war table: strangers in the mirror.

[propulsion]

WHO: Closed to the gang
WHAT: Delving into the temple of Dirthamen in search of artifacts, Riftwatch finds that the temple demands more than they seek. But what else is new?
WHEN: Cloudreach
WHERE: Arlathan Forest, within the temple of Dirthamen, Elven God of Secrets and Knowledge
NOTES: OOC post.

You stand before it, a glow emanating from its smooth surface, a perfectly round sphere whose warmth bathes your face and hands in light. Around you are veiled faces in hoods, heads bowed in reverence, and a murmur of chanting echoes, overlapping, like the clashing of tides. Your hovered hands drift apart in a slow and elegant motion, and you can only faintly see it, the lines of magic you draw between your fingers, like faint golden cobwebs of shivering power.

They tremble between your fingers, they shiver, and they bend towards the orb. You must master it so it does not, in its wisdom and hunger, take from you what you're not willing to give, but you are well trained, you are beyond compare, and you will give only what you will.

The chanting rises, and the orb pulses with light. You focus, and the magic drawn between your fingers pulls away from it, arcs around in loops. It feels akin to reining a wild horse or mastering the lines affixed to the sails of a ship in a storm or pulling taut a bowstring.

And your control slips. Or you set something free. Either way, your hands come down on the surface of the orb, and it burns you alive.

...

The fading impression of this memory glimmers in your mind.

And nothing else. Where are you? What are you doing? Why do you wield this blade in your hand, or lay here with your bare throat offered to another's? You don't so much awake; you become aware of yourself, cold and aching and tired, and as you try to assess the situation and evaluate the motivations of the weary, filthy strangers that surround you, you wait for context to return, but it never does. You reach backwards for memory, for anything, encountering only the image of the glowing orb before you, and the way it had burned you with the things it knows when you touch it.

But there are more pressing matters to resolve.

After the initial confusion and chaos, all that is left to do is assess the place you are in, and decide what next to do. To escape, perhaps, or, some niggling part of you wonders, find the location of the glowing orb, which you know, deep down, is somewhere in this place.

The Temple of Dirthamen

Not that you know its name.

This place feels like an underground palace, sunken deep inside the earth, grand chambers that connect to one another with various passageways, tunnels, and staircases. Light sources come from your flaming torches or travel-sized lanterns hanging off your belt, or the occasional luminescence from green-glowing runic engravings on tiled walls, or the faint glow of a green miasma that lingers in hallways and chambers. There are walls set with elaborate mosaics, and great statues depicting twin figures, one of them cloaked in shadow and the other more detailed, and creatures such as ravens, always a pair, or the arching legs of a giant spider.

As intentionally built as it is, it is also half-wild. There are chambers that seemed carved directly into rock, and floors of rough natural stone. It is not, however, all intentional. You will find the frames of stone archways set directly into rough rock, or stairwells that lead nowhere but directly into cave wall, as if the earth had grown around it.

Despite this oddity, it is a beautiful and grand place, but clearly one steeped in ancient neglect, with flooded chambers, moss-riddled stairwells, crumbled stone, and the smell of rot and dust.

Traversing this place, however, is a challenge in and of itself, hostile to the strangers that crawl through its catacombs. Not only will you find whole pathways blocked with crumbled stone, or rooms that require you to swim through them to get to the other side, or a strangely angled corridor that forces you to climb up its craggy surface, the building itself is intentionally guarded against intruders in a myriad of passive ways. Traps trigger when a previously unnoticed puzzle is left ignored or incomplete, or doors refuse to open without the presence of a key in spite of there being no discernible lock. Some of these you may be able to solve, some will force you to double back.

You are also not alone. Out the corner of your eye, the presence of spirits dart in and out of the catacombs, and occasionally, you hear the ominous chittering sound of many-legged beasts that put you to mind of all those giant spider statues.

