RE:COSMO
The First 30 pages
Note from Author: COSMO was my first completed long-term writing project. A story told across thousands of drawings, posters, notes in the margins of homework assignments. After starting the story two or three times, at the age of 15, I wrote a 200-page script for the epic RPG I wanted it to become. A simple story of a powerless boy, by love and friendship, growing in power to defeat the undead emperor, along the way fighting dozens of deities and critters corrupted by the shadows looming over the land. I grew my skills in writing, music, art and modelling all for the goal of ultimately adapting Cosmo, giving it the form it was always meant to have. But going to school for game design disillusioned me. It's a project that was always doomed to be bigger than me. And now, in 2026, I still cling onto it's characters, still revere the ambitions I had, even as they and the story they were trying to tell, fell behind any standards of quality or storytelling I now hold myself to. It's funny, actually. The new Tomodachi Life is actually what brought me back. The realization a self-insert for who I was like Cosmo would have been trans, and that the world she's fighting against is a twisted version of her own ideals. It's a depth the text itself never had that now felt critical to draw out. There was a chance to save Cosmo, and that chance was breathing new life into the characters and waiting patiently if the fate they were strung along by is truly how the story was meant to go. Thus, after slimming the story of it's gameisms, erasing all but the settings and souls that occupied it, I now write a new Cosmo. A novel in form, it no longer bears unenviable ambitions. It's a retelling from the ground up, not a simple rewrite, atop which it's occupants can finally find peace.
(This is an early draft of something I'll be seeking to publish.)
I. A Fracture in the Cosmos
A boy sits on the silver shoals of an archipelago far beyond all known shores. Cosmo, alone and wistful, is lost before the endless seas he has spent all his life learning from. Even as the trials of life mount, at least this remains constant, still carries him onward with vigour and calm.
Before him, twin sailboats cut raucously through the golden fabric stitched atop the visage by the afternoon sun. He shutters at each jut and crashing of the waves, curls tightly into himself against the caress of tempests. Nature’s verve and the breeze’s gentle touch fill him with not but a cruel ache. He’s pining to be real again, to be vindicated by the strokes of invisible hands. Yet, there is only he and the earth, and he is no presence at all. He presses his hand against the pocket of his vibrant red tee, embracing its warm glow. He opens it up, staring at the aqua gemstone within. Every twinkle the strength and will of he and dozens before him.
Deltopia Isles house the fortunate escapees of history and conquest. These lands of pagan shelter sit cradled at the heart of an eternal storm. Cosmo is one of tens of thousands to which these islands give life, yet one of very few with the unfortunate grace of power. For many years, the isles were home to the six pagan guardians, a testament to their creations and command in shaping nature to their creative will. Yet, with their minds expended, it wasn’t until the miraculous arrival of humanity that they could share in the act of creation. Each guardian graced only one of these earliest arrivals with fragments of their might, not as rulers, but as arbiters to this new synthesis of wills. The powers they were gifted let them reimagine nature in service of itself and in harmony with life. One of these six mighty blessings is currently copulating with Cosmo’s pocket-lint.
Pendant wielding is tragically by inheritance, where one must decide themself how to responsibly serve rather than leverage it for prestige. It’s a job like any other. The Guardians thought this would prevent competition for merit, barring it from the power-hungry by nature of the tragedy tied to inheritance. There’s bound to be bad apples in any system, right? But given only one pendant has ever been rescinded, the system has a pretty good streak. To wield is to serve the lives of all species of islanders until death. To wield is to channel the will of collective change through one’s body and mind, to become it and to shape it into form. To wield is to carry the legacy and prestige of dozens of esteemed men and women. These truths were ingrained in Cosmo from birth, and now, face-to-face with history, he feels gravely indifferent.
Any premature inheritance is doomed to be hollow, but Cosmo feels exceptionally weak. Since coming to wield the illustrious will of the winds, he has done nothing but fade into the patterns and rhythms he’s known his whole life for the answer to what he had before. As the waves crash, the lush path home remains, as do the cobbled paths between his schools, neighbours, jobsites. Yet Cosmo bears a power over the world he never had to consider prior, a power he’s sickened by. The thought of becoming the man his father was, the lessons and reassurance of the other wielders, fill him with a deep aching dread. The possibility of willing a mere tempest feels like a cruel assertion. There is no role for Cosmo that isn’t in the shadow and memory of the revered Derek Tempesta. This is not how the story was supposed to be written. No story should ever feature Cosmo, let alone lead with him. History is not penned for those in the shadows of men. Perhaps by them, in some second-fiddle spotlight. Cosmo does fancy himself a writer, but what’s he ever finished? He just likes character-building. He rolls the pendant around in his palm, his mind and eyes vacantly escaping into its glints. This indestructible stone is the shackle of his ancestors, as it will be his.
“Well well, good afternoon, Sir Cos.” A girl in overalls with pale orange hair stands valiantly over him. “Ain’t you three lucky, crashing your skiffs into each other. Know what Big Al was doing all weekend? Smelling Volta’s pits while she picked up and corrected all his poor wiring. I mean, can you believe the balls on the guy? Let’s dump all our occupational hazards on his student researchers.”
“Glad you made it, Alice.”
“Glad I made it too! Glad I at least get something before end-of-term coursework bites my tits off.” The two, along with those aboard the skiffs, Miles and Isaac, have been tight-knit since childhood. Born to well-known families, they are all university-age now, travelling inseparably each along their own vocational tracks. Alice, for one, is an engineer.
“Would you just look at those bastards go out there, man! Praise be to thee, Cozzie, you sexy deacon of the breeze, for these luscious, luscious waves.” She lifts her cuffs up and runs to the shoreline. “Yo, Miles! Bring it back in! I’ve earned next!” Alice strips down to her underwear and, without a second thought as to her clothes, dives into the sea. Cosmo watches the scene intently with a certain clean joy in his stomach. Seeing Alice happy makes him happy, simple as, right?. She is a much freer soul than he, always guided by a certain laxness in chasing what she felt in the moment. There’s something about Alice, that by mere proxy, Cosmo’s heart bubbles to life.
Miles dives off the skiff as Alice tries to grab at his ankles. He floats on his back, placidly guided by the shoreline waves. As his back runs against the pale sands, he rises to his feet, well-groomed even while foiled by a coat of sea-salt. The setting sun forms an aureole around his dark, wet skin as he saunters over to Cosmo. “ Whatever degree you were involved in that rocking ride, I commend it, C-Boy.” Miles plops down next to him. “You gotta follow her in, right? With these waves, you gotta. Isaac’s probably getting tired, you know? Go blow him off.”
“Don’t underestimate a junior boatsmith!” Cosmo impersonates Isaac with concerning accuracy. “No, it’s fine, Miles. Really. I like doing what I can for you guys. It’s more calming than all that. Just enjoy yourselves!” Cosmo beams as he hands Miles a towel. Miles is wrong about the breeze, of course, but that hardly warrants saying. It’s been nearly two months now with no improvement in his control.
“Don’t always gotta shoulder the burden… but glad you’re filling into it.” Miles, still wet and shirtless, hugs Cosmo.
"Gah!"
“Oh, but we love you big-time and just wanna see you smile! Go on, screw the rest of us over! We’ll still be here cheering!” Miles backs off, but rests his hand on Cosmo’s arm. He softens a little, gaze still drowning in the sea. “At least I will. The first few times maybe. No promises that cute face of yours’d carry you past that.” Ugh, why can’t he return the laugh? So damn lucky and still trapped in his own pathetic little problems. Cosmo leans into Miles’ side to comfort himself. A few minutes pass.
“Er, hate to ruin the moment, but check your 8 o’clock.” Miles looks smugly over Cosmo’s shoulder. “Now who could that snooty girl in pink be, thinking she can stage a photoshoot right here and not say hello first? Keeping her distance ‘cus she knows you and I’ll make her look bad. Wanna go humble her?”
“Go ahead. Gotta stay here keeping the winds blowing.”
“Word. Be right back. Promise.” Miles runs over to former classmate and popular local model, Candyfloss and her photographer. She’s radiantly overdressed for someone kneeling in a patch of crab-grass, a point Miles will no doubt give her shit over.
So Cosmo’s tale as a wielder begins in apathy and dishonesty. At nineteen, he wears his life sentence, the punctuation to his private life. Didn’t get the chance to grow up or “man up” beforehand. So he bides his time with friends he can no longer share the experience with. That and endless training and scholarship for what it means to serve his fellow islanders. Nova’s a scholar right? Maybe it’s okay for a wielder to just lose themself to knowledge. But the guilt of postponement by his own selfish feelings makes him want the secrets unlocked suddenly and all at once.
