Archive of Our Own ^beta

Spinning.

Land, roll, scan.

Nothin'.

Up and moving, scanning, down.

Nothin' — nada!

Creep to better cover, away from the insertion point.

Wait.

He was in an open courtyard ringed with tropical plants.  Eerie silence.

The ground was covered by a comfortably springy low growth, seemingly untended but not growing in disarray.

Warm; air's thicker, less oxygen than Mobius. Gravity's higher. Fuckin' hell, is it ever higher. Sky's distinctly paler; well, that fits with the oxygen, anyway. Sun's a lot richer yellow, bit more orange to it.

Nothing moved within his view from the foliage.

Sonic waited an hour before he was satisfied that there were no immediate threats, then waited a second hour.

 

---

 

The courtyard was run down.  The whole place was a ruin, in fact.

Best guess, empty fer five or six hunnert years... so who's mowin' the lawn...?

It was spacious, and there were some underground storage areas that could be useful.  There was a graveyard in the bailey, the stones bearing unusual epitaphs: “He's dead, Jim”, “Here lies Louise, a thief shouldn't sneeze”, “Here lies poor Mel, he cast the wrong spell ”, and a dozen more of the same.

With no sign of Robotnik anywhere, and Tails possibly lost in that void between the worlds (or worse: drawn back to the newborn black hole of Möbius), Sonic had fallen back on his genetic programming and training: survive, evade, resist, and escape.  There was no one to evade and nothing to resist.  That left survive and escape; with no world-gate on this side of things, nor a control device, escape only meant somewhere else in the same place.

Either way, he had to look around.

Maybe he'd get lucky and find Robotnik hiding somewhere.

There was a well near the gate to the north, still functional — a normal enough low circular stone wall, but also an ugly thing, its roof shaped like a toad with a Goblin face and eyes larger than soup bowls and its tongue sticking out between its teeth, three long legs serving as the poles to hold up the roof, with its front left leg drawn up — and it had the unnerving quality of watching him, its face reacting to his actions, giving him the distinct impression that it didn't trust him one bit and would gladly welcome several more centuries of solitude; he took this as an obvious indicator of his mind having been rattled in transit.

From the towers he could make out a golden ziggurat far to the northeast and a valley spread out all across the northern and western area.  The castle itself was located atop a mesa adjacent to a broad bluff all across the north, with a broad channel separating them, and overlooking a cove to the southwest that spread partly to the east.  It was a broad cove, really, almost a bight more than a cove, but that wasn't a distinction that concerned him much.

The cove was what gave the most disturbing view.

He couldn't be certain of the distance, but all the way to the horizon, stretching in either direction, there was nothing but lava — presumably the same lava abutting the ends of the mesa to curl around and become the channel between it and the mainland; that might be an island too, but it seemed clear that the mesa almost certainly was.  Long, shallow waves undulated slowly across the surface of the viscous liquid, like the ocean floor set to crawl at a more-visible pace, or the seifs of a desert filmed and sped up many fold, the distant crackling resolving itself from the undifferentiated subliminal background hiss that he'd been hearing.  Huge crocodiles basked on the cove's beach, along with several visible in the lava nearby.  No; files and memories spun in his mind: phobosuchus, maybe.

Least now I know why I been sweatin' my balls off.

The fuck is this place? If I'm dead, this sure ain't like any afterlife I ever heard o'....

 

---

 

It didn't take long for Sonic to explore the ruins.  No sign of Robotnik showed itself at any point, nor yet had Tails made an appearance.  It seemed as if neither had ever arrived here, leaving Sonic with only his frustrated regrets.

The walls stood perhaps three hundred feet east to west by four hundred feet north to south.  There was enough of the old castle remaining that it was eminently defensible as it stood, and the catacombs beneath would afford more than sufficient space for living and storage, but there was no doubt that there had been so much more to the immediate lands at one time.

The frontispiece read Barrik Keep.

Don't mean I can't rename it Aberwyvern, he thought to himself, an' bonus — it's been pre-disastered.

But no barbican? he tisked to himself, shaking his head.

Whatever had befallen the place, one thing was clear: no one now remained.

To the south of the castle were the remains of an apparently once-thriving village and farmlands.  There was some damage from time and weather, but the disturbing part was the eerie quiet.  From the main body of the island came an incessant background of bird calls and insect trills.  Here, there was only silence, aside from the wuthering lava waves below.  Some of the background sound resembled that of an ocean shore, though quieter and more bass, but with other sounds alien to a shoreline, faint impressions of ripping fabric and tinkling glass.  The demesne extended fairly far to the west and somewhat west-northwest, but less than a mile south-southwest from the wall, the village and fields were cut sharply by the cliff face.  It wasn't quite perfectly clean, but so close as to make no difference.  He could only assume that the land there had fallen away into the lava — or been cut clean away by some titanic force.  What remained formed a cove, the cliff curving around gently at first, then turning sharply south.  From atop the southernmost tower of the castle — or citadel, really, its walls continuing outward to surround the village and attached farmland as an outermost bailey — he could see the land stretching away and spreading westward for some distance, while the beachhead below showed signs of movement.

