The new World smelled of the sea. Salt and brine. But felt like fire.
No. It was not the World that brought the impression of an inferno. It was my bond with my dragon, Moriodhir, that burned.
I was not new to the familiar bonds. I had been using them for decades. But in Prince Aerion Targaryen, my other self, my local self, the blood of the First Men mingled with that of Old Valyria. Thus the magic of dragon bonds mingled with warging to create an unprecedented mutation.
If I were to compare it to previous bonds, those created by tying some of my Magic Circuits, to this, it would be like comparing a thin strand of spider thread spun by a house spider with that of Shelob. Or perhaps a more grounded example: comparing a Wild West telegraph with a modern fiber-optic cable.
Through the bond the dragon reached me. It was as if the sun was staring at me. For a brief moment I felt a touch of anxiety, mixed with curiosity.
Would the dragon reject me?
I was his bonded rider, but I was also not. I had both the body and memories of Aerion, but I was so much more. In the end though, if one added a touch of lemon juice to tea, it would change the taste, but it would not make lemonade.
The attention receded, with a touch of contentment. It seemed that to the dragon I was close enough.
Dragons were intelligent in their own way. But not even closely to human. A dragon did not seek company, did not need the brush of other minds the way men did. Solitary by nature, they did not move in packs or hunt together, and so their instincts had no shape for fellowship. Only territory. Hunger. Heat. Possession. Well, except when mating.
Should I feel relieved or deeply troubled?
Always there was unease, though, like a stone in my boot: the thought that each time I absorbed my local self, I was committing something between cannibalism, suicide, and murder.
That was exacerbated by a new event. A set of Six Gates appearing at once. This was the fifth I had passed in a very short period of time, and each had changed me a bit. Before this, there had been time between gates, months even years, enough to adjust, but now the changes came fast and strong.
With the dragon bond receding a little, I could feel the other bonds. The change had propagated to my other familiars. To Khenumra, who had sunk deep inward, digesting the meaningful sacrifice he had made for Arnie. Like a python that had eaten an antelope. And from Threshold Slime came a deeper awareness that what man perceived as reality was akin to just the surface of water, and men were like water striders, unaware of the depths under them.
And even more bonds had propagated: to Euclid, who reeked of loyalty stronger than death; to those, well, since I did not have a better name, I would call Thestrals for now; and the shadow hound that I had gained from vampire-hunter Rin.
There were too many active inputs competing for priority. To prevent them from collapsing into noise, I took a breath of salt air and focused on what my physical eyes could see and looked at the cove and the Gate.
Especially at the Gate. The gate synchronizing was a rare event. And I had missed the first by being distracted by new sensations. I had watched the second. But the third was interrupted by Tesla, and the fourth by landing directly in the cenote.
Mists swirled and Archer came through. As with the second gate, as he came through the fog grew slightly lighter. It would, as with the second, thin and thin as more passed, and be gone when all who should have passed had done so.
But it thinned much less than in the second.
My eyes greedily drank the sight of my husband in new form. Hair like polished silver, and lilac eyes, akin to amethyst. A new face, both alike and not. His features recast in the mold of the unearthly beauty of the dragonlords of old Valyria. He did not walk, he prowled, like a shadowcat on the hunt.
Almost exactly as Aerion's memories of him. Someone who knew Aethon less could be fooled—but not me. Not with my almost perfect memory. I could see slight differences. Where Aethon's miraculous combat talent had been polished by Archer's greater experience into something almost too bright and sharp. It showed in his gait, youthful arrogance tempered into pure confidence. Into slight caution, as he measured every part of the cove for danger.
And also he was taller. By a handspan at least. Muscles subtly more defined. Luckily that was easily explained. Boys his age grew like weeds.
Too young, a part of me thought. The older, the greater part. Almost a man grown, Aerion reminded me. Old enough to kill. Old enough to fuck.
It was always thus. Each merge created friction until it was resolved. But this one was a bit more jarring. For all Aerion had much less lived experience, he had some very strong opinions. On rulership. On justice. On his place in the world.
For a moment there, a tide of sadness came over me. For never again would I see Aethon's bright smile, without it being sharpened by Archer's cynicism into a cutting smirk. Both sides of me crushed it ruthlessly. Why then should I mourn him, when he walked beside me still?
It was the fate of each boy to die so that a man would be born. Why should I mourn if it happened far too quickly, and in a less common way?
