faderift | open + closed;

Entry tags:

open + closed;

WHO: Viktor + Abby + Bastien + Edgard + Ellis + Mobius + Richard + Stephen + Tony
WHAT: catch-all for November
WHEN: now, kind of, but also whenever
WHERE: around the Gallows, particularly the library and Research division workroom
NOTES: Open to all/any, wildcards and tweaks welcome. Will match tag format. Content warning for terminal illness in some threads; will avoid on request. Also!! Hit me up if you want to share a job.

Nighttime cracks an eye to gloaming dawn, to a fog moving at a steady crawl between the Gallows and Kirkwall proper, like it's a huge vessel passing by, like it's going somewhere. Fleeing the sun, maybe. A futile effort.

Viktor likewise cracks an eye, two eyes, squints through a fog receding. He raises his head, wipes his mouth, drags a little reading glass on a chain into the gutter and shuts the book around it. On Astrariums, the cover says. Has he ever put his head down 'just to rest' and not ended up warping at least one page with biological humidity?

Since no one's kicked him out of it—or at least had any success to date, should they have tried—this single side room on the lowest floor of the library has fully evolved into a combination office and living space. From it Viktor emerges with crazy hair and an armful of other books, squinting and snuffling and stiff, taps over to the return cart stationed nearby, and adds them to his prior deposits. He then leaves with the cart; his crutch, leaned out of the way, stays behind.

From there he moves slowly between aisles, stopping here and there to slide a book into place, or to leave it out conspicuously so someone who climbs ladders can put it back where it lives. Once in a while he'll pause with a hand on the shelf to yield to a coughing fit, or else to wait for some other silent thing to pass, before moving on.

No one asks him to do this, he just does it.

Other times, he may be found on any library floor, or back in his ('his') little side room, either busy at the table, or asleep on the settee. (Or asleep at the table. Again.) The door is often open, sometimes left unlatched and open a crack.

On rare occasions he may be found on the library's stone balcony, either sitting alone on a bench (also stone), or leaning on the balustrade (is anything not made of stone here) to look out over the sea, nursing some private melancholy.

Later, when the tower begins to sound like it's waking up, Viktor makes the climb to the seventh floor and assumes his spot in the Research workroom. Settles his bony backside on the stool. Spins a dry pen around his thumb while he thinks.

It looks like he's pondering some deep mystery; what he's thinking, really, is that it's annoying that no one exists here who can check his work on this page or the pages beneath it. (Annoying, upsetting, a constant low ache.) No one needs to check that half of his work. It's fine. He knows it's fine. Still—

Should any be present, he might ask of someone he knows has worked with local runes,

"Can I run something past you?"

Or, of a rifter, or else anyone he's hardly spoken to,

"How well versed are you in the native runic system?"

Or it's any other day and he's just toiling away in here like anyone else might be. Coworkers will have found he tends to respond at least lukewarmly to working chatter, and that if he doesn't want to be interrupted, they won't have to guess—they'll know.

The sound of coughing follows him everywhere: a herald of his arrival, a sign of his otherwise quiet presence, a dry barking down the hall.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

“A pity we can’t just take an apprenticeship with a runecrafter and learn how to do it ourselves. I asked. Apparently working with raw lyrium is liable to make anyone — but particularly mages — go absolutely kookoo bananas.”

Meh, is the underlying tone in his voice and thus his verdict on that particular matter.

“That does sound promising, though. I wonder if it might be useful to catalogue equivalents, like a Rosetta Stone— sorry, that’s an old stone stele back in my world, inscribing the same message in three different languages. Invaluable for translation efforts. Maybe it’s pointless to track our own runes here alongside the local ones, but I like to think there might be some use in it. An act of translation. Magic’s just another kind of building block in the universe; it might yet reveal something.”

Strange often tired of learning actual languages — couldn’t stand it, didn’t have the patience for it — but when you threw magical runic languages into the mix, well. That was a different matter entirely.

