Migration Paths

[Containment]

"They’re very precious. You have a right to be proud." Aesop smiled sheepishly under her helmet, and rocked a little on her heels. She had a good gauge of size from where she was standing, and even if they’d been bigger, she was fairly strong. She glanced at Bay, who gave her a confused look in reply. Man, he looked tired. But he didn’t seem to read what she was doing and, well, better to ask forgiveness than permission, at least from him.

Roz spoke while Vanya made the appearance of decision-making. "What do you mean, die by the Dead One? Be killed? Live as his tenets demand?"

"Would your lives have been better, if you were made by the Dead God?"

Moth paused, and looked at Grayling, who stayed close to Checkers. His expression was hard to read, but he was always very calm. The team knew that he was religious, but they’d resorted to taking bets as to what he actually believed in. Roz’s money was on an obscure branch of Christianity, but Nova might not be far off in her bet on an even more obscure cult to something forgotten.

Aesop wasn’t really listening to him, though. She had slung her rifle over her shoulder and turned back toward Mikulass, without coming closer, and interrupted in the quizzical moment after Grayling spoke up. "Sorry, excuse me– May I hold them? I know I’m a complete stranger and you’re in the middle of a conversation and I have all this armor on but they’re so soft and I promise they’d be safe and I’m going to stop talking now and let you actually answer."

She could feel Bay’s quizzical look from where she was standing. He wasn’t disapproving, which was really good. She was trying very hard to not be intimidating in the mock turtle armor and to seem super chill if the answer was no, despite the disappointment. She was a professional! Just like Bay and the others. She could be chill with disappointment. Totally.

 

[Stitches]

Mikulass looked down at Ferris for a long moment, as though considering his question. Before he could answer, Vanya spoke up, and Pepper giggled a little, trying to hide it behind her hand. It wasn’t so much that she was laughing at Vanya, but more so that she had had the same reaction when the children had been born three years prior. Back then, they had been much smaller, but no less fluffy. If anything, they had gotten fluffier as they had gotten older.

The head priest of the cultist turned all four of his eyes in Vanya’s direction. Then, he turned to his two children and softly tittered. One of the two tucked itself closer to its father, but the other stepped out from behind him. “You mean us no harm. Sofwyn grants you permission to hold him. Tarwyn requests you don’t.”

That made sense to Pepper. Sofwyn had always been the braver of the two boys, and he was the one always wandering off during meetings Tarwyn had always kept close to Mikulass, even when he allowed Pepper to hold him. He was easily the shyest little fluffball that Pepper had ever met. “They’re very strong believers of bodily autonomy. They let the kids decide what they want to do all the time. Go ahead, if Sofwyn is okay with it, you can pick him up.”

“You have asked two questions. To the first, the answer is death. He would see everything Unmade and never Made in the first place. It is that fate that we hope for. Your second question. We would never have been made if the Goddess had not killed Him. He would not have seen anything Made. Our lives would not be if He had a say.”

 

[Containment]

Vanya nodded, maybe a little too much. One was better than she’d expected, and it was with a great deal of excitement that she stepped forward, then knelt down with a hand out to wait for Sofwyn’s permission. Roz studied the family dynamic, and nodded to Pepper’s explanation. A very independent bunch, this one. She was liking them more and more.

Even as Mikulass mentioned that they were, to every sense of the word, a death-cult. The belief that nonexistence was superior to existence wasn’t uncommon in old cultures, although it typically had more to do with sacrificing the self to a cause, some distinct tenet, like war or the exchange of blood for crops. Worshiping death itself wasn’t normal in human cultures, and those who did were both outliers and typically suicidal. But once again, it wasn’t Moth who addressed the religion.

"The ancient duality of a life-god and a death-god, without the implied morality we humans tend to bring with it." Grayling nodded, although that didn’t help resolve the team’s betting pool. "One the natural order, one the empty chaos when it disappears."

"Except Death is the natural order."

Snow’s voice was unexpectedly close. Checkers hadn’t even realized she and Peacock had wandered back, although he could imagine Kim was giving her the same look he was from under the helmet. The ontologist was standing very still, looking at the ground. Bay decided to bite.

