Chapter VIII01.IV.2024
Well past ten, with the Yadi in full power and the daybreak aurora long dispelled, Tayne ascended to the streets of Zakossos from one of its regional Nexus gates.
She had the route to Old Geese, 3 from there extensively redrawn with eyeliner on a paper towel from a map Lana showed her on the scroll. And even though she practically memorised it all two times over, she still was consulting the map every fifteen seconds. Costed her almost tripping over a random child, who was drawing arcane-looking symbols with chalk right in the middle of the street. Thankfully, a turn into a narrow crack between the houses was right there, which Tayne's map confidently presented as the last piece of her path - and Tayne instantly escaped the main road. Alright, she needs to calm down a bit...
Tayne slowed her steps, - realising she walked almost at running speed with no real reason, - took a deep breath in and finally pulled her glance away from the map. A nice place they have here, huh. An alleyway narrow as a train tunnel and covered in vine all around - even from the top, embracing a net cast over the street - with an occasional flower standing out, and these were giant lavender flowers with a very dim odor. Romantic. Naia would probably love such a plant in their garden...
Having went down the flower tunnel, past the obscenely long first house and round its corner through to the backyard, Tayne found a dark wooden door she needed in the next one, almost hidden beneath the vine pouring down over the porch. A small plaque on the door with the master's name and working hours dispelled Tayne's uncertainty, and she pushed the door. Too sharply, perhaps, since a sleuth of sounds produced by the door almost washed her out: hinges screeching, cracking of a spring being stretched, gears loudly tapping on the floor above and, finally, a stroke of what could only be a damn starbell, loud, deep and hollow, echoing for at least fifteen seconds - Tayne was dead certain half the city heard it.
An outstanding doorbell choice for sure.
Tayne's inner push to run away as quickly as possible instantly fell, though, as her eyes got used to indoors lighting, and she saw a myriad of things simultaneously, not even being able to pick what to examine first. Dozens of antique computer cases and screens and even more clocks one weirder then the other filling all avaliable surfaces; potted plants with glowing leaves; a giant patterned rug on the wall - a millenium old by the look of it; clearly visible single beams of sunlight penetrating through the barred windows and two layers of vines - holy stars this place was a witch's lair. And it smelled accordingly in here - like old paper, dried tree resin and dust. Tayne got so absorbed by it all that the arrival of the witch in question almost took her by surprise.
The master hovered in from behind the wall rug - apparently it served as a curtain and Tayne haven't even noticed. They were a short hologram of an elderly-looking Archon with a long stream of lank silvery hair channeled into a ring-shaped tail, clothed in a plain white robe. They also had glasses as part of their conjured appearance - yet another aesthetic antiquity - and a thin metal semicircle headband matching the hair tone with plant engravings throughout.
They turned out to be quite talkative. Tayne briefly explained the situation - wasn't an easy task given her jumbled mental state right now, but she managed - and got an overly long infodump that sporadically switched from one topic to the next, all while the master was inspecting the scroll by waving their hands through it. Oh holograms and their witchcraft... though Tayne vaguely remembered Naia did the same with their homescreen once - oh stars, when was that even, how old was she, five?
Even though the master talked on a slow steady pace, fit to read entertaining lectures, Tayne wasn't able to catch the full meaning of everything they said, as she wasn't too savvy in technology to understand what "the boot sector" is (oh stars, Caithe would've probably understood all this way better... she always was very curious about how tech works...); moreover, the master occasionally used phrases Tayne had only ever seen in books as ancient as the master's computers. But she probably understood the essence of the problem. Caithe's scroll had a second small battery in its binder used only to jumpstart various processes, that was by design never expected to completely run out. And Naia sucked it dry too - rendering the whole scroll useless until something physically takes that battery out and charges it. Which the master, after bringing a small toolbox from behind the carpet curtain, proceeded to do - and Tayne observed the witchcraft with great curiosity.
They held the scroll floating in the air between their arms and disassembled it, moving the tiniest metal pieces and crystals of the inside around with mostly their fingers, but occasionally using a thin finger-long device from the toolbox, resembling a small screwdriver, to separate or conjoin parts of the scroll binder. The battery in question was deep near the center axis of the binder - and when the master took it out, they proudly announced so and displayed it to Tayne under a looking glass. A tiny grain of ruby colour crystal, octahedron in shape, like these dice from a game she used to play with Caithe and other village kids.
It being auxilliary and all, it only held a tiny amout of charge that the master gave it in a matter of seconds, zapping it with that same screwdriver. Assembling the scroll back after that was an even faster process, the whole sequence taking under twenty minutes. And as soon as the master placed the battery in, the "charge me please" indicator lit up. Success?
