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An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Summary: 1921. The Walter twins have planned a week-long hiking trip in a remote part of Kazooland, and despite his reluctance, Two agrees to allow Three's secret boyfriend Ignatius Becile to come with them. Two regrets this decision immediately.
Chapter Word Count: 3,205
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Chapter 2: Your Faults Will Follow
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"Are you surprised, as if it were a novelty, that after such long travel and so many changes of scene you have not been able to shake off the gloom and heaviness of your mind? You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate. Though you may cross vast spaces of sea, and though, as our Virgil remarks, 'Lands and cities are left astern,' your faults will follow you whithersoever you travel." —Lucius Annaeus Seneca (translated by Richard Mott Gummere)
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The pool of Blue Matter filling the portal rippled over Two as he crossed the dimensional boundary. It was only one full step, but for a moment, that blue was all he could see or feel. Then his vision cleared as if he'd walked out from darkness into the sunlight, too bright to see for a moment before the world faded into view. The other two were close behind. Ignatius stumbled as his foot hit the Kazooland side, Three reaching out to steady him by the arm.
Two glanced around, finding the hall of the Verkian Rift much as he had always known it. It was reminiscent of Western Earth's Neoclassical architecture, with pillars and arches and white marble. Half of the expansive room was semi-circular with a multitude of portals lined against the wall, many like their own, many of other designs and materials; opposite them was a wide, wide staircase, flanked by gently rising ramps, that led up to a line of doors.
To their left, a man stood at a podium, smiling brightly at them. "Mr. Walter the Second and Col. Walter the Third!" he said before jotting their names down in his record book. "Welcome, welcome. We were informed you'd be bringing a guest— your name, sir?"
Ignatius was rubbing at his eyes. Three tapped him on the shoulder, and he muttered, "Huh? Oh, right, uh, Ig— it's, uh, Matthew Collier." He blinked hard, squinting at the attendant.
"Excellent." The attendant scratched the pseudonym down and then turned the book around, offering them a fountain pen. "Your signatures, please, gentlemen."
Two and Three signed their real names easily. Ignatius had apparently not practiced this part of his forged persona and took noticeably longer. He also seemed distracted by the attendant himself. It took Two a moment to realize why: the attendant was elvish, his ears long triangles and his irises larger than a human's. But the attendant seemed unbothered by the pointed glances, and Two supposed he must deal with rude travelers new to inter-dimensional travel regularly.
"Thank you, gentlemen," said the attendant, pulling his record book back to his side of the podium. "My notes say you expect to make your return to your point of origin, Walter Manor, in seven days. We will reach out to Col. Walter the First to establish a connection at that time. Have a pleasant stay!"
The attendant strode around his station to the portal and rang the crystal bell, the twin to the one hanging in Walter Manor. It was the signal that they had arrived without issue and the portal could safely close. And close it did, the Blue sucking into itself like a whirlpool until there was a popping noise, leaving nothing but an empty metal doorway. The attendant began resetting the portal to accept a new connection while Two and Three started toward the staircase.
Ignatius followed them. About halfway through the room, he glanced over his shoulder at the closed portal and busy attendant before stretching his arms, fingers laced, in front of him then over his head. "Christ Almighty, niceties are so goddamn exhausting!" he exclaimed.
"How you expect to survive academia, I have no idea," Two said dryly while Three chuckled.
"You've obviously never seen a bunch of professors behind closed doors," Ignatius said. "Cutthroats, the lot of 'em. I'll fit right in."
"Well, you don't have to be polite for another six days, at least," Three said.
"And I don't intend to be," Ignatius said to Three, a certain meaningfulness in his tone.
Two frowned and pretended he wasn't listening as Three said quietly, "I'm afraid we'll have to wait before we can be obvious. My father still has his finger on the pulse of the news here, and you just saw that we're about as far from anonymous as it gets."
Ignatius sighed dramatically. "Yeah, I get it," he said. "In that case, let's get the hell—" He stopped as they came to the top of the stairs and Dandyton opened up before them. "Oh. Oh, wow."
