Fifth Iteration (13/15)

[universe_c]

Fifth Iteration

A fic about a village at the beginning of a Universe

Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12



13.


You make it several bays further up the coast as Rufioh diverts his flightpath away from the mountain updrafts, across the crumbly hills toward the sea. You anchor in a bay which Vriska's map labels as 'Weird Huge Fucking Column Things.' This is entirely accurate and an excellent landmark, the columns tall clusters of geometric crystallized lava.

The first thing you think when you sight him, coppery wings translucent against the blue-purple sky is 'finally.' Then, you wonder if you could have reformatted with wings, too, if you'd just believed in it hard enough. You decide being jealous isn't useful, but you still kind of are anyway.

You calm the winds to nothing to let him maneuver in to the deck of the Seafang. He drops out of the air practically into your arms.

“Bangarang,” he says.

“I think that that is, uh, a true statement,” you tell him.

He grins, then laughs a little. You can feel the strange shifts of the muscles that move his wings as you half-support him. He's taller than you, and stronger. His horns are really preposterously wide, and it makes you wonder if yours will get that big someday. Standing next to him reminds you of just how young your physical body still is. You never feel that young, so it's easy to forget.

He lets Jade and Roxy hug him, appearing graceful about it in a way you never manage.

“Fff- Wow. Thank you dolls for picking me up,” he says. “It's been a pretty crazy trip.”

You quickly discover that his wings and horns make him take up the whole cabin. He seems happy enough to sit down outside, though, especially once he's got food and water in his hands. His mohawk is bedraggled, the red dye grown out and faded. Birds land on the railing behind him and he feeds them bits of his bread.

“They flew with me a long way,” he explains.

Roxy fidgets around, then says, “Where is she? Can we get close from the water? Why isn't she with you?”

“Whoa, doll,” Rufioh says, “Calliope, you mean? Sorry, I guess I should make with the storytelling. Yeah, I found her. After she split, I was flying all over trying to use Breath to find where she was at. The plains are real big and empty out there, so it seemed like it should be easy, except it kind of turned out to be, uh, not. But then off in the distance there was this real big sort of hill. So I thought, sure, maybe she headed toward that. Only landmark in the whole place. When I got up close it was this huge rock with all these crazy buildings sticking out of it.”

A chill prickles at you. “Buildings?” you ask. Jade puts a hand to her mouth.

“Yeah. Gray ones just kind of sticking out all over. I thought, if I didn't know better, I'd say that was a piece of the Veil. Kind of gave me the creeps. But I could feel by their Breath that there were people in there. Had to yell bangarang real loud to get up the nerve to go look around. Then I found Calliope and Kurloz, up in this weird round tower.”

“Kurloz was there?” Roxy asks. “But wasn't he, like, off somewhere in the woods being a religious clown hermit or something?”

“Crazy, right? I have no idea how he even got all the way there by himself. But he was just hanging around all silent and sh-t like he usually is, and carrying around this big egg. That part was kind of almost cute, you know, like he had a sweet fiduspawn he was going to hatch and take care of. Anyway, he's basically impossible to talk to and Calliope wouldn't leave him there by himself. So I thought I better go back and find Latula. But, uh, the thing was I kind of lost track of how to get back to them. I guess I'm just not as good at adventuring as people might think. So, I thought if I just kept going down the coast, I'd eventually get back to the village.”

“Well, fuck,” Jade says. “We need to get on the radio to Aradia and let them know.” She hustles off to get the handset.

“I've got news for you, Mr. Slightly-cooler-but-not-all-that-much Nitram,” Vriska says, pointing dramatically. “If that egg was about this big, that wasn't a stupid fiduspawn. It was a goddamn clown wiggler egg he fucking spat out his creepy mime nook!”

“Whoa, what?” Rufioh says, holding up his hands. “No one said anything about that! Uh, not that I guess he would say anything about it. That just seems like like, whoa. F-ck.”

