Societal Solipsism - Chapter 1: Dredging the Depths

Upsilon Test Facility

58 Zephyr, 1330 AE

Orr was heinous at the best of times. In the years since the Pact war machine had rolled across the thrice-fallen landscape, various groups had made efforts to heal the cursed region, but none would venture so far as to call it pleasant. Chill Zephyr winds blew southwest from the Shiverpeaks, permeating the peninsula's moist, cloying, atmosphere with a wet and biting cold that reminded travellers of the chill depths that Orr had been subjected to for over a century. The only small mercy was the seasonal sluggishness of the Risen, as they forced their ice-encrusted limbs to cooperate with the thoughts of their years-dead master.

After days of trekking west across the northeastern shore of Orr, Hisoka was tired. The Risen hordes were not so numerous as they had been before the campaign against Zhaitan, but they were not yet so scarce as to pose a negligible threat. At first, the guardian had been burning the undead with the blue flames native to his profession, but this had just provided warmth that allowed nearby Risen to shake off the effects of the cold. Liberius had been researching and practising stealth magic since the encounter at Dawnside Quay, and the effects were paying off, but that did not make the slow, methodical, opportunistic, killing of Risen any less detrimental to the already unpleasant experience.

Hisoka stood upon the northern coast, looking far beyond the horizon. To his left, the Pyrite Peninsula stretched towards Kryta like a compass beseeching him to head home. The water lapped hungrily at the land it once owned, whipped into a frenzy by the seasonal wind, and he shivered. The human looked over at his charr companion, gauging his readiness to leave. Liberius was pacing along the stretch of land that bordered one of the Inquest's subaquatic bases within the region. His aquabreather lay on the ground where he had angrily thrown it after resurfacing, and his fur was still wet with the moisture that had leaked through the cheap warding enchantment he had purchased back in Lion's Arch.

"Again! Another one, nothing! Last one was consumed by Mordrem, this one was abandoned…" Liberius growled, "little rat owes me."

Hisoka walked over to his boyfriend, still turning the word over in his head. It was strange to link the concepts of 'charr' and 'boyfriend', especially since he had never properly said it out loud. "Nothing in there at all?"

"Not unless you count the flooded tables of junk. Either they removed one of the force panels, or the generator broke. Knowing the Inquest though, flooding their own lab was deliberate. I guess they got sick of studying whatever the hell that is"—the charr stuck an accusatory finger out at the glowing ball of magic presently gilding the Pyrite Peninsula—"and left this place to rot. Maybe they got what they wanted."

"And you didn't, I know. Wasn't there one more potential lab on that list?" Hisoka was keeping his tone calm, trying to soothe the seething charr. He had been pouring himself into his passion projects more and more lately, and Hisoka was starting to wonder when he would get tired. "One more, and then we put this aside? If we can't find anything, the Inquest probably aren't pursuing it. It was just a throwaway line you glimpsed in a tiny fragment of a document, after all."

"Yeah, or they're just really intent on hiding it. Anyway, we need a new lead. The last lab is the InGenium Research Facility."

Hisoka waited for Liberius to explain. After a moment without a response, he did: something he had picked up from spending most of his time with the human over the last half-year. "Oh, right. That's over in eastern Ascalon. Blott marked it."

Before Liberius could continue, Hisoka reached up and squeezed his shoulder. The charr smiled, shook some of the wetness from his fur, and laughed at Hisoka's unamused expression.

"Why don't we leave Orr? I could sooner find a cozy place to speak in Rata Sum than here, even if the chairs are all too small," Hisoka complained, indulging in the shared pasttime of nearly anyone who had spent any time in or around Orr.

"Oh, you want somewhere cozy? Didn't think Orr put anyone but necromancers in the mood."

Hisoka rolled his eyes, already used to the ribbing. His childhood neighbours in Divinity's Reach likely would have smarted at the comment, but casual charr crassness no longer stood out to him, even if repeating the racier lines was beyond his comfort zone.

Liberius continued, "But I agree. This place is horrible. Even the other people are terrible, either stuck-up scholars complaining about everyone else trodding on history, brickheaded norn ready to get themselves killed, or humans who think that their tiny traces of Orrian blood make them entitled to a land they didn't even help reclaim. You're just about the only worthwhile thing on this entire blasted rock."

