The Wild Abyss (PG)
May. 26th, 2008 06:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skywaterblueThe Wild Abyss
Rating: PG
Summary: The grace-endowed Cassington Scholar has an encounter with another mysterious stranger traveling between worlds.
Author's Note: I finally wrote this because it's been bugging me forever. Hat tip to Rosie, I steal from the best.
It was quite right that when things of an unusual nature occurred within the confines of Jordan College that it was the Cassington Scholar one called. Before the Fall, it had been the Cassington Scholar's nature to intimately know heresy, and question the new and peculiar. In this confusing modern era, the unusual and heretical seemed to happen with a regularity. It frightened the Master of Jordan College and made him long for the more certain times of his youth. He reached out a hand and swept his fingers over the ears of his doe-shaped daemon for comfort. The only assurance he had was that the current holder of the scholarship was the greatest in all of the college's storied annals.
"The Steward caught him just moments ago, there was an explosion in the retiring room." He explained, turning his head to the unconscious figure restrained in a chair. "I thought I should send for you." His nose prickled; the air still smelled of burnt carpet.
The Cassington Scholar wore a dressing gown of white Nipponese silk and evening slippers, tawny hair piled up and pinned for sleep. Her marten daemon curled against her neck, whispering in her ear. She looked from the Master to the still-smoking wood of the retiring room, to the unconscious figure. "He doesn't look like an anarchist to me. A bit Saville Row for that. You're sure he isn't one of ours?" With a swift hand, she reached for his neck to feel for a pulse. Her hand lingered for a moment, puzzling something before she removed it and then looked at the Master with a look of pure wonderment. "Why! He's alive!"
The Master nodded gravely. "Quite." It was why he had sent for her; she was the only person with practical experience with those unfortunate enough not to know their own true soul. Harva quailed next to him, her hooves clattering against the stone floor.
She lifted his chin to get a good look at his face. He did indeed look young enough to be one of the many doctorate students. "Well, that shouldn't be possible." Her hands fell to her hip, unbuckling the leather satchel she carried with her at all times. She gave a cursory look to their surroundings once more before taking out her alethiometer. Her daemon slid down her dressing gown sleeve to perch on her wrist. Neat fingers worked the dials. At the sight of her using the altheiometer with such ease the Master averted his eyes to their daemon-less captive in his pinstriped suit.
The stranger came too with an abrupt gasp of air into his lungs, eyes blinking wildly behind the spectacles. "Oi. A menagerie?" He squinted. "No, wait." His hands strained against the bonds, and the Master betrayed a glance at Professor Silvertongue. Pantalaimon arched his back and hissed, fur sparking in anbaric alarm at the interruption. The man made a queer face, looking from Pantalaimon to his own Harva. "Living artron energy shadows! Oh, that's brilliant. And an artron collector?" Straining forward to get a good look at the alethiometer, he made an abrupt moue. "Clockworks." He sniffed his nose. "Not a fan of the robes, either."
The sudden movement threw Professor Silvertongue from her trance. She irritably lifted her head, pulling the alethiometer in to her chest protectively and taking a step back. "It's an alethiometer." She tilted it briefly to show him the face of her instrument. Its needle still spun around the dial, but her fierce eyes never left those of their prisoner.
Silently, the Master of Jordan College snapped his fingers to bring the guards closer.
"A lie detector? W-e-ll, I suppose you /could/ use it for that," the stranger continued to himself. He lifted his hands against the ropes again, raising an eyebrow at the appearance of the guards.
The Master followed a glance from Professor Silvertongue and stepped out of earshot. Her hands shook, and her voice was low. "He's a traveler like myself, from a different world. The alethiometer says he's dangerous, and mad with grief. It called him the destroyer of worlds." Pantalaimon twisted over Professor Silvertongue's shoulders, claws digging into silk embroidery. "It was no ordinary bomb that did that," she said, looking over at the shattered wooden doors of the retiring room. "He blew a window between worlds."
The Master shuddered. "In the retiring room?" The horror stories she told over poppy in that very room had become vividly etched into his memory. Harva's hocks trembled, hooves slipping over the polished floor, her nose digging into his ribs. "He used his daemon?"