Cosmo crawls forward to pick up Alice’s abandoned overalls, sparing them from a brutal snuffing by the rising tide. He dusts them off before folding them in his lap, hand-ironing the denim. An oil-stained rag hung from one of the pockets, which Cosmo gently tucked back in. The smell of grease and brine cuts acridly through the tangs of Alice’s body odor. He lifts the overalls closer. It’s the nose, foremost, that lulls Cosmo back into his memories. The innocent sleepovers, the hugs of welcome and goodbye, the sense of being at home all channeled through little particles in the breeze. He’s got many homes.
Shit. What is he doing? He looks up to Alice, still gnashing carefree across the grinning waves, donning an electric expression. Miles and Candy, meanwhile, are reading each other's style choices with shouting blows. Isaac, too, completely absorbed in the spumes of mist. Isaac and Cosmo used to get mixed up as kids. Brunettes with shoulder-length waves, both light-skinned, though Isaac’s work has kept him tan. Isaac’s also always been the taller and more sharply-made of the two. It should be a favourable comparison, but Cosmo’s never got it. Neither really saw the resemblance. Either way, they’re quite opposite people.
He runs his fingertips over the bulge of the pendant before holding his hands intently before him, tries to place his trust in this devourer of lives. Professor Nova’s many mantras of advice pass through him. An esteemed biologist and one of the other six wielders, he’s offered him rigorous, yet cool-headed tutelage. “Make your body a conduit... Do not assert... Start by presuming its shape… Become yourself the airs that brush against you and motivate them... Free yourself of the little desires and read the calling of your surroundings… Will the winds come in whatever form they may.” Repeat until failure stops.
A spurt of hot air jets weakly around him, displacing a meager scoop of sand. Hmph. That’s really where he’s at? Cosmo tries again, focusing, feeling, embracing all the hot-button words and koans, full-heartedly wishing to birth a tailwind. Another flimsy burst of air. Ugh. An impotent display for no one's eyes and shame but his own. He takes the pendant out of his shirt pocket, clenching his fist painfully around the gemstone before pummeling it into the sand. He feels a tap on his shoulder.
It’s Candy, a truth conveyed by perfume alone, looming over him with her ornamental grin. “Well, well! What a show, Cos! You are star material, girl! Drama given flesh. That sand? Shaken to its core and feeling positively sedimental. She’s wishing she were still a crab shell after such a nasty scare.” Candy restlessly taps her cheek. “You know, I have the perfect use for you just as you are. You’d be a wonderful hair dryer. How about I’ll call you right after my shower tomorrow~ Just you wait. Candy goes for an all-new do, and you’ll be able to point to every headline in Luminis and say ‘*gasp* That was me!’”
Candy… resists responding to. To even try is to meet the acerbic fury of a professional in holding the spotlight. She’s so enthralling one doesn’t feel the inevitable headache creep up as she steals the air away. She pops a lollipop in her mouth and looks sideways. Sticks to a steady diet of empty calories. Sugar is the secret to manifesting a saccharine feminine soul, after all~.
“I’ll consider the offer.”
“Oh no! Where did your rapport go, C-man? You’re supposed to catch my drift and glide it to stardom! ‘I’ll consider the offer’ like you ain’t got a night of moping ahead of you.”
Candy pauses, seeming to acknowledge Cosmo isn’t in the mood. “Sorry, too far? In full sincerity, though? Jealous~. Been really getting into these books Nova dug up that’re apparently from some abandoned village of pendantless mages?? The woods are full of ancient crazies. Shit got too real when I guess they accidentally burned their village down with, like, faux guardian magic? Eek, so excited to grind out that business and cook your powers alive. Hot witches are in heavy demand this season, babe. Know any real competitors besides, ugh, Almonde?”
“Alice’s sister count? Y’know, Ms. Giada?”
“Yes. YES. Ugh. English Teacher chic is such an impending threat! No, but know what could be? You. Dual-wielding the elements, one in each hand. Perfect eyeliner. Jaw dropping at the possibilities. We’re talking a fire tornado in the shape of your face.”
“Maybe one day. Curious where Nova even found those tomes. Thought the mage village was still just speculation.”
“You know the old guy’s pendant power is all searchy-findy. I’m sure the old perv could sniff out *anything* with those creepy flower tentacles.” Candy scoffs, biting down on her lollipop. She fishes out a second one from her swollen jacket pockets.
“That’s not right. He keeps to himself.”
“Yeah, to himself and whatever harem he’s got in that abandoned building he lives in. Celibate sages have, like, gotta be the most bottled-up people alive.”
“Whatever you say. Did you, um, wanna go out there too?”
“Uh, no. I don’t do ocean. Whole thing’s a melange of peepee and poopoo. You would like that though, me riding half-mast for all of Luminis to see? Unfortunate to your boy brain, but I ain’t as crass as Alice! I’m a lady, and ladies don’t keep the whole town up-to-the-minute on… on, what underwear colour is that? Tell me, Cos!”
"I'm-
That’s right, everyone! Boxers~!” Cosmo rises to his feet dizzily, meeting Candy’s gaze.
“Why’s it matter anyway?”
“Gee, I didn’t mean no offense! Just a girl’s gotta leave some stuff to the imagination, y’know?” Cosmo rubs his eyes as Candy stares wryly at the water. “He, on the other hand, can show as much as he wants. Take notes.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Ugh, give me some slack! I’m in a tense spot! I got the second hottest girl in town willing to photograph me, right? But now the noble Miles Celestia is eating away golden hour flirting with the bitch! He doesn’t even like women, right? Get your bestie on a leash! He’s all confused and it’s jacking my style too!”
Cosmo waves over at Miles for a saving grace to this conversation. Miles wastes no time in running over. He pushes Candy to the side and puts his hand under Cosmo’s chin, inspecting his face with ironic fear. “Whew. Patient is clear of any sugar-based radiation. You’re good to go, soldier.”
Candy snorts. “Y’all are so weird. Later.”
“See ya! Oh, and you might wanna readjust that lens!” Miles laughs to himself. Ready to get going? My bro’s probably gonna be looking for me soon. Wouldn’t mind walking home together if you’re done here.”
“Y-yeah, thanks. Ready when you are.”
Miles’ brother, Cel, is another of the six pendant wielders. Besides the two of them and Nova, the only other pendant-wielder in Luminis is actually Alice’s sister, Aurora. Professor Giada. Runs the city’s archives and history curriculum. A big part of the three’s friendship came from how intertwined their families were. As for Isaac and Candy, they came from relative wealth. All lived in the shadows of their parents, their entire households both famed and haunted by their pendants and inventions.
As for the other two wielders, Solaris and Selene, they had a nasty split from Luminis not long before Cosmo was born. Founded a second city on the northernmost isle. Probably has its own set of principles, but with how little the two cities communicate, information is sparse.
Barring the sound of sandals slapping the dirt, Miles and Cosmo head home in silence. They follow the lush, scenic path parallel to the shore. The brick and glass silhouettes of downtown loom over the hills to their right.
“Say, Cosmo, I wanna press you on something. Answer however.”
“What’ve I got to hide? Shoot.”
“I know we’ve had this convo before, but you know, feelings, bodies, minds change, and I know this whole thing with your Dad’s taken a toll on you. And this is serious! No stress or judgement.”
“Miles… just say it.”
“I, well, I don’t know. The way you’ve been, it’s been reminding me. How I was before I could… put to words the type of person I was. Every day, it was like something was just not clicking into place, y’know? Something bigger than all the grief outside of us.”
“You’re asking if I’m gay again?”
Miles smirks “Whatever term you wanna use. I know it sounds like some silly thing, but-” Cosmo sighs. He felt very comfortable around Miles, but his thinly-veiled interest was something Cosmo assumed to be what he meant. “I don’t mean it transactionally. I just see myself in you, man. That your soul ain’t free. I don’t know. Candy and I watched the whole wind thing and I felt really bad letting her give you shit about it. I have been trying to feel it out through my own lens. Think how to get past-”
“I don’t know. Your concern means a lot. Just.. I’m not worth all that.” Cosmo looks sheepishly towards the city of Luminis. “Feels pretty cut and dry that I… regret not spending time with him.”
“Well that’s a different answer than last time’s “well, girls probably!”” Miles dorkily points his finger to the sky, causing Cosmo to crack up. “So I guess we’re making some progress.”
