Zenozarax IV

26.04.2026

“Ravalor?” Zenozarax looked up. “He is trying to speak, right? Why can't he?”

“I don’t know,” Moakatar said, looking at the hovering display next to the bed. “Based on all non intrusive scans there is nothing wrong with him. At least physically. But his neural net is still completely overwhelmed, I don't think he can comprehend what you're saying.”

“Blast-curse it!” Zenozarax muttered, turning back to Ravalor. At least he was looking at him now. He sat down on the side of the bed, trying to once more get anything from him. For the last two hours there had been nothing but cut off words at best.

All the while he sat here, helpless and not at all helping. There was a searing disconnect grinding in his mind as he was very much aware of the chaos on the station. The groaning in its hull. The people and the forceful calm of evacuation his Warrior and Sukatar were leading right this moment. He should be doing something too. But instead he kept himself and, by force of an unuttered plea answered silently by compassion and loyalty, Moakatar here in this room. Just because he couldn't bear the idea of leaving Ravalor in this condition alone. Zenozarax still could do something, theoretically, no matter the sense of helplessness. Ravalor, by all observable signs, could not.

“What is happening to you?” he asked gently. The urge to just grasp his hand was more intense than it ever had been in the last weeks, but there was something critically wrong with Ravalor. There was a greater than zero chance of what had happened just hours before in the restaurant could happen again once anyone tried to connect to Ravalor. Zenozarax would like to believe it wouldn't, that it had been an instinctual defensive reaction (and lords knew he knew how catastrophically destructive this power was in the hands of the ignorant) but even assuming that, there was a secondary threat. Ravalor’s state right now was as abnormal as the moment of his turning. Chaos was an overwhelming amount of knowledge but Zenozarax had never seen a wizard being rendered inoperable just by acquiring it. After all, it felt nothing but natural to himself. So until they could be sure it wasn't an actually corrupting curse Quadirymir had infected him with, it was simply not safe to touch him. “Have you seen something, Ravalor?”

If it wasn't a curse, it must have been a prophecy. Even when Ravalor's case varied dramatically from any account of wizards seeing the future, it was thus far the only explanation for any … abnormal behavior. It was poor scientific reasoning, we don't know what it is so it has to be the only thing we know, but Zenozarax found his intellectual curiosity strangled by worry.

Ravalor swallowed hard, pressing his eyes shut, like he really tried to say something and when he opened back his eyes he looked startlingly near to tears. This body of his was physically incapable of crying, but that didn't change his clearly upset emotional state.

He wanted to say something and couldn't for some reason. Being reminded of Aeven at his absolute worst, caught in panic unable to communicate clearly, he realised he had to change his approach.

Zenozarax tried to calm himself, if Ravalor was even nearly as upset as he looked, he was not helping with pressuring him for an answer.

“Alright, you can understand what I’m saying, yes?”

After a moment, a light nod. While rudimentary, it was the most basic form of reasonably clear communication not requiring words. Keeping it to Yes or No for the start.

“Are you in pain?”

Hesitation. Another nod.

“Is it a curse?”

Again, hesitation, then a light shake of the head. Zenozarax noticed how the quick breath slowed.

“Prophecy?”

This time Ravalor didn't respond either way, but the expression on his face turned more painfilled and he closed his eyes again, blinking hard as if even the soft light in the room was too bright.

“Can you tell me your name?” Zenozarax asked softly. Ravalor looked back at him, for a moment looking almost puzzled. “You haven't forgotten your own name, have you? Come on, humour me,” he teased, trying to lighten the whole situation with a potentially ill-timed quip. He would shoot himself into the nearest star should Ravalor now reveal he indeed had forgotten his name.

“Ravalor,” he eventually said, saving Zenozarax from a fiery death of regret.

“Good.” Zenozarax smiled, now resting his hand on Ravalor’s shoulder with gentle but reassuring pressure. “What’s my name?”

“Zenozarax,” Ravalor answered again, now frowning slightly.

“And where are we?”

