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The Adventurers Guild receives dozens upon dozens of requests per day, and that's just the branch in Nasha Town. For every other branch and outpost combined, Linnea would wager a guess that it's hundreds.
In these requests, there are bound to be some that are less important, or irrelevant altogether. This is one such request — a local family has a daughter who enjoys exploring the outdoors; however, both of the parents work full time. It's probably a request better suited for a childcare agency than hiring a professional adventurer.
The commission for an adventurer to accompany their child into the wilderness on a weekday afternoon is narrowly saved from the waste bin by Linnea, who does not mind being a glorified babysitter every once in a while, assuming the kid doesn't behave horribly. Another benefit of the company of small children is that they tend to be far more interested in her informational rambling, despite being able to understand less of it.
She lets the girl take the lead — so long as she doesn't start heading anywhere too dangerous — and something catches her eye as they pass the cliffs lining the valley. "Miss… ?"
"Linnea."
"Miss Linnea, why do the rocks look like that?"
She squints at the rock face. "Like what?"
"The stripes!"
… Ah.
The cliffs around Nod-Krai are not that interesting, broadly speaking, eroded and smoothed by time, but a part of this one has sheared off to reveal the layers of rock beneath.
"That's just how sedimentary rocks are formed. Old layers on the bottom and new ones on top. It's the law of superposition."
"What's that?"
"In layers of undisturbed strata —"
"What's strata?"
Linnea doesn't usually dumb down her language for her audience… but she is talking to a ten-year-old. "It's… layers of rocks, essentially. The law of superposition states that in undisturbed layers, the oldest ones are on the bottom and the newest on top."
The girl's mouth opens to an o shape, and then she frowns. "Why are they different colors? Aren't they all dirt?"
"Dirt is made of different things. The reddish layers, here — they have more iron in them."
"What about this one?" She points to a thick, grayish layer.
Linnea brushes her fingers over it —
A flash of light, a fragment of a falling star four miles wide, the sun reduced to a dim glow as dust coats the land and settles over —
She pulls her hand away, and swallows. "It's — it's hard to say."
The girl seems vaguely unsatisfied with that answer, but she nods, and continues walking onward. Linnea checks the horizon for the Wild Hunt before she follows.
-
Flins is a fae; this is obvious from his demeanor and general aloofness, even if she didn't already know. She suspects Illuga knows, too, if only because the two of them are close and Illuga is not stupid.
Aside from pretending to be human and forgetting to fill out reports, Flins does not make his interests obvious. The one thing Linnea knows for certain is that he likes collecting things — particularly animal bones, but also anything else he finds interesting.
In her line of work, it's not uncommon for her to find bones, whether scattered by themselves or as a fully articulated skeleton. They're usually not particularly old, but on the occasions when she does find larger fossilized bones —
The lizard struggles for breath as it sinks into the mud, never to resurface until its bones are found thousands of years later —
A hounds tears into flesh, leaving scratches in the bone of the leg, deep —
Linnea puts them into a box to send to Flins, if only because he can better appreciate their mystery.
-
This ability she has is not universal even among those who can wield the power of Geo.
On an expedition on Lempo Isle searching some riverbeds for fossils, she brings along Illuga, who readily offered to come with her before she'd suggested it, even though he is supposed to be on a break. Her working theory is that Illuga has no idea how to relax; this theory is supported by all data gathered experimentally as well as accounts from Flins and his other colleagues.
Illuga fishes something out of the stream and hands it out to her. "Look at this."
She can see that it's a fossil before she takes it and prepares to look deeper —
The creature — some kind of trilobite — scuttles through the silt, oblivious to its fate until it is too late, when an animal twenty time its size cuts through the muck and crunch crunch crunch —
She flinches, the stone clattering to the ground.
Illuga's expression turns worried. "Are you okay?"
He reaches out to put an ungloved hand on her arm; Linnea notes absurdly that his blood is rather low in iron.
"It's — I'm fine."
Illuga seems unconvinced. He ducks to pick up the rock, turning it over and inspecting it, perhaps checking it for sharp edges. "You don't seem fine. What was that about?"
Gingerly, Linnea takes the fossil back, and considers how to phrase what she says next. "It… I can see it. That — what happened to it, I mean. This trilobite."
Illuga looks like he has more questions, but he sticks to basics. "… What happened to it?"
"I'm not sure, but — it was violent, I think."
He winces. "Sorry."
