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This RP immediately follows Governed as it were by chance and is therefore dated to March 21st, 2015 for the sake of space travel cooldowns.

The oath came easily to Babylon, soft and earnest as any prayer he'd ever said. The effect was instantaneous. He'd no sooner uttered the final word (mine) than the world spun around them, lights and shadows of Destiny City blurring and rearranging themselves, taking on a much bluer tone as they settled. They had arrived in the lowest-most square of a terraced city. On one side, buildings climbed the mountain in rows, ancient houses hunkered against the cold. On the other side, a high stone wall separated the coblestones from the valley beyond.

Snow fell gently around them, though it swirled much faster beyond the gently pulsing blue dome encircling the city. It was cold the way a night in early January could be, and Babylon adjusted the way his cape fit over his shoulders. The hillside was awash in blue light cast by hundreds of street lamps, but also by bursts of glowing blue flowers sprouting at the edges of stairways and streets and between houses.

"This is my Wonder," said Babylon, relaxing his arm and easing Umber's fingers from their hold. "It wasn't like this when I found it. The barrier wasn't here, the lamps weren't lit, there were no flowers. It had decayed."

It might even be livable now, he thought. He knew for sure that it would be in another year or two, at least in the future he'd seen (a future that never would be). "Anyway, uh, welcome?"

(Babylon was never sure what to do with people once he actually got them to his wonder. It was a recurring problem.)

Umber had good questions, and Babylon followed along behind the lieutenant and worked over his answers in his head. He could have easily dismissed it as all being due to magic, but the questions were thoughtful and he wanted to dignify them with the answers they deserved - and he didn't think that any of it was particularly dangerous information to share. Perhaps Umber would give pause at mention of ancestors and past lives... but there was a certain suspension of disbelief that being in outer ******** space seemed to lend to people.

That could wait.

"The barrier is tied to the lamps," said Babylon. He didn't understand the mechanism, and context only indicated that it was as likely to be a spell as it was to be some kind of ancient technology. "It only appeared once they were all lit. That was... about a year and a half ago." He was surprised to realize how recently it had been - it seemed longer. A lot had happened since then.

"The plants... I think the seeds were dormant in the soil. The barrier made the climate more mild so they could sprout." That made logical sense, he thought, based on actual scientific principles. There was no way that Umber could take umbrage at that explanation. Unfortunately, that exhausted the things that could be explained without delving into magic.

"That being said," admitted Babylon, continuing to let the lieutenant lead the way, "there are some processes here that I can't explain nearly as well. Or, you know, at all? The cobblestones have gotten straighter since I've been coming here and I don't know why or how that happened." But hey, it made the place a heck of a lot more presentable.

"As for the anthropology perspective," he said, and paused. Even if Umber was following him so far, he was sure that past lives and ancient vigils and memories would test the bounds of believability. "The last knight of Babylon - he was an ancestor of mine from a thousand years ago - he died here, and his - his ghost stood a vigil? He mentored me. I took his starseed back to the space cauldron last summer, but now I see his memories sometimes, so I've learned things from that."

Babylon looked up at Umber, waiting for him to object to some detail in the story - or ask another question. He felt as though his entire existence were open to questioning - but he'd sort of opened himself up to it.

"The Cauldron," said Babylon, after a moment's consideration, "is less like a Wonder or a planet or a star and more like a big cosmic, uh, recycling plant. It's where your starseed comes from when you're born and goes back to when you die, and then it cycles through and every thousand years or so, you get reincarnated. Or, well, your starseed gets reused. It's kind of open to interpretation whether that's actually you or not, but that's how it works." He shrugged, let the statement hang there for a moment, and then moved his thoughts on to the next subject at hand.

He'd found many things in his wanderings. In the old Virgon district, the architecture spoke of distant worlds and ancient wanderings. (This, too, was his heritage.) On the main street there, he'd found a schoolhouse, and in the schoolhouse he'd found a classroom where all the arithmetic books were still lined up carefully, waiting for the next day's lesson. How many of those children had escaped to Earth? Had any of them?

"I've found all the expected civic buildings," he said. "A town hall. A library. Schools. A cemetery." Two, in fact - one in the eastern foothills, outside the walls, and the knights' crypt beneath the city. "I've found books. Journals and schoolbooks and things I can't even guess at but - they're not in a language I understand, or expect anyone still living to know." It was a dialect dead a thousand years, and one that had never been spoken on Earth in the first place. His chances of deciphering them through anything other than untapped memories were slim.