Next GLaDOS rolled in, riding the Eater of Dust, her form unchanged. Still just a core, embedded in a potato battery. Her persistence and resilience in the face of the Gates' alterations were almost admirable.
As she fully materialized from the mist, the coven bond hit me. That was how I immediately knew she was either Vaella, Aethon's twin and my fiancée, or Emily Banefort, her lady-in-waiting. Aerion, Aethon, Vaella, and Emily had attempted a coven-making rite that Vaella had reconstructed from a ruined scroll.
Four had tried. Three had succeeded. Aethon was not part of the bond. Whether that was because he was incompatible, or because the coven was limited to three, remained unknown. It was probably written in some part of the scroll now rendered unreadable. I made a note to have Archer examine it again. With access to psychometry, he might reconstruct it in full.
There were echoes of a dragon in the bond, so it was Vaella—who, like her twin, was a dragonrider.
My fiancée was a robot. That sounded like the title of a light novel. Probably an ecchi one. Not something likely to happen here. Unless something had changed, GLaDOS had never displayed such desires, and Vaella had been far more interested in Aerion as a fellow scholar of higher mysteries than in his rather fetching body.
It was convenient. I supposed we could have what was called a lavender marriage. Well, except that, though I had a permanent male lover, I was bisexual. It was she who was asexual. So similar, but not quite. A periwinkle marriage, perhaps?
There was the matter of expected progeny, but I already had some ideas. Especially those involving Archer's essence. After all, Aethon was Vaella's twin, and using him would avoid the problem of the wrong heir or eye color—something of concern in noble inheritance. Perhaps a homunculus, using jeweled magecraft—an extension of the previous mana reactor project. Or biokinesis. Or I could use pure science and—
No. That was an interesting project, but not the priority.
I almost missed that the mist remained, even after she had passed.
Emily should be next. She had been present at the Gate, in Aerion's memories.
I wondered if she would remain singular or merge with one of the missing souls from Irem. Maybe one of the witches. In that case, precedent would be Rosamund rather than Augustus, since in all cases up to now gender seemed invariable. But it might mean we were due for inversion.
Rather than pure curiosity, there was something about the thought that made me deeply uneasy. It stood to reason that if the Gate merges could change someone else's gender, sooner or later it would happen to me as well. I knew there existed variants of me who were
female. But I felt reluctant to merge with such experiences. It seemed even my curiosity had some particular limits. A flaw of character, no doubt. But not one I was eager to overcome.
But the figure emerging from the mist was unmistakably male. I recognized the body at once; the mind took a moment longer.
Marion of Hull. The captain of my ship, Grey Gull, and brother to the shipwright who had built it. Black hair, a rough sea-weathered face, in his late thirties. Unmarried, but had a niece nicknamed Mouse. He had liked to talk about her, from Aerion's memories.
And his mind was unmistakably merged with Augustus Creel. The witch's contact with the inhuman hive mind from Xen had left an unmistakable trace that transcended death and rebirth.
But I remembered, too, that as Aerion I had given strict orders for the ship's crew to wait, and not approach the Gate. Had that been disobeyed because too much time had passed? Delays leading to complications. Or perhaps the disobedience had been caused by the Gate's call?
I had no time to ask now. Because after the captain, one by one the rest of the crew came from the Gate. Rosamund had been female. The ship's cook. An appropriate vessel for a witch immortalized in the legends of Hansel and Gretel. And after her some small wisps of mist flew out, dispersing in the distance. Perhaps that was the same situation as it had been with Nero. Because Nero had never passed through the gate works, yet had merged with another self.
But what determined the different sets of merger? Distance? Age? Ability to reach the Gate in time? Or just random chance? Not enough data points.
But in the end there was no Emily. The Gate had swallowed her.
How peculiar. I had not known that was possible.
It was a terrible tragedy, but an interesting terrible tragedy. I was not unaware that the same might happen to Archer or me, but the universe was filled with dangers; one more hardly mattered.
Still, it was a mystery worth investigating. For safety reasons, since I would not be able to stop using the Gates. Not just to satisfy my curiosity.
Too many mysteries and too little time. I was, as the saying went, drowning in riches.
"Look," Archer cut in, his now youthful voice breaking my introspection. I followed his finger to where it pointed. There at the very edge of the Gate, where the impossible colors of Irem melded into mundane grays of the Vale cove, was a small, almost invisible wisp of mist, drifting on the very threshold of the Pillared City.
