Chapter Text
Prowl could have sworn he knew every inch of the garden at the Grand Central Library of Praxus. He retreated to it often, to relax and meditate among the crystals. Something about it drew him, called to him. He found it helped him be more productive to pace slowly through the towering formations, watching the light play through the prisms and listening to the soft crystal whispering as he thought. Sometimes it almost sounded like it had a voice…
Today he hadn’t been thinking on anything in particular, letting those whispers guide his steps. They’d led him to a narrow split in what he had thought was a solid crystal face at the back corner of the property. Deciding to investigate, he had carefully made his way through what turned out to be a massively overgrown hedge and now stood, stunned, at the edge of a small enclosed hollow in the opaque purple crystal, staring at a small building he had never known existed.
“Well. This is unexpected.”
A musical tenor — mech or femme, he couldn’t be sure — echoed out from the delicate structure, perfectly capturing his thoughts. Prowl startled, slipping the last step out of the crack in the wall. He heard someone laugh as he fumbled to catch himself on a protruding crystal shelf, a warm, gentle sound that chimed against the surrounding walls. “Careful! That’s library property.”
“It is not damaged,” Prowl said quickly, his door wings twitching behind him at the admonishment. “At least, no more than it was when I found it.” He looked up at the building before him. More window than wall, the front had nearly a dozen tall panes of crystal even more colorful than any in the garden. Bracing those windows were hundreds of smaller facets of the same rainbow-hued crystal, fitted together flawlessly in glittering mosaics laced with fine white metal filigree. A trick of the light made the whole thing slide between translucent and opaque as Prowl shifted his gaze across it, searching for the speaker. He found no one.
“Where are you?”
“Right here.”
At first he still didn’t see anyone, but then — there! Prowl spotted movement in one of the windows as the voice chuckled again. He focused his optics on the wavering shape. The distortion in the crystal made it difficult to make out much beyond a silhouette — a non-Praxian silhouette.
“How’d you find this place?” the figure in the window asked, sounding curious rather than accusing. Prowl realized belatedly that its accent wasn’t Praxian either.
“I followed a crack in the crystal to see how far it went, not knowing there was anything inside,” Prowl replied. “How long has this been here?”
“Longer than the library’s been standing behind you, mech.” Now it sounded amused, as if something Prowl had said was funny. “Want to come in? The door’s open.”
Prowl hadn’t seen a door, but now as he followed the figure’s pointing finger along the building he did see an opening in the wall of color. He stepped up cautiously, peering across the interior. There were more rainbow-hued windows on the other side. They were just as impossible to see through clearly in the refracted light filtering down through the panes forming the vaulted ceiling overhead. Carved white columns of the same material that made up the building’s framework braced its arches at even intervals around the single room.
“Please come in,” the voice said again, more plaintively this time. “It’s been so long since I had anyone to talk to.”
Loneliness and sadness struck Prowl’s audials and resonated in his spark. Without further hesitation, he stepped across the threshold, striding into the open space and looking around for the source of the sound.
He moved too quickly; the colors swirled and spun, making him dizzy. Staggering, Prowl braced a hand against the nearest column to orient himself. He looked down to see everything around him reflected perfectly in the mirror-finish of the floor. It created the illusion of floating in an empty chamber suspended in color and light. Even though Prowl knew his feet were planted solidly on the ground, he felt as though he was standing on nothing at all.
“Sorry ‘bout that.” Prowl jerked his helm around toward the voice without thinking, sending his gyros spinning again as his systems struggled to balance him inside the kaleidoscope. “It doesn’t do that to me anymore.”
“Really?” Prowl gasped. Did that mean he just needed to get his bearings? He focused his gaze on the point on the floor where his feet met their reflection, hoping it would help him reestablish his equilibrium. That felt a little more stable. He continued to lean on the column for support though, before slowly starting to widen his gaze.
“What is this place?” Besides an incredible work of art. “There are no records of it in the library, not on the grounds maps or in the histories.”
