Session 1 - The Most Popular Car In The World

Previously, across the Horizon…
Yves Mrjwin, magitek researcher on leave for thoroughly legitimate and not at all troubling reasons, was offered a job by Jiandie Zheng of the AZYS Corporation. The job seemed simple enough; transporting a lantern that once belonged to an employee, Elijhaa, back to their family in Caerwyn — specifically, the Valles Estate at Bernier Station. Yves’ own role in the circumstances that led to Elijhaa’s lantern needing a return to Caerwyn may or may not have contributed to the young viera’s decision to accept Zheng’s offer.
Isaline Osler, a once-promising dragoon, returned home to continue not being enrolled at the Dravanian Academy in Cardia and generally stew about it. A chance meeting with an old fri—confidan—neighbor, Art Covus, brought ill tidings. The Osler family spear, an heirloom the young human expected to be granted officially to her upon her graduation as a proud Cardian Dragoon, would be instead reclaimed from her disgraced family and granted to a member of the Dravanian graduating class, and the sixth-highest-ranked member at that. Art presented Isa with a tempting and troubling offer; he would rescue her spear if she ran an errand to acquire a sword for him, a sword from Cardia for a girl he wanted to impress.
Linnet Leveche, part-time librarian, part-time black mage, full-time involuntary vacationer, had her leisure interrupted by an unexpected meeting with Caelonde’s Senior Librarian. Jehu Thornwell bade that the wind sylph travel to Caerwyn to purchase a particular book at an estate auction at the Valles Estate at Bernier Station. Green Study, Vol. 1, held incredible treasures inside its boring exterior; ancient research on the interaction between Job Crystals and the living brain. Thornwell leaned on Linnet’s past and promise as a librarian to go acquire this book for Caelonde’s library.
Bast, lockbreaker and risktaker, had one foot out the door when a final offer came through, one the moogle just couldn’t turn down. Thanks to a tip from Eteri Treno, Bast led a team that broke into an airship docked at the Triad, the Seventh Dawn, on promise and potential of finding ‘the weird stuff,’ the peculiar riches from the ruins of the Alternan Empire that made the danger profitable at the end of the day. The heist went off without a hitch, with Bast coming out a book (ATMA, whatever that is), a captain’s ledger (showing a well-worn path through the skies), and a crystal richer. The crystal then attempting to communicate to Bast, showing him a clock tower wrapped in chains, shattering on the strike of twelve, that’s not the sort of thing that helps a moogle’s bottom line. Best to leave the Triad and find a good place to dump that, take that trip out of town.
Orrey Alyon, amateur historian, collector of stories, son of a printer, pawn in a revolution. The hand that moved the naive human belonged to an almost-friend, Lylja, who served as his liaison to the keeper of the Alyon family secrets. The Avengers, a group agitating for change in Saron as they jockey for control of the city-state, hold power over the Alyons due to a printer error, to put it lightly and to obfuscate the truth. Orrey’s latest task as a piece on their board is to travel to Bernier Station in Caerwyn and find a set of Alternan books and plant hidden messages inside of them, messages about modern-day movements, messages that use very strange terminology when it comes to the Great Crystal — or, potentially, Crystals?
We join our performers as they rattle on their way toward adventure…
The Solomon Rail runs the length of Caerwyn, ferrying heroes, entourages, travelers, families, ne’er-do-wells, cargo, and cactaur to wherever they need to be. This train stretches for twenty-five cars, fifteen of which carry passengers, benches and beds adjustable to the preferences and the persons inside. Five cars carry luggage, two house the staff, two serve food any hour of the day, and one is encased in reinforced glass, allowing passengers the chance to sit and enjoy the sights.
