[Medonia] Ruins and Runes (Crimson)

[Thaddeus Birch]

Thad drummed his fingers atop a workbench as he stared at the empty shelves in his workshop. He'd planned on starting a new project today, but his materials were in short supply.

His rumination was interrupted by the sound of four paws landing lightly on the workbench. He looked down to find the cat staring back at him. He smiled and scratched behind the cat's ear.

"Looks like we'll be spending the day outside, Mags," he said as the cat purred. "Maybe if you're good, I'll bring home some fish."

The cat's expression said it wasn't making any promises.

Thad worked his way into his long coat and, just in case it was needed, he slung a crossbow over his shoulder.

One good thing about living in a recently destroyed city was the number of ruins a thrifty gadgeteer could sift through for scrap metal and wood. Anything valuable had been picked over long ago, but few scavengers saw little worth in broken bits of pewter and rusting keys.

He ambled through the Medonian streets until he reached a section of the city that had yet to be rebuilt. He walked through the area until he found a suitable location. The building was still standing, but the roof had caved in and there were signs of fire damage.

Might be able to find something among the ashes, he thought to himself. Very well, then. Time to go inside.

 

[Crimson]

The house in question looked like a half-eaten cake.

Thaddeus could see that the front door and -- really, the entire front of the building -- was basically gone. Part of the roof was crumbling down and there wasn't much left just like he suspected. Whatever furniture or valuables that may have been present here had long since been scavenged and looted.

The young gadgeteer was about to find another dwelling when he heard muffled voices coming from ... below him?

He was standing in what would have been the living room. In front of him was a room that could be a kitchen. To his right was another room, but debris and roof had mostly collapsed into it.

 

[Thaddeus Birch]

Upon hearing voices, Thad crouched low. Perhaps some late-to-the-game looters had discovered something worth taking after all.

Just to be on the safe side, he shrugged the crossbow from his shoulder and began turning the mechanical crank until the rope was cocked. He palmed a bolt and held it along the stock, just in case he needed to finish loading the mechanized weapon.

Trying to step lightly, he walked deeper into what was left of the building.

Strange. The voices are coming from underground, he thought. He looked from the living room to the kitchen and pondered for a moment. Perhaps a kitchen cellar.

He made his way in that direction as quietly as possible. He didn't want a confrontation, but curiosity drove him forward.

 

[Crimson]

Thaddeus felt the weight of the crossbow. It was a reassuring thing to have but felt quite heavy and cumbersome in his inexperienced hands. Still, he knew the theory of the basics from watching his uncle. Plus, his affinity for gadgeteering gave him a small advantage. He began turning the crank until the string was tightly held by the notch at the back of the weapon. After about a half minute, the crossbow was ready to be loaded. Whether or not it fired or actually hit anything was less certain.

Heading left, Thaddeus ventured into the kitchen. Any pots, pants, utensils, and cookware had long since been carried away. The sparse space lacked any semblance of warmth it might have contained before Medonia fell to the Xet. After turning the corner, the gadgeteer saw that there was a small stone stairwell leading below. It was hidden behind what looked like a bookshelf.

He could hear the voices a little more clearly now. Thaddeus counted at least two distinct speakers.

"Watch it!"

"Gods, it smells 'orrible down 'ere ..."

"Not even cheese or wine anyplace."

"Proll got nicked, eh?"

"Nah, swore 'twas hidden before we came. 'Sides, looka dis dust. Never seen sunlight, these books."

There was a small flicker of candlelight coming from the cellar and the smell of mold and earth.

 

[Thaddeus Birch]

Thaddeus peered down the staircase and frowned. He looked down at the heavy crossbow in his hands and felt on easy. One crossbow bolt. Two looters.

He wasn't looking for a fight, but he realized walking down a narrow staircase with a ranged weapon would put him at a severe disadvantage. He sighed mentally, thinking of some sort of contraption, a spring-loaded knife blade maybe, that he could build into the crossbow. That way, he wouldn't be defenseless after firing a bolt.

