Kanin Fyre: Chapter 43 - Split

The little dragon isn’t fast; it takes time to build up speed, and its attack against Lorata is obvious. She doesn’t even stop her pursuit of the Travelers, instead raising a hand toward Ollie in a dismissive gesture. A wave of light strikes the dragon—and breaks, like a wave crashing against the rocks. The next moment, he strikes Lorata in her chest.

We’ve never been good at math. We don’t know how to calculate momentum or inertia, or frankly even know what the difference is between those two things. But we do know that a lot of weight in a very small package traveling at a very high speed could fuck just about anything up—and this seems to include gods.

Lorata is blasted out of sight, gone in an instant.

Fyre appears stunned.

[K̶a̵n̷i̶n̸: go!]

[Fyre: But Ollie—]

We shove her forward, using the glass and void at her back to hurry her toward the platform with the Travelers. Fyre takes over a moment later, summoning concentrated jets of flame to rocket herself forward.

[Ollie: WOW! DID YOU SEE THAT? THAT WAS SO COOL! I WAS LIKE—LIKE ONE OF THOSE BIG BALLS THAT CRANES SWING AROUND TO KNOCK BUILDINGS OVER!]

[K̶a̵n̷i̶n̸: wrecking ball]

[Ollie: A WRECKING BALL!]

[Fyre: Are you alright?! Where are you?]

[Ollie: I’M COMING! I ACCIDENTALLY BROKE THROUGH A WALL.]

We didn’t even know that was possible to do in a place like that. At least Lorata won’t be rejoining us anytime soon. A moment later, Ollie’s tiny form shoots out of a cloud of white debris at the bottom of the room and comes zipping back up to us with a series of happy, tiny chirps.

Rinviu has also been repelled from the Travelers, but while Lorata and Ollie apparently went through the wall, this god is still within view. Noli’s attack wasn’t an arrow so much as a bola; it wrapped around Rinviu even as it slammed them back against the nearest floating block. Her green magic is still active, wrapped around the god and crawling over the platform like ethereal, sentient vines.

Fyre cuts off her flames, landing on the platform next to Noli. A tear has appeared in the air over the Travelers, who have reacted to it in a variety of ways, ranging from fascination to abject terror. Noli is trying to round everyone up, and she appears to have wrangled Hans and a couple others into helping her. She’s produced another magical vine, which she’s in the midst of passing through the crowd to give everyone a length to hold onto.

“...have to select ‘Activate Translation,’” Hans is telling one of the other Travelers as Noli gestures to them. She turns around when Fyre lands.

“Kanin!” Noli exclaims as we let go of Fyre’s back to rejoin most of our glass and void. Since our main body was destroyed by Lorata, we’re now more of a swirl of the two elements rather than anything resembling a human. At least we have some signing hands left.

“Did you see that?” Noli asks, almost bouncing in her excitement. She gestures toward Rinviu, who is still strapped to their block with Noli’s magic vines. “Wasn’t that amazing?”

“It was,” we admit, grabbing our translator and recalling all the glass and void in the room. The darkness of the Planar Linkage spell begins to spill down around us in a dome of black. “How did you do that?”

Noli shrugs. “I don’t know—I just felt like I could. And all that magic I used—was that from you?”

We Check our mana store. “Yes.” It must be due to the way we linked Noli into our magic. Shirasil did say we could throttle the mana if we wanted to. But as long as we have enough for the Planar Linkage spell, we’re more than happy to give Noli whatever she can use.

We gesture to the Travelers. “Are they ready?”

“It’s hard for me to understand them,” Noli admits. She nods to Hans. “But I got a couple to help out. We’re trying to get everyone to hold onto my vine, though most of them don’t understand where we are or what’s going on.”

Yeah, that’s going to be a whole other conversation once we get back.

“Thank you,” we sign. “Well done. We’ll take it from here.” And we’ll have to be quick.

[You have been subjected to an Emotional Radiance spell.]

A sense of peace washes over us, and the distressed shouts and raised voices are almost entirely snuffed out.

“Everyone,” Fyre calls, her voice now audible over the crowd. “I understand how disorienting this must be. I promise everything will be explained to you soon. But in this moment, we need your cooperation. You all have been captured and imprisoned, and this may be your only chance at escape. If you choose to remain, we can’t guarantee you’ll have another chance at freedom. For everyone who wishes to leave, we need to move quickly.”

At this point, the Travelers have stopped speaking and are listening to her with rapt attention.

“Everyone needs to be connected as we pass through the portal,” Fyre continues. “It is absolutely crucial that you do not let go of the provided rope—er, the provided vine—until we’re through the other side. Now, Kanin and I will lead you through.”

