A reservation for the hidden hermit and his gangster bicycle.
Prologue:
“That thing is a mess! Look at it! All those barnacles! And the smell! Yuck!” Aldous ignored Abraxis’ comments in the background, his eyes solely fixated on the massive hull that took up the entirety of his vision. It was still as black as sin, with those same sharp angles that had made it looked poised to ram down any resistance in its path. Aldous felt a shaking hand reach out, smoothing it over the wall that he had known so well. Yes, it was still so cold, like a frost from hell. Perhaps it was the ship’s way of mimicking the sensation of the hearth, a way of saying…
“Anyway, welcome home, Aldous.” Abraxis, watching from the side, kindly spoke, a pang of jealousy jumping up suddenly within him. He knew it was a meaningless feeling, for his home was far and away, out of reach, yet forever taunting him with its intangible presence. In fact, for a good while of their travels together, Aldous had shared that exact same feeling before. It was the promise of empathy and side-to-side consolation to one another for their eternal separation from their homes that had motivated Abraxis to stick so tightly to Aldous’ side. Now, that motivation may just evaporate, much to Abraxis’ inner fear, as he continued to watch Aldous continue talking to the black walls, like old friends long separated by cruel Fate.
“Ten…years…Ten years of walking the earth, knowing that I can never reach you. And then you suddenly reach me. Showing back up in my life, all when I was ready to send you to the abyss of a past left behind.” Aldous murmured with his eyes half-closed. If he had opened them fully, he would have seen the entire ship, proving to him that what was before him was more than a hallucination, but a reality. If he had closed them completely, he would be scarcely ready for the images and voices of things long forgotten that are apt to overcome the floodgates.
“This is not fair. You brought more than your bulk with you. No, you brought a lot more than that.”“Oh, don’t be so dramatic. I was born here, too, you know.”Aldous flinched, a solid rock welling up his throat at the cackling of that one voice behind the bars in his head. He then stopped himself and quickly drew his mental body to its full height.
“Maybe, but it was I who chose to find the various special hideouts during hide-and-seek. It was I who devoured the texts of its grand library. It was I who tasted the delicacies of the ingenious Aunt Jorg and also helped out in making some of them. It was I who knew the people who also lived in it. And all while you were squirming in my mind, throwing a violent tantrum that was never heard. You know nothing about this place!” Aldous blinked blankly when he felt the unexpected clear-headedness of Purgatory reaching back into the deepest recesses. Apparently, his outburst had scared the menace away.
Abraxis watched on, unfazed by Aldous seemingly talking to himself. He had seen this happen over and over again, and while he noted that the conversations were getting more frequent, they also caused an unexpected benefit: the initial difficulty that Aldous had with dealing with Purgatory was starting to fade away, perhaps a sign of his growing experience with direct confrontation with the Entity of the Horizon. The bicycle swore that he was smiling so much that the metal lips of his bell was bending upwards; it was good to see that thing get beaten down for once.
“Well then,” Abraxis chirped, while Aldous was recovering from his outburst. Maybe he can deal with the ‘lack of motivation’ problem a bit later.
“Shall we finally go in?”Nodding in acknowledgement, Aldous paused for a moment before the endeavour, taking one more second to get a full view of the airship that was his home for ten years. Despite its continued maintenance of its ice-cold bite and its complexion of a looming shadow, the Grimoire Heart Airship was a shell compared to its former shelf, having been ripped apart by the one responsible for its destruction, pushed by the currents and barely kept buoyant on the sea by its dying magical engines for the past few years or so, until it finally slammed itself into a deserted beach on some remote island, stranded there and unnoticed. If it had not been a passing fisherman swept off his course by a fateful storm, everyone would have been none the wiser.
Signs of its destruction and afterword age were clear all about the jet-black structure. Most obvious of all was the gaping lack of the tower that had held the ship’s highest and most restricted rooms, such as Master Hades’ throne room, along with his own more private one, not that it did much good against the shortcuts that Aldous faithfully recalled. It was most likely that the force that had grounded the airship had originated from somewhere around there.
