the beast’s hide.

Distantly, he heard the Megalodaunt vocalize a startled grunt, and realized he had closed his eyes. After opening them once more, he found himself staring into the beast’s own.

Ah.

Perhaps he hadn’t struck quite hard enough, he thought in that moment, or perhaps his blade had been faulty in a way that eluded him. Perhaps this one particular Megalodaunt simply had a distinctly tough hide, or perhaps all three of those theories were true at once.

A deafeningly loud shriek reverberated across the cavern’s walls as the disturbed Megalodaunt rose to its full stature, loosening its grip on the flayed torso of a corpse which made a sickening squelch noise as it fell to the ground. With an acceleration that almost definitely would have made him dizzy were he not stirred already by adrenaline, Slate turned his heel and ran.

Now, despite what he may have been thinking to himself at the moment, Slate Sekhigi was not a stupid person. At his current level of skill and strength, Megalodaunts were not the type of creature to be faced without at least a fraction of an idea of a plan.

It was big and fast as it advanced on him, sharp claws digging forcefully into the stone with every stomp and propelling it forward without hindrance, freakishly agile relative to its size. Slate rounded a corner, too sharp a turn to pass without scraping his arm against some coral attached to the wall, and immediately he found himself approaching the cave’s entrance which stood above the same cliff as it had before. He assumed within a second that the Megalodaunt was not dumb enough to exit recklessly and plummet straight down, given that this was its own familiar den, so he decided to make a quick compromise. Darting out to the right, just barely avoiding the beast’s claws as it forced its way forward, he clutched the outside wall and waited for a single beat. The Megalodaunt exited with a loud growl as it looked to find where he’d gone, which gave him time to sweep his blade across its nearest leg before dashing straight back into the den, sucking in his stomach to practically brush right past it.

A groan of pain distilled from its mouth as it gripped the wall to turn back around, certainly disoriented. As Slate ran a bit further into the dense cave, he made a conscious effort to exert some more of his Ether, forcing thin patterns of frost outward from his sodden footsteps. The den’s inner space was not very roomy or fitting for a proper fight, more clustered than anything, but he knew how to play that into an advantage. At least, he had a general idea of how.

Behind him, then, came another angered shriek, and he looked back to see the Megalodaunt picking its pace back up. With a certain annoyance, Slate noted that his slash against the thing’s leg had only scored a thin line into its unyieldingly thick skin.

He channeled further amounts of Ether into the ground as he kept his eyes fixed on his enemy, sharpened forms of splintering frost beginning to creep along the walls and merge with one another. The beast stopped for a moment, glaring around and down to its feet after likely noticing the way the air in its den had become markedly colder, then looked back to him, questioningly, almost with accusation.

Slate gave the creature a blank stare in return, or as distinctly blank of a stare as one could offer while wearing a mask, then drew his blade and pointed it downward with sobered intent.

In an instant the blade was plunged into the chilled earth, rippling invisible waves of willful Ether throughout the now thickened sheets of ice, the ground screeching and growing and violently tearing into itself as if suddenly forced alive (for it was, in a way), and the Megalodaunt could only watch in utter confusion before it was skewered by eight frosted icicles emerged from the ground it stood upon.

It was dead before it could realize, not that it could have comprehended the circumstances at all. The creature gave a blaring wail and twitched once, violently, then heaved down and fell still, its blood already beginning to dribble out from its pierced body and freeze soon after.

A clever, if foolhardy approach, and one that made Slate once again reconsider ever having brought a weapon along with his journeys in the first place. Was that not something he could have done without his blade with the same, if not a higher level of efficiency? If he had channeled that same Ether directly into the frozen earth through his hand, rather than funneling it first into his blade, would the Mantra not have proven stronger? Faster to cast, at the very least?

Always a perfectionist. If nothing else, he was happy that his Attunement was as showy as ever.

Yes, Slate had always been properly melodic and in tune with the Song, scarily more than any of his brothers and sisters, even, as he remembered. It rarely ever occurred to him, but he was considerably lucky in that way. While others might view that invisible calling of the world as a black box, synonymous with the abstract and defying all laws but its own, Slate had always seen it very simply. The Song of the world was a tool, however little or strongly the gods desired that he wield it. Perhaps, he thought, it was that innate, insatiable, incomprehensibly burning desire to always seek out more in the world which drove him to be in such harmony with it as he was.

Or, perhaps it was nothing at all.

Pushing such high concepts out of the way for now, Slate trodded up to the stilled Megalodaunt and scrutinized its corpse accordingly. Its claws were ever-sharp and its limbs entirely too packed with muscle, folded awkwardly into itself after having been unevenly pierced in many different places, in a tangle like a death-curl (Slate supposed it literally was one) but far more jagged and uncomfortable to look upon. Dribbles of blood were now bubbling out from its partly opened mouth, and what Slate hoped was just seawater was beginning to leak from its corals.

The two wounds Slate managed with his blade had in fact contributed little to the beast’s demise, but they weren’t really shallow at all. His initial stab wound was even respectably deep, but in the end it simply hadn’t cleaved deep enough into the creature’s unreasonably thick hide to meet with any vulnerable tissue. The second slash was not much better; like he had seen before, it essentially served only to disorient the beast at the time rather than damage it.

He mulled all of these finer details over for a few minutes, even going as far as to retrace the path he had taken while scurrying away in a panic, then finally decided that his work had been entirely average. The beast was felled, yes, and he had taken no actual damage other than a mild scrape upon his left arm, but there were just so many improperly made little choices which added up one-by-one, at least in a way that made sense in his head, that he supposed he could have done better.

…Right. Back to it.

Slate had averted his attention for as long as he could from the flayed corpse the Megalodaunt had left upon its interruption, but there was little that he could do to beat around the proverbial bush any longer. He supposed, thinking to himself as he absently kicked a stray piece of coral inward, that it was only fair; if he had died in such a manner, the least he could wish for a passerby to do for him would be to provide a shoddy and rushed burial and then continue on their own merry way. He could do that for this poor once-soul, if nothing else.

It made perfect sense to bury this one in particular, even; if one has so little wits as to lose themselves in battle against a Megalodaunt and sink their soul below, one typically does not have the skill nor strength to pass through the Wastes, much less the Cathedral. In the very unlikely scenario that one can, and to a further extent, does escape from beneath the Tides, one certainly also has the ability to dig themselves out from a shallow grave of silt and rock upon their return to life, if that magical healing light wouldn’t do so for them by default. He’d heard tales of similar cases.

As he saw, the body was chewed and nibbled beyond any conceivable recognition, all defining features having been uncleanly gnawed off to leave behind what was more-or-less a large humanoid-shaped chunk of bloody meat and gore. Slate did not think himself to be a queasy person by nature, and he felt little sadness in a death that was not of his making, but there had always been a sort of unnamed anxiety that approached his thoughts whenever he came across such unquestionably dead things in his travels. It was similar to the feeling one might experience after carelessly trampling upon a garden of delicately gorgeous flowers, or destroying a local monument which would have otherwise stood for ages more. It was a foreign thing, and he was out of his proper place. He just didn’t want to be around it.

Thus, the burial was kept deliberately short and simple. Slate held no true knowledge in the rites of death and felt little desire to acquire any, so a cursory grave dug into the soft dirt just outside the den’s entrance was what he decided on. He found it to be an extremely simple process, and the warm light flowing out from the Suncross in the horizon as he worked might have even made it a pleasant one, were his hands and coat not saturated by grimy and half-dried blood from his transport of the body. One victory at a time, he supposed.

It did feel wrong to simply leave them there in such a dangerous and fairly-populated environment, but what other proper choices were there? Even if the Vigils weren’t absolutely likely to arrest him on-the-spot for carrying a skinned and dismembered person into the temple to consult the Maestro of their identity, he wasn’t entirely sure he could even bring the thing back to his boat before the Moonseye rises.

Not only was it unwieldy and slippery like wet soap (as skinned things typically are), it also smelled very, very badly. And strongly. And also badly. If the blood already on his coat would give away his position to others akin to a bonfire in the night, the scent of this corpse would be reminiscent of an Interstitial Lighthouse piercing its light through Voidfog and into the outer seas.

Yes, exactly that. It would be a bad idea.

There are a thousand reasons a person might not be remembered in this world, he thought finally. They might have no one left to remember them, which was the case of many who had taken arms against the Depths with nothing to gain above its seas. They might not want to be remembered. They might have been too inconsequential, even those dearly thought of, for a mason to carve them a stone.

They might have never been known at all.

Chapter Text

The rest of the Megalodaunt’s den was not long to traverse, albeit unnecessarily jagged and grimy in most places, but it was full of simple handholds which made the narrower parts easier to bear for him. Soon enough, Slate found himself just outside a higher, uneven opening that must have led further into the island, and immediately he was taken off-guard by a whining wind, even and constant, driving against his form with a notable calmness to it.

The skies had quickly become overcast during his time in the den, he noticed, and then he wondered whether it was an uptick in Voidfog or only natural weather occurring. The former seemed more likely and came to mind first, given the island’s supposed place of origin, but the visible movement of the storm clouds above him confirmed the latter. A kind of sour humidity had taken up residence in the air, too, not quite pungent enough to cause discomfort, but to enough of a degree to make Slate grateful to be wearing a mask anyways.

Acid rain, then. Not unheard of in and of itself, but Erisia was all the stranger for it.

For the time being, however, the clouds seemed to have only just begun rolling in, so Slate made note and carried on. It probably wouldn’t be so bad.

A little ways in front of him, he spotted the weathered remains of an articulate stone bridge, large and pale and heavily stained with silt. In the past, it seemed to have led to a thick gate carved artfully into the rocky masses surrounding it with greatly refined sweeps and cuts, but now it had all but withstood the test of time, its supporting pillars tilted and broken and its middle half crumpled down into a lower section of the island.

Just beyond the large gate itself, Slate also saw something very interesting; jutting out from the top, there was a smooth ceiling crafted in clear glass and firm grids of iron supports, attached to what he could barely make out to be more stone architecture. It looked blurrily out over the far-reaching horizon, casting so much as a soft gleam over surrounding stone in the wavering light of the setting Suncross’ obscured form.

Slate would have loved to construct some sort of ice-platform to bypass the broken bridge and examine the intriguing sight further, but he knew, glumly, that the acidic humidity in the air would have made any of his frost's structural integrity dubious at best. That, and he didn’t particularly trust himself around such open heights. Not that he was at all scared. No, never.

Instead, he stopped walking once he had approached the bridge, lost in thought. Such old and coherent structures, built so deep into an equally old and enigmatic island. What purpose had they served? In what possible manner, if any at all, could they have been built within such a faulted environment? The lands must have been much simpler in the past, he decided.

It all had a sort of wonder about it, if one didn’t know the ‘wheres’ or ‘hows’. He supposed many things did.

But of course nothing could be purely spectacle, particularly not in Erisia. He’d have poked at the sight with his eyes for minutes longer, strangely fascinated by its inelegance, but the storm was drawing near and there were things to be seen on the island yet. Another time, then.

Just as he’d begun making his way along a series of cliffs not too far away, all of them covered with brownish orange leaves that littered the surrounding foliage to promise a soon-ending season, Slate noticed as something light and fast, a sickly off-green drifted past him, and across the dimming area he soon saw countless of the things falling in the sweeping wind, some of them attaching to his coat to make a short fizzling sound before he wiped them away in distaste.

He walked a little faster after that, and then quickly kicked into a hurried sprint as the bitter drizzle turned into a corrosive torrent, chewing away at his hat by the raindrop, to his utter despair. He hadn’t the ability nor desire at the moment to gaze into the fogged-up landscapes as he ran, which he imagined must have been beautiful in conditions that weren’t acid rain.

Quickly enough, Slate came upon a short wooden bridge held by simply carved stone supports on either side, aged and creaky but otherwise solid as he ran across it into what he only realized was some type of small tower when he was right at its base, then grasping at one of its inner pillars with both hands to catch a deep breath once he was out of the rain.

