Jenna felt quite rotten. Both Billy and Bob had received sweet gifts from the Arcanic Boss, and she was left with a bad case of metaphysical tinnitus.
A hidden vulnerability, the nice lady with the floating cups had called it. Well, it was no longer a hidden vulnerability. It was an obvious pain in the ass.
She was acutely aware that there was something wrong with her. It was extremely hard to pinpoint what or why. She knew she was at odds with everything surrounding her.
She felt as if she were in the middle of a chorus, singing a different song from the rest, while the public glared at her.
She pushed the image away from her mind. It was intrusive and not wholly accurate, a hidden vulnerability—the sensation was more like one of those eye floaters. No matter how much you try to avoid it, once you see it, it is always present.
I should quit metaphors. Now I feel it when I open my eyes, Jenna thought angrily.
I will not think about it, she concluded, but it was like trying not to think about the elephant in the room.
The elephant in the room suddenly acquired eye floaters and tinnitus and started blaring the wrong song with his trunk.
Poor thing.
Damn it! She was just making it worse.
What worried her the most was that no matter how much she focused on the rest of the Losers, she couldn't sense the same discordant sensation in them. This was not a Pantean thing. It was a Jenna thing.
Was it because of the powers? Had she cheated too much? If that were the case, then why didn't Billy feel the same way? He had used the bloody Chant as the motif for a dungeon, for heaven's sake.
Jenna realized how ridiculous that line of thinking was. She felt like a fifth-grader snitching on another kid to the teacher.
She had to take care of this.
It was bad enough having Bob show off at breakfast, with that damned cup he had been carving at night. She was going to scream if any of them asked her again what cool power she had gotten from the Arcanic.
She focused her thoughts and settled on a plan of action. She had been affected by this phenomenon for a long time—she just wasn't aware of it.
The first step to finding out the Why was determining the When.
Mind +5 Memory +5 Recollection +5
This time Jenna did not go for a specific memory. She relived her whole life in reverse, at ultra-fast speed, focusing on the strange sensation she could now perceive.
It was not long before she could identify the exact moment the sensation appeared.
It had been moments before facing Paul in Babylon. She had stopped for a moment to come up with a plan, and her cognitive powers had been boosted by an unexpected source: her future self.
That was the exact moment the Noise had begun.
Jenna had pondered a lot about how she had managed that stunt. She could boost her future self by sending freebie points forward in time; that was the technique she had used to beat the Icosahedron. But she had absolutely no idea how to do it backwards.
The Universe expected her to resolve that Paradox, and she did not know where to begin.
Nothing made any sense.
She went to one of the unused bedrooms and lay on the bed, trying to calm herself.
Damn it, even the bed was wobbly. For an all-powerful immortal, Discovery sucked at choosing furniture.
She calmed her emotions and entered a state of pure, rational thought, allowing her to shed her misconceptions like a snake shedding its skin.
She emitted the Noise. The rest of the Losers did not. She had simply assumed she was the only thing in the universe doing it. While in this state, she could easily see the fault in her own reasoning.
She put all her stats into Spirit and Perception and created a tertiary stat focused on perceiving the Noise. The stat named itself: Dissonance Perception. Ok, she could live with that. It sounded much better than the Noise-Dissonance it was.
She expanded her whole spirit, trying to find any other source of dissonance, no matter how far away, how distant, even if it were hiding in another galaxy or a close parallel reality, she would sense it. Nothing came.
She should try harder, but it was hard to concentrate on this wobbly bed. She knelt on the floor, trying to find out what the problem was.
The bed was wobbly because one leg was uneven. Someone put a flat object under it.
Jenna carefully retrieved it. It was a folder, filled with torn pages.
Pages torn from books in the Library that Discovery had destroyed before teleporting out of her own room.
These pages had been carefully chosen and arranged in a fixed order.
Jenna studied them carefully. There were six pages, each torn from a different book. None of the pages seemed to share any content, and she could not discern any apparent method in the way they were ordered.
Yet, she sensed there was a message there.
Who had done this? Discovery? If that was the case, she had taken an enormous risk, as the Compendium could interpret this as interfering. She thought Bob’s theory about Discovery’s strange behavior was correct.
The first page was taken from a copy of one she already knew by heart. It was the ecology of dungeons—the page described in detail how dungeons starved to death when cut off from Essence.
But that was not wholly true anymore, was it?
Symbiotic dungeons did not starve to death when cut off from Essence. They just stopped growing. Essence for them was not like air to humans; it was like Experience, something that made you stronger, but not essential for survival.
But why?
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The second came from another oldie goldie: Alpha and Omega. This one described how the Compendium’s only goal was to create Omegas who would become Immortal and eventually fall into Exile. They were basically feeding Limbo with powerhouses.
These pages had not been placed at random. They were trying to convey a message, but by providing the information in a roundabout way, much like Eleon described Governance’s prophecies.
The third page did not come from a book. It was a yellowish page from some Beli publication specializing in archaeology.
It was from twenty years ago, and described finding some minor archaeological artifact near some uninteresting ruins. It was a primitive, engraved wooden cup.
When submitted to magical analysis, it was revealed to be millions of years old, by far the oldest artifact ever found. How had it survived so long without turning into dust?
There was a picture of a group of archaeologists with the item, a short, squat tower behind them. Beli had access to some form of magical photography.
