The Stars' Praise

[Seven Xu]

For all Seven thought he knew, nothing could fully prepare him for the ripple of hot shock that surged up his spine when the floor opened up to a field of stones beetling across dull yellow-gold. It seemed another illusion until something emerged from the pool, one of a hundred-thousand. It floated there, seemingly unfazed by laws which kept everything else earthbound. Seven took a blind step backward and cursed under his breath. Damned if he’d trip and fall into whatever anomaly Hadrian had opened.

“Think at it?” Seven asked, unsmiling. He looked from the glimmering memosite to Hadrian and back again, and licked his lips. “Show me—” He caught himself. His brows furrowed.

Show me home.

A village a thousand leagues away flooded his mind. It was only twilight, but he was blind. Everything was draped in formless white and shrouded again in a coat of darkness. The sound of snow crunching beneath his toes rang in his ears and he recalled the crisp scent of cold air and pine needles. Something moved in the corner of his eye, furred and graceless and as white as the world. Seven flinched from the beast and the memory faded in favour of stone walls and glass and the cerulean stare of a familiar mage.

Seven opened his mouth to speak, but spluttered on air. Perhaps it was for the best; he did not bear much in the way of candid intelligence in the presence of magic. The memory wasn’t Lhavit. Home was too broad—though he’d seen someone’s home, he wasn’t sure where, or when. His eyes had become unfocused, and the memosite an arm’s length away became a dull grey blob hovering above his nose.

He closed them, and thought of home.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian nodded, and then as Seven did as he bade him, concentrated on holding the portal open. He thought it only fair to ask the memosite his own questions, but he would wait until Seven had his chance. After all, this was not Hadrian's first encounter with the memory stones, nor would it be his last. He could call them at will for the time it took to draw out a circle, the pain of a pricked finger, and the amount of willpower and attention it took to maintain the link to Swalden's rings. "You have to be very specific," he warned quietly, "and keep your thoughts disciplined or they will react to your wandering mind." But judging by Seven's reactions, he had already figured that out and was attempting again to home in on what he wanted. "And don't forget to share memories in return." Then he fell quiet, just observing, and maintaining the link that burned through his blood.

[Seven Xu]

Seven’s countenance had fallen in his concentration, save for the lines that formed between tightened brows. His thoughts swarmed about his memories of his home—Lhavit, that faraway city so far above the mist and so close to the sky. Dome-roofs and skyglass embellishments drew in all colours of dawn and twilight and burst through the black night with an eerie glow. Children ran about the Plaza, between carts and stands and crowds of people as colourful as the peaks they called home.

Home. He’d left home rather abruptly.

All it took was a flicker, half a heartbeat to let his mind wander to memories he’d forgotten and remembered again. He deserved it, Seven winced, bit his lip, and tried to dismiss the thought, but his wits soon unravelled and he was thrown back into a room with a low table and a sharp knife. It felt like nothing when it went through his throat, no harder than slicing open raw meat, and then it was over. He never imagined a body could fling its blood so far.

You petching fool.

Seven’s eyes snapped open. “Gods, Hadrian, it,” he stumbled for words as he reached for his clammy neck. His heart was racing, driving a tide of pink up his pale face, but he fought to keep his face straight. “What is this? How can it give and take? I know you brought it here—I see that well enough, but how can it … is it alive?” Will it remember?

[Hadrian]

Hadrian kept close tabs on Seven's reactions, the better to intuit what was happening. It was not very taxing to hold a simple, minimal circle open, though he could feel the faint tug of the blood-bond, and he knew it was slowly sucking at his strength. When the halfblood spoke again, Hadrian's head canted to the side, considering him even as he answered. "I have read that they are a creation of Qalaya or Semele or both depending who one asks. I like the idea of a collaboration. I've also read that they might once have been a single stone, while now..." He glanced at the watery surface of the event horizon that separated them from the field of winking memosties encircling the gaseous world however far away. He was going to have to decode the coordinate system at some point. "Well, now they are many, and from what I can tell, they have a sort of hive mind, but are not quite sentient. Not in a way we would recognize as life or sentience... "Life," he mused. "Some would say that the entire world is a living creature, organic and inorganic components alike. By that logic, the entirety of Creation might be one creature. It's a matter of perspective."

[Seven Xu]

“Right, yes.”

Seven managed a feeble smile. “Forgive me, my mind went elsewhere, I …” he paused, hooked his lip beneath his teeth, and shook his head. “I was never very good at focusing.”

He found his knees weak when he moved to kneel at Hadrian’s side. His heart was still fluttering in his chest, and his hands trembled until he balled them into fists on his lap. It was an effort to remain calm beneath the duress of a wandering mind with memories that were better left forgotten, let alone absorb Hadrian’s words as more than noise. It took Seven a moment to gather his response.

“I’m sure that, to some, the world is alive,” he made a guarded motion toward the portal and the stone that floated above it. “Those are more alive than any rock on Mizahar I’ve seen. But, maybe there are people out there that can pluck sentience from our rocks as easily as you can call forth a window to another world.