Caerwyn’s sights are well worth the time. Beautiful hills dotted with groves of trees and assorted wineries, estates woven into the fabric of farmland and pastures, a landscape so scenic and idyllic it almost turns the stomach. Most of the other passengers have tired of the casually rolling terrain, save a few — namely, all of you. The viewing car has enough room for six or seven clusters of people to have quiet conversations, with nooks by bookshelves for others to enjoy reading a novel (selections range from the rail-read crowd pleasers like “World of Wonder,” “Night Train,” and M.A. Walker’s steamy romance “Margrace Under Fire.” The train’s own Solomon Sun paper, delivered weekly from Saron, is available, with the rather sensational TRIAL OF THE CENTURY headline splashed across the top.
And just as the day feels as if it will stretch out as lazily and as long as those gentle, endless hills, the door toward the head of the train opens, bringing with it a tremendous amount of noise.
A young human male, his blonde hair pulled back in a long ponytail, a silver rapier buckled (in two places) to his belt, and what surely is his father’s deep blue cloak wrapped around his thin shoulders, enters and strikes what he thinks is a commanding pose.
“Friends! Who here, pray tell, wishes to be… a HERO?”
“You, by the looks of it?” Bast doesn’t seem amused.
Orrey doesn’t even glance up from where he’s curled up with the paper, reading about whatever Trial is going on.
Isa folds down the top of her own paper, and regards the young man flatly over the top of it. She does not volunteer.
Yves raises a hand. “I’d like to see some references on what the heroic act and its expected consequences would be. Ideally, with citations.”
Undaunted — okay, slightly daunted — he continues. “I am Kurt Heibel, a name that shall surely be on the lips of bards, the tongues of journalists. Why, just the other day I completed a most noble quest, a most perilous journey, nay, a most treacherous undertaking against the most VILE of foes!”
Linnet glances up from the book she’s been devouring, confused at the noise. The overblown appeal seems to resolve the confusion, and she goes back to reading.
Yves raises his other hand. “Do you have documentation? I mean, of having completed the quest, but ideally there would also be solid documentation on the vile aspect.”
The TRIAL OF THE CENTURY in the paper Orrey’s holding is one he’s familiar with; the trial of Oracle Varen d’Orien, assistant to the late Consul Firkser of Saron, charged with treasonous neglect in allowing Saron to fall into dogmatic civil war. The trial is being treated with wildly uneven seriousness, depending on the political affiliation of the people covering it.
Bast looks at Yves sideways, trying to decide if his reaction is an act. Either way, this promises some entertainment.
“But of course!” He’s overjoyed and relieved to have someone paying attention to him. “All of that, and so much more, is available to anyone who wish to join me in endless rest and relaxation here in Caerwyn, as True Heroes! For you see,” he says, hopping up onto one of the unoccupied couches as the train rumbles on, “As I am a True Hero, any who join me can also become True Heroes, living in luxury basically forever, here! And these positions are available, for a quite reasonable fee!”
“I don’t think I can expense that,” Yves mutters, turning back to the scenery.
Kurt looks crestfallen. “But it’s an investment that will pay itself back a hundred — no, a thousand times over! We can be Warriors of Might, or… or Warriors of the Night! Something along those lines!” After a moment, he grumpily adds, “The fees are quite reasonable.”
Linnet eyes the young…adventurer?…with something closer to active disdain this time. Sure, this is not a library, but there are manners.
Orrey mumbles “If only he were part of the Warriors Out of Sight” from behind his paper.
He looks around, finding only averted eyes, or worse, dismissive eyes. “You’ll all regret this when I’m rich! You could have been rich too!” He storms out of the car, heading further down, pausing to yell “Just watch me!” then linger for a moment, and then finally, finally depart.
“Can’t,” Yves says, reasonably. “He’s out of sight. Did he… expect us to follow?”
“Metaphorically, maybe?” Orrey muses.
Isa looks over at the other passengers in the car. “Boys and their swords,” she says, desert-dry. The fact that she is herself bears a sword does not seem to enter the equation.
“I didn’t think it was /that/ sort of watching,” Yves says.
Orrey shrugs and flips a page, diving back into the paper.
