#soter

Soter

Soter is the denizen of Jake Alassa's Land of Armor and Cliffs.

Soter doesn't have as much wacky behind-the-scenes stuff as Khaos, but like all denizens, is still crazy powerful. Also like Hemera and Nix, Soter's color scheme does not match his player's text color. They do have color significance to this session's Cherubs, though, but I'll cover them after I do all the players ;3

Greek/Roman(?) Origins

Not much is known about the Greek god/spirit Soter, or if there is, I have found very little. As far as my research goes, Soter is a god/spirit of safety, preservation, and deliverance from harm. He is commonly associated with Zeus in the Orphic Hymnns, and serves as an overseerer and savior, which suits the Light aspect. The two scarfrobes around him echo the two snakes in a caduceus, a symbol of Hermes/Mercury.

There is a solid chance that I'm making the following up, so please correct me if you know for certain that I'm wrong bc I'm operating off of memory here. I remember reading somewhere that the Roman empire had waystones along roads that looked like the head of a spirit/god of security, to bless travelers with safety and to show them the way. I'm like 60% sure that was the Roman equivalent of Soter? So that ties into the themes of deliverance and preservation that I'm going for. Take that with a pinch of salt, my research is infuriatingly vague there.

Hey, This Guy Isn't Cetus

Yeah, well.

Homestuck is inconsistent with whether denizens are tied to aspect. Sure, Vriska and Rose had Cetus, but that's because their planet was super watery (fit for a sea monster). Both Jake (English) and Karkat had Abraxas, and their aspects are just shy of being as far apart as possible. The only Denizen that is absolutely for certain tied to an aspect is Echidna, with Space. Alli Sharpe (this session's Space player) follows this trend. It's also only implied that Hephaestus is anywhere similar to Echidna. Aradia isn't explicitly stated to have Hephaestus as her denizen, and she is a time player. I go into more detail about why Kronos is a better fit for this session's time denizen in Mark's post, which I'll make later.

Also LOAAC doesn't really have any good places for a sea monster to dwell, now does it? (I suppose I'll compensate with a Kraken pun. Sea also: the Crackening)

There is some alchemical significance with the whole Jupiter/Tin thing, but I'll round all the session's alchemical stuff in one big superpost later. Let's get into the land and quest now.

Land of Armor and Cliffs

Jake's land, the Land of Armor and Cliffs, is an almost entirely level planet with huge cracks and holes running through it, revealing glowing streams of light deep underneath. These are not fjords, like would be found on Mark's land (the Land of Acid and Fjords), as they are not formed by glaciers, but instead through earthquakes in an event dubbed the Crackening. The clay that composes the plateaus is a bright purple, and lush neon pink vegetation lines most of the cracks.

Design

As I stated in the Khaos post, the players' lands in this session follow a specific naming scheme: Land of (Two syllable word dealing with the player's past) and (One syllable geographical feature).

The Cliffs refer to the sheer edges of the plateaus that drop all the way down to the narrow rivers of light that fill the empty space. All of the plant life is concentrated around these areas, though they were like that long before the Crackening (the worldwide tectonic event that split the earth). As such, almost all of the consort settlements are around and some divided by the ravines.

Speaking of, the Armor refers to the consorts, which are turtles. It also is with regard to the fact that the ground itself acts as plated armor for Soter's Lair. Jake's past has to deal with how his mother was a chronic gambler and gambled away all of the money they had instead of paying bills or for necessities. Jake's armor here is the fact that he relied on willful ignorance and pretended like everything was okay instead of confronting his mom. One day, his mom was dragged out of their home by loan sharks, leaving Jake homeless. As a Mage of Light, he experienced/suffered from misfortune and by failing to confront the truth, he lost his home and only family.

The way he as a Mage experiences, suffers, and understands his aspect is very similar to how a Knight might protect themselves from/with theirs. This is a big reason why Dean Casuco (this session's Knight of Rage) and he are able to bond and empathize with each other so easily, and why they have such big influence over each other. In fact, both players' lands and quest are the only ones in this session to deal with war of some kind, but they engage with it in very different ways.