Some places you may encounter in your blind journey forwards:

THE QUEEN'S LAIR: You don't know how it happened, but the ground gives beneath you and whoever you are with, sliding without dignity down the abruptly steep angle of not-quite-smooth-enough rock. You land with a violent tumble upon surprisingly soft, spongy ground—fungus, moss, mud, deep puddles. As you look around, you see the large stone chamber you are in is lit with a sort of ambient bioluminescence of green miasma, showing up the sight of thick patches of cobweb strung between pillars, statues, hanging from loops from the ceiling. You see bundles blanketed in web, tellingly humanoid in size and general shape and, thankfully, perfectly still. The smell of dust and old decay in the air makes you hopeful that perhaps this place is more tomb than nest, until you see the way the giant cobwebs around you begin to sway. Looking up, through the miasma, the shadowy shapes of dog-sized spiders begin to pluck their way down. And you think you see, far above, the unmoving shape of a truly colossal spider resting high above. At least, you hope it's unmoving. You have two choices: take your chance in trying to scramble back up the steep incline you fell down, despite slippery rock, or brave the chamber and try to make your way in deeper in search of the gated archway on the other side that you will only know is there when you find it. Or the secret third choice of being eaten by spiders.

THE RED REVELRY: You and your companions, such as they are, find yourselves at the entryway of a great chamber. The walls glow with a faint blue-green light, only barely illuminating the wide open space. The open tiled ground is littered in debris, some of it crumbled rock, and some of it, ancient shattered skeleton, scraps of cloth, the evidence of many corpses that have long since decomposed to nothing but dry bone, dull jewelry, and the rotted remains of their clothing. Unpleasant, but unless you wish to yet again double back, the only way forward is through, and you do see another archway towards the back. However, the moment you step into the room, your mind fogs over. The room fills with golden light, laughter, music, and a swirling crowd of elven folk. You are in the midst of a revelry, and your heart feels light and joyous. One offers you a goblet of wine, another bids you to dance with them, another offers to share from a platter of fruit. The room is also surrounded by tall men and women of more serious demeanor, dressed in rich ornamental armor, dark cloaks, armed with curved blades, and you barely notice the sound of metal on leather as they all at once draw them. You do notice, however, as the screams begin, as blood begins to spatter, as the ring of guards begin to systematically cut down each reveler in arms reach. Now would be a good time to remember that none of this is real, but as you can't quite shake the immersive experience of a panicked grip to your arm or the visceral sensation of wet arterial spray spattering against your armor, it might be best to run for the next door before you find out otherwise.

Optional dice roll: A d20 roll of 16 or higher has you break the illusion, safely restoring the chamber around you to the dark dusty tomb full of unmoving skeletons. A result between 10 and 15 means you are still immersed in the illusion but you have your wits, and, with focus, are able to move through the figures as though they aren't there, but may still struggle. A result between 5 and 9 means you are too immersed, and the crush of the crowd is preventing you from running, and if a guard with a blade strikes you, you will be injured. You may need help. A result between 1 and 4: oh my god all of this is real and you're going to die unless someone drags you out of here. Otherwise, choose your own result, no dice no masters.

THE PATH OF THE SIGHTLESS: The broad hallway you approach is tiled with jade, with an atmospheric light coming down from the tall arched ceiling. Up ahead, the road is strange. The tiles are grey stone and then foot-square tiles of dull gold or similar metal. Upon stepping into the corridor, you will find that your vision is gone, cloaking you in darkness. To anyone else, standing outside of the corridor, they can see within it and you perfectly fine. What's more, any step you take that is not on one of the shining tiles, comes with a consequence: a psychic kind of torment that feels like a swarm of ravens invading your mind. They tear and claw, a physical sort of headache-like pain that becomes quickly overwhelming and paralysing, leaving you cold and shaking. What's more, this assault has things to say. Although you do not remember anything of yourself, these ravens seem to know. However, if you make it back onto a shining tile, or are close enough to one of the ends of the corridor to leave it, the torment will stop.

The idea here is that those with you will need to verbally guide your way through the corridor. If you are subjected to punishment for mis-stepping, the 'ravens' that flood your mind will pluck and claw at all the insecurities and fears you would have had if you remembered them. This is one way to get information about yourself, but as delivered through the bitchiest and harshest of critics. Your character will not be able to withstand it for long but will have difficulty hearing or moving, so feel free to assume they need extra assistance or manage to help themselves.

