"The world was supposed to end in 964 years, according to the wisest of the human sages, for whom conversing with the spirits was more of a teatime activity than something worth taking questionable mushrooms for, and so the year as Dorn knew it was 964 T.E. (till end). The year would someday be more widely known as 2 PI, but that would come later, after Dorn's entire religious pantheon and doomsday calendar would shrivel into content for children's books and bar trivia. Some peoples less fortunate than Dorn's little mountain province were already calling this time period "second year", but it was more often they would refer to the current time as the "end of everything, come 962 years too early". - Excerpt from From Foam and Fire: A Complete History of Intelligent Life on Earth
It quivered iffily, the first white hair on Saint Pelo's chin, as their sermon and gaze trailed off and through the skylight, where the sun had become a thin sliver of light around the moon. Murmurs became silence, echoing the fleeing midday light that a moment before shone though the maze of twisting glass supporting the Windless Chapel.
"Let's take a moment to go outside and see what The Sky has to tell us", S. Pelo voiced loudly, to a growing mass of noise and people who were already well on their way to the exits. Brine could scarcely hear them over her fizzing mind. Eclipses were things of legends, in the mind of our unfortunately named protagonist, and all the major triumphs and tragedies have got to have an eclipse stuck in there somewhere; Brine had known for awhile now that she ought to become a hero one of these days (though she would gladly settle for a martyr or cool sidekick). It'd been a shame there was no holy war or anything of that sort, but now that the skyfolk had something to say, all bets were surely off.
Dodging around the path of some hobbling old people, Brine scurried up behind Phode and was promptly shushed before she could even start to babble out the bubbles popping in her brain. Phode was not normally much of a shusher, except for that one time with the loose cricket. It took not a full two seconds for the Phodes of the crowd to point out to the Brines of the crowd that a person-shaped thIng had appeared underneath the old lemon tree at the top of the nearest hill. Its figure Shimmered and danced without a trace of motion or light, and it weighed enough that the attention of everything in a mile's radius would probably be gravitating towards it. Even the birds had stopped singing- the being's presence could be heard, a tHrumrumthrumIing beneath the standstill.
The Congregation has many, many songs and much literature on the likeness of the skyfolk. They usually describe the great and beautiful sensation of mystery the teller experiences during the encounter. These accounts are almost all optimistic to the point of misdirection. Older members often attempt to tell younglings about the first time they saw a skyfolk. Those accounts, on the other hand, if ever granted more than a smidget of attention, would probably create a generation deeply terrified of everything they hold sacred.
Brine could feel the being's eyes, all of them, as many little blurry and empty circles of white in every corner of her vision simultaneously. The being's form was sharp with no edges, painted viscerally into her mind and memory as twitching strokes of nothingness. The being's face was an empty pool that, when you look into it, you find you are looking out of it, back into the same pool occupying the place of your own face. The being did not move, and a gust of movement like a tear in the sky swept outwards and produced instantaneous distortions in her carapace and blood that no muscle could produce and no nerve could correctly interpret. Brine found herself standing in front of the skyfolk, in surroundings that looked like the crowd and Phode and the grassy spring earth but moved more like barely illuminated campfire smoke blowing across the abyss, ghostly silhouettes morphing and dispersing. Brine could not tell where the muted, stringy shrieks were coming from, but she would later deduce that the pattern of background noises she'd experienced was the 'divine chorus'.
it spoke,
Hello, Brine
the voice was the sound paper makes when it absorbs a water droplet
You want to be a hero, yes? a divine quest sorta thing?
uuh…. uhuh!
brine applied the best diction she could whilst having forgotten how to move her tongue
Well have I got Just the quest for you!
It may contain: ineffable stakes and/or unbounded rewards (including but not limited toFame, Wealth, Corpses of Giant Monsters You Were Mortally Wounded While Fighting and the likes)
Embark on your DIVINE QUEST NOW and get a second (mandatory) quest FREE!
oooh ooh ooh!
(the ancestral being buried deep within Brine's mind took over at this point)
Awesome! Ill fax[1] the details over after a coffee break.
oooh?
(approximate translation: wait hold on a sec what did I just agree to?)
I'm so glad you're willing to take this quest, it's a tough one. Gotta go, See ya in eighty three and a quarter-ish lunar cycles!
