FV – Chapter 12

Limited Edition

After applying themselves so intently, the two girls went from their hard work pressing them towards dawn to taking it easy right until another dusk.  Maintaining a decent sleeping schedule drifting between two different realities was proving to be decidedly more than challenging.

Axln herself spent her time actively considering matters of time.  She had noticed that this planet at least progressed its time in perfect sync with her own planet, but she didn’t completely understand how it had watched matters of time.  Researching the matter with Lyun, she had learned some rather interesting details on the subject at least.  Ruixse also had an orbital calendar system, though a lot less refined than Aestus worked with, even if a lot of things were surprisingly familiar.  Just like Aestus, most of the time tracking had been ripped wholesale from their original homeworld of Celese.  Instead of months, they had something called a lunar cycle, watching the orbit of a moon.  Just as stupid as earth though, a lunar cycle was the orbital period of the Celesi moon’s phases, not even of either of the two local moons.  This resulted in a lunar cycle taking effectively 18 and a quarter days to complete, which were in turn split into groups of 5 that covered the duration of a standard season over 91 and a quarter days.  The full cumulation of seasons spanned the term of a year, which was itself also a Celesi construct for the same time period as a Terran version of the same stupid word, the amount of time Celese needs to do an orbit around their own sun.  Even more confusing, the term Solar cycle was invented to represent Ruixse’s own orbital period of their own sun, being effectively like a Sidus.  Axln had no idea why stellar travellers seemed to feel so compelled to make such a process so complicated.

Even more complicated was how all those quarter-days fit into the annual rotation.  Because of such odd fractions, each cycle is considered to simply be eighteen days, but the day bordering the switch of seasons was considered to be a special seasonal holiday.  Since this still left one last odd day in the sequence, there was also a similar special day that was considered the border of the annual sequence, being yet another special holiday right mid-summer.  Meanwhile, the same lunar cycle is divided further into three groups of six days called a lunar phase, each as the early, mid, and late phase.  Meanwhile, it seems Celese had never been paranoid about structuring their days with more clarity than morning, afternoon, evening, and night.  Instrumentation though, much like technology, did however call for a system of more precision, a concept she could personally agree.  In simplicity, a day is simply split into a hundred moments, which are then further split into a hundred instants.  Having processed the math in her head, with consideration that a day here is the exact same length as on her planet, that would mean that ten moments are inadvertently the same as one hour.  Any instrument that needed values more precise than an instant simply relied on a fractal of an instant.  The average lifestyle of a person though did not make application of such precise measures, they were only used in instrumentation.  Finding this disappointing, she was really considering asking Lyun to create an actual timepiece for her, one with decimal-level precision in instants.  Time was something very important to her.

With considerations to time, she had found it interesting just how much was actually matching up.  Not just the passage of days, the current season was actually considered early summer when taken into consideration of their primary sun, Yhndae.  Their other sun, Taeqhyx, governed their solar phases that would either empower or weaken the planet’s elements, the current solar phase being a void phase because Taeqhyx was so far away.  This was all the exact same placements as the Aestus’ suns, except for that there wasn’t a third sun in this system.  This itself appeared strange to her, that absolutely everything was mapping up so exactly.  Certainly this couldn’t just be a matter of coincidence.  In fact, from her considerations about how laws of reality were mapping across to each other, the patterns were showing that quite a lot of things could possibly be keeping up with this idea.  It was a prime idea, but Lyun’s workshop just was not a place of research, Axln would have to find a much more suitable opportunity to look into such stuff at another time.

“Sometimes, this place just seems sort of cramped.”  “Yhzia kept saying the same thing, which I guess might be why she went out a lot.  I guess though travelling around like she did might be a bit hard for you, since everything is still so unfamiliar.”  “That, and I’m worried about drawing too much attention to myself.  You already know, me otherwise being a conduit, those sorts of ideas have always been a concern.  Here, I might fit in as one of the humans, but I actually now look strange again because of having such an arm.  It probably doesn’t help that the arm I’m hiding looks almost as unnatural.  Your implants at least hide very easily as a part of your legs, at least as long as they are covered.”  Axln honestly missed having technologies such as her holo and nanites, things which could solve such problems much easier, things Lyun had very little to deal with.  Both instrument sets had finally started behaving properly, Axln had full control over her new hand while Lyun hadn’t been finding walking to be all that difficult anymore.  However, Lyun was still in no position to simply provide new instruments she didn’t already have.  She was already aware that there would be some potential to improve on the initial design, but she didn’t have the right stuff to make such a thing.

“Sorry, I wish I could just provide us with an easy solution, but my workshop just hasn’t been doing very well, my stocks haven’t been the best.  The thing I lack the most are probably the most important, kyuemu shards, so that the instrument has a power source to run with at all.  They’re pretty much a requirement for any instrument, with certain designs needing certain types of shard.  I just haven’t been able to make enough Qeld to purchase much in the area of shards, the sort of stuff we need for this.. I don’t even have any at all.”  “Great, so money problems.  We would have to figure out a decent way to make up for the missing cash.  Maybe it would help to sleuth for some deals, look for cheaper offers from competitors.”  “Competitors?  The Kyuemu Foundry is the only organization that provides kyuemu shards.”  “A monopoly would make this a lot more difficult.. and potentially extra expensive.”  “It’s worse that the Void Phase makes kyuemu shards extra scarce, but that was also supposed to be why making and repairing instruments was supposed to be so lucrative.  If I had known before that the Foundry was also the prime supplier of instrumentation, I might not have even bothered trying.  I’m pretty sure that’s why no one bothers trying.”  Lyun had been standing against such a commercial empire all this time, Axln could see just how rough that might have been, much like how hard it has been for her to stand up against earth’s bias.  With that realization, Axln decided she didn’t want to be such an economic liability.  She was used to suffering against oppression, she could then easily just keep doing so.

“Okay, new plan then.  Let’s just get out there and I’ll be a showcase for your work.  If we need to just make some money, then we should profit from all of your hard work.”  “What?  But there is no way I could reproduce this stuff, a lot of this was your doing.”  “Yeah, and..?  That just means we’re in this together, which works for me.  Means I’ll get to earn my own upgrades.”  “This is the exact problem Yhzia and I were left with though, looking for new buyers.  Where would I go to find a new buyer?”  “Easy, possibly the last place you’ll want to be.  Wherever we can find the largest social presence and gain the most attention.  Hopefully, somewhere at least close to your workshop, would put less strain on your legs that way.  I know that was a prime benefit of having my office near a big mall, do you have anything like that nearby?”  “Actually, there is a big mall nearby, not that far away from here.  It’s where I go shopping for all of my supplies, even the Foundry has an outlet there.”  “Neat, and is it about a 2 moment walk from here too?”  “Oh, about that.. why?”  “Sounds good, let’s go.”  Axln was already getting ready to go, making for the door while Lyun still had no idea what exactly was going on.  A moment later, or about six minutes by Axln’s calculations, the two of them were on their way.  Axln kept track of the route taken, feeling a slight familiarity in the process that matched the typical 15 minute walk after just over another two moments passed.  The two of them fit into the mid-dusk crowds entering the mall, Lyun thankful that this wasn’t at least a busy time.  She knew however that they might very well be here long enough for the place to get packed, getting exceptionally nervous in the process.  What if something went wrong, what if their arms reacted, what if…?

“Don’t worry, just stay focused and we’ll be fine.  Remember, we want to be here, we want to make some positive relations with business opportunities, we won’t have any problems.  Keep in mind, I’m not some liability here, I can actually take care of myself, you won’t need to worry about me either, even if someone confronts me.  It’s not like I’m even a Conduit, we’ve got nothing to worry about.  So relax, and seriously make sure you remember that we want to be here.  Speaking of having places we want to be though, do you know of a store here that deals in maps?  Pretty sure we could get some impressive.. advantages in working with such resources.”  In the shining light of the mall, it actually appeared that Axln’s arms were a heavy contrast to each other, the white of her glove standing in pure contrast to the black of her crystalline arm.  She wasn’t even causing that much of a commotion either, because in such light it appeared as if her arm was actually just in some kind of thin crystalline plating, like a single-armed vambrace.  When blended to the rest of her outfit, she actually looked sort of dignified.

Lyun brought Axln to a sort of map store, the maps however stored in handheld instruments.  As Axln couldn’t navigate such an interface, being unable to read the prompts, Lyun showed her how such a map worked.  Axln however quickly took it from her, and scanned around for herself using the strange GPS device, simply having tracked what options did by memory alone.  The device was even capable of measuring across distances, which Lyun interpreted for her.  Applying some relative trigonometry, using considerations of ratios for distances instead of interpreting a direct conversion, she calculated a couple of distances from some very notable locations.  To begin with, she used the workshop and mall as a baseline, matching it to her office in Aestus and the mall there too.  The overall size of civilized development was very different, Aestus having compressed itself very well, but some of the more major sights that she had found significant were very diligently placed in similar locations.  Most importantly, every place they had shifted between realities remained geographically the same location in the other reality.  The location of Sophie’s work did only seem to match a park, but even her house was about the same ratioed distance from things as the home of Yhzia’s sister.  The two major terminals added up as well, as did the notable distance of the Obsidian Hall and the Diamond Falls.  So, things really did map together very well, this made it very easy to assume where they would show up if they were to shift through right at that point.  The mall, obviously, though she wasn’t quite certain which store.  The malls themself had different shapes, the one on this planet being a lot wider, but this was at least some very useful information.

At the same time as she was checking out such an instrument beside the mid-aisle shelves designed to showcase them, a retail staff was going around cleaning up, the manager looking upon them with a strict glare as the individual had not kept to the diligence of his work.  Feeling the intensity of pressure, the worker rushed around to get his work done, not paying enough attention to his surroundings.  The back handle got caught on one of the bars of the rack, abruptly pulling the worker around to smash face-first into another rack slightly beyond it.  The force of such a collision was enough to destabilize the entire rack, the rack being slightly more weighted on his side.  This was the same rack Axln was standing beside.  Observing things shift dangerously, Axln grasped the rack with her artificial arm, impressing her will to have the rack braced rigidly before it could fall over.  Despite being what would have been around 300 kilo using weight measures of her own planet, Axln braced the entire thing with one hand and little physical effort.  A couple of instruments on the other side did fall over anyway, one bashing painfully into the guy’s leg, but it was clearly a disaster averted.  The manager rushed over to assess the situation, visibly thankful for Axln’s aid.  The commotion in turn caught quite a lot of attention from the crowds just outside, clearly exposed to a side profile of the situation.  A passerby of the crowd event went closer to further investigate the matter.

“That was impressive.  I mean, anyone could tell your gauntlet is just an instrument that was empowering your strength, but to have such efficiency from something that looked like it could barely be thick enough to cover your arm would have taken some impressive craftsmanship.  How many Qeld was the Foundry selling something like that for, anyway?  It looks like it wouldn’t have been cheap.  Do you then need this for your work or something?  I’m not even familiar with the product category.”  “Oh, good day.  No, actually, this isn’t even Foundry made, it was an independent project by my colleague here, we’re walking around to test how well it feels with a regular day of use.”  “Really, that’s remarkable.  Is there any chance you would be willing to take it off, I would love to get a better look at such a thing. I happen to know people who would love to have access to such a thing, who could even pay substantially for such a thing.”  “Ah, that does sound like an interesting offer, though I would have to admit that taking this off can be a bit.. difficult.  If you could show me where such people are, maybe we could go over the related details, possibly come to a decent enough agreement?”  “Alright then, sure.  You can’t read the sign from here, but you should be able to see the sign with a brown half-opened book on it?  Go there and say you were recommended to show up and show off a new innovation, then let them know that I’ll be back in another three moments or so.  Thanks.”  The strange guy continued on his way almost as unexpectedly as he had arrived before Axln, clearly trying to get something done in a tight window.  Lyun managed to notice the human had then headed for the small Foundry outlet of the mall while Axln tried to find the place that had been mentioned in discussion.  Unfortunately, even with her own human eyes, she could not determine which sign had such a simple icon.

“You can’t find it?  Isn’t that it over there?  I mean, I know you’re a human, but I don’t think this should be that hard.  Actually, having been given a bit of time with human sight, I’m pretty sure it should still be visible from here.  That guy had no problem seeing it either.”  “It might be fine for most people, but my eyes never were the best, and that seems to be true here too.  I’m actually a bit nearsighted, I really miss my glasses right now.”  “Oh, so the stuff you had over your eyes in your world.. wasn’t it just to look pretty?”  “No, they were prescription.  I wear them so that they can sharpen my sight a bit more, to make up for my natural vision problems.  I tried to get treatment too, but it seems no one wants to provide such special services for conduits.”  Lyun was surprised, unaware that even her human side’s vision was better than Axln’s.  Vision correction had never been a big deal in her society, they didn’t have anything like glasses specifically.  Setting aside the problem for future consideration, Lyun guided Axln to the place that was specified earlier, a place that oddly looked to be little more than a bookshop.  Books weren’t even common in modern society, people having far more taken to using instrument recordings in place of actual books, the place then looked like a really old antique store.  The books however weren’t normal either, having visibly been coated and treated to have records that could stand the test of time.

“Hello, may I help you?”  “Oh, sorry.  Had a recommendation to stop by here from someone who said they would also be back in another three moments or so.  Was supposed to present our latest innovation here, this.”  “A gauntlet?  How might that be novel?  Wait, how do you even take that off, it looks like it’s…”  The elf was surprised, getting the chance to look closely at Axln’s arm.  With elven vision at that distance, it was clear that there was no actual fold for fitting the gauntlet over an arm.. the gauntlet instead looked more like it was the arm.  The elf thus motioned for the others to follow, the group passing into a more private environment in the back.  In the process, Lyun found some familiar signs, letting her identify what affiliation this business had.  This place was a part of the academy, working with them directly.  Of all the places that might have been interested in her work, Lyun had never once considered that the academy might have been one of them.  She wasn’t even certain why the academy might have been so interested, either.

A short discussion later, and the two girls had found themselves with a personal invitation to visit the academy itself.  All too suddenly, the two girls had found things had suddenly reached a positive spin, it was almost enough for them to forget all the hardship they had gone through to just get there.

---

Previous -|- Portal -|- Next

FV – Chapter 11

Equivalent Exchange

The two girls remained hard at work for the entire day, even late into dusk.  It was not until the next night, after a good rest, were the girls in a position to evaluate the fruits of their efforts.

Rosa woke up and tried to stand, discovering her new knees weren’t working at all.  Of course, that’s what she had been told, this sort of stuff doesn’t just work right away, her body has to adjust to it.  Meanwhile, she had been provided with some more temporary measures as she waited.  Slipping on the metallic pants over her normal clothes, she put on the special glove that functioned exactly like a remote control.  In honesty, she felt this was sort of novel too, it was like she held an instrument that controlled her armored legs.  Of course, controlling legs with hands was no easy task, that alone looked to need a bit of getting used to as she stumbled around.  She still had it way better off, Kori walking in to check up on her, having been awake for an hour already.  Her new arm meanwhile was still fully limp at her side, it being meaningless to try and have a remote control glove to make her arm work.  Lacking the arm, she had even taken to Rosa’s example of using audio mode with the nanites, just to free up her only remaining hand.  Considering that hand was also her frozen one, she really didn’t want to be forced to over depend on it.

“System check, how is our cybernetics doing.”  “Cybernetic installation not having any adverse reactions.  There remains high probabilities of success in this project.”  “Perfect.  Please continue monitoring our status.  Have there been any important updates regarding our frozen problem?”  “Isolation of absolute zero conditions has been successful.  However, on that subject, there has been research accomplished regarding the singularity incident from before.”  “Wait, I didn’t ask for such a thing.”  “As the singularity had been determined to be a potential danger, and similar items had been raised frequently in concern, it was judged that the subject was to be considered with high importance.  Readings accomplished during the time of the singularity yielded no results, which would itself be irregular as all things have results.  To have no readings would require an environment that could not echo a reply.  The closest known similarity to such an event would then include events such as black holes and dark matter.  As dark matter is still considered an unproven oddity, black holes may be considered a more accurate comparison.”  “Black holes, dark matter…  Oh my, could it be any more perfect.  Thank you, your input is in fact highly appreciated.”  Kori was actually surprised to have missed an idea her nanites had not.  Earth’s fairy tales did not just cover fantasies of earth, but also some fictions of space.  For example, the belief that worlds might exist on the other side of black holes, that dark matter was simply detecting planets that were beyond the scope of the universe.  Actually, this was convincing enough to believe that black holes might actually be the tears failing between worlds.  Scientifically sound logic that then claimed, if the veil failed here, Aestus would be consumed in a black hole.

Such however did remind Kori, there were a number of preventative measures she needed to take on that same idea.  She needed to figure out how to stabilize the singularity on this side.  They needed both sides to stay stable, but someone else would have to figure out the side she was still working on trying to understand.  She also needed to figure out how to predict the whole world-switching thing.  They had just witnessed a singularity reaction occurring violently via a measure of impact.  What she had heard about it from the other world, the worry was simply a matter of touch, but it might be more a matter of pressure, tension and strain.  Neuton had a law about it, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Smack the veil, the veil smacks you back in kind.  However, it isn’t like she’s taken all pressure away from her arm, and that crash would have included an impact that made a simple slap look like a gentle touch.  She was still missing something.  Maybe it was a matter of the time or the place?  While lost in thought, she was thus surprised when a holo showed up before her, revealing an important news bulletin.

“The fire that broke out in the delta seven sector has finally been brought under control after an aerospace bus crashed down earlier midday, although the crash site is still under lockdown by aerospace control for further investigation.  Concerns rise as investigations have yielded no information about the incident.  While a lack of witnesses during such a blazing inferno have been considered understandable, investigators have also found evidence of tampering in all surveillance equipment in the area.  The cause of the crash is still not understood, but such circumstances are leading investigators to assume an intent of sabotage and arsen.  A reward is available for anyone who can thus provide any details to further the ongoing investigation.  In other news…”  The human woman vanished as the recording was stopped abruptly.  Rosa was about as stunned as Kori, having wandered over in curiosity early into the broadcast.  It was pretty obvious what the nanites had opted to show them there, the accident they had survived had gone public.  Sabotage and arsen, that would mean that the singularity they had detected was being considered as a malicious attack.  Rosa herself had gone sheet white, stacking this upon the list of her failures.

“Hells, why am I such trash?  I keep getting in trouble for stuff I didn’t want to do, I honestly didn’t want any of this to happen.”  “Wait, equipment tampering?  Shit, the nanites took your instructions about avoiding getting noticed to a whole different level.  Sure, they did hide us under a holo that cloaked our passage, but it seems they also scrambled any other nanites in the area.  There really is no evidence left, but now it’s more than a little suspicious.”  “By the divine, why does this keep happening to me?  Now I’ve started a big investigation on both worlds.”  “Wait, what?  What happened in the other world?”  Rosa explained the story of her trip to the Obsidian Halls to Kori, covering specifically how it had appeared she wasn’t actually allowed to be there, and that now she was being blamed for the theft of a relic that had actually been what had marked her in this mess in the first place.  She didn’t want any of this to happen though, it was all an accident caused by her marking, she was only breaking the law because her mark was forcing her to.

