A Lullaby For Gods Chapter 139

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: ALL WAS GOLDEN IN THE SKY

At the back of the truck, Jeremiah and Eugene smacked their hands on the roof of the vehicle rhythmically, loudly singing along to the song blaring on the Bluetooth radio.

“WELL HE WAS JUST HANGING AROUND! THEN HE FELL IN LOVE!”

Hal twisted in the passenger seat to look through the small glass window that gave him a view of the others sitting with the coolers and umbrellas at the back, snickering when he caught sight of Leon, squatting at the very back with the radio speakers in his lap, staring at his friends with the most unamused expression on his face.

“ – AND HE DIDN’T KNOW HOW, BUT HE COULDN’T GET OUT!”

Leon, as if sensing eyes on him, looked around until he spotted Hal laughing at him through the window. The boy, miserably, mouthed, “Help me.”

“JUST HANGING AROUND, THEN HE FELL IN LOOOOOOOOOOOVE!”

A loud THUMP! as Jeremiah and Eugene hit the roof in unison before they crowed:

“IN THE MIDDLE OF SUMMER!!!”

“If they keep doing that, someone’s about to fall out this goddamn truck in the middle of summer,” Saph muttered, hands clenching on the steering wheel in irritation. “How the hell are they even managing to stay cheery when they’re back there in this heat?”

“Wind’s cool,” Hal said, poking a hand out the open window to his side. “And they have melanin.”

Saph’s expression soured immediately, glancing towards him tiredly. “As if you’re any different.”

“What can I say?” Hal leaned back against his seat, pretending to adjust his glasses. “Pays to be artificial in this weather.”

“Artificial?” Saph’s nose scrunched up, though they kept their eyes on the winding path that led down from the gates of the resort and down to the beach. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing depreciative, I just mean that it’s handy to be able to turn off your temperature gauges – ”

Hal’s thoughts ground to a halt just as he realized exactly what he was saying. He frowned in confusion. What the fuck was he saying? What was he, some kind of robot who could just turn things on and off within his systems or something?

A small jolt of electricity made his limbs lock up for a moment, his vision blackened for the smallest of seconds, the sounds around him scratching and growing tinny in his ears and –

“ – keep doing that, someone’s about to fall out this goddamn truck in the middle of summer,” Saph muttered, hands clenching on the steering wheel in irritation. “How the hell are they even managing to stay cheery when they’re back there in this heat?”

Hal blinked.

Huh. He just spaced out there for a second, momentarily forgetting he was in a truck on the way to the beach since everyone from the Safehouse had decided to beat the summer weather with a trip to the ocean.

“Hal?” Saph asked, glancing towards him when his silence stretched on for minutes and he began frowning at the dashboard. “You alright there, big guy?”

“…yeah,” he said. “Kind of just…got lost in thought there.” He took his glasses off so he could brush his hair back and pinch the bridge of his nose, already feeling a headache coming on. “And I just had the weirdest feeling of déjà vu.”

“Well, you did say you used to live by an ocean.”

“I lived on a flooded earth, not exactly a lot of options to live that’s not bordered by said ocean,” he said, snorting, and then wincing as a spike of pain drove through his right eye.

Saph let one hand go of the steering wheel to touch his wrist. Instant relief flooded him.

“Thanks,” he said. “Since when could you heal, though?”

“I’m taking your pain, dumbass. Did you forget I could do that through our whole cosmic bond thing?” they asked, chuckling.

The road ahead finally sloped to flat surface, and after a turn, the beach was in sight. Hal leaned forward in his seat to look at the shore – not much different from the island he and the other had gotten stranded on, but much livelier with people running around, playing volleyball or generally just standing around with their friends while others swam in the water.

Saph found the rest of the Safehouse crew’s trucks in the parking lot as they pulled the vehicle to a stop there, before hopping out the driver’s seat and immediately putting on sunglasses and holding an umbrella over themself. As Hal got out, they pointed towards Jeremiah and Eugene accusingly. “If I had to listen to you jerks caterwauling for three hours, I’m not carrying a goddamn thing.”

“Like you can carry anything with those twiggy arms,” Eugene said, sticking his tongue out.

Saph flipped him off, locking the car doors and windows behind them before marching towards the cottage where Jade and John were currently floating by, carrying coolers with them.

