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Virion’s bare feet padded gently against worn, dusty wooden planks as he moved through the vaguely familiar building. The hallway was wide enough for him to spread out his arms fully and still have room to lean either way, and went on for at least a minute’s walk before turning. He didn’t need to go that far, though; he only passed a few doors before he reached the one he was seeking, identifiable by the dark blue curtain in place of a door.
“...not had a vision from Holy Lady Malden since we began our journey toward The Lich. I hope it means there are simply no great evils to warn me of, but I hesitate to be so trusting in how this world interacts with ours.” Alphonze’s voice was the first Virion heard as he pushed past the curtain. The aasimar was sitting alone on a two-person couch, elbows set on his knees and chin resting on his knuckles as he spoke with Ram and Grayson, his raw citrine eyes narrowed in thought. His head briefly twitched to the side as the curtain moved, but he didn’t acknowledge Virion’s presence as he walked inside.
“Guess we’ll be playin’ this the normal way. 'Least you can probably still use your magic, since Min used hers,” Ram sighed, a dark puff of smoke escaping past his cigar. He was leaned back in a rocking chair just like the one he always claimed in Virion’s home, head tilted against its back and eyes closed. Alphonze gave a discontented hum in response.
Scanning the room, Virion spotted Min and Strider chatting quietly over a shared book. Chungus was dead asleep against Grayson’s shoulder, both leaned against the wall, as the tiefling read a book of his own and half listened to Ram and Alphonze.
Immediately deciding that he wanted no part in whatever planning or theorizing was going on there, Virion made his way over to a corner near Min and Strider, settling down on a throw pillow that he found slouched awkwardly by the doorway, as if someone had thrown it at someone as they left and forgot to pick it back up. Both nodded at him as he sat before quickly jumping back into their discussion.
With little to do but talk to each other in the few days since the conversation with Lightspeed and Wordsmith, Virion had been all but forced to smooth things over with Strider. It had led to an agreement between him and all of The Greats: if one of them asked to take control, Virion would give it to them, assuming he wasn’t in the middle of something important. In return, they wouldn’t try to forcibly take control unless they genuinely believed Virion was being threatened by an imminent danger that he couldn’t avoid or counter on his own.
The deal had eased much of the newfound tensions between the seven of them. The Greats had even begun to calm down around the people who came to bring them food and talk (assuming Wordsmith was in the group to cast his translation spell). Half of the group still panicked if Virion fully turned his back to someone while they were in the room with him, but there were no objections given about the food or what he said while talking. Whenever one of the healers came to check on the bullet wound in Virion’s leg, Ram or Strider always asked to have control just in case, but there was never anything done but bandages getting changed and the occasional ointment being spread over the slowly closing hole.
As Virion caught the faint click of the doorknob to his room opening, he figured it was one of them visiting. The healers came to him twice a day, but without anything to track the sun by, Virion struggled to keep track of when a visit was due. Wordsmith had mentioned something about a ‘clock’ in the bathroom, but gave no further explanation as to what a clock even was.
Opening his eyes, the comfortable hearth room with all of The Greats disappeared, replaced instead by the room Virion had been staying in. He was sitting cross-legged on the soft floor, already facing the door as it creaked open. Lightspeed walked in first, smiling and waving at Virion the same way she did every time she visited. Instead of Wordsmith or one of the vaguely familiar faces of the healers, a man Virion was yet to meet rushed in after her.
The first thing Virion noticed were his eyes. Pale green and wild, they darted across Virion and his room with equal fervor, noting each and every trait of the sparse items around them. The man had knotted silver hair held away from his face by a pair of cracked goggles that were pushed up on his forehead. His skin was a light bronze a few shades lighter than Virion’s own, the color of a polished coin reflecting the sun and calling all who saw to come closer, compared to his own freshly upturned dirt, soft and unobtrusive.
He was wearing a long, gray coat splattered with small splashes of a random collection of colors, more vibrant than any tailor's dyes or artist's palate. Beneath it was a thin blue tunic crossed by a bandolier holding several small bottles. His trousers looked to be of a similar material to the tunic: the same thin, impossibly smooth fabric that everyone in this world seemed to wear. He had a sturdy belt that Virion could see held a dagger and several potions, and boots more fit for travel than most of the footwear he’d seen in the new world.
But, most striking of all, were his long, pointed ears.
“You’re a sun elf!” Virion didn’t realize he’d spoken until he was shooting off of the floor, ignoring the headrush as he stumbled over to the first of his kind he’d seen in… gods, he didn’t even know how long he’d been gone. It felt like lifetimes.
