For The Blad Design, Wouldn't Another Good Idea Be To Put Stabilizing Lines Of Forbidding Between The

Shallan's Journey: Chapter 2, In Which Shallan Meets a Fire Chicken

A sudden whooshing sound made Shallan spin around and her jaw fall open in shock at the resulting vision. A burst of flame quickly resolved itself into a person and the most brilliant chicken she had ever seen! After a few moments, during which she and the new man studied each other, Pattern drifted into her view and buzzed “Shallan. Your mouth. You are staring.”

Her jaw snapped shut and she quickly looked down as she began thinking frantically. This new man was certainly pale enough to be Shin, but he had far, far too much hair and she had never heard of Shin being able to travel in fire. For that matter she had never heard of anyone being able to travel in fire. Oh storms! She had no idea what was going on or what she should do next... but... but she had gotten through unfamiliar situations before... she just had to decide how to play this. Surely it wouldn't be worse than her first few meetings with the Ghostbloods. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath to center herself. Confidence. She could do this. Pattern's gentle buzzing as he floated near her head was reassuring. He was often good at helping her sort through things and if everything went completely storms up she would at least be able to defend herself. She held her sketchbook close to her chest with her sleeved safehand and her traveling bag to her side with her freehand as she looked back up at the man and the fire chicken with what she hoped was an expression of wary confidence.

She realized that he seemed to be just as curious about her as she was about him. Well, she supposed that if he was typical of the people here, then she probably appeared quite unusual. His sparkling purple dress thing was nothing like men would wear anywhere on Roshar.

Dumbledore wasn't accustomed to being speechless, but he truly wasn't sure how to react to the young woman he found when he arrived. She seemed startled, so he kept his face serene as he stood quietly to give her time to compose herself – and him time to try to make sense of the situation. She was wearing a style of dress he had never encountered despite his many years and extensive travels and seemed to be accompanied by a small whirling mass of black lines. Most curious indeed. When she looked back up and didn't seem inclined to either attack or run away, he took a step toward her and gestured in greeting.

“My dear girl. I noticed unexpected activity here at Stonehenge and came to investigate. Would you mind telling me who you are?”

Shallan looked back at him in confusion. His language was unlike anything she had ever heard before. She opened her mouth planning to say something formal and productive, but what came out was “Who on Roshar are you and where are we?” Pattern buzzed in a way that sounded almost like a snicker. “Mmmm...There's my Shallan. The strange man probably can't understand us anymore than we can understand him.” Shallan glared at Pattern.

Dumbledore's eyes widened as he watched this exchange. She spoke a rather curious sounding language and her friend seemed to be able to communicate directly with her. This was most unusual. He began contemplating how he could communicate with her. There were spells to ease translation, but they all required the caster to have some knowledge of both of the languages they were working with, a condition he usually easily met. They would not work here though.

Shallan narrowed her eyes in thought. She had no idea how to get back to Roshar (it was clear by now that she was no longer there) and as a Lightweaver she was fairly certain her surges wouldn't be particularly helpful for getting back. As much as she didn't like it, this most likely meant that she was stuck here until Jasnah figured out what had happened and was able to rescue her. Unless Jasnah showed up soon, it wouldn't be practical for her to just sit here waiting for her. This meant that, at the very least, she needed information. Right now her best hope of information was this strange man. Shallan made eye contact with him and then pointed to herself. “Shallan.”

The man smiled and nodded to her as he repeated, “Shallan,” and responded with a similar gesture and “Albus.”

Shallan nodded slightly, “Albus.” Now what... Shallan bit her lip and then sat down as she opened her sketchbook and pulled out a pen. They couldn't communicate in words, but pictures didn't have a language. Her pen flew across the page as she quickly sketched Urithiru and the portal they had been experimenting on. She sketched the palace of Jah Keved and added lines that would hopefully suggest that she was hoping to travel there. She then drew a large slash through Jah Keved and firmer lines from the portal into a solid black blob with further lines leading to a quick sketch of her current surroundings. As she finished, she stood and turned the sketchbook toward him hopefully.

