Barely hesitating, Skylar snatched up the blue fruit and crammed it into his gob; it tasted of absolutely nothing, like squishy cardboard. I don't even want to think about the amount of eyes I'd have to grow in the back of my head if other versions of me could change their appearance. I've got enough problems. "I'll leave the shape-shifting up to you," he mumbled around a mouthful of dream-fruit. "There are lots of Anticuaries you could have given me that wouldn't have made my life miserable in the future, so I know for a fact you're trying to trick me. I'll take one minor torment, thank you; large diet soda, apple pie, drive through."
Timurus's smile expanded broadly, leaving the confines of his/her physical face; the effect, though dreamlike, was horrifying. "Good, good. I'm sure you definitely won't regret this decision." Doing something finicky with its hands, the Devari expanded nothingness between them into the shape of a map, upon which glimmering landscape features took form. "If you follow a trail down and to the right of the main gate, you'll come to a tarn where the city's runoff is diverted; I'm sure you can follow the logic from there." The sewers, Skylar realized, and groaned when he realized he could have figured all this out for himself. Even when I keep it in my pants, I'm still getting mishked. "Normally, the tunnels would be guarded, but..."
"But the Professor's army of fish-dudes is already making their way up there," Skylar sighed. "You want me to blend in with their ranks, right? Since presumably they have actual Gram cultists in their forces."
"And some Lucians, too," the Devari agreed, to Skylar's surprise. "You'd be surprised what sort of circular rationalizations people can come up with."
"I really wouldn't," Skylar muttered darkly.
Timurus smirked, but did not comment. "Once you're in the city proper, you can slip away and make for the Gallows," he/she continued. "Nobody will take any notice of a night-clad there. From that point onwards, I assume you have objectives of your own, though I'll remind you that there are other hazards than the physical in these circumstances." The demigod waggled its eyebrows at Skylar suggestively.
Wait. Skylar frowned. He, or she or it, said that they could see through time... "You know everything about the Kalativa, don't you?" he asked bluntly. "You're playing coy for some reason, but you absolutely know that there are two of me in the time-stream right now. Why aren't you including that in your plans? More importantly, why aren't you including that in my plans?"
The Devari shook its head; little wisps of shimmering dream-light cascaded off its shoulders as though its hair was long, in defiance of logic. "I can't get involved in that kind of stuff, Skylar. Do you know how many future versions of you I'm watching right now? How many past versions of you are actively messing with plans that are already completed from my perspective?" The dark, eldritch being ran a hand down its face in a very human-like movement of despair. "It's like having your childhood be thrown into a blender, and I can't affect it any more than you can change what name your puppy had when you were twelve."
Skylar jumped, then glowered. "Leave Mister Wolfums outta this," he warned Timurus. "Are you saying you can't change what you're going to do in the future, even if you know the future now in the present?"
The Devari laughed -- a high, girlish cackle that contained very little sanity indeed. "You have no idea how meaningless that question is, Skylar Kass. But you will." Abruptly, there were hundreds of copies of Timurus dancing around Skylar gaily -- all wearing various styles of flowing spring dresses, jarringly ill-fitting on his male form. "Do you know that I can see in your mind -- right now -- of the trouble I will save you from in two days' time?" they all chanted in unison; Skylar clapped his hands to his ears as the din threatened to drive him to his knees. "Did you warn me, or did I warn myself, using you? You should be careful, my cultist." The entire dreamscape was now composed exclusively of Timuruses, chanting and spinning and laughing and drowning out everything from horizon to horizon with cacophonous madness. "Some questions can never be unasked...!"
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The roar of the Devari's haunting, mocking voice drowned out everything else; Skylar felt like his entire body was going to shake apart into its constituent atoms. Then, with absolutely no warning, it was over; he jolted awake in the cave, heart pounding and ears ringing, as sinister laughter echoed in his mind with an overwhelming inner volume that dwindled to silence even as he cringed from its intensity. "Vix," he muttered weakly, trying to get his heart rate under control.
He tried to go back to sleep, but enough light was filtering in over the half-sealed entrance that it was keeping him awake; reluctantly, he groaned and arose, giving in to the inevitable. At least I don't have to do stretches when I wake up yet at this age. Moving a few of the more egregious stones, he let himself out of the cave and stole stealthily back up the trail to the city's entrance, following Timurus's directions down to what he thought might be the north side of the mountain; as expected, a faint trail ran downwards from the entrance to the tarn. I guess sometimes they have to come down here to guard or service the sewer exit.
