![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lamentus) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
theorememes2026-01-03 07:00 am
TDM #2, arc 1.2: as she bends toward the sun
I sing for you and me
I sing across the sky
To find a place of life
Where all of this is true
I bring this into you❞
BUFF
For those who are bonded to the Fathomless, they will, one night, wake up from a startling dream in which they remembered a memory they had forgotten, or had glossed over.
DEBUFF
Bonded of the Empty Machine will experience insatiable hunger this month, and will never feel satisfied no matter how much they eat.
At first, you feel a pull. In which direction, you do not know. When a portal of shimmering black and glittering stars appears in front of you, it only seems natural to step into it. On the journey, it is as if you see everything: ancient galaxies wheeling through space, cultures born and growing and leaving their planets, lights creeping over landmasses and them winking out all at once. You see the hungry arm of a black hole, an enigmatic smile under a mirrored mask, a fist clenched tight around an endless sword. Fangs shining in starlight, bandaged feet that have traveled so many miles and still remain sturdy, and code shattering under titanium will.
And then your feet touch solid ground again, and what you have seen is suddenly hard to recall, the merest of glimpses springing to mind when you try to think back.
All you know is that you witnessed something enormous, something you probably shouldn't have seen.
As you struggle to refocus your gaze, all you see for a long moment is white. White walls, white floor. Narrow white cots lined up against a wall, screens blinking above them in tones of soothing aqua and mint. You are in a medbay — a highly advanced one, given the lack of bulky machinery — but perhaps the most eye-catching thing about the room is a long window showing endless black and twinkling stars outside.
Before you can give voice to any thoughts, a small robot flutters toward you, and perches on the back of a chair. "Hello, Wayfarer!" the birdform chirps cheerfully. "I imagine you must have many questions; allow me to enlighten you! You have fallen victim to a quantum accident and have been pulled to another universe, but the Ascendants, in their generosity, intercepted your signal and brought you here so that you did not wind up in empty space. You are aboard the Theorem of the Astral Rose; our mission is to explore uncharted space and search for the Song!"
They pause, thinking, their little blue eye aglow, and then brighten.
"Oh! Introductions are in order! I am Starling's Lament in Flight, but you may call me Starling's Lament. I am one of the Hosts of this exploration vessel; we will do everything we can to ensure a safe voyage for you. Unfortunately, at this moment, we cannot send you home. The Ascendants have indicated that their search for the Song may play some key role in doing so." They whistle a merry tune. "Please enjoy your stay! The other Wayfarers are currently on planet Epsilon-355, you may join them at any time!"
And so, you take a shuttle down to the planet; an orb of a nearly unbroken gold landmass and pale pink clouds scudding across the surface. On the journey, the pilot Host recites for you why this planet was picked: it is a possible match for a planet mentioned in a story about the Last Pilgrim, one of the most enigmatic of the Edicts. If there are scraps of the Song to be found, it may be in the path they traveled there.
PLANET TYPE: arid world
ORBITAL CHARACTERISTICS: close orbit to native sun, no eccentricities in orbit
ROTATION PERIOD: 31 hour days, 405 day year
NATURAL RESOURCES: iron-rich silicate, limonite, titanium oxides, sodium, nickel
BREATHABLILITY INDEX: safe for humanoid respiration
WEATHER PATTERNS: occasional sandstorms, very little rain
LANDMASS: 98% of planet
AVERAGE TEMPERATURE: 31c
SURFACE GRAVITY: average
BIOSIGNATURES: indicates a narrow range of native life
ARTIFICIAL STRUCTURES: none found
On-planet, activity is bustling.
Research & Archives pinpointed a clue in the story that would make finding the Last Pilgrim's trail easier to find: a pathway of bones that the caravan traveled upon. It is unknown how long this pathway is, or even if it still exists, depending on how long ago that story came from.
