"Thank you, come again!"
Val waved off what was very likely the last customer of the day, they were set to close up shop in just a few minutes now. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he leaned over his work bench and took a few moments to simply breathe, giving himself a brief respite after the day's labor.
Note stood over by the counter, collecting credit cartridges from their register and adding them to their income total of the day. Val raised his head, watching her as she tapped on their gaunt and performed the calculations. When it seemed that she'd finished, he raised his eyebrows questioningly. "So ....?"
She gave a sigh of relief. "We've met our quota for the day and then some. On track to pay rent at the end of the month."
He tiredly pumped a fist in victory. "That's the best news I've heard all week."
"No kidding. Maybe you can actually sleep in for once."
He actually snorted at that, shaking his head with a chuckle. That thought led to another thought, however, one that had been crossing his mind since Rila had suggested it. "Hey, Note?"
"Yeah?"
"I think ... maybe we should take a few days off. For Ascension Day, I mean."
Note froze midway through her cartridge collection, tilting her head up as though she hadn't heard him right. "I'm sorry?"
"Well, last night got me thinking," he explained. "It has been a while since we took any time for something other than scraping enough money together for rent. And so long as Rila's covering it ... a few days off from work wouldn't kill us, right?"
"You mean it?"
He was surprised to hear such blatant enthusiasm in her voice. "I take it you like the idea?"
"God, yes," she confirmed. "I'm just surprised you actually considered her offer. I mean, let's be honest, you haven't exactly been the definition of 'easygoing' over the last few months. Hell, I practically had to pull teeth just for you to agree to dinner last night."
He held a hand up, conceding. "Okay, fair. Don't expect me to throw a party anytime soon or anything, but I think a few days of relaxation would do us both some good."
"One of us more than the other, but yes."
Note began to pack the credit cartridges into a bag, preparing them for the journey to their local banking terminal for deposit. She stopped, however, as she heard Val clear his throat and she looked up to see him staring at her from his bench. "What?"
"One last thing we need to take care of." He gestured to his bench and then to her. "I got my exercise in today at work, now you need to get yours in."
She suddenly knew where he was going with this and rolled her optics. "Do we really have to do this right now? We both know it's going to be the same as it always is."
"We've got time. Come on, just a quick test."
Note knew that he wasn't going to take no for an answer. Setting the cartridges and bag down in resignation, she walked around the counter and over to his bench. He reached for her forearm, grabbing the gaunt and slipping it off of her.
Setting it on the workspace, he stepped back and gestured at her to begin. "Okay, give it a shot."
She focused on the device as it sat there, inactive. Concentrating, she raised her right hand up, initially closed in a fist, then spread her fingers and flexed them outward.
Nothing happened.
The metal components of her face pinched together, narrowing the glow of her optics. She extended her fingers up, tightening her joints and squeezing as though an invisible fruit were being crushed in the palm of her hand. Finally, the barest glimmer of crimson light manifested from her fingertips.
A translucent, barely visible strand of that light began to reach towards the gaunt. Val and Note watched carefully, neither of them speaking a word. Granted, Note wasn't sure she could talk if she'd even wanted to, all of her effort and concentration was being sapped just to maintain this pathetic display.
But as her hand began to shake, the light itself began to flicker and grow more unstable. In another moment or two, she gasped in exertion, and the light disappeared.
Val pursed his lips. "Still having trouble, huh?"
Note massaged her arm with her other hand, staring at the still-inactive gaunt on the bench frustratedly. "Obviously." She turned around, stalking back towards the counter. "This is so stupid. I don't even know what's wrong with me—"
"Hey, nothing's wrong with you."
"Clearly, something is wrong," she shot back. "I haven't been able to summon more than a spark since the Gate. We both know what I'm capable of, you saw it." She started shoving the cartridges into the bag again, her voice growing more angry by the moment. "You were right there, I was finally learning how to use my abilities. I blasted that damn diamond with the shockwave of the century—so why can't I even power on a gaunt now?"
He winced. "I don't know, Note."
Note tiredly sat on the floor, her back against the wall. Val followed suit, sitting next to her and planting his hand on her shoulder. "I know you don't want to hear it, but you need to give it time. We'll figure out how to get your powers back, I know it."
She scoffed, though it was light and not meant to offend. "And there's that optimism I've been missing. Wish I could share it."
"Pardon my intrusion."
A sudden voice caught both of them off guard, raspy and low, and they swiveled their heads to see a hooded figure stepping past the threshold of the shop entrance, their face hidden under the shadow of their cowl. Only the twinkling reflection of light on their eyes was visible.
Standing up, Val grabbed the gaunt from the bench, tossed it to Note who easily caught it and slid it back onto her forearm, then met the stranger's gaze. "I'm afraid we're closing up for the night, sir. But we'd be more than happy to serve you in the morning."
"I will only take a few moments of your time," the stranger said, cutting him off and shambling closer. "I need to see you with my own eyes. To know that you are the One."
Val furrowed his brow. "I'm sorry?"
He was too surprised to react as they continued forward, their hunched posture lowering them to the same height as Val. He and Note both tensed up as the stranger finally reached him, standing no more than a foot away and moving their head as though to examine him from every angle. This close, Val was able to see it was a Nox, his fur greyed and matted in certain patches on his face, and Val could see the barest blushing of blue on the Nox's orb-like eyes that indicated at least partial blindness.
