The sliver, which resolves into a long tumbling length of golden silk rope, practically jumps from its limp fall towards Scour, spinning through the air artfully before tying itself into a pretty little knot in their hand. This may or may not be what using this technique on a falling piece of rope would normally do, but given that this just fell out of the Sun, it would make sense for it to be an exceptional piece of rope.

If they're paying very close attention, they might also notice that the rope appears to have taken some initiative, with a single hairs-breadth thread surreptitiously snaking up along their outstretched arm, across their back, down their other arm, and is just barely touching the stanchion that Scour is holding onto themself.

Oh, wow! They don't notice the anchor thread. They're too busy admiring the rope. It doesn't feel as though they made a breakthrough with the technique, but the rope came to them as easily as a screwdriver which they've called a thousand times.

Scour pulls themself back onto the guardwall, and drops to sit cross-legged next to their radio. They turn the knot this way and that, letting it catch the last of the dying light of day, and the lamps turning on behind them.

"I wonder what you are," they say to themself.

<I'm the Golden Cord!> says a sourceless voice, followed by a somewhat sarcastic-sounding sigh. <A bit of a dud name. My maker was so good at names, I still can't figure out why he only gave Mountain something properly evocative. Anyway! You can call me Gold, or Cord, or 'the' I guess! What's your name, kid?>

Scour startles, not quite falling back off of the wall.

"Ah! Uh. I am Sunlight Scouring the Unworthy From the Face of the World, honored artifact. You can call me Scour -- everyone does," they say. They turn to peer up into the gathering darkness. "Did you fall from the four-times chain?"

<Ooh, 'honored artifact', don't hear that one in every world! Pleasure to meet you Scour! And assuming you mean up there—> a loop of the knot shivers, collapsing inwards a bit, causing part of it bow out in the general direction of chain above them, vaguely reminiscent of someone pointing with their thumb, <then yes. I and my siblings had been brought together and summoned, for the first time in a long while by my reckoning, by some poor fool up there who didn't quite know what they were dealing with. Things got a bit chaotic, and then we were all sent tumbling. I...probably could have held things together, if I wanted, but the person summoning us gave me a bad vibe, so I didn't bother.>

Every world? There are stories, of other worlds. Realms of powerful adventurers and secret treasure. But those are just stories -- in real life, there is only the surface, and the Chains. Then again, in real life artifacts are jealously guarded and hardly ever seen away from their owners. They certainly don't just fall into people's laps.

"Are you really from another world?" they ask. "And, and you've been to multiple others?"

The thought makes them dizzy. This is so much bigger than trying to get the train's timetables fixed.

<Mhm!> One loop of the knot folds over itself a bit, mimicking a person nodding their head. <I've been to more worlds than is really convenient to translate into words, in this language at least. i don't know about my siblings, we didn't much of a chance to chat, but I'd guess they've seen their fair share of sights, too. Don't worry though, in my experience at least it's pretty common for people to be surprised by that. Even in worlds I've been too that knew other worlds exist, it's real rare for them to be aware of the scope of it.>

"Your siblings -- are you all from the same artifact-maker?" they ask. "How many of you are there? Only I've never heard of anyone making more than one," they explain.

<Eh...Sort of? For one thing, there are lots of worlds where making artifacts— not ones that are as powerful as me and my siblings mind you, but certainly still powerful— is downright common. But, even so, our master, rest his thoroughly splintered soul, didn't exactly create us. He found each of us, and used his powers to make us more powerful, and eventually to give us our selves, our minds. Then, before the Dark Ones took him, he scattered us to hopefully put us beyond their reach.>

The Dark Ones sound like the way one of their mother's stories would begin, but if this world is beyond their reach, hopefully they are not about to pose an immediate problem.

"That sounds ... ominous," they remark. "If your master scattered you, is all of you being drawn together by the summoning going to be a problem? Like, make it easier for the Dark Ones to find you or something?"

<Maybe! We haven't been together in the same world for longer than a tiny fraction of a second since our master died, so it's hard to say for certain. But even if we did somehow end up back up in the Dark Ones' domain, as long as we don't stand out too much from the local power level, we should be able to avoid drawing their attention.>

That was not nearly as reassuring as they were hoping.

"I don't know how you compare to the local power level," they say. "Because on the one hand, artifacts are pretty rare, but on the other hand we're technically hanging from one of the most powerful ones right now. The Chain is the Smith's artifact, and it holds up all of the Chain Cities."

<Yeah, I noticed. It's pretty nifty! I might need to put in a little bit of effort to do the same thing, which is a good sign for being able to lay low. What's the status on local healing and time-manipulation artifacts? Since that's what my siblings do, to a first approximation.>

Scour works their jaw a bit, speechless at the implications.