Bast checks his pockets, just in case. The loudmouth never came near him, but that was a pretty solid distraction. The bag with the journal, book, crystal in a hidden pocket and a number of notes seems to be intact as well. He thinking about heading back to his cot to get another look at the book – no telling who might take an interest, here – but settles for seeing more of the scenery for now.
Orrey digs in his backpack for a notebook and pen and starts jotting a few things down from the paper.
The door Kurt left through slides open, admitting a tall blonde human woman, early twenties, red-framed glasses in front of wary blue eyes, a green and yellow scarf tucked tightly around her shoulders. She gives the room a scan, and then carefully ventures, “Are any of you also going to try to sell me something?”
“If you’re regretting not purchasing True Heroism, he went that way,” Isa says, gesturing back the way the newcomer came.
“Oh, I know which way he went,” she says. “That’s why I came this way.”
“Did he ever provide any evidence for his heroism and its truth quotient?” Yves asks.
She comes in and picks the exact center of the couch the furthest away from everyone, and looks as uncomfortable as anyone has ever been in an open room. “I think he said background references were available at an introductory rate.”
“How charitable,” Isa says dryly. “Every hero I’ve met has said it’s mostly a matter of not dying when you’re supposed to.”
Orrey raises an eyebrow, goes to respond, thinks about it, then “Yeah that actually makes sense. Heroism isn’t BOUGHT,” he says definitively. " Hasn’t he ever read any books about actual heroes? I mean, come on, the Tales of Harul the Grim? Doban, son of Ilish?"
“With enough money, it wouldn’t be hard to have a great many books written about how heroic one was, somewhere sufficiently distant, and it would be easy to pay a few people to corroborate the story.” Yves clears his throat. “…though of course that would be… wrong.”
The woman pauses in her attempt to find the exact geographical center of the couch. “Have you all met many heroes?”
“They like to bring them in for speeches. It’s inspiring,” Isa says.
“It depends on how you define heroism, and meeting.” Yves nibbles anxiously on a fingernail. “Also, ‘many’, once the first two have been established.”
The newcomer muses about that for a moment, falling silent. Then, “Did any of those heroes say that they had any sort of skill in… visions, or prophecies, or anything like that? Or was it just having the nicest sword?”
“Oh! Yes. A few of them, depending on the aforementioned definition thingy, did say that. They were very convinced of it.” Yves adds, in a lower voice, “Until the drugs wore off. No one sees prophecies on a hangover.”
“Mostly swords,” Isa admits. “There was a tactical forecaster once, which I guess is close to prophecy.”
“Tactical…?” She gives Isa a quizzical face, further deepening the lines of worry on her forehead. The bit about drugs does not seem to faze her.
Yves continues in a distracted near-mumble, “We never actually did the double-blind testing on the prophecies, though we talked about it some, and what’s to say that drugs couldn’t induce accurate prophecy? Though maybe that comes down to the power of the interpreter. Maybe we needed… like… quadruple blind testing.”
The quizzical expression does, in fact, switch to Yves.
Isa’s expression switches to relief as the attention turns away.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter what the ‘prophecy’ is, and you just need a sort of randomized set of imagery for a heroic /interpreter/ to use to accurately foretell the future. Huh.” Yves fishes around in his pockets to find a place to jot this down.
“I can tell you what I’ve been seeing, if you want to run that past your notes,” she rushes out.
Yves blinks several times, one ear lifting slightly. “…wouldn’t exactly be double blind, but… um…” He clears his throat. Looks around the train car. And says, gingerly, “Are you in need of… uh… help?”
Orrey takes an increased interest. “Sorry…who…what’s your name?”
She cringes a little. “Oh — sorry. I forgot myself. My name is Ingrid Augurelt. I’m from Saron, but I’ve been in Machanon for the last… five months? I’ve been trying to go to all of the cities and speak to the priests about what I’ve been seeing.” Ingrid speaks with the ease of someone who’s introduced a sensitive topic a number of times in the recent past.
