Voidhearts Chapter 12: Gap
Lia and Alicia encounters a sizable obstacle and have a chat about the past, logic, and fate.
Alicia and Lia’s journey took them along a field of larger shards that had once been parts of worlds. Alicia wasn’t sure if it just was on her mind and thus she saw what she wanted to see, or if she could see more than a handful of them that looked like they might come from Steppeworld. It was possible the area they were passing through weren’t so far from where the world itself had been, or at least an area where chunks of it could conceivably be flung by whatever the Calamity actually was.
“Did you ever see it? The Calamity?” Alicia asked as they landed on a bean-shaped fragment. The question entirely bypassed the thinking part of her brain, and somehow dodged through the sour anger of her emotional self as well. It wasn’t curiosity, at least not just curiosity, after all, everything she had heard about The Calamity told her that anything she’d get would be unreliable in nature. Much to her surprise, Lia’s answer was similarly direct, showing no spite or wariness from their previous argument.
“Only for a second or two,” Lia said. “It came to my world… our world, at night. It had been a long day, I remember, some major negotiations with local chieftains about some matter of high spiritual but no practical relevance. I don’t quite remember what it was about any more, probably something about who was responsible for shrine maintenance and under what conditions. Tedious work, nobody’s wrong, everyone has a point, only thing to do is to dig down into the legalism of it all. Who had promised what to whom, and what relevance did that have to the dispute and so on.”
“Sounds… like a bit of a nightmare.” Alicia said, continuing her pattern of saying what came to her mind without filter, probably because she was tired and filters took effort.
“Oh it was,” Lia nodded. “But still, I do miss it. It was the tedium of the well fed. The bickering of opponents who weren’t enemies. Conflict without consequence.”
“Well, when you put it that way, I suppose it doesn’t sound too bad.”
“I firmly believe it’s the peace all warriors strive for, deep down.”
“Do you consider yourself a warrior?”
“No.” Lia wasn’t loud or angry in her dismissal, and yet it was very direct and unambiguous. “I was a peace keeper, a hearth-stirrer. Nothing wrong with that, someone has to keep the coals from going out after all.”
“I suppose The Calamity changed that in a way.”
“It changed much when it shattered our skies with wings of shadow so large I thought the Dragon Thane was back. It got chaotic after that. Many deaths. Working together I and several warriors managed to save many civilian lives. Of the heroes, only I survived.”
“I suppose that explains how there’s so many Steppefolk in Thereafter today.”
“Yes,” Lia did, for some reason, not sound overjoyed at this. “It isn’t a perfect world I have delivered my herd to, but I do try, and I keep trying.”
Alicia didn’t know what to say to that. It was easy for her, she feared, to forget exactly how much rested on Lia’s shoulders. Not only was she a part of the Council, and thus a de-facto leader of the city, arguably the only person in the position with their wits about them after Eltern proved untrustworthy and Leowin who, powerful wizard or not, didn’t seem to be playing with a full deck at the best of times, she was also the de facto, or possibly de juer leader of a lost people. The part of Alicia’s brain that did the thinking made a note to circle back to the implications in Lia’s words at a later date. It was certainly interesting that some kind of something was going on with the Steppefolk, but considering how damnably tired they both were, it probably wasn’t the best time to get into it.
“We should keep going,” Lia said, calling time on this break that hadn’t really been a break. “I think I see the density increasing further ahead. It may be a good place to scavenge for food.
Lia’s estimation, as it turned out, had been incorrect. There were a temporary increase in the concentration of rocks, yes, but it turned out to be quite temporary indeed, and rather than tapering off, it ended suddenly. Standing on what Alicia had trouble not thinking of as the shore of a wide black lake, or perhaps the precipice of some deep yawning chasm, Lia and Alicia peered into the darkness.
“I’m just going to say it,” Alicia said after a while. “This looks like a whole lot of nothing.”
“Mhhm,” Lia replied with a frown. “It’s odd. The scouts told us the distribution of debris was pretty even all the way. We try not to send them out over Deep Void if we can help it.”
“Makes sense. How do you find where to send scouts anyway?”
“It’s… some sort of omenreading. Leowin does it, and the only other thing I know about it is that it involves a lot of odd-smelling oils.”
