Chapter Text
The end of winter; the start of spring. Ever the time to start afresh, to redefine the world. To plan a new year and devise new strategies. Ever the time for change, yet sometimes for a new act: one that rips apart the old, for better or for worse. Not that you can tell until the deed is done.
“So we now have a written statement from a representative at Verigan’s Hold,” explained Skylord Amber, unfolding a large sheet of parchment from a thick folder full of similar spiels from significant locations across Minecraftia.
“I suppose we can verify it is once again Adaephon’s by the sheer length of the thing,” yawned Baako. It was barely noon, though the light and weather would suggest otherwise, and both he and Amber had been going over paperwork for six hours already. It really was enough to drive one quite mad. The skylords were supposed to be holding a meeting at Skyhold concerning whether they needed to mobilise forces, considering the worrying reports from the holds along The Wall, and the complete absence of communication in any form from Lastwatch. More reports had flooded in from citizens of Mistral claiming they’d seen monsters and dark shadowy figures both on the outskirts and surrounding colonies and indeed even within the city walls, though Baako would happily pin his suspicions of the latter claims as resulting from a partial power failure thanks to an interrupted fuel supply; he could swear the roads were becoming less and less reliable. Baako’s eyes began to glaze as he squinted at the compact black text completely covering the parchment. How anyone could fit what appeared to be around ten thousand words on a single page was beyond him, even if that page was at least thrice the size of anything else currently on the desk between the two skylords, possibly including the entire surface area of the large desk lamp.
“Tired, sir?” asked Amber, a concerned grimace on her face. “I don’t mind making a summary and reading that out instead in the meeting tomorrow. After all, I’ve already read it through a couple of times.”
“How does she do that?” thought Baako, smiling, thanking her. “She received the thing two hours ago and we’ve only been on a five minute break since!” Then again, maybe willpower did indeed give a person supernatural efficiency. Amber seemed the type to receive such a gift.
“Though I hope James will be back on schedule,” continued Amber, catching Baako off guard and still looking like a stuffed animal. “We already have two people out of action; it wouldn’t do to have a third.” She was perfectly correct. Two skylords had already been assigned the task of keeping Mistral running and could hardly been excused. Since the aftermath of the last Important Meeting to Decide the Fate of Minecraftia – the event was held in Mistral, information had leaked, and it had taken a massive adjustment of the rumour mill to hush up – they’d decided not to repeat history and instead sacrificed a couple of randomly chosen skylords.
“Actually I do need to check something with you,” said Amber, tidily folding up the giant parchment and replacing it into the binder.
“Hmm?”
“We left Jasper and Lysander in charge.” Baako nodded, signalling her to continue. She didn’t.
“I’m sure they’ll realise the gravity of the situation and act accordingly,” sighed Baako. Yes, there had been plenty of talk of this. Far too much talk. And it was still far too early in the day to be revisiting this talk.
“Baako, sir, I hope you realise that there is still gossip that this is a scheme of yours to make the two of them sort out whatever’s between them. I’ve been trying to sort it out for the past three days.”
“Nonsense,” chuckled Baako, shaking his head. “Drawing straws is a perfectly fair method of deciding which I had no opportunity to tamper with. Therefore it is pure chance that Jasper and Lysander were chosen together.”
“In that case, Chance wishes the downfall of us all!” said Amber, the spirit of a smile on her open mouth.
“It’s not worth fretting over,” murmured Baako. As if this trifling matter would be a matter at all in the matter of the future. The younger skylord peered up anxiously.
“Is something the matter sir? You look very pensive all of a sudden.”
“It’s just...” Baako paused. “Damn, what words was he trying to grasp?” “I’m surprised there would be so much gossip. Issues like this usually result in nothing around here.”
“Possibly stress then?”
“Maybe.” Baako paused again. “But it’s far worse than last time.”
“’Last time’, sir?” questioned Amber, tilting her head. “Before the Sand Wars if I am to understand?”
“Correct.” Absentmindedly Baako drummed his fingers over the polished wood of the desk before him. “There seems to be far more... uneasiness.” He stopped again, halting the constant passage of his fingertips. Judging by the unsure look on Amber’s face he was beginning to wonder if his age was getting to him. He was hardly what anyone would call ‘young’. “And yes Amber, I understand that we know of the possibility of another war this time. One can hardly blame them all for anticipating something that’s already shaped their lives too much.” The look on the younger woman’s face was slowly causing his insides to crumble. He stared down at the table again, mumbling “forget I said anything; it’s of little importance” and grimaced. “Ah; back to the wonders of paperwork.”
“Sir! Ma’am!” shouted a newcomer from the open door of the building. Had he left that door open? Baako couldn’t remember.