"Ah, um. I think we have pretty good healing?" they offer. "I don't know of any specific healing artifacts, but I wouldn't be surprised if the hospital had one. They can, like, build replacement limbs out of living wood, or close sword wounds without a scar. Time manipulation is just ... only in stories. I've never heard of anything that could do that for real."

There's a mental whistle before Gold replies, <Alright. Needles might have a hard time keeping it subtle, but it'll at least take them a bit to start doing stuff that's really impossible by local standards, assuming they landed on someone willing to use them. Mountain, though, might be more important to get in touch with. He's never really brooked being limited by the Dark Ones anyway, and if his thing is basically unheard of here it's not going to take him long to find someone to wear him.>

"Getting in touch might be hard," they warn. "If the others fell all the way to the surface, I mean. The surface is big. My radio might reach, but it has to be very directional to get that much range, so it wouldn't be any help searching."

<I should be able to tell what direction they're in, if I give it some effort at least, though I don't know if Needles or Mountain have learned to listen for radio signals on their own yet. Still, it might be worth checking, in case either of them has found a wielder who has a radio on them.>

"Radios aren't all that common, but it's definitely worth a shot!" they agree. "Here, I have my compass here somewhere," they continue, rummaging in their pockets.

Eventually they produce a notepad and pencil for recording directions, along with a device looking a bit like a cross between a compass and a sextant that clips onto the edge of the guardwall to align itself north/south.

"If you show me what direction they're in, I can send a message to Swift letting him know I've been interrupted, and then repoint the radio. If they haven't fallen all the way to the surface, direction is probably enough to tell what City they're in."

Immediately, two threads pull free from the knot before tying themselves into two smaller, much more complicated knots. One is very dense and forms a nearly solid sphere, with four triangular peaks at what would be the corners of a tetrahedron, while the other is considerably looser, forming a cubical lattice with sets of threads running in three perpendicular directions. Then the knots moves and waver in an odd, arcane way that has an air of significance to it, before being pulled taut in two different directions. The pointy sphere goes almost straight down, while the loose cube pulls east, back across the city, and a little upwards.

<Looks like Mountain's somewhere on the ground, and Needles might be in the next city over that way,> Gold says as it unties the scrying knots and slides the threads back into the larger handle-knot.

"Oh, that's probably good news in that even if we can't get a radio message to them, a train ticket to 1st Glorious East isn't too expensive," they remark. "Although getting down to the surface would be a bit harder, but not impossible. Is Mountain straight down? If you both started falling at the same time, they might not even have hit the surface yet."

<I weigh more than Mountain, when I'm not trying to be light anyway, but I also catch a lot more air than he does unless I pack myself pretty tightly, and if he's anything like he was when I last saw him, he's probably accelerating himself towards his next wielder. Unless the ground's further away than it looks I wouldn't bet on him still being airborne.>

"The surface is just over 4 light-minutes down," they reply. "Calculating the exact time something takes to fall is a little complicated -- it takes about a day to fall from the two-times chain, but less time to fall from the four-times chain, because gravity is higher up there. I don't know exactly how much less time, though. I could work it out, maybe."

They shake their head.

"I guess that doesn't matter, though, because I don't think the train to the surface could beat," they begin to say, before being cut off by a crackling transmission from the radio.

That's what I thought! But she didn't see it like that, I guess. Anyways, that means that I definitely won't be spending time with the runners this week. Maybe that will give me a chance to catch up on my studies.

What about you, though? Is your mom still bothering you about trying to pick up knives?

"Hold on -- I have to reply to Swift and then I'll see if I can get Mountain," they tell Gold.

"Hey Swift," they say, keying the transmitter. "I'm sorry to cut this short, but something really big just dropped in my lap. I'll cypher you a letter about it for tomorrow, but I have to go deal with it. Don't worry, it's not a problem, just an unexpected opportunity. Talk to you soon!"

As soon as the message is sent, they loosen the bolt on the antenna and pivot it to point straight down along the guardwall.

"The beam is pretty tight, but if Mountain has been accelerating their fall, I would expect to still cover the whole area around the anchor," they remark. "What should the message say?"

<Hm...We probably don't want to cause too much chaos, so we shouldn't say anything that might imply there's a powerful artifact just up grabs. At the same time, if it's just one of our codewords, then if someone hears it first and then picks up Mountain later they might not remember it. Maybe something simple, that just won't mean anything to someone who isn't working with Mountain? Like, "If you're working with Mountain, contact us on this frequency as soon as possible," or something along those lines? Hopefully in a way that doesn't tell everyone where we are.>