“I’m not carrying anything either,” Leon mumbled as he dashed off with the Bluetooth speaker. Jeremiah made a sound in protest, but the boy was off cackling before Jee could grab the back of his shirt to pull him back.

“Hal,” Eugene said, turning towards Hal with an exaggerated pout.

“I don’t know, I might commit to the bit,” Hal said.

Jeremiah gave him the stinkeye. “I mean, we can always just hoard the food.”

Ten minutes later, all three of them had finally gotten the last of the food and umbrellas moved to the cottage. Mr. G had already fired up the grill and was manning several stations with Mrs. H and Loki, while down at the beach, John was trying to explain the concept of beach volleyball to everyone who was troll or lived on a post-apocalyptic Earth (or was Jade or Jake).

Apparently, everyone was willing to give it a try even though they didn’t quite understand it yet (“You’ll get the hang of it once you try it!” John promised), though half of that might have been because Vriska decided it shouldn’t be too hard to hit a ball and anyone who couldn’t grasp the concept was an idiot, and Karkat, being a competitive little shit, decided it was his personal mission to defeat her.

Cecil and Kevin, strangely, declined and instead opted to sit under one of the umbrellas that had been set up, content in watching as the others began to divide into teams.

“Not a big fan of sports?” Hal asked as he ducked under the umbrella with them, surprised to find Saph already lounging on the blanket beside the boys, book in hand.

“Sometimes I instinctively use my telekinesis when I panic, so that’s cheating,” Cecil said, waving a hand. “Kevin’s too good at sports.”

“He used to compensate for the lack of telekinesis when we were younger,” Saph helpfully put in, earning them a swift slap on the arm from the older Palmer. They laughed, scooting away from where they were lying down.

“Let me guess,” Hal said, moving around the blanket so he could sit beside Saph. “You’re too short.”

“Fuck you.”

“You probably can’t even clear the lower end of the net.”

“I’m just here because it’s hot and it’s bright out and I hate it,” Saph said.

“No, they really are too short for sports,” Kevin said – he tried to say it seriously but halfway through broke character and ended up laughing. Saph slapped his leg in retaliation since it was within reach.

Once the volleyball game formally started, Saph put their book aside, sitting up so that all four of them could watch the game properly. It turned out everyone did manage to get the hang of it after a few fumbles, and very soon, the more competitive ones in the game were violently spiking and passing with appropriate adrenaline-fueled war cries.

“Karkat’s a fucking natural, huh,” Cecil said.

“I mean, you get to hit things and it’s acceptable if you hit it angrily,” Kevin said, shrugging, before turning to his brother as he – and Cecil – both seemed to realize something.

“Whack-a-mole,” they both said in unison.

“They’re losing, though.” Hal motioned towards the scoreboard, which had Vriska’s team by a lead of 30-10.

“It’s the passion behind it,” Saph said, waving their hand in a dramatic flourish. “Also it’s just funny watching him.”

On cue, down at the beach, Karkat jumped to intercept the ball as it started falling towards his court, striking it down violently – only for it to not clear the net and instead hit it square on.

All four of them winced.

“That was close though,” Hal said.

“You got this, Karkat!” Kevin cheered anyway.

Sadly, a few minutes later, Karkat did not in fact, get it. His team lost by twenty-five points while Vriska’s rallied for another round, and the losers were too tired and demoralized to take them up on it.

Thankfully, another group of tourists jogged over, friendly faces beaming as they asked if they could play against Vriska’s team instead.

“I’m swimming,” Eridan said, stepping back as he declined. Terezi tilted her head while Vriska frowned as she turned towards him, arms crossed. “It’s hot out and I came here for the ocean in the first place,” the boy said, before turning towards the cottage and – spotting Hal – called out, “Hey, Strider!”

“Why don’t you play?” Hal turned to Kevin. “It’s against another team anyway, and they should know volleyball already, you won’t be unfairly playing against novices.”

Kevin hummed, scratching the back of his neck. Spotting Eugene – who had been on Vriska’s team since Terezi dragged him into it – similarly decline to participate in another game, he nodded. “Yeah, I can sub in for Gene. You sub in for Ampora.”

“I’ve never played.”

“Can’t be that hard for you, can’t it, Mr. Prodigy?” Saph teased, nudging his shoulder. “Hit the damn volleyball and make sure to keep it within the court. Don’t hit people with it. That’s basically the game.”

