Thereafter Chapter 15:Almost-Coffee and a Chat
Michael tries out a liquid that is pretty similar to coffee, gets into an accident and meets a new friend, or possibly a new and exciting problem.
Although the entrance to the large warehouse-looking cantina was rather crowded, Michael couldn’t help but feel that the queue time went by relatively quickly. The line was long, and brimming with the nervous energy of those that needed what was at its terminus, but there was order to it. People didn’t cut in line, there were no shoving, the natural ebb and flow of movement was observed with relatively little complaint. For better or worse, Michael thought, the apocalypse had seemingly taught its survivors a thing or two about standing in line. It could also be that people were too tired and hungry to create a fuss.
Michael wasn’t really sure what he planned to do with this visit. He wasn’t hungry exactly, and while he could go for a snack, it didn’t feel right to do so when surrounded by hungry people. It was a thing they probably should talk about at some point, how the Castle got their own supplies delivered. Even if the allotments were as fair as one could possibly expect such matters to be, the Council not eating with the people they supposedly ruled surely wasn’t for the best. Perhaps something could be said for the Council having to work long hours thus not having the time for getting in line and all that, but Michael wasn’t sure if that was the case or if it was just a convenient enough justification.
“What can I get ya?” The voice snapped him out of the lengthy argument about practical, political, and philosophical matters. He blinked as he took in the sharp-featured young girl that had asked. She was some kind of elf, Michael decided as he took in the sharp point of her ears, and the glint of some kind of ancient light in her eyes. Michael wasn’t sure if she was the kind of elf that needed to sleep or not, but either way she seemed tired. It could very well be that it was hard to look your best in a stained white tunic with your hair tied up in a handkerchief, no matter how immortal and eldritch you were. The elf gave him an appraising once-over, as to make SURE sure that he wasn’t a trouble maker or some kind of lunatic. Michael cleared his throat.
“Just a… uh, just some coffee please, if you have any.”
The elf’s gaze briefly passed over his face, as if it was a piece of a math problem she was trying to figure out. “Only one we got is simulacra’d coffee if that’s OK?”
“Simulacra?”
“Duped by magic. Big magic man waves his hands and makes a little coffee turn into a lot of coffee somehow. I don’t know how it works, I just know it tastes a bit different. Thus the question, is simulacra coffee OK?”
“Oh yeah, sure.”
“Fourth window from your right, please.” She motioned for the line of windows in the wall next to the counter where they stood. Through the windows, food and drink was handed out by what Michael assumed to be volunteers.
“Thank you,” Michael hurried to say before getting out of the elf’s way. She wasn’t unpleasant exactly, but he got the distinct impression that the best thing he could do for her was to get out of her way posthaste. He was nothing if not receptive to this vibe.
There was a small line in front of Michael’s window, which he came to realize was the Hot Beverages station. Like the line to get in, this line resolved itself at remarkable speed. Granted, the longer lines in the windows that served meat and plant-based main course dishes seemed like they’d be quite the wait, but if all you wanted was a hot drink to perk you up, this whole experience could be over and done with in a real hurry, as happened with Michael, who was handed a clay mug full of fragrant hot coffee simulacra that just about smelled like coffee with such a speed that he hadn’t even gotten around to wondering what to do next.
The rows upon rows of tables and benches were where the illusion of order and control faded quite a bit. Put simply, there was offered no leeway in the design to the vastly different body shapes and -sizes that Thereafter contained. A bunch of tables were commandeered to function as benches for rhino men and elephant folk in a corner, while a cadre of dwarves and gnomes and sundry smaller folks bickered, caroused, and ate around a bench turned long-table. The human-sized participants didn’t do much better, and created a near-continuous mass of people on and around the benches. Michael didn’t much cherish the thought of finding a place to sit amid the rowdy folk, but he reminded himself that it was this he had wanted. The people of Thereafter. Unfiltered, in their natural habitat. Perhaps thinking of them as having a habitat was a mite dehumanizing, though Michael couldn’t help but think he was descending into a lion’s den all the same.
