Blackwing’s first act after settling in Hastur’s courtyard is to open one of his indistinguishable crates and extract three pairs of close-toed buskins. He offers the smallest and finest of these to Ashti; she accepts the boots with excitement and thanks him for returning them to her. The merchant nods in response then passes a second pair to Lamp before distributing rectangles of clean white cloth for their footwraps.
While changing shoes, Lamp asks his superiors about the small temple and its three suspiciously cleaned frescoes. Both of them claim to have never visited or even seen that building in their prior excursions to the city.
“It’s an interesting mystery.” Candlewire allows. “Not least of which because I’m about to be stuck here on my own for a couple days, so thank you so much for telling me that ghost story right before you all leave. That said, if I had to guess how it really happened, I’d assume it’s just another byproduct of the rupture.
“Aside from the victims of Blackwing’s trade corridor, every building in this city has existed in its current state since the gods plopped them all down here three hundred years ago. Maybe three of the divines just wanted their portraits cleaned, and the other two didn’t care.” She shrugs. “But if I run into any spectral janitors while I’m hanging around by my lonesome, I’ll be sure to ask them how they did it.”
With that matter settled to the best of their abilities, Candlewire plucks up the golden spear while Ashti slips into her backpack and Blackwing lifts his wooden crates within their netting.
Lamp awkwardly apologizes for carrying nothing, so his employer offers him a task. “Speak a prayer to Wayward, please. A full one. Not something I could say.”
Nodding in agreement and raising his arms, Lamp lags behind the others as they cross the flat, open space of Blackwing’s staging ground. As they approach the rubble-strewn corridor that will take them to the city’s outer edge, the scholar intones. “Font of inspiration, shepherd of shepherds, breaker of chains. You who brought enlightenment and ended isolation. You who…”
The half-improvised prayer occupies his voice and focus while their group passes between the ruined, ancient buildings which Blackwing had laid low for the sake of his commerce and expediency. Lamp might have remarked upon the small tragedy of their destruction had he not already begun a task which brooks no interruptions.
The attention of a god, once called, should never be squandered. Such flippancy would invite worse outcomes than having never prayed at all. By a similar token, however, one should never stretch their worship over-long. Lamp therefore concludes his praises as they near the border of a barren, blasted plain.
“Great one, we ask that you guide us safely between the tiles of your world, or else that you repel us if the journey cannot be survived. Lead us only down the roads that please you and bring us peacefully to our proper destinations. We thank you and your kin for your bountiful gifts and offer our dreams in gratitude. Aletheia.”
“Aletheia.” The others echo; even Ashti joins in their foreign refrain despite having understood very few of the words preceding it.
A brief silence follows Lamp’s prayer as they step beyond Old Carcosa’s edge onto the level band of stone surrounding it. To the left and right it runs unbroken by any barrier or change, but a mere one hundred paces lie ahead.
“Keep your eyes on your feet.” The merchant warns them when they pass beyond a final, crumbling wall. “The water shows you things best left unseen.”
Ashti follows his warning from the moment it’s conveyed, and Candlewire follows suit without any challenges or jests. However, Blackwing’s words are ill heeded by the only person sworn to obey him. In spite of better judgement, Lamp knows he can’t help but risk a glance.
It’s an irrational impulse, one he would have easily dismissed a mere month prior, but the scholar’s short adventure has already yielded significant changes to his outlook. Lamp’s repeated and prolonged exposures both to his deepest personal fears and to the great divine mysteries of his reality have worn away at a previously unexamined aversion to forbidden truths. With that apprehension removed, the powerful fascination it had suppressed now bucks beneath the weaker restraints of self-preservation and humility.
Curiosity would almost certainly overwhelm him at some point, so Lamp reasons that it’s better to risk his sanity from as far a remove as possible. Since every moment of delay only brings him closer to the waves and their dread influence, he should obviously just look at them right now and get this over with.
The scholar hastily concocts a plan to quickly raise and lower his gaze. He won’t pause to make observations, and he won’t look twice. Whatever he glimpses in that single moment will be the sum total of his experience. Up and down; think about it afterwards.
Lamp draws a sharp breath in before rapidly lifting his chin. He closes his eyes a heartbeat later in anticipation of the mental blow, bracing himself for a flood of information.
His body stumbles to a halt.
