team 7's path 7
Late into the night on the compound, Squints and Lucille finished their spasms and regained control of their jaws as the come up what they would later learn was called subordinate powder (not sugar) concluded.
Declan, who had come up to the packing platform to scold Omeb, noticed Squints’ torn pants and the hair and knobby knees protruding from the gaps in the fabric through a barely open door into the ingredient room, which he tried to force open over and over against some obstacle, not realizing that the obstacle was Squints’ own legs. Because of his legs’ new war-orangutan durability, he was spared injury. Declan said, “What the fuck? What happened to your legs?”
“I’ve always wondered what this would be like,” Lucille said, hopping on her new, dexterous feet. “I’ve never had sugar before today.”
After Squints made himself upright, Declan explained to him the possible impending danger from the portal door downstairs, which Kraven had said he wanted to kill himself rather than wait for what would come through. Because Squints was not yet used to his legs enough to walk. Declan carried him over his shoulder downstairs, and Omeb followed them.
Down at the bottom of the Panopticon, a man in a pinstriped suit was frantically digging himself out of the dirt pile that had poured through the door. He occasionally made enough progress to take in a breath, but Sansan was hard at work shoveling more dirt on top of him. She shoveled and shoveled until another figure emerged into sight on the other side of the door, a large upright spider creature, who said, “Forgive. Long time between now and occasion of last speaking.”
A sketch of Markafarcafus recovered from Squints’ notes. The sketch originally appeared in a publication in Ecklune, but it was censored due to protests from the rather politically sensitive siren minority there on account of its anatomical inaccuracy and the pejorative undertones of the strokes.
The creature identified himself as Markafarcafus, and through his largely decayed English and much frustrating back and forth with the party, he explained that the portal door was not a door to another location in Pangolune—only the Red Priests may operate magic like that through the obelisks—but rather that what lies on the other side of the portal door is a pocket of dense time. One week in sparse time corresponded to ten years in dense time.
So every week they rolled in whiskey to be aged, and then they rolled it out when it was ready for packing. Every two weeks they introduced a new age-appropriate bride for the latest descendant of Obadiah, who resided in the dense time and prayed for the whiskey every day. Other than Markafarcafus, there were only these human descendants of Obadiah performing their prayers to keep him company, and everyone in dense time just ate the primordial fruit over and over again. It never lost nutritional value no matter how many times it was digested or by how many people.
A sketch of the primordial fruit, attribution unkown.
Markafarcafus was not the only siren who accepted this work. After he and his congeners were displaced in the rise of the Rabbit Guard, many sirens went south for jobs they could do with their extremely long lifespans. For each week in sparse time and ten subjective years of work, Markafarcafus received a single gold piece.
The party offered Markafarcafus a pay increase to 2 gold for every 10 years, if he moved into sparse time. No one needed to supervise the barrels.
In terms of expenses, this represented a division of his pay by many hundreds, but in subjective terms he would be paid double. The remaining expenses would be routed to the war orphans’ new freedom fighting operation, and a little bit off the top would flow to the party.
The party took Elmo, the latest descendant of Obadiah, who had been trapped like all his forerunners in dense time to pray for the whiskey every day, up to see the sun for the first time in his life.
There, Declan spoke with Kraven and learned that Kraven, Squints, and Lucille had not only suffered something from the scrambling of their vision, but also gained. The vision scrambling revealed the true scripture in the Book of Life. Unfortunately, it was not possible to be able to read the Book of Life and also read in general.
Declan suggested leaving a reformed Kraven in charge of the war orphans, but Omeb distrusted him. They came to the compromise of having Elmo tie up Declan in dense time and force him to study the Book of Life. Declan instructed Elmo to turn the page for Kraven every day.
To Kraven, Declan said, “We got a buddy for you named Elmo.”
“No. I will not suffer this indignity of education at the hands of inferiors,” Kraven said. But he would.
A sketch of Elmo leading Kraven into dense time captured in Squints’ notes.
Meanwhile, Markafarcafus collected all of his magazines of suspect provenance and content out of the suitcase of holding which he kept his belongings in in dense time and moved them out into his new housing in the panopticon cell. From now on, no one would remain in dense time to pray for the whiskey, as that really had no effect on anything.
The party slept, and Squints awoke first due to his sense of the magic weather: flattering lubricant. “I like it, slipping and sliding,” Squints said.
When Kraven, after 60 subjective days (8 hours) of being bound and fed the primordial fruit, emerged into the sun to reconvene with the party, his demeanor had changed completely. The party learned that when Declan instructed Elmo to turn the page of the Book of Life every day, Elmo had taken this instruction entirely literally, and flipped only the one page, the first page.
Kraven, his eyes tearing up with earnest longing, wished to know the content of the second page of the Book of Life. But he assured everyone that he knew the content of the first page quite well.
Before leaving the war orphans, the party decided to train them in dense time. Squints taught Lucille how to fire up a crowd. Because of her vision distortion, she was not a candidate for mathematics education. Declan taught the others how to read, fight, and sang motivational songs as a backdrop for their effort.
At the same time, above ground in sparse time, Omeb used his new wood powers to reconstruct above-ground housing for the war orphans and raise the height of the compound walls.
Separately, Sansan ventured out into the city streets for recon, where she spotted a man in a wheelchair whom she recognized as Romance Star from their encounter at the stadium, speaking with a man who had a lightning scar, which the scar was not cool, looked a little over the top, yet signaled his likely status as a hitman. Romance Star described the party to this man with a particular emphasis on a large man with a disproportionately small and beautiful head. This was lucky because Declan’s head was now proportional (though still beautiful).
A sketch of the assassin recovered from Sansan’s notes.
When Romance Star first arrived in the city to look for them, something terrible happened. Because of his deviated septum, Romance Star was an incorrigible mouth breather, and so his mouth was open when he crossed the street that first night. Out of nowhere, papers doused in chloroform entered his mouth. It disoriented him. Though the witch doctor he spoke to said it had to have been a nocebo because the amount of chloroform in the paper was insufficient to affect his consciousness, it was in any case enough of a startle to make him stop in the street, and he was run over by a horse and would never walk again. At least until the witch doctor found some compatible legs to add to his inventory.
Because enough time had passed since they last took subordinate powder, all of the little war orangutans reverted to their human forms: moderate to severely injured adolescents. Squints and Declan returned from dense time, and Markafarcafus finally finished arranging his magazine collection.
At last, the party set out into the city, with Declan assuming orangutan form with subordinate powder to disguise. He is still hypertrophied with perfect posture, beautiful enough to “make one question”, but unable to conjugate verbs.