Author's Note
Well, how about this Pandemic? Not even during the World Wars has every living member of Humanity shared a collective experience so intensely. I'm not sure how this Pandemic will change history, but I do know that history is being changed. Ideally for the better. And at a very high cost.
It has been a while since the last chapter was released. It may be a while before the next one. This is nothing new. I did enjoy the monthly publishing rhythm I'd established while writing Intermission III, and I hoped to continue that, but then the Pandemic happened. My livelihood as a historical tour guide has been shattered for the foreseeable future, and I've learned more about Unemployment than I ever wanted to know. Still, my situation could be a lot worse. So far, my family and friends have been fortunate enough to avoid the virus, and so have I. Most of my friends still have their jobs.
When I've studied the Great Depression, I've always felt a strong relief that I did not have to live through it, and that relief is now gone. Millions have lost their jobs, and even when lockdown measures are relaxed, those jobs will not instantly reappear. The virus will pass, but this is only the beginning of what may be the most severe economic downturn any of us will experience in our lifetimes.
I do not know how all of you are doing. I hope you are well. If you have survived until now, you have clearly found some way to adapt to the new circumstances. I encourage you to take notes, make journal or video logs, or find some other way to archive and capture your experience of this Pandemic, because it may seem like long stretches of not much happening, but this is history in the making. The older generations still talk about where they were when Kennedy was shot. I still remember where I was when 9/11 happened. In the coming decades, we will talk about where we were and what we did during the Pandemic of the early '20s, so we might as well do what we can to ensure we retain clear memories and stories of the experience.
I thought Ashes and Grist was going to be finished within a year or two, and I started writing it in January of 2012. Whoops. It was never my intention to take this long, but I'm glad I still have this story to write during these interesting times. I've written this story during the greatest and worst moments of my life.
Thank you very much for taking interest in this project, and for taking the time to read.
We will get through this experience together. Stay safe, and enjoy this next piece of the story.
-TheAmateur
Act VII: Concerning Endgames and New Beginnings
Chapter One-Hundred-Seven: Land of Grapes and Glass
Hearing birdsong, Anna Carrero opened her eyes to the headache-inducing pulsatile cyan light of her sweater-wearing lightbulb-sprite.
"Okay, nope." Anna attempted to captchalogue the obnoxious sprite, and much to her surprise, it worked. "Wow." She scrutinized her newest captchalogue card, which now displayed an image of Lightbulbsprite. "Skaia-tech. Gotta love it."
"Hello?" Through Anna's phone resting on the table, Theo's voice asked, "Anna? Are you-"
"I made it, Theo. Thanks for all your help. See you soon." Anna picked up her phone. "Well, soon for me. Later for you. Much later."
"Can we talk about-"
Anna ended the call, pocketing her phone.
Daylight streamed through the shattered windows into the bullet-riddled apartment. The storm was gone. No more police, no more gunfire, and no more screaming. The chaos of Anna's departure from Earth had given way to a tranquil calm, and the sudden change was jarring.
Dazed, Anna wandered through the open front doorway, drawn by the sight of a vibrant meadow teeming with sunflowers and honeybees. "This is what my planet looks like?" She passed through the doorway and took her first steps into a new world. "Wow."
The apartment had materialized in the middle of a sunny valley. Steep, verdant hillsides hemmed in the meadow on three sides, leaving a single direction open for the valley to continue. Skaialight sparkled from the surface of a small, babbling creek which meandered past Anna's apartment, winding its way through the masses of sunflowers until vanishing into the nearby woods.
Anna kicked off her shoes and stepped onto the soft grass. Several honeybees hummed over to investigate, buzzing around Anna's head and shoulders, but she did not mind.
Allowing one of the honeybees to land on her upper arm, Anna glanced upward, watching fluffy cyan cumulus clouds scroll silently across the soft orange sky. One of the clouds drifted in front of Skaia, causing it to shine like a topaz held up to the sun.
Temporary shade swept across the hills, and Anna felt a bit colder without the soothing warmth of direct skaialight.
The honeybee on Anna's arm lost interest and flew away.
Anna knelt down and put her face into one of the sunflowers, inhaling deeply. "Meh." She stood back up and continued walking. "Don't worry about not smelling like anything," she reassured the sunflowers. "You're still amazing."
A gentle breeze rippled through the meadow, carrying a sweet, refreshing scent which reminded Anna of honeysuckle. As she inhaled through her nose, gently breathing in the honeysuckle aroma, she began to levitate effortlessly off the ground. The meadow fell away, and Anna continued to rise, ascending to an altitude higher than all of the surrounding hilltops.
Gently rolling hills stretched all the way to the horizon in every direction, adorned with groves of Mediterranean cypress trees and tall grass which shined a brilliant golden-green in the skaialight. A mountain-sized wineglass loomed in the distance. Thousands of feet high, hundreds of feet wide, the humongous wineglass towered over all of the surrounding hills. Rainwater filled the wineglass's bowl more than halfway, shimmering with refracted skaialight.