The wisp also seemed to dance. Or perhaps better to say it darted towards us, and then, like a dog straining at its leash, pulled back to Irem. But only up to the Gate. Or perhaps like fish in too small a bowl.
"Is that supposed to be Emily?" GLaDOS chimed in. "Stuck somehow?"
"It's a reasonable assumption," I replied. "But you know what we do with assumptions?"
"Test them!" we said together, perfectly synchronized.
"Before you two get distracted by mad science," Archer drawled.
I protested. "Why mad? It could be perfectly sane science."
"With you two together, I would not trust it to be sane even if it were certified by three different psychologists," Archer replied dryly. "But let me finish what I was saying. Don't forget we are limited in time. One Gate remains unresolved."
"But! Tests? Anomaly?" GLaDOS countered. "And think about saving poor Emily. See how she struggles to get out. Isn't saving people your fetish?"
"Saving one while putting others in danger by waiting is just poor strategy," Archer countered smoothly. "Besides, she does not look to be in immediate danger for now."
Good leadership was far too often a matter of compromise. Or, at least, the appearance of compromise.
I sighed out loud. It was both performative and sincere at the same time. A way to communicate that I had thoroughly weighed the options and made a decision that took all concerns into account.
"We have a day, at most two, in this little excursion until we are missed. There are a few minor preparations we need to make here before we brave the last Gate," I replied to Archer, then turned to the captain of my ship.
"Marion," I said, since it was simply good policy to use the names of the local selves. To get into the habit. "Take the crew and man the ship. Check its seaworthiness, and as soon as possible, set sail for Runestone."
"Aethon," I added, turning back to Archer, "Go with them, and link a door on the ship to Irem's Entrance Hall. That is something only you or I can do, and it will allow us instant passage between the ship and Irem. Meanwhile, we are going to conduct some quick preliminary research here. As soon as you get back, we are braving the last Gate."
As soon as they left for the ship, I said to her, "This won't take him long, so we need to hurry a bit."
Already Threshold Slime had been depositing various equipment retrieved from the storage space in Irem onto the stone near the Gate. Both scientific and esoteric.
The new bond had made me much more aware of such processes. I could almost feel my fingers on the smooth metal of the portal gun. Almost taste the polished marble of the divination table.
"Good distraction with busywork," she praised me.
"It's not just busywork. It really needs to be done. I mean, we could get by using dragons for transport, but linking the ship to Irem adds a bit of flexibility. Spend time now, save it later," I explained. "Besides, he is not wrong. This anomaly is interesting, but whether it produces fruitful research remains unknown. And what is also unknown is whether there is a better, more interesting one behind the last Gate."
I took a deep breath to create a meaningful pause before continuing. "The null hypothesis is that this wisp is the missing Emily, trapped in the Gate between transitions. Now, how can we falsify it, and quickly? Option one: pull the wisp from the Gate, and see if it fails to resolve into Emily. Option two: find Emily. If she is elsewhere, she is not the wisp."
I made a sweeping gesture at where Threshold Slime had deposited STICK — Sampling, Testing, and Inspection Crawler Kit. The acronym had been chosen with the usual scientific rigor, meaning after we admitted the machine's core function was to poke suspicious things with a stick.
It was a simple machine by design: camera, tracked platform, telescoping robotic arm, and Wi-Fi receiver for remote control. Utterly disposable. I had a few dozen waiting in storage.
"You will be in charge of option one," I ordered, pointing at each supplementary item in turn. "Start by trying to capture it with a butterfly net. Then move to the vacuum sampler. And if both of those fail, try the portal gun."
"Aperture Quantum Tunneling Handheld Device?" she asked, sounding a bit bewildered.
"Use the secondary function," I explained. "Have you forgotten about it?"
The portal gun's primary function was obvious enough: to poke holes in spacetime and make portals. But it also possessed a much cruder object-handling function, a weak manipulator field for holding things directly in front of it. It was rather a waste of an absurdly expensive device, of course, but one could use it to pick things up.
"It slipped my mind," she admitted. "But who can blame me. The secondary function is almost never used."
"Meanwhile I will be in charge of option two," I continued. "First, simple necromancy to check if Emily is dead. Of course, that would not falsify the null hypothesis. She could be both stuck and dead. But it would reduce the urgency of the matter significantly. Then I will use remote viewing to try to find if she is elsewhere. And if that remains inconclusive, I will finish with lithomancy, which gives more general, though less precise, information. I cannot sense any mind from the wisp, so there is no point in using telepathy on it."