Laws broken by the mark.. the mark was itself a lawbreaker of the laws of reality.  Even that was a sort of misunderstanding, the mark didn’t break laws, it was the border between laws, the edge of both sets of laws.  The mark wasn’t exactly breaking either set of laws, it just had to balance both, to consider both sides of that one coin.  That made everything very complicated, both sides were very different, completely different.  The laws of science to the laws of elementals, there just was no common ground.  Well, unless one could count that each was the fiction of the other.. and that both had the same language and both had humans and both…  Wait, were they really so different?  Rosa had just finished actually taking her mechanical genius and succeeded in working with her own nanites to make actual cybernetic parts based upon a set of laws she still didn’t understand.  Meanwhile, Kori had gotten a quick review of elementals, practical applications only though, but she herself loved theories.  Elements, not the same as the periodic table, but still the composition that makes everything around them.  Balance them all, you bring life, like environmental controls that would support biological necessities.  Take them all away, you leave the void, like how space or a vacuum works. .. like how a black hole works, or like how atomically stopping energy results in absolute zero.  Everything had an equivalent opposite, a parallel version.  The mark then considers both sides of the coin at once, and any action would then have both an equal and opposite reaction.

Was that what she was doing wrong, only looking at the situation from one side?  Sure, matters of such Newtonian processes seem valid, the laws of equivalent exchange seem to be a serious part of the mark with consideration of how much was mapped out in the process.  It would be why she was basically herself but as a human that would have existed in that reality while on the other side, just like how Rosa was also currently a human under the same terms.  It was a very foundational law on this side, but she needed to consider the foundation of laws there.  The most important thing she knew of was the intervals of elements, how they conflicted or compounded, it came up a lot while she was watching the elemental demonstrations.  She simply didn’t have enough information to go by to figure out anything more.

“Ah!”  “What’s wrong?”  “Sorry, I just stumbled there.  It’s rough controlling my legs with my hand, I wish it was as easy as instruments back home.”  “Don’t worry, when your cybernetics finally work, you’ll be controlling them with actual nerve signals that come from your mind, the same way your legs normally work.. at least in our world.”  “So like, with the gift?  Just impress my will and intent for my legs to do what I want them to do, and I’ll move the way I would want.  That really would make things much easier.”  “Ha, you make it sound like wishing upon a star, when it really is a lot more scientific than that.  It makes for a big differ-…”  Rosa was visibly worried when Kori cut herself off mid-sentence.  Of course, cause and effect was valid for considerations on either side, but she wasn’t putting enough value on potential causes that could cause reactions on the other side, wishes were actually potent things over there, holding strong to a single intent could actually be enough to have things simply happen.  Such had been true a couple of times already in weird ways, even while at Aestus.  She had managed to escape a landslide under the falls without sufficient observable causes.. except for wishing the rocks would simply stop moving.  Rosa had managed to lash out at an attacker with overpowering force, very potentially fueled by matters of hatred and spite.  Gift laws did not allow a person to have every wish granted, instead a person was good at a handful of wishes and could will such into simply happening at any time.  It might not completely make sense according to the laws of either side, but was simply a compromise of the mark itself connecting both sets of laws.

“So.. be careful what you wish for…”  “Huh, what?”  “Oh, sorry.  I was just considering the kinds of impacts we’ve seen happen from possibly just thinking about it happening, like getting caught wishing on a falling star.”  “A what?”  “Sorry, local legend.. possibly caused because of your side actually.  I think our connection to the veil is giving us a way to have some of our wishes granted, sort of like how your gift thing works.”  “Oh, so could we just wish to go back to my world then?”  “Technically, didn’t you just do that?”  “Good point, nothing happened though.”  “The gift has restrictions on who could do something.. were either of us simply wishing to switch worlds then?”  “Oh.. actually, honestly.. I may have been wishing for an escape back in the crowds of that terminal.  However, I was certainly comfortable at Sophie’s place, really don’t think there were such wishes going on back then.  When was.. before that again?  Right, that would have been when we were caught in the halls and I was wishing for a way to escape.”  Kori was seeing there might be a few holes in her idea, but Rosa was making it clear she was getting a lot closer.  Back at Sophie’s place then, that was still unexplained.  However, it was nice to hear Rosa had been comfortable, Kori did recall herself being especially stressed about how well Rosa was adjusting.  Actually, right, she had personally thus wanted to bring Rosa back to the other world as a result of that.  Kori had however spent a lot of time wanting to return to her world, with no effect.. just as Rosa had probably wished for a ticket back home several times too.  Wishes to leave however were far more rare.

As a matter of experiment, she considered the validity of their circumstances.  Being at her own office was at least a rationally safe location to experiment with, she had done so countlessly in the past as is.  There wasn’t even anything specific going on either, they were mostly just sitting around at this point, reasonably bored.  In consideration of such, Kori considered that it might be really nice if they could instead simply move everything back to the other side, maybe so that she could learn a bit more about elemental law.  The reaction was immediate, with the room going pale frozen once again, shifting to pure emptiness and then to the ashen pale.  They meanwhile appeared in a very different room, but discovered an immediate problem.  As normal, their possessions had shifted from what they were carrying on Aestus to what they had most recently been carrying on Ruixse.  It appeared that in that light, cybernetics counted as possessions and were not reversible, while the injuries that they sustained were replicated successfully.

Lyun collapsed to the floor instantly in surprise, her legs giving way.  Of course, the cybernetic installation had replaced her knees, she no longer had anything there at all.  With everything else gone, Lyun was left with an aggravated open wound, her bones popping out slightly from the gap left present, blood pooling on the floor as a result.  Axln was in a similar state, her missing arm a fountain of blood as her sleevelet fell to the floor, the lump of flesh twitching by what remained of her muscle tissue.  It was a return to a familiar agony, one neither of them were prepared for.  Axln felt like an idiot, not having considered this potential problem.  Lyun however had not lost all hope, grasping to the fortune of their location, her own personal workshop, they had a large stock of useful supplies as a result.  The only problem with that was how little she herself could do while unable to actually stand, and it was in this moment that she regretted having always turned down Yhzia’s insistence of supplying this place with chairs.

“Axln, there is a healing kit in the cabinet around the corner to your right.”  “Found it.  Wait, so you know where we are then?  This looks like a small manufactory.. fitting for a one person shop.  This is your’s, isn’t it?  An elemental mechanic laboratory.”  “It…  Hey, where are.. are you going?”  “Right, one thing at a time, sorry.”  “Don’t forget.. about yourself either.  Oh drat, this is.. a bit too much.. for me.  Focusing is.. is going.. to be hard, even for an.. elf like me.  I won’t have the stamina.. either.”  Lyun was already trying to drag herself around, though she was having some serious problems trying to even hold herself up by the time Axln returned.  Axln herself wasn’t fairing the best either, she was mostly working on adrenaline.  Axln looked at the small cylinder she was carrying, one of many identicals she found in the same cabinet.  Her first impression was that it was some kind of spray, but it seems she was wrong.  There was a list of things she had suddenly been wrong about, including her random idea, this whole situation was suddenly her fault, she should have thought about everything a lot more before taking action like that.  Now she had a lot to make amends for.  She passed the cylinder to Lyun, who applied the circular end to the side of her legs as close to where the knees should have been as possible, generally almost dozing off in the process.

Axln emulated the same actions with her shoulder using another cylinder, though nothing happened.  Of course, this was an instrument, it didn’t just work so easily.  Elements worked as a fuel source, it was generally self contained, but it needed a trigger.  Impressing her adrenaline-filled will upon the cylinder, she felt a slight tingle from her shoulder.  The thing was working at least, but they would still have problems.  Equivalent exchange, if their arms simply healed over by this process, that instead would interfere with the cybernetics they had installed previously, leading to even more problems on their next return.  This solution wasn’t even filling in the blanks of their biology, it was hardly more than a first aid kit.  The only practical solution at this point was emulation, to match what was done with cybernetics here as well.  Axln’s theoretical mind even figured out that while a wild principle, it was also a proven one.  Lyun had in fact already done the reverse, using her mechanical knowledge to come up with cybernetic parts matching the laws of Aestus.  Reverse engineering that logic could then match the results.

Axln went over to the stock of finished parts and opened the first package she found, containing the mechanical actuator.  This was actually perfect, even if the crystalline material remained unfamiliar to her.  From what she had learned, a lot of crystalline stuff was fairly conductive of raw elements, yet was refined very well so as to be especially durable, she could simply consider it a premium alloy of steel for all equivalence.  Cybernetics used a steel skeleton, with conduits that could intercept and control the parts, the crystalline combination could work fair enough because it could act as an instrument, directly interpreting a person’s will to emulate such a process.  Part efficiency was still important, considering things such as bulk and weight, as that could affect performance.  She had no idea how to replace the role holos played in the entire process, but having a working solution would be the first step, she could always make it look prettier later.  The solution already needed to be maintainable, so that parts could be easily repaired or replaced.  The most complicated part, as it always was in cybernetics, remained installation.  Having such crystalline composites synergize with a person’s body, tuning a person’s biology to a whole different sequence, that would take some complicated.. healing?

A plan started to come together in Lyun’s mind, even if the whole thing was little more than a theory based upon scientific principles that didn’t even apply to science.  She was an expert in information, she already spent a ton of time teaching tiny robots how to do something she couldn’t hope to personally understand completely.  Attaching the actuator to a couple other suitable looking tensile bars, she started weaving together a crystalline arm.  The hand was a bit harder to come up with, but she found a series of complex pieces that hinged together actually very well which emulated the principle very nicely.  Durability casing layers with shielding against outside influence, a series of connectors to enhance movement precision and smoothness, and especially the calibrator ring that would act as the central unit’s main controller by attaching directly to her.  Nothing simply came together on its own though, this is where she would have to get especially creative.

Returning to the cabinet, she pulled out a new cylinder.  She pressed the calibrator ring directly to her shoulder where her arm should have been, then braced that location using the wall, putting immense pressure and pain on her in the process.  With that completed, she applied the new cylinder to her shoulder.  To trigger a reaction though, she impressed her will in a much more complicated way than just asking for the thing to work.  She had grown used to working with things that use scripted actions, with her approach being very unconventional and complicated.  Teaching nanites wasn’t easy, and it was that same approach that she applied with her will to teach her implementation of her expectations.  Rewriting the design of the instrument’s application with a new impression of the gift, the healing instrument began healing her by fusing herself with the calibrator ring.  Excellent, so now this ring was now effectively a part of her arm, healed successfully.  In accounts for that, there are other parts that need to be ‘healed’ onto that, so that her arm could be fully ‘restored’.

Lyun finally started to sit up again, feeling a touch of relief with the bleeding finally stopped.  Of course, she still had a walking problem.  She heard that Axln was occupying herself in the space around the corner, not actually putting much thought into how that might deserve more thought.  With Axln not being a problem, Lyun directed her consideration to her mobility.  She didn’t have the stamina to do much, but she wasn’t about to simply lay there doing nothing.  Accepting the limitations of her arrangements to provide herself with decent seating, she found an adhesive cable nearby along with a windstream lift.  Turning the lift up high, she launched the cable to the roof, then moved the cable below her like it was a swing and repeated the same thing with the other side.  Much better, she was now actually sitting at her desk, even if this was a bit precarious.  Clearly this was an idea to work on later, maybe making a decent thing to ride around on like the fancy legs she had in the other world could be rather useful.  She was pretty sure even Yhzia would be thrilled to see that, like a real world shock walker.  Certainly though, she still wouldn’t need to use lightning, such was old-fashioned even from modern Terran standards.  Caught in thought, not completely aware of anything else, she adjusted herself in her seat and instead fell back to the floor, drawing in an alarmed Axln.

“What happened?  Wait, were you trying to work in that condition?  Hell, do you even know how to take a break?”  “Ah!  Oh, Axln.. it’s just you.”  “Just you.. nice to see you up too, by the way.  I hope you don’t mind me making use of your own equipment, I think I’ve almost got a working prototype.”  “Wait, what?  What could you possibly be doing.”  “Learning, obviously.  Hey, you were using my office first, fair is only fair.”  “Wait, your arm, by the divine, did you just slap a bunch of random instruments to your arm?”  “Hey, they weren’t random, I was very thorough with my evaluation.  I actually managed to get the elbow piece to respond too, but the hand is being a bit more difficult to manage.  This really is some quality stuff you made, by the way.  Anyway, yeah, prototypes for yourself are almost ready, just making a few more touches on your two units.”  Lyun was shocked when she got to see Axln’s two knee implants when she returned.  They were both very well made, even if Axln was having problems with organic transference in things such as blood.  She had even considered how such a piece would have to sustain the life requirements of the legs at the other side.  Lyun however knew that such a thing actually existed, she just wasn’t much of an expert in the field.  Ersatz construction, they were designed to emulate real people’s regular.. everything.  They even had a blood circulation system.  Working with Ezhyrae, she’s had to do a few repairs on certain parts, so she did have a couple of the things.. in the far back storage.  The only reason she had dabbled into such a thing at all was from Yhzia’s compulsion to reach out into new ways to help more people.

While Axln ran off to further her descent into innovative insanity, Lyun considered just how much Axln was even pushing the same compulsions.. just maybe in an Axln-sort of way.  Finding new applications for Lyun’s creations, that’s basically what Axln had just done.  However, instead of pushing ideas that could be useful, Axln had just made an immediate use for a bunch of the little parts she had come up with.  The biggest question though was.. how?  None of that stuff was even made for the purpose she had given it.  Most of all, none of it was designed to be simply attached to a living person.  While left in fruitless speculation, Axln eventually returned with her finished work and a couple of extra cylinders.  Repeating the same process for Lyun at both the top and bottom of both legs, Axln progressively inserted the various parts directly into Lyun’s leg.  Lyun watched in absolute shock at this installation, taking great care to not move at all in fear of ruining the work.  Axln was using a healing beacon to weld her to instruments.. that didn’t even make sense at all.  A healing beacon was designed to mend flesh together, not to fuse it to non-living material.  Axln had thus effectively done this world’s equivalent of reprogramming the instrument to have it execute a completely different function, but Lyun didn’t even have the words for such a process.  This sort of thing was completely unheard of, never having been done before, changing what an instrument does.. should require it to be completely remade.

Despite all odds, Lyun found herself with legs that could bend properly at her own will, even if she was still having problems actually standing with them.  Even just being a basic prototype, this sort of design was clearly going to serve them very well.

---

Previous -|- Portal -|- Next

FV – Chapter 10

First Contact

Discussions on the elements continued well into dawn, with the new day settling in over the sky outside.  With dawn’s departure, businesses were settling down for a midday rest.

Lyun had actually lost track of the passage of the sun there, having a bit of fun trying to teach Axln as she had been.  Axln had actually been able to tap into her gift there a bit, she had an instrument that was able to detect such, but she didn’t actually resolve any effect there, no matter how much they tried.  Lyun however was starting to suspect that Axln might specifically have an affinity for sand or dust or something, tiny thin stones.  The gift was heavily influenced by how people thought, and Axln’s interest in tiny things like nanites was making it seem pretty fitting.  Her instruments actually detected tiny measures like that earlier, it was a really good theory at least.  However, it was getting late, so maybe they could just worry about such stuff another time.  Technically, getting a spark of the gift triggered was the entire goal anyway, so they were doing rather well in that respect.

Such a thought pattern, though, did remind her that the plan originally was to come up with a plan at this point in where to go next.  They actually didn’t have any set destination after this.  Ezhyrae however couldn’t help them any further, she had her own stuff to attend to, so still with no plan the two girls found themselves back outside once again.  Lyun wasn’t inclined to cause Axln extra stress though, she would figure something out.  As an act to lend confidence, Lyun simply started off in a direction, as if she knew where to go next.  Before she could come to a decision, she found them arriving at a major transit terminal, possibly the last place she might have actually wanted to go.  So late in the morning, the place was packed with people trying to go home.  However, rather than just back down now, she continued into the terminal.  The crowds started to gather around them in high density, Axln doing her best to follow the taller Lyun.  Lyun however was rapidly getting uncomfortable, making it even harder to think.  They could take transit.. where?  Was there anywhere that wasn’t so annoying?  At this rate, even the other world was feeling way more comfortable than this.

In the middle of a vast open crowd, hidden under the protective fibres, both ashen hands sparked awake once more.  The crowd around them were caught suspended in a state of mild surprise, everything petrified by white ashen all over again, proceeding to then thaw as white ice.  The crowd of this holo-filled terminal were as surprised as they were at the sudden white mist of their appearance.  Kori knew right away what had happened, and also knew they had to not make a scene about it.  Grabbing Rosa, the two of them vanished around the corner and then blended in the crowd, people still uncertain what had even happened.  Kori however noticed that they were heading towards the loading bay.  There wouldn’t be a choice, to make sure this whole thing didn’t cause problems, Kori would have to pick a destination.  The most plausible destination might be the most familiar, she could just head towards her home.  After their long dawn, the two of them were sleepy, even despite this then being early for everyone else.  At least, at her place, they could get a reasonable nap without much to actually worry about.

The biggest worry she had at that point was with regards to how inconvenient it really was to just swap worlds like that at almost absolute random.  That really had not been a good time to switch over, both for where they had left and where they had arrived.  If nothing else, they needed to figure out how that whole process seriously worked, so that they could actually avoid messy problems.  As it stood, while they had avoided abnormal messes like being questioned for appearing out of nothingness, they had been thrown into the worst of her normal messes.  There happened to be a high number of humans going towards the same loading bay as she was, and none of them appeared especially happy to be stuck with a conduit like her.  She was at least thankful that this was not rush hour, that would have made everything much worse.

Rosa was quick to notice the problem too, not having been ignorant to the issue.  She had even taken an opportunity earlier with Sophie to quickly discuss the hatred of Conduits while picking her outfit.  She was also not ignorant of being uncomfortable in a busy transit vehicle.  She followed along Kori, a bunch of the process being handled quickly and easily by holo at a small counter.  Passing through the gates behind the counter, she found them entering yet another one of those holo elevators, which for some reason had taken them upwards.  She quickly discovered the reason for such was the path that ended at the docking bay of an aerospace bus.  Flying, of course the city of towers kept thinking vertically.  Sure, her world still had a few things in the air too, but underground was considered much more functional.. like the Obsidian Hall.  Divesting from that line of thought, she returned to the present as they boarded the bus, Rosa applying her experience to bring them to an isolated back right seat and letting little Kori have the window seat.  Yhzia had always done this for her in the past too.  Once everyone else was also aboard, the bus finally took off.

