Welcome to Gaia! ::

((And now, please explain Maximos how a computer works and how to use it.

Somewhere, miles and miles away, one little Siren was sitting, grinning to herself, reminiscent of past "lectures", just like these, that made a single tear appear in the corner of her eye.

Gonna delete this here tomorrow. Was just too tempting.))

(Ha! He already has a cell phone! Its not a far step for him to use a computer!

Who am I kidding, yes it is.

But the two of you conspiring to get Maximos educated is hilarious and awesome. xd ))

Max started his reply to Tomorrow by nodding. Which, would lend to the idea that he was generally lost, but after a few bobs of his head his face contorted in distinct displeasure and instead he shook his head back and forth. It was really hard not to laugh in a tragic sort of way when Tomm gestured with one hand at...well, they were going to fix that soon.

"No, no, I understand but..." Well, it was just as alarming as telling a man from centuries ago that the world was not flat. Maximos still saw the world in those metaphysical quasi-terms that science did not usually allow. The world outside the world was filled with void? Nocturne lived in a void. What else lived in a void? And the Sun was not some holy gift, it was actually an inconceivable distance away? To say he was a bit overwhelmed was an understatement.

Max blinked, then blinked again, then several more times slowly and purposefully as if his eyes were digesting the new information in wide gulps. Finally he chuckled and reached out smacking the back of his hand to the bigger man's chest. "Your making fun of me arent you? I see how it is, pick on the man who doesnt understand how to use phones and picture boxes and things."

He waved a jokingly accusatory finger at John. "You almost had me! We had telescopes in my time, I've stared up at the night sky dozens of times! There are stars up there, and the moon, not nothing! No one can really know all that, people cant actually go up there in big tubes filled with bombs, ha ha!"

But then, somewhere deep in his mind he remembered how people cant fly, or wield shadows, or summon storms, or live in gigantic flying islands and the laughter faded into the still and sober face of realization. "...can they?"

Maximos really did look dour. Like something in him had suffered a great weight or loss under Tomorrow's words. His head sunk, his eyes scanned the floor looking back and forth between cracks and pieces of crumbled wall. Was he searching for a handle, a grasp on the moment?

Johnathan was talking but, Maximos wasnt responding. Was the answer in faith as Johnathan said? In religion? In, perhaps a change of topic? The Shadow did not seem to be involved in any topic, his eyes darting faster, and faster. By the time his larger friend finished speaking, Maximos' lips were twitching as if speaking very lowly.

Suddenly, as if shot back out of wherever his mind was, Maximos' head snapped up, his mismatched eyes wide with shock as he settled them on Tomorrow and said. "Four thousand, seven hundred and eighty six."

He blinked, then blinked against and added. "Pieces. You smashed my wall into four thousand seven hundred and eighty six pieces...I'm such a fool!"

And there was the truth of it, Maximos mind was not broken or lost. It was working. Drawing in the pieces bit by bit, clicking together all the tiny details scattered about like dust on the ground and add them together into single fact. Maximos smacked both hands to either side of his head. "Thousands of pieces but its still one wall! Thousands of miles but its still one distance! Hyper-spatiotemporal umbris! A metaphysical contextual based whole!"

He looked directly at John, but his eyes looked left and right dashing around the room like a man in REM sleep. "One follows around the other, the moon shift and phases as it spins! It spins! That means if we see the light..."

He stopped cold and silent. His eyes locked on John, and then he whipped both arms out and clapped his hands to either side of Tomorrow's head. "Genius! Your absolutely genius!"

One line clicked to another, and then another and faster than two lips and a tongue could pronounce Max's mind was miles past anything he had said. An almost complete image that just made him explode into excited laughter. He turned his head slowly, with the same sort of shock painted across his face that one might expect to see in a horror movie when the monster was right behind the main character. And...what was down the far side of this hall behind Maximos?

His laboratory.

Max whipped around and ran, sprinting down the hallway as fast as he could shouting. "Come on! We dont have alot of time!"

It would barely take seconds for the Shadow to burst through his laboratory doors and for the sound of things being tossed and jostled to echo out soon to be followed by his voice shouting. "Hurry up! We've got to go Tomm and I need your help! The Moon doesnt wait for any man! Men! Us! Hurry up!"

The simple fact of the matter was this. Loss and tried, and fell short. Darkness had scored a crushing blow and failed to win. Nocturne had given it his all and came up the loser. If John was really going to snuff that child-like innocence, to crush this man's dreams, he was going to have to be alot stronger and carry a much bigger hammer. Maximos was flesh and blood, but his spirit was just plain unstoppable.

Thankfully, instead would get to enjoy the ride, and this going to be quite the ride.

Surprisingly for Shadow Island in general this room was relatively small. Only a 100 x 100 foot structure, perfectly square with a long table spreading across the wall opposite the door and covered in books and discarded sheets of papers, as well as various bottles of a myriad different substances. The left and right walls were covered with ceiling high book shelves which were quite literally spilling out books with every sufficient jostle or shake and dumping them into already copious piles on the floor. The room was lit by large blue lanterns hanging from the ceiling casting pale blue light on the engraved and painted complex magical symbols etched across the ceiling and dripping down fluidly to connect to similar markings on the walls which in turn slipped behind the book case. Maximos was unrolling what appeared to be a several feet long and wide parchment from a scroll with his hands, while tucking a paintbrush behind his ear and waving for various shadows to slide other various jars to the edge of the table and open them.

Moreover, Maximos was moving at speeds Johnathan might have been more accustomed to seeing him display in battle, not supernatural so much as very quick. Maximos didnt stop to respond he just spoke, he said.