“I meant- I don’t know as in- well, I mean- I’m pretty sure I do like girls! To be clear! Not really sure if… if love is-”
“Was just a joke. No need to unpack your whole sexual identity right here, right now. You’ll know love when you feel it. Just… laying the thought out there, cus it’s about more than just love. Let the idea float until- bam! All those pent-up butterflies in your stomach erupt into an awesome zephyr as your buddies (myself included) weep in joy at the light of your romance!”
“I know love! I’ve, well I’ve definitely had people make my insides feel… soft? People I’ve felt happy at the chance of growing closer to.” Miles nods for him to keep going. “I mean isn’t love, like, moving closer to one another? I dunno I guess I don’t see how any of this is any different from how I am with you or Candy or, or Alice.” Cosmo feels weak after letting himself confess that much, like he’s excised, in rare sincerity, a truth of his worldview.
“You’ll know it when you feel it. Or maybe you’re just into a lot of people, haha. Just talked to Cel last night about the whole middle phase and he thought conjuring’s just not the same with a storm brewing in your heart. Weather pun probably intended.” Cel bears the will of weather, able to manipulate clouds, rain and storms. “Made me think of you.”
“Well, you know, it’s still pretty new, even if it might feel like forever for you. Just every day, I just wake up and realize I’m still not past it.”
“Yeah. I feel you. Not sure you remember how I was, but it never really gets better. Things eventually settle, little by little, as life goes on. It’s all less… immediately bad.”
“Just feels like that day will never come without me finally doing something to escape the shadow of… of how it was.”
Miles looks wistfully at the sun. “How it was, huh? Maybe you just need someone to get you there, give life a new purpose, right? Cel’s the best brother one could’ve asked for in the situation. Flawed as anyone but he went the distance for me. It… it meant something more than grief.” The rest of the walk vanishes into a motley of soothing exchange until they arrive at Cosmo’s front door.
“Goodnight. Love you, Miles.”
“Love you too. And write down your dream tonight!”
II. The Legionnaire’s Crisis
Marcel jerks up, head pounding with blood, torn through by biting nausea and paranoia. Lucid visions of stained dull walls and stalking silhouettes fade slowly into the heavy fuzz of darkness as the needles in his brain cease to writhe. Just a dream again, Cel. His dreams pick away bites of him, devouring his spirits. Even when alert, he’s haunted by the intrusion of memories, of possibility, remixing those years of his twenties buried in the realm between to account for every missed tragedy. He struggles to discern which is which in these moments, has to recall all his darkest points as a chant to sink back into slumber. And sometimes, as now, he drinks. Gazing into the darkness of his bedroom, he fixates on how the cones of his eyes buzz around, how little his vision serves him. Darkness shares in the visual language of The Static, after all. The realm which he unwittingly served.
Parting from Marcel for a moment more, there is one crucial tale, fundamental to the Isles Deltopia, but so often overlooked. There once was a seventh wielder: an inventor by the name of Vuoto Auspicio. Both a hermit and the brilliant forefather of the robotic arts, he was gifted by the guardians with the will of worlds. With such a pendant, one could bend matter, narrow the space between spaces and allow the refugees rapid movement between the sites of natural beauty. It was the lynch-pin of the guardian’s gifts, a means of connecting all other blessings. It was little more than an auxiliary power, not anchored to any specific guardian. Yet, as the network grew, Vuoto carving thousands of hallways through this metaspace, it began to seem less transitional and more a world of its own.
After personally exploiting the space to hoard, traffic and experiment against the conduct and approval of the other islanders, the pendant was, for the first and only time ever, rescinded and destroyed by the guardians. Not long after, Vuoto banished himself into his own creation in search of his own source of strength, never to return.
Through today, that metaspace still stands, rotting without upkeep into an inky, ever-distorting and stretching expanse. Its halls are quilted with a heavy, vague fog as its use-case becomes less certain. The islands are more divided than ever, less travelled, so bemoan the elders.
The space between has earned several nicknames: The Static, The Badlands, The Between. Many of the original tears made by Vuoto still litter the island, connecting key locales across the archipelago. Any traveller voyaging along the unweeded veins, the paths blooming from themselves, chances an encounter with one of Vuoto’s abandoned experiments, so history believes them to be. The Pyrals (named for their smoky, undead appearance) are unnatural creatures of fluid, metallic forms that oft take the shape of a scribble or another living creature. They travel The Static in roaming hordes; digging, haunting, chasing the tears.
It is by such threats that even the utopic Deltopian isles require, at any time, a small squadron of islanders to fend off these beasts. Hundreds of years on, and the undead ambition of one dangerous man hangs as an inextinguishable spectre beneath their life. Vuoto, all islanders know, cannot be allowed to resurge.
Marcel was a willing participant in this civil sacrifice, serving several years before the distance he put between himself and his life before really started to affect him. In pursuit of independence, he let his young adulthood be swallowed; the formative years of his brother Miles and the final years of his wielder grandmother. It is a tale not unlike that of young Cosmo, yet Marcel is of a more certain soul.
That’s what he tells himself, that he learned his lesson. Understands now that connection is all that’s worth chasing in life. That time is precious. He’s wasted no time in making himself a social pillar of the island, making himself the wielder his grandmother was from utmost guilt. Over the last decade, he gets so used to externalizing that when he finds himself back in these positions… alone at the dead of night with false Pyrals in his peripheral…
It’s not just that tonight. He’s woken from his lull by a dull crash down the hall. Stand to attention, soldier! Threats have entered guarded parameters. Arms at ready… good! Cel scoops an emptied bottle from the foot of his armchair, rolls his shoulders and takes a couple practice swings. Miles must’ve heard too. He knows what to do, but the boy isn’t as procedural. Move out. Cel’s body refuses, frumpy and feeble under the night’s toll.
Cel isn’t an alcoholic. It doesn’t devour his every waking thought like some people. He simply treats himself after a long day, tires himself out with a bit of self-prescribing. Admittedly, he’ll use generous doses on nights where Miles is out and all’s quiet in town. Most standard at-home hobbies were too… introspective for him.
He buttons his shirt, slips on his vest and creeps out in the hall, readily sporting his whisky slugger. Footsteps tore down the stairs on the opposite end of the hall. Miles must be ahead of him. We ain’t boxing ghosts, in that case. Something happened.
"Miles!"
Cel barrels down the hall, inevitably shoulder-checking the wall atop the stairs. Shit, pray there’s no damage to either party. Cel’s a big guy, after all. A good 190 centimeters with the retained physique of his time in the service.
He takes more caution in descending the stairs, though quickly realizes haste is the only option. A form indistinguishable from the shadows looms in the center of the room, Miles’ silhouette standing hauntingly before it, staring into it’s abyss. Is… this a dream? What is he looking at? He swears an eye eerily glosses whatever form consumes the hearth of his home. Something stands between him and his brother.
“Miles! Holy shit, Miles! Look at me, man! Can you-”
Cel freezes. No, no, no. He knows what this is. Some delusion that The Static has creeped into his most intimate space. Some Pyral from his memory. This is exactly the type of thing his therapist harangues him over. Yelling will only make the problem worse, scare the real Miles. Damn it, how could he trust his vision so readily like this? Maybe he really does need to stop drinking to do something about the hallucinations. He turns away, scared that Miles is judging him. Imagine being forced to endure a madman through the bond of blood. Of course he knew he’d helped helped rear a considerate man, but-
“Cel… ernnggh… get help. We can’t-” Miles writhes awfully, scratches at the floor, though it gives him no leverage. Hey, Miles? It’s a dream, right? “We can’t fight this…. whatever it is.”
Silhouettes of hands rise from the floor, whirling and cocooning Miles in a veil of darkness. Even if it is, this rage is real. He has to fight it, to back up his deepest-held beliefs. Cel dons his pendant, wrapping his hands in gauntlets of emerald lightning. Resist the delusion, Cel. Grab it by the neck. He curls his hands and charges the peering net of shadows, but the darkness has grown too deep, too encompassing.
At the snap of its own fingers, the darkness resumes its usual form. Miles is lost to the whispers of the night, and Cel can do nothing but collapse. He lay alone in the center of the den, a deeply stupid man who tried to box shadows. He’d have laughed at himself if he hadn’t fallen asleep on the spot. Whatever fire the dream lit in his soul was snuffed out as he faced his own shame. Just sleep, Cel. Miles will shake you awake in the morning. Everything’s just peachy.