"How do you know?"

He could just barely make out the shake of her head. "My gut, mostly, which makes it a theory. But I haven’t felt right since we came through, and I don’t think it’s just Apollo’s absence."

Bay exhaled, slowly, before he spoke up. "We’ll come back to that, unless Mikulass or the Herald have questions." It was a lot to unpack, and they could do it when Bay didn’t feel gravity quite so well. But communication was a two-way street, as Pepper had said back in 7B. Mikulass had hardly had any space to ask questions of these strangers in his world, after all, it was only right.

He did look at Roz again, and she nodded, continuing on their behalf. "If the tables were turned, would He then have devoured the goddess?"

 

[Stitches]

Mikulass and Pepper exchanged a look, as though they were trying to make a decision. Eventually, Mikulass turned back to the team and spoke in his mellow voice, “We require nothing from you. The Heraldess has answered many questions. I will answer your question, as you have traveled to ask it. We too feel the world is wrong. Your companion's senses are truthful. We would hope that He who is dead would consume She who is not, for it is the only way we will be free.”

Pepper turned to the rest of the team. She knew Mikulass rather well by this point. She had known him for twenty years, after all. She knew that he wanted to ask a question, he just didn’t know the words he needed to use. “What would lead a god of life to kill its counterpart? Are there any relevant myths about that? Apparently, the religion of the Goddess knows, but the cultists aren't allowed to interact with them. For safety reasons.”

She shifted her recorder to her other hand, and let her left arm rest for a bit. Pepper had known some of what they had questioned, though she never would have thought to draw links of it back to human religions. She was by no means an expert in religion. She was good at science- physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, geology, hell even astronomy. She could do quick calculations if you asked her for them, she could break down components into their base elements, and she could not recite anything other than basic mythologies. That was the reason she was so silent. It wasn’t that she wasn’t interested, or that she didn’t have questions about these answers- it was that it was simply, not her department.

Behind them, Sofwyn hopped into Vanya's arms. The young bird snuggled into her hands, turning himself into a perfect sphere as he looked up at her, chirping. Pepper watched this absently. She trusted Vanya enough to actually treat Mikulass's son with care.

 

[Containment]

Vanya really wished she could take her gloves off to really hold the little fuzzball, but she was professional enough to not remove any part of her armor while still in an unknown place, even among friends. Instead she cradled her hands to make them the most accommodating nest for Sofwyn, and she crooned soft praises of all his qualities as she stood back up and turned toward where Moth was considering Pepper’s question.

"Typically in the myths, the death god is cast off or imprisoned, not killed. The Life God’s focus tends to be on balance, since it’s based in order. Or, the death god cannot be killed for some reason – humans have this understanding of true immortality in things we call deities, although given the circumstances, that might not be so far off."

Grayling spoke up again, his voice still unobtrusive even through the helmet speakers. "Again, however, human gods are bound by human faith, and by extension, our conceptions of good and evil. At least, true Deity-Class entities are. There are things more powerful than that…"

"The Eldritch?" Moth asked. Grayling just nodded.

The team ontologist stepped forward. "Even if it’s a one in an infinity chance, life is a baseline in our world. Whether it’s true or not, we hold the belief that we are alive because we are somehow meant to be." Snow looked back at Grayling.

"Hence the aversion the living have to both pain and nonexistence, and only madmen offer worship to the truly unknowable."

Nobody on the team needed to mention the madman in question, although worship was a very strong word for whatever he had going on.

Snow then stepped toward Mikulass. "Somewhere, there is a fundamental difference between the reality of your world and reality of ours. I don’t know what – there are only so many tests I could run on ontophysical factors without having to interact with your creator, which is… undesirable, from what you’ve said. With some of my equipment we could try. If we knew what the tenets of the Goddess were – aside from demand of worship and forced existence – it might be possible to guess at why your world is still rooted in death. I’m not asking you to endanger your people for our research. I am simply issuing theories."

The three doctors took the existence of the creator-goddess remarkably in stride, for people from a world without provable creator. Whether it was suspension of disbelief, various forms of faith, or simply an acceptance of the unknown, they were taking what they’d been told with absolute seriousness.