"It's not your fault."
"How does that work? You seeing it."
"I don't know. It's — it has something to do with Geo, I think."
Illuga picks up another rock and stares at it thoughtfully for a few moments; his Vision continues to glow softly at his hip, but he doesn't seem to have any revelations. "… They still just look like rocks to me."
"That means I'm more special than you," she replies, a somewhat lame attempt to lighten the mood. Illuga snorts.
-
Gemstones do not come from the earth shaped and polished; this typically makes them difficult for prospectors to find. Linnea can see through the dirt and scratches in an instant; the way the elemental Geo echoes through a stone reveals instantly if there's crystal inside.
She is not in desperate need of cash, but like any sane person, she does love a pretty rock. She keeps most of what she finds for herself instead of selling it, unless its story is particularly depressing.
This particular use of her abilities has few applications, generally speaking. However —
She spots Flins in Nasha Town one day admiring some kind of shiny object at the Voynich Guild. "What's that?"
"Ring," he replies. "Silver and sapphire, it seems. Nice, isn't it?"
Linnea leans in and takes a closer look. The internal structure isn't crystalline. "It's fake."
Flins tilts his head to the side. "Hm?"
"It's fake. The silver might be real, I don't know — but the gemstone is made of glass," she elaborates. "It's a good forgery, though."
This information doesn't seem to discourage Flins from wanting the ring, and he manages to haggle a much lower price for it as a result.
"You're more astute than I thought, Miss Linnea. You'll have to teach me your tricks."
Linnea knows there are legitimate, non-supernatural ways of discerning fake gems; having no need for them, she does not remember any. "It's not really something I can teach."
"Disappointing," Flins says. "I'll simply have to bring you with me more often."
-
Linnea ends up watching the girl — Auni — again. This is partially because the parents were unable to find anyone else willing, and partially because Linnea likes her. She's inexperienced but extremely curious, and therefore makes for good company; perhaps she too will be an adventurer someday.
"Miss Linnea?"
"You can just call me Linnea."
Auni shakes her head. "Mama says I shouldn't do that with grown-ups. It's not respectful."
"Well — I don't mind."
"But you're older than me!"
Linnea does not know the exact age of either herself or or Auni, but… "Yes. Quite."
"What about, umm… Big Sis Linnea?"
"… Sure."
Auni beams. She makes a move to keep walking, then apparently remembers why she wanted Linnea's attention in the first place. "Big Sis Linnea! C'mere!"
"What is it?"
At the spot where she's pointing is a bump in the rock in the shape of a small seashell. "Is that a shell?"
"It was. It's a fossil now. So it's made of rock now instead of — shell stuff."
"How'd it get up here?"
"The ocean was probably a lot deeper here. This area would've been underwater thousands of years ago."
Auni nods, and continues inspecting the fossil. "… I've never seen a shell like this around here. And I collect lots of shells."
"That's because the animal that made it went extinct a long time ago. Extinct means there aren't any of them alive anymore."
Auni seems deeply saddened by this. "Why's it extinct?"
Another adult would probably sugarcoat it, when talking to someone so young. Linnea has no interest in lying. "Animals can go extinct for lots of reasons, when their environment changes too quickly for them to adapt to it. Natural disasters can do that, or if a new predator comes around."
She remembers the Fatui's metal monstrosity to the north, and shudders. "And sometimes — sometimes it's because of people. Because we destroy where they live or we hunt them until there's no more left."
"Oh," Auni says. "Could people get extinct?"
Humans are tenacious of will, but physically they're so very fragile. For a god it takes a mere flick of a finger to wipe out hundreds of them. It's not an unrealistic question.
"It's… possible," she decides on. "But it would only be if something really bad happened."
Linnea glances back at the seashell before they move on, and touches it briefly.
A small scallop in the sand, a million years old. A boom, and it is buried in sediment too deeply for any hope of survival.
Fossils of this species of scallop have only been found so far on the other side of the island. She makes a note of their discovery in her notebook and follows Auni.
-
The Fatui have done a myriad of good and bad things all across the world; they have, on occasion, even worked in tandem with the Adventurers Guild.
Linnea, for her part, will never forgive them.
She's less of a tree-hugging hippie than people tend to assume. She understands that humans eat and kill animals, and there's never been anything wrong with that — they are, after all, just another part of the food chain. She also understands that people will inevitably encroach upon nature as civilization expands. The destruction of Paha Isle, though, goes far beyond that.