In general, feel free to find the kind of obstacles you might anticipate, such as ancient elven magic hopscotch, doors that only open if you pierce your hand on the knife-like protrusion where a handle should be, rooms full of wisps that taunt and mislead, platforms that require Big Jumps to get across or else you'll find yourself wet or on fire, Veilfire puzzle with tiles that ripple and shift, and so on.

There are also places of respite, ancient prayer rooms or barracks-like quarters, where you may discover the rations you have on you and get to know people who do not know themselves.

Strangers in the Mirror

Here is what you must bear in mind.

MEMORIES OF THE LIVING: Although you have no recollection of yourselves, recollection is not forever withheld. At any time, your mind may jerk towards an impression of something, clear as day. You may whole heartedly believe that you are recalling something of your own past, or it may be so incorrect that you are certain that this memory doesn't belong to you. These flashes come in moments of quiet, in looking upon the face of an ancient statue, or catching your reflection in a shining surface of water or metal or polished tile, or seeing the light in another's eyes.

If you happen to meet the person for whom these memories belong, you will know like a hook in your heart that this memory belongs to them. There is no way for you to give it the way you got it, for only the gods can parcel out memory and knowledge without the tools of language and writing, and so what you choose to do is yours to decide.

MEMORIES OF THE DEAD: There will be moments, likewise, when the memory of those long gone from this place invades your mind. However, they are not for you to know. At any point, you will find that you lose time, that a great stretch of blankness takes hold of your mind, and you come back to your own forgetful self in some other place, perhaps with entirely new company, performing some task you did not mean to begin: sweeping the floor, or kneeling before an altar, or sitting at a table prepared to eat a meal that is not there, or even once again about to slit the throat of a willing supplicant.

Use this mechanic to free up your character to pursue threads with others rather than only your home team. If you can also play out encountering someone in this fugue state or vice versa, in which they will be largely unresponsive, but seem to know their way around, completing their tasks, until they snap out of it.

And some general advice on your current affliction:

This is a fictional form of amnesia, so don't overthink it. Broadly, your character should instinctively know standard facts like what colour the sky is, even if they can't see any sky currently, or they may have an instinct towards certain skills they have practiced every day since childhood, like the yo-yo. However, knowledge of who they are, what their name is, where they've come from is completely lost on them.

More specific world facts like what the Chantry is, what a mage is, what a Ferelden is, you can be fast and loose with. If your character is deeply intimate with something like the Circle, they may roughly know of it in vague terms. Alternatively, if it's more fun if your mage doesn't even know that magic exists, then go with it.

Rifters from profoundly different worlds, like modern earth, can absolutely have a sense that they are in some kind of weird ancient world surrounded by old timey people. This is left to your discretion.

As far as what your character is like without their memories, again, this is up to you. They can be cluelessly the same, or exhibit hidden personality traits they ordinarily keep suppressed (or suppress ordinarily prominant instincts), or simply be fundamentally different without the burdens or highlights of their own lives to inform them. Are they friendlier? More vicious? Braver than usual? Less selfless, more? Whatever you like!

A Gift of Revelation

And then it ends.

Seemingly without ceremony, if you are far away from the thing that ends it. You feel a lurch and then it all comes flooding back: your name, your life, the mission, the people around you, the forward camp merely a few hours of travel outside the bounds of the temple you are in. You may be close enough to where you'd already started scouting before it all went foggy to make your way out easily, or you may be so immersed in the depths of the temple that your mission of trying to escape hasn't really changed, despite this context.

And yes, your sending crystal is still not working. Figures.

You still harbour the memories that you were given unbidden, even if they've lost their bright shine in the void, and you will still feel that sense of knowledge for whom they belong when you meet them next, if you are unable to work it out on your own.

Once out, the warmth of the Arlathan Forest greets you, and your crystal begins to flicker back to life once more. Truly, they don't pay you enough for this.

Comments

[pathlit]

Jayce would hope the tiles make no mark on F.R.E.D.; it isn't supposed to possess regrets or fears. Ever greater is his hope that Viktor's journey from there to here on F.R.E.D.'s back is altogether boring, though he's still nervous to see him on that path. Whatever the magic behind the enchantment this time around, it knows.

