abraxaslogs | 𝒴𝑒𝒶𝒽, 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓌𝒶𝓉𝑒𝓇'𝓈 𝒽𝒾𝑔𝒽

Sabine can generally be found around the castle most days. She is a dutifully present participant in Istredd's public magic classes, as well as can be seen coming back and forth from private lessons with Yennefer. When she isn't with the latter, she can often be found in the library or following up with Istredd in her publically declared study of the Singularity. She takes her meals in the dining hall and can often be found in the library, the gardens, a window, any available nook reading a book.

Sabine likes to head out to the town now and then, especially to trade in books at the book stores (which she seems to somehow never have a shortage of; isn't that strange?). She stops by the tea house Kell works at least once or twice a week (especially given the coming news). Since Sabine's new power appeared, she's often found with different colored hair every new day.

Edited 2023-11-16 03:29 (UTC)

Sabine spends her nights, unconcerned with the need to sleep,
inside the Horizon, at the Singularity, in communion with it.

Caught in the sway of her habit once Jack's vanished, Sabine purposefully places herself out of direct line with other patrons at the site. Often, she disperses her mental form into something smaller: a butterfly with her Arcana painted down its back; a faint swirl of sparkling light or bubbles in the shape of The Empress, so on. When in a fully visible human appearance, she can most often be spotted sitting cross-legged, high above in the center of the circular opening of the towering relic, or on the very top with her hands gently pressed to it in front of her crossed legs.

Her eyes remain closed, and she focuses on untangling each night's newest memory visions she gets every time she touches it. Her focus has only heightened since her time in The Nether, where her efforts to channel the Singularity to bring the weakened dragons, hatchlings, and eggs some respite from their suffering succeeded each time.

~*~

When Sabine is not at the crater, she can be found exploring the Summoned-Created Horizon locations, forever and ever charmed at all the things the people brought to this space have created for themselves. So much of it rings of memories and dreams, pulsing all around her.

[ Istredd spends most of his time in the Horizon in his own domain, it's hard to find anything he loves more than his own library, but the Singularity is his other go-to. He feels strange walking through other people's domains but he does on his way here. He likes sitting next to the Singularity and sharing his thoughts, reading to it sometimes, or peacefully writing beneath it. He will probably never have the connection to it that other people do, on a spiritual level, but it doesn't stop him from loving it.

He's on his way there when he spots someone on top of the Singularity and his eyes widen. The thing is, Istredd sits next to it, but he never touches it. There's a sort of reverence to the way he thinks of it, so he's never considered putting his hands on it. Strange, probably, but still his instinct. But he peers up there, curious, until he recognizes who it is. ]

Hello Sabine.

[ He doesn't need to shout for her to hear him. This is the Horizon, his voice can sound like an ordinary sound for her while he's still all the way below. Istredd is looking up at her though, trying to figure out if she's doing something other than using it as a chair. ]

What are you doing?

[ It's very likely impossible to see at such a very great height difference, but even though Sabine's posture doesn't shift, the curve of her mouth does. There's the combination of feeling everything clearer and cleaner in the Horizon and knowing Istred so familiarly at this point that she can hear it—the surprise in his soft, polite, yet very few words.

(It's not that she can't surprise anyone, though that number is few. Kyle knows the most of her. Then, Istredd, Yennefer, and Kell. People who know enough to know there's so much more than what they can see. But it's nice to simply surprise someone in a 'normal-human-way' sometimes.)

There's no surprise to her in his presence here or reaction to hers, her choices, either. Everyone else seems to fall mainly in the categories of considering it holy divine or to be pulled down, or some grey uncertain middle. She's yet to meet another person who regards it as just one more great power in an omniverse full of them.

There's no hesitation or embarrassment in her response. ]

Listening.

Edited 2023-11-17 02:43 (UTC)

[ Since she doesn't seem interested in coming down, Istredd comes up to her. This is the psychic plane so he isn't someone limited by what he knows in the real world. He doesn't fly he simply takes the 'earth' around him and raises it up toward her. Sometimes when hunting he adopts a similar use of the earth as a shield or to give him leverage, it's his strongest elemental skill. So he makes a platform, essentially, all the way up to her.

It's large enough that he can simply sit down on it, cross-legged, now even with her and the Sigularity. It still seems unsettling to him, treating it as anything other than something with reverence. He's been there before in person. He knows what it feels like, at least to a normal person. ]

What is it saying?

[ By the time Istredd joins her—looking a little too amusingly like he might be trying to touch as little of the fixture as possible while still joining her—Sabine has opened her eyes. Her left hand has come up to fold against her leg and prop her chin on that fist, even as her right-hand stays pressed to it. Her thumb errantly rubbed back and forth in an absent, yet almost affectionate, fashion against the stone. ]

It's still all tangled up. The emotions are often clearer and clearer, but the images— [ Sabine shakes her head. ] I thought after The Nether it might shift. [ That her surprise leap and success might have netted a different facet to this connection. ] But that parts still the same. Almost impossible to pick apart.

[ And for someone to whom time doesn't contain linearity? That's saying a lot. ]

Edited 2023-11-17 03:12 (UTC)

[ Istredd studied monoliths for decades and while he didn't treat them with this same kind of reverence, they also were proven to be big rocks with some kind of power within but no one knew what they were for. He still loved the mystery, the history. It's different with the Singularity. He can tell. It feels real to him, and after visiting, he knows it is. And also that it really hates foreign mages. A lot.

