A sorta illustrated story which may or may not go somewhere

[Scott of Hyperborea]

Anshir at sunrise (with some thanks to a hotel in Sinai)

The crisp smell of a spring morning overpowered Rei Tayunion's nose as he stepped on to the roof of his small one-story house. He yawned and stretched. A few meters away, just across the street, his neighbor the shipbuilder, the one whose name he kept forgetting, saw him and gave him a smile and half-bow. Rei smiled and bowed back.

It was a perfect sunrise, and perhaps half the city had taken to the rooftops for it. Rei looked over the sea of white buildings, interspersed here and there with a brightly colored house, and at the other Hyperboreans standing atop them, facing east. The cluster of tall buildings in the city center would block his view of the sunrise in a few weeks, but for now they were well to the right of quickly brightening eastern glow. He raised himself high and spread out his arms, palms toward the east, fingers apart.

The first tip of the sun rose above the horizon. A flute began to play somewhere. Rei stood and prayed wordlessly, letting the light flow over him and into him, then took a deep breath. The entire disc of the sun had risen above the ocean. He exhaled. The flute music stopped.

Avane, his wife, climbed up onto the roof from the warm house below.

"Missed it," said Rei. Avane cursed, good-naturedly. Here in the far North, sunrises were a rare thing. In winter, it was always dark, and in summer, always bright. It was only during the spring and autumn that the sun and the morning came at the same time, and the rarity of the event gave it a certain sacredness. Hyperborean tradition said that any day you saw the sunrise, you'd have good luck all day long. So in the warmer part of spring, everyone would go up on their roofs to watch the dawn. It was a good community-building thing too, and the Quaithelin were always trying to build community.

"Today'll be a good day anyway," said Avane. "Today's the day we take the train to Benikoth."

"Ah, yes," said Rei. "Odd job, that."

Avane and Rei were the owners, managers, and sole employees of Anshir Teyyerak, the seed-city of Anshir's only security company. Most people in Raikoth already felt pretty secure, so all of their jobs were odd jobs, more or less. Whenever anyone in the greater Anshir area felt insecure and was willing to pay money to remedy the situation, they would give Anshir Teyyerak a call.

Their role was anywhere from tour guides to consultants to bodyguards to import/export officers. Sometimes visitors from abroad would want native Hyperboreans by their side to make sure they didn't fall into a crevasse or get eaten by a polar bear or something. Sometimes the Paladins wanted someone from the outside to analyze the security of their bases. Sometimes a rich person got in a feud, and for whatever reason didn't trust the law to keep him safe. It was never quite the same thing twice, which was how Avane and Rei liked it.

And today, it was an obviously eccentric historian who refused to explain anything over the phone. "Come at once," he'd said. "Bring whatever you need for a trip to the Continent, maybe a week or two long. And weaponry. Lots and lots of weaponry. I'll pay whatever the standard rate is. Don't tell anyone I called."

"Well, we better get going soon," said Rei. "Northbound train leaves at ten."

They climbed down the staircase into their home. Like many Raikothin dwellings, it was a small but cozy one room affair. In the center was a fireplace; along the circumference were storage cabinets, tables, sleeping bags, and shelves of books. Avane made breakfast; a mix of berries, a plate of cheeses, and raw salmon. Rei did some last minute packing, and did some final checks on all the weapons. By nine o'clock they were out the door, lugging their baggage toward city center and the waterfront.

Fifteen minutes later, they came to the city walls. The gates were open for the day, and they passed into Anshir proper. All around them sprouted domed towers, long white arcades, and high walls covered with murals and semiprecious stones. Many of the buildings were in the new style combining traditional Hyperborean architecture with some elements of South Babkhan designs; it had become popular during the Jahandar era, and despite that particular Kaiser's fall from grace the architects had not yet exhausted that particular fount of ideas.

"Anything else we need before heading to Benikoth?" asked Avane. "I don't want to hear you complaining the whole trip about what you've forgotten, like you did that one time in Ashkenatza."

"Now that you mention it..." said Rei. "I'm going to grab a book for the train. I'll be back out in a second. Why don't you get us some kind of good luck piece?"

"I'll do that," said Avane, but by the time she spoke, Rei was already inside the Tower of Elith.