The fourth page was taken from an astronomy book, describing the three moons of Belona and the most commonly accepted theory of their origin: that they had been part of a single celestial body, which was probably broken apart by the impact of a giant meteorite more than twenty million years ago.
The more she read, the less she understood. This was a puzzle made of other puzzles. She would not see the giant picture without first interpreting the minor clues.
The following finding was significant. A page of one of Discovery’s own field journals. She had conducted experiments on the Icosahedron during the brief period it was in her possession. She had managed to calculate the number of times it had been activated, unleashing Systems on other worlds: Nearly three million times.
Jenna’s blood ran cold. That bloody thing had unleashed the apocalypse three million times?
Her breath caught as she read the following one.
A page from a book listing the names and characteristics of all the known Universes in which the Compendium existed, listed in chronological order of discovery, from first to last.
Unfortunately, only the last five were named and described; none of them bore even the slightest resemblance to Earth.
There were more than fifteen thousand different realities, if the numbers listed were correct.
The last page was the weirdest of them all: it was not a complete page, just part of one, holding what looked like a longish love poem. Only a single stanza was left. It did not even rhyme, and the verses did not match. It was either very experimental or horrible poetry. Maybe both.
And the tears of my love
Not restrained now anymore
Down my face they fall, my dear
And through blurry eyes I seek
Red with pain, and teary,
Another day with you, just one
Knavish lover though I am
Not winning your trust and dying
Oh, the sweet balm of death
When you look at me no more
Silently, I shall reclaim…
The poem, so out of place with the rest of the pages, instantly piqued her curiosity.
Perhaps there was some hidden quality or clue in it.
Mind +5 Analysis +5 Critique +5
No, there wasn’t. It was just a piece of awful poetry, from some talentless wannabe, with cookie-cutter metaphors, and insincere, shallow feelings that had more to do with narcissistic self-contemplation than with genuine passion and… Jesus, drop it already! thought Jenna, quickly redistributing her points and berating her own Mind. Give the guy a break. At least he is trying. It is not as if he is charging you, she thought.
Everybody is a critic.
Mind +5 Abstraction +5 Pattern Recognition +5
It was time to see what all those pages had in common. Jenna felt memories, thoughts, and sensations flocking together like the pieces of a 3D puzzle, coalescing into patterns.
…Essence starvation killing dungeons in Chicago by the score…Symbiotic dungeons treating Essence as an option, not a necessity… Experience becoming unavailable when systems became locked...Progressor and Alchemical dungeons being able to refine Essence in experience…
THUMP!
Dungeons are refining Essence and feeding the Compendium with it.
All the powers gained by Experientials come from refined Essence from dungeons.
Symbiotic dungeons keep the Essence they absorb. That is the reason they do not die when deprived of it.
All other dungeons feed their reserve Essence into the Compendium, bleeding to death when it is no longer available.
…the number of previous Systemic Activations is much superior to the number of available realities…the Coven uses Unstable Systems only in exceptional circumstances…Unstable Systems are scoured after use…
THUMP!
The Coven is reusing reality planes. Each world has already been part of thousands of activation cycles. Earth itself has hosted thousands of different civilizations before the Age of Man.
Scouring implies permanently destroying one reality. As their number is limited, the Coven does it rarely.
…the ruins mentioned in the archaeology journal resemble the description of the black tower Eleon mentioned…the wooden cup found near them has survived for many aeonic cycles…the description of the moon the Imperials knew, matching Belona’s moon before it was rent into three lesser moons by a meteorite…Necessity being unable to access dimensional travel…
THUMP!
The Imperials do not come from another dimension. They come from Belona’s past. Maybe the Black Tower grants some type of time dilation effect, allowing years to pass at a much slower pace inside the dungeon.
That is how Necessity avoided the Compendium’s restrictions on interplanar travel.
…Governance cryptic prophetic powers…the fact that Jenna got help once from her future self…and doesn’t that engraved cup in the archaeology photo look suspiciously like the one Bob carved this morning…
SHIT! …I mean, THUMP!
The Black Tower is not a time dilation effect. It is a time machine. It not only allows travel into the future, but also into the past.
Governance is not a prophet. He never was. He is an actual time traveller.
Jenna sat up in bed, flustered and excited. That was the reason she was emitting the Dissonance. She was involved in a time paradox. She had been since she received help from her future self.
She stood up and went to look for the rest of the Losers. They had to know this. Suddenly, she stopped. And that dreadful little poem? It was not a part of the puzzle.
Why was it included in the folder? It had to be some sort of code.
Jenna now understood Governance's fondness for riddles. He had to speak cryptically because giving too much information about the future could alter the chain of causality.
She guessed the poem was some sort of code that would only make sense later, when events had already unfolded.
Well, screw that. She simply had no time for that sort of crap. If there were a code, she would crack it, and she would do it now.
And the tears of my love
Not restrained now anymore
Down my face they fall, my dear
And through blurry eyes I seek
Red with pain, and teary,
Another day with you, just one
Knavish lover though I am
Not winning your trust and dying
Oh, the sweet balm of death
When you look at me no more
Silently, I shall reclaim…
She put her brain into quantum thought mode and used every cryptographic technique ever developed. It turned out unnecessary. The code was so simple that even a child could crack it.
You only needed to read the first letter of each verse.
“Shit!” she said again, and this time she ran out of the room, looking for Bob and Billy.
They were out of time.
They had always been out of time.
