The Stained Tower

With my arc suit back on, I wander through the nighttime park, wearing a long coat in hopes of disguising myself from the countless prying eyes. Though my coat does not cover my titanium boots, the RWR Alliance has a tendency to walk around in absurdly cumbersome armor, so most people do not give my boots much thought.

Looking up, I see my destination within the sea of tents, a set of large white medical shelters with a red lyre outside the entrance. Since my previous visit, the medical tent has doubled in size as awakenings have been taking place at an accelerated pace lately. Much to Doctor Jäger’s dismay as we have yet to reduce the casualty rate, yet there is naught we may do. The spider has made us understand, things are worsening by the day; people must be able to defend themselves.

I observe a few spots in the camps where tents were once anchored. These are likely from people who have fled along the military’s escape path. Last I heard, when the insects were delivered yesterday, we are anticipating anywhere between thirty and fifty thousand people to leave. Chiefly from Cedar Hill, the camp that was less than friendly with me. Still, the exodus prompted Terra to hang a few signs on the message board near Frisbee Hill, reassuring the Pilgrims that they are safer near the Tower in the long term.

Either way, we foresee our lost numbers recovering and exceeding what they were as more stubborn locals find themselves cornered and flee here for refuge. At least for now, the local discontent has been stifled, and people's expectations have been better aligned.

My feet crunch in the snow as I pass by a high tent that flies an ivory flag with a blue egg at its heart. That’s the emblem and canopy of the modest pseudo-religion, Kirk of the Robin’s Egg. From what I know, most of their group are amicable doves and dovesses. [1] 

I peek through a crack in the kirk’s canvas. Inside I can see their members shuffling about, preparing some sort of meal, but outside, I notice the red-eyed man Terry shadowing their tent’s exterior. 

Terry sniffs the air, exuding a puff of warm air from his nostrils. The man is frankly intimidating, so I pick up my pace and pass into the medical tent just as he seems to notice my staring.

From a snowy winter’s day to the quiet of a hospital, the mood changes as whistling winds are displaced by melodious breathing and rough coughing.

In front of me is a large whiteboard propped against a table. The board has around two hundred names that all belong to people who are here and in the midst of awakening. A handful of the names have the letter ‘(C)’ and five the letter ‘(L).’ Those letters mean Comatose or Late respectively, the latter is waiting for their family to retrieve their remains.

Next to this board is a smaller one with only around twenty-five names on it. These are people with conditions other than those brought about by awakening and are kept here instead of sent to their camps to rest. At the bottom, I spot four recognizable names, D.Ford—T2-53 (C), S.Yarborough—T2-55, L.Yarborough—T2-57 (C?), and N.Hollow—T1-C.S. (L).

My eyes move between two curtains set around twenty feet apart. The left curtain is marked with a ‘1’ and the right a ‘2’. ‘Lorcan is, tent two, chamber fifty-seven.’

I enter the right curtain, finding myself in a white tunnel of dancing drapes that separate each person’s private chamber. Recalling where Mrs. Yarborough’s room was last I visited, I proceed to the back of the passage. My feet, clad in metal, step slowly and deliberately to produce as little sound as possible. Being seen may complicate things, and things are complicated enough.

“Mr. Ford, do you know what medications your son is allergic to?” I hear a man ask.

Peaking in between a set of drapes, I see a gruff man with white hair and beard staring down into Dylan’s face. He shakes his head and says, “No. My boys and I lost touch a long, long time ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Ford,” the other man replies.

Mr. Ford pauses. His hand shaking, he asks, “Just tell me, do you know where his brothers are? Jonathan, Barry, and Norman Ford, have any of them been by?”

“Jonathan and Barry are the ones that rushed him to the infirmary and transferred him here.” The doctor stares off into space for a moment and then replies, “I… I believe you should speak to your sons, Mr. Ford.”

A hint of shame rises from my kiln. ‘I should not be eavesdropping. My condolences, Mr. Ford.’

I turn away and step toward Mrs. Yarborough’s room. Though I cannot see inside, her rhythmic breathing suggests that she is in her bed sleeping.

From the room next door, the first thing I notice is a flickering glow from beneath the drapes. Stepping into the glow, my shadow runs long as I reach out and peek between the drapes. There I find Lorcan, his eyes shut and his face peaceful. 

Yet, his body is in a familiar state, one I witnessed on a corpse before entering the Vault to battle Mithridates. His wounds are burning with yellowed fire. 

Even flickers of flame hidden by his bedding dance through as if they are separate from one another. ‘I cannot believe Mithridates’s flame still clings to him. Does it not fade even after he has passed?’

