RE: The Delightful Reverie (FTG2) (Round Three: Crossroads City)
11-25-2023, 07:52 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-25-2023, 08:07 AM by Ixcaliber.)
It had been three years since her escape. Since she’d found that hidden sliphole in the quaint streets of Crossroads City, hurried through it and found herself here in this empty desert ruin. In all that time they hadn’t seen any of the other contestants, or heard the voice of The Dreamer - that entrancingly soft voice like the plucked strings of an enchanted harp, that somehow did nothing to hide the pitiless emptiness of her soul, or the cruelty of her command - demanding she return to her Delightful Reverie, or that which she feared more, the hand of her employers reaching out across the multiverse to drag her back to work.
It had taken a long time for Lucia to relax and accept that nobody was coming after her. She still had nightmares of the Elders of the Raxu Council arriving in town to take back their puppet-like control of her body and put her back to work. Being snatched up to fight in a battle to the death hadn’t been pleasant but at least she’d had autonomy for the first time in a decade.
And here in this empty ruin she was able to find peace in a way she hadn’t for a long time. It would have been a lot harder to stand this place had she still been entirely alive. As an indebted soul bound to the rotten remains of her own corpse, which was in turn bound to a humanoid-shaped hinged metal cage, she didn’t have a lot of need for food or water, which certainly made her stay easier.
She had salvaged planks of wood and hunks of stone to turn one of the ruined structures into something a little homier, a little more liveable.
In terms of entertainment, well this place was still connected to Crossroads City and occasionally things would fall through the gaps; old almanacs and magazines, spellbooks for some of the most useless branches of magic she’d ever heard of, a surprising amount of fae bodice-rippers where a powerful fae lady is wooed by the simple charms of a mortal. Not really Lucia’s thing but she’d ended up reading the entire Miss Hemlock series multiple times over the years.
She was sure that many people, even the person she had once been in life, would find this life dull. But it was hers and she was content.
—
The Huntsman was a professional and as such they finished up their business before they left to take care of personal matters. They had been hired to eliminate all the remaining escapees from The Delightful Reverie, and Lucia here was the last one.
Lucia had maintained a respectable survival rate of 64.22% up to this point. If this were sport The Huntsman would have given her some kind of heads up that she was being hunted, it was more fun when the prey knew what they were.
Lucia was idly gathering materials out in the open and so The Huntsman had their choice of where to target. The head was an obvious first choice, but she was a reanimated corpse and so it probably wouldn’t make much of an impact percentage wise. Through the scope they could see ancient runes burned into the metal of the frame that housed her; could be the thing that was keeping her alive, there was one way to find out for sure. They carefully aimed, and then took the shot.
A loud bang, a distant impact and they had been right, for a second Lucia collapsed to the ground, the magic animating her dissipating before she’d even had time to process what was happening. She was finally dead again and maybe that wasn’t so bad. Then the next second Lucia was back, but different.
She was an eight foot steam powered automaton, whose central body was a pod containing her human form, perfectly preserved in a viscous pink gel. And she was a little confused as to where she was. Her survival rate, as observed by The Huntsman, had plummeted all the way down to 3.41%. They quickly adjusted their aim - once again the body was a tempting target but they opted instead for the bulky part of the mech’s torso, right below the pod that contained her human body.
This Lucia had escaped from The Delightful Reverie as well, but she’d found a different multiversal back-passage and ended up at an ancient overgrown castle in a rugged highland. The dissonance between being there a moment ago and being here now was overwhelming, but before she’d had the opportunity to really process it, a bullet tore through her central processing unit. She stumbled, her pod cracked and spilled out its preserving pink goo onto the sands, and died again. And then the next second she was back, different once again.
This version of her (down to 0.52% now) was an ominous red cloud nailed to a humanoid wooden frame that had long rusted blades instead of limbs. Quickly she was running, or at least attempting to run, her bladed legs had a difficulty finding purchase in the fine sand. All she had to do was get back through the sliphole, out here in the empty desert she didn’t really have a shot against what was hunting her, but if she forced them to come to her then at least she might go out fighting.