The two otherworld travellers just sat in their seats quietly, not wanting to draw any attention.  Kori spent the trip staring out the window, her hair trying to drape over her cortex too.  Rosa just tried to generally stare at nothing in particular, putting considerable care in not making any eye contact with anyone.  Eventually though, people just couldn’t ignore the elephant in the room.  One of the human women present made her way to the back, clearly looking irritated.  Rosa didn’t like her already.  “Yes, can I help you?”  “I’m sorry, but there is a no-pet rule here, if you missed the signs.  If you must bring your pet with you, at least get her off the seats, she’ll get them all dirty.”  “I’m sorry, pet?”  “That animal you have sitting beside you, idiot.  Hell, you talk like a dimented weasel, you must be an idiot.”  “No, that’s just a problem with your ears.  I mean, either something crawled up through them, or those creases on your face are the ugliest things I’ve ever seen.  My word, could you even get any uglier.”  “Oh you bitch.”  Rosa found herself dragged to her feet and pinned against the back wall by the annoying human.  The woman went in for a blooding punch to the nose, Rosa just tilting her head to the side in the process to leave a fist connecting with the solid holo window.  As Rosa was dropped in the woman’s resulting agony, knuckles going red, she just sat down again as if nothing had even happened, turning simply to look out the window along with Kori.  The woman in a fury went to simply slap Rosa instead, Rosa easily lifting an arm to intercept the motion.

As the woman’s hand made contact with Rosa’s frozen arm, a subtle glint reflected from within.  The woman herself screamed with intense pain, her hand going white with frostburn.  The flesh itself started to decay off of her body as clumps simply froze in growing layers, splitting more and more fractions of the flesh until the bone of her hand itself was exposed and the white had gone past her elbow.  Frozen red flakes fluttered towards the floor as they too turned white.  The frostburn continued to the top of the woman’s arm, an icicle of blood wedging into her shoulder to tear the ligaments of her shoulder wide open, her frozen arm falling to the floor.  The frost still continued to ever slowly spread through the woman, reaching her neck eventually and snapping it clean off, silencing her.  Even despite her death, the frost continued, slicing and spilling skin, flesh, and blood as the cold bones were left bare, her heart and then lungs falling forward to shatter upon the floor.  The entire skeleton fell over at that point, itself also shattering into shards that themselves faded into mist, the corpse disappearing.  However, that was not the end of it, the frost getting into the floor of their transport in the process, painting the very floor beneath them with a growing white as well.

“Alert, an unfamiliar singularity has been detected erupting from within the vessel.”  “Good day everyone, this is Aerospace Command.  A problem has been detected within your vessel, so we’re going to have your pilot make an emergency landing in order to investigate.  We implore everyone to please remain calm.”  Two different voices were broadcasted over the vessel, the second at least seeming to be a person.  Unfortunately though, calm was the last thing on everyone’s agenda, panic had overtaken everyone.  Panic was not the only thing to quickly rush to overtake everyone, the actual thermal engine having failed due to serious engine freezing, setting everything sharply off balance.  Rather than a smooth landing, the entire thing suddenly abruptly cratered into the streets below.  The front end of the vessel crumpled on impact, crushing to death anyone who was not in the back.  There were only two people in the back for that flight.

The dramatic impact may not have killed them, but it was not as if Kori and Rosa were unharmed, not anything close.  The impact had thrown Kori forward, her left arm being absolutely crushed by the vessel on impact, her glasses going missing at the same time.  Having taken the aisle seat, Rosa was even less fortunate, her knees having both dislocated and shattered when she fell forward.  With the frost gone, the entire thing heated back up into an uncontrolled inferno, threatening to burn them alive.  Rosa in her situation could not stand, but Kori was absolutely pinned into the crumpled part of the vessel before her.  Kori made a few quick motions before coming to a dreadful realization, there would be no way she could simply pry open this trap over her arm, the material was far too powerful of an alloy for that sort of thing.  Even having enough power, there was nothing which could achieve the same process without tearing her own delicate arm apart too.  If she was trapped by her arm, she wouldn’t make it.  Passing a signal to her nanites, she braced for the immeasurable pain.  Forming a quick holo pattern along her arm, the nanites wove the holo straight through it, then turned up the kinetic force.  Her arm then tore off in that moment, blood pooling across the floor as bits of flesh collapsed from the open wound, the bone itself showing cleanly in the air.  Kori could not endure the magnitude of the pain, and fainted.

Rosa was in shock as she caught on a bit late as to what was even going on.  Left with no other recourse but to drag herself by her arms, she pulled herself towards Kori.  She still had no idea what she could possibly do in this situation, she was effectively helpless and alone.  However, in that moment a small holo prompt appeared before her, a message on screen with some obvious buttons labeled in a language she couldn’t read.  By the divine, that didn’t help her at all.  She collapsed forwards in frustration, weak from the heat, pain, blood loss, exertion, tiredness…  This whole thing was just too much for her.

“Audio response system activated.  Rosa, you appear to be in danger along with Kori.  You have been authorized instructional privilege to deal with this emergency.  What are your commands?”  “Huh?  What?  Oh!  Yes, yes, thank you!  Kori’s arm is seriously injured and needs whatever you’ve got for healing, at least proper bandages to stop the bleeding and all that.  I’m sorry, I don’t actually know how to deal with our health problems.”  “Updating conduit and human medical references.  Diagnosing appropriate first aid techniques for addressing open wounds.  Rosa appears to be also injured, detecting broken legs.”  “Yes, I can’t stand up, and this fire is endangering us.  The both of us need to be carried to safety.”  “Activating two mobile rescue lifts, administering pain relief medication.  Please specify a destination for the two wounded.”  “Is there anywhere nearby that Kori would frequently visit, a place that would be safe?  Hopefully a place where we can find more stuff to help us.”  “Kori’s office is nearby and fits most of those parameters.  Would that be acceptable?”  “Yes, yes, thank you.  Oh, and one more thing, we’re going to be in trouble if we’re noticed, please make sure to avoid us being noticed by people.”  “Of course.  Please be sure to relax, you will be transported with extreme care.”  The nanites had come to Rosa’s rescue, letting her speak with them directly.  Kori however was unconscious, none of this was her doing.  The nanites had actually made their own decision that they would have to depend on Rosa to deal with this situation on Kori’s behalf.  They had even learned that she could not read instructions, so had instead switched to verbal communication instead.  After all, Kori had trained them very well to adjust to circumstances, to be adaptive to anything that might happen.  Rosa let herself relax, but tried to at least remain awake in case she was needed further.  Eventually, they passed through a door that opened for them, the lights turning on dimly.  The two of them were set down in a soft break room on a couple of lounge chairs, safe at last.  With that, Rosa decided that getting a quick nap might do her some good at that point.

Rosa woke up later to complete darkness, the lights turning on slowly and dimly as she awoke.  She found Kori nearby, still unconscious but bandaged very well.  She herself was also bandaged, though she still could not walk.  Some problems might not actually be possible to heal at this point either, Kori might always be without her arm, and Rosa might never be able to walk again.  They were, however, still alive.  With Kori still out of commission, she turned to her only other available advisor.

“Are you still there?”  “Hello Rosa, did you sleep well?  Your medical state appears to be stabilized, but you are still receiving pain relief medication in order to address existing pains.”  “Thank you.  There is much I don’t understand about a lot of things, so I hope you could help me figure things out.  Do you think there would be a way we could restore Kori’s arm completely as it used to be?  Do you think there might be a way I could walk again?”  “Organic restoration would not be possible, but synthetic solutions could achieve most of that goal.  If a cybernetic arm is produced for Kori, it could be installed in place of her existing arm and provide much of the same functionality.  Running a holo over such could even restore the visual appearance and shape of the original version.  Applying cybernetic brackets to your legs could also restore your mobility, allowing your legs to bend properly once again.”  “Ah, so like.. a mechanical actuator.  And you’re thinking we can actually attach it to a person, to me?  My, I like the way you think.  Do we have any equipment on hand that could complete this sort of thing?”  “Your twin sister’s office was dedicated to engineering projects such as OSIDF construction.  Most of the components required for cybernetics are reasonably similar in nature, especially if an OSIDF needs to be installed.  If you wish for a holo for each cybernetic part, an OSIDF will be required.”  Rosa was surprised to hear such news from the nanites, that her locally established twin did such neat stuff around here.  With a bit of coordination and nanite teamwork, she had herself brought over to Fiona’s office, beginning her research right away.  She would have to depend on the nanites to know how any of this stuff was made, but she at least had a vision of the sort of product they could simply work towards.  She had spent much of her life pursuing novel inventions like this, ones no one had ever found a use for.  She could think of two people who could right away love the fruits of her efforts, one even being herself.

Several hours later, Kori woke up as well, still uncertain as to what the situation was.  Promptly, the lights slowly turned on while a holo appeared in front of her.  It initially gave a comprehensive accident report of the original scene, mostly disclosing the state of the two injured.  It dawned on her that such an incident could not explain what might have happened since.  The screen went blank for a moment, as if the nanites were questioning how long they could hide the fact.  Eventually, she was provided with a history log of overall tasks established during the rescue.  Her nanites had opened to Rosa?  Wait, where was Rosa anyway?  The accident report said her legs were completely broken, she couldn’t have just walked away.  Did something else happen to her?  What?  Rosa had taken authority over the recovery process and was currently invested in the final phases of developing a recovery project.  Wait, what was a recovery project?  Kori was then provided with the schematics for a couple of cybernetics that were currently in manufacturing and printing.  Kori ran to Fiona’s room, finding Rosa sitting in Fiona’s chair, staring at some visual holos in deep consideration.  Kori froze, this being exactly like a scene she had frequently walked into in the past.  It wasn’t exactly the same though, not even Fiona had ever attempted cybernetics before.

“What are you doing in here?”  “What?  I’m not allowed to solve problems in your world, I’m only allowed to make them?”  “This is Fiona’s room.”  “I heard, and I’m sorry for borrowing it.  I’m sorry for borrowing your friends too, even though they offered first.  Everything is a giant mess suddenly, and somehow I’m the one responsible for all of it.  Stupid ashen arm.. well, I guess this one is frozen.  Did you see what it did to that girl?  It.. I.. tore her apart, piece by agonizing piece.  Then I caused us to crash, killing everyone else, costing you your last remaining real arm…  Ezhyrae wasn’t joking, this arm is cursed.  I would just cut it off if I wasn’t afraid that might then cause even worse problems.”  Kori could tell Rosa was very upset, the tears being a big give away.  Rosa was then blaming herself for everything, but.. hadn’t she just stood up for Kori when Kori wasn’t even willing to stand up for herself?  Kori could even recall planning to insulate their frozen arms in much the same way as they had the ashen variants.. but had instead delayed due to being flustered.  Not all of this was Rosa’s fault.. but she was in fact the only one actively doing something about it.

“I’m not blaming you for anything, but you better let me help out.  Cybernetic installation is going to be a pretty intensive process.  Actually, while you get that worked on, I’m going to request an express delivery.  Our clothes are a mess of rips and burns, going to need those either repaired or replaced, and my glasses need to be replaced now too.  Meanwhile, we’re going to need to have some quality insulated gloves sent to us, something that can work with arms this cold.  I’ll probably have a custom print made of gloves that look exactly like the long ones we were already given for this problem.  Hopefully they show up in a couple of hours.”  Kori ran off to handle her side of the tasks, still not used to working with her left arm.  Rosa smiled softly at Kori’s departure, appreciative of all the friendly support.  The two of them still made for quite an awkward team, but they were at least getting used to working with each other.

The two of them worked diligently at their own self assigned tasks, determined to reach towards success.  However, nothing about this task was simple, it wasn’t about to be accomplished so easily.

---

Previous -|- Portal -|- Next

FV – Chapter 9

Dawning Eras

After a reasonably short trip, the two arrived at their transit destination.  The seventeenth stop along the line, there was little to distinguish this one from any other, but not all stops on a journey were ever so obvious.

Axln was suddenly surprised by Lyun getting up without warning, though in all accounts this was still generally how public transit worked, there was always a stop that was your’s.  Having been silent the entire trip, it was not as if Axln would have known in advance where they were going, she actually still had no idea what Lyun’s plan was.  They were going to go visit someone, that was about everything Axln knew at this point.  She really didn’t like not knowing the plan, but she couldn’t tell how much Lyun had worked out in this plan of her’s, and it wasn’t as if Axln had enough information to contribute anything yet either.  Following along, Axln was right behind her as they left the vehicle the same way they had arrived.  From there it was a quick walk to another building, Axln noticing that a vast scrawl was almost burned into the surface of several.. signs.  That’s what this was, it was clearly words trying to stand out and promote where they were going, so the place was obviously some kind of business.  The place seemed rather small for a business, sort of in a low density district too.  Lyun however walked right inside, pausing only to make sure Axln was still behind her.

“Good day Lyun, welcome once again.  How can I help you today?”  “Hello doctor.  It’s sort of a long tale, but I was hoping you might spend a moment to take a look at our arms, and.. maybe help us work a few things out.”  “Lyun…  You know I only work with Ersatz, not actual people.  Human elemental composition is far too complicated for someone in my field, far too.. alive.”  “That’s why you’re perfect, look at this.”  “Oh my, what happened to you?”  “Like I said, it’s quite the story.”  The elven doctor inspected Lyun’s right arm with absolute surprise, starting to catch on that there really might be quite a lot more to this situation than first apparent.  She guided Lyun and Axln into her office and brought them to a secluded room to go over the details.  While Lyun repeated the usual story of their strife, Axln looked around at her surroundings patiently.  She could see how this would be the office of a woman of science, the place was scattered with several unknown devices everywhere.  Axln didn’t even know what an Ersatz was, but it was sounding like this doctor was being compared to some kind of medical science.  Notably though, Lyun seemed to believe this to be someone helpful with the state of their marked arms.  Actually, that might be a marvellous place to begin, getting more insight into her frozen arm might be really helpful right now.  She turned down to her frozen arm, realizing that in all consideration.. it didn’t quite seem what she would call frozen right now.  It was still pure white, that wasn’t changed, but it was almost more a white glass or stone than actually frosted.  She still didn’t want to touch it, such an arm having been rather intimidating for her ever since she was so marked, but it was perplexing that there were slight changes.  While thus distracted, she didn’t notice herself being approached by someone new.

“Good day ma’am, sorry to interrupt you.  The doctor would like you to lie down over here so that we can run a few checks.”  “Oh, uh, sure, fine.”  The woman appeared to be some kind of assistant or something, though there was something subtly unusual about such a woman to Axln.  When she spoke, it was as if there wasn’t even a trace of emotion in her voice, something about the woman seeming to be highly artificial.  Dismissing such inconsiderate ideas, Axln turned to the open air the woman was indicating her towards.  Instinctually, she started to form a sliver of complaints about the irrational request, was she to lie upon the floor?  Instead, she looked around and found some strange devices placed upon the ground, the things appearing to be venting air.  She turned around to find Lyun, seeing her a short distance away resting over such a similar device, floating in the air.  A person’s body density is supposed to be too high for it to be capable of resting on pure air, gasses are lighter than solids.  This was blatantly standing in defiance of a few very significant laws of science.  Intrigued, Axln tested her knowledge of science against this scenario, resting carefully against the cushion of air, and finding herself floating softly a distance above, the gentle wind feeling comfortable on her back.  It was at that moment where she resolved that the idea that her known laws of reality may no longer apply.. that might be a bit more than just a theory now.  Everything else might have had an answer, but you can’t question matter density, this was about as simple as you could get.

“Alright, I’ll look into things here, you go help things with our other patient.  So, Axln, it seems like you’ve been through quite a lot coming here.”  “Hello.. doctor.”  “If it’s more comfortable, feel free to call me Ezhyrae.  … or is that too much for you?  Lyun wasn’t joking, you do have quite the accent to your speech going on.  Either way, let me look into that arm of your’s with a couple of instruments, I’ve got a few tests I would like to run.  I apologize in advance, I’m not used to working on patients like you, humans and elves both actually.  My typical patients tend to be of those who themselves aren’t quite so.. alive, like my assistant over there.”  Ezhyrae carefully tried to set a strange.. instrument.. upon Axln’s arm as Axln put things together in her mind.  Not alive, so.. they were artificial?  That floated somewhere between fantasy ideas sorted between golem, homunculi, and possibly even the undead.. while also feeling like some kind of android.  After all, the first three didn’t look anything close to so authentic in any renderings she had been aware of, but concepts such as androids.. especially with the lack of emotions, actually.. that was feeling a lot more accurate.  Having devoted herself to artificial life, her nanites, it was an idea that quite had her intrigued.

“My, now this is interesting.  Absolutely zero.. your arm is completely devoid of all elements, absolutely void.”  “Absolute zero, huh?  So, not frozen?”  “Of course not, there aren’t even traces of frost elements in your arm, it’s like there is nothing there at all.”  “Elements, so that’s a normal thing?”  “Of course, everything is formed by elements.  Light and dark, sky and stone, fire and frost, water and wood.  When all is in balance, there is life, and when none is left, it is void.  That’s the base principle of the elements.”  Now this.. this lesson of Ezhyrae.. this sounded to Axln like a kind of science.  Certainly, it wasn’t her science, this was a different science, a different set of laws.  In her own reality, her nanites had established her arm as being a very different version of absolute zero, a state in which all atomic energy was gone.  Very similar then was to hear that this is what it would look like if all elements were stripped from it.  Both explanations felt like a very chemistry styled answer, but distinct to both sets of laws.  The difference in appearance would then be in how this zero-state resolves based upon each set of laws.  Different, and yet similar, both a solid white.

“So doctor, any idea what might have caused this?  Your Ersatz background has you heavily invested into the elements, so surely you have some ideas?”  “Lyun, you make it sound like this is even remotely normal.  In all accounts, with something like this, I can’t even tell how you are alive.  Like I had said, when the elements are in balance, there is life, and when there is none, it is void.  This arm is completely of the void, completely incompatible with life, I have no idea how you both are even still alive.  I worry that, whatever it is, it may be killing you gradually.  … wait, you said that right around when you were marked, you also found the both of you travelling to each other’s worlds, as if the world around you was itself subtly shifting?  There is a legend about that by the way, a very old one, a part of the Terran Mythos.  The legend tells that there was a passage from Celese to Earth through what was known as the Celesi Veil, the fabric of all existence.”  “But, this is Ruixse, we’re not even in the same star cluster as Celese right now.”  “No, we aren’t, but who is to say that the veil is a thing only special to Celese, that it couldn’t reach beyond.  You even said that the other side was not a world called Earth, Ruixse’s veil then finding its way to this other world.”  Lyun was starting to follow Ezhyrae’s line of thought, it did look quite plausible at least.  Lyun then became quite lost in her own thoughts and worries in such considerations.

