![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Nonsense for all!
1. Chrono Trigger is excellent.
2. Garrison Keillor is the man.
3.
In Eirika’s experience, cities tended to be built horizontally, and so it was with no small surprise that she discovered the capital city of Rausten to have been constructed along an entirely different axis. It went up – indeed, it seemed so intent upon reaching the sky that she half-expected it to come free of its moorings and drift away. For the other feature that struck her, even through the filigreed panes of the carriage window, was the abundance of strange aircraft floating about the city, tethered like enormous balloons.
Opposite her, Lady L’Arachel was still chattering away. She was at her most agreeable, Eirika had learnt, when she was given opportunity to talk about herself – and where no such opportunities existed, she was adept at creating them. General Seth had asked her a question some twenty minutes past and his expression of polite interest was by now beginning to fail him; she had got round to a minute account of all her doings since waking that morning, each a truly momentous event which she could not possibly ascribe to coincidence as they all indicated so very precisely that she was destined on this very day to meet two very charming people in the direst need of her assistance, which she was ever so pleased to extend, etc. While neither her generosity nor her enthusiasm had ever been in question, she was so intent on persuading her companions of them that she hadn’t yet mentioned how exactly she meant to help them.
“Ah, Princess Eirika!” Lady L’Arachel said suddenly. “You have not spoken to us in quite some time and we are getting most desperately lonely.”
Eirika started and glanced around a moment in confusion. “Are you unwell, Your Highness?” Seth asked, his brow furrowed in concern.
“I’m all right,” she said, shaking her head. “I merely…” She glanced out the window again. “To own the truth, I’ve never seen a city like this before.”
“But how could you? No other such city exists!” said L’Arachel. “Oh, and I daresay you will see any number of things to take your breath away while you are here. Rausten is a wonder made up of wonders, and as your hostess I could simply never forgive myself if I allowed you to overlook a single one!”
Eirika’s mood darkened; she fancied she might once have spoken that way of Renais. It had never been as fanciful a place as Rausten, but she knew every tower and every secluded path. She wondered how many of her secret retreats had fallen into ruin.
“Renais will be restored, my lady,” General Seth said quietly. “I swear it.”
Lady L’Arachel sat back amid the red velvet cushions and pretended not only that she was gazing out the window but that she had been doing so the entire time.
“Thank you, General,” Eirika murmured, then directed her attention back to Lady L’Arachel. “Please don’t worry about me. I would very much like to see your city, but I’m afraid there’s little time. Our allies and the rest of my retainers await us in –”
“Oh, pish!” said Lady L’Arachel, apparently quite recovered. “Shall I have them brought here? Or perhaps you’d like to go meet them in style. That can certainly be arranged. But you’re right, you know. You simply must put a halt to Grado’s vile schemes and restore lost Renais with all due haste. I’ll draw up a list of only the most essential sights, and if we manage our time strictly, why, I think we might be able to touch upon them all in a mere week! Today we shall see the docks, I think, and tomorrow you simply must behold the Grand Elevator in the rosy light of dawn, and perhaps – but I am getting ahead of myself! Of course you’ll have heard of the Fountain of a Thousand Flutes, and I should be ever so glad to satisfy your curiosity –” She did not leave off even after the carriage had come to a halt.
The Grand Elevator was a tiny circular room with a marble floor and glass walls. The door was a thin, curved panel of burnished bronze that could be raised or lowered by the operation of a fancifully decorated lever, and Lady L’Arachel insisted that Eirika throw it three or four times before they began their ascent.
“This contraption is safe?” the General asked.
“Naturally. It’s got all kinds of gears and pulleys and such. Shall we go?” She closed her eyes and raised her staff in a highly dramatic fashion, and the glass bulb at the end began to glow dimly. Before Eirika could ask what this was all about, there was a terrible grinding and the floor began to shake.
The room started to rise. It was, Eirika realized, encased in a slightly larger glass chute, and there must be mechanisms beneath the floor or perhaps above the mirrored ceiling to provide for its movement. No doubt this would have provided her great comfort under different circumstances, but as matters stood, there was beneath her an ever-increasing volume of air and an enormous city all around her made tiny by the distance. Seth took hold of her elbow, steadying her. She looked up into his face and saw beneath his concern some of the wonder that had so paralyzed her.