One shot went wide, thrown off by her unexpected burst of activity. The second shot hit her shoulder, her whole right side splintered, her blade arm thrown loose, her frame just about holding together by sheer force of will. (0.47% now.) She stumbled and the next shot went overhead. She was right on the threshold of the sliphole when the final shot pierced the roiling red cloud of her soul and tore it in two. Her final death (0.0% survival rate at last) echoed with a psychic scream that even The Huntsman had to flinch away from, and her broken body fell into the sliphole. It would resurface in Crossroad City, nothing but a broken collection of hinged wooden struts.
—
After the warpsap tree vanished Kaja decided that was enough for one day. There was no way of knowing how far it had gone and in which direction. He resolved to bring this to the others tomorrow when he was rested. He’d kept them in the dark about his intentions to find an escape route primarily because he didn’t want to raise any hopes he couldn’t fulfill. Given the circumstances he was willing to risk disappointing them if it meant they might have a real shot at freedom.
He probably wouldn’t tell them about Simphonia though. It wasn’t that he felt that he was using her and he’d be judged for it. His relationship with Simphonia was symbiotic or at least he really genuinely believed that. There was another reason, one harder to admit to himself.
They’d all been doing it; the math of who was the most disposable. Luron and the Zachs hadn’t been willing to stand against Zaire and so a small part at the back of the mind goes ‘well okay, in an emergency’ and waits for the next time Zaire decides to put a ticking timer on their safety. Right now Kaja felt like he was the break glass in case of emergency sacrifice for the greater good. Sure Scott was more inclined towards cowardice, but his ability was almost too valuable to pass up.
Without Simphonia Kaja was probably next on the chopping block when the time came. And that due date felt as though it was nearly upon them. With Simphonia he could pass that buck to Scott. If they weren’t anticipating it he was pretty sure he could take out Kargrek or Bellona, but the thought of the other being up in arms about it in the next round was a disincentive. One he hoped he wouldn’t have to come to face eventually.
He made his way to what had come to pass for home carefully, not quite as meticulously as he had been when he’d been on the trail of the warpbirds, but careful enough. Simphonia followed behind trailing with a particularly mournful violin dirge.
His makeshift home / laboratory was located within the warped and hollowed out stump of an enormous tree. Calling it a stump was perhaps to give the wrong idea, it was several storeys high and wider in diameter than his home had been in his own world. The bark of the tree was a rich deep brown, thick but brittle to the touch. There was a large crack in one face that served as the main entryway. It was just wide enough for him to carefully ease himself through. For someone without a permanent extremely clunky backpack it would have been amply wide.
Inside the sunlight shone in through a multitude of tiny, and some not so tiny, holes where the bark had flaked away. Inside there was a large stone slab, dragged in from outside, which served as a table, and was littered with washed out and drying potion vials, and a number of small piles of different types of leaves, powdered fragments of shells, stalks and seeds, and slices of mushroom and fruit in varying levels of ripeness. In one corner a pile of soft ( and alchemically useless) plants, some of which were starting to rot, that Kaja made do with in place of a bed.
Another corner (as much as a more or less circular space had corners) had been painstakingly cleared, the soil underfoot tilled and Kaja had been using it to grow some of the more useful reagents he’d found in this place. Though the introduction of the Bastard Climbing Vine (as he called it) had been a mistake; it was good for accelerated healing but it had also grown to cover every vertical surface and was burying some of the other, equally useful reagents.
It was not the coziest home someone could have asked for, but given the circumstances it was perfectly serviceable. It wasn’t as if Kaja had been living in the lap of luxury back in his own homeworld.
He took a seat (a small flat stone) and fished from one of his many pockets a small rectangular tin. He put it down on the table and with his free hand carefully opened it up. Inside were small slips of paper, intended as labels for his potions but he seldom had reason to use them, and an unremarkable fountain pen and a small pot of ink.
Doing anything of any finesse like this was inherently a little trickier one handed. He swapped Zaire’s blade from one hand to another as he uncapped the pen, uncorked the ink, and carefully started to draw the warptree. He made little annotations surrounding it; flaky white bark, neon blue sap, cyan and blue-green leaves, large in circumference, only slightly taller than average. He even drew in some pretty awful sketches of the warpbirds and added a note or two about them.