*******************
I woke with a start, weighed down by my treasured and well-worn woolen blanket. Someone had left cold tea by my nest of blankets. Blurry pictures oozed through my pounding head- I knew I'd been conscious, albeit just barely, as I'd walked myself to nest. Today… no, I could see the morning light in the window; Yesterday had been an odd one. I'd only seen a skyfolk once before, and even though I shouldn't have been able to remember anything yet at that age, I don't think the experience could have been quite like this. But perhaps it was, because I was not nearly as affected as Brine, who'd nearly toppled me when she fainted. I'd helped Saint Pelo carry her back to the den, and all along the way she murmured ominous things. Saint Pelo tried to make out what she said, on the off chance it contained prophecies from Them Above. I expected he'd already be proudly hanging a long scroll of the mighty insights Brine had unconsciously shared in the Windless Chapel.
"Phode, you're up!"
'Up' was not exactly the word I'd have used for my current state, but I suppose up was a thing I was. How Brine was was well beyond my comprehension. Yet she seemed to be holding a …. an oversized mandible? Made of bronze?
"Is that a piece of John The Bronze Idol?" It occurred to me that I might have fallen sick and perhaps I had been in a fever dream since the skyfolk. The mandible had sort of a glob of cloth and glue on the end Brine held it by. By the looks of it, the glue was still wet and Brine had accidentally affixed the statue's mouthpiece to her carapace. She was holding it in a funny pose that I couldn't decipher.
"It's a sword. We're going on a quest! This'll be my holy weapon!"
"What did you do to John?"
"John handed this to me. It's a sign!"
"wut?"
"Ok I may have broken John The Bronze Idol. But I didn't mean to and he was old! He couldn't handle being in the presence of The Skyfolk. They probably meant for it to happen, anyways. It looks just like my favorite weapon! Look how most of the branches have worn off and the crack almost sorta made an edge" Brine seemed quite happy with herself and her holy weapon, so I kept quite a few concerns to myself, the last of which being that a door would be more combat worthy than the object Brine was holding. Holy weapons were more or less a thing of the past now, anyways, since the last of the Fractured had presumably been rooted out a century ago. I craved more nap.
An hour or so later, I managed to wander out onto town square where a small crowd seemed to be congealing in the shadow of the Windless Chapel. Based on the talk of some of the saints to my left, the Queen had already let them know she would appear when the sun shone directly through the ruby in the Chapel's ceiling, to give Brine her blessing. For all I knew, that could be anywhere from in five minutes to six months, but based on the anticipation in their voices it was going to be more on the five minutes side.
I found Brine buried beneath a mound of gifts and at least twice as many questions from the other younglings of our class. The makeshift sword had been sawed off her arm and was now stowed in a seedcatch fastened onto her stomach, along with a pack of dense food, some seeds, a number of stone channels for just about everything stone channels can be made for, and, more surprisingly, some more practical weapons. I recognized a nuke [2]among them and wondered who decided Brine could be trusted with one- I'd seen Saint Tleap nearly crush a leg when they'd fumbled digging the water out of a burrow with one.
"How will you sleep if you're not home?" Jade asked Brine, with the innate innocence children tend to have that prevents even me from feeling deeply pained by their absolute lack of sense. I did not know how Brine was going to explain this, but I was taken off guard when she picked up the nuke and idly rapped her finger against the control band.
"If I cannot find a place to stay down in the sea I will make myself a-" Brine was quickly cut off by everyone over the age of five shouting something along the lines of "TURN IT OFF" and reaching for the nuke that had begun to spin rapidly and float into the air. Luckily Brine managed to shut it down before she killed anyone.
"... - If I need a burrow while I'm in the realm of water I'll use this to make myself a warm, cozy place to spend the night!" Brine said, with a degree of enthusiasm that seemed a bit inappropriate to all of us who'd nearly glimpsed the light at the end of the tunnel. Should Brine ever attempt to work the nuke again, Them Above forbid, I did not want to be present. Or on the same landmass, for that matter. A nuke accident had never yet sunk or otherwise made uninhabitable a continent, but in Brine's hands I believed anything was possible.
"Hey Phode!" said a cheerful Brine to a still-mortified Phode. I wondered if perhaps Brine had traded away the last of her sanity to the skyfolk. I was about to ask what is the quest when there was a metallic pingggg and the tallest spire of the Chapel flashed so brightly there was a heartbeat when the morning sun was not visible in the sky. The Queen was here.
She gently strode out from the twisting marble arches, a glowing gown woven with the last rays of the morning sun and embellished by the light of the first stars before dusk rolling behind her. In the wake of her gown trailed her eight consorts, dressed in deep shadows and blazing fire, pieces of the sky and waves against stone. The one to her right carried a wide wooden box. The one to her left carried a small diamond stake sitting on dark cloth.