Whatever Viktor finds, or doesn't find, in his close examination of this lens, he's satisfied by it; down it goes to the soft cloth laid out for especially delicate pieces. He places it, gives it a little turn to align its features square with the adjacent component.

"Precisely my thinking. Everything leads to something."

Here he blows sharply on the lens housing, then once more, takes a small brush to it. While he does this, he's considering whether to mention his intent to become involved in Wysteria de Foncé's experimental lyrium trials—weighing the pleasure of discussing it against a broader prudence. This isn't secret knowledge, no, but 1) it isn't his project, 2) he doesn't know if Wysteria wants more people involved, and 3) as his own personal experience demonstrates, it's easier to get away with doing whatever you want by being quiet about it.
Also, Strange could be a narc in sorcerer's clothing. He doesn't know.

"I've already spent some time cataloguing equivalents, as you said, using written theory as reference." Hours. Days. Stark wound him up, pointed him in that direction, and off he went. "We're fortunate the Gallows was once a Circle—the library's collection of educational texts is very comprehensive."

“Fortunate, yes. Although I keep forgetting how bleak ‘the Gallows’ actually is, as a name for a place.” The others had spruced it up over the last few years, from what he could tell — removing some of the more egregious murals, painting some more cheerful ones in their place, widening the windows for more light — but sometimes he was still struck by the realisation that he was living in the bones of a prison, that the rifters’ new home had once been a place of such misery.

Strange has wound up with his sending stone in his hands, rolling it back and forth in his fingers for lack of a sling ring to toy with. Absentmindedly, following a train of thought leaning aslant as he glances over at his division colleague: “You said that your hextech engineering was so that anyone could use your portals without being a mage. What are the mages like in your world?”

Viktor has had similar thoughts of the previous occupants, but more often than not he's ended up wondering what it would have been like to live here. Even having read some of the history, his imagination tends to draw on his own life to frame it more like an academy than a prison, young people learning their mystic arts, tutored by their elders—what it could have been, rather than what it was. On the other hand, it's not at all difficult to imagine what the templars were like—he need only think of enforcers.

As to the mages of his world,

"I wish I knew. I've met only two people who claim to have encountered a living mage. Since the ancient wars, they've all but passed into legend."

The balcony in winter, stars above and lamps below, a massive scaffold rising in the distance. A voice blurred to warm tones. His favourite of all the times the story was told to him, reduced to hazy incompletion. Why leave him with the remnants at all?

"Nearly all records from that time were destroyed, so all we had was what we worked out ourselves... likely retreading paths already taken centuries before." Some small thing clatters at his station. He pushes tools around, indecisive, muttering, "Terrible waste of knowledge."

Strange tries to imagine that. All of the Masters of the Mystic Arts vanishing, being wiped out in some conflagration, the only hints of their existence to be pieced together from scraps and half-dead artifacts centuries later. It’s unthinkable.

“This is why I am very much a fan of extensive documentation.” The comment is dry, but sincere. He glances down at the stack of research he’s been working on and which he’s currently taking a short break from; thankfully, the Theodosians seem like they’ve been enthusiastic about recording most things in books and scrolls. “It sounds like… well, magical archaeology. And archaeology always, by necessity, means making incorrect assumptions and struggling to fill in the blanks. I’m amazed you got as far as you did.”

A teleportation rig thousands of meters high. Thousands!!

Thousands. Someone really decided the world needed a phallic symbol that big. ("someone")

"Yes, actually, that's exactly what it was. Much of the preliminary work was literally archaeological in nature, research trips and the like." Obsessive work, years of it, a young man compelled. Deeply relatable. "But that was before... eh, before my time. I came in later, during the reverse engineering phase," pausing for a little effort or precision, "and got physics all over it."

Another clatter, even smaller than the last; he catches the little screw just as it drops off the edge of the table, rolls it forward from palm to fingertips, places it on the cloth.