Science & Engineering, meanwhile, concluded that the golden sand of this planet is wholly unlike the sand of other deserts, made up of not just silicon dioxide and fossilized marine life, but of many inert chemicals and minerals, a scattered rainbow of compositions. Epsilon-355 was, they concluded, at one point the closest planet to its sun, and that has sown a strange field upon it: the golden ash and viscera of a star's fiery tempest and the powdered remains of a destroyed moon. It is, quite literally, made from stardust and moondust. The glass that litters the sands was put there by chaotic lashings of star plasma, whips of heat so intense they penetrated through the atmosphere and raised burned lines of melted sand over its surface. Luckily, the orbit of the planet has since taken it too far away from its star to do such damage again.
After long-range scans, Wayfarers were able to find signs that pointed to a large deposit of inert biological material that lay to the north-west.
As you pack up your camp, the weather is clear, and the sky is bright. For most Wayfarers, adjusting to the 31-hour cycle of Epsilon-355 has been difficult, but midday naps and staggered sleeping schedules have made it easier. The sand has proven to be a constant irritant when the breeze picks up, but the creatures largely prefer to hide, and there have been no more sightings of the barren-racers. It seems they travel only alongside the sand-whales, and the sand-whales only emerge after a storm.
With all of your supplies stocked on people's backs and the hover-sleds the Hosts have brought for easier travel, you set off to the north-west.
After the storm, the glass outcroppings had been scrubbed clear, and they still remain that way. The path north-west takes you through something of a valley, bordered on both sides by sharp juts of the glass, enormous spikes just waiting to impale anybody who sets a foot wrong. As Wayfarers move through this valley, the reflections feel like they are watching you, but you can never quite catch any coherent image in them outside of your own selves.
Until, that is, you happen to glance at another, and see a vision of something you regret. A past action you took, a decision you made, a fate you changed. It's a static image, like a photograph reflected in the glass's surface, and it does not fade when somebody else looks at it.
They all remain like specters lining the path you are taking, watching your every move.
After two days of travel, you find them.
At first, the Wayfarers find the trail of bones mentioned in the scrap of story you're following. It is just as described: a pathway of enormous bones, presumably of the last titans the story refers to. They are neatly laid in a winding pathway over and between the rolling sand dunes, bleached white by sand and time. Most of them are meters long: humerus bones three meters long lining the path like a border, rib bones twice as tall as a person creating elegant fan shapes.
On the side of the path, greater remains may occasionally be seen. Enormous titanic skeletons half-buried in the sand, watching the pathway, like they simply laid down and died as eternal sentinels.
Astute observers notice that the skulls are all pointed in the same direction, and so, that is the direction you follow, until finally, you find life.
You hear them before you see them; music and laughter carrying through the light breeze. And when the Wayfarers crest a massive dune, you look down upon a valley where there winds a serpentine path, and upon it walks a long caravan of people. You catch up to them, and as you walk alongside them to get to the front of the line in hopes of finding a leader, they all greet you warmly, like old friends that simply have not met yet.
There is a brightly painted wooden wagon with a group of old women in the back, their faces stained with red ochre, their eyes blind, and their mouths laughing. A young boy wearing red pearls leads a metal hover-craft with a pilgrim painted on the side, and a pack of young children in aquatic water-suits run with him, giggling bubbles into the water in their helmets. Young women of dark skin and magnificent wings trail in a line behind a four-legged robot, singing helio-cycle poems and carrying bowls of vivid fruit. You identify what must be the lapho-beasts from the story: huge quadrepeds built like a gorilla with hooked beaks, the size of a three-storey building, plodding along at a sedate pace, their backs lined with rolled up tents, and barrels of grain and water that sloshes with every one of their thumping steps. A small group of tall entities with featureless faces and elegant robes walk along a pair of rock-skinned hexapods. A squat creature with a head shaped like a mushroom dances alongside them all, strumming music on a long instrument that emits color and light with every note. Everywhere you look, there is music, and laughter, and celebration.
It takes a while to get to the front, but there, you meet the ringleaders of this pilgrimage. The first is a tall robotic entity with limbs as thin and straight as sticks, a narrow rectangular face, a bright red woven cloak, and a hat that resembles a dǒulì, wide and conical. Her name is Elegance, and she introduces you to her wife, Rēza, a short woman who resembles an upright moth, with large furred wings and compound eyes, her antenna waving in the breeze. The scarf around her neck and mouth is of many colors, and looks charmingly handmade, a little rough around the edges.