"You are truly standing here," the stranger said, suddenly easing off from his examination and staring at Val with an indiscernible expression. "It seems the grave cannot hold the Architects."
Val nodded slowly, clearly uncomfortable with the situation. "Mind telling me who you are?"
"I am but a messenger," the Nox proclaimed, bowing low. "I speak for the Forgotten."
"Oh." Val scratched his head idly. "Sorry, but we're not exactly the religious type. If you have a pamphlet or something instead, you can leave it on our counter—"
"The Forgotten wish for you to know a thing," the messenger continued, ignoring Val's interruption. "A warning. Listen close, young human, and listen well. Their words have guided you in the past, but they can only guide you so far. The next steps must be taken by you, the both of you. Especially as the consequences of your actions are to be felt soon."
Val began inching his way away from the stranger as Note made her way around the counter, both unsure of what to expect from an unbalanced religious acolyte. "Sir, I think it'd be best if you left—"
"The torch has been lit, your flame begins to burn. The key is now yours, to ignore or to turn."
A sudden memory, one of fiery pain and voices in his head in the bowels of an Architect temple, brought itself to the forefront of Val's mind. He felt an icy hand grab hold of his innards, its chill seeping its way into his chest and stomach. "What did you just say?"
"You have heard them," the stranger urged, nodding as his speech became more hasty and erratic. "Their riddles in your dreams, leading you to venture on your path of discovery years ago. They spoke to you before, god-child. I daresay you've heard many voices in your head, but you would do well not to forget theirs."
"The voices in our dreams?" Note cut in, stepping forward now as she too now recognized the what the messenger was talking about. "The riddles? How could you possibly know about those?"
"I fear that I cannot say more." The messenger stepped away from the both of them. "There are rules that cannot be violated, I must abide them. I shall speak quickly—you must take another such path soon if you are to rectify the errors of your forebears. The Architects left many things behind in their absence, not all of them gifts. These remnants have lain dormant for millennia, but now they are waking up. You woke them up."
The messenger held up a single bony finger. "This is the message of the Forgotten: you will seek them out and follow their instruction. Only through them can you find your way to the Eternity Vault. Only with the Eternity Vault can you stave off catastrophe."
He held his hands up to slow the stranger. "Hold on, who are the Forgotten? What is this Eternity Vault? You have to explain—"
The messenger reached deep within the folds of his cloak and retrieved a ragged, folded cloth. Thrusting it at Val, the stranger instructed, "Seek out that symbol. When you find it, you will find the Forgotten."
Then, he promptly turned and left, the sound of his retreating footsteps fading quickly into the muffled ambience of the Mercantile's night life outside. With trepidation, Val knelt down and gingerly picked up the cloth. Unfolding it to its full size, he was met with an icon of which he had only seen once before.
Another recollection shot through his mind, one of this symbol in the temple archives. He remembered the black liquid in the basin, shaping itself into an unrecognizable form with many limbs. He remembered the searing pain as his mind tried to connect the dots between what he was seeing and what was buried in his memory—and then blackness as unconsciousness had taken him.
Dropping the cloth, he ran to the exit of the shop, sticking his head out and glancing in each direction for any sign of the messenger. But as he'd feared, the mysterious stranger seemed to have vanished entirely. There wasn't a trace of them in sight.
Walking back over to Note and the paper, she was clearly taken aback by his reaction to the icon. "What is it? What does it mean?"
"I don't know," he answered truthfully. "But this symbol was on one of the files back in the Archives on the dead moon. When I saw it, I had another memory seizure. I blacked out—but as I did, I heard voices speaking to me again, and they said exactly what that stranger just said about the key being mine to turn."
"When was the first time you heard them?"
"The day I woke up, after the crash. Not everything was clear then, but I remember what they said." He furrowed his brow, thinking hard on their exact words. "'Of mind and soul and algorithmic mold, of blood and bone and fibrous sinew. Hidden truths must now unfold, the hunt awakened—begun anew.' When did you first hear them?"
"The same day," she said, her voice quieting. "'The knight whose flame burns half as long, but may yet shine twice as bright, the animus of note and song—inherit now the darkest blight.'"
"They're both referring to us in different ways," Val realized. "Me, the blood and bone knight. You, the algorithmic mold, the Animus. And 'the hunt awakened'? The 'darkest blight'? They knew who we were, and they knew about the Sensus."
"But I thought the voices we heard were the Sensus."
"When I heard the Sensus in my head," Val said, speaking slowly as he put his thoughts in order, "it didn't sound the same as these other voices. It spoke weirdly, like it was trying to mimic speech without quite getting it right, and it was always trying to make me afraid. These other voices we've heard ... I don't know what they are. Maybe it's just a trick, or maybe it's something else entirely. I'm not sure."
Note crossed her arms, blatantly unhappy with the situation. "Great. Just what we needed to add to our list of problems. Something new that wants to mess with our minds."
The two of them stood there in silence for some time, processing the dark revelation that they'd just experienced. Finally, Note turned her head upwards and her optics met Val's eyes. "Val ... what did the messenger mean that the consequences of our actions would be felt soon?"
"I don't know, Note." He swallowed hard. "I don't know, and I really wish I did."
—V—
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