All in due time, he thought. But how to deal with the two looters?

He retreated to the living room, took some thin rope - the kind they used for fishing nets - from his gadgeteer's kit, and rigged a tripwire at the living room's entrance. He looked for a spot where he level his crossbow at the doorway, then set his crossbow down, placing a bolt in the firing groove.

Now, time for a bit of playacting, he thought as he made his way to the front door.

From the front door, he allowed his footsteps to fall hard and loud. He marched to the kitchen's entrance, then stopped.

Using his best imitation military voice, he shouted as though he was speaking with someone across the street.

"What? No, I'm pretty sure the old lady said she spotted looters in this building," he said, then paused long enough for a believable response.

"The penalty? Hanging. The Medonia Garrison doesn't take looting lightly. And you better believe I brought enough rope." He laughed cruelly, then paused again.

"All right, all right. We'll check that building first, then come back to this one if we don't find 'em in there."

Thaddeus stomped back toward the front door, but diverted quietly back to the living room. He hoped the looters would just leave, but if they didn't, he had a trip wire and improvised fox hole that could possibly even the odds. He picked up his crossbow and waited, realizing he was nervous.

Never mind that. It's easy now. Just aim at the doorway and pull the trigger if they spot you.

 

[Crimson]

The little show seemed to do the trick.

After rigging the tripwire, Thaddeus managed to lure the looters up and out of their little hidey hole.

A tense silence filled the half-eaten, scavenged house. Thaddeus felt his hands perspiring and realized that he was grasping the crossbow too tightly.

That was when the first man emerged from the kitchen. He was scrawny with cornbread colored hair and dressed in loose fitting clothes and boiled leather boots. In his left hand he carried a silver dagger. From his current position in the living room, Thaddeus watched as the stranger suddenly tripped over the fishing wire.

"FETH -- !," cried the thief as he tumbled forward, landing painfully on his wrist. His knife flew out of his hands.

"Oy!", his companion shouted from the kitchen. Thaddeus could hear his footsteps approaching.

Then the first man's eyes widened when he turned to see the hidden gadgeteering just around the corner. Thaddeus was probably just ten paces from his unsuspecting foe.

 

[Thaddeus Birch]

The man stumbled and fell over his trip wire, and Thaddeus couldn't help but smirk. It felt so good to see plans come to life. But then the man turned and looked at him, and Thad realized it was time to make a terrible decision. The second person coming to investigate didn't leave him much choice.

It has to be done, he thought.

He aimed the crossbow at the torso of downed man, inhaled once, exhaled slowly, and pulled the trigger.

Whatever the outcome, the follow up action would be the same: get the dagger and make sure his path through the front door wasn't cut off. Might as well commit to the bit, then, he thought.

Thad ran toward the hallway, yelling with authority. "Medonia Garrison. Stop where you are!" he shouted, pointing his unloaded crossbow at the second person as he knelt down and felt for the knife on the ground.

Again, he thought about ways to modify his crossbow. Perhaps some metal flexible enough but strong enough to inlay through the bow so that he could deflect attacks with it. Anyway, if it seemed the the downed man and the second person could overwhelm him, he'd hoof it out the door. Otherwise, he'd hold his ground ... at least for now.

 

[Crimson]

A twang and a thud was all it took to change the course of Thaddeus Birch's life forever.

The man's already-wide eyes were the color of dirt. He exhaled suddenly when the bolt struck him in the stomach. Suddenly, there was blood and the man was screaming and then gargling blood.

"Brenn! You all righ' ?", called his companion, panic in his shrill voice.

Thaddeus emerged and saw another scrawny fellow. This one was older, his hooded face gaunt. He froze when he saw the crossbow aimed at him, stopping just short of the opening to the kitchen.

"Oy! You shot 'im!", the older man shouted, pointing desperately at his friend. "You shot my boy!"

The gadgeteer felt his free hand curling around the fallen dagger. Brenn was bleeding, dying, a few paces in front of him. Behind Thaddeus was the way out.

