Chapter IX04.IV.2024
Zakossos fully awakened. The Yadi slowly creeped higher and higher, and the air was slowly warming up. It wasn't helping that Tayne was rushing from one side of the town to the other, zipping all across Nexus like a drunk spider erraticaly wandering its web - all while constantly being on the scroll. If not for the scroll's transluscency, she would've undoubtedly eventually tripped on something again. All that rushing made her take off her outer shirt and tie it around the waist.
First she grabbed a new backpack at the town's swapping fair - and took a note to definitely go back here with Lana for clothing by... evening? no way they call it evening when their work day ends with these hot glowing things smackbang in the middle of the sky, she'll need to acknowledge a proper word for that.
Next, she went to restock on medicine. She was undergoing a biweekly course of injections for quite a while now, and though her next one was to be expected in six whole normal days, she wasn't going to wait until last minute to restock. She of course haven't found the exact product she was using this far from where it was prescribed, but one quick talk with the pharmacist and she had a perfect analogue of the same concentration.
Meanwhile she started to draft a letter to Komi - letting them know she's alive and Naia's on the way back - and hoping Caithe will follow soon enough, after all, Wiktori promised! She briefly described where she is and how she got there, wrote about the unmatched kindness of Lana, and took a few pictures of herself and of the city to go with the letter.
And well. This was when she first raised her eyes from the scroll (or a paper towel) up to the sky and saw the University in all its shimmering marble beauty.
The building was massive. It would've surely been scraping well past clouds if there were any in the sky. The shape of it was like a tower - or rather, several thick towers, white with golden adornments, of various profiles and diminishing sizes stacked on top of each other, each transition decorated with galleries of little statues, smaller tower-esque bumps, thin spires and intricate weavings of gilded bas reliefs.
And at the very top, a massive statue was standing high, visibly treating the whole building like nothing more than a giant pedestal. A statue of a young archon with long flying hair and a metal headband sparkling in the light of Yadi, reaching up even higher with their whole body to raise above their head a colossal silvery metal ring, which they held in one hand - a ring larger than the statue itself and standing vertically up to... Tayne guessed it was like a whole kilometer off the ground?
There were also smaller towers peeking from behind the building swarming the main tower, each crowned with a dial of some sort. Three of them were visible, starring a clock, a barometer and - Tayne couldn't care less what the third one was. She was astonished, getting a sight beyond what she ever imagined the University to look.
She immediately mailed the picture to Komi. And to Lana. And to her personal cosmarium journal she haven't updated for three months. And after that she enlarged the photo and examined all the tiny details her eyes couldn't parse from such a distance but the scroll caught in perfect resolution. Like the tiny figures, who all had unique faces and costumes and were captured interacting in groups - talking, gathering around a table, passing pieces of machinery to each other. The metal ring had an engraving of a branching vine wrapping around it, and the similar one was on the top statue's headband. And the top statue itself...
Tayne only just noticed. She knew their face. She saw that same face, just aged up a couple dozen years, no more than an hour ago.
"woo! i told you the university's a majestic build. where you at?" - Lana responded to her letter.
"On my way back, currently descending to the Nexus. By the way, who's that person atop the university?"
"oh that? mara vim reyne. you know, the one reyne uni is named after"
Tayne wasn't a professional in the history of science, but the name "Mara Vim Reyne" still rang a bell. They were the inventor behind the wormhole technology - which in a millenium after them brought the vast Cosmos together with cosmic gates, cutting travel times across it from hundreds of years to just a few days. Some archons even called them the most influential person in all of history due to that. And...
"Wait, weren't they living like thirty thousand years ago?" - she clarified.
"yeah, smth like that. and?"
"And I'm sure they were the master of that scroll-fixing workshop I was at earlier."
At that point, Tayne arrived back at Reyne University station and had to plan her path further - and as such, rolled the mailbox up.
Her last destination for now was the Department of Life - which was also based in the university, in one of the secondary towers. There turned out to be five of them all around the central one - and instead of corridors, these towers were connected with wormholes. At that point Tayne wondered why haven't they installed a wormhole on each floor of the building instead of hosting elevators...
