Edge Cases

Velykos stared.

It was rare, really, that he experienced anything he found difficult to explain. He had been alive for a long, long time, and had experienced almost everything that could be experienced.

The chill he felt now, though? That was new to him.

The fact that none of Harold's crew had anything to say was equally strange, and left him feeling even more unsettled. Ixiss and Iliss in particular almost always had a witty rejoinder, and yet even they—

"What the fuck," Iliss said plainly.

Oh. Well, there it was.

Honestly, that made him feel a little better.

Velykos stood in the remains of the quarry he'd gained his First Form in. The memories of that were fuzzy, as it was for all elementals; he remembered the moment he first understood that he was seeing, the moment he first realized he could interact with the world around him.

By far the memory that stood out the most was of the old daemon that had appeared one day, looking for small rocks to carve.

He'd watched in curiosity, at first, and then ever-increasing fascination as the quarry he lived in was transformed into a thing of beauty. The daemon never took his carvings with him — he left them there like an offering to the quarry itself.

That was around when he'd learned he could speak, and he'd reached out to learn. That was around when their relationship had gone from artist and curious watcher to father and child. The daemon had taught him... almost everything he now knew about the world.

And yet he couldn't remember his name. That should have been the first sign, he supposed.

"This is the guy you were talking about, right?" Ixiss asked him, his voice hesitant. "Your father."

"Yes," Velykos said. He stared at the gravestone in front of him.

At the gravestones in front of him.

It had seemed strange enough at a distance, that there was a monument rising up into the air above the quarry — Velykos remembered no such monument when he left, though that was centuries ago (centuries? centuries didn't seem quite right; this world was only two hundred years old, and he was not as old as this world).

He remembered leaving and taking only a few souvenirs with him, things that the daemon had carved and left behind (but where had he kept them? he had no such keepsakes with him, not anymore).

Velykos remembered mourning, wandering (had he not left a monument for his father when he left? that seemed strange, now. surely he would have created something to dedicate to him, as meaningful as the daemon had been to him).

"Vel?" Harold's voice was sharp, concerned. Velykos shook his head, stumbling forward; a heavy hand pressed against the obelisk in front of him, brushing away some of the dirt and dust obscuring the name.

Onyx.

He'd never heard the name. (the name seemed familiar, though; it pressed into his mind like an imprint left on dirt and scuffed away, smoothed over but not quite gone).

He'd never heard the name. He'd never heard the name—

"Vel!" Harold's voice pulled him back like an anchor. Velykos stepped back quickly, nearly tripping over his allies in the process. Olag and Nathan, bless them, acted quickly enough to steady him before he outright fell.

This was familiar (it was too familiar, in fact. it had happened before, hadn't it? except the last time something fundamental to his elemental magic had been disrupted, and he'd placed protections in place, since then).

(it was so hard to think)

"Vel, look at me." Harold's voice was steady. The skeleton stood in front of him suddenly. Velykos didn't remember when he moved, or when he'd been propped up against the obelisk that acted as a gravestone. He couldn't help but stare out at the sea of other gravestones, laid out in front of him.

The sight was deeply unsettling.

Partly because he recognized the handwriting.

It was his own, laid out over and over in a grid. The gravestones themselves were always different — made from a different stone, perhaps, or shaped differently from the others.

The one he was lying against was the largest. There was something morbid in that thought, in the idea of using his own father's grave to support his body. A laugh almost bubbled up from within, beginning with the rolling of pebbles down over his torso, the skip-hop of them almost distracting him from the roiling thoughts inside—

"Vel, look at me," Harold repeated, and Velykos briefly flickered his attention to the skeleton.

A golden thread appeared.

Velykos didn't see where Harold had gotten it, but his attention suddenly fixated on that gold, unable and unwilling to look away. It calmed his thoughts, reducing the simmering chaos back down into a single thread of reality, of memory.

"Would you look at that," Harold murmured. "Kid was right. This did work. And I thought he was just shittin' me."

"Kid?" Velykos asked, clueless.

"Y'know," Harold said, waving a hand dismissively. "That god kid. Aurum? Fella showed up, told me I'd need this. Didn't know what the fuck it was for. He coulda told me more, that lil shit. I almost didn't think of this."

"Don't call him a little shit," Nathan objected. He still didn't talk much, but he seemed more comfortable now when he did; he spent less time staring at his bones and wincing or shivering. "He's just a kid. He was trying his best."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Harold said with a sigh, and when Nathan gave him an obstinate look, he capitulated. "Force of habit. 'M sorry."