It was, admittedly, an 'oh wow' sort of view. The buildings of Dandyton were sepia-washed, catching the sun in such a way as to glow golden, and below their skyline the populace ran the busy streets in rivers of vibrant color. Even at a distance, the variation of people was evident: skin tones in every shade of the rainbow; bodies of every shape and texture; heights ranging from palm-length fairies to nine-foot giants; and while much of the fashion was, to the eyes of 1921, thirty years out of Western style, a great deal of it spanned across Earth's myriad cultures and some of it was entirely alien. A young errand-boy with feline features under his flat cap ran up the steps just to their right and disappeared into the Rift hall, paying them no mind.
Ignatius was staring at the city; Three was staring at Ignatius and, despite his own warning, was wearing an exceedingly fond expression. Two coughed to get their attention.
"Ticket office should be our first stop," Two said, taking a step forward to encourage them to get a move on. "We've got reservations for the route, but of course the ship we'll get depends on who's in port."
"We might have a little time for sight-seeing, if we're lucky," Three said as he began to walk alongside Two. Despite the extra weight of the brace, it was helping his limp significantly, to the point he wasn't using his cane with every left step.
"No chance we missed it already?" Ignatius asked, somewhat hopefully. As they dove into the rush of the boulevards, he was looking around with unconcealed curiosity and falling behind a bit.
Two flipped open his pocket watch and used his fingernail to catch a small trigger on the edge. The face of it shifted, adding a thirteenth hour. "Pete, did you happen to check the time when we came through?" Two asked. "I forgot to change my watch over."
"Ah, no, I didn't," Three said. "We'll fix them at the office. And, no, Ignatius. Airship reservations come with a window of expected departure time. They might leave late, but never early."
"And we picked today to leave because the mornings here and on Earth lined up closely," Two said. "Kazooland has twenty-six hour days, so they diverge regularly. But we should be fine."
Ignatius didn't respond. They looked behind them to see him a ways back, staring at a particularly nice arrangement of pastries in a cafe window. Three smiled and called, "Your sweet tooth getting the best of you already? We just ate!"
Ignatius looked up, his attention refocusing, and grinned with what Two initially thought was a hint of sheepishness as he caught up. "Guilty as charged," he said with a chuckle, coming up to Three's side and walking next to him. Two glanced back again and noted that, in addition to the pastries, the window contained an ad for the Verk Dandy Candy Factory.
Their outbound airship was the Hivenshvaken. It was not docked far away, but to Ignatius's disappointment, the departure window was opening in an hour. They walked through the itinerary in detail as they headed over. From Dandyton, they'd take the Hivenshvaken over Henry's Breath, drop offshore of the southern peninsula of South Adventurica via seaplane, then take a dinghy to land. The dinghy would return to the seaplane, which in turn would reunite with its airship at its western destination, Biscuit Town. They would hike for six days to reach the western side of the island and then be picked up by another seaplane dropped from the same route. They'd spend the night in Biscuit Town, then return to Dandyton on the next airship.
Unless, of course, there was an emergency. If there was— if one of them got significantly injured or couldn't finish the journey for any reason—they would utilize the flares Pappy had talked about and cut the trip short. The flares, they decided, would be better explained when they had received them from the airship's first mate.
The Hivenshvaken was a sleek winged aerostat of middling size, similar to a schooner. Its hull was floating a few meters off the ground, but it was tethered securely to the docks. The ends of the passenger gangway were locked in place but its center was a shifting bridge, and Ignatius crossed it with white knuckles on the ropes.
Once onboard, Three left them to find the first mate and receive their travel gear while Two and Three stored the backpacks.
"You know," Two said, kneeling by the packs and double checking that the braces were secured and folded correctly while Ignatius leaned against the wall nearby. "If you're afraid of heights, it's not too late to back out."
"I'm not afraid of heights," Ignatius huffed.
"You sure didn't like that bridge," Two said. "The portal was more dangerous."
"Crossing wasn't that bad," Ignatius said. "It just hurt my eyes."
