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Chapter 163 - The Edge of Imagination
🕑 Added 2022-02-14 17:16:12 +0000 UTC"Thanks for the meal." I lean back on my seat and sigh in satisfaction. Since this is more of a bar than a restaurant, it makes sense that they don't have that big of a selection of food. But they still served all the dishes available on their menu, most of which go well with alcohol.
Ultimately, Shin and Nina brought out every last bit of their food stores to cook for us. It was a veritable banquet after all the hardships leading up to here. But we're presented with a new problem now.
"Umm, do you have money to pay them?" I turn to Exla, who stares at me with an eyebrow raised.
"You think I would have any of Alverost's game currency?" She sounds genuinely offended, but I can tell it's an act. As the Guardian of the Soil who lived in exile on the Dark Continent for over a millennium, it's not surprising that she wouldn't have the currency of the Rhodos station.
"What about you?" I turn to Sintress, who shakes her head in response.
"I live on alms and the goodwill of the people." She explains with a sad smile. Even if she's an Old Human, her way of life seems to have been the most grounded among them. After all, she had many children with new humans throughout her long life.
I turn to Kerry, who doesn't even wear clothes besides the golden shawl draped over their shoulders. They blink when they notice my gaze, but I turn away without speaking up.
"Dine and dash when they received us so warmly?" I consult with Exla and Sintress, feeling guilty just considering the prospect. If I truly wanted to, I could leave for a moment and shake down the soldiers watching us from outside the bar for some money. But that would only invite future hardships on the father and daughter pair.
"Oh, you don't have to worry about paying." Nina seems to have overheard our hushed conversation and states with a wry smile. "It's our utmost honor to receive the patronage of our gods."
"We are no gods." Exla remarks while sipping on her drink and staring into the distance. She got a whisky neat, something I always associated with hard-boiled detectives in older movies. Her gaze suggests a sense of detachment from the conversation, but I wonder if she isn't just drunk.
"I would feel bad not paying after all that you did for us." I try to gloss over Exla's words and grab Nina's attention. For now, there's no need to confront the civilians of the Rhodos station with the truth. "We ate and drank so much."
As I say that, Korenga behind me shatters another glass when she shifts around to express her joy. She's not doing it on purpose, but this space isn't made for somebody of her size. If she jumped up from her seat, she would most likely make a hole in the ceiling, and if she accidentally hit her elbow against a wall, it would be torn down.
"This is an occasion that happens only once in many generations." Shin walks up to us while Nina quickly cleans the broken glass on the floor. "We have already received our payment."
He nods in the direction of their photo with the three Old Humans and the group picture on the celebrity wall. I understand the concept of keepsakes as a form of payment, but my conscience won't let me exploit their ignorance.
"And thus, Chaos's story comes to an end in this Rhodos city, being forced into dishwashing for a hundred years to clear the tab she and her friends racked up in under an hour." Senka comments next to me, and I shoot her a narrow-eyed glare. She shrugs with an ironic grin and continues. "How about you pay them back by freeing this world?"
Shin and Nina don't understand what the doll girl is talking about, so they tilt their heads in wonder. I wouldn't say breaking their worldview and potentially making their lives miserable in the process is payment.
"I will come back and repay you in a few days at most. There is something I have to do before then." Standing up from my seat and bowing deeply, I declare in a firm tone. Everybody grows quiet and stares at me, including the father and daughter pair. They're surprised at my sense of duty, then smile in resignation.
"Alright, I will open a tab for you." Shin sighs and takes out his smartphone. He types in something and shows me the result.
"That's a lot of zeroes." My eyes adjust to the long number, unsure what to make of it. I have no idea about the currency used here, but even if it were in Japanese yen, it would be a considerable sum. But I gather my wits and grin. "I am a queen. This should be nothing."
We wave goodbye to Shin and Nina as we walk down the alleyway together. Although we consumed copious amounts of alcohol, it seems that everybody's minds are surprisingly clear. Even the humans, who also had a few glasses, appear steady and focused once more now that the break is over.