Consorts

The consorts of LOAAC are Turtles. Jake likes turtles. Before the Crackening, the turtles established some pretty developed (and heavily fortified) settlements throughout the dense network of heavily forested... well, forests. This is all before the event, however. Nowadays there's all sorts of disarray. There are (heavily fortified) bridges between plateaus, but something about the light coming from the chasms degrades them quickly.

Quest (and lore drop, because I just couldn't stop typing, I guess)

Jake initially believes his quest is to find out who is planning to assassinate the turtle king and prevent it from happening. Jake spends almost all of his time in the (heavily fortified) Grand Library trying to research the geopolitical history of LOAAC, and must go out to retrieve specific books to put together leads on who it might be. This is where most of the combat happens, as all the different settlements and kingdoms are unwelcoming to all outsiders, which leads to underling buildup around their (heavily fortified) borders.

At this point in the story, Jake and Kane have started to form feelings towards each other. It's some messy combination of Flushed and Caliginous, but humans don't really recognize the latter as romantic anyway, so it's fine (*Laughs maliciously*). They talk a lot in the downtime between getting to their respective destinations, as both of them have a lot of travel involved. There is a lot of conflict between the two, as a result of their entirely conflicting classpects (Mage of Light and Heir of Void), but a big help towards mending these is Kane's alexithymia sort of ensuring honesty. Kane has no clue how they feel, and so emotions don't serve as much of a hinderance clouding their reasoning (or so they think), and Jake has a certain soft spot for reasoning. Kane is also sort of like a project to Jake. If that sounds kind of toxic, that's because it is, but they work it out eventually. Jake craves understanding, and Kane is the unknowable. Hijinks ensue.

Quite early on into this sequence, much earlier than anyone else in their quests, Jake stumbles upon a very rare (and heavily fortified) book that was assumed to be lost, and upon returning it to the Grand Library, it acts as a key, opening up the entrance to Soter's (heavily fortified) den deep within the earth.

Jake finds Soter already awake, when his research concluded that he should be asleep still. He discovers that Soter has been manipulating the world population since the Crackening to become isolated and to put up walls between each other, almost a cross between a helicopter parent and a 1984 "big brother" type entity.

You see, even though Jake confronted his denizen early, none of the denizens in the session are sleeping. In cannon, the denizens are commissioned by Derse to spread pollution and whatnot, then they go to sleep until the player shows up. Here, they all independently decide "screw that" and do things their own way, constantly meddling with their lands. The true enemy of the players' sessions in Homestuck was "always already here" but in this session, this enemy that I have so diabolically not shared with you yet takes a more... "always on the horizon" approach to such prophesied schemes. This empties out the narrative niche for an antagonist, so why not just use the antagonists given by the game itself? A lot. Very a lot.

Soter, the meddling overseer of LOAAC, presents Jake with

The Choice.

Embrace the "tyranny" in front of you. Take your place as this session's damned overseer; render all that is Void known and annihilate with your bonds, or

Let Freedom Reign.

Considering the weight of his options gets him seriously donked up. From there, the threat of assassination seems so small in comparison. Whatever Jake chose, it leads him to his true Quest. He himself begins to isolate from everyone else, and eventually leaves his planet for Skaia after one last lecture from Dean about "not putting up with his egghead denizen's rampant and malodorous bullshit."

The only way anyone learns about this is from the turtle king on LOAAC, who tells Kane that "The Mage is going on a holy pilgrimage to Skaia!" and "That's really all that he told us!" after Kane abandons their quest and reaches LOAAC through the gates. Kane gets more in tune with their powers the more that everyone else forgets about them. Kane is nearing the top of their echeladder, and starts to fade into Void. It gets to the point where Kane begins getting impressions of being elsewhere, nowhere even, sometimes getting bouts of amnesia. This is because they begin to start occupying the empty places around Jake.