The very first thing he did after doing so was to take off his hat and assess the damage inflicted. The brown weaving along its outer rim’s diameter had thinned to a noticeable degree, but it seemed otherwise wearable. Were there any tailors or sewists in either of the Etrean Luminant’s settlements? Slate hoped very much so - he liked his hat. It was a nice hat.

The harsh patter of the sour rain outside dulled his senses to an annoying degree, but such weather, too, had a type of wonder to it. He’d seen kinds of acid once or twice before in his travels, and they were swift in their corrosion while this rain of the same liquid was not. The mid-outer supporting pillars of the tower he stood inside had thin cracks and scores along most of its surfaces in which short rivulets of scraping, watery acid flowed down through, but they seemed due to simple age, not unnatural erosion, and the tower had clearly stood unfettered through many years. The acid must need to concentrate in some way to be truly damaging, he decided, which he also thought was a very easy conclusion to come to, and that he should have done so far earlier.

Slate found his head drooping down once he had chided himself, fighting to stay properly aware, and then realized that he was tired. Unsurprisingly so, considering the day’s events and the fact that it was now about closer to midnight than afternoon, and he supposed that this tower would be better a place than most in Erisia to wait out the rain and start his exploration fresh in the morning. Not that he didn’t have his suspicions that there were others lurking somewhere in the island, but he was an easy riser, and felt confident enough in his own practice of self-defense.

So, after finding a slightly-less uncomfortable slope of stone to rest his head upon, removing his mask and repositioning his hat onto his face to act as a muffler, Slate slept, and soon, he dreamt.

- -

“I think you’re kidding.”

Isma looked up from the book’s illustration to face her brother in response, then made a sort of annoyed hissing noise, shifting in his lap to lean her back against his chest.

“I’m not! It really says that, right… here! See?” She said, scanning the page with a finger to find the appropriate line, then eagerly shoving the book directly into his face upon finding it.

Slate craned his neck back, reading it nonetheless, and pressed a breath against the inside of his mask to sigh. “Then whoever wrote this was kidding. Do you really think something could come from… what, ‘another dimension’? They’re just big black birds with arms. How’d this even get published?”

“They’re owls, not birds, Slate.” Isma replied, as if she couldn’t believe she had to explain that to him. “And you believed everything else that was in here! Why would it only be lying about these ones?” She asked, turning back to face the book, fiddling with one of the pages’ crumpled ends as she continued reading.

Slate thought for a moment as he ran a hand through his little sister’s forest-green hair, realizing that she had a point, but the idea of a creature intruding from a different dimension in order to consume his mind and thoughts was such a foreign concept that he just wanted to push it away altogether.

“What’s the next page say about ‘em?” He asked instead, resting his chin upon his sister’s head.

“Umm, it says…” She said, then stopped herself short at the turn of the page. “It’s… blank?”

It was blank.

“Oh, weird. Next one?” Slate asked, blinking.

It was blank.

“What..?” He said, confused, raising his head and leaning over to view it closer. “Let me see it.”

The girl gave him a book with no response, and the rest of its pages were also blank, or stained with emptiness, as it were. He flipped a few pages back in bewilderment, but found all of the previously-read ones to be blank, too.

“What’s… Did you… do something here?” He asked slowly, tearing his gaze away from the purple tome to face someone, which took more effort than he thought it should have.

But nobody was there.

- -

And Slate woke up.

The first thing he noticed when he did so was that the rain had stopped at some point, definitely recently, since the air within his hideout was still dense and humid. The warm light of the Suncross was just barely beginning to creep through the tower’s opening and blur through his threadbare hat, and he felt fairly rested, so he estimated that he’d woken up close to late morning.

Once he’d groggily shook himself awake, Slate walked outside of the tower and, now with the time to do so freely, looked at it properly. It was not a very complex thing, with simple grooves and carve-work along an unimposing entranceway which was only thing that truly stood out, but its design reminded him of the stone architecture he’d seen the day prior, which was already plenty engrossing to someone like him.

With so much to think about, Slate was beginning to wonder whether everything on the island was truly so impressive, or if he was just an easily impressed person. Hm.

After scaling the tower itself (not easily - it was still damp), he saw five more identical towers scattered across what he thrillingly found to be an incredibly large and unevenly excavated quarry, rising and falling with torn cliffsides everywhere below him. The looming structures led to an even deeper part of the island, cut off by an unclimbable gap and dense with greenery.

If before the island’s architecture was thought-provoking, now it was nigh-spellbinding, leaving Slate to stare at his environment in silent, honest enthrallment for minutes on end. Surely, Erisia would soon begin to run out of its beauty and wonder. If it wouldn’t, then Slate was genuinely worried he’d be forced to stay on the island for much longer than intended.

From there it wasn’t a long journey at all. Slate soon found that there were connecting stone overpasses built into each of the towers in the area, and after he’d blissfully walked across each one it was an easy run-and-jump onto an upper mass of rock to reach solid ground once more.

So far into the island’s thick atmosphere, Slate noted that there was now no truly obvious path forward, surrounded on all sides by ivy-strewn cliffs and thick, swallowing trees towering over him into hard brushstrokes of green and brown. A further distinct acidity was charged in the very air, tightening in his throat as he breathed and straining his eyes as he watched the scenery with thought.

As he moved deeper and deeper, he even came across entire rivers of that nauseatingly green acid, fizzling slowly along their entire lengths and eating away at the surrounding dirt, playing tentatively distorted reflections of himself back as he stared down into them.

That was what let him realize that his scarf was now entirely torn and frayed, desaturating towards its trailing-off ends, probably from the very acid these rivers had accumulated into the atmosphere to cast down upon him from the skies. He scowled a bit at the thought, though the wavy reflection’s expression stayed the same underneath its mask, as if taunting him for it ever-so-distantly. Rude.

But Slate would never let such a little thing poison the beauty of the place, so he kept moving. He started to spot entire roots, tearing out from and curling back into the tarnished earth with grand strides, warped by the acid and humidity that no place on the island could escape. Then there were the jagged rock-faces that littered the edges of the area, drastically varying in irregular shape and size, each swept with what seemed to be disheveled and unpredictable carves of un-meticulous detail. For their resources, Slate assumed, but wasn’t there already the quarry?

Different parts of the environment kept catching Slate's eye as he walked, patient and untiring, until at some point he realized he'd just walked through a wide and doorless gateway without noticing. Confused, he turned around to inspect it properly, but soon found that there wasn’t much to note about it, simple in both design and material.

And then, he heard a noise.

A whirring, almost mechanical noise coming from somewhere not far from where he stood, and it was getting closer.

Not closer, he realized. Louder.

And at its crescendo, the screeching blare of energy being displaced was all the warning Slate got before he suddenly ducked behind the gate out of reflex, and an unbearably scorching-hot blast of sheer, blurry white whizzed right past him, then impacted a nearby wall into an explosion of mud, stone and grass with a noise louder than Slate expected.

He murmured something with mild distaste beneath a low breath after finding his coat-arm lightly singed, then slowly peeked his head around the gate’s corner.

And what he saw was by far the most jarring thing he’d seen in Erisia yet. Marching formidably through the acid-swept territory were great, fragmented creatures, immense and made up of rough-hewn stone with jagged patterns and scores carved into every perceivable surface. Some were permanently fixed into irregular stone overhangs with only their torsos allowed to breathe freely, while others were busying themselves by scouting their environment in looping, deliberate paths, their massive footsteps beaten into the same soft dirt a thousand times over.

Sentries. Guardians, perhaps.

Slate looked to the one in particular that he assumed had fired at him. It was paused, glancing around the area with deliberate turns of its upper body (probably because it possessed no neck), but without rediscovering its designated intruder, it soon resumed its robotic march once more.

They must have been here for years. If not, the island must truly be so consuming, Slate thought. The golems were overgrown in more than a few ways, though the moss and dirt strewn about their crevices did little to stagnate them in their eternal promenade.

But what were they, really? He’d never read of any such creatures, and he’d read of many creatures, so they must be native to the island. They were carved of stone, that much was clear, and the environment had plenty of stone carved out from it, but how did they move? As far as he knew, there was no Attunement capable of moving or creating stone, or any Attunement able to create something that might be considered alive, and then keep that something alive for so long.

He so badly wanted to study them up-close, but if that first golem was any indication of what might happen, his next best bet was to spectate them from somewhere up high. So, he took a measured step away from the gate, but immediately he ran into what felt like a stern wall of soft, black material. Slate blinked, though he didn’t need to realize what it was for his heart to drop.

“A little mouse comes squeaking into my nest,” An owl, for that was what Slate saw, said.

“What possesses it to do so? Please, do sate my curiosity.” It requested evenly, voice deep with authority, and as Slate wearily looked up, he saw its pitch-black talons already flared outward in pleasured anticipation.

Well. He was never one to let a question go unanswered.

“I was only- gherk!” He ripped a dry cough from his throat, finding his voice rasped and hoarse from multiple days of disuse, then instantly prostrated himself and stood firmly to try again.

“-Ahem. Sorry for that. I was just passing through, intrigued by all that this place- ah… your nest, has to offer. I’m on my way out now.” Slate finally responded, calm as he thought possible in such a situation, though his tone didn’t quite come out as even as he’d hoped.

The owl bristled once, quietly, and let out a short, almost childish laugh. “Ah. Carry on then, little mouse. I'm sure you have places to be.” Its beak distorted into a smile, and it shifted its beastly form to the side with a single step to let out an inviting hand for Slate to proceed.

Slate blinked again. Surely, it couldn’t be so easy. Deep Owls, from what he recalled reading somewhere, are significantly intelligent and enigmatic creatures, ferocious as they are cunning. A distinctly small number of truly first-hand accounts of them exist, but from what Slate barely remembered, they never actually attacked unless provoked in some way.

Maybe it could be so easy, then.

“You’d best be on your way now, little mouse.” The owl itself said suddenly, interrupting his thoughts with a deep, guttural noise, and Slate realized he’d been staring at it for longer than what would probably be socially acceptable. “Before my hunger eclipses my own politeness.”

To his credit, Slate was at least savvy enough to know what such a sentence implied, so he decided to do just that.

“-Yes, yes, thanks- Thank-you!” Slate stammered, audibly dumbfounded, and turned back as he began walking to give the creature a timid wave. It raised one hand (to Slate’s instantaneous dismay), only to give its own wave back, slowly curling and uncurling each of its pale fingers in order dauntingly.

However beautiful the island was, and however badly Slate wanted to see what it was that those stone golems stood vigil for, he decided in a final moment of clarity that he would not be returning for quite some time.

Chapter Text

He glanced at the straightened wood that made up the walls’ frame and looked up at the sparring hall, enormous and winding. It felt strange.

It felt like, somehow, he shouldn’t have been allowed to be in such a place, even though that didn’t make any sense at all. He was missing something here, he was sure of it, and it set him on edge in a way he couldn’t explain.

“Focus, Slate!”

Something hard and cold impacted his stomach, and all at once the air left his body in a razor-sharp loss of clarity, disallowing him to do so much as feel the floor beneath his feet. He lost his focus, and his head began to throb fiercely as his awareness of the situation waned.

But then something held his shoulder, and he was able to bring a hand to his forehead gracelessly, slowing the windlessness to a much more desirable extent and allowing himself to realize he was being spoken to.

“Your movements lack discipline.” A stern, not unkind voice told Slate from right in front of his face, bringing him to his senses in an instant. Slate made a discomforted noise, and absently brushed the Maestro’s hand from his shoulder.

“Sorry. Must’ve… let my head drift for a second there…” He replied absently, searching the pristinely pale floor to find the weapon recently displaced from his hand, then bending down upon spotting it.

The Maestro appraised him silently as he did this, then let a thin smile plaster his face as he was looked back to.

“Slate. Would you join me for a quick lunch?”