Checkers nodded. "As of right now, that line of thought carries too much risk. We’ll need to regroup before we even consider it. And we definitely wouldn’t want to question it here. If we were to ask one of the goddess’s worshippers questions, we’d need to bring it back where she can’t follow."

Murmured consent passed through the team. There might be other ideas about bringing live specimens back as well – although, without 707, that wouldn’t be the Lepidopterists’ department. There were other teams for extradimensional forays, although that would require speaking to another Councilman. Namely, the aforementioned madman.

 

[Stitches]

“If answer I could, I would. There is, however, one you should speak to before you leave us. Her name is Misha. She, may answer you.” There was a fluttering of wings, and from the distance, thundering steps approached.

“Mikulass, who is Misha? None of your family are named that.”

“Defector. Not of our tribe. There are others of us, many who feared scaring you, Heraldess. She is one such being. Defected to us many cycles ago.”

The steps grew closer until the being became visible to Pepper’s eyes. Misha was massive, with a feline-like body, a strangely, inorganicly-shaped, dodecahedron head, and no face. She had two rows of three legs that were tightly packed together on her sides and moved as one like a jacob’s ladder. When she got close to the path, her legs bent and she sat down As she did, Pepper saw the reflective eyes on her joints. She had at least eight that she could see and she assumed there was more around the back.

“I am Misha. It is pleasing to me to finally meet you, Heraldess. You have questions. I have answers.” Misha’s English was even better than Mikulass’s, and she spoke clearer too.

Pepper swallowed a little. Misha looked almost identical to a creature that had chased her out of the Dark Dimension as a child. Her heartbeat picked up a little as she tried to keep calm. “Misha. I’m happy to meet you too.”

“You need not lie to me. I sense your anxiety. I promise, no harm shall come to you in my presence.”

Pepper nodded her head, then pointed her recorder in the being’s direction. “Mikulass says you know about the tenets of the Goddess?”

“We have no tenets. We live by the emotions that we exude and feel for the Goddess. My job was to teach others how to live like this, through caring for the hateful sphere. I suppose you could call that a tenet. We, or they, they must care for the planet, even as it hates us.”

 

[Containment]

With the first shift of the ground, Widow moved. He stayed low, not bothering to stand up completely before taking the first few steps, then remaining at a crouch. The fractals along his armor would likely give him away more than sudden movements, but habits were hard to break. He slipped into the line of sight of the potential threat, even after it was declared a friendly.

Kim would want to see if the fractals still worked on things other than the shadow birds, after all.

Peacock herself was staring at the living Picasso piece that had just walked up to the team. The movement of its body and angles of its head especially held her attention, although she also saw Widow moving into line of sight. It was a good test of consistency for the perceptions of the intelligent Denizens. She didn’t say anything, however, just watched as the three doctors shifted their attention to the newcomer.

While Mikulass could be confused for a human name, Misha definitely was one, albeit usually a male name. Maybe it was just a coincidence made up of noises. Moth tilted her head to study the creature, with all its bits and pieces that her head kept wanting her to categorize into symbols or parts, not a living whole. After all, a thing definitively created had to have some significance in its pieces, unless the god was an actual child that just put things where it thought they’d be interesting. Or a researcher, seeing how things worked when two parts were squashed together into a single thing.

This wasn’t quite her department anymore, though. It wasn’t just culture anymore – for any more of that, there’d need to be an understanding of the world the culture had cropped up on. So she let Snow step past her, toward the towering monstrosity.

"We did already know that your world is alive, and… that it shouldn’t be." She glanced over her shoulder; the feeling of presence wasn’t going away, although it had been half-expected with the knowledge of a living world. "Is that why it hates? Because it knows that neither you nor it ought to exist?" She gave room for an answer, then added, "And why does it require care? I understand it is alive, but does the Goddess not tend to it?"

 

[Stitches]

“We know not why the sphere hates us. We are to care for it as it provides for us, whether it wants to or not. It is less tending to the sphere and more emotional. Words do not quite convey the meaning of this. We… what is word? Sing our feelings in the hopes it will one day sing back. It hates all. The Goddess is no exception. She sings to the sphere the same as we.”