“You’ve shown me more than what I ever thought I’d see of Swalden,” a quiet laugh shook his shoulders. “I’ve only heard of mages with their numbers and portals, I never imagined it would be quite so … real.”

[Hadrian]

"Did you share some memories with it?" he asked softly, taking in Seven's reaction and preparing to banish the memory stone. "If you have, I can send it back. Then I can show you Shoyden or Fyrden or..." He paused and asked the memosite for the coordinates for Kseyden, and he saw a woman's hand inscribing 3893849280160001 into a circle much more complicated than the one he had created to reach Swalden; wise, he thought, if she was summoning the vilemoss that was purported to thrive there. In exchange, he shared the memory of his visions following the Vision Water he received in Mura. "Or Kseyden." He smiled. "I can show you Kseyden now, though I won't summon anything from those words. Not now." He wanted to tell Seven how he had summoned those glassbeaks into the heart of the Ebonstryfe's power and escaped unharmed, but it were best to keep some things secret.

[Seven Xu]

“If you think that’s wise,” Seven rocked backward to draw his knees to his chest. “I mean, I’d love to see it. I’d love to see every point of light in the sky face to face, but I know a man’s limitations.”

Shielding wasn’t a particularly dangerous study, compared to what a wizard was capable of. It certainly couldn’t conjure up otherworldly creatures or ignite fire from flesh; there had been too many occasions where his vision had gone too blurry and his mouth too dry from pushing the limits of his meagre talents. The urge to purpose the shimmering violet protection was no less unsettling, and came more often than it once had.

He watched as the memosite dipped beneath the pool on the floor to join its kin. There were thousands of them, moving listlessly across the golden surface of Swalden: countless lifetimes of memories. Now his was in there too. He wondered who would stumble upon it.

Seven shivered. “I could show you more in the sky, when you want. Kseyden isn’t hard to spot either, once you know what you’re looking for. They move, you know. They aren’t like the stars. It’s easier to remember their faces, but so much harder to find them when they aren’t always in the sky.”

[Hadrian]

"Well, choose one," he said, laughing softly. Hadrian seldom laughed, but he did enjoy intellectual congress, and he and Seven seemed to be catching each other's drifts. That was exciting. "I will show you another world, and you can show me more of the view from here. I understand that the stars move, but I haven't learned all that much of astronomy and astrology, truly, nor of stellar cartography, but I would like to know. I would have a more intimate knowledge of the places from whence I summon, though I don't summon often. And from what I do understand, the worlds of which we speak, they orbit the stars as if they were suns." He looked up at the star-spangled sky then. "I need to learn more," he mused aloud, "more about stars, their movements, and summoning. I need to meet the Star Lady. Mm. I have a proposal for her." He paused, then looked at Seven. "Have you ever met her, Lady Zintila?"

[Seven Xu]

A smile blossomed over Seven’s face as wide as his lips would stretch. Sins of the past melted from his thoughts in favour of his beloved Star Lady, She who guided his thoughts toward home. “I have,” he cocked his head and shrugged. Some things were best kept close to the heart; winter meetings in the dead of night with the Alvina ranked high. “I am Lhavitian, after all. She’s as glorious as a thousand stars a thousand times over.

“Every spring Lhavit holds a festival in Her honour. Of course, they’re all in Her honour in some way or another, but this festival is just for the stars. The stars, and Her skyglass. She spends the evening among us in the streets and the sky itself brightens in Her presence.”

Seven chewed his lip in thought, and then let his eyes roam across the upturned black bowl that was Zeltiva’s night sky. “There,” he gestured, after a moment of thought. “Kseyden. It’s easy to spot because it’s so bright. I know a few coordinates from spending enough time hanging about Iraltu’s Observatory—astronomers and summoners frequented it, both. I don’t believe I know much about Kseyden, other than its place in the sky. But, it’s either very close or very large.”

[Hadrian]

He nodded, sending the memosite back with his tributary memory, and then allowing the portal to close. "Next time you see her, tell her I have a message for her?" He thought he could trust Seven with that, though the presence of a deity often made thinking difficult from his limited experience with the divine race. Then again, someday he would have to see Lhavit. It was said the city was important for Ethaefal, and one of his closest friends in the world was just such a fallen avatar. It would be right to visit, but it was on the extreme end of the continent, sadly. His eyes followed Seven's bony finger, found Kseyden. He nodded. "3893849280160001. Kseyden." He began to draw in the sky with res, milky white and undifferentiated between the elements. "It's surface is covered with a poisonous plant called, appropriately, vilemoss. Which is why I will open the portal, but won't allow anything to cross it. I am not an apothecary to prevent it from sickening us or sporing." He squeezed his pricked thumb to get a new bead of blood to emerge and pressed it to the outer ring of his summoning circle, and when his blood had infused it, linking its power to his soul, the air between them and Kseyden clouded, became a liquid mirror of light, and then eventually showed a terrestrial surface mostly covered with the greens and browns and yellows of plant life, and the rocks that supported them. No animal life was visible. "Kseyden."