Aldous did not pity the fact that the precious and powerful books in those rooms were now forever out of reach; even when he was a child, he had known, through sheer sensation upon sight that they had held extremely nefarious Dark Magic, far more cruel and sinister than his own Dark Magic, Amaterasu Formula. Aldous recalled that not even the strongest mages, the Seven Kin of Purgatory were allowed to read them and it was likely only thanks to Hades’ own precautions that the Guild Master could do it himself.
What Aldous was most focused on, however, was the general guild library, located much closer to the centre of the airship and according to memory, a good deal separated from the spire. While the collections within it are certainly not up to the grade of the Guild Master’s personal one, Hades had spent decades of his life collecting them and Aldous, having read them himself, knew that they will be of some value, maybe not to his own development, but perhaps if he chose some of the less ambiguously moral ones and sell them for a price, he might be able to earn a neat profit.
It was worth a look around.
“Hey, I found an opening that’s not colonised with barnacles and clams yet! Let’s go through from here!” Abraxis called out, snapping Aldous out from his thoughts. While he mutely watched the bicycle enter with unusual quickness, Aldous sighed to himself. His previous train of thought was purely motivated by a logical benefit-maximizing basis, a reflex developed after ten years of looking after himself and Abraxis’ stomach.
“This is my home.” Aldous gave another uneasy glance.
“Or what’s left of it.”“Perhaps I should not be so….unsentimental. Maybe, I should just give it one final tour.” And so, deciding upon that, Aldous entered after Abraxis, feeling like a child walking into his mother’s embrace.
"Welcome home." And Aldous listened to the grudging voice inside for the first time.
"Yeah," he replied, half-aware that he was holding back tears as he begun to uncontrollably recognize sights. The near-accident with that porcelain jar. The mock sword-fighting with those display knock-offs. The game of Make-the-Swiss-Roll with this carpet right under his feet. Sliding down the stairs on those paintings.
"I've got a lot of catching up to do."The Year:
When Aldous completed his trip down the memory lanes and fully enjoyed himself during his tour of the half-destroyed ship, he found that the engines of the ship were still fully operational, or at least the sole one that was left out of all of them. While the damage to the rest of it would never make it fly again, it still maintained many of the magic-powered services inside the ship. Food refrigeration, water, lighting, cooking appliances, even air-conditioning (>.<), all of that was still fully running after all this time. Aldous had more than a little praise for the ones who designed the ship. It made an idea that had been silently brooding inside him now begin to call out furiously for his attention, manifesting as a nagging urge in the back of his head. At first, he did little with it and only held on to it for consideration in another time. But it was when he came into the library that he finally accepted it.
His memory, perhaps due to him being a child then, did not recall the guild library being that big. To make manners worse, turbulence, ship-rocking and the final impact from the landing on the beach must have been responsible for all of the shelves tumbled down onto the ground, their contents spilled across the floor like beans from an upturned can. Even though some books might have been lost from the destruction, it would take him years to fully read through all of the remaining ones at his disposal, all the while organizing it properly so as to make sure that he can correctly track his progress. It was then that he determined that he had no choice but to stay at the Grimoire Heart airship and call it home for a while.
But Abraxis had something to say about that.
Inter-rim Roleplay
“You want to do what?!”“It will take too long to complete what I set out to do here in just one visit. Hundreds, maybe thousands of visits! I don’t think I have any other choice but to stay here until I can sort this out.”“Until you can sort this out?” Abraxis huffed with a (Aldous suddenly noticed) disbelievingly,
“Don’t you mean like, forever? Dude, what about jobs? What about the jewels? What about travelling around the world and all of its glories?! WHAT ABOUT FINDING A WAY TO EDOLAS? HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN ALL OF THAT?”“No, Abraxis, I haven’t…..of course not….I will never forget such an important promise I made to you. The books in this library might even point a way to your home.” Aldous begun to step back, the joy and euphoria from relishing the idea all blown away by Abraxis’ unexpected anger.