"Well, that's weird." Anna raised an inquisitive eyebrow at the surreal sight of the wineglass-mountain. "Am I still dead?" After pondering for a moment, Anna could not think of a way to prove whether her consciousness was truly tethered to a physical body or to the mentally-generated illusion of one. "Let's go with courtroom logic. I'm alive until proven dead."
The base of the wineglass-mountain was hidden behind an area of tall hills, and as Anna squinted in an attempt to get a better look at those hills, she noticed little cottages built on the hilltops.
After checking her phone and finding no messages yet from Cruz, Anna descended from her lofty position in the sky, returning almost all the way to ground level. She floated directly into her bedroom via the pulverized window, careful to avoid cutting herself on the jagged shards of glass. Gagging at the smell of Past Anna's puke-soaked corpse, she walked over to her bed.
"Miss me?" Anna asked her dead past self, closing and captchaloguing her laptop.
A honeybee hummed in through the window and landed on Past Anna's cheek.
"Of course you did." Shooing away the bee before it could skitter into Past Anna's partially open mouth, Anna captchalogued the corpse and stowed it in her sylladex. "Why am I always the one who gets slapped with corpse-carrying duty?" She paused for a moment to take in the sight of her ravaged and ruined bedroom. "Maybe I'll come back and clean you, someday."
With that, Anna turned and climbed out her window, leaping into the air. Allowing the magnetic feeling of weightlessness to fill her body, she soared into the sky and set off towards the mountain-sized wineglass, leaving behind the tranquil meadow of sunflowers.
Wind scoured Anna's face. She looked down, watching the hills, valleys, and streams pass swiftly by. Many of the valleys contained expansive sunflower fields. In other valleys, Anna saw rose bushes, dandelions, and pink echinacea. "If I'd known my planet was this beautiful, I'd have visited."
The humongous wineglass loomed ahead, and now Anna could begin to see its bottom. The stem of the wineglass stretched hundreds of feet all the way to the ground. The actual flat base of the wineglass, if any existed, was hidden from view, likely buried deep underground.
Cultivated farmland and vineyards filled the valleys between the hills surrounding the wineglass-mountain, stretching out in all directions for many miles. Anna descended towards the nearest inhabited hilltop, which sported a quaint wooden cottage with burnt-orange window frames and a teal door. Smoke curled from the cottage's stone-and-mortar chimney, implying someone was home.
A flagstone path wound its way from the teal door, down the hillside, and into the valley below, where it merged with a larger dirt road. In the near distance, within the expanse of cypress trees clustered around the mountainous wineglass's base, Anna could see the streets, clock tower, chimneys, and rooftops of a small town.
Anna's feet touched down upon the flagstones.
An idyllic vineyard filled the valley below, surrounding the hilltop on three sides and extending all the way out to the neighboring hills. Anna swept her gaze across row after row of lush grapevines supported by sturdy wooden stakes and trellises. She stared, salivating, at the luscious clumps of blue grapes dangling enticingly from the vines, bathed in warm skaialight.
"You look so fucking delicious," murmured Anna to the faraway grapes. "Is your wine blue, too?"
If the beautiful blue grapes were made into wine, how amazing would that wine taste?
No wine.
Anna looked away from the vineyard, walking towards the cottage's front entrance. Knocking on the teal wooden door, she asked, "Hello? Anyone home?"
"Who is there?" asked a gruff voice from behind the door. "Not an inspector, are you? My vines were inspected last week, already. Go back to your supervisors and tell them-"
"I'm not an inspector," interrupted Anna. "I'm just passing through, and I need directions."
"Passing through?" echoed the voice in disbelief. "Directions? You trespass on the best vineyard in Etruria, and all you want are directions?"
"That's right." Anna's pocket vibrated, and she took out her phone, which displayed a new message from Cruz.
"You want free wine, like everyone else, and I haven't the energy for this game," harrumphed the grouchy voice. "If you agree to leave me in peace, I'll allow you a tasting."
Anna cleared her throat, quickly reading Cruz's message. "I don't think-"
"Only one tasting, you hear?" With a dull metallic snick, the newly unlocked cottage door swung inwardly open, revealing a five-foot-tall bipedal iguana. "No refills."
Anna blinked, staring at the iguana-consort.
The bewildered iguana gazed back at Anna. He wore simple pants of brown cloth, canvas sandals, and a dyed blue tunic secured around his waist by a braided rope cord.
"Nice." Anna pocketed her phone. "Lizards, huh?" Peering past the iguana-consort into the cottage's interior, Anna saw a kitchen with a dormant brick oven, as well as an adjacent den with fully-stocked bookshelves, oil lamps, a lit fireplace, and an old-fashioned table made of dark wood. "Mind if I have a seat?"