 

[Thaddeus Birch]

Thad looked down at the dying man and cocked his head to one side. Curious, he thought. His body worked ,and now it doesn't. How very much like a machine.

He thought about trying to help Brenn - maybe stitching him up with fishing wire, it would be a good puzzle at least. But the stakes were far too high.

He looked around, wondering what had compelled him to enter this particular ruin and decide that he needed to know what was under the floor. It seemed so strange now that a man was dying in front of him. It was like a lucid dream, unreal and real at the same time.

Thaddeus felt his hands begin to shake. He shouldered the crossbow and stared hard at the older man. Hand gripped around the knife, he wondered whether it would be best to simply kill them both. After all, who knew what machinations might come from this one event. Wouldn't it be better to simply end any future threat here and now?

He sighed, then moved back into the entrance to the living room.

"Go," he said. "Get him to a healer." Still, he kept the knife in his hand, waiting to see how the old man would react.

 

[Crimson]

The weight of the moment and every decision that led him there weighed on Thaddeus Birch. An instant later, the older man was rushing to his son.

"Brenn!", cried the older man, removing his hood. The blonde youngster clutched his stomach where the bolt struck, blood blossoming on the wool and fabric of his raggedy clothes. When Thaddeus told the man to get a healer, he looked up with hard, desperate eyes. "An' pay 'im with what coin?", he demanded. "You killed 'im, you did!"

The boy tried to speak but he coughed more crimson liquid instead. Now the old man was sobbing, his body shuddering in pain and rage.

Thaddeus felt that his hands were still shaking when he saw Brenn grow suddenly still in his father's arms.

"You took m'boy ...", seethed the older thief, his eyes red and voice filled with venom. With the savagery of a man with nothing left to lose, he launched himself against Thaddeus with tooth and nail!

 

[Thaddeus Birch]

Thaddeus understood the inner workings of clocks. He knew that once you inserted the key and wound them up, you set something in motion that ran in a set pattern until all of the excess energy had been used up. Clocks would run their course, then everything would stop.

He wondered if by turning the crank of the crossbow, he hadn't set something similar in motion - some dark energy that had led to this very moment. Now, it was time for everything to stop. For Brenn, the energy was gone forever. For Thad and Brenn's father, or one of them at least, time was winding down.

Thad felt his hand stop shaking. He gripped the dagger tight. The young gadgeteer didn't know the first thing about wielding a blade, but he knew the softest part of a human was the belly. Brenn could attest to that. As the older man rushed upon him, Thad thrust the dagger forward, aiming for the gut and bowels, hoping to savage his attacker.

No future machinations would be needed. This ended here. This ended now.

 

[Crimson]

Unlike clocks, lives were not fated to repeat themselves along cogs and wheels. Each moment bred a separate, branching reality; and those realities were altered by an infinite number of decisions.

Yet three separate lives, with innumerable sets of decisions and subsequent realities coalesced into this singular moment in which Thaddeus Branch was being bum rushed by a father of a murdered son.

In that instant, Thaddeus altered his fate again and set the wheels and gears of his own clock into a different rhythm. Rather than accept the old thief's justice, the gadgeteer tinkered with fate. Brenn's silver knife flashed as Thaddeus thrust it into the older man's gut. He felt skin give way and the thief's bloodshot eyes bulged. They were so close now that Thaddeus could feel the other man's heat and the scent of cheap ale in his last breath.

A second thud rang out in the empty house that looked like a half-eaten cake that fateful day. Then there was only silence and the sound of Thaddeus' beating heart and labored breathing.

 

[Thaddeus Birch]

Thad watched the old man's eyes bulge and cocked his head to one side. "Curious," he said as he pulled the knife free. "I thought this would feel ... different."

He stared down at the two crumpled bodies as blood dripped from the silver knife. So, time had wound down for Brenn's father, as well.