"I know that there were two main ethnic groups here," he said, trying to offer up something that might appeal to Umber's anthropological slant. "The Babylonians were native to Mercury and lived in the city from its founding, and the Virgons came later as refugees." They'd lost their world or... or something. He'd gotten it in bits and pieces. Perhaps with more intensive study, more of it would come to him.

"I'm descended from both," he added, as an aside bit of trivia. Was he trying too hard to legitimize himself? It was silly. He didn't need to defend himself to this visitor - the city was his, and rightfully so, and all associated miracles had to be taken at face value or dismissed as a fever dream.

Or something.

He'd climbed this hillside enough times that a steep alley or two didn't wind him, but he still slowed down as they reached the next street and raised an eyebrow at Umber. "Do you need a rest?" he asked. Powered forms came with enhanced physical fitness, but it was still quite the hike to walk all over Babylon.

Babylon nodded, and he wondered for a moment if Umber had any sort of formal training in anthropology in his day-to-day life. He very seldom asked Negaversers about their civilian lives, as knowing too much could become dangerous for both parties, but the captain's questions were more thorough than any he'd been asked before - and none of them seemed to pertain to things that could be used against him. Try as he might, Babylon could find no ulterior motive beyond curiosity for wanting to know about ancient languages and peoples.

"Sometimes I have memories of writing the journals," he said, following the captain to the building he'd indicated. One of the front doors was ajar, and there were bits of snow built up in the corners of the atrium. He indicated a low stone bench. "So I know what they say that way." The text itself was a semitic alphabet, which was odd in a way Babylon wasn't sure he felt like sharing - he was still trying to figure out the connection on his own.

"I'm not sure what the political situation between the Virgons and their hosts was like," he said. He could look more into that, though. He could walk the streets of the Virgon quarter in search of memories. He could ask Elke-

He could not ask Elke. "I'll have to do more research. There's so much to learn here."

There was a statue surrounded by a dry fountain at the center of the room, a depiction of some long-dead princess Mercury holding one hand raised and one hand lowered. It means there is innocence, and there is guilt, he thought in Menachem's voice, the administrative desks along the left wall suddenly populated, the fountain bubbling - but only for a second. Asimov was seated at his side instead of Umber, kicking her heels. She looked to be about five years old, quick to imitate the statue's gesture. And we must decide carefully.

"It's a courthouse," he said, the vision vanishing. "The statue's gesture, the raised and lowered hands - it's about how when you place a verdict on someone, that sticks with them forever, so the justice process has to be thorough. Careful. I think."

Babylon followed behind Umber, allowing the lieutenant space to explore but not to get out or reach. If he was asking about the end of the Silver Millenium, well, he had no answers for that. Nor had he ever considered religion at Babylon - not deeply.The space cauldron seemed a religion unto itself, one that the knight found himself cleaving to, but that didn't mean that Finn hadn't been raised with something else.

"I know Chesed," said Babylon, moving more quickly to follow Umber towards the statue. He said it differently, the sound moving further back in his throat. The way it's meant to be said, thought Babylon. "I know Gevurah and the Sefirot, too." He said those differently, too, with a Hebrew school accent. "They're part of the Kabbalah."

Baphomet wasn't a part of it at all, he thought, just a latter-day pagan superstition imposed on top of fifth-century mysticism. The accents was all wrong, anyway, that ch acting as a kind of shibboleth. If Umber spoke Hebrew, he thought, he'd learned it later in life. "I don't know about them being moons," he said. "They're just... principles. Ways of understanding god. Or that's how I was raised. I don't know about you."

But moving on, he thought, turning away from the statue. "I remember being here," he said. "Or - my ancestor does. That's how I know about the statue. He was explaining it to his niece." Mistral. What would she say about this building? "But I can't control when I remember things and when I don't. They happen or they don't and sometimes they're convenient and sometimes they're not."

"Most of Western civilization as we know it is poached from my religion," said Babylon, although Umber won his respect for at least being self-aware enough to admit it. "Or - my family's religion. I'm not sure how much of it I believe anymore." It was a hard tradition to leave behind, even if he didn't believe anymore.

Still trailing behind Umber, he said, "I've only seen his memories since I took him to the cauldron last summer." It was bleed-over, but probably from having Menachem's starseed in his chest and his thoughts inside his head than anything else. "With people who are... recycled, yeah, they have memories." It was a weird word to use, but it felt less loaded than reincarnation.