Unbeknownst to Cel until morning struck, he was the sole witness to a campaign of terror that ravaged Luminis en-masse, catapulting the city onto the path of war. Miles, several of his classmates and dozens of pillar civilians now nothing but a crater in the morale and daily goings of the city. Not all hope was lost, Cel. You know that kingdom well.
III. At Boiling Point
Alice rose bright and early on a new day only to find herself hanging in a tree. Not in the gruesome sense some may envision, but somehow she’d gotten her overall loops hitched onto a sturdy branch somewhere along Luminis’ coastline.
“Oh fuck this,” she muttered, curious how she slept so soundly with her pants so painfully hiked up. No miserable sap in her life could’ve conducted such a prank. Too elaborate for Isaac or her sibling Tori’s dickery. With a groaning swing, she hooks her legs around the base of the branch and shimmies further out until there was enough slack to free herself. Inevitably, the branch snapped anyway, Lady Gravity pounding her down onto the rather unpliant sand. Alice grumbles, her ribs aching and mouth foul. This isn’t right. She needs to cool off, shoot the shit with some unsuspecting dork. There’s gotta be some justice in the world. She pats herself down, scopes out her surroundings. Casa de Cosmo seems the closest spot to borrow an ear to complain to.
✭ ✩ ✭ ✩ ✭
Outside his window, she threw her shoe at the glass. A gentle knock to get her buddy stirring. Doors are for chumps. Alas, no dice. This ain’t your sophomore snoozer. Got the damn duke of dreams in earshot. Second shoe. Thunk. No bed-headed face peeking up to offer a concerning amount of credence for what most would politely call obnoxious behaviour. Fortunately, the second blow caused a slight outward swing. Engineers like Alice call that an opportunity. Finagling a bit of “rope” and a couple of “hoists”, she scales the log wall, still aching horribly may I add, and takes a graceful pose sitting into the window sill right above Cosmo’s bed.
He whispering something? She leans in. Something, something “luvyanomattur… yarily… mmm”. Sweet nonsense. Unfortunately for whatever beautiful dream he is in the midst of, Alice is banged in the back of the head by the window pane’s cruel recompense. She somersaults forward onto Cosmo’s legs. And at last, the beast stirs.
“Er, sup, Cozzie! Fine morning to you! Can I getcha a cawffee, honey~?”
“Huh? Why’s -” He starts breathing quite rapidly.
“Whoa, buddy! You alright there? It ain’t what it looks like!”
“Oh, um, real Alice? Yeah, just had a real, uh… real vivid dream and…” Cosmo trails off, rubbing his eyes.
“Was I in it? Acting all wicked? That why you got all flustered?”
“No, no. How did you-” His eyes gaze up to the unshuttered window “Ah. Hope you didn’t freak mom out.”
“Cassandra knows me from every angle. She’s a respected collaborator.” Alice sits up and wipes her forehead with her neckscarf. “Weirdest thing happened this morning, C. Had to run right over.” She cracks her back.
“Weirder than this?”
“It ain’t a competition, boss. Woke up in a tree nearby. Busted my ass trying to get down.”
“Is your ass alright?”
“Personal details. You’re ignoring the bigger picture. Some profound force of petulance must’ve dragged me halfway across Luminis. The mole-people are onto me, dude. They know I know.” Alice, in truth, was rather terrified that anything could so radically toy with her against her awareness. “They were in your dreams too, I bet. Holding you under. You’d’ve slept forever, man.”
“What’s with you and mole-people?” The words of one who’s been compromised. They’re all across the written history of the island, yet it’s been decades since they were last reported. Schemers. Rotten schemers enacting their blind will. She will not be swayed from her subterranean scapegoat by a knave.
“You just don’t get it, man.”
The lovely Cassandra knocklessly enters the room. “Get dressed. The mayor called a full-town meeting. And, uh, Good Morning, Alice? I didn’t see you come in.”
“Mrs. T. Stocking any treats? Had a real rough go this morning.”
“What I said to Cosmo unfortunately pertains just as much to you.”
“Sick…”
Cosmo slumps out of bed and shoves himself in his closet to change. “I don’t really wanna go if it’s just another vanity thing or clean-up project. Know anything else?”
“Marcel was the one who told me. Called at dawn to say that Miles went missing.” Alice’s body instinctively kicks up, patting herself clean. She can’t know that. Why would she say that? Cel couldn’t think that? She nearly knocks over Cassandra as she rests her hand on the wall trying to come back to herself.
“You can’t be joking, can you? W-what else?”
“I don’t know, Alice, I’m sorry. He… seemed uncertain even saying it. He’s never called me that scared before. And, um…” she seems to be struggling to get the words out. “There were others missing, he heard. Said it’s what let him believe it, so I’m… I’m glad you too are safe.” A lady like her doesn’t deserve any more loss.
✭ ✩ ✭ ✩ ✭
The political furor in the town hall lobby would be glorious on any other occasion; active, energized citizens ready to seize the reins of power from that frumpy toad. Mayor Estrello is a painfully rejected figurehead installed by the last generation of pendant-wielders to mediate the public-facing paper-pushing and grievances towards the misuse or underuse of power. As the torch was passed over the last decade to Cosmo, Cel and Aurora, opportunists and liberal conservatives saw this new guard as a much weaker group who’d put the island on the path to decline. Some older folk migrated north to Solaris and Selene’s defector colony while others started questioning the use of pendants at all now that Luminis is an established bastion. All this annoying politics stuff gave the worst man everyone knows the gall and leeway to chase his own private ambitions for the future of Luminis. Face lifts, tech grants, lotta purely aesthetic stuff.
“Good people! At ease! At ease! Be orderly! Eek!” The mayor ducked behind his podium as a shoe flew past his head. From a girl with a penchant for such behaviour? None can say, no evidence will attest to such. “Gu- Ah! Cosmo, my boy! And Cel, too! My strong-willed knights! Soothe these people for me! This is no condition for me to share my speech!”
“No, man, fuck you! I ain’t gonna let you get up there to finish telling me that Miles just wandered off!” Cel’s voice dominates the cacophony. “I saw him get pulled into the static! Not just gonna let you be cute about this. We need a course of action.”
Aurora raises herself up onto Cel’s shoulders. “We’re not going to tolerate you as a leader if you have the gall to suggest this is a prank. These are our neighbours. My finest students. My sister.”
Er, she’s talking about you, Alice. Her stomach coils with guilt. She’s compelled to slip away, let her sister care about something important for once. Cassandra, you summer angel! Don’t tap me on the back! Whatever. Got to see a sliver of emotion. Alice sneaks forward and taps on Aurora’s shoulder. She perhaps scooped up a shoe off the floor, but purely because it was a tripping hazard.
“Alice! What the stars! Where were you?”
“I don’t know, I just- woke up on the other side of town?”
“What could that possibly even mean? I’m really not in the mood to be tested. It’s bad enough Dad disappeared.”
“Shit… I wasn’t trying to-”
“You and Tori don’t leave home after dark without my approval. I’ll put the house on lockdown and find a way to deal with this myself. I will not have Pyrals tear my family apart.” After their mother’s passing, Aurora became the de facto head of household, usurping their admitted sloth of a father for the crown. Her other sibling Tori is, in generous terms, a stay-at-home artist. Active in the nightlife scene. They’ll find a work-around together. They can fend for themselves.
Meanwhile, the rest of the crowd erupts with their own accusations of teetering relevance: “I bet it was those Northern Islanders. We must bring Solaris to justice for shattering the wielder council! Reassign his pendant!”
“The problem is our leaders are weak! Everyone else thinks we Luminitians can be taken advantage of. Ain’t that right?”
“Like the wielder council ever did anything. We need firmer protection. Stronger wills that’ll use every ounce of the guardian's blessings.”
"Screw the Guardians too!"
In mere moments, all relevant powers were ruled insufficient in trouncing their fears. Action demands those unburdened by apathy. The zeitgeist hurled towards immediate war against this abstract affront.
One might call this bad, an unsalvagable anger that can only be reacted or responded to. The vox populi in need of a good engineer to deconstruct, assess and plan. Alas, as Alice scans the room, absent of Miles, Candy, Isaac and dozens of other members of her daily life, she let’s her blood boil. It’s only just to revolt against conditions where no good life is valued. It’s funny even; centuries of harmony able to be torn apart by a dog-ass figurehead and the same shadowy machinations that lodged her up a tree.