“And you’re a half elf!” the man cheerfully responded, taking Virion’s shoulders in his hands. He tilted Virion’s head this way and that, brushing aside his hair to squint at his ears, before confidently stating, “Human and, hm, you have the build of a wood elf. The right tone, too. Did I get that right?”
How long had it been since he heard someone other than The Greats speak Elvish? Even with Wordsmith’s translation spells, accents were thick and words and some sayings and phrases simply didn’t make sense. Virion struggled to think of what to say back for a few moments, before fully giving up. Slowly, instead, he nodded, if only just to get the other to speak more, barely noticing as the man grinned. “I knew it! I haven’t seen a wood elf with purple hair before, though. Do you know if you have any moon elf ancestry? Or sea elf? Or is it a mutation? Do your parents have purple hair?”
“I- My dad does. It’s a little darker, but… yeah. His parents don’t, though.” Virion had only met his grandparents a few times. They’d moved from Fauna to one of the bigger towns long before he had been born. They’d visited for his fifteenth birthday, and Virion had vague memories of travelling to go see them once when he was little, but past that, most of his knowledge about them came from his father relaying stories, The Greats often stopping by and visiting them when an adventure brought them near their town.
They’re decent folks, Ram murmured. They brag a bit too much about Cole and the things we do, given they don’ exactly go out an’ travel with us.
And that they didn’t give a fuck about him or anyone but themselves until a corpse flower almost killed them and Cole saved them.
’Least they realized their bullshit and try now. There are worse faults people can have.
Like being willing to join with the scourge of the land and betray your closest companions to be trapped in one body on a strange, foreign world.
“What color is your mother’s hair? Is she a human, or are both of your parents half-elves?”
“She’s human. And, uh, blonde.”
“Hm. It’s probably a particularly recessive genetic trait that humans don’t have any genetic counter to, then. So it looped around and became dominant!" The sun elf grinned and let ho of Virion's shoulders to clap his hands. "Oh, that's so exciting! Do you mind if I took a strand or two to examine?”
“...What’s a ‘genetic’?” Virion looked to Lightspeed for help as the other elf launched into an explanation of alleles and gene expression, but she looked just as confused as he was. Wait. Shit, she didn’t speak Elvish. She had no clue what they were talking about.
She seemed to recognize the panicked look, though, and put a hand on the older elf’s shoulder. She said something to him that caused the man to blink several times before turning back to Virion and jutting a hand out to grasp his own. “Oh! Right, yes. My name’s Professor Cross. Or, well, Alastyr. What is your name?”
“I’m Virion. Sol.”
Professor Cross frowned and started tapping the fingers on his free hand against his thumb, not stopping his aggressive jerking of Virion’s hand. It made an odd sound- looking closer, Virion realized the arm itself was metallic and dark brown, with odd, sharp angles. It was mostly hidden under the sleeve of his coat, but he caught some sort of glowing green there, as well. “Sol, Sol, where have I heard that before… Oh! There was an adventurer with that name, before I came here. I think he traveled with an aasimir? Or a genasi? One of the Celestial sort. Do you know him?”
Immediately, any questions about what a 'genetic' was or why Professor Cross was here left Virion's mind. “You know my father? And The Greats?”
“I have absolutely no clue who these ‘Greats’ are, but I know of Sol! Nicholas Sol the Resolute, right? He helped slay a red dragon that was causing problems on my island- I was able to gather many parts of the corpse to craft with!”
We killed that wretched beast close to three decades ago, Alphonze quietly noted.
And most refer to Nicholas by the ‘Kingmaker’ title, nowadays. I don’t think I’ve heard someone use ‘the Resolute’ for him since I was a kid.
He might only know of Cole and Alphonze ’cause he came here before the rest of us joined. It was just Cole, Alph, and Grayson when he got the ‘Kingmaker’ title, right?
Fuck, how long has this guy been here, if that’s the last he heard of us? I’m pretty sure everyone on both the floating islands and the continents heard about the shitfest with the Agedian kings.
Strider and Virion weren't even born when you all did the Agedian quest, and I was just a toddler, Min murmured. Has he lived our entire lives in this world?
“How long have you been in this world?” Virion blurted, cutting off the other elf halfway through a recollection of the Cloak of Protection he’d made with part of the dragon’s hide. He didn’t seem to mind, though, finally letting go of Virion’s hands to count on his fingers.
“Twenty-five years? Thirty? I have a calculator at my office that I could check; did you know the days here are shorter than the ones back in our home world? It makes keeping track of time by hand incredibly difficult. A week on our home world is nearly a week and a half here, and that simply changes everything. Our years are different lengths, too! I don’t know how old I am anymore!”