It was a temple to the God of Truth, and it was a library. It did not have every book in the world; not even Tala could claim that distinction. But it had spent three thousand years accumulating books for one of the largest cities of one of the most book-obsessed cultures on the face of Micras. It had stories piled upon stories, wings tacked on to wings, outgrowths that had invaded and eventually conquered smaller, less important buildings nearby, and basements and sub-basements descending into catacombs and tunnels that hadn't been explored in centuries. All were filled with books, and all were organized in an excruciatingly complex system that generally appeared random only to occasionally give off flashes of pure genius. You might find a cookbook next to a collection of 12th century Treesian poetry, only to later realize that the recipes in the cookbook appealed to your culinary tastes in exactly the same indescribable way the Treesian verse appealed to your poetic ear. The only people who always seemed to know where everything was were the Priests of Truth, who were indispensible for exactly that reason, and who had an unnatural ability to always know when you needed help and when you were "just looking".

"Truth warm, friend," a Priest of Elith told Rei, appearing out of nowhere. If Rei hadn't known better, he would have thought that one of the piles of books beside him had just rearranged itself into a human form. "How can I help you?"

"I'm looking for a book by..." he took the index card out of his pocket, "Yymani Velchovion. He teaches history at the Alephisio Tala."

"Like this one?" the Priest asked, grabbing a book from the nearest shelf seemingly without even looking at it. The title read "Balance of Ages: Further Thoughts on the Primacy Question". The author was, indeed, Yymani Velchovion. No one really knew how the Priests of Truth managed to do that so consistently.

"...yes," agreed Rei. "Thank you. That will do nicely." He pocketed the volume and left the Tower.

Avane was waiting outside for him. She took the vial of water she was holding, dipped her hand in it, and traced a pattern on Rei's forehead. "From the spring at Pirumve," she said. "Good luck on a long journey. Now for me?"

Rei took the remaining water and traced the same pattern upon Avane. "Truth and Beauty keep," he said. Then he held up the book. "I thought I'd pass the train ride by learning a little more about our mystery professor." He opened it up to a random sheet. "Though the radiocarbon dating is not entirely conclusive," he quoted, "it would appear likely that the timber in the foundations of Fort Francis is slightly younger than that in the proto-Elw settlements along the Amokolian coast, including that in Frytterim. This contradicts the commonly accepted theory that the Elw received civilization only after observing the fruits of..." He broke off. "Well, if nothing else, it'll help me sleep on the train ride." Avane made a face.

They walked on further through City Center until they came to the cliffs that led down to the harbor. The port, mainland Hyperborea's largest, was dominated by two warships of the Elwynnese Navy. Around them clustered a few smaller Hyperborean boats, mostly sail-bearing, and one or two foreign vessels. A container ship full of goods from continental Shireroth had left the previous day, and the harbor was now mostly empty. Dolphins played around the berth where it had been. One or two were saddled, obviously taking a break from the dolphin cavalry that had once been a deadly serious part of Anshir's militia but were now a symbol of the city and a memento of different times.

On the very edge of the cliffs was the train station, a big building like a flattened pyramid with an arched tower shooting out of it. If it hadn't said "Kerdenion Vetne" on it in gold letters, there would have been no way to recognize it: the railway itself was mostly underground within the city walls. Avane approached one of the attendants.

"Truth and Beauty warm. Avane Surision and Rei Tayunion. We have reservations for the ten o'clock Benikoth train to the airfield." She held out the tickets, which the attendant stamped.

"Also, we'd like to declare a couple of weapons," she said. "As you see, our company Anshir Teyyerak is licensed to bring weaponry on public transportation." She took from her necklace a large orange bead with several runes on it. The attendant ran it through a scanner and nodded. "What weapons would you like to declare?"

"Oh, let's see," said Avane. "My handgun, my husband's handgun, three grenades, taser, dart gun, electromagnetic pulse bomb, five smoke bombs, three regular bombs, class B malicious software, two swords one of which is magic, blue laser, you don't want to know what this one here does, a pack of throwing stars, nanofiber thread, box of things that look like pens but aren't, you *definitely* don't want to know what this one is..."

"...starting a war, are you?" the attendant asked.

"Wouldn't be the first time," said Avane, and flashed her "you will spend long sleepless nights wondering whether or not I am serious but in the end you will never know" smile.

"All aboard the ten o'clock train to Benikoth!" someone shouted, and Rei and Avane grabbed their bags and rushed on.


The train station in Anshir (again, with thanks to a hotel in Sinai)

[Andreas the Wise]

Beautiful. I'm particuarly fond of the library (I want to visit now) and that first picture - that's just gorgeous.

