The Quicksand Singularity ArQive: Array.init:0

A0T1.2 Arrivals

"I'm really hungry!" Ch'maki whined.

Master Jabbu had barely shifted before Ulloriaq was across the room, the gatecasting an afterthought, manifested as simply as she might set one foot before the other to walk. Standing between him and Ch'maki, Ulloriaq caught Master Jabbu's staff an open palm, meeting his gaze with hers.

"Move over, Weathermaster!" Master Jabbu ordered.

"No," Ulloriaq refused.

"I said, move over! This is not your Temple!"

"Until your Mistress receives them, these are my charges," Ulloriaq countered, "and I forbid your trespass upon that which is my domain."

"Jabbu!" a shrill voice barked from the far end of the hall. "Restrain yourself at once!"

"Mistress T'kmak'a," Master Jabbu reacted, dropping to one knee and bowing his head.

A series of expressions washed across Master Jabbu's face, and Ulloriaq released her grip on his staff, confident that the Grand Matriarch had communicated privately her rebuke. She turned to face the Temple Mistress, striding across the hall in no hurry—as was her way.

Dressed plainly, the High Völva was, eschewing any adornments or cosmetics—not that Hjóni needed them—the small, short woman, dressed in a plain, black dress, seemed many times larger than her physical stature simply by the presence she commanded. Of average build, neither overly fit, nor carrying excess about her waist, Hjóni possessed exceptional natural beauty. Perhaps the Temple Mistress's most startling feature—at least to Ulloriaq—were her eyes. Violet, brilliant, and piercing, her gaze could cut clean through a bunker made of hardened titronium armour.

"Weathermaster," T'kmak'a addressed, cordially.

"Grand Matriarch," Ulloriaq returned, genuflecting appropriately.

"Midwinter has kept you some time now," T'kmak'a mentioned. "Forty-seven Tanno by my count."

"My delay was not from Soulstar," Ulloriaq replied, "I'm afraid the Glitch has been quiet of late."

"Yes, I too have felt the fabric calm," T'kmak'a agreed, "like a receding tide, it feels. Something is coming."

"Have you consulted with Beacon T'kwammu?"

"I have," T'kmak'a agreed.

"What did the tapestry reveal?"

"A gathering storm," T'kmak'a answered.

"Nothing else?"

"He has been tugging at threads for decades now," T'kmak'a said, "in his words, the tree will not flower. It drives him deeper into madness by the Lune."

"I see," Ulloriaq replied, her concerns growing.

"Will you go to him?" T'kmak'a asked. "He will not cease gazing into what he calls 'the Fog' and I worry he is becoming lost in it. I have advised him to halt his searching, but he refuses to see reason."

"He is not a man easily swayed from his course," Ulloriaq replied, "in that you two share great kinship."

"Yes, but he does respect your counsel. If he can be swayed..."

"I will see what I can do," Ulloriaq said, a blanket of dread settling on her.

In her travels gathering the most powerful born of the glitch—the galaxy's great Relicborn Masters and Grandmaster, suspenders of all that governs reality—at every Lossec Temple where the children went, the Farseers had begun experiencing the same. Great clouds loomed on the horizons. The closer they swam to it, the less they saw, but the more enraptured by the fog they became.