This time, Sintress leads the way. We'll be using the transportation circle underneath the Rhodos city hall, which she and the others used to come here quickly from the crashed Queen Pelomyx. It's not supposed to be a publicly accessible space, but they used a secret passage which we're using to get inside.
Along the way, I notice that the soldiers sent to tail us seem to be in disarray. Judging by their movements, they're talking to their superiors over their communication devices and asking for instructions. But as we disappear into an alleyway near the city hall and descend into a hidden door on the floor, they lose sight of us.
It's a short walk from the surface, through a perfectly clean corridor that leads into the basement of the government building before we come upon another hidden door in the wall. The inside has a small elevator that doesn't fit all of us, so we go in groups of four.
Finally, we're all reunited in front of the transportation room reserved for the Old Humans. Unlike those on Earth, this one doesn't use brickwork to hide its advanced technology. The circle itself is elevated from the circular room, and instead of magic inscriptions, it merely features concentric rings of metal and glass. There is no control panel, but I know to use the Imagination Engine to activate it.
As the stream of light surrounds us, I realize for the first time the underlying mechanism of this so-called teleportation. Since I moved faster than light at one point, I can grasp the essence of this technology - or rather fantasy - within the short moment it lasts before we find ourselves at our destination.
"It's truly magical, isn't it?" Senka comments snidely, having read my mind again. "And here you thought this was science fiction."
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, but in a world of advanced technology, magic becomes indistinguishable from it instead." I reply with a wry smile. I'm not even surprised at the revelation of this truth about the Old Humans' transportation circle at this point.
Flann gives me a meaningful look, although her expression doesn't change. I should have guessed as much when I consider her and her father's powers. Also, there's the truth about our origin and the eyes in the sky. It should have been obvious that under the laws of physics, creating something like the Imagination Engine is impossible.
We walk out of the transportation room and enter a straight corridor with a ceiling steeped in darkness. The only light comes from low lamps let into the wall periodically, illuminating the simple metal-looking surface of the floor. At the end is a large and smooth elevator platform that takes us up a tall shaft disappearing into the blackness above.
As with the corridor before, we only have sparse illumination on the platform, lighting us up from below. Nobody speaks a word, preparing themselves mentally for what is about to happen. My Chaos senses tell me that beyond here lies a sterile world lacking even the presence of microbes. Only Shelnir and Elaine can be felt in the distance and the void that is Mataku near them.
The shaft opens above us, and the elevator comes to a halt in the middle of a vast open empty space with no walls or ceiling in sight. We can't see beyond the distant darkness, making it feel like we're on the surface of a metal planet in open space.
"Where are we?" Uten and Saten look around curiously and ask in an almost reverent tone. The utter silence of this space seems to swallow their voices, but at least there is a breathable atmosphere here.
"This is the Imagination Engine chamber." Exla explains while looking ahead. "Reality does not exist in here."
"I can feel it." Asoko comments with a sideways glance at me. Although her mind hasn't gotten to my level yet, her senses pick up the anomaly of this space.
"Stay together, or you might get lost." Sintress extends a hand toward Sigurd, who takes it bashfully. It would be a heartwarming sight to see mother and son bonding if it were not for the uncanny feeling of this seemingly infinite chamber. Everybody is ill at ease here except for me. Somehow, I feel right at home.
We follow the Old Humans in what seems to be an arbitrary direction. The elevator we came in here on barely distinguishes itself from the rest of the repeating meaningless pattern on the floor, and there are no landmarks one could use to orientate oneself. I get the feeling one could truly get lost in here even though it's all a flat surface.
"The elevator is gone!" Svanhild suddenly exclaims, and we turn around on the spot. Even though we only walked a dozen meters, the elevator floor lamps have disappeared. There is now only an endless expanse of metal.
"If we get too far from each other, we might get separated forever." Exla shakes her head and asserts. Everybody huddles together a little more at those words, looking around in worry. "It could take us only two steps to get to the core of this tesseract or decades of aimless wandering. That's the nature of this chamber."
"I'd rather not we have to walk for that long. Could get tiring with me lugging this around." Gram jokes while shifting the weight of his shield to carry it better. He may be trying to lighten the mood, but it's clear that he's nervous.