The iguana-consort continued to stare, openmouthed.
"I'm just gonna go ahead, and…" Anna walked briskly past the iguana-consort and invited herself inside, taking a seat at the den table. "Thank you."
Still in the midst of processing his first encounter with a human being, the iguana-consort turned around slowly, stepping inside without bothering to close the door. "You…" He pointed at Anna, searching for the right words. "You are the wrong species. You are neither kin nor Customer."
"We're the second-worst species from my home planet, sure," admitted Anna, "but that doesn't make us a 'wrong' species."
The iguana-consort blinked. "Second-worst?"
"After spiders, yes." From her sylladex, Anna retrieved her laptop, placing it on the lacquered wood table. "Seriously, fuck spiders." She opened the laptop, waiting impatiently for the password screen to appear. "Do you know anything about spiders?"
"I don't…" The iguana-consort blinked again. "What is a spider?"
"Lucky you. Lucky, lucky you." Anna typed duch3ss_of_b0rdeaux into the laptop's password bar, and when her desktop appeared, she double-clicked on the Sburb server icon. "It's good none of our planets wound up with spider consorts. That would be cruel and unusual punishment for everyone."
"Who are you?" The iguana-consort glanced at the spatha mounted on his fireplace's mantel. A portrait, hanging on the wall behind the spatha, depicted a proud iguana-consort clad in a simple white dress underneath a colorful toga adorned with elaborate patterns of cyan, violet, and amber. "I did not give you permission to enter."
"I'm Anna. Nice to meet you." Anna held out a hand, but the iguana-consort seemed confused. "You're supposed to shake it."
"Shake what?"
"My hand," said Anna. "Shake my hand."
"Why?"
"It's a way of saying a friendly hello."
The iguana-consort made no move to touch Anna's hand. "An odd custom."
"Sure." Anna withdrew her hand, returning her full attention to the Sburb server application loading on her laptop. "You have a name?"
Moving towards the fireplace, the iguana-consort replied, "Ulexios Scipio di Malva."
Anna tapped an impatient rhythm on the table's surface, waiting for Sburb to load and connect. "Ulexios Scipio de what?"
"di Malva."
"Ulexios Scipio di Malva," said Anna. "Gotta say, Ulexios, you have a sick name."
"Scipio," corrected the iguana-consort, reaching for his spatha. "Ulexios is my family name."
"Really? What does 'Malva' mean?"
Scipio took his spatha down from the mantel of the fireplace, gazing at the portrait of the iguana-consort with the colorful toga. "This is Malva. She is my mother."
"Matrilineal naming? Fuck yes. I approve." Anna stared at the computer screen, losing her patience. "Where is she? Do I get to meet her?"
"Certainly not. She lives at the heart of the Pomerium, in Neapolis, and she is far too busy with affairs of state to live on the family vineyard. Fortunately for you. My mother is far less forgiving towards disrespectful fools."
"Sounds like quite a gal." Frustrated by the slowness of Sburb's loading process, Anna forced herself to look away from her laptop screen. She watched Scipio unsheathe his spatha, raising an eyebrow. "Nice sword. Planning on using it?"
Scipio held his sword loosely, taking a step towards Anna. "That depends on what you do when I ask you to leave."
"Juicy." Anna's phone began to vibrate. "One sec, I gotta take this."
"You will leave my property-"
"Uh-huh, one sec." Anna answered her phone, bringing her it to her ear. "Cruz? Hello?"
"Anna!" exclaimed Cruz's voice. In the background of the phone call, Anna could hear faint explosions and sirens. "Where are you? The meteorites are really starting to come down, and I gotta say, it was cool at first, but now it's a bit scary. You're going to run out of time if we don't do this fast."
"Theo already got me through the intro." Anna raised an index finger towards an increasingly furious Scipio, silently telling him to wait. "I have all the time in the world."
"You most certainly do not," interjected Scipio. "Get out of my home!"
"Who's that?" asked Cruz. "Who's there?"
"I've made first contact with my consorts," explained Anna. "It's going about as well as you can imagine."
"OUT!" demanded Scipio, gesturing with his sword towards the open front door.
"Put that thing away before you cut yourself," suggested Anna. "I'm the Seer of Time. Does that mean anything to you?"
"The Seer of Time?" Scipio lowered his sword. "You lie. The Seer of Time would never be so disrespectful."
Anna shrugged. "Unfulfilled expectations are part of life." With a musical chime, the Sburb server application completed its loading process. "Cruz, send me your IP address."
"Done." Within seconds, Anna's phone vibrated with a new message from Cruz.
Anna typed Cruz's IP address into her Sburb server's 'direct connect' option. "Alright, it's connecting."
"What are you speaking to?" asked Scipio, narrowing his eyes at Anna's phone.
"Cruz, I'm putting you on speaker." Anna tapped her phone's speaker button. "Go ahead and say hi to Scipio."