At the crescendo of their fury, the old-guard rogue, Professor Nova enters the lobby, sowing silence in his wake. Some twenty-something woman with messy burgundy hair and a labcoat trots behind him, stack of papers wedged under her arm. Some brown-nosing geek trying to earn the title of doctor with something impractical, surely. As her judgements cross her mind, the woman glares at Alice narrow-eyed. Tough crowd!
Nova rose to claim the Mayor’s podium, pardoning the lesser man to scurry off. What a circus. “My good friends, let us not so readily jump to awful conclusions. As always, we must behave with good faith towards our fellow man if ever we may overcome this. As citizens, I do agree we must unify our strength, our senses and our wit to seek out our neighbours, friends and family. To act brash in the face of crisis is only to forestall a proper search.” Nova paused, a rather harsh cough taking him. “With the aid of my Will of Tethering and the research of my associate Nebula here…” The woman gives a quick nod. “...I believe we shall all find clarity as to this incident within a matter of days. As citizens, I implore your patience. I know it’s difficult, but try to do your own work and keep your hope alive until then. All our resources and greatest minds have dropped everything to pursue leads. That is all. I won’t waste a minute longer.”
Professor Nova’s speech is met with a mixture of solidarity and dissatisfaction, skewing one way or the other roughly off how old a person is. Souls who feel they’ve seen behind the curtain ain’t so ready to be swayed yet. Let the noxious, groundless arguments commence. Alice feels above it all and tries to check out, though Cosmo taps on her shoulder before she get’s the chance.
“You’ve heard him, Al. Detectives Giada and Tempesta are back on call.” Cosmo feigns taking a hit from a cigarette. “It’s just like old times, champ.” Cosmo beams with a certain exhaustion in his eyes.
Alice curls her finger on her upper lip. Her iconic stache. She hasn’t studied the archetypes. Who’s got time for that.. “Verily, verily. Shall we abscond from the premise?”
Aurora turns her head, snickering nastily at her hunched over sibling. “You two are dorks. What, are you coping by playing pirate?”
“You just don’t get it, sis. You haven’t seen the underbelly of Luminis. Me? I was raised under it.” Aurora was incredibly self-serious, though understandably so with the fire under her feet. The island's past and future now rest on the might of this era’s wielders. We’ll ignore the fact that Cosmo is screwing off to mask his own hand in that.
“Meh, I’m the person I want to be. Play, building characters is for children who’ve yet to find theirs. So be home by sundown. Will you, child?”
Alice paints herself infantile. “Yessiree, mommy! Anything you say!” Aurora rolls her eyes and ducks out a side-exit. “I’ll be with Marcel.”
Cosmo takes Alice by the elbow and pulls her out of the crowd. “Detective Giada, this is serious biz.” He’s talking with his hands and a vague accent. “We can’t go getting ourselves be led by the noses, now can we? We’ve got a duty to oats.”
“Detective Tempesta, you trust this Nova chump? I’m thinkin’ it stinks. Like it ain’t the whole story.”
“I think we continue this conversation outside, Detective.” Cosmo makes a grand gesture towards the dozens of bickering citizens. “Quite the spread of harsh chatter and ill intent makes it hard to hear you.”
“Stars, you’re right. Forsooth! Hie!” Alice is genuinely unclear on what people talked like that in the times of history’s great detectives.
Nova’s rather timid assistant had snuck up on them in the midst of their intense pre-emptive character building. “Cosmo and Alice, right? Can we speak?” The pair huddle redundantly before nodding in concurrence. She led them behind a rather indiscreet pillar. “Okay.”
“Nebula, wasn’t it?” Cosmo says with a tinge of anxiety only a good friend could sense.
“Attentive. Yes, I. Oh, sorry. I have a small request from your professor for you two girls.” Alice watches Cosmo’s face closely to see if he’ll correct the mistake. Now that she looks, his hair has gotten quite long, curled cutely just above his shoulders. He would be too polite to dispute anyone’s first impressions. “If I may be direct, I need help breaking into the mayor’s office. For non-political reasons.”
“And why would we do that?” In spite of her defensive response, Alice was already down. Investigation needs a little push-and-pull.
“I’ll explain later at our lab, but Nova needs collaborators he can trust. I expect the situation will explain itself as we go. He said you’ll get credit for his class, also, but I doubt truants like you care.” This acid-tongued dame. No respect for an honest day’s work.
“That’s a pretty suspicious offer from a woman we’ve never seen or heard about before today.” Cosmo gained some misplaced confidence, or perhaps spoke from the same sense of ironic detachment. “How do we know you ain’t the kidnapper? Getting all in Nova’s head, gettin’ him to… somnambulate into crimes.”
“I also made you both breakfast. At his request. For if you agree.” Nebula (if that’s her real name) pulls out two paper bags, each with a solitary sugar-encrusted muffin. “Followed a cookbook. Don’t blame me if it stinks.”
Cosmo collects himself. “A convincing offer, but-”
“Cosmo… take the deal, dude. At these rates, lady, I’ll do some straight-up nastiness.”
“Please don’t lady me. It's Nebula.”
“Are you Nova’s, like, secret daughter? Cus his last name is Nebulana, ain’t it? Nebula Nebulana… Cosmo, this might be a cartoon character in disguise before us.”
“I’m not entertaining that. Neb, Nebby, Nebula Nebulana. Whatever syllables you prefer besides lady. Whatever. Cosmo, will you join me?” Alice holds back laughter at the offense she caused the tight-lipped stranger.
“We’ll go. Pay my partner the rate for both of us.”
“I’ll build temples in your name, Tempesta.”
The party rushes towards the elevators in the back of the hall, only to be halted by Nebula. “Elevators are out and there’s something moving through the pipes. Nova’s not gonna like that.” Nebula looks with acute attention at completely innocuous objects around the hall. “Looks like the stairs are our safest bet.”
“Hey, did you even try pressing the buttons?” Alice interjected.
“No time, girl. Anomalies prey on that naivete.” What a puckish little broad, stringing along their case like she’s blown the roof clean off.
The stairs, as they ascended, began to bend in increasingly odd and unintentional ways. No one’s ever taken the stairs to notice, right? Yet, as the steps climbed and descended with unusual rhythm, a forestalling labyrinth made from a sprawling block-cut terrain. The steps grew crevasses between them, stretched into walls that needed hoisting over. All the while, a thin brownish brine drips down from the pipes in the ceiling. Alice slowly abandons her dissent of the stranger, handing her confidence to the quiet, unflinching imp plodding through it all.
At the top of a flowing tsunami of steps, the party stumbles into spindly glass hallways, puddles of steaming black fluid pooling on the ground, swamping their shoes warm.
“Miss Nebula, pardon the question, but are you leading us into The Static??” Cosmo sounds far less baffled than the situation perhaps called for. The town hall had recently undergone expansions, stretching out into a granite palace, but this level of constructional oversight simply weakened one’s faith in its reality.
“No. Please refrain from asking silly things. Well, um, actually, in its own way? I get the compulsion, but no, not in the way you think. And don’t be annoying and say something like this is my ploy to kidnap you. Like I said-” Nebula spreads her arms “-the problem will be pretty obvious when you see it. Distortions in the construct of reality are the same phenomena behind both. Like… you learned about the Pyrals in class, right?” Cosmo raises his hand to answer, making Alice smirk. “Y-yes?”
“The scribbly little wanderers in The Static?”
“Right. We suspect some- er, something similar has found entry to the physical isles. And that whatever tears they’re sneaking in through are intentionally positioned to warp people’s perspectives. My theory, of course. Corroborated by your professors so far. I needed more empirical evidence before I could sell it as fact to everyone. On-the-ground stuff, I mean.” Nebula stops in place, finger on the bridge of her glasses as she scans the hall. “Hear that? We’re close. Over there’s the real one.”
As the party trustingly makes their way into the office, wall-mirrors making it appear part of an endless cyclone of rooms, a rather unpleasant, creaky voice catches their arrival from behind the mayor’s desk.
“Do I hear footsteps? Foolish foes, you are latte to the inaugural birth of a great warrior. Now bow or burn!”
Alice throws her shoe at the desk. “Cut it with the voices, mayor. We ain’t here for your head.”
”Knaves! Leche-rous knaves with no sense of respect. Kids these days…” Cosmo, Alice and Nebula now stare confusedly at one another, trying to parse the voice’s odd pronunciation. “Hellions of meat and bone! Come into my sight NOW before I give you a good scalding!”
Cosmo dared respond first to this hair-raising entity. “Um, you’re the one facing away from us, right? Can’t you just- turn around.”