Albus studied the image thoughtfully. Whoever this girl was, she had quite a talent for drawing. That quick sketch of Stonehenge was quite remarkable. He turned his attention to the rest of the picture. There was an interesting tower that she seemed to be suggesting was the starting point of her journey. Next to it seemed to be a traveling device of some sort with the indication that it was supposed to take her to the other large building. Instead it apparently took her into a void and then dumped her here. Dumbledore nodded thoughtfully and slowly pulled out his wand.

Shallan watched with fascination as the man, Albus, she reminded herself, took out an oddly uniform stick and began weaving it through the air. To her astonishment, he began to form the image of a large stone castle in the air between them. Was this man another Lightweaver?! Was that stick some strange fabrial? The image zoomed into a room where there was an image of Albus sitting at a desk... Shallan squinted, was he...writing? The image man then looked up and over at a small image of the fire chicken. The fire chicken image flew to the image of the man, which appeared to grab the fire chicken's tail before they both disappeared in a flash of fire. Albus waved his arm and the castle also vanished.

He then wove an image of what appeared to be a home with several other people around and then added an image of himself, the fire chicken and...and Shallan... appearing in a burst of flame.

Shallan frowned. Aside from questioning the brilliance of going anywhere in a strange land with a strange man she had just met, Shallan was worried about what would happen if Jasnah made it here and she wasn't nearby. She turned back to her sketchbook and flipped to the next page. This time she started with an image of Jasnah next to an image of Urithiru with her hand up to her eyes as though looking out of the page. She followed it with an increasingly hasty series of places around Roshar with a flowing line connecting all of them in sequence. Then a picture of Jasnah at a desk surrounded by books and finally an image of Jasnah at in their current location looking sad and confused.

Albus nodded slowly. Shallan seemed to be indicating that someone would be frantically looking for her and didn't want to miss them when, if, they made it here. While he was contemplating the problem Shallan turned to Pattern. “Do you know of any way we could leave a message here for Jasnah? Maybe in Shadesmar?”

“Mmmmm... Jasnah will be tracking you, not just your path. Moving around shouldn't interfere much.”

“You are sure?”

“Nothing is sure. Sure is truth, but truth is based on lies and always changing.”

Shallan rolled her eyes. Someday she would learn not to try to get a straight answer out of Pattern. “Do you think we should go with the man and his fire chicken?”

“Mmmm... he makes good lies. ”

Right. That would be what Pattern focused on. Well, Albus had been reasonable so far and she didn't exactly have any other options. Now, how to tell him that she was willing (or at least had resigned herself) to go with him...

Shallan turned back to her sketchbook and made a sketch of the fire chicken with both her and Albus holding its tail and then got Albus's attention. He gave her a questioning look and pointed back at her Jasnah sketch montage. Shallan shrugged and pointed at Pattern. There was no point in trying to explain her rough understanding of what Pattern had tried to tell her. Albus smiled, nodded and looked around carefully to make sure they were alone before saying slowly and carefully, “The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix may be found at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, London.”

Shallan raised her eyebrows and cocked her head. Was she supposed to have gotten anything from that? Albus sighed and repeated the first word, “The,” and then gestured to her. Shallan repeated it back to him. They went through the whole phrase that way, first with the individual words and then with subphrases until Shallan was able to repeat the whole thing back to him. The words felt strange in her mouth and she had no idea what they meant or what their importance was, but she could say them.

Fawkes, who had been flying a sort of dance in and about the standing stones, now flew over to them and dangled his tail feathers between them. Shallan held out her arm and, to Dumbledore's astonishment, her friend seemed to meld into the sleeve of her dress. This girl came with no end of surprises. Shallan took a deep breath and confidently but gently took hold of Fawkes's tail with her freehand. Dumbledore joined her and they vanished in a flash of flame.

After the events of the last year, Shallan thought she had about had her share of new, unsettling experiences. The process of traveling by fire chicken wasn't actually that shocking – she felt a little warm and a slight tickling before suddenly arriving in a dark gloomy hallway – except for the simple fact that it had happened. Shallan had accepted the fact that there were fully sentient spren. She had, very reluctantly, accepted that she was on track to become one of the new Knights Radiant – the order whose previous incarnation had betrayed all of mankind on the Day of Recreance. She knew that Jasnah could use Shadesmar to travel quickly around Roshar and that Kaladin, that storming obnoxious but fascinating bridgeman captain, could use stormlight to fly.