Or, at least, someone’s body does. Lamp’s not sure anymore whether it’s really his or if he simply dwelled in it for a time. The question immediately becomes immaterial because Lamp’s not even certain whether he still inhabits ‘his’ body at all any more.
On reflection, he thinks his consciousness might actually be drifting off somewhere slightly to the side and just observing. For that reason, he feels minimal concern as the body that may or may not belong to him nearly collapses to its knees.
The scholar focuses on keeping his borrowed frame upright, and it inexplicably obeys him. From his left, he can hear Ashti saying something in an apprehensive tone, but he can’t see her anymore. When Lamp turns his head her way and reopens his eyes, he finds only darkness painted atop the air before him. A rich, velvet darkness studded with twirling stars.
Oh, how sweetly they dance. How indecently they intertwine. How furtively they separate! Oh! The lurid secrets hidden in their careless steps! He could watch them revel and cavort forever! He forgets them in an instant.
Behind him, Lamp suddenly realizes, hides a thunderous whisper woven out of bleeding secrets that were never meant to be seen by anything with a face. If he dares to look upon their sublime beauty, then his unworthy eyes will surely drown him in a thousand, thousand, thousand joyous tears. He knows full well that turning back to bear witness to that miracle will inflict a form of death upon his unfolding mind, but still, he cannot stop the body he tragically occupies from shifting to face the way from which it came. He can only ready himself to gaze upon the heavenly wonder that awaits.
Lamp blinks in confusion as he beholds the dry, abandoned ruins of lost Carcosa. There’s nothing else… He knew that. Why did he think he’d find anything more?
“Lamphand!” Ashti shakes his shoulder roughly. He looks down at the girl in confusion, and she gazes up with worry. “Can you hear me? Did you look upon the sea?”
His lips spread into a fool’s grin before he proudly answers. “Of course I did.”
“Idiot.” She chides him gently. “Some things are not meant for mortal eyes. I expected you of all people to understand that.”
“Ah, but if that’s so, then why, Ashti of House Wit, is it here? For us to not look at it?” His mouth and voice still don’t feel quite like his own, but they make the sounds Lamp wants from them as he asks. “Would the gods really create a thing like that?”
“Maybe so.” The outlander squeezes gently before releasing his shoulder. “But this is not for us to question. Just promise me you have grown sufficiently acquainted with your limits and will refrain from further foolishness. I will convince the others to drag you back into the city, otherwise.”
“My foolishness is at an end. I swear it.” Lamp answers so seriously that he begins to giggle at his own tone.
His laugh is a good sound, he realizes. Warm and filling. As it fades, Lamp comprehends that he hasn’t made it in quite the right way for many years now, since even before his partner left him. He’d never noticed how much he missed it. The scholar almost tries to reproduce those happy notes in their proper cadence, but enough of his faculties have returned to him by now that he manages to refrain from laughing over nothing.
Blackwing draws his attention next, speaking in a neutral tone that doesn’t push Lamp towards one answer or another. “Do you need to rest?”
“No. I’m fine-” The scholar cuts himself off and shakes his head in self-recrimination, then switches from the old tongue to his native language. “I’m fine and feeling more lucid by the moment. We can continue.”
“Good. Don’t do that again.” Blackwing curtly admonishes before turning forward to resume walking.
“I won’t.” Lamp promises as he falls in behind the others. He hesitates before admitting. “At least, not until I understand what my first vision meant.”
“They mean nothing.” The merchant answers flatly. “They weren’t sent to teach you. Whatever lessons you take originated from within.”
Candlewire pipes up with a lighter tone. “This place isn’t called the Sea of Wisdom, Hand. Let the water keep its secrets. You’ll never make sense of everything it shows, and the longer you look, the less sense you’ll have for the making.”
“Alright.”
Lamp wants to argue that his experience felt like something more than temporary madness, but his better judgement forces him to drop the matter. In truth, he has no conception what the dancing stars and bleeding whispers meant. Until he makes progress on figuring that out, he’ll honor his word not to look a second time.
The scholar’s also not keen to repeat today’s experience any time soon. For all its seeming profundity, his vision terrifies him in retrospect. Lamp would rather not feel his consciousness being dragged out from his body again, even if the unity of those two halves truly is an illusion.
