The Sketch Rift: The Eternal Crusade

Moth's New Quote

Soal and Alice tumbled head-over-heels onto the musty silk carpet of Counter's Hall, and as the wormhole imploded behind them, Soal nodded to the company before them, consisting of the ordinary Irene, Hemingway, Gnat, Count, and Lucy -- and even Moth, surrounded by competent Crusaders, aware of the risk that was posed to the Ambassador's survival outside of their constantly altered bases of operation. Everyone, excluding Hemingway, was all too surprised to find that an unfamiliar character had joined him.

"You brought her?" Irene guffawed. There was similar ridicule across Count's lobby as the one who supposedly had carried them both to this time stood collectively. "Soal, why..."

Alice was visibly quivering, her eyes still shut tightly from the journey through the Riverift. "We're here, Alice," he helped her to her feet before her audience of many, all of them glaring at her with unchecked mockery. Mortified, her eyes blinked wide open, and she yelped in response to the relatively unsanitary immediate surroundings. "Quiet down; you're safe here!" was all her son could muster.

"I never thought I would ever see you again," Hemingway bit his cheek, "but the Ambassador and I are great allies. He claimed that Soal's mother was necessary for this chain of events, although I am not sure why. I reopened the Rift here, and Irene and I pulled you inside. You are very welcome."

"There's no way to explain it," Moth announced from behind his guards. "You call it a wormhole, I call it a plot hole."

"Sam, what's happening --" Alice was alarmed, and Soal had to physically hold her back to prevent her from panicking. "Who are all of these people? Where am I?!"

"Alice," Soal groaned, "Hemingway is your great-great-grandson, it's eighty years in the future, and we're all trying to figure out a way to avoid turmoil in September of next year."

"I still don't get it," Alice bit her nails, sweat trickling down her neck. "I don't understand. Is this the future you were born in?"

Soal was fed up; he could not possibly explain everything to her, as Hemingway failed to do multiple times. "Not necessarily, but in no time, either you'll have entirely adapted to these conditions, or you'll feel the same as you do now. Count, Lu -- Countess, you two should explain to her."

"As Soal requests this of you, sir," Hemingway's repeated use of the term 'sir' to Count had become worrisome to Soal at this point. "his mother knows little to nothing of this. Care you to assist her, sir?"

Both the Count and the Countess nodded in recognition and beckoned Alice to come forward to them. Hesitatingly, she agreed, and Soal saw them off into the "throne room" in which countless Fviron scrawlings were embedded into the walls.

"That was embarrassing," Soal mused as he scratched a recurring itch on his head of shaggy hair, simultaneously joining a grateful Irene. "Well, what's new? My adoptive sister has been kidnapped or at least disappeared, and we are certain that she came here in some way or another. My mother insisted on joining me."

"Just as your sense of humor is still developing," Moth temporarily stepped out from his ring of defense, "your abilities can only truly be harnessed by an artifact only capable of use by the Master Bringer. Additionally, there is much you still can learn about your own well-minded purpose as well."

"He's saying that Hemingway and himself are going to teach you something you probably should already know," Gnat thrust herself into the conversation. "As for me, I have work to do at Sogbury. Why I came here in the first place, I still don't know."

"Wormhole or plot hole?" Moth repeated from his concealment among his Crusaders, and everyone had a separate reaction from one another. Gnat began to tromp across the rug to the gates of Counter's Hall, but Hemingway reached through a suddenly reappearing wormhole and grabbed her back through another to halt her before her access outside could be granted. Whether or not this was simply a reaction to Moth's words was debatable.

"No; Natasha, you belong here, and there is a reason we need you in the coming days," the pseudo-Sulukridger declared as he released his grip and the wormholes closed. "Therefore, please do not attempt to leave. Is this a plausible compromise for you?"

Gnat blushed for an unexplained reason, prior to trotting back to the group with her hands behind her back.

"As we need to keep Moth in the Crusade's custody," Irene notified, "the Crusade has already left Waise to stop by at the Henderian boundaries. This apparently means that we will have more chances to meet Ivel and, uh, Moth in a more local area (Hemingway made me tell you this, by the way)."

"I don't mind," Soal shrugged, "but what is this artifact? And what are the new developments? Besides, I want to feel less powerless against September First. Being part of the Master Bringer, there's got to be something we can do about it, or this is all just a myth."