Chapter Text
The thing that Whip processed before they even opened their eyes was that this was not their nest.
Their mornings were always ones marked by feel rather than sight. It took too much to put in the effort to see things early in the morning, so often they just stayed nested until their brain woke up enough to actually open their eyes.
But this was not their nest. The Stump was always slightly cooler, and the air always smelled vaguely floral from all the trees outside. But this was not that feel of air. Here it was hot, here it was humid, here even the leaves sounded different, less petal, more wax.
And Whip was not simply lying down in their nest, but standing. Not the plush cushioning of a blanket pile, but soft dirt.
Finally, almost as an act of acceptance, they opened their eyes.
Whip’s skin had not been lying. This was not the Stump, this was not their nest. But almost unbelievably, this wasn’t Etern1ty at all. Or at least, not any part that they had witnessed.
They were in a rainforest, facing out into the river. Turning around, though, revealed something there. A road, a path, a…a small circle of slabs surrounding a lectern. Surrounding a campfire. Out of the corner of their eye, they saw something pass. A blood-red sheep.
This wasn’t the place they had fallen asleep.
This world…it was supposed to be dead. It was dead, its apocalypse come and gone, its emperors and empires with it.
And yet here the Vigilkeeper…no. No, they couldn’t use that title here. Here, that title belonged to someone else. Yes, this world was dead. But Whip would not steal from a grave.
And yet. Here was the tender of the Grove, a forest that would not exist for a time. Perhaps at this time, the Stump would still be a tree.
And yet here they were, a tender with nothing to tend, in the land where tendings first began.
They had to go find it.
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The first one they came across was the lands of the Codfather.
It was not the place that Whip had been looking for, but they were happy to come across land, some vestige of civilization, no matter how dead.
…It looked healed. The map on the wall said that red marred the area, but there were no more tendrils here.
But they passed by it quickly. The Codfather had his own story. This is not his.
Whip’s grip tightened around the boat’s oars. They were close.
~~~~~~
Whip kept checking the tab. It didn’t work in this world, it seemed to be only them. But that did not stop them. They did it habitually in Etern1ty. That’s where the deaths were.
~~~~~~
Somehow they ended up at Mezelea for a stint. It was a nice place to spend the night.
That king would have his own grief. His wife forgot, after all.
When the sun rose, they passed through.
~~~~~~
To Whip, the Ocean Empire was the truest sign of the healing this world must have gone through. It was the same world. But after the apocalypse had passed. After the emperors had gone, and no one but ghosts lived there anymore.
Because the water was back.
They had seen the way it was just after the world had ended, the Ocean Empire robbed of its identity by the end of the world. And now it was back.
They lingered just a moment here.
And then they moved on.
~~~~~~
As it turned out, their comm still worked. Keys was asking what had happened.
Got dimension hopped. I think.
It didn’t seem like anyone else was paying that much attention.
~~~~~~
The sand was soft under their boots. The empire would have paths, but this part didn’t, the dunes leading up to it.
Whip could feel the pull of it. See the faintest glow of it over the horizon.
The first Vigil, the sandstone pillar. The one from which Ephemeral’s was modeled and Etern1ty’s was inspired.
But it was not the Vigil that came into view first. Instead, it was the unfinished Anthill. The ever-unfinished.
And then the bridge over the river that led into the city. Sandstone railings, copper detailing, a path covered in sand but that was still solid underneath the dust, granite and brick.
There were vultures here, perched upon the sandstone roofs, and Whip could see footprints from where the various desert critters, the rabbits, the owls, the scorpions, had run from the first disturbing human foot in…years? Decades? However long it had been since the Rapture. However many years late Whip was.
A desert’s death.
The walls were carved in honeycomb shapes, pale stone and oxidized copper, the wax on some of them fading away, but staying put on others. They could tell it had once been a gradient, but time and sands had changed the pattern, and now the green crept higher than before.
…It felt like the Monarchy. But a more advanced decay. This is what the Monarchy would become, one day, when the server had closed, when the ghost tours had finished, after the world ended. A place whose ruler abandoned it, a preemptive ruin.
Was this what the Grove would become someday? What would happen when there were no more people to count deaths for, no more deaths to count? What would happen when there was no longer a Tender, when the Stump was empty? Could the forest spread, would it spread? Would one of the trees become massive, would it grow to become a new Stump in time?
Whip didn’t notice how lost in thought they had become until they felt the ground falling beneath them, leading into some kind of town square, some central…oh.
They stared up at the Vigil. The colored lanterns floating, the candles flickering on their dais. The candles were still here, the lanterns were still here. There was no Vigilkeeper, and yet the Vigil was still here, frozen in time at the moment he had left. Unaware that the world had even ended. Though perhaps for this monument, the world already had, when its Keeper joined the sands.
Whip closed their eyes, bowing their head in reverence, in remembrance.
They really weren’t quite sure what the difference was.