translated by catren mjuna—also known as catren hannly, her grey sander name stripped from her by purism, her mjuna ancestors, and the mysteries of her family’s past and place in the aether’s intentions—shortly after her sixteenth birthday.
— catren mjuna, age 16
this translation was stored within the de la rue archives following her eldest brother’s marriage to judith de la rue. shortly before catren moved to the northern reaches of baalphoria, it was removed from the archives at her request. it is unknown if the original translation still exists. this particular translation exists solely within olivier de la rue’s censor, pulled from his memory once his censor was installed.
— olivier de la rue, age 16
“i am not sure whether it is encouraging or disillusioning that even a millennium ago, government workers were just as insufferable as they are today, their documents just as drawn out.” — olivier de la rue, age 37
✮ ✮ ✮
it will perhaps remain the greatest regret of this one’s life that, in the aftermath of the student-doctor’s death, she did not immediately think to interrogate or even monitor the third of the people amongst the many residents of the tidal cities whom her servants first felt an air of otherness from. nay, even that is not good enough, for it was within our first return to the tidal cities, our minds near instantly strayed to the student-doctor despite their lack of official connection with the many-turns-of-the-moon-gone teacher-doctor, that our minds should have fallen to the high eminence whose words seemed perfect and yet held some malicious creature within them.
neither this one, nor her remaining servant and lesser servants both, thought of the high eminence, and for that, this one will forever be remorseful—her shame written over the aether that was so profoundly scarred in the final note of the grand incident. there is no undoing the wrongs that this one’s lack of foresight brought upon her remaining servant, lesser servants, and the many residents of the tidal cities. of those residents, only those blessed by the aether with the most powerful of cores and hearts survived the trauma of that final note.
that is to get ahead of the story, however; let us go back to the long turns of the moon that left us tense and fretful before the final note of the grand incident.
while this one, and her remaining servant and lesser servants, returned home soon after the teacher-doctor’s death, we did no such thing following the student-doctor’s gruesome demise. we thought that we had learned our lesson as we lingered within the tidal cities, aiding in the search and recordings of the many transient people and children. now, with so many dead, our records—destroyed as they were in the final note of the grand incident—would be useless, yet we so clearly did not know such a future would come to pass as we conversed with the many souls who shifted their lives from tidal city to tidal city—only occasionally did any seek temporary homes further south, and even rarer, in the homes of our western and northern neighbours.
yet, this one cannot deny that there was many a moment where the aether seemed to shudder around herself. while this one cannot claim any more familiarity with the aether and her benevolence than any other who is not so blessed by her, looking back, this one can see how something was wrong. where so often the aether is a soft, soothing voice—a brush against the skin, urging our bodies, souls, minds, this way or that—the aether of those long sunlight days and moon darkened nights was wrong—broken in a way so slight that it is only within the context of the high eminence’s claims before they broke the world that this one is now able to see something was erred in the aether’s will and heart.
it is difficult for this one to explain the exact nature of the errors that seemed to spread through the tidal cities as the moons turned and the final note of the grand incident moved ever closer. this one has talked to many of the souls who survived that final note, while she also overheard the many mutterings that seemed to increasingly wash through the streets as we travelled from transient group to transient group.
if only this one had listened to those whispers that seemed to flow so freely between the citizens of the tidal cities and yet never officially reached the ears of either herself or her remaining servant—it was not in the nature of this one’s lesser servants to speak of such things, should they have been graced with such knowledge, and it is long too late to determine if their released souls knew anything of the happenings of the aether’s errors.
the best this one and the few surviving souls have managed to articulate of the aether’s strangeness in that time is to speak as though something were interfering with its words. the aether’s kindness of foresight is so often shrouded in mystery—each gift of insight requiring delicate removal from a pile of energy and thoughts that only the most blessed and skilled amongst us can ever hope to appreciate fully—yet this was something more.
this was the aether’s will, cast upon us through the light scattering leaves of an overgrown tree, flickers of light making way through leaves and shadows, but broken and incomplete nonetheless.
this was the aether’s will, reflected in a pool of water rippling in the sun, the vague outlines of shape casting back upon our eyes, but blurred by the shifting tides, obscured by the water world hidden beneath.
this was the aether’s will, slipping into the desert sands, innumerable and shattered, some poor soul attempting to sift through each grain and finding sand alongside a thousand lost representations of the aether’s will.
out of all the horrors this one witnessed during her time in the tidal cities, this is perhaps the most horrific, for not only was something capable of altering the aether’s ability to bestow her knowledge onto her children broken for many turns of the moon, but the knowledge of the wrongness of the aether was a slow thing to spread. we live within the aether each moment of our lives, and yet when she was pained and tortured, it was not an immediate knowledge for even the most skilled amongst us.
while this one would never wish for a repeat of the aether’s brokenness, she would be quite interested to see who noticed what and when. whispers of the oddness of the aether was such a slow, meandering thing. likely, it began with a single, respected soul sharing their own perspective of some oddness within the aether. from there, it was simply an implanted idea within the heads of so many—this one included, although as she has said, it was not until the final note of the grand incident had come to a close that she finally reflected on her months under the broken aether’s touch as something profoundly wrong.