Outside Simphonia, in her more humanoid form, settled down in a small nook she liked in a small copse of trees and bushes that gave her really nice acoustics. Here her music took on a more peaceful tone, soft bells and piano with a couple of snare beats replaced the mournful violin solos. After a while Niji, Kaja’s discarded experiment in understanding the warpbird physiology now wandering loose in the surrounding area, pushed their way into the copse and nuzzled up next to Simphonia. Effortlessly she adapted Niji’s soft coos and caws into her music and ran her semi-substantial hand through their soft fur.
—
There were six living non-native entities in The Huntsman’s Garden and they were currently paired off. One pair both had survival rates hovering around the 60-75% range. The second pair had one member who was at just over 35% survival rate and another member whose existence gave the probability reader an error. The final pair had one member who was at 19.05% and another who was 99.03%.
The Huntsman considered their first target. The error was probably a multiversal entity. Most likely a hunter who hadn’t been driven out of the universe by poor results and unsportsmanlike behaviour from the intruders.
They attention was drawn to the final pair; there was something intriguing about an entity that had maintained such a high survival rate in such a dangerous locale, and the other member of that pair had the lowest survival rate of the entire group and thus should be a nice warm up to ease themselves back into it.
—
Kaja had finished up the second copy of his warptree/warpbird reference slips and had just started up on the third one when a voice echoed in his head.
“You are trespassing in my Garden. You have one minute to gather your things and vacate this universe before I obliterate you from existence.”
Kaja sighed. Another fucking hunter, and scant hours after it seemed as though Derek had finally taken the hint. “I feel as though I have been very clear and consistent with this point, but none of us have the capability to move trans-universally, save for Zaire that is. As I have said to Derek and at least three others of your ilk, I invite you to hunt him instead, if you are really after a challenge that is.”
There was no response. They had probably gone off to do just that, Kaja reasoned, such tactics had worked in the past. These hunters were here for sport and a target that just talked politely to them and didn’t run and hide or try to fight back, was not really an appealing one. He sighed again; it was bad enough getting accosted when he was out and about, but now in his own (makeshift) home as well? He really needed to get out of this place.
A deafening shot rang out and it felt as though time slowed down.
A golden bullet on a deadly, graceful, arc, punched through the wall to his right, with a shower of brittle broken bark, and then an impact behind him. The sound of glass shattering. He could feel his apparatus breaking, the fluids within that regulated his body pouring out, the processes that kept him alive halted. He felt panic grip him, as viscerally as if the gunman had reached into his chest and wrapped their hand around his heart.
In that slowed down moment he felt a strange sensation. He could almost see the path behind him, the decisions that he’d made that had brought himself to here. And by his side he felt as though he could feel other versions of himself, Kajas that had made slightly different decisions or had slightly different circumstances, and their apparatuses, or equivalents, were shattering too.
He hit the ground minimizing his size as a target and carefully crawled over to the wall, leaking his precious alchemical fluid everywhere as he did so.
“What in the hell was that?” He wondered aloud. The fact that he was now a dead man walking, an extremely limited clock on how much longer he could retain function, was almost an afterthought, compared to the strange sensation of whatever that was.
“An excellent question.” A voice that sounded a lot like his own, but with a slightly higher pitch, responded. He glanced around and there was another person there, flat on their stomach pressed up against the wall just like him. They were wearing black body armor, a curved plague doctor’s mask and had a large reinforced backpack that looked almost as cumbersome and unwieldy as his apparatus had been until recently. “Fortuitously I do have an answer but it will take quite some explanation and I fear you will not find it to be favourable.”
Kaja scrutinized the newcomer. Their whole body was covered, not a glimpse of their skin was visible. The body armor they were wearing wasn’t exactly one to one with the camo or the hunting jackets that most hunters so far had been sporting, but it didn’t seem outlandish enough to suggest otherwise. Though any conclusion that this was another multiversal hunter was not supported by the fact they were on the ground, weaponless, cowering in much the same was as he was. “Well its seems you have me at a disadvantage.” He laughed bitterly. “If you are a hunter I’ve entirely run dry of speeches where I implore you to go and hunt Zaire so perhaps you might do us both a favour and kill me before my organs start to give out. Unfortunately it’s about as close to a win-win as is left for me at this point I’m afraid.” He laughed and that turned into a heaving cough.
