“Christ almighty does it ever stop fuckin’ raining here?!” Don declared aloud as he sat his radio pack down on the mossy ground and stretched his sore back. Even with the fantastic rain gear the entire division had been given, the sheer constant state of the rain in this place was akin to psychological warfare. Torrential storms were interspersed only by endless, misty drizzles that loved to suddenly turn into heavier deluges at random. The titanic overgrown jungles were half flooded, and the lakes were so unnaturally deep they made even the most veteran expeditionists nervous. Of all the Abeyic Ponds to be assigned to…

“Do you ever stop complainin’’ about it?” Saida playfully jabbed back as she swung her own smaller pack off her shoulder and lightly tossed it against a damp rock, rubbing her side with a paw. Don scoffed and swatted the air with his palm.

“If I ever do you should start gettin’ worried.” He called back. At least he had a stand out partner. Don hadn’t been sure of the slender Jacqelyn when they’d first met, but Saida had quickly proven fleet-footed, whip-smart, and most importantly: Good company. Like most Gramaryans, Jacqelyn’s were like a redesigned, alien version of something humans like Don used to see back on Earth. Saida’s kind were like thin, messy-furred, big eared jackals, with large eyes and slender snouts. They were damn fast and had a sense of smell that frankly made Don feel a little self-conscious at times. Ever since that first disapproving sniff from her a week into their first trip he’d been sure to whip his hygiene back into gear.

Right now though the very thought of a shower made him feel sick. Once they were done here he swore he was going to take a vacation to a desert…

“Wow hey… check this out!” Saida suddenly commented, moving through a bit of nearby underbrush. Don stood up and followed after her curiously, soon finding himself in a small, flat clearing amidst the thick verdant underbrush. In front of them was another ruined wall, like most of the old ruins they’d been sent to study, but unlike the rest, this one had a mural painted on it.

“That’s… different.” Don pointed out, somewhat unhelpfully as he approached it. Saida was already on the job, paws up on the stone blocks as she took in every detail.

“It’s newer than the stone, but still old. I’d clock it at 400 years old at a rough guess.” She declared with her usual baffling confidence that made Don feel like he was first grader.

“How d’ya figure that?”

“Well, as much as I’d like to say something cool and scientific, I just recognize the runic system here. It’s Gramaryan. Can’t quite place the Clan but it’s clearly a Homesteader language. Everyone on the homeworld switched to the current system and everyone who joined made it through the Great Retreat adopted it. Since hardly anyone was ending up in Abeyance before the Fall I’d say 400 years is a pretty good guess.” She explained in that quirky manner of hers where it seemed like her mouth could barely keep up with her brain. Don stared at her for a long moment.

“Saida, you’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?” She blinked. Don pointed at himself.

“Human.” He reminded her. Saida rolled her eyes.

“You really haven’t gotten our history memorized yet?” She asked him. Don raised both eyebrows at her.

“Name one of the old nations from Earth.” He retorted. Saida opened her mouth, closed it, then let out a small chuckle of defeat.

“Alright alright, fine. Short version: The nomad clans who ventured far out to settle on new worlds were called Homesteaders. They were usually pretty cut off from the homeworld so they kept a lot more of the old traditions than the rest of us did. See those six runes, on either side of Alter? That’s Gramaryan Runic. I recognize this style of mural too, from back when most of us still believed in the Tsyra.” She explained a little more clearly. Don still didn’t fully follow, but it made sense enough.

“The hell is it doing here then?” He stated, looking it over again. They were supposed to be the first division to enter this place.

“My guess? It was left by Homesteaders who wound up here somehow during the chaos of the Fall. This is a huge find Don! There might be survivors out here somewhere!” She exclaimed eagerly, digging through her pack to get out her translation books as Don found himself splashed by another torrent of water falling from a wide-fronded leaf somewhere above him.

“FUCKING-! I’ve been here five fuckin’ days and I’m already up to here with this place. Poor bastards are probably completely insane by now if they’ve been here all this time.” He grumbled, attempting in vain to rub the water off his raincoat.

“We’ve found survivors in far worse Ponds.” Sadia pointed out distractedly as she fished through her journals.

“True, but still. Can you imagine living in one of these places for years? Decades?” Don pointed out. Abeyic Ponds… despite his chosen occupation, he really, really didn’t like them. They all felt so unnatural, like each one was wrong in some way. They were all just mimicry, imperfect copies of things and places that existed in the tangible universe, drifting around in a very literal limbo dimension, often under the gaze of an unknown someone or something. This one was no different. Endless rain, endless jungles, ruins with rhythm or reason to their placement or purpose, and the oh-so well known major give-away of any pocket dimension in Abeyance: No fauna. No animals, no birds, no reptiles, not even insects. Plants as far as they eye could see, but no life. It was fucking eerie.

“Hey, give me a few, I think I can translate the ruins, see what this mural is all about.” Saida noted, stepping back up to the wall with her notebook in hand, doing her best to keep the constant drizzle from getting the pages wet.

“Seems pretty straightforward if you ask me.” Don noted with a shrug, dusting his hands off. “Dear great and divine Alter, please for the love of god make it stop pissing rain.”

“You know, despite myself, your antics always manage to somehow be just charming enough for me to put up with them.” Saida commented wryly, her long snout curved into a half-smirk. Don smiled and did a little bow.