Everybody else is the same. They came face to face with over a dozen Oinos mass production models earlier, but that was still within the possible. Now, they have entered the unfathomable, and the confusion is eating away at their sanity.
"Bring us to it then, sis-..." I turn to Flann but trail off when I find a massive cube filling my view where none had been before. My half-sister notices my surprised gaze and looks behind her. It's a metal structure with countless glowing lines running across it in no perceivable order.
"We were lucky this time." Kerry says behind me, but I don't want to turn around, fearing that the core may disappear again when nobody is looking at it.
"Is this space the entire middle section of the Rhodos station?" I ask Exla without turning to her.
"It could be. The sensors on the outside say that the core is always at the exact center of this space. Inside here, it's everywhere and nowhere." She responds, also making sure not to look away.
"This hurts my head." Halthor remarks while walking toward the cube. Among everybody, he understands the situation the least, but he still came all this way to help in our struggle. I have to give him credit for that.
Everything in here feels familiar. When I think about it, it's like my infinite interior where nothing is in a fixed place until I decide for it to be. It's as if the inside of a Crawling Chaos is bleeding into real space and messing with the laws of reality. In fact, that must be exactly what's happening here.
Inside that tesseract core must be a gateway to the realm of the Outer One.
"How do we get in there?" Hestia asks while flying up to the bottom of the cube. She's not using the jet engines on her wings but the Imagination Engine to not disturb the otherwise perfect silence of this space with their loud roar.
"There are no doors. We just end up inside at one point." Once again, Exla gives a cryptic explanation. "Not like anybody normally has any business going in there."
"Inside the core is a space of raw possibility." Sintress adds, her brow slightly furrowed. "The Imagination Engine filters out that possibility and limits it so that only the probable can be achieved."
"That's what ended Zylos, huh?" I raise an eyebrow and wonder, causing the Lady of Brilliance to nod with a sad expression. I always thought that the power of imagination was limited because of the laws of physics. But I guess it's precisely because of the laws of physics that imagination has to be limited. Otherwise, this universe would be quite a different place already.
I won't ask how the Old Humans were able to limit possibility to probability using technology. Even if I have access to infinity and my consciousness could move beyond time and space itself, I'm still a high school student who failed physics on the inside.
"So that means we will have to contend with Shelnir and Elaine with their imaginations unbound?" Rolan asks while peering up at the cube floating a dozen meters above us. He has grasped the gist of our conversation somewhat but still has difficulties understanding its true implications. His abilities stemming from the Imagination Engine may be at a level close to the Old Humans, but it still only manifests as physical strength and moving incredibly fast. Who knows what the Guide of Tomorrow and the God of the Sun could do inside this core where the laws of physics don't need to be upheld?
Everybody grows silent at the prospect of having to fight unfettered potential and looks up at the cube's rough surface. But in that regard, I doubt anybody can outdo my potential now. Also, we have Exla, the Old Human with the most powerful imagination with us. Even if I were not here, she should be able to hold her own against those two.
"We are inside." Flann remarks and pulls everybody out of their reverie. When we look around, we find ourselves in a large cubical room that should be the inside of the core we were staring at moments ago. Every surface has a square opening, including in the ceiling and on the floor, leading into identical cubical rooms.
"This is messing with my mind." Korenga grumbles as she looks around.
"It is indeed baffling." Tahiri floats up and looks through the opening on the ceiling while Hestia descends again. The fallen Fata silently clings to my arm, and her expression shows that she's afraid. Kamii and Aurelia have their emotions under control still, but it's clear that they're uncomfortable. All of this can no longer be explained through magic, technology, or even raw imagination.
This is in the realm of us cosmic entities.
"Feels like home." Uten and Saten remark in unison as they walk toward the hole in the floor. When they look inside, their expressions grow blank, and they turn around to us. "Can you tell that we aren't standing on the floor but the ceiling?"
Right as they say that, everybody's sense of gravity shifts, and those who can't fly fall toward what used to be the ceiling. I grab hold of everybody unable to catch themselves with tentacles sprouting from my back.