Knows where to dig, what to unearth and fling upon the psyche like a thousand needles.

Fidgeting with the control rod, he nods again and directs F.R.E.D. to take its first step on the metal tile.

[grindset]

The first tile, the first step. One three-toed saurian foot comes to rest, and then the other. For a humanoid of average size, these plates aren't exactly spacious; Fred's feet are simply too large, the pelvic axle too widely set to fit without touching stone. Between its blunt problem solving functions and mechanical ignorance of the context, it cannot devise a solution on its own.

Over the armoured iron shoulder, Viktor is rigid, his brow drawn. The runic array is bright under his hands, and then it isn't. While to Jayce the lyrium limns him in familiar blue—his throat, the sharp edge of his jaw—he stares, unseeing, through the dark.

A flutter, a rush. Cold—but not sharp. Ancient air cools the back of his neck, highlights the trifling discomfort of a damp collar.

"Next."

[pathlit]

Their positions switched, a discomfort similar to the one felt earlier by Viktor creeps into his periphery, as if he were spying on him. His attention darts between three points: Viktor, F.R.E.D. (or, more specifically, its unorthodox feet), and the path.

"Turn to the left by fifteen degrees," he instructs, because he doesn't know if a construct knows the face of a clock. Immediately after speaking, he wonders if a construct knows degrees, even; to his relief, it shifts appropriately. Louder, to Viktor, he says, "The next one is... two steps?"

Less, maybe? With F.R.E.D.s leg length exceeding his own.

Still worried about what might happen off the safe tile, he says, "Take two steps forward."

[grindset]

Runes pulse for the command; the torso pivots on its waist to requisite measure; the legs follow. Viktor presses his fingers into inscriptions he can't see, anchoring himself to texture. Ahead of forward motion, he flinches like he's been clipped.

The timing is off. Only now does the big body jolt with one landed stride, swing its momentum into another. With his shoulders up and back hunched, Viktor seems braced into their movement, as if he expects a greater speed—only the creasing of his face betrays what this posture really means. It means whispers gathering, rushing up in a frenzy of gusting, beating, thrashing. It means slashing flyby swipes and claws punching in, squeezing hard.

Fred reaches the target at an angle, comes to rest in imperfect diagonal. Both feet stand on tarnished gold, toes and all.

poor little corpse

"Why's it stopped?" Pain gleams sharp in his voice. "Did it overshoot?"

doesn't know he's dead

[pathlit]

Eyes narrow. He leans in -- fully -- right at the edge of safety. A shift in Viktor's postured, hunched; Jayce assumes anticipation, but it doesn't abate with F.R.E.D.'s arrival on the metal tile.

Viktor's question rings sharply in the quiet.

The hairs on Jayce's neck stand on end.

"Come to me," he bids the golem, its control rod clutched tightly to his chest to keep the helpless panic at bay. "As fast as you can."

[grindset]

Here he would say a name if he knew it. Instead,

"What's hahh," smears into strain, choked thin. Jayce says something, far away, and unseen runes flare blue in reply. Thoughts jumble and mat and pull apart in filaments, separate in cruel snips. Where is his body? His hand comes to his face, finds it clammy, imparts him with the chill of his own fingers and the ridges of jutting orbital bones as he grasps his own skull. The darkness heaves.

Metal foot engages metal plate, pushes and scrapes in sudden propulsion. A spark flies. (It's not his feet on those tiles—)

The massive machine, gaining inexorable momentum with every stride, comes to him, as fast as it can.

[pathlit]

"You'll be okay!" he says loudly, stomach churning with dread. He'll have to be okay. Jayce doesn't know what he'll do otherwise. (Now that they've got F.R.E.D., maybe he will try to tunnel them out of here instead. Ha ha--)

"Just hang on!" barely cuts over the heavy thudding of a hastened, impassive return. "You're almost--" as he backs away from the edge of the pathway, fear and worry feeding the storm within, roaring with helplessness, "-- just a little more--"

[grindset]

It isn't long, and it's forever, a storm in the unending dark, the thud and clank and clang of stone and metal, the hissing and battering. It pulls at his eyes, back and back. A cold so complete it pares his awareness of hands and feet down to the pressure upon them.

