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The vision stopped, as if the entire world had been put on pause.

Then arrived those rhythmic pulses that he'd heard before, the ones that Rasalased had been conversing with.

He still had no idea what they were saying, but hey, it was something. It meant that the Forge had heard him, at least--perhaps even that it had understood him.

Maybe he could work with that.

"I'm sorry," said Hector. "I can't understand what you're saying. Can you understand what I'm saying?"

More unintelligible noises.

Hmm.

"Uh... Okay, let's try this. If you can understand me, then beep once for yes, twice for no."

There came a period of silence. Then a single beep.

Holy shit, Hector thought, exhaling an amazed laugh. What the fuck, that actually worked? He felt like he'd just made contact with an alien species or something. "O-okay, well, uh..." Shit, he could start asking it all sorts of questions now. Where to start?

His eyes fell upon the motionless Agrian. Maybe they should start off easy. Confirm a few things. He pointed at the man. "Is that Agrian?"

Two beeps arrived.

Hector blinked. Wait, what?

He needed to ask that again. "That man there," he said, pointing with more fervor this time, "the one who worked so hard to keep you safe, is that Agrian?"

Again, there were two beeps.

Oh shit...

Hector rubbed his forehead, suddenly having to rethink everything he'd just seen--and partially lived through. If this dude wasn't Agrian, then who the hell was he?

Agh. Didn't seem like he'd be able to ask anything other than yes or no questions here.

He wondered if the others were having better luck than him. The Forge was probably showing them similar visions, right? So maybe they were way ahead of him in terms of communicating with it by now.