“I can do you one better.” said the newcomer. They reached into their pocket and produced a small injectable vial, and then clicked it into a slot on their backpack. Kaja watched dumbfounded as the vial filled with amber fluid, then they disconnected it and offered it to him.
“Are you me?” He asked. “Am I hallucinating? I worry that I am further into organ shutdown than I anticipated.”
“You’re not hallucinating, at least you’re not hallucinating my existence. I can’t vouch for anything else you might be experiencing.” The stranger said. “And yes I am you.”
Kaja shakily took the vial from his other self’s outstretched hand. Sweat was beading upon his forehead. Breathing was becoming a struggle, every beat of his heart was like a shockwave pulsing through his body. The incongruity of the situation wasn’t something he really had time to process right at this exact moment.
Kaja steadied himself as best as he could and prepared to inject the vial into his arm. “This will work?” He asked, and did so without waiting for an answer. It wasn’t as though there was anything that his other self could say that would stop him from taking it at this point.
“It’ll keep you stable for approximately half an hour. It should give us time to withdraw to a safe location though you’ll likely need another before we can get your apparatus repaired, so if for no other reason we should stick together.”
“I don’t suppose you could provide that explanation for what in the world is going on, now?” He asked, glancing around and wishing he had prepared a designated receptacle for sharps. The formula his other self had given to him was potent and it already felt as though his body was stabilizing itself.
“It should probably wait until we’re on the road.” Other Kaja said. “Don’t suppose you have any trip-hazard root on you?” A pause. “For an invisibility potion.”
“Oh right, you must mean tangleroot ii.” Kaja fished in his coat pocket and produced an empty looking pouch and passed it over. It was in this process that he finally noticed that he wasn’t holding Zaire’s sword any more. He could see it lying on the other side of the room amongst the broken glass and alchemic fluid. He tensed, holding himself as still as possible.
“Are you okay?” Other Kaja asked, taking the pouch from him and mixing it into a slot on their backpack. Kaja shushed them and tried to listen out for any distant hints of Discordant Simphonia.
“I think we should be alright for the time being.” He said after a long moment spent in tense silence. “We are going to need to that sword back though,” he gestured with his eyes “just in case we encounter Simphonia along the way.”
Other Kaja gasped when they saw it. “What has been happening in this timeline that you have gotten a hold of Zaire’s sword?” A pause and then. “You can placate Simphonia with this…? Might it be possible to pluck his discordant runes from her entirely?”
Kaja opened his mouth to speak but didn’t know exactly what to say. It might be possible but he hadn’t even considered it. It was difficult to admit that to himself, never mind an alternate version of himself who seemed to have their shit figured out.
“My apologies.” Other Kaja said after a moment. “We can talk about this on the way.” They were holding two small flasks with cloudy pale blue liquid in them. Kaja took one and then Other Kaja unbuckled their plague doctor mask, revealing their face underneath. It was much like his, but softer, more feminine. Kaja felt his heart lurch in a way entirely unconnected to the breaking of his apparatus. She had long chestnut hair tied back in a ponytail. Even with her half-dead off-green skin she was beautiful.
“You’re a girl.” He observed dumbstruck.
“Well yes.” She said, with a faint smile. “When you’re a walking chemistry set like we are it’s not that hard to synthesize your own estrogen you know.”
“Oh.” Kaja said, their hands gripping tight to the flask they’d been given. “I didn’t know it was possible to just be a girl… It just never really occurred to me.”
It was true. Much of their life before the incident had been dedicated to alchemy in a way that probably wasn’t healthy. They’d never had much of a social life. They’d never dated. They could remember the discomfort when their parents had started trying to impose a more masculine role upon them, asking about their conquests, suggesting they get their hair cut it was looking far too feminine, when were they going to settle down with a nice girl. But alchemy was fun and came naturally to them and they still received praise for their efforts. It was so easy to disappear into it and not think about themselves.
And of course they’d hated their appearance following the accident. Obviously it was because they had the skin tone and complexion more befitting that of a Scourged. It was another easy answer to a question they hadn’t wanted to ask. It was even easier to use that thought to not think about how they’d never liked their appearance even before they had this deathly complexion. They weren’t even consciously aware that they’d been avoiding thinking about it until there she was, living evidence of the person Kaja could be if only they let themselves try.
“I am beginning to suspect I might be transgender.” Kaja said.
