Aquarionics

At the end of nine, I gave up, and tried to write the end and death of the character Aquarion. I never went back to it, and the story died.

“Give me the stone” asked Jascain calmly
“No! It’s Mine. I found it” shreiked the Researcher
“You stole it” observed Jascain
“I FOUND it!” protested Aquarion
“You won’t give it to me?”
“Not while I have breath. Theif”
Jascain sighed.
“If it must be. I didn’t want to do this”
Your not going to..? Krys’ voice floated though his mind
Not yet
Jascain concenrtrated on the stone, muttering under his breath with the words of a scroll that had never entered his world. The words had been taught by Milamber all those months ago, and in responce the stone rose haltingly out of the hands of the Researcher of Kell. He floundered to get it, but Jascain moved the stone out of his reach. Once his will faltered and the stone dropped to the floor
“Mine” shouted Aquarion as he launched himself at it.
Jascain always remembered the next moment in slow motion. The power he focused to raise the stone out of the way of his tutors grasp. Aquarion’s scream as he realised that he couldn’t stop his relentless slide across the smooth floor of the Hall of Worlds.
The way the scream faded as he entered the dull grey gap between the swirling mists of the portals and Aquarion Kael Da’Blue of the Researcher’s Guild was lost forever in the void between universes.

A number of gold coins saw the pair guided back to Honest Johns, and they sat at a table gazing at the scroll Aquarion had gave them. Jascain cracked the seal, inside were three letters and an object. The first was addressed to the Dalsian Council:

“If this document is opened, it means that misadventure has caused my departure or death on a permenant level. By this doucment I, as dictated by Code, name my sucessor. The sucessor I name is Jascain of the Blue. Thus I complete my service to the universe.
Aquarion Kael De’Blue”

The document was signed and sealed. The second was for Jascain himself:

“You have probably read the other notes, and may be suprised. The document is a copy of the one in the Library back home, filed an hour before we met. The Guild needs a new style of member, and I think you are it, and if you still have the Portal Gem, you can do my job better than I could ever do. Even if you don’t, you have the experiance to write essays the world probably isn’t ready for.
Secondly, The other note is the entire reason for your quest. There is a sect in The Circle who are against history, Beliving that Cyradis decided was the exact opposite of the Right. I don’t know what they plan to do, but it involves the stone somehow.

I can’t keep writing this. I have to find the stone soon. You don’t, can’t understand. I’ve got to find it soon, I can hear it calling me. I think that last sentance means that my medication is fading again. Before I end, I say this: talk to Krydis. Something bothers me about her story.

Toth.

Don’t know what that means. I just hope that I have a moment lucid enough to give this to you. I can’t last long, I fear.

Find the sect. Find the Feenixa. Find the Gods Crossing.”

Aquarion’s signiture was decidely scratchy at the end of the letter.

The third note was a message: “The brats have gone. Begin stage two”

as Jascain and Krydis reached the end of the three pages, Jascain picked up the object, it was a broach, a blue seven sided polygon with a stylized rainbow in the centre. Aquarion’s seal.

Jascain pinned the broach to his doublet, and they sat in silence for a few moments, wondering what in the name of anything they had been dumped into, out of their depth, out of their world, and with no god to pray to.

Okay, here’s where it gets odd. Chapter six was where I lost the plot, because I tried to write stuff set in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. This didn’t work, so I gave up on chapter nine before anything really happened, and tried to write the ending (Put in the archive as Chapter 10)

h3. Prologue

And so it was that the Portal Stone lay within the Guild of Bequestments not inconsiderable archives for millenia, carefully recharging from the very air itself, and beyond the circle and within the circle generations were born, studied, propergated and died without giving a single glance that this most magificant piece of craftwork.