If the fire chicken had been a spren, she might have been able to just accept that Albus had some unknown surge that let them use fire to travel. The chicken, however, was clearly not a spren. It was a chicken. A flashy, brightly colored, singing chicken, but it was a chicken. Chickens did not travel in fire. If chickens and fire went together they became food.

While Shallan was still mostly out of it as she tried to come to terms with the idea of traveling by fire chicken, Albus gently led her down the hall to a staircase and then down into what appeared to be a kitchen. The sound of several people talking over each other startled Shallan out of her confusion just in time to notice a woman wearing short sleeves with both hands and arms exposed standing at what seemed to be a stove. She scanned the room and saw that there were boys, girls, men and women sitting together at the table eating the same food. She groaned, took a step back so that she was against the wall next to the stairs they had just come down, slid to the floor and buried her head in her arms. Oh storms. This world was nothing like Jah Keved, Kharbranth, or Alethkar.  

Hey Cosmere fandom, it’s book rec time.

The book series in question is the Imperial Radch Trilogy by Ann Leckie. In order, the books are Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, and Ancillary Mercy.

It’s a space opera with significant focus on character and relationships. The POV character is Breq, an aro-ace space warship AI in a human body who sets out on an impossible journey to kill the Lord of the Radch (the local 3000 year old space emperor) to revenge her beloved Lieutenant. Along the way she (unintentionally and reluctantly) collects people (humans, ships, aliens,…) in a gloriously messy found family.

* It’s super queer 

* Characters actively struggle with depression, anxiety, addiction, etc.

* Almost everyone is a PoC

* For the sake of Propriety everyone wears gloves and bare hands are super scandalous. 

These books are amazing and you should strongly consider reading them. The audio book versions are also fabulous.

If you’ve already read them, I’ve been Radch posting on my other blog (RithmatistKalyna) and I would love to talk with people both about the books/characters/tea sets/etc and all of the Cosmere crossover potential.

Look. One of Wit’s goals in life is to poke fun at people and make them uncomfortable. I’m choosing to believe that that is Wit’s goal here. Jasnah gets it and knows that reacting will just encourage him, so she does her best to avoid reacting outwardly and just inwardly rolls her eyes.

They get along well. They are friends. They are co-conspirators. They challenge each other. Jasnah appreciates that enough to put up with the nonsense. That’s all. 

active footage of me trying to rationalize chapter 99 in my brain

This feels like a crazy long shot, but do I know anyone who plays Pokemon Go in the Uxie region?

Alloy of Law:  make Sherlock and Watson vigilantes from the wild west and then send them to a steampunk city where they acquire a brilliant but somewhat naive badass girl apprentice.  Oh, and they all have magic.

Kickstarter

Spacefunk!

Space is the place! A collection of science fiction stories and poems by authors of African/African Diaspora Descent.

Hey tumblr, I stumbled across this kickstarter for a sci-fi anthology featuring stories and poems by authors of African and African Diaspora Descent. It sounds cool and when I tried to dig up a tumblr post to reblog about it I couldn't find one, so I'm making it myself.

The kickstarter is running through noon eastern on July 19th, 2024. The pledge level for the ebook with over 40 stories and poems is just $10. For $30 there's an ebook bundle with this new anthology and their previous anthologies (Steamfunk!, Dieselfunk!, Cyberfunk! ,and Spyfunk!). There are also options to get a physical copy of the anthology, cool posters, and more.

If you are interested in sci-fi from voices that are currently underrepresented in the community, go check it out!

V is for Vinebud

Rithmatics digression

We've talked about 9-point circles.  Here is a further exploration of 9-point conics in case you are curious:

Merry Christmas! And I hope that any of you who don't celebrate Christmas have a wonderful day as well :-)

I sat down to work on the “Sh is for Shalebark” page and got the basic layout and text done. Then I started contemplating which kind of shalebark I wanted to draw.  I’m bad at decisions, so you get this instead... If you want to know more about Shalebark, the Coppermind page is good :-)