"The place where our world began." I comment as Al shakes her head, returning to the task at hand, "Sounds pretty heavy. Hard to believe too."

"How so?" Al goes back to digging that door up, "Look around you Nair. All the bodies lying about, the abandoned husks left behind by the angels of Pahlaver."

At this prompt I begin to survey the area again, paying particularly close to attention to the bodies left T-Posing all over the place. Sorry people, not bodies. They're all still alive, in a very broad sense of the word. Though being trapped like that for who knows how long? Probably better off being dead.

Bad posture aside, there's nothing unusual about most of the people left lying about. Peasant, random woman, blacksmith with dirty apron. Just a bunch of guys who got caught up in whatever happened here ages ago. But there are some highlights. Some of the T-Posers are incredibly well equipped, at a standard higher than most magic knights. There's a man clad in full plate that has been luxuriously embossed with intricate patterns. And another fellow clutching at a pair of broad swords with a death grip, runes painstakingly etched into the blades.

"Shit, is that actual gold?" I blurt out, both eyes falling on a muscular T-Posing woman trapped under a fallen building, "Who in the world wears a solid gold armored bikini?"

"Someone who doesn't fear injury." Al says as if it should be obvious, "And whom money isn't an object."

Peering closer at Bikini Woman, I realize that Al is actually correct. Common sense would tell you that walking in battle with an armored bikini isn't the smartest thing to do. You're just inviting your exposed midriff to be stabbed or eviscerated by the first enemy with a set of working eyes. But bikini woman's exposed body shows no sign of injury. Not even any scratches. And this is after getting a building partially collapsed on top of her.

Scratch equipped at a superior standard. What's on display here is a quantum leap over most of the arsenal available at Robeur Keep. I almost begin salivating at a mage's wand topped with a massive ruby and studded along its length with small diamonds. How much was that single weapon worth? Several years of my last drawn salary at Robeur Keep, I bet.

"Don't even think about it." Al interrupts my ruminations, "Not unless you want to join the husks here, forever."

"How would you know?" I barely manage to tear my eyes away from the wealth just lying about.

Al straightens up, gesturing at her chest.

"Touch it." she invites.

"For real?" I raise an eyebrow, "You want me to grope your breasts?"

"Go wild." Al shrugs indifferently, "Squeeze as hard as you want."

"Are you propositioning me?" I suppress the urge to laugh, "Can't say I'm in the mood right now."

"Neither am I." Al insists, "This is just the fastest way to make you understand."

"Its your choice." I mutter reaching out with a hand and slowly closing in on one of her breasts. My fingers wrap themselves around a modestly sized globe and begins to squeeze.

Its dense and solid. Unnaturally so. Nothing like a woman's breast. Frowning, I increase the strength of my grip and try twisting her tit hard. Al's breast resists my effort easily, not budging an inch. Al has no reaction to my probing either, as if she can't feel anything from all the tugging and twisting being exerted against her breast.

"Hard. Like a rock." I murmur in confusion, finally giving up.

"I was here at the climax of the battle against the Farmer." Al starts talking again, "Larson ordered us forward as part of his private army. My body still hasn't completely recovered."

"Wait. That battle must have taken place decades ago." I stare in disbelief, "You should be a senile old woman right now."

Al pulls off one of her gloves, revealing a callused hand, worn from hard practice at the drill ground. Her skin nevertheless glows with the vigor of health and youth.

"Something happened that day." Al reluctantly admits, "I don't understand it myself, but ever since the battle against the Farmer, time -"

"Time is out of joint." I complete the sentence for my companion, "Our ages don't match how long we've actually lived."

"So you know about this as well." Al sighs, putting the glove back on, "Then I don't need to say anything more. Let's get back to work."

I look down at my own hands. The hands of a grown man. Owned by someone who is barely a year old. Its still hard getting used to.

"You're not going to ask how I found out about the whole time thing?" I quip to Al as we go back to wrestling with the broken door.

"Don't need to. I had my suspicions the moment you didn't panic when we arrived in this place." Al explains, "You had already experienced something similar, didn't you?"

"Sure." I affirm as we wrench the wrecked door upright.

"And that means only one thing." Al continues, "You met with the Sage. Just like Larson and I."

"Hoh. Our mutual acquaintance certainly gets around." I say, dusting my palms off, "He was the one who saved you and Larson from the Farmer then?"

"I suppose. This place was once the local theatre. The stage, y'know? But then the Farmer happened, in the middle of a performance no less." Al's voice is dubious, filled with misgiving, "People were dying all around us. Larson and I were part of the final wave of defenders. Then the world started to get weird."

"Weird?" I quirk an eyebrow, urging Al to keep going.

"It just ... stopped." Al manages to say after some thought, "No, that's not quite right. Time began to slow down at first. The experience was like wading through tar, except that it affected my thoughts as well."

I frown. This is certainly something new. Nothing like what I had experienced in Springvale.

"The Farmer was fighting hundreds of people at once." Al clutches at herself and shudders at the memory, "Hundreds. None of us could hurt her. And people were just dropping to the ground without any reason."

"The angels abandoning the fight?" I ask.

