Essentia Animus

04-Nocturnal Nightmare

By dusk, the three girls finally arrived at the Observatory. A low altitude humidity was gathering in the area, rendering the sky itself devoid of clouds, but quickly filling the forest with a dense fog that made ground-level visibility challenging at best.

Somehow, atop the hill, the humidity felt lost, feeling much more dry than they were used to. At least, Sryine felt so, being suddenly dehydrated from the long hike. Khyzae also seemed to have gotten worn out too by the excursion, leaving only Vwyx with energy to spare. Unfortunately for Sryine, Khyzae at least appeared adjusted to such excursions and had quickly recovered her stamina, leaving Sryine to struggle to keep up with her peers. Khyzae proceeded to unlock the Observatory, guiding their way inside. Any hopes that Sryine might have had in getting an opportunity to rest was shattered once they reached the other side of the observatory. From there, she found stairs leading up the tower, inviting her to an even further climb.

Once at the top level, the three of them entered into a gigantic chamber. At the right side of the room was a gigantic instrument of some unusual design, very possibly like 40Uyn tall. On the other side of the room was a giant circular dais filled with an assorted clutter of paper. Directly across from the stairs was a window, which Sryine went to look out from. Through it, she could see the village far below them, almost dizzyingly so. She couldn't tell, but they had to be a few hundred Uyn into the air. She turned from the window and directed her attention towards the papers scattered around the room.

Vwyx meanwhile was more intrigued in the largest resident of the room. The gigantic metallic instrument looked far more advanced than anything she had ever beheld in her lifetime. Khyzae sat in a chair before the gigantic monstrosity, and started manipulating it for her own purposes. Vwyx simply decided to watch, as Khyzae got the entire thing moving. The ceiling shuttered with the motion, as the apparatus shifted through the roof above them. Rotating the seat around, Khyzae continued to manipulate the finer touches of the instrument, until it was calibrated to her tastes.

"So, both of you, if you look up out the window there, tell me what you see." "The stars, of course. From here it's even a very wonderful view." "Maybe, but such stars are still far far away, still beyond our reach. Which star in the sky looks the closest of them all?" "Are you talking about the moon? I've read that it's not really a star, it's something else entirely." Khyzae's lesson was lost on Sryine. She had read stories about how the sky above was filled with flames and stones, where only the flames could be typically seen, but the stones were normally too hard to see. The moon was simply glowing by the presence of the flame they knew as the sun, Celese too itself glowed with a daylight brightness by that same flame. Sure, this was only a lesson shared by the Terran Mythos, but it still seemed so easy to believe.

"From here, how would we know for certain? It is not like we have been to the stars. How much can you see of the ground of each star from that window?" "But that's not how..." "Of course normally such things are denied to Celese, far beyond the reaches of the boundary of our world. But it doesn't need to be like that. Take one last look at the full moon in the night sky, try to measure whatever details you can from it, and then come sit in this chair." Khyzae didn't leave any opportunity for Sryine to finish her statement about a star's flame. Vwyx however followed the instructions, not being as versed in Terran Mythos and genuinely interested in seeing what the giant instrument was capable of. She glanced up at the moon once more, a pale and featureless dot in the sky, then turned towards the great instrument. Khyzae set her up with the instrument and had her peer through a tiny glass. Through it, she saw something far similar to the pale dot of the sky from before, only much bigger and with considerably more detail. Scattered around were pale hills and valleys, shapes and contours of a single-colored world almost frozen in time. It looked so close, it seemed as if it was currently closer to her than the village below them from the window.