Chapter seven: Trying to Find, Find the Right Time

You are now TOBIAS. Your last name doesn't matter. You could shout it from the mountaintops now if you wanted, now that you've escaped the war. But you never cared much for the name. It means nothing to you.

Sometimes, you toy with the idea of calling yourself Tobias Fangor. It was the name your father had, before the Ellimist came and twisted history and left you like some kind of temporal flotsam even though your parents now had never met. How much his kid are you really, with that in mind? How does that even work?

You've never voiced this idea to anybody. You barely acknowledge it to yourself. But once, you almost whispered that that name, first and last together.

It has been TWELVE DAYS since the Earth died and you fled the meteors for the safety of the MEDIUM. Cassie is alive. Ax is alive. Jake is okay and nobody's gone crazy. Today is a very important day. Today is the day that you die.

But you don't know any of that. Today you're just a glorified FROG-CATCHER. It's kind of boring, really, and you have to keep reminding yourself to not eat the frogs.

Why do the most important jobs always seem to be the most boring?

Your name is TOBIAS and you are the SEER OF SPACE. This is a very important and boring job that seems to involve a lot of frogs for NO GOOD REASON at all. But that must be why they call this place the LAND OF WINDOWS AND FROGS.

The windows are also boring. And you are tired of smacking into them. They are everywhere, standing free on their own, of every shape and size. And they are so ridiculously clean and transparent. You could almost believe they weren't there at all.

Except then you smack into another one and, oh yeah, they exist alright.

The world is otherwise inhabited by STUPID CERULEAN RED-TAILED HAWKS who like AGRICULTURE. The idea of it, more. Hawk feet are hardly the best thing for handling farm tools. It also doesn't help that they don't know anything about farming in the first place. You figured that out pretty fast after the hawks started talking to you about how they were growing tomatoes because they needed the sauce to fertilize their grove of PASTA PLANTS.

So instead of actually raising crops they more wander around and dig up holes to put seeds in and awkwardly drag rakes and spades around like a flurry of FEATHERY MAKE-WORK BIRDS.

Luckily, hawks are still predators here even if they're somehow stupider than the hawks on Earth, and they get by just fine on mice and voles. And frogs.

You're kind of tired of keeping the hawks away from your frogs.

After you gave up on the hawks you fiddled around for a few days with something called an ALCHEMITER. It would take objects and make all kinds of hideous or nonsensical fusions out of them. But even that got old fast.

And there's a bunch of things that you're supposed to be doing with these frogs you're catching but again, it's kind of hard to operate the machine. Whoever decided to put the bird in charge of the high-tech was an idiot. It's easier to manipulate when you have OPPOSABLE MONKEY THUMBS but you've been a hawk for so long that being human is like wearing an ill-fitting rubber suit.

You've even forgotten how to make facial expressions without thinking about it.

Which is probably why you've decided to say "Screw this for a bucket of buttered mice at the drive-in," and fly around and around without anywhere specifically in mind. Well, okay, maybe somewhere.

The windows were put here by somebody. And even if you weren't kind of angry at the sight of the occasional crippled hawk shuffling along on the ground like an avian Tiny Tim, by this point you're ready to bring the hate on for your own sake. You and this Denizen of yours are going to have words, you decided, and this nonsense is going to stop.

You might also take offense at the monsters that are wandering around, but honestly they're having an even harder time than you are at navigating through this window pain obstacle course.

You fly for what seems to be a long time. There are portals in the sky. Portal after portal, bringing you ever closer to your destination.

To Echidna.

You find yourself in a space between worlds. You panic for a moment. Crystal spires float here.

You wonder why you came. This is not a good place to be.

=== TOBIAS: Stay still.

Right. Like listening to these random ideas popping in your head are turning out so well. Weren't you told not to confront your Denizen until later? And then you got the impulse to ignore that advice and fly right up and make her answer for all this window business.

And this place is getting kind of freaky and you don't if you should be here any longer. Maybe you're not cut out for this just yet.

But then you don't have time to take your decisions back. Because that's when she appears. Or it. A colossal sinuous thing. Human-like in places. A two-tailed snake below the waist. Armless. A face like stone, unmoving, unblinking. A back covered in countless crystal spires, blue and white and every color in-between.

tobias fangor you are early

You hear it. Not like sound. Not like thoughtspeak. But you know what is being said. It is like you are remembering what has been said, having never actually experienced it.

this is as planned

Suddenly, bumping into windows doesn't seem so important to you anymore.

tell us what you have lost

You don't answer immediately, and it repeats the demand.

So you talk about Earth.

You realize that you didn't lose very much. Your family? Who knows what happened to your mother. You saw your sorta-kinda father eaten by a monster before you ever learned your relationship with each other. The rest of your family barely noticed when you disappeared.

Your friends are here.

The whole human race is gone, except for the five of you, but…

How human are you, anyway? You can barely remember to smile sometimes.

How much did you lose?

(I had the woods. And I had the sky) you say.

you still have the sky

what you have is falling

will you die or will you die

What? What kind of thing is that? That doesn't make any sense.

rachel berenson is the hero of time

she will die a thousand deaths and kill a thousand times

if you ask her, this will be so

and this is your choice

(Why would I do that?)

the reckoning is coming

to survive it you must die

a sacrament on the stone table

And you know, in a part of you that you didn't know was there, that this is so.

The Denizens are many things, and sometimes they are liars. But the Choice is a law. Working strangely for some and straightly for others

You understand this. Without words or feelings or thoughts exchanged, you understand this.

Echidna closes her eyes and drifts away. You have not spoken, but she knows you have made your choice.

The air is cold as you fly back. It is cold as you morph into human form. The keys of your computer, the whole world, so cold as you log on.

Your WAA username is T0bi. You had another one once, but too much time had passed the time you were stuck in hawk form. Hawks don't use instant messengers, and you guess you got out of the habit after you recovered the ability to morph.

Maybe your new username is a little unoriginal, but the meteors were already coming down when you realized you couldn't remember your password.

You type out a message.

T0bi: Rachel.

Lawless85: Hey, what's up?

T0bi: You need to come over.

T0bi: We need to talk about something.

Lawless85: What's wrong?

T0bi has become idle…

Lawless85: On my way. Hold tight.

You close out of the browser. You shut the computer down. And you wait for Rachel to come, so you can explain what she needs to do.

There's a stone slab not too far from here. It's where the hawks say heroes die.

The two of you will journey there.

End of Disk One: Genesis

Requiring Disk Two: The New Gods

Insert Disk Two?

Y/N