In a mere few years, the uncolonized, peaceful wilderness was levelled completely and filled with machinery, every habitat destroyed. It's difficult to map, due to the Fatui's presence there, but less than ten percent of the original tree cover there remains.
When she's there, it is completely and utterly silent, save for the clanking of the machines. The wild should be quiet, not silent.
Not even the aquatic organisms were spared; Linnea's specialty is hardly in mapping ocean currents, but the gigantic crater they drilled into the sea cannot have had any positive effects. She wonders how many animals fall over the waterfall and into the pit they've made.
The deathly silence is nowhere more evident than the Maroon Basin.
A traveler turned in a report to the Adventurers Guild, one which was rather ineloquent but stated that due to the Fatui's activity in the area, as well as some probably unethical experimentation, the once-thriving population of tassel jellies in the Maroon Basin was completely gone.
The tassel jellies are — were — one of Linnea's favorites of Nod-Krai's diverse wildlife. There are tales that at the end of their life cycle, they will rise into the sky and be reborn. Linnea wants to hope, but she can't imagine why they would ever choose to return to this wasteland.
Some creatures do not leave fossils; the earth remembers them anyway. The sandy soil does not forget, echoing hopelessness and misery so deep it could be felt even by creatures without brains. The miserable emptiness is evident, even without Linnea's abilities.
-
It takes all of her self-restraint not to bring her rage down on any Fatui member she sees after that.
On one memorable night, a few Fatui officers are eating at a nearby table while she's at the Flagship with Illuga and Flins. They mention the jellies briefly, and dismiss the topic flippantly.
Perhaps if the jellies couldn't defend themselves, she could avenge them.
Illuga seems to notice her mood shift, subtly perceptive in that way most humans are. He puts an arm across her chest to keep her from standing up. She glares at him; he somewhat apologetically reminds her that as a high-ranking member of the Adventurers Guild, she ought to practice basic diplomacy.
-
Linnea knows more about Illuga than what he's told her. He's not cagey about his past, but he never really brings it up, either; he's said that he doesn't remember much of his childhood before about seven, which is when his town was destroyed by the Wild Hunt.
He doesn't give her any more details than that — mostly, it seems, because he has none — but one day she makes the mistake of looking into the history of a charred, ruined village she comes across, and she gets the full picture.
(Houses are swallowed by black flames. Screams fill the air, and then silence, for hours. They leave no survivors — except for one child, still keeping silent and hidden. His parents, some of the first to fall — gray hair soaked with blood — blue-red eyes open and glassy — )
-
It is one thing to see one thousand years on a piece of paper, or to write it down. It is entirely different to see it, and feel it.
A lot of the things Linnea sees have gone untouched for longer periods of time than she can even fathom.
When she writes reports, though, she has to fudge the numbers a little; elemental-energy-induced psychic visions are hardly empirical evidence. Instead, she uses what they know — comparing strata, fossils, et cetera — like any good scientist.
it is while writing one of these reports that Illuga taps her on the shoulder, carrying — somehow — Aedon, whom Linnea has not seen since they first met, when she accidentally scared him rather badly.
"Second chance," Illuga explains, with a light smile. He makes a move to hold Aedon out to her, and Aedon's head twists back towards him as if to say are you sure about this?
"Hi," Linnea says quietly. Illuga sets Aedon on the table, but he keeps his distance.
"She doesn't bite," Illuga encourages. Linnea doesn't, it's true, but she can't deny that she often wants to.
Aedon hops over hesitantly. Linnea reaches out a finger to pat his little ghostly head. He's made of kuuvahki, she recalls, but she has no idea how that works. She hasn't asked, mostly because of how their first meeting went.
Kuuvahki can leave traces, but no fossils. Perhaps he's the last of his kind.
Illuga, though — Linnea has examined human fossils before, and tries not to anymore. Their deaths are either nauseatingly violent, or devastatingly mundane.
Illuga won't live long, being human; being a Lightkeeper, it's statistically unlikely he'll even make it into his fifties. Linnea has also heard talk of his self-sacrificing tendencies, so that probably knocks off at least another few years from his expected lifespan.
Of course, not all bones fossilize, since the conditions are so specific. Will his bones fossilize, or will they just decay? She's not sure which she'd prefer — on the one hand, she doesn't want to lose him suddenly and end up forgetting him completely. On the other, she pictures finding his skull thousands of years from now, touching it and knowing exactly how he'd died, how he'd felt —
Aedon chirps as if to bring her back into reality.