Rather than repay the compliment, Hisoka sidestepped. "Well, the coral's nice."

The charr snorted, "Really? The coral? I can't count how many times a cold drip landed in my fur, and I looked up to see some moldy old sea plant leering down at me."

"Oh, they're not plants, they're—"

"They're awful is what they are, just like the rest of Orr. "

"Okay, okay, I get it, Orr is terrible. Why don't we spend some time in Kryta?"

"And trade undead for cultists? Sure. We can head to your place, I want to look for more leads since these all ended up being duds. Maybe I'll even wring out Blott's skinny little neck while we're there." Liberius started walking with Hisoka in tow. The inexplicable gold of the Pyrite Peninsula crumbled beneath his shoes, coming away in thin sheets that slid down towards the water. He squinted at the luminous orb above and hummed to himself, mentally noting this as something to investigate later when he wasn't quite so occupied.

"We can check in at Fort Trinity, use the gate up to the Priory, take a hop through Lion's Arch to Divinity's Reach, then head south. May have to deal with more Seraph than usual given all the Mantle activity, but I always get stopped there anyway," Liberius planned, already mentally setting out points on his map. Hisoka followed along, but only half-heartedly. The charr was good enough at committing his rambling itineraries to memory that it wasn't necessary for a second mind to remember them most of the time.

He cleared his throat, "Actually, I was thinking we could stop in Divinity's."

"Yeah, that's what I said."

"No, I meant that we could stay there for a short while."

"They were just the epicenter of a civil war, I doubt they're going to be a great place for tourism right about now."

"My mother lives in the Western Commons, I want to check on her."

Liberius nodded. "Should I wait in Claypool until you're done, or do you wanna meet up later?"

"I'd like you to meet her, if that's okay." Hisoka kept staring straight ahead, too nervous to make eye contact.

The charr laughed. "Okay, what are we really stopping in for? Is it something embarrassing?" Liberius leered, trying to extract any juicy details to distract from the oppressive joylessness of Orr.

"I'm serious. It's..." Hisoka breathed deeply, and coughed as the salty, rotten, air filled his lungs. He wasn't entirely certain how to communicate this to a charr. "It's important to me. A sort of...relationship rite. We're closer with our parents than you are."

"You're one to talk, I've barely heard you talk about your family," Liberius scoffed, unsure of his conversational footing in this unfamiliar territory.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but it's hard to talk about family with someone who has such a different idea of what that means. Why don't you talk about your warband?"

This was met with crossed arms, so Hisoka continued, "I just want to feel that this is less fleeting, more real. Bringing you into other parts of my life is part of that."

Liberius stared directly at Hisoka with his jaw open ever so slightly, unused to the earnestness. Were they not in one of Tyria's least hospitable regions, facing the brunt of the cold season, he would have stopped walking. "Do humans normally introduce their…" he tried to find the equivalent human term and failed, "mates to their parents after only a few seasons?"

"Usually sooner, actually." Despite knowing better, Hisoka felt as if the landscape were watching him. The sooner they were out of Orr, and this particularly unnatural area of an already discomfiting region, the better.

Liberius was not quite sure how to take that. He filed it away as a piece of relevant info on human relationships, and set about trying to apply it. "I thought you said Canthan culture didn't really care about charr?" His tone of voice gave away the mistake he thought this to be, but didn't cast outright judgement.

"Oh, it's not that. It's…" Hisoka trailed off and Liberius could tell he wasn't going to get a proper answer. "It's just, I would really like you to meet her. We've been…dating"—Hisoka tested the waters to see Liberius' reaction, but the charr didn't seem fazed by the terminology—"for a while now, and it seemed about time."

Another nod.

"So…will you come with me to Divinity's Reach?"

"Oh, yeah, sorry. Just…please tell me there'll be meat?"

Hisoka laughed, and Liberius turned to protest. As he did, a fat glob of cold water from an arm of coral highabove crashed into the end of his muzzle, and splashed into his eyes. This just fuelled the laughter, while Liberius growled and rubbed at his face. A limbless Risen farmer, left to rot in the remains of the field he once toiled, gargled menacingly some ways distant, and Hisoka paid it no mind.