Ryn of Avonside

With Grace, Adam, Duncan, Dr. Ross, and the other two, I pulled us back onto the Ring. Barely a minute had passed since Catherine burst into the balcony, after having alerted everyone about whatever emergency was happening. To think that an event was happening on a scale to be seen by both Avonside and Neub…

We were barely back in the Jagdar's compound when we realised that the evening light was so, so wrong. It looked too bright and too blue.

All around us, the citizens of Neub were looking up into the sky with casual delight and wonder — but no fear. I followed their attention up into the sky, and lost my breath as it escaped in one large gasp.

All around the rim of the Ring, lights were glowing — pulsing with eerie, artificial light. Now that they were emitting light, it was clear that there were huge spires protruding from the rim of the Ring, all pointing inwards.

The light of all those spires grew brighter and brighter, while the very air began to hum with a subtle, gentle noise. Up above, a titanic bolt of lightning flashed across the cloudless sky, and it was joined by hundreds of thousands of siblings — all visible along the face of the ring. A moment later, the thunder arrived, shuddering through the air with terrible force.

“My god,” Dr. Ross muttered, awed and terrified. “What is happening?”

“It's the Ring lights,” Eilian said mildly.

I jumped, surprised to find her beside us. She hadn't been there a moment ago.

“Ring lights?” Grace asked, not at all mollified by the obrec’s casual tone.

“It happens sometimes,” she shrugged. “Nobody knows why. It's just another thing about the Ring that we don't understand.”

A part of me wanted to grab and shake her — how could anybody be so casually incurious about a phenomena of this scale?

That idea was plucked from my thoughts when the lights reached a crescendo and one by one, many thousands of spires spiked beams of light up into the sky. They met in the dead centre of the ring and held. That tiny point of space pulsed, and an unnerving twisting, lensing effect began to propagate outwards.

For a heart-stopping moment, I thought it would expand to devour the ring, but it stabilised into an orb of bent space. The centre of that orb was impossibly black, but around its edges, light danced and twisted in a halo of tortured physics.

Then, with a sudden soundless snap, the orb, lights, and flashing lightning all disappeared. The night was normal again — mundane, even.

“Was that… was that a black hole?” Jenna asked, her voice so utterly raw with awe and fear, that I felt the need to reach out and steady her. I didn't — I was just as shaken as she sounded.

“What's a black hole?” Eilian asked, glancing between us with a tad more worry than before.

“A point of mass so dense that its gravity bends light itself… or something like that,” I said, still staring up into the sky. “Anything that goes too close will be sucked in and crushed. Natural black holes will frequently devour entire suns and the worlds that orbit them.”

Eilian's face drained of colour, and she glanced fearfully up to where the black hole had been. “But… we are not devoured? The Ring does this every few years. The last time was… perhaps a year ago, maybe a little more?”

“That was probably just before Avonside arrived, hence why we didn't see it,” Grace said. “That's crazy. I wonder why the Ring does that?”

I was asking myself the same question. Could it be attempting to use a black hole to stabilise itself? Was this how it kept so much matter in check — by harnessing a synthetic black hole? Oh, or maybe it was something magical like a weapon to keep the Red Nightmare away—

“Honoured guests,” Jagdar Marat said jovially, approaching our group. “An omen has been delivered by the great Ring. I see it as a good one, and a sign of prosperity between our peoples.”

“That was a good omen?” Adam asked incredulously. “I'd hate to see what a bad one looks like.”

“Yes,” the Jagdar said with a grave nod. “Let us pray that you never have to see such a thing. Come, we will feast! You have finished your planting of the new trees, after all.”

The Jagdar pulled out all the stops for the banquet he threw in our honour. In fact, since the fruit were already being eaten by many, they appeared in the spread of food we were treated to.

“Absolute decadence,” he grinned, pulling a shred of the fruit away with his teeth. “You know the more peaceful side of your craft well, Rynadria.”