“What is it, Skylord Vimes?” called back Amber inquisitively, brushing more papers into a perfectly neat pile and turning to look at the sudden intrusion. The intrusion looked panicked, his one working eye stretched wide open.
“Smoke,” yelled Vimes, still standing with one arm planted firmly on the dark wooden doorframe. “Coming from the Central Spire!” A second passed before Baako leaped up and jogged to the door to look out over the Hold, powdered snow coating every surface like especially stubborn sugar over one’s clothes. Sure enough, thick black smoke was rising from the very centre of the spire, dissipating as it was blown away to the distance by the winds that whipped the uppermost reaches of the citadel.
“Vimes, proceed at once to atop the spire and put that fire out with whatever means available without destroying the surface beneath it,” rushed Baako, his tone losing all joviality and humour, at once professional and perfectly business-like. With a shout and a nod, Vimes was sprinting up the icy hill to the entrance of the tower, grabbing onto trees as he went to stop himself from losing his balance.
The old skylord turned darkly back to Amber, a look of only mild confusion on her face. Wordlessly he returned to his seat and began once again to tap his fingers over the desk.
“The Seal,” he whispered, more to himself than anyone else.
“To the control room?”
“Exactly.” The two sat in silence, permeated only by the regular rhythm of Baako’s fingers. The feelings of uneasiness seemed less likely to be purely of his imagination.
***
Snow: the eraser of life and nature that existed before even the first creature. Creating a new world where the old is forgotten and instead the new is forever ingrained into the fabric of the earth. Yet such a fleeting world, that only a little hot anger can destroy forever. But such is the passage of life.
Skylord James arrived early the next morning and was quickly received by Baako, having kept himself up half the night feigning a night patrol in worry. As the airship landed and the blonde practically leaped off the craft, the sun was just starting to dissolve the late winter snow clouds and signal the new day.
Though the man looked worried as he walked briskly down the slippery walkways to the centre platform. Eventually he thrust a handwritten note towards Baako and made for his own residence. Baako’s eyes scanned the note, focussed on the signature.
“James, where did you find this?” he asked in a hushed voice, beckoning for the younger man to follow him. James looked anxiously away.
“He pinned it to the door of his house, Skylord Baako.”
“Any other messages?”
“Apparently none, Skylord Baako sir. I am told he spoke of this to no one.”
Eventually they reached Baako’s house (usually used for such meetings) and Baako offered him a seat on one side of the desk in the centre of the room. James obliged, eyes darting around the room, settling on the files of papers still left where they were from the previous day. The older man continued to pace back and forth.
I have left Mistral temporarily to aid Peculier and those he believes are Heroes. I should be gone a fortnight at most, as I am travelling to the coordinates (37, 2) on the 79th Edition of the Standard Map of Minecraftia. –Skylord Lysander Westland
“Skylord Baako?” piped up James once more. “Who is ‘Peculier’? I feel I should recognise the name, but I’m not sure why.” Still Baako was pacing, before finally sitting down on the opposite side of the desk, head in his hands. He laid the scrap of paper on the surface between them, on top of one of the files.
“He was,” Baako began, beginning to thump one finger on the desk, looking for the words he needed. “He was a childhood friend of my grandson’s. You must have heard of him in that context. Nothing more substantial than that.”
The blonde haired skylord next looked up with eyes lidded with disbelief. “You’re clearly lying sir,” he growled. “For a start, Lysander would never mention anything so helpful as details from a time before he had his goggles, and secondly, I hardly think a mere childhood friend claiming something as superstitious as Heroes existing would persuade him to leave the charge of a city up to Skylord Jasper of all people.”
“You’d be surprised-”
“I’m afraid to tell you that I am not an idiot, Skylord Baako.” James’ look of disbelief had by now morphed into a glare. “What the hell is so important about ‘Peculier’ that would cause him to take off without previously mentioning the name beforehand? What the hell info is he privy to to regard that name so damn highly that he’d leave his job for it while you wouldn’t tell another soul?! That guy wouldn’t even leave his post for anything unless it was the most serious thing in the world! I doubt he’d even attend his own mother’s funeral if it involved going against orders!”
A moment passed for the air to settle between them. Dust motes were waltzing in the sunlight that now streamed in shards through frosty windows and the few birds habiting Skyhold began to warm up for their songs. Silently James stood and turned to leave; the chair scraping across the floor made more noise than it should.
“I’ll make sure to attend the meeting as soon as I’m finished cleaning up my ship,” he muttered. The door slammed on his way out. Doubtless James had had the matter preying on his mind since first reading the note; he could be untrusting of others at best.
