Knowledge

  Prete doesn't want to waste his power communicating with you, so I'm writing you this letter. How's the Actually, I can't really trust parchment with cssified information. I'm where I should be, and our new allies should be arriving by now. They will bring resources and a new pn. Try it out where you need to, and we can use it for the ultimate victory over madness. Oh yes, send the one with an unpronounceable name after I'd rather write him a separate letter.

  - Your centurion. – The message for the fifth century of the Hand.

  At the exit of Sanctuary 16, they were met by a white creature with bck dots instead of eyes, a crooked slit instead of a mouth, and a smoking pipe sticking out of it. It was dressed in shapeless clothes and a cap (if it can be called that) of yellow and orange leaves. The creature opened the doors, which smmed shut as soon as the company left.

  The rain stopped and night fell. The moon shards were clearly visible in the cloudless starry sky. It smelled like it should after a rainstorm. Titus looked in their direction.

  "Do you think Alm can find us?" Gloomeye asked.

  "If only a ghost flying underground who's been watching us for a long time could tell him," Splinter snorted.

  They all looked at each other and quickly saddled up. Drat studied the map again and began to point the way. The pegs had to run along the ground so that Alm, if he was nearby, wouldn't notice them gliding carelessly over his head.

  There were more and more scars in the area, getting deeper and wider, until the ground just gave up and became one big canyon. Ahead was a pin of barren nd with a chasm meandering through it. Gloomy risked a gnce down - it would have taken him many metres to reach the bottom. And if that wasn't enough, there was magerot below.

  It did not care about such trivial things as earth attraction and the ws of fluid behaviour, and when it reached the steep canyon walls, the magerot began to flow upwards.

  "How fast will it consume the world?" Gloomy thought, but realising he'd said it out loud when Splinter answered him:

  "Not in our lifetimes, I hope. But if it does in ours, I'd like to turn into a cat. Judging by your behaviour, everyone would have rushed to pet me and carry me in their arms."

  After a while, they reached a cliff. At the bottom was a vast pit filled with magerot, with a giant human skeleton sitting in the centre. Truly gigantic, the company on the pegs would not only fit on its skull, but could also get lost from each other there. Gloomeye saw it from afar, but refused to believe his eyes until the st moment. The giant was half-submerged in the magerot and looking down, giving the impression of a sad man sitting on his knees. A suspension bridge made of ropes and wooden pnks led to the top of the skeleton, and another bridge connected the skull to the other side of the cliff.

  "Dem ... heresy! Ah, to the demons! The demonic heresy! Regent himself would have said the same thing!" Splinter excimed.

  "Squeak!" Drat confirmed.

  "Did Titus have a brother? Why don't we have stories about them?" the girl continued. "He'd scratch his ass and change the whole history of our nds."

  "The skeleton is not strange here," Gloomeye expined. "Magerot only changes and consumes the living, right? It was probably an ordinary person who had entered this magerot. He grew to this size, then died, maybe there wasn't enough air in the world to breathe, or some organ didn't change. The magerot took his living flesh, but the skeleton is more of an object, like a stone, it did not change. I'm more interested in who made the bridges here and how."

  "Speaking of bridges. I'm not going to walk on them. Nightmares are much more inviting than this," Splinter said, gesturing to the wind-tossed pnks on the ropes.

  "Squeak!" Drat warned, pointing back. A creature that looked uncomfortably like a running Alm appeared in the distance.

  "We have no choice. He'll tear us apart with his cws if we don't cross and cut the bridge," Gloomeye said.

  "Still not convinced," Splinter looked from the speeding Mourneer to the perilous bridge.

  "Drat, you're the lightest of us, can you lead the pegs now? If they pass, so will we," said Gloomy.

  Squeaking, Drat tied the pegs together with ropes one by one and led them to the bridge. The pnks creaked and swayed, but they held. Gloomeye looked at Alm, and now it was clear that it was him.

  "Close your eyes and I'll lead you through," the guy suggested.