“Pyrals have never been noted to speak, Cosmo… you two *can* hear this, right?” Nebula jots down a note.
“Ugh… Can one of you guys just… come and turn the chair around for me? C’mon, I’m on a tight script!”
Nebula clicks her pen and points at Cosmo. “You. Do it.”
“All you, Cos.” Cosmo sighs. He slowly approaches the desk, resting his hand hesitantly on the cool leather. The chair slowly spins around, moving lightly aside to reveal… no way… a mug of coffee. It’s… it’s a mug of coffee.
“An odd choice for hosting an anomaly.” The creature hisses steam at Nebula’s dismissive comment. It spits a pathetic spurt of joe onto the Mayor’s obscenely-waxed desk, rolling a marker onto the seat of the chair.
Cosmo steps back. “Can we go, or…?”
With a few squeaky little movements, the mug re-emerges with a vicious expression, a face that had sent thousands of souls back to the depths of the earth. Nah, just kidding. It adorned itself with one of these -> [ >:( ]. Fucking adorable, but Alice wasn’t ready to let an inanimate object outdo her in theatrics.
“Oh, but how could we be such fools! This is no standard morning beverage! It is an angry morning beverage!”
“Mochahahaha! That’s right, you simpering triple-creamer! Tremble, humans, in the presence of the great bitter mage, Muggy the Black!”
“How despicable… no cream or sugar? This guy must be tough as nails!”
“Yes… Mochahaha… YES! Fear me in all my bitterness! Your hearts must be racing even thinking of all the unespressoble discomforts I shall cast upon you.”
Nebula steps out into the hall. “Yeah, you two deal with this. Remember my offer.”
“Seriously?” Alice crosses her arms. “We gotta temper ourselves a little if we got bookworms like her walking out the theater.”
“What? Al, look at the position we’re in. You gotta ham it up a bit!”
“Whispering to each other your little schemes? Plotting your escape from my steel-cut beans? Oh, A-ffogato ‘bout all that! Cha!”
Cosmo slicks his hair back and pulls out some macho cartoon pose. “Can it, Mug. I can’t express-o how much you are roasted, toasted and steeped when me and my buddy get you by the handle. A futz like you is on a straight-shot trajectory back to El Static by Luminis’ finest. Us. The absolute crema. Prepare, you swill, to get all that bad attitude… filtered out of you?” Cosmo turns to Alice, looking wide-eyed for approval, to which she nods stoically. It is in moments like these that one recalls Cosmo is passively of the most fascinating characters on the Deltopia. Keeps it to his ink-and-paper theaters.
The mug tips itself over, using a geyser of scalding liquid to jet itself across the room. Alice makes an effort to try and kick it out of the air with her knee as it attempts to land, but has an unfortunate oversight as to the formidability of porcelain against human bone. She doubles over, the beverage cackling at her misery. Cosmo, meanwhile, retrieves the hefty desk chair, piledriving the vessel with it in attempt to bind it to a prison of faux-leather. The creature vomits up a good bit of its liquid contents before zipping through the hole beneath the chair's armrest. It thus resumes its aerial assault on any and all poor souls subjected to take the stains out of their battle garments.
Alice fishes with panic through her deep pockets, pulling out her multi-purpose wrench. The risk she’ll hit Cozzie by tossing it gives an unwarranted amount of mercy to the piquant punk. Her tried and true technique stands as her last resort. She removes her boot and squarely clocks the mug, pinning it decisively into the concrete wall.
“A- a chip on me? Gah! I’m spilling! I’m spilling! Oh, what a world!” Nebula re-enters the room as the now-empty mug billows puffs of fragrant steam. “You’ll brew the day you made an enemy of Muggy DeBrewe, the Bitterest of Black Mages! My guild will be after you… the great cavalier Muggy au Lait! The gruesome brawler Muggy Doppio! Muggy con Panna… E-ernest-” Nebula grabs the raving porcelain and lobs it into the wall, smashing it into hundreds of pesky shards.
“You really should’ve just led with that. We’re fortunate it was a rather pathetic, given the might there’d be in disrupting such a critical position.”
“Have we seen enough to put aside the riddles, l- Nebula?” Alice says, finally chewing her well-earned treat.
“Come by the old council building tonight. Nova will explain for you.”
IV. The Princess of a Dying Castle
Nebula sits in her room, stewing in the intellectual weight of the dozens of tomes stacked high around her bed. She is of an obscene private curiosity as to worldly affairs, philosophies of life and arcane spectacles. She’s currently attending to a book on critiques of power in various forms of civilization. She moves unpredictably in her scholarship, fashions herself a framework of frameworks. A body for a mind. An archive of her own construct. She’s built this palace within the home of Nova, her strands of self-sufficient desire making her a rather easy-to-accomodate guest. In her own mind, she’s the greatest cosmopolitan the island has produced, bar the fact she’s still under 30. Both her past and anticipated future are ones of extreme uninterest to the biographical reader. She’s guided by enrichment, often needing to be dragged into fulfilling her social needs.
The clangor of the home’s hefty knocker breaks her literary trance. It’s those kids. They’re probably twenty, but who doesn’t love a bit of nominal condescension? She should probably go and greet them. One more page. She isn’t ready yet. She should brush her teeth. Put on more presentable attire. The world runs on the illusion of curated perceptions.
“Yo, lady! Are you home?!” the voice of the overall girl mocks her. She doesn’t intend any ill-will. She finds personal joy in being smug and pert. A mentality beneath someone like Nebula, though she can empathize with the insecurity of character.
“We’re here, Nebula.” The other one speaks now. Has a head full of clouds in multiple respects - both hopeful and haunted, cowardly yet courageous. Hard to parse under any label except meek-minded. It’s intriguingly rare when someone resists standard description with a breadth of language as broad as Nebula’s. She was impressed by their composure earlier.
Nebula promises anyone hearing this that she isn’t some stalker who’s cracked their characters. She just has certain premonitions on character, a primed intuit into the sincere patterns of a soul. Always has. Helps, given she sucks at faces and names. Traditional language is the only language she meaningfully bears. It’s something about her that Nova has put quite a bit of stock into nurturing. He himself tends to keep to more physical forms of knowledge, so she’s an intellectual compliment foremost in their bond (in acknowledgement of any slanders to either party). She should probably entertain her guests now, right? Go, Nebula. Please. Nova alone doesn’t have everything the kids need to hear.
“So glad you let yourself in. Follow me.” In truth, Nebula has no idea where Nova is, but has concluded with enough wandering the estate, he’ll show.
Nova, as the last member of the old council of pendant-wielders, now lives alone in their old guild building. It’s more lavish and expansive than any residency on Luminis by service rather than wealth. Over the years, the wielders would utilize the best of their skillsets to construct a beautiful compound open to the public. Naturally, interest sort of faded in those traditions as time passed and certain magical elements had fallen into slight disrepair. Good material for an unintentional tour, at the very least. Something for the brains of a mechanic and storyteller to latch onto.
Nebula at last finds Nova lounging in the lush, glassy sunroom, observing the sea of stars as he meticulously scribbles imparsible graphs in a sketchbook.
“Alice, Cosmo! Good evening! I’m glad you two both made it. Sit, sit. Get comfortable.”
Alice and Cosmo plop down on the little cobblestone wall that strangely segments the open-air room. The one she thinks is Cosmo looks tired. It is almost midnight. Rookie hours for a nocturnal scholar as she. The other one. Alice. She swings her arm over Cosmo’s shoulder and pulls them into her. Nebula is a little surprised by this, as she’d typically associate such gestures with romance, though the two seem no more than tired friends. There is a tinge of jealousy that she never really reached that level of comfort platonically. She tended to compartmentalize her relationships. Being shoulder-to-shoulder, let alone holding hands, was an action for strictly intimate scenarios. Maybe that’s just love beneath the word. In real, physical form. Assuring for the tasks required if so. Another fair compliment to their team strengths to have linguists in identity and emotion.
“What is all this about, professor?” the assumed Cosmo asks.
“I won’t beat around the bush. You’re adults now, so I expect you to take my words responsibly. I have reason to believe Solaris and Selene are behind the kidnappings, and that both the kidnappings and subsequent riot were an anticipated first step in what will blossom to a declaration of war for unchallenged reign over the archipelago.” Poor children, blind-sided by their own eligibility for the draft…
“Slow down there, big N! Thought this whole deal’d be we get a lecture on why coffee mugs are coming to life in exchange for a grade bump.”
