Around the Dorms, Monday Afternoon

[endsthegame]

Ender had closed up shop early and gone back to the dorms with one purpose in mind: to check the posters Ben had put up yesterday for any new information. And also to put up a few more, just in case there were floors Ben might have missed, people who might not have seen any.

There weren't, but it kept him busy and his mind working.

He copied whatever information was exclusive to one poster to all the other ones, just to keep everyone informed. He still didn't feel like they had a good bead on what was going on, and how many people were dealing with it - but he was getting the distinct impression they weren't alone.

[[ open for running into him, yes. or just jotting down info. ]]

Comments

[glacial_queen]

Karla hadn't been able to concentrate on the store for very long after she got off the phone with Dinah. So she'd closed up early and headed back for the dorms.

"Priestly's gone," she said, voice dull. "Dinah got a message from him this morning. He's just--gone. I think his entire world has just--vanished."

Hi, Ender. How're you? No, wait. Karla knew the answer to that.

"I'm sorry."

[endsthegame]

Ender chose to ignore the apology. It meant very little in the long run, and he couldn't do this if he spent too much time lingering on the reality of Val.

"What did he say?" he asked instead. "Did he describe anything before he went?"

[glacial_queen]

Karla could understand that. She ignored his ignoring and responded to his question. "Better than that," she said. "He sent a picture."

She called up the image Dinah had forwarded to her and offered Ender her phone. "This was the last thing he saw before he--vanished. With what was left of his entire world."

[endsthegame]

Ender frowned as he took the phone. He looked at it. "Priestly needs a better phone camera," he murmured, but that wasn't so important. "It looks like a giant dust storm."

[glacial_queen]

"Something like, yeah." Karla shrugged. "Still have no idea what it means, though. Just a giant dust cloud that passes by and erases whatever is in its path?"

[endsthegame]

"Really erases it?" Ender wondered, squinting. "I can't tell if there's anything left at all behind it."

[glacial_queen]

"I can't say for certain," Karla admitted. "But from everything Dinah said, it sounded pretty...final."

She sighed, raking her hair back away from her face. "But I didn't hear the message and Dinah's pretty broken up, so I could be wrong. Except...except I don't think so. Nothing concrete to base it on. Just a feeling. But a persistent, Black Widowy one."

[endsthegame]

Ender nodded, and pursed his lips. "Anything else your Black Widow senses are telling you?" he asked.

After the past couple of years, he had no reason to distrust them.

[glacial_queen]

"This is big, this is bad, and this is only the beginning," Karla answered flatly. "Other than that, they're being spectacularly unhelpful. I've had a few dreams, but I can barely remember the details. Very...chaotic and vague and formless. I need to spin a tangled web, I think."

[endsthegame]

"How long will it take you to spin one?" Ender asked. "Because I think we can use every potential source of information we've got."

[glacial_queen]

"Not long," Karla said, calling in a frame and some spidersilk. "If you want, I can spin one right now. It might take some puzzling out and deciphering, but the information will be accurate."

[endsthegame]

Ender leaned back against the wall, and looked at the frame. "Then don't let me slow you down," he said.

[glacial_queen]

Karla nodded once and began weaving, fingers flying over the threads. Ender could likely see her lips moving, forming the words 'forgetting,' 'vanishing,' 'Priestly,' and even 'Valentine.' Not even a full ten minutes had passed before she was tying off the last knot.

"All right," she murmured. "Let's see what this has to say."

Calling in a heavy silver pin, Karla heated it with a tongue of witchfire and then jabbed it into her ring finger. Three fat drops of blood fell onto the web and were absorbed instantly. Her eyes dropped to the web which began to glow with a faint blue light, peering into it as if it were a deep pool filled with all of the answers.

...That pose didn't stay long. "Nothing," she said after a minute or two of staring. "It's showing me nothing."

[endsthegame]

Ender blinked.

"Has that ever happened before?" he asked. "Did the weaving fail--?"

[glacial_queen]

Karla was staring at the tangled web she held in complete bafflement. "No," she said. "It's not that it's not showing me anything, it is. It's just showing me...nothing."

That was ever-so-helpful, Karla. Except there was no better way to explain it.

[endsthegame]

Ender looked at her, studied her expression, then tracked his eyes towards the web.

"You said the information would be accurate," he observed quietly.

[glacial_queen]

"I also said it would be useful," Karla muttered. "I might be wrong on both counts."

But she didn't think so. Not really.

[endsthegame]

"Or you might not be," Ender said, looking up at her. "I don't need Black Widow senses to tell me that's bad news."

[glacial_queen]

"Bad news, but not incredibly informative," Karla grumbled. "What do we do with nothing?"

Had someone hoped for an incredibly convenient answer? Maaaaybe.

[endsthegame]

"Hit the books," Ender supplied, "And hope it winds up being something with convenient capital letters."

Ender Wiggin never expected the convenient answer, because convenient answers tended to get you dead. Or at least beaten.

[glacial_queen]

"I'll let you know if I turn up anything useful," Karla promised. "Probably by handing you a giant stack of Kaeleeran books and telling you to dig in."

[endsthegame]

"One day, we're going to digitalize those," Ender said, mostly because Jane had just muttered something slightly more disparaging-sounding about it in his ear, and she did have a point. "But that's an idea for calmer times. I'd appreciate anything you can give me. You're free to join us in the library on Friday, too."

[glacial_queen]

"We're having a Reserves meeting Wednesday, too," Karla offered. "Wesley will be sending out an email tomorrow, I think. Both the school and the town, so we can get an idea of who knows what and just how widespread this is."

[endsthegame]

"I'll be there."

Of course he would.

[glacial_queen]

"Then I'll see you there unless I've got a load of books with your name on it."

She turned away, then turned back. "I know you know it already, but--if there's anything I can do or anything you need..." She shrugged. "I know the likelihood of that, but I wanted to say it anyway."

[endsthegame]

"Just keep working away at this problem," Ender said matter-of-factly. "That's the one thing we need out of everybody right now."

As she'd guessed, he wasn't going to go into any personal needs he had. There was a battle to be fought now, and everything else had to take a back seat.