Jake cuts off communication with everyone else, and brute forces his way through the other lands, Prospit, any crack or foothold in the session that will get him closer to Skaia; he has to get to Skaia. Throughout this, he starts seeing glimpses of Kane in his peripheral vision. A gap in a bookshelf. In a shadow beneath a tree. In the window of a building. The pause between sentences. He sees their face in a crowd of thousands. He reads their name in almost every empty page. But Jake is nearing the top of his echeladder, too. He starts noticing more, his perception focuses, his senses keener. And Kane starts to go away.

The last time they talked to each other, before all this Choice mess, it was about questions. Kane believes that a truly good question is ruined when it is answered, and Jake vehemently disagrees. Jake argued that everything has meaning; that everything has a purpose. Kane simply laughed and said, "I don't." Kane doesn't know why Jake even bothered with them in the first place, but Jake didn't have the heart to tell them that he was still searching for it. Maybe that's why his eyes hurt so much all the time. Is it because he spends too much time with them open, endlessly flipping through texts or scanning for leads, when any moment not looking for a way to Skaia is a moment wasted? Or is it because every time he closes his eyes, he thinks he sees Kane in that taunting darkness behind his eyelids, unable to speak to him, but forced to remember that he didn't say goodbye, blink after arduous blink. Another question without an answer. Those are getting rarer.

The more powerful that Jake gets, the larger his sphere of understanding grows. Kane has only ever found (lost) themself on the outside of that bubble, looking in. Kane is aimless. They spend a hell of a lot of time going nowhere, and even as quickly as they're going, it's not enough. Maybe that's what Khaos meant by "he might not be found," that Jake might find them first? Another wasteful search for meaning. Those are getting rarer. But what good would that do if Kane can't exist around him anyway? Kane knows better than to ruin that one with an answer. This leads Kane to head off and find an ectobiology lab floating away into the furthest ring via accidentally using their Void powers and clipping into Alli's peripheral vison this time during a zoomed out view of the medium. Y'know, because she's a Seer of Space and can do that. This lab was knocked out of the orbit comprising the Veil of this session's medium near the start of the session during one of Lono's (Lono Anakoni, the Sylph of Hope) Hope Surges she used on Alli when Alli first was hit with her Seer powers. But it had to happen in order for Kane to find it and make everyone's ectobiology clones, and Seers are all about what "has to happen". I'll cover that more in another post. Also I promise that this is relevant to Jake's issues. Anyway, Kane does the ectobiology, I'll cover the specific sequence of events in another another post. The only place left in range for them to get to, though, is Derse (as Derse is also technically in the Furthest Ring). On Derse, Kane meets up with Hiro's and Lono's dream selves, and they direct Kane to one of the transportalizers that would lead to a frog temple, if there was one in this session (more on that in another post). Because there's no valid destination, the destination of choice is like a perfectly generic location in the medium (a default coordinate of sorts). In the same vein of a perfectly generic object. This happens to be the very center of the medium, the core of the battlefield. As this session is not a Null Session, and further, the Green Sun already exists, there is no tumor. It seems that Kane's quest really was to crawl out from the center of a planet.