It came to pass in the Guild of Researchers that it’s latest member for the blue, studier of all items not of this world, took an interest in this Stone, and removed it from the archives for further study. His observations were never documented, for events overtook before he began the essay, but he was heard to say to his fellow researchers that the observations of the Guild long ago were inaccurate, for the flaw in the center did not resemble the closed portal it was named for, but a door that seemed to be open. This had to be an inaccuracy in the anchient text because the alternive was that the flaw in a stone had changed – albit in several thousand years – which was unlikly.

And thus did the Researcher for the Blue study the gemstone for many years, noting that the flaw changed subtly very slowly, and that the “doorway” appeared to be opening wider.

One night, while the researcher was late to bed, studying a work on an unrelated object, the Portal-stone sudernly let out a high pitched noise and started glowing as white as the sun. After a few minutes this glow faded, but the stone was no longer the saphirre it had been for countless centuries, but a grass-green emerald, glowing softly, which pulsated and swirled seemingly just under the surface. The stone was cool to the touch and the image of the now fully open door clearly visible within the stone.

The portal stone was immediatly placed in a room of observation, where a Guild Member stood watching at every moment. It was an early morning when a novice arrived to relive the night’s watch and found the observer dead his post, The researcher on the floor of the room with a leg-wound and the Portal-stone gone.

For reasons unknown, Eriond himself took a and in the matter and summond two Dalsians, both still in training, to recover the stone. A few days after they had left (under the cover of a Research Mission) the Researcher, Aquarion De’Blue, who had been studying the stone also dissappeared. It is assumed that he followed the recovery party. Meanwhile, Dalsia was having problems of a spiritual nature.

h3. Chapter 9 A Whole New World

Jascain, Aquarion and Krydis stepped through the door.

Inky blackness surrounded them. Most doors led where they were supposed to, but this was a door with a sense of drama.
Pinpricks of white light surrounded them, the darkness was almost opressive until Jascain noticed something
Khrys? The word floated soundlessly across the mind link, echoing within the junior Seeress’ head like a hail in a cave. Since they had left there own home world the background murmmer of thoughts and history had vanished, like the ticking clock you only notice when it stops. The silence was maddening.
Yes Jasc? If he was going to start shortening names, he wasn’t going to be alone.
Look down, can you see something? They were formless, bodyless, just strands of consiousness drifting though the space. There was no Up, No Down, nor even a Sex Appeal or a Peppermint. Where did that thought come from? she asked herself. And even if there was a down to look at, it wasn’t special, just more stars, more inky blackness it was…

…the gulf between universes, the chill deeps of space that contain nothing but the occasionall random molecule, a few lost comets and…

…but a circle of blackness shifts slightly, the eye reconsiders perspective, and what was apparently the awesome distance of intersteller wossname becomes a world under darkness, it’s stars the lights of what will chartitably be called civilization.

For, as the world tumbles lazily, it is reveals as the Discworld – flat, circular, and carried though space on the back of four giant elephants who stand on the back of the Great A’tuin, the only turtle ever to feature on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, a turtle ten thousand miles long, dusted with the frost of dead comets, meteor-pocked, albedo eyed…

There was a mountian in the centre, and they seemed to be heading towards it, as the disc spun slowly beneath them

Chapter 8 Honest Johns

What in the Guilds do you mean You Don’t trust him? Jascain demanded
I… Don’t know . Maybe it’s that I can’t tell what he is thinking. replied Krydis
Do you trust me?
Yes. That’s why I don’t think it’s that.

The Gate had led to what seemed to be a long corridor. Aquarion had talked to a couple of people, and then they had stepped into a void between two of the millions of Doorways that surronded them. They were now sitting in what appeared to be some kind of resurant. Although whatever they were selling seemed bad for the people who were drinking it, many of whom were slumped over the huge wooden bar that ran the length of one wall. Another wall was encumbered with a long time-line type map which Aquarion was studying in depth, which had led to Jascain and Krydis sitting at a table discussing their collective lot.