“And if they don’t?” Abraxis spat, the bicycle’s frame shifting to the side as he begun to turn his metaphorical back towards Aldous.
Truthfully, at the moment, Aldous felt more pressed to get started on reading and cataloguing the books rather than deal with what in his eyes is just one of the bicycle’s many annoying tantrums. Sweeping his hand over his face, Aldous let out a quick sigh of frustration as he begun to go a little more assertive.
“Abraxis, where is this coming from?”He was not ready for the response.
“I’M AN EXCEED! HAVE YOU BEEN SO USED TO RIDING ON ME THAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN THAT?! I MAY LOOK LIKE A BICYCLE BUT DEEP DOWN I AM A TRUE-BLOODED EXCEED! I HAD A HOME TOO! ONE SEPARATED BY DIMENSIONS, NOT A STUPID-ASS OCEAN! NOW THAT I HAVE SAID IT, I CAN’T HELP BUT WONDER WHY DID I EVEN FOLLOW YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE?!” The bicycle cried and yelled, his boisterous voice booming through the dark hallways of the airship, scaring away whatever ghosts might have roamed the abandoned vessel.
“WE WERE NOTHING ALIKE! YOU HAD A CHANCE AT COMING BACK HERE AT THE VERY START! AND WHOOP-DIE FUCKING DOO! LOOK AROUND YOU, THAT CHANCE CAME BY AND HERE WE ARE!”And as Aldous watched, unable to respond, Abraxis suddenly lowered his voice, barely able to catch his breath. “
Ten years. It took you ten years to find something that was on your world in the first place. Mine isn’t, Aldous. It’s…..far away. Very far away. And what is it going to take? A hundred years? A thousand?” Abraxis’ breaking voice, while his bell was expressionless, betrayed the sorrow and wanting that the bicycle was feeling deep inside. Having followed Aldous throughout his tour was also bringing back pangs of desire that he had suppressed so utterly before. He had not wanted to face them for so long, but now they come rushing out at full-force. He had no hope of stopping them and so he allowed himself to drown in them.
“I may look like an inanimate object. I may have platinum-steel forged under the holy beating of a century’s solar flare. I may have rubber solidified from the largest rubber trees in your world. I may be a cat’s soul attached to the finest frame guided by the hands of the most masterful smiths. But that does not make me immortal, Aldous. I don’t think I can afford to wait that long.”Aldous continued to remain silent, looking down and away, trying to keep the bicycle out of his sight.
“Scrawl your books. Record down everything that you want. Collect all the scrolls that you desire. Chase your own goals…. You don’t need to bother about mine. I can handle them myself. I won’t be there to see your face when you achieve the magnificent success that you deserve.”“Such a pity too, I always wondered how you’ll look when you smile.” And then there was turning of wheels and a second later, silence.
“Abraxis,” Aldous hurriedly raised his voice and his head, his wits gathering, crying at him to stop the bicycle. But the bicycle, no, the Exceed known as Abraxis was gone from his sight, having no doubt travelled out into the falling night. Aldous’ brain cried at his body to chase Abraxis down and to convince him to stay, but his heart told his body that it would have been no use anyway.
“Goodbye. Old friend.”Year Continued:
And so the hidden hermit and his Exceed bicycle parted ways. Aldous spent the next year following Abraxis' instructions, focusing his efforts on both cleaning up the airship as best as he could while getting down into the books. From the texts from ages old and civilizations past, Aldous learned much about the world, about the other continents, the other magic types, such as Curses, about why things in the world happen the way they do today, many interesting perspectives about controversial issues and more importantly, more about his Dark Magic, Amaterasu Formula. Whatever he managed to find was not enough to allow him to fully replicate a new spell but clues and hints were scattered here and there about ancient locations bearing some of the ancient formulas that Aldous may one day go out to find.