"We only found out about that later." Al makes a helpless motion with her hands, "At that time we were too busy burying the Farmer in magic and when that didn't work, our bodies. All the while time kept becoming slower and slower, until -"

"It stopped entirely." I conclude.

"No, everything started going dark." Al looks down morosely, "Like the world was shrinking, the darkness swallowing everything around us. I think ... I would have died. Yes, I would have died if the darkness had swallowed me too."

"So this place isn't the entire battlefield then?" I draw a circle around my head in emphasis.

"No." Al shakes her head, "Its far smaller. About a third of the size. And there are far fewer people as well. I guess everyone else just ... disappeared ... into the darkness."

"I'm guessing the Sage stepped in at this point?" I probe, "You wouldn't be alive otherwise."

"That's about right." Al agrees despondently, "I don't know what the Sage did, but the darkness stopped encroaching."

"And the show goes on." I remark, looking back at the trio dancing on the stage. We were probably at ground zero where the Sage pulled off that stunt. An infinitely repeating loop of time that prevents whatever force that causes eternal T-Posing from advancing any further.

Huh, that sounds less sinister once you put it into words, doesn't it?

"Larson and the Sage wanted to research this place." Al wraps up her tale, "So after the Farmer had been restrained and taken away, we made a few more trips here. That's how I know the method to enter."

"The Farmer wasn't killed?" I ask disbelievingly.

"Weren't you listening, Nair?" Al demands, "We couldn't even hurt the Farmer. Restraining her was the best the Sage could manage."

"So where was the Farmer taken to?" I quiz, "Is there any place in Southmarsh that could hold someone so powerful?"

"I don't know." Al sighs in defeat, "She wasn't seen ever again though."

"Thanks for the story." I grunt, "I know it wasn't easy for you to tell it."

"Hard to tell a story when you don't understand half of what happened." Al remarks, "Hold the door steady, Nair."

"Alright." I agree obligingly, steadying the wrecked door with both hands. Al bends over and begins fiddling with the door knob, twisting it left and right in rapid sequence.

"This door looks strangely familiar." I comment to myself.

"It should." Al confirms, "Its the exact same door of the study back at the Dasar Manor."

"You mean Larson copied the door's design?" I reply, "Don't see why he did that. Its not particularly attractive or anything."

"No, what I mean is that its the exact same door." Al insists, "That's what the Sage told Larson anyway. You know how copies always have slight differences between them?"

"And this one doesn't?" I eye the door more carefully. Outside of the battle damage, it looks alike to the one in the manor. But I doubt every single measurement would match exactly. That would take an inhuman level of craftmanship.

But if anyone could do it, the Sage can. Of that I'm sure. He managed to create a whole bunch of equipment for Ramon and I out of thin air after all.

"It was part of the research Larson and the Sage were doing." Al focuses on manipulating the door knob, her movements getting faster, "Something about crossing time and space."

Time and space. The snake people used their Logos to communicate to Sylvia across an unknown distance. And I spoke with multiple versions of myself, even a younger incarnation, during my Logos induced fit.

"A Logos." I exclaim, "A Logos had been hidden here!"

Al merely nods at my declaration. Its all the confirmation I need.

"Did Larson know how to use a Logos?" I urge. That was the most important point. I had two of those spheres, but no way of making sense of them. If Larson and the Sage's research on the subject was kept somewhere in the manor, I wanted it. Badly.

"Yes, but I don't know the details." Al admits, "Just bits and pieces that Larson saw fit to tell me."

"Damn." I sigh, "Its never easy."

So I'll need to search the manor myself then. But the research exists. Meaning that it'll turn up eventually, as long as I keep looking.

"Nair." Al speaks up but hesitates, not sure whether to continue. After a pregnant pause, she finds her voice again.

"Be careful of the Sage." she finally says, "I think Larson was being used. And so are you, most likely."

"Why do you say that?" I narrow my eyes, thinking of the ramifications.

"The Sage asked Larson to find more Logos." Al answers, "But never to actually pass them over. Don't you find that unusual?"

Yes, that is strange. The Sage handed over one Logos to me without prompting even. Why not keep them, given the Sage's obvious interest in the Logos and how obviously powerful they are?

"The Sage wants the Logos found." I muse, "But not kept in his possession?"

"That's not the only suspicious thing." Al follows up, "Have you ever met the Sage in person?"

No. Never. Sage had always contacted me by puppeting someone else.

"He's always at arms length." I say delicately, recalling my earlier doubts about the Sage when we first met in Springvale.

"I think the Logos are dangerous for whomever carries them." Al keeps drawing the dots together, "Its just a personal theory, but it fits what I know."

"Yeah." I grace Al with a strained smile, thinking about the pair of Logos in my hands right now. Powerful tools. But also possible disasters in the making. The door knob jangles as Al keeps twisting away at it.

"I'll keep what you said in mind."

.......

Addendum

... an application typically crashes when it performs an unauthorized act. An exception is then triggered ... with some applications attempting to recover from the error and keep running instead of exiting ...

Causes include attempting to execute invalid instructions, attempting to perform operations where it does not have permission to access ...

Transient and intermittent faults can be addressed by detection and self correction by the OS through predictive failure analysis ...