"Brine! It has been so long since I saw you! You have grown so big! I cannot believe you are already going out into the sea". The Queen cut through the crowd and violently hugged Brine, sweeping Jade and I up in her embrace as a side effect. "You were here not two weeks ago, mother. And I can assure you that neither I nor Brine has grown more than a millimeter in that time", I said to the Queen. Though I also felt a bit queasy at the thought that we would probably be diving beneath the waves within the day, at this rate. Out of all the places we could've been sent, why did it have to be the cities beneath the waves? I had never encountered the beings that lived there, but from what I'd learned about them I didn't want to. They were an angry people, hate burned into their hearts when they were forced beneath the waves long ago, when the Fractured brought ruin to their kingdoms on land. Brine would be thrilled though- Her favorite lessons were always the stories of the cities beneath the waves, with the floating farms and clanking golems that walked the bottom of the sea. Nevermind the fact that they mostly use the giant golems for killing each other. Perhaps Brine could put that sword to use.
"Now now, without further adieu, for a storm will spring on the cusp of night, I have brought important information and parting gifts for you two travellers."
"Can I come?" asked Jade. "Pleeeeeeaaaase?"
"Of cour-" The Queen began to say, before I cut her off. "Nope. No way. You are three. If they find out what we really are when we're down there they will barbecue us and eat us for supper. Do you want to be barbecue, Jade?" I asked, feeling a tinge bad about how it came off but also deeply disturbed that the Queen saw no issues with sending one of her three year olds into what was probably a warzone.
"What's barbecue?" asked Jade, apparently unphased.
"Something delicious that I'm sure your older sisters will keep you from becoming" The Queen said lovingly, and to my horror. I must be dreaming. This cannot be real.
"but… but why"
"Do not fret, Phode. I have brought presents that will help you on your journey! You will feel better once you have these tools at hand"
I looked at the thin wooden box and sliver of a diamond stake doubtfully. I could imagine no magic so powerful that it could change my fate- death at the hands of Jade and Brine. The Queen began to walk down to the beach and beckoned us to follow, smiling as though we were playing a lighthearted game. It was hard to believe that this Queen was one of the four who'd together won the war against the Fractured. The only trace of a war hero I could find in her demeanor was her willingness to send her children to their deaths.
We stood at the sea's edge, the tops of the waves sloshing up the sand under our feet. The Queen lifted the lid of the thin wooden box and stuck her arm deep inside, pulling something out of a space that was not really a space at all but rather a tear from what was into what was not. She put the odd bundle of elastic material on the sand, and then pulled out two larger, similar bundles.
"These will be your costumes, your skins, so that you may seem like the people beneath the waves in all ways they can tell. Phode, come here and I will help you in one, then you can help out your sisters."
After quite a bit of struggle, the Queen and I finally managed to squeeze me into one of the costumes in roughly the right orientation. I tried to walk a little but my limbs ended up all tangled and I fell headfirst into the water. The Queen giggled a little. Jade helpfully commented "Phode looks silly". After a few more attempts, I managed to do sort of a hobbling crawl, concentrating to keep my midlegs still as to not get all tangled up again. I was like 98% sure the beings I was trying to impersonate were bipedal, though, so I did not think the 4-ish legged crawl was much of a triumph. The Queen assured me it would be enough to pass, that they had not had outside contact for awhile and their cultural memory was short and spotty. I did not feel I could really trust her assessment.
The Queen and Brine set out to get Brine and then Jade into skins, and I tried my best to make myself useful without tumbling into them.
"Alright, now that you're all suited up and acquainted with your new forms, I will give you each the memories of a human so that you may remember how to walk their walk and speak their speak." The Queen brushed her antennae over the tangled mess of the three of us, and all of a sudden my legs felt like legs and my arms felt like arms and I did not feel like I was in a poorly fitted costume any longer. I flexed my joints, and part of me was screaming that I'd just flexed my knees the wrong direction and that my head was now on backwards. After a bit more finagleing, I managed to get my head on right, extract myself from the knot, and then, with all the pride of finishing a gymnastics routine, I stood up like I'd known how to all along.
I had known how to all along- remembering myself flailing about only a minute ago was almost like remembering a dream. And I remembered, long ago, a faint memory of pain and trees and blood, everywhere, and when I was just on the precipice of the great beyond a strange voice and an offer of another chance at life. What was my name again?