It had taken a long time for Lucia to relax and accept that nobody was coming after her. She still had nightmares of the Elders of the Raxu Council arriving in town to take back their puppet-like control of her body and put her back to work. Being snatched up to fight in a battle to the death hadn’t been pleasant but at least she’d had autonomy for the first time in a decade.
And here in this empty ruin she was able to find peace in a way she hadn’t for a long time. It would have been a lot harder to stand this place had she still been entirely alive. As an indebted soul bound to the rotten remains of her own corpse, which was in turn bound to a humanoid-shaped hinged metal cage, she didn’t have a lot of need for food or water, which certainly made her stay easier.
She had salvaged planks of wood and hunks of stone to turn one of the ruined structures into something a little homier, a little more liveable.
In terms of entertainment, well this place was still connected to Crossroads City and occasionally things would fall through the gaps; old almanacs and magazines, spellbooks for some of the most useless branches of magic she’d ever heard of, a surprising amount of fae bodice-rippers where a powerful fae lady is wooed by the simple charms of a mortal. Not really Lucia’s thing but she’d ended up reading the entire Miss Hemlock series multiple times over the years.
She was sure that many people, even the person she had once been in life, would find this life dull. But it was hers and she was content.
—
The Huntsman was a professional and as such they finished up their business before they left to take care of personal matters. They had been hired to eliminate all the remaining escapees from The Delightful Reverie, and Lucia here was the last one.
Lucia had maintained a respectable survival rate of 64.22% up to this point. If this were sport The Huntsman would have given her some kind of heads up that she was being hunted, it was more fun when the prey knew what they were.
Lucia was idly gathering materials out in the open and so The Huntsman had their choice of where to target. The head was an obvious first choice, but she was a reanimated corpse and so it probably wouldn’t make much of an impact percentage wise. Through the scope they could see ancient runes burned into the metal of the frame that housed her; could be the thing that was keeping her alive, there was one way to find out for sure. They carefully aimed, and then took the shot.
A loud bang, a distant impact and they had been right, for a second Lucia collapsed to the ground, the magic animating her dissipating before she’d even had time to process what was happening. She was finally dead again and maybe that wasn’t so bad. Then the next second Lucia was back, but different.
She was an eight foot steam powered automaton, whose central body was a pod containing her human form, perfectly preserved in a viscous pink gel. And she was a little confused as to where she was. Her survival rate, as observed by The Huntsman, had plummeted all the way down to 3.41%. They quickly adjusted their aim - once again the body was a tempting target but they opted instead for the bulky part of the mech’s torso, right below the pod that contained her human body.
This Lucia had escaped from The Delightful Reverie as well, but she’d found a different multiversal back-passage and ended up at an ancient overgrown castle in a rugged highland. The dissonance between being there a moment ago and being here now was overwhelming, but before she’d had the opportunity to really process it, a bullet tore through her central processing unit. She stumbled, her pod cracked and spilled out its preserving pink goo onto the sands, and died again. And then the next second she was back, different once again.
This version of her (down to 0.52% now) was an ominous red cloud nailed to a humanoid wooden frame that had long rusted blades instead of limbs. Quickly she was running, or at least attempting to run, her bladed legs had a difficulty finding purchase in the fine sand. All she had to do was get back through the sliphole, out here in the empty desert she didn’t really have a shot against what was hunting her, but if she forced them to come to her then at least she might go out fighting.
One shot went wide, thrown off by her unexpected burst of activity. The second shot hit her shoulder, her whole right side splintered, her blade arm thrown loose, her frame just about holding together by sheer force of will. (0.47% now.) She stumbled and the next shot went overhead. She was right on the threshold of the sliphole when the final shot pierced the roiling red cloud of her soul and tore it in two. Her final death (0.0% survival rate at last) echoed with a psychic scream that even The Huntsman had to flinch away from, and her broken body fell into the sliphole. It would resurface in Crossroad City, nothing but a broken collection of hinged wooden struts.
—
After the warpsap tree vanished Kaja decided that was enough for one day. There was no way of knowing how far it had gone and in which direction. He resolved to bring this to the others tomorrow when he was rested. He’d kept them in the dark about his intentions to find an escape route primarily because he didn’t want to raise any hopes he couldn’t fulfill. Given the circumstances he was willing to risk disappointing them if it meant they might have a real shot at freedom.