  Splinter obeyed reluctantly, holding out her hand. They walked slowly across the bridge. The girl squeezed Gloomeye's hand so tightly that he could feel her rapid heartbeat more than his own. At the openings of the fallen pnks, Gloomy took her foot and put it on the next pnk.

  "I'm walking on solid ground, how else? Humans are made for the earth, not the sky. And it's full of bright pnts and small alms," Splinter whispered to herself.

  The rat had reached the skull, and the guy and girl were in the middle of the path when Alm reached the bridge and stepped onto it, which immediately colpsed under his weight. Gloomeye managed to grab the pnk with one hand, but the impact of the titan's skull almost caused him to lose his grip.

  "The magic of the elfkind!" cried the girl. She opened her eyes and grabbed Gloomeye's arm and the board with renewed strength.

  Gncing down, he regretted his decision. In addition to the disgusting height, he saw that the big Mourneer had also grabbed hold of the edge of the bridge and was now trying to dig his cws into the bone. Pulling the girl up higher than him, Gloomy shouted:

  "Crawl up!"

  Gloomeye felt pain in his arms as he crawled up. He wasn't used to climbing the (now) vertical dder. His head was spinning and his consciousness seemed to have gone out of his head, but he kept putting his shoulders under the girl's feet to speed her up. He didn't dare look down, but he could feel something shaking: the dder, the skeleton, or himself.

  Suddenly, the Splinter's feet disappeared, and instead of a new pnk, he found a void. Got there! Gloomeye saw the restless pegs and Drat, Splinter on all fours, shivering, and (what he hadn't expected) Valkali jumping right over another bridge on her white peg. Each of their jumps knocked out pnks and tightened ropes, ready to break and end this mockery at any moment.

  Alm! Need to cut the bridge, but with what? Then kick the Mourneer when he appears, but given his strength and mass, this will do nothing. And Gloomeye had only the strength to tremble.

  Alma's face appeared from over the edge, assessing the situation. Then the Mourneer swiped Gloomy away with his paw. He flew to the side and began to slide down the skull. The st thing he saw was Valkali reaching the top of the skull, breaking her bridge.

  "Gloomeye!" called out an unfamiliar female voice. Was it Valkali who cried out? Can she speak? Or was it Splinter's voice distorted? Or perhaps...? No...

  So far, the slope was allowing him to slide down slowly, but he knew it would be over soon. The rounding of the skull will go down, which means he's waiting for the abyss, the magerot, the bottom. What a stupid, unknown death. And I haven't achieved anything in my life. Gloomeye now understood the people of Sanctuary 16 very well. At least my sadness wouldn't st long.

  Above, the metal rings of the heroine's sword swirled. Gloomy saw a bloody explosion from the direction of the dder, followed by Alm's paws and head flying down, followed by his body. Well, at least I'm avenged.

  The rings in the sky did not stop, and there was another explosion above, this time from a blow to the skull. Out of the dust flew the end of a sword, coming out of the bone and slicing it open behind it. And the sword flew towards Gloomeye. Really? Another sword ring knock a hole somewhere near the temple and joined in the shattering of the skeleton. It began to shake all over.

  One of the shakes threw the guy, and he flew down, not slowing down at all. Fortunately, the sword reached him and pierced his shoulder. Gloomeye clung to his rescuer with his hands, despite the severe damage to them.

  "I am death, not salvation," the sword growled, but then it was surprised. "Hmm, familiar blood."

  At the same time, the skull ceased to be a skull and became bone fragments that flew to the magerot. The sword, along with Gloomeye impaled on it, flew up. Valkali caught them there, on a piece of debris that had already begun to fall. With a flick of her hand, she gathered up the sword and slid it behind her back, ripping it out of Gloomy's wound and hands, and with her other arm wrapped around the guy, pcing him on her peg. He didn't even jump, just opened his membranes and began to glide slowly towards the skeletal shoulders.