He knows that she's not human and more than that, she's something unique. He's never asked. It's impolite. He didn't ask Lucifer either, he was the one who explained angels to him. Istredd can tell sometimes. The power off them is different, he is still made of Chaos energy. ]

Maybe it's not as connected to the dragons as they thought.

No. They are. [ Sabine scrunches her nose, and if there's any frustration in it, it's at the unceasing knot—the hundreds of paths and options still everywhere around her in the fog—more than the other situation itself, like those wooden brain teasers. She had managed to make another small piece of it move. But it wasn't connected to this part of it at all. (Or yet?) ]

It was almost effortless, channeling the Singularity to help them heal a little. Going by to all of them a few times a day and giving them strength, peace, a little ease to keep fighting and surviving while everyone was gathering the ingredients and making the cure. [ She hadn't said as much before now because he'd long since impressed upon her what should and shouldn't be said in the castle, even inside one of the sound bubbles.

And it'd been an experiment she hadn't known would work when she tried it. ]

It's just not related to this part so far.

[ Istredd didn't sense much with the dragons. He did spend time with them, he helped heal them, and he's glad he did. He felt very strongly about protecting them as the last of their kind. It seemed clear there was a connection, and them going out into the land, unwittingly curing it along the way, was thought-provoking.

But he shakes his head at her.]

Okay you might have to explain for a normal human awareness. What this part? The rock itself? The Horizon side?

[ It could mean just about anything on her end. If she has a connection to it, and she clearly does, she could be feeling and touching more than he can fathom. It's much safer here than in the castle. Anywhere is safer than there, really. ]

[ Sabine considered him. Then, a glance out over his shoulder at the sky and then down at her hand on the physical object of The Singularity, which still felt more like a conduit tunnel to The Singularity itself than the actuality of it. Something that was definitely starting to grate in the distance, and the edges that impeded her senses in this world, the physical one and the Horizon. ]

When I touch it, I get emotions and images—a mass of them—like—

[ She cut off, shooting a look back. ]
No tv's where you were, right?

[ Istredd does know that this technically is a shell of the true being. This thing they're touching is not it, and the one in the real world also isn't it. The power is obviously more than the shell. Not everyone seems to get that though. He's tried to explain but he has more experience. Just as the monoliths were shells hiding the true purpose underneath. Those were only gates between spheres, not alive, as this is.]

Rhy's mentioned he gets feelings. No TV, but Wanda's shown me it here.

[ Istredd has seen some of the TV she likes to share and he finds it amusing and interesting. Visually pleasant. Nothing like that could exit in his sphere, at least not for thousands of years probably. Their technology isn't even near the type in this world.]

[ Sabine pauses in their clarification of a example pontential. ]

Like just tv for a tv show or movie?

You probably didn't see any static, right?

No, I don't think so. It played moving pictures.

[ Istredd feels like he would know what she means by static if he's seen it. In the Horizon there's no real need for static as it goes straight to whatever someone wants to see. While he's not very interested in television, and there isn't one in the library, it is something to marvel at.]

[ Sabine's thumb continued to stroke the structure—soft, absent, affectionate; rather like she'd gotten used to doing with the baby dragons or the eggs while working with them—as she pursed her mouth. With enough focus, she could make a television appear with them to display what she was implying about television static and shapes in the fuzz without specifics, but she didn't want more of her attention diverted away from the Singularity.

At least not above and beyond Istredd's welcome presence. ]

Nevermind. It's a rush, all slashed together. The images bleed into and out of each other, without crystalizing. Much the same with the emotions that go along with it. They are clearer, but they're the echoes from whatever is all of it.

I was hoping this side of connecting with it would have focused a little more, too. After the trip.

Edited 2023-11-20 20:18 (UTC)

I think it's like trying to learn a new language. The Singularity speaks in a unique way, with images instead of words. Not dissimilar from the gods here.

[ But that isn't a surprise, given the gods and the Singularity are clearly connected. The gods are given as much power and authority in here, from what he remembers of that event. The influence the gods had was absolute during that, both in the real world and in the Horizon. They didn't communicate in words but in their presence and affliction.

He folds his arms in consideration, glancing over the Horizon. He can see his own library from here, the ligthouse, and several other places like Kyle's temple.]

I went to the Singularity physically during the Dimming last year. I plan on doing it again this year. Maybe going there with me will help clarify some things.

[ Languages were not a problem for her before, but it is a new God or Monster or Creature of some kind, or all of the above. How well Sabine knew those things could be all slotted together, with all the powers, who had resided above The Rift for centuries on centuries feeding off the energy there. She let the comment slide by unretorted.

She knew that was earned arrogance tilted by consternation. And that as much as he knew she was different,
he didn't know all that much more than anyone here about all the specifics that went into what she was. ]

What was that like? Going there?

Painful.

[ Istredd sighs.]

It doesn't like foreign magic near it so it attacks, it hurts a great deal in the start. But eventually, it let up. And I took other mages with me, so none of us were having a good time.

[ Stephen, Yennefer, and Istredd were all in agony, Kell was in half agony because the other half was maybe protected by Rhy, but it did forgive them after a few minutes and stopped trying to break them. In a way the pain was helpful for Yennefer though, she thought she was cut off from magic forever, and that gave her some hope that it was still all inside of her, unable to be tapped into. Now she has her power back, but at the time it was a life line.

Poor Lucifer, on the other end of that attack not knowing what was going on, their psychic bond was new at the time. Now they have better protections in place.]

And then it felt enormous. Real. Alive. I don't have the bond that you or Rhy do with it, but you can sense it in the presence, how big it is.