- -

A gentle, constant wind blew through the Isle of Vigils’ crisp air. Dew-touched grass shifted evenly against Slate’s shoes as he looked thoughtfully at every little thing the island had to offer his gaze, sat quietly at a crackling campfire with the Maestro on one of the island’s outer formations.

He had seen this place once before. Distantly, when he’d first sailed into the Etrean Luminant from the East, only two or so days ago. But by the time he had realized that it was indeed a populated island and not just a collection of tall, winding rock formations, he’d already set foot on the front beach of Erisia, and he was the type of person that didn’t like to leave one thing to do another without finishing the first. A good or bad trait, he wasn’t sure.

But the sight of those towering stone hills and cliffs didn’t do them any justice at all when seen from afar. Only when one is allowed to sit right along with them, taking in the cool breeze of a freshly-come Winter and listening to the harmony of countless quietly chittering and chattering sounds from all across the island, Slate found, it must perhaps be one of the most soothing experiences the world has to offer.

That is to say, he was enjoying his stay very much.

“Your blade…” The Maestro slowly began, and Slate turned his head to see the man pouring a cup of steaming liquid for him.

“…Is rather strange, and your bladesmanship, perhaps, stranger. If I may ask, where did you learn?”

An odd question, Slate thought, and one with a complicated answer. He was never taught in the ways of combat, not truly, but observing others came freely and he’d always had both endless time for practice and endless need for improvement. What he had amassed by this point was a poor mixture of maybe two-and-a-half styles of combat he’d learned partially over the years, but it had worked well enough. He was still alive, and he always had his Attunement.

“Here and there, I think. Thank you.” He decided, taking a warm ceramic cup of liquid the Maestro had offered into his hands. “Nowhere in particular.”

The Maestro let out a disapproving noise at Slate’s response. “I supposed as much. It is… Regrettable, but few have the time to apply themselves to the art of the Blade these years.”

Slate took a venturing sip of his provided drink as the man began to list off a few of the finer points of bladesmanship as an art. It was tea, he discovered, bitter with something like ginger and weirdly savory plants. Not something he would readily drink by choice, but he had no intention of spitting in the face of the Maestro, figuratively nor otherwise. He swallowed it cautiously.

“Yes...” The Maestro carried on. “We only spoke briefly before I offered a spar. Where did you say you were from, if not the city of Etris?”

Slate winced. He didn’t want to think about that.

“…The North.” He replied lowly. “I went around the East for a while to do some things, then came over here after a few months.”

“The North!” The Maestro repeated in wonder, voice pitched in surprise. “Such a dangerous place, I’ve heard. How ever did you -“

“- I’d,” Slate cut him short. “Rather not talk about it.” He swallowed, already regretting it. “Sorry.”

If the Maestro had taken offense, he didn’t show it, instead nodding sagely before turning back to face the windy hills, to Slate’s relief.

Such views had always been good distractions, he found. Without any companions on his travels he was alone with just his thoughts more often than not, and his thoughts tended to wander to places he did not like. Taking in the world around him let them drift instead to more bearable ones. Warmer, more… comfortable ones.

Away from what he left behind.

There were a few moments of quiet eating and Slate making stifled disgusted sounds at the tea as he drank it. Then, the Maestro put his own cup down with a soft thump in his lap.

“Do you wonder whether these winds are naturally-occuring?” He asked, raising a hand partially into the cool air and letting his fingers fall backward slowly from the constant stream of gust. “It’s a strange phenomenon. You’ll find little like it anywhere else.”

Slate had been wondering, and he set his cup down to look once again into the open air. A stray breeze brushed into the bottom of his mask and up against his chin, as if looking back.

The Maestro continued in Slate’s silence. “Admittedly, I don’t know myself. But, I like it. It is soothing, as well as fitting for this place, I should think.” He said mildly, then chuckled lightly to himself soon after.

Slate gave a low laugh that turned into a tired, huffing sigh. The Maestro turned his head back expectantly, lowering his hand.

“There’s a lot of things like that out there, aren’t there?” Slate said quietly, fidgeting with a loose thread on his coat. “Weird. Unique. I wonder if that makes them all more, or less special?”

The Maestro paused, humming a low note, perhaps pondering Slate’s meaning.

“That depends on what you believe is special, I imagine.” He finally said.

“Right.” Slate murmured, more to himself than the Maestro. He stared into the wavering campfire before him, trailing his eyes along the glowing ashes twirling into the lower grass, thinking on it. He reached for a piece of bread absently, and took a short bite from it. It tasted good.

“More, then.”

- - - - - - - - - -

The rest of the conversation was not very memorable, but he appreciated the opportunity to sit down and talk with someone about even nothing at all, considering how rarely it came to him. At some point towards the end, the Maestro (Evengarde, that was his name.) had recommended that Slate see the Temple of Blade’s actual inner halls for himself, considering he had entered through a sort of back-entrance into the lower sparring hall, so he decided to do just that.

Its initial entrance was already rather impressive, in Slate’s opinion. Cleanly-cut grass and tidy stone pathways split left and right towards hallway doors leading inside, and in the center was a neatly-carved stone that was trickling water into a small pond from higher rock-faced hills, the water itself moving so evenly and quietly that one might not be able to tell if it was actually moving at all until they moved closer.

And it was quiet. Utterly separated from the island’s constant wind above, strangely muffled so that the silence was simple and pressing within the temple’s hardened walls.

It reminded him of something, distantly.

Once he’d wandered inside the temple proper, there were smooth walls lined with sturdy wood and bathed in warm light from grounded torches, richly colored in browns and oranges that painted a soothing atmosphere no matter which way he looked at it. Not that he wasn’t already looking at it with a soothingness in mind, of course.

Even past the warmth, the faint noises of clattering metal from somewhere deeper inside and occasional passing conversations he heard was a good reminder that this place was well and truly alive, and it had been for a very long time. When he thought about it, even that was a rarity in his travels, where the most day-to-day social interaction he’d get would be a hurried and uninterested passerby, or any of those distastefully loud-mouthed bandits.

Even so, the temple did not make itself out to be distinctly large. The first hallway he’d entered then split into two almost as soon as it’d begun, and upon the wall were three wood-carved signs shaped like pointing arrows, all engraved with ink-black lettering that didn’t look very old. The top two pointed left, and the bottom one to the right. They read; ‘BLACKSMITH’, ‘TRAINERS’, and ‘MANTRA’.

Slate leaned forward and slowly turned his head both ways to seek any more clarification, but found only the same richly-lit hallways on either side. Well, he had no particular need for any smithing or training at the moment, and just the magical word ‘Mantra’ alone piqued his insatiable interest enough, so he shrugged after just a moment and took a right.

Perhaps even sooner, Slate turned abruptly into a seemingly random doorway and was taken aback to find a room that was almost overcrowded wall-to-wall by shelves and shelves made from delicately carved wood, the floors strewn with scrawled sheets of paper and huddled in the corners by old, splintering barrels that were generously coated in dust.

But there were also, by far the most eye-catching, books. Covering every single one of those shelves were countless books and volumes of varying width, height and color, most of which having clearly defined titles and authors carved neatly into their spines, while the more elusive and mysterious (and in his opinion, more interesting) of them were left blank on their outer covers. Slate made a grateful hum as he stepped in from the warmer hallway, taking in the sight of it all.

He was fully delighted to be in such a place, but made note to not get too excited. He didn’t know how this place worked. Surely, he wouldn’t be allowed to just… take any of them at his own leisure. For free? Surely not.

Slate stepped a bit further into the room, then caught sight of a dark-skinned Etrean woman who seemed to be busying herself with some assorted papers, neatly handling them across a low wooden crate.

“Excuse me.” He said, already walking in her direction.

The woman set one last paper over another with a practiced precision, then tilted her head up to face Slate.

“Ah, hello!” She replied, not sounding particularly surprised. “Looking to pawn something off?”

“What?” Slate said, confused. “No, should I be?”

“Oh, sorry. I’m this temple’s antiquarian, so I thought…” She trailed off. “Nevermind. Did you need something?”

“All good. Ah…” Slate replied, then took a glance at his surroundings. “Do you know where we are?”

The woman squinted at him for a moment with curious eyes. “The Isle of Vigils. You’ve never been?” She asked.

“No, I mean - well, I haven’t, but I knew that.” Slate stuttered. “I mean, this place.” He clarified, using both hands to point at the floor.

There was a moment of silence.

“The… temple?”

“This place.” He reiterated, pointing once more. “The room we’re in.”

“Oh! You mean the library?” The woman finally grasped.

‘Library’. Of course. That’s what these were called. He knew that.

“Right. Library.” Slate repeated, nodding his head once in approval. “So, I can just take any of these and read them?” He gestured towards a bookshelf.

“Um… I don’t know, you’ll have to ask the librarian,” The woman told him, raising one hand from her crate to point somewhere behind Slate. “I don’t really read books…”

“Oh. Well, you should. They’re good.”

“Mhm.”

Another silence.

Slate scratched his chin. “Well. Thanks!” He finally said, then began to turn around and make his way further inside. “Good luck with your… Antiquarian-ing.” He finished lamely, already trying to forget the tail-end of the conversation.

“You too, with your… Reading.” The woman replied almost just as lamely, then turned back to her papers.

‘Library’. The word bounced in his head like a rubber ball. A very long time ago, he had been in a place that might be considered a library. Somewhere with books containing endless knowledge, and back then, he had endless time to take in that knowledge. He supposed it was where he came to love the world, and perhaps where he gained his endlessly hungering desire to seek out more of it.

Yet it felt like a pressure caught in his throat, when he had to think of that place. The Northern Luminant. He knew, knew that it would have been torture to stay there any longer, but the thoughts tore and scraped from the back of his mind anyway, rising unsteadily, floodlike in a stifled wracking of guilt, almost too much to ignore.

Everything was starting to remind him of it, but there was little time to waste feeling sorry for himself. He had plenty of things to do.

Plenty.

It didn’t take him very long to find who he was looking for. The library was as quiet as expected, and after carefully edging around some disorganized crates, tables and papers scattered across the floor, Slate caught sight of a neatly dressed Adretian man with saturated blue skin and formal attire of a mostly darker blue, quietly reading a book behind a wooden desk. If there was a librarian in this place, Slate decided it would almost definitely be him.

“Excuse me.” Slate said once more, too unbothered to say something different. The Adret looked up from his book and set it face-down just as fast, seeming pleasantly surprised to have a visitor.

“Ah, welcome to my library!” He said with a cheery tone, almost too loud inside the room’s unmoving air. “I’m Kelsius. Looking for something?”

“Yes.” Slate replied simply, then tilted his hand back to gesture behind him. “I was hoping to buy some books. Or just read them, at least.” He let his hand down. “Can I?”

Kelsius hummed at Slate’s words, and propped his elbow onto the desk to rest his chin atop an open palm.

“Hmm… I don't think I would be willing to part with such knowledge without a good judge of your character. I haven’t seen your face - err, mask around here before, have I?”

Slate didn’t see why the librarian thought these books were so entirely valuable that money alone wouldn’t resolve him of enough suspicion, but he decided not to mention it.

Instead, he pointed at his own mask in response. “You haven’t. I’ve never been here before.” He said, giving it a light, hollow tap. “How do I get my character to be judged as good, then?”

Kelsius took another careful moment to silently appraise Slate, then suddenly raised his eyebrows, as if something had occurred to him.

“…Actually, would you be interested in completing an errand for me? It shouldn’t take too long.”

Slate blinked. “What is it?” He asked plainly.

Kelsius made a grimace and lightly scrunched his face, as if being forced to resurface some bad memory.

“Ah. Well. Some young folks borrowed a few of my books for what was meant to be a couple of weeks, and they still haven’t returned them after three months.” He explained, then made a quick glance behind Slate. “Could you… retrieve them for me?”