As Jayce moves, the machine pivots its trajectory to follow him. Heedless of the state of its cargo (bent and crumpling, reedy restrained breaths), it slows from thundering haste in a smooth downshift for its operator's safety, clears the cursed tiles as though there's no distinction at all, and comes to an easy stop. The eyeless helm points its face at him. Joints settle. Mechanisms shift to neutral.

In the sudden vastness of inner quiet, Viktor's bent body stirs; he peels himself upright on shaking arms.

[pathlit]

For a fleeting moment, Jayce holds his breath, worried that F.R.E.D. might barrel him over. Fortunately, this isn't the case. With a sigh equal parts relieved and concerned, he hastily instructs it to kneel and approaches Viktor from its side as he's lowered, hands hovering uselessly nearby, wary of inciting further distress.

(Let me down. Let me down--)

"Hey," he says quietly, holding the control rod near Viktor's hand in offering. "It's just me again. Can I-- Can I help you down?"

Please.

[grindset]

The first offering he accepts without hesitation, though the gesture itself is slow, as not to knock their hands together in clumsiness. As they close around the rod, the tremor persisting in his fingers is effectively snuffed. It's warm, he notes, from being held.

The second offering—how gently it's delivered, the worry simmering beneath, which, as far as he knows, may simply reflective of this man's essential nature—receives a shallow shake of his head in reply.

"It's better if I stay on," is quiet. "We'll be slowed down, otherwise."

The difference between let me down and now: the figure that kneels beneath him hasn't shared in his discomfort any more than the tiled floor he sought before. He's been hollowed out, it feels like. It's as if that spiteful onslaught tore out every soft thing within reach, leaving behind a raw and ragged structure, awful echoes wafting through the space.

With the same deliberate care—and the same approximate gaze, barely focused—he pulls the hanging satchel into his lap, lifts the flap, and moves things around inside until he finds it: a small packet of waxed cloth. This he offers in exchange.

Inside are a few dried beef strips—salted and marinated, even. They smell good.

[pathlit]

"Oh," is soft in its passage, "um," its end, and Jayce draws his hand closer to himself in acquiescence to a polite refusal for that which he'd not openly offered: warmth.

Quietly, he says, "Yeah."

He feels silly, of course, a self-conscious twist in his gut that leads his attention elsewhere. Even if Viktor hadn't forgotten him (again), he'd certainly find the act too intimate. Inappropriate. Even Jayce feels his own neck warming in embarrassment at the thought, and still does he feel miserably useless.

Gnawing on his lower lip, he peels himself out of the light jacket worn over his tunic, the one sleeve still sporting crusted blood, and offers it to Viktor at the same time Viktor makes an offering of his own.

"Oh," he says again; it is far more neutral than its predecessor. He accepts the small packet with a growl of his stomach and every intention to return it into Viktor's satchel once the jacket is taken.

[grindset]

Another trade. Reluctance is clear in the hovering of his hand before he grasps the jacket's collar and draws it into his lap, first to examine the slash in the sleeve. The stained edge feels stiff under his thumb. A glance flits from there to Jayce's arm, to his face—away, then, as he drapes the jacket across his back.

Sometimes, for some gestures, the trick is simply not to ask. While the man Jayce knows is unlikely to request a hand on his arm, or an arm around his shoulders, rarely has he ever rejected such—but that boundary is only soft when they know each other, and even then only in particular ways.

Little gusts of body scent as the garment's oversized shape settles around him. Warmth, received all the same.

With a nod to the packet, "Eat something."

[pathlit]

"Later," he says with a slight grimace, tucking the waxed packet into his satchel. "Lost my appetite."

(It's a partial truth.)

Upon the reminder that a journal is nestled within it, he hesitates, then glances askance at Viktor. "Do you mind, um... if we left a note for whoever else might cross here?"

[grindset]

Viktor's answering frown persists as he revisits the satchel's contents. Out comes the packet again, this time to be tossed at Jayce without warning—whether it triggers some catching reflex or bounces off his chest to land on the floor, Viktor doesn't concern himself with the results, only moves on to pulling out the journal, and a writing tool after it.