Bast is ready to jump in with a cutting remark – it would be practially a sin to let this kind of setup pass – but…chains, twisting in his memory. He keeps quiet, but is clearly following the conversation now.
“Oh,” Yves says, in some relief, “priest stuff.” He settles back with the air of someone relieved to discover that their seat is not being requisitioned after all.
“I’d be interested in hearing what you’ve been seeing. Do you mind if I jot down a few notes?” Orrey grabs a fresh notebook and scrawls some rapid shorthand.
Ingrid smiles, a smile of relief, with something a bit sadder mixed in. “I don’t mind at all.” “Every night, I see a clock tower. Wrapped in chains.”
One of Bast’s ears shoots up at this.
Ingrid continiues. “They come out of the ground, they descend from the sky, they disappear into the clouds, they stretch up into the past and out into the future. The clock is drawing closer and closer to striking the hour — the hour is two, I can see it clear when I close my eyes — but I always wake up before it does.”
Orrey doesn’t look up, pencil flashing across the page. “Can you describe the clock on the tower? Colors, shapes, etc.? Also, what kind of chains are we talking about? Do you get a sense of size? Do they evoke any feelings in you?”
Isa appears to have tuned out the conversation as it turns mystical, sipping from a glass whose contents are too strong to do anything but sip as she goes back to reading. A careful observer might note she hasn’t turned the page yet, though.
“Stories tall. Gray clock face, black numbers in the Dravanian style. The chains are thick and black, though sometimes I think I see smaller and thinner chains mixed in. Everything is very silver, black, and gray. It feels…” Ingrid stares out into the fields as they roll past, slowly but surely. “Inevitable. Hopeless.”
Orrey taps his pencil on his notebook. More to himself, he mutters “Two o’clock. What does two mean?”
“Have you been to Mechon? Seems like the place to ask about clocks,” Bast says.
Ingrid turns to Bast, surprised that he spoke, that anyone else was listening. “I went to Mechon first. They had nothing for me. I went to all eleven cities in Machanon, hoping that someone, anyone, would understand. I found nothing.”
“What about the 12th?” Orrey thinks. “I suppose it’s not technically in Machanon…”
She shrugs, the futility of her search slumping her shoulders. “No one can tell me where the Forgotten City is.”
Bast scoffs softly. “Ain’t that the way. So when did you start seeing this?”
“Six months ago.”
“And why do you think this is happening to you?” Orrey asks.
Yves mouths ‘drugs?’ but mostly out of the stranger’s sight.
“I have no idea and I wish it would stop.” Ingrid sags back into the couch. “It’s exhausting.”
“Sounds like it would be. Did you piss off any mages six months ago?” Bast asks.
“Or take an unusually large dose of psychedelics,” Yves asks, helpfully. “Or just eat something offered to you by a stranger, after which you had the first of the visions. Or, uh, /touch/ something you got from a stranger, or found, depending…”
The quizzical look is back on Yves.
“…no judgment, it’s only that sometimes, if it’s not formulated for the kind of person you are, like, if something was made for a moogle and you’re a human but you eat it anyway it can have… lingering…” His ears twitch, and he looks out the window. “It’s probably not that.”
The door opens to the back end of the car.
Isa’s eyes slide rearward.
A rather tipsy wind sylph enters, his jaw a chiseled work of art, his pectorals the envy of a thousand sculptors, his greenish-blue hair rippling in a wind none of you can feel, his shirt mysteriously unable to be buttoned above the midsection. “Excuse me!” he bellows, his voice low and powerful. “Who wants to get drunk and talk scientific theory?!”
Orrey blinks. “This is the oddest train ride I’ve ever been on.”
Yves stands up from his seat so fast the cushion might have been on springs. “I volunteer for this experiment.”
“Hell yeah!” He covers the ground between the door and Yves in three alarmingly fast steps. “Zamarud Pantaglios! Damned glad to meet you! Did you know that the Alternans separated the study of magic into six colors, but we only traditionally recognize two now? Do you know how fucking rad that is?”