Slate frowned, though it wasn’t seen behind his mask. The actions of the few reverberate through the many, then. It wasn’t hard to assume that Slate’s own newness wasn’t a problem by itself, but that coupled with these ‘young folks’ made the librarian untrusting enough of him. He supposed it was fair, yet it was annoying nonetheless.

“I’ll get them for you.” He finally said. “Where am I looking?”

“Great!” The librarian exclaimed. “You should be able to find them in the abandoned lodge in the woods below Etris. I’m expecting great things from you!” He grinned, giving Slate two thumbs-ups.

“Etris.” Slate repeated. “OK.”

- -

It was quieter outside now, though that was probably the result of all the living creatures on the island settling in for the evening, since the even breeze he could still feel up the back of his neck had all but ceased. The time had clearly passed since his arrival, and it surely had been well spent, but it wouldn’t take him more than an hour or two to sail to that city. Three, at most. He could easily just find some sort of inn once he arrives, sleep the rest of the night away, and then -

“- Hey, are you even listening?!”

Slate blinked, and tore his gaze away from the open sea to see the dockmaster, who had a look that was half-tired and half-annoyed.

“Sorry. Where did you say?”

The dockmaster made a short frustrated sound. “Yer’ the one that asked. Pay attention, would ya’?” He told Slate, then grabbed his shoulder and pointed one wrinkled finger towards the sea.

“That’s where yer’ going. That big, what’retheycalled… Highway Gate! Y’see?”

Slate looked forward, and could just barely make out the outline of that massive metal structure, parting a large stone formation and passing into a further outstretch of sea. He’d passed through it once before. There didn’t seem to be much else to it.

“I do.” He said. “And?”

“They’re made by some big-shot Thundercalling company, right? Gives yer’ boat a big jolt with some powered waves when you get into the highway. Makes you go reeeaaalll fast until yer’ out of it.”

Slate gave the man a look. He looked back, then made a defensive gesture with both of his hands.

“Don’t ask me how. It’s just how they work.” He explained. “Any-hoo. Once yer’ in, just take a right and go straight till’ you see another gate, and the docks should be visible by then. Got it?”

“Got it. Thanks.” Slate replied exhaustedly, then reached into a pocket and grabbed a small jingling pouch of Notes.

“Is the sloop ready?”

Chapter Text

The sea.

It is consuming. World-spanning. It is all Lumen knows and, perhaps, all it can ever know.

It is the constant. It is Death.

He looks down into it. There is nothing. No truly discernible forms. A dullness overwhelms him.

The sea.

The Tides are hateful, driven forth a thousand times over. Below them are the Depths, that which drags and scrapes and coils around kingdoms and living Souls like body heat drawn into an ice bath; not to sate any desire, but only because that is how it must function.

Living beings must consume in order to continue living, after all.

But the Depths are only an eroding maw, quietly awaiting whatever is swept inward by the Tides. There is something furious in the underbelly of the lands, he can feel, further and further below. Something raging so quietly and insidiously that to face it as he had been would be to blot himself out from existence as thoroughly as the Suncross bleaches the color from one’s bones.

The Drowned Gods.

But they are not Gods.

Gods are absolute in what they command. In ages past, the Tides might have never even been, right up until some unheeding scholars (for example) dipped their fingers into the silent plane of the Song and found themselves waking the ancient beings who sang it in slumber as their birthright. Those beings slept without possibility of awakening otherwise, content alongside themselves, and they were not Gods.

Not Gods. Greater beings, perhaps. Forces. Without need for idols or worship, only quiet sleep. A person holds no true power over an insect; they’ve only the choice to either smear it against the cold, uncaring dirt, or leave it to its own devices.

Most of the time, they do not even realize it is there.

But they shifted in their perfect sleep, when that time came again, and the aftermath -

Bump.

- -

“- Aghk?!”

It was more startling than he would have liked to admit when his sloop reached the docks, having let his mind drift away when at some point he’d begun staring off into the dark waves. He fumbled for a moment in panic once the boat collided mildly against the stern, red-painted wood of the docks’ support beams, before quietly regaining his posture and actually looking at where he’d arrived.

He’d arrived at the Etris Docks. Of course. The Moonseye was mostly risen by now, closer to a late evening, and Slate had been hoping that there would be at least a few more people to welcome him there, even if he had arrived rather late.
But there were no people, only a simple silence and the quietly creeping noises of the waves that brushed against his sloop. It made him a little uneasy, though he didn’t think he could explain why if asked so.

After a few minutes of meticulously mooring his sloop to another sturdy support beam, then, Slate groggily pulled himself up a damp ladder and began passing through the docks proper, too tired and wishing for rest to analyze them as efficiently as he usually might. They were red, and sort of prettily designed, but it was too dark to make out anything past that. The low-lit lanterns hung from various higher intersecting points did little for actual illumination, but he appreciated the thought.

Slate followed his general sense of direction forward alongside a path the wooden beams made until eventually he exited the docks into even more dark terrain, grassy and even, and he could just barely make out a straight stone road against the rest of the ground. There was little he could do other than follow it carefully.
So far from the city itself and far enough from the waves, he noted that the island was entirely quiet. Even if it was still only at night, he didn’t like that.

Slate kept walking, perhaps a bit more hastily than usual, and as soon as he’d entered what was soon found to be a pitch-black cave, pressing and sloped, all he could force himself to think about was how utterly devoid of lamps or torches the place was. He even recalled seeing fire posts just outside the docks’ entrance, but they had been left unlit in the night. Strange.

The cave was not very complicated so long as he was able to pull himself along the rightmost wall, dry and strangely not as cold as he’d expected, but, as one might expect, walking alone in a silent, unfamiliar cave where all one can see is black against blacker is not the most pleasant circumstance that can be experienced.

But at some point the slopes did gradually lessen in their steepness and the darks turned to cool grays and browns, the ascent soon coming to a stop at one final turn of the wall, and finally he had made it out, feeling a gentle wind brush at his hair once more and seeing the stars above blinking disantly.

It was still so dark that Slate could just barely see the shapes of things only within the low gleam of light the Moonseye let off high above, natural fauna silhouetted with black and the curve of the path now laid bare, but at least now it began to curve into something mostly flat.

And in the distance, too, nearly a full mile high above the churning seas below, perhaps at one of the highest points in the entire Luminant, Slate could make out black, towering silhouettes of the city of Etris and its buildings, barely-visible vacuums devoid of stars in the darker sky, whole statements of existence in the night.

He really needed some sleep. It can’t be right to be marveling at literal silhouettes, Slate thought with some humor as he moved further.

As it were, he could now hear a quiet murmuring of various voices speaking amongst themselves from somewhere deeper into the area. But seeing as he possessed no supernaturally powerful hearing ability, Slate assumed it was from somewhere closer than the city itself.

He cast an appraising eye into the dark terrain and, once he’d walked a little further and looked a little closer, spotted a series of tents highlighted by the soft orange glow of simple wax lamps and a burning campfire, and gathered amongst them were maybe twelve people (All Gremors, easily told by their distinct protruding horns), each one of them busied with simple tasks like weaving cloth or handling foodstuffs.

And Slate could already see someone who looked like a leader to the others, an old woman with differently decorated clothing and roughly grayed hair, sat peacefully near the base of the center campfire with her eyes closed.

Maybe the city just did not very readily welcome other races into its gates as it would Etreans, Slate thought wryly as he continued forward.

He walked into the camp and past a few working Gremors, seeming unbothered by him either by being too focused in their tasks or too uninterested in him altogether, and trotted up to the woman he assumed to be the leader. The Gremor cracked one eye open in an instant, and her expression soured.

“Keep your distance from my people, homelander. I do not wish for this to become violent.” She said calmly.

Slate stopped abruptly. “Neither do I. Sorry, I was just passing through towards the city, and this place isn’t very hard to notice in the night, I think.” He told her in what he thought to be a reassuring tone.

The woman opened her other eye, and tilted her head upwards to scrutinize Slate properly.

“Vesperians rarely come to Etris. What are you doing here, then?” She asked with a hint of curiosity.

Slate squinted his eyes. “I don’t imagine they would. The Hive is all well and good, but I much prefer exploring the world for myself.” He paused, then added: “Which is what I’m doing.”

The woman nodded mutely, still looking at him. Slate put his hands on his hips awkwardly, a little glad that his mask made eye contact a thing that he didn’t have to make an effort for.

“So, why are you all out here?” He asked nonchalantly, his curiosity perhaps already getting the better of him.

The woman scoffed, and stopped looking at her visitor for the first time.

“The Lord Regent does not so easily accept those he might consider outsiders as his predecessor did.” She told him simply. “Though we would not choose to live among them anyway, now there is no choice.”

Slate thought that that wasn’t really a direct answer to what he had asked, but decided not to push his luck.

“Then they’re not fans of your religion, I’m guessing. Navaens, right?” He surmised.

The woman made an agreeing noise. “They are not, but it is also not just that. Gremorians, Khans, Canorians… They seem not to be particular fans of any person who is not Etrean.” She said without looking back at him.

“Oh… They’re racist…” Slate murmured.

She looked back at him.

“Are you leaving now?” The woman urged, sounding more tired than annoyed. “For you, the city is still a ways away, and it is already so late.”

Slate looked back to the city and reached one hand up to scratch his head.

“Now that you’ve mentioned it, would they even let me in? They’re not on super good terms with the Hive, are they? Not that I’m with them, but y’know.” He waved the same hand to gesture in the air, and then slowly turned back to the woman.

“Also, it’s really dark.”

The woman lowered her eyelids, then suddenly began to stand up, her purple attire ruffling against the grass in protest as she did so, and she bent down lightly to brush something off from it.

“You are of no obligation to enter that place if you do not want to. But, their guards are usually only unkind to travelers like you, not denying of them.” She explained to Slate as she slowly walked towards and stepped into one of the nearby tents, and soon returned with a simple bronze lamp held by one small, creaking handle, its wick recently lit.

“As for the night, I will give this to you. You may return it tomorrow if you like, but I will not ask you to.” She told Slate, who confusedly took the lamp into both hands.

“Oh. Wait, really? Are you sure?” He asked, caught off-guard by the delicate act.

“Yes, take it.” The woman confirmed, pushing the lamp further into Slate’s grasp. “We have many, and you appear to be a kind person.” She said, and Slate could just barely make out a light smile upon her face contrasted in the flickering campfire’s warm orange light amidst the dark.

Slate paused. He didn’t think he had been particularly kind to the woman, but it wasn’t hard for him to recall that a very basic respect and the bare minimum of ‘being nice’ is rather hard to come by in the world, and not something he would come to expect from most other travelers.

But he also imagined he’d need the lamp, if the city was as dark above as the island is below near the shores, so he took it carefully by the handle into one hand and let it rest by his waist.

“Thank-you, then. If I can think of any way I could make it up to you by tomorrow, I will.” He said decidedly, then firmly smiled back under his mask. “Take care.”

The woman nodded once, wordlessly, and seemed content as she watched her visitor leave.

Slate, freed of his obligation to continue the socialization that he had begun, quickly strode off in the direction of the city. Sure enough, the path was traveled much more confidently with the Nomads’ careworn lamp in-hand, and even though most everything farther than a few feet away from him was still too dark to make out, he found that walking amidst the greenery of Etris, now painted in flickering shades of deep oranges and browns, listening to the almost-silent wind of a night in Etris, was more relaxing than he would have expected.

Yet it was still dull. Slate had never particularly appreciated places in which he was unable to properly admire the landscape through one way or another, so traveling in the night where he might only be able to see the dry dirt and stone beneath his feet wore on him. From there he should have heard the casual, chittering sounds of a closing-in city like staying with the Vigils had shown him, in a place that lived with all the citizens it ought to have, but there was truly nothing that could be heard beyond the stiffly ruffling grass and some distant insects doing as they did. He still didn’t like it.