With his eyes dutifully pointed at the ground and his mind lost to incomprehensible mysteries, Lamp follows the others to reality’s outer shore. The closer they come, the more he feels the water’s whisperings. He can almost hear the ocean’s thousand songs at the edge of his perception, and he knows it offers infinitely more of itself than he was able to quaff from a single glance.
Part of him realizes, however, that those intermingling voices aren’t actually calling for his attention. The sea calls only to itself, not to those who carelessly stumble into its presence. Each wave offers its great bounty to the next along. Lamp’s presence, and the entirety of his existence, is irrelevant to the flow of chaos. Rather, he’s no more relevant than any other fleeting vision carried atop its endless, rolling span.
Another realization strikes him simultaneously, one that carries enormous dread. Deep in his gut, Lamp knows this false-water would absorb every part of him if he stepped a single toe beyond land. With morbid curiosity, he wonders whether the last human who touched its surface still rides atop its waves. If so, how much of that man now remains? Has any of him held together?
Only the gods will ever know with certainty; only they swim within these depths. For Lamp’s part, he doubts that any meaningful portion of a human mind could survive under a constant onslaught of the power to which he was exposed for a single heartbeat.
His musings reach a temporary end when Blackwing stops before a strip of melted, glassy stone that pulls away from the sea in tightly-banded ripples. To Lamp’s eye, this narrow stretch of land almost seems compressed, as though the ocean’s weight had buckled it inward upon itself.
The merchant wastes no time examining that phenomenon, however. Setting down his crates atop the flat stone to his side, Blackwing pulls Clearheart’s bloody bandage from a pouch hidden under his cloak and trades it with Candlewire for the golden spear. He holds the holy implement in place as she ties their borrowed rag beneath its point, then closes his eyes and faces forward.
“Lonesome is the dusk at the close of day.” He recites the poem they were given. “Lost is the hope of dawn come anew. Blind is the faith that never wavers. Bitter is the trust now returned to you.”
All four of them wait with widened eyes and held breath, but several seconds pass in which nothing happens. Lamp’s shoulders sag as he realizes their attempt failed; he can’t bring himself to look at Ashti to witness her reaction. Blackwing, however, seems undaunted.
“Tell me how to say it in their tongue.” He calls over his shoulder.
His translator obliges, and together they repeat the message in its original language. Still, nothing comes from the repeated attempt. Lamp supposes this was a vain hope from its beginning. If the gods- or whomever else sent this spear- wanted them to use it for this purpose, they would have written their instructions along its haft as they did for the runaway princess who became Clearheart.
No sooner does that thought occur to Lamp than he hears Blackwing mutter. “This is my key. Not hers.”
The merchant shifts his hold on the golden spear so that his hand clasps it just beneath its edge. Then he raises a thumb and slides his digit up along the blade. A narrow crimson line trickles down its golden surface, running over Blackwing’s hand and seeping into the tightly fastened cloth already stained with Clearheart’s royal blood.
With eyes closed, he thrusts the sacred weapon forward and intones. “Mine is the hand to open all doors.”
The moment his voice falls silent, they feel a ripple in the world.
The air around them begins to darken slightly as faint shadows seep down from above like a thin film of starless night descending upon the world. Candlewire lays a hand upon the spear haft and silently lends Blackwing her authority, doubling the pressure brought against the sea.
Sparks alight at the tip of their weapon, and a chill wind gushes forth from over the waves, carrying the stagnant scent of a room long left unopened.
Blackwing’s voice gains intensity to shout over the rushing air. “Mine is the eye to unseam all veils!”
The biting wind rapidly builds into gale-force, whipping at their cloaks and forcing Lamp to shield his eyes even though they’re already pointed down. Ahead of him, he feels a familiar warping of weight as Blackwing’s magic drives his feet into the stone to hold his body in place.
Candlewire wraps her free arm around her partner’s back and pulls herself into him. Both of them maintain a strong grip on the spear and hold fast the pressure of their wills. They can’t stop now.