"I'll write two. We can send this," a tap on the machine's head with the end of his pencil, "to leave one on the other side."

[pathlit]

For Viktor’s decisive action, he receives a self-interrupted noise of surprise; Jayce automatically moves to catch the packet a second before understanding. The ghost of exasperated (fond) familiarity for the unspoken decision whispers in his chest. This is what we’re doing. Meeting adjourned.

Said affection merely grows louder when Viktor states what Jayce had hoped to do, but had worried how he might react to the suggestion to dismount. Viktor, he’d been certain, would have agreed without complaint. Viktor-without-his-memories,-having-just-endured-mental-and-physical-agony, he wasn’t sure. To see the alignment twice over draws a relieved half-laugh from him, beginning to soothe the frayed edges of his psyche.

“Yeah,” he says warmly, pocketing the trade, “that’s a great idea.”

He’ll wait for Viktor in the mean time, help him off F.R.E.D. if he requests it, verbally or not.

[grindset]

Upon opening the (his) journal to the back, instead of finding a blank page fit to be repurposed, he discovers more notes. An unremarkable thing to find in a notebook, yes, but these don't match the the rest, aren't of the scrawl he now knows to be his own. Paper scuffs gently as he turns through them—one page, two, and a half page more.

The arrival of yet another mystery in the midst of this thing he has chosen to do—this one small, ordinary, worthwhile thing—hits something. Knocks askew something he'd held steady all through that cruel barrage. It pulls from him one breath, like the distant echo of a laugh, soft and sharp, altogether barren of humour. Swaying indecision follows, restless sensation in the shallow turns of his head, in the wavering restraint against his own expression as it seeks to crumple. He seems ready to close the book, maybe push it aside, maybe throw it down to the ground and the pencil after it—

[pathlit]

Warm fingertips alight on Viktor's wrist, their placement and pause intentional. The second set finds Viktor's shoulder blade, effortlessly avoiding the leather beneath, as his hand slides to cup the back of Viktor's, gently removing the journal from his grasp.

"It's mine," he says quietly, lifting his hand away from Viktor's back. He holds it open in wordless request for the pencil. His eyes remain focused on the pages, offering Viktor what little privacy possible -- and avoiding the visual acknowledgment of whatever judgment may follow. "I remembered. After crossing."

[grindset]

It's his. It's his? Stilled and steadied by the hands alighting gently upon him, touches moving here and there, Viktor looks from page to man and back again, in time to follow the journal as it leaves his grasp. As if contained in the connection of hand to page, that swell of desperate frustration loses its momentum and begins to drain away.

He's quiet for too long, holding the pencil for too long, skirting a look and finding no eye contact, only glimpses of a face that ought to be far more familiar to him than it is. What he doesn't realize is how horribly, awfully similar this is to the first time they were reunited.

That memory hovers. The city. His mother. His own self. A window back on a time unsullied by the ruthless honesty of spirits. Should he have said something? Should he feel guilty for keeping it to himself? It probably doesn't matter now—he'll know.

Under the broad cut of Jayce's coat, much narrower shoulders relax. Speaking nothing aloud, but saying plenty with a few sidelong glances, he hands over the pencil.

[pathlit]

Surprisingly, the weight of those glances lacks the sharpness he'd expected. The tension in his body, unconscious and minuscule, slowly releases. Jayce glances at him, just as he offers the pencil; the base of his heart twists when their eyes meet.

Turning his attention onto the journal, he speaks neutrally as his handwriting fills the empty page. "We're here to search for artifacts, but I'm thinking it might be a wash."

That he says nothing specific to themselves or their memories is intentional, too. Once again, he is in the absurd position of being unrecognizable to the person with whom he's closest. Once again, Viktor has fallen victim to the whims of spirits. To experience the loss again in a different context is plainly bizarre -- an amorphous bundle of loose ends that he isn't sure how to begin to unravel.

And why should he? As the spell ensnaring his own memories has lifted, so too might it release Viktor. This could be nothing.