“So not something we can replicate out here then I take it.”
“Unfortunately no, it sure would come in handy though.”
“Why, you thinking we try to go around?”
“We may not have any choice,” Lia sounded glum. “We can’t see where the debris resume.”
“We can’t see too far that direction either,” Alicia said. “That could be burning resources we don’t have looking for a crossing that just isn’t there.”
Lia took a deep breath. “This is true,” She conceded. “But we can’t exactly see what the alternative is, and the only way to find that out is to leap into the unknown, and if there’s nowhere to land or anything but the most optimal landing conditions we’re also…”
“Pretty fucked,” Alicia agreed. “This is one hell of a dilemma we’re facing here.”
Lia’s eyes glowed white with the Deep Song. She scouted into the darkness for a little while.
“I can’t see anything either way.” She said after a while, noticeably frustrated.
Alicia took in the environment. It seemed impossible that they were truly stuck with this unresolvable dilemma. Sure, shit happened, but could things get this bleak naturally? It occurred to Alicia that she operated with the assumption that the world operated on some kind of inherently fair logic. There wasn’t really too many signs of this being the case. Especially out here, where the base laws 0f the universe was all that governed the world. ‘Then again, the base laws of the universe were the same everywhere, the presence of air resistance and artificial gravity in Thereafter changed things, yes, but the same laws applied. As above, so below. While Alicia was puzzling out this little truth about the world, an idea was occurring to her.
“What if there was a safer way to cross,” Alicia said. She had put no thought into how she was going to pitch this idea, so she’d just have to wing it.
“Hm?”
“Ok, so the problem is that we have to hard commit to the leap if we’re going to try crossing the gap, right?”
“Won’t be any turning back once we’re free floating, yeah,” Lia agreed.
“Exactly. It’ll be a leap of faith, as we say on Earth,” at least in the anglophone parts of the world, but that was a distinction Alicia wasn’t going to get into right this moment. “However, I think it doesn’t have to be. We could do this in stages, like a rocket.”
“Is it a problem if I don’t know what a rocket is.”
“Oh sorry, but no, not really.” Alicia hoped she wasn’t blushing, forgetting Lia was quite literally from a different world was a bad habit of hers, a bit embarrassing even, considering they both were in a different world now. Neither of them were home, but in a way they both belonged here. “The gist of it is that we launch not only ourselves, but a vessel of sorts. Such as that fragment over there.” Alicia pointed at a fairly flat fragment. It’d do nicely. “We’ll turn it so that the flat plane points the way we want to go, brace our backs against it, and then kick off from a nice big fragment, sending us and the rock flying.”
“What would the purpose of that be?” Lia’s question wasn’t hostile, more curious. She had, Alicia was realizing, not quite grasped the physics inherent to the situation, which was fair. To her knowledge the steppefolk weren’t renown for their understanding of physics exactly.
“We’d be flying towards the other side together with the fragment, which would give us something we can use to course correct. If we’re in danger of missing a good landing spot, we can leap off the fragment, and we’d have a window where we could leap back this way if we spot danger or still don’t see the other end. I’m not nearly good enough at math to tell you exactly what those windows are, but it’ll at least offer us a chance to adapt to the situation.”
“I’ll trust you that this is how it works,” Lia said, and a knot that Alicia hadn’t caught forming in her chest loosened with a tangible sense of relief. “And I am willing to attempt it, with the caveat that we should rest up beforehand. It sounds like we need to be of clear mind when we attempt this.” Alicia couldn’t argue with that, and frankly she didn’t mind the break.
The break felt like it should be a food break, if they had any food to eat. “Hey Alicia, may I trouble you for some water?” Lia asked.
Recognizing this as either an olive branch or an acknowledgement that Lia wasn’t going to be stubborn about the water thing, Alicia shrugged off her pack to retrieve some water. “Of course, hold on,” she replied.
After sending a bottle of water Lia’s way, spinning through the not-air like a graceful dancer, Alicia had a sip herself and realized something worrying. It felt so damn good to drink it, she couldn’t help but worry she was starting to feel dehydrated. It was, Alicia reckoned, possible to worry too much about such things, and very much like her to worry about positive feelings moreso than negative ones.