“It’s a piece, though I’ll clarify my thesis for you two to put this all in context, Alice. Anomalies, as far as our working theories go, are responses to distortions in the zeitgeist. The influx, introduction and corruption of an idea forced onto a given object or entity.”
“Whose working theory, exactly?” Alice interjects. “Is there some secret coffee fad we haven’t been clued in on bringing our damn drinks to life?”
“Miss Nebula, for one, as well as the other university faculty, have signed off on it. Your sister, specifically, has given us ample data we’d be helpless without. As for the coffee, we must understand the anomalies as physical signifiers of a strong, collective torment, rather than specific in their manifestation. In this case, the collective rage at this morning’s gathering. A shared desire formed of disdain towards the mayor. Thus, the very essence of the space that provides his power grew hostile to its standard flow.” Nova sips his nightly kelp tea. “As with our pendants, Cosmo, to will or desire is a powerful thing on this island. The guardians have long understood such and thus have channelled the shape of power.”
“In that case, why has this never been written about before? Why now?” Cosmo seemed to speak from personal grief.
“Hey Prof… you really just gonna imply the kidnappings were anomalies? That… that ain’t right to say. That enough people wanted Miles or… or Dad and all them gone so they just… poof! No… that can’t be what you and Rory concluded.”
“And that’s precisely the lynchpin to all of this, Alice. Consider: why could the grief of their disappearance not counteract such a will? Why, with such specificity, were households singularly targeted?”
“I don’t know, man. Am I supposed to just accept this is how life works now? It just sucks so bad, man. I don’t-”
“We’ll make it make sense, Nebula and I. I promise.”
Cosmo seems to be getting defensive. “With what exactly? And how far back does this go? Can… can this collective ghoul cause explosions or- or crashes…” Even without context, Nebula knows they’re committing a logical fallacy, trying to lump these tragedies together.
She cuts in. “W-wielder Marcel reported that he saw your friend dragged into the Static by a silhouette. What we’re facing now is something distinct to our earlier pattern-mapping.”
“Precisely, Nebula, and the technology to open tears to the Static simply isn’t there yet among Luminitians, as Alice is certainly aware.” Alice nods along, glancing at Cosmo every few words. “But I see you’re getting impatient. Nebula’s been spearheading the research as to the nature of anomalies, so I’ll let her explain.”
“Me? I thought this was your part!” Nova shakes his head. “Well, um, this book I’m reading on power discusses it not as an explicit force but an implicit one, by which I mean-” She pauses, aware of her poor teaching to the audience, and internalizing such as an affront to her own grasp of her passions. “-Power’s not in individual actions, but in being able to shape how others act. Not in writing rules but in convincing people they are rules at all. Deluding people into believing travelling by means of the rules is the only one an individual is able to do anything.” Nebula mentally winces, as if anticipating a mocking ‘so what?’. “All to say we have to look… past the kidnappings themselves and rather at the social result of them. Analyze the movement of power beneath what seems to be a random-”
Alice puts her foot down, the air jumping out of Nebula’s lungs. “Are you serious? I respect the vision, but I agreed to this whole thing ‘cus I’m facing real consequences from that “random” attack. Are you really just going to tell me I can’t let myself be upset about that? That I gotta act on matters of pure abstraction?” She clearly doesn’t get the scale of what’s at stake. Reasonable. but unfortunately for her, Nebula is factually correct by all reality, evidence and theory.
“Yes. I think you need a more productive commitment.” Cosmo’s expression sours as well as she speaks. Unprofessionals are impossible. She doesn’t have the time to be as flowery and personable with making her point as Aurora would.
“You know what? Fuck you. If you had any friends, I’m sure you’d be stuck in the same grief, the same feelings and you’d- you’d-”Alice loses the steam to fire back, which does give Nebula a tinge of pity. Marginally softer wording would do.
“Nebula! Let’s be considerate here!” A bite from the boss-man is never a good thing. “Of course that’s our foremost commitment. Nebula’s explanation is precisely what gives our search direction, for this was doubtlessly a well-planned campaign against us. If Marcel’s account is to be believed, this sounds like someone found the Will of Worlds. Or, perhaps, they created their own.” The power to forge paths through the meta-layer doesn’t necessarily indicate reassembling the shattered pendant.
“And you’re saying it’s Solaris and Selene?” Cosmo, to Nebula’s interest, speaks with the same fire as during the fight. Good. “I thought it’s impossible to wield two pendants? What would someone that powerful gain from aligning with a medic and a medium? Couldn’t this be, well… anyone?” This Cosmo reads too much fiction. Guessing at things that’d “move the plot along” as a mode of conversation. It’s kind of adorable to pick up on.
“Cosmo, my boy, here is where I must make a damning confession I hope you don’t judge me for.” Oh shoot, is Cosmo a boy? “I, too, was using my pendant ability to seek Vuoto’s remains. I have been heavily monitoring all soldier activity in The Static for… for nearly my whole life. To assure it didn’t fall in the wrong hands. At this point, I question whether Vuoto ever existed, or if he stands as mere warning for us wielders...” Though she knew of Nova’s tendency to surveil, he’d never confided in Nebula with this information before. ‘How’s aren’t really her intellectual territory. More of a ‘why’ scholar. Though unsure of Nova’s facticity, she chooses good faith mainly from her reverence of the man. Let him lay his proverbial cards out. “The only other group with a presence in The Static, of any species, are the humans of Isle dell’Norte. Solaris’ personal standing army. It’s… all I can reasonably conclude.”
Alice seems to share in Nebula’s skepticism, pushing back. “So are we Team Save our Friends or Team Steal the 7th Pendant? An old guy, a bookworm and two tender-hearted teens… Gee golly, we’ll show those inconquerable wills!” She refers to the joint softening of death and injury in the culture of Isle dell’Norte by way of its leaders' pendants: The Wills of Wellness and Rebirth.
“I promise I have no interest in the 7th pendant. Without that answer, we’ll lack a certain medium upon which we can ascribe Nebula’s theory. It was in truth earlier that I said we needed time to gather intel. Cel and his old team have already begun a campaign into The Static with my backing, and I’ve assigned Aurora and Terry, er, Professor Volta excursions into the mire and woodlands. Even the roboticist, Mr. Cyrus Nereus, has pitched drones to pin down either anomalies or the victims.” Nebula still resents Nova somewhat for that last deal. A traitor to academia.
“Sounds like you don’t need us.” Cosmo seems to shrink by their (his?) own words, but Alice rubs their shoulders. “Feel like I should find out on my own how to will before I can do anything for you guys.”
“Not like I got anything to offer either next to the great and mighty Aurora,” Alice concurs with slight disdain.
Nova breaks from his star-gazing, now looking at the pair with sad eyes. “Ah, Cosmo, don’t say that! Yet, yet! Perhaps not yet, but that is why you are precisely my concern! I want you both to serve as our eyes within Luminis! Serving the community, finding your voice, all while continuing to train under me.” Nova gives a soft smile. “And Alice, you’re of exceptional will-power. The spirit of all of Luminis’ youth. You have a strength that rubs off on all whom you touch.”
Alice wipes her hand on Cosmo’s face. “Gah! Don’t bite!”
“I’ll also do what I can to support you two,” Nebula added. “If needed.”
Nova meets her eyes. “Nebula, you remain our most important fighter.” She blushes a bit. He turns back to the knuckleheads. “Though I hope not to coerce you two into a fate you feel unready for. Sleep on it, and stop by again when you have your answer, will you? Door’s always open! Ohohoho!” Nebula doesn’t really want more than she bargained for, but Nova’s done so much for her, housed and fed her for years. She’s probably supposed to pay it back. Somehow. She only learned how to do so with the info and fancy terms she picked up. All the tact in the world can’t stave off real existential terror.
V. Selected Works from A Young Deltopia, Part I
Written and Edited by Aurora Giada
Note from the Author: This curated selection of documents from the Deltopia archive represent what I believe to be the need-to-know glossary of our island’s founding mythos and esprit d’corps. Many modern scholars may question the importance of a pendant-centric telling of history as a means of orienting our culture [1], but in spite of this fledgling archival movement, I feel these stand as the essential works for any scholar, continuing or dismantling our long legacy, to grapple with in understanding our cultural story. To those readers who still believe such lorekeeping is irrelevant to the lives and narrative of today’s world, I politely suggest you pass over this text entirely and instead seek a career far from civil life.
