Convergence Conclave Dispersion Log 2.1: Photonic Subject #733,682,111

WARPROUTE 37.6

              I dreamed last night. What funny things are dreams.

In the dream, I was prepared to depart. I served among the Luminous Legions. It was the morning of my oath severance, the breaking of a bond to the legions. I had served my time, but wait, you will say, weren’t my people slaves and chattel for experimentation? If dreams are funny things, time is more, but I speak of a dream.

              You’ve distracted me, though, with the pressure of your anticipated questions. You are not to blame, I suppose. The dream was this:

              I stood before a crowd of comrades. I knew them to be comrades, though their faces were blank flesh, hazy like blurs on old world camera bokeh. A stage was set with two microphones, one on a long rod I knew to be the severance staff, the other meant to be held in a hand or clipped. What a strange mixture of the old and the new. But in the dream all strangeness was a mere necessity. A faceless Over General beckoned me into pools of memory. I was to swim for a short time and let the impulses of my recollections seep into the pool. Another older author, whose name I have forgotten, once said that “technology and magic are twin sisters who delight to masquerade for one another.” I swam in a pool of liquid light, and tiny machines drew from me the quality of my remembrance to be stored for future use, knowledge merged for assessment by an Othermind.

              By the time I returned to the stage, all but one comrade was gone. “Where have they gone, Telestrius?” I asked. I knew him well, his face sharp and clear, amber eyes blazing next to high cheeks bones that spoke of an impossible pride – though without haughtiness. He placed his hand on my shoulder, heavy like a wounded man might, and whispered, “Petroclus Matthias Lightfamed comes to speak to the legions. Already we are late.”

              “But what of my severance?” I still held the staff in my hand, subtle electric pulsing waves surged through my hand and arm and up into my left shoulder where Telestrius’ hand lay.

              “You delayed too long. You are oathbound still, but after. After.” His face grew distant as he looked up toward a stone pillar that was not there before. It bore iron-banded rungs in span increments up its side and rose as high as a city tower between two narrow slits of obsidian stone.

              Without a word he lifted his hand and turned, reaching out into the nothingness that creeped in upon the edges of the dream, “We must go, Captain Lowan. We’ll be punished harshly for our tardiness.”

His hand grasped something, and the dream shifted toward it revealing a chain-wrapped wheel which turned with great strain. A loud grinding sound echoed through immense space, and the stone pillar shifted forward creating a stairway into an inverted abyss of darkened sky. Far beneath, the ancient training pits of Mars spread out in red-dust covered marble slabs like the inside of the shell of a giant turtle. I teetered at the height and heard Telestrius speak, but could not make out the words before I tumbled and woke.

I lay here in my cell for long, stretching moments, pondering the dream, wondering at the old titles, the familiar sound of Telestrius’ voice. I suppose it could sound like anything now. I would not know. I never knew a man name Telestrius.

Petroclus Matthias, I think I knew though. I’ve taken the time to write my dream, for no particular reason than that it recalled to mind one long lost. Petroclus must have hung twelve lifetimes ago now, by reckoning of OET, from a scaffold of his own design. Scaffold. I have the distance sense that I know what this word really meant. I wept.

My captors have been kind, or perhaps subtle tormentors, to grant me access to vast libraries from the cosmic networks of an Othermind. There was, apparently, a Captain among the Luminous Legions centuries ago who shared my name. The histories say he refused his oath severance on the day he was to depart, the same day the Last War began. It is fitting then, that I should recall one I did not know from the false memory of a dream. There is no way of understanding the story of my people without learning of the Last War when the first lightforged armaments entered the field, and the sorcerous blessing – or curse –  burned through a select few on the battlefield.

              This Captain Lowan’s record is filled with mixed accounting, but I will tell you his story alongside the tale of my people. As you have seen, I can wander, so a throughline will aid me, and you. I make no promise, though, that I will not once again share my dreams. There is so much that is unknown, despite the luminaries’ obsession with knowing. One cannot afford to ignore even the unlikeliest of clues. I must attend to my studies, and then I will return to you.

              I wave fondly to you, looking out my handmirror-size window across the velvet blanket of distant starlit space hoping we are, somehow, facing. Good day to you.

*Convergence Conclave Clerical Note*

• REPORT: MYSTIC continues to fill the CC logs with nigh lunatic ravings. The perseverance of his claims is clinically notable, and there is the minor chance that his logs may reveal something of the secret source of the Aberrants. Most of his kind are gone. He has been in solitary for more than two decades OET, yet he is apparently undisturbed, unabated in his sense that there is some “other world.” This is the first he has spoken of this sense of “joy” in many years though. I theorize there is a new direction to his story. Recommend delay of his dispersion for at least another galactic standard orbit – 2.23 years OET.
• REQUEST: For research purposes, I would like to share PS #733,682,111 (MYSTIC) logs with PS #656 (ANCIENT) – a fuller research proposal is appended for your review with specified objectives and expected outcomes. I await your luminous grace.

~ Marceus, Research Journeyman Fourth, WARPROUTE 37.6