"You and your... society, your order, would have come in handy."

“They would’ve. My predecessor, she was centuries old herself — which lent a certain continuity of purpose to the society, but even in her absence, the libraries were extensive and well-protected.” Barring just a few incidents of villainous theft and horrific attempts to sunder the world and collapse it into the Dark Dimension, but.

Strange would be spinning restlessly in his chair if it could spin. He catches that glimpse of Viktor snatching for the falling screw, though, and a curiosity about that particular project finally needles through the rest of the conversation. The equipment’s been picked apart like some kind of engineering vulture, disassembling it into its component parts. So he has to ask.

“What’s with the goggles?”

Viktor's quiet as he pulls brass lens housing from molded leather base, his hands holding careful shapes. The creak of his stool as he sits up is, incidentally, typical of a swivel joint taking weight.

"I'm stripping them," he says. "For cleaning." The pieces, while lacking the particular sterility of factory newness, don't look at all dirty from a distance—nor up close, for that matter—and they show only mild edge wear. "They're new," he adds, as if this is all the explanation needed for their disassembly.

(New to him, anyway.)

"Your predecessor—did she retire?"

Edited 2022-12-09 17:29 (UTC)

“If they’re new, do they really need cleaning?” Still, though, Strange isn’t judging. He’d once worked with horology, disassembling and repairing his own high-end wristwatch. There’s a satisfaction in the little details, the delicate machinery and cogs and gears and carefully, agonisingly putting everything back together.

And there’s a small beat after Viktor’s question, then, plain and explanatory: “Yes, if you count death as retirement.”

He doesn’t bristle with that light sarcasm, though, and it doesn’t sound like the topic is more sensitive than most. This particular scab’s long-since healed over. “Passed the mantle to me sooner than she should’ve, but the passing of the torch was also likely later than it should’ve been. Centuries, y’know.”

That sounds more like a wisecrack than a question, so he lets it pass without so much as a glance. He's not about to insist on making a comparison to cleaning fish immediately after mention of a mentor's passing, anyway. But he does think it.

Centuries, and he nods like he does know, in little bobs. The recollection kicks up like silt, traces the shape of a conspicuous vacancy with contextual details. You said so yourself—that he does remember. (And that she spoke it over his head. The both of them did. He'd might as well not even have been there.)

"Was it her decision? Passing the mantle," he adds, to clarify. Not the other thing.

Edited (ahem) 2022-12-12 06:39 (UTC)

“Yes.” There’s a beat, then, as Strange seems to shift gears a little. There’s the doctor when he’s cool and flippant and bored, shrugging off questions with his habitual sarcasm, and then there’s the doctor when he relents and decides to be sincere. Today they’re skirting a little closer to something which does actually matter, and there’s a choice there: like picking through his own mental toolbox and deciding which one to use in this conversation.

In the end, he settles for honest.

“She identified me as her successor. Decided she saw potential in me where others didn’t. It matters, having a mentor, even if you’re a shit student.” He’s been fidgeting so much with the sending stone that it slides, almost slips out of his fingers; he finally sets it back down in its housing in the journal.

“Others weren’t too pleased with the choice, though. I was new. Also, I can be annoying.”

Hey, at least he’s self-aware.

"Indeed."

Viktor affirms this with the kind of indifference one might apply to the existence of any ordinary object in the room. There are chairs. Stephen Strange is annoying. This is information anyone can perceive... and if it were at all a problem, he'd have done something about it by now.

The near fumbling of the stone, as it catches his eye, sets off a cascade of contextual reflection. His own hands still their busy movements to rest on the table. While his fingers can hardly be described as delicate, long, bony, blunt-nailed things that they are, they relax into elegant shapes nonetheless.

"It matters especially for an annoying, shitty student." That word sounds precisely as good coming out of his mouth as one might hope, crisply enunciated double T and all. "Being seen. Valued. A single person's investment can make all the difference in the world."