Virion had noticed that the days and nights felt shorter, but had chalked it up to the stress and panic of the whole situation making time feel faster. “Have you seen any other elves since coming here? I haven’t seen so many aethen in my life, and they’re all human.”
Professor Cross clicked his tongue and gave a quick shake of his head. “No, humans are the only intelligent race on Prime. We’re talked about in books and movies, though!”
One of these people really needs to explain what those ‘movies’ they keep talkin’ about are.
There were no elves here. It wasn’t just that he was in a human settlement- there were no elves in this world at all. Or tieflings, or halflings, or aasmir, or orcs, or kenku, or any of the dozens of other races that Virion’s never seen. For as long as he was stuck here, would Professor Cross be the only one to speak his language without a translation spell?
At least there was someone, now. Maybe later, once he got over the shock of it all, the two of them could trade stories of their homeworld. Professor Cross could show him things to do to pass the endless hours in the dull room, or maybe convince the humans to let him leave. He seemed to know Lightspeed- maybe he’d have some pull? Or, better yet, maybe with the professor’s mind and The Greats’ combined, they could find a way to get all of them home.
“Have you seen a movie yet? Even without the words, there are many good ones. Here, I can show you how to use the remote! Where is it?” But only if Virion was able to get the man back onto a useful topic, that was.
“Wait, before you do that- is there any way you can convince Lightspeed to let me out of this room? We need to find a way home, and we can’t do that if we’re just stuck here all the time. I know that Wordsmith said he’d have people look into it, but they don’t even know what they’re looking for! How will they find the right dimension?” What if they got thrown into someone’s Bag of Holding? Or trapped in Pandemonium, or one of the demiplanes of Shadowfell?
Professor Cross blinked. Blinked again. He looked at Lightspeed, back at Virion, then said something to the woman that made her soft smile immediately fall as she rushed to respond. Professor Cross nodded before turning back to Virion. “Lightspeed says that you are free to roam the W.A.T.C.H. Headquarters. Did you think that you were trapped?”
“Yeah? On the first day, I tried to leave, and the door was locked.”
The other two had another short conversation before Professor Cross translated. “She says that the door has been unlocked since you spoke to her and Wordsmith. She thought that you were just afraid to leave.”
We’ve been able to leave this whole fucking time?
These fools are worse at communicating than Chungus. At least he says when something changes.
Chungus has no secrets!
“I have something to ask, too,” Professor Cross was quick to speak over The Greats’ exasperation, however unknowingly it was. “How did you get to Prime? Were you struck by a curse as well? I don’t see any suspicious magical items or markings on you. If you are cursed, I hate to say that there are no mages here, so no one can use Remove Curse. I’ve learned that the hard way.”
“Uh. A lich did some magic… thing? I think it was a spell, but none of The Greats knew what it was.” It wasn’t like they knew every spell out there. Plus, Min and Alphonze were both empowered by a patron; maybe there was a wizard spell out there that could do this that they just hadn’t heard of.
Probably two or three spells in combination. I doubt there’s a spell that causes multiple consciousnesses to possess one body as well as transporting that body to another dimension.
“Ooh! Liches are known for creating their own spells. How did it feel? Did this lich follow? What did it look like? I’ve always wanted to see one of them.”
“Uh. Awful, no, and… also awful.” Gods, how could he even describe any of it? The fear, the realization that The Lich could have ended all of them at the very beginning and instead chose to play with them like ants under glass? The unnatural, jerky movements of the puppeted skeleton, the pinpricks of light in its eyes that pierced right through Virion’s soul? Just the memory made something in his chest clench tight. “Uh. Can you show me what that ‘remote’ is, now? And explain what the hell a ‘movie’ is?”
Either the professor didn’t catch on to the redirection, or he didn’t care. His eyes relit with that manic light that had been present when he first saw Virion, and the elf quickly led him over to the black rectangle on the wall. “You see, a movie is a series of images shown on a screen like this so quickly after one another that it looks like the images are moving, hence the name, and is used to tell stories and show interesting visuals. Usually it lets you hear what the actors in the movie are saying to one another, but there are a few where there’s only music added…”
Virion let Professor Cross’s explanation wash over him as he showed Virion how to turn on the ‘television’ and startled them both with the sudden volume it blasted them with.
He just had to remind himself that he wasn’t alone. There were The Greats and Professor Cross, now, and Wordsmith’s people were trying to find him a way home. He’d be back in Fauna before he knew it.
But for the first time, seeing the elf who had been trapped longer than Virion had been alive, a sliver of doubt edged itself into his conviction.