What appeared in the distance to be objects or creatures crept across the sand and floated in the lava, presumably more phobosuchoi.  Whatever they were, they were easily the size of large logs, perhaps forty feet or more in length, based upon the trees around them.

As he watched, one of them drew too close to a dark blemish in the sand.  In a frenzy of motion, the phobosuchus began twisting and whipping about, seeming to have sprouted tentacles or vines.  He was too far away to hear the struggle, but it was over almost as soon as it had begun.  It looked as if the phobosuchus had been snapped in half before being dragged beneath the surface, the blemish then lightening and disappearing.

Well, if all else fails, there's always the Nestea plunge...

He snorted to himself, knowing full well the complete futility of such a gesture on his part.  Even that could offer no escape for him.

Just keep swimmin'.

 

As one might reasonably expect, the castle's cistern worked perfectly well, after a little pond scum had been raked off of the top — he noted the green algal scum and duckweed on his mental checklist of food reserves, along with the barely discernible snails throughout.  Someone had stocked it with various fish at some point, since there was a surprising ecosystem flourishing within, complete with a number of water fowl and seagrapes; at a glance, there appeared to be several other species of edible freshwater seaweeds present.  The cistern water would still need boiling even after filtering¹ through its sand layers to reach the cache basin, that went without saying, but it worked as a source to start from.

Least the birds 'n' fish ain't been cybernized.

Through a fractured stone doorway in the southeastern corner of the keep and downward below ground level lay tunnels and rooms, within one of which was a sizable overflow that bled down one of the dungeon's interior walls into a cool pool.

Might be nice ta soak in later, but not really potable — prob'ly seat half a dozen, too, he grinned.

What caught his eye most was that it was neither part of the keep's original design nor a natural recess, but a later addition, as if someone had found it necessary to add an open-access chimney between the basin and... wherever it let out farther below.  Whatever the cause, it resulted in a cool breeze flowing through the dungeon at all times, the whole maintaining at perhaps a few degrees above sixty.

He'd spotted some bulette shells and shell-plates earlier.  How he knew what the beasts were, he had no clue, but he knew them, somewhere in the back of his head.  Huge things, nine feet tall and twelve feet long with toothy parrot-like beaks and thick claws for rapid burrowing and rending, built like bulldogs on steroids and armored all around.  He'd have to hunt some of them down eventually.  Clear the territory as his own.  Plus, with adults weighing upward of twelve thousand pounds, even a yearling calf might stock a larder well at perhaps fifteen hundred pounds, or a nestling of maybe a couple hundred.

As it stood, he set up some bamboo pipes to keep a continuous flow running from the basin upstairs to a bulette shell outside, with easy access to firewood that he stored beneath a broad outcrop of stone, sheltering it all from sun and weather.

The arrangement was simple.  First a medium-high heat under it to drive off any volatiles, then an overflow to another shell of high heat for boiling the remaining water, and finally a larger shell doming over the second one as a condensing surface that kept a constant drip from the tilted edge to collect the condensate in a fourth shell.  This was a functional but temporary design for immediate use; hellaciously wasteful and in place only because there was such a large reservoir to start from.  He'd arrange a more-sealed system of clay or metal once he'd ensured a minimum of daily living needs.  There was a fair amount of metal products stored below, but he wanted to use them sparingly.

Distilling water meant a clean source at all times, with plenty to spare.

Spare water could be put to other uses.

So could the still².

While the courtyard and baileys above were rampant with dandelions, roses, marigolds, goldenrod, ragweed (snow didn't look likely any time soon, though), sumpweed, fireweed — even milkweed, were it to come to that — he found that he needn't subsist on these alone, if at all.

In that dungeon beneath the keep, many rooms were dedicated to storage as if against an expected siege.  The stores hadn't all survived the centuries, mostly those perishables that one would simply hold no such hope for, but many were perfectly intact — salt, pemmican, honey, sugars, extracts, beans, vinegars, corn starch, syrups, powdered milk, powdered eggs, pickled fruit and vegetables, fruit preserves, sealed containers of dried herbs and spices, and even soy sauce.  The presence of some of these surprised him, especially the last item, as did the fact of some of them in particular seemingly still being edible, but he couldn't argue with it.  Enough remained to see a hundred people through several years of siege without external support.³

Those same storage areas led to some other interesting finds — some rooms held simple machinery, tools, and spare parts, others contained textiles and all manner of raw materials.  Amongst them was an area beneath the smithy.  It seemed that the smith had had some rather advanced ideas on rapid fire repeating flintlocks.  Seeing this, he nodded at the design, his eyes tightening as he shook his head sadly at the same and closed the door.  An' here they were, right “on the beach” the whole time...