Phrasing aside, this subject is a persuasive argument for sincerity, and Viktor yields to it easily. The particular gentleness of his voice isn't a tool in his box; this is simply the way he talks.

There’s just something about teachers as far as Stephen Strange is concerned — because he doesn’t respect all that many people, but knowledge and training and the sharing of it is something else. That’s something earned, something precious. And it seems like Viktor might know the feeling.

“How did you learn? Everything that you do.” Strange gestures, encompassing everything Viktor: the careful sets of tools, the deconstructed and reconstructed goggles, the young man’s meticulous attention-to-detail in his corner of the Research workspace.

"Mostly self-taught." He says this plainly, neither boastful of nor shrinking from his own aptitude; it's simply a fact. "I had some guidance early on—a little framework to nudge the intuitive toward the intentional. Before that, I was simply exercising my interests."

Before he met an old man in a cave and his giant pink salamander. In that cave he learned about the scientific method and encountered some truly nightmarish imagery that he can never unsee. Don't worry about it.

"Much later, much like you, I was identified and given a hand up by someone very old and very wise."

He doesn't like that the conversation's eye has swivelled over to him, but bears it well.

“It takes something to learn not to bite that hand, and to let them haul you up.”

Speaking from obvious personal experience. (Strange keeps trying not to project, but it’s hard not to: their respective disabilities. A certain prickly self-sufficiency. He sees a little of himself in this younger man, and perhaps it’s part of what drew him to Viktor to begin with.)

It is difficult to navigate these waters, though. Strange is somehow both nosy and yet also allergic to that conversation sliding, becoming too personal for either of them. So he makes a sudden sharp pivot to safer territory, the professional and business-like and Research-related: “I’ve decided I’m going to start pitching in on Project Felandaris, by the by. If you ever want another set of hands on your own work with it.”

Yes, the comparable details have not gone unnoticed, likely by more than just the two of them, incidentally speaking—though in Strange's case, Stark is a much stronger candidate for many obvious reasons. For one, Viktor has a way of blending into the scenery. He doubts he's capable of making a fixed impression on anyone's thoughts, and the only thing that makes that knowledge less acutely painful is knowing, too, that social invisibility is a form of convenience: when few are inclined to look your way, you can get away with a lot.

Plus, visually. The facial hair is a very particular shape. A cultural hallmark, maybe. He noticed it once and now he notices it every time.

His eyes tick up from looking at it, in fact, along with an overall brightening for the offer.

"Oh? Excellent news. Of course, your assistance would be most welcome." Off an idea, he sits up. "Have you been introduced to our department's technology? The ARRIVED system? The thaumoscopes?"

Edited 2023-02-14 04:36 (UTC)

“Tony mentioned it offhand,” it seems there’s some kind of comradely intimacy there, the two men on a first-name basis where most others call Strange Strange, “but it was a brief mention amongst a lot of words, so we didn’t get too far into it.”

You know how it goes.

“But I do want to know more, because if it’s what it sounds like, I had a fairly similar alerting system back home: it could tell when we had visitors from another plane. I’m impressed that there’s something like it here. Want to show me the ropes?” Is that even a saying where Viktor comes from? Amending, “I mean, give me the tour.”

"I'd be happy to."

They do have it, the ropes thing, but that detail is left in the dust as Viktor swivels from his task and stands. In the same movement, his crutch is taken up and flicked under his arm with seamless motor memory. He's a good four inches shorter than the doctor, even a little more so thanks to his sloping posture, and takes looking up to speak to him in stride.

"Thaumoscope first—there's one right over here." Springing a thought off the familiarity of a given name, "Now I'm wondering if your system lent anything to the creation of the one we have here. That's one thing I've come to appreciate about being here... this collection of minds, and the rich pool of knowledge it affords. That we have several highly innovative engineers among our ranks is quite the fortunate accident."