A little bit of silence then “The Edge of the Universe. Your station.” That was a lot at once. Progress!

“Before you came here, you were in Treva with Pelagius. How did you meet him first?”

Now Ravalor looked downright confused, but that was leagues better than the pain before.

“In Obermoor, he … saved me from the demons.” A short pause. “He also attacked me doing so.”

Zenozarax smiled very lightly as there was a bit of lingering indignant outrage about that, even if only evident by the reflex to state the fact in the first place. Ravalor no doubt was thankful for the help Pelagius had been, but that initial meeting could have gone a little more smoothly. For both sides.

“You did also kill him,” Zenozarax reminded him.

“Because he attacked me first,” Ravalor frowned, then halted. Maybe realizing how much easier the words had come. But before he could focus and that and at worst slip back into confusion Zenozarax continued.

“You talked with Aeven before going to lunch,” he said, slowly introducing the recent events back into awareness. “Did you notice any … violent behavior from him?”

Ravalor raised his brows, as expected, temporarily distracted by worry. “No? Not at all. Why? What happened?”

“You don't remember? After you took Quadirymir's wrist?” He asked very carefully. To his surprise, Ravalor gave a short, husky and utterly mirthless chuckle.

“What’s funny?”

Ravalor shook his head, the frown appeared back on his face, when he spoke again it was like he forcefully tried to divert his attention: “What happened with Aeven?”

“He basically beat Quadirymir to a clump with the wrench you gave him.”

“Torque Wand.”

“It looks like a wrench, it acts like a wrench, it is a wrench.”

“You are strangely alike,” Ravalor noted phlegmatically, but heavily, as if every word exhausted him more. He had closed his eyes for a moment as he had spoken, a slight frown drawing slight wrinkles between his brows as he rested his head further back. Then he opened his eyes again. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine. Just needed a moment to cool down.” Zenozarax assured him. “What happened when you took his wrist?”

“I saw…” Ravalor did not look at him but straight ahead at nothing. “No, I remembered.”

“What did you remember?”

Ravalor shook his head, “It doesn't make sense. It’s impossible.”

Ravalor seemed calm, but Zenozarax knew that wasn't true. He had seen that unnerving distance in Ravalor’s eyes only once. Back then it had been if anything a protective response to fear, grief and shock. Seeing it again, hearing that apathetic undertone, made Zenozarax' skin crawl. Not only because he didn't want to be reminded of those dark few days in the tower at Artlenburg, but also because he couldn't grasp what Ravalor might have experienced now to bring him back into that darkness.

“Nothing is impossible,” Zenozarax countered with forced levity and the unshakable conviction of a wizard that had brushed past godly magic and abstract death a few too many times. “Try.”

“I remember everything I had forgotten. I remember what happened in Funnix. I remember what happened in Artlenburg. And I have seen all of Quadirymir. I know where he is. I know what he was doing. He knows about the rest of me. They are in danger!” Suddenly, like he just needed to put these facts into words, Ravalor seemed more alert and focused. He even raised up halfway, sitting up almost proper against the headrest of the bedframe.

But that was neither here nor there because, as Zenozarax stared at Ravalor because, yes, what Ravalor had just said was impossible and if it was true — his own thoughts scrambled, but unlike Ravalor that didn't keep him from speaking “What do you mean you remember Funnix?” The real question was how do you remember any of that, but Funnix stood out to him as the one claim that should literally be impossible because Ravalor had not even existed back then. But of course, Ravalor had always claimed there was something more to that battle.

“Quadirymir staged that fight to lure you into a trap to take the Knife from you. We were trapped, Mezchinhar's attempts to free us tortured every wizard still alive with the reaction of the chaos sphere, so we wanted to use that behavior to send a message to tell them to stop, but then Quadirymir ambushed you and you took chaos into yourself to defeat him—“ Ravalor had started to talk slowly but with every word it quickened into almost mad rambling.

“No, no, HOW do you know that?”