And while he himself would never be able to perform such magic himself when he read through them, the various other kinds of magic were ravenously taken up by Purgatory, who was secretly watching from the side, hoping to improve his own strength inside Aldous’ mind. Perhaps one day, he might endeavour to use what he learnt to give himself better leverage against his captor in his inevitable rebellion.
Little did he know that when Aldous was aware that he was not watching, the man, maturing from books about deception and trickery, was also secretly reading scrolls about the true nature of Purgatory and details about the ritual through which that Hades managed to use Aldous to pull Purgatory from the horizon between Life and Death. The two sides were gearing up for that fight for control they both knew was coming in the near future. But while there were always new things to learn each day, there was also a single constant that Aldous never strayed away from. Everyday, once a day, he would find himself looking out the window, waiting, hoping that perhaps some miracle can occur.
For a year, he was left disappointed.
Abraxis, on the other hand, went on his own journeys, searching the landscapes of Earthland for both signs of Anima and someone who at least has some awareness of Edolas. He toiled and sweated, volunteered his body as a carrier vehicle for small alms, degraded himself by playing as a circus act and giving out entertainment rides to villager children for some change, for when he left Aldous, he had also left his only source of money behind.
He also had more than money problems. Some of the research authorities, hearing of a talking, self-moving bicycle, were curious about how a machine could move on its own for such a long time, though the answer was easily solvable by the fact that it was being powered by an Exceed’s soul. Even though it would have been a fruitless endeavour, the authorities sought out for Abraxis and thus he was forced to use his superior speed and dirtied his initially fine frame so that he could blend in with normal bicycles.
For an entire year, supported by whatever he could earn and his dignity hurt, Abraxis scoured the kingdoms, asked about taverns and, much to his own displeasure, entered many libraries in his own single-minded focus.
For a year, he was left disappointed.
What he did manage to do, however, was to learn a bit more about himself. Back in the old days alongside Aldous, all Abraxis did was to watch from the side and to provide the occasional get-away vehicle like the bicycle he was. Now, he is more than that. He is also an Exceed and hence when he was wheeling around the world in a near mindless fashion, Abraxis begun to hear something within him.
It sounded like this. “Lub-dub lub-dub.”
It was a heart. A heart in a bicycle’s body.
Where he would go from there, how he would change even further, he did not know. That lack of knowledge made him afraid and so, as if it was almost a reflex, he did exactly whatever he does when he feels afraid.
He went back.
End of the Year:
The morning had dawned clear and cold, its crispness hinting that summer was coming to an end. His eyes opened, ready to accept the rays of the awakening sun peeking through that little unreachable hole in the roof. He could almost feel the muscles in them pulling on his pupils, constricting them to reduce their exposure to light, a fact he had first learned from Kory Lango’s Biological Arts and confirmed by many other books after.
“Has it already been a year?” Aldous muttered to himself as he swung his legs off the hammock, careful to keep himself steady, lest he would find himself in the unfortunate situation of being a pancake on the floor twenty meters below him. Looking on from the large improvised bed suspended on beams such that it was halfway between the ceiling and the floor, Aldous found before a sight that he had gotten the chance to get used to for a year. The guild library room was no longer the hurricane-like mess that it was a year ago. Now every shelf was back where it was supposed to be, with all of the books neatly lined across in alphabetical rows, the result of - Aldous was proudly reminded - three months of meticulous cataloguing and arrangement.
‘Seal Floater,’ Aldous thought to himself as he finally jumped off the hammock. He had long gotten rid of the ridiculous habit of calling out his spell names, in accordance with the instructions of Amaterasu Formula user Patrice Kowalski from 300 years ago. The gravity-pulling heaviness in his legs gave way to air-like buoyancy that quickly took hold over the rest of his body. A desk piled high with many books, one open in front of the sole chair, greeted Aldous as he gently descended to the ground.