He probably wouldn’t tell them about Simphonia though. It wasn’t that he felt that he was using her and he’d be judged for it. His relationship with Simphonia was symbiotic or at least he really genuinely believed that. There was another reason, one harder to admit to himself.
They’d all been doing it; the math of who was the most disposable. Luron and the Zachs hadn’t been willing to stand against Zaire and so a small part at the back of the mind goes ‘well okay, in an emergency’ and waits for the next time Zaire decides to put a ticking timer on their safety. Right now Kaja felt like he was the break glass in case of emergency sacrifice for the greater good. Sure Scott was more inclined towards cowardice, but his ability was almost too valuable to pass up.
Without Simphonia Kaja was probably next on the chopping block when the time came. And that due date felt as though it was nearly upon them. With Simphonia he could pass that buck to Scott. If they weren’t anticipating it he was pretty sure he could take out Kargrek or Bellona, but the thought of the other being up in arms about it in the next round was a disincentive. One he hoped he wouldn’t have to come to face eventually.
He made his way to what had come to pass for home carefully, not quite as meticulously as he had been when he’d been on the trail of the warpbirds, but careful enough. Simphonia followed behind trailing with a particularly mournful violin dirge.
His makeshift home / laboratory was located within the warped and hollowed out stump of an enormous tree. Calling it a stump was perhaps to give the wrong idea, it was several storeys high and wider in diameter than his home had been in his own world. The bark of the tree was a rich deep brown, thick but brittle to the touch. There was a large crack in one face that served as the main entryway. It was just wide enough for him to carefully ease himself through. For someone without a permanent extremely clunky backpack it would have been amply wide.
Inside the sunlight shone in through a multitude of tiny, and some not so tiny, holes where the bark had flaked away. Inside there was a large stone slab, dragged in from outside, which served as a table, and was littered with washed out and drying potion vials, and a number of small piles of different types of leaves, powdered fragments of shells, stalks and seeds, and slices of mushroom and fruit in varying levels of ripeness. In one corner a pile of soft ( and alchemically useless) plants, some of which were starting to rot, that Kaja made do with in place of a bed.
Another corner (as much as a more or less circular space had corners) had been painstakingly cleared, the soil underfoot tilled and Kaja had been using it to grow some of the more useful reagents he’d found in this place. Though the introduction of the Bastard Climbing Vine (as he called it) had been a mistake; it was good for accelerated healing but it had also grown to cover every vertical surface and was burying some of the other, equally useful reagents.
It was not the coziest home someone could have asked for, but given the circumstances it was perfectly serviceable. It wasn’t as if Kaja had been living in the lap of luxury back in his own homeworld.
He took a seat (a small flat stone) and fished from one of his many pockets a small rectangular tin. He put it down on the table and with his free hand carefully opened it up. Inside were small slips of paper, intended as labels for his potions but he seldom had reason to use them, and an unremarkable fountain pen and a small pot of ink.
Doing anything of any finesse like this was inherently a little trickier one handed. He swapped Zaire’s blade from one hand to another as he uncapped the pen, uncorked the ink, and carefully started to draw the warptree. He made little annotations surrounding it; flaky white bark, neon blue sap, cyan and blue-green leaves, large in circumference, only slightly taller than average. He even drew in some pretty awful sketches of the warpbirds and added a note or two about them.
Outside Simphonia, in her more humanoid form, settled down in a small nook she liked in a small copse of trees and bushes that gave her really nice acoustics. Here her music took on a more peaceful tone, soft bells and piano with a couple of snare beats replaced the mournful violin solos. After a while Niji, Kaja’s discarded experiment in understanding the warpbird physiology now wandering loose in the surrounding area, pushed their way into the copse and nuzzled up next to Simphonia. Effortlessly she adapted Niji’s soft coos and caws into her music and ran her semi-substantial hand through their soft fur.
—
There were six living non-native entities in The Huntsman’s Garden and they were currently paired off. One pair both had survival rates hovering around the 60-75% range. The second pair had one member who was at just over 35% survival rate and another member whose existence gave the probability reader an error. The final pair had one member who was at 19.05% and another who was 99.03%.