[Aurangzeb Khan]

Good stuff so far. I'm look forward to seeing where this goes... or rather where they go.

[Scott of Hyperborea]

"Twins", by jiugeon DeviantArt. Hey, I never said the illustrations would be by me. Rei and Avane must look sort of like this.


The railroad had always been controversial.

For ages, the Raikothlin travelled by foot or sled or ship upon the marked roads. Three days from Kalen to Midhoth, or three weeks to Tala, or three months to Sidhli. And it was good. Far-off cities seemed strange and exotic, each town developed its own unique culture, and over the weeks in the cold waste the way of thinking that can only come from the deep wilderness touched the souls of enough people to add a certain something to society. And the Raikothlin gave themselves many names, among which was this one: Tojenal, the Wanderers.

Then, modernization. The old ways had never quite been forgotten. Audente and Jasonian knowledge filled the libraries of Tala, and there was always a certain background level of technology. But eventually an industrial base made itself felt once again, the roads were paved over, and the steady trail of pilgrims, traders, and wanderers turned into a traffic jam of cars.

The Priests of Truth crunched their figures and pronounced it good. Travel time fell by orders of magnitude, the economy flourished, people who would otherwise have never seen the Mirror Figure of Taras or the Garden Isle in Kalen experienced all the wonders of the island. By every metric, things were better and getting better still.

The Priests of Beauty thought and thought, and said it had to go. The joy of travel was gone. People who had once called themselves Wanderers and developed a connection with the Deep Wilderness now tried to go from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible, stopping at the old waypoint towns only for gas and a snack. Everywhere was becoming identical to everywhere else, and people who might otherwise have fallen down breathless before the Spiral Tower were now snapping a few photos of it and leaving so they could get to the next attraction.

The Priests of Joy, the Quithelin (kadhamic: kawithomancers), heard both arguments, and finally ruled in favor of the Priests of Beauty. The roads were laboriously unpaved. The roadside fast food outlets and gas stations withered away, like a cancer tasting chemotherapy, and the government bought back the motorcars and unceremoniously sold them to Concordia at an impressive profit.

In its place, they put the railroad.

But there were rules. Young people were discouraged, sometimes even banned, from taking the trains. If you were travelling on business, or too hold to go hiking through the snow, you had an excuse. And with the exception of old folk and businessmen, you couldn't take the railroad somewhere you'd never been before. What would be the fun in that?

Left to their own devices, the Priests of Joy said, people would convenience all the interesting parts out of life. So the railroad was restricted, little-used, and expensive.

The view, however, was amazing.

From the track high elevated high above the ground to avoid the permafrost, Avane could see all of northern Tairakoth through the huge glass windows. Musk oxen who had grown used to the train's daily course stared up at it as it passed by, and Arctic foxes peeked out from their dens under the tracks. As they passed into southern Benikoth, little hills began to rise, breaking the monotonous flatness, and some of these that had flat sides facing the traintracks had been turned into murals by any of a thousand years worth of artists displaying their works to a captive audience of rail travelers. Now and then, they passed small towns, with special platforms where little children could stand and wave to the trains. Avane always waved back.

"How's your book coming along?" Avane asked Rei somewhere around Talisre.

"Never was much good at history," he growled. "Although this doesn't read much like a traditional history book anyway. More scientific. Everything's all 'archaeological evidence this', 'radiocarbon dating that'. But if I understand right, Yymani's some kind of expert on early Audente colonization of Hyperborea and on the age of Raynor I in Shireroth."

"Odd combination of interests," said Avane. Rei nodded. After all, Raynor I had completed his highly mythologized conquest of east Benacia 2500 years before the Audentes founded Tala.

"Truth, and he's not one for legends either. He basically throws out everything Bukolos writes about Raynor, even though he's practically our only existing source. He'd rather try to radiocarbon date the mortar in Raynor's Keep and that sort of thing."

"Same with the foundation of Hyperborea?"

"Same. He spent two years running tests on a piece of one of the colonization ships, trying to figure out what port they came from, what ports they stopped at, and so on. Although he does seem to trust most of the Raikothin sources...oh, look, there's the Irsil Junction!"