Truth to be told, Aldous no longer felt that overbearing pressure that using the Amaterasu Formula used to bring down onto him. Especially with the more mundane and simpler Formulas, using them was beginning to become akin to a simple gesture; a wave, an outstretched finger, a flexed arm was all he needed to activate the Formulas. While he did not and may never have the speed at which Master Hades drew his Formulas, Aldous was satisfied that he had improved beyond becoming a simple reservoir of knowledge and memorized information.
Granted, there was a great deal about the philosophy, history and mechanics behind the Amaterasu system that he still did not fully understand, but his efforts are getting him closer, as evidenced by the whiteboard at the side, its face overwhelmed by parchment that was recorded with the circulation of the magic in its history, the development of it and, most prominently on a world-map pasted in the centre, various locations that might hold clues into how to develop it further. An underwater wall, a magic particle nexus, a remote cave that led under a volcano….Now that he had looked at it, Aldous felt a little surprised that he already made such conclusive deductions.
“Perhaps it’s time I leave the books behind for a while and seek those places out,” Aldous murmured half-heartedly under his breath as he sat back down at his reading table, his hands already ready to turn the page of the open book, Lawe’s A Just War.
The idea sounded so preposterous to him right now. He was aware that he was out of touch with the outside world, having secluded himself in the airship for the past year. But he was just so far from completion: in this year he had only managed to read through 20% of the library’s collection, not to mention what else he might find if he could actually summon up the courage to enter the rooms of the Seven Kin of Purgatory and take
their collections. He had a good idea of what to expect from each of them: the excitable Zancrow with comics and readings about gods, the poetic Rustyrose with epic novels and eldritch fantasies, the emotionless Zoldeo with encyclopaedias and books about getting himself out of Caprico’s body…….
Aldous could hear himself hold his breath. A soul stuck in a foreign body. It almost sounded like Abraxis. Aldous clasped his hands together as he bit onto one of his fingers, attempting to force his memories back into the lockers through pain. He failed.
“It’s already been a year?” Aldous asked, to no one in particular.
“It does not feel like a year at all.”And then, out of a stray thought that then bloomed into full blossom, Aldous realised why. A second later, he realised how he could stop it.
“I need to get out,” Aldous stated, this time a bit more firmly.
“I need to get out!” Aldous ordered his body to stand up from his seat, away from the books, out of the library, out of this hull that he had kept himself in for a year.
And for the first time, Aldous breathed in fresh air. For the first time, he took in the beauty of the light dancing over the rippled beach waves, the morning wind conducting an orchestra of singing leaves. Pulling down his cloak before it was swept away by the gales, Aldous took a moment to take in the sight.
“Hades….you really missed out. There is more to this world than just the One Magic. More than knowledge, power and immortality, all that. The same thing just happened to me,” Aldous mourned as he turned to the airship, taking a good long look once more. Its desecrated shell represented more than broken dreams; it showed the fate of those who dream too much, those who pursued their goals so single-mindedly that time past them in a blink, till they ran out before they could even open their eyes.
Aldous continued,
“All I had been doing in my life was to focus on a single goal, to make that my life goal, so that when my time comes, I would feel that I have led a worthwhile life. It was a valid approach, but one that will only succeed for a special few.” He closed his eyes, breathed in the salty beach air, and saw himself standing on a single endless road, leading towards a horizon that bore his goal. He felt himself being convinced that if he walked long enough, he could reach that horizon.
But in the end, does he have the time to walk so long?
“I don’t think I can afford to wait that long.”“Me too, Abraxis. Me too,” Aldous muttered to himself, half-sad, half-angry.
“I will not give up on my goal easily; it is too precious to me. But maybe….just maybe….” Aldous gripped his chest when he saw himself stopping, turning and walking right off the endless road. What most struck him, however, was the smile on his face.