But the scowl began to trail off from his face as soon as the grassy hills and curving dirt road at some point came up to a bridge. It creaked a little bit as Slate hurriedly walked across it, and he made yet another mental note to himself to look at it properly when he’s less desperate for a proper place to sleep.

The silence dragged on as he walked off from it nonetheless, but soon enough Slate found what he had been more or less looking for. Standing (or, more accurately, sloppily leaning) against what Slate discovered to be the main gate to the city was someone who appeared to be an Etrean guard, having very obviously fallen asleep on the job, cozily propped up and supported by an ornate spear as he breathed slowly in and out.

Slate considered the man for a moment, then approached him. He did not wake.

“…Hello?” Slate said out-loud. Nothing happened.

He didn’t really know exactly what type of action the situation merited, but he supposed that silently passing through the gates without express permission to do so would more likely end poorly than just waking the man up and asking, so he breathed out a sigh and tried again.

“Hello.” Slate repeated, marginally louder this time, and reached out a hand to tap the man on his shoulder. He appeared to wince for a moment, but his face rested back almost instantly. Slate narrowed his eyes.

“Excuse me.” He raised his voice up to a little quieter than a yell, and gripped the man’s shoulder to begin shaking him mildly. The result was more or less the same however, and Slate was beginning to consider just -

“- AAAH!!! WHAT?!”

Finally, the Etrean’s eyes shot wide-open in a rapid instant, and Slate made quick note to step back when he jerked into an uncoordinated motion, gripping his spear from its tilted position and pulling his gaze wildly around the area.

“...What?” He whispered, then squinted at Slate as if he had only just appeared. Slate sighed.

“Hi.” He greeted for the millionth time. “Do you know where I could find an inn here?”

“Are you…” The guard began with a distant voice, slowly scanning Slate, “One of those bugs?”

To a technicality, Slate thought that the man hadn’t made an entirely wrong observation, but he also didn’t really care enough at the moment to entertain it. Also, it was sort of racist.

He pressed on anyway. “Can I just go through here?” Slate asked, and pointed a finger into the gate.

The guard made a startled noise, as if the final part of his brain had only now kicked into life, and the drowsy torpor seemed to fade as he straightened his posture and blinked again.

“Oh! No, yeah man, we have an inn, it’s just, uh…” He pointed to Slate’s left into the mostly-dark. “You’re gonna want - oh, it’s really dark. You just go through there past the first bridge, then take a left to another bridge, and… then, uh… yeah.” He slowly began to trail off, then turned to look at Slate, who was staring at the man. “That’s about it.”

Slate nodded mildly. “I think I’ll find it. Thanks.” He assured the man, and began to walk off in the indicated direction.

“I won’t tell them you were sleeping, by the way!” He added.

The man only gave a weak nod in thanks, and Slate could have sworn he saw his eyes already begin to close as soon as he turned away.

To that end, he continued. The path forward was more darkened grass for a short time, but as soon as he passed through the secondary gate, his next steps forward instantly became clear.

The city of Etris, as it happened, seemed to be a rather intriguing place, even when viewed in the night. Segmented pillars of rock in varying carved sizes were decorated with more than a few wooden and metal contraptions (things, as Slate knew them), all parts of which were dimly lit by paper lanterns hung low from the roofs of surrounding buildings.

Slate followed the curving outlines of a few soft-edged shapes in the cityscape with his eyes, and managed to make out a general way forward past a series of sturdily-supported bridges. The safety nets below were a nice touch too, he thought, and then quickly stopped himself from wondering why they had needed to install them.

The massive center tree was particularly interesting, mostly because Slate was unable to decide how it could’ve possibly been grown there. Not only was it especially large, with curling, clean roots and a dense pale base and trunk, it was also firmly planted into a half-mile tall piece of rock with nothing but the churning sea below, with no clear signs of withering and very clear signs of age and health. Slate, with little knowledge regarding how trees are meant to work, decided the answer was above any reasonable expertise that he might have had and continued along the next bridge.

And as expected, the bridge in question led to another hunk of solid rock and earth, which then led to the outer side-wall of what seemed to be a refined building made up of tidy stone and wooden frames. Slate held his lantern up to see better, and nearly displaced his mask from his face in shock when a pale-green sign surfaced out from the dark, reading, ‘INN’.

That was, of course, what Slate had been seeking since even before he had docked onto the island, so he hurriedly composed himself and rushed around the side of the building, immediately spotting the entrance and hopping over some wooden railing to enter as fast as possible.

This took him into an especially small room, and he quickly found someone who was probably meant to be the receptionist, lying face-down behind a counter with their arms lazily flopped on top, very obviously asleep. Slate was beginning to think that Etris did not typically have visitors in the night, if everyone was so keen on abandoning their duties as they did.

Well, it wasn’t like he knew how the system worked, and he didn’t really blame them, but it was probably at least partially their faults for taking up the jobs in the first place, he mused to himself before trodding up to the counter and ringing the small bell to its side.

Its ring quickly resounded through the tiny room, and the receptionist instantly shot up.

“GAH!” They rigidly jerked into life, clearly not as deep a sleeper as Slate’s previous encounter, and had to blink a few times before realizing someone was standing in front of them. “Uuh..?”

“How much for one night?” Slate asked decisively and tiredly, already producing a small pouch of a few loose notes. “Whatever room’s good.”

“Oh…” The receptionist looked a little dejected, or maybe they were still sleepy. He didn't know. “Just 20, then… The room farthest to the right should be empty, on this side.” They said, pointing backwards with a thumb and then rubbing an eye with their free hand. “What time is it..?”

“I don’t know. Moonseye’s plenty out, though.” Slate remarked distractedly after counting four 5-piece notes, then slid them all across the counter at once. “Sorry for waking you. G’night.”

Slate, who had already left the receptionist for the hall, heard them lazily respond with a single word, then immediately smack their face against the counter and begin snoring.

Had he arrived a little later, or been any less tired, Slate didn’t think he would have minded engaging them with some small conversation about how business went, or what the locals were like, or any otherwise boring topic, and he probably would have tried to, but he was at a point where he really just wanted to end the day there and start another morning fresh.

So he quickly found his room and discovered that there was absolutely nothing noteworthy about it, with a small blanket and pillow laid neatly on a plain softish floor, the area of which was no larger in size than perhaps a bedroom closet. Slate thought that he much preferred the Vigils’ inn to this one, objectively better in both quality and atmosphere, but he didn’t really have much room or desire to complain. Thus, he removed his hat, placed the low-burning lamp in a corner just next to his aching feet, settled in, and waited to fall asleep.

While he waited, he wondered. He might have taken up that librarian’s offer as soon as he could’ve, but really, that was just because he didn’t have anything else to do with his time. He would have plenty of books to read after, of course, but when he thought of what would happen after that, he could only draw blanks.

He wondered what he would, really, do at all. To his recollection there was at least one more island in the Etrean Luminant which he hadn’t set foot upon, but from what he had seen of it from distant shores and what he had heard from others, he could not see himself exploring it without a good reason to do so, other than ‘to explore’, which was what his usual drive summed up to, to his discredit. Others might call that lifestyle questionable, he thought, with how infrequently he stopped to take breaks, just reacting and taking life as it came to him, but what was so bad about that?

There was always the prospect of settling down into one of the few straggling communities in the Luminant, of course - getting a job, as they called it. Eurgh. If there was one thing he might do with little else to distract himself with, it would not be chaining himself down like many have already, like that.

No, of course he wouldn’t do that. He would bring the librarian his books, read all of the books he would like, and figure out the rest from there. That was how it had always gone, and it shouldn’t be any different in the Etrean Luminant. He knew, no matter how poorly things might go, that he would push through and survive against the odds. He’d done so plenty of times before.

But somehow, he had this feeling of things coming to a head soon, like there was a massive, unavoidable wave leering down at him from the distance, pulling him closer. Like he would soon be thrown into the winds of chance by force, and as far as he knew, anything could happen in the tumult.

Hopefully, it wasn’t wrong of him to feel nervous about it.

- -

Slate didn’t dream that night. Or, if he did, then he didn’t remember anything about doing so, which wasn’t such a rare thing to him.

He liked Etris much better during the daytime. It was a place to be appreciated in many different forms, from its unorthodox infrastructure hung from towering stone cliffsides to the delicately-styled architecture of its many bustling buildings. He had been traveling in the wilderness and the seas for so long that he had nearly forgotten such lively places were actually able to exist, and he had forgotten that it could be so fully encompassing. Even the Vigils, with their single temple populated by many students and teachers, couldn’t begin to compare to what all of the citizens of Etris made up. Though he was one to appreciate the quiet when it came to him, he couldn’t help but like this, too.

He delighted in visiting the various shops and restaurants and other such storefront buildings that made up a path through the city, and a few especially caught his eye.

The Mantra Shop, for that was what it was called, was his first visit. There were no Mantras for sale, of course, because Mantras were not things that could be ‘sold’, but the different Attunement-based training gear strewn about the place was interesting. Slate wouldn’t have minded fiddling with some of his own Frostdraw at the time, but someone else had been occupying the building’s singular modifying table since before he’d even arrived, and seemed to have been stuck coming up with a name for one of their own Mantras. He just didn’t want to break their concentration, or something.

Though Slate was plenty satisfied with his own Attunement for combat, the weaponry shop was a good reminder that some people actually liked to lug around giant hunks of metal and call them ‘greatswords’, which raised a chuckle out of him. Also, the set of bullets that were blocked off and guarded by roughly ten lines of cautionary tape was something that got him thinking, though he couldn’t end up getting an explanation for it from the shopkeeper.

The building labeled ‘Lance Leshi’s’ was small, and must have meant to be a restaurant of some kind, with its clusters of little tables and chairs gathered on either side of the center counter, but when Slate entered it appeared to be more like a bar. Only, instead of alcoholic drinks, there were savory foods on-grill and off, and a few men who seemed to be sharing a nice breakfast sat on stools together, chatting about something mundane. Slate thought it was nice there, and he even managed to end up buying some soup. It was some good soup, he thought.

But at some point, particularly later, he had eventually looped back around closer to where he had started, past the inn and through a larger bridge behind it, and came across a towering stone staircase that led to a further elevated point on the island, so far away from the city center that Slate didn’t even know if it would be considered a part of the city at that point.

Oddly, the staircase reminded him of the one in Lower Erisia. It was out-of-place in roughly the same way, ultimately a gigantic set of carves from what was otherwise a large stone mass from the structure of the land. They were both a little unnatural in that way. They were even about the same length, he noticed carefully as he strode along to ascend it.

Slate must have dramatically overestimated the size of the city of Etris with his initial gaze from below. The peering, looming shadows of its buildings he had seen must have blurred in with the Gloamdark sky to appear more numerous than they were, because the staircase brought him to a place that looked like it was meant to be the city’s outer edge, or at least it was different in architectural style than the rest of it.

The walls were noticeably more fanciful and refined, with smooth pale stone about the base and polished red wood making up its framework. It made up an odd atmosphere, Slate thought, and even stranger was when he noticed the statue in the center furthest towards the wall.

It was of a person Slate didn’t recognize, huge and posed proudly with a sword brandished and held with a pristine firmness, obligingly carved in the dead center of a fork in the path which led somewhere further that he couldn’t see. It was confident, assertive, demanding. Several green jewels glimmered prominently in the eager morning light around the base of its crown. Slate breathed in slowly, staring at the work, conflicted.

He didn’t like it.

Normally, something so lofty would register as nothing short of inspiring to him, but for some reason he couldn’t help but feel… offended by it, however little sense the feeling made. Like it wanted him to do something that he didn’t want to do. Like it was telling him to, anyway.

Slate grimaced at it under his mask, mind slicked by a sudden anger. He didn’t owe anyone anything, not anymore, and he wouldn’t. Nobody could make him do anything, and they wouldn’t. They couldn’t demand anything from him, not if he could help it, and he could. He was his own person, and nothing would change that. How could anybody, anybody be so cruel, have such the audacity as to -

To…

…

Slate blinked.

