middleofsomewhere | We Approach Our Final Hour

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We Approach Our Final Hour

The days after the celebrations are filled with helping those from system #1015 get settled, or just by resting and recuperating after what was a difficult battle.

A couple of days later however Void Minister Till once again calls all the voidtreckers, scientists and other interested parties to a meeting. She looks a lot less grim this time.

FINAL CHOICES

"Thank you all for gathering again. As you know we have been working on figuring out what was happening with your tethers, trying to untangle them from the Voidtrecker Express and find you a way home." She gave a tired smile.

"However with the resolving of the time paradox surrounding system#1015 it seems much of our work is out of our hands, your tethers seem to be detangling themselves and so our work quickly moved to keeping you all stable enough to remain here, because we are very mindful that you deserve a choice in this and a chance to say your farewells. You were brought here without your knowledge or consent and despite that have done a great service to the void so before I say anything else I wish to thank you, on behalf of us all."

To Return Home

"We are now able to see the way to return you to your non-travelling selves. This will untether you from both the Voidtrecker Express and the void. Your bodies on your worlds are, for the most part, well. Tethering is a powerful thing so even those from places that do not have the technology to sustain an unconcious person for a long period of time will find themselves well, though feeling some lingering fatigue. Time has passed in all your worlds and I know it will be difficult to explain your absence." She smiled softly.

"We don't ask you to keep the void completely secret, but especially those from places with a low level of technology should use their discretion when talking about their adventurers. You will not be voidtreckers anymore. You all come from non void active worlds and so until those worlds join the void network you must remain on them. Those from the void can always visit you and we will endeavour to pass on messages between worlds if there are those you wish to remain in contact with. This is the option we expect most of you will take."

To Remain

She lets the any comments or discussions about that bubble for a moment before she presses on. "However, we are very aware that there are those of you who do not have homes to return to. Some of you were tethered on the brink of death. Some of you come from places now destroyed. Some of you have physical places to return but have found family and friendship in the void far greater than anything you had in your lives before." She paused.

"For you we offer another option. You may remain. We believe that as we detangle your tethers from the Voidtrecker Express we can tether you, properly tether you, to this void base." She looked around. "I won't mince words, this option means that your non tethering selves will be no more, your bodies back on your world will die. You will be like those of Osiga and now those of system #1015. You would not be able to return to live on your world." She paused, to let the gravity of that sink in.

"You will always have a home on this base and from here..." She smiled warmly. "You can do what you wish. There are many mission craft that would happily take you on if you have found you have enjoyed assisting worlds in need. Otherwise there are other craft, scientific voyaging craft, tourist craft. We will help you find a place. Though you are free to go your own way, this would be your base but you would not be obligated to remain here. You would be welcome to visit those who return to their worlds, though we would ask that you limited visits to your own, to avoid complications." Again she gave a moment, for the discussion around that to die down before she spoke again.

To Go Back

"Finally. We are aware there are some of you in very difficult situations. Where taking you from your world has led to your whole world, or large parts of it in grave danger. We are aware worlds have fallen, for lack of you. For you we make another offer. We do not make this lightly, it is risky and we ask that those taking it have very good reason.." She looked around, silent and serious.

"We believe that using what we learned of anchoring through time we can return you, not only to the place you were brought from, but the moment. You would remember all that has passed but to your world it would be as if you were never gone at all." A pause.

"Because of the grave risks associated with this, we will be sealing the worlds of those that return in this way. These systems will never become void active and no void craft may enter those systems. As I say, it is not an option we give lightly."

The Choice is Yours

"Whatever you choose we will support you in it. We are also aware there are many of your number not with you. Please be assured that we are working through their tethers. We will do our best to give them the same choices and at the very least we will return them all to their homes. I understand there is a lot to think about. We believe we can hold on to your tethers for a couple more days and so please take this time to talk it through and to say your farewells."

She falls silent and steps back, letting people talk and discuss, whilst remaining close.

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Zelgadis knew his own choice. He has something to go back to, after all, and negative desire to revert things to when he left. It wasn't even difficult.

What was difficult was knowing that there was at least one other Zelgadis Greywords out there who hadn't gotten the choice he had. Zelgadis could just continue to avoid Rezo for a few more days, and the decision would be taken out of his hands. That Zelgadis would continue living as a chimera, never knowing that the power to change back to human existed on another world.

But he'd know. And Rezo would know.

Dammit. Being the better person stunk. He didn't see what people like Amelia saw in it.

(Except that Caleb and Essek and several people he'd never tracked down but who had used the train's shops to get the supplies had been the better people. He couldn't repay them, but he could pay it forward.)

So, Zelgadis actually had to track down Rezo, trying not to act like a sulky and resentful child about the whole thing. "There you are."

Now there’s a serious voice that he’s familiar with.

“Yes, here I am,” Rezo confirms, turning in Zelgadis’s direction. “Is there something you need?”