Lady L’Arachel had lowered her staff and begun humming cheerfully. Eirika ventured another look outside. They were still rising steadily. The plazas and temples and fountains of Rausten grew ever smaller and more multitudinous, to say nothing of the people. She wondered whether they knew as they went about their business that someone in an elevator was watching them; she decided they did not, and for one long, cold moment felt intensely alone. But there was more than enough time for the feeling to pass as the elevator’s stately ascent continued, and the people no longer resembled people so much as a tapestry of exotic hats.
Then darkness surrounded them, and the unperturbed humming of Lady L’Arachel provided no reassurance that the elevator and its passengers had not abandoned the atmosphere for the abyss of space. Some time later there was a click, and they rose into the light again. Lady L’Arachel invited Eirika to throw the lever again, and she somewhat belatedly complied. They stepped out into a great hall, dark green marble, punctuated by glass tubes the likes of which had brought them here. Their hostess glanced around disapprovingly. “Where can he have gotten to now?”
Someone cleared his throat nearby. Eirika turned. A man stood by the elevator from which they had just emerged – it seemed they had all walked right by him. His clothes were neat and, she supposed, probably very fashionable, and he had the air about him of a perpetual aggrieved sigh. “Kidnapping foreign dignitaries again?”
Lady L’Arachel did not seem to hear, and discovered him on her own initiative several moments later. “Rennac! How long have you been there? You ought to speak up, you know. Don’t just stand there gaping! The princess is going to want her things brought up, I shouldn’t wonder, and the General as well – of course, nothing but the most lavishly appointed apartments will do. Be a dear and make the arrangements, won’t you? And tea – I think today we shall take it on the Terrace of Sidereal Luminance – just nip down to the kitchens and have it sent. Oh, and –”
“Yes, while we’re here, why not tell me if there are any mountains you want shifted around?”
“No, they’ll be fine where they are for the moment. There was something else I wanted you for – hm, I’ve forgotten. Come and ask me in a few minutes.” She made a shooing gesture. “Well, go on! How are you going to be done in time to find out what I forgot if you don’t start now?”
Rennac rolled his eyes. “Your Highness,” he said, bowing to Eirika, and with a nod to Seth, “General.” He turned and left in great ill humor.
“Who was that?” Eirika asked.
“Oh, Rennac? Pay him no mind. He is only a thief.”
Eirika and Seth exchanged worried glances. They had not believed there to be any pressing need for more evidence that Lady L’Arachel was eccentric, and should she continue to furnish it so freely…
“Well,” said Eirika, carefully, “I must say that the Grand Elevator came as quite a shock! Wouldn’t you agree, General?” Seth said that he would, and expressed some curiosity as to the manner of its construction.
“The Grand Elevator?” Lady L’Arachel stared at them with a blank expression. “That was only the Royal Express! Oh, you poor things, what a dreadful misconception under which to labor! How disappointed you must have been, after enduring all my talk, to think I referred to such a trifle! How shall I ever make it up to you? To think that I perpetuated such a travesty!” She looked downcast, though not for long enough that anyone could voice a reply, her recovery coming a single breath later. “I know just the thing. Come along,” she said, and thrusting her arm through Eirika’s strode decisively into another elevator.
There was a good deal less to see this time, just a shrinking expanse of marble below them and a growing one above. They passed through several more floors and Eirika, who had in her lifetime declined quite a few invitations to ride Princess Tana’s pegasus, tried not to think of the vertical distances this entailed.
They emerged, in strong wind, onto a long triangular spar of floor that seemed to hang over empty air. Lady L’Arachel, heeding neither her guests’ alarm nor the fact that her madly fluttering cape repeatedly struck Seth in the face, laughed delightedly. “Behold!” she cried, flinging out an arm toward the end of the spar.
This was a dock, Eirika realized, but not for seagoing vessels. Chained to a number of large spikes protruding from the end of the dock, there floated an immense silvery shape. She had seen zeppelins before – Castle Renais had had the use of a few – but this craft was in a different class entirely, with a deck in front open to the air and sweeping, graceful wings.
“The Battle Princess,” Lady L’Arachel said proudly. “Do not concern yourselves over your reunion with your comrades! You have but to arrive in my magnificent ship to leave them astounded by your success! Oh! They will forgive your tardiness in an instant; they will understand immediately how fortunate they are that you encountered me. My noble ship and your noble cause are perfectly suited to each other! As soon as I heard you might come to Rausten, well! I knew I could do nothing other than to offer you its use. Come, come, I know you’re desperate for a closer look.” Since she had never yet released Eirika’s arm, they had little choice but to be exactly as desperate as she judged appropriate.