They tell you that this caravan has been traveling for thirty days, and they are not far from their objective. The unknown temple, they believe, lays little more than a week's travel away. Everybody you see has come here from local systems, hoping to find something in the Last Pilgrim's footsteps. Thousands of pilgrimages have been doing the same, one after the other, for eons.
Everybody, they say, finds something different. Something you did not know you needed until that very moment.
If you ask them if the Song is to be found there, Rēza laughs, and says they do not know. But perhaps, if you need it that badly, it will be what you find?
Elegance and Rēza are happy to have you travel with the caravan, and encourage you to meet with everyone. They also think it would only be appropriate for you to help with the caravan's various ventures: the story-tellers are trying to compose an epic poem to mark their trip, and the hunters are catching local flora and fauna to stretch out their rations. Or, you can join the sand skimmers, racing on their boards with brightly colored sails taking them through the dunes, scouting ahead for an oasis to seek more water.
Medical, perhaps, might be asked to help with desert-given injuries, sand rashes or injuries from the bone pathway. Engineers might be approached to help with the sand stuck in the joints of mechanical entities. Research & Archives might be pulled into hearty discussions about the story set on this planet.
When dusk begins to fall, the caravan draws to a stop, and they begin to make camp.
The Wayfarers do the same, setting up your tents and supplies. The carvan sets up in a series of circles, some small and contained to family groups, others large to hold dozens of people. Silverthorn is gathered for small fires in the middle of the circles, and many set about making dinner. Soon, the smells of smoke and dried meat fill in the air, stews bubbling with vegetables and foraged Firelight Brush roots, Speckled Runners turning slowly on spits to roast. Grain is pulled from barrels and pounded into powder on wide, flat rocks, mixed with scant water supplies to make a bread that is nonetheless fluffy and pale yellow once its dark crust has been broken open.
The caravan gladly shares their supplies with the Wayfarers with no expectation of the same in return, though it would certainly be polite. The lapho-beasts lay down so that their burdens may be taken off their backs, and slumber noisily next to the circles, curled almost entirely around some smaller ones.
Once dinner is served, the caravan turns to the members of the Theorem's crew, and begs: tell us a story.
You see, they have been traveling for a month, and they have already told each other all the stories they know. Stories from their own lives, stories that they were once told about others. Here, in this desert, the only currency worth anything is stories, and they are all eager for new ones. Is that not the domain of the Last Pilgrim? Is it not an honor in their name, to share stories of progress, of journeys, and of learning?
Children crowd around you eagerly, old men and women with sparks in their eyes lean in close, and the light-making music-playing creature of before hushes everyone, readying the crowd to listen to whatever story you choose to tell.
Or perhaps you are more content to listen as other circles share the stories they have told already, finding new details to highlight or new questions to ask. Either way, a lot of tales are being told around these fireplaces, and it would be wise to listen to them.
You spend the next week traveling.
It's not easy. On one day there is another sandstorm, and the caravan has to hunker down and wait it out. The following day is spent avoid the sand-whales and the barren-skimmers, but luckily, they don't go near the path of bones. You make friends with people in the caravan, you share stories over spiced drinks and good bread. You help where you can, and in return, the caravan shares everything they have with you.
You learn that they are here chasing a story: a rumor that visiting the temple at the end of this pilgrimage will grant them something they want. It does not cure illness or bestow riches, they say, but it gives you something you never knew you needed until that very moment. Some of the caravan have nothing besides the clothes on their backs, and some of them are wealthy, and some of them are seeking meaning. Some of them are from Alliance space, others are not.
A week later, Elegance and Rēza call the Wayfarers to the front of the caravan. You will have first honor of cresting the next row of sand dunes to catch the first glimpse of the temple. And as you scramble up the dune and peak its crest, you see it in the distance:
A long, almost mountain-like range of sand dunes, taller than any you've seen so far. Beyond them, the pale purple sky is lit up with fractal reflections in every color; atmospheric blue and x'enuda pink, the same orange as the optics of a robot family in the caravan, the gentle gold of the Theorem's shield.