But yes. Peculier: the new name of Antioch, if Baako’s memory served him correctly. At least he remembered telling it to his grandson years ago to try and cheer him up. He didn’t actually expect him to remember that nor did he think he would still believe it after so many years – that was the wonderful thing about telling a child a lot of stories. And now mention of Heroes as well. Perhaps fairy stories really were coming to life these days, with the battle to save the world et al. That wasn’t a particularly comforting thought when applied to a reasonable situation now was it? Calmly the note was placed in the folder it resided on and Baako stumbled over to his kitchen to get himself a drink; why did anything family-related have to be put under such scrutiny? It always ended up so complicated.
***
Sowing seeds of doubt to grow the crops of hatred: so easy to nurture yet so proficient. A few words, a few missing coins; all change visions of others and distort events. Beware thee who should try to change the cycle, thee who brings a scythe ready for change; it will never be so easy.
“Why do we have to go look for him?” whined Horus, slumping his shoulders and heaving himself to his feet. He and James had just been asked by Amber to try and find Vimes, who was now running late to the meeting. They’d asked around and apparently no one had seen him for the whole day; needless to say there was some concern.
“Because you two were the latest,” snapped back Amber, fiddling with a few papers, reordering and shuffling them like playing cards.
“Huh? But I had a valid reason!” argued James having still not got up from his chair. He had suffered a few post-flight technical problems involving rather a lot of combustion (and in explaining them to the others trying to clear his name he was certainly not lacking detail). Amber looked over the top of a sheet of paper thoughtfully.
“Very well.” She returned the paper to the pack. “Off you go Horus.” Horus made an ungodly moan as he left the room. “And check the Central Spire to make sure he’s not been stuck up there!”
“How and why exactly would he be stuck up there?!” Horus shouted back, his form already lost to the wall.
“Look, kid, just follow orders!” The only female skylord sat back in her chair, rubbing her temples firmly. Why did everyone have to just vanish as of late? It was incredibly impractical. By now chatter was starting to build up again from the few skylords remaining in the room; a few minutes later they heard the alarmed scream.
Feet rushed, crunching as they crushed snow beneath them, slapping against sandstone as six people raced up the curling stairs of the Central Spire to where Horus’ yells were still ringing out loudly. They burst out into grey sunlight, white landscape splattered with red and pale yellow. Horus was currently crouching down near the exit of the stairway, hyperventilating; it wasn’t exactly difficult to work out why. The final wall, ladder pressed against, was stained rusty, draining down to the body of Skylord Vimes lay sprawled sideways on heavily dyed snow. A meat hook protruded from his upper back and he had a surprised look on his face. Amber looked darkly on. Someone else was screaming now, and she could hear Vitali of all people trying to hush him. Baako stepped forwards to her side, as Amber instructed the others to return downstairs and to their homes. Now wasn’t the time for a meeting. Not just yet.
“Amber?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Do you have any idea who could have done this?”
“Not a clue, sir.” Baako cast a final glance at Vimes – no, he wasn’t Vimes anymore – at the corpse and patted Amber on the shoulder, mumbling about going to comfort the others, asking whether she would like to go home too; they would move the body later. Amber shook her head. She wasn’t just going to leave it like this. Meat hooks didn’t just fall from the sky and randomly impale innocuous skylords.
Actually how something like that end up on the peak of Skyhold in the first place?
The lady turned round and scanned the area; yes, she was indeed on her own now. The sobbing of the others now came only from the platform below. She turned back to the scene, trying to control her stomach. What the hell happened?
The snow was uneven all around, in some places barely a millimetre thick. It had snowed only a little overnight. Therefore a lot of the ground had been exposed before. Usually that would be strange, considering how seldom anyone climbed up to the top of the spire (especially since few had ever known about the control room beneath, or what it signified), but irritatingly this told Amber nothing; Vimes must have been pacing around before or after putting out the fire, if that indeed was what had been causing the smoke. Maybe the prints? No, the snowfall had blurred them so only a rough size was visible. Half the workforce had similar sized feet and similar shaped boots so still useless. Nervously Amber edged closer. In this world only a fool refuted that the dead could rise again with new dim light, though Vimes’ eyes betrayed naught: one milky as ever, the other glassy only now. This would be a good time to pay a few respects before disturbing him. Quietly she muttered a few before kneeling down do look closer at the metal sticking out of his back, clearly too short to pierce his chest all the way through. The entry wound was really very rough; it was alarmingly obvious someone had used this in a stabbing motion, rather than a hooking one. It was, as everything else, dusted with fine pink snow, though here it was greying more than in other places. Amber wiped a small section off with one finger before examining her skin. Very strange: engine oil and a few splinters. Actually maybe she should’ve worn gloves. Her finger was now both cold and embedded with wood; it was starting to hurt. No immediately obvious reason for something for curing dead animals to look like it just came out of an airship engine, so onwards with investigating. The skylord got to her feet once again and wandered carefully around the body to get closer to the ladder, and the bloodstain around it.
