The Quicksand Singularity ArQive: Array.init:0

A0T5.1 The Vampyre Syrenn (Part 1)

"Soulstar Central Medical Centre," she answered, leading him down the long corridor.

"How...long?" he asked.

"Three hundred and forty-three thousand Tanno," Hal answered, as they approached the door at the end of the corridor.

"Three hundred thousand?" he repeated, as she opened the door.

The number...

It was...

It was impossible to comprehend.

How could it have been so long?

How...

"Yes," Hal confirmed, pushing the door open. "You've been in The Crypt a very long time, Wander. Too long."

"Yes," Wander agreed, as Hal led him into another room, where three young women were assembled, dressed plainly in outfits the name of which lay just out of reach. A soft blue, the garments suited them well, as though the three had been made for them instead of the inverse.

"Kvôrrím?" one of them asked, astonished.

"Wander," Hal corrected, leading him to a seat.

"Oh," the young woman replied, a pang of sorrow in her voice.

"Wander," Hal said, drawing his attention back as she knelt down beside him, "these are Afa, Usi, and Ona. They're going to get you cleaned up and assist you in DeCrypting."

"Don't go," Wander said, the words falling out of him without thought.

"I'll be right here," Hal assured, patting his hand.

"Afa, Usi, Ona," Wander repeated, glancing between the three women.

He noticed each of them, wherever bare skin was showing, displayed legions of scars. Some were precise, as if cut by a surgeon, others gruesome and mottled, the visage of flesh melted in flames, yet more the appearance of wounds minor and grievous. Eschewing long sleeves, Wander sensed there was pride behind these scars. Each less a memory to forget and more a badge of honour specific to those whose mastery was in making flesh ravaged by disease or injury, whole. They were, by this display, as terrifying to behold as majestic.

"Yes," Hal confirmed, "they're Mercies from the Caldera Academy of Physician-Mages."

"Sisters?" Wander asked.

"Identical triplets," Hal confirmed, "just relax. They'll take care of you."

"Yes," Wander agreed after a long pause, the word he was looking for unable to find.

Hal stood up and backed away as the three women, covered in scars, the ritualistic markings of a sisterhood he had by some miracle not forgotten, approached him. One took a shower head off the wall, another a sponge, and a third a bottle of viscous liquid soap.

An inexplicable aura of peace and serenity came off them like vapours of nepenthe. Wander felt warm water touch his skin as his mind began to dissipate into a cloud of diffuse semi-consciousness, all sensation descending into a Schrödingerian paradox, a distant reverberation and an acute presence. In this impossible contradiction of dissembled reassembly, his mind spread across everywhere and each individual and singular fibre of his being, each sense meridian, all at once, overwhelming and chaotic, orderly and composed. Time stretched in both directions as the Mercies wove reality to their whims, suspended nature's laws by their will, and made of his misfiring neurons and misaligned components a cohesive whole once more.

Everything blurred together until he found himself, in the lifting of the spell, stood in a dark room, dressed in a selection of the day's fineries—a short-sleeved shirt and plain jacket, loose-fit trousers, but without shoes or socks or any such things about his feet. Footwear in this era must have not been in vogue. Either that, or he had never entertained the wearing of them, and so was not made to. Wander, again, could not place why, but he felt this latter answer correct. A feeling of rightness in his feet could not be so easily ignored.