“Which set of six?” Yves asks. “Do they map to the prism or the elementals? Because I’ve seen both posited, and some very awkward attempts to fuse the two. What are you drinking?”
Orrey counts off “Black, White, Red, Blue…and what else?”
Linnet snorts in the corner, but she does close her book this time. “Green and Plaid? Wait, no, I think that was from a novel.”
“I’m drinking Level 99 Red, it’s just as much of a kick as they said.” Zamarud cheerfully raises a bottle. “So they have Black, that’s destruction, White, that’s reconstruction, Red, that’s hybridization, Blue, that’s observation, and Green, see that’s manipulation, and this is the wildest thing, Gray, and that’s elimination.”
“…destruction and elimination were two entirely different schools of magic at one point? Isn’t the difference mainly the degree of destruction?” Linnet cringes a little and glances around to make sure nobody she knows from the library is in this car. Clear so far.
“Gray? Not Gold?” One of Yves’ ears pops upright. “So you’re talking void theory, here?”
Quietly, Linnet rises from her chair and floats about half an inch above the ground behind Yves’ seat. Not eavesdropping, per se, but not sure where to insert herself into this fascinating discussion.
“No, see, it’s like—” he plops down next to Ingrid, who is absolutely not okay with this. “You see, Gray is like yeah, the void, the absence, the removal of all other colors. I mean, all that just gets done up into Black Magic now, because people were like ‘nah bro, it’s all just Gravity spells no one cares about those,’ but back before it was like way more detailed. You had stuff like ‘once you remove all color the absence is all that remains, but once you take that out only then do you truly have power,’ and I mean like yeah, dude you’re just high, but it was apparently the most forbidden stuff. It was like removing parts of what made us… US. And that was supposed to unlock what had long ago been locked.”
“Gray feels like… it ought to just be the pastels version of all the other magic, given the colors metaphor,” Yves says, frowning. He puts out a hand absently in hopes of a bottle appearing in there. “Though having said that, I’m not sure what the pastels version of the other schools would be. What’s a pink spell? Sunburn?”
Bast forces himself to keep still as Zamarud charges in, and grimaces with some chagrin in Ingrid’s direction – then nods at the unoccupied expanse of couch next to him, as if to suggest an escape.
Ingrid hastily and gratefully accepts, moving just in time before Zamarud can accurately demonstrate how the void is like woah.
A peculiar heartbeat sensation thrums from Bast’s bag, though no one but Bast appears to notice.
Linnet slips a bottle into Yves’ outstretched hand – it’s mineral water, she has a stash in her bag – and tries not to grin when the viera jumps. “You are a very interesting person and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. Though perhaps from a distance. I don’t think we’ve met! Hi, I’m Linnet.”
“Hello, Linnet,” Yves says seriously. “My name is Yves, I don’t have a newsletter yet though I did get authorial credit on a few publications, and… and this is not a drink, is it.”
Letting Zamarud’s blustering take over the other three quarters of the car, Bast turns to Ingrid. “Name’s Bast. Sorry about the noise, apparently it’s circus day on this train. So…was there anything special about how this all started for you?”
Ingrid gives Bast a small smile. “I don’t think so. I was working, same as I ever did. I did the same thing the day it started as I did the day before. I went for a jog, I went to work at the museum, I cooked dinner for myself, and I tried to finish reading my book that night.”
Orrey’s attention quickly leaves the intricacies of magic theory and focuses back on Bast and Ingrid.
Linnet smiles. “It’s totally a drink! Just not an alcoholic one. The bar is a few cars down and the need seemed rather immediate.”
“That’s not a drink!” Zamarud proudly declares, and then produces another bottle of Level 99 Red Chocobo, which is actually steaming, and slaps it into Yves’s hand. “That’s a drink!”
Orrey settles in closer to the conversation with Bast and Ingrid. "Which museum? "
“Anything interesting about the book?” Bast smiles.
