Vern navigated the intersection of Timekeeper Lane and Primrose Boulevard, where the clock tower stood tall in all its mechanical glory. He was still making his way to Hotel Inkwell, which was located east of the clocktower—on the intersection between Timekeeper lane and Willowby Street.
It had taken him much longer than anticipated to get back here. He might have underestimated Miss Cera's warning a bit. Some of the locals were indeed a little too unrestrained right now. He had to sneak past many hubs of unrest and make multiple detours to get back here in one piece.
He was a little out of sorts because of that short bout of sprint a few minutes ago. Some asshole had noticed Vern looking at them as they were raiding a Kingsmen's barrack, instantly alarming everyone around him. However, he had the distance advantage in the chase, and for some reason, they didn't dare follow him past a certain neighborhood.
It's like they've their own territories.
There was a religious gathering going on in the Fulham borough as well, but it didn't seem as interesting as the earlier one, so he ignored it in a bid to get back to Hotel faster.
But none of this was a major concern for him right now. The real problem was food. Hopefully, the hotel wasn't already looted to the point of ruin. Because then he'd have to look for some empty house to squat in until he could get his bearings and reach out to some of his contacts in the city. Assuming they were still alive, of course.
So he continued, still somehow not having traversed the width of the clock tower. It was another one of those relics of the past of this city, built in the same era as those bridges. At least, that's what the books said. The leaked schematics of the clock tower he'd seen last year painted a different picture.
Shaking his head, Vern escaped his idle thoughts and hastened towards the hotel. The lights of moon and rift from the sky failed to reach him every other second as he walked under the awnings of many stores. Usually, they would be retracted back at the end of the day. But that day has yet to end for a lot of people.
There were people in some of these buildings who eyed Vern with suspicion, but he ignored all of them and continued on his way.
In no time, he was standing in front of the hotel Inkwell, which was like a landmark in its own right. The hotel exuded an air of grandeur, its imposing façade constructed of time-weathered sandstone, which was gracefully nestled beneath sections of cobalt blue bell cast roof.
Rows upon rows of large, symmetrical windows imprisoned within grilles punctuated its walls, their glass pane gleaming and reflecting the soft glow of the moon's shine. Yet there were a few that shimmered with the warm, inviting glow of the gas lamps from within.
Vern let out a sigh of relief when he saw that. That is reassuring.
The hotel's entrance was imposing in its own right, defined by a heavy oak double door painted navy blue. Flanking the entrance were a pair of marble pillars embellished by finely carved motifs that supported a canopy that had an intricately carved wooden sign proudly declaring 'Hotel Inkwell,' which was etched in golden lettering. On the pillars were two wrought iron gas lamps that cast dancing shadows on the cobblestone underneath.
Looking at this familiar door being in such excellent shape, a lot of his anxieties fizzled away. Squatting in some random house wasn't his idea of a thought conducive environment, nor was it his dream to loot supplies from others.
He exerted himself a little and pushed the towering door, but it remained immobile. It was locked shut.
So he held the golden door knocker and wrapped it thrice. Taps of footsteps approached him from within, and a deep voice emerged, "Hotel Inkwell is not accepting reservations from any new customers right now. If you're not a current guest, please move along. May the lady watch over you."
Vern remembered this voice. It was the butler of this hotel. So he perked up and responded, "I am indeed a prior guest of the hotel. I have a suite reserved under the name Vern Lockwood. I checked in six days ago, and if I am not mistaken, I should have another week before my reservation runs out."
It was odd that the hotel management still cared about reservations and such, but he didn't mind as long as it meant he had a place to stay.
The butler didn't reply.
CLACK.
The sound of a latch being unlocked played in his ears as the door opened just a hint, and an old butler in his immaculate white and black suit greeted him with a deep bow.
"Welcome back, Mr. Vern. I had assumed you met the same fate as many of our other guests. But it seems that I was wrong, and happily so. Please come in."
Vern nodded at the butler and squeezed in, "Who knew how I survived these past three days, so you weren't exactly wrong in assuming the worst."
The insides were still quite neat, if not as opulent as they were before the Duskfall. Heh. Even I call it Duskfall all the time now. It was indeed convenient to call it that instead of whatever that bunch of events was.
Still, the foyer wasn't in a state of ruin that he was expecting it to be. What greeted him instead was a neat hall with a reception desk to the right, a drinks bar to the left, and a wide staircase in the middle. The chandelier up on the ceiling wasn't lit, so most of the illumination came from the windows and a couple of dim lamps that were still ablaze. Butler Beaumont and whatever was left of the staff had done a great job in these trying times. Before Vern could complement Beaumont for his effort and perseverance, he spoke,
"Mr. Vern, as you may already know, these are precarious times, so we have implemented a few changes to ensure we can continue serving our guests without having to force an eviction," said the old man as he closed the door behind him, locking it shut.