“The probability is so far through the roof it's about to hit the seventh gate!” Vriska says. “Ask lameass-you. He knocked his clown up, so he knows all about it.”

Rufioh looks at you like he's waiting for you to say it's a joke.

“Uh.” You blush. “That's, uh, a thing that's true. About Gamzee, and uh, me. He thinks she's going to be a girl when she hatches.”

Several expressions pass over Rufioh's face.

“So, like troll madararui? Except, I guess, whatever we are instead of trolls? That's... crazy.”

Roxy bursts out laughing. Vriska rolls her eyes. “I don't know why you bother with your stupid troll anime references. That hoofbeastshit doesn't even exist anymore. No one even knows what you're talking about, and no one ever will!”

“Can it you guys!” Jade says. “We have more important stuff to do right now than argue.”

“Hi everyone!” It's a little hard to tell over the radio, but Aradia sounds nearly as tired as you are. “Rufioh, we're very glad to hear you're okay!”

“Oh, hey, little Megido, is that you?” Rufioh says. “I'm all safe and sound thanks to my boy Tavros and his crew.”

“Hi Aradia,” you say. “How are things on your end?

“We're finally getting somewhere, I think,” Aradia tells you over the radio. “Porrim's been working on tracing Calliope, since she used her Space thing to cover her trail. She's with Mituna and Latula. Fef, John, Rose and I have been tracing you, Rufioh, but it's been kind of a mess! You criss-crossed all over the place in a whole bunch of circles. It's taken us a while to unravel.”

“She covered her tracks too well for me to sense her Breath,” Rufioh says. “So I started trying to fly a search pattern and ended up getting lost. Sorry.”

“Oh, gosh, don't apologize! We were just starting to converge on the same direction as Porrim, finally, but now we have you to tell us what we're looking for.”

“When I left they were camped out in a big tower on top of a round rock covered in buildings. Looked like a Veil meteor, if you ask me, but that just seems. You know. Crazy.”

“What do you mean they?” Aradia asks.

“Kurloz is there with her,” Rufioh tells her. “That's why she wouldn't leave with me.”

“And he has an egg!” Vriska says.

There is a long pause.

“I'm sorry, did you just say you found a Veil meteor?” Rose says.

“It couldn't really be, right? It was all sticking up out of the plains like it was just set right down there. Not really much of a crater or anything.”

“That is somewhat disturbing news. But at least it should be easy to spot. What general direction do you think it was from the place where you lost Calliope?”

“North and east, closer to the mountains,” Rufioh says.

“Egg or not, Kurloz's presence does not significantly alter our plans. We will simply have to bring them both back with us. We have sufficient flying power to do so. I just hope no further complications arise. We'll check back in when we have something new to report,” Rose says.

*

You sail as far inland as you can, navigating up a narrowing sound that becomes a wide river canyon. The rocks are banded in brown, white and black. You stay well back from the crumbling edges. Eventually, the river gets too shallow for the Seafang. You can hear the roar of rapids somewhere ahead, around a bend in the canyon walls. It forms a constant background noise not unlike breaking waves or the soft static of the radio.

You wait there for a full day and night before you feel John's Breath punch into your field of perception like a starship diving into the atmosphere. The whole lot of them appear over the canyon rim and their shouts echo around the rocks so much you can't make out anything they're saying.

Kurloz is with them. His lack of face paint and plain black clothing are somehow weirder on him than his skeleton outfit. His egg is pale red with indigo blotches. Rose has provided him with a length of fabric to tie it to himself with, and the entire effect makes him look so much like Gamzee you can barely stand it. Calliope is even more gaunt than you remember, her prominent cheekbones knife sharp and her huge green eyes shadowed.

“I'm sorry to make you go through all this trouble,” she says. “I wanted to keep you all safely away from that place. But I felt I had to go. And, I suppose, I was maybe hoping to see. Someone.”

