So many implications and hints. I’m definitely going to need to sit down and reread this at a more convenient time. Wiggle some pieces lose from previous adventures we’ve had.
12 Likes
Ugh I know it’s clearly not the same storm, but 1998 + a storm gives me thorough shivers. Where I am, it was awful. I was younger. Dad he’s gone now, had just cut a tree the previous season. It’s the only reason we didn’t have to leave. We put it in the fireplace we had - our house wasn’t big, now that I’m older and understand where fireplaces tend to exist in North America - and it kept us warm. We had to put plastic sheets up around the areas we could live in next to the fire. (Dangerous, I think) And I did drawings and amused myself mostly by candle light. Most of humanity lived like this for thousands of years. It was interesting to experience it for several weeks. I would go to the fire, get far, far too warm, then go and do something else for a bit. Mostly write, and draw. There was too much snow, and too much ice to even venture out. Ice could come down from trees and wires, and kill a person - no joke. I’ve never seen ice like that. And never since. It destroyed everything.
I’ve never been the type to get cabin fever. I don’t know what it was like for my parents. They kept it together. I felt fine at the time, but I never forgot it.
I know this has nothing to do with the story, but it struck a chord. And since we’re talking about magi(q) - I’m not willing to just keep quiet just because it’s ‘not related’.
Towers that hold up power lines crumpled like paper. You can imagine what happens to wood, if this happens to metal.
(sorry if some of the sentences are pretty bad, I’m going to leave them because it’s how scared it makes me as an adult)
12 Likes
Hey @Catherine - everything okay at the office? We haven’t seen any follow up posts from @Saberlane and I’m getting a little worried.
17 Likes
Hey Mounties.
I waited until noon to really start panicking, but Saberlane didn’t show up to work this morning. I emailed, texted, and called. Nothing.
Everything in the office looked normal when I got in. This was the only thing out of place:
The aliquary, or the pendant holding the aliquary, is empty.
So it seems like the spell worked, but Saberlane was nowhere to be found. After about an hour, I emailed his husband, Matt, who called me immediately.
Saberlane is gone. Matt didn’t say much, but he told me that Sabes had been downplaying his health issues for about six months. He was getting more and more confused about stuff like memories and orders of events, little things like picking up groceries, and also big things like birthdays and holidays. Matt said that CJ confided in him that he could see last Saturday like it had already happened. He’d been able to see it for months. He called it the first-last day. The first day of the new age, and the last consequence of all the magimystic power his mind had been exposed to over the years. He knew something was going to happen to him, and although he wasn’t sure about the specifics, he knew it had to be him it happened to, to protect everyone else and to make sense of his “memory of the future.” And he knew Saturday would bring him peace, after months of suffering.
Matt didn’t give me details but he said that over time, they as a couple, as a family, realized nothing was going to change the fact that the day was coming, and they just had to make the most of the time they had and hope that in the end, the “first-last day” would end up okay. He said it wasn’t without a lot of fighting and tears (I can only imagine), but CJ claimed he had memories that hadn’t come to pass, memories where his mind was healed. They both chose to believe that meant that Saturday wouldn’t be the end of him. Of them.
Matt is obviously worried, not just for his husband, but also that CJ might have lied about having more unlived memories. Their kids are okay. They believe in magic, so they believe their dad is coming back. I guess that’s not so easy to do when you’re a grown-up.
There were other things we discussed, like finances, and me staying on at Ackerly Green and other people who CJ had arranged to help out with the company, but that’s it for now. Matt said he’d call again when everything has settled a little.
I wish I had better, or at least more news for you all. I wish he had told me something, anything, but I guess he had his reasons. Part of me is kicking myself for not seeing it coming, and the other part is just, well…in shock.
24 Likes
Oh man, I had a thought, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.
[spoiler]If all those items that Ilya walks through are foci from spells, and he was using the aliquary/himself as a focus, could he have ended up back in Neithernor?[/spoiler]
[spoiler]And if that is the case, what about all the adepts at BC34 that may have focused on themselves?[/spoiler]
18 Likes
I deeply love magiq. I always have, and I always will. But I don’t believe that all the free magiq in the world is a fair trade for a father, a husband, and the man who’s carried our community on for the past four years selflessly. A brother in our family here in this weird, enchanted little corner of the internet. He’s shown us, though, that he’s certainly cut from the same Ebenguardian cloth as Augernon: sacrificing himself for all of us.