I slip between the drapes and move to his bedside. One of his arms is outside the blanket and has stitches of two different varieties, white and silver. The white is likely the standard as the silver is Terra’s, of that, I am absolutely certain. Regardless, the flame still leaks from both wounds, though the silver thread seems to have diminished the size by around half.

Taking a step back, I sit in a chair adjacent to the bed. On the table next to me, I find a note that reads, “Lorcan, if you wake up, don’t panic and don’t move around! You’re in the medical tent in the middle of Sheep Meadow. I’m right next door - Mom.”

‘Can Mrs. Yaraborough not see the flame? A limitation of Perception? Lorcan could see the fire, so perhaps the requirement is to be awakened. If not, perhaps it merely necessitates a low Perception...’  Staring at the wiggling flames, I shake my head and then ask, ‘Earl, dost thou knowest anything? What is happening?’

A purple wall appears a few seconds later.

Reading the wall, I have to stop myself from leaping out of my chair. ‘Lorcan’s spirit is essentially being used as kindling! From what I know, the spirit is arguably more important to a person than even the soul! Earl, can this flame be snuffed some other way!?’

My eyes hastily move across the wall until I reach Earl’s ‘Notice.’ ‘Wait, Earl! Thou art going to cease answering questions now of all times!? Why must I find thee!?’

The lack of response says all I need to know.

For a while, I sit, watching the red-haired man cooking in a cold flame in front of me. 

‘How long didst thou fight the Interface?’ His arms, legs, chest, face, neck, all of it is scarred with flames that leak between the stitches. Yet, he shows nary a hint of burns, despite how he claimed the fire was hot when it touched him. It even melted the pistol. ‘...Spiritual damage. It’s the same thing that Sprite Knights are said to have a focus in. Earl told me Sprite Knights used spirit-based strikes, which attack the spirit rather than the flesh. ...But, Lorcan has wounds; something still cut him.’

I cross my arms and legs; my mind is a mess. Lorcan’s wounds are clean, sword-like cuts, except Mithridates’s Interface was wielding a branding iron. It did not have an edge to slice Lorcan with.

An hour or two passes while thinking everything through. A light flickers on from one of the rooms, casting a shadow. Something peculiar about the flames draws my attention. Unlike ordinary fire, this flame casts a shadow. 

...But the shadow is also different from the flicking candle-like flames on Lorcan’s body. 

In fact, it hardly shares any resemblance at all as the shadow is like a raging whirlpool of flames—an inferno, spiraling in on itself. I gawk at the spectacle until the light dims and the shadow fades with it. My head and body lean to the sides to see if it might return if a splinter of light catches it perfectly.

A blue wall appears, causing me to flinch.

My shoulders droop as I push the wall away and resume watching the spot where the shadow was. Without a light source, it appears I cannot study it further, and lighting a torch is not an option right now. 

Nevertheless, the incongruous shadow has left me much to contemplate. ‘...Using a spinning wheel as an anvil. If humorism has been perverted, which parts, if any, have a grain of truth buried within?’

Standing, I eye Lorcan’s stitches before glancing around to make certain no one is about to walk in. When I hear Mrs. Yarborough take a deep breath and adjust her sleeping position, I lean forward and pull back Lorcan’s bedding, exposing his chest and abdomen. 

There I discover a particularly vibrant flame above his lungs. I pluck a down feather from Lorcan’s bedding and then hold both my hand and the feather in the flame. My leather glove and the feather are left with a thin film of yellow dew clinging to their surfaces.

The dew evaporates and fades in an instant. 

I try to think back on the history of humorism and recall its earliest doctrines in the earliest eras of antiquity. ‘Hippocrates was the one who first put forth the tenets of humoris—’ 

That thought stops me because it’s almost certainly untrue.

‘Nay, Hippocrates could not have invented humorism because the Cosmic System has a skill for humorism and the Cosmic System has been absent for tens of thousands of years! It even said that the humorism skill was a “rarely employed and primitive skill.” That means it has been employed, and it’s from far, far before Hippocrates’s time. Hippocrates must have found something that described humorism, and he simply did not understand it. I know that there is such a thing as a ‘universal language,’ so it’s not impossible!’

I try to imagine what sorts of misunderstandings someone who did not know of spirits, mana, essence, and so on might have if they stumbled upon a method that demanded knowledge of them. Yet, there are so many confusions that could be had. All I can surmise is that at the very least, his mistaken variant of humorism has solid underpinnings.