“I had the prototype blueprint of myself already in my mind, just the scaffolding — you activated it. Me. I wasn't Ravalor immediately, I think. But … I became me. By the end I was Ravalor, or at least close enough for the Iumzache to recognize me. A Part of me. When Exavidar thought he brought me into time he didn't. He created a second Part of me without synchronising with the first! That’s why I was not whole even from the start, I was always compensating for the Soldier! That’s why I failed that stability test three times and barely made it through the fourth. I was broken from the start, I was, till the Warrior! It all makes sense now!”

“I didn't —“

“You didn't know, it's not your fault.” Ravalor murmured, taken by his manic rambling, shaking his head, “It wasn't your fault. You had already damaged one of Quadirymir's parts. And you thought if only you damaged one more, statistically, you would give the others enough time to get rescued. You were right! He is of four, but he had already lost one creating the dome. It would have worked but…” his expression turned more grim. “I don't remember it happening to myself. But he killed me, because he saw you cared for me. You… lost control then. And the dome exploded…”

Zenozarax caught himself shaking his head. It was hard to believe, but the certainty with which Ravalor spoke left no doubt at least he believed it to be true.

He felt his perception narrow down, he felt his own heartbeat, the faint echo of the pulse that was within all wizards, as he stared at Ravalor. Artlenburg. The question lay on the tip of his tongue and yet no word would come. Because he couldn't ask. He felt the dark tendrils of fear dragging on his awareness, he felt the Warrior too suddenly pause, focusing on him. And so he stared at Ravalor, trying to discern from his eyes alone what he knew. Or though he knew… what Ravalor may had suspected back then. Down in the tunnels below Treva. When at last they had been alone, together, only the two of them. After Zenozarax had killed his oldest and most trusted friend.

But right in this moment, Ravalor's face, not even his eyes, told him anything. And it felt like a blindspot where one had never been before. It felt wrong, desperation wailed up within him, trying to find a way to—

“What have you seen of Quadirymir?” Sukatar’s voice caught him properly off guard and he flinched painfully. He had been so focused on Ravalor that he had completely lost track of his surroundings. Sukatar, clearly called in by Moakatar, now stood at the end of the bed, staring at Ravalor with unsettling intensity.

“Everything,” Ravalor said quietly. “Everywhere he ever was, everything he ever did he — I think I even remember everything he forgot. Everytime he died as a Warrior in the Order. Everytime he was betrayed…” he spoke slowly, like he actively tried to verify every word he spoke as he did so.

“Did you take over his mind?” Sukatar asked sharply. She was tense, and even Moakatar besides her looked concerned. Zenozarax didn’t have to ask why, in their current situation they had no time to waste. They had fled from Quadirymir, but that didn’t mean Quadirymir would simply let them be. Unless Ravalor had fully taken over his mind. But that was unlikely, not just on the basis of Ravalor inexperience. Quadirymir was too careful, he would have been preemptively disconnected from the rest of himself. Probably during the entire time he had been here and only giving regular status updates in brief moments of reconnection.

“I don’t …” Ravalor began hesitatingly.

“I don't think it’s that. Quadirymir appeared to be still himself after Ravalor touched him, and he would have attacked him had Aeven not intervened,” Zenozarax said. “And it wouldn’t explain the extent of his knowledge. Not the deaths.”

“Show me,” Sukatar said. And everyone stared at her — Moakatar was the first to object.

“It might be a curse!” she said, taking Sukatar's arm. “We shouldn’t touch him before we know what happened to him!”

“What do the scans say?”

“The scans show nothing abnormal but,” Moakatar struggled, looking from Sukatar to Ravalor, even briefly to Zenozarax and back to Sukatar, before she added “What if it happens again?”

She didn't say “what if he explodes again” but by the looks of it everyone besides Ravalor himself understood.

“No, if he is telling the truth, and Quadirymir is still alive and out there, I want to know what we’re really dealing with. You said you saw where he was?”

“Yes. Up till that moment. I don't see him now.”

“And he knows about what is happening to the rest of you?”

