Skylar groaned and let his head fall back, planting his palms across his eyes in exasperation. You krepnaks. How the skek am I even supposed to do that?!
Blue box? I don't know what you're talking about. You have to remember that what I send isn't necessarily what you see; there are exceptions, but most of the time if you see me say something like "fratz", that's not the actual word I said or thought. Pretty sure this won't work, though. Skylar opened his eyes and glanced down at the papers again; as before, the unfamiliar mix of swirls, loops, and straightly-angled symbols resembled nothing he recognized and was completely incomprehensible to him. See?
Ick. Skylar turned the thoughts over in his mind. That's possible, but doesn't seem like the most likely explanation; also not something I want to gamble my life with. Besides, if you wanted me to try to weasel my way out of this there were perfectly good vote options for that; I'll have to learn this language sometime, so I might as well try to at least make a half-bruxed attempt now.
Skylar pursed his lips in thought. These are at least decent questions. There's no guarantee I can be certain, but it doesn't look logographic; I see a lot of repeated symbols, a lot more than I think I would if they were radicals or other logographic compositionals. He tried separating the looped and angular shapes, which seemed to help; looks like the straight ones usually happen in clusters; those might have a different meaning than if they were all mixed together. Maybe they're numerals? He started to make some notes, then stopped as he realized how limited his workspace was. No scratch paper and a limited supply. I really should be using a chalkboard or something; guess I'll have to do it all in my head.
Skylar's brain began to hurt; he shook his head in frustration. That's the thing; none of the phenomes sound foreign. When I see somebody say an unusual word, like 'Alvatri', their mouth movements match the sounds I would expect that word to have. They usually don't actually say things like 'frotz', either; they're mostly using normal swears, although sometimes I do see them say frotz or skek or whatever directly. He frowned down at the parchment again. In theory, that means that these symbols should be transliterable to my native language, or at least have that be the effective outcome. Maybe it's a kind of cipher, essentially? Or I can treat it as one? He started to look around for something else he could use for notes.
Oh drotz. Skylar flinched involuntarily. Well, there goes any opportunity to check my appearance in here, too. Total corfsmot, as usual. Morosely, he felt sorry for himself for a few seconds, then focused up again. Can't waste time; he might be gone five hours or five minutes. I need to figure this out.
With renewed determination, he mentally attacked the figures on the page in front of him; grouping the straight lines together is definitely the way to go; they almost always appear in the same patterns, and have repetitious beginning and ending marks that only seem to vary slightly. He scanned the page again, wishing there were more calculations, and then noticed something interesting; some of the straight lines matched the curved ones in shape, but with angular construction instead of curvilinear. That one there looks like this same letter -- if they're letters -- but representing a numeral. Is it a variable, or does it represent a fixed quantity? Wait, maybe it's contextually place-based, like Reman numerals? He began counting preceding and anteceding marks after each of the letter-like shapes, and was gratified to see that they matched the patterns he expected; this is getting promising. I can start to read these numbers, now; if a stylized L precedes a Y, that means "one less than five", but if it's after the Y, it means "one more than five". If I assume that a smaller value preceding a larger one indicates a subtraction, all I have to do is identify which ones are smaller than the others...
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He read, re-read, and puzzled over the figures for a while; but eventually, he was forced to conclude that he simply didn't have enough information. It's a good start, but without at least some kind of known key, I won't ever be able to know for certain which numbers in this lexicon map to numbers I know. I'll only need one example to figure it out, but right now that's one more than I have. Frustrated, he turned his attention to the syllabaric symbols instead. If these map directly to sounds I know, it should be pretty easy to figure out if I can match them to a word I know will be in this. "Food" or "blood" is pretty much guaranteed to be in the document... no, wait, he might use terms like "provisions" and "sustenance" instead, so I can't count on that either. Korskak it, I'm so close! He stomped the floor in frustration.
"Hey! Hey, you in there!"
Skylar's head came up; frowning, he set the lapboard aside and peeked out the window. Is someone calling me?
"I vishnat see you," came the annoyed shout from below. "Get down here, blood-sucker! We're gonna take you down!" Skylar gawked at the vision before him; Levan -- the older, more curmudgeonly Levan of his acquaintance -- and Reine were standing in the open space below, surrounded by unconscious guards. Another copy/version/instance of him was standing next to them, hands in the pockets of his trenchcoat and looking sullen.