“By someone, you mean your brother?” Rose asks, gently. Calliope gives Rose a frightened look, and nods.

Roxy pulls her into a hug, smoothing her lusus-white hair around her wavy horns. “Oh, Callie, why would you want to see him? What if he tried to hurt you?”

“I would like to believe that he would not hurt me. He is my brother, though our relationship was rather complicated and contentious. Besides, if he is as changed as I am...” she trails off, reaching up to touch her hair and horns as if to reassure herself they're still there.

“You're the one who found him, aren't you,” Vriska sneers at Kurloz. “Is that where you got that thing?”

Kurloz makes no move to confirm or deny her accusation. He simply stares her down, one arm wrapped around his egg.

“We'll have plenty of time to think about all of this as we make our way home,” Rose declares. “For now, let's get everyone settled and get underway.”

You regroup as best you can, crowded onto the overladen Seafang. Rose and John come up with a rota to keep the small boats crewed day and night. Feferi checks everyone over, then checks Rufioh again, then checks you and John again. She frowns.

“What?” you ask.

“Nothing, yet. You don't feel weird at all, do you?”

“Mostly just tired,” you say.

“Well, now that we're all together, everyone should be able to get more rest.”

She's right. With both Rufioh and John, your weatherwork is suddenly easy. John is a nucleus of heavy-handed push and pull, Rufioh's touch runs toward pinches and swirls and playful inversions. Your senses soar above both of them, your subtle nudges smoothing the edges of their influence, blending it into the air's natural patterns and tweaking them just so, to send the best winds inward. You are a juggernaut of good weather, the overladen boats making insanely good time down the coast.

“The three of us together could stop a freaking hurricane,” John says, grinning.

“I, uh, wouldn't really want to if it wasn't an emergency,” you say “Like, what if we divert the rain inland and then the river ends up flooding out of season or something? There are kind of a lot of variables and stuff that uh, might have unintended consequences.”

“We wouldn't have to divert the rain inland, that's just silly. Obviously, we'd shunt it back out to sea.”

“But it won't uh, get smaller or anything if it stays over the warm water.”

“So? As long as it's not near us, why would it matter?”

The conversation devolves into a minor argument and ends up with Vriska yelling at John for drawing on her maps.

You sail day and night, stopping occasionally to swap crews on the small boats. It would feel almost like a floating party, if it weren't for the deep bags under everyone's eyes, the specter of the mysterious Veil meteor, and the unsettling presence of Kurloz and his egg of unknown origin.

Calliope and Roxy are joined at the hip while Vriska and John kind of dance around each other awkwardly. Feferi and Aradia share little moments and touches that leave Rufioh and the other Beforans shaking their heads.

“Still just kind of hard to believe a Peixes and a Megido could get along like that,” Rufioh explains when you ask.

Mituna is kept well away from the cabin where Kurloz is sulking as if he's under house arrest. Calliope, Jade, Latula and Feferi take turns checking on him. You avoid him as best you can, because you find him deeply creepy. They look nearly identical, yet he has none of the warmth, humor or casual good naturedness that draws you to your matesprit. You can't help but blame him a little bit for some of the things Gamzee feels so guilty about. Though, on the other hand, you know a lot of the Beforans blame Gamzee for things Kurloz apparently did. You don't know if you really want to know all the details.

You and Aradia aren't able to get enough privacy to have a good feelings jam until you spend most of a night in one of the small boats with Roxy dead asleep in the bow. Aradia retells you the story of their long flight, endless hours of surveying the grasslands, following the phantom trail of Rufioh's past. You tell her how well you've been dealing with Vriska and how far your powers have expanded.

Rose, Calliope, and Aradia spend a worrying amount of time huddled together in one of the small boats, talking intently. You get to talk to Gamzee on the radio a couple of times, and he's all you can think about for hours afterward, remembered conversations and moments good and bad unrolling themselves through your brain. You submerge yourself into the sky as a distraction.

==>Next