"Who?" Cruz's speakerphone-amplified voice filled the room. "Skippy? Smooth is the way to go with Skippy."
"That is sacrilege," declared Anna. "Everyone knows Extra Crunchy is the One True Skippy."
"Nope," said Cruz. "Not true. When I eat peanut butter, I want to taste more than an avalanche of peanuts."
"And I'd like my peanut butter to have a texture which doesn't remind me of baby shit." Anna placed her phone down on the table. "Scipio, this is my friend Cruz."
Scipio's curiosity got the better of him, and he sheathed his spatha, frowning at the phone. "Is your friend inside this device? How could he possibly fit?"
"No, Cruz has a body like mine. This is just a phone. It's a communication tool."
"Anna?" Cruz sounded very confused."What's going on?"
"I think my consorts are pre-industrial," said Anna. "They don't know what phones are, and I don't feel like explaining."
"Nothing to explain. It's simple. Scipio, you hearing me?" asked Cruz. "Phones are just telepathy. Technological telepathy. Almost like how muscle manipulation is bio-technological telekinesis. Our bodies are among the most sophisticated machines in existence, and when you have a thought to move your fingers, BOOM! Your fingers are moving! How do you do that? If that isn't telekinesis, what is?"
Scipio stared blankly at Anna's phone.
"You just blew his mind," Anna remarked as the Sburb loading screen on her laptop dissolved away, replaced by a live video feed showing the interior of Cruz's house.
Cruz could be seen in his bedroom, sitting at the computer desk. When Anna zoomed out to see the house's exterior, she spotted Chela Arevalo on the rooftop. Braving the storm in a heavy raincoat, Chela stood on the shingles near her house's chimney, watching multiple blazing meteorites arc down through the storm clouds.
"Alright, I'm connected." Anna shifted the viewpoint of her Sburb feed back into Cruz's bedroom. "I'm looking right at you."
"Sweet!" Cruz glanced around his bedroom, waving to an invisible audience. "Hello!"
"You're just waving at the wall," said Anna. "My view is behind you and to your right."
Cruz turned around, offering another wave to the 'camera' he could not see. "If you hold down control, the right and left arrow keys will let you rotate your view."
"Really? How about that." A roaring explosion thundered in the background of Cruz's phone call, and Anna's Sburb feed flickered for a moment. "Everything alright on your end?"
"Yeah, for now," replied Cruz. "These meteorites are getting way too close for comfort. Can we hurry this up? Drop in my machines. I know what to do."
Scipio pulled up a chair and took a seat, fascinated by the activity on Anna's laptop. "Is that a real place?"
"Of course it's real." Anna scrolled quickly through the interior of Cruz's house and basement, finding suitable locations for the Sburb machines and deploying them accordingly. "Alright, Cruz, your alchemiter and cruxtruder are downstairs, and I dropped the totem lathe in your grandma's bedroom. Here is your pre-punched card…" She located the pre-punched captchalogue card on her computer screen, clicking and dragging it into Cruz's bedroom. When she unclicked, the card materialized and fell onto Cruz's head. "Alright, you're set. Need anything else?"
"Nope." Picking up the fallen card, Cruz gave another wave as he exited his bedroom. "Thanks, Anna. See you on the other side."
Anna ended the phone call and disconnected from Sburb, closing her laptop and stowing it in her sylladex.
Scipio blinked in surprise as the laptop vanished. "Where are you going?"
"What does it matter?" Anna stood up from the table, heading for the open front door. "A minute ago, you were waving a sword around like a crazy person and screaming at me to get out. I can find someone else to help me."
"Wait just a moment. You broke into my home. I deserve answers." Scipio rose to his feet, following Anna outside. "Your etheric companion, for instance. Where is it?"
"My what?" Anna took a moment to inhale deeply through her nose, filling herself again with the floral aroma of honeysuckle.
"In all versions of the story, the Seer arrives with an etheric companion. A spirit guide."
"Do you mean this worthless waste of a sprite?" Anna retrieved Lightbulbsprite from her sylladex, releasing it from the captchalogue card.
With a harmless explosion of cyan light, Lightbulbsprite burst into form less than five feet away from Scipio, prompting the iguana-consort to backpedal in alarm. "Blight!" swore Scipio, raising his sword. "What is that?!"
"You literally just asked to see it, and now you're asking what it is?" Anna shook her head. "It's supposed to be able to talk and offer tiny pieces of annoyingly cryptic advice, but I fucked it up. Doesn't seem capable of doing much more than floating around, flashing, and being generally useless."
Scipio eyed the floating Lightbulbsprite with wariness. "Is it dangerous?"
"It's too dumb to be dangerous." Anna gazed down at the vineyard below, where the vibrant blue grapes beckoned tantalizingly from the bottom of Scipio's hill. She began to walk in that direction, and her sprite bobbed along after her. "Just don't try to eat it, and I'm sure you'll be fine."