Under her control, STICK picked up the butterfly net and tracked toward the Gate. Meanwhile, I drew Lamentation, the Royce ancestral Valyrian steel sword.
Like me, it had been transformed by the Gates. Other existences layered under the skin. The elven blade Larmo. A Mayan maquahuitl. And under weapons, an even stranger thing: a theomechanical diode that gathered faith and converted it into other types of energy. And under it, what I was looking for. My Aperture mobile.
Because I had a call to make. To the underworld.
The drawn sword shifted, metal flowing and splitting and changing texture, the single blade becoming eight skittering mechanical legs until a spider-like robot craned over my arm. Aperture's designers had taken the mobile part of mobile smartphone a bit too literally. Smart, too.
Now that I thought about it, it was less transformation, and more a change of perspective. Like, for example, rotating a cylinder and turning a circle into a square.
That made me wonder whether I had been too pessimistic about identity merges. I had treated them as though they were gu — the old Chinese poison-sorcery in which venomous creatures were sealed together and forced to consume one another until only a single, stronger essence remained.
Yet perhaps the truer analogy was not poison, but stellar formation. A nebula was not ruined when gravity drew its gas and dust inward until a star ignited. It was transformed. The diffuse made dense; the formless made radiant. And from what remained in orbit, other things might still be born.
It was a nice thought, so I shared it with my greater self. Even if in the end it might just be a nice reframing. Like calling bombing a school collateral damage.
In return I got two pieces of information. One was that two parts of my greater self had already been altered by the Gates. My house, that was in part of my greater self that existed not in any world but between them, had somehow become a twisted reflection of Dragonstone. Replaced with a dragon-shaped castle, now guarded by twin Animal King turrets. It was still in the same void, but something much closer to Dragonstone, as if an island fortress existed just beneath the real one. The second object that had changed was A.S.E.N.D. Now it was not only an anachronistic fast-food eatery in Tesla City, but also Vaella's mansion in Braavos. One building spanning two worlds.
Mysteries galore, but not for this me. Hurrah for proper task distribution.
The second piece of information was more useful. A change made by the previous Gate, but not this one, that I had failed to notice, but my greater self had not.
A new psychic power. Telemechanics. The ability to control machines from a distance. But it had two main limitations, which was why I had missed it. One, it was rather short-range, thus more useful in something city-sized than human-scaled, and second, I needed to know how the machine worked in detail.
Was this how prophets felt when communing with their gods or unknowable fate? Perhaps, but much more intimate. After all, I was only talking to myself.
Although getting the revelation that I could use a smartphone without using my hands or voice might seem a bit trivial, it was practical.
By mind alone I started the call for Emily. Wasn't progress wonderful. So much more convenient than climbing down a cliff to the entrance to Hades and sacrificing black sheep. It did take a special phone app, which I had only acquired after a brief stint as a ghost. But still, progress.
While I waited for the call to be either answered or to get the unavailable tone, I watched GLaDOS try to use a butterfly net to capture the wisp. She was not having much luck. The wisp almost seemed prescient, easily dodging the net just in the nick of time.
"The person you are attempting to reach is not available," the phone returned in a polite, gender-ambiguous voice. "Please wait until the time of passing to call again."
"I really wish you would stop wasting time on frivolous things," GLaDOS cut in, frustration evident even in her voice. Someone who knew her less intimately would erroneously believe that she was perfectly calm and sincere.
Her attempts were not going well. STICK moved in jerky, violent motions as she pushed its tracks and servos to their limits. But to no avail; the wisp darted back and forth, always evading the net by the slimmest of margins. Almost as if it were taunting her.
"Frivolous?" I asked, raising my hands dramatically in a gesture of sincere, albeit amused, offense. "I am communing with the other side."
"I have never considered that the opinions of the dead had any value," she countered. "If they were smart enough to be worth listening to, they would be smart enough to avoid dying."
"People have the unfortunate habit of dying," I said as I reached for the psionic amplification device for remote viewing. "But that is what our flourishing is all about. Helping personal growth by, among other things, trimming unwanted habits."