"Good," Nathan huffed.

"Really, this is the one situation you talk back to our captain for?" Iliss teased him, and Nathan looked away.

"Come on, guys. Focus," Ixiss said. He gestured to Velykos. "Are you doing alright?"

"I do not know," Velykos answered honestly. "But... I think I am now. What is that?"

"Wish I had a fuckin' clue," Harold snorted. He kept the thread held out like it was the only thing keeping Velykos steady. It probably was. Velykos could feel the weight of the thread pressing down around him, even if he didn't have the words to describe exactly what it was doing.

"May I?" Velykos said, reaching out.

"Sure." Harold dropped the thread onto his outstretched hand.

There was a pulse of light, and it vanished. Velykos felt his mind clear a bit more, steadying into something that was once more his own. A compulsion effect of some sort, but... purely beneficial.

Hm.

"So, big guy," Iliss said. "Any idea what's going on here?"

Velykos paused, looking around. He could feel the thread of gold keeping his thoughts steady, even if it didn't give him answers. He could think about the disparity between his age and the remembered history of the world without feeling concurrent thoughts jamming up his head, half-remembered truths hitting him all at once.

He didn't know how long ago this had happened. It felt like a long time, but there were enough recognizable gaps in his memory that he understood he couldn't possibly define the chronology. He didn't even know how old he was.

But this?

"I can try to find out," he said.

There was a very obvious first question. His memories told him that Onyx had simply left; if that was the case, then the gravestones here meant nothing, and were mere monuments to someone he had lost. It wouldn't explain why there were so many of them, but it would be better than the alternative.

The alternative, of course, being the possibility that Onyx was buried here.

Except he couldn't be. Onyx was Sev's god — he could remember that much clearly, now. God didn't have bodies, as far as he knew.

There was really only one way to find out.

[Earth Sense] was a passive skill he could toggle on and off; he kept it mostly off, largely because the amount of information he gained from it tended to be distracting and unnecessary. The skill was far stronger than it had to be, and he had no way to adjust the strength of it.

He toggled it on and reeled.

"Something wrong?" Harold called up to him, and Velykos shook his head, holding up a hand to tell the captain to give him a moment. He needed a second to parse what he was seeing. To verify.

He needed to be sure.

Because what [Earth Sense] was telling him was that there were dozens of identical bodies in the graveyard, one under each gravestone. Each one in the exact same stage of decay. Each one undeniably the man that had helped raise him.

Except that didn't make sense.

"The graves are all full," he said softly.

"What?" Iliss asked. She looked around, her bones rattling slightly with the seed at which she whipped her head towards the nearest gravestone; she nudged a toe towards the dirt before hesitating and stopping. "That... can't be right."

"Forty-nine bodies in total," Velykos said. His words felt almost distant. "They are exactly the same, every one of them. I... I do not understand."

"Shit," Harold breathed.

The six of them stared at the quarry-graveyard in a new light, a chill settling over all of them. Nathan shivered a little, and hugged himself closer to Olag, who put an arm around his shoulder to steady him.

The wind blew over them.

"I did not want to do this," Velykos muttered. His voice was the low rumble of earth and stone once more — the most alien it had been for months. It was easy to emulate mortals when his emotions were calm or positive, as they usually were around this group that he had come to consider close friends.

But when he felt like this, the thought of it just fell away. "It feels... disrespectful. But it may be necessary to dig up one of the bodies, to see if there is something to be observed that my [Earth Sense] cannot spot."

"Are ye sure?" Harold asked. "We're with you all the way, don't get me wrong, but..."

"I am not," Velykos said. "But it is the only idea I have."

It was easy, even. A simple application of [Earth Manipulation] and Onyx's body could be brought to the surface without disturbing it; another one, and he could be buried once more, with not a single trace left for anyone to see except perhaps another elemental like himself. Yet it felt wrong, almost disgraceful to have to do something like this...

...perhaps a small prayer to Nillea first, so he would know he was doing the right thing. A small prayer to Aurum, for his assistance in dealing with whatever strange influence had come over him when he first encountered this graveyard.

And a small prayer to Onyx, to ask for permission.

He felt a ghost of a whisper from Nillea; approval, kindness, sympathy. He felt a brightness from Aurum; excitement and pride, along with a small inkling of sorrow.

From Onyx, he felt nothing.

He hadn't expected a response, but something inside him ached, nonetheless.