Sheathing his spatha, Scipio followed Anna and her sprite downhill to the vineyard. "If you are truly the Seer of Time, that would mean you can see the future?"
"In a way. It's a bit more complex than that."
Frustrated, Scipio asked, "Can you see the future or can't you?"
"Time is not nearly as linear as you think." Anna stepped carefully over a loose rock, making her way to the bottom of the hill. "I can only see pieces of what my future self has seen, because my future self is the one sending visions to her past. To me. Does that make sense?"
"Not in the slightest."
"Really?" Anna admired the nearest row of grapevines, trailing a finger across a vine's gnarled wooden trunk. "None of your people are seers or time travelers of any kind?"
"There were Oracles who supposedly possessed these abilities, but that was long ago," said Scipio. "The Oracles died out not long after the Dawn Times. Their skills were forgotten, if the stories are to be believed, but it is no great loss to my people. We do not need to see the future to know when it is time to sow our fields."
"Tell me about these awesome grapes." Anna stopped in front of the first row of grapevines. "I've never seen grapes this color. They almost look glow-in-the-dark."
"Beautiful, aren't they? And you're right; they are faintly luminous. Here in Etruria, we call them Nightlights, but you'll hear different names if you travel throughout the Pomerium," replied Scipio. "In Neapolis, where my mother was born, they are called Blue Suns, which I find ironic because they only shine at night."
"May I try one?"
"Not these. They were pruned late in the season and are not ready." Scipio led Anna deeper into the vineyard. "The ripest vines are on the other side of my fields."
Another large hill hemmed in the far side of Scipio's vineyard, and Anna spotted a stained wooden door built directly into the hillside, much like the door of a hobbit hole. "What's behind the door?"
"That is my aging vault. My casks reside there during the fermentation process," replied Scipio, selecting an old grapevine laden with plump Nightlights. "The vines in this part of my field are the oldest. My father's ancestors planted them nearly two hundred years ago, and I always prune them first." He plucked a sprig of three grapes and offered them to Anna. "These are ready."
Anna accepted the grapes, popping one into her mouth. The crispness of the grape, the sweetness of its juice, and the intense explosion of flavor rooted Anna to the spot, and time seemed to crawl. "Holy fucking shit." Anna ate the second grape, then the third, trying to savor the experience by chewing slowly. "These are amazing. I've never tasted grapes before."
"Really?" Scipio regarded Anna with incredulity. "Never?"
"Of course not. It's only a saying. I've eaten a shitload of grapes," clarified Anna. "But I've never tasted grapes like these until today, and let me tell you, I could eat this entire row of vines."
"Please do not." Scipio walked over to the aging vault's door, producing a key from one of his tunic's inner pockets. He unlocked the aging vault's door, gently pushing it open. "The product is even more enjoyable than the ingredient," he said, grabbing a long, tubular glass wine thief from where it hung on the wall beside the door, along with a small flint striker.
Using the flint striker, Scipio lit a wall-mounted oil lamp, illuminating the inside of the wine cellar.
Hundreds of cypress wood casks filled the shelves on either side of the vault's interior, separated by a central walking aisle.
"Trust me." Anna stepped into the vault, running a hand across the wooden surface of several adjacent casks. "From what I just tasted, you could make a decent living with the grapes alone."
Scipio chose a cask on the bottom shelf, pulling it out partway. He removed the peg lodged in the cask's top opening, inserting the wine thief. "That would not be feasible. The Customers do not come to our world for unfermented grapes."
"The who?"
"The Customers." Scipio placed his thumb over the wine thief's airhole, creating a suction which kept the wine from pouring out of the glass instrument. He withdrew the glass thief from the opened cask, revealing a vivid blue wine. "Have a taste."
"That looks amazing." Anna stared longingly at the electric-blue wine contained within the tubular glass instrument. "I probably shouldn't…"
"You'll never taste a finer vintage." Scipio walked back over to the vault entrance, where he snatched two wineglasses from a shelf underneath the mounted oil lamp. He emptied the wine thief's contents into the two glasses, offering one to Anna. "Our weather during this year's growing season was impeccable, and my grapes always yield unforgettable wine."
Anna took the wineglass, bringing it up to her nose and sniffing. Although the aroma was heavenly, she hesitated, staring at the blue wine. "I really shouldn't."
"Nonsense. Wine is good for the heart." Scipio drank from his wineglass, humming with pleasure. "This cask could use another week, but it is coming along very nicely."
"I mean… I guess just one won't hurt. It's not like I haven't earned it." Anna took a sip of the most delicious wine she'd ever tasted. The warming burn of alcohol in her throat and belly ignited a dormant thirst which, two large gulps later, resulted in an empty wineglass. Without hesitating, Anna looked at the opened cask and contemplated how to ask for a refill.
Fire.