may no further people—here or abroad or a thousand years into the future—experience such a horrible thing, and if they do, may their own end be less scarring than our own. if those to whom this documents has found itself are to take anything away from their reading of this one’s words, let it be this: when the aether feels like a crawl over your skin, something treacherous and malevolent lingering within its otherwise loving touch, do not ignore it; seek out the evils from the worlds afar, and do not let them break through to our world as they did during the final, shattering note of the grand incident.
what this one can additionally inform about the lead up to the final note of the grand incident is this: there were two people, blessed with more connection to the aether than most, who survived the final note of the grand incident, and even for them—the most beloved of the aether’s blessed children—it took many sunsets to notice something wrong. unfortunately, as is so very common for people so blessed as to be gods unto themselves, they found their words and concerns brushed aside by the citizens of the tidal cities like the ramblings of the mad. perhaps if the grand incident had befallen the capital, where the words of such blessed are taken with much more severity by our most powerful and influential, the final note of grand incident might have been avoided; perhaps it was something fated to be.
it was many turns of the moon into our lingering within the tidal cities, whispers of the aether’s oddness coming to a high, when the first people began to vanish once more. as this one, and her remaining servant and lesser servants, had been shifting ourselves through the many groups of transients, remarking upon each the importance of checking in with our numbers should they decide to shift their home elsewhere, we knew for near certain that in those many turns of the moon none had vanished without meaning.
this one acknowledges that the few who vanished for places outside the tidal cities could have been disappeared following their departure; however, in the ensuing turns of the moon, many of those souls were located once more. still some remain missing, and we may never know if they were swiped up by the high eminence for yet more cruel experiments, fell victim to some other evil, or if they have simply found better lives elsewhere. their fate unknown, let the aether protect them as she does all her beloved children no matter the realm in which they currently find themselves.
upon the return of the vanishings, this one and her remaining servant renewed their search yet again. our original oversight in neither questioning nor monitoring the high eminence was quickly remedied. yet, it was too late. where the teacher-doctor and student-doctor both worked with slow precision—the latter’s boredom-led mistakes notwithstanding—the high eminence was brutal in her efficiency. nary a moonlit darkness passed without two handfuls of people vanishing from across the tidal cities.
as the tidal cities were summarily vanished into their current scarred form during the final note of the grand incident, perhaps this is an opportunity to expound upon the scope of the area on which our story takes place for those who have not spent their youthful summers in her shadow. to say this is a large swath of land is to speak in the smallest of terms; it yet remains unclear how the high eminence managed to pick so many people up from across the entire region within a single moonlit darkness.
the tidal cities are situated on a long strip of land, lined on one side by the high walls of the huss’tra of seer’ik’tine, and the warming waters of our northern bay, which breaks us away from our northern neighbours. the northernmost part of the tidal cities presses against our northern neighbours and the artificial tides of the towering hero, while the southwestern portion breaks into the bleary dead lands where no one dare step, lest they bring the wrath of the sever upon themself, while to the southeast the tidal cities shift into the cool sands that lead to the capital.
while it has been suggested that the disturbances of the aether originated with the sever and their gloriana, this seems unlikely; it was the most southern of the tidal cities alone which survived the final note of the grand incident. this one acknowledges, as do many of her betters, that perhaps this was nothing but a method meant to obscure our suspicion of the sever and their gloriana, yet, does that not turn our suspicions further upon them? at this time, no more evidence exists to suggest our hated western neighbours shared any part in the grand incident, nor in the shifting errors of the aether, yet neither do we completely brush such suspicions off in their entirety.
it remains undeniable, however, that the high eminence played the most powerful part in the grand incident as a whole, despite their late entrance into the investigator’s eyes, forgiving those first, oddness-filled days of this one’s servants’ investigations into the initial disappearances.
here, this one shall leave you, for while she could explain the final note of the grand incident herself, she could do no justice to it in comparison to the arresting words of the high eminence, who was counted among the survivors of the calamity her actions and evils brought down upon that now scarred land of the tidal cities.
[
addendum:
while the honourable hyren za curren intended this to be her final correspondence on the matter, attaching a transcript of the high eminence’s testimony during both her questioning directly following the conclusion of the grand incident and during her final summoning before the zo rayan, the honourable hyren za curren, and their transcriber, some three summers passing, the honourable hyren za curren shared yet more thoughts on the incident with us. as this document contains within it many the assumption and speculation, it has suffered numerous attempts by unknown parties to have to removed from the official records. it has, therefore, been removed to another file. may those to whom this story is relevant find the clues within these documents and its tender words so they may locate the honourable hyren za curren’s final words, aether willing they have acquired the entirety of our great and prosperous land’s knowledge. if those to whom this document has found itself are indeed in need of such horrible speculations—and loath as this one is to admit it, they are speculations with much substance—may the aether bless your way past the calamity that has crashed down upon you.
]
Arc 9 | Chapter 349: the honourable hyren za curren will leave it here (for the moment)
Comments