1st Shot | Video

[lastsonofgilead]

[A new face, although not one that seems confused by finding himself in a new world or even near the fountain. He's been here for a few days now, maybe you're even one of the people he's spoken to already.]

[His voice is old, powerful, yet serene somehow. And while one might expect someone so looking like a cowboy to have a drawl, his accent is light, cultured, with something almost but not quite there. It's been many and many-a since Gilead existed. The accent of the Barony has been leeched out of him over the decades, but a ghost of it still clings stubbornly.]

'Tis an odd level, aye. I'd not thought there were many with Beams and ways. And a carousel at the middle for this one. [Really, the rose made more sense than this. And the rose had more of a... feeling... with it. A rightness. The carousel does not have that, which may only indicate how close this level is to its own collapse.]

Are there any here who have actually dared whatever lies beneath it?

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[unflagging]

[Somewhere in the City there is laughter.]

Oh.

[unflagging]

Oh, they've dared. And they've failed. Of course they did. And can one even be surprised? Could you, of all, be surprised? Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a muddied field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning. So they've failed. Know that.

Howdy do?

[lastsonofgilead]

[It's probably a good thing the device is in his hand. The knee-jerk reaction of 'shoot him now' is much harder to obey without thought when the voice is coming from his hand and not somewhere else.

Still, the free hand drops to his gun and draws it before he can stop himself.]

I think you know I wouldn't be surprised by it, Marten. Or are you going by yet another name, wizard?

[unflagging]

Names are cheap and easy to come by.

So you mean to try the Clock too, don't you?

[lastsonofgilead]

Especially for you, it would seem.

Would you truly have expected otherwise?

[unflagging]

What's in a name?

No, I would not have. You are here and I am here. Things are as they have been before. Herein one can witness all strands of time and the eternal return where, rere regardant, we observe both where we have been and where we are going even as we are. You and I are both here as we have been before and only the shapes of the stones around us have changed. It is the same. And that same desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone.

Seek the Clock, then. I commend you--I do! Because you are wiser than most in what you realize about it. And this place.

[lastsonofgilead]

[As much as he would like to simply cast aside Flagg's words, he knows there is the possibility that this is just another loop. Possible, yes, but unlikely. He still knows too much.]

[He shrugs.] I follow my ka. [Meaning that, of course he's going to seek it out.] Although I suspect the only reason you commend me is the fact that the others died attempting it. Perhaps death will find me in this place, hm?

[unflagging]

Of course you will.

A man seeks his own destiny and no other. Will or nill. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man's destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well.

Anyway--oh, perhaps it will, but you'd be surprised the ways in which death rolls and rattles in its tracks in this place. If death finds you, it will lose you again, though not wholly.

[valentineluke]

[Hello, person of interest!] Few have come close, newcomer. Doesn't like contact to be made if it can be helped.

Beams?

[lastsonofgilead]

Such things never do.

Aye, Beams. Lines of force which bind the world.

[valentineluke]

Are they more similar to Ouroboros or ley lines?

[lastsonofgilead]

I know not Ouroboros.

Beams hold my world together, but they do more than that. They maintain the integrity of time, space, size and dimension. Were they all to be broken, the Tower would fall and all reality across all universes would blink out.

[valentineluke]

In Norse mythlogy, know as the Midgard Serpent. Giant snake that wrapped itself around the world and grasped its own tail.

Interesting. They and the Tower are something new - never heard of either before.

[livingmyths]

You have a nice voice.

I've never been down there 'cause it's scary, but I know some people have.

[lastsonofgilead]

Thankie.

The world can be a scary thing, sai. Did it go well for them?

[livingmyths]

I don't know. I mostly see on the Network that people are going to do it, but not so much anyone I know.

I mostly stay at the Library or my greenhouse or my little house in the woods. I like those places best.

What does 'sai' mean?

[lastsonofgilead]

A library, hm? Is there information on such a thing, d'you wot?

'Tis a term of address, sai. A respectful one, certainly.

[livingmyths]

Oh gosh, I'm sure there is. The Library has information on pretty much everything!

It might be hard to find, though. It likes to play tricks sometimes.

Oh... that sounds nice, then. Sai.

[lastsonofgilead]

The library plays tricks? [It wouldn't be the strangest thing he's ever heard of, no. He mostly wants to verify that it's what she means.]

Say thankie. My name is Roland.

[livingmyths]

Uh huh. It likes to mix things up and make the wrong books show up and stuff like that. It thinks it's funny. But sometimes it does it because it doesn't like someone.

Thankie. Hi, Roland. My name is Rain.