abraxasnet | To: All Summoned

Hello. My name is Inej, and I currently reside in Solvunn. I have been attempting to research information on the Gods and religious practices here. I have been told some wive's tales by the locals about not going out at night if you do not know the way, and the way a single person's fault can affect the lives of many if the Gods take offense.

My research in the library has not given me much more in way of specifics, just vague tales of them, theories of how they might have looked, but one thing does keep coming up: The Singularity came before them. I do not know if that means that the ones the locals see as Gods here were once people like us, pulled into this place... or if it means that the Singularity somehow created them. All the books hold the same theory: Prayer and dedication will wake them from their sleep.

I found something hidden in one of the volumes I was looking at today:

Ever searching Ever longing Lost and greedy Wails of mourning What has been found is never enough Her reach is vast and cutting.

The parchment was ripped and smudged, nothing else could be made out on it. I am uncertain if it means anything at all, but I see no reason not to share it, just in case it might match something someone else has found.

If you have made it this far in this message, I appreciate your time. Thank you.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh, Saints. Jesper! Where are you?

[He can't be in Solvunn, surely she would have found him first if he were.]

[ Absolute relief and joy rush through him. ]

I'm in a city called Cadens. Trying to get my hands on a gun, no luck yet.

[ He's begged, cajoled, flirted, done everything he could so far, but nothing's worked. The fact is they're expensive and Jesper has never been able to save money. ]

You're alright? Safe?

[His pistols taken same as her knives. She does not remember her arrival here with fondness.]

Jesper... Matthias, he's– he's there. In that city, he... he's alive.

[She'd hardly been able to contain herself when she'd seen him. A warning was probably appropriate.]

I am. I have a place to stay, I've met some good people here. It's probably best you didn't end up here, you'd hate it.

[ It takes Jesper quite a few minutes to respond since that is the type of monumental news that he doesn't really understand at first. Inej says a dead person is there. She would never lie about that. But it seems impossible. He's dead, they all saw the body. ]

Saints.

[ He is currently sitting on the ground now, since it's on the cobblestones and he doesn't know how to make it work otherwise. ]

How is that possible? Does he know?

[She doesn't mind that he needs the time to... try to process it. If she hadn't seen him with her own eyes, she'd be wary to believe it herself. But she had. She had, and she's hugged him and he was solid and real and whole and alive. Improbably. Impossibly. But it was real, she knows it down into the marrow of her bones.]

I do not understand it, either... it is just this place. Somehow, it... brought him back.

Yes. It is what he remembers last. I think... I think my reaction confirmed what happened.

[That, maybe, there had been a shred of doubt that it was truly his end, until he'd seen her face making all the emotions she couldn't stop it from making at seeing his face, and feeling his solidness under her hands. It wasn't fair, and she blinks back tears she knows Jesper cannot see, but she feels the need to hide from him all the same.]

Maybe I should leave this place... come there.

[The idea twists in her stomach. She likes it in Solvunn, she likes Mr. Stark and she likes Himeka and she had liked Estinien. She likes the people. But if her people are going to keep showing up in that city... ]

[ Everything in Jesper tells him that can't be the truth, but their little band of Crows wouldn't lie about something like that. The fact they lost Matthias weighed on them all in different ways, even him. If he'd been the one to bump into a walking corpse, it would've been a dramatic response too. ]

Dead people can come back here. Wow. If only we could tell Nina.

[ Knowing their friend, she would want to be anywhere Matthias was, no matter what situation was in front of them. He focuses on her next part. ]

Yeah! Please do, I'm going crazy without my guns, though I think they're willing to pay for hunters, so I might be able to get money that way.

[ The problem is if he'll be able to keep his money and not go to the gambling locations he has obviously and actively been staring at every day. ]

Oh, Nina... I miss her. I miss...

[She doesn't finish the thought. But it's Jesper. She doesn't have to, he knows the end of it anyway. She takes a slow, deep breath in and lets it out to steady herself. She hasn't allowed herself to brush so close to that admission to herself since she arrived here.]

Hunters? You're awfully chattery to make a very good tracker, Jesper.

[It's a gentle, ribbing tease, and she hopes he can catch that through this strange magic that allows them these... instant letters, somehow.

She won't ask if he could manage to keep the money he is able to make. It was a cruel question, especially so far away, with no voice inside of the words.]

I'm not sure how far it is... several days, at least. A week? Two? I wouldn't even know where to begin for a direction to travel... or if they would even welcome me. Things are tense here, Jesper. These cities, they are not allied.

[ He knows who she means, obviously. ]

Ever since I got here I've been wishing I had a planner with me.

[ Typical Jesper to be drawn to both Kaz and Wylan, his boyfriend also having quite a good strategic head on his shoulders. With a much too sweet heart. He isn't a good planner himself. He just reacts and does whatever seems right at the time, and that is going to end him in trouble sooner or later without a keeper. ]

Hey, I could be good at hunting, you don't know.

[ He used to be good at it! When he was growing up with his mother. But not since there's always a buzzing under his skin that she couldn't teach him how to control.

Well that sounds worrisome. He frowns. ]

They must have boundaries, yeah? Maybe we can meet at it. You're the Wraith, surely you can sneak across any one of them.

Have you been here very long? I meant to ask...

My mistake. Assumptions aren't very becoming, are they?

[It seems her research efforts may need to take a different sort of direction.]

I'll look into some things... we'll figure something out.

No, been a week maybe? Never even seen this happen before.

[ He means the glowing words on a stone, it's bizarre, he has no idea what magic is going on, just that it is the only thing that gives him Inej. And he's desperate to cling to that. ]

I'll ask around. If Matthias is here, I'll find him, and we'll get you. We need to stick together.

Yes, it is… strange. But it gave me you. I can’t hate that.

[If she had known about this before, perhaps she and Matthias could have been making plans all along.

Alas. No sense dwelling on the could haves.]

There are people here I will miss… but none more important than you.

[No one was more important than the cobbled together family the crows had made of themselves.]

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