Skylar's mind raced. This is obnoxious and inconvenient, but maybe I can use it. If I get really, really creative... Ducking out the door to the study, he dashed down the stairs and grabbed a large black cloak from a hanging peg near the door before throwing it open. "Enter, fools, if you dare!" he roared in his best faux-villain voice, deepening the pitch as far as his vocal cords would allow as he retreated back to stand in front of Ular's charred and still-smoking corpse.
Predictably, Levan came bursting in, with Reine close behind him; Skylar gathered his will and cast an illusion of a shadowy figure where he stood into Levan's mind. To Reine's left, he saw the other Skylar doing the same to to the Justiciar with a hey-are-you-sure-about-this glance backwards and fought hard to keep a smirk off his face. "Sakpa manling, only fire can harm me!" he cackled, internally screaming at the strain of maintaining the illusion while also speaking for the handful of seconds it required; I'd be thrilled that I could hold it this long if I didn't feel like my brain was about to leak out through my nostrils.
"Okay then," Levan replied, holding forth a threatening palm. "Castigar."
Skylar fell more than leapt to one side, nearly insensate with the strain of holding the illusion still as he landed out of sight behind an end-table; the phantasm collapsed just as the resulting lance of flame shot forth and burst spectacularly, leaving behind a crackling fire that scorched the rear half of the first floor viciously. As the blast exploded, Skylar's guttering vision steadied, revealing Ular's remains just behind where he'd been standing. "I thought you said he was supposed to be strong," Reine opined flatly.
Levan frowned. "He was. Maybe we've gotten stronger?" He frowned suspiciously towards the other Skylar. "Maybe it wasn't really him. Go check the body."
The other Skylar nodded, looking pleased. "Good idea. If it's the real him, there should be a fanged skull..." He stepped forward, carefully not looking at the other Skylar's hiding place, then crouched down in front of the corpse. With his left hand -- hidden from Reine and Levan's lines of sight -- he held up three fingers, then two, then one...
"Hey! Hey, you in there!" an agitated voice shouted from outside; Levan and Reine both turned towards the sound as the other Skylar gestured frantically towards himself, then slipped silently behind the other end-table across the room. Skylar didn't hesitate; smoothly, he dropped the black cloak behind him as he stepped out of concealment and crouched down in front of the corpse where the other Skylar had been only a moment before. He picked up the Ravitu skull -- sorry, Ular, but you're still helping your master -- and turned to face the sound with the others as though he'd been doing so all along.
"Sod off, if you like being alive," Levan snapped back through the door, turning fully and taking a half-step towards the outdoors; beyond, Skylar could see the fat guard who had escorted him struggling to maintain a brave facade in the face of incipient terror.
Whoops. Better move fast. Skylar stepped up next to Levan and tossed the skull nonchalantly into his hands; the Loathborn cursed, bobbled it a bit, and finally caught it with a glare. "Hey! Watch it, Zuzan!"
"I got this," Skylar assured him. "It's him all right; but these guys are just doing their jobs. Let me talk to him." He quick-stepped past a scowling Reine and moved up next to the fat guard, moving his hand nonchalantly up to his chin while making a "shh" gesture with his forefinger out of the other two's vision. "Keep your voice down," he cautioned the guard.
"What's going on, sir?" The guard was visibly trembling; Skylar winced. That's not gonna help sell this. "Are these people friends of yours?"
"No, they're dangerous lunatics," Skylar said entirely truthfully from his point of view, "but I can definitely handle them. This is what the commander wants, anyway; we're doing a rebrand, and you need to tell everyone that Lord Nightstar was evil and now he's dead and the commander reluctantly, but heroically, killed him. If anyone acts confused, tell them that everything they're confused about can be explained by Lord Nightstar's evil lies, and they can come talk to the commander or me about it if they have further concerns." He held the fat guard's gaze steadily. "This is critically important, soldier. Life or death for you, me, every citizen of this town, all of it. You get me?" He caught an aborted twitch of the hand and shook his head the tiniest bit. "Don't salute me. These people are not aware of my identity and it is the only thing keeping me alive right now."