[ By big he doesn't mean in size, he means in power. There's a reverence in how he's talking about it now. He wasn't sure whether to treat the Singularity like a monolith or not until then, and his admiration turned into low key worship. He values the Singularity highly.]

Edited 2023-11-28 02:10 (UTC)

[ Sabine's expression shifted from surprise to concern and then to a complicated consideration as she was thinking about all of those things at once. She both didn't like that it had hurt Istredd, but she couldn't find it within herself to be surprised The Singularity reacted at that level to something it perceived as a threat.

Sabine nodded a little absently. ] It is.

This— [ Sabine lifted her hand to gently tap the top of the structure with one finger before laying it back gently flat. ] —is barely a raindrop of its ocean.

[ Nothing was endlessly. No god. Not even time. But there was more out there. A more direct place to try and reach it. Her mind circled the whole thought and the potential. Whether it would be easier, better, clearer there. If the locality and physicality made a great difference to something woven throughout everything already. ]

How often do people go there?

I know. It's this entire sphere. Possibly others. I believed that intellectually, but it's different to be there.

[ And Istredd doesn't have the connection she does. For him to have something of a religious experience, without the religion, means that it makes an impression on him. He didn't take it personally that the Singularity attacked, they were on its territory when it was at its weakest. Very reasonable response. He doesn't know if everyone would have as life-changing an experience visiting the Singularity, but he feels like they should.]

We can only go once a year. One day, for a few hours. The Dimming is when the Singularity is at its weakest.

[ Which may explain why it felt so defensive.]

In the past they used to send multiple caskets in to absorb energy, we took one, which was agreed upon at the peace conference. The Singularity didn't seem to mind.

[ Istredd thinks if it did, they would definitely know about it. It was not being subtle!]

This year I'm hoping to do a scientific study of my own. I want to test the ground around the Singularity and in the crater for magical residue and see if it's different from the rest of the land.

[ The causes a bit of a frown. ]

Why? What happens when you go at other times?

[ She supposed she could see the logic in it. The potential for exponential resonance, even if she wasn't sure whether she thought that could make the greatest of differences in this situation. It wasn't as though one spot resonated like a magnet that one had to go, and go, and go toward without stopping. The Rift had drawn beings from every which way: linear, corporeal, and not.

The inverse was true here. People being summoned.

Supposedly by mages, but Sabine didn't believe that as much anymore. ]

How hard would it be for me to get there?

For the natives, it kills them. For us, it just forces us into the Horizon. Eventually I believe it spits us back up into the real world, but I've never seen it for myself. That happened in the beginning.

[ Istredd is trying to remember exactly he was told about how the first visit went so it makes sense. Since he's never witnessed it, it's all second-hand.]

Soon after the first Summoning, Thorne took everyone to a camp and then had them teleport into the crater against their will, to see what would happen.

[ So nice of them!]

They were stuck in the Horizon for the first time with no memory of themselves or that they even needed to get out. I don't know exactly how they ended up coming back to themselves, outside of perhaps the Singularity allowing them to. That is why we offer training to get in and out of the Horizon right away, because it's easy to get stuck otherwise.

[ That sort of mindset remained at Thorne long after the majority of them were gone. There are a few dangers in the Horizon, one being being stuck, and it has happened to other people who eventually got out. Possibly the same way they did that time, with the Singularity's help. Since Istredd hasn't experienced it himself, he doesn't know for sure how it all felt. More a Geralt question.]

During the Dimming, it's easy to go there. We got a portal and went directly. Otherwise you'll just end up stuck in the Horizon.

Julie has no way of knowing anyone is hanging around the Singularity in the Horizon. Honestly, she wouldn't even be able to tell if they were at the physical Singularity right alongside her crumpled unconscious body, although it would be unlikely. She's trapped, and only recently discovered that she could communicate with anyone else.

Not that she's trying to do so now. Her thoughts have leaked once accidentally; now, she's keeping it all tightly locked in as she continues treating the blob like a very quiet therapist.

"So anyway, we're at a party, and she's not drinkin', which is not how she usually was. Becca was a fuckin' monster at every bonfire. So I ask her how her new sobriety thing is goin', no weed or nothin'. I mean, it's kinda an achievement, right? Like, the kinda thing you ask about. She didn't even have a DUI or nothin'! And she was like, "I'm five months pregnant, Julie," and just stomped off. Like I'm supposed to know the difference between pregnant and her normal fat ass? She was fat bitch, what can I do about it? I thought I was bein' nice, too."

The monologue pauses for Julie to take a sip from the bottle of wine she made. She's sitting on the pinky-brown dirt of the place she's been trapped for about a week now, her back pressed to the couch she'd created so that she had somewhere to lie down. By now, the ground around her little setup is covered in doodles and song lyrics, forming a circle around the entire couch that extends out a few yards in every direction. Like she's been slowly working her way outward.

The blob buzzes in the sky above her, and she chooses to interpret the noise as positive. "Anyway," she continues, taking another drink, "That was the last time I saw my cousin Becca. Unless you count when I broke in her door after everyone died. Her stomach was all bloated even bigger than everyone else was, I guess from the baby dyin' too. She looked right about ten months pregnant by the time I got there. Guess she went early."

For a few days now, she has been recounting her final interactions with her large, extended clan of rednecks and trailer trash. The stories all end similarly, with only Julie surviving the superflu, and only Julie left to discover all the bodies within a hundred miles of her hometown. Thousands and thousands of them. And while she appreciates the opportunity to remember them all, every end still seems to bring her down a bit.

She hums, then abruptly brightens, forces herself to yet again close those boxes. "Oh, you know what I should tell you about? That shitty reboot season of Gilmore Girls they did!"