“It is like you’ve touched the veil, even passed through it directly.  That alone shouldn’t have been possible, the temporal realm of the veil standing beyond anything elemental.  Touching it alone should have unmade you, leaving nothing behind but wisps of fragments that faded soon after.”  “That’s.. that’s what happened to her, didn’t it?  Fiona.. even Isha.. or however you say her name.. drained of everything before fading away into a mist of nothing.”  “That could possibly still happen to you both too, if either of you aren’t careful.  This is some really dangerous stuff, but quite honestly the problem isn’t just involving you both.  When you read about the veil, there are two significant repercussions about it every single time.  First, tampering with the veil has the danger of potentially causing a tear, an act which would cause massive destruction to potentially everything.  It was said that if the Celese Veil was torn, Celese would be unmade.  In that line of thought, such a tear here could unmake all of Ruixse.  Whatever had caused this could then potentially endanger everyone.  On the other hand, there have been two known times where the veil had been impacted, a tear prevented in each case.  The first one was at the dawn of the instrumentation era, the second was the dawn of the elemental era.  I do not think such timing was simply coincidence, each time the veil is influenced, everything changes dramatically.  It does mean that, while this could threaten all of our existence, it could also be the dawn of a new era.”  Ezhyrae was making this whole thing to be quite a big thing, but Axln believed something important was still missing in all of this.  All of this veil stuff was of this reality, not her own.  Actually, was it?

“Your Terran Mythos, earth’s fairy tales, legends between worlds.  The people of earth though are infinitely ignorant, it is entirely possible they may have simply ignored the facts behind the fiction.  Aestus has thus nothing like this veil you speak of, but that might not mean it doesn’t exist, it or something like it.  You say that the veil unmakes people, and I got to personally see Fiona fade away.  This mirror reflects both ways, something that I might really need to look into if I get another turn to be home.  Touching the veil.. I suspect then that the anomaly we found was then of the veil.. or whatever it is like on my side.  Most importantly though.. such a thing vanished, leaving no signs of such a passage remaining.  With our latest passage through such a veil, I suspect that we’ve become such a mark ourselves, our arm having been linked directly.”  “That might be true, and if so, I would highly recommend securing that arm of your’s.  If your arm is linked to the veil, then that creates the possibility of opening the link and letting another contact the veil too.. something which others may not be as protected from as you yourself have been.  You should start considering your arm there as dangerously ashen, to maybe even start using protective gear around it at all times.  There is a store right next door that sells clothing like that, we can even get you something right away.”  Axln took that as a sign that the checkup was over, that Ezhyrae was moving to the prescription phase of this visit.  Certainly though, this was an idea she would have to keep in mind, her frozen arm may actually be just as dangerous as her ashen one.  Lyun was following along too, with even their current nurse joining in as well.  Inside this store, Axln quickly found herself with a thin long protective glove, supposedly some kind of insulator.  Wearing such on both arms however was proving a bit stifling, like her normal arm couldn’t get enough circulation.  Wearing only one glove would look a touch bit unusual, but there really didn’t seem to be any way to win in this case.  She made sure to at least pack away the spare glove, it might have some uses on occasion.  Lyun looked to be of like mind on the subject as well.

“While we’re here, actually, could we pick up some clothes for Axln.  I sort of owe her a favour in that one, and this looks like a great opportunity.”  “Lyun, you and your favours.  I know it was a lot to ask for those rushed components earlier, but this is a bit much too.”  “Relax, I at least have the Qeld to cover the purchases, you’re just here as a friend helping with your opinions in this case.  I mean, you get a lot of practice, considering all the dolls you need to dress up.”  “Fine, whatever.  How tall is she anyway?”  “I don’t know, I’m about 7 and 9 Uyn, she’s .. less.”  “That’s a lot of help.  Assistant, can we get a measurement here?”  Lyun shrugged, letting Ezhyrae get into her expertise.  The Ersatz was right behind Axln, obviously handling the measuring somehow.  “7 and 5 Uyn.”  Ezhyrae’s assistant backed away as Axln found herself dragged into matters of local fashion before she could follow what had happened.

Lyun stepped out of the store, giving the others room to work, just the same as Axln had done for her before.  She was hiding a smile at the trouble she had caused, inspiring Ezhyrae into such motivation.  Yhzia was also 7 and 5 Uyn, it would have been her best guess.  Even so, she was really thankful for all the efforts Ezhyrae had been putting into this.  Clearly, her plan to find help in her world that was similar to what was found in Sophie at the other world was panning out really well.  She pulled out the elemental chart that Ezhyrae had slipped to her earlier, an overview of Axln’s condition.  Interestingly, it was looking like Axln might have an affinity with the stone element.  It wasn’t surprising though, it was almost a family thing apparently.  Yhzia herself also had quite an affinity for stone, specifically in metals, possibly a fuel for her interest in Mythos metals.  Axln’s stone affinity might be more specific to its own specialty too, but Lyun had no way to figure out what that might be.  She herself was more in tune with the frost element, though it wasn’t as if she had applied that very much.  The most she had ever done with such was to try and do a reverse element reaction to empower the flame of her instruments.  Each element had an inverse, the two elements viced against each other in conflict, removing such conflict made it easier to manipulate the other element.  However, she might need to practice something a touch more mundane, and actually impress Axln with the gift itself.

The gift was not something that had been used much anywhere in recent history, elemental instrumentation having fully proven itself superior in all ways.  The gift itself runs from the blood of it’s user, draining the stamina of the user to achieve some sort of trained result.  Each person could train in their own area of expertise, certainly, but instrumentation could do everything.  The principle at least was the founding concept behind how instrumentation works though, an impression of a person’s will to design an intended result.  Originally, this meant that humans could use their superior stamina to longer usage of the gift, and elves could use their improved sense of focus to achieve more detailed results, but even instruments there took the best of both options beyond the capacity of either.  However, instruments weren’t perfect, sometimes certain situations asked for a little bit from a person present, drops of the gift, you could say.  Such was why it would be useful to make sure Axln was aware of what would be her own gift.  Lyun pulled out her cell, the only instrument she actually was carrying at the time, considering it in example and wondering if maybe she should have left Yhzia’s cell with Axln, so at least someone was using it.  While staring at the thing though, she found she had missed a call, one that had probably come in while she was on the table, the cell off so as to not cause any elemental interference.  She quickly rushed so as to return the call.

“Hey, Zxyd, sorry for missing your call.”  “Lyun, there you are.  Sorry I don’t have much time left, I’ve got work to get back to soon.”  “The wardens are riding you dry, seriously.  Okay, so what can I help you with?”  “Trying to dig up some useful information on instruments that might help with one of our investigations, actually.  Do you know of a way to do rift generation in a void?”  “You can’t do rift generation in a void.  The rift still requires an active element, you simply can’t make it from void, and the void would itself block the active element.”  “Yeah, that’s what I keep finding too, but it doesn’t explain what happened last dusk.  Look, you didn’t hear this from me, but there was a break in at the Obsidian Hall, the wardens have been investigating ever since.  Seems some ancient relic might have been stolen in the process, though no one is willing to talk about those details.  The thieves broke in, stole the relic, and were confronted by our wardens, trapped in a dead end in a chamber filled with the void.  Despite all odds, they just.. vanished, like they had teleported somehow.  We don’t even have anything to go by, the two simply wearing ashen gear that covered every last detail about them.  This is the most hopeless investigation I’ve ever suffered, and I’m not finding anything to build hope from anywhere.”  “Oh my, that does sound.. complicated.  Sorry I can’t be of any help to you.  Anyway, I really should be going, I’ve got a lot of stuff to still look into for myself this dawn, I wouldn’t want to cause any problems.  You take care though.”  “You too, best of luck.”  Lyun disconnected the call from her warden friend, shaking despite her best efforts as she returned inside.  The wardens were holding an investigation to find her, this was a disaster.  She felt really lucky though, they had absolutely nothing to go by, it was actually at this point impossible for her to get caught.  There was no proof she was there, and there was no trail left behind, not unless you could track her between worlds.

“Lyun, perfect timing.  Come look at my latest masterpiece?  Quite honestly, it’s far easier to figure this out with someone who has their own opinions, I have got to tell you that.  I would have figured her into the same vested tights look as your own, the dirty browns clearly picked because things would only get even dirtier, but my word this woman has finesse.  Long sleevelets for her upper arms with a double layered cropped top blending into shorts with long leglets.  It’s fragmented in layers but somehow seems so full bodied, a work of art.”  “Axln is just in touch with her wild side, she’s friends with a fashion expert.  I figured the experience would do you some good, you’re welcome by the way.”  “Quite.  Anyhow, I really should get back to my work.  Axln has shown to be quite intrigued by a few things though, so you’re welcome to relax in the spare room.  I’ll be hard at work at the study, but feel free to drop by if something comes up.”  “Perfect, that works for us.  I hope you wouldn’t mind me making use of a few instruments in your storehouse though, matters of research, rest assured, and I will ensure nothing is broken.  Anyway, how much Qeld do I owe for the outfit?”  “Oh, that?  Don’t worry, I took care of it already, matters of research, rest assured.  I’m sure if you break anything, you’ll be certain to either repair or replace it, so go ahead.”  Ezhyrae and Lyun were almost competing for who could outplay the other at this point.  Axln wanted nothing to do with it, leaving the two elves to their thing, following the nurse back who helpfully showed her to the designated room.  Already, Axln was finding working with these Ersatz to be rather comfortable, like working with her nanites.  The room she was left too was empty for the most part, with only an assortment of round containers sitting around, one of which she used as a seat to wait on.  She still did not have to wait long.

“So, this worked out really well.  Now for the next phase of my great plan.”  “Great, I was wondering when I could see a bit more of this element stuff at work.  What are we going to look at first?”  “Hey, now don’t ruin my fun.  I didn’t even have time to rehearse yet.  This isn’t going to be easy.”  Lyun then took a deep breath, Axln just watching in confusion.  Lyun placed a small round instrument on another nearby container, the device hissing softly, Axln feeling the humidity of the room going up.  Lyun then posed standing up, her right hand hovering in front of her, focusing on the faint mist forming.  In the air above her hand, a sheet of ice began to form and collect, a design that looked sort of familiar.  Axln peered even closer, seeing that this demonstration looked so much like a holo panel, the details on the screen even shifting around at random.  Axln poked the thing, which didn’t respond, obviously a fake then.  Lyun could figure out that idea, but she was still in control.  Shifting the design slightly, she made the whole thing look like a low quality screen showing what Axln looked like from Lyun’s perspective.  Lyun moved at random, the image moving to emulate slowly in the process.  Axln considered that the absolutely crappy responsiveness and frame rate actually established that this was not a video, the whole thing was being rerendered manually in real time.  She was even more impressed when she learned the details behind what was actually at play here.  Lyun was using an instrument to generate the water for her to focus upon, but she was herself weaving ice out of it, no instrument required for that at all.  Not only that, but supposedly Axln could do something like that too, possibly.  The gift was in her blood too, actually waiting to be used, Axln just wasn’t aware of it.

Axln continued listening to Lyun’s demonstration and lesson, the fundamentals behind elemental instrumentation and the gift being presented to her.  Such was only a beginning but both of them were exploring how the laws of each other’s world actually worked.

---

Previous -|- Portal -|- Next

FV – Chapter 8

Reversed Circumstances

Kori helped Rosa to a nearby couch, giving her an opportunity to rest.  Kori and Sophie were both still surprised at what had originally transpired, not having expected such a serious reaction.

“See?  The both of you even have something in common.  You both freak out in the most random of moments.”  “I am not even half that loud, and I don’t faint either!”  “Of course not, but you usually can’t sleep after either.  You’re still plenty loud.  I bet half the difference is that you just aren’t as vocal about your worries as she is.”  “I don’t need to be that vocal, no one does!”  Sophie just giggled at Kori’s expense, Kori going pure scarlet.  Still, with Rosa out, there was a sudden uncertainty in what should happen next.  Kori decided that she would just get some work done, silently taking her usual space in the same room to start working on some nanite script ideas after setting aside all of Fiona’s possessions on a nearby table.  In all consideration, she was already behind after the commotion of that night, and she really needed something to distract herself with right now.  Sophie was understanding, just leaving her two guests to such comforts as she left to tend to other matters.  There was plenty they could talk about after a bit of time to relax.

Kori however really wasn’t tired, even considering how late in the night it actually was.  The common person of Aestus was awake for 14 hours and asleep for 6, but such was because there were 40 hours in a single day.  By sleeping in the 6 hour period of dawn and dusk, waking hours were just drawn into daytime and nighttime intervals.  She knew earth had quite a different sense of days, even though Aestus had still copied most of their calendar system.  There were still 7 days in a week.  Months were based upon the orbit of Aluna, one month occurring every two rotations, and each rotation taking just under 15 days.. around 14.6 days.  The months were then rendered into Earth’s own calendar months to define the 365 days in a sidus, even if the passage of a year was only 219 days.  With 25 moon rotations in a single sidus, it really felt like the humans were trying to impress an old mold for a new model.. one that just didn’t fit.  That said, it wasn’t as if she didn’t like the concept of having a model that structures and organizes her schedule.  It wasn’t good.. but it was better than nothing.

Such is why her latest scripts were about time-keeping routines.  Nanites were not only hyper intelligent, but also hyper precise.  Most routines they accomplished were completed in fractions of a nanosecond.  To make sure that nanites could then have a productive and fulfilling training schedule, practice routines would have to be slotted into a frequency much more than just minutes, but actually more like a simple nano second.  This itself led to the need for what could possibly be some of the most convoluted daily routines imaginable.  Making fine touches on such routines was then more than simply intensive work.  Such schedules need to be varied enough too so that no one area would start to suffer neglect, while there was also concern of getting enough rest.  Sure, they weren’t actually alive, but rest for a nanite involved both energy optimization and system cooling, both performance metrics that had a significant impact on results.

Of the same concept, Kori understood when it was time for her to also rest, knowing that devoting herself too much could impact her own performance metrics.  Rosa however had still not awoken yet, possibly not helped due to excessive lack of sleep.  Kori herself was used to keeping sleep down to a slim five hour period, ten hours per day wasn’t bad, but by all accounts Rosa had still probably got no more than three hours in a sleep period.  Adjusting.. was another concern.  It would take quite a lot to adjust to such a different sleeping routine, to shift her entire daily schedule to match an Aestean schedule.  Actually, that really was only a part of the picture, wasn’t it?  The poor girl would have to adjust to everything else, such as learning to read.  After having just considered schedules for her nanite routines.. it seemed overwhelming just considering how hard things were going to be for Rosa going forward, her having to adjust to so many things around here.  Kori herself wasn’t even sure how well she would have handled things in Rosa’s shoes, it was far too much.  Was there any other option?  The only alternative would be to figure out a way to bring her back home, but who knows how long research on that would take.

Kori sighed, desperately wishing she could just suddenly find a way to Rosa’s planet, right then and there.

Kori’s left hand suddenly shimmered with an inner light, the frost glinting reflectively like a silver mirror, and Rosa’s right hand responding in kind.  Instantly the entire room itself appeared frozen, encased in white ice.. before all recognizable textures of their surroundings began fading away, leaving nothing but endless white.  Progressing from that state, the white began to texturize again, appearing to be something akin to a white marble which gradually softened into distinct colors and materials.  However, at the same time, she found something falling before her vision, obscuring her sight completely.  Reflexively rushing to deal with it, she removed the protective suit that had been given to her previously, the one designed to withstand the conditions of the Obsidian Halls.  Why.. why was she wearing this again?  Actually, where was she now, even?  Looking around, she found herself in a very different home, one she did not even recognize.

At the same time, Lyun had found herself going from a spot of slight elevation over the floor, to finding nothing supporting her slumber.  A short crash to the floor later, Lyun was wide awake.  Wait, what was she doing back in an ashen coat?  She looked around quickly, finding herself in yet another home.. but this one felt far more familiar.  She took off her Ashen coat, exposing her long violet ponytail, and quickly spotted she wasn’t alone.  Ignoring the woman who had been her companion through much of the previous struggle, she went outside of the residence to check outside, almost tripping over a large heavy box at the entrance, a smaller letter acting as its only companion.  The entire box claimed it was due for shipping to the Qhtyzaexhiezyhan residence.. she could even read that.  This.. this was the home of Yhzia’s sister.  She had made it back, even to the place she really had to be of all things.  However, her excitement ended when she recalled that she also was not alone.  Running back inside, she looked upon her newest friend in all of this chaos, still lost and confused.  No, no, why?  She had made it back, but everything was still a mess, Kori was somehow there too.  No, no she wasn’t.  As the woman before her took off her head protection, blond hair spilled out, exposing a blank forehead but with otherwise similar facial features.  This woman was undeniably human.

“So it seems we’ve both made it to my world, but you seem to have been left the one in all the unfamiliar shoes now.”  “What?  That wouldn’t make any sense, how would…”  “Your first clue might be the stuff you’re wearing, Yhzia’s clothes, the same ones I lent you earlier.  Your second clue might be if you tried to do your little light trick, it won’t work anymore.  Third is if you went outside the front door, and noticed our society looking nothing like your own as you tripped over the box left irrationally at the front door.  However, it would be the fourth that you would take the hardest, considering what I’ve learned about you.  If you found a way to look at your own reflection, you would find that shiny gem of your’s was gone, yourself looking convincingly human.” Lyun didn’t even wait for the human to walk through all of those steps, heading to where she figured the bathroom would be to wait.  The human burst into the room quickly after, looking really pale, and saw the large mirror waiting for her.  Rushing over, she looked over her body, seeing most of her features still unchanged.. but Lyun was still fully correct.  So this whole thing worked both directions, and now her companion was the one going through everything.  Wait, just how much did everything repeat going backwards.  She rushed to find her cell, it still being in her possession.  Online lookup, family registry, Qhtyzaexhiezyhan family tree.   Axlnyhqiezrae Qhtyzaexhiezyhan, a new entry she didn’t recognize, listed specifically as Yhzia’s twin sister.  Everything had really gone full circle, absolutely everything.

“This.. this can’t have happened.  I’m not human.”  “In that body, you are.  Don’t worry, you aren’t the first person to be shocked that they had become human, suddenly being the twin sister of someone you didn’t even know in a world completely unfamiliar to you.  Actually, remembering things, maybe you were the first, it just didn’t last very long.”  “You mean…”  “Yes, now you understand how I felt.  Hells, this means that you’re Yhzia’s sister, that’s ridiculous.”  Axln paused for a moment of reflection, Lyun having plenty to think about as well.  There were several things to think about with all of this, and not just that the two of them could apparently actively just pass into the other’s reality somehow.  Three times now since such a discovery, they find each other chained together as the gateway between worlds open.  The way things were, one of them would always need to endure the unfamiliar, they could not both just go home.  Putting things to scale though, there were more short-term considerations.  Axln here was Yhzia’s sister, that was the design her world had set up, and that was going to be its own disaster.  Where exactly was she supposed to start with sorting out this extreme mess?

