Labyrinthium Inbox

[amicustenebris]

You have reached Mister Gold. Please leave a message.

Comments

[familyalien]

"Well, you know where to find me if you ever figure out where to begin."

[amicustenebris]

"You travel to go. What do you look for first, when there isn't a direct goal in a new world?"

[familyalien]

"There isn't an direct goal. Just where I end up in my Tardis. Sometimes I take my companion someplace they want to go."

[amicustenebris]

"So what are you looking for in those cases? What's likely to catch your eye?"

[familyalien]

"Let me be clear. My adventures are on random. I happen somewhere like The Rings of Akhaten. So many shops!"

The Doctor ends with an enthusiastic state and then simply states, "I do love shops."

"Sometimes my companion wants to see something like meeting Charles Dickens. Blimey such a wonderful man."

[amicustenebris]

"So the people you are with might give you a direction." That sounds relatable. "...I suppose there are one or two people that might be that way for me."

[familyalien]

"Yes, and sometimes they just go along for the ride with me. Good. Glad to hear that and likewise most of them are just around for the ride."

[amicustenebris]

"We are very different." It seems the only thing that can be said to that. As impossible as the Doctor finds magic, so too does Gold find the idea of doing anything without an end goal.

[familyalien]

"Is there anything you can tell me how your world's magic works?" The Doctor asks curiously

[amicustenebris]

"In any world with magic, the rule is universal: There's a price. The way payment is taken may differ in some way." But it could also differ in lots of ways in just one world. "You are paying for changing something fundamental about reality. It's like throwing stones in a pond. It creates ripples, and no matter how big or small, the entire pond is going to shift to make room for this new change as it settles in the bottom. Might be tiny, impossible for most to perceive. But then you might have just thrown in a boulder. Big splash. Bigger ripples. And that water's got to go somewhere, now that something else is taking up the space it used to occupy."

[familyalien]

"The way you describe magic sounds like time and needing to understand thar's trade off..."
A short pause, "Sorry. That's sorta my area of expertise."

[amicustenebris]

An internal twitch. If that is the case, then he might as well make things plain or it's liable to keep sneaking up. "I'm guessing time travel is a more achievable thing where you are from. It's nigh undoable in my corner, about as forbidden or impossible a magic as resurrection. But that does not stop desperate people from trying. If I had to guess?" He taps his temple again. "Universes where one is common might be those where the other is less so. There are people who can see threads of fate where I come from. Time as it flows, will flow, can flow. Might not always translate the most clearly, but that is the limitation of the mind. Perhaps you either get a free vantage to look, or you move within it with greater ease. One or the other."

[familyalien]

The Doctor is quiet and waits for Gold to finish, "My people invented time travel... And you're right. I can see the threads of fate, usually, anyways. What should be, what could be and what should not be, it's the burden of my people."

[amicustenebris]

"It's a rare person that gets the gift and stays around for very long after of their own volition." That girl with the firey hair hadn't been unique in that respect. She saw her end coming and embraced it with a kind of desperation that took him a very long time to understand.

But then, so had Zoso, and both her comprehended a great deal better after Zelena had hold of the dagger.

Seers don't live long. Neither do Dark Ones after they've been captured apparently. If their keepers do not put them down to assume the mantle and power themselves, then -- well. There certainly is that desire to find someone who will.

Gold shakes his head, affords himself another sip of tea. "So I suppose it is safe to say it is a burden among mine as well, the ones that have it."

[familyalien]

Even in The Doctor's world there are humans who have been given high enough telepathically 'to see'. He simply gives a slight head nod in he understands.

"I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry." The Doctor reaches one hand towards Gold. He wants to hug him because this is someone else who is tormented with knowing and it's rare to find those sorts even in the multiverse.

[amicustenebris]

Gold doesn't appear to know how to take the gesture. He goes stock still and watches him, but otherwise does not move toward or away. No idea what that was.

"I don't have the gift myself anymore, but I did."

[familyalien]

"Nor do I. Feels a bit like something is missing here."

[amicustenebris]

"It takes getting used to. Not having a fixed point to follow anymore." Having a long-term goal to work toward. Something that was always in front of him. Maybe coming back wouldn't have been so difficult, if it didn't feel like those fixed points were rapidly disappearing.

[familyalien]

"Fixed points are rare, time is mostly in flux."

[amicustenebris]

"That might be the major part of why our universes differ. I am from a place of fixed points. Many movable pieces that will all coalesce to one final, immovable point on the map. The language used to describe them is...deliberately open to interpretation. But the words you are given are always more specific than you think they are."

[familyalien]

"Could be. Could be. I am so,so, sorry if that is the case." The Doctor can't imagine an entire universe were fixed points were everything. He wouldn't be able to ever help out.

"Thar are fixed points in my universe but - it's not everything."

[amicustenebris]

"Forgive me if my meaning was unclear. It isn't everything. Many things that can lead to one. And I have to wonder if it's the looking that makes some of them fixed points to begin with. Payment for cheating, perhaps."

[familyalien]

"Right, sorry. And I can't say without being in your universe and being able to see time. But actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey- stuff. But fixed points also aren't impossible. Thar are events that are in fact fixed. They always have to happen. Even in my universe, I just know what the events are. I said sorry, so, sorry because fixed points I can't do anything to change the event."

[amicustenebris]

"Same as seers, knowing when those fixed points are. I was one for as long as I needed to keep one in particular in view." And then. Well, he died shortly after. The ability didn't come back with him.

At least, he didn't think it did. Zelena didn't really know that was ever really in his wheelhouse, so when she controlled the dagger she never made him look ahead. And since the one vision he cared to have had come and gone, there was no thread for him to perceive, and he had no reason to try to find another.

The girl hadn't told him how he might do that, but then he wasn't at all certain she had any control.

It was very possible that if he ever found himself back home and back to himself, that power would still lie dormant in him, waiting to be used again.

[familyalien]

"What happened?" The Doctor asks cautiously with a small swallow.