The fat guard swallowed, but eventually managed a shaky nod. "Got it. Uh, all clear, sir. I mean, citizen."
"Good enough." Skylar clapped the guard on the shoulder and nodded meaningfully in the opposite direction; he turned back to the others and made a show of looking relieved. "I talked him down. They don't want any trouble; just scared."
Levan snorted, but a haunted look in his eyes softened his sneer. "Yeah, well, makes sense I guess. You'd think they'd be more grateful to be saved from a bloodsucking Ravitu Lord, but I guess anything that can kill that is pretty scary too."
"We're not here to impress the yokels," Reine asserted coldly. "Did you get the proof you wanted for your theory, or not?"
"Dunno; we'll have to return to the future to see. Skylar, get us outta here; future time, chop chop."
"Uh, sure." Skylar stepped close to the others, who reached forward to take hold of his arms; he jerked back in surprise, which elicited scornful expressions from both.
"What's with you?" Levan asked immediately. "You trying to leave us behind?"
"No, you just startled me," Skylar protested. "I didn't think you'd want to do it in front of witnesses." They know about the Kalativa? What time period are they from? Where's Aymon?
The other two paused; "You make a good point," Levan conceded. Rather than removing his hand, however, he looked towards a deeply shadowed region of the woods beyond the city's borders, then closed his eyes. "Loufan."
In an instant, Skylar's whole body was aflame; he froze, waiting for agony, as his physical form seemed to disintegrate into fuzzy, buzzing ash for a split second. However, the expected pain never came; the fire disappeared, as quickly as it had begun, and he found he was no longer standing where he'd been an instant before. "Anytime now," Levan chided him.
Some kinda flame teleport. Good to know. Skylar fumbled the Kalativa from his pocket and held it before him, contemplating; here's hoping this works. Mentally crossing his fingers, he envisioned a period of time far in the future and pressed his thumb against the raised portion of the disc as hard as he could.
Time fell away.
The experience -- using the Kalativa consciously, rather than activating it blindly -- was overwhelming and dizzying; Skylar could literally feel time slipping past him, ages and moments cascading by like sights beyond a train window, as his body and mind froze in an infinite, timeless void of transition. Then, abruptly, he rejoined the temporal river of normal time; his body, freed from the eternal frozen instant of transport, shocked back into motion as his heart and breath resumed with a shuddering, jerky heave. Wow, that sucked. "You guys don't pay me enough for this," he coughed as he doubled over; nothing hurt, exactly, but it definitely didn't feel good.
"Tell you what, Zuzan, I'll double your pay," Levan managed, equally discomfited; only Reine seemed unaffected by the journey. She looked around, nodding in satisfaction.
"Guess he wasn't lying this time; we're back in Shala'kaitya, like he said we'd be." Skylar managed to look upward; all around them, towers of glowing white bone reached towards a black sky dotted with huge, luminous motes, like fireflies the size of dirigibles. "We can either try to find the library again, or go talk to the Regent; she knows much of history."
"We should do both," Levan managed, groaning as he stood upright. "Minds might be changed, but records the same, or vice versa; trying to alter the past is pretty uncharted territory, here." Skylar's eyes narrowed. He's trying to use the Kalativa to change who killed Lord Nightstar, as a test of temporal theory. He's risking the structural integrity of all of space-time as an experiment. Gog almighty, this zubnak is even more arrogant than I am.
Reine nodded, then closed her eyes and raised her gauntleted hands outwards in a Y-shape. "Very well. By the fourth word of Maivat's law, let the quarry be vivid in my sight. Humoil." Nothing happened that Skylar could see, but after a moment, she opened her eyes again, and this time he could detect a subtle golden sheen. "It appears the library is this way."
She and Levan set off; Skylar lagged behind for just a moment, sweating profusely. This is probably the best way everything could have worked out, but now I have exponentially more problems. I have to save myself three times in the future, now; pretty soon it'll become more than I can keep track of, and then I'll also be risking the integrity of space-time, but out of incompetence instead of hubris. I need to get my fratz together.
WHAT SHOULD WE DO IN THE FUTURE?