"If you had slowed down mid-step," Two said, not raising his gaze. "You might have fallen into the void between dimensions. Not a lot of people survive that."
"Oh." Ignatius folded his arms uncomfortably. "No one told me that." A few awkward, silent moments passed. Then Ignatius started up again, saying, "I have a question."
"If it's about why everything is named the way it is," Two said, still not looking up. "Please don't."
"Okay, but you agree it's weird, then. That's not just me," Ignatius said. "Your father seemed way too serious to name an entire dimension Kazooland."
"You're one to talk about silly names," Two mumbled.
Ignatius tilted his head and lowered his brows. "What's wrong with my name?"
Two paused. Did Ignatius not know? Had he never noticed? What was the likelihood of him flipping out if Two told him? Probably really high. Thankfully, Three returned just at that moment and the reckoning was delayed.
As the Hivenshvaken prepared for liftoff, the twins explained the flares to Ignatius. Red meant SOS, to be launched at the sight of a passing airship. Green was the ship's acknowledgement, saying help was on its way, while yellow meant they couldn't offer assistance. White was the rescue party's signal that they were on the ground and needed directions, and its response was blue. All flares were launched from handheld tubes with string-pulled ignitions and would hang in the air from a small parachute. There was also a training launcher that had a rocket but no flare attached, and Ignatius was handed one for later.
Their travel gear also included a gas mask for each of them. Two had been dreading putting his on, and Three regarded his with similar discomfort. Too many terrible memories came to mind— the stench of mustard gas lingering even as the wind blew it eastward, the burned and blistered bodies… Two put his mask with his pack and went alone to the bow. He had brought exactly four cigarettes with him, two for each pass through the Breath, one for before putting the mask on and one for after. He put his elbows on the guard rail and smoked, looking at Dandyton over the scaffolds that made up the docks.
It gave him a few moments to think and stew in his regret.
The Hivenshvaken took off with a series of shouts along the deck and the casting off of the dock lines. Two let his cigarette burn to the filter before crushing it out and flicking the butt over the rail, then went to check on Ignatius and Three. From liftoff to entry into the upper reaches of Henry's Breath was only fifteen minutes, ten if the wind was blowing toward land.
"I have to ask," Ignatius was saying as Two walked up, turning his gas mask over in his hands. "What does this mist do that's so dangerous?"
Three seemed entirely blind to Two's approach, so he slowed and took to leaning on the corner of the wall behind him, out of his sight. "A couple of health hazards, but the primary danger is hallucinations," Three answered. "Particularly ones that lead to throwing yourself overboard, like a siren's song. Not necessarily deadly if you're on the sea and your crew is quick to catch you, but from an airship's height…"
"I see," Ignatius said. He glanced at Two but otherwise didn't acknowledge him. "And if it's thinner at the top, then airships trade the risk of symptoms when a mask leaks for lethality if something does go wrong."
"Pretty much," Three said with a nod. "Though the chances of multiple masks failing at the same time are pretty low."
"But never zero," Ignatius said.
"But never zero," Three agreed soberly.
"Aren't you two cheery," Two said, finally getting Three's attention as he crossed to them. To Ignatius, he said, "You might want to start putting that on now, since it's probably your first time wearing one."
Ignatius had not been drafted into The Great War; as the only adult man in his family, his mother and younger brother Norman had been designated as his dependents and he got a Class 3 deferment. Three, even though he was technically (and reluctantly) a Colonel, had said he was glad Ignatius didn't have to carry the same scars, mental and physical, that he did. Two had nodded along, pretending to agree. In truth, the most bitter part of him resented Ignatius for escaping unharmed. No shell shock, no nightmares, no wounds, no nothing? Of course Two was envious. Of course he'd imagined Ignatius having to suffer the same way he did. Of course those thoughts had given him a twisted sense of satisfaction.
But there was no time right now to daydream. Two couldn't turn back time, but he could make sure Ignatius didn't die now, in front of Three and in a way that would damn them in the eyes of everyone holding them responsible. Ignatius slowly turned his head to look at Two, his mouth flat, but before Two could start giving instructions—
"I'll show him, Peter," Three said. "You can go get yours and we'll meet you below deck."