What would be impossible for Julie to predict is that anyone else, on an entirely different plane of existence, could be in a position to "overhear" her rambling.

Sabine's dedication to her focus, even as it pushes forth more and more in the way of jumbled emotions and scrambled images, is born of a whole existence of being barraged with so much information, backward and forwards, that it would overload a single human being. Which she might look, but she'll never be. Nor has night after night of months with the same result each night caused her to consider quitting.

She lets it flow through her. No longer simply reaching out with metaphorical hands, waiting to be taken, but connecting to it like she had in the Nether. Letting it flow through her, all of her. Not help another this time, but to listen to it as such. The Singularity, like a river, flowing through her, always overflowing its banks and circling back in and of itself. Insistent and primarily content—and if she isn't reading it wrong, starting to slow down.

Not today or this moment, but in the last month or two. Increasingly slower.
Like it was turning inward like it was softening, like it was ... almost sleepy.

Sabine is momentarily surprised into blinking her eyelids when an image of Kansas—and the normal, common, always-yet-never-here-with-The-Singularity, certainty of it being Kansas—shivers through her. Tearing her from it before she pressed her hands firmer and tried to reach for that specifically. That one clear image. The thread trailing and tattered behind it. A thread of connected bits, locations, and faces, blurring through everything.

The soft murmuring of something, like a voice, but not in or of the image itself.

For a few minutes, Julie does try to recount the Gilmore Girls reboot season, but her heart isn't in it, and the blob is not a great conversational partner anyway. Closing the boxes of Captain Trips is never quite enough, at least not when she cracks certain ones open.

She hadn't thought of Becca in nearly four years. Had almost forgotten her swollen, rotting belly. The box is closed, but the image hasn't disappeared yet.

Julie falls silent. Grits her teeth as her gaze goes unfocused, her mind somewhere else. The sweltering heat of the direct sunlight as she walked along unshaded country roads. House after house, room after room of bodies, rotting in the summer warmth. Corpses clutching each other, pets lifeless at their owners' feet. The small, dated kitchen where she'd collapsed and sobbed on the linoleum when she realized she would have to leave her parents unburied, that she wasn't strong enough to move them to the hole she'd slaved to dig. The wheat and the corn in the fields, swaying with the breeze as she'd walked down the road, doomed to rot with no one to harvest it. The weight of her shotgun at her side.

Leaning her head back against the sofa, she chugs some more wine.

If something was going to come into surprising clarity, Sabine had not expected it to be America or Gilmore Girls. Even in a town where reception could get remarkably shitty with the slightest change of a breeze, like every other person of an about given age in their teens at the time, she'd known of the show and the reboot. And watched it. (And had opinions.)

But that's fading out for more of Kansas. For something more dire. Bodies everywhere, bloating and decaying. The suffused feelings of shock and terror, grief and guilt, desperation and despair. But only ever more bodies, in flash after flash.

When she reaches out, it's not how the Summoned do, directing a written message to one person or many. It's the same as how she's been reaching out, night after night, to the Singularity itself. It's only to the receptive open of her own mind, her thoughts, the vast expanse of her true being, and the gentle press of her will, the entry of the words in her mind reaching ever out for it.

H̴̨̗́̃̈̒̈́̑͂̃͆͂̏͆̈́̒͗̄̋̆͑͜͜ę̷̨̨̧̢̖̗̺̰̣̮̯̠̳̪͉̤̻̫͔͙͓͐͋̿͜͜l̵̹̘̘̈̐̂̎̽̀̆̄͂̓̓͐̀͋̚͠͠ľ̷̛̼͙̜̜̻͍̣̗̞̗̰͈̤̬͉̦͍̼̻̅̽͊̌́͋̌͆̇̅́̇͌̋̅͊͐̚̕͜͝ö̷̡̗̦͇̬͓͉̪͙͊͌͑̿̉͆͐̈̐̽́̕͝?̶̢̡̣̖̻͍͚̱͔̘͔̞͇̓́̓͂̊̈́̿̃̀͆̿̈́͒̚̚͜͝͝͝͝ͅ ̴̢̢̢͇̺͈͍̎̋́̓́
̵̧̻̩͎̠͎͇̪̳̻̗͚͖̲̝̼̫̗͎̈́̄́͛͗̓͜ͅͅ

And then, with a touch more effort, shifting closer to human English she has to affix the focus of her thoughts into for the Summoned's communication, too.

Is someone there?

As Julie drinks, the flashes come faster, blurrier. A warehouse store, filled with food and furniture and everything else she could need, but also a sense of loneliness so intense that it feels like drowning, like insanity. Gunshots and fury, hazy silhouettes of men running. A walk that seems to span months, ends with blood trailing from the worn-through soles of her shoes as she climbs into a car. Then lights. So many lights, neon and glittering and endless, laid over music and dancing and champagne. High heels and lipstick smiles, shopping bags and liquor bottles and white lines snorted off expensive vanities. Bodies everywhere still, although now they are alive in every way -- fucking and dancing and shrieking with laughter. A man, his memory now fuzzy around the edges; he has dark hair, a gold tooth and a vaguely slimy (though ultimately nonthreatening) aura. As the sparkling backgrounds swirl around him, he appears to be something of an anchor point. Even so, there emotion he seems tied to is a strange combination of affection and repulsion.

But more than anything, there is fear. Not terror, but much more deep-seated and pervasive and constant. Present from the moment the car door closes. The vague shape of a tall, dark man, all shadows, towers over everything, inflicting a bone-deep paranoia. He knows what you're thinking.

