3.3 KiB
| title | created | updated | public | syndicated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 00037 | Sat, 12 Nov 2022 17:13:06 -0700 | Sat, 12 Nov 2022 17:13:16 -0700 | yes | yes |
00037
Prelude:
Different cultures of Basmentaria have different traditional stories about Nullar, the lord of time and tides.
The cobits say he is an insatiable Wyrm who lies coiled tightly around the present moment. He devours the past the moment it stops being the present. And when he has finished digesting it, he regurgitates it as the future, the processed remains of the past. And he remains ever out of sight, just around the corner. Always having just happened. Or about to happen. But never here, never now.
The gnu describe Nullar as a fastidious Librarian. They believe that every time you make a choice, you create a create two separate timelines, two stories. One in which you chose Option A and one in which you chose Option B. The Librarian collects these alternate stories, binds them between the covers of a new book, and adds them to his collection. In this way he maintains the single sanctioned timeline and keeps the tree of the multiverse pruned.
The torque say he is a solitary old man, a weary prisoner of his office, fatigued by the neverending repeating cycles of time and tide, with only his ravens for companionship.
Inky looks in the direction of the bears' anguish and blinks at the forms on the ship's deck. How strange. Why are the bears in the mirage? Didn't Master Corraidhín send them to a safe spot earlier before he entered the hull?
Between the two bears' tearful retelling of events, Inky gathers the sysorcerer had conjured an identical (at least in appearance) pair of bears farther from the shipwreck, while the other pair were still on the deck. If the sysorcerer had teleported himself out, Inky was fairly sure he wouldn't leave the bears behind to whatever had taken hold of the ship after he and Gabs had gone to the trouble of rescuing them from the harrowkrake's clutches. Either the wizard will return to free the bears, or he was still inside. From an angle close to the deck, Inky can see a shadow inside the hatch that vaguely resembled the sysorcerer, but it was difficult to tell from the blurry edges.
Resigned to a long wait, Inky sighs and pulls out bottles of instant brew acorn tea and offers one to each bear, as well as a jar of candied carrots. The tea was a few pinches saltier than usual, but it would do for now. They float out some carrots to the giant manta ray hovering nearby, holding up the jar briefly for the jellyfish atop their head to snag a few with a free tentacle, before picking out two themselves and passing the jar to the bears. To distract the bears a bit from the sight of their doppelgangers in painfully slow motion, or the urge to dive in after them, Inky inquires about their deep sea and lunar adventures.
After some time, Inky notices the same group of fish swimming back and forth by the shipwreck, a few appearing as though they were passing through the ship? "Hey. Do you know what the fish there are doing? Do they regularly hang out near the shipwreck?" they ask the bears.
"What fish?" says the bear, squinting at the ship. "Those aren't fish."