Noxil Ravenfall woke up in darkness. As a denizen of Ulgu, this was no surprise, and it did not worry her in the slightest. What did worry her, a little, was that she found herself within a space without walls. Or anything for that matter. Mist and physical shadow seemed to obscure the distance, and no matter how she turned, she never found an exit. Honestly, she thought, it was her own fault. She had known better, communication in Ulgu was rife with misunderstandings, lies, and deception. She should have foreseen this, had foreseen this and yet… well, here she was.
Noxil had worked within the Vanishing Court for four cycles of the moons by the time she had reached the office of Minor Phantasmagoriarch. Now, in this room, she had lost it all. Her first moons cycle, the Orb Duplicita had hung low in the void, but Noxil had kept her head low, had learnt as much as she could about how things worked, had stayed out of any recognisable work so as to avoid any issues. She had kept communications she was in charge of backed up, written out a number of times over. By the time the second moons cycle had passed by during her stay within the Court she had realised this had not been enough, was now keeping all records in multiplicity, and encased them all in nullstone. She had risen the ranks as well, had become a Junior Corrective Duplicitant, and was working overtime to prove herself within the Court. Agreements, financial records, deeds, communications both minor and important, passed below her gaze. And she duplicated, and he had kept it safe. Every so often something would go awry, a minor spat between some noble and another, usually as the Twins were trading comets, but always she could pull out what had been marked down in nullstone, and the communications were cleared, truth sparked in the Realm of lies, and they had moved on.
It was a Full Showing the night of her mistake. All of Ulgu’s satellites had hung in the sky. The Court attempted to continue business, but even simple tasks proved to be too difficult. Two orders of bread for the wizard’s tower became five orders of soup sent to the clerics office, the signing of a marriage oath reformed underneath the pen itself to become a difforce document, even one of Noxil’s nullstone tablets had shook lose of it’s bindings in a shelf and shattered on the floor. Stress levels were high. She had spent some hours scouring a new document that had come onto her desk from one of the Tenebrophants, a lofty position indeed within the Court. There was but a single error in the otherwise fine document. But the moons were ascendant. And so she left the document alone. It was simply too perilous, miscommunication amongst the Tenebrophants was exceedingly dangerous, the risk was simply too high. She had seen it before, members of the Court exiled for misplaced, or worse incorrect, word-usage on a Court document. The Vanishing Court prided itself on its professionality, and so even minor errors, at any level below that of the Tenebrophants was dealt with swiftly, and without mercy.
And so she had gone about the rest of the day, doing minor things, solving minor problems, and slowly she forgot. For some reason, still lost to her, she forgot. And when she sat back down at her desk the following morning, breakfast in-hand and sipping her first coffee, her eyes glazed over the document, the correction was made, and she sent it away with the rest of the paperwork, the rest that had not been done beneath the full gaze of Oliatru… The Liar’s Moon. Within the hour she was brought before the Head Tenebrophant. They had gone through the documentations, they did not approve of her corrections. Her trial had already been completed by the time she was made aware of what was going on, she was in no position to give insight as she was just a Minor Phantasmagoriarch. The moons had done their work on those privy to the Tenebrophant’s conversations, the gaslighting, the deceit, the pride had all risen to a crescendo in but a moment. They could not lose face, and it came crashing down on her as retribution. The safety of the Court rested with the Tenebrophants, and thus their will should be done, no matter the cost, no matter whether or not they were the ones to make the mistakes. Darkness had been draped across her eyes then, and she had awoken some time later in this misty room.
She wondered how long would one survive here? Would she be let out at some point? Or maybe there was some hidden exit she didn’t know about. Then again, at least she had company. The eyes that stared out from the mists. They were barely visible, but they were there most certainly. They could not speak up on her behalf, but they were there.
“Thank you,” she told the dark room, “it’s nice to not be alone.”