  The giant's torso began to roll slowly forward and down, but Gloomy hoped it wouldn't sink completely into the magerot. His friends were also gding on their pegs. And Grassy with them. Not that she had much freedom to move around, but it seemed to Gloomeye that after all she'd been through, she'd rather run away from him.

  The group nded on one of the slowly falling skeleton's shoulder bdes. Everyone jumped off the peg to keep their bance on their own feet. Gloomy looked questioningly at his savior:

  "Thank you for saving me, but now what?"

  She held the invisible cup in her hand, then turned it over and looked at it expectantly. Could it really be Drat calling my name? He is an upright, intelligent alm, the voice could be anything. Gloomy looked at the rat bnkly. He held up his forefinger and carefully drew a semicircle. It's not a good time to forget how to read gestures.

  The titan's ribcage began to sink, and Gloomeye felt the air above the magrota shift again. But he also heard a rhythmic sound, like a whisper pretending to be music. That's exactly what I don't need.

  As it fell, parts of the skeleton caused the magerot to spray, and it liked that so much that the spray continued without the bones falling. The magerot swallowed the skeleton almost whole, leaving only part of the vertebrae and the shoulder bdes. It was a good thing that it seemed to have been hunched over in life. With a final push, the dangerous liquid took pity on the humans, leaving them a small isnd to survive on, but almost at their feet.

  Splinter lost her bance from the impact and filed her arms, trying to regain it. Gloomeye lunged at her and managed to grab her arms, but her legs separated and she fell backward into the magerot. Instantly on her feet, she spun around to assess any damage, then turned to Gloomeye for help:

  "What have I got there? Everything is fine?"

  "You have a good butt," Gloomeye reassured her.

  The butt was actually quite skinny. If it was good, the guy wouldn't say anything out of embarrassment.

  "And you have a tail now," he added.

  The back, after getting acquainted with the magerot, decided to continue, and now the girl has a small (finger-sized) tail, more like a hanging strip of skin. Splinter didn't react as Gloomeye had expected. No "Oh, you're the only tailless freak in our group now" or "Where's a knife to cut that thing off?" Splinter just started to cry. Her face was wrinkled and red, snot dripping from her nose, and she held out her shaking hands.

  Gloomeye, already proficient in gesture nguage, thought he understood her. He stepped between her arms and put his arm around her, thinking he should be kinder to her. She buried her wet face in his chest. A crazy magical liquid gushing out all around them, but fortunately it didn't reach the humans. Rainbows, northern lights, halos, reverse rainbows, and mirages appeared in the sprays.

  "Never... Never again," Splinter squelched.

  Gloomy didn't know what she meant. When he could show his age with the fingers of one hand, he discovered that emotions were always a choice. He had learned to discard the unnecessary ones, but he suspected it made him less understanding of other people. Why get angry for more than five seconds outside of a fight? What is the point of wanting the unattainable? What's the point of being sad? Maybe Splinter was upset by walking on a rickety bridge at high altitude, or by the tail, or maybe even by Gloomeye's fall into the abyss? Or all of them together had a cumutive effect.

  "Okay, your butt isn't just good, it's great, don't be so upset," the guy muttered. If he had turned around, he would have seen Valkali's grin.

  Splinter snorted and sprayed more snot on Gloomeye's clothes. Then she pulled back and looked at her work. She stopped being heartbroken.

  "I'm sorry. You can blow your nose at me if you want," the girl apologized.

  Valkali chipped away at the ledges in the sheer walls with her sword, which grumbled incessantly at its misuse. And with it, she dug into the ground above her makeshift steps, pulling herself, the peg below her, and the passenger in the back onto those ledges. Gloomeye didn't even know which was stronger: her hand holding the sword (even though it was shaking) or her legs holding the peg. Perhaps this magical sword gave her such power, not only was it able to speak, but it also had some kind of beyond the pale length. Valkali took short breaks to rest or let her sword rest. The st thing she pulled out was her peg.

  "Thank you," Gloomeye said.

  "Thank you," Splinter said.