And obsession. Wild desire for him. Worship.

Hello? Is someone there?

The messages come through in a strangely simultaneous way, almost indistinguishable in Julie's vision and mind. She startles so hard that she drops the wine bottle, spilling it into the pink-tan sand. It is enough to immediately push every other thought from her consciousness, back into their proper compartments, like she has trained herself to do. She scrambles onto the sofa and draws into a ball in the corner, eyeing the blob in the sky suspiciously.

"What, you're talkin' now?" she mumbles warily, to herself because of course the stupid thing isn't talking to her. Settling onto her knees, Julie sighs and rubs her face. Fuck, she's starting to lose it again. Didn't she just talk to Geralt yesterday? Or was it longer? She can't really gauge the passage of time well here.

Lying down, she turns her back on the blob, which buzzes at her. "I'm taking a nap," she declares firmly, jamming her arms crossed over her chest and screwing her eyes shut. "Hush."

Maybe she should be wary. Maybe anyone else would be. Kyle and Istredd would like her to be. Yet, nothing in the flow of the magic, the feeling of the Singularity permeating every iota of the Horizon, gives her any sign that she should be. Even as a photo album of horrors begins to latch onto the edges of her thoughts. Dots that become dominoes that slide into temporal ripples. Bread and milk and. breathing, Sabine leans into the loosed flood.

A virus. Aggressive and remorseless.

Bodies as far as the eye could see.

And yet not everything, not everyone—not quite the child insanity couldn't touch but likened to. There are dashes of light, of Life, of those who survive. A swirling darkness in and under and through it all. Collapsed at a point. Like the Rift. But not. Not a temple with a million faces, only the last a gas station, with a crack where the edge of a God lay sleeping, this was different. A sprawling metropolis, and in its center, instead, within its hidden crack the whitest lightning, where a dark spire of a shape, going up and up meant to dominate the sky—no, worlds—it touched.

Through even that the whisper of light,
of a force fighting back.

Hush, the voice says. But Sabine can't.

There's something almost...familiar...but so far away.
Everything felt effortless and
needed every iota of her focus.

But where are you?
When was all of this?
Was it here? Before?

That doesn't seem right. It doesn't line up with anything on this planet she's read, researched, or allowed to come to her across its time. But there's so much being hidden and held in this place—in all the places of this place.

Perhaps it's ironic, that Julie too would lack the inclination to be wary. That she already has, that she has greatly aggrieved pretty much everyone she loves by continuing to trust so deeply in this connection. In all the random bullshit it keeps shoveling at her. She knows that they would be much happier if she acted like Ciri and just pretended there was nothing. Ignored it entirely, stayed out of the Horizon.

But she never does. She just lets it all in more.

Locking the images away is not the problem -- the problem has always been the roar of the cages rattling once she has intentionally cleared her mind. On the rare occasions she has flashbacks, usually she relies on Nadine's draughts to quickly relieve herself of consciousness, but that does her no good here. In the darkness behind her eyelids, she individually swipes away each blur of color before it can materialize into a full recollection.

Burning bright lightning snaps across the black and a scream tears unbidden from her chest as she rockets into a sitting position. One hand claps over her mouth with a gasp; it has been many months since she has seen that. Even more than see, she feels it still. Static in the air, prickles on her skin. The smell of charred flesh. The sting of her legs as she ran.

Julie sniffles and swipes her eyes. A nightmare. She drifted off and had a nightmare. The sky is clear. The blob is here. Geralt is a word away, even if she can't reach him physically.

But there's a. Pull. Somewhere deep inside. To what or where, she can't tell, and she doesn't want to know right now. It seems to drag her from the center downward, hissing questions that are felt more than heard, and only halfway at that.

"Go back home." Julie means her voice to be stronger. More firm. To really tell it all that she doesn't need it here -- doesn't need Kansas or Vegas or Lloyd and especially not Flagg and Trips. Instead, it comes out a whisper, desperation rather than insistence. "Abraxas don't need any of y'all, and neither do I."

The blob hums, shakes the ground a little. Julie presses her face to her knees and closes her eyes.

Sabine goes to Nocwich for at least one of the days every month. She can be found wandering the the market, popping into bookstores, seeking out more books on the Singularity and new reads, whether bartered in trade for other books or bought new. She'll often take some time catching a quiet meal in one of the comfy velvet chairs at Crescent Spots or try a new treatment at one of the spas.

~*~

Fortuitously, right after Kell asked to take Sabine to Borrel (because her hair at the time looked very much like their sea glass), The Maritime Fair was announced, and so they decided to make a time of it. A very colorful floats, fireworks, and ocean-meeting time of it. [ Closed to Kell for Month 1. ]

Edited 2023-11-16 03:26 (UTC)

In true Thorne fashion the celebrations of the first Maritime fair are downright extravagant. Kell refrains from openly commenting on how a minuscule fraction of all this stupid money could have been used to fund operation of Rhy's clinic in Nott for months. Not only because it could be overheard by just the wrong people, given loyalist attitude common across Borrel, but because he knows how power works.

When it comes to extravagant, Borrel is the place to come. Kell got them seated at small table on a good spot to watch the floats. It came for a price of ordering a dessert, quite overpriced in his initial opinion, but then they got served two plates of actual confectionery art.

His is a selection of fruit slices arranged in shape of a flower, with some kind of soft cake and cream composition, decorated on top by a sculpture of Borrel's pride, a warship under full sails. All blue and green and translucent, it looks as if it was carved in seaglass. Kell has been assured by the man serving it that each part of their desserts is fully edible.

