Chapter 17

And from the heavens themselves I saw Him descend, a being clothed in garments of light. As he stepped down from the stars I saw His true appearance, a luminous being like that of a shadow composed of radiance. A crown with seven spikes, each with the seven virtues labeled upon them sat upon His head, and a scepter entombed within a throne lay at His feet. For this was the Radiant King, and His light was apparent to all in the land, bringing gifts of fire and metal to those who knew not how to make it for themselves.

Chapter 1 of the Luminous Scripture, accounting the Radiant King’s first appearance to guide humanity.

Levi strode down the magnificent brass streets of Compass island to her first lead, that of a local saleswoman with a penchant for gossip.

“Hey, june.”

“Hello, Levi. Aren’t you looking dapper. What’s the matter?”, enquired the woman, who was happily writing something in a journal with a quil. She looked up at the catsith, who was currently adjusting her hat with cautious precision.

“Well, i’ve heard around town you know quite a bit of gossip, and currently I’m doing an investigationon who vandalised the town hall. Do you have any leads that I could follow?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. See, I heard from maggie - very nice washerwoman by the way - who heard from Eve who heard from her cousin who happened to be at the crime scene. Unfortunately, she’s too damn scared for her life to actually reveal any information on account of her paranoia. She should be in the sanitarium, she’s spent the last twenty years there. I think her name’s, uh, Sothal. Yeah, that’s right. Sothal. She doesn’t really talk to people, and most folks don’t really know about her all that much, but for some reason I think you can get information out of her. See you!”

After the motormouth that was June the Merchant gave her the requisite information, she then strode off towards the sanitarium. Unlike the typical image in one’s head of a massive, dark and looming castle or abandoned mansion, it instead looked like an incredibly sterile porcelain cube with windows of quartz. After being quickly buzzed in, the first thing she noticed was the smell. Or rather, the lack of one. No ammonia, no cleaning agents, not even cloth or iron. She could somehow detect the lack of smell, as if there was a negative odor to detect. For the catsith who had spent her entire life living by scent, this was like having your hands and feet swapped, walking on your fingers while struggling to manipulate things with your toes. Sure, it was possible, but it just felt wrong.

The front desk, also made of the same sterile and odorless white material, was manned by the blandest-looking woman Levi had ever seen, draped in the whitest fabric posible. It must be a pain to get the stains out, thought Levi as she approached her.

“Hello. What can I do for you?”

Levi straightened her hat. “I would like to converse with Sothal. I am here on investigative business releating to the recent town hall vandalism”

“Oh dearie me, you can try, but it won’t go well. She’s on an entirely different level than the rest of us, and speaks in a way none of us can understand. She’s one of those idiot-savants, you see. Great at numbers, but only can communicate through them. Something about her brain not understanding words as well as pictures or numbers. She can just barely understand us, and that’s through heavy assistance with nonverbal cues. It’s the reason we have an expert retired chemist as our chef. Her scribbling for meal requests is some “three dimensional abstract molecular chart”, or something. There’s been talk of using that notation as the standard one, wth how efficient it is. If you can find someone who can talk to her, go ahead. She’s on the top floor, the one wth the weird mirror lens she built herself. Probably how she saw it going on.”

Levi went up the tightly corkscrewing staircase, again noticing how there was a distinct lack of a metallic scent that seemed like a negative imprint of it, despite such a thing being impossible by any application of basic logic. Finally, she went to the top floor and opened the door after being confirmed by that floor’s guard squadron, all of whom were in plain white light armour.

“Hello. Is this sothal?”, said levi. Insidethe room was a plain white desk, a pen, a piece of parchment and a woman hunched over it. At thewindow wasa massive contraption of carefully placed and deformed mirror lenses that magnified whatever it looked at, which was currently a bird’s nest on the opposite side of town.

Instead of speaking, she mumbled something incoherently, nodded, then handed over a scrap of parchment with scribbles on it.

On the paper was some sort of weird equation on it that stated this:

S = (r ± π)^1/S

S had some weird drawing of an old guy with a beard alongside a symbol that made her feel sick looking at it, with the r being labeled with a weird square-spiral thing with “aa+b” written in it. Also, the “aa+b” was labeled R for some reason, to make things more confusing. Scratching her head, she suddenly had an idea. These symbols looked just like the ones Victor used while talking about

“Of course. You’re a crazy person. In order to communicate with you, I’ll need to get someone even crazier. Hold on real quick.”

The woman nodded, then continued scribbling. Levi spoke up again.

“I’m just going to go grab a friend who might understand you. Are you okay with that?”

Again, Sothal nodded, this time with apparent hope at being able to share the words that seemed to only make sense to her.

After roughly thirty minutes, Levi returned with Victor, who had a bag full of …. Something.

“Here he is. I think he can probably understand those weird numbers and analyze the - Victor what are you holding and how did you get it in here?”

“It’s a bag of ferrets. As for how, I literally just held it behind my back.”

“How could I not notice - whatever, it’s fine. Anyways, what does this mean?”

Victor squatted down and looked at the notes, with Sothal having gone deathly still, which made her pale skin and unruly hair give her the appearance of a corpse.

In an instant, Victor’s demeanor change. He dropped his bag of ferrets, leaving the wriggling weasels to scamper out and immediately cause ruckus in the halls.

“We need to leave. Now. This place is doomed.” , he said, looking like he had seen his own ghost.

“What are you talking about-”

“We have one day to either fix this or leave. Otherwise, the town and everything near it will be devoured.”

For the first time since Levi could remember, Victor was terrified.