For some reason, Pepper understood. The purpose of caring for the world wasn’t in the same sense as humans caring for the Earth. There wasn’t any climate to ruin, there was no murder. But their planet was alive in a way that Earth wasn’t. It was sentient. It required emotional tending, as though it were a person. For some reason, that made Pepper sad. What a horrible existence the sphere must have to be filled with so much hate.

 

[Containment]

Snow listened. She seemed to just listen, with the very slight tilt of her white-helmeted head. While the face was turned to Misha, however, underneath the mask her eyes were closed. There was the undercurrent of malice, in that feeling of being watched. She recognized it now.

After Misha was done, she was quiet for a moment. Then she reached up to the side of her helmet, and switched something. Both her external and internal comms were disabled. Alone with her thoughts, she hummed a single note. A minor note, one that could be identified as B flat, if anyone else could hear her. She listened, not with her ears, but with her whole self, to the world under her feet. Whatever happened, she would reopen her eyes, and nod, slowly. Anything learned, even if it was nothing, was still something when it came to these things. She’d switch comms back on, and find them silent.

The rest of the team was looking to her. She looked at Bay, and then gave him a little nod. He nodded back. Whatever theories and results she might have, she’d explain in the security of their location after she’d consulted with her Apollo. He performed a small breathing exercise, patted Inigo on the shoulder, then pushed himself up to stand on his own.

"Thank you, Misha. And you, Mikulass. You’ve all helped us immensely." Him, especially. "I may not be able to return with the Herald in the future, after today, but others here I know will want to come and learn more. Moth and Snow," he gestured to the two researchers, "will have questions about your world. And Peacock, my second, would want to test more of her dark-on-dark patterns, as they seem to act differently on the denizens here than on those of our world. I’m sure the Herald can speak with you about their intended purposes before future returns, if you have the patience for us again."

That was a good-mannered joke, told with a smile under the tired eyes. The rest of the team took the subtle hint of the intention to tie up loose ends, however, and began to pull in, most with small waves or nods. Aesop carried Sofwyn back to his father, hands loose to let him free himself whenever he was ready. Widow rose the rest of the way, but stayed near the more brightly-colored Brimstone, so that perhaps the other agent’s ability to catch light might make the darkness of his own plate more digestible.

As everyone gathered, Bay looked to Pepper, with a very slight nod. They were ready whenever she was, but they wouldn’t rush her. This was her path, after all.

 

[Stitches]

Snow’s hum did not echo across the sphere, but instead descended deep into its “earth”. Some of the malice she felt would dissipate and fade as the sphere accepted the note. It didn’t fade completely, for the sphere could never stop its hatred, but it felt less malice toward Snow at that moment.

“It has been an honor to converse with -you-.” Misha rose to her feet and gave them what looked like her best version of a bow. Then, she turned and walked back out into the desert of the Hateful Sphere. Pepper watched her go and felt guilty as the part of her that had been tense began to relax. She turned toward Mikulass to catch his final words before turning off her recorder.

“An honor indeed. We will do as we can to assist when your steps next grace us.” There was a soft click as she stopped the recorder. She watched as Sofwyn lept from Vanya’s hands and back to the ledge his father stood on. Pepper gave him a deep bow.

“Thank you, Mikulass. This has been very helpful.”

“Heraldess, no need to thank us. It is -you- we wish to thank. May your steps take you far and keep you safe.” The sound of wings flapping began to rise, and all around them, dozens of Mikulass’s family members took to the skies. Pepper waved her arm in a wide arc to say goodbye and was greeted by a choir of singing. The last to ascend was Mikulass and his two boys, each of whom chirped goodbyes of their own to the group.

Pepper watched her strange friends disappear from the light of her Path, and then turned to the rest of the group behind her. “Okay, we’re not far from the other end of the Path. I’m ready to go.”

 

[Containment]

The team watched as the birds rose to leave. Vanya waved, as did Roz. When they were gone, almost everyone looked to Bay, but it wasn’t Bay who spoke.