“I’m a prodigy with machines – if anything, I’m the archetypal nerd, not the jock,” Hal said, though he was already standing up.

“If you and your brother can self-teach yourselves how to fight, you can wing this,” Saph said.

Fair enough. And Hal supposed he could look up a quick manual of the rules right now –

He blinked rapidly, swaying to the side a bit as he suddenly found himself disoriented. Shaking his head, he stood up properly. There was that weird feeling of his thoughts escaping him again.

What was he doing, again?

“Strider!” Eridan called again. Hal turned towards the beach, where Eugene had now joined some of the others in the water, and Eridan was about a foot away from the waves, Anshu in tow.

Right, right. Some volleyball game.

“Yeah, yeah, wait up,” he said, jogging down to the court.

He missed Saph’s smile slide off their face as they looked up to the sky from behind their tinted glasses. And as he wasn’t looking up, he didn’t see the hairline crack that rain across the cloudless expanse of blue above them.

“I just fixed that,” Sapphrel mumbled, clicking their tongue, before snapping their fingers and watching as the sky resealed itself.

#

JANUARY 26, 2014

NIGHT VALE

The android boy still didn’t wake.

Every morning, Leon took a tester and opened up a small panel in his arm to see if he was still responsive to the power core in his chest, and every morning, results showed that yes, his body was functional even if the face plate was a little scuffed up. He stayed on the couch, completely idle to the world while the others tried their best to figure out what was wrong with him and how to get news about the rest of the world when time and space fluctuated in this weird-ass city, in between cleaning up the large pyre that the Angeles kid’s body had been burned on a few days ago.

Their best friend – the taller boy whose red hair smelled like cherries instead of wine like Eugene’s did – had insisted on putting their remains to rest that way, as per their instructions to make sure that they didn’t leave a physical form behind. Given that they were supposed to be a Sgrub player in this universe, Terezi had no idea why, but that kid always seemed shifty.

People had a certain smell when they lied – an acrid, slightly sour scent that made Terezi’s throat burn a bit – but the late mini-Heir-of-Doom carried about their conversations without a single scent to their words. Sure, their text smelled like camphor and tasted like mint, but their voice – water was a million times less bland than it.

Whether they were lying or telling the truth, their voice remained the same, no matter how the tone or the pitch varied.

It was freaky.

Though, perhaps Terezi shouldn’t be thinking that. The kid was dead, after all, and it was technically a martyr’s death given that they were stalling the end of the world by suffering through whatever injuries the universe should have gotten. They were close, barely even friends, but Terezi wasn’t insensitive.

With the pyre behind the house now mostly taken down, though, the others no longer had much to busy themselves with. Obviously, going back into the wider world was asking for trouble given whatever news they got was always about some massive disaster or another fucking up another part of civilization, but staying here also meant that they were all just basically waiting for something to happen, useless to themselves and to everyone else.

While the others were taking the lack of activity as an opportunity to face their grief, Vriska was either running around town barging into buildings that were either dangerous (“So, I went to the Library today – ” “Why do you have a huge bite on your arm?” “Didn’t you hear me? I went to the Library today.”), so out of the way she was in danger of getting lost, (“Found some weirdoes who call themselves baristas and they were hiding at the edge of town, super far from the city center, and…stop looking at me like that, I’m not Strider, I’m not going to go over the border and get into a fucking coma), or just plain weird (“Did you know there’s a puppy infestation at the local theatre?” “…what the fuck is a puppy?”).

Terezi would have told her to be a bit more vary of a city they weren’t familiar with that clearly had nightmarish attractions and surprises waiting at every nook and corner (not that Alternia was much better, but it wasn’t like they liked having to deal with their home planet’s bloodthirsty flora and fauna alongside bloodthirsty neighbors), but she couldn’t blame the girl when they were all just stuck…doing nothing.

She wasn’t the only one who noticed it. And truthfully, it wasn’t just Vriska who shared the same sentiment either. Strider, before falling into his shutdown-coma thing, sometimes muttered to himself out loud while thinking. Eugene’s expression flickered into concern every time he caught news of the outside world, but he used to always glance towards the Anathema Point back when they were alive, as if he was reminding himself to trust whatever plans they had.

Still, there was just some feeling that they’d been…set aside. Pushed the bleachers, taken off the field and hidden.