The device had the appearance of a motorcycle or fighter pilot's helmet, but certainly not one that would be advisable to wear while riding a bike or flying a plane. For one, it was completely eyeless. Furthermore, it was so heavily modified with embedded gemstones and crystals that it entirely defeated the basic purpose of a helmet. In the event of a crash, rather than protecting the head from an impact, the design guaranteed those crystals would be driven directly into the wearer's skull.
But this helmet was made for an entirely different kind of protection. It blocked out physical sight and hearing, creating the absolute sensory deprivation necessary for remote viewing. There was even a small gas mask and inhaler attached to the front, designed less for blocking outside scents than for administering precise mixtures of gases to help achieve the proper altered state of mind.
This included enough aerosolized LSD to supply an entire hippie commune for a month.
It wasn't as if it were strictly necessary. In a pinch, I could perform remote viewing with nothing more than a simple cloth blindfold. But I simply could not resist building the device, and having done so, it seemed a terrible shame not to use it.
I put the helmet on. The last thing I heard before it covered my ears was GLaDOS saying, "If humans want to avoid dying, they should follow my example and stop being sad sacks of meat."
That, and the high-pitched whine of the vacuum spinning up as she swapped out the net.
In utter darkness and silence, I adjusted the gas mask. I took a deep breath. Tasteless. Scentless.
And I fell out of my skin.
The Void was incomprehensible. Thus, every visitor inflicted his own comprehension upon it.
I was no different.
Under my feet lay a solid black surface. It was a single facet of a black diamond larger than the observable universe. It was the surface of an infinite obsidian mirror that reflected an endless sky. It was both, and neither. It was only a metaphor, of course, but metaphor and reality were the exact same thing in this place.
This particular vision of the Void was mine alone. Each visitor had their own. From extensive interviews with other psychics, we had concluded as much.
There were commonalities, but whether they were innate to this place, to human consciousness itself, or simply cultural archetypes embedded in the collective subconscious, remained unknown for now.
And while my vision was unique, it was hardly immutable.
It could shift with changes in personality. Or knowledge. Or even outside circumstances.
For example, the sky that had once been starless was no longer so.
That change had first occurred when my student, Helena, discovered that worshippers could be perceived through their prayers. Thus, she was the first to see those stars—and once I knew they were there, so did I.
Of course, it was entirely possible that I only perceived them as stars because that was the metaphor I had inherited from her.
There were fewer stars now. Like the light of stars beyond the edge of the observable universe, the prayers of those I had left behind in Worlds to which I was no longer connected could no longer reach me. They clustered in constellations, each revolving around a priest. Nero's star glowed an imperial gold, while my new Mayan priest, Tzekel-Kan, glowed a baneful red. I wondered whether that color was dictated by each priest's own personality, or by their specific beliefs about me.
There were new stars to replace the lost ones. Fewer, but much brighter. The brightest among them was Moriodhir, who shone almost like the morning star. The other familiars were duller. Then, there were my coven bonds: an electric blue star for GLaDOS, and a sable star for Emily.
The largest object in the sky, however, was Archer's moon. Although it took the form of a moon, it was not lit by reflected light. Instead, the fire of countless forges burned within it. Ever-working, producing swords without end.
Black iron, red fire, and ever-moving gears. It was brutal, made beautiful by its industrial savagery.
But then, I might be biased. I found my husband beautiful in any form. Whether as a man, a city street, or a celestial body.
This was no time for distraction, no matter how pretty the sights were. Instead, I reached toward the sable star.
A most incomprehensible thing happened.
Absolutely nothing.
There were no obstacles. No conceptual barrier to set my will against. Instead, I was like a little child trying to pluck a star from the sky, wondering why it did not work.
The connection was there. But it was a path I could not traverse.
And I did not know why.
Even if I had more time, this was the proper moment to pivot to another approach. When examining mysteries, one must be careful not to become obsessed, lest one become trapped in the sunk-cost fallacy.
I reached back for my physical body and initiated the proper purge spell to clear my metabolism.
Considering the common ritual use of psychoactive or toxic substances to alter perception and enable contact with non-ordinary reality, it was natural that spells designed to deal with the aftereffects were just as ubiquitous. Many simple variants were taught in General Fundamentals, and any magus of Cause rank was expected to be able to cast at least one.
Mine was far more advanced. Jewel Magecraft was particularly well suited for purifying the body of toxins. I drew a pulse from the ruby hanging from the amulet at my neck and let purging fire thread through my blood.
I noted that the spell was much more efficient than expected, for two primary reasons.
