IC Date: 01/30/2026

Bacchus felt a hair less resentful of Tempesti’s presence than he had during their previous visit. He could tell how hard she was working to restrain her curious chatter, her endless questions, the pity hidden behind sympathy as they walked through the boneyard. Not that pensive quiet was all that much better, the cracking of branches as they collapsed from the corpses of trees didn’t make for particularly good company. Still, he was fairly certain that silence was worse.

-----

Despite the intensity of her fascination with the galaxy’s ancient cultures, walking through the Chaos infected ruins with the culture’s sole survivor forced Tempesti to face the staggering scale of this…absence. Multiplied by the countless worlds that still lay silent in the void of space…it was a struggle to understand even a fragment of the devastation strewn across this half shattered galaxy. She swatted aside the fleeting fear that all of their efforts to stem the tide were an exercise in quixotic vainglory. It would make no difference to her, even if it was. Better to die trying than live in servitude to the whims of a monster that seemed to think itself a god. Stealing a sidelong glance at Bacchus’ stormy countenance she knew that for all of his loud, nihilistic professions, her friend was at the very least too stubborn to roll over entirely. He wouldn’t be stomping around here grumbling about everything in sight if he wasn’t.

-----

“You’re not as sneaky as you think you are.
Stop analyzing me.
I’m fine.
You get used to this s**t when you wander around in it for centuries.

Bacchus added a flourish to his statement with a kick to the pile of bones closest to them.

No point in counting skulls or otherwise trying to guess how many people the mycelia had knitted together before it had its fill. No point in wondering how long they lasted. How long it took for reality to melt away, Chaos robbing them even of the sweet delirium that a more merciful force might have offered. It was a godsdamned waste of time and far, far duller than filling the silence with the clattering of spore-pocked skeletons.

The deep space senshi ignored his companion’s grimace.

It was good for her.

Builds character.

He couldn’t recall exactly where he’d heard that phrase, but he liked the sound of it. Not so much when it applied to his own life, but it sounded good when it meant other people becoming more tolerable.

-----

The road to the temple was far more decayed than anything Tempesti had seen in Keraunos, even in the first days of her exploration. The ground erupted violently through the paving stones at uneven intervals, Chaos warped roots refusing to allow their boundaries to direct their paths as they reached toward the trespassers. Dead fingers wanting to drag them downward into the gaping maw of whatever waited beneath the surface. An involuntary shudder passed through her small form as the cold, heavy presence seemed almost to press in on her. The sensation defied all attempts to fit it into her admittedly limited understanding of the galaxy. Even if it hadn’t come as a surprise after their last visit she suspected that it would be impossible to acclimate to something like this, however her friend attempted to hide behind that practiced mask.

-----

“Don’t think about it too much.” There was an affected playfulness to his voice, a manufactured smirk plastered across his face. It was enough to deter questions from most other people, but he suspected that Tempesti’s quiet stemmed more from politeness than anything else. Not that he was complaining. Less questions meant less answers and less answers meant less thinking. Always good to take his own advice, especially when it came to this bullshit.

Looking around the shattered city he wondered how he’d ever had any affection for this midden heap. With a grunt the senshi gestured toward a tall carved stela carved with the traditional spirals of rooted text that always accompanied the deep sunken relief images of the greatest Tuath victories. Not that they did a godsdamned thing for him. Could help his curious little friend on her pointless endeavor, and watching her try to puzzle out the differences between this spiraled text and the vertical text of every boring document in the temple should be entertaining at least. Certainly better than time wasted dragging his eyes across the shades of the past himself.

“Do what you need to do so we can move on.”

He watched the tide of questions attempt to force their way from Tempesti’s mouth, stemmed only by her valiant efforts to remain respectfully quiet. Dully quiet, he decided, despite the vague flicker of self-awareness that forced him to recognize that sound and silence were equally irritating on this planet.

-----

The tangle of characters in the incised stone were more than a little disorienting, particularly when compared with the aggressive neatness of the records Tempesti had pored over during her last visit. It seemed fitting that whatever stories this stela carried would grow into one another and she suspected that this aspect of the language contributed to the utter foreignness of the way Bacchus seemed to perceive time. The rare occasions on which he gave hints of his thoughts on the matter revealed something far from linear, years and eons intertwined and feeding upon one another in a way that was difficult for her to wrap her head around. “The good stuff,” as Bacchus described it bore only a tenuous connection to the time and space made tangible in this stela. The ancient songs and stories residing timelessly within the minds of those who carried them. Well, the one who carried them now. Any attempt to pry loose even a pebble to steal a glance at what lay behind the ancient man’s stubbornness earned her nothing but irritable excuses or dismissive jokes.

His subtle flinch the sight of the standing stone, as though he was refusing to make eye contact with the humanoid forms sunken into its surface, caught her attention. Scrutinizing the weathered figures she could make out a woman, spear aloft, impossibly tall beside the soldiers she commanded and the enemies driven before her. That would have to be a question for later, for now all she could do was document what she could and learn what was left.