Professor Silvertongue shook her head. "No, I don't think so. He doesn't have that look." She looked off into the distance towards nothingness, before glancing back down at the alethiometer. The needle was still flitting from one symbol to the other. When she spoke, it was distant, confused, as a sybil translating for ancient and dusty gods. "He used his ship, it travels ... through time and space." Her voice lifted in wonderment at the very notion, and her left hand moved swiftly 'round the golden casing to set it for another reading. This time, the needle ran even faster.
"What is he doing here?" The Master asked.
The stranger lifted his voice, "Buggered up the landing. My fault." They spun around, unaware he could hear them. "Sorry! Hearing's a bit better than yours, m'fraid." He really was disturbingly cheerful.
Professor Silvertongue took one last look at her alethiometer before putting it away. She seemed to have no fear at all of the stranger. "An accident? Wrong world?"
"Right," their prisoner said. The Master felt he was leering at Professor Silvertongue in her pyjamas, especially given the uncouth way he raised his eyebrow. "All my bad. Sorry about the explosion -- she normally doesn't do that. Let me go, and I'll be right on my way. You all can get back to beddie-bye." He lifted his hand to wiggle his fingers in a goodbye.
"We can't do that." Professor Silvertongue raised a slender eyebrow in response.
The stranger's face turned hard, his eyebrow sinking back down. "Why not?"
She said, "I can't allow you to blow open any more windows between the worlds. It's dangerous." Professor Silvertongue struck one finger against her open palm, counting the reasons off as she would to her errant students. "You're tearing apart the fabric of the universe. And when you do that, Dust -- Ruskaov particles -- dark matter leaks out of the holes. And what leaks out can leak back in -- there are things that live in the space between the worlds, dangerous things that feed on our universe."
"The artron energy. Every reaction causes an equal reaction," the stranger agreed. "Newton, from my universe. Maybe you've heard of him?" He asked.
Professor Silvertongue lowered her chin. "He burned as a heretic here. You knew?" She folded her arms.
"Yes. I did. We-ll, not about him burning, that's a shame, but then he did always spend far too much time harassing the church." He showed not the slightest bit of remorse, and strained his hands against the ropes again. They seemed more slack this time. The Master suspected he was doing something to the knots. They would not hold for much longer. He looked to the head of the guards. The Cassington Scholar had never had a reputation for caution, especially in the face of danger.
She frowned, "I meant, you knew what would happen if you tore open a window between the worlds."
He rolled his eyes, "Didn't I just say yes?"
Her face was a mask of anger mixed with grief, at war with curiosity. "You knew and you still did this. What would drive you to do that?"
"What indeed," their prisoner suggested wryly. "I had a -- friend. In fact, you'll like this," he said with a nod in her direction: "We were trying to close a massive rift in space and time -- one of your 'windows', when she ... slipped. But! She's fine, okay, safe as houses. Do you say that here, safe as houses? No? She's just trapped in another world."
"Oh! Oh, no." Professor Silvertongue placed a hand over her mouth, stunned. "You lost her and now you're trying to get her back." Her form relaxed in visible pity for their captive. It felt uncooth to watch her. The Master instead eyed the guards and their bristling shepherd daemons.
"I'm not trying. I am going to get her back. Really thought I'd made the right landing this time too, but the u-axis coordinates must still be off. And for that, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," their prisoner said, as he retracted one of his hands from the rope. Quick as a flash, he pulled a silver pen out of his jacket.
A horrific wave swept over his daemon. She let out a pained bleat and fell to her knees. "Harva!" He scrambled to the ground and pulled her body close to his own chest, even as her hooves lashed out and struck against his knees and the stone floor. Around him he was distantly aware of the other daemons whining and Pantalaimon yowling as he fell from his mistress's shoulder.
Frozen in place as Harva caught her breath, he could do nothing more than watch as the stranger used his silver pen to burn through the rope tying his other hand down. The stranger rotated his free wrist once, raised an eyebrow and looked directly at him. He tilted his head and then flicked a two finger salute in the direction of Professor Silvertongue before sprinting for the wreckage of the retiring room. Then came the most queer sound, as if an entire orchestra was warming up by playing dull knives against a grinding stone.
