The Quicksand Singularity ArQive: Array.init:0

A0T5.1 The Vampyre Syrenn (Part 1)

Editor's Note:  Völva, pronounced (Wahl-wah), is a word from Old Norse and refers to a Witch-Seeress. In Into Infinity the term was reintroduced via the Mythica (see Valkyries) and is used commonly to refer to a witch of high station. Additionally, the letter "þ" is pronounced like the "th" in the word "thing". Due to content policy restrictions, subsequent chapters of The Vampyre Syrenn will be exclusively available on www.quicksandarchive.com.

QSI-N 9854179e(1)

Interview: Kvôrrím (aka Wander) | Øsjäm "Venus" Sjöbäl

Part 1: DeCrypting

Three things the ancient traveller carried. Each a totem of memory, of grounding, of dispelled illusions, they reminded him where he was—an Ariadne's thread of sorts. Together they formed within a labyrinth, void of walls upon which his left hand might find purchase, or, where walls there were, such threads would lead him nowhere but deeper into realms of the non-euclidean. For dreams and fantasies were the winding passages he made home, and therein paradoxes and abstruse geometries were abound. In the spaces between two forms of lucidity where he wandered, only these three items, inscribed in words of power older than memory, threaded the corridors of all mankind's imaginings.

First was a paper crane, wilted, wrinkled, and browning with age. This totem, an anchor to a past he could no longer remember, carried on it still the scent of someone important. Her name long faded in the expanses of time between them there yet remained the sillage of her fragrance, lingering like a ghost. She was precious to him, he knew, but for what reason, he could no longer recall. Impressed in washi preserved only in the worlds he created—worlds of dreams and fantasies—this fragrance was an anchor, reminding him of where he was, the place to which he must one day return, and the presence or absence of it would make obvious which of the two he was in.

Second, a ring worn on his left index finger. Made not any precious metal, but of tungsten carbide, void of any markings, jewels, or other decorations, filigree, engravings, nor scratches, nor blemishes of any sort. Like the crane, he could no longer recall how he came to be of its possession, nor in whose memory he wore it still, only that it was a gift from a dear friend whose face, like so many a photograph, had faded into naught but another indiscernible and washed-out shadow. Though the crane had long ago disintegrated in the real, the ring remained, affixed to his left index finger between worlds. It was a tether to identity, something that had, at one point, come to define him, a boon from one greater than he in a time none now lived who could remember. It would be there just the same now as when he woke.

Third, he kept an old, analogue telephone. The colour red, bright and bold, like cherry taffy, it had on its face a fixed, black ring where a dial one might have turned would be, and its handset, connected by a corkscrewed wire to the base, remained as an icon of an era dead and forgotten for four orders of magnitude longer than it had twice once been. This was not so much carried upon him, like as the crane and the ring, but was hidden just on the limits of the landscape, tucked away in impossible geometries, a corner or a cupboard or a biometric safe built into the intangible substrate of his mind.

This hard line to reality was his oldest device. The ancient traveller knew this, though he did not know how. It was right that it should be the oldest, for he knew also there was one in the real, held in the stewardship of one entrusted with its keeping. When he was needed, they would call upon him, and, in the spaces between, his would ring. Its shrill and shrieking bell, striker oscillating between two metal domes tucked within its inscrutable components, made by intent to be an intolerable presence he could not ignore nor give reply with any delay.