Ingrid turns bright red, and stammers out “Margrace Under Fire, it was… good?” She then veers back into the museum. “I work at the Saron Museum of the Arcane Arts. A lot of books, a lot of old relics, a lot of purported history of magic. I, um, take tickets.”
“I like that one,” Orrey says. “Really well laid out.”
Bast shrugs. “Haven’t read it myself, but people say good things about it. Nothing odd at work that day? A museum of magic seems like a place with a lot of…potential.”
Yves takes a dubious sip from the mineral water, in case it’s going to be more exciting than expected. This not being the case, he glugs back a big swig of the Level 99 Red Chocobo. “Tastes like red magic.”
Linnet inspects the steaming bottle with dubious curiosity. “So…this is what you need to drink in order to see gray magic?”
“What?” Zamarud squints at his own bottle, as if seeing it for the first time. “No, you drink this to get friggin’ ripped.”
Yves hiccups a puff of steam, and offers the bottle to a space somewhere between Zamarud and Linnet. “Try it, you’ll see. Well. Taste. Feel? Probably also see, eventually, depending on how much you drink.”
Linnet gives a philosophical shrug and takes a pull of the bottle. Then she stares into space for a few very long seconds. “I think I can taste colors. Pink magic…it’s everywhere…background taste of watermelon.”
Zamarud has made two new best friends and this is the best day of his life that’s happened today.
Another creak of the door — it is popular in here today.
The human male who enters is in his late fifties, with a salt and pepper beard, thick curly hair to match, and a small, inquisitive smile on his face, his eyes crinkling in anticipation of some light joke. His eyes alight on Isa, studiously ignoring everyone else, and he approaches her, the light of the springtime sun outside sparkling off the three rings on his left hand — bronze, silver, and gold. “A moment of your time, please.”
Ingrid and Zamarud both give him a brief glance of recognition, but little more.
Isa holds eye contact as she folds her paper and stands. “For?”
“A question.” His eyes flick out to the others. “A question that I will also share with the others here that I have yet to meet, but I admit a second question will follow, specifically for you.”
“You’ve yet to meet me,” Isa points out.
“Wait, you’ve got a question for everyone?” Linnet asks. But…how do you even know who we are? How do WE even know who we are?" (She doesn’t sound particularly drunk – this might just be Linnet Standard Time.)
“I don’t know who you are, that I freely admit.” He smiles, and it comes easy to him. “I believe I know who you could be.”
Isa’s eyes narrow, defensive. “Ask your question.”
“With a reasonable admission fee?” Bast asks.
“I am sure that you have already run afoul of the excitable Kurt Heibel, he of the — of course you have,” the man says, accompanying a quick nod in Bast’s direction.
“He never cited his sources,” Yves declares.
Bast shares a weary look with Ingrid.
“The nerve of him! You’re not a rival, are you?” Linnet asks.
“Maybe his is a Villain’s Guild,” Orrey says.
“My question to all of you, save Miss Augurelt and Mister Pantaglios, is this: What makes a hero?” He then turns and watches the countryside whip by.
Linnet answers first. “A self-preservation instinct inversely proportional to some combination of curiosity and brawn.”
That gets a slight nod.
“It takes a story to make a hero,” Orrey says.
A tilt of the head, a smile playing along his lips.
“I was going to say lowering everyone’s life expectancy just by being around, but I’ll defer to the more scientific definition.” Bast opens a palm in Linnet’s direction. Linnet winks at Bast, charmed.
A quirk of the chin.
“It depends on how ‘hero’ is defined. I doubt there’s any universal standard for the word,” Yves says.
The smile fades, his eyes drifting to the side.
Isa remains stonefaced as others give their answers, giving the question real consideration. Finally, she says “I don’t know,” with finality.
“Jessamine doesn’t either,” he says to Isa.
“I don’t claim to know the mind of the King.”
“Nor should you.”
“Then we agree.”
Another slight incline of his head, and then his attention falls on… …Orrey.