Surveying the once-tended fields gone fallow, he found an abundance of now-wild grains and tubers, not to mention a profusion of fruit and berries in the village and along the main wall.  The village even offered a fair variety of herbs and vegetables gone wild, should he so choose to infuse them.  Everything that he'd need was immediately to hand, but it was the sweet corn and sugar cane that really drew a smile — he'd search for beets, maples, and honeybees soon enough, but the date and coconut palms⁴ would do just fine to start with.

Everything in its time.

For the moment, he set to work with a will, singing off-key and nasal and a bit flat throughout.

“Well my name's John Lee Pettimore,
   same as my daddy an' his daddy before.
 Ya hardly ever saw Grandaddy down here,
   he only come ta town 'bout twice a year.
 
 He'd buy a hunnert pounds o' yeast an' some copper line,
   everybody knew that he made moonshine...”

 

---

 

His memories didn't make a lot of sense.  They weren't particularly hazy by any means, or even jumbled, he just remembered things that couldn't have happened the way that he remembered them if other things that he remembered were true; too many lines of events that were mutually irreconcilable.

He knew that he'd been an unwavering, dedicated troop.  He knew that he'd always questioned Robotnik's plans, and eventually his very ethos.

He knew that he'd been decanted as a fully functioning clone in the masses, proving himself superior in the death mazes in every instance, every measurable parameter, no matter the surprises and distractions... a lot of dead hedgehogs, cybernized animals pitted against one another.  He knew that he'd spent a lot of time with his grandfather, hiking through the cool green hills of Möbius and its mystical-seeming caves, exploring the marble ruins below and their water-filled labyrinths and aquatic ruins, the remnants of ancient cities of lost civilizations and their erratically functional technological wonders often as surreal as a carnival in a dream.

He knew that he was merely one of many experimental designs, all working unquestioningly toward a common goal.  He knew that for every time that he'd sought a connection, friendship, he'd met only confusion or disgust.  He knew that he'd joined a resistance group, seeking to overthrow Robotnik.

He knew that his programming had led inexorably to... something; he could feel it just beyond reach of his memory, something that had been in line with Robotnik's plans all along.  He knew that he'd spent large amounts of time studying other worlds' cultural records, uploading them voraciously into side-channels within his genetic memory, viewing them externally, analyzing their worldviews and mores, drawn increasingly further away from his peers over time, eventually embodying the alien concepts of agency and self-actualization, the innate right to self-determination — at once so basic that there weren't even words to describe these things, like a fish describing water, and again so at odds as to be insensible, as much so as describing a particular shade of nearly-invisible violet to a blind man.  Sometimes his research was just an excuse to distance himself, or create a protective barrier; other times it gave him leverage that the others couldn't even comprehend being there, much less its uses; most of the time it was simply refuge.

Beneath all of this was a generalized feeling of having known a better life in some other way, a world without this dichotomy, a “normal” place.

He knew who he was, while at the same time having not a single clue.

OK campers, rise and shine, and don't ferget'cher booties 'cause it's cold out there... it's cold out there every day.

“Ave atque vale, mi amice,” he pronounced as he settled the last soft stream-smoothed stone onto the pile, “et requiescet in pace...”

He returned his attention to the bottle that he'd retrieved from the dungeon's endless stores, pouring first a measure over the stones, and then another for himself.  It was some weird shit; a good, heavy molasses rum underneath, but with a light and playful fruity-something brandy overall, like an almost-peach flavored green wine, a little bit of a buzz to it, but still plenty of maturing left to come — but it was just the kind of shit Tails'd like: almost an egg cream without the bubbles.

In the back of his mind, he could hear a refrain playing, soft and sad and comfortingly bitter.

Freedom's just another word for
  nothin' left to lose...

For now, this would do until he could find a better escape, or at least until his own brews came to fruition.

 

---

 

“Oh, I got a lo-ve-ly bunch o' coconuts...
 here they are all standin' in a row...”

He bowled an empty coconut down a poorly improvised lane, pulling a long draught of fermented coconut water⁵ in his other hand and trying not to taste it.  He'd lucked out here — so much that he was tempted to call it suspiciously lucky — aside from the whole place being full of food, the coconut crop almost always yielded good white meat, with so low a percentage of bad pinkish-light-brownish stuff that he almost didn't bother checking them anymore.  Almost.