As they approached, a hatch opened on the Battle Princess’s underside and a short dark-haired man came barreling out to meet them. He appeared to be in his mid-forties, though he was wearing such preposterous goggles that it was difficult to be sure, and to have recently singed off one of his eyebrows, though the other was more than substantial enough to compensate for its loss.
“Mr. Dozla! I bring still more hapless people captivated by the majesty of the Battle Princess!”
The man laughed heartily. “Of course they are, milady! How could they resist? Unless they were related to Rennac,” he added thoughtfully. “There’s a lad who doesn’t like anything.” He laughed again, then stopped and peered up at Eirika and Seth curiously. “You aren’t, are you?” They didn’t think they were. He bellowed with laughter and shook their hands vigorously. “I have the honor of being the machinist! They call me Dozla!”
The people of Rausten, it seemed, never missed an opportunity to exclaim something.
Seth put forth some question about the operation of the craft, which Eirika was unable to hear over the wind and Dozla’s continued mirth. Lady L’Arachel looked dismissive. “Oh, I don’t know. The righteousness of my soul, I should expect. Mr. Dozla, how is my zeppelin powered?”
“Gwah ha ha! The purity of your spirit and the righteousness of your soul, my lady!”
Lady L’Arachel gave Seth a look as though to say “that settles that.”
Rennac told them later (though they hadn’t asked, and it was terribly impertinent of him) that he despised the thing and that if he was ever asked to go near it again he would resign on the spot. In particular he had nothing charitable to say about Mr. Dozla – “hawks and handsaws trip him up.”
ETA:
Joshua: "a tall gentleman in a battered top hat with more dueling pistols stowed about his person than anyone could reasonably expect to need and, as though that were not clear enough, a very impressive sword"
Knoll: a patent clerk "with no friends or associates but enough books that he could never have felt justified in complaining." Lyon drops in to ramble at him about his latest inventions and eventually enlists him in mad science.
Artur: currently enrolled in a seminary, where he can get absolutely nothing done because Lute keeps barging in and threatening to go hunting cryptids without a chaperon until he agrees to go along. She insists that you can become a priest any time, but there's only going to be one first person to capture a Karakoncolos.
2. Garrison Keillor is the man.
3.
In Eirika’s experience, cities tended to be built horizontally, and so it was with no small surprise that she discovered the capital city of Rausten to have been constructed along an entirely different axis. It went up – indeed, it seemed so intent upon reaching the sky that she half-expected it to come free of its moorings and drift away. For the other feature that struck her, even through the filigreed panes of the carriage window, was the abundance of strange aircraft floating about the city, tethered like enormous balloons.
Opposite her, Lady L’Arachel was still chattering away. She was at her most agreeable, Eirika had learnt, when she was given opportunity to talk about herself – and where no such opportunities existed, she was adept at creating them. General Seth had asked her a question some twenty minutes past and his expression of polite interest was by now beginning to fail him; she had got round to a minute account of all her doings since waking that morning, each a truly momentous event which she could not possibly ascribe to coincidence as they all indicated so very precisely that she was destined on this very day to meet two very charming people in the direst need of her assistance, which she was ever so pleased to extend, etc. While neither her generosity nor her enthusiasm had ever been in question, she was so intent on persuading her companions of them that she hadn’t yet mentioned how exactly she meant to help them.
“Ah, Princess Eirika!” Lady L’Arachel said suddenly. “You have not spoken to us in quite some time and we are getting most desperately lonely.”
Eirika started and glanced around a moment in confusion. “Are you unwell, Your Highness?” Seth asked, his brow furrowed in concern.
“I’m all right,” she said, shaking her head. “I merely…” She glanced out the window again. “To own the truth, I’ve never seen a city like this before.”
“But how could you? No other such city exists!” said L’Arachel. “Oh, and I daresay you will see any number of things to take your breath away while you are here. Rausten is a wonder made up of wonders, and as your hostess I could simply never forgive myself if I allowed you to overlook a single one!”
Eirika’s mood darkened; she fancied she might once have spoken that way of Renais. It had never been as fanciful a place as Rausten, but she knew every tower and every secluded path. She wondered how many of her secret retreats had fallen into ruin.
“Renais will be restored, my lady,” General Seth said quietly. “I swear it.”
Lady L’Arachel sat back amid the red velvet cushions and pretended not only that she was gazing out the window but that she had been doing so the entire time.