Burning cypress trees, boiling sap, churning pillars of smoke.
Anna's breath caught in her throat as she was overtaken by a powerful vision of wildfires spreading across the countryside. Steadying herself against the nearest cask, she blinked, and the vision passed.
"You are a lightweight," remarked Scipio, finishing his wine. "And you imbibe too quickly. Subtler flavor notes do not reveal themselves to the impatient."
"I…" Before Anna could say anything else, a distant thunder rumbled faintly from outside. As the seconds crawled by, the sustained rumbling did not abate, and it became clear to Anna that she was not hearing thunder.
"That is odd." Scipio frowned, sealing his sample cask. He ushered Anna outside, extinguishing the oil lamp on the way out. "The Customers are early."
Anna stepped outside, looking up to the sky, where she spotted the unmistakable shape of a Dersite Royal Navy frigate. "Your customers are the Dersite military?"
"What they call themselves is their own business," said Scipio, joining Anna outside and shutting the wooden door behind him. "More than ninety-five percent of my product goes to the Customers."
"Um." Anna swallowed uncomfortably, watching the DRN frigate grow bigger in the sky as it approached. "Do they pay you?"
"The Customers pay my entire people," Scipio explained. "We offer part of our harvest. In return, the Customers provide our crafting guilds with steel."
"You call more than ninety-five percent 'part' of your harvest?" Wondering if she should hide, Anna continued to stare at the oncoming DRN frigate, noticing two points of bright white light shining from the front of the ship. "And all you get is a lousy bunch of steel?"
"It allows us to protect ourselves. Our legions are the only thing keeping our borders intact, and without steel, we would be reduced to using wooden clubs, stone spears, and wicker shields. The frontier walls would be little more than earthworks. You must understand; there is only death outside of the Pomerium," explained Scipio. "Millions of bloodthirsty creatures roam the wilderness beyond. I fought them when I served in the Etrurian Legion, and I can tell you, some of those beasts are larger than my house."
"Believe me, I know. I'm telling you, the Dersites could kill every last underling on this planet if they wanted. It wouldn't take them very long." The DRN frigate came near enough for Anna to make out more details, and she realized the two points of light happened to be the glowing ends of primed forward-pointing cannons. "Why do your 'customers' only give you steel? Why don't they offer you rifles? And why is their ship about to open fire?"
Scipio did not answer.
The Dersite ship fired its forward cannons, launching two torpedoes of blazing white energy. Both projectiles ripped through a cumulus cloud, vaporizing it completely. When the torpedoes made landfall behind a distant hill, Anna saw the blinding explosion for a moment before the thunderous impact reached her ears.
"Why?!" Scipio watched in horror as plumes of smoke gushed into the sky. "Why are they doing this?!"
"They want me dead, and I think they just destroyed my house. Hey, I'm talking to you!" Anna clapped her hands loudly, getting Scipio to look at her. "I need directions to my quest bed."
"The neighbors must be warned." Scipio turned away and hurried back across the vineyard towards his hilltop cottage. "Quickly! We must seek shelter!"
"Wait!" Anna sprinted after Scipio, shouting, "You can't just hide; you need to leave!"
"This is our home, Seer," replied Scipio. "We will not abandon our home."
"If the Dersites decide to look for me in the surrounding countryside, you're one of the first people they'll find," said Anna. "They'll put you in a room and cut off your fingers, joint by joint, until you talk, so do yourself a favor and find a faraway place to hide for a while. I'll do what I can to lead the Dersites away from here, just tell me where my quest bed is."
"I do not know what you are talking about," said Scipio, making his way uphill towards the cottage.
"None of your myths reference an altar or a mountaintop where the Seer can be reborn if she wants?" asked Anna, following Scipio all the way to the door of his cottage.
Scipio kicked open his cottage door, barreling inside to gather up his most valuable possessions, starting with the painting of his mother. "Could you mean the Lost Hallow?"
"What the fuck is the Lost Hallow?" Anna nervously glanced over her shoulder, watching the DRN frigate turn slowly towards Scipio's vineyard. "Quickly! We're out of time!"
"There is a mountaintop altar where our ancestors once worshipped and prayed for the arrival of the Seer, but it was lost centuries ago." Scipio eased the portrait of his mother into a large rucksack, pausing to properly fasten his sword belt around his waist. "When the Pomerium was first established, we abandoned most of our world to the wilderness, including the region where the Lost Hallow is located. No one can go there anymore."
"Where is it?
"Did I not make myself clear?" Scipio shoved an armful of cloth-wrapped food supplies into his rucksack. "The Lost Hallow is more than two hundred miles outside the Pomerium. The beasts of the wilderness will rip you to pieces. You'll never make it."
The last of Anna's patience evaporated, and she yelled, "Just tell me where it is! Which way?!"
"West, on the other side of Lake Colossus." Scipio pointed in the direction of the oncoming DRN frigate. "More than two hundred miles that way."