A Seer's expertise surrounds that which "has to happen," and Jake has learned that he simply does not have as easy access to that information as Alli does. What he does know is that the Mage deals with "what is happening" a whole lot easier, and what's happening right now is very bad. He spends almost all of his downtime looking up at Skaia from Prospit, and it's bad. Yeah, that whole "always on the horizon" guy I was talking about earlier (remember him?), well he's not quite on the horizon yet, but he's getting there, and it's not good. Jake has to get to Skaia. And it's not good enough to just fly up there as his dream self. It has to be his awake self. It has to. He gets impressions from the information around him, allowing him to glean entire books from skimming multiple at a time. His friends haven't stopped reaching out to him. They've actually pestered him more, recently. He can't talk to them. Not yet. Not when he could do something. So he does. His alchemizing equipment is back at his room on LOAAC, so he delves into a new realm of experimentation and research: His fetch modus. By selecting all empty data, he can load an empty card onto a card, then retrieve it, then turn it into storage space and partitions. He duplicates his storage space a lot this way, then he begins captchaloguing anything and everything he can get his hands on. By storing two items, then selecting a string of 8 digits from the middle of their agglutinated item codes to load onto a card, he can essentially design items bitwise. He deduces offhand that there are only 2^48 possibilities in terms of item codes, and there are many dud items that don't even render properly. It takes a lot of effort and fine-tuning, as the only patterns he can tell between items that vary by a single bit are long-winded and not elegant, to say the least. Along the way, he discovers [bixqbx!q], a code for a dual-sided fountain and ballpoint pen named "Riptiditpir" that could turn into a shortsword with a dagger on the other end. That might've come in handy, if he already couldn't see danger approaching a mile away. Literally. For transportation, he settles on [PCHOOOk] which is an-- oh, wait, no that's a violin stuffed with a potted plant, a cinderblock, and.. is that shaving cream? That doesn't fit at all. After a brisk and completely necessary reanalysis of the entire understood system of bitwise alchemy to accommodate the god damned shaving cream, he settles on [PCHOOOOO], which is a rocket pack. Good enough. One last nap though, just for good measure, while the night surrounds him like a cold, distant blanket.

Now that Kane and Jake's sequence of events are nearly lined up, let's smash them into each other like two action figures in a shitty embrace. But not like that at all, actually.

Ascent To God-Tier (Feat. Kane Mendoza)

Jake wakes up during the peak of noon on LOHAW. Again. Its sun burns, but it's a familiar feeling, and Jake has spent a long time this session heavily fortifying himself against the natural degradation that comes with continuous exposure to Light. He dons his rocket pack and shoots up into the sky. Whenever he passes by one of the gates, it's as if he can almost "see" where it goes... except for the seventh gate. Jake has a bad feeling of uncertainty surrounding that one. from there, it's a straight shot to Skaia. As he approaches the huge ball of sky, something is wrong. Are the clouds... darkening? A bunch of small red portals pop up around its atmosphere, almost like shields. Jake blitzes through the calculations in his head. There's not enough time to course correct. He knows how these portals operate. They'll smash him right into the Earth during the Reckoning.

Kane finally peels himself out of the battlefield. Who knew that increasing the complexity of a place exponentially seven times would thin it out some? Not Kane. Kane wouldn't even consider that in the first place. Something's off. Was this place always so... bright? A bunch of chess people fight to the death around them. As chess people do. They don't see Kane walking around, too focused on trying to not die to focus on some weird fleshy person and their cat vaguely drifting on the edge of their vision. Whatever,

Jake forces his eyes shut, hoping to see Kane again, to tell them goodbye. Kane hasn't been there for a long time, though, and Jake knows better than to let something be meaningless. He opens his eyes and faces whatever purpose Skaia has for him, head on and oh, no. he. he just... He just passed them. It was a tight squeeze, too. A shield blocked the gap he flew through maybe an instant after he passed it. A few instants, perhaps? Lucky shot, then. The chances of that... no, he was certain he'd crash. What was Skaia up to? The portals were gone, now. Why did it put up a barrier for him? Why did it let Jake through? Was it some kind of-- Jake crashed hard into a river, injuring himself in the process. --distraction.

No. No, no, nonono. Jake forces himself to stand, falling over on the bank of the river. He couldn't move his arm, his right eye was pooling with blood, and he was certain that he had punctured... something. This place is a chessboard, why are there rocks in the river? Why are there trees?! He has to keep going. He can't die here, he's not allowed to. He has to do this, to preserve this session.

Kane didn't plan this far ahead. Turtle guy said that Jake was going to Skaia. Here's Skaia. What now? Kane wanders around aimlessly. Something about this place wasn't too keen on letting them do any sort of Voidy thing, as if this whole damn planet was being watched. Kane didn't even have full control of it yet. So it probably wouldn't do much of anything. Kane walked for several minutes until they saw something that surprisingly wasn't white, black, or red. It was a yellow stone in the distance with four tall yellow pillars on its corners. Kane started to walk towards it.