“Thank you, General,” Eirika murmured, then directed her attention back to Lady L’Arachel. “Please don’t worry about me. I would very much like to see your city, but I’m afraid there’s little time. Our allies and the rest of my retainers await us in –”
“Oh, pish!” said Lady L’Arachel, apparently quite recovered. “Shall I have them brought here? Or perhaps you’d like to go meet them in style. That can certainly be arranged. But you’re right, you know. You simply must put a halt to Grado’s vile schemes and restore lost Renais with all due haste. I’ll draw up a list of only the most essential sights, and if we manage our time strictly, why, I think we might be able to touch upon them all in a mere week! Today we shall see the docks, I think, and tomorrow you simply must behold the Grand Elevator in the rosy light of dawn, and perhaps – but I am getting ahead of myself! Of course you’ll have heard of the Fountain of a Thousand Flutes, and I should be ever so glad to satisfy your curiosity –” She did not leave off even after the carriage had come to a halt.
The Grand Elevator was a tiny circular room with a marble floor and glass walls. The door was a thin, curved panel of burnished bronze that could be raised or lowered by the operation of a fancifully decorated lever, and Lady L’Arachel insisted that Eirika throw it three or four times before they began their ascent.
“This contraption is safe?” the General asked.
“Naturally. It’s got all kinds of gears and pulleys and such. Shall we go?” She closed her eyes and raised her staff in a highly dramatic fashion, and the glass bulb at the end began to glow dimly. Before Eirika could ask what this was all about, there was a terrible grinding and the floor began to shake.
The room started to rise. It was, Eirika realized, encased in a slightly larger glass chute, and there must be mechanisms beneath the floor or perhaps above the mirrored ceiling to provide for its movement. No doubt this would have provided her great comfort under different circumstances, but as matters stood, there was beneath her an ever-increasing volume of air and an enormous city all around her made tiny by the distance. Seth took hold of her elbow, steadying her. She looked up into his face and saw beneath his concern some of the wonder that had so paralyzed her.
Lady L’Arachel had lowered her staff and begun humming cheerfully. Eirika ventured another look outside. They were still rising steadily. The plazas and temples and fountains of Rausten grew ever smaller and more multitudinous, to say nothing of the people. She wondered whether they knew as they went about their business that someone in an elevator was watching them; she decided they did not, and for one long, cold moment felt intensely alone. But there was more than enough time for the feeling to pass as the elevator’s stately ascent continued, and the people no longer resembled people so much as a tapestry of exotic hats.
Then darkness surrounded them, and the unperturbed humming of Lady L’Arachel provided no reassurance that the elevator and its passengers had not abandoned the atmosphere for the abyss of space. Some time later there was a click, and they rose into the light again. Lady L’Arachel invited Eirika to throw the lever again, and she somewhat belatedly complied. They stepped out into a great hall, dark green marble, punctuated by glass tubes the likes of which had brought them here. Their hostess glanced around disapprovingly. “Where can he have gotten to now?”
Someone cleared his throat nearby. Eirika turned. A man stood by the elevator from which they had just emerged – it seemed they had all walked right by him. His clothes were neat and, she supposed, probably very fashionable, and he had the air about him of a perpetual aggrieved sigh. “Kidnapping foreign dignitaries again?”
Lady L’Arachel did not seem to hear, and discovered him on her own initiative several moments later. “Rennac! How long have you been there? You ought to speak up, you know. Don’t just stand there gaping! The princess is going to want her things brought up, I shouldn’t wonder, and the General as well – of course, nothing but the most lavishly appointed apartments will do. Be a dear and make the arrangements, won’t you? And tea – I think today we shall take it on the Terrace of Sidereal Luminance – just nip down to the kitchens and have it sent. Oh, and –”
“Yes, while we’re here, why not tell me if there are any mountains you want shifted around?”
“No, they’ll be fine where they are for the moment. There was something else I wanted you for – hm, I’ve forgotten. Come and ask me in a few minutes.” She made a shooing gesture. “Well, go on! How are you going to be done in time to find out what I forgot if you don’t start now?”
Rennac rolled his eyes. “Your Highness,” he said, bowing to Eirika, and with a nod to Seth, “General.” He turned and left in great ill humor.
“Who was that?” Eirika asked.
“Oh, Rennac? Pay him no mind. He is only a thief.”
