Prometheor

Grandmore II

Anwan Deval was a minor royal in the House of Man. He was assigned Obos as a fiefdom and went into debt financing a colonizing mission. His prescient dreamers assured him he would never be forgotten, but only if he went to Obos.

He sat across from the wild jungle man, his daughter Aeolia in his lap. He wondered how much of this was getting through. Aeolia whispered in his ear.

"She says she's dreamt of you her whole life."

"What she say?"

The girl's thin voice sounded. "I knew you would come tonight. I knew you would see me in the tree, that's why I left the tart."

Elliot smiled at the memory of its taste.

"I know why you're here and everything you're going to say," Aeolia said, picking up steam, but Anwan cut her off.

"I've told you that's rude--"

"I know but he needed to hear it."

"Aeolia, enough, off to bed."

The girl stood and considered possible futures.

"Fine," she said with resignation, "but everything you're going to learn tonight, I've told you already, if only you'd listen."

For months now, Anwan's been dreaming of a prescient 'looney' named Halcyon. He assumed it was a random bit of drama thread bubbling up from his subconscious.

He stared at the wild man. His eyes were the only indication he was speaking to a human being. His face was hidden behind a filthy mat of beard and dreadlocks. The beard twitched.

"You answered the questions."

Anwan had no idea what he was talking about. Earlier tonight, he and his family had eaten dinner and when the rest of the children went to bed, Aeolia insisted on staying up with him, saying that they were going to meet the Worldwalker.

"It's happening tonight, Dadday, he's coming!"

He had no idea what she was talking about and when he saw Elliot and Goba on the security feeds, he was shocked into stillness.

"Naked," was all he said as he watched the wild jungle man and the flying monster approach. None of the security measures reacted to his presence.

Everything tonight had been a series of unanswered questions, he was completely baffled by the presence of this...man and everything he was saying.

"The numbers," Elliot said. Speech was hard for him. It was an unfamiliar workout for his throat and a taxing endeavor for his mind, despite its new processing power.

Clothing was a new sensation as well. He twitched and shifted.

Anwan's mind was spinning. He was a gifted cybernaut and was used to thinking fast to solve strange riddles, like the time he found this structure, the one he made a home in.

His mind, on that day so many years ago, was gripped with terror. Everyone he brought with him to start a new life on a faraway world perished violently. Monstrous animals seemed to swarm out of the jungles and grasslands.

He was dragging his wife through the mud, looking for shelter from the rain. The flying monsters snatched away his entire life. In order to get in, to get to safety, there were these riddles, strange puzzles, alien glyphs, but still recognizably math.

"She was dying," he said quietly. His wife gathered a bouquet to mark the resting place of their fallen. Something in the bouquet began to assault her heart and lungs, some poison.

"I'd already lost everything. She was the..." Anwan stared at his hands; he couldn't go on.

Elliot took a deep breath. He remembered that day, of course, remembered the Ubriria Machine directing its fiercest predators at the humans; remembered picking them off one by one as though he had done it himself.