  Drat gave Valkali a thumbs up, and Valkali put her hand on her chest and bowed slightly (and her peg lowered his head a little. Not a bad trick). Valkali and the rat obviously didn't need such archaic things as nguage to understand each other. The heroine then jumped into the darkness without further ado.

  The company decided to move away from the cliff and rest. They fed the pegs, treated Gloomeye's wounds, ate dried meat, drank water and y down on the ground. But Splinter decided to speak again before entering the dream world:

  "What chance did we have of escaping?" she said thoughtfully.

  "100%, since we escaped," Gloomeye replied, already ready to fall asleep.

  "The bridge colpsed just as we had time to climb up in front of Alm. Valkali suddenly came to our rescue at the st moment, which means she happened to be nearby and decided to help. The skeleton didn't get completely underneath the magerot, but left us a little space to live. This is an incredible series of successes, and on the verge of failure.

  Gloomy hadn't thought much about luck before. He knew from Storyteller's tales that the lower the odds, the closer the success (and a one-in-a-million chance was a guarantee of victory). Conversely, if everything is conducive to the fulfillment of pns, then the hero should dig the ground to hide.

  "Titus looked at us, his gaze brings luck," he suggested.

  "I've heard it brings bad luck," the girl protested.

  "So my good luck and your bad luck banced each other out," Gloomeye said. "And everything happened as it did."

  ***

  In the morning, after a breakfast of crumbled safe pnts, dried meat and a sweet, viscous substance they spread on ftbread, the group continued on their way. They enjoyed the ck of pursuit, the warmth of Dayorb and the light headwind. The empty pin continued, but now several looping scars cut it into isnds.

  "By the way, write Valkali to your harem, hero?" Splinter rode to Gloomeye's side. "We already have the princess of Capital, the dirty wench of the den for fun, and all the southern women of the Fatron'' caravan will provide us with money and exotic goods. But the heroine of monstrous power is just the thing for protection. And she won't bother you with talks."

  "I think she's my mother," the guy said thoughtfully.

  "Errrr... What an answer," something incredible happened after the Break: Splinter found no answer.

  Gloomy noticed that her eyes were now engaging in general facial expressions, and that emotions were beginning to appear in them. How long ago? It's hard to see her face, hidden by her hair. And she began to keep her back straight.

  "Merchant did not give birth to me, and I remember Valkali from my childhood, and not so many women came to us, and even more, left without a trace. I understand the nguage of gestures very well. She comes to our rescue, even if she doesn't know that we are her direct competitors, from her point of view we are chasing her. The sword found my blood interesting, perhaps because I share it with its owner. And I also feel that way," Gloomeye said.

  "O-o-o-o-okay. Thank you for doing me such a favour. I've been making jokes about you two all night. And now what? Throw them into the nearest scar?”

  "I am sorry I was born of her and ruined my mockery. You can save it for another woman," the guy apologised.

  Splinter wagged her finger at him,

  "So be it, I forgive you this time, but I don't want you to do it again."

  "Don't you consider yourself a member of my harem?" Gloomy decided to change the subject from his supposed mother to Splinter.

  "No, but why am I there? Do... what?" the girl was surprised.

  "At least you already keep records of women. What should I call it? The manager? The scribe?"

  As they talked, they rode up to the Fallen Academy.

  It was a small isnd, tucked into the nearest edge of a rge pit that stretched into the distance. Inside the pit, as was to be expected in the area, was magerot. On the isnd itself, there were several colpsed multi-storey buildings. It looked as if the isnd had descended from the sky and continued to do so, reaching the ground and digging a hole.

  The party entered the isnd through a tower that had fallen onto their cliff, ending in a broken spherical dome. Inside, the tower was spacious, and daylight filtered in through the colourful shards in the windows, painting the floor (which used to be the walls) in different colours.

  The isnd where the Academy was located was a sad sight. The buildings were in ruins, some lying on their sides, others reduced to piles of rubble. It was hard to imagine what the Academy had looked like before its fall. Different styles, decorations and colours could coexist in the same heap of ruins.