“Such a pity too, I always wondered how you’ll look when you smile.”“Is it possible?” Aldous was unsure of that answer.
“Can one who achieves nothing actually call himself as having led a worthwhile life?”“Who cares about worthiness? I just hope you actually have a life to lead.”“I never expected someone like you to appreciate spiritual concept-” Aldous halted himself, his mouth half-open, while his eyes widened at a bicycle standing on the beach with him.
"Yo."“W-Why?” Aldous stuttered a word out, his tongue having left him at the sighting of a miracle denied from him for a year.
“To take care of your sorry ass, for one! My god, dude, look at you! Have you been locking yourself inside that barnacle-ass ship all this time?” Aldous felt his heart skip a beat at each word of Abraxis’ trademark tirade. In fact, he could barely stifle down a guffaw himself. It was true that he had been more preoccupied with reading rather than keeping himself presentable, so before he knew it, Aldous’ messy hair had grown over his shoulders and a stubble had formed around his chin. Rings of exhaustion circled around his eyes, the products of a year of late-night reading. The cloak that he previously had had been torn apart by a stray nail when he had been cleaning the library. By now, he had replaced it with a black hooded jacket one-size-too-big, reaching down towards his knees.
“You don’t look so good yourself,” Aldous pointed out, indicating with an accusing finger the dents in Abraxis’ frame, his half-flat rear tire, his bent handle-bars, his half-rusted hinges and fraying strips of wicker from the basket attached to his front.
“How did you manage to keep yourself going like that?”“Duct-tape, spit and a whole lot of martial mastery. Surely you did not forget that I am a kung-fu master with 100 black belts!?”“It is impossible to get 100 black belts. No one has them.”“I’ll be the first,” Abraxis snorted, confident as Aldous remembered him.
“
I’ll look forward to the day you get them. Perhaps then I might challenge the dojo that you will no doubt set up.”“With one million students, no less! You won’t be able to use magic, of course!”“Oh, I’m shaking in my unwashed diapers,” Aldous shivered mockingly,
“Come on, I know just the place where we could get you and me a badly needed clean-up: Magnolia. They have some of the best barbers and bicycle fixers in town. Cheapest there is as well.”“Oh, you cheeky spend-thrift!” Abraxis cried angrily, though much to Aldous’ amusement he could tell the leap of joy inside that bicycle's chafing tone,
“You have not changed at all! You should be lavishing this fine body with the highest quality that money can buy!” Aldous could barely hold back his sneering at his mental image of ‘lavishing’ Abraxis.
He could also secretly tell that Abraxis was different in his own way. It was probably this difference that had prompted the Exceed to come back, but Aldous decided that it was up to Abraxis’ own will to tell him what it is, as the two begun to walk away from the airship wreck, with the trail of a man’s footprints and a bicycle’s wheel-prints left behind, side by side.
“Hey. Umm…Are you sure you want to leave?” Abraxis popped the question out suddenly, his frame nudging towards the direction behind them.
“It is your home, after all.”Realising that he was also about to leave the airship after one year of staying in it, Aldous turned towards the wreck that had housed for ten years of his childhood and a year of his adulthood. For a moment, seeing it so far-away now, with its towering bulk now the size of an apple from his perspective, tugged at Aldous’ heartstrings, sending a sense of longing reverberating through his soul.
However, the waves crashing against the sand drowned it out, reminding him what is waiting out there.
“I know. But I’ve been walking on my own for ten years now. I think I can manage another ten,” Aldous assured Abraxis with a confident nod, his head turning back towards the way that he has to go now: forward. And as his booted feet begun the first strides of a new journey, Aldous silently thought his farewells to the airship.
“I’ll be back soon. I promise.”“I’m just going to go out for a walk now. In which direction, I don’t know yet.”“But you will always be my home. So just wait for me, alright?”End of Timeskip
Last edited by TacticalFallacy on 18th March 2014, 10:51 pm; edited 13 times in total
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