Sabine's plate has same flower shaped fruit, with a sprinkle of smaller flowers arranged meticulously around it, a cake like his, just in different color, and a sculpture of a jellyfish jumping out of the water. Both water and the jellyfish are done in the same translucent material as the ship on Kell's plate.

"Now I feel bad for wanting to eat this."

He's no stranger to elaborate dishes. State dinners in Arnes were no less extravagant. That's just politics. What changed is his perspective. He never had to think about people behind those event, and what did not get funded because of them. Year and a half of not being royalty has opened his eyes to many things. He knew not everyone prospered back home, but he never had some much of a first-hand experience of what it exactly means like he does now whenever he goes to Nott.

Kell doesn't have to give his opinion alloud for Sabine to pick it up. It flickers across his face from time to time before being tucked carefully back away in what amounts to the respect and enjoyment this place expects them to have for it being a festival day all the Summoned are allowed out to, today and beyond.

Sabine's consideration is speculative.

(As is the slowly becoming more defined memories of moments around Kell.)

For all that the opening fireworks make the light that comes and goes in those green eyes a little more in the last month or so—but never quite as brightly and fully encompassing of her as when they first met—she understands the idea of what she assumes is behind the looks. Even in their world back home, whether the details matter or not to her and her parents, she understands the detriments that humans set upon themselves through arrogance, greed, and showmanship.

More than half the time they are sent anywhere, there's pomp and circumstance.

The floats slide by outside, and Sabine studies the ostentatiousness of it. There's still beauty there. Someone's hard work and inspirations (the dreams sown and worked hard for across a life, faintest whisps of memory-feelings of hard work, pride, hope swirling their edges).

The same with everything. From the decor of every shop along the route, the caliber of plates, and the panache of the desserts that look more like colorful little statues than the food they are.

"Oh, does that mean I get two desserts, then?" Sabine teases the threat, reaching out a hand toward the edge of his plate closest to her.

That's the issue with Kell. He's often too fast to see flaws and faults in a thing that prevent him from enjoying it. He does not recognize, as she does, in addition to the original reason for creating all this opulence, it gave many people chance to exercise their craft, realize their visions and get paid for it. Kell's not yet good at seeing more sides to things than one.
But he notices, she's enjoying the show so it helps to shoo away his discontent with the greater picture of the celebrations.

Kell makes a face, an mock expression of deep contemplation. He's not the greatest actor, but even if he was a star performer, the sparkling amusement of magic swirling about him would give him away to her immediately.

"You put me in a difficult situation. Should I be a gentleman and rescind my right to cake? How then would I know if this is any good?"

Admittedly, Sabine has had far more time than he's been alive to watch the full sides of situations (both to the detriment and benefit of humanity, depending on whether they were being talked about in mass or in specific, especially if it was Jack, and yet even Jack, like Kell, was the bat of an eyelashes time—even as that same time had changed her entirely—compared to the time before it).

"To cake or not to cake," Sabine quotes back, even knowing Kell has no chance of knowing who Shakespeare is, and thus losing at least 65% of what makes it a great random comeback, quick, like it's a volley served in a game. "That is the question."

(Sabine makes a mental note to start pulling Shakespeare books from home into this world soon, too.)

"I think that you will have to try it at least, or the bakers will cry."

"And we wouldn't want that, would we?"

Kell doesn't know Shakespeare so he does not recognize the quote she paraphrased. Yet, there's something about the flow of words in it that sounds to him vaguely familiar. He doesn't know Shakespeare. He does know another poet who also happens to be British. So he hazards a guess.

"That sounded like something from Blake."

"Heathen." It's fast, fond, and full of mock offense. "That's Shakespeare."

She picks up a fork and starts into a small corner of her cake, with small, slow movements, disrupting the art as little as possible while cutting through the colors and shapes. "It's from a play called Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, and the line is actually 'To be or not to be, that is the question.' It's very famous back home."

A beat. "I'll bring you some Shakespeare books."

Kell chuckles. He pulls his plate closer to himself. Nobody said using magic is against the rules, he opts for that instead of fork. He's far from clumsy, but also when it comes to fragile confectionery he trusts his magic more than his innate grace... or rather the lack of it. Being born graceful is Rhy's domain, not his. So it looks as if the tiny sliver of delicate construction separates on its own from the rest. Only the melted edges give away that it was actually a very tightly compressed band of water. It is mostly sugar, isn't it?

"Pretty dramatic that prince of Denmark."

Kell manages not end frozen with a fork half way to his mouth. He eats his piece of cake and puts the fork down before replying. Still, his surprise is obvious.

"Thank you!"

He looks back at the river, its floating spectacle and smiles.

"We used to watch a lot of plays back home." He doesn't add that he found most of them boring and a waste of time. It feels like it happened ages ago, in a different life, to a completely different person. "I don't remember who said that, but I've heard they have a theater in Free Cities. I wonder if they have one here."

"You have no idea," is Sabine's easy quip to fade off on about Hamlet—the everyman of quintessential humanity and blithering inaction—before they're both eating cake. His choice to use magic earns a slight tilt at the edge of her mouth. Even here, even beyond the pale of a 'death' more real than not and less real than real—and Jack more fully aware of the what if not how much the how—it's still instinctual for her to simply do things as normally as she can.

Magic, and everything she is, was nothing like it in their once-world.
It'd taken years of Jack's life to stop tripping on her toes. Metaphorically.