“MINE-” The merchant bellows just to hear his own voice. “IS THE PATIENCE TO OUTLAST-”
A gateway soundlessly tears open, and the world stills. A subtle, acrid smell permeates Lamp’s lungs as he draws a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
Hanging in the air like a collapsed section of the wall between adjoining houses, another reality looms with quiet portent. On the gate’s other side lurks a shadowed realm of black sand, empty and lifeless like the outskirts of their own. Its cold metal sky looms far above whilst distant crimson lights flicker on and off like twinkling stars.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
Blackwing’s magic gate looks less like the grand door Lamp had envisioned, and more like a borehole drilled through the terminus of space. Still, it fills the scholar with awe, and a long moment of wonder passes before his attention returns to his immediate surroundings.
Ahead of him, the business partners breathe heavily from their exertion, slumping against each other for support in the wake of their monumental achievement.
Between gasps, Blackwing mutters. “Clearheart never mentioned this level of effort.”
“Bitch.” Candlewire agrees with a laugh.
Her counterpart chuckles, then straightens himself and shifts away in an attempt to separate their bodies. Candlewire continues leaning against the man in spite of his movements, causing him to glance down at her with mild impatience.
Maintaining her posture, she looks back up with doe eyes and innocently asks. “What?”
Blackwing gently pushes Candlewire to the side and curtly passes the golden spear back into her hands. Then, turning to Ashti, he communicates through Lamp. “First, we test it.”
The merchant opens one of his crates and pulls out a red bone of the upper arm that still retains most of its gem-like luster. Returning to the portal, he lightly tosses the ruby ulna through. Lamp holds his breath as the graft travels forward into foreign air, worried it will shatter or crumble into dust upon contact with the gate.
It does neither, simply dropping on the other side to dig into the sand. Before Lamp can ask whether that proves it’s safe for them to cross, Blackwing declares that they’ll watch the bone for a few minutes to ensure it doesn’t slowly degrade. To enhance his experiment, he extracts a second graft from their store and uses his magic to gently throw it further inside.
“We have time for observation.” He states confidently while glancing toward the portal’s edge. “Perhaps less than usual, but long enough.”
At the merchant’s insistence, they settle in to wait and watch. A few words pass between them intermittently, but no one feels much inclined to conversation. They focus their unwavering attention on the pair of grafts, constantly assessing them for any signs of change. After perhaps two minutes of uneventful quiet, Ashti begins shifting restlessly.
“I believe my turn has come.” She announces with clear confidence. “We have seen all we can, no other tests remain, and we cannot know how much longer this atypical gate will remain open.”
The outlander bravely steps forward, intending to stride across to the other world at a brisk pace. Her momentum abruptly cancels, however, when Blackwing swiftly raises his human arm to block her path. Before Ashti can protest his obstruction or question him, the merchant extends his grafted limb through the portal.
Lamp’s breath catches when his employer’s fingers cross the barrier, but, just as before, nothing else comes of it. Blackwing’s three claws flex freely on the other side, still as lively and dexterous as they had been before they touched it. Glancing at the merchant’s back and seeing it expand as the man draws another breath, Lamp smiles with relief. This outcome means the plan worked. They can all safely cross. Grafted individuals may walk freely between the tiles of their broken world.
Gazing forward at his inhuman hand, Blackwing softly mutters. “All this time.”
From his side, Ashti complains sternly. “This is not the process to which we all agreed. I was meant to risk my own life before we gambled yours.”
“Did I agree to wait for you?” The merchant slyly smiles down at her. “Or did I simply propose tossing a graft ahead of us both?”
“You- how could-” She stammers while flicking her eyes between a smirking Blackwing and his grinning translator. “It was ignoble- that is, it was unjust to deceive me!”
“A just host protects his guests, noble or otherwise. And you are welcome.”
Those final words only seem to increase Ashti’s frustration, but the merchant makes no effort to hide his amusement as he turns away from her. Reaching down into the black sand, Blackwing recovers the ruby graft and rubs it clean on his cloak before stepping aside to return the object to its crate.
As soon as he exits her path, Ashti steps forward through the portal and marches a few paces further inside. Her hunched shoulders indicate continued displeasure, though she raises no further objections on the subject.
Blackwing follows the girl a few moments later with his haul of boxes carried before him. He too passes seamlessly between world-tiles. After setting down his burden on the desert’s flat surface, he crosses back through the portal, returning to his own side just to prove he can.
As the man reenters the native twilight light of their homeland, Lamp notices that his skin has grown slightly pale. The scholar announces this development with a sudden sense of alarm, only for his worry to be casually dismissed.