Not quite. After the master retold a bit of their infodump in slightly noob-friendlier words, Tayne understood a second problem: a rapid energy current exiting the battery damaged some data crystals in its way. Not the main data storage, thankfully, as it was stored on an opposite end of the scroll, but the "tables of contents" for it, named the partition tables, and the boot sector storing information about how the device should turn itself on. The latter was easily downloadable back from the Cosmarium, though, and the former - given how greatly important it is, as without these tables nothing could read the main storage - were backed up half a dozen times all over the scroll. Thus restoring order to this data was doable - and done by the master by connecting the scroll to one of their ancient computers and letting it run a couple programs for several minutes.
And now, with a functional scroll in hands, still plugged to the master's computer with a thin thread to charge up, Tayne pulled together enough courage to ask the only question which really mattered to her right now. What about Naia?
This explanation took some time, as now Tayne meticulously asked to clarify every word she couldn't immediately understand - but eventually she got the idea.
The "key for Naia's restoration" Wiktori mentioned was really a set of cryptographic keys used in the process of hologram transfer. Every time an Archon hologram jumps through the Cosmarium, a complex backup algorithm is invoked, synchronizing the contents of their mind with a centralized data storage. With these keys, this process can be invoked backwards, and if Naia's mind was only damaged, they could've initiated their restoration themselves that way. But with them completely destroyed, Tayne shall file a special request on their part, which would then be processed by the Department of Data - and after it passes, they will send Naia back through the scroll with these keys.
While listening to that, Tayne already started to think through various ways she could start that process. Sure, she can file that request via whatever interface the Department of Data has for that in the Cosmarium, but she wasn't really willing to trust a faceless remote structure with handling questions of life and death. Would at least feel better if that structure was here and had a face... yeah, she should probably go talk to Wiktori.
"You know what?" - the master surprisingly finished their speech with these words, - "I like your attitude. You're inquisitive and unintrusuve, unlike these nosy students, who always ask personal questions."
"Well," - shrugged Tayne, - "thank stars, you weren't asking personal questions either." She wasn't ready to talk about the abhorrent catastrophe of yesterday in detail again.
"Every Archon has their story, some are willing to tell it, some aren't. Not for me to decide if they shall."
They both said nothing for a while. The master delved into their computer, and Tayne opened a scroll: it readily turned on, displaying the main menu with a backdrop image of Caithe's own making, some human character of hers. Unlike Tayne, she never used to protect her devices with passwords. Tayne pondered over the past hour if it will be morally acceptable to temporarily use her sister's scroll before requesting a new one for herself... but hey, Caithe happily showed her most files several times, she probably won't accidentially invade her privacy. And Tayne was never going to mess with stuff on the scroll anyway if she could avoid it, especially with Caithe's Cosmarium address.
Thus first she made sure to setup herself a separate Cosmarium gate on the device. Which took an excruciatingly long half-minute to even open, contacting the other side of the Cosmos, where her home domain was, for authentication... after which Tayne was met face to face with a harsh reality of being thrown out of existence for a day and not checking her mailbox. Yeah, she'll sift through all that on her way back.
"I hope I'm not bothering you by still being here?" - Tayne decided to ask, as she started to feel a bit awkward. She already got enough charge to last her several hours, so theoretically she could leave any minute. And the outside still had several tasks she needed to do.
"What a silly question is that," - the master shrugged, - "if you want to, you can stay. I hope I'm not too distracting with all that typing"
They did in fact have a surprisingly loud keyboard, but button pressing noises were the least of Tayne's concern right now.
"Well..." - Tayne stood up, carefully putting the chair back after, - "I need to go. But your place is honestly amazing! And uhm..." - she held her palm over her eyes and lowered her head as a sign of respect - "thank you. Really, really thank you. I don't think i have the emotions to express the thing you did. You know... saved a life and all that."
"Oh naaah, don't be so dramatic, the brethren of the Data department wouldn't have left an Arcana to disappear even if you throwed all their keys into the sea," - assured the master. - "You'll resolve this, don't worry. Wish you best of luck on your path forward"
Tayne was still worrying. But at least this major roadblock was overcome. With a functional scroll in hands she was feeling just a little more confident.
No alarm rang over the city on her way out. She breathed in the warm air and sat on the stairs of the establishment for just a minute more, before taking up and looking back one last time - making a note to definitely go back here before departure to take a cutting from the vine. They'll need to rebuild the garden with something, after all.