“We-ell, technically speaking it ain’t a part of the library.” A small mech with a visor blue and sparkling as crystal moved slowly into Prowl’s peripheral vision in the reflection in the floor. The edges of the mech’s oddly shaped armor blurred into the rainbows around him, color bleeding across white plating so that parts of him vanished into the architecture. The silver on his arms and legs didn’t disappear as effectively, but was still harder to make out than the dark, solid black shapes of his torso, hands, and helm. He waved up at Prowl with a grin. “There’s a reason no one knows it’s here. Wanna hear the story? It’s a good one.”
“I… yes,” Prowl said, confused. He tried to follow the mech’s reflection past the floor to get a better look at him, but somehow lost him at the transition. When he looked down again, he was gone. “Please.”
“All right then,” the mech said from somewhere behind him. Prowl didn’t turn his helm this time, but his door wings fluttered slightly, trying to pinpoint him. The sensor panels couldn’t detect anyone else there. What was going on?
“A long, long time ago, back before the unification of the territories, this land belonged to the most powerful noble family in all of Praxus,” the mech began. His reflection now appeared in one of the eastern windows. “They were real strict, big into tradition. Everything had to be done just so, and no one questioned the head of the house. Didn’t matter who you were — from the lowest servant to the heir himself. If the elder decreed something, his was the final word.”
Despite the warmth of color around him, Prowl felt a sudden chill creeping through his lines. “This is not a happy story, is it.” It wasn’t a question.
“Did I say it was? Good and happy ain’t the same thing, mech.” The visored figure in the window wavered and vanished again. Prowl couldn’t triangulate his new position as his voice seemed to come from all around. “ Good is subjective. Good is what the elder thought he knew best, and to the Pit with whether or not it made anyone happy.” The words were bitter and resigned, but there were embers of an old anger lingering just beneath the surface. Prowl shivered as the story continued.
“At the height of the family’s influence and power, the estate was unrivaled anywhere in the city for its richness and splendor. The members of the house were considered the most upstanding, most righteous, most pure of all Praxians.” The emphasis grated against the crystal, sending discordant echoes full of disgust and contempt pinging around the room. “Egocentric, narcissistic xenophobes, the lot of ‘em! No place for foreign builds among that crowd! Except as servants, where no one heard or saw you.”
Prowl was starting to get used to the effect of the chamber. Helm no longer spinning, he stepped away from the column he’d been leaning against and turned slowly. He caught elusive glimpses of the strange mech in the windows as he scanned his surroundings. “You speak as though you were there,” he observed flatly. That was impossible. Praxus hadn’t been an independent city state for thousands of years. Its nobility was relegated to the archives of history, remembered only by those who still thought claiming descent from the old lines would bring them some sort of prestige. An entirely academic exercise, as far as Prowl was concerned. Noble lineage had no bearing on anyone’s function in modern Praxus.
“You sound like you don’t believe me,” the mech said knowingly from the reflection of one of the upper windows in the floor. Impossibly he looked to be sitting on the vertical filigree frame between two large panes of variegated crystal.
Prowl had the suspicion that if he looked up he wouldn’t be there anymore. “And if I do not?” he asked, addressing the reflection. Some of the colors were beginning to deepen into shadows, stretching and lengthening around the room. Prowl had to fight the urge to escape. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to if he tried. Was any of this real? Had he fallen and hit his helm climbing through the crystal? Was he lying on the ground dreaming?
The blue visor watching him dimmed somewhat. “Doesn’t matter what you believe.” The mech jumped down from the window, falling upwards towards the floor and disappearing behind a column just before reaching it. His image walked out around the column a moment later, pacing along one of the windows before turning to face Prowl. Once again, Prowl could detect nothing behind him to cast that reflection. “You want the rest of the story or not?”
“I do,” Prowl answered honestly. Real or imagined, he was curious. “What does any of that have to do with the fact that this building is not part of the library, and that no one knows of its existence?”
“The land was given to the library. The building wasn’t,” the mech said enigmatically. “It used to be at the center of a grand crystal garden, the focal point of a symphony of sculptured pinks and reds, blues and greens, lavenders and ochres. All the most fantastic shapes you can imagine! It was a status symbol, a private chapel built as a demonstration of wealth and false piety with no intention of anyone ever actually using it.”