“Weird that everyone has this whole hero thing going on today,” Orrey says. “I’ve got no interest in being one or being near one. I’m sure we’d all be happy to avoid them altogether.”
“My name is Cid Tantalus, and young man, I have no promises or threats of heroism.” Cid smiles. “I do have, however, a story that needs to be written.”
Well, he’s got Linnet’s attention.
“Are you hiring? And how much are we talking here?” Orrey narrows his eyes.
Cid reaches into his pocket and pulls out a key of the blackest metal Orrey has ever seen, so dark it seems to swallow the light itself.
Yves leans forward, drinks somewhat forgotten.
“I have a ship that needs to get to Mechon. Aboard that ship is something more valuable than gil, more worthy than heroics, more powerful than a thousand crystals.” The key rests in his upturned palm, in front of Orrey.
“Yeah, but will there also be gil involved? I can’t work for free,” Orrey says. “I mean, it’s a neat looking key. I don’t really know who you are or who you’re working for? I think I’m going to need a few more details, maybe a cash advance or a written contract or something.”
That same smile. “Of course.”
Linnet leans in. “Um. Forgive my intrusion, but fine as those sentiments sound…we’re on a train. Presumably the ship is not also on the train…”
Cid speaks. “The ship contains the Truth. Someone in Mechon awaits it. And of course, do finish your current business. I understand that you all have your reasons for being on the train, whatever those may be. But in this land of heroes, there are so many who would pretend at claiming that title, without understand the why.”
“The truth about /what/?” Yves asks.
Bast leans closer to Ingrid, speaking quietly. “This doesn’t seem to be the best place or time for conversation, but…I’d like to know more. Where are you headed now?”
Ingrid does not seem impressed by Cid. “Bernier Station, for a transfer.”
Bast nods. “It’s not the first time I’ve heard about something like your vision, see.”
Bast has all of Ingrid’s attention now, the entire train forgotten. “No one else had ever heard anything like it! What did you hear? Who did you talk to? Who knew?”
Cid looks out at the terrain rattling by, then at Yves, at Linnet, at Isa, Bast, Zamarud, Ingrid but briefly, and then Orrey. “The Crystals.”
Orrey can’t hold back a bit of excitement…or anxiety. Probably both.
“That… seems…. like a good sort of thing to find out more about. For, uh. Science. And. Other reasons?” Yves sits back, eyeing that key.
“I need to be in Caelonde in two weeks. Where is this ship now?” Isa says.
Cid’s attention rests on Orrey, the other questions and comments falling around him.
“The Truth fits in a ship? Awesome. Um. Not that I’m volunteering or anything.” Linnet leans on the back of Yves’ chair and tries to look nonchalant.
Bast answers Ingrid. “A friend. I don’t know if he told anyone else; he only mentioned it once, I thought he might have just had a bad night after a few bottles too many. But it sounded much like yours – the clock, the chains…” He pauses, as if to gather his thoughts. “I think he said it broke at twelve, though? Shattered. And then he went missing, not long after. I didn’t think it had anything to do with that, but now that you’re here…”
Ingrid nearly squeaks, “Missing?”
“Eh.” Bast shrugs. “Along with some money, and I think ahead of some other trouble. There’s any number of reasonable explanations. I’m just wondering if there was any kind of connection. He was talking about Alternan artifacts around then, too, and you said you worked in a museum…”
“This is why you need /double blind/ trials,” Yves says to Bast and Ingrid, but a little half-heartedly.
“Dude, maybe not the time,” Linnet whispers in his upraised ear. Yves’ raised ear flops back down to match the other, abashed.
Ingrid looks relieved, but maybe not as relieved as she would like.
The key rests in Cid’s palm, in front of Orrey, waiting.
Orrey looks at it. “Am I supposed to take the key?”
“If you care about the Truth and wish to see the Truth delivered safely to others who care.”
“Uh huh.” Orrey has a wonderfully troubled expression on his face. “Well, as long as it won’t interfere with my other work that I need to finish…” Orrey gingerly picks up the key. It’s heavy for its small size, and dense. “Now what?”