"First, the food will only be served twice a day until our supply chain is restored. Second, all guests will have to help ensure the smooth running of the hotel's amenities however they can. Third, no one is allowed to leave or enter after midnight until seven in the morning. Fourth, guests cannot bring in anyone else with them. Fifth, the cost of the suite has been tripled, so you'll have to pay the overdue amount as soon as possible."
"Any questions?" finished the butler with an indifferent expression, the wrinkles on his face following suit.
Obviously, he had many questions. What was that second term? But he didn't want to argue about any of that right now. It wasn't completely unreasonable anyway, and he needed food and time alone. So he skipped the formalities and simply nodded, "No problem. Please send dinner to my room as soon as possible. I will come down in the morning to pay the due, and then we can talk."
The butler stepped aside and extended his arm towards the staircase as if to truly welcome him this time. Vern nodded one final time and left Beaumont to his own devices.
The management's response to this whole situation was quite peculiar, and understanding the rationale behind it might give him some idea about his own future plans. Vern would thoroughly shake down this butler for all the information. Just not right now.
His suite was on the third floor, so he didn't even bother with the lift. Beaumont probably wouldn't let him use it to save on steam anyway. So after another quick unintended workout, he reached the third floor.
The carpeted floor of the long corridor on either side of the staircase was dimly lit, with only a few lamps that barely illuminated the doors and room numbers on them. He strode towards 307 on the left side and started turning the circular knobs on four corners of the lock to match his secret sequence, which he had set up when checking in.
These mechanical locks weren't the safest in the market, but they struck a good balance in terms of their value and security. It wasn't worth waiting two days and paying triple the cost to get a new door installed just for a better lock. He would know. His master was paranoid and always fussed about the locks in even his temporary residences.
With a click, the cogs fit perfectly, and the lock came loose. He entered the room, and luckily it looked undisturbed. Moonlight illuminated the roll-top desk, which was littered with papers, tools, and some contraptions he'd been fiddling with before he had left that day.
He flipped the switch for heat and light, and the outline of a lavish couch, chair, hearth, table, wall clock, curtains, and rest of the furniture were filled with their respective textures and yellow haze as he took in his room.
Locking the door behind him, he made straight for the desk next to the window and pulled open the top drawer. A crystal clear glassy sphere with thin golden lines on its surface rolled around in it, and he let out another sigh of relief.
Phew. At least the Insight Sphere is still intact. It had taken him years to save up for one of his own, and he would have really raised hell if someone had stolen it.
He made for the wooden chair in front of the desk and plopped down on it, all his energy ebbing away as his mind finally relaxed.
He closed his eyes and kneaded his forehead, clearing his mind of stray thoughts. A few minutes passed by as the room heated up, and he sat there, his eyes closed.
.
.
.
Then when the clocktower started its chimes for the next hour, his eyes snapped open, and he sat back up straight. A clear and sharp edge returned to his eyes as he picked up a pen, retrieved the notepad, and threw his blazer aside.
It was time to figure this out.
So he was able to observe and manipulate reality just fine when he was in that ethereal form. But as soon as he woke up, he had failed his Observation and lost that form. He struck out one of his earlier hypotheses and rewrote it with this new information, 'Observers aren't always in the ethereal form. Confirmed to be a temporary state.'
So whatever Hensen was doing by walking through fire indeed had something to do with his Viewpoint, not that ethereal form.
Also, he had only faced serious repercussions for Observation when he was in his natural state of a material human being. He experienced eye bleeds and vertigo back in the burning library, but nothing like those…voices.
When he had first experimented with the balance, he had wondered back then too. Why was Observation so easy. And now it started making sense. It wasn't that Observation was easy. It was that ethereal form that made it a breeze. Now that it was gone, there must be some other limitations and rules as to how Observation worked.
That's what he had to figure out.
He jotted down the exact process of many events that had happened to him, and he noticed a problem.
When he planned to snatch that gun from Cera, he had completely skipped the part of taking in the shades of gray in the environment from his perception and had simply simulated what it would look like and envisioned changes to it to hasten the process.
This is definitely a problem. He furrowed his brows, circling the terms 'Observation' and 'Envision' repeatedly.
Did he almost get himself killed because he didn't follow the proper sequence? He had skipped the Observation part and went straight to Envisioning.