She followed Kell's gaze out to the parade while the floats continued to pass, and she thought she might have heard something like that once or twice, too. Here and in Thorne. And Nocwich. She sucked cake off the tines of her fork slowly, not thinking too hard about why she could make that list but had never considered actively seeking one out before now.

"The most we ever had was the smallest of—" shitty "—theatre plays at the high school Jack went to, and even then, we didn't go to them. I've seen more on TV than in person, and even that is lacking a lot to be said."

Magic was abundant like air in Kell's world. Only he truly knew how unique Red London was in that regard. Regular people knew that other Londons existed, and that they were different, but that was the extent of their knowledge. Only Kell ever visited the other two. One hungry, one dull and drab, both empty.
It was considered ill omen to born without magic. A greatest punishment, worst than death, to be cut from it. Even if most people had only a little of it. Most were able to master their own drop enough to use it daily, almost casually.

For all his involuntary stay in Abraxas, Kell has not met a single person coming from world with an attitude to magic similar to his own. It seemed that most treat it as something special, something hidden or dangerous.

Even Sabine, who in Kell's eyes has nothing to hide, whose magic is of such unrivaled beauty he can't help but be drawn to it. Even for her, the first impulse is for the mundane. Kell himself uses his own less here, after his usual behavior gained him enough of sideways glances to make him think it's not coincidence. That he's making people uncomfortable.

It's difficult not to forget about the cake when talking about an interesting subject. That's his weakness, he's always more focused on conversation.

"Tell me about them. The ones you saw."

Though he would need to be dragged kicking and screaming into it, but Kell actually is a pretty good actor.

Sabine has been counting down the days to this meeting.

Diplomatic hoops are not something she's had to deal with during her existence, but that doesn't mean their importance here or how they work had escaped her in all the years of watching humanity profligate their Earth. On this specific day, there's no colored hair, only her natural color, pulled back neatly, and one of her better informal dresses.

As she folds her hands politely behind her, she's not quite near to nervous, so much as deeply aware this is a necessity—and one that needs to go well—between where she is and getting closer to the Singularity. The root and heart of this world. The answers at the puzzle box bottom of everything happenimg to both it and the Summoned.

Istredd has been around Ambrose enough times by now that he isn't nervous either, he did this last year, but it was with Stephen and Yennefer's assistance. All the same, he suspects he can convince him, it is Sabine he has to sell at this point. Kyle should be no trouble. He doesn't often have to go into formal requests, but this isn't that different from making presentations at the Brotherhood. Only his purpose is more interesting to Ambrose than it's ever been to the mages.

"Follow my lead. He's a logical person." Not reasonable, precisely, although Istredd thinks he is. It's just hard to know what that reason is. He smiles reassuringly to Sabine and knocks on Ambrose's door. He did ask for this meeting beforehand so it wouldn't be a surprise, Ambrose is very busy after all.

"High Mage, it is Istredd and Sabine, may we enter?" He is using his polite and formal voice and posture.

Ambrose is a very busy man but he makes time for the people he believes matter. Istredd just so happens to be on that rather short list, having proven himself to be like-minded and work-oriented.

But it is easy to get lost in his own projects given their nature and number. When the knock comes, Ambrose looks up from the tome he is pouring over and glances to a nearby clock. There is an audible thud from behind the door as he slams it shut.

"Yes, enter," he says as he waves a hand at the candelabra behind him, the flames flickering brighter from the touch of magic. When they enter, he stands to greet them.

The walls of his study are lined with shelves, stacked with various books, tomes and parchments that are too important to leave in the library. Small experimental devices and curiously glowing vials and containers are kept on higher shelves but a few are close enough that wandering eyes may get a closer look. A large shimmering orb sits on a pedestal not far from his desk.

"Istredd, a pleasure." His tone is deep but genuine. He eyes his other guest for a moment and nods. "And Sabine...please take a seat."

Sabine waits to follow in a step behind Istredd, the first in who knows how many things to follow behind him in the wake of, but Sabine trusts him, and she only quasi-trusts three people here since Jack left. All of them were out of necessity, but Istredd has had several reasons for that to become less shaky the longer time went on. She trusts that if he has a plan for this and knows how to make it happen, he does, and he can.

Or at least that he will try his best with the means he has.

(And doubt would not help anyone if they could hope instead.
Especially when there was so much at stake with The Singulaity.)

Sabine inclined her head low with deferential respect at the acknowledgment of her name, her voice a soft response of—"High Mage."—and "Thank you."—as she took the seat proffered and looked to Istredd.

Istredd focuses his full attention on Ambrose at first, as he should out of respect, and nods his head to him. His eyes do dart around when they get a chance to take notes of details, he always finds it fascinating what people have in their own workspace. He doesn't have a whole lot here in Thorne, but people could tell a great deal about him from his labs back home or from his Horizon.

"Thank you for taking the time to meet with us. I was hoping we could speak about an idea we had regarding the Dimming this year." He waits for Sabine to sit before doing the same, right to the point as he knows people like Ambrose (and himself!) prefer.

"I don't think I've mentioned this before, but my main field in my sphere was archaeology." Though if Ambrose declares he knows everything about people from their spheres, he would already have known. "I studied magical digs and artifacts, and I believe that this year we should take samples of the ground at various places in the crater, including close to the Singularity, and see if there are any unusual magical readings."

He tilts his head toward Sabine. "Sabine here would be assisting me in getting samples if this was approved. I trust her, or I wouldn't have brought her into this." It is, technically, a private escapade.

And prefer it he does with Ambrose settling readily as he leans back into his own high-backed chair. The mention of the dimming has him raising a singular bushy brow, but Istredd clearly has his attention.