The mech turned to gaze out the window; the thick walls of the hedge beyond were partly visible through the coruscating crystal glass. “That’s what’s left of the garden, overgrown and run wild ‘cept for where they prune it back to keep it from encroaching on the library. What it used to look like… Oh, if only you could’ve seen it! It was beautiful, every bit as beautiful as this chapel. Two parts of one masterpiece.”
He looked back at Prowl, the glow of his visor brightening and the colors in the room brightened along with it. “Do you know anything about cultivating crystal?” He seemed to expect a no, and Prowl shook his helm obligingly. Truthfully he knew very little, though he did know some. “You have to seed the mineral beds, monitor the humidity, clean out undesirable inclusions, train and shape the formations, polish the faces without injuring ‘em…” he trailed off, though Prowl knew there was plenty more he left unsaid. “Point is it’s hard, time consuming manual labor. Who do you think gets saddled with that job on a noble estate?”
“I would assume one of the servants,” Prowl hazarded a guess. “Or several, if the task was too large for a single mech to accomplish unaided.”
“Got it in one,” the mech smiled, tapping his helm smartly next to one of the strange short audial protrusions sticking out on either side. “There were two shifts assigned to looking after the crystal, a day shift and a night shift. You gotta have someone at night to make sure it doesn’t get cold enough to damage the more delicate species, to finish whatever the day shift didn’t get to. And,” he said fondly, “to sing with them.”
“Sing with them?” Prowl repeated, not sure he’d heard right. “What purpose does that serve?”
“Listen.”
The mech slipped away again, vanishing as his clear, vibrant tenor began humming through the room. It rang in the largest window panes first, each one singing back a different note. The pitch started low and resonant; Prowl could hear it in his audials and feel it in his door wings. The twin panels on his back twitched reflexively, settling into a wider position to better pick up the subharmonics as the music built around him.
Around each tier of windows, arcing up overhead and cascading down over him, the sound picked up new notes from every facet, turning the chapel into a choir. Every color, every size, every shape sang back with its own unique voice, filling the chamber with liquid sound. Prowl knew the strange, mysterious mech had to be orchestrating it all, carefully controlling the responses with the strength and direction of his voice, but it quickly reached the point that he couldn’t follow the complexity even with his advanced sensory suite and superior processors. Unable to think his way through it, all Prowl could do was experience it.
It felt like being consumed.
Sound and music poured through him like light and color and he became transparent; his awareness evaporated as the music penetrated him. He could feel his frame buzzing with the melody, his plating vibrating as it sang too… until at last, it was too much. Crying out, Prowl’s voice joined the crystal chorus as it swelled and broke like the dawn, shattering in its intensity without breaking a single thing.
It was an eternity before the last audible note faded, leaving the air humming with crystal resonance that tingled along Prowl’s door wings. He felt shaken, was shaking. At last he realized he was somehow still standing, trembling, at the center of the chapel.
“It doesn’t serve any purpose,” the maestro said softly, at last appearing properly before Prowl’s optics in the still-charged air. He looked almost solid, as if Prowl could reach out and have his fingers brush against something real. His feet, however, didn’t quite touch the ground. “It’s just beautiful.”
“Beautiful is… an inadequate description,” Prowl whispered, hardly daring to move. “How…?”
“Practice. Lots and lots of practice. I’ve had plenty of time with nothing else to do, after all.” The mech smiled sadly. “I used to sing when I took care of the crystals at night. Wasn’t part of my job, but it made me happy. And not just me — I didn’t know it at first, but the young lord of the house actually did use the chapel. Not to pray, but to think. Then he started coming to hear me sing. He said that it… that I… made him happy too.”
A pause let the chill and shadows back in. “Of course, the elder wasn’t very happy when he found out. It’s not good to consort with a worthless Polyhexian grounds servant. In the elder’s optics I’d contaminated and corrupted his heir, ruining him, his reputation, and the reputation of the house forever.”