"He's cute," she says.
Illuga grins and she fights the urge to reach out and grab his hand.
-
When sedimentary rocks form, the sand and soil are compacted together, squeezing out every molecule of water and everything else nonessential, before the sediment cements into stone. Linnea likes to think this is also how her mind works.
She's heard tales of fae driven insane from the sheer weight of their own memories, but even when she was young, she never remembered anything vivid or detailed beyond about fifteen years ago, besides anything particularly important. It's a blessing and a curse.
Linnea occasionally accompanies Illuga on trips to the Final Night Cemetery, where it seems Flins has a hobby of telling Illuga extremely convoluted and ridiculous stories. Despite her inconsistent memory, she's lived long enough to know that about half of what he says is complete bullshit. Flins knows that she knows, too, and keeps glancing over at her with the most insufferable expression she's ever seen on another person's face.
She has never known Flins particularly well. He seems like a person she would like to have as her friend. They do have in common an interest in bones and skeletons; Linnea knows he's kept everything she's sent him over the years.
Linnea is not close with many people — it comes with the territory of having a lifespan that is longer than that of the average person, but she's never been great at socializing regardless. She wishes she and Flins were closer and has no idea how to bring that about.
She wonders if Flins feels the same way — probably not, since he's already quite close with Illuga and too introverted to maintain a large number of relationships.
Perhaps this — friendly dinner with a couple of acquaintances — is the best she'll ever get.
-
Linnea doesn't sleep that night; she has less need for it than a human, and the lighthouse only has the one bed, which appears to only be used by Illuga on his occasional visits.
She spends the night watching Flins, who fills out some reports and then walks out to one of the graves — freshly dug and filled, judging by the disturbed earth.
"What are you doing?"
Flins kneels before the gravestone and takes an object out of his coat — some sort of chisel. "I am going to put this poor Lightkeeper's name on their gravestone."
"They're — already buried here?" She'd understood that human burial customs usually involved the making of the gravestone before the burial fo the body, at least in the modern day.
"The Lightkeepers do not have the budget to employ a professional to carve headstones. I am happy to do it myself."
"Isn't it… a little dark for that, right now?"
"It doesn't bother me. And besides, it is best to do it when Illuga is asleep. It tends to depress him."
Snowland fae aren't supposed to get cold. She pictures "ILLUGA" — or "AUNI", even — emblazoned on a gravestone — of Flins having to do the carving — and shivers.
-
Linnea can tell where battles have taken place — the earth tends not to forget the sheer volume of blood spilled there. It's not uncommon, either, given the large amount of Wild Hunt outbreaks throughout Nod-Krai over the years.
Illuga brings her along to investigate the disappearance of a Lightkeeper who was last seen in one of these such areas. Unwisely, she touches the ground, hoping for clues —
No signs of their missing person but signs of many many more, bodies piling up on each other in the absence of empty ground, the air thick with the smell of iron, some of their guts strewn around —
— the screaming gives way to a silence that's even worse —
Something like a sob catches in her throat before she can pull herself out and she falls back into a sitting position, screwing her eyes shut as if that will help.
"Linnea — are you alright —"
She looks up at Illuga standing over her, face drawn in concern — blue-red eyes open and glassy — and tears her gaze away, shaking her head —
He sits down next to her, hovering uncertainly for a moment. "Are you — can you hear me?"
Linnea manages a nod.
He puts a hand on her arm, not resting it there so much as letting it touch just barely. "Can… can I hug you? Would that —"
Linnea throws her arms around him before he finishes the sentence.
Illuga is good at hugging, if that is a thing one can be good at. He puts one arm around her shoulders and one around her back; his hold is tight, the only thing reassuring her that he is not one of the limp bodies on the pile. Yet.
His body feels distressingly fragile, even with the layers of muscle necessary for his line of work; far too easy to injure. A single well-placed knife strike and he'd be gone in minutes. Blue-red eyes, open and glassy — not even safe from the passage of time —
Illuga shifts slightly, presumably to a more comfortable sitting position. He's warm and his coat is soft; she repeats that thought in her head to keep everything else out.
Ever tactful, he doesn't press her about this.
(When they return from their investigation — unsuccessful — Illuga lets her hold his hand. She doesn't know if it makes her feel better or worse.)