This might indeed be one of the factors behind that catastrophic failure. A supporting argument to this conjecture was the fact that he could only cause changes to reality when he envisioned what the shades of gray would look like after the change. Simply envisioning a different reality hadn't worked.
This got him thinking. What would happen if he tried to envision a state of grays that was drastically different from the original distribution of grays. It would be like he tried to envision a revolver in front of him to be lighter than it was, but in reality, there was a carriage in front of him, not a revolver which he assumed.
There just wasn't any realistic way to have that vision come to fruition.
But he very precisely remembered what that monochrome vista of 'Gravity' looked like, and it was simple to extrapolate it for the second floor of the library. That was what he had done back then. He was sure that even if he was a little off in his imagination during that attempt, there was no way it was significantly dissimilar to what he would have perceived from the grays.
.
.
.
Unless…
Fuck. Yes, that might be it!
He would need to try it out to confirm his new hypothesis. But what if I am wrong and I trigger those voices again?
A few more minutes passed by as Vern tried to figure out any loopholes in his argument.
Even Miss Cera had said something about Observing without comprehension. Did that hint at the fact that he failed because he didn't really understand gravity? Maybe yes. But was that to say he could only observe things he understood? But then what would be the point of Observation in itself if it's just a representation of how I believe things to be?
Then it hit him. To be able to envision changes to it!
Yes. That did make more and more sense by the second. If those shades of gray were just a representation of what he believed them to be, what's the point of them at all, if not to make it easier for him to envision changes to it and manipulate reality?
Indeed, that was logical. So now he really had to try out Observation to confirm his hypothesis on what went wrong. If he was right, then he might be able to make it work again.
Vern made up his mind, got off the chair, and went straight to his bed, lying down on it. He didn't want to fall off the chair and injure himself in case he had another one of those episodes.
He risked triggering the burden of Cryptic Constructor once again if things went really south, but his conjectures gave him a high enough chance of success, which warranted taking the risk.
So he settled down comfortably and let go of his inhibitions. Not going for something over-complicated like Gravity, he focused on the simple balance of brightness and darkness around him.
It should be just a black-and-white version of his current sight but with a different level of detail. So he thought about it with the intention of observing it as shades.
His perception, which was nothing but a transparent veil, suddenly turned black. Pitch black. Just like he expected.
Vern navigated the intersection of Timekeeper Lane and Primrose Boulevard, where the clock tower stood tall in all its mechanical glory. He was still making his way to Hotel Inkwell, which was located east of the clocktower—on the intersection between Timekeeper lane and Willowby Street.
It had taken him much longer than anticipated to get back here. He might have underestimated Miss Cera's warning a bit. Some of the locals were indeed a little too unrestrained right now. He had to sneak past many hubs of unrest and make multiple detours to get back here in one piece.
He was a little out of sorts because of that short bout of sprint a few minutes ago. Some asshole had noticed Vern looking at them as they were raiding a Kingsmen's barrack, instantly alarming everyone around him. However, he had the distance advantage in the chase, and for some reason, they didn't dare follow him past a certain neighborhood.
It's like they've their own territories.
There was a religious gathering going on in the Fulham borough as well, but it didn't seem as interesting as the earlier one, so he ignored it in a bid to get back to Hotel faster.
But none of this was a major concern for him right now. The real problem was food. Hopefully, the hotel wasn't already looted to the point of ruin. Because then he'd have to look for some empty house to squat in until he could get his bearings and reach out to some of his contacts in the city. Assuming they were still alive, of course.
So he continued, still somehow not having traversed the width of the clock tower. It was another one of those relics of the past of this city, built in the same era as those bridges. At least, that's what the books said. The leaked schematics of the clock tower he'd seen last year painted a different picture.
Shaking his head, Vern escaped his idle thoughts and hastened towards the hotel. The lights of moon and rift from the sky failed to reach him every other second as he walked under the awnings of many stores. Usually, they would be retracted back at the end of the day. But that day has yet to end for a lot of people.
There were people in some of these buildings who eyed Vern with suspicion, but he ignored all of them and continued on his way.
In no time, he was standing in front of the hotel Inkwell, which was like a landmark in its own right. The hotel exuded an air of grandeur, its imposing façade constructed of time-weathered sandstone, which was gracefully nestled beneath sections of cobalt blue bell cast roof.
Rows upon rows of large, symmetrical windows imprisoned within grilles punctuated its walls, their glass pane gleaming and reflecting the soft glow of the moon's shine. Yet there were a few that shimmered with the warm, inviting glow of the gas lamps from within.