“I aim to please.” He chimed, taking a moment to look around the rest of the clearing, before something caught his eye. A metallic glint hidden behind some underbrush. Squinting, the human approached it, and cautiously moved some of the vines and underbrush out of the way, before letting out a long, impressed whistle.

“Ohoh wow, we really did hit the motherlode. Look at this ancient beauty!” He exclaimed, catching Saida’s attention for a moment.

“What is it?”

“Not sure, but it’s Gramaryan, and it’s ANCIENT. Like Museum old. Looks like your hunch was right.” Don noted, started to clear out the area around the thing. It was a dark, cobalt blue-black cylinder of some kind with a faintly glowing green-yellow light at its center. While no history buff, Don knew machines well, and this thing sure looked like the great grandfather of the current Gramaryan power cores used to fuel their smaller spacecraft.

“See if you can find anything else, maybe we’ll get a hint of where the survivors went.” Saida told him, before returning to her own work. “Let’s see… ithkaa’ naranai unethek radam…”

Don explored around the power cell, quickly finding a small treasure trove of ancient goodies. An old Gramaryan hunting rifle, ruined by centuries of rust but recognizable. The scrapped and gutted remains of a flyboy, one of the clunky-looking drones Gramaryan Clans were rarely seen without, also rusted to the mechanical marrow. A cooking kit, the final vestiges of someone’s carving knife, and some other scraps and bits not withered away by the elements just yet.

However… It was the last thing Don’s eyes found in that back corner of the clearing, behind a thick burn bush, that made him freeze in place.

“...Saida?”

“One moment, I think I’ve got this just about translated.”

“...Saida.”

“This just doesn’t make sense. It seems like a plea of some kind, but it’s referring to water in a positive light, why would they…”

“Saida!” Don demanded.

“What?!” The Jacqelyn snapped, spinning around in annoyance, tail flicking behind her.

“I don’t think we’re going to be finding any survivors…” Don sighed, the look on his face telling the canine everything she needed to know, but she followed where his finger was pointing to regardless. Twelve stones had been planted into the dirt, each with a runic name and a date carved into them. There was only one thing they could be.

“Fuck…” Saida muttered, her ears folding down.

“I’m sorry.” Don sighed, turning his gaze back to where he’d left his radio bag. “We should call this in before another bad storm rolls in and cuts the connection.” He tells her. Saida’s brow furrowed.

“I just… I just don’t get it. They have all the freshwater they could ever need, and there is plenty of fruits and vegetables growing here. Wood for fire and stones to make a shelter… they should have been able to survive…” She muttered, beginning to pace back and forth, clearly bothered by the revelation.

“We’re in Abeyance, Saida. This isn’t home, you know how strange things get here. It could have been anything. Maybe the entity watching over this place didn’t take kindly to someone trespassing on its little bubble of reality, y’know?”

“Entity…” Saida blinked, her pace slowing.

“I mean, I know I’d be pissed if ten people just suddenly appeared in my kitchen and started fucking around with my stuff, you know?” Don shrugged.

“The entity!” Saida exclaimed, startling Don slightly. Saida pointed back to the mural, specifically to that white scrawl at its heart. Alter, the imperfect circle, the universal symbol of the Eternal Engines, the esoteric, god-like consciousnesses that lived in Abeyance, the source of the Abeyic Ponds, a race in equal measure responsible for the apocalypse that nearly destroyed all sentient life, and the ones who saved it.

“These survivors clearly knew they were dealing with an Eternal Engine. They were trying to communicate with it by drawing this mural.” She declared. It was a bit of a jump, but it made sense, and even still it made Don wince slightly. Everyone knew the golden rule of Abeyance, the one thing they made sure to drill deep into your skull before they even let you step foot into this plane of existence.

“Trying to commune with an Engine almost never ends well…” He reminded Saida. Eternal Engines were notoriously bad at understanding mere mortals like them. Misconceptions and misunderstandings were abundant, and when the person misinterpreting you was a literal god-being, the results were more often than not cataclysmic.The jackal was already back at the mural though, looking over those runes one last time.

“Well yeah, WE know that, but they probably didn’t. See? This rune denotes a request, this one is for water, this one for sustenance. But see, this rune here caught me up, because normally it means…” Saida stopped, taking one step back, then another, looking down at her book one last time.

“What?” Don asked, tilting his head towards her, noticing the expression on her face become unreadable.

“...drought. It means drought. They… this isn’t a request. It’s a plea. A prayer…”

“A prayer? A prayer for what?” Don insisted. Saida turned around to face him, and the look in her eyes made the humans blood freeze. He could almost see the tidal wave of emotions washing over her through that gaze, and right away he knew what she was going to say before she said it, and felt the weight of it in his gut right as that single word left Saida’s mouth.

“...Rain.”

Somewhere far off in the distance, a vicious thunder rumbled, long and rolling, traveling over the treetops and past the mountain peaks of that drowning jungle, warning of yet another coming storm.

- - -

This was a personal pic, done just for me, but I wanted to share it regardless. I wanted to draw the mural from my very first Alter story I ever wrote, which is what you just read ^^ this is what started the birth of my biggest and most complex and thought out setting I've ever done, and it's very important to me. It was also a very magnificent BG study ^^

Art: Me.


"They asked it for rain, and the kind god made it so. And it rained. And rained. And rained. And all the while the kind god feared he had not given enough, never aware that they had long since been washed away."