Phode, yes that's right, Phode's my name. The Queen beckoned over another of her consorts, Ehmad, the one dressed in fire. Ehmad offered the small diamond stake to me so carefully it was as though dropping it would make the sun fall from the sky. I took it with equal caution, and he said
"This crystal is one of three artifacts together called The Triket Diamond. The skyfolk gave it directly to us 13 eclipses ago, in this very spot. They say this one makes history. We do not know how to use it, but the fax specified you three would be needing it. Perhaps they will tell you when the time comes. Or perhaps you just carry it around and it will do its thing. I do not know. Good Luck. "
Then, the consort wearing the cloak of waves clashing on rocks, who I did not recognize, walked up to the water and spat a glob of spit into the sea foam. He knelt and waved his front arms back and forth, moving their hundreds of joints in complex, synchronized motions. He then pushed the tips of his arms together and dipped his arms into the foam, grabbed it, and then slowly drew his arms apart. The foam seemed to unfold like a net coming taught and it formed a solid, ellipsoidal vessel made of still-flowing strands of foam. I recognized it from history lessons, but I'd never seen one and could not recall the name. The vessel was big enough to fit the three of us, but just barely.
"This geris is of the same sort I used to cross the sea to join this Congregation. It will hold and keep you safe on your journey. Long ago, before the skyfolk taught us to form the spires, we depended on watercraft like this for survival. We crossed the oceans in flocks of these little pods." He spoke like he was reminiscing about the good old days, but I knew no one could be that old, and I severely doubted any memories from back then were still around.
The Queen then decided to go ahead and make her rounds around town, leaving the one wearing waves, whose name I learned was Litha, with us so we could learn how to work the geris. Litha had done his best to bend the vessel into something usable in human form, but learning how to steer without the use of midlegs was still a group effort that took the four of us all of an hour to master. Then he explained to us the way to navigate using the currents and sounds of the sea, and gave us the memories of the maps of the area, though he warned they were at least a century out of date and that landscapes and buildings changed as quickly as the seasons in the city under the waves. And before I knew it I was squished in the foam pod with Brine and Jade. Jade had wanted to drive but we had decided the job would go to Brine, who was actually pretty good at remembering which limbs went where and, more importantly, was not three or already seasick.
We submerged, moving slowly at first before picking up speed as we left the shallow waters. Every so often the pod would tumble around under the influence of the water and Brine's unskilled driving. I was glad vomiting was not something I was physically capable of in this life, because in those moments when our vessel spun front-over-back the memories new to my mind were telling guts not present to vomit, and to vomit quite a lot. Concentrating on my mental image of our route was my escape from our supposedly perfectly safe voyage, and I counted each sixtieth of progress with relief that we were making something like good time. I would have told Brine to get us there faster to avoid the storm except we had already collided with a school of fish and somehow one had pushed its way through the foam barrier and onto my face during the confusion. I had tried to put it back, feeling sympathy for a fellow traveller made miserable by Brine spiraling at what I calculated to be in excess of 140 knots in only vaguely controlled directions, but it ended up lodged somewhere in the geris's structure.
All of a sudden I remembered I was ostensibly supposed to be on lookout duty, to keep us from hitting anything or driving too close to any unmapped settlements. I tried to empty my mind and let the knowledge of the outside world filter in from the vessel walls. It was difficult to concentrate with all the spinning- was Brine trying to plaster us into the walls?- but eventually I managed to sense the sea floor and it was a good thing I did right then because even though we were only supposed to be 43 60ths of the way there, there was another seacraft about four knots ahead and Brine was accelerating in a sort of drunken zig-zag towards it. I think she'd just figured out the specifics of accomplishing the trick Litha had mentioned, where if you spun fast enough you could vaporize the layer of water in front of the craft and by doing so reach fractions of the speed of sound in deep water. I cannot imagine why he thought it was a good idea to mention that in front of Brine.
"4 knots ahead… no left… straight ah- 4 knots northeast there's a- no 3 knots… BRINE SLOW DOWN" I tried to express, though I do not think the sound could travel through the air properly given that the atmosphere was quite a bit denser along the curved mesh wall of the geris. I am not sure whether she heard me or not, or whether it would've made a difference. We started tumbling about the wrong axis again and Brine must've lost whatever small control she'd retained because the craft was doing maneuvers that I would not have thought possible, enabled only by the combination of extreme speeds, the thick water of the depths, and some dreadful inertial physics. Next thing I knew we were all strewn about the vessel and our spinning must've slowed to a gentle glide given that there was finally oxygen in my pores… lungs?... again. I could feel the water flowing between my fingers, which had tangled into the weave of the foam. Perhaps in a mild state of shock, I found myself wiggling my fingers and grinning like an idiot, the relief that we had all survived making my hearts seem more buoyant. Then something metallic and painful slammed into my extended fingertips.
[1] translation (see author's note) inferred from later usages of the term
[2] This manuscript is transcribed from a damaged audiotape found in a rock (see the author's note). I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what this word was supposed to be- the translation program spat out "clipopopopopoptriptoptoptopciopcopcopcopcoptrooooooo". Based on later context (see later context), I am guessing "Nuke" is an sufficiently similar, though not wholly appropriate, term.