But as Thad looked at what he had just done, he realized he wasn't interested in the mechanics of clocks. He didn't want to build gadgets and knick-knacks. No, he wanted to build weapons. Crossbows more forceful than any the world had seen. Great siege engines to rival the walls of any fortress. Craft to move his inventions across across air, land and sea.

Gods, think of the destruction one could cause, he thought to himself while trembling a bit.

Thad knelt down and took one last look at the destruction he had just caused while he wiped the blade clean on the old man's clothes. He stood, tucking the knife into his belt.

"If it's any consolation, you've truly opened my eyes," he said to the corpses. "For that, I am eternally grateful."

He paused a moment longer, then shrugged his shoulders, and began making his way down the secret set of stairs.

 

[Crimson]

"Smooth Criminal" Secret Achievement unlocked.
Thaddeus Birch collected loot worth minor wealth and one (1) good quality silver knife engraved with a cursive "B".​

The corpses, father and son, said nothing when Thaddeus left them in scarlet pools of their own blood. But the gears of fate were wound once more as the gadgeteer sought the secret stairs.

It was dark in the secret cellar. Thaddeus could smell the lingering smoke from the candles but they were likely snuffed out after Brenn and his father decided to scram. From what little he could see, Thaddeus saw rows of empty shelves where picked jars and even a few bottles of cheap Medonian Red might have been stored by the house's previous occupants. Like the rest of the dwelling, it had long been picked clean by scavengers.

He might have been tempted to call it a loss when Thaddeus noticed strange scripts that seem to ...glow in the darkness. The strange shapes made no sense to him. They did not look like letters or symbols he'd ever seen befor -- wait.

Thaddeus had seen those odd glyphs ... in the pages of his uncle's journal that was sitting in his workshop.

His eyes began to swim at that moment, a sudden headache driving pins and needles along his temple and nape.

 

[Thaddeus Birch]

Now, it was Thad's turn to crumple to the floor.

He landed on his knees, holding his head as he winced at the sight before him. What were these strange symbols? He stared at them, as best he could, pain pulsing through his brain. They were familiar, somehow, even as they remained alien in their nature. They seemed intentional, like a blueprint for some gadgeteering mechanism, except that Thaddeus thought he could be staring at blueprint for all of reality.

He felt as though he was staring at the strange schemata for all things unseen.

His uncle's journal. He remembered now. What had the old man known, and could Thaddeus learn from the journal's wisdom?

Why did you keep this from me, uncle? he thought. Why hide such magnificent, disturbing truths?

He continued to stare, gleaning what he could from the shapes before him.

 

[Crimson]

It felt like the symbols were burning into his eyes.

Even when Thaddeus closed them, he could see the bright, blinding light creating a constellation of pain that drove scalding knives through his skull. The pain was unlike anything Thaddeus had ever experienced before. Coupled with increasing nausea, it was all he could do to keep from falling face first on the dirt floor.

Whether it was an hour or a lifetime, Thaddeus was not sure. The torment eventually subsided and soon the gadgeteer could reopen his eyes.

He was ... in his uncle's workshop. Everything was exactly like he remembered: the tools, fading blueprints and half-finished schemata. A light layer of dust reminded Thaddeus that he hadn't spent as much time down there as he would have liked.

 

[Thaddeus Birch]

Thaddeus stood, looking around at old, familiar surroundings. He felt panicky at the sudden change in location and started grasping things with his hands to try and get a better grip on reality.

Was he dreaming? Or, perhaps a better question, had he been dreaming? Maybe he hadn't killed two people in a ruined house, after all. He sighed, feeling something like relief course through his body. Then his hand fell to his belt and brushed against Brenn's knife. Disappointment overtook relief. Ah, so it wasn't a dream. He was a killer, plain and simple. Time to embrace that fact.

But then how did he end up back here? He looked around tentatively, fully expecting the strange glowing symbols to once again assault his vision. As he waited, he again remembered his uncle's journals. Yes, he thought. Perhaps I can learn more from my uncle's writings.

He quickly moved to his uncle's old desk and searched for the journal.