"Samples from the crater?" He frowns as he considered, but anyone who has spent any time with Ambrose knows that it's his thinking face and not one of disapproval. "That would be of interest to me. What do you expect to find?"

Ambrose assumes there is a null hypothesis Istredd wants to test. His gaze slips back to Sabine, sitting quietly and politely. Istredd vouches for her, but Ambrose does want to form his own opinion.

"What exactly do you bring to this dig? Do you consider yourself another archaeologist?"

Sabine is dutifully following their exchange, so she meets the High Mage's gaze head-on when it shifts to her. It wasn't unexpected, given that she probably fell directly under that for him—being unexpected.

"I have been studying under Istredd since I arrived. Magic, originally, and still, but more so, the Singularity. The importance of it to this world, and possibly all others." Her voice was calm and still. Her why considered both publically and privately so many times since she'd heard of it, especially after managing to connect to it, however limitedly. "The need to keep it safe from those who would wish it harm."

There's a small glance toward Istredd and then back. "I would very much like the chance to help him and all of you in this. I can think of no better thing worth spending my time on since coming here."

That was a truth, whole and utter. If the details were edged slightly differently. (Especially since Jack vanished, but even before that in bringing them back together somewhere.) In the why and how, and wanting to know more about exactly what kind of god-like or supernatural being it was and whether its intentions toward this planet—and others—were of the same ilk as those that had once been the focus of Earth before The Rift was sealed.

"I am hoping to find out if there is anything different in the soil from close to the Singularity than in the common dirt around us. It may seem like a small thing, but I believe tests upon its magical properties would be worth trying."

This is to Ambrose. Since the locals rarely are able to go, outside of when they've done so carefully during the Dimming, it might not have occurred to them to try this. They must have been busy just hoping to stay alive as they did caskets. Istredd has the time to take samples from all parts of the crater and organize them into places. Either it will show that the soil right next to the Singularity is powerful and lesser so the farther they get away ... or it'll all be the same and they get a different type of answer.

Istredd turns his head to listen to Sabine's answer and he smiles because he's not surprised at all that she has the type of steady head to know what to say in this instance. And it is all the truth, it is ringing in her tone. He turns his attention back to Ambrose.

"I was hoping we could take Kyle with us to assist with the casket, so our attention isn't split in too many ways." Kyle has risen in ranks in the castle and he's well-respected by now. "And that will be if for this visit. Stephen has given his blessing." So Ambrose doesn't think that Istredd's snuck in there without their chief magical Summoned involved.

Stern as his expression is, Sabine's answer earns a single nod of acceptance after a moment's pause.

"Everything we do here in Thorne is ultimately for the preservation of the Singularity," he says with finality. "For the sake of protecting this world, not only the Kingdom of Thorne."

A topic of speech that Istredd has doubtlessly heard before, but Sabine is saved from Ambrose going down that long-winded path for now.

"Very well. You may accompany Istredd." He motions from Sabine to Istredd. "And as his apprentice, I expect to see your name on his report whether or not there are unique properties to the ground around the Singularity."

He taps his fingers three times on the wooden desk as he considers the second half of Istredd's proposal.

"If Kyle isn't tasked with another delivery, he would be a fine choice to deliver the casket. If he is busy with something of markedly less importance..."

Plucking a quill from an inkwell, Ambrose scribbles down a quick note on a small piece of parchment and places magical seal in the bottom corner next to his signature. He holds it out to the pair.

"...then this should remind everyone the Singularity is our primary duty."

Sabine doesn't balk at the clarification so much as to even wrinkle a line or raise an eyebrow, though to hear tell of it from several other Summoned, she knows that several people believe that Thorne is, and is only, out for Thorne's sake. For power and control. Her consideration of the man who holds the power to give her approval or not is as much of him truly, too.

A piqued sort of curiosity herself—of how much he understands or doesn't the creature itself, the amount to which he's able to control what's happening and not in this world, how he indeed plays out on the larger stage than this so very castle and continent—a man of such immense power, and yet that: a single man.

"Yes, High Mage. Thank you." It's respectful, and there's more relief in her last two words than, perhaps, even Sabine expected. It's easier this way, rather than deciding whether to skip all the political hoops and find a way regardless, wondering what Istredd and Kyle would say to that. To put the necessity of the drive of needing to know, needing to see, to figure out how the macrocosm equation is.

It's nice for this to end up going this smoothly.

"You know that I share the same opinion, High Mage. I will share with you the soil and any findings we may see." That is the trade-off. They get the permission, they give something back. The silent part being whatever Sabine goes through in the meantime, a private detail for only the Summoned.

Istredd respectfully inclines his head to Ambrose again. He takes the parchment and smiles at Sabine. Well done indeed. "Thank you for your time." He opens the door for Sabine and heads out to plan the next steps with her and Kyle. Mission successful.

𝒴𝑒𝒶𝒽, 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓌𝒶𝓉𝑒𝓇'𝓈 𝒽𝒾𝑔𝒽

𝓣𝓱𝓸𝓻𝓷𝓮.

𝓗𝓸𝓻𝓲𝔃𝓸𝓷.

By the Singularity

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thank you for being so patient

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𝓝𝓸𝓬𝔀𝓲𝓬𝓱 & 𝓑𝓸𝓻𝓻𝓮𝓵.

Borrel festival :)

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[ ᴄʟᴏꜱᴇᴅ ] ʟᴀᴛᴇ ɴᴏᴠ → ᴍᴇᴇᴛɪɴɢ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴀᴍʙʀᴏꜱᴇ

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and can wrap here, thank you!