“Don’t be troubled by any connections you might see between me and your friend, that’s just going to hurt you more.  We aren’t the same people, even if we really are twins.  Most likely your friend wouldn’t have liked you to just give in, you have to keep going if you want to keep respecting the friendship you had with her.  Never forget that.”  “My, that was deep, I really didn’t expect something like that from you.”  “Sophie.. she’s the one who.. back at the store while you were asleep…”  “Ah, Sophie is a very smart woman, isn’t she?  She knows all the best ways to deal with stuff as wild as this.”  “Wild is just what she does, even her work is called Wildside Outfitters for a good reason.”  Axln and Lyun couldn’t help but to laugh at that.  Lyun however considered this in depth, maybe Sophie really did have the right idea in this whole thing.  The first goal would be to at least make sure Axln was a bit more comfortable, such as getting some exposure to the ways the world works.  Getting Axln into an outfit of her own might not be a bad idea either.  Lyun rushed around, trying to figure out a proper course of action.. only to suddenly collapse after tripping over her own feet.

Axln had this figured out in a heartbeat.  Of course, no matter what else, everything needed enough rest in order to perform optimally, especially people.  Lyun here was under-rested, she was making too many mistakes.  However, there would be little Axln could do either without more information, so maybe the most efficient thing for her would be to also get some rest.  Lyun had shown that she knew the way around this home, it was familiar to her, she was behaving as if they were allowed to be here, even as she got their ashen coats away and found a place to stash Yhzia’s possessions.  If they would be fine for now, they should just start with some rest.

“Is there any place here that would be good for a nap?  I think everything is complicated enough that I would rather tackle it all after a good rest.  We just finished dealing with all of this once already, I would rather not rush into a second iteration so quickly.”  “I.. actually, maybe a nap would be nice.  Yhzia and I were supposed to come here around now actually, this is her sister’s place.. which I guess would mean technically also your sister’s place as you are right now.  On that note, your full name here would be Axlnyhqiezrae Qhtyzaexhiezyhan, your last name was on that box outside.  Here, I’m called Lyun, and you would probably go by Axln.  Of course, just like your world, Axln never existed before this night.”  “Like I said, let’s not go over all of this stuff now, it would be far better to get some rest first.”  “Right…  Well, like I was saying, we were supposed to be here, but I don’t know where anything is.  As far as I can tell, the living room might be the only sure fire bet.”  Axln shrugged, not of the mind to complicate things right now for Lyun.  Axln gestured for Lyun to take the first pick of spots, waiting for her to find a choice couch before picking from the remaining options.  Lyun however grabbed a blanket and pillow to just curl up in a corner under a table, not being fond of thinner sleeping arrangements.  Axln gave in, taking her pick of a couch across the room.  Lyun was asleep almost immediately, with Axln just closing her eyes until she might eventually catch up.

By the time Axln finally woke up, Lyun had long ago awoken.  Axln made her way to a window, watching the break of dawn beginning outside.  Of course, on her planet, this was when people went to sleep, not when they just woke up.  Of course, this wasn’t her planet, was it?  She had just woken up in the land of elves, Fiona would have loved to see this place.  Then again, she never would.. Fiona wasn’t anywhere, this world or her own.  Of course, she would have to do the seeing for Fiona.  That really wasn’t so impossible either, she really was in a body that wasn’t quite her own, she was even suddenly a human like Fiona.  In truth, not even Kori was here, her body had another name, Axln.  How do you even say that?

“As-in?  That wasn’t quite right, was it?   Ah-.. silen?”  “Axln.  It’s much shorter, you’re using too many sounds, don’t draw it out.  Everything is very soft sounding.  Don’t worry though, I can’t even say my name from your world either.  Ruxa?”  “Rosa, but I see your point.  Nothing about this is so easy.”  “Maybe not, but I still have some ideas.  I got things organized while you were sleeping, took care of a few things waiting here, found some requests were left for Yhzia to take care of, so I did that stuff for her.  In all accounts, staying here is too uncomfortable, even though I still have access to the place.  We were only supposed to spend the night, so I’ve been looking into somewhere else to go.  We could return to my workshop, but I figure that wouldn’t have been much comfort for you, and the place is quite far away from here.  Instead, I called in a friend from someone I know, someone who might be a good sort of support in all of this.  First though, we should probably eat, Yhzia had been left some food from her sister and I don’t remember either of us having anything to eat during all of this, so you should be as hungry as I am.  We can leave after eating.”  Axln discovered that, after hearing about food, Lyun was not incorrect, they were both actually very hungry.  Axln followed Lyun into the dinning room, surprised at how things both remained unfamiliar and yet made sense.  Axln wasn’t even certain what the floor was made of, it certainly wasn’t wood, but it wasn’t quite as hard as stone.  Tables and chairs followed the same sense of design.  The room itself was lit by what seemed like a crystalline chandelier that simply gave off light for no apparent reason.  The room was itself scattered by a number of devices she simply could not identify.  The most normal thing present she found though was a book that had been left on the table.

Axln picked up the book, finding the whole thing covered in some sort of protective material.  So, this would be like something between lamination and a way to simply help the book stand the test of time?  The book had some oddities.. but it was still very obviously a book.  The cover had a title she couldn’t hope to read, the pattern of words more like a scrawling art than letters, no image gracing its cover.  Flipping the book open showed pages filled with more scrawl.  However, at one point, she found a picture rendered in simple black, a scene which looked vaguely like a primitive brick building surrounded by an electric fence, the building supporting what looked like solar power panels for backup power.  It looked like a scene out of a human history book.

“That was the book Yhzia was being given a chance to read when we got here, her biggest compulsion for making the trip, a book she won’t get to read anymore.  She always loved stories about the Terran Mythos.”  “A book that tells history like it was fiction.”  “Here, that is fiction, just like your world makes elves out to be fiction.  Your gem thing is gone, so I expect what you are is fiction to my world too.”  “Conduits are real though!”  “You’re still missing the point.  This isn’t just another world, it seems we live in two very different kinds of realities, the actual rules of existence being completely different.  Somehow though, each of us are aware of the other as nothing more than a simple fantasy.  I actually wonder if there might have been something that inspired that originally, that maybe we weren’t the first ones to cross the border.  The Terran Mythos has been a major inspiration for everyone here since a very long time ago.  Our realities are not just unknown to each other, we remain established forms of imagination to the other, like there has always been a connection.”  “So now, you and I are connected.  It had to be by that anomaly.. but the thing is gone now.  Actually, I wonder if this is a mark of such a connection then.”  Lyun looked at Axln pulling back her own sleeve, revealing the ashen white arm beneath it.  Of course, Lyun had a similar arm as well, they both shared such an oddity.  A mark of their connection, the theory might actually hold up very well.  However, nothing in any records she knew of spoke of anyone with similar marks.  As such, that theory left more questions than it did answers.  With that, Axln set the book back down and ignored it further.

With plenty to consider each, the two of them ate the meal that was provided to them.  Axln had little idea what she was eating, but it tasted well enough at least.  It was some kind of sandwich, though she had no idea what was doing the sandwiching nor what was inside.  She was mildly curious to dissect the entire thing and check closer, but she figured such might appear disrespectful.  In all accounts, it wasn’t as if she had any nanites handy to get any specific details with either, her observations could easily hold substantial bias in that regard.  It was probably best to just be aware that it at least tasted well enough, and just leave it as such.  Most of what she was being exposed to was seeming similar, her scientific bias being unfounded if the premise was wrong.  That’s how significant Lyun’s claim was, that the laws of science as she knew it were no longer valid on this side.  Physics, Chemistry, Biology, it all needed to be proven once again, and any laws may fail such a test.  That was no light claim, certainly, but she had grown up devoted to the ways of science and technology, such ways also included the ways of discovery.  If nothing else, there were things here she could not prove or explain, but things she could question.  This world was then an open book, waiting for her to make discoveries anew.  In a way, while still terrifying, that idea sounded.. exciting.

Once they had finished eating, the two girls left in plain clothes, with Lyun locking the door behind them.  The process wasn’t automatic, but it wasn’t primitive either.  A quick swipe motion near a sphere-shaped object beside the door had the door visibly fuse with the wall.  It was probably a process she could try to emulate with a holo, but this was all real material.  They had just left the house and already Axln had something her science could not prove.  However, Lyun had claimed that the laws of reality were different, not that they no longer existed.  This place then still had laws, ripe for Axln to discover.  With such, she turned to the area before her.. and realized that the process of discovering all of such laws might make designing a complete nanite schedule very easy in comparison.  Everywhere she turned was yet another piece of local technology doing something different, the entire perspective was actually making her dizzy.  The lamp posts out front, just as weird as the chandelier from earlier.  The buildings themselves look like they were stone that someone had grown in some kind of stone garden.  Vehicles on the road.. at least things that seemed like a mode of transportation.. more resembled an opaque glass that had decided to ignore all laws of friction and momentum by just sliding across the ground.

It was even to one such vehicle that Lyun was leading them, in a communal location with several other people waiting.  The science behind the process was different, but it seems the psychology remained constant.  This was obviously a place of public transportation, even though Axln herself had quite the history of avoiding such things.  Then again, she currently did not have her major reason for such evasion, she wasn’t a Conduit right now.  Axln looked around at those around her, a fairly even spread of people with and without pointed ears she’d learned represented elven folk could be found present.  Meanwhile, both sets of people were mingling like the entire idea really didn’t matter.  A large glassy transport thing arrived, with everyone climbing inside.  Lyun then passed Axln a small golden crystalline shard, clearly an important step in this process.  Axln made sure to follow behind Lyun, trying to follow her example as she brushed another similar shard beside a glass sphere.  Without problems, she found herself waiting on a seat, still not sure which part was more surreal.. that she had done everything correctly or that no one especially seemed troubled by her presence.  She did notice though that not many people were getting on this vehicle, and that they had chosen seats in the quiet far back where few people sat.

The two of them continued their trip in silence, not wanting to draw any unwanted attention.  With curiosities overflowing, Axln decided that the best way to proceed would be to not focus too much on the oddities of her trip right now, it was becoming a bit too much for her to take in.

---

Previous -|- Portal -|- Next

FV – Chapter 7

Adopting Reality

The two girls finally reached civilization by around midnight, passing through the barrier into warm air once again.  After that, it was only a short walk further to the commercial district which held their destination.

Rosa was stunned by the sight, but she was not surprised.  She was already aware, this was simply the modern day of the Terran Mythos.  Actually, that wasn’t even true either anymore, the Terran Mythos were filled with tales of a mythical place called Earth, and this was no Earth.  This was simply a world Earth had reached since the Mythos.  Such a Mythos had led to these towering buildings of light and metal.  The design was unique enough, a lot more box-style than what she was used to, but it at least looked organized enough.  Several buildings looked almost identical to one another, a feeling to her that might make such streets easier to get lost in than she knew, but maybe there was more to it than that.  The actual instrumentation involved stayed absolutely foreign to her, but she knew to expect that.  In all accounts, actually, much of the basics behind instrumentation seemed to be simply repeated.  The lights, holos, those were decorating everything everywhere, including bringing enough light to the streets to make the whole place glow like day.  Coming to terms with the state of such oddities wrung out all of their novelty, this was just what this world was like.

Kori continued leading the way, winding through the back alleys of the streets, very obviously trying to avoid the crowds.  Rosa could tell this was a path Kori had travelled several times in the past, moving forward with certainty in their path.  Rosa didn’t have any hesitation either in her movements, not even when their path suddenly passed into one of the boxed towers, the doors opening and closing for them on their approach.  Kori kept leading the way to a very central door in a boxed hall, a holo appearing before her again that was waiting for her instructions.  A short wait later, the door opened to a small room, Kori already heading inside and Rosa still hot on her heels.  The interior already looked like a holo, it had the same subtle glow, though this specific holo blocked her from seeing anything beyond it.  Everything went absolutely silent then, not even her own motions making a sound as the room briefly shook.. and then the doors opened once again to reveal a very different sight from before.  Kori stepped ahead towards a fairly large holo banner, clearly trying to make the place stand out a bit more.  Passing another entrance, Rosa found herself in a reasonably colourful office, holos flickering across the walls to show a variety of different outfits.  A woman was sitting at a desk, already looking their way as they entered.

“Kori, nice to see you again.  I hope the night has treated you well enough.  What might I help you with?”  “Sophie, you won’t believe how this night has gone.  I’m sorry to interrupt you while you’re working, but it’s really important.”  Kori went over to Sophie to discuss everything, while Rosa decided to just look around.  This was their destination, after all, she would be free to look around.  Mostly, she already knew how the conversation was going to begin, such did not matter to her.  Rosa was a woman of business herself, even if she was horrible at promoting it, and this clearly looked like someone else’s workshop.  Considering the promotions adorning the walls, this would be a business related to fashion, one that thus clearly knew how to promote their work.  She wasn’t the greatest of fashion freaks, let alone in position to evaluate local fashions, but the products looked pretty enough.  In a way, these holos were just working like some kind of illusions.  Sure, illusions might have a fairly strange elemental composition, but she suspected such details might not apply here.

The holo then presented her with a display, though she couldn’t understand what it was trying to tell her.  The visuals were simple enough, the interface rather intuitive, but the sprawl within meant nothing to her.  She took into consideration the meaning behind the design, what sort of purpose this would ideally serve, especially based on what she could figure out.  Certainly this was an overview of the product being shown to her, and such would ideally come with some supporting details, the bubbles being an interface to represent controls.  Wait, so this sprawl of patterns was actually writing?  Unfortunately, they might have a bit of shared language to work with, but their writing form was completely different.  It was actually interesting how this writing was formed at least, more like individual icons than a single cascading interlinked line, it clearly had its own elegant artistic form.  Thinking about the matter though, the Terran Mythos generally originated from a myth formed about a thousand years ago, which was also the time of the Instrumentation Era.

Meanwhile, the instrumentation era had been supported with a distinct language that had represented it, something that had simply spawned from its inspiration.  Back then, Celese had two languages, one for humans and one for elves.. but instrumentation was bringing the two people together.  With no common language, one was formed, with inspiration to the language that came with the era, the old languages quickly being forgotten.  However, with instrumentation came a need for names, for new words to represent new ideas, and of all things people turned to the Terran Mythos for names, words that were believed to be spawned by the original myth, to have come from Earth.  From this, the instrumentation itself inspired local languages even further once the Elemental Era struck, people believing that the terms of instrumentation were also a sign of development and progress.  From those beliefs, language as it was known settled into the state it currently was.

However, now she was in a place where the Mythos was real, earth being a distant world whose people had brought their culture here and forced it upon the locals, culture that likely included language then.  The language here was the same as her own, and it didn’t seem as if that was just a coincidence.  Sure, there were still some significant accents that remained different, but it really was enough to at least communicate with.  This theory also implies that her’s might not have been the first connection with the people of earth.  If she could investigate this further, she might find the answers she really craved right now, answers that might bring her back home even.  Even the thought of such hope inspired her, she really craved a way to go back, anything at all.

“Rosa?”  “Oh, sorry, I was just looking.”  “That’s fine, no harm looking, right?  Listen, Kori and I have been talking about what had happened, and I was wondering if you would be willing to help us figure a few things out?”  “Sure, why not.  What do I have to do?”  “Well, I was hoping you would be willing to be a part of a quick DNA test.  I was thinking it might be a good place to start at least.”  “Don’t know what that is, what does it involve anyway?”  “Oh, well, mostly a small blood sample.  Don’t worry, you won’t even feel a thing, and I’ll be taking one at the same time too.”  Rosa didn’t understand most of what Sophie was talking about, though she knew blood at least.  With blood usually came pain, but having a painless process released her from that worry.  Having someone else go through the process before her also made it easier to gauge her opinion too.  She followed in step and entered a nearby small room empty except for some simple tables and chairs.  Taking a seat near Sophie, removing the heavy snow gear she had been wearing, she watched as a holo was placed upon her arm, a complex assortment of designs resolving over it.  Holding out her own arm, Rosa discovered it also developing the same holo not far behind.  Kori was there too, busy with another holo that was clearly in charge of the entire process.  Watching carefully, Rosa noticed that a small sphere of the holo suddenly filled up with a tiny red bubble, her own doing the exact same thing.  The holo was removed after that, a few drops of blood passing through Sophie’s skin where the holo used to be.  Rosa considered her own freed drops as she wiped it away, making sufficient observations that such was indeed her own blood.  It was marvelous how clean that was, exactly as promised, she had no complaints with this.

“So, what do we have?”  “The test came back positive, both blood samples have a lineage match common to same-parent siblings.  How?  This isn’t even possible.  It’s like we’ve suddenly re-written history, throwing in a visitor of another planet into our own like she’s always been here.  You saw those records, there were plenty of convenient details, but a lot of open holes, like she’s been doing nothing all these years since she was born.”  “My parents gave no sign that they had ever had twins when Fiona was born.  I was there when she was pregnant, the doctor showing a holo of my tiny sister sleeping in mother’s womb.  There was only one then, we only ever talked about the one sister, we wouldn’t have accidentally missed one that never came up later.”  “Exactly, so how can we explain this?  It’s as if history changed but our memories of it didn’t.”  Sophie and Kori were both perplexed, almost missing Rosa being present in the conversation.  Rosa however was seeing things from a different angle.  Sure, she knew she had lived a full life of her own, but her body right now was not the one which had lived that life.  She seemed similar, but this was still not her.  The instrumentation of this world has identified that this body was a twin of Fiona’s, that was probably true.  This would then actually imply that her own body was then templated by a body that was available when she showed up.  Reality was just asserting itself then, and this was the result.

“Because I shouldn’t exist.”  “What?  That..”  “Elves don’t exist, I can’t be one, right?  So, I have to be something else, something that could exist.  Could you show me a close view of myself, like a reflection, as well as a picture of how Fiona looked?”  Rosa waited for Kori to provide her requests as she looked over herself casually.  Beyond the basic elven features being missing, she didn’t notice all that much which stood out as different between the version of her that was here and the real deal.  When the two holos appeared before her though, she started to see just how much she might be onto something.  Fiona’s brown hair didn’t match her reds, but they really were the same height.  Slight facial differences, along with Rosa’s complexion being mildly lighter, but she really thought it wouldn’t take much effort to make herself look exactly the same as this Fiona.

“It’s like she’s another Fiona…”  “No, no, no, I refuse to believe it.  This girl is not just some replacement for Fiona.”  “Kori, wait!”  Sophie was too late, Kori had already stormed off on her own.  Rosa realized that she might have suddenly been abandoned in this process, but that probably wasn’t surprising either.  Kori really wasn’t taking anything right now very well, and Rosa really probably couldn’t blame her.  However, Rosa did have her own concerns to worry about, she would have to just leave Kori to her own care for a while.  Sophie was at least present, the woman who was supposed to be Rosa’s sister in this world.  Maybe Sophie would be willing to help her work out a few things instead.