"Alright, extraction mission resuming."

She glanced at him, meeting his eye even if he couldn’t see hers, and he nodded a little. He knew very well that in a combat situation, a panic attack like that could have gotten someone killed. There were a number of reasons why Lepidopterists had a co-lead, and that was one of them. And he’d chosen Kim for a reason. She nodded back, more firmly, and then resumed orders.

"New formation. Widow, take point with Herald. The memetic will slow down anything that comes after her, or at least distract it. Brimstone, left side again, Aesop right side, I’ll take up the rear. Checkers and research remain in the center. Grayling, stay right by him. Moth, keep one hand on your firearm, just in case."

Roz was finishing a note in her book, but she stuffed it back into her bag and nodded to Kim as she patted the eagle. The team took up formation, although Snow did switch her comms back off. In a dangerous situation, they’d be using hand signals, not vocal cues. With every step, she murmured the lyrics of an old fado her mother used to sing, soft notes from long before the Foundation. It was a sad song, about home, about dying. It was not the place of her birth, but it was a place where her soul had always been given.

Hate me less, and let me love this home I’ve never known.

But she was quiet to the outside, as the rest of the team moved into position. Widow looked to Peacock, who nodded once. They were ready to move when Herald did, and would keep position and pace with her until they reached the other side.

 

[Stitches]

After the team fell into position, Pepper began to walk. The Path ahead of her glowed like it always did, and for not the first time, she wondered why it only glowed for her. It was part of her anomaly that she was most interested in. And then, she remembered something she wanted to have the team do. “When we arrive at the other gate, could I convince one of you with working visors to see if you can look at me in other light frequencies? We have a lot of theories as to why I’m the only one that no one calls an abomination, and one of them is that I might glow the way the Path does to my eyes, but not to anyone else’s. The energy readings I’ve taken certainly point to it.”

The walk to get there was very short, as they had already reached the midway point when Mikulass and his family had found them. Soon, the open portal was there before them. Pepper looked to Kim and gestured for them to go ahead of her, in case they wanted to take point on the next part of the mission. Pepper certainly wasn’t a field agent yet, so she didn’t want to get in the way if at all possible. Besides, they would need their butterflies back before Pepper could look at them again.

 

[Containment]

"Sure, I can do that," Gilroy replied, chipper even through the helmet. Maybe even overeager. As the portal came into view, she started issuing orders.

"Aesop through first to check the area, then Grayling and Checkers. I’m guessing Snow will want to go through last, but the rest of you file out in standard order. Herald and I will be right behind."

Vanya moved up with a hop, skip, and a jump, and ducked through the portal into the daylight beyond with barely a pause. Her head poked back through a second later with a cheerful, "All clear!" Then she helped Ferris help Bay through, followed by Roz and Inigo. Donovan hesitated at the threshold, then seemed to get ahold of himself and pushed past, leaving Nova to continue her silent hum down into the Sphere while Kim turned back to Pepper.

"Alright, setting the helmet to record. Visual test and adjustments to detect the light source on asset, temporary designation ‘Herald.’ Starting whenever you’re ready, Herald.”

Her hand was near the goggles as she said that, as the shadows of her teammates passed between them and the door. She spotted Bay in her periphery and was relieved to see him on his feet. But her main focus remained Pepper, hand hovering to begin observation.

What color was the light of a dead god?

 

[Stitches]

Pepper made sure that everyone got through all right before she turned back to face Kim. There wasn’t much for her to do at this point other than wonder. This was really just one of many theories, but it was the one they felt was most likely. They had no idea what levels of light, what kinds of light, the denizens of the Dark Dimension could see. She had no idea if the light was anomalous in nature even. There was a possibility the denizens could see a wavelength they didn’t know of.

Either way, she had no set expectations for how this was going to go.

She gave a nod to Kim and smiled nervously. “I’m ready. Let’s do this!” She rubbed her hands together like she was about to do something, but instead just shifted back and forth on her heels. There was nothing she needed to do for this, even though she felt a nervous energy, as though she should do something.

