Chapter Text
Oughmos is a strange little universe at the edges of existence. Far removed from the tumultuous nests of universes and multiverses that exchange stories and share origins. Instead Oughmos exists off alone, an outsider, isolated and quite lonely. It's rare for universes to be lonely, most are too preoccupied with the goings on within and around themselves as they lumber through infinity. Many are so exhausted by the proximity of other universes they choose to slumber rather than keep tabs on all within, operating under the assumption it will all work out eventually anyway in the grand scheme of things. They liked to think like that, grand schemes, fate and all. It's a fancy way of saying ignoring problems hoping somebody else will be bothered to fix it.
Oughmos wasn't so fortunate, it was alone and empty. It had no grand schemes to worry about and no one to be bothered with its problems. Eventually in all the infinity it decided it would no longer be so alone and so it made from itself another universe, one to be bothered with its problems. And so born was Aos, and suddenly Oughmos found itself still alone, the suddenly in this case being relative to the infinity in which universes operate. You see Aos while eager to be involved in all of Oughmos’s problems Oughmos realized it never really had many problems other than being lonely. As Aos figures, if it wants it to solve problems why doesn't Oughmos just create its own problems.
‘That's cheating isn't it?’ Oughmos supposed. it doesn’t really feel right, mainly because Oughmos figures it’d already know how to fix any problems it could think up. ‘Might be more boring than just being lonely’. Aos seeing this lack of problems as a problem to assist with determined it would be best if something else could cause problems. So it decided to create another universe, Ios to cause problems for Oughmos to suffer from and For Aos to fix. This unfortunate relationship is the start of all the problems that our stories stem from.
Trysin didn't hate her job, she didn't much like it either but she didn't hate it. She didn't mind stocking the library and researching strange topics, she just didn’t like assisting her employer. Which she supposed was strange, she was his assistant after all. However she was his assistant in much the same way as a child holding the flashlight for their father working on a sink could be considered an assistant. Often following vague cues and being berated for not reading his mind about needing more light at an unspecified angle, not for lack of trying.
It was nights like this though that made her really hate her job. She shouldn’t be here at night, no one should, but because her employer asked her to stay late she was forced to. She couldn't say no, well she could but she shouldn't. As much as she hated her employer she knew that he only would have asked if it was necessary, and she knew it would be much easier in the long run to simply do what he asked. She just wished he wouldn’t ask so often.
She contemplated all of this while mindlessly wandering the rearmost shelves of the library. Her employer hadn’t yet informed her why she was supposed to stay so late nor was he there to explain why. The sun had set hours ago and the few windows of the library had become like mirrors to the unlit night. Looking out to the nothingness Trysin could see only herself in the reflection. With little more to do while she waited she took the moment to internalize how she had changed since she last looked. ‘I had gotten thinner’ she thought clinically analyzing her tall form ‘and my hair had gotten longer’ she reflected. Her straight hair had gotten slightly longer and slightly lighter as the errant silvers and grays had begun to appear amongst the sea of black. Her tan skin had begun to show the spots and blemishes of the sun. ‘When did I become old?’ she thought to herself as the reflection, while not old by any measure, had lost the ability to be considered anything other than an adult.
Trysin was awoken from the musings of her fading youth by a loud sound. The knowable crash of the front library door being swung open so fast to slam into the adjacent wall. A sound often accompanied by her employer's clumsy footsteps.
“Trysin you still here?” the voice called out disturbing all sense of Peace that the library managed to accumulate.
“Yes sir” she responded quietly trying to recover some of the lost silence before it escaped Into the night.
The hurried footsteps of her employer echoed as he made his way to the back where Trysin had been waiting. Trysin caught the glimpse of his approach in the reflection of the window. He was rather short for a man, his head barely reaching up to her shoulders, yet his footsteps slapped with the weight of someone double his size. His waddling gait almost whips the soles of his shoes into the floor with each step. He always appeared unkempt, as though he had just been woken up and had only groomed enough to not become offensive to common society.
“Good good” he turned the corner to reveal himself in full stature. He was wearing or rather he was being worn by his large brown coat, an item that just like him seemed unfazed by the passage of time. He carried a wooden box filled with all manner of occult implements that seemed to have come undone from his excited gait.