Ignatius smirked, and Two decided he would take damnation if the asshole fell overboard anyway. Two heard him almost purring his next words to Three as he walked away: "Maybe you'll just have to hold onto me, instead."
Two shoved his mask over his head and was silently thankful that no one could converse with them on.
The three of them were led by a crew member to a passenger's cabin while the Hivenshvaken flew through the mist, heading toward its cresting height. Even within the ship, a few swirls of sparkling white mist seeped through the wood. It was, after all, ethereal in nature; some disobedience of the laws of mundane physics was to be expected. This was the most boring part of the route, and Two spent most of it trying to doze. He did notice Three flip the latch on the door, locking it as they settled in. After a few minutes, Two heard him shift, and he glanced over through barely-opened eyelids. Three was looking toward him and after a moment seemed to determine he was already asleep, because he got up and moved closer to Ignatius. Two closed his eyes again and waited for a crew member to retrieve them.
It was an unusually cloudless day on the other side of the Breath, the laid-bare archipelago spanning the northern sea before them— except for the thunderstorm over Asininia, far in the distance, which drew the eye to the island that would've otherwise been nearly invisible.
And Ignatius was looking straight at it. He pointed to the black clouds and the mountains beneath them. "Let me guess— North Adventurica, right? Looks miserable by comparison"
Two took a drag of his second cigarette before responding. "No," he said slowly. There was probably no harm in the name alone… and Ignatius might be more suspicious if he found out Two was feigning ignorance. "That's Asininia. But there's nothing there. Because it is miserable."
"Ahh." Ignatius squinted. "Where's North Adventurica, then?"
"There isn't one."
"Of course there isn't. Why did I even ask?"
There were no settlements on Asininia, that was true. But it did have two things: feral monsters— and mountains full of Rock Candy. Being on this trip with Ignatius was annoying, but him learning about the trove there was dangerous. Admittedly, Thadeus Becile had died long before he could teach Ignatius anything about Green Matter, and to Two's knowledge, Ignatius had never experimented with it himself. But temptation was an awful thing, and if he learned the truth of Asininia, if he was set down the same path as Thadeus— the situation if Pappy found out would go from catastrophic to apocalyptic.
But for now, Ignatius appeared to lose interest, and Two finished his cigarette with hardly a moment to spare. South Adventurica was already ahead of them, and the seaplane needed to start at a good distance in order to descend safely. It was stored in the lowest part of the hull, its nose pointing toward a large hatch on the stern. Gear returned and backpacks stored in the dinghy the plane carried, the three piled in behind the pilots' seats.
The seaplane was unhitched by crew members wearing safety ropes. The hatch opened by pulley and the plane was allowed to roll out, dropping into open air. They glided through the Hivenshvaken's wake as the engine kicked alive, giving the pilot the necessary control to turn and take them down to the water, coming in to land within rowing distance of the peninsula's shore. One crew member came with them in the dinghy in order to take it back to the plane; Two helped row them to the shallows, burning off some of his still-simmering annoyance, then dragged Ignatius out of the boat with them to pull it to the beach. After Three got out and retreated up the sand to clean the saltwater off his orthotic's metal, Two and Ignatius grabbed the backpacks and shoved the dinghy back into the shallows.
Before the seaplane took off, they had Ignatius use his training flare launcher. He pointed it skyward, angled to avoid the plane, and pulled the fuse string. He flinched as the rocket took off with a loud crack and a cloud of smoke, hissing sharply into the air, but his hand was steady enough that the rocket didn't fly dangerously low. Satisfied that they had checked off every precaution on the list, they finally, finally set their feet to the coastal trail and began their hike.
so apparently tumblr is going to try to put ads on people's blogs now
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right hand to god i will never pay money for this fucking website. go complain about this. go to the app store and tank their fucking ratings. send a shitload of support emails, and in the meantime armor up against any other ads
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