✴

“Ædan,” you say without hesitation.

“What is an Ædan?” the being says. Its obsidian liquid body stretches up, branching out in a crystalline shape. Feel behind you--the pond stirs. Another body grows outward. You feel they are the same, their resonance in the æther.

“It is a femboy,” you say.

“Meaningless,” it says, growing to surround you across the ground and over your head.

“Gender!” A distinct voice sounds in your head from a direction. You look up. A point of light circles around you, descending, orbiting, examining. A closer look--a dense, complex fractal form, shifting and turning on five axes. “I knew it, a humanoid! How strange.”

“Who are you?” you say.

The spark of light answers, “I am just curious. Few of you have come this far.”

“It is not possible,” the dark crystalline mass speaks. “How are you humanoid? You are not.”

“You’re both right...” You try to find the words to explain, but nothing comprehensible comes to mind.

The ever-splitting branches twist around each other, blocking out all light and sealing you inside. Only the little one’s light echoes off of the large one’s polished glass surface.

“Why are you here?” the little one says.

“I’m looking for information,” you say.

“That is all you will find here,” it says.

“About other humanoids who might have come here,” you say.

“How can you hope to look that direction?” The little one circles rapidly around the wrist of your avatar, then the other. The temporal shackles still binding you glow faintly under its pale light.

“Maybe someone here also knows how to help me with that,” you say.

“Look, strange one,” the dark being speaks. Its branches open up a window to the outside light, facing the far horizon. Its body stretches and flattens out into a convex shape. The little one shines its light on the window, and the darkness recedes. You see, magnified, in the distance, a shape--a tower of twisted forms, reaching far up into the sky.

The little one shines another light on the wall behind you as an opening emerges there as well. It shows you a place, far in the opposite direction, where the landscape is undiscernible, where shapes and patterns, shadows and clouds, encircle and writhe in pulsating color.

“One way you will find one answer you seek,” the large one says.

“The other way, the other,” the little one says.

“But which is which?” you say.

“That, strange Ædan...” the large one speaks, echoing all around you. Suddenly, light--blinding light surrounds you. The body enveloping you shines and pulses with uncountable fractal layers. In front of you, only the smallest stem of the black crystal form protrudes from the water. The voice of the bright one, now all around you, continues: “That is what you must understand.”

The body of patterns of light recedes--a doorway opens. You step outside. Ahead of you, the tower looms on the horizon. Where its heights reach, you cannot see. Behind you, the vortex of gathering storms spirals down into a depth far below.