Wait; if Vimes had been stabbed in the back, then why was the bloodstain on the wall? There was no blood on his front now and you could only tell he was long gone by the absence of focus in his eyes if you couldn’t see his back. Amber committed that to memory. Damn; where was paper and ink when you needed them? Remembering that the ‘fire’ was what led Vimes up to his death in the first place, Skylord Amber decided to climb up a different ladder to check on the Seal.
Most of the heavy wooden plug was still coated with half a foot of snow mostly frozen into a solid mass, with only a single large scoop almost surgically removed. However a patch roughly a couple of feet in diameter uncovered the corner of the large square plug; it was strange to think how few people were aware even of its existence under the snow that here was year round, swept away only by the winds and storms. Though Amber was certain that the patch caused was by no accident. Indeed the surrounding snow was sloped and had an extra sheen to it: melted away. Brushing away the little snow left, Amber winced and withdrew her hand. Ouch. More splinters, these ones black, burnt wood. The ones left on the wood of the Seal stuck in the air as if trying to breathe now the choking frost had been lifted. Well the plug was made of a sturdy wood that was supposed not to weather so severely.
So the Seal had been attacked. That was the most likely option. It had been both scraped with the meat hook currently embedded in Vimes’ corpse – the splinters were too much of a coincidence after all – which had been hidden in someone’s airship or somewhere of similar conditions and later taken up to the top of the Central Spire, and set fire to as a second option – the first method had apparently failed. So someone had tried to break into the control room guarded by the Seal.
In which case, did Vimes catch them in the act? That would be a motive for murder. But what other options were there? If the attempted burglar had originally escaped, where did they flee to? Amber poked her head over the side of the uppermost platform. The snow at the back of the structure looked pristine; no one had touched that for years, clearly. Unless they could fly or just held onto a ladder for ages, Amber doubted that Vimes was murdered after coming up a second time.
So that meant her first theory was the only probable one. Vimes saw the burglar/murderer and made for him, at which point he was stabbed...
Amber groaned. That didn’t work either. That would mean he would’ve been stabbed in the chest, or the wound was unlikely to be so well positioned, not to mention the fact that one would have to hook rather than stab if their arms were of standard length and build. Somehow the murderer got behind him. Amber wandered over to check the ladder again. And stood bolt upright. “Of course. Checking over the side leaves my back exposed.” She made a beeline for a different ladder, and experimentally lurched forwards a little. She felt her balance tipping over the edge and automatically leaned back. She was unsteady; a small push from behind to her legs would push her lower half to the lower level while her back would scrape down the wall. That was it. She regained her balance and jumped down the ladder, speed walking back to the body to examine the wall again. Sure enough, down the middle of the sanguine staining ran a single line carved into the sandstone, exactly the width of the meat hook.
So the events were clear now. The criminal, having seen or heard Vimes approaching hid on one of the ladders as the skylord put out the fire with a handful of snow taken from nearby. Vimes, having worked out that whoever was attempting to burn the Seal was still present, checked over the edge of the platform to spot them. Realising that their hiding place would soon be discovered, crept up behind Skylord Vimes and skewered him with the meat hook that they had brought to break the Seal (though why they hadn’t simply brought a hammer and chisel or a crowbar, Amber would never know; perhaps they were in it for the theatrics, or perhaps they were unable to steal woodwork tools?). Vimes, in his final moments balanced himself, but the criminal pushed him over the edge and onto the snow below, leaving a bloodstain behind on the wall. All of this took place soon after she herself had seen Vimes off, a bit after noon the previous day.
And the perpetrator had escaped with ease. Amber paused, realising she had been grinding her teeth. All of this led round in a circle. Whoever did this must’ve been aware of the existence of the Seal and the fact it was wooden but the three most senior skylords, the only ones who were still expected to know its secrets were Amber, Baako, and Vimes. She was certain it wasn’t her, and she had been with Baako for pretty much the entire day; meanwhile there was no way in the world that Vimes could stab himself in the back with a meat hook and besides, Baako claimed the previous day that there was already black smoke rising to the sky.
Which meant this was another, having more recently discovered the existence of the Seal and the control room beneath. The hook had recently been near an engine; it was possible someone from outside Skyhold entirely had stowed away with the weapon but were unable to source the correct tools from their home, from lack of money, recognisable notoriety or otherwise. And not a single vehicle had left since Vimes had died. So from all of this, one thing was certain.
As long as the killer was still alive, they were still somewhere on Skyhold, and still dangerous.
...I stuck a meat hook in his back...