@Ashburn - I hope you’re right. I hope he was brought to Neithernor, and maybe one day will knock back. I still can’t get the image of the aliquary in his hand in the abandoned City Hall Station out of my mind. Wasn’t that the first place he was able to get to Neithernor to from?
What’s done is done, though. I doubt we could unmake it if we tried. I think we need to honor what Saberlane has done for us in bringing forth the new age, and like @Ashburn said, make sure everyone else is safe, though, too. @Eaves - everyone present and accounted for on your end?
21 Likes
Okay, well. My first reaction to this, when I recovered from the shock, was a lot of swearing that I’m trying not to repeat as I type this because…what? WHAT?!?
God, I feel horrible right now. I was the one who said the Well at the AGP offices would be enough to make everything go smoothly. I didn’t want any more complications in an already complicated spell that had so little chance of working. And now Sabes is gone.
I don’t even know what to do now. I wish he had told us more. When we found out about Ascender, it felt like there was closure, at least, knowing what had led to it. But this…we don’t know enough to know why Sabes is gone, or if we could bring him back? Am I supposed to be grieving or am I supposed to not give up and find a way to fix this? What do we do?
21 Likes
Gone? Just gone? What do we do now? It’s weird. I feel empty.
15 Likes
Ah. Oh no. Thats not good… i mean, if he knew it was coming, we can only hope he saw his return, as well? But still… thats not great. What’ll we do now?
13 Likes
Well said, @Augustus_Octavian.
This was a man who had his memory wiped of most of what he loved 20 years ago. He had seen his war back in 1998. But we dragged him back into a world of magic and he damage it’s done to him is almost too cruel to imagine.
The only saving grace in this whole mess is that his kids believe he’ll be back. Explaining things to kids is never easy, but Saberlane strikes me as a very grounded guy. If he thought he was never coming back, he wouldn’t have told his kids he was. He would have found a better way to explain that he was going away forever.
For what it’s worth, I think Saberlane fully believed he’d be back. I’m not sure what I believe in at this point about all this.
19 Likes
I’m hoping that’s the case too, @Robert. And not just because I’m suddenly a 23-year-old in charge of a whole company.
Sorry, guys, I don’t really know what else to say, or what to do. This is gonna take some time to process.
21 Likes
So… what. No clues? Thats it?! I wont accept that. Magiq’s let us track lost people before, SURELY theres SOMETHING we can use?!
15 Likes
Guys… a new thread popped up…
16 Likes
@Viviane I don’t know him as well as you all do, but I don’t think that he’d want us to give up. We’ll figure this out.
@Catherine Take the time you need. We’ll keep you posted. This is alot on your shoulders.
@Eaves How are you all doing?
16 Likes
2 things.
-
This has to be a related lead. It has to be.
-
I dread having to explain to someone in a psychiatric hospital how the Consolatory Teatime for Misplaced Memory spell works, but it might be a way to figure out who this is, if mundane guesswork doesn’t work.
17 Likes
I know there’s not a lot to go on, but as we’ve been holding on to for as long as I’ve been a mountie…it’s definitely time to trust the flow of magiq. I can’t believe that after all of this, it’s poof and Sabes is gone. Maybe he got into Neithernor. Maybe magiq brought him somewhere else and he’ll be back with more stories for us. If he believed he would be back, I think it’s a disservice to him to disregard that entirely.
Until we know more, @Catherine know you’ve still got all of us and you aren’t alone out there.
Hey @Eaves…any news on BC34? I hope it’s good…
15 Likes
I’d be hyper-cautious about using Teatime in this case. New book, new rules, remember? Not that I’m not willing to try it if we had no other options, but we just barely got the aliquary seeded, and at way too great a cost.
16 Likes
If our focuses ended up in Neithernor, maybe @Saberlane did, too! If the first chapter takes place in the past, but @Nimueh’s necklace and the very tree it was on ended up in 2018, maybe he did as well.
@Catherine, please please let us know if we can help. You have an amazing responsibility, but never think you are alone 
21 Likes
Also, regarding the doc - should we ask him to tell his patient that the Book of Briars has changed? Maybe she will react if she reacted during the wellspring.
15 Likes