For what, Terezi had no idea, but she did know the Angeles kid was behind it. Since most of the kids who had been with her and Vriska had been their friends, they’d been the liaison between the Safehouse and their little mismatched posse, and if what Eugene’s said was right, they were also the one to suggest moving everyone to Night Vale.

And then there was the fact that they’d left instructions for Ruben when they died. It reminded Terezi too much of Aradia letting things play out when they were still setting up for their Sgrub session – since the kid had some Doom stuff going on, could they listen to the voices of the dead too, then? Receive instructions from them?

Currently, Terezi found herself stepping into the bedroom that Strider had been moved to, tucked into bed as if he was asleep when he was as still as a corpse, the only thing setting him apart from one the metallic smell of his chassis and the occasional sniffs of ozone that Terezi got from his whirring reactor core.

The kid was alive, obviously, and there was nothing wrong with his hardware, but he was just…unresponsive.

“Tin can’s still down and out?” Vriska asked behind her. Terezi hadn’t heard her footsteps, too deep in her own thoughts as she was.

“Unfortunately,” she said, carefully navigating her way around his bed. The floorboards creaked across her as Vriska went to the other side and immediately sat down at the edge of the mattress, if the creak of the bedsprings was any indication.

“I don’t get why they don’t just take out what’s inside and then scrap the rest; something clearly fucked up in his body if he’s not receiving enough power to boot up.”

“They can’t replace it easily since we’re stuck here,” Terezi said.

She could hear the pout in Vriska’s voice when she replied. “Oh, boo-hoo, it’s not like the asshole’s going to use it if it’s just going to be a useless piece of metal. Might as well ditch everyone the trauma of watching something that looks like a corpse just lie still for days.”

“We also have no idea if abruptly disconnecting him from his power source would do anything. This guy’s got a sleep mode.”

“So it really is just some coma.”

“Looks like it.”

Vriska huffed. The bed creaked again as she stood, and then Terezi heard her footsteps march out the room.

After a few minutes, she returned with someone else – footsteps lighter than hers, carrying with him the scent of pumpkin spice. The Miscer boy.

“What?” Jeremiah asked.

“Check if the tin can’s in sleep mode.”

“I’m – I don’t know how to do that,” Jeremiah said as Vriska deposited him on the edge of the bed. “I’m not that tech-savvy, I barely know what the fuck people are talking about when they list out computer specs.”

“You’re the only one still in the hive,” Vriska said.

Terezi raised an eyebrow. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Mr. G and Mrs. H went to restock the pantry,” Jeremiah said. “Eugene and the others are going around town to see if anyone’s got experience in waking someone up who just suddenly collapsed and wouldn’t wake up.”

“Huh. Well, your town’s weird as fuck – ” Vriska started.

“It’s not my town.”

She ignored that. “ – so maybe your boy got caught up with whatever curse or infestation or weird eldritch thing or another populates this place and you’ve got a remedy.”

“I don’t live here,” Jeremiah said. “I have no idea what to even look for. I was in the house because I was tired and wanted to sleep, and you dragged me out my room.”

“Yeah, well, someone’s gotta to get things done around here.” Vriska’s nails tapped against Strider’s metal arm. “Strider Senior Red Edition was red with that kid who died, right? He’s got to know something about why they stranded us here in the middle of nowhere.”

“I have…no idea what a fourth of what you just said meant, but I genuinely have no idea how to help Hal,” Jeremiah said. His weight shifted on the bed, and Terezi imagined that perhaps he was waving his arms about as he spoke. “Look, I don’t even know if his software’s functional. For all I know, his hardware’s fine because there’s nothing wrong with it, but his software’s fucked. Or maybe they’re both alright, and there’s just some incompatibility issue! Or if he’s one of those tv-comas where they’re unresponsive but can hear people, since his hardware’s fine.”

“People do that here?” Terezi asked.

“I don’t know, I’m pretty sure they don’t, but he’s a fucking robot,” Jeremiah said.

All three of them fall silent, even Vriska, surprisingly, but the reason for the girl’s sudden pause made itself evident as she said, “If he can, you can check can’t you?” Then, “Not you, rat boy, I meant Pyrope.”

“Huh?”

“If he’s in a coma and he can actually still hear or like, has some awareness of what’s going on around him, you can’t check, can’t you?” she asked, and then, when Terezi just tilted her head, said, “You’re a Seer of Mind? Hello?”