“All skin looks pale on the other side.” Blackwing reminds him. “Ashti only developed color after she crossed. We’ll regain our hues when we return.”
Having curtly dismissed that matter, he turns to Candlewire and asks. “Can you find your way back to camp? I have time to carry you if we leave now.”
She laughs warmly. “You know I’m not completely blind. I can find your trail of rubble and follow it until I reach the headless giant.”
“Good… Then.” He steps forward to embrace the woman, keeping his thumb off her back so the blood doesn’t stain her dress. She likewise takes care not to stab him with the divine spear as she wraps her arms around his back and squeezes tightly. As they hold each other close, he lowers his head and murmurs into her copper-leafed skin. “Please don’t strand us so you can steal my company.”
The overseer smirks into his chest. “You know I would probably never do that to you.”
“Almost certainly.” The merchant fondly smiles back.
Lamp, having politely averted his gaze from their affectionate exchange, returns his eyes as the embrace breaks and they step apart. To Candlewire, he somewhat nervously asks. “I hesitate to question your abilities, ma’am, but are you completely certain you can reopen this portal alone?”
“Yeah, I can do it.” The metal woman answers flippantly. “It’s usually not as strenuous as it was this time. I managed to pop the thing on my own about a year ago. Wing brought me out here just to make sure I could keep his silver flowing in case anything ever happened to him. So don’t worry, I’ll bring you both back home.”
Turning to her partner, she adopts a more serious tone “That said, I’d put my odds of opening another off-season gate like this one at worse than three-in-twenty without your help. I can rescue you at the next conjoining but no sooner, meaning you’ll both be trapped on the other side for two and a half months.”
She pauses and taps a finger against her chin. “Though I suppose that’ll happen anyways even if you wait for a proper cycle, so if anything, you’ve gained two weeks. However, what it does mean is that I came all the way out here for no purpose beyond powering your flight and sharing my charming company. You could have left me behind to party all night with Clearheart for all the difference it made in the end. Carcosa might never experience another day like that in my lifetime, and I missed it for nothing.”
“Don’t be so sure.” Blackwing gently counters. “I doubt I could have opened the way forward on my own either, so in the end, you made all the difference.”
Candlewire shrugs. “Well, if you want to insist that I’m indispensable to your operations and you’d get nothing done without me, I suppose I can’t argue.”
“You always know what I really meant to say.”
The two of them share a long-lingering smile, then the overseer glances through their dark gateway in the general direction of Ashti’s stationary form. With a frown, she mutters. “Sorry to drag this up again, but are you absolutely sure you don’t just want to send the girl off on her own? She’s made this exact journey by herself before, and it sounds like your presence only adds complications to what would otherwise be a simple and safe trek. The two of you don’t need to leave today.”
“We do.” Blackwing almost whispers.
Lamp expects Candlewire to challenge the assertion, but she simply nods in acceptance. Forced to summon his own courage, the scholar clears his throat and interjects. “If I may, I would like to know why. I’m willing to proceed with the knowledge I currently possess, but I’d appreciate an explanation for your urgency.”
The merchant stoically regards him for an uncomfortably long moment before answering in a careful tone. “We must shape how they view our people and the magic we shed before they form conclusions of their own, and I may find greater opportunities to establish parity between our realms. Whatever awaits, we will enjoy more freedom to act if we arrive before we are expected.”
Fixing his translator with a level stare, he asks. “Are you willing to trust me? Will you follow my lead as we contest with demigods and kings?”
“I am, and I will. Sir.”
“Then it’s time to go.” The merchant steps past the scholar with a nod, only to stop again a moment later at his partner’s voice.
“Wait a moment, please.” Candlewire bids while moving closer. After setting down her golden spear, she fumbles in the air for a moment before laying a hand on each man’s closest shoulder. Then, looking between them with a serious expression, she demands. “Come back alive. Both of you.”
“We will.” Blackwing solemnly promises.
With a bob of her head, the copper-leafed woman releases her hold. Both men mirror her nod before Blackwing turns away to step through the portal without another word. Lamp cautiously follows a deep breath later. He still harbors apprehensions on whether he’ll be able to return, but he won’t hang back like a coward after his boss showed such ostentatious bravery. The two of them are in this mess together now.