For a moment, it looked like it was going to go fine. Michael felt extra clumsy as he tried to navigate himself, his cane and his cup of almost-coffee through the slow-flowing but insistent currents of people coming and going, but it all went to seed in a sudden, if not entirely unexpected moment. Michael sensed someone to his right getting up before he saw them, but by the time his brain had processed it, that wide-shouldered individual had gotten up, and bumped into Michael, who now found himself in the middle of a fall, with a blob of coffee simulacra simultaneously launched skyward.
“Oop, there you go sir,” Michael realized, with some confusion, that he wasn’t falling, and neither was his coffee. “These thing happen, a wayward apple in the harvest, you know?”
Michael’s eyes slid to the side, he found he couldn’t move, much like the bolt of almost-coffee hung suspended in midair. He saw what he could only describe as the second-most wizard-like man he had ever seen. The man was perhaps 1,6 meters tall, wiry if not for the pot belly that made his shirt cling to him in a rather unflattering way, and sporting a white beard that probably was meant to make him wise and not like a disheveled wintertime stoat, which it sadly did.
“Alright, Mr. Sørstrand, I’m going to unfreeze you in a second, at which point the burly lithic gentleman behind you who is all to keen to demonstrate how sorry he is about this little altercation, will support you getting back to your feet.”
Somewhere in his brain, Michael thought it somewhat odd that this wayward wizard knew his name, but on the other hand, he was kind of a big deal around here.
“The esteemed Lithoid is ready it seems, so here comes the catch,” the odd wizard said as Michael felt himself falling, if only for a second before something unmoving stopped him, and Michael found he could re-find his footing without a problem.
“Wow,” he said, mostly to himself.
“Oh think nothing of it Dayshadow, it’s just a spot of chronomancy, hedge magic really. Thank you for your help mister, give my best to your cairn.” The wizard sounded like he enjoyed the sound of his own voice quite a lot. His hitherto unseen companion grunted, the sound dry and reminding Michael of stone grinding on stone.
“And lest we forget! The coffee, or what they call coffee at any rate, oop back in you go.”
Before Michael’s eyes, the coffe-like liquid moved back into the cup, like the tape of its unfortunate impromptou flight had been reversed.
“Handy,” he said. “Could you not do that with me?”
“Unfortunately not, sit, please, sit,” The wizard motioned for the empty bench. As Michael sat down, he found the wizard in the mustard-yellow robe was already sitting opposite of him, which was impossible on account of him standing in the row between the benches mere seconds ago. It was, Michael decided, probably some Magic Business he didn’t understand yet and nothing to worry overmuch about.
“Now where was I?” The Wizard said.
“Turning back time on me is… impossible?”
“Ah yes, afraid so, although I suppose “highly inadvisable” is more apt a phrase. You see, we humans, for all our wonders and terrors, aren’t terribly used to moving in time like we move in space. We move forward along with it, and that’s that. That’s the motion our brains know how to process. Now, usually a jaunt backwards or forwards or to a parallel chain of causalty won’t do too much harm, but it adds up, you see, rounding errors in our brain’s ability to understand time. A mentor of mine took a jump or two too much backwards and ended up only remembering a few seconds at the time, complete amnesia and memory formation collapse. They had to Stem him just so he didn’t tie local spacetime into a knot, nasty business that. Put me off time travel and make no mistake.”
“Stem?”
“Cut him off from his magic, for the safety of himself and others.”
“Huh,” Michael said. “That’s quite the story, can’t say I blame you then mister…?”
It took just a touch longer than Michael had expected for the chatty wizard to get the underlying question asked.
“Oh many pardons, Exalted, here I go rambling on, and I haven’t even seen fit to introduce myself. It is my curse it seems, to become fast friends with people who are entirely in the dark on my sobriquet.”
“But…?” Michael decided to give this chatty sorcerer one more chance to introduce himself.
“Ah yes, this can be remedied, surely, it is never too late to introduce oneself after all. My name is Bartholomew Thistlebarrow, former Procurement Archon at the Magus College for what that’s worth which is, I suppose, mostly irrelevant.”
“Michael Sørstrand,” Michael introduced himself in kind. “But I suppose you knew that Mr. Thistlebarrow?”
