The Past
An archipelago in the Crystal Sea.
The islands. The shattered rift gate held together by energies that gave Oren a headache through his new, improved mind's eye. It was unknowable magic, and it was broken. On top of that, it was jury rigged to function in spite of all, using messy, creative magical means that its original creators would likely have derided. And yet, it existed. It was a legend to most, but Galeas was, apparently, people who know people.
On what could be called a pirate ship, they sat together. Ava by the porthole, Oren beside her, Len'Falas and Galeas opposite.
Once, as it banked over water, Oren saw the jewel-glow of an island town. And once, he caught the flicker of a sea creature some people thought edible in the depth of his alcoholic beverage. Ava leaned across him and slapped Len'Falas' face, once. "No, baby. No games. You play that illusion shit around me, I'll hurt you real bad. I can do it without damaging you at all. I like that."
Oren turned automatically to check Galeas' reaction. The smooth face was calm, the blue eyes alert, but there was no anger like there used to be back in Oren's youth. "That's right, Ambal. Don't."
Oren turned back, in time to catch the briefest flash of a black rose, its petals sheened like leather, the black stem thorned with bright silver. Ambal Len'Falas smiled sweetly, closed his eyes, and fell instantly asleep. Ava turned away toward the window.
*~*~*
"You've been, haven't you?" Ava asked, as he squirmed back into his coffin-like berth on another, stranger vessel
"Nah, never travel much, just for business."
"Hope you don't get sick."
"Airsick? No way. Seasick, not even. River barges might not rock as much, but you know I was breaking and entering party barges when I was seven."
"It's not the same," she said, skipping right past any mention of his childhood that might lead to talk about her motherhood. "Through the gate, weird shit happens. You float like you're underwater. Speeds up your heart, and your sense of balance will go nuts for a while. Kicks in your fight or flight reflex, mostly flight. Like, you will want to run like the mists are after you.
Oren downed another pastille, to help with his threshold sickness and whatever was to come. He wondered if she was just toying with him, knowing he was already miserable, or whether this was an attempt at maternal protection. He closed his eyes and told himself it was just another airship, only it was flying through a different medium. Somewhere, someone was playing something on what sounded like a Kalzasern zither.
He closed his eyes and waited. After about twenty minutes, gravity came down on him like a giant hand, soft but with bones of ancient stone.
*~*~*
It was worse than Ava's description, but it passed quickly enough he was able to sleep, albeit with the usual nightmares like something Len'Falas would dream up. She woke him up as they were preparing to dock.
"We're coming up on Freeport now?" he asked, eyeing a shred of tobacco that had drifted gracefully up off of his tunic to dance inches from his nose. He had been told not to smoke anything until they were at Freeport. He didn't know what could go wrong in whatever part of the Aetherial Sea they were sailing, but he didn't want to find out.
"No, we got Galeas' usual little kink in the plans, you know? We're getting a little taxi out to Utopia." She released herself from her harness to float free through the room. The laws of reality were suspended here. "Strange choice of venue, if you ask me."
"How's that?"
"Mm, colony's about thirty years old now."
"What's that mean?" Freeport was a fairy tale as far as he was concerned. Actually going there was messing with his head. He wasn't sure he would believe it until they were there, present floating notwithstanding.
"You'll see. It's an all right place by me. Anyway, they'll let you smoke your pig weed there."
*~*~*
Utopia had been founded by five workers who had refused to return to Ransera, who had turned their back upon the real world and started building. They had suffered for a lack of sunshine and fresh air, before their little colony had managed to set up their own gravity, trapped enough air and water under wards to set up a little ecosystem that would support them if not allow them to thrive. From the flying taxi, Utopia reminded Oren a bit of the Alienage of Silfanore, mismatched architecture, patchwork colors, strange glyphs scrived here and there, or perhaps they were just words in a language he didn't know.
Ava and a skinny Utopian called Caelum helped Oren walk the gangplank from airship to domed colony.
"Here," Ava said curtly. "Grab the railing. Pull yourself along, and be ready to catch yourself when everything returns to normal. Got it?"
Oren's stomach churned. He just hoped his magical sight didn't kick in mid-gangplank or he was going to vomit and probably fly off into the Aetherial Sea, never to be heard from again.
"You'll be fine," Caelum said, his grin showing how he hoarded his wealth. They were all made of gold.
Somehow, Oren made it across without dying. He embraced the more normal weight of everything.
"Up," Ava barked. Oren lay flat on the floor, on his stomach, arms akimbo. Something struck him on the shoulder. He rolled over and saw a fat bundle something somewhere between rope and twine. It made him dizzy to look at it. "Got to play house. You help me string this up."
He looked around the wide featureless space and noticed iron rings driven into every surface, seemingly at random.
The Present
Stardew Valley was beautiful at dawn. He yawned, jaw cracking. He hadn't slept yet, but he had found Torin's bed empty and used one of his magical doorknobs to get here rather than wear himself out with a familiar vault that would still require a significant amount of magical energy.
Aurin was burning the candles at both ends, but then, he always had.
It was, all things told, a good thing that the new moon had revealed itself and the sun had returned. As much as a world of endless night might sound like a good time, the reality meant starvation and privation. Only magic had kept people alive, and he knew that not everyone had stayed alive. There were more deaths down in the Midden; he had brought food fresh from this very valley to Elwes, and he knew she had killed to stay alive as well. A serpent couldn't survive on bread alone.
They hadn't had Avaerys' magical phallus to shine false sunlight down upon them. Many Solunarians had bought into the story that there was no eclipse, which was wild, but a testament to their blanket use of Arry's command trick. Aurin really should have demanded a tit-for-tat when he gave him his showing trick. Torin still worried about that rune, especially in the hands of Arvine Venasyr.
But Arvine Venasyr had become Arvaelyn Princeps, and had his subterranean kingdom. Torin had become Lord Kilvin, and while he wasn't crown prince, he was lord of his peaceful valley, living in harmony with the gritaeri and spirits of the land. It suited the boy who had become a man under Aurin's tutelage, and he was proud of Torin for rising on merit, though he didn't begrudge Arry his windfall on account of his bloodlines. His power also came with more strings attached—or chains, given he had been chosen, it was said, by the Our Lady the Dominatrix.
If Arry could have loved him as he was and allowed him to love Arry as he was able, Solunarium would have been an amusing playground. But in Stardew Valley, where Torin was having his second home built, Aurin felt comfortable playing house.
His smiles lacked an edge when he smiled at Torin's people. It was a simple place that allowed him to be more simply himself, whoever that was, unfettered by the past, by trauma, by mistakes. Perhaps someday he would introduce Torin to Oren Cavafy.
Once, he had met settlers who had followed demons into a broken Rift Gate, then refused to leave because they wanted a place of their own. Here in the Astralar Mountains, more ordinary folk had followed Torin through a more mundane portal to set up new lives for themselves. He supposed that, in some ways, it was all one.
But for now, "Where the hell's my boy?"
Aurin, now a master of his knowing trick, reached out and found Torin, predictably, at his forge. He just hoped he wasn't working on anything important, because he was tired and he was going to demand that he come home and let Aurin use him as a body pillow.