 

[Crimson]

The silver dagger was there and so was his uncle's journals, which Thaddeus found exactly where he had left it.

Most of the leather-bound books contained only the schemata and sketches that the young gadgeteer had read and re-read over the eras. They were the dreams and aspirations of a man who had spent most of his life imagining a world with carriages that could sprout bat-like wings or riding saddles with extendable, swiveling arms. Inserted into some of the pages were schematics that Thaddeus had sent him all the way from Trysvale. His uncle's neat, minuscule script littered little Thaddeus' letters.

"Add gears for more torque", read one such note next to one of Thaddeus' earlier inventions.

Then along the margins of another letter from his nephew, he wrote: "Water wheel ... or steam-powered for propulsion."

As Thaddeus continued poring through his uncle's notes, he started to notice strange symbols on his diagrams and plan schematics. These were dated after the destruction of Medonia. There was a specific symbol that kept cropping up. His uncle inlaid it, creating esoteric patterns with the single rune, along the supporting structures and beams of his pulleys, cranes, and quarrying implements. "Reinforce", his uncle wrote in regards to his plans.

Then it happened again.

The runes came to life, shining as bright as any star and burning, searing white-hot into the surface of his mind.

Thaddeus thought that the pain was going to kill him. Except, this time, the pain was quickly replaced with a feeling of cold metal leaving an imprint or impression on his bare flesh. Then he saw that same symbol, that rune, and he knew its meaning, its truth, as if the wisdom came from his very soul.

"Strong" was its meaning. But Urkux was its true name.

 

[Thaddeus Birch]

Thaddeus read the same notes he had studies over and over before, scanning hastily to find the strange symbols he knew were there.

His finger stopped on "Reinforce" and smiled. "There you are," he said. "Now, what exactly do you mean?" Then the rune jumped from the page and burned into his mind. He stumbled as white-hot pain again shot through his body while his mind wrestled with comprehending a deeper level of reality.

He grabbed his head as the pain began to recede, blinking until his vision came back into focus. Urkux, he thought. Of course ... Though his body was shaky, he chuckled a little, realizing how often the rune inherently appeared in objects around him. It was everywhere ... they were everywhere. He wondered how many runes existed.

He again looked down at his uncle's notes, hoping to find another of the strange symbols.

 

[Crimson]

The moment Thaddeus recognized and accepted the truth and true nature of the rune, he felt a sudden wave of vertigo. His world, the workshop, everything was spinning and Thaddeus thought that he was falling, falling, further and further, down and down until he landed ... in front of Medonia's walls.

The Midlands around him were covered in snow and the faraway trees were skeletal and dark. His uncle was standing next to some builders and men dressed in the colors of the Medonian Guard.

"No, we build higher", the guard was saying. "Gotta make sure those damned insects can't get over the new walls!"

Thaddeus saw his uncle shaking his head. "Higher does not mean stronger. You can't just build up. You have to have the structure and support below!"

The world spun again and a moment later, Thaddeus found himself walking the familiar streets of the city. His uncle was ahead of him, greeting neighbors, and waving at passerby's. If Thaddeus tried to catch up or interact with his uncle in any way, however, he found that no matter how fast he ran or how loud he spoke, his uncle was always just out of reach; and no one seemed to react to him, hear him, or see him. Everyone was living their lives, unaware, and uncaring of his presence.

Thaddeus followed for some time, turning from this street and climbing a few stairs until they reached an unfamiliar one-story house. The ruins of the homes on either side of this particular building was an odd juxtaposition. It was as if the Battle of Medonia and the destruction wrought by the Xet simply omitted this specific house.

"You might as well come in", his uncle said, his tone waving between seriousness and amusement. Then he turned to face Thaddeus. "My boy", Uncle Graydon said, beaming. His face was younger than Thaddeus remembered. Though the creases and wrinkles were still there. But it was his eyes that Thaddeus knew best. Those intense orbs that shone with intelligence and kindness all at once. "I have waited a long time to see you again."