It was a statue.

He unclenched his palms. The frost began to recede from his fingertips.

He needed to find that lodge.

- -

The air was constant and cool now. Closer now to an in-between of the churning waves below and the bustling city above, the noises had all begun to mesh together in his ears before soon fading away once he’d found himself able to tune it out altogether.

Once he’d started actually looking, it didn’t take him very long at all to find the abandoned lodge. The librarian was right in that it was ‘below’ Etris, and though Slate did have to go to some unique lengths to spot it, there turned out to only be one piece of land that could be really considered ‘below’ Etris; a straightforward path along the outer edge of the island’s whole, tiny and held together with jutting bridges that led to a lower mass of land he had seen from above.

At one point the place must have served some kind of higher purpose to the city-goers, as Slate saw that the grassy parts of the path were particularly beaten into and lifeless with damp footsteps and the like, but it clearly hadn’t had many visitors in closer times.

At the end of the path, straightforward as they came, there was finally the abandoned lodge in clear sight; makeshift with dark, unclean wood, broken and heavily stained with the elements surrounding it on all sides, appearing empty save for, once Slate squinted at it a tiny bit harder, what seemed to be a person standing still to guard the fragmented doorway.

They boasted a particularly hefty frame with blood-red garment and a heavy metal helm that denied any further identification, unmarred in spite of the ghostly building creeping behind them. Without waiting to be greeted, Slate set off towards them.

“Hello!” Slate began with an upbeat tone, hoping the sentiment wouldn’t go unheard. “Do you know Kelsius?”

The person didn’t respond, or even move at all for that matter, still as a statue. Slate considered for a moment that they were one, until they suddenly jerked into a deliberate movement with their legs and shifted to the side, and instantly resumed their entirely motionless stance.

“Enter.” Was all they said.

Slate stared at them for a few seconds, hoping for any further clarification, but eventually just supposed that he would meet who he needed to inside, though the strangeness of the situation didn’t go unnoticed by him.

He walked past the sentinel and through the broken doorway, and discovered that the inside of the shack was almost exactly as decrepit as its outside, perhaps a little more, with sodden, aged planks of wood that made up what could barely be called a floor, and unidentifiable stains unevenly scattered about the darkened drawers and barrels covering the walls. Slate didn’t like to judge the sights he saw at first glance, but he couldn’t help but be a little anxious as he walked into the next room.

The next room was the same as the last room, but emptier and accompanied by, to Slate’s relief, another person; a young-looking Etrean man who was just kind of… standing at the right end of the room, doing nothing at all. He was already looking at Slate.

“Ah, hello.” The Etrean greeted, expression contorting in a strange way. “I see my friend let you in.”

“Do you know Kelsius?” Slate asked a little breathlessly. “He sent me to grab a few books.”

“Oh, so Kelsius sent you to grab some books?” The man echoed Slate, eyeing him. “...But may I ask why you're here?”

“...For the books.” Slate repeated.

“Of course. That's why you're here.” The man looked down at him with dark, narrowing eyes. “But have you ever stopped to consider why you're doing this?”

“Doing… what?”

The man barked a grating laugh, and Slate could swear his mask was being looked straight through into.

“Working for a murderer, you swine.”

What.

“You act as though your actions are of your own volition, but even now you show yourself to be a mere servant.” He continued, and was now taking strides towards Slate. Slate couldn’t find it in himself to move any more than one shaky step back.

“Did you really think that any of your choices were of any consequence?”

He stopped walking. There was only the feeling of cold, mounting dread as he grinned.

“Worry not, little swine, your true masters will soon wake.”

And it all went dark.

Chapter Text

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Slate sat quietly in the warmth of the Vigils’ inn, mind rested as he enjoyed another moment of reading to himself. The last few weeks had been full of more or less the same work, so he was starting to appreciate these opportunities when they came to him. Reading a nice book or three was a good distraction when you had nothing to think about.

He also appreciated Kelsius for letting him read so many books for free. What had gone down in Etris was more or less a blur by this point, but he’d returned the lost books through one way or another which was a favor returned by the man, and that was a good thing.

The latest set of volumes he’d gotten into was a compilation of tales written by the scholars of the Citadel of Markor, which explained an extensive variety of topics and folklore in a professional and straightforward manner. In particular, the one he was just reading detailed and debated some of the finer points of various Attunements, like the day-to-day utility of Flamecharm or what it meant when people called Frostdraw a ‘creation attunement’. It was interesting, just to see what others would consider mundane, invisible parts of life, in the clear and direct form of words on a page.

There was always something new in the world to learn about, different lenses to be looked through, so that even the familiar and typical might have something a little wondrous to be discovered.

Slate resolved he’d visit the Citadel’s historic archive at some point, or at least stick around to hear a few lectures from Head Scholar Marvaile. Perhaps the Scholars’ Halls were where he needed to be.

Once he’d finished with the one volume, a short note was made of what subjects he would want to look into further later, and he softly let the book’s brown hardcover close in one careful motion before setting it down atop a small stack of the others and reaching over the desk for the next one.

His hand grazed the desk instead. Slate looked over, and saw that it was empty.

Oh. He must’ve finished everything he’d checked out the other day. Strange.

Well, his legs were getting a little sore from disuse, and the even flow of light peeking out from the curtained window behind Slate told him that it’d passed to an early afternoon since he’d woken up, so he would probably do best to go return the books and borrow the next set now. It made sense.

- -

“What do you mean, you finished all of them?!”

Slate winced for a moment at the man’s tone. “It was a good set, real interesting. What’s next here?”

“What's next?” Kelsius asked in disbelief. “Slate, that was the last shelf. Nothing’s next.”

Slate raised an eyebrow, and went to place his jagged stack of finished books on top of the librarian’s desk. “What’s that mean?”

Kelsius stared at him for a few seconds, jaw hung wide open in silence, and then he quietly closed his eyes and raised a hand to massage his forehead.

“…Slate, how long have you stayed on this island, exactly?”

Slate scratched his cheek. “Bout’ a month, I think. Why?”

“And how many books have you checked out from here, per day?”

That one got Slate thinking. Admittedly, he hadn’t really been doing much with himself besides reading for the last few weeks, other than cleaning up around the Temple to pay for food and his stay at the inn. Yet it surely couldn’t have been more than…

“Three?” He guessed.

“Eight.” Kelsius corrected him instantly. “On average. Every day. Do you see the issue with that?”

“Not really..?” Slate answered honestly, fiddling with the bottom of his mask. “I like to read. It’s a library.”

“No, that’s just it!” Kelsius burst out. “This library only has so many books! You’ve read, most literally, every single book there is in the whole Temple!”

Slate was taken aback. No, that couldn’t be right.

The librarian then murmured something quietly to himself, something so low that Slate could only make out, partially; ‘Gods, save me…’. Slate narrowed his eyes.

“Then… Do you know any other libraries in this Luminant? Are there any?”

“Not to be rude, especially not to a fellow book enthusiast, but…” He carried on, and had circled around his desk to begin putting the bundle of books away. “You may need a hobby.”

“Isn’t reading a hobby?” Slate argued.

“It is, but people don’t typically live purely to participate in their hobby, like you have for the past month.” Kelsius said in a dismissive tone. “I suppose it’s more like… you need something to actually do. To… live for, perhaps.”

“That’s a really deep cut. I’ll be sure to think about it a lot.” Slate deadpanned as hard as he could. “Do you know any other libraries, or not?”

Kelsius gave a tired sigh, just as he’d finished delicately sliding the last book between two others. “There aren’t any, not in the Etrean Luminant. But, as you’re so intent on seeking out more books, then…”

“I think I know where you could go next.”

Chapter Text

Slate was used to the cold.

Or rather, when it was cold, he wasn’t. If it hurt, he couldn’t tell. When the frost-born scars on each of his palms grew at every particularly potent Mantra he casted, he felt fine. He was numb to the very sense by this point, of course, because for the first few years of his life, the cold was all he had ever known. All he could have known, to be fair. That’s just the way it had to be.

But that didn’t mean he liked it, either.

In some ways, he hated it. Even if he couldn’t feel it, he knew when it was there . It curled into him, reminding him of every single thing that he had left behind in that particular snow-swept wasteland. It circled in his mind like a hunting Brainsucker, clawing forcefully at him whenever he failed to drive it away from his thoughts. For the longest time afterwards he had hoped, and believed, that he would never see snow again. For the longest time he had been wrong.

It wasn’t the type of thing that one is meant to get used to, not really, and it made him slightly bitter because he had been given no choice in the matter. Either he would get used to it, or he would perish because of it.

So when he approached the frozen waters that would bring him to Minityrsa it was more difficult this time than the last, to look at the distant snowstorms in all of their fury and know he would be placing himself directly in their form.

He would not like it.

- -

And as so before, the cold did not greet him with dignity.

Already the shores had defied him harshly, drifting stray ice into the hull of his vessel in every possible manner that it could, as if hoping that he would turn his sail and leave them already. But he didn’t.

The knowledge of what lay inside the island, and the lingering desire to explore anyway (however terrible the land was), gave him some semblance of confidence as he tied his sloop to the land and began trudging through the hard snow.

The air, though obviously tainted by the never-ending snowstorms that plagued the region for reasons unknown to Slate, felt more dry than even Erisia’s had been, strikingly active and carrying the rough, chilling scent of frost, and earth, torn apart and frozen over more times than it was formed to be. As though the very land taunted him, the only paths forward, if they could even be considered paths, curled upward into one another as mounting, icy cliffs of snow only got steeper as he advanced the terrain.

And of course, as he had expected before, everything that was farther than maybe twenty feet in front of him had become unseeable, blurred by thick blotches of whites and pale blues that disallowed him to do as much as simply enjoy the landscape. If anything or anyone native to the land desired to stalk him, he would surely be the last to know.

The long passage he had chosen of frozen cliffs and snow-covered rocks past the shore was a straightforward one, and wound past a dozen more before Slate finally caught sight of something that stuck out from the rest of the all-white environment.

It was a camp of some kind, as far as he could tell, consisting of a few dead logs that were probably fashioned into seating blocks (though he couldn’t fully see them from his higher vantage point) that surrounded a campfire weakly crackling to fight against the snow that encompassed it in full.

And there were, somehow, people. Four, maybe five or so men and women of varying races, all adorned in identical black robes, speaking lowly and strangely amongst themselves as the seconds passed and he stared from afar.

Why were they here of all places, out in the freezing, biting cold? The snow must have been piling up on them by the minute. Surely they hated it. 

..Did they? Their expressions were… blank, almost, from the ones he could see. They were hardly frowning, or smiling, or even emoting at all. They were just… sitting there, quietly speaking to one another. It deeply discomforted him in a way he couldn’t explain.

Whatever they were doing, he had the feeling that it would end badly if he went down to just ask them. So, with a foreseeing clarity, he didn’t. He would have the chance to ponder it later.

However, that didn’t stop him from looking into the situation further. The librarian hadn’t been specific as to the location in which Slate would find what he was looking for, so this conspicuous camp probably had more of a chance than most else of the landscape to lead him to it. Probably.

He distanced himself further from the group of people, circling deeper into the snowscape, and wandered around somewhat aimlessly in the same general area for a few minutes before the snow closer to the cliff-shores of the island’s right side led downward, and further downward, into a lower point on the island, leading into what looked like a giant alcove. He kept expecting it to get darker as he descended, or at least the wind to slow, but it seemed Minityrsa was eternally set on remaining as spiteful as it could toward him.

Then finally, a little ways in front of him, there was something like a building, or the decrepit remains of one, oddly structured in that it was all built just to amount to four open hallways connected at each of their ends to encircle a grassy, dead courtyard, with a withered tree swaying in its center. The architecture itself wasn’t very impressive, in Slate’s uneducated opinion, and he thought he’d probably seen better with similar structure elsewhere, or maybe he was just prejudiced against anything that was covered in snow.