Jake was panicking. Blood loss was setting in, and his already limited powers began weakening. Screams from the clashing armies turned to indistinct ringing in his ears, but he had to keep pushing forward. At the very edge of his shrinking field of focus was his destination: His quest bed. There was one on LOAAC too, somewhere, and dying on that would have transported him here by combining with his dream self. But he couldn't do that. That's not an option for him. The closer he got, the less he could see. The less he could know. His bubble...

Kane approached the structure, noticing a stone pillow and the symbol for the Light aspect on it. On the other side of the bed, Jake was dragging himself towards Kane. Kane called out, breaking out in a sprint, but Jake couldn't hear them. Kane reached the stone bed first, and went to hold their badly injured friend.

"Kane." Jake muttered, barely a whisper. "I get it now," He looked up with bloody tears in his eyes. "I finally see you. You're beautiful." Kane tried to help Jake lay down.

"Jake, I don't--" A long blade exited the back of Kane's body. Jake coughed up more blood. Kane looked down at the double-bladed weapon that connected the two of them. Jake had... Jake...? "Wh-Why?" Jake fell backwards onto the bed, bringing Kane with him and driving Riptiditpir deeper into the both of them.

"not everything needs a purpose." Jake sighed.

Kane's death would be meaningless, as it always had to be. And Jake learned better than to argue otherwise. With his last surge of life, Jake pulled Kane into a long, eternal kiss. This is how it was always going to end. The Mage of Light destroys the Heir of Void by revoking them of their nonexistence. This is what Jake saw in the clouds, after all. Jake saw himself kill Kane over and over and over again. This is how he would save this session. This was what he chose. Then again, there really wasn't another option. When matter and anti-matter meet, they cancel out; they annihilate. Jake died with purpose, as he always had to do. And Kane knew better than to argue otherwise.

When someone's awake self dies, their dream self can be utilized as an extra life of sorts, so long as another player kisses the corpse before the injuries have time to affect the dream self, killing them too. When this happens, the person's dead awake self becomes their dream self. This does not work if a player's dream self is dead. Not existing in the first place, mechanically speaking, is not dead.

From this, Kane is revived and becomes nothing. Kane becoming nothing is the Heir of Void moment of all time. Kane becomes a God.

From dying on his quest bed, Jake is revived and becomes a God.

There was a reason that Jake had to die on his battlefield quest bed instead of his LOAAC quest bed. Dying on his LOAAC bed would have caused his dream self to fade from Prospit and appear on this bed before waking up as the God-tiered player. That wouldn't do. Dying like this doesn't happen in cannon, but essentially what it does here is function as a sort of wrong warp. SBURB is a game, first and foremost, so it would stand to reason that it uses game mechanics to achieve its very wacky prophetic paradox bullshit. It takes the locations of the quest beds in an index (LOAAC is 1, Battlefield is 0), and when you die on one, it warps your dream self to the next one in the index by subtracting 1. Following the item codes, it is likely that SBURB operates in base-64. So the location of the "quest bed" that Jake's dream-god self is transported to is the next one after 0. This is called an integer underflow error, and it causes the index to read whatever "location" is at the base-64 8-bit integer limit, which is position 281,474,976,710,656 in the index. Yeesh. Luckily, this happens to be 3 feet to the left. So he doesn't clip into Kane.

God-tier Mage of Light Jake is revived and instantly teleported off of the bed and falls on his God-tier butt. Unfortunately, Kane becoming nothing causes them to have disappeared completely, meaning that this whole scheme would have been utterly pointless if it wasn't fated to happen by wacky prophetic paradox bullshit. Point, Kane. For the rest of their conditional immortalities, Jake and Kane will continue to engage in this game of metaphysical-ontological one-upmanship with meaning/meaninglessness and bicker like an old married couple until the sun explodes.

"Wait, cabins?" Rowan asked.           