Vern let out a sigh of relief when he saw that. That is reassuring.
The hotel's entrance was imposing in its own right, defined by a heavy oak double door painted navy blue. Flanking the entrance were a pair of marble pillars embellished by finely carved motifs that supported a canopy that had an intricately carved wooden sign proudly declaring 'Hotel Inkwell,' which was etched in golden lettering. On the pillars were two wrought iron gas lamps that cast dancing shadows on the cobblestone underneath.
Looking at this familiar door being in such excellent shape, a lot of his anxieties fizzled away. Squatting in some random house wasn't his idea of a thought conducive environment, nor was it his dream to loot supplies from others.
He exerted himself a little and pushed the towering door, but it remained immobile. It was locked shut.
So he held the golden door knocker and wrapped it thrice. Taps of footsteps approached him from within, and a deep voice emerged, "Hotel Inkwell is not accepting reservations from any new customers right now. If you're not a current guest, please move along. May the lady watch over you."
Vern remembered this voice. It was the butler of this hotel. So he perked up and responded, "I am indeed a prior guest of the hotel. I have a suite reserved under the name Vern Lockwood. I checked in six days ago, and if I am not mistaken, I should have another week before my reservation runs out."
It was odd that the hotel management still cared about reservations and such, but he didn't mind as long as it meant he had a place to stay.
The butler didn't reply.
CLACK.
The sound of a latch being unlocked played in his ears as the door opened just a hint, and an old butler in his immaculate white and black suit greeted him with a deep bow.
"Welcome back, Mr. Vern. I had assumed you met the same fate as many of our other guests. But it seems that I was wrong, and happily so. Please come in."
Vern nodded at the butler and squeezed in, "Who knew how I survived these past three days, so you weren't exactly wrong in assuming the worst."
The insides were still quite neat, if not as opulent as they were before the Duskfall. Heh. Even I call it Duskfall all the time now. It was indeed convenient to call it that instead of whatever that bunch of events was.
Still, the foyer wasn't in a state of ruin that he was expecting it to be. What greeted him instead was a neat hall with a reception desk to the right, a drinks bar to the left, and a wide staircase in the middle. The chandelier up on the ceiling wasn't lit, so most of the illumination came from the windows and a couple of dim lamps that were still ablaze. Butler Beaumont and whatever was left of the staff had done a great job in these trying times. Before Vern could complement Beaumont for his effort and perseverance, he spoke,
"Mr. Vern, as you may already know, these are precarious times, so we have implemented a few changes to ensure we can continue serving our guests without having to force an eviction," said the old man as he closed the door behind him, locking it shut.
"First, the food will only be served twice a day until our supply chain is restored. Second, all guests will have to help ensure the smooth running of the hotel's amenities however they can. Third, no one is allowed to leave or enter after midnight until seven in the morning. Fourth, guests cannot bring in anyone else with them. Fifth, the cost of the suite has been tripled, so you'll have to pay the overdue amount as soon as possible."
"Any questions?" finished the butler with an indifferent expression, the wrinkles on his face following suit.
Obviously, he had many questions. What was that second term? But he didn't want to argue about any of that right now. It wasn't completely unreasonable anyway, and he needed food and time alone. So he skipped the formalities and simply nodded, "No problem. Please send dinner to my room as soon as possible. I will come down in the morning to pay the due, and then we can talk."
The butler stepped aside and extended his arm towards the staircase as if to truly welcome him this time. Vern nodded one final time and left Beaumont to his own devices.
The management's response to this whole situation was quite peculiar, and understanding the rationale behind it might give him some idea about his own future plans. Vern would thoroughly shake down this butler for all the information. Just not right now.
His suite was on the third floor, so he didn't even bother with the lift. Beaumont probably wouldn't let him use it to save on steam anyway. So after another quick unintended workout, he reached the third floor.
The carpeted floor of the long corridor on either side of the staircase was dimly lit, with only a few lamps that barely illuminated the doors and room numbers on them. He strode towards 307 on the left side and started turning the circular knobs on four corners of the lock to match his secret sequence, which he had set up when checking in.
These mechanical locks weren't the safest in the market, but they struck a good balance in terms of their value and security. It wasn't worth waiting two days and paying triple the cost to get a new door installed just for a better lock. He would know. His master was paranoid and always fussed about the locks in even his temporary residences.
With a click, the cogs fit perfectly, and the lock came loose. He entered the room, and luckily it looked undisturbed. Moonlight illuminated the roll-top desk, which was littered with papers, tools, and some contraptions he'd been fiddling with before he had left that day.