The Huntsman considered their first target. The error was probably a multiversal entity. Most likely a hunter who hadn’t been driven out of the universe by poor results and unsportsmanlike behaviour from the intruders.
They attention was drawn to the final pair; there was something intriguing about an entity that had maintained such a high survival rate in such a dangerous locale, and the other member of that pair had the lowest survival rate of the entire group and thus should be a nice warm up to ease themselves back into it.
—
Kaja had finished up the second copy of his warptree/warpbird reference slips and had just started up on the third one when a voice echoed in his head.
“You are trespassing in my Garden. You have one minute to gather your things and vacate this universe before I obliterate you from existence.”
Kaja sighed. Another fucking hunter, and scant hours after it seemed as though Derek had finally taken the hint. “I feel as though I have been very clear and consistent with this point, but none of us have the capability to move trans-universally, save for Zaire that is. As I have said to Derek and at least three others of your ilk, I invite you to hunt him instead, if you are really after a challenge that is.”
There was no response. They had probably gone off to do just that, Kaja reasoned, such tactics had worked in the past. These hunters were here for sport and a target that just talked politely to them and didn’t run and hide or try to fight back, was not really an appealing one. He sighed again; it was bad enough getting accosted when he was out and about, but now in his own (makeshift) home as well? He really needed to get out of this place.
A deafening shot rang out and it felt as though time slowed down.
A golden bullet on a deadly, graceful, arc, punched through the wall to his right, with a shower of brittle broken bark, and then an impact behind him. The sound of glass shattering. He could feel his apparatus breaking, the fluids within that regulated his body pouring out, the processes that kept him alive halted. He felt panic grip him, as viscerally as if the gunman had reached into his chest and wrapped their hand around his heart.
In that slowed down moment he felt a strange sensation. He could almost see the path behind him, the decisions that he’d made that had brought himself to here. And by his side he felt as though he could feel other versions of himself, Kajas that had made slightly different decisions or had slightly different circumstances, and their apparatuses, or equivalents, were shattering too.
He hit the ground minimizing his size as a target and carefully crawled over to the wall, leaking his precious alchemical fluid everywhere as he did so.
“What in the hell was that?” He wondered aloud. The fact that he was now a dead man walking, an extremely limited clock on how much longer he could retain function, was almost an afterthought, compared to the strange sensation of whatever that was.
“An excellent question.” A voice that sounded a lot like his own, but with a slightly higher pitch, responded. He glanced around and there was another person there, flat on their stomach pressed up against the wall just like him. They were wearing black body armor, a curved plague doctor’s mask and had a large reinforced backpack that looked almost as cumbersome and unwieldy as his apparatus had been until recently. “Fortuitously I do have an answer but it will take quite some explanation and I fear you will not find it to be favourable.”
Kaja scrutinized the newcomer. Their whole body was covered, not a glimpse of their skin was visible. The body armor they were wearing wasn’t exactly one to one with the camo or the hunting jackets that most hunters so far had been sporting, but it didn’t seem outlandish enough to suggest otherwise. Though any conclusion that this was another multiversal hunter was not supported by the fact they were on the ground, weaponless, cowering in much the same was as he was. “Well its seems you have me at a disadvantage.” He laughed bitterly. “If you are a hunter I’ve entirely run dry of speeches where I implore you to go and hunt Zaire so perhaps you might do us both a favour and kill me before my organs start to give out. Unfortunately it’s about as close to a win-win as is left for me at this point I’m afraid.” He laughed and that turned into a heaving cough.
“I can do you one better.” said the newcomer. They reached into their pocket and produced a small injectable vial, and then clicked it into a slot on their backpack. Kaja watched dumbfounded as the vial filled with amber fluid, then they disconnected it and offered it to him.
“Are you me?” He asked. “Am I hallucinating? I worry that I am further into organ shutdown than I anticipated.”
“You’re not hallucinating, at least you’re not hallucinating my existence. I can’t vouch for anything else you might be experiencing.” The stranger said. “And yes I am you.”
Kaja shakily took the vial from his other self’s outstretched hand. Sweat was beading upon his forehead. Breathing was becoming a struggle, every beat of his heart was like a shockwave pulsing through his body. The incongruity of the situation wasn’t something he really had time to process right at this exact moment.