Tayne needed to replace her identity card, which also got lost with the backpack. It was a small metal sheet storing access keys to all databases which held info about an Archon - which were predominantly the medical ones. Thus these cards were distributed by the Department of Life - and Tayne got a new blank one there with no problems. And most keys on it were successfully reissued after Tayne went through quick body scanning.
After that Tayne finished and sent her letter to Komi (only just realizing she sent a photo of the university to them separately out of instinct, whoops) and returned to chatting.
"hey, you said before the master were an arcana?" - Lana wrote. - "you know they can take any appearance they want, right?"
"Of course I know! But why would they?"
"idk, cosplay?"
Tayne chuckled at the idea of an arcana cospalying. Nah, doesn't sound plausible. The master wasn't looking like an exact replica of the statue, rather an elderly rendition of it. With the same headband, but different clothing. She took a note to search for photos of Mara Vim Reyne in their later years - there sure must be some, photography was around as long as the archons themselves.
"Anyway, I'm done for now, we can meet up if you want, just name a place."
"yeah sure! how about down in the nexus?"
...and in no time Tayne was laying along a couch, her head on Lana's laps who was gently playing with her hair - with Tayne's consent, of course - and scrolling train routes to plan her eventual departure.
"Why is anyone coming here for their studies and sleep?" - Tayne asked in the meantime. - "You have the biggest building I've ever seen to your name with entire rooms for privately doing anything and instead choose sites along the busiest streets of the town..."
"There are sofas here," - Lana shrugged. - "And its midway between home and studies for everyone. And it's kind of a tradition. And I personally just like looking at passersby. To privately do something, you need someone to do it with, don't you?"
"Err, no?" - the rooms were literally called "personal purpose space", doesn't it imply solitude? - "Or maybe... I guess it depends on the person? I don't know, it's just that I usually study alone. Not like I have much choice at home..."
"Poor village kid," - jokingly said Lana, - "just you wait, you'll have so much choices in a university if you would wish so... Oh! Do you have anything in mind on that front?"
"Like... universities to enroll to?"
"Yeah, that!"
"Err... I honestly don't," - that was kind of a hard topic for Tayne, but after yesterday even the hardest topics of her prior life suddenly lost in scariness. - "I can technically apply anywhere right now, just finished my general education last month but... I don't really know what to do next? Even in terms of specialization. I wanted to take some time off... explore myself, fix my body up, all that, and who knows, maybe some idea will come in the process? I do want to eventually continue studying, though, that's out of the question"
"Oh. Yeah, makes sense, I was like that," - Lana nodded, - "I'm just saying, if you'd want to browse through options, you're in a perfect place for that!"
"Browse.. how?"
"Oh, just talk to everyone! Maybe visit some labs or lectures, ask researchers about their fields. And don't focus on super-narrow tracks, choosing these comes way later, at least here at Reyne's it's in the second year."
"Sounds... surprisingly doable," - Tayne thought universities would be less open about a stranger wandering around asking questions, but she had no real reason to believe so. - "I don't have much time for that, though."
"Oh, and where are you rushing to this time?"
Tayne took a minute to think. Yeah, where to? She can do the remainder of urgent tasks on the Cosmarium, but after that nothing's requiring her to rush home. The rest of things out there don't need her and are allowed to happen without her.
"...Home, I guess. Though I certainly don't have a deadline for this one."
"Here, you see!" - smiled Lana. - "We can take our time. Look for clothes like you wanted, go to clubs, visit the beach..."
"Not the beach, please," - Tayne firmly objected.
"Oh. Okay, as you say. Sorry."
"Nah, it's fine," - Tayne shrugged, - "but I'll be glad to do anything else with you!"
"Wow. Anything?" - Lana jokingly asked.
"I mean..." - sadly Tayne wasn't able to explain what she meant, as she was interrupted by her scroll vibrating. She quickly grabbed and unrolled it.
That was Komi mailing their responce - and, after gesturing to Lana to stop distacting her for a bit, Tayne started to thoroughly read the letter.