Kori stormed out of the building and found herself an empty bench, tears streaming down her face.  That was not Fiona, no one could ever hope to just replace Fiona.  The two of them had been together for ten sidera already, and in five months she would be having her thirteenth birthday.  It did mean she was twenty one years old right now, they both were.  Right from such a young age, the two of them had become quick friends, pooling their minds into whatever trouble they could come up with.  The two of them were always nigh inseparable ever since, having both inspired the other into more and more ambitions.  It was thanks to Fiona that Kori had started dabbling into nanites at all in the first place, all in the attempts to support Fiona’s artistic side expressing itself in holos.  Kori could rightfully credit Fiona for all of her life’s accomplishments, she owed Fiona for everything.  Now, it would just remain a debt she would forever owe, she would forever be alone.  However, it was at that moment that a holo prompt appeared before her, letting her know of an incoming video call.  With a quick wave, she accepted the call, the holo switching over to connect her right away.

“Nick, sorry for leaving you hanging like that, it’s been a night.”  “It’s okay, I’m on my midnight break now though.  Now that I’m not on the clock, do you want to talk about what happened at the falls now?  Something happened there, and it’s left me worried since.”  “Wait, yeah, didn’t you like right away asked what had happened to Fiona, even though I was standing next to someone who might have easily been her?  What actually gave you that idea?”  “Easy, attitude and posture.”  “Oh, so then, like, she wasn’t acting like Fiona at all?”  “Well, she was just following you like a lost puppy, yeah, none of her usual ambition and drive.  Fiona was always like an endless font of energy.  Still, what gave away everything the most was you.  When you’re with her, you always seem to pick up on her energy, having it drive you.  There, you were clearly running on empty.  What actually happened?”  Kori explained to their driver from the falls all about what had happened, leaving the two to discuss the story in great detail.  Getting to talk to Nick about how ridiculous everything was.. it was at least good for calming her back down.  However, Nick’s break wouldn’t last forever, he eventually had to disconnect and get back to work, leaving Kori to once again face everything for herself.

Of course, Nick wasn’t the only one she had left hanging, she had just walked out on Sophie, leaving her to take care of everything while also faced with her work.  The woman was an apprentice stylist, she couldn’t afford to leave her desk empty for very long.  Leaving Sophie to care for some stranger on her own wasn’t even being fair.  Making her way back up the commercial tower, she arrived once again at the Wildside Outfitters, the shop Sophie worked for.  The place specialized in a variety of casual and sportswear, including outfits which were designed for use beyond the barrier.  Fiona always came to her sister’s place to shop, the both of them making avid use of the available styles.  Even while hard at work, the two of them typically wore such styles, and it was from here that she had picked up the snow gear she was currently still half wearing, the overall impression leaving her feeling a bit overheated.  Taking off the rest of such gear and just carrying it with her, she ran her hands through her long pale blue hair and adjusted her glasses.  Her layered top held what was akin to a light and thin lavender tasseled overcoat with similarly styled plum capri and amethyst blouse.  The entire outfit left her feeling reasonably comfortable with a fashionably intelligent look that she felt suited her technical background.  With that, she walked back into the store, feeling a bit more dignified than she had left it.

“Welcome back.”  “Yeah, sorry about running off like that.  Wait, where.. is…”  “Rosa is taking a nap in the back.  It seems, from where she’s from, this is pretty late, and she did have a really long night.  We had a lot to talk about while you were gone at least.  Did you know she can’t even read our writing?  Pretty obvious stuff for her would be pretty rough, going through all of this.”  “Why are you suddenly doing so much to take care of her, she isn’t really your sister.  People don’t just become blood related like that, it’s all complete nonsense.”  “Your point?  Actually, I don’t even care that we might suddenly be mysteriously related.  The girl is going through a lot, and doesn’t have anyone else she could turn to.  I fail to see why there might be any reason I shouldn’t try to help her out.”  Sophie left Kori without any form of counter.  Of course, much in the same light, Kori remembered when Rosa too had just stepped in on her behalf not that long ago.  The guy from the aerospace station’s lobby.. Rosa had stepped in then in much the same light, helping without any good reason.. except possibly for not having a good reason for not helping.

“Look, I know you’re taking Fiona’s absence really badly, I know you’re just troubled because you’re drawing a connection between Rosa and Fiona and that’s just hurting you more.  Rosa isn’t Fiona, even if you take the whole twin thing at face value, they are each their own person.  To be honest, the idea that my little sister might actually be gone feels really surreal, it’s hurting me a lot too.  My mind actually feels numb with shock about the whole idea, like it still can’t even comprehend such a reality.  Even so, the world doesn’t just stop, Fiona wouldn’t have let me hear the end of it if I just gave in, especially if it was because of her.  I know that, it’s why I’m here.  I almost didn’t take up this apprenticeship on her behalf, because I wouldn’t be in a position to support her anymore.  She didn’t take that very well, not at all.  So, I’m going to keep going.. she would probably want you to keep going just the same.  Never forget that.”  Sophie actually wiped away some passing tears as she worked, sorting through a catalogue of store inventory, never actually slowing down.  This moment broke Kori, realizing she was being both immature and selfish, an utter affront to her friendship with Fiona.  Left in a bit of a daze, Kori found a place to go and sit down to sort through her thoughts, while Sophie continued to work through the night.  Kori had no idea how long such had continued, having completely lost touch with time, which is why she was surprised when Sophie started closing the store.

“Oh, is it that late already?”  “My, I was wondering if you had fallen asleep or something too.  If you are awake, could you go wake up Rosa?  We won’t be able to stay here, the store needs to be locked up.  Maybe she would be willing to drop by my place, we could figure something out from there.”  Kori obliged Sophie’s request, heading to the back room half in a daze.  Passing through the door and turning on the lights, she heard Rosa startle to an alert state, bashing her head on the metal table in the process, leaving Kori to scream in fear as well.  It was an all too familiar event, one that had only happened recently, one which only got more painful to experience while Rosa looked so much like Fiona.  Sophie herself came rushing in to discover what might have happened.  Sophie was right, Fiona was gone, but Kori just wasn’t letting Fiona rest.  It still wasn’t Rosa’s fault though, if Kori was painting a likeness of Fiona over Rosa’s image, Rosa still had nothing to do with it.  This was a problem Kori had designed against herself, so she would have to come up with her own solutions.

“Sophie, before you close up, do you mind attending one last customer?  Rosa here still only has Fiona’s clothes, she has nothing for herself.  It might be better for her to wear something she could call her own, something of her own choice style.”  “Oh my, that’s a great idea.  Rosa dear, could you come join me here so we get an idea of your own personal tastes?”  Kori stepped aside as Sophie took control over the situation, the fashion expert in the room in her own element.  Kori meanwhile just waited in the same room, leaving the two with room to work things out for themselves.  Sophie was really good though, and in hardly any time at all she returned with a Rosa dressed in a holo sample of a choice outfit.  Rosa was much taller than Kori’s 152cm, beating her by 11cm, and you could tell most of that was achieved in Rosa’s legs.  Lean and beanie, Rosa’s mauve choices were rich in warm tones, a complete contrast to the usual sapphires Fiona had gravitated towards.  The tiny capelette floating over her shoulders looked completely unlike anything Fiona might have ever worn, but went well with her sleeveless top and slender pants.  For an additional effect, even her hair was done up in a distinguished ponytail.  Contrary to anything Fiona, Rosa looked like a woman who wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty, a very serious look in contrast to Fiona’s energy.

“Before you ask, no, none of this was my idea.  It seems our little Rosa has quite the personal tastes, wouldn’t you agree?  The actual outfit is currently in printing, it should be ready soon.  In the meanwhile, if you ladies would excuse me, I really need to finish closing up.  Also, don’t worry about the purchase, Kori, I’ve already looked into it.  Rosa, I’m sorry but you won’t have a chance to get change here.  Instead, why don’t we all go to my place to relax a bit more?  It would give you an opportunity to actually get into your outfit, and we could talk a bit more about anything.  Kori, please wait with her just outside of the store, I’ll be there shortly.”  Sophie then rushed off before anyone could get in a word, not even in reply to her requests.  Kori and Rosa blinked at each other, both aware that there wasn’t any room for complaints here.  Rosa’s holo outfit was dismissed as the two of them made their way just outside the store.  They really didn’t have to wait very long, Sophie only needed to make sure that the nanites present had the current closing instructions and that everything was still in good order before packing up for herself and going outside too.  From there, Sophie led the way back to the holo elevator, the unit rapidly bringing them to the basement in the blink of an eye.  OSIDF lightspeed engines were really reliable in empty spaces, although alternatives were required in denser environments.

Sophie then brought the two of them to her vehicle, a very classy drifter made with a silicate alloy in a quality holo chassis.  Fiona herself had worked on the holo pattern for it, a sleek reflective black shade that somehow shone with an inner light.  The whole thing also handled quite well, it’s holo grips being very well made.  Humans classically loved models like this, as it apparently had a lot in common with the old cars that the people of earth had used ages ago.  Rosa herself took an immediate interest in the thing as well, taking shotgun beside Sophie at the front and leaving Kori to the back seats.  Kori had no problem with this, returning to her own thoughts in silence.  Sophie made sure Rosa was safely secure before getting everything started and calibrated.

“Audio response system activated.  Best of nights to you, lady Chalcedony.”  “Yes, thank you.  The young lady to my right happens to be unskilled in reading comprehension, so I was hoping that we could get some audio responses for any inquiries she might have, if you will be so kind.”  “Of course.  Support will be provided for auditory readings of writing found during this journey. Feel free to point at anything you want explained, Rosa.  If you have any other specific inquiries, feel free to express them vocally.”  The nanite system of Sophie’s drifter was operating with live audio in response to Sophie’s instructions.  Kori glanced at Rosa, finding this whole thing was actually about as surprising as one might have expected.  Of course, Kori hadn’t been using audio mode the entire time, she found it a bit too loud and slow.  However, for someone unable to read but perfectly capable of listening, it did carry a bit more details as to what was actually going on.  Rosa had no problems making friends with the nanites involved as a result, making plenty of inquiries along the way on each different sign and banner.  In the end, Kori avoided a headache by activating a sound screen to the back seats, leaving her to relax in silence.  Such silence lasted until they rapidly reached their destination, pulling into another underground garage.  The vehicle stopped, the doors opening automatically.

“Wake up Kori, we’re here.”  “I know, I wasn’t actually asleep.”  “Can you bring Rosa inside and show her into my spare room so she can get changed?  I’m going to go make sure Iggy is doing alright.”  Sophie again didn’t even wait for Kori to reply, already inside before Kori could leave the vehicle.  Rosa stood there holding the bags Sophie had given to her at some point, most likely containing the new outfit.  Kori guided Rosa inside, making sure that their heavier snow gear was left in the main closet before making their way inside.  Rosa quickly found herself alone in a fairly empty room, with nothing but the new outfit that was provided for her, Kori waiting outside.  Rosa quickly rushed to get changed while contemplating her circumstances.  This was Sophie’s home, Rosa’s supposed sister according to the world’s logic.  It did remind her that Yhzia’s sister was still waiting, another reality away.  She was supposed to go there with Yhzia too, much like her current situation.  Much like Sophie though, Rosa knew very little about Yhzia’s sister, not having actually visited more than once.  Once had been plenty enough, the girl was insane, actually trying to care for this red lizard she had found in the wild one day.  By the divine, that thing had terrified her.  Rosa was only a young teen at the time, but she’s remained terrified to visit ever since, convinced the thing was looking for an opportunity to devour her.  Fortunately, her sisterly visit in this reality wouldn’t have such concerns to worry about, a firm perspective on how she was far away from home.  Once she had finished getting changed, she stepped out to stir Kori from a chair.

“So, what’s the plan now?”  “Oh, Sophie is probably just feeding that iguana of her’s in her study.  She’s been the one with a plan so far, so we might as well go see what’s next on the list.”  “Fair enough.”  Rosa could tell even Kori was just in for the ride here, neither of them able to keep up with everything.  Sophie was quite a good business influence, just throwing you into doing things without giving room for hesitation.  As she followed Kori up a set of stairs, she took a quick moment to wonder.. what’s an iguana?

Coming to face the tiny lizard, Rosa shrieks her own round of terror, the sound echoing through the house.  It was too much for Rosa, herself having fainted as a result of such an encounter.

---

Previous -|- Portal -|- Next

FV – Chapter 6

Living Dream

The shuttle landed promptly in the snow a distance away, a steel silhouette shining in the night sky.  Once the snow settled, the two girls made their approach, eager to at last escape the freezing weather.

Rosa was still trying to come to terms with exactly what in the world was going on.  Rosa hadn’t even yet accepted the idea of even being known as Rosa, a concern she knew her companion had yet to come to terms with either.  Apparently, whatever instrument the girl had been using had somehow identified her by such a name, and Rosa was coming to terms with the idea that the girl at least believed such sources would be reliable.. except for how it simply isn’t believable.  Rosa herself could definitely understand the part of it at least not being believable, clearly it was a matter of mismatched identity, being mistaken for someone else.  She was Lyun, not Rosa, this was all just some extreme misunderstanding.  However, it didn’t help that there was very little she herself understood right now.  They had escaped that obnoxious cave, a place feeling so absolutely unreal in its intensity, especially when the world went stiff and still for her in a few moments.  At least, those moments seemed equally as surreal for her companion as for herself, even if such a companion still seemed much more informed in the current circumstances.  Clearly, Rosa had failed to properly grasp the exact nature of her companion’s naivety, it wasn’t that she was crazy, it was that the world she came from really was so different from the Ruixse that Rosa knew.

Watching the shuttle land brought all of such feelings to another level.  By the divine, what in the hells was that monstrosity.  Rather than being made by crystalline composites, it looked to be high density metal, possibly the least efficient thing to use for flying.  Rather than using either wind or dark elemental for propulsion in any variety, the entire system looked to be using some sort of strange blue light.  Did everything here run on light?  The girl was even making use of some sort of strange light earlier too, while looking up some information.  That had also surprised her, she hadn’t even located the instrument being used.  To her, it was like she had conjured up a bunch of strange lights from nothing with nothing, like she was using some kind of strange magic.  It was a ridiculous idea, magic was just a thing of fantasy, there had to be another explanation.  However, finding an actual instrument that defied every principle she knew, she didn’t even have the slightest idea what sort of explanation might even be rational at this point.

“Hey Kori.  Wait, what happened to Fiona, and who is this?”  “Everything just got complicated, please don’t ask any questions, I’m still trying to figure out everything myself.  Just bring us back to civilization, please.”  “Alrighty then, no questions on the job, got it.  Just keep in touch then, let me know if you need anything.”  The guy who appeared to be in charge of their transportation slipped back into the strange craft as quickly as he had appeared, the girl having hardly looked up from her light-based research the entire time.  Rosa was surprised, faintly hidden under the guy’s unfamiliar uniform, she had been able to identify that same strange shine of a gem sparkling from the guy’s forehead, the same blue one the girl had.  Just what kind of purpose did that actually have for such people?  Not only that, but they both shared that strange accent in speech as well, making it a bit harder for Rosa to follow along.  She did catch that the girl she was with had a name as hard to pronounce as the one that had come up for her just earlier, Kori being about as hard to pronounce as Rosa.  By the divine, those strange deep sounds in their regular dialogue make it seem like something had died in their throats.

“Ka-Ke-Kaeri?”  “Huh, what?  Oh, Kori, as in Korinna. … Yeah, that won’t make any difference either, will it.  Your dialect just doesn’t do the O-thing very well.. which means being named Rosa makes even less sense.  You just couldn’t be Fiona’s sister…  Wait!  Fiona does have an older sister though, we should roll this over with her and see what she thinks of it.  She should be at work right now, but her nights are pretty quiet.  Here, don’t just stand there, come and take a seat.”  Rosa followed Kori to the seating area, still perplexed about how unfamiliar everything was.  Sisters.. that reminded her about Yhzia’s sister, a promise she had still left hanging.  Of course, this far from home, she had no way to fulfill such promises, but it still left her feeling bad about it.  The worst part would be letting Yhzia’s family know what had happened, something she had no idea how to explain.  Just how would she explain anything when…

“Nothing makes sense.  Fiona is gone now, but now she suddenly has a twin sister that came up out of nowhere.  She couldn’t be a twin sister, she isn’t even from our planet.  I can’t even find a planet with anything close to the term designation Roiks or anything.”  “It’s Ruixse.  Oh, whatever.  Yes, I’m pretty certain I don’t have a twin sister or anything, especially around here.  I’m not sure about a lot of things right now, but that I’m absolutely certain about.  Sorry, this whole thing is rather a mess for me too, everything is so surreal.  Ever since my friend died, everything just stopped making sense.”  “Oh, you too, huh?  Yeah, this all pretty much started right when Fiona died.  That strange orb, then my arm goes all frosty and she suddenly just goes frozen stiff before shattering.”  “That.. that’s a lot like how it went for me too.  We find this strange stone fragment, then my arm goes petrified and she goes white stiff before crumbling to dust.  Right after that, you showed up, and then.. well, you know the rest.”  Kori doesn’t reply, going about as quiet in thought as Rosa at that point.  Was it such a coincidence that they had both faced loss, at even the exact same moment then, only to be drawn into this insanity.  Rosa then reflected on the conversation earlier, Fiona being mentioned now several times.  So like Yhzia, this Fiona had perished in almost the same way.  Fiona however was the same person being mentioned as her supposed twin sister.  Fiona also had another sister, someone they were going to go visit.  This Fiona was then in the middle of everything right now.

Nope, Rosa wasn’t about to believe any of it.  A lot of things didn’t make sense, but people were at least still people.  Clearly, this was a delusional phase of Kori after having been deprived of her friend, and then left to grieve over it.  Certainly, grief was something she could understand, even while much else wasn’t as easy to explain.  If Kori was going to be so consumed in grief, Rosa would have to work on her own to uncover the truth of what was really going on.  However, it wasn’t as if Rosa had the resources to do such on her own, not while everything was so unfamiliar.  She would instead have to stick with Kori and make her own observations, to figure out the truth for herself with her own limited resources.  At that moment, she glanced out of the window to witness the approach of the aerospace station below them, a high tech facility which surprised her even more than the craft she was flying in.  Making sense of things was looking more and more challenging the farther along she went.  Everything was metal and lights.  The craft they flew in, it even landed on a platform that formed out of nothing, looking to be made of little more than light itself.  Even so, the craft came to a stop on such light, having finally reached its destination.