  In the middle of the ruins, a statue of a man with a very prominent bird's nose, slicked-back hair (perhaps because the sculptor did not want to bother with his real hairstyle) and powerful eyebrows fell on its side. His arms are outstretched, as if he doesn't quite believe (because of his appearance) that he can't fly, and it's worth a try. Broken gss balls y around him.

  The isnd itself was small compared to Capital or Truth, with one end visible from the other. Inspecting the buildings, however, took several hours. All around them were shredded, white, sprawling creatures that looked melted, like some of the food in Gloomy's bag. Only their faces, looking up from their torsos, were dark. One creature was huge, and several smaller ones could be made from it.

  "Do you think...?" Splinter asked the hanging question hesitantly as she stared at the surrounding ruins.

  "If you're talking about monsters, yes. But the buildings were already destroyed by the fall, it was the Flying Academy," Gloomeye assured her, though he wasn't sure if some of the debris hadn't been further shredded and moved by his mother.

  Eventually they found the entrance to the preserved building, for it was not made of gss and stone, but of gss and metal. But it was very tilted and halfway underground. Inside, there were rooms, corridors and a rge hall with empty shelves and a mountain of books on the floor.

  The books piqued Gloomy's interest, and he sat down on the sloping floor and began to open them. Someone long dead had created a book, and now Gloomeye was practically communicating with them through time and pce, with his thoughts and emotions. This is... a kind of magic.

  Unfortunately, the communication didn't go well. The thoughts the ancients wanted to say to Gloomeye were (to put it mildly) incomprehensible: 'The Soulflow at Bifurcation Points', 'The Limit of Accuracy in Homuncur Temporal Retrograde Experiments', 'Thought Experiments on Destabilised Emotional Personifications (Demons) and their Retrospective Consequences'. What kind of combinations of meanings are these?

  He was distracted from studying the 'Influence of the Observer's Animus in Harmonising the Desynchronised Universe' by a persistent tap on his shoulder from Splinter. Gloomeye looked up and saw the ghost.

  "Have you started asking for reports directly from me? What impertinence!" the guy returned to his book.

  "This ghost isn't a Mourneer," the girl informed him in a panicked voice.

  Gloomy jumped to his feet and saw for himself. It was a transparent woman, like the Mourneer's cursor, but blue in colour. She wore a floor-length robe, with long hair and pointed ears that stuck out like little alms', not like the elf he knew. She was also only slightly taller than Gloomeye.

  "Sorry for the mess, visitors. The physical-skinned librarians who could have cleaned up are dead, and their shift hasn't been sent yet," she said.

  "G-g-ghost?" Gloomeye stuttered a little, confused.

  "I'm a projection, not a ghost. It is sad to see such a drop in the level of knowledge of those rising to the Academy."

  "Mmmm... We actually went down to the Academy. Don't you know it fell? And about the Break of the world?" Gloomy decided to enlighten the projection with his knowledge.

  "Well, of course I don't. I am a projection. Are you trying to give me new information now? After my creation? Seriously? Shame on you," the transparent woman scolded him.

  "And how do you work as a librarian? You look after the books, don't you? When they bring in a new one? Who has taken a book, who has returned a book? That's new information, isn't it?" asked Gloomy.

  "Okay, you're not such a fool. I pretend to be a piece of furniture so that visitors will leave me alone and leave quickly when they find what they need," the projection admitted. "So you are here on purpose or just: humans see ruins - humans go to loot the ruins.

  "Do you know how to remove a tail?" Splinter interjected quickly, knowing that Gloomeye would take all the time he was allowed with his main quest.

  "I assume we are talking about a real tail and not an academic debt?" the projection smiled, but no one supported it and the smile faded. "Just break down the spell that gave it into its component parts and see how you can reverse each of them. That's really the basics."

  Splinter darkened:

  "It's not a spell, it's just the magerot, thankfully. And don't say you don't know what it is, you're floating in it on the pavement level."

  "We don't do wild magic. Ask the Deep Academy, they can sink so low. The pun was intended. And don't you want to stop being a rat?" The librarian turned her attention to Drat.