Emerging from a small copse of dead trees, he bore witness to the grisly scene of a slaughter's aftermath; dead guards lay strewn about in pieces, and a large swath of devastation cut through the deceased forest to the east in what he assumed must have been the path the Professor's army had taken. Not sure how he got an army, but that's tomorrow's problem, if ever. He was surprised to see that the Kulaku had posted no guards to the rear, but after a moment he realized that it wasn't necessary; they're here to invade, and they'll secure their ingress routes after they win. Interesting... you'd think that someone would have discovered these guys being missing between now and my trial in two days, but it doesn't look like that's the case. I wonder why?
He made his way around the tarn's circumference and into the sewer's exit pipe; it was huge, nearly ten meters across, and had originally been protected by a wide iron grate which had been unceremoniously torn off and cast aside. Probably by a Humbrite. Carefully picking his way over the sharp remnants of the grate's anchors and suppressing a gag of disgust, he made his way into the sewers for the second time in his own personal chronology despite being two days earlier in than his first. Man, fratz time travel.
For nearly two hours, he trudged upwards and around spirals of walkways and service tunnels, seeing no one, but eventually he began to hear commotions up ahead; slowing and moving more cautiously, he peeked around each corner before he traversed it and eventually fetched up against the rearguard of the Professor's forces. As he expected, the majority were Kulaku and Mukati, but there were enough humans and Loathborn that he didn't think he'd stand out. He tossed a quick Weir at one of the sentries, blinding it to his approach, then let the enchantment drop once he was in its blind spot; a few other members of the enemy forces glanced at him, but no one paid him any attention for longer than a few seconds. Mission accomplished; I have now joined Team Evil.
For a moment, he was wary that the others would be suspicious of him; but it soon became apparent that nobody cared about him, and everyone else was mostly busy standing around, bitching about the waits and delays, eating and drinking, or picking fights with each other. Slowly and with as much feigned nonchalance as he could muster, he made his way by increments up towards the city proper while seeming to be doing nothing other than mooching around and complaining like the others; at one point, someone handed him a strange roasted tuber-like fruit and a skin of foul, vinegaresque wine; he chugged the wine before he could think better of it, then munched on the root while shifting and slipping towards the upper city. Not bad; Team Evil has a better benefits package than anticipated. Am I on the wrong side, here?
Finally, he glimpsed the exit from the sewers that the main forces seemed to be taking; shuffling along with the others, he made his way up and out into a large open space at what appeared to be the base of the hollow mountain, surrounded by large piles of trash and debris in all directions. Overhead, a large series of black cloth tarps were stretched corner-to-corner overhead to obscure vision from further up the mountain; his palms began to sweat as he realized what was happening. They're setting up a base inside the city, that nobody's going to discover until they attack, despite that still being two days away. How in the drotz are they getting away with all this under everyone's noses? Shockingly, he even saw several soldiers drifting outside the camp in small groups to make small talk with street vendors and buy snacks; his mind reeled at the implications of everything. They were here. They were here long before everything kicked off, and nobody noticed or cared. What in the actual fratz is going on?
He waited until the next set of stragglers -- two humans, a Loathborn, and a garrulous female Mukat with bright red hair -- went to shop for contraband, then tagged along in their wake; the two humans gave him an odd glance, but the Loathborn just nodded grimly and the Mukat girl simply included him in her chattering stream-of-consciousness one-sided conversation as though he'd been there all along. He nodded back, rolled his eyes and smirked at appropriate points, and generally made himself unremarkable as the little group meandered their way over to a set of junk-selling stalls. You know, if things had gone differently, maybe these guys would have been my companions instead of the jerks I ran into, he mused to himself. The Professor's forces might be the bad guys, but they're still just people. Kind of sucks most of these dudes will be dead soon, but it's not like they won't be murdering a bunch of innocent people first. Clearly, the lesson here is just to kill everybody and let the Devari sort 'em out.
He waited until they were engrossed in arguing about what to buy, then dropped a casting of Weir on one of the humans to make it look like the other was about to shank him; when the resulting brawl broke out, he slipped away into the shadows and made his way out into the city proper. He quickly discovered that the district Levan had called The Gallows covered most of the first few levels of the city, down at the bottom far below the entrance and most of the thoroughfares, and appeared to be some kind of crimey crapsack of refuse, poverty, and refugees; he felt at home immediately. Many of the inhabitants also wore black, making him feel less exposed, and people either nodded as he passed or ignored him. Good. Now I just have to figure out what it is I want to do here for the next two days...
GAVISPAR ON 5 GREMS A DAY