If the elder decreed something, his was the final word, Prowl remembered. “But you had done nothing of the sort.”
“Of course not!” The response was immediate, indignant. The mech’s form wavered slightly in the air, becoming somehow less solid. “All we did was talk! We knew there was no bridging the gap between our stations, no matter how we felt about each other. I wasn’t gonna destroy his future like that, and he didn’t want to see me get sacked. Or worse.” He laughed, a dry, brittle sound compared to its earlier richness. “It got so we knew we had to stop seeing each other. We agreed to meet here one last time to say goodbye… and then worse happened.”
Prowl felt his spark clench in his chest. “They caught you,” he said quietly.
“They did. The guards surrounded the chapel and rushed us, forcing us apart. The elder watched as they held me down and dragged him away and I never saw him again.” The raw emotion in the mech’s voice was stark and painful. “I can only hope they didn’t kill him in favor of the next in line, but I wouldn’t put it past them. Then, with a lengthy lecture about the depths of my sin and depravity, I,” the mech gestured grandly around them, “was imprisoned here. They struck every hint of the chapel’s existence from the records and let the garden grow up around it so no one would ever find it. That’s why when the house finally fell and the land got split up, the chapel wasn’t part of the deal with the library. And neither was I.”
“But…” Prowl stared in disbelief. “If you were imprisoned here that long ago, that would mean that you…”
“Died? Yeah.” As if to emphasize the point he faded further, his body now undeniably transparent. “The crystal’s too hard to break and the metalwork too strong to pry apart for someone my size without tools, and they made sure the place and my subspace were both empty before they removed the door. There was no way out other than slowly starving into stasis and then slippin’ quietly offline.”
He said it so matter-of-factly that it took Prowl a moment to react. “That must have been horrible,” he finally said, then winced at how pathetic it sounded. “I mean–”
“It’s okay. I know what you mean,” the mech said soothingly. “Anyway, you’ll notice I didn’t let dying kill me.”
Prowl shook his helm, trying to make sense of that. “I do not understand. If what you have said is true, how are you are still here? Who are you?”
The mech’s face lit up with a brilliant smile. “I’m Jazz,” he replied. “Tender of crystal and amateur musician. Don’t bother trying to find any record of me. None exists any more than you’ll find on this place. They erased us both a long time ago. All that’s left,” he chuckled, “are the ghosts!”
“So then, you are a ghost.” Prowl extrapolated, feeling the twinges of a processor ache coming on. Surprised only that it hadn’t started sooner, he brought a hand up to cover his optics. “How can I be talking to a ghost?” Had he hit his helm harder than he’d thought, or inadvertently stepped through some sort of portal? A tendril of panic curled its way into his spark and his hand dropped back down as he looked back at Jazz. “Wait. If they removed the door, how did I get in? How do I get back out?”
“Hey, calm down! One question at a time!” Jazz said, making shushing motions with his hands. “You get out the same way you got in. They might’ve removed the door, but I removed a window. See? It’s hard to spot unless you’re looking for it, but that frame there’s empty.”
Following Jazz’s finger, Prowl looked behind him. Just as he’d said, one of the large ground level windows was missing, the transition from the mirrored floor to the outside uninterrupted. With a sigh of relief Prowl relaxed, the sudden fear subsiding. “How were you able to do that?” he asked, curiosity once again coming to the fore. “You said the crystal was too hard to break.”
“When I was alive it was,” Jazz admitted. “Couldn’t do it with my hands. I had to learn how to sing the crystal well enough to crack just the one piece without bringing the whole place down — Primus only knows what it woulda done to me if I had. Only took a hundred years or so.” He shrugged, bleaching further in the light as the air grew more and more still. “Would’ve taken longer if I hadn’t been so familiar with the crystal. It’s all from the garden originally.”
“It does not look like the same crystal,” Prowl objected.
“Not the stuff out there now, no. The garden used to be a lot bigger and had a lot more variety in it. The chapel’s made from one that isn’t there anymore, but you can still see all the original species in the sigils on the columns.”