He flipped the switch for heat and light, and the outline of a lavish couch, chair, hearth, table, wall clock, curtains, and rest of the furniture were filled with their respective textures and yellow haze as he took in his room.
Locking the door behind him, he made straight for the desk next to the window and pulled open the top drawer. A crystal clear glassy sphere with thin golden lines on its surface rolled around in it, and he let out another sigh of relief.
Phew. At least the Insight Sphere is still intact. It had taken him years to save up for one of his own, and he would have really raised hell if someone had stolen it.
He made for the wooden chair in front of the desk and plopped down on it, all his energy ebbing away as his mind finally relaxed.
He closed his eyes and kneaded his forehead, clearing his mind of stray thoughts. A few minutes passed by as the room heated up, and he sat there, his eyes closed.
.
.
.
Then when the clocktower started its chimes for the next hour, his eyes snapped open, and he sat back up straight. A clear and sharp edge returned to his eyes as he picked up a pen, retrieved the notepad, and threw his blazer aside.
It was time to figure this out.
So he was able to observe and manipulate reality just fine when he was in that ethereal form. But as soon as he woke up, he had failed his Observation and lost that form. He struck out one of his earlier hypotheses and rewrote it with this new information, 'Observers aren't always in the ethereal form. Confirmed to be a temporary state.'
So whatever Hensen was doing by walking through fire indeed had something to do with his Viewpoint, not that ethereal form.
Also, he had only faced serious repercussions for Observation when he was in his natural state of a material human being. He experienced eye bleeds and vertigo back in the burning library, but nothing like those…voices.
When he had first experimented with the balance, he had wondered back then too. Why was Observation so easy. And now it started making sense. It wasn't that Observation was easy. It was that ethereal form that made it a breeze. Now that it was gone, there must be some other limitations and rules as to how Observation worked.
That's what he had to figure out.
He jotted down the exact process of many events that had happened to him, and he noticed a problem.
When he planned to snatch that gun from Cera, he had completely skipped the part of taking in the shades of gray in the environment from his perception and had simply simulated what it would look like and envisioned changes to it to hasten the process.
This is definitely a problem. He furrowed his brows, circling the terms 'Observation' and 'Envision' repeatedly.
Did he almost get himself killed because he didn't follow the proper sequence? He had skipped the Observation part and went straight to Envisioning.
This might indeed be one of the factors behind that catastrophic failure. A supporting argument to this conjecture was the fact that he could only cause changes to reality when he envisioned what the shades of gray would look like after the change. Simply envisioning a different reality hadn't worked.
This got him thinking. What would happen if he tried to envision a state of grays that was drastically different from the original distribution of grays. It would be like he tried to envision a revolver in front of him to be lighter than it was, but in reality, there was a carriage in front of him, not a revolver which he assumed.
There just wasn't any realistic way to have that vision come to fruition.
But he very precisely remembered what that monochrome vista of 'Gravity' looked like, and it was simple to extrapolate it for the second floor of the library. That was what he had done back then. He was sure that even if he was a little off in his imagination during that attempt, there was no way it was significantly dissimilar to what he would have perceived from the grays.
.
.
.
Unless…
Fuck. Yes, that might be it!
He would need to try it out to confirm his new hypothesis. But what if I am wrong and I trigger those voices again?
A few more minutes passed by as Vern tried to figure out any loopholes in his argument.
Even Miss Cera had said something about Observing without comprehension. Did that hint at the fact that he failed because he didn't really understand gravity? Maybe yes. But was that to say he could only observe things he understood? But then what would be the point of Observation in itself if it's just a representation of how I believe things to be?
Then it hit him. To be able to envision changes to it!
Yes. That did make more and more sense by the second. If those shades of gray were just a representation of what he believed them to be, what's the point of them at all, if not to make it easier for him to envision changes to it and manipulate reality?
Indeed, that was logical. So now he really had to try out Observation to confirm his hypothesis on what went wrong. If he was right, then he might be able to make it work again.
Vern made up his mind, got off the chair, and went straight to his bed, lying down on it. He didn't want to fall off the chair and injure himself in case he had another one of those episodes.
He risked triggering the burden of Cryptic Constructor once again if things went really south, but his conjectures gave him a high enough chance of success, which warranted taking the risk.
So he settled down comfortably and let go of his inhibitions. Not going for something over-complicated like Gravity, he focused on the simple balance of brightness and darkness around him.
It should be just a black-and-white version of his current sight but with a different level of detail. So he thought about it with the intention of observing it as shades.
His perception, which was nothing but a transparent veil, suddenly turned black. Pitch black. Just like he expected.