“He’d never actually taken a close look at the one I had, so I’m not sure there’s any connection. Maybe just chalk it up to great minds thinking alike. That, or I’m immediately claiming credit for inspiring this invention.”

A joke, mild, as he’s led over to inspect one of those thaumoscopes: the delicate copper antennae, the gears and dials. It’s much prettier than the scientific hardware back home, and so more than anything, it reminds him of the various artifacts in the Sanctum’s storage. Touch the wrong thing there and it might blow up in your face.

And Strange has latched onto the etymology. Thaumaturgy and wonderworking, he thinks, and says aloud: “Thaum. Like the Greek thaûma, meaning ‘miracle’ or ‘marvel’.” Then, redirecting the full wattage of his curiosity onto Viktor, the arch of one eyebrow: “Does this thing measure magic?”

While Viktor is careful as he takes the device in hand, he has the thought that someone else might give it a cocky flip to show it off, handle to handle grip—and catch it, each and every time, so a scolding for carelessness wouldn't even land. It leaves a strange feeling behind. A shadow suspended behind cloudy glass.

It doesn't ruin his day; he's very pleased to have the opportunity to show a new thing to someone interested, as well as the dip into etymology (that means the interest is genuine!), and though his mien is somewhat restrained, he practically radiates this pleasure as he brings the thaumoscope closer to the doctor for a better look.

"That is precisely what it does. With reasonable accuracy, too." When he looks up from the device's little assortment of ingeniously devised meters, there's a certain gleam in his amber eye. "Would you like to see?"

“Please.”

He isn’t always this polite — usually quite the contrary — but there is a very particular button labelled FUN MAGICAL ARTIFACTS in Stephen Strange’s brain, and Viktor’s just hammered it. Strange is intrigued, curious, and therefore playing along to find out more: leaning closer, peering at the device, but mindful to not just reach out and seize it out of the other man’s hands.

(It had taken years, but he has finally learned to not touch the macguffins before he fully understands how they work.)

As he holds the thaumoscope in his right hand, Viktor opens the left roughly two feet out, the anchor shard seated like a dim green scar in his palm.

"Keep an eye on this one especially," he says, indicating which with the angle of his thumb. "The way it jumps." The meters' sedate clicks of registration pick up as he brings it in closer; he finishes nearly touching it, then resets his position.

"And now..."

This time, his fingers spread and stiffen, not quite a claw, like he's imagining he must keep a hold on some large invisible sphere. A cord in his wrist stands out. Flexion at the inside of his elbow. Effort shows on his face, the set of his mouth, his nostrils. Just as his hand begins a faint trembling under the strain of it, that quiet green crease suddenly snaps into sizzling acid glow. At once, the thaumoscope crackles its excitement—it grows to an excited fizz of tiny sounds, the meters pipping madly as his palm comes near.

“Like a Geiger counter,” Strange mutters as he leans in to look genuinely fascinated, forgetting for a second that Geiger means absolutely nothing to the other man. His blue-green eyes follow that little jump of the needle, the buzz and click of noise alerting to Viktor’s flex of his anchor abilities.

“So I’m assuming the arrival system is like a larger extension of this, maybe?” Radar, he wants to say radar but he really needs to stop with terminology which probably doesn’t carry over, “It pings on magic with varying sensitivity, and presumably the opening rifts are an even larger outburst of magical energy—”

And they discuss, and that’s how they while away the rest of the afternoon: Viktor showing him around, explaining the intricacies of the thaumoscope and how to use it, eventually taking a tour through the ARRIVED system. They don’t come across anything earthshatteringly new, but they get to play around with the toys in the Research division — which is a good enough way to kill a day, and mucking around with the artifacts feels enough like Christmas that the newer rifter is, frankly, delighted.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

open + closed;

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

blows six inches of dust off this thread, cough hack hello

reaches for

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

wrap or yrs to close?