Kaja steadied himself as best as he could and prepared to inject the vial into his arm. “This will work?” He asked, and did so without waiting for an answer. It wasn’t as though there was anything that his other self could say that would stop him from taking it at this point.
“It’ll keep you stable for approximately half an hour. It should give us time to withdraw to a safe location though you’ll likely need another before we can get your apparatus repaired, so if for no other reason we should stick together.”
“I don’t suppose you could provide that explanation for what in the world is going on, now?” He asked, glancing around and wishing he had prepared a designated receptacle for sharps. The formula his other self had given to him was potent and it already felt as though his body was stabilizing itself.
“It should probably wait until we’re on the road.” Other Kaja said. “Don’t suppose you have any trip-hazard root on you?” A pause. “For an invisibility potion.”
“Oh right, you must mean tangleroot ii.” Kaja fished in his coat pocket and produced an empty looking pouch and passed it over. It was in this process that he finally noticed that he wasn’t holding Zaire’s sword any more. He could see it lying on the other side of the room amongst the broken glass and alchemic fluid. He tensed, holding himself as still as possible.
“Are you okay?” Other Kaja asked, taking the pouch from him and mixing it into a slot on their backpack. Kaja shushed them and tried to listen out for any distant hints of Discordant Simphonia.
“I think we should be alright for the time being.” He said after a long moment spent in tense silence. “We are going to need to that sword back though,” he gestured with his eyes “just in case we encounter Simphonia along the way.”
Other Kaja gasped when they saw it. “What has been happening in this timeline that you have gotten a hold of Zaire’s sword?” A pause and then. “You can placate Simphonia with this…? Might it be possible to pluck his discordant runes from her entirely?”
Kaja opened his mouth to speak but didn’t know exactly what to say. It might be possible but he hadn’t even considered it. It was difficult to admit that to himself, never mind an alternate version of himself who seemed to have their shit figured out.
“My apologies.” Other Kaja said after a moment. “We can talk about this on the way.” They were holding two small flasks with cloudy pale blue liquid in them. Kaja took one and then Other Kaja unbuckled their plague doctor mask, revealing their face underneath. It was much like his, but softer, more feminine. Kaja felt his heart lurch in a way entirely unconnected to the breaking of his apparatus. She had long chestnut hair tied back in a ponytail. Even with her half-dead off-green skin she was beautiful.
“You’re a girl.” He observed dumbstruck.
“Well yes.” She said, with a faint smile. “When you’re a walking chemistry set like we are it’s not that hard to synthesize your own estrogen you know.”
“Oh.” Kaja said, their hands gripping tight to the flask they’d been given. “I didn’t know it was possible to just be a girl… It just never really occurred to me.”
It was true. Much of their life before the incident had been dedicated to alchemy in a way that probably wasn’t healthy. They’d never had much of a social life. They’d never dated. They could remember the discomfort when their parents had started trying to impose a more masculine role upon them, asking about their conquests, suggesting they get their hair cut it was looking far too feminine, when were they going to settle down with a nice girl. But alchemy was fun and came naturally to them and they still received praise for their efforts. It was so easy to disappear into it and not think about themselves.
And of course they’d hated their appearance following the accident. Obviously it was because they had the skin tone and complexion more befitting that of a Scourged. It was another easy answer to a question they hadn’t wanted to ask. It was even easier to use that thought to not think about how they’d never liked their appearance even before they had this deathly complexion. They weren’t even consciously aware that they’d been avoiding thinking about it until there she was, living evidence of the person Kaja could be if only they let themselves try.
“I am beginning to suspect I might be transgender.” Kaja said.
Heaven Help Us | Make Room!!!! | I'm Not Okay (I Promise)
Hang 'Em High | The Only Hope For Me Is You | Zero Percent | Early Sunsets Over Monroeville | DESTROYA | Demolition Lovers | To The End
Surrender The Night | Disenchanted | The Ghost Of You | Party Poison | Vampires Will Never Hurt You | The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You
Hang 'Em High | The Only Hope For Me Is You | Zero Percent | Early Sunsets Over Monroeville | DESTROYA | Demolition Lovers | To The End
Surrender The Night | Disenchanted | The Ghost Of You | Party Poison | Vampires Will Never Hurt You | The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You