 

[Containment]

Color, its wavelengths, existences, and nonexistences was Kim’s specialty. It was theorized that her grasp of the idea of color was what made her attempted memetics so potent, and even her incidental art memetically dangerous.

And so, of course, Kim knew that yellow, when emitted as a wavelength of light, is not a real color. It only exists as the mind perceives it. And, until she found the frequency in her visor, she couldn’t hadn’t been able to perceive it. Maybe that was relevant, or maybe it was a coincidence, or maybe it was an anomaly. And then, obviously, for just a second, the light was all she could see. She went from “dark with some outlines, even through the night vision” to an eyeful of golden light. It faded after a second, as her eyes adjusted, but when she looked at Pepper again, the light was all she could see, like looking at a lit bulb.

"Found the frequency!" she announced, raising a hand. "But if they see in shades of dark, I’m surprised the denizens can see this. Recording high levels of light emission, probably somewhere invisible on the red side of ‘yellow.’"

Of course, now that she had the wavelength, she could maybe attempt to replicate it, as well as anyone could replicate ‘yellow’, and incorporate it into the black designs she already had in mind for future expeditions. That would be a fun and productive use of downtime, she knew. She had to avert her eyes from Pepper again when she started to see spots, and looked around the landscape. Nothing else on the ground seemed to be showing signs of the same frequency.

She did, however, turn her eyes skyward. And, lo and behold, there was something that seemed to share the slight glow of the yellow light – the big lunar body of the Dead God. Of course, golden light being associated with deities was very common, so Kim didn’t think too much of that. It was already recorded, and once she was sure of that, she switched her frequency back to night-vision.

Dr. Neves was still standing nearby, still silently looking at the flesh at her feet. Gilroy decided it might be best to leave her be until the last moment, just in case she was noticing something new, and turned back to Pepper.

"Alright, Herald, anything else you wanted to check? I feel like we’re going to be taking 707 back, for Bay. So if you need anything else now’s the time."

 

[Stitches]

Pepper jumped up on her toes in excitement, her hands clasping together in front of her. “Fascinating! That’s incredibly fascinating!! Dr. Kallie is going to be really interested in this. This will give us what we need to get clearance for more equipment.”

She hadn't had any expectations, sure, but she had hoped for something like this. It was a confirmation of one of their longest-running wild theories. It could have been so many things, but something about the fact that the denizens didn’t seem to ever look at her head on, but rather around her, and the fact they had no problem staring down others, really lent itself to some kind of visual effect. She looked around the dimension, taking in the Path, visible to her eyes alone, and looked at her hands. She saw no glow like the Path, but maybe that was because one light was anomalous, and the other wasn’t. But then, yellow was supposedly not “real”, so maybe one light was just more anomalous? Either way, she couldn’t think of anything else to check, so she shook her head in Kim’s direction.

“I think we have everything. And, I understand. That was really rough for him, wasn’t it? I’m sorry about that.”

Beneath Dr. Neves’s feet, the planet began to hum back. The traces of malicious had long since disappeared, replaced instead by a gentle harmony that built a small symphony around her own humming. It wasn’t just one hum, but many overlapping, as though the planet was made of more than one sentient thing.

 

[Containment]

Peacock waved off the apology with one hand. "Don’t be. Checkers knew what he was getting into as soon as he stepped through without Little Bay. He made his choice to come through anyway. He’ll be fine now that he’s back on the other side."

She knew it had been a long time since Richards had actually separated himself from Little Bay, and she was almost certain this had been some kind of subtle test for himself. That didn’t mean Kim wouldn’t go check up on him later – she was his co-lead, after all. They were each other’s responsibility. But for now, they still had a job to do.

"Snow." Nova looked up from the sphere, still humming the fado under her breath, and nodded once, never hesitating. Kim nodded back, then gestured for Pepper to take the lead ahead of her, then followed, with Dr. Neves in the back.

As her helmet disappeared, her head poking through the gateway, Dr. Neves left her foot planted in the other world just long enough for the last verse of Prece: "Das mãos de Deus tudo aceito, mas que eu morra em Portugal."

And then she had passed out of the Sphere, and rejoined her butterfly and teammates on the other side.