  He had been busily pacing, hands csped behind his back, taking in the surroundings. He turned and shook his head.

  "Are you an elf? I saw an elf once, he was different from you," Gloomeye decided to take the opportunity to ask as well.

  The projection sat down on an invisible chair, crossed her legs under her robe and csped her knee with folded hands:

  "Even you, as two humans, are not identical copies of each other, especially if one of you is a wildling, even if unintentionally. Yes, I'm a projection of an elf," she began to swing her leg impatiently. "But that's not why you're here, is it? Let's get down to business, or do you want to know if all elven maidens are frigid and if we like to be pulled by the ears?"

  "Does Maginarium mean anything to you?" the guy decided not to annoy the librarian with the question "what is frigid?" and got to the business, as she suggested.

  "The previous visitor left a book about it over there," the elf pointed in that direction. "But may I ask you not to tear up the books? It's already an unnecessary pile of rubbish, but I still feel like my heart tearing along with the parchment."

  Gloomeye had guessed what he would find as soon as he saw Valkali on the bridge. But he didn't want to think about it. Part of the page was missing from the open book, there was only the beginning: "...So it was decided to break the devil's machine and hide the parts in different pces of Faltess. Here they are:..." and the end: "...and the st part was stolen by the Court of Madness. May the true gods have mercy on us."

  "Learned everything we needed to know and made sure we didn't. A true loving mother," Splinter looked at the torn book behind Gloomeye.

  "No, she left a trail. She separated our work so we wouldn't look for pces where she had already taken a part," Gloomy expined. He still wasn't quite sure what to make of Valkali. On the one hand, she had abandoned him as a child, but on the other, he did not know her circumstances.

  "And where does this lead, so generously and nobly left to us? I can't see it from here."

  "Have you ever heard of the Court of Madness?" Gloomeye asked.

  Judging by the way Splinter turned white and widened her eyes, she must have heard something.

  "Something," she croaked.

  ***

  "One st question: do you have anything on... magic for beginners?" Gloomy asked the non-ghost.

  "Deep Academy. Only the basics are taught there," said the projection, now lying on a pile of books. “Though, no, human, the old ws of magic no longer work, the new ones must be rediscovered. Perhaps you will be a pioneer in this," the elf said seriously, raising her head.

  "Are you going to choose a profession you can't name in polite society?" if Gloomeye hadn't been lost in his own thoughts, he would have heard the serious tone in Splinter's voice.

  "Yes, but what's the big deal? Is extra self-defence a bad thing? And much more powerful than all the others we have," Gloomy said.

  "Because it's magic! Magic! I thought you knew what was wrong with absolute evil," she said, sounding genuinely upset.

  "I'd know why magic bothers you so much if you told me about yourself," Gloomeye snapped at her.

  "I'm ending this conversation," Splinter ran out of the hall and tried to sm the door, but it was broken and didn't reach the jamb.

  The guy immediately regretted his words. Splinter didn't need to talk about herself. Everything she had said before was a sign of her good will. He decided to apologise to her.

  Splinter came back and stood next to Gloomy, looking at the same books as he did:

  "I'm not going to tell you about my life. It's very boring. Yes. Very boring. Only if you really need to fall asleep quickly, and even then, if your life depended on it."

  "I'm sorry."

  "No, I'm sorry. I have no right to demand anything from anyone. If you wish, you can become an archmage."

  The projection raised her head again and looked at them:

  "Kids..."

  Unnecessary author's note: Because my pacing is fast, it's worth adding a lot of action where it's justified. I don't know how well the action is described, but it all looks good in my head.

  Valkali's attacks turned on heavy music in my head, maybe even with a chorus.

  A bloody explosion, because the density of Alm is much higher than that of normal creatures. I don't like to read the details of the cruelty myself.

  I tried to create a crisis in their retionship. I tried. But Gloomeye is in control of his emotions, and Splinter has a low ego. How can I work with such material?