“Okay, let’s get going.  Stick close, I expect things to get a bit more busy going forward, we wouldn’t want you to get lost in the crowd.”  “Oh, great, so unfamiliar and busy.  That sounds just awesome.”  Kori led the way with Rosa not far behind, making their way outside of the craft.  Kori meanwhile stepped right onto the path of light with no hesitation, quite unlike Rosa in that moment.  “Come on.  What, never seen a holo landing before?  Don’t worry, it doesn’t bite and you won’t fall.”  Kori was obviously getting impatient.  In all accounts, it was getting obvious that the things Rosa understood shouldn’t be considered dependable here, nothing here applied the principles of elementals anywhere close to what she understood.  However, if she then accounted for the idea that things might then work in their own way, clearly this path of light has proven that it can hold her weight much better than any light she had seen before.  A holo landing, that was both unfamiliar and hard to say, she didn’t even bother trying.  Regardless, she stepped onto the strange lights and followed Kori into the steel building ahead.  Walking inside, she suddenly found everything much warmer than she would have expected for a steel building.  Of course, that was just a new way this world worked, she was getting used to such oddities, it wasn’t even surprising at that moment.  She did also notice that Kori left on her warm attire, so obviously such warmth would be needed again soon.  She also noticed they were no longer alone, the building full of an assortment of people, most of them being simple humans.  Actually, she didn’t see a single other elf anywhere.  She took a moment to rub her eyes by the strain of looking around, her eyes feeling a lot more clouded than she was used to.

“Hey, watch where you’re going.”  “Ah, sorry.”  “You better be sorry, I almost tripped there, could have gotten hurt, you know.”  A guy had opened up conversation with Kori, something had obviously happened.  Rosa wasn’t paying attention at the time either, but it appeared that Kori had suddenly ran into someone else while being so distracted.  “Hey, you’re an airhead.  Idiot, you scum really are so dense.  Pretending to use a holo to actually seem smart then, but it’s left you confused?  You really need to know your place.”  The guy promptly shoved her to the ground then instead, the wet mud across the floor leaving a smear on her clothes as the guy only laughed.  At this point, Rosa took note that not only were there no elves, but most of the people present did not have that shiny blue gem either.  The ones who did were looking away in shame, the ones without generally standing proud as they walked past.  It seemed this was another normal thing around here.  Sure, she had just finished accepting that not everything worked around here the same way as she had grown to understand.  Regardless, Kori here was very obviously proven so far to not be stupid, to not be deserving of such bullying.  Rosa herself was the one more ignorant to all the instruments in use around here, she could then consider this a personal affront, and right now she really wasn’t in the mood for it.

“Leave her alone, atnizhyq.”  “Wow, you okay?  You sound like you’ve got a broken jaw.”  “You sound like you cracked your skull as a child, should have someone look into that or something.”  “Hey, don’t tell me you’re actually trying to stand up for scum like this.  We’re too good for scum like her, they’re like the mud we walk over, just look at her.”  “I’m sorry, did you say something, or were you just vomiting what is left of your mind.  Oh gross, did I step in it, eww…”  Rosa made a dramatic motion with her boots, as if she stepped in something unfortunate, while the guy’s face went red with rage.  The guy rushed forward, a clenched fist ready to strike her, but she side-stepped in the same motion, stomping forwards in time to trip the guy in his passage.  The guy himself went face first into the mud, now being just as much a mess as Kori.  Rosa meanwhile went to help Kori up and guided her in the direction they had originally been trying to travel, unsure of their destination otherwise.  The guy rushed to his feet, slipping in his hurry and went down on his back as the two girls slipped into the crowd.

“You.. you didn’t have to stand up for me like that.  I’m used to such treatment already, it doesn’t bother me.”  “Really, that’s normal around here?  I’m sorry, I can get used to strange accents and crazy lights, but.. it’s people like that which I still can’t stand.”  Kori was staring at Rosa with a look of pure disbelief, but Rosa wasn’t about to give in.  It reminded her of the people who thought she herself had been stupid for trying to fight for success against all odds, to pave her own path instead of just accepting the ways society expected things to be.  This is why she hated being around others, society being blind unto itself.  It seems, of all things, that one thing wasn’t any different around here.  Eager to leave the crowd behind, she pressed forward until the path forked, the crowd in general going in a single direction.  Kori took the lead at this point, picking the path less travelled to Rosa’s approval.  This path led quickly straight outside beside a couple of metal mounds in the snow, the faint sound of many hums from within.  Rosa took a moment to wonder if that was dangerous, but Kori did not seem alarmed, the two pressing forward through another wall of light, this one actually letting them just pass through.

“Yeah, sorry, we could have taken the warmer road, actually get to sit for the entire trip too, but …”  “Oh, don’t worry, after that last incident, I can see why you might want to avoid such creeps.  I’m not exactly of the mind to deal with more of that trash right now either.”  “Well, I expect you might have gotten tired of the cold by now too.  Either way, I know I’ll be enduring this hike better than you will, so just let me know when you need a break.  I’ll pull out a nice campfire and we can warm up a bit before moving on.”  Kori was actually remaining aware of how much better she could endure the cold, but to Rosa it was sounding like concern for the more familiar lack of stamina.  Rosa knew Yhzia frequently compensated for such things, but it seems her new companion was being thoughtful there as well.  With such in consideration, the two proceeded a good distance along through the snow, leaving one barrier behind to approach a much bigger one in the oncoming distance.  Things were obviously only going to get more complicated from here, so Rosa did eventually decide to take up Kori’s offer.

“Thank you for being so considerate, by the way.”  “Oh, well, I’m used to it.  I can take the cold much better than you can.  Besides, you were considerate of me earlier yourself, fair is fair.”  “I fail to see how treating another person as an actual person constitutes special treatment.”   “You really aren’t from around here.  Humans have been doing that to us ever since they first showed up on our planet, it used to be even worse.  A lot of us died back then, it was quite the massacre.” Rosa was shocked by Kori’s story, implying a violent invasion.  So those people just showed up on this world and started walking around as if they owned the place.  As a guest of the world herself, she still couldn’t even see the logic behind the approach.  Just what kind of garbage world encourages this sort of behaviour?

“The humans I know are way better than that.. like Yhzia.  … anyway, I’m pretty sure it isn’t because they are human, it’s probably just a part of the society they came from.”  “You speak as if you aren’t human yourself.  Well, Fiona wasn’t like that either, I know, but she never really liked fitting into her own culture.  Instead of facing her history, she always buried herself in its fiction, imaginary fairytales of forest elves who can conjure fireballs at a whim.”  “Hey!  That’s mean, we’re not imaginary, totally real.  Though, I would give you that calling up fireballs sounds so archaic, no one does that anymore, takes too much out of people.  Way better to actually get instruments to coarse a fire elemental reaction than to actually do all the hard work.. but it wouldn’t actually be impossible.  The only trick is finding someone who has a gift for calling up fireballs.  Besides, isn’t that generally what you did here, with this fire?  How exactly is it any different? … Wait, why are you looking at me like that.”  Rosa cut herself short, suddenly noticing that Kori had run short on words and had started staring blankly.  She knew everything here was so unfamiliar and foreign, but to be told that she herself was only imaginary?  It was ridiculous.  She was an elf, that’s why she had pointy ears, that’s why she had such sharp senses, that’s why she easily got tired after too much exertion.

Despite the cold, she pulled down her headwear, exposing her ears as clear evidence, pointing to them soundly.  However, at the same time, she also found her hands unable to touch her ears where they normally could be found, cusping the side of her head, she found herself with a set of ears completely unfamiliar to her.  It was at that moment that it dawned on her, in everything they have done, even this specific hike.. she should have grown tired long ago, this was probably her new endurance record.  Earlier, just before Kori had gotten bullied, she remembered even struggling to see quite as well as she usually could.  This was probably the most impossible thing ever, she suddenly wasn’t an elf anymore?  More than just finding herself in another world, she wasn’t even herself anymore, completely robbed of even a familiarity in herself.  She suddenly felt very lost and abandoned, shaking as dread started occupying the depths of her thoughts.

“Wait, didn’t you actually have longer ears earlier?  I remember in that blazing crypt, having got a chance to look, you really did have different ears.  It was one of the first things I had the time to notice.”  “I did, yeah.  One of the most obvious signs of being an elf.  Except.. except I don’t think I have any of them anymore.  So, not only is this a strange new world, but I’m not even an elf anymore, I myself have become just as strange as this world.”  “Wow, Fiona probably would have loved to meet you.  She would have loved to hear any stories about elves, one that wasn’t actually so unreal would have been even better.  The only stories of elves she’d ever read were the made-up tales the humans brought with them from Earth.”  “Wait, Earth?  As in from the Terran Mythos?  Isn’t that just a fantasy dream-world that someone from Celese imagined one day and wrote books about?”  “I wish Earth was just imaginary, that our treatment from their people was just some nightmare I might wake up from one day.”  So, the world Kori had mentioned to Rosa earlier, the place that the humans here had come from, Kori was claiming that was actually Earth?  On the subject of simply waking up from a nightmare, this itself was starting to feel like it couldn’t be more than a dream.. but it still seemed so real.  Rosa thought back to all the things she knew about the Terran Mythos, an expression of the imaginary to her, while reality as she knew it was being called little more than imaginary.

“Well, how about this then.  What do you think about things like metallic cubes that float on a spinning blade, taking records of their surroundings with enough perfect accuracy to produce pictures that look exactly like reality without a person ever having to be there.”  “Oh, so like a drone?  Wow, those things have fallen out of style centuries ago.  It would be far easier to just reproduce the same effect with Nanites.  Watch.”  Rosa was surprised at a sudden holo appearing before Kori, but turned to watch regardless.  After a few instructions, a much larger holo appeared closer to Rosa, one revealing a video feed from a Nanite high above looking down on them with perfect quality.  Rosa looked up in sudden alarm, not seeing anything at all which would have been responsible for this sort of view.  She moved slightly, noticing that the one in the picture far below who should be her moving in just the same way.  It really was true, the things here were practically taken from the Terran Mythos.. except it seems such tales were as old as their books, having developed way beyond the limitations of the Mythos itself.  This was then the reality behind the Mythos, the reality of the Mythos.  She really was just living a dream.

“Interesting, but it reminds me that we really should be going.  You did say we have a lot to look into, and we really can’t do any of that sitting here.”  “Oh, yeah, if you’re all warmed up again, we should keep going.  Sorry for dragging you around like this, though it isn’t like I have any leads that would bring you back to your home yet.  I know it’s kind of stupid, but the whole Rosa deal really needs some clarity.  If we know why you seem like someone.. someone who shouldn’t even exist.. I don’t know, it should do something.”  Rosa could tell the biggest reason for such research was to simply settle Kori’s feelings after having lost her friend, to bring rest to such a memory.  It was something she could go along with, because in the process she would get the opportunity to do some investigating on her own.  What was the truth behind the Mythos, and in turn, what was the truth behind what had become of her?

With their campfire gone once again, the two of them continued on their journey.  The community Kori spent her days at was just ahead of them, and their night wasn’t going to last forever.

---

Previous -|- Portal -|- Next

FV – Chapter 5

Shifting Probability

Both girls blinked in their mutual moment, their surroundings around them going an absolute sheet white and fading away like all of creation had taken that moment to blink.  Just as quickly as it had happened, the effect faded away, leaving both girls to continue to grieve.

Lyun’s sharp hearing picked up in that moment that she was not actually alone.  Searching around quickly, she discovered the fallen frame of another human collapsed and weeping on the other side of the pedestal.  The most alarming part about such a human was her complete and utter lack of any possessions whatsoever, not even the clothes on her back.  Considering the heat of the environment, that would alone be highly unusual.  However, what drew the most attention was the ashen pale left arm very visible on the human, an almost mirror of her own sudden circumstances.  The added reminder of her circumstances simply made Lyun feel even less comfortable.  This place was just continuing to get weirder and weirder, she would have time to grief later after she escaped.  Of course, escape was the original problem before she had lost Yhzia to this madness, but her circumstances were still decidedly questionable.  However, maybe that’s when her newest company would provide some good news.  If they had shown up so suddenly, then maybe they were aware of another way out.

“Hey! Hey!”  “AH!  Wait, where am I?  Oh hell, from the freezer to the oven, how is this place so insufferable hot?  How could anywhere be this hot during the noctal season anyway?”  “Oh, so things are still getting weirder, then.  Should I even bother asking why you’re speaking with the most convoluted accent I’ve ever heard in my life.. as well as spouting pure and absolute nonsense?”  “Okay, yeah, I’m obviously nowhere near home now.  This place is strange, this heat is strange.. you’re strange.  Wait, what happened to your ears, they look like they got stretched out.”  Lyun was impressed at just how strange the human woman was becoming, it almost authentically sounded like she had never seen an elf before.  Then again, everything about the woman seemed wrong too.  She quickly took a moment to readjust her headwear, it having fallen aside in her grief, then returned her attention to the human in consideration.  A quick review made it clear that such a person was probably around the same size as Yhzia.  Protectively withholding all of the other possessions, Lyun submitted at least all of Yhzia’s clothing, especially the protective gear.  It was in this instant that her guest appeared to have become aware of her current state of attire, too.  Yes, something about her was clearly very wrong, and in her state she would be completely useless in an escape.  Comfortably though, having at least provided the bare essentials to survive, Lyun saw no issues with just leaving such a stranger to her own devices.  To her, this whole complexity was enough to not leave her wanting to know more.  After taking a moment to compose herself in her blob of an outfit, she set off back the way she had originally come from, with luck she would find an alternate way out and maybe not misplace Yhzia’s determination and even pull off not getting caught.

“Hey, wait up.  I don’t even know what’s going on, don’t leave me here.”  “I don’t know you, don’t follow me.  That gear should help you beat the heat.. for a time at least.  From here, you’re on your own.  Best of luck.”  “That is totally not fair.  My word, how do you move in this thing, it’s so thick.  Wait, why isn’t this making me even warmer?  Why does absolutely nothing make sense anymore?”  “Obviously because something has just decided that the both of us are deserving of its pure contempt, isn’t that why you showed up?  Now again, bye.”  “Hey, even if I’m not walking with you, it’s not like I’ve got another path to take.”  The infuriating human had an insufferable point that Lyun could not refute, so she simply started to ignore said human.  However, as the gears started spinning in her head, she realized that she may have stumbled upon yet another possible worst-case scenario.  In this situation, she could manage to actually survive and escape without getting caught.. but she could find herself still having to deal with this new headache.  Losing Yhzia was a big enough headache as is, and the fact that their protective gear made it impossible to tell the difference almost made it feel like Yhzia was still following her.  However, that wasn’t Yhzia, it was some really awkward human with the most insufferable accent imaginable, like she was suddenly inventing sounds into the words she spoke.  It wasn’t even obvious what the girl was even trying to say as a result, as it was also clear that the same confusion worked both ways.  Communication was a waste of effort.

A few more steps forward, she suddenly found everything getting worse, the uniform of a warden appearing at the far end of the corridor.  She turned to bolt, seeing that the warden must have been elven too, they were both also spotted.  She spun around the human, making a desperate dash in the reverse.  Of course, this was hopeless, the corridor was a straight line back to the pedestal chamber.  Running out of breath in the process, that human managed to quickly catch up to her.  So, ignorant, but not stupid.  They were both in this together now, and returning to the pedestal left them none the wiser.  What was clear in turn was that their pursuit was really also an elf, the girl had also run out of breath.  She took a moment to honestly ponder overpowering the woman, but wardens were not only far better trained in combat, they were also generally armed.

“I.. I have you trapped now… Please.. please surrender.. peacefully a-and don’t make.. this any harder for.. either of us.”  The warden was clearly exhausted at least, actually doing much worse than she was.  She had probably been making her rounds at a much more brisk pace, which would then explain her current state.  Meanwhile, her newest companion had gone completely quiet, watching for Lyun to lead by example.  Lyun really could see no good place to hide, nothing here would work at all.  Quite honestly, this place sucked for her current circumstances.  If only she was anywhere else right now, she might have had a chance.

Without warning, their surroundings suddenly went stiff and ashen white, as if the entire world had fallen to the same Kyuemu petrification that had claimed Yhzia.  The two girls then backed deeper into the room, concerned about what might be even going on as they found themselves back at the pedestal.  Then, the features of the world itself faded away too, leaving a blank expanse of pale nothing.  Both girls collapsed in a sudden surge of pain, as the colors of the world gradually returned to them.

Kori looked up again, seeing herself at least back in the cold cavern from earlier.  Her initial concern was that her entire experience earlier was nothing more than a hallucination, and that she had simply just woken up.  Sure, that intense heat had felt real, but it made no sense at all.  Her resolve in such beliefs continued until she noticed she had a guest choking on the dust and shivering in the cold, wearing absolutely nothing for herself.  The human looked almost the same as the one from before, with only slight variations.  The thing that stood out the most was the fact that this human also had the same sort of frozen arm she herself had to deal with, just on the opposite arm.  Having just been in the girl’s shoes, she had a pretty good idea what the experience would feel like.  Not wanting to leave a debt unpaid either, Kori also went to recover Fiona’s old clothes, which surprisingly enough looked like they would be a perfect fit.  Even in these small moments, she was getting the impression that she really didn’t want to leave momentos of her departed friend in a strange place like this, so instead she packed away everything else of Fiona’s along with her own stuff.

“You, again.  Wait, where is this now?”  “The place I was brought from, it seems you followed me back here.  I have no idea how we got back here though, but you’re going to need to put something on before you catch a cold.”  The human looked back at the clothes, reluctantly complying with Kori’s instructions.  The absolute strangeness of the situation had Kori convinced, this was absolutely no place to grieve for Fiona.  First, she needed to actually get out of here somehow, hopefully before something even worse decided to happen.  Fortunately, the path did not end with the altar, there was a path going further beyond it.  Kori set off along the new path, making sure to be careful with any passing winds.  From here, the path became absolutely crazy and narrow, pure cliff drops on both sides.  Meanwhile, the human wasn’t far behind her, clearly going in the same inevitable direction.  However, Kori could tell the whole situation hadn’t proven to yield the best of first experiences, this was probably going to become a meeting in passing, someone she would soon never see again.  The girl probably just thought she was an airhead anyway, much like any other human still alive.

“Wh-why do you have a gem on your forehead anyway?  I don’t think I noticed that earlier.”  “Because I’m an airhead, of course.”  “Air.. head?  Do you mean like, elementally?”  “What?  You mean like the periodic table?  Yes, it’s oxygen, though I thought everyone knew that by now.  Old jokes get old.”  The human went quiet at that, clearly perplexed by Kori’s statement somehow.  Frankly, that wouldn’t make sense, everyone on Aestus knew the joke already.  However, as she continued to scale over the steep path, she took a moment to account for her own experiences in that last while.  All of Aestus was flash frozen because it was currently Noctal.  Knowing that, the simple idea of where such a complicated monument she had seen earlier would remain in an area infused with such incredible heat.. nothing like that could possibly exist anywhere in all of Aestus.  When also accounting for the strange dialects, it got even more suspicious.  Seriously, not just this girl, but that all too obvious security officer were both speaking in the strangest form of english she had ever heard of before.  It was like they had problems making the ‘o’ sound at all, and had substituted it for a gallery of invented other vowels.  Quite honestly, nothing was adding up correctly.