So it was an outpost, as far as he could tell.

Slate crossed his arms and stared from his safe distance at the droves of identically-clad figures who also inhabited the place’s inside, all either sitting without rest against its walls or walking evenly through its halls to no end. They were threatening, in his short-sided view, both because of the increasing strangeness of the situation and because they looked dead . That’s the only way he could describe them; they were entirely, almost unnaturally pale, the cold having wholly flushed any blood out from their flaky skin, and what put Slate off the most was that they looked like they didn’t care about it, or anything. They were just too distant for Slate’s mind to fully register them as living things.

Well, that didn’t matter too much, as long as he could avoid them properly.

After a moment’s wait of watching carefully, Slate decided he was satisfied with the direction in which the nearest figures were facing, then hurriedly maneuvered along the open cavern’s walls before slipping through a thin, empty window frame into the outpost proper, making an important note to quietly edge his footsteps onto the wood as he descended as to not make any noise that was distinctly louder than the rushing snow outside.

He allowed his pace to slow into a more even one and took stock of the hall he was in. It appeared to be in a notable level of disarray; There were more broken floorboards than clean ones, a few lanterns were haphazardly scattered next to the entrances and windows with melted snow pooled at their bases, and there were dark streaks that he could only assume were black, grimy mold, lining the walls.

At the direct end of the hallway he had infiltrated, there was what looked like an open hatch, or a trapdoor, that was just… There. In the middle of one of the hallways’ intersections, for everyone to see. It seemed like quite the hazard, but he didn’t intend to complain, or to give it a second thought before approaching it and quickly grabbing hold of the floor to slip through it unseen.

His feet resounded against the hard floor with a short echo, and then the sudden silence caught him off-guard.

The hatch had brought him into a narrow hallway beneath the ground, apparently, with unlit torches attached to jutting stone pillars  lining the way forward. The air was stuffy, imposing, and though he appreciated that it was markedly warmer than above, it wasn’t by much.

Somehow, even though none of the torches were lit, he could still see the room perfectly clear. There was a glowing, white luminescence creeping up and reflecting off of the floor from the next room, he realized after a moment of looking, and then he promptly walked over to investigate.

Though his mask filtered and dimmed most light that passed through itself, Slate found himself suddenly having to cover his eyes at the turn of the next room, where what he could only describe as a blindingly pale mass of white had been waiting for him. He recoiled back in surprise, blinked and waited a few seconds for it to pass over, and slowly tried to make out what he was looking at.

It was a large doorway, he discovered between squinted eyelids, carved with a formal stone arch up to reach the room’s ceiling (also made of stone) with the door itself fully closed. The light he had been blinded by was only peeking out from below the door, but it just was so unnaturally, insanely bright that he could only realize that once his eyes had gotten used to it. Even then, he still had to squint.

Though, upon further inspection, the door didn’t seem to have any formal way in which it could open. The ‘door’ itself was only a flat surface. To that end, he reconsidered having recognized it as a door at all; perhaps it was just nice-looking stone decor.

But… of course, that didn’t make sense. It looked like a door, and there was something on the other side of it, so it had to have a reason for being there.

An idea suddenly occurred to Slate, and he approached the door cautiously. Slowly, he turned his head to the side, pressed an ear against the cool stone, and listened.

There was silence.

…

If he focused, he could hear thumping. It was only his heartbeat.

…

For a moment, distantly, he swore he heard a sound on the other side.

…

Metal clashing against something.

…

…

Another sound.

…

…

…

Someone screaming.

- -

More wandering.

Though it felt childish to admit, it was especially frustrating now more than before to walk in the same hard, uncaring snow, now that his first lead had led to nothing more than empty rooms and eerie sounds heard from afar.

This time, Slate found himself gravitating towards the icy paths that made up the higher plain, farther from the shore than he had been previously. Snow littered its edges, dithering into the unreflective, densely blue ice, dotted by particularly cold spots and broken rocks halfway buried by all the same snow. Supposedly, it all stretched out into a larger, expansive landscape, but he couldn’t see it.

He couldn’t . That was the part that soured his mood the most. He couldn’t see anything . By this point, the weather made it impossible to see more than ten feet in front of him, and what he could see was made pale and desaturated by the snowshower so that everything looked the same anyways.

And what was worse, because he couldn’t see the landscape, he had no direction to go in. He had assumed he would be fine; he had traveled and lived through one, much worse snow storm before, but in hindsight, just asking Kelsius about anything more than just what the place looked like would have been better than not. As it turned out, his usual directive while in unknown territory, which was just to look around until he spots something of note, wasn’t applicable if he couldn’t spot anything at -

Slate paused.

A silhouette. A person, maybe. Frighteningly close, in the corner of his eye, there was an undoubtedly humanoid shape, leering down at him from a slightly higher ledge, silent and obscured by the snowfall. He wasn’t sure what to do.

He waited. It didn’t move. A cold sweat began to form. He would have to do something before it did.

Without giving any warning, Slate suddenly turned his head towards the stalking presence, disturbing the snow that had been piling onto his hat in one motion and -

Nobody was there. They were already gone.

Someone had been watching him.

Okay, well, sure, okay, yeah, that was really great. Not only was he lost in perhaps the worst possible kind of place to become lost in, there was now also… someone , stalking him from inside the shroud of snow that he couldn’t escape. Had he been spotted back at the outpost without his knowledge? Had he been followed? How much did they know he knew? How much did he know?

…Were they still watching him, now from a changed vantage point?

Slate drew the cold handle of his blade out from its holster, pushing the questions out of his mind, and approached the ledge that his newfound stalker had left from. He found it empty, and either the snowfall had already thoroughly filtered into their footsteps, or they hadn’t left any at all, which he supposed wasn’t out of the question.

Because there were no footprints. He was left alone once more in the empty tundra, but at least now he had been given some kind of bearing.

Burned with a reignited desire of investigation, Slate spent the next twenty minutes or so searching his surroundings with a vigorous focus, incrementally drawing out the landscape into a mental map. Away from the icy paths, through the flatter parts and along the dense cliff-walls, almost fueled by spite of whoever had thought themself cunning enough to stalk him unnoticed. He was better than that. They weren’t.

Then at some point, he turned another corner, and was greeted by the back of a darkly-cloaked person, who was sitting perfectly still on the snow floor.

Slate froze. There were a few moments of one-sided silence.

Well… They weren’t moving, so, as grim as it was, there was always the possibility that they were just - 

Slate saw their torso rise evenly, then slowly fall back down. Breathing, not dead.

Slate considered them for a moment. Could this have been the one who was watching him? Had they really been caught so ridiculously off-guard by Slate, who was otherwise just wandering around with perhaps an ounce more purpose than before? Surely not.

Ah… No time like the present, he supposed.

“Excuse me?” Slate stepped forward. “I’m -”

“EEAAAH!”  

The figure instantly screamed at the top of their lungs, and then Slate only heard the sound of sliding metal as he shifted back and felt something push against him.

Slate scrunched his face and widened his eyes as the most intense pain suddenly overtook his lower body. One of his legs instantly felt like it had been churned into bits by the stomach acid of a Lionfish, and he couldn’t bite down the loud yelp he made as he stumbled back in disarray.

There was a large outburst of incoherent babbling as the figure brought themself up to a standing position, brandishing a pale knife that dripped blood into the snow. Blue blood.

His blood.

Slate backpedaled as fast as he could, scrambling and nearly tripping over himself while one of his legs took twice the usual amount of effort to function, and he looked down to drearily try and comprehend what was happening. He tensed up as a wet, blood-soaked gash in his left leg made itself clear to him, and then he only had a second to move before he looked back up and saw the man charging towards him.

“Wait, I'm not- ” Was all he could stammer out before  another piercing slash of the pale blade came towards him, and he had to hastily shift further back. “WAIT!”

The enemy did not wait, however, rushing him further backward all while chanting with hysterical laughter, and Slate found himself suddenly having to push any attempted sense of the situation out from his mind, realizing instead that this was very much now a matter of survival. After a final step he scoffed, tensed his shoulders, and with a single surge of Ether his blade rose once more, drawn cleanly and flourished in a blue, icy mist out from the hilt.

“I don’t -” He looked back at the figure cloaked in black just before he had to duck around another attack. Talking wouldn’t get him anywhere, he remembered painfully.

Slate tried to jump back just out of the way of yet another slash, but found his leg only able to perform a measly wimp to the side. As a result, he had to narrowly avoid it with another duck instead, yelling out in pain as the swung knife scored a shallow line into the flesh of his chest. That… actually wasn’t good.

Maybe he had been stupid, he thought blankly as he continued trading barely-clashing blows and near-misses with the enemy. He was the one that had caught them off-guard, and yet now here he was, stabbed in the leg and wavering to someone he could have literally incapacitated in an instant.

The snow grasped at his shoes when he stumbled back with each half-mustered attack and deliberate counterattack. He turned with a wider swing of his blade, and grit his teeth in spite as the blow finally struck true, halting the madman’s laughter in an instant as they sputtered back into a pained half-curl. Slate clenched his muscles, ignoring the searing pain in his leg as he began to push back.

“I don't even know you! ” Slate found himself yelling out in full at the enemy as he stepped forward, fingers rattling into his handle as he gripped it with a reinvigorated strength. 

When next the enemy uncurled and raised their knife, Slate immediately shut them down with a broad slash of his sword, lashing deep against their unguarded front. Their knife fell into the whistling snow.

“I don’t! You don’t know me either, but you had to attack me anyway!” Slate insisted, overcome by a sudden fit of anger. He forced himself through the now scorching-hot pain of his wounds, unevenly approaching his opponent who was doubled over in pain and recoiling backwards, bleeding profusely from an open wound along their chest.

He watched the blood drip down along their form, clumping into their clothing, reddening all of the snow latching onto them elsewhere. He looked at their face, really looked at it, and saw their eyes, bulged and red as they grasped at their wounds.

I don't know you. You don’t know me, either.

Slate took his first deep breath in what instantly felt like hours, and briefly drooped his head, discontented. This whole thing sucked.

“...Sorry.” He breathed into the cold, open air, heaving a heavy sigh out, and the enemy let out a half-frightened gasp when Slate yanked tight at their shirt with a bloodied hand.

“I just hope you’ll learn from this.”

And that was all he wanted to say, all he could think to say to someone so… wrong .

“Celtor will… repeat itself… Here.” They spat back at him with a hateful tone, voice stuttered by phlegm and blood.

"The world will fall under the Depths."

“Heh… HAH! HAHAHAHA!!!”

Slate lowered his eyelids, then finally threw their limp,  deathly laughing body down into the biting snow, barely resounding with a muffled thud. There wasn’t the slightest ounce of desire in him to take the life of such a person, and he knew that the cold would do so in time anyway.

So, he turned around to leave, then immediately fell onto his knees and threw up in pain.

Right, right, of course, that made sense. The intensity and adrenaline of the fight was mostly gone now, leaving in its passing the realization that he was also still wounded profusely, having been fully damaged in more than a few places while he was drearily trading blows with the madman. Every part of his body felt hot, scorching -hot, and he almost felt like the very snow he was making contact with had begun melting just because of it. The deep stab-wound in his leg burned especially terribly, and would probably stagnate his progression through Minityrsa even more. Great.

The idea distantly occurred to him that he had only been the victor in the encounter because his blade was longer than theirs, or something extremely stupid like that.

To be honest, it was likely just indicative of how desperately he needed to learn to handle a sword in a proper way, in the cases that his Frostdraw wouldn't...

In… the…

Slate violently flinched to himself in shock, coughing a few bits more of yesterday’s bisque from his mouth. Frostdraw. Why in the Depths hadn’t he even thought to use what was literally the most powerful tool at his disposal a single time for the last ten minutes?! WHY?! Was he really that dumb?!?!

It didn’t matter now anyways, he thought as he weakly pushed himself off from the snowy ground after a few minutes of laying there, tensing his increasingly burning muscles to begin moving away.