We’d rather go last to make sure no one gets left behind, but it’s true that we are needed to make sure the Locate spell takes us to the right place. Luckily, we can be in two places at once. A portion of us carrying our core and the Locate spell heads to the front with Fyre, while the rest of us stays back with Noli. We won’t be leaving until she does.

At the front, we start to lead the chain of Travelers through. We send more of our void and glass down Noli’s vine, which is surprisingly firm, and hover near the Traveler’s hands, ready to grab anyone should their grasp slip. Calmly, steadily—but slower than we would like—we begin to guide the Travelers through.

There’s another moment of pressure as we enter the rip in space, pressing into the nothingness—a strain that rapidly grows in our mind, similar to the time bubbles we’d split ourself across earlier. We wince, enduring it; we should only feel it for a few minutes—assuming we can quickly lead all the Travelers through. Look back out through the portions of our glass and void still in the Sanctum, everyone there seems to be slowing down.

Then the pressure releases, but the strain in our mind does not, and we step out the other side. A spear whips toward our core.

We catch it with glass and void—which doesn’t stop the spearhead, but causes us to be whipped through the air along with it.

“Mir!” Fyre cries.

Mirzayael stays her weapon, frozen as her gaze lands on Fyre. Then her ice seems to shatter.

“Fyre!” Mirzayael drops her spear, rushing to wrap Fyre in an embrace.

We counteract the weight of the spear before it can drag us to the ground, then let go of it to remain hovering as the weapon clatters to the ground.

“I feared—” Mirzayael doesn’t finish the thought. “I couldn’t feel you. Like our connection had been severed.”

“I’m sorry,” Fyre says, smothered by Mirzayael’s hug. “My telepathy couldn’t reach outside the dimension we were in. I didn’t mean to make you worry.”

As the two lovebirds (or we guess, one lovebird and one lovespider) share their mushy reunion, we focus on the rest of us still back in the Sanctum, or halfway between. We use our glass and void to pull on Noli’s vine-like rope, feeding even more mana into her construct to ensure it holds. No matter how quickly we try to pull it through, however, it seems to resist us; an artifact of the time dilation, probably.

“Is everyone okay?” Fyre asks. “Lorata’s champions—”

Mirzayael’s face clouds with distaste. “They’ve been trying to get through, but the dome has held them off. I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be able to endure the assault, however. Their numbers are growing each day.”

We’d only half been listening to the two women, our mind still aching from the continued split of our conscious, but the last words snag our attention. “Each day?”

“It’s been nearly three days since you all vanished,” Mirzayael tells us, finally allowing Fyre to start to extract herself from the arachnoid’s grip.

Fyre grimaces. “I had expected as much.”

I hadn’t. I mean, I know one second in there is a minute out here, but we hadn’t taken that long, had we? We barely even been in there for an hour.

Then again, that’s all it would take; if seventy-two minutes becomes seventy-two hours, then it really has been days.

Nothing we can do about it now. Just try to pull more of the Travelers through. Just try to work as fast as we can.

Even as we think this, the first Traveler, Hans, steps out behind us. He blinks, staring around the throne room in awe.

“We have thirty more on the way,” Fyre says, quickly turning back to Mirzayael. “We’re going to need help getting them oriented.”

Mirzayael frowns. “Our guards are already strained trying to spy on the champions amassing outside. But I’ll see what I can do.”

“Please,” Fyre says, her shoulders sagging in relief. “Send whatever help you can. I’ll start handling whatever I can here in the meantime.”

Mirzayael is already racing off, out of the room before Fyre has even finished—though we imagine telepathy helps make up for that.

“Where is this?” Hans asks, craning his head toward the fantastical mosaics that cover the ceiling.

“Welcome to Lusio,” we say through our translator, trying to approximate a less terrifying form as we cobble what little void and glass we have into something approximating a puppy-sized spider. Hans looks our way and jumps, fear spilling over his face. Okay, objectively, we don’t look much less terrifying this way.

Fyre steps forward, taking Hans hands and giving them a pat. “Welcome to your new home.”

In the Sanctum, we watch the line of Travelers steadily feed into the portal with mounting anxiety. They might be moving as fast as they’re able, but it’s still taking too long. With what glass and void we have here, we could certainly grab them and throw them through, but only one at a time—and that might not be the best strategy to ensure they don’t lose their grip on Noli’s rope.

Rinviu, who appeared to have been knocked unconscious, or at least disoriented, is now starting to rouse. We anxiously watch them, ready to leap into action if necessary.