"Stop saying such misleading things. There is no floor or ceiling in here." I remark, and the Imagination Engine accommodates our collective consciousness by turning off gravity. Everybody's hair begins to float, but I keep my feet firmly planted on the rough metal surface. Much like the outside space, this one is also covered in uncanny patterns the meaning of which only the builders would know.
"And this space isn't as large as it seems." Tokomaha declares as if having realized something. When she says it, the distant patterns on the walls of this cubic space grow within everybody's vision. I shift my gaze slightly and realize that what used to be a room of easily fifty by fifty meters has been reduced to one of five by five meters.
"It's pretty cramped all of a sudden." Korenga complains while knocking on the wall that is now right next to her. The slight pushing force causes her body to float away from it slightly. The openings on the surfaces that measured several meters across are now small windows, revealing that all the rooms beyond are as tiny as this one.
Kamii peeks through one of the windows and shudders at the sight of the recursive rooms that disappear into infinity. The cube looked finite on the outside, but reality doesn't matter in here. Wordlessly, the little dark elf takes my hand and intertwines her fingers with mine. Her squeeze tells me that she's afraid to be separated from me.
"Why are Shelnir and Elaine awaiting us inside this place?" Rolan wonders, exchanging a glance with Luna. He said earlier that we would have to contend with the two Old Humans at their full potential here, but he realizes that the reality of this space is too malleable to have any semblance of control. Anybody could overthrow their imagination on the spot.
"Maybe they want to go out with a bang." Floating in the air as if lying on a hammock, Asoko comments with a shrug. Here, they have no limitations, so they could create a second sun. It surely would fit Elaine to do that, but I don't know what Shelnir's personal fantasy is.
"Or they want to banish you all to the other side." Flann adds, causing everybody to turn to her. So I was right in assuming that one of the tears in space leading to the Outer One is inside this tesseract. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say because the tear is here that this is a tesseract.
"What about Mataku?" Tahiri wonders when she realizes that our talk is about otherworldly beings.
"What about him?" I turn to the God of Storms with an eyebrow raised. I don't think this space changes anything about his power relative to ours; he was always far beyond the Old Humans.
"Why is he here?" She asks while letting sparks fly from her fingers that connect with the wall but dissipate. It may seem metallic at first but appears to be a non-conductive material. She may have been trying to travel through it and search for our target.
"Surely to return home." I glance at Flann. From our conversation, I know that Mithra is trying to rebel against the Outer One. Where Mataku is, the former court magician won't be far, but how much he can do in the end is questionable.
"So we beat Shelnir and Elaine, and then Mataku, and we'll have peace, huh?" Asoko pumps her fist with a grin. I would love to have such a simple-minded outlook on what lies before us, but I can only smile wryly. "Somehow, I feel like you just insulted me in your mind, sister."
"Nothing of the sort." Shrugging, I turn away and peer through one of the windows into the adjacent rooms. My Chaos senses tell me that the Old Humans are very near, but I get the feeling that we won't be able to find them if we don't imagine ourselves doing so.
With this in mind, I move through one of the openings into the next room and peer up. There, in the next room over, is a large open space that looks like it could be the outside of this cube. And within that space is a massive machine generating a bright force field that illuminates its surroundings. Two figures stand before it with their backs toward me.
"I found them." I turn around to call out to my companions, but they're nowhere to be seen. Really, I should have expected this when I left them behind, but it's surprising that it happened so quickly.
"We should have all held hands." Kamii comments in a level tone as I turn to her. Through her hand, I can tell that she's shivering in fear or anticipation when she looks at the machine in the next room over.
"They will find their way." I pull the little dark elf closer and head for the opening in the ceiling. As we pass over the threshold, gravity takes hold of us again, and I help Kamii over the edge before she falls back into the previous room.
"How nice of you to join us here, at the edge of reality!" Shelnir turns around to greet us with her arms outstretched in a grand gesture. She wears a beautiful navy blue kimono with a wave print. Her expression shows that she's absolute sure of her superiority.