Shit needs some salty lime 'n' tequila, or at least some banana. Got all of 'em around. Gotta remember that fer the next round. Or at least prep some nice girly frou-frou drinks.

“Hey, an' we got us an Earth-shatterin' kaboom,” he remarked to the empty air as the bamboo pins fell and he lurched drunkenly.

The sun at its zenith beat down mercilessly, but it was cool enough where he stood.  There was a conveniently wide overhang along the northern wall, and he took advantage of it for this very reason.

Lunch time.  He glanced over at the spider-pig on the spit.  The stones had been a pain to haul and set right and mortar, but it was paying off.

Takin' fer-fuckin'-ever. Fuck it. Prob'ly just slice some off an' fry the shit f'now.

Peach palm fruit and hearts, pond apples, smoked spider-pork, and something to wash it all down with.  It had sounded like such a nice idea, that morning.

Testing the foodstuffs held within the storage rooms and growing throughout the local area had been tortuous.  Avoiding bright shiny berries or waxen surfaces, looking for clear watery saps, sniffing versus telltale acrid chemicals and almond-like scents, dabbing each against his skin and waiting, doing it again against his tongue and waiting some more, tasting versus bitterness or soapy flavors, finally taking in tiny amounts and waiting, repeating this in larger amounts until he was finally sure that each held no nasty surprises.  In the end, the items that looked and smelled like food that he recognized had all turned out to be safe, and although some of the wild plants and animals had given him the shits or had him vomiting almost immediately, and one had seen him fevered for two days, he'd worked out which ones were which.  He had yet to dare the fungi.

Now he was bored.  The mesa was safe, the immediate surrounds reasonably well provisioned, but there was no zest to life.  Nothing presented a challenge, nothing of interest captured his attention, there weren't any interesting cultures — or any culture at all — no new life, no new civilizations, no place to go that he hadn't gone before.

And everyone whom he'd known was dead.

“They're all dead. Everybody's dead, Dave.”

Everything that he'd sought to save was gone forever.

No more orders; no more fighting.  It was freeing at first.  Then relaxing and empty.  Now... it was just empty.

No more orders; no more fighting.

Just empty.

Mostly empty.  Every so often there was a creepy feeling of being watched, but he could never pin it down.

Ruru was no help at all.  It didn't help any that he'd imagined the annoying self-centered Pixie-thing into existence long weeks gone, for all that she protested otherwise, but the least that she could do would be to offer insight or decent conversation.  Instead, she'd just shown up one evening, half-naked and demanding food, and since then had simply spent her time making his pineapple liqueur disappear.  Hell, even a lap dance — or I guess that'd be a pole dance, or maybe an “arm job”... slip 'n' slide? Nah: sit 'n' spin!  He chuckled to himself at the images conjured by his ruminations.  Meh, prob'ly fer the best, since she might drown if she tried it. Freakin' tamagotchi.

Oh, he certainly wouldn't object one bit were she to show such interest and lend him a hand or a couple of arms as it were, and the lascivious images that this thought conjured inevitably led him to some titillating but mostly hilarious images as their conclusions, but somehow he just didn't think of her that way.  Forasmuch as she ran around practically naked most of the time, and mostly or entirely naked the rest of the time, yet even so she simply didn't register for him like that.  She was his friend and drinking buddy: very nice to look at, plenty of fun to hang out with, but somehow just not sleeping-together material, at least not beyond the literal sense at the end of the night when they collapsed in a stupor onto the hides and pillows.  She never showed any interest in helping or hindering whenever he took matters into his own hand as sleep stalked them, or upon awaking; neither particularly intrigued nor obviously repulsed, she seemed about as interested in his doings as she was in his personal choice of drink for the morning, or the afternoon, or the evening, or the night: he could scratch his own itch whenever he wished, morning, noon, and night, without any fuss whatsoever from her, but it was always an entirely solo effort.

These thoughts were on his mind as usual as he neared the fire pit, only to stand thunder-struck by what he beheld there.  With neither sign nor sound of another's presence, there sat a footprint in the sand.  Even in his intoxicated state, he searched up and down the wall, finding no other impression but this one.  Returning with care, he examined it once more, sure that he'd imagined it, having seen no evidence of such before, and there lay the very print still.

I'm losin' it. More. I'm losin' it even more. This I don't need...

The lyrics of a song played at his subconscious, his sense of unreality, of surreality, coming home to roost once more, embodied almost perfectly by the distorted strings and a whirling, precessing beat.

...and you see a girl's brown body
  dancing through the turquoise,
and her footprints make you follow
  where the sky loves the sea...