Though, one aspect that I believe might help me is how Hippocrates blended humorism with other concepts such as seasons, age, elements, organs, qualities, and temperament. If I can decipher which of these actually do share a connection and which do not, I could have a basis for understanding.

Dropping the feather, I cup my hands and hold it in the fire. I stand like this, watching as a tiny pool of yellow liquid gathers in my palms. Then I pull away, yet the second my hands leave the flame, it scatters and fades.

‘Burning wounds, fiery shadow, yellow liquid... if spiritual damage, such as Lorcan’s, always manifested the same, then would someone not write that down to share? It’s not uncommon for a doctor to describe ailments and their symptoms, but....’

I gaze at the wiggling flames for several minutes, and nothing ever comes to mind. 

‘Nay. I know naught.’ Shaking my head, I draw the bedding back over Lorcan’s body. ‘On the most fundamental of levels, everything I thought I knew is flawed. It does not help that the images the Cosmic System showed me when I received the humorism skill were so vague. Doing anything more than this at this moment would be reckless. I… I require more time to think.’

My leather gloves rub across my helmet’s window. The silver thread Terra stitched Lorcan’s arms draw my attention one last time. I remember that Terra had taken the nonhuman corpses for dissection, two of which possess fiery injuries similar to Lorcan. ‘...Terra wishes for me to focus on the Tower, but I wish to help. Moreover, if this is genuinely a spiritual skill, then it could be even more important to me than I thought.’

A blue wall appears.

I nod and push the wall away.

With a quick glance around the room to ensure everything is as it was when I arrived, I take my leave. While passing by Dylan’s room, I peek between the drapes to see his father napping in a chair and then continue onward.

Reaching the front of the medical tents, I am about to exit when I glimpse a jar that contains a handful of maggot carcasses on a table. I recognize the insects. They are the same maggots that were removed from the expeditioneer’s bodies after the squir-eel and fly boat encounters.

I forgot to ask for them since Earl, and I essentially unraveled the mystery behind the maggots on our own, so I simply overlooked requesting them... two or six different times. Gazing at the jar, my cattail begins to kick around inside my arc suit. ‘Some borrowed food might ease my mind.’

Jar in hand, I walk outside, finding the sun rising and the sky bluing. 

‘It’s fortunate the Cosmic System does not seem to revoke skill grades because stealing a jar of long-dead insects for a meal is rather unknightly.’ In the distance, I see a group of Church in Light members walking across Sheep Meadow. One of which resembles an exhausted Scarlett. ‘They must have finished the funeral rites and burial…. Aye, rest now Scarlett. As for me, I suppose I should investigate what Earl is doing.’

Quietly, I fade into the morningtide, pausing only to absorb hoary haze from a node so that I may greet Nick in the Tower. Before that however, I savor a meal well stolen and wait for Earl’s wall to appear.

...Yet one never comes.

---

Before me is a chrysalis large enough for a horse to transform into a Pegasus. The chrysalis is a medley of rich colors and from within is the sound of grinding and a dim glow of light. 

Then, to my left flank is the tree I shoved the doodlebug into, now laying on its side half scoured away as if an enormous beaver ground it down with its teeth. Curiously, despite the bark and pith being unquestionably scraped down, I notice minimal signs of wood chips in the area.

Finally, to my right is my lovely field of medicinal white flowers. It’s become a labyrinth of silk blankets that something is bobbing around inside of, making a noise that gives me shivers. ‘Good lord, what have I done? ...Why did I not move them further away from my delicate poppy flowers!? The camps are going to require those as ingredients for medicines within the next few months!’

Climbing a nearby tree, I hastily march across one of the longer branches and then leap, landing on top of the brier bushes. With a few long strides, I am floating back down to the barren marble ground of Tenebrous. I would pass through the bushes, but I am in my hoary form without my arc suit right now, and I do not wish to squander haze by fighting through the briars.

Landing on the ground, I throw up my arms. ‘Curses! Now I shall have to do something about that monster when we require medicines. Mayhaps I shall simply plant more poppy flowers somewhere else.’

I turn toward the titanic firmament wall that encompasses all of Fairy’s Pantry—a thought crosses my mind. ‘Would I see anything outside the walls with my hoary vision? That could be where Earl is… If I recall, that is around where I think she was the first time I ever came to Tenebrous through a gate.’

My eyes fixate on the jagged walls. As if by themselves, my feet begin to shuffle forward. I do not know why but it feels as if I am doing something wrong, so I glance back and forth to make sure no one is watching me.