Rezo’s expression is calm as usual and, as usual, it disguises the gears turning inside his mind. He’s not sure what brings Zelgadis to him this time, but it’s quite possible this will truly be the last time the two of them ever speak. And unlike previous possibly-final conversations they’ve had, neither of them are exactly busy.

He supposes that means there’s a chance he can end things on the right note.

A shame he has no clue what the right note would be.

"I assume you're staying here," Zelgadis said. Certainly fit with the pattern of tethering his soul to things other than his original body. And... at this point, Zelgadis had seen that Rezo was having the same trouble as he did with reduced spellcasting. In Zel's case, it was adjusting to his human body; in Rezo's, it suggested that Shabranigdo was not along on the trip. And... well, he could think of a few people that were also staying, and he wouldn't wish Shabranigdo on them.

Honestly, it was like having a hangnail knowing that Rezo could come back to bother him (if anyone cracked the void travel thing back home), but there wasn't anything he could do about it.

“That is correct,” Rezo says. It isn’t as if he has a body- his own or otherwise- to even return to. Or any particular reason to go back, really. They’re both aware of that.

“Likewise, I assume you intend on returning?”

Rezo supposes, if he’s understanding the direction that Zelgadis is leading them in, that there may be some sort of void-related task that he’d like Rezo to do. But what exactly…?

"I have confirmation that the spell we cast here worked on my body back home," Zelgadis said. Which -- Zelgadis knows Rezo knows he's human. Zelgadis still doesn't usually remind Rezo of it unless he's trying to make Rezo feel bad. "So it's not even a question. I don't even need to have the world rewound and sealed. Whatever world-threatening peril Lina has gotten into while I was gone didn't require me."

Zelgadis doesn't know Lina has gotten into more peril. He just assumes that it happens sometimes.

"Some months back, you asked how I did it. Reversed your transformation."

It really seems that Zelgadis has made a habit of getting involved in world-threatening peril as well, hasn’t he?

And then Zelgadis refers to a prior conversation- and there’s the slightest, almost imperceptible shift in Rezo’s demeanor, a tightening around the eyes that betrays the inner tumult.

“Yes, I also recall that.” And how it almost turned into a shouting argument before one of the other voidtreckers had, embarrassingly enough, interrupted. And that Zelgadis had been unwilling- unable?- to trust Rezo with any of the information he had about his retransformation.

Rezo waits for Zelgadis’s next words.

Zelgadis's voice is tight. It's obvious that while he's decided to do this, it was not an easy or comfortable decision. "I have a letter you can deliver. To the other me. It has all the instructions. Don't open it."

The envelop is thick, and by the feel contains more than paper. It also has a wax seal and, though Rezo won't see it, an intricate pattern of multicolor lines sketched over the flap, to make any tampering obvious unless someone could exactly line up the pattern on closing the envelop again and replacing the seal.

"It does depend on getting access to void travel to either bring him there or bring the spellcasters to him. And whether or not they can be retrieved since they are some of the people the train lost."

He didn't know what Caleb and Essek were dealing with in their home world. Perhaps they might need the world to be sealed. That was... troubling, but if Rezo was in contact with the scientists here, there might be a window in between their retrieval and return.

"You could ask Yondu to handle most of it. All we need is your system ID, and everyone else can handle it."

... He really should just have asked the train for Rezo's system ID and gone around it. That would have been smarter than what he was now doing.

“Oh.”

Rezo takes the envelope, turning it over in his hand. Zelgadis’s explicit direction to not open it does little to abate his curiosity. Whatever is inside pertains to magic he knows nothing about, and the scholar in him- or perhaps the nosy bastard, as Zelgadis might describe it- wants to find out more.

Some other part of him points out that it would be rather embarrassing if he cannot even cooperate with that simple instruction.

Zelgadis’s next words do offer a much greater insight than Rezo had before into what happened to retransform him. And apparently, it will be a difficult situation to replicate. Well, if that proves to be the case, Rezo could look into it, couldn’t he? He’s going to be staying in the void, with access to innumerable worlds with their own sciences and magic. There may well be more than one cure out there.

“...All we need is your system ID and everyone else can handle it.”

…Right. He’s never been very good at leaving well enough alone, has he?

“In that case, it may be better for you to speak with Yondu directly,” Rezo says gently. He holds the envelope back out to Zelgadis.

“I can get my system ID from the ICP in this carriage. Do you have anything to write it down with?”

"I have a notebook with me," Zelgadis said, not taking the message back. "I can write another letter for other people. That one assumes that you might have had to deliver it in person."

So at least some of the security measures are not just for Zelgadis's own piece of mind, but also assuring the other Zelgadis that Rezo is only the messenger. He's trusting to his alternate's own desperation to get the letter opened and read.

"If you do have to do that, the only way I'd open it is knowing it contains information that will help me turn back into human."