Liar. Murderer. Betrayer. Is this our Man of Progress?

"There." The soft sound of careful tearing, two pages with identical information written in a neatly organized scrawl that ought to be familiar, but isn't. He never did ask if Viktor had that recognition snatched away, too.

Not that it matters. Jayce still signs his notes, including these.

[grindset]

"The golden light," is how he answers the artifact assertion as he watches Jayce's hand move. He reads his name as it appears, twice.

If Jayce has remembered, just like that, he himself may not be far behind. If this is so, it would be senseless to spend time telling him things which, on some level, he already knows, therefore he doesn't need to ask. (And if he never regains the whole of his mind? If he doesn't live long enough for it to matter either way? What's the point, then?)

Without his prior panic, with his hand on his belt, that blue glow in his palm: "Let me down." Then a warning to Jayce, "Watch the arm," as said arm moves from its neutral position, the bulky armoured shoulder rotating to bend it back, baring a few of the complexities around its elbow joint.

Not the safest of stepladders, but Viktor nonetheless plants the arch of his foot on some barely-extruded ridge as he extracts himself from the narrow saddle apparatus bolted to Fred's back, and the limb holds his weight without budging, as though he's not even there. It's slow and inelegant—very little practice saved in his muscle memory, even subconsciously—and any help Jayce wishes to provide is taken without complaint. Last order of business: pulling the auxiliary crutch from its clever attachment, just in case.

"Thank you. Now hand it one of those so we can leave this... chamber... behind."

Now that he remembers it all, Jayce ought to recognize the sound of his little buddy respectfully stepping around a curse word.

[pathlit]

Warning taken, a half-step made, and despite the inherent awkwardness of a memory disparity between the two, his hands still hover automatically, one near Viktor's arm, the pages held between two fingers, with the other inches from his back. The latter makes contact as Viktor descends. It remains as he draws his secondary crutch.

"This chamber," he echoes, a hint of mirth in his tone as he nudges Viktor away from the golem, closer to himself. Jayce holds out one of the pages for F.R.E.D. to grasp. "Awfully generous, V." Correction: "Viktor," he says, mirth falling as his gaze does, too. "That's your name."

[grindset]

A pause lands lightly between them, all eyes drifting down. Softly, then, his voice severs the silence:

"Never mind that now. The return of your faculties bodes well, so... we'll catch up once mine are restored." When? If. "Let's just focus on getting out of here alive." And drag their stone-heavy hearts around until then.

To Fred, then: "Stand up." Its bulk rises to a neutral shape. "Grasp the page. Two fingers." This simple pincer looks more suited to this task than the three-pronged gripper opposite. Under further guidance (gently, slowly) it closes its two blunt fingers on the page and waits for Jayce to release it.

Sending the machine across is easy enough. On the other hand, getting it to place the page:

a) somewhere visible
b) upright
c) without destroying it

—that takes some fiddly instruction.

[pathlit]

Never mind that now, he says, like his name is some insignificant thing to be swatted away so nonchalantly, and Jayce's stomach sinks. He realizes, then, that he'd never known Viktor as anyone but his partner in Hextech. He'd never known the man who evaluated the wreckage of his study with the same nonchalant pragmatism -- had only met him briefly before someone else took his place.

He realizes, now, how little he knows of the man with whom he's shared nearly a decade of literal blood and sweat, sleepless nights, shared sentences and finished thoughts, disagreements and troubleshooting, juvenile quips and professional presentations -- of the collaboration on his life's singular dream. Viktor upheld an effortless, inoffensive sense of privacy.

Even now, without his memories, he'd still quietly withheld innocuous information. Why not mention himself when sharing the memory of their first Progress Day together? The details elude, but it had been neutral enough, hadn't it?

(Time has smeared it into a vaguely warm sentiment.)

So Jayce merely nods in wordless agreement and steps away to set the second note down, wedged somewhat securely between two pieces of fragmented clay. With F.R.E.D. present, his support feels superfluous; he keeps his hands to himself. They speak of what they've encountered thus far in these haunted ruins because it is pragmatic and safe.

Then, when the enchantment bids them to separate tasks yet again, they speak of nothing.