The Quicksand Singularity ArQive: Array.init:0

A0T5.1 The Vampyre Syrenn (Part 1)

The room he was in was also familiar. Though three and a half ages had passed, and this structure had, in all due likelihood, been rebuilt many times, there had been no need of much innovation in its structure, layout, and design. An interrogation room and its attendant observation room had proven time and again unbroken, and so no manner of fixing was required.

This one, though, it did have a peculiar feel of the vintage to it, as though Hal had made this place with intentional nods to their generation. None could appreciate those subtler elements but Hal's and his generation, those whose essences had coalesced and arisen in the frozen wastes of the Apoch-Freeze, the aftermath of the universe torn asunder by forces man had no right to toy with. Describing them he felt as pointless as sacrilegious. Red to a blind man would bear more weight of meaning.

From ancient holms and hjälla of Stronghold, Wander knew this architecture, knew its purpose and function. Technicians seated at desks worked terminals all too contemporary—an anachronism in a space defined by its timelessness—he had seen this scene in every role and every perspective a hundred thousand times since last he walked the Real. Its half-silvered mirror displayed the quotidian beyond. A room of concrete walls, bare, with nothing to serve as distraction. Only the thoughts of the subject seated at a steel table would keep her company, pressing her deeper into the aluminium chair upon which she sat, its left front leg slightly shorter than the others. Cold, uncomfortable, a room void of peace, it made the mind into an echo chamber, the acts which brought whomever sat inside let to reverberate without pause nor relief. Indeed this was one ancient idea that had not once lost the least of its utility.

Seated in the chair in which no comfort could be found was a woman. She was naked, covered in blood and a viscous fluid he could not immediately identify. It seemed familiar, though the mindscape whence that memory hailed was beyond his immediate access. Her wrists were bound to the centre of the table by chains of anomalous materials only the greatest of mages would know how to break. Red and ragged from chafing against the chains, fresh blood dripped down her wrists as her arms and hands quivered from the pain. Hunched over, her face was obscured by long, wet strands of hair, tangled and dripping with the same fluids as the rest of her. Draped on the table, her messy and tangled hair left pools and streaks of thick, ruddy slime. Behind her, a trio of figures dressed in a manner that spoke of their station stood.

On the left stood a tall, dark, and wispy woman, with white hair unbound and untrimmed. She wore a sleeveless dress which, like her hair, blew gently about her as though she called to her a soft, spring zephyr. Her grey eyes spoke of a sorrow deeper than any mortal could bear, and her shoulders sagged beneath the weight of burdens she barely had strength to carry.

In the middle a pale and short man rippling with muscles, stood with his arms folded over his chest. His head he kept shaven clean, but his jaw boasted a thick and impressive auburn beard that would have been the pride of many a starship's captain. Wearing military-style fatigues, he exuded strength, authority, and the temperament of a man who had spent his life mastering himself, and from that, gained power beyond measure.

The woman on the right, however, was most intriguing. She seemed a mix of all humanity, bearing the tan and physique of one who had spent her life employed in manual labour beneath the beating sun. She wore only a short skirt and kept her hair—dark but iridescent in the manner of ravens, pleochroic in the hues of a peacock—short and in a neatly arranged topknot.

"The woman on the left," Hal said, "you may, for now at least, refer to her either as The Weathermaster, Halcyon's Weathermaster, or HalWeath."

"She has no other name?" Wander enquired.

"Her name is sacred to her," Hal replied, "given only to the worthy."

"How did she become your weathermaster?"