Who is he anyway? asked the seeress
One of the researchers. Basically, some Dals who broke off from the Dalmind thousands of years ago becauase they thought it interferred with research. I’m inclined to agree with them. replied Jascain
But didn’t Vilane introduce you as a Researcher Novice?
Yes, I study under that guild. We are seperated under several guilds, for some reason the researchers took an interest in me. Reasearcher of the Blue is what I become if they let me.
Doesn’t that mean you get disconnected from the Dalmind? Krydis asked
More than now you mean? No. Only the Rainbow – the seven Researcher Masters – take that step, and they are never connected in the first place. I was noticed when I was 14, and therefore to late to have the decision made for me.
What does it mean though?
Each of the researchers colours specialise, Red stays behind and collates what everyone else does, Yellow makes a study of Extrapersonal development Jascain was rapidly heading into Lecture mode and he knew it. He made a consious effort to stop
What?
Stuff like sourcery, things that most people can’t do
Like Belgarion? asked Krys
No, he came under another catagory, but like me and you.
I’ve never heard of it said the seeress
She tends to study from afar I gather
And blue?
Blue is extradimentional, stuff that is not only of this universe, but others. That’s what Belgarion falls under, what he did was for the sake of the multiverse. These catagories tend to merge. He wrote most of the stuff on the recent Event, but has a tendancy to do lots of things
like?
he likes to travel, and write histories of the places he’s been based on what people tell him, but history is more strictly Orange, if you see what I mean. Jascain was rapidly getting bored with his own explainations, and attempted to change the subject
What about you? he asked artlessly
Me?
Well, you should know most of this really
Seeresses arn’t suposed to know about that type of thing. We are supposed to remain aloof from normality. I’m slightly differant. replied the blindfoldless seeress
What is it with the blindfold thing?
I might well ask you what is it with the mind-protection?
I asked first pointed out Jasc.
So you did. I can impress things onto people, like I can make the world see me with a blindfold. It doesn’t work with you though.
Sort of, it looks as though you could be wearing one. It’s difficult to describe.
Your turn noted Krys
I can control what people see when they look into my mind. And I can see what other people are thinking
A Mind Reader? the thought had a taint of disbelief to it
Sort of, yes.

Aquarion finished his in depth study of the map and strode over to them
“We leave. Now”
“Why so soon?” asked Krydis
“Because someone is following us.”

As the stepped out of the door the reemerged in the Corridor of Doors.
“This” declaimed Aquarion with drama “Is the Hall of Worlds. This is Phase Space, or half of phase space, as I understand it. Every world is represented here, every possibility of every world, every universe is here.”
“Why half?” asked Jascain
“Because for every universe here, there must be a universe where one of the paths chosen was notto have a door into here. Or something very similer, as I understand it. I never dreamed I would actually be here” Aquarion looked like a kid in a candy store, never knowing what to try first, gazing at the vistas presented at every turn, of new people, for the “doors” were mearly rectangles of grey on a black background, with symbols beside that assumably told people who knew the lanuguage what the world within was.
“Every door we pass” said Aquarion quietly “creates a new door, a possibility that we would have stepped though. The universe divides into the version where we passed the door, and the version we didn’t. And more, for there are versions where only you, Jascain, or only Me, or even Krys, stepped though alone, and versions where we didn’t”
Krys? Jascain’s mental word came soon after Aquarion’s sentance.
Yes?
We are going to have problems with my Tutor
Why? queried the Seeress
He doesn’t want to leave. I don’t think he is going to.
What? an element of panic had entered
He has studied extradimentional worlds for all of his life, this is his dream. I think we are going to have difficulty bringing him home
Why is he doing this then?
There is something he has to do, I think
You think?
It’s indistinct. He has a mission. I think I’m involved.
Why?
I can’t read things about me. I don’t know why, I think it’s part of the “One man cannot know his own future” thing. relied Jascain crypically
What?
Will you please stop it with the one word questions?
Sorry, it’s just that he is the only guide we have. If we lose him…
…we’re lost. I know. Jascain broke off the conversation

By Aquarion