“Thanks,” I said, using a knife to cut a piece off so I could eat in a more elegant way.@@novelbin@@

He hummed lightly and reached for some of the cured meat on the table. As he did so, he glanced at Dr. Ross. “So, where will you be going next?”

“Further into the Empire,” Dr. Ross answered immediately. “Towards the capital, eventually.”

“Into the viper's den,” the Jagdar chuckled darkly. “Be on your guard, and if I were you, I'd send my sons to watch the flock.”

The professor looked confused. “Send your… I do not have any children, sadly.”

“Ah, no. It is a saying here — it means to… to not allow others to know what you plan, and what… what assets you have at your disposal,” said Jagdar Marat, struggling with the cultural divide and the fact we were speaking Anve currently. Evidently, he agreed with me on the cause of the complications, because he added, “Ah, and if you are accepting more advice, you should begin to learn Ghraial and Tayghrai.”

“What are… they?” I asked.

“The languages of the empire. Ghraial is the official language and is spoken by those of higher status. Tayghrai is the commoner’s tongue. It shares most words with Ghraial, but makes use of a great many additional words from around the empire. A speaker of Tayghrai, for example, will not have trouble understanding what the Ghraial speaker says,” our host explained.

I wonder which one he spoke most often? Hopefully my odd polyglot abilities would allow me to learn them quickly.

“Do you have anyone here who would be willing to teach us the basics?” Dr. Ross asked.

The Jagdar grunted and after a second of thought, shrugged and said, “Well, I can personally help you there. My station requires that I know both.”

The conversation continued to revolve around the minutiae of the imperial languages, which I paid attention to while absorbing all the fascinating peeks into Ghraiga culture that it gave. For example, the empire did indeed have an emperor, but the position was explicitly not hereditary.

“It's the four lineages,” one of the Jagdar’s men explained to me when I quietly asked while the diplomat professor and the lord spoke. “They don't want to let one of the others keep the title, so it's gotta be passed around.”

I held up a hand to stall him. “Hold on, what are the lineages?”

The man, who I understood to be a sort of knight or man-at-arms, stroked his dark beard and took a second to answer. “They… are the original founders of the empire. Thousands of years ago, the Ring summoned the four lineages in quick succession, as it does often, and—”

My heart lurched and stuttered, and I blurted, “Wait. How quick?”

Were we going to have more arrivals from Earth?

He blinked, jarred again from his explanation. “Uh… once a year or so? We don't really know. It is usually between one and four summonings. I am not sure… well, we are not sure. The Ring does not bring all to the same place, after all, so some summonings might go entirely unnoticed.”

Oh. That was big. We might not be the only group from the present day Earth on the Ring. Would we have heard of them if there were others out there?

“Regardless, at the beginning of Ghraiga history, the four lineages were summoned to the Ring very quickly and placed very close to one another,” he said, a little bemused by my reaction.

Clearing my throat, I reached for the water and took a long drink. It was unfortunate that he didn't know more about the rules of an arrival or summoning.

Well, I could at least learn more about the empire. “What are the lineages?”

“Laicnia, Antigo, Tolem, and Sarcid. The emperor is a Sarcid,” he said, sounding a little bored now.

The information was still extremely helpful, however, and I took out a little notebook to write the names down. It was very good to know who ruled this titanic nation.

“Is he a good emperor?” I asked, before realising the trouble a question like that might get me in. This wasn't the US — free speech was probably just some fringe idea whispered about between rebellious philosophers.

To my surprise, the steppe knight considered the question, then nodded. “Yes, I'd say so. He's ruled for about forty years now. That's no small feat, considering the way the lineages engage in politics. We haven't had a rebellion or civil war in at least twenty years too. Folks have food when they want it… yes, yes I would say he is good.”

Smiling thanks to him, I turned my attention back to my food and drink while I considered all the information I'd just gained.

The empire was currently stable by their standards, and apart from a reasonably recent war they lost against Fennimore, they weren't fighting anyone in the region. Would it make them more likely to pursue a continuation of that situation when we appeared on their radar, or would it mean they had the breathing room to try conquering us?