Half an hour later, I turn my head skyward and gawk at the firmament walls. Each spike is like a mountain all its own, and the undercroft, the area underneath them, is like a glass hollow. This is also when I realize that looking outside is nigh impossible. These walls are not only incredibly thick but lack transparency altogether. Perhaps a whisper of light might pass through, yet I suspect nothing more could.

Except … Except I see something move. It’s not from the opposing side of the wall, rather a reflection on its surface. 

I lean forward and focus on the reflection.

A shadow with triangular ears and a curled tail. Behind it a violet sparkle of light in pursuit.

“Request: Pursue the lesser spirit remnant!” I hear Earl’s voice echo.

Before I can fully grasp what’s happening, my body has spun around and given chase.

Earl’s request appears a second time, I push the wall away with nary a glimpse.

The shadow runs faster; it seems to be caught off guard by my swift reaction. My Acuity may be my weakest stat, but this is far beyond simple reflexes or reaction rate. This is a genuine natural response.

As in this wasteland of marble adjacent to the lush Foggy Forest is a lonely, frolicking creature, a creature with a nature similar to my own—a mouser.

This mouser is partially transparent, and while running, it leaks a line of grayish smog, reminiscent of my own hoary. Yet, the mouser spirit still resembles Nick more than it does to me. A poor bygone mouser that has lost its place amongst the living.

It is not long before I am close enough to grab it by its tail. My arms extend outward, I am about to snatch it, but it jumps and slides into a hole at the bottom of one of the gigantic glass mountains. 

I do not hesitate to jump in after the mouser.

Our pursuit moves from the vast empty planes into the tight serpentine passages of a shiny glass labyrinth. Skyward, downhill, sideways, diagonal, this chase is the nightmare of anyone who despises restricted spaces. These glass passages are so narrow and cutting that a young child would struggle to snake through them.

Without a kiln, the narrowness enables the mouser to gain distance from me. 

I have nary a notion of where I might be, and I do not care. Drawing my arm forward, I reach out for the mouser; even if it has gained distance, I am still on their tail. 

Just as I am closing my palm, the passage opens into a chamber, and my face hits the floor. 

Dragging my lower body out of the passage, I look up to discover that I am in a glass cavern. Stalagmites run from floor to ceiling, glittering in the light of my violet flame. Along the walls are crags, each of which has a mouser perching atop it, twitching their tails and gazing down at me. In the heart of the chamber, a dozen or so mousers girdle a fragment of amethyst that bears a tiny twinkling bluish-green sparkle within. [2]

I stumble to my feet, watching the mousers who seem to contemplate my every movement.

A squeak of a lantern signals the arrival of more light as Earl appears at my side. Earl grins and snickers, her small feet plodding against the glass floor as she steps toward the amethyst.

Swinging her lantern and snapping her fingers, she says, “Demand: Move from this one’s path, former material lessers.” The mousers scatter as the lantern’s light illuminates their figure. Earl reaches down and snatches the amethyst. “Triumph: Mistress, the beast spirit has finally been found!”

{Earl, I need an explanation. Immediately.}

“Query: Does the Mistress recall the three ‘girls’ from when the Mistress was reborn as kiln?”

{The three girls? My younger selves, Roach, Sink, and Black? The ones who consoled me just before I became a kiln. They were mere hallucinations… were they not?} 

Shaking her head, Earl takes a few steps closer. “Explanation: After a fleshie spirit spends enough time in the material realm, the spirit will inevitably expire and then return to the spiritual realm. In the spiritual realm, the spirit splinters until all that remains is the original foundation buried underneath by a myriad of experiences and memories. However, those splinters don’t disappear; they become new fleshie spirits. Those three ‘girls’ were not hallucinations, but the Mistress’s splinters—new spirits, new personalities, new foundations in their infancy. ...The Mistress was in the spiritual realm for much longer than the Mistress realized. It took a very long time for this one to locate all the Mistress’s splinters and convince them to rejoin the Mistress.”

{Thou art saying those three girls split apart from me and become their own people. How long did I lie there on Tenebrous’s floor... I… I do recall hearing other voices and footsteps, but…} A suspicion begins to grow from the pit of my kiln. I gaze at my reflection in the floor before then looking back up. {...but I do not understand how that answers my question.}

Earl smirks and tosses the amethyst toward me, saying, “Answer: Because the little splinter, Roach, refused to separate from a lesser beast spirit. Hence, this one promised the little splinter that the stowaway would be assimilated during the Mistress’s rebirth.”

Haze breaks away from my body and rolls across the ground, stopping the amethyst mere inches from the ground. 

The haze twists together and thickens—a shape begins to appear.