But... even if it didn’t, he couldn’t help but feel immensely angry at himself for it. The last thing he wanted was for it to become a habit. Next time, at the very least, he could -

Shing!

Slice.

Slate startled at the sudden sound of a weapon being unsheathed from behind him, followed by a wet, heaving thud. He took a step to turn around, and in the process realized that it wasn’t the person he had just left to die.

No, something new was here. Some body new.

A Vesperian.

Her mask was pale and yellowish, though more saturated than Slate’s own. Its marks were of the common Six-Eye pattern, with the top and bottom eyes slightly thinner than the middle two, and the age of the painted ink told Slate that this particular Vesperian was slightly older than himself, by roughly five or six years. Her complexion was similar to his own, too, if a little greener than his blueish-green, and her hair was ruffled, medium-length, and noticeably unkempt.

She seemed to be wearing a tattered version of the common Pathfinder’s cloak, with brownish drapes over purple underclothes. Also under those drapes, he noticed, were a lot of bandages. Like, a not-insignificant amount, mainly wrapping her torso and arms in unevenly-distributed patterns, with some seeped in dry, blue blood. In one of her hands was a beaten, giant metal cleaver with crescent-shaped curves on each of its ends.

Also, it looked like she had just cut off the head of the person Slate had just knocked out with that cleaver, but he wasn’t really paying close attention to them right now.

“They’re all used to these conditions.”

Slate flinched when she suddenly spoke after the period of awkward silence, and then felt a bit worried when she began to approach him.

“This one’s wounds were not particularly deep, so they would have lived for hours more in the snow before bleeding out or freezing.” She slowly explained with an odd firmness to her tone. 

“In that time, another one likely would have found them, and they would have been brought back to one of their outposts.”

The Vesperian stopped walking when she was only a few feet in front of Slate. He couldn’t really think of anything to say.

“Why didn’t you kill them yourself?”

It barely felt like a question with the way she asked it, moreso an accusation. Slate was both surprised and unsurprised when he still couldn’t muster up any kind of proper sentence.

“Oh…” He tried to grasp for an answer. “I don’t… really… do that.” He mumbled.

They both stared at each other for another period, the strangeness dragging on by the second. Slate’s mind was so clouded by confusion, pain and fatigue that it all sort of mixed into a haze that wouldn’t dissipate no matter how hard he waded through it, and so all he could do was stare at the stranger, expression shifted into a sort of bewildered despair under his mask. The stranger didn’t really do anything other than stare, either.

But the fatigue of his wounds bore into him more and more, and eventually he was forced to let out another rough, painful cough, and he broke his posture into a hunched lean as a few more came out. If the other Vesperian reacted in any way, he didn’t see, nor care enough to check.

“Hm.” She vocalized over another cough of his. “ You won’t be so lucky. That leg will do you no favors now.”

Slate didn’t get the chance to respond, only groaning more to himself as his wounds throbbed again and the fatigue kept feeling worse. For his own sake, he hoped that was all else the stranger would say.

But Slate heard the stranger say something again, but barely heard over the muffling winds and his own disgruntled noises.

Exhaustedly, he gave in. “Say again?”

“I said, I can take you somewhere safe for now. Or were you planning on bleeding to death out here?” She sternly reiterated to him.

Slate’s expression dulled. Who even was this? He could tend to his own wounds, find somewhere to rest himself, keep traveling on his own, obviously. Why was she so insistent about inserting herself into the situation? Why did she chop that person’s head off? Why was she even talking to him?

Without so much as the slightest effort of motion, the pain of his wounds shot up once more, his throat letting out another breathless cough as a thousand more needles pierced his muscles. As it happened, he was beginning to realize he might not have a choice in the matter after all.

Yes, he would have to deal... even with his peeved suspicions. Whatever the actual intentions of this stranger were, and he was reasonably certain they were less than favorable, there really was nowhere else he could go on this island to recover other than this 'somewhere safe'.

Powering through the aches after the needles went away, Slate slowly brought his hands to the ground, his knees up, and pushed himself up. His head throbbed heavily, his joints lacked the amount of force he recalled them having just minutes ago, but he could stand. And, as he rose again to look at her, it seemed that the stranger had been watching him in silence the whole time, likely waiting for a response to her preposition. He didn't blame her for that, at least.

"Fine, fine, if you insist." Slate finally heaved out, muscling an airy sort of pain in his ribs down to talk. "Lead the way, please."

Slate felt a cold arm maneuver under his own before pulling him up. He looked up a little too quickly as he tried to get a closer look at its user, the world dipping in and out nauseatingly, and he had to close his eyes for a few seconds to regain what little balance he had in the stranger's hold.

This was going to be a long walk.

- -

He recognized it immediately, even with the blood.

The safe place the stranger insisted on bringing him to, as it turned out, was actually the same cavernous fortress Slate himself had visited only hours ago, but, rather distressingly, now the darkly cloaked figures that inhabited it were all completely, unmistakably gone. Its tall, thin windows, through which before he only saw the simple dark floorboards of the hallways and the occasional resident passerby, now oversaw sprouted clusters of muted blood stains, so incredibly visceral and violently splattered that he was sure something terrible had happened to everyone inside all at once.

Of course, the sight of the blood alone wouldn't be enough to make him more sick than he already felt, and even the theoretical smell was completely dulled out by the cold snow everywhere else, yet he couldn't stop himself from lurching a little bit more when he entered the dark halls themselves.

The stranger, on the other hand, appeared completely unphased by any of this, and Slate was able to guess why. "I don't suppose you know what happened to the people here?" He attempted an explanation out of her.

She did not recognize the question with a response.

They came to one of the deeper hallways into the cavern, and the Vesperian let go of Slate to allow him to slump down onto one of the walls that didn't have any blood or broken glass scattered around. The stranger walked over to the other wall, right across from Slate, and kneeled down in a much more even manner.

Slate was reasonably sure that she was just going to keep staring at him while he sat if he didn't say or do anything, so he sighed and took out a set of bandages to begin treating his wounds.

"Well, at any rate, thank-you for this." He began as casually as he could, first running some gauze around the most prominent leg-wound. "I was hoping that -"

"Shut up." The stranger interrupted coldly. "Why did you come here?"

Slate pondered the question for a bare second. "Because you brought me here?"

"Why did you come here, to this island. " She clarified in the exact same tone.

No luck, then... Even if she was peaceable enough, Slate couldn't help but wish this stranger was a little nicer about the current situation, or that she could at least find good in his humor. He chuckled quite nervously.

"I suppose you could say that there's a... Hm. That I'm looking for a particular place." Slate restarted vaguely, unsure of how comfortable he would feel about saying he came all this way just to find books to read. "Someone told me I could find something I'm looking for in that place, which is apparently on this island somewhere."

The stranger didn't budge. "Then, what are you looking for? " She asked sharply.

"...Well, what do people usually come here for?" Slate winced. "If you know."

"People don't 'usually come here', ever. Excluding those madmen scattered everywhere in their ruins." She seemed to shift in her posture at the mention of those people, her back slightly firmer and the hand grasped around the handle of her rested cleaver a little tenser. "But I'm more interested in why I saw you busying yourself interacting with one of them, if you were meant to be looking for something instead."

"You mean the one that tried to murder me? I didn't have much choice in that, you know." Slate frowned a little beneath his mask, but then squinted his eyes as he thought of something. "Oh. Does that mean you're the one I saw watching me out there? Don't you -"

"I watched you try to speak with them." The stranger cut him off harshly. "What am I meant to make of that?"

"...Fair." Slate admitted, noting that the people in these lands who did not know each other typically just fought and murdered the other upon first sight. "But, you should know I was just going to ask for directions."

Slate felt a pair of eyes narrow at him, but he was mostly undeterred. The truth was something he was able to stand by.

Then, the stranger scoffed, and took a moment to brush a hand against the flat blade of her cleaver.

"So you were." She finally replied, dismissively. "And see what that did for you. You would be a bloody corpse in the snow by now if I hadn't been watching you."

Slate bobbled his head in thought. "Well, we're all too suspicious these days, don't you think?"

"I don't. Nobody here will ever spare you just for being kind."

"But kindness and strength aren't mutually exclusive things." Slate argued, taking two of his fingers in the air together to indicate the two concepts intersecting.

"And, you did." He said, dropping them.

There was a minor twinge of regret as he did so, watching as the stranger's head shot up. Her cleaver was in her lap and at his throat between one breath and the next, Slate just barely having the strength to find it in himself to crane his head back in discomfort. He felt the same sharp pair of eyes pierce through her mask directly into his.

"You don't know anything about me. Do not speak on matters you know nothing about. I want you to know that your life is strictly conditional from this point onward." She hissed at him slowly.

Slate stared at her as the cleaver was kept tightly at his throat, and after a quiet moment of indecision on his end, he gently tried pushing the blade away enough so that he could (painfully) begin to stand up, to the apparent alarm of the stranger.

"Well... I didn't mean to be imposing." Slate strained, having to lean against the wall as he brushed himself off.

Slate had some amount of nerve if nothing else, this he knew of himself, and he had no intention of letting this completely random stranger dictate what he was allowed to say or whether or not he held the right to live. That would not do.

"If you don't want me here, I was actually just on my way to -"

"Wait." The stranger said, backing up as Slate started moving.

Slate only furrowed his brow. "I'm not just going to sit here and be -"

"Wait!" She suddenly yelled out, grasping at Slate's shoulder with a cold hand from behind, but letting go as soon as he flinched and turned around. He had to force himself not to choke out of surprise.

"What!?" Finally, he threw his arms out in frustration. "What do you want? "

The stranger cowed for a moment, her posture having notably shrunk compared to when she was slinging out insults at him before. Slate's mind was flipping right and left between annoyed and confused.

"I'm... sorry." She said quietly, her voice far more subdued, wrapping her arms around herself slightly. "I have been unkind to you when I had no reason to be. It's just..." She paused, looking away.

"I needed to make sure you weren't one of them." She gestured towards one of the nearby patches of dry blood. "But I should've known the second I saw you. You're... nothing like them."

"Right..." Slate slowly began inching his way back to where he was sitting, the frustration fully dissipated with a curiosity rising in its place. "So, it's important that I'm not one of them, because...?"

"It's only ever them." The stranger said flatly. "For as long as I've been here, everyone who passed through was either one of those cultist lunatics or closely related to them."

"Everyone, except for you. Unlike them, I had no idea why you were here, or what you meant."

"Okay." Slate could accept that, as strange as it sounded. "Sorry, how long did you say you've been here? Do you... live here?" He asked again, letting himself slide back down into a sitting position. The stranger seemed to follow suit, bringing herself to the floor in a much more relaxed way than before.

"For as long as I can remember." She said wistfully. "There's nowhere else I can go."

Slate hummed, sure that there was a lot more to it than that.

Maybe he had been looking at this from the wrong angle, or perhaps from no actual angle at all. This was a person who, despite her stern mannerisms and straight-masked insults, obviously had a reason for trying to interact with him. The nauseating pain and irritation from before had blinded him from trying to put a meaning to any of this, but now he was here in his entirety.

She didn't know him, but similarly, he didn't know her. He had been more concerned with why he was here than about why she had brought him here in the first place. There was one easy solution to both his and her motivations that he could now see in full; simply to listen and learn.

If she really, honestly wanted to make amends, then granting her that much was the least he could do.

"Well... can I know your name?" Slate asked, tapping his fingers against a knee. "I'm Slate."

"Oh..." The stranger's tone sounded weary.

"It's Winter."

Slate tilted his head to the left, looking out into the white expanse outside. A smirk crossed his mouth.

"I wouldn't know. It's always snowing here, isn't it?"

"What? I don't..." She turned her head the same way, confused, but then made a low sound as if something had suddenly dawned on her.

A stifled laugh resonated from Winter's chest, and she covered her mask with a hand, sighing.

"...You make no sense."