“Yes!” Ravalor rose up even more. With raising concern Zenozarax noticed the moment of wavering as he no longer was supported by the headrest. “He doesn’t know why, but—” Ravalor looked back at Zenozarax. “They are going to discontinue me. It’s inevitable. The moment Aeven…” Ravalor fell silent for a moment, and dropped back against the headrest. His breath quickened, like he tried to wrap his head around something he just realised that simply wouldn’t make sense, his gaze lost focus. “If he leaves… He…I’m— I…”

“Ravalor!” Sukatar snapped.

“Would you give him a moment?!” Zenozarax flared up, standing up, meeting the glare of Sukatar head-on.

“What do you think is happening right now?” she fired back sharply. It was like being doused by a bucket of ice cold water — because there had only ever been one time she had spoken to him with this much vitriol in her voice. But this time he lacked the godly influence that had made him blind to its implications. “We’re in the middle of an evacuation that could end in destruction any second. Do you think we have time to coddle him? Do you think he has that time? With what he just told you?”

Lords, he knew she was right but, “Can we just —” what? He looked down to Ravalor who seemed too exhausted as to really pay attention to the fight over his own well being. “I should do it.”

“No you shouldn’t. And you probably can’t, not like I can.” Sukatar stepped forward. “Right now, if it comes to a fight, you and Moakatar are the only ones at full strength, and you are the most powerful. If this is dangerous, I’m the one you can afford to lose. But we need to get ahead of it.”

“Su!” Moakatar stared at her aghast.

“You want to check those scans again?” Sukatar looked back at Moakatar, and there was even a light smile on her face, maybe trying to calm Moakatar, at least a little bit. Moakatar said nothing, but the desperation in her eyes was palpable.

Then Sukatar turned back to Ravalor, but before she could sit down next to him Zenozarax took her by her arm. “Are you sure about this?”

“If he knows what Quadirymir knows I need to see it,” she said unshaken. “Zen, I would have killed to get into that wizard's head any day. If he knows even a fraction of Quadirymir's secrets — Do you know what that means? His stashes, his hideouts, his contacts, what he might have done to the station?! If this is true, and we play this right, we can do more than survive this.”

“It’s all there…” Ravalor murmured, eyes closed. “I can tell you.”

“I’m not sure you can,” Sukatar said, finally sitting down as Zenozarax let go of her. “Not in your current state. I want to see all of it, make sure we’re not missing anything of importance.”

“Ravalor?” Zenoarax asked. “Are you okay with this? Can you show her?”

“I think so.” Ravalor nodded weakly, then opened his eyes again, looking at Sukatar. “But it’s a lot. I don’t even fully… know how much it is. It keeps coming into my thoughts.”

“I’ll be ready. It might even help you make sense of it, have two eyes on it,” Sukatar said almost gently, but the look in her eyes was hard and determined. “When you took Quadirymir's hand, there was a force. An explosion.”

Ravalor looked at her with nothing but bemusement, but Sukatar continued, “I don't get the impression it was something you did consciously. If it was something you did. But I think maybe you wanted to defend yourself?”

Zenozarax felt a chill as he recognized that tone of voice. It was so soft and reassuring — the voice of a Seeker prodding for a confession of an unsuspecting wizard.

“I don't know what happened,” Ravalor said carefully.

“That’s alright,” she said. “But you don't want to hurt me now, right?”

“No.”

Then she held out her hand.

“Will it…” Ravalor took a deep breath. “Hurt? Like with the Mindcrawler?”

“No,” she said, “Nothing like that. I’ll just be with you, going where you let me go. I won’t force myself anywhere you don’t want me to look.”

Ravalor seemed assured because he raised his hand, at least he tried to. He couldn’t hold it up, and it dropped back down onto the bed before Sukatar.

For a moment Zenozarax felt the sickening sensation of everyone being aware of the horrible state Ravalor was in, but everyone chose to say nothing about it. And even he could do nothing but accept it.

Sukatar took Ravalor's hand. “Ready?”

Ravalor nodded.

Please log in to leave and read comments.