On impulse, Lamp activates both of his grafts in the moment before his body contacts the gate. If magic acts as his shield against chaos, then he’d like to carry it firmly in front of him. It also feels appropriate, in a poetic sense, to hold light in his hands as he visits the new world. Conceptualizing himself as a wandering torch shining dimly upon the edges of a vast, unexplored wilderness, he enters the bridge between realms with a silent prayer laying weightless on his tongue.
In his brief period of transit, Lamp’s senses are temporarily overwhelmed by an all-encompassing perception of absolute emptiness. For that short moment, he feels surrounded and subsumed by an unknowable expanse stretching endlessly in all dimensions. His light shines out into that great darkness, filling a tiny measure of the trackless void with his brief flicker of radiant life.
Then Lamp’s momentum carries him through the portal. His leading foot settles into the black sand, and his body transits another pace forward before he pulls to a sudden stop. By then, the strange sensation has fully passed. Shaking himself, the scholar calls ahead to ask his employer whether he’d experienced anything strange while passing through. The man replies that he felt a simple chill.
Any additional questions Lamp might have asked are driven from his mind by the astounding sight of Blackwing’s rapidly bleaching skin. Abruptly overtaken by curiosity, Lamp glances down at his own arms to find his complexion lightening from an olive tan to pale alabaster. He watches with a mix of earnest fascination and subdued horror as the transformation swiftly overtakes him.
“How bizarre.” He whispers to himself.
Raising his eyes again, Lamp discovers that his employer’s depigmentation has already completed. Every inch of Blackwing’s previously loam-dark skin has turned a milky white. Only his graft retains its original black coloration. Lamp observes with empathetic amusement as the merchant holds up his right arm to examine its pallid tone with an expression of resigned displeasure.
The scholar barely hears him mutter. “I don’t care for this.”
Shaking his head, the merchant strides forward to pluck up the second graft he’d thrown through the portal during his earlier tests. Then he returns to his assemblage of boxes to begin fussing with their contents. Leaving the man to his work, Lamp marches ahead across the coarse, flat sand to join Ashti deeper inside her world.
The girl hasn’t moved from her current position since she crossed through a few minutes ago. Lamp feels a twinge of worry as he approaches her immobile form, but she dismisses his apprehension the moment he reaches her side. Lowering her face from the metal sky and opening her eyes, she greets him with a forced smile.
“My mask did not return.” She numbly states while reaching up to touch one of the silver feathers drawn across her face. “I had hoped…”
The handmaiden sighs then turns away from him to face the open desert before closing her eyes again. A second later, Lamp feels the subtle influence of her magic briefly tugging at his mind. When the girl looks back to him, she wears a more peaceful expression.
“At least I still retain what I obtained in trade.” She smiles slightly. “I would have sacrificed my graft as well, had it been the price for my return. And, as much as it would aggrieve my mother and Lady Jaleh for them to hear me admit this, there are benefits to life without a soulmask. When I next see my darling, she can look into my eyes and hear my voice for the first time since we were children. In some ways, this outcome is preferable to regaining my lost power. Perhaps it was a mercy from the gods.”
Lamp nods but says nothing, not trusting himself to choose an appropriately sensitive response. Luckily, he’s saved from having to think of something when Blackwing shouts from behind them that their portal has begun to close. The scholar and his outlander companion head back in the merchant’s direction with no further exchange of words. Though Lamp supposes he and Blackwing are the outlanders now.
Regardless, he can see as they approach their starting point that the doorway home is indeed closing in on itself. From his current side of it, the portal appears as a jagged hole carved into the irregular surface of a massive metal wall. The sea of chaos must lurk somewhere even further beyond, held at bay by this gargantuan, inscrutable barricade.
Lamp’s eyes follow the world-wall’s great bulk upward into the distant shadows where it joins with a dull grey sky. As he examines the enveloping shell, Lamp experiences a flicker of envy over the ostentatious protections offered to Ashti’s homeland.
Never mind that he willingly gazed into the sea’s maddening tumult only a few minutes prior. Never mind that he crossed through or above several mountainous barriers to even reach that point. All of his world-tile’s obstacles could be circumvented; any cohort with sufficient time, determination, and cleverness could eventually find their way to the edge as Blackwing did.
Here, though, the gods have made it impossible to pass beyond their creation’s final border. No one born in this place could ever look upon the terror and majesty of the oldest waters. For them, that option does not exist.