"No! Stop!" Professor Silvertongue shouted, pulling herself upright with a fierce thrust in his direction. Her daemon had already found his feet and was running into the wreckage. The shepherds tore after him, guards close behind. The Master forced himself up, knuckles on his hands creaking against hard stone floors. Besides him, Harva was wobbling to a balance.
Tossing open the remains of doors to the wardrobe she found nothing behind them but a heap of ceremonial robes. Her daemon threw himself forward to place his paws against the intact panels of wood. The Master followed close behind them, lifting the edges of his robes to avoid snagging on splintered wood. "He's gone," Pan said. "And so is the window," she marveled, sweeping her hand through the air as if searching for something invisible to the eye.
The Master folded his arms as Harva picked her own way closer. "He'll do it again, you know. If we had kept him here, we could have taken apart his ordinator."
She turned her head to look at him, turning to sit on a cushion of ruined robes. Her face hardened, and Pantalaimon arched his back defensively, glaring at Harva. "And done what with it?"
Beside him, Harva blinked, and took a step back in concession to his ferocity. The Master frowned. He thought the applications for such technology would be readily apparent to her. "It's your area of specialty."
Having won the battle for them, her daemon arched his back, clambering up her arm fluidly. "Travel between worlds isn't something we should consider pursuing. It's far too dangerous." Professor Silvertongue turned an ear to listen to something her daemon whispered in her ear, and she nodded to him grimly. "We have to trust that we gave him sufficient warning. In the morning, I will begin a line of inquiry with the alethiometer."
"It seems all we can do." The Master agreed reluctantly, eyes casting themselves to the ruins of the room. "I... shall expect an update tomorrow evening over supper. It seems we may have to change the usual venue." Harva stepped her way back to his side, tail down. He could do nothing more than begin rebuilding and hope that the stranger would never appear within the confines of Jordan again.
"Of course," Professor Silvertongue responded in her best polite tone. One hand rested on the golden alethiometer, the other picking wooden splinters out of velvet cloth. As he walked down the hallway, he could have sworn to have heard her voice whisper the words, "Good luck."
Rating: PG
Summary: The grace-endowed Cassington Scholar has an encounter with another mysterious stranger traveling between worlds.
Author's Note: I finally wrote this because it's been bugging me forever. Hat tip to Rosie, I steal from the best.
It was quite right that when things of an unusual nature occurred within the confines of Jordan College that it was the Cassington Scholar one called. Before the Fall, it had been the Cassington Scholar's nature to intimately know heresy, and question the new and peculiar. In this confusing modern era, the unusual and heretical seemed to happen with a regularity. It frightened the Master of Jordan College and made him long for the more certain times of his youth. He reached out a hand and swept his fingers over the ears of his doe-shaped daemon for comfort. The only assurance he had was that the current holder of the scholarship was the greatest in all of the college's storied annals.
"The Steward caught him just moments ago, there was an explosion in the retiring room." He explained, turning his head to the unconscious figure restrained in a chair. "I thought I should send for you." His nose prickled; the air still smelled of burnt carpet.
The Cassington Scholar wore a dressing gown of white Nipponese silk and evening slippers, tawny hair piled up and pinned for sleep. Her marten daemon curled against her neck, whispering in her ear. She looked from the Master to the still-smoking wood of the retiring room, to the unconscious figure. "He doesn't look like an anarchist to me. A bit Saville Row for that. You're sure he isn't one of ours?" With a swift hand, she reached for his neck to feel for a pulse. Her hand lingered for a moment, puzzling something before she removed it and then looked at the Master with a look of pure wonderment. "Why! He's alive!"
The Master nodded gravely. "Quite." It was why he had sent for her; she was the only person with practical experience with those unfortunate enough not to know their own true soul. Harva quailed next to him, her hooves clattering against the stone floor.
She lifted his chin to get a good look at his face. He did indeed look young enough to be one of the many doctorate students. "Well, that shouldn't be possible." Her hands fell to her hip, unbuckling the leather satchel she carried with her at all times. She gave a cursory look to their surroundings once more before taking out her alethiometer. Her daemon slid down her dressing gown sleeve to perch on her wrist. Neat fingers worked the dials. At the sight of her using the altheiometer with such ease the Master averted his eyes to their daemon-less captive in his pinstriped suit.