“Now before we start I've got to ask you a question?”He shoved the box onto the edge of on of the shelves knocking a few books off that Trysin would later be expected to pick up later.
“Yes sir?” she managed, noting to check for damages later.
“Tell me, what do you know about time travel?”
Magic in Aos is rather mundane by most measures, it has been so thoroughly studied, documented, and codified as to almost have become a science. The only thing keeping it from such is Science’s stern refusal, citing Magic’s unfortunate repeatability as cause for concern. And in fairness if it can't be completely up-heaved by the occasional new discovery could it really be called a science. No, that would be absurd magic is much too consistent to be a science. This refusal has soured Magic and Science’s opinions of each other for the foreseeable future .Magic’s unfavorable opinion of Science aside, its use has become normalized in the day to day of Aos’s inhabitants. The most common of which are the Aldrean’s a race of thin humanoids that often live long lives and have very strong opinions.
Trysin watched as her employer was scrambling on his knees drawing symbols on her library floor with chalk. He moved in a circle, often having to redraw symbols as his long coat would rub though the chalk lines on the floor disrupting their elegant and unique shapes.
“Nox , Sir!” Trysin yelled quietly, Nox waved absentmindedly with the hand holding the chalk as he review the damaged symbols. “ Was not it you who stated that time travel never works the way you wanted it to?”
“Right right right” he mumbled before patting his head and leaving chalky dust in his brown hair “I could have sworn I drew the right symbols” ignoring Trysin entirely.
“Sir!” Trysin punctuated by setting the box of occult implements aside. The clonk of the wooden box magnified by the library's silence
“Oh yeah yeah, um look while I'm finishing this up, why don't you tell me exactly what you remember me saying about time travel.” he said before haphazardly fixing the symbols he had destroyed.
“Going forward is fine as any information gathered is unreliable due to the butterfly effect. Going back is pointless. Any attempt to alter the past results in one of three outcomes, a grandfather paradox, a self fulfilling prophecy, or an alternate worse present that must subsequently be undone.” She responded while circling around her employer's construction either a learning eye.
“Close but not quite right. While You can't alter the past, you can travel to it. So answer me, why do you think?” he mumbled while not looking up from his own work.
“ I have not an idea “ Trysin shrugged hoping to once get a simple answer from her employer.
“ Use that head of yours” he emphasized by pointing towards his temple “You understand it well enough to give it a guess.”
Trysin grimaced as she thought through the question. “As you can not change the past, perhaps one could gather information as you can with the future.”
“There it is” he tapped his forehead leaving an outline of chalk dust.
“Does this information suffer from the unreliability of the future?”
“The past is stable So it should be alright.” he guessed casually.
“Should? Is this worth all the effort and added risk?” The question was more a form of protest than anything, trysin knew nothing of value would come of it.
“I'd hope so” he rubbed his hands and clapped, the last of the chalk dust emphasized his excitement “let's Get started.”
Trysin really enjoyed the library despite her job. It was quiet, when Nox wasn’t there. The work was never too difficult. The kind of work one could do while half there. It gave the other half plenty of time to think on matters of magic and mystery. The library had that effect on people, made them think. It was all this thinking that had made her such a useful assistant to Nox, not that he’d ever admit it. So she sat and thought as half her mind kept the spell Nox had drawn running in the background. Nox didn’t tell her when the spell was going to take him, or where, or even the why come to think of it. She knew he wouldn’t. It was expected of her to figure these things out on her own. “Saves time” Nox would always say, but she figured he just didn’t trust her enough to tell her most times. Bit of a nasty cycle it was, Trysin would have to pry to get anything out of Nox. And Nox to avoid the prying wouldn’t tell Trysin anything.
Anyhow now that she was alone she had the time to analyze the spell Nox had her cast. She dissected the thaumaturgic nature of the spell with the half of her brain not tied up in maintaining the spell’s link to the past. She recognized much of the theory behind the spell despite nNox’s attempts to obfuscate them. Lysander’s temporal Anchor, Grand magus Argost’s Transposition, Emperor Stannus the 3rd’s soul lock. Gods beside, mages were an arrogant lot. Just about every mage that makes a spell has to name it after themselves. Even if it’s nothing special like Sir Edwards Wince’s Grand Afternoon Tea Warming Evocation, not to be confused with Inquisitor Alandra Pentarus’s Breakfast Tea Warming Incantation.