Noli pats our nearest blob of void. “Calm down. It’s going to be okay.”

“You should go through now,” we tell her, gesturing to the line. “Before the gods come back.”

She gives me a pitying smile. “You know I’m not about to do that.”

We could throw her through. But she’d probably just come right back.

Our glass and void continue to ripple nervously, shifting between different forms—the amorphous version of pacing back and forth, we guess. Rinviu blinks as they look around their surroundings. If they try to get up, will Noli’s vines even hinder them? We gather our void, ready to Displace the god somewhere else to buy us time, if we have to. But we’re more worried about Lorata.

The head of the pantheon hasn’t reappeared yet. Did Ollie really knock her unconscious? That hit would probably have killed a champion, but we’re not hopeful it would mean the same for a god.

Damn, immorality is really annoying.

Of course, we don’t want to kill Lorata. She seems to think she’s doing the right thing. But from what she’s said, she’ll never let anyone with a remnant go free. And if Shirasil is to be believed, it’s all in the name of order—control. We can’t accept that.

We just wish she would have listened to us. We wish there had been some other way.

All but eight Travelers are through. We’re distantly aware of what the other half of us is doing, actions and mind sped up almost faster than we can parse; they’re attending to the Travelers as they come through, trying to organize the unfolding chaos and deluge of questions. The pain in our mind is getting harder to ignore. Between the Traveler’s cells and the Sanctum, we’ve been keeping our mind split across time differentials for somewhere close to an hour. But it won’t be much longer now. We’re almost done.

Our glass catches sight of movement. Rinviu sits up, Noli’s vines snapping as they strain against their bindings.

“Go!” we sign at Noli. We rush our glass and void around the final group of Travelers, pressing them stumbling toward the brink of Between. We clamp bits of void and glass around their hands, trying to keep them pressed to Noli’s rope. “Go now!”

The Travelers object with startled cries, and Noli urges them on, doing her best to convey the urgency in the hopes that any of them had Echo’s translation turned on. She turns to look back at Rinviu—right as Lorata blasts out of her crater.

We press up against Noli and the Travelers, forcing them through the portal. Rinviu is still untangling themselves from the vines—they won’t make it in time. The Travelers are haphazardly falling through the portal, knocked from their feet. Only two to go, then Noli and us. We might make it before Lorata reaches us, too.

She must realize this too, as she levels a finger toward us, and a beam of light erupts from her fingertip. Something blurs our way.

It’s moving so fast we can’t even see it—but we can feel it. Leaning on the version of us that’s back in Lusio, its mind running sixty times faster than our own, our perception seems to slow to a crawl.

The last of the Travelers trips through the portal. We hope we didn’t just doom any of them to the Between. We hope our grip was tight enough that none of them were able to let go. Noli’s head is turned back toward Lorata, a hand thrown up protectively over the back of one of the Travelers. Our glass and void start to enter the portal—but the refiner is shooting our way like a bullet. None of us have the reaction time to dodge.

Even so, we try to pull our void away. We try to hurry it through the portal. Noli’s arm is moving on an intercept course with the refiner. We can’t stop her—we can’t stop anything.

The marble crashes into Noli’s hand. We witness the shockwave pass through her hand, bones cracking, skin tearing. The refiner is deflected to the side, away from the densest collection of our void. It clips off to the side, missing the bulk of our mass. It strikes a volume of void no bigger than an apple instead.

We lose our grip on our other self, and time speeds up again, the moment crashing into us. Pain rips through us as the remnant tears through our void.

We scream, silently, in our own mind, as our essence is hooked by the remnant, clawing at our mind and dragging us in. We fight, we try to rip ourself away, even as we fall through the portal.

But it’s like trying to breathe underwater. It’s like trying to claw your way out of quicksand. It’s like nothing we’ve ever felt, or ever want to feel again.

Noli falls through the portal. Most of us has passed through, too. But our void feels like a fish on a line. We’re being painfully reeled back.

Yet, we fight. We pull. We throw everything we have into the battle. And as we strain, as we stretch ourself apart, we feel something inside us rip.

We fall out the other side of the portal to find Noli and Fyre already at our side, where our void has collapsed to the ground, spasming in pain.

We’re out. We’re through. We haven’t been trapped in a refiner. But agony still tears at our mind and soul, stealing away all rational thought.

It hurts. It hurts. Worse still, we feel something was taken from us. Like the battle in Emrox, some tiny fraction of our void—or mind—was flayed from our sense of self.

And the scariest part of all is that we have no idea what we might have lost.