Shaking his head, Lamp dismisses the matter as just another perplexing difference between their respective homelands, a subject for future philosophers to ponder. Maybe he’ll even take a crack at explaining the discrepancy himself once he’s no longer trapped inside an immortal monster’s yard.
At any rate, as Lamp and Ashti return to the portal, the girl glances between her companions and asks. “Are you both determined to proceed? It might seem too late to turn back, but it is not, and you could die if you press forward. Your survival depends on your ability to evade a threat none of us have seen before.”
Blackwing nods resolutely. “I have experience fighting enemies whose range and speed exceed my own. So long as I can observe the icon, I believe I can maintain distance.”
The handmaiden nods with a strained expression then turns to Lamp. Recognizing her cue, he answers. “I think Candlewire only packed enough food and water for herself, so I’m stuck with the boss now. I made my final choice when they were packing provisions back in Wall Town.”
Blackwing waits a beat to ensure the matter is settled before posing a question of his own. “Have both of you tested your grafts? We should all verify normal functions.”
Ashti confirms having done so, and Lamp relates that he hasn’t used his magic since passing through the gate. His employer looks at him expectantly in response, so the scholar obligingly holds up a hand and opens his reserve of light.
The stored energy flows as easily as ever, quashing a brief spike of apprehension that something might have gone awry in the minutes since he entered this realm. However, in this new world, his magic produces a startling effect.
Beneath the clear sunlight issuing from the small bones of his palm, his two companions instantly regain their true colors. Lamp’s eyes widen at the sudden revelation; a pair of shocked expressions gazing back at him show that the others share in his surprise and wonderment.
Lowering his hand and allowing the glow to fade, Lamp watches with fascination as their pigments slowly leech away again beneath the monochrome suppression of Ashti’s desert home. He makes a pleased little sound to indicate his satisfaction at having discovered something interesting. The younger of his two companions echoes that non-verbal utterance while the elder nods in silent agreement.
“The light of home shines true.” Lamp mutters. “I suppose I’ll have to ration it.”
“Or…” Ashti counters with a contemplative mien. “It might just be about you. Perhaps the light of my realm would shine in the same way once filtered through your particular magic.”
“Maybe.” The scholar slowly nods while adopting a pensive frown. “I suppose that to test it, I’d want to discharge all the energy from one hand before refilling it with only local light, but that could turn out to be a massive waste if my graft isn’t actually responsible for the phenomenon. Though I will say- if your native light produces an opposite effect on my own side of the gate, that alone could serve as proof of our journey.”
Looking up at the distant metal sky, he shakes his head. “Regardless, I don’t think we have enough illumination here to conduct the test.”
His interlocutor nods. “Best not to put on a light show when we want you to remain undetected, anyway.”
“True.”
Glancing toward the portal home, Lamp finds that its edges have drifted close enough together now that he could brush his fingertips against its opposing sides if he fully spread his arms. If he wanted to step back through it at this final juncture, he’d need to duck his head while simultaneously lifting his feet above the metal barricade rising from the sand at the doorway’s base.
Of course, Lamp would also be forced to weave around his employer, as Blackwing now stands directly before the portal with his back facing the desert. The merchant’s graft arm extends back through the gate into their home realm. At its far end, Candlewire intertwines her metal fingers with the dark, fearsome claws.
The two of them don’t speak. Whatever needed to be said between them clearly has been by now.
Blackwing waits until the gate has nearly closed itself around him before pulling his arm in through the portal. With her hand freed, the overseer begins to wave goodbye. Lamp and Ashti return the gesture while the merchant only smiles.
“You know you have to tell me if you’re waving back.” Candlewire cheerily extols all three of them. “I can’t see a damn thing over there.”
“We’re waving.” Blackwing patiently assures her. “You should close your eyes now. The gate’s about to shut.”
“Sure, sure.” She lightly scoffs but still turns her head away from the portal before suddenly adopting a panicked expression. “Wait! Wing, before this thing closes, I wanted to tell you that I'm… Shit. I screwed the timing on that, didn’t I? Okay, we’ll try again. Could you please just let me know when it’s right about to-”
The door shuts, and her voice snaps off. Only an uneven wall of strange grey metal remains behind. Blacking lays his human hand upon its surface and silently bows his head. After a long breath in, he turns away.