Trysin would never. The spells she had created are just numbered in a little file she has in her desk. Should she ever publish them they would just be labeled as such. Not that she’d ever be published, Nox would never allow it. Besides, being published would require doing respectable work. Not that being an assistant isn’t respectable, it's just being nox’s assistant wasn’t.
To most people that wouldn't make much sense. Nox is the department head of the largest, oldest, and most well respected university in the world. It's just the department. The Department of Esoteric Affairs, the department was founded before the university. Originally the department founded Olithair university as a way to train specialists to funnel back into the department. But that was some 900 or so years ago, the university has since grown and expanded into something all together separate from its founding. Conversely the Department has withered as the years passed becoming something of a forgotten vestigial organ clinging to the larger institution like a male Angler fish to its larger mate.
But she didn't mind that part. The forgotten little department was allowed to do as it saw fit with little interference or oversight. The considerable funding didn’t hurt either. The problem was that much of the world at large regarded the department as a relic. A bunch of quacks chasing shadows that didn’t exist or don’t matter. Trysin imagined that this perception was engineered by the department over the years. It would be just like Nox, what better to disguise a threat as than a joke. Jokes rarely get taken seriously.
There was a bright flash of light and thick crackling in the air of energy as the spell had finally run its course. The potential energy of holding a person back in the past finally sprung forward into the library eager to ground itself on whatever it can. Trysin nonchalantly grabbed the energy as it flooded into the air and pulled it into herself like wrangling a large dog on a leash. Like an obedient dog it fell in line and sat aside as the spell ended. Leaving behind the grubby image of her employer lying back on the floor with both hands in his hair.
“Welcome back” Trysin teased knowingly.
Nox exhaled and blew air for a bit before crawling up to his feet. He stood and nearly fell over before catching himself on a bookshelf “im goo…oka..alright” he stumbled. Somehow he carried a strong odor of raspberries barely masking the iconic smell of wet sewage
“Safe to assume your journey was productive?”
“Barely, and not as much as i hoped” he managed reaching into his coat for the mangled remains of a piece of paper. “Down to about 9 now was hoping to get to keeping track of suspects on one hand” he fetched a pencil from somewhere on his person before scratching away on the paper.
“I suppose that's good, is there any chance of lasting effects from spell on our local timeline ”
“ Come on now this is me, everything went perfec..”
Nox never got to finish his sentence as the loud crack of a solid object displacing air Behind them. The sudden wind tearing Through the library disperses the silence. In the center of the circle stood an average height cricalan woman with dull grey wings.
Aos is home to many sapient species colloquially called the thinking peoples, Few so prevalent as the Dianune. The Dianune are a species formed from the broken corpse of a dead god. They have four phenotypes across the species, muls, cricalan, aldreans, and craven. Muls are larger and stronger than most with a very high metabolism. Cricalan are of average build but sport a pair of wings attached at the shoulders, and despite aerodynamics seem to be able to fly for long distances. Aldreans are thinner of build typically taller than Cricalan but shorter than muls, they have a powerful connection to Ios and correspondingly a deeper understanding of magic. The craven are a squat race that bare sharper teeth and larynx that limits their speech. Because of this they are often ostracized from the other three hence their despicable name. Despite their similarity over the millennia the species at large segregated itself into separate cultures of the four phenotypes. Similar levels of self enforced idiocy is present among many of the thinking peoples of Aos.
Nox and trysin stood in confusion over the appearance of their newfound visitor who was struggling to stand up. She had that wiry build that can only be developed by years of physical training. She was wearing a black dress torn and soiled by some conflict. Her hair was shoulder length and light blond in color.
“What” Nox finally muttered, dispelling the silence like a parent pulling off the covers in the morning.
“I don't know, perhaps some form of delayed feedback from the spell” Trysin proposed
“Not possible” dismissed her “so seriously, what?”
The woman finally standing to her full height took some blinked glances across the room before locking her yellow eyes on Nox and yelling “You” with the recollection of someone very well within their right to be angry.