First, the Od in my Magic Circuits was unusually pure and responsive. This was perhaps an effect of inhabiting a body native to a more mana-rich World, and perhaps because, as I increasingly suspected, this particular body was the product of quite advanced fleshcraft and blood magic.
Second, the fire now carried a draconic aspect. It seemed that my bond with Moriodhir had significantly enhanced my fire-aligned magecraft, adding a draconic conceptual attribute to it.
It was something I would have to experiment with later, along with testing the influence of my other familiars.
I kept my eyes closed as I removed the helmet, ensuring I would not be blinded by the sudden influx of light. That was why sound returned first.
"You are being inconsiderate," I heard GLaDOS say, berating someone. "I cannot have a lady-in-waiting who is a meteorological phenomenon. What would people say?"
Opening my eyes, I saw that the target of her ire was the wisp. Still uncaught, it danced through the air, completely ignoring the mechanical pull of the vacuum.
"I imagine they would say the exact same thing they would say about the Royal Vegetable," I said out loud. "I mean, Princess Potato is a wonderful title for a children's book, but perhaps not the best name to use when introducing oneself at court."
"Sarcasm," she dryly diagnosed, rolling right next to me. "So your attempt was a failure, too. Have you at least had fun with better living through chemistry?"
Without waiting for a response, she suddenly shifted into Vaella's form. One moment she was a potato riding a Roomba, and the next, an ethereal princess with white hair and lilac eyes. Honestly, I had not expected that.
"I want this right back," she said, taking off an elaborate amulet and pressing it into my hand. The next moment, she was back to being a core again.
"Wait. The only reason you shifted was because you wanted me to put the Tear of Syrax on you?" I asked.
Even just holding it for a moment, my mind sharpened. It was like someone was constantly whispering information directly into my brain. The exact mineral composition of the stones that made up the cliff. The local sailors' names for the specific species of seaweed drying on the shore.
"Unfortunately, I could not access it while in my superior form, so I had to briefly enter that distasteful state," she replied. "For what other reason would I do that?"
"Because we will soon need to show you as human?" I replied dryly.
"I need to look human. Not actually be one," she countered sharply. "You promised me a new and better chassis. You may make it look right. Now, put it back on me."
I knelt down and affixed the amulet to the Roomba using duct tape, courtesy of the Threshold Slime, which had delivered the roll into my hand from storage in Irem. I must admit, I felt a touch of reluctance about it.
The Tear of Syrax was Vaella's most prized possession. She was no more likely to willingly share it than a dragon was to share its hoard.
It did not merely possess a passive ability. The amulet had an active one, too. With a few moments of focused meditation while holding it, one could be mentally transported to a conceptual representation of the temple of Syrax. A temple that also doubled as a vast library.
Syrax was not a goddess of writing, books, or libraries per se. Rather, she was a goddess of very specific transitions. The twin and opposite to Balerion, she represented the exact moments where the mutable became fixed. When lava turned to stone. When a hot blade was quenched. When a fleeting thought was recorded as text.
So, the temptation to actually visit that library was acute. For I did not know when the chance would come again.
I had something of a weakness for books. Well, for any source of information, really.
But this was a matter of discipline. Sacrifices had to be made to keep our relationship productive.
"I think we should both move to our respective third phases," I said, then sighed. "We are running out of time. The ship is not far, and he is likely to hurry."
"A few acid pits might slow him down," she suggested.
I knew it was just a joke, but I still treated it as a serious suggestion. What? I had a sense of humor. Anyone who claimed otherwise, like Archer, was simply unable to appreciate my sophisticated taste.
"Unlikely. And even if we ignored his skills, and how he would react if I actually did that, the time spent digging pits and filling them with acid would be better spent on an actual experiment."
As Delia used to say, "Crystals speak to me."
Of course, all she ever heard was buy more crystals. I, on the other hand, was capable of much more sophisticated discourse.
For a brief moment, I wondered what had made me think of her. It was not common for me to dwell on those whom I had left behind. Then I dismissed the thought and walked over to where the Threshold Slime had placed the divination table for lithomancy.
It was a small, altar-like table, carved from a ruined column of a temple of Apollo, somewhat irregularly acquired. Its single central leg still bore traces of the original stonework, softened by age and weather. The top featured a circular hollow with a raised rim, ensuring that gemstones cast for lithomancy would not scatter too easily. Around the edge were carved inscriptions and symbols meant to guide interpretation.