The stranger came too with an abrupt gasp of air into his lungs, eyes blinking wildly behind the spectacles. "Oi. A menagerie?" He squinted. "No, wait." His hands strained against the bonds, and the Master betrayed a glance at Professor Silvertongue. Pantalaimon arched his back and hissed, fur sparking in anbaric alarm at the interruption. The man made a queer face, looking from Pantalaimon to his own Harva. "Living artron energy shadows! Oh, that's brilliant. And an artron collector?" Straining forward to get a good look at the alethiometer, he made an abrupt moue. "Clockworks." He sniffed his nose. "Not a fan of the robes, either."
The sudden movement threw Professor Silvertongue from her trance. She irritably lifted her head, pulling the alethiometer in to her chest protectively and taking a step back. "It's an alethiometer." She tilted it briefly to show him the face of her instrument. Its needle still spun around the dial, but her fierce eyes never left those of their prisoner.
Silently, the Master of Jordan College snapped his fingers to bring the guards closer.
"A lie detector? W-e-ll, I suppose you /could/ use it for that," the stranger continued to himself. He lifted his hands against the ropes again, raising an eyebrow at the appearance of the guards.
The Master followed a glance from Professor Silvertongue and stepped out of earshot. Her hands shook, and her voice was low. "He's a traveler like myself, from a different world. The alethiometer says he's dangerous, and mad with grief. It called him the destroyer of worlds." Pantalaimon twisted over Professor Silvertongue's shoulders, claws digging into silk embroidery. "It was no ordinary bomb that did that," she said, looking over at the shattered wooden doors of the retiring room. "He blew a window between worlds."
The Master shuddered. "In the retiring room?" The horror stories she told over poppy in that very room had become vividly etched into his memory. Harva's hocks trembled, hooves slipping over the polished floor, her nose digging into his ribs. "He used his daemon?"
Professor Silvertongue shook her head. "No, I don't think so. He doesn't have that look." She looked off into the distance towards nothingness, before glancing back down at the alethiometer. The needle was still flitting from one symbol to the other. When she spoke, it was distant, confused, as a sybil translating for ancient and dusty gods. "He used his ship, it travels ... through time and space." Her voice lifted in wonderment at the very notion, and her left hand moved swiftly 'round the golden casing to set it for another reading. This time, the needle ran even faster.
"What is he doing here?" The Master asked.
The stranger lifted his voice, "Buggered up the landing. My fault." They spun around, unaware he could hear them. "Sorry! Hearing's a bit better than yours, m'fraid." He really was disturbingly cheerful.
Professor Silvertongue took one last look at her alethiometer before putting it away. She seemed to have no fear at all of the stranger. "An accident? Wrong world?"
"Right," their prisoner said. The Master felt he was leering at Professor Silvertongue in her pyjamas, especially given the uncouth way he raised his eyebrow. "All my bad. Sorry about the explosion -- she normally doesn't do that. Let me go, and I'll be right on my way. You all can get back to beddie-bye." He lifted his hand to wiggle his fingers in a goodbye.
"We can't do that." Professor Silvertongue raised a slender eyebrow in response.
The stranger's face turned hard, his eyebrow sinking back down. "Why not?"
She said, "I can't allow you to blow open any more windows between the worlds. It's dangerous." Professor Silvertongue struck one finger against her open palm, counting the reasons off as she would to her errant students. "You're tearing apart the fabric of the universe. And when you do that, Dust -- Ruskaov particles -- dark matter leaks out of the holes. And what leaks out can leak back in -- there are things that live in the space between the worlds, dangerous things that feed on our universe."
"The artron energy. Every reaction causes an equal reaction," the stranger agreed. "Newton, from my universe. Maybe you've heard of him?" He asked.
Professor Silvertongue lowered her chin. "He burned as a heretic here. You knew?" She folded her arms.