"Thank you." Anna launched herself forward into the sky, leaving behind a dumbfounded Scipio.
Lightbulbsprite cruised after Anna, bright white light pulsing rapidly from the filament at the heart of its cyan sprite-matter body.
As she gained speed and altitude, Anna looked down at the expanding pillar of smoke, spotting the burning husk of what had once been her apartment. Smoke poured into the air from wildfires erupting around the blast site. "Free funeral pyre," she murmured, wondering if any of Great Uncle Andrés's bones had survived the incineration.
As she soared over the DRN frigate, Anna raised both of her middle fingers, flipping off the Dersite crewmembers whom she saw scurrying about the frigate's deck. Several of the ship's deck-mounted turrets opened fire, momentarily peppering the air around Anna with smaller energy projectiles, but within seconds she had already flown past the frigate and out of range.
Engines flaring, the DRN frigate changed course to pursue Anna.
Wind ripped at Anna's face as she hurtled westward, drawing the Dersite ship away from Scipio's vineyard. She spotted more wineglass-mountains on the horizon in several different directions. The golden-green hills, sunflower-filled dales, and glittering rivers of Etruria whizzed past below.
After several minutes of flying at breakneck speed, Anna spotted a broad river in the distance, and several minutes later she was able to see the massive lake into which the river emptied. The closer side of the river was lined with rock-and-mortar walls, wooden palisades, and the occasional stone fortress.
Hundreds of heavily armored iguana-consorts garrisoned the various stone fortresses, and the river walls were patrolled by smaller groups of armed iguanas marching in tight formation.
On the far side of the river, the hills and valleys were hidden underneath dense tree cover. An endless expanse of tree canopies stretched off into the distance as far as Anna could see. "Wilderness, check."
Anna felt a sudden surge of blistering heat from behind. Without looking back, Anna immediately threw herself to one side
Looking back, Anna saw the DRN frigate's glowing forward cannons. "Fuck you, too!" she yelled, fully aware the Dersites would never hear her.
The Dersite frigate fired a second projectile, but this time Anna was ready. She abruptly changed course and rocketed several thousand feet straight upwards, plowing through several clouds. With the frigate now far beneath her, Anna levelled out and propelled herself forward again.
Far below, the Dersites moved to ascend, but it would take time for the frigate to reach Anna's altitude, and Anna had no intention of remaining above the clouds.
A humongous lake lay ahead, large enough to prevent Anna from initially seeing the far side. "If that isn't Lake Colossus, I don't know what is," she said, taking a moment to soak in the spectacular view.
The forests below soon gave way to the sparkling waves of Lake Colossus, and the faint smudgy line of the lake's opposite shore came into view. Anna took several deep breaths and stopped herself from looking down, uneasy about flying over water with no nearby land.
Slowly, the land beyond Lake Colossus grew less fuzzy and distant. Anna's downward trajectory brought her closer to the lake surface. As Anna flew lower, the DRN frigate continued its ascent, and eventually Anna dropped beneath the frigate's altitude.
Twin points of white light reappeared on the hull of the DRN frigate's bow, warning Anna of the impending salvo of energy bolts. Two projectiles of searing white light erupted in unison from the frigate's glowing forward cannons, roiling across the sky towards Anna.
"You've tried that already!" Anna howled at the pursuing ship, dodging the torpedoes with ease. "Try something else!"
Racing past Anna, the pair of torpedoes arced downward and crashed into the lake below, flash-vaporizing the surface water unfortunate enough to be in the way. Twin pillars of steam geysered into the sky ahead of Anna, forcing her to carefully fly between them to avoid a painful scalding.
When Anna punched through the edges of the steam clouds, the western shores of Lake Colossus came into clearer view. She could now see the ruins of a once-mighty city in the process of being reclaimed by nature.
Broken streets and shattered stone buildings hugged the lakeshore, stretching inland for miles. Trees grew from most of the ruins, and nearly all of the partially-collapsed stone walls hid beneath generations of possessive vines. Tall grass grew from the many cracks in the surviving stone roads, waving gently in the breeze.
Beyond the ruins of the city, Anna could see a familiar shape in the distance: a tall, slightly crooked, flat-topped mountain. "Bingo."
The DRN frigate, for now, seemed to have given up on its attempts to shoot Anna from afar. When she next glanced over her shoulder, the frigate's forward cannons were dark.
Anna flew directly over the ruins, spotting underlings lurking in the shadows of the ruins below. She saw imps skittering from building to building, and occasionally an ogre could be seen lumbering across a street. The further inland she progressed, the more overgrown the ruins became, until she could no longer glimpse anything underneath the dense foliage. The ruins appeared to extend deeper into the wilderness, suggesting the existence of a much vaster city than what Anna could see.