“Are you hungry?” Lia asked.
“Uh, yeah, I mean, it’s not debilitating or anything but I feel it.”
“Catch,” Lia chucked some sort of object Alicia’s way. As it spun through the air, Alicia’s confusion turned into surprise, and back into confusion as she grabbed the stick of dried meat.
“Where did you find this?” Alicia asked.
“Oh, nowhere. I keep some emergency supplies on my person at all times,” Lia answered, placidly calm like that wasn’t an unusual measure to take. “It’s a habit I learned the hard way.”
“Ah,” Alicia said, the pieces were falling into place now. “I suppose this isn’t the first time you’ve been blindsided by some serious bad luck, now is it.”
“It isn’t,” Lia agreed. “Although I must admit, I don’t know if it was bad luck either time.”
“Oh?” Alicia could feel herself tense up. She was already struggling with the idea that her drawing on the Deep Song was part of what had gone wrong back at the port crystal.
“Well, the Cataclysm. It came from somewhere, I have to assume. There is a process there, and that tells me that someone, or something, started that process. The thing, I have to assume, didn’t just emerge from the void.”
“Right,” Alicia agreed. “But do you think that process was, uh, turned on your world with intenton?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Lia shrugged. “There’s a reason it went that direction, but I don’t know if my world was targeted as such. Unless we learn something about who or what started the process that culminated in the Calamity, we may never know”
“How about this time around?” Alicia asked.
Lia pondered that. “Well, I don’t think it was the Calamity, for what it’s worth. Some carrion-feeder or other following in its wake, maybe, but if the calamity fell upon us out here we wouldn’t be alive to talk about it.”
“Cheery thought.”
“As are all thoughts about the worst case scenario.” Lia observed. “That said, the fact that I was drawing on the Deep Song as it hit and didn’t sense it coming in any way tells me whatever it was either was fast as the devil or some sort of incomprehensible to me.”
“Oh,” Alicia said, “You were?”
“It’s starting to become a bad habit between us Mountain Wind,” Lia didn’t quite chuckle. “I need to get better at staying my temper.”
“No!” Alicia spoke without thinking. “I mean… we both do. I was drawing on it as well. I’ve been wondering if it caused the disaster somehow.”
“Huh,” Lia said, clearly mulling the idea over. “I’ve never considered the possibility, I must admit. The Deep Song does its work in the body, or so doctrine says, so the idea of it having a direct impact on the world around us is alien to me.”
“I mean I get it, it’d be like telling me gospel music could cause house fires or something.” Alicia said. “And then there’s the logical fallacy of it all of course. Just because a thing happens after another thing doesn’t mean the first thing caused the second.”
“Now that sounds like Earthling talk,” Lia chuckled. “Your lot seems, pardon the observation, very concerned about what things cause other things and thinking about it right”
“We are kind of like that I suppose,” Alicia couldn’t help but smile slightly herself. “Our world is very complex, and we have access to so much information we have to get kind of strict with ourselves to not let anyone tell us lies.”
“Even yourselves it seems.”
“ESPECIALLY ourselves. Nobody can lie to you like you, or so my mom always said.”
“That,” Lia observed, “sounds like an exhausting way to live.”
“Well, you’re not wrong,” Alicia shrugged. “But it is, I suppose, our own tedium of the well-fed… except we’re not all well-fed for reasons that are pretty stupid.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, it’s a bit like the Brother Wars if I’m honest, except our Dragon Thane is kind of… immaterial and abstract.”
“Good thing for the Thane, then,” Lia said, there was a slight but unmissable tease in her tone. “Or I have no doubt you’d have slain him by now.”
Alicia felt a wave of complex emotion wash over her. There were many reasons she didn’t quite agree. There were too many complicating factors, and slaying the “Dragon” all but required to build up supporting structures that Alicia had no idea of how to make, or even how to fully grasp the scope of. Then there was the fact that she had no superpowers in what she had come to call “the real world.” That said, she did feel a flash of pride that Lia believed in her, and while she did still feel a number of ways about the older woman, that flash of pride sure as hell wasn’t nothing.
“Your faith in me inspires and honors, Deepspeaker Lia. We should get ready for the launch.”