"Motus vet exmos libras vet sumno nox nocti--" He paused, shook his head. Right, wrong Common tongue. Not Arian. Try again. "El'en sel kes'enala bru'elvias umb..."

Not elven! He shook his head again, as he laid the parchment on the floor and placed the paintbrush in his mouth to wet its bristles, waving for a long shadowy arm with a hand-like appendage at its end to lower a jar down. The Shadow grumbled something which sounded very much like crackling flames and burning wood then promptly smacked the heel of his hand against his forehead and proclaimed, as if by great effort. "The bookcases! I need you to pull forward and apart both bookcases and grab two of the the six foot iron girders, a container of brown soil, a container of gray soil, and one of the empty jars and bring them all over here."

If Tomorrow tried he'd find the process mostly easy. The bookcases would move like doors, out a certain amount then lock, then apart until they overlap the bookcases beside them and lock again. The difficulty lie in the fact that both cases were exceedingly heavy and there was already a mess on the floor in front of them. Past the bookshelf doors however and inside was a roughly three hundred foot long walk-in closet lit by similar blue fiery lanterns, shelves filled with tomes filled the hidden closet on the left side, and shelves filled with random objects trinkets and ingredients within the right. All of them were neatly organized, but unlabeled, the difficulty here lie not so much in finding something but finding the right thing. As he walked he would see bottles of fluids, jars with some sort of fleshy packets inside, bags of various contents marked with a symbol or a name in some foreign language. Metals, soils, dusts, herbs and the like were a good way down all organized, but all again unlabeled.

Maximos, down in a crouch moved to the center of the large parchment he had lain across the floor and began drawing a large black circle as close its outer edge as he could without spilling over onto the floor. He was talking to himself rather fast, spewing out words or names that were most likely not in Gaian broken up by little excited laughs. Without another word he left John to his task.

When Tomorrow first returned to the room, Maximos was rambling. The parchment was nothing like the way it was when he had left. The ring was complete and Maximos had drawn over a dozen other rings inside the initial. Not concentric rings, but rings placed in seemingly random places across the canvas. Maximos didnt look up, but he gestured to a spot outside the ring for Tomorrow to place the girders and continued his hurried work. He was filling in smaller symbols and runes inside and around the already completed circles. Max moved his brush like a calligrapher, which is to say, he articulated his wrist like he articulated his sword. Fluid. Fast.

The next time the Aesir returned, the parchment had exploded into life. Curling and swirling lines filled in most of the empty space which was no dotted with arcane symbols, runes, leaving only three empty circles devoid of any markings, and glaringly obvious.

Max was no longer rambling. His tongue had slipped past pale lips and was sliding along the side of his mouth. He was smiling, a wide grin from ear to ear. It seemed, that now that the majority of the circle was drawn, the rush of inspiration was no longer threatening to overwhelm his mind.

"Oh good," Max said, looking up as Tomorrow came in to the objects in his grasp. He smirked. "I guess it wasnt that hard at all."

He gestured to the magic circle, and followed that with. "Now John, we're going to do that magical stuff."

Yes. He heard every word, chuckled lightly and then grinning slipped back to business. "I need you, my able-bodied friend, to bend both of these bars so that they surround this circle. A sprinkle of dirt goes into each of these circles with the empty jar of air in the middle."

He gestured to each circle in turn, and then smiled a terribly devious smile and said. "We're going to need air where we're going. And I'll need Walter!"

And with that, he turned on his heels, placed a hand on his ear and called out. "Walter!"

"Yes, yes exactly, approximately fifteen minutes." Maximos said, wandering away from John as if he wasnt really listening to a word the other man was saying, just lazily sauntering across the room.

"Good, thank you Walter." And with that, Maximos turned around, and blatantly laughed. He didnt even try to make it sound like a light chuckle or a causeless chortle, he laughed directly at what John had just said and then followed through by saying. "Dont be daft, Tomm. Something like that is hardly worth our time. We're going someplace you will never forget!"

"Where was I? Oh yes!" He clapped his together and took a step back towards his magic circle, intricate as it was, sprawled out across the floor on whitish cream colored parchment. "I need you, Mr. Tomorrow..."

And Maximos gestured to the far wall and the general vicinity of his work table. "To punch a whole in that wall, about the size of your fist and scoop out two..."

He paused, looked directly at John's absent arm and barren shoulder, and then edited himself promptly. "One, very large scoop of soil and stone and bring it over here please."

With that, Maximos stepped into the center of the circle so as to grab at one of the lamps hanging down from the ceiling. With a few squeaks of metal, he began undoing it from its hinging. "Oh, and please dont destroy my work table. Please?"

Max stopped, blue lantern in hand and looked at Tomorrow with a serious, and yet almost pleading face and added. "No but really Tomm. Watch the table."

Funny enough, while harming the table was a serious concern slamming a whole in his wall nearly the size of a basketball was of absolutely no concern. Literally. Maximos seemed quite cheerful to hear the near thunderous boom of rock hard flesh slamming into stone and shaking the entire room.

When Tomorrow turned around, Maximos had the lamp dangling by a handle from his wrist and was clapping excitedly.

"Perfect!" He exclaimed and laughed. "Absolutely perfect!"

And then he lift his paintbrush, lowering his other arm so that the blue burning lantern fell into his waiting hand. "Alright Tomm, I appreciate your patience, but this part is key. I need you to hold still for a moment."

And Max approached, lifting the paintbrush and approaching Tomorrow's empty shoulder. "I'm going to doodle on your arm here a bit, and then I'll need you to smear that soil all over the drawing and we'll be almost ready to go!"

He took another step, held up the brush inches from the steel empty robotic socket and said. "Questions? Comments? Ready?"