IC Contact - Lost Carnival

[scientificist]

✆CHANNEL FREQUENCY: 101.16662
DESCRIPTION: Herbert will usually answer but he almost always sounds irritated and terse about it.

✉MAIL BOX LOCATION: Mailbox on Door
DESCRIPTION: It's just the wooden one the trailer came with.

Comments

[anti_nonsense]

I don't know her that well, to be honest. I talked to her a little after the whole mess, mostly to find out about the Lady.

But... she doesn't strike me as the sort who'd want to confront them. [Certainly not in the way Rita has before.]

[scientificist]

No...she seems prone to avoidance, if anything--you know, I wouldn't be surprised if she'd thought the fae in question was another story to be dealt with. [He sounds like he's grinning over the next sentence.] I'm not usually prone to attacking women with swords myself, for instance. If it's true she attempted to defect, of course, and not a ploy.

[anti_nonsense]

Hmph...

Ignatius is a lot of things, most of them despicable, but he isn't a liar. I don't think he's naive enough to fall for a ruse from one of his allies, either. I'm not about to say Lapis is a scheming traitor or anything, but that rumor probably didn't come from nowhere.

[scientificist]

Yes, how do you know him? There seems to be a history...

[anti_nonsense]

[There's a pause. It's not really a secret, but it is complicated.]

How much have you heard about a place called Portland?

[scientificist]

In relation to the Carnival? Bits and pieces--some sort of, reality adjustment issue with a lot of, fae involved? Nobody has gone into much depth.

[anti_nonsense]

When we entered that world, we forgot who we were. Our lives were rewritten, as if we'd lived there all our lives.

So when I was in Portland, I wasn't... me, exactly, but another girl named Rita. A changeling who fled the Summer Court just two years ago, after spending most of her life as a prisoner of a certain fae.

[He can probably guess who.]

[scientificist]

That...would give you a great deal of insight, wouldn't it... [A lot of...piecemeal and offhand comments are starting to make sense to him, across the entire Carnival's worth of people.]

Does your original life still exist?

[anti_nonsense]

Wh... of course it does!

[Said indignantly, as if that was a stupid and offensive question. It takes a moment for her to consider that this magic is friggin' weird, pretty much nobody really understands it, and the things she does understand aren't necessarily common sense. So after a pause, she does offer some clarification.]

... When we got out, we regained our real memories and identities. The magic that changed us in the first place was limited to that world, so the rest of the multiverse was unaffected.

We retained a lot of our memories from our other lives, though... so it's almost like we lived two separate lives up to this point.

[scientificist]

[That sounds strange, and very complicated to exist through, and Herbert is honestly glad he skipped the whole thing. He would have wanted to go home immediately after: despite Rita's convictions, he would have wanted proof his original life still existed. He's put in a great deal of work there already, after all. As. Long as he can make everything work out where he's left things, that is. Hm.]

The fae seem to take it very seriously, despite it not being real.

[anti_nonsense]

[Quietly, but with little hesitation:]

It was real.

[scientificist]

It. Only altered that version of Portland. You know it was a fabrication.

[anti_nonsense]

The world was altered, but everything that happened there... they aren't false memories. All of it really happened.

I didn't want to believe it, but... the Ringmaster confirmed it. There's evidence, too.

[scientificist]

So...most of the Carnival is two people at once now? What sort of evidence?

[anti_nonsense]

Members of the carnival whose Portland counterparts were faeblooded... that is, directly descended from fae, are now themselves faeblooded, even after returning to their normal selves.

[scientificist]

How did this spell...overwrite your original bodies without changing the fact of your original existence? Are all of you......walking, contained alternate universes?

[anti_nonsense]

H... how should I know!? The magic behind the Severing is extremely complex, and I don't have any way of going back and studying it now.

[scientificist]

How should I know what you don't know! I wasn't there!