Georgia nodded, as the band of misfits sitting in the library studying up for their finals for the summer classes, “It’s tradition for students to pick out one of the cabins close to the forest,” the seer mage replied, “you get to hang out with a bunch of your friends together and just have fun.”

“So, we are going to a cabin after finals… how will we pay for it?” Rowan asked.

“We’re not,” Nemo mentioned, “My friend Soter has a large family cabin, and his parents are allowing him to use it.”

“And he’s invited all of us!” Georgia exclaimed before being shushed by the red-head librarian, “Do you wanna go?!”

It seems like fun, spending time with friends during summer vacation, “It will just be the five of us, Soter, his girlfriend, Bernadetta, and their friend Estelle,” Elias informed seeing the slightest bit of apprehension on their face.

“Hey Elle is my friend too,” Georgia remarked, “Rowan, if you don’t wanna go that's fine—"

“If all of you are going, I’m obviously going!” Rowan laughed, “What am I going to do with the summer without you guys.”

The students' library conversation led up to today, the early morning of a Saturday, where Rowan packed the last of their things for a week and a half of relaxing in a cabin.

I’m outside, whenever you’re ready, blossom

Walking through Indigo and Calvin’s quiet house and making it through the front door felt like they were sneaking out. Regardless, Rowan exited the lavish cottage covered in greenery and flowers and greeted Elias in the front yard taking pictures of all the plants and flowers.

“Indigo’s going to look in your portfolio one day, see all the pictures you’ve taken of her house, and kick your ass!” Rowan remarked descending the step of the porch.

Elias chuckled, “It would be worth it. I imagine it would give Georgia a show.”

Rowan let out a laugh before following him off of the Bookstone-Corals property, “Where are we meeting everyone, again? My phone finally stopped working last night, I couldn’t check the chat.”

“Outside of town, Soter said there is a road, mostly used for hiking, that leads to a bunch of the cabins in that area.” Elias answered, “He and Georgia agreed that it would be fun to walk up there together last minute.”

“Also…”

“Mhm…” Rowan hummed, looking over at him, seeing the blush on his pearl-white cheeks.

“I know you probably want to room with Georgia, and I get that it’s cool, but Maverick and Nemo are obviously going to room together—”

“Obviously,” They chuckled.

“—And I don’t know Estelle that well, plus Soter and Bernadetta are going to room together, so…”

“You want us to room together.” Rowan finished his sentence.

“It would be nice.” Elias sighed with a smile.

Rowan thought for a moment about, all the possibilities that could happen flashed through their brain making their face hot, “I don’t see why not…” they replied.

Elias exhaled placing his hand over his chest, “Do you have any idea how many days I’ve been psyching myself out?!”

Rowan giggled, “I can only imagine.”

The linking of their fingers as they both walked toward town felt like a seal, unspoken proof that they would be sharing a room during this week-long trip as if this was another step in their relationship that they had gotten to climb. Even though they had talked on numerous occasions about the slow speed at which they were going to take things.

“It’s not too fast, is it?” Elias asked in a muttered tone, “I know I started calling you blossom, and we haven’t really talked about it all. I don’t want to make you overwhelmed—”

Rowans squeezed his hand, “Everything this good.” It felt like that had become their mantra as of late, “I would tell you if it wasn’t, I promise.”

“Can you promise me one more thing?” He asked.

“Depends on what I am promising.” Rowan chuckled before Elias made them stop walking before they entered town, “What?”

Elias held up the pinkie finger of his unoccupied hand between himself and Rowan, “Can you promise me not to get horribly hurt?”

“What if I can’t help it?”

He looked at them with narrow eyes, “Rowan you know what I mean, at least try not to!”

Rowan locked their pinkie finger with his, “I promise,” they replied with a nod.

Elias smiled before they continued to walk again, traveling through the mostly empty streets and paved sidewalks throughout the Maqurisian city center, hand, and hand to reach the meeting place to greet their friends.

“ROWAN!” Georgia squealed before running up and enveloping them in a hug, “I’m so excited!”

“I can tell,” they chuckled.