"Yes. I did. We-ll, not about him burning, that's a shame, but then he did always spend far too much time harassing the church." He showed not the slightest bit of remorse, and strained his hands against the ropes again. They seemed more slack this time. The Master suspected he was doing something to the knots. They would not hold for much longer. He looked to the head of the guards. The Cassington Scholar had never had a reputation for caution, especially in the face of danger.
She frowned, "I meant, you knew what would happen if you tore open a window between the worlds."
He rolled his eyes, "Didn't I just say yes?"
Her face was a mask of anger mixed with grief, at war with curiosity. "You knew and you still did this. What would drive you to do that?"
"What indeed," their prisoner suggested wryly. "I had a -- friend. In fact, you'll like this," he said with a nod in her direction: "We were trying to close a massive rift in space and time -- one of your 'windows', when she ... slipped. But! She's fine, okay, safe as houses. Do you say that here, safe as houses? No? She's just trapped in another world."
"Oh! Oh, no." Professor Silvertongue placed a hand over her mouth, stunned. "You lost her and now you're trying to get her back." Her form relaxed in visible pity for their captive. It felt uncooth to watch her. The Master instead eyed the guards and their bristling shepherd daemons.
"I'm not trying. I am going to get her back. Really thought I'd made the right landing this time too, but the u-axis coordinates must still be off. And for that, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," their prisoner said, as he retracted one of his hands from the rope. Quick as a flash, he pulled a silver pen out of his jacket.
A horrific wave swept over his daemon. She let out a pained bleat and fell to her knees. "Harva!" He scrambled to the ground and pulled her body close to his own chest, even as her hooves lashed out and struck against his knees and the stone floor. Around him he was distantly aware of the other daemons whining and Pantalaimon yowling as he fell from his mistress's shoulder.
Frozen in place as Harva caught her breath, he could do nothing more than watch as the stranger used his silver pen to burn through the rope tying his other hand down. The stranger rotated his free wrist once, raised an eyebrow and looked directly at him. He tilted his head and then flicked a two finger salute in the direction of Professor Silvertongue before sprinting for the wreckage of the retiring room. Then came the most queer sound, as if an entire orchestra was warming up by playing dull knives against a grinding stone.
"No! Stop!" Professor Silvertongue shouted, pulling herself upright with a fierce thrust in his direction. Her daemon had already found his feet and was running into the wreckage. The shepherds tore after him, guards close behind. The Master forced himself up, knuckles on his hands creaking against hard stone floors. Besides him, Harva was wobbling to a balance.
Tossing open the remains of doors to the wardrobe she found nothing behind them but a heap of ceremonial robes. Her daemon threw himself forward to place his paws against the intact panels of wood. The Master followed close behind them, lifting the edges of his robes to avoid snagging on splintered wood. "He's gone," Pan said. "And so is the window," she marveled, sweeping her hand through the air as if searching for something invisible to the eye.
The Master folded his arms as Harva picked her own way closer. "He'll do it again, you know. If we had kept him here, we could have taken apart his ordinator."
She turned her head to look at him, turning to sit on a cushion of ruined robes. Her face hardened, and Pantalaimon arched his back defensively, glaring at Harva. "And done what with it?"
Beside him, Harva blinked, and took a step back in concession to his ferocity. The Master frowned. He thought the applications for such technology would be readily apparent to her. "It's your area of specialty."
Having won the battle for them, her daemon arched his back, clambering up her arm fluidly. "Travel between worlds isn't something we should consider pursuing. It's far too dangerous." Professor Silvertongue turned an ear to listen to something her daemon whispered in her ear, and she nodded to him grimly. "We have to trust that we gave him sufficient warning. In the morning, I will begin a line of inquiry with the alethiometer."
"It seems all we can do." The Master agreed reluctantly, eyes casting themselves to the ruins of the room. "I... shall expect an update tomorrow evening over supper. It seems we may have to change the usual venue." Harva stepped her way back to his side, tail down. He could do nothing more than begin rebuilding and hope that the stranger would never appear within the confines of Jordan again.
"Of course," Professor Silvertongue responded in her best polite tone. One hand rested on the golden alethiometer, the other picking wooden splinters out of velvet cloth. As he walked down the hallway, he could have sworn to have heard her voice whisper the words, "Good luck."