Cid smiles, warmly and deeply. “The ship is currently at the resting place of Empress Laurent. Once you have finished your business, travel there, secure the ship — you will need someone to fly it — and travel to Mechon. Deliver the ship to Blank. Blank will know you with the phrase ‘I want to be your canary.’ There is” he does not speak here, only mouths two-hundred-thousand gil “waiting for you. Travel well, my young friends. You will be doing all of Ducorde a great service.”
Linnet zips back over. “Wait, but…how many of us were you talking to? We’ve barely even met!”
“I don’t think we have met at all, actually,” Orrey says.
“See, it depends on how you define ‘met’, anyway…” Yves adds.
With a last smile, a proud nod, and a few quick steps, Cid is gone, exiting through the forward doors, leaving you all here in his wake.
Orrey looks at the closed door. “That guy was completely insane, right?”
Isa does not hesitate. “Yes.”
“Big on the cryptic pronouncements and not so much on the answers, isn’t he?” Linnet lands back on the floor with a very faint thump and glances at the bottle still in her hand. “Well, if we’re supposed to be questing for truth together and we haven’t even met yet, let’s fix that. Anyone want a sip? Sometimes you can taste colors.”
The door Cid left through slides open, because nothing is more popular on the Solomon Rail today than this one single car.
Orrey takes the key over to a bookshelf and stuffs it behind a copy of Margrace Under Fire.
“Ooh, I haven’t read that one.” Linnet wanders over, removes the book and reads the back cover. The key clunks slightly on the bookshelf.
A stern gray-furred moogle with a red pompom, very fine red-and-black busby, coordinating uniform, and notably, a pair of jeweled daggers, walks through the door. She takes in the room in one practiced glance and then walks immediately up to the gathering of travelers.
Yves automatically goes looking for his ticket. Do conductors wear daggers? Maybe? He’s never really understood the weaponry conventions outside the university, where it was generally ’don’t’.
“Aramog Sydney, of the Coda. I am looking for a human male, roughly five foot ten inches, one hundred and eighty pounds, brown hair and full beard trending gray.” Her attention is placed fully on each traveler in turn, starting with Linnet and working through the others one after another. “He may have attempted to pass off a stolen relic onto a passenger.” She looks at Orrey, perhaps too hard. “Have you seen him?”
Linnet drifts a little more securely in front of the bookcase, still apparently absorbed in the back cover blurb.
“The Coda?” Bast tilts his head to the side, looking curious. “Sorry, not from around here.”
“Humans all look alike to me,” Yves says. “It’s the little round…” He makes a gesture at almost, but not quite, the place where human ears would go on a head.
Zamarud, illiterate when it comes to reading a room after a few drinks, speaks up. “Oh yeah, the Coda! Saron’s secret police, monitoring any and all magical anomalies that may or may not have escaped the labs where the most twisted and forbidden experiments took place!” He hiccups. “You look pretty young for one of them, seeing as you’re, like, thirty.”
“If they’re secret,” Yves says, suddenly indignant at word definitions, “why do they /announce/ themselves? That’s terrible operational security.”
Linnet looks up from the book in her hand with a scathingly sarcastic expression. “Zamarud, you’ve been reading way too many adventure novels. Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I don’t think any of us saw – or at least noticed – the man in question. We were all a little blindsided by mister Who Wants To Be An Adventurer earlier. You’re not after him, by any chance? Blond, rapier, scrubby little beard?”
“The man stole an Alternan airship,” Sydney says. “He is attempting to absond with it and leave the continent entirely. If the ship is truly what our researchers and historians believe it to be, it belongs to the Alternan government and those who would truly learn what lessons it has to tell us.”
Bast nods, his curiosity apparently satisfied, and leans back, resting his hands in his lap. And definitely not going for any of a number of hidden pockets with certain emergency measures.
“I will ask again. Have any of you seen anyone matching that description?”