Whatever is beyond that dune-range, it is giving up a spectacular light show.
They say it will take another day to get there, but for today, you will stop at an oasis. 
The presence of water has allowed tall canyons to form around its exterior, so you must descend downward to find the shady oasis. The water is a perfect aqua blue, so clear you can see the very bottoms of the shallow pools. Here, there is life different from the tough, scrubby plants you encountered among the dunes: plant-life whose roots are able to draw in water from the pools, crowded around the edges of them in small clusters of orange and red leaves, white flowers peeking out among them.
First, the caravan must take enough water to fuel itself. But after that, anybody is free to take a dip, to bathe themselves or merely to enjoy the cool water.
If you do, you'll find yourself curiously refreshed, like you've just gotten the first decent night's sleep in a while. It may even cure minor wounds, and ease the aches of travel.
Tomorrow, you will finally find the temple that the Last Pilgrim visited.
no subject
[ His name is said quietly at first, albeit firmly, to curtail his stutters. It's only when he grabs him and pulls that Noctis squeezes at his hand, repeating himself but louder this time. ]
Jonas. [ His father looms over him like a sad distant specter and leaving his line of sight is almost impossible, having to turn away again like he had such a scant while before his arrival on the Theorem. Like he's betraying him. Like both of them are betraying each other.
Again. ]
I'm with you. Don't run on me, okay? Hey. Don't fucking hurt yourself. [ Already he's moving with Jonas, their pace far quickened from when they first rounded the corner but he keeps a close hold on him to stop him from breaking into a panicked sprint. His mistake, however, is in thinking that frozen visage on a left-behind column will be their greatest test of mettle, an assumption shattered when the line of jutting glass walls ahead of them seems to flicker and catch reflections that aren't there. Light bounces from one to another until every one shows the same image, Noctis's sallow-cheeked father looking down on them with that resigned half-smile. ]
What... what the fuck is this...
no subject
It's not real, it's not real, it's not real—
He can't form a coherent thought as they run, and occasionally, in shutting his eyes at the spectre of Noctis' father, he trips into a stagger forward. Until they get to a sort-of oblong chamber beneath one of the higher crystal shards, large swaths of smooth surface shuddering with one final image:
The towering, ailing figure of the second last King of Lucis, bidding his son farewell.
Jonas drops into a crouch, no longer mobile. )
Haah... Haa, I-I'm sorry, I ca— ( His own noisy breaths cut him off, and in feeling for his necklace, he remembers it's there—that it appeared to him miraculously overnight—and grasps the gold wedding band in his sweating palm. ) Please, please, God, no, no, no...
no subject
It's like the maze entrapping them knows it, throwing cascading images all around them before centering Regis prominently above them. Looking down. Still so unreachable.
Jonas sinks, and fingers pull at Noctis's clothing as he drops, trying and failing to catch a hand that slips fully out of his grasp. ]
Jonas? Hey, Jonas! Come on... hey, stick with me! [ Immediately he lowers himself, scrambling to retake that hand within his, clasping tightly at a sweaty palm that slides against his. Fuck... fuck... His head lifts in a desperate search of their surroundings, teeth grit against the image of his father, which now stands as a threat to both of them. What seeing him here means he doesn't know, but the faith Jonas has earned in such a short period of time is staggering. He knows the possibilities and carries that reality within his very body, reduced to this broken version of himself so easily by even the hint of what he's seen before.
He has to get them out.
He has to get them out, and just there, to the right of that column and closer to them both than its far edge, he sees the crest of a cliff. Earth, ochre instead of the sickly obsidian-swirled purple hues of the crystals splitting it open all around them. If they can reach that height then they can clear this path instead of losing time trying to navigate it. ]
I need you to trust me, okay? You trust me? [ His voice is rough with exertion, throat lined with sand that makes a raised voice sound even more heightened. He doesn't wait for a reply he doesn't believe is coming, instead suddenly beginning to manually maneuver Jonas's arms around him with a steadying clap to his back between his shoulder blades. ]
Just keep your arms around me! Eyes closed, hold on as tight as you can–
[ At this angle he's free to peer down over his friend's shoulder, brow knit at the sight of a familiar swirl of magic that brings to life a dagger within the palm of his hand. Light, and by far the easiest of his weapons to throw. It would be child's play now for him to warp himself out of this situation, but that assumes he would ever choose to abandon Jonas to face it alone. And that thought doesn't even cross his mind.