“Oh indeed. One does try to keep abreast of the comings and goings even here at the end of the world and you, ser Sørstrand, are making some waves.”
Michael took a sip of the coffee. It was subtly wrong in ways he couldn’t quite articulate, but it wasn’t the slight tinge of ozone to its flavor that made him grimace.
“Oh, nobody blames you, of course, for that mess down at the plaza. It was poorly planned is all. While us wizards are undoubtedly masters of the arcane, the state of magic today, well, it does separate those that use magic from the ones who rely on it, is all I am saying.”
“I’ve been hearing a lot about the state of the magic and I gotta say, I’m still not sure exactly what’s up with that.”
“Oh, it’s complicated, messy, the underlying rules are poorly understood, so you are not alone in that,” Bartholomew explained. “To the best of my understanding, there is less magic in Thereafter than there should be, at least to the understanding of any of the Aurol boys who survived. It’s concerning, yes, but it could be related to the void through which we fly, or that dreadful thing that shattered the world, or it could even be that we’re not looking in the right place.”
“How so?”
“As much as I loathe to admit it, the Aurolian understanding of magic may not be complete. We knew how magic worked in Aurol, sure, but it doesn’t line up with what a Rhinofolk shaman can do, or how Deepspeaker Lia’s people can leap tall buildings in a single bound or toss horses at you at the slightest provocation. It’s all clearly preternatural at the very least, but it doesn’t line up with the Magus’ understanding of magic. It could very well be that there is an underlying animating force of some kind, proto-magic, perhaps?” Bartholomew shrugged. “I am sure I don’t know, I try to not cast any spells I don’t have to, and I check twice if the ambient magic is enough or if I have to break into my own reserves. A spell saved is a spell earned, you know?”
“I suppose that does make sense,” Michael said. For all his loquaciousness, Batholomew had explained the issue fairly concisely, and as far as Michael could see, it lined up with the little Lex had shared on the situation. “Did you do a lot of teaching in Aurol?”
“Oh, certainly not,” Bartholomew sounded ever so slightly offended at the idea. “I was in one of the administrative roles, mostly to deal with reagents and focus tools, your staves and wands and arcane symbols and whatnot. It wasn’t the most prestigious post at the college, but a Thistlebarrow takes pride in their lot. Between us, though, the destruction of Aurol did end up making some complicated choices I had to make somewhat easier. There really is something to be said for crisis clearing ones mind and agenda you know?”
“I suppose,”
“So,” Bartholomew shifted the conversation with a click that Michael could have sworn was audible. “What do we owe this visit all the way from the Castle? Outreach? Propaganda opportunity? Is the Council finally going to fix the Waypoint Crystals?”
“Oh, nothing so dramatic.” Michael said with a shrug. “We asked, well, pressured really, Eltern to show us around a little. We found we couldn’t make good decisions without knowing a little more about how things are here in Thereafter.”
“I hope we have not yet frightened you off with the barbarous way of our unwashed masses.”
“Nothing of the sort,” Michael waved the idea off. “If anything, this trip has reinforced the idea that we’re just people. People in a big scary situation, but people none the less. I can’t say I’ve hesitated to step into this role as hero,” Michael found himself grimacing again. “But now that I’ve seen what’s at stake and who I’m going to have to save, I am certainly motivated.”
“Ah, I suppose that is a mercy. A rarity these days, when things aren’t as bad as they look.”
“Oh, I tend to find mercy where I look for it,” Michael said with a shrug before downing the rest of his almost-coffee. It wasn’t good, but it did give him the jolt he was looking for. “But I should get going. Many thanks for your company and conversation, as well as arresting my fall earlier.” He started getting up, stopping himself halfway through the motion. He did have one more question.
“Oh, just one more thing while I’m here,” Michael said. “How long have you worked for Nih-Ka?”
Author’s Note: Oh that’s a cliffhanger right there. Am I not a stinker? There are practical reasons for this little split, of course, but I will be honest with you dear reader, I also just really wanted to Do A Columbo. What can I say? You gotta respect the classics!
-VSD