“This is Bernadetta,” She gestured to the young girl with pale skin, long navy hair with periwinkle hair, and dark charcoal eyes, “The deer man beside her is Soter our lovely host,” she added, pointing to the deer man standing next to Bernadetta with black and blonde hair, olive eyes, and medium ton skin, “and the one hiding behind them with her headphones on is Estelle!”

Georgia pointed to the brown-skinned brown-haired girl behind Soter and Bernadetta, crisp baby blue headphones covering her ears and VSCO style of dress making very clear that her favorite color was blue. She glanced at Rowan with her heterochromatic eyes, the right a pale green the left a baby pale, a scar was very noticeable under her right eye. She only glanced at Rowan before looking away not saying a word to them.

She feels oddly familiar.

“Where are Maverick and Nemo?” Soter asked, “They are coming right?”

“They said that they were coming, I texted Ricky this morning but…” Georgia answered pulling out her phone, “He still hasn’t answered.”

“Knowing Nemo,” Elias mentioned, “he was probably out training too late and is now curled up with Maverick and won’t let—ouch!”

“Idiot,” Nemo muttered, after smacking his brother in the back of the head.

“Sorry, we’re late,” Maverick remarked with a yawn.

Georgia jumped with joy as all her friends were together, “Eeek! I’m so excited,” she squealed.

“Let’s get a move on before she explodes,” Nemo remarked, beginning to walk up the path before everyone began to follow him.

They were hiking up the path to the cabin everyone chatting as they strolled along taking pictures of the beautiful landscapes the path became more covered in trees and beautiful foliage hiding all sorts of magical elements, kind creatures, and natural water features behind them.

“So… Rowan….” Georgia remarked falling behind Nemo and Maverick, whom she had been chatting with, to talk to Rowan elongating the words, “Are you and Elias going to share a room?”

Rowan’s face instantly became hot, “…Yeah…”

Georgia squealed again, making Rowan blush harder, “You guys are growing up so fast!” she exclaimed.

“Elias is literally older than you,” Rowan replied.

“But you’re not!” She retorted. “Oh, I’m so glad you guys are happy together! I love it when the people around me are all happy! I’m gonna tell Elle we are rooming together!”

Rowan watched her skip her way to Elle, who was walking on her own. While talking with Georgia, Elle glanced back at Rowan giving them an icy stare, like she was staring into their soul and attempting to crush it with her bare hands.

“What’s that about?” Nemo scoffed as Rowan caught up to him and Maverick. “She looked at you like you had killed her entire family.”

“I don’t know,” Rowan muttered. “She seems oddly familiar, even though the two of us have never met before.”

“Did you kill her entire family?” Nemo joked.

“No,” Rowan answered, “at least I don’t think I did.”

Nemo chuckled, “You say that like you still don’t have your memories.”

“The inner workings of the part of my brain that holds memory is working as it should normally, so not being able to recall center things and events is normal.” they recited, “At least that’s what one of the healers said. She very well could be from the past, but I have either suppressed the memories or I just don’t remember.”

“If it makes you feel any better, Rowan, I only know Elle from seeing and talking to her around school, so Goddess for bid, she was a part of Duke experiments I also don’t remember her.”

“She’s a part of the band,” Nemo remarked, “She plays the double bass, she and I run into each other a lot in the media room, but she always scowls. So, maybe it’s her natural resting face.”

“Like you?” Maverick chuckled.

Rowan giggled as Nemo’s cheeks turned a bright pink, “and yet I love you all the same.” the gray-haired teen added.

“Guys it’s just up head,” Soter called.

The group came upon a large three story cabin although it was obviously old one could tell that it had been maintained, given the different ages of the sun-faded parts of the exterior clearly showing that the lodge had been taken care of.  

The inside was cozy wilderness and wildlife very homey and soft, with tons of bear and deer motifs. It’s odd to have a family full of deer creatures to have antlers perched on shelves next to family pictures and portraits, maybe it’s a remembrance thing although it feels inappropriate to ask.