A strong arm whips back before throwing that dagger as hard as he can towards their target, focused on the familiar whistle of steel as it cuts through the air and clears that ridge by at least a meter, and it's only then that a do-first think-later mind begins to ponder the feasibility of his current task. Too late. There's no time to practice and explore the physical toll of him expending his magic to teleport two people instead of one, nor to consider how that might impact Jonas himself. All he feels is that familiar weightlessness as if he's being pulled up from the ground and dragged forward by his core, Jonas locked in against him, and then–
He sees sand. An endless basin of it, well above the cavernous tunnels below them, and he immediately throws that dagger back down to warp them closer to the surface before white-hot pain explodes behind his eyes. That next spurt of magic is executed far more sloppily than the first thanks to the utter break in his concentration, both of them appearing a foot above sand they then drop onto with unchecked momentum, and Noctis tumbles forward past Jonas when they part with a hard impact.
Shit.
He can't see, at first, as the familiar aches of magical stasis lock up his body, forcing out only a pained grunt from a tight throat. He's on his back, blue eyes blinking wide and beginning to focus on the oppressive brightness of a sun that burns spots into his vision, and he isn't sure if it's been seconds or minutes before he's again become aware of it. ]
J... Jonas?
no subject
A lurch of momentary suspension and energy overtakes him. As it's the focalpoint of his magic, Noctis is tugged along a cord with Jonas affixed. Crying out, he almost lets go. It'd be easy to; all he'd have to do is release. Instinct, however, forces him to squeeze and claw to stay attached.
Another wrenching at his core throws them in a different direction, the force of which makes him nauseous. There's hardly enough time to process it all, disoriented when they reappear in blue light and crash to the ground—the distance to which is just enough for Jonas to again shout, only to be dislodged from Noctis and forced into the sand.
He lurches to the side immediately, ensuring he doesn't choke as vomit plasters the ground beneath him. Then his fingers are grabbing fistfuls of rough grain, trying to ignore the stinging of his hands, mouth, chin, and eyes. )
Oh, God. Oh, my God. Ugh— ( Stifling panicked sobs, still dizzy from brutal travel, he stands shakily to his feet only to collapse again onto his hands and knees. Powerful vertigo makes him dry heave until he squints into the sun to find Noctis lying motionless nearby. )
Noctis. Jesus Christ—Noctis!
( His friend's image shimmers in the heat. Black hair to teal, green coat to red, then back as the sky wheels overhead. Eyes still blue, responding actively to their true surroundings, Noctis isn't possessed. Can't be. That's enough to make him clutch at dusty clothes, palms feeling them, and then hovering over areas of a body that could be in pain.
Jonas, only injured in the sense that their harsh landing has given him several top-layer abrasions and bloody gums, is shuddering but safe. Protected by something that burst brightly from Noctis. )
Are... Are you alright? Are you hurt?
no subject
He doesn't know how far away from Eos they are, and as a result he doesn't know how long the Crystal's magic has had to travel to take root in him again. But right now he knows it's fighting back, unable to be contained by a damaged body that pushed itself too far.
A face pushes into his line of sight, and relief rapidly overtakes pain as his chief motivator. ]
Hey, you okay? [ The fumbled greeting doesn't mean to dismiss a question that only registers a moment later, and Noctis's elbow digs into the sand with his effort to push himself up to answer it. ]
Nn, fuck... I'm okay, Jonas. I'm okay, I know what this is. [ That's what matters more than anything. The severity of any wounds or discomfort don't matter like the source of them does, and this isn't what he knows Jonas fears. ]
It'll be gone in a minute. What about you?