The train slowed down, then made a ninety degree turn. Had they continued on their current course, they would have arrived in Irsil, the hilltop city that dominated the mountainous regions of east-central Hyperborea, before continuing on the multi-day transit to Taras and eventually far-off Sidhli. But having turned, they were now on tract to Tala, the capital, and to Raikoth's lone major international airport, Sirris. The view suddenly vanished as the train entered a tunnel, a not uncommon happening in this region.

"Now this part is interesting," said Rei. "According to some of the oldest Raikothlin records, the colony ships stopped in Goldshire to resupply after a storm, where they were received by a local Duke whose name is listed as Mirchajion. But the Shirerithian records list no Duke by anything near that name anywhere near the time the ships would have been sent out. Mirchajion is clearly supposed to be a family name, and it should have been either the Ballard or Killebrew families ruling at that time."

"Ah," said Avane. "The airfield."

Sirris Airfield, which had once been named after cirrus clouds before being transliterated into the native language and stripped of all meaning, stood equidistant from Talisre, Irsil, and Tala, right in the center of the inhabited part of the island. As international airfields went, it was nothing special; it didn't even have an attached stadium and copper mine, generally all the rage in Shirerithian airports. But it had two or three flights a day to Shirekeep, two or three more to areas around Elwynn and Kildare, and the odd plane out to Craiteland, Gralus, or Antica.

The train silently pulled into the airport station, and Rei and Avane got off and joined the long line to collect their luggage.

"Ours will be the one with the red DANGER - WEAPONS ribbons around it," Rei told the attendant, remembering the packaging job the people in Anshir had done when they learned what was inside. Raikoth's liberal weapon laws could be a bit loopy, but their heart was in the right place.

"Got it," said the attendant, handing them a big orange bag.

"Uh, no..." said Avane. "Afraid ours was red."

The baggage attendant searched a bit longer and came up with two red bags. "Thanks," said Avane, and left him a generous tip.

"Oh, sorry about that," said a large, red-haired, red-bearded man with a heavy Brookshirerithian accent. "I'll be taking that." He picked up the orange bag and trotted off, just fast enough to make distance but just slow enough to remain inconspicuous.

Rei and Avane looked at each other. "Right," said Rei. Then both of them at the same time: "I'll follow that man. You find the professor." For a second, they looked like they were about to argue. Then Rei walked off in the same direction as the red-haired man, and Avane took out her cell phone and began dialing Yymani's number.

The man checked the list of gates, then stepped into the men's restroom. Rei followed, inconspicuously. He went into a stall. Rei went into the stall beside him and listened. The man was fiddling with something, opening his suitcase. He heard a "click". Then the man left. Careless, thought Rei. He didn't even flush the toilet to make it look like he was really doing business in there. Not a professional at all.

Rei flushed his toilet, just out of habit, and then silently continued trailing the man, who now had an extra, comically bulky jacket on and a bulge shaped rather like a large gun in the back of it. He seemed to know where he was going. Not the waiting floor, but the shopping floor above it. Past all the popular stores, into a rest area completely deserted at this time of the evening. There was a large, rectangular opening through which one could see down into the waiting area, surrounded by a glass railing.

Rei ducked behind a stand of postcards and made himself so still as to be practically invisible; not a moment too soon as the red-haired man furtively glanced around to make sure he was alone. He looked down. So did Rei. Gates 7 and 8 were visible through the opening. Ten or twenty of the 'play it safe and make it to the airport two hours early' were there, reading books or meditating silently.

The red-haired man reached into his coat, and pulled out a sniper rifle and two grenades. Very, very quietly, Rei pulled out his own taser. He didn't shoot just yet. There was one more thing he had to see.

The red-haired man took aim very carefully. A bright red laser dot appeared on the mostly bald head of a very old, grey-bearded man in grey robes that seemed of an Irsil design. That was as much as Rei wanted to know. He fired his taser. The red haired man gave a shout and fell to the floor.

Barely checking to make sure the man was knocked out, Rei vaulted over the glass railing and dropped ten feet down to the waiting area, almost landing on his feet - it'd been a long time since he'd last practiced that particular trick. "SECURITY!" he shouted. Then he grabbed the old man in the Irsil robes and threw him under the protective covering of a bench. "who are you?" he cried. "And why's a BOO/\/\ist assault commando trying to kill you?"

A hand tapped him on the back, and he looked up from his shelter under the bench.

"Dear," Avane said, "I'd like you to meet our client, Professor Yymani Velchovion."

"Truth and Beauty warm," said the old man, who managed a weak smile. "I can't say how glad I am to see you."