Elaine looks the same as she did when she appeared in the sky over Kairaki, except that her hair is unkempt, and she wears a white lab coat. She glances over her shoulder with sunken, empty eyes, but they widen when she sees me. She must have been in a trance and only now realizes what is happening.
"What did you do to the solar storm?" She dispenses with any greetings and demands to know, her eyes twitching in a display of her unstable mind.
"Now, now. We will have plenty of time to speak about such things in a moment when everybody is here." Shelnir waves a hand to stop Elaine from continuing. I can tell from her demeanor that she has become unhinged herself, clearly having forgotten that I broke her last prophecy. After all, I was supposed to kill Luna when trying to free her, which in turn should have made Rolan fight me to the death. "I can tell what you are thinking."
The Guide of Tomorrow turns away from us, wholly unconcerned that we could try to attack her. Kamii squeezes my hand as if to signal that we should make our move now, but I shake my head ever so slightly. It's not that I'm afraid because we have been separated from the others, but one part of me has a morbid interest in the Old Humans' last gambit.
"The battle to the death will still happen, but it doesn't have to be perfect. Life is imperfect after all!" Spreading her arms, Shelnir speaks with her back turned to me. She's staring up at the force field as if praying to it rather than addressing me. "I planted the seed, and the core of the tesseract has delivered the water. Watch it bloom now."
The moment she says this, she spins around and points past me. I notice with my Chaos senses that my companions have arrived and turn to look. They seem surprised when they notice that space has changed before their very eyes but prepare for battle upon seeing Shelnir and Elaine.
Suddenly, bright lights appear behind everybody. Then, a barrage of plasma beams shoots out from the rear. One cuts through Kamii's cursed arm and severs it cleanly just below the shoulder. The little dark elf screams in pain as her crab pincer drops to the floor.
The core of Hestia's wing covers on her back is hit, igniting the machinery inside and causing it to explode. She's flung through the room and into a wall by the pressure of the explosion.
Aurelia has a hole burned through her abdomen from behind. Molten gold pours from the wound as she looks down at herself with an utterly surprised expression and collapses to her knees.
Tokomaha's instincts allow her to barely dodge the sudden attack, but her leaf hair bursts out into flames. Tahiri has her head cut off, but her body turns into lightning, negating the damage. Korenga doesn't even notice when a beam whips across her back until it singes her hair, upon which she spins around in surprise.
Asoko, Uten, and Saten each have a beam cutting through their torso, but they're Crawling Chaoses, so they can repair the damage immediately.
I stare into the small cubical room, past the carnage, where Luna hovers a few inches off the ground. She's surrounded by several balls of plasma, and her eyes are glowing with power, but it's clear that her mind is gone. Rolan and the others turn to look at her, unable to comprehend what the half-elf just did.
Before Luna can shoot again, now aiming at those around and behind her, Rolan disappears in a blur and tackles her down to the ground. The plasma balls floating around her go haywire and scatter into tiny pellets that pelt the surroundings. This time, Sintress is quick enough to react and erects the Perfect Sanctuary around everybody, shielding them from the deadly rain.
A blast of wind sends Rolan flying up and crashing into the ceiling. Rising from the ground is the empowered Luna, who raises her arms to summon another array of plasma spheres. Sintress points at the half-elf, upon which a Perfect Sanctuary surrounds her and locks her in space. But Luna merely waves her hand and cuts through the barrier with a plasma beam as if it were paper.
Utterly shocked, the Lady of Brilliance can't react in time and has both her legs cut through by the continuing beam. She falls to the ground but raises both her hands to lock Luna's limbs in place directly with smaller barriers like I attempted against Oinos in Kairaki.
Gram, Sigurd, Svanhild, and Halthor stare at the imprisoned Luna with their mouths hanging open, unable to comprehend what just happened in the last few moments.
Then, space shifts and changes. The walls of the cubical room move away, and the floor stretches, pulling everybody apart. Segments of the floor and wall fold in a kaleidoscopic display that boggles the mind. Moments later, everybody has been separated, and all I'm left with inside the cubical room that returns to its original size are my beloved girls wounded and dying on the floor.