Eirika and Seth exchanged worried glances. They had not believed there to be any pressing need for more evidence that Lady L’Arachel was eccentric, and should she continue to furnish it so freely…
“Well,” said Eirika, carefully, “I must say that the Grand Elevator came as quite a shock! Wouldn’t you agree, General?” Seth said that he would, and expressed some curiosity as to the manner of its construction.
“The Grand Elevator?” Lady L’Arachel stared at them with a blank expression. “That was only the Royal Express! Oh, you poor things, what a dreadful misconception under which to labor! How disappointed you must have been, after enduring all my talk, to think I referred to such a trifle! How shall I ever make it up to you? To think that I perpetuated such a travesty!” She looked downcast, though not for long enough that anyone could voice a reply, her recovery coming a single breath later. “I know just the thing. Come along,” she said, and thrusting her arm through Eirika’s strode decisively into another elevator.
There was a good deal less to see this time, just a shrinking expanse of marble below them and a growing one above. They passed through several more floors and Eirika, who had in her lifetime declined quite a few invitations to ride Princess Tana’s pegasus, tried not to think of the vertical distances this entailed.
They emerged, in strong wind, onto a long triangular spar of floor that seemed to hang over empty air. Lady L’Arachel, heeding neither her guests’ alarm nor the fact that her madly fluttering cape repeatedly struck Seth in the face, laughed delightedly. “Behold!” she cried, flinging out an arm toward the end of the spar.
This was a dock, Eirika realized, but not for seagoing vessels. Chained to a number of large spikes protruding from the end of the dock, there floated an immense silvery shape. She had seen zeppelins before – Castle Renais had had the use of a few – but this craft was in a different class entirely, with a deck in front open to the air and sweeping, graceful wings.
“The Battle Princess,” Lady L’Arachel said proudly. “Do not concern yourselves over your reunion with your comrades! You have but to arrive in my magnificent ship to leave them astounded by your success! Oh! They will forgive your tardiness in an instant; they will understand immediately how fortunate they are that you encountered me. My noble ship and your noble cause are perfectly suited to each other! As soon as I heard you might come to Rausten, well! I knew I could do nothing other than to offer you its use. Come, come, I know you’re desperate for a closer look.” Since she had never yet released Eirika’s arm, they had little choice but to be exactly as desperate as she judged appropriate.
As they approached, a hatch opened on the Battle Princess’s underside and a short dark-haired man came barreling out to meet them. He appeared to be in his mid-forties, though he was wearing such preposterous goggles that it was difficult to be sure, and to have recently singed off one of his eyebrows, though the other was more than substantial enough to compensate for its loss.
“Mr. Dozla! I bring still more hapless people captivated by the majesty of the Battle Princess!”
The man laughed heartily. “Of course they are, milady! How could they resist? Unless they were related to Rennac,” he added thoughtfully. “There’s a lad who doesn’t like anything.” He laughed again, then stopped and peered up at Eirika and Seth curiously. “You aren’t, are you?” They didn’t think they were. He bellowed with laughter and shook their hands vigorously. “I have the honor of being the machinist! They call me Dozla!”
The people of Rausten, it seemed, never missed an opportunity to exclaim something.
Seth put forth some question about the operation of the craft, which Eirika was unable to hear over the wind and Dozla’s continued mirth. Lady L’Arachel looked dismissive. “Oh, I don’t know. The righteousness of my soul, I should expect. Mr. Dozla, how is my zeppelin powered?”
“Gwah ha ha! The purity of your spirit and the righteousness of your soul, my lady!”
Lady L’Arachel gave Seth a look as though to say “that settles that.”
Rennac told them later (though they hadn’t asked, and it was terribly impertinent of him) that he despised the thing and that if he was ever asked to go near it again he would resign on the spot. In particular he had nothing charitable to say about Mr. Dozla – “hawks and handsaws trip him up.”
ETA:
Joshua: "a tall gentleman in a battered top hat with more dueling pistols stowed about his person than anyone could reasonably expect to need and, as though that were not clear enough, a very impressive sword"
Knoll: a patent clerk "with no friends or associates but enough books that he could never have felt justified in complaining." Lyon drops in to ramble at him about his latest inventions and eventually enlists him in mad science.
Artur: currently enrolled in a seminary, where he can get absolutely nothing done because Lute keeps barging in and threatening to go hunting cryptids without a chaperon until he agrees to go along. She insists that you can become a priest any time, but there's only going to be one first person to capture a Karakoncolos.