Intrigued, Prowl walked over to the nearest column and examined it. Sure enough, there was a small, decorative sigil he hadn’t noticed before containing elements made of several different types of crystal. Though there was none of the same rainbow crystal making up the chapel, Prowl recognized the purple crystal of the hedge outside and several others from the garden as well. The shapes had been laid out in the form of stylized glyphs spelling out a name beneath a small relief portrait of a mech.
Presumably the name belonged to the mech depicted. Prowl examined a few more of the columns, finding that each bore a different name. They seemed vaguely familiar somehow… “Who were they?” he asked, trying to place them in his memory.
“Former elders. Ah, that one’s kinda, erm…” Jazz’s sentence trailed off as Prowl came to the next column. Its sigil was cracked and broken, the glyphs unreadable. The relief had popped loose and fallen at some point in the past, shattering and disintegrating over time so that only the faintest traces of it remained as dust at the base of the column.
“…I think I can guess,” Prowl said mildly. “He was not a former elder though, was he? He was the current head of the house.”
“Yeah, but they figured putting it in when they built it would save them the trouble of having to add him when he kicked it.” Jazz made his way over to one of the other columns, form flickering fitfully between each step. “I would have hated them for makin’ me look at his ugly mug till I was able to shatter it, except for this.”
Prowl left the broken sigil and joined Jazz, drawing up short when he read the inscribed name. That one he knew, and knew well.
“He was the heir, the next in line to succeed the house, so they put him here too,” Jazz said quietly. He brought his hand up to the relief, fingers trembling with effort as he reached for it. Then, suddenly, he was gone.
“Jazz!” Prowl whirled, his exclamation the only sound in the silent room.
“Still here,” he heard a second later. Prowl looked down and saw Jazz standing beside him in the reflection in the floor, a wavering smile on his face. “Sorry ‘bout that.”
Slowly Prowl extended his arm, reaching out to his side. His hand overlapped with Jazz’s where he looked in the mirror, but there was no one there to touch.
“Aw, don’t make that face.” Jazz ‘patted’ Prowl’s hand and then walked back to the windows, floating up from the floor to ‘sit’ once again on a band of filigree facing Prowl. “I ain’t going anywhere, trust me. It’s silly, I know it is, but… when they were dragging him away, he said he’d escape. He promised he’d come back for me. So I stayed.” He was smiling, but it was a smile filled with sadness. “I could’ve moved on but I stayed for him. I missed my chance.”
“Have you… tried? Recently, I mean, to… move on?” Prowl asked hesitantly. He didn’t want to upset Jazz, but was unsure of what to say. His processor was spinning.
“I can’t.” Jazz’s shoulders slumped tiredly. “I’m trapped, bound to the crystal. I can’t even leave the chapel now that the garden doesn’t have any of this variety left,” he said, indicating the windows around them. “I used to be able to go out, to visit the other pieces of it after I broke the window. But then they all died out. I’ve just been kinda sleeping since then… It’s a pretty miserable way to live, you know.”
Prowl didn’t point out that it was in fact no way to live, given that Jazz claimed to be dead — a claim which was crazily starting to sound plausible. He desperately wanted to get back to the library. There were so many things he needed to look up!
“I walk in the garden often,” Prowl offered slowly, not wanting to say too much and get Jazz’s hopes up. “I could come and visit you again, if you want.”
“You would do that? Really?!” As close as they were standing, Prowl should have been able to feel Jazz’s excitement in his EM field. He couldn’t.
“Yes,” he said. “I promise.”
Now Prowl felt something, though it was more like crystal resonance than a true EM pulse. It felt like it came from the chapel itself. “I’ll be waiting,” Jazz said solemnly. “You have to go now though, don’t you?”
“I do. But I will return.” Prowl knew the words were true as he said them; he would come back. Whatever his research turned up, whether he found anything or not, he would be back at least one more time. If only to prove whether or not he’d been dreaming…
Prowl looked over his shoulder one last time after stepping through the missing window. Jazz stood in the pane beside it, hands pressing against the crystal. It looked like he was trying to break free.