“I’m not sure if that would work on robots,” Terezi said. “And I’ve never actually mind-read anyone, you know. I’ve only been using that to help us win our game.”

“Well, it’s time to get literal, Pyrope. Everyone else has been doing it.” The girl’s tone dropped to something akin to jealousy. Terezi immediately untensed in understanding. Right. “Didn’t you sit through that whole lecture Ampora Senior had about Seers and sight powers with Lalonde?”

She did, but she’d mostly stuck to the sidelines, far too wary about the new face (especially a creepily friendly highblood – she’d learned a lot about taking friendliness at face value from Gamzee and his murderous rampage, thank you very much), and it was Lalonde who’d gotten most of the advice on how Seer abilities were latent and far-reaching like a Bard’s destruction was, and far easier to call on than most classes.

“You want me to mindread the robot?” Terezi asked.

“At least we’ll know if we have to toss him out or not,” Vriska said.

“Hey!” Jeremiah protested.

“Besides,” Vriska said, ignoring him again. The bed shifted as she sat back down. “What else is there to do. If he’s in there, you can ask him what that little white-haired twerp was planning.”

Terezi pursed her lips. On one hand…she had no idea if it would work, but on the other hand, there really was nothing they could do at the moment. Night Vale might be the last safe place in the world so they couldn’t go out to ask for answers, and whatever the Angeles kid had known had died with them, and they were making sure it remained buried with them given that they were making sure their body couldn’t be used for their revival.

“No risk, no reward,” Vriska said. “Come on, Pyrope.”

That was a point. No risk, no answers.

It was worth a shot.

Just to anchor herself and make it easier for her to mentally visualize, Terezi reached forward until she found one of Strider’s forearms, holding onto it tightly. Behind her red glasses, she closed her eyes, pulling most of her focus into a singular point, the singular idea of Hal Strider.

At first, there was nothing. She couldn’t imagine anything, after all, lest she muddy whatever she was trying to find, but…slowly, there it was, something creeping at the edges of her consciousness – it made her hair stand on end from the static electricity about it, and the smell of ozone was much, much stronger than it usually was around his physical form, to the point where it crawled down her throat and made it dry, forcing her to cough.

The image of it slowly solidified in her mind’s eye, a whirling mess of red and black that nearly bowled her over with how heavy and tangled it felt.

There was something else there too, something that had camphor crawling into her lungs and mint forcing another cough out her throat –

“What are you doing here?”

Vast empty. That was the first thing that Terezi realized as she blinked her eyes open to a massive space of nothing. There was no ceiling, no floor, no walls – no sense of up or down or proper distance, just a complete lack that surrounded her. She lifted a hand, surprised to even see the shape of it, before she blinked again as she realized why she could do that.

This wasn’t real. This wasn’t a physical world, because her physical eyes had been burned.

But her mind could visualize clearly.

The faint sound of a drop of water behind her had her whirling around, summoning her sword-cane – which materialized in her hand without a problem just like it would if she’d taken it out of her sylladex. Now, there was a sense of distance, as there was a figure shrouded in all white several meters away from her, the space where their feet touched rippling as it they’d just stepped onto water.

The figure, whatever it was, as due to how far away it was, the only thing Terezi could see was that its head was terribly bloated and misshapen, tilted said malformed head to the side, appraising her.

“Oh,” it said, “I know you.”

Well, that wasn’t alarming at all.

Before she could react, though, the thing was already in front of her. She didn’t blink, didn’t get distracted – and it didn’t disappear and reappear, it was just at one point and then at the next like two drastically different frames in reality. Now that it was closer, Terezi could see that its head was actually a massive skull – one that was in fact, terribly bloated and misshapen, as the bone had warped and swollen to form multiple other skulls. It looked more like several human skulls of varying sizes had been melted and stuck together in a mess of mutated bone.

The figure raised its hands, which were thin but mostly normal, though they looked extremely ashy, like the figure had been drained of all its blood. Slowly, it tapped its hands on its skull.

“Hey,” the person said, now that the skull had disappeared without so much as disintegrating into ash or melting away. It was just there and then it wasn’t, revealing a familiar, though very dead, and very blank-eyed face.

“…hey,” Terezi said.

Angeles smiled, and said, in that blank voice of theirs: “It’s been a while, Miss Pyrope.”