“Okay,” Soter remarked, “There are 2 bedrooms upstairs and two bedrooms down here, I’m assuming Mave—”

“Elle and I are going to share a room!” Georgia exclaimed loudly grabbing the brunette by the arm are pulling her close.

“Okay,” Soter chuckled, “So Georgia and Elle, Maverick and Nemo, Bernie and I, and Elias and Rowan! Perfect, You all can fight over which rooms you want, I’m going to the station and get some stuff we’ll need.”

“Soter, do you want me to—”

“No, Bernie, I’ll be fine,” Soter replied, with a smile before leaving the cabin.

“Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who sleeps upstairs?” Elle mumbled.

Everyone agreed, with four of the now seven teens against each other leaving Nemo and Bernadetta the winners able to room upstairs, leaving Elias, Rowan, Georgia, and Elle to room downstairs. With rooms decided they left each other to their own devices, allowing one another to unpack, chit-chat, or Maverick and Nemo’s case nap.

“Hey Elias?” Rowan muttered, while unpacking their bag.

Elias hummed, looked through his camera, the room they were in simple to a hotel room, two large beds basically beside one another, a dresser, and one shared bedside table with two lamps, “What is it, blossom?”

“Do I seem unapproachable?”

He looked up from his camera and looked over at them, his head tilted to the side while holding the most confused expression, with his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth contorted in such a way as if to say, “Are you serious,” without vocalizing it.

“Don’t look at me think that!” Rowan remarked, putting their hands up, “Have you seen how Elle looks at me? It makes me think I’ve done something to her without realizing it!”

“I can't imagine you ever wronging someone, well maybe Duke—” His comment about the old dean of their college made Rowan laugh, “Maybe you two just need to talk to each other.”

Rowan sighed, looking into the darkness of their duffle bag, “do you think Duke… did stuff to her?”

Elias frowned, “...It’s possible…” Rowan huffed out a sigh. “But I don’t see why she would be angry at you, you got Duke put away.”

“But I didn’t do anything to do with it, it was all Indigo,” Rowan muttered, “I broke a window and gave him a few scratches plus killing those catacomb creatures.”

“My question still stands regardless,” Elias stated.

“I guess I’ll just have to talk to her,” Rowan mumbled floating on to their left to staring at the ceiling, watching the ceiling fan slowly turn, “But if she was tortured by him, how do I bring it up to her? “Hey did you also get abused and experimented on by Duke?” “No way me too! Is that why you are upset with me? I gonna be honest until recently I didn’t even remember that he did any of that stuff because he had mages steal away my memories, and even then I’m still processing what was done to me with my therapist my foster parents said I had to go to help me with my trauma because I couldn’t stop waking up in the middle of the night and screaming because of my nightmares, I’m sorry I don’t remember you I guess I’ve blocked you out!” I like that makes me sound insane, and what if she isn’t, like what if she just isn’t comfortable around me? Or she isn’t even mad at me at all and that’s just her rest face, and I am just reading too much into a person that doesn’t even know me just looking at me! Like not everyone is Georgia and naturally friendly, and everyone I meet is going to look at me like my boyfriend does! Nemo looks at me the same why when we first met, and I didn’t feel this weird about! GRAH!”

Rowan rubbed their hands down their face before opening their eyes and looking back at the ceiling, yet Elias moved from his bed to stand next to Rowan’s looking down at them, “You called me your boyfriend,” he commented with a smile and pink cheeks.

“I did?” Rowan paused thinking about what they said during their rant before blushing a bright red, “Holy shit, I did…”

Elias began to laugh, “I’m sorry,” they whined covering their face.

“No no, it's fine!” he retorted still laughing as Rowan looked at him with a comical level of fear, “Really Rowan it’s fine. If you want to call me your boyfriend, I’m your boyfriend.”

Rowan smiled; cheeks still red hot, before Elias added, “Georgia said she brought some cards games if you want—”

“I still need to beat you at Uno!” They declared, interrupting him.

“You're on!”