Mistral's had proven useful. Virgo's had proven nothing but a burden. Babylon supposed he was happier without that burden.

(But Virgo would have been happier if it had been Menachem's starseed spun out of the cauldron and not his. He supposed he'd feel guilty over that forever.)

"I haven't seen all that many," he said, following Umber's lead up the stairs. The upper floors were probably stable enough. "I've only had my ancestor's since last summer and I don't see them every visit. Personally, in my lifetime - it would have to be the first time I lit all the lamps and I saw the city all lit up and I felt like I'd really accomplished something. I'd never really made any progress here before then."

Sure enough, there was a second floor terrace off the staircase. Babylon gestured for Umber to follow him out. "It was a view kind of like this," he said.
"Just from the very top."

"You understand correctly," said Babylon, taking up a position leaning on the banisters beside Umber. "There is some combination of starseed, mind, and place that the memories cling to. When I recall things, they are always relevant to the location I am in." As much as he'd come to understand about his wonder in the four years he'd had access to it, there was still so much about it that he didn't understand.

"It did look like a tomb," he added, looking down over the city. "When I first got here. No light. No plants. No one had been here for a thousand years to take care of it. I didn't even have the lantern then - I was a page. All I had was a glowstick. You know, one of those dinky ones that you get in emergency survival kits. Crack it, shake it up, it glows for twelve hours?"

"Anyway, it was the middle of a blizzard and it was creepy as s**t. I think I stayed for all of about fifteen minutes and the last five of them might have been a hallucination," he said. It had been so long ago. The memory should have been vivid, but so much had happened since then that it was fading.

Umber's next question was interesting, but Babylon's instinct was to doubt what he was asking could be done. Titan's request had been simple by comparison. "I didn't dig my compass up here," he said. Or, well, he'd found the casing - but the inner workings were all new, and that was what mattered. "I designed it, and a friend of mine built it. Mistral."

He gestured down the mountain, out to the crater plain where a distant spot in the valley glowed blue. "Her Wonder is about a mile and a half from here," he explained. "We're cousins of a sort. Even in the Silver Millennium, our lines were joined. Anyway, no, space travel is its own magic. This couldn't take you there - it's only meant to show you what you are, not who or where."

He thought of the moon pearls, of the surrounding passports. If there were talismans that could grant their holder safe passage to those locations, surely he could do something similar for his own city. And if so - could he create something that could open up the whole galaxy for exploration? Something that could do what Umber asked? After all, Camelot had said there was no way to discover a Negaverser's planetary allegiance, and it had turned out that no one had ever tried...

"It would probably take months or years of study to even begin to understand that kind of magic," said Babylon.

Babylon shrugged. "I feel called to this place. I couldn't leave it alone," he said, although the truth was that he'd done his best not to come back. His ancestor had been judgmental. He'd left his wonder alone for well over a year once, he remembered guiltily, and considered telling Umber that present piousness was no indication of his misspent youth. He'd had to reach a turning point before he could earn his ancestor's respect and make any real use of this place.

"If there are more knights in my family, I don't know about them," said Babylon. The rule seemed to be one knight per wonder, or at least he'd never met a pair of duplicates. Perhaps it was because they were so few in number...? But Menachem had never mentioned anything to contradict the assumed order of one at a time. He'd always assumed that if anything were to happen to him, his sister would awaken then and only then.

(In his dreams, he thought, he'd seen Orianna as a page. Was that a different future not to be?)

"Well," said Babylon, wincing as Umber's spine cracked. He was sure it had been satisfying for the lieutenant, but it was less pleasant to to listen to. "I guess? Yes? A lot of people assume that magic is this really constant thing. That you can't change magic and it always behaves the same way, but that's not true. With enough work, innovation is possible."

He hoped that answer was satisfactory to Umber. It was enjoyable to talk to someone so earnestly interested in knowledge - even if that person aligned himself with Chaos. Babylon could only hope that his words were finding purchase - perhaps, one day, Umber would come to him for more than just curiosity.

The Negaverse almost had Avalon, he thought, feeling momentarily chilled as he remembered the officers who'd almost taken the island. "That's the trade you make," he said. "Chaos lends you power, but it cuts you off from your wonder. If you were purified, you would have magic all your own."

There. He'd said it. He'd said the p word.