This book is dedicated to the late Astrid Giada, a brilliant wielder, storyteller, archaeologist and mother.
Fig. 1: from Journal of the Voyage, Oswald Sullivan
“‘Tis a night of grand tragedy, as we depart from our past lives in sorrow aboard the fleet of Captain Eduardo Alvarado [2]. The cities, homes and families we built have been lost to the greed of man. A cruel green now blankets the land, a name and substance which we shall not carry with us in pursuit of new land. We travel the dusky seas a fleet of nine, wrought with the grief of what is lost. My darling wife and daughter, Allegra and Bliss, may we carry their names, remain among those lands met by an unknown fate. May God save them.”
[Miss Giada here restores almost the entire several month voyage entirely as it was written, skipping only the pieces of prose from Founder Sullivan suggesting more unsavoury or unrefined behavior. Such will be omitted in this abridged submission for brevity.]
“We’ve cleared the storm at last, two ships short of the nine who departed Mor Ubhal, at an island known scarcely among sailors as a lands none has ever seen twice. ‘Tis the last habitable and unsettled land on Earth, characterized only by the vagueness of its mythos and the eternal hurricane it sits at the heart of, striking fear into opportunists, pirates and navymen. The storms have been fair to our entry, but alas, felled in our loss were the great artistry of Mr. Avery Featherstone, as well as the scientific advances made by Inventors Giorgio Giada and Vuoto Auspicio [3]. While the inventors were aboard Captain Saydean’s ships at the time of the incident, Mr. Featherstone, a brilliant creative soul, has been lost with his works. Heavy despondence claims the hearts of our entire fleet, even as we dock on these prosperous lands. At dawn, we shall deboard.”
“Upon the northern bank of an isle of twisting pines, much of our crew, consisting of several hundred refugees, has begun to set up camp. Captain Alvarado and his men (a lot of experienced seamen and bootleggers) have decided that to settle is no life for them, plan to take six of their ships out to map out the archipelago and find what remains of the old empire before returning to the high seas.”
“The isles have revealed themselves, in our short stay, to be of some supernatural character. Clean water flows endlessly from the wellsprings, the weather remains temperate through the nights and, personally, my dreams have been notably fantastical (though that may be from the absence of seasickness and liqueur [4]). Several among us have reported sightings of colossal beetles, tool-bearing moles (Alice has frustratingly scribbled shocked faces in the margins of many of Aurora’s proof copies here.) and a ‘flying fish-like creature’, but as the vividity of our dreams grows, it is hard to estimate how much of these tales is fiction.”
“One month has passed and at last, the inhabitants of the island have made themselves known to us. Such is how long was taken to assess the essence of our character, so they say. They’ve fashioned me a leader and conduit of their might. Where before were we compelled to survive, the burden of becoming history, constructing a good legacy amidst my men, now rests on this writer’s shoulders.”
Fig. 2: from First Contact Transcribed, Unknown [5]
Note from Editor: Though this transcript either omits or does not account for formal introduction, the seven guardians' names and roles were said to have been implied in their form itself. An exact date cannot be ascribed to this transcript with current technology.
Petra, Architect of Tunnels and Peaks: Heed, travellers! We understand well the resilience needed to reach these lands and wish to propose a bargain with your kind.
Niña, Weaver of Skies and Storms: These lands have long been our sandbox of creation, in which we curated and attuned every errant breeze, grain of sand and drop of water.
Stella, Kindler of Light and Revelation: Our beautiful lands are awash with golden perfection, as you have no doubt seen, yet stagnancy eats at our creative spirits.
Notte, Sentinel of Dusk and Shadow: My pretentious comrades intend to say we are bored.
Stella: (marked silence)
Moira, Conductor of Rivers and Glens: We have admittedly been… observing your flow of dream. We want to bottle them into our own wills, yet we cannot see them through as you do so effortlessly.
Juniper, Sower of Blooms and Woods: Myself and the other guardians have agreed to an experiment, given you now grow as a resource in our domain. We will offer you pieces of our will as a means of realizing your own dreamed visions of idyllic lands.
Notte: Though retain the fact that you remain replaceable in this role. [6]
Petra: It is as my comrade suggests. We will not hesitate to rescind these powers or toss you out to sea if you betray these visions for violence.
[Niña advances forth, spreading her arms as to suggest an embrace of the travellers]
Niña: Messenger Hermes has been observing you all and has come to understand the most leaderly and worldly among you, those whose vision has already before moved the world you arrived from, so we shall each present our blessings to those souls in hopes that they act on behalf of the collective sight and fiction to create a lands of beauties unimaginable. Down the list…
To Amira Dhahab, the heiress of a kingdom reborn, the Will of Weather, for manifesting fertile, healthy lands.
Niña (on behalf of the mute Hermes): To Oswald Sullivan, legendary boatsmith and scribe, the Will of Winds, for journeying the open seas.
Moira: To Rionnag Nebulana, pursuant of the hardest answers, the Will of Wisdom, for the eternal new.
Juniper: To Malik Nahdi, the ill vagrant turned voice of nations, the Will of Rebirth, for second chances.
Petra: To Giorgio Giada, the polymath of astounding resolve, the Will of Resilience, for crafting unperturbable hearts
Stella: To Ghrian Saydean, a soul of unconditional support to the needs of friends, the Will of Wellness, for good spirits ad aeternum.
Notte: Lastly, To Vuoto Auspicio, who endeavoured into untapped sciences, the Will of Worlds, for lands born anew.
Note from Author: While I will not doubt the existence of Vuoto and Notte, as the archive simply doesn’t conclude such, I must emphasize that Vuoto’s pendant was later rescinded, though remains a firm outlier as the only pendant-wielder to act against the will of the guardians. The other guardians have gone on record as expressing prior doubts as to Notte’s selection. Notte themself has since become the least human-facing of the guardians and is believed to have relocated to The Static for His mistake.
As for the other six and their chain of lineage, herein lies the critical juncture in the essence of our history that those doubtful of this meritocratic system ought to pay special heed to: our history stands without segregation or colonization and has, from day one, stood in lockstep with the will of the land and populus. As such, I see no obstacles between our current mode of advance and all trajectories towards utopia. Scholars who declare all that is scarce in the world a schism in power bear ideas drawn more from base envy than from history.
✭ ✩ ✭ ✩ ✭
As of the time of writing, here are the six pendant wielders as they stand today for the historical record, pedagogical purposes and contemporary representation:
Rebirth: Benedict Solaris
Resilience: Aurora Giada
Weather: Marcel Celestia
Wellness: Yezmin Selene
Winds: Derek Cosmo Tempesta
Wisdom: Nova Nebulana
I acknowledge this documentation obfuscates the nature in which these wills manifest, as Wills appear uniquely to each wielder. Founder Dhahab, for example, utilized her powers to weave the Nimbus people of Niña’s domain, while my colleague, Mr. Celestia (listed above) primarily operates through the channeling and creation of defensive storms.
[End of Section, Please Consult Volume II - Deltopia: The Civilization’s Rise]
[1] For the author’s stance on this affair, please consider her seminal work Of Voyages and Guardians: The Writings of Oswald Sullivan in a Post-Parliamentary World, pub. Giada, 2nd Edition,. Published AB 421.
[2] Referred to by his pseudonym, Whitebeard, by more colloquial writers than Sullivan. Marked for cross-reference.
[3] Geologist Platz Mannberg famously surmises both sets of cargo were in part comprised of the very same substance Mr. Sullivan omits as the “cruel green blankets” of their homeland, referred to in modern scholarship as Cactite from the lost writings of founder Rionnag Nebulana, who carved “fuck teleportation, fuck cactite and fuck this tree” onto an unassuming conifer. Further Reading: Cruel Green: The Miracle Mineral, Mannberg, Published AB 250.
[4] Note from Editor: Miss Giada wishes to note ‘liqueur’ here likely refers to medicine according to contemporary sources, rather than the connotation it may have today with alcohol.
[5] It is believed this dialogue was received telepathically by the guardians, as still today, much of their presence is confined to the internal realm. For those who have not been visited by a guardian (as I have) their visage resists photography or recording as they exist between the senses. Without the experience, a skeptic may read such as a hallucination (or write off this transcript as a mere theater script from later re-enactments of the first contact), but this simply does not factor in the vividity of the actual empirical experience (and empirically accurate characterization of the Guardians).
[6] Note from Editor: This line, glaringly omitted from early prints of this text, was addressed by Miss Giada as an issue with the scans she used to compile this collection, not a curatorial choice.