On top of it rested a small bag, fashioned from the bark of a mallorn tree and filled with gemstones.
I began to hum a wordless melody. As I hit certain notes, certain gemstones in the bag resonated, each of them chiming in turn.
Each gemstone had been meticulously cut and calibrated by my own hand, both for symbolic value and to achieve a distinct resonant frequency. By layering notes and timing, I drew echoes after my voice, until a simple melody became a crystalline chorus.
But there was more than beauty in that song. It was attunement, both to this particular world and to the question I wanted to ask.
Where was Emily?
As the song reached its crescendo, I moved swiftly. With a twist of my wrist, crystals poured from the bag, falling onto the table.
Not all of them.
They moved lightning-fast across the white marble, striking each other. Each sharp impact rang out as another different tone in the song.
But soon the energy was exhausted, and they came to rest. Still. Ready for interpretation.
Save one. One piece of jet had been expelled outward. Moving almost too fast to see, it left the table and embedded itself in what seemed to be a softer earthly part of the cliff.
The configuration settled into a near-complete circle, the stones spacing themselves with deliberate precision across the white marble. Quartz held the eastern arc, clear and inert. Amethyst rested opposite, its presence suppressive rather than active. A garnet lay to the south, but dim and unassertive. The center remained empty.
No dominant vectors. No call to action.
The pattern they formed was not accidental. It rarely was.
The jet's displacement broke that order. Expelled entirely from the circle, it had embedded itself beyond the table's boundary. A rejection. Something outside the system's defined scope.
Inconvenient, but interpretable.
The primary reading was stable. Observation over intervention. A system already in motion, requiring no external input. Interference would degrade, not improve, the outcome.
The yellow stone did not conform.
Citrine, positioned along the northern edge, should have remained a passive attractor. Instead, it lingered half a degree out of alignment, its resonance clean but uncooperative. Not part of the structure. Not derived from the question. And yet, persistent.
Not noise. Not error.
Something misaligned in time, perhaps. Or something with sufficient conceptual weight to intrude regardless of relevance.
Irrelevant to the question as asked. Unlikely to alter the immediate outcome.
And yet, not something to ignore.
The conclusion remained unchanged. Wait. Observe. Do nothing.
But the intrusion suggested a future state already exerting influence.
"Yellow," I murmured, more to fix the anomaly in memory than from any expectation of immediate understanding.
Not part of the answer.
But very likely part of what came next.
"Yellow what?" GLaDOS asked, breaking my concentration. "Yellow alert? We are in danger? Or do you mean I should pause? Not while it is refusing to react in any way to the pull of the portal gun."
"No," I replied, picking the gems up and putting them back into the bag. "I mean the divination says we should just wait and observe. And Emily will find her way back to us. Also, beware of yellow."
"Yellow?" she repeated. "If it were green or black, it might make some sense with the current political situation in King's Landing. But yellow? Wait. Are you supposed to be wary of Lannisters?"
I thought about it as I walked over to retrieve the final gem, that wayward piece of jet.
That interpretation felt both too literal and distinctly lacking in symbolic weight. Yes, yellow was associated with the Lannisters, but without any deep conceptual connection. Perhaps it was just my intuition, but I highly doubted that was the answer. Or perhaps it was simply arrogance. I genuinely could not see how they might present a threat of that magnitude. Any threat to me, really.
"Are you done?" Archer's voice interrupted my thoughts just as I reached the rock face. The gem was embedded in a patch of rough clay that had washed down from above, leaving a smear of brown against the grey cliff.
"Just a moment," I called back, prying the jet loose. It came away easily, a lump of dried clay falling to the ground next to my boots. "Actually, make that two."
Because beneath the displaced clay, letters were carved directly into the stone of the cliff. It seemed the jet's final resting place carried even more meaning than I had first thought.
At my order, Threshold Slime materialised its tendrils and licked the stone clean, revealing in full the glory of what lay beneath.
A very realistic portrait carving, almost to scale, of Aerion, Vaella, Aethon, and Emily. All of us together carved into stone, probably centuries before we were born.
And under it, words in the script of Old Valyria. A prophecy, no doubt.
I read it out loud.
"They shall go east to arrive west. In the ruins of three great cities they shall find three secrets. The youngest city choked by ash. The middle city buried in shadow. And the oldest, golden city, where the wings of steel angels were broken.."