The flat-topped mountain drew nearer, and Anna could now see her quest bed on the mountain's summit. "Homestretch!" she declared to her sprite. "You're doing great!"
Lightbulbsprite gave no reply beyond a bright flashing of its heart-filament.
Anna gradually decelerated as she approached her quest bed's mountain, shedding altitude in preparation for landfall. Bringing herself to a complete halt, she descended the final three hundred feet towards her quest bed.
The quest bed was a simple slab of cyan-tinted stone. Four stone spires rose from each of the bed's corners, capped with spheres of polished rock. Anna stared at the gear-shaped Time symbol engraved upon the center of the bed's surface.
When Anna's feet touched down upon solid stone, she grasped one of her quest bed's four spires to support herself, taking a moment to regain her breath. "I need a nap," she muttered, accessing her sylladex to withdraw the dead body of her past self.
The corpse of Adam's dream self flopped down onto the quest bed. Blood poured from Dream Adam's slit throat, pooling onto the quest bed's stone surface.
"Jesus fucking Christ. Wrong corpse." Anna re-captchalogued Dream Adam, swapping him out with Past Anna. "I really need a nap." She lay Past Anna's body onto the quest bed and took a step back. "Alright, let's go."
After thirty seconds of silence and inactivity, Anna began to wonder if something was wrong. None of the bedpost orbs were shining with the cyan light she expected. "Um, hello? Can I get a resurrection, please?" She tapped the nearest orb with her left index finger. "What gives? Are you broken?" A minute slid by, followed by another, and still nothing happened. "I don't understand."
A honeybee landed on Anna's hand.
"Yeesh!" Startled, Anna shook the bee off her hand.
The unfazed honeybee buzzed over to the quest bed, lighting on Past Anna's nose. Another bee landed on the corpse's left foot. A third and fourth bee arrived immediately after, making themselves at home in Past Anna's hair while a fifth bee landed on the corpse's right ear.
To the east, the DRN frigate maintained its stubborn pursuit, and as it came within weapons range, one of the frigate's forward cannons began to glow.
"C'mon, bees, sweet bees," Anna encouraged the honeybees, to little effect. "Can we buzz a little faster?"
Hundreds of honeybees began to emerge from the surrounding wilderness, with thousands more streaming in from miles away. Every single bee in the coalescing swarm converged on the quest bed, eager to participate in Past Anna's resurrection.
The Dersite frigate fired its forward cannon, sending another torpedo thundering towards Anna.
"Um." Anna remained rooted to the spot, watching the intensifying light of the frigate's forward cannon. She looked down at Past Anna's bee-covered corpse, asking, "What do I do?"
Past Anna's only response was to disappear gradually underneath thousands upon thousands of swarming honeybees.
"You're never any help," muttered Anna, turning once again to face the nearing frigate.
With a blaze of light, the DRN frigate's primed forward cannon opened fire, launching another torpedo towards Anna and her quest bed.
Anna considered grabbing her past self's body and jumping to a different time, but she did not feel particularly inspired to reach into the growing mass of honeybees. Biological immortality would not take away the agony of ten thousand beestings.
Lightbulbsprite quivered in the air, darting anxiously from side to side.
Anna scowled at her sprite. "You're never any help, either. Can you please do something useful for a change?"
A concentrated beam of intense cyan light erupted from Lightbulbsprite's heart-filament, flashing across the sky. The sprite-laser speared through the Dersite torpedo, causing the torpedo to detonate prematurely, filling the sky with blinding light.
"Alright," Anna admitted, shielding her eyes from the blast. "That was impressive."
When the light subsided, Anna rubbed her eyes and faced down the DRN frigate, which was now scarcely five miles away. This time, both of the frigate's forward cannons were already glowing brightly, primed for another salvo.
On the quest bed, Past Anna's corpse was completely submerged underneath a teeming mass of honeybees which continued to grow with each passing second, and yet the quest bed's bedpost orbs remained dark.
"C'mon." Anna glared at the frigate. "Wouldn't you all rather just take a nap?"
In response, the DRN frigate fired both forward cannons.
"Okay, do it again," Anna ordered her sprite.
Lightbulbsprite hovered in front of Anna, unresponsive.
"Do the thing!" Anna's heartbeat skyrocketed as the torpedoes closed in. "Do the laser thing!"
Lightbulbsprite zipped around Anna's head in a tight circle, flashing its heart-filament.
"Useless fucksucking shitsack!" Holding her breath, Anna stepped into the maelstrom of honeybees, plunging her hands into the seething mass of bees covering Past Anna's corpse.
Seconds away from impact, the two torpedoes roared close enough for Anna to feel their heat, obliterating all other sound.
Wincing as dozens of honeybee stingers tore into her arms, Anna blindly felt her way through the dense swarm and found one of Past Anna's legs.
As the light and heat of the torpedoes blotted out the sky, Anna closed her eyes and threw herself backwards into the timestream without a clear destination.