Rezo’s brow furrows.

“Very well,” he says, and after a brief hesitation he tucks the letter away. “One moment, if you please.”

Rezo sidesteps Zelgadis and heads over to the ICP, considering the potential task he’s been given. He’d had no intention of ever returning to his old world, yet it seems he may have to deliver this in person. And to speak with Zelgadis again; a Zelgadis who will still be cursed and who will undoubtedly find it a nasty shock to see his great-grandfather alive for a third time.

When he has the ID number up, Rezo reads off the braille display for Zelgadis:

“The ID number is eight zero seven, eight four three, zero seven one, two seven eight, eight zero.”

He waits, giving Zelgadis a chance to write it all down, repeating it if requested.

Zelgadis did.

"I'll get that to Yondu, and anyone else I know that might deliver the message." It probably would be best if Rezo isn't the bearer of this news, but Zelgadis would rather make sure it did get through and that means giving it to anyone who would be able to find his other self.

Rezo makes a noise of acknowledgement, the oddity of the situation still nagging at him. Why is Zelgadis trusting him with this? Since he mentions other people will be getting copies of the message, it’s probably just that Zelgadis wants to cover as many bases as possible.

And yet. It’s still a risk. Rezo could take the information back to his old world just to use it as leverage over the Zelgadis there. He could open the envelope the minute this Zelgadis turns his back and keep the information for himself, trying to find a way to use it for his own goals. He could say to hell with it all, and toss the envelope in the dustbin.

He doesn’t plan on doing any of that, but what reason would Zelgadis have to believe that? Rezo can only speculate…

“Zelgadis.”

…Or he supposes he could ask directly. Rezo turns away from the ICP, and holds up the envelope.

“Why are you giving me this?”

"I don't know," Zelgadis said. "Maybe wishful thinking. That the part of you that did everything to me that I hate you for was the part who had spent a century marinating in whatever background that Shabranigdu put out. There's nothing in the letter that would help your case directly since it's just a shopping list and the people to contact, and giving the information to other people means I'm not trusting you that much." This gets a small grin.

"I don't know if I can ever forgive you, but... maybe it's comforting to know that you might be less of an asshole without a Demon Lord sealed in your eyes. I'd certainly feel better about you wandering the multiverse while I stay home."

Maybe it was the same impulse that lead him to try to call out to Rezo when Shabranigdo had full control of his body, that had given Lina the opening she needed to finish off that fragment.

Rezo frowns, his brow knitted in an uneasy manner as Zelgadis speaks.

“Forgiveness…” he murmurs.

It makes him think: He’d been furious with Zelgadis after his great-grandson had turned against him. I did you a favor! I made you strong, just like you wanted, just as you asked! Just as I have always granted the wishes of others! You said you were proud to serve me; was that just a lie?! A certain bitterness had lingered even after his first death and several years in the Hellmaster’s Jar had served to cool his temper and made it blatantly, objectively obvious that Zelgadis was correct not to support him to the destructive end.

“I can understand if you never forgive me,” Rezo says. “There are people I have never forgiven myself.” It’s not particularly appropriate for a priest and sage to hold grudges, but it’s not as if Rezo has ever been a particularly good priest or sage. And Zelgadis is a hardheaded mercenary, not a priest, so he can do as he likes.

He realizes a moment later that what he just said could be taken as a passive-aggressive dig and hastily adds, “Oh. But you’re not one of those people I bear a grudge against.”

Yes, there had been that lingering, irrational bitterness, but that had faded steadily. By now, all that is left is just… an odd, hollow sort of melancholy, like the feeling of a house that’s been abandoned. He understands now why Zelgadis betrayed him, and moreover…

“To be truthful, it was probably for the better that you came to hate me. If you had continued to be loyal towards me even after I had cursed you, it is likely that you would have ended up even worse off.” At the very least, he’d probably be dead- though Zelgadis has already come incredibly close to death as it is…

Rezo tries to put a polite smile back on his face.

“...Pardon me,” he says. “It seems I’ve taken us off the subject. So, shall I try coordinating with your other allies on this matter?”

"You can try," Zelgadis said. "I'm realizing that you might have trouble when all some of them know about you is what I've said."

He's so used to Rezo's reputation looming over him that the idea that people know Rezo based on what Zelgadis has said is novel.

Rezo smiles one of his thin, crescent smiles, and simply says, “If I have to work alone, then I will.”

Privately, he thinks that if Zelgadis’s allies are most concerned about Zelgadis then the practical thing to do would be to work with him if only to keep an eye on him, rather than allowing Rezo to act as a wildcard- but, well, that’s a concern for the future, and for people other than the Zelgadis he is speaking to at the moment.

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We Approach Our Final Hour

Re: Rezo Greywords | OTA

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Zelgadis is literally figuring out the logistics as he talks.

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