“Such powerful winds, such mighty frost, such rich stone.. almost like the void phase has neglected this place completely.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but this isn’t Ruixse, is it?”  “I don’t even know what a Ruixse is.  Right now, we’re deep under the Diamond Falls, middle of nowhere really.  Then again, I get the impression none of that might be familiar for you either.  Do you at least know which planet is Aestus?”  “About as well as you know my world of Ruixse.”  So the human really did come from some other planet, a planet Kori had actually taken a few minutes to herself visit.  Void phase, that was probably an important term from her own homeworld.  With how intense the human’s accent was, she wasn’t even certain how she was supposed to even pronounce such a planet, Roiks?  After a few moments more of consideration, she realized the error of her ways.  Of course, such a place’s culture included their pronunciation, it wouldn’t be proper to force her own pronunciation upon them, that was repeating earth’s mistake for herself.  Clearly the cold was only getting to her, she just needed to set aside such confusions for when she could relax in safety once again.

The reality of her circumstances came back to haunt her then, as she got to witness one of Fiona’s final concerns in full expression.  The path ahead of her had actually crumbled into pieces, collapsing into the chasm below.  The good news was that everything was still in places that looked rational to scale, but the bad news was that the stones were probably all loose, ready to slide at the slightest provocation.  This was going to be exceptionally dangerous, no questions there.  Her newest companion for this challenge paused in reflection too, clearly at least also aware how bad things were as she visibly considered turning back.  Kori pressed onward regardless, already aware how grim her options remained.  Carefully moving from one stone to the next, knowing that picking the wrong stone could have the entire pile shift beneath her, she eventually noticed she was still being followed with an equal degree of care and concern in the path taken.  However, today just hadn’t been their lucky day, for either of them, really.  Not even an eighth of the way along, Kori gently shifted her weight onto a particular rock.. one which shifted several other rocks in turn.  She knew right then, she had screwed things up, the whole pile was going to slide now, and they were both going to be crushed.  As the pile slid downwards, she inwardly screamed her refusal, demanding that the whole thing just stopped.

A wash of intense chill overtook them both, a feeling that passed through her warm layers like such did not even exist.  After that was nothing but still and silence.  Kori opened her eyes and looked around, gasping.  Every single thing around her was frozen in a pale sheet, even stones that remained floating in mid air.  Meanwhile, nothing else changed.  It was a world washed in white, all over again, something that seems to happen of late by some means.  However, unlike previous times, the objects of the world were not also fading.  It means they weren’t being brought to somewhere else, this was more of a technical bug in reality.  However, much like the other times, this certainly wouldn’t be a bug that would be left to remain for much longer.  Switching from care to haste, Kori picked up the pace and started dashing along the frozen foundation, not even finding it slippery.  The human behind her had quickly caught on to the same line of thought and was making haste to cross as well.  Kori lept from the last stone to the firm path on the other side just as the pile of stones restored their sense of color and resumed their tumbling activity.  The human however was behind her the entire time, meaning she had not made it yet.  Kori turned around in time to see the woman make a desperate leap, her final ditch effort to try and grab something sturdy with her right hand.  Kori intercepted such a hand with her own left, the two hands locking together in a moment of frost.

It was a new experience, she knew she had grabbed onto something, but her body did not need to brace for the extra weight.  Her hand meanwhile couldn’t move at all, like it was suddenly frozen in the same way as the other stones had been.  This wasn’t just awkward for Kori, visibly the other woman was finding it weird to have her one arm suddenly suspended in it’s space, herself dangling from it freely otherwise.  With some visible difficulty, she managed to build some momentum in order to have her body shift enough to grab on to the cliff edge with her other arm.  From there, she realized she was in no way a skilled enough contortionist in order to bend herself in the angle needed to pull herself up with her arm suspended where it was.  Instead, she took careful timing with her momentum, built up some upwards momentum in the instant she tried to let go with her frozen arm.  Both arms resumed motion again, the human having finally successfully reached the rest of the path for herself.  The remainder of such a path became generally uneventful for a while, tension having kept everything quiet for the final stretch.  Then, Kori found herself before a fitting sight, a familiar slippery intersection, the same spot Kori and Fiona had originally fallen from.  She had finally found it, the path that led to the waterfall.

Such still presented one last final challenge.  This surface was very slippery, with a sudden misstep taking her right back to the very beginning all over again.  Meanwhile, they still had nothing on hand to deal with such a slippery surface.  So close, yet so far.  Kori’s hand twitched in aggravation, and in response a faded holo display appeared before her with a very simple message: [Are you okay?]

“Oh my word, my little ones actually found me here.  Yes, thank you.  Now, let’s see.. I’m going to need some equipment materialized, stuff to handle this ice.  The ice is also really really slick, so we’re going to need some excellent adhesive qualities.  Now, do we have stuff like that in stock?  Yes, awesome.  Oh, and please be certain to outfit the lady with me as well.”  “Who in the world are you talking to?”  “Ah, I guess from an outside perspective that might have looked awkward.  Let’s just say that I used some of the stuff we use on my planet to organize a bit of a rescue team.”   As Kori explained such details to the human, various styles of equipment started materializing out of thin air.  Kori made sure to secure everything on herself first, then started passing the extra equipment to her companion.  The human at least didn’t find much difficulty in emulating her own preparation.  After making sure everything was done properly, Kori led the way through the tunnel, finally returning to the pitch black night of the surface.

The moment she arrived on the surface was the same moment her thoughts contemplated that one of them had still not made it.  Fiona had still perished, she was gone now.  Crumpling into a pile of snow at the ice’s edge, the tears finally returned to her.  However, she quickly discovered she wasn’t alone in such either, the presence of tears reminding her companion that there was one other good reason for tears, one other who had perished that night.  They remained there for a time, until a holo display suddenly appeared before her, giving her an indication of general body temperature and a handy prompt for materializing another quick heat source.  Of course, her nanites would get worried that she was just going to get sick if she just kept neglecting herself like that.  On that matter, it might be a smart idea to get a full health update on herself, figure out if it was already too late for that.

She glanced over a handy little holo of her own medical condition, with everything generally reporting she was still doing okay, a brief overview of her body temperature flickering just below her name in the display.  It wasn’t as if everything was perfect though, her nanites were reporting that the body temperature of her one arm was as low as absolute zero.  The flickering around there was proving her nanites were generally confused and concerned by that result, such did not make sense and they were hoping to learn why.  Sadly, she did not know the reason herself either, it was also confusing and concerning for her.

The human with her had meanwhile calmed down as well, turning her curiosity towards the variety of displays appearing before Kori.  The human meanwhile looked like she couldn’t make any sense of anything present.  Well, at the very least, Kori should at least look into the health of such a human too while she was at it anyway.  Bringing up another view, she noticed that the human with her had thus far managed to stay healthy, with exception to that frozen arm problem.  However, she was startled when the name line at the bottom was not as blank as she would have expected, the person with her actually had a name on file, Rosalia Chalcedony.  Kori refreshed the holo, certain that such was a mistake.  Chalcedony was Fiona’s last name too, just what kind of coincidence was that, this had to be the worst kind of joke.  Doing a name lookup though, she found the same name in the directory, Rosa Chalcedony, sister of Fiona Chalcedony, same birthdate.

By the time their ride home had finally arrived almost half an hour later, Kori was absolutely livid.  She would absolutely get to the bottom of this, there was no way she would allow such craziness to make a mockery of her departed friend.

---

Previous -|- Portal -|- Next

FV – Chapter 4

Gilded Heart

Darkness had finally finished clouding the dusk of a brand new night.  With night full upon them, Kori and Fiona began their approach to the Diamond Falls.

Unfortunately, having been all business this trip, Kori hadn’t found any opportunity to hold a discussion with their pilot.  Instead, they were left in the viewing bay in the upper level of the small shuttle, giving the pilot a quiet sanctuary in the level below.  The guy would be back in around two hours to pick them up, enough time to shuttle another passenger.  In addition to their pilot, even Fiona had been especially quiet the entire flight, visibly captured by her own thoughts.  The combined silence made the trip feel generally awkward for Kori, who was generally hoping to work on a plan together while they travelled.  She was honestly worried that Fiona might have still been a little sleepy, considering how much she was spacing out like this.  From a distance, she could see exactly how much of the falls they had to work with, it wasn’t even a surprise.  Diamond Falls was one of the most important sources of Serenity lakes, a lake which got a lot of usage around here during the Diatal solar season.  However, during the Noctal solar season, the entire river itself was frozen solid in a gradual freeze in sheets at the falls as the river struggled between its own water pressure and the growing intensity of the cold, leaving a frozen scene of falling water suspended in midair.  Such was how the falls had earned their name too, the scene of glistening water captured in solid shimmering ice looking akin to diamonds, a detail they could see in all intensity once they started to walk around the basin of the falls..

“My word, now that’s something.  Can we get a closer look?”  “Sure, but make sure you stay bundled up tight.  We’re going to be here for a couple hours, wouldn’t want you to catch a cold or something.”  “Oh of course, I’m the only one that has to worry about getting sick here.  You conduits really are lucky, I hope you know that.”  Fiona was making reference to how Kori wasn’t actually human.  The people of earth, those were humans, but the people of Aestus were something else.  Sure, Kori appeared mostly humanoid, it was sometimes easy for her to hold herself as another human, but the biggest distinction remained the special plasma network going through her body, a second kind of blood.  This azure blue left faint patterns in a few distinct locations on her body, mostly on the back of her hands and the top of her feet.  She even had a slight protrusion on her forehead from the plasma core that protruded slightly as a tiny crystalline shape, itself made mostly of crystallized oxygen.  She could hide her cortex easily with the right hairstyle, or even a headband, though such features were more than just decoration.  This special plasma system provided her with considerably better resistance to harsh conditions, including both the diatal heat and the noctal chill, while supposedly keeping her extra safe from catching a variety of illnesses.  However, it wasn’t to say that such a system came without flaws, the much more pure plasma system of humans did what such blood did best much easier in their case.  Humans were remarkable in how quickly they could heal injuries or how easily they could endure climates with low oxygen levels.  As is, her glasses were quickly fogging up due to the intensity of her own breathing in the stagnant air.

With a quick motion, a holo panel appeared in front of Kori, and a flurry of motions after that had landed her with some basic survival equipment that had almost materialized out of the air.  That done, she carried the light heat lamp over to Fiona, letting the human share in the warmth.  Sure, being called conduits was a sort of slang name for her otherwise alien species, but it was actually better than the more scientific name.  Homo Caeli, like Homo Sapien, but actually stupid.  Literally too, it meant she was an airhead.  Such probably originated by that small detail about having crystalized oxygen on her forehead, but society really took that idea on a very different angle. Getting called an airhead was actually normal for her people, making the alternative of Conduit at least garnish much more respect.  If it was anyone other than Fiona, she would probably hear stupid jokes about her glasses being so fogged up cause she was such an airhead, it wouldn’t have been the first time.  Instead, Fiona was captivated by the still image before her, taking artistic notes of every detail for future reference, hardly even noticing the sudden warmth provided for her benefit.  After a few quick notes, she would suddenly go searching for another spot even closer, providing a new and fresh perspective.

At a point, Kori discovered that the day would include balancing practice, Fiona having gone right out onto the ice to get the most up close view possible.  At this point, there were standing among the cascades of water sheets frozen all over.  The waterfall itself was still sheets suspended in layers in the air, but a number of splashes around them had frozen into very complicated piles in the most spontaneous arrangement of tiny white ice towers.  Fiona went straight up to the water sheets itself, looking carefully at the decorative white mist patterns captured within the ice, taking even more notes.  However, in all her excitement, she had found herself in a position of precarious footing without the right precautions against slipping.  The inevitable happened, causing Fiona to tumble into the waterfall barrier itself.  Kori however was right there beside her, grasping her hand for balance even as she started to stumble.  However, such wasn’t enough to save the day, the two girls both getting carried in the momentum.  Slamming hard against the ice fall together shattered it, causing them to slide into a small alcove on the other side.  There, they found themselves on a slope coated with pure ice leading into an underground cavern, with inertia still working against them.

Kori had seen that there was a much more shallow slope in the cavern, effectively devoid of ice in the process, but the water flow from the falls had painted off a side path that went downwards at a much more dramatic angle.  Sliding down the icy path in a rapid descent, the two girls quickly found themselves in a snowbank at the bottom.  The walls of the cavern shimmered with the reflection of light on ice, but otherwise remained conspicuously dark. To address such a problem, Kori made a quick motion to call upon some Nanite support.. but there was no response.  She personally hadn’t known there was a cavern here at all, and was pretty sure no one else knew of its existence either, this was quite the accidental discovery.. but that did mean that her nanites weren’t designed to be responsive in this area, and probably weren’t even present.  The two of them really were on their own.  Help might come in about two hours, but help wouldn’t even know where to look for them, and certainly wouldn’t have the equipment to brave such a path too.  Organizing a practical search party would take several more hours.  Meanwhile, she was already starting to feel really cold, something which would have been far and all worse for Fiona.  Something was keeping this cave at such a low temperature to make even the surface look warm and cozy.  They simply couldn’t afford to simply wait for a rescue, they would freeze far quicker than that.  Instead, they would have to keep moving, to try and locate another path back to the upper levels of the cave.

“Are you doing okay?”  “My word I’m dizzy.  Also, it really got cold real quick, didn’t it?”  “It did, so we need to keep moving.  Can you stand?”  “Oh, yeah, makes sense.  Sounds like you already have an idea for getting out of here.”  “Close to nothing, why?”  “Oh, so it’s that bad, huh?  Oh well, no helping things then.  Complaining won’t get us out of here any faster, so lead the way.”  Kori did exactly as Fiona requested, taking the lead in what was initially their only way forward.  After hardly any travel at all, they found their first fork in the path, quickly followed by even more forks.  The caverns almost appeared to divide indefinitely, going everywhere and nowhere at both the same time.  Without any guide to measure from, it was also difficult to determine if they were even going in circles as the trail took them up and down through a complex network.

“This is clearly nature’s way of saying we don’t belong here.”  “I’m sorry my planet seems to have taken offense like this, alright?”  “Don’t worry, this isn’t your fault.  I’m the one that slipped back there.  Really though, I’ll figure this out, don’t you worry about it.”  Fiona was so obviously trying to hide her concerns, Kori could tell very easily.  Even so, she wasn’t about to bring it up, it would be important to remain strong and provide an unending resolve in the face of such danger.  If Fiona was going to work so hard to pick up the slack in that area, Kori wasn’t about to be left behind in that either.  The two of them continued on their path all while Fiona visibly got colder and colder, coughing slightly as they travelled.  At a notable point though, the path began to narrow rapidly and simply ascend upwards.  However, this path which held so much potential suddenly swiftly ended in a cave in, rocks having tumbled in their way to suddenly block their path.  This was the point where Fiona’s determination was all but spent, the cold having taken its toll on her as is.  She found a spot to sit at the side of the path, visibly looking to have given up wordlessly.

With Fiona having stepped aside, Kori decided that it was her turn to step forward.  Kori simply refused to give up so easily, she wasn’t about to let them down after having come so far.  She took a glance over the pile of stones, quickly determining that this was a point of slope from the area above that had settled rocks onto the path, and the rocks had gotten stuck trying to slide down to the right.  Of course, just like Fiona, if the problem was in the inability to keep going, Kori would just need to lend a hand in keeping things moving.  Bashing hard against the barrier from the right angle, she managed to set loose the collection of rocks, resulting in a cascade reaction of falling rocks.  An opening formed before them, so Kori swiftly grabbed Fiona’s hand and brought her through it.  Soon after they passed through, their retreat was quickly blocked off with new rocks having taken the place of the old.  Not just that, but every step felt like a rumble, like the cavern was getting ready to drop even more rocks upon them.

“Okay, we’re doomed.”  “Why are you giving up so soon, we made it past that barrier?”  “Don’t you hear that rumbling?  All that rock came from somewhere, it was perfectly content to sit there.. and now it isn’t.  We’re going to have a landslide on our head any moment now, it’s just inevitable at this point.  Stuff like this is always a chain reaction.  Worse, all that rock probably came from the way out, meaning that we just lost our path.  We are officially stuck between a rock and a hard place.”  “We aren’t stuck until we can prove there is no more path.  Rocks falling change nothing either, this has been a race against the cold already, now we just have even more reasons to not stop.  We’ve made it this far already, so certainly we just need to keep up the pace and we’ll be out of here no problem.”  Fiona was looking at Kori like she had gone insane.  Kori however honestly saw no reason to call it quits until they either made it or perished.  While a path still existed, she would walk it.  Fiona had sparked that feeling of inspiration within Kori, Kori was determined to not let such a spark just fade away.  Fueled by such resolve, Kori took to the lead and guided them to an underground plateau way high above a cold chasm depth.  A swift chilling air current passed over the plateau from below, the latest threat that tried to invite them to an even swifter of a death.

Set into the ground in the center of the plateau was some kind of naturally-formed altar, a haze of sparks forming with the arch of the altar.  Visibly curious at this point, Fiona stepped forward to get a closer look at the strange anomaly.  Once close enough, the subtle haze started to fizzle away, revealing something decidedly not natural that had been hidden within.  There, sitting upon the altar was something akin to a strange jigsaw cube.. except for being golden and a sphere.  The entire contraption looked decidedly mechanical at that too, though it looked like whatever task it might have had had long ceased, the multitude of blank panels spanning the device having long ago lost whatever purpose they might have had.  At that moment, Fiona reached towards the strange novel, ready to pick it up.. and then hesitated.  With a firm step backwards, she turned to observe the anomaly once again.. and then stumbled as the wind returned with a refreshed vengeance.  Kori then rushed forwards, grabbing Fiona’s hand with her right hand and grasping the altar for support with her left.  Her left hand stumbled slightly, but such winds were short lived, so when she stumbled, grasping the strange anomaly instead, the winds had already dissipated.

Quickly, Kori found her hand freezing around the anomaly, coating in a pure white frost.  Being so perfectly frozen, she found herself unable to drop the strange anomaly, and the frost was rapidly climbing up her arm.  Fiona rushed over to help pry the thing out of Kori’s grasp, but it just turned on her instead with an even more intense vigor.  In the blink of an eye, Kori found herself standing beside a white ice sculpture of her best friend, the anomaly itself having slipped away in the chaos.  Seconds later, that same sculpture shattered into tiny flakes of frost, leaving all of Fiona’s possessions behind.

In a faint desperation, her resolve finally broken, Kori rushed to pick up the remains of her childhood friend, setting her possessions into a safe alcove of the altar like it was some kind of burial monument.  That simply could not have just happened, it was impossible.  Her own left arm, however, drew attention to the reality of her circumstances, itself still frozen in the same ice frame.  It was exceptionally pale right now, bleach white well up her sleeve, but she could move it again.  If this was the impossible, then the impossible had just happened, there was no way she could deny it.  Breaking down, she collapsed against the altar, tears of grief scouring her face.

It felt like an instant suspended in time, where in one instant her best friend was still there beside her.. and in the next she was gone.  In that instant, Kori fervently wished for an escape, to be able to face any other reality that was not this one.

---

Previous -|- Portal -|- Next